Latest / The Steve Harvey Morning Show / Full Episode: Bevy Smith, the Pop Culture Aficionado; Olowo-n’djo T’Chala, Founder & CEO of Alaffia; Dr. Geneva Williams, Master Leadership Strategist, Speaker, and Author; & Corey Wilcox, the Inventor of the Roto-Brain
Transcript
- 0:04Speaker 1: Welcome to Money Making Conversations. It's the show that she
- 0:07Speaker 1: has the secrets of success experience firsthand by marketing and
- 0:10Speaker 1: Brandon expert Rashan McDonald. I will know he's giving me
- 0:13Speaker 1: advice to many occasions. In occasion didn't notice, I'm not broke.
- 0:17Speaker 1: You know. He'll be interview with celebrity CEOs, entrepreneurs and
- 0:20Speaker 1: industry decision makers. It's what he likes to do, it's
- 0:22Speaker 1: what he likes to share. Now it's time to hear
- 0:25Speaker 1: from my man, Rashan McDonald money Making Conversations. Here we go.
- 0:29Speaker 1: Welcome to your money making conversation. I'm your host, Rashean McDonald.
- 0:33Speaker 1: It's time to stop reading other people's success stories and
- 0:35Speaker 1: really and start writing your own. I tell you that
- 0:38Speaker 1: every time you can listen to this show I watch
- 0:39Speaker 1: it now you can be motivated by their success because
- 0:42Speaker 1: their stories can offer you direction and help you reach
- 0:44Speaker 1: your goals. But remember it's their stories and it's their goals.
- 0:48Speaker 1: Now you have to start planning your story and your goals,
- 0:51Speaker 1: and you're not gonna get there through your committed effort.
- 0:54Speaker 1: My interviews that I bring on money Making Conversations or
- 0:57Speaker 1: celebrity CEO entrepreneurs, and in just your decision, because these
- 1:00Speaker 1: are different types of people that you're meeting this business,
- 1:02Speaker 1: and these type of people influence the way we from
- 1:05Speaker 1: pop culture, sports, the finances are tied to those four
- 1:08Speaker 1: categories of our demon Pott No Money Making Conversation. My
- 1:11Speaker 1: next guest is Betty Smith. She is an author, pop
- 1:14Speaker 1: culture deficionado, fashion expert, and host of be Relations on
- 1:19Speaker 1: Sirius XM Radio. Andy Beby just released our first book,
- 1:23Speaker 1: be Relations, Relations of her memoir about learning to live
- 1:26Speaker 1: a big, authentic and unapologetic life and how you can
- 1:29Speaker 1: do it too once in a while. It's successful luxurally
- 1:32Speaker 1: fashioning publication executive at Rolling Stone and Vibe magazine. She
- 1:37Speaker 1: shifted and I have really I can relate to that
- 1:39Speaker 1: because I did some shifting and we're gonna discuss because
- 1:41Speaker 1: a lot of things in her book I related to
- 1:43Speaker 1: and she shifted her professional goals over a decade ago
- 1:46Speaker 1: to pursue a life in front of the camera. Bety
- 1:49Speaker 1: served as a moderator on Bravo TVs revolutionary talk show
- 1:52Speaker 1: Fashion Queens, and with a co host in the nationally
- 1:55Speaker 1: syndicated entertainment news program Page six TV. Please Working the
- 1:59Speaker 1: money in conversation for the very first time, but not
- 2:02Speaker 1: the last time, Mrs Bevy Smith, how are you doing?
- 2:05Speaker 1: I love, my love, I'm so happy to be here
- 2:07Speaker 1: with you. Well, I you know, I we'll talk about
- 2:11Speaker 1: the book. But it's a lot going on in your life,
- 2:13Speaker 1: you know, And it's my design. I I took it
- 2:16Speaker 1: with my reading from the book that every move you
- 2:18Speaker 1: made was not something that's just kind of happened. It
- 2:21Speaker 1: happened because you started out. You planned it and and
- 2:25Speaker 1: and and it worked to your favor. And that's what
- 2:27Speaker 1: the book really is about planning your destiny and choosing
- 2:30Speaker 1: your path correct. It is it is. You know. I'm
- 2:33Speaker 1: from Harlem, and so a lot of times and people
- 2:36Speaker 1: hear my story they say, oh my gosh, you're such
- 2:39Speaker 1: a hustler, and I always tell them I'm not a hustler.
- 2:41Speaker 1: I'm a strategist. Because a hustler will do anything to
- 2:45Speaker 1: make their money, you know. The in goal for them
- 2:47Speaker 1: is always about the green the money, And for me,
- 2:51Speaker 1: it's always about satisfaction, finding my work. Um. And I'm
- 2:55Speaker 1: also not going to take things that don't resonate with me.
- 2:58Speaker 1: I'm not going to ever take a job that just
- 3:00Speaker 1: really doesn't connect with me. Um, it's just not worth it.
- 3:03Speaker 1: I've been offered a myriad of time to be a
- 3:05Speaker 1: part of reality TV show once or rights in my life,
- 3:09Speaker 1: and I've always said no because I just doesn't fit in. So, yeah,
- 3:13Speaker 1: I do believe that's important. It's imperative to have a
- 3:16Speaker 1: plan for your life, to have a strategy for your
- 3:18Speaker 1: life and not just allow things to just kind of happen.
- 3:21Speaker 1: But while at the same time being open to the journey.
- 3:25Speaker 1: The journey is really important. That we want to talk
- 3:27Speaker 1: about your book bere Relations, and you have relations in
- 3:30Speaker 1: it a little a little uh like all a little
- 3:32Speaker 1: the little um statements of information that would allow you
- 3:36Speaker 1: to move your life forward in a positive direction with planning.
- 3:39Speaker 1: And that's what I took away from the book. And
- 3:40Speaker 1: it's a long book now, but a good read because
- 3:43Speaker 1: it's talks about your life from childhood. It talks about
- 3:46Speaker 1: your parents, talk about your older brother, your your your
- 3:49Speaker 1: sister who's a nerd, older brother who's gay, and and
- 3:53Speaker 1: your father who worked at a copper refinery pact factory,
- 3:57Speaker 1: and your mom who was cleaned homes. But I didn't
- 3:59Speaker 1: want to, like you said in the book. You know,
- 4:01Speaker 1: let me not let you think your mama was working
- 4:03Speaker 1: like the people in the Help. Your mom had fashion,
- 4:06Speaker 1: your mama had personality, and that's where you got your
- 4:09Speaker 1: personality from from your mom. Correct. Indeed, I got my
- 4:12Speaker 1: my fashion, sensibility and my outgoing personality from my mom.
- 4:16Speaker 1: My mom is still, at this age of ninety three,
- 4:19Speaker 1: one of the most fashionable people that I know, and
- 4:22Speaker 1: it's been a great honor to be her daughter, along
- 4:25Speaker 1: with my daddy, gust Lee Smith, and I said his
- 4:27Speaker 1: name in every interview, So um, yes, it's been an
- 4:30Speaker 1: honor to be their daughter. Well, you know, I know
- 4:32Speaker 1: that I was fortunate. H I grew up in fear
- 4:35Speaker 1: War Texas and it was just like the who as
- 4:38Speaker 1: they would say in her city in Houston, Texas. And um,
- 4:42Speaker 1: I both my parents. My father was a truck driver,
- 4:44Speaker 1: my mom was a high school had received a high
- 4:46Speaker 1: school education. Six sisters, two brothers. My family was a
- 4:48Speaker 1: little bit bigger than yours. But the family was important
- 4:51Speaker 1: to me because it shaped me. And I felt that
- 4:53Speaker 1: in reading your book, you constantly talked about how your
- 4:56Speaker 1: family shaped you. That's definitely you know, Um, my parents
- 5:02Speaker 1: gave us a really incredible work ethic. They also, um,
- 5:06Speaker 1: even though they were from Jim Crow South, they were
- 5:09Speaker 1: not enamored by white people. They never felt like we
- 5:13Speaker 1: needed to compare ourselves to white people to see how excellent.
- 5:17Speaker 1: So I never got that traditional speech for that a
- 5:20Speaker 1: lot of black people get, which is you have to
- 5:22Speaker 1: be ten times better than the white person to get,
- 5:25Speaker 1: you know, half as much. I never got that message
- 5:27Speaker 1: in my home. And although I understand why many people
- 5:30Speaker 1: give their kids that message, I'm so glad I didn't
- 5:33Speaker 1: get that message because then when I went into all white,
- 5:36Speaker 1: um environments for work. You know, everything I've ever done
- 5:39Speaker 1: really has been primarily a white world. Advertising is incredibly
- 5:43Speaker 1: white unless you work, and multicultural fashion is incredibly white,
- 5:47Speaker 1: especially when you're talking about the luxury fashion category. You know,
- 5:51Speaker 1: TV is incredibly white. Um. You know. So I've always
- 5:54Speaker 1: gone into these environments. But because I didn't have that
- 5:57Speaker 1: hanging over my head that I needed to show white
- 6:01Speaker 1: people that I was just as good, if not better. UM,
- 6:04Speaker 1: I was able to go into experiences and just to
- 6:08Speaker 1: my work and do the good work, which is how
- 6:10Speaker 1: my parents raised us to do. And then from my sister,
- 6:13Speaker 1: she was the one who gave me a lot of
- 6:15Speaker 1: my black uh kind of intelligencia information. She's the one
- 6:21Speaker 1: who told me all about the Hall and Renaissance and
- 6:24Speaker 1: and why the community that we were living in was
- 6:26Speaker 1: so great and it was had such a legacy. And therefore,
- 6:30Speaker 1: because I was living there and working on the same
- 6:32Speaker 1: streets as Baldwin, as Zora, Neil Hurston, as Linkston News,
- 6:36Speaker 1: as a Philip Randolph Adam Claim Powell Jr. I mean,
- 6:40Speaker 1: the list goes on and on. Because I was walking
- 6:42Speaker 1: on those same streets, because I was attending schools they
- 6:44Speaker 1: had their names on the building. I had a legacy
- 6:48Speaker 1: as well, and that I could be black excellence. And
- 6:50Speaker 1: then my brother gave me my love of art. My
- 6:53Speaker 1: brother was, as you mentioned, he's gay, and he gave
- 6:57Speaker 1: me passionate about art. Ja It's like the creative arts
- 7:01Speaker 1: just overall, well, you know the fun part about it.
- 7:04Speaker 1: You know, let's go astrology. I'm Pisces. You know your scorpio.
- 7:08Speaker 1: You know I know that. Come on, I wouldn't bring
- 7:10Speaker 1: up Pisces if I didn't scope you. You know, we're romantic,
- 7:13Speaker 1: you know, poet and a system will together, you know,
- 7:17Speaker 1: became day almost birthday Youthday, February seven, coming on and
- 7:24Speaker 1: then and I can I can respect. That's why I
- 7:27Speaker 1: love this book. Okay, any book that quotes lyrics from
- 7:30Speaker 1: Teddy Pendergrass. I'm telling you, you're my girl there, You're
- 7:33Speaker 1: a girl right there. And the book was so much fun,
- 7:38Speaker 1: it was so honest, it was so you know, uh, well,
- 7:42Speaker 1: I stay honest because you wouldn't to tell us when
- 7:45Speaker 1: you made a mistake. You wouldn't open up about your
- 7:48Speaker 1: personal life from your from your siblings, to your parents,
- 7:52Speaker 1: to your lifestyle. At what point in the book that
- 7:55Speaker 1: you went, wow, I am telling a lot. Did they
- 7:58Speaker 1: ever cross your mind? You know? I felt that it
- 8:02Speaker 1: was a really freeing experience to be able to tell
- 8:05Speaker 1: my story in this way and to tell it in
- 8:07Speaker 1: an authentic manner, because you know which I'm actually moving on.
- 8:11Speaker 1: You know, this is another chapter that I'm embarking the pond.
- 8:14Speaker 1: My book is literally my book Revelations, Lessons from my Mother,
- 8:19Speaker 1: Auntie Bestie, a combination of fifteen years of work when
- 8:24Speaker 1: I left welling Stone Magazine to now. And that's fifteen
- 8:28Speaker 1: years of attempting to be a part of this industry,
- 8:31Speaker 1: be a television host and become a writer all those things.
- 8:34Speaker 1: And I did it, and now I'm on to the
- 8:36Speaker 1: next And I knew that this book, if I was
- 8:39Speaker 1: honest in this book, this book would actually be a
- 8:43Speaker 1: catalyst for that change and for that next chapter in
- 8:45Speaker 1: my life. So I had no no hesitation about being
- 8:50Speaker 1: very honest, authentic. No, let me share some things that
- 8:54Speaker 1: are related to okay, um, you know uh. First of all,
- 8:58Speaker 1: the name change. You know very my name is Rashawn
- 9:02Speaker 1: publicly now I'm a junior. My father's actual name is
- 9:05Speaker 1: Russian McDonald. And so it got to I got to
- 9:09Speaker 1: a point in my life where I needed to find
- 9:11Speaker 1: my identity, what was my voice because I went through
- 9:14Speaker 1: some of the same middle school and the high school
- 9:16Speaker 1: challenges you with you trying to find your voice, maybe
- 9:19Speaker 1: running with the wrong crowd and and and defining yourself.
- 9:22Speaker 1: And so I remember I was in college when I
- 9:25Speaker 1: changed my name, And so when I left school in
- 9:27Speaker 1: the spring, I was Russian. I came back to school
- 9:30Speaker 1: in the fall, I was Rashawn, and I was correcting people.
- 9:32Speaker 1: I was saying, hey, my name is was Shan. And
- 9:35Speaker 1: and then of course everybody from high school you ain't
- 9:37Speaker 1: know Rashane you're Russian whatever, but youtually gonna be saying Rashane.
- 9:41Speaker 1: I was just telling it all the time. I said,
- 9:43Speaker 1: I said, you eventually gonna be saying Rashan one day,
- 9:46Speaker 1: and and that and that. And I related to that
- 9:49Speaker 1: because you know, when you make a decision to say
- 9:53Speaker 1: this is who I am, that's a powerful statement. And
- 9:55Speaker 1: I know because I experienced it. And sometimes you people
- 9:58Speaker 1: make you trying to be you know, trying to browbeat you,
- 10:01Speaker 1: try to bully you, just and trying to define who
- 10:04Speaker 1: they think you are. And that's why the name changed
- 10:06Speaker 1: for you was very important to tell us about that. Yeah,
- 10:10Speaker 1: and I love that story with Sean because it is
- 10:12Speaker 1: very similar. I was um at the height of my
- 10:15Speaker 1: advertising fashion career. I was thirty three years old. UM.
- 10:19Speaker 1: I had just arrived at Milan. I was surrounded by
- 10:22Speaker 1: gifts and Bucci and father and and all the big
- 10:24Speaker 1: Italian luxury brands. I had, you know, just gotten out
- 10:28Speaker 1: of my luxury Mercedes Sadan with my driver Giofani. I mean,
- 10:33Speaker 1: it was quite fabulous and I come to, you know,
- 10:36Speaker 1: my regular hotel suite in Milan at the Fanciest uh
- 10:40Speaker 1: you know, five star hotel in Milan. And I'm a
- 10:42Speaker 1: black girl from home. I'm a hundred and fiftiest street
- 10:45Speaker 1: in Nida, So clearly this is I've come a long
- 10:48Speaker 1: way from the block, right, And when I arrived this
- 10:53Speaker 1: is probably like, you know, maybe my I don't know,
- 10:55Speaker 1: twenty of thirtieth time doing that, right, because I've been
- 10:59Speaker 1: in the business for me and I've been living this
- 11:01Speaker 1: kind of lifestyle for a while. And when I when
- 11:04Speaker 1: I got to that hotel woman, when the bellman left,
- 11:07Speaker 1: I collapsed onto the sheets and I was like, this
- 11:09Speaker 1: cannot be my life. I realized I was miserable and
- 11:12Speaker 1: was dissatisfied, and I just felt like there was a
- 11:15Speaker 1: hole in my spirit. And I said, how can I
- 11:18Speaker 1: change my life? And I did not really have an answer,
- 11:21Speaker 1: but I sat down and I wrote out the things
- 11:24Speaker 1: that made me feel bad about myself and about my life.
- 11:27Speaker 1: I realized that I was working in a career fashion
- 11:30Speaker 1: that really does prey on women's insecurities, and um, you know,
- 11:34Speaker 1: and also it was a tough position for me because
- 11:37Speaker 1: I was working in luxury and there weren't a lot
- 11:39Speaker 1: of black people in the space, so I was always
- 11:42Speaker 1: having to show up and kind of be a representative
- 11:46Speaker 1: for my entire culture. And for a while I took
- 11:49Speaker 1: a lot of pride in that, but then it just
- 11:50Speaker 1: became exhausting, um and there were lots of other things,
- 11:53Speaker 1: and I bolt these things down, and I said, well,
- 11:55Speaker 1: what can I do about it? Now? Clearly, if I'm
- 11:57Speaker 1: I'm from a hundred and fifty street and night that
- 11:59Speaker 1: haplue for all I'm in the hood, I'm not gonna
- 12:02Speaker 1: up and jump my uh you know, quit my uh
- 12:05Speaker 1: six figure job, right I'm not gonna do that because
- 12:07Speaker 1: I'm just satisfied. I said, what can I do to
- 12:10Speaker 1: start changing my life right now? And I said, I
- 12:13Speaker 1: can change how people address me. Because I was so
- 12:16Speaker 1: successful at my job at Vibe Magazine, they have started
- 12:20Speaker 1: calling me Beverly Smith from Vibe Magazine. That was my name,
- 12:24Speaker 1: and I said, no, I don't want to do that anymore,
- 12:26Speaker 1: because one day I'm gonna leave vib Magazine and one
- 12:29Speaker 1: day I'm gonna do something different. And I don't want
- 12:31Speaker 1: my name to be so closely connected to an enterprise
- 12:35Speaker 1: and really has nothing to do with me. It's not
- 12:37Speaker 1: something I own. So I said, I'm gonna change my
- 12:39Speaker 1: name to Betty because Betty is a Betty abundance much,
- 12:43Speaker 1: you know, so it's me. I'll take that. So I
- 12:48Speaker 1: became Betty Smith. You know. The beauty of that story is,
- 12:52Speaker 1: like I said, I I experienced it, and you know,
- 12:55Speaker 1: and that the early part of it is when people
- 12:57Speaker 1: start accepting it, because there's a group of people that
- 12:59Speaker 1: will accepted and then some people will tease you and
- 13:02Speaker 1: kind of remind you like they have something that over
- 13:05Speaker 1: your head or well, I know who you really are.
- 13:08Speaker 1: But the but the big part about it was, you know,
- 13:11Speaker 1: my whole life. And this is where we relate A
- 13:14Speaker 1: lot is that. And this is with anybody. You're told
- 13:19Speaker 1: you raised by a parent of your two parents. If
- 13:22Speaker 1: you're fortunate, and you go to middle school, high school,
- 13:25Speaker 1: you told how to walk, talk, you make decisions. You
- 13:27Speaker 1: you may go to college if you're fortunate, all the decisions,
- 13:30Speaker 1: a lot of the decisions are being made by somebody else.
- 13:33Speaker 1: They're shaping you. And so when you have a personality
- 13:37Speaker 1: like I have a person like what like Bevy has
- 13:39Speaker 1: a personality, it's not normal. Her personality is not normal
- 13:42Speaker 1: because it was screaming to say something different, to say
- 13:45Speaker 1: something like my degree is in mathematics and so oh
- 13:48Speaker 1: I got a degree to but I was screaming, like
- 13:50Speaker 1: like like your careers in fashion and Vibe and Rolling Stone,
- 13:53Speaker 1: So that's what I said. It was later, but you
- 13:55Speaker 1: were screaming and say, yes, I'm successful, Yes I'm achieving.
