 Well, pre-marriage, I was raising a small town, Sanford, North Carolina, and was very, as I got older with high school, very into my education. That was very important to me. Knew that my way out, or what I was told by my mom, my sisters, you know, and by sisters, I mean sisters in the church, different things like that. What I was told by my grandmothers was get an education so you could have the life you want to live. So that was my path. That was what I decided to do. And so I went to college at Appalachian State University, and there I had a path, had a plan. This is what I wanted to do. And I am like a sharp personality, and so very, very driven. Go get it, go get it, go get it, go get it, to the point where nothing else really mattered. I remember at one point in time having a conversation with my mother and just seeing the different struggles I seen other people go through, it was, I don't want kids. And I kept saying it repeatedly, and she said, Yolanda, your words have power. Stop saying that because you're planning your future now. And so when she said that, I said, well, I don't want to count that out to say I never want kids. And so I started out, and I like to say that I was a baby modern chick or a baby boss chick. Like I did it all. I wore the heels. I did the stop, and I was president of this. I was in every leadership role you could practically think of starting out in high school and then moving into college. I did a lot of that. So there was some changing I had to do to move into this role of a traditional wife that I didn't even know I wanted when I was on this route to being a modern woman. And so a lot of stuff started changing. The more involved that I got with my current husband, I was a senior in college. He was a freshman. And so we met through a service organization at that time I was president of. And so it wasn't like I was checking for him or filling him or anything like that. It was just we clicked in a lot of different areas. And so in those different areas we clicked, it was like, what do we really want? How do you really want your life to look? And so he had a bunch of characteristics that I thought that I wanted in a husband. And so I knew that I needed to work on me. I needed to become who I needed to be to be the wife to him that he needed. And what that means is I had a lot of issues I had to work on childhood trauma, different things like that. And so I literally was still in school my senior year and I went on the grass school at Appalachian State because my husband stayed there. He was undergrad and I had a choice to make. Was I leaving? Was I staying to go to grad school? Was I going to teach? Was I doing different things and routes? I was like, you know what? I'm going to stay here. I'm going to keep going to school. And that is what I did in that process. I went into a counseling field, which I quickly got out of because I saw that all the issues that took and what I had to become to actually go into that field, I didn't want to bring that into our relationship and marriage. And so as I got in that, I started discovering I have issues with trust with men because every other relationship that I've been in has only been six months and they start acting stupid. I was like, it just can't be me. So I literally remember waiting for my husband James to be like, okay, we six month dating we're dating for six months. Like, okay, where's the crazy about to start? Because I hadn't had a lot of relationships, but I had never had a relationship I had been in longer than six months before it started getting lonely, crazy. And then I stayed in that relationship another year, year and a half, not feeling like everything was adding up. And so at six months, I was like, okay, what's, what's about to happen? He was like, I'm not that dude. Like, I'm not who that is. I want you to be my wife. And so then I was like, there's some issues that I need to work on in me. Not in him. It has nothing to do with him. There's some issues in me that I need to check and figure out what that was. And so I went to counseling. It's all that from my birth father. I had some stuff that I hadn't even let go of I was an adult woman. I was in my early twenties. I hadn't let go of that stuff. So I had to lay that out and be like, you know what? I can't, you know, harbor this anymore. I can't have that feeling anymore. And once I was able to start doing that, I was able to start working on, oh, these are your issues. This is why you're so aggressive. This, because for this reason, people say you're assertive, but is that aggressiveness or is that assertiveness? This is why you're so driven won't give up. Just fight, fight, fight, fight because you don't want less. Born the first daughter, I saw everything. Could literally lose my mind if the plans changed. No, we said this was the plan. What is going on? You know, that's the issue. Like I can't, I'm so rigid that I can't move and change. I can't, how am I going to be a wife in this format? Like how do you not compromise? And so that's where it developed, that's where it started changing. And the biggest change, I think, that came for me. Because again, you work on yourself hard and you work on any marriage, anybody or anything else, you work on you. The biggest change came when James and I were actually leaving school, he had graduated, and so I was still up at App, I was working. And we were leaving and we got introduced to a business opportunity. And in that business opportunity, they were big on personal development. And they were big on create the future you want, not what somebody else told you to have. And they said, what do you want your life to look like? Do you want to be away from your husband and you go work over here? And you away from him 10 hours a day, he's away from you 10 hours a day. And then y'all can have y'all separate lives, y'all 10 hours a day. He'll have his wife at work, you'll have your husband at work. Y'all will talk about each other and down each other. And y'all have that life, because let's be real, that's what the call centers look like. So do you want that life? Or do you want to do something together where you can create legacy? They told us that we was like, no, we want to be together. We want to create legacy. This is the life that we want. And from there, a big component of that was you can't have that life till you become the person that you're supposed to be to have that life. To, what's the word I'm looking for? To rightfully say, this is what this life is, because I did the work on myself to have it. And we had mentorship along the way. We had other couples that were three, five years ahead of us, that were married and sold into us over and over and over again. Hey, I got this disagreement with James, like, hey, what do I do? And I'm talking to the wife. She was like, girl, you tripping. Like, what called me on it? You are tripping. Go with your husband. Like, he's trying to win for your family. Why are you giving him so much pushback? Wow, 18, 19-year-old James to the James I am today. Yeah, obviously it was a journey from a relationship standpoint. We met when I was a freshman in college. And we actually didn't connect initially. And early on in this meeting, we actually had a little bit of discord between us. But that quickly changed. And I've spent all my adult life now. I've actually been with my wife longer than I haven't been with her. So I graduated from college. Did everything they tell you to do to go out there and be successful in the world, go to school, go to college, do a good job, you'll be OK. And I found out very quickly in the quote unquote real world that that wasn't the recipe for success. If you do what everybody else does, you'll get what everybody else has. And I didn't want to average lifestyle. But I found myself in this cycle of an average lifestyle. So I knew how to do something different. Fortunately, we got introduced to some mentors and some opportunities to be around some people that had a type of lifestyle that we wanted to emulate. And so I understood and learned and grasped the concept that if you borrow somebody's opinion, you borrow their lifestyle. I just want to start. How do these people think? If I want to live that type of life where I don't have to be average, I don't have to wake up every single day at 0 dark 30 to go somewhere I don't want to go to do something I don't want to do for somebody I don't want to do it for. If I want to design my life differently, then I have to be differently. I embraced the temporary loss of social esteem from people who really didn't matter anyway. What are they going to think? Well, I don't care what they think. I don't want their lifestyle. Their average. So I went on a journey of real personal development, not just professional skillset because there's a lot of talk about personal development and it's really skillset development that's past office personal development, performative behaviors. Stephen Covey talks a lot about the personality ethic versus the character ethic. Your personality is what people think about you. Your reputation is what people think about you. Your character is who you really are. So I really got into the root work of really becoming a different type of person because success isn't just something you go obtain a grasp, it's something you attract to yourself by the person you become. So doing that root work, that deep work of becoming a different person focused on that in my early 20s, mid 20s, versus focusing on going and getting something. If I just become the type of person who's capable of doing the type of things to have the type of lifestyle I want, I focused on that. And it really just paid great dividends here in the second half of my life. If I say, you know, at the midway point, kinda from my age standpoint. If someday I woke up and I was a man today at my age being a man, I would hope to be like my husband. He is a phenomenal leader, provider, and he is also a protector. And so I look at what he does daily, what his role is, how he interacts with our children, how he interacts with people, how he doesn't let the world move or sway him, his character, all of these different things. And that is who I would hope to be. Now, the younger me, when I was in my early 20s, I don't think I would have been that person. My husband and I have been together over 20 years. We've been married 16 years. And so I've got to see him grow, change, and develop. And I've got to see, oh, okay, this is where he's going. This is where he was. This is the life that he wants to create for us. He vies us into the vision. All of those different things. In our 20s, or when I was 20, it wouldn't have been good. Like, I would have just been running