219: Plot Twist: From Solitary Confinement to NY Times Best Selling Author, Shaka Senghor’s Incredible Story of Redemption

In this week's Plot Twist episode of The Light Watkins Show, we revisit the remarkable story of Shaka Senghor. This bite-sized Plot Twist episode takes listeners through Shaka’s life, highlighting a pivotal moment that transformed his path forever.

Here are some of the topics discuss in this episode:

1:12 - Introduction

3:39 - What's it like to be in solitary confinement

5:40 - How Shaka wrote a book in prison

11:05 - How Shaka managed to get his book out of prison

15:44 - How Shaka got himself out of prison using only a letter

18:09 - What it takes to become a bestselling author

21:13 - The first book Shaka ever sold out of prison

23:31 - How to get your life back after prison

31:17 - The call that changed Shaka's life

If you want to find out why Oprah didn’t want Shaka to come to Hawaii, watch here.

Chapters

• 1:12 Introduction
• 3:39 What's it like to be in solitary confinement
• 5:40 How Shaka wrote a book in prison
• 11:05 How Shaka managed to get his book out of prison
• 15:44 How Shaka got himself out of prison using only a letter
• 18:09 What it takes to become a bestselling author
• 21:13 The first book Shaka ever sold out of prison
• 22:42 How to get your life back after prison
• 30:28 The call that changed Shaka's life

Transcript

SS: “It was a very chaotic environment. Every day, it was super noisy. There was always, the officers come in to extract people from their cells. Then they come as 10 officers fully adorned in what looks like hockey apparel, and they would come and extract people and take them to whether the suicide watch cell, or other cells, which means they spray pepper spray, and that just goes through the whole unit. There was days where you would just — I would be sitting on my bunk and all of a sudden, I'm coughing and whatever, because they’re spraying pepper spray without consideration for everybody else around them. It was chaos. At one point, I started to question whether I was actually losing it, because I wasn't ractive to so many of the things that other people was reactive to. I was like, well, maybe I'm the one who's losing it, and they've got it all together. That's the psychological challenge of being in an environment where it's so chaotic, and nothing is normal. There's no idea of when you're going to get out. For me, writing in that environment, require a lot of ingenuity.”

Hey friend, welcome back to The Light Watkins Show. I'm Light Watkins and I have conversations with ordinary folks just like you and me who've taken extraordinary leaps of faith in the direction of their path, their purpose, or what they've identified as their mission in life. Today I have a bite sized plot twist episode, which is a shorter clip from a past episode where the guest shares the story of a pivotal moment in their life trajectory. 

And the idea behind sharing these plot twists is to inspire you to lean into those plot twists when they happen in your life, because usually when you get turned around from what you thought was your path, what's actually happening is you're being detoured towards your actual path.

And sometimes that looks like getting fired, or it could look like being betrayed, or in the case of this week's guest, author Shaka Senghor. It's being locked up in solitary confinement for nearly five straight years and using this time as an opportunity to create, to write his first book and to dream about having his book being read by Oprah Winfrey.

Well, after several plot twists, turns out Shaka's dream wasn't so implausible after all, because he went on to become a New York Times Bestselling Author. And he now travels the world, giving talks and creating content that draws upon his unique past. And he uses his story of redemption to encourage us to break free from thinking that is potentially holding us back.

 And at the beginning of this plot twist, Shaka has been locked up in solitary confinement and he is first starting to get the idea to write a book within 30 days. He has no formal writing training. And while it's hard enough to write a book in regular life, he found the inspiration to see it through to the end, which becomes a theme of his life story from that point. 

His big dream is to get his book in Oprah Winfrey's hands, which is the furthest thing away from where he currently is when he has that dream.  And let's see how his dream plays out. 

SS: When I think about where I was, at the time that I was writing, there's a few things that comes up. There's obviously the pain of the experience. Solitary confinement is something that I will forever advocate to have ended. I think, it's the most barbaric and inhumane treatment that we can inflict on people consciously, and with our tax dollars. I think to lock a person in a cell, or cage for years at a time is cruel and unusual punishment.

 The environment that I was in, the thing that struck me the most about it was the high level of mental health challenges that the men around me were faced with. The way that that showed up, whether it was men who were cutting themselves, so that they can get taken to a hospital and receive some type of care and comfort from somebody who treated them with humanity, or whether it was just personal attacks on each other, from slinging feces on each other, to sleep deprivation by banging on the toilets in their cells.

