[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:03] JB: I will literally be driving around the city, or the bridges by my house. I used to get the food from 7-Elevens, that they were going to throw away and just because of the date, even though it wasn't bad, but per their rules, they have to throw it away. They used to tell me no, because they didn't want to get sued. I was persistent and I just kept going back. “Please, man. Can I get it? Can I get it? I don't want to dig it out the trash, but I will.”
[0:00:27] JS: Three or so years into that, I'd gained about 50 pounds. My cholesterol, my blood pressure, everything was going in the wrong direction. I walked into a wall, not meaning to. Thought I was having a heart attack or a stroke. Turns out, it was a severely inflamed pinched nerve. That was my wake-up call. You got to do something differently.
[0:00:52] SS: At one point, I started to question whether I was actually losing it because I wasn't reactive to so many other things that other people was reactive to. I was like, “Well, maybe I'm the one who's losing it and they've got it all together.” That's the psychological challenge of being in an environment where it's so chaotic and nothing is normal.
[0:01:14] KN: We called up LAPD and I said, “What would it cost for us to shut down Hollywood Boulevard?” The cop laughed. He's like, “They don't shut down Hollywood Boulevard for a race, or for kids in a shelter as a charity run. They shut that down for the Academy Awards, when they're shooting a scene out of Transformers or something. They're not going to do that for some kids at the Gramercy Place Family Homeless Shelter. I was like, “Oh, man.”
[0:01:41] ST: I just had zero money. I guess at that point, I was 26 or 27. I just had $0. The company was paying me an amount that just got me by, without – I mean, I had nothing.
[0:01:55] AS: I had projects that I worked for years that fell through. I had relationships that I thought, “Oh, he's the one,” and he was not the one at all. He went out and found another one. I had heartbreaks. I had times where I was broke. I had times where I didn't know what to do with myself. I knew spirit and I knew the light, but I didn't know how to translate it.
[0:02:27] LW: Hello, friends. And welcome back to the Light Watkins Show, where I interview ordinary folks, just like you and me, who have taken extraordinary leaps of faith in the direction of their path, their purpose, or what they have identified with as their mission. In doing so, they have been able to positively impact and inspire the lives of many other people, who've either heard about their story, or who've witnessed them in action, or who have directly benefited from their work.
Today, we have our annual compilation episode. The theme this year is Making Something Out of Nothing. I went through the archive, and I found guests and hand-selected clips from those episodes, where the guests created their movement from nothing and told the story of how it happened. Meaning, they told the story of how they took action on their inner calling, without having all of the resources, or the know how that we sometimes think we need in order to do what's in our heart.
What their stories illustrate is that our heart is rarely going to direct us to do something that we feel prepared to do beforehand. Instead, we're going to have to trust that the desire to follow the calling itself is our credential. It is our sign that we are ready to take the next step. With each subsequent step, so long as we keep trusting that process, we're going to get the resources that we need to prepare us for the next step, right when we need it and oftentimes, in the most unexpected way.
In this compilation, we're going to be hearing from Sebastian Terry, who created 100things. We're going to hear from best-selling author, Agapi Stassinopoulos. We're going to hear from former inmate turned author, Shaka Senghor. We're going to hear from Ken Nwadike Jr., who is also known as the “Free Hugs Guy”. We’ll will hear stories from a conscious comedian named J Smiles, as well as from B.A.R.E Truth Founder, Joseph Bradford. Each clip is going to be about 15 to 20 minutes long. I'll put the individual episode numbers, both in the introduction to the clip, as well as in the shownotes, in case you want to go back and listen to their entire episode, which I highly recommend doing.
[EPISODE]
[0:05:11] LW: To kick things off, in this first clip, we're going to hear from Sebastian Terry of episode 91. Sebastian, who goes by the name Seb, quit his day job to start a movement called 100things, which is a list of the things that he felt would bring him happiness, very simply. Now, what's interesting about Seb’s story is he basically had no money at that time. It was just an idea that he had been carrying around with him for years. Then after hitting rock bottom financially, he decided that that was going to be the time to go all in on his idea of doing these 100 things. Of course, after starting to achieve the things on his list, he started getting inspired to help other people do things that brought them happiness.
In the process, Seb got to have some amazing experiences, while also participating in the immovable power of kindness. Okay, so let's go to the clip to hear the story in Seb’s own words.
[SEBASTIAN TERRY]
[0:06:19] ST: I didn't have any money. I just had zero money. I guess, at that point I was 26, or 27. I just had $0. The company was paying me an amount that just got me by without – I mean, I had nothing. Dave asked me to go out for dinner one night with him for his work thing. He worked in hospitality. I went purely because I couldn't afford to eat by myself. I ended up with this lavish dinner. Really lovely. At this place, in Circular Quay in Sydney, and it was Dave next to me and all his colleagues, or employees, actually.
Everyone was silver service, and we're getting wine poured. It was all really lovely. It was great. Then, I just remember looking around going, “What am I doing? I'm 27-years-old. I can't afford to buy myself a meal. Even if I could, I wouldn't be here. I'm purely here because I need to eat.” I just got quite upset. I looked at Dave and I said, “Mate, I'm going to go.” I was getting a little emotional, but I held it together. I walked out. I went to the ferry, to get from Circular Quay to Manly, where I was living then. I missed the last ferry. Meaning, that I had to get a taxi home, which costs more. I had to walk back into the restaurant and go, “By the way, Dave. I still am leaving, but I need money for a taxi.” He gave me money for a taxi.
Then yeah, I left Circular Quay. I was going over that Sydney Harbour Bridge, and I just burst out crying. I didn't really know why, to be honest. I just burst out crying. I think, my girlfriend at the time was in the cab with me. It's funny, how you forget things. I think, my girlfriend was in there. She said, “What's wrong?” I was like, “I don't know.” We went home, had a very somber evening by myself. The next day, I woke up. I just remembered this list that was hidden in a drawer in my room that I had forgotten about for two and a half years.
I pulled my drawer open. I got my list out, my actual list of 100 things, which was there. I have never felt so motivated in my life. I went down to Humphrey’s news agency in Manly. I bought a map of the world, just a foldable map of the world. I put it on the wall, and I got 100 sticky notes and wrote every one of my goals on that and then stuck it all on the wall, on the map, to represent what I wanted to do in my life in that moment.
For the next, well that day certainly, I couldn't work. I was just looking at this thing, thinking about all these possibilities. I work really hard when something is put in front of me. I remember thinking, imagine if I just took the focus that I've got on my laptop right now, and I just moved it. I just went like that to a map on a wall that represented for me an opportunity to be happy. I thought, I would be happy. That was it. I rang up Dave. I said, “Mate, as soon as I pay the business off, I've got to leave.” He said, “Why?” I said, “I've got a list of a 100 things. I've got to go and do them.” That was it.
[0:09:22] LW: You were broke. What was the plan then? How were you going to pay your bills? How were you going to take your girlfriend out to dinner? How are you going to get dental care?
[0:09:30] ST: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I didn't think about dental care, I'll be honest. There was money in the business. Not a lot. I said to Dave, when we pay it off, as soon as we pay it, I'm happy to work for whatever I was working for at the time. It wasn't a lot. I think, he gave me a bit of a bolster each week, just so I could go and do one additional thing, perhaps. My thinking was, as soon we pay the business off, we'd have maybe a little bit extra. As soon as we pay it off – I'm not a business person, but we really paid it off in a bit more and we can take that. I think I took $8,000 from the company and we paid the business off. I think it was $8,000. It might have been $11,000. Do you know?
[0:10:04] LW: I don't. I just know that Dave pushed back a little bit when you told him about your plan.
[0:10:08] ST: Oh, yeah. He was like, “That’s stupid. You're in your late 20s. What do you mean, you're going to take off for a trip around the world? An endless trip, check off things like, skydive naked, or do an Olympic ski jump, or become an ordained wedding minister. That's ridiculous.” I tell you what, and I'm not saying this for effect. I knew. I just knew I had to do it. There was no convincing me otherwise. Because we all think we know what's good for other people. We might have some idea. If someone knows, they know. I knew. I knew. No one supported me. My mom cried when I told her. My sister –
[0:10:52] LW: They weren’t tears of joy.
[0:10:53] ST: Nope, they were not. They weren't for a long time. They weren't for a long time. My dad was like – he was the only one. My dad's a bit of a renegade. He was like, “Yeah, I get it.” Still, that might have been the most positive comment I got. Everyone else, that is –
[0:11:11] LW: What about your girlfriend? What was her response?
[0:11:13] ST: Well, after that night where I realized – she's great, by the way. She ended up marrying a friend of mine. She's fantastic. After I showed her my map on the wall of a 100 things, she looked at it and she said, “Are we doing this together?” I remember, it wasn't to get away from her at all. I had the same realization that I had had earlier in Canada when I learned that Chris passed away. That was, I just don't know who I am. I still didn’t, two and a half years later. That list that resurfaced, as I saw, it was my way to work it out. That is a journey I knew I had to take on myself.
[0:11:48] LW: Talk about some of the next steps. Once you committed to your mission, and you didn't believe in the word bucket list because you thought that was too much associated with death, right? What were some of the first steps, such as googling pen pals in prison and things like that?
[0:12:03] ST: Oh, that's true. Yeah. Okay, so I committed my list. I told Dave, when we pay the company off, I've got to go. It was fine. He just as a friend was like, “That makes no sense, but sure.” Whilst in Sydney, I started thinking – I'm so action-based now. I never used to be. I was like, “What can I do? I can't leave the country yet. I got to pay the business off. What can I do for my list whilst I'm here?” I looked at my list, and I used it as a reference point from that moment on in my life. I would go, “Right. Speed dating. I can do that in Sydney.” I went speed dating. Hilarious. I wanted to visit an inmate on death row. I just talked to someone that I would never speak to on any other occasion.
I googled death row pen pals, and you can do it right now. In fact, I'm going to do it right now as I tell this story because I keep telling people, it's this easy. I'm just going to make sure I'm not lying. I googled death row pen pals. I was met with a database. Look, globalpenfriends.com. No, actually, that's not it. That's something different. You can talk with death row. You can Google it, and you're met with a database of thousands of people who are on death row, who are looking to connect. Yeah, first one, death row pen pals, writeaprisoner.com, for anyone who’s interested.
You get to read their profiles. They have a photo and they have their story. Some of them admit to what they've done. Some saying, “I'm here for the wrong reasons, but I've turned to God.” That was it. I wrote a letter. This guy had an address. I just wrote a handwritten letter to this guy called James, or Jay Lock. He was in there for a crime he didn't commit. Sounds like the A-team, by the way. He just, I don't know, for whatever reason, he, out of the many of the profiles that I read, I spoke to this one guy, I read his and I thought, “Yeah, I'll do that.” I wrote him a letter. Two weeks later, he wrote a response, and I got it delivered to my place in Manly. It was handwritten by this guy. There was a template that he had drawn on each page and a story just saying, “Hey, I'd love to connect. Da, da, da, da, da.”
I just wrote back and 12 months later, he invited me to visit him. Maybe that was maybe the timeline of from the moment I told Dave, that as soon as the company paid off to when I left, maybe it was about 12 months. That was my first thing from that moment moving forward. I didn't know where to go in the world. All I knew is I wanted to go somewhere related to the list. He invited me to Oklahoma, to a place called McAlester, to his penitentiary. I thought, “Well, that'll do.” I bought a ticket to LA and then LA to Oklahoma. Got a rental car, and drove for two hours to McAlester. I think it's about two hours, and then visited Jay Lock in death row.
It sounds so bizarre and outrageous, and almost unlikely. I've got to tell you, it's the simplest thing I've ever done. I just applied myself. I'm not here to be a motivational speaker. I'm not on stage now. I'm just telling you, it was easy. It was easy. Things are so easy when you are very clear about what's important to you. That's the question that's relative, right? What is important to you? At these points, it was that. Followed by what happened then? I mean, whatever it was, I just look at my map and go, “That's what's happening next.” I would go and do it.
[0:15:13] LW: When you're doing these first, say, dozen or so items on your list, were you thinking to yourself, “This may potentially get picked up by the media, so let me record what happens.” Were you taking and listing notes?
[0:15:29] ST: None at all. This was completely just personal. I wasn't even recording half of it. It wasn't like in this day and age now, where you have content creators and influencers. No, I’m just doing it. With that said, and this goes back to what I mentioned before, I wanted to raise money for charities. I've never done it before. I chose Camp Quality, which is an Australian-based charity that they help with kids with cancer. It's more detailed than that. I wish, I could give a better explanation, but I can't think of it offhand.
Their PR team said, “Well, hey. Why don't we put a press release out there?” Because I guess, as a business, which it is, they’re wanting exposure. They said, “Why don't we pitch this as a story, a guy with a bucket list is raising money for kids with cancer.” Of course, as soon as I did that, we got a response from Channel 7, a big network in Australia to do their morning breakfast show. I was on their breakfast show. Before I’ve even left Australia, having only achieved maybe 10 things, probably, including speed dating and what have you, I was talking about this goal.
