[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to Circle of Greatness. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host, Nia Maya Davis, and I am so excited about today's episode. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm about to bring before you wanted a leading authorities in the world. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm talking about consultant. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm talking about entrepreneur. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm talking about venture firm owner.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm talking about best selling author and probably wanted a most requested speakers in the world and has wanted the most polarized and social media that's going to get you to think. [SPEAKER_02]: about leveling up, think about exiting your business, and think about building it the right way the first time. [SPEAKER_02]: Without further ado, my God, Lucy, what's up, man? [SPEAKER_02]: We here, man. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for coming. [SPEAKER_02]: Finally, yeah, finally we here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Kelly, thank you to Kelly and your team, Courtney, and then making the happen, man. [SPEAKER_02]: So, how you been, bro? [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, look, I should tell you, hang on to Kelly because she's persistent. [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, listen, we got to be. [SPEAKER_02]: You don't believe this, that's the only way we know, man. [SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, I think you're welcome. [SPEAKER_02]: You coming in, man. [SPEAKER_02]: We got to, [SPEAKER_02]: We got a great general friend.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, Lamar raved about just how amazing you are, just a great businessman. [SPEAKER_02]: How important is environment and a right connections? [SPEAKER_00]: Sure. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you went right in there. [SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about environment first. [SPEAKER_00]: My experience has been that [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't change your environment, your environment is going to change you. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think a lot of, it's especially true today, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because there's certain businesses that you can't make happen unless you in the right environment. [SPEAKER_00]: And so there's somebody watching this who's wondering why they're not succeeding, why they're not getting the results that they know they capable of getting. [SPEAKER_00]: And they think it's them, sometimes that's the case. [SPEAKER_00]: But my experience has been that often it's also you in the wrong environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're not in an environment that nurtures growth, that identifies opportunity, that partners with people, then you're going to immediately hit ceilings around what you're able to do. [SPEAKER_00]: And just if there's one thing you've got to do when it comes to being in the right environment, you have the right to be selfish. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: So when you feel cold to do something, you feel cold to greatness.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to go to the place where that greatness is going to be able to make manifest. [SPEAKER_00]: And not every place in the world can bring the best out of you. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a fact. [SPEAKER_02]: I tell people all the time. [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, some of you are like a rose in a Dubai desert. [SPEAKER_02]: No matter what you do, you won't grow because the environment is in conducive to growth. [SPEAKER_02]: That's a fact. [SPEAKER_02]: You're not going to grow there.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a fact. [SPEAKER_02]: So I think as we sell people like your environment is going to make you or break you. [SPEAKER_02]: You're not critical. [SPEAKER_00]: I can tell you my own personal experience because I know this because I've experienced it is like, you also have to be in an environment where wealth is allowed. [UNKNOWN]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: You have to be in an environment where wealth is encouraged. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's not true for every environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's some places where the minute you begin to do well, the people who know you will start to act different around you. [SPEAKER_00]: They'll start talking about you behind your back. [SPEAKER_00]: And those places are also very dangerous because those people tend to want to drag you down. [SPEAKER_00]: misery loves company, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing about growth, the thing about greatness, the thing about pursuing your purpose is you have to make sure you're in the space where people around you don't see you being crazy as an outlier. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, in fact, they encourage it. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: They look at you wanting to do big things and they say, that's not big enough. [SPEAKER_00]: So, you're analogy about the rosin, the Dubai desert.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know how many people watching this, you know, I lived in Dubai. [SPEAKER_00]: I can tell you when that heat comes, it's hard. [SPEAKER_00]: Circuit July is over. [SPEAKER_00]: Man, it's, it's, it's, it's next level. [SPEAKER_02]: Bro, for some reason that I don't know why this was, [SPEAKER_02]: over five, six years ago. [SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to do bar door and ramen that in July. [SPEAKER_01]: Why did you do that? [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: You would, let me guess. [SPEAKER_01]: That's why why the tickets were cheap. [SPEAKER_01]: I was about to say. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, that's a rookie era. [SPEAKER_02]: I had no clue. [SPEAKER_02]: Like I'm like, you know, it was. [SPEAKER_02]: Blistering. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes sir. [SPEAKER_02]: You could cook a steak on a fry ground in the family. [SPEAKER_00]: That's a fact. [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't believe it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to hop from building to building just in search of the aircon. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think a lot of people don't understand that heat. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like a swarm of bees attacking you at once. [SPEAKER_00]: The only way I can explain it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not it's not just that it's hot. [SPEAKER_00]: It's that it's hot. [SPEAKER_00]: It's humid and it assaults you. [SPEAKER_00]: So you just step into the sun and you feel the heat everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: You inhale and your lungs heat up because that's all you're breathing in. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just heat. [SPEAKER_00]: Do buy heat, man. [SPEAKER_00]: That middle eastern heat in the middle of the year. [SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you, that'll get your mother-in-law to love you. [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, listen to me, bro. [SPEAKER_02]: It was crazy. [SPEAKER_02]: I literally cannot believe it. [SPEAKER_02]: Man, you, so you spoke at, man, I went a few years ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: I spoke, see me, I went with a few buddies and they had a man. [SPEAKER_02]: I missed the meat and we're robber, cement for whatever. [SPEAKER_02]: I was with my brothers, earned your leisure and I didn't have my hotel bench because I got there late, so I missed that meat and which bothers me. [SPEAKER_02]: But I went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in this particular year. [SPEAKER_02]: I knew you spoke there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the things I know about them, they're always talking about just the future. [SPEAKER_02]: What's next, right? [SPEAKER_02]: What do you see? [SPEAKER_02]: And I want to ask two parts. [SPEAKER_02]: So I want the Davos, but prior to that, we were in [SPEAKER_02]: We were in Ghana. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's when they told me, yo, you need to come with me to a dabble. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm like, bad, I'm there. [SPEAKER_02]: And I met another gentleman.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I forgot his name. [SPEAKER_02]: But he owns like a oil rig in the middle of the ocean. [SPEAKER_02]: They said he's like a billionaire. [SPEAKER_02]: I got to get you his name. [SPEAKER_00]: But based in Ghana. [SPEAKER_02]: based in God. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: He's based in a, he's in a Nigeria. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: And he said, listen man, you could bump your head and build a multi-million dollar business and do everything wrong in Africa.
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you believe is the next biggest thing in Africa right now? [SPEAKER_02]: Because I know you're, you're investing in immersion found, you're investing in business businesses like AI's right now. [SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm. [SPEAKER_02]: a private foreseeable future, but what do you see ten years from down to semi need to really be looking into today? [SPEAKER_00]: It's a good question.
