Yeah, but I know I feel like I'm feeling so high. GV quick take, Spy guys people. I'll just be all up some real quick. Like, you know, like a freestyle, but I'm fine.
It's a good day to be inspired. And I'm definitely, definitely in the mood to inspire you. Look man, we're gonna talk about a couple of good topics today. I wanna talk about the source of inspiration.
And I'm probably gonna get a little excited with that one because I'm feeling really passionate today. And then I wanna talk about Jesus versus cancel culture. You know what I mean? And I guess the reason is because we all know, you know, what cancel culture is.
I think, you know what? Let me not do that. I absolutely cannot stand when people just assume that like, I know something. Like maybe you have no idea what cancel culture is because you don't watch TV and not on social media or whatever.
You know, I can't assume. So, so for those of you who don't know, cancel culture is something that exists today that cancels people typically based on something they did in the past. So let's just say a couple of random examples that come to mind. And I'm not gonna really get into names and stuff.
The stories are out there, but I remember like, there was this football player. Young kid got drafted maybe three or four years ago in the NFL, white kid. And I guess when he was about 15 or 16 on Twitter, he used something that was like a racial slur or whatever, right? And look, this me as a black man, like, I'm kind of like, but he was 15, you know, and people were like trying to cancel him and you know, like bringing this up for why he shouldn't be drafted.
And I'm just like, man, like, so we took a point that a 15 year old could go on Twitter and say something, even if it's horrible, like let me just be real, like, it's a lot of 15 year olds out there, me included. I couldn't even imagine if like social media existed and I had a documentation of some of the stupid stuff I did at 15 or 16 years old. Some of it that I probably willingly forgot about at this point, right? But cancel culture, if you're catching that, this exists where, you know, if you make it, if you become successful or especially a celebrity, movie star, NFL athlete, you know, you know, media person, it's the idea that, hey, if you become successful, we look back at your entire life.
And if you did something that does not fit the politically correct or, you know, the standard, I guess, of today, then we cancel you. We take away all of your partnerships. We take away all of your opportunities based on something you said. No, I got a couple problems with that.
And I guess I should probably wait and get into that on the second half of the show. But let me, should I wait? Should I just, I'm just go with the flow right now. So here's the thing.
My first problem with it is it's self-righteous and it's not godly, you know? And I see a lot of believers jumping on board with this stuff because of our self-righteousness in our flesh. Like we are all dealing with some level of seeing in our flesh, me included, right? And so to me, cancel culture is to embrace your sin nature and desire to wanna like really eliminate people and send them to hell on earth.
Like, oh, you successful? Yeah, no, but I found something you said five years ago, you know, and let, and then you get a bunch of people to say, hey, we canceling him. Like we not listening to this or we not doing this. And it's like, yo, we really doing this Christmas.
Now, today I'm talking to the believer. If somebody's out in the world, you know, we always talking to them from the standpoint of preaching the gospel and, you know, and hopefully today, let me say that. Like if you're in the world, I am talking to you today, but there's two different perspectives to this. One, I might wanna change my mind.
If you're in the world, if you're a believer, part of God's kingdom, then I wanna remind you of who you serve, right? So I think we gonna switch the show up and we gonna go there first. So let me say this what happened was last night. Man, it was late too, probably 11, 30, 11, 45.
No, Saturday night. My home boy, Gerard, Gerard Brooks, what up, Gerard, oh. He hit me up and he was sharing the scripture because he was preparing, he's a pastor not. Pastor Brooks, God, share that.
All right, let me stop playing. Pastor Brooks, you know, it's kinda weird. I got a couple friends becoming pastors now and I'm not gonna lie, y'all know, I'm not always the most formal person, right? But I wanna exercise formalities out of respect.
But it's just, I'm just a different type of person. I'm not even saying this is good, I'm just being honest. Formalities feel forced to me sometimes. So that's why I don't like them.
It's not just like I don't like them. But sometimes formalities don't feel authentic to me. Like we start getting caught up in titles and stuff. Like, oh, I have to call you pastor now, pastor.
All right, bro. Anyway, my home boy, Pastor Gerard Brooks, he takes me and this is about probably 12 to 14, 15 years ago. I don't even know what year it was. Man, we got this ongoing inside joke called the center's praise.
We were in Dallas, Texas, man, it's probably 15 years ago. And it was so funny. It was just this joke about like, I don't even wanna explain it, it's hard to explain it inside joke. But what we were doing is like, we were laughing about, you know, the different people in the Bible and like with their true intention was, you know what I'm saying?
I can't get into it. But we've been joking about this literally for 12 to 15 years, how long has it been? And Gerard hit me up the other night, like, Hey man, I think I wanna preach about this. It's called center's praise.
I don't know if that's what he ended up calling the sermon. But my point is that inspired what I'm gonna talk about today is I'm actually gonna be looking at the same scripture that Gerard shared with me. But I have a whole different perspective, like talking about something totally different. But he sent me that scripture and I was just looking at it.