What I noticed, a couple of things here, what I noticed is because I went on TV, I wanted to raise $10,000 for Camp Quality. I can't remember what the actual figure was that I got to at the end of that day. Because of the TV interview, we raised a lot of money for Camp Quality in one day, and I raised it after then to a $100,000, which we went and did. That was interesting. No, there was never any plan with it.
[0:16:54] LW: Was that the interview that Mark saw?
[0:16:56] ST: No, no, no. That was years on. That was a very first interview before I left the country. I left. What I found, going back to your question is that I never did any of it to be seen, or to try and build a business. Or some people might see that as me either not telling the truth, or being incredibly stupid. It's neither of those. If I had to pick, it would be closer to the stupid one. I just did it purely for myself. I found that media likes to follow me, wherever I went, I suddenly would end up in a newspaper because someone I would meet in that area would generally go, “Oh, I know someone. This would be a great story.” That's how it started at first. Of course, some of it was documented.
I found that I loved writing, from backpacking earlier on in my life. Instead of sending emails, block emails to everyone in my address book, I created a little blogging site, where I just put down stories. When I visited Jay Lock on death row, first thing I did, I wrote this long story about the whole experience, and it helped me process and understand it. Friends would read it and they would share it with friends. That was what I was doing. I hitchhiked across America shortly-ish afterwards. That was the first time I ever tried to video anything. I had a camera with me and I just video and I thought, “Well, this might be cool in between my writing about it.”
That was awful footage. My intention was to be happy. There are other people and their intention is fine, too. It was to go out there and film everything and create a site that immediately inspires, so they can do this and that. It's absolutely fine. It's just different, my way of thinking, certainly back then.
[0:18:25] LW: Just for the listener, some of the items included things like, going on a game show, which you did, playing a song that you wrote on stage, being homeless for a week, delivering a baby, obviously, getting married to a stranger. Kissing a celebrity. Stand-up comedy. You started writing down little comedy bits. You started doing all these little things that you could do initially. Was there a point where you started getting coverage? You started to think to yourself proactively that, “Oh, this is something that the media could potentially be interested in. This could make things easier when I want to jump up and try make it.” Were you calling the media and notifying them beforehand?
[0:19:04] ST: No. As I said, the media would follow. It was always good. They've got more people following me on Facebook. What I would find is that the more people that followed me, the more people would offer to help me with my list. I saw that my list was now being seen by many people. Of course, learned along the way through my experience that people are fantastic. We're here to connect with each other. If I had an opportunity to help someone, I would. The same goes for anyone else with me. That's what was happening. That was the benefit I saw.
Number 100 was to write a book on my list. I wanted to write a kids book about the boats and everything in Sydney Harbor. It's going to be the kids book. Ultimately, I got reached out to by somebody who wanted to help. That person happened to work for Random House, or Random House Penguin as they are now, and they wanted me to write a book about my story. They read the death row story on my blog and liked it so much, that they asked me to put together memoirs of my journey. That's how it worked out. Everything's been pretty organic.
There was a moment or two, where someone would say to me, you should put out a press release about something you're doing. I think, I did it on one or two occasions. I met this guy called Dave Cornthwaite, who's a professional adventurer. He also does speaking, keynote speaking. He was coming at it from a business point of view. Let me qualify that. He is a complete adventurous soul, and he's great. He also has an entrepreneurial side. He was doing what many people are doing now ahead of the time, which is fusing business and passion and adventure to help other people. That's what he was doing. He was making documentary, mini-documentaries, self-producing of him doing his adventures.
His first one, by the way, was skateboarding the length of Australia, the width of Australia, from Perth to Sydney, and then beyond. Anyway, so he's a known guy. That was my first inkling of, “Oh, people could do this and actually try and generate money, or something.” That's not the direction I ended up taking anyway, but I saw it for the first time. Him and I decided to standup paddle across Lake Geneva. We were the first people to do it, we think. It was on my list, number 85, go on an adventure. That's what this was.
With that, I saw him send out press releases. He created a little mini-documentary for us. That was the first time I saw how it might work as a business. I still haven't gone down that route, but I started to see it. ESPN approached me. They wanted to do a documentary. Discovery Channel approached me, wanted to do a documentary. I have a show. I have a 26-episode show here in the US, a reality show that went on this platform called Go 90, which was a Verizon product, which is going to be like a Netflix equivalent. Got dissolved. I don't know how these things happen. I mean, I do know, but on every occasion, I just got approached. People would say, “Hey, we heard about you. Would you like to do a thing?” That's a funny story. My first talk I ever gave in LA, I was approached by a guy called Keith from Defy Media, here in LA. He said, “We want to do a TV show on you. What would it be about?” I at that point, had started helping other people. I said, “Well, I think it should be about me helping people achieve their goals.” He said, “Okay.” Then I just forgot about it.
I mean, this is just such a good example of me. I forgot about it. I went home for a year. I came back to speak at the same event the year after. Keith was there. He said, “Where'd you go?” I said, “I just went home to Australia.” He said, “We want to make a show.” I said, “Oh, okay.” We made a show. All that to say that, yeah, there was never an intention, or strategy around the business side of it.
[0:22:24] LW: How are you making money? How are you paying your bills prior to all of that?
[0:22:28] ST: I think, I left with $8,000 or $9,000, something like that, and whittled that down really quickly. Then, I started using my credit card aggressively. Again, no financial knowledge, or no education around finances. I did that. My mom, she would pay the interest on my credit card. She wouldn't pay off debt, but she would pay the interest, which was so good of her. I eventually paid it back.
At the time, it just meant that I wasn't going into any more debt. I remember thinking, “Well, what's the credit card for?” My answer was, “Well, it's for doing things you want to do.” I wanted to do all these things. I was very happy using it. I was flying to wherever, without thinking, or care. What happened was that I got offered to write a book. The money I got was an advance for that, covered all that debt. I was able to pay my mom back and thank her because she's the greatest human on the planet. Then a little bit more.
I started doing other things on my list. Then, I go back to Australia, and my book, which was now in circulation in Australia, and then it actually went into China. I forgot that it was China. China and Taiwan. I was generating a little bit of money. A little bit, but enough. Suddenly, people were now reading it that I got asked to do a talk at one point. A company in Australia had said, “Would you do a talk for us? I'd like my staff to hear your story.” I thought, “That's interesting.” I did that. I've actually done one more talk at that point earlier on. I can talk about that, too. Anyway, I got paid for this talk. I got paid 500 bucks.
I thought, “You are kidding me. That is phenomenal.” I did that. They liked it so much, they said, “We've actually got something like, 30 branches or more around Australia. We'd like you to talk to all of them.” I was like, “You're kidding. What? No way.” That's how it funded itself. The other point, this is just a funny one and I'm jumping around so much, so I apologize to you and anyone who's listening. Number 36 on my list was walk across the country. Now, I chose France. I was halfway across France with a guy called Maddie, who I'd met working in a bar in Geneva, where I was living to try and learn French, number 42 on my list. We were halfway across, and I have $40 to my name. $40.
By the way, I've been part of another documentary at this point, which my plan was to get across France in 14 days, and they were going to fly me to England for the premiere of this documentary, so just to give a bit of a timeframe. Halfway across France, I had $40, Australian dollars to my name, and I didn't care. I thought, “Well, I'll be fine.” I checked, we were in this tiny, tiny town, a village in France. We walked through and I checked my emails, and Dave said, “Call me.” Dave Tank, my business partner, if you will, for the inflatable movie screen business in Sydney, after Thorpey tried to screw us over. He said, “Call me. Someone wants to buy the business.”
I called him and I had forgotten. I just didn't think anyone would want the business. It turned out, someone wanted to buy it. I think, it was for a $119,000. I was like, “No way. Really?” We split it 60/40. Dave argued that because he had been staying and working on the job, he should get 60.
[0:25:36] LW: He does it more.
[0:25:37] ST: I said, “Well.” He's my best mate. I was like, “Yeah, but I worked on it for two and a half years without you.” I don’t like confrontations, so we stayed at 60/40. For the record, about 12 months ago, me and Dave have been catching up and he said, “I think you're right about that, by the way.” Anyway, after paying capital gains, taxes, or whatever the other taxes were, I got my 40% of that amount, ended up being something like $12,000, or something. It was ridiculous. I'm really bad with figures. It was nothing. Whatever it was, I was like, “This is amazing because I only had $40 at the beginning of the day.”
It all just worked out in some bumbling way. I will say, and I'll save this for later on if it pops up, there is something to be said for pursuing something that you're passionate about because things pop up, you seek out opportunities that you don't see before, and things will show up. The world conspires to help you out. It's not really my world, the way I speak in interviews, or anything like that. In a spiritually led way, I feel that there's something looking after us all, if we're able to connect with something. I do believe there's something going on there.
[END OF CLIP]
[0:26:46] LW: Okay, that was Sebastian Terry from Episode 91. Next, we are going to hear from Agapi Stassinopoulos, who has written several best-selling books on various topics, like Greek gods, meditation, mindfulness, and most recently, Agapi has written about the power of prayer. She was gracious enough to come on to the podcast back in episode 89, to share her superhero origin story. In this clip, Agapi talks about how she aspired to become an actress when she was younger. While it felt like that was her calling at the time, it didn't quite manifest as she had hoped. One of her most memorable performances took place on a city bus. That experience taught her something very important. It taught her about callings and why we don't need to wait for other people to validate our calling in whatever ways that we imagine it was supposed to happen. All right, let's listen in on that conversation.
[AGAPI STASSINOPOULOS]
[0:27:58] AS: My God, I had so many difficulties in my life. It's not like I had my experience at 23 and I lived happily ever after.
[0:28:06] LW: You write about that. Every difficulty you have leads to some greater awakening, and some new step along your path.
[0:28:14] AS: I had projects that I worked on for years that fell through. I had relationships that I thought, “Oh, he's the one,” and he was not the one at all. He went out and found another one. I had heartbreaks. I had times where I was broke. I had times where I didn't know what to do with myself. I knew the spirit and I knew the light, but I didn't know how to translate it. I had to trust that in my forming, in my awareness, creating my life and myself that I was guided, but that doesn't mean that I didn't go through the ebbs and valleys of life. That's the reason why I have the confidence and the authority to come up and talk about it with such passion, is because I know it. I have faced a lot of these human difficulties. Until we die, I think, we're always facing something.
Back to your question of how do we find the confidence to pray when we feel awkward, we feel silly, we feel self-conscious, is to just put one foot in front of the other. You put one word in front of the other. Your intention behind is you start to assume it, and it will meet you halfway, your willingness to go there. There's nothing more wonderful than to pray for someone and to feel that the spirit used you to lift them, bright light.
[0:29:57] LW: It reminds me of this story that happened to you, where you ended up giving the monologue on the bus and that one, you were complaining and you weren't getting the acting jobs. A women said, “Well, you don't have to get a job to act.”
[0:30:11] AS: Yes, exactly.
[0:30:12] LW: Can you share that story? I think, it's such a wonderful story. That it summarizes all this up.
[0:30:15] AS: Oh, my God. It changed my life. I was auditioning in New York City for a six-hour adaptation of Greek plays at Williamstown. I went with Joan of Arc. I did the Joan of Arc monologue. By that time, I already had my spiritual experiences. I was already in the spiritual path. I had a lot of high expectations like, “Okay, it's a Greek play. It's a Greek director. I'm a Greek girl. I'm talented. I'm very talented. I will get this part.”
[0:30:49] LW: Beautiful.
[0:30:50] AS: I’m beautiful. I'm talented. I speak Greek. I speak English. Well, I auditioned and the guy called me three days later, and he said, he spoke with a thicker accent than me, “You know, Agapi, you know, you are so talented, my dear girl. But I don't know how to cast you, because you have so much personality that if I cast you as an extra, you'll stand out in the chorus. Not extra, in the chorus. If I cast you with a big part, [inaudible 0:31:22], you don't have a big enough name.” I said, “No, I do. It’s Agapi Stassinopoulos. It’s very big.” He said, “Well, no, no. I mean, Sigourney Weaver, Susan Sarandon. I need the names for the theater.” That was that.
I was despondent. I can't even get a chorus part in a seven-hour adaptation of the Greek plays. I took the bus to go to my singing lesson, which I had religiously every week. I was so depressed, and so down. Oh, my God, Light. The difficulties as a young girl that I went through, with the disappointments constantly with the acting thing. I was sitting next to a woman and being Greek, I talk to everybody. Somebody sitting next to me to the bus, of course, I’ll say, “Hi, how are you?” It's beautiful woman. I said, “Well, I'm very depressed. I didn't get the part. I'm an actress.” Oh, she said, “I'm an actress. I was an actress.” She said, “I’m a nurse. I have a little boy. I'm a single mom, so I had to earn a living.”
She said, “What did you audition with?” I said, “I did Joan of Arc.” Said, “Oh, my God. Was that the Burnett Show?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “I know that monologue.” I said, “It's the one that goes, you promised me my life. That you lied.” I said, “Do you want me to do it for you?” I start to recite this monologue, which is so powerful because she's in front of her accusers. She says to them, “I could live without water and bread, but to shock me from the light of the day, to throw me in the dungeon, so I can no longer hear the larks in the trees, and see the soldiers passing by, and to no longer be able to smell the flowers in the air, that is worth in the furnace in the Bible that was heated seven times, so burn me, burn me at the stake. God will be with me, and God will comfort me because the hatred in yours will be supported by the comfort of God, and the people who love me.” She goes on and on and she says, “So God be with me.”