[SPEAKER_00]: So from an African perspective, you know, and it's difficult to explain it for people who haven't been, but Africa still has very foundational things that we're solving. [SPEAKER_00]: So I was in Ghana for instance, before I came here, and three weeks ago I was in Zimbabwe, and between Ghana and Zimbabwe I was in three other countries.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I get to see Africa from the vantage point of the globe, [SPEAKER_00]: And Africa still has like very simple, you know, base issues we've got to solve. [SPEAKER_00]: So we've got to solve agriculture at scale delivered affordably into the household. [SPEAKER_00]: We've got to solve building a middle class and using financial services to drive middle class. [SPEAKER_00]: So I think the lending rate here in the US is what, circa four percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think maybe you could borrow it the bank depends. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there are countries in Africa where you're getting a corporate lending rate at twenty four percent. [SPEAKER_00]: By the time you're trying to build a home, you're getting it in APRs for credit cards. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's, and by the way, that's on asset back finance, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're not, you're not even moving into personal loans. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So personal loans will be at userless rates. [SPEAKER_00]: electricity. [SPEAKER_00]: We still got to solve the electricity problem. [SPEAKER_00]: I saw I've got this because we're busy raising an energy fund at the moment. [SPEAKER_00]: I've got this graph that I look at that shows percentage access to electricity by African countries.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like the North African countries kind of have their act together. [SPEAKER_00]: So Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, where rhyme from is an outlier. [SPEAKER_00]: And then in the middle, particularly when you get to Central Africa, West Africa, in some of those countries, you have access to electricity rates lower than twenty percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason I'm mentioning this is because when I come here, I hear people talking about very advanced industries, artificial intelligence, et cetera, and those are great, but where I'm from, it's just like, let's just get the basic stuff to work and work and live. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's one of the changes we've had to make in the firm.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were like, well, [SPEAKER_00]: Where are the industries that are going to grow, going to grow reliably, and are going to grow into the foreseeable future? [SPEAKER_00]: That's why Trump just did a deal with Rwanda and Congo, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's Congo is the wealthiest country in the world, banan when you consider the amount of minerals under the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can mine the Congo for the next three hundred years, and they still will not be able to take everything out of the land of Congo. [SPEAKER_00]: It is an unbelievably wealthy country. [SPEAKER_00]: But what does it need? [SPEAKER_00]: It needs road, rail, infrastructure, ports, banks, housing for the middle class, reliable electricity.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you are thinking about getting into Africa, you've got to be thinking about building as I like to call it real businesses for real people. [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas here it's a lot of light. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to write an API plug it into something. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to help you double your revenues or I'm from it's build something real and the customers will come. [SPEAKER_00]: But your friend was absolutely right.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you find the right industry, your sneeze and make money. [SPEAKER_02]: And he said, I'm like, bro, he's like, I got to oil you rig in the middle of Nigeria. [SPEAKER_02]: There's just pregnant. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, bro, he's like, you need to come over here. [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm beyond us. [SPEAKER_02]: I went, but they scared me. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's so bad over here. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm like, yo, I'm like, let me get out of here.
[SPEAKER_02]: They make you seem like, let me, they won't kill you. [SPEAKER_00]: You said something about which I feel very passionately. [SPEAKER_00]: That's why I spent so much of my time traveling the world evangelizing Africa. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to say three things very quickly. [SPEAKER_00]: First, [SPEAKER_00]: It should be a birthright, but a human responsibility for every black person or every person of African descent, anywhere in the world to go to Africa.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if people don't remember anything else, I say, this is really important. [SPEAKER_00]: Because what's been done in the world over the past hundred and fifty years [SPEAKER_00]: is the black economy has been convinced that other black economies won't be like it. [SPEAKER_00]: I was looking at the numbers are the other day. [SPEAKER_00]: The black economy in the US is one point five trillion dollars. [SPEAKER_00]: One point five trillion dollars.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's the amount of money that makes it's where around, eight hundred billion or one point five trillion. [SPEAKER_00]: One of these two. [SPEAKER_00]: But it's a lot of money. [SPEAKER_00]: And in my mind, I'm going, we're all of these black people putting their money, right? [SPEAKER_00]: The assets you could buy and the value you could get for those assets.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you took a little bit of that money and you're investing it into the continent, [SPEAKER_00]: game-changing. [SPEAKER_00]: And the differences every dollar you invest in the continent invested correctly actually changes a life. [SPEAKER_00]: Because unemployment rates are so high. [SPEAKER_00]: There are countries where the unemployment rates are so high that if you are opening a business and an establishment, the number of people who apply for that job.
[SPEAKER_00]: is no way near what you would have imagined. [SPEAKER_00]: Here, you can have a job out for a couple of weeks, and people don't want it, they don't want it. [SPEAKER_00]: So the point I make is you can make a real difference in Africa. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's the first point I want to make. [SPEAKER_00]: The second point I want to make is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I took the opportunity to be on your podcast, because I understand the influence that you have, and I think it's really important for black people in the United States to know [SPEAKER_00]: that Africa is not a dangerous place where you can't travel and you can't not listen. [SPEAKER_00]: everywhere in the world. [SPEAKER_00]: There are people who are going to take a chance.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what you want is to have reliable people, good partners that you can work with, who will make sure that your interests are taken care of. [SPEAKER_00]: So first travel the continent, necessary. [SPEAKER_00]: And in a couple of places, you've got to go. [SPEAKER_00]: You've got to go see the guerrillas on the road. [SPEAKER_00]: guerrillas in Rwanda. [SPEAKER_02]: I got to go see. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I saw my homies do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just saw it like Louis Hamilton just went. [SPEAKER_00]: So you've got to go see the you've got to go go to the gorillas. [SPEAKER_00]: If you go north, you've obviously got to go to to the permits in Egypt. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: You have to go to the Atlantic sea board Cape Town. [SPEAKER_00]: You have to see the beauty of kind of with a Pacific and the Atlantic connect on in Cape Town. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's where the reason is called the Cape of Good Hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: is because, you know, when the Europeans, which were traveling from Europe coming to the Americas, they stopped right in the middle in Cape Town. [SPEAKER_00]: And so you catch a lot of history of the world. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like when I went there, I saw a heavily white Africans, they call it. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's a big part of it. [SPEAKER_01]: Cape Town is a, is that the European peace that you're, refers to?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: Cape Town also has a very complex history because it was the, it was the node into South Africa. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And, and, and in part, the node into many parts of South Africa that Europeans kind of came through, right? [SPEAKER_00]: the first Dutch settler, Jan von Rebek, settles in Cape Town, sixteenth, fifty-two. [SPEAKER_00]: That's before the Gettysburg address here. [SPEAKER_00]: It's before the proclamation of independence here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Cape Town is at a very long complex history. [SPEAKER_00]: But you've got to go to Cape Town. [SPEAKER_00]: You've got to go to Cape Town. [SPEAKER_00]: You've got to go to Namibia. [SPEAKER_00]: Beautiful, beautiful, maybe a, say that part again. [SPEAKER_00]: Namibia, okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Donald Trump called it Nambia. