My confidence is like through the roof. And I was doing it for other kids at my school. Like, they would pay me money to come shopping with me, just to see how I do what I do. And so I realized at a young age that the fashion s*** was real. So I committed myself to figuring it out. It took a long time, I’ve been at it since I was 19 years old [39 now]; but I feel like I just became financially successful last year. I was really a starving artist; I was homeless, actually. Like straight up homeless—shelter homeless—not couch surfing homeless. It was the ugly homeless. Sleeping on park benches, like, that type of s***. And this was just in 2018. So a whole lot of s*** has happened in a very short period of time. God is great. Many people couldn’t survive the park bench piece of dream chasing. What made you stick to it that long without finding $300 and catching a flight back to your hometown of Memphis? When I was coming up, I used to read a lot of books. They were like ‘you can do anything’ type books. I was reading self-help books. It just so happened that I was gonna need that s**t one day. I also watched Pursuit of Happiness probably 25 fu****g times. And in Pursuit of Happiness, Will Smith’s character was with his kid. So, I’m one of those people that do contrasts and comparisons. Like, I don’t like getting on roller coasters. But if I see a 10-year-old girl get on the roller coaster and she had fun, I have to get on it, because the contrast is too stark. If she can do it, there’s no reason why I can’t. So when I watched Will Smith’s character going through homelessness with his son, in my brain, that just tells me like ‘who are you to complain? ’ This ni**a’s sitting here with his son, your daughter’s in New York; you don’t have to have this experience with your daughter. So this is your experience. “You’ll eventually become unsuccessful if you have unsuccessful business practices.” The URBAN EXPERIENCE | 2021 27
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