EP 179 | What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

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Learn more at littlebellies.com today. Little bellies, do what's natural. What's up, guys? People.

I'm your host, Jay Will. This is Inspire Guys, People, where we balance faith and business to guide you to your purpose. Welcome to one 79, episode 179. I can't talk to people.

We starting off the show right now. I got to show you. I can talk. It's all good.

This is episode 179, entitled What You Don't Know Can Hurt You. And today, the topics we're going to cover is why I believe that education and learning is the number one first step to finding your purpose. We're going to talk a little bit about cancel culture, maybe slipping in some Kanye West. I made a post about that this week, so we're digging into some of my posts.

We're going to talk about this concept that freedom is dangerous. Also made a short clip on YouTube earlier this week, just breaking down the day the slaves were free, according to Booker T. Washington in his book From Slavery. We're going to talk a little bit about that.

Then we might dig into the parable of the talents in the Bible. That's Matthew chapter 25 verses 14 to 30. But for now, you're going to check out this intro. You know what I'm saying?

This new intro is the first time the video intro that I actually edited about two weeks ago. You're going to check it out and then we're going to jump into the show. So let's do it. When you say you ain't afraid to die.

It's a fucking beer. Yo, that's, hey, I feel good. That's the first time we aired the video intro. I mean, y'all saw it, but you know, having it as part of the show is dope.

I'm excited about that. We continue to grow this show. So look, if you like this content that we're going to talk about today, like, subscribe, YouTube, that's where I'm pushing a lot of the content. Of course, we got my Apple podcast.

I can talk Apple podcast family shout out to everybody that rocks with the show on audio and has been doing so for four plus years. We got over 180 episodes on Apple podcast, a bunch of interviews with CEOs, entrepreneurs, a little bit of everybody. So you want to check it out. But today is all about what you don't know can hurt you.

You feel what I'm saying? Yo, what up? What up, Tonya? That's what we do, baby.

Straight from church, gala, gala, you know, suited up to this pops, what up. All right. So Pete, thank you. Thank you.

I appreciate it. So today is all about what you don't know can't hurt you. So we all know that there's this idea of cliche, whatever you want to call it, of which you don't know can't hurt you in. I want to challenge that a little bit.

I believe that the first step to finding your purpose, right? So we got this like most people are walking around trying to find their purpose in life today. And I believe the first step to doing that is education, learning, and literacy. So first and foremost, let me say this is a faith in business podcast.

So I tend to jump on topics that are across sometimes the Bible and a lot of times in business finances, the economy, things like that. So we're going to talk about why learning is important in both of those. Let's first start, you know what I'm saying with the Bible with my saved people, my Christian's out there. Why is it important to know something to learn and to be educated?

Well, it's real simple, right? When you think about the Bible, it's important to understand the proper doctrine of the Bible, because I'm gonna be I'm gonna keep it all the way I'm hunting with y'all right now. It's a lot of people, a lot of weird, like things being said, like all you need now is just like I'm doing really a camera, throw it on, you can use your phone, whatever you can upload it to YouTube and Facebook, and you can talk as crazy as you want to talk, right? And so it's important for a lot of us out there to be equipped with the word of God ourselves so that we not believe in every little video on YouTube that floats around that gets popular.

And I think what happens in this culture today is that we mix up popularity with truth. So the moment that something becomes popular and a bunch of people amen it or like it, especially if it's people that are celebrities or people that you follow or admire or they're influencers, when they like something, you just jump on a bandwagon. And I've seen this happen a lot of times in the world today where it's like, you know, some video or meme or whatever it is, a TikTok is floating around and it's 2 million people sharing it and liking it. And people take that as the truth.

It really all has happened and a lot of times it's that the person is speaking a message that connects with your emotions. And again, when you learn the word of God for what it really is and learn the proper way to dig into and study the Bible, you end up realizing your emotions ain't always the true fam. That's just me being real. Like my emotions ain't always true.

So yes, some celebrity can jump on Instagram and say something that in my flesh, I agree with it. But according to the word of God, it may not be true. So it's important to know to protect yourself spiritually. The Bible says to try the spirit by the spirit, but how you going to try a spirit by the spirit of you and know the spirit.

And that's what a lot of us are doing is like we're circulating these ideas and these thoughts that feel good when we don't realize that like, yo, it's a proper way to read and understand the Bible. Now, I'm gonna say this and I didn't even like I can't keep up with everything. I'm just too busy. But I know there was a video I think floating around YouTube this week and look, if I'm wrong about it, I didn't watch it myself.

But at least from what I understand, it was like some pastor or something was saying that Adam didn't name the animals and all this stuff. And it's like people was like, yeah, like, and that's the kind of weird stuff I'm talking about. Again, no offense on me if you out there and you see this, I'm not saying you said it. I just heard that you said it.

I don't have time to watch all this stuff. But my point is if that's the case, look, man, when people go out here talking crazy and just because it's sound good and it's in front of a thousand people or a bunch of people screaming and saying, Hey, man, it don't make it true. So that's my point with that as it relates to the word of God in the Bible, which you don't know can't hurt you because you will find yourself being manipulated. And then what ends up happening is like you get this idea of like church, right?

