March 14, 2024 • 16 mins
The BluePrint Connect Podcast LIVE is an extension of last year's 7th annual, 2023 Waymaker Men's Summit. "Dive into the world of success, ambition, and inspiration! Join us for a special podcast episode featuring television and film actor, philanthropist, and entrepreneur., Jay Ellis. Jay reflects on his challenges with closure, his transition from aspiring basketball player to actor, and the importance of stepping out of one's comfort zone for personal development, emphasizing the value of embracing setbacks as learning opportunities. Welcome to this special podcast episode featured at the #1 Men's Empowerment Conference in the country. Enjoy the show!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I'm Lewis Carr, host of the Blueprint Connect podcast. The
Blueprint Connect podcast is an extension of the Waymaker Men Summit,
where we consistently give men a prescription for growth, not
just for themselves, but also for their families and their communities.
During these podcasts, we will educate and motivate our listeners
about entrepreneurship, careers, finance, health and relationships. We're at the
(00:30):
seventh annual Waymaker's Men Summit in Chicago, so welcome to
this special podcast episode featured at the number one men's
emparliament conference in the country, Waymaker Men Summit.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I'm Rufus Williams, and I'm excited to be here at
the Waymakers Summit, and even more excited with the first
guests that we have here today, none other than Lewis Carr,
mister Waymaker, and we're also joined by none other than
the actor Jay Ellis.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Lewis, Good morning, whatever, this is. Good morning, Rufus. How
are you man? I'm good man.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
This is a great start. How do you feel about
how things are going to well? I'm excited to kick
it off with Jay Ellis. I've been knowing Jay for years.
He's an amazing actor. You know, he put that explanation
point on it with top Gun. All right, and I'm
gonna talk to him about that today because that kind
of came out of nowhere. It was like insecure. We
was like yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Then he came up
(01:26):
with top Gun. We're like what. So, you know, just
excited to be here, and you know, the brothers are
coming in right now. So this is a real privilege
for me and a real honor to be here with
Jay and you.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I don't know if you've been downstairs, but to see
all these young men coming in downstairs, lining up, just
excited to get up here, and everybody is in good,
good frame, good shape, good spirit. You've done something phenomenal
with us. Congratulations, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
When I came up and saw the busses dropping people off,
I was like, they got busses. I'm like, am I
paying for that?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
So they got busses and they're hungry, so you have
to come through two.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Jay, It's good to have you here. Man to Chicago. Yeah. So,
you know, I have been very steeped in education for
the Loma's time.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
So the first thing I noticed about you is that
you went to eleven schools in twelve years.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Yeah, man, is that?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (02:14):
My dad was in the Air Force, So we moved
around a lot, man, And even when we were in
a city for a stretch, we would still move across
town or move I think I went to like five
schools in tos Oklahoma, and the course of like six
or seven years, like we still would just kind of
move around in a city, or I would get restless
in the school and want to move around.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
So I bounced around a lot.
Speaker 5 (02:32):
Man.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So new things are easy for.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
You, easy.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
I mean, you know, getting older now I'm kind of like,
you know, I like my stuff, but you know, yeah,
new things have been kind of easy for me.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
I think that's always been my superpower.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
It's kind of hard to have friends from childhood if
you're moving around that much.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Yeah, it was tough. It was tough, you know, you
move around so much.
Speaker 5 (02:52):
And obviously back then social media was different, like we
didn't have it like that, so it was tough. I
think for a long time, I like I had I
didn't know how to deal with closure, just because because
we would just pick up and we would move and
then we'd be on to the next and then I think,
you know, after a while, I started to realize some
patterns in my own life.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
You need to get it.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
But I started to realize some patterns in my life
and realized I needed to figure those out. And then
you know, you're fortunate enough. I've been fortunate enough, man,
Louis thirteen years. It's crazy, man, I've been fortunate enough
to like have people in my life where even if
I only see them once a year, once every three years,
like Lewis, like, it's just an automatic pick up like that,
(03:32):
that that kinship, that friendship, the brotherhood, the mentorship, like
it immediately just picks right back up where it left off.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
And you know, I've been fortunate for that.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Those are real friends.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I don't know why you and Louis think that we're
not going to get into these patterns.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Because these other kind of things we're here to talk about.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
So give me one, what kind of patterns did you
get into that you needed to come out of.
