Your Transformation Station - 42. "Diversity and Racism" Isaac Etter w/ Favazza

Episode Date: December 1, 2020

Join Favazza, podcast host and creator as he connects with Isaac Etter Founder of Identity start up, who at the time of recording was the owner of Etter Consulting. Isaac describes in detail the hardships he has faced from being an adopted black male to a white family, with little to no interaction with races outside of white locals until he was nearly an adult.   Support the showPODCAST INFO:Podcast website: https://ytspod.comApple Podcasts: https://ytspod.com/appleSpotify: https://ytspod.com/spotifyRSS: https://ytspod.com/rssYouTube: https://ytspod.com/youtubeSUPPORT & CONNECT:- Check out the sponsors below, it's the best way to support this podcast- Outgrow: https://www.ytspod.com/outgrow- Quillbot Flow: https://ytspod.com/quilbot - LearnWorlds: https://ytspod.com/learnworlds- Facebook: https://ytspod.com/facebook- Instagram: https://ytspod.com/instagram- TikTok: https://ytspod.com/tiktok- Twitter: https://ytspod.com/x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You said this racial awakening back in 2016. I wasn't a part of society during this time. I believe it was, oh my God, 2014, yes, 2014 to just last year. I was in the military active duty. So my understanding of society is very different, abnormal. Everybody to me is my brother and sister. I see green. That's all I see.

but I mean would that be considered racist? It's the fact that I'm ignoring the fact that somebody is black and somebody is white by saying I see green. Yeah, that does sound racist, but I'm not racist. That's just the hidden customs and courtesies that I lived in the society of the military. How can you create a transformation in others if there's no transformation in yourself? Join your host, Greg Favaza, as your. your voice on the hard truths of leadership, your transformation station connecting clarity to the cutting edge of leadership.

As millennials, we can establish change, not only ourselves, but through organizational change, bringing transparency that goes beyond the organization and reflects back into ourselves. Extracting, actionable advice, and alternative perspectives that will take you outside of yourself. From what your profile says, you have a really interesting background. Can you provide me a little snapshot

of what that looks like? Yeah, one of the biggest stories that I tell in my talk is how I didn't really find out about racism. Like, nobody ever talked to me about racism. But I found out about racism on Tumblr when I was 16. Yeah, and so I was had, it was the hashtag Blackout Day.

I don't know if you remember that colleges did that in around 2014. kind of like in solidarity with like Black Lives Matter and how I found out about racism was on scroll under Tumblr and then I spent that whole year kind of questioning whether it was real you know I didn't know any black people that weren't also adopted and then on the night that I turned 17 me and my friends were walking late at night down this down this hill

I live in Lancaster PA which a little bit more rural and as at the top of the hill a cop car came and was flashing around a light like it was looking for somebody so scared that we made too much noise me and my friends started running. And one of my friends yells out, it's all right. Isaac's the only one that's going to get in trouble. And that was the moment that I had that awakening. That's when I realized that racism was real

and that everybody in my life knew it. And I was the only one who didn't know. Man, that really hurts me inside just to hear that. From somebody that you considered a close friend, they have this perception of you that you never thought would even cross their mind once because of your own social upbringing. And then to hear that in that moment during that time under pressure really is an awakening. Yeah, absolutely.

In 2016, I think, you know, America went through a really interesting racial awakening, that first, like, year of two of Trump. And so when I came back to Lancaster in like 2017-18, people were a lot more receptive to the conversation, which is when I really started doing a lot more like consultant-type work. You know, I never got a degree. I just kind of fell into like an interesting consultant position just because of my predicament in life. And so, you know, I started a nonprofit. And I run another nonprofit now too.

I'm also the executive director at one that I founded this summer. Um, I say stop that quick. Yeah. You said this racial awakening back in 2016. I wasn't a part of society during this time. I believe it was, uh, my God, 2014. Yes, 2014 to, uh, just last year. I was in the military active duty.

So my understanding of society is very different abnormal. Everybody to me is my brother and sister. I see green. That's all I see. But, I mean, would that be considered racist? It's the fact that I'm ignoring the fact that somebody is black and somebody is white by saying I see green. Yeah, that does sound racist. I'm not racist. That's just the hidden customs and courtesies that I lived in the society of the military.