the house with the iron fist. This is what we're doing. This is how we're doing it. No slack, no mouthing off, no anything. And my biggest priority and goal would to be to get the money. Nothing else. You would have had toxic masculinity. I don't, no, no, toxic masculinity is a made up word. It's not real. Like, I can't stand that word. I wish it was never termed in society because it downplays who you're supposed to be as a man. How is it toxic to be a man? We in society have created where we want everybody to be feminine, yet femininity is now toxic masculinity. I don't, it's just, it's really crazy out here in these streets because I want to play football and I'm aggressive on the football field. Oh, that's toxic masculinity. I have to actually watch shows with my kids and tell them, okay, no, that's not the case. Let's break this down. All these different things. When that wasn't the case for me, when I watching family matters back in the day. Like, but any show on Netflix, all these different things that's on, even our shows, the black shows, they the biggest quoters of toxic masculinity. I hear the words, my daughter, she's 13. She sees my reaction. It's always this, that's always my reaction because I've never seen a generation of people that want to strip men of who they are. Every black show you see, they're putting a black man in a dress, a black boy in a dress. They saying that, oh, it's okay to have all these gender blurred lines when it's not. It truly isn't. And we're teaching the next generation that this is okay. So toxic masculinity, that's a little jab point for me. But no, I would be then, you know, as a 20 year old, if I had to switch and be a man, it just, it wouldn't be good. It would be hardcore military driven. I'm going out to go get this, everybody fall in line. I don't need your buy-in. My husband gets my buy-in on everything. Like, this is where we're going. Let me tell you why this is it. This is the vision we have. Let me tell you why this is it. And I buy into it because he's such a great leader. I would be a nurturing, comforting, and supporting compliment to, it feels real weird saying it, right? To pause, right? To, it feels weird talking about it. Because we have to raise those. Well, for sure. For sure. I got to have three of them. You know, and so I would embrace the equally important and equally demanding role of being a woman. So I think one of the biggest challenges is our world is teaching us, teaching our women, teaching even our men, teaching just all of us that there's only value really in being a man. Sounds a little weird at first because we see all the women's empowerment everything. But the women's empowerment is given in making women feel like being like a man is, you know, you can do, you can do anything a man can do. So if your empowerment as a woman is the fact that you can do anything that a man can do, do you really value what a woman can do? Or do you value what a man can do? Right? So you don't even really value what women can do. And so I would embrace the same way I'm teaching my daughters to embrace the equally important and equally demanding roles of being a woman. Embrace that. And I don't have to find my value and my power in being like a man and having masculine energy to masculine tendencies. No, I'm gonna find my power in femininity. I'm gonna find my role and my place in the world and what I was designed and created for. I'm a black woman. Why? I think because I've always grown up black. I've always been around black people. I've always been part of black culture. I've always been in the black church. And so when I've seen myself, I've always thought of black. I've always had a heart for our people, for our community, for black people. I want us to do better. I want our black community to rise. And that's why I'm so big into men and women coming together and having healthy marriages because without the healthy marriage, we can't raise a black community. When my husband and I, or when the husband and wife aren't on the same page and aren't getting along, that stems down into the children. If they have children, that stems down into the community. But if we can't come on one accord, how can I lift anybody else up in the community? It's impossible. If we can't bring together this unit, then it's not gonna work. And so I've always had this heart for black people. And so sometimes I have to kind of tailor it back and be like, you know what, you so, I would have been in the Panthers. I would have had the larger fro, you know what I'm saying? Like the black leather jacket, like I'm gonna fight for us. I would have done all of that. Because we've been so disfranchised, so disserviced, so any of that, that I feel like if I can make a small wave in this ocean of us, if I can make a small dent, then I've done something. I don't plan on the dent being small, but if I can help our people where it helps my children, where it helps their children's children and children's children, I say a goal of ours is I want your children to look up in the mansion that we leave behind and say, oh, these are the books that grandma and grandpa left. They're on the shelf. That's the picture of them that, you know, this is why we have what we have, how we move, how we move, the real estate, the property, the education, all of this other stuff is because they started it. Yeah, I consider myself to be a black person who happens to be a man, it's pretty close. It's pretty close. I certainly, you know, move through the world as a man and I understand that. I think it's pretty obvious in how we observe other people from just a physical standpoint. Let's say it's winter time, it's cold. We bonded up, we got hoodies on the stuff. You can tell if somebody is black and you might not know if they're men or women. Like, oh, I thought that, right, we've all encountered that, like, oh, I thought that was a man, oh, I thought that was a woman, and it's actually the opposite, particularly in this day and age, right? But you know for sure that they're black or if they're white, you know, or maybe age some other race. So I certainly identify more as a black person before being a man, I would say. Feminism divides. Feminism says, I am woman, hear me roar. Where do you hear anything about man in that? I really think what has occurred is in the feminism movement, women have pushed themselves to the forefront and said, you know what, this is what I want, this is how it should be, and everything else with that. They put men on the back burner, they put children on the back burner, and it's about what I want. And so when you are on that agenda, how is that help anybody? And honestly, feminism even hurts the woman. So we have everyone that is segregated going after their own thing, and no one that is coming together. And I'll tell you who needs the most togetherness is us black people, we need the most togetherness. So it's so many rooms on clubhouse, it's so much social media, all this kind of stuff about the black man is wrong and does this, the black woman is wrong and does this red pill, blue pill, all of these different things. I think my husband introduced something to me about, I was just talking about it, about black women that only wanna date white women, they're diversifying whatever is called, all of these different things that we as black women are allowing and participating in. The reason I say that is because we are the loudest voice. We are the ones that are rah rah go do it, and we as black women, it can be chaos, it can be trauma, it can be all of these different things. And you still gonna have your girlfriend, your sister, media, all these different things that are going to promote you in it, that are going to say, you go girl, you do it. While everything else is just falling to the side. And so the feminist movement has been very detrimental to us. We left our post, we joined with other organizations of people, mainly white women, and fought their fight. We, that's what we decided to do. And we decided to leave our black men who are already suffering. Like let's not get it twisted, we still suffering, extremely, extremely bad, but we're even more in a situation where they fighting for their life, they being jailed, they're being beat, they're being wrongly accused and treated of different things, can't get a job. Black men now today have a difficult time getting a job. They're gonna employ every other race before you and women. It's not even the better world, close to me. It's been a net negative. Going back, like you said, that segues just from what we came into, that we really value what women offer. And even for us as men, I think more of our women wouldn't have been so compelled or eager to take on the male exciting roles and aspects in life if we held up in higher regard and esteem, their role as being a homemaker, as being our partner, as being our comfort, as being our support. If we held that in high esteem and gave that the same level of acknowledgement and cherishing that it deserves, maybe it wouldn't be so eager to take on those other roles that are really designed for us to fulfill. So I can't tell you the amount of times that people refer to, my wife is just a stay-at-home mom. What do you mean? Do you understand what that role really is? In the hemisphere, you will see all up and down the internet streets, all up and down comment sections, what they will or won't do for a woman that's just at home. Bro, you won't really, I see it because I work from home too. I think that's probably a unique scenario where my wife is a homemaker, a domestic engineer, as I like to call it, because it, right? There's some science to run in a household. It's a- And mathematics. And mathematics. It's a living organism that is what she is running and operating. I'm not involved in the home school to the depth that she, you know, the meals, everything that's keeping something running, most men, even men that are traditional, if they're working outside of the home, they may not get as much of a up close perspective of that as I do, because she's at home as a homemaker, but I'm also at home working from home as well. And so I see it. I'm like, I'm not gifted for that. I'm not built for that. And so I can appreciate it on a much different level. And so I think if we, you know, embrace it and appreciate it that more as men, it didn't just reduce it down to something that is trivial or something that's like not a huge contribution. Like we bugging when we do that. My wife literally, you know, took me in and duplicated my DNA. That's my legacy. And her, you know, cultivating them, raising them, teaching, the admiration I have for my wife, for the fact that she's teaching my children. My children, you