Unfazed Under Fire Podcast
Welcome to Unfazed Under Fire, a podcast designed to help senior executives lead with greater impact, resilience, and well-being. Each episode is rooted in proven, systemic frameworks that empower leaders to achieve extraordinary results, foster high-performing cultures, and thrive in today’s complex and unpredictable business environment.
I created this podcast for two key reasons:
First, to provide executives with leadership principles and culture-enhancing frameworks that support them in turning their visions into reality and achieving their goals.
Second, to challenge and inspire the leadership development and executive coaching fields to adopt new approaches—particularly breakthroughs in neuroscience—that accelerate growth and enhance leadership effectiveness.
In a time of global crisis and unprecedented challenges, business leaders are uniquely positioned to drive change that unites rather than divides. By embodying enlightened leadership, executives can create environments that unlock the full potential of their teams and generate innovative solutions for a better future.
If you're an executive committed to this kind of leadership, this podcast is for you. Let’s shape the future of leadership together.
Unfazed Under Fire Podcast
Election Series #2 - Empathy and Empowerment: Navigating Censorship, Political Influence, and Leadership Transformation with Gary Lamb
What if you could harness the power of empathy to navigate the turbulent waters of political influence and censorship? Join us as we explore this question with Gary Lamb, a YouTube creator and entrepreneur whose journey of resilience against censorship and political maneuvers underscores the fight for individual freedoms and the American dream. His story is not just about overcoming obstacles but about empowering others to do the same, especially as we approach the decisive moments of the upcoming US presidential election. Gary's insights invite us to challenge prevailing narratives and think critically about leadership in a complex political landscape.
Women's unique wisdom and emotional empathy take center stage as we delve into the nuanced perspectives they offer. We explore the dual nature of being driven and empathetic, unraveling the struggles of navigating emotions as an empath and the potential for both profound connections and manipulation. Our conversation finds its sweet spot where creativity and passion meet, highlighting the joy of the journey over the pursuit of recognition. Coupled with this are reflections on leadership disconnects, particularly between political figures and the communities they claim to represent, with a keen focus on the black community's viewpoint.
The episode culminates in a heartfelt discussion on family values, societal shifts, and the pressing need for leadership empowerment. By examining the effects of welfare on Black families and divorce on white families, we uncover the systemic issues that pervade our communities. Our dialogue emphasizes the crucial role of traditional family structures and the transformative power of embracing executive leadership. As we push boundaries and embrace empowerment, we underscore the importance of striving for social change and ensuring that the freedoms defining our society are employed to leave a positive impact.
Connect with Gary Lamb:
- https://www.youtube.com/@GaryLamb2020
Support Gary and His Work:
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=AV74P8M6GW5KY&source=url&ssrt=1728310959075
Unfazed Under Fire Podcast - Host: David Craig Utts, Leadership Alchemist
Welcome to Unfazed Under Fire, a podcast designed to elevate your leadership and amplify your impact. Each episode offers valuable insights to help you transform your vision into reality, cultivate high-performing cultures that attract top talents, and navigate the complexities of today's uncertain, chaotic world with confidence and clarity. Now tuning into your needs, here's your host and moderator, seasoned executive coach and leadership alchemist, david Craig Utz.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to Unfazed Under Fire. I'm David Craig Utz, your host at the Leadership Alchemist Now. This show is dedicated to helping executives like you amplify your leadership impact, gain fresh insights and build the resilience necessary to thrive in today's unpredictable business world. However, I am in the middle of two episodes that have a bit of a different focus right now that are dedicated to the upcoming US presidential election. So I, as I said in my last podcast, I am stepping into the political fray a little bit. In our previous episode, with Ryan McShane, who was the founder of HR Evolution, we explore the upcoming US presidential election through the lens of leadership, examining the qualities that matter most when we're choosing a leader for such an influential role at such a critical time in history. Now, if you missed that, I highly recommend you check that out, because it lays some of the framework for the conversation today.
Speaker 2:However, today's episode stands on its own, yet takes a different but equally important approach. It's not just about leadership at the highest levels, but about how the political landscape impacts our individual freedoms and our ability to pursue the American dream that's baked in the principles that this country was founded on. Now, for those who've seen the Matrix, you'll remember that pivotal scene where Neo's offered the choice between the blue pill to remain blissfully ignorant and forget about what he saw and taking the red pill, which will allow him to wake up and see the truth and have to live with it. Well, over the past several years, I've had many real red pill moments myself, and some of that I shared in my last show with Brian, where I realized the powerful narratives grounded in half-truths and outright lies are being put out there on purpose, influencing people's perspectives that steal our alien rights to be free and to think for ourselves. As a leadership coach, I always teach my clients to ground their beliefs and facts and evidence. The first law of critical thinking is to question anything you're told and, second, to do your own research. When we don't challenge the stories we tell ourselves that are being told, we risk making decisions that undermine our success and, worse, our freedoms.
Speaker 2:Which brings me to today's guest, Gary Lamb. Gary is a YouTube creator and entrepreneur who has experienced the consequences of rising censorship in his country. His journey is one of resilience, as he navigated significant challenges, including censorship, that led to personal hardship and ultimately woke up the forces woke them up to the forces that are limiting our liberties. Gary's story represents what many Americans have been experiencing, especially in recent years a confrontation with the realities of rising censorship and nefarious political influence that can dampen our freedoms and dreams. He's turned these challenges into a mission to help others navigate these turbulent waters, and I'm honored to have him on the show and share his vision with us. And this is an important conversation about what's at stake not just this election, but it's our ability to live the ideals of liberty and opportunity that define the American dream. So appreciate you being on the show, Gary. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you very much. I just had to turn my uh mic off come on, no worries, oh my god.
Speaker 3:So first of all, I'm nervous?
Speaker 2:no, no, worries, no, worries, don't be nervous. I pretty just be yourself, man. You're great. Um, and in the first and foremost, I want to say a few words, more words about you.
Speaker 2:Uh, just to introduce you, gary is because gary is a man of deep integrity and humility. As you just saw, he's a self-taught editor, producer, writer and content creator, a special talent for short-term content. And he's also very humble, has come from very humble beginnings marked by periods of poverty. He's always embodied the values of hard work and perseverance. His blue-collar roots and life experiences have instilled in him a strong sense of compassion and drive to help others. He is the proverbial poster child of a servant leader who is deeply passionate about fairness and justice, and he stands firmly against prejudice and arrogance. He believes everyone deserves a fair shot of freedom and success, especially those who have started with very little.
Speaker 2:And I met Gary because one of his videos showed up in my feed and I felt very moved by the video and he was kind enough to make a time to get to know me a little bit. And since then we've become fast friends. I've been on Gary's podcast and he's now being on mine. I'm glad to have him here. I see Gary as a visionary and a giant among giants. Really, his relentless pursuit of mastery drives him, even as it challenges him. He's also described as a deeply empathetic person, whose ability to connect with people from all walks of life, whether they're business leaders or the homeless, and the mix of those two cause him challenges at times, which I'm sure we'll get into in the podcast, but they also remain his greatest gifts, and I've been very much looking forward to having you on the show. So again, welcome, and is there anything else you'd add to what I just said that you feel needs to be said?
Speaker 3:Only the fact that that was the best introduction I've ever gotten. That was beautiful, but no, you hit it right on the nose.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I want to start out today, like I start out with all my podcasts, and I'd love you just to share a little bit of your story from your upbringing, how you got to where you got today, and we're going to go into all the challenges you faced and the vision you have for a world that came out of that. But I want to just have people get a flavor of you as a human being, an individual who's been through it in life but also has rose above it.
Speaker 3:Okay, so I didn't ask how deep down the rabbit hole you wanted to go. So what do you want? To keep it more of a cosmetic background.
Speaker 2:No, I want to get to know Gary as the human being right now and we're going to go down the rabbit hole, but I want people to get a sense of who you are and where you came from and what you've been dealing with, and then we'll go into all you've been through for sure.
Speaker 3:Gotcha, because I got to ask that question, because we can be all day.
Speaker 2:I understand where this could go. Ask that question, because we can be all day on this one topic.
Speaker 3:I understand where this could go. So I was born and raised by a two family household. My father died when I was 16 years old, which was where I lost my guidance, my compass, and I've been stumbling through the dark ever since. So I just decided to follow the beacon of good. Right, it didn't really matter what it was, it just just follow it. If it's good, follow it. It started off with the feeling of good. All right, this feels good, so let's go with that. Well, this doesn't feel so good, let's not go with that. Oh, this feel really good.
Speaker 1:Let's go with more of that.
Speaker 3:So I started filling out life that way, because without a commas, how can I do it? So when I started realizing there was a huge emotional disconnect between language and people, when I realized that there was a disconnect there, that's when my problems really started for real. Because I came from a household of say whatever you want to say, when you want to say how you want to say, and that's that Right. That doesn't translate well in the business world, just don't. So I was struggling with that and I had to learn a whole new language, a whole new way of being, and that's close to impossible in an environment that I was born in. So my father broke his butt to get me out of the poverty mentality, the mindset, the environment, all that jazz. He did his best to get me out of there.
