Latest / Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck / Interview with Kevin Miles | Awakening & Entrepreneurship

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Interview with Kevin Miles | Awakening & Entrepreneurship · Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, I'm Kay Eck, and welcome to my podcast, Alive and Kicking: Stories of Waking Up.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome back to the podcast, everybody.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: This is Kay Eck, and this is Alive and Kicking.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I have with me here today my friend Kevin Miles.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome, Kevin.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, Kay.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: How are you?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing well yourself.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: Good.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: So you and I have known each other for a while, but I think this is actually might be our first face-to-face.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: We've talked on the phone, but we've never been face to face.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: So this is exciting, and I'm so happy to have you here.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 0:48
  unknown: I'm happy to be here.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: Good.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to get started.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: I know a little bit about your background, but not a lot.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm looking forward to kind of filling in the holes and getting the full rounded story of how you got from where you started to where you are now.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: Because I feel like that route is probably not the most traditional route.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that you were raised by um you were both military kid and preacher's kid.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that is like um sort of like a double dose of tradition and expectation, I want to say.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: So tell me about that.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me how you grew up.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um, grew up just in the army.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my pops was in the army from the time I was born, actually.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: He went off to Vietnam and I was really young.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: My my mother passed when I was like two years old.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: That was kind of probably the first big event that set my life on a certain trajectory.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and these are the things you, of course, you figure out looking back at it.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: You never, when you're going through it, you don't really know.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I was really blessed to have a father who, and he was one of, I think, 11 children, grew up on a farm in Oklahoma.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone says about him his whole life.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: He he was just like kind of angelic almost.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: That was that was just kind of who he was, you know.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So he found his way into went to seminary.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: He actually went in the army first, went to Germany, found his way to seminary, and went back in as a chaplain.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um, he was he was an interesting guy because he's not like what you would think of, sort of a typical preacher.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: He he just didn't wear anything on his sleeve, his religion, anything like that.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like I wasn't forced to go to church.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: If I didn't want to go, I didn't go.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's unusual, right?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, after I got a certain age, you know, when I would go through those teen years where you, you know, you kind of want to rebel against everything, you know, and he would say, Hey, if you don't want to go, you don't have to go.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I love staying home because it was the only time I had the whole house to myself.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I would I would wind up doing that.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: But but he and I used to have conversations about death and dying.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize it was probably because my mother had died.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: You don't really know what that means when you you just know your mother's not there, but where is she?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Where did she go?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and even like what is a mother?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what is the role of a mother?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you don't even have a frame of reference for that.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and well, he did get remarried.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a I had a stepmother that that raised me, you know.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and um that kind of came with its own challenges, you know.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: So life is just, and when I look back on it now, I just I don't have any of the frames that I used to have because now I just see it as sort of something I must have designed before I was born to make sure that I was doing, you know, I was on the path I was supposed to be on.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even every door that didn't open was really a blessing in some ways.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, that's such a gift to be able to see things that way.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: But so did your um did your father come up through a certain denomination?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, he was Methodist.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it's there's a church called uh AME, which is African Methodist Episcopal, but at one point you know, folks kind of fell out.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: They started in Philadelphia way, way back.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the CMEs broke off from the AMEs.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they're very, very similar.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they're very kind of stayed, they're they're not the holy rollers, you know, they're they're much more cerebral, you know.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the old man was he, I would say he was really a theologian.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, very academic type of servants, you know, not not so much the drum rolling and all that type of thing.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, they were they were just they were seeing these, you know.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: We grew up that way, but because the army is non-denominational, you know, he was always he always would have a church, but he he pretty much counseled soldiers all day, every day.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: But he also had a ministry.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a church and people would come and you know it was it it was almost like a traditional church, except it just wasn't it wasn't that it wasn't denominational, it was just Christian, you know, it was a Christian church.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: So where did that childhood take you?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: Where did you do the typical two years here, two years there type of thing?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: We pretty much did three-year tours, um Kansas.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was born in Florida.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the this was before he went in the army, actually.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was born in Florida.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: He was working with migrant uh farm workers in Florida.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, yeah, and so that was that.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then he went into, then he went to into the army, went to Vietnam.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So we lived in Texas, in Kleene, Texas, where Fort Hood is, uh, South Carolina.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: I went to junior high school in South Carolina, went to elementary school in Germany, second, third, and fourth grade in Germany.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And which was a great experience.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we went on a couple of field trips that I still remember.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: One was the Berlin Wall, you know, where we would see that there are people who are actually, they have guns and dogs and a wall to keep people in.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Can't leave, you're not free.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just learning about the idea of freedom and what it means to be an American at that age, that was interesting.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we also went to um Hamlet, where the Pie Piper of Hamlet was from.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we went to the little town, you know, so it was it was a very rich experience to be able to grow up.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's an education all its own, just traveling, you know.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Fifth grade in New York during the bicentennial year, during the garbage strike.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, these are it's just so strange because you wind up being in these, I feel like Forrest Gump in some ways.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was there, then I was here.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was in South Carolina, uh, Los Angeles, went to ninth grade in Los Angeles, and then from Los Angeles, which was so fun.