117: Activist Venture Capital and Teaching Yoga and Meditation at Rikers with Marcus Glover

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I am absolutely thrilled to be here today with Marcus Glover. Marcus is an investor advisor and Chief Marketing Officer, which I love. And I had the great fortune of sitting behind Marcus on a bus ride to Walko Prison for a Defy Business mentoring day and we seriously could have hit record on that bus conversation. We just as soon as we started getting into it. We covered everything from yoga and meditation to his work with criminal justice and his mission as a venture capitalist of funding minority owned businesses through his disruptive vc. Marcus has a huge heart and a giant brain and he's just a great guy. So as soon as we were talking on that bus ride, I knew that I had to bring him here. To all of you on the Pivot podcast, before we dive in, a little bit more about Marcus. He's a partner at southbox, an early stage investment fund focusing in areas of high growth technology startups and disruption content producers. He founded TEDx Harlem in 2010 and has also consulted entertainers and athletes including Alicia Keys, Jay Z, Lil wayne, Nicki Minaj, 50 Cent, Shakira, the Black Eyed Peas, Kobe Bryant, Ray Lewis, Peyton Manning, Rihanna, the list goes on. He holds a deep commitment to social justice and criminal justice reform and is serving as a board member of the New York Tri State Board of Directors for Defy Ventures, which is how he met, and also on the National Board of Defy as well as as Liberation Prison Yoga. Through his work with these organizations, he has become a dedicated mentor to incarcerated men, women and youth and also volunteers as a yoga and meditation instructor leading juvenile programs at Rikers Island Prison. Marcus, welcome to the show.

Wow, that was quite an introduction.

Well, you're quite a guy.

Well, I will say that some of the best, very Best conversations in life that you could ever have, you'll have on your way to prison. So that is for sure the truth. And how we struck up a chord and a great friendship.

It really was such a bus full of such interesting people and energy and like everyone there had sort of self selected themselves of, I don't know, just a big heart and wanting to do whatever piece each of us can do.

Yeah, it's really, I find amazing in the work of Defy Ventures and broadly speaking, advocates in criminal justice reform. There's this notion of really trying to transform the moment that I think we're all interested in. I like to think if this was the 17 or 1800s, we would all be coming together to work to abolish slavery and in that sense, to see the amounts of people that have been penalized and criminalized by the criminal justice system. You know, we all share passion and a conviction for wanting to overturn these outdated systems. And so you just feel in our groups there's this special electricity of people who really are passionate to see change.

Electricity is such a good word. That's the perfect way to describe it. I would love for you to tell listeners how you started teaching yoga and meditation at Rikers and you shared some stuff with me that was so powerful about what you learned in doing that. And it's different than what other people who have gone into prisons might think is the goal of these types of prison programs. So how did you get started doing that? Because I know that was kind of the precursor to joining the Defy board.

Yeah, what an amazing question.

I think that there's no clear sort of linear path to a high powered career in advertising and marketing and working with entertainers that would lead one to then sort of dropping out of their careers and dedicating significant amounts of time to serve the needs of incarcerated people. I think I had reached a place in my life where it was really important to embrace my own brokenness. And after sort of running from things in my life and needing to unpack parts of my own brokenness and embrace things about myself. And yoga became this amazing platform for personal transformation.

It was the power of my dedication, time on the yoga mat, and self reflection, really just getting a little deeper on my inward journey that very much like the caterpillar and the butterfly, I began to kind of transform into the man that I am ultimately trying to become. And that was just so powerful in my life. I just wanted to give the same sort of personal epiphany to other men, women and children. And I couldn't think of a better audience to serve than incarcerated people, many of whom frequently are wrongly convicted or are suffering from some greater afflictions, some trauma, which is usually the case. And.

It'S by no stretch to say that our criminal justice system is far from the medium of corrections that it portends to be. And so it just became a personal conviction of mine to try to give these tools to incarcerated people, to lessen their own trauma, help to settle.

Any sorts of feelings of, you know, just any harboring of anger or resentment. Just giving a place, especially prisons in general, are very triggering environments. So that has been the journey that led me very much to this wonderful work, this magical work inside jails and prisons.

