SPEAKER_00 1:17

I have great stories because I live a bold life. You don't have to have children to leave a really strong legacy. The conversation is for your future, not for your past. You're a business person who creates. You're a creator who's in business.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Actors spend so much time trying to get the next job that we often don't think about building wealth or leaving a legacy. What do you think the danger of living your entire professional life focused only on today's income?

SPEAKER_00 1:50

I think that focusing on today only is the danger. It's not just about the income, it's about how we live and about how we give and how we steward. So the natural tendency is to think about today, today's job, today's audition, tomorrow's work, what we have to do, and quite frankly, tomorrow's bills. But I think when we start developing a different mindset, it's more about how are we going to give, live, and steward? What do we want to carry forward? So it's how we present ourselves, it's the work we do, especially in the acting world. I think the amazing thing is, is that you leave a legacy every day by what you're doing, right? You leave a little piece of yourself in every role, on every stage, in every song, in every opportunity. So you are leaving something for the world every single day. So I think if we focus on that and what our contribution is, not just on the singularity of our income. Now, the income is important. We have to, you know, we have to give, live, and steward. We also have to eat, sleep, and travel, right? So we have to be able to do those things. But I think if we're focused not just on today, that if we're focused on the bigger picture of what it is we can do, I think that's part of what helps you develop a different, what I call a legacy mindset.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Okay, so let's talk about your term legacy by design, not default, right? What does that mean? And how can an actor or creative professional begin designing their own legacy, even if they're not wealthy yet?

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Sure. Legacy by design is is and not default means we choose, right? We get to choose how we're remembered. We get to choose what we hand down, not just assets, right? Legacy is so much more than just financial. When you're building, and I often say legacy is activated by the people who you prepare to carry it forward and the people who are you are you are shaping for the next generation. So you can leave a legacy, but you've left it, right? The legacy really is what's picked up by the next generation. So if we think about designing our legacy, what do we want to be remembered for? What do we want our children and our children's children to know about us and our heritage and our ancestors and our values, how to move forward? In today's society, often we we inherit responsibility before we inherit assets. A lot of us are becoming caregivers for our parents. A lot of us are taking on new responsibilities. And if you are in a job like the acting world, where sometimes you move around, sometimes you have different places you are, you know, that idea of putting down roots can be challenging for some people. And so if you're you're thinking about what are we, what are our values rooted in? And I say again, start with the question give, live, steward. What is it I want to give in my life, first of all? So whether that's you know, teaching or serving or mentoring or helping people come forward, what what are how do I want to live? Right? What are the aspects of my life that I want to have? Is it is it education? Is it travel? Is it writing? Is it am I an author? Am I writing scripts? What am I doing? And then steward, what is it I want to leave for future generations? What do I want them to know? Especially in this content-driven age. Um, we if we're authentic and we are really using a lot of these mediums to leave information for future generations, it's more powerful, I think, than it's ever been before.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

So when we think of legacy, a lot of times we think of leaving to our children, but there are a lot of actors and creatives out there that aren't having children. You know, they're they're baby boomers now, they're in their 60s, 70s, and young, young actors who are coming through who are like, yeah, I don't want to have kids in this society. I'm not, I'm not gonna have any children. How do you speak to them about legacy?

SPEAKER_00 5:50

So it's funny, my family kind of sits right about where you talked about. My my son is a young creative, he does all my production for my podcast. He's done some filmmaking, he's on the production side. My daughter is a rising senior at UCLA TFT in screenwriting, and so she's in that same world of how do I get into this world? How do I move around? Do I want kids? My wife and I are at that other end, we're hitting 60. I think legacy is again about how you activate people. So you don't have to have children to leave a really strong legacy. Think about some of the people who've impacted your life the most. They were coaches, they were mentors, they were teachers, they were directors, they were, there was that unnamed person on a set somewhere who helped you over the hump when your confidence was low. Those people have left a legacy within you and within others. So I think, again, if we're thinking about it intentionally, we design where we want to leave that legacy. If we are an individual who doesn't have children or who may not go down that road, there are hundreds of thousands of places you can leave a legacy. Again, you can mentor someone, you can teach someone, you can be an author. That's leaving a legacy. You can design a program to help others act smarter now, right? You can leave a legacy by the programs and the businesses that you are putting out there for people because, for instance, your content will live on long beyond us. And that will be there to help people understand the journey. And so, if you're intentional about how that legacy is developed and what you want to do and think about how you want future generations to benefit from the value that you left today, I think it's a real powerful legacy. And again, legacy, assets are important. Making sure that you are wise with your financials and your assets is also an important part of a good legacy.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

Okay, so this is good. Assets. A lot of actors I know that I've known over the years don't have assets because we're going back to that first question, they're thinking about today. How do I eat today? How am I gonna make my rent today? And so they're not thinking ahead. Like, what do I want in the next five years? How will I support my future self to get what I want five years from now? Because the the tunnel vision is so tiny. It's like just for, you know, basically, what am I doing the next 24 hours, the next week? How am I gonna get past this? Can you talk about mindset as far as how do you start expanding your thinking even when it doesn't look promising?

