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I didn't realize it until I got older I was just a young kid and that was molested [ __ ] please welcome Charlamagne the god co-host of The Breakfast Club and America's most influential radio host growing up my father was telling me if you don't change your lifestyle you going to end up in jail dead or broke the problem was he wasn't practicing what he was preaching when I started selling drugs I found out he was selling drugs then he had an affair on my mom so I became a player because I felt I had to be like my pops but then I ended up getting in a situation where a shooting happened and going to jail but I was able to finally wake up and I was smart enough to realize whatever I want to be doing 5 years from now I got to start doing now and then the microphone ultimately changed your life I didn't know that you had 12 years of rejection I got fired four times I just collected my last unemployment check I was scared to death but you can't live life with fear you got to live life with faith next gig I got was The Fast Forward 3 4 years I'm having more success than I've ever had in my life but I just was not happy I was losing myself and um those Suicidal Thoughts just cross your mind for no reason you know and even even now what what am I still doing here man we've just hit 6 million subscribers on the D Co um so me and my team would like to do something we've never done before as little thank you and we're calling it The di Co subscriber raffle and here is how it works every episode this month we're going to pick three current subscribers at random and we'll send one of you a 1,000 voucher one of you tickets to come and watch the dire SE behind the scenes live with our team and one of you will have a 10-minute phone call with me to discuss whatever you want to talk about if you're a subscriber you're in the raffle thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to do something that me and my team love doing so much it is the greatest honor of my lifetime and I hope it I hope it continues uh off into the Future Let's get to the [Music] episode get honest or d Ling why did you choose those words why did you choose that title um it's a play
it's a play on 50 cents Get Rich or Die try you know um I'm always going to have have you know some some some old hip hop you know somewhere like my last book was was shook one you know that was paying homage to mob deep but also um you know just talking about how I felt my whole life when I would get get panic attacks get anxiety attacks and get honest to die ly that's you know not just to play on 50 cents title that's how I truly feel it's like yo if you don't get honest with yourself you're going to die lying like you know I had a um I went to a spiritual Retreat you know back in February me and my wife and like that's one of the things that came up for me you know that that that weekend at The Retreat one of the things that came up for me was stop lying to yourself and stop volunteering those lies to others and I think a lot of us do that you know a lot like we we lie to ourselves and then we just volunteer those lies to other people like nobody even asked us you know and I think I think social media you know uh contributes to a lot of that because every day you feel like you have to you know feed this beast and like you know you might go look at your feed and at some point you got to ask yourself who is this person you know or just the just the things that you you know say to people you know in your life as you're as you're as you're just you know growing and and evolving just as a human you might just volunteer lies you know for security purposes or the mask the mask insecurity are you know the mass fears and so it's just like yo if you don't start getting honest with yourself you going you going to die die a liar the truth and the lies start young for all of us absolutely especially if you look at the stats for black men because um they are much less likely to get to the point where they can get honest with themselves in their whole selves their mental health everything when I read through your story I met an individual that I never knew before I've watched The Breakfast Club for years years and years and years I've probably watched it for a decade I think something something like that it's always been my connection with us culture has been watching that show and I watched the guy that was a bit of an antagonist to the guests coming on but I never knew all of the other stuff and
you're one of the only black men that I encountered especially in the United States that has a big sort of public figure who has been so unbelievably honest about what it is to be a complete man and the complete Human Experience and your complete experience that starts very young if I am trying to understand and the man that sits before me right now where do I have to start to truly understand oh you got to you definitely got to start from the beginning you know you got to start from that single wide trailer you know in mon Corner South Carolina you know growing up as as as a young man you know to a a great great father and a great mother I I say great you know now in regards to my father because I understand him as a man you know there was a period in my life you know especially when I first started going to therapy I didn't know if I even like lik him as a person you know because you know you got to question yourself you question things that he did to you growing up you know just uh I always said my dad raised me out of fear and not love but the fear was just from the standpoint of he didn't want me to you know make the same mistakes that he did and he didn't want to see me make the same mistakes that he saw a lot of people in our town making like you know the one thing that he used to always instill in me was like if you don't change your lifestyle you going to end up in jail dead or broke sitting under the the tree and I think that's what happens with kids a lot right like kids you they end up miring you know the parent and I think sometimes when you see yourself you know in your child if you made a lot of mistakes and you know you bumped your head a lot of times man that'll probably terrify you to see your child going down that that same path so for me my journey would definitely have to start um in Monks Corner South Carolina in that in that single wi trailer on that dirt road you grew up in a a single trailer in a a dirt road with a father that seemed to be pretty absent from what it says in your book you talked about him raising you there but it sounded like he very much also didn't raise you no he was absent in the sense of he had his own issues that he was dealing with you know and I didn't find that out until
you know 2018 when I put out my second book shook one anxiety playing tricks on me where I really opened up about a lot of my anxiety and a lot of my depression and going to therapy I never forget it it was Thanksgiving um it the week of Thanksgiving 2018 and uh I had a younger cousin he was like 24 25 years old he tried to complete suicide four different times and on the fourth time he he completed it and it was the week that he completed it and then on that on top of the fact my father had just read my second book he said to me um he called me and he said you know he he talked about my cousins and he talked about my book and he said man I I was going to therapy two and three times times a week and I tried to kill myself you know 30 plus years ago and you know I was on 10 to 12 different medications for my mental health so when he said that to me I already knew that he had the substance abuse I knew he dealt with the substance abuse issues right but I knew that but I didn't know the other aspect of it so when I realized that I'm like oh I get it cuz my dad was absolutely you know there when he was you know sober for the most part or when he wasn't dealing with his own issues but when like I said the the the the way he raised me was out of was out of uh fear you know more than love but he definitely you know had his foot on my ass like on you know in a in a real way just because he didn't want to want me to make those um those same mistakes but you know I always felt like um growing up we didn't have the the kind of relationship I wanted to have that I would think a father and son would have but that's only because he was dealing with his own issues and then he started you know having a an affair on my mom so he really wasn't in the house then like he was you know off off with his his new family how what age were you it had to be like 90 98 so maybe I was 19 20 I probably might have been like 1920 when he when he like left the house I I think can we model our sort of Al relationships we model our idea of relationships based on the relationship we first see with our parents I think about my own my mom's Nigerian my dad's English a household that was very loud to say the
least and I always thought my dad was in prison so growing up I never had a relationship because I thought women were like I thought it was prison and it was only until I got to about 30 years old that I had a real relationship but then I've had to go to therapy with my partner over and over again to get out of like being triggered by this idea like whenever we have conflict I'm like run cuz I always wanted my father to run my mom so same same like I had that deep in me that relationships were prison and when I read through your story and looked at your father and you know his infidelity with with your mother I was wondering how that impacted your future perspective of what a relationship is oh it had me it had me bad for a while CU you know I've always been the type person I like being with one one partner you know what I'm saying I like being with one woman like that's something that I always thought was really cool growing up probably because a lot of the images that we saw especially on TV back then it was always the nuclear house old it was I was like the the mother and the father whether it was you know the Cosby sh whether it was Martin and Gina you know whether it was you know the Windslow on Family Matters like you know whether it was the the Evans on Good Times before James died whether it was the Jefferson like you always saw you know a black man you know with a with a with a black woman and they had a family like that was what I always that's what I thought the American dream you know consisted of so that was like always something in my mind that I wanted and then uh I remember when I found out my PO was cheating on my mom and I remember just confronting him about it and just asking him I never forget it he was in my uh in my room with my mom's house and I used to have like this one of those exercise bikes in the room and he was riding he was on he he wasn't working out but he he came in to get on the exercise bike cuz I needed to talk to him and I bought it up to him and I remember him just saying to me like yo so so you only got one woman huh looked me right in the eyes and that's what he said he was like you only got one woman huh and I was like what you mean I only got one woman he was like huh you know like when you get older you'll understand like literally so planting
