From 561 Pounds to Unstoppable: Dave Anderson’s Untold Story! Dave Anderson | Ep. 109

Introduction and Dave Andersonu2019s background 0:00

Our relationship with health, both from a holistic and traditional standpoint, is absolute trash in this country. And the stuff they put in our food that nobody talks about is killing us slowly and we are saying, yes, supersize that thing. Why do so many men avoid therapy? Because it's girl stuff. That's what we've been conditioned to believe. We all suffer from a form of cancer. It's called delusion. And some of us are at stage four. Dave Anderson is the founder of The Business Bully and host of the BusinessBully podcast.

He's a best-selling author whose latest book, The Real Black Agenda, challenges how we think about leadership and community. Get ready for a direct, powerful conversation. I had a very toxic, abusive relationship with food. I was so big, Sam, on our wedding day, the button popped off of my tuxedo. Don't even believe I am who I'm. Sometimes I don't recognize that person. You know what's crazy on the other side? I do not recognize the 561-pound guy either. Bullycon, I started in 2017. It's sexy, but it's ugly before it gets sexy.

And I knew if I created this conference, I can make a difference in my community and then my Community can, make, a, difference, in the country and country can. Make a. Difference in. The world. That was the goal. Welcome to another episode of a healthy point of view podcast. I'm your host, Sam Sahara. And as usual, we're bringing experts from all over the world to talk about health, wellness, beauty, and mindset. Today, our guests flies in from out of town. This guy here. tremendous success story, but he just doesn't keep it for himself.

He coaches people, he elevates others. he's a serial entrepreneur, multiple books, He's published so many books on how to elevate.

Childhood, school, and early creative development 1:49

And this is a story, guys. You hear us talk about health, wellness, about the weight loss. This is someone who was at 561 pounds. Well, one day he just decided, he says, you know what? It's time to change. Today, we have Dave Anderson. Dave, all right. Yes! I'm here for it. Welcome to Healthy Point of View Podcast. Man, thank you for having me. So excited to be here, brother. Amazing, man. You're doing some big things, bro. Listen, I am very mediocre. I have nothing to write home about, but I'm happy to here.

We can start off the podcast as mediocre, and we'll let the listeners and viewers by the end of the put all the comments about if it's mediocre or not. I already know what my comment's gonna be. See, I know you. So I want to start off for people to get to know who you are. Who is Dave Anderson? But not the Dave Andersen of today. I wanna talk about your upbringing. When you were five years old, what was it like? Where did you live? Who were you? who was mom and dad? Oh, wow. By the time I was five-years-old, we were in a red brick row house in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.

My parents had split. At that point, I was lucky my dad was very, very active in my life. I didn't go longer than seven days without spending time with my father. He was diligent about that. Dad was a cop, mom was teacher slash hairstylist, and it was her, my brother and I, you know, My grandparents lived down the street and around the corner. I had a happy childhood for the most part, normal, everyday kid, man. My brother was super athlete, I was the super nerd, love comic books, have X-Men socks on, that should tell you everything you need to know.

Um,I did not know that we were poor. Didn't register to me. I didn't know any different than anybody else man. And I remember getting lifesavers for Christmas and being stoked. So I'm just in a place where I am truly grateful and I reflect on my childhood in the way that a lot of people just don't have the luxury of doing. Overall, man, I was blessed I had involved parents that cared about me and encouraged me to do what I wanted to. And the only rule that was in my house was if you do it, you better do.

If you decide to quit, then you can never pick it up again. So that was the only thing. So, you know, my brother was a three, three sport athlete. I played seven instruments, I did the debate team, all that kind of good stuff. And I was very active kid, got in a radio at nine, gotten a television at 15. Yeah, and I wasn't very, very blessed in that regard.I had parents that would not let me quit and i didn't realize that it was rarity until much, much later on in life. Did your parents put you in a lot of extracurricular activities?

Yeah. Yeah, it was a thing. You know, my my grandfather, and my mother's father was really big on Idle Hands Me in the Devil's Workshop. And so we were always busy, you know. So I did Chess Club, I Did Day Camp, all of that type of stuff, anything that was going to enrich me that through the Philadelphia public school system I did and a few things that were out of it. I was actually just gonna ask you that. Were you part of the public schools? Oh yeah, no, I went to neighborhood schools, nothing special.I went the worst high school in America, Martin Luther King High School, class of 95. That was, that was a class president.

Oh, there you go. You know, so again, in the land of The Blind, the one-eyed man is King. But I didn't have any special, you know... privileges when it came to my education, other than the fact that I had a grandmother that was a teacher and uncle that a was teacher, eventually a stepfather who was the teacher. And, you know, my mom being a teachers, so my stuff had to look a certain way. It had be a way, there was certain level of excellence that's was expected because how is that gonna look amongst my mother's peers?

You know three time teacher of the year finalist, it would not have looked good. So I worked very, very hard. Yeah, so it was very, very enriching.

Weight gain, homelessness, and the first turning point 6:19

It wasn't always easy being a teacher, son, but luckily I never, never had to go through being like one of my mother's students. She never taught at a school I went to praise them. Yeah. That's interesting what you're saying, man. I'm looking in the mirror. It's a public school system, inner city. My mom worked for the public schools system. She was a high school teacher. So she knew all the different teachers. I didn't go to any of the schools that she taught at, but she still knew a lot of teachers, all of them.

And extracurricular activities. Our parents always try to do as much as possible. They want to keep our minds going but also keep us off the streets. You know, so that's amazing. But this is what I want to talk about with what you're talking about, with the public school system. Back in the day, and I graduated at 05, so you graduated 10 years before me, it was even more different then. The way you just said that. Yes, I'm old. In case you didn't see the platinum hair. I got them growing. Don't worry.

I'm catching up. My dad had gray hair by the age of 18. So I think I am doing good. Yeah. Who had a gray by 18? But, you know, public school system, man, back in the day, at least where I was from in Milwaukee, we had everything, yeah. We had every single activity. Talk about music, programs that the public schools had. It was well funded. Now you look today, a lot of this stuff is just non-existent. So when we talk about a lot of things, chess club, band camp, after school type of activities, they don't exist.

How important do you think all of those things that were offered to you back then through the public school system, that into your success today? Oh, absolutely. It taught me discipline, it gave me motivation, and it was incentivizing my performance because just like an athlete, you can't participate in these particular programs if your grades aren't up to par. And I remember in 10th grade when the Philadelphia Public School system cut everything that was not related to a ball or a puck. And so band gone, choir gone.

Anything music or arts drama club gone bro. And like you're talking about I got, I did like Beauty and the Beast. I was Aladdin and The Genie. That's how bad I wasn't like, you record all the genie parts and you do the Aladdin thing live and they had like a big puppet. Yeah, cut all that. And I mean, our drama program was so good, we would tour and go to the other schools and put on these plays. So that exposure to theater and all of those things, I hate to say it because now I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but facts are facts.

If, in fact, you want to make sure that you keep that 13th Amendment thing going, that little clause that says there's no slavery, BUT if you commit crime, people who are busy and people are stimulated and satisfied with their quality of life are not committing crimes. People who aren't do. wind up being in that system that's been created to box you in so that we can, you know, weaponize that cheap labor. So there's no reason with the amount of money you're talking back in the mid 90s, 25,000 per student.

That's what the allotment was. that our schools should have been gutted like that as far as programs go, but there's a direct correlation. But none of the other, like the schools on the outskirts, the school that had less black people in them as opposed to the ones that have almost all black Gone, so it definitely took the wind out of my sails, but at that point I was doing radio every night and then by the time I Was about 15 16 like right when they cut that off I? Was on national television and so It's like they closed one door.

God opened the window Right, right. And so I was able to keep going. But it's critical. I think the arts, I Think, you know, mental stimulation exposure to things outside of your community is integral to how you operate as an adult. Those lessons in the beginning stages of Your childhood are extremely important. Agree, man. Now you said seven musical instruments. Seven. What are they? Every brass instrument except for the trombone. Play the bongos and I used to play the xylophone. I haven't picked up any mallets in like 20 years.

Yeah. Were you part of a full symphony orchestra? Yeah, I was in all city band. I wasn't all-city choir. My high school had... had an orchestra before it got cut, but I had been playing since my sixth grade year of elementary school all the way up through high school when they cut the program. So say I played piano and violin. I got a little violin up there. You can't see this part here. Yeah, you were smart. As long as you don't have arthritis, your good. My embouchure is shot. Well, I don' play the violin at all anymore.

No? I've played for 14 years and then after highschool I was just like, it's really not my thing. I wasn't the best, you know what I'm saying? Like I did it, and honestly like I was not passionate about it. My parents kind of like made me, I am the youngest out of four, so my parents made do it because my brothers and sisters were doing it so, but then I second string violinist sitting in the back. I could play music, I can read music. And yeah, when we were playing, that was part of a full symphony orchestra.

We played the big Christmas concerts and stuff. That was fun, it was, you know, because I love Christmas. But it wasn't really my thing. Like other cats, they would work towards winning a championship, the city, things that they're doing. So, but the one thing I'll say is, I do think that it helps the mind. It makes you academically better. And makes your kind of focus differently. So that's why I was asking about the musical instruments. Yeah, absolutely. I think the arts, and I mean, there have been plenty of studies that talk about how it helped you with reasoning and mathematical computation skills.

