SPEAKER_01 0:02

If you need motivation in order to change your life situation, because where you're currently at offers no hope. You have to apply pressure for future you to live in a better reality. And how do you do that? You don't accept the current circumstance you're in as final. You just take whatever circumstance you're in right now as this is where I'm at currently. But as I move forward, I'm gonna develop skills. I'm gonna develop potential of what I can be tomorrow. Failures podcast. Today we're talking about hood motivation, living a life without hope, or living a life without a roadmap, any roadmap to success, when nobody around you has made it out the hood or even knows how to make it out of the hood. Here's who this episode is for. Are you the guy working a regular ass nine of five? You're just taking a break at work, daydreaming about your side hustle, making you millions of dollars, how it's going to make you rich, how it's gonna get you all the women. On the other side of that rainbow is a big ass pot of gold and freedom. Freedom away from the hell that you exist in today. Freedom away from all the bullshit and all the struggle you go through every day. Are you a big dreamer, a big, big dreamer, but you never actually met anyone who's succeeded and actualized their dream? You don't have no celebrity friends, you don't know anybody who could help. Shit, you don't even know anybody that made it out the hood, nobody to copy, no trust funds, no trust fund babies. Do you feel like there's no way out for you? Then this episode is definitely for you. Rich, before either of us had anything going on in our lives, any motion, what made you believe your life could actually be different from the way it was back then?

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Man, just this is gonna sound funny, bro. But working at Whole Foods, which is where I met you. We were both working at Whole Foods over 20 or 25 years ago. And bro, I vividly remember I was working in dairy, you were working in Frozen, and every chance we could, we tried to talk to one another, talk about music, talk about business, and just talk about like our big dreams and our big ambitions. Bro, I remember you used to hit up this dude named Ronnie, who was my boss at the time, and you used to stack up 30 boxes of just frozen shit, like ice creams, frozen peas, vegetables, and you used to tell Ronnie, like, hey, do you think Rich could help me? Like, can you pull him from dairy so he could help me here in Frozen? And bro, that was our opportunity. We spent an hour, two hours just packing frozen goods, just sharing information with one another. And man, those conversations were everything for me at the time because I'm like, man, I found camaraderie. I found someone with the same goals and ambitions as me. And it, you know, it it was it let me know that someone out there was also dreaming big, just like I was.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Yeah. What we're talking about today is basically us back then. I think we were anywhere between the ages of 18 to 21 years old, right? 22 years old. And we were working a bullshit job. I mean, Whole Foods paid well for the point in our lives we're at, but we're talking about the show topic. At that time, we were living a life without any real roadmap or any real success roadmap. And when you don't have any success roadmaps around you, you start to lose hope as you get older. Because when you're young, when you're 12, 13, 14, dreaming a big dream, no one's gonna stop you from that. But I think as you get older, you start realizing, damn, I don't really know anybody that's made it out of where we come from. So you either try to find a friend who can help you dream big, or you have to be insanely delusional to dream big, knowing that 99.9% of the people around you have never made it out the hood. That's why they're still there. So Whole Foods is a great starting point, Rich. What comes to mind when you think about that era of your life?

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Bro, I I had no reference point. You know, I grew up without a father. I didn't really have a mentor. My mom was, you know, on government assistance and welfare, so we didn't have a lot of money. And she never went to college either. So I really didn't have a reference point to be like, oh, I could model my blueprint after this person. You know, I didn't have that. So when I connected with you, bro, I remember we both had an Audible account separate. We were on a trial account, and we were like, yo, let's get the premium account, let's get one account, let's share the email and password, and let's get one account where we could download all the audiobooks that we want to listen to. I remember we downloaded Rich Dad, Poor Dad, The Secret, The Millionaire Next Door. And in that frozen aisle, we would debrief every week. Like, what did you learn? What did you learn? And it was sort of like our own little internal like entrepreneurial mastermind group that you and I created at 20, 21 years old. And that shit gave us hope. Just that was the hope that we needed, you know, through audiobooks and music. Like, I remember I would bring you like Lil Wayne's Carter 2 album, and you were like, yo, that shit's fire, but you gotta listen to Kit Cuddy's Man on the Moon. And I remember when I listened to the album for the first time, bro, and I immersed myself in like Cuddy's world. I'm like, damn, this dude is speaking to me in a way that no other artist or musician has ever spoken to me. Like I felt that inner child, inner city struggle of the kid who didn't have much, didn't come from anything, but wants to obtain a lot, right? Wants to be that astronaut, that man on the moon, right? So, man, I just remember like being a young guy, but wanting to have reference points through different outlets, music, audiobooks, anything that could give me some sense of information that I could then use and leverage to change my situation and my circumstances.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Yeah, Rich, I mean, a dollar and a dream, right? That's all you need. Shout out to J. Cole, one of the first artists that we worked with when we started our media company. But that's why his music related to us, right? Because he was a dreamer. Meek Mill was one of my favorite rappers at that time. Big Crit was one of my favorite rappers at that time. Crit. Kid Cuddy, Man on the Moon, music about dreamers. Why did we relate to that music so much? Or at least why at that time do you think young men that don't see a way out relate to this type of music so much?