that in my head just made me feel like am I doing something wrong am I supposed to have you know one woman so I spent like a large majority of my life trying to trying to show him that I was like a player I was like I was like my Pops I was like you know I was I I I had I had I had a I had a roster too right only for him to come all the way back around to tell me I always had it right literally don't only come back and tell me you know one of the worst mistakes he ever made you know was was was was leaving leaving my mom or or causing my mom to leave him however which way it went and I I remember him saying that to me and he just was like man you know you you you you've always had it right but that just kind that shows you right just because somebody is older than you you know doesn't mean that they're they're right doesn't mean that they're always correct like we're always growing we're always evolving if we allow ourselves too and you know we're going to figure out later on in life that yeah we did make a mistake you know doing whatever it is that we were doing and we should be able to admit that no matter the age and correct it no matter the age eight years old your cousin's ex-wife had a sexual encounter with you MH and you talk about these sexual encounters changing your personality thereafter when did you decide to speak about this and and when did you begin to learn the implications that that one instant sort of incident when you were that age had had on you throughout your life well I used to always make jokes about it right because I you know I used to always say um you know I I I used to always say that I used to buy these there used to be like these little firecrackers that were like these little poppers so you could throw them on the ground and they would pop and so it's like one day I just started throwing them at her cuz I didn't want her to touch me and um when when I did that she started calling me ugly like literally from that moment like oh you ugly you got a big nose you know she'd be telling everybody look at his no I think his nose is swollen so like to the point where my grandma God bless the dead would like take cream and put it on my nose to try to reduce the swelling it wasn't swollen she was just messing with
me so in my mind it was like a psychological thing like she was she was she was messing with me mentally and how old was she I don't know you know she was 30 40 50 oh yeah she was definitely older yeah yeah yeah and you were eight I was eight yeah yeah yeah and um I remember her I remember her uh me telling people the reason I made her stop cuz I didn't like to smell of her Jerry cut so that was always that was always the joke and I remember watching uh Tyler Perry on the open Winfrey Show and I remember watching him cry over a older woman who molested him and I remember thinking to myself what's wrong with him cuz the way we rationalized it in our mind is like when you young you just used to talk about it like it was a sexual encounter and it was when I think about it now like I had like me like you know three of my other younger friends and all of us were talking about these sexual encounters we were having with older women so now that I think back on it I'm like damn we all was getting you know molested you just don't look at it like that when you're a young man when you look at it when you're a young man you look at it like I'm just getting action early so when I saw you know Tyler on Oprah that's when I first started like thinking about it and I remember this was I forgot what year this was but this was way way way back in the day but I remember there was Twitter and remember tweeting about it but I was tweeting about it in just like you know like wondering like what the hell is wrong with Tyler Perry you know but then I had to start asking what's wrong with me that like I that I'm not reacting to being molested the way that you know he is but then you don't even realize that it's molestation till you get old at least I didn't realize it until I got older and I was like oh I was getting molested and then when you start going to therapy and you start peeling back you know the layer of that that that trauma you start realizing oh this is why I am the way I am in regards to pleasing people because I felt like even though what she was doing to me was wrong and it made me uncomfortable and I didn't like it I had to keep doing it so she'd stop calling me ugly cuz her calling me ugly was really really really hurting my feelings you know what I mean as a young
8-year-old kid so that's that leads to you being a older adult who's a constant people pleaser because you don't want to let nobody down because you know if you let them down then they'll talk bad about you you know but that you realize you got to set those boundaries because if those people are going to if if making if you making yourself uncomfortable is the only way to please said individual that individual don't need to be in your life that's not somebody that you have have have in your your circle at all you've never gone back and found out who that person was and that done anything about it no I see her you still see her yeah I've seen her I've seen her I've seen her around in my hometown absolutely you're not interested in N last time I saw her actually she came up to me this was about let me see 2024 this probably had to be before Co you know she came up to me at at at a house party and she was like oh you so handsome and I was like you you been thought I was handsome Beat It Like You Been thought I was handsome like knock it off y your behavior becomes problematic 15 years old 1993 I watched I sort of read through from you were 15 up until you sort of early 20s up to sort of 23 years old and there was um quite a shocking pattern of behavior involving drugs and other things I I was wondering not that early 15 I was still in I was still in high school so I was I was I was I was the disciplinary problems from started in Middle School it started when I was in like seventh grade and the disciplinary problem started just because you know my older cousins were like what you would call I guess bullying me right like they would I was wearing glasses and I had the fanny pack and I was in like what they had they they used to call it uh the classes were broken down in letters so it was like a A and C were for like the smart students right so I was in like the a class and there was only like two black people in the class two or three black people in the class right rest is all white and so like I would be with a lot of white people for the most part and like my cousins who were all from my daddy's uh side of town they would bully me like literally like they would just beat up
on me because I beat with all the white kids cuz my dad is like a was a really cool dude you know like he was like a the the the the guy who always had like the small little Sugar Shack where you come over there and get your alcohol and stuff like that and you know he he used to hustle his his drugs stuff like that people knew my pops my pops was a cool dude so they they thought I was supposed to be like that so being that I wasn't like that they was like they would bully me and um it just became one of those things where it was like yo if you can't beat them join them so it's like yo my glasses fell off my face you know one too many times and like that one time where they fell and they just broke for good that's when I broke for good and I was just like you know what if I can't beat him join them so I I just started hanging with them and like in order to hang with them I had to be I guess like worse than them to prove myself in a lot of ways so that's when like the disruption really started in class that's when the the class clown you know really started to happen and that just evolved into me getting left back a couple of times you know I think I I went to summer school twice in seventh and eighth grade then I got left back in ninth grade and that's when I actually had to stay back and then by the time I got to by the time I got to 10th grade um I was getting kicked out of the school I was in Berkeley High School and they transferred me to to straford high school where my mom taught cuz they thought if I was my mom's school then I would act better but most of my problems from that point on started to be in the street more so than you know in school and so I ended up getting uh in a situation where I was with you know some of my homeboys and a shooting happened and we all ended up going to jail and they actually came and arrested me from straford high school and that's the last time I was in uh high school and you sat in jail for 3 months no it was was like 40 I think 45 days something like that yeah your dad could have bailed you out my Dad could have bailed me out um but he wanted to teach me a lesson like he wanted me to learn from my mistakes so he he let me sitting there for for 45 days and and sadly that wasn't it it was a wakeup call but it wasn't the wake wake up call it was more like I woke up
but then I hit the snooze button you know slept for a little slept for a little while longer before I finally got up as a great man you can look back now and think that 15 16 year old kid he needed something that he wasn't getting he needed a bunch of things he just wasn't getting because you got kids now yourself so you can if you saw that behavior in your kid you wouldn't say oh well I don't know I'm putting words in your mouth here but you probably wouldn't think okay they need to go to jail and sit in jail for a while you'd probably look at it and go there's something unmet there man that's such an interesting question because when I do think back on it I say to myself I didn't have to do none of that like that's my mindset now like I didn't have to do any of that like um my mother was an English teacher she was a Jehovah's Witness my grandmother was a Baptist they absolutely taught me better like I absolutely positively knew better I had the example of my father you know if my father had been probably more honest with me about um his life and you know the things he had went through and who who who who he was then I probably would have seen a lot of those obstacles coming cuz I got to the point even when I started selling drugs when I found out he was also selling drugs you you can't tell me not to do it you know like like you can't be on some don't do as I do do as I say type stuff I remember us having that conversation and he was like well this my house so you're not going to be doing that in my house like cuz you you making me hot right like like literally and so I feel like you know for me I was just a young impressionable kid who wanted what every single human being wants and that's just simply security and if you don't get security you know from people you will you will find a way to get it so me you know becoming that that version of myself I was then was that was just literally for security that was for survival like I was just literally a kid that was tired of getting bullied but you know once you get down on that path you know if nobody stops you there will be things that stop you like jail you know are sadly in some cases deaf but then it's too late so I just always thank God that you know even though I I got caught up and I made
