The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Go Where There Is No Path: Stories of Hustle, Grit, Scholarship, and Faith by Christopher Gray

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

Go Where There Is No Path: Stories of Hustle, Grit, Scholarship, and Faith by Christopher Gray For all who dare to go off the beaten track, this is the inspirational, power-packed playbook for transforming your life and your world—from a young, Black social entrepreneur whose dorm-room tech startup has helped millions pay for college and access unprecedented opportunity. Gray, the son of a single working mother who had him at age fourteen, grew up in deep poverty in Birmingham, Alabama. An academic star, he had every qualification for attending a top college—except for the financial means. Desperate, Gray headed off the beaten path, searching online to apply for every scholarship he could find. His hustle resulted in awards of 1.3 million dollars and became his call to action to help other students win their own “schollys.” It inspired him to start up Scholly, an app that matches college applicants with millions of dollars in outside scholarships that often go unclaimed. When he was a senior at Drexel University, he appeared on Shark Tank as CEO of Scholly. In the most heated fight in the show’s history, the sharks challenged Gray as to whether his app was a charity or a profitable business. Both, he insisted, proposing a new paradigm for social entrepreneurship and netting deals from Lori Grenier and Daymond John. At the time Scholly’s subscriber base was 90,000 users. Today the app has 4 million subscribers who have won scholarships totaling more than $100 million. Meanwhile, Gray—without help from the mostly all-white boy’s club of Silicon Valley—has emerged as a tech startup superhero now tackling the crisis of student debt with innovative, unrivaled strategies. Gray’s premise is that when you lead with the good—confronting issues such as poverty and racism—the money will follow. His story is proof that when you develop a mindset for success, you turn disadvantages into gold. And when you create opportunities for others, you enrich the marketplace for yourself too. Gray shows us, we can carve out new paths to better days and leave trails for others.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrissvossshow.com, thechrissvossshow.com. Hey, for coming here to the Inner Gate Podcast, we certainly appreciate you tuning in.

Thanks for being here. Be sure to go to youtube.com, Fortress Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification button. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss. All of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and all those wonderful places where you can find out so much more about everything that is going on. Today we have an amazing author on the show. It's his first book that he's put out. It's coming out August 3rd, 2021. You can

take and pre-order this baby so you can be the first one on your block to see or read it. Thumb your nose to the old book club there and be like, I read it first and beat it to the movies too as well. There you go. Go Where There Is No Path, Stories of Hustle, Grit, Scholarship, and Faith. The book is from the author Christopher Gray. He'll be joining with us today to talk about this amazing book. He is the CEO and founder of the mobile app and website, Nisgali, a tool that helps prospective college students find scholarships. Gray is a regular contributor to Forbes.com, a member of the American Program Bureau, and is

designated U.S. Embassy Speaker. There's going to be some edits on this, babe. He's a contributor to Forbes.com, a member of the American Program Bureau, and is a designated U.S. Embassy Speaker for the U.S.

State Department. He has spoken at events such as Obama Foundation's My Brother's Keeper Summit, Steve Harvey's Disney Dreamers Academy, and others. Welcome to the show, Christopher. How are you? I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Thank you. It's wonderful to have you on. Give us your plugs so people can find you on the interweb so we can see you there. Yeah, you can check out my company, Scali, at myscali.com.

And my book, Go Where There's No Path, comes out next Tuesday, August 3rd, and you can order a copy on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Walmart, et cetera. Wherever fine books are sold, go check it out. Scali, Christopher, it's wonderful to have you on the show. What motivated you to want to write this book? You know, I think that my journey, like growing up and from growing up to winning a scholarship to go to college, to starting a company while I was a student, I don't advise trying to go to school full-time and running a company full-time and getting on Shark Tank and getting Scully where it is today. It's really a story that I really wanted to tell. I think that there are a lot of young people who come from non-traditional background, underserved communities, or just young, and they just don't know, and they just

don't have a path. They think that they have insurmountable odds, whether that be financial hardship, they're a person of color, they think they're too young to start something, they don't have the experience. And I think that I wanted to show people that entire path, that path for my youth and how I overcame all these different verticals as a source of inspiration for a lot of people who just don't see a path in front of them. And really being able to create that path for yourself and just really being able to set goals and believe in yourself. But more importantly, really putting a lot of hustle into showing people with the right amount of hustle, grit, and faith and persistence and resilience that they can achieve whatever they want to achieve.

