Avoid These Mistakes in Your Journey to Millionaire Status! | Dr. Farrah Gray DSH #586

Projects, you know, so a lot of us don't make it out, but those of us that do, you know, I always believe it's best to not only fight your way out, but pull other people with you.

You know, I always say, you know, a lot of times in this social media world, we only show our best.

We don't show, you know, the shit that we actually go through.

For sure.

And a lot of people say, I want to do what you do.

I want to do what you do, but do you want to do what I did?

And that's what's critical, right?

Wow.

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Ladies and gentlemen, I have on a self-made millionaire at the age of 14, Farah Gray.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Man, thank you for having me.

Crazy story.

At 14 to become a millionaire, I mean, that is not common.

Yeah, I've heard that.

I've heard that.

Was that always a big goal of you growing up to have a lot of wealth?

Well, I believe that comfort comfort is the enemy of achievement.

When most people are comfortable, they don't think about what's possible for their life.

So when my mom had had a heart attack,

you know, she had two back-to-back heart attacks.

And I woke up.

I was basically six years old.

I said, I'm not going to come home until I've helped my mom pay the bills.

So I saw oversized rocks in the streets.

I started painting them.

And I would ask people, would you like to buy this?

And they would look at me like, and at the rock that was in front of my door, I'm like, yeah, but see, it's different.

It could be used as bookends, paperweights, and door stoppers.

So it was never wealth.

It was more or less trying to get out of poverty.

Because according to statistics, I'm supposed to either be in prison or dead.

Wow.

So that's why I got out there and tried to just help my mom and then grew my businesses from there.

Yeah.

What are the stats on that where you grew up of who went to prison and who ended up getting killed?

Well, I grew up on the south side of Chicago, 72nd and Jeffrey, Robert Taylor Projects.

You know, so a lot of us don't make it out.

But those of us that do, you know, I always believe it's best to not only fight your way out, but pull other people with you.

You know, I always say, you know, a lot of times in this social media world, we only show our best.

We don't show, you know, the shit that we actually go through.

For sure.

You know, a lot of people say, I want to do what you do.

I want to do what you do, but do you want to do what I did?

And that's what's critical, right?

Wow.

So the struggle of, you know, having nothing.

My dad was a black leader and activist.

His name was Khaled Muhammad.

And my mom left him when I was younger.

She said, this activism shit does not pay the bills.

And I've got to feed the kids.

These eviction notices.

We're sleeping in and out of cars.

I mean, this is crazy.

And my father said, I've got to stay focused on the work with the people.

So my mom left my dad and that's why we struggled so much when I was younger.

Wow.

What was your father trying to achieve with that stuff?

He was on the front lines.

He was kind of like a modern day Malcolm X.

He was on the front lines fighting for the liberation and salvation of black people.

Wow.

And this was pretty recent.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

Yes.

Wow, just one lifetime ago.

Yeah, exactly.

I didn't know it was was that bad back then.

That is crazy.

So how old were you when your mom left them?

I was, uh, they started separating when I was very young, like a baby.

Oh, so you don't even remember?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I would say not much has changed,

you know, society-wise.

You know, there's a lot of institutional issues at this point that we face, you know, as a people.

So the fight, you know, continues and we all fight on different levels as it relates to those of us in the black community.

Right.

Were single-parent households common where you grew up?

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, unfortunately, single-parent households are very common because I feel like the government kind of promotes in many respects single-parent households.

Can't have a man in the house.

I'll give you food stamps.

I'll do this.

I'll do that.

So it kind of isolates, you know, black men and pushes us out of the household in many respects.

So interesting.

It's very common to find

a man who's a lot of them are trying to be fathers, trying to be in their children's lives.

But, you know, I think the government aids in helping to get you out of there.

Wow.

I actually never thought of it from that point of view, to be honest.

Yeah.

They say we'll do everything for you just so you don't need a man.

Damn.

That is fascinating.

You got kids yourself right now?

I do.

I have a little one.

She's three years old.

Nice.

Congrats, man.

That's a goal of mine.

Okay.

I can't wait.

I started late as hell.

I'm 39.

Was that by choice or like it was by choice.

I feel that if you have children a lot of times too early, it can derail your focus and your career.

And by God's grace,

my daughter's grandchildren are financially taken care of.