So two part question. Was it hard to get in the door at Rikers? And then part two, how did you actually recruit your students? Was it an easy sell to get people? Because I know you were working with youth, especially to get them to come to Yale and meditation, or did you have to pitch it somehow? Like, I'm just curious of how you started to build it at Rikers.

So I serve with an organization called Liberation Prison Yoga. Folks can go online and check us out. And even with organizational support getting into Rikers, it's probably easier to get into the White House than it is to get into Rikers. It's just an overly bureaucratic, very disorganized system. And I hope I don't get anybody in trouble for saying that. It's kind of a funny story, and I hope he won't be mad at me for taking these liberties, but at one time I worked with an entertainer named Lil Wayne, and Wayne had spent some time behind bars in Rikers. And. And just around the same time that he was coming out of prison, I began to help his team to rethink his career and how he would, you know, remount success after having spent time behind bars. And it very much worked. We were able to do some incredible things with his career. I've since not been working with Lil Wayne. Suffice it all to say, when I go into Rikers and I do work with juveniles, 15 to 19 year olds, many of them are very resistant to yoga. They have the most.

Sort of crude understanding of what yoga is. They think it's very effeminate and.

It'S not a place for their hyper masculinity. And I eventually sit them down and I tell them that there was one other person who I helped. I would come in and teach them yoga. And that person was Lil Wayne. And after hearing that story, I have 100% retention in all yoga classes. Now, between me, you, and your listeners, I didn't actually teach Lil Wayne yoga, but for the purposes of my guys in prison, let's just, like, continue with that story.

It seems to really work. And I would imagine that once they're in the room with you, the Lil Wayne story gets them there, that they must leave transformed. I mean, what has your experience been? Because, you know, you're a yoga practitioner, you know what the classes on the outside are like. Of course they're all different, but it must be very different working with juveniles in prison and both how you teach, how they experience it. And I'm just curious if you could share what that's like and sort of how they leave the room after class.

Well, I can share this with you. In one of my most recent classes, you know, Rikers is. I'm sitting in midtown Manhattan, and Rikers is probably about one mile to my east. And we're here, Jenny, you and I, in one of the most liberal cities on earth. And yet, and still.

One mile from midtown Manhattan is a place that you could argue is a place of torture. It's extremely triggering environment. We're here in the dead of August. It's hot, it's humid. People don't realize this, but you're really. Rikers is a stone's throw from the main Runway of LaGuardia Airport. So, you know, 16 hours a day, there are low flying aircraft every 30 seconds that are flying over your head. So there's not a moment's peace. There's not a moment of respite. The environment is triggering. Between other incarcerated people, correction officers, there's usually extended family on the outside that are suffering right along with the incarcerated, the time they're serving. And there's usually some extended court situations. Remember that nobody in Rikers has been sentenced. They're all awaiting sentencing. So this is an extremely anxious and triggering moment in the lives of the women, men, and youth at Rikers. And so the practice that we and I tried to offer is just to create a moment of wholeness, a moment of peace, and to just try and create a place, a neutral ground, I like to call it, especially with the youth in the game of tag, you know, there's always bass. And when you're on base, you can't touch me. And so I try to use the yoga mat as almost base. A place where guards can't touch you. Whatever the triggers are in your life, they can't touch you. This is neutral ground. And so to your point, this Isn't the studio yoga culture of New York City where everyone wants tight abs and tight footage? You know, this is very much trying to give people space to just be in their emotional self. So there is a very practical importance to the practice that we are sharing.

It's so powerful just to create that space. And I remember you telling me that some days what they really wanted was to just sit and talk and that you did your best to kind of respond to what their needs were in the moment, rather than the mistake some people make of coming in and thinking, oh, I'm gonna deliver all of this to you. And it's very top down.

Yeah, I think that's the frequent thing that we hear is, you know, the art teachers are coming to teach art, the religious teachers are coming to give religion, all the care providers have an agenda. And, you know, our goal is just to offer unconditional presence. And so, yeah, sometimes I'll sense, like, I'll just ask the kids, like, do you guys even want to practice today? And they're like, no, we just want to talk. And I'm like, what do you want to talk about? And they're like, are we going to war with North Korea? And it's like, okay, we'll have history class. Sure, why not?

