Welcome to your brand amplified, the podcast where we interview marketers, publicists, and

brands to learn their stories, what makes them tick, and tips and tricks that make a

difference. I am thrilled today to have a doctor in the house.

So we have Dr. Ray, Dr. Reynolds, Kyress here today,

otherwise known as NYC Street MD. Dr Ray thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me and I appreciate you.

Yeah, I'm really intrigued. I want to get into your story because even on your

LinkedIn your summary is pretty evocative it makes somebody

want to know more about you and your story and your journey so going from being shot at

arrested to now being a doctor, a paramedic, and EMT, and providing health

knowledge to people through social media and in real life.

Let's get into it.

So tell us about your...

Where did you start? Tell us about your journey and how you got to be who you are.

Yeah, so basically I'm just the stereotypical New York City kid who was raised in a poverty-stricken area by a single mother on welfare without a father figure.

I ended up leaning on the wrong father role models which were basically hip-hop music, gangster rap, gangster movies, and like the gangsters from my neighborhood and the gangsters in my family.

Kind of crazy, my goals as an early teenager were to be incarcerated for something more violent than my relatives.

Wow. Yeah, my mother did her best to like raise me bright, but there was too many influences so you know how they say like you are the sum total of the people you think out with so I was consuming so much content today we call it content that time it was just movies and music and then everything in my

surroundings was leading me down there for jail you know it wasn't until I got one

step closer to death like someone was shooting at me they try to kill me and then I eventually found out who they were and as I was planning payback you know I had like this whole group of deported gangsters with me in the Dominican Republic ready to like help me commit suicide or like to kill this person.

When I got that echo in my head, yes and if you keep going down this path, you're going to end up

dead or in jail. And I always heard that voice, but this one time I paid attention to it, you know, and then I ended up eventually entering and becoming an EMT in 2003, I became an EMT, just seeking the emergency medical technician, just basically working on the

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