11: Cam F. Awesome

Hey everybody welcome back to another episode of the Impossible podcast on today's show. I have Cam F awesome. He's a five time USA national champion in boxing, a four time Golden Globes winner. He's a speaker, a comedian.

He's a really funny dude. Sometimes you'll see him make a joke and then there'll be a little bit of silence. That's because I'm standing away from my microphone trying not to laugh because it would screw up the recording process. But dudes got jokes, his post fight interviews are really something.

You should go on YouTube and check them out. We talk about resiliency. We talk about the similarities between boxing and ultra endurance running. Then we also talk about success and building up your resume from scratch and making yourself valuable when you're starting off in your career and business.

It's a really interesting talk. I had a lot of fun and like I said, if you hear some silences after his jokes because I'm actually standing away from the microphone because I'm laughing so hard. So before we get into the podcast, if you guys want to support the show, check out impossible gear.com. It's the most comfortable gear to wear when you're about to do something uncomfortable.

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Get healthy, get stronger, get faster and start moving well. Movewellapp.com. Check it out. All right guys, that's it for the intro.

Let's get into my talk with Cam F. Awesome. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Impossible podcast today on the show.

I have cam F. Awesome. He's a boxer, a speaker, a comic. And yes, he has legally actually changed his name to awesome.

Cam, welcome to the show. Ah, thanks for having me. And that's just one of the cool things you can do when you're an adult. I looked this up because I was your Twitter handle and I was figured it out.

Oh, it's just his Twitter handle. Cam F. Awesome. And no, you actually legally changed your name to F.

Awesome. Yeah, yeah. The fourth was Lenreoy Cameron Thompson, Jr. And that's not catchy.

So what he do many names. I got found out that Cameron, because that was my name at the time, my name was Cameron, and everyone called Cameron. I found out it was Unisex. And then I giggled because that's what eight-year-olds do.

And then I found out that it was for a boy and it was for a girl. I was like, I don't want to be bisexual. So I just had everyone call me Cameron after the rapper in the 90s. Amal.

Yeah. And then I go. Yeah. That was a Hey, Monty.

I got you. We're going to get it on a night. I smoke. I smoke.

I drink. Me too. Say, yeah, you get it. So for my listeners who aren't quite familiar with you, you want to give us a little bit of your background how you got into who you are, where you're from, how you got into boxing, and then we'll get into all your other endeavors from there as well.

I'm pretty sure everyone knows who I am. I'm sure no one knows who I am. People my own neighborhood Walmart have no clue. I am just the weird do the times and weird hours.

I'm born along island New York, started boxing at 17. Got really good really quickly. And just won nationals a bunch of times and got to travel around the world and represent America in the national competition. And won nationals, global nationals four times, US men's nationals seven times, ringside worlds, believe eight times, national power three times.

And now I'm trying to make the transition out of boxing into motivational speaking and I do stand comedy as well. And I am see a bunch of events. So. There you go.

So what about boxing drew you in? I'm always curious what I've never been involved in boxing ever. I always played sports, basketball, track and field stuff like that. Boxing was always kind of outside the realm of anything I really considered.

So how did you get introduced to boxing and why was it interesting to you? And then how did you get so good so quick? I think I got to it because it was the only free jam in the neighborhood and I never made any teams in high school or in middle school or anything, center play any sports. And it's not too hard to make the team in boxing because there's no team.

It's more of a you compete against yourself type of deal. And yeah, it's I love that it's an individual sport because whether you're fighting or you're just doing it for workout, you compete against yourself. So it's more of a personal accountability deal. And as long as you're in the greatest shape, you could possibly be in, you will beat 99% of the people.

For one, you'll need to believe that you're in that greatest shape. And once you know that you are, there comes confidence. So you don't you do need to be confident in boxing, but you just need to be confident in your own personalities. So interesting.

And one of the things that I I played basketball for I want to say like 15 years growing up and then through high school and college and then I got into track and field. And one of the things I liked about track and field was the individual aspect that you were talking about where it's not necessarily about a team. It's not necessarily about like synergy or anything like that. It's just like you show up.

And one, you kind of have to beat yourself, but then with track and field, there's numbers that you have to hit. And if your number isn't better than the other guy, then you can't fudge it. You can't say, hey, well, you know, he had a better team around him or is a bad fit with the players on the court. Coach took me out too early.

Yeah. And that's one of the things that sounds like boxing where it's like, you know, you can't you can go up against the boxer and you can kind of know where you're at, but you're not. You're always you're always competing. You can't have a line.

It you'll be exposed. That's basically what it is. And a lot of people don't like that part of it. As long as you run position B, you should be good.

Like in like music, everyone's saying, I'm the best rapper, or LeBron James, the best basketball player in boxing. It's there's nothing subjective. What was I to score system? But he beat up.

You get beat up. Artists can like, I know a lot of rappers like I'm the greatest rapper live, like very subjective. Everyone likes different things, but no one likes to get punched in the face. It's like ball of sleep.

So that's usually how you choose who the better boxer is. There's a what's the same. Everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face. And one of the things that is interesting to me about combat sports is just the reality of it.