Speaker 3:We moved from, and we moved many times, moved from um, uh, essex to specific, to passeo, ultimately um. But we got out of exes county and went to passeo county. When I was an adult I was in passeo county but I got an opportunity to experience white culture, um, I got to go into white people's schools and learn from their books and learn from their teachers and I was so, I was so behind in like every subject, everything I was failing miserably, um, so my father, eventually we, we lost that house and we, uh, moved to Montclair and Montclair was more diverse, had more of a you know flavor to it, and that's where I really grew. My roots was in Montclair. So Montclair was very diverse, as I said, and I was able to, I was able to see a different way of life. It was the one on one side, it was poverty, where every man's for himself, every woman is for himself, and then it goes into this high city type of environment down to a diverse environment Right.
Speaker 3:So I was able to experience all three. And when I start learning that there is something called kindness and there is a certain approach you're supposed to take when you get to certain people, talk to certain crowds, I learned all that. So by the time I was on my own, I pretty much knew how to take care of myself. But I learned that I had to figure out that barrier, that language barrier, and boy was that tough. That was tough, but I got through it. And here I am in front of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, appreciate it. Tell me a little bit about your, your dad. So he, he clearly, uh, if you just be willing to say something about cause he sounded like he was a very important influence in your life. You saw what he's trying to do for you. Probably by the time you're 16, you figured that out. What was, what was the relationship with him Like? Just if you wanted to share it a little bit.
Speaker 3:It was um, um, as I remember it, it was the most pleasant relationship I've ever had. It's beautiful by far. Um, my dad was extremely understanding, um, but he was stern, right, he was kind, but he was principled. He was very loosey, goosey, but he didn't play when it came to his kids. So I learned, I learned boundaries with my father, not with my mother, because the bound because there was no boundary that was, um, untested by my mom.
Speaker 3:It was just she tested everybody, she did just what it was. She's going to go against that boundary and that's it. That's the mother that I had, and my father had to learn how to be real loose with his boundaries to almost silly putty in order for it to work with my mom. But he still had his limits, and that's what I learned how to do. I learned how to um, roll with the punches, if you will, through my father. Uh, I learned how to deal with difficult situations. Um, we might get into some of those stories later. And, um, I learned never give up for my dad. I mean, my dad, to the day he died, was trying to be a singer and that's what he was going for. He passed away at 36 years old. That's tough. I mean yeah, because he thought he hadn't made much time with me. Right. Here's the thing Fathers generally get to really start getting access to the children after around 12, 13 years old.
Speaker 3:That's about when we start getting access to the children.
Speaker 1:Prior to that, it's all. Mom, ask your mother, ask your mother, ask your mother Right.
Speaker 3:So my dad lost the house when I was 13, 14. That's when he was starting to have his real health issues, because he was a diabetic and he was not meant to laugh. He was not meant to to see the age of six, much less the age of 36. So there you go with his health issues and, um, he didn't have the right information about sugar and all that other stuff. I have it now myself because I researched the crap out of it after killing my, my dad. But it was that his body was felling him and he thought he had more time. And then he realized one day he didn't. But by that time I was still trying to figure out what a teenager was like. I mean, I was constantly bouncing from that tough spot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because I'm bouncing all over the world Until we got to Montc Like I haven't stayed. I wasn't in. Until we got to Montclair. I wasn't in a school system. That was longer than two years before I transferred to another school and that was going on most of my life. That was going on most of my life. So when I got to Montclair, being there for the whole four years was unheard of. And then still being there after that was just comical at that point, like how is this working? But we was able to stay in Montclair, which was great. So, yeah, I learned a lot from my dad when it came down to that, but I didn't learn how to navigate emotions. I didn't learn that. I had to learn that the hard way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, we all have to kind of learn that. Yeah, would you remember any messages he said to you like son, this is what I want you to know about life or about what you have to do to succeed. Any messages that you remember from him? Women. He told me everything I needed to know about women.
Speaker 3:That's important, that's an important yes, that's important information yes, it is.
Speaker 2:I wish I would have met him.
Speaker 3:No, just kidding oh, but no, but seriously he was. He was a beast when it came out of women and um, he just, he just knew how to deal with them and um, it was, it was. That's what I learned how to. That's why I'm so passionate about talking about women. I, I'm so passionate about it. I talk about politics. I have to. I don't really want to, but I kind of have to. I feel like I'm being led in this place, so I got to do that, but I'm I'd much rather talk about women.
Speaker 2:Well, what's so, what's a couple of things you want to say about them right now. Since you're talking right now, what is it that you, what is it that they bring to the table, that you know, and how to, how, the importance of their presence in our lives, those kinds of things.
Speaker 3:They bring how can I say this? They bring the wisdom to the game. They, because they have the other side Right, so they can bounce. You can say something to a woman, right? So if you're, if she's emotionally connected to you, she will, she'll let you in your camp Say something yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, you'll say something to a woman and she'll tell you why you're wrong on her side, not that how you're wrong on the man's side, but how you're wrong on the on the on her side. This is how you would be wrong on her side, because she has a whole set of life experiences that you don't have. Yeah, and when you realize that that is that that is the other half of the equation, we go back to the drawing board and said all right, cool, with this newfound information, what do I got? And it points you to the right place.
Speaker 2:So it sharpens your focus.
Speaker 3:It's like putting on glasses Right, like you know you was in. Hd. Now you in HD, you know what I'm saying. So.
Speaker 2:Oh I thought that was through, though that's through. They do have the hd lens.
Speaker 3:They have the hd so it's like when you got that, that, that, that that pencil, um, you know, jot it down and you now know where your point is going. It's much easier to drive. But when you're not really sure where you're going, what are you doing? You're looking at the road signs, you're seeing trying to look down the street.
Speaker 2:We didn't get contracted to the shiny baubles and all the other things.
Speaker 3:Right, we all go to place and wonder why we running into stuff. You, you don't know where you're going. You know what I'm saying, but when you know where you're going, you just chill. You like this focus, you know what I'm saying you know, in 3.5 miles this turn turn is coming up. Boom, boom, boom, boom boom, you know. So that's that's what women bring to the table. Unfortunately, they have been taught that they need to bring correction, which is not what they need to bring. That's what we bring. I got it.
Speaker 2:Well, I appreciate you sharing that and sharing your background, and I have another kind of a new direction to go, just to go a little deeper about you. You indicated that you have this, both this drivenness and this empathy, uh, or one that feel. You know you, you feel intensely but you also feel driven. Um, tell us about the blessing of that and the curse of that, or maybe you can start with the curse of the blessed, of the blessing seconds, let's, let's end on a positive note.
Speaker 3:Okay, so you want me to start with the negative.
Speaker 2:Sure, why not? So we get in on the positive yeah.
Speaker 3:All right. So I'm going to put this All right. So I try to break things down into the simplest terms I possibly can. And I know everybody loves most men love tinkering with stuff. Most men love things that lead to something, right? So Imagine you're in a boat and you said talk, start at the bottom. Ok. Imagine being in a boat in the middle of nowhere. Ok, you can't see land for miles. You're just in the middle of the abyss. Do you care what's moving past you when you're trying to catch on to something, yeah, you don't care if it's negative energy, you don't care if it's positive energy, you just know it's not nothing Right? And that's the drawback of being an empath I might catch on to the wrong energy because I'm desperate for something, and that's-.
Speaker 2:You're looking to feel something. Is that fair?
Speaker 3:I'm looking to feel something and that's a very dark place to be. So I was numb for a long time when my dad died. So I had to feel through physical emotions, right Like what felt good to emotions, right like what felt good to my body, what felt good to my flesh, because I didn't know how to emotionally connect to what happened to me. So, um, I was stuck and then I didn't have any you know, father figures to come and pick me up. The closest thing was my um cousin kenny, which was a. He taught me how to, he taught me how to, he taught me how to do business, and that was a beautiful relationship. But I had to walk away from that because he was into narcotics and I just couldn't get it into that.
Speaker 3:My father made it very clear we don't hurt people and that hurts people. So I couldn't get into that Um. So I started to run from that, especially when I saw how much money it made. Oh boy, I had to get out of there. So I was efficient enough to learn that, but I still was searching through the dark emotionally. So I connected to everything that was able to. I was just giving emotion away, I was just giving that energy away and I got hurt a lot doing that. Yeah, it can deplete you.
Speaker 2:to get you hurt? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Yes, it will.
Speaker 2:You give trust too easily to people.