I'm screaming this monologue in the bus. The whole bus wakes up and she applauded me. She holds my hand and she says, “My dear girl. You don't have to wait for anyone to hire you. You are so talented. Why don't you go do your own thing?” I left the bus. I felt so elated, as if something had hit me. That the light had hit me and said, “Get off you're wanting this acting so much. It's not for you. Go do your own thing.”
Of course, I didn't know what my own thing was going to be. I reflected on in it and thought. I think, a few weeks later I started to think, “I'm going to do a one-woman show with all the Greek goddesses, seven of them.” The Greek goddesses from Olympus. I am going to do the monologues that I love for each goddess. Burnett show of this Joan of Arc will be Artemis and the castle will be Demeter. A character from Burnett Show Colorinthia is going to be Aphrodite, and on and on. It was a dream. I mean, I put this show together and I launched it and it was Agapi emerging with my light and my spirit, but now combining my talent into the world. That's how my life unfolded; finding the courage to say, “I'll do my own thing. Nobody's hiring me. I will hire me.”
[0:35:04] LW: Well, it's almost like you embodied that. You wrote about this in your book, the chariots and fire line, when the guy says, “When I run, I feel God's pleasure.” It's almost like, you stumbled upon that living prayer. It's a living prayer, right? Because you thought acting was your purpose. For all we know, for that part of your life, for that season, that was your purpose. It wasn't about the outcome. It wasn't about getting the film role. It wasn't about getting the audition. It was about just the art of acting itself. God is speaking through your actions.
[0:35:37] AS: Exactly. Oh, my God. That is so true that you remember that movie. I don't remember that.
[0:35:46] LW: I didn't remember it. I just read it in your book. I was like, “I want to go watch this movie again,” because I saw it when I was a kid, and I don't recall that profound moment. It really struck me.
[0:35:58] AS: Let me just share it with our listeners. There is a movie called The Chariots of Fire, that Vangelis the Greek composer actually wrote the music. It’s a true story, by the way. It's about two Olympic athletes in England. One is a Christian, and the other one is a Jewish one. They're competing in the same race. The Christian one is a missionary. They go with his sister all around. They, of course, support people to become Christians. His love is running. He’s running the race. His sister has a conversation with him. I think, his name is Lidel. “You got to give up that hobby of yours of running, and concentrate on what God is calling you, for which is being a missionary.”
He turns to her and he says, “But when I run, I feel His pleasure.” That is the most beautiful line to me, that I've really heard from expressed, how the spirit moves with us when we do something that we really love. I wrote this whole chapter of during the pandemic, because I wasn't speaking and I wasn't interacting with people out there, I stopped feeling his pleasure. I got really sad and very upset. In writing this book, the spirit allowed me to get deeper into myself, to feel his pleasure while I was writing, while I'm speaking the words. Spirit comforted me in my bereftness of what was happening. Now, you tell me when do you feel his pleasure, or her pleasure?
[0:37:48] LW: I read this anecdote. You probably heard it before, where an astronaut goes into space, and it comes back and he tells everyone, he had a face to face with God. They go, “What was he like?” He goes, “Well, first of all, she's a black woman.”
[0:38:06] AS: Oh, my God. I love it.
[END OF CLIP]
[0:38:08] That was Agapi Stassinopoulos from Episode 89. Next, we're going to go to one of my most anticipated interviews from this past year, which was with former inmate turned author, Shaka Senghor, who was convicted of murder, and he spent 19 years in total in prison. Seven of those years, he was in solitary confinement. That's where he ended up writing his first book, which is called Writing My Wrongs. It was published shortly after he was released, and then very serendipitously found its way to Oprah. Then his career as a writer skyrocketed from there, and he became a New York Times bestselling author.
I love his story because it reminds us that we don't need the perfect setting and the perfect resources, and the perfect equipment, or even the perfect time to do what's in our heart. All we need is the right amount of inspiration to spark our leap into action. In this clip, which is taken from episode number 87, Shaka shares more about his experience of finding that inspiration in solitary confinement, while in prison and what happened from there. Let's listen in.
[SHAKA SENGHOR]
[0:39:31] LW: Now, we're in the period of your life where you're writing more or less prolifically in the solitary confinement. What's the day in the life like, in terms of your writing and whatever else is going on in that six by nine-foot cell?
[0:39:44] SS: I'm happy you asked that. When I think about where I was, at the time that I was writing, there's a few things that comes up. There's obviously the pain of the experience. Solitary confinement is something that I will forever advocate to have ended. I think, it's the most barbaric and inhumane treatment that we can inflict on people consciously, and with our tax dollars. I think to lock a person in a cell, or cage for years at a time is cruel and unusual punishment.
The environment that I was in, the thing that struck me the most about it was the high level of mental health challenges that the men around me were faced with. The way that that showed up, whether it was men who were cutting themselves, so that they can get taken to a hospital and receive some type of care and comfort from somebody who treated them with humanity, or whether it was just personal attacks on each other, from slinging feces on each other, to sleep deprivation by banging on the toilets in their cells. It was a very chaotic environment. Every day, it was super noisy. There was always, the officers come in to extract people from their cells.
Then they come as 10 officers fully adorned in what looks like hockey apparel, and they would come and extract people and take them to whether the suicide watch cell, or other cells, which means they spray pepper spray, and that just goes through the whole unit. There was days where you would just — I would be sitting on my bunk and all of a sudden, I'm coughing and whatever because they’re spraying pepper spray without consideration for everybody else around them. It was chaos.
At one point, I started to question whether I was actually losing it because I wasn't reactive to so many of the things that other people was reactive to. I was like, well, maybe I'm the one who's losing it, and they've got it all together. That's the psychological challenge of being in an environment where it's so chaotic, and nothing is normal. There's no idea of when you're going to get out, similar to what we're dealing with the pandemic, in the sense that uncertainty is always looming above you.
For me, writing in that environment, require a lot of ingenuity. I had to write, so what's the optimum time? Typically, it was once the lights were out in the cellblock, then things were quiet down. I would stand by the window, this little, small window at the back of my cell, and a little bit of light that filtered in, I would write from that. Then sometimes, I would lay on the floor, and write from a little bit of light that leaked up under the cell door. I was always just finding different ways to do it.
Then I created just a consistent cadence of what I want my experience to be like. This is once I started realizing that we may not be able to control our circumstances, but I believe we can always control our reaction to them. I began to set my cell up, as if I was at university. I would study philosophy in the morning. I would go from philosophy to world history, from world history to African history. From African history to Eastern philosophy. Then I would get into literature. Then I would make time to just read. Then after I got done with that, then that's when I would write. I just made sure that I consistently kept my mind moving forward. I think, people lose hope, when they can't take that next step in their mind. Those things allowed me to just every day, to add some type of value to my life, and to my experience and really, just to keep me moving forward.
[0:43:33] LW: What about more practical considerations, such as exercise, food, water? Was that adequate when you're in there?
[0:43:42] SS: Well, the exercise part, that’s up to you. I definitely exercised every day. I would take my mattress and roll it up, and then I will tie a sheet around the mattress, and then I will loop another sheet through the mattress, and then I will curl the mattress. That's how I do my curls. I would do shoulder presses. Then I would just do push-ups and other calisthenics. That was part of that vacant routine, just to keep my body moving forward. Meditation, that was so important to me. It’s the ability to process my mind in a way that emptied out all those negative, self-defeating thoughts.
Journaling, that was very practical practice for me, is to really get things out of my mind. In regards to food, we were solely reliant on whatever they were serving. That was oftentimes not the best. The portions are very skimpy. You can't buy in solitary — I mean, commissary out of the store when you're in solitary. The only edible thing you can buy are cough drops. Cough drops became candy, as well as currency. That was it. You can't save, you can't hoard food, because if they catch you with any food that you saved, basically, they will put you on food restriction, and then you would get a big lump of what's called food loaf, which is all the food mashed up and baked into this brick. To avoid that, you have to eat whatever you can before you turn your tray in.
[0:45:14] LW: Under all those conditions, you wrote your first book within 30 days. Did you know it was good? Or how did you get any validation? You passed it around and let the other guys read it? How does it work?
[0:45:24] SS: I remember setting very intentional parameters for finishing the book. Because when I was journaling, I realized that I had never completed anything. The only thing I had completed was a GED. I was like, I want to challenge myself. I challenged myself to write this book in 30 days. I got it done. I remember thinking to myself, well, a book isn't a book, until somebody reads it. I asked the guys on the cell block. I'm like, “Yo, anybody want to read this book?” A few guys was like, “No, we won’t read it. Blah, blah, blah. You’re…”
[0:45:56] LW: Most of these guys can't even really read. They're operating in a third-grade reading level, right?
[0:46:00] SS: Yeah. There's definitely a third-grade reading level. There’s surprisingly some guys, who figure out how to get through books that resonate with them. That's why I think reading is so important. Iceberg Slim, I think you put more effort into something when you can see yourself in it.
One guy, he was like, “Yeah, send it over to me.” I remember, I had to send it over on a fish line, so we would make these lines that we would attach it up and slide it up under the door, so that the other person can pull it in. I remember sending it under the door and thinking to myself, “This is my only copy.” As the last part of it slid on the door, if you don't give it back, there's nothing I could do because I’m in solitary. I remember him getting it, and I didn't hear from him from a couple of hours. I started getting really nervous. I'm like, “Oh, man. He going to keep the book. That's going to turn into a whole conflict when we get back to the yard.”
[0:46:50] LW: You got to turn back into the old Shaka.
[0:46:53] SS: Got to go back to the smacking it out on the yard, and trying to avoid that at all costs. I remember him coming back to the cell door. He was like, “Yo, man. This is one of the best books I ever read.” I did a little dance in my cell. I was like, “Yo, I did it. Blah, blah, blah.” Then I had this moment of clarity. I was like, “Well, he's in solitary confinement. He probably shut the door…”
[0:47:18] LW: His judgment is a little bit skewed.
[0:47:20] SS: I'm like, I could have sent him a recipe over there. I was like, I got to get my work out. I eventually started sending work out to one of my brothers. He's my stepbrother, but we don't identify the step part. He's just my older brother. We call him Ken, but his name is Will Red. I remember sending my older brother the book out. Initially, I sent him some short stories first. I remember him writing me, and he hadn’t wrote me much in prison. My older brother, he was the one brother who had never had a brush with the system, never got caught up in the streets. He played ball for high school. He went to college. He was doing all the right things. To this day, he's just an incredible example for me as a father, as a husband, and all the things that he does. Really, he inspires me.
I remember getting a letter from him. He was like, “Man.” He's like, “I read all this stuff when I was in college, and I read all these different things people wrote.” He was like, “You write better than most people I went to school with.” I was like, “Wow.” That validation meant something. It's like, this is something I can take serious. I continue writing. Then I started, once I got out of solitary, I started sharing the books in the cellblock, and just that great find of like, “Guys, come on. Yo, man. When can I get the book next? I heard so much about it.” When guys started to talk about it, that you have no connection to, they don't know nothing about you. That's when I was like, “Okay, I'm on to something.”
[0:48:57] LW: As you're writing, were you recognizing any patterns? “If I tell more stories, if I'm completely raw and honest, that's the stuff that connects with people the most.” Or were you just stream of consciousness and just writing whatever was coming to you?
[0:49:12] SS: I think, a lot of it was, as I talked about early, being really influenced by hip hop. I think about some of the artists that I've grown up loving, and the ones that always resonated with me was people who rap very cinematically, great storytellers. The Kool G Rap, the NASs, and people you were, very – can bring you into their world. That, really, from a storytelling structure, the way that I've approached it is that I want people to feel like they are a part of this world, that they're having the experience of the characters, that they can smell the environment, they can taste the environment, they can be grossed out, they can fall in love, they can be angry, they can laugh, all the things. I think that instinct really came from reading a lot and listening to a lot of hip hop.
What I started finding consistently in the reactions to my work, is people would say, “I felt like I was there. I felt like I was part of the experience.” That became a thing where I was very intentional about setting the scene and really setting up those connecting points, and the metaphors and the similes that really align with that more cinematic storytelling.
[0:50:32] LW: At what point were you aware that you were going to get out? When you found out, and now you're writing these books, and you're getting this response, what was your plan in your head, before you actually walked out of those gates, what were you thinking was going to happen with all of this?
[0:50:49] SS: I was excited. When I wrote the first couple of books — for years, they were just tight, in folders. I was carrying from, safeguarding with my everything. During this time, there was this uptick in literature that was coming from communities, real communities, like Terry Woods. True to the game. Sister Soldier, The Coldest Winter Ever. Kwan, Animal. All these great literary — to me, they're literary giants, right? They may not rise to what people typically frame as literary, but I think, if you can communicate a reality from an environment that makes people feel something, that makes people feel connected, that makes people feel they can see themselves in those stories, that's greatness to me, and that's what they embody.
