The CEO Mindset feat. Michael Johnson

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to We Talk Back Podcast, the production of iHeartRadio
and the Black Effect Network.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
We're just two unapologetically black women with an opinion to talks.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
What's up, y'all? Thank you for tuning in for a
new episode and we talked back and oh god, I
went way back when a show dedicated to you niggas
and you bitches and holes.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
And everything in between, we forgot, y'all.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
What's up y'all? Is your girl a j holiday? What's up? Tamam?

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hey, y'all is tamvam. I love y'all so so very much.
I'm happy y'all came back.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
This is my favorite to them, like, I know they
heard it. You can't hear me, No, we can hear you.
But your titties was ruffling the mic. Girl, No, they
did not grow. It was just too close to your anatomy.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Anyway, I love y'all, and I'm glad y'all came back
again this week. How you doing. How it was your weekend?
I'm fine, girl?

Speaker 1 (01:08):
My weekend? You know, I don't be doing much. I
might I might be in Charlotte this weekend, possibly for
my niece's twenty eighth birthday, but I'd be enjoying my
solitude pretty much, can lie Okay, I'd be looking forward
to doing fucking nothing. Yeah, it feels good. It feels
really good. I'm just doing what I want to do
because I got to travel and all that shit. I'd

(01:29):
be like, did you have a weekend? Not so much. No,
I need a weekend after the weekend, right, would just
be wanting to do Costco on TJ Max. That's it
for the weekend.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Girl, you need a TJ Max. We need a Costco sponsorship.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
They asked me every time if I want that TJ
Max credit card? Like, girl, I'm trying to buy a
damn house. No, I don't need that credit card. I
do need that credit.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Card credit card for your house.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Right, need is a booster with an unlimited gift card.
That's what I do need.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
It me and somebody.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
It was Ben at Dick Ben Dick's homecoming this weekend.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
BC that I didn't need participating. I didn't either.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
I was right.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
I did not go. I did not feel good. I
went to Chicago last week and I don't know, I
must have came like something about that flight. I was coughing.
I don't know. I still you can hear it A
little bitsy.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Girl, I was picturing you in the field eating barbecue,
like I just knew you was out.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
There, and that was the plan. That was the plan.
But I felt so bad. I stayed here. I slept
till three o'clock on Saturday. I took the day off
to go to the game, and then slept till three o'clock.
I didn't make it. I just felt damn. I just
felt bad, and I was so sad. I was looking
at all the pictures of everybody at homecoming. I was like,

(02:54):
I wouldn't need to go, but you know, your body
will sit you down.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
So yeah, so I didn't pull a trigger on a costume.
That's really why I didn't go either.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
I have nothing to wear for Halloween, and I know
they was having like the good little, good old Halloween.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
You could have just bought some and put it on
your head. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
No, I wanted to dress up you know who. I
wanted to dress up as Alvira from Scarface. Remember she
came down and elevating that green dress with the with
the blonde bob, Like, that's what I wanted to dress
up as. Alf It's Alvera in it. Alfita, it's Elvera.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Another kl you love me in the morning her right, Yeah, scarface,
just gonna put some cocoa your nose, yeh.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Think about that.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Maybe, yes, I missed that. I just kind of rested.
That was it.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Man, When your body tell you to lay down, lay
the fuck down, like you know I am. I don't
be pushing myself to do ship. I don't want to
do no more. I just don't. You know, if a
little bit of me say do it, I'm gonna do it.
But if everything in me say bitch nor, I'm not
doing it.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
And I didn't do my hair because I felt bad.
You know, you just don't have the energy. I was like,
I ain't going out there with the same old quick week,
so I ain't go and you just still look better
than boom.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
A large percentage, A large percentage.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Let's get this in.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, going on? Okay, So, y'all, I don't know if
y'all saw this story on social media, which is just
a black woman who has a Golds gym membership's she's
in the gym and in walks a grown ass man. Okay,
and it's supposedly allegedly a trans woman. Okay, but this

(04:50):
man just has on earrings. And the thing is, most
of the trans people don't even be like actual trans
they haven't actually transitioned, you know, they still have their
male parts and they're showing up in female spaces. And
one thing this woman did say, she said, if you
are a trans woman, you actually like, y'all don't even
respect actual women's minds at all, you know, because if you,

(05:14):
if you were a woman, you would respect women's minds.
And they just don't. Like That's why it's still a man.
It's very manly. What's that doing.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
So this person walked into the female locker room and
the black lady went crazy.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
She was butt naked in there, and a grown man
walks in and she said it in the middle of
GOLs gym. And she's a lesbian to add that to
the to the pod, right, she's a lesbian herself. And
she says, you know a lot of y'all trans men
like y'all, y'all were never little girls like y'all never
been touched before. Like she was like that shit, like
does something to me? Right, And a lot of women

(05:50):
I think are have had things happen to them, you
know why they don't fuck with men, right and then
now here it is you have this, this, you can't
do anything about it. And she's the one who was
put out, which.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
I thought was weird. But maybe I think they put
her out because she was raising hell that the woman.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Was allegedly kicked out and terminated from Goals gym all
because she doesn't want to see penises unsolicited in a
woman's locker room. There's some bullshit. Yeah, so this is
in LA. Also, the post says, so remember this when
Gavin Newsom decides to run for president, this is what
you got to look forward to. Like, we got a

(06:31):
little break from this ship right now. I feel like,
I'm sorry, y'all. Y'all don't feel like this shit died
down just a little tidy bit, you know, since the
beginning of the year, because I do.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
I just think we got on other stuff. That's why
we haven't been focused on this. Niggas ain't got no
food stamps, stay worried about no dicks right now? In
that part, Yeah, but I feel her like because I
don't like getting unsolicited dick picks, and I like, did
you know? So imagine if you don't and you're just

(07:04):
trying to exercise and be healthy and you got to
see a random dick. Yeah, I feel her.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
You know, have you have you had ever had any
conversations with guys and they tell you their experience in
the locker rooms and the gyms and how it be
niggas in there with thongs on.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
No, I've never heard that.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
You know in Charlotte that my homeboy goes to the
club fitness off of university. You know, a pack that
should be like a real club. It's real live club
fitness in that bitch, right, But he said, niggas be
like the punks, Okay, the punks, the girls be in
the locker room with the thongs on. Like what is

(07:46):
a heterosexual man supposed to do with that?

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Mind his business?

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Right like that? But I feel like that's a little
that's a little violation as well.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
No, because as long as he in his right locker room,
you can't do nothing about what a nigga got on
mine your business.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
You're like this squad, look at it. I'm not gonna
lie and my exercise folder or Instagram while I put
all the shit that I have not done yet in
the gym that I'm watching everybody else do on their page.
It means some baby booty niggas. I got in my
save folder.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Workouts and he'd be doing like this little squad workout. Yes,
his but look good. I know he got a throng
on none of there. I know he's never high or
free balling too. So I don't know if you guys
saw this, but mother of R and B singer Sammy

(08:52):
arrested on charges of second degree murder and shooting into
a vehicle, allegedly killing twenty seven and your old wife
and mother of two.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
So I don't know if if y'all you might have
cut out a little bit, but you did, did say
mother of Sammy? Not Sammy?

Speaker 3 (09:10):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yes, Sammy, the R and B singer His mom.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
His mom was shooting randomly at cars because she thought
someone was following her, and she shot into a car
that was carrying a twenty seven year old Nakia bah
Collier and she was found shot on enough Powers drive

(09:34):
and she died. And so now his mother is facing
charges for second degree murder. And I think, you know,
people be suffering from mental illness, and sometimes we're not
doing enough, you know, because we be knowing. I'm sure
his new I knew his mama was I'm sure he
knew his mama wanting right, you know, but.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
Can you really do right? So there's no cure for
mental illness. I think a lot of it might take accountability,
you know, the person having to take accountability that they
even have a problem, and then they got to want
to want the help, right, So people they medicate, these
people in abe zombies, and people get tired of not
being themselves. You know, this is a plethora of reasons

(10:23):
why people don't, you know, stick to the meds and
stuff like that. But what are you what can you
really do? You know?

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, but I mean, at least try to keep these
people up, try to keep getting away from her motherfucking ass.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
That's true. I mean, but this is a grown woman,
this is a grown adult. They probably don't live together.
She you know, probably on her own, and maybe she
has never done anything. This is extreme extreme, you know,
so maybe just recently escalated. And this is this is
actually weird and terrible. I'm very said, very much so.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
And I think he in jail too, ain't it He
in jail on some child cruelty shit?

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Oh sammy, Yeah, I hadn't heard that.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, he just went to jail last week too on
some child cruelty shit.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
You're making that up? No, let me see y'all. Of course, Sammy,
I've been hanging out.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
With ray J, ray J and Brandy hugged it out.
Really yep, that's on stage.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
Okay, so I do see. It's as Sammy invested and
charged with charged with cruelty to children and battery. This
is on October twenty six. Was recently invested in Atlanta, Georgia,
following an incident where he was charged with cruelty to
children and battery. Although no additional details have been reported,
Sammy has since been released, as he recently shared a

(11:48):
post regarding one music fest this weekend. Okay, yeah, so
he had cruelty to children, third degree witness something and
then battery, family violence and then fugitive in state like
what and he posted just a picture like headed to

(12:10):
one music Festall what y'all on? What y'all on? Like
once he got out? Like what I mean, Listen, I
don't never need nobody to make a statement about some
shit life be happening, all type of we don't know
what transpired. We know that men definitely violate people, right
and we're not saying all men, but it's always a man.

(12:33):
And we know that some women be making it hard
for some men to be pearents and your ass might
end up in jail and some shit you ain't do.
I'm just, you know, just not even playing devil's advocate,
just showing both sides of the thing when you don't
have all the information. So I don't know. I didn't
even hear about that shit, So I wonder what came
of it. Is it true?

Speaker 2 (12:51):
And he's key to make you fucked him up?

Speaker 1 (12:54):
You hear me, okay, girl? Like I remember one time
liking bad kids. I ain't gonna lie, man, I don't
know if I know. I wasn't like a super bad kid,
but i'd be liking bad kids a little bit.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
I don't like them. I remember one time we were
on vacation. We were in Brussels, and me and my sister
and it was her two kids. It was like a
bunch of family on this trip to Brussels, and we
were walking and my niece was being so terrible, like
she just would not listen. She's just doing what the

(13:27):
fuck she wanted. And my sister was at her wits
end and My sister walked up to me and grabbed
me by my shoulders and she said, Tammy, I need
you to get your niece cause I'm going to kill
her today if you don't. And I believed her like

(13:48):
she did. It wasn't like I was scared for my niece,
Like girl, yo, Mama about to in you out this motherfucker.
So kids will make you want to kill they assad,
So it might have.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Been got a lot of patience.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Man, she's not. She's she's the very peaceful calm. That's
why when she said that, I was like, oh shit,
you don't turn my peaceful sister ready to kill your
motherfucking ass. Come on, come here, let me take my hand,
because you're about to die today if you don't tighten up.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Badasses.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, but not not advocating for child abuse or anything,
but these kids will take you through there, right.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
That's why I never understand like especially the teenagers, like
I do not believe you should be putting your hands
on little people like when they get about ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
bust they ass up, okay, but like little ones not
so much. But like the preteens, yeah, it's time for
them to get their hair busts if they if you
maybe you messed up a little bit of something, gave

(14:59):
them too much wade when they were a little bit younger,
and now they like really acting out. But I don't know.
My nieces, my nieces and nephews like they real good people,
good kids, you know, they never I gotta take that back.
I actually my niece, my oldest niece, that bitch was
a terror. It's a little kid, right, yes, And I

(15:21):
used to like because I don't believe in people like
I could not wait for her to get her rasshop
I'm in. One day my mama beat her rass so
bad and Applebee's girl, I was in the car like, yes, yes,
like she just was cutting up for no reason, like
you know, like a low four year old five year
old just cutting up. Nah, she popped that little butt up.

