Picture a nine-year-old in Compton walking into elementary school in a purple crushed-velvet three-piece suit, carrying a briefcase with nothing inside but order forms and big dreams. That was me, and my classmates had plenty to say about it. I didn’t care. A banker had started visiting our classroom to teach financial literacy, and I wanted to look like the man who was showing me a legal way forward.

My brother Charlamagne tha God once told me he wanted me to do a financial literacy podcast because I’m a working businessman who meets a payroll, not someone selling a lifestyle. Many people assume I started with a silver spoon. This episode is my answer, and it includes parts of my story I’ve told in speeches but never here.

You will hear about the night I looked up the word entrepreneur in our family’s Encyclopedia Britannica, the question I asked that banker that changed how I saw money forever, and why I turned down the best job in the neighborhood liquor store to take the worst one. After that, every muffler shop, nail salon and barbershop on my walk home looked like a lesson in capitalism.

None of this required being born brilliant. It took curiosity, a mother who believed in me, a father who showed me how to build, and a willingness to fail forward more times than I can count. If you have been doing so much with so little for so long, take a lane of this story and run further with it than I ever did.

🎧 Listen now — wherever you get your podcasts, or simply click below.

Prefer to watch? The full episode is on YouTube.