Steve Harvey in conversation with Professor Mo Ivory

i get around the paws [Applause] everybody thank you so much for being here tonight on this very special occasion i appreciate everybody coming there are some extra seats still on the front if anybody would like to come fill in and it's my honor to welcome president blake to the law school so everybody president blake well i'll tell you what i i never um two things have never happened to me one is i've never had this many students in my software engineering class and i'll start there and two is they never clap when i came in so so let me start by um thanking uh professor ivory and dean reed for their leadership and all of their their staff for um for for all and then sir yes thank you for joining us today and sharing his insight and you know it's just you know i got a chance to speak with him briefly um he good choices about fraternities i that really certified him from the start but uh but certainly um to to have this opportunity the conversation and to share that broadly across the campus you know it's very meaningful obviously for me but certainly something i think uh hopefully as we move forward as georgia state this is one of those aspects of the institution so i know more work to be said but welcome and thank you for coming mr harvey and hopefully looking forward to class [Applause] good evening everyone i'm lavonda reid i'm the dean at georgia state university college of law i just want to welcome you all to hope will be a phenom event this evening um we've got a wonderful conversation for you steve harvey in combination with professor mo ivory one of our most beloved professors here at the college of law as evidenced by the crowd here this evening i want to thank president brian blake for joining us this evening and for supporting this event and the work we do here at the college second i extend my gratitude and appreciation to professor of practice mo ivory for her hard work dedication to the college of law and our students through her entrepreneurial spirit creativity and initiative she brought forth her vision to offer our students an interesting and contemporary platform to engage with the law by exploring the real life legal lives of some of today's and dare i say atlanta's most recognizable entertainers by implementing the legal life of course series here at the college of law i will let professor ivory speak more about the series and this installment but i will note that this series represents experiential learning that is equal parts rigorous accessible interesting relevant and timely in this course the students have the opportunity to engage with legal doctrine and business law concepts centering on ascending careers of well-known figures i for one cannot wait to see who she chooses to study next thank you professor ivory and your students for engaging in the law in this way now i have been known to wax nostalgic and when the opportunity arises like this i take a walk back in history to prepare remarks for events such as this so i paid a mind in my vid i paid a visit in my mind to the apollo theater and retrieved a memory of a feeling i had when i had the opportunity to visit the apollo theater a few years ago at the invitation of dean leonard baines who is the dean at the university of houston law center the association of american law schools held its annual meeting in new york city that year and dean baines hosted a reception at the apollo for black law faculty it was thrilling and inspiring and i remember taking in the feeling of standing on that stage that him engraced by entertainers known and not yet known i thought of the sandman of course and hoped that he didn't snatch me off the stage and the many entertainers performing on what is affectionately or maybe sometimes not affectionately known as the chitlin circuit to the present it was an awesome feeling one that would have only been made better if i could have been able to croon a line from nancy wilson or luther vandross or craft a witty joke like tonight's honored guest the memory floods my my spirit whenever i return to harlem and it's an honor to share space this evening with one of those grades then i queued up a few episodes of the steve harvey show and was reminded of the side-splitting humor and laughs that were served up by mr hightower principal miss regina piggy greer seti and levita we had a good time in the 1990s laughing with that crew as a fictional former r b performer who was coming to terms with his latest gig as a high school teacher mr harvey's character mr hightower joked that he used to have so much money that when he and his band the high tops would deposit a check the bank would bounce but now that he was so broke that they cut off his refrigerator light he had to teach school at this high school we had a good time laughing with those uh with those characters that show um was pivotal in that his assignment as a band and drama and art teacher was as humorous as it was a critical look at the challenges of inner city public high schools and the ups and downs that often come part and parcel with a career in entertainment fast forward to today when nearly every time i set foot in my house after a long day here at the college of law i find my dear mother miss brenda reed captivated by an episode of family feud miss brenda she would have been here tonight but her grandbaby is performing in an orchestra concert across town and so she sends her regrets but she did tell me to tell mr harvey that we are cousins by marriage on her side of the family let's talk about that so mr harvey wears many hats many hats including comedian actor author entrepreneur style icon radio talk show host philanthropist husband and father just to name a few i i want to thank the man of the hour mr steve harvey for scheduling time to be with us in person share his lived experiences and for opening himself up and his life for study by our law students thank you everybody enjoy the program well thank you dean reed so much i did ask dean reed to give two minutes and well she's the dean so there you go and but she did a great thing by introducing mr harvey by just giving all a brief and that's just a very brief background of his bio the students in this class have studied it you know for 13 weeks 14 weeks is what the semester is and so what i want to start off by doing is sharing with him a little bit of what we talked about and who came to talk to us so that he understands all that we learned about you during this semester so we did start off with brandon and um for everybody here brandon is the head of steve harvey global and he's a an attorney but he is now an executive of a multi-million dollar company multi-multi and he took the time to come in and really set the foundation for us legally on that first week of class and we thank you for that brandon um and what he really wanted us to know is that it's a lot of work and that although this class is centered around a figure that we love as an entertainer and who we spend a lot of our time laughing with there's also a lot a lot of business behind mr harvey and we got a chance to really begin to explore it and so after branson came rashawn mcdonald came i don't know if sean's here he said he was coming maybe he's not here yet he came next to talk about those early years and to just talk about how things got started in the radio show and walked us all through that and uh we loved the steve harvey morning show and then walter latham came to talk to us about kings of comedy you had a chance to talk a little bit about it um to our students but we will get into it more when we talk about the questions next up was tracy sherrod from harpercollins and she came to talk about the book and she told me to tell you that she's ready for you to write another book i told her i would let pass that along um and then christal seis came next to talk to us about your facebook watch show um and just how digital assets are being protected and all of those types of things we looked at a lot throughout each of these folks coming to visit we examined a legal agreement that would have gone along with it a publishing deal or a management agreement or a comedy booking tour agreement so we would spend some time talking about your experience we would study the agreements and then we would have the guest speaker so then we had after that shirley strawberry came to talk to us about the radio show and just how long she's been is it true that she is the longest person that has been on the steve harvey morning show yeah over 20 years yeah yeah so she shared a lot with us and we had a chance um me being a former radio host as well to talk about women in the industry and and talk about how she said that you've been a unique um radio a head of a radio show in that you've always championed everybody and helped them along whether it was through negotiations of their contracts or whatever they were running into at the time and that is definitely unique tiffany vegas came next from abc to talk to us about judge harvey and that was an amazing um class we had a lot a lot of fun with her uh-oh i feel like you want to say something about that okay hold it we're going to talk about it um and then sharon page and the rest of the folks from your foundation the marjorie and steve harvey foundation came to talk to us about foundation work and where it all is so that's what we did the whole semester and it was fascinating to learn all the things that we learned about you um so let's just start off with the early career i wanted to um really talk oh please because i talk to a lot can you hear me i talk pretty good uh first of all uh i'm honored to be here you know i don't take moments like this for granted you know technically this my life is way beyond anything i've imagined it would be you know i'm a product of grace and prayer you know if you believe in that that's what i am if you don't believe in it you ought to get to because this is how i got here we're streaming we're just gonna put the microphone on so everybody okay uh i want to say man that i'm really impressed by all of you i'm impressed by people who get education you know i don't have that i didn't have the particular skill set that you possess to sit there the capacity to learn to listen i i just i was not my groove you know i could i couldn't get it uh so i'm impressed man i mean i was talking to the students a minute ago so i was just trying to grasp this law school thing so you go to college you get a degree and then you go back to school again what hey man let me tell you something getting this high school diploma was the hardest thing i've ever done it was like it was like major for me so i just want to say really to all of you congratulations for making the necessary steps to improve your life and and it will pay off it really really will you know as daunting and hard as and difficult as it is it has some great hard work has great rewards but it is hard work so i just want to say thank you all for having me that's what i wanted to say first thank you so much i want to let you know that the reason why i chose you is not because it could have been anybody else because you said something those weren't your exact words but you said why me or whatever and i wanted you to know that the reason why is because it's not really about degrees or it's about the journey and when i'm looking at somebody to study i want to study somebody who has done things in different disciplines so radio television business fashion books and it's not just for a singer who has had a fantastic career for my students to learn i can get through those two agreements in relatively quick time but it's for somebody who's created an entire career will have a legacy that follows them and has also done the service work so that's the reason why we chose you i just wanted you to know that um so just in the early years in stand-up assembling a team i heard you say that the industry the entertainment industry is built to keep talent poor or really to make sure that talent always needs to work we all saw the interview uh on earn your leisure where you talked about the tax issues and so i wanted to start off by saying how do you pick people that you want around you to work for you well you know uh i had to i got better at over the years you know my first guy that i had with me who's passed away is juan hull i picked him because he was my friend i just needed somebody i could trust you know i was going out to hollywood in 92 93 i didn't know nobody out there i just wanted somebody i trusted uh what happens is is you learn as you progress there are people in your life just for a season er you know my father used to say this all the time everybody come with you ain't gonna go with you you know some people are in your life just for a period of time you know uh juan it was just he passed in a limo one night after the steve harvey show you know i wish he could be here today because he was he was he was he was not brandon williams trust me he had a high school diploma too and we was out there cutting deals the rough way man and you know we made a lot of mistakes but what i started learning how to do was i figured out i was lacking in a lot of areas you know because i have a high school diploma so you hear the old saying if you're the smartest person in your group you need a new group i figured that out right away so i always look for people that were smarter than me and i've surrounded myself by people who are smarter than i am now here's here's the catch with me i don't care how smart you are i don't care what you know there ain't