Your daughter's grandchildren.

Yeah, so generations yet unborn.

And that's what I always encourage young people to think about.

It's not just about, can we cuss?

It's not just about, you know, I need to have my three-year plan, my five-year, my tenure.

I say, fuck that.

You need a hundred-year plan.

You know, it's about generations yet unborn.

What does your legacy look like?

So if you're just planning for the next three to five years, you know, you have no legacy.

And with entrepreneurship, I think it's about creating that generational wealth.

Yep.

So, you know, the next generation and their generation they're after doesn't have to struggle like you did.

So you are the believer of leaving your kids with everything you've earned?

I'm a believer in leaving them with the resources, right?

Equipping them with the knowledge and information and, of course, the financial resources.

And you bring them up in the way that you want them to go, you know, training them, kicking their ass, teaching them, listen, this wasn't given to me.

You're going to have to struggle.

So, I think if you create, and I was a little nervous about that, you know, having spoiled ass kids, you know what I'm saying, that don't amount to anything, because they say it takes 40 years for the parent to build it and four years for them to mess it up.

But if you bring them up in the way that you want them to go, I think that you'll see that they'll carry on with the legacy.

I love that.

You had some interesting tweets, man.

I want to go through some of these.

So you tweeted out, stop dating while you're healing.

You're damaging innocent people.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

One of my most recent books, I kind of switched lanes a little bit.

It's called Strong Women Only Intimidate Weak Men.

You know, we as men, especially those who weren't good at sports.

Are you interested in coming on the Digital Social Hour podcast as a guest?

Well, click the application link below in the description of this video.

We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and life.

click the application link below and here's the episode guys we treat women like a sport right

and i'll never forget i was visiting my dad and um i remember showing him all these numbers i got at the mall i was a player i was like dad i got like look at that was i think it was i mean i was like 20 something girls damn and um because it was a numbers game a lot of them told me no but i spent all day at the mall from sun up to sundown and um i said my dad said you're gonna call every single one of them.

And I said, well, no, dad, I just got their number.

You know, it was cool.

It was fun.

He was like, no, there's a young girl.

I'm not saying all of them, but somebody's waiting for you to call.

You know, so as the old saying goes, never awaken a woman's heart.

Only a coward awakens a woman's heart that doesn't have, you know, the intentions on truly loving her properly.

Wow.

I was like, dang, I thought player shit was cool.

They was like, no, that's not cool.

So it started just teaching me to be more responsible.

And I would say, you know, especially we got the whole red pill, blue pill kind of thing.

I would say, if you show me a no-good woman, I can show you a no-good man that made her that way.

That's true.

Cause if they're like that, it's not by a coincidence.

It's a reason.

You also tweeted out, once you mature, sex is mental.

I won't even get horny if the vibe isn't right.

Real shit.

Yeah.

You know, sex is a human basic experience.

You know, something that's just attraction that just simply happens when we're, you know, when you're connecting with someone.

But I'm more of a sapiosexual.

You know, I always say her ass is fat, but her future is flat.

Right.

I love that.

So she's got to have more than just looks in order to capture my attention.

And then also when you're thinking about, you know, building a family, that's the mind that's going to raise your children.

So I want that substance.

I don't want a successful woman.

I like an ambitious woman.

Right.

You know.

Yeah, the looks will get you in the door, but if you want to stay, you need intelligence.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I love that.

When did this mindset shift happen for you?

Because you said you were a player in the day, right?

Yeah, as I got a little older, I started realizing that, you know, I wanted more substance as I decided to start working hard on my really, well, shit, I've been working hard since I was six.

But once I realized that I had literally become a millionaire and

became a published author and a magazine owner as a teenager and just a really hardworking career that I had created, or I would more or less say a calling, right?

Because I think a calling, a career is what you're paid for, but a calling is what you're made for.

So so many times I think we forget to really focus on our dreams because jobs pay you just enough, a J-O-B, a just over broke position.

They pay you just enough to forget about your dreams.

So I think the greatest, you know, tragedy in life is not death.

It's living and not knowing why you're here.

Wow.

You know, one of the greats of our time once said, the two most important times in anybody's life is when we were born and when we find out why we were born.

So it was important to me to start taking my personal relationships seriously because a woman can be

our greatest gift or our greatest downfall if we have the wrong mate.

