Mastering the Art of Growth: Insights from Kenyatta Griggs

Hey, friends.

Welcome, and welcome back to Nosy af.

I'm your host, Stephanie Graham.

Today's guest is barber, author and filmmaker Kenyatta Griggs.

And I gotta tell you something, on top of all of the work that Kenyatta does, one of my favorite things he does is run his Instagram account, Hip Hop Motivator on this Instagram.

It is where I'm constantly discovering new ideas, perspectives and people through his posts.

And it's really one of the reasons why I continue to be such a longtime fan.

And when I think about leaving Instagram, I'm like, then I'll have to leave Hip Hop Motivator.

Kenyatta is the founder of Hip Hop Motivation, a personal development platform that merges hip hop culture with mindset mastery.

His books Think and Ball Out Culture Vultures and My Barber's Hand Stink offer game on growth, creativity and ownership in a way that feels both accessible and real.

He's someone who's built on layer upon layer upon layer of creative work shaped by experience, driven by intention.

And I am super excited to share his story with you.

So after my theme song, let's get into our conversation with Miyata Griggs.

Gotta get up, get up tell the whole world you a winner, winner Vision of a God with a mission in the cause what you doing, how you doing, what you doing and who you are Flex yourself and press yourself yourself Check yourself, don't work yourself if you know me then you know that I be knowing what's up.

Hey, Stephanie Graham is Nosy Kenyatta.

Welcome to Nosy af.

Hello.

Pleasure to be here.

Last time we talked, you put me on to the book the Game of Life and how we know it, how to play it and how to play it.

Oh my God.

How to play it.

Right?

It's so intense.

Absolutely.

One of my favorite books I got, I was, I got hit to that book through LL Cool J, the rapper, you know, working on set with him years ago.

And he told me about the Game of Life and how to Play it by Florence Scavo Shin.

And I'm gonna tell you, it's a little small book, but the book is so.

There's so much information in that one little book that, that was, that was another book that kind of like rearranged and shifted my.

My journey, if I can say, yeah, shifting my journey a little bit after I read it.

And then what was funny is after I read the book for one time, I went back to LL on set because it was like a one day read for me.

And I was like, yeah, man, I read the book.

It was dope and this and that.

He started asking me questions.

And I'm sitting here and I'm like, damn, this is L Cool J asking me questions about a book that he recommended to me.

But he was asking questions that, you know, I really couldn't answer at the time.

And so when I went back, he told me to go back and read about two or three times and then come back and then we'll discuss it.

Because, you know, LL is really into, like self help motivation, things that people don't know about him.

He's like, very, very knowledgeable.

So when I went back to him, like after I say maybe my third read, that's when we were able to build on it, you know.

And he always told me that's one thing he shared with me is that.

And I always knew this from, you know, just growing up studying stuff.

And, you know, I used to win spelling bees when I was a child.

And my mother always said that repetition is the key to success.

You know, the more you do something, more you go over something, the better you become and the more relaxed you feel.

And, you know, what he was sharing also was that, you know, you want, you don't want.

You want it to become a part of your life and a part of your everyday movement.

So if you want that to happen, you have to sometimes go back over things and sometimes you don't leave a paragraph or a sentence until you really get it because comprehensive comprehension is key.

Yeah, well, the audiobook, it totally can be a part of your everyday life because it's only like a three hour audio.

Like, that's like a morning.

Yeah.

And the part that's really a struggle for me, that I thought maybe you could help me with since you put me onto the book, was about the subconscious has no sense of humor.

No humor.

And I could not believe that when she said that because you always hear people, like, make jokes.

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, you definitely become.

Once you start becoming aware that the subconscious mind is the feminine aspect of ourselves and whatever we.

Whatever seed we plant, which a seed is what every thought is a form of a seed.

And so when you're planting these seeds, there is room you can abort the seed that you actually plant and the subconscious won't give birth to it.

But you want to be very cautious of what seeds you're planting and what you're saying and what you're thinking about yourself and others.

Because a lot of times, you know, and a lot of times when we think Things about other people, unless that person's thinking the same thing, it won't really have any significance to them, you know, and so that's why.

But also the negative thoughts we think of others and say they don't think that about themselves, that becomes a part of our reality.

So we have to be very careful with what we project out there into the universe because the subconscious mind does not have a sense of humor.

She believes whatever you believe about yourself.

And it's a, it's very.

She just reflects whatever you give her, you know, because even in mathematics, the man is masculine principle, which is male, the male principle is the sun, and the feminine principle is the moon, and the moon reflects the sun.

In mathematics, you know, that's what we're taught.

And so what that means is that when it comes to, even on the physical base, on the physical level, a woman usually reflects whatever her man is projecting towards her, you know.

And so because men, I believe that men control the temperature of the household, while women, you know, they reflect, they give back what you give to them.

If you're giving it bs, they'll give you back bs, you know, so it's very, it's very, it's very, you know, so you can't really play with that, you know, as they say, don't play with women, you know, on the physical level, the subconscious mind even more so you don't want to play with her, you know, and that's for men and women because we both have the masculine feminine principle within ourselves.

You know, left brain, right brain.

Yeah, it's definitely like, yikes.

Yeah.

You know, we all play and we say different things and you know, we could be like, you know, we can, we can say different negative things towards ourselves or think different things about ourselves, like, oh, here I go again, or I'm not doing this right and this and that.

But you want to get out of the habit of that because you don't want anything to compromise your confidence and your self esteem, you know, any more than the things that have already been done to you through your formative years.

And that's really where we have to, you know, from the formative years.

We have to.

In order to get past those things, each human being has to commit to putting forth and inputting certain inputs of information to bring them forth and bring them beyond whatever they were taught by their mothers or father or whoever their caregiver was.

So it's very, very, it's intensive work, you know, but the subconscious mind is not to be played with, you know, and she was right.

You know, like we play.

All people play.

It's not that you think, oh, I'm a rabbit and all of a sudden you become a rabbit.

What it is, you have to just be aware, you know, what you're saying about yourself in those silent moments, you know, when you're chilling and no one's around.

And you know, after a while, you know, you'll commit to making sure you're planting the right seeds within the subconscious womb.

Because the subconscious is a womb, you know, and that's, that's what, that's really what it is.

It's a womb.

And so, you know, we have to just be aware of that.

We have to make sure whatever we're putting out there we want, we.

It's something that we truly desire, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Because it, it comes back.

Doesn't mean it automatically comes back right off, but it definitely comes back over time, one form or another.

Our worries, our fears, you know, because fear is a powerful, a powerful frequency, you know, as well as love.

Love is a powerful frequency.

You know, the heart chakra is everything.

And so where the heart, where the heart lies is how we feel about a thing.

And the feeling is what receives and gives the blessings.

You know, that's why they tell you don't do anything unless your heart is in it.

Because the heart chakra is the strongest frequency.

I would say that is above the mental frequencies.

The crown.

Yeah.

Because that's the crossroad of everyone's life is the heart frequency.

The heart chakra.

It's deep and it's intense, like you said.

Yeah.

So I know that you had, you know, you got started, you know, in your work through being a barber.

And I'm just curious, like, could you walk us through, like, how that started?

Yeah, well, I would think, like just, well, my formative years, I had a great time growing up.

I have two parents that were very open to me expressing myself and coming to them if I needed to and saying whatever it is.

Fortunately, I wasn't around.

Abuse, you know, any form of fashion.

And then I have aunts.

My mother has nine.

Well, she has nine siblings.

And so out of those nine siblings, there's school teachers, there's child psychiatrists.

So there were people that were committed to the overall well being of the children, you know, and from a young child, you know, my mom went through her own ups and downs, like we all do.

And we all have our own dysfunction and we come from it.

But the one thing that didn't stop me from developing myself and Becoming and just knowing that I could do whatever it is I felt I wanted to do was the fact that, you know, there wasn't a lot of yelling and a lot of, you know, telling me what I'm not and who I am and, oh, you're just like your father.

You're just like your mother.

And all this stuff that a lot of people unfortunately go through.

I just really was just taught at a young age that the sky is not the limit.

You can go beyond the sky.

You can go into the outer realms of the.

Of space and really, you know, put forth whatever it is you want to do.

And the barbering thing came from.

My mother wasn't able to give me money every week to get my hair cut.

And I'm one of those people that I like to.

I like to look a certain way.

I wanted, you know, to be.

I was.

I was, you know, clean cut, dressed a certain way.

So that was a big deal for me, because in the 90s, that was very important for a young man to look a certain way.

Like today.

It's funny, I know old people always say, oh, it's not like we was back in.

In the day because my grandfather used to diss us because they used to wear suits and slacks to school.

But in the 90s, you know, how you looked in your hairstyle and what you wore was very important because that was like the fashion boom.

You know, all the Jordans were really coming out there, and the Jabot and the Polo and the Nike, and, you know, everything was, like, really official.