I saw the way that they were hustling. They were hustling books. I also come from that era, where DJs would hustle the tapes in the neighborhood. I used to DJ, and we would sell a mixtape for $2. Two-short hustling, his album on the trunk and masterpiece. I knew those stories, because I was reading Bad Magazine and Source, and keeping my ear to the street. I knew that I can get out and sell books. I just had to get out. That was the big part of it was getting out. That was something I didn't know. I didn't know if I was ever getting out of prison, because that's what they told me that “You will die in here”. The first step was getting myself out of solitary.
[0:52:23] LW: You did that with a freaking letter.
[0:52:26] SS: Yeah. I wrote a letter to the warden. It was a mixture of writing a letter and reading all these philosophical books. I challenged them on a philosophical idea of what the truth is. Basically, what I did is I wrote the warden a letter and I said — and I prefaced it with, “What you're going to read is my truth. If you follow the pattern of what my experience is, they line up with exactly what I said. When I came to prison, I said I wasn't following the rules. I've been pretty consistent with that. Which means that you can agree or disagree with me not following the rules, but what you have to agree with is that I told the truth. If you believe that the truth is the most important thing, then everything that I'm about to tell you in this letter moving forward, I would hope that you acknowledge that as truth as well.”
That's when I told him, “If you give me an opportunity to get out, I'm going to pursue this writing thing. I'm going to take it serious. I'm going to stop doing the things I was doing on the yard to get in trouble. I'm going to focus on becoming the best writer that I can be.” It was the first and only time that a warden has ever directly wrote me back. He said, he was so moved by the letter. He believed my truth that he's going to advocate for me to get released from solitary. He ended up doing that.
It still took about two years ago because he had to go to his higher ups. Once I got out, I started typing those books up. I had a little Brother’s word processor. It’s a Brother ML500. I had that little word processor. You can only see half of a sentence on that little screen. I would just type, type, type non-stop for days on end, transferring those books to type manuscripts. I did that. That's what I shared in the cellblocks, those typed manuscripts.
Meanwhile, I started putting the business plan together. I started walking through what I wanted to happen with my writing. I was very intentional about where I wanted to land at, and what I wanted to become when I got out. I wrote in every genre you can think of. I started with fiction. At one point, I wrote some erotica, which turned into a whole different things because it was a mixture of me coming from being a hustler, to evolving into a real writer. I was like, okay, I can write, and I know I can move products. I'm going to get out. I'm going to hustle these books.
I ended up meeting Sekou’s mom. Sekou is my youngest son, who I write about in a book. I met his mom while I was incarcerated. We started exchanging correspondence. She was like, “What is your plan for life?” I was like, “I'm happy you asked. Here's what I want to do.” I sent her a whole business plan, the whole breakdown of how I was going to disrupt the literary scene, how I was going to approach it, the places I was going to go. My goal was to get out, get a job, save that money, buy some books, take those books, hustle them everywhere I could, buy more books, hustling, rinse and repeat. She was like, “Wow.” She's like, “I'm with it. Let me help you.”
We ended up joining forces. I actually published my first book from prison in 2008. It was Crack Volume One. As soon as I published the book, I got sued by the Department of Corrections for the cost of my incarceration. I didn't let that deter me. I went up for parole that same year, got denied, went back up the following year, got denied. I decided, I wasn't going back to the parole board at that point. I was just going to do the time. The reason I had thought about that was, it was hard watching my dad. At the time, who was my girlfriend, it was hard watching them suffer. I wanted to relieve them of getting their hopes up high, only to have them dashed by my denial of prison parole release.
Fortunately, Sekou’s mom came to visit me the same day. I sat in that visiting room. I was in tears. It was heartbreaking watching her come through security, and get patted down and have to take her shoes off and have to open her mouth and have to be touched, and all the things. I was like, I didn't want her to suffer through that anymore. When she walked in, I was like, I got to break up with this woman.
As soon as she sat down, I go into this whole spiel about we have to break up. I broke down in tears, and it's just let me cry and get it out. Then she was like, “You're absolutely going to next parole board hearing. You can get it together and get back up in there, but we didn't come this far to give up.” I ended up going back and I got paroled on that third try. You know as they say, the third time was the charm.
The first thing I did when I got out of prison, they took me from the prison to the parole office. I had to check in with my parole office. Ebony, who was Sekou’s mom, she pulls up, her and my oldest son, Jay. There was a brother who was getting out, his name is Prince Montgomery. He was getting out the same day. We had met her the last 60 days in my sentence. He's like, “Man, I'm going to borrow one of your books when I get out.” I thought, he was talking about once he got home and got himself together. He had money in his account, and they gave him that. He was like, “Yo, did your girl bring them books?” She was like, “Hey, I got them in the trunk.” I'm like, “Yo, pop that trunk.” I remember giving him the books for only $15. He gave me $20. I didn't have no change. I didn't have no money on. He was like, “Man, keep that extra five, man. I'm happy to support you.” End of the year, we celebrate our freedom anniversary, but we also celebrate the moment of my first actual hand-to-hand book sale. I've been selling books ever since.
[0:58:24] LW: You talked about selling books to put gas in your Honda Accord, and you're going around mentoring kids and all of that. I imagine, you never dreamed in a million years that you'd be interviewed by Oprah and all this from one of your books at that time. Talk about what those next breadcrumbs were along that path. I know, there was a college, or something that I was interested in one of your books.
[0:58:49] SS: Yeah. Actually, I did think that I will be interviewed by Oprah. I'm going to tell you why. I believe in the laws of attraction. I believe that we can manifest into our lives, the things that we desire. I was super intentional about what I wanted to happen with my work, so I wrote it down. I was like, if I'm going to be a real writer, Oprah has to read one of my books. For me at that time, that's the validation that I needed to confirm. This was a life for me as a writer. I was like, I want to be a New York Times bestseller. I wrote that down.
I was very intentional about writing down exactly what I wanted to happen. Of course, it didn't happen in a way that I imagined. I imagine, I'm just going to send her Crack Volume One. Oprah's going to read that and be like, “Yo, it's really going down in the hood.” I need to be in tune with that. It didn't work out like that. What did happen is there was a professor, who was at State University in New York, Binghamton. She had been introduced to me by a young lady who used to edit their paper, who I had became pen pals with while I was in solitary. She got my first book, and she assigned that book to her class. Then, they ended up inviting me to come speak. My first professional speaking gig was at — she had moved from that college to a college in Wisconsin, Platteville. That was my first gig.
That was the beginning of like, this is really starting to happen. My book is in a college, officially part of college curriculum. That was the first thing like, “Hey, this thing can happen.” I started doing these talks, but I was also doing work in a community. I was using literature as a means to mentor kids at the school called Cody High School on the west side of Detroit. Then there was another one in a suburb called Tri-County, and a suburb of Detroit called Southfield. I was using literature, and I ended up winning this award called Black Male Engagement Leadership Award. That allowed me to write another book called Live in Peace. It was like a workbook that I use in my mentoring program.
That experience really opened up the world to me. After I won that award, the organization, they would invite me to these gatherings. I ended up going to one of those gatherings, and that's where I met the director of MIT Media Lab, Joi Ito. Joi invited me to learn about the Media Lab. I went from nearly two decades in prison to being in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at MIT Media Lab, with all these crazy robotics and 3D printing. I talked about in my TED Talk. When I tell people, it was like Fred Flintstone walking into an episode of The Jetsons, that is no exaggeration. I didn't know anything about technology. The Internet hadn't been created before I went to prison. There was no smartphones. There were no iPads. None of the things that we now have at our disposal.
When I walked to the Media Lab, I was just like — I mean, there was one thing that stuck out to me out the gate. There was a car that basically, folded up the wheels and parallel parked. I was like, “Yo, this is crazy.” It sparked my imagination. From there, I just was like, anything is possible. I went on to do Ted and be interviewed by Oprah, which was one of the most groundbreaking experiences of my life. That was five years after I’m out.
[END OF CLIP]
[1:02:29] LW: That was Shaka Senghor from Episode 87. Make sure you listen to that entire episode. It is amazing. In our next clip, which is from episode number 85, I'm in conversation with Ken Nwadike Jr., who grew up in a homeless shelter in Southern California. Ken went on to become a track star, who created a race called the Hollywood Half Marathon. Then later, he became known as the Free Hugs Guy, after trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon, failing twice, but still deciding to show up with a free hug sign on the sidelines.
Little did he know, that act of kindness would launch him into a career as a speaker and advocate for bridging gaps between sides in conflict zones. Ken’s is a fascinating backstory, and I highly recommend checking out the entire episode. Let's go straight to the part where Ken is volunteering at the same homeless shelter where he used to live. He's proposing to the kids who currently live in that homeless shelter, that they put together this marathon, this Hollywood half marathon, even though they had nowhere close to the 1 million dollars that it would take to pull it off.
[KEN NWADIKE JR.]
[1:03:54] LW: When you were first going back to volunteer, what was your mental state like? Because you experienced all these loss and trauma and all of that. Were you as positive then as you are now?
[1:04:05] KN: Absolutely. Yeah. I definitely went into it with the intention of spreading that positivity to the kids. Because you have to be that way to be an athlete. You have to be very goal-oriented and motivated. I think, track did that for me. I went from being this shy kid that was struggling to even speak out to my own bullies, to being a captain of that track team. Once you get handed that leadership responsibility of leading a team to a championship, because track is an individual sport, but cross-country is a team sport. As captain of the cross-country team and track team, it's like, “Oh, man. We have to win this championship.”
It's almost like, being captain of a cross-country team, you're that quarterback. You're the quarterback of the team. People are leaning on you for leadership, not even realizing that just a year prior, or months prior, you were walking around with your head down. Now you're trying to tell everyone else, keep your head up, keep your knees up when you're running, and we're going to win this thing. I just would take that same motivation and try and inspire the young people that same way.
When I walk into the shelter, and there's a kid that I'm having a conversation with, and the entire time during the conversation they won't look me in the face, I'm like, “Yo, I used to be the same way. I could tell you, that lack of confidence that you have to look a person in the face, it's going to make it tough for you to get a job. It's going to make it tough for you to get a date.” I remember, I used to go on dates, and I would look everywhere, but at the girl’s face. I'm looking over here. I'm looking down the table. I'm looking everywhere. I remember, there was a time, there was a girl. She was like, “Right here, Ken. Can you just look me in the eyes for just one moment?” When I couldn't, I realized, “Man, I have some serious things that I need to work on.”
These were all of the little things that when I went back to volunteer as a peer mentor in the shelter, almost all the little boys are that way. They feel so insecure. You go to shake their hand, and it's this weak little handshake as they're looking down. They won't even look at you. I wanted to try and figure out, well, how do you take that captain of the team mentality and use that to inspire these young men and women that were living in the shelter? I said, “Stand tall. Let's fill out that job application. Why don't you go back to school, rather than just you come out of the shelter and you go hang out on the block?” Those things became very important to me.
[1:06:46] LW: That led to a conversation about goals and big goals, which then led to this event. Talk about that.
[1:06:55] KN: Yeah. Yes. When I understood that, you can't just tell them, right? You can't just tell kids who are living in a shelter, or they've been abused, you can't just tell them, “Hey, pick yourself up. Everything's going to be all right.” They're like, “Yeah, what does that look like?” I knew for me, just taking running to that next level, I was like, “You know what? Why don't we create an event then? Let's create an event. We'll shut down Hollywood Boulevard.” Which was ridiculous now, when I even think about it. Go straight to Hollywood Boulevard. Why would you assume that you're going to be able to shut down Hollywood Boulevard? But we did. We called up LAPD and I said, “What would it cost for us to shut down Hollywood Boulevard?” The cop laughed. He's like, “They don't shut down Hollywood Boulevard for a race, or for kids in a shelter as a charity run. They shut that down for the Academy Awards, when they're shooting a scene out of Transformers, or something. They're not going to do that for some kids at the Gramercy Place Family Homeless Shelter.” I was like, “Oh, man.”
We were on speakerphone. These kids, they heard that. Of course, they're going to be frustrated. They felt let down as I'm hyping up. “Yeah, we're going to shut down Hollywood Boulevard. We're going to get 10,000 people to come out and run this race. We're going to raise all this money. We're going to put a basketball court on the yard, and we're going to do all these things with the money.” Then boom, one phone call, “No, you're not.” I was like, “Oh, man. Well, can't give up hope that easy.” That's what led to me reaching out to the media and sharing, “Look, here's where I came from. Here's what I'm trying to do. Here's why it's important.”
They came down to the shelter and did a whole profile on me, a whole story. Then they interviewed some of the kids. That led to so many people seeing that news clip out in LA. They started registering for this; at that time, this imaginary race. We didn’t have permits or anything yet at that point, but I was believing by faith that if I get enough people to register for this race, you're going to have to shut down the boulevard because we've got the money now, and we've got the participants. It's one thing to just blow it off. If you're like, “Oh, yeah. A handful of kids at a shelter who want to run this half marathon on –” We're not shutting down the boulevard for that. I'm like, “I've got 10,000 people and a million dollars. You're going to pay attention to me now.”
[1:09:24] LW: What's interesting is, you had already done a dry run of your story. That essay allowed you to really hone your pitch of what was important from your story. I'm sure, you probably used some of that, or borrowed some of that. Or, maybe you were used to now telling your story. When you finally reached out to the media, you didn't have to try to guess what was appealing about your – you already knew what was appealing about your story, so you knew how to play that angle.