Like they say behind every successful man is a phenomenal woman, in some cases a phenomenal woman or two or three, depending upon if you're a polygamous or not.

Absolutely.

That's powerful.

What was it like retiring your mother?

That was my biggest dream, man, to be able to retire my mother and my grandmother when I became a millionaire at 14.

Because I think that, you know, it's really to me success to significance.

You know, being able to tell my mom, you know, she threw away those pink pills that she used to have to take every day for her heart because of the stress.

And that was my biggest accomplishment.

That's the most important thing that I've ever done.

I would say now second to being a father.

So retiring mom, grandmother, that's what it's all about.

You know, I call it success to significance.

If your success doesn't help other people, it ain't standing on shit.

Absolutely.

You mentioned stress earlier.

Did you ever deal with that yourself as well?

Yeah, I deal with stress daily, but you know, meditation helps me.

I would say, you know, a lot of people pray.

I believe in prayer plus meditation because prayer is our conversation with God.

But meditation, you know, it kind of allows us to listen to that voice, you know, to be calm, to ignore and block out the negative noise of society.

So I believe in both.

And that meditation keeps me calm, it keeps me centered and provides that clarity that I need in my business to start my day.

Nice.

Before the phones and shit start ringing.

Right.

I used to pray a lot actually.

And looking back, it's almost a form of manifestation.

Absolutely.

Because a lot of the stuff I would pray about as a kid would actually come true.

It's true.

It's true.

You know, just to give a little bit of religion, you know, Paul said that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen.

You know, so I've always been a visionary, someone who prayed, not a dreamer, because I believe that a dreamer keeps their eyes closed where a visionary keeps their eyes wide open.

So I'm always dreaming, kind of like a story that was always told to me about an eight-year-old.

His name was Sammy.

He was in art class, and he was drawing a picture.

And his art teacher walked over and said, What are you doing?

He said, I'm drawing a picture of God.

She said, No one knows what God looks like.

He said, They will when I finish my picture.

Wow.

You know what I'm saying?

That's crazy.

You got to believe in yourself when nobody else will.

But, right, you have that.

But prayer and faith without work is dead, right?

So, you got to hustle.

I tell people that all the time, you know, even especially a lot of upcoming entrepreneurs, I tell them, you know, hustle will beat talent any day.

You know, Abraham Lincoln said there will be things that will come to those who wait, but only what's left by those who hustle.

You know, hustle is really, you know, pushing yourself.

I tell people, if you don't have hustle, learn to fell gracefully because nobody's going to give you shit.

You know, people say, well, opportunity only knocks once.

No, opportunity doesn't knock once, twice, or three times.

It's something you have to go after, after, put in a chokehold, and pull it in.

So it's all about hustle.

I love that because there's so many visionaries and dreamers that don't do well in business.

That's right.

But you've been able to pull it off.

And I think it's definitely work ethic for sure.

Absolutely.

You know, it's the discipline.

You know, as they say, regrets weighs ounces, but discipline is, you know, regrets, discipline weighs ounces, but regrets weighs tons.

So, you know.

I would say it's easy to do what I've been, to me, what I do today is easy, right?

It was believing in myself, right?

It was disciplining myself.

And that's why a lot of people are not successful because success is dressed up in work clothes.

Wow.

It's just that simple.

Man, sounds like you read a lot, dude.

Absolutely.

I love that.

I don't read as many books as Cat Williams.

Yo, a thousand a year?

Right, but I get a couple there.

You know, bigger, you know, in order to be an effective writer, I think you need to be a reader.

Yeah.

His whole scene just coming out right now really makes me think of the media and how they vilify people.

Well, media stands for most effective devil in America.

Wow.

Right?

It can make you hate someone or love someone.

It's no longer about the truth.

It's about the narrative.

You know, and a lot of times a lie is more entertaining than the truth.

Most of the times, yeah.

So, and that's what circulates around social media.

I'm not saying that Kat was per se lying.

I don't have his experience, and I think there was a lot of truth to what he said, but that's pretty much how now everything works.

It's all about really the power of the media is what it's about.

We're pretty much in what I call the attention society.

It's about, you know, social digital currency.

Yeah, and the negative headlines get probably five times the views as positive ones.

Always.

