Dream Plan Execute (+Q&A)

In my life, I've used the idea of where you want to get to as a measure to start.

You've got to start with the end in mind.

I believe that creativity is freedom and wealth.

I'm a creative, but I had to put structure around my creative goals, dreams, and aspirations.

My mom said, 'Your gift will make room for you.'

Yes, creativity is freedom plus wealth, but creativity unbridled can become chaos.

It is important to me to at least set the framework for how we make sure there is improvement, but not displacement.

For me, I'm a businessman. I bring people solutions. This is a solution to a state problem. This is big.

I am not going to get to my objective if I try to absorb everyone else's stuff.

So I think it's just being able to just say 'no' sometimes. To myself first, because I've got, you know, two business ideas a day.

The only person I want to be is myself. But I want to learn from folks. I want to be challenged. I want to push back. And I want to create a rich legacy.

My wife passed away seven months ago . . . and I mean it's tough, you know , . . . but when she passed away I decided that I was going to harness all my grief and burn it like jet fuel creatively, and she is still teaching me to this day.

I remember getting out of juvenile detention on a Sunday. No one gets out of jail on Sunday.

My punishment was I had to get a job.

I told my friend . . . ' I cannot work for anybody, not in that sense,' and I was 14 years old. And so I started cutting hair in the basement. I started selling t-shirts in the halls of North High. And by the time I was 16, I was making 950.00 a week.

So I figured my way forward creatively and that's been my journey.

The mature version of the entrepreneur started to emerge.

Four years later, we had a company that had done ten million dollars in sales through this process of being creative, of sticking to it, but then putting those barriers around it to actually give us something that could scale.

Though we had become successful, we weren't really making a huge impact for anybody other than ourselves.

My mantra for life is to dream, to plan, and to execute.