Steve Harvey on Hollywood, Financial Lessons, Being a Mogul, & IRS Problems

i had to learn something in adversity this is what i learned i often ask people i said how many of you all have ever had a bad day in the audience raised ahead how many of y'all have had days where you felt like you wasn't gonna make it and everybody raised their head how many of y'all have had days where you thought you you just didn't know what you was gonna do everybody raises their hand i said now let me tell you something about yourself your track record for surviving hard days days you wasn't gonna make it thought you weren't gonna make it in insurmountable days your track record for surviving those days is 100 every bad day you've ever had you survived it exactly you got a 100 track record everybody in here everybody watching got a 100 track record of surviving funky ass days my graduates from my school being forbes backdrop backdrop backdrop [Music] [Applause] all right guys welcome back eyl this is going to be a legendary situation it feels legendary already it's already a legendary pre-conversation that we actually have for like a half an hour so if you know us you know that you know we grew up in the culture yeah from music sports of course entertainment 1000. um so one of the pillars of our culture who's actually become an icon steve harvey so steve harvey needs no introduction but i was telling him the story my i'm not sure if that's my first introduction but like when it really became like really really big for me was the kings of comedy yeah and it's crazy that that happened over 25 years ago now i'll say when you saw it don't say you were the teenager i was younger than teenagers yeah yeah i'm gonna go further back i'm gonna go further back i remember having to wait up uh at 12 a.m to watch showtime at the apollo yeah over to apollo that was before that was before around scene same time right yeah like you have to wait up to that apollo that was legendary yeah um but just to see the kings of comedy in the movie theater and to see his cultural impact like i never forget like i had never seen because i'm too young for like raw or you know all that old so crazy yeah that was before my time so that's the first time i actually saw like a comedy show in a movie theater and packed and people were talking about it and people stealing the jokes and making it their own jokes like it just became like a cultural phenomenon i think that might be my first time crying in the theater why'd you cry because i was just laughing so hard oh yeah yeah yeah once i said when bmac got up there it was just like this is crazy and then dl and cedric it was it was crazy it was great i couldn't wait for the dvd to come out to keep watching it that's how it was dvd is what we used to put in inside of a driveway let's forget it you gotta tell people but you know it's crazy just to see the evolution i thought i told them it was just inspiring for me like we were actually at his estate right now and to see the evolution of you know somebody that was doing comedy and then was on tv radio and now it's just media mogul and has grown a whole empire like you know it's inspiring actually because we actually got to see it firsthand we actually got to like witness the growth step by step by step by step so this is going to be a dope conversation because i feel like a lot of times people might they might see the surface like they see you know the celebrity but they don't actually see what goes behind that and how he's actually transitioning the whole world of hollywood with the conversation that we just had we're gonna have that conversation as well reframing everything and ownership and all of this stuff global vision so this is gonna be extremely extremely high level conversation dope conversation so it's dope because it's like we saw the entertainment but most people forget that there's a business in it and so like to head here what's gonna happen today man it's gonna be one of those situations that they're gonna remember forever yeah thank you for joining us brother i appreciate it yeah thank you for having us thank you man you know one of the things like you were talking because what i learned very quickly that show business is actually two separate words it's not one continuous thing so you can have the best show in the world but if you don't have the business then how would people book you how would people pay the ticket price to see you why would people come you know if you don't have the business so you can have the best show in the world and if you don't take care of business it won't work you can have the best business acumen in the world but if you ain't got no great show or you might trick them into paying you this money and you might but once they get there and you don't have a show that lives up to the ticket price you don't have a repeat customer so i always had to learn that show business was two separate words and i had to ask and at first it only starts off as being a great show showman because you got to learn the business and over the years i started focusing on the business and that was one of the biggest uh causes for my success because i always understood that even with a promoter that booked me or comedy club owner that hired me i didn't go on that just to be hired i went in there as his partner i wanted to sell his place out so after he paid me he was successful so he would want me back over and over and over again and i kept that relationship whether it was a comedy club owner or a promoter or a tv show that was my philosophy so i want to get into this i understand you have five core principles when it comes to considering business um dreaming big dream big use your imagination show gratitude overcome fear and have faith yeah man can we go over each one dream big let's start with that one everything starts with the dream nothing launches without the dream that that comes from your childhood from anything it's the dream it's the core basis of success see the thing with me man is i don't really focus on the technical aspects of business because i'm not the technical guy i focus on the mental aspect of business i focus on the part to go on in here because if you fix what goes on in here you got a shot now and you technical ain't nothing if you ain't got it set up so the the dream is the core of everything that dream man this is biblical you know man without a dream or vision shall perish that's about you education ain't even in the bible i never mind never read nothing about harvard emory i ain't never heard no ivy league scriptures i've never all it talks about is that dream so that's the core imagination yeah now that's critical because see what people don't understand is man this thing that you imagine is is is a peak albert einstein had a quote he said imagination is everything it's the preview to life's coming attractions oh man when i heard that that tripped me out because here's albert einstein setting it out that imagination is everything is to preview the life coming attraction so everything that's in your imagination is god showing you a preview of a coming attraction that he has for you see so you can't don't let nobody play your imagination off don't let nobody twist you about what's in your imagination don't let oh how you see that that they ain't supposed to see it see everybody's not gonna see your imagination you can quit telling it to him because if god wanted them to see it he'd put it in their imagination but he put it in yours so imagination is as critical as the dream because the imagination is just god showing you a preview of what he has to it's like when you go to a movie and you get your popcorn and you sit down before the movie start what did they show you preview they show you previews of what a coming attraction have you ever seen a preview and then the movie ain't come out now bro once you see the preview it's going to be a movie you believe that and that's how that's how imagination works in your life let me ask the third one is very interesting to me show gratitude see gratitude is one of the most overlooked and key principles to your success if your goal is to be a millionaire and you start out making 20 000 a year and then god gets you to 50 but you mad because you ain't a millionaire but hold up man do you not remember that just a minute ago you wouldn't didn't have a 20. so you got to show gratitude for the 50. then somehow by the grace of god you get to 150. it's people making 150 who used to be dead broke mad because they not a millionaire hold up partner do you remember when you was just making the 50. now you don't triple that and you got to understand that there's joy in the journey so if you don't show the proper amount of gratitude you're never gonna be happy you're never gonna be content and after a while man god gonna get tired of you it's like if you somebody come over your house and borrow a cup of sugar every day every day somebody come to your house they ask you for a cup of sugar and you give it to them and they walk away and don't ever say thank you how many times can this cat come to your house and get this sugar without saying thank you to you before you as a human being go yo yo yo my man you come here every day and i give you this cup of sugar you ain't saying thank you one time don't come by here no more but through god's grace and mercy he allows us to keep coming back but suppose you were grateful though maybe one time you go to god and ask for another 150 and he'll give you 500 cause you didn't show gratitude maybe sometimes when the guy that kept coming by your house asking for the cup of sugar if he would show gratitude maybe you go hey man he got five pound sack of sugar that way you ain't gotta come back tomorrow but if you never show the gratitude you never become the recipient of the grace and the grace is to what you need on top of that that helps you get to the next level and take your plate my wife asked me the other day because i just turned 65 right i was talking to my wife and i said baby i was just kind of kind of got a little throwed off a little bit because even i'm human you know i got a little throw it off baby i just turned 65 and i really was wanting a little bit more to be popped off by now she said wait my hole upstairs wait let me ask you something when you was 30 where did you see yourself at 65 i said well i ain't see this she said exactly she said so you can want all you want but you need to go outside and just drive around and go get in some of your cars and see how you fly and just take a look around and i think you'd be all right and i went on sit down go sit down what about overcoming fear well fear fear is the number one cause of people not being successful because the average person freezes themselves with fear and they never try you know it's like people are afraid to fail dog that's the process i don't care who you talk to i've watched y'all's interviews man y'all can talk to some bad people i don't care who you i was listening rick ross man that boy cole you know you sit up and listen to ross man and you go this is a hood dude real simple if you don't understand ross's because you don't want to he's just basic dude but if you are afraid fear it freezes you and people are afraid to fail failure is a part of the process you cannot get where you going without failing partner you don't learn nothing winning michael jordan took 900 some game winning shots he only made 140 some of them yeah they don't write about the 700 some misses but you see he on wheatie boxes causing 146 he made that nobody gives a damn that he has failed three quarters of the time he was willing to take that game when he shot and hoping to make it now he made 146. so he got a lot of rings on his fingers because he lost to fear of failure and failure man is part of the process so you got to lose the fear of failing man it's just a part of it it's the deal the last the last one having faith well that's the ultimate see mark i was raised cool man because my father didn't go to church ever my father was a hoodlum he was a hard-working man but my father was a hoodlum he wasn't a gangster my father was a hoodlum he did he had some illegal activities with don king in cleveland when i see don king man we just hugged don king went to jail for manslaughter my father knew this dude my father ran numbers with don king in cleveland because in the wintertime he worked construction so he wasn't working so he was a number runner in cleveland so my first job when i was 10 years old was a paper route and my job was not to just deliver the papers but i had to go to everybody's house off my bike and remember where they put their numbers some people put their numbers up under the fender of their car some people would tape it under they stairway under their steps rats and stuff on the night get up there and get the paper some people to put it behind their mailbox some people hand it to you every morning and my father was a hoodlum my mother was saved she was a christian my mother took it to church that combination of his being doing whatever he had to do to survive for his family measured with my mother's teaching us about god and prayer and faith and scriptures has been the total cornerstone of who i am my faith see faith is the belief in things that you cannot see without that how you make it because i'm finna ask god for something that i don't see know how no way i can get it but i got the faith that one day i have it that's cold man that's a cold piece to lock into your mind and people that don't have faith that don't have a spiritual background i feel sorry for a man because it's gonna be way harder way harder because too much gonna happen to you that's gonna require some god now you can think it don't i don't really believe in god okay yeah you ain't got he's still there you know people all the time i don't believe in heaven yeah that's cool well it's still gonna be one one dude told me he said well hey man suppose you get there and you find out it ain't no heaven well then i lived the best life i could ain't no heaven you got a bigger problem if if if you think it ain't one then it is because now you didn't done what you wanted to do and now you ain't going so faith man all those five pillars are the cornerstone of it so i mean there's a there's a generation that has watched you like we spoke earlier like my son knows you for family feud and you know like all right they've come up in a a world where you've always been successful but that always wasn't the case and so those core principles how would they develop throughout your career because i know it's i mean you started early you were homeless at one point living out your car and so how did we start developing these core principles were there experiences that were happening like all right there's a lesson they won't have to go through it because i did here's what you need to look you know man um it's that failure piece that teaches them to you hey ernest did you know that the black community has 2.7 trillion dollars of spending power are you ready to see what you can do when you combine and recirculate our resources to expand the pool of black excellence i know i'm ready and that's why we've partnered with greenwood the in demand black owned digital banking platform