This Week in Startups - E1085: Chris Atoki shares his inspiring story: from homeless to homeowner in 4 years through grit, technology & hustle

Episode Date: July 17, 2020

Follow Chris: https://twitter.com/kingatoki Follow Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis

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in startups. We talk here a lot about entrepreneurship and we talk a lot about grit. We talk about pursuing your dreams

and we talk about opportunity. And right now in America, I believe that opportunity still exists. And when I say

something like opportunity still exists on Twitter, which is a madhouse. Let's be honest. It's a

hall of mirrors. It's a lot of extreme voices. People get very upset at me when I say, I believe that opportunity still exists in America. And I believe, sure, it may not be evenly distributed, but it never has been. Opportunity, grit, hustle. These are the things that make America and Americans great. And I just thought, I wish I had somebody I could talk to about this credibly in the moment. And right as I was having this moment and thinking about in the last couple weeks,

I saw a tweet go by. And it was by a gentleman named Chris Atoki. And he's on the line right now. And I thought his story was so notable that I needed to have Chris on the podcast. King Atoki, that is. I'm sorry, I don't mean to, I'm sorry to the king. He's at King, Atoki, A-T-O-K-I.

I'm sorry to be so casual in the presence of royalty, King of Toki. But welcome to the podcast. And your tweet went viral. Explain to everybody what you tweeted and what the reaction was. And welcome to the pod. Thank you for having me. You know, this is great to be able to talk about my story, I guess, and inspire whoever I can inspire. But I tweeted pretty much that I was homeless, you know, about four years ago, sleeping in my car, wondering where my next meal would be and I had just bought a house. I didn't expect it to go viral at all. I tweeted it from my car walking out of the mortgage office after I gave away a bunch of money.

And I just put my phone down and came back to it and there was a lot of likes and replies. Okay. So in America, something good happened. A person who was homeless four years ago, four years later bought a home. Tell me what happened in your life that changed everything. I would say I lost just about everything all at once. You know, I got kicked out of my mom's place. I had lost my job. I had to quit college because I couldn't afford it anymore and I was cold hungry and I had like 83 cents in my account, you know, one of these, one of the days that I remember very specifically. All right. So we go,

Let's just go to that moment. We're going to tell the story, just, you know, act one, act two, act three. Act one is you're in college and you're going to college, I believe, full time and working full time. Is that correct? Yep, correct. Okay. Now, most people believe that this is impossible, but you and I share this in common. I worked three jobs, and I went to school at night, four nights a week, three hours at Fordham at Lincoln Center.

And it took me, basically four and a half, five years to graduate. But, you know, I had to pay my own way. And it was brutal, but, you know, I worked those 50, 60 hours a week. And then I just did my 16 hours of, it was three hours times four classes. So it was 12 hours of being in classrooms and then whatever, another 12 hours of schoolwork. So your entire life at that point in time was work and school and sleeping if you had the ability to sleep, correct? Exactly. You know, I was going to school from 7 a.m. to about 3 p.m.

Got it. I would try to rest if I didn't have any homework. I would have two hours and then I go to work from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. and then start over every day. Okay. So you did the night shift and you went to school during the day. I worked during the day and I did the night school. These are two viable options. But explain to me, Chris. How did you watch five hours of Netflix a day like the average American when you were doing these other two activities? I didn't. You know, I didn't watch Netflix. I didn't. go out to party or anything like that. So you're telling me you gave up Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad in order to improve your lot in life and move your station in life? I still haven't seen them to this day.

So I'm just going to let you know now that you're a homeowner and you're making some bank. So you can catch up and these are just your first two series. You're going to want to catch up on Breaking Bad and you're going to want to catch up on Game of Thrones. However, I do think you made the right decision to spend a couple of years not watching television, which is very addicting. The average American spends four or five hours watching television. Instead of those four or five hours, you redeployed that time to school and work. I'm correct, right? Did you have a life? Was there any life outside of school and work for you

during this period? Not at all, you know, and it's, it was so much so to where even now, you know, I don't even watch TV, you know, I'm just working all the time still trying. Even now, where I have my house. I have a better job. I'm in a lot better position than I was. I'm still not, you know, relaxing, so to speak. Yeah. You still got the hustlers.

You know what? I feel you because, uh, once a grinder, you know, once a hustler, it's very hard to stop that DNA and, and stop and smell the rose because I've had to really work hard in my life to,

to, to like, stop and do and enjoy some of the fruits of the labor. But, uh, you're doing the school, great. You're trying to get that Associates or College degree. You're not going to Harvard, or I assume.

And this job that's from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. I'm assuming it wasn't a great paying job. No, I was making minimum wage and at a point even below that because, you know, well, less hours, not 40 hours a week. Got it. So you're making basically minimum wage or less. You're going to community college or a state or city school, I assume? Yep, Cumberland County College.

Okay. And then you're working hard and the reward you get for all this is the bottom falls out. Definitely. And that floored me, you know, like losing my job and I told it on the tweet, the first thing they did was cut my hours because I'm going to school. And, you know, that hurt because, you know, I'm not making as much money as I'm need. needed to, but after they cut my hours, I think it was like two weeks later. They said, we're going to let you go because you're not working enough.

This is a factory job you had. You were in a factory overnight, so, or something like that. It was like a warehouse. You're working in a warehouse. You're doing the overnight shift. It sucks. You're exhausted. And you got to get out of there at 5 a.m.

Try to get two or three hours of sleep and then getting your class and try to actually be alert. You finish up the day. you try to get another two or three hours of sleep and maybe you catch up on that sleep on the weekend. Is that correct in terms of describing the week for you? Pretty much, yeah. Then you'll lose the job.

Mom doesn't want you at home anymore and now you're stuck with school and you're paying for school yourself, I assume? Yes. What happens next? I ran out of money. My money started dwindling. So that was the first thing I had to drop out of college right after that, you know, and then it's dropping out of college.

