Ep. 228 - Jermaine Ee: The Questions We Wish We’d Asked

0:03 That's November 11th at 6 p.m. Central Time. See you there. [music] are listening to Stories from Real Life, a podcast by engaging storytellers for engaged story listeners.

0:52 Here's your host, author and journalist, [music] Hello and welcome to Stories from Real Life. I'm your host, Melvin E. Edwards. What if the most important gift you could give your family isn't money or property, but clarity? My guest, Jermaine E., has lived several lives in one. Politics, humanitarian work, entrepreneurship, and even an attempt to eat a thousand tacos. But when he began having serious conversations with his mother about her future, he discovered something far more important. Then he lost her unexpectedly.

1:34 What those conversations taught him and what he hopes the rest of us will learn is the heart of this episode of Stories from Real Life. Jermaine, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Well, first of all, I want to give my sincere condolences on the loss of your mother. Thank you. It was her birthday yesterday and my siblings and I, we went to volunteer at Skid Row here in Los Angeles because that's what she loved to do. She loved feeding strangers. She loved feeding people. Sounds like a wonderful woman. So tell me about your name. Your mom gave you the name Jermaine, and you don't look like any Jermaines I've ever seen before. So tell us about that. You know, the truth is I don't look like any Jermaine that I've seen except for the one in the mirror.

2:19 So it's been my whole life. Yeah, so my parents, they met in Oklahoma in the early 80s. And when they met, they went to school together, they lived in Oklahoma, and they got married when they had me in the early 90s. They thought to themselves, you know, we should name our first American born the most American name we can possibly come up with, right? And if you know anything about music and history, in the late 70s, 80s, the Jackson 5s, They were everything. They were everything, everywhere. And so for their oldest son, they decided to go with Jermaine after the great Jermaine Jackson.

3:02 And so I've carried this name with me with pride and even sometimes I try to sing like Jermaine does. So what's your family's nationality? Yeah, we're Malaysian Chinese. So ethnic-wise, we're from China. But my family has lived in Malaysia for, I suppose, two generations. Yeah. Here's a little fun note though. So I always joke with them that, you know, I appreciate this legacy of carrying on such a unique name as Jermaine. So when I will become a father at some point, and let's say if I have a son in two years, I too shall name my son the most American name I can think of.

3:43 And in 2027, 2028, I think my son's going to be named Jose. That's funny, that is the most popular American name right now, especially here in Texas where I am, probably in California where you are too. Certainly, yes. All right. So you grew up between Malaysia and Los Angeles. When you were young, where did you feel like you belonged? And then where did you feel like you were an outsider? I was an outsider everywhere I went. When I was in Malaysia, I was seen as the American kid who's temporarily living in Malaysia. So my friends would always tease me, it's okay if you fail school, you'll just move back to the U.S., And when I got back to the U.S., I was 15.

4:26 I was a junior in high school. And I got into school in October, which basically meant that classes were formed, friend groups were formed. And I was the new kid, literally fresh off the boat kid. I just got over back to the U.S. And I was an outsider for... Essentially my whole life since, but I've come to embrace this role of being an outsider. I really enjoy it now. I think it's actually a secret superpower that I have to be able to look at any situation and feel comfortable knowing that I don't know everything about it, but I'm going to go figure it out. So at the age of 15, when you came to the United States, apparently a school counselor predicted you wouldn't graduate.

5:09 Why did the counselor come to that conclusion? Yeah, to be fair, I had terrible grades. You know, this counselor told me that, look, it's October of junior year. You're in informal geometry, which is basically your math is at a seventh grade level, right? That's what she told me. And for you to graduate high school, you're going to need this set of credits that I just, I think physically impossible to get through, given how far back I've tested it. So she just told me like, hey, look, I think you're not, you'll be lucky if you graduate high school. So if you want to try, you can take zero period at six in the morning. You can take seventh or eighth period after school and you can go to community college while doing high school.

5:53 And that's what I did. And so in two years, I did graduate high school and I went to a community college after. And you also responded by doing jazz band in the morning, orchestra after school, and then college classes at night. Why was earning that diploma so important to you? I don't know if that diploma was actually important to me. My whole life, I've been told I was too rebellious. I was too smart for my own good. I was street smart, but never book smart. And I was not the kid that could sit down in school. I always got into trouble with authorities, school authorities, not legal authorities. And I think getting a diploma and going to university meant for me that I was part of society.