know, the three year old still don't know how to read yet, but my other kids that they know how to read, she taught them how to read. We talk all the time about, you know, our schools should teach them this. Why don't school teach them about, you know, how to balance the checkbook? They, the school should teach them about credit. They should, no, that's our job is to teach them that. So my kids knowing how to read, my wife talked them out of it. My kids knowing how to asset, track, multiply, divide. My wife talked, how much admiration and pride I have looking at my wife knowing like you are, you not only duplicated my DNA and gave me that gift, but now you're cultivating me. You're cultivating me as you're cultivating my kids. I'm literally watching you, you know, when I see my son, I see me, right? If all of the men in the internet space, the man in spirit, red pill, whatever you want to call it, started to really just esteem and like, like, women will probably will respond maybe a little bit differently. The same way we respond and we move about how women, oh, you want to do that. He, you know, he swaggy or he act this way. We start to emulate this whole lot of men wearing beards because women, they let us know that they wanted beards. My wife went on, right? I used to just wear the little goatee, you know, it's that things like, you know, salt and pepper in a little bit is more salt than pepper now, but she's like, oh, that look good. I like that. I was talking about cutting my beard one time. She literally almost start crying. She literally almost start crying, right? So I was like, I ain't cool, I'm not going to cut it. So the same way I can respond, like we'll, we recognize that we're going to respond. Okay, that's how y'all want it. All right, we're going to get to you like that thing. Cause that's what y'all showing that she want. What are we showing them that we want when, when we, I need a woman, she going to bring something to the table with the implication being finances. And I'm not saying that obviously women should, you know, bring something to the table, but often when you hear it, it has this tone and its implication of, you know, if I'm doing this, she ain't about to just sit around and do nothing. She got to be brings up like, yes, she brings forward, bring something to compliment something different. Not the same thing you. So, so we got to reduce our contradictions. Cause then we'll say, well, I don't need a woman's money. I got them, but is your interview lining up with your interview? We, is your interview lining up with your interview? You saying this in the interview, this is what your words is saying, but make sure that the tongue in your mouth is lining up with the tongue in your shoe. Walk it like you're talking. If I had to talk to black guys in their 20s, I would tell them, find a wife, find a wife. Let me tell you why. So in our society, we feel like you have to have accomplished all of your goals before you can get married. You have to have the car, the house, education. This is big for our black women. We feel like you got to have all your degrees before you go and accomplish a spouse. There is nowhere that it is written that you cannot be married and still accomplish and have these dreams, goals, and desires. Getting married younger leaves out so much baggage. How many body counts do you want to take into your marriage? How many soul ties do you want to take into your marriage? This stuff is real. Like I would not expect somebody that is 35 plus years old not to have had six and intimate relationships with several different people as they're wading through and they're not going in the mindset. When you're in that age, if you went into the mindset in your 20s, even before, before your 20s, saying, you know what? I'm looking to be married and your marriage hunt is not by yourself. Your family should be involved in it. We believe in arranged marriage. We're gonna arrange our children's marriages. Let that sink in. Arrange does not mean forced, but it's gonna be a courting situation. And again, we have a 13 year old daughter. We have these conversations all the time. You're not gonna, the most important relationship you have in your life is with your spouse. Like, so we gonna make sure stuff lines up. Like we're not gonna let that most, people spend more time helping their children pick the college they wanna go to than they do the make they gonna marry and be with for the rest of their life. And so in your 20s, you circle yourself. And it's not your parents. It's not, you know, your grandparents, whoever that is. In your 20s, you circle yourself around people who have the marriage that you want. And you say, look, I wanna get married young. Why? Because I wanna develop a life and build a life of somebody that I want to be with for the rest of my life. And in doing that, I'm gonna need help and assistance because if I knew all the answers, I would already be in the marriage I wanna be in. I haven't lived that life. And so I'm gonna need some help. Your marriage looks like something that I would want my marriage to look like. I'm gonna need your help. My relationship mentors, they weren't my direct family, but they had a marriage like I wanted to be like. And so when I needed help, I went to them. When I was having an issue with my husband, I went to them. I didn't go to my girlfriends who were single. So a young man says, nice guys finish last. Who said they shouldn't finish last? Nice guys should finish last because it's a difference between being a nice guy and a good man. So oftentimes a lot of the disgruntled, nice guys, they aren't necessarily having the character of good men. Nice is more about being agreeable and moving in a way that is non-confrontational more so than being good. Dr. Jordan Peterson talks about being non-violent. If you don't have the capability of violence, being non-violent is not a virtue. So being a good man isn't just about being nice and being agreeable all the time. So you can see nice men they're true character when they don't get what they think they're supposed to get for being nice. I'm being nice. I'm being agreeable. And so wait a minute. Are you operating in good character because that's who you are? Or are you being nice so I can get the reward that I want? And you see a lot of these nice guys, true colors come through when I've been nice this whole time, I'm not getting the reward I want. And they start getting very, very passive aggressive or actually aggressive. And now that's who you really are. That's your real character. Is you think being nice is enough and should be enough of a reward even if you have bad social skills. But I'm nice. Even if you have some hygiene problems going on. But I'm nice. Even if you have a lack of firmness and masculinity you think you being nice is going to replace your lack of masculinity and you having boundaries for yourself and you having a backbone, you having firmness, you having direction. You have, it's so many things that fall in place for a good man. Let's see the things I'm talking about being firm, having a propensity for violence but having it under control, right? How is strength under control? That don't mean you just some, oh, I'm just some weasley, you know, nice guy. No, that's not, there's a difference. So we do talk about how women, you know, want these contradictory things. A lot of times they want a dude that is, you know, very, very attractive but, you know, he don't have no women around him. Like, and we see these contradictions but we all have a certain level of contradiction in what we want. And so how do we navigate through that, right? Really what a woman is saying is she wants, she wants a good man with an edge. She, you want a good man with an edge and that's not unreasonable. My wife wants me to be kind, being kind and being nice aren't necessarily the same thing, right? She wants me to be kind and know how to be gentle but she also wanna know that there's some fire in you if need be. And so I think this is what the nice guys miss it is they think they're supposed to get, you know, a reward just for being agreeable, just for whatever you want. That's when I hear nice guys, that's what I think about. I think about, yo, bro, don't develop into being a good man, not a nice guy because sometimes a good man can be nice. I'm gonna tell some truths right here and I'm gonna be real. I was already married to my husband before I got married. We had an apartment together. He already said, I'm gonna marry you. So it's just formalities on the paper. If we can go back and do it all over again, we would have went down to the courthouse and signed the documents. You don't need no lavish wedding, you don't need it. You don't need all these things. Why can't we do that five years later, 10 years later, all these years later and we can start right now together building a legacy. When you have your mind unclouded about who you're partnering with, I ain't gotta go to the clubs. Homie, bruh, brother, you ain't got to worry about who you sleeping with and having sex with. Sex is a need that men have. It's not a desire or a want or something like that. It's a physical need that men have. Let's keep it real. And so when you have a wife that is there to fulfill that need, you don't have to turn to pornography. You don't have to turn to going to the one night stand. And I've heard this, oh, that affects women more. I know it doesn't. It affects men just as much. And then you're taking all of that stuff, all of that baggage into the marriage that you want to have in your 30s. When I could have negated all of that baggage, all of that and just married younger. So I would tell my young sisters and brothers in their 20s to get married young because the only reason James and I didn't go sign the line on the contract is because he had people that were influential in his life that said, don't marry her yet, wait till you finish school. James was ready to marry me his sophomore year. Sophomore year. But people, and we've been together since the end of his freshman year, April, the end of his freshman year, he ready to marry me his sophomore year. But we had to wait those four years until actually three and a half years. But four years, because after that we got a house and got married after that. So we had to wait all those years. When I honestly was married to him, we stand together, we're in the same residence. You know, all those other different things that married people do. But we didn't sign the paper because society says you shouldn't get married when you're young. So I would say, forget about what society is saying. The current modern society and marry young. And don't marry young without mentorship. It's very key that