And I was thinking about cancel culture. So we gonna jump into that to show you Jesus versus cancel culture. Now a couple of other things about cancel culture is like, you know, this mob mentality, you know, one of the things for me is like, how self-righteous could any of us be to think any of us could survive that level of scrutiny? Like, yeah, maybe your dirt ain't out there.
So maybe you like, oh well, when I was 15, Twitter, what not. So you can't catch me on that. But yo, let's catch him. And what I've learned about people is that I even saw this a lot with the, you know, the vaccine versus non-vaccine, Democrat versus Republican.
These last couple of years has taught me a lot and just seeing how people carry themselves and how really we have a lack of respect for one another. And as a whole, in a world, it feels like, I can't even say America, just the world. It feels like what I'm seeing is that everybody thinks they're right in their emotions and feelings. Like it doesn't even have to be logic behind it.
So I'll give you an example. Let's say today is perfectly fine, you know, to, I gotta think of something that's so silly because a lot of the things that change, we change rules, they're so silly, like, like just so silly. So, all right, let's say today, it's 100% okay to call somebody bro, right? That's not really your brother.
And then all of a sudden, 10 years from now, somebody makes a rule. Like some group of people create some politically correct movement, they get some traction, they get some media and some marketing behind it. Maybe get a logo and a catchphrase for whatever their movement is. And all of a sudden, I can't call you bro, no, no.
Hey, I can't call you bro, no, no. So, let's say this happens. And I can't say bro, not all of a sudden, if you ain't really my brother, and I call you bro, that's like cussing at you, right? And so then they find out that 10 years ago, I called somebody bro on Twitter, and they say, yo, we need to cancel him because he was calling people bro back when everybody called people bro.
And that's the thing we gotta understand about these politically correct movements. It's a reason you didn't get canceled when you said it. That's my whole thing is like, it's a reason they didn't get canceled 15 years ago when they said that because obviously, everybody must have thought it was okay to say it, right? Or you could argue, oh, it's because they're not, they weren't famous.
So now we're basically saying, you shouldn't be famous if I don't agree with you or if you said something in the past is weird. I'm just gonna be the person to say it. It's very weird because I don't believe there is anybody walking the earth, right? I don't think there's a human being walking the earth that is free of sin.
I don't, I don't believe it. Jesus, like he died and resurrected is in heaven, right? So this idea that I could go around canceling people when that's not even what Jesus did. All right, so this is my number one thing right here.
Jesus literally walked the earth and was an example to believers. Christian means of or by or following Christ. Like it means I'm from Christ or I follow Christ. I am American, I'm from America, right?
Or I follow America. It's the idea of being a part of something. Christian means I follow Christ, which means I follow his ways. It's not my truth, like we live in this world.
It's like, oh yeah, you're truth. No man, it ain't my truth. I don't create the truth, bro. It's God's truth.
So what does this mean to me? See, we have actual examples of things. This is why I'm for the believer out there, I wanna remind you where you came from, right? As a Christian, you're of or by God.
As someone who's not a believer and maybe interested, I wanna introduce you to the reason why we become followers of Christ. I wanna introduce you to the entire concept and show you a different way than this world is showing you today because the reality of it is, cancel me now. We all don't get canceled in. None of us deserve to have a job to make a living.
Like this idea that you point out something that you don't like about somebody that they did this wrong. And keep in mind, time out. I'm not arguing whether it was right or wrong or not. And we gonna go to the Bible for that.
I say, we gonna go to the Bible for that. I'm not arguing whether it was right or wrong. And that's where the self-righteousness comes at because you're looking at sin and you're saying, hey, that's more wrong because he had a racial slur. That's more wrong than this.
Okay, you lie. So let's cancel you. You know what I'm saying? You're still in spoons at the lunchroom at work.
Like come on now, it just ain't on Twitter, bro. So this whole idea that, oh, I'm gonna pick a scene. I should call this pick a scene. Pick a scene.
We think we get the pick scenes and then we rearrange them. Oh, that ain't a scene. No, no, no, no, I don't care what the Bible's saying. No, that ain't a scene.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, I'm gonna pick a scene that's worse than the scene that you got. All right, all right. Let's go to a pick scene.
Like this is what I'm saying. This idea that as a human being, I could see here right now and go through individuals' lives in their mistakes, in their ups and their downs and pick and choose me, Jermaine, the flawed human being, can go and pick and choose who deserves to have a job, who deserves to be able to have fans like, now this is me, I'm God in everybody. Like I'm God now, right? But what did God actually do?
Believers, hear me up. We about to go to the Word of God. We're gonna go to Luke chapter seven and where we start at. Look chapter seven, verse 36.
I'm reading from the new living translation in LT. You can read from any translation you like. All right, so verse 36. One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him.
So Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat. You know what man, Jesus was always around some food. They're like 5,000 with two fish and five loaves and the last supper and eat like, I mean, Jesus, Jesus, he might have definitely hit a restaurant in modern day times, okay? All right, so I don't know, I'm sorry.
This is how it just happened. I just thought that, I don't know where I'm in. Jesus stayed around some food. All right, 37.