a person living going out hustle me you can't now hustle me my grind is unmatchable there's no one on this earth born today that's gonna out hustle me my father taught me that he said boy look they can out throw you they can outrun you they can outdance you they can outsing you but don't you let no man outwork you work covers a lot of things my ability to work and grind covered a lot of my flaws and so i started surrounding myself with really really smart people and the smarter i got in this business i kept looking for people who did something better than me you know in the early days if you heard from rashaan after juan pass why uh rashaan became my manager you know we frat brothers rashaan and i started in comedy when i started in comedy rashon was a headliner i was his opening act but see me i was i was looking at him trying to figure out okay why he headline and now i'm opening cause clearly [Laughter] we streaming i can't say everything and i decided to put the work in but he taught me a lot of things one of the things he taught me was promotions you know this was before internet you know i was in business before cell phones right so the way i became a draw was i used to get those little golf pencils and index cards and every time i went to a city to perform i would have the waitress the cocktail waitress put an index card and a pencil at everybody's seat in the area and after my performance i said if you enjoyed my show write your address down and i'll let you know when i'm coming back well stamps was 10 cent i collect all of the index cards and then when i come back to town i get a 10 cent stamp lick it and send it let them know i'm coming and i started becoming a draw well before other people could become draw so rashaan taught that to me and i my first lawyer was ricky anderson he was another frat brother but i always tried to i forgot to talk about ricky that brother right there we still connected today but i trusted him i need people you could trust because they still in this business just a cash business eventually you're gonna make a lot of money somebody gonna get you that's just if you think that's somebody gonna get you i don't care who you are you can ask anybody with money if they've never been got they've been god so i tried to surround myself with people i trust and people who were smarter than me brandon uh when i had when i got him from austin bird i was telling this to because he used to come to chicago to do deals for me in chicago and i just kept watching this guy how he moved how he was and like i was telling the group of students a little bit earlier not only was he brilliant at law he was a people person see you you got to get into the people business because once you become a lawyer nobody going to ask you where you went to law school we all know if you can cut this deal if you can make this money for me and he was a people person when i had cigars one night and i just said man this guy's a people person so he was with acquisitions and mergers so guess what i had never acquisitioned or merged nothing but since i said i'm gonna get me some money one day and get into acquisitions and mergers let me get a guy that's brilliant at that so not only did i hire him away from austin bird but as we progressed he became not only my clo but my ceo of everything i do that's not only because he's trustworthy but because this dude's people skills is like wicked see we're in show business you know we got to sit out there with them man you know they just lying they're lying to you and so we got to sit out there and figure that out and then we got to make moves and brandon became he's in charge of my middle east division he's in charge of my africa division he's in charge of my american division because he works hard now that sounds like a lot i'm not going to have nobody in charge of africa and middle east and america because i don't trust you it may get to that but i got one guy in charge all of that now he's making the money so but it's it's it's a difficult process but that's what i did i looked for people who were smarter than me you've got to be smart it was what's a stupid lawyer what what what is what is that how does that work so you know oh it is a lot of them and there's a lot of lawyers just not people you know if you into like corporate law and stuff you might not have to deal with people but if you want to get to that money you got to deal with people they're only going to pay you so much to push paper you make money with people you don't make money with paper you only make so much money pushing paper man what i care you know you got to be able to get on a plane go sit and talk with somebody you got to come back with a deal you got to find deal procure business that's how you make money so that was my this is not my next question but it occurs to me to to ask you when a stressful situation comes up like you know somebody's stolen 22 million dollars from you law students have stress all through the three years they're in law school and then they have to take a bar exam after stress and anxiety has become very topical these days because of covid what do you what in those times are you doing to keep the hustle going like we all see you doing and deal with the stress at the same time well you know i mean it comes with time but you got to understand something let me ask you a question how many of you in here have been through some hard times how many of you have had some days you ain't know how you was gonna make it how many of you thought you just wasn't gonna make and was gonna have to give up okay now let me tell you something about yourself your track record for surviving unsurmountable difficult give up days you'll track a record for surviving those days is 100 you've survived them all so what makes you think you ain't going to finish up with the rest of them see you got to get you got to go you got to understand what's happening this is life covet was for everybody everybody been dealing this global pandemic this is real you ain't the only one covered you don't want to lost somebody you love you ain't the only one got put out okay and life don't care it don't care man it just keeps coming you get the next card you get the next card because life just dealing them out so you got to understand through experience that if your track record for surviving insurmountable unforgettable unthinkable days is 100 you got to know as i heard tom hanks so eloquently say online he wish he knew when he was younger that this too shall pass i don't care what's happening it has to pass now that's spiritual but that's another thing and let me before i say anything else i don't know what you heard about me in this class but let me tell you something i'm just going to tell you real i'm here because of my faith i'm here because of god's grace and mercy now if you got something else you want to hear i ain't your man because i ain't got no education i ain't got i've lost everything i ever owned twice been homeless stuttering problem sleeping in a car two divorces what what what that's favorable that's grace that's mercy if you don't understand that you need to get to understanding that cuz i got news for you and you can ask mr brandon williams it's gonna have days as a lawyer you ain't gonna know what to do your little books ain't gonna save your little book other stuff everything ain't in a book some of this stuff is life man and you got to have something else behind your education to get you through that's the truth of the matter so this dude you're looking at that that made it is because of god's grace mercy and favor and my mother was a praying woman i'm a product of prayer so now put that in your notebook if you really want to learn yourself something because you're going to need that you're going to need that more in that education watch what i tell you because once you get that degree it just hangs on the wall after that it's about you brandon shared a story of me one time he went into his law firm and he was sitting down he's telling his boss at austin bird how difficult it was and how he was having these cases and he just went on and on about the troubles and his boss sat there for 15 minutes and let brandon talk and when brandon got through talking his boss looked at me and said hey brandon it's hard it's just hard you coming in here with all these it's hard you ain't going to get rich easy and that's what me and brandon's thing we look at here sometimes we be on the plane we look at each other and go it's hard dog it's hard and we've been we've been in the middle east it's hard because we've been meeting they'll just start speaking arabic you know that ain't no language you can just pick stuff up and go oh you know what i think they said no you don't know what they say they get through talking arabic me and brandon look at each other and go this hard dog and so once you understand that you you you expect that to go that way thank you for that um so kings of comedy was a huge success you made a lot of money doing that what was that experience like when walter you know you you talked about saying he was like we can sell out stadiums over and over and you like no no we get and he just made you believe a 26 year old kid that you could do that and then it actually happened and it was a movie and it kept on going what was that you know all of us were older than walter see king's economy when it first jumped it was just me uh said in bernie dio was added to next year the first year was just me saying bernie and he said look man y'all selling 5 000 seaters i want to put you all together and we're going to sell 20 000 seaters and we that was like unthinkable but he had this vision and he was right and he had a sponsor crown royal and they was paying goo gobs of money and i don't even drink and so i was having trouble as the host because i didn't want to promote the brand you know but then after they gave me this money i was you know i was pulling liquor you know backstage serving and having don't i don't ever drink i've never been drunk before i've never been high before i've never smoked weed i never tried nothing i ain't knocking it it just ain't my thing i don't need that you know i got i'm already is something wrong with me anyway last thing i need is to introduce an additive so so there was never any i mean the entertainment world is very celebratory um and always pushing things that there was never a time that some executives were have a drink with us or oh so that ain't me you just never felt like you needed to do that i don't care what you talking about you're not getting me in a position to mess my money up you can't take me out of who i am because i can't be nowhere inebriated you know i was a dude in college where you know i i took everybody home we go to the party they knew i wasn't gonna drink man they go with love man love gonna take us home and i take everybody home i i didn't need it you know and then hollywood traps you see this business is cold man they they have the parties with everything you need the devil busy man you understand so taxes drugs and women is your downfall and if you don't think it is come out there and they got it for you and they serving it up in bowls and at the party's just feeding it to you all the free what you want what you want you take pills you snort what you want they give it to you give it to you and next thing you know you be holding to them now you hooked now your next negotiation take it or leave it it's a tricky business man and if you don't think it's happening it's very very real because television has changed it was 800 stations now you know back when i was on tv man it was abc nbc cbs and then it was a few network uh fox came out in the end the wb came out and then uh up came out and then it was it wasn't that was it fox and it was all net all network shows after abc nbc cbs all network shows start with black shows you ever noticed that a startup network always look at the wb look at the cw all of them they always start with black shows you know why because instant audience instant audience so then they get the instant audience but they tell all the black shows you have to have a white on your show that's why i had uh elizabeth on my show what and bullet head on the show jamie foxx was the only one that stood up and said i ain't gonna do it i ain't had time for that argument you can bring all the white people in here you won't i need this check dawg but parenthood everybody you know and when i had the steve harvey show or me and the boys i had i had three sons and a mother-in-law live in the house they wanted a white person on a show so bad they introduced a little white girl on the show and said she'll come over and play with your sons what well where in this world do you send your daughter white black yellow or blue next door to play with the three boys what had happened there that's why i had to shoot that down but you look at the way tv is man and and they had so many trappings but you you know you kind of learn as you as you as you go along how to avoid the traps and everything i hope i'm answering your question no you are i mean because mine it just goes right into it about what were the challenges in tv that led you to be interested in doing family feud and knowing you would have to bring all of your you know figure and to that show because it was struggling well you know i didn't i didn't want to do family feud when they first came to me 13 years ago they flew me out to la they said we have a game show we're interested in you hosting and i had heard that howie mandel was getting tired of doing