SPEAKER_00 8:49

Yeah, I think when you're thinking about finances, I am not a financial professional. I think you should find good counsel, but I've been I've been blessed to have been able to help teach a faith in finance class and grow up in a family that focused on it. I think you know you really have to go back to the basics. In faith and finance, we talk about, you know, base as basic as, you know, what is your money story? Where do you come from? Where do your money ideas come from? Are they from your parents? Are they from a scarcity mindset, an abundance mindset? How are we looking at the money that we do have coming in and how are we deploying it and creating that budget? Being, I think when you have seasonal income, one of the things I've seen growing up in a family where we operated a small business, Irving Swain Press, it was a printing office. And, you know, in a small business, like with acting, income can be very cyclical. Um, you know, there are when you're a printing business, you've got you know, funerals and programs and things that are going on, but then all of a sudden you may go for a little while without it. I think you have to, again, you have to be very intentional about how do I budget? What do I have? What are my spending habits? How do I work on those? But also if you recognize you're going to have a life of seasonal income, one of the things I think a lot of small business people and other families do is they look for multiple sources of income. So at some point, are you able to look into the real estate world? At some point, if you have time, do you look into the ability to trade stocks and to learn that business? Again, today we have so many resources out there where we can learn. And I encourage my children who, as I mentioned, are in uh looking into being part of this creative world into developing some other forms of stable income that they might be able to rely on when they need it. If you're going to be on a set for weeks or months at a time, you know, is it possible for you to develop and look at some real estate holding somewhere? And even in today's market, again, you should get good financial and legal counsel. You don't have to have real estate in your market. It used to be when I was growing up, it was always about the real estate around the corner. Nowadays, people can own real estate in jurisdictions hundreds of miles away that may be more affordable to provide some source of income. So I again I think it's thinking intentionally about the lifestyle you want to live and then making your assets work for you to make that happen.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Hey Hector, are you tired of being tired of being tired of being tired? Your pictures aren't working, you're not getting into auditions, your agents aren't calling you back, or worse off, you can't even get an agent. Well, if that sounds like you, if it sounds like you are at your wit's end, that you just feel like all is lost, you don't know what to do, come and join us at the Acting Smarter Circle, where we are a community of actors who help other actors. And I am your guide and your coach to help you with a plan, strategy, and your branding. So if you are interested and you're tired of being tired and ready for change, come and join us at ActingSmarterCircle.com. We're waiting for you now. Okay, so we're talking mindset because uh habits come from mindset, right? We we create habits uh be based on our thinking. If we have stinking thinking, our habits are gonna be very uh poor. We're not gonna be able to, you know, we're not gonna be able to do things that other people are doing because our mindset is so narrow. We we see ourselves as as victims, right? That welfare mentality, whether you are on welfare or not, you're always thinking about how can they help me, not how can I help myself with the thinking of inheritance. When I hear the word inheritance, if I think about it, I think about my childhood and thinking about, you know, the the adult who would say, you know, I want to leave an inheritance for my children. In the Bible, we hear that a good steward, uh, a good man leaves an inheritance for his children's children. Not just his children, but his children's children. So I think of someone like Getty or or the Rock, the Rothschild or the Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, they left inheritances not just for the children, but the children's children. So the mindset of an artist, how do you encourage them to start thinking not for today, but start thinking for the future? What, you know, in 10 years from now, because 10 years from now is gonna come rather quickly. We we don't think of that, but it's it, you know, time keeps moving. It's not waiting for us. What are some of the things that you've learned that you implement in your podcast, in your in your speaking around the country? What are some of the things that you talk about that could bless an artist, whether they're an actor, a singer, a fine artist, what are some things to start helping them reframe their mindset?

SPEAKER_00 14:18

I think we have to first start with where we are. So we have to recognize what is that mindset we have. So I think I've really kind of framed it in three ways. That there's normally we talk about scarcity mindset and abundance mindset. A scarcity mindset, as you kind of mentioned with the welfare mindset, a scarcity mindset is I have to accumulate, I cannot spend, I have to protect, I gotta guard against loss because tomorrow is gonna be very difficult. You know, and that's and that's a mindset I think we all go through, especially when you're younger or when we're trying to first accumulate and grow. But if we can then grow to an abundance mindset where we recognize that growth and collaboration will help us get to a better place, right? I mean, when we work together, we tend to accumulate more than we do as individuals. And so if we can change our mindset to that abundance mindset of growth and expansion, how do we how do we do that? How do we collaborate with other artists? How do we collaborate with people in other industries? How do we learn from them? How do we exchange skills and how do we look into other ways of creating assets and income and opportunities for ourselves and our families? That growth mindset allows us to build for the future. But then I add a third one onto that. I think we then have to grow into a legacy mindset. And a legacy mindset shifts from where we are simply accumulating and owning to where we're being stewards, to where we're thinking about what happens to that next generation of people who were like us five, 10, 15, 30 years ago. How do we give back to them? How do we give to our children and our children's children? What is it that we are able to provide for them? That might be in today's market, that might be assets, that might be intellectual property, that might be things that we decide we want to own and keep and hand down through the generations. And so if we think about that legacy mindset, I think if we think about it that continuum, and don't and don't beat yourself up, give yourself some grace that we all go through those stages. The key for us as we get to be older is that sometimes we go from scarcity mindset to abundance mindset back to scarcity mindset because we're worried about that future. And if we instead look at it as a legacy mindset, I think that opens up a world of possibilities for us after we've what I say, what comes after success? What comes next?

SPEAKER_01 16:52

You talk a lot about family, family alignment. A lot of artists don't have family or they've been disowned by family. So, how do they create family collaboration, putting stuff together so they can leave that legacy for uh the next generation? Maybe it's not their flesh and blood, but they've, you know, they've mentored people, they've walked people through process. They're leaving a legacy that continues to water other people's children and other people's grandchildren. What would you say to that artist who doesn't have a family? So right away they're ready to turn this interview off. Like, yeah, this doesn't apply to me because I don't have a family.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

I would say you do have a family. I would say you have to reframe what you think the definition of family is. I think you have to think, as you mentioned, about your broader family. Who is it that I often tell my children that show me the five people who you are closest to, and I'll show you of a composite of yourself. Those can be your family. You don't have to be DNA to be a family. I think you and I over the years probably have had lots of examples of that. So you have to think a bit broader about who your family is. Who is it that you depend on? Who is it that you rely on? Who relies on you? Who, when you're having that tough situation, who is it you turn to? When you have that opportunity, that audition, that ability to go pitch, who is it you turn to? These are your family members. And so you have to think about them that way. And so those are the people you collaborate with, those are the people who you dream with out loud, and who you talk to, and you have conversations with about the future, about what it is you want for your future, what it is you want for your legacy to be. You write it down, you exchange those words with each other. Again, I think you have to challenge that definition that family is only the people who your DNA or only the people you grew up with, or only the they're the people who you touch. Your heart connects with, and your life connects with, and your connections are with. Then I would also say I would encourage people never to give up on family. We have to have what I call unaccustomed conversations, and they're not easy conversations. We have to sometimes go back across bridges that we thought were broken and walk back in and say, hey, if something is going to be important at this stage in my life, we need to talk about it. Um, and those are not easy conversations with someone who, as you say, may have chosen to step out of your life. But they're conversations worth trying, they're conversations worth having. And I think you start those conversations talking about your family, talking about your past, talking about family values, talking about what the family wants for the future, and you open doors that that may not that you thought might have been closed.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

So, okay, you're asking the viewer to have courage to go back and talk to a family member that maybe disowned them, maybe had a disdain for what they chose, you know, be it career, be it lifestyle, whatever it is, but there's a there's there was a rift and there was a a tear in the foundation. And now you're saying go back and talk to them. So as you were saying that, what came up for me was sometimes, yes, you go and talk to them, but you also go without expectation, because the expectation will will drag you down, because they may not, they may not be open to the conversation. You may have mustered up all the courage to say, you know what, I'm gonna go talk to my father who was never there for me, never showed up, never, never financially supported me, emotionally supported me, or mentally supported me. But now that I'm making money, he's got his handout and wants me to give him money because he's my dad. And you have mustered the courage to go and talk to this man who on your birth certificate says father. That parent coming from a different generation, you know. I think you and I are similar in age. And so our parents, our elders had a certain belief system. And that was it doesn't matter who, you know, what your parents did, you are to honor them. You are to take care of them, you are to do for them, and that's it. Today's culture, today's youth, today's generation, they don't have that same kind of thinking. It's like, well, you know, that so-and-so wasn't there for me. I don't care about them. What would you say to that young person who is trying to figure life out, and you're saying to them, have this difficult conversation with a family member?