So it's really like, how can you be a source of inspiration for all those people looking to start, looking to go to college, looking to start a company, looking to make impact, or just looking to change the world. And to make impact, or I'm just looking to change the world. And I felt that telling that story, telling my story, it was a really good way to really help them. That's awesome, man. This is the beautiful part about us telling our stories is not only are we kind of self-serving

ourselves a little bit, hey, you're my story, but it helps so many people because they see some of the cathartic journeys that we go on, some of the challenges, how we overcome it, and it helps empower them. So give us an arcing overview of the book, if you would, please, of whatever else we haven't covered. Yeah, I think that, you know, I start with, like, my story of youth. I went, I'm originally from Birmingham, Alabama, so I'm sure you don't meet that many people from there. I went to a minor high school. We had a lot of struggles growing up. First, my family go to college. I didn't have too much guidance. And then there

was also financial hardship. And because you didn't have that guidance, I had to figure it out. I had to go. I had no path. And so what I said was like, I want to go to college. I said, I go. But you got to pay for college. And college is really expensive. So if I start with that part of me winning over a million dollars in scholarships, I was just applying for hundreds of scholarships and not know what I was going to get. I just buy up all of them. I luckily I was a good student and all that stuff. So that helped. But then that's the first part. Then the second part is really going through the process of like how I started scholarly, how I built that and going into it really how you, how people think about being a

young entrepreneur, starting a social enterprise, how it was, how the idea of Scali was really birthed out of me simply wanting to help more people than I physically could because more people would come to me for help and all that stuff. So that was good. And then it goes into one of the, some people call it my origin story of being on Shark Tank. It was really that process and how that really took Scali to where it is now and really going into focusing on how you build a product and ultimately showing as a result of that resilience, as a result of overcoming poverty, going to a good school, going to starting a company as a young entrepreneur while you're in school, not being able to have easy access to, not being able to ease access to funding, all those things, how I

overcame all that and how Scholar is like a multimillion dollar business. We're powerful today and that journey, because again, a lot of people who are starting companies, especially in tech, they come for money or they want to raise a friend and family around, they can do that. I didn't have that option. I don't think a lot of people do. So I think that showing people that path. So the book has that arc of really showing from like used to that and really showing you lessons along the way. It's not just like a, it's not a memoir. It's more, Hey, these different phases and these are the lessons that I learned and these how you can apply them to your life. That's awesome. How hard is it to grow up being the first one to go to college? Were your parents putting a lot of pressure on you? You will be the first one to go to college or was it your

own self-pressure? Yeah, I think that I've always been inherently ambitious. I think I was like competitive and I think, but I think one of the things that really helped me was I read a lot of books. So even though I was in an environment where I didn't physically have role models, I read a lot of, I was inspired. I read Black Enterprise. I looked at Wall Street Journal. I saw, I was able to, through informed media and through books, really, I was able to really see a world outside of my world. And that was inspiring. And I knew that college was the first step because what people think that, people think that when you're dealing with poverty or not in a great environment, they think, oh, writing a check is really the

answer. It's really, you have to physically get out of that environment. And I think, and that was really college. I was able to go to Philadelphia, Drexel, and that was really there. So I think that motivation, seeing what people achieve and seeing college as being that first step was really like, was really important to me. And I didn't, in college, it wasn't just for me, okay, just getting a degree. It's the network I was able to fill. I was suddenly exposed to new things. My roommate's dad was like a millionaire. My first semester in college, I'm engaging with people who are wealthy, who are powerful, that was just new to me. And I was able to emerge myself in that world and really thrive. And so suddenly, all these things I wasn't able