But you know, to me, that is, that is very much the yoga practice. That is, if there's anything that we learn about calm in difficult positions, remaining.

Sort of finding calm in those difficult and inflexible positions, it's not only the physicality of the practice, it is the emotional part of the practice that I think we want to share as well.

So well said. I love it. It's very interesting too, how your background in yoga and meditation, you're using that and serving at Rikers, and then you have this deep business background and so much experience as a venture capitalist and manager and creative director. And now to be connected with DEFY and bringing in business skills to the men and women that you're working with through defy and that, you know, you're serving on the board and you were organizing the day that we went to prison. So how has it been doing that work like the business coaching and mentoring? And what have you learned that I don't know that we might not expect for people who haven't done this?

I learned several years ago that I'm not a good job candidate, I'm not a good employee candidate, I interview poorly, my resume is a hot mess.

So entrepreneurship is the result of realizing I'm never going to be understood in these formatted systems. Because yes, I am the guy who has jumped from advertising to work with entertainers, to filmmaking, to venture capital, to startup tech founder, to prison yoga instructor. I mean, it's probably about as jumbled as.

You could probably imagine. So I'm not on anyone's short list for employee of the year. Let's say that.

Well, you're a pivot pro. I can grant you that award.

I think I do get perhaps MVP honors.

Exactly.

For career pivoter. But to me, the truth is it actually is all.

Central to a very consistent path that through it all, I am and pretty passionate about.

Well told stories.

And as humans, I'm very concerned about our ability to tell stories that empower us versus stories that disempower us. And in that sense, whether it's a startup company that I'm investing in or a.

Young woman or man who is struggling to hobble together their ideas for life post incarceration, it is all about telling a well told story and a story that is going to empower you versus disempower you. So in that sense, I actually think that everything is a variation on a central theme.

Love it. What would be the ingredients of a well told, empowering story? Particularly for someone who feels like, let's say they have been locked up for 10, maybe even 20 years and they don't have a resume. They don't have, you know, even like you were saying, even people who haven't been to prison often feel insecure about their story or their history or their ability to pivot their lives or rebuild. So how do you. What does it mean to offer a well told story that's empowering?

Well, I think the first and probably the most important, the element that I think inspires us all is the person that can own all of their story. I think that's probably the cardinal rule to successful storytelling is just to own it. All the pieces of it that.

Seem successful, but then the pieces of our stories that feel broken. It's often the shards that we shy away from, but it is the shards, our brokenness that make us more relatable, more human. And it gives others the ability to have a moment of empathy for us. And so I do see in many of the women, men and youth who are either presently or formerly incarcerated, it to me is one of the greatest joys that I experience in working with incarcerated people is this ownership of their story, this sense of I completely messed up.

You know, I couldn't have tore my underwear worse, you know, I completely messed up, but it's because of that, that I've learned. And here's what I've learned, and here's how I'm going to apply it into the future. When anyone stands up and can own that in front of us, we have an obligation to have that moment of empathy. And I think that is the power in personal storytelling that anyone can learn from and apply in their lives to create a more powerful path forward.

So powerful. And as you were talking, I was taken back to the day at Wallkill where you're right, I mean, it's true. Whenever anyone, Maybe there were 25 men there that day, I had so much respect. Every single time somebody told me their story, it was like I couldn't. I just had so much respect for what they had been through, what insights they had, what brought them to that room, being part of defy the transformation that they're seeking. It is. It is so powerful. It's hard not to have empathy. It's like when you're standing in front of someone and they're sharing their authentic, true story and like, you said it so well, what they've learned and what they're looking forward to moving forward.

Well, I don't know if it's my age, but many of these women, men and youth, I've gotten to know personally over time. I know their stories. I've heard their stories several times. But every time they stand up and own their truth, I'm bawling all over again. I'm like, why am I crying? This is like the sixth time I've heard the story.

Wipe my tears again. It just never ceases to amaze me, the how inspiring people standing up day in and day out to own their truth, how powerful that is.

Yeah, absolutely. One thing I find so inspiring about your background and your story is.