It was a very chaotic environment. Every day, it was super noisy. There was always, the officers come in to extract people from their cells. Then they come as 10 officers fully adorned in what looks like hockey apparel, and they would come and extract people and take them to whether the suicide watch cell, or other cells, which means they spray pepper spray, and that just goes through the whole unit. There was days where you would just — I would be sitting on my bunk and all of a sudden, I'm coughing and whatever, because they’re spraying pepper spray without consideration for everybody else around them. It was chaos.

At one point, I started to question whether I was actually losing it, because I wasn't ractive to so many of the things that other people was reactive to. I was like, well, maybe I'm the one who's losing it, and they've got it all together. That's the psychological challenge of being in an environment where it's so chaotic, and nothing is normal. There's no idea of when you're going to get out.

For me, writing in that environment, require a lot of ingenuity. I had to write, so what's the optimum time? Typically, it was once the lights were out in the cellblock, then things were quiet down. I would stand by the window, this little, small window at the back of my cell, and a little bit of light that filtered in, I would write from that. Then sometimes, I would lay on the floor, and right from a little bit of light that leaked up under the cell door. I was always just finding different ways to do it. Then I created just a consistent cadence of what I want my experience to be like. This is once I started realizing that we may not be able to control our circumstances, but I believe we can always control our reaction to them.

I began to set my cell up, as if I was at university. I would study philosophy in the morning. I would go from philosophy to world history, from world history to African history. From African history to Eastern philosophy. Then I would get into literature. Then I would make time to just read. Then after I got done with that, then that's when I would write. I just made sure that I consistently kept my mind moving forward. I think, people lose hope, when they can't take that next step in their mind. Those things allowed me to just every day, to add some type of value to my life, and to my experience, and really, just to keep me moving forward.

LW: What about more practical considerations, such as exercise, food, water? Was that adequate when you're in there? 

SS: Well, the exercise part, that’s up to you. I definitely exercised every day. I would take my mattress and roll it up, and then I will tie a seat around the mattress, and then I will loop another sheet through the mattress, and then I will curl the mattress. That's how I do my curls. I would do shoulder presses. Then I would just do push-ups and other calisthenics. That was part of that vacant routine, just to keep my body moving forward. 

Meditation, that was so important to me. It’s the ability to process my mind in a way that emptied out all those negative, self-defeating thoughts. Journaling, that was very practical practice for me, is to really get things out of my mind. In regards to food, we were solely reliant on whatever they were serving, that was oftentimes not the best. The portions are very skimpy. You can't buy in solitary — I mean, commissary out of the store when you're in solitary. 

The only edible thing you can buy are cough drops. Cough drops became candy, as well as currency. That was it. You can't save, you can't hoard food, because if they catch you with any food that you saved, basically, they will put you on food restriction, and then you would get a big lump of what's called food loaf, which is all the food mashed up and baked into this brick. To avoid that, you have to eat whatever you can before you turn your tray in. 

 LW: Under all those conditions, you wrote your first book within 30 days. Did you know it was good? Or how did you get any validation? You passed it around and let the other guys read it? How does it work? 

SS: I remember setting very intentional parameters for finishing the book. Because when I was journaling, I realized that I had never completed anything. The only thing I had completed was a GED. I was like, I want to challenge myself. I challenged myself to write this book in 30 days. I got it done. I remember thinking to myself, well, a book isn't a book, until somebody reads it. I asked the guys on the cell block. I'm like, “Yo, anybody want to read this book?” A few guys was like, “No, we won’t read it. Blah, blah, blah. You’re…” 

LW: Most of these guys can't even really read. They're operating in a third-grade reading level, right? 

SS: Yeah. There's definitely a third-grade reading level. There’s surprisingly some guys, who figure out how to get through books that resonate with them. That's why I think, [inaudible 00:43:17] were so important. Iceberg Slim, I think you put more effort into something when you can see yourself in it. 

One guy, he was like, “Yeah, send it over to me.” I remember, I had to send it over on a fish line, so we would make these lines that we would attach it up and slide it up under the door, so that the other person can pull it in. I remember sending it under the door and thinking to myself, “This is my only copy.” As the last part of it slid on the door, if you don't give it back, there's nothing I could do, because I’m in solitary. 

I remember him getting it, and I didn't hear from him from a couple of hours. I started getting really nervous. I'm like, “Oh, man. He going to keep the book. That's going to turn into a whole conflict when we get back to the yard.” 

LW: You got to turn back into the old Shaka. 