Speaker 5 (03:55):
I think I just found myself a lot of times
like not finish it. I will walk away from things
just in general.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Right. It could be a relationship, it.
Speaker 5 (04:03):
Could be a hobby, It could be a job.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
That I was excited about for a minute in time.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
I would just find myself constantly walking away from things
and would never really take the time to really assess
why I was walking away or why I was unhappy
with a thing. Some of it was intimidation, and I
was like, oh, I can't do it, and I don't
want to do it, so it's easier for me to
run away from it.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
Some of it was just like, oh, I'm not passionate
about it.
Speaker 5 (04:30):
But I think I just never really gave myself the
time to like find those answers until I found the
thing that I loved. I think once I fell into acting,
I think that's when it all really clicked for me
to like go back to like why wasn't I finding
closure with a lot of other things in my life?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Man?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Interesting? So how did you find acting?
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Man? It was a journey I started in college.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
Actually, I used my electives and I played college basketball,
and I used all my electors in college to like
do stuff.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Around the theater program.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
And I wanted to be in a production so bad,
but I was terrified, like I wasn't going to walk
in the locker room and be like, hey, y'all want
to see me and pippin the night, like I'm in
a title role, you know what I mean, Like, I
wasn't going to walk in the locker room and do that.
So that's where I literally got my first kind of
like bites at it and just really fell in love
with being able to like create and make believe for
(05:20):
a living and walk these paths and journeys of these
characters that some may be similar to mine and some
may be wildly different. But it was this chance for
me to like have this expression that I had never
had before in this creativity. And I think that for me, man,
I must have been a junior and college sophomore, junior
in college, and like that's when it kind of clicked, like, oh,
this is what I meant to do with my life.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
So Jay, you know our theme is being out of
your comfort zoneeah for growth? Yeah, when did you start
realizing I got to do something different and come out
of my comfort zone?
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Clearly?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Sports was a conference Yeah yeah, like for all of them. Yeah,
and then you're going real stretching. It's a whole different ecosystem.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
You ain't thinking about doing it in the locker room.
Speaker 5 (06:04):
I'm gonna tell you right now. I had a couple
of them points. I got to college, I hooped, I
was nice. I thought I could get to the league.
And then I started playing and I was like, these
guys are and these dudes make it.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
They don't even go to the league. These guys are
good and they go overseas, you know what I mean,
they or they.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Don't even get to go play after that, and for me,
that was my first pivot. That was where I realized like, oh,
I have to pivot. I have to use this education
that I'm getting to do something different. And so that's
really where I had my first kind of like moment
of like where's going from a comfort zone to like,
all right, I got a step into something new, which
then actually literally led me to like taking these electors
(06:44):
and getting into acting and then from there. It's funny
because when I first got to LA, I was like, yeah,
I'm here to act.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
I got it. What's up? Y'all here for me? Y'allm
not here for me?
Speaker 5 (06:54):
Like I'm out here, and literally would start going on
auditions and I wasn't booking, and I ran away from it.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Fully, ran away from you and ran away from acting,
fully ran away from it.
Speaker 5 (07:04):
Like I was like, man, I ain't trying to be
no starving artists driving across town and no auditions. They
don't see then they don't they don't deserve me, like whatever.