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was extremely diverse.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the neighborhood I lived in, I mean, the the somebody's parents was all were always at a party or something, and when they were gone, we took over that house.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: But it was it was everyone from Samoans to Japanese to you know that was wonderful.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And from there to to move to Kansas, where there's only one high school in the whole town.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, oh my, what is what is God doing to me?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: But that turned out to be great because I got into basketball and I loved it.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was fantastic.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: So, so by the time you got to well, I don't want to get to Kansas yet because I'm sorry, I'm going too fast.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: So was it was it actually being in the military that informed your childhood, or was it being with your father that informed your childhood, or was it the diversity of all the places that you lived?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was all of those things, but there was the military, the children in the military have sort of protective, they're like in a protective cocoon.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Even when I was in Germany, second, third, and fourth grade, I was we were roaming all over the place, you know, and and you could do that back then.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it was safe, no one was trying to do anything to you, you know.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Even in New York, I remember leaving campus in the fifth grade to get to go to White Castle or go get a slice of pizza.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: No teachers, no supervisors, you know, you just were able to do that type of thing back then.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: So um, but it did teach you moving all of those places really taught me how to discern in terms of what are the rules, what are the written rules, what are the unwritten rules, and it sort of informed the way I looked at the world very analytically, always analyzing what's really happening.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because you don't, when you get to a new place, you you're not, it's new to you, it's not new to everyone else.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: They have rules already.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's norms.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can go here, you can't go there, you can do this, you can't do that.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: You could say this.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: I remember getting to Los Angeles.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: There were certain colors I couldn't wear because they were gang colors.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Don't wear this color, don't wear that, you know.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know that, you know.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So but it was just quite the education.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: But my father was there to guide me the whole way.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: So he was he just he was sort of one of these presences that he could loom large without you even noticing that he was there.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because he was a very gentle type of spirit.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you've you there's you've talked about him before, and so I've always felt like that would have been a great person to know.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, he was so by the time you got to Kansas, were you how old were you?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was in the 10th grade, like 10th, 11th, and 12th grade.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was in Kansas City.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then you you ended up staying there a while?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, I went off to junior college to play basketball for two years in Kansas City and Johnson County.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Johnson County Community College, which is actually the fourth largest school in in Kansas.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's like Kansas, Kansas State, Wichita State, and then Johnson County.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's that big, you know.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I played basketball there with on a on a scholarship and uh enjoyed that.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went to Morehouse, which is I had I knew in high school, I read an article in the Ebony magazine.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Most African Americans, middle class at the time, you would get two or three magazines, but Ebony was gonna be one of them.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: It would be like Ebony, Jet, and then you know that they were out of Chicago, so you probably John Johnson.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it was Ebony, Jet, and then we would get like US News and World or something like that.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: But that was that was like your we didn't have the internet, you know.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: That was like that was as good as it got, you know, that and the encyclopedias.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: You do you'd have a set of encyclopedias.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: You do the book report and you go to that thing, and you know.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: So um so when you landed in Kansas, was your was your dad still in the military?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, oh yeah, he was in there my whole until I was out when I was in college.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: When I went to college, they went back to Germany.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: He did three tours in Germany.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: So he did like 33 years in in the army.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it was my entire life.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't even see a non-military doctor until I was out of college.
• 11:28
  unknown: Wow.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Every hospital, every dentist, it was always on a military base.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: You know, one of the things that I've always found interesting about the military experience when I hear people talk about being um growing up within that structure is it it's you know, it feels very much like uh like a community.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: I guess you could almost call it a consciousness.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's like a whole thing, but the actual military aspect of it, like what the military actually does, doesn't seem to pervade into that atmosphere.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because we were blessed because my dad was sort of blessed, except for Vietnam.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: He pretty much they were and he wasn't in any other conflicts until he got to he became a hospital chaplain, and he also was at Fort Leavenworth.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: He was like a prison chaplain, did that, and then he was a hospital chaplain.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So when the first Gulf War happened, he was at uh in Denver at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center, which is it's like Walter Reed in DC is the biggest, and then there's Fitzsimmons, which I think is now closed, but they were getting all of these soldiers coming back from war, and he would he he had to deal with those issues, you know, dealing with the family, your you know, your loved ones have been lost.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: You might get a visit from the chaplain.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, the chaplain was one of the few people that could get you out of the military.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: If he if he because he's counseling you, he's a little oh yeah, you know, he he the guy wound up getting like three master's degrees.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: One was pastoral psychotherapy.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, if if if he thinks that you're not all there or something or you need to some other environment, if he writes a letter, he can get you out, you know.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so um, yeah, but you're right though, because it's so normal when you grow up in it, you don't even think about the fact that the mission is you know, that they're a that's defense, that's army, that's war.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: You don't really think about that.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Although everyone's wearing a uniform, you know, the idea of rank is very present in everyone's mind.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: When you walk down the sidewalk, you know, people are saluting each other.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is all normal, you know.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it is a community in the sense that because everyone's going through the same experience, you get what they call orders.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, dad would come home and say, Oh, we got our orders.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: It means we're moving somewhere.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, Where?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's kind of exciting in a way because you don't know.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, where?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're going to LA, you know, and he would go to we he was in LA for a year and and new in New York for a year because he was getting another master's, which he would just not even, it would be wearing civilian clothes, and you know, they he would just take advantage of all of those things that that the army offered, you know.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: So um, but they always have uh when people come, people are gonna gather and welcome you.