SS: Got to go back to the smacking it out on the yard, and trying to avoid that at all costs. I remember him coming back to the cellar door. He was like, “Yo, man. This is one of the best books I ever read.” I did a little dance in my cell. I was like, “Yo, I did it. Blah, blah, blah.” Then I had this moment of clarity. I was like, “Well, he's in solitary confinement. He probably shut the door…” 

LW: His judgment is a little bit skewed. 

SS: I'm like, I could have sent him a recipe over there. I was like, I got to get my work out. I eventually started sending work out to one of my brothers. He's my stepbrother, but we don't identify the step part. He's just my older brother. We call him Ken, but his name is Will Red. I remember sending my older brother the book out. Initially, I sent him some short stories first. I remember him writing me, and he hadn’t wrote me much in prison. My older brother, he was the one brother who had never had a brush with the system, never got caught up in the streets. He played ball for high school. He went to college. He was doing all the right things. To this day, he's just an incredible example for me as a father, as a husband, and all the things that he does. Really, he inspires me. 

I remember getting a letter from him. He was like, “Man.” He's like, “I read all this stuff when I was in college, and I read all these different things people wrote.” He was like, “You write better than most people I went to school with.” I was like, “Wow.” That validation meant something. It's like, this is something I can take serious. I continue writing. Then I started, once I got out of solitary, I started sharing the books in the cellblock, and just that great find of like, “Guys, come on, Yo, man. When can I get the book next? I heard so much about it.” When guys started to talk about it, that you have no connection to, they don't know nothing about you. That's when I was like, “Okay, I'm on to something.” 

LW: As you're writing, were you recognizing any patterns? “If I tell more stories, if I'm completely raw and honest, that's the stuff that connects with people the most.” Or were you just stream of consciousness and just writing whatever was coming to you? 

SS: I think, a lot of it was, as I talked about early, being really influenced by hip hop. I think about some of the artists that I've grown up loving, and the ones that always resonated with me was people who rap very cinematically, great storytellers. The Kool G Rap, the NASs, and people you were, very can bring you into their world. That, really, from a storytelling structure, the way that I've approached it is that I want people to feel like they are a part of this world, that they're having the experience of the characters, that they can smell the environment, they can taste the environment, they can be grossed out, they can fall in love, they can be angry, they can laugh, all the things. 

I think that instinct really came from reading a lot and listening to a lot of hip hop. What I started finding consistently in the reactions to my work, is people would say, “I felt like I was there. I felt like I was part of the experience.” That became a thing where I was very intentional about setting the scene and really setting up those connecting points, and the metaphors and the similes that really align with that more cinematic storytelling. 

LW: At what point were you aware that you were going to get out? When you found out, and now you're writing these books, and you're getting this response, what was your plan in your head, before you actually walked out of those gates, what were you thinking was going to happen with all of this? 

SS: I was excited. When I wrote the first couple of books — for years, they were just tight, in folders. I was carrying from, safeguarding with my everything. During this time, there was this uptick in literature that was coming from communities, real communities, like Terry Woods. True to the game. Sister Soldier, The Coldest Winter Ever. Kwan, Animal. All these great literary — To me, they're literary giants, right? They may not rise to what people typically frame as literary, but I think, if you can communicate a reality from an environment that makes people feel something, that makes people feel connected, that makes people feel they can see themselves in those stories, that's greatness to me, and that's what they embody. 

I saw the way that they were hustling. They were hustling books. I also come from that era, where DJs would hustle the tapes in the neighborhood. I used to DJ, and we would sell a mixtape for $2. Two shot hustling his album on the trunk and masterpiece. I knew those stories, because I was reading Bad Magazine and Source, and keeping my ear to the street. I knew that I couldn't get out and sell books. I just had to get out. That was the big part of it was getting out. That was something I didn't know. I didn't know if I was ever getting out of prison, because that's what they told me that “You will die in here”. The first step was getting myself out of solitary. 

LW: You did that with a freaking letter. 

SS: Yeah. I wrote a letter to the ward. It was a mixture of writing a letter and reading all these philosophical books. I challenge them on a philosophical idea of what the truth is. Basically, what I did is I wrote the warden a letter and I said — and I prefaced it with, “What you're going to read is my truth.” If you follow the pattern of what my experience is, they line up with exactly what I said. When I came to prison, I said I wasn't following the rules. I've been pretty consistent with that. 