- 13:59Speaker 1: I work for IBM, But I was screaming saying that's
- 14:03Speaker 1: not what I want to do for the rest of
- 14:06Speaker 1: my life. And that voice. Talk tell us about that
- 14:09Speaker 1: little voice. Because I heard that voice in my body
- 14:12Speaker 1: and I ran from it. I was afraid to tell
- 14:14Speaker 1: people about it. And when I finally made the decision
- 14:17Speaker 1: that this is who are going to be, it brought
- 14:19Speaker 1: me to tears because I was, for the first time,
- 14:22Speaker 1: being honest in my life. And that's why I love
- 14:24Speaker 1: your book Relationships, because it's about being honest, and you're
- 14:27Speaker 1: asking any reader who read your book to be honest
- 14:30Speaker 1: about yourselves when you start reading the book, when you
- 14:33Speaker 1: walk away from it in the end, there will be
- 14:35Speaker 1: changes because for the first time, you have basically a
- 14:38Speaker 1: blueprint on somebody who's telling her story, unapology, unapologetic life
- 14:44Speaker 1: that in comparison, is very similar to yours. Yeah, so
- 14:48Speaker 1: I'm hoping to challenge people book inside to really kind
- 14:53Speaker 1: of excavate um what they really want in life. As
- 14:57Speaker 1: you mentioned, oftentimes especially we're successful, um as Black people especially,
- 15:04Speaker 1: we feel very guilty about being successful in in our
- 15:08Speaker 1: careers and then I'm wanting to do something different because
- 15:13Speaker 1: we know from whence it became. And even the most
- 15:16Speaker 1: affluent Black person is traditionally only maybe too if they're
- 15:20Speaker 1: blessed four generations away from poverty, right, you know, like
- 15:24Speaker 1: you know traditionally you know, our parents are come through
- 15:28Speaker 1: Jim pro South. You know, my parents were they actually
- 15:31Speaker 1: knew slaves. My my grandparents you know, um, you know,
- 15:36Speaker 1: so we're not that far removed. So when we start
- 15:39Speaker 1: to become successful, we find ourselves feeling very guilty about
- 15:45Speaker 1: saying I don't want this because who are we? You know,
- 15:48Speaker 1: there's that whole meaning that goes around on social media.
- 15:51Speaker 1: I am my, uh my, my my ancestors wildest dreams,
- 15:56Speaker 1: And I'm sure when I was a Beverly Smith fashion
- 15:59Speaker 1: average tising, making a great six figure salary and traveling
- 16:03Speaker 1: all over the world, my grandparents could never have imagined
- 16:07Speaker 1: that these were people worn in the eighteen hundreds. How
- 16:10Speaker 1: can they imagine that their granddaughter would have all of
- 16:13Speaker 1: this latitude and have all this luxury and have all
- 16:16Speaker 1: these um you know, and have actually a staff that
- 16:19Speaker 1: looked up to her, you know how open always says her.
- 16:22Speaker 1: Grandmother said, one day, you're gonna, you know, find yourself
- 16:25Speaker 1: some good white people to work for. And Oprah said, open, Grandma.
- 16:28Speaker 1: Now I found actually good white people to work for me.
- 16:31Speaker 1: So all battle that. But I think that in my book,
- 16:35Speaker 1: which is meant to be a self help book, I
- 16:36Speaker 1: really stressed to you that if you have a dream,
- 16:41Speaker 1: if you have a passion that's inside of you, even
- 16:44Speaker 1: though you're really successful at your current job, your career,
- 16:48Speaker 1: what have you, you owe it to yourself to explore that.
- 16:53Speaker 1: You have to And it doesn't mean and I never
- 16:55Speaker 1: tell people to do what I did, which is I
- 16:57Speaker 1: quit my job totally. I quit a job at Rolling
- 17:01Speaker 1: So magazine where I was making three fifty tho dollars
- 17:04Speaker 1: a year and I quit. Okay, I'm not advising anyone
- 17:09Speaker 1: to do that. That's a very hard thing to do,
- 17:10Speaker 1: and then that's an extreme thing to do. That's what
- 17:13Speaker 1: I need to do for myself. But for you, it
- 17:16Speaker 1: could be just as simple as actually honing in on
- 17:19Speaker 1: that passion, you know, how many of us are amazing
- 17:22Speaker 1: home cooks. My sister is a great home cook. Guess
- 17:25Speaker 1: what she did. She started up her own catering business, MS.
- 17:29Speaker 1: Longley's Kitchen, and it's doing really well. I have another
- 17:33Speaker 1: friend who actually shot the cover of my my book.
- 17:38Speaker 1: He is a music industry executive, has nothing to do
- 17:41Speaker 1: with photography, but he was taking his classes. He was
- 17:44Speaker 1: doing so well, and I said, what would you would
- 17:47Speaker 1: you actually take the photo from my book? And I
- 17:50Speaker 1: gave him an opportunity and my publisher paid him for that.
- 17:54Speaker 1: You know, so we we. But the thing is we
- 17:57Speaker 1: don't ever even try to follow our dreams and to
- 18:03Speaker 1: chase our passions. We will never ever know if we
- 18:06Speaker 1: can actually do them. We will never know. So it's
- 18:09Speaker 1: very imperative. I know you're successful. I know you're doing
- 18:12Speaker 1: the damn thing. I know everyone loves you in that position.
- 18:15Speaker 1: I remember when I put Rolling Song, my boss said
- 18:17Speaker 1: to me, you can't quit. You're in line to be, uh,
- 18:22Speaker 1: you know, a publisher. You could actually run this magazine
- 18:25Speaker 1: one day. And I was like, yeah, I know I can,
- 18:27Speaker 1: but that's not what I want to do. I want
- 18:30Speaker 1: to do all these other creative things. I want to
- 18:32Speaker 1: be a writer. I want to be a TV personality.
- 18:34Speaker 1: I want to act, I want to sing, I want
- 18:37Speaker 1: to dance. I want to do all these creative things.
- 18:40Speaker 1: I want to paint, I want to study art and architecture.
- 18:43Speaker 1: And guess what was Sean, I'm doing all those things now.
- 18:47Speaker 1: You do not tell me because I feel like I
- 18:49Speaker 1: told you. Our stories crossed so many times, you know,
- 18:52Speaker 1: and and and and not, and I never enough. And
- 18:54Speaker 1: I'm sure it crosses a lot of people who are
- 18:56Speaker 1: gonna read this book and people who are looking for direction.
- 18:59Speaker 1: And I tell you this, you know, you know it's
- 19:01Speaker 1: not a dollar value. Because I remember when I was
- 19:05Speaker 1: white no Jamie Foxx Show, and I went to one
- 19:07Speaker 1: of brothers and I said, can you let me out
- 19:10Speaker 1: of the contract. I was making money, but I wanted
- 19:12Speaker 1: to go a different direction to my care career. Wasn't
- 19:15Speaker 1: nothing to do with bill Ley Avers, who was a
- 19:17Speaker 1: good friend of mine to day Jamie Foxx. It was
- 19:20Speaker 1: at that point in my career I wanted to do
- 19:21Speaker 1: something different. I wanted to I wanted to have been
- 19:24Speaker 1: making that decision eventually leave me to managing Steve Harvey,
- 19:27Speaker 1: because you know that move right there went over to
- 19:31Speaker 1: the Parkers, and I was writing known as a consultant producer,
- 19:34Speaker 1: which gave me time to start managing Steve and we
- 19:37Speaker 1: got a deal to do the Morning Show in two
- 19:39Speaker 1: thousand and basically the rest of history, you know, family feud,
- 19:43Speaker 1: the three books, the two movies, and were all avoid
- 19:46Speaker 1: And he has a career that he'll never looked back
- 19:48Speaker 1: on it and I have a career that I don't
- 19:50Speaker 1: look back on. But it's a decision you make, and
- 19:52Speaker 1: that's like. And the reason I bring that up is
- 19:55Speaker 1: that you know, money holds a lot of people hostage.
- 19:59Speaker 1: It holds the stage from their dreams, hold them hostage
- 20:02Speaker 1: from the opportunities. I have to stop you for a
- 20:05Speaker 1: moment because this is something that's really pertinent. Right before
- 20:10Speaker 1: I decided to quit rolling Stone, I also had an
- 20:13Speaker 1: opportunity to buy a brown Stone Hall Now for pyone
- 20:16Speaker 1: who doesn't understand what that means, is that I had
- 20:19Speaker 1: an opportunity at that time to buy a Brownstone that
- 20:22Speaker 1: would have been two dollars um, which that Brownstone now
- 20:27Speaker 1: probably goes for one point five minutes in the fifteen
- 20:30Speaker 1: years span, that's how much the property values have risen.
- 20:34Speaker 1: But if I had brought that brownstone with Sean, I
- 20:37Speaker 1: could not have also quit my job, and I would
- 20:42Speaker 1: have been beholden to the job so that I could
- 20:46Speaker 1: maintain that lifestyle of that brown stone. And sometimes people
- 20:51Speaker 1: do not understand, which is what you were alluding to.
- 20:53Speaker 1: They do not understand that sometimes your money and your
- 20:56Speaker 1: possessions can become a guilded cage. It can become an
- 21:00Speaker 1: albatross right around your neck, and you have to be
- 21:04Speaker 1: careful about that, you know. In my book, I write
- 21:06Speaker 1: a chapter called Brooke but Blissful, and so many people
- 21:10Speaker 1: are outraged about that chapter because they're just like, I
- 21:13Speaker 1: can't believe you went from three fifty thousand dollars a
- 21:16Speaker 1: year the thirty five thousand dollars a year. And I
- 21:19Speaker 1: tell them all the time, I did that because I
- 21:21Speaker 1: knew that it was a temporary moment. Trouble don't last always.
- 21:26Speaker 1: I knew I could make more money. But what I
- 21:28Speaker 1: knew also is that if I kept on that same
- 21:31Speaker 1: path of being a fashion advertising director, I would have
- 21:35Speaker 1: made a lot of money and been incredibly miserable. And
- 21:38Speaker 1: what kind of life is that? That's not a life
- 21:40Speaker 1: worth living to me? Well, I would tell you this
- 21:42Speaker 1: your life in this book has been ahead of the time.
- 21:45Speaker 1: I want to I want to go. In a couple
- 21:47Speaker 1: of areas of the book, I thought they just stood
- 21:49Speaker 1: out the Essence culture versus the Vibe culture. And that's
- 21:53Speaker 1: important because time periods dictate how people react to you.
- 21:58Speaker 1: Like you said, you know, I was ten years earlier,
- 22:00Speaker 1: tenors too early when I walked into Essence with the
- 22:03Speaker 1: look that you had at that point, Now that that
- 22:06Speaker 1: look would work. It was it was like, talk about
- 22:09Speaker 1: the essence culture and the Vibe culture because you're an
- 22:12Speaker 1: opportunity to go to Essence and you chose Vibe. Yes, yeah,
- 22:16Speaker 1: I had an opportunity to go to Essence magazine, the
- 22:19Speaker 1: the grand dam of Essence Magazine. And Taylor, who is
- 22:22Speaker 1: an iconic woman and who's such a great gift and
- 22:26Speaker 1: a woman who doesn't judge other women. She she met
- 22:29Speaker 1: with me and she thought I was terrific, and she said,
- 22:32Speaker 1: you know what, I think there's a position here for you.
- 22:35Speaker 1: Go and meet with my my advertising team. And when
- 22:38Speaker 1: I met with them, I realized that everyone was in
- 22:41Speaker 1: like really businesswomen's suits, you know, like everyone had like,
- 22:46Speaker 1: you know, collars up to here they were wearing suits.
- 22:50Speaker 1: They weren't wearing that. You know that their makeup was
- 22:53Speaker 1: very subdued and understated, and no, I was like, whoa, yeah,
- 22:57Speaker 1: I just left the white and the old white environed
- 23:00Speaker 1: me ragging and feel my most natural bevy as self.
- 23:05Speaker 1: I don't want to go into a black environment and
- 23:07Speaker 1: not feel my most bevy as self. And so I
- 23:10Speaker 1: declined that that author. And then a couple of months
- 23:15Speaker 1: later I got an offer to be at Vibe magazine.
- 23:18Speaker 1: And when I walked and by, I said, oh, this
- 23:19Speaker 1: is my jam right here. I see. I'm I'm the
- 23:22Speaker 1: first generation of hip hop and I'm going raised in
- 23:24Speaker 1: New York. So hip hop is my thing. And in
- 23:27Speaker 1: the book, as you know what, Sean, I talked about
- 23:29Speaker 1: being big Bet from Uptown, friends of Tupac and Biggie
- 23:32Speaker 1: and you know Puff, and I'm in the scene. I'm
- 23:35Speaker 1: on the scene, and so hip hop is my natural habitat.
- 23:39Speaker 1: And so when I'm walking to Vibe, they get my
- 23:41Speaker 1: flag girl look, they get my big errands, they get
- 23:45Speaker 1: that I'm showing some cleavage and I'm still gonna take
- 23:47Speaker 1: care of business, you know what I mean. So it
- 23:49Speaker 1: was a really good fit. So sometimes you know, you
- 23:52Speaker 1: have to look at a corporate culture and know whether
- 23:55Speaker 1: not it's worth it to you to contort yourself and
- 23:58Speaker 1: to do things that don't feel necessarily natural to you.
- 24:02Speaker 1: Is it worth it? When I went to rolling Stone,
- 24:05Speaker 1: totally different corporate culture again, right back into an all
- 24:08Speaker 1: white situation. But I went up in rolling Stone was
- 24:11Speaker 1: a real reason, as you know what shann I talked about.
- 24:14Speaker 1: I went to Rolling Stone knowing that I was gonna
- 24:16Speaker 1: quit as soon as I got my bonus shot. Absolutely
- 24:19Speaker 1: absolutely gonna doing hot ten months up and there, and
- 24:22Speaker 1: as soon as they gave me my bonus chut, I
- 24:25Speaker 1: was gonna be like child for now. But you know
- 24:28Speaker 1: the thing about it, in that moment that if you
- 24:30Speaker 1: we used to vibe rolling Stones, moment that you had
- 24:33Speaker 1: because you didn't really expect to go to rolling Stone.
- 24:36Speaker 1: You was using roller Stones as a stepping stone, and
- 24:38Speaker 1: then Vibe said, uh, you know, the Viber's first, and
- 24:42Speaker 1: then it was rolling right, it was Vibe. I apologize
- 24:44Speaker 1: it was rolling Stone because you went to roller Stone,
- 24:46Speaker 1: picked up an offer, and then you took it back
- 24:48Speaker 1: over the Vibe and the Vibe said, oh wow, good luck,
- 24:52Speaker 1: good luck, good luck, and so and so and you
- 24:55Speaker 1: were ready for that. You you were caught off guard,
- 24:57Speaker 1: but it didn't slow down your momentum. And so that's
- 25:00Speaker 1: why I just loved the whole process is that do
- 25:03Speaker 1: not and I talk about in my intro, do not
- 25:06Speaker 1: allow people to control your destiny. Write your own story.
- 25:09Speaker 1: And you continually write your own story. And I want
- 25:13Speaker 1: to ask you one thing, Bevy, because I'm talking to
- 25:16Speaker 1: Bevy Smith, author a tremendous book that I want to
- 25:19Speaker 1: recommend to everybody called bever Relations as Herman Wall by
- 25:22Speaker 1: learning to live a big, authentic and unapolotic life and
- 25:25Speaker 1: how you can't too. One of the most fulfilling speaking
- 25:28Speaker 1: events was your tour of HBCUs. Uh talked about HBCUs.
- 25:33Speaker 1: I did not attend one, but I'm a big proponent.
- 25:36Speaker 1: I promoted, I amplify HBCUs Equal Black Excellence. Tell us
- 25:41Speaker 1: about how impactful that tour was that your girlfriend from
- 25:44Speaker 1: Boost took you up with as the sponsor HBCU college tour. Yeah,
- 25:50Speaker 1: you know, I also went to a p W I
- 25:52Speaker 1: you know, I went to New York University, where I
- 25:54Speaker 1: did not graduate because I was already in my career.
- 25:57Speaker 1: And so my boss was like, well, you can actually
- 26:00Speaker 1: teach the force. And now you're miss missing out on
- 26:02Speaker 1: big presentations and meetings. You know, the rubbie hit the road.
- 26:06Speaker 1: So I actually left UM, but probably only a year
- 26:10Speaker 1: left to get my degree. But it didn't stop me.
- 26:12Speaker 1: But I always tell people it's one thing to drop
- 26:15Speaker 1: out of a prestigious school like n y U and
- 26:18Speaker 1: another thing to drop out of a you know, a
- 26:20Speaker 1: school the Trump University. Let's put it that. So, UM,
- 26:25Speaker 1: I like you. I'm a very big fan of HBCUs.
- 26:29Speaker 1: And so when I had the opportunity to go and
- 26:31Speaker 1: speak UM, it was a boost mobile toy. It was
- 26:33Speaker 1: really an amazing moment for me because it was my
- 26:36Speaker 1: first ever speaking engagement UM. And so I learned the
- 26:41Speaker 1: lat I was on the panel with people who did
- 26:43Speaker 1: a lot of public speaking, and when I realized is
- 26:46Speaker 1: that they had very wrote, very scripted kind of things
- 26:50Speaker 1: that they would talk about, and every stopped would be
- 26:53Speaker 1: the same line. So from Morehouse to Howard, from you
- 26:56Speaker 1: know fam you too, you know uh Morris Brown, they
- 27:01Speaker 1: would say the same kind of things. And I also
- 27:04Speaker 1: realized that they were giving people are highlights real and
- 27:08Speaker 1: I said, oh yeah, that's not going to help the kids,
- 27:10Speaker 1: giving them a highlights real We need to let them
- 27:13Speaker 1: know about the real challenges that they will face in
- 27:17Speaker 1: the workplace being black going into corporate America. What can
- 27:21Speaker 1: they expect and how can they how can they navigate
- 27:24Speaker 1: these issues? And so that's when I decided to come
- 27:28Speaker 1: really clean. I started telling people about my most authentic self.
- 27:32Speaker 1: And then the book I talk about, you know, finding
- 27:34Speaker 1: out three things, and that's how you develop your own
- 27:36Speaker 1: personal brand. Who are you at your core? How are
- 27:40Speaker 1: you being perceived? How would you like to be perceived?
- 27:43Speaker 1: If you can answer those three questions really honestly, And
- 27:46Speaker 1: that's where the introspective work comes in. That if you
- 27:49Speaker 1: can answer those questions, you can develop a personal brand.
- 27:52Speaker 1: And once you develop your personal brand, I have a
- 27:54Speaker 1: chap to call brand You, and that talks about how
- 27:57Speaker 1: you can maximize and actually sell people into your personal brand,
- 28:01Speaker 1: have them buy into it. And that's what I was
- 28:04Speaker 1: able to do on that tour. But I gotta tell
- 28:06Speaker 1: you you know which, y'all. Um. As I've mentioned several
- 28:10Speaker 1: times just in this interview, I'm from Harlem, and when
- 28:13Speaker 1: I was in these all white environments, especially when I
- 28:18Speaker 1: was a kid in the eighties, and as an advertising receptionist,
- 28:21Speaker 1: um people were hard fied that I lived in home,
- 28:24Speaker 1: and they would say things like are you saved? Don't
- 28:27Speaker 1: you want to move? And things like that. And when
- 28:29Speaker 1: I would go over to Europe, I would always tell
- 28:31Speaker 1: people I was from Harlem versus saying I'm from Manhattan.
- 28:35Speaker 1: We call him as a neighborhood in Manhattan. So I
- 28:37Speaker 1: could have easily said I'm from Manhattan and that that
- 28:40Speaker 1: means everything you know. Manhattan is what you see when
- 28:42Speaker 1: you think of New York City. You really only think
- 28:44Speaker 1: of Manhattan and now Brooklyn. But Willie Manhattan, right, And
- 28:48Speaker 1: so I could have said that, but I chose to
- 28:51Speaker 1: always lead with Harman. And can I just tell you something,
- 28:54Speaker 1: from being authentic about my brand and about who I
- 28:57Speaker 1: am and where I'm from, I have made so much
- 29:01Speaker 1: money from Harlem from being from Harlem, because now all
- 29:05Speaker 1: these big brands come into Harlem and they want an
- 29:08Speaker 1: authentic and they want someone who has recognized, recognizable from
- 29:13Speaker 1: a national point of view, or someone who is very
- 29:16Speaker 1: locally connected, and there I am. So I learned doing
- 29:20Speaker 1: that on that HBCU tour. I learned to be my
- 29:24Speaker 1: most authentic self and not to hide these things. That's
- 29:27Speaker 1: even the reason why I put in the book that
- 29:29Speaker 1: didn't graduate from y you. I thought it was important
- 29:32Speaker 1: to put that in there, you know. So yeah, it's
- 29:35Speaker 1: the authenticity is what wins for me. Well, I'm talking
- 29:38Speaker 1: to Bettie Smith. She's she's been booked, she's blessed, and
- 29:41Speaker 1: she's busty, but more callantly, she has a fantastic book
- 29:44Speaker 1: called Be Relations. You can hear her own serious ex
- 29:48Speaker 1: Relations of radio Andy Baby Smith. I want to thank
- 29:51Speaker 1: you for coming on Money Making Conversations. Thank you so much,
- 29:54Speaker 1: my love. It's been a droid. It's been really great
- 29:56Speaker 1: chatting with you, and I'm so happy that we finally
- 29:58Speaker 1: met after all these years. Absolutely, you know, the beauty
- 30:01Speaker 1: of you is that I know it won't be the
- 30:03Speaker 1: last time we're going to talk. But secondly, our lives
- 30:06Speaker 1: are so relatable and I feel you a kinshift towards
- 30:08Speaker 1: you and I'm i'm I'm a Blessings that haven't happened
- 30:12Speaker 1: in my life are being received in your book, and
- 30:15Speaker 1: so it's my responsibility to promote your book and getting
- 30:18Speaker 1: into the hands as many people as possible. Again, thank
- 30:21Speaker 1: you for coming on Money Making Conversations. Ms Bevy Smith.
