Sitting down with Mirthell Onyx was a really enlightening experience. He has really guided his whole family through faith and you're going to learn so much from him about how to how to be entrepreneurial, have an entrepreneurial mindset with your family, how to do so, but not lose your family and keep your family through that process. I hope you hope you get a lot out of it. I certainly did.
And if you're if you're into building your brand as a family or building your brand as an individual, there's something you can definitely learn out of this episode of Disruption. Now, of course, as always, we are powered by Disrupt Art and I hope you enjoy this Welcome to Disruption Now. I'm your host and moderator Rob Richardson. With me is Mirthell Onyx with the Onyx brand.
I'm going to call it So many brands under, under under your empire that you have over 7 million YouTube subscribers collectively between all of the brands and about 4 billion streaming views. Woo that's a lot of views. Yeah. That's a humble I'm very humbled that you're on our podcast and really excited to learn more about what you're doing and really learn from what you've done. I mean, it's it's really impressive.
Looking at what you've built as a family, how you were able to build that out and how you're working together, not only what you've built out, but the fact that you're working together as a family unit to kind of do this Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being on the show. It is a privilege for us to be on the number one Christian broadcast. All right. So we are we are we're people of faith and family. And so this is an honor for us to be speaking with you.
Oh, well, so are we. You're in the right. You're in the right. You're we got the right company here. So let's talk about your entry into starting a YouTube show for your family. That's a lot, right? You it's it requires a whole lot of time. And in some ways, it requires your family to kind of balance out between being just your family. And being this public personality. Walk me through how this started and how you got to this point.
Well, I'm an ordained minister and a marriage and family therapist. Marriage and family therapist came a little bit after. But it was necessary because if you anybody knows what a pastor does, most of his stuff is working with the sheep and and families in particular. And so I felt I needed to be more comparable to be able to do that. So I went and got my master's in science in marriage and family therapy and and then began to just that was always my passion.
Anyhow, I've always been a family guy. So if I'm on the rostrum and I'm preaching, I'm always preaching about that from the angle of family, one of the greatest institutions that God has put on this earth. So so that was that was who I was prior. I had a, you know, my my practice. And I was also in the church. My wife, she was she became a nurse practitioner. So she was in school during some of the time that I was in ministry. And she became a nurse practitioner.
as time progressed, she started to look into different things. She's always been an entrepreneur, so I'm not here. You know, if you want the business business side of this algorithm stuff, that's her. You know, she's the brains. So she started studying YouTube and she was like, wow, people are making money off of this thing. And I think that, you know, this is an opportunity for you to be able to to have a second chance because I had left ministry and at that point in time.
I didn't know what I was going to do at that point in time either. Right. And so and that's how I kind of started. And within a month of us, well, we launched in like November 2015, but not a real launch. We kind of got into it and we failed miserably, if you want to call it failure. It's not really failure, but. Right. $0.50 for the month is, you know, some people would say that's failure.
So so we got $0.50 and then she started studying it and when she started studying it, she realized, OK, no, we need to do this and do that. We'll talk about that because people part of what we're talking about is developing your brand. It sounds like, oh yeah, right. You developing your brand as a family. And I know your wife sounds like the chief operator. You're kind of the person that's the presenter, it sounds like. Right, right.
Which is good. You need both the visionary and implementer, right? Yeah, absolutely. So I, I frankly, I understand it now, but she was the one that was doing it.
So what she did was she started studying the algorithm and she started to look at the trends and she started realizing that there's a connection between the algorithms and the trends started looking at keyword optimization and search, looked in the search engines to see which keywords were critical in order to get your your brand or your video into the algorithm.
And so when she started studying that, she came back and we relaunched and we launched as a kids channel and we began to do like there was a trend that was going on back then, which was getting into like, you know, getting into costumes. It required costumes and things like that. And so we got into that and so we got our costumes and we did our thing. That was the trend at the time. And frankly, to tell you the truth, I wanted to do ministry.
I want to just jump right in You're kind of like like you're helping me. This is something because I do a lot and I stick to this, but it's like at the end of the day. You also have to make sure people are paying attention and it's following. We won't say they're following the trends, it's understandable. You didn't follow the trends. You just set your own path, but you understood where the trends were going and use that to basically hook people into the content. That's how I see it .