you have mentorship because if you marry young and you don't have the mentorship you're gonna mess some stuff up. You're gonna need somebody that's guiding you through. You gotta have someone older that is guiding you through this process because you're two different people coming together in marriage, you're gonna deal with stuff. Challenge is gonna rise. So tell my kids, everybody deals with challenges. It's how you get through it. It is just as valuable for us to settle down, quote unquote, earlier, as it is for women. Now it manifests differently, but we have this idea and it's being perpetuated in the hemisphere that men have more of the advantage when they get older. Younger women want older men and we can get away with things more when we're older. But if we keep into the buck, all things being even younger women don't want older men. Like we know it, right? We got the trope of the old man in the club. Like bro, the silver box, right? Like, you're 40, you're 45. Yeah, well, we know a man hits his financial peak between 40 and 60. So once I get there, then I'll settle down, okay? But then you're gonna wanna go down younger. That 25-year-old girl, she really don't want you. And I could hear them screaming in the comments, yeah, younger women do want older men. No, they don't want older men. They want what older men can do for them. All things being equal, they would rather have somebody closer to their peak. Maybe a small age gap, couple of years, whatever the case may be, but don't deluge yourself, bro. Like you 40, she 25, she's not, she see so that she really want you or what you're able to do at that point. So then you have scenarios where you have these men who waited later on where, yeah, they may have more options, but I see emptiness in being with the woman that I don't know if she's really here for me. Like with my wife, bro, there's no, I never have to, anything that as we continue to go up socioeconomic ladders and statuses, she got whatever, bro. My wife's been with me when they came for the house, when they came for the car, when the water got cut off. My wife was there with me through all of that. So she get whatever she want. Now, for us, it's till death do you part. So God forbid something happened, I remit. Like how do I know like you really, I mean, I can have this connection. So you hear men who have achieved a lot later in life talk about this, you know, you hear Shannon Sharp talking about, man, I don't, you know, at this stage of my life, I don't know, can I ever really be, is she really here for, I can never really know. You know, you hear LeVar Ball talking about his son. He's like, I tell my boys, you're not gonna find it while you in the league. You're not gonna, so just stay away from these women. Or if you ain't gonna find it while you in the league, if you had a successful career, you're gonna find them afterwards. That's really there for you. So you put yourself in a position and that's why you have all of the conversation about, you know, focus on yourself and it's your stuff over any woman ever. Like she's always gonna be second. Yeah, because you built all this up without her. My wife don't come second to a business I have. And so I think this also plays into our misunderstanding of purpose. And this is on point and topic as well for our young men. When are we ready? When's the right time? That kind of conversation. We tell our young brothers, bro, focus on your purpose before you focus on a woman. And I agree with that, but I disagree with it. I agree with it that that's right, but I disagree because we don't have a proper understanding of what purpose is. So when we say that, we say focus on your purpose. Most men, most young men think me telling you focus on your purpose means figure out what you want to do in life. And that's not your purpose. Purpose is not about what you do. Because even at my stage in life, and I've had some success, I've had some results done some different things, I still try to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, what I want to do, right? Like, you know, we see different men have different career stages. This is my first act, this is my second act. Nah, you know what? I want to do this now, right? We see Kobe Bryant, he was going to another stage off the court. We just saw a small glimpse of what he was able to do, right? Like how many men in life, they don't have their major, major accomplishment till 50, 60 years old. Colonel Sanders didn't start KFC, so he was like, what, in the 70s? So he didn't find, what you do then is your purpose. He didn't find his purpose till he was in the 70s. So he wasn't supposed to be married then before then. So like throughout my journey, and now I haven't been married for 16 years, and nobody can look me in my eye on my face and say I have not operated and executed at a certain level as a husband, as a father. And I still am on a journey of discovering, okay, what am I going to do next? What am I going to do next? So your purpose isn't about what you're going to do. Your purpose is about who are you going to be? Your purpose is who you're going to be. So until you have an understanding of the type of man you want to be, you don't even mess with no woman. How you know, or how I knew I was ready to be a wife is I was drawn, I was drawn to wanting to be under my husband's leadership. I was drawn to wanting him for protection. That was what I was drawn to. I was drawn to what is our vision? What do we want to do together? How do we make this work? I was drawn to all of those different things and I didn't even know it because I wasn't considering myself a traditional wife then but I was still drawn to all of those. I was very modern. I was going to climb the corporate ladder, all of these different things but I still was drawn to I want James to be the leader. I want him to lead us. I'm going to join what's our vision. I want him to be the leader. And so I saw all these different characteristics and traits in him that looked like a wonderful husband. How I knew I was ready? I felt like I've always been ready. I was born ready. No, I always knew I wanted to be married. And a lot of times people don't know, I want to be married. I knew I won't, didn't want to be alone. I don't think as a human species we're meant to be alone. And so I knew that I did not want to be alone and I knew I wanted the best life for myself. And I knew eventually, as I got older into my twenties I wanted a great life for my children. And so it was all of those different things that had to line up and make sense for me. And I think we are delaying those feelings longer and longer. We're not dating but trying to accomplish, oh, okay, I'm dating to see for marriage. Are you a great marriage candidate? We're dating because I like this person. We're wasting time. Brothers, don't get started focusing on any women or women until you understand your purpose, who you're going to be. But that doesn't mean you have to delay partnering with a woman until you figure out what you're going to do. That's why you see it. We don't figure out a lot of the things we want to do in career, you spend your twenties trying some different things out. You could be partnered with the woman. If you're clear on the type of man you're going to be. I know from a character standpoint, from a value standpoint, from a moral standpoint, from a worldview standpoint, I'm solid in who I want to be as a man. I don't quite have it all figured out or want exactly what I'm going to do to career. That's not your purpose. Because that can change. You may have three careers throughout a lifetime. So from that standpoint, we got to, you know, make sure that we're more precise and communicating that to our young men because there's a lot of ill effects that come from delaying even for the man. Like I pointed out, you go figure out all this you're going to do and accomplish all this and I got to get more money. One, that chase never stops. Yes, I believe that the traditional format and setup can still work. What it would take is for us to be less materialistic for us to be able to delay some different things. When we first started, well, we first got married, James and I, delay gratification was a big thing. Why? Because we had a bigger goal that we were chasing. We had a vision and plan. And if it didn't line up with the vision and plan, it wasn't going to work. And we always had a vision for our family that if we wanted something or desired something and wanted to go somewhere, check that against, does this line up with the vision? And so if it was, I wanted a new dress or a new outfit. Is that in line with what our vision is? Or could we use that $100 or whatever, how much money that dress, outfit, purse, whatever it was, could we use that to sew into actually who we are, increase our likelihood of being more successful and put that into us versus it going on to something more materialistic. The vacations that James and I took until 2020 have all been business related. Like we would add on extra days to our vacation, but we went for business. We went to this conference. We went to this meeting. Someone invited us out to speak at this event. And so we were like, oh, this is a nice location. Let's add on some more days. It wasn't until like 2020, we went to Mexico. It was just, you know, we gonna go out here and do what we do. And that was great and wonderful. Do I feel like I missed out on a bunch of the stuff because I ain't traveled the world everywhere? Like we've been to Paris and Europe and all these different things because of the companies that we work with, because of the companies that James has aligned himself with. Here's what you're telling your future wife. You're saying, hey, listen, I'm glad I met you now that I'm 45, 47, 50 years old. After I got the education, after I got the degrees, after I started the business, after I traveled the world, after I got the income, because you're not as important as that stuff. So I'm glad I met you now because you're not as important as my degree is. That's what you're telling your wife. Like you're not as important as my businesses. And we've said it so much because we think our business is our purpose. And we're like, yeah, my woman ain't coming for my business, your business ain't your purpose. Yeah, my wife's not even more important than my purpose. But my business is my purpose. My career is not my purpose. Who I am, who I'm to be as a man is my purpose, right? So when we start putting business over our wife money, I could lose some money and replace them. I can't replace my wife. We were like, I don't need, just the same way we get our eyes rolling about women saying, I don't need a man. And we're like, ah, here it goes. See, they