So you had to drop out of college. And that is for a guy like you who's trying to make it in the world, that's got to be a gut punch. Tom take me to the day. Take me to the hour. Where were you when you had to make that decision? Where were you physically? I was actually just getting up because it was one of these nights where I didn't sleep at all. And, you know, I'm getting up at 7 a.m. to go to my engineering class, which is already hard because that was the first one in the morning. And, you know, I'm just, it just got, I was exhausted. I was out of money. And I'm just like, I can't do it anymore, you know, like looking at my future. I'm like, so you're broken. It won't last. Exactly. And you just decide that's it. I'm done. At that point, yep, that's what I thought I was like, I lost everything else. I can't see myself continue.

to do. I think I had like six months left for, or not six months, like three months left until I got my associate's degree. And I was like, I can't, I can't do it. I was devastated because that was just getting my associates. And I thought that was the beginning. And now you're thinking, my God, I'm assuming you're thinking, I'm busting my ass and I, and I'm not making this work. Do you blame yourself? Do you blame society? Do you blame who? What for your life in life at that moment? If you get to your dark moment there, what do you say, what's the internal dialogue? I would say I blamed myself, you know, because I wasn't, you know, perfect growing up.

I wasn't perfect at all, you know, in life, not even close to it. I made lots of mistakes. Nothing, you know, too terrible or anything like that. But I made a lot of mistakes and I just felt like, you know, getting everything taken away from me, that just had to be like the result of me, of all my bad mistakes. That's what I was thinking at the time. So basically you attribute your lot in life to yourself. You take ownership of it.

Definitely. You know, I'm very hard on myself even now. And then even more so, you know, I felt like it was my fault. Whatever I did, I didn't know what I did. I just know it was my fault. So didn't blame society. You didn't blame the factory. You didn't blame the school.

You didn't blame anyone but yourself. You looked in the mirror and said, this is on me. At that point, yeah. You know, whenever I lost my job, I want to say, hey, you know, maybe the manager, doesn't like me, but I could, even now, I can't say it was his fault. Because he, he didn't want to fire me, but that's just how the company worked or dropping out of school. I didn't blame the school for being expensive. You know, I blamed myself for not being able to afford it, you know, so. And, uh, when we get back from this quick break, I want to talk about the comeback.

When we get back on this week and start it. It's time for you to close that laptop. It's time to shut it all down and chill out with, you know that sound. Get ready. It's coming. Oh, there it is. That crispy Korsi, I'm going to have a little bit right now. Mmm. I love that ice cold taste of that Kores Brewing Company in Golden, Colorado, where they're made to chill. There is no doubt that summer's going to be different this year. We all know that.

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I want you to celebrate responsibly. Of course, you know that. Coors Light, Mountain Cold Refreshment, and it is made to chill. Let's get back to this amazing episode. Great. Okay. A problem when I crack open a cold course light, you know what the problem is? I just want another one. That is so refreshing. All right, everybody. Chris Atoki is here with me, King Atoki, A-T-O-K-I on the Twitter.

His tweet went viral. His story, pretty brutal up until this point. You hit bottom. No job. No money. No home. And just a couple of months out from getting... in that associate's degree, you have to drop out what happens next. How do you rebuild?

Well, there was a one, there was one specific time. And I, I remember it vividly. I'd like to say, and it was, I put it all on the tweet. I was sitting in front of a Walmart and, you know, I had no money in my account. I mean, it was less than a dollar, a dollar. I think it was around 83 cents when I was, I think specifically somewhere around there. And I just felt like giving up, like literally killing myself. You know, like I was contemplating. You know, there was that pivot point of do I just give up and just kill myself or, you know, do I like lift myself out almost?

So just like I said on the tweet, I didn't really know how to describe it. It wasn't like a out-of-body experience or something. But, you know, I had a crappy 1995 Ford Thunderbird and the rearview mirror wasn't even a attached to the ceiling of the car. So I grabbed it out of the backseat. I looked at myself and, you know, right then it was the weirdest thing ever, but it was almost like a fire lit in me because it's almost like talking to myself outside of myself. And I said, you know, every day from that point on, I'm going to live for myself until I die.

That's the way I said it to myself. It sounds weird out loud. and even when I was typing it, it sounded weird, but it made perfect sense to me. And it was one of the, it was like a euphoric moment or something, like where I just said, I'm going to live for myself at that point. And I think it was the day after or the day or two days later. I can say this is where the story ramps up because I went to the library and I applied for every job imaginable.

You know, I didn't put in a job title like you have to do on Indeed or Zip. recruit or a monster.com or dice.com or whatever. I just put Vineland, New Jersey and I think 50 mile radius or something like that and press search. And every single job that came up, I applied for it. I went so you just decided, I'm at the bottom. Can only go up. Let's just start applying. And you go to the library because there's no other computer available to you, but they do have them at the library. Thank God for the libraries. And people, a lot of of people are like, why are we funding these things? It's like, you know what? There needs to be a floor in society for access to the internet. We used to call it the digital divide. And it's pretty

easy to be cynical. Like, why do we have computers at library when everybody's got a supercomputer in their pocket or everybody's got computers at home? Well, what about somebody who hits rock bottom, which is where you were? No library, you wouldn't have had high-speed internet, I assume. You wouldn't have the ability to do these applications. Exactly. I had like, you know, I forgot what service I had, but I know most of the time my internet was 3G, which was not fast at all. I mean, data capped. Exactly. I got you. So what happens? You go back, you check your Gmail account and you've any good news? Yes, and a lot of them, you know, hit reply because a lot of the jobs, if you just apply for anything and all of the jobs come up, these are jobs that people

will pay a monkey to do, you know, and I'm coming at it like, hey, I can do a job that a monkey can do. So I have a lot of... You're humble. You'll tell you. You'll take anything. Yeah. And there's a lot of people who maybe just maybe they feel they're above a certain job. So you applied for everything. You didn't care. If you paid money, you're going. Exactly. I tell me, I give people examples like, you know, warehouse worker, again, factory worker or something like that, a wedding DJ assistant, you know, a pickle for a person who, who is stuffing pickles in a box, you know, like these jobs do exist in America. Exactly. Yes. And there are, there are a group of people who maybe are unwilling to do them.

because they suck, but having no money sucks more. So you decide, I'm going to do it. What job do you wind up taking? Pickle Farmer? Pickle Packer? Yeah, so one thing again, just like we talked about in the beginning, I didn't, I was kind of like you,

where you said you worked three jobs. I got a lot of nose, you know. I look back at my Indeed history, and I think I applied for just on Indeed over 1,500 jobs. 1,500. 1,500. You get mostly nose.