You know, a lie or the negative headline can make its way around the world before the truth gets up in the morning.

And it's a shame because I'll have on some brilliant guests that talk about just inspiring people and they don't get as many views as someone talking shit about someone.

Right.

It's like, damn.

As soon as they name the names, that's it.

Yeah.

Once you start name

I mean, we were talking earlier about the fresh and fit situation.

Yeah.

Pretty crazy.

And it's unfortunate, but

I think people will wake up over time.

There's a spiritual awakening.

I could feel it right now.

Yeah, I think it's on the rise.

You know, and I always say I don't criticize the negative.

You just put the, you know, clean, clean glass next to the dirty glass and let the person make the choice.

Yeah.

You don't have to criticize the dirty glass.

Yeah.

You're very aware of who's in your circle, I bet.

Absolutely.

You know, and I've always kept a good circle around me.

You know, as one of the greats of our time once said, if you can't change the people around you, then change the people around you.

Because some people are so negative that they can walk into a dark room and develop.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

So those are the kind of people that you have to get away from you and only surround yourself with people that are going to, you know, big you up.

Right.

I think as Kanye said one time,

you know, if you hang around people who don't know who you are, then you'll forget who you are.

Wow.

Dude, you're spitting these deep quotes right now.

I've really got to reevaluate some things in my life.

For real, I love it, man.

You're so educated.

It's impressive.

And that's another thing.

You know, I didn't go to college.

I have three honorary doctorates.

Actually, I think I was one of the youngest to ever receive an honorary doctorate.

I got one when I was 21, and I'm 39 now, my very first one.

And I've received two others, and I've lectured at over

probably over 100 colleges and universities.

And,

you know, even my book is Recommended Reading at Harvard.

And that means a lot to me because I had a teacher one time tell me that I wouldn't be successful.

She was used to people saying what they wanted to be.

And I told her I was going to be a millionaire entrepreneur.

And I kind of fixed my clothes.

And she looked at me and she said, no, you're not.

She said, you're poor and your family's poor.

Damn.

You better go find somebody to work for.

That's just unrealistic.

Think about a job.

And I looked at her and I remember, you know, saying to my grandmother, I said, grandma, you know, my teacher told me that I couldn't be successful.

And that's when she said to me, you know, did you believe her?

I said, yeah.

And she said, the funny thing is about an insult, it's not the insult.

It's about the part that you believe is true.

She said, you believed that, didn't you?

She said, I don't want you to ever believe that again.

She said, never allow, and she had read this, never allow anyone's perception of you to become your reality.

And she said, you can be anything you want to be.

Everybody puts on their pants one leg at a time in the morning unless they jump in them.

Wow.

I said, okay, grandma.

She said, wake up every morning and say, why not me?

She said, fuck anyone's perception.

My grandma cussed all the time.

Her soul recipe.

She said, fuck anyone's perception of you.

Wake up every morning and say, why not me?

Why can't I?

So that attitude propelled me.

So it didn't really matter, you know, what other people said.

I knew that I had to face rejection.

And that's my message to a lot of young entrepreneurs.

You know, don't look at no as a door.

Just look at no as a not right now.

You know, and to continue to face rejection because I think that everything we want is on the other side of fear.

We have to continue to push ourselves past that no, just like you've done with your life.

You know, it's not always yes, but no, it's just, you know, it's a matter of just navigating past that and having that fortitude and determination.

Pushing past fear has been the best decision I made.

I couldn't even public speak.

I would have an anxiety attack.

I was a huge introvert growing up.

This is not natural for me.

It's something I had to push past fear to get to.

And look at you today.

Yeah.

One of the biggest shows in the world right now.

Yeah.

Pretty crazy.

Did you ever reach out to that teacher, make amends?

She reached out to me.

Wow.

She acted as if I forgot.

The teacher reached out to me and she said,

I saw you on TV.

I think I was on 2020 at that time or something or somewhere on one of the Oprah platforms.

She said,

I saw you on TV and I'm so proud of you.

We did it.

I said, we did it?

I said, you told me I would never be successful.

I said, but the success that I've been able to achieve, not only has helped me, but now I'm able to help other people.

I have a foundation.

I said, I'm on the board of United Way and I'm able to help so many different people.

I said, so the success that I'm receiving now,

I'm loving it.