SPEAKER_00 6:54

I think naturally, just when you're going through setbacks, when you feel like you hit rock bottom, or you feel like you don't have any motion and you got nothing going on for yourself, you gravitate to things that give you hope. And for us, it was music. It was these artists that you mentioned. It was these albums that you mentioned, right? Like these things gave us hope that there is a world outside of where we came from. There is a world bigger than high school or working a bullshit nine to five or working at Whole Foods. Shit, I remember, bro, when I was working at Whole Foods and I saw they had a whole aisle for fucking cheese, just I didn't know that there were that many different levels of cheeses. That shit opened my mind to a whole nother world of like, oh, there's a lot of different things that I don't know about, which is like simple groceries. You know what I'm saying? Like it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

If you really think about it, anybody that may not be from the northeast of the US or may not be from the East Coast, New York and Hudson County, New Jersey, where Rich and I went to high school at and we work at Whole Foods at without traffic, midtown Manhattan through the Lincoln Tunnel or the George Washington Bridge, and without traffic, you're talking about maybe a 10-minute commute, 15-minute commute from Midtown Manhattan to where we we lived at. And if you're talking about Edgewater, where a lot of affluent people live, they lived on the waterfront. Just about 10 minutes up the road where Rich and I went to high school at, which is West New York, some of the most poor people in all of the United States live in that area. And fortunate for Rich and I, we weren't too far away from. We were a three or two dollar bus ticket away from the city of dreams, the city that never sleeps. And we were able to get jobs at these bougie supermarkets that were on the waterfront. And that's where we met at Whole Foods. We're very fortunate to land these opportunities in these places to get exposure to affluent people. This was the first time in our lives that we were around white people every day, like people that had money, Asians that had money that didn't look like us. No cultural reference point to the blacks and Spanish people that lived in our community. We're talking about people that had good money, made good money. And Whole Foods, it's crazy. Whole Foods was one of the first times in my life that I was around people that had extra money. And when you have extra money, you buy stupid shit like olives, all kinds of olives. You buy stupid shit like expensive wine, you buy stupid shit like cheese, all sorts of different cheeses. Rich and I couldn't imagine somebody going to a supermarket just to find a cheese that's $30 a pound. Why would anybody buy that kind of cheese? I know it sounds ignorant now. I'm 40. Rich is 38. Rich got kids. I've done been to every nice restaurant in the world. But at that time in my life, I would be lying to you if I told you, why would anybody want to spend this much money on groceries? That just goes to show how limited our worldview was, how little exposure we had to anything beyond the hood. That's why this episode is so important to us because we have to imagine anybody that doesn't know anything other than the small town they come from, something as simple as a supermarket where affluent people go to buy groceries, overpriced groceries is enough to change your mentality. I do want to discuss exposure, Rich. How important it is to get exposed to something outside of the hood in order for you to see the world a little bit bigger than the way you see it on the day-to-day.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yeah, listen, I think exposure naturally gives you belief, bro. Belief that you can obtain more, belief that you can change your circumstances, that you could change your living situation. I think the more you expose yourself to things, the world, your mindset, like literally your brain, I feel like opens up to a world of possibilities. But if you're going to that nine of five and then going straight home back to the hood, right? And you don't expose yourself to new information, new books, articles, audiobooks, documentaries, like understand what's going on in the world. You kind of live in like a silo of information. So to your point, Jess, I think that's certainly step one is like have the recognition within yourself that you want more. It's cool to not have a reference point. It's fine if you don't have a mentor, if you don't have a father, if you don't have a big brother or uncle to guide you and give you the blueprint. But it really starts with you wanting to do things for yourself and mobilize yourself to obtain new information that's going to allow you to expand your worldview and allow you to see more opportunity and to see that more possibilities are possible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

And if you really think about it, if you were to put your headspace into the young man that is working a bullshit nine to five after college or after high school, and he feels like he's stuck. He feels like he doesn't have a roadmap to success, or he feels like his dream is slowly disintegrating because he has no point of reference or access to what it is that he always thought he could become. He always dreamed about becoming. I remember this very clearly when I was in Ho Foods and I was and I was in and out of community college, you know, working bullshit jobs, fucking around with my life, wasn't saving money, just not in a good place. But it was very normal to me. Life was very normal to me at that time. That's how everybody around me was living. And I remember sitting there with a lot of ambition, a lot of anger, a lot of frustration. I was motivated, but I didn't have nowhere to point my gun of motivation and shoot towards a target. And I think if we really wanted to unpack the first layer of this episode, Rich, we have to discuss the young man that has a lot of motivation, a lot of ambition, a lot of excitement towards a dream, but he doesn't necessarily have a place to point that energy towards. And I think that is what makes people around him in these lower income areas, or just areas where people don't dream big, it'll make you feel like you're delusional. People would make you feel like you're crazy if your dream and your reality don't necessarily line up and the people around you have never really accomplished anything outside of what they're doing in their nine to five. And I'm curious to know if you've ever had that feeling, Rich, when you were in this point in your life.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Yeah, bro, I definitely had this feeling. And this is why I would recommend for this young guy to really find one serious person, bro. One serious person that they trust to really share these dreams and ambition and ideas, because you you gotta get it off, Justin, right? Like you can't consume all this information and then be inspired and have all this ambition and then just bottle it in, and then you're kind of stuck. You don't know where to go, you don't know how to take action. At the very least, if you have one serious person that you can share these things with, at least you get it off. At least you release some of that tension and and in hopes that that person understands, right? You don't need 12 motherfuckers to understand the vision. You just need one serious guy. And I was fortunate to find that in you and our 20-year friendship. It's funny because every time we would talk in Whole Foods, I'm I I always thought I'm like, yo, this dude's gonna think I'm crazy. And I would fire off crazy ideas, what I believe to be crazy ideas, and you were like, bro, that's brilliant. That's genius. Did you think of that yourself? Did you did you like read that in a book? You're like, bro, you're you're fucking incredible. And that assurance was everything that I needed to continue dreaming big and continue to be inspired and have motivation and have that ambition. So I highly encourage the young guy to bro, find one serious person. It could be your brother. It doesn't even have to be a family member, it could be a big homie, somebody, somebody that you trust that you can share ideas with, and they're not gonna look at you like you're crazy.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Yeah, if you're a young man and you're living a life where you feel like you're losing hope and you have no roadmap to success or to make it out of the situation you're in, you should find someone that is the spark in your life, someone that sparks your thoughts, someone that gets your mind moving in the right direction. Because if you find someone that can spark your thoughts, all you need is a little bit of wind. And that wind could turn that spark into a flame. And that flame could easily turn into a forest fire of opportunities that you didn't even know you had. So, what Rich is saying, I'm flattered that I'm the person that you thought of when you thought of, hey, find someone in your life that can open up your mind in a way that can allow you to dream with someone else. There's nothing wrong with a big dream. And I think that is the reason why we bonded, Rich. Because if you were dreaming big and I was dreaming big, it didn't make me feel delusional anymore. Even though we were inside of a freezer at Whole Foods, unboxing pallets of frozen peas and frozen groceries and ice creams. In that moment, we were doing manual labor in 20-degree freezers. But in that moment, I wasn't even working manual labor. I was already brainstorming and putting together my business plan and my business thesis to present in a room full of a board of directors of what we were gonna build as young men. So I was able to live in my dream, and I had a friend that was able to dream with me, and that's all I really needed at that point in time. So, to the point we made earlier in the episode, sometimes all you need is a little bit of hope, but you also need is action. You definitely need hope, action, and one crazy motherfucker that will sit around with you and dream the biggest dream because it's possible. It's definitely possible. And Rich, we want to avoid bragging about ourselves in this episode because that's that's not the point of why we did Failures Podcast. But we also want people to understand that we too suffered a lot prior to getting to the point in our lives that we saw ourselves as successful. So we're not gonna bore you with who we are today. We will create a graphic at some point that will show you our accomplishments, but that's not the point of the episode. The point of the episode is to say Rich and I were two people in debt before we went to college, living with our parents, working a bullshit nine of five, and all we really had is a friend and collaboration that allowed us to not feel delusional and crazy when we when we sat down and we spoke about dreams. Because every big celebrity, every big superstar that you know started in a room dreaming. That's how it starts.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Yeah, I love the Andre 3000 clip when he accepts the award and he's like in tears and he says little rooms. He's like big dreams, big things happen in little rooms. And for me and Justin, it was big freezers, very cold, big freezers.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Oh yeah. I mean, think about it. I'm being honest, our first flip came from working at Whole Foods, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Yeah. I mean, listen, we did a lot of side hustles, and you know, it all goes back to Whole Foods, bro, because there part of our sort of origin story with building the media company was that there was another gentleman by the name of Quentin, we call Q, who was also working in Whole Foods. He was already in Rutgers University and he had a college radio show that was on air from 12 to 2. So he met Justin and he was like, yo, I needed uh another on air personality, bro. And you are a talker, bro. You are a ball of energy. Like, I'm so tired during midnight, and I feel like you would bring a crazy energy from the slot of midnight to 2 a.m. So you came on board and you started doing the radio show. Shortly after, you were like, yo, I think we could do something with this college radio show. I think if we bring Rich in, he might have some ideas on expanding our reach and getting more listeners and you know, just expanding the scope of what we were doing. So you brought me on board.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