There is no hiding. Like you said, there's no, like you can kind of, you know, maybe you can hide behind the scoring of the system, but from reality of the situation, if you get knocked out, you definitely didn't. Yeah, you go back. You can't spend that.

No, no, it's it's that's my favorite part of it. So what as you got an unboxing, like you said, okay, it's the it was the only gym around or you know that you could get into. There's a big spread between getting into boxing, being interested in boxing, you know, showing up at the gym and then getting really good as you have done it and you know, qualifying for all these things. So what what really pulled you in?

Like was there a specific thing that, you know, made you sit down and say, Hey, you know, I'm not just going to do this, you know, because it's fun or it's going to give me in shape, but I'm going to get really good at this. What what kind of foot that switch for you? What made you want to dedicate all this time and energy to really get into it like that? Because you're still you're still an amateur.

You never went pro. Is that right? Yeah, I used to I figured out why it happened. I joined the boxing team just for a sense of community and losing weight and mean chicks.

That was like I was like, I'm fat and awkward and got called bosoms because I had man boobs. And I was like, if I just look at it, I was going to bunch of girls and be confident and right as I lost the weight, my senior in high school, my parents had moved to Florida. So I had to go to a different high school and hit me that like in school before I was getting bullied and I was awkward and I realized I could move and I could be whoever I want and no one would know. And I use that to my advantage.

I walk around like this one specific kid I would think about in high school, he's like the cool kid in my school in New York. And when I got to Florida, I was like, well, I'm just going to do and say whatever this kid would do or say. And I was basically just making confidence and I accidentally fake the confidence for real and I was working out so much because it was the only sense community I had really had any friends. So I would just be in the gym all the time and I used to walk.

It was 6.3 miles, five times a week from my high school to the Boston gym and I would have to walk all the time and I'm not going to walk that much and lose a fight. So that coupled with the fake confidence that became real confidence that fed my new confidence, which only made more confidence. Basically I was a dick at one point because I was so full of myself and I think that's why I became good but it was the first thing I ever found out that I was good at or anything I ever, it's the first thing I ever found success in and I realized at that point that if you just try harder than everyone else, you'll be better than them. And I've taken that philosophy and I've moved it to different aspects of my life.

So with those 6.3 miles, is there and back? I'll pill both ways in the talk. Bro, that is the exact line I use when I talk about it in speeches. I say it's not like when your parents walk 10 miles, I'll just go back up to the home.

I'm not quested to add. I had the picture on a slide just to prove it because it sounds like I was exaggerating it. And while it was happening, right now I would never do that in my head. Walk 6 miles every day in the sun to work out.

But while it was going on, I was so blinded by it by being so close to everything that I never had a chance to step back and take a look at it. And I believe if I would have taken a look at it, I would have crumbled on pressure. But now I look back and I'm like, wow, I would never be able to do that. And then I have to remind myself, well, that's me.

So I think people play a lot of pressure on themselves and they can't handle it. So I put zero pressure on anything I do. I usually don't think about much before I do it. Well, what I kind of like about that strategy, I've done similar things in the past where you said something, you know, I wasn't going to walk all that way to not win a fight or to get beat up.

And one of the things I like about that is I've done similar things with races and everything. It's like I didn't come all this way to not to give up halfway through the race or give up before I finish what I started. Just give yourself because I have these little talks with myself. No, I talk to myself all the time.

I have I have entire like thesis and everything that I can just whole whole. I should record those podcasts in my head and just because they're an entire conversation. Mine's just all arguments. Like seriously, you'll be a bitch right now.

You're tired. Okay, you're tired. Watch this quick and I'm very mean to myself. I do that all the time and races.

I'm just talking to myself. Are you really you came all this way and I'm going to go home? You're tired. That's why you're going to that's why you're going to go home.

Okay. And it's one of those things like you you have to it's actually strategy that I've done. It's like sometimes I'll do bigger things than I think I can because if it's too easy, you know, if it's oh, I'm just going to go to the gym down the street, get in my car and go three minutes or whatever. It's like almost too easy and then it's easy or to talk yourself out of it.

But if you over commit yourself, if you over invest in this one little thing, then you're like, okay, I have to go do this thing. Like there's no other options here. I'm not walking six miles home after I got my my my face beat in. Yeah, like I see dudes like not Jews people set goals and they post them online as accountability.

Like, first of all, all those people usually fail in their goals. And that's why most people do not make it through their new year's resolution past like Martin Luther King day. Like I hold myself personally accountable for myself. I'm not going to make a social media post to I'm not doing what I do for other people.

Like I do things for other people. But all of my sports and activities, it's for me. I never got white people. Anyone who's post something online.

You know, if I post this, it'll hold me accountable. Like really, do you actually care what other people think more than we care about yourself? Like I don't get it. I don't get it.

It blows my mind that like your job, like you get one body. I know people who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on cars and maintaining them an hour fixing them yet they won't eat a salad or go for a run. Like you care about an end of a job, or strangers online more than you care about your own self mind blowing. So I actually have a thing that started off as a public accountability thing.

It's called my possible list. And when I started it, it was something that I did because I was like, I need the outside pressure of someone else. Otherwise, I was in such a bad rut in my life. It was like seven years ago that I need public pressure in order to do this.

