Growing up together, I always had to get approved of living the approval to think the proven to be accepted. That shit don't mean nothing to me. I just. I just feel so good.
Like I think I'm in my. I think I'm at my best, the best feeling possible. But I'm able to feel something and be able to react with my emotions and to be able to embrace what I'm feeling and to be able to cry. I love crying on the aspect of life.
It just feels good because I'm letting something out. And I used to remember when I used to be feeling a certain way and I couldn't let it out because of the environment. That said that wasn't cool. I would be soft.
Everybody, welcome to another episode of Impact Theory. I am here with somebody that is going to make your brains leak out of your ears. This guy is extraordinary. He is the one, the only one.
WALLOW267 WALLOW. Welcome to the show, my man. Thank you for having me, Tom. Dude, it is so good to have you.
I am obsessed with people that have a no bs, no excuse mentality. I read your book, which we have here. The mind of wallow267. For people that don't know your story.
You spent 20 years in prison, which seems impossible. Every time I heard it I thought, okay, he got a 20 year sentence, but there's no way he actually did 20 years. He actually did 20 years, which is crazy. You write a book and I want everybody to understand this is after coming out of jail for 20 years.
And this, this was the part when I heard this in the book, I was like, I know why he's as successful now as he is. This is a direct quote. All things you put in your mind of why you can't win or why you can't do this. Oh, they racist.
Oh, this are they hating? That's all bullshit. Make it happen. Let me tell you something.
Every key to every closed door on this planet is, is right here in your mind. All you got to do is believe in yourself and stop BSing. Stop making excuses. It gives me the chills rereading it now.
It really gave me the chills the first time I read it. How? After what you've been through growing up North Philadelphia, what gave you that insight? That insight to me is the difference between success and failure.
If you blame other people, even when it's real, even when somebody is actively you up, if you focus on them and what they're doing and the things you can't control, you will Lose. But if you, even when someone is you up, you focus on what you can do, what you can change, what's in your control. You will win. But that, that insight is hard.
Where did somebody say something? It is about once I sit in my cell and I realize that I used to. I used to chase the police. I used to chase police.
I'd be like in Philly, I was a guy that used to do a bunch of dumb shit and wait a police like yo, come get me because doing dumb shit. So it was like, I can't blame the homies today. I ain't got nothing to do with this. I can't blame like when we go through something, we always look for somebody to blame for our existence in the up place.
No. I paid for the train ticket to here. I paid for the train ticket. I got on the train.
It was many stops before that. I could have got off. No, I went to the final destination. I robbed you in jail.
Oh, let's do it. I gotta do this now. This is my reality. Okay, how did I get here?
Well, I'm pushing that because your punchline is so powerful. But it gets more powerful the more people know about your story. So when was the first time that you were locked up? June 30, 1990.
I was 11 for a couple days. 11? Yeah, I was 11. Philadelphia?
No, Philadelphia. Philippine County. I got arrested for robbery and then a week later, this was on Saturday. Saturday later, I got arrested in September 19, 1990, I got set away for a year, St Michael School for Boys.
I did a year there, came on home, pass back and forth, got came home once, I finished the year, got arrested again, went back for another year and I just was in and out of the juvenile facility for five years. Five years of your youth, did they ever try to help you? Teach you a useful skill? They put me in a habitual finish June.
So I never forget if I had this probation officer named Ruth Marcus. She was a lovely lady. She always tried to help me in every type of way. She was real communicative with my mother and all that.
She always tried to help me get away from her. I got this other probation officer named Denise Lalo. I think she wanted to turn this FBI agent. She was no joke.
Denise was. Denise was something different. Denise wasn't no joke like. And even with her being no joke, she still.
She'd had conversations with me. I think she wanted me to win. She's not angry. I think she wanted me to win.
A lot of times when people bring run down on Us and brings that. And brings that friction. We freeze up and we think the dick is and all that. To me, at the time, she was a dickhead.
But when I think about it as I got older, you know, she just really. She just really was trying to see me win, you know, and. But I was in there, in and out, five years, in and out, that juvenile system. And then when I turned 17, I locked up.
