Yo, what's up people? I'm your host J. Will and I would like to welcome you to inspire guys, people where we balance faith and business to guide you to your purpose. This is episode two, 23.
I'm successful. Now what, how to transition from nothing to something part one. That's right. Part one.
Today we're going to talk about how do I transition from being I want to say like from having nothing to having something, right? You know, it's the reality of it is in this world, man. Nobody really teach you how to be successful. People teach you how to chase it.
You feel what I'm saying? They tell you how to chase it. They don't even always necessarily teach you how to do that. But you hear a lot of like get the bag and do this and it could be success in relationships.
Just success generally, you know, people are always telling you to chase it and go after it. But then it's like, all right, I got it. Now what do I do? How do I live in the success?
How do I, you know, be successful? So we going to talk about that today. I'm going to share some of my thoughts, some of the things that I've learned on my own personal journey, you know what I'm saying? And this is where for me, if I'm being real, it's like, as I've been on my journey and like, yo, like you reach a goal.
And it's like, all right, now what? You know, I've never actually never actually told me what to do now that I have it. So today I want to, you know, try to share with y'all out there with the people, with guys, people, try to just kick it and kick around some thoughts around how I feel about that transition from nothing to something. And maybe you have some thoughts that you want to share or maybe you agree or disagree with me.
You know, I'm saying feel free to share those as we go. So first things first, man, you know, when you think about transitioning from nothing to something, first of all, it's all about mindset. So you're going to hear me reference mindset a lot today. Like I've learned that some people will have a mindset to see the title in this video, to like see what I'm talking about.
And they already will make up their mind to disagree. You feel what I'm saying? And like, so when you even think about obtaining any type of success, you have to have a certain type of mindset and you've got to develop that mindset. And then if you want to transition from having nothing to something once you reach success and kind of like live in the success, then that's a whole different mindset.
Because what ends up happening is sometimes you can have quote unquote success without developing the mindset. Here's like, so here's an example, the lottery is always the easy and the best example, right? But you could really relate the lottery to receiving something that you ain't really qualified for receiving something that you're not prepared for receiving something that you ain't been educated for. So what ends up happening with the lottery is that people obtain the quote unquote success of having the money, right?
You get a hundred million dollars in studies and statistics that I've heard say that, you know, within five years, those people don't have that no more. They lose the success that they had. And it's because they got something, but they never changed their mindset. So you got to first understand like the importance of developing a mindset as you go after success.
You feel what I'm saying? And with that said too, success is different but it's specific. And what I mean by that is like, you know, like there is no universal success. Like, so I can't measure my success up against your success.
That's not how I do it. That's not how I live life. You know, I kind of have my own goals and my own kind of purpose and focus and things I'm going after. And then I measure whether I'm successful or not up against my own journey.
So I think it's important for you to have your own journey and understand and, you know, seek the Lord, like pray about it as God, like show me my purpose. Read his word. You want to know how God talk 100% for sure how God talks through his word. You read the Bible?
Like that's God talking. You'll be looking for God to like say something to him and, you know, like you'd be looking at people that say God told him something like, man, that person deep, I could never be that deep. It's like, all y'all do is read his word. That's him talking.
So he's saying it. That is one of the, you know, easiest ways to hear the Lord speak is to read his word and meditate on it, right? And then he will speak to you and guide you through his word. You will see where it connects with your spirit.
Sometimes it'll be things that you're doing well, some things that got to be things that you got to change, but it will develop you and make you better. So you got to seek God to understand like what is success for me because where we go wrong in the first place is looking around at other people. Like, like, we already know I ain't going to dive into that looking around at other people and thinking that, you know, looking what he got, looking what she got that ain't your success for him. Like you can't measure if you successful up against what they doing.
They got their own purpose. They got their own life. And I know that's tough. That's so tough in the social media age because we see too much.
Like, let's just be real. We see too much of each other's lives to ignore it. So you see somebody just living a greatest life every day and you just in a phase of like wanting to give up in life and you thinking like, yo, I'm a failure because this person is on a yacht every weekend. I'm a failure.
I have a station wagon and they're on a yacht. That's not your success, fam. See success is different, right? So yours is yours, mine is mine, but it's specific.
Now the fact that it's specific means you got to actually define what success is. Some of us are just floating through life and we like, yo, like, what is this? Like, it's like, no, it's specific. And that's how you obtain the success.
And I'm talking about like the what success is because I think it's important for you to even be able to call yourself successful. You have to understand what success is. So it ain't just money. It could be money.
It could be, you know, you had a goal that you accomplished. And now you, now that you've accomplished this goal, you trying to figure out, well, well, what now? Like what do I do now that I have it? So that's what we going to try to unpack today is this idea of like, what do I unpack now that I have it?