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Then Namibians were pissed. [SPEAKER_00]: That's all say anything. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, look, I want to come back.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want my visa cancel. [SPEAKER_00]: So we love you Donald. [SPEAKER_00]: But, Tom, when you, there's this beautiful place in Namibia called Socrates Mund where you have the desert, meeting the ocean. [UNKNOWN]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think you see anything like this anywhere else in the world, bomb maybe the Middle East or Dubai. [SPEAKER_00]: So all of these are places that you have to travel in. [SPEAKER_00]: What I say to people is, just do one trip a year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just one trip a year. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, today from Delta, you can kind of fly anywhere, literally. [SPEAKER_01]: Get in a flight. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's here for myself. [SPEAKER_00]: One out of ten. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm on that flight every six weeks, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, it's, listen, if you and I do nothing else after this, we have to be intentional about connecting the continent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: to the diaspora and the diaspora to the continent. [SPEAKER_00]: So I said to Lamar, I was like, dude, your event is amazing. [SPEAKER_00]: Love it. [SPEAKER_00]: Then he told me about what Raphael is doing in the UK said, Raphael I'm coming. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I said to him, but I've got two conditions. [SPEAKER_00]: First condition is you make the state comfortable. [SPEAKER_00]: Second condition is you have to come to my part of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if we can demystify it in our heads, [SPEAKER_00]: Man, it'll be a game changer. [SPEAKER_02]: We could get thousands of people over there. [SPEAKER_00]: It'd be a game changer. [SPEAKER_00]: Your business, the services that you offer, the number of small and medium sized businesses that need the help that you can offer. [SPEAKER_00]: I said the same thing to Lamar.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, man, you're doing well, but you've got to be able to come and offer this in our part of the world. [SPEAKER_02]: Speaking of Africa, I gotta ask you a question. [SPEAKER_02]: So you met Nelson Mandela. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: And you really share how that was one of the most influential leaders ever. [SPEAKER_02]: True story. [SPEAKER_02]: How did that moment shape your life?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what did you take from that to be the man you are today? [SPEAKER_02]: Like, how was that experience? [SPEAKER_02]: And I know you meet important people all the time, but that's like, it's a legend. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: That's a good point. [SPEAKER_00]: So the first thing I would say is that [SPEAKER_00]: But maybe once in a generation, there are some people who can change the laws of physics. [SPEAKER_00]: Mandela was like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, if he walked into the room, a temperature dropped by one or two degrees. [SPEAKER_00]: Even if you didn't see him, you could just feel it. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh, something just changed. [SPEAKER_00]: He carried something special about him. [SPEAKER_00]: But the second thing is, a lot of people talk about them, out of time, he spent in prison. [SPEAKER_00]: And I can recognize why that's something worth noting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you what for me is the part about his life that really was like, wow, is that, first, he was a lawyer before he gets arrested. [SPEAKER_00]: So before he gives off his life into the struggle for the liberation of black people in South Africa, he's a professional. [SPEAKER_00]: At a time, a date in an age, when there weren't a lot of professionals going around who were of color, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because what the apartheid system was doing was it was implemented to keep as many black people from progressing into their full potential as possible. [SPEAKER_00]: It was an intentional system. [SPEAKER_00]: So just stuff like the education system. [SPEAKER_00]: There was a stream of education for black people, a stream of education for, as they called them non-whites, and then a stream of education for white people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Mandiba broke through all of that, becomes a lawyer. [SPEAKER_00]: He feels the calling, he joins the political party, the ANC, and he begins to lead for the liberation of his people. [SPEAKER_00]: Then he gets arrested. [SPEAKER_00]: And tell you an interesting story. [SPEAKER_00]: So many years ago, I got to share the stage with a guy called George Bezos. [SPEAKER_00]: He's not. [SPEAKER_00]: But George was Nelson Mandela's lawyer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: So George tells me the story backstage. [SPEAKER_00]: He says, they've tried the case now. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's almost certain Nelson Mandela's going to get given the death penalty. [SPEAKER_00]: Because again, that's a part of the story, people don't know, right? [SPEAKER_00]: The apartheid government had the death penalty. [SPEAKER_00]: We don't have it in South Africa today, but they did, and they would kill people, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for the crime that Madiba had committed, the statute said death penalty. [SPEAKER_00]: And so they're sitting, you know, and he's sitting with him, and they're talking, and Madiba's like, I'm ready. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm ready. [UNKNOWN]: Wow. [SPEAKER_00]: And then they find him guilty. [SPEAKER_00]: And they are adjourned for sentencing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the period of adjourning for sentencing, as you know, before you get sentenced, you get asked, do you have anything last you want to say? [SPEAKER_00]: And Madiba had written a speech about what he wanted to say. [SPEAKER_00]: Wow. [SPEAKER_00]: So George says, takes the speech and he reads it. [SPEAKER_00]: And the speech says, it says a few things, but it goes on to say, I have fought against black domination, and I've fought against white domination.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've cherished the idea of a free and fester of Africa for which all races can live. [SPEAKER_00]: He says, in the speech, it is an idea for which I hope to live. [SPEAKER_00]: But if necessary, it is an idea for which I'm prepared to die. [SPEAKER_00]: George Bezos tells the story. [SPEAKER_00]: He says, when Mandela had written this, the speech, it said, it is an idea for which I hope to live.
[SPEAKER_00]: But my Lord, speaking to the judge, it is an idea for which I'm prepared to die. [SPEAKER_00]: So George Bezos said, I asked him to add three words, but if needs be. [SPEAKER_00]: And he said, just adding those words changed the texture of the speech. [SPEAKER_00]: Because now he got to throw it back at the judge. [SPEAKER_00]: We're like, yo, this is what I stand for. [SPEAKER_00]: This is what I'm about. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm about it all the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you need to kill me, then so be it. [SPEAKER_00]: Right? [SPEAKER_00]: And I tell you why for me that stands out. [SPEAKER_00]: Most people, most people, love the idea of who they think they are. [SPEAKER_00]: Most people, you see it a lot with entrepreneurs, come up with an idea, business a deck, they start pitching it to one or two people, start trying to raise some money, start trying to do stuff until life happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when the life happens, the person's true character shows. [SPEAKER_00]: And for me, [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing symbolizes life happening more than you standing there looking at a judge knowing full well he might sentence you to death. [SPEAKER_00]: That's life happening on the ultimate and to stand there and still [SPEAKER_00]: than on business. [SPEAKER_00]: Still stand on business. [SPEAKER_00]: For me, I hear the twenty-seven years, and I don't want to be a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nineteen years on the island of Robin Island. [SPEAKER_00]: I've been to his prison cell. [SPEAKER_00]: Nineteen years on the island eight years on a prison on mainland in South Africa. [SPEAKER_00]: I get the quarter century spent in the prison. [SPEAKER_00]: I get the lost marriage, because a lot of us also don't talk about that as a father, as a married man, [SPEAKER_00]: Listen, wild horses couldn't drag me away from my kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how you'd do it for twenty-seven years. [SPEAKER_00]: You know you have a little girl growing up and she grows up to be a little girl and then a teenager and then a full woman and you have a wife and you have a boy and the boy grows up to be a man. [SPEAKER_00]: How do you miss all that? [SPEAKER_00]: To stand on business and still not give up on your beliefs?
