Frasier - Dont Dumb Down Your Greatness: A Young Entrepreneurs Guide to Thinking & Being Great

Lets take a quick trip to the past.

When I was a youngster, I struggled with childhood depression. When I was in fifth grade, about 11 years old, I was a short and chubby kid. I lived with my mother and brother in a one-bedroom apartment in Newark, NJ. I grew up in a neighborhood infested with drugs, gangs, and crime. My parents got divorced when I was young, and my mother raised the two of us by herself. Things were not easy for us, but that didnt stop me from keeping a smile ,on my face.

My mother was strict. With the prevalence of neighborhood kids getting sucked into street life, my mother didnt want us to fall into the wrong crowd. The only place in the neighborhood we were allowed to go was to our front porch, backyard, or to our grandparents home, which was right next door. From my home, I jealously eyed my classmates riding their bikes in the street.

To escape the strict regulation of my mothers rules, I looked forward to school where I could interact with the kids I was never allowed to play with at home. When I was at school, I wanted to be the cool kid. So I drew graffiti art on notebook paper to impress my classmates. I would even do drawings for girls I liked, thinking that would get me closer to them.

For a while, things at school were going well, but they took a turn for the worst for me during that year when I began to get teased and bullied because of my height and weight. During gym class, I would be the last picked to be on a team. I can recall coming back to school after Christmas break and a girl sitting next to me was so disgusted that she went to the teacher and asked if she could switch seats. I was so embarrassed.

During that year, there were times I would pretend to go to school in the morning. I would wait until my mother left for work and then sneak back into the house. That optimistic kid always wearing a smile, was gone. My love for going to school grew into hate.

In addition, my attitude did a complete flip. I didnt care about anything. I got into fights, I knew couldnt win (in hindsight that was hilarious). I began talking back to adults. My grades started slipping. My mother was at the school for parent-teacher conferences so much, they knew her by her first name.

But nothing was worse than the day I earned a nickname that would haunt me for years. My brother used to always joke about Biggie Smalls songs. He came up with fake raps and acted out a fictional character named Piggy Balls. I loved to join in the jokes, and we would make our own versions of Biggie Smalls raps under that persona. Then, I decided to bring the joke to school with me. This was not a good idea.

In an attempt to do something that would lead to acceptance at school, I recorded one of the songs on a cheap recorder. It backfired on me immediately. Sure they laughed, but it wasnt with me, it was at me. From that point on, the kids started to call me Piggy. I dont recall any of the kids even using my real name anymore.

This nickname followed me up until I actually graduated from middle school. It was embarrassing. It reminded me every day that I wasnt normal, accepted, cool, and far from great. What Im not particularly proud of, is that I accepted it. When someone called me outside of my name I would smirk, but my insides were hurt. At this point, as you can probably imagine, my self-esteem was shot. I wasnt sure I could ever recover from it.

The state of mind that I was less than those around me followed me into high school. It made me a quiet kid, and outcast of some sort. I hung out with a group of kids who kind of felt the same way. All we would do after school is go back to each others houses and play video games. Excluded from the parties, dating, athletics of our classmates, we did nothing.

During lunch breaks at school, Id sneak into the computer lab or the library to play on the computer. This is where I began to experiment with coding. Yet despite my new hobby, I was so unmotivated by school, that I was one bad grade away from not graduating. So I forced myself to hit the books and earned enough credits for a diploma. On graduation day one of the teachers from my first year of high school pulled me to the side. He handed me an envelope on my way out.

On the first day of my Freshman year of high school, that same teacher had all the students write a letter to themselves. We werent allowed to read it until four years later. So I stared at it, almost scared to read what I wrote, but I didI opened the letter.

The rest is to be continued

See everything fresh and without formthen make forms that will express us truthfully and totally and by this certainly free us eventually. Amiri Baraka, Technology & Ethos

Almost everything I thought I knew about entrepreneurship was a lie.

For the past two years prior to penning these words, Ive served, in-person over 2,500 entrepreneurs. I created a platform to learn, engage, and challenge some of the biggest names in the tech industry.

However, during that time, I became acutely aware that people who looked like me were visibly absent from mainstream representations of the tech industry. If you were watching TV or scanning entrepreneurship magazines youd hardly see a person of color. But we exist.

Ive spoken at tech conferences all over the country, and when I hit the stage at each of the conferences that I held, I was always in awe of the turnout. A sea of black faces coming together to learn, build, and network. In my heart, I was happy to be apart of the larger community of tech professionals and entrepreneurs. Yet, if I wouldve listened to the subtle hints in the media at the time suggesting that the tech field was not for the melanin-rich skin that eagerly gathered together in those settings, then I would have packed up and left before even starting. But I didnt, because, despite the messages that were being sent by the larger media, I had a message of my own to share. Im here to tell it.

A few years ago, I took some time out to mentor a young man who wanted to be an entrepreneur. I asked him what his biggest challenge was? He said he was scared. I asked for more information to pinpoint his area of fear and what he shared is common to many in his shoes. He didnt know how to network, stay focused, he feared failure, and lacked self-confidence. He also argued that hed be overlooked by customers because he was black. As I sat and listened, I felt that I was hearing a voice from the other side of my mirror. He reminded me of myself.