Two hour robberies, two firearm violations. That's why 1990, two years combined, two different sentencing. And like, it was just like, damn. And then when I went to jail, I'm like, over the years, it took some time because you grow.
You're growing in there. I realized, hold up, I spent more time incarcerated than I did free on this planet. Me up. That.
Me up. Like, I'm saying, sitting down, like, oh, this is some crazy shit. So you're just like, all right, cool. I gotta figure this out now.
Now, what is the reality of the shit? What did I do to get here really fast? I want to talk about that moment because so, so far, it seems like you have a litany of things that you could blame from culture determines what is cool. You're just trying to fit in.
You're in an impoverished neighborhood. It's a neighborhood notorious for crime. So you're already putting that. There's sort of generational poverty issues all taken into account.
There's a system that is not exactly preparing you for anything. I've heard you say that the juvenile system makes you feel at home in the penitentiary. It's like a training school. There's a list of things you could blame.
You're still not blaming them for the person right now that is subconsciously or consciously spending their time focused on that stuff. I want to understand how. How you think about. There are real things that are you up.
They're real. Yeah. But it still doesn't help you to focus on those. And I want to know what it is you've learned about life, because you're a martyr.
Like you. You figure out how the game works, and then you go, I'm not gonna judge it. I'm just gonna say this is the best way to play it. And that's what makes you so interesting.
So what was the key insight about how life works that made you go? Even though I have reasons like, these are real legitimate reasons for me to just stay broken, it's not a smart play. Why isn't it a smart play to wallow a nut? Because this is gonna have me in the same place.
I'm in the same place, I might not be gonna cry, but I'm still gonna be living a loser lifestyle because I'm complaining. I'm American complaint. I just complain. Complain.
That shit don't work. I ain't got time for that. Time I got. Listen, Let me play one to you, Tom.
I'm 42 years old, just turned it a couple days ago. Okay. Bet there's a big, is a big. It's a big change that 50, nah, 60%, maybe 80, maybe 90% of my life is going already.
I don't have fucking time. Time is not waiting for me. Time is not my friend and I'm not talking about your type of time. I'm talking about T.
I don't like nobody time hate all of us. Time is trying to stay away from us. You think I'm wasting the rest of the time and I got to be operating out here crying and complaining, blaming somebody? No, I know why I'm here.
Because you know, I was a guy. It was plenty of people that I know that came from the environment, that produces that I come from that didn't go where I went. So what I'm complaining about, oh, this happened. Oh, I was living here.
What about all people? Listen, I know more people in inner cities. That's law abiding, tax paying citizens that never did nothing wrong is. Let me like to not do this criminal.
Now they might over report crimes in my environment through the media intelligence. So you see it, so it makes it look like. But what is it like 1.7 million people in Philadelphia. How many of them do you think it's criminals?
Not a lot, it's not a large percentage. So I'm like, hold up, I can blame all this. I ain't got time for that. Because you think I got 10 years to be blaming the complaining.
You know how much time and energy people spend? The average person, I'm not doing a ballpark figure, they spend years and years, maybe a decade complaining and still nothing change. I could use my time to change my life. I could use that time to break the reality of life and the reality of the shit that I've done to put myself.
I paid for my ticket, I got on the train. It was many stops that came. I didn't get off at the stops. I went to the final destination of the bullshit that I was living in.
I enjoyed being that. I was married to streets of Philadelphia. I enjoyed that dumb. So I had.
Okay, I went through the process of that dumb. I grew up, I evolved from that. Now it's Time to live. Now it's time to just be out on a journey through life, experiencing new things, new ideas, exposure.
And that's what I realized. A lot of us don't expose ourselves to new things, new ideas. We're not open, Open to different, open to change. And that's what helped me.
I came open to all this and so I'm like, okay, damn, that's different. Let me try that. Damn this. Oh, let me try out a plane.
Damn, let me do this like some real shit, you know, like while I'm here, I'm living this out. Because I'll tell you some real time, when I die, it's going to be a party in that graveyard because my tune stone is going to be playing music and bouncing around the fucking radio. I'm not going to be landed because that dash, that's between the year I was born and the year I die, that shit is going to be break dancing off that tombstone. Because I'm leaving all that shit here.