Which means that you can agree or disagree with me not following the rules. What you have to agree with is that I told the truth. If you believe that the truth is the most important thing, then everything that I'm about to tell you in this letter moving forward, I would hope that you acknowledge that as truth as well. That's when I told him, if you give me an opportunity to get out, I'm going to pursue this writing thing. I'm going to take it serious. I'm going to stop doing the things I was doing on the yard to get in trouble. I'm going to focus on becoming the best writer that I can be. 

It was the first and only time that a warden has ever directly wrote me back. He said, he was so moved by the letter. He believed my truth that he's going to advocate for me to get released from solitary. He ended up doing that. It still took about two years ago, because he had to go to his higher ups. Once I got out, I started typing those books up. I had a little Brother’s word processor. It’s a Brother ML500. I had that little word processor. You can only see half of a sentence on that little screen. I would just type, type, type non-stop for days on end, transferring those books to type manuscripts. 

I did that. That's what I shared in the cellblocks, those typed manuscripts. Meanwhile, I started putting the business plan together. I started walking through what I wanted to happen with my writing. I was very intentional about where I wanted to land at, and what I wanted to become when I got out. I wrote in every genre you can think of. I started with fiction. At one point, I wrote some erotica, which turned into a whole different things, because it was a mixture of me coming from being a hustler, to evolving into a real writer. 

I was like, okay, I can write, and I know I can move products. I'm going to get out. I'm going to hustle these books. I ended up meeting, Sekou’s mom. Sekou is my youngest son, who I write about in a book. I met his mom while I was incarcerated. We started exchanging correspondence. She was like, “What is your plan for life?” I was like, “I'm happy you asked. Here's what I want to do.” I sent her a whole business plan, the whole breakdown of how I was going to disrupt the literary scene, how I was going to approach it, the places I was going to go. My goal was to get out, get a job, save that money, buy some books, take those books, hustle them everywhere I could, buy more books, hustling, rinse and repeat. 

She was like, “Wow.” She's like, “I'm with it. Let me help you.” We ended up joining forces. I actually published my first book from prison in 2008. It was Crack Volume One. As soon as I published the book, I got sued by the Department of Corrections for the cost of my incarceration. I didn't let that deter me. I went up for parole that same year, got denied, went back up the following year, got denied. I decided, I wasn't going back to the parole board at that point. I was just going to do the time. 

The reason I had thought about that was, it was hard watching my dad. At the time, who was my girlfriend, it was hard watching them suffer. I wanted to relieve them of getting their hopes up, of only to have them dashed by my denial of prison parole release. Fortunately, Sekou’s mom came to visit me the same day. I sat in that visiting room. I was in tears. It was heartbreaking, watching her come through security, and get patted down and have to take her shoes off and have to open her mouth and have to be touched, and all the things. I was like, I didn't want her to suffer through that anymore. 

When she walked in, I was like, I got to break up with this woman. As soon as she sat down, I go into this whole spiel about we have to break up. I broke down in tears, and it's just that me crying, get it out. Then she was like, “You're absolutely going to next parole board hearing. You can get it together and get back up in there, but we didn't come this far to give up.” 

I ended up going back and I got paroled on that third try. You know as they say, the third time was the charm. The first thing I did when I got out of prison, they took me from the prison to the parole office. I had to check in with my parole office. Ebony, who was Sekou’s mom, she pulls up, her and my oldest son, Jay. There was a brother who was getting out, his name is Prince Montgomery. He was getting out the same day. We had met her the last 60 days in my sentence. He's like, “Man, I'm going to borrow one of your books when I get out.” 

I thought, he was talking about once he got home and got himself together. He had money in his account, and they gave him that. He was like, “Yo, did your girl bring them books?” She was like, “Hey, I got them in the trunk.” I'm like, “Yo, pop that trunk.” I remember giving him the books for only $15.” He gave me $20. I didn't have no change. I didn't have no money on. He was like, “Man, keep that extra five, man. I'm happy to support you.” End of the year, we celebrate our freedom anniversary, but we also celebrate the moment of my first actual hand-to-hand book sale. I've been selling books ever since. 

When you get out of prison, it's hard to get an apartment. It's hard to get a car. It's hard to get a job. It's hard to get a bank account, right, because you have to report that you're a felon in each of those cases. One of the biggest priorities is rebuilding and getting back on your feet, financially, etc., especially as a man, and especially as a man in his 40s. No one's feeling sorry for you, if you can't pay your bills. 

