Earn Your Leisure Lecture at Wharton ft Andre Iguodala & Evan Turner The Secrets to Success

20:16Andre Iguodala:You have to be an expert for hundreds of people every day. And you have to do a million things at once.

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21:08Evan Turner:Call 866-GET-RUBY or visit ruby.com. And so they export their oil and then they buy back gas because they don't have refineries. but they can build the infrastructure with their wealth. But that let me know everything I needed to know in terms of, oh, I know exactly what's going on. And so with NBA Africa, we're seeing a lot of talent come from Africa. You know, Pascal Siakam, Giannis is Nigerian, Joel Embiid. You know, we got MVPs now. And the interesting thing is they might get mad at me, but there's NBA Africa, there's NBA China, right? But the players, we only participate in the revenue from NBA America.

22:03Evan Turner:And so there's some things that need to be worked on from that perspective, but that's something that's near and dear to me. So my eyes are constantly on it. I sat on the board of a publicly traded company that was based in Africa, and we had talks in terms of sponsoring the NBA Africa team. And then a lot of players are involved. Luau Dang, close friend of mine. Not close enough. But I look up to him in terms of what he's been able to build, the portfolios being able to build, what he's done with – what team did he have? They made the Olympics. Sudan. Sudan. Sudan. I think it's South Sudan. Yeah.

22:46Evan Turner:Royal Ivy. We had Royal Ivy, who was my teammate here. He was the head coach. He's doing some amazing things. Basketball without borders. We have a lot of players that participated in that as kids in the NBA. And so we're seeing, you know, we talk about building pipelines, right? We're talking about giving out jobs. And, you know, just controlling, or not controlling, but raising your talent. And so it's on my radar. and we've been having a lot of conversations in terms of like how do you own a part of the business that you you know you're you you are the reason why the business exists and athletes have never been able to participate in you know uh the value increase of nba teams you talk about uh ghost or phantom shares i've had some interesting conversations about that um i like y 'all y 'all making me reveal a whole lot but seriously you guys talk about brands you talk about andre or even you know a brand i was able to have from the nba how did you guys again restart your brand so you know now you have you know festivals and people following you all over the world 4 million subscribers yeah i mean that's actually crazy y 'all got it out yeah thank you appreciate it yeah i mean the origin story really is formatted in purpose to be honest with you um his career was as a financial advisor.

24:11Evan Turner:I was a teacher. We had an opportunity. Every summer, I took kids from my neighborhood, and they were part of this program. We were teaching them about the things that they missed in the 10 months of school. So everybody goes to school, and they're like, I don't remember anything. I didn't learn anything. You ask your kid, what'd you learn today? Nothing. And so it was like, I felt very complicit in that. If kids are going to school, I'm a teacher. They're learning nothing. I'm not doing my job, but I'm getting paid. And so there was an opportunity here. Like we can educate kids about financial literacy, about college, about decisions that they were going to make around money at 14 with the hopes that if they got it at 14, they would be more advanced by 19, 20, 25.

24:50Evan Turner:And so financial literacy was at the cusp of that. It was like, all right, bet. We're going to pay these kids to be in the program. Let's teach them about money. He had just started his career in advising. I'm like, this is perfect. You can come in. And so we started co-teaching that. Like I learned about finance from him. He learned how have classroom management for me create lesson plans and so we did that in my mind the vision was i need to have this program throughout new york first right because parents would see it they're like this is incredible how do i scale this i can't figure it out can't figure out he was always into social media he was like this is how we do it so he had our coo was up there right now abdulai he said look shout out he was like look i want you to record the classrooms i was I was like, okay, whatever.