[1:09:51] KN: I never even thought about it like that, but you're totally right. I'm so thankful to Miss Tuck, my counselor in high school, and another teacher, Miss Warmath, who, everyone hated this teacher, but I thought she was super sweet. They all combined because they were aware of what I was going through, but they knew of my insecurities. It was almost like, they would interview me to pull these things out, and they're like, “Put that in the essay, Ken. Put that in the essay.” That's what structured this thing.
You're right. It's almost like, very early on, it was already preparing me for what the future was going to hold, to be able to share that story in such an impactful way that it led people in Los Angeles, celebrities in Los Angeles, and even LAPD to say, “Let's shut down the boulevard for them,” and we pulled it off, 13 miles of Hollywood Boulevard. We already know how congested traffic is there. We didn't just shut down roads, we shut down freeway on and off ramps. That’s just insane to have to divert traffic like that for this race that we created.
[1:11:01] LW: You raised a million dollars, right? You didn't even know you're going to have a race. Where was this money sitting? In your checking account, or?
[1:11:09] KN: There's an online portal called active.com back then. It's race registration site for charities. I built a website called The Hollywood Half Marathon. I was surprised that that domain was even available. I was like, “How come no one's ever thought of this before?” I registered to hollywoodhalfmarathon.com, and I built the website. I pointed registrations to this website called active.com. Active.com, just to make sure that people aren't trying to scam people, they'll take all of the race registrations, and then they'll pay you little bits of what you raised along the way to cover some of your operational expenses. Then after the race takes place, then they release the rest of your funds.
Yeah. It’s like, I didn't even know that I was going to have the race yet. I can check in my active.com account, as well as the deposits that I was already receiving. I was like, “We've got a million bucks.” I remember, I used to call my friends back then. I was like, “You guys realize, I could buy a Lamborghini right now? I won't. But I could buy a Lamborghini right now. There's a million dollars that I have access to, but we've got to pull off this race.”
[1:12:24] LW: What were you doing for money at the time? Did you have a job?
[1:12:26] KN: I was living out in San Francisco, running track with the Nike foreign team, which was an Olympic development program. While I was there, I had started a party bus company. The reason why I did that was, there were – one of the first news stories that I read when I got there, it was about how many kids were passing away, driving drunk on, I believe, it was the 101 Freeway coming from San Francisco back up to Stanford University. My Nike development team, we were training on Stanford University's campus. They were talking about all of these university students who had recently lost their lives, driving drunk.
I remember back then thinking, all these brilliant minds at Stanford and Berkeley and all these, you guys can't figure out a solution to this problem? I was like, the easiest thing is to create party transportation from all of the colleges. This is back in ’05, before a party bus ever even existed. I was like, “You know what? Why don't I call up a charter bus company and have this charter bus meet at the Stanford University parking lot?” Then I would just charge people admissions to board the bus. Then I would negotiate a contract with the clubs down in San Francisco, so that people can hop to these clubs. This is pre any party bus company that ever existed.
[1:13:49] LW: Yeah. Pre-Uber, all that.
[1:13:50] KN: Any of those things. Exactly. No ride share apps, any of that. I was like, to make it more appealing to kids, you're not going to have to pay cover to get into the club because I've already negotiated the deal with the club owners. The way I got the club owners to accept all of these kids come into their clubs, you know how clubs, they usually try and keep people outside from 10 to 11 to make it seem like the club is popping. If I brought 50 people on a bus and just dropped them, you can let them in, and the club is popping. Because that's instant 50 people. If I have multiple buses coming from a number of colleges, I could get you a 100 people in your club, right by the time your club opens.
They went from having one bus, leaving Stanford University to where I had buses leaving from Stanford, from Berkeley, from Santa Clara University, and they were coming from all over the Bay Area. Then, I would just funnel them into the clubs that were cool with me, like whoever negotiated the best deal. I was like, then you're going to take all these college students. They're going to party, and then they're going to leave early and safe back to their colleges.
Now, there's no more drunk driving accidents down the highway. I was like, simple problem to solve. That's from the kid that didn't go to Stanford. I'm like, “You guys couldn’t figure that out?” That became a very lucrative opportunity for me because I ran that for a number of years, which is also, what took my focus away from track and field. I think, it was my first real successful entrepreneurial venture to where I went from being, I would say, a struggling track athlete, because track athletes, we’re not paid like basketball players, or football players. We get a lot of gear. I had a lot of Nike gear back then. Called Coach, if you needed shoes, shorts, whatever, they hook you up. You can't eat shoes. You have to figure out how you're still going to put food on your table, how you're going to pay your rent.
Although Coach didn't want me running that business, when it quickly became so successful, he was like, “You might want to stick with that.” He goes, “But do me a favor and stop having the guys work for you,” because I was taking other Nike athletes in. I'm like, “Yo, can you man the bus coming from Berkeley, and I'll man the one coming from Stanford?” I was paying them to do that. He's like, “Ken, you can’t have the guys partying all night with you on your buses, and then showing up at track practice, struggling the next day.” Eventually, I had to let the guys go and then hire actual staff from the nightlife scene. That was what I was doing. That was my early taste of being an entrepreneur.
[1:16:24] LW: That's why you had the LAPD on speakerphone because you're a hustler. You knew how to negotiate.
[1:16:28] KN: I was like, “We're doing this.”
[1:16:29] LW: I’m going to show these kids what a true negotiation actually sounds like.
[1:16:34] KN: Without a doubt. Yeah, yeah. This wasn't just some blind, let me call up LAPD and hope that it's going to happen. I was already used to negotiating with the police, just in moving my buses around. I think by that point, I was only 23-years-old, running that operation. At one point, I owned 12 Greyhound buses at age 24, 12 Greyhound busses.
[1:16:58] LW: You owned 12 Greyhound busses? You bought –
[1:17:01] KN: I was purchasing them. Yes. I went from chartering buses to eventually, I hated that when I would charter buses, the drivers, when they see that you're making too much money, then they try and hustle you out of what the cost is for the bus by the end of the night. Or, they would make up stuff. Like, “Oh, someone got sick on the bus, so it's going to cost you an extra 250.” Or, “I didn't want anyone using the restroom on the bus because I have a corporate run tomorrow, so I'm going to charge you this.”
I just got to the point where I was like, “Let me call Greyhound and find out whenever their buses reach a high mileage to where they can't take them across the country. How much would you sell your high-mileage buses to me for?” I started buying these high-mileage buses from Greyhound. I found this huge bus yard, where I would park. I still don't have the CDL license and things to be able to drive the bus around, but I owned 12 of them. I would just have drivers come down and drive all of the passengers. I knew how to move the buses around the yard, but I would never take it out onto the street. Yeah, 24-years-old, man, 12 Greyhound buses in a row. They would go out every Friday and Saturday night.
Eventually, I had the drivers on my own payroll. That was my first really successful venture. I've had a number of others along the way, including what the Hollywood Half Marathon became. It went from just being the Hollywood Half Marathon to Superhero Events. The reason why it became Superhero Events, I seemed to have a knack for getting first-time runners out to my events because of the way I marketed my races. My races were not for – it wasn't for the weekend warrior, who wants to run a 5K, 10K, half marathon every Saturday or Sunday. When you come to our races, it was an experience.
You come to pick up your runner’s bib, and you have to wear a suit, or tuxedo because our pickup isn't at a local running store. It's at the Hollywood Palladium with paparazzi there, and a red carpet because we wanted to honor you as a runner, even if you'd never run before. No matter how skinny or overweight you were, it didn't matter. Everyone was treated like a celebrity when you were coming to our events.
We're really helping people find their inner superhero. That's what led to creating that. Why it did so well for a while, for roughly about six years, we would have 10,000 people come out every year, which is insane for a first-year half marathon. You're lucky if you get 600. 10,000? How is he doing this? It was all in the marketing.
[1:19:33] LW: Then, the Boston Marathon bombing happened.
[1:19:35] KN: Exactly, yeah. It happened the same year that was our first year of Hollywood Half Marathon, 2013 was our race. Our race just happens to take place the first Sunday in April every year. That next day, Monday morning is Patriots Day. As we're having our debrief meeting, we're talking about ways to improve on the Hollywood half marathon. We're like, “Next year, we should do this and do that.” We got to become like them because they were so big and everybody knows of the Boston Marathon. Then boom, you see that breaking news headline that bombs had gone off at the finish line. I just remember, feeling like, “Man, who would bomb runners?” My whole life, all of the runners that I have met have been some of the most kind, genuine and supportive people that I've met in my life, from the coach to my teammates. When I went to college, same thing. Coach Scott, my teammates there. They were all still my friends today. They were people who were looking out for me. When I was with Nike, Coach [inaudible 1:20:37], my teammates there, while we were up at Stanford.
I was just like, man, everybody, along the way of my life, all of my favorite people were runners. I was like, any runners that are there, they have to be those same people, and no one deserves to be attacked in such a way, to be doing your sport, crossing the finish line and a bomb goes off. Even for the spectators that were there cheering for their families. I was just like, “No, man. I have to do something about this.” Because I felt like, I owe the sport back. This sport took me out of homelessness. It got me to college. It gave me purpose. The only reason why I'm even able to talk to you right now, to have this conversation with you right now, literally, is the confidence that I picked up through being a track athlete. I have always felt I owe the sport, big time. Because if it wasn't for running, I was sure, I was probably going to go to the Air Force. I was already studying my ass off then.
That was my fallback plan, was if I didn't get a scholarship to college, I was going to join the Air Force. Running changed that path for me. More than that, it gave me confidence and a personality to be able to create other entrepreneurial ventures. I was like, “I have to do something.” That something, initially, I thought was going to be run in the race, but not just run it, but invite and encourage tens of thousands of other people to join me there, because I had just come off of 10,000 people who just ran Hollywood with me. “Hey, you guys. Let's go and make the next Boston the biggest Boston ever.” They were like, "Word. Okay.” Everyone starts registering to do it. They're pledging on this site that I had made.
Actually, the page that I had created back then, it was actually called Free Hugs for Runners. That was the name of the whole brand. It was a Facebook page. The website, it was called Free Hugs for Runners. We're going to be a crew, and we're going to go and run the Boston Marathon, tens of thousands of us to say that we're not intimidated by these acts of terror. If you were to go to even the Free Hugs Project Facebook page right now, I think, you could sort it back to the history of what the page used to be called, and it was Free Hugs for Runners.
[1:22:46] LW: Where did that name come from?
[1:22:48] KN: I felt like, because of this bombing that took place, I was like, we have to figure out a way to show love to the running community because they were hurting. I was like, Free Hugs for Runners is a healing way to how do we combat this terror attack that happened there.
[1:23:07] LW: I mean, were you in the shower? Did it just occur to you? You knew right away, “This is it. Free Hugs for Runners. That's is what I'm supposed to call it.”
[1:23:13] KN: Yeah. Maybe it was in the shower, I don't know. Because ideas do come to me in the shower and in the plane, for sure. I feel like, when I can't do anything else, then my ideas start spinning. It was probably one of those places. I was like, Free Hugs for Runners just makes sense. We're going to go out there and run, but we're going to be ambassadors of love when we go out and run this race. Most importantly, we're going to show that we're not scared of your acts of terror, that we're going to come back in bigger numbers.
Because at that time, there was the whole Boston Strong Movement that formed immediately in response. I was like, “How do you set yourself apart from this huge movement of Boston Strong?” Boston Strong was almost as bold a statement as those Live Strong bracelets in the 90s. Boston Strong came out, and everyone knew of those colors, the blue and gold right after the bombing. I was like, I want to associate myself with that, but I want to carve my own lane. My own lane was Free Hugs for Runners. We were going to get tens of thousands of runners that were going to show up at the Boston Marathon. We're going to run it, and we're going to be emotional support for other people that are there.
I was the one who missed qualifying by a few seconds. You have to pick which race you're going to use to get into Boston to run as a qualifier. At the time, being under age 35, it's the fastest qualifying time to get in. It was three hours and five minutes. You had to run three hours in five minutes flat. I ran in the qualifier race and I ended up running three hours, five minutes, point 11 seconds. Because of that, I had come so close. Can you imagine training for something for an entire year, and running in this race for three hours feeling good and checking your watch and I'm like, “I’m right on pace. I'm right on pace.” In that year and three hours wasted from just 11 extra seconds. 11 seconds. That's nothing. I could go down the stairs right here and come up in 11 seconds –
[1:25:16] LW: What happened? Did you lose track of time, or did you think you – your clock’s slow, or what –
[1:25:23] KN: Two things, I think, happened. One, I cut it too close. Two, whether people believe it was God, or the universe, or whatever it is that people want to say it was, it was meant to have been missed. Because in missing it, led to what the next idea was, which was Free Hugs for Runners needed to fly out there and literally hug people. That gave birth to that idea, as I had to go back and tell my wife like, “Look, I already bought tickets to Boston, because I thought I was going to run in the race.” I'm going there anyway, and I'm going to cheer on all of these runners who took my pledge as the whole Free Hugs for Runners Movement was growing. I was like, I'm going to go out there and just hug on as many people as I can.
