Derrick Hayes | Ambition, Family and Cheesesteaks

Derrick Hayes, Founder of Big Dave's Cheesesteaks, named in honor of his late father. His restaurant started in a gas station and has since expanded to multiple locations, including Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Derrick is also a community advocate, supporting cancer research, and the David & Derrick Hayes College Fund. Recognized nationally by Forbes, Good Morning America, and Essence Magazine, Derrick embodies entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and culinary excellence.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Talking to Death is released weekly every Wednesday and brought
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dot com or on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Talking to Death is a production of tenderfoot TV and
iHeart Podcasts.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Listener discretion is advised. Welcome back, mum. Well there he
is on a little MacBook screen. What are you doing
out there? Where are you?

Speaker 2 (00:36):
I'm in the studio.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Where are you at? I'm in Alaska? Still? Oh?

Speaker 2 (00:40):
What happened?

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Well? I had to change our flights. It's a logistical
nightmare of folks. It's a thing. It takes a long
time to get here, so once you're already out here,
you kind of just got to make it work. I
don't think I've ever needed a haircut as bad as
I do right now, and I'm just turning into this
Alaskan mountain man. I am just incapable of growing facial hair.

(01:09):
But if you can see it, which I hope you can't,
it's this weird stubble that kind of accumulates over time.
It's one of those like etching sketch kind of vibes
that can never complete a full beard. I'm thirty six
and I can't grow a beard. It's embarrassing. I hate it.
It's a little patch right here that just never wants

(01:30):
to complete. It's like someone put like tape right there
and it just refuses to grow. First world problems. But
we're out here in Alaska still Mike is not well.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
I'm in the office and it's dinner time, so I'm
waiting for dinner. Apparently it's noon there or something.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Guys looks like you just three zero pm. Okay, let's
talk about how fun your flight was yesterday. Though it
had to be a blast.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Oh, it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Let me tell you about the second flight after I
flew what is it five hours from Anchorage to Seattle,
then five more hours from Seattle to Atlanta overnight, so
I landed. I got home at six twenty am, and
luckily I can't sleep on planes, so I'm very well rested.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
So you're refreshed, You're good.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
I feel great.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, you've got to get a new man. I'm not
gonna lie. Ever since you've left, we've got a little
bit lonelier, a little bit more depressed.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
You know, no one's cooking you breakfast.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
You never cooked breakfast anyway. No, I think it's one
of those things where, honestly, the constant lack of daylight,
just always being dark, eventually starts to make you just
feel different. I wouldn't say it's necessarily a bad thing yet,
but I don't have any sort of rhythm or cycle

(02:50):
to my day right now. This is the brightest it
will get, and it's not that bright. It could be
any hour of the day. But hey, we're here and
today I have a really fun guest. His name is
Derek Hayes. This guy is pretty much a local Atlanta

(03:10):
hometown hero in my opinion. He's not originally from Atlanta,
but he moved here when he was a kid, and
this is a business genius that's making waves not only
in Atlanta but all over the country. He was from
Philadelphia originally, and he brought quite possibly the best Philly

(03:33):
cheese steak to Atlanta that I've ever had. It's called
Big Dave's Cheese Steaks. And this guy has blown up
this business and is someone who I look up to
in terms of how to be an entrepreneur. This guy
has accomplished so much. He just was nominated for forty

(03:55):
under forty for Black Enterprise. The guy is a go.
He actually sent me a DM a few months ago
and said, hey, let's do a podcast. And this is
before Talking to Death was out. I just in the
back of my head was always thinking, man, this would
be such a fun guest. He came over to the
studio in Atlanta and we chopped it up for about
an hour or so, and then that night he invited

(04:18):
us out to this party he was throwing at Ponsanity
Market for him making the forty forty Black Enterprise list.
And I mean, I'm not gonna lie. We were just
straight vip in that bitch. It was a blast. It
was It was amazing. This guy really didn't have to
treat us with as much hospitality as he did, But
I was just flattered and I had a blast, and

(04:41):
I consider this guy my friend. Now, before you make
any assumptions about how cool a cheese steak business could be,
let me tell you that this is quite possibly the
fucking coolest. This guy is a mastermind and is taking
over the country with new franchises for the business. His wife,
Pinky Cole, has Slutty Vegan. If you've heard of that,

(05:04):
They are on the pulse of hip hop culture in
the black community. I had so many questions for this guy.
Was super honored that he was that he wanted to
talk to us at all. He is someone I think
is super fun. I look up to. I aspire to
have that. If I don't get that in my life,
it's fine, but man, it would be cool. Building a

(05:24):
business isn't easy. I've been doing it for seven years
plus with Tenderfoot. I admire his risk taking ability and
I think he's got I think he's got what it
takes to succeed and he's not afraid of failing, and
I think that is super important. And no matter what
you're doing, you got to have a little bit of

(05:46):
that in you to make it out here. And I
think you'll really enjoy this conversation here. It is dere
Kay's episode six. Well thanks for coming, man, No, man,
that's that's let's make this history. I uh just been

(06:08):
watching you on the internet and it seems like every
other day you're killing something else. What is like, how'd
you get here? And like for those who don't know
who you are and what you do and what you've done,
just give me a little little history. Lesson on what
you're up to.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
Well, my name is Derek Ky's aka Big Dave. A
lot of people call me Big Dave. That's my dad.
I named my business at them.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
He had Okay, I go. I asked you because, like,
your name isn't Dave?

Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (06:37):
Nah.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
He passed away from lung cancer in two thousand and nine.
Oh wow, And I wanted to make his his.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Name live on.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
I wanted to you know him in the right way.
So I wound up opening Big Dave Sea Steaks. You know,
I'm not a big guy, but he was a big guy,
So I represent the big name.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Naw.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
But I'm a kid out of West Philly going and
raised just like you know. Will you know what I'm saying?
Sight out of West heard that before?

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah, do you get tired of hearing that?

Speaker 3 (07:02):
I'm used to it now. I'm used to it now.
But I was an inner city kid, you know what
I'm saying, just trying to figure life out on the grind.
Always was around my friends. I always was a hustler, though,
like when I iced to sell bean piles and newspapers
when I was a little kid on the corners shoveling
snow for like the richer neighborhoods. I always was, you know,

(07:22):
trying to go out there and make my own dollar.
But along the way, you know, just being in the
situations and the environments I was in, you know, I
wanted more. I wanted to you know, be somebody. I
wanted to represent something differently than the opportunities that was
in front of me.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Where'd that come from? Though? Why'd you feel that way?