You had to look a certain way.

And so because she couldn't get any money every week, it turned into a thing where, you know, I was down and out about that.

My aunt picked up on it, my old.

My mom's oldest sister, my Aunt Betty, who was a school teacher, and she was just hearing the dialogue between me and my mother, and she asked me to go to the store with her.

And so I went to the store with her.

I really didn't want to go because my Aunt Betty was one of those people that would walk down every aisle.

Oh, my gosh.

She would go down every aisle, and it would take forever, you know, and that's.

That's.

That's death to a child.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

You know, and so she.

She took me to the store called Service Merchandise.

We went in, and she was shopping, and then we went in the section where they had hair clippers, and she asked me, what clippers does my barber use to cut my hair?

And I wasn't really interested in, you know, anything going on.

I was just kind of pushing the basket while she was shopping or whatever.

And I said.

And I looked and I said, I think it's those.

And just some purple, and it was like some burgundy and black Osters, they call them.

And I thought she was buying some clippers from Uncle Phil, which is, you know, her husband.

And I still wasn't getting the.

Getting nothing from her that she was buying some clippers for me.

And so she got the clippers.

The guy came in, unlocked the glass, old school style, gave her the clippers, went.

Went to the register, paid for items, including the clippers.

We get to the car, she hands me the clippers, and she said, here.

And I looked at the bag, and I'm like, what am I doing with this?

I know she ain't trying to get me to get in here and cut my own hair.

She was like.

She was like, here.

Every young man should learn how to groom themselves.

And she said it just like that.

I was like, I don't know how to hear.

She said, you better learn.

I was like, okay.

And it's still sitting in my lap.

The clippers, like, professional clippers.

I think she spent.

She spent like $120 on those clippers.

Wow.

And she.

She.

She loved.

We left the store, she pulled up to my barbershop, where I got my haircut.

She handed me $20, which was on Slauson, like a few blocks up from Crenshaw, handed me $20 and told me to, you know, get my hair cut and walk home afterwards.

And so.

And I was like, wow.

So when I got back to the house after getting my hair cut, she.

The clippers were sitting on my bed.

And, you know, she told me, like, every time I get a haircut, pay attention to what the barber's doing.

And she knows I do anyway.

And I started cutting my hair.

I started going around the phase that my barber would give me, and come to find out I had the skill and the gift to do it because artists, I knew how to draw.

And so from there on, I just developed a certain amount of independence about myself, you know, so.

And that's really.

To me, I feel like that's like sort of my point of reference to why I stay with the independence and just letting it hang all out and just doing what I need to do based on, you know, what does it mean unless you try, you want to put forth some effort towards whatever it is you're doing, even if it is a mistake.

Because when I first started cutting my Hair.

There were a lot of line pushbacks, there were a lot of bad haircuts.

There were a lot of mistakes.

Not too many because I wanted to look a certain way.

But when I didn't pay attention, how I need to pay attention, it was always a mistake happened.

So, you know, I kind of correlated that and connected that to life as I became an adult is that everything is based on the care you put into it and the focus you get if you focus on it.

Even with a mistake, that mistake is something that can help you as you begin to develop and grow within that business or whatever you're doing.

And so that was really like the, the, the, the point of reference I could use to say why I went independent.

And then from there that's the same way I filmed my movie the Secret to Ballin and wrote my books.

My first book was a book called Thinking Ball out, which was an audiobook.

Yep, I love it.

Yeah, I wrote that.

And at the time, I didn't know how to write a book.

I knew how to storytell.

I knew how to write because I was into writing and reading.

I did a lot of reading growing up, again, because we had school teacher aunties and I played Dungeons and Dragons, which is a so called nerd game in the circle of, you know, some, some young white children, a lot of white kids about Dungeons and Dragons.

But I played that so much growing up because my cousin, he was, he was hella into that.

And so we played that like every damn, damn near every day in the summers.

And so because of that, Dungeons and Dragons is a game of fantasy.

So you have to use your imagination a lot of times and you have to really be on cue with what you put focus on certain attributes that you want to focus on to help you get through the journey.

And so from doing that, you know, learning how to cut my own hair, then I became good at it.

And, you know, all my boys and different people would just come to me for haircuts.

All through high school, I just felt like there was no limit to what can be done.

If I could teach myself how to cut my own hair, if I could, you know, you know, do all these different things.

I kind of connected that to life, saying that, you know, in life, it's like a haircut, you know, you have to get rid of the things you don't want in order to see what you do want.

And so that's really why, you know, cutting hair was a blessing to me, meeting so many great people, entertainers.

But the ideas kept flowing because I was deeply into motivation as well as hip hop.

And so the day I came up with the title Hip Hop Motivation, Mm.

It was like one of the slowest days I ever had in the shop on Crenshaw.

You know, we didn't have too many slow days, but this was a Friday, the day after my 29th birthday.

I came up with the concept for the project I wanted to write called Think and Grow.

Thinking Ball out, which was from one of my favorite books, Think and Grow Rich.

And I was writing it.

I was.

My pen was flowing, you know, and, you know, I came with the idea and what to do and what I wanted to do with the company.

And I still have the notebook, and I look at it from time to time, and I'm like, wow, this is amazing.

And that I want to write books.

I wanted to help people, you know, give forth information, every.

You know, research things, learn.

As I learn, I begin to circulate that back to people.

Whoever's on the frequency of learning and needs that information.

And from there, it was just.

It was.

It was crazy because I was.

I was.

I was feeling so up and alive when I was writing, and I was like, yeah, this is.

This is what I'm gonna do.

I'll put this together.

And then I got a phone call from Method man from Wu Tang Clan to come cut his hair.

So he called me.

You know, we had our dialogue.

I told him, I'll come.

I'll come through once I pick my children up from school.

I picked him up from the school bus.

My daughter was looking crazy.

So I dropped him off.

I was gonna take them with me to cut his hair.

And the last time I had cut meth before that day, he called me, which was June 24, and he was like, you know, could I hook his ipod up for me?

Because I had all the music, all types of hip hop on my computer.

So I stopped by my crib, where I was staying at the time, to get my computer, and somebody came out of nowhere and just started shooting, right?

Wow.

They just started, like, letting off.

So this guy, out of nowhere, he hit me like, six times.

I got hit in my liver, my lung.

Wow.

Across my spine.

You know, it was pretty bad.

And I was laying face down, and, you know, I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't really talk and project.

The cops came up and harassed me when I was laying there in that position.

When they finally came up.

What?

Yeah, yeah, it was a Hispanic cop and a white copy.

The Hispanic cop walked up and said, what you do deserve this.

And he was smiling as my face was pressed.

On the contrary, I could see him walking up.

He was like, what did you do to deserve this?

I was like, nothing.

Please help me.

Help me, I can't breathe.

He said, oh, you must have did something.

What?

And then the white cop, he was like, you know, his foot, his boot was in the puddle of my blood.

Cause I remember he was right by my face.

And I was looking and kind of looking up at him, trying to see what's going on.

And he was like, what's your name?

I was like, can y'all help me?

Please help me.

You know, I can't project because I can't breathe.

And he told me he couldn't understand my name.

If he doesn't, if I don't tell him my name, he can't get me any help.

But at that moment, I heard the ambulance blaring.

Thank God.

Yeah, I blacked out, came back.

It was.

And then in the ambulance, it was just even.

It was even an iller situation because no one in the ambulance, you know, they had me on the gurney, they put me in the truck and is it called a truck or a van, whatever, the medical ambulance.

Ambulance, yeah, the ambulance is a better way of saying it.

And I had to hold myself up on the gurney to stop from flipping over.

And as I'm looking around, nobody's paying attention to me.

The mask is coming off my face, you know, and I kind of, I kind of connected it to, you know, a typical, probably attitude and personality trait that a lot of people have in Los Angeles or in any inner city, especially la, thinking everybody's a gang banger or, you know, you did something to deserve whatever you're going through.

And, you know, I was trying to get help, you know, and then.

And the good thing about it is that I arrived at the hospital on time.

Lot of life changing situations because I spent that was the most I've ever sat still, you know, and in quiet.

And I couldn't do nothing about it because I've always been a hustler and had my own shop, you know, on Crenshaw.

I owned the shop since I was 21 years old.

So I was used to hustling and moving around constantly and I had to sit still and take a look at everything.

And that stillness is where I learned that, you know, everything grows from the stillness.

It's not so much of the hustle, it's more or less when you sit still and you get quiet and you pay attention, you know, because every human being wants to move around and do, do, do, do, do.

I gotta do this, I gotta do that.

But what they forget is that stillness is how things grow.

The same way we grew in the stillness of our mother's wombs.

And so when you sit still, you meditate, you get quiet, you know, silence things, silence yourself.

Turn the phone off, turn the television off.

Anything that's bringing you away from yourself.