SPEAKER_00 23:35

I would say that the conversation is for your future, not for your past. The conversation you are trying to have is about where you go in the future as a person, as a potential parent, as an aunt, as an uncle, as a mentor. You're your as you mentioned, you said that so-and-so wasn't there for me. There's a certain amount of anger there. There's a certain amount of, I wouldn't call it hatred, but fear too. I think we these unaccustomed conversations we that I encourage people to have, again, they're not easy, but they're ones where if you open a door, they don't always have to start with that person. They may start with an aunt or an uncle or a cousin.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Or a therapist or a therapist, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Therapist on your side, but in every family there are people play different roles. And so most families somewhere down the line have a peacemaker. And so maybe it starts with that peacemaker who's the go-between, who's the intermediary, who's kind of you know, you're it's almost like a little bit of a negotiation. Hey, I'd like I'd like to talk to Pops about where things broke down, but I'd really like to talk about what their values were growing. Up and this, that, and the other. So I think that we the way we approach the conversation is really important. The way the people who we involve, the roles in a family change over time, and doors are shut, doors are open. And I think having those kind of conversations, again, if you are trying to break a legacy that you don't want to have, right? Legacy, we talk about legacy. Legacy is not always positive. Legacy can be negative, legacy can be positive. So if you're trying to break that chain of a negative legacy, you have to confront it sometimes. You have to have those conversations. And then you decide how you want to design your legacy going forward. That conversation may not go well, it may go very well. But again, it's about how you're designing your future. And sometimes looking back and having those unaccustomed conversations, those difficult conversations, or at least trying to answer something for you as you design your legacy moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

This is a big thing for you legacy, inheritance. And how you were growing up, or what you saw at a certain point, made you go, this is what I want to focus on the next 10, 20 years. Now that I've I've left my job, I really want to talk about this. Why?

SPEAKER_00 26:14

I was raised by an incredible mother and an incredible family. I was fortunate enough to be mentored by some very uh incredible people. And one of the things that I have witnessed as I spent the last 20 or 25 years as a lobbyist and a communicator. And what I've seen is this lack of civility and this what I call death of a statesman. People who are willing to talk about the next generation and not the next election. And so as I got out of that political world, it was, you know, my mother had just passed away, and she had left to us an inheritance for which we are able to build, on top of what we had done, able to build a life. That we had we were able to turn this the home, she, as I mentioned, she built her dream home at the age of 93 years old. As she says, dreams don't die, they mature. And she lived in it for five years by herself. But the way she and my wife designed it was so that it could grow in the future with us and for future families. And as I thought about that and where it came from, it came from my grandparents. My grandparents lived a very similar life. My grandfather, you know, was a World War I veteran, and a number of things in his life, he could have been belligerent, he wasn't. My great-grandparents were actually slaves in North Carolina, and so it's only been a few generations. So I think as I look at legacy, it has always been really important to me. And I think that not just when people say family, people say family values and all these other things. And I don't I don't think it stops there. I think legacy is what we leave in people so that they can carry forward and meet whatever day and whatever challenge they get to. So that's why for within me, I was like, what my mom poured, my mom said to me shortly before her death, her passing, she said, I wish I had written a book so that people will never forget me. And I made her a promise that people would never forget Florence, Irving, Francis. Do what I do. And so what I do is help others think about their legacy intentionally so that the people who were important to them are never forgotten.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

I want to dig into this because you just said something so profound about your mother's character. First of all, that she at 93 decided, I'm gonna build my dream home. 93. We have people at 45 that want to retire early. They they're done. And your your mother at 93 decided, no, it's time for my my palace, my my place, my my kingdom. I'm ready now. And it reminds me of Caleb and Joshua in the Bible. In their 80s, they come into the promised land and Caleb says to God, Lord, I'm ready for my land now. He wasn't like, I'm 80 years old, it's too late for me. He was like, No, I'm ready. Give me my land, I'm ready, I'm ready to do it now. And that's what came for me when you were talking about your mom at 93, that she didn't see her ending, she saw her dream.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Right. The family that I was raised in, and the people who I've been raised around, and the mentors I had, were always looking forward. They really appreciated their history and their past, but they were always looking forward. And they didn't, I don't even like the word retirement because it means withdrawal. And so my mom, like so many others are doing today and of her generation, they redeployed. They decided to do other things that were still of value. They had had all these things, almost like a chemistry experiment. They had all these things were poured into them over the years, and so when they finished that particular season, they made a shift to another season and still had value to contribute. My mom often also said, somebody asked her one time, you know, why'd you build a house when you were 93? And she said something to the effect of, I didn't want to leave room on my calendar for dying. And so it was more that she still had things she wanted to learn and to accomplish and to do. And that's what I think for a lot of us now, and is those who are fortunate enough to be able to live longer, who have, you know, it's not not everywhere in the world has it, but for those who are fortunate to have the ability and the resources to live longer and retire or walk away from one job at 62 or 65 and live for 20 or 30 more years, I encourage people to do because getting old gets old really quick. Um, and people who have so much wisdom who sit at home, um, it burns them inside. It's just burning to get out. And I think when when people think about it from that perspective, I don't I don't know a whole lot, at least in my life, I don't know a whole lot of people who could sit on a beach for 18 hours a day for three or four or five years. They can do it for a little while and they could do it every year for a while, but then something pulls them back, and how they create a structure for themselves to deploy that is really important. That's something, Lydia, that we really don't learn. Corporate succession is for the corporation, it's not for the individual. Individuals who are in the acting world, they go from place to place, they're contractors a lot of times, and so what is that structure you design for yourself for that latter stage of your life? I think is really important.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

And how do you design structure for yourself now? You know, because instead of playing the waiting game where you're sitting and waiting for that job, it's like, what are you doing for you now? What other forms of income are you investing in to use your skills, your talent, your abilities? So it's not just you're at somebody else's mercy, right? Because as artists, we are here to create. So what are we creating as opposed to waiting for someone to give us a script and go, okay, now do? No, you can't. I don't think that's right. I think God put you here with purpose. And if He gave you creative abilities, write a play, write a short, go do something else. You know, live your life as an artist to the fullest, as opposed to saying, well, you know, I only I only did three jobs in my lifetime because I was waiting. That's not helping anybody. You um you talk about your great great-grandfather being uh great-grandparents being slaves, and then their children coming into a time of reconstruction, and then we go into Jim Crow, and then we come into the civil rights, and now we're in a dangerous time where the government is trying to take our rights away again, trying to strip us from all the stuff that people fought for, died for, believed in, the this thing called democracy, and they're trying to just rip it away from us. What are some of the things that you grew up with from hearing the stories of ancestors and their struggle and how they made it? Because in talking to you, what I hear is a fortitude of life. Like you are just this, you know, we got to live well, we got to do well. And it doesn't always have to do with the dollar, but it has to do with value, it has to do with. I love you talk about giving, living, and being a good steward. And to me, that is a perfect combination to walk in purpose.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