- 30:27Speaker 1: We will be right back with more money making conversations
- 30:30Speaker 1: with your host Rashaan McDonald. It's finally here, the season
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- 32:28Speaker 1: dot Ai him Rushan McDonald, the host of Money Making Conversation.
- 32:32Speaker 1: The Cafe Moka Swag Award is a celebration of black
- 32:35Speaker 1: men who wire making a difference in our community by
- 32:37Speaker 1: empowering others to reach their life goals from civic leaders, businessmen, activists,
- 32:42Speaker 1: celebrities and everyday dad's. The Cafe Moka Swag Award one
- 32:45Speaker 1: of this week is Dendre with Field. He is an
- 32:49Speaker 1: Emmy nominated veteran TV and film actor. His new book,
- 32:52Speaker 1: Mail Versus Man is a game changer. Dandre's goal is
- 32:55Speaker 1: to help readers understand how the definition of manhood has
- 32:59Speaker 1: changed and to transformed males so they can obtain man status.
- 33:03Speaker 1: Our manhood is directly tied to our dedication to being
- 33:10Speaker 1: a servant leader, serving the women and children in our lives.
- 33:15Speaker 1: I talked about it in the book, how every man
- 33:17Speaker 1: has to be the walking tree of his house and community.
- 33:21Speaker 1: So a treat feeds us, a treat gives us shelter.
- 33:24Speaker 1: The tree allows us to breathe better. That's the job
- 33:27Speaker 1: of every man for every woman and child in his life.
- 33:31Speaker 1: The Cafe Maka Squag Award represents men who have strength,
- 33:34Speaker 1: whose wisdom is assertive, and who is genuine in their spirit.
- 33:38Speaker 1: Welcome back to money making Conversations with your host. Rashan
- 33:42Speaker 1: McDonald my Next Year is an industry decision maker. He's
- 33:45Speaker 1: an entrepreneur and his celebrity is a celebrity in his
- 33:48Speaker 1: industry or Luen Joe Shalla. He was born and raised
- 33:52Speaker 1: in West Africa. Growing up, he shared an eight by
- 33:55Speaker 1: ten room with his mother and seven siblings. Now is
- 33:58Speaker 1: the founder of CEO of He proceed proceeds from the
- 34:01Speaker 1: Ala Field beauty and grooming products are returned to communities
- 34:05Speaker 1: in West Africa defined community empowerment and gender equality initiatives
- 34:09Speaker 1: such as maternal healthcare, education, reforestation and regenderative regendative agriculture.
- 34:17Speaker 1: We were discussing overcoming the arts, something I'm vary for
- 34:19Speaker 1: me with in America, so it happens everywhere. Stereotyping and
- 34:23Speaker 1: business something that we deal with in America as well,
- 34:26Speaker 1: and his female centric business model, please working to money
- 34:29Speaker 1: main conversations, Well win, Joe, Charlotte, thank you, thank you.
- 34:35Speaker 1: Let's let's get the name right there. I did. I
- 34:37Speaker 1: come close Charlotte and I got Charlotte both sixties, so
- 34:42Speaker 1: you got passing. Great? Thank you, my brother, I know
- 34:45Speaker 1: got Charlotte right, I know I got that. So I
- 34:50Speaker 1: think I want to, uh if you've been practiced off
- 34:54Speaker 1: for a little while, absolutely so, so tell me man,
- 34:56Speaker 1: you know, you know we always deal with stereotypes, you know,
- 34:59Speaker 1: you know, since I've been uh in this business, you know,
- 35:04Speaker 1: because I want to start to the truth, to talk
- 35:05Speaker 1: to the journey, because you've had the battle stereotypes. You know.
- 35:09Speaker 1: You know a lot of people say negative things about
- 35:11Speaker 1: people from Africa, UH, scam artists. Uh, you know, shouldn't
- 35:15Speaker 1: trust them, always got some up their sleeve. And then
- 35:18Speaker 1: but you want to be a businessman, and so you're
- 35:20Speaker 1: trying to convince the same people who are these stereotypes.
- 35:23Speaker 1: And I'm not just talking about white people. I'm talking
- 35:24Speaker 1: about people in my color had the same stereotype. How
- 35:27Speaker 1: did you start breaking down those walls before people understood
- 35:31Speaker 1: your story? You know, thank you? The walls is you
- 35:39Speaker 1: have to have a understanding that walls six time to break. However,
- 35:44Speaker 1: you cannot let anybody uh guard your wall, and you
- 35:51Speaker 1: have to take those down immediately. I think for me
- 35:54Speaker 1: it was being very clear on what has been to offer.
- 36:00Speaker 1: And what I mean is that when I when we
- 36:02Speaker 1: first started, when I approached retailers, I was coming from
- 36:07Speaker 1: a place of these what you need. It's not about
- 36:11Speaker 1: what Africa needs, These are what America needs. And that's
- 36:14Speaker 1: a very different approach because for for for a long
- 36:19Speaker 1: time with view as beggars and needing as opposed to
- 36:24Speaker 1: be viewed as those that can contribute to overall humanity
- 36:28Speaker 1: around the world from civilizations, uh and even to today.
- 36:31Speaker 1: So that that fundamental that's important because it's psychological. When
- 36:35Speaker 1: you're stay psychologically understand what you're offering to the world
- 36:38Speaker 1: and what you can offer the America, I think people
- 36:41Speaker 1: pay attention. Uh. And also when you're very clear what
- 36:46Speaker 1: you can engage your own community with, right, because you're
- 36:49Speaker 1: facing a community here in America, but how do you
- 36:51Speaker 1: engage your own community. One of those two things are
- 36:53Speaker 1: very clear, I think it becomes a little bit easier
- 36:56Speaker 1: to break those walls. But it was interesting when you
- 36:59Speaker 1: look at my life, you know, I've been A've been
- 37:02Speaker 1: a Negro, I've been recognized as a black person and
- 37:06Speaker 1: then an African American, and so so that's the name
- 37:09Speaker 1: journey that I've been involved in. The African American ties
- 37:13Speaker 1: me back to where I've come from, which I feel
- 37:15Speaker 1: blessed to be able to have a place that I
- 37:17Speaker 1: came from. Because when you come over ownership and you're
- 37:21Speaker 1: in you're based on slavery, you gotta have a real route,
- 37:24Speaker 1: because slavery is not a route, It's not a base.
- 37:26Speaker 1: And and I have to say this, what impact do
- 37:29Speaker 1: you feel that they're having at that base? Because you
- 37:32Speaker 1: have a home, you know, you have a recognizable home,
- 37:35Speaker 1: talk to you know, the the basis is uh fundamental,
- 37:44Speaker 1: Uh because essentially, if you look at what I'm doing
- 37:50Speaker 1: is really shame the base of the world. Because I
- 37:55Speaker 1: have a base, I'm able to say, culturally, be is
- 38:00Speaker 1: what we have to offer, and cultually these a knowledge
- 38:03Speaker 1: that we have and by sharing that with you, you
- 38:05Speaker 1: can be healthier. So I think it is a multi
- 38:08Speaker 1: magnitude level when you do have a base, and and
- 38:12Speaker 1: that's something I'm quite grateful for to have that base.
- 38:16Speaker 1: Beauty and grooming you can't go wrong with that. You know,
- 38:19Speaker 1: everybody wants to look good, especially in the African American community. UM.
- 38:23Speaker 1: I have suc sisters, so I know a little bit
- 38:25Speaker 1: of thing about watching women look good and groom themselves
- 38:27Speaker 1: on the regular basis. I used to watch my mom
- 38:30Speaker 1: in the kitchen pull out that hot iron and I
- 38:33Speaker 1: don't know if it was I don't know if it
- 38:34Speaker 1: was a pain uh walk of pain for my sisters,
- 38:37Speaker 1: but guess what they experienced. It put that gye in
- 38:40Speaker 1: the hair and burned half the hair out. And you know,
- 38:42Speaker 1: and so but that was the price that black women
- 38:45Speaker 1: paid to look good. And then you come along with
- 38:48Speaker 1: products that I like to say female friendly from a
- 38:51Speaker 1: stand up, how you care for one another? What led
- 38:55Speaker 1: you down that path of beauty and grooming? It was
- 39:00Speaker 1: is in the matter of of a choice. And you know,
- 39:03Speaker 1: this is really what it's important to understand about love.
- 39:06Speaker 1: Yet they needs a vehicle for equality, is a vehicle
- 39:11Speaker 1: for justice. And so when you are set up your
- 39:15Speaker 1: life to fight for equology, you have to use the
- 39:19Speaker 1: tools that you have and that can give you the
- 39:21Speaker 1: maximum return in these case. For for me is understanding
- 39:26Speaker 1: that we have shared butter and we don't how to
- 39:28Speaker 1: make share about that and share butter is used in
- 39:31Speaker 1: the personal care. So it was, it was it was
- 39:34Speaker 1: a logical path to take. Now I love for you.
- 39:39Speaker 1: What is shape butter? I'm gonna ask you that I
- 39:41Speaker 1: see a lot and I aver there in my house.
- 39:43Speaker 1: What where did they come from? And who you know?
- 39:48Speaker 1: What magic rock did? It? Did somebody discovered? Because shape
- 39:51Speaker 1: butter is taking over the world. Man, Come on, y'all
- 39:54Speaker 1: talk to me brother, yes, yes, yes, well you know
- 39:58Speaker 1: the uh here's the thing, the the ship butter. As
- 40:03Speaker 1: as we know, we need to go back to share treats,
- 40:06Speaker 1: right those indigenous trees that can only be found in
- 40:10Speaker 1: the savanna of West Africa and as the time can remember,
- 40:14Speaker 1: for tens of thousands of years, that's what the people
- 40:17Speaker 1: of West Africa use either for cooking, for the hair,
- 40:21Speaker 1: for the body, you name it. So this is really
- 40:24Speaker 1: entertwined with our way of presenting beduty and and culture.
- 40:30Speaker 1: But you know the share butter that you do see
- 40:32Speaker 1: around the world today, as we know, African resources don't
- 40:36Speaker 1: benefit Africa or African descent. So yes, share but as
- 40:39Speaker 1: everywhere in the world. But what we're trying to do
- 40:43Speaker 1: is to engage with the communities in the way that
- 40:46Speaker 1: it provided in direct economic benefits and obviously, as you mentioned,
- 40:50Speaker 1: as we started to contribute back to the community. But
- 40:53Speaker 1: what is the shap butter itself in this case, I
- 40:56Speaker 1: want to talk about unrefined ship But because the majority
- 41:00Speaker 1: of the share butters uh, they see the marketplace go
- 41:02Speaker 1: to a refined process that does not have all the
- 41:05Speaker 1: healing property that should so everybody it is is a
- 41:09Speaker 1: fact essentially, uh from Mascha Tree. And it really is
- 41:15Speaker 1: a very unique type of five because see, when you
- 41:18Speaker 1: have you exposed to harsh environment or direct sunlight, you
- 41:23Speaker 1: need to be able to protect the layers of your skin.
- 41:26Speaker 1: And Share but is known throughout history to be one
- 41:28Speaker 1: of those protectors. Now, the reason I bring that up
- 41:32Speaker 1: because you know, we see something that you know, start
- 41:36Speaker 1: to dominate the store, start to dominate the beauty line,
- 41:39Speaker 1: the talk of conversation, just like black soap, it's a
- 41:42Speaker 1: dominant force. And grooming. Now, how did these two become
- 41:47Speaker 1: such a major player or a game changing I like,
- 41:50Speaker 1: let's use the word game changer beauty and grooming not
- 41:54Speaker 1: only for women but also for me because I used
- 41:56Speaker 1: the black soap. Yes, you know I I think it
- 42:01Speaker 1: really goes back to the bigger change that's happened around
- 42:06Speaker 1: around us in the world. Uh. And here we're talking
- 42:09Speaker 1: about America. We're talking about health. But if you look
- 42:12Speaker 1: the revolution of organic movement uh and people wanting healthy product.
- 42:19Speaker 1: I really think it's correlate any linked to these and
- 42:22Speaker 1: when you see there are very million ingredients in the
- 42:25Speaker 1: world like you share but that have all the ars
- 42:29Speaker 1: healing properties and just in one thing that could do
- 42:31Speaker 1: all these different things that's come from ultra natural source
- 42:36Speaker 1: and the entries a wild It can't be more natural
- 42:39Speaker 1: than that. You don't have to ferilize, you, you're not
- 42:41Speaker 1: to bother them, you don't have to put the chemicals
- 42:43Speaker 1: on them. So I think it's really correlated to the
- 42:46Speaker 1: fact that the people around the world today want to
- 42:50Speaker 1: be have healthier options and and then it happened that
- 42:54Speaker 1: they share But is of a of a natural source
- 42:57Speaker 1: is giving that attention. But I do think though, uh
- 43:02Speaker 1: whild we see a lots of ship but the and
- 43:04Speaker 1: and is in the dominant places. We really should be
- 43:09Speaker 1: having the conversation how these fundamental African is ingredients is
- 43:15Speaker 1: empowering the people of Africa African descent. Now, with that
- 43:18Speaker 1: being said, because part of your I guess a narrative
- 43:22Speaker 1: or initiatives of your company mandate is giving back. It's
- 43:26Speaker 1: about the reforestation, talking about maternal healthcare, which we all
- 43:30Speaker 1: know even in America that's a major need. So I
- 43:32Speaker 1: want to go to each one of them separately so
- 43:34Speaker 1: we can discuss and have an extended conversation. I want
- 43:37Speaker 1: to blow up because let's talk about first, which I
- 43:39Speaker 1: think is important is maternal healthcare because a lot of
- 43:43Speaker 1: people take for granted, you know, could they see a
- 43:45Speaker 1: child being born, but a lot of children aren't brought,
- 43:48Speaker 1: don't go for a term, and and the situation leads
- 43:51Speaker 1: to a lot of sadness and also conlude to suicides
- 43:54Speaker 1: depending on that situation. So let's talk about the maternal
- 43:57Speaker 1: healthcare and your company's initiative, especial when it comes to
- 44:00Speaker 1: ginger equality, gender equality. Thank you. I mean life in
- 44:07Speaker 1: general requires us to be devoted to day for the
- 44:14Speaker 1: well being of being a child to this world. Uh.
- 44:17Speaker 1: And you know when we started the conversation and we
- 44:20Speaker 1: talked about the wing which I was brought up with
- 44:23Speaker 1: se seven sibling in a very small space. When you
- 44:27Speaker 1: grew up in that poverty, what you witness this woman
- 44:30Speaker 1: dying given birth, I lost systems myself. But when they're
- 44:35Speaker 1: trying to bring life to this earth, so it's something
- 44:38Speaker 1: that's really personal to me and become an adult and
- 44:42Speaker 1: having a laugh, Yeah, it just makes sense from my
- 44:46Speaker 1: heart that laugh here needs to be devoted in contributing
- 44:49Speaker 1: to reducing the unnecessary death of a woman by trying
- 44:53Speaker 1: to bring life. But there's something more even more fundamental
- 44:56Speaker 1: or equally important. That has to do with a canal mix. Right.
- 45:01Speaker 1: We when we talk about gender quality, I'm really talk
- 45:04Speaker 1: about economic quality for our women. And what that means
- 45:10Speaker 1: to me is that if we do not invest in
- 45:12Speaker 1: maternal health and we lose the mothers, what happened is
- 45:16Speaker 1: that the child, the older child is likely to drop
- 45:20Speaker 1: our school, the young girls likely to drop our school.
- 45:23Speaker 1: So for and and when we continue to have just
- 45:26Speaker 1: a high drop our rate, the cycle of poverty never breaks, right,
- 45:31Speaker 1: and the poverty to continue. The more the poverty to continue,
- 45:34Speaker 1: the more inequality or gender card to continue. So for me,
- 45:37Speaker 1: in order to break the cycle, we need the modest
- 45:40Speaker 1: to be alive so that the children can continue to
- 45:43Speaker 1: go to school. So to answer that question, one is
- 45:46Speaker 1: just a moral thing to do. One sixteen woman today
- 45:50Speaker 1: in Subian Africa would die trying to bring life to
- 45:53Speaker 1: the earth. And the second party is a part of
- 45:56Speaker 1: the long term um UH process of breaking psycho poverty
- 46:01Speaker 1: by investings so that our women can be that and
- 46:05Speaker 1: our children to going to school. Yeah, Mr Charlotte, the
- 46:08Speaker 1: reason I wanted to transition start with that because we
- 46:11Speaker 1: used the word consistent in your first conversation with maternal health.
- 46:14Speaker 1: There the word poverty, and poverty is always tied I
- 46:18Speaker 1: think a lot to education, and because if you don't
- 46:21Speaker 1: give a shot, you don't have a clear understanding of
- 46:23Speaker 1: the opportunity. And that's what education gives you. I would
- 46:25Speaker 1: tell people, you know, education is why you're not having
- 46:28Speaker 1: this conversation. You know, I come from the inner city.
- 46:31Speaker 1: I come from my father's truck driver, my third grade education,
- 46:35Speaker 1: my mom graduated high school, six sisters, two brothers, you know,
- 46:38Speaker 1: so all those elements without education means I may not
- 46:42Speaker 1: be here. So education saved me a foothold to be
- 46:45Speaker 1: able to have a conversation through opportunity, opportunity to give
- 46:48Speaker 1: me a chance to say goals. You said goals, then
- 46:51Speaker 1: you become a person who can commit it to an effort,
- 46:53Speaker 1: a plan of action. We're trying to get that. So
- 46:56Speaker 1: when I saw education, I really was excited because I went,
- 46:59Speaker 1: he gets it. It gets it because you can give
- 47:01Speaker 1: people the money to for food, you get people money
- 47:05Speaker 1: for housing. But if you don't really understand that education
- 47:09Speaker 1: can If you give it to education, they can buy
- 47:12Speaker 1: their food, they can supply their own housing, and so
- 47:17Speaker 1: so that's it. Is a dignity right that nobody wants
- 47:20Speaker 1: to hand out right. Uh, But but we can give
- 47:23Speaker 1: a hand to each other and an education. Uh. Portunity
- 47:27Speaker 1: is a form of giving hands so that a person
- 47:29Speaker 1: can stand. And I think dignity is very important as
- 47:34Speaker 1: a human being. How we view ourselves and I will
- 47:36Speaker 1: conduct ourselves and I would go through life. I'm gonna
- 47:39Speaker 1: ask you this, sir. You know, stereotype could we started
- 47:42Speaker 1: out the beginning and just be on I spect probably
- 47:46Speaker 1: a month in Durban, South Africa, and Steve Harvey now
- 47:51Speaker 1: went over to the broadcast, and I swear to you
- 47:54Speaker 1: I didn't have a clue on where we could possibly
- 47:56Speaker 1: broadcast because in my mind, based on information has been
- 47:59Speaker 1: given me, there was not a modern city in Africa
- 48:03Speaker 1: period stereotypes And when I and and when I landed,
- 48:08Speaker 1: I was ashamed of my lack of education. I landed
- 48:12Speaker 1: in South Africa, saw these beautiful black people. Then we
- 48:15Speaker 1: drove down to Derban. It was it looked like I
- 48:16Speaker 1: was landing in Atlanta, Georgia. It was like I was
- 48:19Speaker 1: living in Atlanta, Georgia. But yes, you know, doesn't that
- 48:23Speaker 1: anger you? The stereotypes, the blind information that is being
- 48:27Speaker 1: distributed and I have to say propaganda, but clearly you
- 48:33Speaker 1: know it not it is more than the anger, because
- 48:38Speaker 1: what it does is that A doesn't allowed for the
- 48:42Speaker 1: world to to truly appreciate um who we are. And
- 48:49Speaker 1: I think it is by design. Is A is a
- 48:53Speaker 1: process that's not new to you is divide and conquer.