25:34Evan Turner:I'm still trying to figure out how to scale this physically. He was like, just keep recording the classroom. He was huge on content, putting it up. And that led to him creating his own platform. He wanted to teach people about finance in a different way. Sometimes when we think about finance, it's a foreign language. And we were coming out like Rosetta Stone. We were coming out like, let's break the monotony of this stush feeling when it came to financial education. Let's talk it in our language. and so he was doing that for multiple people had his own public access show um i'll let him tell his story and then people like wait where's the rest of that we need more of that where's the episode and one day we're just like look want to do a show let's do this podcast i sat we sat in our basement my basement i'm like all right let's do it and that's how ernie leisure was birthed really we came up with the name pretty quickly he was already using it as a hashtag and from there it was consistent we was like all right well here's the vision these are the 10 things we need to do here are 10 people we want to interview let's just go attack it and really it started with three iPhones and that idea and it branded into what you see now yeah I think it's I don't want to cut you off I just want you to can you explain to me what you took from the public access and like just explain to me how that works within your story and then how you knew how to maneuver into you know subscribers streaming and all that and the difference in the revenue streams and like

26:56Andre Iguodala:how much is valued at yeah i never went to business school but i was always interested in business my whole life so i was studying like real world case studies so in 2012 instagram was like fairly new and you know i got introduced to it and like everybody else i was on the app all the time and when i'm first on instagram i'm just thinking like this is a cool app you get to share photos at the time it was no videos at that time it was just for iphone users but i quickly realized something in this situation. So I used to follow this fashion blog and the fashion blog had like a million followers at that time.

27:33Andre Iguodala:And at that time, if you had a million followers, you could reach a million people. And what I realized was that what she was doing, the girl that actually was running the fashion blog was that she would post like look books on like, you know, this actress wore this and this singer wore this. But in between the looks, she would do like organic ads. So it'd be like a small boutique in Philly that had a blazer and you didn't really know it was an ad unless you was actually really studying it. So right then I'm like, this is crazy. Cause how I was looking at it was like, okay, how many people subscribe to New York times?

28:13Andre Iguodala:Probably a million people in circulation from New York times every single day. And how much money does it cost to run an ad in the new york times fifty thousand dollars how much money does it cost to run an ad on nbc abc millions of dollars right but i'm thinking i didn't know but i'm thinking to myself that they're probably paying her five hundred dollars a thousand dollars but they can reach just as many people as all these traditional outlets so then that's when i was like okay advertising is going to change this is the new wave so i actually had a meeting with him and i was explaining this to him and i was like we need to start a fashion blog and we did we started a fashion blog it was called fashion wave and we actually got it to like 12 000 followers but that was the original point was like social media is something that's going to take over the world most people have no idea how they're actually using it they're just using it as consumers, but there's a business behind this.

29:16Andre Iguodala:This is before influencer was even a word. This is before you had to put ad. You could just organically do it. That didn't work out, but the idea was still there. So the next idea was I was a financial advisor at the time. So I wanted to become a celebrity financial advisor. That was my original goal. I wanted to work with athletes, entertainers because I felt like I played basketball my whole entire life. And I was looking at the people that was representing athletes. And I'm like, I know that they don't, they're not from the culture. They don't, they're not listening to the music. I know the music.

29:52Andre Iguodala:I'm listening to it. Why should they get to work with these people? I know I'm more qualified because I can actually sit down and have a conversation, but I didn't know anybody. I had no inroads. I had no advanced degree And I didn't really have a way To actually get my way into the door So the idea was to become a famous celebrity Financial advisor Because I was looking at the landscape And I'm like, okay Social media has provided a platform For anybody to become a celebrity Celebrity chef, a celebrity trainer Previously you could only become a celebrity If you was an athlete or an entertainer But now you could be a celebrity anything I'm like, well you maybe be able to be a celebrity financial advisor right first of its kind anything is possible right anything anything is possible bro just maybe so that's when all of the content comes into play right where it's record everything i'm mad we're not recording this but that's the number one rule in life is to record everything because you never know so we record we are We were recording this, but you got to get you got to get the organic or organic cell phone footage algorithm breaker.

31:09Andre Iguodala:So now it's like, OK, record the classroom, record selfie videos, record everything. To your question about the public access show. The number one rule in life is to cultivate relationships. There's a lot of number one rules in life, by the way.