Even though nobody like at the time, nobody, I don't think anybody read my blog. I think my mom and my brother read my blog. And it wouldn't be only a joke. It was all one view.

Like one of those people lied and didn't read it. And that was mine. Okay, that was actually my view. I was refreshed.

One of the things it did for me was it, it, like you said with, you know, when you moved and you started acting like the person that you wanted to become, it forced me to start acting and doing the things that I wanted to do. And then eventually it became, I'm actually really curious about how this happened with you. But for me, it became this thing that, okay, I posted and it was a public thing. And then it turned into something that became like an innate ethic where if I'm going to say I'm going to do something, if I've gone through the process of internalizing into my head and then getting to the point where it actually comes out my mouth, if it comes out my mouth, it's already done.

I get to the point where I've talked about it. Like the project has already done. It just needs to be completed. And that's the point for me where it's become much less about getting external pressure now as much as maintaining congruence with the things that I decide inside that I want to do and then physically going out and enacting those out in the world.

And if no one was watching, then the accountability was just on yourself. You just place the accountability on yourself. I guess I'll reword what I said before because I still think it's ridiculous that people lead outside validation, basically, but yours was outside validation. I think family.

It's a bad, it's a bad long term, it's a bad long term fuel, depending on what other people are going to think of you. But sometimes I think there's a aspect where it forces you to start like, if you have outside pressure that like, like, if you have outside pressure to do an XYZ thing, it can force you to start acting in the way that you said you wanted to act. And then it becomes, it starts to snowball over time and creates that sort of character. Like you said with, you know, you're walking and becoming that, you started acting like that, you know, whoever you could be.

And then you start to become that person and then eventually, you know, can you change on that? In hindsight, it's kind of scary because the goals I was setting and things I was in my mind, I wasn't setting unrealistic goals. I was, I was just like, I walked this far. I'm definitely going to win.

Like I got to the point that like after my first couple fights and I don't mean this as in a cocky way, I knew that I was the greatest boxer ever to live. And I knew it to be so true in my heart that I didn't mention it. And I didn't mention it because I didn't want other people to judge me. I didn't mention it because I just assumed everyone knew.

So I entered, I trained like I was the best and I entered the ring like I was going to win. It was, I was never nervous about losing. My only nervous thing was walking up the side, I trip upstairs a lot. So like walking up the stairs to the ring was the only thing I was nervous about.

That very came true. I thought on a sliding, I think it was my TV on Christmas Day, which was awesome because everyone's home and like, they know, everybody gets a CB flight. And I spent $400 on a cape. I had a broidered cape with the organization logo on it, missed her awesome, even before I changed my name.

So Mr. Awesome. And it was, it was nice. It was really, it was more of a cloak.

I expected the cape, but I was happy with the cloak. And how it is, it's like you're at the top of these stairs when you first go, like you went to the ring. So the ring walk is the fireworks go off. And then you walk down the stairs and walk towards the ring and you get in the ring.

Well, of course that's too simple. So what I decided to do was fireworks go off instead of going down the stairs. I jumped off the side of the stairs and I run through the crowd with my cape on, high-fiving people. And then I hop over the barrier and in my head, because I flip into the ring, right?

I do like a front somersault on the ring and I picked up a lot of momentum and I was going to step one foot on, I was going to jump to the third stair. And then from the third stair I was going to leap, one stair and then somersault over the top rope into the ring and do like, it was going to be a great photo op. And I felt very great speed, very great speed. And I felt my feet, my foot placement was great.

And I jumped on my third stair and as I bent my knees to like get a really good jump, my knees just kept bending because the stairs were not bolted, they were bolted to the ground. So when my right foot hit the stairs, it just slid, plus my ass. Like on my back, the first thing I think is like, my coach is, if I'm not dead, he's going to kill me. And like I eventually got up, I looked around and was like, well, I look stupid, don't I?

I'm just, I bowed and walked into the ring slowly. Like I should have been the first time. But that's the only thing I was ever afraid of in boxing was the stairs. And then I look back at videos of my older fights and I was terrible.

Like I have no clue how anyone let me beat them. I'll be more embarrassed losing me. But I entered the ring with the confidence and the mind said no, that couldn't work. And that's, you know, it's 99% mental.

So when you're training, what's your training regimen look like when you're getting ready for one of those fights? What I usually, my training is this, I try to spar four or five times a week. I spar one with anyone else. I don't really hit the bag because all you, the bag should be hit when you don't have a person to hit.

Because if you lower your hands on the bag or you have bad habits on the bag, the bag won't make you pay. So you just develop bad habits. If I'm sparring someone and I start doing bad habits and I have the physical consequence to deal with. And it works so much timing.

It works like, because anyone can hit the bag for 10 rounds, but can you spar for 10 rounds? You can hit the bag for 10 rounds and then fight and get tired, but you can spar 10 rounds and fight and get tired. It's a different level of exertion. Granted, you have to be super conscious of making bad habits.

Because the bag is supposed to go through the motions and you work on your fundamentals. But they get fundamentals of crunches for the untalented. Getting ours. There you go.

What's it like to build that type of endurance? Like I said, a lot of my athletic challenges have come in the form of different races and long distance and alter races. Can you run without it? Yeah, I hate it.