to do, a person I wasn't able to be back in the environment I came up. Now all those abilities are manifest because I feel that if somebody talk about in the book is that a lot of people who come from like underserved communities or in the cities, whatever they are, you are talented. You're just not in a right environment that can, where those talents can manifest or be nurtured. So I suddenly saw going to college was not just getting a degree, not getting education. It gave me access to a network and the resources where my intelligence, persistence, and entrepreneurial abilities were able to manifest and be nurtured. And that's kind of how I ended up starting the company. Wow, that's freaking awesome.

So how soon after college or during college did you start the app? I started working on it my junior year of college. And then we really, we did a soft launch and then we did our big launch on Shark Tank. I was, we had some press, I think in USA Today, and then a producer actually reached out to one of my professors and saying, okay, we want to talk to this guy. He made the introduction and we, yeah, and it was cool. We went to talk. And at first when I, when a producer reached out, because at the time Shark Tank, you saw e-commerce brands like Cookie, like they sold physical products. So I didn't really think Shark Tank at the time shark tank you saw e-commerce brands like cookie like they sold physical products so i didn't really think shark tank at that time was really tech focused i think

they're a little more so now they have a little more tech companies on there so i went i didn't take it too seriously but i called the producer he loved the story and i was like so what's next he was like you got to submit you got to submit a um submit audition video telling your story about the company i I did. The show, they liked it. And they were like, oh, guess what? They loved your video and they want to get you to LA. And I was like, man, the rest is history.

I mean, the whole part in the book about Shark Tank, that experience, it's a funny story that happened there. But yeah, I started. My big launch was really on Shark Tank. But I filmed. It's funny. I filmed actually the year before. And I aired eight months later. Yeah, TV production.

So you're able to get the investors still, right, and move forward and stuff. And how many years have you guys been working on this now? Six, six years. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, not public in 2015. When you were in school, you were trying to come up, You're, of course, trying to serve yourself by getting scholarships and stuff. And other friends were coming to you going, hey, can you help me with this?

Getting scholarships and stuff. Is that how that played out? Yeah. You mean in terms of talking to the students to learn from the problem? Yeah. I was like trying to figure out the pathway to why you developed the app. Okay. Yeah. So I think it was two things.

So one, when I got to college i was i was really i won a lot of scholars i won a million dollars scholarship to go to college myself now and that was one thing and i and i think that when i got to college i started to get a lot of it was a big story about me winning this money and i started to just try to help a lot of other students um who had similar backgrounds and one student would hear about it, me, and then another student would hear about me. Then parents would keep inundating me. Some people tried to pay me. It was crazy. And basically I couldn't help everyone. Physically, I couldn't. I was a student. I was trying to do my own thing. And so I was like, I was really, how can I find a way to help as many people as I can without, at scale, basically, like in the

whole concept of technology. And that was around the boom of the apps. Instagram just got acquired for a billion dollars. Facebook, it was like the age of the apps. It was like the gold rush. And, but even at that time when I made the first version of the app, I wasn't really looking to turn it into a business. So I found out that you got to have server costs and other things are associated paying developers and all that, the thing. And yeah. And so it was, we really started the idea of Scali, paying developers and all that, the thing. And yeah, and so it was really started that idea of Scali, not necessarily just the business, really started as a concept of how do I help?

How do I help as many? How do I help more students find money for college? How can I put some, how can I put, I've taken the product ties, Chris Gray, right? In terms of doing that. And that was really, and that was really the concept. And that's, that was the origin story of how I really came up with the idea and why I did it. It was really just to help a lot of people. And this is what I love about entrepreneurism

and being an entrepreneur. A lot of times we're sometimes we're just trying to solve our own problems. Hey, the widget doesn't do, you know, what I want it to do. And yeah, if somebody redesigned this thing and, oh yeah, that works much better. Hey, I bet some other people want this. That's the beauty of serving others and sharing that stuff. And according to the Amazon page, tell me if these numbers need updating. The app now has four million subscribers who won scholarships totaling more than $100 million. Wow. Yeah.