[1:26:14] LW: You ran twice, right? You tried to qualify twice within a week.
[1:26:16] KN: I tried to qualify in –
[1:26:18] LW: Within a week.
[1:26:20] KN: Yeah. Correct. I first ran one seaside here in the Los Angeles area. It was a coastal race. It was mostly flat ground. I was feeling good that whole way and missed it there by 11 seconds. I ran that one on a Sunday. By that Saturday, so literally, the same weekend, it was in one week, I was like, then I have to run it again. Anyone who knows, if you've ever run a marathon, you don't run two marathons in one week. You're still getting feeling back in your legs, right?
Even worse, I said, “Well, I'm a better downhill runner than a flat runner.” I said, “I'm going to fly out to Utah, where I knew all of their marathons come downhill.” There was this race called the Big Cottonwood Marathon. I was like, “I'm going to run this one because it's going to force me downhill for the entire way of the marathon.” I ran it, and same thing, coming down the hill. I think, this time, it was 3:05.9, or something like that. It's like, “What? Twice?” You came that close again? I almost wondered, if I would have just skipped the LA one and went straight to Utah, would I have blasted past that 3:05?
That's why I still think, it was all fate. It was meant to be. I was not supposed to run in the Boston Marathon. I tried it twice as an elite runner, as being in the top shape of my life, and I couldn't hold this pace for even just a few extra seconds to help me reach that goal. In all of my running career, I had never shed tears at the finish line of a race until after that Big Cottonwood race in Utah. Because that feeling of defeat from muscle aches and pain, but then also, emotionally of saying, “Man, I was really doing this to be there with the people of Boston, and I let them down. I'm not going to be a part of this whole thing.”
I've promoted it to everyone. Free Hugs for Runners was going on with or without me. Everyone was already – People who had the slower qualifying times, or who were faster than me, because they were marathoners, they were all going. I'm not a marathoner. I run 1 mile really fast. I don't run 26.2 miles. There was a bunch of people that were going, who took that pledge of Free Hugs for Runners. I was like, “I'm not going to be able to make it.” They went, and I was like, “Well, I guess, I'm just going to put Free Hugs on a t-shirt and go out there anyway.” Then, that's what gave birth to the whole movement of what later became the Free Hugs Project. I didn't know that at the time. Until I stood out there on the race course, and I was just hugging people as they were coming by because I wasn't even sure that people would take me up on that offer, right?
You're a Black dude, standing in Boston. Who's going to give you a hug in Boston, on a racecourse? It sounds like, “Well, I'll see what happens.” If I don't get any hugs, it's all good. I gave it a try. I have Free Hugs on a t-shirt. I held the Free Hugs sign. Of course, the elite runners ran past me because they're racing for prize money. They're racing to win. Right after the elites went by, it took that one first person to break the ice and come in, and give me a hug.
Strangely, back then, it was Doug Flutie, who was the former San Diego Chargers quarterback, which is crazy, because I live here in San Diego. It was so strange that out of 50,000 people that were running that race, this first dude that comes in, he's got the American flag on his shorts, and he puts his arms in an airplane motion and comes over to me, and then gives me that hug. Flew into me and gives me that hug. That was literally the first hug that I got in Boston. He had no clue who I am. Doesn't know that I'm from San Diego, but it was our former San Diego Chargers quarterback. Then, he continues running on.
Once he set that example, it broke the ice and thousands of people behind him started coming in and taking the hug. Just like back here, I have my camera with the tripod set up right behind me, as everyone was running by because I wanted to document the experience. I took that video, uploaded it to YouTube and Facebook, instant viral hit, by the time I had made it back to my transfer from LAX back to San Diego. I was like, “What just happened?” Then it seemed like, every news site in the country was either sharing the video of this feel-good moment that happened at the Boston Marathon.
I think, it first started with BuzzFeed. Buzzfeed snipped up animated GIFs, snippets of everything that was happening there. They're like, “And in this hug, where this person jumped into his arms and this hug where this person was wearing a tutu.” It was just this really feel-good thing. Then they shared the link to the video. The video just went nuts. Then it went from BuzzFeed to Huffington Post, New York Times, Boston Globe. Started getting invited out to do TV shows from Good Morning America, to flew out to London to do Good Morning Britain. All of these websites talking about what inspired you to do this thing after this bombing took place. Why was free hugs your response? That led to that conversation.
[1:31:35] LW: What did you experience that was unexpected from that first hugging event?
[1:31:42] KN: I wished that the world could be like that all the time. Because after so many people coming in and sharing those hugs with me, it's like, in those moments, you forget that you were the homeless kid who struggled with your own insecurities. Now, all of a sudden, everybody sees you.
When I got back to the shelter with these kids that I was mentoring, and I'm talking with them about the experience as well, and they were saying the same thing like, “Ken, you have to keep this up. People can see us now.” I knew how much it meant to feel invisible, as did they. Where now, all of a sudden, their mentor, their peer mentor is on all these social media news sites. By the time I had landed and turned on my phone, and I’m like, “What is going on? This thing was a viral hit.” Just being part of that experience, I had never had any viral fame or viral success before, so I didn't know what that entails. Then shortly after, where you’re being called by all of these news sites to do an interview, it felt good.
[END OF CLIP]
[1:32:46] LW: That was Ken Nwadike Jr. from Episode 85. In our next clip, we're going to hear from a conscious comedian named J Smiles, who I had the pleasure of interviewing back in episode 99. I love J’s story, because again, it's a story where she experienced a major unexpected life change that ended up disrupting all of her previous goals and put her on a completely different trajectory to becoming a stand-up comedian, and to starting a podcast for caregivers, which was called Parenting Up.
Long story short, J lost her dad unexpectedly to a heart attack. Then soon after that, her mother was diagnosed with dementia. J was thrusted into the uncomfortable position of becoming a full-time caregiver. She had never care-given in her entire life, so she had no idea what she was doing. Because of that, she started to get very stressed, she wasn't sleeping well. The comedy and the podcasting became outlets for all of that stress that she was under. As a desirable side effect, she was able to then help other people laugh from the absurdity of her situation. She also was able to give caregivers the inspiration to keep going through sharing her story in her podcast. Okay, we're going to start this clip from the point where J describes the direction that she thought her life was going in, versus what actually ended up happening.
[J SMILES]
[1:34:29] LW: Where did you see your life going prior to your dad having a heart attack?
[1:34:32] JS: Prior to my dad passing, I had the three academic degrees and the plan. It was well underway. The ultimate goal was to have a tri-continental life between Europe and Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, mostly Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Namibia. Those were the four countries that I had contacts in, very specific, definite contacts around legal missionary work to assist current lawyers into helping raise equity for women and girls and I’d already started doing that.
In Italy, I would engage and work on product design pursuits. My passions for product design and law didn’t go anywhere. They were things that in my brain, I would have connections with like a stronghold in Milan, then a stronghold in those areas that I mentioned in Africa. Then I would come back to the United States, making connections as necessary to bring those products and services to the US for whatever might we need. Whether I needed at that time, if I maybe I’m bringing the products and services back for funding, or for sales or whatever.
I’m spending like half a year to 18 months somewhere or half a year to 18 months somewhere, and I’m coming back and I’m circling. I’m more of an enthusiast, consultant, and engager and I’m just going to keep repeating that. Just rinse, and repeat. Also, my father started collecting game warden sports memorabilia back in the 1980s. Somewhere around the early 2000s, he had become the largest private collector of game-worn western-based sports. I don’t know if somebody has more cricket items or squash. I’m not getting into that. But if you’re saying baseball, football, and basketball across the western bay sports, nobody had more than my father had acquired. It was a source of pride and a great deal of family input.
My goal was to then, as I made more connections in Europe and Africa, we eventually have those prime pieces of it circling the globe with virtual and/or live tours, to really impact people with the stories. I have Jesse Owens track cleats for 1936 Olympics when he got the four gold medals in front of Hitler. I have an original pair of gloves from Jack Johnson. Also have one of four known Babe Ruth jerseys when he was with the New York Yankees. I have male and female, Black, white, Hispanic, Asian game warden stuff. Italian, I have Mario Andretti full racing suit. That’s what I was setting out to do. I was like, “This is it. I want to get better and better and make more connections.”
I think it’s always been around, I’m a global citizen, and how can I make the world a better place. I want to leave more than I take out of it. That was the plan and it was coming together. Then dad dies. Well, we just been discussing, it happens. About three years into caregiving, for those three years, I was only caregiving. I was managing my mother’s CPA firm, managing my father’s law firm. The best way to say this, I opened the first African-American equity-owned business on the strip in Las Vegas and it was a sports memorabilia gaming experience. I had those things going on, while I was trying to also handle my father’s estate and learning how to be a caregiver.
Tremendous amount of stress, and people suing me. Hey, guys, I didn’t know trying to wife me, trying to come up until what they thought might be come up. I was like, “What are you talking about? What? No. Get out of here, silly guy. Should have got on that train earlier. You can’t come in here talking about, ‘Hey! I know you.’ That’s stupid.” “Didn't nobody teaches you how to act like you don’t know me.” I was like, “You don’t even have good and you don’t even – ugh! Get out of here.”
Three or so years into that, I’d gained about 50 pounds. My cholesterol, my blood pressure, everything was going in the wrong direction. I walked into a wall not meaning to, thought I was having a heart attack or stroke. Turns out, it was a severely inflamed pinched nerve. That was my wake-up call. You got to do something differently. I started looking for a hobby. I need a hobby that takes me out of all of this, somewhere where I’m not Janay Smith. Because anywhere I walk in that time as Janay Smith, people knew what had happened.
My dad was a Google alert before I knew the dude was dead. He was kind of a big fish in his area, so it was too much. I was like, “I need to go somewhere where nobody knows me. Nobody wants anything. I need a new hobby because I got to let life off.” That’s where comedy came in. I did not know I would fall in love with this half — comedy caught me by the heart. It pulled it up out of my throat and she was like, “Ah! J, I’ve been waiting on you.” I was like, “Well, why aren’t you saying nothing? Been over here doing all this other stuff?” Then family and friends are like, “You’ve been funny. I don’t know what it took so long.” I was like, “Really? Why didn’t nobody say –?”
I basically was on kind of like a janky version of Groupon. I get really wasn't on Groupon, but it was kind of Groupony. Just kind of look, like it’s going to be glassblowing or beer making. I just need something that’s fun. I want to meet some new people. I was going to walk in and say, “Hey! I’m J. How you doing? Yeah, let’s learn how to crochet, two hours a day on a Saturday for six weeks.” Comedy popped up. I fell in love with it. I knew it by like the second class because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was getting into writing jokes. I was sweating, like I was out somewhere running a marathon. I’m at my desk writing a stupid joke. I looked down and I have like wet rain under my armpits and sweat running down my back. I was like, “Damn it.” Because I knew what that meant. Right? I lived enough life to know, I was like, “Okay. Okay. Damn it. I don’t even have time to like nothing. Oh man! I don’t have time. This was not supposed to happen.”
Anyway, it happened. But for the first couple of years of comedy, I didn’t talk about being a caregiver. To circle back to that point, I didn’t bring it up. I didn’t talk about being J, I didn’t talk anything about caregiver, my dad, my background, nothing. I only talked about the world current affairs and life experiences. Because remember, I was going to comedy to escape my real life. I didn’t want to talk about it. I was trying to not deal with it.
[1:42:10] LW: How did that shift occur, to become the conscious comic?
[1:42:14] JS: Charm, the universe, Mother Nature, it wouldn’t let me not. You start just writing jokes and you’re writing jokes. It just started coming out of my spirit. I meditate, you know that, but I want your listeners to know. It got to a point where who I am had to come out because I became serious about being a comedian.
Once I decided, “Okay, I’m serious. I’m going to be a professional. I’m going to have a website. I’m going to go on tour, I’m going to more to open mics.” Once I made the decision that this is not just open mics, I’m going to go grab a glass of wine or beer every couple of weeks and just do three minutes. Then it became, “Well, I don’t want to get up there lying.” That’s disingenuous and that’s not who I am. I don’t do anything else like that, so why would I do this? I’m so passionate about the art form. I know, I feel like you got politicians, preachers, professors, comedians, who else can command an audience? You get the mic and everybody’s listening. What are you going to say, J? I’ve come of age as a comedian during the time you got Black Lives Matter. You got people grabbing women by the crotch. I’m like, “I got to say something.”
My point of view, I’m coming from the hotbed of civil rights and the cradle of the confederacy. Then I have all this corporate experience. I’ve been to all seven continents. I’ve lived in three or four other nations, so it started coming out of my jokes. But it was the pandemic, the pandemic made caregiving be a part of my comedy. I didn’t have a choice. The same way. I didn’t have a choice to be a comedian. I didn’t have a choice to keep caregiving out of my material in a very real way, soon as COVID hit. I tried to fight it. I ignored it. The universe was like, “All right. Okay.” I was like, “Ah! No, no, no. I don’t want to do it.” I lost.
[1:44:26] LW: That’s when you started your podcast too, right, during the pandemic.
[1:44:28] JS: That is correct.