I started doing it. I tried it. I had it. I had a start because I got into it with triathlons.

And triathlons, I guess you might be able to get away with it, but a lot of races don't allow you to bring any sort of music on the course, because especially when you get to the bike, there's just too many different things. And so when I was training for triathlons, I wouldn't use any music. I have phones, nothing. And then when it transitioned to just marathons and alter marathons, it got to the point where it was weird and it was too much weight to carry around.

I replaced... Was this back in the 80s when people had like... This was like last year. But even after that, I basically replaced music with muttering to myself like a crazy person and all those conversations that we just talked about, just being like, oh, you're going to give up now?

You're tired now? You're going to slow down now? Really? That's what you're going to do?

You're 15 miles out. That's not going to work. So basically, I've replaced music with my own entertainment of my own conversations and personal motivation, if you will. I tried, man.

I tried to do the whole run without music thing, but sucks. The last thing I want to be stuck with is thoughts in my own head, which they're never good. I can say that when I go out for a run, I'll solve more problems than I'll actually remember. I'll go out with, like, figure out problems I didn't know I had, and then I'll forget about them by the time I get home and then I forgot the answers.

So it doesn't actually leave me in a neck game. It feels like a therapy in the moment. It's like you do all your therapy, blackout, drop it, don't remember anything the next day. Like we wake up blackout, drop it, you feel like crap.

But in your head, you don't remember much, but you're like, last night? I was a good fucking night. That was a good run. I was happy to have you.

Yeah, you check your phone. You see what pictures are in it? What text messages? So when you're fighting, one of the things I want to talk to you about from a boxing angle is the endurance and the resilience that you have to build up to handle a fight, because it's one thing from my perspective of running and all these different things to push through personal pain or whatever.

It's another thing to be actually getting punched in the face in the body wherever and then continuing to go and also being strategic about how you're continuing throughout the fight, not just surviving the fight, but actually trying to win the thing. So what are you? You said you talked to yourself a lot, but what are you thinking about as you're going through a fight or as you're progressing through a really tough workout on how you're going to get through it? For working out, there's no motivator quite like someone staying in front of you trying to put you to sleep.

So that doesn't really, the sparring and stuff, the gym, running and doing the cardio stuff. I don't care how hard it is, because there's nothing worse than the pain felt after losing. But there's no better feeling than after the first round, you look over and he's dead tired and you feel invincible. And he knows there's nothing.

He regrets all his decisions of staying out late partying and worrying about wait, you know you've been killing it and then you get to conquer his soul. And in your head, when I get in that situation, I look over at a guy's dead tired after the first round, I'm definitely going to not play around the first round, but I'm just not going to try to take him out, because I just want to see him look on the guy's face when they make it out of the second round and they bell rings, they have a foot in their face like, you know, we'll hold it back to the corner. And then when they get to the corner, they remember after they get to sit down for 45 seconds, they got to deal with me again. That is the greatest feeling.

Like a cat playing with a toy or something. Yes, I call it. I call it a man soul. So what I do is, a lot of mental games when I fight and from the outside looks like I'm playing around, I'm sure voting, but it's not partly.

So like, I'm self-awesome, my right leg is out front, my right hand is out front and I usually fight right handers. And if he throws a jab, I'll slip to my right and throw a uppercut, a lead uppercut, and it always lands clean. It's just one of those punches where it takes balls to throw it when you land it, it's good. And he throws a jab again, uppercut, that was a jab again, uppercut, that was a jab again.

I lean for the uppercut. I don't throw it. I just look it up. So now he knows if he throws that hand, I'm going to hit him with another guy, the uppercut.

So he stops over that hand. Now I'm fighting a one-handed fighter. And when I do that to the second hand, every guy does the same involuntary exhale. Like at some point, they say bad and like, that's they're still leaving their body.

They know there's nothing they can physically do. They're mentally beat already. There's nothing they can physically do to win this match. And they know I'm not going to hurt them because I'm not a knockout puncher.

But they know they're going to be embarrassed. And beating a man's ass apart is wife and kids. There's no better feeling. I just feel like I can go to his house and control the remote.

They start erasing shit off the DVR. That would be great. That's my favorite part of boxing. That's it.

And the thing about boxing is I can use 10% of the effort I put into boxing in any other avenue in my life, whether it's speaking or comedy or podcasting, just 10% effort from boxing. And I'll kill it in anything because boxing forces you to step your level up because there is no there's no rating. There's no ranking. Like in your you don't know who you're going to face next and you don't know what they're going to do.

So you just need to prepare for everything, always, every time. And it just forces you to be on a different level of competition. Because like if you if you if you know you're an NBA and you know you're playing like go to say words, you're like, oh, yeah, man, we got a games. And then you know tomorrow you're playing like the 76ers.

And I don't watch basketball, but I just assume they're still trash. So go that. Then you're like, all right, maybe a little more lax. They can't shoot three pointers.

They can't do that. And boxing, anyone can do anything. And at any point you can get hit with a lucky punch. So you have to train so hard that you beat luck and good luck doing that because it's possible.

Hmm. That's good. I like that. Yeah.

