Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Had a podcast with the real Freeway Rick Ross.
He was like, Young blood, just hit record whenever somebody comes on because you never know where the conversation is going to go. Because me and him had a whole podcast episode before we even got to the actual podcast episode.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: There was so much content that I missed because I didn't hit record. So he was like, just hit record. Let it go to the cloud. He said your engineers could chop it up, right? He was like, yeah. So I was like, damn. So ever since then, when someone comes on, I instantly just, hey, record to the cloud.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: That's really a good idea, because you're right sometimes in that because sometimes the pressure of like, okay, we're getting ready. All right. Three, two, one, go.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, on tonight exactly. It's like, come on, man. Just be you. And to be honest with you, it took me about, I'll say about three to four interviews to kind of get comfortable with that. Just because I call it newfound fame, because I'm a realist. But at the same time, I'm still down to earth, right? So the idea of having over a million followers on a social media platform, it does put you in a certain, I guess, light, so to speak, when you're being recognized in public or people are doing nice things for you just because you're you. Like, for example, this one lady, she's a follower of mine.
She made me some sneakers, bro.
Customized me some freaking sneakers. Put not just my grandma, God rest her soul, but also my kids.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: My condolences.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Oh, what?
[00:01:47] Speaker A: And your fraternity on there, too.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: And I'm never going to wear these. I'm going to keep these in plastic, you know what I'm saying?
And to know that I have a custom pair of sneakers that got my slogan and my kids on it, all things that I cherish, you know what I'm saying? And it's different, man. It's different. And when you have different instances to whereby life changes for you and you start getting access to places and spaces that you've never been before, then it kind of changes the game a little bit. And I think for many people, they're a little apprehensive towards really getting comfortable with that. I mean, my background is in media anyway. I have my bachelor's degree in communications. So that part was never hard for me. It's just the idea that someone sees me as a celebrity when I just think of myself as I'm a regular guy that just so happened to achieve some extraordinary know.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: It's kind of like Trevor Knowles.
Did you see that Trevor know interview with his brother? His brother told him, trevor Knowles on a podcast, I think, or interview. But his brother told him that, hey, they know you. You don't know them. They've already built a relationship with you through all your videos and everything. You know what I mean, you just happen to meet them, and they already believe that they know you.
I think that literally that's where you are, and that's what's up. I think that's amazing because I've met some influencers that are like, they think higher themselves. They're like, yo, I got a million followers.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: Actually, you know what's crazy? I got a story for you. And this definitely ties into one of the reasons why I wrote my book in the first place, right? Because when you think about power, you think about the dynamics of power. Sometimes there's delusion that comes along with that. However, there is a healthy delusion as it relates to gaining power, as it relates to what you want to do. So I went to this conference, right? And me being me, I'm looking at the list of all of the influencers there. So I'm like, okay, so they got me at the big table, the big boy table, you know what I'm saying? So nobody at my table had less than a million. So I think I had just hit 1.3. Dude had two shorty had like 3.5, and I think the highest dude had, like, five mil. Nobody had less than 100,000 at the conference period, because I literally went through every single it was like, over 100 people. And I literally sat there, was like, okay, who is this person? Oh, they look interesting. I might want to follow them, you know what I mean? So I'm going through the list. I'm like, okay, cool. So we're going through, and they start doing this speed dating, but for networking purposes, for the influencers that get up, go around to the tables. So as people are going around the million table, since we were the biggest table, they just told us, just stay there. People will come to you all. And I'm like, no, I want to go in, and I want to meet other people, too. They're like, no, sit down, because we ain't got that much space. I'm like, all right, cool. I go argue.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Okay, yeah.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: So the people that were coming around, they kept telling us, like, it's this dude here who keep telling people they ain't got enough followers to talk to him. And I'm like, what?
In my mind, I'm thinking, did I miss something? Because I know I looked at the list. All of the big the heavy hitters are sitting at this table. So if the heavy hitters ain't walking around, who is this guy? You know what I'm saying?
People going around, going around. And then the guy, of course, they end up describing him, pointing him out, stuff like that. So he comes and sits at the table. Now, mind you, I'm the only black person at this table with all these heavy hitters. You feel me? So the guy, I think he was either mixed or he was just, like, fair skinned. Nonetheless, in my opinion, you say you're black? You're black. Yeah, I'm not arguing with you. You feel me? I just met you, by the way, too.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: I'm not going to argue your whole addiction.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: I don't even water under the bridge, you know what I'm saying?
I'm listening to them, listening to them talk, and I'm like, okay.
In my mind, I'm still thinking, like, did I miss something? So I'm like they all looking at me because I'm like, oh, I see what this is. So I'm like, hey, brother, let me ask you a question, man. What's going on? I said, Are you the one that's running around telling people that they ain't got enough followers to talk to you? He was like, yeah, but they ain't really paying me no mind. So it is what it is.
So again, I'm still thinking, what am I missing here? So I'm like, burning off. It's like money. When you get as a kid, it's just burning a hole in your pocket, right? So I'm like, I got a question. How many followers do you have? And he was like, 60.
I'm like, 60 million?
He's like, no, 60,000.
He was like, yeah, I'm scratching my head because I'm like, the lowest person at this conference had 100,000, meaning you were an alternate for somebody that didn't show up. So you got a last minute phone call to pull up, and everybody here got more followers than you, to the tune of at least 40,000 or better.
So I'm like, what gave you the confidence to be telling people that they can't talk to you if they don't have a certain amount of followers? And he was just like, Nah, just the way that they was moving. I could just tell they had that big of a platform.
And I'm like, how many of these people did you look up before you came to this conference? He was like, I ain't really looked nobody up. I got the call, and I came, and I said, you want to know why you got the call? Because you were an alternate.
Are you just hating on a young brother? I said, how many followers you think that guy got? All the people sit at my table. I pointed at the three mil guy. He was like he probably got, like, oh, no, maybe 100, 200,000? I said, no, he has 3 million.
He sat back in his chair, sat up, oh, I'm at the big influencer table. I said, no, you came over here with the energy that you've been having. Don't adjust yourself now because you feel like you're in the presence of some bigger influencers. What I learned about social media and this is one of the reasons why I wrote my book, what I Learned About Social Media when I was in college social media in and of itself is an extension of who we are as people, right? But there are people that long for social acceptance. That's where this whole clout comes in. They do anything for clout. It's really social acceptance. That's what it truly is. Because in some facet of their life, they felt as though they didn't have control or power.
So when I started thinking about my book, going through my coursework, because I graduated in 2014 from college, I started writing in 2012. I didn't publish it till 2016 because in my mind, I'm like, ain't nobody going to read this. The purpose of power. Plenty of books have been written on power and power dynamics and things of that nature. What I realized going through my coursework and starting off on social media, because I started off I'm about to date myself. I started off on MySpace, you know what I'm saying, with the top eight. You take me out your top eight, we got a problem.
Let you be dating somebody, and you take your shorty out your top eight, who you just put in your top eight for, you know, starting off there and just kind of working my way to Facebook and then Twitter, and then finally TikTok comes about. What I learned over the course of that entire process as I was on my way to TikTok, is that people want to be in control with as much as they can touch. If it's out of their reach, they don't want nothing to do with it. In that moment, he felt as though these people are accessible and just based off of a sheer assumption, I can treat people differently than they're treating me. So long story short, with that situation, what I did was I pretty much just told him, like, listen, man, you can't just walk through life thinking you can treat people any kind of way just because you got a certain amount of followers. And I said, I'm going to keep it a hunting with you, bro. Now, while I don't claim to be any type of street dude or from the streets or anything like that, I'm from Philly, bro. Certain rhetoric just don't sit well with me. You feel me? You telling people they can't talk to you because they ain't got a certain amount of followers. I said, I want you to remember something. I'm not threatening you. I just want you to just think about this. It don't matter whether you got 10,000, 10,0000, 100 million, all of those influencers can still get punched in the face, respectfully. You know what I'm saying? So you thinking you can treat people any kind of way just because you have this social following. You need to cut that out, because I promise you, a lot of doors are going to close. They may laugh in the moment, they may he ha in the moment, but behind your back, they running, and they talking to people about you. They going to go put that bug in somebody ear about you, and now you're losing out on opportunities. So when I wrote this book, I started thinking about what does power mean to me? And how is it connected to our purpose, right? So then I started shopping around a lot of different titles, the Power of Your Purpose. I started googling things, and I was like, wait a minute.
