Southwest Flavor Ep. 159 - Tyler Farley, Phillip Steward

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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**Ron Arenas** (0:14)
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Southwest Flavor. Happy Tuesday to all of you. We have a great show going for you today with my co-host, Brittni Gutman.

**Brittni Gutman** (0:23)
That's right.

**Ron Arenas** (0:23)
Good morning.

**Brittni Gutman** (0:24)
Thanks for having me, Ron. Blessed and honored to be here.

**Ron Arenas** (0:27)
Yeah, it's been a little while. So glad that you're on today with us.

**Brittni Gutman** (0:30)
Yes, sir. Thank you. Thanks again. I'm excited. It's going to be a good show.

**Tyler Farley** (0:33)
It will.

**Ron Arenas** (0:34)
It will be a great show. So our first guest is Tyler Farley from HOTT Fitness.

**Tyler Farley** (0:40)
It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you guys for having me.

**Ron Arenas** (0:42)
Yeah, thank you. Bring your microphone up just a little bit closer. There you go. All right.
So you have quite a story for being such a young man. You have quite a story and we would love to hear it.

**Tyler Farley** (0:56)
I'd love to share it with you guys.

**Ron Arenas** (0:57)
Yeah, go ahead. Start to start with some of your history.

**Tyler Farley** (1:01)
As far as my history goes, some of what you know is I spent five years in the Department of Corrections, which is where I learned to find my passion for fitness.
What I did is I started training guys while I was in prison. I seen guys losing weight, building all this muscle. I was like, you know what? I'm not too bad at this. So I just continued to do my research when I got out, and I got my certifications to the National Academy of Sports Medicine up in Chandler, and started my own company.

**Ron Arenas** (1:39)
Very cool. And you also, when you're inside, you went through a program, right? Through the county?

**Tyler Farley** (1:46)
Yeah. I started working while I was here in Tucson. It's the Pima County Adult Detention Center.
I got my high school diploma, and I met the Pima County School Superintendent, Dustin Williams, and he offered me this program. And I'm like, I was like, yeah, you're kind of full of sh- Can I say that?

**Ron Arenas** (2:08)
Yeah, you can say that.

**Tyler Farley** (2:09)
I was like, yeah, you're kind of full of shit. I was like, you're not going to write me. I was like, you know. So I was like, all right, whatever.

**Ron Arenas** (2:15)
So you had to like qualify for this program?

**Tyler Farley** (2:17)
No.

**Ron Arenas** (2:18)
No. Okay.

**Tyler Farley** (2:18)
There's no qualifications. I mean, I guess there's one qualification. You have to have justice involvement, which clearly I did because I was in jail.

**Ron Arenas** (2:26)
Sure, sure.

**Tyler Farley** (2:29)
So me and him were writing letters back and forth. I still have all my letters from him.
And when I got out, they helped me out right away. They gave me a cell phone, clothes. So I didn't have to wear the prison blues anymore. And they kept me on track for what I wanted to do. And they've never tried to sway me into anything that I didn't want to do. I told them I'm going to do this. They're like, how can we support you in doing that? And that's exactly what they've done the entire time.

**Ron Arenas** (3:02)
Very cool.

**Brittni Gutman** (3:03)
That's beautiful.
That's good. Amen, Justin, Dustin, Dustin Williams.

**Ron Arenas** (3:09)
So is this a program that you were selected or?

**Tyler Farley** (3:14)
I'm one of their first participants.

**Ron Arenas** (3:19)
Do you think that you were selected partly because of your age?

**Tyler Farley** (3:22)
So when they started the program, it was originally 16 to 24 year olds.

**Ron Arenas** (3:28)
Okay.

**Tyler Farley** (3:29)
But where the program is at now is anybody with a justice of all background is welcome. Right now, we have 307, I may be wrong on that.
But out of that 307, only 7 have reoffended and gone back.

**Ron Arenas** (3:49)
Oh, wow. Okay. That's a percentage. Yeah, that's a great percentage.

**Tyler Farley** (3:52)
I was just promoted in the program to be the head mentor.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:59)
Wow.

**Tyler Farley** (3:59)
So I'm currently setting up my own team of like-minded individuals like myself to go in and speak to the incarcerated youth. That is phase one of my plan.
After that, we are going to go in and get in touch with the at-risk youth in the high schools and middle schools and try to nip these problems in the butt now instead of later.