deal or no deal so i went cool so i flew out there and when i get out there they said it's family feud and i said i don't want to do it and they said why i said because the show is nothing now you know after richard dawson it was a show and it was a 1.4 in the ratings i'm not hooking myself up to this wagon this this plane is already on the way down why would i fasten myself into a seat belt for this and they had hired different hosts every year every year and so i said no and so they said we want you to look at a tape so they showed me this tape of the last host and the question was name your favorite pet and the guy said a cow the host said let's see if it's up there you ain't said dog cat goldfish hamster puppy your first answer is cow i told him i said they said well what would you do first of all i'm not turning around to see if it's up there cause who the hell has a cow walking around in their living room oh i'm sorry i'm sorry [Applause] i'm sorry that's how i felt and she said well what would you do i would ask him why did he say cow and the lady said oh no you can never make a disparaging remark against an answer that a contestant has i said well see then you don't want me i said cause i have a skill set i said this is what i'm gonna do so they said well let's try it so they have me come back the next day and they set up a dummy family actresses and they brought the camera crew in to film it and so they were doing the little lines and i had the cameraman just rolling laughing they they were shaking they was dropping the cameras they was walking away and they said oh my god that's fantastic how did you do that did they give you the questions i said no and she said well and so i said so the lady said i can't take a chance on this because this could be offensive and offend our listeners well you got 1.4 little over 1100 people 1.1 million you that ain't nobody and so this lady gabby johnston who's executive producer she said i think he's on to something i want to give him a shot i said no that's right you ain't got to fight for me i don't want to do it and so she said but let me ask you a question you were so funny we have to do 200 shows how can you be that funny every single night we're gonna have to i'll tell you what we'll do we'll give you the questions the night before and you can write your jokes i said i don't need that she said why not i said this all like i just all i got i ain't got number jokes i can't fix cars i definitely don't know law so i'ma write jokes they said how will you be able to write to jokes for 200 shows i said pay me they paid me and then that's when i took the show and in the second year we were like a 2-4 then we went to a three-something then we went to a four then it was a five and it's climbing and then next thing you know it was the number one game show in the world with seven and the secret behind it is the only thing i do on family feud is i say what i know everybody at the house is thinking that's all i do and i just became a reflection of people watching tv and i turn a a game show into a comedy show because look at it family feud is a survey game top 100 people surveyed said who gives a damn who cares what a hundred people think but they do care about the response so somebody on youtube did a clip the actual questions and answers on a 30-minute show of family feud is 90 seconds that's the question and answer rest of it is me talking to them that's the show and that's that's how i did it it was really by accident but once again that's god put me in a position that i wasn't even ready for and little how did i know that it would turn into this thing do you man look people people pay me to come to their company to do family fuel we got a board we travel with and everything i charge so much money when they pay me i'm embarrassed i think everyone checks oh my god oh my god thank you so much well we talked about negotiating for you in class many times and we um we renegotiated your family feud agreement um and really what y'all come up with because we're in the middle of that right now we um anybody in the class can also participate in this i mean i think we were paying you 40 million um we were um we were decreasing the time as you got older for the commitment so that you could have some of your personal life back um not with a pay decrease just so you could have some personal time back you're welcome we wanted you to be here so in most of the agreements that we've negotiated for you throughout the semester we've talked about uh de-escalating clause on term um in order that you still get paid the same amount of money but you get more of your time back um and so we've transitioned you into a succession plan and we've had all kinds you talking to me like i know what you're talking he about you into a succession plan the hell do that mean what is that so we just thought about when you might not be able to do certain things anymore and how you would be teaching others to be able to slowly step into positions and give you your time you can take that out oh that's not gonna happen when i leave i don't give a damn what happened to that show i'm gonna but seriously what does when you were first starting out family feud and talking about leverage right and you're so highly leveraged at this point when you go into a deal and everybody knows who you are what is the conversation like when a deal is presented how do you choose what is what you will do because you have so many opportunities and can create so many new opportunities what's that conversation like in the sense of how you will go in and what you will get for what you want well you know the negotiation is is a slippery slope you know because they're going to offer you what they want you to accept and if you accept it they're the happiest person in the world me and brandon's philosophy is this we only sign a deal a good deal is when everybody signs it hurts a little i didn't get exactly what i wanted but you paid me more than you wanted to see when everybody signs and we all hurt a little bit then that's a good deal that's our philosophy you very rarely are going to get everything you ask for but you have to go in from a position of strength like you say and being in a position that i'm in today is a lot more favorable than when you start and because you're a pig in a blanket in the beginning you know you don't you got to prove yourself and all this here but then they real slick because you got to remember when you go in the room to negotiate for a client or you may be on the corporation side you know your job is to come in as though this is it this is the value of you we can't pay you any more or i don't give a really care what you think of me i i have a family to take care of and it's me who's turning that corner with that suit on so when i come around that corner okay if you got somebody else you can hire they can turn that corner and do this show like me then go get the pan whatever you want to pam but if you want me and then see i'm gonna get you a seven when i come around that corner without me you was getting a one four no i know when i come around the corner you get a seven now if you like that seven and i know what seven pay if i know that your company is making a hundred million in ad revenue sales i got real good idea what you need to give me and and that's and and that's the way we go about it and you've got to use all of that when you're negotiating for your client now once again if you're on the corporate side i i i'm not going to really care for you and i don't care what you get out of this class me personally if you got to start vomiting and left right now i'd be perfectly comfortable with that but if you're wanting to be on the client side then let me help you if you're a corporate person really i i don't even like you because at this point i mean really brandon and i we sit in the media and we realize what the enemy is this person is trying to pay me as less as possible because he earns his stripes in the company by being able to say i've delivered you steve harvey for this that man once i know that's your angle man me and you man we we we hard folks to sit across from because i'm i'm already edgy i already understand what i'm dealing with and i got that's your job but your job is to not allow me to be as successful as i could be that's a funky job to have man and if i were considering the type of law i'm getting into i would think about that because you're going to be very well and deservingly hated and a lot of people gonna hate you your car tires gonna get cut a lot of windows a lot a lot of people gonna be looking for you especially if you get into this hip-hop thing they find you can you tell us um an example of a deal that you said uh no i am not doing that i can imagine that people want to request you for all kinds of deals is can you think of a deal that you said i am not doing that i mean we do it all the time i mean you know it's people who churches are bless us with your um how is that your opening negotiation bless us by blessing me you a church bless me that that's the beginning of a star and then as you know we don't have you know his you know we don't have what you normally make but if you would see it in your heart well my heart don't have eyes so i'm not going to see that tell me what you're offering and let's go from there now i say no to a lot of things you know i don't do the worst gig i ever took what when i when i learned this was when i first got started i was a young act and they hired me for this dude's birthday party and peppa pike which was a suburb of cleveland and the pay was a hundred dollars and you know back then i was 25 a night fifty dollars said pass a hundred dollars i just took it a hundred dollars man and i went to peppa pike i get to this birthday party the dude that i'm performing in front of is 87 years old he's dead now his son hired me who was at the comedy club tuesday night and thought i was hysterical my dad's gonna love this his father was dead the entire time i stood in front of a fireplace and i'ma tell you something i wanted to just lay back into that fire and just go on and go to hell this was the worst this 100 was the most painful one hundred dollars that kid paid me to now he said god you were great i sucked nobody laughed but the kid that hired me the dead people remained dead the entire time his father didn't even know i was talking and i learned that day right there that all money ain't good money and so i started being very careful with what i chose after that now i've made some mistakes biggest mistake i ever made was for a million dollars one night i took a gig 2008 new year's eve detroit because they offered me a million dollars the other headliner was cat williams kat and i were pretty cool but some things happened and somehow catnip promoter turned it into a boxing match so they told me that i would enter the joe lewis arena in a robe and i would climb into a boxing ring and it was going to be a heavyweight match to see who knocked you out and i was going to go first and then cat was to come home well i told them you know i'm fly i wear suits i'm not gonna wear no robe so the robe is out and i said i'm not climbing the rope take all the ropes down it was one of the worst decisions i've ever made because i took the money i hated the entire night cat went up on that stage and his whole show was about me with nothing to do with the show or nothing i mean he was just in me man just doing him to doing his thing it was a horrible night oh i made the money but that night 2008 going into 2009 the worst night of my life ever on stage got a million dollars new year's eve but boy that was an ugly million dollars the internet was all over me man laughing at what cat is saying all this you wrote man your career finished cat mopped you up comedy is not a beef or a battle this is not rap man we go up you do our jokes you don't post it come up and this ain't this how we do comedy i wouldn't i wasn't prepared for it i never mentioned him that one time in my act and it was just crazy but they wrote me off but let me just show you something you got to hang in there when you get rolled off you got to hang in there when it don't go right because 2009 little did i know my book was coming out act like a lady think like a man on around the 18th and 19th that bad boy came out and stayed on the new york times bestseller list at number one for 38 weeks so so much for your career is finished that book i don't know if tracy told you that book made anyone i didn't even do a good deal i did a deal where i got a nice check up front i made money off the book i made owls make it that that book still but it's the gift that keeps on giving every april 1st and october 1st i get a check i got to check april 1 i went i put it aside for mother's day because i'm finna buy my wife some cold well not well mother's day then the anniversary is june uh all the money is going for her anniversary gift in june which is i promised her something real special so um y'all pray for me i got to save up for this one so all that money is gonna go for her gift she gets way more money than i do i don't know how god set this arrangement up i make all the money all of it she don't even work can you edit that out i got caught up i just got caught up in that so that book was on the for 38 weeks i mean what does that make you feel about you had several books after that but what about another book of that sort of nature that could be turned into i mean do you think about that i have one it's already written someone when we see that i got how many ladies did i