mf your 30 take 1

The speaker is reflecting on turning 30 and the changes in their life and mindset. They discuss their journey and experiences, including playing basketball and working various jobs. They talk about their passion for storytelling and their desire to find a career in that field. They mention their decision to work at a talent agency and their experiences there. The speaker also discusses the lack of diversity in the industry and their determination to make the most of their opportunities. Mic check, mic check, mic check, mic check. Yeah, this has been long overdue and my intentions for this is nothing more than just a personal journal, man. Whether it's for myself, whether it's for my future kids, whether it's for my future wife, whether it's for my family, like, I'm gonna start again. Yeah, this has been long overdue and for many reasons. First of all, I'm 30, right? So that's where this name thrives from, where it's like, what the fuck are you, 30? Like, 30 as a human, I think our psychology towards life kind of like a switch goes off, right? And sometimes it's for the best, sometimes it's for the worst, sometimes it's a panic, you know, with women that like, damn, you know, that kid window is closing up. But for me, it's been a real time of like, reflection, reflection on where I was, where I am now, what I want to do in the future. And also, I think just being grounded and just loving the fact that I kept going, right? And whether this is for my future kids, my wife, or more so just myself, to document my journey, because I think so many times we're highlighting how far we came once we already got there. But I think there's so much beauty in the journey of, okay, like, we're not there yet, but we're on our way. And also, I think even just journaling and going to therapy or whatever your form of getting whatever's inside of you out, right? I think it's important to just understand that like, where you were at certain spaces of your life, what headspace were you at at certain stages of your life? And again, this is going to be about me highlighting my journey, talking about the ups and downs and everything that got me here, but more importantly, where I'm going with it and how I use things as a fuel to get there. Like I said, I'm not there yet. But I'm on my way. And I think that if we were to go back to like, I think the most cliche question that teachers asked us growing up, it was like, where do you see yourself? What do you want to be when you grow up? I'm from New York, Brooklyn originally. And shit, I think mine was, you know, NBA player. And that was my dream until I was probably 21, 22. And I realized like, yo, I'm not going to the league. Played with a lot of league people, basketball still the love of my life. My first true love, met my best friends. I've had so many dope experiences through that game. I love the game and I'm a Knicks fan. So it's been a tough, it's been a tough decade for me. But if I could go back, you know, when teachers asked that question, it's like, I did not think I'd be working for a tech company. You know, I would not think I would have been a producer on Versus, which was one of the biggest, you know, things during the pandemic had that shit lit. I wouldn't think that I was the executive assistant to an A-list celebrity, which was fucking weird. We'll get into that as well. I wouldn't think that I'd be living in LA now for almost seven years and traveling the world and doing all sorts of jobs just to say what the fuck works, what doesn't work, what's sticking, what's not sticking. A lot of trial and error, a lot of growth as a man. And if I could answer that question now, I would say something along the lines of, I want to just make myself happy, right? I want to make myself fulfilled. I would want to find something that I was passionate about, but equally something that I would pay myself to do. And I don't know who asked me that question, but I think I was around 24 and somebody said, what would you pay yourself to do? I said, damn, I would pay myself to who? Would I pay myself millions? If I was going to keep it a hundred? No, hundreds of thousands, for sure. And I couldn't answer that question. And that shit really bothered me. I remember going home back to my apartment. I had my roommate, my boy Lex, and he was going through something similar again, like was at a D1, then went to a D2. We ended up finishing our college basketball career together at an art school in San Francisco. But I remember talking to him and I was like, what would you pay yourself to do? And he's like, bro, like I'm in the same boat as you, bro. Like the jack of many trades, you know how to, you know, represent yourself. I know how to be in different environments. It's like, yo, I could be with the dudes. I could be with the corporate people. Like I could, I could figure it out and nobody's going to knock my hustle. And that was that East coast hustle is what I brought out to the West coast. But more importantly, I didn't have that one thing that I would hire myself to do. And that shit was, it was, it was daunting at first. And then I remember just looking in the mirror and being like, I would pay myself to storytell, but not storytelling in the corny, like influencer, like, again, this is for me to document my journey, not for anything else, but a storytelling, a component where it's like, I know what people, I know how to relay a story to somebody in a way that hopefully is going to make them interested, or at least in a way that I find it interesting. And, you know, growing up people that, you know, Vino you gassing shit or Tyler you gassing it. But it was like, I just like to add flavor to the, to the stories that I was, I was telling. So I was like, all right, bad. How do I monetize storytelling? And that was a tough part, right? Because it was like through, you know, TV, was it through film? Was it through tech that I just got emerged, you know, immersed in this world, living in San Francisco, Uber