those mistakes I was able to you know finally you know wake up I've sat with Buster ryes and uh Ashley welters and they talk a lot about their fathers and they also talk about the absence of male role models often for for young black men and how the the impact of that I've actually come up to learn the impact of that by having these conversations over and over with black men that didn't have a a male role model in their life that could stop them from going down that path and I don't think it's talked about enough because I've learned about it from Buster ryes and from Ashley Walters from Top booy um and it's really made me think that there's something we need to think more of in society for especially for people that are have sort of single parents or have an absent father or an emotionally absent father I think we could save a lot of um Downstream consequences with mental health crime and all of those things if we thought more about the importance of real male role oh yeah I mean listen I I had I had a a a a male role model in my father but the problem with my father was he wasn't practicing what he was preaching so you know you have to be about actions you can't just be about words and lip service people have to see you and and and see that you're you know a a living walking example of what it is that you're telling others like you know I didn't even believe that men could be faithful to their women until I started seeing it from people that I actually knew like you know it's it's it's it's one thing for somebody to tell you they are but like let's just say you know you're you're you're out and about at a at a television shoot and you know you're out of town right and you and this person or these people are hanging around after the shoot and their wife is nowhere in sight and they got every opportunity to do the wrong thing but they like nah I'm going back to my room you know what I'm saying I love I'm got to get home to my wife like or Nah then you where you that's when you strike up conversations like really like then like n I'm faithful you know what I'm saying like literally like those are the conversation is like no I'm faithful I don't I don't get down like that and you
like oh all right that's respectful you know so it's just like actions speak way louder than words man and and the thing I love about the area that we're in now you know this is the first generation we're the first generation of of of people that I feel like we have the luxury of healing our the people before us our parents you know I'm 45 my my parents they were just scratching and surviving they were just trying to figure it out they were just trying to trying to make it they were trying to keep some food on the table and a roof over their head we are the first generation that has the luxury of actually healing and I think that's a beautiful thing so true there's a lot of Role Models emerging now on the internet you know do you think about like the Andrew Tates of the world and all of those conversations and at the same time what it is to be a man has become quite unclear in many respects like gender roles and there's a lot of because of you know we're in the the post Meo movement where a lot of inappropriate behavior was called out and it's funny a guy came up to me in the gym Life Time Gym just down the road from here in Brooklyn yesterday came up to me 25-year-old kid wearing a Barcelona shirt tapped me on the shoulder said I love you podcast I listen to a lot one question he goes I'm 25 years old he goes where do I find male role models and I remember I was with Will in the gym and I just remember thinking it's so interesting because I'm getting that conversation over and over and over again I think what he's actually saying is like what is a man in 20204 and um who do I model myself on because there is a lot of you know if you go on like Twitter there's a crowd of people that are saying Lamborghini um 17 women Rolex loads of money and I'm not necessarily sure that's a great example either and and then you look at the stats around Su suicidality amongst men in the UK where I'm from the single biggest thing that's has the chance of killing you is suicide if you're over the age of 18 and under the age of 45 as a man it's yourself and I just think about put all this in context this sort of like looking for Role Models masculinity is really unclear we've
called out men do we need to call them back in what matters if you got a young son I got all girls I got four daughters four girls D yeah me and my wife got four daughters I guess it just depends what you're trying to model like we use that term role model but what does the term role model mean because you know you can only model yourself after what somebody shows you you can only model you know yourself off what somebody presents so if you like that person's Lamborghini if you like that Rolex if you like the clothes that they got on if you like their jewelry then you're going to say to yourself okay that's what I want so that's what you're modeling you're not necessarily modeling the man you're ma you're modeling the man's things yeah you know you might as well be a mannequin you might as well be you might as well be looking up the mannequins you know it's hard to like really you know model yourself after somebody's you know personality after somebody's morals after somebody's values after somebody's beliefs cuz you don't necessarily know exact what they are and especially on social media you just know what people present so you got to be very careful of that like I would tell people man you know yeah if you admire something about a person cool you know let that be like a a a guide for you so to speak it it gives you a it's like a flare going up in the air so you kind of know which direction you may want to go but you don't know that individual the only per individual that you will ever truly know is you what kind of man do you want to be are you trying to be with the therapy with the work you've done with your books Etc what are you what kind of man are you trying to be a good man and what does that mean um just somebody who is who they say they are like that's what I always tell people and that's what I constantly tell myself I want to be who I say I am I want to be who you know if if you see me um saying something if you see that that I'm telling you that this is what I believe in if I'm telling you this is my truth I want you to know that that's exactly who I am like you're not going to you know hear something in the future and be like oh my God this dude had a whole other life going on and you know he had this going on over here and
that going on over here and nobody ever knew about it no I'm a I'm a faithful husband you know I am a a learning father and the reason I say learning is because you there's no class on being a parent none whatsoever anybody tells you that that they got that figured out they are lying I got a 15 yearold a 8-year-old a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old and every single one of them you know challenged me and my wife in completely different ways and there's been plenty of times when me and my wife sit around you know late at night or at dinner somewhere or just sitting around talking in the bed asking ourselves if we getting it right so like there's no you know blueprint or no manual on to be that but I just want to be um I want to be the adult that I feel like I needed when I was a child you know I want to be present um I want to be I want I want to raise them out of love which is very hard especially being that I deal with you know really bad anxiety in a lot of ways and I talk about parental paranoia a lot and you know you just have to man you have to let go and let God like I'm a faithful person because I have no choice but to to be you know I'm a optimistic person because I have no choice but to be like you know the the opposite of you know fateful is worry the opposite of faithful is doubt and like you can't raise kids in that way because they got they got to live their own life my 15-year-old she wants to go hang out I can't worry about what may happen you know at the mall and you know you you open up a newspaper and you see all types of crazy stuff happening in the world and you see crazy things happening to other people's kids and you know you just it's like y I don't want my my child to ever get caught up in anything like that but man sadly that's just not your call and you just can't live life like that man you can't live life um with fear you got to live life with faith with all this work you've done on your mental health to understand the anxiety and um the bouts of depression and so on have you been able to pinpoint the causal factors of it in your early years oh yeah I mean my being being molested at 8 yeah was definitely definitely part of it um um definitely the the the bullying you know early on uh definitely
wanting uh wanting my father to raise me out of love and not fear um one of the main things that I I realized when I had like one of my first breakthroughs in therapy was when I realized my dad used to discipline me for things he never taught me all right so I remember one one one example I always tell is like I just got my driver's license and so he told me to follow him somewhere and he was like follow me do what I do like all right driving he's driving and we're coming off uh gilard Road in Mons Corner South Carolina about to get on the highway highway is Highway 52 so we're driving and we get to the stop sign but he doesn't stop he just drives onto the highway so I drove onto the highway you know and he pulls over to the side of the road I pull over to the side of the road what I didn't notice was you know you're coming down the highway you're driving he he drove like maybe a not I want to say a split second but like several seconds before a car was coming and so I came right behind him so the car had to Swerve out of the way I didn't even notice that so he tells me to pull over he pulls over so I pull over he gets out the car he comes to the window slaps the [ __ ] out me right I'm like he's like wake up that's all he said I'm just sitting there like I mean I think about that now but there's no teaching in that where was the teaching in that I ain't even realize what I did wrong you told me to do everything that you did you literally said do what I do you ran the stop sign so I ran the stop sign and then once you slap the [ __ ] out me you don't even tell me what I did wrong so that's why I said my father used to discipline me for things that he never even taught me so I think um um that's where a lot of the insecurity and anxiety and you know impostor syndrome that's where a lot of that comes from you know and the the bouts of depression I don't that's probably just some a chemical a chemical imbalance or something cuz like that's just I constantly have to pump myself up and I do that through prayer I do that through you know daily affirmations you know I do that through like um just constantly telling myself I belong you know and that's something I remember being young my affirmation used to be I love Jehovah