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's they have uh they're gonna be, you know, whatever your unit, and it's all the families will come together and welcome people.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: When you leave, they're gonna have some sort of celebration.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's very, you know, the army does a good job of, and even on race relations, I would say the army was way ahead of everyone else.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And dad would say, because there's he would say, well, you know, there's no atheist in the foxhome for one thing, but also you don't really care who's watching your back as long as they're a good soldier.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's life and death, you're not, you know, you don't have time to think about all these things that maybe we're back at home in the neighborhood, you know, all that segregation and things like that.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: When did your stepmother come into the picture and what was that like?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: That was an interesting situation.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um very, very early, actually.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: My first memory was being in the country at my grandmother's house.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it must have been that summer before after my mother had died.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I guess my dad got remarried like like maybe a year later.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: He got married, and um, they had a very similar background.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: She's from a large family.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Her father was a preacher.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: They, you know, they're they're both from you know, these families that are they were really religious families, church, all of that, you know.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And her father was actually a big time preacher, but in the country, way deep down in this country, a town called La Hare, Texas, where Anna Nicole Smith was from.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I went to my when I went to my grandmother's funeral down there, he had been dead something like 30 years.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the people that came out for that funeral, and I mean, it was like it was like a scene from like the color purple, you know, like the church down in the country where people are singing and you can hear it across the hill.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was just like that.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was just like that.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: So she, you know, but really they had a different culture.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: My father was, you know, he was really kind of a academic type of guy.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: So he was doing things like he was he had studied all these psychologists.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: So he was into you can say anything you want as long as it's in a respectful manner.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: We can debate, we can, you I want to know what you think.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: She was from a different, she was cut from this cloth of you're the kid and I'm the adult, and you do what I say.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And my spirit was just too big for that.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it it wasn't gonna be contained by anyone, you know.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and and I ran into that dynamic throughout my whole life, really.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like people would say it's a problem with authority, but it's really a problem with BS, you know.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: Same thing.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: I just have my if it doesn't make sense to me, I'm just gonna say it, you know.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I later found out some of that's my personality type, which is an ENFP, which tend to be, you know, they're just sort of the contrarian thinkers in the world, you know.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but that doesn't do well with any anyone who likes authority and wants you to sort of conform, I'm just not a conformist.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: I never have been.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, so you know, and I so I don't really, you know, it was difficult.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was it was a challenge.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but for the most part, you know, as I got older, it was less of an issue because I was never home.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was playing basketball, I was just gone.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, and and when it came time to go to college, I was so happy to leave the house.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: I I I find it, I I don't know whether that's a generational thing, but I know like um when I was ready to go to college, I was so ready.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: I was ready like out the door and I never looked back.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: And like the idea that I would be homesick was like a joke to me.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like I wouldn't like, no, why would I be homesick?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: But I I you know, I guess it happens, but that was not my experience.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: So um I'm so looking forward to talking about your Morehouse days because even though, you know, of course, I didn't grow up with the knowledge of this college, but I feel it.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then I think of it like it's um, I just feel like the the weight of it, the prestige, the um the the the quality of it, just I don't know how or why I have such a strong sense of it, but um I I want to hear all about it.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: So you read this article in Ebony about Morehouse, and that was it for you?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there was this a guy named LaRone Bennett Jr.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: When I was in Kansas at junior college, I had two encounters with two Morehouse guys.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: One, I was playing street ball, and a guy had also Morehouse sweats.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: He turned out to be, he's actually, he just ran for Congress in Atlanta.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: His name was John Eves, but he was just young and he was working at the NCAA.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And all of us do this.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: When when someone asks you about Morehouse, you kind of go into this place where it's like, because you want to let this person know, hey, you need to do this if you can do it.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so the other one was when I was in at Johnson County in junior college, I had an English class, and they just announced, you know, we have a speaker coming and it's mandatory, you must go.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the guy's name is Laurent Bennett Jr.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, What?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's the guy that wrote the article.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because I I mean I was thinking about Morehouse literally, but I just I probably should have just gone there because this is where you start to understand, you look back and you see there were so many forks in the road, but you never recognized them as forks.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because the truth of the matter is you are kind of operating from fear, you didn't realize it, but you just didn't, even though it was calling you, you didn't have the faith to do it, you know.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I got recruited by Dartmouth to play basketball, and because I had the grades and I could play, you know, I was all league and all this stuff, you know.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, but as soon as I heard they don't have academic scholarships in either league schools, I just immediately said I can't go there.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I just didn't have the, you know, I didn't know that, hey, those things get worked out.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: I just so I took a scholarship at this little junior college.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Not before I even got to Johnson County, I went to Fort Scott Community College, the guy that wrote the learning tree.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's where he's from, Fort Scott, Kansas, Little Diddy Town.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: The academics were horrible.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: I stayed one semester and went to Johnston.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that was another one.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: I could have gone to Johnson County, but they had three point guards, they had two returning point guards, and I thought, I'm just not gonna get any time, I'm not going there.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna play.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: The one guy broke his leg and another guy flunked out.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I would have played if I had gone.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I had all these sort of near misses, but you know, it was all good.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so I went to Johnson County, walked on, played, you know, and then they gave me a scholarship right away.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I did get a scholarship, but I didn't think I was gonna play right.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: I got a little time.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so so when Lerone, I met Lerone at, you know, after his speech, and I speak he he was a real distinguished guy with a pipe, young man.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Young man, if you can find your way to Morehouse, it will change your life.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I promise you, and I was like, wow, this guy really feels strong.