So one of the things that I think Mark Cuban said is business is a is like sports, but 24 seven and never stops. And I think that's one of the things that always appeals to me about business and just other endeavors outside of sports is that it's always a competition. And you know, someone's not trying to punch you in the face, but someone's trying to take you out one way or another. That's works.

And when you get to the ground, someone counts the 10 in business, you lose your house, your car, like the money you have, your wife's probably going to leave you because she's probably only with you because you're rich in the first place. This is going to take half of everything you don't got. Yeah. So yeah, business is even more like it's more like you have more to lose.

It's literally everything you have. It's our do you have kids? No, no, it's just how old are you? I'm 30 not high school without getting pregnant.

Surprise. How hard was that? Most people can't figure it out. Shout out to us for not having children, which when we turn like 50 and we're like, Oh, shit, we're going to die alone.

That's that's why we won't be laughing anymore. But right now I'm changed. I have to suppose we'll let go. So let's live it up.

But having a business is is like because I'm building my speaking business and I put I put so much love into it in time and effort and I lose sleep really for a bad day. And I'm like, I had a new deal go through with the United States Olympic Committee where I'm speaking on the behalf and I couldn't sleep for about three days just as it seems I laid down all of a new all day working as soon as I lay down. Like I get giddy, which is like wondering what who I'll talk to next and what business I'll reach out to. And I lose sleep because this is my baby.

I love it. And then I see my talent progress and I see I see the way I reacted to things I wouldn't have reacted to the way that way before. Like if a slide today one of my slides went down door my speech and shut off the projector because I mean because I'm comfortable enough to just run with it. In comedy when you get deal with heckers.

And I'm watching my business grow and I started raising my prices because I was getting a lot of gigs. And this is exactly what parents probably feel like watching their children grow. And I love it. This is replacing the way that boxing will leave.

So let's talk about that. Let's talk about how you are you done done with boxing? Are you transitioning out of it? And then let's talk about the transition from boxing to comedy because it is one of those things where comedy is kind of similar to boxing where you got to go in and you have your plan but anything can happen and the crowd sucks.

You start bombing. You get heckled. You have to be prepared for a lot of different avenues. So what was the impetus to transition both away from boxing and then what are you towards going on?

I'd say both are difficult in their own ways. I think that comedy is a little more so difficult. Granted in boxing you don't know what your opponent is going to be but you know they have two hands. If you're lucky they may have one which I've seen.

That's you be surprised. I do fight with an help and an all hand. But you know what you're getting. But in comedy you not only have to have your jokes set up great.

You have to use communication skills. You have to read the crowd. You have to know the crowd that you're speaking that you're performing for. You have to deal with hecklers the right way because I had a heckler once.

Like I was on a roll. I was on fire. Not just my material but like crowd work or whatever and someone heckled me and I just ripped the dude apart. It was I wish I was recorded but I started doing too good against the heckler and the crowd turned on me.

Then I learned can't do too good against a heckler because they don't have a microphone and eventually everyone realized you just shitting on a drunk dude. And also now it's even more difficult because everyone's being offended by everything. So that's a little more difficult. On top of that not all my material material is clean and now that I'm in the public size of role model which I believe you can still be a role model and not be.

Usually a role model and not be air quotes good person because sorry bro. Sorry to you you're a terrible person. I'm a terrible person. Your neighbors are terrible people if it's taken out of context.

I think the context of comedy is there's nothing that should be taken in context. It's humor. Nothing is off limits sick people dead people injured babies gays black people white people transgender nothing should be off limits. But what I'm doing now is I'm learning that there are a lot of things that are off limits and my pride is in a constant battle which whether I should say it for my own personal satisfaction or not say it to the crowd and enjoy themselves and I can get booked off referral.

I don't. It's different to with corporate gigs versus the US Olympic committee ones versus a comedy seller type crew versus knowing where you're speaking to and their allowance if you will for different levels of humor. You would think so but there only takes one person who has nothing going on in their life and needs to feel offended because it's the only way they can gather attention. I had a joke.

It was part of the storytelling thing and I had learning issues growing up and issues with comprehending reading and just having different learning style and I was supposed to be in special ed which I should have been special ed high side because I learned anything because I'm a different one style and my grandmother sent me down to tell me I was retarded. Those were the words she used and she didn't mean it in a demeaning way but she seems like you're retarded and you learn a little differently and I'll put you in special ed but the kids don't make fun of you so don't go to special ed. But stay quiet and that was kind of like the premise of the joke and it leads into like a joke about me being a public speaker and because my grandma told me to stay quiet so people don't know them stupid. I had a girl come up to me after the show and was like hey I just want to know that I was really offended because the person I was with drives a school bus for special ed.

My question was how did that feel about it? Well he didn't really mind but I was like whoa how can you be offended for someone else? You have nothing going on in your life. I've read some things are offensive but people are way too sensitive and I feel like people who are more likely to be offended are people who have nothing going on and that's the only way they can validate their existence by being offended by someone else.

It's tough with comedy too because the whole point is to push the edge of what's acceptable and poke fun at society from an absurdist perspective and from angles and sometimes materials finalize sometimes it's not and when people record in a comedy store and sometimes they post it on YouTube and they get mad at him. I'm like some joke that like he bombed and he did a bad job. He was going to push it. That is a big no no.