greenwood's namesake was founded in 1906 built from the brilliance of black dreamers looking to create a self-sufficient community in the greenwood district of tulsa oklahoma aka black wall street today greenwood is a digital banking platform with the mission to strengthen the black dollar using the same community reinforcement strategies of the original greenwood district and it's powered by a best-in-class mobile app that allows you to bank from anywhere so earners if you're ready to build a new legacy of black economic achievement go to bankgreenwood.com eyl and sign up to be a part of the new greenwood community that's bankgreenwood.com uil don't wait don't hesitate head over there now that's why you got to lose your fear of failure because it's in the failures it's where you learn these lessons you know my father used to say it ain't no the best lesson you'll ever learn is a bald lesson that lesson you pay for that one gonna stick with you harder than anything so when uh faith is when i was 10 years old and i wrote on the assignment piece of paper what you want to be when you grow up and i was 10 and i wrote i won't be on tv okay that's faith i i didn't know i couldn't so i just wrote it on bill cosby was on tv in 1966 so in 1968 when bill cosby came on tv the whole block cleared out everybody went in the house watched bill cosby he was on i spy he was a black dude that was talking on television to white people and telling them what to do oh man we were sitting in there all day so two years after that when a lady asked me what i want to do i said i won't be on tv now through all of my hardships i did not get on tv till i was 36. it took 26 years for that little piece of paper to ring true that took a lot of faith but in there in between there the homelessness the losing everything i ever earned i ever ever had twice i've lost everything twice i lost it all when i was homeless i lost it all again in 2005. i was z rolled out in 2005 i had 1 700 dollars left king was a comedy all that 2005. divorce oh yeah her lawyer was outstanding [Laughter] yeah he was so cold i was in heaven courtroom going next thing i knew i had nothing this dude was gangsta man you know and then i asked some people had stole some stuff from me and accounting and all types of stuff happened i lost everything but in those dark moments was when i learned okay faith is belief in things that you cannot see i don't know how i'm gonna rise up again but i gotta believe that i am and then you gotta keep that imagination that i saw since i was 10 i was going to be on tv so that imagination i had to keep relying on that because that's all i had you understand and then uh the dream was to get on tv and i had to keep that in my head even through the darkest moments because see if you master the mental aspect of it when the stuff is happening that comes into play you remember all the scriptures my mama taught me today is the day that the lord has made let us rejoice and be glad and she said that to me every day i went out to school i'm so tired of hearing that but man do you know how cold that thing stuck with me that today is the day he made and and since i had to learn something in adversity this is what i learned i often asked people i said how many of you all have ever had a bad day an audience raised ahead how many of y'all have had days where you felt like you wasn't gonna make it and everybody raised their head how many of y'all have had days where you thought you you just didn't know what you was gonna do everybody raises their hand i said now let me tell you something about yourself your track record for surviving hard days days you weren't going to make it thought you weren't going to make an insurmountable days your track record for surviving those days is 100. that's that's great i used to say that to my co-workers i was when i was teaching i'm like i had a terrible day they were like why are you always so happy i'm like if you had a terrible day right really internalize that how many good days have you had to have to realize that this one wasn't as good as the other ones yeah like yeah you're right yeah so let's just be thankful for this moment right we may not get it again but every bad day you've ever had you survived it exactly you got a 100 track record everybody in here everybody watching got a 100 track record of surviving funky ass days everybody so now once i know that when them funky days come i'm rest assured that even if it lasts for a week or two six months i'm gonna survive it because if you wake me up in the morning man that's a clear sign to me to hang through with me yet so i i feel like i i'm almost out of it and eventually you're gonna get out of whatever it is you know so let's let's talk about this um steve harvey global so that's that that's all your companies are underneath that right so i want to talk about the family feud africa but first i'll pick up on a conversation that we just had as far as you realizing that you wanted to change things up how usually hollywood is done where you wanted to eliminate like the traditional agent route hiring a full-time attorney without the brandon and and actually you know doing the deals yourself negotiating the deals with yourself you and your attorney and not having to pay the percentage and not having to go through all the hassle of dealing with the traditional so can you talk about that a little bit yeah see it took me years to come to this because hollywood is a system they have an ingrained system out there man you come out here you get an agent then then a lot of them got a manager too and then when you sign a contract with a hollywood attorney they five percent of your contract for the duration so if you sign a five-year deal they get five percent of your money for five years and everybody falls into that deal man every because they lock you in and then what's crazy what i found out was it's not a lot of agents that's beating the bushes to procure you employment they simply list you on a roster and when somebody wants you they go online and your name is under this agency's roster and they call these people now because they picked up the phone now their ass is in for 10 now when they come in for 10 then you want to go do the deal they pick up their phone and call a favorite lawyer who is they boy who they work in conjunction steve we got the guy that's going to cut your deal you so busy being happy to be on tv you say okay cool cause you don't have that lawyer normally and now right there you 15 of your money gone now if you real stupid you got a manager who is this dude that's some dude that's usually your homie that you started out with and you make him your manager now he can be anywhere from five to twenty percent depending on how you cut your deal with him now you're looking up at your money man and you could be out of anywhere from 15 to 25 to 30 percent of your money off the dribble before taxes anything you ain't got nothing so if you make 1 million 300 000 of that is gone yo man and you're doing it in california yeah i think i pay taxes bro and now you got that that that franchise tax that's seven so now you're sitting up here going then the government they want 40. now you're sitting up here man 70 of your money gone and that and that that's real man that's real talk that's why man hollywood is the land of illusion most of us man are not making what y'all think we're making we're just not man because we're in that system and it's not it's not that's cause you stupid or not it says you get caught up in the system so as the years went by and i'm just not getting free of this you know what i mean it took me a long time to figure it out so i said wait a minute man so i had this lawyer that was doing some deals for me with a a business i had this this guy named brandon williams and he was black and he was with this huge law firm the acquisition merger firm right and he's come up to chicago and do deal so man i just liked him man so one day i was sitting up man i was watching godfather and i was watching my favorite movie man and tom is the conciliar or whatever that name is for the family right but he's not italian and he's not he's not a maid man or nothing but he cut the deals for the godfather and i was sitting up really watching that movie one of my favorite movies i said man that's what i need i need a tom somebody just cut my deals so brandon williams some years ago we hooked up and i just approached him one day i said may you ever thought about doing something else and he said no i'm really good where i am you know but that's cause you know you in the system too bro so just let me talk to you for a little bit we talked about i said man i'm gonna travel i'm gonna travel the world man i'm finna be global i'm gonna be i'm gonna take my brand and spread it across the world i ain't gonna just sit here on united states tv i wanna go be global i said man we can travel we can do this and he said and then he went home and talked to his wife and like we often joke about how much smarter our wives are than us and y'all don't get to see them in the background with them women man because they know who they really are she said it's a no-brainer and he had a conversation with a mom who's a lawyer and next thing you know he came back and we formed a relationship and it took me some while to get out of some of the contracts i was in but after a while as contracts was ending i got rid of the lawyer i said amen you read that paperwork and tell me what to say because the only section i can really understand is compensation once you type in the word wince i get lost because i don't know how to make now i'm reading the bible now when it's further more that's why my bible is the new living translation because i need just regular english words man because once you say furthermore whence hints after uh i'm out so i got him and then slowly but surely over the years as contracts would inspire i would take the lawyer out of this take the lawyer out of that and then i got smarter and i said i don't really need an agent you know i got some agents that do img does some stuff like we're in partnership with uh miss universe and stuff and that's a whole nother story but uh we're in business with some stuff and i'll allow you to package the deal for me but that's between you and the network but as far as now in my life now nobody ain't nobody getting 10 ain't nobody getting five i found a way to to just keep them out and you know that ain't bad business man i'm just why would i yeah you're not doing nothing i'm the one gotta put these suits on to turn these corners and create these jokes and solve these problems and be entertained and not you man so it was a really blessing from god man that taught me that side of the business and it's brought a lot lot more to money to my side of the table and so when you do things like that it obviously allows you to pay more to the people that you have why do you think that more people in hollywood the beasts of hollywood are not taking that approach well i just think man you get caught up in the system and it's comfortable and it's easy and you know look man you gotta look at some of these big boys out here they're making so much money you know you look at tyler and denzel and samuel l and these boys and wheel will smell these dudes is really making money man you know i mean they listen to me they make them they they scraping it so and i don't really know their particular business but you know if you make it x amount of dollars and you know off the dribble and you're comfortable and you got a team sometimes comfort cause you don't want to have you got to get a lawyer you do have to get a lawyer i'm just not going to pay you five percent you know why don't you tell me what your hourly rate is how many hours it takes you to cut this contract and then let that be your money but you get in the tv business it's like that now i would think of denzel cause he's such a brilliant dude man and his wife paul letter i'm pretty sure she didn't sit down figure this out so and tyler tyler's a gangster too cause tyler i think has done more in our lifetime man in this generation i don't think there's been anybody black that's been more successful than this dude in terms of ownership now the queen was open for a long time oprah oppa ain't no joke but she teaches it to us she then told me steve got to get on the ship that's tyler's whole mantra but i think what what tyler fitting to do of late gonna change the game he's fitting he finna go past everybody so just really quick so even like the shows that had your name as a title so we had the steve harvey show which was on wb and obviously you have to see all the show on nbc talk show they're licensing the name or how does that work there was no ownership of those see i didn't get i wasn't a businessman when the steve harvey show was i was just happy to be on tv you know i just took my check and went out and said i own 12 of the show back in but i learned real quick in hollywood you never see back in they got a different type of arithmetic it's like the music industry the only people that you make true back in with is book people book people are the most honest people i've ever done business with books they're honest music and tv you're not gonna get no back in partner how man by the time they get through doing their arithmetic i ain't made back in on none of my shows ever because they saying they didn't hit the numbers that it was supposed to hit even in syndication bro steve harvey show i never saw back in nevo i got just it's just crazy man so i started figuring that out and i went okay you know my business with fremantle which is one of the best companies i've ever dealt with they're very honest and forthright but when i signed a deal to do family feud you know look man family feud was a 20-year franchise and they had ownership and they couldn't get i you know i was going through tax problems back then i just wanted to check so i took the check over the years i still couldn't get ownership but since i can't get ownership i'll tell you what though i'll tell you what i might not have ownership but you're going to feel like i'm one and so we've we've negotiated really nicely with them and you're the longest running host in the history of the show and it's the number one syndicated show on earth speaking of family feud so you have an unprecedented deal with family feud where you actually produced the show in africa yeah which i believe is number one in ghana and south africa so talk about that well that was funny man i was uh sitting up one day i was in botswana at the diamond council thing which is a another business i was interested in so i was over there at the diamond council conference in botswana and i picked up the phone i called brandon and it was just one day i was sitting there man and i saw this facility i said man you know what really be funny to do family feud in africa so i picked up the phone and called brandon because the thing i love about brandon is he don't ever ask me no how are we going because he don't know i want to hear that see the thing that's important thing about people around me that i hire when i when i have a vision and god show me something i call you and tell you to do it don't start telling me why it won't work i don't