How can I write something that is indicative of who I am while also simultaneously allows my readers to see it through their lens as well? So when I thought about the purpose of power, we defined that based on our own experiences. Now, I can give you a baseline. Everything after that, that's up to you. That's completely up to you. So for me, the purpose of my power was to write, perform, and speak using my gifts, talents and abilities to be able to not only motivate, because in the beginning, I was like, yeah, motivational speaker. That's awesome. But then I quickly shifted within my first year of speaking. No, I'm not a motivational speaker. I am an empowerment speaker. I don't want to just motivate you. Motivation fades. Motivation fades very quickly. Empowerment forces you to get up and do something. Empowerment forces you to change the trajectory of not just your life, but the lives of those around you. So in that, I was just like, yo, we really have something dope here. Now watch this.
I started diminishing my own power because I sat on that book for four years. For four whole years. I sat on it because I'm like at the time. So what I did was in the book. I'm 31 now, but I wrote it based on the first 25 years of my life and different things that I went through and the lessons that I learned as a result of that experience. So in that I'm thinking, I'm not old enough to write an autobiography. So this is what I'll do. I'll change the game. There's a quote that says, don't go where the path may lead. Go instead where there's no path and leave a trail. Ralph Waldor Emerson. So I said, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to do an autobiographical sketch. My roommate was like, what does that mean? I was like, I get to define it myself.
So what I did was I took those many experiences and then just talked about them. What is the lesson that I learned as a result of this experience? And then how best can it help somebody else?
[00:13:46] Speaker A: I mean, I think, damn, that knocks out a lot. So we already got into the preview of the whole book, the purpose of the book, and even the example on how the book can be used in everyday life.
But how do you define power in your book? You know what I'm saying?
[00:14:04] Speaker B: Really and truly? I don't think I give an outright definition. However, for me, as the author, if someone were to ask me that, like a conventional meet and greet, the response that I would give them is, power is defined by the control that you have over things both seen and unseen.
The true power is not in the reaction, but more so in the preceding action. What do I mean by that? A lot of people talk about power in regards to responsibility. I'm sorry. Accountability. You are accountable for the platform that you have because of the power of your platform. Right. The power of your voice. However, what I teach people to do is to focus on the responsibility long before you get to the accountability. So the action is what you really need to be paying attention to. The reaction and or the summation of a group of actions they all center around. What was the responsibility in the beginning? I don't want you to just for example, I use it a lot when I'm talking to my clients on TikTok.
Before you even turn the camera on, before you even hit that button and press Go Live. What are your responsibilities? Who are your responsibilities, and what is your target audience? When you answer those three questions, oftentimes you will determine whether or not you even need to press that button, because then the final question right after you answer all three of those is what my grandma calls it the sneaky devil. The sneaky devil question is, are you in the right emotional state to have that conversation?
Sometimes. And I speak primarily more so to men than I do to women. I do know a lot of women do follow me because of the way in which I speak, no pun intended.
When I'm talking to them. I always talk to them about the responsibility of our emotional intelligence. And I know we kind of touched on that a little bit before we kind of got going. But what it boils down to is when we talk about having control over things both seen and unseen right. The things that are seen. Right. What is the experience that you've had? How many times have you gone live? What audience are you speaking to now? The unseen is what about the person that has never come across your content? What about the person that has never come into your live stream? What type of impression do you want to leave them as opposed to the ones that know you on a regular basis? Right. So that power being your control over what's in your immediate environment, meaning who do you have control over? Myself.
Walking away from a situation does not make you less of a man. It doesn't make you weak. It doesn't make you a coward. Crying definitely does not make you weak. Definitely does not make you a coward. It's actually one of the greatest signs of strength that you will ever exhibit. The issue oftentimes comes in at who are you being vulnerable around?
That's where the whole power dynamic comes in at, because we've been conditioned to believe that certain emotions are signs of weakness. So in that I don't want to cry in front of you, I'm still going to cry, but I'm not going to cry in front of you because I don't want you thinking you got a leg up on me. I don't want you thinking. And then we got to remember, it spans off into a lot of other areas of our life our friendships, our relationships, our marriage. If we have children, I got three kids, seven year old daughter, five year old son, three year old son, it spills off over into our parenting. So you got to make sure you check all of those things before you even think about taking the action that will result in you either having to take accountability or someone appreciating the responsibility that you went through the thought process of responsibility long before you even got to that situation.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it's actually funny you talk about crying. Yesterday I went to go look at places to stay, and my whole situation, I always floated between negative and zero, right? Like, in my account. And you probably know exactly how you might know how I'm feeling, right, in that sense. So yesterday I went to go look at apartments in DC. Apartments in DC. This is not just any apartments, right? These are capital view of 14. These are penthouses, right?
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: The number one penthouse, the largest penthouse they have, right? They were showing it to me, and I was like I was torn. And I was like, I don't really like it, you know what I mean? But this is, like, the top floor. I'm looking down at everybody, and I'm like, Nah. But I had to take a second when he told me. She showed me the second apartment I went to, and I was like, Fuck.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: Yeah, this is it.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: I like it. This is the one I want.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: Right? Yeah.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: But the feeling of being able to have the choice to be like, Yo, you know what I mean? Back in the day, I would have it on my vision board to be like, this is what I want, you know what I mean? But now to literally have the power to be like, yeah, I want that, or like, no, I don't want that, you know what I mean? And I think that for me, that's the same thing I tell men all the time, like, Yo, save 25,000 before you start dating is because I want you to have the power to when you go out to date, when you go on a date, you could choose to go wherever you want to go. It's not about where she wants to go. It's about where you want to go and you feel comfortable, like, yeah, I want to go wherever. And even if she chooses someplace, you never have to feel like, I don't know if I can go there. No, the whole world is your oyster now, right?
You go wherever and just be like, I'm good. I don't care where we go. Actually, you can really say, I really don't care where we go. Where do you want to go? You know what I mean?
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Now. Got you. You got that space.
Honestly, I wanted to upgrade my car, right? So I just recently got divorced, and I just kind of wanted to make a lot of different changes in my life, and thank goodness it was more of a healthy type of separation and not like, super toxic or anything like that.
But I just started recognizing different areas of my life that I needed to change, and my car was one of them. So I had a 2016 Ford Explorer, and when I went to the dealership, I said, I want something either 2020 or better. I'm tired of not having at least within the first couple of years.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: You know what I mean?
[00:20:27] Speaker B: I'm making enough money in the military and on TikTok, where I deserve something saying. But like you said, the idea that I was able to walk in there and choose exactly what it is that I wanted because I knew two things. And this goes back into what we were talking about the power over my finances, doing my budget, making sure I know where my money is going, making sure I know how much wiggle room I have. How much money do I have left over on the first how much money do I have left over on the 15th? How much am I investing over here? How much am I putting into this? What ventures my office, you know what I mean? How much do I want to invest into my office? I just recently got one of those adjustable desks. Well, I've been going crazy with that thing. Just lifting it up, lifting it down, lifting it up, lifting it down. And it's crazy because you think about all of these things that you want, right? And like you said, I'm glad you touched on the vision board, because my book was on my vision board, and in that, walking through the car dealership was the same thought process I had walking through my college right as I would walk. I mean, right now, I got on a freaking polo, some slacks all Express, you know what I'm saying? There was a time I look at Express, like, one day one day I could just go in there, and it's a different feeling when you can walk into an establishment, any establishment, and you don't got to check your bank account beforehand, and you just know that, you know, hey, it's in there.
