For you to continuously improve and be able to pivot at once whenever necessary, embracing a learning mindset is a must. By learning how to learn, there will be no excuses for you to always try and achieve endless growth, even with the constant risk of failing. Elliot Begoun sits down with DC Glenn to discuss how this mindset brought him success in various fields, from being a club DJ, actor, rap artist for Tag Team, voice-over artist, online marketing expert, and even a paralegal. He explains how learning to grow the seeds of success the right way, all while embracing your mistakes and fighting the struggle to procrastinate, is the only way to the top. DC Glenn also talks about how he avoided being swallowed by the most depressing emotions and painful experiences in his life by utilizing them instead as the fuel to keep his motivation burning.

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The Many Benefits Of Embracing A Learning Mindset With DC Glenn

Before we start and jump into what is going to be a cool and eventful conversation, a little bit of light housekeeping. This is your show. The questions that you ask shape the journey that we go on. As a reminder, do it. That’ll give DC Glenn an opportunity to respond to the things that you’re interested in learning about. We had a little brief conversation about the wisdom that he’s about to drop on all of us. I’m going to turn it over to you, DC. First, to introduce yourself, tell the folks a bit about your journey and then we’ll dive in. Thanks for doing this with me. I’m thrilled to have you.

I’m glad to be here. I love to talk. I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’ve been having fun for years. I’m at an age where I feel like a kid again. It has happened to me several times. I tend to find fountains of youth.

Where do you find those fountains? How do you recognize that you’ve discovered one? Is it by energy?

One is because I retired from DJ-ing in 2015. I’ve been DJ-ing in strip clubs all my life. DJ-ing in a club like that is the fountain of youth because everybody’s young. For you to be able to thrive and adapt, you better be able to relate and then flourishing. I tell this all the time to people that are bitter at young people because youth is always wasted on the young. That’s what my grandmother used to tell me. Why are you old and bitter at them because they’re just being them? You’ve got something that they will never have. You have experience. I know what they know, and then I have experience. Now I’m the leader because I’m creating things for them that are making them better. I’m creating value for them, and then we’re all making money together in the club, and then they revere me for it.

How do you adapt? How do you identify the things that you need to do to stay relevant to them and current, and also challenge yourself?

This is going to be totally different, but this is what I did. I worked in a club where there were maybe 150 girls a night. How are you going to get to know all those people and know what they like, what they do, what they need, how to get them paid, and how to make the club better overall as a DJ? As a DJ, I drive the bus. I have to play good music, but it can’t just be playing good music. It’s about getting the women paid. I used to have a saying that I say to the crowd when they weren’t spending money. It’s like, “If these girls don’t get paid, I’m not going to get paid. I promise you, I’m going to get paid.”

One of the things that I did was I had those big postal boxes where they put the mail in. I had one of those filled with candy, all the old-school candy of your childhood. I had them in the DJ booth. Everybody’s drawn to the DJ booth to get candy. Now I can communicate with people, impose my will, know what their likes are, get to know them, and be able to more efficiently get more money out of the club overall. That right there is one of those things where experience trumps just being young. I figured out a way to make an organization out of chaos because that’s what a club is, and you just be on point with everything you do.

Now everybody knows how you flow. You know what each girl likes, what song she likes, who she likes to go on stage with, who she doesn’t, you know what security wants, and you know what the owner wants. I wasn’t just a DJ. That goes back to one thing when you’re trying to do something or if you’re working for somebody, and you like your job or you think you’re not going to get your job, from day one, you got to make yourself invaluable. I’m not just a DJ. I’m your DJ. I’m the voice of your radio commercials. I’m the copywriter of your radio commercials. I’m cutting your radio commercials. I’m cutting your television commercials. I’m your light tech, sound engineer, marketing executive, SEO specialist, and website designer.

Now I got six streams of income, health insurance, life insurance policy. The owner recognizes my value because I was more than just a DJ. I was on a big self-help kick in the early 2000s. There was this book I cannot remember, but it was about a guy who went to work at a pie shop because he wanted to have a pie shop. He went to work and he started as a dishwasher, then he came up and he was making pies. He learned how to make the pies and learned how the business worked. He gave it two weeks and then he quit. He opened his pie shop and franchised it, and then he had a big pie conglomerate. He called it Getting in The Corridor.