When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar, filled with expensive perfume. I love this, like even in the Bible, like she was immoral. Like sometimes man, a person can do something and just become branded as that, right? And that's what we do a lot of times.
We brand people as like, they're worse mistake or the worst of them, but I really want you to know man, like the Bible shows us that regardless of what you've done, regardless of how you fall in short in this life that God will forgive you. And if you out there and you listening to this right now and you have a title on you, just like this, a moral woman, like they know you as something, a thief, a liar, like they know you as something. I'm just here to tell you today, you don't always have to be that. There is another way, there's a way out, like maybe people wanted to cancel you.
Like this is the thing, cancel culture wants to cancel people. Jesus wants to cancel sins. Whoo, all right, all right. Let me just see that was a center's praise right there.
This is, that's it. Like y'all, that's a center's praise, right? All right, all right, let me just contain myself. Verse 38, then she knelt behind him at his feet weeping.
Her tears fell on his feet and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on there, on them, verse 39. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. She is a sinner.
There goes that title again. You might have a title on you, fam. And that's the thing, like, man, like people want to title you. Like people want to put something on you.
They want, like, he like, yo, this Jesus, you supposed to be a prophet. You don't know this woman that's touching you is a sinner. This is an immoral woman. You know what I like about it though?
And I'm not the scripture's gonna break this down. But like, when a person has been through something, they ain't like, when you've been through something, you don't really got time for the games that people who've been, I guess you, you missed the Pharisee, man, you know the word in and out, you're just perfect, man. So you, you're not, you ain't been broke down enough, not to care. And you want to just get to your source.
Like this woman just needed to get to the source. All right, all right, all right. Let's see. 40, verse 40.
Then Jesus answered his thoughts. Simon, he said to the Pharisee, I have something to say to you. Go ahead, teacher, Simon, reply, verse 41. Then Jesus told him this story, a man loaned money to two people, 500 pieces of silver to one, and 50 pieces of silver to the other.
But neither of them could repay him. So he kindly forgave them both, canceling their debts. Who do you suppose love him more after that? All right, let's pause.
Let's cheer. See, I like to let it, let it marinate. Maybe rushing through the wire, man. You got to let it marinate.
So we got the situation. My man invites Jesus over for dinner, Jesus goes. And the more woman shows up, she, oh man, Jesus over there. Oh, here I come.
The center woman, she comes in and lay down at his feet, kissing his feet pouring the most expensive perfume on him, wasting something good. So it seems to the natural eye. But she knew that when she was pouring it on, was worth more than a perfume itself. She was getting to the source.
Meanwhile, you got woman that's getting to the source. She's a moral, she's a sinner. She's been broken down. She knows she has nothing to lose in that.
When she sees the source of this woman, she got to do all things to get to it. Meanwhile, you got to do that and invite it. Jesus over the house to have dinner with him in the first place. Who chilling because he a Pharisee and he feel like he need nothing wrong in the first place.
And he wants to cancel her because she's a sinner. And even criticizes Jesus for letting her touch him, reminding her of her title, the sinner. But Jesus got a whole different point of view on the situation. So he tells my man, come over here.
I got a story to tell you, bro. Jesus tells him the story. He's like, yo, two people owe me some money. Want me five, honey, want me 50.
Neither one of them could repay me. All right, let's stop right there. Let's think about it. I love that Jesus pointed out that neither one of them could repay me.
Let me tell you something cancel culture. Hey, let me tell you something people who hate the other political party because of something they did or said. Let me tell you something people that hate the other race because of something they did or said. Neither one of us, neither one of y'all, neither one.
Neither one of us, neither one of us, neither one. Can repay Jesus. I don't care how self-righteous you are. I don't care how little you have seen and how straight and narrow you feel that you have walked in this life.
You can't afford the invoice. Now, let's think about it. So Jesus acts a simple question. Who do you think?
Loved me more after that, loved him in this parable, the master. Who do you think they love more? The person who was forgiven for a little or the person that was forgiven for a lot. Let's think about it.
43, Simon answered. I suppose the one for whom he canceled a larger debt. Cancel culture wants to cancel people. Jesus wants to cancel sins.
All right. That's right, Jesus said, verse 44. Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, look at this woman kneeling here. Right?
She's kneeling. When I entered your home, you didn't offer me water to wash the dust from my feet. But she washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. Whoo!
She washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. She had less than you, but she gave more. I came into your home. This is me talking now, y'all.
I'm sorry. I just got to like really explore what was happening. Like Jesus is saying, I came into your house. You could have, you had all the tools and resources.
You got whatever I need, whatever they was using back then, whatever kind of cloth or soap or whatever they might have been you know, maybe they would, let me not start talking about that. Anyway, whatever they were doing, you got it because we at your house. She ain't got it, but she used what she had. Her tears, remember, you ain't been broken down enough, not to care in the use everything you have.
And some of us are so self-righteous, we ain't never did nothing in our own mind. It ain't that you ain't never did nothing. It's that you think you walking around thinking you good enough. You walking around thinking you're good enough without forgiveness that you are above God.