- 48:56Speaker 1: And you can divide when you can divide the mind
- 48:58Speaker 1: and pollute the mind, and then you can conquer the people. Uh.
- 49:02Speaker 1: And the conquering of the people today is not like
- 49:05Speaker 1: you have to miss up with them changing just about
- 49:08Speaker 1: their mind. And I think that what that also does
- 49:13Speaker 1: he continued to lead to these well of thinking resources
- 49:19Speaker 1: cheaply from Africa because well, they don't really need it.
- 49:23Speaker 1: We need it, so that I think there's there's a
- 49:25Speaker 1: reason behind It's not by accident. But when you understand
- 49:29Speaker 1: that and and and for me is to try to
- 49:32Speaker 1: break it, you start to talk about the wall. You
- 49:35Speaker 1: have to break them down. You have to engage directly, uh,
- 49:38Speaker 1: with the world. You have to engage directly to the
- 49:41Speaker 1: global market. And that's why you know, because I went
- 49:45Speaker 1: out always like to have honest conversations with my interviews
- 49:49Speaker 1: that I have because it's an education for me. And
- 49:52Speaker 1: I remember when I went down to Durban, you know,
- 49:54Speaker 1: I was down there, I found myself looking for property
- 49:57Speaker 1: to buy. I was so I loved so it never
- 50:00Speaker 1: and so and my wife said, calm down, calm down.
- 50:04Speaker 1: You don't know when you're gonna go back. You because
- 50:10Speaker 1: you know, it's like, you know, it's like opening up
- 50:11Speaker 1: a gift, you know, and you don't know what's inside
- 50:13Speaker 1: the gift. When you pull it out, you go. You
- 50:15Speaker 1: want to keep looking aside for more of that gift.
- 50:17Speaker 1: And that was my experience. And so when I hear
- 50:19Speaker 1: things like reforestation, that means that you're concerned about you know,
- 50:24Speaker 1: how your country looks and how if you don't take
- 50:28Speaker 1: care of it, guess what it becomes a desert. And
- 50:30Speaker 1: so talk about that the article culture, the importance of that,
- 50:34Speaker 1: and because all this ties back to the bigger plan
- 50:37Speaker 1: of what you're doing with your brand, and I want
- 50:40Speaker 1: to support it. I want to promote it because of
- 50:42Speaker 1: the fact that it's about changing through education, changing and
- 50:47Speaker 1: removing a poverty culture from people, and also letting them
- 50:52Speaker 1: understand they gotta take care of where they live, they
- 50:54Speaker 1: gotta take care of your house. It's like if you
- 50:56Speaker 1: know what's saying, it's a child. If you go in
- 50:58Speaker 1: your house and you need the doors wide open, somebody
- 51:00Speaker 1: gonna come in and stay. It's just taken comself gonta.
- 51:03Speaker 1: And so the same thing in your country. You don't
- 51:05Speaker 1: take care of your country, You don't take care of
- 51:07Speaker 1: your forge, You don't replenish your the ground that you
- 51:10Speaker 1: want food to come out of, guess what it's going
- 51:13Speaker 1: to die. And that's that has to be a passion
- 51:15Speaker 1: for you. That's really emotionally leads you every day down
- 51:19Speaker 1: your path of what you want to do with your brain. Definitely,
- 51:23Speaker 1: you know the because in order to achieve these uh,
- 51:30Speaker 1: this mission uh and this really is a mission of
- 51:33Speaker 1: self respect and respect to people, you have to have
- 51:38Speaker 1: a comprehensive approach. You can't simply just do maternal care
- 51:43Speaker 1: or you can't simply build schools and not think about
- 51:47Speaker 1: your environment. But I think it really goes down to
- 51:51Speaker 1: you again about poverty right we today. When when I
- 51:56Speaker 1: first came to the States, people will say you come
- 51:59Speaker 1: from a dongle and and the fact that is that
- 52:02Speaker 1: we used to have a lot of trees, We used
- 52:04Speaker 1: to have a lots of jungles, but lots of it
- 52:06Speaker 1: have been mowed down. And what we do know now
- 52:10Speaker 1: is that when you cut it, you cut all those
- 52:13Speaker 1: trees down, then the top soil gets wash away with
- 52:17Speaker 1: what's called erosion. And when you have so much erosion,
- 52:22Speaker 1: you lose all the nutrients from the top soil. And
- 52:25Speaker 1: when you lose all the nutrient, the topsail gets wash away.
- 52:28Speaker 1: Increase in ability, inability to grow food, and when you
- 52:32Speaker 1: don't have food will happened at least to farm it.
- 52:33Speaker 1: And when you're hungry, you can't learn, you can't go
- 52:35Speaker 1: to school. Ok. So, the the the environment and planting trees,
- 52:40Speaker 1: while i've here, is fundamental way that we feel that
- 52:45Speaker 1: in nydirect way that leads to reduction of poverty. You know,
- 52:50Speaker 1: it's really uh first, were hopefully enjoying the conversation here
- 52:54Speaker 1: because it's a it's about my view and my unique
- 52:59Speaker 1: experience of going to a country being called an African
- 53:02Speaker 1: American and being recognized as a leader in this country,
- 53:06Speaker 1: but also be after you acknowledge a hard level of ignorance.
- 53:10Speaker 1: And so you know, when you when you're trying to
- 53:13Speaker 1: get financing for your business, did you run it the
- 53:15Speaker 1: stereotypes there? Well, I think that's a common place, right,
- 53:24Speaker 1: which is unfortunate because people like us and yourself, you
- 53:30Speaker 1: when you grew up in the way we'll grow up.
- 53:33Speaker 1: You're not gonna go to diet your mom and say
- 53:36Speaker 1: can you give monthy started like you by the by
- 53:40Speaker 1: the minute that you can put your own belt on,
- 53:42Speaker 1: you have you're taking care of They died in the moment, right,
- 53:46Speaker 1: so you are on your own. And when you're on
- 53:49Speaker 1: your own and you can't give money from family, which
- 53:52Speaker 1: many people do when they start business. Uh and on
- 53:55Speaker 1: top of it, being a black man, uh so is
- 54:00Speaker 1: the mountains high? But again you can climbate. You have
- 54:04Speaker 1: to try, You have to, you have to give it
- 54:06Speaker 1: all you got. And we were turned down many times,
- 54:10Speaker 1: to the point where I scanned in the bank and
- 54:11Speaker 1: it's I won't go home. I was surprised. I wasn't arrested,
- 54:14Speaker 1: right that this I need to get this loan, and
- 54:17Speaker 1: I believe this loan will help American and it will
- 54:20Speaker 1: help my community, so I can start the social enterprise.
- 54:23Speaker 1: And you don't, you don't give up. But you know
- 54:26Speaker 1: what I also learned very quickly is that people in
- 54:30Speaker 1: America is not going to give you what you need,
- 54:34Speaker 1: and we we did end up getting a small loan
- 54:37Speaker 1: after so much perfect perseverance. But what I did to
- 54:41Speaker 1: this day is to work around the clock. Let let
- 54:45Speaker 1: my sweater become that money and generate the funds as
- 54:49Speaker 1: well as we grow. But we all also know that
- 54:52Speaker 1: without UH capital is difficult, difficult to grow at the
- 54:57Speaker 1: way that you need to grow. Absolutely. You know. It's
- 55:00Speaker 1: really interesting because I always tell people there are twenty
- 55:03Speaker 1: four hours in the day. Learn to take advantage of
- 55:05Speaker 1: each hour. And that seems to be the principle that
- 55:08Speaker 1: you run your career. Because it was a question that
- 55:10Speaker 1: was sitting over to me and says, what advice would
- 55:12Speaker 1: you give someone wanting to pursue a career similar to yours?
- 55:15Speaker 1: And I saw that converge. I said, there's nothing similar
- 55:19Speaker 1: to yours. You know. You know, your philanthropers, your businessman,
- 55:22Speaker 1: you're you care, you, you remember, you, you feel, you
- 55:28Speaker 1: feel pain, you know. And I say that. I feel
- 55:31Speaker 1: like I say that because it's really interesting when people
- 55:34Speaker 1: look at successful people and I can send you a
- 55:35Speaker 1: successful person and and I'm quite blassed and grateful, you know,
- 55:40Speaker 1: and and and in that blessing process, it lends itself
- 55:44Speaker 1: to go, how can I do more? And you know
- 55:46Speaker 1: you can do so much, you know what I'm saying.
- 55:48Speaker 1: And and also when you fighting stereotypes, you fight ignorance,
- 55:51Speaker 1: You fight impoverished conditions that you can't change, generational ignorance,
- 55:56Speaker 1: generational poverty. You know, So when I hear that question,
- 56:00Speaker 1: your career isn't similar because you're unique and unique the
- 56:04Speaker 1: fact that you want to create change because a lot
- 56:07Speaker 1: of people just walk away, they go, hey, man, that's
- 56:10Speaker 1: why I used to live You know, I'm saying. You're
- 56:13Speaker 1: not saying that. You're saying, Look, no, I used to
- 56:15Speaker 1: live there, and I still go back there, and I
- 56:17Speaker 1: want to build up. I want to grab as many
- 56:19Speaker 1: as I can. You know that that old that old
- 56:22Speaker 1: you said that painting where somebody leans down with their
- 56:24Speaker 1: hands to pull another brother up? You know that ship? What? What?
- 56:28Speaker 1: What what created that? Driving you like that? Sir M Charlotte?
- 56:32Speaker 1: You know, I uh, I was thinking really come from
- 56:36Speaker 1: my mother. She she was an indented servant in neighboring
- 56:41Speaker 1: country and and she she lost both her her parents
- 56:45Speaker 1: when she was still a baby. So she she she
- 56:48Speaker 1: worked in exchange for food their whole life. And I
- 56:50Speaker 1: end up having us and having it off us and
- 56:54Speaker 1: never want to be along again. But one thing that
- 56:57Speaker 1: she made sure that we know once is to is
- 57:00Speaker 1: to work hard, but move all is to be humble
- 57:04Speaker 1: and serving. She felt that was how she survived and
- 57:07Speaker 1: that's how we need. Those are the manas that we
- 57:10Speaker 1: need to engage with. Uh and and shows she also
- 57:13Speaker 1: help us understand that justice even in our small community
- 57:16Speaker 1: or village that I think for me, I very early on,
- 57:21Speaker 1: I have come to somehow believe on on duties and
- 57:26Speaker 1: more responsibility as an individual. Uh And And when you
- 57:30Speaker 1: have a more responsibility, doctors drive because you've got to
- 57:34Speaker 1: do something with that responsibility, and especially when it's moral. Wow,
- 57:40Speaker 1: you know, I know that. You know. We're just human, sir,
- 57:44Speaker 1: that's all. We're human. And sometimes being human also can
- 57:48Speaker 1: be a negative because no, we have no guard like powers.
- 57:52Speaker 1: You know, we can't snap our fingers, we can't wish
- 57:55Speaker 1: with our genies. But in the process of building your
- 57:58Speaker 1: company and building your brain, you can't make a difference.
- 58:02Speaker 1: And if you say, rashaan one thing because you because
- 58:07Speaker 1: we list to a lot of things. We talked about
- 58:08Speaker 1: maternal health, we talked about education, reforestation, We talked about
- 58:12Speaker 1: gender equality initiative. What pops out at the top of
- 58:16Speaker 1: that list if you said, Rashan, I really want to
- 58:19Speaker 1: focus on this what what what what popped out? Is
- 58:22Speaker 1: it education? Is the maternal health care? Well? You know
- 58:26Speaker 1: how will I will actually uh think that is economics.
- 58:33Speaker 1: And what I mean by economics because is having to
- 58:39Speaker 1: me and I'm looking at from home right when I
- 58:43Speaker 1: look from home, seven people centers of our communities in
- 58:46Speaker 1: West Africa today are the way I grew up in
- 58:49Speaker 1: the real community. And we have two things. We have
- 58:54Speaker 1: knowledge and we have resources. So economic to me is
- 58:59Speaker 1: that how do we put those two together and and
- 59:02Speaker 1: and in the moral process and share of the world
- 59:05Speaker 1: because that process does many things. One it gives us
- 59:08Speaker 1: fund uh for for health care for ourselves. It gives
- 59:13Speaker 1: self dignity because now we're able to trade own resources,
- 59:16Speaker 1: we don't just give them away. And above all allow
- 59:20Speaker 1: us to invest in our future, which we don't have
- 59:22Speaker 1: right now. So I think, I think everything else in
- 59:26Speaker 1: my view falls under economics, but it needs to be
- 59:29Speaker 1: economics that have a level of morality. Does incorporate economics
- 59:33Speaker 1: itself in the terms of capitalism that we see there
- 59:36Speaker 1: nothing's going from making money but making money recklessly and
- 59:39Speaker 1: and and destroying the people wealth, life, cultures and above
- 59:43Speaker 1: all the environment is not the way to go in
- 59:45Speaker 1: the future when we have eight billion people on the earth. Uh,
- 59:49Speaker 1: to me, it have to imply a sense of morality
- 59:52Speaker 1: and and still be a capitalist process. Well, you know
- 59:57Speaker 1: they when we we we as we go through this
- 1:00:00Speaker 1: conversation talking about your brand, talking about you, I know
- 1:00:03Speaker 1: this is not. First of all, we just say this,
- 1:00:04Speaker 1: this is not the only time we're gonna talk. Secondly,
- 1:00:07Speaker 1: my main concern here was that I just want to
- 1:00:10Speaker 1: have a conversation with you, sir, about you. I thought
- 1:00:13Speaker 1: that that way as soon as we turned the comments off.
- 1:00:17Speaker 1: I'm gonna I come to London and not we know
- 1:00:20Speaker 1: because of the way your drink, but I can bring
- 1:00:22Speaker 1: some stuff from home. We don't thank you. You know.
- 1:00:25Speaker 1: The thing about it is that you know this is
- 1:00:27Speaker 1: a man's man's conversation and it's since um, you know,
- 1:00:31Speaker 1: I know where I came from and and I'm not bragging.
- 1:00:35Speaker 1: I'm not bragging. You know, you don't brag from coming
- 1:00:37Speaker 1: from impoverished situation. You don't brag from coming from situation
- 1:00:41Speaker 1: that that didn't lend themselves to favorable I've comes. You
- 1:00:44Speaker 1: brag when you come from Beverly Hills, you brag when
- 1:00:46Speaker 1: you graduate from Yale. You brag when you you're born
- 1:00:50Speaker 1: with the spooning your off, you brag when you when
- 1:00:52Speaker 1: you to Queen Elizabeth, it's yours, your grandmama. You know
- 1:00:55Speaker 1: what I'm saying. That's what you brag about. But you
- 1:00:58Speaker 1: can brag when you willing to make a difference where
- 1:01:02Speaker 1: you came from. And that's all that's my mandate, that's
- 1:01:05Speaker 1: all I live for. And so so when I was
- 1:01:07Speaker 1: leaving your bio and I wanted to talk to you,
- 1:01:10Speaker 1: my conversation was that your business got this interview, but
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: the interview I wanted to talk about the mains and
- 1:01:16Speaker 1: thank you. You cannot change because you're an inspiration because
- 1:01:20Speaker 1: you're breaking down barriers every day. And as you break
- 1:01:23Speaker 1: down these barriers, it's important that people understand that that
- 1:01:27Speaker 1: you don't have to do that you can get in
- 1:01:29Speaker 1: your call and not and and then be happy. That's
- 1:01:33Speaker 1: you can pay the taxes and not go back, and
- 1:01:35Speaker 1: when you go back, you can floss and then end
- 1:01:39Speaker 1: it all. But you don't want to floss. You want to,
- 1:01:40Speaker 1: you want to get but we have to. You know,
- 1:01:44Speaker 1: you saw the conversation talk about the barrier in the wall.
- 1:01:48Speaker 1: If we and as you do, and we don't engage,
- 1:01:54Speaker 1: what kind of it's people before us didn't didn't engage. Uh,
- 1:01:58Speaker 1: what's gonna happen to your us children? Because we know
- 1:02:02Speaker 1: that we don't want them to live? Uh and witness?
- 1:02:05Speaker 1: Well we witness. So I think again, Uh, there's no
- 1:02:11Speaker 1: there's nowhere around but to engage and to share and
- 1:02:14Speaker 1: to share with with respect. And I know that. It's
- 1:02:18Speaker 1: the interesting thing about streaming television, you know, streaming television.
- 1:02:24Speaker 1: When I talked streaming, I talk about the Netflix, the Amazons,
- 1:02:26Speaker 1: and the Apples. They have exposed us to the African
- 1:02:30Speaker 1: culture from a television, from a filmmaking standpoint, and really
- 1:02:34Speaker 1: allowed us to become more and more comfortable that they
- 1:02:37Speaker 1: are just like us. And that's a blessing. And that's
- 1:02:40Speaker 1: a blessing. A lot of people need to understand what
- 1:02:43Speaker 1: I'm saying here, because when you don't know, and so
- 1:02:47Speaker 1: it's sometimes the media can control what you know. You know,
- 1:02:50Speaker 1: and so that's why you walk around the United States.
- 1:02:52Speaker 1: They have they have Confederate statues up like they're good
- 1:02:55Speaker 1: because they don't tell you the story that they should
- 1:02:57Speaker 1: never have been up. Okay, so special rock people who
- 1:03:00Speaker 1: were willing to enslave and maintain that slave reached status.
- 1:03:04Speaker 1: And so so when I look at the next the
- 1:03:06Speaker 1: netflix is and the Amazons and all these treatment, I'm
- 1:03:10Speaker 1: so happy because I myself personally, I see it breaking
- 1:03:13Speaker 1: down walls of communication, entertainment And do you see that?
- 1:03:17Speaker 1: Do you feel that it's a blessing? You know? I
- 1:03:20Speaker 1: do you know? Because there's one thing that that I
- 1:03:25Speaker 1: always talk about is that do we bring our communities
- 1:03:28Speaker 1: uh together right? Uh? And and and to me, what
- 1:03:33Speaker 1: the well I feel does and the partuct that I
- 1:03:35Speaker 1: feel over uh is one way to do that. But
- 1:03:39Speaker 1: what we see today that we can you know, and
- 1:03:41Speaker 1: I even speak for myself. I can be in the
- 1:03:44Speaker 1: West Africa and b to do a video conference with
- 1:03:47Speaker 1: somebody in America is immediate where you don't have to
- 1:03:50Speaker 1: rely on the on the on the newspaper to print
- 1:03:55Speaker 1: this story that's your story. You could have your own story. Uh.
- 1:04:00Speaker 1: So I I think that that process, what's happened right
- 1:04:05Speaker 1: now is a good thing. But we must also be
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: very mindful um that the way in which the way
- 1:04:11Speaker 1: sharing that the people who are sharing, at least from
- 1:04:13Speaker 1: in Africa are representing the people. So that's something that
- 1:04:18Speaker 1: we have to be we have to pay attention to.
- 1:04:19Speaker 1: But as it is right now, I do agree, it's
- 1:04:22Speaker 1: a it's a way for us to begin to build
- 1:04:26Speaker 1: the first layer. Out said, there are many layers. At
- 1:04:28Speaker 1: least build the first layer, the first layers. There. You
- 1:04:31Speaker 1: came on my show to talk about your product. Let's
- 1:04:33Speaker 1: Starr tell us how we can we can reach it,
- 1:04:35Speaker 1: how we can buy it. How I want to tell
- 1:04:40Speaker 1: you something I don't see. Alaia's just a product right
- 1:04:45Speaker 1: these the two uh, and I'll be more than grateful
- 1:04:50Speaker 1: to talk to you about even bigger matters around the
- 1:04:53Speaker 1: world all day long. But where you can't find the
- 1:04:58Speaker 1: alat of your product, since you asked, we're quite fortunate
- 1:05:02Speaker 1: we have a product available in walmarts. I will have
- 1:05:06Speaker 1: a product available in the target as well as the
- 1:05:09Speaker 1: whole food's market around the country and pretty much any
- 1:05:13Speaker 1: health food stores that that's where we are is in
- 1:05:16Speaker 1: healthful stores do care out product as well, and of
- 1:05:19Speaker 1: course within our website. Well you know I had to,
- 1:05:23Speaker 1: I had to bring it up because I didn't want
- 1:05:24Speaker 1: the p all people be man, he didn't even talk
- 1:05:26Speaker 1: about the product. Who's that United Nations conversation? I don't know,
- 1:05:31Speaker 1: we don't ever won't come on money, make conversations again,
- 1:05:34Speaker 1: having a good time. But you know, all people, you
- 1:05:37Speaker 1: don't book you. He didn't even ask for the website. Friends,
- 1:05:42Speaker 1: what would you interview all about? We're never doing that
- 1:05:44Speaker 1: show yet they come down. I love the guys, I
- 1:05:47Speaker 1: love the guy my maid. Really for everybody, you do
- 1:05:53Speaker 1: you think of everybody? Well? I take care of people
- 1:05:56Speaker 1: who are making a difference in this world. And I
- 1:05:58Speaker 1: think I'm not saying I'm doing nature. I know that
- 1:06:02Speaker 1: this this is just a small show that represents my
- 1:06:04Speaker 1: values and the people I've trying to bring on this
- 1:06:06Speaker 1: show also represent the values of change, of opportunity, of success.