6:38 I was not someone who was outlawed and will always live outside of the system. And I think it was more important actually for my two biggest supporters, which are my parents. They've always believed that despite the school counselors and the kids in the neighborhood, the parents of kids in the neighborhood telling them that your son is a troublemaker and we're going to keep our kids away from him. They've always believed in me. They always told me that, hey, look, we can't back you every time you get in trouble, but At least you got to do the things, the minimum to get through. And they kept me going. They kept me on track. And I think it was more so for them to also prove to them that your son is not a failure.

7:21 So what did your parents sacrifice that you didn't fully appreciate until you became an adult? There was a conversation with my mom about two years ago. We were walking in Amsterdam by the windmills. And I told her at some point that, I don't know how this came up, but I said, you know, the day that I got into USC, University of Southern California, was the happiest day of my life. I told her, hands down, I think back to that moment as one of the best times. And she admitted to me at that moment that, yes, she was so happy for me, but it was actually one of the most stressful times of her life.

8:02 Because at the time, USC was the number two most expensive university in the world or in the United States. And for her, what it meant was this feeling of being a parent and having your child do everything he's supposed to do to achieve everything that you would hope and pray that he would achieve. But to realize that perhaps the limitation for his achievement is you. Well, it's the price tag of the university. But she never vocalized this to me until more than 10 years after. And it really made me think how much of being a parent is just, you know, you keep going on pretending that everything is okay because all you have to do is just figure it out.

8:48 But it also gave me a lot of appreciation of the situation that we were in. When I got into USC, my family, I received a Pell Grant loan, which is essentially your family's income is at the poverty line. And so I ended up getting a scholarship to USC, so it wasn't too bad. But I just never really knew how difficult it was to be a parent of a child like me. It's very difficult to be a parent of any child. But I'm sure your parents were very proud of what you did and what you are accomplishing. So you've worked in political fundraising, humanitarian relief, education, technology, and business.

9:30 What connects those different chapters in your life? It all starts with curiosity. Every chapter that I've started is because I felt back to being an outsider. At some point, the outsider becomes the insider. I feel comfortable. I feel confident in the field. And I started asking questions. When I was an entrepreneur doing creative agency work, and to break it to layman's terms, there's an app called Snapchat in the teens, 2014, 15 years. And apps that are around today. But at the time, Snapchat was launching these augmented reality ads. And I decided, okay, we're going to create an agency and sell these ads to businesses and we're going to design them, implement them.

10:14 And somewhere along the way, we had a consequential election in this country where I felt that the conversation around politics, around what the government's role is in our life has shifted. And there was a lack of empathy between the left and right. At least the American left and right. And so I was curious and I wanted to understand how politics worked. So I called the email my way to a job with the then-treasurer of California. I worked on this campaign, doing campaign finance. And again, an outsider coming into this field, asking dumb questions a lot of times. But...

10:55 What connected me to all these fields is just, I seek from all my twenties to even now I'm in my thirties. I just seek to understand how the world works. And along the way, all these questions about how does the world work led me to each one of these chapters of my life. All right. You've worked in places like Columbia and Ukraine. So what did you learn about people from those experiences? Yeah, I think this question actually takes me back a little bit to my community college days. So when I was a student at a community college, I needed to get a part-time job to pay the bills. And what had happened, I saw this listing of a recruitment for part-timers to go to the local high school to work with underprivileged kids to help them apply for financial aid.

11:44 And because I speak multiple languages, I applied for this job and I got the job. And it sent me around LA to about 40 high schools, giving workshops, teaching families how to apply for FAFSA, which is the Federal Student Aid for University. And one of these stops in a high school in South El Monte, California, a Hispanic mom came up to me and she used a translator and she told me that She was really concerned about paying for her kids' college. And my presentation really helped her. So she came up to me just to say thank you. She didn't have any questions.

12:26 And I was 19 at the time. And I was driving home. I thought to myself, that was the first time that I had this feeling that my voice was able to make a difference in the world. And this thread of... Making a difference with my voice has followed me to Colombia, two hours outside of Medellin, where we helped set up a medical facility for families that would have died from dengue if they got bit by the mosquito because the nearest hospital was too far away. Ukraine, because of my knowledge in freight forwarding and containers and custom clearance across borders with medicine, I was able to just share my knowledge and help refugees coming out of Ukraine to get the medical need that they need.

