The First Year With My Son
The year 2020 was the first year I spent with my 17-year-old son.
Yes, I just said that and let me clarify a bit.
The year 2020 was a curveball for everyone in one way or another, and thankfully I was not immune. I became the guardian of my teenage godson at the beginning of the year 2020. He moved in with me to give him some stability and guidance as he is finishing high school. Who would have thought we would rend up teaching each other in the process?
You see, I am an 80’s and 90’s baby, a millennial and life-long entrepreneur without children. The main reason I decided not to have children early in life is because I wanted to take every risk possible, and I did not want to raise a child with any uncertainty of being able to provide for them.
This is due to my upbringing.
I was raised by a single mother and although she never showed dissatisfaction with being a single mother, I know she would have been more open to pursue a career in creative arts if she didn’t have to hold down a “real job” and provide for my sister and me by herself. She is a dreamer, a creative at heart that never found the path to connect her creativity to a career. Which is something that many creatives find themselves challenged with.
As a child, I loved to draw and use my imagination. Legos, comic books, and sports made me tick. I built cities for all my action figures to live in. I drew blueprints, even crafted a 3ft tall Sears Tower out of construction paper and poster board just because I wanted my characters to live in the same city that I grew up in and wrote stories about their adventures. The goal in life was always to create a career where storytelling was a cornerstone and I could use my imagination to the fullest. I would depend on my own efforts to determine my income, not a job. As an entrepreneur I can control my destiny and what success means to be. I try to show my godson how to own his destiny everyday.
We Learn from Each Other
Although I have never been a parent before, I’ve always understood some key ingredients to a constructive relationship between parents and their kids. And I owe this to my mother, especially when I was a child, she established a level of trust and honesty. She established the importance of listening and open communication, which led to us having far less arguments and dysfunction than many other families that I knew growing up. And we had far more positive support and collaboration in our household. I do the same today with my godson where I’m always honest in that I know I can learn from him just as much as he can learn from me. I’m never going to pull the “this is my house and that’s the way it is” stuff because we all know when people lay rules down like that people tend to shut down, stop listening, and start plotting how to break every rule being given. Also, I remember being a teenager and he is very much a teenager. Lord have mercy upon my SOUL, he is a 17-year-old boy. So, every day we are learning from one another.
What he taught me
Be Yourself All Day and Everyday
This boy loves to dance and sing. He practices singing and playing the piano every single day, so please pray for my ears. No matter where we go, if the right song comes, he will literally stop everything to break out into song, start singing and dancing and won’t hold back. He’s a natural entertainer and that is just who he is. That’s living. Sadly, so many of us adults don’t do this enough. Not break out into song in the middle of Michigan Avenue, but just be us and make it a part of our daily lives. I’ll tell you right now that although I work out on a daily basis and have what a lot of people have considered an abnormal amount of energy, I must say — where the hell does this kid get all this damn energy from? it’s like he is a walking, living tanker truck full of Reign energy drinks! With no sign of a crash.
And honestly that’s one of the things I enjoy about this kid and have learned just from watching him practice music and dancing, if we are going shopping or leaving the park after a workout or going grocery shopping or right after finishing some schoolwork it doesn’t matter, this boy is himself ALL DAY and EVERYDAY. This is the way to live life. Do not compromise who you are for anyone else. Put yourself in an environment where you can be the best you, naturally who you are. Obviously if you have some traits with tendencies that let’s just be honest are not exactly ideal for the typical workplace then the typical workplace is not for you. This is why many musicians and artists don’t typically do well in what is considered a traditional business setting. It doesn’t do well for what they need in-order to thrive, most creative types need to be in a creative environment. Coincidentally, a lot of people are finding ways to tap into their creative side since the Pandemic started forcing many of us to work from home and work remotely. This has allowed many creatives the opportunity to literally design the best and ideal work environment for them to thrive. For those of us that have the luxury of having a home office we can turn that into our creative space, do it immediately and create daily. Yes, hold down your real job, but do as much as you can to release your creative side daily. I have learned a lot from this young man, and one of the best lessons is to simply enjoy being yourself everyday no matter where you are.