You're the only human I ever knew that built a website that I ever met in my life. That this is before AA, bro. This is like way before even fucking Instagram wasn't even around at this time. It was YouTube and Twitter, if I'm not mistaken.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Yeah, YouTube, Twitter. Bro, I learned how to use WordPress. I created a blog for us. This is when like the blogosphere in rap music was a thing. So you had your world star hip hop, you had your two doboys, you had your Now Right, and we were part of that group of just music blogs that put out new music and new content every week. And we created a YouTube channel. This was way back when YouTube was first starting out. YouTube is a lot different today than what it was back then, but we were on the forefront of like putting interviews with artists on YouTube, and we got to a point where we were able to grow this thing enough that people started to pay attention. We started to get inbounds from different artist managers, and we were fortunate enough to interview some of the most important artists in today's music, right? And rap music. Like we interviewed early Kendrick Lamar, early future, early Big Sean, early J. Cole. Yep. Bro, they were like 20 years old, and we were 20 years old, we were all the same age. And I think it was so crazy to me that we had all but five hundred dollars to our name, and here we are interviewing some of the most popular emerging artists in music. And I think that moment, bro, when we were building that media company, that was the action that we were taking. That all the hope we had was amplifying, right? So it started out with Whole Foods, it started out with a dream. We took that dream, we took that hope, that ambition, and we translated that into a radio show where we were really able to take action and build something that we really cared about.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Yeah. If I really think about the point of this episode, the one thought that I keep going back to is you gotta believe in whatever it is that you're working on can change your situation. I know that sounds hokey and woo woo, but it's true. Because if you don't have hope, you have nothing because you already started with nothing. And if you look around, there's nothing around. So, what else is there other than a dream or hope or bigger vision for something that doesn't really exist? I would listen to Kanye and the line that he would say, when I didn't have it, I would just close my eyes and imagine. That was a line that resonated with me a lot because I spent majority of my life, at least up to my 20s, my mid-20s, not having anything that I was proud of. But every time I would close my eyes, I could imagine what my life would look like if I just stood to the task, kept my head down, and really just did what I thought was gonna change my life. And it's funny how one thing leads to another thing, leads to another thing. And then eventually, as you move forward, the path of progress starts to show more path. So it's like with every step comes another step, and with every step comes more light. And that's really what you have to fight against when you're living in your own head and you're in a fucked up situation. Because hood motivation could be motivation, but it's motivation that needs action. And once that action starts, you start making your way forward. And I think exposure is important because if you're exposing yourself with the wrong people, if you're exposing yourself with the wrong content, you only believe what you expose yourself to. I'll tell you something very simple. Not until I got to college did I believe that I could have a six-figure job or I could start my own business. And that was only because after I got to Rutgers, it was the first time in my life I was surrounded by kids, kids of affluent parents, that these motherfuckers had no idea what it was to struggle. Their cell phones were paid for, the rent on campus was paid for, a lot of their expenses were paid for. But when I would speak to them, they would have this level of confidence in what comes next. And I was always living in a very like scarcity mindset, a fear-based mindset of like, I don't know what's gonna come next, but this could be it for me because I don't know anything beyond this. And I think that's a mindset thing. So it comes down to mindset and exposure. And that mindset you have to believe. And the exposure is important because I was now exposing myself to kids that were the son and daughters of doctors. And these motherfuckers are going to medical school. And they already knew there were gonna be doctors. I was around kids that parents were athletes, played lacrosse, played football, played baseball, and they believed, oh, I'm gonna be an athlete. That's what I'm gonna do when I get older. I'm on a four-year scholarship, I'm gonna play professional baseball. And it occurred to me like, damn, the reason why these people are so confident in what they're going to do next, it's because of who they're exposed to. So this thing is not new to them. Success is not new to them. These professions are not new to them. But if you take us, anybody that's coming from a place where people don't succeed beyond the poverty line or are barely making it above the poverty line, you learn the schemes and the scams, the ways of the people that are just trying to get above the poverty line. You learn the ways of people that live for income tax checks, learn to scam off the government, learn to play Powerball, scratch offs, because you don't think success is something that could happen to you. Because you don't believe success can happen to you, what winds up happening is that you just say, fuck it. It is what it is. This is my life. So if you're gonna learn anything from what Rich and I are saying, is as you progress and you let that hope and belief drive you forward, expose yourself with new people, expose yourself with new experiences because that's gonna open up your mind in a way that you from five years ago would not even believe is possible.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