13:19 And I think the through line there is just each step of the way, realizing the power that I have, just being an average Joe, at least in my mind, to do things for people that don't That can do nothing in return to me. That's a feeling that I still love today. Nice. That's very nice. All right. So speaking of a feeling, this probably is an uncomfortable feeling when you set out to eat a thousand tacos. So how did that idea begin? And at what point did you wonder, why did I do this? I was driving on a turnpike in New Jersey with my former colleague, Vladislav, my software engineer extraordinaire.

14:03 And I told him it was COVID time. It was 2020. And I say, we're going to spend a lot of time just at home doing work, work remotely. I want to do something unique. I love tacos. And I hate how every time I ask somebody, what is the best taco? The answer is always the one right down the street from where they live. And it's never true. And I thought, I'm going to eat a thousand tacos. And when I'm done with a thousand tacos, I can tell you definitively what tacos are good. And so I just started doing this thing and I documented on Instagram. And when I got to Tacos 144 in the first month, I felt a heartburn.

14:47 And I thought... Okay, you know what? It's time to back off from the pace. But I kept going. So I ate the first 900 tacos in the first year. Somewhere along taco 400 or something, I started telling myself I would only count new tacos. And only one unique tacos would count. And when I got to 1,000, I had tacos from 10 countries. From 13 of the 36 Mexican states, so all over Mexico, as well as the United States, and have had built a community around eating tacos.

15:28 And to this day, the fun thing is people still reach out to me about these tacos, which is a great little thing to have done. That's awesome. So let's tell the people now, because I'm sure they're really curious. What's the best taco in the world? The best taco... In my opinion, is one in Merida, is the state of Yucatan. It's the other side of Cancun. It's a kind of taco called the castakan taco. It's a pork with three layers deep fried on the top as the skin, the layer of fat and a little bit of the meat. And it's a taco stand called Wayan. And to be honest, it's pretty tough to pick out one.

16:11 But the reason why I chose this as the one is because it's the one that I think of the most and I'm salivating as I'm telling you. So that is a pretty good sign that it is to me the best one. That counts for something. That definitely counts for bonus points. All right. So next time I'm in Cancun, I'll have to look for this place. It's about a three hour drive from Cancun. Okay. Maybe I won't look for that place. It's not too bad. It's a beautiful place. It's a great cuisine. Okay, cool. All right. I'll keep it in mind. So let's talk about your parents and your mom and your realization that you experienced. You were talking with your parents about retirement when you discovered that the issue wasn't necessarily financial security.

16:55 What was the uncertainty that you noticed? Conversation with my mom started off being pretty casual about, hey mom, I think you should retire, right? You've worked for a long time and you probably made the last dollar that you need in this lifetime. And what I realized was she had this underlying fear of dying before running out of money before she dies. And in this fear, I noticed that the anxiety that kind of is in the back of her mind is the fact that she didn't really know what she had. She didn't really know what's in her bank account. She knew the number, but she didn't know how her bank account plus her 401k plus all this thing, how did it translate to the rest of her life if she stopped working.

17:38 And as an immigrant that came with nothing, the only gear she knew in life was, I will work, I will save, I will I'll take care of my kids. Repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse. And this conversation that I had with her made me realize that if I were to help her feel better about her situation, the first stop is not to make more money. The first stop is to first figure out what does she currently have. And once we figure out what she currently have or had, then we got to figure out what is enough to her. Because if we don't measure these two things, we'll just be working for something that feels endless.

18:19 And so from that conversation, I built a very simple AI chatbot. And this is when ChatGPT first started. I customized this chatbot for her that asked her questions such as, list out your bank accounts for me. Where have you stored money in the past? As well as, what is one thing that you really miss? Or a friend that you haven't talked to for a while that you'd love to reconnect with. What was your favorite food when you were 18? What kind of drinks made you miss home when you were thousands of miles away in Oklahoma? So with all this information that she told my chatbot, I realized if I know who you love and what you have, I can actually organize this information into an estate plan for you.

19:06 So that's where the conversation flipped from being a fun chatbot to getting to know my mom to an actual legal document. Nice. So when you began asking her about possessions, plans, and dreams, what did you learn about her that you had never known before? So much. I learned that she loved the movie The Sound of Music since she was a child. I learned that because she went to a Catholic school, All girls Catholic school in her hometown of Malaysia, Ipo, Malaysia, that she related to the character Maria in that movie. And she still sings the song.