don't need a man. I don't need a woman. I need my wife, bro. I need my wife. So something up to being with James 20 years that surprises me. About men, yeah. Okay. All right. This is very monotone. But it was what came to mind that what surprises me most, I think, is that I still forget that men don't think like women. So when I asked my husband if he got this particular detail, like I want information. Like, oh, I talked to this person. This is what's going on. I was like, he don't tell me everything. The first question I asked every single time he never got it. It's like, I didn't ask that question. I'm like, how you didn't ask that question? So it's just because we're different. And so a lot of times I think we need reminders that men and women are different. We have different things that we're great at. And so for me to be like, oh, I need you to be great at this, this, this, and then that, and those are roles that I'm good at or great at, then that's just silly. Like we're different people. And so I'm still surprised to some time, like no, that's not the case, but I'm still surprised by that, that you didn't ask that question. That's the only one I wanted to know. So I'm saying, we'd still laugh about it, but that's the one I want to know. Why didn't you get that detail? You know, what happened to it? I want a big picture. Women are more sensitive. Yes. Yes, so why do you, but we laugh about it and keep it moving. It's always that one thing. He's telling me the whole story. I'm like, okay, what, what about his mother? And you're like, I didn't ask about his mama. I'm like, did you get that one? I didn't ask. So a lot of times now in business opportunities, he's like, okay, you coming with me. So you can get the answers or meeting people, all those different things. You know, I'm right there and glad to be there. Like I said, you know, as our, now our youngest is three and a half. She, of course my kids need me three and a half. They got a six year old, nine year old, 13 year old. So I'm very, very heavily involved in their homeschool, all that kind of stuff. I do it. So, but as they get older, I'm released from more and more time. And now I can have a baby so to come in and it's easier. Like today we left that my third and a half didn't cry. No one cried when I walked out the door because everybody's like, oh, she's coming back. No one's happy. Let me get that straight. My 13 year, I can't believe you're leaving. I'm kind of upset mom. Like, but no one's, no one's crying or anything. So that makes me feel better in my wife as a traditional mother, traditional wife, being able to leave them under the care of someone that is going to take care of them. And I'm only gone for a short amount of time. I've been with her longer than I haven't been with her. Right? Like I've known her for more of my life than I have not been with her. She know me better than anybody else in the planet. So guess what? I married her also because she's brilliant and intelligent and she could be a sounding board for me when I'm making moves in business and decision and career and, hey, babe, what do you think about it? Babe, you know, I know you're excited, but think about it, you, just how you move. Just how you're like, yeah, you're right. I got a sounding board. I got a built in, you know, therapists if you will, right? Who knows that pillow talk. There's value in some of these things. And so we don't understand and appreciate and I wouldn't hide enough esteem in regard the value of somebody who has partnered with you since you were in your early adulthood. You found out who I wanna be as a man and then you partner with her to help go build whatever empire you're building and she knows your tendencies. I take my wife to business meetings. She's my intuition radar. Cause I can't tell you the amount of times that I'm like, y'all, yeah, this is the way it's like nah, I picked up on this stand. I'm like, nah, you bugging. They good people, they good people. And it might be a couple of days, couple of weeks, couple of months, she always right. So now I need to argue it. I took her to a business meeting, you know, recently just come, you know, hey, my wife coming to the meeting. Okay, you know, she sat back, I'm doing my thing. I'm like, hey, what'd you think after? On the way, but what? Anywhere if I, nah, they good people. Okay, good. Cause I got, I like what I'm seeing here. It look good. But anytime she was like, nah, I'm like, nah, you tripping, you tripping that intuition that's valuable. If you're not working on yourself and you are still the same person or you're not changing, there's a problem. You should not be the same person that you were a year ago. You should be reading, listening and changing and developing and growing into someone that is better. We spend way too much time on social media. We spend way too much time doing stuff that is chaotic. We spend way too much time wasting time on a bunch of things that has nothing to do about growing as a person. So these people that have their fears is true because people go and they work a job, they get off their job, they own social media while they're on the job, they're on all this trash. You're checking highlight reels of other couples, other people and then nobody's putting anything on but the positive and the great things. And then you comparing that against who you with. Like it's the age old story. Like the guy that you work with that show house husband, you're not dealing with his dirty laundry. You're not seeing his socks on the floor, his underwear on the floor and picking them up and putting them in the laundry. You're seeing all the good that they have. So social media has now highlighted instead of it being just one person that you're seeing all the good in, you're seeing the whole world, everybody else's husband, everybody else's man is better. So why should I settle for this guy here that it's not perfect? Hey, guess what? You ain't perfect either. You got to work on yourself, he has to work on himself and that's the main thing that you look for when you're going into marriage. Are you willing to change, grow and develop into somebody other than who you are? If I was the same person I was when James met me when I was 22, 21, whatever that age was when we met, like he will pull his hair out and run. Like he'll be like, oh no, never. But we grew and developed together and changed together because we were working on ourselves separately but together. Like we in the bed at night reading books. I'm working on the books I'm reading. He reading the books he's reading. We in the car taking rides and trips together listening to, and this time it was CDs. That's how old I am. It was CDs. We were listening to CDs. We might have some concepts too but we were listening to CDs. And so it really was making it together, working separately but making it work together. We never worked on our marriage. We just knew what our vision was. We knew what our goal was. We never meant to marriage retreats and all those different things. If we did, we went because we wanted to help other people. I don't believe that we're suitable for vetting for ourselves. Men or women. I don't think we're suitable for vetting for ourselves. Now we live forward and we learn backwards, right? It was, I don't know if you're familiar with this quote, life's a strange teacher. It gives you the test first and afterward the lesson. We're living for it and then we learn backwards. Sometimes intuitively we can do the right things and get the right results but we didn't really know until we learned backwards like, wow, this worked out. How did it work out? And we don't pick up on those lessons unless we're a thoughtful person. So me being somebody who is a thoughtful thinker, I can recognize that I intuitively did some things, right? And it led to positive results but I didn't know, I was fortunate. I'm not gonna pat myself on the back like, yeah, see, I did it the right way. Some things worked out intuitively and I'm fortunate that they did but looking back in retrospect, I can reverse engineer like, why did that work out that way like that? And if I'm going back and doing it again and I'm trying to replicate that, shake up the snow globe of the world and put me back in the same scenario where I might not just bump into my wife and it worked out, what would be the steps to give me the highest probability of duplicating that? The steps to doing that is to have people with wiser counsel help you in the vetting process. So in vetting for ourselves, we're all emotional. I know men like to think that we're just logical, you know, all more logical. And in many regards we are but we're emotional in a different way than women and we all make decisions based off of emotion and how she, you know, makes you feel a certain experience, things of that nature. We make decisions based off of that. And if we want to minimize emotion, not avoid emotion but minimize emotion in major decisions, the best practice to do that is to have an outside source help you through that decision. Having a coach, the value of a coach isn't necessarily that they're so much smarter or wiser than you. They might have some higher wisdom to you but the value is the fact that they're not you. Sometimes you can't see the picture because you're the one in the frame. We've all seen one of our boys that's with a woman and we can tell bro, she ain't no good for you. Brad, like I'm telling you, we seeing her like, but she just there for you, for the back. She just there for it. She, you know, she playing you, this, that. We, all the homeboys see it and he can't see it but men, we never emotional. We like to think this, right? Why can't he see it? Cause he's the one in the scenario. So the coach, somebody outside is just a different perspective. You think the offensive coordinator that's up in the box is better than the quarterback on the field. I don't care if it's the worst backup on the worst team in NFL. The offensive coordinator is not as good of a quarterback as they are. But when that quarterback throws the intercepts on the field, they send it from the press box down to the sideline like, yo, here's the aerial view of, ah, I didn't see the coverage. Yeah, I can see it from up here. I can just see it cause a different perspective. Don't mean I'm as nice as you, don't mean I'm smarter than you. I just got a different perspective. So if I'm in a sky helicopter and you in traffic and I'm like, hey, yo, Alan, you need to take the next exit. I'm gonna put you on a deep thought. You're like, it looks clear from here. I'm like, but I'm in a helicopter, bro. I'm telling you, take the exit. I don't mean I'm a better driver. I just got a different perspective cause I'm not