It's really how you get in tune with yourself, to change yourself, you know, and to rearrange things in your life that may not be great for you at the time, you know.

And so that.

That was what I learned in that situation.

You know, took a while to heal and go through things.

And of course, Meth was wondering where the hell I was at, you know, and he's on thinking ball out too, kind of reenacting the scene that when he called me for a haircut and just, you know, it was.

It was just an eye opener.

And then I kept moving forward from the hospital on to, you know, develop hip hop motivation, you know, having different people on my team and just different things going on.

Things, Things change because teams change, people change.

And.

But I wouldn't change one thing about anything that's happened to me in the process of where I'm at today.

But you didn't do.

When you said that you think about, like, things changing, you didn't do anything wrong.

No, no, it wasn't anything so much wrong.

But, you know, I know that things don't happen to us, they happen for us, you know, and at that time, I didn't really have any form of that.

I would say I didn't really have any message to bring forth other than the fact of the motivation I've learned and the things I've read over the years.

But there was really no true testimony that I had before that I would say where I really experienced something that was a real painful situation, not only physically but spiritually and mentally.

Because in the hospital, I began to question who would do this to me?

Why did I get done like this?

You know, I've never shot anyone.

I've never went up to someone to stab them or hurt them or did anything like that.

But, yeah, you know, again, things don't happen to us, they happen for us.

And so because those things happen, that thing happened to me among other things.

You know, we all go through things throughout life, you know, like losing someone is a happening, you know, you know, not having the money that you expected to have, not doing anything, you know, within your career that you might have Expected.

But these things are happening to you.

It's trying.

It's something else is emerging from you when you're going through anything.

That's true.

Yeah.

When people get out of your life, it's on purpose, you know, because everything.

We're in a frequency universe, you know, the people that are meant to be around you and the people that you will meet and connect with is based on a frequency.

It's not based on, oh, I just want you to do that now.

It's frequency relationships and frequency.

It's not, I'll make you like me or you make me like you.

It's like we connect.

A peaceful union.

We just, we're on the same page as some people call being on the same page.

And that's what frequency is.

So it's the law of vibration.

But these things help me come forward and still helping me.

Because even when I look back over these things, I hadn't even talked about that one thing I just talked to you about in years and I'm looking at like, wow, that was.

That was deep.

Yeah.

That happened in 2004, by the way, so.

Oh, wow.

How many years?

That's 20 years.

20 years.

20 years ago.

June 29th, 24th of this year.

Wow.

And then Thinking Ball out came out.

What's funny is I should have did a 20 year thing for.

But I'll do it at the top of the year.

But Thinking Ball out came out.

I finished Thinking Ball out in November, I think it was.

Yeah, yeah.

And Thinking Ball out is.

It's certainly available on Apple music.

I've heard it.

I don't know if it's on Spotify, but I'm sure it is.

Yeah, yeah, I think it is.

I have to check.

I'll look, I'll look and I'll put it in the show notes for those.

Because I like the approach for Thinking Ball out because I mean, it's like your voice, it's like hip hop, bass.

It's like, you know, I feel like it's very relatable.

My favorite story in there is when you spoke about one of your clients, the parent who came in and how she always like pretty much lets her kid figure out what he wants.

Oh, that's on.

That's.

That's the Secret to Ballin, which is similar to Ball Out.

So the Secret of Ballin.

You talking about a chapter called.

I think that if I don't mistaken, that chapter's Unique, Creative.

No, the Choice is Yours.

Yes, Choice is Yours, where I talk.

About how there was this lady that used to bring her son to me.

And I just loved.

I liked her parenting style.

Yeah.

Cause I'm a student.

I'm a student of everything around me and I pay attention without judgment, you know, and she just had a dope parenting style.

And I had a son.

You know, my son was little at the time.

He's 29, 29 today.

But you know, at the time he was like probably 3, 4.

And I just was paying attention to how she would always allow him to make decisions.

And if she had to step in, she stepped in.

She would let him figure out what he wanted on his head and how he wanted to do it.

And, you know, and she said that she would do the same thing, what he puts on his body, you know, making sure he was good.

But she.

That trust that she had for her son is something I could relate to because that's also a point of reference for me on why I was able to step up and do certain things throughout my life is because my mother had that same form of independence, that independent mindset to where she.

She allowed me to.

To make my mistakes.

She allowed me to make a decision.

And if it was a decision that she saw that she.

I really needed help with or something she need to step in with, you know, she would step in, but other than that, she would let me make choices, you know, and choices is everything.

I think that's our God given gift, you know, for us to make choices for ourselves.

And it starts at childhood, you know, and of course our parents have to help us and guide us.

But I just loved her parenting style.

It was dope.

It was dope.

Yeah, that was cool.

And yeah, my apologies.

I was getting the ball in.

The ball in it.

Oh, no, it's.

Yeah, it's in the same.

It's in the same.

It's in the same family.

So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

It's cool.

Like with your, with your documentary.

How did you even, like working with meth?

Like, how do you.

How did you start working with celebrities and like, you know, such hip hop legends?

It's so cool.

Well, again, it came from, like, just cutting hair in the industry.

It started off with.

Before I got into cutting people in the industry.

It just really came from me honing my skills as a barber, you know, because, you know, it's safe to say that, you know, we all know with hairstyles and barbering, especially with black people, you know, hair is everything.

And so when we see people on television or the rappers and different people, these people want to look good.

They got to look.

Right.

So they actually sometimes appoint a barber, a beautician that can give them that look that they're trying to achieve.

And so I spent many years developing my craft, you know, developing my skills and not knowing it at the time.

I did a lot of free haircuts.

It used to drive my mom crazy sometimes when I was in high school.

But I feel like everyone needs to and has to go through an apprentice stage in development to develop their skills.

You know, not everybody's so money conscious and wants to get paid for everything, but there's times where you could do more work.

If you don't get paid, you can do more work.

You can develop yourself when you don't get paid, because then you can go in and say, hey, can I just film this?

And I'll give it to you and let me edit.

Let me do, you know, whatever it may be if you're a filmmaker or if you're, you know, whatever it is.

Yeah.

You know, and so I felt.

I feel like that was a big part of why I was able to get into the industry and continue doing people for many, many years.

Over 30 years now, because I developed my skills beforehand.

Now if I didn't have the skills, it's damn hard to really keep a client in the barbershop is what.

Especially in the.

In the entertainment industry, because people have to look a certain way, you know, continuity, and you have to make sure that the line is straight, it's not crooked.

It's, you know, that everything's on point.

You know, there's not really a lot of room for error in the.

In the hair game.

Shout out to all my barbers and beauticians.

We all know it's like drawing all day with a.

It's drawing all day with no eraser.

We don't have room for error too much.

Yeah.

Because nobody wants their head messing, especially not no black person.

Yeah, it's a lot of, you know, it's very anxiety inducing.

It's making me like, oh, my God.

You know, but.

But over time, you know, you get used to it because you know that this is just what you have to do.

You have to see the style before you even start.

Yeah.

You know, I say that on one of my projects, the same project you're talking about on a chapter called Thinking of a Master Plan.

It's like you have to see where you're going before you even start.

Yeah.

You know, somebody.

That's why the consultation is the most important aspect of doing hair.

You know, giving someone what they giving them the.

Knowing what they want to see and what they're trying to achieve.

And you know where you're going.

It's easy to arrive there once you know where you're going, you know, so, you know, and it's funny because there was the book that I read years ago, this guy named Walter Russell, he had a part in his book where he.

He was a sculptor.

He was really good at sculpting.

You can.

You can look it up online.

He was a.

He had a book called the.

The Secrets in Secret Science or no, the Divine Iliad.

Okay.

And he said one of, you know, he found out, like, he just connected his.

His passion for doing sculptures.

Sculptures to life and saying that, you know, in order to achieve anything in life, you have to first remove the things that are unwanted in order to get to where it is and to achieve whatever it is you're trying to achieve.

And it's the same with cutting hair.

You know, if I'm.

If someone comes with an afro and they want a short haircut, wavelength, I have to remove the unwanted to achieve the wanted.

And he said that was such a big deal to him when he really connected that to his life skills and doing things.

And he became well known in everything he put his heart into because he understood that principle.

You have to do away with some things in order to achieve things.

If you want to lose weight, you can't eat a certain thing in order to achieve a certain healthy look that you're trying to achieve or have a healthy lifestyle, you know, and so it's the same principle as above, so below.

Everything is connected.

Yeah, yeah.

Cause, you know, I think about, like with your barbering career and then like, of course we both, like, I work on sets, you work on sets.

I think about, like, the customer service and people work, you know, and I'm curious, like, how working with different people in barbering, how that might inform your documentary where you were talking to a bunch of different people.

It was the.

It was.

It was basically what you just said.

It's like the customer service.

But the main thing that a lot of people overlook is the.