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, I don't know about you but [SPEAKER_00]: That for me, that's the mark of the men's character. [SPEAKER_00]: So what I hope to draw from that story is that when not if, because none of us are immune for it, when life happens to me, I've got to have the ability to stand on business. [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody is a superhero until life happens. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's good. [SPEAKER_02]: Speaking of that, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And that's actually perfect for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Speaking of that, in the end, twenty twenty you talked about nearly going bankrupt. [SPEAKER_02]: And I feel as though, of course, it's not Nelson Mandela. [SPEAKER_00]: My dad did it for me. [SPEAKER_02]: My dad did it for thirty two years in prison. [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't really want to go about your upbringing because we all know this story. [SPEAKER_00]: Did you just see your dad to thirty two years in prison? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, for murder or somebody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Need that there about six years ago, probably. [SPEAKER_02]: Pause. [SPEAKER_02]: Rewind. [SPEAKER_02]: What? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, my dad. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm from Westfield. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I got up, you know. [SPEAKER_02]: Look, you must know it. [SPEAKER_00]: That's the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_02]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_02]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_02]: And the summer we get in class.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_00]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_00]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_00]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_00]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_00]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_00]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_00]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_00]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_00]: And the summer we get in class.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_02]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_02]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_02]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_02]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_02]: And the summer we get in class. [SPEAKER_02]: Me and Will Smith got some commonalities, so Will and I went to the same high school. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, we both got kicked out of the high school.
[SPEAKER_02]: Will and I both got a street named after us in West Philly. [SPEAKER_02]: I got my name first. [SPEAKER_02]: He just got his name true. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's true.
[SPEAKER_02]: But a community work we now served over like [SPEAKER_02]: probably over a million people through philanthropic efforts that were meant to the city name the street after me though street that I grew up well done bro I appreciate that so yeah those are two little fun facts about well and but yeah so hold on I know this is the interview the other way but I'm a conversation as well for give me how did you what what were the circumstances surrounding your dad murdering somebody yeah
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, my mom and quite tell me, my dad was like a gangster, like he's selling, you know, heroin, dope, like he, my dad whole face was like, [SPEAKER_02]: He's a chemist, you know, cooking up drugs. [SPEAKER_02]: So every time I saw, all his hands are all white-specked all over because the kitchen blew up that he was cooking up the dope in. [SPEAKER_02]: So he says he didn't murder the person of, you know, most people who do criminal things say they didn't do anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if it's true or not true, but [SPEAKER_02]: He was a terrorist. [SPEAKER_02]: He was about business. [SPEAKER_02]: He didn't care. [SPEAKER_02]: He got caught evidently and spent three died in prison. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's why I tell a lot of these young men and young women. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, especially, you know, you're a one decision away from the life you want or the life you don't want to treat. [SPEAKER_02]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_02]: You will, I'm preaching like, thirty two years in prison. [SPEAKER_02]: It's hard for me. [SPEAKER_02]: I got everything I wanted my house. [SPEAKER_02]: It's hard for me to stay in my house for two, three days straight. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how anybody opted into years and years in prison. [SPEAKER_00]: How, so you don't have to answer this, but forgive me for asking it. [SPEAKER_00]: So how did you learn to be a man if Dad wasn't wrong?
[SPEAKER_02]: Man, I think I'm still learning. [SPEAKER_02]: I grew up with a stepfather that didn't really do a good job, so I didn't really learn nothing from him. [SPEAKER_02]: But I'll say, my mom and grandma, you saw my mom, she just left. [SPEAKER_02]: It took such a good care of me, man, where, like, [SPEAKER_02]: I don't got that up, bring where, oh, we weren't eating, no heat in the, like, everything was good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I was just being a knucklehead on purpose, but they took such a good care of me that I didn't even have a void that I miss my father. [SPEAKER_02]: So I am learning how to be a man now. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I got mentors now and that I call what about this? [SPEAKER_02]: What about, like, I'm literally learning. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm learning now.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm learning how to be a father right now from trial and error from seeing because I never had one that really that I could look up to that guided me. [SPEAKER_02]: So have you got boys? [SPEAKER_02]: I got one son. [SPEAKER_02]: He's two. [SPEAKER_00]: So you are having two. [SPEAKER_00]: Excuse me. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of like you're learning to be a dad while being a dad. [SPEAKER_02]: Literally learning. [SPEAKER_02]: And I've come to learn.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, I told you before I got married, my wife already had a daughter. [SPEAKER_02]: She was born when I got married. [SPEAKER_02]: We didn't get married for six years ago. [SPEAKER_02]: I was in a nursery in one of the reasons why I never really saw a successful marriage. [SPEAKER_02]: Where we from? [SPEAKER_02]: They say, yo, go get married. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, when you get married, that's when you really get the chicks broke. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, huh?
[SPEAKER_02]: So you tell me, I got like, it was just weird at it. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, where I'm from, that's how to eat. [SPEAKER_02]: So I say, yo, I'm not gonna rush and get in this and not do it the right way. [SPEAKER_02]: So I wanted to wait until I felt like it was the right time. [SPEAKER_02]: But when I've come to learn, I was raising my daughter, my wife's daughter, which is my daughter. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think I did that great of a job.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I didn't really do great. [SPEAKER_02]: Now in retrospect, I realized I was teaching her, but she was learning a lot of these things. [SPEAKER_02]: So she's buying her own, she's getting her new apartment, she's about to move out, getting her new bans, she's up full-time entrepreneur, like she's, so she was actually paying attention, which I'm excited about. [SPEAKER_02]: That's incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'll say all that to say, now I got my three year old, my four year old, my five year old, my two months old. [SPEAKER_02]: They're all different. [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know kids were different. [SPEAKER_02]: Like you got to talk to one differently. [SPEAKER_02]: You got to communicate. [SPEAKER_02]: Like I could say one thing on one and it means nothing. [SPEAKER_02]: It's true.