want to hear that i already know it's going to be hard to do i already know it's going to be obstacles i want to hear that i want you to show me how we can do it so i picked up the phone i said brandon he said yeah man what's happening i said i'm in boston man how is it i said hey man call fremantle i want to uh i want to do family feud in africa he said okay tell me what you want to do i said i want to do the show family feud in africa amen amen let me know what they say and i know i threw him into something but this dude man he don't call me back with no excuses do you know man as long as we've been together this brother has never given me a single excuse because that's one thing i'm i'm i'm really i don't i don't do excuses man don't don't please don't tell me an excuse that that that serves us no good an excuse i don't do excuses i've never given anybody excuse when i make a mistake i just eat mine i don't do excuses so please don't tell me your excuse brandon williams has never given me an excuse he got on that phone i said brandon how's going man he said man give me i'm working on a couple things for you h okay cool next thing i know he said hey man there's a way we can do it we can buy the international rights i said okay bound he said well it's going to be a little caught that's that's okay just go by he cut the deal and he bought the international rights to south africa and to ghana then i said okay b let's go and make tv he went um okay and next thing you know he went over there and everybody told him uh this was in what month was that we started talking uh that was probably april february i told them in february march and they say it would take a year and a half to get this set up that was in february in november we was taping because brandon no what you talking about we're going to get on tv now and so i go to africa and we're over there and their mouth is open and because they couldn't believe it wait a minute you're a major tv star in the united states you're going to come to africa in our studio and shoot this show yeah oh you you're a host yeah yeah i host the show yeah cause ain't nobody gonna do it like me so yeah let me go how long did that take to to do the season or how how many episodes did it uh 20 26 episodes because they do a weekly show it's like a american tv season it's 22 episodes weekly that's an american tv show they wanted a full season we gave them 26 episodes in ghana and 26 episodes in the u.s in in uh in south africa how long did that take uh it took about a month or so to get it all together it took it was a lot of because now man we got to get questions that's unique to south africa and poland because i'm asking people questions i have no idea what this answers because i was there what's your favorite dish in africa bunny chop the hell is that bonnie chop you look it up there like i'm looking to do like don't fried chicken clearly it has to be the number one apple and they were saying stuff like pop pop the hell is pop dog all this stuff was on the board so it was really funny and then it was a language barrier because the accents there's 2 000 languages in africa and you got tribes coming in as families man dressing up and they use they speak in english but they have heavy accents to me but i'm the one on everybody understood them except me i'm the one with the accent and they names we couldn't even fit their names on the cards i mean they got some names man that you you'd have to put a name plate on these people and it was so funny man it was it was the funniest it's the funniest show i've ever done was that and then once we got it on the air they couldn't believe we did it and then it aired and we were the number show in south africa the number one show in ghana is that their plans to expand to other countries in africa uh particularly english speakers my goal is to do like world cup family feud where i want to do it in a big facility and i want to bring in country against country i want to have ghana against the congo uh egypt against kenya uh south africa against botswana versus dog i want to have them in there with flags because they so enthusiastic man cause number one when i finally went over there to start taping the whole thing was so you are you are coming so steve harvey is really come to africa yeah yeah man we believe that when uncle steve comes here i believe it when we see it so when we went there and we started taping it was mind-blowing it was such a popular show man and it worked and i hear that africa and the uae you have you have businesses in both but let's talk about africa systems talk about africa you see a lot of opportunity in africa right like outside of just doing a show i understand that you know you you're looking at africa as a place to do investments things that nature talk about that as far as because we actually had the opportunity to go to africa for the first time a few months ago we went to nigeria and we went to egypt and it was for us because the way you know people were tapped in with our podcasts out there they love us out there and they were saying like you should do this out here you should do a actual eyl university like here where you're actually teaching people about financial literacy and just to see the enthusiastic um spirit it just let me know like there's so much room for opportunity out there like just from us looking at it so i'm curious to hear your standpoint but see for you all to go over there it's brilliant because you all are forming the bridge that's my goal is to create the bridge between african americans and africans because there's more of a similarity than we ever like when you was over there it looked like you recognized all of them they looked just like detroit i mean the way they walk everything i i thought i saw so many people i knew because we are so similar in design the way we walk the way we move it was just amazing but what we got to do man is create that bridge like brothers like yourself who go over there whose podcast is probably but who can teach and share what we know you know i'm trying like all the young africans want to come to america but i tell them i said look man you sure you sure you won't come over here and be in this this ain't what you think it is see when i'm in ghana or south africa and i get stopped by the police guess what i get i get a warning i get a ticket i give him a hundred dollars and i drive home and i got a hundred dollars so chances are i ain't got a ticket yet if you wanna be speeding my ass off i've never since i've been over there saw on the news or nothing that somebody got pulled over by the police and got shot they don't shoot you in africa i said man y'all sure y'all won't come over here cause you all don't understand that and then when you're in south africa you hear about the difference between the blacks and the colors i said well let me help you out with that you come to america your ass is black you can call them coloreds over here if you want to you can call them black but you come to united states your ass is fitting to be black so you sure you won't come over here i think it's more beneficial for us to go home see this is how i describe it america is my home this is my home my children are here my grandchildren are here a lot of my business is here but africa is my homeland me going to africa is like going to a place called home that i've never been when you land in africa you immediately feel good don't you yeah it's a good box doug it's crazy [Music] because you're home no this is where you're from your feet belong on this soil we was ripped from there so when i go to africa man it's the place i get to walk around and i'm good all the time because the majority of the people look just like me everywhere i go and that's a warm feeling man and if i could take what we've learned over here as african americans and share that with them and empower them that becomes great but i think what people don't understand is how rich of a continent africa really is do you realize man it's the only country in the world that don't have to import nothing they'll need your food they'll need your energy they'll need your gold they'll need your diamonds they'll need your coal they don't need your uranium they'll need your plaque they'll need nothing africa is the only country in the world and they'll need your oil you they ain't got to import nothing but they've been over there just raped colonialization the dutch the portuguese the spanish the french the chinese they're just over there just raping them man and so if we can go over there because they got they got they man they got some money over there they got some dudes over there that's that's making something it had me thinking but you said everything was true and it was like all right you were going to the uae and not only bring a family fuel to africa but bringing festivals and we were supposed to meet at the last one in the uae yeah so why was it important to do it specifically in the uae well see the uae is very different for me i'm accepted over there like like i never thought i would be because the uae for me is like it's like they like brothers man i mean i'm i'm so enamored with the uae now the draw for me in the uae it is unbelievable peace if you want to go somewhere and walk down the street and not have to worry about crime if you want to go somewhere and walk down the street and not have to worry about racism police brutality corrupt government then go to the uae in the middle east i'm telling you right now it i i don't know of a place on earth like it there's no crime don't buy steal your car they don't steal cars over there they don't ain't no shootings ain't no armed robberies ain't nobody getting stabbed where's this look man i can take a cigar and walk down the beach all i'm gonna do is have to take selfies and they're polite and they're respectful and it's because of their culture and their faith man that makes them who they are that you get a clear picture there of what islam is it's not what it's made to be in the propaganda machine everybody you walk by ain't feeling to pull a cord and blow up the market that ain't what's happening man these people man are living their life in they pray a lot of times a day man i'm my business partner man we'll be talking he said hey man you mind if i go in the other room to pray and he'd have made me pray more because i'll be going man don't you you pray all these times a day yeah man and my business partner he 34 years old let's do and i'm just going wait a minute man how did they get this way and it's their faith in their culture and it's the way they treat people it's 160 nationalities that live in the uae i mean they got everybody there's no homelessness ain't nobody living on the street ain't no paper on the ground go to dubai go to dubai and open up there's no paper on the ground ain't nobody begging got no cup jingling it because no we have a job for you if you come here we have a job for you the only people that don't want to work over there is because they don't want to work everybody's employed everybody gets taken care of with free medical everybody that is a very very special place to me and i think our company melt uae is where we can introduce uh what the middle east is from that region to america and the world and help with some of the falsehoods that's been out about it going back to the conversation about hollywood um i want to talk about this because you said that you know the back end you never get paid on the back end um and like we've actually have conversations about we had conversations with like some hollywood companies and we got talked about the backing and stuff like that so it's interesting that you say that so like what is some what are some things that you learned as far as like do you always try to negotiate like well just for young people that's coming up like ep credit or like get paid upfront or some level of ownership like what is some terms i feel like a lot of people just don't know that information and you can't even ask a question if you're not equipped with some level of knowledge though the best thing i can tell you is if you have an idea before you go around the town pitching this idea have your paperwork in order make sure you have the domains for that name make sure you have the ips any trademarks before you walk around pitching your idea have everything on paper get your trademarks get you get your ip because that's it ownership nobody's done it better than tyler perry this guy right here is complete ownership of everything he do so when he go to hollywood he can do it the way he want to see it took me a while to learn that part of it man i'ma tell you something man i don't know how this is gonna go with the country but this is a a long time ago in the 90s i created a show on the wb called steve harvey's big time do you know what steve harvey's big time was because they didn't believe me when i told them y'all ought to take showtime at the apollo and put it on mainstream tv instead of having me come on one o'clock in the morning i used to tell them that no you can't do that no no no no so i said well let me give them a version of it i said let me create steve harvey's big time so i went to the fledgling network wb and they put it on i didn't have the business of it i should have owned the ip the trademark because you know what steve harvey's big time was i had acts from all over the world come on the show i had three judges and i had a host that stayed on tv two years it ended may 10th 2005. i was in the middle of a divorce my head was clouded i didn't have the business along comes the show called america's scottsdale he's gonna say that you know what america's got talent is shows come from all over the world different acts they got three judges and they got a star well guess what that's my ip that's my concept that's my whole thought but i had no business for it look man the first year of america's got talent was all acts from steve harvey's big time and they took all the producers i had from steve harvey's big time and gave them jobs if i understood my business america's got talent would belong to me and steve harvey would not be sitting here talking to y'all [Laughter] i'm thinking in my mind like i could once you were describing him like i know it's america's got talent and obviously nick cannon another guy who's doing incredible media i feel like that could have been you hosting it but i want to go something because you said something earlier and it just caught my mind about the most honest people being the people who are writing the books and so i know you've wrote you've written three and the fourth one's on the way but from those books you actually turn those into movies yeah right so think like a man obviously one of those those classic movie what was that process like in terms of ownership right because now it's your ip the book that's turned into it i know you're the voiceover in the movie and so what was that process like that deal wasn't bad for me it should have been better i did once again i missed a couple of points now the book completely mine i've made more money from that book man i can't even tell you and i still get checks they still send you a check i get paid every april 1st and every october 1st and i still get checks from