Speaker 3:You trust too easily and people take advantage of that, especially when they find out how sweet you are. Oh my God, you're this sweet. Yes, more, more, give me more, give me more. And then the manipulation gets stronger and stronger and stronger. They're attached to what you're giving gets, they get addicted to what you're giving and they don't give anything back because they don't.
Speaker 3:One they don't know how to right right and two, they don't know how to say no to something that's pure right. They're like oh, this is amazing. And they, you know, the worst thing you, uh, worst thing a homosexual could say to you is some, there's something about you. And the worst thing that a woman, a woman, can say to you is something about you. And the worst thing that a woman can say to you is there's something about you, because one is going to run and the other one is going to hold on Guess which one it is? Because they've never gotten that experience of love before, that affection, agape love, and that's nuts. But it also can be very, very manipulating on the empath side, not their side on the empath side, and I learned how to manipulate people with that. So now you're going down the dark.
Speaker 2:It's like the worst side of the survival instinct. We're all trying to survive, so they're trying to suck away from you and you're trying to hold on to what you get from them. And it's not really a relationship, right, it's a I'll give you this, I'll get this, and as long as we're getting and giving what we need, this is good. But as soon as that starts going and the scale starts going, this tip in the other side, you're talking about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean agave love. You're talking and you're willing to go through that, and that's what love is all about, right, so really beautiful. So so on the other side of this, what?
Speaker 3:has it given you to have this combination? Oh man, like the good side of this is I connect, I like the. The bonds that I create are profound, they're amazing, they're, they're, they're sincere, they're authentic, they're. Take it like it is with love, yeah, and when you have that, oh my God, that, that, that that ability, it flows through everything, like it flows through the relationships.
Speaker 2:Would you call that your tribe? Is that your tribe? You're kind of connecting no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 3:That's just the energy.
Speaker 1:See okay.
Speaker 3:So as an empath okay, I'm using the word empath. I really would like to use the word father, but this is conducive for now. I really would like to use the word father, but this is conducive for now. As an empath, I can connect to you on such a level where I'll have you think about me when you have a problem, right Dang, I think I wonder what Gary would say about this. And because you know enough about me, you don't even have to ask me, you don't have to call me. You already know what I'm going to say and you know what I'm gonna say and you know what. He probably be right and you'll be able to move on because you're having it.
Speaker 3:You're having a sticky patch emotionally and you don't know how to get out of that and you're not sure if you're being bullheaded or right, but either way, you're not getting what you want and you want to find out how to get what I want. What do I want? I want, I want that, but I can't get that. And I know I'm right about why I don't have it, but I still don't have it. And that kind of bond, that kind of connection, it's almost like a transfer of energy and you hold on to it. That's the type of bond that I create with people, so I don't necessarily have to be your friend for you to get that right and then your drive is mixed into that.
Speaker 2:so if you, if you look at you, know your creation of your youtube stand and your continued effort to do that and you're putting a lot of good content out is is there a mixture of the two that happens with that, like, do you see how they're they're connected at all at all, or how you?
Speaker 3:You're talking about the dark and light energy.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm talking about the, the talking about the you also. You're very driven, so there's a mix of impet and driven, which can be kind of conflicting at times, Right.
Speaker 3:Oh God, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, but there's also there's a mix that can happen a sweet spot with that, when you have the drivenness and the joy and the empathic feelings. Where do you find that sweet spot?
Speaker 3:Okay, where do I find that sweet part? When you don't care if it makes money or not, that's when you know you're in the sweet spot. When you don't care about the outcome, when you don't care if it gets a lot of views or don't. You don't care if it lands hard or easy, you're just proud to be able to do it. Um, that's when you're, that's when I know that I'm in a sweet spot where it's obviously authentic. Yes, I'm not doing this to hurt anybody, but at the same time, I'm doing this knowing that I'm giving glory to somebody anybody, I don't care if it's three people. I'm giving glory to somebody. I'm giving somebody juice that they might have not had before. This is not about, you know, going out there and getting 50,000 views on a video. At that point is did I edify you enough to move closer to your goal? Right, that's when I know I'm in a sweet spot. Yeah, I'm talking to you, I can.
Speaker 2:I can, I can, I can relate, I can relate, I can relate to that. Um think that's one of the things that I'm hoping that all we're going through right now is being opened up in people. Is that essence we all have within us, that when we're doing the time and I do help them, but it's like before you get there, what do you care about? What floats your boat, what is your purpose? Oh man, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That kind of thing, Because, that drives usually good outcomes eventually come out of all that. Right, it's not like you don't do bad stuff and you don't get followers, but if that's the reason you, you're doing it you tend to. It's paradoxically short term you may get more followers, but long terms you long terms. That falls off the clip, but you're on the law. You're playing the long game. That's what a visionary does. They play the long game and they recognize that there's going to be obstacles. So you're really speaking to what executives deal with. They have to play the long game and the problem is, because of quarterly reports, they sometimes have to play the short game at their own detriment, because the long game isn't tolerated.
Speaker 3:David, you have hit the freaking bull on the head with that one, because, let me tell you something A lot of times, playing a short game sucks. Oh, it sucks Because.
Speaker 3:I got to get money in here, yeah, and I gotta grind up this. And that's when you know the driven part, that's what gets you through, right, the perseverance, right, the ability does just power through it. Um, but to get to that one video that took 40 videos to get to, yes, and you finally get that video and you see why it hits. You see what hit and you're like, why can't I just do that? Because that's the video that I want to do. All these other ones to keep myself relevant is just in the way, but that's the one I want to do.
Speaker 3:But it's hard to get to that because there's so much stuff in the way. And I think the reason why so much stuff in the way is because we put it there Right. We're focusing more on the goal than the journey and that's that. That's where we get sidetracked, because I want to see the numbers go up. Yes, I need my dopamine hit, right, so I need that Right. All right, I got to be able to pay the bills this month. I got to do that. Right, I'm under the gun, you know. You know, wife is yelling at me about something I can't remember and I'm mad because I need to remember that, because that's supposed to be my most important prospect, but right now I'm putting her on the back burner so I can pay these bills Right? Yeah, got it.
Speaker 2:Well, well, that's that's the quadrant we all face in life, right and then and you know like to me it's, it's it's learning where to trust yourself and let go trust life and and and know that the game kind of comes to you when you're in your heart. You know that's, that's what happens if you're focused. It's not about just feeling all the time, it is about being focused and on point. I love the mixture of the drivenness and the feeling, because if you can get that sweet spot, then you become a magnet for what you're looking for. Sometimes that magnet is slow, yes, but you do become a magnet, you start you start.
Speaker 2:You start attracting people, attracting opportunities. They may not even seem to be strategically, but you just do it. You just know you have to do it and then you do it. My God, I'm glad I did that, because now it connects to this person, so those kinds of things happen.
Speaker 3:And that's why I picked up the phone.
Speaker 2:Why I picked up the phone, picked up the email and called you because I was moved. I said you know that's exactly. I have no idea where this is going, or whether he'll return my call or whether he wants to, but talk to this man.
Speaker 3:But that's what they're trying to stop right, Exactly.
Speaker 2:You know how long.
Speaker 3:David, let me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:You know how long I've been wanting to have these conversations Almost 17 years. Yeah, I started YouTube so I can have these conversations. Right, that's why I started YouTube, just so I can talk to people like you, right, men? Right, because we couldn't talk Everywhere we went. We was not allowed to talk. All right, that's true, they always put something in the way and it made it where we couldn't just have these conversations. So, um, I've always wanted to have them. So when you called me up, I was, like you know, saying like, okay, let's see where this goes. You know, oh, my god, oh my god, you know, let's do it right. But that's the again.
Speaker 3:If you're not in a place of of acceptance, which a lot of men aren't in, because you know they've been burnt hard I mean hard it's like how do you repair that? And that's why I'm I'm pretty much like angry about being an empath, because I feel all that. You know, I don't just feel the women's side, I feel the men's side too. I feel the silence that's coming out of you. I can, I can see your stonewall, bro. You're not fooling me. You know what I'm saying. I see straight through your defenses. I used to have those. You know what I mean. So it's like that's, that's rough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we've got a generation of men who are stuck in the social media jail and that's reality for them. It's tough and I don't want to divert too much because I want to stay with you. We have another conversation there. But before we kind of dive into some of the things that I know we want to talk about, I want to set a context with you about what your vision is we want to talk about. I want to set a context with you about what your vision is, because I know you have a passion and vision to help people escape poverty, mainly through entrepreneurship, if I got that right, or maybe through understanding what groups of people don't understand. I watched your video where you talked about how we have the opportunity. There's plenty of opportunities. I'm doing a summary of what I heard in your video. I can't remember what it was titled we have all the opportunity.