19:46 She remembers, she knows the words to every song in there. And also found out that she wanted to go back to see Oklahoma almost 40 years later. She wanted to see if the restaurant that she worked at was still there or the four apartments that she heard my dad stayed at was still there. I also found out that she really loved dancing more than she could ever tell us. She says it here and there. And I think it's common for us to talk to our loved ones and hear things, but don't really register in our mind of how important it actually is to them. I think the most important thing for me is that with this project that I was working on, I was able to have conversations with her and make her feel more seen.

20:31 Because when it's written down in front of you, You tend to process it differently instead of this throwaway conversation in the car ride or taking a walk in the park. So that was the best thing that had happened. That's great. So speaking of sound and music, you eventually went with her to Salzburg, Austria. Tell me about that trip. It was July of 2025. My dad, my mom, my girlfriend and I, we rented a car from Vienna and we drove around and eventually we got to Salzburg. And we started off the trip before the tour at the mansion that the Von Trapps have lived in.

21:14 And if you don't know this movie, this family in the World War II time lived by the lake. It's a beautiful place. And as she was holding up a postcard that she got from this, it's a hotel now. She looked in the camera that I was filming in and she said, this, I'm in my dream. I'm literally standing in my dream. And all throughout the day, she kept saying something like that. And it made me realize that for her, this little girl from a small town in Malaysia, to have related to this movie all her life, to have sang these songs all her life, to be standing there felt like an achievement for her.

21:55 And I thought so much about this because if I didn't ask these questions, how much longer would we have put off this... This little bucket list of hers. And it oftentimes isn't even about the money, right? A lot of the things that we want to do with our family doesn't require us to fly across the world. Typically, what we really want to do with our family just requires being present. Sometimes it's literally a picnic in the park. But the issue is we never really pause in our busy days to ask our family these questions. And so... In that trip, I watched her sing, I watched her dance like a child, and I watched her show me the trees in that movie that she still remembers and it's still there.

22:43 And I just saw my mom as this young woman who had so much play to her that I haven't seen in a long time. I dropped her off to the airport. And she continued on and flew to Malaysia to see family. And I have this video of me waving goodbye to her and her turning around with the escalator waving to me. And eight days after that, I got a call that she was hospitalized. And another week after, she was gone. So Salzburg was the last place that I spoke to my mom. But it was also the place that she...

23:24 It was just so alive, so full of life. And I'm so grateful, right? I'm building this app that people build up all the time. But this app allowed me to help my mom feel so seen while she was still with me. And so I often say that clarity is love in practical form. And if we have love for the people around us, one of the best things we can do is just to have these conversations. And that's where Air Light's starting point is. That's where I'm going to go next. But first, I want to reiterate my condolences on the loss of your mother. That must be really tough. All right, so let's talk about Air Light.

24:05 That was something that you had already started on before your mom died. So did her death change your relationship with something that had originally started to help her? I had started it as a project. It wasn't a full-blown company at the time. I knew I would take it seriously because this mission that we have encapsulates... Everything that I believe in as a person. Beyond asking questions for clarity, what I believe in is what I say just right before this, which is how could you possibly know what is enough if you don't know where you start today? And I'm at an age where my friends are becoming executives in their companies and many of them are golden handcuffed to a job.

24:51 Because you're too busy keeping up with the Joneses, right? My neighbor went to private school. I got to send them to private school. They got a bigger house. I got to get a bigger house. They got a new roof. I got to get solar panels on those roofs. And this world that we live in is highly materialistic. And we don't often stop and think, why are we doing these things? As well as, is it actually what we want? Or is it just what we think we need to do? So AirLite, on top of being an estate planning app, it is just a reminder for us to stop and ask these questions. And it's exactly where I'm at in life right now. So I've spent all my 20s chasing to understand how the world works, as well as to understand, well, how do I become impressive?

25:39 I want to get a Forbes Under 30 article or something like that, or a TechCrunch article. And that's all I chased in my 20s. And now that I'm in my 30s, I'm starting to understand how the world works. And I'm now questioning myself, what is my place in this world? And so Airlite is all of that encapsulated in one project. So when my mom passed, I mean, I don't wish for this, but she gave me an incredible founder story, which led me to sitting here talking to you today. So tell us more about Airlite and how listeners can connect to it. For Airlite, we are a storytelling app with an estate planning angle.