So you've defined success, you have a mindset for success, right? Your mindset has developed. And then what happens? You find yourself seeing success, obtaining success.
It's a beautiful feeling, man. It's a beautiful feeling. But then you get there and it's like, well, not what? And what I've learned is that there's a difference between obtaining and sustaining.
So it's like a lot of times we, we addicted to the chase, like we addicted to that journey to obtaining something. But we don't always think about like, well, what do I do and who do I become once I obtain it? And then so that I'm not like those people that played a lottery and lose everything. How do I sustain my success?
How do I make this real? How do I stamp it? You get what I'm saying and make it something? It could be like a lifestyle change.
It could be like, yo, I'm not going to eat candy after five o'clock, right? And then you do that for a year, right? Like maybe you said, I'm not going to eat candy after five o'clock for a year. And then you get there.
The last thing you want to do is get to the 12 month, get to the year and then just go back to eating candy every day. And then you just kind of wipe out all the progress that you had. So when I think about success, it's like, yo, it takes a lot to be successful. And if I'm going to do all this work to get success and, you know, attain whatever level of success I have, then I want to make sure I sustain it.
I don't want to do all this work for nothing. So that's kind of what we kicking it and talking about today is how do we, like think through making the success worth it valuable and sustainable, right? So you can't just, you don't want to blow, you don't want to have a goal to save $10,000 and then get it and blow it. That's a waste of your time.
That's a waste of your success. So the question is, how do I transition from nothing to something? All right, let's talk about it a little more in depth. First thing you got to know is what made you successful and going to keep you successful.
So I kind of learned like, and to my surprise, I'm going to be real, like success in and of itself is actually challenging. That's maybe one of the biggest myths out there when you're chasing and going after something and working towards something you thinking, I'm doing this so that everything can become easier. Now, it ain't that stuff ain't going to become easier. It's that the stuff that's going to become easier is the stuff that you already know.
That stuff going to be easier. But it's some stuff once you get to success that you ain't ever seen before because you ain't never been successful in this particular area. At least in my example, you know what I'm saying? You haven't been successful.
And at least that was the case for me. Like a lot of things that I've been successful in, been blessed to be successful in whatever level of success it is for me. It's like, yo, every time I reach a new goal or hit a certain level or accomplish something or grow in a particular area, then I get there and it's like, oh, I wasn't thinking about the challenges that success brings. So I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but at the end of the day success does bring challenges.
And I know like, it's this weird thing when people who don't have whatever type of success you have, they're looking at you and they're thinking that you got it all together and they think and you got it easy. Those are two things that people mistake in life. You look at people and you think, hey, they have it all together. They don't.
I don't just because I got a podcast and talking about inspiring guys people and I'm talking about success and self development and a journey and living for God. Like, yeah, I'm still all the way human. Like, so I don't have it all the way together. You can't look at me and put me on a pedestal and think that I'm better than you.
You can't think that I'm some glowing special being that like has powers like, no, that's not reality. It's literally not reality. So you can't think that you got to understand that we're all human. You feel what I'm saying?
And so as I'm going after the success and trying to obtain and sustain and evolve and all of that, it's like, it's people looking at me like I got it all together. I'm like, bro, I'm just like you. I'm kicking it with you, trying to give you the game, not because I think I'm perfect, but because I was doing the same thing you doing. So people think you got it all together and they think, you know what I'm saying?
They think your life is easy because you have some success. Like, what? Because you, I can tell my me as a person, imagine a person to drive a nice car and you just looking at them like, man, they got a nice car and they got a nice house. Life must be so easy, but you're not thinking about whatever they go through because you don't have what they have.
So when I say that success comes with its challenges, let me just let's make it real. Let's give some examples, right? So, you know, I like like talking about money in a healthy way because, you know, money is always talked about so unhealthy and such an unhealthy fashion. I can't talk people.
I can talk. I promise I can't. Money is talked about in such an unhealthy fashion that I like talking about money. So let's think about like challenges that come with money.
Now, I'm gonna say like me, right? Like, I mean, I come from the hood. Like I really came from seven. I don't know what to tell you.
Like, that's where I really came from. And so when I, where, when I came from where I come from and, you know, like have to like learn financial literacy and things along the way, like, as I improve myself, what ends up happening is at some point, let's deal with a low level. This ain't about me. This ain't about thinking that I got money and this ain't even about that.
This is about the fact that like, let's just use $1,000 at one point in time, I had never had $1,000 bro. Like never, I ain't saying I never received $1,000. You got to hear what I'm saying. I ain't never had it.