So church, heart is something that we all hear about, all have heard about or know about. And I think part of the problem with that is if I'm just being real, can I just be all the way real child? That's what we do on this podcast. Like sometimes it's your own ignorance that's causing the hurt.

Now, like, oh, that's thing. I'm not saying that's always the case. I'm saying that sometimes your ignorance is what allows you to be manipulated in general in life period. That's why we live and we learn.

And when you know better, you do better. And so my point is it doesn't make whoever is responsible for the church, heart, it doesn't make that okay, because they're in a position of leadership, right? And a lot of times people manipulate that position. And this is a very tricky subject and a tricky thing.

So I'm not going to dig deep into it. But what all I'm really trying to say is like in a world we live in today and really always, you need to know the Lord for yourself. You need to be reading the Bible yourself so that you can what do what the Bible says and try the spirit by the spirit. Like, but you got to know that the word says that, right?

You have to know the word to be able to use it as a shield against false doctrine. And it's so many people that just say what feel good and they lead you astray. And then you mad at them. And I'm not saying they're not responsible.

I'm not relieving them at that responsibility. You feel what I'm saying? But what I'm saying is that you own some of that responsibility too. And sometimes it's our own ignorance that allows us to continue to be taken advantage of.

And so we have to know so that we can be better, right? And to protect ourselves sometimes from whatever hurt. Now, again, that's a loaded topic. So don't, don't allow yourself to be triggered by the fact that I said a church, because sometimes you talk about a topic that like somebody super passionate about and they like miss the point because they focus on that.

So let's move past that, right? In business, it's really important to know because what you don't know can hurt you, right? So a lot of people don't realize you are in business. If you have a job, you own business, I don't care where you work.

Like you are in business. And one of the things that happened, especially in poverty, and again, I come from poverty. So I'm speaking about this through experience. A lot of times through poverty, what happens is we don't actually know the extent that we're into a business deal or in a partnership or relationship.

And so what comes in mind as an example is like a day to pill. So and this is just one example because you hear a lot of celebrities or artists talk about like, yo, I was in a bad deal or a B and C or this company manipulated me, this business manipulated me. And I remember Dave Chappelle talking a little bit about his comedy Central Days and saying like, he signed a bad contract and they knew it. They took advantage of him.

I talked about this a little bit last year. The reality of it is they may be wrong. So we not dealing with how wrong they are or not, but Dave owns some of that responsibility. Like it's your responsibility when you sign your name or something, like what you don't know can hurt you.

So if you don't know and you don't realize, this is a business relationship. These people don't love me. They don't care about me. They don't, when it comes down to court or a situation, they don't take me to court.

They don't take my money. They don't put my show out. I'm not going to get the residuals or the royalties. So many times, man, we allow ourselves to remain ignorant.

So we keep signing bad deals. And then what happens is we get mad at the company for doing what they said they were going to do in black and white on paper. When you sign an agreement, it's your responsibility to read it. It doesn't mean that I'm saying the company isn't wrong for being manipulative.

But what I'm saying is what you don't know can't hurt you. So if you don't know business and you're engaging in business, relationships and partnerships, it can hurt you. And we see this time and time again and we get mad at the companies, but you got to understand your leverage. Now here's the other thing I will say.

Leverage is a part of this. So you're not always going to get back. So let's use Dave Chappelle as an example, right? We just talking about business, whether you like Dave Chappelle or not doesn't, that doesn't affect the content of this conversation.

If you look at the Dave Chappelle situation from a business perspective, he signed a bad business deal. He admitted to that. I heard him say that himself, like, I signed a bad business deal. So here's the first thing we got to do in business is we got to take accountability.

You got to look at yourself in the mirror and say, yo, regardless of whatever, I signed that piece of paper. Nobody held a gun in my head. But here's the other part of the y'all that we overlook sometimes. Sometimes what you got out of it wasn't the money.

Because let's be real, Dave Chappelle signed that deal with Comedy Central and he blows up. So at the end of the day, maybe the monetary value directly into your bank account wasn't what it should have been, but you were able to leverage the situation. That's what business is really about, is two parties really looking to leverage as much as they can off of each other. And I think the problem with us is we enter business, relationships and partnerships, thinking that it's a friendship.

And that's why you see so many artists that chase record deals. That's like they chase record deals, thinking a record deal is something that is not like a record deal is alone. That's really what it is. It's a company saying it's just like going a record deal is just like you going to try to get a mortgage.

They're looking at your credit history, your background and your reputation financially and saying based on everything we see, we believe that we can loan you $700,000 to go and get a house. And if you don't pay it, we want our money back. I never went to a bank to get a loan or a mortgage and thought I was dealing with my friends. They want their money.

They want something out of me. But here's the thing. I'm also looking to leverage something out of them. I'm saying, okay, I don't have the cash or don't want to take the cash to spend the amount to get this house today.

So I'm going to leverage the money you're going to give me, right? I'm going to pay you back in smaller increments so that I can have a place to live. That's business. If I miss a payment long enough, however long I never miss the house payment.

So, you know, ever. So it's like, thank God. So I don't know how I work, but I'm sure at some point you go to foreclosure. Like at some point they taking you to foreclosure regardless if you a nice guy, regardless if you just friendly.

Yo, what up, family from Texas? Thank you. Thank you for checking out the show. They don't care though when they want their money back.