What jobs do you take? And I took another factory job. I was shoving like meat into like these little containers or whatever. It was some meat packaging company. I got another job as Mary K. The Mary K tubes, I was putting labels on those. The pickle farmer job or a pickle box job. That was weird.

Yeah. And yeah. And so these jobs pay minimum wage. they're backbreaking. The boss is a jerk in some cases. Sometimes the boss is good, but it does put a little bit of gas in the tank literally and figuratively. Exactly.

Yep. What next? So from there, I didn't stop. I was breaking even still because it was minimum jobs, plus the hours weren't where I would want them to be. So I was breaking even. Plus, I told you had that crappy car, that 95 Ford Thunderbird that always needed repair.

I still needed to eat. By the way, that car was pretty fly when it came out. I'll just be honest. It was a good-looking car than the underbird. I give forward some props for that in 19-90. If it was 2005, you'd be okay. But we're talking 2016. It was a clunker.

The car was as old as I was. That's the thing. Yeah, that's pretty. Yeah, that's with your car, that would be the equivalent of me driving in 189070 Mustang. It's a hot car. It's a classic now. All right.

So what happens next? So yeah, so you're treading water, you're treading water. exactly and I didn't want to stop there because I wasn't satisfied you know always under that threat of will I get fired again you know am I doing good enough for my boss to keep putting me on you know the schedule or whatever so I just kept looking for other jobs I told you I applied for literally thousands of jobs and that's not even an exaggeration you know every time that one job would let me go because I still got fired you know for all for whatever reason and um I always had a another job coming up. So it's just I've done a lot of things until finally I somebody talked to

me about Primera. And if you don't know what that is, it's like a, some people call it a pyramid scheme. It's multi-level marketing, whatever. But MLMLAM, multi-level marketing. It's like Mary Kaye Cosmetics, whatever. You sell something, you convince other people to sell it. You get a little kickbacks. It's like you're getting paid on commission, but you learn how to sell. Exactly. And those people are some of the most motivated individuals. you will ever see. I mean, all of them say, hey, I'm going to be a millionaire before I hit 30, or I'm going to have my own business where I have all this residual income. But, you know, I drank the Kool-Aid a little bit too. I'm not going to lie. You know, I was like, man, this is cool. You know,

I see people who are literally making, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars and stuff. And, you know, I'm like, man, I want to be like that. But it's just the individuals that I saw. I've never seen people so motivated to just work, I guess. There were hustlers. Exactly. And, you know, I did pretty well with that, but it's just that first start. That's where I got my first sales job. And then that's when I got into sales. So I think that's a big unlock. That's a big on lock. Once you realize that you can convince somebody to give you money, it's why I always tell people, if you can get a sales job in a tech company, just take that job because I see a lot of CEOs. You ask them where they started. They say sales. I was a sales trainee. I was a cell. Because you know, because you know, you know why? Because you know why the customer says no and why the customer says yes. You know why the customer cancels. It's almost like also being in, when you're in customer

success, which used to be called the customer helpline, the people who work in sales and the people who work in the customer helpline, they understand customers and the salespeople understand how to talk to customers and get them to give them a credit card. You know how to learn to close.

Exactly. And, you know, my, because, say, I applied to all those jobs and I got a bunch of noes, In selling, you know, they always say it's a numbers game where you get like, you know, out of 10 customers, you'll get seven knows, two maybes and one, yes, you know. And I saw that. And that's what they kind of taught me. And I was reading books on, I can't even remember the books now.

But I can't remember reading books. Just little snippets about, you know, some encouragement. But anyway, so that's where I got my first sales job. And after leaving Primera, I wanted other sales jobs because I was like, I can take no. I don't care. I don't really take it personally. But I think the biggest thing is that taught me how to sell myself, which I always tell people, one of the first things that you want to do before you do anything trying to improve

yourself is learn how to sell yourself. And I even put a tweet out there, you know, I'm a black man with a bunch of tattoos, you know, and I'm in a professional environment and all that. And in America, and, you know, I just bought a house, you know, and stuff like that. And I was homeless four years ago. Right. I try to say that because I say I'm nobody special. I'm, you know, one of the most, I guess, down-looked-on individuals in America, generally, you know, speaking.