There are certain times where I’m stuck in this club because I’m Tag Team. I still get to go do shows on the weekend and we still go do NBA halftime shows. We still get to go do this, but I’m enthralled in the middle of a twenty-year lawsuit. My career was stymied from 1998 to ‘99 and the youth fleeted. I went back to what I knew and it worked because I’m getting show money as a DJ in the regular clubs and the strip club. Because I started getting in the corridor, I said, “Be the marketing arm for this company.” I went and I put together a business plan. It was brutal. It took me six months.

I know all the things that you have to do to put together a business plan. You got to do projections. You got to do where you’re going to get the money from. You got to do where are you going to do it and how’s it going to work. I did it and it made me better. I then give the owner the presentation. I bought a projector. I had a screen and gave a PowerPoint presentation in a strip club office on how I can increase your bottom line. She cut me a check right then and there for $25,000 and said, “Get started.”

All because I took it upon myself to get into the corridor, get into this, then I became the marketing arm of the club. That way, that was my education on marketing. I’ve developed techniques over the years. I was a licensed commodity broker. I passed the Series-3 test, traded commodities and forex. This was in the early 2000s. I was like, “I’m going to do a hedge fund.” I didn’t know what a hedge fund was, but it didn’t stop me. It was like, “This is how a hedge fund works. You need a manager for a hedge fund. What bank or what entity does that well?” I started calling people. I picked up the phone and started calling companies.

I’m like, “My name is DC Glenn. I’m about to put together a hedge fund. I made the song Whoomp! (There It Is). I’ve got a lot of investors. I know all the stars, athletes and politicians. They all know me and they know I’m starting a hedge fund. I want to meet because I need a management arm for this as well.” I’m Flying to Vegas, New York, and all these places meeting with these PR firms and getting in these boardrooms because I sang Whoomp! (There It Is). It goes to show you I’m embroiled in a twenty-year lawsuit and I could have looked at the glass half empty.

I want to talk about all of that. We talked a little bit about the contract that’s never died that you’ve had around your neck from the get-go and why it’s important to know heads up. The other thing you told me is I can ask anything I want and you will answer it, so I’m going to ask you this question. It’s not going to be an easy one. I’m asking from a perspective of a dad of girls in their late twenties. Does it ever bug you working and supporting in a strip club? Is that something that ever felt uncomfortable for you? Give me your perspective there because I’d struggle with it, to be honest with you.

I did struggle with it for the first year because I was fresh out of college. I moved to Atlanta and I got a job at CNN, but I go to this club and the DJ sucked. I’ve been a big DJ all my life so I was like, “I can make money here.” The first year was hard because I’m being bombarded by all these women and by the lowest common denominator in society.

The objectification element.

I’m also standing in a DJ booth so I have a force field around me. I’m the one that dictates what happens inside of those walls. If I choose to come at it from a perspective of efficiency and the things that I did, and the things that my parents taught me, then this thing is going to turn out alright. It changed for me when I realized that chasing women and trying to have sex with them wasn’t the most important thing in the world. There are cats my age to this day and they’re still doing the same thing. They’re ruled by it and it clouds their judgment.

I was alleviated at that as a 22-year-old man, so then it was easy after that. I’ve had times where I’ve lost my way and I will go to my father because my father is educated. They put me through college. I know they’re thinking, “We didn’t put you to college to work in a strip club.” It’s not just I’m working at a strip club. I am a great DJ, first and foremost. I come from the beginning of the hip hop and I was good at it because there was only one question back then. “Can you rock a party? Can you move a crowd?” I used to tell my father, “I’m the best in here. I’m smarter than everybody. I’m intellectually superior. I’m this. I’m that.” He looked me in my eyes and said, “Of course you are, in a den full of fools,” and that changed me.

I’m DJ-ing in regular clubs too, so I got the biggest clubs in the city, that whole 4,000 people. My bread and butter is the club because I DJ on that club only two days my whole career. That’s how much money I made at those places. It’s not like I was there every single night and I was stuck there. I DJ on Wednesday and Saturday or Wednesday and Friday, depending. It was never 4 or 5 days a week. I’ll fill in for other people. Moving forward, this is my chance to learn things as I go and practice. I started practicing SEO. How do you get on the first page of Google? I had to learn that.