The point that I'm making is, one, I don't understand. I wasn't a part of that change in society to see the, hatred and to see the change in society. I came back to a society where it's different. And now I'm playing catch up on what. Holy shit. It's like seeing your parents for like after five years. They're 10 times grayer, older, and they're starting to lose their mind a little bit,

kind of like dementia. I'm like, what the hell happened? I feel like I was gone a lot longer than it is. And explain that to me just so I can understand a little bit about this. drastic change. So, you know, I think, I think one of the things, like, to address all this things. So I think one of the biggest things that happened in 2016, you know, during the election, election of Trump was like this big, like racial divide based on his antics. You know what I mean? And like everybody knows about that. You know, everybody knows that there has been a big racial

divide about Trump himself. But I think one of these things, one of the things that kind of happened after he got elected was kind of like a series of like interestingly racial related things like Charlottesville. I don't know if you've heard about Charlottesville. Charlottesville was basically man, I don't even know how to describe this.

It was basically, I think it was kind of like a white nationalist rally. Okay. That happened through Charlottesville. And it just like, it was a very violent event, like different people who came to protest it like would get run over by people who were a part of it.

Like a couple girls got run over. People were getting like beat up on the streets. Like it was a very, it was a very big thing that happened. And then also like religious groups started talking about race a lot more because they saw how big of a divide it was. And so like, you know, a lot of denominations also were like,

maybe we should start talking about race because it seems like this is something that is like coming up a lot right now, which made a huge. huge like shift in the church. So if you think about, I don't know if you're religious at all, but like spiritual discernment a little bit from my soul. No,

I understand. But like Christianity, which has had like a very prominent thing in America. It took a very interesting shift in terms of like even even like my, my parents denomination, I would consider like pretty conservative. Um, even took a pretty big like shift towards like,

all right, we're going to start like reading different books and like, opening up this conversation. Okay. Because of basically that, that big divide. That big evident like divide where, you know, it was like, if you support Trump, you're racist and all that caused everybody to kind of take a deeper examination, I think, about race.

And so that's really what happened while I was gone. Like, while I was in Atlanta, you know, back home and kind of like my conservative hometown where I'm in now, Lancaster, a lot of places were starting to have that conversation. They were like, we see what's happening in America. It seems like, you know, we haven't been maybe thinking about race and racism enough because it seems like this. Now it's becoming like in our face. So when we're the family you were raised with, what state was that in? What city?

So I was adopted out of Richmond, Virginia, but we've lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, like, since I was five. So we've lived here, like, most of my life. And how was that like there being with living with a white family? Well, Lancaster is a pretty white and conservative town. So like, I mean, I didn't, I literally didn't know any of black people that weren't adopted until I wasn't adults. So like our community and our circle didn't have any people of color in it. And so my experience, like I tell stories about, you know, how when I moved, when I worked at a summer camp in Georgia for the first time, that was the most black people that had ever been around. It was a scary experience for me.

Or like when I went to Morehouse Homeworld. coming because I met a friend at that camp, how like being in an all black room was a scary experience for me because I literally just didn't know black people. I never been in in rooms with black people. And so I talk a lot about like that journey too, like the uncomfortableness of being a black person in a black room because I literally never experienced it. Or like going to the barbershop for the first time. Like the first time I went to a barbershop here in Lancaster, I sat there for like an hour because I didn't know the process. There was no like sign in a like there is like a clipper, clipper, you know,

whatever those, what they're called, you know what I'm talking about. Like those like little chain haircut stories that like my family took me to growing up. First I went to a black barbershop, you know, you go in and you like usually have a barber or you say something. Like I just went in and sat down, sat there for like an hour until somebody talked to me because I didn't know what I want. And even when he asked me what I wanted to do with my hair had no clue. And so like just like these very interesting like cultural things that are just a part of like most black people's lives. I missed out on so many of them and had to try to like figure them out on my own that they led to some very interesting stories I think. Interesting. So I like which where we're going and the reason why we're going into this is because I'm trying to resonate with you a certain experience that people have.