in the frame. So we need some people to help us vet from a different frame, a different perspective and where we're looking at both men and women cause we all make decisions emotionally. It's easier being a traditional wife. Why? Because I'm not out in the world on a daily basis dealing with several different people doing different things. I'm focused on my vision as a traditional wife. My role is to be a wife that is to support comfort. My role is to be a mother. And so I know what role I play. I know where I am on the, I guess the roster being a traditional wife. But when you have two people with two different goals and both of y'all are out here going to get the bag, you're going to get the bag as the husband and the leader. She's going to get the bag as a modern woman. Then you are on two different missions and two different plans. But if we could bring that together and not only be working on who we are and our character but we making moves together, we are, and I don't believe that traditional wives necessarily have to be partnered and doing everything that their husband does. But having a family business where we work together, we are already joined together on that. And it's about making all of that work. Once you know what your role is and what you're doing, I think a lot of times we don't even know the roles we play. And I truly believe modern women are the most disfranchised in this. Why? Because now you're working on getting money. Over 80% of women that are modern still do all the housework. So I got to go out, work a job, work 40 hours a week, come home, cook, clean, take care of the house. Then, oh, let's add on to that. I'm tired. Now my husband is feeling unfulfilled because we ain't had sex in four weeks. Okay? So I'm at like, all of this stuff is adding up or you got your weekly random sexual activity, the weekly planned out sexual activity. My husband will tell you, he got me off my job. He was working to get me off my job ASAP. Why? Because he wanted me to be home so that we could have that lifestyle. But an increase in that lifestyle was more sex. If I'm getting out of work at six o'clock, sometimes nine o'clock at night, depending on what the schedule was, I'm tired, I'm exhausted. I wake up now, when I get ready, typically it's about seven o'clock and I go work out. After that, I start homeschool with my daughter. We cook breakfast together. Certain kids come down and they help me with cooking the breakfast. Then everybody starts homeschool. So we have crafted and I changed the schedule when I won't. I created how I want because I'm at home. I'm a traditional wife. And so we've crafted that life. Why and how do we have it? We aren't where we want to be by any means. We're still striving, still working hard to get further and further ahead. But we've hit some of these different milestones because in our 20s we delayed about everything we could. Like we were investing so much into this. I think I ended up losing my job, but James had a job. And so we were putting all of our money and resources into getting to our meetings we needed to get to, getting to events, all of this different kind of stuff to where I made a whole meal out of boiled canned potatoes. And we ate it like it was a gourmet meal. I can remember sacrificing so much that we had got the, because only James was working at this point. And our rent was crazy astronomical high. And so it was one time that the water got turned off. And it was like a couple of days where it wasn't gonna turn off and he would have me come to his job to work out so I can take a shower. These were the sacrifices we made. We didn't have children at that time, but this is what we were willing to give up and do. And I don't know if people realize you gonna have to give up some stuff if you want to have the marriage and the life and all these different things that you have. Now we hit some misfortune, like we go hard. When we in the paint, we in the paint. Like we going hard on it. And me personally, I'm gonna put and do everything. So it was a job I had that I could have kept if I wouldn't have told them there isn't job security. I laughed, they fired me. I don't recommend that. We could have been in a better financial situation. But all of that to say that delay ahead when you're younger, when you don't have the family, when you don't have the children, when you're chasing whatever that is, delay that younger. Now for somebody in their thirties, waiting that long is just, I couldn't imagine, I couldn't imagine waiting until I was 30 something as a woman to get married. I mean, if you want it more than one kid, you might have one. The chances of in your mid thirties and you never being pregnant, getting pregnant naturally and having a child goes down astronomically. Two things. First, coming back to reality. That's not the real world. And we all can sense it. If we step, just step back for just a moment, we all recognize it's not the real world. It's literally the matrix. I remember the matrix being like really that movie, particularly in the business world that I was in, coming out of college. And we're like, yeah, we got to get out the matrix, stop working the job, been a program, been these worker bots for people. That was like the matrix. But it was in a time pre-social media being what it is now. Pre-murderverse, pre-tiktok, pre-all of that. And it's like circling back to it. Now it's like, yo, it's really a matrix now. There's three realities, right? We got the physical reality. We got the unseen reality, right? There's unseen laws that operate in the universe. And then we got virtual reality. So you got the unseen reality, the physical reality. We actually in a physical world. And then the virtual reality. It's so crazy how much more time we spend in the virtual reality today versus five years ago, 10 years ago, 15, 20 years ago. How much time we spend in the virtual reality? And I found myself even, you know, getting upset about different things. As my head is literally buried in the virtual reality. And I had to step back and be like, whoa, whoa. Yo, chill out. That's not the real world. Because when I go look at my actual physical reality, the observable world that I live in, that's not even what I'm seeing. We see it with different agendas, alphabet community, this to the third. You would think that 20, 30, 40, 50% of the population believe that they're in the wrong body. And when you're in virtual reality, it really, okay, how you start thinking like, yo, women, is that really a woman? Like you think that that's normal. How many do I really know in the physical world? How many do I encounter? Really. This is an example of the virtual reality versus physical reality, all right? Oh, well, women, they just want this. They just, you know, all of them want a man that's a high value man. If you're in virtual reality, you start thinking that that's really what it is. The physical reality, is that really your experience? Like, so I like to have conversations when I'm talking with people, they start to get into these general concepts of what they're hearing online and in the comment section. And to some degree that's valuable because when people feel safe and they can post, they'll anonymously, they'll say what they really feel. So in some sense that's valuable, but in another regards, like yet, you got this frustration and animus about all of the stuff that's going on in the virtual world because you think that's how they think and that's how they feel. But it's like, what's really going, let's not talk about the broad conversation in general. Let's talk about specifically what you, is that your reality? Division of labor and specialization really is a core fundamental principle of a traditional lifestyle, division of labor. Yo, these are my roles, these are your roles. We're dividing and conquering. That's a principle. Oh, that principle don't work in this day as well. Yeah, virtual reality might have you believe in that. Get off of virtual reality and look in the real world. What organizations thrive the best? Be it a sports team, be it a government, be it a company, where you have division of labor. Who outperforms who? Specialists or general practitioners? If you go to a, we think like certain professions are like so well-esteemed and accomplished like doctors. Most doctors don't have like some great lifestyle. Right? If you're just a general practitioner, you got like a little family practice. I know them, I've met them, they don't have this incredible lifestyle. There's some specialists though, doctors that specialize in a particular, when you go to your general doctor and they say, you know what, hey, I'm gonna send you to this specialist. When they send you to the specialist, that doc make more than the general practitioners did. So how can you specialize in something if you're trying to do everything? So how can my wife specialize in her role that's equally as important and equally as demanding of being a nurturer of comfort and support? If I have her also, she gotta go pay half these bills. This is what I want. This is where I want to be. This is who I want to be. And if you know that about yourself in your mid-30s, which is mid-30s or whatever your age is past the early 20s, if you're knowing that, you still can couple with somebody and y'all can come together and be in alignment. And when you see the red flags, don't ignore those. When you see the red flags, I'm not gonna say none. But a lot of times red flags are there to let you know this is of pause. This is where I need to stop and really get some help on that. And even if you're in your mid-30s, early 40s, you still should couple and have people around you that can see past who that person is in your eyes. How many times do you have the guys that see the girl? They're like, nah, that ain't for you, but they don't have sex. And so now we tied together because I'm really in love with this woman. How many times has that happened? And that's just with friends. But think about if that person has some mentorship and game, went into it with the plan of marriage, how different that would be. Oh, she don't meet these characteristics. Or on the other hand, with the guy that the girl is with. Oh, he don't meet what I'm looking for. He's not a great leader. I wanted a leader. He's not willing. He doesn't compromise. He doesn't take my input on anything. But because we already are tied into this relationship, this love and all this kind of stuff, it makes no sense. People are like, no, we're not serious at. You can't meet my parents. Y'all been dating six months and been sleeping together six months and you can't meet my parents? We that intimate and that close. And I can't even meet your mama. Like, that's