That was going to be my other question. How did you begin to expand that to talk about being in the court? How did you begin to learn those other skillsets and bring them forward? What we’re talking about here and we talked a lot about this with founders in general is solving an unmet need. One of the hallmarks of entrepreneurialism is seeing a need that’s going unmet, and then figuring out how you can be the solution to that want.

That goes back to when I was sitting in a boardroom of a hedge fund and my question to them is, “Why should I let you manage my hedge fund? I got Michael Jordan, Deion Sanders, Dominique Wilkins, and LL Cool J, I can get all these people because these are my peers.” They’re like, “Because we can do this and that.” I’m like, “I don’t understand that part. Can you reiterate that?” They’re like, “We do this and that, and then when you have a hedge fund, you do this and this.” What they don’t realize is they’re teaching me while they’re pitching me. I know nothing about a hedge fund.

After four of these meetings, I know everything about a hedge fund. I know how it works inside out. I’m taking notes and I’m writing things down. I have a phrase called learn how to learn. That was the genesis of it. Everything is about a solution. People will give you every excuse and every reason why they shouldn’t do something instead of one reason why they should. I’m always the guy that’s like, “Here’s the one reason why you should and this is the solution.” It might just be a simple solution, but you’re already in your head that you can’t do something so you’re already stymied.

Were you always wired that way?

I was and I attribute that to my parents because my mother made me work like a dog. I was stemming collard greens and shucking peas since I was five years old. I had to wash dishes and I had to wash clothes. She taught me how to do all of it. My father was like, “You got to do the hedges, cut the lawn, shovel snow and rake the leaves.” There were stipulations to those things attached. We had an allowance, but if I didn’t do right, we weren’t getting an allowance. If we didn’t do our chores, you can’t go play football on Sunday because I love to go play football on Sunday.

That was the incentive to do those things, but then I took it upon my own. There was a big blizzard one year. I was about nine years old and we were the only family on the block that had a snowblower. I and my brother took it upon ourselves. We did ours, and then we went did the neighbors, and then the next. We did the whole block out of the kindness of my heart. I didn’t want anything for it. We had the snowblower. For the next two weeks, we were getting $30. They’re like, “Come here. I appreciate you doing my snow.”

I was like, “That little $5 a week is nothing compared to $30 for shoveling somebody’s snow.” That started it. Because my parents made me do that, that switched into, “I’m getting paid,” then it was like “Now that I’m doing that, let me get a paper out.” I got a paper out. I got up at 5:00 every morning folding papers for the block route. When I did my thing, I got money. It snowballed and I thank my parents for that because I do not fear work. I have no fear of work in any shape, form or fashion. I get lazy and I don’t want to do anything. I’m like, “Why do I get to do that?” I complain but I do it anyway.

How do you make sure that you do it anyway? You say you get lazy but you don’t get into laziness.

Everybody’s been through this right here, “I want to go to the gym.” This is what I do. I go slow. Get up, put your shoes on, put your socks on, put your coat on, get ready, walk out the door, and walk slowly to the truck. Go to the gym and once you’re at the gym, you work out. You don’t have to do hard. Just do a little bit, then it gets good to you. Now you’re sweating, you worked out, you leave the gym, and what do you say to yourself? “I’m glad I went to the gym. That’s the payoff.” If I got to get up and I got to write copy for SEO, “I don’t want to do this.”

I don’t want to do this turns into learning how to learn, “How can I do it a different way?” If I get a long email, I know I got to read it and I know it’s important. If I got a big transcription that I got to read from this court thing that I’m into and sitting there reading is going to be difficult. I thought of AI and it reads it to me, and then I retain more by reading along with the AI. Now it’s reading to me, I’m reading along with it, I’m retaining everything. Now it’s done and I’m better for it. You’ve got to learn how to learn.

I could take this podcast and I could put it in AI. Now it gives me a transcript that’s 90% accurate. You got to go through it, but then AI is dope that you’ll be coded one color and I’ll be coded another color. If there were four people, it is that good that it separates all the copies. Now I got a transcript and I can take that transcript and throw it in the description of my podcast or on my YouTube video. I rank on the first page of that because I knew exactly what words to say in this podcast to put them into where I’m not manipulating Google but I’m manipulating Google.