But again it was me running from this growth.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
It was me. I didn't want to be vulnerable. I
didn't want to be uncomfortable.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
I didn't want to go through that process of a
learning the whole new craft and what it took to
learn that craft, be the feeling of auditioning and not
getting a job, that rejection, right, you hear no a lot,
and so like, I didn't want to go through that.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
I didn't want to feel that. I just wanted to
be loved.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
And so I was like, well, if y'all ain't gonna
love me, then I'm gonna move on and go do
something else. And so I literally walked away. I probably
for about a good three years while I was.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
In LA and then.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
I kind of got back into it. I was in
a job. I was in a retail job. Actually, I
was a West Coast regional manager of this retail brand.
My boss called me and she was like, Hey, I
just got laid off. You're the only person I hired
since I've been here. You're probably gonna get be next,
and all I could think about was like, I moved
to La to act, and I'd never give myself a
real chance.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
And I could do retail anywhere in the world, So
why choose La?
Speaker 5 (08:10):
And I love La, but why they're so I just
kind of kept coming back to this thing of like
I want to give myself a real chance to do this,
like I want to actually be uncomfortable, go through it,
sit in class, and do it. And so I ended
up enrolling in the class. I worked overnights at Target,
I worked, I bartended, I worked the front door at
(08:31):
a club.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
I did all kinds of stuff, whatever.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
I could do to make ends meet, so I could
be in acting class one night a week. And then
I would just sit in other acting classes and just watch,
like I would beg my acting coach and just let
me watch, wouldn't participate, And that ended up kind of
being this moment of like super uncomfortable, wildly uncomfortable, because
now I'm dealing with feelings that I never really dealt
with before. I'm watching people who were technically proficient do
(08:56):
something that I'm like, oh I'm messy, I'm all over
the place. But it was just that thing of like,
you know, if you want to get on the other side,
then you just got to go through it.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
It's no other way.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
We'll be right back with more of my interview after
this quick break.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Say what were those moments, like, so you come in,
you're a basketball star in college, you're thinking about going
to the league, You're going to be this actor, but
you're boxing things at target. Talk about what that felt
like to be at that moment given the skills that
you had and where you thought.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
You would Yeah, I mean, you know, star is a
strong word. I don't know if I would call myself
about I don't know if the basketball st.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
We give promotions, we give awards here, so take it.
Speaker 5 (09:49):
Do we give contracts because if we give back contracts,
I'll tell you it.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Uh nah.
Speaker 5 (09:55):
You know, it's crazy to to feel like you own something, right,
to feel like you're so good in something and you've
put in the time.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
And you've been good at it, right, and then all
of a sudden.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Not get the response that you're expecting, or not get
the accolades that you're expecting, or even the growth, the
personal growth that you may be expecting.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Right.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
It is a wild thing to like have to look
at that and then reassess and decide.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Okay, well, can I push myself further? Is there?
Speaker 5 (10:27):
Am I not doing the work? Or is this where
I'm meant to like tap out in this thing? And
now I can use these skills and use everything I've
learned from being a teammate, from being a scorer, from
being a passor like all these things. Can I use
the principles of those things somewhere else? And I think
for me, like that was the thing. Like when I
go to work, when I go when I'm on set,
(10:49):
I feel like I'm with a team, Like nobody is
more important than anybody.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
We all got a job.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
And if I don't hit my twenty, if I don't
get twenty five tonight, and you don't get your rebounds,
then we're gonna be here for fourteen fifty teen hours.
And then when that show air, ain't nobody gonna watch it.
So like I just feel like to me, like I
feel like I learned so many lessons from basketball that
I was able to take into my life when I
started working and started working in corporate retail. So then
(11:14):
when I started acting, like it's always been like what
lessons can I take to that next stage in my life.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
I'm going to go back to some of these uncomfortable
times because when you're there, this is not overnight that
you say, you know what, I'm not doing this, I
can go do this.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I'm not playing basketball. I'm going to act. I'm not acting.
I'm going to go and do something else.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
I'm not gonna stay successful in retail because my boss
got fired.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
I need to go do something else.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Talk about the transition, talk about the time, and talk
about the depths that you get into.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Yeah, and making those decisions with those stuffs.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Yeah, man, it's tough.