God and his son Jesus Christ and I would say that three times then I would say [ __ ] Satan and I would say that three times and that is what used to get me like okay I'm ready I'm ready for the day I'm ready for whatever you know the the day is going to deliver me so yeah it's just all of those things from my childhood contributed to those issues at some point it appears that you reached a sort of personal Rock Bottom in those sort of early 20s and you made a decision to that enough was enough and I find that so interesting because I sit here with so many people who reach that moment where they they look at their lives and they go listen look look at what I'm doing with myself and some of them carry on going and they're probably not around to sit in the chair and then some of them Hit That Rock Bottom moment and they go I can't carry on doing this with my life and they make a decision to take at least one footstep in some positive direction and that starts to compound for them is that accurate is that an accurate description of what happened cuz I cuz I cuz I learned early that everything my father was saying was true so my father was telling me if you don't change your lifestyle you going to end up in jail dead or broke under the tree I actually saw that starting to happen to not just myself but people around me so you know I had my stin in jail but then I had people around me that was going to jail for like five years like they were going to jail for actual prison sentences and you know I had people around me that were dying that were actually you know getting killed and I saw like you know people that I used to once look up to who were older than me sitting under the tree literally doing nothing with their lives like becoming that next generation of you know people who just sit under the tree all day and drink or do drugs or whatever it is so I saw that happening and I was just one of those kids that was smart enough to realize man whatever I'm doing today will directly impact what happens in my life tomorrow and that's all that's been my mindset since I was you know early 20 years old like whatever I want to be doing 5 years from now I got to start doing now literally that's always been my mindset and so you know when I finally um got that break to
find the internship in radio like just being in that environment being around that in 1998 as an intern literally made me say okay this is what I want to do with my future before that I didn't know what I wanted to do I was going speaking of male role models like I had you know Uncle Uncle Henry he worked at UPS I'm like all right maybe UPS is the move I had a uh one of my mother's cousins named Bruce he was in the military okay maybe being in the military is is the move for me like I was just trying to figure out you know what I was going to do with my adult life and you know I started working a bunch of odd jobs I did I did telemarketing I worked at a clothing store called demo in the mall I worked at a warehouse called industrial Acoustics I worked at a flower garden I worked at Taco Bell for a couple couple of weeks cuz my sister was the manager there I was just trying to figure things out and at one point in my life I worked at demo in the mall with my now wife I worked at the telemarketing place and I had stumbled upon an internship probably like a year prior which was at the radio station in 1998 and then around 1999 I actually started being on the air and once I started being on the air it just started to let me see what the future could potentially look like up until that point did you have high hopes for yourself in your future um um because because because I thought I was going to be a rapper cuz you know most most young black men you know from the hood you know in the late 90s or from the the rural rural area that I was from in mon Corner South Carolina you know when you look on television or you open up these magazines the people that you see that are successful are usually in rap hip-hop in some way shape or form are Athletics and so I thought rapping was going to be the way to get up off that dir Road mon Corner South Carolina that's why you know I got I got a tattoo on my arm I got Wolverine from the X-Men tattooed on my arm holding a microphone in his hand I got this tattoo when I was like I don't even know like 18 19 something like that and and I got it made by a dude named T Willis T Willis was a tattoo artist in South Carolina tattoos weren't even illegal in this time but I I got I got I got it I got it
tatted on my arm in his apartment and the reason I got Wolverine holding the microphone cuz always loved Wolverine because I loved his healing powers I Lov that he was able to heal quickly from things this is this is me at 18 19 years old not knowing anything about no therapy not knowing anything about you know the future journey I would go on of healing this is just me back then being a young comic book lover loving the fact that Wolverine had these healing powers and I had them holding the microphone cuz I thought the microphone was going to be you know what changed my life which It ultimately did I just thought it was going to be through through rap music the microphone ultimately changed your life I also didn't know that you'd spent this really long stint on the radio from sort of 20 years old doing that internship right up until The Breakfast Club when you're 32 years old so that's 12 years but it's not just 12 years of work and graft and mastering your skill it's also 12 years of rejection getting fired over and over and over and over again I got fired four times I got fired from four different radio stations I got fired from hot 9 89 in Charleston I used to do radio I started my career at Z93 which I'm back on now which is the actual Heritage station so The Breakfast Club is broadcast on Z93 so I'm back on Z93 but um I left Z93 which was the big Heritage station in Charleston to go work for an up incoming station called high 989 simply because you know my man George cook who's still a great mentor of mine to this day he offered me a full-time radio gig I was on Monday through FR Monday through Saturday 7 to midnight I had to take that making what I don't know $199,000 a year or something like that but that felt so good back then because I was able to show my mom a contract and say look I'm making a salary I'm making $199,000 a year right like that just felt good to say that I had a job that I had to be to you know uh every day and and not just a job a job that um that she knew about because she would hear me on the radio what did your father think oh he loved it like that was I mean even when when I was on Z93 that was a big deal cuz z9 was the was the Heritage station like that was dation in Charleston so that was a big deal for
him was he surprised um having shared a jail cell with you at one point seeing your delinquency through that period of your life was he surprised man you know what's interesting I've never had those conversations with him even to this day like I've never had like that conversation with him like n like you know he he might tell me he's proud of me stuff like that but we've never had like an indepth conversation like my mom like me and my mom have had like those in-depth conversations like my mom has told me things like you know you've accomplished more than you know anybody in the family ever thought about accomplishment accomplishing or she'll show me like um the the taxes my my great-grandfather her father yeah her father was it her father yeah her father her father my grandfather she would show me like the taxes that he would have to pay on their land so like just to put things in perspective you know for me and um yeah like she's like I share things with her like I share with her how much I'm making or how much I made doing something I I share things like that with her and um yeah she she she's she's very always supportive and you know lets me know like she's proud of me I remember she she gave me the best advice a long time ago she told me just be happy you making a living up survival generation but but but she the way she said it was basically basically saying you know this is how you stay humble she was like just be happy that you're able to make a living and she's right cuz you know how hard it is for some people to make a living like like seriously it's just it's hard for some people just to be able to afford some some wings from the grocery store like it's hard for people can't afford daycare like things like like just little small simple everyday things that you know you and I may be able to just take care of there's a lot of people out here who can't so you should very you should very much be happy just to be making a a living so her telling me that you know puts a lot of things in perspective for me and then that's kept a lot of things in perspective for me but nah me and my
pops have never really we've never really had those conversations 32 years old you you joined the Breakfast Club which is the first time that I I saw you um heard about you with was entertained by you but before you joined the bref Breakfast Club something else became really sort of front of mine in your life which is anxiety and panic attacks and you talk about the the first sort of panic attack you had while you were driving down into say 26 in South car Carolina I had 26 that that was probably the first really really really major one um the first one I ever had was definitely in first grade I would never forget that M Elementary School I I don't I can't forget that to this day like my mom dropped me off first day of school and I just could not calm down I mean balling tears screaming like like I could not stopped you know and and now when I think back on it I'm like oh that was I was straight up having a panic attack I remember to look at my mom's face like what is wrong with like what's going on um but the one I had then that was after being fired for the fourth time from Radio I was back home living with my mom like you said I think I was 31 32 I don't remember how old I was 3132 my daughter was like one or two my now wife was back living at home with her parents in Mons Corner South Carolina and I remember I was driving down i26 uh going to Orangeburg to go see uh little Duval at a comedy show he was at a comedy show in um Orangeburg I forgot what school it was and um yeah I just remember feeling that feeling that I've always felt my whole life heartbeating crazy fast mouth getting dry Palm sweaty feeling lightheaded dizzy had to pull over get some water take a few deep breaths and just told myself like look man I'm I'm I'm going go to the doctor yet again cuz I you know I always would check myself in the emergency room whenever I would have those kind of panic attacks CU I always felt like I was having a heart attack and so I went to the doctor and the doctor was like nah you got to your heart is fine you got a athletes heart and then he was like um he said to me he said yo you you deal with anxiety I like anxiety what do you mean do I deal with anxiety and he was like um do the symptoms you're
describing sound like a panic attack he said have you had these before and I'm like yeah and he was like are you stressed out about anything and I'm like hell yeah like you know and so he was like yeah it sounds like you know that that's anxiety you know and then he was telling me some breathing exercises I could do to possibly deal with it and then in my mind after he said are you stressed out about anything the first thing I thought to myself was all I got to do is get another job and everything will be a okay I just got to get out my mom house get my family back in position and everything will be okay next gig I got was The Breakfast Club and so you think you fast forward three four years I'm having more success than I've ever had in my life I'm making more money than I've ever made in my life everything is going great but nothing's changed I'm still having the panic attacks probably even more so now I'm still dealing with bout of depression and I can't figure out why I just was not happy and so that's what finally made me decide to start you know going to therapy we started Breakfast Club in 2010 I think I started going to therapy around 2015 2015 2016 how bad did your your depression get in those Z years there Z 30s oh no they got bad I mean they it got it got it n it definitely got bad it got bad to the point where like I was the guy who you know you I I love to laugh definitely love to laugh love to joke love to have a good time but then like yeah those Suicidal Thoughts just cross your mind for no reason like literally for absolutely no reason like you know you you would it would it would now's a good time to end it all like just literally randomly and you like what was that you know and even even now sometimes it it it'll cross your mind and it definitely it crosses your mind a lot when you have like I had a a friend who committed suicide you know um her name was jazz jazz waters you know and call her Jazz fly and me and her used to lean on each other a lot like she committed suicide during um Co and her and I used to lean on each other a lot like I used to call her like my my my wartime General like you know when it was like really time to you know get busy and you know really strategize some