(15:45):
I was so happy that ask I'd be And one
time my nephew. My nephew is not bad, but he
like has always thought he was the smartest in the room,
even as a little two three year old and he
might have been about seven and eight. And my sister
husband his dad beat his ass.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
Boy.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
I was so happy she had that niggas spinning around
the kitchen floor like a little windmill. I was, so,
I'm like, y'all, don let him get away with so
much shit. I've watched these couple of days I've been
over here. Beat that ass anyway?

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Please?

Speaker 1 (16:17):
All right, y'all, you know I gotta add in that
messy meme segment again because I'd be saving all types
of shit. I got a folder I call that's called
memes for talking shit. That's the folding for like funny
should I see?

Speaker 3 (16:30):
So?

Speaker 1 (16:31):
Rich Dollars tweeted the other day and he said, you
in a section with your friends and your man? Is
it inappropriate for your homegirls to start to working? Question mark?
Somebody commented a girl camming and she was like, if
we in a section with my man, nine times out
of ten he paid for it. Some bitches better be
shaking ass all night long. And I agree, because what

(16:55):
are we doing if we ain't shaking ass?

Speaker 2 (16:59):
I agree? And we can't dance? Why are we here?
Who want to be in a station where we gotta
stand still because somebody man can't be trusted or whatever.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Right, that's what it's given to me. So I don't
know if he's posting a question from perspective of a
man or perspective of a woman whose friends is shaking
ass in the section with her nigga like, I don't
know which. Either one doesn't make sense to me, because
why why why can't shake ass? Well, I'm going to
another nigga section if I can't shake ass in your
nigga section, right.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
Because if my song come home, I don't want to
be looking like can you send your man to the
bathroom withst Island?

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Like I don't need that, Like can you cover his eyes?

Speaker 3 (17:41):
Right?

Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, that's a weird question, And I wonder what happened?

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yeah, me too, And I think you know, I don't know.
Sometimes I was leaning some more towards like him posting
this question because of how he felt with his girl
friends shaking ass in a section, right, mm hmmm, because
niggas be thinking everybody want them right, all right? So
we inter section, My friends are here and they dancing,

(18:09):
and now we leave from the club, and you, like,
you see how your friend was shaking their ass in
front of me. It wasn't for you, though. We know
that men be thinking everything before them for them, even pussy.
They never have before as.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Long as as long as my friend ain't putting the
ass on him. It's sometimes even that might be a
little okay, it's just appears, you know, if we set
it up right.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
But I don't know that I care. And the older
I get, the less shit I care about. Right, I'm
already like my mind set, it's already. You're not sixty
seven year old black women. Be like, I don't give
a fuck. I don't give a shit, like I've been
there for the last for the last few years now,
like I don't care. You can bag them, baby, you
can have him, take him, take him, because he in

(18:57):
my mind in the first place.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
All right, if you can he ain't mine, Please go
ahead and take him. Y'all.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
Have at it.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
You know what I'm saying that shit, maybe I'm blocking y'all.
Blessings who knows right, have at it. You won't switch
something like you got another nigga for me. Let's swap
it out, all right, y'all. Anyway, listen, we have an
amazing guest on we talked back this week, mister Michael Johnson.
He is the CEO of the Boys and Girls Clubs

(19:27):
in Dane County, Minnesota. Okay, the illis Nigga from Minnesota,
and he's talking leadership. He recently had a book released
all the good shit, you know, the things we need
to hear. Okay, because we are multifaceted here on we
talk back, Okay, So y'all stay tuned. We'll be back, y'all.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
Before we get into today's guest, I just need to
speak to y'all about something that's really been pulling at
my heartstrings. We haven't been seeing a lot on it,
but our brothers and sisters in Jamaica they really going
through it. Like the news kind of has seemed to
stop reporting on what's going on in Jamaica. But these

(20:16):
people are without clothes, These people are without food, These
people are without electricity. Their homes have been like completely
washed away. And I have a friend there and he uh,
he works in tourism and one of his employees she
is a woman, a single mother of four children, and

(20:36):
her home was completely destroyed and y'all, she has nothing.
And he was on the phone with me and he
was crying talking about this because he don't even have
a lot. He's trying to give her what he has,
but he don't have shit to give her either. And
when I spoke to him, it just really it really

(20:57):
upset me. And you know, I just want to use
this platform to try to seek some help. You know,
like even if y'all could send a dollar, two dollars,
anything would help. It's a lot of us and this

(21:17):
is a black woman and she really needs our help.
I mean, if y'all can sacrifice something, I would greatly
appreciate it to help this woman. And even if you
want to actually send goods, she has children. So this
is I got an address that y'all can send goods
to if you want to send it straight to them,

(21:39):
and it's the address would be Hopetown. That's h Ope
t O n E District, Hope Tone PO Saint James,
Montego Bay, Jamaica. W I. I'm gonna say that one
more time. It's Michael Solomon, Hope Tone h O P

(22:02):
t O n E District, Hope Tone P dot O
Saint James, Montego Bay, Jamaica, w dot I And I'm
going to post on my story and then my excuse me,
y'all in my bio where you can actually send a
couple dollars. Y'all, please, we got to help this black woman.

(22:23):
And it's so many people that need help. But if
you could sacrifice even just a couple of dollars to
help this black family right before the holidays, I would
appreciate it. All Right, I love y'all. All right, we'll
be with our guests in just a moment.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
All right, y'all. So today we have a very sexual
guest on we talk back. We have mister Michael Johnson. Okay,
he is the CEO of the Boys and Girls Club.

Speaker 3 (22:54):
What's the city, Dane County.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Dean County, Madison, Wisconsin.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Yeah, yeah, sorry.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
First of all, it's good. I said the same thing
when I first came here sixteen years ago.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
Dan, Are you the only black person in Wisconsin?

Speaker 4 (23:13):
It's a lot of it's a lot of black people here,
and well, we make up about six percent of the population,
and so it's it's a tight niche black community here,
but we're well represented.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Are you from Wisconsin?

Speaker 3 (23:29):
Now, I'm from the West side of Chicago.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Oh, that's right, Chicago.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
So y'all, y'all need to come. We throw some dope
parties up here.

Speaker 4 (23:35):
I do an all white party, and it's not just
for white people. It's mainly black folks dressed up in
all white, and we usually bring a bunch of celebrities
down here. So every year of you like Google, you'll
see like the Lorenz tating his brothers, or Leon or
Gladys Knight, or one year I had Drew Hill, so

(23:57):
we bring him out and we have a good time.
We raised money for kids, and I hope y'all are
coming hang out with us.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
One summer we come in Winlaren's state coming back though I.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
Was every year.

Speaker 4 (24:09):
I was on his family Foundation board for a couple
of years. So he's been here probably four or five
times in the last two years.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
Okay, what's the weather like right now?

Speaker 3 (24:22):
It's cold.

Speaker 4 (24:23):
Well, it's not like South Carolina, so he gets cold
up here. But it's about thirty five degrees right now.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
Okay, it's pretty I mean South Carolina gets cold. Don't
get it twisted. We get cold weather, but it's probably
not Wisconsin cold.

Speaker 4 (24:40):
And life is about, you know, exploring. I've lived all
over the country. I lived in Chicago, I lived in Philadelphia,
I lived in Saint Louis, I've lived in Indianapolis, I
lived in Cincinnati. You know, life is about experiences, so
I think you'll come up here to Madison and probably
never want to go back home.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
Oh wow, like Saint Louis because I live I lived
in Saint Louis for like four or five years, and man,
every morning I would wake up like what am I
store here? A prison? You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 4 (25:11):
Like, like, I stayed in Saint Louis for I think
I was there three years.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
And it's just about who you connected to, right, Like
you can get to a city.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
It's a lot of socialism, right, it.

Speaker 4 (25:24):
Is, it is it is. But I would say that's
almost everywhere.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
When I say that, I mean like it's not like,
you know, some cities, like we're from South Carolina, so
we can say, like maybe it might be a little racist,
but really like Saint Louis is about who has money
and who doesn't. It's not really about skin color race.

Speaker 4 (25:45):
Yeah, I would say, I don't know. I've seen it
at different levels in different cities. And and again it's
kind of like how you allow people to divin defind
you what circles you know that you're And people told
me not to come to Madison, Wisconsin because of X
y Z. And I'm the type of person sometimes you

(26:08):
just got to follow your dreams and go where the
calling is right. And so and that's kind of like
how I've just lived my life. But I wouldn't say
you're wrong, but I would say what you're saying. I've
seen segments of it in other cities as well.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
So was it the Boys and Girls Club that brought
you to Madison? Like how did you get involved with
the Boys and Girls Club?

Speaker 4 (26:31):
So, I actually grew up in the Boys and Girls
Club and I talk about it in my book. So
I grew up in the Boys and Girls Club on
the West side of Chicago. It was Boys and Girls
Clubs when I was working part time that when my
mother didn't have health insurance, they raised.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
The money to bury my mother.

Speaker 4 (26:51):
It was the Boys and Girls Clubs as a kid
that kept me off the streets, and I would say
pretty much kept me alive.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
And I was also a kid that could not read.
I could not write.

Speaker 4 (27:02):
And today you know, I run a multimillion dollar nonprofit
organization in Madison, Wisconsin. So I was recruited here by
Boys and Girls Clubs. When I was a deputy Commissioner
for Parks and Recreation in the City of.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Philadelphia, amazing. So, you guys, mister Johnson has a book.
It's called The Audacity to Lead.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
You can call me Michael.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Michael Bold Mindsets and nonprofit Impact, right.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Well, yeah, so the title is The Audacity to Lead,
and it's the seven Mindset Lessons on Love, Family, and
turning adversity into Impact. And the subtitle is from the
Project to the c Suite period. And really I.