It is. I think that finding what you value and finding that little bit of uh your framework for life is really important. And so for me, and what I like to talk to people about is this give, live, steward framework. But I think everybody can develop and design that for their lives. They can talk about what is important to me, what is important for me to live, to learn, to do in my lifetime. Right? And as we and as we think about it at whatever stage we are in life, we can think about how we want to live our lives. Nobody can determine that for us. Even if we are struggling artists or if we are CEOs of companies, if we leave that over to someone else, um, then we're prisoners. Right? I think, as you mentioned, my my great this your storytelling is really important. And I I grew up in a house that was extremely active in civil rights. My my great-grandparents, as I mentioned on my mother's side, one set of them, my great-great-grandfather was a slave on a, I don't call it a plantation, it was a farm, it was a little thing, didn't make any money. And he was actually rented out to another farm. That's how he met my great-grandmother, rented out to another farm. She lived long enough, she was born in 1848, she lived long enough for my mother to know her. And we have quilts that she quilted. And so my mother then, you know, my grandfather took that mantle up and was active in civil rights, but they always told me these stories. So I think, especially for people who are creative, people who are actors, people who are singers, every movement that I was ever told about involved storytelling, acting, singing. Things that were happening on stage, in music, on screen were a really important part of fighting whatever power structure at the time was uh was clamping down on people's rights. And at this time, when we have access to more open information and technology and ability to make and create and put things out on whatever platform you may be on, you know, that that fight the power mentality in the creative world, I think just has to continue to just come to the forefront. And and people in that world have to be active in fighting back against those kind of oppressive, oppressive natures of people. And I think that storytelling that we have is what we are able to stand on, Lydia. We we I think that's part of the legacy. I would love to see people who are now deep into or entering the creative and acting world to think about what is it, what's the legacy of this day and age that my children, my nieces and nephews, my great-grands, the people who come after me are going to hear and remember. They can try and erase a lot of things, they can't erase everything.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

No, and they can't erase the things they want to erase either, because the DNA in us to tell stories are much greater than just the books.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

You know, how many, how many stories have come through centuries by verbal, you know, by someone verbally telling that story. It's we think that just because they ban books or they burn books, then we're gonna lose the history. Uh, and that's a lie from the pit of hell. But it makes them feel good. Um, uh, and and I think um uh you you said something, and I was listening to an interview yesterday with uh Jamal Bryan and Latasha Brown, which um they talk about the uh soundtrack. Jamal Bryant was talking about speaking to Andrew Young, the great Andrew Young, civil rights leader, uh statesman, awesome man of God. And he said the problem with today's generation is they don't have a soundtrack. And so that in the, you know, during the civil rights era, they had the soundtrack, these spirituals that kept them fortified and kept them going. We shall overcome, keep your eyes on the prize, and on and on and on. And we don't have that right now. I think in in this conversation, encouraging young people to start uh writing that poetry, to start uh writing those lyrics, speaking truth to power, the the Beyonce's, the Taylor Swift's, the uh Bruno Mars, to start writing stuff to speak truth to power in a way that gets people um uh uh ignited. You know, in the 60s, early 70s, we had um uh uh Gil Scott Heron, we had The Last Poets, we had these people that were just coming with the truth, just speaking out what was going on. And we need that revival as you're talking, and as I'm uh recollecting what they were talking about yesterday, it's we need that. We need artists to stand up to speak truth to power. We need those Banksies that they go in the middle of the night and they put their art out there and they're really saying something about society right now. We need that. Um, and that is that's part of legacy that you that you uh talk about. It's those artists that that come through um the um the Harry Belafantes, the all these, you know, um uh Frank Sinatra. We have Frank Sinatra who was very active in civil rights. We had um Elvis Presley, very active in civil rights, even though he took from us, but he came back. Um, so it's that thing of of putting out, knowing our history, how important it is to know our history. Um, because not everybody comes from the ghetto, not everybody comes from uh broken households. How do we keep our history going forward and sharing when um when you do come from a broken household and to to give yourself that that purpose to go, you know, I'm not gonna do what my parents did, I'm gonna do better. How how do I live better? Because we always, you know, the whole thing is you want to leave the world better than you found it.

SPEAKER_00 41:32

Exactly. Yeah, it's interesting. I will I will uh challenge one thing. I think that that Dr. Bryant and those folks are right that we don't have a, and I will put coherent soundtrack right now, because I think there are a lot of people out there. I think right now we have a lot of noise. We have more communications channels, we have more information out there than we maybe have ever had in our history. So it's hard to find it. And it's hard. We had a few back in the day who were very prominent, who were the Harry Belafonte's of the world, the Lantine Prices of the world, uh, we had folks who were out there who had a platform large enough that they were able to say and speak. I think now we have we have independent voices that are just hard to be heard. And so I would encourage people to continue to seek out those folks who are doing spoken word, who are putting out independent labels and songs, who are putting out vertical dramas about something important, who are doing things. There are a lot of people out there, they're having trouble breaking through. And so I would encourage those of our generation and those who are in places of ability to spotlight some of those people and to create opportunities for those folks to get heard and to get seen and to become part of the conversation. Um, because we are so there's so much noise now that you know you might find one and I might find one. The question is, is there anywhere that people can go to hear and see and find those things? There are some places out there that are doing great storytelling work, there are places out there doing great spoken word, maybe there's some independent labels, maybe there's some independent artists, but I think their their frustration is they can't break through some of the noise that I want to call it superficial because it's important, but that may not be as on message as some things. And so I would I would like to see some of those things pushed even more, some of those types of artists who have an opportunity to shine and to showcase. I think if we hear them that they'll make a powerful impact.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

For those people, go to your AI and start asking, how can you break through? Well, get the you know, AI will give you some pointers on how to get to the right people. How can I get my songs across here so that even though we do have a lot of noise, it's it's being strategic. You you had you had made a comment earlier, uh the struggling artists and the CEO. To me, all artists are CEOs. They they take up the mantle of starving artists, but that's a lie. You know, we are a CO, we are a small business. We may we may not uh be the the printing press or you know the the bookstore down the street, but we're we're a CEO of our business, and we have to act like a CEO and act like a business owner instead of a beggar uh begging to do your art.