[SPEAKER_02]: Another one that means so I'm literally learning how to balance, bother her, husband, like it's tough, but I'm figuring it out though. [SPEAKER_00]: And do you [SPEAKER_00]: How do I ask this? [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have a sense of any toxic traits you have because of what you might have lacked growing up or what you might have been overexposed to? [SPEAKER_00]: Toxic traits. [SPEAKER_00]: So are you overly aggressive? [SPEAKER_00]: Are you controlling? [SPEAKER_02]: I'm tough, man.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm tough. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm a straight shooter. [SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_02]: It's not not focused much on fillings. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm focused a lot on the result. [SPEAKER_02]: It's best to be in business. [SPEAKER_02]: I know you talked about it. [SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes you just gotta be cut. [SPEAKER_02]: You gotta do it. [SPEAKER_00]: You gotta do it. [SPEAKER_02]: You gotta do it. [SPEAKER_02]: You gotta do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I also care too, but I'm trying to get a result. [SPEAKER_02]: Whether with my family, whether with our business, whether I'm trying to move things forward. [SPEAKER_02]: But toxic traits. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, my wife will probably have to answer them like, I'm sure. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure she might have something to say. [SPEAKER_02]: She said I'm rough though. [SPEAKER_02]: She says, it's tough being with me.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I mean, in terms of, you know, we demand a lot. [SPEAKER_00]: So last question on this. [SPEAKER_00]: So your dad died in prison. [SPEAKER_02]: Yep, in prison. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have a memory of ever seeing your dad not in prison? [SPEAKER_02]: Never. [SPEAKER_02]: My memory. [SPEAKER_02]: Zero memory. [SPEAKER_02]: My God. [SPEAKER_02]: Only memory I got to see him in the prison. [SPEAKER_02]: We go into the vending machine.
[SPEAKER_02]: Ordering the little stuff out of the vending machine. [SPEAKER_02]: I have no memory. [SPEAKER_02]: I do have a picture that my mom gave me of where we're hanging out, but I don't remember not none of it. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's why I want to be present in my children's lives now. [SPEAKER_02]: Wow. [UNKNOWN]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Wow. [SPEAKER_00]: I lost my father when I was thirteen. [SPEAKER_00]: He was murdered. [SPEAKER_00]: Wow, sorry to hear that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a funny thing. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's, and thirteen is such an interesting time right because it's kind of the time when a boy becomes a man. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And so, a lot of what you need to model. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just not there. [SPEAKER_00]: That's why I'm asking these questions because then I'm like, so, how did you learn what masculinity is? [SPEAKER_00]: How did you learn how to draw boundaries?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's stuff, you know, I don't know kind of where you sit on this, but I watch a lot of the contents on social media and I'm just like, who came up with this bullshit? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: And my mom will let me do certain things, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Ain't no plan with dolls, ain't no. [SPEAKER_02]: walking in my shoes and we did just certain stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: I like your mom. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's just certain stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: She's just not standing by.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not going to do this. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, so I'm doing the same thing for my children and certain things you can't do in our household. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, and this is what I learned from her. [SPEAKER_00]: And you keep saying you're from West Philadelphia. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, West Philadelphia. [SPEAKER_01]: Is that to say that different parts of Philadelphia have different? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: So you got West Philadelphia.
[SPEAKER_01]: You got South Philadelphia. [SPEAKER_02]: West, North, South. [SPEAKER_00]: I think different in terms of how people experience them. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, they're all, they just different ghettos. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: You're just in a different ghettos. [SPEAKER_02]: You're in a North ghettos. [SPEAKER_02]: You're in a South ghettos. [SPEAKER_02]: You're in a West, they all get, now they getting better. [SPEAKER_02]: But twenty years, you got good parts of West Philly.
[SPEAKER_02]: I lived in a good part and I also lived in a bad part. [SPEAKER_02]: You got good parts of South Philly. [SPEAKER_02]: South Philly is downtown by the stadium, but then you got bad parts of South Philly. [SPEAKER_02]: So every part got a good and got a bad. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm almost done. [SPEAKER_00]: What is it like being black in America? [SPEAKER_02]: It's a good question. [SPEAKER_02]: What is it like being black in America?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think being black in America [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's different for everybody based on where you're at, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Where you're at, fair point to, you know, with economics, where you, like when you win a hood and the trenches is rough, man. [SPEAKER_02]: You try to figure out how you gonna keep your lights on, you try to figure out, it's certain things you try to figure out.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanna say it's tough, because where we from black, you don't have no mentor, like for you, like you were like perplexed, like you're gonna have your dad, that crap is normal. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I can't name all the people I grew up with most of them that had no dad, like in their life, like, or most households, most households, from where I grew up, you never had both parents in the house.
[SPEAKER_02]: You may don't have, you may have a dad, but there's not, like, my wife, she haven't talked to her that in [SPEAKER_02]: Ten years, it's not even, that crap is normal where we fall. [SPEAKER_02]: It's not no, so it's not, when you say dead in jail, that crap is normal. [SPEAKER_00]: You understand the kind of intergenerational problems that that causes, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Sure. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because then you breed a generation that breeds a generation that thinks that's normal. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: And so, and that's why, you know, you talked about a son earlier about [SPEAKER_02]: mentioned something, but at my lab, I remember when we had him speak at a venue, he talked about every now and again, his one person that comes and changes generations. [SPEAKER_02]: That's my hopes is that's going to be me. [SPEAKER_02]: That's that's you and it's good.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm trying to be less of a victim and be a victor. [SPEAKER_02]: And here's how we grew up, but here's how y'all need to grow up. [SPEAKER_02]: Like my intentions, people like your bro, why you keep having all these kids? [SPEAKER_02]: I actually got a plan. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm like, okay, you may have six or seven kids. [SPEAKER_02]: My goal is to have [SPEAKER_02]: Forty-fifty grandkids, forty years from now sitting at the table and remembered that I did this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I put insurance on y'all. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, I'm not really a great fan of Trump. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm not big in the politics, right? [SPEAKER_02]: His kids can run a country, effects. [SPEAKER_02]: Ivanka could go run a country. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm trying to be like, yo, my kids in position to go run something. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's my responsibility to help them go do that. [SPEAKER_02]: That's so surreal. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what that is real. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm just trying to I learned [SPEAKER_02]: You're going to complain about, or you're going to do, like, how long are you going to talk about? [SPEAKER_02]: People are being, keep talking about, oh my, my dad liked it. [SPEAKER_02]: How long are you going to be a victim mentality? [SPEAKER_02]: Everything wrong, everything going wrong.
[SPEAKER_02]: How long are you, what can, I only focus on what I can control and look to go make the best of it. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, what you said is something I live by this philosophy, right, which is [SPEAKER_00]: your excuses are valid. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the problem. [SPEAKER_00]: The problem is that if you verbalize or write down your excuse, you're actually a hundred percent right. [SPEAKER_00]: You are not lying. [SPEAKER_00]: Your experience is true.