Speaker 4 (27:51):
Really focused the book on I talk about, you know,
all the adversity that I faced not being able to
read and write to end up graduating and getting the NBA,
to going to Cornell University, to Harvard Business School and
getting all these credentials and degrees, to becoming a millionaire
and losing that money in six months after our sue

(28:13):
the university that I went to, after the coaches dressed
up in kuklusklam you know outfits back in the nineteen nineties.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
I talk about that, you know.

Speaker 4 (28:23):
In the book, I talk about my friend BG, he
was killed, you know, right in front of the boys
and girls clubs.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
But I also talk about how.

Speaker 4 (28:31):
I've raised two hundred and fifty million dollars over the
last twenty five years in multiple cities. I talk about
how we raised money for Maud Avery family when he
was killed in Brunswick, Georgia. I talk about Michael Brown
and Saint Louis when the mayor and the Urban League
CEO asked us to raise money.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
You know, for that family.

Speaker 4 (28:52):
I talk about the money that we've raised for educational
programs up in black and brown kids graduate from high
school and go on to college. I talk about a
whole bunch of different things, you know in the book,
but I also talk about love and leaving with passion.
I talk about how I built the first statue of
a black woman and our state capitol by the name

(29:13):
of Veil Phillips in the United States. Before last July,
there was not one singular statue of a black woman
anywhere in America on state capitol grounds. And after the
George Floyd you know, protests, I talk about in the
book how young activists challenged my leadership and pretty much

(29:34):
for whatever reason.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Young black activists.

Speaker 4 (29:37):
Yeah, yeah, young black activist And I'll tell you why.
I talk about it in the book, And so what
came out of that. They challenged me and said there's
no black representation at our state capitol and now there's
a million dollar statue of a woman by the name
of Veil Phillips. She was the first woman in the
country to ever be named to a national political party.

(30:00):
She was the first woman in the country to be
named to a statewide office, and she was the first
black woman of many different things here in Wisconsin.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
So I knew.

Speaker 4 (30:13):
While it took us four years to get it done,
last July, we were able to erect this statue and
then we made history in the United States.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
And I talk about that in the book.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
It's crazy for it to be that many first for
this black woman and does not have known her name, right,
I don't know, you know?

Speaker 4 (30:31):
Yeah, Look, her name is phil R. Phillips. She was
appointed by John F. Kennedy to the Democratic National Committee
and the first of any colored woman, any woman, and
she's having to be a woman of color to be
elected to a statewide office. And she did all this
in the sixties and seventies. It was pretty amazing.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
And we didn't got a movie about this woman.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
It's crazy, but yes, it's all kind of documentary on her.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
They're are Phillips.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
So in your book you talk about the seven mindset lessons.
Can you list those for us? Because I want to
talk about.

Speaker 4 (31:11):
Yeah, So in the chapter in the in I should
have sent you all a copy of the book.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
So it's really I broke that down.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
By you should have bought one. Sorry, you know it's.

Speaker 4 (31:21):
On Amazon, it's on good Reads, and uh, I hope
you allill read it to Really it's a good a
lot of good stuff in there. So chapter one, the
first mindset is about the urgency of now and pretty
much unleashing your purpose and making the best of what
you got in your situation. Chapter two I focus on
how to expand your horizon and surrounding yourself with role

(31:45):
models and believing in a bigger vision in your life.
And I give examples through aversity on how I accomplished
that as a as a nonprofit leader.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
Chapter three, So chapter one, power of now, right, Yeah,
that is what I struggle with the you know because
tomorrow and next week are killers. Someway, I'll do it tomorrow,
I'll do it Monday, Monday and tomorrow. So how do you?

Speaker 2 (32:13):
How do?

Speaker 1 (32:13):
How do? What would your advice be to someone to
do it now? You know, start where you are?

Speaker 4 (32:20):
Yeah, So I would first go back to there were
people that would tell me I knew I wanted to
be a CEO, and there was people that would tell me,
because of my circumstances and because you rarely see black
people running multimillion dollar organizations that it was very slam.
So back when, I would say in my early twenties,

(32:42):
I was still running the streets in Chicago, and at
that time I couldn't read and write, but I knew
that I wanted to do something with my life. I
saw my friends being killed, I seen them getting life
sentences in Chicago, and I just didn't want that to
be me. So what I would say, a day is
one step at a time, right, you know, life is

(33:03):
a marathon. You're not going to like knock it out
the park right away, but you have to swing the
back and some days you'll hit, you'll get on first base,
some days you might strike out, some days you'll get
on second base, and some days you will hit the
goddamn Grand Slam, And but you gotta I'm sorry for Curtison,
I apologize.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Did you really listen to our show?

Speaker 4 (33:26):
I actually did, I really did.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
I was.

Speaker 4 (33:31):
I was on a panel yesterday and I slipped up
and I was like, and I was a pastor. Was
on a panel with me and I was like, oh
my god, I'm sorry. So so I would say that
it's just all about swinging the back and whatever your goals.
I always tell, whether it's my colleagues or young people
that's around me, like what's your mission and what's your

(33:52):
what's your vision for your life? Right, So, if there's
somewhere that you want to be five years from now,
did you write it out? Did you map it out?
What's your intersections to get into your destination? And I
always try to do that, and I would say that
would be that would be my advice. Write out what
it is you want to accomplish and take one.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
Step at a time.

Speaker 5 (34:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
I literally wake up every morning I be chatting do
it now, Like just to get to the gym. Just
do it now? Do it now? Do it now? Because
our bullshit?

Speaker 4 (34:22):
Yeah, you know, and we all struggle with that, right,
just speaking like the gym. You know, I was I
went for a two mile walk this morning and I
got up at five o'clock, but I actually did started
till eight and I was like, oh my gosh, she
just got out there early.

Speaker 3 (34:38):
And it's just it's difficult.

Speaker 4 (34:41):
But as you know, once you start and you get
to a cycle of it, you know you'll just get
You'll just get used to it. And that's the same
with careers, right you get into these roles and finance
might be something that you may not be good with,
marketing or public speaking, whatever that is. Take whatever steps
you are to craft your feel I mean, I look

(35:02):
at what you all are doing. I watched y'all shows,
and y'all are very entertaining, very funny. Y'all talk about
some really really good content. It kept my attention. Like
I said with you earlier, I was up to midnight
last night. I raally stay up to midnight watching anybody show.
So y'all, y'all what it take?

Speaker 3 (35:22):
And it seemed like.

Speaker 4 (35:23):
Y'all building up y'all base, building up y'all content. It's
pretty amazing what y'all are doing.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
Yeah, it takes a lot of commitment, boy, it does.
So what's one mental habit that you think could possibly
be holding back some black leaders or people who are
aspiring Because I remember when I worked also I work
a corporate job now, but before my boss asked me

(35:51):
like what I wanted to be? What I wanted to be?
What I wanted to do within the corporation, right, because
she said she always knew she wanted to be the boss.
I don't necessarily want to manage people, right. I'm good
at managing processes.

Speaker 5 (36:05):
Right.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
So what's one mindset that you think maybe hindering a
lot of you know, people who think they're the boss.

Speaker 4 (36:16):
Yeah, I would say, like, if you're trying to move
up the corporate ladder, one things that I learned is
that you have to be like, if you're always the
smartest purpose person in the room, you're probably not growing.
And so I think about I told somebody the other
day when I was on this yesterday, I was on
this panel, and they said, you know, I'm on TV

(36:37):
a lot here in Madison, Wisconsin, and people are soon
that I only hang out with HOGH Network individuals because
of all of the resources that we raised for kids
and their families. And what I've actually told them is that,
you know, some of my friends include people with GEDs,
PhDs and everything in between, from HOGH Network individuals to
people who are still drug dealers and gang bangers. And

(36:59):
I learned from each one of them. And because when
I learned from them, I then can bring those two
worlds together. I say all that to say, AJ is
that you have to put yourself in different environments to grow.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
And so I'll give an example.

Speaker 4 (37:14):
When I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, one of the first
parties that got invited to was a farm party. And
I was like, and it was a donor and I
was like, God, I don't want to go to that shit.

Speaker 3 (37:26):
A farm party. And so it's of a farm party.

Speaker 4 (37:32):
So I automatically judged what I thought a farm party
is gonna be, Like there's gonna be some sheep and
cows and shotguns. And I get out there. Man, these
folks had a live band. They had those four wheelers
and I'm out there like going through the mud, and
they had they had a barbecue out there. It was
it was lit, and I was like, I was one

(37:54):
of the last people to leave. And so and that night,
that night, that family, well, since I've been to that event,
that family has helped me raise a million dollars, you know,
since you know, since coming here sixteen years ago, fifty
thousand here, one hundred thousand there. And so I was
just saying, you always got to just be willing to

(38:16):
put yourself out there and go into different environments if
you're going to grow.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Absolutely in chapter three, what were you saying? You were
giving us the seven Yeah.

Speaker 4 (38:28):
So chapter three, you know, the Academy of adversity, forging
tragedy and turning pain into power.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
Right.

Speaker 4 (38:35):
We all go through some sort of pain, whether it's
a sibling or a parent dying, or you're getting fired
at work or whatever it is. We all deal with
some sort of pain. And in the book, I talk
about the pain that we experience and not letting pain
and adversity set you back. In my case, you know,

(38:56):
I talked about this cool cluss Clan incident when I
was at a university and the coach is dressed up
in kul Klusklan outfits and and uh yeah, it's all
in the books and it made national news back in
the nineties.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
You did you sign an NDA? Can you say the
school's name?

Speaker 4 (39:15):
What I will say if you go to my website
the school actually invited me back thirty years later. This
happened in nineteen ninety three, And if you go to
m Johnson CEO dot com, I actually posted the video
of me at this school talking about the incident. So
at first I wouldn't have talked about it, because I

(39:37):
don't know what I signed when I was eighteen years old.
But since the school has talked about it, they've invited
me back. I didn't name the school in the book
because I do think eventually it did the right thing
by me. And I always told people that the coach
went to jail, the students went to jail, and I
came home with a boatload of money, and I bought

(40:00):
a truck, I bought some rims, I bought a bunch
of speakers, gave started a record label. I bought a restaurant.
I got into a little bit of entrepreneurship in Chicago
on the streets.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
And six months later I was broke.

Speaker 4 (40:15):
And yeah, and I thought about committing suicide. And because
I couldn't have believed that I went through, you know,
all that money, and I was thankful that I had
people in my in my life, including my wife, who
encouraged me to go back to school and to do

(40:35):
something with my life, and it ended up taking me.
I ended up going to Malcolm X's Junior College, and
Malcolm X Junior College wouldn't even accept me at their
school because.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
That's where I learned.

Speaker 4 (40:46):
I couldn't read and write at proficiency and then ultimately
it took me four and a half years to get
an associate's degree. So that was one example where I
talked about adversity and how I got through that pain
and how I fought through it to ultimately become one
of the most successful Boys and Girls club leaders in

(41:06):
the country.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Amazing. So this is a prime example of you know
a lot of black folks that are fighting for reparations
all the time. We are old a lot of reparations,
a lot of money, but without the financial literacy, we
will literally collectively give that money back to the system
within twenty four hours. So you got a million dollars.
You obviously easily attract money, okay, eighteen years old a

(41:33):
million dollars, but without that financial literacy, you ended up
in the same predicament.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
Oh yeah, let me just say this.