I want to relate it to everybody for those that aren't the color of black. I want people to relate it to every color and how I'm trying to do this is I'm looking at your story and I'm trying to compare it to how I grew up, my family never taught me anything. They never showed me the way of life. And it's been kind of like a trial and error scenario basis every time I would go out. First time I got a haircut. I didn't know what to do. I did something similar to I went to sports clips and I just sat there like an idiot. I didn't know you needed to check in online.

I just showed up like, okay. And I was just very quiet. And that's where later on the military shift that around 180. But I want to try to resonate everybody from these experiences that you don't have to be of a person of color or this education to understand somebody's life. We all have an experience that can resonate and we can all apply it in numerous life realms. This is how we can generate equality. This is how we can establish a transformation. and everybody through these personal stories.

Yeah. I do think that personal stories are kind of how we create the biggest impact for change. And that's really why I think my story is really the thing that's kind of like, you know, kind of catapulted me into where I do now and like the kind of consulting that I do is because I just started by telling that story. You know, there wasn't anything else to it for a long time. It was just telling that story. And that story opened up so many doors for me. to like open, enter consulting and to work in different states and to travel and to be in conferences and to speak at colleges. Like those, those doors were all opened by me telling that one story that connected with so many people.

And then also, like, just opened up so many conversations. And I think one thing when I think about, you know, I would consider myself like, and I always say this, I would say that I'm an expert at talking to people who don't know how to talk about race. or who are uncomfortable about talking about talking about that's my expertise. That's really essentially what Better Consulting does because a majority of people that adopt, you know, a lot of people that transracially adopt,

they don't even know other black people. Their black kid is their first black friend. And so a lot of times I'm working with families who have never even had the opportunity to ask hard questions about race in America, who have never had somebody to sit down with and say, I'm not understanding Black Lives Matter.

I'm not understanding these, these, this. I need to have this conversation. That's a lot of what our Q&As and our personal consulting entails. To go into two other points before we wrap this up. One is how you threw yourself into this journey. I want to know, like, what was the process in your brain when you decided to say,

I'm going to start embracing myself and my vulnerabilities as my authentic self. You know, so I graduated when I was, so I graduated high school in a 16. So I graduated high school in a 16. I went to my first year of college at 17. Nice.

And it wasn't until I was 18. So my sophomore year, I'd spent one year in college, kind of like, gaining black friends in college and like having kind of like a little secret dialogue. And it was really my sophomore year when I, when I started talking about racism.

So I was, you know, fresh 18. and I was making post on Facebook and seeing how bad the negative reaction was, you know, I was losing friends. It felt like I was losing my family. And I had a lot of conversations with myself about like, you know, why was I doing this?

Like, what was the purpose? If it was leading to all this pain, like, what was the purpose? And there was something in me like then. And I still don't think I understand exactly what it was, but there was something about it that told me that I just couldn't stop. Like there was something that I had. There was an audience that I had here that I had to understand. And there was a journey that I had to go on to create this conversation here.

And so, you know, in the middle of that depression and like trying to understand like, you know, why this is something that, you know, I felt passionate about and something that I couldn't just like, can I sweep under the rug and forget about that I ever posted about. you know, we had a family friend that lived in Georgia who worked for an inner city school. And, you know, I called him one day and was like, hey, like, I know your kids don't live with you because you rent me a room and try to help me get a job at that school. I really want to understand inner city education. And I need some space to grow and to learn and to figure out who I am. And so that was like my first step in being like, if I'm going to do this, I got to figure out who I am first.

Because I didn't know, you know, I had no clue, especially now that I felt like my family. was turning their back on me. Like the whole foundation of my upbringing was collapsing. And so, you know, I went to Georgia to do that. I was a janitor at an inner city school. I volunteered every day and I worked two other jobs for six months to just go on this journey and figure this out in Athens, Georgia. And then I went to this summer camp that I worked at previously again.