Right. it's one of those things. Like, I, think even though I and this is the part that always embarrasses my mother. My mother was a math teacher and i sucked at math until 11th grade. i had a teacher named Ms. Killebrew who said, i think you probably have dyscalculia and dyslexia. And I was like, I'm not Theo Huxtable like you fucking. They would have caught it by now. And she said nobody cared. She said, we're going to get you tested. Sure enough, that's what it was. What kind of test is that?

It's basically like a... I don't know what is is now, but then they would give you like, it's part phonics, part reasoning, how you connect letters and sounds reflexively, that type of thing. So it, you know, standard test for the most part, couple of, like oral questions and then written questions, things of that nature. And yeah, same thing with math.

Marriage, surgery decision, and major weight loss 13:10

Like you just can't make everything work. You have all the pieces, but something's missing. Right. Yeah. You know, obviously you have a very strong success story with your health, right? You did lose a tremendous amount of weight. But I want to go back a little bit to when the weight gain occurred, when did it start happening? Was it at a young age? Or was it high school? When did you start putting on the massive amount weight? Oh, well, I was a chunky kid, but I wasn't big. I think I had body dysmorphia way early.

in school. And I remember the gym teacher, I always come and I'm like, yo, can I get a double XL? He's like you barely need an extra large. I mean, no, the kids say I am fat. He was like it's just your composition. Once you grow, you're not done growing. Like it'll change, don't. But again, other people's perception of you when you were a kid is everything and then you believe that to be a reality. food tended to become my friend. And, you know, my mom was an emotional eater. So, of course, I became an emotionally eater, something good happened, yeah, we're eating, some bad happened.

Yeah, and that's what happened I would say the freshman 15 probably turned into the freshmen 45, sophomore 52, the junior 12. You know, my senior year I dropped a little bit of weight, but then after that, I'm in radio. You're in a studio for four hours in the box. The record rep comes to town. Yeah, you're going to the chart house. Your going the Ruth's Chris. It's time to eat. Everything in my life revolved around food and there wasn't any working out. Why am I working for? Like I live a sedentary lifestyle and it's cool.

Like doing what I want to do. For me, I looked around and one day I was 350 and next thing you know, 400, then I got really depressed. And then when I wound up homeless, the only thing that you can really afford is the dollar menu. So, you drive-throughs and cheeseburgers were, the menu of choice at that time. And so yeah, I got really down on myself and homelessness will do that. So the only comfort I had was two things, me at a drive through and then there was a book by a guy named Bob O'Dean.

It changed my life, it's called The Power of Who. And in that book, he talks about how you have absolutely everything you need, you just don't know it yet. And he based it on the Bible and he says that Jesus had 12 friends, three close, one best. So you got to find who that circle is, who are the people, not necessarily your disciples, but your closest council of individuals. and then from there, anything that you want or need will probably most likely come through God from those 12 people. And that book literally is the reason I'm sitting here right now.

Wow. Absolutely. What would you say? Was that the turning point where you told yourself, you know what? I refuse to die this way. Not quite yet. I wish I could tell you I had a pursuit of happiness moment. At that point, I said, OK, You washing your nuts in the gas station sink, Dave. We don't do this." And I had a conversation with my brother, God rest his soul. Yeah, at least you were washing them. Oh, no. These nuts will get washed. Trust me, I will not stink. But do you know how difficult it is to be homeless and fat?

You can't put up a cardboard sign and be like, please give me food. I've had enough. So I called my bother and he said, where are you staying? And And I couldn't lie to him, you know, I could avoid things, but I can lie and I said, stay in my truck. He said if you don't get home as soon as possible, like you can come stay with me and the kids, we're good. And so I did. I stayed in our brother's garage until I got myself together. My wife, at the time she was my girlfriend and then became my fiance, because we met in college, we had decided to move in together and that's what we did.

And we were engaged, everything was going good. I was as happy as anybody could be. She comes in one day and she says, listen, I'm bringing out the groceries, but you have this big, huge bag in the back of your truck. But you never take it out. I never see you open it. It's always there. What's in the bag? And I said, no, I'll just leave it there, it's cool. And she said Dave, the hell is in a bag. Is it guns? Are you a mule? Like what the Hell is going on? That's my jump bag. And she said, what the hell is a jump back?

I said if anything ever happened where I find myself in a situation where washing my nuts in the gas station sink again, I got that bag, that bags got shoes, it's got clothes, its got toiletries, Its got meals ready to eat. Like I've got everything I need in that back. The only thing I don't keep in their bag is fresh water. Cause I can get that from any, you know, gas stations. And she looked at me and she says, do I strike you as a person that's going to leave you? I said, no, it's ain't got nothing to do with you.

It's my jump bag. And so to understand, I'm six, six one on a good day and my wife is five, two, maybe five three on good. So she's just come here and I lean down and. She puts her hands on my face and says I love you with everything I got in me. You are the best thing that ever happened to me if you don't get that bag out of the back of that truck. unpack that so we can live our life, you're safe, your home. You will never not have a home, I don't care what I gotta do. And that was it. Man, how you feel when she said that?

Bro, like you could have knocked me over with a feather. I was done, every pivotal moment. That's when you got engaged. No, we were already engaged. But that's when I moved up the date to September 29th. I said, no, I ain't letting you go. from that point on somehow revolves around her in that I was trying to figure this entrepreneur thing out when I decided to retire from the radio business because I got tired of getting my ideas jacked and not getting paid for them. And she says to me, well, what's going on?

I said, Well, I've got this gig. and they're going to put a hundred K on the table plus uncapped commissions. Cause at that point I'm a sales machine because it's the only job you want to give somebody who's been working in entertainment from, from nine years old. Because there's no risk. You eat what you kill in sales. And I said, yeah. She said. But Dave, you've done sales jobs and every time you do a sale job, three things happen. I said, well, what? She said. Well, yeah, you get paid and then you know, You start getting recognized because you're good at what you do.

And then somebody gets upset because Dave Anderson shows up and I say, OK, but what does that mean? So, oh, no, they'll sit up there and they promise you the world and tell you they move you up to the front office. Then they take all your ideas and pretend that there's or they try to sabotage you because You're making them look bad and They're afraid that they're going to promote you with their job. or they just make your life a living hell because you know that you're supposed to be out there on somebody's stage, writing somebody book, helping somebody do something.

Now, I don't know about how to make this entrepreneurship thing work. I come from workers. You know, my wife's from Michigan. So all those folks are, you saw to the earth, go to The Big Three, work a factory, retire with a fat pension. She was like, ''I can't help you with that, but I know you have what it takes to makes it work and I've already gambled on you. Find a way.'' And at that point, it was like I had to burn the boats. I never went back to another gig after that. It was a wrap. And so two years into our marriage, this is what you're looking for.

Two years in our marriages, we were on a walk one day and she was walking and I was waddling. She says, Dave, can I ask you something? I say, yeah, she says you don't ever argue with logic. I said, if it's sound, of course not. She said cool. Logically, how many 561 pound older people, elderly people do you know? And if you any, are they living the life you want to live with me when you're that age? Say that one more time. She said, how many 561 pound older people do you know? And if you no any, are they living the life you want to live with me when you're that age?

I was like, oh, and that's all I could say was oh. And I said, no, she said I married you big. Like I was so big, Sam, I've never told this story. I were so on our wedding day, the button popped off in my tuxedo. Flew across the room. This is my belly, like Nutty Professor just. So I knew that she loved me. And she says, you promised me, and I say I ain't never broke a promise to you. She said but you promise me forever, but she can't point to nobody 561 pounds as elderly. All right, I'm gonna figure this out.

And that was the moment. That was a thing. It's like, because it's not just me, you know, when it was me and we got kids, it is a whole different ball game. Because I stopped playing for my first name and I had to play for last name. There are people who depend on me. You know I consider my wife a 10. I really don't want my wives smashing the pool boy. I don't have a pool boy yet, but I imagine one day I will. Listen, no, I want to be able to give her what I promised, which was forever, as long as humanly possible.

So that's powerful, man. And you as the husband, the father, you're there to lead the way. At 561 pounds, if you could try to You're leading the way a heck of a lot better now. Oh, yeah. It's a different ball game, man. When I look back on it, it all seems like a blur. I can't believe I used to order two pizzas, one for me and then the other one, for the family. That's what I use to do. And it's like, It might be laughable to some people, but here's the thing that I say to people who have never had a weight problem.

You've seen people have sympathy for people who are addicted to meth, coke, heroin, alcohol, whatever. What if your addiction is directly tied to the one of two things you need to live for the rest of your life? You can't just quit that cold turkey. There ain't no 12 step program for that. Cause I gotta face my addiction every day and I got to take a hit of that medicine. So now talk to me about how easy it is. Just get up, move more. It's cute for you. You've never been big. you don't know what it's like.

How you have to compensate. What it means to try and be the life of the party so nobody pays attention to the fact that you've got three chins and your thighs rubbed together and it smells like bacon. I'm being facetious. It's more like smothered pork chops with applesauce, but I digress.

Life after transformation and health mindset 24:28

You're right about that. I've never thought about it that way. In the health and wellness business, the addiction is something that you do need every single day. So it's not like you technically relapse every day, you know? So, it is a huge mindset shift that has to happen. So throughout this process, there was a six-year delay before you decided to actually go through the surgery. Oh, you've done your research. I'm scared of this, man. Yes, that is absolutely true. Six years is not overnight. No.