Speaker 4 (41:41):
It was a blessing because what I learned is that
I didn't earn that money, so I didn't respect it.
And that's why I went back to school and got
all my degrees in business, a master's in business and
bachelor's in business, have all these business certifications. Because what
happened when you don't understand how to do financial projections,

(42:01):
don't know how to understand profit.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
And laws, revenue and experience.

Speaker 4 (42:05):
Their financial acumen. I don't care what you do in life,
whether it's for profit, nonprofit, your own business. You gotta
have business in life. You gotta have business acumen. So
I told myself that if I ever was put in
a position again, that I would never make that mistake again.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
And I never have.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
So you said that your wife encourage you to go
back to school. How young were you at that time
when your wife was, like, babies, just go back to school.

Speaker 3 (42:35):
So my mindset was not really at a good place. Then.

Speaker 4 (42:39):
My wife was a chemist and she went to University
of Minnesota. So, and she was from the South side
of Chicago. She grew up in a household where she
had both parents. My mindset was, if I got her pregnant,
I could move in with her mom and live in
their empty basement. That was my game plan. She was

(43:00):
a chemist, she was doing well in school. I knew
if she a chemist coming out of college would probably
make seventy eighty thousand dollars a year. So she was
my That was that was my meal ticket, right, She
and I got I got bemboozled, right, so she was like, Nope,
that's not going to happen. And she really encouraged me

(43:22):
at the time I was running the streets. She was like,
I'm really not going to lay down with you until
I run your credit. She made me take a health exam,
so I did to go take an age test and
get all my blood work done, and then she ran
my She ran my credit and she told me I
couldn't buy back of potato chips on credit, and that

(43:42):
she couldn't really get serious with a guy unless he
was standing on business. And that's why I enrolled in
Malcolm Max. At that time, I was I was like
madly in love and was like a pet.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
Yet these niggas to do and anything. Don't give up
the cookies, okay.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
So I wasn't miss that opportunity. So I did what
I had to do. And uh and so I rode
my ass in school and I figured it out, and
and and and.

Speaker 4 (44:16):
Thankfully I was in a position where I've been able
to earn a really good living. My wife was able
to take seven years off work and take off our kids,
and I was able to take care of her, you know,
during that time, and and we've done well for ourselves.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
All Right, y'all, don't try this at home. Be careful, okay,
because not everybody. It's gonna end up like Michael. Okay.
Results may vary.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
So true, so true, so true, so true.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
But I think running the nigga credit is a good
idea before you sleep.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
With him like that. Listen, she was.

Speaker 4 (44:53):
I thought she was. I thought she was crazy. I
was like, I was like, I didn't care. I was
like I didn't really know what credit was, right, and
so I was like, run whatever you want. She was like,
I need your self security number. I don't even know
my self. Scared, I had to go to my mama,
and my mama was like, what do you need it for?
I was too embarrassed to tell my mama I was
giving it to this girl. Yeah, make you do strange things,

(45:21):
for sure.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
No, that's amazing, man, Like we need to definitely adopt that. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (45:27):
So I do talk a lot about her in this
book because just being straight up, I think I would
still be running the streets if it wasn't for her.
And uh, and she was the first woman Like where
I grew up at, people didn't go to weddings right,
like we got married in the neighborhood boys and Girls
club or uh in the neighborhood like room in our building,

(45:50):
or you went to city hall. You just got your
little certificate ated and that was it. So she started
taking to me like these fancy weddings where three four
hundred people in these halls. I hadn't never seen anything
like that. She started taking me to plays like I
had never been to like a she took me to
a Tyler Perry play and I was like, what is.

Speaker 3 (46:09):
This Joe black? This is a picture of her. She's
a black woman.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
I don't know if okay, yes, when he said she
was from the South Side, I knew she was black immediately.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
Yeah, yeah, that she comes from like a what is
all the South Side of Chicago? Like Ben is that now?

Speaker 3 (46:33):
It's changing? Right?

Speaker 4 (46:34):
You got High Park where Barack Obama, you know, live,
it's a very like affluent community. But then you got
pockets to the south side that's very, very dangerous. But
my wife grew up on like right around ninety fifth
and Halsted, and that community is also starting to shift.
But the time that she was living there, I saw
it as an upper middle class community. That's what it

(46:57):
felt like to me, because I'm like, man, they got
a house, they got three folk bedrooms and basement, mom
and dad working.

Speaker 3 (47:04):
That's gonna be my new place of residency.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
So that's like, that's what my family. That's exactly like,
that's not too far from where my family grew up.
And they were like in a home. They had a house.
It was both parents there like, but there was some
rough spots over there, like it wasn't all it is
it is.

Speaker 4 (47:22):
I mean, my wife brother was killed right in front
of their house, shot right in the head. So it's challenging,
but it's not as bad as the West Side of Chicago.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
And I think most Chicago wins would.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
Say that, y'all, let me turn a light on right quick.
It's getting darker quick, quicker than I thought it was.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
Okay, so continue with the seven you were at.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
Oh so, so then we're on uh So.

Speaker 4 (47:49):
Chapter four, I talk about embracing the courage and acting
and committed to a life of growth. In chapter five,
I talk about the unbreakable spirit and how great transforms
tough times until like turning points, and I give examples
of all this. And in the book I have these
reflection questions in each chapter. Right, So I didn't want

(48:11):
to just make this into like a biography. I wanted
it as a blueprint. So for if somebody's starting a business,
if somebody trying to take their podcasts or another podcast,
but the podcasts or whatever to the next level. They
also say, there's a business side of it, and this
is how you can scale it.

Speaker 3 (48:29):
This is how you raise money, Here's how you nurture
and store it. Relationships to get people to invest in
what you're doing. And I tough about that, and then
in chapter six I talk about strategic connections.

Speaker 4 (48:42):
Right, you can never do this work by yourself. Right,
So I think about, you know, Tam and aj y'all
are doing this together. But I'm pretty sure there's some
people behind the scenes that's also supporting what you all
are doing and what I've learned. It might be a spouse,
it might be who. I don't know, if somebody got
be like I don't know, if you got good. Somebody

(49:02):
gotta be helping y'all do something.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
We be trying, we be trying to find.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
We need some of that boys and Girls club money
behind this ship.

Speaker 4 (49:13):
You need to come, you need to come that's what
I would say in July when I have my wife party.

Speaker 3 (49:19):
I think I'm gonna bring new addition this year, and
y'all should come down.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
Right, absolutely come having a nonprofit before I get there,
though again I said, I'm gonna create me a nonprofit
right before we get there, dons, okay, Or.

Speaker 3 (49:34):
You can do some crowdfunding, right, y'all.

Speaker 4 (49:36):
Got I've seen some of the views I got, you know,
I've seen thousands of people on y'all views, So people
are watching you all, and I just got can't be
afraid to ask and ask people to support your your content,
and y'all got good if y'all let me tell you this,
if y'all show was on some bullshit, or to call
Steve O and be like, I'm not really interested, but

(50:00):
y'all got a good show, and I think I got
a good thing going on, all right. And then the
last chapter is the APICs in the aftermath, building legacy
that out lives your lifetime. As I've matured into my role,
what I've learned is really without margin has no mission,
you know, and for years you see whether it's church

(50:20):
based organizations or smaller organizations doing these like little mini
fish fraud, dinners.

Speaker 3 (50:26):
That stuff is not sustainable.

Speaker 4 (50:29):
To what I've learned is to try to build endowments
and raise enough money where the interest income can sustain
the work that you're doing. So, for example, you know,
if I was to show you this building that I'm
being now, we just built this building three years ago
and we raised thirty five million dollars in sixteen months,
and it's the largest youth workforce center in the history

(50:51):
of Boys and Girls clubs, you know, of America. And
it's probably the best looking office, best looking nonprofit, I
would say, in the state. Remarkable what we have here.
But it was casting a vision and putting the right
team around you to be to go out and get
the resources.

Speaker 3 (51:08):
That you need.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
Yeah, fundraising is definitely a skill set I would love
to acquire because it's like it you have to put on,
do you not when you're meeting people.

Speaker 4 (51:21):
I don't know what, but hm, I'm sorry, you'll get
used to it. Right, So I'll give you an example. Right, So,
I was in this program at Harvard Business School, and
you know, I knew I wanted to, Like, I was like,
am I really gonna learn something? I really want to
spend time in this program, and I ended up doing
it because I got the scholarship to go and I

(51:42):
was so inspired. There was this guy Indonesia. It was
a case study that we were learning and this Indonesia,
this doctor from Indonesia was an eye doctor, and back
then there was this epidemic of people going blind in
their country, and everybody had these little, small micro clinics
that systemically was not solving anything. This man was like,

(52:05):
I'm going to build like a hundred million dollar hospital.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
I'm going to mortgage my home and I'm gonna figure
it out.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
And he built me never use your own money.

Speaker 4 (52:14):
I know I would never do that, but it was
a powerful story and it inspired me.

Speaker 3 (52:19):
At that time.

Speaker 4 (52:19):
I was thinking about building this facility and our goal
was a million and I went back that night and
I said, I'm taking this goal to like thirty five
million dollars, and I laid out a blueprint and we
went out and we raised it in sixteen months. And
so I say all that to say, the first call
I made was to a wealthy woman by the name

(52:40):
of Pleasant Rowland. I don't know if you are If
you all are familiar with American girl downs, they're really
famous all over the United States, and those dolls were
made right here in Middleton, Wisconsin.

Speaker 3 (52:52):
So I found her phone number. I got it from somebody.
I reached out to her. I didn't know if she
was going to respond or not. She responded, just like
all three of us is on this call. I got
on a zoom call with her, and three days later
we had five million dollars sitting in our back. I
just simply made the acts and I sold her on
the vision, and then her husband turned around and gave

(53:14):
us a million three days later.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
M h, I just need to know what you be saying,
because thirty five million.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
And how many went sixteen months?

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Sixteen months, that's impressive. I need to follow you around.
You got the gift of gas, and I think money
is attracted to you too now.

Speaker 3 (53:35):
But y'all got there. Y'all got the gift of gap too.
I've watched y'all show.

Speaker 4 (53:40):
There wasn't one minute that it was boring and which
made me go look at.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
Other content y'all had.

Speaker 4 (53:47):
So I saw all of it, all of it, and
it's really good content.

Speaker 3 (53:52):
So you got the gift the gap.

Speaker 4 (53:54):
It's how you take your craft and continue to show
up in it, right, So I talked about all these
different programs I've been in at Harvard Business School, at
Cornell University, at the Center of Philanthropy.

Speaker 3 (54:08):
It might just be if philanthropy is.