So we have, oh, my God, like tons of scholarships in our app. And we facilitated and verified a lot of users who have won scholarships for our app. We now even have foundations, millionaires, wealthy people who come to us to start their own scholarships. We now have this cool, Scholarly has a program called Scholarly Build, where we can pretty much set up a scholarship for a celebrity a foundation a business within two weeks and we have we we automate the legal process the payouts all of that so they're able to come so we work and we'll be working some other people we work with graduate hotels we work with natty light we did we did a million dollars student loan payout for them every year basically yeah so anyone like if even if you wanted to start your own scholarship we can

automate that yeah so we're able to just facilitate all this cash and track it. And we have a really cool feature coming out this fall where it's going to be a common app for scholarships where you're going to be able to apply to up to a million different scholarships. One application is going to be like LinkedIn. You create your profile, you do easy apply, we're going to be able to do something like that. So that stuff is coming. And we're excited to have so much support from a lot of our partners to make. Because the problem is there's so many opportunities out there for all these students.

But if you got to sit in platform, 400 different applications, that that's a lot where we want to bring that all together and create it's common app. It's universal application for all these scholars, as many as we can to help streamline that process. This is pretty freaking awesome. I love it. You guys have, so you have your own pool that you guys are creating. Yeah.

So you're not just dependent upon some of these other different, you know, forms of the stuff. You're creating your own pools. This is beautiful. And do you target a certain, a certain income level or a certain price or a certain person, a certain income level? Like I, my parents are poor, so I got a Pell Grant. Does, do you, you know, is there a certain type of, are you really helping? I guess what I'm trying to say is you're really helping people in the poverty level and helping them. Yeah. And we have a lot of really good stories that we tell for people who are poor, but actually there's a lot of scholarships,

actually close to half of them are simply merit-based. So some don't even look at financial aid. So that's the bigger thing. We like to convey the myth that scholarships, they're all scholarships that are not just for people that are poor. It should be, and there's a lot more for people poor, but there's actually a lot, nearly half the government database are just merit-based, so they don't actually consider income. Because the problem is what these scholarships had to start to understand these foundations is that the government has a very flawed system of determining whether you can afford college. Because you may say, the government may say, oh, both your parents make 100K, but they don't take into effect that they have four kids, two or three kids. And yeah, and other spaces, exactly that, that equation isn't that simple.

So I think that when, so I think scholars should start to realize that and really make sure that there are merit-based scholarships that can really, that can really help empower people, because there are some people who are below the help empower people because there are some people who are below the poverty line, but there's some people who still need money for college to help reduce debt who may just have a different situation. The thing is, having money, quote-unquote, and I've learned that too. There was a time where I'm sure you were like, when I thought 100K was, oh my God, being in Birmingham, Alabama, like, Oh, I can't, yeah. Like that's a man. And then now you realize, Oh shit. Yeah. You got to pay rent and these bills, you know, so it's very different. So yeah.

Like at the end of the month, you're like, I had some money at one time, but now that all the bills are paid and now there's new bills. I think this is brilliant because I ran a mortgage company for almost 20 years. And one of the things that was interesting to me, just to let people know, I didn't fulfill that Pell Grant. I deactivated it before I started college and I'd started a business when I was 18 and I decided to go for with that business. So once I got that entrepreneur drug, you know what that drug is, I just said, I need to go see where this goes first. And I'm glad that I did. And I'm not saying there's anything bad about going to college. Even then, I think back when I went to college, back when I was a kid, it was still fairly expensive seemingly, but it wasn't as expensive as it is now. You talk in the book about the crisis

of college affordability. But one of the things I was leading into was I owned a mortgage company for nearly 20 years and I would see the applications from people. And a mortgage loan is basically a P&L and a balance sheet for a company as a person, if you will. And so I would see people that they would be paying these extraordinary loans from college. And it was like indentured servitude. You could see that the way they were, some people made really bad choices of what jobs they wanted to go into based upon their emotions, but their logic on what they spent was if they were like, say, for instance, a psychologist or social person, they were going to be on this ride for 20 years.