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I just made it up in my mind to go.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I put I had a few bucks and I put it in my car and I just pointed the way to Atlanta.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't accepted or anything.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: I just went.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: At that point, I just because I had sort of developed more confidence.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because when my parents went to Germany, at first it kind of scared me because I'm like, I'm on my own.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: But once I realized, because I was broke.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I was struggling.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, because we had a scholarship, it covered your tuition and books, but not your living expenses.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: I just had to figure it out.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I did, I figured it out.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: But and once I did that, it was so empowering because I thought, you know, I can make it anywhere.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I can do this.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I went to Morehouse and I went there every week to see the admissions directory.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're friends now, too.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Every week until he I just badgered him until he let me in.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And one day I went there and he had a certificate printed out.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Morehouse.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: He said, You have all the makings of a Morehouse man.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're sort of known, they talk about this Morehouse mystique, but really we're known as Maynard Jackson used to have a saying, he used to be the mayor of Atlanta.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: He said, You you know, you can always tell a Morehouse man, but you could never tell him nothing.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: What was once you were accepted, what happened then?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I so I was accepted, I got in.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the thing that really makes Morehouse Morehouse, once you realize some of the people that were there, like there was a guy there, Howard Thurman.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he was he was one of Dr.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: King's, he was one of Martin Luther King's mentors.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: He had been to India and met Gandhi.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's the one who told Dr.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: King about this nonviolence and the power of it that really went into the civil rights movement.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: This is so funny because I have this as uh in my notes to um to to bring up Howard Thurman, because for some reason he's recently entered my orbit and I ordered his book, Jesus and the Disinherited, and I I've been waiting to start it.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I what I don't understand is why everybody doesn't know about him, you know, especially.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he's such a mystic, right?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like he has that Christian mystic um absolutely because what he was talking about, because really back then you had whatever whatever your spirituality was, it had to find its way into a traditional uh mold, or else it wasn't gonna be accepted.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it would be people would be afraid of it, they might say it's the devil, you know.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: So even though he was a Christian minister, the things he was talking about was not purely speaking the theology of Christianity, which really teaches that there's the only way to get to God is through Jesus Christ.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: That means the Buddhists, they're out of luck.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And these are the kind of conversations me and the old man would have.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'd say that.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Are you telling me that if some Chinese person is in some remote village?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because the word was if you have an opportunity to come to Christ and you don't, then you gotta go to hell.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's the that's the theology, and that just never made sense to me.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Dad, that doesn't make sense, man.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, what if you're just you're you're some poor peasant in a village, and and a nun comes by and says, you know, we need to tell you about Jesus, and you know, and you say, Hey, I'll I'm quite good.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we have Confucius and we have Buddha, and you know, we're doing okay, you know, we we're good people, we treat each other well.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are you telling me?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he would say, I don't have all the answers, son.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and you know, but but that was the theology, and that is not what Howard Thurman was saying.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: He was this he was up here somewhere.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: He was he because he would talk about the kind of universe he said.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: He would he he there's a there's a nice clip on YouTube people should check out called What Do You Want Really?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: You know that I have uh I heard about it.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of his speeches, right?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a short thing, you know, what do you want really?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he talks about how if there's something that you want where you want it so bad, you don't care if you live or die, you have to have it.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: He said, if you have that kind of resolve, he said, This is the kind of universe.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: He said, This is the kind of throbbing universe that responds to that.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, his all of these people, you know, there were there were leaders like that who were there.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And King had come through there, and and Dr.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Mays is another one.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Benjamin E.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Mays, you know, it's not, he talked about he he has a uh a saying that was it was like reaching for the stars and not and not grab and not achieving it, that's not the that's not the bad thing in life.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's not having stars for which to reach.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so these are the all these ideas were just there, and um, you know, we would have to go to chapel once a week, and that was one of the most important things we did.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was like 11 o'clock, like Thursday morning.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're a freshman, you go twice a week.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think you go Tuesday and Thursday, and I missed the freshman experience because I was in junior college, I transferred, and uh so in a lot of ways, I got some of the Warhouse stuff, but then some I didn't get because a lot of those bonds are formed in freshman week.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Those people know each other for life, you know.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and uh, you know, I have good friends from there, but um so you would go there, and and the format would be you would have the SGA president who would kind of introduce people, and there was always a speaker.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was in the audience when Oprah Winfrey came and she gave a huge gift to Morehouse.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was like four or five million dollars, which is it was a lot of money back then, you know.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when the light bulb came on in my eye in my mind that entrepreneurship can be a way, just think of how many people she's helping because she can write that check.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, you know, it's like because I mean the model that I knew, all in my family, they were like preachers and nurses and social workers, they were helping people, yeah, yeah.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the person who was a business person who was helping people because she was successful.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, That that really kind of was a that sort of informed my thinking.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, and and people like Colin Powell, like just it was gonna be you would never know who it is, they wouldn't announce it.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: You just go to chapel, and you know, we sing the song, Dear Old Morehouse.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we we wind up singing that song every time, and and and and and basically what they're telling you is that you're expected to, they tell you it's gonna probably be harder for you than other people.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: You you know, you're representing Morehouse when you go somewhere to work, and people, and that's why when you meet, if you go to any large company, you can talk to any CEO of any company, they know a Morehouse man.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if you go to Harvard Business School or Harvard Law School, there's four or five Morehouse men in every class.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they, you know, so they find their way into you know, people like Jay Johnson, who is the director of Homeland Security, uh, Spike Lee, Samuel Jackson, um, folks like that, you know.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: So they're they're throughout the generation, but we really rely on this king reputation too much, in my view.