Breaking Generational Curses

Breaking Generational Curses: Neurodivergent Journeys, Fatherhood & Creativity

On this episode of Hustle Zone TV — the show Ryan Perez has rebranded around his own identity as “Digital Stem Cell” — the conversation starts with a chance encounter. Perez, who is open about being neurodivergent (he names autism, dyslexia, and ADHD as part of how he sees the world), was out shooting a video when a stranger stopped to film him back. That stranger turned out to be Jerry Jones: a retired U.S. Navy Chief, a content creator, a father, a consultant, and a fashion designer whose Instagram bow-tie game was sharp enough that Perez clocked him on sight.

Jones opens by laying out his Navy career. He didn’t enlist out of patriotism — he needed a paycheck, and his mother had told him that if he wasn’t doing something substantial by 19 she’d send him to boot camp herself. He grew up in Chesapeake, Virginia, in the shadow of Norfolk, home to the largest naval base in the world, though he says he barely noticed the Navy’s presence around him until he came home from boot camp and suddenly saw it everywhere. He started as a Deck Seaman, rose to Boatswain’s Mate second class, then pivoted into Navy human resources as a career counselor once he found the deck work mentally unchallenging. By his own description, he became “the plug” — the guy who could get sailors whatever they needed, a habit he still carries into civilian life. He talks about the difference between “day ones” (blood relatives) and “day twos” — the people you’d go to war and possibly die alongside — as the bond that shaped how he sees loyalty.

That problem-solving instinct became the seed of his brand, Alter Ego Apparel. Jones explains the name isn’t about anything clinical — it’s about the idea that everyone has a version of themselves they switch into for work, for social settings, for command presence. He connects it back to Navy culture too: Chiefs are nicknamed “goats,” and their gathering space is literally called the “goat locker,” which he says lines up with the brand’s message of striving to become the greatest version of yourself.

The most personal stretch of the conversation is about fatherhood. Jones talks about growing up in a single-parent home, with a stepfather he calls dad who wasn’t consistently present, and says plainly that he never wanted to repeat that pattern with his own son, who is 14. He describes insisting on 50/50 custody when his son’s mother moved out, and choosing fatherhood over dating advice his own father gave him at the time. He talks about learning to skateboard with his son in his late 30s, buying him clothes from H&M and the Gap because he couldn’t find stylish options for kids, and posting a photo of his son in lime-green skinny jeans from the girls’ department as the first image on his “Gemini King” Instagram. Both men return to the phrase “generational curses” — the idea that their generation is now reclaiming a childhood some of them didn’t fully get to have, whether that’s through skateboarding, video games, or simply being present in ways their own fathers weren’t. Perez, whose son is 12, shares the same instinct to change that narrative rather than assume it’s inevitable.

The episode closes out with a lightning round (Tacoma, Washington as a favorite city; Wednesdays; a self-rated “Tyrese 10” as a driver) and a run of business plugs. Jones talks about his drop-shipping site, forthcoming cut-and-sew Alter Ego hoodies arriving from Pakistan, and two logo directions — one Prada-inspired, one an “erratic” rockstar style — designed by a Connecticut-based designer he credits by name. He also credits Rod Wave’s “Ghetto Gospel” with getting him through a hard period. Perez, in turn, highlights his own “Made for Dyslexic” shirt line sold through Teespring, where the text is deliberately misspelled — a nod to typoglycemia and to Albert Einstein, whom he cites as dyslexic — and invites Jones back for a future round-table episode of the show.

The episode plays less like an interview and more like two people who recognized something in each other on the street and kept talking — about the Navy, about fatherhood, about building something of your own after the uniform comes off.