- 1:06:11Speaker 1: And you're a beautiful person. Man, you can't change you.
- 1:06:13Speaker 1: I'll be mad if you do. You know I'll be
- 1:06:15Speaker 1: the first person to fly to Washington find you and
- 1:06:17Speaker 1: said what happened? Brother? I can I can promise you
- 1:06:21Speaker 1: to the last breath, these my journeys, the path I've
- 1:06:24Speaker 1: been grateful for to walk on in this coin moment,
- 1:06:27Speaker 1: and I would do it until until until there's no
- 1:06:30Speaker 1: more living, because you know, after seventeen years, it has
- 1:06:35Speaker 1: become very clear to me that these these the right
- 1:06:38Speaker 1: thing to do, and it's the right thing to do
- 1:06:41Speaker 1: by my communities. And I'm just very very grateful that
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: I have the opportunity to serve admission like these cool.
- 1:06:48Speaker 1: I'm gonna thank you for coming on Money Making Conversation.
- 1:06:50Speaker 1: Please come back, please come back. Since telling to me
- 1:06:53Speaker 1: about some flyers, some banners so I can put on
- 1:06:56Speaker 1: a newsletter and so so you pee up. People will
- 1:06:59Speaker 1: be mad at this, But this interview did you give
- 1:07:01Speaker 1: you before you let me go? I want to tell
- 1:07:06Speaker 1: you too, you can't. You can't stop either, Rischan. You
- 1:07:10Speaker 1: have to keep going to because we we make product
- 1:07:15Speaker 1: and invest in the community. But people like you that
- 1:07:18Speaker 1: want to have conversation and pill the layers and bring
- 1:07:21Speaker 1: out community together, it's just it's just as critical, even
- 1:07:25Speaker 1: if it's not more critical. So we carry on forward
- 1:07:28Speaker 1: as well. Thank you, my friend, Thank you for coming
- 1:07:30Speaker 1: on Money Making Conversation. And again you are my friend.
- 1:07:33Speaker 1: I say that very sincerely. I say that because can
- 1:07:37Speaker 1: I say this. I love you, brother, I love you.
- 1:07:39Speaker 1: I love you too, And thank you. Thank you for
- 1:07:41Speaker 1: opportunity to speak to you. Okay, cool sticky notes, email alerts,
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: a string around your finger. They're just not big enough.
- 1:07:49Speaker 1: So here's a big reminder from the California Lottery. Tomorrow's
- 1:07:52Speaker 1: making millions jack parties, which we have a million point out.
- 1:07:55Speaker 1: Please play responsible. You must be eighteen years older to
- 1:07:57Speaker 1: purchase play of final. Adoption of means from foster care
- 1:08:01Speaker 1: is a topic not enough people know about, and we're
- 1:08:03Speaker 1: here to change that. I'm April Denuity, host of the
- 1:08:05Speaker 1: new podcast Navigating Adoption, presented by adopt Us Kids. Each
- 1:08:10Speaker 1: episode brings you compelling, real life adoption stories told by
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- 1:08:20Speaker 1: Navigating Adoption presented by adopt Us Kids, brought to you
- 1:08:23Speaker 1: by the U. S Department of Health and Human Services,
- 1:08:25Speaker 1: Administration for Children and Families, and the ad Council. If
- 1:08:29Speaker 1: I could be you and you could be me? Or
- 1:08:32Speaker 1: just what hour? If you could find a way to
- 1:08:34Speaker 1: get inside each other's mind walcome mile in my shoes,
- 1:08:38Speaker 1: wacome Mile in my shoes. Shoes. We've all felt left
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- 1:08:54Speaker 1: Welcome out in the shoe. It's time to stop reading
- 1:09:00Speaker 1: other people's success stories, and I'm just gonna tell you
- 1:09:02Speaker 1: you have to start writing your own. That's the only
- 1:09:04Speaker 1: way you can win now. You can be motivated by
- 1:09:06Speaker 1: their success when you read about their stories, and they
- 1:09:09Speaker 1: can offer you direction and help you reach your goals.
- 1:09:11Speaker 1: But remember it's their story, is their goals, it's their success.
- 1:09:15Speaker 1: You have to plan your own and it has to
- 1:09:17Speaker 1: be planned and achieved by your committed effort. The interviews
- 1:09:20Speaker 1: I present to you on my Money Making Conversation platform celebrities, CEOs,
- 1:09:26Speaker 1: entrepreneurs in Decisions, male, female, transgender. I try to walk
- 1:09:32Speaker 1: through the whole process of let everybody know that everybody
- 1:09:35Speaker 1: is available to to share slights of how they are
- 1:09:38Speaker 1: achieving success and nobody's unique in it. But the only
- 1:09:42Speaker 1: unique thing I always tell people is how hard they
- 1:09:44Speaker 1: work when they said the goal, they see it through.
- 1:09:47Speaker 1: My next guest is one of those people. You know.
- 1:09:50Speaker 1: She didn't let age stop her. She had let being
- 1:09:53Speaker 1: agenda stop her. She didn't let being a single mom
- 1:09:56Speaker 1: stop her. The next guest is Dr Geneva Williams. After
- 1:09:59Speaker 1: a far it plus your career as an order winning,
- 1:10:01Speaker 1: innovative nonprofit leader, Dr Geneva reinvented herself as an author,
- 1:10:06Speaker 1: international speaker, podcast entitle holding, an advocate for women to
- 1:10:10Speaker 1: live fit, fine, and a vibrant life. She says how
- 1:10:13Speaker 1: she went from her stellar career as a president CEO,
- 1:10:16Speaker 1: becoming a widow at the four decades of marriage, still
- 1:10:19Speaker 1: raising two millennaials at home, to become the oldest contestants
- 1:10:22Speaker 1: to win to Miss Black Fit and Fine Patch, to
- 1:10:26Speaker 1: being recognized as a leading Michigan businesswoman and going on
- 1:10:29Speaker 1: to be the star in the very first television commercial.
- 1:10:32Speaker 1: She's on the show today. Please welcome to Money Making Conversations,
- 1:10:35Speaker 1: Dr Geneva Williams. Did I get everything right? Dore? Oh
- 1:10:40Speaker 1: my goodness. I want you to come right from me
- 1:10:43Speaker 1: and introduce me everywhere I go. How are you got
- 1:10:49Speaker 1: something to say? Though? You have something to say, You
- 1:10:51Speaker 1: have a life to say. And I want to talk
- 1:10:53Speaker 1: about your life because you know I always look at
- 1:10:55Speaker 1: people your youth. We don't we don't see uh, you
- 1:10:59Speaker 1: know you eighteen nineteen used to mention worth forty sixty
- 1:11:02Speaker 1: is so far off you can't even conceptualize. Or it
- 1:11:06Speaker 1: feels like to be forty or sixty or and you
- 1:11:10Speaker 1: look around and you see people who are forty and
- 1:11:12Speaker 1: sixty and you go, I never you might not even
- 1:11:15Speaker 1: say how I'm gonna walk or what I'm gonna do,
- 1:11:17Speaker 1: because we don't think about preparing for retirement. Now, let's
- 1:11:20Speaker 1: talk about your early life. You know, successful, married, happy, uh,
- 1:11:25Speaker 1: two beautiful kids. How was that life like for you? Oh?
- 1:11:30Speaker 1: It was fabulous. Um, you know I am. I have
- 1:11:34Speaker 1: three children and three grandchildren, so you know I I,
- 1:11:40Speaker 1: you know, really was living a fabulous life. I had
- 1:11:45Speaker 1: the career where I didn't think I had a job
- 1:11:49Speaker 1: because I was doing what I love doing, uh, running
- 1:11:52Speaker 1: the United Way, working in nonprofits, helping create change, raising
- 1:11:57Speaker 1: millions of dollars for various community initiatives. And you know,
- 1:12:03Speaker 1: had a real good, good marriage, um, and things were
- 1:12:06Speaker 1: going along for me great. I come from a small
- 1:12:10Speaker 1: town in New Jersey, and I grew up in a
- 1:12:14Speaker 1: community of adults. You know, Rashan, you know my sister
- 1:12:17Speaker 1: and I used to always think that the adults in
- 1:12:19Speaker 1: the community would go somewhere and have a meeting on
- 1:12:23Speaker 1: us because they seemed to know everything about us, and
- 1:12:26Speaker 1: they gave us constant advice and endless questions about how
- 1:12:31Speaker 1: we were doing, and how are our grades and how
- 1:12:35Speaker 1: were we making it? And you know, it was like
- 1:12:38Speaker 1: this community consensus where everyone was interested in our success.
- 1:12:45Speaker 1: And I still today think even though then I thought
- 1:12:48Speaker 1: it was a big time conspiracy, but what I know
- 1:12:51Speaker 1: now is it was about adults in a community caring.
- 1:12:57Speaker 1: Until so much of my life's were has been about
- 1:13:02Speaker 1: trying to rebuild that community consensus that many of us
- 1:13:07Speaker 1: grew up in in black communities where every adult, you know,
- 1:13:12Speaker 1: it was a big mama or an auntie or some
- 1:13:15Speaker 1: everyone cared about who we were and what we would do.
- 1:13:20Speaker 1: So that's the kind of environment I grew up in
- 1:13:23Speaker 1: and really shaped um my career, what I got into.
- 1:13:30Speaker 1: The influences that and my parents, who were ordinary people,
- 1:13:36Speaker 1: also were civil rights activists. Right now, let's talk about it.
- 1:13:39Speaker 1: So that's that's certainty right there. That's that's a certainty.
- 1:13:42Speaker 1: You're explained a very uh eight to five children, loving husband.
- 1:13:49Speaker 1: Then the uncertainty came into your life now, when uncertainly
- 1:13:53Speaker 1: comes into me life, that's one of your critical steps
- 1:13:56Speaker 1: that you talk about because a lot of people aren't
- 1:13:58Speaker 1: ready for that. Uncertain It can be getting fired. Uncertainty
- 1:14:01Speaker 1: can be a relationships suddenly indie and you didn't expect it.
- 1:14:05Speaker 1: A certainty can be uh financial loss. A certainty can
- 1:14:10Speaker 1: be COVID nineteen. That's a biging certainty. A lot of
- 1:14:13Speaker 1: people dealing with that's uncertainty. How you embrace it? The
- 1:14:16Speaker 1: uncertainty in your life was the passion of your husband. Correct. Yeah,
- 1:14:21Speaker 1: And and it happened at a time where I was
- 1:14:25Speaker 1: experiencing all these ups and downs and differences in life
- 1:14:30Speaker 1: because I was in my fifties and sixties. And there's
- 1:14:32Speaker 1: something about when you get to a half century, more
- 1:14:36Speaker 1: than a half century of living, you know, you experience
- 1:14:40Speaker 1: all these different changes, everything from the gray hairs to
- 1:14:44Speaker 1: the your body changing, to the changing in relationships and
- 1:14:48Speaker 1: taking care of aging parents and seeing children go out
- 1:14:52Speaker 1: and do their thing which you want them to. But
- 1:14:55Speaker 1: it does create these changes. And what was I going
- 1:14:58Speaker 1: to do for retire? And all these things were going
- 1:15:01Speaker 1: when both my parents and my husband got very sick
- 1:15:06Speaker 1: and I went into several years of caring for them,
- 1:15:13Speaker 1: and then they all passed pretty much during within months
- 1:15:18Speaker 1: of each other. So for the first time, Uh, I
- 1:15:22Speaker 1: was devastated totally. You know, I was just grieved out.
- 1:15:26Speaker 1: There was just nothing. I mean, these were people who
- 1:15:31Speaker 1: I had never spent a day in my life without,
- 1:15:36Speaker 1: you know, I always had them, so total uncertainty. Uh,
- 1:15:41Speaker 1: dark days. Um, every day. I was crying every day.
- 1:15:44Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was going to do. Um.
- 1:15:47Speaker 1: And even though I had been very successful in in
- 1:15:52Speaker 1: my career and I had a forty year marriage, a
- 1:15:56Speaker 1: good marriage that was only ended by the cancer, it
- 1:16:00Speaker 1: took my husband away. Um, I was lost. I didn't
- 1:16:04Speaker 1: know what to do, and I was in my sixties,
- 1:16:07Speaker 1: and so it was like I constantly said, well, my
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: life's over. What am I gonna do now? And it
- 1:16:15Speaker 1: was Sean. It was one of those times when one
- 1:16:19Speaker 1: night I was looking through these obituaries of the three
- 1:16:24Speaker 1: most important people ever in my life, and you know,
- 1:16:28Speaker 1: I was in my night nightly ritual of you know,
- 1:16:31Speaker 1: on my knees often crying, you know, woe is me? Um.
- 1:16:36Speaker 1: I looked and saw that dash, you know, Sean, that
- 1:16:39Speaker 1: dash between the day you are born and the day
- 1:16:42Speaker 1: you die. And I when I looked at that dash,
- 1:16:46Speaker 1: I said, you know, that's what I remember about my
- 1:16:49Speaker 1: mom and my dad and my sweetheart, my husband. That's
- 1:16:53Speaker 1: what I remember. It's that dash. That's what life's about.
- 1:16:57Speaker 1: It's where the meaning takes place. And what was I
- 1:17:02Speaker 1: gonna do about my dash? Was I just ready to
- 1:17:06Speaker 1: give up? And that's really rashan. As I began to
- 1:17:10Speaker 1: look at it and think about it, I slowly started
- 1:17:13Speaker 1: to get off my knees, stand out and get back
- 1:17:18Speaker 1: in the world because I found some meaning. And that's
- 1:17:21Speaker 1: when I began to discover what for me with the
- 1:17:25Speaker 1: secrets of um, you know, living a vibrant life. Let
- 1:17:31Speaker 1: let's talk about let's talk about that that that that
- 1:17:33Speaker 1: old way, what is me? Lifestyle and mentality and coming
- 1:17:36Speaker 1: out of that the little the little engine that could
- 1:17:39Speaker 1: coming up that hill, you know, and then going over,
- 1:17:42Speaker 1: you know, because what happens is when you're that old
- 1:17:44Speaker 1: always mean you have a lot of tragedy, tragedy and
- 1:17:46Speaker 1: tragedy in your life. A lot of people don't I
- 1:17:48Speaker 1: talk to you, they know, they know they feel nerves
- 1:17:51Speaker 1: by telling you to suck it up or come on down.
- 1:17:54Speaker 1: You have a lot of life to give, so you
- 1:17:55Speaker 1: don't have a lot of people around you that they
- 1:17:58Speaker 1: can challenge you because know you in a state of
- 1:18:02Speaker 1: sadness and they don't want to sound like they they
- 1:18:05Speaker 1: are uh selfish by telling you you can you can
- 1:18:08Speaker 1: move on? And so you saw the dash. What were
- 1:18:13Speaker 1: everybody else saying around You're the family members, your friends
- 1:18:16Speaker 1: and all that good stuff. Yeah, everyone, And you know
- 1:18:19Speaker 1: when you're in that state, everyone is so supportive or
- 1:18:23Speaker 1: they try to be right. You tell you things like,
- 1:18:26Speaker 1: you know, you've got a lot of life ahead of uh,
- 1:18:30Speaker 1: move forward and you know, get over and even get
- 1:18:34Speaker 1: over it or it's time to get over it. And
- 1:18:37Speaker 1: you know, none of that helped me, None of that.
- 1:18:41Speaker 1: And you know, I don't believe there's a timeline for grief,
- 1:18:46Speaker 1: you know, I just really don't. And I had to
- 1:18:50Speaker 1: discover me for me, in myself. And the first thing
- 1:18:56Speaker 1: that in what I discovered for a secret for me
- 1:19:00Speaker 1: that I discovered was I had to reconnect with my
- 1:19:04Speaker 1: why so, my purpose, my raisin detra Why am I here?
- 1:19:10Speaker 1: You know? Not about my husband and my parents and
- 1:19:13Speaker 1: my children, my grandchildren, all the friends and family? Why me? Lord?
- 1:19:18Speaker 1: Why me? You know what is it that you have
- 1:19:21Speaker 1: for me, because I believe each of us has at
- 1:19:24Speaker 1: least one unique gift or talent and finding that gift
- 1:19:30Speaker 1: or talent and understanding your purpose. And as I began
- 1:19:35Speaker 1: to reflect and really go deep, I rediscovered my purpose.
- 1:19:41Speaker 1: I refound my why I'm living. And so that's one
- 1:19:46Speaker 1: of the secrets I think to life at any age,
- 1:19:50Speaker 1: and that is knowing your purpose, knowing why you here,
- 1:19:53Speaker 1: why God put you here, what is it you supposed
- 1:19:56Speaker 1: to do? And that's the thing that helps get me
- 1:20:00Speaker 1: up every morning, gets me excited and to think about,
- 1:20:04Speaker 1: you know, I'm fulfilling my meaning. And I rediscovered that,
- 1:20:10Speaker 1: you know, God put me on this earth to inspire
- 1:20:13Speaker 1: and teach and to help, particularly women over fifty who
- 1:20:18Speaker 1: are in my same age category, to uh rediscover themselves
- 1:20:24Speaker 1: and figure out their next steps because we're not done yet.
- 1:20:28Speaker 1: And so rediscovering my why and my purpose really was
- 1:20:33Speaker 1: the first big secret that I discovered. Well, you know
- 1:20:37Speaker 1: now I want to go back on that sadness that
- 1:20:41Speaker 1: I don't think there's a timeline of sadness. You have
- 1:20:43Speaker 1: to learn how to just box it, put in a
- 1:20:45Speaker 1: box and from apartmentalize it. Because of the fact that
- 1:20:49Speaker 1: you know, I know when I when I think about death,
- 1:20:52Speaker 1: I think about my parents, I think about my sister.
- 1:20:55Speaker 1: You know, I might think about it a year from now.
- 1:20:58Speaker 1: I might think about it on their birthday. I might
- 1:21:00Speaker 1: think about it. So it's all right, Well we're talking
- 1:21:02Speaker 1: about is compartmentalizing it so it doesn't dominate your everyday
- 1:21:06Speaker 1: life moving forward, so it doesn't stop you from meeting people,
- 1:21:10Speaker 1: stop you from movie, stopping you from getting the job,
- 1:21:13Speaker 1: stopping you from saying, you know something, I want to
- 1:21:16Speaker 1: be happy, hear me. Don't get that I want to
- 1:21:18Speaker 1: be happy, and so what happens is and that that's
- 1:21:21Speaker 1: why I wanted to bring Dr Geneva Williams on the show,
- 1:21:24Speaker 1: is that it's about you know, this is how I speak.
- 1:21:26Speaker 1: You know, I speak this way and I'm not trying
- 1:21:28Speaker 1: to be younger than what I am. I'm just trying
- 1:21:30Speaker 1: to be Rashwan McDonald. I don't worry about another birthday.
- 1:21:33Speaker 1: I gotta have a birthday to accomplish my dreams. I
- 1:21:36Speaker 1: don't lock myself to a certain age. I want to
- 1:21:38Speaker 1: be thirty nine for rest of my life. I want
- 1:21:40Speaker 1: to be fitting that. No, I want to be whatever
- 1:21:42Speaker 1: age God allows me to be on that year, he says,
- 1:21:44Speaker 1: my birthday, because I got gold I gotta put in place.
