Walk This Journey With Me

Hello, coaches, leaders, entrepreneurs. Yusef-Andre Wiley coming at you. Um, it's really been a journey, and you know, I really want you all to walk with me on this journey that we're going to take over the next several months or even years. Who knows, right? I just want you to walk this journey with me that I'm going to take you on about really who I am and what I've done and how explaining those lessons of what I've done can really empower you. Because you see, the lessons are in the stories. The lessons are in the story, my story. Um, if you haven't heard before, I want to share a little bit with you here just before I'll take you on this journey with me. So if you haven't subscribed to my channel as of yet, please do so, you know, subscribe so that you can start walking with me on this, on this journey I want to take you on about life, about how to be successful regardless of where you come from, regardless of what skill sets you think you might have or lack. Of skill set, how you can truly be a successful person, how you could be a successful entrepreneur, how you could be a successful business— businessman, businesswoman, coach, um, CEO, executive director, CFO, you name it. I want to talk to you about that because I think everybody that wake up in the morning think about success. And how I can be successful, whether it's in a small, minute way or in a large, grand way. We're all hoping to be successful at life itself. So I want to take you on this journey a little bit. You can walk with me a little here. Today I'm 53 years old. I'm 53 years old, and this is 2000— 23. I'm 53. I'm a 53-year-old man, and I started off as a young juvenile. I'm gonna say juvenile, and I'm, and I'm using juvenile, the terminology, for a reason. Because in my youth, I began to get into a whole lot of mess, a whole lot of problems. I grew up in California, here in the USA, in California, in the city of Los Angeles, borderline in Compton. So I grew up in what we call then South Central LA. It's still South Central LA as far as I'm concerned. They now call it South LA. And growing up in the part of South Central LA that I grew up in, the school system, the public school system, the lack of resources, just the hood, you know, the hood being what it is. Many of you see this on TV, you see it in Hollywood, you see some of these themes played out in Hollywood, but it's not really the truth. It's not the reality. A lot of the stuff that you're seeing in TV is just not reality, and they're giving it to you in a way for you to digest. I don't know, the— for entertainment, of course. But I want to tell you something. For me, as a young child, uh, no one ever admits this often, but someone that grew up in the community like I grew up, there's a lot of fear and anxiety growing up in a community like that. A lot of fear. That's how it always starts. It always starts with a lot of fear and anxiety. A lot of the fear comes from a number of things. It can come from where I'm going to get my next meal to, uh, am I going to get teased at school? Am I gonna have enough money to eat with the privileged kids that have a little bit more money than I do, than my parents do? Or am I gonna be stuck eating out of the cafeteria and maybe get teased? Am I gonna have on the right kind of shoes when I walk out the door? Are my shoes going to be up to date, or are they 3 or 4 years old and people are not wearing those anymore, or they got scuff marks on them because I couldn't get a new pair this year? And I'm not just talking about myself, I'm talking about so, so many kids like me that ended up in a gang like I did. It all starts from fear and anxiety. That's where it starts from. It all starts from this fear and anxiety. And like I said, though, that's just one aspect. Another one is the girls. So if you're a guy like me, a boy that like girls growing up, and I'm wondering if they're gonna notice me, or if they do notice me, are they going to tease me? My education is not as great, so are they— am I— if— is the teacher going to ask me a question during session and, uh, am I going to be able to answer? Or am I going to just crack a joke and be the class clown to divert attention from myself to answer that math question or that English question that I can't answer because I'm too ashamed? I have too much anxiety. I have too much fear. To answer, right? So what happens over time? Over time, a young boy like myself, Yusef-Andre Wiley, this young man growing up in a community experiencing these things, most of the time I had the right shoes on. Because my parents were well off. I come from parents that they both were working, they had jobs. My father was a supervisor. My, my, my mother worked at a, a, a plant, a, a factory where she had a lot of benefits. She'd been there a very long time. So I was okay. I, I'm also the baby of the family, so all of my other siblings, you know, I had 3 sisters and a brother Most of them were older. They had moved. They were out of the house already. And they had their own things going on. And it was just me as the young kid. So I got a lot of love. So it wasn't as hard for my parents who were before having to spend money on 5 kids total, me being an infant and a toddler. To me being a teenager or a middle schooler and a teenager, and the rest of them are moved on and it's just me. So it was a little easier for me to keep up with some of the, uh, the new fashions and the new styles that were happening in school. And but I wasn't that smart. I wasn't that smart, um, and I was always worried and afraid that someone would notice that I wasn't that smart. So I diverted. I was the class— I became the class clown. I got in trouble. I was sent to the principal's office. And guess what happens when you begin to get in trouble, begin to become the class clown? You begin to be a little bit defiant because you're trying to divert attention away from yourself Guess who you're gonna attract? The gangs, the gang members, the fellow other— the knuckleheads on the school campus, in the neighborhood. That's who you're gonna attract, and that's who I attract. And you know the rest, you know the rest. So I'm just giving you a little bit. So this is This is a part of the journey I want to take you on because so many young students that's going through this right now and the parents that just really don't know what to do with their kids. It's like, you know, how do I raise my child in this society? How do I raise my child in this neighborhood, this community? Whether it's South Central Los Angeles, whether it's Oakland, California, whether it's Detroit, whether it's New York, the Bronx, Atlanta, these communities that many of our people come from that end up in these lifestyles of sagging and wearing colors and tattoos and carrying weapons and shoot 'em up bang bangs. Right? Where did it develop from? I want to deep, deep dive in this. I want to go really deep and really dissect this mindset and how this mindset and similar mindsets, um, even from the bullied kid, uh, can develop into who I am today, a successful businessman. Entrepreneur, uh, managing a multi-million dollar operation, among other things and other, uh, ventures. So stay with me, and like I said at the beginning, just subscribe, subscribe, and take this journey with me as I share my life through this lens and a similar lens of so many of other people that's been through what I've been through and that's been through the hardest of the hardest life of being raised in South Central Los Angeles and can live today after 22 years in prison and get out sane enough to develop a mastermind business model that is still living and surviving today and serving community and helping others as a coach. All right, stay tuned and subscribe. Please subscribe. Thank you. Peace.