Yeah, you're absolutely right, Just. And I'm so glad you mentioned mindset because if I'm being honest, Just, like my mindset was in constant conflict because part of me always had this ambition of like, I know I want more and I know I could strive for more, but I don't know how to do that. Right. So I was information gathering a lot. And to be honest with you, the other half of me was I'm not the college guy. No one in my family has ever gone to college. Identity is huge, yeah. Yeah. I don't even know how to fill out a college application. People like me don't go to college. People where I come from don't go to college, corporate isn't for me. People like us don't make a lot of money. No one in my family makes six figures, just I've never seen it. So, in my mindset, these two sides of rich were in constant conflict. And you have to let the inspirational, motivational, ambitious side win. You have to let that side win. You have to block out that negative noise and that negative mindset of people like me don't make it here. People where I come from don't make it there, right? You have to be able to block that out.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Yeah. You were talking about borrowed belief. What does that word mean to you and why is it so important in this episode?

SPEAKER_00 27:07

I think it's so important because borrowed belief is exactly what I did to reach the level of success that I've been able to reach, right? Like I didn't have any point of reference, didn't have a father, didn't have an uncle, an affluent uncle, didn't have anyone in my family to do anything extraordinary or anything significant, or I could be like, damn, maybe they have the blueprint, right? So I had to have borrowed belief. Well, what does that mean? I had to consume information and borrow ideas from The Secret, from The Millionaire Next Door, from Rich Dad Poor Dad, from Kid Cuddy's Man on the Moon album, from different artists, from documentaries. And all this information allowed myself to have the ability to have belief that it is possible. I can make it out of the hood. I can be a college graduate, I can obtain all these certifications, and I can become a professional in the corporate world, right? But all of that came with borrowed belief, not from any one set individual. It was just an aggregation of all the different pieces of information that I collected along the way to then give me the hope that it was possible.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

Yeah. And listen, that borrowed belief is crucial because if you're someone that truly believes that this life you're currently living is not the life for you and you want more, you have to borrow belief. You have to borrow some motivation from other people. Because if you don't, what do you have? Realistically, what do you have? If every room you're in, the ceiling is literally at the tip of your head. There's not enough room for growth. You have to try and find another room. And in order to find another room, you need a reference point. And in order for you to find a reference point, you need role models. You need other information. You need other oxygen. You need to be in different places. You need to change things if you want to change things. And if nothing changes, nothing changes. So if you stay in the same places, you're only going to run the plays of the people around you all day. So if you really want to expand your mind, you definitely have to absorb new information. You definitely have to seek new information. You have to surround yourself with new people and be comfortable with being uncomfortable. That's what comes with being in different rooms. And I know for a fact that every phase of my life where I felt uncomfortable, it was a reminder, oh, okay, this is exactly where I need to be.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Moving from Jersey and New York to California with not one family member, with not one close friend, was one of the most difficult transitions of my life. But here I stand five years later, six years later, I've worked the biggest projects in my entire life. I've been acknowledged by some of the biggest publications in my life. I've financially changed my life. And if I didn't hop off the porch and jump into the street and see what this world was about, I would have never been able to receive them blessings that were on the other side. So I didn't let fear keep me in a tiny room where I was supposed to only be as big as the room. You got to get in different rooms if you want to expand who you are and what you are. And that's a metaphor. But don't let that metaphor go over your head. You could only be as big as the room that you're in. You could only be as big as the ceiling of the room that you're in.

SPEAKER_00 30:45

Yeah, 100%, bro. And just you have to have the ability to zoom in, bro. And what do I mean by that? I feel like naturally when you're in a fucked up headspace, when you're feeling like you come from the hood and you'll never make it out, once you look at other points of reference of people who have made it out, you're comparing yourself to like rappers, millionaires, billionaires, right? There's such a big disconnection between where you come from and where those people are and what they did to get there, that it feels so out of reach that it could decapitate you. It could like dehabilitate you. It could make you feel like, why should I even try? Like, this is so far out of reach. So I'm saying zoom in. What does that mean? Just look for a crack, bro. What did Tupac say? The rose that grew from the concrete, right? Look for that crack in the concrete with that one rose that's popping out. For me, I knew I would never get into a four-year college university with my GPA. I knew I couldn't, right? Because I tried and I got rejected. So what did I do? I went to community college for two and a half years and did the community college route and grinded that out, right? But that was the first step in seeing that, hey, there's a bigger world out there. I might not be in a university, but I'm going to my local community college and I'm absorbing new information and I'm exposing myself to different knowledge, right? And then I was able to pivot from community college to Montclair State University. And when I was when I finally got accepted in that school, that shit made it even more believable that, oh, I can make it out, right? Montclair, New Jersey, and West New York, New Jersey are two entirely different universes, all within 20 miles of each other. There was no poverty in Montclair. There was no drug use. You know, you didn't see homelessness. Like it was a beautiful campus and a beautiful affluent area called Montclair, New Jersey. So I was physically placing myself somewhere that just for those few hours where I was taking college courses, it allowed my mind to disconnect from the place where I came from, from the place where hope didn't seem possible. And that's why I highly encourage the young guy at a bro, zoom in and take it one step at a time. Because then when you're able to zoom out, you're like, oh shit, I did this college thing. Oh, I am working a corporate job, right? Like it all tends to work out, but you have to have the ability to zoom in a little bit and heads down, just grind it out. One task at a time. Yeah. One college course at a time, one credit at a time. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