Speaker 5 (11:46):
You know, you're basically looking up and you're like, all right, well,
what am I gonna do.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
With my life?
Speaker 5 (11:50):
You know, like it's a question that you're constantly and
then what is accessible to me? What's not accessible to me?
What resources do I need? But I think a lot
of it for me was really into like why do
I do the thing that I do? And for me,
that why has always driven my acting and my even
(12:12):
pursuit of my career has always been driven by my why,
and I always come back to it. And so there
are plenty of things that I've said no to. There's
plenty of things where I could have easily done and
maybe have gotten on faster and maybe gotten jobs faster.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
But my why for me was always the thing that
like guided.
Speaker 5 (12:35):
My decisions, my choices, and the things that I've been
lucky enough to be a part of.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Jay young people ask me this question all the time.
Did you ever have any self doubts? And if you did,
how did you come out of that? Oh?
Speaker 5 (12:49):
Come on, man, I had self doubt this morning when
my alarm went off. I have some self doubt this morning.
I think that's a healthy thing. But it's knowing how
to deal with it, right. I think, to hell, we
all have self talk, like it happens, right, But I
think it's about knowing how to deal with it and
knowing if you're a person who easily falls into to
it just because you think it, are you going to
(13:10):
Is that gonna become your thought pattern?
Speaker 4 (13:11):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 5 (13:12):
And so I think a lot of it for me
was like, hey, putting myself around people who had a
goal and had a vision, putting myself around people who
maybe had already achieved the.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Thing that I wanted to achieve.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
And then I think a lot of it a lot
of it, especially when I first started acting, was like,
how do I I think I'm a student at heart.
I think that's why I love acting so much, because
I feel like I get to go learn something new
or learn about somebody new every time I step into
a project. But for me, like, that's something you can't
take away from me. What I go out and learn
(13:47):
is mine and I own that. And I know if
I did my work, and if I learned everything that
I was supposed to learn and I studied it, and
if I wanted to have, if I wanted to know
about a script and a director and every anything else,
I know for a fact that if I went and
did that work, when I show up, self doubt is
erase because I did my work. I mean, I get it,
(14:09):
but I still can be proud in the fact that
I did my work.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Did it because you don't win all the time, No,
you got to try all.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
You gotta try all the time.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
I want to take a minute and reintroduce the people
I'm here with.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
I'm on Lewis Carr's summit, Waymaker Summit, so I should
probably reintroduce Lewis.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Carr as the man, the man legend who's here and
put all this together.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
And Jay ellis the big time actor who's been on
BT series, The Game. He was also on the HBO
series and Secure. And importantly, as Lewis pointed out, when
you came in, if you all saw Top Gun Maverick,
he was also there and Top Gun here are this man, summit, Jay,
if there's something that you can leave with the young
men who are here who need some inspiration and need
(14:48):
to understand how to move their lives forward, what advice
would you give.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
The journey man? For me is all about the journey.
I think.
Speaker 5 (14:59):
You know, when you set your sights and you set
your goal and you kind of focus on the thing
your intention and the thing that you want in life
and that you want to go achieve. It's not linear zigzags,
you know, and you'll take two steps forward and one
step back sometimes, and that's all, okay. I think it's
all about learning that across the journey and through the
(15:20):
journey there is something for you to take from every
zig and from every zag there's a lesson for you
to take, a skill set for you to take with
you along the way to like your end goal. And
I think if you can be mindful because I think
a lot of times people get thrown off and then
when you something want just because you pivot left doesn't
mean that it's over.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
It just means you got to figure out how to
pivot back right, you know.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
And I think that like you can find something in
that pivot left that you can use with you to
take to the next level, excuse me. And so I
just always go to the journey. The journey is, you know,
it's that alchemist thing. It's like the journey is, you know,
it's it's the it's the end goal.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
The journey and the lessons that come along with jealous.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Thank you so much for being here at the summit,
and thanks for sitting in the podcast with us with
me and and mister Carr today.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Thank you, Thank you brother m hm hm
Speaker 4 (16:19):
Hm
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I'm Lewis Carr, host of the Blueprint Connect podcast. The
Blueprint Connect podcast is an extension of the Waymaker Men Summit,
where we consistently give men a prescription for growth, not
just for themselves, but also for their families and their communities.