Don’t Look So Serious
So, I mention he’s very creative and I have definitely seen the heights of some of that creativity. Especially when it comes to Halloween and he wanted to dress up as Heath Ledger’s rendition of the Joker from “Batman the Dark Knight” movie and one of the most popular lines from the movie is when he says to the Batman is,
This kid epitomizes the statement. It is a positive way of course. He laughs as much as possible, and makes me smile even when I’m very, very, busy and sometimes that’s the exact medicine that’s needed. I mean, clearly, I have a sense of humor, heck stand-up comedy specials are my favorite category on Netflix, and I grew up watching Def Comedy Jam and Comedy Central. Although, when I’m busy, I’m busy. I’m the kind of person when I start something I have to finish it. I want to execute to the best of my ability no matter what I start, and I take it personally when I work on something because my work is a reflection of who I am. But we all need to laugh, and we don’t need to always be so serious. Sometimes, we just need to laugh, and this young man is all the “humor insurance” I need. I’ve seen him execute some of his most difficult music practice or homework and then breaks with a humorist mental break. It’s important to take a mental break here and there because stress will kill you. And 2020 was one of the most stressful years in recent history, not to mention all the aftermath. So don’t look so serious all of the time.
Over communicate
One of the best things about mentoring or parenting young people, you understand the importance of communication. Actively listening. Tailoring the message to the recipient so they grasp your message. Making sure the message is clear, concise, and consistent. Over communication is better than no communication, as long as the message is consistent. When setting rules or providing guidance, I see that he fully understands when there is not any wavering. Using wall calendars and electronic calendars to keep us in sync with events and expectations like chores. But most importantly we communicate expectations of each other through active listening and holding each other accountable. We rather over communicate than take the chance of miscommunicating something vital.
What I taught him
Don’t Let Fear Control Your Decision Making
Sometimes you just got to cut the world off around you and focus on what makes you happy, the best you that you want to be. Sometimes you will allow fear to control your movements and your progress and although you may make progress in life, you’re actually not progressing in doing what you desire. Do what you love. Start early and do it often. This way you enjoy making progress along a path. Don’t go down a path that does nothing for you spiritually, emotionally, personally, and it truly doesn’t fulfill you. This is exactly what I’ve been explaining to my godson when we have our cool discussions every few days over a round of Mortal Kombat. Of course, he wipes the floor with me most of the time, but only when he selects Scorpion.
I explain to him not to worry about money because you can make money doing anything. Literally anything. Focus on being successful in the field that you enjoy. In our chat, I explained this to him after he overheard me telling a story on my podcast. I was talking about one of the first millionaires I ever met. For lack of a better term, he called himself a “Shity Millionaire” yes you heard me correctly. One of the first millionaires I ever met was a gentleman who ran a business distributing and supplying compost and I will never forget the simple statement he told me and the lesson I learned from speaking with him. He said, “you can make money doing anything as long as it’s solving a problem for someone else” then he said he found a passion while working on clients’ properties. He didn’t want a career in photography, but he wanted time and money to just learn, shoot, and enjoy his creative passion. He had more than enough time to pursue because he was making more than enough money working a job and staying in a business that he started 30 years before the day I met him. He created a career that gave him time to also focus on his personal passion, so he was a photographer, he didn’t make any money from it, but he spent a lot of money on it, and he was able to do photoshoots any day he wanted. He was more than fulfilled because he would go hard making phone calls, sending out emails, and when he was done working with contacts, he could take one or two weeks off just to go on a drive and do some landscape photography across the country. The key to true success is to identify what you desire early on and pursue it feverishly.
As we get older, what starts to creep up into our lives and control our actions is fear. Fear of being late on bills, fear of taking chances, and how those chances or reactions are going to affect us. So, we stop pursuing our passion even though that passion could lead to a lucrative career and more importantly, happiness and fulfillment. Now I’m not saying to be irresponsible, instead I am saying take the time to understand what it is you truly want and invest in that subject or practice. This way your “debts’’ that you are responsible for are actual investments. This aligned with a topic of one the podcast episodes where we talked about being “Purpose Driven and Not Priority Driven” and taking actions toward your overall purpose because priorities change. They shift as we get older, and more responsibilities come into our lives. But if we focus on our overall purpose then the priorities will fall in line and lead toward our ultimate goals.