You're above the gospel. Jesus died for your sins and you haven't accepted it yet. So you're walking around thinking that, oh, I'm got to do nothing. I ain't made no mistakes.
It's her. She's the immoral woman pointing the finger at everyone else. Hey, look, that's the center. Hey, the guy over there that used this word, the woman over here that used that word, the person over here that don't like this, the person over there that don't like that.
They're the center. They're the one that's wrong. Oh, not me. I'm the canceler.
But Jesus is saying to you, why are you walking around here acting like you got it all together? The person that's broke down, that bit through something that was a center that he is immoral. Like, what broke down and bit through it and cried and what do you say he, I'm sorry, I can't even get it out. I can't talk.
It says, when I entered your home, you didn't offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. But you want to cancel her. Sometimes the people that you're canceling is the ones that's so grateful for God because they know they don't deserve it. But it's the person that's walking around thinking they deserve everything and God is looking at you like, what is your own?
All right. 45, you didn't greet me with the kiss, but from the time I first came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46, you neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume. 47, I tell you, her sins and they are many have been forgiven.
So she has shown me so much love, but a person who is who is forgiven little shows only little love. 48, then Jesus said to the woman, your sins are forgiven. That woman came in that house that night as a sinner. And when she came in, everybody or at least this man wanted to this Pharisee wanted to cancel her, but Jesus saw her.
And when people wanted to cancel her, he decided to cancel her sins. He decided to cancel the debt. It's kind of like everybody walking around wants the student loans to be dead to be canceled. You know what I'm saying?
We know how that is right. Wink, wink. It's because if you got a lot of debt, it's going to feel better if it gets canceled. So Jesus saw her sins and canceled that.
Woo, people want to cancel you. They want to take away your opportunity. They don't want to see you grow. They don't like people will want you to live with the title of your sins in moral center, Rahab, the prostitute.
And some people, unfortunately, will only remember you for those things. But today I'm hoping that this story in the Bible helps you realize that there is freedom in Jesus Christ. No matter what you've done, no matter what you've been through, you have an opportunity. But the opportunity, and this is the tough part for a lot of us, requires you to turn away from the sin.
The opportunity, that's what repentance is. So Jesus, listen to the difference. Cancel culture sees something that you did wrong five years ago, 10 years ago. And they say we want to get rid of this person.
Hey, everybody, join me in getting rid of this person. We are canceling them. They never even offer an opportunity for repentance. That's the crazy thing about cancel culture.
And then even if they do, it's not repentance based on following Christ. This repentance based on bowing down to them, bowing down to another man, a woman, or a group, or organization, because we are holding this carrot over your hand of an opportunity. And if you don't give us the glory, we don't take the opportunity, even though they don't have the authority to dictate your life, because at the end of the day, they might stop an opportunity. They may stop a situation.
They may close the door of a guy who will open another one. I'm hoping that anybody out there today that's listening to this, any person who feels like they're down and out, you feel like there's a title on me and I can't shake it. Yes, you can. You don't have to be canceled.
Jesus can cancel your sins, but you have to repent. You have to turn to Him and accept Him in your life. And that is why I'm a Christian. It's not because I think I'm so great.
It's not because I think I'm better than people. It's because I know I'm not. It's because I know that without Christ, I got a title on me too. But I needed Jesus to cancel my sins.
We got to give our life to Christ. I asked the question on social media. When you were down and out in Lost in your sins, did you need to be canceled or did you need to be forgiven? I want you to think about that the next time you join a mob in Thailand and you want to just cancel somebody simply because of something they did in the past.
And look, just the tough part, you got to put your flesh aside, your pride aside for this one, even if what they did was wrong. That woman was a moral. Jesus said her sins and then He went on to say, and they are many have been forgiven. You know what I would hate to be doing?
Cancelling somebody that Jesus has forgiven. I would hate that. That means that I think I'm more righteous than Christ. Hey, Jesus, but you don't understand.
He said this about black people and I'm black. We don't play that. Okay. Jesus is looking at me like, oh, so you think you think you got the authority, right?
Oh, no, but you don't understand Jesus. You know what I'm saying? Jesus said this out of the political party and they said this about that and that ain't right. All right.
All right. Y'all got me here too. I got to take a quick break. I got to play a song for 30 seconds.
You know, I don't know what I'm about to play yet, but it's something from music catalog. J wheel music. Check it out on Apple Music, Spotify or anywhere else you listen to music. Also, please do subscribe to Inspire Guys, people on YouTube, even though I haven't made a YouTube video on three weeks.
You know what? Maybe I should tell y'all. I just been busy. That's all man.
It's been a lot going on. Last month was what we have the end of February right now. It's like the last year of February. So all the February had an opportunity to go after a new job.
And you know, for me, like when I go after a new job, I give it everything I got. I don't play games. Once I reach out to people, research the opportunities, you know, at the same organization I'm already at, looking at the critical experiences and things that I can gain from the job, right? So I always strategically look at a job and I'm sharing this right here for anybody who may want a little bit of career advice or like, you know, get some insight into like not saying it the way I make decisions is the best way or something, but just to share like, this is how I make decisions about my career.