stuff that's who I would pick up the phone and call and we would always have these conversations about you know therapy and you know depression and anxiety and all of that from I mean deep conversations I'm talking about we' spend Sundays literally i' be in the backyard sometimes three 4 Hour phone conversations right like away from everybody my my wife kids everyone just really having conversation so you know when she did it I remember um sitting in my backyard and and I heard her voice in my head and it was like she she literally said to me you still here like on like you still like you still there on Earth and I was I got that that like kind of just shook me to my core a little bit right and so it's just like I constantly do not constantly constantly is is a strong word but yeah those those thoughts just cross your mind I don't know if it's because it's not cuz I actually want to do it or because I'm thinking about doing it but because I've had people close to me do it and because I had those thoughts when I was younger sometimes I don't know if it's to Sur survivors guilt maybe or survivors remorse of it all that just makes you think about it like what what am I still doing here you know but then I got a million reasons to still be here so that immediately makes it makes it go away when when you have a friend like that that passes in such circumstances it's it a complex range of feelings and he like I sat here with someone who described that exact same thing to me their best friend who had said nothing to them was um always that it was actually works on radio in the UK um both of them worked on radio then his radio partner one day died by Suicide never said anything to anybody appeared to be fine in the complex set of emotions that he's left with the regret the feelings of what if what if ID said something did I reach out all of those kinds of things is there anything that I could have done all of those feelings what is that complex set of emotions that you man yeah you can't do that to yourself you you will but you can't do that to yourself
because like I was saying earlier when I talked about you know modeling when you say the word role model and you're modeling yourself after people you don't know what's behind all of those layers of a human like we're complex creatures like to me she was one of the most intelligent brilliant creative strategic human beings I ever met in my life and she was somebody that you know so many of us went to and I never felt I didn't I didn't I didn't you know guilt myself with that because I know that she would come to me with stuff too and I would always be an ear for her like I was always there for her um but yeah y yo you it is it's just to act like that to narrow it down the one emotion is crazy like you know you'll go through sadness you'll go through anger you'll go through happiness you'll go through frustration you'll go through um thinking about those last moments that that person was here and you'll be saying to yourself I I I tried like like like I tried that's all that's that's that's that's what I know that's what I do know I know for a fact I tried like it's it's not like we didn't you know you didn't see things you know so it's not like we didn't try to get that person all the help and more that that that they needed but yeah it is it is it is a very very complex set of emotions something that you can't even really put in words and not even not something I'm trying to suppress either like you know it is one of those things you want to you you you want to constantly confront but it's it's a it's just very complex cuz you wish that you could have had you what you really wanted you wish you could have talked to that person that day you wish you could have had a conversation with that person that day that's what you really wish you know and see where they see where they were at in that moment and and you and and hopefully if you because you all every I think everybody would probably do that everybody probably says the same thing I probably say the same thing her mom probably says the same thing her father probably says the same thing her sister probably says the same thing if I would have spoke to her that day you know I probably could
have got her in a better place but that's not the way that's not the way the universe had it had it designed your external Life Changes rapidly when um your external your world your everything around you changes when you become as a star in The Breakfast Club but internally you say nothing really changes if not if anything it was potentially worse the panic attacks anxiety the bouts of depression a lot of people will be surprised by that because as a big as you say people think that you get the job you get the money you get the fame I was losing myself because you got to think I'm still in survival mode I'm still coming off being fired four times you got to think what my journey was from 1998 up until that moment up until that moment I'm just coming out of my mom's house living with my mom in Monks Corner South Carolina like I'm literally I'm I just collected my last unemployment check right you can't chill nah I'm scared to death everything that you saw was me was was rooted in fear it was rooted in I'm not going back to that so whatever I have to do to not go back to that I'm going to do that's why you see the ruthless anybody can get it you know it's it's still a lot of pain there that I'm probably projecting on the other people it's still a lot of hurt there that I'm projecting on the other people plus y'all done tried to fire me out of this business four different times y'all thought it was sweet when I was down in Monks Corner South Carolina living back home with my mom now all of y'all got to feel my wrath like literally that's what I was on and you know when you getting when you're getting rewarded for that that fuels whatever that is Until you realize like for me it was around 20 2015 you like this this ain't this not what I want how did you know that how did you know just wasn't happy and I like at this time I got two kids like my my oldest is like seven at the time in 2015 and my newborn had just been been born and like I got married in 2014 so it's like yo am I really about to become my pops you know am I really about to become you know this I you know I love this man I despise the way he you know ended up you know treating his family us
treating my mom and I'm like yo am I really going to be that am I really goingon to get caught up in this radio you know Radio Star and I'm putting star in air quotes lifestyle you know am I really GNA get caught up in the women am I really going to get caught up in the drugs am I really going to get caught up in the alcohol am I really going to become a character of myself this character that I created you know to protect you know this vulnerable young man named lonard am I really going to get caught up in that and and completely lose myself am I going to do that or am I going to you know get back on the path that I know I'm supposed to be on am I going to get back on that that that that that that righteous path am I going to do that so I chose to go the righteous path sounds simple sounds like it was a one an epiphany one day but I and that's a man speaking in hindsight there and I just want because there be a lot of people that are in that moment where they're looking at their life going is this really who I'm going to be yeah yeah you're right it's not simple because you you you'll constantly lie to yourself and I think that's why so many people uh from the street always end up in the same situation like there's nowhere you going to go in any ghetto America USA any rural Town USA where a older person isn't going to tell a younger person you keep living like that you going to end up in jail or dead my dad added the other one or broke sitting broke sitting under the tree but everybody thinks they can beat it everybody thinks they can live a certain lifestyle and if they just do this you know then that won't happen or that person was stupid that's why they ended up like that nah you live a certain lifestyle you move in a certain way all of y'all going to meet the same fate and it's no different you know um even in even in that space like I was I was absolutely about to crash I knew it how just I just I just saw it coming like a crash to me is losing your family you know your leave in you like I don't want that like who wants that I don't envy those type I don't envy people like that I don't envy people who and I'm not knocking them in no way shape for but I don't envy people who you know lost lost their families because of infidelity and now they got to visit their kids on the
weekend you know you you are unfaithful to your wife oh yeah absolutely and she's the love of your life I mean there's very few people my soulmate 100% you've been with her 30 plus years or something6 26 this year absolutely absolutely 26 years we were kids you know and we we literally grew up together in every sense of the word like literally the first time I ever filed out an application at a radio station she drove me because my license was suspended like we were together since kids like literally like I I was at her high school graduation I was at her college graduation you know I mean like she like I said she the first time I ever filed that application at the radio station she drove me like she went to college in Columbia South Carolina I got a radio job in Columbia South Carolina I ended up getting a radio job in New York she ends up getting a job in New York City like our lives were just like that all the time we couldn't escape each other if we tried and to be honest with you I would never want to because like that has been the one constant in my life that has been my muse forever that has been the person who's constantly made me want to be the best version of myself even when I wasn't the best version of myself you know because when you ask God for certain things he's going to give them to he or she is going to give them to you so when you tell God like this is what I want I want to be with this person for the rest of my life or I'm looking for a soulmate or I'm looking for you know my My Hope Brady or I'm looking for my you know CLA hustable like he's going to give you that but are you going to be prepared for it when you get it same thing with any type of success you yeah God he or she may give you that but are you prepared for it I think a lot of us are you know a lot of us get things that we're we're we're really not prepared for and when we get those things we're not prepared for we don't hold on to them you nearly lost it I feel like I did absolutely I feel like I did it would it wouldn't have been worth it even if I would have continued to have success professionally in radio but Meanwhile my personal life you know I lose my wife I lose my family that's that's not worth it that's there's no way there's nowhere on this Earth where