Because she had recommended that basically I go work at McDonald's.

So, you know, I've learned to never allow the negative noise of society to tell me what's not possible for my life.

And again, I tell young people that reach out to me, you've got to stay focused and you've got to stay disciplined, right?

So I tell people, even if you're not motivated, because they ask me all the time, what do you do for motivation?

I said, even if you don't have motivation, stay consistent.

And that's the problem.

We lose our way and we're willing to give our job more time and attention than we're able to give to ourselves because we don't look at our downtime.

So I kind of call it entrepreneurship kind of the Tarzan effect.

As one of my good friends always talks about the Tarzan effect.

He said, you don't let go of one branch until you get to the other one.

So I tell people, stay at your job, but also use your downtime because your downtime can either pull you down or you can use that to elevate yourself.

Are you reading in your downtime?

Are you working your business in your downtime?

Are you cold calling in your downtime?

Are you hustling in your downtime?

What are you doing in your downtime?

That's what's fucking you over.

It is what you do with your downtime.

And it's okay to party and have fun, but you're celebrating the struggle.

Give yourself something to celebrate and maximize that downtime.

That way, and it's a quote that I don't know when I said it, but it's now been quoted a billion times.

Even I saw it on the NASDAQ

Twitter with my name on it.

It said, build your own dreams or someone else will hire you to build theirs.

That was you?

Yeah.

So, you know, I don't hell remember when I said it, but

it's something that I live by because so many of us, again, are afraid to be who we are supposed to be.

The richest place in the world is the cemetery.

Because so many people have died with their natural God-given talents.

They never painted the Jacob Lawrence picture, Picasso picture.

They never wrote the book that was within them.

So they had so many gifts that died within them, that haunted them, right?

And that could have only been birthed through their innovation.

This podcast, Digital Social Hour, could have only been birthed through you.

So if you would have thrown it in the trash and didn't overcome your fears, you would have not been able to inspire the billions of people through your reach that you've inspired.

So, I always encourage people: there's something great inside of you.

Stop hating, stop being a critic, because unfortunately, social media has created a whole generation of critics versus creating.

So, they're so busy

being a critic with no credentials, right?

And that they will say, Oh, I don't like this podcast, or I don't like Far Gray, because they're not living their purpose.

And when you walk in purpose, you collide with your destiny.

I've never met a hater ever in my life that was doing better than me.

Right?

Facts.

So there's so many haters that if they were just doing what they were supposed to do and got the hell out of everybody else's business, they would be 10 times more successful.

So when people say, Far, I want to be just like you, I say, no, be better.

I was talking to a marketing genius, Ryan McCrary, the funnel doctor who handles a lot of my advertising.

And as we were conferring on the importance, you know, of really utilizing your gift, your talent as an entrepreneur and actually promoting yourself you know that's another critical thing that i always tell entrepreneurs a lot of entrepreneurs are good at what they do but nobody knows what you do

that's true you know so your visibility is just as important as your ability yeah that's so true man i don't want to die with any regrets that's it's always in the back of my head and that's the key to literally live your life to the fullest as they say when someone dies there's the sunset and the sun uh sunrise and the sunset and in the middle where there's the dash The dash is your life.

What did you do?

Did you die empty?

And that's the key.

That's the key, man.

I saw my grandmother die with regrets and my father.

I said, I never want that for me or my kids.

So even with my kids, I'm going to let them do whatever they want to do, man.

Yes.

Yes, absolutely.

I'm not going to make them get a job, go to college if they don't want to.

If they want to go off and do whatever they want to do, I'm cool with it.

You know, as Khalil Jabron once said, that your children,

you know, they're not necessarily of you or they come through you, right?

So you can give them your love, to paraphrase it, but you can't give them your thoughts.

So I'm always, even at my daughter at three years old, I'm always paying attention to the little things that she enjoys, her area of excellence.

So I think that's the biggest secret to success is really finding your area of excellence.

And I always encourage people, if you want to find your area of excellence, ask yourself three questions.

What comes easy to me?

but harder to other people

second question what would I do and literally work for years and years and years and never have to get paid for it?

Because so many people hate their job.

You know, I always ask people, you know, whenever I'm doing public speaking, I say, how many of you like dogs?

They'll raise their hand.