get paige how many hannah hannah was there i had about 40 women coming at tyler perry studios and i sat there for a week with 40 women and i wrote a new book and i did it two years ago and i'm just sitting on it now will packer has found out the name of the book and has already offered me money for the movie rights already because the name of the book is so dope that i'm not going to say because and y'all so brilliant in here y'all are but it's so dope will packers already offered me money for the rights to the movie but i'm a lot more selective this time because see even though uh the book got turned into a movie the first time if i had known what i know now oh my god i would have made you know that movie did over 100 million you know what i'm saying so what would you do differently uh complete ownership right ownership is key for us right now everything uh ownership is the key and i sold it and i banked on the movie doing points and it did all the points i hit all the bonus marks and tens of you know millions and millions was i was making it but if i owned it i would i would have had the lion's share of it and i didn't because i i bet on the points but see i was in tax trouble and i needed money and so i was just doing the deals best i could so looking back on it man it would have been ownership for me like now for us that's all it is if there's no equity ownership we know we don't do nothing we talked a lot about ownership when we were negotiating uh your agreements about limited rights to your name and likeness about total ownership of whatever the product and the content really yeah um just about how we would want to see let me ask you a question when you all do this type of thing when you come to whatever conclusion you're saying you're pretty much secure in your findings sure so what we did was we would learn about your career and then we would basically renegotiate whatever deal you were in whether it was family feud africa whether it was uh rashaan told us that you did not have a written management agreement so we put you in a written management agreement um we thought that was safe from moving forward we did we just did that well just you know things that we thought as as i've never done that really i've never done that why i'm not signing myself to a piece of paper to a person you can't like like for example when rashaan started managing me i was after the kings of comedy so if i'm gonna do a tour date why am i giving you a percentage all you gotta do is answer the phone now here's a salary sean made a lot of money a lot of money between the radio and our career but you can't get a piece of my comedy career are you kidding me no it was built so if i got a managerial degree see i don't have a manager now i did a deal with img for my talk show i ain't signing nothing so she so now that's over with bye yeah you know y'all y'all you put me in the deal with um um uh uh uh miss universe uh uh see okay this is a different let me story say that in your management agreement we did exclude your comedy career any stand-up tours and things like that are you very good excuse me we took that out that was good see uh 2015 miss universe right the infamous you said the wrong name you know that was like man see the truth of what really happened was crazy and i i almost wish i hadn't played it that way but i did see you i i don't make mistakes on tv i i've been on it too long i have an ifb in my ear i have a teleprompter and i got a card now on this card through practice has been two names all week long because since we bought we bought uh miss universe from donald trump at the time that's when donald trump was like you know okay and uh we bought it from donald trump right and so they used to do and it was anti-climactic when they would go and the first runner up is and now miss universe just standing there she's the one but you got to celebrate the first one up so they decided to change it they wouldn't announce the first one they'd say second runner-up and then they'd have the two ladies standing there and the next person you just named miss universe practice like that all week so we get that at night and the teleprompter says and the new 2015 miss universe is i'm reading it in the teleprompter the director in my ear says read the second name steve and on the card was miss columbia now the lady that used to work for trump decided she don't want to do it like that the night of so she puts a third name on the card but when they handed me the card the third name is under my thumb at the bottom left-hand corner of the card i don't even see no third name which would didn't matter anyway because the teleprompter said and the new 2015 miss universe is second name steve miss colombia great job steve go to the back let's wrap it up i go to the back two minutes later my boy come up to me and say hey dog you said the wrong name i said i ain't saying wrong what are you talking to me about i said the name that was on the card and what his ass told me to say i ain't saying nothing wrong so i said damn they out there crowning miss colombia so he said man that's cool man don't worry about it i said i'm gonna go out here and fix it the they told me my ear don't do that we'll fix it tomorrow in the paper i said no i'm gonna go get to this girl now and i'll walk my ass out there that was the most noble dumbest i've ever done that was the right thing to do that was the right thing i could have kicked i was kicking my you don't even know how i felt that night because then i had to go to a press conference the columbia media was there and they was in my ass man damn people was cutting me to pieces so i go home that night i can't sleep my wife says hi we go home next day and i don't know how bad it is until i wake up and it's everywhere i got people calling me man from africa italy yo man what happened dawg you all right now before that i had asked god one of my prayers i was asking god to increase my global brand and persona do you know in 48 hours the name steve harvey was googled 4 billion times in 48 hours i was the most famous person in the world for 48 hours you know what god had did he had increased my global brand and persona now i didn't appreciate the way he did it but boy my ass was famous and it turned out to be a horrible situation and i got a lot of death threats from colombians oh my this is my daughter right here she'll tell you they they were taking notes and tying them on rocks throwing them over my gate they were threatening my children my wife you're gonna die since 2015 i have had armed guards at my house front and back since 2015. i live with forearm policemen around my property at all times because i'm not playing with them now you're going to be if you want to because i don't know who y'all you know i'm kind of hood you know so and i ain't really and then i bring a lot i have a lot of illegal friends from my past who come down who do things for 1500. look at all these lawyers is he our client is this but the beauty of it was this happened in december right along came the super bowl verizon came to me t-mobile came to me to do a commercial they paid me so much money to mock that their little t-mobile commercial was i said the name and then i went i got it right yes i got it right that was a commercial they paid me millions for that i go out there and say that name wrong air damn week if you want me to so once again this opportunity is like you have to hang in there when adversity hits because you know you never know how to turn for you're going to have a lot of adversity in your career and you've got to be able to okay let me let me tell you this you all in law school you have this dream whatever it is of being whatever kind of lawyer it is i want you to understand something every dream gets tested every single dream gets tested you're not just going to be a lawyer because you want to be somebody might not pass the bar the first time so what you do now or you're going to go again i got a partner that failed the bar three times before he made it now i don't use him dumbass moment no really man you know hey look here all right you can you can't you can't do not practicing law with me no you got to be doing law ricky anderson his nickname is city who was my first lawyer we call him city because ricky bought this big house in texas and he just from the city man he'll know nothing about the country he bought a five acre lot in a wooded block cut every tree down on his five acre lot because he don't like trees because he from the city he had no hedges around his you can see the foundation of his house with the brick he didn't have flowers along the edge of you can see an ant coming up in his house and we called him city he passed the bar before he finished law school because he a gangster ass dude he said i got to get at this he passed the bar before he finished law school go figure that i hired him cause of the hustle in him you see what i'm saying now you but but if you do fail the ball you got to keep going every dream you have is going to be tested understand that ain't no easy walk to the top ain't no stairway to the top you got it ain't no elevator to the top you got to take the stairs you're going to be tested what you're going to do when you get tested because you're going to get told no a bunch of times so what you're going to do you got to master that but the only way to master it is you got to get knocked down to understand how to get up you must fall and roll over to know what it is to have to recover you got to be down to understand up you got to be under to know how to get over you got to get to the low point to appreciate the high point if you don't think it'd go like that man you might want to get out of school now cause you're gonna get tested now the question is what you gonna do when the tests come cause you think this test in here hard you think the ball hard oh wait wait till you get a load of life it ain't nothing like it man it's nothing like it so you got you got to keep fighting and digging you you got to be funky i tell people all the time you got to develop the dog in you you have to develop a tenacity in you if you don't have dog in you man you're done you look the little cat attitude that don't work you got to be a dog i don't care if you're a lady i don't care what religion you in you got to be funky you want to win you got to get funky man and i don't mean nasty step on nobody but when they bite at one you can't keep walking past people when they snapping at you you gotta turn around stop somebody snapping see i'm not like i'm a christian right but i'm like a really like underdeveloped christian you know like i don't like really do like i don't like do like high level christianity i don't i'm not like on a scale of one to ten i'm here i'm like a two and that's good because i that's the level of christianity i can work on you know like you like you slap bishop jakes he'll turn the other cheek because he's a high-level christian you slap me will smith let me play some tea it's no way you slapping me turn around button your jacket and walk off that stage they gonna have to go to full commercial breaks i'm not saying i wouldn't get slapped but i'm just saying for you sit your ass back in your chair jada and everybody else gonna have to move out the way cause we're gonna be down here moving furniture around partner that's the type of christian i am i'm sorry oh i want to talk about that so badly with you but we're going to move on for the sake of oh really that is but let me say this though i mean when you saw that happening were you watching the oscars when that happened oh i was i was in abu dhabi okay and the feed came up right away my son said dad he brought it to the hotel room it was like 15 minutes after it happened it was online here's here's the deal i'm very good friends with chris rock i think he handled it admirably people talk about what they would have did but man how he stand there you that's the last thing you expect to be standing on stage at the oscars and somebody come up and slap you that's you because when he saw him come he said oh here come richard cause he was thinking you know he coming up there to say something it was alarming but he hauled off power and he slapped chris but let me tell you how punk of a move that really was look man we ain't show busy we know how this is he knew that was the only place he could walk up slap an adult male turn around close his jacket and walk back to his seat where else bears in this world can you go slap a full grown man turn around and button up your jacket you see that that was such a hollywood move he knew he could get away with that that's why he did it that's all that is man i lost a lot of respect for him that day you know i text rock after that he said i'm okay man i'm just trying to work through it you know what i mean and like then after the part after the thing he had to party holding the oscar dancing oh no homie no i'm at all these parties they'd be looking for that oscar and when they find it they don't have to wipe it off i'm telling you that right now you're not going to be at the party partying with the oscar because i ain't that way and i'm 65 years old man and i still because of the way i was raised i have a certain element in me and you know i was raised you can't kick nobody spit on nobody or slap nobody and to this day you cannot talk about your laws fear harvey and in-laws very harvey has left this world 25 years ago and to this day if you say anything about my beloved mother you can ask my daughter it's only cracking she just seen it if you say something about my