26:20 Many, 70% of Americans don't have any estate plan. And I would say approximately half of those 70% should get one. And estate planning seems daunting to, at least to me in the beginning, right? Lawyers are expensive. I don't know if I'm rich enough to even have an estate plan. Why should I bother? I'm probably not going to die tomorrow, so I'll do it next month. These are the reasons why people don't have it. And what I realized is maybe there's too much of a focus on death. Maybe the focus should not be on what would happen after, but the focus should be on the benefits that we get by doing it now.

27:03 Everything that I told you today has been about how much joy someone that I love, my mom got because of estate planning, really. And I think these effects can be repackaged. So we don't set out to solve the entire estate plan. There's tax strategies, there's trust, there's all sorts of complexities there. Our goal is very simply, we want to enable anybody to get from zero to one. We just want to help you out with three simple documents, your last will and testament, which essentially is a document that says who gets what, the guardianship of your child, custodian if they're minors, A healthcare directive, which is who gets to make decisions for you from a healthcare point of view if you're in a coma or if you can't.

27:50 And the third one is called a Durable Power of Attorney, which is essentially giving somebody the power to take care of your finances and pay bills and things like that. So it's three very simple documents that gets you thinking about the topic and gets you comfortable with the topic. And what we realized a year and four months into this journey is... We have users who can absolutely afford an attorney, but they tell us, well, I'll quote exactly one person. One of our users told us, the reason why he doesn't go to an attorney is because he just didn't want to sound dumb. He didn't want to sound like he didn't know this topic despite being 57 years old.

28:34 And so by talking to An application that is fully guardrailed by the laws of your state, right? That makes us different from ChatGPT and all the other AI. He's able to ask it as many dumb questions as he wants to. And the app will patiently, with legal guardrails, answer him any questions that he has. And that made me realize how complex this topic is. Because... We have users of the Muslim faith that requires an additional line on top of the will for them to sign it and make it valid in their faith. And there's also things like in certain states in the United States, the age of adulthood is 19 and not 18.

29:18 And sometimes it's, I think, 17. And so there's all these little complexities with estate planning that makes people feel like it's this daunting task. And I want to just reduce it down to the most basic thing, which is why are you doing this? Who do you care about? And let's set this up so that it's quick. And once you get more comfortable with it, we can refer you out to a lawyer if you want to, or you can just complete the entire thing through our app. Okay. So what do you say to someone who knows they should have a difficult conversation with a parent or a spouse, but they don't know where to begin? They should start with themselves. You know, look inward. Start with the people.

29:58 Write down a few names that truly matter in your life. A lot of people get tripped up because parents that have young kids, they come into the app and then the app asks them, how old are your kids? And the app identifies that the kids are minors. And then the app asks the parent, should something happen to you? If something happened to you, who would you trust to take care of your kids? Now, that's a very heavy question, right? And if you've never thought about this question, you'll be startled and you'll say, I got to go wash the dishes. Maybe I'll do this next weekend. We'll just keep putting it off for another week.

30:40 So I think the first step is actually to look in the mirror and have a journaling session with yourself and say, who are the people that actually matters to me? And understanding that You can then have, let's say your spouse, have a question for your spouse about, hey, what are some values that we care about? You know, what are some things that we care about? I've gone through this conversation so many times with my friends and, you know, of course it starts very high. It's like, I want them to live in the same neighborhood so the school's not disrupted. I want them to have the same dietary preferences and, you know, all these things. But when it really boils down to, it's like, who do I just trust when the times are tough that this person will do the right thing for my kids?

31:23 It really comes down to that. Sure, there are maybe 20 things that we would have liked to have, but these conversations are the ones that really matters. So starting by looking inward, and then you slowly expand outward to the people that are on this list. And when you get to a certain point, you should be at a place where you are in agreement that, do we all agree that this is important? And if you can't afford it, talk to an attorney. Our app is pretty inexpensive, but it doesn't work for everybody. Some people would rather have a hand-holding experience. It comes with a price, but I want you to do what is best for you and to get the right plan in place.

32:08 What's one thing about the American dream that your immigrant parents understood better than native-born Americans generally do? I think it's not an understanding, but a belief. When I was growing up, my parents... Always told me that in this country, laws are laws. And I'm saying that now because with the political climate, it's quite interesting. But we don't have to go there. You know, Malaysia, where our family's from, is a place that is known for corruption. Actually, like many places in the world, right? There are rules and then there are Exception to rules and there are exception to exception of rules.