the book i don't even have to check on it the book business is honest i'll give you an example like when i go to a book signing and i got to fly there or get a hotel if you're in the record business they take all that they put surcharges on and they charge it back against your deal and your record sales don't do that in a book business whatever your book sales is whatever your percentage is that's your check whatever it costs to promote it ain't got nothing to do with you so the book business i found to be very very clean uh back in for other stuff man now when i went to the movie yeah it was a tough time for me because i was in a lot of tax trouble so i took a big check from sony for the rights and then i made back in i made back end points on the movie i did but i could have done better they have you involved in the process of actually creating it and producing or not no that was mostly will packer they asked me a couple of questions they asked me what i thought of kevin hart and i was sitting up here going i mean the little dude is cold yeah he wasn't who he is now but i knew right away that dude right there because he was putting the work in kevin was putting into work as a young stand-up his his standup used to didn't be that good he'll tell you that but neither was mine because he was a you know he worked mostly white rooms and you had to be a certain way to survive white rooms my early in my career was all white rooms until the comedy act theater got started and joe torre came one night and saw me at the punch line in buckhead and took me down to the comedy act theater in the 90s and said man you ought to come see how they so we went to the waffle house and i was telling them stories about my father joe torres is cracking up he's a man why don't you tell these stories on stage i said i can't tell it like that in front of white folks he said let me take you down he took me to comedy theater and a black dude went up on stage he had on pad pajamas and had a barbie doll stuck in the pocket of the pajamas he never mentioned the damn dog he never mentioned him down pajamas and all this what was talking about was fine fish and man some black people was knocking [ __ ] over laughing man i was laughing so hard at this black dude because all he was talking about was how to fry fish but every black person in that knew what he was talking about and he went through the different variations of hot sauce and what you got it and it was so black it was just so black like it's a fish fry oh dawg i was in there vomiting so the next night i heard him got finished with my set at the punch line so i could go back down and that's what i meant mike williams he said hey man going up on stage let me see what you gotta give you five minutes now i had been at the apollo so a lot of people knew me from the apollo but when i walked up there man i left my white act that i had written for the punch line and i was doing jokes about my father barbecuing and stuff man them black people was knocking [ __ ] over i mean they was just raking [ __ ] off the tables and i had never seen black people in a club because black people laughed different they emotional they don't they hit people that they rode with they they've been there it feel and i was in this i said man this is magical and it changed my life because i started writing my jokes even in the white club as my black ass self and so what i learned at that particular time was i could become a crossover act but the way i've always crossed over is i build the bridge and i invite white folks over to me the problem with most blacks is they build a bridge and then they cross it then when the bridge burn down their ass can't come back home i build a bridge and i allow white folks to come to me the way i talk on family feud is how i talk right now i'm not fitting to change that man so you can be okay with me no this is me i've been told all the time like i tell this story all the time i was on nbc when i first got to talk show and they said uh they sent this lady in to talk to me and uh she was a lean she was a what is it linguist she was a linguist i didn't know what that was so i thought she was in there teach me how to fix pasta and i thought that was nice i always wanted to know a little bit about pasta and so she says no i'm your linguistics coach and i said well what you mean she said nbc feels that if you speak more grammatically correct you'll be more successful on tv 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 what you said slowly for me sir i ain't fit i said i ain't fitness do all that she said that's exactly why i'm here she said do you understand what we can become if you speak better i said well yeah i ain't going to be about it though she said excuse me i said i ain't fitting to be about it though sir this is exactly why i'm here i said ma'am let me ask you a question i said because i'm not finna change she said why not i said let me ask you a question which one of these sound better to you i am broke or army is rich i say see now you're talking to me but i'm just rich i'm is rich i'm already rich so where you fitting to go with this man that lady packed her stuff up she said this black son of a [ __ ] i know she wanted to see black ass bastard she packed this you know and walked out of there and i tell that to people all the time man said bye felicia because i'm not a dog i ain't finna do that i'm not changing so when did when did it actually because you were saying you have financial hardship 2005 and you you still was uh making some mistakes but in your state now so obviously things change dramatically so what was the turning point what was the turning point from you know making mistakes to actually going on a skyrocket i know man that this gonna sound like cliche-ish and corny but a woman a woman was a difference maker in my life my wife when i married marjorie man 2007 2000 2007 we got married it changed the game for me because for the first time in my life i was at peace because she made me good with who i was she kept telling me you're a major tv star don't don't believe this here steve you look good you can do this you're talented you're the best and i had a peaceful home i had never had a peaceful home life before man i was coming home i wasn't sitting in the car looking at the door for three hours scared to go in there you know you probably might have been in something like that fortunately enough but unfortunately no but you know you never know you know faith man your faith yeah i know but you're gonna sit in that driveway but even if you're happy if you piss her off you're gonna go sit in that car dawg cause at least i can lock these doors and roll these windows up in this car but if i sit in this house i'm here so you know i'm happy about that but i was in a horrible situation and this woman came along it gave me peace peace is priceless man and i was able to think clearly for the first time and so i was able to start seeing stuff now we got in huge i got in a huge tax situation in 2008 because my divorce was in 2005 and my accountant had gotten in cahoots and next thing you know my accountant died and a girl that worked for him called my lawyer and said we have a problem she had found on the floor all my tax forms for seven years signed and with the checks stapled to them so i'm thinking out of signed and unstapled checks well they were cashing the checks keeping the money and not turning in the tax form so yeah count that's why we interviewed fat joe similar situation he went to jail for that actually tax evasion so yeah yeah accountant you how you were signing the check oh so you didn't know who the check was being made out to oh to the government so how did they cash it well they didn't cash it they took the money out of the account that matched the exact because i wasn't watching it like you didn't see uh hundreds six hundred thousand yeah you look deducted yeah so i'm thinking this to check little did i know it was some people taking the money out for seven years for seven years how much money did that i ended up owing 22 million wow 22 million with the with the penalties so now listen to me man me and my wife in 2008 i get the call and the way i found out was my lawyer called me and said hey man we got a problem you haven't paid taxes in seven years i said man get what are you talking about i paid taxes i've been writing the checks and all this here oh man he said this woman found your taxes in your accountant's office on the floor every tax check i had written in every was stapled together for seven years quarterly taxes all of it so he said man that's tax evasion you can go to prison and i said what are we going to do so he said hold on man let me get some lawyers so he called up some tax accountants out of chicago these boys was the best and they sat me down and they said man we got a major problem he said i got a friend work at the is let me take the first year we took the first year and we sent it in he said man what this is an old tax return he said man we got a problem he got more but he didn't know it and so we need a tax payment plan so the tax payment plan was so astronomical that it was no way i could pay this so the deal was if you miss one payment we come and seize all your assets and you're going to jail that was the deal so the way i found out i was in real bad trouble was my accountants my former manager lawyer got on a conference call to discuss it but they sent out an email with the conference call number to my assistant but it wasn't supposed to go to me she inadvertently gave it to me i wasn't supposed to be on the call so when i logged in they were already talking and i just didn't announce myself and i heard them say nobody can live under this amount of stress there's no way he can pay to back taxes pay his current taxes and his living expenses and i heard a guy on the phone say what are we going to do when he goes to jail and i hung the phone up i went upstairs i said marjory dodson margie we got a problem when i explained it to her marjorie started crying she sat down and cried my wife cried for two straight days she said steve what you gonna do i said i'm gonna go to work i took every comedy gig in this country i signed every contract i went to work man i worked every single friday saturday and sunday i went to every venue the verizon staples center mci phillips uh uh i i sold out the fox i so i went everywhere i stayed on the radio man i'm coming i'm coming sold out i never missed a payment and for four years in a row i was sending 650 000 a month to the government plus i had to pay my current taxes i couldn't get behind on nothing and i was living so i was credit cards running them up paying them off and finally man in 2012. i was just go okay you got me thinking now this is the pay-per-view of that well it was coming to that okay two things happened okay to 2012 i sold 49 of my radio company to iheart [Music] i got checkmate i got me a check and then so i paid the government completely off to zero and that was the first time man i could breathe and then the pay-per-view i said let me get out of stand-up because my wife says steve you feel to be a major tv star you're gonna have to stop telling the jokes you're telling cause you're gonna ruin your career because i she saw the political correctness turning and so she said steve you can stop if you want to i said baby i can't ever stop telling jokes it's who i am she said well okay but you got to watch what you say and all of my tv shows are sponsor driven radio or sponsorship driven i said man let me get out of this cause i need time to go do more tv and so i did one last comedy show but i did it on pay-per-view and little did i know for eight dollars you could watch my last i had no idea how many people was gonna tune in for that i made a lot of money it was it was the biggest single paycheck i ever made and next thing you know i was back hey tyler about that house hey sitting over there i said i'm back man and then uh things and after that man was all because my wife had this vision for me and she could see it and that was to turn so the account you say he died but you couldn't sue his estate and no there was no there was no course of action that could be taken yeah so because like the money that it's the same situation with fat jokes it's crazy so this so you lost the money that he took but then you had to pay that money in taxes and then penalty so it's like a double-edged sword it's crazy man it's nothing but the grace of god that i didn't go to jail how often because it's like it's so crazy that this story because it's like fat joe yourself kevin garnett tim dunk like this happens a lot like what would you advise for people that as a learning experience like just to always watch your accounts a little bit don't let nobody sign your check don't let nobody have access to your money even if it's your wife you still got to watch it yourself cause little did i know man i i wasn't moving the money the only other person that could move the money had access to the account so when you deposit when you withdrawing the money out like let's say tax was 600 000 and you take exactly 600 000 out i'm thinking that's the the check cleared oh it made they never okay the exact amount i don't care if it was if it was 1.2 million thirty two cent one point two thirty two cent got took out exactly so i'm thinking i'm just looking at real going down the sheet not realizing that that check ain't cleared and that's what happened man i got burnt and that happened for seven years of money man that's a lot that's crazy you spoke about the marriage in 2007 that brought you peace i want to talk about generational wealth and i kind of want to change the version of sustainable wealth because you have seven kids five grandkids seven and seven seven seven yeah they had two more two more seven little machines over here right now cranking them out and so i'm interested because obviously maybe your children have seen some of the the setbacks that you've had mm-hmm but your grandchild children will never see it they they don't know anything about that and so it's tough for them to understand the type of perseverance the type of determination resiliency to sustain the things you've been through so how do we teach from what you've been through to them you know man i ain't figured that out yet because there's even a hiccup between not the grandkids but my own kids right right okay cause look bro most of us that are successful today oftentimes are the first ones in our family to be successful i'm pretty sure before rick ross hit it what no mo i'm i know before jay-z hit it one no more in his family you know we ain't got nobody to go to to figure this thing out so what happens is and then you say as most good parents i want my children to have a better life than one i had so you try to protect your children from the hustle and grit that you was under you know my kids ain't got to come up like me figure it out and work through this and work like that but in that though you've made a mistake because now see all of my children live their life as high acrobats with a net right so if they lose grip of the handle daddy down there got a net i ain't handling that so i was a high wire act and when i slipped off my ass hit the ground had to get