mama i don't care i don't care how old i get i'm gonna do something to you we we're not playing this game and that's just that's just how i come up i just thought it was such a soft just chump move man on his part and now he's in india now you know we all went to india to visit with this uh to do like some spiritual work oh whatever you know you you know when you go to india you could went to the potter's house in dallas if you wanted some spiritual work you know all this you can go see whoever the hell you want when you come out that cave speed gonna be out there waiting on you you come back in here you can say oh incense you could do whatever you want you can get you some orange and red okay let me stop all right so human resources we're gonna thank you for sharing that with us we all um wanted to know how you felt about that and that gives us an inside look um going back to ownership and international deals we talked about your taking family feud to africa and we were completely intrigued by your production company owning that product um brandon going there and learning the fine points of negotiating that international deal which he shared with us that you know he was learning as he was doing those deals because i called him one day from botswana when the vision came to me because when god give me something i go right away what's your opinion what you think of it don't matter to me i don't even listen to people you know if god puts them in my heart and i'm not saying that to sound like extra spiritual but i do i follow instructions i call brandon say brandon i want to do uh family feud in africa and uh i won't do it next year and click i hung up now brandon i mean the credit to him if it wasn't for brandon the deal don't happen because brandon is a dude i can go to with stuff like that because you know well mr hart hold on mr harvard what you want what you mean what i want hell if i knew how to do it why i call you i called you and he went and made it happen and researched it and came up with it you know he talked to us about walking through and in discussions with the fremantle people and walking through that whole deal and then the concern about well you're gonna have to put the africa you know the the two countries you're in the spin on their culture right because the questions are very cultural related like you know what's your 100 people think is a favorite pet well maybe a cow is not the pet and um well maybe it i don't know cows are very valuable right but you still had to put your cultural how do you do that um to still make it humorous and funny and relevant to the culture well the thing i did the one thing i've understood i am to be uniquely me no matter what i don't go and try to fit into nothing else i just go and i let you all fit into me so when i went to africa it was a huge cultural thing going on i didn't understand half the questions or answers you know name your favorite food bunny chop bunny chop is really a fool bunny chow right there from south africa i met her she's she one of my friends she's the ceo of his company in south africa the neville group i'm surprised to see her and that's and i was over there learning and then i have the accent in africa not them so i played i cut i didn't know none of the names look most of the names didn't even fit on the name tag i mean they got names man five eight syllables long i was over there struggling so i made the humor about the fact that i'm i'm the foreigner here okay i got to learn this and so the joke became steve doesn't understand anything about us but at the same time we the same so i made them understand how culturally close we really were that are really man i'm african-american key word african because it's too many days i don't feel american at all at all really tell you true you don't know truth about me i prefer being called black i really do i like black steve you black i like black i like that because it tells the story for me and i'm comfortable with that you know that african-american because i'll die identify with african-american when that constitution applies to all of us if if this country okay we all finish something else if this country would allow that constitution to apply to all of us that would be fair but it don't it just don't and you know it's people like you who can make a difference in that because you are the young man see your mind is different than your parents mind hopefully hopefully it's not all the way there yet but you got a better chance and you got a better chance because of hip-hop to be honest with you hip-hop merge the cultures because it used to just be one music hip-hop became your music you know i'm an r b man hip-hop kind of crossed all cultures and it made y'all feel more and more about each other but you all as young lawyers have a chance to change this thing you all can get in there and do the right thing instead of the usual thing y'all know this justice system ain't worth a damn you know it you looking at it so now you want to be a part of it you want to be a part of it so you can do the same thing or you're going to get up in here and make some changes or you just sit up in here and just take the money and go status quo we're going to keep doing it the way it is you know this thing ain't right you can't sit here with an intellectual mind and tell me that this is what justice is supposed to look like you can't let these cops keep killing these black faces and don't nobody do nothing about it that don't make no damn sense see how okay go ahead cause no no okay let's see no check this out the only way this is going to change is when it starts happening to everybody it's the only way it's going to change man see i'm on something else right now but i'm just appealing to you as young lawyers the future of what this country could be is in people's like your hands you understand what i'm saying to you you know it ain't right it's a problem because all the black kids that get shot by police are black ain't now white kid got shot i don't i ain't seeing the story of a police officer killing a white kid now i don't want that to happen but is that what's going have to happen for things to change or can it change with somebody just saying enough is enough see what happened with george floyd the only reason we got the george floyd thing right is because everybody was home we covet and you were sitting there and you couldn't go to happy hour and you went on spring break you was at the house watching that man with his knee on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds ah and it got caught on film but i gotta tell you something if that little black girl didn't have that camera his ass be at the house too well this ain't funny no more so let's go listen we have hard conversations all around this law school and we're challenged as faculty to think about what our positions can mean in society all the time so whether you are an entertainment lawyer keeping a young entertainer from blowing his entire advance on one thing or being caught up and arrested and his record deal is over and his entire family has been relying on that record deal to lift their situation we all can make changes in that way no matter what discipline of law we're going into so we are in this building in this courtroom to learn the law and to go out there and to apply it as we see fit and hopefully that is to help somebody else so see that girl right there yeah with the bird no she gonna change something cause i you know i could i ain't saying that nobody else but i was just watching her expression she gonna change something that dude right there he gonna change something that dude right there you don't have the g on you oh glenville yeah well i but i can just tell man i just want i don't know i don't mean to like be preacher get on the soapbox i'm 65 years old i'm exhausted i'm tired of asking this country can cannot be equal i'm so sick of that man damn what why what is very simple and y'all know y'all can do this man y'all from a generation of more forward-thinking people you know our parents my father was racist but he was supposed to be my dad was born in 1914. he wasn't posting like nobody white well i'm trying to tell you now he was very justified in his racism but me i i had to come out of that because i'm i'm finna go work with him i'm gonna go make money with everybody my father was proud of what i became before he died but in you born as a black person 1914 this ain't cool my grandfather was a slave did you hear what i just said my grandfather was a slave till he was 12 years old not my great-grandfather my father's father was a slave what man i'm i'm close to the edge i should have been come on man just just make a change i don't care if you get an entertainment law or something don't sit up in here and let them keep doing it the way they've been doing because y'all have power you're brilliant you young and you gifted and there's a calling being put on your life to do the law the right way not the regular way there's a calling to do it the right way because you know look how y'all sitting in here do you know lost school didn't even used to look like this y'all black white indian latino asian y'all all sitting in here together that used to didn't be the case well do something with it i'll sit up in here man and just sit up here with your little pen and go make your money cause if i see you somehow this billion dollars in about another year and a half and if i see i swear to god i'm gonna buy you out ruin your ass i'm gonna buy your whole firm and put you out and turn your firm into a daycare [Applause] put swings and in your office i'm sorry okay um so i was gonna there you it got all tight there for a second and i was going to go like let's what's your advice but like you loosened it up like that quickly see i know how to do that when i see the room tight i i got that gift i can spin it back thank you cause i didn't want i didn't want it to get like that because they're good people i didn't want them to think i you know was saying they was going to hell and nothing so you woke up you wanted um family feud africa and then did you wake up and you were like judge steve harvey that was a phone call brandon set up a phone call he said mr h abc wants to talk to you and you know because uh what happened was celebrity family feud is a huge hit on abc well i had offered the show since i was on nbc at the time i had little big shots on and the steve harvey talk show so i took it to nbc they said they didn't want it so i took it over to abc abc turned it into a smash hit the guy that was running the nbc at the time came to me and said he came to my trail and said what would i have to do to get you to stop doing family feud okay well you know what that answer is pay me but then he started him in the heart and then i changed my ass out i don't care what they pay me i'm just gonna stick and he called herself paying me back by taking off little big shots and the steve harvey show at the same time canceled it on the same day he said we'll just get rid of him well here's the deal remember this young people when the door closes don't stand there beating on it walk up the hall god has another door that's probably bigger than the door that they slammed in your face so instead of getting a writing campaign and all that you see people doing trying to say they show your counselor's show cool i walked up the hall and abc said he's doing such a great job man we could get him on a prime time scripted show which is a sitcom so they said brandon we'd like to talk with steve and so the morning of the call i'm at tyler perry studios taping a family feud i said brandon who's on the car he said about 12 people i said 12 people who he said comedy development scripted the president of abc the vice president of abc the head of business affairs wait a minute business affairs don't get on that phone they don't get on nothing they all here to do a deal i said wow this is big so we get on there and they said steve harvey we love you we want you to do a scripted show they went down this whole list of descriptive shows which one do you want and it's yours and i said well that's another sitcom i said after i left the steve harvey show it said and and wendy i said that's the greatest experience i ever had it's too much work i don't want to work that hard no more they said well you don't understand we'll give you the show i said i don't want to do it they couldn't understand that man you don't get he said we'll pay you the rate you're making per day on celebrity family feud a lot of money man that's a lot of money every day you told that up man i'm well i walk out of there with a lot of money for one week that's a it's a chunk but i know now my life i'm tied up sun up some down i said i don't want to do it they couldn't believe it finally the president said so what would you want to do i said well the only show i ever really wanted to do i thought of this about 12 years ago i want to be a judge on tv you could have heard a rat pissing on the ball of cotton in the corner it got so quiet that lady said a judge on tv and then i heard a guy on the zoom zone is he a lawyer they was trying to work it out in their mind the people on that zoo was just going through it has he ever been to law school what did he say he wanted to do and then i heard one day he said judge i said so uh then this guy goes what what makes you think you could be a judge i said donald trump was president he a reality star now he the president how the hell is so far-fetched i can't be a judge they said well how do you see it happening i said well