But still, did you let that get in your head? Because, yeah, we haven't talked about race at this point. But did you let that get in your head? Was that something that you thought about, hey, I'm a black man in America. Why is it so hard? It shouldn't be this hard. Did that get in your head? it I'll say it got into I got in my head as in hey it's one of the variables in my life that makes me need to push harder push myself harder try harder yeah but it never stopped me you know it never I never looked at anybody different I always tell people ask me before you know why why weren't you bitter you know whenever I got a no from an interview or when somebody was maybe racist towards me or maybe prejudged me or something like that I say I'm never bitter because I look at everybody like a human and I still

remember the golden rule that we all here, treat everybody the way you want to be treated. And I do that with anybody, regardless of race, gender, whatever, religion, any of that stuff. So I'll say to answer your question more directly, no, I didn't let it get to me because I just, I didn't see it. You know, I even though it was in the back of my mind. Yeah, go ahead. No, I was going to say, so you went from minimum wage. You get the sales job. I'm assuming you're making a little bit more of the minimum wage.

and then something happens where your salary I think more than doubles correct more than doubles when we get back from this quick break

I want to talk about how you went from zero to minimum wage to a little more than minimum wage and then you double triple up because you learned another skill after sales when we get back on the speaking startup

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Thanks to Vanta for supporting independent media like this week in startups. All right, welcome back to the riveting story of King Atoki. His name is Chris, but he has the Twitter handle King Atoki, A-T-O-K-I. All right, so you, just to catch everybody up, if you're jumping in the middle of the show, you lose everything, you can't get the associate's degree, you apply to 1,500 jobs on one job platform, you get three shitty ones, you get a little bit of gas in the tank, you learn how to sell through some dogged, brutal multi-level marketing

shenanigans but then something else happens you flip you flip you flip and then you find another skill to add after you learn to sell yourself what happens next in the story of King of Toki yep so you know at that point I was at a mattress firm

originally I went there I was working at sleepies converted to mattress firm and you know I had my job that was the best job ahead of the time. You know, I was making $30,000 a year at the time. I thought I was on top of the world. Cha-ching. Ch-ching. You know, exactly. 600 a week, baby. We made it. I remember when I hit 30 a week. You get that 600 a week. You start thinking like, hmm, 600 a week. That was nice for me. I remember when I hit 30. Okay. Because then you're like, what if it hits 40? Ooh, 800 a week. I would just do that math in my head all

the time. I used to dream, what would it be like to make $1,000 a week? Did you have that moment where you're like, wait a second, I'm making $600. If I double this, I could get to $1,000 a week. Yep. Even working at mattress firm, I was like, maybe I should take an online job or something I could do for my phone to get that extra 400 specifically to get to $1,000 a week. It is a milestone. It is a milestone. I will tell you that. So you're working in a mattress store and you're selling mattresses, I take it. Yep. What's the secret to sell in a mattress? How do you close?

How do you close the mattress? Because people come in there, they want that mattress. Nobody's going in a mattress store who doesn't need a mattress. If they come in, if they're in the mattress store, they want to walk out with the mattress. That's true, right? There's nobody who's just checking them out. You need it. For the most part, yeah.

Exactly. How do you close? What's the secret? What did you learn for the people who are working at mattress stores right now? What's the secret? Whether somebody is coming in in a bins or a. beat up Honda, try to sell them the $3,000 mattress. Treat them all the same.

That's what I, every single time. You just start with the $3,000 and work backwards. Yep. That's it. I love it. You start with the, you stop, you listen, if we're, because you never know. You don't know. It could be somebody who's got the money to buy it and they just have, they,

their benzes in the shop, or maybe they're just cheap about cars, but they're, they care about sleep. I love it. So you're doing this. You're selling the mattresses. Now you feel like, hey, not only are things a stable in my life, but maybe I'm coming back. Exactly. And that's where, you know, I went to college for engineering and I had to drop out.

But I was like, I wanted to be an engineer. I wanted to be in tech. I don't want to be in sales. I hated it. I don't like customer service. But you did it anyway. You did it anyway because you had to and you saw it as a bridge. Exactly.

So just to, I want to make sure we stop on this point for a second. Life is unfair. Life is hard. And sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do to get to the place you want to be. Are these three statements true in your experience, Chris? 100%. 110%. Right.

Yes. This is just, this is life. Lest you think that you automatically deserve or you will be given the dream job sometimes you've got to do the jobs that suck to get to the jobs that are awesome in your dream. It's called sacrifice. You have to sacrifice, right? So you're in what year of sacrificing right now, five years, four or five years of sacrifice? Right.

And that kind of sucks. It's grinding on you, but it feels like you're coming back. What happens next? Yep. So mattress company and, you know, I want to go back in tech. So I look for schools and what I needed was something that's all. line because I don't want to be in a campus again like I did. I need something that has some kind of financial aid so I'm not paying out of pocket

because I still have to support myself and something that would teach me a web development. And then so I'm Googling things, you know, different type of schools and I see Lambda school. Okay. The school that I ended up going on, going to. So you see Lambda, you just from a Google search or you think maybe you saw it on Facebook? What do you think you ran into it? I don't know if you remember exactly that moment. No, I remember exactly. It was on Facebook because I remember exactly it was on Facebook.

It was an ad? You know, whenever you're searching things, yep, whenever you're searching things that I got one of those little ads that just pop up. Do you remember what the ad said? I wonder what the copy was that converted you. It was something like, you know, online boot camp with zero money down. I think that was like the big headline. I know the zero money down is the thing that brought me in. So zero money down. Just for everybody who's listening who's a copy editor or needs to be a copy editor. There's something about zero dollars up front that

gets people on the hook. So, and full disclosure, I had the founder of Lambda on the podcast, and I put a little tiny bet, a little tiny, slicey poo. I put a little bit of money into Lambda. And when I say a little bit, there was not much room

for me, but I just put a little bit of money in. So you see that ad, you click on it. You go start doing research. What happens next? Yeah, one of the things was back then at least they had a little online quiz that you would take out. I guess it was like critical thinking. But anyway, even before that, or when I did it, it was like, congratulations. You know, you passed a quiz.

And I was looking into it more. And it was like it's full time at the time. So I was devastated because I was thinking, you know, everything else is perfect. This is exactly what they do. You don't have to pay any money back until you get a job. You know, this is what I want to do. And, yeah, that full time just stopped me because I needed something part-time. So what I did was I went out on the limb and I emailed Austin, the CEO of Lambda

School, and just talked to him, you know, just said, hey, I really want to be in your school. I can't really do full-time. You know, I was just talking to him about my situation. And we didn't really have, you know, an extensive conversation. But he emailed me back and we were talking. And it just blew my mind that the CEO of a company is taking his time out to talk to me, a potential that maybe not even a potential student, but just somebody who could be one of his students. This is two years ago? Yeah, yeah, or 2017. Okay, so three years ago, we're sitting here in 2020.