And then from there I got recruited to go teach in Atlanta and design programs for inner city teams. And like that was the journey. Like that six months in Athens journey in Athens was me saying, all right, I know that I have something here, but I'm not, I don't even know black people. Like I have to know what I'm talking about. And so I just went on it. It was, it was a mix of reading, being in uncomfortable spaces for me and learning for people who did the work. And that's how I still learn to this day, you know. Can I ask you if you were to write out your,

entire speech of what you just talked about. Do you feel like it would be 10 times more difficult to write this out than actually verbally speak it? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, there's been multiple like versions. Like I have certain writings of my story and I like them to an extent. It's just not the same. I do really want to have like a book version of this journey because I think it would be helpful. But I want to do it well. And I think when I speak it, because I've been public speaking for so long, you know my dad put us in public speaking class when we were like 12 and so you know i've been doing it for so long that i think i just know how to tell my own story better than i know how to write it um but i do want to have a written version as well okay um with the writing aspect

that feeling of is it do you feel like it's like uh phomo no not not if you're missing out but uh like you're slipping through the cracks over the system that of society. It's like a made up norm of what people view you as. And you felt like you slipped through the cracks and you're on the other side and you feel like you aren't qualified to say what you say. Thus, you sometimes doubt yourself. But doubting yourself will actually put that into other people's perception and cause them to doubt you because of you only doubting yourself. Right.

So like imposter syndrome kind of stuff. But that is, that's what's looking for. Yeah, yeah. I definitely used to a lot. I don't really anymore. You know, one of the things that I came to, and it's actually pretty unique, I think, for adoptees, especially transracial adoptees. Yes.

Was that I really just came to a sense to where, like, I really embraced all of all of what I was. It was like, I really embraced, like, my white upbringing and all of the negatives and all of the positives and all of it. Like, I really embraced that as who I was. Like, nobody's going to change the fact that I loved pop punk, and I still love pop punk. Like that's not going away, even though it's not a traditionally like black thing. Just like nobody's going to change the fact that I really love like rap music, which is. But, you know, for me, being black was just like, no matter what my personality entails, this is just the reality.

This is the reality of how I live. This is the reality of what I experienced. When I went to college and experienced racism, having a white family didn't save me. Like there, there is no, you know, not black enough or not. not black because at the end of the day, you know, I was experiencing life as a black man regardless of my upbringing. And so really taking that to heart and being like, there's no code of ethics that I have to follow or no check marks that I have to hit to be a black person or to do racial justice work. Like, this is just who I am. And I have to fully embrace all the things that made me

that way, which include my white upbringing. And when you do this, fully embrace what What was an example of some key actions that you did to help you immerse yourself in this identity you actually are true to? I think part of it. The part of it that was most helpful for me was to go and live, I think, in black spaces. You know, to live. I lived in one of the poorest areas of Atlanta. I did a ton of like inner city work in Athens, Georgia. And that journey for me.

And also like there were two parts of my, I think this. that gave me the reality of like black people are just normal people. Because I think for me, you know, because of my upbringing, because when we can only imagine how somebody's going to be, it's kind of a fantasy. And so it gave me the realization that like I wasn't like too white to hang out with people that grew up in the hood. Like those were my friends and like we had great times and like they didn't seem to view me as like less than them.

And then the other half of it was like I spent a lot of time with friends of mine that went to Morehouse. I don't know if you know much about Morehouse, but I was an HBCU. So it's where like Martin Luther King Jr. went to school. It's like an historically black college. Okay. Yeah. And so I remember now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I spent a lot of time like and I had friends that went to Morehouse. And one thing that like Morehouse really taught me was that, um, like black people aren't just one thing. Like I was hanging out with black people that had two parents that were doctors and spoke exactly like me and had like very similar upbringes to me. When you spoke exactly like you?

What do you mean by that? Like, you know, sometimes, you know, black people have like certain accents, I think, or talk certain styles. And like I talk traditionally like what would kind of be stereotypically known as like a white person. And so, you know, a lot of times when I would hang out, like, especially when I was working in inner city places, they'd be like, it's interesting that you talk like that. Just because I don't necessarily have as much slang as, um, as, as maybe people who grew up in inner city environments might have. And so that's kind of one of those things that being in a really diverse black city taught me was kind of that like there was just like there wasn't a cut and dry way to be black. There were so many black people living so many different experiences.