Like you nice, your wife fried good chicken, you cut the grass real good. You know, you're a great guy. You know, you got good hair. Whatever it is, nobody cares when it's time for that.

So let's what's the point that I'm saying? I'm saying that at some point we got to, we got to take accountability for our own lives and learn how to operate. Again, whether it's the we need to learn the word of God for ourselves, seek the Lord for ourselves so he can put us under the right leadership, the right pastor, someone that we can trust and we know is leading us where God has taken us, but we can also filter what we know about the word of God ourselves. And we can use that as a barometer to say, is this person operating like I see in a Bible, according to God's will and purpose for my life?

And then now that you know better, you can do better and you can also hold them accountable. And in the same way in business, the more you learn, then now you can start making better business decisions versus continuing to be in a cycle. You feel what I'm saying? So what you don't know can't hurt you.

All right, let's jump to the next topic. I want to talk a little bit about cancel culture. And this is really along the same lines because like I heard you got you had to news with Kanye this week. So let me say this, I want to talk about cancel culture in Kanye separate from whether or not what he said was offensive.

That's not what we've done with it. So let's just talk about the topic. I didn't hear everything he said. First of all, I heard some of it, but I just don't have time to watch all these interviews and keep up with these videos.

I don't I'm sorry. But let's just assume that what he said was the worst thing you could say. Right. So I saw that he said some racial things negatively about Jews, which are cool.

That's wrong. Just like I'm black. I've heard, you know, people say bad things about black people. That's wrong.

So we not deal with whether or not we're not here to justify Kanye's comments right wrong or indifferent. I didn't follow him enough to know. I'm just going to assume that he said the equivalent of the inward. All right.

So let's do that. Because I've heard as a black person, Robert Sarver, who's the owner of the Phoenix Suns, Donald Sterling, who was the former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. And many more CEOs and owners and billionaires and rich people in the world celebrities, whatever it may be, have used racial slurs against black people and I'm a black person. So as you can imagine, that's offensive.

I don't like that. So let's assume Kanye said the equivalent of the inward or worse. Now let's put that aside. We got to compartmentalize this conversation because one of the ways that we end up, I think, at illogical conclusions is that we're trying to mash everything together.

And these are very nuanced conversations with multiple layers and it's very challenging, especially publicly, to engage these conversations about these topics because everybody is so emotionally triggered and charged. And so if you just take that and set that aside and let's just say he did the worst thing. All right. Secondly, I'm hearing or seeing that he lost all of these partnerships.

So whether it be with Adidas and I think Chase Bank no longer allows him to bank there and the gap, Balenciaga, all these people in the day partnerships with him. Again, for me, I'm not here to get into the certain aspects of that. But I want to say this. People were tripping because they were like Adidas owns the designs.

There are two ways that I feel about that, which you don't know can hurt you. I'm led to believe that Kanye from a business perspective is smarter than maybe we give him credit for. And if he's not, that's his responsibility. He got to own that.

Like, so if Kanye at this point in the game after doing business with multiple big brands over the last 20 years, is not wise enough to have a plan of action in place, whether it be he has more designs off to decide. He's a genius as a relates to fashion. Like we got to give him that at least he is a genius. Whether you whatever else you think about him as it relates to fashion, this is a rapper who literally created the number one sneaker brand.

He's rivaling Michael Jordan shoes as a rapper. Jay Z came out with some shoes back in the day. Them boys did not do that. So you got to give him some credit from his designs.

Very futuristic. So he enters a partnership with Adidas, right? Kanye is in his partnership with Adidas. What does Adidas get out of it?

We talk about what you don't know can hurt you. So I'm telling you all this because so many of us seek deals with big brands because we think that's the championship. We think that's the epitome of success. So when you look at what did Adidas get out of it, Kanye West changed Adidas.

I could tell you nobody was rocking the Adidas. Like nobody was rocking the Adidas like that before Kanye got there. So they leveraged him. They leveraged his popularity, his fame.

I'm sure they represented his design genius, him and his team. I don't know the details behind who's creating these shoes and his fashion, but I'm telling you, Yeezys are some of the best shoes I've ever had in my life. They are both comfortable, stylish, simple, futuristic. They are like the Tesla of Apple of sneakers to me.

Like on top of the side, beyond Kanye, the branding, they're just great shoes. So okay, he brought his design and his his cache his influence to Adidas. He gained a lot from that and they gained a lot from it. Here's the reality of it.

When Kanye went out and said whatever he said, which we're going to just assume was the equivalent of the N word, he had to be smart enough to know that this could happen and he had to be smart enough to have a plan in place. Again, whether he has more designs, he might feel like he ain't brought out his dope and stuff yet. I just believe like Kanye, like either he knows or what he don't what you don't know can hurt you. So in either scenario, I think it's something we could take from this.

When we look at this Kanye thing, we could say, all right, if I'm doing a deal, if I'm taking my brand or something I created, I got to understand how these companies work. You're going to work with them until you do something to offend them and you can be at zero and they could take whatever you did with them and they could sell it. If that's how your deal is set up. So what I'm saying is what you don't know in business and hurt you, it is very important to try to get past the excitement of the fact that you are partnering with this large brand.