31:28Evan Turner:just so y 'all know yes yes three more coming so you gotta cultivate you gotta cultivate yes

31:34Andre Iguodala:you gotta cultivate relationships so i was like okay at that time i wanted to get in front of all like the top real estate developers and and entrepreneurs and architects these are people that have made a lot of money and successful but nobody knows them and what i realized is that the number one rule in life is that everybody wants to talk about themselves, right? So I'm like, okay, if I could provide a platform for somebody to talk about themselves, then now that's actually a way for me to build a relationship. So I get offered a public access show. I never looked at it as a public access show.

32:11Andre Iguodala:I looked at it as a TV show. And that's how I pitched it. I would go to somebody and be like, you know, I have a TV show. Do you want to be, nobody's going to turn down being on a TV show, especially if they've never been on TV. So what that actually did was helped me to sharpen my communication skills and learn how to actually interview people, right? So all of this is happening at the same time. We have a relationship from growing up together and working in the classroom, as he just described, and my social media following is building at the time. So when we start Earn Your Leisure, the show, now we have a lot of things working for us, Right.

32:47Andre Iguodala:So when we hit the ground, it's like an explosion because we was able to actually provide information in a very relatable manner. So we're kind of like the ladder to the clouds. I think a lot of times in our community, there have been a small pocket of black intellectuals. but they have not been able to fully communicate or relate to the vast majority of black people on the ground so now you have a disconnect the intellectuals feel like they're better than the masses the masses feel like the intellectuals are boo-wajis and they just like disregard them right like so i'm like well there's value in both places we need each other right so it's like okay we have an interesting background where we're able to communicate to everybody we can be in ivy league school or we can be in a penitentiary communicating to people and we have been in both places communicating with people and educating people so when we were able to provide the education it was done in a very non-traditional manner when it comes to business.

34:04Andre Iguodala:So the way that we dress, we have hoodies and t-shirts. The way that we talk, we was using hip hop references, but we're breaking down case studies and we're actually talking about very high level business, right? And everybody wants to make money. So what happens is that it's just perfect timing. It hits social media and then it just explodes on social media. My original thesis on social media actually turned out to be right. Like I said, we just had to wait some time and we switched lanes a little bit but the idea of it came to fruition and then there's opportunities in every crisis so when the pandemic happened everything shut down and everybody was scared and a lot of people you know unfortunately lost their jobs and some people passed away as well but then some people benefited we were on the side of people that actually benefited because when everybody was home, they had nothing to do.

34:56Andre Iguodala:So then they start watching us. And then we develop a show called Market Mondays, where we're actually teaching people about stocks investing. Then something that happened in our favor was that everybody got a stimulus check. Then something that happened in our favor is that the stock market started to skyrocket. So now people are making money in real time from our information. And then it becomes like a cult following. Now everybody's passing it along and they're telling their friend, they're telling their cousins and before you know it we're at like a million people that's watching us right so this is all part of the earn your leisure story how we was able to grow organically but it's a mix of i think having a unique product mixing it with the right time and maximizing the moment we're in a moment right now where traditionally media if we were to try to start a show 15, 20 years ago, we would have to go to Bloomberg, CNBC, ABC, and we would have to compromise who we are.

35:53Andre Iguodala:We would have to like shave our face and we would have to talk in a language that we didn't fully even feel comfortable talking in. We would have to wear a suit. We would have to be under the umbrella of them. We couldn't own our own show. It'd be impossible. But now the cell phone has empowered the creatives and independents. And now we're able to break through without having to go through the actual gatekeepers or the larger institutions. But what has propelled us to even a higher level is there's a middle ground that can be reached where now independence is at an all time high and we have the leverage.

36:30Andre Iguodala:But there's only so far you can go as an independent from just exposure resources. There's still some level of benefit from corporate, but now we can work with corporate from a relationship standpoint as opposed to them owning everything standpoint because we have leverage. So now we've been able to leverage with a lot of different corporate relationships, which have helped us expand our reach globally and expanded our reach and accelerated the growth in a much quicker manner. So this is an interesting time for creatives because now you can grow your following, whatever you're doing, use that leverage to work with corporate, but maintain ownership, maintain independence and have real leverage and real partnership as opposed to being an employee.

37:21Andre Iguodala:And that's something that has accelerated our growth as well. So that's a very long winded answer to your question. But I think that it might be beneficial for anybody that's interested in new age business and media.