Is that right? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I want to get right into ministry. I want to get to the serious parts about the black family and get into things where, you know, we need to be there in this particular way or that particular way. We need to be the face.
And, you know, all this, all these things that my understanding from a marriage and family background and just understanding politically where we are as a country, as a nation, where the family is, where society is, I wanted to get into the meat. The the and my wife said no. She said no. She said, you've got to entertain. You've got to speak the language of the people you've got to you got to speak the conversation, have the conversations that they want to have.
And so so we started to do trends and that's why we became the superhero family before we became the Onyx family. You know, we were we were doing what was trendy at the time. Yeah. And it her her idea was this it is that if you if you give them what they want at first, then what will happen is on the back end you will be able to say anything you want to say because you'll have the numbers, you'll have the audience, you'll have everything, and you can do anything. And that's where we are today.
We are able to say and do anything that we want to do drop mic I mean, it's it's about it's about going given the consumers what you want and then giving them back what you feel that they need. But you first have to give them what they want. What they want. You have to speak their language. Absolutely. You helped me like just this conversation right here is like, OK, this is an adjustment we need to make in really how we go about the YouTube and how we go about branding.
So we we teach branding now. And one of the things that we teach, one of the things that we teach is we teach always entertain first. I don't care what you are. You could be a dentist. Dentists, come to us. People come to us with a gardening, gardening, you know, landscaping, whatever your business is, it doesn't matter. Entertain first. It's incredible how the human nature is. But we don't like chaos. We don't like catastrophes. We don't like wars. We don't. Of course we don't.
We don't we don't like these things So what we do is we like to laugh and we like to be distracted. So there's nothing like a good ball game during a war. You know, there's nothing like true, you know, things go up when money goes down and people are struggling financially and economically. No better time than to laugh because you know what? And to drink to drink, to laugh, to eat, you know what I'm saying?
And so what ends up happening is we know great people in history, you know, very wise people. Empires and emperors have come up with games like the card game and different things like that as a way to take their people who are going through struggles take their minds off of the fact that you're living on a hill and you're living down down here and you're struggling and you're and you have to pay me taxes as the emperor.
So here here's a card game and let's get them playing cards, you know, whatever works, whatever works. And so it's the same concept. Entertain people if whatever your business is, I don't care what it is, Right. entertain them, do a funny skit about it. Nobody does it better than people like Dave Chappelle. Well, he's the best, isn't he?
Absolute I, Dave Chappelle, as another moment as Dave Chappelle is really, really, really good at taking serious content, but then making it funny like I don't know how anybody could have made, like, the death of George Floyd entertaining in some way or police brutality, engage it in some way. Profound. It's I mean, it is profound because I'm like, I don't know how you do that. And this man just was able to bring all of that together and still make it funny. He like, wow, how did he do that?
Like, so how do you do that? Like, how do you that feels like magic to me, right? And that's the thing. It's like, to me, he's a preacher, but I know he's not Christian, but he's a preacher. To me because he takes the most serious things and he's able to speak to it and we listen. Even if we don't agree with him, we are able to take it. It's like a pill that you're taking you put it down with a little juice or whatever. Like he makes it palatable. Yeah. And so and so that's what we do.
So our mission statement is tell the story, feed the soul, make them laugh, heal the heart. That is Onyx Family's mission story. It's entertaining. First, this is I think there was some struggle with me. Mirthell it's like, OK, do I entertain first? Do I inform first? Like, do I do you lose your brand if you do this but but you can't have a brand if people aren't there, right? You cannot be a famous secret. So like you got to get people there.
So you can call it you can do a great blend of edutainment where you're entertaining and educating at the same time. That's that that is a great strategy to do that. And some people, what they're dealing with is so serious or they don't know how to to just entertain. So edutainment is fine. It's a blending of both educating and entertaining with probably a little bit more leaning into the ed education side My friend calls it infotainment. But yes, there you go. There you go.