One of the things you said is something that I subscribe to, learning how to learn. Being able to consume information, but not just consume. There are a lot of people who can do that. The hard part is then to synthesize, to use it. If you learn how to learn, you automatically begin to learn how to learn more efficiently because you learn new tools, techniques and things you can do to become faster.

It’s the analogy of the hedge fund. Another one is with Scoop There It Is. You got let me tell you the story because it’s all relevant. It means this right here for me is the total essence of everything because this was all my hustle. In 2011, I’m at the club and there’s a call coming in, “DC, somebody needs to talk to you at the front door.” I’m like, “I’m working. Take their message.” He’s like, “DC, they want to talk to you.” I go to the front, “May I help you?” I was like, “I’m at work. Please just call me in the morning at this number.” A reporter from the New York Times calls me and was like, “DC, have you seen the Gawker article?” I’m like, “What?” “They wrote an article that Barack Obama was in the Whoomp! (There It Is) video and now the whole world is going crazy.” I’m like, “You got to be kidding me.”

My phone started ringing because everybody finally found me through her. I could have been like, “This is cool,” but what I took from it was, “How did you find me? I know I can’t be found because I haven’t done anything.” She was like, “Over the mountain and through the woods.” I was like, “From this day forward, that has to stop.” That’s what started my SEO journey. I said, “I got to have a web presence. I got to learn all this,” and I did it. It’d be in a quarter in the club. I built their website and started learning SEO.

Back then, if you type in Tag Team, everything was wrestling. If you type in Tag Team now, it’s our Tag Team. It took me ten years to learn SEO because it’s a moving target. Fast forward during a pandemic, I got the website built and people can find me. Since people can find me, GEICO calls the phone because I have a link on the website that if you’re on your cell phone, you can call direct or you got the number, they call the number, and they leave a message but I don’t answer. They could have given up there, but they didn’t. They went and found my IMDB because I lay good breadcrumbs and I fill out all my profiles properly.

Now they call my acting agent. My acting agent calls me and says, “DC, you booked The GEICO commercial.” I’m like, “Quit playing with me. I didn’t audition for a GEICO commercial.” He’s like, “DC, you booked a GEICO commercial.” I’m like, “Tag Team.” I went back and checked my message. “DC, we got a problem. We want to work with you.” I got one of the biggest marketing agencies in the world calling my phone saying, “GEICO wants to work with you.” I’m like, “I could take it from here,” but because I’ve been skittered in the past, there was anxiety there like, “How should I do the deal?” They said, “Let your agent do the deal because you get to break bread with them, you develop that relationship even further and make it more solid.”

That’s what they do. They’re the acting agent. This is a commercial. Let them be the lead on everything. Now you don’t have to get lawyers. You don’t have to do this and you don’t have to do that. You’ve been working with them for three years, but your money comes on time. Everything is hashed out and they have your best interests at heart. We make the deal and it was time to go to work. Everybody’s like, “Weren’t you happy that you have it?” I was like, “I was happy for two days, but I knew I had work.” You have to recognize when your opportunities come and you have to be prepared because you don’t know what opportunity is coming your way.

Because I am an actor, I could have walked up on set and say, “What do you got for us to do?” I did it and left, but I said, “This right here can be my pension plan.” I got to work. Right before the pandemic, I booked a piece of that commercial because I changed the way that I went about doing auditions. I hadn’t been booking. It was frustrating, but then I was like, “When you get the script, put five things in your pocket that you can prepare, and then if they come about, then it’s easy.” That’s what happened. I booked a Pizza Hut national commercial. It’s my first one. Here comes the pandemic but I wasn’t mad that I lost all that money. I was happy that I booked. The most important thing is that I booked. I proved that I got it. That meant more than anything.

Fast forward to the GEICO commercial, I was like, “I need to have certain things. I want to spin a scoop. I know kids love sprinkles.” At first, they wanted to do “Soup! There it is!” and I’m like, “Soup! There it is?” I’m watching Seinfeld trying to get ideas looking at The Soup Nazi episode trying to figure it out, and then they’re like, “No, we’re going to scoop.” That brings me back to my childhood because I and my brother used to sit in the driveway and we’ll put the eggs, sugar and vanilla in a big cylinder. We’d have the ice ready with salt in it and then he put it in. I will crank it for five minutes and my brother will crank it for five minutes. In twenty minutes, we had ice cream.