And so really looking at like, all right, if I do this, then what would that prepare me for? Right? So last year when I took the job, I have now, it was the same thing. Like I was taking over a team that covers the US and it's very high exposure.
And it was like, okay, if I do this job and I do a great job at it, then I have a lot of exposure to, you know, high executives and VPs and, you know, senior directors and things like that. So it's like, all right, this puts me in a spotlight and always say with me, I don't look for jobs where I can hide. Like, I look for jobs where it's my work is going to be visible because I believe in my work, I believe in the effort and energy that I bring to the organization and to the job every day. So anyway, by the grace of God, that happened and I had an opportunity to go after this role.
And it was two rounds of interviews. And the first round, I probably put together like an eight to nine page deck and presentation. And I go through like kind of my life, have like an open slide of like who I am personally professionally, kind of what I call an executive summary. And then I did a lot of research on the job.
So I'm saying all this to say that that's why I couldn't get a lot of YouTube videos done this month is because I was spending a lot of late nights researching this job because, and when I say researching like learning about what the job is and trying to learn it before the interview, I wanted to go into the interviews being able to talk about the job as if I was in it. So I had to put together like a deck where I kind of gave an overview of how I would approach the job, right? So like, you know, everything I learned in a few weeks at the organization, long story short, by the grace of God, I was blessed to get to the second round, which was kind of the final round of interviews for this one. And then that was a case study.
So I was given a situation and basically a small project. So then I had to find a week or so to kind of like, you know, even some days on the weekend to prepare for this case study because I needed to go into that next interview and really kind of break down how I would approach this. And the case study was not fictional. It was something real that I would have to do if I were given opportunity for the job.
So I had a great cigar. Y'all hearing here first, I did get the job. I'm not going to say what it is because even though people know it's been socialized through the organization now and my job, my current job is posted. So, you know, but it hasn't been announced with job I'm going to have, but it's a good opportunity.
So I'm grateful for it. And I've been putting a lot of time and energy into that. So I'm balancing faith and business and my real life and things and I'm dedicated and committed to this podcast, you know what I'm saying, and bringing it every week. That's not going to change at the same time.
Sometimes the other, you know, YouTube videos and social media videos and things like that. I just can't make that level of commitment to those things right now because I have to prioritize everything because I'm human. I got a life. I got a wife.
I got family other things I have to attend to. So just keep me in your prayers on that. But I'm really excited to start a new opportunity. This is something that, you know, in my 15 years, not the organization, this is a function of the organization I never worked in before.
So this is new to me, which is exciting, right? But this is one of those opportunities that if I do great in this, it opens up a lot of doors. I will say this, you know, and this is, this is really transitioning to the next topic. I'm still going to play a song for 30 seconds.
But this, this topic of the source of inspiration and I believe in the show. So I need you to know that like, and I'm going to just be real. Sometimes I kind of like will tone it down so that nobody takes it wrong. But I'm just hoping that you've been listening to the show long enough.
And if you're a new listener, I do really ask you to go and start listening to episode one and catch on, catch on up. I think it'll be worth it. It's a lot of gyms in here. But a lot of times I try to like, it's like, again, like we just said with cancel culture, right?
Like I can find myself sometimes like, all right, I don't want to offend nobody. I don't want nobody to take something the wrong way. But at the end of the day, I believe in the show. And I'm saying it confidently because I believe it that way.
I believe that this show is a source of inspiration and actually believe it provides a lot of value. And it's important in life and in business and things that you encounter and journeys that you take on that you find a way to be confident yet still have humility. And it could be a challenge. Sometimes it could be a balance in our walk in his life and you have to deny your flesh.
And you know, there's that's your own journey. But what I'm saying after say, like, I really believe that this show could change lives. And that's why I try to share some of these things and somebody behind the scenes. So if you've got an opportunity or you're doing something, whether it be with work or things like that, man, give it your all.
Oh, I just remember why I gave that. I was like, why am I saying this? Why am I even going here? And talking about the show is because at the top of 2020, when everything first started happening with the pandemic and then with the racial tension, you know, I was intentional about the grace of God and I was given the blueprint in real time on this show about how I was handling it and what I believed we should be doing.
And the big thing was don't leave the pandemic empty handed. Now, I really hope that we can turn the corner on this pandemic. But also hope even more is that you didn't waste the time because we talked about it. And if you listen to the show, like, I might not always tell my like exactly what I'm doing in real time, like, tell all my business or something.
But I'm giving you the blueprint, even if I'm not telling you my business. And that's why I focus on the blueprint because I think that's where the value is at. I think the value is in the content and the substance, not necessarily whether you know or not like, oh, what I do or, oh, exactly what company I work for. That doesn't matter as much as me trying to give you the principles to succeed in something or at least an example of some principles because you might have a better way.
You might take something I'm doing to put your own spin on it, right? And so when at the top of 2019 and even with the project that I did to whom it may inspire, all I was talking about was don't leave the pandemic empty handed. And I love this podcast because it's on wax. You could go listen to it.