And so so that's what we did. And so one of the one of the things that we are disrupting, if we're going to, you know, yeah. Let's go with it. For your disrupting. We needed to disrupt the market in the media where black faces are not seen and our stories are told, but they're told in only a certain way. And so what ends up happening is the entire world sees the black family or sees a black man or sees a black woman or sees a black narrative only in a very narrow way.
Yep. That when you walk in China, they automatically assume that you're a rapper or they're automatically assumed that you're a criminal or whatever nature. It doesn't matter where you. Rapper, athlete, entertainer, there you go. That's it. That's it. And that your families are full of just single mothers. The fathers have kids all over the place. So there is a narrative that is being told. And so it's not like we are not represented or underrepresented.
In fact, we are probably very much represented, but we're just represented in a very narrow way. Yeah, we're overrepresented with the stereotypes and underrepresented on the truth. There you go. And so I don't think that our family is unique there are I know too many families that are just exactly like our family.
So we are actually representing a big slice of who African-American families are that has a father, that has a mother, that has children that, you know, that have their education or that are entrepreneurs or that, you know, that are law abiding citizens, you know, that love their country. You know, whatever. This this narrative is just simply not told.
No, it's not and it's been it's been a very profitable narrative to just focus on the most the worst examples, the stereotypes of our culture without actually having a full, comprehensive scope. Because, again, I mean, part of goes to what you said is not that's what's been used to entertain.
That's what people have found entertaining, entertaining, and what I love about you is that not only are you changing the narrative, you're using that you're using that algorithm and turned it on its head, right? You use the algorithm as entertainment. and turned it on its head to say, look, this is who we are. This is a more complete picture of who we are, not just what you get in entertainment. So I think what you're doing is revolutionary. I definitely want to come to the family table
at some point. Let me put it out there. OK. I want to come to the family table sometime second season. Yeah. We'll have to be there for that. So how do you keep everybody grounded? This is a lot, right? This is in principle. You've done it. You've done it. You've done a great job.
How do you keep your kids grounded throughout this process where they they certainly have a certain level of celebrity and now you want to make sure, of course, they're grounded in the principles of Christianity and in the family values. How do you balance that out with with them being celebrities? Because that I would think that would be one of the biggest challenges.
Well, you know, it's really hard to build a home after the foundation is set and to restructure it, you'd have to break up the foundation and start over. And so I would say that while it is possible, we were blessed and fortunate to set the foundation right. And so before they were superstars, they were just humble pastors, family. I was a pastor. My wife was first lady in a very small church in Ontario. Canada. Membership was probably maybe 250. That's where I began.
And and I've pastored other churches where there's been a thousand plus. But, but where I really began, like from my own senior as a senior minister, it was in a small country type church. And and we would go to we'd go to prayer meetings on Wednesday night, you know, and, and interesting story, I remember and we homeschooled we homeschooled our entire life.
We really believe in homeschooling So when I say homeschool and a lot of people think I think everybody needs to be homeschooled first and foremost. OK, every family. But I don't mean homeschooling in the traditional sense where people think like you keep your kids away from the school system. Now, that's what we did. We homeschool them in the home.
But when I say everybody needs to homeschool, what I'm saying is, is that you as a parent are responsible for your children's education and raising them so even if you send them to school, which is fine, you're responsible for what they learn, you're responsible for their values, you're responsible for teaching them how to live and then ultimately launching them. And the school system does not launch your children. They don't set them up for autonomy. They don't set them up for for life.
You're responsible for that. And so each family needs to homeschool. A few things that can break down with that statement. People like to blame the public school system, and there are issues with the public school system. Right. But ultimately, it is your responsibility to empower and educate your family. Schools are never going to do that. They weren't even designed designed to do that. Schools were designed to basically make workers and factories from that point of view. Right.
An old model that needs to change doesn't even. There kind of looks like the prison system, too, if you look at. It. I mean, kind of. Right. The yard the yard where you go out to play, you know, you have to sit in don't you have to move from this class to that class? You're told constantly what you have to do next. You know, the the the lunchroom looks just like the chow. You know, where you go and slop the food. I mean, the bell rings and, you know, the time to move. Time to move.