I met people that were like pharmacists and lower level doctor's assistants that they still were like 10 to 12 years in the hole. And after they paid out their loans, they're almost making minimum wage. Yet they were like doctors and pharmacists. And I was like, holy crap. And this is horrible for people like yourself. I grew up in poverty. We had the welfare in the fridge, but this is horrible because you finally rise from poverty. You get free of all this stuff. And then you're back in the hole again. If you'd like to just talk about that in your book and how you address that. Yeah. So I think that one of the things that we address is really helping people,

understanding how part of our start at Scholarly to really help people understand that there is a lot of money out there for them. And one of the things, what you talked about, the whole student debt crisis, it is a thing. I know people, they computer science degrees, making good money, but their student loans are $2,800 because they didn't even know any scholarships existed. They didn't know that certain opportunities were available. And recently, we actually, to that point, what you just described, Scholarly actually has a product called Scholarly Payoffs. You can see it on our website.

We basically, so it's for people who graduated with student debt. So what we are able to do is that if you are a person that's having financial, we actually able to auto enroll you into a student loan plan that will actually match your income. So what happens is, yes. So a lot of the federal government actually has a lot of income based repayment, different forms of them that you can auto enroll into. So basically rather than you paying $2,600 a month, making a hundred K, they'll actually bring it down to match your income. You don't have a job. And a lot of people don't know that, but of course the government doesn't want you to know. Yeah.

You're saying because you would think that people would know that, but they don't want to know that because they don't, they want people to pay the payments, but, but yeah, we're able to match your income and we're able to, and it would, it's a six month, it's a long process. So we are able to auto enroll you pretty quickly. So that's something we're proud of. So we definitely ball beyond scholarships. But I think helping people understand that everyone has definitely a unique situation. And what we try to help people understand is that, yeah, like student loans are definitely like a flaccid bargain. It's like, oh, hey, it's kind of, we're going to, if you pay for college, then you graduate.

Oh, sorry. Yeah. You're going to be paying this off for the rest of your life. And interest in career is like every single day. So it's very, really interesting. So my advice to people then, and I talk about it really in the book, is that when you graduate, everyone's not going to start a company. Everyone's going to do that.

So definitely, like financial literacy definitely is a thing. And I think that there are ways to really help reduce that debt because, again, it's hard. And people end up thinking that their education was their key to success. And then they're, they find out, like you said, with the student loan debt and different bills, in addition to supporting their family and all these other things they want to do, like it's kind of, they still have the extra burden. Awesome. Awesome. That is great, man. That probably would help a lot of people being COVID because a lot of people lost their jobs. You tell a story in the book about your, let's see, I think I lost track of it, your great-grandmother, I think it was.

And her, there it is, great-grandmother taught him to tap resources to make a way that there is no way. Can you tell us a little about her? So she passed actually a few years ago. So that's right. So I think that, yeah, so she passed a few years ago. I think that when she was, she didn't go to college. She, she did the best she could. And I think that what I loved about her is what she symbolized.

Despite all those things, despite she grew up, she was born 1929 at the same. So the world was very different, especially people of color back then. So it wasn't like insurmountable, what we consider insurmountable barriers today, it pales into comparison to what she experienced in insurmountable barriers today pales into comparison to what she experienced with insurmountable barrier. Like literally it wasn't like, okay, at least I probably messed up in saying, Hey, I had the option to go to college. I had the option to do certain things that she didn't. So I think being able to have a house, like take care of all your children and your grandkids, being able to, and having this endless work ethic. She just never stopped working. I don't know how she, like that kind of work ethic came from just like to never stop where

there's like cooking, we're going to work, trying to make money, like, and taking care of all these different people. Like that work ethic was just endless. No one can ever call Thelma Gray lazy. She probably wouldn't want to either. She'd probably go after him with the roller. Yeah. Yeah.