that's a fair trade for me you start going to therapy you go twice a week no I always started off going once a week oh really yeah when did you start going to therapy 2016 either late either late 2015 or early 2016 why therapy who was who told you that that was a good idea a lot of people lot of black black men a lot of black Americans period don't seek Mental Health Care there's a huge disparity it's almost 100% difference between um white people and black people seeking mental health MH a lot of people I mean you know I'm a big fan of the the TV show girlfriends grew up watching girlfriends that's one one of my wife's favorite shows so when I would go to her her house when she was in college she would have that on and we'd be watching girlfriends and like if you watch girlfriends a lot of them were going to therapy that's the first time I even heard of it right but then as I got older talking to different people and they were all you know ing from from men women like I remember having conversations with you know Neil Brennan who's a comedian and he was in an interview talking about the benefits of therapy my my my Young Homie Pete Davidson you know he was talking about it you know my my home girl Debbie Brown like she was really into it like not just therapy but just all different facets of healing like if you know Debbie Brown now like you youd understand why she was on that back then like she's one of the leaders and the mindfulness you know mental health space right now I have some very exciting news to share with all of you as of yesterday you can find a 247 the Diary of a CEO with Steven bartler Channel exclusively on Samsung TV Plus in the UK and in the Netherlands the channel will also be launching shortly in Germany Switzerland and Austria Samsung TV plus is Samsung's own streaming service which is pre-installed on all Samsung Smart TVs and Galaxy mobile and tablets and it's completely free so if you have a Samsung TV go and watch the dire of a CEO on your TV and please do me a favor take a photo and tag me in it thank you what's helped you to heal what's if you look at the like tool kit you've used my girlfriend's alternative healing breath work practitioner super spiritual she's helped me a lot with all of my child all of that stuff all of it brother I didn't
I therapy meditation breathing exercises I done did raiki uh you know I got I got Crystals at home you know I do plant-based medicine I I like all of it are you ask set of s I've I've I've I've I've done I've done an iwka Journey that's that's when I that's what I was talking about earlier when I said I went on a a spiritual Retreat ah really yeah early this year and that was South America was it or somewhere else N N I did it I did it I did it here in the states it was it was a beautiful beautiful ceremony um and it was man it was very very very lifechanging like that's where I got the the Revelation the Revelation was you know stop lying to yourself and stop volunteering those lies to other people it's like yo whatever um wherever you're at in your life like for me it's just like I want to show up and be my authentic self at all times like me that's what I want to do all the time I don't matter where I'm at in my life I want to present that and being on that Journey it literally ripped away every single ounce of falsehood that existed it like it just shattered it like B that gotta go like I watched it in my mind like go up in Flames like like literally what's the cost if we live with those falsehoods and those lies depression you know probably constant anxiety you know a whole lot of insecurities a whole lot of impostor syndrome because you know I'm from the country so I believe in simple sayings like God can't bless who you pretend to be you know and I think that constantly we got to we got to constantly check ourselves and make sure we're always showing up is who we are and we're not pretending to be you know some version of ourselves that's why that's why you read get honest or die line I talk so much about social media in the book because I'm watching so many people lose themselves to social media like I'm talking about intelligent well-educated well read academics are are literally losing their s to social media you can have conversations with them and you realize like all of their talking points are coming from social media like their their thought process is being dictated
by social media these people care more about their relationships online than they do their actual relationships offline like I know people who are personalities who have like you know uh podcast or who may have YouTube shows you know and these people will literally be on Twitter all day be on redit all day listen to what listening to what people are saying about them reading what people are saying about them and crafting their thoughts just to talk to them in that crowd to just please them I'm like my God how narrow-minded is that that's why for me man if you're if if you claim to be an an academic or you claim to be a well educated person you came you claim to be a uh an intelligent book smart person I don't think you're that smart if your emotional IQ is that low if your if your emotional IQ is so low that people on social media can dictate how you move how you think how you talk you're not a smart person to me smart people know how to disconnect from that and smart people know how to go you know do some meditation to make sure that their thoughts are absolutely positively their own like I got people right now today hitting my phone trying to tell me how they feel about the new Kendrick Lamar record and I love Kendrick Lamar I think he's fantastic I think Mr morale and the big steppers in the future is going to be known as one of the most hip-hop one of the most important hip-hop albums of all time that one in Jay-Z's 444 but people are hitting me telling me their thoughts and telling me their opinions and I'm blocking all of that because I listen to the record I listen to it five or six times same I know what I got from it I know what I feel about it and I'm not letting y'all change my mind okay but they're doing that because they know that tomorrow when I'm on the air I'm going to be talking about it so they're trying to curate my thoughts and they're trying to push my thoughts in a certain direction I don't want that and I'm not even I'm just using that Reg as an example because it's the freshest thing on my mind but I don't I'm like that with anything I need my own Clarity I need to I need to into my own discernment what is my spirit telling me about this situation or this moment or this thing that's all I care about I
don't care about any of that noise that exist uh on social media that's that's giv you a real big competitive advantage in many respects because originality is so that's right valuable that's right you're 100% correct that's why I laugh at a lot of these individuals because what also happens is you know they start whispering about me right and they start wondering well why why is this happening for him and why does he get to do this and why why is that like why is that going on like they looking you know cuz I keep growing and they wonder why they wonder why I keep growing and they don't I tried to tell you disconnect how you how how are you going to grow when you're not even watering your own garden because if if if you're if if you're getting on social media and you're reading what they're saying about you and you're catering all your thoughts and all your talking points to appease those people you're not watering your garden you're you're you're literally trying to water somebody else's so as you're you're as you're watering somebody else's that continues to grow and that continues to get louder and louder and louder but meanwhile you just stagnant it's scary though it's scary to ignore and then to show up as yourself in a world where we're rewarding Conformity with the likes the claps the okay you won't be cancelled because you you fit in it's when you say oh I'm going to disconnect I'm going to be myself I'm going to be authentic I go Jesus Christ that is man I get I get attacked all the time for thoughts for opinions because I don't go along with with with with the mob and I'm not even I'm not a contrarian in any way shape or form I just know that nothing is black nothing is white right there's always those areas of gray in the middle there's Nuance to everything like like you can be objective about everything right like there there there has to be a certain level of well let me see what this person is coming from you got to hear both sides to me that's just common sense and I feel like the only way to get the real truth about anything is if you see where both sides are coming from I can't just dismiss you as wrong because you have a different opinion than mine or you feel differently than mine I got to hear where you're coming
from first there's no political party called nuance and we we're we're we're in an election year I know this as well I think if I if I wanted to go viral I just got to do a hot take for either side because there's algorithms for that there's a group of people that are going to pick that up and retweet it and send it but the people in the middle it's there's no and we're going into this election year now where there's I've heard you say there's really no great choices yeah but on that point you just said about being able to see the other side what you think about Trump I think that uh I mean I say this everywhere I go I think Donald Trump is a threat to democracy you know I don't think that you should have anybody uh especially in the United States you can't have a leader of a country who says said said he we should suspend the Constitution to overthrow the results of an election I mean he he led an attempted coup of this country like we watched it we saw it you know um yeah I just don't think a person like that should be president of the United States of America I think that if you're facing you know the type of criminal charges that he's facing what is it 80 86 counts or something like that now 86 counts 88 counts I can't remember the exact number but if I was facing 88 counts of any criminal charge I wouldn't be able to work at Walmart nonetheless you know run to be president of the United States of America so I just don't think that he's you know he's he's he's not somebody that should should be in that position but I understand why he is in that position because he's he's he's good at messaging what do you think about the people that follow Trump do do you think they're good people some of them that even that even that is a very broad question right like when you say what do you think about the people that follow Trump those people aren't monolithic yeah yeah all of those all of those people those 70 plus million people who voted for Trump a lot of them voted for Donald Trump for a for a lot of different reason I have actual friends who will remain nameless who I know voted for Donald Trump and I know they're great people and they didn't vote they not they're black they're also black too and they're