SPEAKER_00 44:45

No, I think that's absolutely right. I tell my kids sometimes, again, as they are embarking on careers in in this world that you've been in for a while. I tell them that maybe Sai read a book called Alter Ego. So sometimes you may have to have an alter ego, and the business person may have to hire the creative in you, but you may have you have to develop this business acumen, this strength to own your own intellectual property, to own your own business, to be a business person, not just there's not a creator and a business person. You're a business person who creates, you're a creator who's in business. And those are the things you have to think about as you um, you know, I'm not a contractor, I'm an owner, right? I own who I am, I own my brand, I own this, and I will bring it to your studio, I will bring it to your label, I will bring it into your house, but I am the owner of what I'm putting out, right?

SPEAKER_01 45:46

And we we have to be more aware of our power, not our power, our position, and our prosperity. Because our our creativity prospers somebody. So we have to start with it prospering us, not I'll give you everything I have for $2.50, just let me be in that project. If if if all artists get together and start saying to corporations, you will not rape me, you will not get my my uh IP, you will not utilize um my image for your gain and have me in a poverty house. We're not doing that. But it it there needs to be a consciousness of we are not starving artists. We come with goods that are very valuable and we have to believe it for ourselves. ourselves. We believe it for other people. We have to believe it for ourselves. Like, you know, what I have is is worth a lot of money. I I am wealthy. How do how do I move forward in that? Owning that without being afraid that I'm not going to get seen. You you talked about there's a lot of noise out there. And a lot of times artists feel like, oh, nobody's going to see me. Let me tell you, if you are diligent enough, if you are focused and you have a purpose, you're going to cut through. Yes, there's a lot of noise, but there are not a lot of uh of people who are talented and committed to saying, I'm here and you are going to hear me. You know, not it we think of luck as, you know, oh, they're lucky. No, they're on purpose. They had a plan. They had a strategy. You talk about uh um your legacy legacy design uh that you're a legacy design strategist. Well that's how we have to think to be a legacy design strategist with our art.

SPEAKER_00 48:04

And it's funny we talk now a lot about as you were saying that I was thinking how you were talking about the creator. We talk we hear now all this about we're in the creator economy. And the creators have to realize that they are the value in the creator economy. That's right it's the other people who are coming to you who want to utilize your talent, your service, the skill, the wealth that you have within you to design and to act and to sing and to write and to speak. And if it's the creator economy and the creator is the value you have to understand your value in that business sense and you have to then dictate in that economy what it is you're going to take and not take. You have to but you also something you kind of alluded to Lydia I think is really important is you have to also have a community of people. You have to have a circle you can't be by yourself. Independent contractor is is without a circle without a community without people who they can share ideas and thoughts and knowledge with but if you come together in this circle in this community of people and you've got each other's backs and you've got you can provide and share information again you're you're building your legacy from that community. So if you think you're alone you are but if you come together with people who have you know similar interests similar concerns in the strength of your community will most likely allow you to go further.

SPEAKER_01 49:34

Yes and I I I'm a big believer in the five people in your circle that they influence you. And it's up to you to find five people who are going to influence you for good and not evil you know or or um I I was just talking to um some actors in my community about you know getting out of the pigeon mentality and getting into the eagle mentality because we have pigeons we have uh turkeys we have crows we have vultures and then we have eagles and you get to choose which one you're gonna be you know pigeons poop on everything so they're always complaining they're always you know pooping on people the the turkeys are gobbling they they they're too big to fly right they get fat they're too big to fly so what what happens they get eaten because they get so fat they're luscious meals then you have the crows that are that are getting the crows and the vultures that are getting dead stuff they're all about the dead thing but the eagle the majestic eagle eats living things it has eagle eyes right we say eagle eyes because it can see so far. It's also able to fly over storms. So no matter what our challenges is are we get to go over the challenge as opposed to let the challenge drown us. And being an eagle there are some uh some cons because eagles don't know how to let go they'll see they'll see something that they want and they'll dig in but they don't know how how to release to go wait a minute this is too big for me right now let me let go and and they have found dead eagles on top of uh you know holding on to elephants or holding on to big animals not realizing not having that wisdom to go this too big for me and so we as human beings have that ability to go well this is too big for me right now.

SPEAKER_00 51:52

So how do I release this and and get something that I can grow into you know we're evolving as artists as human beings we're always evolving if we're paying attention we should be growing developing going back to the giving and the living and the being a steward you know we give so we can live so we can replenish we you know in the stewardship we're replenishing right I'm I'm being a good steward I'm I'm being a mentor I'm being a guide I'm being a a boss I'm uh I'm giving it it it's all it's the circle of life yeah and those things overlap it's not like you have to give in one season live in one season steward in one season when I'm old those things keep going as you said you know while you are mentoring and stewarding and preparing you're still living and giving you may be learning a new discipline you may be someone who's wanted to act and you come to it late in life and you decide that now I'm gonna go to my local theater. I'm gonna go start doing something you may have a script in your heart because of the life that you have lived and the challenges you've had you may want to get that out but at the same time you're still giving living and stewarding like you said it's this circle it's it's a way of living that allows you to honor the past but look toward the future.

SPEAKER_01 53:15

And also taking what's in your hand uh whatever that is it it may seem small you know I'm an actor what do I know well you're an actor you could go and read to kids that are in in um group homes you could read to kids who are in hospitals you can go and hold babies who need to be touched in hospitals that uh they don't have anybody there's so much that you can give out of what you think is little which is really a lot to somebody else you can go and help an elderly person one day a week get their groceries help them you know what if you're a handyman or a handy woman how can you help them set up their place there's so much that actors creatives can do on their way to success to help others it is food banks but it's not just food banks you can volunteer in shelters you can volunteer in community centers and after school programs there's so much you can create a little theater out of you know your garage and have kids come and learn the basics and today we have Zoom so you can even teach on Zoom we have you know technology has allowed us to be global citizens. So as artists I can be a global artist I can teach people that are in Russia or in Africa or you know my podcast reaches the globe. I have people that reach out to me from Europe and Africa and Asia we have that ability right now.