I was running into black people that did like pop punk like I like pop punk and like there were black people that did resort to like very like would be like what you might stereotypically see as black people. but we're also at an almost Ivy League college. And like there was just like so much I think like a breakdown in that process to where like the whole idea of like what we call a stereotypical black person just totally dissipated. There was no stereotypical black person anymore. Thus I didn't have to fit into anything other than myself. Do you have a, did you come to an understanding of what a normal way we're using this as example? as a normal way for a black person to speak. And is that why they would ask you,

why do you speak like that? Because you were not the normal. Yeah, I would say like because, you know, neighborhoods and certain, you know, groups of black people talk a certain way. Like for me coming as kind of like an outsider and somebody who didn't grow up around, some of the dialect and some of those words,

I think like the way that I talk, and it's probably some of the words that I use, that I just grew up hearing, you know, we're just different. And that's like, you know, that's true across all races and, you know, things. Like, people grow up in just different settings. And so they speak differently and act differently. But I think black people have been shown kind of inside of a box throughout American history, you know. And like black people were kind of like a one size fit all.

And so. Cool. And so I think that for me, coming from that mentality and that kind of like, that kind of view, even if nobody intentionally said it, like, that's how people tended to view black people. You know what I mean? Even like questions that I got growing up, like was like an assumption that I was good at basketball just because I was black. You know what I mean? Like just those kinds of things. Those kind of minute stereotypes, they kind of become ingrained in how we think about people.

even how we think about white people, Italian people, black people, Asian people, they build on themselves and all of a sudden we find out that we kind of just think that. And that's why we continue to live the same way over and over. And this is why we can't refine our character

to a universal standard where we can start applying a change in society rather than focusing on these stupid fucking stereotypes. Yeah. That's limiting our success in life. Absolutely. And so I think that was that was it. Like I had to break down that wall. For me, I had to get out of out of the head space of like that being the normal or that being the way. And just realize like exactly what you said. Like there's there's no stereotype to this. We're just people. We're just living. We're experiencing different things. We have, you know, depending on where we grew up and in our circumstances, we have different experiences. We have different experiences. We have different experiences. that's that's the makeup of people and sure like black people share collective things like hairstyles and and you know how our body look and our skin tone and all those things

but our personalities are not in a box or the way that we can't experience the world is not in a box and I think that's what I had to break out of I could accept the fact that I look like other black people but I still felt like I I wasn't one of them because my viewpoint of black people was still inside that box. And as soon as I realized that that wasn't a reality, that wasn't the truth, then I was able to be like, okay,

now I can actually live into my full self. What are some business tips that can help me and other people that are aspiring entrepreneurs, startups, get them established and start going after their dreams? Get in touch with yourself is my number one. I didn't know I was an entrepreneur. until I moved back from Georgia.

And what's crazy is that all of my friends knew. But I didn't know because I started a record label in high school. And I didn't think of that as an entrepreneur. I just loved recording people. And so, like, get in touch with who you are and what you love. When I started my first nonprofit in 2017, I just never looked back from then. And I realized that I really loved, like, creating the change that I wanted to see. And that just drove me.

And that made it impossible for me to work for me. for anybody else because they weren't doing the change that I wanted to see happen. And so really get in touch with what you want and who you are. Don't look around too much and think that you have to be what other entrepreneurs are. The entrepreneurs that I've been following for years aren't social entrepreneurs, but they certainly help me build an intense and super great imagination in terms of what I could accomplish the business. Number two, I would say is execute.

Fail, go at it. Many of my businesses has failed. My first nonprofit failed. And our consulting has failed in many ways. But we're here now working in multiple different states because I kept with the vision and kept following and kept executing when I had a new idea. Same with the nonprofit that I started this summer. That was about execution. It wasn't about waiting around for somebody else to solve a problem.

It was about solving it. And so that's another thing that I would say, go out and don't be too scared. And the third is stay studying, be a learner. The number one thing that I think really holds at least social innovation in terms of like social justice and the business relationship back is actually lack of knowledge. Because usually people have one of the equations down. Either they're really good at the entrepreneurship business and they really understand that and they want to do good. but they're looking at it too narrowly because they can only see the systems and operations in business, or the other side where they're an activist and not a business person.

And you have to figure out how to combine them if you want to do social innovation and social like entrepreneurship to where how do you take the structure and all the great benefits that business and owning your business can bring to drive change with all that knowledge of being an activist. You know, I jokingly say that this is one of my first years being both an entrepreneur and an activist, because I really had to unlearn some of the activist way of talking about change instead of actually creating change. Activists do such a great job of advocating for change. But one thing about social entrepreneurship and social, I think, innovation is being activists that are now productively creating the change. instead of just advocating for the change. And that's a shift in mentality and how we do things. Both are really important.