just started up. I remember they came to our school for internships and I was like, nobody's going to get in a car with random people and get to the destination. But then I realized that you knew exactly how much he was going to pay as soon as you got in that way. And that's why Uber succeeded, period, right? Because taxis and cabs in New York, especially they'll go around four blocks. Unless you were from the city, you could have been in, it should have been a $6 ride. It could have been 60, right? So Uber cracked that code. And I realized people just wanted to save bread and be efficient with their time. And they cracked the code. So hindsight, I maybe should have taken that internship, but you know, that's neither here or there. And I realized that there was a real boom in tech amplifying storytelling. And it just, it dawned on me, you know, you hear about all the traditional agencies from the CAAs to the WMEs to the APAs. And all I heard was like, yo, they start you in a mail room. You don't get paid. I've heard like horror stories, but then obviously you have success stories like that of like Charles King, who, you know, was at CAA and then started Macro, which they're killing it. Shout out to him. And I'm like, all right, I don't have a direction right now. And at the bare minimum, I'm going to go to this agency. I'm going to check out every department. You know, they had everything from the lit, the book, the screen, the talent. And I was like, I think I want to work with talent, right. Or at least that's the only job that they had available. So I was like, all right, let's run it up. And I remember going to APA, CAA, WME, which is like the top agencies. It's a very LA thing to do. It was nothing special about doing that. But I remember it was all the same offer. $15. We start in a mail room. I'm like, damn, like nobody got 1525, you know, 1505. Like there was no, it was the same value proposition. And then I think that that's when I was like, where do I see myself growing the most and who needs me the most. And just for the sake of this podcast, I'm not going to drop any names, but the agents that I ended up going with was out of APA. White Irish dude, all his clients were black. All of them were black. I'll name some of his clients. You know, you got the 50 Cent, you got the Mary J. Blige, you got Tyrese, Gary Oldman, Joseph Sikora, like that whole power series kind of stemmed from this agency. And I was like, I can add a lot of value to him. It wasn't that he wasn't invited to the barbecue because he was, but I knew that I could speak their language better than he could. And he knew that as well. So it was like a win win. And I'm like, I can level up here. It wasn't as facey as the CAAs or, you know, things like that. And they were like, all right, bet it. Like, he was like, when can you start? And this was like a Wednesday or Thursday. And I was like tomorrow. And he like kind of looked at me crazy. He was like, no, no, I'm like, let's ease into it. Let's do like Monday. I'm like, let's do it. And so I live in Hollywood. It's every day. It's Grand Theft Auto over here. And I'm gonna fix this audio and set up. This is again, just a warm up. I had some stuff I need to get out today, but I remember my first day walking in there with the suit on and understanding that there weren't many people of color. All the assistants looked like trust fund babies. And I remember the first day a group of the assistants came up. So how it worked was if you were in a mail room, you had to literally deliver mail and print scripts all day. I was in this little room for like a week and a half. I couldn't take it anymore. And I remember going up to the agent because how it worked was like visually, to give you an example, was all the agents have their offices on the left and the assistants were all outside of their offices in a desk, like right across from them. So you could literally see right into every one of your boss's offices, but you're like on the outside, like put me in the game coach type shit. And with that, I remember being like, I need a desk, bro. This mail room shit, I need that. So I would deliver mail and start conversations with agents. And the one agent ended up opening his desk to me. And I was like, I'm not going to take advantage of this. Like, I'm not going to take, I'm not going to take this for granted. And I remember I had one suit, I had a couple undershirts, I had like eight ties that my boy had lent me. And I remember saying, I'm here on a mission. This isn't even enough money for all my bills, but I'm gonna make it work. All that to come to a full circle moment where I knew I was going to make it work. And I remember the first day, a group of the assistants, they came up to me, you know, again, all trust fund, all lacking some flavor, always going to keep it 100 right here. And they said, Hey, bro, nice to meet you, man. We're about to go grab Chipotle. And I said, I'm glad I brought my lunch. They said, are you sure? I said, okay. That same group grabbed Chipotle every day. I mean, they must have been shareholders in the Chipotle stock. They, I don't know how many burritos you could have, but I remember there was a huge, this was right before the pandemic. There was a huge, they were about to cut a lot of people and they could, we went from 22 assistants to four. The entire Chipotle crew was gone. And I remained. And I remember thinking like, I didn't really feel bad for them in that moment as fucked up as that sounds, but I'm like, I wonder if they understood that Chipotle had a lot to do with this shit. I wonder if they understood that that fucking burrito and those hour and a half lunch breaks while I was cooking in his kitchen. Like, but that was just a testament to my work ethic. A lot of them, you know, it might've been higher education, you know, USC, UCLA, you know, all the accolades. But even for my basketball career, what I took was I wasn't going to be outworked. And that's when my journey in LA started.