And I'm saying this because I'm telling you, I didn't see many people. I know a lot of artists. I've been an artist myself and when you were artists, you're trying to chase a record deal. I know artists who have had record deals and they land nowhere, but so many of us chase that like that is the end goal.

And so my point with all of these things is we're chasing after things in ignorance because we don't really know how they work. And then when they don't work out, we want to point the finger at the company and we want to like think that our emotions matter. So now let's shift into thinking about cancel culture. So Kanye West says whatever he says, and I'm seeing him getting canceled.

I'm seeing people burning up his shoes, like literally lighting them on fire. I saw that somebody lit his shoes on fire. Well, their shoes that they bought with their money. So that's also not really the most wise things.

Appreciate it. So you burn up your shoes because he says something offensive. Then now people are saying they're going to boycott not wear the shoes, chase bank again, don't allow him to spend money like he can't put his money in a bank. He lose all these partnerships.

All right, cool. But here's the problem I have with cancel culture. Number one is very inconsistent. Cancel culture is very inconsistent to me.

It reminds me of if you set the speed limit on the freeway at five miles an hour and you look on the freeway and everybody's driving 25 miles an hour, but you just picking the people that you don't like personally, and you saying, yo, you go to jail, you can no longer drive again, but everybody's going 25. You get what I'm saying? So Kanye says something offensive. I've literally watched sports owners right now, Robert Sarver.

If you don't not familiar, look up Robert Sarver, the current owner of the Phoenix Suns, the NBA did an entire investigation on him. And he was mistreating employees, calling him the N word, calling. I don't want to go too far because I might be mixing up certain reports. I know he was using the N word.

All right, he started receiving some public pressure from the players and stuff and he's going to sell his team. But here's the thing that's crazy. He's going to sell a team and profit likely billions of dollars because I'm sure the value of the Phoenix Suns has increased. I know that for a fact since he owned it.

I don't know the year he bought it. So his penalty is sell your team, make billions of dollars potentially, and walk away. He's not losing his other business ventures. You don't have people canceling his bank account.

You don't have everybody burning up Phoenix Suns jerseys. He still owns the team today. The Phoenix Suns still play games today. I watched the same thing with Donald Sterling when he owned the Clippers.

Okay, he received some public pressure to have to sell the team. He makes his billions. He walks away. He lives his life.

Now again, he said things. I'm black. He said very offensive things against black people. But to me, you don't have to go and cancel every part of people's life, not because I am defending what ignorant people do.

But I'm saying we have to be careful about the precedent that we said because who is the moral judge in this court? Like so again, the problem with this is there are no real laws around this stuff. These things are not constitutional. These are just people basically setting case by case rules based on their emotions.

So hey, I don't like what he said. Cancel his bank account. Hey, I don't like what this person said. Take them off PayPal.

Hey, you know what? BAM him from Instagram because I don't like him. The problem, y'all is I'm like, we canceling everybody. It ain't gonna be none of us left.

Like what happens when you the person being canceled? What happens? Because think about it. We have in the last year, I've seen people cancel based on their political views.

I've seen people cancel based on their medical decisions. I'm now seeing people cancel based on, you know, albeit completely, you know, maybe offensive or ignorant speech. But again, I thought we had freedom of speech in America. What I'm concerned about is the precedent that we're setting.

I'm also concerned that the people who are pushing this mean in the everyday public, we're doing it out of some level of ignorance of not really understanding what we're doing. And we're just following the lead of other people following the lead of the media. And we're just saying, hey, yeah, that's right. Let's cancel him because emotionally what that feels good to me.

I don't like what he said. I canceled him. Hey, man, I ain't here to defend nothing nobody's saying. But I mean, are you that perfect?

Like who has never in their life said something that today and today's age would be worthy of being canceled? It's impossible. Y'all know to live a life without offending anybody. And so my problem with the president being said is, man, is it, let's just say racial or offensive language that we're concerned with?

Well, if that's the case, like, all right, we just don't go cancel everybody in. None of these owners should be able to own a team. Like, I just I'm I just think we're making a mistake by jumping on board with that mentality. Here's the other thing.

When you get emotional, you get illogical. You're lighting up shoes on fire. So let me say this. Y'all know how many like from a political standpoint in the world, like different countries have done we've been at war with countries, things have happened.

So a place like China, it's like Russia, all these places, there have been things that happen, right? But you start opening up the tags and looking at, you know, go start tracking down on Google. Where your gas and energy coming from, your oil coming from that you fill in your tank up in your car. Start looking in the tags and all your clothes.

It's impossible to cancel everybody who deserves to be canceled. That's just an impossible way to live. Like, it's impossible. You don't have no clothes.

Okay, I'm gonna burn my shoes up every time somebody I don't like say something. Have you seen a Gucci movie? This is what's crazy to me. You watch that Gucci movie.

You watch that movie about that family. They did some insane things. I think they did some offensive things, but I still see people proudly walk around with Gucci bags. I've heard things about Chanel.

Last time I checked, we value Chanel bags. We value these brands. These people get to go and make their billions and continue to live their lives. But the moment that someone else does something that we find offensive, crazy, however else you want to categorize it, again, I can agree with you.