Just search through the 2020 episodes, March, April, May, like, listen to how we were talking in the midst of everything. We were saying don't leave the pandemic empty handed. And what I was doing in that time is that I was becoming laser focus and it was taking laser focus. And so I'm saying at the same end, by the grace of God, I can honestly say that we are now 2020, 2021, 2022.
Again, this show is about faith in business and in a business world, like, man, I'm so thankful to God, God, open doors for me. Like this, this is my third promotion since the pandemic started. Like it actually blows me away because earlier in my career, I moved really slow. It felt like I felt like my first, I spent five and a half years.
My first two roles, but then here we are in the last two years. I've had, this is my third job and I don't believe it's by chance. And I'm only sharing that with you because that's what I meant by don't leave the pandemic empty handed. Like take this opportunity to get in laser focus and like handle your business.
What are your goals? No, you're goals. Again, I'm sorry. But if you've been listening to the show that like I don't talk about this stuff, just to talk about it.
I talk about this stuff so we can do it. Like, I'm just being real like, I talk about stuff so we can do it. And I'm not only sharing it because I'm like, yo, it's people out there that might not know and this show is a source. I'm gonna take a quick break and we're gonna come back and talk about the source of inspiration.
Who I am. What would it take for me to get the honest answer to that question for you? Just think about it. I don't wanna judge you.
I only wanna challenge you because I really love you. That's what the other is for me. I don't wanna judge you. I only wanna challenge you.
I'm just trying to give you arms. Guys, people, you just heard love me or judge me or judge me or love me. I think it's called judge me or love me by your truly J-wheel music. And ironically, the project that that's on is entitled to inspiration.
So if you're on Spotify or you're on Apple music or Amazon music or even YouTube, just type in judge me or love me J-wheel music, which is J-W-I-L-M-U-S-I-C. And you can hear that song in this totality. But again, the project is called the inspiration. And I guess that's fitting because I am not lying to y'all.
I did not plan to play that song. This is just be happening. It be blowing me away. And you gotta understand, man, I'm so passionate about this stuff.
This stuff is so real to me because it's like I feel blessed to even just be able to create and creating has always felt like a blessing to me. I think people don't understand, like having my own studio, having my own equipment, like just being able to do it. When I was younger, I remember when I first started, like I first started recording stuff, dubbing over cassette tapes, me and my cousins. We went to the studio one time.
But I was probably, at this time, I'm probably 14, 15. And I was probably 15 because I was a ninth grade. I did this a little mix tape over a cassette tape. I used to do my own versions of popular songs, but they were, it was comedic.
It was like Nint to be comedy. But it was sweet, but it was like a parody song. So I used to do Usher and Master P. I had all these songs, me and my cousins would write them.
And I remember wanting to make more songs, but I didn't have a studio or I didn't have access and stuff. And then I remember when I was like 18 and started going to the real professional studio, I didn't have enough money for studio time. So I might have song ideas and I can't get them out. So what I'm trying to say is I'd be so passionate because it's like I'm living a dream.
I just, I can't believe that God is allowing me to create and to do stuff. It, it ain't even about it making it to some level. It's about the blessing is the creation. Like I have an archive of over 160 podcast episodes.
Like I own the files, like it's on my drives. Like I got the backups, like I can chop them up and do what I want. It's just a blessing. I'm sorry, man.
You know, I got to stop apologizing for my passion. Like I just do. And I just hope that if you've been rocking with me this long, you know what I'm on. But I'm like, I feel this stuff in my soul.
So that song called the inspiration or the album called the inspiration. Strategically, that was the second year of that was in 2020. When did I do that? And I'm so in 2020, we did to whom to whom it inspired 2021.
I didn't do a project last year, did I? So maybe it was 2019 to whom it inspired 2020 was the inspiration. I'm sorry to date. I'm not getting them.
But my last project, the inspiration, um, that was about me trying to inspire people to become that was the purpose of this show is to balance faith in business, the guide you see a purpose. So rock with me. Okay. That's the whole purpose of the show.
My purpose is to inspire guys people. And then we have the purpose guide. There's a whole episode called how to be inspired. And that project, the inspiration, you know, like was me getting to my be be inspired.
You know what I'm saying? Like the fifth, like when you actually become the inspiration. So that's what that project was. It was called the inspiration because it was me accepting my purpose and accepting it.
It was time for me to become and be. You know what I'm saying? Learn plan do become be. That's the guide to your purpose.
Right? And then make all these connections and the stuff that I'm creating and been creating the last couple of years with this show and the journey that we've been on to become the inspiration. Right? And I want to, I want to zero in on that right now because you have to accept at some point if you're going to get there.
We can talk about these conceptual things and these theories every week all the time. But if you are going to become who God called you to be, who become be? If you're going to become, I'm sorry. I'm so like, all right.
This is where I got to take a deep breath because I'm like, I'm so high. If you're going to become who God created you to be, right? At some point you have to do it. I feel like a lot of us with our purpose, we are standing, you know, at the edge, maybe, I don't know a way to put this for real, but you need to take that leap of faith, but you won't jump.