Speaker 3 (07:41):
I think because you know, at this certain it's like
it's like, at a certain amount of time of view
in a situation, if you want more out of life,
you'll get tired of it, you know. And I didn't
want to be procrastinated, Like I really wanted to make
something different than my life. So two thousand, I would say,
two thousand and two, Uh, my father and my mother

(08:02):
sent me to Athens, Georgia, my grandmother, I mean, and
my grandfather was already residing there, and I used to
go down in the summertime. So they was like, you know,
you're gonna go down there and finish high school because
high school was rough for me and Philly, I'm getting
in trouble and all that, and you're doing no just
being you know, in the environment you are. Like in
Philly when I was in school, just the way it worked,
Like your neighborhood might be going through with another neighborhood,

(08:25):
like on some beefing or yeah, beefing on some beef
and stuff, and like, really you got I walked to school,
you know, it ain't okay.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
It's like, hell shit, don't get on the wrong street
for real.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yeah, yeah, you gotta walk down the neighborhood. So it's
a lot of stuff that you know, what's happening at
that time. So you know, my parents thought that, you know,
it'd be good for me to just get another opportunity,
you know, you know, I shot at life, and when
I came to Athens, I'm like, oh man, what is
this Like, I never got a white people. Yeah, I
never went to school out.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Of the race. Also kill dogs, yeah, but not.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
Needless to say, I had the funnest damn time my life.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
The I mean, it's pretty hard to not have on there.
I feel like culture shock.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
I'm sure, no, it was, but it taught me a
lot of different things because then now from the other side,
I'm seeing a whole other side of life that I
never seen, you know, different was what like what was different,
just just the culture side of opportunity, you know, just
seeing like, you know, kids be able to take extracurriculum
activities and actually can afford the shit and stuff like that.

(09:24):
You know, it's like stuff like that. So I'm like,
you know, this is actually cool. If my friends or
if other people around in certain areas that I came
up and had these opportunities, man, a lot of people
would be you know, a lot more successful in being
able to help the world.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
And I took that in and you wanted to be
able to do that for your family, your friends, like
what you were seeing around you, Yeah, I want that
were there.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
Yeah, But when I was living in it in the beginning,
I didn't know it was the opportunity because again, you
come from an environment and then you come to a
new environment and.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
You're like, I don't belong here, Like what's going on?
So you felt like an outsider. Yeah, in the beginning, the.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Beginning, but I started to realize that, you know, I
do belong here. This is where God pit me, and
this is where I'm going to succeed at to change
my life.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
And that's what I did. It's really you kind of
just adapted to Oh no, definitely adapted.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
It wasn't the easier that it was, like me getting into,
you know, premature altercations with people. And I remember my
first day at school. Teacher I forgot her name. I
think her name is miss Sharp. I said to her
she said something to me, and she was like she
said something, and I was like yeah. She was like,

(10:33):
you mean yes, ma'am. And I'm saying to myself in
my head like yes ma'am, Like I don't call nobody that.
But again it's just so othern like polite shit. Yeah,
but it was a different upbringing. But then over time
I started to see, like it's certain little things of
life that I missed out on, even though I had
a good upbringing, but those type of principles and morals

(10:54):
that I've seen in the South.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
So you kind of learned like, okay, I should say
yes ma'am, Like it's very simple exchange, but you're picking
up on these other ways people are operating es.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
And then I'm looking at on the other side of it,
I'm meeting people and like I was an athlete, so
a lot of my athlete friends, they got weight benches
in their driveways, green grass and all that. I'm like, man,
you know, I'm from the hood. Like, ain't no green grass,
ain't no driveways, you know what I'm saying. Like that
was different from me. So all of these things was
a privilege. I'm like, y'all understand. And then they telling me, oh,

(11:28):
this high hood. I'm like this shi hood? You mean
this is like the suburbs, get nice hood? This is
niceod h, your way here?

Speaker 1 (11:34):
Right? So you know, what was the first big step
that you took as an entrepreneur that got you set
on the journey that you're on now. Believing in myself?

Speaker 3 (11:47):
You know, like you can wake up every morning and
you could be like you're going to do something when
you get out the bid, But if you already missed
that hour that you saw you was going to get up,
you already missed that opportunity. So I said, with this opportunity,
I was really going to take it. So I told myself, like,
I'm going to be a legal serial entrepreneur. And what
I mean by that is that I then might have

(12:07):
the education a lot of entrepreneurs had at that time,
But long as I had the first step of saying
I want to be it I'm going to be it
and I'm not going to.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Quit the bed. That's the approach I took.

Speaker 3 (12:17):
And man, like all the roller coaster rides I've been in,
it taught me something like no professor could teach me
these things in the classroom, right, because like nobody could
teach you how to lose like a half a million
dollars in a month and not knowing what you're doing
in business, like you know, there's no class for that.
So these are the things that I learned along the way,
And now I could teach people through experience, like I'm

(12:38):
not telling people and nothing wrong with you know, people
that took the educational right or even professors, but I
lived it, so me living it like I now can
say like a student can be the listener of a
teacher to say, oh yeah, my teacher actually lived these
moments and actually lived it and these are the ways
that he did it with the roller coaster rise, and

(12:59):
I could tell you not to do so you don't
get in those jam ups, because in business, you can
have a million dollars two million dollars in a business account,
do it wrong. In thirty days you have a negative
one hundred thousand. You know how it go like so
like sure, yeah, So like what I'm saying is like,
you really got to know what you're doing. So when
I took the point in my life to understand, like,
okd you got to the point of popularity. You got

(13:20):
to the point of the growth of the business. Now
it's time to scale. What do you got to do
to scale? You got to go hire the experience that
you don't know. You got to be around people smarter
than you.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
Also, you're recognizing the fact that maybe you're not the
best at this particular thing, and there's someone out there
that is.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
There's always somebody listening.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
You gonna be humble enough to do that too, right.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yes, always listen. I tell people as good as I
am and everything that I've done in my career so
far as an entrepreneur, it's going to be somebody better
as something. But what you do with your power while
you got the ball is will make you a legendary,
will make you legend that can't be replaced. It's a
difference between somebody being good at something and somebody made

(13:58):
something legendary because is how many people you've brung up
in that situation.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
To you what's being legendary? What's that mean to you?

Speaker 3 (14:06):
What makes what makes a legend to me is knowing
that I can build locations and give thirty to forty
new people jobs, career startups, opportunities at life that they
didn't have that they may have been stuck in life
like it's people in my company that didn't have resources
and opportunities that now have those resources and opportunities to
be able to spread their wings and grow inside my company.