All right, it's crazy. But man, like, can't go to the bank no more. So now here's the precedent we said. And we saying, in order to go to the bank, in order to have a job, in order to do anything, you have to agree with me.

But I got a question for everybody, cancel culture. Who is me? Who is the person setting the rules? Where's the employee handbook on cancel culture?

Is it just whatever emotion you wake up with today? Is it whatever you can post or whatever snippet or video you could take from somebody that goes viral? What qualifies? Because I want to know so that we can all start understanding what are the rules in this game that we're playing?

And who is the one that's setting the rules? Who is me? You have to agree with me. I am the king of cancel culture.

But who am I? And what happens every day people when you don't agree? Let me tell you something. I've known a lot of people, got a lot of friends, associates, whatever it is.

You tell me when's the last time you met a person and y'all agree on every single thing in the world. I don't agree with my wife on everything in the world. I don't agree with the temperature that she puts the heat on in the house. You get what I'm saying?

So what type of relationship makes sense when one person, whoever that is or one group of people gets to say, you either agree with us or we cancel you. Some of y'all, we set in a precedent that's dangerous, dangerous. You feel me? Set in a precedent that's dangerous and impossible to live up to.

I got an episode to say cancel me now. Look, man, I'm happy that I don't, whatever. Let's keep it moving. Let me look at my notes.

What else we got? Y'all going to be mad. Y'all going to cancel me for talking about this. All right, I want to talk about, let's switch topics.

I want to talk about this. Freedom is dangerous. And this whole idea came from really two things. Read in the Bible, Exodus 16, back in like 2015 or 16 when I was studying this, it blew me away.

In Exodus 16, this is after the children of Israel have been set free. So we are like, everybody knows it's Pharaoh. Let my people go when Moses said that. And then the children of Israel were free.

And then Pharaoh kind of changed his mind and then sit on his army to chase the children of Israel. And I think it might have been 14 and 21 in Exodus, when Moses raised his staff and the sea was split and the children of Israel were able to walk across. And then as soon as they got across, the waters came in and drowned the people who were trying to get them. So they found themselves free.

Previously, they were literally slaves. I know we think slavery only exists in one form or fashion in the world, and four generations before us, but that's not the case. Slavery has been around for a long time, unfortunately, a horrible thing. However, they were made free.

Now, you would think that freedom is the absolute best thing we could ever want or desire in his life, right? So the slaves, the children of Israel find themselves free. And the Bible says in Exodus chapter 16, that four weeks, one month into being free, they started complaining. And you know what they were saying?

They started complaining and saying, at least when we were slaves, we had food. At least when we were slaves, dot, dot, dot. I can't think of a reason in the world. If I was just getting beat and I was owned by somebody and having to do physical labor, that I would ever just four weeks later use the phrase, at least when we were slaves.

But psychologically, it showed me a lot about us as human beings and how we operate. And like we find ourselves in a scenario where it's like, yo, that's just how we are. We complain about slavery because it does say that they prayed for God to freedom. So they were enslaved, prayed for God to freedom.

And then God sent Moses to come and free his people. And then they became free in just four weeks go by and they forget about the prayers they were praying a month ago. How many times do we do that? We pray for God to set us free because we have this idea of what freedom is, but what we don't know can't hurt us.

Freedom ain't what you think it is. Most of us think freedom is easy. Freedom is dangerous. Freedom is where you are responsible for yourself.

And it's completely up to you where you end up. Freedom is wild. Freedom, that's why they were in the wilderness, the wild. Freedom was wild.

They probably were praying for freedom thinking that they would just go off into the sunset, live in a nice, beautiful 2000 square foot hut in the middle of nowhere, have the best 10-cile garage, whatever you need. But they got in freedom and realized it's just us out here and what they did was started complaining because what they didn't know hurt them. What's my point? My point is when I started reading that, I started realizing in my own life that I got to be careful that when I'm praying for freedom that I also accept the responsibility that comes with being free.

That I also learn and make myself aware of what type of freedom am I going into? When I say I want to be free, what am I really saying I want? Because what I don't know can hurt me. All right.

Now let's transition to Booker T. Washington's book up from slavery. So Booker T. Washington writes this book up from slavery, his autobiography and Booker T.

Washington was born a slave but of course grew to be a very successful influential black man. What's amazing is that at the end of chapter one in his book, he describes the day the slaves were set free. The day that it was announced to them, he described the very moment that it was announced on the plantation that the slaves would be free. Could you imagine being in bondage, being enslaved, your entire life, being beaten, abused, never taking showers, never brushing your teeth, like just like never having good clothes, never eating the best of food and being told that you are less than and you are not even a person?

Could you imagine the date that somebody walked on the plantation and announced your freedom? Booker T. Washington described that. Here's what's intriguing about his description.

You can read it for yourself in his book up from slavery. He said that he remembered the guy, I think it was an army official or a servicemen of some sort that came on the plantation and announced to them their freedom, I believe reading the Emancipation Proclamation and he said for the first few hours, it was pure bliss, pure joy. They were so excited. He said his mother cries tears of joy because when they used to sing about freedom as slaves, he described, they were actually singing about freedom in the afterlife and they were amazed and blown away by the blessing that what they thought would have to come through death, God brought it to them in their lifetime.