So when I say I ain't never received it, yeah, I didn't got $1,000 check before and spent it the same day. And like, you know how we do? Like, if you from where I'm from, if you from the good, like you get $1,000 man, that money be gone before like when somebody broke, get money, they get the call in around you looking for ways to spend the money. Nobody wants to spend money the way a broke person wants to spend money as soon as they get it.
What happens is when you change that mindset and you start taking on from a poverty mindset to a wealth mindset, right from nothing to something, then you like, all right, I got $1,000. Not what? And that ain't like that ain't necessarily easy. It's sound easy.
But if your whole life, you've been stuck in a poverty mindset and you've been spent, spent addicted to things, you can't keep money in your pocket. It burns a whole, your thighs on fire if the money is in your side pocket. Like it, it's hard to know how do I keep money if I got stuff that I want, right? Change your mindset, change your life.
So then what ends up happening is what are the challenges that comes with having that $1,000 that you never had before? Well, one of the challenges is just the discipline to resist sensation. That ain't easy. You know, you got your shoe, like if you like Yeezys, I like Yeezys.
I wear Yeezys. So if you got Yeezys and you like Yeezys and you got $1,000 and you like, man, I'm Yeezys. They dropping right now on the site every other week, they're 230, 240. I should get them.
I should get them. And I got the thousand and I can't think of a reason not to spend a thousand on the Yeezys that I've been wanting the whole time, right? That discipline is tough. That's a challenge of reaching the success that you got.
You obtained the success, but now can you sustain it? That's one challenge. Here's the other challenge. You know, especially with money with any type of success I feel this way, you got a guard your success.
Like you got to think of it like, yo, I got a guard dog. I got some dope rimmons and a pit bull, like standing out with a gate around my success. And because people will try to get to it. The moment that people see you successful and especially if it involves money in any type of way, you got a thousand dollars, bro, you mean it's something you got a thousand dollars and I got this bill do in his $400.
I know you got me, bro. Come on. You love me, right? Like, come on, we go back and that's how people do you like and they don't even realize they're trying to manipulate you, right?
So again, the challenges of success. Nobody tells you nobody told me, well, what do I do when I got a thousand dollars and people around me need a thousand dollars? Like should I just give the thousands to everybody that needs it once it were asked for it? How do I become a good steward of what God gave me?
We talking about how to go from nothing to something and these are tough conversations that nobody had like, no, I ain't say when I say nobody, maybe I'm exaggerating. I don't know. Maybe it's people having these conversations, but I haven't found them because when I have my first thousand, my first five hundred probably and things started coming up and I was saying, no, I ain't doing that. No, I can't do that.
People was looking at me like I was crazy. So now I got people that love me that's looking at me like I'm out of my mind because they haven't gone on the journey that I've gone on to become educated or learn whatever I've learned about money. And I don't mean that literally or like that's not a shot at nobody. I'm just saying, this is what happens when you're on these journeys.
Like you find yourself going down the path and then learning and then getting further and further away from the mindset that you used to have, but the problem becomes nobody prepares you for the fact that the other people that you love from that mindset, they don't necessarily change. They don't necessarily leave the mindset that y'all all was in together. And that's one of the challenges again of success. At some point, we all did this together.
We all went here together. We all used to be like this. And then now you start growing. Let's say your goal was just to grow or to stop doing something you used to do.
Let's just use drinking as an example, right? Just an example. If we all used to drink together and you knew me from drinking, I knew you from drinking and like, you know, like you just seen me at my worst, who am I to think that I'm better than you, right? And then just remember success is different, but it's specific.
My success might be different from yours. If successful me started looking like, yo, you know what I need to become sober. I need to stop doing whatever that was. You know what people do and nobody prepared me for this in life, just generally speaking.
When people that you used to do stuff with, find out that you don't do it no more. The first thing they think is that you think you're better than them. It's like, nah, success is different, but it's specific. I'm trying to be better than me.
I ain't trying to be better than you. But then you have to kind of like wrestle with this sometimes on this journey of dealing with the fact that there may be people that you love, used to love, used to hang out with, that don't understand where you at. So then you got to reconcile with the fact that like, dang, I hate that they don't get it. I hate that you think that I think that I'm better than you.
I wish you could see that really I'm just trying to be better than me. But because I'm trying to transition from nothing to something, I got to be okay with the fact that you don't get it. That's tough. We just talking about some of the challenges that come with success and nobody likes to really talk about this part because I think we like to make success seem like we like to romanticize success in a way to make it like, hey, I'm successful.
I have arrived and now I know everything. It's like, no, bro, you could become successful. You know what I'm saying? And still have all these challenges that you deal with.
I want you to think about some imagine becoming successful and not being successful at being successful. That happens to a lot of people. That's why you could be looking at somebody thinking they got it all together and they could be miserable because they haven't even figured out how to be successful at being successful. Right.