37:32Evan Turner:It's crazy because as he's talking and I was listening to you, Dre, when you're talking about Nigeria, when we talk about how we creatively are reaching people, it made me think about the first time like what you were speaking about was illegal. Right. He has an opportunity to change the export import ratio from Nigeria. And so I'm thinking, like, how do I teach kids about that? How do I walk in the classroom and tell them, like, they should know this person? And so our way was hip hop, right? The first lesson was I took Jay-Z's line. I said, all blacks got is sports and entertainment until we even.

38:02Evan Turner:And I showed them six people from the world of sports entertainment. They knew every one of them, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Floyd Mayweather, Dr. Dre, and Oprah. They knew them all, right? And Jordan. And then I gave them another sheet with the six wealthiest people, black people on the planet. And they knew none. I said, damn, Jay kind of prophesied this, right? He really showed us all we had until we even, because we've never recognized anything outside that world until I get to teach him about the wealthiest guy on the planet who was a legal Dan Gote. And now this is the crossroads. And so now that group of kids never gets to say they don't know who that guy is.

38:39Evan Turner:And guess what? He didn't do it because he dribbled. He didn't do it because he could throw a football or he can spit around. He did it from natural resources. He did it from oil. He did it from cement. These are all different things. So now that kid or those kids that are now hearing it know that there's value in other things than the traditional things that have been fed to us through the TV. Right. We have to be entertainer. We have to be. There's no value in the guy who's going to be the doctor in the neighborhood. There's no value to the person who's going to be the teacher or who's going to be the chemist or who's going to be the next person to venture capital.

39:13Evan Turner:Those people weren't celebrated until this moment in time. And so that was kind of thing was like, all right, this is how we now can creatively reach people, use social media, use hip hop, merge it all together and deliver it to the people. How long did that breakthrough take? Because when you sit there, we talked about just recently, you know, to be more an athlete was a thing that just popped up like five or six years ago. And then a lot of times when you're coming down to talk about sports entertainment and what young individuals typically want to be, they necessarily don't want to hear all the rah, rah, like educational stuff.

39:44Evan Turner:And how did you guys keep your confidence up? We always have a saying, don't, you know, diss the caterpillar and then jot the butterfly. So, like, it couldn't have been that easy going in and, you know, continue to build step by step. So how did you guys keep that momentum up in the face? Did you ever get discouraged? Well, I think that when losing is not an option, then you really have no choice but to win.

40:09Andre Iguodala:So it's a few ways how you look at the time frame. You can look at it from when we started social media That's a relatively short period in the grand scheme of things of success like we kind of it just kind of went up But then you look at it from like your whole entire life takes you to the moment that you're at and that's a very long journey, right? So it's like he was a teacher And he was preparing for that moment without knowing it I was a financial advisor and I was preparing for that moment without knowing it, right? So I feel that um You have to fully believe in what you're doing to not even thinking, not even, you can't really even think about it not working.

40:46Andre Iguodala:It's only a matter of how do I get it to work. So like for me, my personal journey, I never really had a job before ever. So I went to school and then I became a financial advisor. It's a commission-based situation. So anybody can get hired. It wasn't, I wasn't working on wall street. I was working for an insurance company. It's not too difficult to get hired in that situation. I'm just being honest. But it's also extremely difficult to be successful in it. That's why it's not difficult to get hired. Like 90 % of people is not going to be successful. That's 22. But it's an extremely difficult type of job, especially at 24 years old, to try to convince people that they need life insurance and IRAs and stuff like that.

41:25Andre Iguodala:But my alternative, like I said, I didn't have an advanced degree. I went to a state school. My alternative was to actually get a job. And that wasn't going to happen. So I have really had no choice but to make it happen. So I think, you know, and when you, when you use that type of framework, then you really don't think about like tough times or like, because at the end of the day, what is a tough time? We really never really had anything anyway. So that's something that we already used to. Like, I mean, if you think about it, like it can't really get too much worse. You only really have a, you really, you really have nothing to lose when you have nothing to lose.