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Learn more at littlebellies.com today, Little Bellies, do what's natural. Freedom is dangerous, so the slaves were excited when it was announced to them that they were free because they had thought about all the work and all the pain that they had endured and now we are going to be free. Now black people are free and he said within a few hours it went from joy to sorrow. Now I want you to let that sink in that you've been a slave your entire life and you just received your freedom and after about an hour of being joyful, freedom made you sad.

And he said, this is Booker T Washington who was born a slave, this ain't me talking. He described this experience as the slave started realizing the responsibility of freedom. Freedom is dangerous. What you don't know can't hurt you.

They started being afraid because they didn't have the least idea of what to do in their freedom. They had never had a job. They weren't equipped education wise. You couldn't read, you couldn't write, you couldn't write, I'm sorry, I was like extremely funny to me.

I don't, I'm not even going to go with that joke considering the sensitivity of the topic on summer, but that is hilarious to me. So the slaves couldn't read them what right and they find themselves in a situation where some of the slaves actually decided to remain in bondage because they were old, right? You 70 years old and you get set free, freedom is dangerous. What you don't know out there can hurt you.

So what's my point with that? My point is those two situations, both the situation and exit is and the situation with the slaves showed me that freedom is dangerous and it's a responsibility. So if I want financial freedom or whether I want to go from, you know, for me, a lot of it was like, yo, I'm coming from the hood. I want to get out of this.

I want to get to a place in my life where I can make something to myself. But freedom is dangerous, bro. You're not just going to go out here like government assistance ain't going to do it. Government assistance ain't going to get you to greatness.

And I know that might hurt. And you talking to somebody who grew up on government assistance. So I'm not looking down with or looking down at we're talking ill of nobody who finds themselves in the time and need for that. But what I'm telling you is government assistance is going to keep you where you at.

Government assistance is like the people who were enslaved that decided that freedom was too dangerous for them to embark upon. So they needed their master to guide them through their life. Freedom is dangerous. What you don't know can't hurt you if you think if you are ignorant enough to believe that government assistance is going to push you into greatness.

I want you to find me one book of one successful person in the world that ever said that the reason they became successful is because people gave them handouts. Never happened. They might have received handouts just like I have. Not down to nobody.

If you find yourself in the time of need, there's a need or reason for that. Here's what I'm addressing and I feel qualified to address this because sometimes publicly we just fake. Let's just I'm just going to call it what it is we fake. Listen, I'm really from I'm really from Detroit.

I'm like really from there. I really know how it is growing up on that level. Here's what I learned growing up. A lot of the people are just taking advantage of the system.

Not everybody. But they think they take advantage of the system and really the system is taking advantage of them. I'm going to tell you why. The reason that government assistance and I'm using this as an example of a handout or us operating in a victim mentality because we received refused to learn how to grow in these systems and how to position ourselves to elevate beyond it and many people do it.

But what I learned is that a lot of these programs incentivize you to remain in your situation. You feel what I'm saying? Thanks, fam. Art Sock, please, bro.

Some of them, he's really like, I wanted to go back with today. Yes, they did. They really wanted to go back. That is facts.

Meach, what up, bro? Thanks. So here's what I learned is that a lot of us, like these systems, these programs incentivize us to stay where we at. So what happens is I'm going to give you an example.

This is just a hypothetical situation that a lot of people can relate to. Let's take like the EBT cars, which when I was a kid, it was actually food stamps. We used to get a packet of colored money and I had this little trick. Actually, I had this dope trick.

I never heard nobody talk about this with food stamps. But you know, food stamps, if you're a person out there that never had food stamps, it's like, it looked like monopoly money. But we love to see you come in. It came in books.

It was like staple and you had to pull it out, right? And the crazy thing about food stamps is you literally could only use them on food. So imagine if you wanted, you know, I don't know, you wanted some batteries to go in your walkman back in the day in the gas station. You come back on batteries with food stamps.

But here's what I discovered as a kid. This is how crafted you could be. I discovered that there is no food stamp version of coins. So whenever I got the food stamps, I always went at the singles because I could take a single dollar food stamp, go buy a quarter bag of chips with one dollar.

That's one transaction. Take another dollar, go buy a quarter juice. That's another transaction. Now that's two food stamp dollars I had spent 50 cent out of those and he got my dollar 50 back in quarters that I could go do whatever I want.

Whoo! Hey, when you grow up on that system fam, let me tell you something. When you grow up on the system, you are so crafted, you are so creative, you are so talented. And I'm telling you right now, like you weigh more creative and talented than that system can handle.

So it's okay to be in that situation. It's okay to have food stamps or EBT. Then I remember when I first saw an EBT card, I'm like, they ain't gonna put the food stamp on a debit card. That is crazy.

But when I was a kid, I learned that trick to turn them dollars into coins and we are so creative. And let me tell you something, I was too creative to remain in that situation, too smart to let myself have a cycle of a lifestyle of I'm on them. My kids is on them. My kids on it's okay if my grandma was on them.

It's okay if the next generation was on them. They didn't have the opportunities I have, but this opportunity is out here. Freedom is dangerous, but you go and get out here and you go and embrace that danger and embrace what I call the hope of the unknown and go out here and live your life and make something happen. But instead of that, what happens is they tell us, well, in order to qualify for this, you can't make this amount of money.