There's some jokes that don't go over well but as long as there are some effort involved and you can tell the intentions are there and the intentions are good but if you get up to it you say Mexican people drive pickup trucks. Well that's observation that's not really comedy but not really a great joke not offended because it's not Mexican but if they're like black people like chicken yeah okay your name is stereotypes that's not comedy. I had a joke about that guy in trouble for that was the premise of it was why white people are bad at sports and it's because of the way they raise their children and the joke goes into like little timmies at a basketball court and he has a basketball and he wants to impress his dad. He dribbles the ball.

He shoots he misses everything. What does a dad what does a white dad do? I mean just good job. Good job Timmy.

Because he times and then it's like and Tyrone's on the other side of the court. He has a basketball nobody knows how. Probably still whatever and he wants to impress his dad. Problem is he doesn't know whose dad is.

He knows the only way that his dad will simply basketball so he makes the NBA. He's been punking on Timmy since seventh grade. Like that was a joke. But you can't get offended off of a well thought out joke.

So what I'm curious about is how you got from boxing to comedy because it seems like I watched a bunch of your post boxing interviews and they're pretty funny. They're like intros for like your monologues. I enjoyed them quite a bit. But how do you get out of boxing and then get into comedy and was that like a seamless transition or how did that happen?

I used to open my soles broke for a very long time. I was technically still broke in the big scene with things. Jason Dorebs, yeah. But I used to go to open mic night comedy nights because it was always free and open mics are where the inexperienced hop and comics go, which I didn't know that.

And I saw everyone doing that. I was like, this is these people are terrible. I can do better. But I really hate when people say they can do something better than someone who does it.

When they don't do it. Like people who talk shit in LeBron James, like, oh, I need that good. LeBron James, you couldn't make a free throw. LeBron James is dunking for the three point life.

Like you know, it bothers me when someone shits on something that someone else comes so much passionate to. And the fact that I said I can do better than that in my head. I was like, well, I better try. And I knew it was a funny guy in the world and I got up stage.

And I did amazing. That's what I told myself after I got up stage. I did terrible. But I lied to myself a lot.

And I think that's a part of resilience is lie to yourself. Because if I were to be honest with how that went, I would never get on stage again. I like to say I have a short term memory when it comes to the things that I screwed up or failed at. I was like, yeah, just forget about that.

It's a rabbit. But it's it that is it. When guys get the box and they lose like they get knocked out or something their third fight, they're like, Oh, man, I'm done with this. That's like you keep going.

That's when you get better. And when you have 200 fights, you get to fight guys with three fights and knock them out too. But the dude who knocked you out when you had three fights got knocked out when he had three fights, but he kept going. That's where I am.

I have just under 400 amateur fights. When I fight these new guys coming up on the man, but I have to fight those dudes when I only had a few fights and I had to fight whoever the man was. And it took L's but I always came back. I mean that and I think that's the greatest in that box of Tommy's is that you're not a lot to be a bitch.

You know why? Because if you don't give a shit about your life and what you're capable of accomplishing, no one else is going to care either. And once that's not good for me, I don't do anything for anyone else. Like there are other things that I do for other people, which would make me seem like a nice person.

But to be honest, I do because it makes me feel good. So it's still a self-attached. People only care about themselves and maybe something that looks like them, which they call kids, but I don't have those. So it's just me and anything I do, I do it for me because I just feel like that's the only thing I owe anyone to.

I owe anything. Oh, anything to it's myself. And why not set myself up to have the best life possible? One of the things you said was just what's the price?

What's the price of admission? And you said, okay, I made it through flights and I'm going to head home now. People don't realize what the price is. They say, hey, I could do that.

Or, yeah, that's easy. Like you said with stand-up comedy, oh, I could do that. And then they don't do it. Or they say, I want to do this, but they're not willing to pay the price.

And that's the number one thing that I've always found is the key to getting anything done. You said to figure out what costs, whether it's money, whether it's time, whether it's hours in the gym, whatever it is, figure out what that is. Just the balls that you got there. Paris, it's like, and one day I wish I'm going to have a talk with my friends, but I'm not the point where I can have the talk.

I would like to talk to my friends and let them know that I'm aware of how bad I am because I have super supportive friends when I do comedy, like probably the first three years I was doing, oh, she's bombing. But I can sell tickets and not to fans, just friends and stuff. And they're in the crowd and they laugh whether it's funny or not. And I know they're laughing because it's me.

And I don't think they know I keep going. They may think I keep going because they're laughing. I know they're laughing with me, but I am aware of how bad I am or I was at the time. And I just know that I'll just get on stage again.

I'll just keep going on stage like a good. But it- How long have you been on stand up for? About six years. Oh, wow.

What a- I just, I do shows anywhere I can. Like I believe the more stage time you have, the better. Because I have a platform that I have, I get to become better, faster than normal people because stage time is hard to come by. And there's been times where like for Christmas, I did a holiday party and they didn't have it in their budget to have a comedian at DJN and MC.