Why the six year delay? because I had gotten myself to a point where I have believed what I saw on television. And what i saw in television is if you have any type of weight loss intervention via surgery, you're cheating. It's not fair. Um, it's knock on, is not the same. You know, You're going to regret it. People die, all this old kind of stuff. The truth of the matter is I felt I was doing well. I hadn't gotten down 92 pounds on my own and I thought good. And I sat down with the surgeon and shout out to my surgeon, Dr.

Gary Kores, good dude. He sat me down, he said, okay, Dave, I've been waiting for this. And he pulls out this white binder. he says, hit me with it. I said hit you with what? He was like, we've doing this dance for damn near six years now. Give me all the things that you've been thinking and saying in your head and say to your friends that have kept you from making this change, using this tool." I said, what tool? He said weight loss surgery. I say, bro, that's cheating. He says, but you're talking to a weight-loss surgeon.

And I says yeah, because I would. What are your concerns? I don't want to die on the table. How many people have you done this to that died on a table? And he said six. Well, how many of these have done? He said, 10. I said oh my God, 1,000. Oh. And he said I know you were gonna see that. He showed me the files, he redacted the names, but he showed the me files of everybody who died. This person had heart complications, this person was diabetic. None of them lined up with where I was. Here's the cardiologist report, here's what your stress test looks like, Here is what you sleep study looks.

to throw a touchdown pass to a fit prime Emmett Smith in a Super Bowl than to die on my table. He said, you've hit a wall, this is a tool, it is going to help you. You have done everything else. you seen the therapist, You got the nutritionist, your exercising, Your drinking a gallon of water a day. This is tool. he said you have stretched your belly so wide it's like a beach ball and a half. Your never gonna get full. He said, but if we just go in, he said I don't wanna do a bypass, I think a sleeve makes a lot more sense.

And I said well what's the difference? He says well the bypass is gonna go from the esophagus, we wanna bypass all this other stuff and then everything goes out. He's said that's not what I'm thinking. If we do the sleeve, what we're gonna do is we gonna take that beach ball and a half that you got and we want to leave you with a sliver that looks about the size of a banana. So I wanna take about 80 to 90% of that stomach out and he's say your first job when you get in the recovery room is try to get down one ounce of water.

I say. He said, you laugh now you won't. He says, if you do this, I guarantee you everything, your life will be better. And you'll see me in two weeks after the surgery and you're gonna drop 60 pounds. I said you bullshit. It was just my knee jerk reaction. and he was like, no, trust me. So I go in, and I'm about 468 pounds on surgery day. When I saw him, because I see him a week later instead of two weeks later, I was 418. And bro, i was doing double backflips in my head. I couldn't do that because i'm still big as a house.

But I said, yo, Doc, you'll never see that number again as long as you live. I was like, oh, this is great. He said, it gets better. And he says, six weeks. Then at that point, I'm walking. I can't lift any weights at the point. Just walking and moving and drinking and walking, moving, and drink. It just started to fly off. The second I could lift weights, Oh, let me add the weights. Let me get to the heavy stuff. Pick up heavy and put it down. Get in here. my new addiction. And then at that point, I'm watching, my daughter's watching me now.

My oldest one is at this point on her way to college. is a goober, but she's starting to get to that age and she wants to do, she says, daddy, I want to work out too. And so I said, well, you need some coordination. You need to discipline. I know what, i'm going to give you the one thing my mom couldn't afford to. Give me, imma put you in karate. So I put her in Karate and I'm there and iI'm karate dad. Like I am referee in the tournaments the whole nine and have a conversation with the sensei one day and say, Hey, um, You think I can do this?

He takes one look at me. He said, hell yeah, why wouldn't you be able to? So, you know, kind of big. he said that don't matter. By the time I'm done with you, he ain't going. And so like, I'm four belts in, and you know, that's my daughter and I saying we love combat sports. So I do Kempo and Krav Maga kickboxing. You know? And when I tell you people who are what society deems as normal or regular average people, or read comic books, it's all the time they talk about how Spider-Man is like 100 times stronger than the average man.

an average man can do a lot and we don't realize how good that is. And so for me, to be in a position where I can go into a Target and just grab a shirt and not have to worry about whether or not it's gonna fit or I'm gonna look like baby Huey in it to, be able to outrun my 10 year old who is a bottle of energy. You were at what like seven XL? Yeah, I was seven, let's run the stats. I wore a I had a 28 inch neck, if you can call it a neck. I was a seven X shirt, I have a 72 inch waist. Even my shoes, people don't realize, fat goes everywhere.

It was 13 and a half, but I'm actually a 12. The fat go everywhere, and so yeah. Yeah, no, am a 40 inch waste now, wear a large shirt. 12 in the shoes. But yeah, brother. I don't even believe I am who I like when we were doing the test and looking at the cameras and whatnot. Sometimes I didn't recognize that person. But you know what's crazy on the other side? I did not recognize the 561 pound guy either. He's gone. And you go on Facebook, right? And I know Facebook is for old people. But you go on Facebook and you'll have these things and we'll talk about memories from five, six, seven, 10 years ago.

And I'm like, who the hell put the fat filter on all these pictures and videos? No, that that's actual me. I mean, and I didn't nobody tell me I was this big. Did your mind change whatsoever? Like after this, after you lost all that weight, are you still the same person in the inside? No, no. What would be, I guess let me ask you this, what is that unspoken loss after the weight loss that nobody ever talks about? You don't have to hide behind food, you don' have be the loudest person in the room.

You are more than enough anywhere you go. And the part of me, like there's a poignant scene in Nutty Professor where Buddy Love is telling Sherman, because they have that duality thing, and he says, You gotta suck in your gut and strut. I took that as you gotta own the You know, but own the room from a real place of confidence, not the confidence you put on as an armor to protect you from people's criticisms or their judgments because you're as big as a double wide trailer. But just be who God called you to be.

and what that looks like in every aspect of your life. And I ain't got it all figured out yet, but I do know that I'm a leader. I know I help people scale their businesses. The sense of achievement you have permeates every single part of your life. Like you do everything so much more diligently than you ever did before. I don't just put my kids' nuggets in the air fryer, I place them gently. Everything, as crazy and as trivial as that sounds, everything is so more meaningful. Life feels better. Bro, do you know, I walked on the beach this afternoon and I was just thinking to myself, none of these people have ever seen 7X Dave.

They don't know. There are people who have met me and they didn't I ever had a weight issue. I can't explain to you in any particular words without keeping you here for the next three and a half years that we going for The World Record of podcasts to explain how freeing, how empowering, How magical it feels on this side of things to the point now where I'm nitpicking things, bro. You know, like I lost all the weight, but then I developed stage four Dunlaps disease. you're in the health field. Are you familiar with DunLaps?

I love. Dunlaps means that it's a condition that happens after massive weight loss. Your belly dunlapped over your belt. So I got a tummy tuck, the first one I had to get. Oh yeah, because I mean, I have to lift this up to pee, bro. Like you over here, you working with ... No, it was too much going on. I'd had get all that skin off, and then I was able to move again. You know, so now I'm like, oh, well I gotta get my thighs cut off because all of this is excess skin. Even with that small price to pay, small-price-to-pay, bro.

I am so happy with the problems I have with my body now versus the problem I was having with body then. Like sleep apnea, I did a sleep study, and I stopped breathing 150 times. Is that going up? Oh yeah. And that's incredible because you know when you got sleep apnea, you're not getting enough oxygen to the brain, correct? So now you have mental fog. Yes, the clarity is not there So so now it allows you to even perform greater and better than what you were doing before, bro I'm sharper now than I was in 12th grade.

I can only imagine. It's it's like being high because there's nothing blocking me, You know, I''m not Like sometimes I don't want to wake up because I got a little one and she's up and at him with the sun. But when I'm up, bro, it's on until I fall asleep. Like I am focused in a way I wasn't focused. So I wrote this book, right? A week and a half after I finished writing this book. What's the name of the book? This is The Real Black Agenda. It's my love letter to black America as to what needs to happen in order for us, yo, your sneakers are ill.

what Needs to Happen in Order for Us to Do What We Need to do in Order to Fix Our Problems. Because no one's coming to save us. We're political pawns on both sides of The Isle. And the only way for US to Save Us is for U s to one, admit we've got problems that we need to take care of and two, make sure that We are doing everything

Books, legacy, and family responsibility 35:48

we possibly can. So I wrote this Book. And then I said, another one. I went DJ Khaled on them. And I wrote another book, which is coming out February 15, called Weapons of Mass Destruction. They gave you the circus so you missed the war. You know, and it talks about all the things they put in front of us to distract us from what is happening while they're playing in our faces. And when I say faces, I'm not just talking about black people. I talk about brown people, white people who aren't rich, Asian people...

Everybody's getting played with all these weapons of mass distraction, reality shows, this thing over here, This person fell down a well. It's a whole bunch of stuff. So you're not paying attention to what's really happening. And I wrote... That book took me two weeks. Weapons of Mass Distraction took one week. And it's just like, I never wrote a book that quickly with that much research, that, much, you know, putting in depth. And when I say I wrote this book, a devotional, graphic novel, and I recorded the audio book four weeks, everything done.