repaired the incline back up there they got a safety belt on they on the hunt they doing wild ass flips they hit the thing and the little cable pick them back up and it's messed up man because you and i've talked about this with all the brothers i know that's successful i don't know nobody to figure this one out man how do we teach our children the hustling grind when we're trying to keep them out of the hustling grind you understand why would you not give your child an allowance and you have it why would you not so now plus you want them in the best schools right so now you got them in school with these white kids they sitting up in here with the latest on ipads iphones you can't send your little black ass kid up there without that cause you trying to teach him how to be tough strong wicked no you got to put his little punk ass in the same outfit say you know cuz come on man you can't have your child up there looking crazy but now you mad cause they ain't got the same grit you got the same hustle like i look at them all man and i just go i'm proud of what they're becoming but i know man that if something go really wrong for them they got me yeah but when something went really wrong for me my ass just had to live in my car i couldn't go to my daddy and get a thousand for no apartment well which look man i was in college for three years before i flunked out my father sent me money one time he sent it in envelope and it had two index cards and when i opened it up it had a flat chris five dollar bill in it and the note on the index card was this [ __ ] gonna have to stop [Applause] this [ __ ] got to stop five dollars man three years of college he sent a five dollar bill and that was the message on the card i opened that card i went man this [ __ ] got to stop i went on book course this much bro bro i had a job all through college bought books and everything my father gave me nothing what what nothing something to be going look man my kid teddy cow failed to pay their insurance cause they forgot they come to me we gotta get another car well you ain't gonna drive none of mine i don't have cars you can drive they already know none of my children here's the only thing none of my children have ever driven one of my cars because i don't have drivable cars i ain't got no car you can go scrape i got caught see and people ask me all the time man why you buy such expensive cars cause if this all go away one day and i got to go back to living in a car it's going to be that [ __ ] going to be nice phantom i'm being afraid i'm in the backseat of a phantom out of the room i got lights in the ceiling that's what i'm gonna be home let's see so quit asking me why i spend so much money on the car cause if i gotta go live back in that thing again that's a nice way to live steve living nice i brought up the family piece because i know um uh lori and yourself have gone into business uh with moon ultra so what i mean what's that process like knowing that one of your children has the you know the business acme to say i want to do this you know lorry man is really great i got a few business men in the family you know the two youngest ones wynton and lloyd are figuring it out lori's lori came to me and said she didn't want to go to college no more and i was like i'll be damned that's a fine time after i don't pay these money you know we we could have had this discussion for the tuition you know i can't get it back but she had a plan and it's been really amazing watching her grow and develop because of a couple of things man i'm so protective of her because i know what she up against you know and but she's always wanted to be a business person and so you know you watch your kids grow and develop you watch them learn they make mistakes as we all do but what lori did was laurie has uh i've she just always asked me a question dan what's it like for this what's it like for that and i could see her wanting more but this moon ultra investment that we invested in but her skin care line was all her all the vision of her and her mother her and her mother her mother had this vision before but she put it on the back burner and she dumped it all in with lori because lori got smart lori has a team lori has a ceo mentality she understands it now she gets it you know she's been through the washer out here she know what this social media can be she learned how to make it more of a friend of hers than the enemy and she just got real smart man and she'll come to me and she'll go dad i'm thinking about doing this what do you think i don't always agree but i don't have to because what's in laurie's imagination i don't have to see because god ain't going to put her imagination in my head so since i understand that principle when laurie comes to me with this what people think is this wild crazy idea like this girl right here is not going to stop man her skincare line is good she's into fashion she's smart and uh it's just a pleasure watching her my oldest daughter the twins brandi is on her own with her beyond her element that she does speaking engagements carly that girl went out here married her husband who came and asked me for her hand in marriage on a golf course i had a 7-iron in my hand i wanted to crack his head wide open because i'm thinking fine time to ask me to marry my daughter and i just lost this round of golf out here and uh but he's a good guy she got it together she has been agent of the year with state farm now for two years and running this girl and opened up agencies and stuff oh sure she's an insurance business yeah yeah that's where you stay you started y'all started in that i wasn't never aging at a year i was stealing premiums and stuff i was at the lower level real cleveland player yeah some things was i had to make some survival decisions when i was selling insurance if you gave me your premium um but she's doing really really well uh jason uh my other son is uh in the fashion business with his wife he had a shoe line out for a while it kind of was hard to keep afloat now he's back down at basel again he's got his clothing line he's working on with his wife who was a model the runway model they met her that's a long story but he's giving me more grandkids than anybody and he's doing well my oldest son broderick works on all my tv shows because he just wants he wants to be in tv uh directing and tv uh production so he's working as a second stage director and stuff for all my shows winterdale's photography on my shows but winton does videos he's did a lot of work with kanye too chains a lot of artists and stuff winton travels to dubai working he does uh work for the uh uh department of tourism over there so when all of the kids man are getting it they're not where they want to be but they're getting it and um i told them all i think what helped him was i said i was cutting everybody off and um i didn't but it felt good saying it but i didn't i told lori i was going to cut her off and she just went daddy stop that was all she said was don't don't play don't play because lori really thinks she's the special one she really does lori i told her i was going to cut off because she's making a lot of money right now and i was going to cut her off and she just started laughing and then she said well and you're not going to speak to me anymore i said yeah i still talk to you she said but not if you cut me off so can't cut her off so but they're doing well let me ask you this um you're also an angel investor so you invested in coinbase draftkings airbnb all pre-ipo um how'd you get it how'd you get in that world well because i got a couple of smart people at work for me to betty stevens is the head of my uh global business development and strategist he brings a lot of these things to me because you know really like i said man i'm in the mental game of it when it comes to the technical stuff i just surround myself with people who are technically smart now brandon is not only my legal he's my ceo he's chief operating he's in charge of everything and they all report to him but trubedie stevens has bought me the majority of these deals especially in the tech space uh the way i got this kid was i wanted my son to help me run my company my oldest son broderick who's in television but he came to me and said dad you really want your business to grow hi my best friend and and i thought that was really smart of him because he could have took this check but he said no dad this is what he does he grabbed him he graduated uh magnum [ __ ] laude from morehouse he had cut all these offers to go to all of these uh ivy league schools he had full rides to go to all these schools and stuff and i was sitting down with him one day and i said well how much do it cost to go to these ivy schools and he told me and i said well when you get this degree at these ivy league schools how much money will you make a year and then he told me and i said how many years is this going to take to do that he told me then i said well how much you know already spent going to school and he told me and when he told me it just didn't make no damn sense to me so i said i tell you what man if you come work for me he said i'm gonna be in exports and imports and i'm gonna be taking big meetings oh you won't you're on big meetings oh you won't sit in big meetings i got big meetings for your ass tomorrow and so i hired him and gave him a salary that'll save all that going to school for it and how many years has been now beatty seven years and and the way we started was i took four hundred thousand dollars gave him four hundred thousand dollars and said hey man show me what you would do in the stock market 400 000 just give it another when i tell you that he gave me 10 times that money in two years and then has quadrupled it to get that money just sitting over there making money and stocks all his picks and stocks all his every last one of them i mean i'm in some of those companies i get them on my marketing market monday yeah yeah yeah yeah but that dude right there and that and that's what it takes you know yeah i mean we were having conversations for over the course of a few months you probably didn't know this part though so tabiti was part of a team and we got to give credit to chad and kat 85 right the 85 south guys yeah um they were they you know found us early on used to work for you yeah that's what i was doing yeah yeah so all the all the things that they learned from working around you they implemented and told us and we were like okay this is great information and so when i was talking to tabitha about it he was like yeah man we all used to sit in the same room and so indirectly all the lessons you've been teaching them well yeah that's a good lesson but yeah actually you probably wasn't even aware of that but really each one teach one situation because chad used to work for you and he built the 85 south business structure that's right mainly based off of the stuff that he learned from you and he's been a mentor for us when we you know getting in the game really yeah we got we got our lawyer from him chad been a mentor for y'all yeah vice versa vice versa wow yeah so he's been telling us a lot of stuff about how to run merch um gave us the entertainment lawyer that we have all the lessons that you i mean every time he tells us a lesson it's like that was what what well see that cruel man this is what they told me they always said this they always said this and now he's implemented on his own and since we were just starting in in the media space he was giving us the advice that he learned from y'all and so like indirectly him and him and his cat joe they were supposed to cat joe and uh they were just bright man they were just bright we just got into a situation with my former manager and that's all but they they i stayed in touch with them because i always believed in them and you know we talk every now and then and then i hear about stuff that they're doing and i'm just proud of them man because they got it they weren't bitter with what happened to them see sometimes you got to get in order to grow you got to go see people understand man when doors close you can't trip when the door closed that's simply god telling you he got another door he wants you to walk through the problem that most people do like doing the pandemic a lot of companies closed a lot of people lost their jobs it's people still standing there open this company back up i want my job back up i'm waiting on the company to get back and come back in business it ain't it's dog most of these companies that's gone ain't coming back so you quit beating on that door why don't you stop beating on that door stop praying to god to open that company back up lord bless them to get back on their feet why don't you stop beating on that door and turn away from the door and walk up the hall it's some models though what hall ain't got no models what this is this is the hallway of life the hallway of life got more doors you got to turn up the hall and there's a bigger door with your name on it but if you stay there banging on that door you know you can't drive your car looking in the rearview mirror you got to look at the windshield the rearview mirror that's why it's this small that windshield that big people can't get out of their own way because they're in that rearview mirror what would it be and i wish it had a shoulda coulda woulda hey man stop all that walk up the hall and go see what else god got for you before we leave i got to ask you about this michael jackson story i heard you took michael jackson to church is that him how did that i got pictures of that day man it was one of my favorite moments i uh you know mike was in a lot of trouble man you know he had a he had a uh publicist named ramon bain and me and mike was cool over the years i always hung out with him and talked with him you know like i was the only one that ever called him the n-word and stuff like that i just talked crazy to mike you know he needed that you know you just oh hey man hey hey everybody got no time for that so one day ramon called me said steve michael want to talk to you i said what's up mike he said i need to go to church i just want to go to church and i said well he said can you take me to church i said yeah man i take you to church because mike thought they was going to convict him and he said steve i didn't do this man i just believed him i just i've never believed that about mike i i know him i've been around him and that's just me everybody else would teach that last one that came out he did it that's you you don't know where all this stuff come from after after he did and then if you anyway that's a longer story but they just was doing this brother so he said hey man i won't go to church so i said okay man uh so i called up my buddy chip mary that owns chip mary uh episcopal ame church over off of jefferson and adams off of crenshaw adam's over there somewhere in that area off crenshaw and i called him up he said michael wants to come to this church and i said yeah man he wants you to talk with him and pray for him and so uh i said mike i'm gonna come pick you up and we can go to church so mike had took the entire floor of the beverly wilshire hotel and gutted it and just turned it into his own place so i came up there and mike met me at the door on a moped because he