this is what i would do i said i would do the cases but i would use my my gift which is humor and they said but do you know the law well most of the laws i knew i broke uh i'm not really like law i don't know no law i say but i got real good common sense i said but i don't want to do like murder no like that i wouldn't do like small claims oh my arguing about a dress and like that i don't want to be like no i really want to be no law he said well and what would you do i said i wouldn't focus on the law because i don't know law i i'll care about the story i just want to hear the story i'm not judge judy and all this here i just want to do the story they said oh my god really we'll get back to you and i've heard that a million times i was telling the guy today i've been to 120 pictures over 120 pitches i have five shows on tv out of 120 pitches i got five shows on tv so i hung the phone up brandon said hey man where the hell did you come up with being a judge i said hey b i thought about this about 12 years ago i thought it would be dope he said and so he was talking to my other guy on the phone he said did trevor did mr harvey ever tell you anything about this and said no the next day abc called and said we're green lighting the show we'll give him 10 guaranteed episodes the show was bought it happened so fast next thing you know the next six months i don't even know how to do a judge show i don't know nothing about it i really didn't think they was gonna go for it i was just trying to get him off the phone you know cause i wasn't gonna do a sitcom once again here come god i ain't want to do family feud you know i don't want to do a lot of stuff then he'd come to judge show so what i did was i told brandon i said now listen to me i'm owning everything i'm owning everything they don't want to do that we ain't doing nothing do you know this is the first time i've owned everything think of this you have an ip an intellectual property first of all it's a judge show that's done in prime time never ever on tv has a judge show been on at night secondly i'm gonna interject humor nobody has ever done that so i have a very unique property that i've come up with so now every time abc get a check i get a check but not not only to start a show i get that check i get an ep check i get it created by check i get an ownership check and on top of all of that i don't care what happens if we take it to napti and we franchise it i own that too and we just made sure every time abc eats i eat and that right there and and let me it's so crazy right now it's such a incredible deal tonight as a matter of fact is the first time this the season finale of the judge show it's a double run do you understand how you don't double run a show in prime time unless it's a monster they're not going to put you on back to back so they're running a double run season finale tonight which sends us the other signal that it really is a major hit and so now we're in a in a great position uh brandy brandon i'm gonna tell you something how slick he is he didn't milk this deal do you know that we in such a position right now we have all the leverage all the leverage and it's coincidental because my family feud deal is up and the number you said i went okay me and brando i saw brandon with the right and i said i don't know what these damn kids figured out but you better believe i'm going in there with your sheet of paper and let me tell you something man if you don't think that i'm gonna get a sheet of this paper that y'all can't i've been walking there and this is what the georgia state school of law says i ought to get now i'm gonna lay that on that table and walk my ass right out of there y'all put up a number i said y'all better be and you know what like technically man i'm telling you right now that is so on point with what we're doing it's scary y'all y'all on to something man i don't know how you did your numbers and where you got it from but y'all's ass is on point and i'm gonna tell you man it's gonna be funny cause we're in the process now now the leverage i have with the judge show is going to play very very well with this family feud because guess what now abc came up and said do you want to syndicate your show you know what syndicated tv is oh my god oprah winfrey money now the only difference between me and oprah i want you to understand something oprah got a billion dollars and she bought own network i get a billion dollars uh you have seen the last of me i'm not buying a damn thing my ass is gone and you know the day after i get the billion dollars you'll know but when you cut your tv on i ain't gonna be on that song i love it well look at the um just the progression of a deal for you we started talking you know an hour whatever amount of time and we end with full ownership and leverage out the wazoo we talk a lot about exclusivity and the fact that you have managed to do things in this industry that most would not be able to do because of how you have so cleverly negotiated exclusivity you know that too yeah we've talked about it all and if it weren't [Laughter] if it hadn't been for um being able to manage exclusivity and define it in each of the things you were doing you wouldn't have been able to jump to all the networks like you've done so gracefully and that's really a true statement man i mean like every contract has exclusivity in it yes i just take it out you can't take that out okay well i ain't gonna do the deal right take it out if they first started taking it out because they said well he's not gonna be able to do all these shows do you know a few years ago man i had six tv shows running at one time i had six full-time prime time shows on at one time i was making so much money but i was dying yeah i had no days off i taped seven days a week i taped all things my wife would say steve you gotta slow down but i was trying to you know i've always been running from my past you know i've always at three years living in a car man that was that was that was crushing man and i've always been running from that and the reason one of the reasons my grind is the way it is is because i've just always i can't go back to that you know about like somebody asked me one time man why you buy such expensive cars well in case all this go bad and i got to live in my car again i'm gonna be living in a really nice ass car but you know you you work to acquire nice things but after a while man is not the things that can motivate you because i mean i have everything my motivation now is my legacy my family my children i got grandkids now man you know when you i know when you look at me you think man he is so fly and you're right but i got grandkids man just before when i was coming over here i was almost late because little ezra saw me and he ain't seen me in a couple of weeks and paw paw i want to ride you back and i said no i got to go so i got to ride his ass on my back a little bit you know and i wrote him real hard so his little cause he was on the back of my neck and he's he's potty trained so now he just wear regular underwear and i know if i ride him real back his little jewels will be slapping up against the back of my neck real hard and his ass almost passed out so papa put me down put me down yeah i just ended the ride real quick that way you know you got to know how to get rid of kids at a certain age just this you have to learn like if you have a baby and a baby don't go to sleep just blowing their eyes they'll keep doing that and then blowing their nostrils and to take their breath away and then after a while they just go on and go to sleep i've been putting little kids to sleep for a long time daughter brandy let me tell you man brandy and carly twins right and like uh i was poor really poor man and so like diapers was killing me man i got two kids and these huggies they was wiping my ass out so i was out of work and their mom used to go to work and i'd stay home with them for two weeks i had to stay home with them i got tired of buying them diapers so i would like put a lot of chairs in a circle and put newspaper on the ground and just let them walk around naked they'd be peeing and in the floor and then i just rolled up the newspaper and then you know we only used two diapers that day the college of law would like to make a disclaimer that none of this advice and or facts are um being given by the laws yeah just a little bit don't have a child one day you're gonna need these are cost-saving measures i tell you something else is really funny like brandy would be laying in the floor and i used to just test like little stuff i like take like ice water and just like drop a drop on her stomach and just shoot ahead now because i used to just shock a ass in it sorry about that okay i do have a couple of students who want to ask a question and i want to get them to that but i do you know i think i'll go to that first before i do my final question so who was the fir where is my first student sitting who was in yes there you are introduce yourself and one of the questions for our class was do you care about negative media attention at all not anymore uh well because i learned something haters are not decision makers power brokers or shakers and movers you know uh i was getting done up by my ex-wife in the in the media media takeout everything they was just doing me and we got a lawyer one time and the lawyer said steve do you block oh no man ain't got no time for that said give your business partner's blog i said no no i don't he said do any of your friends blog i said no he said does anybody you do business with do they blog i said no he said you know why because people like that don't have time he said ignore it see when they blog about me it's a blog if i respond it's a press conference see so i don't give them no fire and nothing a hater has said about me has affected anything i got going oh he finished oh really am i he's the dumbest person on tv oh well what you don't know is you think because i made the mistake on miss universe i'm the dumbest person on tv well they wanted me to come back the next year because it would be even more viewers right well i guess what now i own miss universe so now who you talking to who to dummy now that's right you feel me so i don't let no that i don't care what they say about me it doesn't matter they don't matter and what they say don't matter they don't have a person can only affect you if you allow them a people only matter if you allow them so what you gonna say about me what i care heat is he that you don't even know me you ain't even never met me man everybody that talks about and especially men when i hear a man talking about me i just look at him how weak can you be you don't even know me bruh really tell the truth have you ever met me 99.9 of the time no so i care nothing about them nothing thank you who had the next question great reminds paul haley um second year of class and so we also wanted to ask him we spent a lot of time learning about all of your decisions and your your aspirations and how you've had your career from a very legal point of view so we were curious how has your personal background uh informed your career the decisions you've made within it well you know that's an interesting question because we are all the sum total of our past and you got to remember man god has an amazing way of taking your past and and and using it to your advantage if you had a disadvantaged childhood you you could you're going to be able to use that if you had a rough upbringing you're going to be able to use that like i was i grew up in a tough neighborhood so i grew up tough man you know i've been fighting my whole life so i'm a fighter you know uh i don't have an education i have a high school diploma like i was telling a group of students i grabbed my graduating class was 695. i graduated 690 and i gave them five people hail that was behind me every time i saw their ass hang in that dog [Applause] i've used every thing that happened to me two divorces living in a car for three years a stuttering problem told i would never be nothing i i've lost everything twice i've taken all of that and it has turned me into who i am today my overcoming power is wicked man i'm a bad boy man i don't care what you do to me you can't crumble me what you gonna do what i already been homeless what you got what does he they thought when they canceled my show i was finished i lived in a car for three years see i use that so every time somebody say i'm taking something from you they forgot i had nothing i come from nothing i've lost it all twice anyway if i lost it again i could get it back let me tell you something mother's day coming do you know how i make a lot of money i have a lot of things if i could have my mother back i would sell all of it i would give every dollar i got if i could get her back man you give up everything just to have your mama back every every dollar every piece of property every house i give it back because you know why because i know how to go get it again cause i got that dog in me man i'm unbreakable you can't break me cause you didn't make me i'm created by my heavenly father you had nothing to do with it so when you come up with these ways you're gonna crumble steve harvey hold up homie i got news for you i ain't over here by myself you come over here messing with me i'm a child of the most high you come from me if you want to cussing at all i still belong to him so when you come for me man you better i'm telling you have a lunch bucket with you because partner i am all you won't i'm that and everything else i'm one of the strongest wheeled people