I want to bring that essence to the commercial. I knew kids love sprinkles. What can I do is for us to do the Salt Bae. That didn’t work in the commercial because I had a long sleeve shirt on. It was sticking everywhere and the sprinkles were all in my ears and beard. The sprinkles are everywhere. Let’s put that away. That’s funny because we have sprinkles everywhere. The crew came in and it was like a NASCAR. It was clean in ten seconds, right back the way it used to be. It was impressive.

The sprinkles were an ode to LeBron James. The little dances and all these little things were prepared, but at the wardrobe meeting, we had a production meeting with the director and the producer. I was like, “I got some ideas I want to throw.” They’re like, “DC, anything you want to do.” I’m like, “I was trying to get to spin a scoop, but I couldn’t get nobody to do it. I wish we could have done it.” They’re like, “It’ll be done tomorrow.” I was like, “Whoa,” then I realized I was on another level, 60% to 70% of the stuff that I prepared is what makes that commercial.

What’s happened since that commercial?

We shot the commercial on November 9, 2020, and then I was like, “Now it’s time to go to work.” I’m having meetings with my agents and I’m like, “I need a publicist.” I’ve done the publicist thing, but back in the day and before the pandemic, you get a publicist and you go to New York or LA, and it’s almost like a junket. Everybody comes to ask you the same question over and over again. I get in these meetings with this publicist like, “We don’t know how to do it. This is not a movie premiere. We’re in a pandemic.” I was like, “Thank you.” This goes back to learn how to learn. I was like, “I appreciate you. You’re the reason why they couldn’t do it.” They gave me every reason why they couldn’t do it but I won’t find a reason why I should. Whenever I get hit a brick wall like that, I go join an organization or a society. Every profession on this planet has an organization or a society full of professionals that have been in that game for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. It might cost you $100 to join, and then you start calling people. Every time I get stuck, that’s what I do.

Did someone teach you that or you just figured it out?

I figured that out because everybody was giving me the runaround when I want to start doing shows or a book. They’re like, “You only got one song. You can’t do this.” They were playing me. I joined what’s called the International Entertainment Buyers Association. I went straight to the horse’s mouth. I went to the buyers and the buyers have a convention of 5,000 people. I and Chubby Checker were the only black dude there. I’m there in a big black Whoomp! (There It Is) t-shirt and I started networking.

I knew my pitch. I was like, “My name is DC Glenn. You might have heard the song Whoomp! (There It Is) with the group Tag Team. We’re a clean ‘90s nostalgia rap group.” Their ears perked up. I’m meeting the owner of all the Hard Rock Cafes, the owners of all these stadiums and arenas, the buyers who put on a meeting in Live Nation, and all the booking agents. The same one that gave me every reason why they couldn’t, now they’re giving me every reason why they should and I should use them. I said, “I’m using everybody,” because it was everybody.

There was a lady who wants to do a contract. She wanted to be exclusive though I couldn’t be exclusive. She wanted to do 30 shows with the Ice Capades. We performed Whoomp! (There It Is) on the intermission and it went for a lot of money. You got Hard Rock Cafe came. I’m doing casinos, rodeos, state fairs, and all these different times for nickel-and-dime. One here, one there. I’m on tour because somebody said, “I want them for fifteen days on a freestyle tour,” all because of my hustle and I didn’t take no for an answer.

Let’s talk about two things you said that I wanted to dive into a bit. One is hustle. What does hustle mean to you? What does that look like? The audience of this show is primarily entrepreneurs and they need that hustle. Talk a little bit about it. What does that mean? How would you explain it and encourage others to leverage it?

At the beginning of this pandemic, the whole world stopped and everybody had to re-evaluate themselves. Everybody had to dig deep like, “What am I going to do?” I’ve said hustle several times, “I’m doing this. I’m hustling.” To me, hustling is the equivalent of you being in the car revving the engine and you think you’re driving, but you look outside and you’re stuck in the mud. You think you’re hustling but you’re not. You’re spinning your wheels. Sometimes, you have to stop and refocus because if you’re all over the place, you’re drunk driving on all five lanes on the highway. If you narrow that focus and you know what lane you’re in, then you can build your own six-lane highway and be the master of each lane.

Hustle isn’t just the activity and doing shit, but it’s doing it with intentionality and focus.