Is the relationships.

You know, those connections, those are very important.

You know, it's easier.

It's easier to connect with people when you build rapport with them.

You know, if you're a likable person and not to be self.

Not to be.

Not to be a people pleaser, but to be a person that respects people first and foremost.

You know, respect brings forth respect a lot of times, you know, and I just, I know that, I know now that it really came from my relationships with people and people having a trust in me that I wouldn't misuse whatever they were bringing me into if I was asking them to do a certain thing for me.

They knew I wasn't setting them up to get robbed.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, whatever it may be.

But you know, I have great friends in the industry to this day, you know, and it's not because I'm getting something from them or they're getting something from me so much, you know, like Red man is a good friend of mine and Method man still and Damon Dash and, you know, and I kept these relationships up and I'm proud of these relationships because for the most part it's.

Because it's not a, it's not a needy relationship, you know, I'm actually a friend to these guys.

It's not like a.

I'm your friend because you Damon Dash or I'm cool with you because you Red man or, you know, or like Jennings, who I was always been cool with and you know, Flow Rider, that's another one of my partners, you know, it was, it was more or less like based on we connect because we brothers, you know, saying I have respect for you.

I'm not coming in your house trying to steal from you.

You know, I'm not, you know, coming over here, you know, telling your business when I see something in your house that you know, people don't know about.

I'm over here telling your business to people and trying to make a mockery of whatever you're going through.

You know, it's just having respect, man, but, but respect, it's, it all begins to me with self respect.

You know, you go into the game, any game you're going into, you gotta have first half self respect.

Because a lot of times people overlook self respect and they just looking at the money, you know, you don't want to just be money motivated.

Money's very important because you need it.

It's just as important as oxygen.

But the first thing you have to do is stand on some principles.

Have to have morals and standards, you know.

Cause people will test you too, you know.

There was times when I used to be like in the beginning when Rockefeller was still together.

I remember like, you know, I would go to the house to cut hair and I would see like medallions here and there, chains.

I remember one time I saw like this diamond encrusted gold.

It may have been platinum or something.

Wow.

I saw it on the ground.

I'm looking like, you know, like no one's noticing it.

No one's paying attention to it.

And I remember telling Biggs, which is Dane's partner, and I was like, yo, I picked it up and handed to him, and he was, oh, shoot.

But it was so little to where it could have went missing.

Yeah.

If I was a thief.

Yeah, someone else was a thief.

Or, you know, not to say that he.

They were testing me.

But these things will happen.

People having their money around when they bring you in their house or they bring you to their.

In their trailer, you know, on set, you know, and all these things matter.

It's like having principles, morals and standards, you know, what you stand for, you know, and I think that's really what made it easier for me to pull people in to participate in my project, the Secret to Ballin, you know, and I'm actually doing.

I'm actually doing.

I'm creating a book around the Secret of Ballin right now.

And the audio, because that was more of a case study.

Okay.

You know, the movie itself was filmed with one camera.

It was all in house editing and color corrections and sound work.

And, you know, we had all these different pieces that added to the puzzle.

And, you know, I wouldn't change anything about it.

You know, the people we worked with, like, you know, from the guy that filmed it, my guy Sean, who filmed it, coordinators and producers Michelle and Carolyn and John Robinson and this guy named id, who did a lot of music and Frost and, you know, Vang Laputi, this full crew producer as well, that.

That did some of the music for us, and just bringing people together to put forth a.

Put together a project.

To me, at the end of it, it wasn't so much of an ego thing, but it said a lot about my leadership skills, you know, and so now more than anything else, the book the Secret of Balling is going to be based on how these things came together.

And it's really how I carry myself.

And, you know, because, you know, people pay attention to how you carry yourself.

You know, if you're asking for help or you're asking for, you know, people to be involved in something, they're paying attention, you know.

Yeah.

And you don't want to slip up.

You know, I'm not.

I'm not a drinker.

I don't smoke, you know, and peace to anyone that does any of those things.

But I take everything I do serious when it comes to business, you know, and, you know, I have my fun, but I don't take my.

I don't I don't play with my relationships to say.

It's a better way of saying it, you know, like, I ain't just bringing people to Dame's house and popping up and doing stuff.

And, you know, and it's interesting because I've been, I've sometimes I've been in the deep hood, like in Los Angeles, and because my friends in the industry have such a trust for me, they'll come to my house, they'll come wherever I'm at, and they know they're okay, they know they're good.

Somebody like a red man, you know, I put my life on my line, on the line for my brothers to make sure they good wherever I'm at.

That's how I feel.

Yeah.

You know, and so, because I have that respect for myself and I stand on some standards, some principles, you know, I know that that's a big reason why things began to flourish for me and continue to flourish because, you know, I have, I have some connects, I got some great connections, but the most important connection I have is I have a connection to the universe through understanding natural law.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If, if I was, if I was a young Kenyatta in 2024, wanting to start to build relationships, what would be, what would you think would be like?

What's step one to building relationships?

Step one, again, it would be self development.

You know, what, what, what am I offering?

What, what can I offer to connect with people, you know, working on whatever it is I'm offering to the, to the, to the, to the grand scheme of things, you know, what's, what is my service and what do I provide?

I will really pay attention more than anything else, the service.

If I would have did that when I was younger, things would have went a lot faster, but I don't know so much if I would do it, do it any different.

Because I needed all that, all that apprentice stuff.

I needed those years of apprenticeship.

Yeah.

Getting my skill, honing my skills, doing things.

So if I'm cutting hair, someone's a, someone's a film student.

You have to have years of filming and years of editing for nothing.

You know, if you're trying to do a podcast.

That's why I'm actually in a high appreciation of all the podcast people and everyone out here stepping out, doing it.

Because when Dame and I were doing it, it wasn't, it wasn't like it is today.

People actually getting paid while they sitting up talking now, like super chats and, you know, we wasn't, didn't have all that, you Know, we didn't really even know how to monetize back then.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, and then we were the ones like sitting on camera, being seen where a lot of people weren't being seen back then.

They had like a picture up and you would hear the voice like a radio show.

And, you know, it's like whatever you're doing and you can continue to do it, you know, that development is the first thing.

Whatever service you're providing, you want to develop that service, you know, because the market, the marketplace is all about service.

You know, that's true.

That's true.

Most, a lot of people put money before service, but that's foolishness.

That's putting a cart before the horse.

When service is what brings forth money and brings forth connections and different people that, you know, from all walks of life.

And just being a barber.

Yeah.

For me, developing my skills and being good enough to get certain real estate agents in my chair and even certain gang bangers, certain hood people, certain drug dealers that, you know, was in the know about something.

Certain pimps I cut over the years, you know, and the good thing about me is that I don't have heavy judgment towards anything in anyone's path.

Yeah.

You know, because I understand that life path is what we're here to find out our lessons on, you know what I'm saying?

Because again, things don't happen to you, they happen for you.

Yeah.

You know, I've had some insightful conversations with gang bangers.

I've had some insightful conversations with pimps.

I've had some beautiful conversations with doctors, lawyers, preschool teachers, high school teachers.

And so when you're open to the information, it's going to come, you know, because I'm a firm believer that when the student is ready, the teachers appear.

And the teachers sometimes are younger than you.

Your greatest teacher might be a five year old like my little daughter, who, you know, has taught me so much in the last five years being a single parent.

You know, being a single parent right now, after going through getting shot, after going through doing these movies and books and seeing all the things I've seen, being flown all over the world to cut hair, from London to Jamaica to Hawaii and all these different places and all the states, you know, cutting hair for concerts and doing different things, being a father to my two youngest children day to day, is the most I've learned about life that I've ever learned.

If you packaged all those things up, I just told you, nothing compares to being a single parent.

Nothing compares to being a, A Real conscious parent.

Yeah.

And actually taking what I've learned from being a parent, the patience it takes, the empathy it takes.

And it, it just actually, it actually had me one day where I sat after getting them to sleep and I sat in tears because I was like, wow, this is what life is.

This is how you develop a thing.

This is how you grow through patience, empathy with yourself.

I'm saying because we, we get into a box where we, we compare ourselves to others and we try to be this and we want that and we.

Oh, I gotta, I gotta hurry up, I gotta make.

No, no, no, no, no.

Slow down.

Sit still and have some empathy for yourself, you know, because with a child, it's the same you, you still are that same child.

You know, the eyes don't grow, the vision grows, your body grew, but your eyes are still the same eyeballs you had in your head when you was.

A little kid, which is wild.

That's so weird.

So the funny thing is that when we begin to slow things down and have empathy for ourselves, you know, like we have to have empathy for our children.

If you're in a relationship, you must have empathy for the, the new relationship you have because no one comes in knowing everything about you.

Yeah.

And if you get upset because someone did something that kind of violates something that you may not have discussed and some of your rules and your boundaries, that's foolishness.

How can you get.