From the time you were growing up, you had this passion to serve and kind of diversify what we see in business. And I'd love if you could tell listeners how you decided to go the route of venture capital so that you could have more resources, too. As you said it to me, like, kind of disruptive investing or subversive, you know, like just the way that you invest and the way that you want to apply your resources through vc, I think is so powerful. So it's in addition to the nonprofit and the volunteer work that you're doing, you also, very intentionally or through many, many pivots have worked your way. Because I know it's usually a combination of both intention and, oh, wow, life has ended me up here. But have Gotten yourself to a place where you can also invest consciously as your day job.

Yeah. I mean, it's once again candidate for lifetime award for pivoting the new skill.

It's like, now you're on top, now this is the skill everyone needs.

I continue to pivot, but I think the pivot to venture capital, if you really study VC over the past 50 years, the growth and acceleration of venture capital in Silicon Valley, and obviously, as you know, because you're from there, venture capital has been very much the partner to all of the world's most important disruptive innovations. So the.

Immersion and proliferation of mobile technology.

We all. No one has those old rotary phones in their homes anymore. We're all on mobile phones.

We're about to see autonomous driving vehicles, we're about to.

Voyage into deep space and interplanetary discovery. All of these very disruptive realities that are taking root in our world. The partner in giving birth to all of these innovations has been venture capital.

VC becomes this transformative platform and medium. But I think my main critique of VC is as much as it has been pioneering in all of these ways of technological discovery, VC hasn't done a very great job of disrupting diversity and inclusion. And so we're still confronted with many of the same systemic biases that have been here for decades.

But I think that as a platform, VC has the power to continue to transform in all of these areas. If there's anything that I think I enjoy throughout my career journey has been working in key areas of disruption on the messaging and marketing front. But I tend to want to stay at the front of innovation or the front of change. And I think that is the platform and the characterization of VC which suits me best. I just particularly focus on one end of VC which is to transform and to disrupt areas of diversity and to target systemic bias and want to see change in this end through vc.

Can you give us any examples of what that means, like whether it's companies that you've invested in or how you look for companies to invest in that might fit that criteria?

Well, sure. So one thing that I'm very excited about right now, which might be pretty non obvious and a bit ironic, is cannabis. And I'm.

A newly involved cannabis investor.

Here in New York or nationally.

Nationally.

Okay. Because I know New York has had really skewed and strict licensing and then of course they give it to the richest white men basically when people apply for licenses.

Yeah. So New York, as recently as this week, has made some announcements that it's studying implementation and legalization so New York over the next 12 to 18 months will probably go through its own cycle of, of change. But cannabis is interesting because if there is one thing that has truly harmed communities of color over the last 50 years, it's been the war on drugs and over criminalization in communities of color. Long, harmful sentences for low level drug convictions. And many people are still behind bars charged with the same crimes that now many people are profiting from in the legalization of cannabis. And so it creates this world of bias and by all measures, injustice.

But I'm finding that there are more ventures. One in particular I'm invested in is called the People's Dispensary, which is fantastic because it is a social impact model that seeks to reinvest profits into communities that have been harmed by the war on drugs, which is really a disruptive model for the world. But as an investor, this meets my, what I call my double bottom line objective of people and profits. Not just naked, wild profits, but how we can improve the lives of people through our investment. So this is one example of how venture capital allows for a robust implementation of growth, not only in revenue, but how we improve community.

That's a great example. And I love the focus on people and profit because we don't typically think of that. At least I don't in the VC world. It seems like a lot of it is around ROI and how they're going to exit, how they're going to get a return. But I love your focus on finding companies like the People's Dispensary.

In this way.

That's an exciting company. And I think what our hope is is that.

We can address a lot of the harms that have been done throughout the decades and help to, since it will be an enormous growth category and very profitable. We don't just want to, as you say, continue to make record profits for the traditional privileged white male investors. Our hope and expectation is that we can begin to better serve communities that quite frankly, were harmed through the same thing that people are making profit with now. So this and so many other, I mean, whether it's the environment or women or lgbt, I look to invest in companies that are meeting a greater cultural competency and greater cultural commitment right alongside, you know, revenue trajectories.

Cultural competency, that's such a great phrase.

Yeah, I want to take credit for it. Sure. Someone else said it smarter than me.