[SPEAKER_00]: You actually had that experience. [SPEAKER_00]: Life isn't fair. [SPEAKER_00]: It's easier for somebody else. [SPEAKER_00]: And all of those things are absolutely valid. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the problem. [SPEAKER_00]: The problem is, because they're valid, you take them to be a sentence on your life. [SPEAKER_00]: And then you think, you know, the rest of your life is just, this is not the trajectory that you've got to follow. [SPEAKER_00]: It's very difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: to go in spite of these things, I'm going to choose a different direction anyway. [SPEAKER_00]: That's very hot. [SPEAKER_00]: So good on you for doing that, man. [SPEAKER_00]: Appreciate it. [SPEAKER_02]: Well done. [SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate it. [SPEAKER_02]: I just honestly don't. [SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of like an entrepreneurship. [SPEAKER_02]: I've been full of time now, fifteen, sixteen years. [SPEAKER_02]: And it was the toughest part.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, when I got fired from my tenth job, I worked at the private airport, I said I'm mentally unemployable. [SPEAKER_02]: So I've never looked at anything that I'm going through really at the tough time because it's a part of the process. [SPEAKER_02]: You're going to go through some stuff that are going to challenge you. [SPEAKER_00]: So I just want to, you know, you know, one of the things I think, and I don't know if you guys have a sense of it here in the US, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But from an outside as perspective, one of the things I observe about the US and set aside [SPEAKER_00]: all the idiosyncrasies and the various different political sides. [SPEAKER_00]: One of the things I observe about the US is, you guys, there is a culture here that it's okay to make it. [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think, I'm not sure how many people are actually aware of that. [SPEAKER_00]: But there are parts of the world where if you make it, you better make sure nobody knows.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: Because it's cloak and dag is coming for you. [SPEAKER_00]: But here, if you make it, you stand up and go, hey, made it. [SPEAKER_00]: Here's my template. [UNKNOWN]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And then people go, okay, cool. [SPEAKER_00]: So how do we copy that? [SPEAKER_00]: It's not to say the society isn't perfect in the risen jealousy, but it's like the level of permission for you to be successful. [SPEAKER_02]: It's very high here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me ask you that though. [SPEAKER_02]: So with that being said, I know I want to do your videos. [SPEAKER_02]: You talked about being cut throat being at how do you balance the two? [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I, I've had to learn to be in a hole. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not my nature. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm an empath by nature. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: But I've also learned that my role as a leader is to be unreasonable. [SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, what am I leading?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like the last night I drove past the residents were Martin Luther King stage, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And I was thinking about his legacy. [SPEAKER_00]: And I happen to share the stage with Ambassador Andrew Young last year. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm believable human being. [SPEAKER_02]: I once had a mayor's ball with him. [SPEAKER_02]: I was one of his guests. [SPEAKER_00]: Isn't he cool? [SPEAKER_02]: Amazing. [SPEAKER_00]: I called him the H. And I see.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's a legend. [SPEAKER_02]: He's a legend. [SPEAKER_02]: Lamar had him up on a poster. [SPEAKER_02]: That's right. [SPEAKER_02]: I saw that. [SPEAKER_02]: I saw that. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to think that I love about him. [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know what your experience was. [SPEAKER_00]: I was only backstage of them for like, you know, a few minutes. [SPEAKER_00]: But he has time for you. [SPEAKER_00]: He looks you in the eye.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's actually listening to what you're saying. [SPEAKER_00]: His brain is not wondering. [SPEAKER_00]: But he said something which I thought was interesting when I met him. [SPEAKER_00]: He said that, um, and it was a bishop T.D. [SPEAKER_00]: Jake's conference last year in Texas. [SPEAKER_00]: He said, he said, um, he said that MLK was ruthlessly unreasonable.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was like, this man wanted what he wanted, the way he wanted it, and he pushed all of us to make it happen. [SPEAKER_00]: And so when we lost him, that's the spirit and a lot of us kind of took on going into the rest of our lives. [SPEAKER_00]: Especially for young people watching this, it's such an important lesson to learn. [SPEAKER_00]: You have the permission to be unreasonable. [SPEAKER_00]: So if you don't fit in, great. [SPEAKER_02]: They don't like you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Great. [SPEAKER_02]: If you're an odd liar, great. [SPEAKER_02]: I'd be feeling bad sometime. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, yeah, they ain't gonna like you. [SPEAKER_02]: They ain't gonna be offended. [SPEAKER_00]: So I say to my team, I say, I would far rather you like the person I'm making you than like me as a person. [SPEAKER_00]: That's good. [SPEAKER_00]: Because what a lot of us in leadership do is we make being liked more important than being potent.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm gonna push you so hard that you're gonna be the best at this. [SPEAKER_00]: I want you to like that person more than I want you to like me. [SPEAKER_00]: Which means I'm willing to sacrifice you, I'm liking me. [SPEAKER_00]: So you can like what I'm doing through you. [SPEAKER_00]: Right? [SPEAKER_00]: And I can do it for the other person, because I do it for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I look at me in the mirror and I go, I'm gonna push you to be the next, the next best version of yourself. [SPEAKER_00]: And this version of you is gonna hate what I'm gonna do to this version of you, for that version of you to happen. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, great, let's go. [SPEAKER_00]: And that push man, listen, we live in the best time it's ever been to be human beings.
[SPEAKER_00]: Never in the history of our species has the world, have the resources, technology, money, connections we have today, [SPEAKER_00]: It's up to us, someone you. [SPEAKER_00]: And the people who are not doing anything without opportunity, who are being lazy, those people are in such big number that those of us who are outliers have a lot of job to do. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm like, let's just get to it. [SPEAKER_02]: That's fine. [SPEAKER_02]: I got a question, too.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was good. [SPEAKER_02]: Kind of lead in there. [SPEAKER_02]: So with you, man, you're talking to CEOs. [SPEAKER_02]: You're looking at companies doing best. [SPEAKER_02]: you know, give your experience advising five hundred, Fortune five hundred and emerging, emerging African founders. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Was this strategic questions that you're asking them to unlock their next level? [SPEAKER_01]: That's a good question.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a good question. [SPEAKER_00]: So let me tell you how I choose my clients. [SPEAKER_00]: I like that. [SPEAKER_00]: Choose your clients. [SPEAKER_00]: I choose my clients by testing how much sameness they are suffering from. [SPEAKER_00]: Sameness. [SPEAKER_02]: Same thing. [SPEAKER_00]: Same year. [SPEAKER_00]: Same results. [SPEAKER_00]: Same. [SPEAKER_00]: Now what's crazy is sameness creeps in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can achieve a five to ten percent growth but still be the same. [SPEAKER_00]: Right? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's incremental. [SPEAKER_00]: So when I look at the clients I want to work with, I go, do they suffer from sameness? [SPEAKER_00]: Because my job is to be the shock factor, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So your question was, you know, what am I advising them to do? [SPEAKER_00]: What are the conversations?