Leaving it here. So it's like why the should I complain? I heard you say once that you only die once, but you live every day. I live every day.
You know what I'm saying? Think about that. That day that you die once. See a lot of times, people for living as.
There's one big thing. It's not the one big thing, it's things. It's days. Every day you're doing something different.
Think about this. 50 something months ago I was sitting in a cell waiting to go to Shout, standing for count. Now I'm in Hollywood Hills gym. Think about that.
I walk right out here and I look at the whole, the whole la. I can see every tired part of la. Every movie I've ever seen, everything I ever seen is right down in there. Think about this, man.
I'm out here doing what I want to do, you know. You know, go from prison to closing multi million dollar deals and doing speaking all over the. Come on man. Fuck it.
You know why? Because I wasn't going to be a victim myself. See a lot of people be victim myself. This victimization is self victimization.
Oh, why me? Oh this is happening. Why this is doing to me? Oh, I'm black.
Oh, I'm this. I live in the ghetto. I'm this. I'm the motherfucker.
I'm, I'm, I'm from deep in the ghetto. I can feel the ghetto time, but I'm making happen. I got to show these young kids in cities of America or kids period. Not just the kids, but I Focus them because they still sponge, they're still impressionable, they're still trying to figure out life.
And like a lot of times adults, they be locked in already know what they want to do. They just know how to disguise the bullshit that they claim that they want to let go of. They just know how to put a different uniform on. Kids they're growing up, they're impressionable.
And imagination is everything. And that's something that's very important in my journey, my imagination. Yeah. So this idea is really powerful.
One thing that to lead up to that. So people really let this one hit. When you say it, the inner cities break most of the people that it touches. Every now and then though, someone comes out and they come out.
So with so much velocity. It was like for them trying to escape took so much energy and they built so much enthusiasm and intensity up that when they shoot out they go really far. You can look at somebody like Jay Z for example. Now prison breaks most of the people that it touches.
For the people that survive again, the same thing, never going back. They build up this energy and that escape velocity is crazy. Part of the reason when I first started researching you, I was like, okay, he got a 20 year sense. There's no way he did 20 years.
And the reason I couldn't reconcile it in my mind you actually served 20 years is you were so positive, energetic, enthusiastic, focus on all the things you were going to make. There was no sense of loss or mourning. It was just like 20 years. A long time, man.
No, but see you got to understand this. I wasn't in jail. I was in Yale. I wasn't in prison.
I was in Princeton. I wasn't in the state Penn. I was in Penn State. How the do you think like that?
Because you know why I took the time. I say, okay, this is time for me to, you know, educate myself. It was, it was this book place that we used order from R. Hamilton's.
I think it was all connected somewhere. Andy, you'll get books in probably like $20 for like $3. I used to get a lot of books. I used to read, I used to read magazines all the time.
I used to study out of marketing because what I used to do is I always watch commercials. I know when myself like why the you always watching commercials? And outside of commercials, I used my charity boarding. The reason I watched commercial so much was because I was always fascinated with like hell, when I went to McDonald's.
That burger ain't never looked like that. So maybe so I didn't realize I was advertising agency as doubles. Then I started studying advertising agencies. One and I would then I started studying.
I read a book by called Damn Good Rice by George Lois, one of the great admin of a town. He did the TV show Mad Menace about him. This dude was ad master. So I read his book.
I'm learning about nano second messaging and all this stuff. I'm realizing the color red is the most powerful market. I'm just studying commercials. I'm looking at things, I'm like, so the whole time I'm in here, I'm just reading, I'm learning, I'm laughing.
And one of my homies said man, why will you have these in jail? I said yo man, I know why I'm here. I'm not here. I'm not innocent.
It's sorry to anybody else. I know why I'm here. I know what the fuck I've done. I know why I'm here.
But I'm not going to be mad. I got to listen. I can see the end of the shit I'm looking at that I'm chasing into the tunnel. When I get there, I'm going to be on point.
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My family members, others people kill ideas. You got idea killers out here. A lot of times these kids, they can't grow to what they want. They live in environments where ideas is beat up.