Well, on the cannabis example, I just want to highlight why this is so important because I happen to have a sliver of experience with it when I was consulting for the hydroponic Basil company and Spring. UPS is an organization. My two friends, John and Kit, I mentioned them in Pivot and we sort of intersected in each other's lives at the perfect time. I was really grateful to have an extra gig consulting and I love building operations. And they were pivoting out of Wall street and just cold hard cash and into doing something that they felt was good. Creating healthy produce that was locally grown and through this innovative new method in shipping containers. And as we, as they were looking to pivot a year in, they realized the margins on Basil weren't going to support their life goals as well as they had hoped. And marijuana was just getting legalized, I think in New York State. So we started researching and they were looking, well, what if we would try and get a license? And there's a $20,000 non refundable application fee. At least there was at that time. So what is that? It's so prohibitive. What does that mean? It means that the only people we were reading articles at the time, the only people who were able to just kind of like light 20 grand on fire because there was going to be way more people applying than could get licenses, were often.

Very senior level former leaders at big Wall street companies like Bear Stearns and former Lehman and all of those. Those companies like they had just made kind of silly money in their careers. And so therefore they could apply for this type of license without blinking and without taking out a loan and betting the bank, embedding the farm. And so I guess I just wanted to offer that as a specific example where venture funding is so crucial because it gives at least people a chance to apply even if they're not filthy rich already.

Yeah. And it's, you know, to your point, it really becomes important to.

Once again the cultural competence to understand the complexity of the legacy of the war on drugs and for VC to play an active role. I like to consider myself a activist vc. So I don't want to just make an investment. I want to make an investment and also level the playing field at the same time in everything I do. And so cannabis is no different. I'm very much for the investment opportunity, but I'm also protecting against the downside of once again privileged people coming in and owning all the wealth and then communities of color owning all of the despair over the decades.

Again. I think we need to begin to look at the world through this lens of in everything that I look at every investment.

It'S an investment, but it's also a reciprocal Dismantling of privilege, whether it's male privilege or white privilege, these are things that we've got to become aware of in the world, develop that IQ around how we level playing fields through the acceleration of investment capital.

I just interviewed Karen Pittleman. She wrote a book called Classified on class privilege. She's such an important thinker in this space. And she's a woman who gave away a $3 million trust fund when she turned 24. And her family was upset with her about that decision. But she just, at that time felt, and still does feel very convinced. And I'll link to that episode in the show notes. But it's so important, this idea of privilege. And.

It'S almost like for people who are coming from privilege of various kinds, class privilege, just even invisible privileges that we don't see, you kind of have to do a little work. Like you said, there's a competency here. It is going to take a little work to understand what's really going on. And yet it's so crucial that we all do that, even those of us, and I mean, we all have such a melting pot of life experiences. I can't generalize, but where, let's say you haven't been directly affected by the war on drugs, but it's still so important to learn about it. And because, I mean, I don't even know, maybe you could say why it's important.

I think it really links back to our.

Earlier conversation around jails and prisons. I'm smiling, remembering at our day two weeks ago. We had all worked really hard in the morning to mentor the.

Entrepreneurship students at Wallkill Prison. And I think, Jenny, you'll probably remember, we were all getting a little hungry. It was a little warm in the gym where we were working. And the head of commissary, there was a guy named Vinnie, and he pulled me to the side. He had this sort of like, you know, insidious smile on his face. And he said to me, I made a special gluten free vegetarian lunch for you. And he smiled and he opened the box and it was like the same lunch slop that everybody was eating.

But if there's anything that I think we all learned is that prison is a place that quickly strips you of privilege. And for many of our friends, brothers and sisters in private equity and in a lot of areas of leadership.

Privilege is what we enjoy most in our culture. And yet it is probably one of the greatest deterrents to our growth and maturity as a culture. It is in many ways the barrier to empathy and so I just smiled at Vinny for giving me the same slop lunch that we all had to find a way to stuff down. And it was a way of saying, hey, you're in prison. You're no different than here. And I think in many ways, that was the gift, was to just say, let me just kind of be humble, accept where I'm at, and find my moment to just be grateful in this moment for where I am.