the issue and the problem. We think relationships and marriage is something that's completely separate that nobody should be involved in. Why society has taught us that's the way I tell my kids if average people are doing it, if the world is doing it, if society is doing it, it's the wrong thing to do. And I haven't been wrong one time. So you want what they have, you do what they do. If you want your marriage to fail and you at the 80% rate of what, you know, I'm not 80% rate, 50% rate, then keep doing what they're doing. But if you want something different, do something different. It just logically doesn't make sense that if we're saying people are divorcing and the reason that they're divorcing at 50% is they aren't the same people. Let's say they aren't the same people that they got married to. What did y'all do when y'all got married? Oh, we both work jobs and we were away from each other. But yet we still force and say, education, education, education, education. Women, black women, go get your education, all these different degrees so that you can have the life that you want. Black men, wait till you get married, wait till you're in your 40s to get the wife that you want. And this is the narrative that we're still spewing to the youth. It didn't work then, why is it gonna keep work? It, why is it gonna work? It's gonna switch and start working? We have to do something different. And the something different is getting married younger, building together. So, it's not so much of learning some practical things that would blow your mind that you didn't know. Or let me say it this way, didn't understand, but you don't know it. So what I mean is anything I could tell you about, well, women have this type of emotional response to this. Like, there's nothing I'm gonna tell you that's like, wow, that blows my mind, I didn't know that. Well, you might not have under, you might understand it, but you don't know it because you only know something to the degree you practice and to get results. So having lived with a woman for 20 years, I know what it's like to live with a woman. I don't have a conceptual understanding of it. And that's what most people miss. They think because they understand the concept of I know women tend to respond more emotionally than men. You understand the concept, but do you know what it's like to experience operating in that, right? So the more time, this is why we're such a big, this is another reason why we're such a big proponent. So if partnering and marrying young, is because we're not meant to go on this journey of life by ourselves. We're not designed as human beings to be by ourselves. So the more time you spend conditioning yourself to not operate in the space with somebody else, the more you just setting yourself up to not know what that's like. I know how to move with a woman, no, no, no, no. You understand the concept, but until you're living it, you don't know it. And so the more we can start conditioning ourselves, okay, you think you from zero to 18, you're living with your parents. You're in a family environment with, you've got sisters, mom, hopefully intact, right? Family, you're in an environment where you're seeing man, woman, dynamic, siblings, brother, sister, boy, girl, dynamic, you're in that environment. And the average life expectancy is 78, 80 years old, whatever it may be. You know, if you get married at 30, 35, 40 years old, even at 40, you're still going out 40 years, right? That you're gonna be in living in proximity. Hopefully you don't get divorced, right? With another person. So we're not designed to be by ourselves. For 40 years, you get married late, you're gonna be with somebody else. Why would you spend 15, 20 years conditioning yourself against what we're not set up for? You're not gonna know how to operate in that space, no matter how much conceptual understanding you have. And that's why it's gonna create a joke for you. Like, whoa, you come into the scenario and you're like, yo, this is, I got a young newlywed brother that, you know, I just talked to the other day. I was like, what's going on, newlywed man? How's it been? Like, yeah. And I mean, he's like fresh. I mean, I don't even know if he a couple months in, he might be like a couple weeks in. And he like, yeah, it's an adjustment. Yeah, when you've conditioned, what's the adjustment like when you ain't been in the gym for a minute? I'm having these conversations. Now, of course I'm giving it to my 13 year old or 13 year old level, but she already understands differences in men and women, differences in desires in men and women. Why? Cause she asked me because at 13, she's seeing this stuff on TV. The G rated meaning, the PG, the PG 13 is so different when I grew up versus when she grew up. And so she's saying different meanings. My husband called her on something that she was saying. He'll have to tell you. I'm gonna say cut this if you need to. That I'm not even catching it. She was like, she told my husband, he was like, you know what I'm doing? I'm doing no nut November. And she had already said this to me. We talk like, we all, she said it to me. I was like, Kayla, I'm not doing that. I'm eating my walnuts. I eat walnuts every day. Doing that Kayla, you see how the touch I am. And so she's sitting at the kitchen table and she, we've had this conversation. Like even last year it just, she was like, yeah, last year they talked about doing it. I didn't do it. I'm doing no nut November. It means nothing to me. And it just flies. It just flies up. And we're, I'm literally when she's having this conversation, putting walnuts into my fruit salad. I'm like, Kayla, I'm not doing that. I eat almonds and walnuts all the time. I'm not doing that. And so she's sitting at the kitchen table. She has this conversation with dad. He's walking in. She's like, dad, I think I'm going to do no nut November. He's like, what, what is my 13 year old talking about? Did she know what she was talking about? Not at all. She had no idea what she was talking about. None. And so James was like, he was like, wait a minute. He comes to help me. He's like, yeah, he's like, wait a minute. He's like, did you know about Kayla's talk? I was like, yeah, we talked about it. I was like, I told her I'm not doing it because of the walnuts. He's like, oh my gosh, my wife. He's like, that's not what it means. I was like, oh. So I had to have that dialogue with her and explain what that meant to her. And she was like, I was like, I know, honey, it's some different. You're going to even hear more as you get older, but come to me about it. We both own the salad. Dad had to figure it out. And I explained to her, this is what this term means. This is this. And we went through all the technical stuff and all that kind of stuff, not to bore your readers, but we went, our listeners, not to bore your listeners, but we went through all of that. And we're having these conversations at 13. Why? Because I'm homeschooling her. So she's not getting on the bus and getting this from the girls in the bus. She's not sitting in the classroom and getting all of this from the girls and the boys in the classroom. We're able to parse all of this stuff in a household with care, love, and she's not getting her brain tainted as much because I'll be truthful. If I could have it my way, which I wouldn't do this, I would strip all social media. We'll just look at the physical world results, get out of the virtual world. We're chasing happiness more. We're chasing, do without will, should be the hold of the law. We're chasing, whatever makes you happy, you got to do what you happy. And we're less happy than past generations. Even with all the things that we dealt with as our people, do we think that we're really more fulfilled? Like, let's get happiness. Happiness is fleeting. Happiness is a feeling. We get so caught up on feelings, dopamine. How does it make me feel? Man, that's a chemical balance going on. That's temporary. Let's talk about real joy and fulfillment. Would you say that we're more fulfilled now than we were in the past? I don't think so. And we're getting married later. If we look at the average marrying age, so in the physical world, is it working? I would say no. My biggest issue was not listening. I still work on it. Let me be clear. You get passionate as a woman, you're emotional. I revert to, I have to make conscious decisions to equalize. Like, let me hear what you're saying. Let me stop trying to figure out the next thing to say. Let me just take in, because the conflict is in truly what I believe, men have more testosterone, right? That leads to being more aggressive, right? And so that leads to some great characteristics. You need that aggression in leadership. You need that aggression in protection. We have come so far out of touch with society that men don't even get an outlet for that a lot of times. My husband is a wrestling coach. Thankfully, he gets an outlet for that. He takes my son to wrestle at nine years old. They have an outlet for that. It's sometimes that I've heard him say, you know what, I just want to, ah, I just gotta, because it gets pent up in you, you feel like I need to go box. I need to go, he lifts weights. We do all kind of, he does physical active stuff that is needed, right? Because he has a higher level of testosterone. This is like what we had talked about earlier with the toxic masculinity. Like, men can be men, it's okay. It's okay for a man to be a man. Because if it comes down to us women needing protection, we're gonna look to them like, you supposed to protect me, right? You're stronger, you're taller, or should be able to protect me. Yeah, we're trying to pacify and say that they're equal. So by golly, if James and somebody is attacking us and they got a gun, it will be crazy for him to put me out front. He gonna move me around to the side because his role is to protect. And so when we're dealing with society and they're saying, no, everybody's equal, that's crazy, right? And so I had to step out of that role of these are hit roles that he agreed, these are my roles that I am good at. Why am I trying to over talk him in dealing with this conflict resolution? Why am I trying to lead in this situation of resolving whatever the issue is? Be quiet and let's just listen and listen for understanding. You're gonna have to listen for understanding in a loving relationship and check that against who that person is. I think a lot of times we want to judge who a person is based on who they are in that moment and the emotion and everything that's going on in that moment. We want to judge that particular person against that versus judging them against, this is who you are at your core. Can we all grow and improve? Of course we