During these podcasts, we will educate and motivate our listeners
about entrepreneurship, careers, finance, health and relationships. We're at the
(00:30):
seventh annual Waymaker's Men Summit in Chicago, so welcome to
this special podcast episode featured at the number one men's
emparliament conference in the country, Waymaker Men Summit.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I'm Rufus Williams, and I'm excited to be here at
the Waymakers Summit, and even more excited with the first
guests that we have here today, none other than Lewis Carr,
mister Waymaker, and we're also joined by none other than
the actor Jay Ellis.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Lewis, Good morning, whatever, this is. Good morning, Rufus. How
are you man? I'm good man.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
This is a great start. How do you feel about
how things are going to well? I'm excited to kick
it off with Jay Ellis. I've been knowing Jay for years.
He's an amazing actor. You know, he put that explanation
point on it with top Gun. All right, and I'm
gonna talk to him about that today because that kind
of came out of nowhere. It was like insecure. We
was like yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Then he came up
(01:26):
with top Gun. We're like what. So, you know, just
excited to be here, and you know, the brothers are
coming in right now. So this is a real privilege
for me and a real honor to be here with
Jay and you.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I don't know if you've been downstairs, but to see
all these young men coming in downstairs, lining up, just
excited to get up here, and everybody is in good,
good frame, good shape, good spirit. You've done something phenomenal
with us. Congratulations, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
When I came up and saw the busses dropping people off,
I was like, they got busses. I'm like, am I
paying for that?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
So they got busses and they're hungry, so you have
to come through two.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Jay, It's good to have you here. Man to Chicago. Yeah. So,
you know, I have been very steeped in education for
the Loma's time.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
So the first thing I noticed about you is that
you went to eleven schools in twelve years.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Yeah, man, is that?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (02:14):
My dad was in the Air Force, So we moved
around a lot, man, And even when we were in
a city for a stretch, we would still move across
town or move I think I went to like five
schools in tos Oklahoma, and the course of like six
or seven years, like we still would just kind of
move around in a city, or I would get restless
in the school and want to move around.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
So I bounced around a lot.
Speaker 5 (02:32):
Man.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So new things are easy for.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
You, easy.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
I mean, you know, getting older now I'm kind of like,
you know, I like my stuff, but you know, yeah,
new things have been kind of easy for me.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
I think that's always been my superpower.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
It's kind of hard to have friends from childhood if
you're moving around that much.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Yeah, it was tough. It was tough, you know, you
move around so much.
Speaker 5 (02:52):
And obviously back then social media was different, like we
didn't have it like that, so it was tough. I
think for a long time, I like I had I
didn't know how to deal with closure, just because because
we would just pick up and we would move and
then we'd be on to the next and then I think,
you know, after a while, I started to realize some
patterns in my own life.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
You need to get it.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
But I started to realize some patterns in my life
and realized I needed to figure those out. And then
you know, you're fortunate enough. I've been fortunate enough, man,
Louis thirteen years. It's crazy, man, I've been fortunate enough
to like have people in my life where even if
I only see them once a year, once every three years,
like Lewis, like, it's just an automatic pick up like that,
(03:32):
that that kinship, that friendship, the brotherhood, the mentorship, like
it immediately just picks right back up where it left off.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
And you know, I've been fortunate for that.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Those are real friends.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I don't know why you and Louis think that we're
not going to get into these patterns.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Because these other kind of things we're here to talk about.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
So give me one, what kind of patterns did you
get into that you needed to come out of.