I know that people will be going to see me hustle because that’s the whole point. This is another reverse way of thinking. If I want something from somebody, say I want to be in a movie or I want to be on somebody’s roster or I want to do this, then it would be imperative for me to stuffily let them see me hustle. Everybody’s on Facebook at 2:00 in the morning, so it could be in the form of a post saying what I’m doing. They see me hustle because I tagged them or it could be calling your agent and saying, “Thank you. I’ve been through every coach in the city. Do you know any more coaches?” Right there, I told them I’ve been through every coach in the city and I want more. They’ve seen me hustle.

They got to see you hustle before they can trust that you’re putting in the work to take a chance on you. In the clubs, somebody is looking at me like, “I can do that,” then all of a sudden, they’re doing it. That’s four people doing my hustle and now my hustle is diluted. I get mad but I’m like, “You all can have this one because I got six more in a hole and you will always be following me. You’ll always be chasing me.” When one hustle is down, here comes the next hustle because that hustle is a seed and I’ve curated it. This is what happens to a lot of people, especially the younger generation.

Everybody makes it simpler and it’s not that simple but it is. They want self-gratification and they want it now. There’s nothing wrong with that. We all want it now. That’s what dreams are for. I tell kids this all the time. I’m like, “They look at it as a quid pro quo.” “If I do this, then this has to happen.” There is no quid pro quo. Do you go to a garden, plant a seed, water it, sit down and be like, “Grow, seed. This seed isn’t growing. I quit.” That’s what happens to people. You got to plant that seed and keep moving.

Don’t even worry about that seed because that seed is going to grow at its own pace. That’s your idea and you planted it. If you keep nurturing it or you come back to it whenever or maybe that seed doesn’t do anything, but if you get good at it, you’ll plant many seeds. That’s what I’ve done. All these different techniques and things that I figured out how to do, I plant on many seeds. I don’t even know. I just keep doing it.

Let me ask this question because I’m always interested in this one. Is hustle something you’re born with or that innate ability to do it, or is it something that is learned?

I have no clue. I take it back to my parents who made me work my ass off to get things as a child. They didn’t beat me, but it was beaten into me. I’ve made plenty of mistakes. That’s where the good stuff is. I tell people this all the time. I love being wrong because now you’re on the path to being right. You could put your ego aside and not have to win every single argument and be like, “You’re right,” and let it go.

I have a saying that I always tell people, “It’s great to have a strong opinion. Just hold it loosely and look to be wrong.” Wrong is where you learn. That’s how you grow.

It hurts. It kills your ego, but with anything, you practice it and you get good at it. I have acquired the ability to take any emotion, pain, envy, suffering, despair and anger. I might act viscerally a little bit but I don’t let it break me down. I put it in my pocket and I use it for fuel. I use it later.

How did you learn that?

Through a bad contract. The bad contract was the genesis of all of that.

Let’s talk about that.

It wasn’t a bad contract. We were in a situation where I had to sign that contract and I knew I was signing a bad contract, but I had to do it because I was young and I wanted to be a rockstar. I was like, “I’ll deal with it later,” which was a fatal flaw.

Which is how many years ago?

It’s 28 years or so. I almost gave up on Whoomp! (There It Is). A lady named Lisa McCall is like, “You need to call this guy named Al Bell. He knows how to work your type of record.” I was like, “I remember that record.” I called him and I was like, “Mr. Bell, I got a hit record. I’ve done this. I have been in the hottest clubs. I’ve tested this. You need to sign us now.” He’s like, “Okay.” I was like, “You haven’t heard the record.” He was like, “I don’t have to hear the record. I hear it in your spirit. Let’s agree to agree and let’s get this thing going.”

I gave my two weeks in the Magic City Club and signed that contract. I had lawyers look at it, but the lawyer I had was a paralegal so I was doomed from the start. About 1.5 months, I was platinum. How do you not? Those are things I had to do. I’m a young man. I’m young and dumb. I don’t know, but I take full responsibility for it. For maybe 2 or 3 years, I was a little bitter, but then 5, 6, 7 years down the line, I’m in this luck because another record company bought it. The original record company went to bankruptcy and now they’re fighting over us. I’m stymied because I can’t do anything. I’m tied up in all this and I started looking at the glass half full, “DC, you got to forever hit record.” Especially when it came out on Elf, that’s when I knew.