- 1:21:47Speaker 1: And so when I saw a video of you, I said,
- 1:21:49Speaker 1: this is my girl. I gotta bring home my show
- 1:21:51Speaker 1: because she she's not restricting the steps of opportunity tied
- 1:21:55Speaker 1: to the age that she's assigned to that year. That's
- 1:21:58Speaker 1: a beautiful part of your personality. Where did that come from?
- 1:22:03Speaker 1: You know, I don't I think it came from my
- 1:22:08Speaker 1: started with my parents because they were activist way into
- 1:22:13Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties. You know, my I started writing
- 1:22:18Speaker 1: my book with my dad when he was one and
- 1:22:24Speaker 1: we were to publish it together. So, you know, I
- 1:22:27Speaker 1: interviewed him about all the things he went through, all
- 1:22:30Speaker 1: his trials and tribulations, the historic U landmark civil rights
- 1:22:35Speaker 1: case he won and took all the way to the
- 1:22:37Speaker 1: Supreme Court New Jersey and changed housing discrimination laws in
- 1:22:42Speaker 1: New Jersey forever. And we talked about all of that.
- 1:22:44Speaker 1: We did that together. Now he passed before the book
- 1:22:48Speaker 1: was published, but he did read the final manuscript and
- 1:22:52Speaker 1: said it was good. But that was like nineties, and
- 1:22:55Speaker 1: and my mom, I think left in her late eighties.
- 1:22:58Speaker 1: And but they always. But you know, Rashan, it really
- 1:23:03Speaker 1: wasn't about the chronological age. What it really was was
- 1:23:09Speaker 1: their mindset and and what they felt in their heart
- 1:23:13Speaker 1: and their purpose. Uh. And that's what I discovered that
- 1:23:18Speaker 1: it really is about my purpose and my motivation and
- 1:23:22Speaker 1: continuing to give, you know, those gifts, and that compartmentalization
- 1:23:28Speaker 1: you talk about, I think is right on for me.
- 1:23:31Speaker 1: My compartment is my heart. So I keep you know,
- 1:23:36Speaker 1: those who have gone on that you meant so much
- 1:23:40Speaker 1: to me in my heart and so they'll always be there.
- 1:23:44Speaker 1: So I'm not trying to get rid of them at all.
- 1:23:47Speaker 1: Those they've got to be in your heart. And you
- 1:23:49Speaker 1: know what, Rashan, we have to laugh about the good times.
- 1:23:52Speaker 1: And one of the things I do is I pull
- 1:23:54Speaker 1: out the albums all the time. I consider myself an
- 1:23:58Speaker 1: amateur photographer, so I have thousandsons of pictures. I ain't
- 1:24:02Speaker 1: in none of them, okay, because I'm always so busy
- 1:24:06Speaker 1: taking over. But I pull out my albums and I'll laugh,
- 1:24:10Speaker 1: sometimes i'll cry, but I reflect and we live those
- 1:24:15Speaker 1: good times, those moments, Rashan. And that's why I think
- 1:24:19Speaker 1: it's important to have those moments um to live because
- 1:24:24Speaker 1: we all are going to get out of here one day. Okay,
- 1:24:29Speaker 1: what we do while we're here that dash, my friend,
- 1:24:35Speaker 1: you're not hitting, you're not you're not tweeting a mission
- 1:24:37Speaker 1: or another of This interview right now got me popped up,
- 1:24:40Speaker 1: as usual, because when it's from a from a gender standpoint,
- 1:24:44Speaker 1: I'm a man, your woman, and they have different rules
- 1:24:47Speaker 1: in the play, and they have different rules and play
- 1:24:49Speaker 1: for African Americans. Okay, and so leadership. You know, you're
- 1:24:54Speaker 1: an attractive woman. Some people can diminish your success because
- 1:24:57Speaker 1: you're attracted, you know. And then that's a sad part
- 1:25:00Speaker 1: about sexism. But in the end, if you have somebody
- 1:25:05Speaker 1: who's fifty, they confused. They you know, they don't they
- 1:25:08Speaker 1: look in the mirror, they don't like the way they're
- 1:25:10Speaker 1: seeing in the mirror. They don't like the people around them.
- 1:25:12Speaker 1: What advice do you get for people who are stuck?
- 1:25:16Speaker 1: Let's use the word stuck, because a lot of people
- 1:25:19Speaker 1: listen to this interview are stuck. We want to get
- 1:25:22Speaker 1: them unstuck. And I'm gonna tell you something, we are
- 1:25:24Speaker 1: not on the way you pull yourself from an unstuck position.
- 1:25:27Speaker 1: You have to want to make change. Exactly if you
- 1:25:32Speaker 1: don't want to make change. You think this is the lottery.
- 1:25:35Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but you gotta want to make change. I
- 1:25:37Speaker 1: do want to set that little, that little qualified before
- 1:25:40Speaker 1: you get started. You're absolutely right, and you have to
- 1:25:44Speaker 1: put sweat equity into what it is you. You got
- 1:25:49Speaker 1: to do that, okay. You know. One of the things
- 1:25:53Speaker 1: that I say the folks in terms of the secrets
- 1:25:57Speaker 1: that I found, is to make a plan. You gotta
- 1:26:02Speaker 1: have a game plan. What is it you're gonna do
- 1:26:04Speaker 1: with your life? You know? So you know, let's assume
- 1:26:08Speaker 1: you you you you know what your purpose is, You've
- 1:26:10Speaker 1: discovered your why, you understand why you're here, what it
- 1:26:14Speaker 1: is you want to do, what your talents are. Okay,
- 1:26:17Speaker 1: then what you're gonna do with it? So that's making
- 1:26:19Speaker 1: a plan, you know, whether you think it in your
- 1:26:22Speaker 1: head or write it down. Though writing it down, you know,
- 1:26:24Speaker 1: writing it down helps you see it and achieve it better.
- 1:26:28Speaker 1: That's what all the research says. But I understand if
- 1:26:30Speaker 1: you just want to keep it in your head and
- 1:26:32Speaker 1: think about it. But the best thing to do is
- 1:26:35Speaker 1: figure out what your goals are, what it is you know,
- 1:26:38Speaker 1: you've got this vision of your life that you want
- 1:26:40Speaker 1: to be, which is first step, figure out what it
- 1:26:42Speaker 1: is you want your life to be and then decide, well,
- 1:26:47Speaker 1: how am I going to get there? So those are
- 1:26:49Speaker 1: your goals, and then how am I going to reach
- 1:26:51Speaker 1: those goals? That's your action steps, and then what am
- 1:26:54Speaker 1: I gonna do it? That's your timeline. Well, when you
- 1:26:57Speaker 1: finish putting together a vision, a goal, some action steps
- 1:27:01Speaker 1: in the timeline, you got yourself a plan and then
- 1:27:04Speaker 1: do it. And so one of the things that I
- 1:27:08Speaker 1: found is you gotta have a plan. And it's your plan.
- 1:27:11Speaker 1: It's not your uncle's or your aunts or your scouse is.
- 1:27:14Speaker 1: It's your plan. And come on, let's do it. Get
- 1:27:19Speaker 1: that game plan together. Uh, you know, male, female, black, white,
- 1:27:24Speaker 1: have a game plan and that you know, and it's
- 1:27:27Speaker 1: your plan, and be willing to switch it up or
- 1:27:31Speaker 1: change it if you need to. You know, if people
- 1:27:34Speaker 1: say to me, um, sometimes well I don't know what
- 1:27:37Speaker 1: to do. You know, I don't feel I'm I'm really
- 1:27:40Speaker 1: done anything. I'm stuck, you know that that kind of thing.
- 1:27:44Speaker 1: One of the tips I give folk when they feel
- 1:27:47Speaker 1: that way is to, uh, make a list of your accomplishments. Rashan,
- 1:27:53Speaker 1: I don't care who you are, if you living and breathing,
- 1:27:56Speaker 1: and if you're listening to us, have this conversation. In
- 1:28:00Speaker 1: your life, you've accomplished something, probably a whole lot of somethings,
- 1:28:05Speaker 1: and so one of the things, pull out that piece
- 1:28:08Speaker 1: of paper and write down all of the things you've
- 1:28:13Speaker 1: account all your successes. What have you done? When you
- 1:28:17Speaker 1: sit back, I'm guaranteed you sit back and look at
- 1:28:21Speaker 1: that list, You're gonna say, but you know that's important
- 1:28:25Speaker 1: what you're saying. But you know what I'm saying, here's
- 1:28:28Speaker 1: something that absolutely it always saying. It's like in my life.
- 1:28:32Speaker 1: You know, because a lot of people have qualifiers on success.
- 1:28:35Speaker 1: You know, they they look at Lebron James and that
- 1:28:39Speaker 1: might be successful to them. You have to look at
- 1:28:42Speaker 1: your competition. I mean, when I was building Steve Harvey's
- 1:28:44Speaker 1: a social media I put this competition that was that
- 1:28:47Speaker 1: was close to him. I didn't go way up there,
- 1:28:50Speaker 1: there was way away. I started close to him and
- 1:28:52Speaker 1: started setting his goals in social media and we started
- 1:28:55Speaker 1: passing them as we were along the way. Now, if
- 1:28:58Speaker 1: I just said this goal four or five million away
- 1:29:00Speaker 1: instead of fifty thousand away, then guess what it would
- 1:29:03Speaker 1: look seem insurmountable. And so when you start talking about
- 1:29:06Speaker 1: goal setting, said, goals that are reachable. I always talked
- 1:29:11Speaker 1: about nay day goals. I don't talk about years. Well,
- 1:29:14Speaker 1: you know, that's why a lot of people don't go
- 1:29:16Speaker 1: to college because they see here here four years. It
- 1:29:19Speaker 1: just knocks him out on the four years. Uh, I
- 1:29:22Speaker 1: can't catch comm into something like four years. That's why
- 1:29:24Speaker 1: people go to trade schools. And I'm not knocking that
- 1:29:27Speaker 1: because they see a shorter turn turnaround. But always no
- 1:29:31Speaker 1: set a goal that you feel comfortable with and reaching.
- 1:29:35Speaker 1: And that's what she's saying about planning a lot of
- 1:29:38Speaker 1: people playing success, but they don't planning it with a goal,
- 1:29:40Speaker 1: a reachable goal, and know that it's you always treated
- 1:29:45Speaker 1: like a steps on the ladder. Each steps kiss you higher,
- 1:29:49Speaker 1: each steps gets you higher. You don't want to jump
- 1:29:51Speaker 1: steps on the ladder. You might fall off exactly exactly.
- 1:29:57Speaker 1: And so that's what you know. Be have realistic goals,
- 1:30:02Speaker 1: goals that make sense that you can touch and reach,
- 1:30:05Speaker 1: and goals that you know that you've reached success when
- 1:30:10Speaker 1: you've completed that. Sometimes we set these vague goals and
- 1:30:15Speaker 1: we don't really even know when we reached them. And
- 1:30:18Speaker 1: so I always tell folks when you're setting goals, um,
- 1:30:22Speaker 1: speaking in the present and the now and speaking in
- 1:30:27Speaker 1: positive terms like you know, um, you know, I want
- 1:30:32Speaker 1: to lose fifty pounds. Okay, that's too vague. It really
- 1:30:37Speaker 1: doesn't say much, doesn't talk about when or what have you.
- 1:30:40Speaker 1: But you can say, Brad said, stated in the positive terms.
- 1:30:45Speaker 1: I am my ideal weight. You know, it's a positive thing.
- 1:30:51Speaker 1: So you've already put yourself in that future self that
- 1:30:57Speaker 1: you want to be and you see yourself that way.
- 1:31:01Speaker 1: Oh I gotta quit smoking. No, I'm a non smoker.
- 1:31:06Speaker 1: So you claim it and say it for yourself and
- 1:31:10Speaker 1: then begin to write down the action steps that will
- 1:31:13Speaker 1: make that statement on a non smoker true. Absolutely when
- 1:31:19Speaker 1: I when I think about it, when people, especially on
- 1:31:21Speaker 1: weight loss, I always tell people just just pickle. I
- 1:31:25Speaker 1: want to lose a pound of week. That's See. If
- 1:31:29Speaker 1: you lose a pound of week, at the end of
- 1:31:30Speaker 1: you lost fifty pounds. And so what if you say
- 1:31:32Speaker 1: I want to lose fifty pounds, I'm like, oh, I'm
- 1:31:35Speaker 1: gonna do that. But just to pound a week, a
- 1:31:37Speaker 1: pound of week in your mind, that's what we're talking
- 1:31:40Speaker 1: about a mindset. We're talking about how to relax your
- 1:31:44Speaker 1: way into success. We're talking about not being overwhelmed by
- 1:31:48Speaker 1: setting goals and planning things that feel unreachable because it
- 1:31:52Speaker 1: came out of your mouth, which Shannon said. Another thing
- 1:31:59Speaker 1: that I've learned through the years, and that is that
- 1:32:05Speaker 1: one of the ways to continually be able to create
- 1:32:09Speaker 1: possibilities and live a vibrant life at any age is
- 1:32:14Speaker 1: to practice self care. You know, too often, particularly for women, Um,
- 1:32:21Speaker 1: we get so busy in life trying to be successful,
- 1:32:25Speaker 1: trying to you know, climb to the top all of
- 1:32:28Speaker 1: those things that we forget to take care of ourselves
- 1:32:32Speaker 1: and and and not. And I'm not talking about you know,
- 1:32:36Speaker 1: making sure you get a massage every week, though that's good, now,
- 1:32:40Speaker 1: now that that'd be good. Okay, that's if you can
- 1:32:43Speaker 1: afford it, that's great. But you know, self care is
- 1:32:46Speaker 1: about so many different aspects of your life. It deals
- 1:32:50Speaker 1: with your social care, your physical care, your psychological care,
- 1:32:56Speaker 1: your mental, your emotional even learning how to a no
- 1:33:01Speaker 1: is a good way to practice self care, so that
- 1:33:05Speaker 1: in fact, you're putting your needs your priorities first. So
- 1:33:09Speaker 1: practicing uh, taking care of yourself, loving yourself the way
- 1:33:15Speaker 1: that you should eliminating the negative self talk. You know,
- 1:33:19Speaker 1: we be you know, talk all these things kind of
- 1:33:23Speaker 1: run around in our mind about what we can't do,
- 1:33:25Speaker 1: these limiting behaviors. You know, what we can't do, what
- 1:33:28Speaker 1: we can't say, what we can't wear, what we shouldn't do,
- 1:33:31Speaker 1: you know, et cetera. By the time we finished, you
- 1:33:33Speaker 1: be exhausted. You know. So we need to reduce or
- 1:33:38Speaker 1: eliminate the negative self talk. And that's part of taking
- 1:33:43Speaker 1: care of yourself, that self care, that self love. That
- 1:33:47Speaker 1: particularly during these times, as times are tough, as we're
- 1:33:52Speaker 1: in pandemic, as you know, we're facing uncertainty UM an
- 1:33:57Speaker 1: uncertainty that is going to the pandemic sean is going
- 1:34:00Speaker 1: to end where it will move into something different, but
- 1:34:05Speaker 1: uncertainty it's going to be with us always. You know,
- 1:34:10Speaker 1: life is about ups and downs, That's what life is.
- 1:34:14Speaker 1: And so learning how to embrace uncertainty, become a master
- 1:34:22Speaker 1: of UM, having yourself developed, learning the tricks and tips
- 1:34:30Speaker 1: to decrease worry and stress and focus on your goals.
- 1:34:35Speaker 1: You know, those are things that we should develop. We
- 1:34:38Speaker 1: should become masters of that. Pandemic or not because it
- 1:34:43Speaker 1: will always be something that's in our lives that we're
- 1:34:46Speaker 1: not going to be a hundred percent sure of. So hey,
- 1:34:51Speaker 1: let's become those masters of being the best that we
- 1:34:56Speaker 1: can be, being the most vibrant that we can be
- 1:34:59Speaker 1: at an age. Thank you. She's a late she's a
- 1:35:03Speaker 1: later life beautiful queen. I would say beautiful queen. I
- 1:35:05Speaker 1: am saying I'm not gonna say beauty queen. Beautiful queen.
- 1:35:08Speaker 1: She's a queen. She's an entrepreneur, online course creator. You know,
- 1:35:12Speaker 1: the thing I love about you is that you don't
- 1:35:14Speaker 1: let age stop you. And that's what I'm preaching now.
- 1:35:16Speaker 1: I'm preaching that for even somebody twenty years old, don't
- 1:35:18Speaker 1: let age stop you. Don't tell us somebody you're too
- 1:35:20Speaker 1: young to accomplish that thirty years old, fourty years old,
- 1:35:23Speaker 1: fifty and when you hit fifty and sixty, please stop
- 1:35:27Speaker 1: it by saying that you can't accomplish your dreams because
- 1:35:29Speaker 1: you're too old. As a message that she delivers on
- 1:35:31Speaker 1: a daily basis, Dr Geneva Williams and Dr Geneva Williams,
- 1:35:35Speaker 1: I want to thank you for coming on Money Making conversation.
- 1:35:37Speaker 1: On that one request, will you come back oh, I'd
- 1:35:41Speaker 1: love to love you know. One of the things that
- 1:35:45Speaker 1: I said is I, um, you know, celebrated my seventieth birthday.
- 1:35:50Speaker 1: Was I'm going to be doing only those things that
- 1:35:55Speaker 1: give me joy. Having a conversation with you and all
- 1:35:59Speaker 1: the what you do to help other people brings me
- 1:36:03Speaker 1: great joy. So it would be my pleasure come back
- 1:36:06Speaker 1: and continue the conversation. We we're gonna do this annually. Okay,
- 1:36:10Speaker 1: I'm gonna locked this date down because because my birthday
- 1:36:13Speaker 1: is in fabru Wary, so you're gonna be one of
- 1:36:14Speaker 1: my paper my moth birthday birthday. Okay, that's what I'm
- 1:36:17Speaker 1: talking about. That's what I'm talking about. So my den,
- 1:36:20Speaker 1: we're gonna stay in touch. If you ever have an
- 1:36:21Speaker 1: event coming up that you need to get promoted, you'd
- 1:36:23Speaker 1: always count on me. Even as in Michigan or any
- 1:36:26Speaker 1: state area. You gotta uh you know seminar that you're doing,
- 1:36:29Speaker 1: please come to thank you, thank you, thank you. In fact,
- 1:36:32Speaker 1: I've got one coming up for a a r P.
- 1:36:36Speaker 1: They've asked me to help their members learn how to
- 1:36:42Speaker 1: do their create their personal Action plan for one, so
- 1:36:46Speaker 1: I'll be doing that. It will be a virtual event
- 1:36:49Speaker 1: and I hope you can be a part of it. Well,
- 1:36:53Speaker 1: I'm there you come on. I I'm there for you, Doc,
- 1:36:55Speaker 1: So let's make it happen. So I want to thank
- 1:36:57Speaker 1: you again for coming on money making Conversations. Okay, we
- 1:37:00Speaker 1: will be right back with more money making conversations with
- 1:37:04Speaker 1: your host Rashwan McDonald. What grows in the forest trees? Sure? No.
- 1:37:10Speaker 1: What else grows in the forest Our imagination, our sense
- 1:37:13Speaker 1: of wonder, and our family bonds grow too, because when
- 1:37:16Speaker 1: we disconnect from this and connect with this, we reconnect
- 1:37:23Speaker 1: with each other. The forest is closer than you think.
- 1:37:27Speaker 1: Find a forest near you and start exploring. I discover
- 1:37:30Speaker 1: the Forest dot Org, brought to you by the United
- 1:37:33Speaker 1: States Forest Service and the AD Council. Look to your
- 1:37:37Speaker 1: children's eyes to see the true magic of a forest.
- 1:37:40Speaker 1: It's a storybook world for them. You look and see
- 1:37:43Speaker 1: a tree. They see the wrinkled face of a wizard
- 1:37:46Speaker 1: with arms outstretched to the sky. They see treasure in pebbles,
- 1:37:51Speaker 1: They see a windy path that could lead to adventure,
- 1:37:54Speaker 1: and they see you. They're fearless guide through this fascinating world.
- 1:37:59Speaker 1: Find a forest in your you and start exploring. And
- 1:38:01Speaker 1: discovered the forest dot org brought to you by the
- 1:38:03Speaker 1: United States Force Service and the AD Council. Look at
- 1:38:07Speaker 1: your children's eyes to see the true magic of a forest.
- 1:38:10Speaker 1: It's a storybook world for them. You look and see
- 1:38:13Speaker 1: a tree. They see the wrinkled face of a wizard
- 1:38:17Speaker 1: with arms outstretched to the sky. They see treasuring pebbles.