So I think, yeah, a month other things, but with the roller. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, yeah, a month, other things, but my grandmother would. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that endless work ethic, that ability to make a way where there's no way to make sure food is on the table, no matter how little it is to make sure that you can take care of me to make

sure that you're, you took your circuits and the mace and made the best out of what you could. I think that that symbolism, I think that work ethic, that persistence is actually, it's, I think really what she embodied. I hold that that symbolism, I think that work ethic, that persistence is actually, I think really what she embodied. And I hold that with me today. And actually, she's the only person in my family

that has my brown hair and my skin complexion. So that was also really interesting. And I also dedicated, my book was partly dedicated to her as well. That's awesome. Did you get to see your success then? Yeah, so it was really, yeah, I'm trying not to get emotional, but I think, yes, she did. to her as well that's awesome did you get to see your success then yeah so it was really yeah i'm

trying not to get emotional but i think yes she did that she all like up to shark because shark tank was 2015 so they saw all of that what was really interesting actually the three months after i think three months after she died was that um she i like oprah was i met oprah literally like i was introduced to oprah like sitting on her rug like sitting on her work she's always on the big screen tv i used to hate it because i used to want to watch cartoons and i was like sick still like we were like after school like she's turning on oprah right before dragon ball z is coming on or something else or something else some anime or whatever and so i can't really like it but that was my big introduction to oprah but she loved oprah like she she loved me it's just she just loved oprah that was her obsession so actually a few months after she died

i actually was honored as one of oprah's super soul hundred it was her list of favorite people so i flew out to l.a and i met oprah and we met and we're on her website and everything and i was there and i was there in the same tape with Zendaya, like Sophia Bush, like Jesse Williams, Chandra. It was, everybody was there. It was really like, it was a very good group. And I met Oprah and I just felt that was a full circle moment. A very sad year, but I think

that, I just think on a spiritual level, that happening that year was just, like, how did that happen? It felt like that's like a manifestation, a full circle moment of really, like, how did that happen? It was felt like that's like a manifestation, a full circle moment of really like some, something that she really values, something that I was introduced to her.

And, but I honestly wish she would have like saw it. Cause I probably could have, she probably couldn't FaceTime. I probably would have found a way to like to call while my phone's like, can you talk to my, can you just talk to my grandma or something like that? My great grandma. Yeah, it'd be great.

But, but, but I think that I'm sure she's smart. I'm sure in heaven, she's really, she's excited. She's, yeah, I always look at it this way. I think that coming from these sort of environments, it's a weird journey, but I understand. And I think you find solace that anybody, whether your ancestors or whether they died before the senior census,

that you are their happiness. You are their legacy. And your success is really, your success is the best way you can honor them because you prove that they raised you and and that and that all their efforts to take care of you was were really doing the best they can was really worth it yeah and she probably always knew you were going to be successful i know some great grandmas like that yeah she always told me she's right so i didn't like doing like hard labor i didn't like cuttingmas like that. Yeah, she always told me. She's right. So I didn't like doing hard labor. I didn't like cutting grass. But she always said, baby, you better be good.

You're book smart. Because she said, but I didn't want to do. I hated hard art. And she still made me do it. But yeah, but like I am book smart. She said, baby, you're book smart. She said, you ain't got that. You got to hire somebody to do it. Yeah, so I'm book smart. She said, baby, you got me. You're book smart. She said, you ain't got that. You got to hire somebody

to do it. Yeah. So I'm book smart. That's good. That's good that she inspired you and led you and had a vision for you to become something better.

Another thing you talk about in the book is how to run a multimillionaire company and using hood wisdom with top business school education. Tell us a little bit about what that's.

And this is probably really important for people to learn, too, that want to run startups. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think that there's a level. I think that's something I was always able to. I've been able to see. Like, we made our first, I think, first million when I was like 24, 24.