How could I get upset with a 5 year old?

She's supposed to perfectly know how to cross the street right now.

Unless I've shown her and she knows.

But even then it still takes time.

We're talking about someone that's only been walking maybe four years like most children.

Yeah.

So, you know, empathy comes into play and it comes in.

And it should more than anything else come, Come into play, continue to come into play with us as adults.

Yeah, but we're too hard on ourselves.

Absolutely.

We too hard on ourselves, we give up.

You know, you didn't gain, you know, like when people like again, like I'm on this workout thing, you know, we didn't.

You didn't gain weight from eating one cookie.

You didn't gain it from even one cup of ice cream or one hamburger.

Over time, time, time, time, time, Things expand, things grow.

Yeah, but it's going to take the same amount of time and patience the same way.

The opposite way.

To take it off, to take it off is going to take the same amount of time.

So you must be patient with yourself and have empathy.

But here's the One, the last key out of those three things.

So we got empathy, patience.

But the last one is the most important.

Consistency.

Children need consistency as you need consistency with yourself as an adult within your relationship.

Consistency is the lifeblood people have.

Trust is developed through consistency.

Yeah.

You have to sometimes show your children as well as showing yourself that there's nothing more important than your overall well being.

It's very important to say no.

Say no to some things sometimes to say no to some friends that, you know, bring you forth, bring you down or bring you to a certain energy space.

And sometimes it's family members where you don't need to go and where you don't need to be.

No.

It's so valuable, so important.

Yeah.

You know, understanding the laws of reward and punishment, which is the law of cause and effect, which is the, the most important law to me that is the law of laws.

Cause and effect.

There is a reason why things happen.

Yeah.

But you have to understand in order to bring forth a new effect in your life is what you see on a day to day basis is you have to perform and bring forth a new cause.

And you can do that at any given moment.

But it takes again, empathy, patience and consistency.

And that's the premise of my book, Conscious Father.

Yeah.

And I'm connecting it to relationships because, you know, the relationship thing is real big right now, you know, and all this alpha male and alpha female and balloon popping and all this stuff.

But what people don't understand is that.

They'Re balloon popping for like senior citizens now.

Have you seen this?

Beautiful.

I love.

It's entertaining me.

I love it.

Oh, I love it.

It's so good.

It's just.

You gotta.

But you have to understand that the formative years and how we grew up, each person, the formative years is the most important time of your life.

Yeah.

As if you, you're not a computer nerd, but you should know this one thing about a computer.

The most important part to the computer is the format hits formative years hence for a computer.

The format, you know, because the operating system comes from the things we were taught and saw as children.

Because children don't do what they're told.

Nine times out of 10, usually they do what they see.

They pay attention.

They're watching.

You know, I have five little girls, you know, and one thing I can say in comparison to my little boys, my two sons, little girls pay attention in a different kind of way than little boys do.

Little girls pay attention to daddy, they're watching stuff.

They're watching.

They're paying attention.

I remember one time I was at a light, and it was a girl, she had a big old booty shaped like crazy.

I'm in the car, I had four of my daughters with me.

This is before my youngest daughter was born.

And I'm sitting at the light, and I'm kind of like.

I don't even wanna, like, make it gross and be looking all at the lady, But I look in the rear view and all of them in the backseat were looking at me, trying to see what I was gonna do.

And they were little girls.

They were probably like six.

I'm like, this is crazy.

But they pay.

But little girls, you're a woman and, you know, women pay attention a little different than men.

Yeah, yeah.

We can pay attention if we need to and we want to, but women pay attention because, you know, and one of the reasons I think that little girls pay attention as women do is because women's strength is not physical.

So they have to pay attention to how to win at things without it being such a physical.

Without it being a physical battle.

They have to win at things mentally and emotionally, you know, and especially emotionally, because that's the women.

That's a woman's field.

That's a.

That's.

That's your playing ground when a man gets emotional.

We can't win against women in emotion.

You'll serve us every time.

You'll beat us every time.

It'd be like Mike Tyson really fighting that white dude.

He just fought like he was able to let those hands go.

It had been over early.

Quick.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, you know, but being a father, a single father at this moment in my life, which I did not expect.

And at first I was fighting with it.

Fighting with it.

Oh, I hated it.

Yeah.

I literally hated it.

Because I've been a person to move around and do things and go.

And it changed my money.

It changed my ability to go somewhere just because I wanted to go somewhere.

Because all the kids were with their mother or they're with whoever.

I can just go over here.

Well, now I have to consider them first.

Yeah.

More than anything else.

Like something that most single mothers have went through.

Yeah.

So anytime I say this to them, they like, hey, we've been going through that.

Yeah.

Like, they're like.

And like most people coming from single parent households, you know that mama had to sacrifice.

Yeah.

Sometimes she couldn't go out.

Sometimes if she did, she had to get someone on deck and put somebody in.

In place to make sure you're.

You're.

That you guys were good or whoever.

And so, you know.

But now, once I began to accept being a single parent, everything became easier because I started changing the dialogue of how I saw things, you know, how I express what was going on.

Because at first, to do this, I got to do this.

Man, I gotta go over here, man.

I got.

Man, I can't go over here because I gotta do this.

I have to do that.

And then I changed my dialogue.

I talked to my mother one day and she said, well, nothing will change until you make it, accept it as your new normal.

And I'm like, you know, I was sitting there, I was listening.

Cause my mom is like.

Is like a Damon Dash with life skills and shit.

You know, you hear Dame say something you like, yeah, that's real smart.

That's sharp.

My mom is the same exact way, but when it come to life stuff, she don't know much about business, but with life, oh, shit.

You'll be sitting there like, woo, that's deep.

But that's what I grew up with.

And she said that to me.

And I was like.

She said, what you gonna do?

You complain about it, but what are you gonna do about it?

Yeah, she said, there's options.

Turn them over to child welfare.

Nope, that's not an option.

Yeah, well, guess what?

What you gonna do?

Step up, be a man, do what you gotta do.

But nothing changed until I changed the dialogue and how I looked at it.

Once I did that, instead of saying, I have to do this, I have to do that, I began to say, I get to.

I get the privilege.

I get to see my children go to sleep at night.

I get to give my little girl a bath and no one's tampering with her.

I get to know that she's safe and he's safe in here.

Sleep.

Change the dialogue, Change how you look at a thing begins to change.

And then the power, the power is in the shift.

Yeah.

And that's when everything changed for me.

And I, you know, I wouldn't have no other way at this point.

You've put me on to so many people through your Instagram, Like, I don't ever, like, really know who the folks are.

And like, I.

I like look in the comments to see if somebody, like, says, oh, that's a great talk by Dr.

Whoever.

But it made me think, like, these could be like, they look like a desktop calendar.

Like, it's like each day I go.

I go there for, like my hip hop motivation, you know?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

So it's like just like, really Quick.

Do you watch, you must watch a ton of content.

At one time.

I did.

But what happens with me now is sometimes, sometimes things find me okay.

You know, I can be, you know, in the morning when I'm getting, getting my children, getting myself ready and my children ready because I wake up every morning about like 4:45, 5:00.

They gotta be at school by 8, but I like to get dressed before them.

I put, I put something on YouTube and I just let it roll and I hear something that sparks and then I put a little bookmark on it and I come back around to it and listen to it, make sure it's the right frequency and energy that I want to put forth and I put it up.

You know, sometimes it's comedy, you know.

Yeah, no, I'm always appreciative when you, when you're letting us laugh that day for our motivation or, you know, like, I'm like, wow, you must have like watch like sermons all day to like be able to pick these clips.

And actually a lot of times, like when I'm on the treadmill, I take a walk.

I do, yeah, I'm listening, I listen to a lot of audio, you know, I don't really listen to a lot of music as much maybe every now and then when I'm in the car, every now and then.

But I'm really deep and big on information.

So, you know, I'm listening to a lot of body Kamid, a lot of, you know, whoever is coming forth with something.

Like, I've really been big into a lot of the psychiatrists now, child psychiatrists.

I like to listen to a lot of that stuff because again, I know that the formative years are the most important parts and times of all of our lives.

For better or for worse.

It's the most important.

You keep looking at your teenage years, you want to.

The most important is from 0 to 12 and it's really 0 to 5, 0 to 7.

That's the most important time of our lives.

Whatever was going on in.

Take a look at it, pay attention to it.

There's a reason why you have.

You might have anxiety levels out the roof when you're in a relationship.

Your anxiety, your anxiety comes from the formative years.

That's why it's very important for people to know what they're doing before they even have children.

You know, mama jumping off, going right back to work, which a lot of parents have to do a lot of times.

But that builds a certain amount of anxiety in the child because a child can't decipher when mommy or daddy's coming back.

A child.

You tell a child you're going to work, they don't know what that means.

They don't care nothing about no money.

Yeah.

What the hell does that mean to a child?