I didn't know that story about Vinnie, but it's interesting that you bring that up. It's a great one. Even one of the guys said to me while we were eating, because this was a working lunch, we were continuing to mentor and review resumes and business plans and everything while eating lunch on our laps. This is like, how intense and engaged. And I was happy to do that. It was so fun to just keep going. But anyway, one of the guys said, how do you like your lunch? And I'm like, it's not bad. I was enjoying it. And he's like, well, they're trying to impress you. This is nothing near what we actually get. So even on that level.

We had the privilege of, like, being outsiders, and they made us this box lunch. And he's like, most of what we eat isn't even edible compared to this. And I just thought that was such an interesting comment as well, that we don't even realize we're not even there. Like, what. What are they eating when we're not there?

Yeah, it's really true. I even have to say.

And it's.

It's not the easiest thing to say, but Wallkill Prison, compared to other places I've been, like Rikers and others.

That felt like a courtside Marriott.

Even the facade of the building.

The facade of the building, the hallways were.

It's not a concrete box. Yeah, it actually looks like. I don't know how to describe it.

There were windows.

There were murals on the gym walls.

There were murals. Exactly. There was signs of.

Life and health.

Yeah, there's grassy, there's grass. Like, outside is in kind of a rural area.

Don't want to take any of the agency away from incarcerated folks there at all. But, you know, I.

Comparatively. I have experienced a lot worse. And once again, that is. Empathy is the one muscle that we're not born with, and we have to learn empathy. Right. And so frequently people say, oh, boy, that's so great, the work you do in prison. I imagine those convicts, they're probably so grateful. And first of all, they're not convicts. They're incarcerated people. So let's learn to use humanizing language. But second of all, I find.

These women and men are my teachers, and I feel very much like their student because to your point, even if you spent the day there, you still get to get on a bus and leave.

I still get to come home and go to Chipotle or whatever.

So.

That creates an opportunity to learn the experience of another, learn the hardships and struggle of another. And to me, that is so much of where and how character is built. The character that I think we need in this country to begin to understand each other better.

Character is such a good word. And it really describes my experience of that day. Like when you said that the EIT's entrepreneurs in training are as much a teacher for you. I think one of the greatest strengths that they bring is character, actually, like that. You know, okay, we can meditate and do yoga and do this and plan our day, and we have the privilege of planning our day how it suits us. And there's all this productivity advice and all these books, and I've no doubt been a part of it in my 10 years doing this. And yet these men showed up with such enthusiasm and character. Like they, they, they overcome all of the insults of prison life and still show up with a smile on their face and cheering us as soon as we enter the room and, and eagerly, you know, just showing up, just showing up. And the ones who've said, you know, I finally found inner peace, I'm finally okay with myself. Like, these are things that not everybody on the outside has achieved. You know, like there really is so much to learn and there's so much depth of character for how, at least this was my experience of the EITs and just who they are and how they show up.

Yeah, I totally agree. I often think that part of my.

Love and enthusiasm for working with our sisters and brothers behind bars is when you reach. When they reach a certain point.

They have no more excuses to make and they just want to own it in order to move their lives forward. And you just find again, when they reach that place, it's just no more excuses. Whereas I find many of us in our circles, our friends.

We'Re somewhat of a culture of complainers.

And that also is a privilege.

To.

See things in the world that many times are unjust, but to lack the conviction for them, that is an aspect of privilege that also needs to be looked at. And I often find that at least I've gotten to a place in my life where I'm very Much in the habit and practice of trying not to be an excuse maker. And, you know.

Martin Luther King said that his job was to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comforted.

So I really try to exercise that muscle that Dr. King spoke about.

Another muscle that I know you've built over time and that you believe in is embracing failure. That in terms of storytelling and our paths. This is something you said to me on the bus, that rather than standing up and giving the career highlight reel, you'd rather say the failures say more about that.

Yeah, I just, you know.

I think, you know, look at.

Any winning sports team or any winning athlete or any hero in entertainment.

Can they honestly say that their success is all their own? You know.

Even the musician, the singer.

Has the luck and fortune of working with a good songwriter or a good manager. Success is, to me is.

