Again, there is this, this internal push and pull of me feeling like I need to to take on this challenge of becoming a proficient reader. But also while this is happening simultaneously, I'm excelling as an athlete. Right. All right. Why do I need to read when I can catch really well? And for the majority of my life, for all of my life, nobody can answer that question. And I don't think anyone really wanted to or tried to because of my athletic ability led them to believe that I'd be okay either way. Yeah. And that's just not the case. One night I was watching Jay Z rap videos on YouTube. And you know how YouTube works, right? I do. You watch a video and then they begin to populate themselves. You know, I fall asleep while I'm watching videos and I wake up. I guess I watch so many of the videos. I wake up to him doing an interview with this fat white guy. I mean, I learned that that fat white guy was a Warren Buffett. But at the time it was like Jay Z was a pinnacle. Right. We didn't know about Warren Buffett in my community. We knew about Jay Z. Yeah. You know. Well, in this atmosphere, he was sitting down with a suit on and he was articulating himself much differently than he did in his music. And he said that he used books to help build his intellectual ability to brainstorm in real time to come up with this music. I don't know if you know this, but Jay Z is known for never having to write down a lyric. He just brainstormed it. No, I did not know that. And then he said in this video that he uses reading to help him build those abilities. Wow. You never mentioned that in one of his music videos. Right. Yeah. Eventually, I made the connection that if you wanted to build a sustainable life for yourself, this is before I even learned the statistics. I just made the assumption based off of the references that I heard, because after Jay Z said it, I heard Warren Buffett say something similar. Then I heard other someone else say something similar. And so many of these successful people were saying the same thing. I thought to myself, if I want to have any sustainable success in my life, whether I'm an athlete or not, I need to be a proficient reader. And that's when I became committed to the process after obtaining enough evidence. Wow.

But you list, there

must have been a reason you were listening for that, right? Like that seed was planted maybe before Edgar Allen Poe or maybe at Edgar Allen Poe, who knows. But it's interesting that somehow that seed was planted and you kept hearing this over and over and over again. I think it was a seed of academics. But I think my mom definitely planted the seed of always trying to be your best and maximize your potential. My mom stressed that more than anything else as a child. I think that is what made me latch on to reading because I saw that as the thing that would allow me to become the best version of myself. That's amazing. I think that is why Edgar Allen Poe, those moments stuck because they represented me recognizing here's something that could help me be the best version of me. And I still believe that to be true today. Reading is the most self empowering tool a person could possess. It's not money, it is reading. Wow, that's powerful. How do you go about doing that though when you're a freshman in college and how did you teach yourself to be a proficient reader?

Did you

reach out to somebody and ask for help? Did you practice? No, I mean, walking around saying I don't read so well and the most popular thing to do. So, you know, in these videos that I was watching, I heard a few book recommendations. And the first book recommendation I heard was titled The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green. Now, I don't know if you've ever seen this book. I have not. But it's like trying to read the Old Testament. I know what that's like. And it's not a book for, you know, struggling readers. So I pick up that book and I'm immediately discouraged. I bet. Immediately. It takes me about an hour to get off the first page. And I'm having to Google every other word because my vocabulary isn't strong enough to kind of digest the book. So I thought to myself, well, I wasn't always a good football player. Right. I couldn't have been. Right. I had to learn how to do these things. Right. And I thought to myself, what was the process of me becoming a good football player? And what if I take that same process and I replicate it in relation to books? So I said, okay, the first step of becoming a football player is learning the fundamentals. Start from the lowest point and build upon that. So I go back to the bookstore and instead of picking up the 40 Laws of Power, I pick up a very hungry caterpillar. Oh. And I started using picture books to build my vocabulary and understand sentence structure. Wow. And that's how I took the natural progression to becoming the reader that I wanted to be. Is I started from the most basic point. I was a 19, 20 year old college athlete walking around with the cat in the hat in my backpack. Did anybody know that or did you keep it hidden? At the beginning, no one knew. It was just something that I wanted to accomplish. No one would have cared initially because I was still having success on the field. And still today, if a professor walks in the room who discovered the, I don't know, I'm just going to make up something. If the doctor who walks in the room who discovered the cure for cancer walks in and LeBron walks in, LeBron James walks in simultaneously, who's going to get more attention? No, LeBron James. Right, because no one cares about the academic prowess when it's split beside and Ashley. That's the sad part. Because that guy who's curing cancer is probably doing more for the world than LeBron James. And I'm sure in some cases that can be argued. But yeah, I went back to the bookstore and I used picture books to help me build a foundation for reading. And that's why I started writing them too. I was just going to ask that. Is that the connection back to picture books? Yes, that is the connection. So I was watching your TED Talk video, which by the way, we'll link our listeners in the show notes to that video. And I think in there you talk about joining a book club. In that TED Talk video, there's actually a picture flashed of you sitting in the center on the couch with all of these, well, I'm just going to say it, old white ladies in a book club, right? You said that, I didn't say that because I'm an old white lady, so I can say it.