We need advocates that are really good at bringing attention to issues, but we also need activists that are really good at driving the change. And so one thing that I always stress is like if you want to create change and create long-term change, you have to learn how to not just advocate for change, but create the change. And that involves being a really good studier and really understand. understanding business and social change.

So those are my three tips. I don't know if that's too long, but those are my three things. I'm having an aha moment. I don't know that that doesn't apply to the situation, but it's close enough I can say towards transparency and what you just explained to me. Holy shit.

Just seeing the difference in that lens, through this lens of being an advocate and actually being the individual that's leading change with other people. That is a huge difference. And if you don't understand that, you can end up struggling to misinterpreting your life's purpose because you're trying to establish change, but you're approaching it from an advocate perspective and taking it on an approach that way. You're not getting the change you wanted.

Thus, you feel incomplete. And then it becomes a survivorship. bias where people look at everything. Well, okay, Warren Buffett, fucking Mark Zuckerberg, but we don't look at the fucking everybody else who's failed. We only see those people. That is extremely powerful. Yeah.

And it's crazy. You know, we, one of my biggest examples for that, along with that same, like those same people is that like we expect those people to have our same mission a lot of the times. But we accept, we claim like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, all these people are like extreme villains because

they're not social justice warriors when that's never what they said they were. Do I love what they do? No. But I never, at least in my mind, and maybe not every activist is like this, I never think about that as like they intentionally are causing harm. Do they have the ability to make change that I couldn't? Absolutely. But they also never said that that's what they wanted to do. And like we a lot of times look at people with money or politicians who honestly never said that that's what they wanted to do and are usually pretty open about what they actually want to do. We expect them to do what we want them to do when we can do what we want us to do. And like that's that's one of my biggest things is like I agree. Those people should be doing more. But they also never said that

they wanted to do that. And so the longer we critique them for not doing things, the more things we're not getting done. Yes. And that is why there is a huge rise in stoicism, whereas having individuals really focus on what they can control, and that is themselves. It's not caring about other people, but it's caring about what you can control versus what you can't.

Absolutely. And there's so many ways that I think that young activists right now that are super passionate about change, don't know what to do. This is actually what my nonprofit does. Could actually like create the change in like five years that they want to see. Issues like homelessness, issues like, you know, food, issues like foster care. These are not issues that are unable to be changed in our communities. You take a small community and you and your buddies save up 10K and buy, you know, a property. and then two years later by another property

and commit to it being low-income housing, you just started solving issues all by yourself and now you also have equity in the house. And there's also things like the FHA loan that make you put 3.5 down. And there's also a lot of programs that cover your closing costs when your first house. People just like, we're thinking too hard

about what everybody else should be doing or we're thinking that the government should be doing this and this and that. When we've known from history, that they fail in those areas. People aren't thinking, what does it mean for me to find 10 buddies who can commit to saving a grand this year? And we all set up a partnership and we buy a fourplex. Like, we buy a, you know, a house. Like, that's not how we're thinking about it, which is why I think that we're kind of getting into a blame game situation. I'm always thinking

about it from that perspective. Same with that or consulting. My perspective wasn't, oh, I need to yell at adoption agencies, I was like, all right, I need to just create a service that does this, that I can market specifically to them to make them aware and also solve the issue. Because sometimes when we advocate for change, not to go into this loophole again, but sometimes when we advocate for a change and they say, all right, we're going to do it, they do it their way. And their way might not be the best way. So I always like to double down on my services and be like, I'm going to present you with the issue and with how I think it should be solved as like a combined service. And if other people, you know, don't agree with how I did it, then they should start their own

service. That's always how I approach it. It's like if you don't like how I deliver that service and how I made that change and you don't agree with my methods around DEI, well, then like there's nothing stopping you from starting a competitor service. I would almost rather have a competitor service than somebody who is constantly telling me what I'm doing wrong. I would actually love for that instead. Because at least then, we're doubling down on change. I don't really, I don't want anybody to just sit around and complain about how I do things. I want them to do it their way and prove to me that I'm doing it wrong because I'm going

to be the first person to change if you show me that I'm doing it wrong. But nobody has any stake in the game except for me right now. And so, you know, that's my mentality. And so like my nonprofit, well, we started this summer as we were watching the protests happen was we started a kind of like think tank, this training in Quebec here to help activists do that. So my nonprofit has kind of like two folds. We help businesses work on like anti-racist practices. And then we help young activists learn how to do activity work that makes tangible change. And so that that whole thing that I was talking about was like kind of.