Speaker 4 (54:10):
A route you want to go to help raise money
for your platform, you might have to take your platform
for being a for profit entity to a nonprofit entity
and making it more educational base.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
Right.

Speaker 4 (54:22):
Then you can apply for grants, Then you can create
a board, then you can ask people to make donations
and they can get a touch right off for that,
And so it could be done. And plus, both of
y'all got a great small y'all got a great smell.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
Y'all. It's just a matter of selling your vision.

Speaker 4 (54:41):
Y'all could be the next whoever, right, the next opera,
the next billionaires.

Speaker 3 (54:47):
It all starts somewhere.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
Yeah, I definitely I wanted to speak to you because
I do have an idea for a nonprofit and I
don't know where to start. And I think it's a
great idea and I need help just a little bit,
if I can borrow a little bit of your time.
But what what is some of the things that maybe
the public misunderstands about nonprofit leaderships, like somebody in your position, CEO,

(55:10):
because I see a lot of articles online about people's salary.
Ye think yourself. I don't believe in the poll poper shit.
You know, I said, I feel like you could be
paid well for whatever it is you do if I
was a church girly, like I want my church to
be rich. You know what I'm saying, Like it's I.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
Look at it. You know, you get what you pay for.

Speaker 4 (55:30):
You want to pay somebody thirty thousand dollars, You're gonna
get thirty thousand dollars worth of work. But I've always
shared with my board, I don't set my salary.

Speaker 3 (55:37):
We have one hundred.

Speaker 4 (55:38):
We have thirty eight board members and seventy something people
in our committees, So in reality, I have one hundred
plus bosses. And what I've asked my board is to
pay me with my white counterparts. Make pay me no more,
pay me no less, and let my performance speak for self. Now,
you're right, there are people who criticize CEOs for their salaries.

(56:00):
But I make no different than what other CEOs make.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
And I'll also scause you black. Right, that's the problem.

Speaker 3 (56:07):
Now, you know what?

Speaker 4 (56:07):
Yeah, I think sometimes people see black leaders in these roles,
and people criticize you, right, especially when you are a vocal, verbal,
intelligent CEO that stand on his or her business.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
People will always attack you. And that's okay.

Speaker 4 (56:24):
But like when people look up my salary or look
up my charity, my audience are clean. Every year we
are four star Charity Navigator rating, which only about twenty
percent of nonprofits in the country, you.

Speaker 3 (56:37):
Know, get that.

Speaker 4 (56:38):
And every year our balance, our balance sheet gets stronger.
When I started at Boys and Girls Clubs, we had
eighteen employees. I now have close to two hundred. When
I started, we only had about a million dollars in
the bank. Now we have close to thirty million dollars
in their assets. And so people can criticize it, but
the results beak for self. There's not another program graduate

(57:00):
more black and brown kids in this state than I am.
I have eleven hundred kids that's in college right now
in twenty five cities across the United States. My Wisconsin
is the largest racial achievement gap in the country. Ninety
nine percent of my kids that graduate from high.

Speaker 3 (57:17):
School and they're going on lunch.

Speaker 4 (57:18):
Okay, So people could talk all that crap they want,
but the results is where.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
It counts absolutely, aj he said, I don't I make
the same thing as every other CEO. All I heard
was bullyed.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
For real because the Goodwill good I think the CEO
of Goodwill they make like half a million dollars, over
a half a million dollars six hundred and some thousand
dollars a year.

Speaker 4 (57:43):
Yeah, some of some of those guys are running eighty
ninety million dollar budgets, no different than our corporate counterparts. Right,
So if you have a nonprofit that's running an eighty
ninety million dollar organization, and there's some CEOs that run
companies that have twenty million dollars, they do twenty million
in revenue, and their CEOs make a million dollars and

(58:05):
so or more. And so how I look at it
is this is how I share this with my board.
When I think about pay equity, is not just about
the CEOs, about your entire team.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
In my organization, we give our employees sabbaticals.

Speaker 4 (58:21):
So our employees, you work five years from us, we
will pay you to take four months off and you
can go anywhere you want, and we're still gonna pay
you so you can have time to be with your
family and your friends. We're gonna also pay you, not
based on what nonprofit leaders make locally. We bench mark
our salaries across all non profits across the country to

(58:42):
make sure that our people are paid here well. When
people leave me with my vicevate eleven vice presidents, when
they leave me, most of them go on the universities.
Some of them are foundation presidents now, some of them
run their own businesses. One was a vice chance of
a university. And I can go on and on and on,
And it's not about just the CEO. It's about taking

(59:05):
care of all your people because in this space there's
so much turnover in management and the direct care staf
positions that families need to see consistent leadership in the
lives of the families that they serve.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
Absolutely. So, I know you mentioned love. You talk about
loving your book, right, Yeah, So damn the hell was
my question? Sorry? How do you balance? How do you
balance being a CEO and your family, being a husband,
all those good things?

Speaker 2 (59:43):
Father?

Speaker 1 (59:43):
You said you have kids, Yeah, yeah, and what has
it taught you? Like, what has it taught you about
like love and patience?

Speaker 4 (59:50):
So I've always on the first say I had my
before I agreed to do y'all show. I had my son,
who's a hip hop artist and he's becoming fairly famous,
and I said, look at the page to let me know,
and his exact words were.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
That they dope as shit. You should go home. And
that was his exact words.

Speaker 4 (01:00:10):
And he's a junior in college at the University of
Cincinnati and it goes by MK E three X and
he just did a music video in Atlanta with the
Concrete Boys, who is part of I think Young Gotti
or one of them. Right, So what I've learned is
that people I hear some people say there's never balanced

(01:00:33):
when you're a CEO, and that's bullshit, Like you can
work all your life and make good money, but if
you're alone and unhealthy, it means nothing. Because when your
life is over where you can't take your house, you
can't take your cars, and you can't take your money
to wherever you're going after life. Right, So early on

(01:00:54):
I did not get that I would come to word
and I watched. I remember when my son was born,
I didn't know if I was going to be to
afford to take care of him, but I didn't want
to be a deadbeat dad like my dad, and so
I committed to working as hard as I could to
try to work for my work hard for my family.
Now I make sure that my team. I don't call

(01:01:17):
my team members on weekends. I don't call them at nighttime.
And when I do, if I send them a text,
I schedule it for six or seven o'clock in the morning,
so I'm not bothering or taking them away from their family.
I also schedule date weekends and nights with my wife
without the kids, so we are doing stuff together so

(01:01:38):
as we get older, we don't lose interest in each
other because there's a lot of temptation that's out here,
and people marriages fall apart, you know all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
And when people know your salary.

Speaker 3 (01:01:53):
People come at you right.

Speaker 5 (01:01:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:01:55):
And so what I've tried to do is I always
honor my wife at an read time I can at
different events. I tried my best to honor her, you know,
in this book. Because what we've built, we built it together.
I didn't do it by myself. I built it with
a queen that stood not behind me, but side by
side with me. As we've given back our time and

(01:02:17):
our talent and our treasure back to our community.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
Yeah, hear that, get you a wife.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
I was just about to say I was just about
to say that, because you know, in the black community,
people really think you can build legacy and generational wealth
by yourself. Doesn't work like that.

Speaker 4 (01:02:39):
In the book aj I talk about I actually talk
about that, right, And there's a there's research that show
married couples make fourteen percent more in the network than
those who are not married. Right, and you think about it, right,
you know, at one point, like, let's think about it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
If it's two of you all, and y'all are splitting
all the.

Speaker 4 (01:02:57):
Bills, and if you're liven beneath or at your means,
that means you should be in a position to put
away thirty or forty percent of your income if y'all
both are working towards the same goals. Right, some couples
will be together for twelve, thirteen, fourteen years. Somebody's ranting
eighteen hundred. Somebody else rant it's twenty five hundred. When

(01:03:19):
y'all could be living together and sharing those bills and
reinvesting that money and making nine ten percent every year.
Then over the decade, look up, damn, I saved one
hundred and fifty two hundred three hundred four hundred five
hundred thousand dollars. And if people got to learn you
can't go at this by yourself, that's my advice.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
But you also got to have the right partner too, right.
I've seen on both sides.

Speaker 4 (01:03:44):
I've seen some of my male friends be hurt by women,
and I've seen a lot of family members and females
that are in my life be hurt by men. So
you got to find the right person that you are
equally yoked with to get ahead.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
Absolutely on the internet, there is value for men in marriage. Okay,
just to sum it up for the niggas who think
they gonna get that m by theyself. Mama's women literally
come with a loaf of bread. Just our presence might
bring the bag for you.

Speaker 4 (01:04:21):
Yeah, and men are genuinely healthier too when they're married. Right,
It's and there's all kinds of research out there that
backs that, that backs that up. And I know sometimes
you know especially, I mean both it's men and women. Right, people,
we live in a society where people are not disciplined,
and we're not disciplined, and you get in trouble.

Speaker 3 (01:04:43):
And so I've learned it I don't put.

Speaker 4 (01:04:45):
Myself in situations that will cause any to jeopardize my
marriage or my relationship with my family.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
I definitely don't want to lose my kids.

Speaker 4 (01:04:55):
I don't want to lose my family, and I also
don't want to damage my reputation by trying to have
thirty five forty minutes of pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:05:03):
Do you have like other men that are also like married,
you know, business owners, because I think that also kind
of helps keep men in line, right, instead of you
hanging out with all your single homeboys. You know, you're
you have a group of men who are on the
same page.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
Family men, Yeah, you are your circle, right.

Speaker 4 (01:05:24):
There are friends in mine who do different things who
are single, whether it's going out of the country or
going to different types.

Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
Of clubs broads.

Speaker 4 (01:05:36):
Yeah, I cannot go to those types of things with
them as a married man, and so it's like, hey,
if you want to meet me, you got to meet
me at a Chicago Bulls game or a Bucks game
or I don't want to put myself in that environment.
So I do typically try to hang with married men.
But there's also some married men and married women who
ain't really married, they just married. They playing games you

(01:06:00):
know where those people are having a couple of conversations
with them, so I try not to. You know, again,
I'm a very imperfect person. Marriage is not easy. Me
and my wife been married twenty three years and we've
had our and flows and it's.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
Just it is what it is. But you gotta work.
You gotta continue to work at it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
So we want to do like a little quick, little
rapid fire. Uh real quick questions.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
Okay, y'all didn't give me no heads up on the questions.
I don't know. I'm scared, man.

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
I literally just know. We never give anybody like outline
or heads up. You know, we kind of got our
little talking points. But yeah, I said.

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
Just remind them that I'm the CEO of Boys and.

Speaker 4 (01:06:54):
Girls clubs, so uh so, just just keep that in mind.

Speaker 1 (01:06:59):
But these are these are very SIMP story for me
and ship like that. Now, let CEO or not. We
still need a SIMP story at the end of the episode,
So CEO or no, Yeah, we need that. We need
know these are regular Yeah, these are a regular question.

Speaker 3 (01:07:15):
Yeah, I'm just I'm just messing with y'all. An.