They gotta suffocate the ideas of somehow they kill ideas and bury ideas because they want to get laughed at or be ashamed of it. So by me going to prison from 17 to 37, you know, experience life, live experience life will destroy your imagination if you're adult. I was out here and I probably live, had A kid went through different kinds of relationships, jobs, this, whatever I was doing got shot. Whatever happened, it started deterioration, imagination.
By the time I probably hit 27, I'd have been done dreaming. I probably stopped dreaming by me going to prison. What it did is it froze the imagination that I had. So when I'm in prison the whole time, I'm not living the life that most people be living.
Beating down, wearing down and becoming jaded and getting ass kicked by life. So when I come out 37, I, I'm still in there reading all type of. And then when it was 2000, you know, 2013, I got my hands on ipod touching while I was hot spot in jail. And when I got that, I came alive.
That's when I came alive. When I seen technology, I seen potential. And I realized, okay, these people don't understand what's going on. I realize the stars, they couldn't see what you humans.
I'm looking at, I'm looking at people from my environment. I'm like, yo, okay, I'm in myself. I'm on social media. I'm going down now.
Social media, the timeline. Everybody's battling for attention. Attention is real estate. Attention is a new currency.
So everybody's battling for that. So I said, okay, you see this athlete, that's why you watching, because you're athlete. If you're an athlete, why would I care? If you're not a girl is half neglect on Instagram, why would I care?
If you're not a rapper, why would I care? That's what the average person say. I realized that social media gave it this gave everybody a stage, but a lot of people don't know what. It's a stage to introduce people to their ideas, their outlooks of life or whatever.
And I also don't know how to capitalize on. So there's an interesting part of your story. You're coming out of prison, you don't have two nickels to rub together. And you've got to find a way to get local businesses to let you be basically their pitch man.
So that's already a procedure. But what I did was I went to these businesses and I just did for free to get my proof of concept. I had to get this, I had to show you, I had to have some proof. So I can take the proof of concept and be able to say, will you go on my page and be able to say, oh my God.
I'll just be able to say, tom, oh my God, I've seen that commercial you did at the rib chat. I want one of them. How much? I'll never forget.
It was a place that was, you know, home healthcare place. They paid me like my first check, it was 500 to do it, to do a commercial form. And when I shot an iPhone or an iPhone. Yeah, I just went there, tell my friend to hold the camera.
I said, hold the camera. And I just did it. And it was like it was out of here. Like I'm telling, I did it.
That was the first time I really charged my fine. I'm like, oh, I just got a job. Oh, there's a market for this. And then I just start charging and then the prices start going up for 5000 1500.
And this is walking up on somebody. You tell me this, how much it costs. I'm looking at doing research on Google, finding out what's the price point. Okay, These are the price points.
Okay, that's supposed to get, oh, I supposed to get $100 for 10,000 followers or whatever. How did you figure stuff out when you didn't know? How am I supposed to charge? Like, I'm Google, man.
I'm Google. I'm Google. I'm an alumni. I'm talking about Google University and YouTube.
I went to universities, dumb about colleges. And I got a degree. I got a degree in information from them two places. That's easy to tell people what you thought when you first heard about Google.
I lost my mind. I thought, I thought this. The kid I'm walking in, she's in prison for a long time. I'm in prison.
So the young kid coming on to his family, whatever, he telling me, yo, this thing called Google. I'm like, okay, yeah, you could look this up. I go look up anything. I was listening to him.
He said, I can't even look up blue. You said, why the would you be able to look at me? I've been jealous. Time.
That don't make a sense. I'm not that stupid kid. I know I'm in jail. I'm not that slow, right?
Cause I'm pretty bleep. So I went and I wrote it down in my book like the book like this. And I wrote a bunch of stuff down. I gotta check out when I get home from jail, things I'm gonna do, whatever.
So, you know, associate of mine gave me the ipod touch and the white clear wireless hotspot. And I'm doing research and I went on Google and I typed my naming and popped up. I dropped the five old feds on me. I was like, I'm thinking crazy.
So I'M prepared, like, oh, this is real. And it was over from there. Once I knew that, I go ahead and research. I'm like, it cut the middleman out.