Everybody moves in the same direction. You know, when you stop and look at the school system, it really designs our children to be able to to be good workers, to be. But it doesn't design them to be intelligent, free thinkers. And to be entrepreneurs. So you have to learn the same thing. And the learning style is systematically designed you know, for a certain type of thinker. Yes. And so if your child is sitting there, you have some geniuses inside your classroom.
That will never reach their potential. And it's when they drop out of school and I'm not suggesting that you need to do that, that's when they thrive. And that's where we have the millionaires and that's where we have great leaders and that's where we have huge corporations. You know, they came from people that we're not successful in that prison system. No, there's not. There's no question about that. It's a very monolithic way of teaching, of learning.
And and I will make this very clear for my kids, because sometimes I say the same things that you're saying and we had this debate with my wife at home and everything. I'm like, yes, school is important in terms of learning how to learn. I get that. But they're not going to teach you how to think like an entrepreneur. You can't depend on them to do that because the system was not designed for that.
The system was designed to make you be a worker, to put you in debt and make you oh, yes, you contribute to the system and make other people wealthy. Like that's really what they teach you. When they teach you how to go about saving. They don't teach you normally about investing. They teach you to go about having a job. They don't teach you about what it means to be an entrepreneur. Conformity. Yes, conformity. They don't teach you how to leverage your money.
And they don't teach you that saving your money, and just putting it in the bank is actually losing money because of inflation. So these are things you don't. And then the bank takes your money and then your bank invests it where you should be investing it. So when you go to the bank now, especially in these days where they limit how much you can take out, you can go to the bank. and you can say, hey, can I have can I take out my 100,000? And they're like, No, I'm sorry.
You know, you give me 30. Wait, wait, hold on, hold on. You know, I need 100,000 out of my money. No we can only give you 30 because what we're doing is we have this invested in this and this and this. But don't worry, come back tomorrow, make an appointment. If you want that kind of money, you come back. Wait a second. I want my money. You know what I'm saying? My money is being invested. So. So no bank accounts, is not it? It doesn't teach you your children about taxes.
Doesn't teach you about full history. Let's keep going with it. I mean, it does it. You got to teach your kids and take time with your kids to inform them because otherwise, you know, the most powerful the only thing we have the ability to control is our thoughts actually. Right. Nothing else. If we really. Don't have the ability to control anything else so. Much. I mean, my wife, we were in our Ph.D. programs We literally and then we were like, wait, wait, hold on a second.
Why are we going to go into this Ph.D. program? You know, we both have Masters. I have two. She has one. So we're educated people. Like, you know, but the thing about it is, is that we realize, wait, why are we going to get a next degree when we have all this debt? Why are we going to have another degree? Why don't we use the knowledge that we just had so we're not anti-education because we're very educated. We are just we just understand the system.
So that's why we're able to even help people who are educated take the education that they got and now leverage it to find how they can use it in a way that will work best for them. Because we're both we're both we respect both worlds. Which you have to right? there is like you got to have if everybody was an entrepreneur, no one would be a worker so the and there's you need both, right? You need both. But I think everybody needs to have an entrepreneurial mindset.
Even if you're not even if you're not an entrepreneur. Like, how do you make sure that you have other sources of income? How do you leverage what you have the knowledge you have beyond just where you work and how do you leverage and leverage the income you have now so you're not always dependent on one source of income? That's really the part everybody doesn't have to be an entrepreneur.
Everybody needs to be entrepreneurial in their thinking and how they apply things and never assume that a companies are going to be there to take care of you because those days are long gone and done. All right. So what's the best advice you've received and what's the worst? Best advice that I've received.
I think that the making sure that you are trying to own as much as possible your yourself, brand yourself branding yourself, I think that God has given us each one giftedness inside of ourselves. And so I think that learning how to discover what God has placed inside of you and then and then branding that finding a way to monetize it, finding a way to let it become attractive to others so that others can get to know who you truly are.
I think what happens is, is that most of us are told kind of what we should do or what we should be. You know, we're looking at other people and we're saying maybe I should be that because that looks lucrative. And I think we're missing the opportunity when we are not following our the path that was designed for us. That's not the easy way. But if it's following, the path is designed for us and then and then learning money, money, skills and how to monetize it.