of like the curriculum base for how we're taking like kind of like 18 to 25 year olds and shaping their thoughts about social innovation and change. That is powerful. I love that. Just that shift in the perspective of rather critiquing somebody, go out there and do it yourself. That will ripple into our community. That will begin to illustrate a new character in each individual in United States. States. That is genius. I like that. And there's no shorts of money. There's no

short of money. Somebody else starting a firm that does exactly what I do will likely not like ruffle my feathers that much. It might frustrate me because I want to be the only one. Yeah. But there's a there's not, there's a likely chance that I'm still going to make as much money as I need to make because there's a ton of adoption agencies. Like there's hundreds probably thousands of adoption agencies, I can't cover them all as one person. And so I think also like people get into the mentality that, oh, somebody else is already doing it. Who cares? Yes.

There's enough money to go around. Do you think your biggest weakness is establishing your dream with other people that are going after the same dream? Do you think that I know that's very difficult for me because I feel like I want to be the only person that says, I discover this first. I did this. I want to be known. I just want to be known that I did this. Do you think that's a struggle for you? Oh, yeah, definitely, especially as more transracial adult adoption consultants have like emerged over the last like three years.

And like there have been people that I've mentored like who called me and they were like, this is my business idea. And like I helped them like get it off the ground and like now they have more followers on Instagram than me. Like that can piss me off sometimes. But but then and then, but then I realized that. But also, like, they have their own lane. Like, it's true that, like, almost everybody that I've coached into starting, they work primarily with families. And I work primarily with adoption agencies.

So really, they're not actually ruffling my feathers. I'm just mad that I don't have as many likes. And that's stupid. And so, like, that's kind of where I keep it. Like, I try to be humble about it. Like, everybody's in their lane. Don't be mad because somebody got there faster than you or is doing, making more money than you. Just stay in your lane and stay to stay.

the course. But how do you feel that after coaching that individual and then have him go out there, they are exceeding you, but you get to see the creation of your disciplines, your knowledge, into this person, and they're out there living your vision? Exactly. It's a good feeling. It definitely has, I think it's complicated for sure, but it's definitely like more good than bad. Like you, I'm definitely really excited about all the people that are doing really good work. Because at the end of the day, that's what we want. And like, no matter where our insecurities come in, that's what we want. And so I don't, I kind of embrace both sides of it.

Like, I embrace the fact that there are insecurities there because at least that's honest and true. But those insecurities don't make me what that person did not do what they do. Like, I love that they're doing what they do. But I embrace that just like human, like I'm insecure about things. And so that also drives me to work harder. So it all works together. But I would say that more than anything, I like when people go out and create the things that they want to see.

And so even if that comes into my lane a little bit, I'm going to always support it. Isaac, let's wrap this up right now. It was excellent. So my intent right now is to utilize this as some backstage kind of content that I'm going to put on. Yes, sir. Thank you so much for your time.

You're very welcome. Thank you. Take care. been listening to your transformation station, your voice on the hard truths of leadership. We hope you've enjoyed the show. We hope you've gotten some useful and practical information. Make sure to like, rate, and review the show. Remember, your transformation station is on all major platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, and YouTube at YTS, the podcast, and visit the website at YTS.

Thepodcast.com. Till next time. LifeLock, how can I help? The IRS said I filed my return. But I haven't. One in four taxpaying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud. What do I do?

My refund, though. I'm freaking out. Don't worry, I can fix this. LifeLock fixes identity theft guaranteed and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage. I'm so relieved. No problem. I'll be with you every step of the way.

One in four was a fraud-paying American. Not anymore. Save up to 40% your first year, visit lifelock.com slash podcast. Terms apply.