SPEAKER_00 55:03

Yeah no your voice is so valuable right now because we can as and the reason you do yours the reason I do inheritance to income podcast is because someone one person may be reached and just helping that I always think if you could my mom had a saying when she was 12 years old I found a photography book my aunt's high school graduation book from 1938 my mom would have been somewhere around 12 years old and she wrote in that book next to her picture to her sister get up every day just trying to make it a little bit better than the day before this is an 11 or 12 year old woman in the 1930s. Those were not easy times and I think if we if we have that mentality of we're just gonna get up and make everything a little bit better that next day for somebody if if we can just help one person every day I mean every day I mean that's I mean can you imagine the amount of the lives we would change right and and and and and the amazing thing about that is I had a high school uh drama teacher one time and I think he said something to the effect of um I have great stories because I live a bold life he's like you know you have great stories because you choose to live a bold life and so then you can tell better stories because you gave more because you lived better because you stewarded better it will enrich the stories that you were able to then transfer into what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 56:33

Seeing life as an adventure as opposed to seeing it as a drudgery you know it's like uh I I remember as a kid hearing older people talking about oh my god it's Monday again it's like you've never been here before how do you know it's like the last Monday you've never been you're speaking death over yourself and and going back to the five people that we spend the most time with is how do they speak into your life? How do you speak into their life? I always tell young artists if you don't have a good community go on YouTube and find five people whose podcasts or their videos that pour life into you and let them be your five people that speak into you because we have so many wonderful uh speakers you got Les Brown you got Tony Robbins you have so many people who can speak life into you Eric Thomas and Jeremy Anderson and Myron Golden I mean there's so many and it's like there's no reason why you can't live a good life no reason not today.

SPEAKER_00 57:46

You're back on your mindset piece right I mean if your mindset if we're if we're encouraging people to design their legacy to have a mindset that looks forward to have a mindset that says I I can right if no matter where I came from if I came from the best situation in the world and I want to continue that trajectory but if I want to be the foundation that I always needed right I I I've got to look at it that way. One of the things that I've always thought about and people ask me I have two two beautiful children um but my dad my mom lived to be five days short of her 98th birthday my grandfather died on his 98th birthday and one of my aunts from my dad's side just turned 101 up in New York my dad died when he was 42. Wow my dad died when I was five years old and so though I have lived and am living a wonderful life where um you know my 70 year old I say that one of the things happened at my dad's funeral my mother I fell asleep at my dad's funeral and my my mother turned to my uncles and said could you pick up Garrick and my grandfather who was 70 years old at the time picked me up off that church pew and I tell people he never put me down again and so and so but but but when we think about the the stories and we think about how we are built and the people who poured into us that's how we have to look forward no matter where we came from if we come from a situation where you know we are a creative who is creating out of our pain because we had a tough family life we can determine that our legacy starts with us. It may not go back centuries.

SPEAKER_01 59:23

We may know where we came from but that may hurt but we are going to be that legacy and we are going to move forward with this legacy that we hand down to people who we touch whose lives we touch that's a mindset thing like you said early on yeah are we gonna have that mindset of a creator where we are going to leave something valuable for other people yes and how do you create from your dreams not your nightmares unless you're creating horror movies that will make a lot of money you have to create from your dreams going back to your mother she decided to build her dream home at 93 how do we create from our dreams that thing that seems impossible right so to me the Bible is such an incredible manual in that you know we have words that encourage us you know write write the vision down that even though it tarries it will come and and that and I hang on that a lot because sometimes we have these dreams and we're writing down our goals and we write down what we want and then they don't show up in the time frame we want it so we get the depressed we get disappointed we get disillusioned and then we are ready to give up but that line that sentence says wait for it because even though it takes long it will come and I share this with with uh people all the time I was in a church for 32 years I I was there from the beginnings when there were like 15 people in the church uh eight of them looked like they were going to die any minute um and then and we grew and we we grew and then we would the church would split you know we would there would be like a pruning like a like a mandatory pruning we go from we got 25 now we're back at 10 then we would go to 50 now we're back at 20 and then and and they kept going for I would say the first 15 years we would grow get pruned grow get pruned and when I started at that church our pastor had a vision he had a dream he saw a big congregation so he rented a theater in Los Angeles it's called the Saban Theater now but it was called the Wilshire Theater and it seats about uh close to 3,000 people or 2,000 people and we rented it with only 50 members of our church for a month of Sundays and every Sunday morning before service me and two other women we would pray over the whole place go every nook and cranny lay hands and uh and oil and just call in the the members that it would be overflowing. At the end of the four weeks we lost like maybe 15 people because it was so bad that the pastor had spend the money renting this space 19 years later our our church was filling up to the point where we were having five and six services on the weekends because we couldn't contain them all. So he rented the Saban theater to put a he said you know I'm gonna I'm gonna put everybody in here for the next couple of months and see how it goes well the first Sunday that we went in there I was sitting in the back of the theater and I felt someone tap my shoulder and I turned and I heard God say this is what you prayed for 19 years ago it took this long and I looked and we were over with overflow. They had to do two services we were there for a whole year and they did two services every Sunday for a year it took 19 years. So that that scripture that sentence write the vision make it plain though it tarries wait for it because it will come that for artists for entrepreneurs for anybody if you hold on to your vision if you hold on to your dreams and you continue in pursuit of it is going to happen and I've seen actors who have you know they they had little j little acting part and they they continued and they had other jobs to keep them going and 20 years later their careers took off 20 years later they got a series and and and you hear this Morgan Freeman is a great example of of an actor who was working working working his success didn't really happen till he was 52 years old with driving Miss Daisy. It is if you're an artist you're an artist and you have to continue and believe that God is going to open doors for you that no man can close that he can make a way for you that where there doesn't seem to be a way but you have to believe you know the the problem is going back to those five people because I think that is so powerful that sometimes we're hanging with five people that keep diminishing our dreams. They keep they're dream stealers so we have these grand dreams that God has put into us and we're listening to the knucklehead who's afraid to go across the street and we go oh yeah you're right that's never going to happen for me. Instead of going, I can't hang with you. I got to let you go because God has put such a big dream in my heart and in my head that I have to be faithful to follow it no matter how crazy it looks like the people who follow their dreams always win.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:39

That's back to one of to tie it back to one of my old North Carolina movies if you build it they will come it's really kind of biblical. It's like you know if you put it out there if you build it people will come but but as you mentioned about I think people come and again thinking about this whole legacy design idea and and your new seasons I think people come into our lives for reasons and seasons right you don't have to think about that I'm getting rid of this person in my life but I'm moving to a new chapter in my life and my new season my new season needs a new circle I need some new people in here some people may stay some people may go as you mentioned earlier in one of the stories some people may come back around right to it you may see them again so treat them well because you may see someone again one day but as you as you move through life as you design it as you think about your future your legacy there are going to be people who you need to come in and out of your life one thing I look when we're younger if you hung with some folks you needed their protection because places where you slept at night weren't exactly safe you needed people around you those five people that was your that was your gang they needed you needed each other to protect each other. But then you may be at a new season in your life where you need a teacher you need a mentor you need an accountability partner then you may need a mentee you may need someone who you're pouring into so reasons and seasons in your life change and so the people in your life have to change. And if you think about it from from a legacy standpoint you are leaving something with each person and they are leaving something with you. And so then you are preparing people to carry the legacy that you've designed but there's no people sometimes don't want to let go of people in their lives and I I don't want people to feel like they're jettisoning someone or they're getting rid of someone forever or for whatever reason. Some of you may have to you may have to I mean that the you mentioned the Bible and it's storytelling my pastor likes to say that you know read the Old Testament it ain't exactly you know PG rated if you read into it. He says you know there are some hard lessons in there but if we look at it as growth and look at it as a different mindset that we are in people's lives for a reason and a season that's okay and that as seasons change we need new people we need new influences.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:05