So here's what I'll tell you is one of the things that I truly believe is one of the ways that we start transitioning from nothing to something and being successful at being successful is we got to tap into our purpose. Now when I say tap into your purpose, what I really mean is like, you know, let's say again, let's keep it on money. A dollar amount can't really be the long term go, right? Maybe that's where you start because we all start somewhere.
But at some point you might reach a certain amount of money where it's like, all right, is that it? And it's like, no, it got to be about purpose. It can't be about money. And what do I mean by that?
If you want to be, let's say you want, I don't know, you want to be a millionaire. Let's just make it about that. You want to be a millionaire. That's your goal.
You might start off thinking. You're like super easy. And you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm just be lazy.
I ain't gonna work. I ain't gonna do nothing like, you know, whatever. Well, because we talking about as believers, right? God has purpose for everything.
God ain't trying to make you successful. So you can stun on people. He ain't trying to make you successful. So you could just go out and live a greedy sinful life.
Like there's purpose in your success. And so sometimes we're not seeing the purpose in it. Like, why do I even have money? Well, that might mean that God hasn't trusted you to be a good steward.
Oh, man, what do that mean like to be a good steward? Oh, that might mean like, yeah, you're gonna as a result of having this excuse me. As a result, nay, let me, we talk about, talk about success and money and I'm getting choked up. Let me take a sip.
I beat him passed out on this show. I mean, remember where I was at? Tapping into your purpose. You could be, you know, you could be thinking about success and thinking about money, but not realizing that yo, God has a purpose for giving you that money.
So it might be, hey, you're gonna become a better tipper, right? And so then what happens? God started using you, you going out in public, you looking for reasons to give somebody a tip above and beyond, right? And then you might meet people along the way.
Maybe you got a waiter or waitress that maybe they've been praying for something. Maybe they need a hundred dollars for something, right? And that waiter that waitress gave you phenomenal service that night and maybe yo bill was only $45 and you gave him $145 just because again, you're being a good steward and you're being a giver outside of the four walls of the church. We tonight being a giver in life.
And then so what happens? God just use you to bless a person and meet a need for them. That's being a good steward. Now that makes the million dollars that you wanted to get.
It becomes so much more purposeful when you start looking for opportunities to give. Why? Because the Bible says it's better to give than receive. If I want the better thing, then I want to be the one given.
Some of us are just looking for reasons to take, take, take and scheming and scamming and trying to get over on people and stealing from people. It's like, bro, like that ain't successful. Still it? That ain't it.
Like it's just really not it. You're going out and trying to take away from people that and God wants you to be given to bless people that no, we taught my purpose. If it's just about the money, you could go rob somebody to get the money and successfully have the amount. So the purpose has to be also how am I getting the money?
What am I doing to get the money? And then what am I doing once I have the money? We tell them how to transition from nothing to something. And so let's say, you know, now you got, you start reaching these levels and you went from nothing to $1,000 to $10,000 and so on and so forth.
And people will think that, oh, this is all about money. It's not. Do you know how much discipline it takes to go from nothing to having your first thousand and having 10,000? Well, if you used to be a person that was just in pure poverty from a mindset perspective and spent and blew all your money left and right.
And now you got all this discipline, the discipline you can apply to other areas in life. So then let's also say, you know, you were struggling with any type of sin, like it could be anything and you just couldn't help yourself for years. You could not help yourself. You couldn't resist the temptation of the sin.
But this journey that you went on, this simple journey you went on with money started building discipline and the ability to resist temptation. Now you've strengthened a spiritual muscle to resist temptation and it's showing benefits in other areas in your life outside of money. That's what I love about success is that success is this journey that you go on and it's not that the success changes you or should change you. It's the journey that changes you for the better because it's no way that you go on this journey and learn all these principles in the most genuine way and in the most godly way and that you don't become better.
So in so many ways success could make us better if we just had something that we went after. That's why a lot of times you see people that get in trouble, especially like young boys who get in the most trouble is people who don't have they don't have no nothing identified as a purpose or a plan. They just freestyle it. They just waking up and they wing it and what happens when you wake up and wing it is you like, all right, I don't got nothing to do.
We might as well go rob this door. I don't got nothing to do. We might as well rob the bank. I don't got nothing to do.
We might as well go fight somebody. And so that's how sometimes you can see people living the trouble lifestyle and you don't understand what's going on. It's just they have it identified a target. They haven't identified something valuable to go after and then that makes them better and then once they get there, right, you start thinking about how do I sustain this because you don't want to lose the success that you've gained.