Speaker 5 (03:55):
I think I just found myself a lot of times
like not finish it. I will walk away from things
just in general.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Right. It could be a relationship, it.
Speaker 5 (04:03):
Could be a hobby, It could be a job.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
That I was excited about for a minute in time.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
I would just find myself constantly walking away from things
and would never really take the time to really assess
why I was walking away or why I was unhappy
with a thing. Some of it was intimidation, and I
was like, oh, I can't do it, and I don't
want to do it, so it's easier for me to
run away from it.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
Some of it was just like, oh, I'm not passionate
about it.
Speaker 5 (04:30):
But I think I just never really gave myself the
time to like find those answers until I found the
thing that I loved. I think once I fell into acting,
I think that's when it all really clicked for me
to like go back to like why wasn't I finding
closure with a lot of other things in my life?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Man?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Interesting? So how did you find acting?
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Man? It was a journey I started in college.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
Actually, I used my electives and I played college basketball,
and I used all my electors in college to like
do stuff.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Around the theater program.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
And I wanted to be in a production so bad,
but I was terrified, like I wasn't going to walk
in the locker room and be like, hey, y'all want
to see me and pippin the night, like I'm in
a title role, you know what I mean, Like, I
wasn't going to walk in the locker room and do that.
So that's where I literally got my first kind of
like bites at it and just really fell in love
with being able to like create and make believe for
(05:20):
a living and walk these paths and journeys of these
characters that some may be similar to mine and some
may be wildly different. But it was this chance for
me to like have this expression that I had never
had before in this creativity. And I think that for me, man,
I must have been a junior and college sophomore, junior
in college, and like that's when it kind of clicked, like, oh,
this is what I meant to do with my life.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
So Jay, you know our theme is being out of
your comfort zoneeah for growth? Yeah, when did you start
realizing I got to do something different and come out
of my comfort zone?
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Clearly?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Sports was a conference Yeah yeah, like for all of them. Yeah,
and then you're going real stretching. It's a whole different ecosystem.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
You ain't thinking about doing it in the locker room.
Speaker 5 (06:04):
I'm gonna tell you right now. I had a couple
of them points. I got to college, I hooped, I
was nice. I thought I could get to the league.
And then I started playing and I was like, these
guys are and these dudes make it.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
They don't even go to the league. These guys are
good and they go overseas, you know what I mean,
they or they.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Don't even get to go play after that, and for me,
that was my first pivot. That was where I realized like, oh,
I have to pivot. I have to use this education
that I'm getting to do something different. And so that's
really where I had my first kind of like moment
of like where's going from a comfort zone to like,
all right, I got a step into something new, which
then actually literally led me to like taking these electors
(06:44):
and getting into acting and then from there. It's funny
because when I first got to LA, I was like, yeah,
I'm here to act.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
I got it. What's up? Y'all here for me? Y'allm
not here for me?
Speaker 5 (06:54):
Like I'm out here, and literally would start going on
auditions and I wasn't booking, and I ran away from it.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Fully, ran away from you and ran away from acting,
fully ran away from it.
Speaker 5 (07:04):
Like I was like, man, I ain't trying to be
no starving artists driving across town and no auditions. They
don't see then they don't they don't deserve me, like whatever.
But again it was me running from this growth.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
It was me. I didn't want to be vulnerable. I
didn't want to be uncomfortable.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
I didn't want to go through that process of a
learning the whole new craft and what it took to
learn that craft, be the feeling of auditioning and not
getting a job, that rejection, right, you hear no a lot,
and so like, I didn't want to go through that.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
I didn't want to feel that. I just wanted to
be loved.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
And so I was like, well, if y'all ain't gonna
love me, then I'm gonna move on and go do
something else. And so I literally walked away. I probably
for about a good three years while I was.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
In LA and then.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
I kind of got back into it. I was in
a job. I was in a retail job. Actually, I
was a West Coast regional manager of this retail brand.