was crazy man that's he it another one but she said come on let's go down to the apartment that's mike a moped dog i'm six too what is that it's just just a little bit so ride the moped down here we're gonna get up and go in the place and i'm looking at this place and i'm going this is incredible he didn't got it the whole floor just made it his apartment just incredible so i'm in there man and uh i said mike we we gotta go to churches black people we we gotta go now you know we gotta get parking and everything i said mike did you tell anybody he was going to church oh no i want it to be a secret i said okay cool i told you mary man we get in the car and no first mike goes to get dressed and he comes out dressed and i went mike [ __ ] you got home so where you going man what is this you wearing what's the matter this is my suit so what what you dressed like captain crunch folk where's you going with all these balls on your shoulder military we're going to church man you got one stripe on one leg i said well yo sue at man we black people we wear suits ties this is all i got steve this jacket is twenty twenty thousand dollars i'm going what dude was spending money on stuff so i'm laughing at him so we go get in the car he said man this is great man is it are they good do they have a great quads man they'd be jamming so so we get down off the 10 and we turn on crenshaw and it's cars from the 10 all the way down crystal all of jefferson apps you people all on the side where michael i'm going what the hell i said mike i thought i told you and tell nobody i never opened my mouth well the preacher told somebody michael was coming and the word got out let me tell you something man it was people from belgium argentina amsterdam signs from everywhere people from all over the world flew in to see this guy go to church so we finally took us a long time to get through all the crowds and stuff police escorts got everybody out the way we get to the church it's packed this easter it's a regular sunday it's easter in here man it's packed so before the service start i get him in the back with the preacher chip mary chip mary prayed for michael he told us to mike you're gonna walk away from this he said god knows what you did you're good brother you ain't good and he was so worried he prayed for him mike said man he says i'm going to walk away so that's what you could just these people he taught god all time with this black church man so we went and they had a seat for us in the middle and we sat down and bought his choir came out and they were jamming and mike's hair was in his eyes and mike was just sitting there just rocking man he was getting it man he said this is great man this is great oh my god what are they doing phil he he knew every instrument man they went from a d to an e flat this is amazing what you heard that i don't know dawg he was in that man oh my god why are those people jumping up and down i said hey shouting for what well probably cause you here it was funny man so the whole church service he was just rocking man he loved it and so he went he said i want to meet with kids and man basement full of kids they was asking michael questions is that your hair can i touch your face michael's just letting him touch him and everything so it's news reporters outside where's my phone at man it's my phone anyway i got pictures of the news conference and everything so mike says i don't want to talk to anybody steve go out there and talk for me i say ain't no problem got the right one look man microphones man i mean everywhere everybody was there steve we want to talk to michael he ain't coming out not happening you know hey well steve we want to talk and say man mike said he ain't coming out and he wants me to talk for him i go out in front of all the mics steve where's michael we don't talk about mike ain't coming out we have questions for mike i said mike told me to answer all the questions so go ahead why did he come to church i say you know he liked church music why did he pick this church he said he didn't i did i told him which one to come to well when's he coming out i said when he come out we're gonna get straight in the car we don't want to talk to you we won't talk to mike i say man tell you no [ __ ] mo mike ain't coming out here now we ain't in the church right now so y'all and you know this this me back in the day before i had all these shows i had nothing to lose dawg i'm lighting their ass up and i'm aggravated cause the dude don't want to talk to me i'm going with them i'm all you gonna get so what is michael doing now he's talking to the i said he's talking to the kids about what why are they allowing children in the basement with michael i said hold on man where are you going with this hill i said what's it i say press conference over so i go in the back so we talk with the kids long time michael say steve i'm ready to go i said all right man so i told security go get the car bring it around we're walking out there to get an umbrella for mike and all this here we walk to the car and we get in the car i say mike listen man it's people all the way down here i just want to shake their hand i said mike you can't shake these people's hand dawg you know where we at we crenshaw this saying what we finna do so mike's sitting over there and this ass rolled the window down he over there by himself he rolled the window down man these people were reaching them and tying his clothes off oh yeah they're pulling me in i said roll your window up shut up all that grinding and [ __ ] mike can roll your window up you're gonna crush that hand then [ __ ] that hand but i got that window up and this dude's hand was caught in the window he said it's so now the car picking up speed and the dude is running with his hand crushed in the window real thriller so mike's saying steve stop the car he's gonna get hurt man [ __ ] him we all gonna get hurt if we don't get out of here so i told dude speed up man so the driver sped up and i opened the window just a little bit and he got his hand out he said steve you were gonna drag the poor man i said didn't i tear your ass not to open the window [ __ ] is your fault mike he said you're crazy he's just talking to me so crazy so i'm trying to save your ass you don't know how to fight and he'll tell like they're tearing my clothes off what is your ass [ __ ] you think they gonna do so we get all the way back to the hotel and they take us through the back and mike just stepped in some gum somewhere so we on the elevator and he raised his foot up and his gum down from his foot down to the floor he said steve there's gum on my [ __ ] i said and what the [ __ ] i'm supposed to do i said mike i don't get gum off nobody's shooting but it's on my shoe now security they up there laughing their ass off cause nobody talked to mike like that put his gum on my shoe what the [ __ ] i supposed to do rub that [ __ ] off the elevator opening them two damn mopeds it's awesome man we ain't got time for this [ __ ] let's walk down here [Laughter] that's election true story i can't let you go because you spoke about your wife and how from the financial standpoint and bringing peace but she's also changed your style yeah we we we we can't go because i see my man ellie's here we gotta acknowledge that he the transformation in the steve harvey said we went from the big suits yeah you couldn't tell me nothing you couldn't tell me nothing i was clapping in the classic hairline bruh if you look at them suits every nba player from magic johnson to michael jordan had them suitable that was a treasure dog they said man we used to watch the apollo to see what you was wearing and we get it made michael all of them they all know that they always come man them suits man yeah it was i was king of the urban where but you've transitioned now oh yeah at later stage and now it's fine fashion yeah it's it's gotten to the point now it's like i think like people are looking just to see what you're wearing again yeah but in the social media world it's like like they're turning it into a comedy at some in some places but other people looking like yo who's who's dressing this dude cuz he's fly yeah see the haters how was that transition well marjorie if you watched my wife over the years she's just she's it man she's a fast fashionista and it started with her when she said um stephen won't you change your suits and i said why she said because i'm tired of being married to a pimp and i said well i'll be damned you have no problem she said well i just had to get you married first she said i was gonna change you the whole long so she got a couple of tailors and i started wearing some little canali ketone suits and stuff like that and it was going okay and then i i got this guy when i got to talk show and all this here and i wanted to have a certain look i'm a game show host i'm a talk show host i wanted to be more mainstream so she took all the big suits off of me and she cut the suits down but i was one note man because that was the image i just wanted out there game show host tv host tie collar bar clamp cufflinks pocket square necktie colors shoes gators that was it and that went for a long time the reputation on family feud was he dressed so nice and all the people have come on family feud would try to wear two pocket squares because they thought it was two pocket squares there's really only one i just wore tom ford pocket squares that had a border once you have a pocket square with a border on it when you pull the middle out and put the board it looks like it's two so that was a little trick move i did right i was going along with that and then um i went to africa uh four years ago and uh i started taping the show i had a problem with the guy he couldn't make the trip he had some family issues so my wife had been telling me about ellie she said steve you really ought to hire this kid he's very very talented in fashion and you need to freshen up your look and i said babe i don't need all that you know and plus i had seen ellie a few times with wynton and lloyd they were friends and you know i just didn't think nothing of it you know but every time they got dressed they was calling him what do i wear what do i do and so when the dude didn't couldn't make it to africa she called ellie and said what are you doing and he told it now ellie had designed something for me some pajama sets with dolce cabana before that i flew him out to l.a to show me these designs he designed these cold sets for me and they were just outstanding so she called him and said what are you doing she said he said i'm off right now she said get on the plane and come to africa now this is marjorie she don't play so the next evening he shows up in africa well the guy that wasn't making it made it he had the dinner too awkward moment now we go to the dinner at this restaurant in africa this beautiful restaurant called the saint and the only seat available at the table they sitting next to each other this was awkward this wasn't this was a very awkward moment man this was and so one thing led to another the brother had to go home for family reasons so ellie stayed and that was the first time uh the first season of family feud he was starting to style me and i was going yo man so he says oh you're not wearing a pocket square today and i went what are you nuts no pocket square who know who you think you're dressing and he says you we don't have to match we're going to color block now what you mean we infinite match we're nothing to match what no we fit the match partner i'm from cleveland you know my gators got to be the same color as my hat and my gators got to match my belt i don't know what you talking about these are rules since that's old so he started dressing me and color blocking and doing all this stuff i wasn't really happy with it but you know when i come out to dressing room all all my son's dad oh that's dope and i was going man this ain't that dope and you know it got home so it worked out for us and then i just noticed he was super organized he was he took better took such great care to close and then he started showing me stuff mr harvey look at this this is coming out this is going to be the new collection i had never seen this in my life what do you mean new collection stuff getting the stoves that's what i buy stefano richard a little bit of tom ford about some key time no no no no no this is what we're gonna do and so i got this show called facebook watch after that and they said they don't want me to dress like i normally dress would you wear your regular clothes now my regular clothes were different than my image was so he would go in the closet and start putting stuff together then he just started saying let me let me buy some stuff and bring it to you so he would go out and shop and bring stuff to the house and i would look at it i was fighting him all the way he said no mr harvey but you got to try it on we got to have a fitting i used to hate when he said it would have a fitting and then you know he said then one day he really pissed me off because the last year he was in africa he said mr harvey you need to lose some weight you are making these fashions look ridiculous i went oh you little skinny song [ __ ] you're sitting up in here looking like a somalian and you're trying to tell me i need to lose some weight can you tell me i need to lose some weight oh okay cool kind of pissed me off my wife said he might be right [Laughter] now when your wife say it then you i got to get my ass in the gym gotta get some of this weight off and then on facebook watch two years ago he started dressing me the way we just started doing some different stuff he said mr harvey what's the one thing you really want to do i said i want my colors back i used to wear colors on kings of comedy that's what i miss he says but we have to change your fit he started narrowing down the shoulders narrowing down the sleeves i was against all of this change your fit mr harvey you now don't have the weight you can wear the clothes are better and color blocking and blah blah and then it just took off and it started happening a few years ago on facebook watch and then he did a special order on um nfl honors and that took off and then the guy who run nfl honors works for celebrity family feud and called him up and said hey man you should let steve harvey dress on celebrity family feud the way he does on nfl honors so they because i used to have to wear the same suit on celebrity family feud because they didn't know what order he was going so i just wore the same suit when they did that i told ellie do your thing and then he just started setting stuff out and next thing you know he said mr harvey let me take your picture which is the one thing i hate sitting up for a picture i don't like looking at cameras smiling and stuff like that so he said just look i saw most of my pictures i'm looking down or something got a cigar or something he was taking pictures and then he would start posting it and by accident next thing you know man fashion problem daily and boom people started picking it up and i was going what's going on because it was never my intention you know i just wanted to i didn't want to hear my wife's mouth no more that's all it was for her to be quiet but this kid ellie is such an innovative dude