not like the they're not black conservatives they're not in any way shape or form they are black like Pro black individuals and like that's what I mean when I say having conversations with people because you get to see why people do you know different things I know why that person told me they voted for Donald Trump back in you know 2016 just like I know individuals now who tell me why they they they voted for him in 2016 or or or 2020 and you can't just chalk everybody up to being a racist you know you can't just chalk everybody up to you know not caring uh about lgbtq issues or whatever it is people have different reasons and interests why they vote for people it might be one thing it might be one interest that they vote for that's what they always tell you right they tell you to vote your interest so it's the same thing with a with a President Biden I can look at a million things that President Biden has done that I do not like the 80 86 mandatory minimum sentencing the 88 crack laws the 94 crime Bill all of that I there's a million things I can point to and say I don't like that he he he did this but if the if if the one interest is to at least protect democracy in 2000 in in in 24 or if you're somebody who got their student loan debt wiped away you that might be it if you're somebody who can afford instantly now because of President B that might be the reason you vote for him so it's just like everybody has different reasons as to why they vote for different candidates that's why you I don't even think the question is fair when you say what do you think about the people who voted for such and such like I'm not the I'm not the person I vote for when we get to speak to those people we understand their motives until then we kind of misunderstand them and I think right I see that Crossover with you and your father because eventually you had a conversation with him you talked about that conversation at the very beginning of this one where you finally had empathy for him and his experience and his life that conversation with your father where you rebuilt your relationship and finally understood him did that help your healing Journey absolutely 100% because
like I said I never quite had the relationship uh with my father that I I wanted to and it's I mean it's not too late he's still here right um but yeah it did because I realized in that moment that he was just a man who was just doing his best and he didn't have the tools that I have he didn't have the resources that I have even though he was going to therapy two and three times a week even though he was on the 10 to he was on 10 to 12 different medications the state of South Carina just started giving him a check we used to call that a crazy check back in the day you just get a check for being crazy like I knew people who used to play Crazy to get a check I remember when I went to my mom and said yo did you know dad was going through all of this and she was like yeah I just thought he was playing crazy to get a check so it's like all of those you know if if if I would have known when I was young if he would have told me all of those things when I was young then I probably would have ended up on a totally different path much earlier I guess that's another example of like you know Role Models right because I think another time A lot of times when we say role models we think it has to be just about all the good a person is doing but if a person has dealt with a lot of the things that you're going through because a lot of this stuff is genetic right like if a person is dealing with their own anxiety if a person is dealing with their own you know bout to depression my father he was already in therapy he was already on 10 to 12 different medications he tried to commit suicide if he would have told me all of that when I was young I would have known what I was dealing with I would have been able to be like oh okay I'm I'm dealing with that it's the same way you can see it in your kids you can when when your kids are dealing with those things you can look at them and be like okay I know I know what that is because you know I went through that to me that's being that's good even though my dad was dealing with all those issues but him if he was just telling me when I was young if he would have just told me when I was young this is what he was dealing with then that would have been a good model for me to follow cuz I would have known what it is I need you know to do much much earlier than I
did my last question before we go to the book for you um this is a question that I think is Central to why especially don't really talk about their feelings or at least it's a question that I think we often just diminish which I wanted to ask you very simple question we ask each other this question every single day which is um and please do give me the long answer how are you doing I right now I'm doing great I am I am blessed black and highly favored I'm doing fantastic you know I just came uh I just had a fantastic weekend man like we were in uh Atlanta Georgia um cuz I did my second annual black effect podcast Festival cuz you know have a podcast Network called the black effect and you know we're the home of you know like 30 various podcasts you know everybody from the 85 South show the horrible decisions to you know carefully Reckless with J hilarious you know all the smoke with Matt Bond and Stephen Jackson like we have a bunch of different you know um podcast and we just had our second annual black effect podcast Festival in Atlanta and it's such a beautiful event because podcast in is such a such a new industry and to be able to curate a space where it's like seven or eight of your favorite podcasts on stage people are from from 11 to 7 o'clock at night 11:00 a.m. to 7 o'clock at night we got all the food trucks we got the vendors we got the merchandise like it's a festival so to be able to have a real live podcast Festival to be doing it for the second year in a row to see this you know community of creatives you know just come together for the day that's very fulfilling to me and you know another thing we do during the festival is we um we bring three people out from HBCU because you know Nissan is one of our sponsors of the sponsors of the festival so we bring these three uh kids out from these HBCU CU another event that we do throughout the year with the black effect it's called The Thrill of possibility Summit and we fly 50 HP students to Nashville and we just have a weekend of like panels for them and we have different you know uh people who went to HBCU who've gone on to have tremendous success in the world come and just pour into them all weekend long so we had those three individuals come
speak uh HBCU yeah historically black colleges University so we had three people from The Summit come to the black effect podcast Festival just to talk about the summit and you know how how fulfilling it was for them and then we're doing it again this year and the reason that gives me such a high is because man I'm I'm I'm All About service man like that's what I'm about at this point in my life I say all the time if I'm building things whatever I build nowadays if it only benefits me it's not big enough and the things that I'm building now you know whether it's my black effect podcast Network whether it's you know the company me and Kevin Hart got at audible called SB Productions whether it's the you know the book imprint black privilege publishing with Simon and Shuster I'm able to provide so many people opportunities like we got got staffs and you know we got presidents you know of our of our of our companies like and you know we're able to partner with people and you know Ride book deals and podcast deals and all of these different things so it's just like that is what is fulfilling to me and then being able to take those resources and do things like the Thriller possibility something we're pouring into these HBC HBC youth students so I got a nonprofit called the you know mental wealth Alliance you know where our goal is to get 10,000 black and brown people free free therapy over the next 5 years I do a Expo every year I think I'm on my like my fourth year fifth year of that called the mental wealth expo here in New York it's a free event I bring some of the best psychiatrists and therapists and spiritual leaders and I've seen it yeah I own the domain name mental wealth.com so if you want it for free you can have it I was going to do something with it I bought it five years ago for no I bought it five years ago for a project wow and then I saw you post on Instagram an event called mental wealth I was thinking damn I've got this domain name and he's doing something with it so you can have it it's just sat there I'll send we'll send that would be fantastic no I saw what you're doing it's incredible I can't think of a better reason to for someone to do with that that domain So yeah thank you so that's all so to answer
your question I'm doing great and the reason I'm doing great is because I realize that um your true purpose in life will come through service to others Dr Wayne W Dyer says that in the power of intention I read that years ago and didn't understand what it meant I'm talking about I got I read this 20 plus years ago and didn't quite understand that that what that meant your true purpose in life will come through service to others I over understand what that means now that's not the way culture's gone culture's become less religious less Community more about yourself your own goals your own individual being less about others less about a higher power and it's so interesting because as I've had these conversations over the years I was Rel I was religious until I was 18 years old my mom's religious I was baptized raised in a Christian household and I lost that religion and with that you lose the church and then social media made me more individualistic get the get the lambo I was this broke kid dropped out of University trying to get the range over sport in the Mansion I got those things the anticlimax something's missing going in search of more and I've almost found myself right back at the beginning again going I said it yesterday I was like damn I wish I was still religious but what I'm searching for is what youve said I'm searching for service in my life yeah because listen I grew up Brook so when you grew up Brook I grew up I grew up broke but I grew up watching my grandma even if you know we didn't have much she all always knew how to whip up a lot of food yeah and so whoever was in the yard could come to my grandma's house and eat same thing with my pops my pops was the guy who like they all like frying fish you here you going to eat you know hey we got drinks you going to drink so to me that was service that was early versions of service so I've always you know known that you know you got to you got to give to receive like that's just how I how I grew up so being that I never had much you know growing up um I just always felt like that was the way for me to show up for people like do something for them and now that I got you know a lot of resources that's just Amplified you know like I really I I used to look at people