You feel what I'm saying? One of the things that I always think about when you think about like how do I transition from nothing to something is this is tough. Man, you have to fight the desire to have survivors remorse. And what I mean by that is it's no different than you think about the war movies where, you know, the dude they went in as friends, they was all together, went to the war and then, you know, they you go to a war and you had six friends and five of them get killed and you the last one.
I don't feel good. They don't feel good at least the way they portrayed in the movies because it's survivors remorse. It's like, bro, like it could I wish it was me. That's like you love people so much that you almost would trade places with them because you would rather see them succeeding.
One of the toughest things to accept in life is like, bro, you can't you can't live for somebody even if you love them. I can love you, but I can't live for you. You got to make your own decisions. You have to accept Jesus for yourself.
Like you go stand before the Lord as you like you can't stand before the Lord as me. And sometimes we love some we love people so much that we're trying to live their life with them. And what ends up happening is it makes us feel bad about being blessed. So a person can make decisions, a bunch of bad decisions in life to put them in a certain position and like not even let's not even making about the decisions they make to put them in a position.
They can decide not to want to get out the position. So let me use that like that better. So let's say it's me and you and we friends and we both in a struggle like we in a struggle in a gutter like we come from nothing and I look at you one day and I'm like, hey, yo, I'm about to get out of here. And you looking like, man, whatever dog you can have that.
And I'm like, no, bro, I'm about to really I'm about to put in a work to get out of here. Now if five, 10 years go by and like, yo, there's progress being made on my path and my journey of success and you realizing that you decided to stay there as much as I love you until you change your mindset, you not going to change. The Bible says in Romans, I think it's 12 and two be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Like the Bible literally says you like you want to be transformed.
You want to change renew your mind, like straight up, renew your mind and your life will transform. But I can't change your mind for you. So what does that mean? That means that I can offer help.
I can offer support. But if you don't want it, if you don't receive it, I can't give it to you. Look, Jesus don't even force himself on people. If somebody don't receive and accept Jesus, they don't have him yet.
He's there for the taking. This is a crazy thing in life. Maybe in potential could be staring you in the face. But if you don't receive it and accept it, it has no value for you.
It's still valuable. It could be valuable to everyone who accepts it and receives it. But if you just keep passing over opportunity, you're going to remain where you at and then what happens to the person that is successful? They start that's they start wrestling with that in their mind.
Like, oh, like, why me? Like, why don't I, you know, I'm saying, but like, you don't have to deal with that. If you want to transition from nothing to something, part of your growth is going to be how do I manage survivors remorse, right? There may be some good purpose that comes out of it, some good things that the good things that the Lord want to use you to do and use your success to give back to other people, right?
But you have to be careful not to allow other people to manipulate you and your success just because you love them or you knew them. And that's what people will do. People will do that. They will try to manipulate you.
They will try to take advantage of you. People will try to make you feel bad for being successful. That's part of the crabs in a barrel mentality is like, y'all, you sold out, you changed, or whatever. And it's like, I ain't sell out.
I hope I changed it since I've been on this journey in life. How are we going this journey in life and I want to change for the better? Why wouldn't I want to improve? You got to, like, if you want to remain successful, like, you can't give in to peer pressure.
And I'm saying that that way because when we were younger, we talked about peer pressure like it's only with kids. Peer pressure happens with adults every day. I would even venture off to say that peer pressure is worse with adults than it is with kids. It's grown people that won't go after their own purpose and they won't go after success because they friends are making them feel bad for it.
No, if you want to transition from nothing to something and you want to become successful and be successful, you're going to have to learn how to tune people out that ain't on what you want. Like, I ain't here to, like, argue with nobody about the path I'm on. It ain't nothing to argue about, bro. Like, now that I ain't saying that I'm above reproach.
If somebody, like, points something out, somebody I love, no interest, reach out like, hey, bro, like, I'm a little concerned because let's have that conversation. But as it relates to just, like, being completely worried about getting everybody's approval and acceptance for the journey that I'm on, why? Because unless you've walked the path, I've walked, you might not even understand it. And that's the problem sometimes with us is we're trying to be understood by people who don't understand.
Like they haven't accepted their purpose in calling from the Lord. How they going to understand what you should be doing. That's why the Bible says iron sharpens iron. You need other people around you, right, reinforcing where God wants you to go, right?
That's success. That's really what success is. And the Bible talks about in Joshua. I want to say it's Joshua.
I don't know if it's the first chapter or not. I don't want to misquote nothing. But in Joshua, there's a, like, it talks about good success. And that stood out to me some years ago when I read it, like, good success.
There is good success. I think sometimes in this world, like good things have been spoken so badly of we think good things are bad. It's like, no, there is good success, bro. There is a proper way to grow and to be successful and develop in this life and in this world.