I say, how many of you have dogs that raise their hand?

I said, dogs like bones?

They say, yeah, yeah, dogs like bones.

No, they don't like bones.

That's bullshit.

They like steak.

They settle for bones.

And we keep settling for jobs that don't feed who we are.

So I tell people the third thing is to give back, right?

So So if you can answer those three questions for yourself, what comes easy to me, but harder to other people?

What would I do and do it for free?

Because the job,

you're living and working a job that you hate.

And the third question is, how can I be of service?

Because I believe that we should all be ashamed to die unless we've made a contribution to society.

Nobody gives a fuck about your individual success.

What are you doing to make this world a better place than how you found it?

And I say, once you're able to answer those three questions for yourself, the world, the marketplace will open up for you, your gifts and your talents.

You'll never have to work another day in your life.

Why?

Because your work will be your play.

I love that.

And for you, that's public speaking.

Public speaking, writing, and entrepreneurship as a whole.

You know, I've got everything from car dealerships to commercial real estate.

Myself and a group of investors have some Marriott and Hilton franchises.

I've got, you know,

a publishing company.

Well, mostly

our backlist catalog, residential real estate.

I don't know why I did that that's probably the worst thing residential real estate

yeah I'm a landlord I've got about 90 properties now

and you know they're all cheap properties they only cost me like ten thousand to forty all section eight all section well some section eight some I didn't feel like doing all the work to meet their requirements but being a landlord is like the worst thing in the world customer service

There's something always wrong.

There's something always to fix.

Somebody's always not paying their rent.

So a few of my friends in the industry said that's not what you want to do.

But of course, growing up, I went to all those lying-ass seminars that said passive income.

There is nothing passive.

Everybody watching, there is nothing passive about owning real estate and being a landlord.

That is not passive income.

There is always a problem and a headache.

But I believe diversification is, you know, it's really the key.

I also have a media company.

I own one of the largest black-owned media companies in the world.

Nice.

Now we've reached over 20 billion impressions.

Yeah, so I believe that

news is so powerful because

digital social hour and I encourage everyone get a podcast, utilize your platform and a channel to reach more people with a particular message.

You know, that's the key because media is so powerful.

It's the second most powerful force in the world.

First, it's especially in America, it's the military, right?

And then it's media because the media shapes the conscious and subconscious of the people.

So we publish, at one time we were up to publishing as many as 60 stories.

We don't need to do that as much.

We publish news stories.

We create video content.

Some of my content has been licensed by Acon's page, the Rapper of the Games page,

Tay Diggs, George Lopez, and countless others.

So I own a lot of different companies that people know about and don't know about.

So I think diversification is key because one income is too close to no income.

Yep, learned that the hard way when crypto crashed, had all my eggs in that basket.

Wow.

But now it's back.

So this time I just got to be smarter, man.

Yes.

Bitcoin just hit all-time high, literally today, actually.

Second of 2000.

You have any crypto?

I have some, yes, but I got in and out quick.

Okay.

I made a couple of million and I can't even take credit for it.

Someone close to me said, buy now, sell now.

Buy what?

They said, buy this, this, this, this, this, this, this.

Now go sell.

Hello.

Oh, okay.

So, yeah.

We all need someone like that.

We do.

do.

I love that, man.

It sounds like money is just more of a side thing.

It's not the main thing for you.

You're more about passion and purpose.

Absolutely.

Because I think the money will come as long as you're doing what you love.

The money will be there.

And even if you don't know how to monetize your gift, I tell people, stop doing it alone.

Connect with people.

Have a network of people.

Everything that I'm doing is not because of Far Gray being the smartest person in the room.

It's because I surround myself with a grade A team.

And I tell people, I used to have a student venture capital fund headquartered on Wall Street.

And I started learning that even when you're seeking funding from private angel investors, high net worth and accredited investors, or a VC firm, they go right to your team.

The hell with your idea.

Who the hell is going to make this work?

When you're investing in the stock market, okay, you can look at different factors to help you make a decision.

But if you don't rush and see who is the captain of this ship and what is the team, is this an all-star team?

Is this a grade A team?

Then you have nothing.

Right.

You know, so I'm more or less about investing in people versus ideas.

And when I really realized and learned that, I realized that I could continue to scale with the right team.