So mental clarity, bro. I'm like yo, if I had done this sooner, I'd be a billionaire by now. So let's talk about that because that's a lot of when people look at that from the outside, it's. A lot. Of success that you're doing now, right? Right now? So when we talk. About success is success valid without your health? It don't mean anything. Steve Jobs. I mean, this is a dude who got fired from the company he built, went off and did some other stuff, then went often did Pixar, Disney bought that.

And Apple says, you know what, we need Steve Jobs back. He came back, cancer. Like this was the dude, who said a thousand songs in your pocket. We can have a conversation about where he got that from. But anyway, the thing of it is Sam, all of that money, All of success, where's Steve jobs now? It doesn't, when I tell you the one thing, if I could just sit every black man in a room. Right? We just lost D'Angelo. You know, like all of these, we lost, oh gosh, Richard Roundtree who played Shaft. We lose all these brothers to cancer, to heart attacks, type two diabetes.

we don't have a conversation about type three diabetes and you know what that is, Alzheimer's and dementia. And we call it that in the States because of marketing. Sugar on the brain is killing us. Mama don' just have the sugar, she's got dementia and Alzheimer because she had the sugars in her system. It has nowhere else to go. Our relationship with health, both from a holistic and traditional standpoint, is absolute trash in this country. And the stuff they put in our food that nobody talks about is killing us slowly.

We are saying, yes, supersize that thing. The guy who did supersized me is dead. Success means nothing if you can't enjoy it with your family, if can pass those lessons on. To me, I don't feel successful. I feel very disciplined, but I don't feel successful. Andre 3000 said, if you don' then we're like neck to neck, meaning that you're living check to check. I'm working on this music. If you not buying what I am selling, I dead in the water. And so for me, that society is in a place now where everything is this algorithm doom scrolling, you know, what have you done for my lately Janet Jackson type of vibe.

and I not looking for accolades, i'm looking to make impact. For the first time in my life, I feel like... It's about me, but it's not about it. It about my health, it so much bigger than me now. Because it like now I've done it, now want everybody to feel this good. I want everyone to have this clarity. Everybody to live a fulfilled life. Everyone to shoot for their maximum potential. When people tell me it is so hard and you can't make it on YouTube, there is a 13 year old kid who does not manufacture toys who makes $30 million a year reviewing other people's toys.

And you're telling me With all of your degrees and all the things you got to say, you can't do it? Come on, man. Tell that to somebody else. I want you to feel what I'm feeling. What's your definition of success? My success comes down to three words. Dory, Devlin, Janae. My wife and my kids. That's success. Anytime that I look and I am able to feed their addiction to heat and indoor plumbing, Anytime my kid says, daddy, we gotta play hide and seek right now. That said, if my daughter said to me, and this changed my life, my oldest, she said daddy if I don't go to Howard University, I feel like I'm gonna die.

And then she hit me with that one Native American tear. You know, that tear that comes down the face. I was like, yo, She means this. So I have to figure out how I want to generate $186,383.63, because that's what it costs to put her through four years of out of state school, you know? And I did it. cash, I had a relationship with the bursar's office. And I'm not saying that to brag, i'm saying it that I did not know I was capable because when you see your daughter cry from a real place, you have kids?

No kids. Oh, yeah, You ain't experienced this yet. There is a level that children take you to when You don't even realize you're capable. You know how you hear those stories of adrenaline and the mom lifts up the car to get the kid out. That was me lifting up The car. Wow. I am not a success. without them, you know, and I think Other people will decide what my legacy is when I'm gone. I look at Van Gogh, everybody talks about Starry Night, but nobody talks the fact that the starry night he painted was from inside of an insane asylum.

Nobody talks that Picasso, he couldn't sell a wet napkin, you know, until right before he died and then after. So when we look people's success, it usually comes when they're gone, You know, you do see people who are successful while they're here, if that's, monetary things are your thing, but I think my thing is gonna come after I'm going. That level of... What would you want your legacy to look like? Because you work so hard, you're publishing books, You're going around speaking publicly. So that all feeds into the legacy.

The day that God decides for you to be me to pass on, we're working towards that legacy, so when someone runs into your child at the university or wherever she's working at that point, and they know who her father was, it's like, wow, I knew your father. He was this guy. What does that look like? The one thing, probably several things if we're being honest, I would want somebody to say, he meant well, He said what he said. You never had to worry about where you stood with him. I'm not a passive aggressive person.

I want people to know that I love my people and I loved my country. I Love any of our servicemen and women, you know, firefighters a firefighter, You know pulled me out of a burning building. So I have an immense amount of love for you for what you what You sacrifice for our people. Um, I think that understanding that the one thing that made Black America great, regardless of segregation and all of the horrible atrocities that have happened in this country, because I'm not divorced from that, I am the great grandson of a slave.

I've very well aware of what this county has had in terms of contempt for certain periods of history for my people. However, My grandmother, my mother's mother, I called her Meemar. We would have these long conversations, just me and her. And she would say, David, i never understood civil rights. I said, what do you mean? And She said with the exception of your mother because she was an emergency birth. All of you aunts and your uncles were born in black hospitals to black doctors. we knew our butcher cause he was black.

Everybody in our community down to the veterinarian. was black. There were black entrepreneurs up and down. Why in the world would you want to go stay in a hotel that don't want you? Why would want have food served to you from people who said that they hate you and they don t want serve you. None of it makes any sense. And by the way, a lot of their food is unseasoned. Her words not mine, God rest her soul. For me, I want my legacy to be that I bought entrepreneurship back to the black community in a real substantive way.

Not this rock star entrepreneur stuff people try to pin on me and other people, but this, hey, the Bible says, what's in your hand? You know, when God talked to Moses, he showed him your staff is in hand. What are you going to do with that staff? what can you do with maximum skills? What can do in the greatest era of information? what Can you to make the world a better place? How can give your dream life the same way you pedal wished on a star and made Pinocchio from a wooden puppet into a real boy?

Like, what you can to take that dream to a place that's impossible? When you and I were children, the Jetsons was fantasy. You FaceTime me, it ain't fantasy no more. It's fact. Fantasy is what happens when time hasn't caught up to the idea. I want people to catch up the to idea that we don't need anybody but us. Everything that you need you have and the people that know and what God put in you that have to unlock. There is a gift inside of you. You reach people, you could still be sliding down a pole, pause.

You know, and hitting the holes, wait pause, but you're serving a bigger purpose. Your showing people the importance of health because health is wealth. Look what you doing with Norrie, look what your doing Angela Simmons. Like you changing people's lives. People don't understand that a lot of reasons that people walk around so tired and hungry is because they're thirsty. They're not hydrated. they don' have the right vitamins. We don have that conversation. I want my legacy to be that the shift in the way that black community and the American community at large happened because I said, enough is enough.

What's possible for me is possible to thee. And if it's for thee, then it is for we. I touch so many people in a positive way, that when I see God, He says, well done, my good and faithful servant. Because I ain't perfect, I have made horrible decisions. I've made a horrible mistakes.I have hurt people,I am not a perfect man. But what I had to come to terms with Sam is this. God does not call the perfect. He calls imperfect people perfect and that's what... I'm trying to live up to my calling. That's it.

So that is what i wanted to be. i want them to say that i'm a good man, that I am a man who cares about his people and you're lucky to have that name. That's powerful, man. And that answer right there shows that you're an individual of impact. So I appreciate that. The question I'm gonna ask you right now is a two-part question. Take your time to answer it. Because I think this is important for people to understand, especially coming from the background that your come from. When we start talking about generational curse, right?

as we grow in age and grow, in our careers, and our life, our family, we do have to break that generational curse that some of us have. So I want you to tell me, what is that generation curse, that you broke, you saw from the lineage in your family? And what a generational course that your kids are gonna break, but you haven't broke? Wow, that is a heavy question. No one's ever asked me that, but let's dive in. So the curse that I know I've broken in my family, I was lucky because my mom and my father respected Lee.

And I talk about this in book, Pitch, Close Up, Sell, Repeat. It's my homage to rich dad, poor dad. Just because mom had one philosophy on entrepreneurship, my, father had a different philosophy. My mom, had a hair salon. And before she had that hair salons, she was doing hair for like all different types of fashion icons, Bill Blass, E.C. Laurent, Ralph Lauren, you know, because they didn't have people to do black women's hair who were black. You know they'd do it, but it'd be jacked up, look like a bird's nest.

So you still hear actresses and models complain about that to this day. But my mom was one of those first people break that. And she had a shop in the Wanamaker building in Center City, Philadelphia that she ran. They took that model and duplicated it all over the country. My mom went back to teaching because of the whole fall back on something plan. She was older, but she was still young. she's in her thirties and her feet were hurting. and she didn't want to do it anymore. So in early nineties, she said, you know what?

I'm going to open a salon. I said you kidding? She said no. And she said, we're gonna call it girlfriends. And so when you go, if you've ever gone with a woman to a salon, you see like the couches are very nice. There's potpourri, there's wine and cheese, and there're TVs on the wall. My mom was doing that stuff in the late 80s, early 90s. She called it the girlfriend experience, so she called her Salon Girlfriends. she didn't have like everything she did was word of mouth. She didn' have this version of me then to help her scale that, right?

My dad had a corner store. He did it with his brothers and it went well for a while until it didn. And he didn t have me at this level to show him how to scale it, figure things out, do the books differently. Even though he put me behind a register at seven years old, he got the arcade games in because kids couldn't afford to go to the mall.