42:07Andre Iguodala:When you become a millionaire, now you start to think, damn, I can really screw this up and I'm back to zero. But if you have$5 ,000 in your bank account, what's the worst that can happen?

42:15Evan Turner:You're closer to zero. That's right. That's the reality. We grow up, we're so close to zero, so what is the risk? But I thought he was going to answer this a whole different way. The thing about it, I've known him since he was probably 11 years old. He's known me vice versa. There was never a time where our confidence ever wavered in ourselves. What we were going to do, we would figure that out, but we were always confident in what we were going to be. I knew he was going to be successful, probably vice versa, and our community knew that too, because we were rooted in the community. But what happened over time was that we realized representation and showing up as your authentic self was the key.

42:55Evan Turner:So most people, when I worked, they were like, well, you're the gym teacher. I'm like, yeah, I'm the physical educator, but there's other things I do too. But people will only judge you from where they see you at, right? So like even now, if I go back to the school, they always ask me if I'm coming back. I'm like, well, about that, right? But they only could see me as that. But there was so much more to it. So when we started to grow as a company, it was like, all right, don't change who you are, right? When I was standing in front of the kids in the Bronx, I had the freshest Jordans on, right?

43:30Evan Turner:I had G-Shock watches. I had a BMW because I knew one day a kid was going to look at Mr. Millers and say, I want to be him. Like a lot of kids are going to grow up saying they want to be you. But I was like, I want kids to grow up and say they could be me because the chances that they could be me, this is a hundred percent chance. Right. Right. Like making it to the NBA is one in a million. Right. But being somebody that is productive in their community, somebody that's giving back, somebody that's educating their community, they could do that. So if I could show them, I can have the nice car that you guys have.

44:00Evan Turner:I can have some of the watches and some of the kicks, and that's where it stops.

44:06Evan Turner:I'm making it very clear. That's where it stops. You might get lucky. You never know. That's where it stops. You've been in Dubai. I've never been in Dubai. But, like, now, so that's the thing. Now they see, that's my teacher. Right? He was my teacher. I know him. Right? He's in Dubai. He just sat with Steve Harvey. He's here with Andre Inga Darlon. Like, right now, he's speaking at Warren. Yo, he used to teach me how to catch a football. Like anything is possible, but the representation was there. So when you see us show up in a hoodie and we have on Fresh Kicks and, you know, we do travel and we like to wear nice clothes, that's all part of the presentation because that's authentically who we were prior to all of this.

44:44Evan Turner:All we get to do now is show up as we are and people are receptive to it because it's like, wait, these guys is real. They're the real deal. This is real. This is really who they are every day. And that's the easiest part. We get to show up as ourselves every single day. Now I got a question to that. for all three of you because this is you know i have battles with this sometimes where i had a teammate his name was andrew bogut and he and i have gotten really close and i learned this from my mother you know i did i wrote a book the sixth man and uh go

45:15Andre Iguodala:buy it if you haven't read it on amazon right now i wasn't i never planned on saying that to be

45:20Evan Turner:honest but my mother taught me at a young age i had a story in there where my mother had two voices And I said this to her one time. She looked at me crazy. I was like, Mom, when you have on makeup, you're nice. And when you don't have your makeup, I think I'm going to get a whooping at any given moment. My mom was six foot tall. So I was scared of her until I was like 15, like frightened. And she had two voices, though. You know, she had the voice at home. And then we went out to work. She had the other voice. And I think as African-Americans, we all have that. You got to switch it up. The code switching.

45:55Evan Turner:Thank you. and so Andrew Bokit was he said to me he's like Andrew why why do you talk different to like your black teammates and then you talk different when you're talking to like you know white people and I couldn't I couldn't quite explain it to him but I was trying to explain to him like my mother when we went to go she was on the phone I heard I remember the phone conversation talking to this guy about a house rental we used to rent this small two-bedroom apartment like I went in there like maybe 10 years ago. And I'm in there like this. And I'm like, my brother and I, how do we live in this space together?