If you're someone who struggles with ambitious projects, you have big dreams, you want a lot for yourself, but you're currently stuck in a situation where it's going to take maybe two or three years for you to get to where you want to go. Don't suffer from the trap of the whole map. The trap of the whole map is you trying to accomplish this goal in one day, in one week, in one month. The map is pretty big. There's a lot of ground to cover. The trap of the map is looking at the whole map and freezing yourself out and being like, I can't do it. It's too much. If you see yourself as a nobody, all you have to do is do something. Do one thing. If you can do something and one thing and accomplish an aggressive goal, a big goal, you could quickly see how your identity changes. And you're not so thrown off by the grand scheme of a whole project. How can you be a nobody if you've accomplished something? Somebody that accomplished something is a somebody. So you gotta just put your best foot forward. Start where you stand. More resources will be available as you move forward. That is basics for somebody that feels like they're trapped. And that's what this episode is about. This episode is about the young man who feels trapped. And I used to feel like that all the time, Rich. Every point in my life, even right now, at 40 years old, sometimes I think about my situation and I feel trapped. And then I get overwhelmed by thinking of the whole map. I want to do everything at once. Failures. Sometimes we feel trapped. Damn, are we gonna be in this stage forever? Are we gonna have this little bit of subscribers forever? How are we gonna get our retention up? And then we zoom all the way in to your point. And you just kind of start where you stand, you start chipping away at it. And I think that is something really important to the guy that feels frozen by the situation he's in and he's looking for motivation. If you're looking for motivation, that's fine. But look for movement along with the motivation. So you're not just sitting there with motivation. Because motivation is like caffeine. It fades after a while. You're just getting yourself sparked up, hyped up, and then you don't execute anything, and then the caffeine wears off, and then you're back to status quo. You're right where you were at before. So allow the motivation to motivate you, but apply some nails to the wood so you start building. Because if not, you're gonna be in motivation phase forever.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

Yeah, absolutely. And I think just part of the issue is that when young guys who are motivated and do want to get out of the hood and do want to have more for themselves, but don't have a blueprint, it's like, how do you tell a guy with no blueprint to create the blueprint? Because what you're saying is when you hammer in the nail, right? Like you are creating the blueprint. That's hard to see initially when you are the guy that has to develop the map, right? Because you don't know what that first step looks like. And if you allow your mind to overthink things, you become paralyzed and then you don't take action. But I think you sort of have to be comfortable with the uncomfortable notion that, hey, I'm doing something for the first time. It's not gonna look pretty, might feel weird, I might face friction, I might fail, but I have to execute on something. And you've mentioned this concept before, and I'd love if you break it down of like ugly execution. Like the shit doesn't always look pretty in the beginning, but as long as you're mobilizing yourself and taking action, that action will compound to a favorable result on the other side.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

Yeah, I mean, all the glory to the man who's willing to try and fail. I mean, that's pretty much what it comes down to. Ugly execution is just showing up every day and imagine yourself trying to freehand a circle, trying to freehand a circle. Every day you freehand that circle, it may not be perfect, but you can see on a pad of paper, every time you try it again, the circle gets a little bit better. The circle gets a little bit better. And it's never gonna be perfect. I actually think it's factually impossible to freehand a perfect circle, but you'll see if you go from left to right and you try it enough times, every time you try it, it gets better and better. And that's what ugly execution is. It's just showing up and trying to get it right. Your favorite rapper doesn't deliver his hit record in one studio session, in one take. Your favorite actor doesn't nail that scene that you love in one take. It takes a long time to shoot one scene in a movie. Sometimes it takes even a week. Think about how many times they rehearse that rep so it can look perfect to you, the viewer. But behind the scenes, anybody who's ever put in that much work knows you have to execute very ugly in the beginning until you start getting a rhythm and developing a cadence. And in that rhythm and in that cadence, you start building strength. And that strength comes with confidence. Do not be afraid of failure. Failure is nothing but a sign that you're moving in a direction that is towards the better version of yourself. Because we all know failed reps is like a science. The more failures, the more you weed out what doesn't work and you're getting closer to what does work. Don't let that go over your head. This is exactly what we're talking about when you're sitting in phase one of your growth journey and you want to be at the end of the book, but you got to start somewhere. You might as well start now.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

Yeah. And just I started at negative 20, bro, because at 19, when me and you were packing those frozen peas and vegetables, I was also filing for bankruptcy. Yeah. Trying to figure out my life. I'd have made a blunder of my life from 17 through 19, racked up like 35, 40k in debt, and started life at negative 40k. So I had already fucked up. How old were you again? I was 19 when that happened. So from 19, filing for bankruptcy, connecting with you, doing the radio show, going to Hudson Community College, making it to Montclair State University, graduating, becoming a cybersecurity professional, you know what I'm saying, becoming a VP. Like nobody had ever laid out the blueprint for all of that. And had I not gone through all of the ups and downs and failed reps and shit that life tends to throw at you, I wouldn't have come out on the other side. And my hope is that shit, if you're 20 years old listening to this and you've never filed for bankruptcy, you're already winning, my man. Because that was I was failing when I when I was 20 years old filing for bankruptcy. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 40:10