So it's three years ago. You email the CEO. How did you get the CEO's email? I can't remember if it was on with that congratulations you got in or you passed the test. I think it was on that email. And I think I've replied back to it, thinking it was just like automated or something like that, you know, I'll get his secretary or something. So you made it ask.

What was the ask? It was just telling them like, hey, you know, is there something that you guys have for me that's not full time? And, you know, it was just that. And, you know, I didn't know, I didn't expect him to reply. I thought it was just going to be automated of reply like I thought. But he got back to me. And it blew my mind that the CEO of a company.

So you get another unlock. And I think that this is why you are unstoppable king. And this is one king talking to another. king. Yes. Or in my case, from Mount Olympus, you know, I'm not saying, I'm a god, but I could be in the Hercules category. Maybe someday I'll be Zeus, but, you know, just king to king, you're getting the unlocks now.

You unlock the rule of numbers. You don't need, if you send 1,500, you unlock 1500 job requests. You unlocked, sometimes you've got to do crummy jobs to get the one you want. You unlock sales is a numbers game. You don't need 10 yeses. You need one yes. And then you unlock Wait a second. The most powerful people in the world are accessible. Wait a second. This is a major unlock because I remember when I learned that. When I was young, I used to think, God, I want to be important in life. I want to be powerful in life. I want money. I want money. I want power. I want people to know the name

Jason Calacanis. And this is when I was on the subway going to Fordham at night and I was a barback. You know what a barback is? That's worse than your job of packing pickles into things. I mean, I would have to carry ice and beer from the basement of a

bar, the salty dog in Bay Ridge. I would carry up a staircase that was made in the 20s where the steps were just broken and I would trip have to time and smack my knee on the on the concrete carrying up just in the dang dark basement two buckets of ice cases of beer and then pack the beer into the ice my hands would be raw from

packing that beer and you know i started at six o'clock at night and i finished at five a m and i made you know the good news was they they would pay me twenty five dollars cash for 12 hours of work. It was $2 an hour. But the bartenders, if I did a good job, they made $200 a night. And depending on how hard I worked and how, you know, I'd be like, yep, you got it. I'll clean it out. I'll do whatever you need to do. They break a glass in the ice. I melt the ice. I put new ice in. I get the glass out. I did whatever they wanted. I would get them, I'd run and get them a pack of cigarettes. I'd do whatever they need. Just so instead of giving me $40 at the end of night, they might give me $50 or 60. So I got the original. original 25, plus they might give it be 40, 50, 60. If it was a good night, I might get 80 bucks. 80 bucks. Hey, you know, now I'm sitting pretty. You know, I'm making like $8 an hour here.

This is getting legit because at the time in 1989, minimum wage is $3.50. So I'm doubling minimum wage. But my hands, when I say my hands were raw from that ice and I smelled like smoke, it sucked. but put a little gas in the tank and then you start meeting people so that's what you did you learn to meet people and you get accepted correct uh yep i actually just

from austin emailing me back that showed like this is where i'm supposed to be you know i never talked to a CEO before you know i didn't even know the CEO of mattress firm at the time or any other company i'd been in right but here you are CEO of a tech firm who could change your life and he accepts you into the school when we get back from this final break we're coming around the third base right now

and that means I'm going to get to crack open a cold course light after this after we get back from that break I want to know what happens in Lambda school and this isn't a commercial for Lambda this just happens to be a viral tweet that happened it could be any this free code academy

is it freecode.org what's the you all for the free one Nick? Freecode camp.org is the other one right? Quincy Larson Shout out Quincy Larson. He's got the free version of Lambda. So I'm not picking any code school here.

You can also learn code for free, you know, on Khan Academy or YouTube. Lambda is but one. So I'm not just like rooting for the home team. I own a de minimis amount. When we get back, I want to hear about what it was like to sell mattresses, learn to code, and then how you got that first job when we get back with the king on this week's startups. Hey, everybody. I want to tell you about Republic's new product.

It's really exciting. You know Republic because a lot of the companies I, invest in will go and do an equity crowdfunding raise on Republic. And I know Ken over there and Chuck over there. We've invested in a ton of companies together. And they have something new. It's called note. And it's the Republic Note. And you can see that at Republic.com slash note. Now, as I've said many times, I believe that angel investing is a great thing for society and that everybody should have at least the opportunity to do that. And the team at Republic has launched this new, very unique profit-sharing security token. Okay? And this lets investors share in the upside of companies that

raise money on Republic. And Republic has over 700,000 members now. So when a company chooses to raise money on the Republic platform, Republic receives an investment, basically upside potential in that company. We all know how that works, or you should. Well, if they do have an exit, then they're going to distribute some or all of that cash to the Republic core. That's the technology hub of Republic. And they're going to give that back to the holders of the Republic note. Well, more than 200 companies have already raised money on Republic using regulation crowdfunding. And one of our company's balloon, which went through our accelerator, and that we syndicated and we put money in, Republic fell in love with that company as well,

and they put some money in. So we've done business with them before. And we love the team over there. They're really in it for the right reasons. And right now, on the accredited side, they've raised money for companies like Robin Hood, Carta, and Relativity Space, right? These are names you've heard of. For now, it's only accredited investors, but non-accredited investors can also right now make a reservation and reserve their spot for, you know, if they are able to do a public sale of these using Regulation A, which I have a sense that they're going to do at some point. So whether you're accredited or non-accredited, I think it's worth checking out at Republic.com. And as always, terms and conditions do apply. Congratulations to Chuck and Ken. I know you worked really hard on this for a couple of years now. And it's great to see it come to fruition.