Give 100% on Monday to get 100% on Friday and enjoy 100% of Saturday
Do not expect to get a 100% return out of the 50% effort you put into anything. Based on what I have seen throughout my life, sadly a lot of people have the mindset of “doing a little, to get a lot in return”. It does not work that way. I do not care if you like or dislike a person, any person that has achieved anything had to put in some work somewhere. So, I do my best to explain this to my godson, not to have a Lottery Mentality, instead have an Investor’s Mentality. Put all of yourself and as much of your time, your energy into developing skills in whatever field that you want a 100% return on. Therefore, do not expect to get the most when you’re not giving the most. The same goes into that saying, we consider Monday to be the workday. The day that you know that this is the first day of the workweek so let’s put as much effort into it. I remember this in the world of sales which was my first real job out of college where I had a trainer who always said you set up your business on Monday so you can really enjoy that paycheck on Friday and NOT HAVE TO DO JACK on Saturday and Sunday!
Now I know some people think, “well you know I like to have the 4 hour work day” or “I like to get a lot more out of whatever I am doing as opposed to me putting in more energy” and the funny thing about it is if you think about people who make the most money when it comes to things like residual income and passive income is that they don’t make so much because they spent less time working hard, they make so much in residual income because they did so much on the front and they could relax more and capitalize on the backend.
For example, think about being a musician that makes a very, very, very good sum of money from the music that they recorded and published. The interesting thing about it is that for years they did not make a dime off what they were doing. They could have been singing in choirs or even singing on the street corners and singing at open mics, they were writing music for friends and did not make any dollars out of that or their performances on YouTube and performing on Instagram. They were practicing with their vocal coaches and they were not making a dollar off any of that for years potentially, but they put in all that work. Working hard on Monday, so when that Friday comes, they can really enjoy that paycheck and then on Saturdays and Sundays they can relax and chill and take the days off completely. So, to go hard for 8, maybe even 10 to 12 hours a few days out of the week in-order to enjoy nice paychecks and enjoy “mailbox money” as we like to call it in the music business almost every day of your life is utterly worth the investment. Enjoy more weekends of not doing work and spending time just chilling with your loved ones.
To get a 100% return on your investment, crush your Monday through Thursday look at that bank account on Friday then sit back and enjoy your Saturdays and Sundays, then get right back at it.
Find your passion early and be the best you can be at it.
My passion can be summarized in a few simple words; Learn, Create and Share.
I’ve always enjoyed learning new ways to express my thoughts and creativity. And I have always been an observer of the world around me and enjoyed finding creative methods to illustrate or explore specific topics/events or just an imaginative way telling a story. I found that marketing was all about connecting a brand’s message with the right audience. What better way than to use creativity to do that with advertising, promotions, and business development the more creative and unique the more memorable and more tailored that message will be. That’s why marketing always stood out to me. I grew up in the mid-90s and early 2000s where digital marketing was changing the marketing profession. At an early age I allowed influence to tell me that I couldn’t make a living from my passion and my passion is storytelling. Once again when I found out how to use my creativity to develop a career in marketing, I started tuning the world out and focusing on what made me happy years ago and channeled my creativity into a profession. Over the past year this is what I have had long discussions with my godson about. No matter what the world throws you, it’s always going to give you its own $0.02 cents and its opinion but it’s up to you to be honest with yourself about what makes you happy and what wakes you up in the morning. Focus on the thing that you can’t stop thinking about when you’re asleep and channel that into a profession or career.
This way you make a living doing what you love or make a living while making sure you take the time to do what you love. Let’s be honest not all of us live off of our passion but we make sure that our passion projects find a way into our everyday lives. I know many musicians don’t make their living from music, but they are playing in bands or they write music, some even teach music while making a living as electrical engineers and mechanics, but you can find him jamming at a local club every weekend and posting his latest gig on YouTube. Find your passion and stick with it no matter what then you will lead a fulfilled life.
Finish What You Start
The simplest thing to do that can disrupt your path to success, is to get so focused on something and then immediately switch our attention to the next task without making sure you completely closed out the previous task. Circling back making sure tasks are coming full circle is a simple thing but easy to overlook. My godson has this issue and at one point I did this as well. The funny thing about it is that this was a bad habit I picked up from an associate of mine. They were always really passionate to start something and “complete” it but wouldn’t circle back to ensure all “I’s” were dotted and “T’s” were crossed. For instance, let’s say they created a PowerPoint presentation they will create the presentation get all the way to the end of the presentation, save it and start a whole new project without going back through the presentation making sure everything had been done efficiently before presenting it at work. This is a bad habit that I picked up and had to get out of my routine quickly. Slowly here and there it creeps back up. As I saw my godson struggling at school because of the same issue, I shared with him ways to learn more productive habits. He would do all his homework and literally everything is homework because he is going to school remotely. But he would complete work and forget to submit his homework because they can upload it at any time.