Therapy, accountability, and daily discipline 50:18

And he would get the top arcade game and he'd switch them out every month. Whichever one was the topic, that's what he wanted every And he put quarters in the game. So everybody knew when you got to the store, you know, You could play those games for free until the quarters ran out. And then you have to put quarter in yourself. But what would happen was the parents of the kids who would be running to The store would like, give me a loaf of bread. Give me pack of cigarettes. Get me gallon of milk.

He was generating business by having those machines in there, which seemed crazy to my uncles at the time until they caught on. If they had me, And I say this humbly, but in that particular time, they were ahead of their time but people weren't ready. I'm ahead in my time and people aren't for a lot. So to the second part of your question, I think both Devlin and Dory, Dorey's my oldest, Devlyn's is my youngest. They're two different parts of me. Dori is very, very creative. Devlins creative too but Devlins cerebral.

Ill give you an example, Ill sit down and Ill talk to a group of my clients on Zoom. And seven-year-old Devlin comes into my office, which again, anybody else comes to my Office, it's an immediate death sentence, but Devlins different. She's the baby. So she comes in, she says, daddy, what are you doing? So I'm talking to the people. That's what I call clients because she couldn't say clients yet. And she said, oh, that's cool. Daddy, watch out. and she literally positions herself on my lap and She sitting in front of the Zoom.

she's said I'd like to have your attention, please. My name is Devlyn Anderson and I want to own all of this. I am the business bully now. What do we got? And I was sitting there like, And I'm texting Marva, you gotta see this. And so Marve comes down and she's looking. She looks at me, I look at her. And then later on that night we're in bed and she said, she watches everything you do. She understands profit and loss. she's seven and a half years old. Oh, She gets it. Not afraid of a camera. not afraid to tell people what it is.

Literally was telling my clients, well, this is why you're not succeeding because you need to do this. Did you send out those emails daddy sent to you? And what about you, what happened with your lives? I don't know what my clients are doing. She's got an iPad, so she's looking at their YouTube, she watching their podcast, going through their campaigns, everything. And she is doing what I get paid a lot of money to do to my current clients at 7S. Now, that child is a monster. I tell my client all the time, listen, you better hope I have a long one.

Because, woo! And I already told my executive team, like, yeah. and Devlin takes over, I suggest you better learn everything that she knows and then some because otherwise you ain't gonna keep your job. For real. Yeah, man. That's the thing. I think for me, i'm breaking the curse of they got the premise. My parents got to premise and they had some success, but they didn't take it all the way and he fell back. Burn the boats. So I broke that curse. Ain't going back Devlin is going to have every good trait about me and her mother without having the struggle story.

She doesn't know what it is to eat sleep for dinner. she doesn' understand any of that. But she has a grit in her that's genetically encoded. And I tell her all the time, I said, what's an Anderson do? I can tell you what they don't do. I say, well, What's that? Give up. That's it. You don't quit, you do not give up. And I got that from my mom and I passed it on to my kids. Those are the curses I think have been broken and will be broken. Amazing. Dave, when you were going through this whole journey of taking control of your health, did you ever seek any kind of therapy?

Oh, absolutely. Because again, I had a very toxic, abusive relationship with food. I never met a cheesesteak I didn't like. Buffalo wings? Bring them on. Lemon pepper? I make Rick Ross look like a vegan. So, bro, I promise you. 10 piece? No, 20. Run them. All flats. Well done. Give me some Cajun on the side just in case. I had to get past that thing because I was filling my emptiness that I felt inside with food. And while doing that, I also digging my grave with a knife and fork. We don't have those conversations that it all starts up here.

Everything you ever want and everything you don' want start here and once you get control of that and you realize that there are healthy addictions to have. How far can I take this? How many push-ups can do? You know, how many miles can walk? Can I jog? These knees are kind of shot. I put some damage on these knees. My knees is 50, the rest of me is 48. But how far I can take it? What can i do?" And so I literally decided that it was important for me to get Oh, I see a therapist every Wednesday.

I saw my therapist today. Why do so many men avoid therapy? Because it's girl stuff. That's what we've been conditioned to believe. When the last time you spoke about your feelings, Sam? He just sat at the bar with the homies talking about your feelings. I would say I am a little bit more open to talk about it, but that's because of what I do. Exactly. And even working at The Fire Department, we got to a certain part where it's like it was okay to go get help. Right, because you have a level of empathy.

So, you know, I'll tell you what, when I first started The fire Department we were just smoke eaters. You gotta toughen up. That's it. You don't talk about problems, you just gotta do it, You start that body, big deal. But you still see it in today's world that a lot of men, You know, when they look at therapy, they looked at it like, oh, that's for the wussy, right? And they looking at like if they're sick going there. And I think that something that we should talk about of like therapy is not just for sick and the broken.

You can really help you level up. I don't think people understand how important therapy because with therapy. Here's the thing. If you can knock out everybody in this room, Sam, Can you beat you, the version of you that you have to fight every day to not be? The version that is trying its best to... not give in to all those impulses? Can YOU beat your shadow self? And I don't mean like some hippy-dippy waist-bead-wearing, herbal-tea-sipping girl who's just working and doing her shadow work and ee-ee-gaggy-eewy gooey, I'm doing a vision board.

No. I'm talking about who you are when nobody's around. Can you face that person, unpack all of those things, and rip every layer of demonic skin off of you? If you can do that, fine, don't go to therapy, but I guarantee you, you cant. And the only way to work through that is with somebody who's a professional who can understand and show you the one thing no one's ever been able to, the mirror to your soul. When somebody is showing you every part of you good, bad, and different, this is how your actions affect your daughters.

This is, how you're actions affects your wife. This is how your actions affect your mother. This how actions affected your dead brother. Like when somebody is showing you all of these things, who does not have a dog in the fight other than your wellness, you have no choice but then be accountable. Who are you accountable to outside of outside forces? You need to be accountable to something greater than yourself. God, for certain people, is just this magical man in the sky. But while you're here, there is work you have to do.

And if you don't do that work, you want to keep repeating the same lessons, the Same temptations, The same issues,the same problems,The same things that you feel like aren't that big of a deal can become festering problems. We all suffer from a form of cancer. It's called delusion. Some of us are at stage four. And that's why therapy's important. Now, one thing you said, you say accountable. Yes. Right? And accountability is important I want you to talk about the difference, not just accountability.

I wanted to you talk the different between responsibility and accountability, right? Because we all have a bunch of different responsibilities that we have to accomplish, but the accountability component is what gets you all the way through it. Right. So for me, and I talk this in The Real Black Agenda, there's a whole chapter on family. Because to me accountability and responsibility The intersection of that for me is my family. I am responsible for their health, their happiness, they're well being, right?

I'm the founder of the feast, the head of table, all of those things. is a direct reflection on them. I remember one time I had a conversation with my oldest child. This is like a therapy session. You know, I'm revealing things I've never talked about. But I like this show, you're good at this. And I said, Dory, said Dori, why won't you call this person? You, know I am connected. They'll do anything for you off the strength of my phone call. So I worked hard to be able to pick up a phone, snap my fingers and you are good.

Welcome to nepotism, population you. That's good, she said. You have no idea what it is to live in Dave Anderson's shadow. And I was like... I'll have you know, this shadow is dope. This shadow has shaded you from all types of different enemies, foreign and domestic. What do you mean? She said, yeah, and I could take that. And it's not that I don't respect it. It's it not I that don' appreciate it, but if I do that, then I'm just Dave Anderson's daughter. I am not Dory, I gotta be me. And I was pissed off for like three seconds, and then I the proudest I'd ever been, because she, like her father, wanted to figure it out on her own.

She wanted her name to matter outside of this huge shadow that I cast, depending on if you know me or not. In her world, I cast a huge shadow because the people in her word know or have heard tell of what I've done. Or they've seen me with somebody that they love or they know that I did this thing or that thing. And it's like, damn, what's it like to have such a cool day? It's cool. Until things come up and it was like well yeah, you know, your dad. I'm like yeah no, so for me, I was accountable to the fact that there is a back side to what other people consider success.

that shadow that I was casting while I'm was shining bright and protecting my family from all of these things had an adverse effect that, I couldn't predict. And so I had to be accountable to the feelings that created through no fault of my own that am inevitably responsible for. You know what I mean? So that to me is the difference between accountability and responsibility. They are similar, but they're different. Now, when it comes to your health, now that you lost all that weight, what are some of your daily non-negotiable responsibilities and how do you hold yourself accountable?

Protein, water, vitamins, time. So protein every day. I'm 210 right now, so 210 ounces of protein. You know, protein shakes, chicken breasts, lean meats, that type of thing. Water, gallon a day, non-negotiable. I'm Hulk Hogan, training prayer is vitamins. But yeah, vitamins are extremely important. We are so vitamin deficient, especially in this country, bro. They take all of the vitamins out and put stuff I can't pronounce. You know, you've seen the packaging. And when I say time, that means time with my daughters, it means with time my wife, time for myself to exercise, to think, write down ideas.

Like my bag, I got a blue bag. It's called Blue Pony Fur. In that bag I keep you know, a journal, because I'll have an idea and I need to write it down and fizzily take a pen and write It down. It's not enough to put it in the notes that my phone because when I'm writing it, I making a contract between me, God and Dave six months from now, three months, from two weeks from Now that that idea is going to come to fruition. I have to right it out. Yeah. So, you for me that's critical. Those are non-negotiables every single day.