- 1:38:21Speaker 1: They see a windy path that could lead to adventure,
- 1:38:24Speaker 1: and they see you. They're fearless. Guide through this fascinating world.
- 1:38:29Speaker 1: Find a forest near you and start exploring and discovered
- 1:38:32Speaker 1: the forest dot org brought to you by the United
- 1:38:34Speaker 1: States Force Service and the AD Council. Hi, I'm Rushan McDonald,
- 1:38:38Speaker 1: the host of Money Making Conversation. The Cafe Mocha Swag
- 1:38:40Speaker 1: Award is a celebration of black men who are making
- 1:38:43Speaker 1: a difference in our community by empowering others to reach
- 1:38:46Speaker 1: their life goals. From civic leaders, businessmen, activists, celebrities and
- 1:38:50Speaker 1: everyday dads. The Cafe Moca Swag Award winner this week
- 1:38:53Speaker 1: is Dr Shaun Woodley, a graduate of Hampton University. Dr
- 1:38:58Speaker 1: Shaun Wooden has dedicated his profession from a career to education.
- 1:39:01Speaker 1: He is the architect behind the educated movement teach, hustle, inspire.
- 1:39:06Speaker 1: He has written the bestselling book mc means Moved the
- 1:39:09Speaker 1: Class How to Spark engagement and motivation to urban and
- 1:39:12Speaker 1: culturally diverged classrooms. I firmly believe that education it's a
- 1:39:17Speaker 1: key that can unlock so many doors in so many
- 1:39:21Speaker 1: different directions. We need to be sure that the bright
- 1:39:25Speaker 1: young scholars in the four walls of these classrooms across
- 1:39:28Speaker 1: this country are being exposed so that they have something
- 1:39:32Speaker 1: to shoot for. An education can do that. The Cafe
- 1:39:35Speaker 1: marka Swag Award represents men who have strength, whose wisdom
- 1:39:38Speaker 1: is assertive, and who is genuine in their spirit. Welcome
- 1:39:42Speaker 1: back to money making conversations with your host, Rashan McDonald.
- 1:39:46Speaker 1: My next guest is all about community effort and also
- 1:39:49Speaker 1: about reaching his own dreams. He is an inventor and
- 1:39:51Speaker 1: a hard worker. He has dreamed up dozens of innovations
- 1:39:54Speaker 1: and solutions to everyday problems well over a decade. His
- 1:39:59Speaker 1: endurance has a yield in him and overnight success with
- 1:40:01Speaker 1: the current investors. Now he has multiple ideas in various
- 1:40:05Speaker 1: stages of production. He's the owner of a startup and
- 1:40:07Speaker 1: has aspirations that reach into multimedia entertainment. Please welcome to
- 1:40:12Speaker 1: money making Conversations out of michicun my man, Corey Wilcox, Hey, Corey,
- 1:40:19Speaker 1: what's going on? Well? I brought you on the show
- 1:40:21Speaker 1: man because you know, I'm a guy who's never ever
- 1:40:26Speaker 1: been able to understand the Rooper Q. And you come
- 1:40:30Speaker 1: up with something similar in style called the Rodo brain,
- 1:40:33Speaker 1: which is a three dimensional type, would enhances your memory,
- 1:40:37Speaker 1: critical thinking skills, and would test your I Q. Well,
- 1:40:40Speaker 1: you know my Q pretty high. What would the Rodeo
- 1:40:43Speaker 1: brain do? And I'm not saying that out of ego.
- 1:40:45Speaker 1: I got a math degree, my mind is and sociology,
- 1:40:48Speaker 1: so I'm a logical person. But man, this Rodo brain
- 1:40:52Speaker 1: looks like it's gonna complicate my mind and my just
- 1:40:54Speaker 1: it's my mind too over to embrace something like this
- 1:40:58Speaker 1: just far a certain generational age. No, it's for it's
- 1:41:02Speaker 1: for all generations. Uh, it's next level puzzle gaming. Um
- 1:41:06Speaker 1: it's basically I took the idea from uh master combination
- 1:41:13Speaker 1: lock right combination lock. I just figured, hey, I want
- 1:41:17Speaker 1: to just make something cool from it, and I brought
- 1:41:20Speaker 1: the I took a roots cube and I took the
- 1:41:23Speaker 1: master combination. I can I kind of combinding together and say, hey,
- 1:41:26Speaker 1: let's make this happen. Okay, now the master's combination lock.
- 1:41:29Speaker 1: You know that's that you know, you know to this way,
- 1:41:32Speaker 1: this way, this way left to thirteen fifteen right, thirteen left,
- 1:41:39Speaker 1: and then they are locked. That's the way that works.
- 1:41:42Speaker 1: But that's just a lot. Now you have all these
- 1:41:45Speaker 1: colors that you have to align on the rotor brain correct,
- 1:41:49Speaker 1: similar to the rocks Q. So each each level has
- 1:41:52Speaker 1: its own combination code color combination code. So as you
- 1:41:56Speaker 1: go through the game, the first combination code has about
- 1:41:59Speaker 1: three of your combination possibilities, the second, the second row
- 1:42:03Speaker 1: has about ten thousand possibilities right, and the third row
- 1:42:06Speaker 1: has about sixty thousand possibilities. So as you saw beach
- 1:42:10Speaker 1: rolls a little knob at the top, you get the
- 1:42:12Speaker 1: correct colors correct through combination colors, each level will pop
- 1:42:16Speaker 1: up and say uh, level one complete, level to complete,
- 1:42:19Speaker 1: Level three complete. Once you get done with the game,
- 1:42:22Speaker 1: you can actually take it apart and and reset it
- 1:42:25Speaker 1: and start your own code and give it to your friends,
- 1:42:28Speaker 1: family member, and you can say hey, now you saw it,
- 1:42:31Speaker 1: or you can even if you want to test yourself,
- 1:42:33Speaker 1: you can reset the code and try to solve it again.
- 1:42:35Speaker 1: Now we said reset the code. What does that mean
- 1:42:37Speaker 1: because I want you to slow it down. We all
- 1:42:40Speaker 1: podcasts and were all on video, but just to get
- 1:42:42Speaker 1: somebody hears this on podcast when you say the word
- 1:42:45Speaker 1: reset the code. Because we're talking about the Road to
- 1:42:47Speaker 1: Brain let me explain everybody with the Road to Brain is.
- 1:42:49Speaker 1: It's a three D puzzle similar to the ruby que. Well,
- 1:42:53Speaker 1: you know that enhances your memory because you gotta remember
- 1:42:55Speaker 1: when you placed all these different colors to get them
- 1:42:57Speaker 1: a line. Critical thinking skills and we'll test your i Q.
- 1:43:01Speaker 1: The benefits of this rodal brain that when hans your thinking,
- 1:43:04Speaker 1: improve your memory, your patients, that's my problem patients, problem
- 1:43:08Speaker 1: solving skilled, keep your mind active and improve your speed,
- 1:43:12Speaker 1: your finger dexterity, and agility. Now, this is an awesome way.
- 1:43:15Speaker 1: As you always say, it's a conversation starter. Once you
- 1:43:18Speaker 1: put it out on the table, when your adult and
- 1:43:21Speaker 1: a kid, you're gonna pick it up. Correct. Actually I can, uh,
- 1:43:25Speaker 1: I can take it down absolutely. Let's walk us through
- 1:43:27Speaker 1: this gap. Now we're on video, okay, so I can
- 1:43:31Speaker 1: take it down as I just want to show you
- 1:43:32Speaker 1: because you say it's when you say, how you reset
- 1:43:35Speaker 1: it and why you reset it? Sir? You take it apart.
- 1:43:39Speaker 1: Actually has gears that go around. So these gears as
- 1:43:42Speaker 1: a little knobs and you can actually set these knobs
- 1:43:46Speaker 1: and they actually can set up the colors for you.
- 1:43:48Speaker 1: And that's how you actually have the combination code where
- 1:43:51Speaker 1: you can reset it and give it to friends and family. Right,
- 1:43:53Speaker 1: So you can't I love this already because you're saying, Rashawn,
- 1:43:57Speaker 1: you can. You can always change your channel, lunch, always yourself,
- 1:44:03Speaker 1: challenge yourself. Okay, So now this goes back to how
- 1:44:07Speaker 1: did this start? Which came first they gotta chicken? How
- 1:44:11Speaker 1: did this whole thing lay itself out? Because to me,
- 1:44:14Speaker 1: I'm still confused, not in the sect of the fact
- 1:44:17Speaker 1: that this is not a talented toy or talented thinking
- 1:44:21Speaker 1: the device. How you pulled it off. That's why I'm confused,
- 1:44:25Speaker 1: because you're stepping into another level of being an inventor
- 1:44:30Speaker 1: that really complicates my life but also simplifies it because
- 1:44:33Speaker 1: you were able to pull it off. That's why you
- 1:44:35Speaker 1: are who you are, and that's why I'm interviewing you.
- 1:44:41Speaker 1: You know, I can give the background of the rotor
- 1:44:44Speaker 1: brain is I was going through a very very very
- 1:44:48Speaker 1: depressing time of my life because I'm in event for
- 1:44:50Speaker 1: a very long time. Yes, sir, so I never really
- 1:44:54Speaker 1: got any success from, you know, showing companies different toys
- 1:44:57Speaker 1: and different products. So I had this. I'm just in
- 1:45:00Speaker 1: a deep, deep place, in my deep dark place in
- 1:45:03Speaker 1: my life, and I had a conversation with God and
- 1:45:06Speaker 1: I sat there and prayed. I remember, I remember like
- 1:45:08Speaker 1: it was yesterday, just like five years ago. I'm sitting
- 1:45:11Speaker 1: in a dark room crying, like crying like somebody punched
- 1:45:14Speaker 1: me in my face or something. And I had a
- 1:45:16Speaker 1: conversation with God and I said, you know, God, if
- 1:45:18Speaker 1: you can give me something that the impact and change
- 1:45:21Speaker 1: the world, I tell everybody that you did it. And
- 1:45:25Speaker 1: that's what happened. Then I had to do. That night,
- 1:45:28Speaker 1: I had a dream the roller brain was kind of
- 1:45:30Speaker 1: floating in my face, and my dream, I woke and
- 1:45:32Speaker 1: I grabbed it. When I grabbed it, I woke up
- 1:45:35Speaker 1: and I remember I bumped my wife and I said, hey,
- 1:45:37Speaker 1: I think God just showed me something. She was like, man,
- 1:45:38Speaker 1: I don't care about that without tabs, man. So I
- 1:45:44Speaker 1: sketched it up, drew it up, and I came up
- 1:45:47Speaker 1: with the rotor brain and it was no awesome experience.
- 1:45:51Speaker 1: Now that's that. Now we all know about patents because
- 1:45:54Speaker 1: how did that work out? How do you go through
- 1:45:55Speaker 1: the pattent process? Did you hire a lawyer? Did you
- 1:45:58Speaker 1: do it yourself? How did the pattent process has worked
- 1:46:00Speaker 1: for you? Because you see a lot of people TV
- 1:46:02Speaker 1: calling for nineteen n and nine, bring us your inventor,
- 1:46:05Speaker 1: inventor help. Did you go to inventor help? No? No,
- 1:46:09Speaker 1: no no, So what you can do with people don't know.
- 1:46:11Speaker 1: As long as if you make under a hundred fifty
- 1:46:13Speaker 1: dollars a year, you can actually do a provisional pattern
- 1:46:16Speaker 1: for sixty five dollars. So you go a provisional path
- 1:46:19Speaker 1: six five dollars. It actually holds the patent for a year.
- 1:46:22Speaker 1: So you can actually take that provisional patent, take to
- 1:46:25Speaker 1: the company and say look I got the patent on it.
- 1:46:27Speaker 1: They don't really know, they just always the patent. You
- 1:46:29Speaker 1: can say, look I got a toy, I got a patent.
- 1:46:31Speaker 1: Let's talk business. So okay now, but so that sounds simple,
- 1:46:36Speaker 1: but you're the latest design out. You just couldn't put
- 1:46:38Speaker 1: it in just description. You have to have to have
- 1:46:41Speaker 1: some pictures and some some something some symboms of a
- 1:46:45Speaker 1: design correct. Correct. So what I what I normally do
- 1:46:49Speaker 1: for how our license a product is This is the
- 1:46:53Speaker 1: sill I saw that the cheap man's way, right. You
- 1:46:55Speaker 1: can always go to fiber right, and you can find
- 1:46:58Speaker 1: somebody on fiber for another country. Had them sketched this
- 1:47:02Speaker 1: up for like five or ten dollars. Have them sketched
- 1:47:05Speaker 1: up for you. We call the sales sheets. Because you
- 1:47:08Speaker 1: get the product looking good on the seal sheet, you
- 1:47:10Speaker 1: can get photoshot, you can have it looking like it's
- 1:47:12Speaker 1: in Walmart, all this good stuff to impress the company
- 1:47:15Speaker 1: to make the one to do listens with you. You
- 1:47:18Speaker 1: can uh once you put the cell sheet together. You
- 1:47:21Speaker 1: submitted to different companies, act different companies. Hey, I'm a
- 1:47:24Speaker 1: product developer. I developed this cool product. Can't take a
- 1:47:27Speaker 1: look at it. And if they decided to go with you,
- 1:47:29Speaker 1: you can get a license and deal. And based on
- 1:47:31Speaker 1: how the company is in their contract, they can give
- 1:47:34Speaker 1: you whatever contract they want the percentage right. So now
- 1:47:37Speaker 1: you have the idea of your wife and told you
- 1:47:39Speaker 1: get out of big because she ain't got time for
- 1:47:41Speaker 1: all these charts. We've got bills and paid God and
- 1:47:43Speaker 1: gave you this vision, so you sketch it out and
- 1:47:45Speaker 1: then you got this company. It works on the cheat.
- 1:47:48Speaker 1: But that's how foreign labor here sometimes just schet you
- 1:47:51Speaker 1: up and draw, just getch you everything out and put
- 1:47:53Speaker 1: it into a professional plan. Then you're able to file
- 1:47:56Speaker 1: that because you make it on a hundred and fifty
- 1:47:58Speaker 1: dollars for sixty they would hold that for a year.
- 1:48:01Speaker 1: Correct correct? Okay? Cool? So now I see this is
- 1:48:05Speaker 1: on Amazon because I did my little research. You know,
- 1:48:08Speaker 1: in fact, you go you Google is a nice description
- 1:48:11Speaker 1: pops up about your toy? How long has it been out?
- 1:48:14Speaker 1: And has has the sales met your expectations? So it
- 1:48:19Speaker 1: took it took about five years to actually make it
- 1:48:21Speaker 1: because the technology didn't exist, so we had to find
- 1:48:26Speaker 1: engineering company to actually prototype it and make it, and
- 1:48:30Speaker 1: that that's what took so long. The toy actually just
- 1:48:33Speaker 1: came out of September, right, um, and the sales and
- 1:48:35Speaker 1: the response has been pretty good. We'll be in a
- 1:48:38Speaker 1: lot of response from different different people, different groups, um,
- 1:48:42Speaker 1: and it's been pretty it's been pretty good because it's
- 1:48:44Speaker 1: not only in Amazon, it's on Walmart and a couple
- 1:48:47Speaker 1: of different stories around the world. Well, you know, I
- 1:48:49Speaker 1: have you ever heard of, uh, this restaurant called Cracker Bottle, Yes, okay,
- 1:48:54Speaker 1: Cracker Bottle. You know they got that little game you're
- 1:48:56Speaker 1: going there with the little sticks. You know, you you
- 1:48:59Speaker 1: you it's almost like tik tac toe, but it's not
- 1:49:01Speaker 1: tik Tac toe. Man. It'd be great if they if
- 1:49:04Speaker 1: you went to them and convinced them to replace that
- 1:49:07Speaker 1: little game that I never played with your with your
- 1:49:10Speaker 1: rode brain, because it's just slick, because you know, it's
- 1:49:13Speaker 1: one of those things you put out there and you
- 1:49:15Speaker 1: know people can compete with each other. I'm just this
- 1:49:17Speaker 1: is why I'm a marketing person. I know how to
- 1:49:19Speaker 1: brand and get ideas out there. All I know is
- 1:49:22Speaker 1: that at Cracker Barrel, which I love, they they have
- 1:49:25Speaker 1: become pancake That's my thing. I got for the bacon
- 1:49:27Speaker 1: pancakes and the Freeman Cracker Barrel. Man today the food cannavasty.
- 1:49:32Speaker 1: Oh see see you can't see right there. See how
- 1:49:34Speaker 1: are you gonna get out there? See you're I'm going
- 1:49:37Speaker 1: there crackingout food that I'm talking about the product of
- 1:49:40Speaker 1: getting your stuff in there. That's what I'm talking about.
- 1:49:43Speaker 1: If you know what I'm talking about is that you know,
- 1:49:45Speaker 1: these different restaurants and their different brands, and you diversity.
- 1:49:48Speaker 1: You're diverse, okay, And so like if you go to Denny's,
- 1:49:52Speaker 1: then it's got those little drawings with their little kids
- 1:49:55Speaker 1: and they give them crayons and things like that so
- 1:49:58Speaker 1: they can keep them busy. I'm just saying, is that
- 1:50:00Speaker 1: your product, it's so interesting and so entertaining. That's a
- 1:50:04Speaker 1: good way of getting it out into the marketplace and
- 1:50:07Speaker 1: start gaining interest out there. Unless you have another marketing
- 1:50:10Speaker 1: plan that you want to reveal to me on the
- 1:50:11Speaker 1: show that you're just gonna make your products just go
- 1:50:14Speaker 1: to the next level, like Rupu's Q Oh. Yeah. So
- 1:50:18Speaker 1: the company that that actually licensed the roller Brain and
- 1:50:22Speaker 1: we're working together as a partnership, they kind of they
- 1:50:24Speaker 1: got things set up. I know, it's a it's a
- 1:50:28Speaker 1: reality series that's in Canada that's actually supposed to be
- 1:50:32Speaker 1: featuring the roder Brain and a little competition and things
- 1:50:35Speaker 1: like that. So you know, we we we got a
- 1:50:38Speaker 1: plan and this is working pretty good. And you know,
- 1:50:40Speaker 1: it takes some time too, because it is a new product.
- 1:50:43Speaker 1: People are so used to the root excue. That's kind
- 1:50:46Speaker 1: of it's kind of hard to to break that market
- 1:50:48Speaker 1: because everybody is so used to rupe see roots who
- 1:50:51Speaker 1: being out for what forties forties some plus years a
- 1:50:55Speaker 1: long time. So we kind of that's our biggest competitions
- 1:50:58Speaker 1: RUPI scie, So we gotta take all those people and
- 1:51:01Speaker 1: bring them over us. Let me ask you this now,
- 1:51:03Speaker 1: you know that's your competition. It's just like McDonald's. You
- 1:51:06Speaker 1: know McDonald's has a hamburger Burger, he has a hamburger,
- 1:51:09Speaker 1: and then Chick fil A came out with a chicken
- 1:51:11Speaker 1: sandwich and then pop Eyes came out with their chicken sandwich.
- 1:51:14Speaker 1: So that's all competition. And what what what do you
- 1:51:18Speaker 1: believe that's different from your brand that you need to
- 1:51:21Speaker 1: tell people about so they can either start playing your
- 1:51:25Speaker 1: your rodeo brain or they just say, man, this this
- 1:51:29Speaker 1: way better than ruby Q. Let's go do this. The
- 1:51:35Speaker 1: biggest thing I tell tell the company is is social media. Uh.
- 1:51:40Speaker 1: Social media is the biggest platform YouTube, Instagram. Uh. That's
- 1:51:44Speaker 1: where we're trying to build the market at right now,
- 1:51:46Speaker 1: to gain the followers, uh, to to expand the brand. Um.
- 1:51:52Speaker 1: Right now, it's just kind of word of mouth, and
- 1:51:55Speaker 1: you know, I'm fighting back and forth with the company,
- 1:51:58Speaker 1: trying to get them to expand and do some different things,
- 1:52:00Speaker 1: but they kind of got to the lock and key
- 1:52:03Speaker 1: with it. How do they want to do the market there? Right?
- 1:52:06Speaker 1: So with that being said, so have you guys started
- 1:52:09Speaker 1: any online contest yet about the rotal brain contests right now?
