Josh Aryeh And His Batmobile

Summary:

Josh Aryeh has a unique hobby Founder of Smiles for Cars. Josh dresses up as batman and visits

chronically ill children in his free time. He even outfitted his car to look like the Batmobile. He shares his inspiring story of why and how he got started. He describes the whispers the moment he realized how impactful his actions are, and the bricks he has faced along the way.

Episode Transcription:

Intro plays

Ari: Welcome to whispers bricks. My name is Ari Schonbrun and I’m your host. Today we have an interesting young man. I consider him young because I’m a lot older than he is. His name is Josh Areyeh. And Josh is 34 years old. He lives in Lawrence, New York, as well as Manhattan. He is the CEO and founder of lions view development, and Josh has co developed $250 million worth throughout the East coast between 2018 and 2021. Now in Josh’s own words, he states, I generally have a very full schedule each day. Given my responsibilities. However, I always find time for the work which I find to be the most important and most rewarding of all charity work. On my free time in the evenings or over the weekends, I dress up as Batman, complete with my car which has been transformed into a Batmobile to visit sick kids in hospitals or an outpatient treatment centers, or at their homes after returning from a hospital stay. It started as a one time favor. But when I saw happy that first child was when I walked into the room, I decided right then and there that I would continue doing it. And I’ve since helped give out 30,000 Plus toys to sick or underprivileged children, pictures and videos from various events can be seen on social media, Batman real account, which has more than 100,000 followers, or via my organization’s website, which is wwwsmilesthroughcars.com. Please help me welcome Josh. Rei. Josh, how are you?

Josh: I’m great. Thank you for having me.

Ari: Hey, it’s my pleasure. So good to see you. Okay, so we’re gonna get right into it here, my friends. Okay. One second. Here we go. Alright, so Josh, as you know, the name of this podcast is whispers in bricks, the whispers of those voices telling you what is the right thing to do, and represent the good in life. The bricks represent the bad things we go through in life. And let’s get real. Everybody goes through some bad things in life, everybody has a brick thrown at them at some point in time or another. Now, the format for this episode is going to be a little different than my normal format, it’s going to be divided into two sections. Actually, the first section, we’re going to be talking about the whispers to which you have listened, that led you to the amazing work that you do. The second section will be about the bricks that you’ve been hit with in your own life, and how you managed to get through it. So let’s get started. I know there are many people in my audience who have gone through some of the situations that you have seen and dealt with. I’d like you to share with them how you started smiles through cars. And I’d like you to tell them the story of that eight year old little girl that you conveyed to me earlier on.

Josh: All right, definitely. So when I was a younger boy, I grew up loving exotic cars, I had a passion for them, but I wasn’t able to afford them when I was younger. And I developed relationships with people that either had memberships to car clubs, or that owned these cars. And from time to time, they would allow me to borrow them just to go home, do errands for them, whatever it was. And one day I just had an idea. I said the same way that I grew up having this passion and desire to go into these cars. There have to be sick and underprivileged children that had that same want or wish. So I started calling up all these different organizations saying Hi, my name is Josh airy. I don’t own the cars, but I’ve access to almost any exotic car in the world. If ever you have a child that makes a wish or wants to go on it, let me know. And I do this day after day, week after week, I thought it would be the simplest thing in the world. I never got a call back. Months went by before I got my first call was actually a friend of mine called me up saying that he knew of an eight year old girl who is battling stage four cancer. And she lived in Queens and she was coming home in between the chemo treatments and her dream was to go on a Lamborghini. So I had a cousin of mine that lived in Great Neck who had a yellow Lamborghini from the car club he was a member of and I called them up I said Look, can I borrow the car for two days? This is what I want to do. He said 100% And you know, I arranged a surprise of the family. And they bring out this little girl and this was the moment that changed my entire life. Like until that moment. My goal was to be on Forbes I wanted to be one of the wealthiest people In the world, the biggest car collection biggest houses yachts, I want it to be a billionaire. I want it to be Bruce Wayne, not Batman. That’s what my goal was. And after this, my entire life changed. And they bring up this little girl. She’s in a wheelchair, she’s looking down at the ground, she was all said, and she looks up and she has this bright yellow Lamborghini in front of her house. And you see this entire child’s face like lights up the biggest smile you’ve ever seen. And I put the top down, we get her into the car, drove around for like 1520 minutes, get her back, they take kinds of pictures, they put her in a wheelchair. And as soon as she gets in the inside the house, the mother starts hysterically crying, like non stop bawling. And this was the first time I’ve ever truly had like a one on one interaction with a child that was that sick, I was always involved with charity and helping people. But it was the first time I was one on one with a child with stage four cancer. So I looked at the mom, I said, if I did something or said something insensitive, like I thought maybe it was just something I said that, you know, made her upset. She goes, No, she because you don’t understand. My daughter was diagnosed with cancer at the age of four, she’s had over 20 surgeries, she got an infection, which caused her to become paralyzed, which is why she was in this wheelchair. Should this is the first time I’ve seen my daughter smile and four years since she was diagnosed with cancer.