The other thing and this one is crucial. I have three rubber balls and I had three glass balls. The three class balls are things that I to do, tasks that have to for that day. I do not hit the pillow until those three things are done. Rubber balls, I try to get to them. If I don't get them, Eh, okay, cool, but I'm getting them tomorrow because tomorrow those rubber balls through my own internal alchemy are going to become the three glass balls. Those are the accountability right there. That's it.

Right there, so I have six things. Can't go to sleep until it's done. Six things I do. Three are rubber, three are glass. If the rubber don't get done, they're glass tomorrow. And those three last ones get every single day, whatever they are. What made you implement that tool? Because If I don't put a limit or a cap on what I do, I will never go to bed. I won't stop. I gotta shut it down at some point. And so that's the thing. Like if something comes up, like we had a reality show that was pitched to us and we turned it.

My wife and I, they wanted to talk about my homelessness and us being a couple in the jump bag, all the things I told you in this, that and the third. We realized two things. Number one, we'd be the only black couple and number two, They said, well, you guys are good. Where's is the conflict? Oh, You want us to be angry black? Nah, pass. Oh, wow. Not going to do it. Right. Two weeks later, another opportunity came for me. God knows what he's doing. You know, got to put guardrails up, you got put limits up and it's important.

So that's why I had to implement that. Yeah. That's, I like that. I feel like when you look at people that are always accomplishing and taking things to the next step and leading the way,

MAHA, food corruption, and public health advocacy 1:04:58

they have those type of tools for accountability. Because we all got responsibilities, but not everybody has the the ways to be accountable. And that's why people gain so much weight. People are unable to succeed with their family, unable is once you have the right things in place to hold yourself accountable. And even during a leadership role, holding other people accountable as well too. Yeah, and that's hard. I tell people all the time, they're like, well, because this is what I get from a lot of my high ticket clients.

So we're talking 30, 50, $100,000 clients, They'll say, Well, you know, Dave, it's so hard and how do you trust people? Because at that level, when you're making the kind of money where you can afford to pay me 30 50 80, a hundred thousand dollars, You don't know who to trust because everybody's looking at you like Daddy Warbucks and they're all a bunch of little orphan aunties. And I said, the problem with you is that you are trying to. Trust people. Who told you I trust people? Baby, I'll trust the paperwork because here's the thing.

If I don' do what the paper work says, sue me. You know how many times I've been sued, Sam? How many? Zero. Paperworks right there. It's just that simple. The other part of that is, you don't know this, do you know what my middle name is? No, litigious. I will sue you into the dark ages if you breach a contract. That's how that works. It keeps everybody accountable. When I moved to Dallas, Texas, Austin is an oasis in Dallas. it's very liberal. Is very relaxed. Very hoity toity, right? And I move to dallas and I worked at K-104, which was my dream job.

Tom Joyner came from there. Um, KK Holliday, a bunch of people I admired had come through K10 4 and i get there and the engineer, had two guns just sitting on each hip. And he said, Mr. Anderson, you all right over there? I said yeah. He says, You're looking at me a little sideways, like you might be a bit uncomfortable right now. I say honestly, yeah, he says could it be that I have really big firearms and one of them looks like a clean these with dirty Harry gun? And I says yeah! He said, let me explain something to you about real Texas.

He says, you came from BS Texas, that's Austin. That's not Texas this here's Texas and here in Texas we have a real civilized society because everybody in texas has a gun. Guns are as American as apple pie and I know apple pies French but that is not the point. The point is, if everybody's got a Gun, You are very slow to pull that because the other guy might be very fast to Pull it. So we a have real Civilized Society. I hire fast, I fire faster. That's what it is. I'm only married to Janae. Everybody else can go.

That it. And that's when it comes down to, can I ask you a question? When's the last time you apologized to yourself? Not to myself. All apologize to God for things that I am not pushing myself fully to do, but not to my self. Yeah. I just wanted to, for some reason, I felt it in my spirit to tell you, you've got to start being kinder to yourself because your ability to focus so much on pouring into everybody, and I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. You're starting to see that there's a limit to what you can do.

And sometimes you cant do everything you want to do right when you wanna do it. But it's not enough. Sometimes you feel like you're letting yourself down and you might be letting other people down. I'm here to say you need to apologize to your self. because you're doing exactly what God has called you to do, but you have to be kinder to you. That's it. And you were right about that, Ash. You hit the nail on the head. Yeah, that wasn't me. that was God. I feel it, I'm a believer, so. So, Dave, to talk a little bit about what's going on in the world right now, here in our nation, there's a big movement called Make America Healthy Again, the MAHA movement.

You know, it's unfortunate that it has been so politicalized, you know. And it really should be non-partisan, right? Of course. How do you argue against health? Right. But the thing is, there's a lot of people against it. I'm a huge advocate, I participate in it, and I work with the crew behind Maha. I wanna hear your input about what's going on. You know, RFK Junior's out there trying to make some moves, you know try to take a lot of the corruption out of this stuff. I want to hear you opinion on Make America Healthy Again.

Here's the problem with RFJr. He decided to do a deal with Donald Trump. That is the only thing wrong with RFK Jr. And when I say that, I see that tongue in cheek, but that's the problem because let's face it, he's a Kennedy. Kennedys are as close as we get to Royals in this country. Period. Point blank. I mean, Cinderella's story. You're talking about a family that produced the first Roman Catholic president. Like you're talking about people who have allegedly a bootlegging empire before they made it a political dynasty.

I mean, just American excellence in nepotism at its finest. And you are talking somebody who got away from politics and went out and became an environmental lawyer and started looking at everything from pharmaceuticals to plastics and calling people on the carpet. He married somebody who loves and supports him no matter what. He cares about children, he cares things. And as a father of a child who is mildly autistic and as kid who was dyslexic, who had dyscalculia and has had to deal with a myriad of health issues, I back everything he does.

I'm 100% in support of President Trump for allowing him to clean out the swamp that is this corrupt system, not only that. When you look at what happened in 2020 through the end of 2021, and you know what I'm saying, the big C word that I won't say, cause I don't want your channel demonetized. You worked hard for that YouTube plaque. I think the fact that they kept telling you, because this is a country that says, oh, my body, might choice. Yeah. When it comes to killing your kids, not your body.

Your choice when it come to vaccines that haven't been tested, polio vaccine was tested. Measles, mumps, all that stuff was testing. That took years, all types of research and development. That's not what happened with this particular vaccine. And there were three of them. One was the one hitter quarter that nobody wanted to take, and two was just sponsored. We talk about the corruption, but we don't talk the lobbies. Everything I learned about how the government works, I learn from Eddie Murphy's 1992 movie, The Distinguished Gentleman, which is hard to find on Blu-Way, ironically.

You know, hey, where are you on sugar? Well, he, Where should I be? I don't know. Um, well, if you're for sugar, we got money for you from the sugar lobby. We got for money you, from high fructose corn syrup people. If you are against sugar we've got the money from parents groups. Everything is money. And the one thing you can't bribe RFK Jr. with is Money. It makes him the most honest man in D.C. and if You can get past, Oh, He's got a voice that you didn't ask for that. But I don't care how he sounds.

I care the sweet sounds of what he's saying to the American people. We are sick and we are constantly sick. And I said this years ago and people told me I was crazy. He said it and I'm like, I am not crazy, thank you God I feel validated. My wife is from Michigan. Michigan is known for The Big Three and it's also known Battle Creek. Battle creek is what's called cereal city. In cereal City, Fruit Loops makes Fruit loops for the UK. They make Fruitloops for US and they make fruit loops Canada. But those same colors and dyes and things that they put, those preservatives and stuff they've put in those FruitLoops in America, they're not allowed in the U.K.

and they're not allowed in Canada. So why are we giving them to our children? Well, we're giving it to their children because some idiot pencil pusher in marketing said it was a good idea that these need to be more colorful in order to make kids get them. I'm like, why can't you just make Toucan Sam's beak more colourful and leave the damn Froot Loops alone? But no, it's all about money. And there are people who are saying that maybe, possibly, there is a chance. We don't know how much of a change that my child's autism and thousands of other kids' autism.

I didn't what autism was when I was a kid. Mm-hmm. Then I got real familiar real quick. It's all the toxic, all that toxic chemicals. Exactly. And these ultra processed foods. Right. You know, it's, we gotta change that. We gotta to change it and we also gotta these cancer clusters. Eddie Murphy was talking about cancer cluster in Distinguished Gentleman in 1992. Go down to Louisiana. Look how many cancer clusters are up and look how everybody sweeps it under the rug because all you got to do is grease the right palms.

Well, where's the law before our health? Where's a lot before life? Do we not matter? Or is this a bigger plan for rich fat cats to thin the herd? I'm 100% behind RFK and I am 100 percent behind President Trump when it comes to our Health because I want to live. I Want my kids to grow up in a world where they can drink the water from the holes like we did when we were kids. You can't do that now. I'm 100% behind it. I don't see anything wrong with it, and I defy anybody to tell me what's wrong outside of the fact that you don' like what he says.