Yeah, those are two things that if you can do that and if you teach your children that, that will be great. So I was doing an interview with Matthew McConaughey over his book and the Green Lights. It's a great book. Yeah. We were helping promote that. And yeah, we thought it was fascinating too it was a concept that he had in there that I resonate with. And the concept is is this thing where it's like many people consider themselves almost like they're the arrow, an arrow and a target.
And so when they see themselves as an arrow in their life as an arrow, they're constantly looking at ways like, I got to hit the target. If I don't hit this target, if I don't get this test, if I don't get this job, if I don't get if I missed the mark, then that's it. I missed the mark you know what I'm saying, but Matthew switched it and he said, I'm more the target so the opportunities come to me. I let yeah, I am like a magnet. My wife prefers magnet because she's like, We're black.
We can't be targeted. Yeah, but it might be better. So we're the magnet, not the target. Yeah. I'm with your wife, right? But. But but I get what Matthew say. You get. Yes, target. Because the target means that opportunities come into you. You're drawing opportunities to you. And that's what our God given gift to do. When we align our God given gifts with our purpose, we become targets. Or we become magnets where we don't have to shoot our shot. Yeah. Shots get shot to us.
So let me give you an example. When? When what's his name? The Dr. Fauci Yeah. You will see us doing an interview with Dr. Fauci at the height of the pandemic Dr. Fauci called us. We didn't call Dr. Fauci Wow, Dr. Fauci Saw us working in our element. His team called us and said we need to work with this family because we need to make sure that we are connecting with the black community.
Then Biden and Kamalas team, they're having a tumultuous time in our country, culturally and in everything they called us to to rock the vote Then they invited us to the inauguration, and we were part of the inauguration with Kiki Palmer. They called us That's pretty awesome. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. So these are examples that I'm saying. And when you're in a situation where you're not at the mountaintop experience, you don't see the future yet. So you need your faith.
You needed the eyes of faith, the faith that is the substance of things, hope for the evidence of things not yet seen. So I'm sitting in my car now coming back. I'm ordering them pizza we're coming back.
You know, I'll put on SpongeBob or I'll put on a cartoon that they like and they'll be in the back and la la la la la fast forward now to that future that you had not seen that that that time where the Bible promises us that the faith is the substance of things, hope for the evidence of things not seen now we fast forward. My children are sitting around the writing table with the director of SpongeBob movie, the president of Nickelodeon.
Oh, wow, OK. Wow. Their favorite shows and their favorite actors, they're now operating in that circle so when I saw God do that miracle and then the miracle of taking me and my family so that I will now be able to be a representation because mission to me matters far more than money. Like the money is there.
Yeah, but the mission is everything for me because I already know that this money's gone Like, like at the end of the day, this money is going to be Gone And for me, our mission is important because there's too many kids of color that is does not see representation of themselves, do not see accurate representation of themselves. And I be I believe in beholding you become change. So I don't need to preach. We don't preach. We don't preach. Anything except for we make them laugh.
We tell the story, make them laugh, feel the heart. That's what we do. Because by beholding you become change they will get our spirit. They will get our positivity. They will see us just like we saw The Cosby Show. And we will feel like I could become a doctor. I can become a lawyer because I see. Yes. Yes. Barak Obama doesn't have to do one thing for black people. He just has to sit in that position. And he already accomplished
what he needed to accomplish. Yep. Because I can become the president. That's exactly right. Brown Now she is sitting on the highest courts. She doesn't have to do a ruling that I agree with from this point on. Our daughters know they can sit on the highest court by beholding. We become change so we can shift our culture. We can shift the trauma that we've been spewing since slavery. We can shift the trauma that we have experienced through drugs infiltrated in our homes.
We can shift the trauma that we experience as a family has broken up by beholding and seeing that it's possible for us to change the narrative. What's a what is a theme? A Google ad that stands for What You Stand For or the Onyx kind of brand. What is that theme? What does that saying and why. A Google ad. It could be. A Google ad. It can be a it could just be a a billboard that has a saying, whatever you're saying is, what does that say and why.
So if there was a billboard, it would say that billboard would say We each are loved perfectly, eternally. Mirthell Onyx, pleasure having you on, please come on again, man. All right, man, take care. Thank you for having me.