A lot of your family, a lot of your friends are telling you, “Hey, Shaka, don't tell anybody you've been — Just keep your head down, go get a decent job.” You defied all of that, because you believed in yourself so much. I just wanted to make a note of that, because I think it adds context to the courage you had to have to really lean into your story, and to use that. 

SS: Absolutely. I tell all my mentees that what you believe about yourself is more important than what anybody else believes about you. When I came home, I know my family had the best of intentions. They really wanted me to just find a job, and live the rest of my life. I come from a working-class community; people who work for the factories, and work in social work and things of that nature. They’re just like “If you can get a job, you'll be fine”. I put in for jobs. I didn't come out like, I could just pull magic out of the air in some random way. I knew, I had to have a game plan. 

It was hard to get higher. I ended up — I would get these little, random jobs. My first job actually, was writing for a local newspaper. Every job that I've had since I've been out of prison, have come through these very unconventional ways. I ended up posting. I opened up a Facebook page, because I knew the marketing side, I'm like, I got to get to reach the people, right? I don't know nothing about the social media. I've just know these people and they need to be buying my book. 

I remember making a post and just saying, “If there's any local artists, send me your music, so I can write a music review.” I had two missions in mind. One was to get access to free music. Other one was just to keep my writing skills sharp. There was a woman following me at the time, who was the managing editor at a local newspaper called The Michigan Citizen. Her name was Zenobia. Zenobia was like, “Hey, can you do reviews for us?” I was like, “Sure.” 

I write these two reviews. Then she called me and was like, “Hey, come pick up your check.” I was like, “What check? What are you talking about?” She’s like, “Oh, we're paying you for those reviews.” It was $25 or something. I was like, “Wow, I made some money writing these reviews.” I just started writing. It was a couple extra dollars coming in. $50 extra a week. I wasn't making a ton of money. I didn't have a job. Every penny counted. 

Then one day, she hits me up. She was like, “One of our staff writers isn't available. Can you cover this story?” I went and wrote this story. It was about this man, his name was Warren Harper, a Detroit-based theatre actor. He had his movie coming out about this church, etc. I remember going to interview him. The story of the movie that was coming out was fine. It was cool. His story was fascinating. He had been addicted to crack cocaine for a long time in his life. 

He found theater therapeutic, and he found that that art form as a means to help with his healing. He was also running a drug rehab program and using art to help people find their way. I ended up writing his story. Weeks later, after the paper comes out, the managing editor, she calls me and gives me the stack of mail. She's like, “We've never got this much mail for an article in this newspaper.” They just started offering me the opportunities to cover different stories. 

Then, they allowed me to go out and find stories. A lot of my friends to this day, I found them through writing their stories, because they’re business owners. Actually, one of my best friend's name is fame, Clement Brown, Jr. He's a fashion designer on the store called 313. I write about him in a book. I met him writing about his business at the time. Now, we've been friends for 11 years. That's the pathway forward, being in a mentoring program. I ended up winning that award. It came with a $25,000 stipend. I was able to pay myself for the month, get some supplies, do the programs. 

Then that following year, that organization hired me as a consultant. It was like, all these little consulting, one-offs, just enough to pay the bills, just enough to get from point A to point B, while I continue writing. It was during that time, as I was doing all these things, when people would — they were reading, hearing about Crack Volume One. They would always say to me like, “You don't sound like someone who's been in prison.” They meant it as a compliment. 

It always dressed up something really hurtful to me. Because when I was in prison, I met some of the most brilliant men in my life. That still holds true today. I know some incredible people. My network is full of some of the most brilliant scientists and venture capitalists and entrepreneurs and actors and writers. I met some of the most brilliant men in prison. These men are my mentors. They are the men who guided me to books. They are the men that saw something in me before I saw anything in myself. That bothered me. 

I was like, I need to tell people about how I went to prison, because my story isn't unique. Inside our prisons in America, there is a wealth of talent, a wealth of genius. There's a wealth of creativity and entrepreneurship, and good people who, unfortunately, have either made decisions that landed them there, because of a series of things that happened in their life, or people who were falsely accused. That's what inspired me to write Writing My Wrongs. 

I wrote that book, self-published that originally in 2013, and hustled it, like I hustled the rest of the books. There was something different happening with the response to that book. I started to see this uptick in this groundswell of people like, “This is an important book. This book needs to be out in the world.” We hustled the book. I remember sending one person who supported me, they bought books for every prison in America. They were so moved by the book, they was like, “If you put together a list of all the prisons in America, I’ll write you a check to send books to them.” 