Well, guess what, you rich, multi-millionaire women on The View? Of course you do not like it because they paid you not to like. But once you stop Mickey-mousing around, we can get down to real business and there are real kids and real people who are losing fathers and sons and daughters and cousins and brothers and sisters. And I am tired of it and want everybody to be healthy. So if you did not liked the facts that R.F.K. Jr. put a red hat on in order to make sure the red, white, and blue constituency gets a better shot at life, that's your own problem.

If making America healthy again is in some small way making American great again, 100% on board. Can't stop me from being on it. Love what he's doing. I'm just being a fine African American right now. Hey, Dave, you put on a big show, man, Bullycon. Yes, sir. Want to talk about it? Yeah. You know? Bulycon, I started in 2017, right after the kid hit me with the tear. I was like, ''I gotta get to more entrepreneurs. '' I gotta have a place where people are talking real entrepreneurship. They're getting real solutions, they're real skills, not some mega mix of the black IPs, let's get it started, and beach balls flying all over the place.'' I wanted people to understand that entrepreneurship, it's sexy, but it is ugly before it gets sexy.

Right. And I wanted people to understand that it's possible and get in a room with people who are doing it and who aren't in the process of doing because the Bible will say nothing about a job. The only J.O.B. I saw was in The Book of Job other than I see job nowhere says you should work. you know, and that you're entitled to make money from your skill set, it don't say nothing about job. It says labor, It doesn't stay job, job to me is always different just over broke. And I know that we were a merchant class of people.

We were producer, we led in absolutely every field of human endeavor, everything that makes the world run now. for the most part, with very few exception, comes off American ingenuity. And I knew if I created this conference, which is Bullycon Black Unapologetically Living and Loving Yourself Controlling Our Narrative, that's what BULLYCON stands for, I can make a difference in my community, and then my communities can makes a different in the country and the world. That was the goal. It was rolling very beautifully until 2020. And I had grown it from a small little tiny ballroom in a holiday inn to two ballrooms in much bigger hotel.

And, I have rented the Apollo Theater. I was going to do it in the apollo theater. and I'm so excited. Lockdown. Right. My team was like, hell Dave, we got all these speakers and we've got to cancel all of these things. What are we going do? I said, OK, well, we got two weeks. Bullycon right now is going on pause, and we're going to have Coronacon. And I had what some consider the first fully functional interactive online conference for entrepreneurs. That's how we pivoted throughout the pandemic.

But Bulycon is coming back in 2026. Super excited about it. I gotta be there. Oh, come on, man. You're gonna hit the stage and talk about all these things and hopefully you'll bring some IVs. We can make that happen. Come and drip it. Get that real drip. This next question I'm gonna ask you man, take your time on it, I wanted to come from the heart and take a minute, two minutes, say what you gotta say and I want you to just I want you to let the world know, this is what you want the word to know of what is the problem and what the solution is that you're bringing to the table and people need to now.

The problem is we've been fed a steady diet of reality television, fast food, bad actors, politicians who believe that making the stallion twerking in front of us is more important than actual policy. And I want the world to know that we are better than that. We should not be married to one particular party. we should be marry to policies that improve our lives as Americans. I think the solution is going independent and making everybody fight it out like the hunger game.

Bullycon, entrepreneurship, and community impact 1:18:28

Show me who's got the best offer. Isn't that what we do in everything else in life? Don't we go to two or three different car dealerships to see who has got best deal on a Chevy? Or is that just me? Am I the crazy one here? I don't know. I just think that the thing for us to do is stop getting so caught up where we're voting 92% for one group of people. who don't seem to give a rat's ass about us until it's time for us to be elected. And when it is not time to for them to to elected, then they go and they hit us with fear.

Everything is scary. Everybody's coming. You know, this guy is going to put you in a gas chamber. This guy's going, he's a fascist. He's not a king. Da da da. My whole thing is, would a King allow you to protest against him? Can we look at things logically? Not from an emotional standpoint, not from what the media is feeding us, but whether that person is good or bad. I don't believe any one politician is all good, or all bad, I treat politicians like servers in a diner. I'ma tip you good, as long as you're serving me what I want off of this particular menu.

The problem is we haven't delivered a menu to enough politicians on a state and federal level, let alone a local one. Most people don't know who their ombudsman is, most people who don' t know their alderman is. They don t even know what district they live in, so they don''t know to talk to when it comes to city council. I believe you back people by voting for them, but I also believe that you backed them with your money. Money talks, BS runs a marathon. That's what my daddy told me, God rest his soul.

And so I want you to understand if we're going to participate in America in a real way, if you're sick of just the churches, the liquor stores, dispensaries, being the only thing pristine in your neighborhood. If you want to keep your streets safe again, if you wanna start making things happen, then you hold all of these politicians, whether they're jackasses or elephants, and you say, give me what I need to succeed. And if can't give you what you need succeed, move out of my way while I pursue it myself.

I thought we were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But everywhere I go, I'm being told, oh, you're oppressed. You can't do this. I eat camp for breakfast and spit it out at you. What are you talking about, homie? We can do anything we want as long as we don't have to deal with a whole bunch of bureaucratic red tape. We gotta get past that, but we have to understand how the system works. And everybody understands that. If I'm wrong for saying America's for sale, then you have explain to me how Pfizer and Moderna and Johnson & Johnson got those shots off so quickly.

You gotta explain how General Mills and Kellogg's have no problem giving us cereal that's chock full of all types of things. Whole grains is the main ingredient because they have something to put the sugar and chemicals on. You have to tell me, if it's not possible, how we keep finding these multimillionaires telling us who to vote for because they bought a rapper to us and they told you you could stand on stage at a particular convention and convince people that it is cool. And yet, God rest Hulk Hogan, ripping the shirt off was a bit much and he struggled with it, but he died a few months later.

I don't care about the theatrics. I just care what you have for me. W-I-F-M is my favorite radio station. What's in it for ME? We gotta start demanding more than a good speech and somebody listening to Despacito on their dag on iPad in order to impress us. We need policies, not partisanship. Community organizers, NOT Ratchetry. We need reality, not reality television. We eat healthy food and dinner table talks. And we need to start treating our children like heirs as opposed to people that were just responsible for it till they turn 18 and we kick them out immaturity without preparing them for the world that exists.

That's the solution. We are the solutions. If you want a real solution, look in the mirror or you can pick up The Real Black Agenda. It's available right now for fine, fine people at therealblackagenda dot com or wherever books are sold. I love it, love, it love. We're gonna have a little fun here real quick. One of my favorite podcasters, Steven Barlet with the diary of a CEO. He came out with these conversation cards. So I want you to grab that. Open it up, grab a card from anywhere in the deck.

You can do shuffling or whatever you want. I like that guy, he's really cool. That's one of our dream shows. It's coming, but right now I'm where I wanna be. So pick a card, read the question, and answer it. That's ironic. Ooh. I feel like we already answered that one. Yeah, you can pick another one as well. Pick another. What do you want your tombstone to say about you? That is too close to how you wanna be remembered. And I already did that. What did you learn from your greatest failure? Oh, great question.

When you grow up in the entertainment industry, when you're in radio at nine and television at 13, and you know, you you are a performer and your singing backgrounds for people like Gerald Laverte and Teddy Pendergrass before your 18th birthday, You begin to believe that There's nothing you can't do. I had a real unhealthy relationship with reality. Because until this day, I don't believe in reality, but my greatest failure was I got fired from a show and I would love to say it was through no fault of my own.

But I wanted something more from that host than that hosts could give because they didn't see the vision. And I learned a lot of times, it does not matter how good your plan is. It doesn't matter, how great your marketing is, and it damn sure don't how your intentions are. What I learn was, you can't want it for somebody more than you want for yourself. Then that person, Christmas day, I was at Houlihan's with my cousin Tara. I will never forget this as long as I live. and I get a call from my boss, his name was Hurricane Dave.

Hurricane Dave's still around. He runs like the National Black Radio Hall of Fame. Brilliant guy, extremely talented man. I've been following this guy since I was 17 years old. So he calls me, he says, where are you right now? I said, man, I just got off the plane. And I'm at Houlihan's about to have salmon. he said yeah, was trying to catch you. Oh, guess you're on a plane? He's like, got something I gotta tell you? What? he's says I got to let you go. Said, let me go, number one. Well, you know where this is coming from.

I said, oh yeah, that's what's happening. He said I tried everything I could to stop it. This is what he wants. So he wanted me to lose my job at Christmas. Oh, cool. That wasn't the failure. The failure was what came after that. that was the catalyst. I had a bunch of jobs I was up for, and then all of a sudden, oh yeah, we decided to go in another direction. Jobs I knew for a fact I'd had. Somebody was making phone calls behind the scenes. Names redacted to protect the guilty. And I... I thought I could ride it out and for six and a half months I did.

Two cars, really nice apartment, garden tub. I was living a good lifestyle for what I do. My savings ran out, and I wound up homeless. Again, the people that you thought were your friends weren't. And I came face to face with reality. Reality said, hey, you've been running from me. Here I am. What you going to do now? And I cried. And my agent at the time who was working diligently to get me another gig, his name was Ward White, good guy. He calls me one day. Because as homeless people go, I was good.

I had a cell phone, and I slept in my truck. It was cool. But I would have to sleep. So I'd sleep in a Walmart parking lot most nights in between the tractor trailers and the back of the parking lots so nobody would come and bother me. And Ward calls me, he says, I want you to come see this guy speak. And I'm like, okay, you got a suit? I said, yeah, still got my suit. He said I need you go ahead and get it pressed and come with me. So I went with him. The guy who was speaking was the guy I told you about in the beginning of this podcast guy named Bob O'Dean and gave me a copy of The Power of Who.