Yeah, I mean, that's a heavy story. You shared it before, but I don't think anyone understands what it feels like to be 19 and not only be at zero, but to be at minus 45,000 in debt. And not to mention, not to put your business out there, but you also lost your girl. You also lost your car. Not only were you down bad on your finances, terrible credit score, because when you go bankrupt, it fucks your whole credit score up. And you didn't even have a lady or a car. Like I could only imagine the headspace you were. And you were smoking cigarettes at that time, and cigarettes are expensive. So your whole life was fucking upside down.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

It was it was terrible, bro. It was terrible. And it's weird though, just because I was failing so much during this time, but I still had hope. I still had ambitions that things could get better. You know, I just had to make better choices, make better decisions, and really mobilize myself in the right direction. But to my point earlier, I was in constant conflict. I was like a 20, 21-year-old who wanted to become a millionaire, but also wanted to crash out at the same time because I wasn't happy about where I came from and my circumstances. And these two headspaces were in constant conflict. And ultimately, and fortunately, I allowed the headspace of somebody who wants more to overtake the headspace of someone who wanted to crash out, and I found a way out. But at the end of the day, bro, it's really some mental gymnastics, bro. Like you're not always gonna wake up every morning and feel inspired and feel ambitious and feel like you want to take over the world. Some days you have some dark days and you have some better days. But my hope is you have some better days than darker days.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

Yeah, Rich. And you said the word circumstances, and I want to put a point on that. And I have a story about circumstances. Your current situation, your current circumstances, the environment that's around you, the people that surround you, the lack of money in your bank account. These things are your current situation, your current environment. But your environment can teach you what's normal today, but it does not get to decide what's possible in your future. Your future is up to what you do given the circumstances of your environment today. And I need the listener of this episode to understand that. And they gotta sit with that and they gotta think about that. What I am today, what I am right now, it will not be what I am moving forward. And I have a story about getting denied into the college that I was supposed to be at in order to do the uh the media company that Rich and I started. And that moment of my life where I got denied into Rutgers two times, it wasn't once, it was twice. It was really a sign of the lack of work and effort I had put into school up to that very moment. The denial into Rutgers destroyed my confidence because I thought I was God's gift. I really thought because I had insane levels of charisma. I was making good money at Pizza Hut. God knows how I was making good money at Pizza Hut. I'll let you do the math on how I was making good money at Pizza Hut. I was running side plays in my life that may or may not have been legal. And I had cash in my pocket and I had a radio show that I was doing at Rutgers, New Brunswick, but I was still a nobody because in my mind, I couldn't imagine a world where I was valuable enough to be in a four year school. And I went to Bergen Community College. I tried to shortcut my way into Rutgers, my first semester in Bergen. I sat with my transfer counselor, I told her, hey, I don't know if you know this, but I'm a real big deal. I'm doing a radio show at Ruckers that I have the biggest artist in the world driving to New Brunswick from Manhattan, and they're coming to see me and my business partners to do this radio show. I have to go to Rutgers. And my transfer counselor damn near spit her fucking coffee out in laughter when I was trying to tell her, yo, I have to go to Rutgers. She was like, Justin, you didn't take your SATs in high school. You had a 1.8 GPA. You graduated at 22 years old. You failed the seventh grade and you failed the eighth grade. What in your right mind makes you think, because you're in community college, that you deserve to be at a school like Rutgers University in New Brunswick. You don't qualify. You know what I did when she told me that? I was delusional. I still applied. And when I applied, they couldn't have sent that motherfucking denial letter back quick enough. Within two days, they sent me the letter back. You do not qualify. Unfortunately, you don't have the academic standing or XYZ reasons why you shouldn't be at Ruckers. I'm not gonna lie. I took that shit personal. What did I do? I went back to my transfer counselor and she told me, I told you so. You don't qualify for a school like this. You should stay in community college. I you know what I did, Rich? I was like, fuck that. I shit the bet again. Another semester at Bergen Community College, 2.2 GPA, barely went to my classes. I reapplied to Rutgers again. They sent the denial letter back even faster. Your GPA dropped. You still don't qualify for this school, but thank you for paying for the application. This is my second denial into Rutgers. Now I'm 23 years old. I'm a grown-ass man. I have no business being in a four-year school. I took it personal, but this time I took it personal and I gave it some thought. Damn, I really got to get better at this school shit if I want to get into a four-year school. So what I did after that is I took the denial letter. I highlighted the part that said that I was not up to the standard of Rutgers University and the state of New Jersey. I taped that bitch onto my wall of my room door. Every day I got up in the morning, I would read that I wasn't enough. And it motivated me to take school serious, start taking my academics serious. And it was that third time I submitted an application and put the most saddest letter in there about how I was a kid who grew up like fucking Tiny Tim. Me and my mother were splitting peas and beans at the end of the night every night. And if I didn't get into Rutgers, I wasn't achieving my dream. I sent that third application letter. I sent that form. And I think it took about a week or two. And I got a letter back that I got accepted into Rutgers University. And that was a really big deal for me because not only was I really old, I was a lot older than every average sophomore junior that went to Rutgers, but it taught me a very valuable lesson. My current situation didn't determine or change what was possible for me. The me, the first day that I got denied, and a year and a half later when I got accepted was a different me. And that right there is basically what this whole episode summarizes into. If you need motivation in order to change your life situation, because where you're currently at offers no hope, you have to apply pressure for future you to live in a better reality. And how do you do that? You don't accept the current circumstance you're in as final. You just take whatever circumstance you're in right now as it is what it is. This is where I'm at currently. But as I move forward, I'm gonna develop skills. As I move forward, I'm gonna develop potential of what I can be tomorrow. And I know this feels like a rah-rah speech, but I couldn't think of a better time to share a motivational story with our listeners than on the episode titled Hood Motivation. You couldn't get any more motivation from a hood motherfucker that literally changed his life. If we didn't get into Rutgers, who knows what both of our lives would have been? Because that means we wouldn't have done the radio show.