You just got to hear from God, read his word and pray and trust that he's taking you on that path. And then when you get there, it might be more work to do. And you got to think about, think about the children of Israel. Think about the Joshua generation when you know you got these years, what 40 years of talking about this land, this goal of reaching the land of milk and honey, right?
So you got the promise land and that's the goal, right? That is the goal that was the promise from God. Let's just look at the word. I love the word.
It just speaks to you. So you look at them and then now Joshua has taken over as the leader from Moses and they actually reach the promise land. Imagine that, like reaching something that you didn't see before, but you have faith for it and you get to it. And then it's like, wouldn't you expect just to like walk up to the door of the promise land and say, all right, I'm here to collect the promise land.
Everybody, this mine and walk away. Nope. They had to go over there and fight for it. Literally had to go over there and fight for what God called them to.
And I'm saying that to say, you might reach the goal. You might get to the goal and you thought that getting to the goal meant everything was just going to be easy and that's your mindset. And that's why your mindset got to change in order to go from nothing to something because if you want to keep that success, you might get somewhere to the opportunity to the goal and God is like, all right, yeah, here's the work I need you to do now. So always work to be done in a particular time of season.
And I think when we change our mind, not only does it help us not be lazy, right? And to just think that life is just about just wake up. You just wake up. Life is just not like the fact that there are things to accomplish in a doing life, make life valuable.
It makes it work living and makes it exciting. The fact that, hey, I'm on a journey. I don't want to just reach success. And that's it.
And my life has no more purpose. It's like, no, there may be new purpose when you get there, but you got to see potential and you got to see opportunity. Some people are staring opportunity in the face and they will never accept it. They reject it every day.
When you do nothing, you reject opportunity. When you do nothing, you reject success, you reject potential. And the Bible says the Lord give it then the world Lord take it away. You got to also understand and like part of the reason you got to keep living and keep trusting God and keep growing and be humble with it.
Be as humble as possible. You know, I'm sure we all struggle. I definitely struggle at different times where I have to, you know, be put in check and like, all right, kind of come back to my senses. It can happen to anybody.
Um, but the Lord give it then the Lord take it away. So how you carry success matters because look, I know, man, like I know, like celebrities out here, they, they make success all about material things and like how they throw those material things in your face and all that stuff. And it's like, it's not a, it's not a sin or a problem to have material things. And by all means, I ain't saying you should hide it.
But if you chase a material things to throw it in people's face, I'm willing to bet that internally, spiritually, you still got some things you dealing with. And that's why when we talk about what is success, success for you might be, how do I sharpen and develop my character where I don't got to try to put on for everybody where I'm not doing stuff for people's acceptance or validation that like I'm truly living this life for the approval of Christ, right? That's success. And sometimes we focus in so much on the tangible, worldly material thing and calling that success.
And sometimes that's the result that ain't even success. And sometimes more of that stuff comes more when you ain't even really tripping off of it. I mean, I like just on a small level, I ain't someone not the major, but on the smallest level, like it's stuff that I have now that I know I would have been tripping over when I was younger. Like I know I would have been tripping and probably would have thought I would be acting totally different with this stuff.
But the journey matures you, the journey causes you to evolve and to grow and to develop and become better. And so as part of that, yeah, like people who once knew you might be like, yo, you changed. And sometimes it's like, yeah, I changed, but I'm still the same. Like, because people try to like point out changing is like this negative thing always like, man, you changed.
Just like, yeah, like, I mean, that's kind of what I was doing it for. I was on this journey to change. I used to have a poverty mindset and I would have a wealth mindset, bro. I wasn't, I wasn't reading financial books.
So I could keep staying broke. That is, that doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. But at the same time, I could literally sit here and give you the keys to financial success on a small level, right?
I ain't just small level. If you, if you got nothing in the bank, I can definitely tell you how to get $1,000. And I've told people and I've set with people and I've talked to people and you know, it's crazy. It don't mean nothing unless they do something.
Like, it's just a conversation. If you teach me how to invest, right? And you put in the effort and you, you know, you willing to share with me ideas and thoughts like this is how you invest. This is how it works.
And I sit there and I'm like, cool. And then I don't do nothing with it. It's it has no value for me. And what am I saying?
I'm saying for so many people, you've been given the answers to the test, not to just achieve success, but now to to sustain success and to grow success in a godly fashion. And some people just so lazy or so disengaged in life that they like, they ain't even trying to hear it. It's like, bro, you don't want to hear about how to sustain success, how to transition your mind from nothing to something. Now that you have something, what do you do?
Well, now that you have $1,000, if you never had $1,000 before, you don't go out and blow it by something for $900. Now that you have good credit, right? And you never had good credit before. You don't go out and put everything on credit.