And to be okay when someone leaves you you know because we're talking about leaving people but sometimes people leave us sometimes they feel like they gotta go to another level and we and they can't bring us with them and we have to be okay. You know it's just knowing that we're we are on our own trajectory so we have to walk our walk as best as we can loving people sharing but also moving forward and sometimes it just means we're not going to the same place.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:38

Yeah I don't have to I don't have to go I just have to grow.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:41

There you go. And um you said something and I wanted to add to that that I think no Matter where you are in life as an adult, it is good to mentor and it's good to be mentored that you are constantly, you have somebody that you're pouring into and somebody who's pouring into you because we don't always want to be the smartest person in the room. We want to be in rooms where we're learning, where we're developing and we're growing so we can be better mentors to others. So we can't go, oh, look at this is what I learned the other day. Let me share this with you, as opposed to I know everything and I'm gonna know we don't know anything. We're still learning, we're still growing, we're still developing, you know. And technology reminds us of that every day. You think you just you know, I know how to use my phone now, and then they do an update. Oh my God, that update makes you crazy. It's like, what is going on? My phone is not working. No, they did an update, so you have to update, you know, and part of that legacy is continuing to update, to develop, to grow that uh I love the story of your mother, and I am going to own that story now because I love the story that uh she at 93 decided to build her dream home. How many people um have dreams and then they just let it die? They just go, oh, well, you know, it was a nice dream. No, I want that dream. I I want I want to be your mother and go, no, 93, I'm I'm doing stuff. I have a neighbor right now, he's 94, he's a he's he's an actor, he's retired. And I look at him and he is constantly reading, constantly pouring in, even though he's not doing his acting how he used to, his mind is still active, you know, and he lives by himself and he does his stuff, and and it's like I'm always encouraged watching him, you know, and and then he'll, you know, he'll say, Okay, something's wrong with my phone, and I'll go, no, it just got an update.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:09

Update. You know, one thing I want to plug here for you, and you talk about the phones, you talk about the stories, you talk about the people. One of the things that we were fortunate enough to do is my son in his schooling to become on the production side, sat his grandmother down, my mom, pretty much in the same spot I'm sitting in right now in a rocking chair turned the other way, and spent a couple hours interviewing her. And so, what I would love for people to do, actors, non-actors, is what I say is family media, not social media, is to use that phone you have, turn it around, ask a family member or a mentor or someone one or two questions. What is it that you want future generations to know? What do you value? What do you remember, especially if you say some people don't have children? I would love for us to capture more of these stories that are that'll be with us for a long time. So if you have that friend next door who's an actor, just record one story of his. Or if you have a parent or a grandparent, record one story because it's so powerful to be able to see and hear them two and three generations from now. I just I would encourage everyone, everyone to become a filmmaker in their own house.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:28

And just pick up your phone and just just record people you love. That's all. They don't have to be famous, they don't have to be uh, but record them so that future generations can hear their voice and see their their faces. I I'm a believer of that, and I interview a lot of people who, you know, they're older now, but they have such incredible stories that go, no, we we have to talk. We have to, you know, we I don't care. We got to talk because it is important. It is important again, going back to this government trying to stifle our voices, to to take away our history, to keep um putting it out there, keep sharing with people, you know, keep sharing incredible stories like your mother, like my neighbor. Uh there, I I just came back from San Francisco. Uh, we had a a film festival up there that we were doing, and I was talking to the guy who sponsored us, and I was asking him if he knew about a woman named Mary Ellen Pleasant, who was a big deal in San Francisco at the turn of the century. She was a former slave who came up from Louisiana to San Francisco. She was white passing until she was in her 40s and her skin started to change color. But by that time, she had already embedded herself with a high society of San Francisco, mainly the politicians, and she had a house where she served the men, their favorite women, blah, blah, blah, blah. So she, by the time her skin um betrayed her, she already knew all the dirt on these people. And she's got uh house is a landmark, and there's a a memorial park after her. And she was she was the Harriet Tubman of the West in that she brought black people from the South, brought them up to San Francisco because at that time it was predominantly Chinese people who were the workers. And she, yeah, and she told them, you know, black you could get black people here for cheaper. So she would bring them through whatever underground railroad they had going on, and she's the one who was responsible for black people migrating to San Francisco. So it is those stories that we need to continually share with people. You know, I'm big on history and knowing stuff. I want to know everything. I don't know anything, but I want to know everything.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:19

So and I want to make sure too, I want to make sure too that we make sure and share with younger folks our struggles and our triumphs. A lot of times, I think in the last number, and this is a generalization, it's too much of one, but we have we have glossed over sometimes the hardships and we've talked about the triumphs. People who were in, I know my my uncle was in World War II in Korea, didn't like to talk about it a lot, but talked about it enough. There are people who were in the civil rights struggle who don't really like to talk about the painful episodes. But I'm all I've been taught by my grandfather and my mother that you know I can't step over the bad footsteps if I didn't know about them. And so if you're if you're sharing, share the struggle in a way that teaches a legacy to your children's children, your mentees, and others. Because if they understand where you've gotten to and gotten through those struggles, then we don't simply want them to have to repeat those. And sometimes it's painful for us, I put myself us as an elder, but I'm not in my family. But if we if we if we share the struggles and then share the what got us to where we are, I think it's very instructive for people. It's it's a it's a gift and a legacy.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:39

I agree. And and and uh you said something about uh a relative being in um the Korean War. That's another contribution that black people made in Korea. Um by by serving, by being uh in service there, they taught Koreans about spam. So a lot of the a lot of the foods that Koreans eat are they're eating it because black uh servicemen, when they came, they brought their cans of spam. They taught them how to make fried chicken. I mean, you think fried chicken is uh Korean. It is not, it came from blacks from the South who went to war in uh in South Korea to defend South Korea from North Korea. So just just a tidbit of stuff. Yeah, yeah. So um I here in Los Angeles, we have a very big uh Korean community, and uh I I'm seeing a lot of fried chicken and beer uh joints popping up, but that is all uh from black culture.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:55

My daughter Karis enjoys frequenting those on the weekends when she's not studying, so I understand.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:00

