unfortunately growing up as a young african-american male i was promised or told that
i would not live past the age of 21. i'd die or be in jail what are some of the common attributes
that you see that successful people billionaires what is it that they have they're always trying to
educate themselves constantly trying to educate themselves they're trying to find out how could
they be better or stronger what they do most of these people they will write their own obituary
they'll write it today and they'll want to know did i live the life that i wanted to live or did
i live for everybody else they're focused on what they want to accomplish in life and they
find the time to be by themselves they make a lot of mistakes they don't spend themselves too
thin but they keep trying new things because what that does is it forces them to educate themselves
i can't get nowhere in life or i don't have money i have this and that and i realize the
only difference between me them or any of us is what we negotiate through life
how many more silversmiths around what two percent in the world so the rest of us
have gotten to a level of success or broken the cycle in our families or even just become a better
person by purely negotiating with themselves and then with others people say somebody like
you is not supposed to do it so you get trained into thinking that there's only one way to do it
selling drugs or stuff like that but my mother would break those stigmatism down because she
showed me so much love and she showed me that i could be anything and anybody that i wanted to be
like most of us start there was no belief that i could do it but i remember walking into a store i
saw this picture of this guy who like looked like a young mike tyson hanging off a pair of jeans and
it was uh hawk and i and then it just hit me i thought prior to that we always thought that
you had to be from italy and france to design you had to be older and like a you know you know
the guys with the with the tape around their neck you know the tailors right and so
or whatever the fashion design had looked like in those days
and i thought i just i'm just supposed to buy from them when i saw that i was like wow that's amazing
okay no problem uh then i'm watching a de la soul video i remember and seeing them wearing these
hats it almost looked like a ski cap but it has like a tie on the top and i couldn't find that hat
anywhere in queens i finally find one uptown manhattan i i pay for the the hat i come home
i show my mother i said look ma go get 40 worth of fabric i go to the store get 40 with the fabric i
come home i give my mother the the the stuff to sell the hats and she says i'm not selling this
you're sewing this so crap now i got to work at this i sew the hats and then all of a sudden
i have all these hats and only one head so anyway so that's when it happened that's when i went out
and sold those hats in the outside on that good friday and i sold 800 worth of hats in one hour
and that's when it just snapped it just i just said to myself wait a minute i made this with my
own hands i went and sold this to individuals and nobody was in my way i didn't have to get a check
from my boss nobody told me when or to come to work or go to work i can't get fired from this
because of my color creed or whatever the case is i'm responsible for what's happening here
and i will either fail because every decision i make i'll succeed because every decision i make
people don't buy what you do they find why you do it
leaders and organizations with the capacity to inspire all think act and communicate
from the inside out they start with their why they communicate their purpose first
you can't hit a target you can't see if you can't visualize it it's not gonna happen
they say eight percent of the time that you're sleeping you're thinking about
either what you want to accomplish when you wake up or with fear there's an ups and downs and you
just have to be true to yourself you don't have to go out there and be something you're
not especially in this day and age you're gonna go out and get it discover your why
i was watching a show where a girl was she was like she was now living in nature but she said
i lived in ireland and i was fighting every weekend in clubs and bars and i realized i
was working and i was so miserable so that was my release so i was working to fight because i was so
damn miserable with my life and then she started to find causes that she liked she stayed the job
but she would go home at night and put some time into causes that she liked and she got able to
get out of that circumstance and move to someplace else and now she's doing what she loves but people
don't know their why but people always say well i want to be a millionaire what are you going
to do when you get a million dollars what are you going to do with the money some people go
i'm just going to keep making money well how are okay you're going to be a millionaire so if over
65 percent of the lotto winners are broke three years after winning lotto same thing with athletes
and football players yeah and football players three years oddly they didn't know their why the
football player knew his why or you know he was why oh i want to get that ball or run that play i
want to become part of a championship team because i love it or because it makes me fulfilled or it's
fun i love going to the gym i love i love the i love i'm there for competition you know better
than i do because obviously you are an athlete if you don't know your wife for a million dollars
well when you get the money you're going to buy a bugatti you're going to buy 10 cars but then
you just have the bugatti right so now what else you need right you're going to buy 10 cars are you
going to move to bali and live off 30 000 a year for 10 years carve canoes save the turtles and
invest in some stocks because stocks are going to average out 12 every year and you're going to
turn 600 000 into uh whatever case and then when you come back like what are you gonna do yeah
yeah right are you gonna buy investment properties and keep doubling down many people go through life
without their why the first thing to achieve is why do you want to achieve it like what is your um
many of us walk into the room even into the room we're talking ourselves and they're not honest
about the outcome what is the outcome why are you going through the motion is it because society
has told you that that's what it should be or is it that your parents always wanted that from you
or is it that you have been neglected in some way and you're trying to please a bunch of people that
you can't stand or is that you want to change the world is it that you know that you being healthier
is going to be able to be around in your family's life much longer or you're going to be able to
uh stop some social injustices like what is your why first of all i just started looking at all the
the best things in my life the the people that i get to motivate the the fact that a little brown
boy who's dyslexic from queens with no money no nothing came up in the world and hopefully i can
empower the next little brown boy little brown girl or anybody of any color culture or sexual
preference to be not the next name in john be the next steve jobs warren buffett oprah winfrey or
uh president barack obama if i can do that then maybe that's what my life was uh you know
that's what that's what god put me on this earth for it made me also want to live
to leave my daughter's a legacy i wanted them to be proud of their father so i refrain from doing
and having a lot of the temptations that i've seen a lot of people fall yeah fall short and yeah and
get caught up and there's nothing wrong with that we're all human so when i invest in brands
and companies i invest in them because they're allowing me to be part of their dream but i'm also
learning from them which is in return allowing me to go back to my special skill set and improve it
the main thing that i found that most of these people do is they're selfish they're selfish in
a good way they take time to be by themselves and and hone in on what they want to accomplish
a lot of people want to be something they want to be something great to everybody and you can
and actually when you have haters in the world they actually can fuel your success
you