And I'm always super open to new ways to fund these companies and new ways for people to participate in the funding of companies. And so great job getting it launched. And I will be participating and you should check it out. I can't tell you to participate, but I can tell you you should check it out and get educated. Republic.com slash note. Okay, let's get back to this amazing episode. All right, everybody, welcome back to this week in startups. The World is unfair. You don't get anything given to you. You have to do jobs that suck. Sales solves everything, and it is a numbers game. And, hey, sometimes powerful people are available to you. And there is racism in the world. And people are jerks and worse to you. But if you have that grit and resolve,

it might just work out. As it did, for Chris Atoki, who was on the program today. You can follow him, King Atoki on the Twitter, ATOKI. His tweet went viral. I took the tweet. I sent it to the producers and I said, book them, get him on the show. I want to know everything. Because I believe in America.

I believe in hustle. I believe that society is unfair. I believe we have race issues that need to be solved and it's long overdue. I believe that people are racist, jerks. But I also believe if you have grit and hustle, and you work really hard, it can happen. There's no guarantees, and it doesn't forgive all the other stuff I just said. And you are the living embodiment of that, Chris.

So you get into the school, and the school takes place in a Slack room and on Zoom or whatever, I assume? Yes, completely online. Great. You had some aptitude here, because obviously you had done a year and a half for your associates. So you get through the school And it's about nine-month program At the time it was a six-month program So it's a six-month program

But wait a second You said you needed to work full-time At the mattress company So how does one go to Lambda To get their degree Over six months while working full-time Are you back in the situation When you're not sleeping?

Kind of still But what I did was at mattress firm I didn't have Wi-Fi in the store And actually at the time I saved up enough to buy a room in somebody's apartment. And I didn't have Wi-Fi there. So what I did was I used my phone as a hot spot. And I bought probably the crappiest MacBook that I can find on, you know, eBay. Okay. So you spent 500 on a MacBook that grinds. Got it. So, you know, after getting it to turn on, I just went to school

during the day while I was in the store. Got it. All day. So you're in the store. You're getting paid to sell, but everybody knows that you have to sit there and wait for a customer coming. There could be a 45-minute break between customers. It could be a 20-minute break between customers. And you're allowed to, I guess, play bejeweled or threes or listen to the radio or a podcast. You chose to actually learn to code. Well, that's the thing is, well, I'm not in matches firm anymore, so I don't care. But we weren't allowed to do it.

So they said you had to sit there and do nothing? Literally sit there. Oh, God. Yeah. Find something to clean or something like that. Oh, I see. Yeah, they would just give you a busy work. God forbid somebody uses a little bit of free time to improve themselves. So anyway, a little hustle, a little bit of a gray area, but I'm going to allow it.

I did it myself. I did it my whole life. I was going to school at night. I was working at Sony. I was working for Mike Savino at Land Systems. Sometimes I needed to, you know, maybe during my lunch break, I had to do a little, you know, a bit of math homework. and sometimes, you know, when I was at college, I had to do a little bit of network engineering and IT stuff on my laptop. You got to do what you got to do. So you graduate, you're now 30K in debt on your ISA, your income sharing agreement to Lambda.

Explain what happens next. Yeah, so after I graduated, I just, the same thing I did, after that day in my car, I did with tech jobs. You know, I never had a job in tech, and everybody knows or anybody in the tech industry knows, you know, getting that first one is the hardest to do. So what I did was, you know, I spruced up my resume. I built a lot of projects, made everything look as pretty as I could make it, you know,

a previous mattress salesman with that experience. And I applied for anything. I did, I think it was Philly at the area or Philly at the time. I'd just put developer in Philly. And I put a hundred mile radius. applied for everything. I even moved it. I said in Connecticut, a 100 mile radius from there, you know, I was looking for jobs from Vermont all the way down to Texas if I needed to. And I applied for any job. I didn't even care if I didn't know the language, the technologies.

I said, I'll learn it before the interview. But I wanted, I just want to at least the interview experience. Got it. So you do your machine gun strategy again, spray and pray. Exactly. You're going to get something. You're going to hit a target. You're going to hit a target. Tell me about the target you hit. Tell me about the first job. Tell me about the second job. What happens next? The first job I got was at the neat company.

It's like a bookkeeping company in Philly. Really love that company. That was great. But I got hired for 65K. What? Doubled my income. Oh, a little $1,200 a week. Oh, $1,200.

You got a little $200 past the month. thousand dollar now you're thinking hmm for thunderbird maybe i can get uh i can maybe i could get a hundred ninety nine two hundred ninety nine dollar a month car mm-hmm wait a second maybe i don't need or maybe i don't need to rent a room maybe i'm going to be renting my extra bedroom exactly so and that's what i did one first check tell me about the because this is see this is what people don't realize because i was in your shoes i'm not a black man with tattoos okay i you know you in the vicar

Olympics in like who had it rougher, you had it rougher, okay? Period. Period. Full stop. I could always, you know, just before they try to cancel me for saying I had it hard, I will freely admit that like when I get pulled over by a police officer, I'm not going to get pulled out of the car and murdered. Okay. We all understand that these other problems exist in the world, but we can still talk about the way to get there and what we have in common, right? We have so much in common as human beings, as Americans, as hustlers, as people who are starting, you know, behind the eight ball, people who are starting, you know, maybe they're not even at home plate yet. When you get that first envelope and you open that check or pay stuff, I don't know if you had the direct deposit or if you went to the check cashing place like I did, we would go to the check cashing place and I just love to watch them count out that money. Tell me about that moment when you open that two-week check and it's for $2,500.

I mean, it was, come on. It was amazing, you know, like getting, getting that. I mean, of course, taxes were taken out, so. I know, but you still look at the gross. You can still look at the gross. Yep, and that's what I did. I was like, you know, this is more money than I, going from, like, at that point, it was, I think, two years prior or a year prior to from not having a job at all.