SPEAKER_00 48:01

Yeah, bro. Imagine had those two rejections been the last time you ever applied, right? Your whole life could have easily taken a different turn. And that's exactly what we're talking about here, man. It's like I work in music, right?

SPEAKER_01 48:13

I work in music. So what is my life if I don't do the radio show? What's a version of my life that I don't get into music?

SPEAKER_00 48:20

I remember you were a car salesman for a little while. You could have been out here selling cars and still.

SPEAKER_01 48:25

I was a I was a luxury certified pre-owned car dealer.

SPEAKER_00 48:30

Just want to be clear. Yeah. Just you know what's worked for me is funny when when I heard you say the college story, like it sparked the thought because I still think about this often, and I don't know why I uh let this thought consume me. But I remember when I was in right around sixth or seventh grade, I had this one teacher. And bro, I was a menace. Like I wouldn't listen to teachers, I was just always talking back, didn't care about school. Again, straight D's and F's every semester. But towards the end of this semester, I was actually passing barely, bro, like D minus. You know what I mean? And I remember telling this one teacher that I was gonna go to college. Bro, this lady fucking started cracking up in front of the whole classroom. You go to college. Wow. She's like, not in my wildest dreams will I ever see you go to college. Mind you, that I had failed two grades prior to being in seventh grade. So you look at my transcript, it's like, bro, this kid is a crash out. Like statistically, there's no way for this kid to ever graduate college when he's already failed two classes. He's been a juvenile detention when he was 11 years old, right? And he he shows no interest in the educational system. So I don't knock her for sort of embarrassing me in that moment, but I just remember, bro, like every once in a while I'll visualize her laughter in slow motion. And almost like Bobby Boucher in The Water Boy, like I take all those little moments in my life, right? Her laughing that I would get to college, right? Filing for bankruptcy, like everyone who's ever doubted me, and I weaponize that shit, bro. I let those negative thoughts swirl in my mind, and it gives me the ultimate ambition to prove these people wrong. This is literally how my brain works when I go to the gym. I don't get that aggression out unless I think about all the negative shit that I've ever been through, and then I could lift 100 pounds with ease. And I don't know if that'll work for the person listening, but shit, it works for me. Yep. And I encourage you if you're dealing with some trauma, some pain, some history that's not favorable in your life, bro, take that shit and weaponize it, bro. Use it as a positive momentum and as an indicator that I'm going to prove these people wrong. Watch me. Watch me work. And that's always worked out for me, bro.

SPEAKER_01 50:59

Yeah. Let the devils push the plow. That's my thing. It's always been my thing. I'm kind of mad that my life has gone the way I want it to because now I have trouble going back to the well of water of an underdog. I used to always go to that well whenever I needed extra drive and motivation. I would be like, what the fuck did that person say about me? Or I know that person don't believe in me. These days, I'm finding it hard for people to doubt me. They're like, no, no, you got it. Uh, we're gonna pay you more for that. We're actually gonna give you the title you want. And I'm like, fuck. I need a reason. Somebody doubt me. So that's a sign that maybe I should be challenging myself more.

SPEAKER_00 51:38

You ever seen the uh the marathon runners who start celebrating right before they they cross the line and then the dude in second place just blows past them?

SPEAKER_01 51:47

Yeah, just slide right in.

SPEAKER_00 51:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:49

Yo, Rich, I actually have a question before we uh get to the last part of our episode. I have a question. What's the first moment you remember realizing, wait, I definitely live in the hood, and I cannot believe people actually live like this?

SPEAKER_00 52:04

Bro, I know I was fucked up and I realized people were living a certain way when I worked at Whole Foods because the way I was currently living and the way that I would see people interact and the way I would see them buy groceries in Whole Foods was completely different. Like, I didn't know any other cheese outside of American cheese. And here I go to work in Whole Foods, and they have a whole accessory of different cheeses. I'm like, what is this?

SPEAKER_01 52:32

Like I have a whole department that just does cheese, just people that do cheese, people that do olives, people that do nuts.

SPEAKER_00 52:41

Yeah, they had a whole department of nuts that you could grate yourself and make like organic butter. I was like, what is this?

SPEAKER_01 52:49

You mean to tell me you never seen that in the bodega? You never seen a cheese aisle in the bodega? No, bro.

SPEAKER_00 52:55

I was limited to the cereal that we could buy because we were on food stamps.

unknown 52:59

You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 53:00

Like, facts. I didn't have a point of reference of like seeing all these different gourmet foods, and I was really living an alternative reality because when I came back home from work, it was a different environment. It was a different circumstance that I was living than the place where I was working at, you know. So that was the first time where I felt like, man, there's really more to life than the limitations that, you know, my current circumstance has placed on me.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