I'm big on K dramas, and in all the K dramas, there's always a scene with fried chicken and beer, or their spam, there uh or they'll make um they'll make uh sushi rolls with spam in it. So let's talk about your podcast. You started your inheritance to income podcast for what purpose?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:24

For a couple of reasons. One was to share the journey that Sheila and I went on with this house and the story of my mom. And Sheila is my wife, my wife of 35 wonderful years. And so, you know, we wanted to kind of share the story of how you can take an inheritance, monetary or not, and build it into life, build it into an income, build on that inheritance that you receive. And so, over the time, we've been up now for uh since about last November, so uh 30 or so episodes, and and we've really started to focus on how do we help people who are in that transitions in life, especially that latter stage of life, um, think about what comes next. How do you prepare generational readiness to receive whatever inheritance it is and to turn that into generational impact and influence that they don't have to start over again? So, right now we've been doing a series called What Comes After Success, talking to people who have had great success, but what comes next? What are those new seasons of how you continue to design your legacy moving forward?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:29

And what have you learned from that series?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:32

I think I am learning that success is not a point in time, that success changes as you move along, that success is temporary, but service endures. That you know, people who are eminently successful have focused on serving others. And they that's how they judge their success. It wasn't a point in time, it wasn't it wasn't a particular financial number or wealth position. It was when I asked people when did you realize you were successful, many of them say um I don't know that I am, or that I've been successful in different ways, big and small, or that success for them is not a point on a calendar and it's not a decimal point. It really is how am I able to continue to serve with what I've been given.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:27

Hey actor, where are you gonna be in 90 days from now? Is it gonna be with that same old headshot that is not getting you anywhere? That same old story that it's everybody else's fault while you're not booking, or even worse, depression because nothing is happening for your career. Well, let me help you because in 90 days from now, you can have a whole new set of pictures that are built on your brand, you can have a list of agents that actually would fit what it is that you sell, and a plan to have a more prosperous career. Listen, I cannot book you, but I can make you bookable. So if you are ready, willing, and excited to change your circumstances, come and join us at ActingSmarterCircle.com, sign up and get started. We're a weekly community that helps actors get in gear and get the career that they deserve. I love that because I for me, I think the fact that you get to do what you love means you're successful. Whatever that is, you are successful. Sometimes we we put it so far away from us, that word success. I'll be successful when. For myself as an actor, that used to be my conversation, my my my one-liner. When I'm successful, then I'll do this. When I'm successful, and I remember waking up one day hearing my pastor's voice, she would say, Where is the fruit in your life? And I would, and I woke up one morning and I was like, Where's the fruit in my life? I do all this stuff. I've been working, I've been plowing the dirt, I've been doing, where is the fruit? And that day I transitioned from being a cereal plant killer to being a grower of of good fruit, good, you know, and and that process taught me that being success now, right now, what is it that you're doing right now to make you successful? I went to Kmart and bought paint cans and painted my walls. I was like, what am I waiting for? Make my home nice now. And and then I've I discovered oops paint. Do you know oops paint? So let me tell you about oops paint. So you can go to any hardware store when people return paint, it's called oops paint, and you buy it at a discount price. So I started going to my local hardware store periodically, and I'd see the paint that was returned. I go, oh, that's a nice color. I'm gonna take that. And when I get the when I feel the need to paint another wall, I've got fresh paint. And I started doing that. And and part of the fruit, where's the fruit? I started planting seed in my balcony. And I learned so much from stuff I had read in the Bible by just planting seed. You know, in the Bible it's agricultural, so everything is like you plant seed, you sow, you done. Well, I started to see it physically. I bought some nasturtium seeds. I bought a plot, I bought a bag of soil. I put the the seeds in the soil, but I had seeds left over. So I put it underneath the pot. Well, I didn't know that you needed a little, a little uh drainage uh pan to keep the water from going under. So I come out to my balcony one day and I see the nasturtiums have have blossomed and they're there. But I look down and I see there's nasturtiums underneath the pot. Well, I was watering, watering, watering. It was hitting the little uh bag of seeds. Those seeds burst open and started blooming by just the water. And at that moment, I heard God say, I want you to see that when you water something, that water goes to something else. You're not just watering that person, but you're watering the other person. The other person's watering the other person. So by you talking about your mother, you are watering all these people who are watching this interview. You you have watered them and planted in them the idea of I can do that at 93. So our words water people. We, you know, we we plant seed and we water, and the more we speak life to people, the more we're watering into them and causing them to blossom and bloom. And so that thing of we should see a harvest from the giving that we do. We should see a harvest from our podcasts, from our movies, from our our uh plays, whatever it is that we're doing, going back to our value. We don't see value, but we are so valuable.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:04

I love it, I love it because the way you just described that hits me because my mom was a gardener and my granddad was, and I we still have some of the flowers she planted outside, and it it when I look at her garden, I think of her. And so the way you described legacy in your gardening example, in your watering example, and your seed example, and your harvest example, that's what a legacy is, right? I mean, it's a harvest, it's how you are pouring into other people so that the harvest that sometimes you may never see will grow abundantly. And I think it's a beautiful way of talking about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:42

Yeah, and we and we do it with our children, right? If we're if we're training them up in the way they should go, they will water other people.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:50

Now it says when they it says when they are old, they will they will so when they're young, they are pretty much 100% gonna go the other way. But when they're if we if we when they are young, they're pretty much going over there. But if we train up a child that when they are old, they will not depart from it. Sometimes I ask my kids, I tell my kids, I said, man, I'm gonna be glad when you get old.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:18

I I believe that if you train them well, even though they're they're seeking, they still know they still know, they still know the goods, they still know what what is valuable, you know, so they don't depart too far. They not too far.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:36

They always have something pulling them back.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:38

So that's right, that's right. They do. So, you know, we've been talking about legacy. What do you want your legacy to be? Having seen what your mother's legacy was for you and your children, what do you want your legacy to be?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:55

I want my children and my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren to remember me as a statesman who thought about the next generation, who stewarded for the next generation, who lived a wonderful, blessed, happy, fulfilling life, who had a great marriage and a great family, but whose impact was one of service. Someone who thought beyond themselves because that's the way they were thought of. And so I want I want people, when they look at me, I want them to think, you know, I spent I spent 25 years as a lobbyist and an advocate, and I want people to remember me as a legacy advocate. I want people to remember that I fought for people to be able to design their legacies and live their lives as stewards so that future generations would be better because they were here.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:49

And I would add to that a mighty man of God.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:53

And that definitely.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:05

She was amazing because her family was amazing, and their family before was amazing, and you are just uh continuing to bring that bloodline through in such a beautiful way. So I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you, and for showing us what uh a mighty man of God looks like. You know, because we we need to see more. We need we we we don't see enough. And so I love this. This was fantastic. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:37

Thank you very much. I'm so glad and honored to have been able to do it.