And for me, at that moment, I said, If I could have such an impact was such a stupid thing. Like I’m a huge car enthusiast. But at the end of the day, it’s just a piece of metal, a piece of carbon fiber, or whatever the materials are like it’s a car. And I like my entire life shifted from wanting to be a billionaire, to saying I need to figure out how I could potentially be wealthy enough to afford these types of things, but use them to give back to the community. And that’s kind of how my mission started with that. And then as social media came out with Facebook, and Instagram and all that, you know, growing to more than 100,000 followers getting millions of views per year on the account, we get messages from people all around the world. So we’ve you know, really expanded the organization. And we do I mean, we have volunteers all over the let’s say like Florida, Vegas, California, New York, even parts of the Middle East. And we visit tons and tons of children. So what was originally just my greatest passion ended up becoming my greatest pleasure, like I, you know, my mission really is just to make a difference in the world, it’s, you know, I always say that kindness is free, it’s something that everyone could afford to give, it could be as simple as holding the door open for somebody because I get a lot of messages from my followers saying, I don’t own a Lamborghini, I don’t own a Ferrari or a Porsche or whatever, you know, I can’t do what you’re doing. And you’re right, you might not be able to do that. But it could be as simple as holding the door open for someone or smiling, saying good morning. You know, a kind deed is something that did done to someone else, you never know how big of an impact it has on that person. And that’s really my mission is just to get people to either inspire people are to bring hope to children and families in need, even if I can’t personally visit them. So we’ll do FaceTime. You know, because of technology, there’s so many more ways that you could do it, especially during the pandemic, we had to change our entire if you want to call it business model or model that we implement it to visit the children, we had to change that because we couldn’t do that during the pandemic. And I said, I’m not going to go for X period of time, because we don’t know how long this less without visiting the children. So we had to completely restructure what we were doing to enable us to still achieve our goals, but changing the ways that we were originally planning to do it. And I think that’s the most important thing in life. It’s, you can’t control the cards you’re dealt. But you can control how you choose to play those cards. And that’s really an important thing. You know, no one could make your day good or bad. It’s how you internalize it and how you react to it. It’s not that you can’t ever get said you can’t ever get upset. But don’t let someone else define how your day is going to be or who you are. A lot of people like to say negative things about people. But a lot of that comes from the fact that they themselves are in a negative place and you can’t let them define who you are. And you can’t let that negativity bring you down you have to surround yourself with positive people, which is what I try to do with the organization. It’s not just the volunteer. We want people that truly care about the children.

Ari: You’re you’re quite a young man, you really really are. I mean, I you bringing me to tears actually, um, I just I I can’t imagine, you know, the, the effort, the hours the you know what you’re putting into this in order to accomplish your goals here. And it’s so refreshing. You know, when you hear about somebody who Yeah, maybe he wanted to be the richest guy in the planet, but you know, was turned around because of a simple deed. And what you’re doing is just so amazing. And you’re you’re very, very, you’re a very wise boy at the age of 34. But let me now ask you this, okay. Can you share with my audience, maybe some of the bricks that you’ve been dealt with in your own life? And how you managed to get through it?