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: We just like because we, you know, it's it's it's you know, we we need to do something too, you know.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I I feel like your your particular blend of you have like this unique blend of spirituality and intellectualism that it sounds like it kind you kind of got that from your dad, but certainly that type of blend would be nurtured at a place like Morehouse.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: And is that true?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: Is that was that your experience?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, because it's a for one first of all, it's a liberal arts education.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: You have to take music, you have to take art, you have to take religion.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if you're a finance major, it doesn't matter if you're gonna become a doctor.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone's taking those core classes, and I remember taking the art class, and it was at Spelman, which is the women's school across the street, which is the same, same Spelman is the female version of Morehouse, you know.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: I I think the I want to say the CEO of Starbucks now is a Spellman graduate, you know.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: She's either the number one or number two, you know.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, and of course we we have a saying, we say we go to Morehouse, but we live on the yard, which is a spelling.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: We were always across the street.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Not surprising all the time.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so we kind of played hard and we worked hard.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there was a lot of partying happening, but there was, see, you had to be what we call thorough, you know.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: People would you would go to class, they were just challenging you.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: You had you couldn't come half-stepping, like it just wasn't that kind of place.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I I really enjoyed it because I I love competition.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think from the sports, you know, I don't view this as a bad thing at all, you know.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh, so um, yeah, but it did kind of it kind of nurtured it, but it had its own, you know, all institutions have their own kind of where they kind of want you to conform.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like even in I butted heads.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, everywhere I went, I butted heads.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, it was just that's just who I am.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: So your um your spiritual path has taken you to some place that I think you know could be called rather unconventional.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm wondering if you had like what your first of all, what your awakening experience was, whether it was sudden or gradual, and um how you would characterize what the spiritual path is to you now.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it it really came from sort of a uh Howard Thurman talked about what did he call it?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: He called it it was the stirring of the soul, you know, it was stirring all the time.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I was reading really because I had my father to talk to, we were just always having these conversations, you know.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and I would be, you know, my grandmother when she passed, I mean, uh she was such a she was a saint too.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: And um when I think about her, I used to remember I would think if she dies, I don't know if I can make it.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: So after she passed, I would ask my father, you know, do you think granny can hear us?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that would just set me on, I would just read, I just read everything.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and if for the longest, it was the Bible.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: I read the Bible backwards and forward, like even in high because of the curiosity of it.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I found that some of it so beautiful, you know, some of the psalms is just poetry, you know.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: So um, but you know, then I found my way to a lot of other works, Abraham Hicks, Dolores Cannon, and then finally I found this Paul Seeleck work, and it was like I described it like um I've been thirsting for something my whole life, but all I could find is like I had never tasted water.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: I drank everything from buttermilk to Kool-Aid to whiskey, but nothing ever quenched it, you know, until I till I tried that the sealic thing just really spoke to me because it was so pure.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the the the teachings were just, you know, and they say people have said, well, who is this channeling?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, well, you can call us whatever, but if you have to call us something, call us Melchizedek, which now takes you back to the Bible because there's a there's only a couple of lines that talk about Melchizedek, but one of them is talks about Jesus.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: He is forever from the order of Melchizedek, and so it seems to be that this ascension process is what he went through, because there was a saying that where he was in the Bible when he was on the cross, Father, Father, why hast thou forsaken me?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: That was his small self.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: He was in fear because God can't forsake you, because He's at God is everything, you can't be separate from God except in awareness.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Then when he said, Uh, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do, that was his true self.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, just that fast, you we that's what we do.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: We go in and out of consciousness, yeah, from this lower level of awareness to this higher level of awareness.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the shift is so subtle.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us are having those experiences at some point.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you hear mothers that lift the car to get it off their kid.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, where does that strength come from?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: They are aligned at that moment, and the strength is coming through them.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not even their strength, it's they're accessing it somehow.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, yeah.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_02: So what was your when when were you aware that your that your spiritual path was sort of diverging from the traditional Christian path?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: In those conversations with the old man where I couldn't get in, I couldn't get answers that satisfied me in terms of it was just too limited.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought, if God, because I I knew there was a God, you know, and I'm like, why would a God so big be so small, have these small ideas of, you know, if if you know, in other words, even if you're in the I mean, think of all the religious people who have fought in the name of religion, that just didn't add up for me.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't make sense, you know.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: And you meet good people who they're not religious, they maybe never set foot in the church, yeah, but they have so much goodness in them, and then I've seen the opposite.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: People that are at church every time the door opens, yeah, but they don't really carry that in their heart in the way they treat people, yeah.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I I don't I wouldn't say I I just never compared it as oh, traditional or not traditional.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was just doing my own thing.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: I I I was sort of, you know, but but uh I would say the whole idea of prayer and you know what I didn't realize that I was doing was I had all kinds of intuition.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: I it was God was talking to me all the time.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: I just didn't know that's what it was.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just like the thing that was saying go to Morehouse.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: That was God telling me go that way.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, when I read the article, it was just like there were certain things I just I would have a knowing.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, you you later recognize, well, the small self thinks the divine self knows.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: When you when you get something in knowing, there's no doubt attached to it.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right, and you kind of move with a certain type of confidence because there's no doubt attached to it, and you don't know how it's gonna work out, but you just know it's gonna work out.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you get in your car and you go, and you know it does work out, yeah.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we lose that because we get too educated.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yes.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, especially when you when you have a large intellect like you know, somebody like you.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: There's it's you know, there's a lot to distract you in that world from from following that the intuition.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: And yes.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: So how does the how does intuition register for you?