I remember putting together a little crew of my friends, and my brother. We sat in my garage, and we packed over a 1,000 books and sent them to prisons. Sekou’s mom, we sent them to prisons, living all over America. Eventually, I was doing a talk. After I did the talk, there was a woman there. This woman, her husband came up to me later on. After the talk, so you've done these talks where they have the happy hour room and everybody's just chilling out to work. I'm sitting there and this brother comes up to me; super clean-cut brother, very polished. He's like, “I'm really upset.” I'm like, “Oh, man. What did I say in my talk that offended him?” I'm thinking he's about to be like, “I’m tired of hearing these.” Come from the hood stories, blah, blah, blah. I’m thinking, he about to land to me. 

I'm like, “What's going on? How did I offend you?” He's like, “My wife is in a room reading your book. We supposed to be out here having fun, getting time away from the kids, and she don't want to leave the room.” We had a laugh. Finished the night with drinks and all that. It turns out that his wife, who's now a dear friend of mine, named Andrea, she used to work for Oprah. She took the book to Oprah. 

LW: The self-published book, she took it to Oprah. 

SS: Yeah, the self-published book. Yeah, the self-published one. Oprah gets the book. She's like, “Why would I read this book? This guy's on the cover with tattoos and barbed wire fences. He's been in prison for murder. Why would I read this book?” What Oprah said is that she took that book, and kept moving it around her house, because she doesn't throw books away. 

Finally, when she was moving her operation in LA, she said, she was like, “Let me just take this book.” She took the book with her. She's on her plane, says she got 50 pages in and was like, “I got to interview this guy.” Oprah has gone on to say that our interview is one of the best, not just in her career, but in her life. That, Writing My Wrongs is one of her favorite books of all time, one of her favorite memoirs. She said, it was her favorite memoir, until Will Smith dropped his memoir. I might have got bumped down. I don’t know yet. 

LW: What was that day like, when you got that call? Was it Andrea that called you? Or Oprah's other people that called you? 

SS: Andrea called me first. What actually happened was, so Andrea calls me, and she comes to an unknown number at the time. I answered it, because I answer all unknown numbers at the time. I'm like, “It might be some business. It might be some deals, or I don't know which one, but let me gamble”. Answer the call. She's like, “Hey, Shaka. I want to talk to you, blah, blah, blah.” Then the phone disconnects. 

She calls me the next day and she’s like, “I'm so sorry. Something was going on with kids, blah, blah, blah.” She was like, “I was calling you, because Oprah wants to interview you and I want to connect you to her producer.” I was like, “Wow.” “She wants you to come in.” She connects me to the producer. Producer is like, “Yes, he wants you to come, this, that and other.” Start to set it up. I'm hyped. I’m like, “I'm going to Hawaii.” I never been on anything I've ever seen is Hawaii-5-0 when I was a kid. I'm hyped up. I got this idea of I will be greeted, getting off the plane. 

Producer calls back and like, “Oprah doesn't want you to come to Hawaii.” My heart literally just sank. 

[END]

That was Shaka Senghor, author of Writing My Wrongs and most recently Letters To The Sons of Society. And to see why Oprah declined the interview and how the whole story unfolds from there, you want to check out our original episode, which is a Episode number 87. You can find that in the podcast archive. If you go to lightwatkins.com/podcast. 

And I recommend following Shaka on the socials @ShakaSenghor, which is S H A K A S E N G H O R. And if you know anyone who's making the world, a better place, and they have incredible plot twists in their life email me your guest suggestions at light@lightwatkins.com. My other ask is that you take a few seconds to rate and review the show. You hear podcast hosts like me ask listeners like you all the time for ratings because that's how a lot of my future guests are going to determine whether or not they are going to come on to my podcast. So it does make a huge difference and it's completely free. It only takes 10 seconds. All you do is look at your device. You click on the name of this show and you scroll down past those first.

Five episodes, and you'll see a space with five blank stars, just tap the star on the right and you've left a five star rating. And if you're feeling generous and you want to leave a review,  just one line, what you like about this podcast, then it will go a very long way. 

And also, don't forget, you can watch these plot twist episodes on my YouTube channel. If you prefer to see what Shaka looks like as he's sharing his plot twist. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube as well. All right. I'll see you on Wednesday with the next long form conversation about an ordinary person doing extraordinary things to leave the world a better place. 

And until then, keep trusting your intuition, keep following your heart, keep leaning into those plot twists in your life.  And if no one's told you recently that they believe in you, I believe in you. Thank you so much. Have a fantastic weekend.