Yeah. The reason why I brought that up, Rich, because I do believe that um for anybody out there that feels like life dealt them a bad hand and they are in a fucked up situation. And everything that surrounds them, all the people around them are people that are not ambitious, they don't have big dreams. I feel you. I've definitely been there before. Most of my childhood was that. And the crazy part is the people that be in the hood, they seem normal as fuck. Like they don't really care about anything other than what's going on there. But if you have a phone in your hand and you're connected to the internet and you can see how other people are living, it gives you a different perspective where you're like, damn, we don't really gotta be living like this. We could be living different. We just choose to live this way. I'm sure you can relate to that, Rich, because I could relate to that feeling of seeing how other people were living and being like, damn, this can't be it. This can't be life. There's no way this is the way it is until I'm 60 years old with grandkids. But when you come from a certain environment, it's almost like being in a room that the windows haven't been open for months. And it's starting to smell like an addict. You're not getting new oxygen in that room, and you slowly become whatever is in that room. And all Rich and I are saying is sometimes you got to crack a window, let some new air in. Sometimes you got to open the door and get outside. Because if you don't change the situation, nothing's gonna change in your situation. I remember being 10, 11 years old, Rich. This is in the 90s, watching Dawson's Creek on CB11, fucking channel 11. These are like white people that lived in these little like houses by the lake and by the creek, and thinking to myself at home in the hood, being like, damn, people really live like this. I wish I had a little house like that with a little boat, and I was flirting with girls that look like that. Exposure. Think about that. I'm listening to fucking young jeezy. I'm listening to 50 Cent Get Rich and Die Trying. I'm listening to the crazy merengue music that's about straight fucking treating women like dirt all day. This is my life. I'm outside, I'm playing Freeze Tag, Manhunt, Kill the Man with the Ball. Crazy lifestyle. And then I'd come home and I'd throw on a TV show, and I'm like, man, where in the world do people live like this? I remember watching Full House. You remember Full House, Rich? Yeah, of course. Remember that opening scene in Full House that would always show their house on the hill?

SPEAKER_00 56:06

Yeah, it was beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 56:08

San Fran, the San Fran, yeah, yeah. San Francisco. I remember thinking to myself, like, damn, people actually live in houses like that. And like when the show would take place, I would imagine a different reality than the reality I was in every day. I'm talking about I'm sleeping in a bedroom with cousins on the floor. I'm sleeping in the bedroom with my uh my cousin Wichito, sleeping. We used to sleep opposite, feet to face, face to feet. This is the type of environment that I grew up in. How in the world was I going to understand a world beyond the world that I was living in if I didn't allow new information into my world? And I'm gonna be honest, that curiosity that came from me watching Dawson's Creek, me watching Full House, even fucking Moesha. Moesha had a really cool house. I remember she had steps in her house, like stuff like that opened my mind in a way that made me feel like there's gotta be more. And I know that's a silly reference, but I do want to let people know don't kill your curiosity, feed your curiosity because it'll help you imagine a circumstance that's bigger than the one you're currently in.

SPEAKER_00 57:12

Yeah, bro. I mean, shit, uh Fresh Prince of Bel Air, right? He moves from Philly to Bel Air and he's exposed to this whole environment with a butler that he's never experienced before. Like, that shows a perfect example of that metaphor. Rich, there was a funny ass moment.

SPEAKER_01 57:28

I'm I was on FaceTime with my nephew, right? Um, my nephew is in his early 20s. Um, he works with me in the music business. He doesn't work with me, he has his own business, but he's in music. And um he just got his own apartment. First time he ever moved into his own apartment. And um, he lives in uh like a loft space with a patio overlooking the water. And if you recall, Rich, that's where I lived when I got my first place, was a loft space with a patio overlooking the water. And Rich, you had an apartment that was very similar. And it's funny for guys that come from where we come from, that is such an achievement in our lives to have a nice space, loft style overlooking the water. And it's funny to me that he never had a point of reference outside of that. And when he got his apartment, he FaceTimed me and it was like, yo, does this remind you of anything? I'm like, yeah, this shit looks exactly like the first apartment I moved into. And he was like, Yeah, bro, but I'm calling you because I'm trying to, I'm trying to figure out how to get some of them plants. I don't know where to get plants at, so I could put them outside the way you have your patio set up. And it hit me like, damn, this kid doesn't know anything other than where we're from. And his only point of reference to something better or different, I'll say different, not even better, was me. And I'm a little older than him. And he didn't even know where to get plants, but he knew for a fact he wanted some plants on his patio. And again, this is not groundbreaking shit. Failures podcast is not gonna give you the secret to becoming a billionaire next month. That's not what this platform is. These are very honest and simple conversations about really strange places that people end up in their lives and they wonder how they get stuck there. And what we're saying is just keep people around you that motivate you, keep information and inf and content around you that keeps you inspired, motivated, looking for more. Because if my nephew didn't have me as a point of reference, he wouldn't even know what to aspire for. Because what is life other than the life that you're currently living? So keep people around you that motivate you, keep things around you that keep you moving in the right direction, whatever that direction may be for you.

SPEAKER_00 59:41

Yeah, that's exactly right. And just you said it, and that that is the perfect way to conclude this episode. It's like when you're on that journey, when you you find a way to get that motivation and be an ambitious man and be the first in your family to lay out that blueprint, right? Be the first one to lay down that first brick. When you look back, guess what happens? You've laid the foundation and the blueprint for everyone that comes after you in your family, right? You created that evidence for them, and you've created that evidence for your nephew. And man, that's a byproduct of all the hard work. So highly encourage the young guy listening to this episode to like really understand that you're not only helping yourself in the situation, but you're also laying down the foundation of the blueprint for all the people that come after you.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:32

The artist currency had a fire line about becoming the change that you want to see in your world. So if you don't necessarily see what you think you would need or a younger version of you would need in the world, then that means there's an opportunity to put that thing into the world and become the change that you want to see in the world. And I'm pretty sure some philosopher said that quote before currency, but when I heard it from currency is the first time I ever heard it. And if you see something wrong with the world, and if there's not information, or if there's not motivation, or if there's not anything that anyone that is an arrow, that people that can aspire to be more, then you could become that. Why don't you become that? You could be the first person from where you're from that can change the pattern of how people get the fuck out of the hood or add value to the hood. But that's on you. And by the way, not everything is a hood. We're talking about neighborhood, where you come from. If there's not a lot of opportunities there, in that neighborhood where you come from, there should be more opportunities.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:32

Yeah, bro. Listen, I'll end on this. If nobody gave you a reference point, become one. There you have it, man. Failures podcast. We out.