So I said, how about I DJ the party and MC the party and I do comedy show? Because I'm not passing up stage time. And I knew, like I asked, what's a crowd like? They said, well, 1880.

They were right. It was accurate. It was a real estate agency. It was literally 18 year olds and 80 year olds.

And I did the show. And to be honest, as it's going on, I lied to myself and I've been so good that I don't know how the show actually went. I have a recording of the show, never watch it, don't care to. Because I'm afraid that I did turn.

I got my check. I got the experience. And I got on stage again after that. And I've done shows, places with terrible acoustics.

I've done shows at high schools, middle schools, after school programs. And the more stage time I get, the more comfortable I get. And I believe the more comfortable I get on stage, the more content I create, the easier I create content, the better I'll become. And that's anything.

If you can just get over the embarrassment and stop thinking that you're actually that important to where if you do bad at something, everyone's going to remember it forever. I've talked about my badges, but this is just I've killed. And I'm 100% sure that Monday when they go to work, they don't remember what my goddamn name is. And that's what you have to remember when you're bad at it.

I like that because there's like a happy delusion and everything that you do. You know, when you got into boxing, you said, you know, I'm the best and you've boxed one time. Like you're probably not the best boxer in the world. But you almost have to delude yourself into the fact that you're going to create those characters in order to get in the ring enough times to get the reps in order to become as good as you want to be in the same thing with the stage time.

And the funny thing is about the, you know, you said, Oh, everybody thinks they're so important. You said everybody thinks they're so important that if you bomb on stage for your five minutes or 15 minutes or you get knocked out or whatever, like it's going to be a story for, you know, if you bomb on stage, nobody's probably going to care past, you know, as soon as you're off stage. But you know, say you get nationally embarrassed, the big story at the pace of the news cycles lately, like that's going to be a story for 36 hours. That's the fact that in college, no longer news should tell everyone everything they need to know.

Like, I can't remember what happens because it's where we are oversaturated with news and information that we can't retain anything or remember anything. It's just temporary entertainment. You won't ever remember anything great anymore. Why?

Because we have too much access to greatness. Just it's an overflow of everything, pretty much. And one of the things that I think you kind of have to do, you just have to get over yourself, get over the fact that the world of all of you are not. At that once you go do things that like actually embarrass you and realize nobody actually cares.

Like you can go way down in the middle of the street and no one's really like, they're going to look you a little weird, but then they're going to walk on by and they're going to check their Instagram account and they're going to forget about you. The only way you would come up in conversation after laying down the middle street are the people that were on their way to somewhere and you cause them traffic because it affected their lives. Other than that, no one's a shit about you unless they can get something out to you or you're great at something. You'll never be great if you're worried about what people think.

I need to listen to this podcast. I'm driving some time. Stop it. Stop it.

Inspiring yourself. I like this. So as far as like, as we start like wrapping this up, as you know, from comedy to getting punched in the face, you know, across the board, when you go talk to people, what is like the one or two things that you tell people that have been like the key to being able to do things you've done? I think it is.

If you get there without being discouraged, success becomes inevitable. That's, I mean, that's the key to everything. That's good. And I wish it didn't sound so cliche or you could be anything you want to be typeship.

Like I wish people knew that the reason why people write books, giving away the actual honest genuine, authentic keys to success is because 99% of people will do that shit anyway. You can give the secrets to success and people still will become successful because you won't be successful unless you actually want to be successful. You're not going to be successful because you held yourself accountable on Facebook once six years ago. No one's going to remember that post.

I don't remember my mother's birthday and we're Facebook friends. You can just understand that you argue they'll never be another you and you only have one life as far as you know. You might as well get the most out of it. I lose sleep, not out of, out of fear or any, just out of excitement for life.

Because if you're not excited about life, nobody gets a shit if you're living. There's way too many people on the screen like care about you. So if you don't care about living and being happy, you're not going to really accomplish anything. And I would also tell people second thing is to ask for opportunities.

I do so much for free. Like I speak for free. I do comedy for free because if you do something for free long enough, you'll develop a skill. And once you have a skill, people will pay for that skill and you monetize that skill and you can make a career doing what you love.

But no one wants to do that. They don't want to, they're afraid of failing or looking stupid or being embarrassed and they don't want to do anymore. They get knocked out of three fights and they're like, well, I guess I'll play golf. That's why those people will never be great.

The only difference is someone just keeps doing it. It's not even good when you decide to just keep doing it. Eventually you become good. And if you eat enough shit, you'll be way too caught up in that to realize how great you are when you're doing it.

And that's where humility comes in. I like that. The ability to do something for free in order to gain a skill, I think people really undervalue the fact that you can give away your time for free in order to develop something that's valuable. My buddy Derek Halpern put out a video the other day that said, most people leave, you know, most millennials or whatever that is anymore, leave their job after like 18 months because they feel like they were saying they feel undervalued, like they're not going to pay enough.

So they didn't, it was not challenging. It was something along the lines of they didn't have the skills or they were getting trained for the job that they had, but they also wanted to get paid more. So they were simultaneously admitting that they didn't have the skills for the job, but they also wanted to get paid more for that job. And Derek just looks at the camera and he goes, are you kidding me?