A child want what they want.

You know what I'm saying?

We all born into this narcissism called childhood.

When we little babies, that's narcissism.

Right.

Right in front of your face.

You want to know what narcissist?

Narcissist is from 0 to 5, they want what they want, they gonna have it.

They don't care, and they gonna tell you what's going on.

That is the most honest and open time of all of our lives.

And that time, a lot of times gets shut down by our caregivers through yelling, hitting.

Yeah, you know, so true.

Or seeing.

Or seeing.

Seeing hilly.

Hitting and yelling amongst, you know, the, The.

The parents, you know, and we have to be very careful and mindful of what we.

What we introduce our children to.

But the most important thing, we can re.

Raise ourselves.

Once we start getting into the formative years of ourselves, you can re upload new information to yourself to make yourself a totally different situation, give yourself a whole different journey.

But you got to take a look at those formative years, and it's painful because that's the dark side.

A lot of that stuff is the dark stuff.

That loneliness, that yelling, that hitting, that you ain't this and the drug.

You know, you might have had a drug addict parent or alcoholic parent or a parent that was, you know, just depressed the whole time they were raising you, and you didn't know it.

Because we come from people.

You know, everyone has some form of dysfunction, and we come from people that they just never understood and knew how to get beyond these certain mental things that they need.

That they need help on.

They didn't understand, especially with black people.

So is Conscious Father.

Who's the audience for that?

Could I read it?

Conscious Father is for anyone being really.

I'm thinking about changing the name to Conscious Parent.

But I'm a conscious father.

Sure.

Because I want it to be more or less.

It's not so much for people that have children, though.

Right.

That's why I was saying, like, I don't have kids.

But it seems like Conscious parent is.

Reparenting yourself because at this moment, you blaming your mother or father or whoever your caregivers were.

Even if you were raised in foster care, when you're an adult and you're blaming the People that raised you that didn't know how to raise you is foolishness.

If you had, like, for instance, sometimes I look at my son, right?

My son, like, who I said is 29 years old, I think he about to turn 30.

I'm get me mixed up.

You look 30.

That's so wild.

Yeah.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

Yeah.

He turns, he's, he's, he's about to turn 30, if I'm not mistaken, next year.

Okay.

I was 19 years old.

I was 18 two days later.

No, I was, I just turned 19.

Two days later he was born.

When I look at it now, I'm thinking like, and his mother was 19.

I'm looking like, damn, like a 19 year old.

Like, I'm just learning really how to be a parent at 48 years old.

19.

Yeah.

But we did a good job.

We did the best we could.

But I'm like, if he's mad at us or mad at me for not being a certain kind of parent, it's foolishness.

Yeah.

You're like, I was mad because we.

Only perform and do what we've learned and what we know.

This is all of our parents.

Some parents are abusive.

Yeah.

Some parents are depressed because the other parent ain't there because there's no one coming to help.

There's no one coming to bail them out.

Yeah.

So this is why we have to take a look at these things.

And with conscious parent, conscious parenting is really us reparenting ourselves, learning how to be a great parent.

Learning, learning how to be, especially for men, within a relationship.

Parenting and manhood is one of the same.

In a relationship, a good man within a relationship is like a good parent.

She's not your child.

But it's like being a good parent.

You gotta have poise.

You gotta have again, patience, empathy and consistency.

You have to set boundaries.

There have to be rules.

If you don't have boundaries within your, within your relationship, it's doom.

It's already done because you have to have room.

You have to have your likes and dislikes.

This is what I want, this is what I expect to see.

This who I expect, how I expect to be treated.

And if this changes or this is compromise, then we can't be together.

And it's going to hurt me to not be with you because I actually like you.

But I like myself enough.

More.

I like myself more.

To not be treated a certain way.

I can't stand for be treated a certain one.

This is where boundaries, how you develop your boundaries.

But with children, you got to have Rules.

If you don't have rules with children.

Oh, you should know how that goes.

Because it's on and popping.

Not those people.

If you ain't.

If you don't have.

If you don't have parents to tell you and to guide you.

Oh, man.

I know too many people like that right here in Los Angeles.

Not gonna name them, but I know.

And their life is not healthy right now as adult males and females.

That I know, because they were able to do what the hell they wanted to do as children.

Yeah.

And that doesn't work well in the work in the workforce.

It doesn't work well in friendships, in relationships, because there has to be rules, there have to be boundaries.

There has to be some form of reciprocal respect that has to take place.

Yeah.

Have to be taught.

And that's where our parents come in, our caregivers.

Yeah.

But in this case, conscious parent will help a lot of people just get back in tune with those formative years and input new information up into this mental computer up here.

Because computer and brain.

The brain.

The computer was made in the likeness and image of the brain.

And I'm really pumped up about that project as well as all my projects, but this project, because I know that, you know, getting back in alignment with.

With your true nature and your true self, you know, and.

And healing some of those wounds, you know, letting go, you know, you might not forget, but you want to let go.

You want to.

You know, you keep blaming you.

Blaming your parents for stuff happening to you and you in your 30s at this point, like, they did the best they could, what they had.

What's your excuse?

You've been parenting yourself since you was.

Since.

Since you was 18, let's say, since from time you was 18 or 12, let's say, because, you know, you know, 12 for a lot of people, but 18.

And now you still blaming Mommy and Daddy or who wasn't there and what did.

Who did what.

That's foolishness.

Dang.

No.

What happened to Miss Betty?

What happened to Auntie Betty?

She passed away was like three years ago.

Okay.

That was such a big deal when she passed away because she was the matriarch of the family.

She was the oldest sister, school teacher.

She was the first person I also seen go independent herself because she was being a schoolteacher for years.

She stopped and went into daycare.

She opened up her own daycare.

And that was the first time I seen someone go independent.

This was way before she bought me the clippers.

And, you know, after she passed away, that's really when we began to understand who she was to the family, she was more.

She was here to give us information and let us see how this thing works called life, you know what I'm saying?

She was such a giver.

I mean, most of the time when my mom didn't have nowhere to go, we stayed with mom and Betty and her kids.

She never complained.

You know, she never made us feel like we was just visiting.

Sleeping on the floor, you know, made us feel like we wasn't supposed to be there.

She just was.

You know, that's her extraordinary lady.

And my Uncle Phil as well, you know, he was a white dude, you know what I'm saying?

And that's my cousin Sanjay Malaka, and Don's father.

And he was just such a beautiful person because they never made us feel like they didn't want us there.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

And if they had food, we had food.

If we didn't have money at Christmas, we had Christmas, you know what I'm saying?

Those kind of people.

Yeah.

You know, and terribly miss those people because, you know, when those type of people pass away, you know, it's.

Those are the loud funerals.

Those are the people that, you know, people really miss those people, and they still think about those people.

And they.

And they.

And they.

And they have conversations about different stories they have with these people.

And that's something that all of us have to look at.

Like, who are we.

Who are we projecting ourselves to be out here in the world?

Like, when we interact with people, will people miss you?

Yeah.

What would they say about you when you gone?

You know?

Oh, you was just all about yourself.

You was just all about what you wanted to do.

You just wanted to get your projects on, so you.

So you neglected certain family members or certain people that came to you for help.

You know, what would they say about you?

Yeah, because, you know, in this life, we don't just learn by ourselves.

We learn through other people as well.

Yeah.

You know, so it's also important to write your own obituary before you leave here and say, this is how I want to be remembered.

This is what I wanted to say.

This is how I want to be seen.

I want to be this type of person.

I want to be a giver.

I want to be respectful.

I want to be.

Boom.

This is.

You know, that's a good starting place.

You know, I had an Auntie Betty as well.

Oh, you did?

Okay.

Yeah.

And she taught me.

I remember one time my grandma's house was like the house for all the parties.

And I was an only child.

I'm an only child.

But, like, I was, like, the first grandkid.

So, like, I'm down in the basement at the adult party, and someone had this random lady there.

I don't know if she was.

She was obviously somebody's date, but she had this really beautiful bracelet on.

And my aunt's like, I love your bracelet.

And Lee's like, oh, thank you.

She's like, how much for it?

Oh, yeah.

And like, I was just like a little kid, like.

And the lady also was stunned.

And my aunt's like, can I give you 60 bucks for it?

And that lady sold her bracelet.

Wow.

And I ain't put it on and just continued on with the night and then wore it forever.

And it was even a picture.

Like, when she passed, there was a picture of her dancing, wearing this bracelet.

And I'm just like, you know what?

When you see something, you, like, make an offer.

Yeah.

Right then and there.

Those memories etched in stone.

How old were you?

No, man, I had to been, like, seven.

Just, like, sitting, you know, like.

Yeah, sitting on the bar, like, you know, watching her until it's time for me to go upstairs, of course.

But, yeah, I was just like.

That was.

I'll never forget it.

Cause I'm like, wow.