(14:28):
So that's bigger than the dollar. That's bigger than the
actual self of the business, and that's bigger than me
because it's like a whole nest of help of every
time you go to a new city or a new neighborhood,
all of these people who probably America says that you
know that's in the way of what are they doing?
This gives at least a percentage, a good amount of

(14:51):
the percentage of those people to see that if somebody
looks just like them, even if they don't look like me,
a different culture can change mindsets.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Coming in a big day, says them.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
That's the way I look at it.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
Is that one of the things that I mean, because
it's really hard, I'm sure what you're doing is not easy, right,
and it's just always some new obstacle. But is that
one of the things that keeps your drive going Because
a certain point, you know, do you have to realign
why you were doing this at all.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
So let me tell you you already achieve all of
the things that you set out to do. Yeah, so
I'm glad you asked that, right. It's interesting, right, Yeah,
that's real interesting. So I'm gonna tell you the part
that that's hard for me is keep leveling the experience
of the brand because you can't be looked upon as
last year as you is now. They have to see

(15:44):
the level and that comes through believing in your people.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
Right.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
So the upside of what I'm doing that don't feel
like the job is I love motivating people. That's easy
for me. That's a layup, you know what I'm saying.
I love giving people inspiration. I love seeing somebody who
may have been down, but my I have listened to me,
had a conversation with me, or watched me say I
got the ball back, my battery is charged again. I'm
gonna get through these hard times. That feels better than anything.

(16:09):
So that part to me is not even work. That's
like what God gave me, the ability for people to
believe in the missions that I'm driven It does.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
That charge you doing that? Yeah? Hell yah?

Speaker 3 (16:18):
Charge me. Like if I'm not doing that, I'm stagnant.
And if I'm stagnant, I'm like quick saying like it's
like sometimes you know, I'm like a little kid that
got like a lot of sugar, and I'm like, I
can't sit still when it comes to wasteless time and
hours of a day. I have to go out there
and chase and go get it. Like, if I feel
like I'm sitting stagnant, I feel like I'm losing the

(16:39):
moments that God has given me right now to be
able to grow because everybody don't have the opportunity that
I'm having right now.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
So who motivates you?

Speaker 3 (16:48):
The people?

Speaker 1 (16:49):
So you get your motivation from your own motivation.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
Yeah, you know, like people look at the biggest people
in the world and be like, oh man, that person
motivates me. Not to say that they don't motivate me,
because a lot of the big dogs motivate me out
in the world right now. That's in the industries and
not an industry that I'm in. But I get motivated
off of looking at the kid on Instagram who may
have a bowtie company or a little kid that's you know,

(17:16):
they got the little they got the water boys in Atlanta.
You know, I've seen them, you know, transition that into
a company, which is inspiring. You know, Like those things
inspire me. Even when people don't know that I'm watching,
when they just think that I'm pouring out, they pouring
into me too, to be given me, to be able
to have the strength, to be able to go out
there every single day and be this person that I

(17:37):
am right now in as well, because it ain't easy
when distractions come your way. I wake up every day
with a distraction. You know, every single day is a
different thing. Whether it's somebody need opportunity in a certain
way or it's somebody that's not getting the opportunity in
a certain way. Those are the things that you have
to develop and when it comes to growth, because you're
gonna lose friends along the way, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
You can't please everybody.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
But what I'm learning this, I'm trying to do the
right thing for me to be able to help people
develop into what I built.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
For those who don't know. The water boys in Atlanta
are like the kids who sell bottle waters at like
the stop Frinds and stuff. How much are you buying
those waters for?

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Let me tell you how much I bought into them
waters before it became a company. I actually hired the
water boys and brung them inside the big days. I
actually gave them jobs.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
It was on the news.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
I took them up there just to work at the
restaurant or what. Yeah. I wanted to give them opportunity
because listen again, if you go rewind back what I said,
I sold bean piles and newspapers on a corner.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
You were doing that same thing.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
So when I drove past them, I was like, man, listen,
it's people out here that won't go get a job,
that actually break the law. These kids out.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
Here on the corner doing things.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
Now, you know, granted it might have been some stuff
that happened in between of what's going on, but that's
just like anything else in the world. You have, right,
you're going to have the good seeds and the bad seats,
and you can't paint that out for them to be
a bad seat as a whole. I've seen them dumb
boys out there, you know, you know, selling waters. You
know they wasn't you know, even if they wasn't selling
the water, they were entrepreneurs. So let me tell you

(19:10):
why when somebody can make you give up money without
getting a part. Yeah, well, they like, you sold me
something and I didn't get my product. You're good, you're
a salesman. You are entrepreneurs.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
They won't recently gave I gave them twenty bucks for it, yeah,
on cash app. But then this boy came up and
was like, YO about me. I'm like, let's put it
with your boy.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
But yes, but they got there, like no he got yo,
like hit your boy up on that one. But they
got Yeah, but they got they hustle. But what I
appreciate out of all of that is when you really
because like, I'm in a different stage in my life
right now, so I'm looking at the mirror differently than
they looking at it right now. But they don't even
realize inside themselves that they're hell of a salesman to

(19:49):
be able to get money for Curtsey. You appreciate that, Yeah,
you appreciate it later on to say I was actually
able to get these things without even actually giving you
the product. That's like, that's like the best car salesman
in the world.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
Right, you win, Yeah, you win, you got me and
I just did it willingly exactly.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
So I think those are the things when I mean
creating opportunity. So just like you just said with those
water boys, just imagine right now, it's a millions and
millions and millions of water boys out there that if
they just was in the right moments of life, you know,
they would have the opportunities to be able to show
people who they really are as human beings. That's how

(20:27):
we look at everything when it comes to the community
driven give back of the society that we live in.
Because if you look at all the four walls around
the United States right now, all of it is broken
down into basically stages. When it comes to your net worth,
what do you mean your environment is around what your

(20:48):
household income is. And I think those things when you
be able to take a kid outside of a lower
class income neighborhood, right and you put them in a
just say, if you put them in an average income
neighborhood of one hundred and fifty thousand, two hundred thousand dollars,
that leap of a jump will be able to give him.
It is like an aliu to a slam dunk, because

(21:09):
that's like taking a kid that was in a two
hundred and fifty thousand dout of a medium income neighborhood
to living in a two million to five million dollar
medium income neighborhood. You know what I'm saying, The level
of opportunity changes. And now I think what I'm doing
and what I'm going to do is keep giving those
level of opportunities to be able to help the brand.
And that's why I'm franchising right now, which is.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
An amazing idea. Also applaud you for doing that. I
thinks it's really cool and it's exciting to say it
all coming together. How important has it been for you
to infuse black culture into your businesses and just even
from a you know, branding standpoint to a lifestyle to
everything or like involving the community, because that's how I

(21:52):
look at it, and it seems like you're doing it
the best way possible. I mean, how important is it
to you?