can with dealing with emotions and dealing with all that kind of stuff. But as we're growing and improving, I still need to allow you grace. And how do I allow my husband grace in a conflict resolution situation? I close my mouth and I see what he's talking about. Why? He's a leader. Maybe he has some insight that I haven't looked at. I've said different things to James. Like, hey, have you ever considered that? He's like four times over. This is what I do. This is my role. Like this is what I do. He's like, by the time you thought about this one time, I thought about it 10 times. Why? Because that's what he does. He literally was built for it. He came out of his mother's womb with certain characteristics that I did not come out with. I came out of my mother being a nurturer. Why? Because I'm the only part of the species that can bear a child and carry it. The babies aren't looking at James for milk and nourishment. They're looking at their mama. I came out of the womb of a comforter. Why? Because when that child is crying and hurt, it's coming to me, mama. Why? Because I'm a nurturer. They go hand in hand. I came out the womb being a support. Why? Because he's the leader. So I know it to get in line. I have to be able to support. And being a support system is not something that is weak. It's very strong. Me supporting us on our vision. A lot of times I believe it is one of the strongest roles that anyone can have being part of that support system. When you drive over a bridge, you're not thinking about everything that's underneath the bridge. You all you see is this beautiful bridge, but that bridge would crumble without the support system. Fall apart, be in the ground. And I think we don't look at our roles. Men or women, we're falling apart because we don't look at our roles at how strong they are and how they're built for us. Women, we're looking at, hey, we gotta go get the bag. We need to be the leaders. We need to do all of this kind of stuff because a lot of times men have to mend that role and how do they demean that role by sending the woman out to go work a job so that we can get more stuff. Modern society has said it's all about the stuff. It's all about the cars, the houses, the boats, the travel. And let's be honest, it's almost impossible with the average salary the way it is at 45,000. So let's say you sniff 60, 70,000, you got three kids. I'm gonna have to send you out so we can have two cars. We can have all this other stuff that we want to have. So you're gonna have to go out and work, wife, and work for somebody else so that you can bring in 30, 40, 50, 60, 70,000 or more so that we can have this lifestyle we want and at the same token, we're gonna send the kids off to school to be raised by somebody else so that we can have the lifestyle that we want. But is the lifestyle worth the sacrifice? What are we giving up in everybody's shipping off and going somewhere else? What are we giving up? We're giving up the family unit. We're giving up the black community. We're giving up the togetherness. And that's why we homeschool. That's why we do family business because we've sent a route that you can create where you can have the things you want, the lifestyle you want by doing it in the family. Our daughter has a book. She's 13 years old. She wrote a book when she was 10. We guided her through that. We worked her through that. She sold 1,000 copies her first month. How do we do that? By everybody coming together, this is the vision, the goal, the plan. This is what we are going to do. Was it 1,000 copies her first year? My husband knows the stats but she's been very successful at her book. Why? Because it was a goal and a vision of ours. It was one of the goals and visions. Okay, you wanna write this book. So what are we moving towards and going towards for the family? How does that work? And how that ties all back in is as a woman because I know my mouth can run. I may not listen because the estrogen is rolling. It has some great characteristics. Let me talk about that. But at the same token, being the more emotional of the sex is if you say something wrong to me, my feelings get hurt. My feelings just get hurt all the time early on. Just like, oh, my feelings are hurt. I'm not talking to you. He don't even know nothing's going on because I ain't talking to him. I'm not talking to you. So the conflict never got resolved and I'm harboring this resentment about this issue and it takes me two or three days to let it go. What do I do now when we have a conflict or issue? Let's just talk about it. I'm gonna come back to you and I'm gonna talk about it. This is why I feel what I do. This is the way that it is. One of the, I'm gonna tell you this story, then I'm gonna be gone. We were in the bathroom, so James was getting ready and he was in the shower. Well, he's playing his music in the shower and I am at the sink getting ready. And he just said, got out and I got a call coming in. And I raised my voice and I say, no, I didn't raise my voice. I said to him, babe, can you turn your music down? Well, the reason I was saying that is because I had a call coming in from the babysitter because we were getting ready to go. And in that moment, he's like got something on his hands. He's putting beard oil on or whatever so he can't turn the music down. And so I pick up the call on my watch. So he can't, he's not seeing all this happen in real time. And I, like, I'm on my Apple Watch. I'm like, hello. So he flips out because he think I'm talking to him. I wouldn't dare say anything like that to my husband. And so I was hurt in that moment. Like I was crushed. Let me say I was crushed because I felt like he thought I would ever talk to you like that. And he thought that it was weird that I did that. And it was like, hello. I was like, oh my gosh. And I was like, I was talking to my watch. The babysitter was calling. And so in that moment, I was just taken back. I was crushed. I could have let that fester. I could have let that sit there like, I can't believe my husband would think I would yell at him that way. We don't yell at each other. Like, we're not doing that. Like, I can't believe he thought that what did I do for him to think that? But I went and I talked to him. And I was like, I would never talk to you like that. He apologized immediately. Like, babe, I thought whatever it was. And then we move on with the day. Kiss, makeup. And it wasn't anything makeup, but my feelings got so crushed and hurt. But that's just something that back in the day, in my 20s, when we were new in a relationship and just getting mentorship, that I would have been like, all right. What about the failed business rate? Is that higher than the divorce rate? But we still chase entrepreneurship. We still champion entrepreneurship. Why? Because, yeah, 90% of businesses don't make it through X amount of years or whatever the case is. But we don't think about it like, yo, I'm gonna be one of them. We ask them a better question. We don't ask, well, what should I do instead of entrepreneurship? We ask, what's the difference to those 10% that make it? The young man that wants to go play college ball. You know, only this percentage of athletes go on to play in college. Okay, cool. So what's the difference about those percentage and why do they make it? Because at the end, the divorced older man that's in the barbershop, you don't wanna be him, right? Like you like, yo, I don't want his situation. Well, what about the older man in the barbershop that ain't never been married? You won't be him? You might not want him in his situation either, right? Like we love to tell the women, you gonna die alone. It's being dying alone too. Like is that, you wanna sign up for that? We're not designed to be by ourselves. So ask the better question of what separates the ones who actually have it successful because that's a beautiful, you know, situation. And if you look at people who, you know, marry younger, have family involvement and helping them in the vetting process. They have had less, you know, partners, ideally none when they get married. What do you think the divorce rate, if we could get the numbers on those metrics of they married young with heavy parent involvement, not necessarily dictating like you, you're going to marry as part, but having the wisdom of the elders, you know, to help them choose a mate and they were chased when they got married. What do you think divorce rate? I don't think, I doubt it's 50%. If us going in the opposite direction of the lane, get more or foregoing it all together, if that was giving us the results that we wanted, we could look at our community and be like, yo, since we started getting married, we winning. Since we waiting later and later and later to get married and getting more bodies and getting more Trump. That's why therapy is such a, you know, advocated thing now. Oh, I think everybody needs therapy. I think that's some of the craziest talk out here. We're so conditioned to accumulate so much trauma that we think everybody needs therapy. And a lot of the baggage that we complain about, and there's women got so much baggage nowadays, where did they get it from? From not having somebody help them vet and get partnered with somebody younger. They got the baggage from being out here in this set pool of dating often times. And they're, you know, so last thing I say on this is a lot of the men out here, they're making a mistake of trying to have women understand men. Brothers, you don't need to get women to understand men. You need to get a woman to understand you. So we get on the internet and we fight, women don't understand men. And that's what is keeping us resistant because the women out here, women, women still don't understand men. But guess what? My wife understand me. She on my page, she on my program. Why do I care that the modern woman out here is doing this and doing that? My wife ain't. Women need to do this, women need, no, my woman needs to do this and my woman needs to do that. And that's a conversation and a crafting and a molding that I do. I've had people talk about, that sounds like molding. Yes, it is. It sounds like grooming. Yeah, I grew my wife to be my top living wife. She's my wife. I know it's gonna make me upset some people, but it is what it is. My wife is crafted and molded to be my partner and my helpmate. So guess what? She's gonna have my tendencies, my likings because I molded and crafted her to be that way because she's gotta be my fit, fit. So why I'm spending all this energy trying to get women to do that? With you, black girl, tell me how you really feel. I wanna keep it real with you. I wanna live better, eat better. I wanna love better, sleep better. Yeah, I wanna feel so aligned.