46:30Evan Turner:He's the same height as me. And the guy approved the rental. Like, yes, it's available to you. She took my brother and myself with her to see this, to get the house. And so we pulled up, knock on the door. He answers the door. He's like, can I help you? She was like, yes, I'm the lady you spoke to on the phone. But her voice, he couldn't tell what it was. the house is not available. So from that moment, I understood how the world works. Like, whoa. And I'm like, nine years old. Who understands that at nine years old? It's just like what you're saying. It's like, how low can you go? What can you lose when you don't have anything to lose?

47:09And so that leads me to now,

47:11Evan Turner:I still have to maneuver how I speak. I have to be PC, more PC in some places. I can turn it down to other places, even when we speak. You know, he's always saying, I want to see that Springfield in you. But for three of you, you know, this is my question. You know, the higher you keep moving up, you're going to open doors that, you know, you've never been in before or doors we've never been in before. Like I'm thinking, you know, we're seeing entertainers into these billionaire realms and they have to maneuver different. You know, we're in this room and we don't have a the black Elon Musk, whatever you want to call it, or the Zuckerberg.

47:44Evan Turner:Like, when are we going to have our own tech companies that are, you know, trillion dollar market caps? but we're inching closer and so as you move up you say you want to stay yourself like we always want to stay ourselves but are you thinking about how you plan on maneuvering once you get into certain places and like what's your thoughts on it yeah i think the only thing i can change is like

48:07Andre Iguodala:i probably curse less in certain places and but that's just the truth but like anything else

48:13Evan Turner:because you know sometimes you might walk into rooms and you might be like man am i am i sure I'm supposed to be here. And one thing I always say is, like, I've been told is look for the signs. And when you talk to other people, shout out to everybody. You guys are very talented, accomplished people. And so am I. And like, when you talk to other people, you see the confidence that individuals have and sit in front of you having all the things they can do. And it's like, okay, you guys are able to do that. You're able to do, like you said, what I was able to do was one in a million. And, you know, you'd be a teacher and be a lot of different things.

48:45Evan Turner:And it's like, I try to find, you know, the one little, you know, speck that I can take to really build from. So when I sit there and I see, you know, great people speak with confidence, I'm like, well, I came from a situation of, you know, poverty where, you know, single parent wasn't supposed to make it out, wasn't supposed to be in this situation. I was able to do it with, you know, a tenth of a chance. So every time I look there, I'm like, all right, if these people can do it, I can leave here and do it because I've done some amazing stuff that most people can't even fathom. We talk about a lot of situations, even just with career, like mistakes.

49:18Evan Turner:It's like you worry about how people judge you. But a lot of people stopped their mission a long, long time ago and just went to the sideline and started pointing like, yo, that ain't him. And it's like, no, I'm your superior. I'm him. Worry about yourself. You know what I mean? And then from there, I move on and just keep going. But, you know, I got to keep it. Dre does a great job of smoothing it out. But my mission, my delivery can be a little bit more aggressive. But I definitely earn the right to know I'm in that room and gain confidence for comprehending that if you can do great things, I can do great things.

49:50Evan Turner:And I take it from there. Yeah, I think you're spot on with the confidence. And Dre, that story you told about your mother. Quick one before you jump back in. You're listening for ways to help teams move faster, make sharper decisions, and turn scattered context into work they can use. ChatGPT for Business can help. Chat GPT for Business gives teams a shared workspace with admin controls, permissions, and access to work and codecs in Chat GPT. This means your business can move from question to answer and code to rollout quicker. Join over 10 million business and enterprise users worldwide already using Chat GPT for Work.

50:26Evan Turner:Download the Chat GPT desktop app or contact sales to learn more. earners what's up look on earn your leisure we're all about smart money moves and here's one that most people skip car insurance renews on autopilot the rates creep up and nobody tells you that's what insurify fixes in about two minutes completely free you can see rates from more than 120 top insurance companies and if there's nothing better today they keep watching and notify you when is a better rate. So go to Insurify.com. That's I-N-S-U-R-I-F-Y.com. Insurify.com. When traveling for events or festivals throughout the country, every dollar matters.

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52:01Evan Turner:Picture this. You're the owner of a plumbing company descending into an 18-inch crawl space to hydrojet a sewer line. Don't ask.