Speaker 2:We just have not been directed on how to leverage and take advantage of that opportunity. There's nothing wrong with this country. There's nothing wrong not from the point of view of how it's been led. There's problems with how it's been led and what we've done in the world Plenty of that. We've been the most violent country in the last 50 years. That has to do with leadership and the people that are in charge of our country. It doesn't have to do with the basis of our country, and so I wanted to have you talk a little bit about. I know we're jumping over some things, but I wanted to use it as a context to step back in, if that makes sense. You've come to a vision. Tell me a little bit about your vision, about what you want to see in the world and how you want to contribute to that, as much as you want to share about that.
Speaker 3:As much as I want to share about that, all right, you're absolutely right. I look at it like. This is how I look at it. There's far too many people speaking for me who don't know me, and that's the bottom line. How can you ever speak for me when you've never spoken to me? The black community is doing this and the black community is doing that in the black community. Well, I'm the black community. I've never heard one conversation with you ever. I've never had one, right?
Speaker 2:So how in the world can you tell me about me that you know something about me, right?
Speaker 3:Right, like, like, like. I'm not going to say any names, but like a lot of the the, the black faces that you guys see, right, they don't speak for us, ok, they do not speak for us, they speak for themselves, and they always speak for themselves, is not? They don't party with us, they don't. They don't come have, you know, a brew, ski or whatever. They don't do that kind of stuff. You know a Mountain Dew, that's what was his face name. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 3:But the point is is that we don't. We don't have those conversations with these individuals, and yet they know exactly what we need, right? So I don't know where they're getting these polls from, but they are completely ill informed getting these polls from, but they are completely ill-informed. And then we have the other side trying to listen to what has been said on the news and decipher what is necessary to be put in a Black community or whatever. How do we bridge this gap, instead of just walking over to the Black community and say, hey, what do you need help with? You know how easy that would be, not this? Well, we gave the funding. We never got to it. It never got to us. Y'all now seeing where it's going, right, you know how long black people have been yelling about this, but the what they're trying to do is stop the bullhorn. Hello, you're connecting the work. They're finally connecting. This is what Donald Trump did. He connected the workforce with the billionaires. That was a bad move for America the way it stood at the time. Yeah, because the middle.
Speaker 2:Current people in power would like it to remain.
Speaker 3:That went against because they're the middleman, they're the ones that get the money first, so they decide how you get it Right, right, so when, when, when, when Donald came up and this is what got me to really vote for him he said what the hell, what the hell do you have to lose? He named this directly. He didn't know that was against the rules, he had no idea he was just running for president. I think that's what made that pissed him off their work class. Just they just lost their workforce, just like that, and because people were starting businesses left and right so I was one of them. So that that biggest, the biggest problem is that we have middlemen, all right, we have middlemen who have their own agenda and they spike the prices up three times over every employee that they have, and you wonder why we can't get ahead. Well, duh, here it is. So I think that's what's wrong with it?
Speaker 2:got too many middlemen. Well, I also saw this and again, you know this is where I'm stepping into territory that I'm still learning. I'm learning. I listen to Candace Owens a lot, I like her a lot and she said that there was two issues that they haven't even touched and all their help the literacy rate in our community and and how their policies have reduced fathers in homes. We have like seven out of ten homes without fathers and you just talked about your father just a moment ago and the impact he had on your life and that is not happening, for you know girls and boys in homes that don't have dads. So I mean, I don't know if that also points to something as well, but to me there's real. I don't. The second one probably isn't as easy to fit because we've let it, let it get to the place it's at. It's going to take time to build that back up, but the other one is really easy to fix. Which one is that? The literacy, their literacy rates? Not really. No, it's not.
Speaker 1:You need fathers to fix that.
Speaker 3:See the the main problem that we have is that we have a lot of boys that don't know how to learn in a woman's school. Ok, they don't know how to learn there, so you can teach them the book, but if you don't teach them how to read the manual, it doesn't matter. You know, what we tell our children in a black community which is really destroying us is pass the test study for the test. Just pass the test study to put a test and you're good. No, I need to read the manual. How does this stuff works? Yeah, but there's no manuals, there's just test books. And that works great for the female mind.
Speaker 3:Most females do very well when it comes down to that, but a lot of men. We need hands-on, we need to do stuff. You know saying show me how to do it, and that doesn't mean we can't be literally literate, but me connecting the dots and making fun, making learning fun has to have a tool in my hand. It's like I'm raising sons, right, I gave them tools. That's how they was able to learn. I don't really, you know, say my son, he was, when it comes down, and they're both special needs. One wasn't supposed to be able to really speak. Now he's given freaking essays and stuff like that, because I gave them tools. And Candace Owens is right, they know if we got rid of the father, all that stuff would fall apart. They knew that. And then they gave us terrible schools. Now the schools they just pass you through. They just pass you through and it's almost like getting you out of their hair because they don't want the numbers to look bad. We got a whole season that we want to talk about that after the election.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I mean. So what you're saying is and I hear you saying is I don't know if I'm getting the center of the trail right All the people that get you to pass the test and all the ways that they pass you through the schools, In a sense, is that the middlemen that are getting paid to make sure that those results happen.
Speaker 3:Those are the middlemen.
Speaker 2:Those are the middlemen. So what we do is we put these people in schools and we teach people how to create the tests, make sure they pass the tests you know other things that you said and we get those results so we can look at the charts and say, look at how people are doing on test scores. They're doing better on test scores, which has nothing to do with the actual practicality of living life. There you go and learning how to take advantage of the opportunity we have. They're not teaching civics classes. They're not teaching entrepreneurialism. They're not teaching civics classes. They're not teaching entrepreneurialism. They're not teaching engineering. They're not teaching things that could actually help an individual thrive in the economy.
Speaker 3:They're not teaching you how to work with your hands.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:They're not teaching you how to work with your hands. They're teaching you how to work with manipulation. What do you?
Speaker 2:mean by that?
Speaker 3:Okay, so I have this type of degree in this, I have this type of degree in that. I have this type of degree in that. So I'm worth this? No, you're not, but that's what you think. You think you're worth something because of the money you spent on it. That has nothing to do with me as an employer. This is how much you're worth. I don't care what you say you're worth, but this is how much you're worth.
Speaker 3:And that inflated ego that comes along with the one who do believe they're actually worth that it destroys the market, because now they're saying, oh, you are not worth it because you don't have this credential. You don't have this credential. You don't have this credential, but you don't even have people skills. You don't even know how to treat people on that level. And you wonder why you suck in business. You suck in business because you're not paying attention to people. You're focused on the numbers. You're focused on the graphs. You're focused on all the other stuff're focused on the graphs. You're focused on all the other stuff that makes you feel good. Yes, and have you drive your Mercedes-Benz, but the people are suffering.
Speaker 2:You also get your pay because you're doing what they ask you to do to produce certain results that really don't mean a lot. Exactly, you're giving them statistics and numbers and you're putting so many people through a program, and that is where and what's happening on the other side is intellectual arrogance, thinking that matters. There's probably belief. I would say that there's probably some fervent belief that we're doing good, but it's really doing nothing but but, and this is why when I what was her name?
Speaker 3:montgomery, she I forget her first name, but uh, black, the black woman that that went with trump and basically told harris off on that, uh, and she went viral. Basically they had her on. I think it was fox or something or other. I can't remember her name, but you guys can look her up at another day. But, um, you hear how she handled the guy who called her up, trying to pretty much tell her off, in a very, very sarcastic way. She took it to and you could see her eye doing this. He and you know, and basically that was like you know, you on my nerve, you're getting on my nerve, you're working my nerve and she told him off in a way that was very, very womanly. I guess I can't say I don't know which one.
Speaker 3:It was elegant he got it talking to she told him off elegantly because she worked through that, but the real uh would have been mother effer, who the hell you know, saying like who you think you're talking to but I can't come off that way.
Speaker 2:Now I'm angry, right right, exactly, but this person just insulted her intelligence on such a level yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3:And it's like how could you? It happens all the time.
Speaker 2:And it's a surfacy level of the conversations. I'm so confident in this surface level of knowing and as soon as I've run somebody that has had the experience or has the depth of reflection, that has done some critical thinking and realized what the real issues are, I meet that I have no defense. No defense against it. Let me ask you a question going back to what you were talking about, your vision. If you were in, if you had control over some power to make changes for impoverished and African-American communities, starting in the school system, what are three or four things that you think could happen that would make a huge difference for kids and get them ready to actually be in life and take advantage of the opportunity in this country?
Speaker 3:For the school systems.
Speaker 2:Well, however, you want to answer that based on what you know and what you're passionate about. I mean, I it doesn't have to be in the school system, but just thinking about like, if, if, if they would take that money and invest it in this way in, in 10 years you would see our community rising economically, or in shorter time than that four or five years, you see us rising economically and, and shorter time than that Four or five years, you see us rising economically and contributing to society in a whole different way.