[SPEAKER_00]: The first conversation, the first very big conversation is, you know, we have what we call an inverse possibilities conversation. [SPEAKER_00]: So right down on a piece of paper for me, all the things you think might happen. [SPEAKER_00]: we go through that exercise. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I say, now let's invert that. [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I want us to invert that is because people think possible insofar as they realm of what they can imagine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Inverting that forces your brain to go. [SPEAKER_00]: So here's a good example. [SPEAKER_00]: Say, YouTube channel is at two hundred fifty thousand followers. [SPEAKER_00]: Now go, write down what's possible. [SPEAKER_00]: You go, we might double that. [SPEAKER_00]: I go great. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's invert that. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's make that twelve X. What does a twelve X look like? [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: No, it's not a goal, but it's a think exercise.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, how do we think about it? [SPEAKER_00]: So that's the first thing. [SPEAKER_00]: The second thing is a big part of my job is to communicate to my clients, not where they are, but where the world is going. [SPEAKER_00]: You know this because you work with entrepreneurs. [SPEAKER_00]: Entrepreneurs are like this, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So they have their business, their problem, their solution, their industry. [SPEAKER_00]: That's what they know, that's what they do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so my job is to go, let's do this a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: What else is out there? [SPEAKER_00]: Now, as entrepreneurs you and I, we naturally do this, naturally. [SPEAKER_00]: Like you naturally follow a certain channel, social media or read a certain kind of book or be involved in a certain kind of conversation, [SPEAKER_00]: But that's how you're wired. [SPEAKER_00]: But a lot of us entrepreneurs don't get is that's not actually how most people are wired.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people shop at the same grocery store. [SPEAKER_00]: They go to the same gym. [SPEAKER_00]: They live in the same suburbs. [SPEAKER_00]: They have friends with the same people they went to school with. [SPEAKER_00]: So that test of sameness for them is not a curse. [SPEAKER_00]: It's who they are. [SPEAKER_00]: So when you come into their lives and you go, yo, the reason you're not achieving these results is because you're addicted to sameness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow. [SPEAKER_00]: And sameness is like a drug. [SPEAKER_00]: You inject it often enough. [SPEAKER_00]: You don't even know you're addicted to it anymore. [SPEAKER_00]: So what happens is when the opportunity for the outlier comes, you think the opportunity is too scary and you don't want to take the risk. [SPEAKER_00]: What you don't get is you're now being addicted to the sameness, rather than going, how do I push for boundaries for next?
[SPEAKER_00]: So a big part of my job is to be the guy standing behind them, kicking them in the backside, going, you're not doing enough, you're not working hard enough, you're not pushing hard enough, you're not taking enough risks, you're not doing this enough, you're not seeing the world for what's out there. [SPEAKER_00]: Let me just say one last thing. [SPEAKER_00]: Every single person in the world today, shaping the world today is not a celestial being.
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't fall from the heavens. [SPEAKER_00]: They were human beings, they were born, and they will die. [SPEAKER_00]: Once you understand that every single person shaping the world is a person just like you, the competitive nature in me goes, well, what's so special about some ultimate? [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, you can write a bit of code, shit, I'll learn some code, yeah, shit. [SPEAKER_00]: I might even steal his code. [SPEAKER_00]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm that kind of guy. [SPEAKER_00]: And so, I think that the push, and that's why I love the name of your show, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Greatness. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, it's like, all of us have it. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, this is, this is so good. [SPEAKER_00]: All of us have it. [SPEAKER_00]: Greatness is like blood. [SPEAKER_00]: Every single human being, walking, the surface of the earth has blood pumping through them. [SPEAKER_00]: We all have greatness in us.
[SPEAKER_00]: It manifests differently, it looks different, and it's called on in different spaces, but all of us have it. [SPEAKER_00]: You have two jobs. [SPEAKER_00]: First is to find where you're called to manifest it. [SPEAKER_00]: And second, once you've found it, is to be unbelievably ruthless in how you go after it. [SPEAKER_00]: That's good. [SPEAKER_00]: So the folks, we still won't be like though. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, listen, listen.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like you won't lose a lot of people. [SPEAKER_01]: Let me tell. [SPEAKER_02]: I'll be watching some people because I'm the man and the greatness. [SPEAKER_02]: They like you. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm good. [SPEAKER_02]: Have you watched Save The Last Dance? [SPEAKER_02]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Michael Jordan. [SPEAKER_00]: Michael Jordan that I don't watch the years. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I was watching it again the other day. [SPEAKER_00]: It was just me watching it with Mike.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I saw it. [SPEAKER_00]: Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan. [SPEAKER_02]: I was talking about, say the last dance like the dance. [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no. [SPEAKER_00]: Michael Jordan said Michael Jackson. [SPEAKER_00]: Michael Jordan, right? [SPEAKER_00]: The documentary about him on Netflix, right? [SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that stuck out at me is, for all intents and purpose, this guy was an asshole.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Like if you actually watch the view like this guy, he was an asshole. [SPEAKER_00]: So people didn't like him. [SPEAKER_00]: Even his team members didn't like him. [SPEAKER_00]: But you know what? [SPEAKER_00]: They respected him. [SPEAKER_00]: And they are the first to say they achieved more because they were with him. [SPEAKER_00]: Then they would have done when he wasn't there. [SPEAKER_00]: And so what does Scotty Pippin remember?
[SPEAKER_00]: He remembers the championship ring. [SPEAKER_00]: So your point is, yeah, you know, people are going to leave you. [SPEAKER_00]: Sure. [SPEAKER_00]: But around me, you're going to get that championship ring. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: My job is to take you there. [SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to go. [SPEAKER_01]: That's good. [SPEAKER_00]: Greatness, man. [SPEAKER_00]: Greatness. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm telling you. [SPEAKER_00]: Greatness. [SPEAKER_00]: That's the game.
[SPEAKER_02]: Our song got to ask, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And it's so crazy like as we're, it's like you're unfolding answers to questions I already have in the future or whatever, but I've got to ask this. [SPEAKER_02]: So when you're booked to make the car of exponentialality, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Yes. [SPEAKER_02]: And you got a new book underdogs coming out. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: And a few months. [SPEAKER_02]: That's a biggie. [SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait for that one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, man. [SPEAKER_02]: That's going to be great. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, five years of work. [SPEAKER_02]: When you come back, we'll have you back and we'll push it out there. [SPEAKER_02]: For sure. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_02]: How do you balance? [SPEAKER_02]: So we're talking about, we just talked about Elm J about being the best grinding, but how we balance rapid skill while maintaining the value and culture of the organization?
[SPEAKER_02]: Cause I'm trying to drive drive drive drive drive, but sometimes you only about money. [SPEAKER_02]: You only care about money. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I can't pay y'all and we can't pay bills without making money. [SPEAKER_02]: So how are you maintaining both of these? [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't think you should be seeing them as competing with each other. [SPEAKER_00]: I think making, making, so let me put it to you this way. [SPEAKER_00]: You guys have that drinkool-aid, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's like a constant shake. [SPEAKER_00]: You put some water on it, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And sugar. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And sugar. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm not sugar. [SPEAKER_00]: I only remember it because I saw it on Friday the movie. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think Ice Cube was looking for some cool-aid or something. [SPEAKER_00]: And Big Warim came out on the things.