Speaker 4 (01:07:20):
I don't have a problem answering. I'm an open book
probably answer any question.

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
All right, So audacity or faith? Which one of these
things get hard?

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
No wins?

Speaker 1 (01:07:32):
Oh yeah, audacity or faith? Which one wins when things
get hard?

Speaker 4 (01:07:37):
And there you go, Fai faith, I would just say that,
you know, I am a man of faith. I believe
in God and when when times get tough, I'm not
super religious, but I know when you covered and when
you've gone through things that I've been that I've been through,
I know the only reason I'm standing here today is

(01:07:59):
because there's a God.

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
So I would say it faith absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
And Tam got dropped off a second. She'll be back.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
She's like he talked to damn much.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
I don't know. This is a great interview, all right.
So leading or following? Which is harder to do? Well?

Speaker 4 (01:08:19):
I would say, in order to lead, you have to
learn to follow, and once you're a leader, sometimes you
still have to follow. Because good leadership is about pointing
to other people and allowing other people to lead. So
good leaders have to be good followers even when they're
in a leadership.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
Okay, next question, what's one leadership lesson you learn the
hard way?

Speaker 4 (01:08:44):
When I was on this panel yesterday, I gave an
example when you start a new organization or you're in
a new job and you're a new leader, you always
should do a swallow analysis and really listen the going
there telling people easy your dreams, this is what you're
gonna change, you're gonna change, because if you going there

(01:09:05):
guns blazing, you might come out as a casualty and
get buried before you even start. And so I always
tell people if you're leading a new department, if you're
a new leader, go in meet with all your stakeholders,
Meet with uh, the the employees, meet with your clients.
Understand what the issues are. If there's a person that
you replace, call that person and learn as much as

(01:09:28):
you can and just seek understanding instead of being understood.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
You ain't answer the question. You ain't answer the question,
then no, that makes sense. One leadership lesson. You learned
the hard way.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
So what happened some water analysis, which is your strength
and opportunities and threat?

Speaker 3 (01:09:49):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:09:50):
So I didn't finish it, So I answered the halfway
by saying right, So see AJ she fell asleep on me?

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
I did not.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
I just didn't hear.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
I didn't hear where they. I didn't hear where that
happened there, Like where was you at?

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
Like you didn't to tell the story.

Speaker 4 (01:10:05):
So the incident, I would say, when I started here
sixteen years ago. My boys and girls clubs, all the
country clubs for kids. They're bright, they're clean, they're beautiful.

Speaker 3 (01:10:16):
But when I.

Speaker 4 (01:10:17):
First got here, one of our clubs is really dark.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
It was gloomy.

Speaker 4 (01:10:22):
And when I got here, I said, throw everything out,
throw out everything, and I really pissed off a lot
of people, and about a thirty staff quit on me
because I was making too many changes too fast. I
also learned that being a large black male, and I
give this example. Yesday I was on this panel, there
was a woman who worked for me, and I thought

(01:10:43):
she was really fragile. Every time I would be on
the phone, I would come out of my office and
she would be crying. I'm like, why the hell are
you crying? And she was like, every time you raised
your voice, it's just.

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
Charing. I'm just caring.

Speaker 4 (01:11:00):
So I went to HR and I was like, get
her out of here. So I got to thinking, I said,
why is my voice triggering her? So I sat down
with her was I wanted to seek understanding. And what
I didn't realize is that she was in a domestic
violent violence relationship for over a decade, and her husband

(01:11:23):
resembled me, and from what how does she described was
just as loud as me. And so I grew up
in a household where everybody just scream and we're loud.
We're just loud individuals. So what I've learned is that
I had to temper my enthusiasm or when I got elevated,

(01:11:44):
I now go in my car and I screamed at people.

Speaker 3 (01:11:47):
I don't do it. I don't do it in my
office anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
Good stuff, Okay, so filling the blank. Real leadership is.

Speaker 4 (01:11:59):
Karen given and giving back to those who are around you.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
Good answer, all right, number five? We only got a
couple more. So you can.

Speaker 3 (01:12:11):
See you sweat all I'm gonna take you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:15):
You ain't gotta tell that people what number on next?
Number five?

Speaker 2 (01:12:22):
If your younger self walked into a room right now,
what would you tell him?

Speaker 3 (01:12:27):
That's a good one.

Speaker 4 (01:12:28):
There was years that I used to be a car thief,
and those years were very, very challenging in many ways.
And I wish early on in my life I would
have turned that switch before I met this woman of mine,
And I wish I would have found some mentors around

(01:12:50):
me that would have intervened earlier, because I feel like
I got to later start in life because of some
of the things I was doing back when I was
in my late teens and early twenties.

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
What's your personal definition of success today?

Speaker 3 (01:13:13):
I would say, I would say it's threefold.

Speaker 4 (01:13:17):
I'm gonna say one, my family first and foremost, and
really measuring how healthy my family is and how we
acting and support one another. So I would say that's
one target of mind. Then I would say, on the
business side, my work at Boys and Girls clubs in
terms of the resources that we raise, are we really

(01:13:38):
impacting young people lives? Are they graduating from high school?
Are they going on to college? Are they graduating and
becoming medical doctors and lawyers? And are we seeing it
and are we tracking it? And that's the other thing.
And then I would say, now that I've just turned fifty,
it's health related, right, you know. Every year I go
to the Mayo Clinic, which is the number one, I think,

(01:14:01):
the number one hospital in the country, and I go
and get executive physicals done to make sure that you know,
I'm checking all my my blood levels and making sure
that I'm okay as you do this work, because when
you raise money for challenge communities, there's a lot of
challenges that come with tax that come with the jealousy

(01:14:23):
that come with the envy that comes with it, and
you got to be prepared and ready all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
Are you Are you insured? I mean yes? Do they
ensure you?

Speaker 3 (01:14:33):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:14:34):
I know, people who make CEOs usually, like the companies
usually have insurance on them.

Speaker 4 (01:14:39):
Everybody should get insurance, Like it's I've had I've probably
had insurance on me for fifteen years.

Speaker 1 (01:14:47):
So you know, I'm saying the corporation has insurance on you.

Speaker 3 (01:14:50):
Oh yeah, they like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
Why you're going to get that blood work done.

Speaker 4 (01:14:57):
Let me my board doesn't require but it's something you know,
they don't require it all at all.

Speaker 1 (01:15:04):
Okay, that's what I was asking.

Speaker 4 (01:15:06):
Yeah, no company can require you like it's because of
hippo laws. You don't have to share your health status
with anybody. Now a board could say, we encourage you
to deal it. In my case, you know, fifty was
a milestone for me, and you know, turning fifty there's
a lot of people who just at least fro where

(01:15:26):
I come from are either fifty and there's all kind
of health issues or they didn't make it to fifty.
And so the last few years, I'm working to be
a healthier, healthier person. And you can only do that
by knowing your status, right, knowing you know what your
A one C is, what your cholesterol is, and all
those things, because they take a lot of us out.

Speaker 1 (01:15:47):
Yeah, I just had a physical done on Friday. Man,
y'all will get y'all a physical. Yeah, I'm run here thinking,
I just love to eat crushed ice, super amic, super anemic.

Speaker 4 (01:15:59):
I always know people like I was showing some people
like I got this my chart thing from the male clinic,
and I was showing a group of people like all
of my results right, and they were like, man, you
share yourself. I don't mind sharing it because people should know,
like what all their levels are, right, you know. And
a lot of us die with this pancreatic cancer or

(01:16:20):
like it's it's just so much stuff that can be
treated early if you catch it. And so and I
gotta think my wife, right, there was parents in my
and I married us. I ain't going to know a doctor.
And she's like, oh, it's been two years. You ain't
got your fist. Oh I go next year? She was like, nope,
you're going now. So part of it, I would say,
being married to a good woman, she would make you go.

Speaker 3 (01:16:47):
I am, I am really.

Speaker 4 (01:16:48):
Honored, appreciate, and honestly, if you ever need my help
and you need me.

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
To jump on the I need it right now. I
need your help and I have a friend who needs
your help. One of my girlfriends was recently the CEO
of a nonprofit here in Charleston, South Carolina, and the
board was giving her a super super tough time, first
black woman, young, she's only forty as well, she just
turned forty in December, and you know, they just didn't

(01:17:16):
treat her well. So she ended up stepping down recently.
But I know she's good at raising money. I've been
to it, so like, yeah, I would also like, you know,
maybe this is another reason why she needs I would
like for you to possibly talk to her. Also, yeah, of.

Speaker 3 (01:17:30):
Course say no more than.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
Yeah, AJ feeling your schedule up?

Speaker 1 (01:17:35):
Ain't she tell you relationships is worth more than money? Okay? Okaya?

Speaker 4 (01:17:46):
Life is an open book, and I went through something
like that. I ran a very large nonprofit and I
went there for four months and my departure was very,
very very public and U and so and I was
a black CEO of two different nonprofits, first black CEO
of two and it just didn't work because I am

(01:18:09):
the type of CEO that I cannot be a figurehead
and I will not be a figurehead. And if you
hire me as the CEO, you got to know if
I interview for a job, I'm going to be straight
up with you, right, I am an entrepreneurial CEO, and
if you hire me in that role, you need to
allow me and empower me to be in that role.

(01:18:29):
But you got to find somebody else. And it's that symbol.
And I've always operated like that. And so when you
ask the question around audacity of faith, my faith have
always allowed me to step out there on courage and
know that your skills are strong enough that if somebody
mistreat you, you're laying on your feet in the next
opportunity to present itself.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
Period.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
Am all right? Final question? Complete this sentence. In twenty
twenty five, the world needs more leaders who blank.

Speaker 4 (01:19:01):
Show empathy and compassion. You know, I think about what's
going on with the SNAP program. I made a post
about it on my LinkedIn profile that I think has
now gone viral, and you like, there's people out here
that have no empathy. And as somebody who benefited you
know from Snap, a mother who was single, they had
schizophrenia and mental health issues. There are people who are

(01:19:26):
dependent on those resources. And I just see a lack
of empathy and a lack of compassion from so many
people in this country right now. And we need leaders
who's going to be bridge builders and show empathy and compassion.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
Absolutely, yeah, none of that, that's for sure, and they
need to go ahead and give them Snap benefits right
on back.

Speaker 3 (01:19:50):
Messed around, really Snap, but they I.

Speaker 1 (01:19:54):
Think they got they got it. They got it November first.
But I guess there's going to be any trumpset.

Speaker 4 (01:19:59):
Trump a couple of hours ago said it's not happening.
Yesterday they announced that they were going to get half
half of the funds out, and then today he circled
it back and say, ain't nothing going down until the
Democrats come.

Speaker 3 (01:20:12):
And pass his budget. Wow, you know, in cases like
this and.

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):
What all I got to see what all that budget includes,
because a lot of times they have a whole bunch
of bullshit. The small print people aren't reading that's included
in these bills and budgets, right, which is probably why
they won't pass it.