and he understands how i am and he don't bring stuff that don't fit my body because still all in all man i'm 65. you dig you got to let me be comfortable skinny jeans is for skinny people you know and then we got a couple of rules i will not wear high-top sneakers with the suit that good i'm not going to do that too trendy for you yeah i'm not fitting to do that i see all these basketball players and stuff i'm not fitting to do that i'm not wearing a high top sneaker with my suit now we got some stephano richie alligator sneakers i had made i'll wear that with them but they look they look dope yeah and we get in a lot of fights because i don't like a lot of the stuff but to give him credit he's right 90 of the time and but when it comes to fashion man the dude just said mr harvey i'm going to let you be you i'm going to introduce you to these looks and he introduced them some of it worked i'll put on some stuff in love and he'll go you're not wearing that and i'll be going what the hell i ain't well i don't want my name on it then that's when i know i look like a fool you know but it turned out to be a great relationship man you know i think it's done a lot for his recognition really more so than mine because for me it's an it's an added like a accident but for him it's career changing because this is truly what he does and i think what's going to happen is i think this dude is going to be he's going to end up before it's over he won't always work for me because that's not how i do people i expect me to be a stepping stone for most people like chad and them cats like that he's going to be one of top fashion designers in the world he he will be what virgil was he would be what virgil was you heard it he heard his head first that's not for real once somebody understand it yeah he will be what virgil was and virgil was a bad boy yeah absolutely before we leave i know you want to talk about your nft project you got an nft project that dropped right yeah yeah yeah i got monkeys and how you feel about that because i know you old school so to be in a new world of nfts that's that's a whole new school you know you just have to listen man to beatty bought this to me because i'm telling you it was a tough sell for me nfts what are you talking about um mr harvey buy this monkey because for me it's just a little stupid ass face right i buy the monkey and next thing you know i'm in the magazine i'm everywhere and i'm sitting up here going to betty explain this to me because he has to help me but one of the things about being successful man is you have to surround yourself with people that's smarter than you you hear the saying all the time if you're the smartest person in your group you need a new group dog i i got a new group because i don't know everything but these nfts have been so interesting to me and how to be a part of it and participated and get on the ground floor say it out loud but that's for me if i can own something that's the deal for me it's not going to change this new judge show is like such a jump for me man because it's like i finally got one i created this ip you know that there's never been a judge show on primetime television ever ever dog that's original that's an ip i thought of it it's my show i'm the star and i own it now with the numbers that this show was getting on abc or trust and believe this one right here this this this judge show god willing it as my brothers say in the middle east inshallah if this this pops off when when when this pops off as god's will this will be the one that i can ride off in the sunset in this will be the biggest thing i've ever done this is complete ownership i'm the executive producer i'm the owner i'm the star the creator what's going to shock him though and i'm not gonna say it on camera was going to shock him is the next move i make with the judge show it's going to be paramount and you can look for us on the global level you can expect to see some studios in the middle east you can expect to see some studios in africa and steve harvey global steve harvey melt uae melt africa the conversations i'm having around the world man by the grace of god because he put all this in my imagination brother the sky's the limit and uh all i need for god to do is i just need uh 39 more years i just need 39 more years that's a long time 39 years a long time i'm gonna live to 104 and then i'm gonna push all the chips up to the window and cash it in but i'm gonna be on the boat pimping so hard i swear god man next time y'all interview me it'll be on a yacht in the middle of the mediterranean i'm gonna fly y'all out for it we're gonna spend two days out there smoking cigars and and drinking uh a lychee martinis a liche martini has you ever heard of that that's my favorite that's what you drink i haven't that's my favorite martini martini that's the vibe yeah i had one last year i ain't know what it was [Applause] and when they showed it to me before they peeled it they had all them spines ain't nobody eating that they peeled it off made a martini yeah it's good oh man you had one real quick where you getting them at oh new york in the restaurants oh you're in new york yeah not in georgia you get a barbecue martini down here with a little gravy on it because you in georgia down here pardoning these there's some areas down here where gravy is actually a beverage gravy shaking that's dirt nice it's been it's been a pleasure bro this is actually probably our longest episode but it just seemed like it was just like could last forever because so much information and i'm personally appreciative because i learned from actually asking questions just like our audience does so a lot of the questions i was asking you because i personally wanted to know myself to not make mistakes and know how to maneuver and that's what it's really about mentorship so i appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule it was good man because i watch y'all y'all deep brothers man what y'all trying to do is educate and the more people you help become successful the more successful you become that's what people don't understand man you got to take some time to share the knowledge you know it's like uh i went to robert smith's house and tell you a quick story the billionaire and the story is you got 30 minutes no one gets more than 30 minutes of his time period i was told that i didn't got a jet on a flew to austin to his house cool for 30 minutes man do you know how bad i wanted to sit with this man to get a jet and go somewhere for a 30-minute meeting then the lady explained to me at 30 minutes when i walk up if he does that that means give him five more minutes at 30 minutes that lady walked right in that room and he did like that i said well i got five more minutes and i sat there and we talked she came back in he did like that she walked away she came back again he did like that she didn't come back no more i was at robert smith's house for seven hours i was leaving his house and i asked his the lady who runs it i said can i ask you a question i said i was expecting to leave in 30 minutes 40 minutes i said why was i in this man's house for seven hours she said you know why steve she said because you're the first person that sat with him for 20 minutes and ain't asking for no money she said so the question is why don't you ask the man for no money because he was waiting i said because i didn't want to ask for no money i want to learn how he made that money see i want to be a billionaire so what i needed from him was information the biggest thing robert smith taught me was to scale up everything you're saying steve scale it you want to bring 300 boys to your ranch how do you bring 3 000 to your ranch you bring 3 000 how do you bring 30 000 you want to change 30 000 lives how you change 300 000 lives he taught me that valuable lesson and me and robert smith we've been friends ever since man and when he gave that money to morehouse and paid off all them loans do you know he meets with them brothers once a month he meets with him once a month i was on the yacht for my birthday he called me says steve need you to join this call with me on thursday night man ain't no problem on got got on the lunch with him and said he got in on the zoom call with him he had about 40 50 of them cats on the line set online and all i did was give them information about the mindset you have to have for success you got to get your mind wrapped around this thing man if you don't get this here you got to have successful thought everything i think is big and everything i try to think is positive now i'm human i have my days you know when i have doubts and i'm i'm human but right after that whenever i think something ain't working i do two things i start thinking of i get grateful and i immediately go into prayer i get grateful and then i just say okay god i thank you for what all you've done for me let me just shut up and cool out and then i go into prayer and and dog what i have now is because of that it's not because like i'm the funniest cat out there you know somebody asked me one time you think you that funny i don't know i know enough people do i got about i got 100 million people willing to give me a dollar i made a few hundred million now you might not think i'm funny but i don't really need you to make it though do it there's a whole lot of people hating on y'all but you don't need not one of them that's a fact you know the fact that i ain't never heard now want a little baby's records i wouldn't know a little baby song he'll need me asap rocky hill he got rihanna what do you need me [Laughter] i said asap rock i wouldn't rock it the hell if i know her asap racket i don't even know what he'd do i ain't got to know none of that man dog i was that i was that dumb ass dude in 1977 when hip hop hippity hop when that came out it was my last year of college i heard that song i was at a dance i said man this this [ __ ] ain't gonna last i don't know what hip hop this ain't gonna last this will never make it they ain't even singing there's no way this'll make it i bought in my life i can i can tell you the hip-hop albums i bought i bought all eyes on me by tupac i bought death certificate by ice cube i bought jay-z's blueprint classic i bought petey pablo's diary of a sinner interesting interesting dog that's one of my favorite you can't talk to me i mean you was going it was just yeah i was a classic classic classic tupac no ice cube j petey pablo no yeah yeah it fell off it fell off i know and then that song he got uh i was scraping up change in an ashtray two cigarettes not a dime to my name but man it's a song about gratitude okay it's a song about man where he it was his darkest moments and he just didn't know how he was gonna make it but when he said i was down to a cigarette scraping up changing the ashtray that was me that's you i play that song in my dressing room all the time peter pablo diaries or center y'all don't quit talking to me i played that for my son my son said who was this country ass dude what are we listening to i'm sitting up here i'm shocked you don't know petey pablo dog went to prison came out i told y'all everybody have it but y'all wouldn't listen to me now you got to see it popping off got you in the club dancing your ass off shake it down shake it down siri come on man i already know y'all shouldn't have been here y'all supposed to be hip hop face number five though what's number five that's four what's five five who the other album okay petey pablo blueprint death certificate uh all eyes on me got one more and uh uh uh uh outcast speaker box cigarette blow oh yeah that is that double album yeah that's that was cold that was coke that seeing them when they wrote uh ain't nobody dope as me i'm just so fresh and clean yeah like you're in that video right like kiki mine like showtime at the apollo minus the kiki shepard yeah when they released that they came to the beat in la and i played it on my radio station and a big boy say wrote this for you and he played that line ain't nobody dope is me i'm just so fresh and clean like showtime at the apollo minus the kiki shepard well who else out there ain't nobody left for me after that you couldn't say [ __ ] to me yeah that's number one number one selling hip-hop album of all time because of me number one yes not for one reason no no i've kid you not them the five albums i bought but hip-hop don't need me look how many hours it's the biggest music genre ever created in the world and steve harvey ain't bought the five of their albums what they need me for so when people ask me man you think you're the funniest i don't need you to think i'm funny man you ain't [ __ ] you wasn't the funniest ones in the king i had to be i was on the kings you take me off and it ain't no kings you take bernie off ain't no kings you take said off dale see like if i had you ain't asked me this but that's pride right there that's the reason if i had a mount rushmore comedy yeah first of all prior is a mountain by himself okay he don't he don't you can't put him on this rock he's a chiseled whole plateau rock taller than the mountain eddie murphy gets a plaque alone okay yes legend yes eddie get a whole plaque by himself yes you can't touch eddie when it comes to comedy who no delirious raw and then everything saturday night live buckwheat no he's just yeah eyes feed times of mayday dawg are you talking about somebody sitting there on saturday night live crying i'm telling my dog i would go home and cry watching buckwheaton velvet jones the pimp and all this hell eddie got a rock by himself yeah for me that mount rushmore that was full out outside of that what we got defoe yeah chris rock okay okay legend dave chappelle yes legend yes now it's hard because i know i know some things people don't know bill cosby was the most prolific stand-up of all time 20 comedy albums ain't nobody done that dawg this dude right here was masterful but if you say something about bill right yeah about how could you like people ask me all the time how could you be friends with bill cosby well hell i ain't know what happened you know you know they took all this money from bill cosby took his names off all these buildings ain't nobody gave that money back though you know why you what he was so i would want to put him there but if i had to put the new school in there it had to be kevin hart so that's the four that's the three three oh so we're not putting bill okay so we got three we got one more and one more the last spot the kings of comedy is a plaque all together yes sir no more no i was just thinking that's ahmad lawrence is the most gift my loss is the most what have i said about martin martin lawrence is the the best mimicker i've ever been around in my life what he did on def jam was unthinkable he's the best mimicker the most talented versatile stand-up ever born on this planet was jamie foxx jamie fox another one no no you i'm but i'm telling you but but we we can't put everybody on this road now i'm impartial because i'm one of the kings but i know what the kings did for black comedy right right right i know what it was man it launched you can ask kevin you it launched a a kevin hart now there's no cat williams there's no kevin there's no there's no none of these dudes earthquake who is a bad boy you know bill