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Is really because if you look at the way I
built the Big Dave's brand, you got food, but everything
outside that food is corridors to something else, like you
got the culture in rap music, you got the culture
in sports, you got the culture in business, you got
the culture in philanthropy, you got the culture in speaking.
You know, all of those elements of power comes into

(22:21):
that one element of the empire, food And I was
able to take all of those things and make people
fall in love with all of those areas. And that's
how I built the brand. I made the culture understand
that this is a business that sells sandwiches, but it's
bigger than that. Right Because I was a kid that
you know, America could have looked at to say, you know,
maybe didn't see those expectations for me, or maybe did

(22:44):
I see them, didn't see them for myself. But when
you get in certain opportunity levels, you able to say, okay,
wait a minute, I was getting tricked out of my spot.
I know that I can do this. And that's what
it did for me early on and in ninth grade,
going to add deaths, see how life works. If I
never seen that, I might not never believe that what

(23:05):
I'm doing all the way right now because I don't
know that it's possible. That's why I said the level
opportunity always beats disbelief.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Do you ever feel pressure to my pressure? Man, that's
a response.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
No, no, no, I feel pressure, And I'm gonna tell
you why. Because so I got one hundred and forty
four lives in my hands, right, and that's my people,
my livelihoods. Yes, like, so outside of Big Daves, I've
built my life to be able to sustain everything that

(23:44):
I've got going on far as like I get paid
to speak, I got you know, real estate. You know,
I'm in a good position without my business, right, but
I worry about the livelihood of every single member under
any of my roof and my brand and outside my roofs,

(24:04):
and meaning to that. You don't never know how the economy,
you know, it hits, it goes up and down like
roller coasters. So there's a lot that's out of your control, right, Yeah,
So I take my best practice and being a good businessman,
a great CEO, and you know, making sure that my
business and my books and everything is in order so
that I survived the months where business might be slower.

(24:26):
Because listen, it's the difference between you got one location
and you're having a bad money if you got a
bad money on seven different things, man.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
Like, Yeah, I didn't know what that is, Like, Yeah,
it's doing the math here, So I guess you're just
timsing it by seven. Yeah, so it's like loss or
a big win, right, Yeah, you can have a big
loss of a big win.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
But thankfully, you know, I've been having a lot of
big wins and this has been my winning season and
I'm going into my storm. Twenty twenty four is gonna
be my storm.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
What's the storm?

Speaker 3 (24:52):
The storm is going to be me franchising. The storm
is going to be more big daves getting built corporately.
The storm is going to be they see that the
brand just up get to the you know, a higher
level of what I've been doing through the year to
year and now this year, they actually going to see
that it's getting the roses that it always deserves. Because

(25:13):
sometimes you can have something really good and have it
too good too fast, and you gotta pivot right. And
I got a lot of popularity, you know, real fast
after you know a certain amount of time, and so
what do you do with that?

Speaker 1 (25:26):
Because you feel like, hey, I gotta make sure I
make this ship work now and just celebrate too much
or what.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
My passion, My passion was getting me through a lot
of years. Passion is not going to be the only
thing to get me to the top, right, It's going
to be understanding between wants and needs and the principles
of that. Because like I can, I can be sitting

(25:52):
here talking to you and my passion can be driven
so much at a high expectation level. But if I
don't go out and get the things and the tools
I need to get that's inside that passion that I
got built up, I still can't make.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
The dream work. Then you're all talk.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
I'm all talk, because then you're just a person that's
a dreamer. You ever heard somebody say maybe it's a
big dreamer.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
Oh yeah, I know some dreamers exactly a lot of people.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
I think every single American or outside of America is
a dreamer. But what I'm saying is, like, how many
people are going to actually put the dream and drive.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
So for you? How do you do that? Because everyone
always says, you know, stuff like believe in yourself and
blah blah blah, But like, how do you actually take
that into an action?

Speaker 3 (26:32):
I never said this publicly, and I'm gonna say to you.
I'm gonna drop it to you, all right, This is
how I really feel about that question. I feel like
God didn't give me breath inside my body to waste time.
He bring me here to create, to create environments, opportunity
and everything that he built. As a student, I'm going

(26:52):
to become a teacher.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
So you feel obligated with your life that you're given
to do this stuff. Yeah, I mean listen, well you're
blowing it no how you feel, right, yeah, because like
this is the whole thing. This is the whole thing, right,
So I was My friend just said this to me
last week, and it was very interesting. Some people think
about the next generation. Some people think about right now.

(27:16):
Some people are hustling for the next three hundred years.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
I want to hustle for the next three hundred years
because if I hustle for the next three hundred years,
then my kids kids' kids are good. Do you know
what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 (27:28):
You think about you thinking about the generation of your family,
and yes, your entire legacy essentially, right, So I.

Speaker 3 (27:37):
Built So put it this way, just like you your parents
now built the generation that brung you in. Now you
carry the torch. It's like a baton like running track,
like you have to pass that to the next generation.
And then if you don't do that, that's when the
generational wealth gap happens and it comes into a disaster
of the generation because all of us may not know.
We may have came from generations hundred years ago that

(28:00):
actually was wealthy, right, you actually, and it just passed
to the wrong hand. It might have went to the
wrong hand. You just never know.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
But if they did exactly how to create it.

Speaker 3 (28:10):
So now that you created it, now that you know
these things, you know that shit. Honestly, maybe your kids
ain't as strong as you and be able to build
the same legacy you built, right, But if you teach
them how to carry that legacy, it's easier.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Listen.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
I tell people this all the time. It's harder to
build an engine than it is to start a car.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
So, yeah, do you know what I'm saying. I do. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
So if I can go ahead and start a car
and build that engine, I'm built it. I built the engine.
All you do is start the car and you and
you work on the next model coming out, because that
might have been built for you in front of you
and showed you the next legacy where you're supposed to chase. Now,
if I show you nothing. You got to start from scratch,
and I might not have made you strong enough to
do that, but I know I was.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
Describe one of the hardest times in your career when
you were start out, busting your ass, grinding long hours,
probably not a lot of sleep, trying to make Dave's work,
Like what was that like? Trying to remember back when?
Like because also I think the mentality is probably different
back then, because in that grind mode, when you've not

(29:17):
achieved that level of success like you have, I feel
like there's a in some ways, it's the mindset is
easier because you have almost nothing to lose. But now
you have something to lose because you've built so much.
Like but now you just have to like elevate and evolve.
But like, take me back to that time when you're like,