Speaker 4 (01:20:33):
I mean, people have agendas, and people want to reallocate
funds to things that's important to them. And the reality
is we are a very divided country. The president won
with a little over half the vote, and his base
is probably saying, why why cater to that other half
when they're not going to vote for you anyway. And

(01:20:55):
so I think it's going to be a challenging next
few years for a lot of a lot of people people,
and that's why we need leaders who are empathetic and
compassion and are willing to step up and do things
outside of the box. And you know, normally, like over
the holidays, you'll see every year I usually go out
and buy somebody a car and raise money for that.

(01:21:17):
We've a couple of years ago, you'll see news stories
where we help purchase a half a million dollar house
for our maintenance guy. We go around town and we
give away two three four thousand dollars in tips to
restaurant workers. And it's not necessarily just giving out.

Speaker 3 (01:21:32):
It ain't my money. I just raise it. On social media.

Speaker 4 (01:21:35):
People are compassionate and they're empathetic and they want to help.

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
So a half a million dollar home for how do
I apply for the janitorial position right now? Because I
clean that motherfucker from top to bottom.

Speaker 4 (01:21:49):
Okay, let me tell you this story about this guy,
and I talk about it in the book.

Speaker 3 (01:21:56):
And if you go to m Johnson's CEO dot.

Speaker 4 (01:21:59):
Com on my website, right on the homepage, you will
see a video about this Gentleman's name is Dwayne Malone.
When I came to Boys and Girls Club sixteen years ago,
we had no money for maintenance, and Dwayne was like, man,
I believe in what you're trying to do, and he said,
I'm going to help you get these buildings together. So
he came in one Christmas and we painted one of

(01:22:22):
our boys and girls to meet him in like three
volunteers from Christmas Eve all the way to like.

Speaker 3 (01:22:27):
New Year's Day.

Speaker 4 (01:22:28):
And every year he's been with me doing something. When Flint,
Michigan happened, Flint Michigan gave me a key to the city.
All I really did.

Speaker 3 (01:22:37):
Was showed up.

Speaker 4 (01:22:38):
I told Dwayne I wanted to take fifty thousand gallons
of water down there, and we had two days to
do it. I posted it on my Facebook page and
within two days he collected fifty thousand gallons of water
and we took it down to Flint, Michigan. I really
just used my profile and my influence to get the
word out. But he did all the major labor. And

(01:23:00):
I recognized that the same thing happened when there was
tornadoes and floods in Houston. We rescued people out of
their houses. I went down there with firefighters and newspeople,
and it was Dwayne who drove that semi trailer you know,
down there full of supplies. So in Wisconsin we have
the largest racial gap in home ownership. And he was

(01:23:24):
trying to buy him and his new wife a house
that was like an hour and a half outside of Wisconsin.

Speaker 3 (01:23:29):
And he was actually smart. He told me that's what
he was trying to do. So he was making his
ask without making his acts, and I was like, man,
I got to take care of my guy. Now what
came of that?

Speaker 4 (01:23:41):
If you read the comments like in that set, people
are like, oh my god, how can he do this?
Why would he buy this? For as baking this guy
and as other people. Sometimes you got to take care
of people on your team too. And I'm thankful because
here's a guy who is giving his time and his
talent to our organizationation for years and all I simply

(01:24:02):
did us ask dollars to give ten thousand here, twenty
thousand there, thirty thousand there to buy him his dream house.

Speaker 2 (01:24:10):
Yeah that wasn't He was the steward of the Lord
and the Lord, so I fit the blessing.

Speaker 3 (01:24:15):
With a home.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
That's all that was.

Speaker 3 (01:24:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:24:17):
Yeah, they leave it bags for something real important. Get
on a hacksing for twenty dollars. You need five hundred
thousand dollars. Listen, don't nothing piss me off? Then the
person asking for twenty dollars, because what you about to
do with that? Like, right, I ask anybody even anything.
I really can't afford it a big ass.

Speaker 3 (01:24:38):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:24:38):
We are going to ask break now. When we get back,
you gotta give us your SIMP story. Okay, so just
be prepared, think about it while we're on this break.

Speaker 3 (01:24:47):
And you gotta re you gotta re educate me on
the SIMPS story.

Speaker 2 (01:24:50):
We're gonna we're gonna help you, all right. We're not
really taking a break. We just put a break in there,
But Simp serious.

Speaker 3 (01:24:59):
I got y'all making money.

Speaker 2 (01:25:02):
It's a couple of little dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:25:06):
We ain't gonna go oh money.

Speaker 2 (01:25:08):
Yeah, but we're trying to get some of that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:12):
I do, got it. It's just in the universe around.

Speaker 4 (01:25:16):
And just remember old me when y'all started your foundation,
and I'll come. I'll come work for y'all when y'all
making them millions.

Speaker 2 (01:25:23):
Okay, we're gonna hold you today, don't hold you to that.

Speaker 3 (01:25:28):
I'll come. I'll come work for y'all any day.

Speaker 2 (01:25:30):
Okay, all right, now we're gonna be looking for you.

Speaker 1 (01:25:34):
I'm about to come work at the Boys and Girls
Club because I'm trying to get these student loans paid off.
And y'all know if you work for a nonprofit, you
can get your student loans forgiving.

Speaker 3 (01:25:44):
I think already looked up my salary, so.

Speaker 1 (01:25:46):
I think, no, I am, I know finance right, I'm money.

Speaker 3 (01:25:58):
Look your ship up.

Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
Me wanted to get my city loans written off. Don't
got nothing to do with your salary. I'm trying to
get you to pay the government depend.

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
All right, So Simp, sim story you have to tell
a story about the time you got played by the Office.

Speaker 3 (01:26:18):
Of sex Ooh peez.

Speaker 1 (01:26:23):
Now he's been with his wife for twenty three years now,
be real curlful, right.

Speaker 3 (01:26:30):
Think about that one. I don't think I've ever been played.

Speaker 2 (01:26:35):
Oh you're one of those.

Speaker 1 (01:26:37):
You're a virgo. What's your birth Whe're your birthday? He
a libra libra?

Speaker 2 (01:26:43):
You a libra like play like she's on just played.
Somebody finessed you out of some money. Somebody made you
think that they really liked you, and you call them
with your homeboy in a locker room or something.

Speaker 3 (01:26:58):
I swear to God, and that's never happened to me.

Speaker 1 (01:27:01):
Because somebody said, I guess you could put it in
a in a donor way. I don't know how somebody
ever promised you some money and didn't come through with
the donation.

Speaker 4 (01:27:09):
I mean I could say I was played by my
wife early on. She's dating I talk about it, but
she dated this prince looking as us dude, and uh
I actually talked about in the book and we were dating.
I didn't want to get serious, and she was like, well,
I'm gonna go back and see my ex boyfriend and
like bring some closure to that the weekend. I wanted

(01:27:29):
to get serious and when she left Chicago, her her
hair was all whipped up, and she came back three
days later and it looked like a hot mess.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
And I just knew you wanted to get serious. Now
she is Arbitrarily, she.

Speaker 3 (01:27:44):
Went back and slept with her ex man.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
That was the weekend you wanted to be serious.

Speaker 2 (01:27:50):
See how Nick, you know how you know how it is?

Speaker 3 (01:27:54):
She was.

Speaker 4 (01:27:55):
We both were like we dated for ten years before
we got married, and I was in the music business.
It was just hard to settle. It was just very difficult,
and I didn't want to lie to her until I knew.
And that took me seeing her with another guy. I
think what happened when I was daying o.

Speaker 2 (01:28:16):
That hair fucked though, Like.

Speaker 4 (01:28:20):
That did hurt me. I was all week she was
in she was in Minnesota. She was in Minnesota. I
was listening to the Osley Brothers all week I was.

Speaker 3 (01:28:30):
I was.

Speaker 4 (01:28:30):
I was in a little feetal position, and you know
how it is when your woman is with another man,
All kind of stuff go through your head. And I
was brave enough to talk about it in the book
and so h but she was honest with me. She said,
I need closure, and so I'm gonna go and talk
to him, and I knew they woul talk, and I

(01:28:52):
was like, I was like, I could drive to Minnesota
with you.

Speaker 1 (01:28:55):
Right, because why y'all can't talk on the phone. Y'all
had then, though, but I knew.

Speaker 4 (01:29:00):
She was with that guy for a while, and I
don't know what, you know, It still bothers me to
this day.

Speaker 1 (01:29:08):
I told y'all, if you cheat on your man and
he take you back, leave that nigga immediately.

Speaker 3 (01:29:16):
She can't to Minnesota. Ever.

Speaker 4 (01:29:20):
Ever, some years ago, you know, women, I feel like women,
at least the women I've dated, like some men don't
get emotionally tired and and easy to move on.

Speaker 3 (01:29:35):
And I would say, at least for the women I dated,
it's just not that easy.

Speaker 4 (01:29:39):
And so my wife in this case was like a stud.
She was just like, look, you know, while while we
were going back and forth, she was like, you know what,
if you go do your thing, you do your thing,
and I'm gonna live my life and I ain't gonna
wait on you, and.

Speaker 1 (01:29:59):
We can do it.

Speaker 4 (01:30:00):
And when I got serious she uh, you know, I
was like, we gotta now commit if we're gonna do this,
and she said, well, I need one more weekend, And uh, rightfully?

Speaker 1 (01:30:19):
So right like her? I like her.

Speaker 2 (01:30:24):
I like her a lot. She was like, I ran
your credit your credit wasn't she? And I'm about to
go see Malcolm because you playing Malcolm in the middle.
In the middle, that was a good that was a
good story, all.

Speaker 3 (01:30:43):
Right, tell so I gotta tell her all over again?
Did you record that?

Speaker 5 (01:30:48):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:30:48):
We recorded recorded?

Speaker 3 (01:30:52):
What?

Speaker 1 (01:30:52):
Wait a minute, what why would we have stopped?

Speaker 2 (01:30:57):
Oh that break? Ben over buddy, we.

Speaker 1 (01:30:59):
Canial oh my god before we wrap it up. So
for our listeners, Uh, because a lot of people are creatives,
entrepreneurs every day, people just trying to lead, you know,
and whatever laying they're in. So what's the one bold

(01:31:20):
step they can take this week to start leading with audacity.

Speaker 3 (01:31:28):
Self reflection, introspective work it.

Speaker 4 (01:31:32):
Yeah, you gotta like you can't pour it into your
future until you realize what's.

Speaker 3 (01:31:39):
Going on with you right now in the moment.

Speaker 4 (01:31:43):
And uh, And so I try to self reflect a lot,
like even to this day at fifty.

Speaker 3 (01:31:50):
I don't feel accomplished.

Speaker 4 (01:31:52):
And some people look at my house and my car
and my big office and all the stuff we do,
and I still don't feel accomplished. And the reason I
think that's the case is because I shared it with you.
The variety of people that I hang with, right, I
have some friends who are multi millionaires and billionaires, and

(01:32:13):
I have some friends who are still living lives that's
not as productive. And I learned from all of them.
But I don't feel as successful as I know I
could be, or as impactful as I believe I can be.