Excuse me, sir. It came back insufficient funds. So something's wrong with your machine.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: Something's definitely wrong with your machine. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: Something that I had to get really? So I want to touch on. This is like, what about talking about finances?
Are you pretty open on talking about finances?
What's your take on that?
[00:22:22] Speaker B: I think for me let me start by saying this for me. Yes. I am open. And I'm open because I want my supporters to know that life be life. You feel me? I don't like to give this whole glitz and glam type of experience as it relates to social media. So when it comes to breaking down, I feel like I'm doing this thing called word salad. I'm saying a lot of stuff, but it's not really making sense. I was watching this convention, right, and it was a lot of social media influencers, and it was one specific guy, and I really liked his content, but he talked about how I think now he has somewhere between, like, 15 to 20 million followers on Instagram, something like that. But he had just hit a million, right? And he talked about how he had a million followers on social media, but he was broke. And in my mind, I'm thinking, I'm a hustler. I've been making money since I had, like, 300,000, and the only reason why it was 300,000, it was because I got my 1st 100,000 in my first two months of being on TikTok. So in that I'm just, like, still learning the basic functions of the app. So as I'm continuing to build, the first thing I know is marketing and promotion. That's my background. That's what my degree is in. You know what I mean? Well, my degree is in journalism, but I had, like, marketing classes, so I'm like the philly in me is like, oh, I'm a hustler. You feel like I know somebody got a clothing brand, or I know somebody got saying some sneakers or something like that. Hey, you want your stuff promoted? I got 300,000 followers. What's up with me? Get with me. Get so in that, I was just like, okay, cool. So then I dropped the book already, and the book was doing really well since I dropped it in 2016. We've sold out on Amazon ten times, so that was yielding its results, right? Then I seen this quote that it was like, the average millionaire has at least seven streams of income. And I was like, Whoa, I got to set my game up, because at this point in time, I was already speaking professionally. I started speaking when I was in my sophomore year.
I'm a spoken word artist as well, so I write and I perform. So I would write things for people, and I would perform.
Then once my book dropped, that was four. Then I joined the military. Well, I was teaching before I joined the military, but that didn't last very long. Then I joined the military. That's five. Then I started investing on Robinhood just as, like a start off in stocks and things of that nature. And then TikTok. I got my seven. Now I just need to figure out how to merge them all together so that it doesn't seem like I'm pulling too much in this direction or pulling too much in that direction.
At this point, I think it'll be 15 months. Actually, let me do some math right now, because the reason why and I'm glad you asked that question about finances the reason why I'm so open and honest about finances is because I feel like a lot of brothers. They get intimidated and or they base their worth upon how much money they're making, when really and truly the real, true value is in not just how much money you can make, but how much can you teach others how to make the same? Me helping you eat takes nothing off my table, you feel me? But here's the deal in that. The reason why I say that, why I was really apprehensive in the beginning, is because you can't share that with everybody. You can't share that with everybody because everybody's not prepared for you to give certain numbers. Right?
[00:25:55] Speaker A: Yeah, no shit.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: You write about that divided by 200.
Okay, so in the last 14 months yeah, I'll say 14 months. I've made over $100,000 on TikTok in the last 14 months alone. Now, for me as an influencer, because I'm making so much money, I'm able to gift it back to other creators that may not have the same level platform, not those that have bigger platforms than me, but those that, for example, I go into someone's livestream, and they're like a mom and pop business. And let's say they're doing like sublimation. They're making like tumblers or something like that. They're like, we just need X amount of dollars so that we can get a new actually, I'll give you a perfect example. There was a young lady that was on Live, and she had a printing press, and she's making T shirts, and something happened on the Live. The machine broke, and she was like, oh my God, this is going to cost so much money.
I'm not going to say how much that price tag was, but it was five figures.
So I reached out to her and said, hey, I want to help you. And she was like, no way. And I'm like, yes, way. I want to help you. And she was just so grateful and so thankful, and she just kind of broke down. And for sake of anonymity I'm not going to say her name, but her family had been going through a lot. Her daughter was in the hospital and just a lot of health issues. Didn't have health insurance. She's paying for a lot of it out of her pocket, and she was funding it through her business. And when she shared with me the numbers that she was making with them doggo T shirts, I almost went and bought a print. Bread.
I ain't got the time for that, big dog.
Eventually, I got it all. It actually ended up being a couple of days getting her what she needed. And I had the conversation with her, and I was just like, what was it that made you continue. Going live. Although, like we talked about earlier, you knew you were in the negative.
She said, because I kept up hope that something about the purpose of why I'm doing what I'm doing is going to lead the right person to me.
Immediate tears, because I'm just like, it took me back into again. What is the purpose of our power? For me, my power is in helping people. That's where I draw my power from. How many people can I help? There's a quote that says that the only time I want to look down on someone is when I'm reaching down to help them up, right? And in that, when we think about there's a chapter, I believe it's chapter five of my book, and it says, don't deny your greatness. Right?
I have this personal mantra that I live by that greatness is not an option. Greatness is an expectation. So when I talk to people about denying their greatness, there's a lot of apprehension because of a person in their life, whether it's mom, grandma, dad, uncle, auntie, whoever, that because they didn't accomplish something.
They seek to invalidate or downplay what that brother was trying to accomplish and or in the process of accomplishing. And you'll be surprised well, probably you won't, but you'll be surprised for those that are listening at how many dreams are literally demolished off of a simple statement, oh, you think you're going to be this? Oh, you think you finn to be that? I tell them, Brother, stop thinking. Start knowing.
So when people tell me, oh, you think you smart? You think you that? No, I know I'm himothy. Hemi, neutron, hemi, Hendrix, hemi, crack, corn. And I don't care. You know what I'm saying?
You got to big yourself up. You feel me?
[00:29:57] Speaker A: Exactly.
One of the reasons why I love that so much is because yesterday I just posted, I told people, like, stop giving God so much credit. Start giving yourself credit right now. The reason why I think the message went over people's head, right? Because one of the things is that especially I didn't leave church. I left the Christian community, but I never left God, right?
[00:30:24] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: The reason why I say that is because the Christian community is very like, yo, hope, pray. That's it, right? Like, God's going to make a way. God. I was like, no. The day that I stopped tithing, I stopped putting that money in my account, right? I stopped giving my last all the time, right? That hoping for a miracle, right? Like, I'm going to give my last penny. God's going to multiply this and then give me a miracle, right? Like the lady with the oil. No, I stopped doing that. I said, no, I need to take some action here, right? And I'm talking about real action, not just like, get on my knees and praying all the time, right? I stopped doing that. My bank account went up right? Because why? Because I stopped looking at my Bible all the time for answers. But I was like, look, there's opportunity somewhere for me here in America, right? Found the opportunity in it, right?
I went from 2500 a month to 2000 a week, you know what I'm saying?
Income shot all the way up, right? And then after that, I became deputy director of Icloud China for Apple, right?
I'm not even talking about business wise. I'm just talking about what I did in my nine to five, right? Because everybody always talks about, like, nine to five not being the right thing for you, you know what I mean? But not denying my greatness in that sense is like, I thought some people like, no, God didn't do this. Oh, man, I can't believe God blessed you. No, I put in the work. You can't be saying that.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: That's blasphemous. Okay, cool.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: I'm going to go to hell then. All right, cool.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: Whatever.