So just imagine running a company. We got our first. And this is a start. We got our first, we got a, and this is a start, we got an investment from Steve Cates, found everybody well. We got an investment from Kevin Plank, CEO of Under Armour.

And all that kind of pressure and being in that space was cool. But the thing is, I think that when you, something I noticed that was a difference between me and a lot of my peers who are raving money in tech, I'm starting companies, is that there's a level of persistence and grit and resilience of the out that is necessary running a company

that I have more of than I think some of they did because they have more privileged background. So when their company didn't take off like immediately and they didn't raise $10 million or get 20 million revenue in less than six months, like Facebook or something like that, they quit because they didn't have that persistence. And I think scholarly anytime, like we're up and up, we're in this hyper growth right now, but there are downs and we have those ups and downs that you keep persistent. So I think that tenacity of going through so much when you're younger, like being able to overcome that, it really developed those muscles, that resilience, that grit that really carried

over the entrepreneur. They really carry over entrepreneurship because entrepreneur, I mean, a journey, entrepreneurship is a journey and it's a high level of risk, but it's, it's a journey that a lot of people want it to be like this kind of like hockey curve, but it's really like this, it's a zigzag there. And then it's a big payoff at the end, right? Like if you look at Jeff Bezos, he's the richest man in the world. Like Amazon was started at a bookstore and in his garage, whatever it was. And look where he is now. Elon Musk, like people told him Tulsa was crazy like for years and years. And look what happened.

So I think that it is a journey. But it's the payoff is always at the end. But that's good. And I think that what I tell people, I love being a young entrepreneur. But sometimes I hate it because I think that you're learning how to run a company and run a company at the same time. So you're learning in real time. I have executives and stuff like that who are obviously much older than me. So it's a lot.

It's a lot of people, man. It's just a lot. But I do think that it is grateful. But I think that the days just get crazy. And I think that I just tell young entrepreneurs or just entrepreneurs in general, the entrepreneurship of the grind is a journey. Please don't just read TechCrunch and just see all these exits. This company sold this one this much or that. And that's the end game where you want some sort of liquidity event. However, it's a journey to get there. And sometimes when a lot of people are driven by

their process of success comes through the media, they tend not to understand that the media does not necessarily reflect reality or what happened behind the scenes before that person got there. Yeah. Yeah. It's a challenge. I started my first company when I was 18 and it's a hell of a road. Looking back at 53 now and all the companies that I owned and all the stuff I did, it's extraordinary. There's so many of them. I've been writing my book about some of them. And like half of my stories are forgotten. I'll be telling somebody something.

I'll be like, oh, yeah, hey, we need to put that one story in the book. That's happened like 50 times now. And the journey is just amazing that you go on. There's nothing like it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's rewarding. And you nothing like it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, and it's rewarding and it's, you

learn so much. And that's why a lot of times people say your second company is always like the best one or second or third, because you learn so much that first ride, you learn so much about yourself. You learn how the mechanics running a company, who to hire, wrong hires that experience. It just helps mitigate so many mistakes that you're gonna that you would have made the second time and yeah it's just good it's a lot of journeys and i you know and i look forward to just at some point sally's gonna exit and i look forward to being able to do some other some other things too yeah and in the case of jeff payos the payoff is you get to fly into space on a giant phallic symbol rocket let's see your book begins with a quote from the dark knight rises tell us about how batman influenced you as a child that's a really interesting story so it's so

batman as much as not as like bruce wayne so i was fascinated by entrepreneurship when i was young and my one of my first introductions that was this um billionaire bruce wayne to go to tv batman has come on a cartoon network it was like yeah it was like one of the first older ones and i was always fascinated by this um this person even though he's from a wealthy family and all that but i was really fascinated about this concept of this ordinary person using what he had like to technology and the resources he had to be able to and didn't have superpowers or anything which i accept which like first like a superman who was just born like you know being able to be fast and misleading like having to go through something and also go through something and build something like and

build his own version of yourself your own superhero to be able to help people i think was really compelling and relatable in a symbolic way and also just like bruce he was really cool he was cool like doing like especially in the movies and stuff like that. But even though the childhood cartoon was, was really influential for me, it was really fun. But yeah, but I saw that. I liked that.