That lady would have been like, oh, that's very nice.

But, you know, like, my husband bought this or something.

She's like, okay.

And took it.

Yeah, Here, take it.

She was like, take it.

Yeah.

But, you know, this, you know, your conscious parent project as we speak about, like, relationships and formative years.

It almost feels like it's the prequel to all your projects.

Like, it, like, lays the foundation of, you know, you're thinking, ball out.

Then you, like, go into, like, the secret of balling.

Because now you've gotten your, you know, your tools, your toolkit, you know, and you might see what other people's toolkits are, how that might work.

And, you know, and then even culture vultures is in that, because then you can sort of, like, establish, like, through these toolkits, like, who's allowed and who's not, you know, it's sort of cool, right?

Oh, I appreciate it.

Yeah.

Culture vultures was another one of those things that was more like.

It wasn't so much on how to make money.

It was more about, like, seeing someone's journey.

Yeah.

You know, I just wanted to present Dane's journey.

That's what's.

What's so funny now, you know, with everybody kind of getting at him a Little bit.

Talking about he going through this and going through that.

I have faith in Dane, you know, because Dane, that's really how that book was written.

That book was written.

Shit.

He was on a lower level than he is right now, but that book was written during that time.

And that in those quiet moments, because, you know, the entrepreneur is sort of one of those things.

It's like.

It's like something in you.

It's innate.

It's in you.

It's in your heart.

You know, if you have heart and you have an ability to keep going no matter what, which is called resolve.

I mean, something's gonna come up.

Something's gonna happen for you eventually, you know, but we all gonna go through ups and downs, you know, because the pendulum swing is active in all things.

There'll be times you'll have money and times you won't have money.

You know, there'll be times you'll be up, times you'll be down.

But the name of the game is to stay focused on keeping a balance of emotions going even in the bad times, even in the good times.

Don't get overly excited and don't get overly depressed and just don't get all upset because something's not going the way you want it to go.

And the reason I have faith in Dame is because I stayed around him enough to see that no matter what was happening, even what's going on right now with 50 Cent, when I just talked to him the other day, it's not phasing him.

His teeth falling out of his mouth don't faze him.

That's a happening.

Yeah.

You know, and it's sort of like the happening that our.

That our elders used to say.

If you ever heard an elder say keep on living.

Yeah.

If you ever heard an elder say that, that's really what that is.

That.

That is.

That is the direct.

That is the foundation of the pendulum swing.

Keep on living.

You will experience it.

Just like Dame said in the culture vultures in the Aaliyah chapter, he said, the thing with death is we either die before someone we love passes or we.

We're going to experience it.

We're going to experience loss.

Yeah.

You either die before someone you love passes or someone you love will pass.

Yeah.

And when you begin to look at it, you're like, damn, you're going to experience it or you're not going to experience it.

Yeah.

Keep on living.

And so that's why I like his teeth falling out.

Different stuff going on in business.

And he's promoting you Know his.

His network and doing different things.

I got faith in my brother, you know what I'm saying?

Because I know one thing for sure is that that book stands on principle.

Yeah.

You read it, and you really pay attention to what's being said.

It wasn't about making money.

Yeah.

See, the foolish person didn't look at, oh, I'm getting the book because he gonna teach us how to get money now.

He gonna teach you.

He gonna teach you how to stand on principle.

Yeah.

You know, and you can't let no one.

You can't let no one pull you off into something you don't want to do.

You know, you got to stand on your morals and standards.

You got to stand on it.

Stand on your square.

Yeah.

You know, and he's not perfect.

I'm not perfect.

You're not perfect.

But at the same time, you know, it's something that's in your heart.

If it's in your heart, man, it's nothing you can't accomplish.

Wow.

Well, look at that.

You just gave us so much.

Was the.

Hey, did you draw the COVID of Culture Vultures?

What'd you say?

The COVID of Culture Vultures.

Is that.

Did you draw that?

No, Rocky drew that.

Danes.

Oh, Rocky.

Okay.

Oh, okay, okay, cool.

Cause I didn't know, like, if you.

If you drew.

Yeah.

She was messing around one day, and we was like, oh, yeah, let's make that the COVID of the book.

It wasn't even.

I don't even think it was.

It wasn't even finished.

She was just messing around, and we was like, bingo.

Like, it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, I have faith in you.

You know, I don't know if it means it.

I.

Thank you, but.

Yeah, I think it's just, like, I keep, you know, playing, like, calling you Dr.

Yada, you know, because I just feel like you have so much wisdom and you have so many great ideas, and you really do.

Seriously.

Like, I'm going to put obviously your Instagram in.

In the show notes and everything.

What I feel like, you know, from this party girl from the suburbs turned artists and, you know, I just really learn so much from you.

And you know what else, too?

I feel like I don't really know, and maybe you might, but, you know, like, how people, they'll say this.

Like, they'll.

When you, like, mention, like, mathematics and stuff like that.

There's that whole, like, hotep Grand Rising Queen group, but you're not that.

But I feel like they come into your world and they just ruin everything, so they need to stay out.

Right.

It's a piece of all those things within me though.

But the difference with me, I think what you're saying is like I don't really have so much judgment and so much like I look at all of us as one and the same, you know, So I don't really look at like because you know, a thing you're not, you know, you're not capable of learning or you're, you're beneath me.

I don't look at it like that.

You know, I look at it more like we're all different forms and different pieces of the most high that are here for a purpose and here for a reason, you know, and so that's why that's where my respect, that's where my respect for people comes from.

Understanding that the God element is within all of us.

Yeah, it's within you, not without you.

So once I understood that, which I did in my teenage years, that's when respect really came online.

I've always had it, but that's when it really came online, you know, was then when I understood that each of us has the God frequency.

Yeah, yeah.

And I love the like motivational speaking part.

Like I love that you like hip hop motivation.

Like you're our motivational speaker.

You know, I hope that other like young folks will follow in their footsteps.

Is like this is like another thing you need.

The encourager is very important.

Oh yeah, definitely.

I mean, you know, like, like again like I'm just getting, getting back into the swing of things like before.

Like I said, the last five years have been so insightful.

I've been working on conscious father but the first thing I had to really get under wraps is being a father altogether.

Yeah.

You know, a day to day single dad.

And it took me some time because it was, you know, it had, it had its rough patches because I had to adjust the change my whole life.

You know, I had to like change things around and you know, intercept it.

Yeah.

You know, and you know, so it's a lot of things that I learned over the last five years that totally changed me.

I'm a totally different person than the person that was sitting on the couch with Dane right now.

You know, I feel like my insight is different, my respect for people and just my understanding of the formative years is different, you know, and so that actually brings forth more respect and understanding when people do things, you know.

And you know, my heart goes out to anyone that grew up in a household in situations where, you know, just unfortunate because when you're a child, you really can't stop.

What child can stop an adult from doing the thing to them?

Yeah.

You know, and people being molested and raped and robbed and hit and beat.

And it's just, you know, it's unfortunate.

And so my thing is that if I can bring forth some information to help people heal these different pieces and parts of themselves, even if they didn't go through anything, you know, then I'm doing what I'm here to do.

Yeah.

You know, so, you know, as long as I can do it.

Today, my, my kids, my children's book, My Barber's Hand Stink is available.

It's the second edition.

There were some mistakes in the first edition and some things I had to shift and change around, but this second edition is, to me is perfect.

You know, there's no typos, there's no, you know, misreads.

And then there's also some activities in the back of the book for children.

And so, yeah, it's up now on Amazon and I'm excited about it because, you know, I know that, you know, again, dealing with the formative years.

The formative years is where we learn the most first important thing that we must all learn is how to take care of ourselves.

Yeah.

From washing our hands, washing our face, brushing our teeth, wiping ourselves, using the bathroom.

All these things are important.

But it's so funny that we overlooked something that we all had to go through in order to be where we are at today.

Because you don't need mommy to come in the bathroom with you.

Bathroom with you right now as an adult.

And where did that come from?

Consistency, empathy, patience.

But some people, you know, and we all know some people didn't get taught.

They had to learn through trial and error.

Yeah.

You know, but, you know, but that's okay because again, you can re parent yourself.

You can always re parent yourself.

What made you write My Barber's Hand Stink?

Well, that came from just me understanding, like how important hygiene is.

That's our first form of expression and first form of self care, you know, because self care, without that being implemented as a child, everything else becomes folly.

Because the first thing you have to learn how to do is take care of yourself.

Yeah.

And so the formative years is where all that stuff comes up.

If you, if you think back, you had to learn how to brush your teeth.

Oh.

And you know, mommy can brush them for you for a minute and daddy.

But sometimes they gotta hand you that toothbrush when you get to a certain level, let you do your thing, hand you that wash rag let you and watch you do it and then say, okay after you finish, because you didn't probably wash yourself.

Right.