I was sitting there one day and I saw what he said and was like yeah 12 friends, 3 close, 1 best. Typical white man, he ain't got no problems. And to know who Bob Bodine is, is to understand that this guy is probably responsible for your favorite college football team's head coach being in that position. If you know, who Roger Goodell is. Roger Godell, it's not the commissioner of the NFL without Bob Odine say so. Like Bob is that guy, but you don't like shut down the country club guy. but he's the nicest, kindest man I have ever met in my life.

And for a pro-black guy to tell you this white man is probably the nicest, kindness guy I ever meet in life is saying something, but I'm crying my eyes out one night because I cannot believe how low I, and I was like, you know, I am the wonder kid. I mean, that guy, like I've been youngest executive producer in history, billboard awards, all this, it's like that I got. And I'm washing up in the gas station sink and I don't have nothing. I said, God, you need to give me a sign. And literally at that point, the lights in that Walmart parking lot came on and on the floorboards of my truck was the power of who.

and read it under that light. That's when I realized that even though I was homeless because I didn't have anywhere to go, Iwas punishing myself because i didn' have any where togo and i was ashamed. And so the first thing I did was I said, God, i'm sorry. I should trust in you. Second thing i did, was i apologized to myself. Dave, listen, every story you've ever read that you loved had a bad part in it. A part was like, how's our hero going to get out of this?

Failure, mentorship, and final advice 1:28:38

This is the hows the hero part. I'ma need you to embrace this. It sucks. We ain't nowhere near what we gonna be. I don't know if you ever gonna find love again. All I know is that this is not how this ends. And I went home. But that failure taught me. that it's not who you are when the cameras are on. It's now who are you when everybody's singing your praises. Is not you who where you're sitting down with celebrities. Not who who when you coaching people to 100,000, 500,002, three, four million dollars in revenue a year.

Its about who your are, when it just you and your dark self and God. And can you live with that? And I said, No, I can't live with that. There's a better version of me and I'm going to go get it. And that's what I did. That failure became the thing that has allowed me to be what in your humble opinion is successful. I don't feel successful, but I feel like the son of a cop and a teacher and the brother of one of the greatest human beings who's ever walked the face of earth. All I know is that I'm trying my best to be better than I was yesterday.

And compared to where I I'm 10,000 times removed from that. I am 400 yesterdays, you know, away from... that mindset. And it took a long time to get there. and... I´m grateful for every minute, every breath of air I take. Im just thrilled, man. So yeah, I learned that I can be beaten. That I learn that can... be hindered. But I also learned I can't be stopped, and you can break me. I met myself there and I won. Thank you to God. And then, epilogue, one day I'm sitting at the radio station, which would be my very last gig.

and, I got in the Power of Who, And I went and got the power of who workbook and i'm working through the entire work book and at that point, i said, im gonna call Bob Odean and im like, what the hell did that come from? This man dont know me from a hole in my body. I called Eastman Bodine, talked to his secretary, said, I have to talk to Bob Bodin. Tell him there was a kid that he met in Dallas, Texas, that that book has changed the course of his life. Two days later, get a call. Hey, Dave, it's Bob.

How are you? That man has been my mentor from that point on. Wow. And whenever I need somebody who is, um, at a level I'm not at, and I think everybody, I don't care where you are in the world, you need somebody who is doing things that you can't fathom yet to show you and to scare you into a place where complacency can exist. And I was like, Bob, what do I do about this? And Bob will give me some amazing philosophical answers. He says, have you picked up Two Chairs yet? Which is the second book.

I said, yeah. Two chairs is a concept where I get up four o'clock in the morning. This is gonna sound, if you're one of these people that does not like hokey stuff and does believe that there is spirit inside this meat suit, this the part where you click off, ratings just dropping. You get four clock in morning before dawn where the entire house is quiet and you sit down in a chair and there's a share in front of you and wait for God and God will sit in that chair. And God would order your steps.

And that's what it is every morning. Two chairs, me, God, and what I'm supposed to do. That's how I know which balls, which one's a rubber, Which one is a glass. Every morning I do two chairs. And to have an audience with God. Like, why would you not show up to Have an Audience with the Creator of the universe? That's it. And that might sound crazy to some people, say, well, you can pray in meditation. This is my prayer in mediation. It works for me. Whatever works, for you, I'm not judging. Some of you like waste beads and chamomile tea.

I put a chair in front of me and I talk to God and listen because just like when Bob talks, ain't got nothing to say. Right now I am talking my ass off. When Bob is talking, Listen, I can't put Roger Goodell at the head of the NFL. What can I say to this man? I got 22 Amazon bestsellers. I don't have one New York Times bestseller. He's got three. Wow. Well, what am I tell him? Yeah. Teddy Pendergrass, I did it with Joe LaVert. I am not above correction, and I'm not about proper mentorship. And that's what I tell people.

The reason that I coach the people that coach, And I choose who I couch. You gotta go through a process for me to take your money. It's not enough for you to have the money, you gotta have a mindset. Even if it ain't perfect, You got to be willing to understand that. That I want to show you things that are going to make you very, very uncomfortable. But at the end is the thing that you say that, you want, but these are the barriers you got to get to, get through, and to me, that's where I am. I felt that.

Brother, I'll tell you, You're the true definition of an individual who's experiencing and enjoying the journey, not just the destination. Yeah. So Dave, with that said, as we wrap up here, if there's one person that's listening or viewing this podcast that resonates with today's message, what is that one thing that you can leave them with? The best thing you could understand in order to get the most out of life is all we are Super Mario. That might sound stupid and trivial, but let me break this down.

When I was a kid, my brother got us a Nintendo entertainment system, because my mom wasn't going to pay for that. My mom was three hots in the cot. Anything you want out of that, you go get it yourself. So we're playing Super Mario Brothers. I always fancy more to duck hunt because I like to shoot. Still like the shoot, um, But with Supermario Brothers, You know what my favorite part is? You get to the end of a level. And it looks like you just beat Bowser. It looks that's the princess. And the Princess says, sorry Mario, but our princess is in another castle.

But you look like the process. The final level is death, Sam. Until you're dead. until they call it and say, time of death. There's another level. You never stop moving to the next level, whoever you think you are in peak physical condition, there's a physical conditioning you haven't hit yet. No matter how many best sellers you have, There is another one inside of you. There was a message that's not for you, for somebody else that you need to get out. there is a dream that she'd been hiding from, that You need To get Out because it's Not going to benefit you It's gonna benefit somebody Else.

I was in a movie theater in 2003. And I saw the Tupac movie. I don't know if you ever saw a TUPAC movie, not the All Eyes on Me biopic, but the one they took a bunch of like stock footage and used his stuff to voice him narrating his own story. In that there's this one scene where TUpac says, I may not change the world, But I'm going to spark the mind of the One that does and I drop my popcorn. I'm like, yo, he's talking, Pac is talking to me, and I met Tupac twice. And I was like yo Pac, is he talking with me?

Like, I want to change the world because Pac couldn't do it. Like I am going to do. I don't know if I'm going to hit that, but that's my goal. So every time I write a book, every, time, I give a speech, Every time. I coach somebody, everytime I I am in the process of raising my daughters, i'm doing it through the lens of this particular action is going, to be that thing that changes the world. Even if it's as simple as me putting healthy gluten-free chicken nuggets in, the air fryer for Devlin. i am doing this so that i can change the, world because the nutrition she's gets going.

To spark that idea that it is that deep for me. at the risk of sounding like Will Smith, like it's that deep, I'm willing to die on a treadmill. I am here to tell you what you want is on the other side of the thing that you have been avoiding. And if you are avoiding writing that book, if your avoiding being the best entrepreneur you can be, If you're avoiding getting healthier, I'm gonna need you to hit me up immediately. My email is Dave at businessbullyshow.com. my phone number is 929-352-7263.

Hit me anytime I am around, I will answer the phone. Because if I don't show up, what good am I to God? I'm here to show up for people, but you gotta show for the people who are dependent upon you, who may not even be born yet, that are depending upon your pursuing and achieving your dream. If you don't do that, you are a waste of skin and God doesn't need you here. Act like you have a privilege of breathing because there's a million people tonight who're gonna make plans for tomorrow who will not wake up.

Don't be one of them. That's all I got on Netflix. Brother, you mentioned the phone number and the email. Is there a website that people can find you at? Absolutely. You can me at www.thebusinessbully.com. Also, if you want to know, and this is completely for free, If you wanna know how to start, grow, scale your business in a real way without having to dump a bunch of money in paid ads because most people don't have it, go to thebusinesbilly. com forward slash without paid adds. I've got a free mini webinar there.

And I'm going to give you a free gift just for checking it out, because I want you to have the answers that I had to work so hard and spend three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars to find out. So that's it, man. I just want people to reach out to me and on all social media platforms at the business bully. You got to get to do that. Now, this this was a great, powerful, powerful episode here, Dave. Appreciate you coming on a healthy point of view podcast. Thank you, brother. You heard it.

This is a very powerful story. And if you weren't touched by it, we all know that you have someone who will be touched. So guys, make sure that share this episode to your friends and family. Make sure you subscribe, leave all the comments, do all that fun stuff and we'll see you for the next one.