- 1:52:15Speaker 1: That's all I was talking about. With the reality series
- 1:52:18Speaker 1: that's in kind of the right now. They're doing some
- 1:52:20Speaker 1: type of set up right now where they're trying to
- 1:52:23Speaker 1: broadcasting like that where it's gonna be a competition to
- 1:52:26Speaker 1: to bring get more people, to bring it more views
- 1:52:28Speaker 1: and have more eyes on it. So, so right now
- 1:52:32Speaker 1: this company and how did their relationship with the company
- 1:52:34Speaker 1: start Just to listen to other entrepreneurs who have ideas
- 1:52:38Speaker 1: and like I said, you know when you you know,
- 1:52:39Speaker 1: everybody wants their product to just blow out, just blow up,
- 1:52:42Speaker 1: okay now, but you want to have a person that
- 1:52:45Speaker 1: believes in it. And so this was an investor. The
- 1:52:47Speaker 1: company came in. They believed in your product, the rotal brain,
- 1:52:50Speaker 1: and the rotal brain is like a rupie Que type product,
- 1:52:53Speaker 1: where like the roup is Que enhances your humanity, memory,
- 1:52:56Speaker 1: critical thinking, and will test your i Q. That's the
- 1:53:00Speaker 1: value the ruby's que. The value of the rothal brain
- 1:53:03Speaker 1: is that you can keep changing your codes so you're
- 1:53:07Speaker 1: not trapped at the same ruby que. So once you
- 1:53:10Speaker 1: master the ruby Q, it's mastered. Okay, the rothal brain
- 1:53:14Speaker 1: it can keep. You can change your code and guess what,
- 1:53:16Speaker 1: you master that code, change your code to another code.
- 1:53:19Speaker 1: That's the beauty of the rothal brain. How have I
- 1:53:21Speaker 1: figured it out yet? Yes, sir, never stop stop, right
- 1:53:26Speaker 1: And so with that being said, what's next step for you? Man?
- 1:53:29Speaker 1: I know you're not tied to just one one one invention.
- 1:53:32Speaker 1: You got a lot of startups going on. Tell us
- 1:53:34Speaker 1: about the future story. I'm also an author to I
- 1:53:37Speaker 1: wrote the book based on some past experiences with my
- 1:53:40Speaker 1: son's mother. It's called Baby on the Drama, the Drama,
- 1:53:45Speaker 1: And it's not a book that's the Great Woman anything
- 1:53:49Speaker 1: like that, you know. Going through course. First of all,
- 1:53:54Speaker 1: baby Mama Drama. That title right there, You got me
- 1:53:57Speaker 1: chuckling right there. Okay, So so know that you and
- 1:54:00Speaker 1: jumped from enhancing your memory, memory, critical thinking and testing
- 1:54:04Speaker 1: your i Q too, Baby Mama Drama. You know what
- 1:54:07Speaker 1: it's like here and there? Okay, So now this is
- 1:54:11Speaker 1: a brand conversation. Now, okay, I understand it's a it's
- 1:54:15Speaker 1: a personal journey. So how can a guy be talking
- 1:54:18Speaker 1: about rup e Q type design style and in the
- 1:54:21Speaker 1: rotal brain and then turn around and say, I'm also
- 1:54:24Speaker 1: the author of Baby Mama Drama. It was something that uh,
- 1:54:31Speaker 1: you know, I followed Dr Masma Row, the late grade
- 1:54:34Speaker 1: Dr mos Row, and he always said when anything, anytime
- 1:54:38Speaker 1: something bothers you the only person that's bothered by it,
- 1:54:41Speaker 1: and as God telling you should do something about it.
- 1:54:43Speaker 1: I always wanted to write a book, even while I
- 1:54:44Speaker 1: was inventing and creating stuff and trying to license products.
- 1:54:48Speaker 1: Are always was a writer and the author too. So
- 1:54:51Speaker 1: it's kind of this was time for me to put
- 1:54:53Speaker 1: the book out and put the toy out. There's having
- 1:54:55Speaker 1: to come up at the same time. So you got
- 1:54:58Speaker 1: the mama's mad at you and confused kids with so
- 1:55:05Speaker 1: so tell us about the book, man. You know you
- 1:55:07Speaker 1: have brought it up, Baby Mama Drama. Y'all. Sorry, it's
- 1:55:09Speaker 1: right over your head right there. I was just gonna
- 1:55:12Speaker 1: talk about the roto brain, but you brought up the
- 1:55:13Speaker 1: Baby Mama Drama book. That was okay, okay, how long
- 1:55:17Speaker 1: was this book? In the writing and who helped you writeing? Uh,
- 1:55:22Speaker 1: my wife is a writer too, over too, so you
- 1:55:26Speaker 1: know she helped me know with the time to write
- 1:55:28Speaker 1: the book. And he sat down, went through some some
- 1:55:31Speaker 1: past experiences and we we we chopped it up and
- 1:55:37Speaker 1: we dropped the book out and and that's out here. Man, Now,
- 1:55:42Speaker 1: how are you promoting it? Because I'm assuming this came
- 1:55:44Speaker 1: out and there you you you you finished writing it
- 1:55:47Speaker 1: and during the pandemic year, which is and it didn't
- 1:55:50Speaker 1: come out this fall? And what is your promotional plan
- 1:55:53Speaker 1: for that? And what message are you trying to create?
- 1:55:56Speaker 1: A who what just called Baby Mama Drama? Is that
- 1:55:59Speaker 1: a book that's going to be to find men for
- 1:56:02Speaker 1: men to read or women can find interest and information
- 1:56:05Speaker 1: out of it for them to be uplifted from. It's
- 1:56:08Speaker 1: a book. It's a book for both men and women.
- 1:56:10Speaker 1: It's not a book like I said that that The
- 1:56:12Speaker 1: Grades Woman is actually just a book like to me,
- 1:56:15Speaker 1: and what I believe is guys never had the opportunity
- 1:56:19Speaker 1: to to have anybody to talk to about situations with
- 1:56:22Speaker 1: their kids mother, whether it's good or bad. It's just
- 1:56:25Speaker 1: always like we're always told, hey, just take care of
- 1:56:27Speaker 1: your kids, So we never had nobody to talk to,
- 1:56:31Speaker 1: no outletting. Um. So when I wrote the book, it's
- 1:56:35Speaker 1: just some personal experiences that just my struggles and my
- 1:56:38Speaker 1: opinions on how you can deal with the situation. Right now,
- 1:56:42Speaker 1: with that being said, did they are all in positive
- 1:56:45Speaker 1: for you? Are you still struggling with the baby mama
- 1:56:48Speaker 1: drama situation? No? No, so my son, my son is
- 1:56:51Speaker 1: fourteen right now. In the beginning, like I said, the books,
- 1:56:54Speaker 1: how the book is written. In the beginning, of course,
- 1:56:56Speaker 1: it's all bad. But as you grow and you learn,
- 1:56:58Speaker 1: the situations is better. So and that's a lot of things.
- 1:57:01Speaker 1: And that's that's what the book is about. It's helping
- 1:57:03Speaker 1: guys in those situations that are in bad situations to
- 1:57:07Speaker 1: help them learn how to deal with them so they
- 1:57:09Speaker 1: don't go no to the or get worse. Get your stream.
- 1:57:14Speaker 1: Give us an example of what you're talking about from
- 1:57:16Speaker 1: your book, an extremely an example of guys being guided
- 1:57:19Speaker 1: by your book that can follow some advice that won't
- 1:57:22Speaker 1: let them step off to the ledge and do something stupid,
- 1:57:25Speaker 1: or react to something stupid and embarrass themselves in front
- 1:57:28Speaker 1: of their child, or create a relationship where they walk
- 1:57:31Speaker 1: away from their child. All right. So it's a chapter
- 1:57:35Speaker 1: in my book that I called it's called Barriers Setting barriers.
- 1:57:39Speaker 1: So like in this in this chapter talks about how
- 1:57:44Speaker 1: my kids mother used to call me just random times
- 1:57:47Speaker 1: and talk about random stuff all different times in the night,
- 1:57:51Speaker 1: you know. And because a relationship with you that right
- 1:57:56Speaker 1: there to say, hey, you gotta you gotta learn how
- 1:57:58Speaker 1: to tell her note right to her, you can call
- 1:58:00Speaker 1: me at this time because you have to set barriers,
- 1:58:03Speaker 1: like if you if you're married, I have a girlfriend
- 1:58:05Speaker 1: and somebody call you a little knight, that can cost
- 1:58:07Speaker 1: confusing in your house. Absolutely. So I was teaching guys, hey,
- 1:58:10Speaker 1: learn how to talk to her in the professional, nice
- 1:58:13Speaker 1: Curtius way so you know it won't be no bickering,
- 1:58:16Speaker 1: right and learn and grow from that. So she was
- 1:58:18Speaker 1: still tying up your time, like y'all were still in
- 1:58:21Speaker 1: the relationship. So that night, Hey the pipe boat bro over,
- 1:58:28Speaker 1: Hey I need some food. Hey the grassneed cutting. Hey
- 1:58:34Speaker 1: the plumber ain't working. Hey the lights ain't on. Hey
- 1:58:37Speaker 1: I got a flat tie. He ain't more food in
- 1:58:40Speaker 1: the refrigerator. All that man's all that madness, right or
- 1:58:44Speaker 1: calling yelling being mad at my son. This boy up
- 1:58:47Speaker 1: two o'clock in the morning playing video games, and I'm like,
- 1:58:50Speaker 1: but you you stay with you right, Maybe you should
- 1:58:54Speaker 1: tell them go to bed right right right, But you
- 1:58:56Speaker 1: know that I can understand the calling about that because
- 1:58:58Speaker 1: sometimes you gotta you gotta step up the volume and
- 1:59:00Speaker 1: men have a difference. But that's why it's important to
- 1:59:02Speaker 1: have to keep that parental structure, you know. That's why
- 1:59:05Speaker 1: it's important that you know, if two there's two people
- 1:59:08Speaker 1: made that child, two people should raise that child. And
- 1:59:11Speaker 1: that situation is that I'm not mad, you know, because
- 1:59:14Speaker 1: I have a daughter and my wife. Sometimes my daughters,
- 1:59:17Speaker 1: you go, I can't, I can't. I can't get through her.
- 1:59:19Speaker 1: I can't get through to her, talk to her. I
- 1:59:21Speaker 1: go and I go and do and I just say,
- 1:59:23Speaker 1: what's wrong baby? Do you not listen to your mama today?
- 1:59:28Speaker 1: What's going on in your mama down stairs? You know
- 1:59:31Speaker 1: she's on fire because you're gonna get up by this
- 1:59:34Speaker 1: room and do what yes, you do, what's going on?
- 1:59:37Speaker 1: And so just a conversation, That's what I'm saying. That's
- 1:59:41Speaker 1: that's all your that'saw your ex wife is telling you
- 1:59:43Speaker 1: look some things because my I would because I speak
- 1:59:46Speaker 1: things out. My wife. She wants an immediate reaction, you know,
- 1:59:49Speaker 1: And I would explain to you what I want you
- 1:59:52Speaker 1: to do. That's what that's the difference between my wife
- 1:59:54Speaker 1: and I when it comes to our child. I go,
- 1:59:57Speaker 1: I go to I go to my daughters to look.
- 1:59:59Speaker 1: I need you do that. I stay, and this is
- 2:00:00Speaker 1: why I need you to go downstairs. My wife would go,
- 2:00:03Speaker 1: I need to come downstairs and wash the dishes. Okay,
- 2:00:07Speaker 1: as a parent, you can do that, okay, But I go, look, hey, baby, okay,
- 2:00:11Speaker 1: you enjoy eating in the house, right yes, daddy? Okay, cool.
- 2:00:15Speaker 1: When you're eating the house, there are certain things that
- 2:00:18Speaker 1: need to be done to continue eating in the house. Yes, daddy.
- 2:00:21Speaker 1: That means you have to wash the dishes. You understand
- 2:00:24Speaker 1: the logic right now, baby, don't you? Yes, daddy? And
- 2:00:26Speaker 1: she goes down stairs. See that's a that's a conversation
- 2:00:30Speaker 1: that she understands, because if she doesn't, if you don't
- 2:00:32Speaker 1: watch them dishes, guess what's gonna happen there? Core She's
- 2:00:35Speaker 1: gonna stop eating in my house. She got you gotta
- 2:00:39Speaker 1: make it make sense. That's why my son make it
- 2:00:41Speaker 1: makes sense. Just go downstairs and watch the dishes. My
- 2:00:46Speaker 1: done dollar all up in fire. She's gonna keep playing
- 2:00:48Speaker 1: that video game. I got school work, okay, cool. Guess
- 2:00:51Speaker 1: what if Daddy don't pay for the school work to
- 2:00:54Speaker 1: keep playing at the school. Guess who's gonna stop going
- 2:00:56Speaker 1: to school? Me? Dad? Absolutely, I think you need to
- 2:00:59Speaker 1: watch those is it just just to stand in the conversation.
- 2:01:01Speaker 1: So in the book, So the book Baby Mama Drama
- 2:01:04Speaker 1: that was that was a co author. I want to say,
- 2:01:06Speaker 1: by you, by your wife, what is the what are
- 2:01:09Speaker 1: you are you? I know it's COVID nineteen and you
- 2:01:12Speaker 1: can't do any book tours or are you doing any
- 2:01:14Speaker 1: any any virtual tours or anything like that? What are
- 2:01:17Speaker 1: you doing to market the book right now? Just I
- 2:01:21Speaker 1: do a lot of marketing, a lot of social media,
- 2:01:24Speaker 1: do a lot of live videos. But with like you said,
- 2:01:28Speaker 1: what the hots ovid is? I covid got everything locked up?
- 2:01:31Speaker 1: It's really nothing right. Well, you know the thing about
- 2:01:35Speaker 1: this is that I like the I'll be honest with
- 2:01:38Speaker 1: your title doesn't really tell you the truth because Baby
- 2:01:41Speaker 1: Mama Drama. You know it does sound negative. Okay, I'm
- 2:01:45Speaker 1: just be honest with you, But what you're talking about
- 2:01:47Speaker 1: is real positive it's about communication. And also I like
- 2:01:51Speaker 1: what you're talking about is the fact that co parenting
- 2:01:55Speaker 1: the right way and like you said, sitting barriers. So
- 2:01:58Speaker 1: so some of you a copy of that book and
- 2:01:59Speaker 1: start to read it, and I bring it back on
- 2:02:01Speaker 1: the show when I know what's going on. So I
- 2:02:03Speaker 1: can because I read all books that when people come
- 2:02:05Speaker 1: on my show, I read the book. Okay, So to
- 2:02:08Speaker 1: the copy of your book to me so I can
- 2:02:10Speaker 1: bring you on back on the show reading this book. Okay,
- 2:02:12Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do with in this interview, I'm just
- 2:02:14Speaker 1: gonna just do the interview on the Rodal Brain and
- 2:02:17Speaker 1: then I'm gonna cut this part out and I'm gonna
- 2:02:19Speaker 1: bring you back on the show about your book. Is
- 2:02:20Speaker 1: that cool? That's cool? That's cool. Yeah, because I don't
- 2:02:23Speaker 1: like to my staff. No, I read books, you know,
- 2:02:27Speaker 1: and I like to be in tune and be able
- 2:02:28Speaker 1: to help you get to your message so it could
- 2:02:30Speaker 1: be sold to the general public, and that would be
- 2:02:33Speaker 1: only favorable to that. I didn't expect to talk about
- 2:02:36Speaker 1: it doing this interview because I was just talking about
- 2:02:38Speaker 1: the Rodal Brain. Because I would never interview you about
- 2:02:40Speaker 1: the book. I've never read that's not fair to you. Okay,
- 2:02:45Speaker 1: that's cool. So so tell us how to buy this
- 2:02:47Speaker 1: rotal brain, sir. So yeah, man, the rotor brain. Man
- 2:02:52Speaker 1: is this next level game? And man? Next level fun? Um?
- 2:02:56Speaker 1: I think it's gonna blow any puzzle toy out the water.
- 2:03:00Speaker 1: Um Um. I love it. It's the best thing I
- 2:03:03Speaker 1: ever created. Man. Um, I gotta get guy his credit.
- 2:03:07Speaker 1: It wasn't for him, then this thing would have never
- 2:03:09Speaker 1: been uh in existence. Um. Always tell people I borrowed
- 2:03:13Speaker 1: it from God, prayed and asking forward and then he
- 2:03:15Speaker 1: let me borrow it. So I'm showing the world what's
- 2:03:18Speaker 1: your what's your education background on this U that led
- 2:03:21Speaker 1: you to this? Do you did you go to college
- 2:03:24Speaker 1: or what? What's your background? Technically? No, I'm seeing that's
- 2:03:26Speaker 1: that's the thing. My my gift was was always creativity
- 2:03:30Speaker 1: as a kid, as a youth growing up, I was
- 2:03:33Speaker 1: that kid, right, So my mom used to buy me
- 2:03:35Speaker 1: Christmas toys, right, I don't care what she bought me.
- 2:03:38Speaker 1: I always took her apart. I mean, I just told
- 2:03:41Speaker 1: him myself, I don't even know this about this. I'm
- 2:03:43Speaker 1: girl now, but mom, sorry, but all the toys she
- 2:03:46Speaker 1: ever bought me, I always took him apart. I was
- 2:03:48Speaker 1: always interested in the way toys worked. So my gift
- 2:03:54Speaker 1: has always been creativity and invent My background in education
- 2:03:57Speaker 1: was applied science. But no, this has nothing to do
- 2:04:01Speaker 1: with sciences. This engineering and UH and the mechanics. Well,
- 2:04:08Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a it's a fun movie that's
- 2:04:10Speaker 1: on Netflix right now. Only if you called it called
- 2:04:12Speaker 1: a jingle jangle. The Christmas story Christmas Journey UH is
- 2:04:16Speaker 1: about a black inventor. You know, if you haven't watched it,
- 2:04:19Speaker 1: please watch it. You're gonna get get a big kick
- 2:04:21Speaker 1: out of it. It's just kind of reminds me of you,
- 2:04:23Speaker 1: a talented young man who has skills and UH and
- 2:04:27Speaker 1: and changing it is going to change the world. There's
- 2:04:29Speaker 1: no doubt in my mind that you're going to be
- 2:04:30Speaker 1: successful at what you do. There's no doubt in my
- 2:04:33Speaker 1: mind that this is a fantastic UH toy that you've created.
- 2:04:37Speaker 1: We call it a toy, but it's beyond being a toy.
- 2:04:39Speaker 1: It's it's a it's a it's enhances your memory, enhances
- 2:04:42Speaker 1: your critical thinking, which is good for anything. I remember
- 2:04:45Speaker 1: when I was in the band. By being in the band,
- 2:04:47Speaker 1: it always helped my memory by being playing an instrument.
- 2:04:51Speaker 1: And I feel that by playing their toy, it can
- 2:04:53Speaker 1: help your memory, your decision makers, this decision maker, and
- 2:04:56Speaker 1: more importantly, it can test your i Q and get
- 2:04:59Speaker 1: it up there. And that's what we're all trying to
- 2:05:01Speaker 1: do it nowadays, especially within the black community, but just
- 2:05:03Speaker 1: towards not strictly for the black community, it's for the
- 2:05:06Speaker 1: community general. And I'm gonna thank you for coming on
- 2:05:08Speaker 1: my show. Corey. I appreciate that. I appreciate you having me.
- 2:05:11Speaker 1: Well guess what, we're gonna come back, because we're gonna
- 2:05:13Speaker 1: get that book out of here and I'm gonna read
- 2:05:15Speaker 1: it and I we're gonna first in January. We're gonna
- 2:05:17Speaker 1: change some lives in the first quarters, all right with you?
- 2:05:20Speaker 1: Sounds like they're playing to me. Alright, thank you man,
- 2:05:22Speaker 1: Stay stay warm if you can. And Wayne Michigan, I
- 2:05:27Speaker 1: don't know that. You gotta tell me. I've been up
- 2:05:30Speaker 1: there when it's been cold. Okay, Just you just like
- 2:05:34Speaker 1: you're just a water throw from all Canada, so I
- 2:05:37Speaker 1: know exactly where you at. But thank you for coming
- 2:05:40Speaker 1: on the show. Okay, no problem. I appreciate If you
- 2:05:43Speaker 1: want to hear more money Baking conversations and the police interviews. Please.
- 2:05:46Speaker 1: If you want to hear more money make conversation interviews,
- 2:05:48Speaker 1: please go to Money Making Conversation dot com. I'm gonna
- 2:05:50Speaker 1: Sean McDonald, I'm your host. Thank you. In mid season
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