I showed him that you consider everything that you do a circle, I started this habit and it has helped me along the way so I showed him to start at the top of the circle and we make our way all the way to the 45ﾟ point with checkpoints between 1 and 45. When we get to 60, we can work our way back to 1 and make sure we have completed every step or we have reviewed every step to ensure our work is truly complete and ready to present. I picked up the bad habit in my undergrad program and had used this practice to replace the bad habit when I started my first business. He is using this same technique to study for his STAs and college application process.
Sing Like No One is Watching, When Everyone is Watching.
The world is going to judge you no matter what and the best thing about this is that this is the world being the world! You have to be you. You have to do what makes you happy. I mentioned this to him when I found out how much he really enjoyed singing but he was so hard at critiquing himself. He let the world’s opinion seep into his brain bring down his drive to try. He stopped singing.
So, I would challenge him, if you want this then no matter what the world says to you have to work so hard and elevate your skills to satisfy yourself. Not others. Do what you love and be successful for yourself. So, I asked him, “Would you like to make a living as a singer?” he said, “yes, yes I would love to make a living as a singer.” So, I asked, “Do you think everyone’s going to be a fan of your singing?” And his reply was he knew everyone wouldn’t be, but hopefully I will have enough people that I can make a living from singing. So, I finished with, “exactly that’s all the matters you can’t please everybody you should never try to please everybody. Your goal should only be to be the best that you can be at what makes you happy. Your fanbase will find you but work hard to satisfy yourself. Sing your heart out. Practice like there is no tomorrow and your next big performance is tonight.
When I start a new project, like a website for a client my focus of course are the parameters and criteria from the client. I have things that my team has to deliver because we actually have a customer. So, I have to satisfy and meet their expectations. When I’m doing a project like an episode of the Podcast or new blog, yes, I want to get my facts right, I want to get everything correct, all my sources, all that stuff and at the same time I know I’m going to have comments from people that may not like what I wrote or may not like the episode or critique what I have to say. But that’s life. If you are an individual that doesn’t want to be criticized, then never attempt to do anything. The only way to save you from those things is to never attempt to do anything in life and that’s a horrible way to live. Be yourself, work to your best to be the best you could be.
You can never be perfect, but you can always strive for perfection. But there’s a fundamental difference between striving for perfection and not doing anything because it’s not perfect. A good example and I am so glad we got to watch this together, one of the positive outcomes from Quarantine, we watched the documentary, “The Last Dance” which is about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls during their last championship season and reviewed their dynasty. One of the positive things during the pandemic is that many people got to spend more time at home with close family and forced opportunities for parents to connect with young people and share experiences. My godson and I watched this together and he got to see in-order to be great and reach greatness the dedication one has to put into their craft is almost unparalleled. Jordan said that all he wanted to be the best basketball player that he could be. And he was. Arguably the greatest of all times. Does he care what people say, yes, we all do, but he left the game clearly thinking, “my resume speaks for itself’ and in the end that is all anyone can do. Control what you can control.
As you grow, succeed, and accomplish goals you will have haters and be criticized. In the words of the great Katt Williams, your goal should be to acquire new haters everyday by being successful
Because haters are going to do what they are supposed to do, they’re going to hate. So, whether you do what you love or not, whether you are great or not. Haters are everywhere, so don’t shortchange yourself by holding back and doing things half-way. Work smart and go hard for your passion and let the world be the world.
Closing
This is his last year of high school and I have seen this young man grow so much from a few years ago. And he has helped me grow, we are learning from one another and building together. I cannot say this enough that this is one of the best experiences in my life and I am a better man because of what this relationship. I tell my godson every chance I get that I look forward to seeing the man that he becomes. As we move forward through 2021, I hope all of us will take all the lessons and opportunities that we learned from 2020 and keep doing it a thousand times better. Because one of the greatest failures we can do is learn a lesson and not build on that lesson daily and share what we learned with others. Make an effort to share what you learned with others. Let’s do our best not to lose these lessons that we picked up from 2020 and grow together.
Hey, stay in touch. Drop me a line and let’s connect! I devote my professional life to helping entrepreneurs and creatives reach their professional goals and make a career out of their passion.
I’m Ehren Muhammad, Founder of EMPro, Ltd
Podcast: The Ambition Show
YouTube: Ehren Muhammad channel
Twitter: ChiBrother85