Once upon a time, I have bad credit, right? That is that is a fact people. I had tragic credit. Well, when my credit was bad, it was a result of the decisions I was making because I was putting, getting bad loan after bad loan, excuse me, I was charging stuff that didn't need to be charged, but also just I lacked the education of how does it work?
How does the credit scoring system even work? What should I be doing? Not what I heard. Like some of us hear something.
It's a difference between hearing something and learning something, right? You can hear somebody say something, be like, yeah, I heard that in order to build your credit, but taking the time to learn builds confidence. But then what it also does, it changes your behavior. Once I learned how to grow my credit and then I grew to having good credit in my behaviors change.
So then what does that mean? We talking about I'm successful now what I have good credit now with. Well, now unfortunately, when someone calls me and this has happened to me a hundred times, so no, this ain't about nobody in particular, but when somebody calls me and wants me to co-sign for a loan or put my name on something, why? Because I have good credit and they don't.
That's the reality of it. I say no, I can't do that. Why? Because I'm successful now what?
Now what? I got a certain credit score. Not that I'm in the seven to eight hundreds. I'm not about to let you drag me back down to five thirty five.
That's not happening, buddy. See, we don't we get the success and we never ask ourselves now what or we never ask someone who knows now what so they can guide us and tell us. So then we just go back to what we were doing before we had the success. It doesn't make sense.
I ain't judging you for it, but I'm just saying it don't make sense. I know for me again, once I attained a certain credit score, it's like, all right, what do I do now? Because I knew like I had learned I knew what I was doing when I had that credit. Then I learned how to build my credit.
Then once I had it, it was like, okay, this like how I built it ain't necessarily how I'm going to keep it. So it's like, all right, now we got to be like again, we got them, we got them, we got them, we got them, we got them, we got them, we got them, we got the watch dogs out, a garden to credit score like a month when people come to me asking me is like, nope, I still love you though. And I know you might not understand, but again, I'm successful now what I'm trying to sustain something that you don't even understand. So I can't judge you for not understanding it, but I would be a fool if I allowed someone who lacked education to guide me on a particular topic.
Now, just because you don't know about money, I'm not saying you like education, education overall, I can talk, but I am saying that, listen, bro, if you a foot doctor, I'm not coming to you for my ear, like, no, bro, like I want to talk to the ear doctor. So what am I saying? I'm saying like too many times we're taking our guidance and our advice from people who don't even have the success that we've attained. And we're doing that because we want to please them.
Here's the thing, if you love me, you're going to have to trust me. If you love me, you're going to have to trust that. I love you too. But you're going to also have to respect me.
And this is part of we talking about I'm successful. Now what if you're a person that reached a certain level of success, then you're going to have to start demanding a level of respect in that particular area. I don't mean this in an arrogant way, though. Don't take nothing I'm saying to mean it negatively.
That might sound a certain way to your ears, demand respect. No, what do I mean about respect? Respect my credit score. Respect that yes, we were friends and we were cool and we used to just cosign for each other and everything.
We used to both just be struggling together and didn't care. Now I care. Why? Because remember, I made a decision to care and to go after something.
And if you love me, you should want to see me do the thing I said I was going to do. If let's make it more practical. Two friends both way the same amount. I'm not going to say in amount because I don't want to offend nobody.
Two friends wait the same amount and they say, I, one of them says I'm about to lose 50 pounds. The other one is like I can't do it. They keep doing what they doing. Six months go by the person loses 50 pounds.
You don't walk if you love that person and you don't walk up to them and say, man, you don't want to go to the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factor with me? Come on dog, like you change, bro. No, you a hater. I don't even be calling people haters and you a hater.
You're in the wrong if you're trying to get me to go eat a biscuit and I just lost 50 pounds. You don't love me. You don't miss me that I don't love you because I don't want to go back on the progress that I made. If you love me, you would be knocking a biscuit on my mouth.
See that's the difference. If you watched me build my credit and go from like a horrible credit score to having good credit, you should be knocking, knocking a pin out of my hand if I'm going to try to sign for a loan that you know I can't afford. Where if I'm doing something financially that's going to put me right back in that spot, if you love me, you'll be coming to me like, yeah, like I thought you said it was, you know, not spending like that, bro. But too many times people do the opposite.
We see you have success and they want a piece of the pie. But then what happens when you lose your success because you made too many slices in the pie and too many people freely took it without considering you and not all the work that you put in is gone. I want you to think about this thing. This, the person that's trying to take advantage of you didn't put in the work.
That's really what it come down to a lot of times. They haven't developed the mindset. I ain't even mad. I'm really not even mad at you.