[1:44:29] LW: Parenting UP Podcast, where you sort of bring together all of the things you’re passionate about: storytelling, comedy, your experiences in caregiving. Why did you think that was important?
[1:44:39] JS: To do it?
[1:44:41] LW: Yeah, to make your podcast about the caregiving adventures.
[1:44:44] JS: I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but Light, when I tell you I didn’t have a choice, but that fall in the charm. When you get to the corner, you’re supposed to go left or right. What do intuition tell you to do? I started meditating in 2015, and in December 2015, is when I started meditating. March 2015 is when I started comedy. I’ve been working very intently and intentionally on building my intuition muscle. I don’t even want to do a podcast.
Again, I don’t have time to add anything. I’m barely staying above water with what I’m already responsible for, all the things I least have agreed to do. Because everything in this world is a choice. I could get up from this mic right now and walk out on you and what you’re going to do? There’s nothing you can do, right? Everything’s a choice. I can leave my mama today. What she’s going to do? Nothing. You could just, whatever, everything’s a choice.
But I already had so much on my plate. I was like, “J, what do you mean? How are you going to?” But it wouldn’t let me go. It was very clear what continued to come to me during meditation, in moments of quiet. We have been in lockdown probably less than six weeks, definitely not two months, for sure. It was, you’re going to do a podcast and you’re talking to caregivers. The podcast, I was very clear. The mission was not to just deal with, “Oh, J Smiles, you got to figure out how to do comedy.” Right? Because a lot of comedians, or a lot of artists or entertainers made a podcast about their craft because all of a sudden, if you can’t perform, figure out how to take it to a digital medium.
It was clear like, “Nope! This has nothing to do with just stand up. You are supposed to talk to caregivers. They are hurting.” I was getting that from caregivers, people who know that I’m a caregiver, would DMing me, “What are you doing? How are you taking care of your mom? How are you not going crazy?” I was, “Argh! Ah! I’m Jonah.” That’s what I tell the person all the time, “I am so Jonah in the Bible. Jonah didn’t want to do nothing. Whether you’re Christian or not, it ain't but five pages in the Bible. Okay? Jonah didn’t want to do nothing. He was always running from whatever he’s supposed to do and I’m Jonah.” I was like, “Here’s the only five pages I know. I don’t even know where nothing else is in the Bible.” Whatever. That’s not the point.
It came to me, he’s like, “You’re supposed to talk to caregivers, and you’re supposed to tell your story and it’s supposed to be funny. Don’t try to get into statistics, or pills, and doctors and tests. Just tell your story, talk to other caregivers. If you tell your story, it will help people.” Everything I’ve ever done has to pass through that eye of the needle.
In my 20s, I thought I wanted to make money more than I had a mission. By my early 30s, I knew that I wasn’t driven by that. I’m just not, period. Like mission over money for me, period. Impact over income. That’s just who I am. I show up better when the mission aligns with my values and who I am. So, helping caregivers during the pandemic, that was a reason at two o’clock in the morning after I get my mom to finally go to sleep to come, to cut these damn lights where I’m like, “All right. Hey! It’s J Smiles. Blah, blah, blah.” But it if I was just trying to trying to come to figure out how to do a set in the dark with some lights to ask people to put 99 cents on my Patreon account, Light, I wouldn’t have done that. I just wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have had the consistency because I wouldn’t have given a shit. I would have been like, “I don’t.”
How many 99 cents do I need to buy some coffee by the time the IRS –?” I’m like, but, I’m on every continent and I have people who barely speak English sending me links like, “I legit was about to quit my mama, until I heard season whatever episode whatever. If you can do it, I can do it too.” I’m like, “Let me go to my next episode.” That is what leads me, but I did not have a plan to become a podcaster. I am following intuition and the spirit. You’re going to do a podcast, and it is for caregivers and J Smiles is doing it.
It was also very clear, my legal name, Janay Smith, she is not doing this podcast. It’s never her perspective. It’s always J Smiles. I’m very clear that get in the right head, mind frame whatever before I do the recording. I don’t think Janay, or JD was what my mom calls me. I don’t think she could be so transparent because it was too painful. J Smiles is telling JD story. Like J Smiles is JD’s best friend who happens to know everything, but JD would probably be crying every third word. Like, “That’s who I am.”
[END OF CLIP]
[1:49:52] LW: That was J Smiles from Episode 99. we have one clip left. This is our final clip, where we're going to hear the incredible story of a man named Joseph Bradford, who started a one-man food bank in Southern California called B.A.R.E. Truth. This is a clip from way back in episode number 47. But it's one of those episodes that I still personally go back and listen to, to this day because of Joseph’s drive and determination and his wonderful storytelling.
His life journey reminds me of that movie, It's a Wonderful Life. Remember that Christmas movie with Jimmy Stewart, who played George Bailey, who was the guy that wanted to end his life because he thought he was better off dead than alive? Well, Joseph didn't want to in his life or anything, but the plot point that reminds me of Joseph’s story in It's a Wonderful Life is that George wanted to see the world. There were always these things that kept happening that would hold him back.
Then when his father passed away, he had to take over the family business, which meant he never had a chance to leave his small town. He ended up doing a lot of good for many people in the community. Joseph's desire for his whole life was to get out of Kansas City. He grew up with a bunch of siblings, where he was basically having to take care of him because his dad was not in the picture. He didn't have any money. There were drugs involved with his parents.
He just wanted to get out. He just wanted to see the world. He ended up finding himself in Los Angeles, where he's surrounded by all the opportunities in Hollywood and all the lights, but he ended up becoming a community servant. It happened in the most unexpected way. That's what this clip is about. It's about how Joseph surrenders to this inner calling that he had one night really, really late after leaving a restaurant and giving a homeless person his food, and how that snowballed into this movement that he started called B.A.R.E. Truth.
[JOSEPH BRADFORD]
[1:51:58] LW: What was your idea for your life at this point, now that you're finishing up computer school?
[1:52:03] JS: I just knew there was a world bigger than Kansas City. I wanted to see it. This was my opportunity. I got accepted in Florida. I’m out. I'm going to Florida. Then now, I've been in Florida for a couple years. Now I was like, “Well, I want to go to LA.” Literally, it was that. I want to go to Los Angeles to see what it is.
At the time, I'm young. I have been working, so I saved some money. I had $4,000. I didn’t make a lot of money, but I'm young. I have no kids. I don't have no responsibilities. It's just me. My work ethic is good enough to where I’ll find a job. That's how I looked at it. I’ll find a job. I never had no problem finding a job before, so I found a job and I just wanted to go and see it. Literally, me and my cousin drove down to LA. Ran out of gas twice. Hitchhiked once, we’re good. We’re good.
I end up finding a job in a month. I lived out in the valley. Most expensive rent that I've ever had. I didn't know places cost as much when I moved out here because I'm from a smaller city where, renting ain’t bad. In Orlando, in Florida, the renting, ain’t bad. Three months later, guess what? Now my brothers are living out here with me. Had some issues in Kansas City. My mom was going through a few things and now I have my brothers again. Not again, but now they're with me. I had to enroll them in school. I had to be that again. I'm trying to work and take care of my brothers.
During this time as well, my mother was having some issues. Bruce was now by this time, her and Bruce had got back together. He was supposed to help me. He was supposed to help out with my brothers coming out here. He ended up dying. Then come to find out, he had a drug problem, too. Here it goes again. Somebody else with a drug problem. Now they're not here doing what they told me that they was going to do. Because when I moved to Florida, it was like, “Oh, I’ll help you out do whatever. Try to help out.” Cool. Then now, I got my brothers literally three months after I moved to Los Angeles. No help again. I got to figure it out.
From there, I moved to Vegas for a year because by this time, the girl that I was dating, she had a little daughter and I had my youngest brother still with me. I was trying to be more of a family guy.
[1:54:30] LW: Did you have proper jobs at this time?
[1:54:32] JB: Yeah, but not the greatest jobs ever. The first job that I got when I got here, I was doing maintenance. I was doing maintenance for this property in Reseda. That was the first job. Then by this time when I started, when I moved to Vegas. I was actually working. I was doing maintenance for 24 Hour Fitness. I was actually getting paid something decent. That was now, I’m 24 or something like that. It wasn't that bad. Like I said, now moving to Vegas, it was cheaper. It was cheaper and it was like, “Oh, I can do this.” I was able to get a house and all that other stuff. Like I said, I had that girlfriend with a young daughter, and my brother, put him in school as well. It wasn't that bad either. Then we ended up moving back to California.
[1:55:23] LW: How did you get introduced to the population on Skid Row?
[1:55:26] JB: Fast forward, it was really sitting there, not really doing much for my life because I ended up getting hurt at a job, and so I had a lot of free time. Because I was acting and modeling for one point because I didn't have anything else to do. I was on workman's comp for years. After I got out of that, it really was a pull on my life to do something different. I felt incomplete. Really, it was in those moments, trying to figure out what am I going to do. I used to promote clubs in Hollywood. We ended up going out every night. I ended up giving a guy half of my meal. Then just started thinking like, “Damn, he wouldn't want half a meal. Let me give him his own meal.” That's how the birth of it was. Because I would see the same guy outside of Denny's and Rascals in Hollywood every night. Every night, I would see him.
[1:56:20] LW: After you finished promoting at a club, you would –
[1:56:21] JB: After we went out. Yup. Went out –
[1:56:24] LW: Go to Roscoe’s, get some food.
[1:56:27] JB: That was 3, 4 in the morning. I will see him. Then I would end up talking to him after a while. Gave him the food. Then he's like, “Hey, man, why are you out here every night?” Just started doing it. Like I said, that pull on my life because we once were homeless. It was an easier conversation. When I would ask my friends like, “Hey, can you buy another meal? We can give out two meals tonight.” Nobody would do it. I just did it by myself.
[1:56:51] LW: When you saw this guy, who did you see? Did you see yourself? Did you see your dad? Did you see somebody you crossed paths with?
[1:56:59] JB: No. I just see somebody that needed help. That correlated with my life because all along here, I feel like my life would have been a little bit better if people help me. I always had to struggle to do different things. I always wish that, “Damn, I wish somebody could help.” Somebody could help me. If somebody could help me out, can move. I could move this journey alone a lot faster. When my car broke down, or when this happened, somebody was there to help me. If I could call back and say, “Hey, can I get $600 for fixing my car?” That would have been a great help. For me, it was just that compassion to help and want to help and really listen to him and what he was going through.
[1:57:40] LW: When your friends refused to help to even buy one meal, what do you think the psychology of that is?
[1:57:45] JB: It was all about self for them, because they were going to do whatever they was going to do. I didn't necessarily like it because my friends at that time were just the only people that I knew, when I just first moved to California. Essentially, I was forced to be around them, because then I needed, I wanted somebody to be around. Because I'm used to having all my siblings around, as much as I didn't want them around. Now when I'm gone, it’s like, “Uh, this is boring by myself.” I spent a lot of time by myself moving, doing different things.
Me and those same group of friends back then, we're not even friends today. I know them, but they're not a part of my journey and what I'm doing today because we just grew apart, because I always knew that that wasn't really what I wanted. That was just where I was forced to be at that moment.
[1:58:31] LW: You started buying the guys a couple meals. Then what happens?
[1:58:35] JB: Yeah. Buying the guys a couple meals. I just kept doing it not as regular at that time, but I just did it here and there, here and there. Then, I really created a plan for housing, because I was – where I was living, that was my biggest bill, my rent. I wanted to reduce the amount of rent, but I also wanted to provide people housing because then I would see more people now on the streets.
Now at this point, I'm conscious of homelessness. We always knew it, you know what I mean? Now I'm very conscious of it. Damn. A lot of people over here, or me walking around at 2 in the morning on a scene stand over there, I've seen John over there. I actually now know them by name. It's like, they're sleeping outside when they could be sleeping inside. I really outlined a vision on how to reduce my rent and eventually one day, get housing. What I did is I created a plan, as far as if I managed the properties, or became a property manager, then I could live there for free.
Then also, I targeted companies that helped homelessness. Then now, I wanted to be a property manager for places that worked with homeless people. Because then, for me, I didn't know enough people to be able to ask the questions. What I did is I worked there. It was a paid internship. If I worked there, I work inside of the mode, now I can learn. I can ask the questions. I can look at the paperwork. I can see who's coming in and how they were doing it. Because in my life I've never been. I just don't feel I've been fortunate enough to know the right people. It's always been a struggle to get information and how people are doing it. Especially now, I'm living in a big city like Los Angeles. People are doing a bunch of stuff out here, but I don't know them. Now, let me work there. That's what I did.
I started working at a property management company first. Well, I lied and said I did it in college to get me in the door. I moved from my one-bedroom apartment to a studio apartment, unbelievably small. Now I'm a property manager. I don't have rent. That provided me the flexibility to now go out and now seek the other company. Then when I found a larger company that actually did what I wanted to do, end up applying there. Now, I actually have the skill set that they need. Because I didn't have it before, but this was a smaller company, so it's fine. Now I'm going to go into this bigger company. That's where it was a very strategic plan of how I went in there and introduced myself and how I got that job.