(29:38):
let's make this shit go.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
So it's two different size to the coin it is, right,
So I'm a better entrepreneur and a better businessman than
I was then because I want those mistakes, because I
want to those experiences that you're talking about, that those
were the ugly truths of learning know how to actually
operate a business. Now I moved off of a lot
of panic back then, what do you mean there's something

(30:04):
go wrong? I gotta you know, like I'm all over
the place instead of just taking my time, Like the
route to a problem is understanding the solution of the problem.
You have to like if I now go to the
find the root of the problem right now, I have
to put a policy in place that fixed that problem.
Back then, I was fixing problems, and when I'm paying policy,

(30:24):
I was just fixing, like fix, fixed, fixed, fix. Now
I'm fixing and paying policy so that don't happen again,
so that the company can grow, it can elevate, it
can turn into something else, because if I don't do
those things, then it becomes a popular disaster. And I
don't want to tell a popular story. I want to
tell a legendary story when I'm dead and gone. I

(30:45):
may I may not outlive this name of this brand, right,
but what I want is I want this brand to
live while I'm dead.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Why do you want that so badly?

Speaker 3 (30:55):
Because I know that if kids read a story about
something that was just like them, even if there was
one percent of them that read it or believed it,
it's just like I was telling you before, it's something
that I'm painting a picture so that they can believe
like I would do for my kids. If I'm passing
generational up to them.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
You're looking at it like the other you out there. Yeah,
there's a lot of other means out there.

Speaker 3 (31:18):
As soon as they get the resource and the opportunities,
they're gonna be able to show who they are. And
even if I never give them a dom I gave
them a resource by looking at me saying that they
can do it too. So a lot of people miss
that aspect of what are you doing for people? If
people can look at a reflection their view, and if
you're out there doing something where I'm gonna tell you

(31:39):
shit half the time, I might want to be living
like a regular Americans. Sometimes I want to go out
there and you know, just like my old dies. But
I have to, you know, make sure that you know
it's kids looking at me now, there's people looking at
me now. I have to make sure that I am
being the picture that I painted to them to give
them that motivation. Now, I'm not perfect. I'm going to

(32:00):
have my imperfections. I ain't painting that picture. I ain't
painting a precture that I'm just perfect dude. But what
I am painting is that I got my stuff together,
and if you believe that, you will have your stuff together.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
Too, and you're taking that responsibility seriously.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
I take it very seriously because I know how important
it is to be in a trap. And what I
mean is the trap is if every day that we
wake up, me and you can't inspire each other, we
in the trap. You have to see something to get inspired.
We're people and if you can't get inspired off of anything,
you around nothing every day. I want people to see
what what's out here? It's more life out here. It's

(32:33):
a lot of life out here that we never seen.
And me believing in this Chief State Company has made
me see so many different cities, so many different states,
so many different countries, meet so many different people, different
ethnic groups, backgrounds, everything off of believing in this sandwich
helped me understand that it's a lot more life to

(32:54):
live out here.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
Right. So will be your advice to someone who maybe
doesn't have that inspiration motivation in their life.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
Go hang around it, Hang around it.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
You don't have to Where do you look for that?
Where do you find that?

Speaker 3 (33:07):
I don't care if you go listen, you can go
go to a Starbucks, go I don't care where you go,
just go around something that's not what you've been around
and see if that can give you a spark. It's
like being in a bad relationship every day. Whether it's
a personal or business matter, don't matter. If that relationship
isn't leveling you up. You in a wrong relationship. You

(33:29):
see what I'm saying, Because you ain't supposed to be
the man you was last year. You're supposed to be
a better man.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
Now.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
You might have went through way more shit than you
went through a year to year, but it's up for
you to understand psychologically what you prepare for it, because
now you have to understand that life is going to
be life. But you got to move on from those
things because you've been through those environments and those systems already.
So you can't go backwards and say, oh, man, I'm
gonna let this person get to me that's said this

(33:55):
about me or did this. You're always gonna get talked about,
whether it's gonna be good or bad. My grandfather I
always told me this. He said, they're gonna talk about you,
whether it's good or bad. So do it any damn way.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
They're gonna talk shit either way.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
Yeah. And the thing is when you had that mindset,
you don't worry about Look, I used to be that
guy that used to be like, hey, I gotta ask
a couple of my friends, like, what do you think
about this? Should I do it? No? I'm doing it
now off of my gut.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
Why were you asking that? Why were you pulling the
room like that? You can have.

Speaker 3 (34:29):
It's not a confidence thing. It's more so that you
want to make a validation, right, But the only validation
that you have is your gut in your life.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
But you've changed that. You're saying that you used to
do that, but now you don't.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
It's no like I still know what I mean? Is
I still know I do more so I live off
of the validation of what I believe in. But I
have a structure to my validation now, so it makes sense.
So it's not just like I'm jumping off the cliff
for every single thing. But like, okay, for example, if
I got to spend seven hundred thousand dollars to build
the location, I don't want to just go off of

(35:02):
with people validate. I have to feel it. I don't
feel it. It ain't getting built there. I don't care
how the validation is because I have to understand that
I feel good about the thing that I always been
believing in, and it's his brand and the way I've
been building it. Because you ever heard that that they
say the if it ain't if it ain't broke, don't

(35:23):
fix it, right, So my my psychological logic to that is,
if it ain't broke, don't fix it, but polish if
it ain't even broke. I think my homegirl just says
something like that, Milano, she have a clothing company, and
you always got to work on something every single time.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
You know what I'm saying, like you to make it better,
like even it's a small nuanced thing.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
But yeah, because think about it, if I come on
your show again in two years, it's the same exact thing.
I didn't see.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
Growth from this here talking the same Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
If I come on there to even richer, yeah yeah,
And now I can talk to you and we having
a same conversation. But I can tell the level A
of your brand, right, I could feel it. I'd want
you to hopefully see that in me. Yeah, hopefully I
prest Yeah because guess what, because guess what I might
have came on your podcast at that time and my