But no, you're not taking my life savings to go and get you some Yeezys. That's not happening. That's not a need. And so I think, you know, part of what we talking about on this journey of finding success and growing in the Lord is being okay, letting other people be adults and be okay.
And that's something that, look, I've had to deal with that for myself because, you know, I'm the oldest of nine and, you know, at different points because of our age gaps or stages in life, like certain siblings of mine, I might have been, I might have been treating you like I was a hybrid parent. I might have been doing things or stepping up in ways that like, all right, you grown up. So, hey, I got to transition to respecting and dealing with you as an adult, right? Hopefully you hopefully I've built enough credibility through the years where you still got that respect for me.
But at the same time, like, I mean, you grown. So some of the like the training wheels comes off the bike at some point, right? Imagine seeing a 35 year old road go bike riding to have training wheels on. You look crazy at 35 years old riding a bike with training wheels on it.
That like, so that's how crazy it looks when we try to like live people's life for them. Like for me, it's like, yo, I have these goals that I'm trying to go after. If you love me, you'll cheer me on and pray for me that I reach mine. I love you.
So I want you to have some of yours. Your goals don't have to be mine. I ain't in competition with you. But I'm gonna be here for iron or sharpened iron.
So when you tell me that, yo, I got to go to buy a house, I'm gonna be on you. Like yo, you going after your goal? If you got, if you got to go to lose 15 pounds, I'm the friend is going, the loved one is gonna be on you. Like, yo, what's up?
Like, like you have four biscuits today. You said you want to lose 15 pounds. Like that, that's to me, that don't mean I think I'm better than you or whatever. I'm welcoming you to like encourage me.
That's encouragement, like for real, for real. And that's how you go from nothing to something. You got to have those things and you're like, look, this was just part one, man. I'm successful.
Now what I want to keep talking to you all about this idea of success and how do we walk in success as believers and, you know, please God, why are we doing it? And also like grow while we're being successful beyond just whatever the results of your success is. Understanding the success is different levels, bro. Successful one person.
So let me say this before I go. A lot of times we think success is a thing. So let's say if, let's say I pull up in the forward focus, if they still make those and then a person pulls up next to me in a Porsche and somebody acts who's the most successful person, I bet nine times out of 10 people are going to say the person in a Porsche. But what if my goal, right, what if my goal was I want to pay off of a car, own a car outright, I want to get the cheapest car I can find, pay it off.
The cheapest car is going to last the longest, right? So that might be like a Honda Accord or a Toyota Camt. Let's just say that. So I pay off my Honda Accord and now I'm riding around in this Honda Accord that I'm going to put 350,000 miles on it.
I only got 60,000 miles on it right now and it's paid off. And that was what I, that was my goal. So I'm successful. The person next to me in the Porsche, they could be successful too.
If their goal was to get a Porsche or something, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're more successful because what if we make the same amount of money, but the Porsche costs more than the Honda Accord and what if I'm because my Honda Accord is paid off with the money I'm getting, what if I'm putting it into more investments. So like you're stuck on the fact that the person is driving a Porsche, which could represent or reflect some type of success. Let's be clear. I'm trying to give you a different perspective though, where it doesn't necessarily mean that and that I don't have to measure my version of success up against having a Porsche or not.
If that wasn't even in the puzzle pieces that I was trying to put together. My puzzle pieces might have said Honda Accord fully paid off. You get 300,000 miles on it at least maybe 400,000. You drive this car for some years.
And while you're driving this car, you keep stacking whatever investments or however you got the wealth that you obtained or a couple dollars. Maybe you learn some of you like, Hey, this is my strategy, right? Now you start running that strategy and you become successful in order to maintain that success. You're going to have to have a mindset, a mindset that wants to grow and develop, a mindset that wants to change for the better that is not going to allow yourself to have survivors remorse.
Although you love people in our empathetic towards their situation, you're a giver, right? So it's not about being selfish because you've tapped into your purpose and now you're going from nothing to something. Look, man, I hope y'all enjoyed this episode two, 23. I'm successful.
Now what transition in from nothing to something part one? That means that I might do a part two to this because I do want to expand on this conversation and you know, keep trying to help people grow and develop on this journey through faith and business. If this provides value, please do like, share, subscribe to inspire guys, people on YouTube, all those good things, man. And look, we drop daily videos, inspiration a day.
The little reels, the short videos is like 15 seconds that you're like, I dropped those on YouTube all the time. So check those out for the people who can't sit and listen to a 53 minute podcast and you're like, bro, I'm good on a 53. I'm really good on a 53. Well, subscribe and you'll check out the 15 second joints.
Look, I love y'all. I bless y'all. Hopefully y'all have an amazing, amazing, amazing day.