[00:31:47] Speaker A: I did it. God didn't do this. Oh, bless you. No, don't bless me. Bless yourself, because you need it. I don't need it, you know what I mean? And the reason why I speak like that, a lot of people say it's arrogant and all that, but I say, no, you got to understand, for me, I come from a point where I always used to pray for everything, right? Always used to beg God. Like, God, help me. God help me.
Really, in a sense, I was a victim, you know what I mean?
I'm black, white people, the system, everything, which there is white supremacy and all that, right? That's definitely there. But to add on top of it, to be like, oh, well, I can't do anything. I can't help myself.
No, I had to cut that out. The minute I cut that out and I listened to my mom, that got into industry, right? It industry, higher income industry. I was able to help myself after that, right?
[00:32:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: God didn't come do the work for me, right? God didn't do all that studying, all that laboring and all that. No, I went out there, right? I worked a six figure It job, and I worked at Domino's, and then that month, I saved 10,000 because I did that work, right? If God wasn't there with me, you know what I mean? People will say, God with you, whatever. But at the Nate, I was putting in those hours when my eyes were tired and I was, like, flipping at pizza or cutting it up or getting yelled at by some lady, you know what I mean? I know I make way more than I'm like, lady, don't you say you over here yelling at me about you can't pay for a $15 pizza, lady, I could buy the whole store right now.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: I could buy all these pizzas for you, you know what I mean?
[00:33:11] Speaker A: Yeah, but you yell at me about, oh, you broke, you don't know okay. Appreciate it, lady. Have a great day.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: Right? Thanks.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: At the end of the day. But one of the reasons why I even asked about finances, too, because I noticed that especially as a black man, we don't talk about finances at all. Right. We talk about it in hopes of how much we want to make. Right. But actually, how much is in your account right now? It's just like, no, I'll shit out everybody. It's a very shameful it's almost like a shame based thing where we don't talk about finances and then the power is power isn't letting go of all that to me. That's the way I feel about it, right. Is that that's why me, I openly talk about how much money I want to make. Like even the debt I'm paying off, I posted it at like, hey, I got a $19,000 credit card that I'm paying off. Right? I just paid off like $5,000 towards one credit card.
Those $5,567 paid it, boom. I'm going to take all that money that I paid, now I'm going to go on the other credit card, right. But I'm openly going to share that because at the day, I don't know about you, I never saw somebody with legit money paying off credit cards or like showing how much money they're actually making. legitly.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: No, never really had an example of that. And that was another reason. But the flip side to that, that I do caution is that in doing so, after a certain point, we're not going to be able to do that anymore. Because now the expectation that people are going to have and their viewing of you is going to be based on what they can get from you in terms of money instead of the knowledge. You feel me?
[00:34:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: And I do believe that it's important to because this is what I do.
Once I hit one hundred K, I was like, whoa, this is crazy. Like I'm yo, I need to write a book about this. So I'm in the process of writing my second book called Dig Through. It how I made my 1st $100,000 on TikTok. My target audience is not everyday TikTokers, it's big business because I know they got the money. And it's more so about consulting to get in there to teach them how to use the platform. And then I can go ahead and funnel that down to the little guys, you know what I'm saying? And I give that away damn there for free almost every day on my live streams. So when I'm giving those little nuggets, the first thing that people ask me is, how did you write your book? And I'm like, this is about to sound real crazy.
The hardest part about writing a book is not writing it, it's the marketing. Afterwards. If you don't have a company attached to you and you have a budget for marketing and promotion, you're going to struggle. Because writing the book, you already know what you want to write. You already know who you're writing about oftentimes. Who's the best person to write about when you're writing about something yourself.
Because you know you you know what I'm saying? You know why you do what you do, what certain experiences did to you. X, Y and Z. Right? Now, when you go and put those all together now, of course you get an editor. You get someone to kind of look it over, fine tune it, please get it. Listen, I was going through trying to turn this into an audiobook for TikTok, and I was like, how did my editor miss all of these mistakes? Like, what in the world was going on? This man got three PhDs. He must have just skimmed it. So I called him. I'm like, Doc, how you miss all this stuff? He's like, I ain't gonna lie, bro. It was like two in the morning when I read. Like, you should have told me, bro. Here we are seven years later, and I'm like the fact that we saw. But see, here was the deal. This was the idea, when you operate, right, to bring it back to the title, the purpose of power, right? What is the purpose of my power? To help people. The fact that people invested enough in me and in what they felt as though I was given to the community.
Those grammatical errors didn't matter to them. Those structural errors didn't matter to them. It now matters to me. Absolutely. So now when I produce my second product, it's like, I cool. Now. You're going to see a clear bit of growth, you know what I'm saying? From college me to professional me, you know what I'm saying?
In that? Another thing that I learned about social media and this is why the book was so easy to market, is because people want to see growth. They don't want to see you stagnant at the same place. So in that, when we talk about going to the next level, right, this idea of, oh, let me be careful who I'm vulnerable around, right? Everybody can't go where you're trying to go. I like the fact that you said, I did this and God didn't do this, right? Because I had to learn the difference between the two. And even it's crazy because Christians will say some of the same things to me, like, oh, that's blasphemous. Woo woo. And I say, doesn't the Bible itself say, faith without works is dead? You can have all of the faith in the world you want, but if you're not putting no work in, bro, what's the point? What are you doing?
[00:38:12] Speaker A: What you mean?
[00:38:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So I started thinking about that, and it was just like, okay, I know I'm far too talented to work for someone else for the rest of my life. And then again, it's like, oh, my God, the bounce off is crazy. I'm glad you mentioned that. Nine to five and then still having that side business because a lot of people don't realize that nine to five is sometimes what's funding your business until you get it to a point where that business is no longer in needing of that funding because it's self sustaining, but they're listening to too many people. And that's another point that I would have in terms of advice to those that are listening. Be careful who you listen to. Be careful what you consume. Because if you consume the wrong thing from the right person, that could still mess you up. Yeah, listen to that again, if you consume the wrong thing from the right person, it could still mess you up because that person could have all of the answers. But the reason why it's the wrong thing is because it's not for you.
What helped you specifically be successful in it is not going to help me be successful as an author. It's not, you know what I'm saying? Now, the principles of like Word, Excel, those types of things, sure. You know what I mean? But as it relates to the cloud and metadata and when you get into those intricacies and it's just like, I don't care about that. I'm trying to sell these books, you know what I'm saying? So it's like you got to remember that there's someone out there. Unless you're seeking to start a brand new industry, there's someone out there doing what you're trying to do. There's a group of people somewhere in your immediate vicinity that's doing what you're trying to do. Humble yourself. Go get you a slice of humble pie. Go get under the tutelage of someone, you feel me? Whether it's in person or whether it's virtual. As a poet, one of the things that I don't do is I don't listen to too many other poets. Now, if I'm at like a show or a slam, I mean, of course I have to, but regularly? No. Why? Because I want my sound to be authentic. So when people hear me, they like, we don't heard five poems. Only two of them sounded different. And I was one of the ones that sounded different because I got my own unique sound. Figure out what your own unique sound is in your industry and then stay in your lane, right? Because ain't no traffic in your lane. It's when you try to veer off into other people's lane that you don't realize you don't swerved into oncoming traffic.
[00:40:52] Speaker A: Dude, I had to come to the realization that being black was going to be my superpower in the industry of helping men, right?
Because when I looked, I was looking for somebody to go sit under and learn from and be like, yo, who got a you know what I mean? And I was like, I'm going to pay somebody. So I got on a call with my friend Jason Moore, and Jason Moore six figures a month. Beautiful wife, I think, has two kids. But he has a life that I was like, yo, that's a guy like, I like it. He has a life I want. He has everything, right? And I got on a call with him. We went through the whole, I think probably like an hour and a half call explaining everything I wanted.
At the end of it, he was like, yeah, I can't help you, but you can build it.