Josh: Yeah, definitely. So I personally, I had a younger sister, actually, that unfortunately passed away. She was studying abroad for the year. And when she came home, she had a little bit of a cold, she didn’t feel well, and she went to the doctor, the doctor said she was fine. And I remember waking up one day to the paramedics inside my house was like 8am on a Sunday morning, and waking up to the paramedics and everything, all the commotion going on. And unfortunately, she just had severe difficulty breathing, and she was turning cyanotic, she was turning blue. And they had to take her to the hospital. And eventually they had to induce a coma and intubate her. And within seven days, she passed away, and ended up being she had a horrible staph infection. But because of the fact that at the time, thank God, she was an 18 year old child with no medical conditions, no medical history, no medications, because her immune system was so strong, it was trying to fight it off, and they couldn’t identify what that issue was. So they couldn’t treat it. And by the time they figured out what it was, the infection spread throughout all of her organs. And there was just nothing they could do. So unfortunately, the whole thing from start to finish was seven days. And that was my only younger sibling and the only girl in my family. So that was an extreme, you know, below, if you want to call it to the family, when something like that happens, it’s never easy to lose someone, but when it’s a sudden passing, it’s even worse, especially an 18 year old, you know, that’s when their life is just beginning. So that was, you know, something that really impacted me, and thank God, I have a very, very close family, you know, like my siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, you know, I have a great support system. But there’s a lot of people in the world that go through similar situations that don’t have that support system. So the combination with the experience that I had with that child, and seeing my own experience of being in the hospital day after day, spending your entire life there, you know, willing to give up anything, you have just to, you know, potentially save her or for someone else that has cancer to see them happy. And I realized that if I could have that impact, and be the person that people need you to be, then that’s what I want to do with my life. And that’s kind of how I got into it. Because there are so many people suffering, especially during the pandemic, I mean, the amount of anxiety and depression and loneliness that people have, because of this, you know, way before, you know, forget about cancer and all that just this alone, you know, picking up the phone and calling a neighbor or calling a grandparent and aunt and uncle, a friend, someone that might be alternately single, right? There are tons of people that are in their 50s 60s that don’t have children that never got married don’t have a significant other. You know, there’s a lot of people in this world that might not have cancer, or some illness that you see. But there’s a lot of other illnesses that people have, or issues that they’re going with that you can make that impact. And that’s kind of the main thing is that we all have our own bricks in life, we all have our issues. I mean, there are tons of others that we had, you know, I wasn’t born rich, you know. So there’s a lot that people could have, you know, when people look at the social media account, they say, Well, look at that car, look at this, look at that. I’m like, that might be but what about all the heartache that the person had to get to that point to get the car? What about all the chances that they took the sleepless nights that they worked on projects that didn’t even end up happening? You know, not knowing if you’re even going to be successful, and you took a gamble and saying, You know what, I’m going to give it all and work and try and so they just see now but they don’t look at what took to get to that point, or, you know, while in this point, what we’re working towards there, you know, because there’s no one in the world that has a perfect life. You can have the wealthiest guy in the world, they still have problems. Everyone has their bricks. But a lot of people don’t want to talk about the bricks because they’re afraid they think it makes them worse, but I think it actually shows your character. You know, like I said, you can’t control the Cards You’re Dealt but with the bricks and stuff, you have to figure out how to make life better.

Ari: So let me ask you this. Did you ever get to a point because you talked about you know, deals that may have gone south whenever the gym to get to a point in your life and your young life? Let me put it that way. Okay, we actually said to yourself, you know what, I can’t do this anymore. It’s too hard. It’s not worth it. I’m just gonna give up on my dreams. I mean, did you ever get to that point at some point, and if you did, how did you get through that? What did you do in order to get through that?