Like, okay, because now anything. I don't have to waste the time to ask you to try to guess. It's like, you know, we were voting or something. Back in the day, you had to go off the stuff that you see on TV about a candidate because you want to go to the library.
We want to find out where. Can you fact check? So I'm going online. You go online now.
Okay, this is what this is about. This. And that's what helped me so much. Anything that I wanted to do, I go right on there.
How do. How do I do this? Everything. I was getting my YouTube plaque.
I was telling great friend of mine, I was on YouTube. I went on there and just looked it up. Took me a couple minutes. Guy told me exactly to do, get my YouTube plaque, my 100,000.
It was done. It was that easy. So here's the thing that's really fascinating about you. So one, you've got this imagination piece.
You actually allow yourself to be childlike to imagine a world that's like, understand that you're in prison, there's nothing but walls and lock up and just. It would be all too easy to only see the heartbreak of prison. And yet through Anthony Bourdain, through commercials, through other people coming in, I know you said, like, pinning down and asking a lot of questions about terrible people like you, you let your imagination roam. And I don't think it's as simple as, oh, I was in prison.
That froze my imagination. I think most people, their imagination dies in prison. Yours didn't. So you fan the flames of this imagination, you let that run.
While you got your book of life, you're keeping all these notes. But the key fucking thing that I want people to take away from you is you never said, oh, but this isn't for me. It was always, I can imagine it. And I'm going to go make it real in my life.
Everything for me is on this planet. Everything that I want to do is for me. That's why it's here. Everything that you want to do, you can do.
That's why it's here. It is about, are you willing to put the fucking work? And when I persevere, as you persevere to be able to, is you going to stay now, everything you want to do, I don't know what you want to do, you say, damn, I want to be a chef. Did you want to put in the work?
You want to do the research? You want to study the grapes? Or maybe not study the grapes. Or you want to come up with some new ideas and new approaches to being a culinary and a culinary field chef, whatever.
Everything is out here for everybody. That's why it's out here. Once you're able to read, you got all the tools you need. See, but can people understand that's really hard.
So my last company quest, we had a lot of employees. About a thousand of them grew up in the inner cities. And I remember one kid, like, my whole thing was trying to get them to understand, like, that what separates you from success is a lot of execution. That's it.
Nothing else matters. Like, Kobe Bryant has one of my favorite quotes. Booze don't block dunks. You can literally hate a person.
You can actually pay an entire team millions of dollars to try to stop this man from scoring a basket. They have every incentive in the known universe to stop him. But he's so good. He scored 81 points in a single fucking game.
So at some point, your talent just shuts everybody down. I love that about life. Now, one of my guys came to me and was like, yo, Tom, this is crazy. Like, you're making me rethink my whole life.
Because my mom told me that the world doesn't want people that look like me to succeed. He was a Hispanic kid, and. And I was like, bless your mom. I bet she's the most wonderful person on the planet Earth.
But that's terrible advice. And honestly, it doesn't f. Ing matter. Even if.
And this is, like, my obsession. This is why I love your message. Even if the world doesn't want you to succeed, if you're good enough, they can't fucking stop you. And when you take out that middleman and you've got a device like this that lets people build shit, like, literally, you're limited by your imagination and your work, and that's it.
I'm not saying that it's hard for some people. I'm just saying that it is possible. And that's what makes this collision for you, of imagination. And the whole world's here for me.
So fucking magical. Everybody. You know why? Number one, think about the cool thing.
Like you were saying. I got a lot of, you know, like, with me, one of my sayings is, hey, this is your marketing team. Let them work. Let me explain something to you.
You know what haters do? They tell the world about you. They're free marketing. And what they do if you really.
If you really shit out here, you ain't playing no games. And I'm talking about you kicking ass out here. When a hater tells somebody about you and they go look you up and do something, you got new supporters, they introduce new people to you because they always talking about you so they don't even matter. Like he said, booze, do not block no shots.
Yelling and hectin, do not block no shots. They gonna have you leaving the game, telling somebody how you hate me so much or whatever's going on cool to me, this is what we gotta understand. Everything you want is out here. See, to me, the world is one big library.