86 cents. Exactly. To being able to have a check. where not only did I just pay like at the time all of my bills in one week or that two week thing all in one paycheck to being able to save for the next month. I mean, that was like the craziest thing. Yeah. Mind blowing. It's mind blowing. It's mind blowing when when like all the sudden the uphill climb you hit a plateau, right? And it's like, oh, I'm not just like grasping for like, you know, just a rock to pull myself up, but I'm on a plateau and I can

actually see for miles. Because once you see the view from 65 dimes a year, you're like, okay, 65 times a year, there's a person next to me making 75 dimes, and the person who's got the office making 90. Like, did that happen in your mind? Where you start unlocking other, what are other people making in the building? Yeah, and it was more. of I didn't really look at it as the money. That's the thing. I looked at it as the position that they were in. That's where I was looking at. And I knew the money would come with it. Unpacked that a little bit. What does it mean to you, the position there in? So, you know, I got hired as a junior developer. And, you know, throughout my studies when I was studying at

Lambs or studying at mattress firm, you know, overnight. I didn't even go home whenever the store closed. But I did my studies. I built projects. I was networking, putting in all the hard work, even though I got hired as a job, a junior developer, that's just my foot in the door. I wanted to be a mid-level developer. I wanted to be a senior developer. You know, that's where I wanted to get to. And I knew the money came with it, but I wanted to be, you know, the person who makes the decisions in the company.

Got it. You could say, you know, that. So you, when you hit your goal, what I'm hearing is you like to set another goal. you like you actually move the goalposts for yourself every time okay so moving the goal post when I say that term to you you see that as a positive thing

when you raise the bar for yourself you see it as a positive thing now once you get in the door what do you have to do to make it to the next level because this is where we're starting to get to the you know we're getting up to current day you got another job after that and are you a mid-level developer, senior developer?

Where are you at now? Yeah, I would say more senior. I have a UI lead position. Whoa, user interface lead. You got lead in your title. Yep, so closer to that senior, but I like it. And I have a few other things that I'm doing, but I'll say. Side hustle, maybe a little weekend project.

Always. Always. You know, I know a guy who invest in the, I know an angel investor, by the way. So if that side hustle, Yum Yumskis, they can be sitting here, you could be pitching a company someday. All right,

so what's the ambition now? You got there. You make more money now, obviously. You don't have to tell us your current salary, but I'll assume it's above 65K. And then you decide you're going to buy your house. You save up a deposit,

or does somebody give you the deposit? Saved it up. You saved it up. Okay, so still, you're alone in life. You got nobody. looking out for you, except for you. Exactly. You know, I have a few, you know, friends and everything, but I didn't, not really anybody that I could call closer.

You know, you didn't know rich people. You didn't have a rich uncle, rich on who could just give you 50K or 25K for the down payment. You had to get that yourself. Exactly. Got it. And when you look back on this life, when you look back on this five-year journey and you could go talk to. yourself during those dark moments when you yourself said you consider killing yourself and you're not speaking uh metaphorically that you mean that sincerely sincerely one yes when you go back to yourself

taking that mirror from the back seat of the car and look in yourself in the mirror and saying hey this is it one way or the other what do people who are in that position right now who hear our conversation what did they need to know. What would you say to that person? What would you say to Chris back in 2015, 16 when you know what? It just maybe it's not worth it. Maybe I should end it or maybe this is just too unfair, this life, this system, this capitalism, America. What do you say to those people? I would say that if you feel like you've reached your bottom, which I did at that time, I was at absolute zero. I literally lost everything almost zero dollars in my account. The only way to go from there is up. It's like the thing, you know, even from there to here now, it wasn't a straight path.

There were still downs. I still made mistakes. You know, it wasn't just going up all the time. But there were downs. But I never, even though there were downs later in life past that point, it never was, I never got to that absolute zero again. I wouldn't tell everybody. If you're at your lowest point, if you're saying, man, I can't continue anymore. You, you're, You should, at that point, you should be happy because if you're at a point where you say you can't continue, you want to give up, you should be happy because from that point on, there's only up from there. There's only up.

So what I'm hearing in that answer is that perspective matters and how you frame your own story is critically important. You, at no point during the story, did I hear anything for you? from you where you pointed the finger at anybody else. You, and I asked you, I gave you multiple windows to blame somebody. And I did that explicitly during this conversation because, you know what? You probably had jerk bosses. Yeah, you probably had racist bosses.

Yeah, people probably saw a tattoo and said, well, man, black eye a tattoo. Maybe I don't need this guy in my company. You of anybody, as you said, could probably point the finger. But what people need to know, and there's a very important lesson for everybody, is that when you point a finger, you have three more pointing back at you. 100%. Just let it sink in, people. When you point your finger because your plan fell through,

you got three more fingers pointing back at you. Chris, sharing the story I think is critically important. because there's something I've been trying to say for the last couple of years. And I, you know, listen, Twitter is where we conversed about this stuff. That's where you and I met. And I've been trying to tell people that I believe the world is unfair. And I understand that black men get treated a certain way in this country and it's abhorrent and it has to stop. But there's also opportunity that still exists.

It's not fair. It's clearly unfair. It's difficult. It's hard. But when someone like you does it, I think we need to focus and celebrate how you did it and talk about it. And then think about what the blockers were in your story. And this is what I want to wrap on. I was thinking at what points could you have received more support or help?

and one of them is that Wi-Fi access came up and a computer came up. And it's very easy for rich people, for privileged people, to not take a moment and just think that having a decent computer and an internet connection is a blocker. These were specific blockers to you. not having an entry level job to pay your overhead is a blocker because if you can't pay the rent and put food on the table as a blocker watching television and wasting your time on bullshit that is not your career is a blocker for some people

you for some reason had a level of focus that you were able to get through these blockers but when you look back if you could remove blockers, I mentioned but a few. What are the blockers you think as a society? And I'm not, to be clear, I'm not saying to a black man in America who made it like, how should we fix America? But you fixed your situation. How should we fix America based on what you've learned?