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: Is it a physical feeling?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: Is it an energetic feeling?
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing, clear knowing.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, something will just come into my knowing.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just know.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how I got there, I don't know how it, you know, I just, you know, if I have a, you know, I I would just know certain things.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I've always had that when it came to numbers.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: And even when I was in, you know, I I I had a mortgage business when I was at Morehouse.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was written up in Black Enterprise Magazine.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I always had this entrepreneurial sort of bent to it.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Even when I was in Kansas, I had a jewelry business.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: I used to sell jewelry to NBA players.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I just, you know, I and we don't know where that came from because no one in the family is entrepreneurial.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: And all um of that little of those 11, I think like nine of them went to college and graduated from that little country town in Oklahoma.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it was all because my aunt went to Langston University in Oklahoma.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: And she came home talking about it.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: And they they just saw anything that's gonna get us off this farm.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, they when they heard that, they all went, you know, after that.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh, but but my grandfather didn't want to let her go because that's not what women were supposed to do.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: She was supposed to just get married, yeah.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and my great-grandmother talked him into it and said, you know, give her a chance, you know.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: And she became a school teacher.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she was almost like one of the leaders in the family.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: She taught for like 50 years then.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: So let's talk a little bit about how you've blended your spirituality or or what role your spirituality plays in your in your work life, in your professional life.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: How does that come together?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's coming together now because I would say for the last 10 years or so, that's that that inner stirring, and I just lived in the work.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh for for eight years I went through a big what they call complex litigation.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was in a lawsuit with a former client, and it's sort of it's almost like um it's almost like you wind up going into a cave, but you don't realize you're going into a cave.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was in a cave for like 10 years, and when I came out of the cave, sort of how you how I serve, which is this professional life, I can have all this, it's almost like the the the little nuggets you pick up along the way.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's no accidents, there's nothing wasted.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Things you've learned that you thought weren't really significant, now I see it like this beautiful puzzle that's just it's like, wow, I thought that was an accident, but that's why I met that person, that's why I took that class, that's why I was in Silicon Valley, that's why I was an investment banker.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: And now I have a grand vision, but it's for the benefit of all.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of like, and you know, and I'm really, I see the problems in our community, which which to me, most of them, a lot of what we think are social problems and social ills are really economic problems.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I have this sort of grand scheme to lift up the whole community through opportunities, really, for people to, you know, you have to really solve the problems.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: If access to capital is the problem, you can't expect people to just manifest money from nowhere, they don't have it.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to design, and this is what I learned at Babson, which is a good school for entrepreneurship.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're really what problem are you solving?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then once you start with that, you design a custom solution to solve that problem.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that means it's gonna be new, it's not gonna look like anything that anyone else ever has seen.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the problem, when we solve a problem for black wealth creation and black wealth, which is really gonna deal with things like health disparities, it's gonna deal with things like um um food deserts, the lack of healthy food, you know, we're we're more obese, we just have all these issues, but they're really economic issues when you really when you really pay attention to it, you're gonna have to create a lot of entrepreneurs.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason you'll be able to do it is because right now, black people are at a place where they're not really looking outside for the solutions as much as inside.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we spend$1.4 trillion a year just in America as black people.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: If we just capture the profits from that and direct it into entrepreneurs, and you can do this through franchising.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's the trick.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: You have to create branded franchises, and then you have to invite people in, which now, because of technology, you can just do.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can do this now in a way that you could never do it before because this is content right here.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: It just takes an iPhone to teach someone.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: I can teach people everything I learned at absent with this iPhone.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: I I mean I can sense your in your excitement about the the opportunity to finally, you know, make this kind of impact in the community.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's here, it's now, and you're like ready, you're poised.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_02: And that's one of the things that I love about the spiritual path is that once you you see it that way, it you you you marvel at how everything has evolved to serve you in the in the highest way.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like it when you when you have that attitude or that knowing, life is such an incredible blessing, even the tough times and um you know the obstacles.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, yeah.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, it's it's it's so true.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: How do you how do you sort of reconcile or how do you talk about the your ideas about manifestation and how the individual is creating their reality with the situation of the community at large?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's been a challenge because it's sort of the chicken and the egg thing, you know, which what goes first, you know.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I just wanted to lead with the business part, but you really have to treat, you know, people we're we're holistic beings, we're we're spiritual beings in these bodies, you know, and we came here to do something.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: Once you understand that people everyone came here to contribute something, and everyone is a genius at something, yeah.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's usually their passion, it's that thing that's drawing them.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: And what you need to do is create enough opportunities and enough ways for people to find their way in.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this platform we're calling is called Awakenaki.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: And all of these things came to me while I'm doing this work in this, you know, and I'm in the cave.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'll hear something like Do Earth 2020, Awakenaki, Blackpreneurs.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're blackpreneurs.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of black preneurs, salon preneurs, learning preneurs, physician preneurs?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you want to capture the imagination of black people, you got to make it cool, you got to make it fun, you got to make it exciting.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, think about Keisha down in South Side of Chicago's salon.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: What does she have to do to get herself to become a business owner?