that would put philanthropist in their bio and be like what what all you doing is giving money like what does that even mean but now you like I understand I get it when you can go to your mother's Alma moer South Carolina State University and say I am starting a scholarship fund and my mother's name the Ford family endowment scholarship and I'm going to donate this amount of money a large amount of money right and I you can look it up and see how much it was I mean by the way it wasn't that large because Mr Clyburn who's a congressman here in South Carolina I remember the day that we did it we were both donating money to South Carolina State University cuz that's where his his his uh beautiful wife Emily went she's from my hometown he literally said to me you should go first and I was like nah n n you go first and he was like n you you should go first and I was like n you should go first he like no you go first I'm like all right so I went first you know they hold up my check I say it was a quar million dollars right blessed I'm happy to be able to receive that I mean to give that Mr curn goes up it was like 1.3 million you know he goes up and he and he was like and I was was like you were right i' see why you wanted me to go first but my point with all that is the fact that I'm able to do things like that yeah man that means the world to me and that's literally what I just want to do for the rest of my life I want to be able to provide opportunities to people I want to be of service that's it that's all we're here for it's self selfish and selfless at the same time and both of those things because as you said you you said said by giving you get so much yeah there's only so much you can get from the Lamborghini right and like I've never wanted that in my life and you know what's so crazy I used to say that when I was broke and when you say it when you're broke you sound like a hater and you see a nice car like I don't want that well you can't afford it yeah you know how when you know you really mean that when you can afford it and you still don't want it I don't want it what the hell am I do with a Lamborghini what am I going to do with a Bentley what am I going to do with a phantom like what why does that need to be in my yard you know what I have to say but we don't have especially
like I grew up on rap videos I grew up on 50 c on MTV and all that stuff and that was model to me and it's model to a lot of young black men as success and it's so nice to hear people like you say listen you don't that's not that's and fact you're doing yourself a disservice because it's a some of those things are really bad use of your funds like go and invest a lot of the these other a lot of other people have a dad at the table who's an investor and knows to put it into a this investment fund or this investment fund and I think some of our role models growing up said okay if you get that kind of money you go spend it on champagne in a nightclub and something else which is going to make it go to zero yeah most of that stuff is ritten too like when you look at those rap videos most of that stuff wasn't even wasn't even theirs so yeah I've done that I've I've gone to Miami and and and my partner E-class salute to E-class he's the the founder and CEO of of the licking restaurants in Miami he toss me his keys to his big bins back in the day and I drive it around Miami I'm cool I get my fix I don't need to have one of those at home you know what I'm saying I don't need it like that that stuff does absolutely positively nothing for me in any way shape or form we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for and the question that's been left for you in the Dio is what are you most afraid of feeling [ __ ] grief grief the grief the grief of death 100% 100% the grief of death that's the thing that like if I was an actor or an actress I I would never be an actress well I mean I guess I could be in 2024 if I wanted to be but if if if I was an actor that like if you know how they tell you you got to cry on que like it's C it's that like that that that's the thing that I dismiss out of my mind because it's just certain things like I always say the things you want to happen in your life you constantly think about and you speak about the things you don't want to happen in your life you don't think about you don't speak about your thoughts creep up on you but when they
do creep up on you you just got to push them out but for definitely for me man it's that feeling of um that feeling of of of of grief when somebody close to you passes like like that is man I i' I've had some like really traumatic things happen to people that I genuinely love like you know I haven't lost a parent God bless you know not going I haven't lost a parent um I haven't lost a mate you know a wife a significant I haven't that hasn't happened to me but I've had that happen to people who are very very very very close to me I haven't lost a child God bless you know so yeah people that people that have had have have experienced that I truly truly truly truly truly truly feel for and I know that we all will that I I hope I don't I hope my kids bury me you know man I hope my my wife buries me but um yeah that's that's the feeling that I don't want to want to feel even though I know I probably will at some point in life a long long long long long long long long long time from now but n you don't you don't you don't want to feel that thank you thank you for for so much I think um I can't imagine how many people's lives and relationships you've saved by making the what many people would consider the Brave and vulnerable decision to speak to speak about your own struggles and to as you've said said step into an authenticity that's what you do in this book but that's what you've been doing long before long before you came here you've been doing that for years now and it had an impact on me imagine that I'm thousands and thousands of miles away in my own room I'm feeling anxiety for the first time in my life and I see this man who I love watching he's an Entertainer I see him of all people because he's a black man and black man never speak on these things I see him speaking about it and I go damn this isn't me being broken this isn't something that I should hide this isn't something that I should be ashamed of this is something that happens to all people and it's not evidence of my inadequacy it's actually evidence that I'm a human being too you're human man like there's there's nothing inadequate about any of us like we're literally all Spiritual Beings Liv in a human human existence and that human existence is is
is is going to go through a lot but at the end of the day like I think you said it earlier man we all got to return back to to to Spirit like I I love uh I love the movie uh well not the movie the the book American Gods it became a a TV show and you know in the book American Gods one of the new Gods was the Internet it's like internet boy social social media and I think that too many of us man are submitting our will to the internet literally we're submitting our will to the internet and if you talk to anybody who works in Silicon Valley they'll tell you that the internet it literally thrives off the seven deadly sins the seven deadly sins it thrives off of those it is fueled by the seven deadly sins so if you're submitting your will to something that is fueled by the seven deadly sins then what are you fueled by and you you wonder why the anxiety is is is so crazy you wonder why the insecurity is so crazy you wonder why the impostor syndrome is so crazy you wonder why the depression is so crazy it's because you're worshiping that that should be a tool that's what that's that's what you should treat as a tool like you wouldn't walk around with a hammer in your pocket and you wouldn't be pulling out that hammer all day and just looking at it and staring at it you wouldn't be pulling up that that screwdriver all day and just looking at it and staring at it so why are we doing that with our phones why are we all in verbally you know abusive relationships with social media we literally go especially when you're a public figure you'll go on these these Pages just to read people talk about how bad you are these are all people that are dealing with the same things you're dealing with the hurt the pain the anxiety the depression the insecurity impost syndrome they don't it it brings them joy to talk like that to you and hope that it gets to you in some way shape or form so why are we letting that in here we can't have all these conversations about mental health and not really truly be protecting our mental amen yes sir everybody needs to go get this book um get honest or or die lying and I think it's been one of the biggest Inspirations for me to really get closer to being my authentic self in every sense of the word and it's also made a really good case to me as to the
power of that authenticity because people say I'll be authentic whatever and they say that's part of their like virtue siging status games but it's it's so clear to me that it's one of the greatest Services you can do to yourself and those that matter most to you in your life I'm going to link this book below everybody needs to go and buy a copy and don't forget the why Small Talk sucks part that is that is actually the most important part to me because what we just had here was a macro conversation and I think a lot of times you know in this world that we live in we're having too many small conversations like we make micros macros like literally and once again that's what social media does it takes these micros and it makes them macros and you don't realize that they're micros until you get out into the real world and you walk up to somebody and you talking like hey did you see such and such and that person's like no I didn't and you like what do you mean it's trending number one on Twitter and they're like I don't know what the [ __ ] you talking about like that's literally the world that we live in so when I say why Small Talk sucks I'm not just talking about like when somebody's trying to make CH chatter with you like you know I hate that too I can't stand it but I'm talking about just those small conversations those small conversations we have we're we're we're talking too small we're thinking too small so this book is literally giving you some things to just simply talk big about to think to think big about that's why I end every chapter by saying let's discuss cuz I'm not an expert at anything I'm not an expert at nothing I just got some experiences and I got some thoughts and I put them in that that book and you read them and next time you find yourself in a situation where you feel like the conversation is too small I want you to say yo charag Lenard he said we don't got to do this we don't we don't we can we can sit here in silence or we can talk about this in this way in this large way and hopefully you know when you start doing that you'll start having more fulfilling conversations like uh this one I just had was with you thank you so much thank you so much you're an honest massive inspiration to me in every sense of the
word and uh you're so right about the small talk I think my relationship wouldn't exist after 5 years if I didn't figure out how to start having big talk uncomfortable conversations with my woman um and that's changed my life it's made me a better it's made me better inside my head and it's it's saved the thing that I care about most in my life at the moment which is my relationship with her and a lot of men they don't have the tools they don't have the role models and hopefully you know they can look to you and this book now as a as that guidance and that framework for for how toel model ourselves in such a way I have to say I have to shout out your podcast as well the brilliant idiots because one of my favorites I was watching the other day when you you guys were talking about all the the Drake Kendrick stuff like that and he was doing the little white thing and saying about the the it's just so hilarious and it's the best combination of podcast Andrew Schultz is the best standup comedian in the business today I think he is the best I I bought his pay-per-view for his when he did the online thing it was incredible oh the infamous yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely thank you so much really really appreciate it appreciate you brother thank you oh [Music] [Music]