that you will ever meet and you can become that if you use the mishaps in your life and apply them stop that's what kills me with celebrities they get where they going and then they forget to tell the truth what helps me is my transparency see the fact that i'm willing to tell people that i messed up that i made mistakes because you gonna mess up and make a mistake i can't stand when people write books donald trump got this book out talking about he turned his father's million dollars into into an empire ah that's true he did get a million dollars but he left something out the book when his father died they split 800 million you don't think you can make it give me 200 million watch the show so see what i decided was to be transparent about it and i appreciate y'all doing this study on my life because like it's it's a trip man you know i'm i'm just a hood boy i come out of cleveland ohio i come from the dirt and y'all and i'm at a law school i'm a case study and then y'all said you don't know who you're going to do next whoever it is it ain't going to be me i can promise you that and when they come in here to talk to you very few people gonna give it to you the way i'm gonna give it to you because they don't want it they they want to tell you about this side of it they don't want to tell you about the side that got them here that's my specialty i'm telling you you fitting the mess up so bad you finna blow it but you can blow it and recover from that let me tell you something you're allowed to make three major mistakes in your life and you gonna use up all of them i didn't use my three i have no more and i know that so that's why you hey look man you know why you don't see me on tmz you'll never see me on tmz you know why because i don't go nowhere waiting and put my ass on it i go home partner i bought a house where i can go home everything i want at my house behind my gate i go home because i ain't got no mistakes i can make i don't used up my three major ones it's over with i got the chick of my dreams i got grandkids i got smart kids cool i'm out her hearing carly got college degrees i paid for they ain't got no student loans all my kids and not one of them got student loan all of them went to college i didn't done mine i didn't done all of mine and now all i got to do is just make it to the tape all i gotta do is now do a couple more deals see this jaw show this the one right here three years later i'm just telling you don't please don't turn your tv on looking for me that's that's that's really true we'll take the last question where is the last question okay awesome my name and you is three major mistakes but like looking at your life as it is now would you do anything differently you know that's a strong question i wish i could say i would but it would be in my best interest if i didn't because then i would be somebody different you're going to need everything that happens to you you're going to need it to happen in the exact order that it happens to get you where you want to go remember something listen to me everything you're going to go through and going through is god preparing you for what you asked for that's that's a fact man young people listen to me that's a fact look if you're not a spiritual person i look i know you what's coming so i i just have the way i talk and this is where i'm just telling you spirituality has something to do with don't get hung up out here with this ignorant mess right here this whole ain't no god you know i was doing pierce morgan show one time and he said steve i understand there's a statement that you don't talk to atheists i said i don't he said well aren't you a christian isn't it your job to convert people i didn't sign up for that side of it i'm not in the soul conversion business if you don't want to believe in god go to hell i'm probably fine with that if you want to go to hell say bye bye me i don't he said why is that i said because listen to me if i am talking to you and you don't believe in god i think you're a fool on the other hand you who don't believe in god if you're talking to me and i believe in what you think is this hocus-pocus how of higher power you must think i'm a fool i just don't think two fools ought to need to be standing around talking so i don't have no room for it and and that's all it is it's just me being who i am at all times i'm gonna tell you one last story i was in nbc now y'all probably not gonna feel this because you're young and you've been speaking good grammar your whole life but uh they had problems with me when i first got on tv and they said steve we don't think you're speaking grammatically correct and so they hired this lady to come in to me and what what was she called violet coach linguist so when she came in i said excuse me she said i'm your linguist coach so i thought she's going to teach me how to make pasta you know because i thought that was really interesting you know because oh linguini linguini's this i said she'd be real nice she said no i'm here to help you with your grammar i said for what she said because they've decided that you'll be more successful on tv if you were more grammatically correct i said i ain't going to do all that she said excuse me i said i ain't finna do all that she said could you say that slowly for me i said i ain't fitness she said that's exactly why i'm here i said well you know you just wasting your time because i ain't even bought all that she said what did you say just now i said i ain't bout all that i said you want me to say that slow i ain't bout all that she said sir if you don't learn how to speak more properly you won't be a success on tv i said ma'am let me ask you something which one of these sound best to you i wait hold on let me see how i said it too i am broke or army is rich i like ami is rich and that ended that right there so okay to wrap this up we had a chance to learn all about the foundation and all of the great work that you're doing and hold for one second sure for y'all i got something for y'all um thank you thank you all so much for being a great audience absolutely hello tony richards hello dr perry foreign [Applause] foreign [Applause] [Applause] let me tell y'all something y'all gonna have to repair one of them latrines in there you okay you need a minute let me tell you something i chipped the porcelain off one of them bad boy [Applause] i was trying to hold on but you know i'm 65 so i just said this ain't gonna be a good look not in front of these law kids they'll probably sue me for something you know i did this here i said let me go hold on i wouldn't this only works if you're a girl yeah that didn't work out for me so i'm so sorry i should have given you a break no no it's cool okay big man took me in there that's my boy right here me and him we for we the same age about so man we was running pretty up run up that ramp well i was so hurt when he said that bathroom was up that ramp that took anything i had okay so we're gonna wrap this up and uh oh i'm good now okay good we want to take care of you in here um so we learned about the foundation and all the great work of the foundation and i had known about the foundation and a lot of the work a good friend of mine dr steve perry is here and he had been telling me about you know coming and speaking to the boys and all of the you know challenges sometimes and um all of the work that is done what does the foundation work mean to you well my mother was a sunday school teacher and she told me when i was a little boy i didn't understand it there but she kept saying boy one day god gonna give you a big house up on the hill you can't get a big house up on the hill and don't tell nobody else how to get up there she said remember that and that stuck with me when i got older i finally learned what she was talking about and the foundation got formed uh 22 years ago when my father died and it was second most crippling time of my life the worst thing ever happened to me was my mama died when i was 40. man that pain i thought i was gonna die man and i'm a tough dude you know i'm i'm really tough i'm really tough guy man i can take a lot but my mama passed man god talked i didn't know what to do she was the greatest person i had ever known in my life three years later my father died from heartbreak he wasn't sick of nothing he just his heart was broke he's telling me all the time boy i guess i just go and see your mama this ain't nothing down here without him and i said man that was so cold to me and at my father's funeral when he was in that casket man i was sitting there and i was thinking on that day i said man what would i have done if it wasn't for this dude right here i there's no way i couldn't make it i grew up on 12th superior i'm in the hood we we was dealing with some tough cats up in there man and it it's just no way i would have gotten out of there without his guidance and on the plane going back home after the funeral i said man what do boys do that ain't got no father how what do they do because i'm trying to tell you something man trying to be a man without a male role model is like an explorer without a map it just ain't no way to get here and so i said man i gotta start doing something about that so i said my foundation was gonna be originally boys who from single-parent homes headed up by women and i was going to teach them the principles of manhood and how to dream because you know it's hard for single women when they got boys because it's a daunting task for a woman to try to raise a boy because you have no idea how to do it and that's not any thing disrespectful to a woman it's like when brandon carly was born i had no idea how to turn a girl into a woman what do i know about it ain't no woman their mother did that she turned them into ladies and women i don't know the first thing about it so guess what you can raise your child to be law-abiding or christian god-fearing you know smart a good student but you can't turn him into a man though it takes another man to do that so i started the foundation at first just for boys and it my whole mission with these boys is to teach them only two things the principles of manhood and dream building see one of the problems with school systems today um and this ain't knocking education i just know what the problem is because it was a problem for me see school doesn't teach you how to be successful what school does it teach you how to memorize recall information and apply some logical thought and then if you can recall it good enough we'll give you an a and we'll give you a high g point g a gpa and we'll give you a degree and that's perfectly fine but after that we've got to start doing this thing called life and life ain't got nothing to do with your gpa life don't care that you magnum lottie don't give a damn man i'm telling you right now it just don't and so what i focus on and the problems with schools instead of having study hall you know what schools should implement schools should implement a dream building course for kids to sit them down in a room once every 30 days and just talk about their dreams because your dreams is more important than your education i said that at a school one time that lady cut that mic off so fast but they set my ass down at that school that lady said don't you ever stand up in front of a student body and tell them that the most important thing is a dream and not their education i said lady what you have me come talk to these kids for you brought a person in here that ain't got no education and then you want me to talk to you about the importance of education nothing is bigger than the dream see you dream one day of being a lawyer and it spurred you to get the education to fulfill the dream see without the dream man you gonna drop out you ain't gonna pass the ball your dream is to be a lawyer you dig but if you take the dream out the equation what you in here for you studying this hard if you if you don't see your day yourself one day being a lawyer you're gonna go through this you've already been in school four years you've got a degree i don't know why you in here this is the most amazing thing i've ever seen you're a special group of people you have a degree then y'all gonna go to school again you know how smart you have to be to even come up with that you people are brilliant but it's this dream that's got you in here so if schools would implement a dream system to ask people see if you ask a little boy what's your dream of doing i want to fly airplane well you ain't got to kick his ass to go to school now cause now guess what to fly airplane you're probably gonna need to be good at math and science and engineering it spurs them to get an education that's what the dream is doing so i talk to the boys about dream and what real manhood is real manhood real men take care of their children real men go to church real men honor women real men obey the law real men go to work every day our young people today man i don't care what nobody's saying you can feel how you want to feel like i say this one right here hip hop has been good because it has made more millionaires than any music genre ever in the history of this world but it's been a disservice too though because our lyrics man we are so lyrically incorrect we the only group of people that degrade our women in our music it's it's sad situation man and then you wonder why so many women are disrespected it's in song they're dancing to the beat it's in the beat they put it to a beat and now the disrespect is there you every name under the sun as women to music and you at the club you dance into it so when he called you on what's the