You can't be married. You can't have this many people in the household. So you know what I watch people do my entire life? I watch people alter their life to fit within a bubble to qualify for the assistance.

You know what? Wow, that is people are literally saying, okay, wait, I can't be married. Okay. All right.

Yeah, we can't get married because I got to get these. Oh, you know, how many kids we how many people we can? What's the situation we could be? Okay, I'm gonna change whatever my situation is to keep qualifying for the assistance.

Dear Jackson, what up fam growing up on that welfare system reveal hitting creativity, but we should not remain in the system. Amen to that. That's my point exactly. But it brings something out of you.

But too often we throw away the skill set that poverty taught us, man, it takes a lot of talent to grow up in poverty. I'm just being real with you. If you didn't grow up in poverty, you can't understand this, but I'm telling you right now, it was times I had two pair of jeans and four shirts. And think about this, if it's five days in a week for school, I got to make this work.

How am I going to make these black? Okay, I'm gonna hit the black jeans with the white T shirt on Monday. Can't wear the black jeans on Tuesday. Let's go and hit the blue jeans on the Tuesday.

Wear them with the red shirt. Now Wednesday we back to the black jeans, but I wore it with a white shirt before. But if I throw the black on with a black joint, that looked like a whole different outfit. You get so creative in poverty because you don't want to be talked about in school.

I know y'all kids these days can't handle that. I ain't gonna talk about that. We didn't want to get talked about. Then you know what else you develop other skill sets.

You know what my skill set was? I was a comedian. I will roast you. You could be a teacher.

You could be another parent. You could be a student. My words wouldn't embarrass you. And y'all let me discover that gift when I was growing up.

Like, oh, people are afraid of what you might say to them in front of other people. I'm just gonna be all the way real with y'all. Ain't nobody ever talked about me in school to my face. I wouldn't care if my shoes was curling up like a cinnabun.

Ain't nobody said nothing to me in my face. You know what I ain't saying to me? Because I discovered a skill set. I discovered that people were more scared of being talked about in public or being addressed in public or laughed at.

Like, they never mess with me. I ain't, I was good to go. Thugs like me. Whoever you was, you was cool with me.

Because it's like, you know what? I might have a gun, but this guy has words. That's just how it worked, man. That's how it worked.

Katie the vessel, we want to help, but don't want to hope. Hope changes your mindset. Help can keep you relying on help instead of becoming help for someone else. I appreciate that fam.

This stuff. Can't get a Jones, live for God. Amen. So that live for God.

So, the bridge, what's up? How you doing? So we're talking about this idea that you don't want to find yourself minimizing your life to qualify for assistance. It's okay to get assistance.

But what I believe is that education is what frees people from assistance. And so my thing is, hey, get it while you need it. But let's learn along the way. What I'm not a fan of is if I was on assistance, then I have kids, then my kids get to an age and a on assistance.

And then, assistance is all we know. It's like, come on, bro, assistance can't be all you know. When are you going to learn something else? Because what you don't know can't hurt you.

Appreciate the DS. And we got to stop living around walking around life. Listen, y'all, I'm just being real with y'all. They not coming to save you.

Like they not like these politicians, more power to y'all. Like more power to the people that's good politicians out there. But I just seen too many lives. I'm telling you in the last three years alone, people changed.

They like they stand some stuff left and right. And we wait no none to save us and it ain't gonna happen. Meat says I'm on kingdom assistance. Jesus, blood is my bridge.

Oh, man, you got to appreciate the churchy people out here. Thank you, Meat for bringing the churchiness there. All right. So here's what I want to say.

That's system in Jesus at all. All right. So I know it's people out there that are saying, all right, Jay, I hear you. But my problem is I don't have the resources they have.

You know, I grew up in the hood. I grew up like this. I don't have that. All right.

Follow me people. Follow me on this. I'm from the same hood. Ain't nothing too special about me.

I'm a normal person. So here's what I realized at a fairly young age. I was like, all right, why everybody always talking about the problem. I find myself even now, even in my day job, in my corporate job, regardless of what I'm doing, I tend to be a solutions or interpersonal person.

So I get drained when people spend too much time glorifying a problem because the problem ends up becoming something that we just continue to feed. So it continues to grow. Not saying that the problem ain't real. Like, so follow me on that.

You got, look, can I be real? Sometimes you got to take all the triggered emotions out of it when you get into a dialogue with me because I'm really trying to get beyond a surface in a sincere and genuine way, not a fan people or whatever, but just to say, let's just be real because this fake stuff bothers me. All this self-righteous hypocritical surface, it bothers me. I can't do it.

I can't do it. So when I was younger and people were making glorifying a problem, I had to make a decision. Don't remind me, like, don't remind me, okay, I'm black. Okay, I'm from the hood.

Okay, I don't got this. It's something in me, and I'm sure you could relate that never want it to be belittle. I never wanted to look at myself as less than like, you're not better than me because you have more than me. You're not better than me because you live in a better place than me.

You're not better than me because your parents make more money to mine. You're not better than me because you get the where you got five pair of jeans and I only got two pair of jeans. You're not better than me because you got your first car before me. You're not better than me.