The most. The greatest illusion that there is. And the more that I think we try to own this notion of success, I think we do ourselves a bit of a disservice. Whereas I can clearly say, here's where I failed. Like, I own that. Like, I know what I did there. And so I frequently, you know, people are like, oh, you worked with these people? Yeah, I did that. But I was lucky. I was in the right place at the right time. And, you know.

I guess I didn't turn, you know, someone off. Will. I didn't turn Will. I am off. And he gave me a shot. And, you know, it was around the time where he had hit records. Okay, so I can't claim that, but I can claim I made a series of mistakes that led to having to bankrupt a company.

And I own that. And you know what that was to me? That was an MBA level education in business, how to avoid chapter 13 for a company. And I'm able to take that lesson and to give valuable advice to startup founders.

I'm able to share aspects of manhood with people. How my idea of masculinity failed me over the years and how I had to recapture my understanding of manhood in order to be on the path to becoming a better man. So failure is.

So often seen as something to run from and hide from. But in my opinion, we're all first timers at life. No one has had, unless you're Shirley MacLaine, of course, then you've had thousands of lives. But to the degree that we know.

We'Re all first timers at this.

I love what you said about just reshaping your ideas of masculinity as well. Can you Say a little more about that, because I think we hear a lot, especially in the media, about feminism.

But I think reshaping masculinity is as crucial and men are in as much of a box, although we don't talk about it as much as far as old ideas. So I would love if you could just share a little bit before we wrap up about your kind of before and after snapshot of what you thought that masculinity entailed.

Well, I think we live in a culture where there are certain tropes of manhood, certain concepts, certain cliches even about what a man is. You know, there is. And then, of course, working in jails and prisons. It's a place of hyper masculinity. And yet it's a place where no one even wants to talk about manhood or masculinity. So I'm particularly drawn to those environments in order to help us as men to unpack some of these feelings that we have. I think the greatest data point that I could share with you and your listeners was at a certain point, I'm almost 50 years old, but at a certain point in my early 40s, I had realized that it had been 20 years since I even cried. I hadn't shed a tear in 20 years. And in so many ways, I think I was the poster child of a kind of harmful to self idea of masculinity, where we tend to be stuffers. We stuff our emotions as a family man. We're thrust into the role of being a provider. We are largely seen as the.

You know, making powerful waves, the hunter and gatherer in the world and in the work environments. We're sort of taught to not really show any weakness and.

To always demonstrate personal power. And over time, that was just an idea of self and an idea of what it meant to be a man. That just didn't serve me.

And I had to unpack a lot of these feelings and unpack areas of being able to be weak, to be broken, and understand that.

That is an aspect of.

A healthy mode of masculinity. And so I then got to the point where I'd be watching ESPN and I couldn't stop crying. I'd be walking down Broadway in New York City and I'd cry at the flash of a kid in a stroller. So now I'm somewhere in between.

But I think it is very much something that I am passionate to help men with, is to achieve a better understanding of masculinity, you know, as woman. And in the circles of the Sorority of women. When you guys meet up before you launch into a business discussion or a podcast, it's always something like, so, how you doing, girl? Oh, girl, oh, girl. I know how it is, girl. You know? And men, it is very much sit at a bar watching sports and really not talk and engage about the things that are affecting us in our lives. So I very much make the point whenever I engage a brother to ask him, how are you doing? No, no, no, don't give me the cliche. I'm fine. Like, tell me about the contours of you. What's happening in your life? Let's create space for one another. So I think there's a new culture of manhood, especially with how we are unpacking MeToo and several of the harmful engagements between the sexes. I'm all for helping us as men to achieve a better sense of who we are.

I love that. Just focusing on how are you, really. And you said, tell me about the contours of you. That's such a powerful prompt. That's amazing. Marcus, thank you so much for being here and sharing your insights and your passion for doing this work. It's so inspiring. And really, if anyone comes through New York, I hope that you can go to one of these defy mentoring nights or days. And you're doing so much other great work, including prison yoga teacher training at Omega. We didn't even talk about that. That's very funny.

A lot going on. Let's just.

Yeah, so, okay. I always like to leave listeners with one piece of homework, like a small experiment. Maybe it's even an inquiry, something you want them to just ponder. What would you like to leave people with?