My boss called me and she was like, Hey, I
just got laid off. You're the only person I hired
since I've been here. You're probably gonna get be next,
and all I could think about was like, I moved
to La to act, and I'd never give myself a
real chance.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
And I could do retail anywhere in the world, So
why choose La?
Speaker 5 (08:10):
And I love La, but why they're so I just
kind of kept coming back to this thing of like
I want to give myself a real chance to do this,
like I want to actually be uncomfortable, go through it,
sit in class, and do it. And so I ended
up enrolling in the class. I worked overnights at Target,
I worked, I bartended, I worked the front door at
(08:31):
a club.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
I did all kinds of stuff, whatever.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
I could do to make ends meet, so I could
be in acting class one night a week. And then
I would just sit in other acting classes and just watch,
like I would beg my acting coach and just let
me watch, wouldn't participate, And that ended up kind of
being this moment of like super uncomfortable, wildly uncomfortable, because
now I'm dealing with feelings that I never really dealt
with before. I'm watching people who were technically proficient do
(08:56):
something that I'm like, oh I'm messy, I'm all over
the place. But it was just that thing of like,
you know, if you want to get on the other side,
then you just got to go through it.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
It's no other way.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
We'll be right back with more of my interview after
this quick break.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Say what were those moments, like, so you come in,
you're a basketball star in college, you're thinking about going
to the league, You're going to be this actor, but
you're boxing things at target. Talk about what that felt
like to be at that moment given the skills that
you had and where you thought.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
You would Yeah, I mean, you know, star is a
strong word. I don't know if I would call myself
about I don't know if the basketball st.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
We give promotions, we give awards here, so take it.
Speaker 5 (09:49):
Do we give contracts because if we give back contracts,
I'll tell you it.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Uh nah.
Speaker 5 (09:55):
You know, it's crazy to to feel like you own something, right,
to feel like you're so good in something and you've
put in the time.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
And you've been good at it, right, and then all
of a sudden.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Not get the response that you're expecting, or not get
the accolades that you're expecting, or even the growth, the
personal growth that you may be expecting.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Right.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
It is a wild thing to like have to look
at that and then reassess and decide.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Okay, well, can I push myself further? Is there?
Speaker 5 (10:27):
Am I not doing the work? Or is this where
I'm meant to like tap out in this thing? And
now I can use these skills and use everything I've
learned from being a teammate, from being a scorer, from
being a passor like all these things. Can I use
the principles of those things somewhere else? And I think
for me, like that was the thing. Like when I
go to work, when I go when I'm on set,
(10:49):
I feel like I'm with a team, Like nobody is
more important than anybody.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
We all got a job.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
And if I don't hit my twenty, if I don't
get twenty five tonight, and you don't get your rebounds,
then we're gonna be here for fourteen fifty teen hours.
And then when that show air, ain't nobody gonna watch it.
So like I just feel like to me, like I
feel like I learned so many lessons from basketball that
I was able to take into my life when I
started working and started working in corporate retail. So then
(11:14):
when I started acting, like it's always been like what
lessons can I take to that next stage in my life.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
I'm going to go back to some of these uncomfortable
times because when you're there, this is not overnight that
you say, you know what, I'm not doing this, I
can go do this.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I'm not playing basketball. I'm going to act. I'm not acting.
I'm going to go and do something else.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
I'm not gonna stay successful in retail because my boss
got fired.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
I need to go do something else.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Talk about the transition, talk about the time, and talk
about the depths that you get into.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Yeah, and making those decisions with those stuffs.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Yeah, man, it's tough.
Speaker 5 (11:46):
You know, you're basically looking up and you're like, all right, well,
what am I gonna do.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
With my life?
Speaker 5 (11:50):
You know, like it's a question that you're constantly and
then what is accessible to me? What's not accessible to me?