(36:22):
battery just ain't charged and happen.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
I might have.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
Walked in and said, damn man, two years ago, I
remember coming into your podcast, and now you got a
whole big, damn building. You're doing these things. But you
get what I'm saying. So now I'm saying to myself, like, yo, man,
like that's inspiring. I actually was on his podcast and
I've seen him grow, Like that's what I mean by growth.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah, and you want to see people around you doing
that too. Yeah, And that's where it comes back to
you being sort of the natural motivator, right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
Like it takes a lot of juice to be to
be me every day. But just the thing, I'm not
doing this for your likelihood, right, I'm doing this because
it makes me feel good when I wake up in
the morning. So it's not your opinion is not stopping
me or making me move forward on what I want
to be out of my life.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Got any haters out there.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
I mean, everybody got hated. The hardest thing when it
comes to the whole hating environment is that people just
don't understand how you did it. How did you make it.
Why did God pick you? So they're jealous or confused.
They don't even understand what they are. They just know
it feels better when they's a person that get the
success they don't know.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
I would put it that way.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
If they don't know that person, it feels better because
then you can congratulate them, right, But if you knew
them more so likely your haters are going to be
the people that watched you get to the bag or
watch you get to the success because they can't figure
out their once and their needs. But if they had
took the likelihood to say, you know what, I'm gonna
jump on this thing that's working and let's build together

(37:55):
so they listen. Everybody want their egos stroked, Everybody want
to feel good. But the only thing that's going to
happen is.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Your hard work.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
Why do people think that you're You're the person that's
supposed to get these things to happen for you, And
that's showing who you are as a person. If you
just think that these things are going to fall in
your lap, it's not. You can wake up every day.
Everybody thinks they're special. You know, we tell ourselves that
all day, But you're not special to the world. You
might be special to yourself, but what makes you special

(38:24):
to the world is when they can feel with type
of heart you are, what type of human you are,
what type of special is that you're putting into the
world to make the world better. That's what makes people
pour into you. And when people are not doing that,
they wonder why, you know, things aren't happening for them.
And even when people are doing those things, I think
everything is time. And like you know, I've been doing
these things for years and years and years, and a

(38:44):
lot of times I wasn't getting hand claps, but I
wasn't doing it for the hand clap, right, I was
doing it because I wanted to do it and it
felt good.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
You're gonna do it no matter if you made it
or not.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
Yeah, because this is the thing I knew that I've
seen other lives like I seen like I've seen lives
change through my business. I've seen people come to me
publicly and say, listen, you made me want to be
a better me. You made me get out the streets,
you made me stop selling drugs, like you made me
want to get an LLC. Like these things is we're

(39:15):
pouring to.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Me Yeah, that, like I would imagine, gets you through
the hard times that you have to.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
Yeah, sometimes I'm pouring into them and I'm having a
hard time. Right, No, No, for real, Like I got,
I got, I got rich people problems like I got,
like need a million dollars tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
What's a rich person problem you have?

Speaker 3 (39:36):
You can say the richest the richest person problem I
probably had was man ship everything just building, like you
just spending millions of dollars a year, you know, building
these locations. I mean you you know, I see millions
go and come and go and come, and you know,
and I know I'm building a massive empire. So that
feels good. But you know, the way I look at

(39:58):
a million dollars might not be the somebody else looks
at a million dollars, you know. And growing up as
a kid, I used to wish to God to say, God,
I just need a million dollars and I'm gonna be
rich forever, right my bills, you know, Like you know,
so I'm looking at that like, you know, the spending,
this is a million dollars. So like when you're looking
at it that way, you know that you have grown
so many levels in life that you got other people

(40:19):
problems now, you know, and I've grown to have those
people problems and it's a gift in the case. But
what I could say is I'm the one percent that
made it and then believe that I can get that far.
And that's what feels good right now. And I'm gonna
give myself those flowers every single time.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Do you feel like you did it feel weird or
validating whenever you seem to start getting your flowers from people,
this actualized success in the eyes of peers and fans
or the internet.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
No, because you know why, if I keep dripping thirty
a game, you go eventually give me a scoring title, right,
I said, if I keep driving thirty a game, they
go eventually recognize and see what I'm doing. So it's
nothing different in basketball, you know, it's a sport. Entrepreneurship
is a sport, you know, Like just like I just
made forty under forty two days ago, Black Enterprise. Thank
you for that honorable recognition. Yeah, thank you. And I

(41:15):
just got called Colonel Sanders by Forbes a week or
two before that, you know, So these things are like, which.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
I actually love that title. You like that I love.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
That title because you know, no, it's no. It shows
it shows the level of where people see, you know,
when it comes to like those recognitions, it lets me
know that people are recognizing the brand at a high level.
They see where I'm going in the brand, and that
lets me know that I've been doing the right thing
even when the collapse wasn't happening for me. People are watching,
and that's what people understand. Like every time that someone

(41:48):
or you do something great, someone isn't going to clap
like right now, I can call my mind right now,
I'm like, mom, I just did this. She's so used
to my accomplishments now she's just like, oh, that's good,
you know. But I'm like, no, man, this is a
real big more important than it. It's like way bigger.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
She's like that's great. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
So it's like, you know, that lets me know that
I'm doing things in the world right now. That's even
inspiring the person that came out of Yeah, because they're
so used to accomplishments. It's like, yeah, like you so
it's like, you know, you still you know, honestly, like
I still get up every morning and look at Google
and see what stories I got out right, Yeah, And
to be honest, some of the storylines I'd be like, oh, this,

(42:28):
this is like crazy. But but yeah, yeah, But some
of the stuff that I beat, some of the stuff
that I make, I'm actually like, I used to read
these papers as kids, and these things like, it's not
too many outlets right now that exist. I haven't been
in off of a cheese steak, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Which is wild to think of.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
Yes, and and that's what I mean. When you come
to like the one percent, the ones that's not going
to give up, the ones that's going to keep going,
let me tell you something. You can look at this
and say, this is the room. If you get to
the room, he gets to the room, he gets to
the room. I'm in the room. No matter how each
of us got to that room, we made.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
It to that room.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
If you played golf, he played soccer, he cooked, and
I was a dishwasher. I became a famous dishwasher. I
made it up to that room.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (43:11):
Guess what you're successful. That's how I look at you.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (43:15):
All I'm looking at right now.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
Is you're just knucking the back door. You still got
here exactly.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
Don't matter even if I was a fly on the wall.
I'm in that room even if I didn't have a
seat at the table. Y'all closed the door and allowed
me to be in that room. That's how appreciative I am.
But if you let me in the room, I'm gonna
make my own table and I'm gonna get a chair
to that table every single time because I'm always going.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
To be me. Where does this what's the end game?
The game? Where does it or does it end? What's
the what's the final goal? Man?