52:11Andre Iguodala:Oh, boy, this is tight. I knew I shouldn't have had that extra helping of mashed potatoes last night.

52:17Evan Turner:Now let's say your phone rings. Uh-oh. It could be a lead on a very big job. I better get that. Or it could just be a spam call. Oh. But thanks to Ruby's call screening and seamless integration with the CRM system you already use, by the time you come up for air, your next job will already be waiting. Oh. This is Ruby, the team of remote receptionists who answer all your calls live. We do everything a great receptionist does, only better. Experience the new Ruby for yourself. Visit ruby.com or better yet, call us 866-GET-RUBY. It hit me dead in the heart because I remember calling my dad at work.

53:07Evan Turner:My parents are from Jamaica. Straw. Yeah, shot.

53:16Okay.

53:17Evan Turner:Now that we said that, now that's out the way. So I would call him, and you know, he has a heavy patois dialect. But that's changed over the years. When I would call him, he worked in Manhattan at corporate. And I told the story, I really never knew what he did. But I would call him, and he would answer it. And my brothers used to laugh, I'll do it for y 'all. He'd be like, hello.

53:39Evan Turner:I'd be like, that is me and you know he would talk to me in his regular voice and when i'll call my mom she couldn't she never did it but it used to irk me then but it irks me even more so now it's like somebody calls the house he'll do that and um it's because i'm fighting for him to never have to do it right and so when we show up in these rooms i show up exactly who i am right now right the the guy used to stand in front of the the the classroom who couldn't curse right is the same guy that's going to sit on CNBC or Good Morning America or Bloomberg, same guy that goes to the Breakfast Club or Joe Button.

54:15Evan Turner:I'm able to change the conversation. The conversations change, the information changes, but the person never changes. And so we're comfortable in the barbershop or we're comfortable right here in the business school because we trust and we're confident in what we know. And that's the most important thing. I think a lot of times people feel intimidated because they don't know what they're talking about, right? And so that's our thing is I'm a constant learner. So every day, like I told you, I just read the Wall Street Journal before I got here. Let's have a conversation, right? I'm going to be part of the conversation because I make it my point too.

54:50Evan Turner:I don't ever want to walk into a room where I'm going to feel like I don't feel confident. We sat down in some procedures rooms over the past month. And I'm just like, I feel like, yeah, we've earned every aspect of respect and determination and dedication to be in these rooms. So it starts with the confidence, but also goes into that part of having education and feeling like, you know what? I belong.

55:14Andre Iguodala:I want to answer this. I'll try to speed it up. But two parts. So I never really had to worry about. I grew up radical. So and I never had a job. So I never really had to worry about code switching. He really told me because you only code switch when you're not in a position of power. Elon Musk can curse on TV and it's OK. that's a fact so but they got finger snaps on that joint that was crazy for sure all the renaissance but um what i did realize when so when i was working as a financial advisor in my office um you know everybody in my office was pretty much older white men and in the beginning part of like the training they will make you watch videos of yourself like we have like a practice sale and I'm and I never really realized that I actually had a New York accent until I actually watched myself speak and then um then I started to realize it and I kind of became a little self-conscious of how I spoke because I know that I didn't have the best the best diction I know that you know I had an accent and I didn't sound like anybody else in in the office.

56:27Andre Iguodala:But I realized that what I thought might have been a disadvantage was actually a superpower. And that's actually helped us is that there's millions of people that actually talk like I talk and relate to how I communicate as opposed to how somebody else communicates. Those people were left out of the conversation for a long period of time. So never run away from who you are, embrace who you are, because that's actually a superpower. Now, you do have to be intelligent. and it is important to have a strong mastery of the language that you speak. So you know it's like you don't wear a jumpsuit to a wedding.

57:06Andre Iguodala:It's just common sense. So how you communicate in a barbershop might not be how you communicate.

57:12Evan Turner:I don't know. He's talking about the Batman suit that Jaden wore.