Because you have done it. And that actually gives you the high ground for us to live. listen to you because you actually got to the other side. What should we do as a society? I say there's at least, there's many things you can do. And, you know, I have just one point of view. But two things that I would say is, number one, treat everybody as if they were your brother or even an extension of yourself. That's what I do. I look at everybody as an extension of myself. If I see somebody homeless or whatever and I have some money, I'll give it to them. If they, if somebody reaches out to me and says they need help, I don't care.

if I'm busy, I'm going to help that person because that's what I would do for myself. So number one, treat everybody as an extension of yourself. And number two, give every or give everybody a chance when applicable. I'll say there's sometimes where you got to be smart and you just can't give somebody a chance, but open in your heart, know when it's right and give that person a chance, whether it's a job, whether it's just hearing somebody's pitch for their business that they're excited about. I mean, you know, there's so many times where people come and they're excited to tell somebody about something and that person's like I don't care they just have that look on their face like stop talking to me give that person a chance to be excited you know and and I guess the last thing that

I'll say um other than that or the third thing would be continue to teach other people no matter who they pay it forward whatever you know exactly and I think doing those three things that's that's a right start you know because so nothing bad can come for that the golden rule treat people as you would want them to treat you. You say it in a very eloquent way that they're an extension of yourself. Number two, a kind ear and a bit of enthusiasm for somebody else's dreams, as opposed to cynicism. Exactly. Optimism over cynicism.

It's critically important. Cynicism, negativity is easy. Our minds are designed for it, sadly. and we shoot other people down when they say, I'm going to go from packing pickles and selling mattresses to being a lead UI developer. I'm going to buy a house. You know, it's very easy to glaze over and be like, yeah, whatever.

You know, who cares, right? And number three, pay it forward. Because if you do make it, you have an obligation to the rest of the people who are coming up. So don't pull that ladder up behind you. Just turn around and reach, your hand down and help people get up that ladder and show them where the ladder is. And that's the point of today's conversation is that there are some ladders. There may not be enough, but there

are ladders out there. And I'm not saying everybody has the aptitude like you to be a developer, but there are other jobs, there are other paths to excellence. And we will get absolutely barbecued by somebody on Twitter who says you're just cherry picking one example, you're just taking one guy who did it, you're talking about Lambda School because you got an investment in it, whatever. But the truth is, the reason we did this episode is to celebrate you, Chris, to celebrate what you did. And you are a fantastic guest on this program.

I have the leaders of industry on this program for the last decade. You are one of the top ten people that I have enjoyed talking to. I mean that sincerely. And I have had the greatest leaders in the world, the people who created Pixar, the people who created Instagram, the people who created Uber. They've all sat in the seat you're in. They've all had this interview opportunity. and had this discussion with me.

But you get it and you did it. And this is the beginning of your story. I wish you continued success. And your attitude towards life, your perspective, your framing of your own situation for me is, I think, the critical piece.

It would have been so easy for you to frame your brutally hard situation as, well, you know, reason to give up, a reason to blame others. And if you're blaming others and you want to give up, I am not criticizing you. That's not the point of this discussion. The point of this discussion is that it can be done, right? It can be done. And it's hard. And I think we all acknowledge that.

And Chris, you know, I found the story very inspiring. I found the episode very very touching. I find your story great. And, you know, someday you'll be sitting there. You put in the hard work. You get three, four, five years under your belt working for other people. But at some point, the king will have an idea for a business. And when you have that idea and you build that MVP, you know how to reach me. You will, we'll talk about it. And I will give you whatever time you need and answer whatever questions you have because you were so kind to come on here and be so honest about your story. And I believe the world is a better place because of you in it and because of what you share

today. Thank you for coming with Chris. Let me know when you're in San Francisco. When you're in San Francisco, let's celebrate that you did it. You did it. And it's only going to get better for you because let me tell you something. You know that feeling when you open up the 25 Hyundai? imagine you add a zero or two

or three because that's the path you're on you know entrepreneurship and technology man I can tell you a kid from Brooklyn I know who you know just carrying those those buckets of ice

you know he got there and you're right behind me it may seem like a big distance behind me let me tell you something the distance you've traveled to get where you are that's the hard part. Getting from where you are to where I've gotten,

that's going to be a lot easier. You actually got through the hard part. From here on, you got momentum. You got wind in yourselves now. You're dangerous. You're dangerous now. And that's really, it's a four or five years of hard fucking work that you have to put in to get into the room.

And sometimes it might take 10 even. But man, if you do it and you stop watching television and you start adding skills, man, you become unstoppable. You can see it right now. Like, how is your perspective different now than it was five years ago? What's the view like? It's just like you said, I have momentum now.

You know, from there, I was just at the bottom looking up. Now I don't even think I'm at the top because just like you said, move back to goalpost. I've raised my ceiling and I'm still trying to keep going up. Yeah. But that view, see, once you get, you know, it was really the different. I'll tell you, the moment for me, it wasn't even just a salary. It was being in Manhattan. When I got out of Brooklyn and I got that place in Manhattan, I think for you, it might be owning your home.

Like, there's just some moments for certain people where you just mind goes, and it's just a little click in your mind, right? And I saw that in your tweet. I saw it in your tweet. Like, oh, now we're dangerous. Oh, now we're in the room where it happens. Oh, now I've got a new perspective. All right. Listen, Chris, continued success.

I can't wait to meet to meet you. in person and break bread and pop a bottle or a crisp course light. And you can follow the king. He's king, A-T-O-K-I on the Twitter, and we will see you next time on this weekend startups.