What resources do I need? But I think a lot
of it for me was really into like why do
I do the thing that I do? And for me,
that why has always driven my acting and my even
(12:12):
pursuit of my career has always been driven by my why,
and I always come back to it. And so there
are plenty of things that I've said no to. There's
plenty of things where I could have easily done and
maybe have gotten on faster and maybe gotten jobs faster.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
But my why for me was always the thing that
like guided.
Speaker 5 (12:35):
My decisions, my choices, and the things that I've been
lucky enough to be a part of.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Jay young people ask me this question all the time.
Did you ever have any self doubts? And if you did,
how did you come out of that? Oh?
Speaker 5 (12:49):
Come on, man, I had self doubt this morning when
my alarm went off. I have some self doubt this morning.
I think that's a healthy thing. But it's knowing how
to deal with it, right. I think, to hell, we
all have self talk, like it happens, right, But I
think it's about knowing how to deal with it and
knowing if you're a person who easily falls into to
it just because you think it, are you going to
(13:10):
Is that gonna become your thought pattern?
Speaker 4 (13:11):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 5 (13:12):
And so I think a lot of it for me
was like, hey, putting myself around people who had a
goal and had a vision, putting myself around people who
maybe had already achieved the.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Thing that I wanted to achieve.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
And then I think a lot of it a lot
of it, especially when I first started acting, was like,
how do I I think I'm a student at heart.
I think that's why I love acting so much, because
I feel like I get to go learn something new
or learn about somebody new every time I step into
a project. But for me, like, that's something you can't
take away from me. What I go out and learn
(13:47):
is mine and I own that. And I know if
I did my work, and if I learned everything that
I was supposed to learn and I studied it, and
if I wanted to have, if I wanted to know
about a script and a director and every anything else,
I know for a fact that if I went and
did that work, when I show up, self doubt is
erase because I did my work. I mean, I get it,
(14:09):
but I still can be proud in the fact that
I did my work.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Did it because you don't win all the time, No,
you got to try all.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
You gotta try all the time.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
I want to take a minute and reintroduce the people
I'm here with.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
I'm on Lewis Carr's summit, Waymaker Summit, so I should
probably reintroduce Lewis.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Carr as the man, the man legend who's here and
put all this together.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
And Jay ellis the big time actor who's been on
BT series, The Game. He was also on the HBO
series and Secure. And importantly, as Lewis pointed out, when
you came in, if you all saw Top Gun Maverick,
he was also there and Top Gun here are this man, summit, Jay,
if there's something that you can leave with the young
men who are here who need some inspiration and need
(14:48):
to understand how to move their lives forward, what advice
would you give.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
The journey man? For me is all about the journey.
I think.
Speaker 5 (14:59):
You know, when you set your sights and you set
your goal and you kind of focus on the thing
your intention and the thing that you want in life
and that you want to go achieve. It's not linear zigzags,
you know, and you'll take two steps forward and one
step back sometimes, and that's all, okay. I think it's
all about learning that across the journey and through the
(15:20):
journey there is something for you to take from every
zig and from every zag there's a lesson for you
to take, a skill set for you to take with
you along the way to like your end goal. And
I think if you can be mindful because I think
a lot of times people get thrown off and then
when you something want just because you pivot left doesn't
mean that it's over.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
It just means you got to figure out how to
pivot back right, you know.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
And I think that like you can find something in
that pivot left that you can use with you to
take to the next level, excuse me. And so I
just always go to the journey. The journey is, you know,
it's that alchemist thing. It's like the journey is, you know,
it's it's the it's the end goal.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
The journey and the lessons that come along with jealous.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Thank you so much for being here at the summit,
and thanks for sitting in the podcast with us with
me and and mister Carr today.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Thank you, Thank you brother m hm hm
Speaker 4 (16:19):
Hm
Host
Louis Carr
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