[SPEAKER_00]: He ain't got no sugar or something like this, right? [SPEAKER_00]: But if you think about it, think about it this way. [SPEAKER_00]: If I want to make a glass of coolade this big, or that big, the amount of concentrate would change, so would the water, so would the sugar. [SPEAKER_00]: Culture and scale are kind of the same things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I'm saying is this, you have to see building and bringing the culture of your organization and the rapid scale you're trying to achieve as the same thing and not one against the other. [SPEAKER_00]: People will only say to you, [SPEAKER_00]: you're chasing scale over culture, if they think your culture can't accommodate scale. [SPEAKER_00]: If it can't, it's the wrong culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason that's important is because it's like sitting somewhere in the US right now is your competitor. [SPEAKER_00]: And they've got your logo on their dashboard. [SPEAKER_00]: They've been to your website. [SPEAKER_00]: They've studied everything you're doing and they're trying to figure out how they're going to outdo you. [SPEAKER_00]: So scale, this is so important. [SPEAKER_00]: Scale is the most important line of defense you have.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I always think about business in sports terms, offense defense, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Defense is what are the non-negotiables in the business? [SPEAKER_00]: Everything else must be offense. [SPEAKER_00]: And culture has to be a part of offense because the culture of an organization evolves. [SPEAKER_00]: The culture of what it took to build a fostering company twenty years ago, this is what it takes now. [SPEAKER_00]: And so a lead is job is to be able to intuit.
[SPEAKER_00]: what the right culture is, that's gonna suit that moment in time, and then ruthlessly make sure that they pursue it. [SPEAKER_00]: It just came out today, I don't know if you guys saw this, that Mark Zuckerberg is paying like a ton of money for a couple of developers to come and join from OpenAI. [SPEAKER_00]: Why? [SPEAKER_00]: Like he's suck. [SPEAKER_00]: You're trying to tell me he can't find other developers? [SPEAKER_00]: What is he injecting into meta?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the culture that he needs for the level of scale that he needs. [SPEAKER_00]: And he's well aware that internally he doesn't have the resource in for that. [SPEAKER_00]: So he's going to go outside and pay a ton of money to people to do it. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's important for entrepreneurs to understand. [SPEAKER_00]: You have to make culture and scale one and the same things. [SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to scale these things together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if one lags behind, then your job is to go and find it and make sure that you make these two things go exist. [SPEAKER_00]: That's why, I'm sure you've seen it. [SPEAKER_00]: Come on, guys. [SPEAKER_00]: You've seen the number of times people start in a business and a relationship or a partnership. [SPEAKER_00]: And then over time, the partnership fades. [SPEAKER_00]: And one person is like, I just wanted to go somewhere. [SPEAKER_00]: The other person didn't want to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I mean by this culture thing, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And it's the same in a marriage. [SPEAKER_00]: You've seen people say, well, a married twenty years. [SPEAKER_00]: What happened? [SPEAKER_00]: We grew apart. [SPEAKER_00]: It's exactly the same idea that there's a point you get to with a thing we find the most value in, the thing that we think makes us what we are changes. [SPEAKER_00]: So the gig is always as a leader to make sure that this consistency and congruency.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you still going where I'm going as we still had in the right direction? [SPEAKER_00]: So when you're checking in with your leaders, especially entrepreneurs watching this, when you're checking in with your leaders, it's like, are we still on the same page? [SPEAKER_00]: Do you still see the world the way that I see it? [SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I'm seeing. [SPEAKER_00]: What do you think? [SPEAKER_00]: And the minute somebody has checked out, you can tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: They just won't bring the energy to the conversations. [SPEAKER_00]: And then you know that you need to start thinking about how do you bring in an external force to drive that culture? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what's next for you? [SPEAKER_00]: It's a good question. [SPEAKER_00]: Some of the things I can't disclose publicly, but [SPEAKER_00]: We're busy raising capital now for our next fund, which we're very excited by.
[SPEAKER_02]: What are the main companies you're looking at investing? [SPEAKER_02]: So somewhere our audience may be building that or, you know, let us know. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I know a lot of African companies emerging. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Sounds like that are solving real life problems. [SPEAKER_02]: One hundred percent. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: One hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the current fund that we're raising is, you know, real businesses in the real economy. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And so we're looking for entrepreneurs who are building real businesses in the real economy. [SPEAKER_00]: So these are not necessarily businesses in the software technology space, but businesses in the kind of industries I mentioned earlier when we started. [SPEAKER_00]: So we're very excited by that. [SPEAKER_00]: The book comes out underdogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's already ready. [SPEAKER_00]: We've been going kind of up and down to the other side. [SPEAKER_02]: The pre-order now. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: We'll see. [SPEAKER_00]: Timberwire.com. [SPEAKER_02]: You heard that go pre-order. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Go pre-order. [SPEAKER_02]: Right now. [SPEAKER_00]: We have a wait list of eighteen thousand. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's go. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So. [SPEAKER_00]: So.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we drive it. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's go. [SPEAKER_00]: So, so I'm going to make sure I get you a signed copy. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, please, though. [SPEAKER_00]: Underdog is like the ad in this episode. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Underdog is like, I'm loving what that book is going to be because here's what I actually did in that book, my co-author and I who also happens to be my business partner.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we went around the world studying the world's most overlooked underloved companies. [SPEAKER_00]: Overlooked under love. [SPEAKER_00]: Wow. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because a lot of literature about companies is brands we know stuff we know. [SPEAKER_00]: But then, but then we're like, there are all these companies that people overlook, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the minute you know who these companies are, you're like, oh, of course they do that, or of course they do that, or of course they do that, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And so we've been working on, and then what we did is we study these companies and we would try to find the DNA that makes these companies tick. [SPEAKER_00]: And in the book, we basically give you the secret formula for how to build an underdog business.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the underdog's book comes out in the next few months. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm on tour. [SPEAKER_00]: When I leave here, so I'm going to be going all over the place and speaking. [SPEAKER_00]: We're looking at setting up a business here in the US. [SPEAKER_00]: We have an office in Delaware, which we use for some capital raising. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: But it looks like the my opportunities for us to do some actual underground stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm always excited to see who I can work with, who I can partner with. [SPEAKER_02]: what kind of things we can do or whatever we could do. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm excited just about your vision and just everything you got going on, man. [SPEAKER_02]: Let's do it. [SPEAKER_02]: I just want to say thank you for coming on us. [SPEAKER_01]: I am ready when you are ready. [SPEAKER_02]: I said, man, so guys, what that being said, man, we're going to do a part two in a future, man.
[SPEAKER_02]: Underdogs is on the way. [SPEAKER_02]: I want you to go pre-order it. [SPEAKER_02]: If you're looking to put your money in the right place, I want you to look into the fun y'all. [SPEAKER_02]: And look into Africa. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, maybe we're going to do a trip. [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to maybe bring thousands of people over to Africa. [SPEAKER_02]: And we're going to create a moment and we're going to create something amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, God, thank you once again for tuning in. [SPEAKER_02]: Makes you tap in a voosee. [SPEAKER_02]: Follow them on all social media. [SPEAKER_02]: Let me know your socials and everything, please. [SPEAKER_00]: at Vocetember World. [SPEAKER_00]: Come on, miss it. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Just type in VUSI. [SPEAKER_02]: It'll come up because I know you can't spell as that's man. [SPEAKER_00]: So just type that in.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's probably why I haven't pronounced the last name, right?
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