Oh, wow, that's a great question. What. What homework can I give folks?

Yeah. Like, could it go do one thing differently this week or an action they can take as a result of everything we talked about?

Well, it's less.

A piece of homework. It's more a secret weapon of mine, which I invite your listeners to try for themselves.

I've done this for the last 10 years.

And not a day passes where I don't do this.

It could be someone on the subway. It could be the cashier at Whole Foods. It could be somebody in a meeting with. But each day I ask one person, generally someone that I don't know, I ask them one question. And the one question that I ask people is to tell me three things that they like about themselves.

So I'm going to try it out on you, Jenny. No.

You to tell that story, Cher.

Three things that Jenny likes about Jenny.

Marcus Glover. This is not part of the podcast arrangement.

Not only do I have to do it, but it's now on air and in front of listeners. Oh, boy. Oh, man. Well, I like that I can bring. Well, no, is that. I don't know if that's about myself. Come on. This is so hard.

How about this? I'll go first.

Okay. Yes. Thank you.

Three things I like about me. One, I love that I love people. I really enjoyed this conversation, and it's because I just. I love what we do as humans, just to, like, relate and, you know, take space away from other things for each other. I love this about our shared humanity. So I love people. Two, I love to listen because I listen to people's stories. So I really enjoy.

Hearing what you say and hearing what you don't say, because I think that's very much a part of listening is listening to what's not being said.

The third thing I love or like about me is in another life, I was a jazz musician, and I like that I have rhythm. So whenever a song comes on the radio, I can, like. I can tap it out. I can kind of replicate any rhythm.

That's amazing. Now, in another life, in this incarnation, or legit in a past life. Cause we've talked about both on the.

Pivot podcast in an earlier iteration of Marcus Love.

Okay. Because we have an entire episode on past lives, so.

Those are good. Those are really good.

Your turn.

Okay. All right. Well, I won't steal that. I love listening, but that's true. I just second that one. That was such a good one. One thing I like about myself is that I really do see the best in people. If anything, it's to a fault, but I won't go there. As in, sometimes I'm very open and trusting, but I like that that's my default mode, is to see the good and see what's possible for people.

One thing I like about myself that the podcast certainly helps me with is I work to understand new perspectives. And.

I enjoy that feeling of increasing awareness or just turning the lights on a blind spot that I might have, even though it's not. Sometimes it's challenging. And the third thing that I like about myself is that I'm generous. I just. I like to give, and I don't keep score. I don't keep tallies. I don't. I can't say I'm generous all the time, at all times to all people. And every time, like, I'm terrible with email. I'm not as social as one might think, I. I do have to say no and learn to say no. But in general, the way that I live is to give. And.

I just, I just think that's. I, like, I feel that it serves the world to just be generous and to like, even. I was teaching a course this week on podcasting, and I kept telling them every day, like, I can't help it. I'm just cramming in everything I have. I don't care what you paid to be here or what this is worth. I'm not withholding anything at all. Like, I, you know, it probably has $1,000 value and many people there paid maybe $100, $150. I just don't associate.

Yeah, I don't associate what I give in that way.

I just learned so much about it. I thought you were going to say you loved your cobra pose because I know you're a yogi as well.

Oh, man. I love that I do yoga. And I also love that I've been doing yoga no matter how I feel, like, bored over it, not looking forward to it. I do love that my commitment to yoga and meditation, it has completely rewired my brain. So I share your passion on that front.

That is so awesome.

Yeah, I learned so much about you too. I love it. And Marcus, I really love your love of people. It's just so clear. Marcus shines so brightly. He's just really such a powerful presence, but a real connector and joy maker. So thank you, Marcus.

It's been entirely my pleasure.

You are my newest old friend in the whole world.

Likewise. Totally. Marcus. I said, he's one of these people that I met him and I felt like, okay, I've known you my whole life. We just have to catch up now in the real world. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. And where can people find you if they want to reach out or keep in touch?

Yeah, let's see. Drop me an email marcusarcusglover.com Amazing.

And you're on Instagram.

Arcusglo. Marcus glo.

Marcus Glo. See? Told you. He glows.

Awesome. Thanks again, Marcus.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, why, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.