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: When she's had all of these challenges in her life that, you know, we read about and hear about, and it's Oprah had a whole career on it.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: The kinds of issues.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: But she can teach the next person with just content.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: She can get on there and talk about what she does.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: That can be free content.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the model is content attracts the people, and and it really surfaces people who can find their passion, get the sort of educational stuff that they and to understand that they can do it.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because if they don't believe, if people don't believe they have that opportunity, and even I have one called Hood Preneurs.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: There are people in the hood slinging dope, doing whatever.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: These are entrepreneurs, yeah.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: Just not, you know, but you got to make them legal.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: You have you have to give them a path that's legal that can show them look, you can do this.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a way for you to do it.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to solve those problems.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: You can't expect them to show up with the training and the money.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have that.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're gonna wait for that, that's why the problem hasn't been solved.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, the black folks have one half of one percent of the wealth.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's been that way since 1865.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: But we were closer to like 14% of the population.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that's we're like a permanent underclass, and those are the issues that you see.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's spilling out into the street now, and have all these different movements that you know, um uh, you know, people are gonna do whatever they're gonna do.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: But what we're gonna do, it's gonna we're gonna use the power of entrepreneurship, which is like a lever.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Archimedes said, if you give me a lever long enough, I can lift the world.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: Entrepreneurship is a is a lever.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that it's it's um the the great thing about that model is that you can be an entrepreneur at a very small level.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, there's there's so many levels you can enter into, and it's the it's the mindset and the belief and the the connections and the desire and that that mostly fuels it and the the hard the willingness to work for it and you know all that stuff.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like it's perfect, really.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like the atmosphere is supportive and ready.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like we've, you know, as a collective reached a level of consciousness where the old structures that are keeping people down, like we're ready to crash those.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like, let's get rid of those.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all the big things, like people don't trust large institutions like they used to.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they don't trust the food supply.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: We have GMOs and all over the place.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: People don't really want that, yeah.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: But somehow they're there.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: So now people are awake to they want local, they want to know where's my where is the food I'm eating, where is that coming from?
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so we have something called farmpreneurs for that.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's the point, is to have something for where everybody, whatever you're into, there's a way for you to plug in and serve your community, yeah, and make a dollar for yourself.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, that's also one of the things about the spiritual path is that when you have been walking this path, you're you there's nothing that you want for yourself, like it's it because the path itself is so fulfilling, and so the work becomes sharing it and lifting people in just by being there, you know.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's like so there's it's by nature it's altruistic, or you know, it's uh comes together, yeah, it comes together.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it it does, and I think the whole world, we're in the time, as you know, it's just a great awakening.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's something going on, this energy that's here, and people really refer to it as this Christ consciousness, and um it's just here, you know.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you have to, for me, you know, this is why I have I just started a podcast called New Earth 2020, because I want to be able to talk about the spiritual stuff in a in there.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I got one where I talk about politics, I got one where I talk about just entrepreneurship.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: That that one's called What Problem Are You Solving?
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and eventually it would be great to be able to have people call in and you know with their business ideas and you know, um that sounds fun.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, you know, so it's just but it's like it's the chicken and egg thing, it's the resource thing, and trying to, you know, you you're gonna eventually have to invite people in and build the infrastructure because a lot of this has been in my head and coming through me.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've been putting it down, and so there's a ton of planning, but now it's time to actually go into action and build the team and and and uh you know save the world.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm super excited to hear, like to watch it and to see how it evolves.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm a big fan.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: So oh, thank you.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate that.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you so much, Kay.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because your energy, I mean, you always such a positive spirit, and what you're doing in the world, you know, just the the mission you have, the people that you're reaching, it's inspiring, you know.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and I mean, it's really inspiring actually, because you know, just the idea of you saying, Hey, let's do an interview, it it made me think about what we were gonna talk about.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: That that created the first part.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: I finally got off the dime.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes you just like you keep you don't think you're ready.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, yeah, you know, and so sometimes you got to jump in and then you can have to worry about is the water cold?
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: You have to find that out when you hit the water.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I feel like if you're ready, you've already missed the missed your opportunity.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_02: I waited too long.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh good.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: Where did you how did you figure that out, Kevin?
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, it just occurred to me, but I'm always jumping into things with like equal amounts of enthusiasm and terror.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well then I'm not alone.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not alone.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_02: All right, like Kevin, would you be interested in going for our lightning round now?
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, good.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me, yeah, tell me what I'm doing.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: What is the lightning round?
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_02: You don't get advanced notice on the lightning round.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like my kind of thing.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, lightning is exciting, you know.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna ask you some questions and you're gonna answer them.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh this is like truth or dare well.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_02: You tell me after we're done.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, what's your favorite childhood memory?
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_00: Going to my grandmother's house in the summer, swimming all day, and playing basketball in the evenings with my cousins.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I would do that in the summer, and that was just heaven to me.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it was in Armore, Oklahoma.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, they had moved to town because uh my grandfather was sick and they left the country.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: That was town, but it was so small.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, but for me, for a kid, it was like heaven.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, well, that sounds wonderful.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: I can almost like you can just like feel the air of that, you know.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_02: What is one food that you would never eat?
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: Whale.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_02: Whale.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_02: I thought if I thought you were gonna, I thought at first you said quail.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: No, I would eat quail.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's like chicken.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I had whale in Iceland.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just an experience that if I don't, if I live 10 more lifetimes, I I don't need to have that experience again.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_02: Why was that?