You stand in there and you focus in on how low it is to the ground. You're not focusing on like, yeah, but God gave you everything you needed to fly. And part of this whole podcast and what I'm trying to get people to do is I'm trying to give you that extra push to jump to your purpose and take the leap of faith and not spend all of your life standing there looking down. Oh, man, do you get like, there are so many people, even the last couple of years in this pandemic who have the opportunity of a lifetime.
I was driving in the car the other day with Tiff and she made, she made this powerful point. Like my wife don't talk a whole lot all the time, but when she say stuff, sometimes it's like, Hey, Nelson Mandela, like you just, it just dropping fire. All right. And she talked about, she made this statement and we were talking about something.
She was like, you saw the opportunity in the opportunity. Okay, y'all, y'all, that blessed me to she even said that about me. Number one, but like it's one time, it's one thing to see an opportunity, right? And opportunity will bring us to the edge.
Like you only standing at the edge about to take a leap of faith because you know, there's an opportunity, but then the second part is where a lot of us mess up. It's where we can't see the opportunity in the opportunity. So we get to the opportunity and all we see is the fall. We only see how messed up it could be if we fail.
We only see what could go wrong or what people would say if I started a podcast and it didn't last more than two weeks or if I didn't get a lot of listeners, we see the value. That's all we see. We get to the edge of the opportunity and stay there and never take the leap of faith because we can't see the opportunity in the opportunity. What I was trying to get everybody to do, this is, I'm just going to be real.
This is what I saw. I saw it when 2020 came and it was all about COVID in March and then making and it became all about race. I was like, ah, this is an election year. Like there needs to be divisions so that people can choose a side that just has to happen.
That's just like really plain and simple. And I saw people get emotionally riled up, become fearful, become angry. And when you become like that, you are easily controlled. All right.
That's just my opinion. That's just me talking. But I saw this and I said, I told my wife, I told my family, people in my circle know this to be true. I was like, I have to be laser focused.
I cannot let the media like I can't, I have to focus on what I believe in right now. And my belief was that if I did that, I would not leave this thing empty handed. I believe that if I would have followed the world, I wouldn't have made the progress I've made in the last two and a half years. And as I almost don't want to say this because of how it may sound, but the last two and a half years have been some of the greatest years of my life.
I've made more progress in the last two and a half years than I made in the five years before it on just about every level. I'm not saying that the brag. I'm saying that to say that the reason I was doing that is because I saw what the world wanted me to do. I saw it.
It was there. It was tempting. I was like, oh, but then God allowed me to see the opportunity in the opportunity. And because on this show, I believe that people listen, I believe that we get like we were, we were talking through the blueprint like every single week and you could go back and check it.
That's why you like if I'm not telling the truth, you can go back and actually listen. We were following that blueprint. We were staying focused. We weren't talking about what the world was talking about.
We were talking about things to push guys, people forward. And then now is the time for the payout. And that's the thing like you cannot, if you miss the window of opportunity, it's not that you won't ever get an opportunity again. It's that you won't get that one.
You have to see the opportunity in the opportunity. Every opportunity has an opportunity. But if you don't take that leap of faith, you're going to miss it. All right, let's talk about it.
I'm a star by saying this. I believe that inspired guys, people to podcast is a source of inspiration. I believe that now I'm going to expound on that. Okay.
A couple of things I want to say. First things first, everyone you meet is either a plug or an outlet. I'm going to show you listen to every album you listen to. Like see, I genuinely believe in maximizing things by saying this.
I'll get an example. But this new job, one of the things that I was asked when I was offered a job was do I know how to play golf. And I'm like, nah, nah, I know how to hoop though. I know how to hoop, but I don't know how to play golf.
I went to Topgolf one time last year and my homeboy at work been trying to tell me he wanted to teach me how to play golf for three years. One of my neighbors down the street been asking me to go to play golf for him for the last two years. I got so busy I got so much stuff I hadn't made time for it. See, I could have got a head on that.
I missed the opportunity and opportunity on that. I could have spent the last two years. I could have prioritized that and came out of this prepared, but I wasn't. And they were like, oh, you might want to learn my new boss.
You might want to learn how to play golf because there's a huge golf executive event in June. And yeah, you're going to be there for show, but we do a lot of business on the golf course. I'm like, okay, cool. So now me is February, March, and I, I got a couple months to learn how to play golf.
So I've already started looking up lessons. Um, did I tell y'all, I don't know if I told y'all last week I'm with the look at some clubs. I was like, Hey, I went in there feeling muscle. Like, yeah, me and two.
I'm like, you know, me, I got to go in there looking like Tiger hood. So I'm about to get the outfit. I'm already finding some dope golf shoes. I'm like, oh, like we're going to do this.
I look at that club. Look at that price. I was like, Oh, oh, it caused basketballs cost 30 bucks. The cheapest clubs I saw was five hundred.
I was like, Oh, we're going to use the umbrella. I'm going to be out there on the course with the, just hand me a stick. Like I'm just, I got to pay 500 dollars for that. I could break the legs off of one of the chairs in the kitchen and we can make it work.