I was pissed. I was so pissed because I was like, no, I'm really like, no, I'm about to pay you to do this, to help me.
I don't want to build something like this, right? Like, the 1% man was never supposed to be built, right? He told him. He was like, yo, what you want? You're going to have to build it. There's nothing out there like that, right? And then after that, I was like I said, fuck it. No. Okay, whatever, Jason. You know what you're talking about. I went to another Men's program. Another Men's program. Another Men's program. Now, they had pieces, elements of it, right? But as a whole, everything I wanted. Like the financial piece in the beginning, right? Not Mindset. Because most programs, you join us mindset first. Your mindset you got to get, right? I was like, no, that's BS. Finance is the first for Men, and particularly for Men, finance is the first thing. Because if you don't get financed, right, mindset doesn't matter because you can have the best mindset in the world, but you can be sitting on the bed like, damn, I'm broke. I need a job or something. Because it's hard to do anything else as a man when your bank account is negative, you're going to be like, damn, I'm not motivated to do shit, bro.
[00:42:42] Speaker B: I don't want to go out. I don't want to go talk to women.
[00:42:45] Speaker A: I mean, there's men out here that they go smash, but they're driving that girl's car or whatever.
I've seen that shit in person. Now I'm like, damn.
To me, you can't really be authentically yourself and really want to live the lifestyle.
[00:43:03] Speaker B: You know what I mean?
[00:43:04] Speaker A: The lifestyle I want to live. You can't do that and drive your girl's car. You can't do that like you big dog on the weekends, but throughout the week you're struggling.
[00:43:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:14] Speaker A: Fact, inboxes like, let me get 20.
[00:43:17] Speaker B: You know what that reminds me of? I don't know if you've seen this trend going around. I had initially seen it, I think, on Instagram, and it was this trend going around where guys were in the club and they were buying bottles just to pour them out. Did you see that?
[00:43:32] Speaker A: No, I didn't. You know what? Actually, I did see one of yeah, it was like one of those, but it was one that's dedicated to Africa, a page of Africa. They talked about, like, one guy bought a whole bunch of bottles. He just started pouring them all out. He spent, like, a whole bunch of nairas or something like that.
[00:43:55] Speaker B: So now they're doing it in America. And it was like New York just did X amount of dollars. DC. You got 24 hours to respond. And it was like a whole viral thing was going around, and I was just like, you all going to the club, spending money to get in the club. Even if you didn't spend money, okay, you knew somebody, you got into VIP. You definitely paid for VIP. Now you paying for bottles, bro. You know we in the military.
The 750 milliliter of Sarak at the PX at the freaking packet store is, like, $21 in the club. That bottle like foe honey.
[00:44:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:34] Speaker B: And you pouring it out.
People will be like, Damn, he got blessed. And then my thing is, all of the people that's standing around, you letting them mess up your good outfit, your nice shoes, I got bruh.
See, this is when I bossed up the first time, bro, and I walked in that Louis Vuitton store, and I got them loafers. I paid 890 for some loafers, bro. I thought I was going to have a heart attack, but I was like, I deserve this. Like, I worked for this. You feel me?
You finn to pour $20 liquor on my almost $1,000 shoes.
No, big dog. You tripping. You're stupid.
You need to relax.
You need to relax, okay?
It's instances like that that I tell guys, like, be careful who you're allowing to influence you to do certain things. And when you're guided by social media specifically, you're doomed for failure like, 100%.
Especially if all you're consuming is, like you said, during the week, you're struggling, but on the weekend, you big dog. How does that even correlate? Because soon as Monday hit, now you back to square one.
Friday was lit. Saturday was lit. Nine times out of ten, you in church on Sunday in America. Nine times out of ten, you know what I'm saying? Well, I'll say eight times out of ten just to kind of because we are a Christian, very heavily dominated Christian United States, but of course, masjid, temple, everything like that. We want to be sensitive to that. However, eight times out of ten, your behind go be in Chetch. You know what I'm saying? And then you're getting ready for the work week, and now you're right back to where you were when you first started again. And to me, just like you said, I think it's a matter of at what point do you make that shift? For me, when I was in college, my shift was when I kept seeing all of my well, now they would be coworkers, but at that time, they would be my classmates. I was seeing folk with money that I knew didn't have it. And that's such a crazy concept, right? So I started asking myself, like, what are they doing now? Of know some people doing some things they ain't got no I don't want no parts of that. You know what I'm saying? But my roommate again, another hustler from the Ivory coach. But we both grew up in Philly. That hustler mentality he had what did he have? A printing press? He's making T shirts right out the door. But that was his side. Oh, my God. Dude made so much money. That was his side hustle. His main hustle was graphic design. So anybody on campus that needed a graphic, that needed a flyer, they came to him.
I'm going to give you a crazy one of those, like understanding the purpose of your power, right? He realized the purpose of his power was to give a service that was far better than every other person that could give it on that campus. There was this girl that was going around taking pictures at events, right? And he started asking the different organizations, how much are you charging? How much are you charging? How much are you charging? And because she was the only one doing it, she could ask for her price and get it, because ain't nobody else doing it, bro. Right? Hand to God, on all three of my kids, he literally walked up to this girl. I still got give flashbacks of this shit to this day, because on my mama, it was so crazy how it happened. He walked up to her at an event and was like, I hope you enjoyed your run, because I'm about to take your business.
I'm like, in my mind, I'm thinking, well, I was smashing her, but I'm thinking at the yo, that's a single mother like, bro, you need to chill. Yeah. And you know what he said to me? And it literally changed my perspective on how I view business.
He said, do you think Warren Buffett think about that?
Do you think Bill Gates think about that? Do you think Oprah thinks about that? Business is business. And sometimes the most blatant business is cutthroat. They don't care about what your background is. They care about how much work you're putting in. And if me telling her, I'm going to take your business destroyed her business. Her business was destroyed long before I had a conversation with her. It's like, oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
In three months, that's all they took him. Three months. He bought a camera. He was my roommate. He was watching videos on YouTube, figured out different lighting configurations, figured out different exposures and things, how to tweak the camera, bought a better camera than she had, started producing better turnaround times. I think her turnaround time was like 72 to 96. He did it in 24 to 48. And I'm like, God dang. I'm talking about we're not talking about, oh, he shot ten pictures at an event. I'm talking about hundreds of photos. And he's just going through no.
And I asked him, I was like, Bro, how are you able to go? He said, Because quality knows what quality looks like.
As I think back, I got to write some of these things down. They were so powerful, bro.
He recognized that there was a need, right? And he could fill it, but there was a goal that he had, and guess who was standing in his way? Her.
Sometimes what you want to accomplish, sometimes the craziest part about it is the only person standing in your way is you.
Where's your mindset for greatness? That's why I go into that chapter, don't deny your greatness. There's a poem by Mariam Williamson called Our Deepest Fear. Right. And my favorite part about that poem states, your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that others feel comfortable around you. It isn't our darkness, but our light that most frightens us. And I started internalizing that, and that's when I hit the switch, and I was like, Write the book. Write the book.
When I decided to write the book, it took me three days. I literally no bull. I ate three bagels in three days. I didn't even go to sleep at the time. I was still married, and my wife was like, on the third day, she's like, Listen, I feel like a bad wife. You have not ate in three days. All you've ate is bagels. You're going to stop writing. You're going to eat some food.
And I was like, okay.
[00:51:27] Speaker A: All right.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: I'm not tripping.
So on the conclusion of the third day, I was like, I'm not writing nothing else. I feel like in those three days, I emptied my brain of everything that I was thinking about. Now it's time to tighten the screws. Now it's time to fine tune what I have. Cranked that out in another day. Boom. It was published.
And then from there, it was just like the opportunities that I received as a result of it. When I talk about denying your greatness, I can now say that I am an international public speaker, because I've spoke virtually in the UK.