What, well,

how did that happen? I start with picture books. I move to graphic novels and I move to young adult. And then I move to just traditional nonfiction fiction books. I'm reading whatever I want, but I have no one to share it with. Okay. There's this concept that my mom preached when I was a child. You are who you hang around. And I still wasn't. And I still wasn't. The reader that I wanted to be. And I, and I knew that I needed to surround myself with a group of readers to help foster an even greater love or a deeper connection with this. And I started with Oprah's book club. The only problem is it wasn't tangible enough for what I needed. It was online. Oh, right. There was no physical location. There was no one to meet with. And there was probably a chat section, but that's not what I identified myself needing. I am not joking when I say this, and it is just as random as it was going to sound. One day, a friend of mine walks into my room and said, do you have any books you would recommend for the summer? And I had a trunk full of books. And I could have very easily have said, sure, go in the trunk and grab one. But I saw it as an opportunity for me to get a free ride to the bookstore. So I said, no. And she said, well, let's go to the bookstore and you can pick out one for me. Okay. I said, great. Let's go. Let's go. I go to the bookstore and traditionally I go to the bestsellers rack and I just look at whatever's doing well. And I pick one of those books while I get to the bestsellers rack and I look to the left. There's a lady who has about seven books in her hand. I had never seen anything like it. And I'm thinking to myself, well, if I'm looking for a book, I'm sure this person who's walking around with seven of them could give me a good book recommendation. So I think to myself, I'm going to walk up to her and ask. As I'm making my way towards her, I'd be honest with you. I actually walked by her. She was an older white woman. I was a younger black guy and I thought to myself, this ain't a great idea. Yeah. But I wanted to be a reader so bad. I mean, I just wanted it so bad. I didn't even care. I turned around and I walked right up to her. And I said, I hate to bother you, but I'm just looking for a good book, which you might recommend to go on. And with joy on her face, she said no problem at all. And she kind of, I mean, she riddles off five or six books. And then she says, my book club is reading and I hear book club. Oh, and I say, here's the moment. Right. I've been looking for this. This is what I've been asking for. So before she can finish her sentence, I say, well, can I join your book club? What did she say?

She was taking a bath. I was

going to say, look on her face. Maybe. She, her first comment was, I don't think you want to join my book club. I don't think you want to join my book club. And I, my response to her was, yes, I do. She said, well, we're just a bunch of older, older women. I said, well, I really don't care. I gave her my email address. Okay. And my name. And she said she'd reach out because she had to talk to the person who created the book club. Sure. Because no male had ever participated. Oh. She goes back home and she does a little research and she finds out that I'm a University of Georgia football player. She sends me an email and invites me to the first book club meeting. And I showed up. And for two years, we met every second Tuesday of the month. That's awesome. And those women, I played a huge role in me becoming the person I am today and the reader. I have become as well. That's an amazing story. That's amazing. Yeah. Now, yeah, I mean, if you look at the picture, I may be a bit of an outlier, but you know, honestly, as I think about what the world is today, I would encourage more people to focus on, on what you're trying to accomplish versus what people look like or, you know, I'm positive that we all had different religious beliefs. The things that were obvious, one, I was the only black person. Right. The other one, I was the only male. Yeah. I was the only one of my generation. Yeah. And some of them became my greatest friends. One is on the board of my foundation. Another I mentioned in a book, it's like, take off, take off society goggles. So you can see what's really there. Yeah. Yeah. What's so cool is it was reading, it was books, it was literacy that brought you together. But you had the courage to reach out, to ask, to join that. I mean, that's, that's

courage.

Or desperation.