Speaker 3:Give the authority back to the mother and dad. Yeah, that's it, no other. There's nobody on the planet Earth that's going to take more attention, pay more attention to children than their own parents. But they have to be able to do that Right. They can't be stuck at a job for 80 hours a week, and that's where we are right now. Parents are stuck at jobs for 80 hours a week and you wonder why the kids are falling apart. There's nobody, nobody. There's nobody that's teaching them the ropes. Nobody, there's nobody that's teaching them the ropes.
Speaker 3:You know, the best thing that a child can see is the mother and father argue and sit and then next next day playing and hugging and stuff. You know what I'm saying. You know I love you. You know I love you too. You know I love you. So we can argue and still love each other. Really, that's possible. We don't have to do the whole divorce thing, Right? You know what I'm saying. So you know, if you can put that back in the kids, the kids would do far better in school.
Speaker 3:But what's going on? You're working too hard just to keep on, and I say this all the time. I keep saying this If you really want to fix your children. Sell your house, Just sell your house. Invest back into your kids. That's how you do it. But too many people are investing in my image. Oh, my God, I'm this and that Again, all that puffed up ego. And then you wonder why you're being put in a home at 60. Dude, that's what you did to your kids for the last 20 plus years. You put them in a home. It's called school, but you put them there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, again, this goes back to what we value in the society versus what we ought to be valuing, and we've gotten I don't know your thoughts on how do we get so far away from those values? Do you think that's been on purpose? Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 3:We've educated people out of this Pardon. They made sex free. Okay, that's how they did it. They made sex free. And when you make sex free, you create a market. Right, and that's what they did. They created a market. Now, now women can't compete unless they're out there giving it up, can't compete no way. Most men will stand around longer than three minutes, let alone 30 years, if they. You know, that's real talk. That's real talk. That's what hurt. That's what hurt us. But you know in, that's what hurt us.
Speaker 3:But in order to make sex free, you have to give women financial power. So when you give financial power to women, what happens? The GDP goes skyrocketing. The GDP go way up. So your country looks good because your GDP is high. But what are they buying? They're not buying tools. You know what I'm saying. They're not buying tools. You know what I'm saying. They're buying stuff more paper, more debt. The average woman is how many thousands of dollars in student loan debt? Yeah, and you want to be a mother after that? How are you going to figure that one out? You can't handle a kid right now. You're too much in debt. So I need a man that's making four hundred thousand dollars a year, because that's what I need. And then you find out the man that's making that kind of money. You realize, wait a minute, I don't want him, but I have to take him. See that, now you got that. Now you got to go right back to the free sex thing, and then that's the problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that seems like there's a kind of a mindset that's been generated. How do you break through that mindset? I guess some of that is we're waking up to it now. What specifically would there has to happen for it to be a shift back to what you're saying is family, right Back to recognizing the value of that being the central core of our society? That sounds like I'm and I'm and I'm and, as I said in my last podcast, I've been Democrat my whole life until very recently. You know that. So I drank the Kool-Aid for a long time. I believed it until I started seeing things happen. I'm not going to go into that today because it was in my last podcast.
Speaker 2:You know the story because I was on your podcast, but there's like something about how we've been slowly. It's almost like the water has been turned up. You heard a story about the frog in the water and the water gets turned up and it doesn't realize it's getting hot until it's boiling and dies. But it feels like the temperature in the water has been turned up little by little and here we are. Who's benefiting from that? My question is follow the money? Who's benefiting from that? It goes back to the middleman. It goes back to how we've treated structure for people to make money. Why we're in war right now is not what we think. It is Things like that, so a long-winded way of getting back around to. What do we have to do to change that, gary? What do you think we have to do? We got to raise men.
Speaker 3:Got to raise men. That's the only way you fix this. You fix this by raising men, and the only way you can raise men properly is in a mother and in a dual family household.
Speaker 2:so you're gonna learn so. So I'm gonna go ahead. I'm going down the rabbit hole a little deeper with you right now. I, I apologize for interrupting, but it feels like a good time because I, I, I feel what you're saying. Do you think that the depletion of fathers and homes in the African community was a strategic, conscious move, or do you think it's just what happened?
Speaker 3:because it's a hard question.
Speaker 2:It's been across the grain. We're not're focused. I'm focusing on african-american, but there's many. You know white men, you know our men, right? No, no, no, no, no, I know this is not a.
Speaker 3:This is not a. This is not a racial or sexual conversation. This is a human function in all of us. It's, it's default. Okay, right, if I close my eyes and I put you in the same situation that I was in, you would have found the path that was best for you, and you will still get through it, or you will die, right. Right, but you'll be just as jacked up as I am. It got nothing to do with better or less or not. No, this is a human functionality. You put somebody in that situation. They'll find their way out, but they're going to bump their head a bunch of times. I don't want to say this is because the same thing's happening to white people. You know, you can. You can say that welfare and the government split up the black man and woman, and you will be right. But what do you think divorce is doing you?
Speaker 1:think. You think because you call it something else, that is not doing the same exact thing.
Speaker 3:You know so, absolutely. Just, they just change it up, you know. So, yes, I do believe it was directly dealt to do that. Now, I don't think they meant to do it.
Speaker 3:Two white people, I think what happened was A little leaven leavens, the whole love, right, you do a little bit, it gets bigger and bigger, and bigger, and bigger and bigger and bigger and before you know it, you got this thing spiraling out of control and you don't know how to catch it. That's what I think happens to the white community. You can't deny people getting funding right. You can't. You can't deny people getting funding Right. But what happens? When people get funding and they realize that if they decide to try to get out of it, it's going to cost some more, they say, well, it's better, I'm better off just staying on the system than going out to work, and that mentality does, you know, speak volumes to a lot of people. So you want to get people that want to do that. Then you get people that's just want to get off for no matter what I do Right.
Speaker 3:But yes, to answer your question, I do believe they did do that on purpose. I believe that they saw these uppity inwards getting uppity too much because we wasn't stupid. We saw what was happening. You know we were saying the same thing now that we were saying then you say you're going to do something and then you don't do it. You say you're going to do this and you don't do it.
Speaker 3:You got all these Black people right now saying what are you going to give for your vote? What are you going to give for your vote? Well, you even heard Kamala say I can't just come out and say I'm going to help Black people. Why can't you? Trump did, and that's another reason why a lot of people are looking down the rabbit hole. But tell somebody who's never had a father you need a father. Good luck with that. Good luck with that. It's not going to work because they're going to say I never needed a father. No, you need a father. But you don't see it because you're living in an area of experience that you get away with that.
Speaker 2:Well, you're in condition that that's OK. Somehow you think it's OK. Right. Right, you know, and and so, yeah, I appreciate that. But you know, the bottom line is that we we've kind of got what we've got right now and what we have to do is move in a new direction, which I think is part of their main reason. And I want to see. If it's okay, I'd like to go for another 35 minutes or so. Is that okay with you?
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it, because we're just getting into some good stuff here. Okay, cool, and you'll have to come on. You'll have to come on again, probably.
Speaker 3:If they want me up, I'll be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate it. Okay, I want to back up.
Speaker 2:Like, I know that we talked about some big stuff, we opened up some can of worms here, but I want to back up to your experience and how you got to where you got today. How you got to where you got today. So this is where I want you to share about your creativity and how you started building your YouTube station and where that went and where that brought you to and where you are today With all these things that now you feel. I feel like I don't know if you would say three years ago I was thinking about what I want to do the same way as I do now. No, but life has kind of forced you into a place where you say, yep, this is where I'm being called.
Speaker 2:This is where I'm being called. I don't like what I just went through and I realized I went through that because I learned something and now I'm called. That's what I feel. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 3:That is fair to say. That's very, I feel. Is that fair to say? That is fair to say. That's very accurate, because I started with YouTube. I remember YouTube in its heyday, when it first started up. I remember my very first video that I set up. I don't have it, but I remember. They deleted that account, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I was using a lamp in this old well, it was state of the art back then, but it was old and I bought me. I still have that camera, actually. I bought me a DSLR and started to utilize that to do my videos and then I discovered that you can make money online.
Speaker 3:When I discovered that it was game changer for me, um, I went really, really hard for about six, three, three to six years. Um, half of it was, most of it was offline work. Uh, most of it was offline work, but it it started online. This is why I think that I have an idea that's going to blow people out of the water, because I know how to do it. I've done it many, many times. I've pulled myself out of poverty three times now and I can do it. I mean I'm not saying I like it, I can't do it. I mean I'm not saying I like it, I can't stand it. I never want to go through it again. But I know why I went through it. Right.
Speaker 3:Every single time I went back to poverty there was an economic crash every time and I got shook off the ledge, like when I first started doing. Youtube was prior to 2000. No, it was post 2008. I was in mortgages at the time and all of a sudden the economy blew up and you know that whole old saying first hired, last fired. I mean last fired, first hired. Well, that happened to me. I was a first hired I mean last hired, first fired and at the time I didn't know what to do. My wife was seven months pregnant. I just bought me a brand new car and they just suspended my license.