57:19Andre Iguodala:I think it's just a matter of just knowing how to communicate properly, not necessarily code switch. I don't like code switching. I'll never code switch. But Steve Stouts told us something that was extremely important. I think that this has been the key to earning your leisure success. It's the thinnest slice strategy. When you're black, you have to deal with a variety of different things that other people don't have to deal with or don't worry about. So for us, we walk a very thin line because most people that are on TV, that are communicating finances that are black, they're not relatable to the majority of black people, right?

57:54Andre Iguodala:How they talk, how they look, whatever. And then there's a variety of different people in our culture of hip hop that aren't taken serious in the business world, right? So we have to be articulate enough to be respected at the highest levels of finance to be here, Right. But we also have to be edgy enough to still be likable, appealable and relatable to the masses. That's extremely difficult. Very few people have been able to pull that one off. And that's something that we do. This is just a blessing that we've been blessed with. But this is something that when you're thinking about, you know, your pathway forward, it's important because a lot of times when we get isolated in circles that we're in.

58:41Andre Iguodala:But we can never forget about the overarching theme of black people. And no matter how good we're doing individually, nobody's successful if the vast majority of people are unsuccessful and the vast majority of people are struggling. So it's important to keep relatability. It's important to be able to communicate to the masses while still having your integrity and being able to move up the ladder. Like I said, Elon Musk doesn't have to worry about that. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have to worry about that. They can just communicate and they just live freely. They don't have to worry about street credibility.

59:23Andre Iguodala:They don't have to, but we do. right so this is a very interesting conversation that you just brought up but i just feel like you know in in the world of media and communications and just everything um it's important that people have other people to look up to that's why every kid wants to be a rapper and entertainer because those are jobs that they see as attainable because the architect the doctor they're not visible they haven't made themselves visible a lot of times and they're so far unrelatable that nobody's even going to try to be that right so if we have to a make ourselves more visible and we have to a make ourselves more relatable as well that way we can inspire more people more kids to want to be more than just what they see on television

1:00:19Evan Turner:Thank you guys so much. Thank you. Before you sign off, you tuned in for ways to help teams move faster, make sharper decisions, and turn scattered context into work they can use. ChatGPT for Business can help. Chat GPT for Business gives teams a shared workspace with admin controls, permissions, and access to work and codecs in Chat GPT. This means your business can move from question to answer and code to rollout quicker. Join over 10 million business and enterprise users worldwide already using Chat GPT for Work. Download the Chat GPT desktop app or contact sales to learn more. Earners, what's up?

1:00:59Evan Turner:Look, on Earn Your Leisure, we're all about smart money moves. And here's one that most people skip. Car insurance renews on autopilot, the rates creep up, and nobody tells you. That's what Insurify fixes. In about two minutes, completely free, you can see rates from more than 120 top insurance companies. And if there's nothing better today, they keep watching and notify you when there's a better rate. So go to Insurify.com. That's I-N-S-U-R-I-F-Y dot com. Insurify.com. When traveling for events or festivals throughout the country, every dollar matters. We compare flights, prices, hotel rates, and restaurant options.

1:01:35Evan Turner:So why wouldn't we compare rides? Personally, I always check Lyft before booking a ride. Prices can change throughout the day depending on traffic, weather, and what's happening in the city. If you're headed to a concert, out to dinner, or catching up with your friends on a Friday night, taking a few seconds to check Lyft could leave you with more money to enjoy the experience. Save money. Check Lyft. You gave everything you could give, and now it's time to take the next step. Hey, it's Emily Tisch-Sussman. And this season on She Pivots, the podcast where women share bold career moves and personal turning points.

1:02:08Evan Turner:I sit down with culture-shifting women who share their pivots like Elizabeth Smart. I still feel that drive that I can still make a difference. So I'm going to keep going. And feminist legend Gloria Steinem. All of us were trying to express women's real lives. Listen to She Pivots on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:02:28Andre Iguodala:On Big Lives, we take a single cultural icon. People like Jane Fonda, George Michael, Little Richard.

1:02:34Evan Turner:And we pull apart the story behind the image, discovering forgotten interviews that change exactly how we see these giants of our culture. We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. I'm Emmanuel Jochi. I'm Kai Wright. And this is Big Lives.

1:02:50Andre Iguodala:Listen to Big Lives on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:02:58Evan Turner:This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.