So teamwork makes the dream work.

Team's important, man.

It's all about the people.

Yes.

I love them.

And that's how we can reconnect it through an associate of yours.

Exactly.

Nathan, shout out to Nathan.

Shout out to Nathan for making this happen.

Yeah.

You mentioned subconscious programming earlier.

I'm fascinated by that.

Do you think the media partakes in that on purpose?

Oh, absolutely.

The media knows its power.

And they know what they admit and omit, right?

So that's why now we're living in an age of citizen journalism.

So it allows us to connect the 196,940,000 square miles of the planet Earth.

So now when everyone picks up their phone, we have access to literally one individual, one citizen journalist who only has maybe 10,000 followers can disseminate information around the world and it goes what we call viral.

So I think again,

utilizing our platform to combat, right,

the traditional media and to tell the truth because it's all about narrative, not truth anymore.

Right.

Twitter comes to mind when you talk like that for me.

It does.

You know, Elon is an interesting character.

or X now, as I guess he's calling it.

So yeah,

that's interesting what he says.

The other platforms will shadow ban or delete certain posts if you talk about big pharma, big food, certain topics.

But Twitter seems to keep everything, which I like.

They do.

They do.

So I think freedom of expression is important, but also not putting out false information, right?

That's another problem with social media.

People can say anything and it goes viral.

And next thing you know, it becomes the gospel.

It becomes the thing that everybody's talking about.

Sounds like you've had to deal with cancel culture.

You know, you can't cancel anybody that you didn't hire.

You know, I don't work for anyone.

That's why I think it's important to make your money outside of, you know, being a public figure and public attention.

I have made more money than I can count through speaking engagements and books.

And some of the biggest clients in the world, whether it was a Hershey's or a Johnson Johnson or a Wells Fargo or One United Bank or a Chase Bank or a Deloitte,

have been my clients over the years.

However, I think it's so very important to diversify and have businesses that you cannot get canceled from.

That way you can speak your mind and be independent.

You know, that's the key.

Absolutely.

What was it like getting featured on Oprah?

Wow.

That was a game changer.

Mainstream media was a big time game changer.

Shout out to Stepman Graham, her significant other,

who then introduced me to Gail King.

Gail King then made the introduction between myself and the Oprah Winfrey platform.

and then to read that, you know, Oprah's saying I'm an all-star with priceless advice.

And it was just, it was a game changer.

It made more people pay attention to me.

And my books have been, you know, taking off.

Now I'm at

seven books.

Damn.

They're in 24 countries, 13 different languages, and sold and or downloaded because I gave a lot of digital copies away for free, 2 million books.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's incredible, man.

So, and that was, like I said, a game changer for me.

I always say drop some ink and make them think.

You know, I like to really,

regardless of the fact that people say people don't read anymore.

Yeah, we're doing more reading than we've ever read.

Status updates, tweets, messages,

text messages.

We're doing more reading, but it's about engaging them with content.

So, you know, I wrote my first book at 19 and I'm 39.

So celebrating 20 years

as an author.

Incredible.

You got a personal favorite book?

I don't give credit to one book.

I do not.

No.

Bro.

It's kind of a melting pot.

Yeah.

So you like a bit of everything?

I do.

I do.

I only read nonfiction.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't have time to, because I don't have time to entertain myself with fantasy.

Unless I'm watching a movie or entertainment, but not when I read.

I want to make sure it's feeding my conscious and subconscious.

Interesting.

I'm very aware of that now with the music I listen to, the books I read, the videos I watch.

Because

I'm not going to lie, I used to watch drama videos, you know, like drama alert and people talking about celebrity rumors and stuff, and it just doesn't feed me anymore.

No, no, like it's so pointless.

It is, it is, and I like to mind my own business these days.

Yeah,

absolutely.

But they say, mind your own business and drink water.

You got to drink glass water now because of the microplastics.

Right.

Right.

I've been driving my family crazy.

I'm not getting those plastic bikes out of here.

I mean, it's expensive, but we work hard to get to where we're at now.

That's right.

That's right.

Anything you want to close off with our promote, man?

Just follow me everywhere, pretty much Far Gray on all social media platforms.

Cool, we'll link below.

Thanks for coming on, man.

All right.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thanks for watching, guys.

See you tomorrow.