And everybody's a book. You got books on coding, you got books on mechanics, you got books on culinary, you got comic books, you got street novels, you got crime manuals. Read your books wisely, choose them wisely, watch what books you read. But every human being on here got a journey and they know something that you might don't know.
So it's like everything's out here. But what made it even more possible is that that world is a library. I got in my pocket and phone they gave me, put a computer in my pocket. They didn't up.
They up because that's the only thing I ever wanted was a phone. Coming out of jail, I just wanted two phones. I didn't care about nothing else. Why two phones?
Two phones? Because one, I could be listening to my music when I can record myself. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I'm a real emotional person.
Like, I love to feel. I love to cry. I love to just be soft. I love that.
Because I was neglected from that growing up in the MCS of America because I was taught how to be tough. So now as an adult, it just feel good. It feels so good to be able to cry. Do you get backlash on that from the streets?
No. No, I don't. It don't even matter. I don't run my life, not the streets.
You know what I'm saying? Like, I dictate to life to die. And I'm not looking for your approval to live. I did that too much growing up together.
I always had to get approval to living, to approval to think, approval to be accepted. That shit don't mean nothing to me. I just. I just feel so good.
Like, I think I'm at my. I think I'm at my best, the best feeling possible, but I'm able to feel something and be able to react with my emotions and to be able to embrace what I'm feeling. And to be able to cry. I love crying on the aspect of like, it just feel good because I'm letting something go out.
And I used to remember when I used to be feeling a certain way and I couldn't let it out because of the environment that said that wasn't cool or I would be soft. So it was just like that. Everything, just feeling it, just feeling like. It's hard to explain, but it's like to be.
To not be able to do something for so long, then to grow to understand your emotions and your feelings, it's like that is like everything I'm talking about. That is everything to me. And to be able to feel, because I. I never could feel at one time.
I wasn't allowed to feel. I was taught that wasn't tough. I mean, you know, so like, that is amazing, you know, crying to me, you know, man, I didn't see that one coming. That's.
That's sick. Like, even. Especially in an era where so you've talked a lot about the bottom controls culture, and so you've got these people that you were saying earlier forgotten. But at the same time, that's where our whole notion of cool comes from.
The streets, hip hop music, all that. So even if you're not from the streets, the element of cool, to want to be cool, to not be soft. There's something amazing about somebody like you being who has the bonafides of having been from one of the roughest neighborhoods in America, having spent time in prison and come out okay. And for you to say that crying is everything to me, that's fucking powerful.
I got responsibility to keep young people in a way, because I'm exposed to more things. And I know a lot from being exposed. I've been in some big rooms, I've been to some big places with some big people, some big ideas, some big environments. So I think it's my duty to educate them on life and living as I see it, on the next level, as being exposed.
Exposure is everything. And that's why a lot of people can't grow, because they'll be in the environment. And like, where I'm from, the ghetto, Bill's walls, I jumped over the motherfuckers. You see what I'm saying?
I'm gonna jump over and I'm trying to get other kids. You'll jump over the idea of what you're supposed to be and in spots of what you gotta be in order to be whatever you think is cool or whatever cool is, you. You've got a really powerful idea in your book that you talk about, which is you can't copy and paste your way to success. Talk to me about that in, in the terms of that box of what you're supposed to be and how that sort of in and of itself is going to stop.
You think about this. Everybody got people that's interested into their thing, whatever you want to. So you try to copy and paste. You will see somebody say, oh, I'll do that.
No, no. Just because they wanted that mean you won't do that. Dennis Robin, what I loved about him, all you did was with people. And he won.
That was his style, that was his approach. He's going to foul you, he's going to whisper some shit in your ear. But outside of that, he's gonna grab a thousand rebounds. And he was necessary in order to win.
He broke some real shit there. He knew when he got on the court, this is my position, this is what I can do that nobody else can do. That's why I love him, because he was just different. He understood that a lot of people want to do.
They want to copy and paste somebody else to try to emulate a whole situation that they want to win and be mad when they don't, you know, and that's the problem out here. You can't copy and paste. You know what I mean? You got to figure your life out, because whatever you're doing is going to be some people that's going to.