And one of the things that I've talked about forever is that, you know, a lot of people, you know, in the early 20s, or even early in the career, they want to optimize and try to get as much money as possible. And it's like, man, if you want to build up a skill, if you want to do something, you know, you might, you might be better off doing it for free and learning what it takes to be really good at that. And instead of getting paid in money, you're getting paid in that skill, you're getting paid in learning. And then you go use that experience and you've got a shortcut to a much higher pay grade or whatever it is that you want to do, you can do it so much faster than I know I talked to school, I talk at school to students about school, but seriously, if you, like I know people go to school for entrepreneurs, which I think you're a complete idiot.

Nothing school can teach you if you go to school to learn how to be unemployed. It's completely ridiculous because every business is different, every step of a different, every generation is different, you're going to have different outcomes. But if you wanted to be in marketing, let's say, and you didn't want to go to college for marketing, call up a marketing firm and say, hey, I don't care if you're hiring or not, I would like to volunteer 20 hours a week for the next six months. In those six months, you show that you're a competent person and the only thing you ask for is a letter of recommendation after.

After those six months, within those six months, someone's going to get fired, they're going to know what you're capable of and you have on job experience. Someone with a bachelor's degree compared to someone with six months of experience on the field, who would you choose? Exactly. That's, that's, to be honest, that's exactly what I did.

Like I graduated school and I couldn't get a job and I ended up doing something almost exactly along those lines. You made shit for so much. And by the time, yeah, I mean, I got paid like maybe like $1,000 a month or something. I don't even know.

I love that. You know, nothing. You ate shit for a year. And, but by the end of it, I was working directly with the owner.

I knew where all like the bodies were buried. You know, you become to the point where like he couldn't afford to let me live. I was working for nothing and he couldn't afford to let me leave. And so, yeah, I definitely could have.

My, my whole situation was basically I, I was forced into becoming kind of building my life the way I wanted to because I'd always done the things that you were supposed to do. I went to school. I got to grades. I was, you know, on multiple sports teams.

I, you know, learned another language. I, then I graduated in 2009 and I couldn't get a job at Starbucks and they wouldn't call me back. And it got to the point where this free, you know, working, you know, working for another entrepreneur for free for basically commission on a thing that, on a product that never sold for three months and then on a lightly salaried contract with him for, you know, less than minimum wage for another three months and finally failed, you know, not failed, but worked for free my way into a job. And by the time I did that, they couldn't afford to let me leave.

And I got, I think I promoted like twice in six months right after that and eventually got recruited to another thing and then started my own stuff. So exactly, you need to write a goddamn book. Do you have a book? I'm not even a book.

I'm not even a book. I've got like a, I've got a short thing. I'm a, I'm, I may or may not be working on a longer, longer book, but that's the idea, man. Like it's the fact that people think they come out of college and they have some degree, they have some degree of paper and that's not because it's worse.

Not because maybe in the 80s, a bachelor's of remence, I think because no one had one, but now everyone has one. So it's worth shit. And it's not worth the debt you're going to have for every, with a job that you're probably not going to get because you have that degree unless of course it's something like your nurse, which certification for I'm a big fan of trade schools. But if you want to be a mechanic and go to college, you're like, Hey, how about you take 13th century art interpretation and will charge you $600 for this book?

I know that someone has the book from last year, but we changed the page. So now it's why you two, you need to buy the new one. Like that's what they do. And all you have to do is give effort.

People just have skills that everyone else has. And they're like, well, this is definitely worth a 100k a year. It definitely is not. That last piece of showing up and doing the work and really getting the skills before you ask for a, you know, before you, you think you're entitled to something is something that it's got to be my Loki entrepreneurship and like path of recommendation to anybody who sends an emails and all that stuff that I get off the site.

But it's one of those things that I would say a huge percentage of entrepreneurs that I know got their start somewhere like that. They got in with just by doing showing up for opportunities for little or no money and then making themselves invaluable and building the skill set to the point where they could command huge amounts of money or were able to build their own things that had massive amounts of value. And that was something that I kind of stumbled into backwardsly, but it's, I've seen so many people do it that I can't believe that's not a. More talked about viable way for people to go.

Well, that takes more effort. And I don't think people really want to give much effort in life. No way. Which makes it easy when you when you're willing to show up and do the work and get punched in the face and and, uh, and, uh, and make it work work was like a punch in the face, one of them work hard enough.

And that's the type of stuff that that that will make you excel above everybody else. Well, there we go. Um, as far as all of your stuff, uh, where can people find more of you as, uh, if they want to find out more about, um, catch me post non-gragulation list, uh, I usually check Kent City misconnections on a daily basis. Literally my iPhone's most viewed site.

I never post. I just always wonder if someone misses me. Uh, I'm at camera. Awesome.

Uh, on everything, because I'm not famous enough for anyone to steal my name yet. Also, you legally change it. So I don't know if anyone else actually has that. No, no, no, no, they don't.

It's just me. There's not, there's not a bunch of info up. So if, uh, you know, if, uh, if a lady plays a card, right, she could be Mrs. Awesome.

DMs are open. Okay. Let's, let's wrap it right there. .

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So that's it for today's show. I will see you right back here next week. And until then keep pushing limits and do something impossible.