I'm in the process of going to Australia next year.
Then I just know again, sometimes that power is in knowing and speaking out into the atmosphere. Those won't be my only international gigs. And the more you speak it, right? We got to be careful again, scripture. My grandma, she raises in a church. Life and death is where in the power of the tongue.
So all that, oh, I'm always going to be broke. I ain't never getting no opportunities. That's why. Because that's all the energy that you're putting out into the atmosphere when you ask for things, sometimes they're done just like that. Now you just got to go through what you need to go through in order to become the person that you need to become, in order to not mishandle or mismanage the opportunity that you asking for. But the social media generation that we live in especially, and I tell guys this all the time, stop idolizing other people you don't even know. I love this quote, right?
Finish this for me. You can't walk a mile in my what? Shoes. Now watch this. Here's the deal. I can though. It might hurt. It might be a little bit more comfortable. The shoes might be a little bit bigger. I can right now. Watch this. And this is what really changed my perspective on that quote. You can't walk them all in my shoes. Yes, I can. But guess what? You don't know the holes in my souls.
You don't know what it took for me to get here to this point.
So, yeah, you can walk. But when you turn it over and you see, oh, I had to go through this. I was in foster care the first five years of my life. I was sexually assaulted when I was a teenager. These are all real things that happened to me. I was sexually assaulted when I was a teenager. Nobody believed me. They laughed at me. I graduated high school, first in my class, got a full four year academic scholarship to college, went to college, didn't have to pay anything. Graduated, started teaching. Super racist environment. Resigned from there, joined the military, blew up on social media. Now I'm in a position to help other people.
Yeah, you can walk in my LeBron's, you know what I'm saying? But you don't know the holes in my souls and why I grind the way that I do, why I'm so passionate, why I speak the way that I speak. No pun intended. Again. And what people need to recognize is that when you see people and you see them in their element, right?
Learn to draw on the energy, right? The energy of success, the energy of prosperity. But you also want to draw on the energy of self preservation, because you can't just give give without getting anything for yourself.
And far too many guys are just out here just giving, given.
And I'm like, Bro, when's the last time you thought about what makes you happy?
Just simple question. When's the last time you did something that brought you joy?
And to just watch them like, it's a good question, bro, the fact that you had to think about it that long means you're not prioritizing self. And there's this misnomer of, like, oh, you're just trying to be arrogant, and you want women to bow down to you. Wait a minute. I didn't mention nothing about women. I didn't mention nothing about anyone bowing down to me. The power is in knowing me. When I know me, I know how to communicate with you. I know how to communicate my wants, needs, and desires as it relates to you and how we're going to engage. So when I wrote that book, I started meeting other authors, and. That is what really helped me put things into more perspective of like, okay, now let's bounce ideas off of each other. And there were no egos involved. Now, granted, I do believe in a powerful and useful application of the ego. However, we can't get too much into our ego because then you start ego tripping, and that's what you don't want to do.
[00:56:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I think there's definitely times where I think there's definitely times where I think I placed a high value on self. Right? But I think more than not, I've always placed a high value on other people.
And it's only that this year that I've finally decided I was like, I'm going to put me first, you know, that video, but truly everything.
I may buy something, I'm like, no, I'm buying it for myself.
No, this is going to be good for me. Oh, you know what? No, what do I want to do? I don't want to do that. I'm not doing that. Hey, no, I can't come because I don't want to do that.
At a point right now, in the beginning, it kind of felt like, damn, this is kind of selfish. This is wrong. Because you were always taught that.
[00:57:26] Speaker B: No.
[00:57:26] Speaker A: Think of everybody higher than yourself, always. But then again, no.
[00:57:31] Speaker B: What makes you happy take some time.
[00:57:33] Speaker A: For you, it's important because I like what you said about self preservation. Because if you're always giving and your cup is empty, my old mentor told me, like, the overflow is what you give other people. What's in your cup is for you. It's the overflow that should go everybody else.
But if you give from your cup and it's empty, it's going to fill you up.
[00:57:58] Speaker B: And I was like, Damn, that's real.
[00:58:03] Speaker A: It goes back to what you said.
[00:58:05] Speaker B: I said, it my phone.
[00:58:08] Speaker A: Go ahead and take that.
But it goes back to what you said about even, like, finances, right? Like going all the way back to that is when I started publicly saying about my finances, people took advantage of me like crazy. And I didn't know they were taking advantage of me until somebody else told me. But then I told myself, I was like, you know what? It comes with the territory. Somebody has to go through it. I'm willing to go through it.
[00:58:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:33] Speaker A: Are people going to take advantage of me? Yeah, fuck it. You know what I mean? Like the last girl talking to.
[00:58:40] Speaker B: This, there's this audio on TikTok, and literally, I internalized it as soon as I heard it.
The craziest part about being used, right, is that most oftentimes it comes from people that know you and are familiar with you, right? So the audio said this. He said, if you are my friend and you mess me over, you've now lost me in your life.
I don't have to do no videos about you. I don't have to make no statuses about you. I don't have to talk about you to other people. You losing me in your life is the punishment enough? And if you don't feel that way about yourself, you're not providing enough value. I know for me personally, I bring great value to my relationships, great value to my friendships. So in that I don't have to mess you over after you've messed me over, because again, another quote. I've seen this on Facebook. I stopped trying to get my lick back because I realized God hits harder than I ever could.
So in that, I'm like, you know what? Ancestors got them?
Hey, karma, Finna. Spin the block. Something decent on them, you know what I'm saying?
[00:59:53] Speaker A: Yeah. My take is I don't believe in karma, right? Because I because personally, I don't care, right? I don't care that if you fuck me over, because whatever money I give you or whatever time I give you, I'm going to get twice of it back. Right?
My expectation is like.
[01:00:12] Speaker B: Right here.
[01:00:16] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[01:00:17] Speaker B: Dog.
[01:00:17] Speaker A: So Dan Kennedy used to write these facts about people that paid him $100,000 a year. He would send one fax a week, right, to them. This one facts changed everything for me.
And I recently just read it. It's like he talked about Andrew Carnegie. Andrew Carnegie, no matter if you want an evil dude, bad dude, whatever you want to say, right? He expected to be rich, he expected to have money, he expected success to come to him, right? So me, no matter what happens to me, right? I'm like, Yo, I expect good shit to happen to me no matter what happens, right? Even if somebody fucks me over, I expect, okay, good. It's going to turn out for my good, right?
In turn, this expectation, this unrealistic expectation that I have of everything always turning out for my good, I mean, call it delusional, maybe call it what's that thing called, like placebo effect, right? Maybe it's the placebo effect.
I look at the world differently.
I just got offered a job for 150K, plus a $20,000 bonus on top of that, right? The expectation of all this, maybe it's my year, right? Whatever you want to call it. But me, I'm just like, once I just had this expectation that all this stuff I'm going to win no matter what, right?
It just kept happening. It just kept happening. Kept happening. Kept happening. Right? I think I said I went to go visit Penthouses, right? And the Penthouse was way under the budget. I was expecting to spend like, maybe 6000, 8000 a month, right? No, it was less than $4,000.
I don't know. Maybe call it you know what I mean? Somebody else may have a good example, may have a better word for it, but I just said no, man, I expect this shit to happen to me, right?
I expect to have great conversations with people like you, right? I do. I just have this expectation about life, that it's going to happen. I'm going to win, right? No matter what happens. No matter what happens. Everything is working out almost like the alchemist. Everything is working out for my good. Everything that's happening to me is working out for my good. Maybe super unrealistic, right? But for now, I'm going to run with it until maybe I'm a drain all of it out.