Speaker 3:Now, if the license was suspended for something I did years ago when I was like 16, 17 or whatever, I had my license Don't get it twisted. It wasn't like I was breaking the law, I just didn't have any insurance. So I got in a car accident and then, several years later, government came after me and said you got to pay this. If you don't pay it, we will not reinstate your license. So my license was suspended for five years. The government said we need to stop doing that to people.
Speaker 3:That cripples men. The ability to move is insane. You can't cripple men like that. So that's got to stop. But how would you know if you never get, never experienced it before? Right?
Speaker 3:So I have nowhere to go. The closest job I can get is 30 minutes away from where I live, because it's close to impossible to get a job in a black community, not because there's not jobs that's being had, but because you have to work for a corporation that doesn't pay much. Or you have to go 30 minutes, 15, 30 minutes away from where you live. And when you bring that money back, it doesn't bounce around, it doesn't go to. Your landlord is not black. Your landlord is not black. Let's just say that he's putting his kids to school. You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 3:So, and the people that you buy the food from, the people that you buy the groceries from, the people that you buy the gas from the people that you go get your tires rotated from, they all have businesses, but you don't. You have a job, so you're the one supplying them with their income. Um, but it's just easier and cheaper to go to the tire shop down the street with Pedro, who can't speak a lick of English, because he has those used tires for a hundred bucks, as opposed to having to go to Firestone, and you got to spend $600 for a fresh pair of tires, cause they don't sell used tires, you know what I mean. Or you got to get six hundred dollars for a fresh pair of tires because they don't sell used tires, you know what I mean. Or you got to get a whole new tire because the nails in is too close to the sidewall. Man Like I can't use a pull a plug. But this is what they teach you, right? So I have to do what I have to do because it's a more expensive in the hood.
Speaker 3:So what was I going to do? I couldn't get out there. I had no license. They just repoed my car because I lost my job. My wife is um seven months pregnant, so what am I going to do? So I started YouTube. That's what started YouTube A crash. And every time there was a crash, I came back to YouTube.
Speaker 2:That's how I got you did. Did okay on YouTube too, for a while.
Speaker 3:The first time around it was in Open City, it was Wild Wild West. Anybody could do good on YouTube, because it was fascinating to listen to people talk about nothing and all of this stuff and just have a good conversation about good things, where you didn't have to come up with thumbnails and tags and hashtags.
Speaker 1:good things where you didn't have to come up with thumbnails and tags and and hashtag this and you had to.
Speaker 3:You had to do all that, just had a conversation that was just, that was edifying to the soul and boom, you did good. Right now you got to compete with all this other stuff. Thumbnail have to be just right, you gotta. You gotta send it out at the right time. It's just like crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just nuts right but that.
Speaker 2:But but you, you did. You did earn some money to support your family through doing that, uh did I?
Speaker 3:I was making bank. I was making bank, um, because I wasn't doing political stuff. I was teaching people stuff. I was teaching people how to dig themselves out of the gutter. Right, I was teaching people because, keep in mind, even though I lost my job in 2008,.
Speaker 3:It wasn't that I lost my job that hurt me, I lost my ability to drive that were hurting. I couldn't drive. You got to understand. I've always worked with my hands, always. There's always a bike that I can get my hands on, I can sell. There's always something I can get my hands on to do something.
Speaker 3:It was just what it is I'll clean your carpets, bro. I'll clean your carpets. I'll paint for you. I'll clean your carpets. I'll, I'll, I'll. I'll paint for you, I'll. I'll knock down that wall. You need me to knock down. I was a beast, yeah, but when I lost my car, I couldn't get to the job. What's the point of having craigslist when I can't get there? You know what I'm saying. So I lost my ability to to drive. So that's when I went to YouTube, right, but yeah, I was definitely doing well, because I was teaching people how to do that. I was teaching people how to get off their butts, how to stop having excuses and showing people how to do that online, which is very, very, very tough to do, because I can see the potential in you but you can't see it. That's beautiful and that's problematic for you and for me, because I want to see you do good but I can't get you to do good.
Speaker 2:And I can show you.
Speaker 3:I can show you the way. If you're not willing to go. It's nothing I can do, though that's right. It's been a lot of times.
Speaker 2:What did you get your follow? What were your followers up at the peak of your success on youtube? Where were you? What were you?
Speaker 3:I didn't have much many followers it wasn't this is, this is the, the, the, the channel is this the channel make money no, this is not the channel um, I didn't have many followers. I didn't need them. I had quality followers. I had quality prospects. I wasn't going for views, I was going for a specific prospect.
Speaker 3:So the people that were coming were coming consistently, and when they were coming to you that was helping with the advertising piece for the YouTube. They were coming to learn how to make money, yeah, and I created a path where they didn't have to have money, right, so that's what I was doing. Path where they didn't have to have money, right, so that's what I was doing. Now, what I started learning after the fact is that YouTube was trying to snuff people like that. They didn't want those type of people on their platform, so they started taking them out. I didn't know why, but I guess people was complaining about the path or whatever. What have you? I really don't know, but I got snuffed, my channel got snuffed and they took down my website. They said I'm no longer to use their advertising with my website. Agreeing with it, didn't? It didn't, um, convert at all, because the type of people that I was going for need to be led right.
Speaker 3:They see a whole bunch of words. They just walk away, and this is this is the painful reality of attempting to reach people in poverty. They're not going to read your book, dude. You're not. You're not told to read the book. When they see words, they they think test, I got to learn all this. Nah, I'm good. You know what I mean? They don't see journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's a motivational aspect due to keep them inspired and giving them real practical things that they could see and do something with that's what you were doing. And that's what I was doing Even before, even before that was so. So you were, in a sense, snuffed out because of that, because that didn't align with YouTube's business model.
Speaker 3:No, it doesn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so tell me a little bit Was that the time when you know you was that was you? Did you have a comeback from that, or you never had a comeback from that?
Speaker 3:So I never had a comeback from that. Right, I never had it, because wise men build their house on rock, not sand. If you can just snuff me like that with no real explanation it was. The same thing is today. They don't tell you why they took you down, they just tell you that you're down. They don't tell you now.
Speaker 3:Now I saw some hope with the way they took down candace owens. They gave detail on why they took her down, so now she can fight it. She knows how to fight that, but prior to that there was no reason. They don't tell you why they do it, and she got her stuff back really split, and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that YouTube might be trying to work with people I don't know, but that's promising in my opinion, because normally you wouldn't get even that. So, um, but back then youtube was dead set on just not telling you, not nothing, not give you any information. You just got to figure it out and it's like how can I figure something out? Because they can't. They don't want to be publishers, because they're not a publisher, it can't be labeled as a publisher, so they can't tell you.
Speaker 2:But you're treating me like you're a publisher so, if I let me play devil's advocate, I want, I would like, to push back on this. Like okay, well, youtube gives you a free platform. They have the right, if it's not making money for them, to pull back on that. What do you say to that?
Speaker 2:uh, if it's not making money for them yeah, I mean, in other words, they pulled back for some reason because they there was something about what you were doing that they didn't like. But it's a free platform that you were making money on, you know. So I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to understand. I like thinking about the audience's thing oh, no, no, no, there was no such thing as monetization.
Speaker 3:Back then I was using adsense. I was paying them to run my ads. Oh, got it, got it, got it. So you're paying them to run your ads. No, no, no, no, no. I was completely different ballgame, I was paying for my ads.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, so you were paying the money.
Speaker 3:I was at the level where I can, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:You were paying money and they still canceled you basically.
Speaker 3:They still canceled me.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah yeah, yeah, got it. That makes sense to me now, thank you. Thank you for clarifying that. That makes a lot of sense. So you are, you are giving them money, but they, for whatever reason, didn't want this kind of station on. So was there, was there something you know different about? When you came out with your video about tim fool and second tim fool and how that affected you? Was there, was there a different impact of that, or was it in the same category or because of my my? I've tried to see where that connection happened and then that, certainly after that, things really spun out of control. What did you talk? A little bit about that well when I okay.
Speaker 3:So when I came back to youtube, I never really left youtube. I've been using youtube for decades. Um, that's the platform of choice for me. That's the one I grew up with, that's the one I'm loyal to. So when I see what's going on, it's almost like I'm weathering the storm with YouTube, because I'm the audience that they started with and once we're completely gone, youtube is going to die because nobody's going to care about YouTube the way we do. Yes, so I don't want that to happen, but YouTube is making it very difficult to stay.
Speaker 3:And what brought me back from YouTube? Because I didn't come back to make YouTube, to make money on YouTube. I just came back because I just wanted to have a say, because that's what I really was using it for. I was using ads to get people get in front of people to run my business, but I wasn't. It was legit. It wasn't no sketchy stuff. It's just that my website did not. They didn't approve my website for whatever reason. But once that happened, I really didn't want to be bothered with that, because I didn't like the idea of being knocked off just without no explanation. I hated that.