Josh: Yeah, so I mean, first of all, when I first started off doing some real estate I started, you know, working for a company doing some management. But I was also trying to do brokerage or you know, as an agent to try to get additional money. And I have to say at least my first 1000 deals like literally more than 1000 deals that I tried didn’t work out. Like some of them, we got to the table, like as exciting as it would be to get to the table, both parties are there, and they couldn’t work it out. Like there was one property I was trying to sell it was downtown Manhattan, think they wanted 70 million. They’re asking was 70, something they actually wanted 70. And the person offered like 68.5. And eventually they were willing to come down and the deal was going to go through and I would make 1%. So I was going to get about 685,000 for that deal was going to be my commission. But at the end, they ended up coming down to 606. Steve was at 68 million. So they were half a million dollars short on what the actual offer was that like that’s how small the discrepancy was between the two sites. And neither of them were willing to budge because of pride. And I said to them, I said, Look, you’re paying me $685,000 Commission, keep my 500 Give me 185 To get the deal done. And that’s it. And he said, No, I want him paying the half a million. So then I went to the other said, Look, I’m willing to get this deal done. I know you don’t want to pay more than 68 I’m getting paid 685 I’ll write you a check 500. At the closing, you get it back. And I’ll make 185. Because no not I don’t want the guy to get 68.5 I’m willing to do 60 both sides and do it the deal fell through. Imagine me I was really young. But I mean, that’s a lot of money for anybody. And it’s just so there’s been a lot of heartache that gone through. And so in terms of that, like I’ve never felt like giving up because every if you want to call it, I don’t call it a failure, I call it a bump in the road. Because I think the way that I define failure is when you quit, you know, I don’t say that I’ve ever failed, I figured out a lot of ways it didn’t work. And that was really my mentality with when I was doing that it’s this didn’t work out, I’m that much closer to being successful. And again, and again. And you know, how could I learn from what was happening, but at the same time, my motivation wasn’t to be that billionaire anymore, my motivation was to be able to make that impact. So I wasn’t even motivated to become successful for myself, I want it to be successful. Because my my goal every year, like everyone has a New Year’s resolution, you know, they want to go to the gym, they want to my goal every year was either to donate more money than the year before, or to be able to make more of an impact on the world. You know, if I couldn’t afford to donate money, I could donate my time I could make. And that’s all I wanted to do. So my motivation to become what you want to call successful was other people’s lives were motivating me to do it. So even on the nights where I literally didn’t go to bed, like I would be up from Monday to Wednesday trying to work on a deal and, you know, crunch the numbers and do that. I would say you know what, I’m exhausted. But I’m doing this for the other people like this isn’t about me. So it gave me that extra motivation to be able to push through it, you know, because I wanted to be able to help other people. Like I think the thing that that bothers me the most is that even though I’m doing a great job, I’m limited with how much I can donate. Right, you could only give, let’s say certain percentage of what you have, you know, if I had $100 billion, I would love to save the world and do that. But I don’t, I’m not at that level. And that’s, you know, the only thing that bothers me in life is that I’m limited with what I could do with money. You know, I would love to be able to, you know, see struggling families and buy them their clothing, buy them their food, buy them that, you know, anonymously, I don’t need recognition. But that’s the only thing the only thing in my life, if I would want to change is somehow be able to do that. But other than that, I don’t think I’ve ever really failed because I don’t quit, you know, I found certain things that don’t work for me, right? I’m not a rocket scientist, I’ll never be that just something it’s not meant to be. But I’m good at certain things. And that’s really what people have to do. Because there’s so many reality TV shows that are out there. And it’s all about keeping up with you know, fill in the blank. But you know, I think what a lot of people struggle with is they’re always trying to be like everyone else, instead of being the best version of you. Right? I’m not to call us the MK the best looking. I’m not the richest. I’m just a normal guy with a big heart, but that’s who I am. And I think people have to learn to accept that and embrace that because it’ll make you a much happier person as opposed to always trying to be and keep up with everyone else. So, you know, that’s definitely my mentality in life.

Ari: It’s, it’s amazing. You know, I always I always tell people and you hit the nail on the head. You know, I don’t care how rich you are. We’ve all got the same issues. They just might be differently levels, like, you know, I try and figure out what kind of car I can afford to buy, right? And my boss, my ex boss, alright, he used to try and figure out what kind of a jet can he buy? You know, I’m saying, so he has the same problems that I do. They’re just on a different level. So don’t think just because you’ve got a lot of money, or just because you see somebody who has a lot of money that they’ve got it all figured out, because chances are they don’t. And chances are they’ve got the same problems that you have just on a different level. It’s, you know, you’re amazing. Okay, let me ask you this, because let’s wind down, I want to ask you, if people want to get in touch with you, what would be the best way for them to do that?

Josh: Sure. So either they can message us on our website, which is smiles through cars.com. Or if they use social media on Instagram, it’s at Batman real account, and they could send us a message and sometimes it takes a little bit of time to catch up with the messages, but we will respond within a couple of days.

Ari: Wow, that’s great. That’s terrific, Josh. Thanks so much for sharing your story with my audience. It was truly amazing. You’re an amazing young man, and I know you’re going to accomplish so much in your lifetime. Good luck going forward. Keep doing what you’re doing. You been listening to whispers in Britain. I’m your host I’ll be showing next time.