[01:02:35] Speaker B: That's the beauty of it. Even in our disagreement, because I'm Beyonce, I definitely believe in karma. But even in that though, right? The beauty of it is it's what works for you, right? I don't have to force my beliefs on you in order for you to live your life the way that you live it. That's why I tell people all the time, like, learn how to have dialogue without it's. Like learn how to disagree without being disagreeable, right? We can disagree on a topic, but we don't have to go at each other as a result of it because really and truly, all you're really doing is trying to force them to believe what you believe.
There's a quote that says that the mark of true intelligence is being able to entertain a thought without accepting it. It's by Socrates.
Even if you don't accept the thought, still be open to at least listening, you know what I mean? Because when you look at life through your vantage point, you're not necessarily going to get everything that you can out of life because everybody's not seeing the world through your eyes, through your experiences. So maybe just maybe getting that different perspective, even if you don't agree, it's like, wow, I never thought about it like that. All right, let me go ahead and throw this in the arsenal real quick. I mean, I may have to use it right now, but I use it.
[01:03:56] Speaker A: Know I love you said that because when I was in Djibouti, something that they did a lot, right? It's like people get together, especially in the Middle East, they'll get together, they'll sit down, they'll have positive discourse like this. Men will sit down and just talk about politics, talk about religion, talk about and they'll get heated, right? What we would perceive as heated, right? But at the end, they would be like, all right, masha luck and kiss each other on the cheek and then be like, hey, I'll see you tomorrow. You know what I mean?
But that positive discourse, right, of being able to come and just talk and engage and disagree and agree, yell and be like, oh, man, you're so dumb, you're so stupid. What are you talking about? But it's not like I'm actually calling you dumb. Actually, I just said I don't like this idea that you're having. You may disagree with me, but we're still friends at the end of the day, right?
[01:04:42] Speaker B: Right. And I think it's the difference between anger and passion because we're passionate about what we know, you know, what I mean?
I know that. I know that. I know. I know what I'm talking about, you feel me? I didn't get 1.5 million. I think it was 1.3 in under a year just because it happened. Part of it was I knew how to maneuver, and I did all of the research beforehand, and I just worked my system, you feel me? So I know that. I know that. I know that this system works, and then I have multiple other people that I've assisted to get here to this place, right? And when we elevate, especially in our community, when we get super passionate about something and we raise our voice or whatever the case may be, what I've come to find is that people on the outside will perceive it as, oh, they're arguing with each other, or they're about to come to blows, or somebody's about to pull out. Don't pull out the Niger Mall type deal. And it's just like, Yo, relax. We just talking like it's no bad blood. You feel me? And then sometimes some people, they communicate differently if you're just talking just like this, they're not hearing you if you're like, Nah, bro, just listen, bro. Just listen.
Stop talking, bro. Just listen. And he was like, all right, bro. I'm going to listen. Then you talk to him. You know what I mean? There's another quote. It says it's an African proverb. It says speak, and the people will listen. Speak their language, and they will understand.
A lot of people are out here just pointlessly pontificating that's it just lip service.
But then when you actually start speaking their language, that's when it's like, oh, okay.
Yeah, that makes sense.
[01:06:24] Speaker A: Okay, Bet, I got to send you this.
I love mafia movies. I love gangster movies, like Power, right, with ghosts. When he goes to sit down, talk to the headmaster at the school, and he tells him, like, I got a club, but I can talk to everybody. I can sit down, come talk to you.
I can go talk to the black people. I can go talk to the bottle people.
I become who I need to be to get what I need to get. You know what I mean? And to me, I was just like, Yo, I know people may say whatever, but I think the ability to switch your I don't say your language we call it code switching, but code switching with whoever you're talking to to get to where you want to go, to get to what you need out of them. I think that in itself is very powerful.
[01:07:25] Speaker B: I think sometimes it boils down to the only difference, I would say, between it being code switching and it being I look at it more so in understanding your environment, right?
[01:07:36] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:07:36] Speaker B: For me, I don't dim my light because of the place that I'm in. Now, granted, we both recognize in the military, you got to conduct yourself a certain way, you know what I mean?
However, in other areas of my life, it's just one of those choose your battles kind of deal. The military ain't the place for that. You know what I mean? There's a system in place. There's a structure in place. You go against that, you're in trouble. It is what it is.
[01:08:00] Speaker A: We need to move forward without you.
[01:08:02] Speaker B: That's it? That's it. So outside of that it's. Again, what do you have in your immediate control? Your environment? So in that, am I going to adjust the way that I talk? Hell no. Because I'm me, and I'm going to continue to be me. When I have companies reach out to me, one of the things that I pay attention to is the rhetoric that they use in our negotiations. I'm a big proponent of negotiations. I never accept the first price ever, unless it's good enough to be like, well, I can't argue with that.
Well, can you do $50 more just so that I feel like I did something? They're like, no, let's stay with the regular price. All right, deal. You know what I'm saying? Just so I can feel like we had some sort of process. And I would always ask, well, how much of my content have you actually consumed? Did you just look at the top nine videos? And that was that. And most oftentimes, the answer is yes. So then I'll tell them I'm an activist and I have strong stances on X, Y, and Z, and I say, how do you feel about that? They'll never tell you not to post it because legally they can't. But what they'll say is typically those that work with us don't post that type of content or during their campaigns don't post that type of content. But we're not telling you what to no, no. You just tell me what to yeah. You all have a great day.
[01:09:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:09:21] Speaker B: Wait. And I'm like, you're not going to stifle my voice, and you darn sure ain't finna buy my voice either. You're not doing see, and I'm not going to go too deep into it.
The Israel and Palestine conflict that's going on right now. Right. And like I said, not to go too much into it. There are some influencers that are exposing companies because they're trying to pay them to support a certain side publicly that I thought was the most insane, but it makes sense. They have influence in a specific niche, in a specific demographic, and people listen to them. Why not pay them for their voice to further push this narrative or that narrative? The idea of winning the, quote, information war. Right. And I just thought that was so interesting because in that moment, they had all the power the power to say yay or nay and the power to either accept that income or deny it. Right.
But the question is never asked what happens after they accept it. Cool. They post a video. Cool. They get the bread. Cool. What happens after that?
Now, all of the people that you've hurt as a result of you posting that content, now, you got to bear that. So I asked them this simple question. Is it a hill you're willing to die on? Metaphorically, of course, because anybody dying on no Hills, is this a hill you're willing to die on? And they'll be like, well, if you got to think about it, then it's not if I know for a fact that what I'm going to say might get me canceled. And I use canceled in air quotes because the canceled culture is a freaking joke, then I say, you know what? Post if I have to have, like, delete, because although I got the feels and emotions out, I just know in my heart of hearts this ain't going to go over well and practice that restraint on you know what?
I'm not going to go ahead and post that. I'm going to hold on to this. Maybe there's another time that I should post this. Or maybe this just ain't for the Internet.
Maybe this just ain't for the Internet.
[01:11:37] Speaker A: Something that just came to my mind.
I don't know. You can see that list behind me right there, right? That yellow. The list of people that I want to talk to to get on my podcast.
You're on my list.
[01:11:50] Speaker B: Stop it.
[01:11:51] Speaker A: I swear to God. I was like, yeah, it's either on this one or the one I have on my Google Doc with me and my VA.
Yeah. I'm like, hey, reach out to these people. You know what I mean? Let them know that we want to talk. Yeah, because I don't know why it just hit me. I was like, and you talking, so hey, hold up. And I'm like, hold up. Where's his name at? I know his name's on here.
[01:12:17] Speaker B: Shit.
[01:12:18] Speaker A: Because remember I told you in the beginning, I don't have you as Anthony. I have you as.
[01:12:24] Speaker B: Bad.
[01:12:24] Speaker A: I'm sorry for a.