Speaker 3:But it's still freedom of speech. I could talk about it or whatever I want to talk about. So I will come out periodically to talk about things that was bothering me. I got a video up here. Never mind, I'm not going to talk about that one I have. I'm going to talk about the other video that I got. I have another video. I have multiple videos talking about relationships and just sharing my grievances with what's going on.
Speaker 3:I didn't know, I didn't start learning about what was going on in our culture until late, late, because I'm I'm my hands to the plow dude. I'm not. You know, youtube is entertainment for me. I'm not trying to. You know what I'm saying. It's just something to do whenever I want to do it. I'm not trying to make anything happen with it. I'm out here doing my thing. I'm taking care of my kids, taking care of my wife moving. I get to a place where we're doing really good financially, the best we've ever done ever in the history of our relationship. We're doing excellent.
Speaker 3:But I'm afraid to speak my mind. Me, I ain't talking about you, david, I don't care about you. That's your problem. I couldn't speak my mind because I was afraid it might mess up my money. Yeah, keep think about this for a second. All I had to do was go, become compliant with youtube and I would have started to be made. I would have been able to start making the money that I was making again. I told youtube to kiss my butt I'm not doing it and did something else. That's the type of man you're dealing with, and now I'm afraid to speak my mind. How did that happen?
Speaker 2:yeah, well, what? What was that about? What was it? What was the fear about?
Speaker 3:I was not allowed to like my president. I wasn't allowed. I'm hearing about people losing their jobs because of their political views. I'm hearing people going, you know, being uh, being pretty much crucified for saying trump, and all of the other stuff. I'm seeing trump getting destroyed everywhere. I mean destroyed, destroyed. I mean they're going after this man and I'm like what happened? Like he's a this, he's a this. I mean prior to uh, 2016, trump was awesome. Everybody loved trump. Trump was awesome. Everybody loved Trump. Trump was awesome. He was on.
Speaker 2:Oprah, he was on the View.
Speaker 3:Everybody loved this man.
Speaker 2:I think he went to Chelsea's wedding. I mean, he was everywhere, right.
Speaker 3:He was loved by many and then, just like that, they turned on him, just like that, and I'm thinking, all right, okay, whatever. But then I'm starting to notice that people were treating you differently when they found out you was a Trump supporter, mm, hmm. So I got scared about talking and speaking my mind. Keep in mind, I'm a 10 99 or. At this point, I don't work for nobody, I work for myself, right? And even then I was afraid to you see what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:So when I was seeing that.
Speaker 3:I was talking to my, my, my boy at the time, my, my best friend, not my boy. I'm talking to executives. I gotta I'm talking to executives. I got to talk to executive talk. Well, I was having situations, you know whatever, but I was talking to my boy, kyle, and he was in a donut shop or some type of shop and we was talking about Trump and we were talking about how much we appreciate what Trump was doing for the black community. We was like yo man, I mean. I got your money Huh.
Speaker 2:He did a ton.
Speaker 3:He did a crap ton and this is why it shocked the heck out of me that so many blacks turned on him in 2020. You know what I mean? That shocked me Like what? But then you start realizing the demographic who turned on him. It wasn't the working man, it was the educated black woman who turned on him, and because he's not like there he's. He's gaining steam now, but up until that point he wasn't like there.
Speaker 3:Because of all the news saying he's a racist, this, he's this, he's this and when you can't get your message out to that person, they default to the one they're seeing and that's the machine that pretty much destroyed him. They did the same thing to Michael Jackson. They did the same thing to Bill Cosby. Why are all these people? Why are we knowing about this? They're doing the same thing to P Diddy, but nobody's listening to, nobody talking about Ellen and what's going on with her. Why is that? Why ellen not as big as p diddy right now? Because that's what they want to push. It's their machine. They could push whatever they want.
Speaker 3:So people know about ellen, but not many people are talking about ellen, not as much they talking about p diddy. So it's like this kind of stuff is going on and you realize that this is just their way to say look over here so we can do something mysterious and malicious over there. So, uh, I'm again back to the story. I'm talking to my boy. Uh, we're talking about how we love trump and how we love what he's doing for us, and we're starting to get terrified because we're seeing the change where she we're starting to experience. I'm losing friendships over conversation.
Speaker 2:Well, this was his post 2020 election. This is opposed to the election, so you're this is before.
Speaker 3:this is before the 2020 election, right before the 2020 election. I'm losing friends over conversations and I'm like dude, what are you talking about? Understand that he the people that was I was talking to was still bound to a corporation. I wasn't bound to a corporation, I was. I was making my own money on the street, so I see money move differently than somebody that's on credit. You know, I work for you, then you give me a check two weeks later. Then I pay my bills bills that's credit. Okay, yeah, yeah, I got my money first.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I got my money before and I decide what I want to do with it. Done the work's done. I get paid that day. That's $150. Right now I can go buy a bike, turn that $250 into 300. And I'm looking at this on our streets.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So it was easy for me to be a 1099er, because all I needed was cash. That's what they interrupted. So I'm sitting here like I'm doing great Things are wonderful. Everything's moving, my business is starting to flourish, I'm building my credit, I'm paying down bills, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do with money, because that's what money does. Money paid down bills, money paid debts down that's what they don't want circulating. But the moment they start realizing it was too much free cash going through the black community, they had to stop it. They had to stop it because you don't want us flipping our money like that. What? And you believe?
Speaker 2:that free money moving through the black community had a lot to do with Trump's policies and what he was doing. That was.
Speaker 3:He was absolutely yeah yeah, because we was no longer relying on we wasn't lying, relying on the end of the year, uh, lump sum of money that, the taxes, that that you get from your taxes.
Speaker 3:We wasn't relying on that we was able to start making money between one another. I was able to do business with other cultures because I now had money. All right, when you're on a system, you can only do business with corporations. You can't do business because the corporation is the middleman. They hire you to talk to your customer. That's how it works. You know you're the one serving the customer, you're the one doing, but they give you the supplies. All right. So when you think about it that way as a business person or whatever, what have you, you see you don't need them. You need funding, but you can't get funding because you don't have the credit score that you need. You don't have the connections that you need. You don't have the business know how that you need. So you're defaulting to what the corporations you have to.
Speaker 2:Whereas you were finding more fluidness in the economy with Trump and his policies, which allowed you to work more on cash and flow cash and leverage cash, and that was what was being shut down. That began to be shut down close to the 2020 election. No, it wasn't shut down at all.
Speaker 3:It was booming. Remember before, before they shut down the country, america was kicking one of the best of.
Speaker 2:It was the best economy in my lifetime, for sure.
Speaker 3:Well, people forget that everybody was happy, like yo at door dashes was. I don't know, was door dash back then? I think they were. I know uber was and I was doing uber man. People were happy. But there was a second section of people that was very furious. Those were the people who liked service.
Speaker 3:Um, I'm gonna leave it at that because I don't want to blow anybody out for whatever I'm thinking right now. I don't want to do that. But people because it doesn't. Because if I say the word and I'm thinking it's going to label a person and I don't want to label that person because it's not, it's, it's a spirit, not a label. But labels hurt. You know, when you're attached to a label, you get what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:So, um, I'm sitting here watching this happen. I'm watching people afraid to say trump. I'm watching people losing their job because they're saying trump or at least being I browbeat and I didn't know what fascism was been back then. I didn't know that's what it was. I just thought this is weird. This is really weird. Why can't I? And I said to my friend while he was in that shop I said say Trump. He said no. I said say Trump. He said no, I'm not saying Trump. I said why won't you say Trump? He said I'm not saying Trump. Then he walked out of the establishment. Then he said Trump there. I said it. I said that don't count, nobody can hear you. That's when I made the video. We're talking about something that we are afraid to talk about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in a country that has a First Amendment.
Speaker 3:Right, and that's what made me do that video.
Speaker 2:And then, and it's from there that things begin to spiral down and in the that was after the, that was after COVID.
Speaker 3:Has they reopened the country? People are getting back to work. Trump is fighting for the presidency. They're introducing all kinds of new stuff that you're not familiar with. All this was going on, thank you, tim.
Speaker 3:It didn't start spiraling out of control until year About year two in Biden's presidency. Yeah, that's what it really started to spiral out of control. I was already struggling by that time because they depleted my money. Right, countries shut down. I'm making moves that are based upon getting this lump sum of money at the end of the year that was due to me because I worked hard and I was supposed to get this money but it was held up. I didn't get my tax return, it held it up, which to me, is seed money. That's the money that I need to do what I got to do. So I'm thinking I'm about to re-up. No problem, credit's stacked, I mean stacked. I'm like 780, 785-up. No problem, credit's stacked, I mean stacked. I'm like 780, 785 score. I go in this thing. I'm going to do this. You know what I'm saying. Got a great credit store, I got 10 Gs coming that's going to replenish the 7,000 that I lost during COVID, and an extra $3,000 to do what I need to do Right now. I was supposed to have 17 grand that's what I was going in with, but 10,000 is enough.