problem you in here like do you at the club with you doing this to the music so when he called you one of them names what's the problem you feel me so now i got to undo all this when i get these boys i got to tell a boy no man real men respect women treat women like you want somebody to treat your mother do you know how you know do you know what i'm trying to untwist and in five days i do a hell of a job of it man i got dude i got dudes in here it's my man right there from my mentoring camp my man over there from my mentoring camp these dudes is qualified man this i got eight ministers from my from my ministry camp i had crips and bloods in there man gang banging kept working with them the the little he was just hard man this dude was everything he engineered today he's an engineer because i put a j i told him how to dream he thought he had to be a because everybody in the hood is a little man you can change a person's life with the dream i'm i'm i'm in front of this lock school today because at 10 at 10 i dreamed of being on tv at 10. but see you you got to write these visions out the bible says write the vision and make it plain so the hebrew who reads it will run to it and even though it terry wait for it for surely it will come at an appointed time that's rebecca two and two that's in the bible you better get hip to this one right here cause you're gonna need this one motor you need your degree because after you get your degree what you're gonna do with your dream then you you think that's it when you become a lawyer no man you got obligations after that you gotta change some lives you got to get right so the mentoring camp i got was to get young men to dream and become the proper type of men real men it ain't your realms it ain't your chain dementia girls in the video that ain't your money to spread on the table it's not and once i get a young man understand that i have the undivided attention and then i have only men talking to men and so they never see it i got young boys who have never heard a male tell them they love them before because they live with their aunt their grandmama and their mama i got boys crying because i got men barking at them they talking to me so rough no no no that's how we talk i got boys get off the bus you ain't gonna do nothing to me cause we have cameras filming them when they get out there you ain't got nothing you ain't gonna do nothing to me i do what i wanna do well these cameras gonna be gone in a minute [Music] it's gonna be dark out here we in the country you're gonna be very afraid and we get the attention and then my wife runs the girls program now the girls program is different because marjorie takes girls from all different backgrounds marjorie's philosophy is if you mix the privilege with the underprivileged and you give the underprivileged a chance to see what the privileged side live lives like they get a vision of what that is but then you take the privilege and all of a sudden they develop a heart for the underprivileged see y'all y'all right now y'all privileged the question is will you have a heart for the underprivileged after you become lawyers will you change something you can do it man because it ain't just about the money so we spent millions of dollars on this camp now this let me see tuesday i think is the closing day i'll be buying the rock ranch from chick-fil-a the rock ranch 1 600 acres i'm gonna buy it just me and my wife will purchase it ourselves i'm gonna lease it to the foundation for one dollar and i'm gonna put a camp on and like robert smith taught me i spent time at robert smith's house one time he taught me the most valuable lesson i've ever learned he said steve size up because i wanted to know how he had 13 billion dollars i just need one i just needed to know what he did i just need one i'll get more i'll take it but if i get one i'm good he said the key is to size up and i didn't understand what you what do you mean he said you get 300 boys at your camp how do we do 13 000 of them i said i need more money than that he said well then guess what you got the size up he said what's what you what you put on your vision board for your number i said a billion he said take that number off and ask god for three billion size up he said what difference do we make and oh by the way that's the book everybody should buy the magic of the magic of thinking big by david schwartz by this book it'll change your life because it taught me the one thing he was trying to get me to understand to size up if i walk around the room and i give you all the key to any car you ask me for and you say i want a volkswagen and i ask you what kind of car you want you say i want an audi line and ask you what you want you want a rolls royce and i pull out the key and i give you the key to the volkswagen the audi and the rolls-royce for a moment all of you will be happy but then that one with that volkswagen she has got to say at one point in time man if i had just said rolls-royce but see guess what it requires no more brain power to think small than it does be one dollar one million same brain power i changed it when i sized it up so if you're gonna ask god for something why waste your time with a little bitty request when all you got to do is size up what you afraid of he can't do it he make billionaires all the time so i sized up sizing up is big man they used to do it at fast food restaurant they they pimped the game they were so slick with it or super size and for extra quarter your ass get 400 more french fries it's sizing up is is a special thing and so he taught me to size up so this camp will allow me to service thousands of boys and girls instead of hundreds and you have to give back most of you come from families that understand that you have to give back god blesses you to become a blessing you know you can't it doesn't work any other way i use why you see rich people all the time trying to find somebody to give their money to because they're trying to first they're trying to cool out their conscience and then some of them just trying to obey the law most of them is looking for tax write-offs though that's the sad thing about it but that foundation is really important to us and paige has done a wonderful job running it she really changed it when she came along uh my daughter ran it for a while but then she want to go off to costa rica and take girls on field trips and and so um i lost her and uh my other daughter's uh huge agent now one of the top agents in the state gave me a grandson so i don't bother her my three sons uh winton is in abu dhabi right now he works there for me uh jason and stevie uh trying to put themselves together and see where they want to fit into the plan stevie works on my tv shows right now he's studying to be a d that ain't gonna last though already so that's not gonna work he's gonna make way too much money but you know i let my children do whatever they wanna do all my kids are artsy all of them they don't they're not really number people and then uh the other one is lori lori is doing really well um i just i got grandkids and i'm cool like life is better than it's ever been i got the baddest chick i could get let me say something to ladies too this has nothing to do with it but i want you to remember something about men in case you're wondering like don't ever let a man make you think he could do better don't ever let a man make you think he could do better i'm gonna tell you a secret about every man in here we are with the baddest chick we could get we are with the baddest chick we could get it ain't a man nowhere with a chick and he could have got better he doesn't exist his ass is with you because you're the best that he can do don't let him fool you i can get somebody else take your monkey ass on over there and let's see he can't because he's with the baddest chick he can get some people man if you want with margie who would you be with i'd be with marjorie cause she the best chick i can get oh you don't want halle berry no i'm with the baddest chick i can get and which i think is bad as halle berry anyway so i'm cool so just know that ladies he is with you because he can't do any better you are the cream of the crop [Music] period and don't ever let him make you think any different because hey i tell it to all i don't want to start that let me go that's why brandon ain't married now because i won't let nobody know brandon's the reason i brought i wrote the book act like a lady think like a man she's the reason she was dating a boy well a young man he was a trainer and he had been by the house about four times right and so me and her uh grandfather was in the kitchen making sandwiches and he was in there he was okay we liked him and so her grandfather said so talking to him the trainer a little muscle brown dude you know in shape and that don't bother me you know broke ass standing around in here you got a lot of muscles you probably don't have money because you're in the gym too damn long so and so my grand her grandfather said so young man what's your plans for my granddaughter and he said oh yeah oh man we yeah we yeah we good we good pops he said no no what's your plans for my granddaughter he said oh no man we you know we ain't planning nothing or nothing like that so now i i catch the conversation so he sits down that tail says sit down my man so now it's me him and brandy's grandfather i look at the dude and i said hey man what my father-in-law's asking you is a legitimate question what's your plans for my daughter he said well i don't really have a plan i said no bro listen to me every man that walks up to a woman and introduces herself has a plan now we might not share with you what it is but we got a plan when we walk up to you we know we're not asking your name because we're interested in your future what your hopes and dreams are we want you and we got to come over here and see what it's going to cost i said so what's your plans for my daughter he said oh we just kicking it i said cool brandy he said he said he said he said mr harvey what you doing what i'm doing my i ain't on your side it's what you doing my tail i said brandon come here sit down i said to tell my daughter what you just told me he said oh mr harvey oh my ass dawg i'm for real you finna get your finger you don't even understand what's going to happen right here you're in a jam right now tell my daughter what you said when i asked you what's your plan with my daughter he said i said we was just kicking it her face cracked she thought she had some then she came in she said daddy how did you know to ask him that i said brandi you have to ask him that the day he walk up to you because he has a plan and then we talked about a little she said dad how do you know all this i said cause i've been here my whole life i've been a boy my whole life she said dad you ought to write a book because women don't know this brandy said you ought to write a book i wrote act like a lady think like a man seven million copies us in your show i said well hold on you see all these groceries y'all eating y'all y'all got a room with your own bathroom man i said you know what brought all this jokes now if you ain't gonna help me write none of these jokes your ass is gonna be the joke well i wanna just say the um the ultimate thank you for one of the things i really hope with this class is that students get to have a real experience with the person that we're studying at the end of the class and you have the busiest schedule of any human being and when brandon uh said no he is gonna come we were so delighted because we didn't know if that would really happen but deep down when i asked if you would do if i could do this class after you i knew you would come without having ever talked to brandon because i just knew from watching you over the years from listening to the way you talk i knew you would come and i never worried about it it's been my honor no it's been really sister look at me it has been my honor it's been our honor listen for somebody to think enough of me to do something like this this is deep i ain't no study i'm i'm a miracle yeah i'm telling you well when we sized up we got you oh man thank you [Applause] um i just wanted to give brandon this gift oh thanks [Music] [Applause] because it's very special to us damn is oh [Applause] we want you to know that you might not have gotten formal education but you are our favorite judge and on the plate it says college of law spring 2022 and on the front it says judge deepak thank y'all you know from parking lot it does mean something to me you know what i'm saying i got a lot of awards in my life you know i got a lot of awards man but sometimes it ain't about the war sometimes it's about to reward and i'd rather my life be rewarding and awarded i stopped working for awards a long time ago this right here this is a reward this is y'all saying to me man you fly all right we appreciate you and the hustle keep dreaming don't ever give up talk to god he love to hear from you i'm telling you prayer is necessary please understand that but no matter what happens don't ever don't ever give up i don't give a damn what pop off you get your ass up and you keep going and then tell god you appreciate it and he'll keep lifting you up thank you all very much thank you everybody thank you everybody so much for coming and get home safely thank you

Channel: Georgia State University - College of Law

Views: 101,796

Keywords: Mo Ivory, Steven Harvey, Georgia State University College of Law

Id: ZWuUWX1Ge5w

Length: 141min 6sec (8466 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 27 2022