I'm gonna come back after you and do it until you get to the level where you can do it yourself.

But hygiene, and you know, hygiene is the first form of self care.

Yeah.

And I'm all about, you know, self care on all levels from childhood to adulthood.

But I know that self care is how you become caring of others.

Yeah.

You know, you begin to care about.

If you care about yourself.

You can't give someone something you're not giving yourself.

Yes.

And that's why a lot of times, you know, it'd be the little dirty kid at the school.

You don't know what he's struggling with, going through.

They be the bullies usually.

A lot of times they be the ones committing.

Car Committing harm to others because they not being taught, they don't understand.

The first care is self care.

If I care about me, I can care about you.

If I don't love myself, it's foolishness to get into a relationship with someone that doesn't hold themselves in high esteem.

And you should know that being a woman, If a man don't like himself or he feels a certain way about himself, and you can tell through how he treats himself.

Is he smoking himself?

Drugging himself?

Is he over sexing himself?

What's he doing?

Is he not cleaning up after himself?

He's not making sure his clothes is on point?

If he's not doing that stuff, then, you know, you might have to reconsider.

Yeah.

Because how you treat yourself is how you instinctively treat others.

That is really, really true.

Absolutely.

That is really, really true.

Yeah.

And that's why the ch.

That's why the formative years.

The most important thing we teach our children and young children, as we've learned, we don't remember it, but if your mom was in this room.

My mom was in the room, my dad.

It's obvious.

Yeah.

The first thing you have to teach a child is how to maintain themselves.

Yes.

Not cook for themselves, wash themselves, wash your hands, wipe yourself, use the bathroom.

Potty training was the first.

Yup, yup.

It's the first.

We didn't, we didn't get to.

We didn't get to kindergarten.

Begin using the bathroom on ourselves.

You know, hey, you had to learn.

That's why they tell you when you take a kid to preschool, does she.

Is she potty trained?

Is he potty trained?

They want to make sure because they got to get him.

They Got to get that child in order.

If you ain't had the time to do it, they gonna get him in shape.

And it sometimes takes crying, oh, I want to get off the toilet.

Don't sit there.

You know, you gotta go through the ups and downs of it.

But again, the formative years is where all these things that we do as adults comes from.

Because when you.

When you teach a child, you teach them for the future.

Not today.

I am so glad to have you on record saying this, because I have a friend who loves this coach.

It's some coach that she listens to.

But the lady's hair always looks so crazy.

And I'm just like, if she doesn't have enough time to even get her hair together to, like, talk to you, like, why are you listening to her?

And she's always like, oh, Stephanie, you're just too hard.

It's really not that big of a deal.

You need to get over.

I'm like, no, she looks a mess.

She looks a mess.

And then, you know.

Yeah, she just looks a mess.

And I'm like, you cannot be following this lady.

What?

I'm like, that's the first thing.

See, it's not just me.

You just said it.

You just said it.

That's why.

That's why.

Then I have a class that we.

I'm gonna start up in a minute called Speak Out Loud.

Where we talking about frequency.

Because frequency is how you groom yourself, how you take care of yourself.

Bathing yourself, you know, like I say on the Secret of the Ball, and I say, bathing yourself is also praising the Lord.

You know, when you do your nails, that's praising the Lord.

Yup.

Get a pedicure.

That's praising the Lord.

You know, you're actually taking care of what you've been given.

Yeah.

If you only got three fingers on one hand, them three fingers gotta be manicured.

And pedicure, you gotta get on the joints.

You know what I'm saying?

And that's a form of praising the Lord.

You just.

You're just being grateful for what you've been given.

That's another form of being grateful for what you've been given.

Yes.

Because if you don't take care of it, what they say, if you don't use it, you lose it.

Yup, yup.

And I feel like even down south, you know, they would be like, I come from, like, probably white, like, neighborhood, but, like, ladies would be like, the higher the hair, you know, the closer to God.

And it's like, yeah, but even if their hair was like all like crazy curls and stuff.

But it would be like on point and it's like, yes, you can trust this lady, you know.

Well, that's the first step.

That's the first step to, you know, adding to esteem, you know, and that's why I learned just people coming to the barbershop over the years, it's rare that someone doesn't feel good after getting a good haircut.

Yeah, they get a bad haircut, they can feel bad, but someone comes and get their hair done, they usually feel a lot better, even if they're feeling down or depressed.

You know, it's like, it's connected also to going to the gym, taking a walk.

If you don't have money for the gym and you're able to walk, walk.

If you're able to do a light jaw draw, you're able to do some push ups or some dips or whatever you can do, do it, you know.

But the name of the game is just using whatever it is that's at your disposal in front of you.

Yeah.

And you can start today.

You know, you start paying attention to when you're washing your hands, when you're washing your face.

Next time you take a bath or you take a shower, sitting there and really take care of yourself.

You know, it sounds freaky, it sounds weird, but it's the truth.

Yeah, you're taking care of what you've been given.

Yeah, I'm taking care of, I'm washing and taking care of what God has given me to bring forth and to continue on as long as I'm here to continue on.

Your body is a temple.

The temple.

Yeah.

Take care of it.

That's it.

Oh my gosh.

It's so simple, guys.

Not, not you listeners.

The food, we eat different things, you know, we know about the food.

The closer we are to nature, the better.

Yeah.

You know, fruits and vegetables, grain, you know, we all know that we like a lot and people like junk.

But the closer you stay to nature, the better it is for your body temple.

You know, I had, when I was working on the last show I was working on, we had such crazy hours.

I was getting home so late and like I would start to just forget eating, you know, Then I would meet with the nutritionist because I'm like, I really didn't need to meet me with the nutritionist because it's like I need to eat.

But like, still I went, you know, to her and she's like, treat your meal like it is a conversation with God.

Yeah.

You know, she's like, you would never miss that.

Like, you need to eat.

Like.

And it really, like, shifted, you know, instead of being like, oh, whatever, whatever.

She's like, no, no, no.

Treat it like a relationship with God.

And it really changed.

It made me, like, really take notice of, like, what I was gonna cook.

It made me plate what I was gonna make it.

Nice, sit down.

And it, like, really just changed.

It versus just like stopping at, you know, fast food joint, just grabbing a quick fry and just trying to have something in my stomach before I went to bed.

It was like, yeah, preparation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You have to.

Yeah.

And then a lot of that stuff too, is.

It's all like, preparation.

It's.

It's just, you know, that's why people do meal preps.

Yeah.

You know, it's the same thing when you have like an early morning, you know, this being, working on sets, you have an early morning, you have to be somewhere about 5am it doesn't make sense to get up at 4 and press your clothes and look for clothes.

What you gonna wear?

You know, we all know the preparation should be at night.

Yeah.

Having stuff already ready.

So take your shower, your bath, whatever you gonna do, get dressed, brush your teeth and be able to put your clothes on and walk out the house if you have to do that.

Yeah.

So it's the same with eating.

It's the same.

You know, it's the same.

And it's the same again in conscious parents.

The same with taking care of children.

It's preparation.

Having things done to make the morning easier.

Having things done at night before makes it easier in the morning.

Yeah.

Then you're not rushing, like, where's your shoes at?

Where you.

You have all that stuff set out ready to go.

I love it.

You're not looking for shoes.

You're not looking under the couch or under the bed.

No, it's already set there.

Yep, it's already set there.

Already ready.

Lunch is already made.

Lunch is already made.

Yeah.

When you stay ready, you never have to get ready, Right?

Preparation.

Yeah.

Preparation.

I love it.

Well, barber, author, filmmaker, father, philosopher, our motivational speaker.

Appreciate you having me being on Nosy af.

This really means a lot to me.

I've been following you for a long time.

You've done so much that I forgot that I started watching you and dame on YouTube, like, that's how much stuff.

That was like, a long time ago.

So I feel like as you bring this stuff up, it's like, wow.

Nice.

Yeah.

What a conversation.

Wow.

From conscious parenting to personal growth and the power of stillness to the grind of entrepreneurship.

Kenyatta shared so many powerful insights, he was dropping gems.

Am I right?

Remember, repetition builds mastery, choices shape your path, and it's never too late to reparent yourself or rewrite your story.

I already know you're snapping your fingers to that like yes, yes, yes, yes.

I've added links to all of Kenyatta's projects in the show notes you to check out.

So who knows, maybe I'll even see you in the comments on his Instagram.

Thank you so much for tuning in, friends.

Take care of yourself, pour into your people and keep growing.

This has been another episode of Nosy af.

I'm your host Stephanie Graham.

What did you think about today's conversation?

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Head over to the Nosy AF website for all the show notes related to this episode.

You can also find me on Instagram at Stephanie Graham, what would you know?

Or online@miss graham.com where you can sign up for my newsletter where I share exclusive updates about my studio practice as well as this podcast.

Until next time, y'all stay curious and take care.

Bye.

Sa.