Speaker 3:I didn't know they was going to destroy the country the way they did. I knew they was going to make it bad, but I thought at the very least it is still be as good as it was when Trump left. No, they, they reversed everything. Yeah, everything, full stop. Good as it was when trump left. No, they, they reversed everything. Yeah, everything, full stop. Reversed everything. In an economy with an influx of immigrants that don't belong here. Yes, I didn't know nothing about that. That I didn't know. I didn't know that people was coming into the country illegally. You know what I'm saying? Um, I've already, I've always had to deal with illegal immigrants my entire life, because at the bottom, you are going to deal with it, right, that's your competition, basically. So I knew they were there, but I didn't realize that this was going to happen. So when I finally start getting to a place of depletion, I was yearning for my tax return. Didn't get it, and that's what really rocked me. I didn't get my tax return. Turns out, somebody stole my wife's identity From a.
Speaker 2:COVID scam yeah.
Speaker 3:From a COVID scam or something. I don't know. I don't know if it was a PPP loan, I don't know Something, but at any rate something happened and they said all we underreported. Eighteen thousand dollars turns out. Somebody got 18 grand from the. Whatever it was. Just it was nuts we don't know what happened so that's what knocked us off and right back to square one. Yeah, yeah so uh yeah.
Speaker 2:So you know, I think people are watching this and saying, why is he supporting Trump? And you're giving me some good reasons why I supported Trump because he created opportunities. I also liked your video with your lovely the other day when you talked about this whole thing, and this is where kind of the part of the conversation will start wrapping up soon here. But Trump is divisive. Trump is pulling us apart. I say this because I'm actually seeing more and more of the opposite. I look at his community and his rallies. I see that they don't talk about that.
Speaker 2:20 to 25 percent of the black vote has moved in this direction. He's got the Hispanic vote at 55 percent. Now Younger people are moving over and I started feeling like I actually have had the experience myself and you're an example of this of feeling more connected to a diverse group of people, because it's it's a sense of being American first, and then we're trying to figure out how do we leverage the opportunities and support each other and our mission and what's up and how can we help each other. And it's felt very freeing to me and I look at Trump remaking the Republican Party into a big tent party. You know, I just feel like there's been a miss.
Speaker 2:It's like who is dividing us Is the question. So I'm wondering what your thoughts are on is he a divider or is he a uniter? And I think you know the people that are. I also look at the people that are complaining that he's a divider. They don't seem to be the people that they say is that he's dividing. Be the people that they say is that he's dividing okay. They seem to be the people that want to put another thing on him that we they want people to believe. That isn't true. What do you say about all that?
Speaker 3:all right. So I know exactly where you're going with this. I get it 100. Yes, trump is in fact, dividing the heck out of this country. Yes, he is absolutely doing it. What the other side that don't like Trump don't understand is that they're the eyeballs, they're the outsiders. They're starting to see how small their numbers really are and it's terrifying them. So now they're saying Trump's dividing us. Yes, he is. Take a side. You want to pick Kamala Harris, who wants to take 600,000 plus babies every year through her policies? Go over there. You want Tim Wals, who's teaching your children that they can change their gender. Go over there. You want open borders so you can help the homeless and help the needy. Go over there. We'll do it our way, the way it has been working for the last four million years. Right, and I think that's what's terrifying them. Their new, their new way of doing things only work for them. It doesn't work for the country.
Speaker 3:It just worked for them. That's the beauty of a republic. What we're basically saying is OK, you take your state. What we're basically saying is OK, you take your state, will take ours. It is absolutely a division. The problem is they're realizing how small their numbers really are, because you can flush and you can fluff. You can fluff your numbers with millions of dollars. You know what I mean. You give a campaign, you give a person fifty two million dollars, then go online, then go online, then go on, then go online, then go online, then go on, then go online and tell everybody you're voting for her and why something you have not done in any presidency ever in the history of your organization. And now you're giving 52 million dollars publicly to kamala harris. And I didn't see that. You think I'm that much of a fool? This is why it's hilarious, because they don't know what the hell they're doing. They have no idea what they're doing because they don't have a real heartbeat with the people. Everything is a graph to them, everything well, yeah, I would.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everything is for them and not other people. It's hard to get this through because people have been so kind of brainwashed over the years about how good the system is, the way it's been going. But I think what you've opened our eyes to today, gary, is that you know more people are taken care of by Make America Great Again than by what's been subverted, perverted and changed over the time, and it's been like that frog in the proverbial water that's been turned up. More and more of you know it's. To me, it's always about follow the money and I know that. You know this is going to sound radical, cause I said I've been a Democrat all my life. I didn't vote for Trump once until this election. I'm voting for him.
Speaker 1:But so so I voted for Biden last time.
Speaker 2:Welcome aboard. I know it hurts to say that. It hurts to say that.
Speaker 3:No no it doesn't. It's pleasant. I love being able to say it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it's to me, it's. We have to. We, literally, I agree we have to take our country back and provide opportunity to everyone, because that's what our forefathers created in the structure and principles of our country. That's what our forefathers created in the structure and principles of our country. And, as I teach my leaders all the time, you know, if you start following tactics and your belief that something could change from a tactical standpoint, you're going to get into trouble. But if you live on principles and values, you can self-correct quickly and you tend to. You know it's kind of goes like this and then platforms and goes like this and then platforms and goes like this, and you've had your downs and you've made yourself back up. And you've made it back up because of your entrepreneurial spirit and your drive and your caring. That's what I think, that's what I hear in your story, that you've done it because there's a resiliency that's allowed for in this country. And when I, when I talk to people, executives, that have gained legal citizenship through the process that I have a conversation.
Speaker 2:I had a conversation with one gentleman. He's from um uh, where was it? From Pakistan. He just became, became an American citizen and I coffee with him a week after he became a citizen, guy was so filled with gratitude and he said to me David, you have no idea how lucky you guys are. You can do anything. You can do anything you set your heart to, as long as you do no harm. You can do anything in this country and you recognize that. That's what is the gift of this country, and it's been slowly eroded for the sake of the powerful, and our forefathers warned us of this.
Speaker 3:Yes, and this is where the this is where the this is where the turning point happens when it comes down to Trump dividing us, trump dividing us. I want everybody to know that when we say you're dividing us, that means that we are, we're, we're, we're. We're basically crossing the line. I'd rather be here with the republic, I'd rather be here with a constitution. I would rather be here where we're love and discipline, and discipline and patriarchy roam free, right. That's where I want to be, because men are self-sacrificial by nature. That's what we do. So you give a man a cause. Game over, game over. You'll just start connecting.
Speaker 2:We have to re-inspire that by educating people. If you have that and there's a way to take advantage of that, there is a way to take advantage of it and not using the school systems just to get people ready to work in corporations, which is what they've been doing.
Speaker 3:They got rid of the fathers and they did that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, so, wow, appreciate it. Any final words, for, yes, we probably just said a lot there, but anything else you'd like to share before we complete for the day?
Speaker 3:no, not really. I mean I was. I was here to be prompted.
Speaker 2:I think we could have many shows really, so you know I really want, to definitely can yeah, I thank you really much, gary, for sharing your powerful journey today and with us and, uh, your story of resilience and facing adversity and dealing with it and finding ways to get through, and also helping us understand how political forces have impacted liberties and prosperity for people that we really want to help. Uh, so your courage and vision is a testament to what what it means to rise above those challenges. So stay in with one's purpose and taking full advantage of the tremendous opportunities this country can bring us. So I really appreciate you being here today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So first of all, for everybody else, if you've been moved by Gary's story and vision, you can find a link in description below. If you'd like to support Gary's vision and efforts, you'll be able to do so. I've also included links to Gary's contact information if you want to connect with him firsthand. To everybody else listening, I want to thank you for joining us on what I think is one of the most important conversations I've had on the podcast. Your time and attention is genuinely appreciated.
Speaker 2:If today's episode resonated for you, I encourage you to share this with others, whether they're entrepreneurs, leaders or anyone that's navigating today's complex political and social landscape, and Gary's story speaks to the heart of what so many are experiencing nationwide and also demonstrates the power of the human spirit. So, as always, you can catch this episode or all others on YouTube. I will podcast Spotify, amazon Music and across 15 other podcasting platforms. A link to that full list of that is right below in the description as well. As we close, I want to remind you of the incredible impact you can have as an executive leader on others around you. When you challenge the narratives that limit your potential and the potential of others, you open the door to empowerment and this election season and beyond, let's all lead with courage, integrity and commitment to make sure we're taking advantage of the freedoms that define our society. Until we meet again, keep pushing those boundaries leaning with purpose. This is David Craig. I'm the Leadership Alchemist, signing off. Have a great rest of your day.