It's always for everything, I'm realizing. So you got to stay focused on nobody else too much. How people find out, like, what their flavor is. Like so many people.
One of the number one questions I get asked is how to figure that out. Like, hey, cool, I buy what wallet267 is saying, but who the fuck am I? Oh, you got to revalue yourself. You got to have a real conversation with yourself.
Everything's in here. Everything you need to know is inside of you. And you got to get to know you. Sometimes you gotta.
You gotta remove yourself from people, places and things. That's not. It's not gonna allow you to embrace the reality and your individualism of who you are. And that's.
That's what's important. That's the most important ever. And it's already people talking about, why are you asking me? You know, you know your journey, you know what's hold you back, you know the horrors of your life, you know, joys of your life, you know who your parents was, the house you grew up in.
What affected you? Whereas though you feel as though you stopped growing, you stop living, you stopped dreaming, what moment? What was that? Go back and deal with that.
Figure out, you know, if you need a therapist, do that, whatever. But you got to have a conversation with self about the reality of your journey. And once you connect with that, it's a wrap. When did you stop dreaming?
That's a really powerful question. Yeah, because stop dreaming of the imagination of that relationships will fuck you up. Rather friendships or regular love relationships. It's a paralyzing.
The end of relationships. You become paralyzing. You know, you doubt yourself. Yeah.
It makes you do all types of. Now you're asking questions, you're asking all these questions. Person like, don't want to abuse you no more. Why am I not enough?
Oh my God, now you want a depression. All you think about all this, you know, y' all have to get marriages. All this that people up. It's devastating to people, oh, did she know me?
Was I not enough? Did they want somebody else? That's why I say when did your dreams die? What happened in your life where you just stopped and it snatched something out of you and you just start going to a different place.
You start eating a bunch of now, oh, laying there. I don't really all this dumb. When did that happen? When did your dream like.
Because you know, out here a lot of times you got idea killers out here. And sometimes idea killers and the dream killers be yourself. There don't be nobody else. See, nobody can make you do something.
Nobody. If they don't have no guns to you. No like that. You're only doing this because you want to do it.
You know what I mean? So you got to figure out, you can have ideas, you can listen to me, you listen to this person, that person. But at the end of the day, you got to listen to self because you got to get up and figure it out every day while you're here. And you can't waste your time.
If you waste your time, you have trouble because guess what? I'm not wasting mine. No shit. Let's talk about the most powerful force in wealth building.
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I know why it's so dangerous is they're repeating themselves back together, right? So the end of the relationships are broken apart. They had a sense of identity as that pairing, whether friends are romantic. And when that shatters apart now they're like, wait, who am I really?
Maybe I am a loser. Maybe I'm not worthy. And so as they build back up that vision of themselves, it's usually worse. Is there?
You talked in prison. This. I heard you in an interview talking about prison. You said, you know, something happens to your mind when you walk by a guy getting stabbed.
Until the other guy. I had to go insane in order to stay sane. That's why I protected my mind when I was in prison, because I would have ran up against some mentally. How did you protect it?
I protected it because I had to go insane in order to stay sane. Meaning I had to convince myself that all the that I'm gonna see during this journey of prison is normal. If I did, I was in trouble. But then at some point you realize, actually maybe I served me for a while, but now I have to do something different.
Or did that mentality carry you all the way? No, what it did is I learned how to after a while. I removed myself from a lot of people in prison, a lot of things. I stopped having certain conversations, stopped being around certain people.
If I've seen, if I felt tension, I wouldn't go to the yard or all type of shit. So I wouldn't have to be exposed to a lot of more shit. In the prison, you exclude yourself. You don't have to go to certain places.
You know, you do your own thing and. But it was a time where it protected me. It really protected me because, you know, prison is a scary place. And when I was first went to prison, I was scared to death.
I thought somebody was gonna try to do something. We don't know because I'm only going off the tv. But I heard. And the.
The education of prison based off the entertainment industry is so far off. It's so much more barbaric on tv, you know, than it is in real life. Like, people being in your mind in the business, a lot of times when that go down and go down, you'll see some. But I'm saying that's how I protect myself.