32:50 There are gray areas. And as I was a child, my parents always told me, in this country, you can do anything. You can be anybody. And there are rules to protect the way of life. And it's, I think, a beautiful thing to have this core belief that if you work hard, you're kind, that amazing things will happen. And I still believe that today. Sometimes it gets shaken a little bit, but I still believe that to be true. All right. So if your mother could see what you've built with Air Light, what part would make her the proudest? And then what part do you think might make her laugh? She would say, please stop talking about me on podcasts.

33:31 She's way too humble. She would have never disclosed that from being a home cleaner in Edmond, Oklahoma, that she died a millionaire. She would not have. She would not have disclosed that. But too bad she's not here to stop me. And we're not going to stop you because that's a great story. Yeah. And I think what she'd be most proud of is the people that the app will and is helping. I think for her, it's always been about when we started developing the app, I asked her to talk to her. The people around her, so her facial lady, friends at Zumba, I'm like, hey, talk to your friends and kind of get some opinion and tell me what they say, what's a pain point, what is something that they're struggling with in this topic.

34:21 And the stories that came back to me are so purely human. For example, there was a woman at Zumba who her English was not great. She's a Spanish speaker. She told my mom that her husband had set everything up. And she wished that she could just ask these questions without making it seem too serious. She didn't want to challenge the will. She just wanted to understand it. And so she said, it would be really cool if your son had a way for me to upload my will, and then it will explain to me what would happen. So we had this feature. It's off right now due to some legal reasons, but we're working through it.

35:03 Yeah. When I think about building Airlite, I think my mom would be most proud of the fact that we are looking at the end user's concerns and in real life situations trying to solve for the average Joe. One of the first things we talked about was I'm not going to take investors as far as long as I can because I didn't want to succumb to the pressure of having to show really strong numbers. So I'm able to go at a loss for a very long time. And do what I think is right for my users. To only referral attorneys and not take a fee because of ethical concerns. And to go as far as I can playing this game of doing what's right by our end users.

35:48 That's great. All right. So as we start to wind down the conversation, tell me how listeners can connect to the app, what some basic charges are, and how soon they can get a will and Durable power of attorney and the medical information they need to have available. Well, I have a one-of-one name. I'm named after Jermaine Jackson, and my last name is two E's. So if you Google me, you'll find me. Airelight is spelled H-E-I-R-L-I-G-H-T. If you go to download.airlight.com, it'll take you to the page that whatever device you're on, it'll help you download that app. We're live in 16 states right now.

36:30 All 50 states have a slightly different probate rule. So we're making our way through the states. And Oklahoma is a strange one. I had to launch in Oklahoma just as a tribute to my parents. But the other states are the highly populated one all the way down. And we did this fun concept. In building this app, I discovered there is a legal term in estate planning called the gift of residue. A lot of apps out there, you can actually make a will for free online. There are many, many ways to do it. The challenge is that a lot of people start the process and they end up stopping because they reach page 16 and question number 12 is too difficult.

37:12 And they're like, well, I'm going to do it next week. So we found out this concept called the gift of residue, which basically means everything else. So if you had not named all these things in your life, what happens to everything else that you didn't name? So we flipped it raw. So we asked our users who matters the most and what would you like to do about everything else? Just name the everything else first so that now your will is complete. You can then go back and add all the individual things after as they come. And if you bought more new things, they'll keep coming in. But once you have those two things, the people and everything else, you're pretty much done.

37:53 You've got a will. And so... Someone who's fairly young or a new parent can probably get this done in about 20 minutes and be out the door. And it's free to start, it's free to draft, and you only pay when you export the documents. It's $149. Okay. And I will include the link in the show notes in case somebody doesn't know how to spell Jermaine E. We'll make it as simple for them as possible. And again, your company is Air Light and you're the founder. My guest today is Jermaine E., named after Jermaine Jackson, although he's not one of the Jackson 5. He's the one of one. Jackson, one of one. That's what you are. All right, Jermaine, thank you so much for being here today.

38:36 I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, that's it for this week's episode of Stories from Real Life. Until next time, don't forget to shine your light wherever you go. [music] That was Stories from Real Life. Join us again next week for another great storytelling journey. See you next time. [music] Stories from Real Life is a production of Media Well Done, LLC.