First, I want to say thanks to everybody here for, you know, being a part of this to put this thing together for, you know, the future leaders and the speakers, tomorrow's leaders.

Brand star, everybody. Sistic fibrosis, I said that correctly, right? I didn't know a lot about it until a couple of years ago.

We've been a part of donating some money to different charities like that

and anytime that you can help or pay it forward it's important we get stuck in our own way sometimes

and we forget that that people need help people need to be taught things people need to give back

because it comes full circle and what i'm going to talk about today is is some of that i've got a book

out called own your power. No BS, no

excuses. The time is now. And I'm no different than a lot of you folks out there watching or listening

to where you've had bumps in the road. You've had obstacles you've had to overcome. You've had

deficiencies in your life, whether you were born poor or born rich, born without a mom or dad, or however your

situation is, everybody's got their own problems that they've got to overcome. They've got to put

that perspective and change their mindset. So I'm going to kind of go over a few chapters here

and really try to inspire and motivate people to get out of their way and have eight reasons

to live a no-excuse life. And so I'm going to start by,

it mentioned the 2019 EY Entrepreneur of the Year award that I won. I remember when I went to the

event, I had to really show myself off to all of these judges and pitch them why I should be

the EY winner. I didn't even know that we applied for the thing. And a buddy of mine, I was at a, we're having a little adult game night, right? We had adults over, we have a game night. And a buddy of mine, Brian, who works for EY up in Michigan, is like, hey, I hear you're up for a finalist for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year award.

We get tons of awards. And I'm not trying to diminish any kind of award, but I was like, yeah, yeah, whatever, yeah, it's fine. He's like, are you going to the thing? I said, I ain't going to the thing. I'm not interested. It's no big deal. He said, this is a big deal. I was like, really? He's like, yeah, you know, the Damon, I think it's Damon John from Fubu, right?

He won the award.

Several people have won the award. You need to take this seriously. So I call my guy, Raj, right? Rogers are a PR blogger. And I say, dude, I think it's next week. Can you schedule me to be a part of the event and the whole festivities? And what do I got to do? What do I got to know? I don't even know what I'm going to talk about. How am I going to pitch this? So he gets, you know, he sets it up. I get the folder. I open it up when we get there for the dinner and the cocktail hour. And I go through and I see that everybody there, all the judges are X winners, right? They're all white shoe Ivy League folks. There's nothing wrong

with that if that's what you are. I'm just not that. So I'm walking around. I'm like, all right,

I'm trying to find my groove. And Chevy Arnold, who is over the entire thing for the Southeast,

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