Like, my thing is like, yo, y'all can tell me every reason and I feel like we live in a world today that wants to give you every reason and remind you for every reason why you shouldn't be doing something, why you can't overcome things. Like, no, like that ain't what the Bible say. God didn't tell me to walk around the world and fear you. That ain't what Daniel did.

Daniel didn't do that when they were captured by the Babylonians. Like, no, like, we talk about the Daniel diet. Let's go on the Daniel diet. Did we read the book?

Do we know what that even means? Daniel was confident enough in what their diet was where he even challenged the diet of the Babylonians. He's like, no, like, yo, come back in high or long and watch who's in better shape. That how to read the Bible and see how people got elevated in the kingdoms.

They didn't get elevated because some preacher just walking up to you and saying, you elevate it. You elevate it. You elevate it. It's like Oprah, you get a car.

You get a car. That's what we want. That's what we want to believe but which you don't know can't hurt you. And I'm here to tell you, when you read the word of God, people rose above their situation.

When David found himself walking in to a situation where the champion, the life, a giant, was killing his people and he went out there with a slingshot and five smooth stones and didn't even want to wear the armor because it was too big. How did he overcome if he was just a little boy tending to the sheep? You all got to read your word because what you don't know can't hurt you. You will be walking around in his life, feeling inferior to everybody and everything and never getting anywhere because you're waiting on somebody to save you who named Jesus.

What you don't know can hurt you. So my thing is this, don't remind me of why I can't do something. Don't tell me because I read Frederick Douglass autobiography. I read Booker T.

Washington's autobiography and because everybody wants to remind me about slavery and tell me why because my people were enslaved, what I can't do and what I'm the reason that I'm struggling and everybody glorifies the struggle. So I went to the source. I'm like, well, let me go read with the slaves wrote, but what you say about slavery, I want to read what Frederick said, but what you talking about, you ain't ever been no slave. You was born in 1990, bro.

You ain't no slave. You weren't even in civil rights. Okay, cool. Let me go see what Booker T said and y'all know what's crazy.

Y'all know that when I'm reading the words of the enslaved people who overcame it, those are the people that I'm hearing who did not let their situation stop them. These are the people who were slaves and taught themselves how to read and write. Don't sit up here and tell me what you can't do and you got YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, iPhone, iPad, a tablet, smart TVs. Like, come on, dude, the TV can't be smarter than you.

It's people that watch seven seasons of something on Netflix and didn't wake up out of that and tell me what they can't do. Well, yeah, you just wasted 16 hours. Of course you can't do it. But I read the words of Frederick Frederick Douglass.

I read how important it was for him to learn how to read. Do you know that with with Frederick Douglass? Let's talk about Frederick Douglass just for a quick second. What I'm trying to, the point of what I'm saying right now is that you could do less with more.

You could do more with less. You could do more with less. Frederick Douglass was a slave and at one point, I don't want to say this word because I don't know if social media is going to flag me or something. The end word, the endbreaker, there was this guy that was called the endbreaker, the jigger breaker.

Let's just call it jigger. The jigger breaker, the jigger breaker, not the jigger, the jigger breaker. So this guy, what happens is if you for their slave owner, for Frederick Douglass slave owner, if there was a slave that was too inspired, that was the hat, too much hope, that had too much belief, that had too much faith, they would send him to the jigger breaker in hopes of breaking their spirits. He Frederick Douglass was a type that'll fight his master.

So you got it like y'all ain't fighting, bro. Y'all just, oh, they said cancel everybody on Instagram. I'm a cancel. Okay, they said go and check hot sauce.

I'm just injected like, whatever everybody say y'all but I'm reading the words of the slave. I'm reading the people that was there in Frederick Douglass, they sent him to the jigger breaker. Woo. First of all, you got to ask yourself why they sent, you got to understand like, only the best of the best getting sent to the jigger breaker.

I should have, I should have named this episode the jigger breaker. I might change it. Only the best. If you are doing so good, if you got so much potential that they feel like the only way to kill your faith is to go and sing you somewhere that's only going to remind you of how bad you are, only going to remind you of reasons why you can't become who you are.

And the crazy thing about it is that's when they send you to the jigger breaker. What up, Gina? So they sent Frederick Douglass to the jigger breaker. And the crazy thing is Frederick Douglass said he almost broke him.

But he was able to overcome it. What's my point with all that? Frederick Douglass had so much potential in him that his slave master tried to send him to someone who specialized in breaking his spirit. And Frederick Douglass, regardless of the fact that he was a slave, regardless of the fact that they sent him to the jigger breaker, he became a person who was literally advising presidents.

Taught himself how to read and write. Now you tell me, you tell me, you tell me you can't overcome something like because because it got a little hard. It's been tough for me to trust me. I've had my ups and downs in the last couple of years, life ain't all just peaches and cream.

You get what I'm saying? But what I'm telling you is that it's something on the inside of you that the devil trying to send you to the jigger breaker. The world tried to send the saints to the jigger breaker all last year, all the last two years on my podcast, I talked about being united by faith because I felt like the world was constantly reminding us of the turmoil of the racial tension of the 60s, the 50s and the 1400s to try to make us hate each other today. And I'm telling y'all, they might have sent you to the jigger breaker fan, but there is potential in you to be greater and rise above your current situation.