Speaker 1 (01:32:30):
So you are a yacht like a big So I
would say the yachts in the boats ain't my thing?

Speaker 4 (01:32:37):
Like I would say materialist, Well, the island maybe more property.
I would say, I'm not real big into material things,
but I do think about I am starting to think
about how do I put back into my family. All
my family still live in poverty in Chicago. Ninety five
percent of my family is either still on Section eight

(01:33:00):
living in poverty. And how do I help build wealth
for not only my family, but the people around me,
including the families that we serve. And that's why in
this workforce center, we built this this financial literacy program,
we built this entrepreneurship center. We want to teach kids,
you know, how to become doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs. One of

(01:33:21):
my kids just graduated from med school and now she's
delivering babies.

Speaker 3 (01:33:24):
And when she.

Speaker 4 (01:33:25):
Finished her residency, Chang chain And this was somebody that
was just in our program nine years ago. I didn't
know what she wanted to do with her life. And
that's where her name is, doctor Mattiba Bojang. I'm very
proud of her, young black woman, and I just can't
believe she graduated month and a half ago and she's
already delivered over forty some babies at our local hospital.

Speaker 1 (01:33:47):
Wow, that's amazing powerful. Do you have any survivor's remorse?

Speaker 3 (01:33:55):
I don't know what do you mean by that?

Speaker 1 (01:33:57):
Because who made it out the hood? And oh yeah,
still back there.

Speaker 4 (01:34:02):
You know, I'm thankful man, because growing up there, I
feel like I can handle anything. Like I've lived in
the gutter, I've seen the worst, and even though my
neighborhood was very challenging, there was a lot of love
that too. In the buildings I grew up in. You
can go borrow chicking off somebody table, You can borrow

(01:34:25):
sugar kool aid. I don't know another neighborhood when you
go and knock on somebody door and say can I
borrow some butter and it was just that's how it
was in our neighborhood. And even though there was a
lot of drugs and prostitution and gain banging, there was
a sense of community there. So I'm proud, and I
think because I lived in that environment, I've been able

(01:34:47):
to in my new and well in my role at
Boys and Girls clubs. Because I have those lived experiences,
it's made me a better CEO.

Speaker 3 (01:34:57):
And it also keeps like there's this guy named Jackie
Morris that dress like a pimp, and everybody will be like,
why why do you hang out with him?

Speaker 4 (01:35:06):
And you see him. He wears his big dab hats,
he wears big shiny, glittery shoes, like he does look
like a pimp. But I love Jackie so like, I
have a fundraiser on Friday night, Jackie's gonna be at
my table with one of the biggest philanthropists in my community.
And I'm not embarrassed to hang out with Jackie because
Jackie keeps me grounded and when there's stuff going on

(01:35:29):
in the streets, he tells me, and so I keep
him close to me. And some people be like, I
just don't know why you do that, And when you.
Sometimes when people move up, they forget where they come from,
they forget who like.

Speaker 3 (01:35:43):
It's not you.

Speaker 4 (01:35:44):
Sometimes you got to reach back. Jackie got out of prison.
Jackie came and worked with me on the project. Jackie
got out of prison eight years ago. He's been working
every day and I helped him through a donor out
of Chicago, guy named Willie Wilson, help him purchase at
shop in downtown Madison. The same thing with my boy Goon.

(01:36:04):
His nickname was Goon's name now is Corey. He runs
the Black Man Coalition a Dane County. Spent ten years
in the hole. Now he's a nonprofit leader that's also
raising millions. Corey introduced me to a donor that I
couldn't get to and she recently gave us a million dollars.
So I poured it to Corey and now Corey is

(01:36:24):
pouring back into me. And I just feel I just
believe when you give back to other people, God to
bless your work and give back to you.

Speaker 1 (01:36:31):
Absolutely, Thank God. Yeah, So, how can people support your
mission or get involved with what you got going on next?

Speaker 3 (01:36:42):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:36:43):
I would encourage people. You know that My biggest thing
coming up now I'll go to www dot bgc DC
dot org. That's the Boys and Girls Clubs at Dane
County website. If you want to learn a bit more
about my book is m Johnson CEO dot com. We
fund raised on Friday where we're raising money for our
Youth of the Year event on Friday where there's a

(01:37:05):
competition some young person as an opportunity to win a
car to get a college scholarship. And it's a very
big competition that we have here in Wisconsin. But my
biggest one that's coming up is what we do over
the holidays. I want to raise it about two hundred
thousand dollars to refurbish somebody house, to give tips to
restaurant workers, to help buy a car, to a family

(01:37:29):
that's in need, and if you want to get down
and you want to see it in real time, we
raise the money and then we bless families in real time.
We're not one of these organizations where we raise the money.
So we're gonna sit on there for a year and
decide people submit their applications. I don't make any of
the decisions anymore because what comes with that when people
say you raising that kind of money, Oh, you giving

(01:37:50):
them money to his family, all his friends. So what
I've did sometimes you got to listen to criticism and
get out in front of it. So over the last
seven years, I have a community group of business and
civic and gracial community leaders that look at all these
applications and then they tell me who to go get
the money to.

Speaker 3 (01:38:08):
And that's how we roll.

Speaker 1 (01:38:10):
All right, y'all. So that is b G C DC
dot or go pay y'all ties, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:38:17):
Ministry sometimes outside the walls of the church, right, So.

Speaker 1 (01:38:20):
Yes, podcast is the ministry.

Speaker 3 (01:38:23):
The broadcast the ministry too. You're sharing the word.

Speaker 4 (01:38:26):
And in the marketplace, you know, here in the marketplace,
and uh and you having a little bit of fun
with it.

Speaker 2 (01:38:32):
Too, right, Thank you so much for joining us. This
is really really good what AJ said. I found this
amazing CEO from the Boys and Girls Club. I was like, girl,
he about to be born as hell. But you thought.

Speaker 1 (01:38:48):
You thought you was disconnected because you were sleeping.

Speaker 4 (01:38:56):
But I hope it says, I hope we stay in touch.
I hope y'all come down the third. If y'all come
down in July, I would let y'all interview all the celebrities.
It's usually about seven to eight of them that we had,
like a couple. I think we had Tate Diggs and
I mean website.

Speaker 1 (01:39:14):
He's gonna come set up shop.

Speaker 3 (01:39:17):
Let's let's let y'all do y'all thing, all right, Gret,
absolutely all right.

Speaker 2 (01:39:21):
We look forward to it.

Speaker 3 (01:39:23):
And then a j let me know. I'll agree to
have free consultant services for you and your nonprofit friend,
but if it goes beyond those two people, I might
to charge you about five hundred dollar an hour.

Speaker 1 (01:39:34):
Ra I'm coming to ship.

Speaker 2 (01:39:35):
I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:39:36):
Listen. I don't mind paying for information. I give out
a lot of free information all the time, and I
usually have had to pay for the information and I'm
then given for free. So I don't mind, you know,
investing in myself. But anyway, y'all, I'm not gonna charge you.

Speaker 3 (01:39:53):
But here's what I will say. I see about the book.
I respect definitely about the book. I am the blueprint
is there.

Speaker 4 (01:40:01):
Go to Amazon dot com and get it. Michael Johnson,
I see the reading to pop right up and uh.
And here's what I would say. If the book ain't good,
I will fully refund you, because I know everybody I
talk to they tell me they can't once they started
one chapter, they can't stop. And it's real, it's authentic,
it's raw. You really see a leadership book that talk

(01:40:21):
about the adversities and a leader that's raising the type
of resources I've raised in my career that comes from
the projects, and it's really told. And so I know
it's a phenomenal book and I believe it's gonna be
a best seller. But I gotta get on podcasts like
like y'all's to help us, help help us get the

(01:40:42):
word out.

Speaker 2 (01:40:43):
I'm definitely because I feel like the subtitle could be
real Nigga ceo.

Speaker 5 (01:40:49):
You know, iur paaraphrase.

Speaker 3 (01:41:02):
I am an authentic CEO from the streets.

Speaker 4 (01:41:06):
I have never left my ties as I've grown in
my role, I just haven't. And there's there's not one
place I feel There's no place in America I feel
like I can't go, whether it's in the projects.

Speaker 3 (01:41:22):
Or in corporate America.

Speaker 4 (01:41:24):
I'm comfortable in all those spaces because I've been in
all those spaces and so but at the same time,
I've always tried to be my my authentic self. I
was on this panel yesterday, I was telling people, don't
fake it when you When you fake it in your job,
that's acting and when you're acting, eventually the acting is

(01:41:46):
going to wear off.

Speaker 3 (01:41:47):
Now, somebody asked me, do you co switch?

Speaker 4 (01:41:51):
I used to, but now like I used to have
a stuttering problem, so I worked on that.

Speaker 3 (01:41:57):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:41:58):
If there's things you know you need to be better at,
you work at it. But don't be fake, don't be phony.

Speaker 3 (01:42:04):
Be you.

Speaker 4 (01:42:05):
And just like I'm talking to you all like you
talk to my guy Goon who runs the Black Men Collers.
We played pokers with our donors. We play basketball.

Speaker 1 (01:42:14):
We won't say that.

Speaker 2 (01:42:15):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:42:15):
You see what they're doing with the basketball players right now.
They played poker, peanut play gamboo.

Speaker 3 (01:42:24):
We played for pizza and push ups, that's what That's
what we played for.

Speaker 1 (01:42:29):
I had another pion there.

Speaker 3 (01:42:32):
Oh my god, all right, that's what we got. That
was hilarious. A single man that's in my life. They
would have loved that.

Speaker 1 (01:42:48):
All right, y'all. The audacity to lead with Michael Johnson.
We do appreciate you for coming and we talked.

Speaker 3 (01:42:54):
Back touch ladies, appreciate You'll stay right.

Speaker 1 (01:42:57):
There, y'all if you enjoyed this episode. Y'all tune and
every Thursday on the Black Effect iHeart Radio app wherever
the fuck you get your podcast. That is your co
host A J Holiday two point zero on instagrams.

Speaker 2 (01:43:08):
Kick it Tam y'all, It's official Tam Bam on Instagram.
I love y'all so very much. Thank y'all for tuning in.
Remember speak now.

Speaker 1 (01:43:15):
And never holds no hell no We got you gotta
relate to the show. You don't never hold our piece.
We say whatever every time. Don't hold them donations, y'all
go oh hold yes periods and support your local Boys
and Girls club deuces and never holds no hell no,

(01:43:36):
We gotta. You gotta relate to the show. You don't
never hold our piece. We say whatever every time. Don't
hold them donations, y'all go, oh hold yes periods and
support your local boys and Girls club deuces. We Talk
Back Podcast is the production of iHeart Radio. Visit the

(01:43:58):
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.

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