[01:12:28] Speaker B: That'S dope. That's dope. Because what that goes down into and I'm glad you said that, because it's a great segue into this conversation about manifestations, right? What are we manifesting in our life and around us, right? And this goes into that. I definitely feel like this piece is important when we start talking about mental health, right? And we start talking about, like, what are we manifesting? What are we bringing into our psyche? Right? What are we bringing into our environment? Because different people bring different energies. I tell people this all the time. I didn't realize I was doing a little bit of research. I didn't realize how much our gut is attached to our brain and how we say we have that gut feeling. That's a real thing. I used to think that it was like a cliche, and I was just like, no. As I'm watching it's like, yo, our stomach is really connected to our brain and the signals that we send. It's like when I say to myself, I'm not hungry, I know I'm not hungry. And I think back to that day that I literally it took me three days to write my book, and I ate three bagels because I kept telling myself, I'm not hungry for food. I'm hungry to get this out. Like, my appetite is success right now. That's my appetite. That's what my appetite consists of right now. Success.
[01:13:48] Speaker A: Bless you.
[01:13:49] Speaker B: Thank you. So in that, I was just like, yo, it's crazy, because there will be moments just like what you just had. Like, wait a minute.
This looks familiar. You know what I'm saying? I remember I was sitting with a friend of mine, and I was looking at islands, because I was just know I was looking at properties, but then I was also looking at islands. There's actually islands in the United States for sale. I was like, oh, when I started building my platform on TikTok, I'm like, yo, how dope would it be to have my own island? And then the Jeffrey Epstein stuff happened. I said, oh, never mind. Let me just we ain't worrying about no islands right now. We'll wait on that. We'll wait on that.
[01:14:35] Speaker A: Blow over for a little bit.
[01:14:36] Speaker B: Let that blow all the way over before I start talking about investors for an island. But my idea was getting a self sustaining island that I could have a yearly conference on, but I could also double it as a resort around the year and then cut it off between this point and this point so that I can have the island to myself, and then I can have my conference. Boom. Then we'll kick up the resorts for the next part. So it'll be like, first quarter into the second quarter resorts. The second quarter into the third quarter will be my time. The third quarter into the beginning part of the fourth quarter, boom. And then we'll go all the way again round to the first half of the second quarter of that resort time. And, of course, geographical locations and stuff like that matter. I say all that to say I was looking at islands. My bro was looking at houses. Not one time did he say, bro, you looking at islands, bro, you're doing too much. He was like, bro, I think they're hold on, hold on, hold on. Let me look something up. He's like, bro, you're looking at islands off of the coast of cali, bro. There's some in South Carolina. And I'm like, I thought you was looking at houses. He was like, nah. And it goes back into what we talk about manifestation. When I say I want people around me I say I want people around me that are doing better than me, if not on the same level as me, doing better than me or way better than me. Because I never want my cap to just be my level of intelligence. Because if that's the case, then I'm not growing. I'm not really growing. So whether they're in my immediate vicinity or whether they're in my virtual vicinity, right, which is the day and age that we live in here, what am I allowing into my environment? And then it goes back into what you were saying. I expect good things to happen. I expect good conversations to take place. And when you build up that expectation, you look at the world differently, right? You navigate the world differently. So when people say certain things, you're like, oh, that's why you didn't do it.
Oh, you just got to change it. It's more than just changing your mind. It's having a continued changing of your mind because 1990s Anthony ain't 2000s Anthony, 2000s Anthony ain't 2010 Anthony, 2010s Anthony ain't 2020s Anthony. So the only thing constant in life is change. So in that for someone to say, like you said, those blanketed oh, mindset, mindset, mindset. No, it's about more than that. What work are you putting in? What tangible work are you putting in? When I came off my first deployment bro, and I did my financial analysis of how much money I spent in each port and what I spent it on, god bless.
God bless. I didn't realize how much money I was wasting just on frivolous things. But in the moment, you feel fulfilled, but afterwards, you like, you got buyers remorse. You know what I'm saying? So then I started really hunkering down like, yo, I need to get this debt paid off so that my credit score can be higher so that when I finally do go to put in this bid for this island, they're not looking at me like, island, well, you better take this two bedroom flat, get out my face. A little plot of dirt. Yeah, I'm saying that's it, you know what I mean? And granted, I do recognize that the building process needs to happen. However, when you put up exactly what it is, and I also believe, too, that there's power in seeing it as well. It's not enough to just talk about it. Put it up like we talked about earlier, that vision board, put it up. I know for a fact I'm going to be driving a lamborghini. I don't care how it's going to happen. I don't care when it's going to happen either. The Aventador well, me personally, I'm a classic guy, so I like the mercia lago with the galardo, you know, the Aventadors fire. But the know, I got kids. You know what?
[01:18:40] Speaker A: The uris after this, I'm going to show you my vision board. Dude, I just put the all black lambo urus on my vision board, and then I put the request in. I was like, I'm putting the request in. Come on, call me. Talk to me about the numbers. I need to know what the numbers hitting.
[01:18:57] Speaker B: One when I was in Hawaii, I was in Hawaii for three years. Every time I went down to Waikiki, I made it a point to make sure my route included driving past the Maserati dealership because the Lamborghinis were in the window.
And I was like, One day, one day. And I was like, I should go in there. I was like, no, because my goal is I'm just going to look at it because the moment I step in that door, they're not going to tell me no.
[01:19:25] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[01:19:26] Speaker B: They're not going to tell me, oh, we'll see you again sometime, sir. No, you won't.
No, you won't. I want that one right there on the showroom floor. Let me get that. Let me get that.
This goes back into the point that I was making earlier about sometimes you got to be careful who you tell your big dreams to, because if you tell your big dreams to small minded people, they could make or break your decision on how you get there. And that's rough. I'd have seen a lot of dreams destroyed. I'd have seen a lot of dreams destroyed. However, I go back into what my brother said. If one thing that I said had the ability to destroy everything that you work so hard towards, it was destroyed long before I talked to you.
[01:20:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:20:14] Speaker B: That was just the tipping point.
[01:20:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Agreed with you, man.
We've had a great conversation. I appreciate that we could have positive discourse and disagree on things and share our thoughts. I really do appreciate that. For real?
[01:20:32] Speaker B: Absolutely.
And as always, I like to believe that when it comes to our platforms and our audiences right. I kind of take it like our classroom. Right. So I want to say thank you for allowing me to talk to your students, your audience, to impart some wisdom. And it is my hope and desire that something that either one of us has said resonates in the hearts of someone that's listening to the sound of our voices and gets up and does something. This isn't just an opportunity for you to sit down. It's an opportunity for you to get up that dream, that goal that you said you wanted to accomplish, that thing that you wanted to do, go do it. Go do it.
[01:21:11] Speaker A: Go ahead.
Sometimes I got a moment of relax. You know what I mean?
[01:21:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:21:22] Speaker A: But as a closing thought, I know you already said so many keys, you already dropped so many jewels, but what is one key message or takeaway you hope readers would gain from the purpose of power? Maybe something that you went through this week, maybe something in your life that you hold dear. What is something you want to impart on us before we go?
[01:21:45] Speaker B: One of my favorite quotes. It's a personal quote that I live by when you read my book, the Purpose of Power, available on Amazon Pacification is never an adequate substitute for honesty.
That's a personal quote that I have, and it really means a lot to me, because in every facet of my life, I ask people at this point, I request people, that they be honest with me. Don't just pacify me, right? Because it's not an adequate substitute for honesty. You pacifying me doesn't help me grow. Sometimes we need to be challenged in order to go to that next level, because that next level requires something different of you, that in the absence of that challenge, it could destroy you. So as you build up that mental toughness, as you build up that emotional intelligence, welcome those challenges.
Don't just look for people to tell you what you want to hear. Seek out people that tell you what you need to hear and hold them near and dear, because there are too.
[01:22:55] Speaker A: Many man and brother. You heard it here first. Your legacy starts today.