I liked the idea. And honestly, like that's kind of my goal. So my end game, like it is to make an impact. And it is to like, I want to be somebody that accumulates wealth to be, and,

and use and use my experiences to come back to others. And like while fictional Bruce Wayne, he obviously inherited money. That was a piece of it. But again, I think that doing, being a person that's able to be in a position of power and have wealth and being able to leverage that wealth to help other people, I think is something I really inspired.

And also you can have the cool stuff too, but you can also, but being able to help people and leveraging that, I think is something really important. I think that's what Batmanman represents it's like it's left it's leveraging power access and resources and then and then you're also a billionaire on the side which is the cool useful part of it and i think that's something that that was very symbolic for me very cool for me it was very cool for me as a kid but growing up especially starting to manifest the christian bale movies and all this other stuff i think think it really, as an adult, it became much more symbolic.

So I was going to put you on the spot and say, is Christian Bale the best Batman, in your opinion? So far, yeah. I think that I don't know. Judges, do we have the answer on that? That is correct, according to the judges. Yeah, Christian Bale. He's an exceptional actor. I don't know about the new guy.

I don't know. I didn't want to see Batman turned into what was that vampire thing? The Twilight series? Yeah, yeah. The Twilight guy. Robert Pike. I think they keep switching the characters because now Ben

I feel like he said he wasn't going to be Batman anymore and then now he is gonna be Batman again so I don't know it sounds like a legal nightmare like a lot of stuff happening but yeah there's a new one coming out like like with another character or something like that but yeah

hopefully he's not running around with his shirt off like the like that series yeah but that was the thing I'm like it's kind of a little it's kind of skinny or frame so yeah i wonder i wonder how he fits that you know mold but we'll see it's gonna be all suit or something i don't know anything else you want to touch on or share or tease out about the book before we go no i really think i really think if you are a young person who is who's just who you know had a unconditional background if you are a person trying to start a company,

if you're a person trying to pay for college, if you're a parent who has a child, a young adult who's interested in entrepreneurship, who needs inspiration, who wants to really learn lessons about hardship, resistance, grit, or you just want to instill ambition in them in some way or be inspired yourself and really see a playbook on how to go from point from A to Z, how to start from zero and get to a hundred. I think that this book is for you. And I think that there are a lot of really important lessons that are really powerful. And I hope as many people can get a lot from it.

And I hope so too, Christopher. It's stories like this where people rise from poverty and the odds are stacked against them. You have to fight for every inch you possibly can. I kind of went through not a similar thing, but there always was somebody that would get in our way. And maybe that plays into some of the stuff you talked about from the hood where sometimes you get a little street level with some people to get where you go. But it's a fight. It's a journey. I'm glad that you've

shared your story so that you can lift other people up. Give us your plugs so that people can find you on the interwebs if you will. Yeah. My, my Instagram is C J gray, C J G R A Y nine one. That's my Instagram. And yeah, and go to my scholarly.com and learn more about scholarly and you can get the book, go where there is no path on Amazon pre-order today or get it on August 3rd when it comes out there you go get it now order it now guys actually yeah you want to order pre-order it now so that he gets all these great sales on the day is you always want that thing going on uh be the first in your book club to be able to read this book give it away to all your friends relatives all that good stuff thank you very much Christopher being on the show sharing your inspirational story and just awesome sauce I just to be able to read this book, give it away to all your friends, relatives, all that good stuff. Thank you very much,

Christopher, for being on the show, sharing your inspirational story and just awesome sauce. I just, I love great stories like this. I love people who not only lift themselves up, but also help lift up others because, you know, I,

someone told me writing this book that there's somebody out there just waiting for this book to be published and it will help them and save them. So I'm looking forward to hopefully your book's going to come out and lift some people up and make some difference in lives. So that should be awesome. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you.

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