bellamy adele givens monique samora uh man that teddy carpenter damon wayans it's some boys j anthony brown man the first night the first week of def jam on the stage in one night was martin lawrence all little wayne's bros jamie foxx bill bellamy bernie mac shirl underwood steve harvey cedric the entertainer j anthony brown teddy carpenter adele givens dog that stage with some no genre bred more still living talented people than deaf jail because tucker was on that part of the junction tucker was on that stage this boy see you can't that that that genre right there was nothing else but that mount rushmore for me because i know what the kings was man it was it was like still the highest grossing it's just so it's something that ain't ain't nobody fitting to do that you can get four like i love these boys at 85 south they're doing something man i never thought would be done that's why i got to take my hat off to him because i don't know how they did this man they actually go on stage in the living room setting and sit around and talk and sell out and the [ __ ] is funny they they've taken improv comedy to a whole nother level yeah like live conversations yeah they're different we sat we did that show just after the show we're just like how did they just do that don't do they just play it they're so you don't realize it like as it's happening you're like did this just happen i didn't think that could work i tried to improv comedy i can't do it then i don't understand dividing the check that's what always through me going to get this check and we're going to split it now i got to do this myself but 85 south has came along chico and mancia and dc and them boys and they special man they changed the way comedy could be done so my hat's off to them young boys right there man because i just i didn't think it could work but once again it wasn't in my imagination it was in theirs so that's my view man so you have to write your own jokes to be top tier or does that not matter yeah but then you know like the like chappelle and rock you know they have writers you know but they doing some high-level stuff it's it's time consuming like if i went back i'd have to go that route i spent my whole career writing my own i bought two jokes in 30 years you said bought them bought two jobs for writers yeah off of a writer i bought a funeral joke from prescott it's comedian out of memphis i bought a funeral joke from prescott and i bought something else from prescott i don't remember that joke but i bought it and then didn't use it right but that funeral joke that i never put on tape one of the funniest pieces i've ever gotten it was just you know going to a black funeral and yeah you know and then i you know like you know funeral homes like back in the day some we lived in the hood you had to take the body to the funeral home they didn't do pickups so my uncle died and uh we came home and he was dead and we had to take him to the funeral home now me and my nephew we ten and my mom and daddy in the front and they propped my uncle up in the back sitting him up and they put us on each side so he wouldn't fall over you know how [ __ ] traumatized i was man we make a left turn this [ __ ] he owned me he owed me you shut up and leave my brother quick pushing him you know you know how hard it is to ride with your first dead person and you and you and your brother is booking is trying to prop his ass up look at that brains you need therapy after that [ __ ] you got to go to therapy you know i wrote a whole joke about that taking him up there and took the suit down there for the funeral director to dress him in and everything we get to the funeral and we opened up the casket and my uncle ain't got the suit on he got on a michael jordan jogging suit with number two and three yeah that [ __ ] was one of the greatest jokes oh man i never put that on tape man but i was wondering if i came back i'd have to release that nft releasing that ft yeah one of the first one of the first actually uh endorse and speak about solano as tabitha i'm sure he's behind that man you explain how that would work the joke on the internet how you would put it as an empty yeah so i first i would do it like as a i would record it right and then make it a digital product and make it exclusive to the people who bought maybe create artwork around it and make it exclusive to the people and then after they bought it perhaps make it uh a one night only where you actually perform if they have that entity they get a whole big business around it they buy it in crypto they can resell it every time they resell it you get percentage percentage on it to me it's like wait that's it man you know how much of that stuff i got hey man do you know i have footage i have at least 16 hours of never recorded i'm talking about because i when i did my seven specials man and and and feature films and for stand-up i only picked the best hour ten i've got some stuff that never got recorded the funeral joke the jerry springer bit the waffle house joke i got some [ __ ] man that was so gut-wrenching funny man i just haven't had time to go through all of it i got a lot of the footage but yeah this would be the time for it i mean obviously i'm gonna hook up with y'all and do something man i'm gonna do a business venture with y'all too all right let's do it let's go do it y'all gotta get with the beatty and y'all got to come up with our idea and we got to do the three of us got to do a business venture together let's do it and launch it take my radio show use it as the nucleus to promote and then uh whatever social media i got and then we need to get out there and we can do something big man we can promote on our side too yeah yeah y'all y'all strong seeing it whatever y'all trying to do in africa if y'all trying to go however that work i got yeah we'll talk about that we got some some investment opportunities out there i got a studio for you in abu dhabi you know the deal and i'm talking about where you can go man like when you go to abu dhabi man you won't even believe it you've never been nowhere on earth like this you you you know what it's like to walk outside and not have to look around that's like i was when um singapore and singapore that was like the most immaculate place that i've been to like it was just no poverty nothing on the street look like i was in the future like it was like that was just like i never been there oh it's crazy you know when you go on a plane so i was in i was coming from hong kong and when you go on the plane you know how they give you those things to read but nobody ever really reads it like i actually read it this time it said drug trafficking of any kind is punishable by death so then i get there and then my friend who was with his cousin actually was living out there so she was telling us like there's no drugs like they're serious about that really no drugs don't even try to see it's like there's no drugs out there but it was like i'm like because it's like one of the most expensive places to live and she was like yeah but everybody works and she's like even like low-income housing it's like just a regular apartment like there's no poverty there's no ghettos there's no crime there's no none of that and it looked like we was in the future like what language is over there uh well everybody spoke english because really yeah i forget what their like native language is yeah somebody was telling me to go to singapore but i kept thinking the five core pencils but we we can't leave without talking about i think which is probably the sixth principle and that's to give back let's talk about your foundation the philanthropy work that you're doing well um i've been doing this for quite some time steve and margie harvey foundation but it's about to take a new turn man i'm in the process of closing the deal um to buy rock ranch and rock ranch is owned by chick-fil-a right now and it's uh sixteen hundred acres where's it at uh just south of here okay it's about an hour and a half from here in uh is it rock georgia and it's called the rock ranch and it's 1 600 acres i'm gonna buy it myself donate it to my foundation because i don't want my foundation to have to take that type of hit it's a lot of money to buy but this is going to give me a chance to do what robert smith taught me to do was to scale up and so what i'm going to do is i'm going to build permanent housing on it because right now when i go down there i got to spend hundreds of thousands on tents for the boys to sleep in i gotta i gotta have uh toilets brought in and showers bought in and uh i just wanna change it and really really go all out with it we're going to build uh sleeping for 700 kids boys and girls with indoor toilets and showers for everybody um we're going to have a performing arts center that seats 700 with theater seating in it to show movies and do presentations for corporate getaways i'm going to build about 15 tiny houses on it for corporate exec getaways to come down there i've got fishing ponds all over the place got rock climbing zip lining i'm going to open up the stem center robert smith has committed to opening that for me i'm going to open up a stem coding center to teach coding to young all this is for underprivileged kids if your child got money that ain't who i'm working with i work for people who can't afford it man i'm taking all underprivileged kids there that's all i'm taking the ones people don't think got a shot that was me um i'm gonna uh i'm claiming it i'm gonna open up the floyd mayweather boxing facility down there he mentioned it to floyd now you know bringing he had a conversation with floyd mayweather body but he a good brother every time we see each other we cordial but i love his dude al haymon he a cleveland boy i'm gonna go to uh i'm gonna go to floyd and i'm gonna ask him to build a gym for these boys i'm just putting it out there i'm claiming it um i'm building the uh tyler perry performing arts center the robert smith coding center i want to build that here's another one that i'm putting out there i'm going to build the shaquille o'neal gymnasium shaquille is a good brother man just a good brother man and i like being affiliated with people that's good dudes man that i know got their heart in the right place uh you know it it i just claim stuff like that you know but if they understand that i don't put my money in it these cats is willing to give they have a lot of give back spirit in them you know and uh i'm gonna open up a uh i'm gonna put a track down there i'm going to open up a gardening facility i'm going to sell flowers i'm going to take 200 acres and grow flowers down there and raise honey with the bees and i'm going to open up a farming i'm going to find me an african-american farmer that got hit doing the pandemic and lost a farm i'm gonna give him farming acreage down there a few hundred acres and i'm just gonna pay him to grow organic vegetables i'm gonna feed the community and whoever needs vegetables that live in that area i'm gonna just feed them for free and let this brother earn a living from farming and uh i'm gonna open up a dining hall i'm gonna have a facility there when i'm not using it i can rent it out for uh corporate events and for weddings and things like that i'm also going to open up the gym and create it in a way where if hbcus want to come down there and have camps they can come down there uh doing as long as it's not summer and whole camps uh training facilities and i'm gonna have a division one workout center built for uh football teams who wanna come down there i'm gonna go to the nfl and get them to build me a football field with astro turf and i'm gonna go to the nba if shaq don't come through i'm gonna go to the nba i'm gonna have them build me a gym if they don't do it i'll do it myself don't make me no different i hope they do but it don't matter to me i'm not in the big business i'll ask you but i won't beg you and then uh that's what god didn't put on my heart so that's where we're going with uh philanthropy and my wife's goal and our goal is to send ten thousand young people to college full paid scholarships we're on our way we've done a hundred or so right now but we're a long way from ten thousand but that's the goal i'll say this we definitely want to help in any way that we can help in that so i'm gonna have y'all come down there and teach a course yeah let's do it for sure that's what i want y'all to do that'll be dope we definitely will do that so thank you man yeah steve it's been a been a pleasure my brother been real black appreciate you man i appreciate you man i appreciate y'all let me let me speak like this most people don't come at me like this i don't get to say these types of things so i appreciate it thank you i appreciate you more thank you guys for rocking before we go we got to give thanks again uh to be making sure that this happened uh shout out to nicole uh our black effect family for also making sure that this took place so thank y'all and i want to highlight his he's talking about it but i think it's important to really say this on camera so he talked about his lawyer he talked about his stylist he talked about the video who helps them out a lot of financial issues and they're all young black men and that's important too like he has a staff and a team of um black professionals he didn't have to compromise the entire lifetime we think we have to compromise the integrity if we hire somebody like he didn't compromise the integrity of people extremely highly qualified um and that's something to highlight just like like lebron you know different things that nature but it's always good to see you know a team of of black people especially black men yeah working together so and they qualified too because when i put them boys in the room i ain't got to be in there because i know they gonna handle bids because they smart and you you're gonna run nothing by them dog i ain't even worried about it you can come in there i these cats got some lines on them and like you say i didn't hire black people that have to compromise no man i'm actually i actually i actually have an edge because hey what else it gives me man gives me a comfort level because you know man sometimes man when you're out here in this world as an alpha male it's lonely out here you're out here operating with people that don't look like you talk like you some of them don't want to really be bothered with you but you had the ability to make money so they tolerate you well when i'm home and i'm sitting around my guys i want the comfort level i want to be able to talk like i talk say what i say you know if i fall off a word that ain't politically correct ain't nobody wincing writing me up filling out no paperwork hey dawg i don't want to say nothing all of a sudden i see somebody filling out paperwork okay yeah yeah yeah and we have a lot of meetings in my house where hr don't apply [Laughter] no it's a pleasure my brother thank you guys for rocking with us we'll see you next week peace peace graduates from my school being forbes back drop back drop my drop back drop [Applause] bye

Channel: Earn Your Leisure

Views: 2,875,101

Keywords: EYL, Steve Harvey show, Comedy, Steve Harvey

Id: -GuFNqeeUA4

Length: 141min 3sec (8463 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 15 2022