Then from there, it just – I worked for them for six years, learning how to get into people, where are they getting people, what does this mean? Meeting the social workers and just really talking to them and going through the de-escalation training. I literally said yes to everything that they wanted me to do. Because in my plan too, I'm also now figuring out B.A.R.E. Truth and what I wanted to do with that. At that point, I need to have a name for the organization as well. It was literally like, “Okay, God. This is the speed. This is where I need to be.”
Not necessarily working for somebody, but how can I make it better because then, I also noticed a bunch of flaws within what they were doing. I also, because now I'm the property manager, I'm depositing $30, $40,000, every month into somebody else's account, and they don't even treat the people as good. I know that there has to be a better way. That's where really the birth of it, because when I did it, I didn't necessarily know it was going to be what it is today. I just knew the passion I had for the homelessness because of what we went through before.
Also, now I'm actually getting to know these people. Now hearing their stories, versus just walking past them like I did on another years, or drop a dollar here and there. You know what I mean? It was literally that. Then I also remember, even when I would drop the dollar, I always had a little slight conversation with people. Like, “Hey, what are you doing?” I would really tell them, it wasn't my thing, I would say, “Hey, man. Do something good with it.” Because in my brain, I'm trying to steer them away from drugs and alcohol because for me, that's probably why they're here. Now for me, I lost everybody due to drugs and alcohol. I didn't want that. Yeah, I want to help you, but it's like, I don't want to feed into your habit.
That wanting to help you now with my organization goes even further, because now I can give you housing to really move you off the streets, and then now work on those other little issues. I got to get you safe first. That was always my thing. Because it still goes back to helping people by getting you safe and making sure you're good, as best as my ability, obviously, because now we're adults. Still, it was that. Housing is – you make sure people are good because I've been without a house before. We had to sleep in a car a little bit, in the snow, or be in a house with no heat. I get it. How can I make sure that other people don't have to go through this?
[2:03:48] LW: You're in your mid to late 20s at this point?
[2:03:50] JB: Yeah, by this time I’m – Yeah.
[2:03:52] LW: I know a lot of people in that age, they're just looking to make as much money as possible. They're looking to go on as many dates as possible. You're sitting around thinking, “How can I get all these homeless people off the street and get them safe into houses?” That's what you were thinking about. Was there a motivation underneath that? Were you looking to make that into a business?
[2:04:13] JB: Not at that time. I wasn't. No, I wasn't looking into making into a business. I was just looking to do it, because I had been trying to do stuff. After working all these jobs, I remember crying in Griffith Park telling my mom I wanted to go. She told me literally, she said, “Your job is not done yet.” I didn't understand what she meant. That stuck with me like, my job is not done.
Now, this became my job and were infatuated with it, because of my natural desire is to help people. That personality tests when I was in high school about being a doctor, helping people is still there. That's at the core of who I am. Me being the oldest, as much as I hated being the oldest, but I do get joy taking care and making sure people are good. Even though I hated it. I used to run away from that responsibility, but it wouldn't leave me because that's at the core. That's who I am. I sacrificed a lot of money and everything else by doing it this route.
[2:05:26] LW: Your mom knew what you were doing? Is that why she said that, your job is not done? What was she referring to?
[2:05:30] JB: She said, “If you came back to Kansas City, you wouldn't be happy.” She said, “As much as I want you to be here, obviously close to me, I just know that you wouldn't be happy being here.” Because one, she know I don't like the cold weather, but I'm pretty sure she wasn’t thinking that. For me, I like the opportunity to be great.
At that time, I probably wasn't able to articulate it in a way that I may be able to do it now. I feel like, she was wise enough to see that in me. Everybody around here is not doing nothing. Your friend, she might even still seems like, my friends is like this. They're not doing their thing. I'm out here now meeting people, whether was promoting clubs, and I'll tell her like, “Mom, I've seen Snoop.” She really loves Snoop. Even little stuff like that because of where we grew up, that doesn't happen for us. She clearly seen in it somewhere the excitement, or knew something else about me that I didn't know about myself to say, your job is not done.
She wouldn't let me come back home, even though obviously, I could. She was like, “No, you need to stay there and figure it out.” It was like, I guess, maybe she didn't want me to quit either. Because she knows that's not who I am. It was so many different things of why she might have felt that way. I know some of it is how she might feel about her own life, or what she didn't do. Or maybe when she'd been scared to move, or jump outside of her comfort box. Then she don't want that for us. That's why I love her for that because she – a lot of my motivation, or what I do right now is because of my mama and for her support, even though it wasn't financial, even though when I was a kid, I wish she had more money or did whatever else. She always loved us and she never gave up on us. This was a perfect example. When I wanted to give up on myself, she didn't give up on me. She made me look in the mirror and keep pushing forward.
[2:07:24] LW: Were you a one-man show at this time? Or you got help?
[2:07:26] JB: No, I was a one-man show at this point. Because then, it wasn’t an organization. It was now, I'm working for this company and I'm in a sense, still in a resources, or how – we’re getting food donations from him and I sidebar to people, “Hey, man,” I go out at night, “Can I get some food too?” I would literally be driving around the city, or the bridges by my house. I used to get the food from 7-Elevens, that they were going to throw away. Just because of the date, even though it wasn't bad, but per their rules, they have to throw it away. They used to tell me no, because they didn't want to get sued. I was persistent and I just kept going back. “Please, man. Can I get it? Can I get it? I don’t want to dig it out to trash, but I will.” Then it was like, one 7-Eleven was good that he was like, “Oh, call my buddy. I'm going to call him right now and tell him you're going to go get the food over that 7-Eleven.”
Now, I had five or six 7-Elevens that was giving me food at a time. I would go do that. I would be walking around the promenade, in Santa Monica at 3 in the morning passing out food. Then, I'm also always talking to these people. I'm talking to them. I actually know them by name, or they looking forward to now me coming. Then it was like, “Oh, I know the people at the building that I'm managing, they go to this mental facility.” “Hey, why don't you go here? Just tell them I sent you.” Because now I know the people too because now I work at the job. That's where it was like, this is great. By this time now, I did create the name. Literally, I'm a guy that when I hear something, or you say something good to me or whatever, I keep it in my notes. Really, one day when I wanted a name for now what I'm doing, it was in my notes. Not in the order, but it was there and it literally shifted. I watched the letters form. It was like, B.A.R.E. Truth. It was there.
Now, by this time, now I got the shirts printed up. I remember, I was in Culver City passing out some food. One guy and this guy said, “Hey, are you a non-profit?” I didn't have a clue what this man was even talking about. I was like, “Nah.” He was like, “Damn, and I was going to give you some money, but you can't even give me a write-off.” It hurt because it's like, I'm seeing the humanity of people from a random stranger that I don't know, but now I can’t providing what he needs. That happened to me too many times over the course, now maybe two years because now I'm focused on doing the work. I was like, I just got to give the people the food, or the clothes, or whatever else I can give them. I didn't really understand the business side and why that was so important. I was doing the work for years before I turned it into a official business.
[2:10:03] LW: This is sounding a lot like a full-time job. Are you working on a part-time job to make your ends meet?
[2:10:10] JB: No, I'm still working at I’m managing an apartment. I manage an apartment building. I did that literally by day. I was like Superman at night, or Batman at night. Because and then, I will be killing myself because I'm up, going around a 7-Elevens, picking up food and then going to pass it out and trying to find –
[2:10:25] LW: By yourself in your car.
[2:10:27] JB: Yeah. Every once in a while, maybe the girl I was dating or whatever would come out with me. Or I could maybe get one of my friends. For the most part, consistently, it was always me.
[2:10:38] LW: What did your friends think about this? They know that you had this alternate life at night?
[2:10:42] JB: Yeah, they knew. They do. They just was like, “Be careful.” You know what I mean? Literally. Because then now, I'm starting to see stuff and do stuff, or whatever. I tell them about it and it’s like, “Oh, okay.” Like I said, sometimes people will come. It was like, everybody that I knew at that point always had their own separate agendas, doing whatever. It was frustrating because then I'm thinking to myself, “I'm doing this good. Why is nobody helping me? Why is nobody with me? Why wouldn't nobody come out? Yeah, I know, I'm tired in the morning, too. You can come with me.” I just wish that people saw the vision at that time.
[2:11:25] LW: Let's say, somebody is listening to this and they're doing something on their own, they're a one-man show, and they want to recruit help. Now that you've had all this experience looking back now because you have volunteers now. Is there something you could have done, or said that could have enrolled people to help you a little bit easier?
[2:11:42] JB: In my experience, honestly, it wasn't the people that I knew. I had to step outside of that bubble. It was complete strangers that started coming with me. Unfortunately, it sucks to say that. Then, I also say for me, too, my family in Kansas City would have helped. I believe that they would help, but I was just in Los Angeles. You know what I mean?
[2:12:04] LW: Who was your first volunteer?
[2:12:07] JB: My barber.
[2:12:09] LW: He's cutting your hair, and you're like, “Hey, man. I’m going out tonight to 7- Eleven. Would you want to come?”
[2:12:13] JB: My barber gave me $200 and I cried right there. Because it was like, he actually believes in me. Yeah, he gave me $200. That was the first time. I mean, people gave me a $1, $10 or something. He gave me $200.
[2:12:27] LW: That actually makes sense because your barber is like your therapist, right? He's listening to your story time to time.
[2:12:31] JB: I’ll be talking to him. Yeah. Yeah. He really supported that. Like I said, it made me – it was one of those confirming moments where it was like, “Okay, I'm doing the right thing.” I got my barber to give me $200. Mind you, his job is to collect money from me, paying for a service and he gave me $200. He said, “I believe in you.” I was like, “All right. I’m good.”
[2:12:57] LW: Prior to that, you weren't even sure if you were doing what you were supposed to do?
[2:13:02] JB: No. No. I was just doing what I felt was right. Regardless of what people said about me, regardless of, “Why would you want to go out there with those people?” It was always something. It was like, mind you, these are now people that came to my kids’ birthday parties at this point. These are close people to me that wouldn't support, or wouldn't help out, or do nothing. Literally nothing. Maybe they prayed for me, you know what I mean? That's about it, that I know. That's what I would always say. It made no sense. I don't understand it.
Then for me, I'm always on the flip side of that, you want to do something? Let's go do it. They didn't. I appreciate them for that because then it makes me work harder, to prove to them that this is what I was supposed to be doing. I still work on me today. I have a little conversation with them now, but I’m working with them because we need the help and support. A lot of people told me, “Hey, man. I didn't I didn't see it. I didn't know what you were doing. I didn't get it,” or whatever else they told me. I was like, “Well, thank you. I'm glad you see it now.”
[END OF CLIP]
[2:14:10] LW: Thank you so much for listening to our year-end compilation episode about Making Something Out of Nothing. I hope you found that inspiring enough to do your version of making something out of nothing. Whatever you've been feeling in your heart as something that you're being called to do, just remember you don't need the entire blueprint. You don't need some massive budget. You don't need all the resources. Just like all of the guests in this episode, all you need to do is take the next step with whatever you have, right? However small, or insignificant those resources may seem to other people, don't wish for an easy path, or for everybody to support you right off the bat.
Instead, wish for the courage to follow your heart no matter where it's directing you with the understanding that it will never ever leave lead you astray, and that all of the resources that you will ultimately need will come to you from taking step after step after step. If you visit lightwatkins.com/show, you can find the full episodes to every clip. Or you can search our archive of past interviews with other luminaries who share how they found their path and their purpose. People Yung Pueblo, who you've probably seen his poetry on Instagram, or Ava DuVernay, you've probably seen some of her films on Netflix, or Ed Mylett, you've probably seen some of his motivational videos on YouTube, and so many more.
You can also search the interviews by subject matter. In case you only want to hear episodes about people who've taken leaps of faith, or people who have overcome financial struggles, or people who have navigated health challenges, you can get a list of all of those episodes at lightwatkins.com/show.
You can also watch these interviews on YouTube. If you want to put a face to a story, just search Light Watkins Podcast on YouTube and you'll come across my channel, you'll see the entire playlist of past episodes. If you didn't already know, I post the raw, unedited version of each podcast in my Happiness Insiders online community. If you like hearing all the mistakes, and the false starts in the chit chat in the beginning and the end of every episode, you can listen to all of that by joining my online community, which is at thehappinessinsiders.com. Not only are you going to have access to the unedited versions of the podcast, but you'll also have access to my 108-day meditation challenge, as well as other challenges and master classes for becoming the best version of you.
Then finally, to help me continue to bring you the best guests possible in the new year, it would go a long way if you could just take 10 seconds to rate the podcast and all you do to rate the podcast is you glance at your screen, click on the name of the podcast, scroll down past the first seven or eight episodes, you'll see a space with five blank stars and just tap the star all the way on the right and you've left a five-star rating. If you want to go a step further and leave a review, maybe just type one episode that you recommend a new listener should consider starting with as an introduction to this podcast. It could be the episode that had the biggest impact on you personally.
Thank you so much in advance for that. I look forward to hopefully seeing you back here next week with another story about someone just like me and you taking a leap of faith in the direction of their purpose. Until then, keep trusting your intuition, keep following your heart and keep taking those leaps of faith. If no one's told you recently that they believe in you, I believe in you. Thank you very much.
[END]