Speaker 3 (43:48):
Like, it's even harder now because you know, I'm married
to another entrepreneur.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
Let's talk about her. Actually, if you don't mind, she's
also a legend. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
So like even just being beside my wife every single day, the.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
Level hard with her also so damn successful. No, I
think it's a blessing for me. You know a lot
of people.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
Yeah, I mean, like my wife is on the time
one hundred. Like now they give me a level of say,
you know, even if I never get that, you know,
I know that the person that I'm spending enough the
rest of my life with has accomplished that. So we
did it together. Like it's a lot of these things
that whether she get the handclap or I get it,
we get it together, So I take share that, which

(44:29):
is cool. Yeah, that moment, Like do you know, like
even at the Time one hundred events that we went
to that she was getting under that I'm sitting at
the table with the editors of Time one hundred, I
get the chance to talk to them. Yeah, you know,
moments of opportunity. Again, that's the resource that provided that opportunity.
So yeah, you know, I take all these things in

(44:50):
there as a blessing, you know, even the things that
I got coming in that she could do the same thing.
So we able to like watch each other back man,
and it's a good feeling. It's like a level of
motivation because sometimes in weeks I go through downsides where
you know, I might have some level of not even dismotivation,
just like you know, it can be like you know, Rocky,

(45:11):
you're getting punched around. You got to just keep getting
back up. Tough spot, Yeah, tough spot. And the motivation
from her, the encouragement of words and the same thing
I do for her every single time. So I think
that's the blessing of being at a high level that
we at right now, because you can take the best entrepreneurs,
some of the best entrepreneurs in the world right now,
and stick them in our businesses and our lives for

(45:32):
a month. They will fold under pressure. Because it all
looks good. There's a lot of handclaps that come with it.
But it takes endless hours of meetings, endless hours of traveling,
endless hours of being on zooms, endless hours of coming
up planning. Some days me and her only getting Honestly,

(45:53):
this is no cap. Some days we getting probably six
or seven hours. Is just real time between sleep and
family time. Sure, just just sometimes we're looking at the
whiteboard for man eight nine hours up to twelve hours
sometimes planning on what the next year look like and
what we're actually planning for twenty twenty six right now.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Damn you get what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
So we already have our twenty twenty four planned out,
twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six now is going into planning.
We already know what what what uh magazines that covers
that we went already accomplishments that we want to achieve.
Because even if it seemed too big for you, now
those are the things that you have to look forward
to in.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
Your like you have to markers and you know ghosts.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
I hope GQ watches this.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
I know one day I'm gonna be on the cover
and we gotta both be on there at the same time.

Speaker 3 (46:41):
Yeah, I'm going to be on the cover of GQ.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
Like every tight that would be a bucket, Yeah it would,
it would.

Speaker 3 (46:47):
But those are the things that like I say to
put in the universe that I believe me.

Speaker 1 (46:52):
Let me tell you something about me.

Speaker 3 (46:53):
Everything that I put out in the universe happened.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
Why is that, you think?

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Because I believe it and there's no human in this
world gonna stop me doing it.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
So you put it out there to make it real.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
I put it out there because I believed it, to
make it real when I believed it, so I already
lived it already. Now it's time to make it happen
in real life.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
You're letting yourself down if you don't listen. Get it.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
Everything Everything that I dreamed, from that moment of that
gas station to now, I've dreamed. It may not have
been the moments of the moment, but I've dreamed the
level of success. I've dreamed the level of popularity. I
actually even dreamed the level of just giving people that
inspiration through me. I dreamed of all these things when

(47:35):
I was just in a little gas station on the
broken fry and a broken grill. I believed it now.
I always knew it was up for just the people
to see who I was as a person and believe that.
But I already dreamed it. Like when you dream something
you don't want to dream and say, oh man, that
was a wild dream.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
What if that happened.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
I dreamed it and I said I needed to happen.
I'm going to make it happen because that dream felt
too good.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
Right, I have to think about this and not I
cannot live. That's why to live.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
Thus, Yes, I cannot live day to day of my
life in this world not trying to be able to
make this dream happen, because it drove me crazy. That
dream of minds drove me crazy, and it drove me
crazy every single day still today, of level of levels
that I'm trying to get.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
To in life.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
It drives me nuts. Really, because I love the dream
I'm in right now. Yeah, And when I dream, I
dream more. I dream more and dream more. It's not
saying that, oh, God give you enough. You should be happy. No,
it's not that. It's the addiction to the dream of
seeing this massive empire actually be something that you thought
it could be from a little gas station.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
So it's quite easy for people to look at your
life career and success and say, Okay, like he's sort
of here and now he's made it to here, he's
made it. But do you look at where you're at
right now as like an early chapter in a very
big book, where you have so much more and bigger
places to go, and not just hey, this is it.

Speaker 3 (48:58):
If this was an encyclopedia, I'm just in the beginning, right,
You know, you're in the interest. You know, people people
see this this empire that I'm building right now with
the brand, but what they gonna know me for in
the end may not be what they know me for
in the beginning, right, And that's just the real reality

(49:20):
of it. I think I'll always be looked upon as
a serial entrepreneur and I'm going to build a big
dave to a massive, massive company which is already headed
forward too.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
I want you to make Shark take special guess right, Yeah,
I gotta be a'd be tight, I gotta be a
judge on there it'd be awesome.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
But all of these things that I've already accomplished, it
feels good. But I think if I sit in these accomplishments,
it makes you staggerant. It makes you, you know, feel
like you already won.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
How do you balance that? How do you give yourself
like kudos a little bit?

Speaker 3 (49:57):
Oh no, no, no, I'm not saying that. I'm happy
as hell, So how do you balance Like I take
my vacations, I party, I have fun. I ain't saying
that I'm a fun entrepreneur.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
Sink I'm high right now.

Speaker 3 (50:07):
I'm a fun entrepreneur. But the thing is is that
I think when it comes to people being stagnant is
because they feel like they've made it. Your ego being
stroked so much. You got money in the bank, you
can wake up and do what the hell you want.
But that's not That's not how I see making it.

(50:28):
I see the level of making it when one day
I'm gonna wake up in the morning and one of
my sons is gonna come to me and may say that,
what do you think about sitting down and me becoming
the CEO and you just enjoying the rest of your days?

Speaker 1 (50:51):
You take mom.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
Y'all go travel south of south of France, whatever you
want to do. And I see that as making it.
And I'm gonna tell you why, Because if I can
give my son first job as a CEO.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
I mean it'd be pretty first. Yeah, but you give
it him if you complete that loop.

Speaker 3 (51:08):
Yeah, so that's like Lebron he's gonna and I believe this,
he's going to be the first guy that plays in
the league with the son.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
Yeah, he's got to do it, all right.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
I'm gonna tell you same example I'm making. That's the
level of I made it. I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
Yeah, No, for real, it is because you actually.