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was just not very tasty.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to, I don't want to gross your listeners.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, I guess it's something they it's like a delicacy.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_02: I I mean I'm sure Are you talking about the the the putrid shark whale?
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh no, that's shark.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_02: Not that one, not that one.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't get that one, thank God.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't we I guess you know they maybe they didn't have that around.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: We were at a fine restaurant, yeah, you know, and they just still serve it because it's sort of a traditional something to Icelanders, but I don't think they even like it.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: They don't, they don't eat it for the um you can you go to a fine and it's probably for the tourists, yes.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: Just it's the same with the puffin, they don't eat that either because those are endangered animals, so yeah.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, some good questions that would transport me back to that experience, yeah.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, next question.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_02: What would you do with your 15 minutes of fame?
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's a good question.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_00: What would I do with my 15 minutes of tell everybody to buy the book called I Am the Word and change their life?
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_02: I am the word, okay.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_02: You don't even need 15 minutes to for that.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: I think I would I was thinking it right now with you.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is my 15 minutes of day.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yay! Um, I think I I when I was I always think about these questions for myself when I'm preparing them for the guests, but when I thought of this one, I thought, I think I would like to just read to people because I think that reading to people is really a very sweet gift.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think people really enjoy it, and there's something that comes through the voice that is it's like a blessing, it's like a transmission or a blessing or something.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what I would do.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, final question for you.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_02: What is the purpose of prayer?
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: To it's to be in communion, it's to be in communion with the God that's everywhere, that doesn't take a day off, that's always present for you.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: The one that the Bible says, I stand at the door and knock.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's always there.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're the only ones, but it's only in the present moment.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: And as the small self, we're either lamenting the past or dreading the future.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: The two places where God is, you know, it's not gonna be in your awareness in that way.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the purpose of prayer is to align to the ever-present now moment that the guy Howard Thurman talks about.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_02: So, did you bring a question for me today?
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what I only get one.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_02: You got a two-parter?
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's a lot.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: I probably got 10 questions.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, um, you can have me on your and I met as part of a group online that's kind of a spiritual group, and I really enjoyed it because there are certain things you can do it with the group of souls that you can't do alone.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: People get different information and different, you know.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I found myself, and your audience might get a kick out of this.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: I find myself in this group with basically a bunch of white women, totally different backgrounds.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I know they were like, what is this guy doing here?
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but I was so fascinated because I want to know what the world looks like through your eyes.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you see someone like myself or even the community, because I can you have a big heart, so I can always feel that you're pulling for everyone.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've seen some of the projects you've worked on with the First Nations people.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_00: And but I'm always curious coming through your experience, like what does what does Black America look like to you?
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's that's what I want to know.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_02: That I feel like that I feel so privileged to actually even answer that question.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you for asking it.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_02: It is so generous of you.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um when I think about the black community, I think about the incredible richness of it.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_02: And um the the what I what I love about it is the um the joy, the the I do not see that in other communities.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't see it a lot in my own community.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, just like the the connection and the joy and the richness and the tradition and the um, you know, I mean the history is is part of it, you know, like the the beautiful, horrible struggle.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_02: And um yeah, that's and the the I I when I think about the community rising up, it it just fills me with excitement and anticipation because then that means that I get to share in some of that that I feel is missing in my life, you know.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like I don't I don't come from a tradition that has that kind of joy and uh the music and the um the food and the the celebrations and yeah, that's interesting, interesting.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: That is really fascinating.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we should write a book on that one of these days.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_02: All right, I totally game for that, yeah.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like it just because I I think I mean the whole world is talking about race now, yeah, and people are trying to see each other, they're trying to relate.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and a lot of times we miss each other because the experiences are quite different, you know, and there's certain things I think are they almost unknowable to the other because it's just when you walk in a certain way, you know.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: So um, I really appreciate you you giving me that answer, and uh it was really fascinating being being in part of that group, and because I would just it was like school, man.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: I just feel like because there were you there were times when my mind was being blown and you all didn't even have any idea.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm like a fly on the wall.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, wow, really?
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_02: You're you're silent, you know, silence would speak volumes, but you know, that's what it's all about.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's crashing into each other in a way that makes everyone, you know, come away from the experience, you know, richer for the experience.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's all good because we're all you know, the thing is once we realize we've lived, and this is what I got from these the Lord's Canon books, once you've realize, you know, we've all been everything.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you might be remembering when you were, you know, maybe in one of your other lifetimes, you know, you remember being a part of that, you know, that's the what you talk about because it's true, with all of its tragedies, with all of the pain and suffering, dysfunctionality, and the old man would say, you know, slavery really messed us up, you know, because there were so many broken lineages, like just you know, just the fact that we don't know, we know we're from Africa somewhere.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we don't know.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, with these DNA tests, people are are getting more of an idea, but that's why when something like Roots came out, it was so impactful because it was like, wow, you know, that's why we that's where we come from, you know.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we could be talking about this forever.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're gonna have to do this again one day.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it would be fun for us to do a podcast um about race.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's cool.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm game.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I love doing this, yeah.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_02: But for now, we have to say goodbye.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to thank you so much for um being with me today.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's been super fun and super interesting.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't think it's gonna bore your audience?
• 1:03:03
  unknown: Uh no.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, I hope not.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_00: I hope not.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think so.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_02: I guess they'll let us know.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see what they say.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_02: But thank you so much for being here.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, thank you so much, Kate.