Maybe I'm from seven mile. We can make anything work. What's my point? My point is that like, I, in order to be successful at the next thing that I'm doing, I have to be willing to give golf some energy now.
Like I'm already looking into lessons. I'm looking into the driving rate, all this stuff that now I got to do in order to be successful at that. And I can't think about what failure might look like or what this and no, it's like, no, I gotta, I gotta like give it all of that. All right.
So here's the thing. Back to the point. Is either a plug or an outlet. And here's what, here's what I would say.
Uh, when you think about a plug, right, a plug is there to drain energy to power something else and the outlet is there to provide energy as a power source. So you have one whose whole intent and purpose is to give energy and another one is to take it, right? Now, I do think there's another interesting dynamic to this. I'm just thinking of top of my head.
I'm not an electrician, y'all. This example, example man is here today. And if this example ain't good, then fire me. Okay.
But look, I think a charger is an interesting piece to this puzzle. I'm just thinking, just saying to my notes because a charger takes energy from one. So it is consuming energy, but it also serves as a power source for someone else. I should have wrote that down.
That's an important piece to the puzzle. You got outlets, you got plugs and you got chargers. All right. Let's, let's work with this.
Right. So I'm going to give you an example. Example man is here. So a couple of weeks ago, I told y'all a little bit about like this dude came to my house looking and working on the HVAC system system and they had like some special like where they could come in and clean it out, clean out your ventilation system for $89 and do a video inspection.
Make sure everything good. I'm like, let's do it. Like that's nothing. I got that.
Let's go. Yeah. Okay. By the time he left, I was paying like $500.
I think maybe it was three, four hundred five. I don't forget the number, but yeah, I think he left by the time he left, I was paying $500. Here's a crazy thing. He came in my master bathroom, master bathroom in, in the en suite, you know, you watching enough HGTV, you start calling and stuff the real name.
He came into the en suite and he was cleaning out the vent in there. He plugged up like this, this crazy machine. It was making a lot of noise. It was crazy.
And the joint was like so crazy, it just killed all the power in the bathroom. Like, like he was, he was done. Thank God. On one hand, but on the other hand, like, oh, the lights don't work.
The power don't work. And he was just looking. I'm like, man, it is what it is. I guess I figured out later, I was thinking like maybe it was just a circuit breaker.
I turned it back on. It was going to be cool. That ain't do it. That ain't do it.
But I did find out how to reset everything and I reset it and you know, it was back working. But what is my point? My point is that piece of equipment that he brought in here and plugged up in that bathroom was such a drainer of power that is sucked all the energy out. Now, I'm just be real with all the kind of person I am.
You know, like I can be a laid back person. I can be a passionate person. I don't know. I don't, I call myself an ambivert because I do go in and out of intro and extrovert.
But the one thing out, if you ever are around me, which you will notice is this. And hopefully, you know, I don't love how to get your secrets about myself. But if you ever around me in a public setting, what you will know is the louder everybody else is the quieter I tend to be. Whenever I get in a room with like what I call like an extreme extrovert and some of you all might be out there and I love you all.
I do. But an extreme extrovert is like to me, someone who doesn't even have like they never turn it off. Like you can meet them from day one and they own team like what up. They speak they mind like and I meet people like this all the time and they could be cool people like this that just like have no filter like the moment you meet them.
It's like they in their mind, they didn't know you 20 years they'll tell you anything. They'll ask you anything. I'm going to be honest. Those people tend to be like that piece of equipment that was in the bathroom that drained all the power.
They drain me like I can get drained by being around like like super high energy people. When I get in those situations, I guess the way I naturally balance it out for myself is I will get real quiet. They'll do all the talking. I won't really try to say much.
Right. And my point is that there are people that could come in your life and they are trainers of power. You get what I'm saying? They just got a plug.
All they all they do they see and they say, oh, let me plug over here. I'm going to take it. I'm just here to drain it. Now here's the thing.
The purpose of an outlet is to provide energy. You get what I'm saying to provide power. So it is okay for a plug to go and find the source. You give what I'm saying?
But what I like and what I want us to think about is if you're going to be a plug be a charger because that joint in my bathroom just sucked all the energy out and left and get an energy to nobody. At least with a charger, the whole point of it is like, let me look for a source of energy so that I can go provide energy. And when I say that this podcast is an outlet, it is the source of inspiration. It is intended for you every week to be able to come to this show and an outlet provides power to anything that connects with it.
That's what it does. So, yo, okay, cool. The Inspire Guys people is outlet. You come here every week.
The goal is to be a catalyst to provide energy to you. But here's the thing, y'all, be a charger. And I want you to really think about what type of person you are when you, if you're a person that just takes energy from others to the point that you drain them and shut them down, like you might need to, you might need to pray about that. I'm just be real with you.
You might need to step back and say, yo, I'm constantly draining energy from people. I'm constantly taking away and I'm not giving anything. Right? It's okay to take energy of something that's created to provide it.