Speaker 3 (51:26):
Get to see what you love and what you put
into the world fell in love with through your love,
to be able to do the same thing that you love,
that is making it. That's called I trained the kid
the right way to understand how we keep this legacy going.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
Yeah, no, that's that's badass. Tell me about the future
of Dave's and the franchise situation. What's the you know,
what's the big picture here? What's the idea?

Speaker 3 (51:53):
One hundred locations in the next twelve to twenty four months.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
That sounds like a lot, It does but I mean,
like in a good way. But I'm like, how do
you actually do that?

Speaker 3 (52:05):
I'm gonna show you.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
Sometimes we all get one.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
Yeah, you gotta take five, that's the thing. You gotta
take five. So right now we're not doing singles. You
gotta take five.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
In Why is that? Is that? Because it's just easier
to get skin in the game kind of thing too.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
I'm still a new franchise company, and I want to
make sure that I professionally get in bed with the
right people, get operators, people that I want to see scale.
Like if you start with your five, I want to
take you personally to one hundred.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (52:34):
If I take if I take right now all these
people to one hundred locations, and that's just you know,
hypothetically me speaking, it's easier to get to a thousand
that way to be able because what they can do
is like say, right now, if you said to me
you want to hold Texas right, and I say, okay,
I give you the whole Texas, but under your umbrella,

(52:56):
you could bring up so many entrepreneurs to give their
own locations to your umbrella and y and that's what
I care about. I care about. Who can I invest
in just like me to bring in other people bigger
swings here, Yeah, because listen, I get the bigger swing
with the person that understands me as a captain that
can bring in the soldiers versus I can get the.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
Soldiers like hiring other little captains, right.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
Because like, yeah, but but that's what the soldier, that's
what That's what the captain is gonna do. The captain
is going to be the person to say, okay that
I look upon and say, oh, you think like me,
and you carry business like me, and I know that
the culture of the brand wouldn't change, and I know
that you recruit, you would recruit that way. Also because
we're like minded, we're on the same mission. So that

(53:37):
mission driven is going to help us get to the
bigger figure in the end with the same type of
people that see the vision in the brand.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
I'm with the pivot question. Here, come on, here's your
favorite basketball player right now?

Speaker 3 (53:49):
My favorite right now? I'm gonna say, uh, I'm gonna say,
I'm gonna say Lebron, And I'm gonna tell you why.
For so many reasons, Lebron is my favorite on and
off the court. He's my favorite on the court because
you've never seen Lebron paying any game he didn't make
somebody better. That's the way I look at my entrepreneur game,
like I make people better around me. Outside of basketball,

(54:12):
he's a businessman. He's made smart decisions. He's been able
to create the level of massive success through his empire,
not just in the NBA, but through investments, and I
think it takes genius level of mindset to do that.
I mean, you got to think about it. He was
already at eighteen years old with a multi million dollar

(54:32):
Nike contract. So if you give a kid that young,
already level of access, anyone can fuck that up exactly,
That's what I'm saying. So like, I think for him,
he's a goat for that because out of his whole career,
you've seen Lebron every year go level to level the level,
and now he's at a level now where he's a

(54:53):
billionaire playing basketball and that's not which is by the way, man,
next time I come, you better have some mic coldess,
just Mike Hovey and shit like I'm up here switching.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
And I think it's that forty milimeter on that. Actually
I don't know you said my wrists size that damn thing.
But yeah, man, this has been a blast, dude, and.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
I wanted to say this. I want to get your flowers.
Like you know, I was looking at you from afire,
you know, just being on social media, and you know,
even when I was growing a brand, I just I
liked your content. I thought you guys were funny as hell.
A lot of stuff you dice, but these guys crazy shit.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
But it used to just, you know, it used to
give me that level of like they live life. They
don't care how people think of them. They just want
to be themselves, to be able to be the best
they can be for the universe.

Speaker 1 (55:38):
I'm glad you That's how I looked at Yah. I
did get that. I got to appreciate that because that's
really kind of yeah, I see the same in you
out here doing my thing, man, yeah, and is what
it is. But like, yeah, I was humble that you
reached out.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
And and by the way, I don't I don't do that.
I'm like, you know, at this time, you know.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Not Almos like, oh yeah, what did you reach out?
I was like, what's his right?

Speaker 3 (55:58):
Because the was for me to do even just you
know us linking up was for me to understand who
you were outside of social media because you drew my interests.
You know what I'm saying as a person, So I'm like,
I want to meet like minded people, whether you're white, black,
no matter. I want to meet like minded people so
that the connection. Listen, I tell people this, your network

(56:22):
is definitely a network, right, but your resource is your
next goal. You know what I'm saying. I know the
more people I build with that inspired me in some
type of way, I get to my next goal, you know.
So it's a stepping ladder. So if I'm looking at
you and I'm saying your content online and I'm saying
how you carry yourself, I want to meet you. I'm

(56:42):
in the stage now with my life where i can
jump out the box and say it's cool for me
to say, hey.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
Yo, you inspired me. Afraid of.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
No, because I'm me, because I know I'm the ship
without doing you know what I'm saying. So I have
that level of myself. You know, some people Listen, I
meet Selectason be like, oh yeah, yeah, a little bit
about now you know a lot about it, bro, I'm
everything smoking Yeah, man, you are look at it earlier. Yeah,
so like, I don't want to be that person. I'm

(57:11):
gonna give your flowers in front of you. I was
left precureing that you inspired me.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
You know.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
So you're just going through your roll decks, You're like, man,
I just need like a bleached haired white guy in
my right. I need to like spice it up in here,
love it. I was tumbled that you reached out. And
we're fans of what you guys do, and we go
to eat your food too, So we're honored that we're here.

Speaker 3 (57:32):
And listen tonight, if y'all not doing nothing, I'm to
buy a vegan.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
Celebrate my I'm a thousand percent.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
I'm listening, I'm taking shots. I'm getting getting.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
Okay, let me let me see. Let me see how
this guy gets. It's been a blast, dude, Yeah awesome.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
Talking to Death is a production of Tenderfoot TV and
iHeart podcast created and hosted by Paint Lindsay. For Tenderfoot TV,
executive producers are Paint Lindsay and Donald Albright, co executive
u is Mike Rooney. For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are
Matt Frederick and Alex Williams, with original music by Makeup

(58:08):
and Vanity Set, Additional production by Mike Rooney, Dylan Harrington,
Sean Nurney, Dayton Cole, and Gustave Wilde for Coohedo. Production
support by Tracy Kaplan, Mara Davis, and Trevor Young. Mixing
and mastering by Cooper Skinner and Dayton Cole. Our cover
art was created by Rob Sheridan. Check out our website

(58:29):
talkingd Deeathpodcasts dot com