When Elf came out, I knew I had to hit record forever because I knew it would be played every Christmas from here to eternity. It’s up to you to make this right. It’s up to you to hustle this money up. It’s up to you to learn how to make chicken salad out of chicken doo-doo. That’s what I did. I became a paralegal because I went and found discovery. I went and kept all the paperwork organized because I knew I was going to have my day in court. Every time there was a lawsuit with one of them suing somebody, I kept all that. I had all this discovery.

In 2012, they finally went to trial because they had had motion after motion and everyone got blocked. They found a circuit court that said, “We’ll take that case.” The original record company got the rights back, and then the other record company appealed again. That’s 2012 to 2017 and the last appeal was to the Supreme Court. Can you imagine the Supreme Court had a tip of the case of Whoomp! (There It Is)? That’s where I was at. At the same time, I’m not sitting back. Whoomp! (There It Is) is just Whoomp! (There It Is). I know I can get into the boardrooms of Whoomp! (There It Is).

You’re wearing it on the shirt and showing up and using that to get the meetings that you wouldn’t have gotten into.

That I wouldn’t have gotten the other way. It’s learning how to learn. I know how to do that. All of this culminates into tons of seeds being laid over there.

That bitterness and anger would become the shroud that’s around them. You said you figured out a way how to stick those things into your pocket and use them to fuel that hustle. How did you figure out how to do that? Was that survival? Was it a conscious decision like, “I can let this shit completely chew on me and kill me,” or “I can take this and put it to some good use?” Where did that mindset come from?

I knew that it would kill me if I didn’t do that. It will make me bitter and it will make me old, and then I will have nothing. That’s what happens to people. The older cast is mad at the younger cast like, “Why did you mess up hip hop?” They are kids, for one. That’s all they know. They’re doing it the way they did it. I have this argument with guests all the time. They’re mad that people didn’t come to them because they feel less valuable. I’ve never felt like that because I’m hustling. It’s my responsibility to teach them. That is my mission statement. My mission statement is to talk to everybody I can talk to in this world and tell them my experiences and the things that I’ve been through so I can at least impart my wisdom upon them the way I wish somebody had done to me when I was 21 years old.

My parents raised me beautifully and incredibly. They made me an outstanding member of the community and a good man. My father can’t tell me the ins and outs of the music industry, how snakes are going to get you, how music publishing works, and all these things. That’s up to me to do that research before I jump into that arena. I’ve always taken full responsibility for my actions and it’s up to me to correct them. The byproduct of all of that hard work, hustle, and correction is, “This works not only for this but for this and this.” They say, “Jack of all trades, master of none.” If you live long enough and you hustle hard enough, you become masterful at some of those trades.

Why the calling to teach or share? It was obvious to me that you became impassioned when you said, “This is what I do. I want to talk to anyone and everyone who will listen.” Why do you have that sense of obligation or calling?

To learn how to learn. I learned more sitting here talking to you than I would if I wasn’t talking to you. This is like a refresher course every time I do one of these because something comes back up in my past, a seed that I laid. I forgot to water that seed. You and I were talking about something and you come up with a question that I hadn’t thought of. These things kill fourteen birds with one stone. I do voiceover, so it serves this purpose with storytelling, diction, articulation and timbre.

How did you get into that? I’m curious. To me, so much of what you’re describing is the entrepreneurial journey. You assess where there’s an unmet need, and you also assess where you have some unique characteristics, attributes, capabilities to leverage to do that. How did it move via work?

Everything is a byproduct of your hustle. In 1996, I’m in the deep boughs of Disney making a record called Whoomp! (There It Went), teaching the voices of Mickey and Minnie Mouse how to rap. That started my voiceover career, but it started before because I was an emcee. I did parties and I rock the microphone. That was the pivotal moment because I’m like, “How do you do the voice like that? Can you make money?” He’s like, “You can make money.” I’m like, “Really?” That was a seed that was laid but I didn’t get to that seed until 2009.

When I got to that seed, it was like, “I know I got to do something else. I can’t be DJ-ing in clubs for the rest of my life. I got to figure something else out.” I’m in the corridor. If I become better at voiceover, I’ll do better TV commercials and radio commercials. I started flying in New York and LA. I go get the best coaches. I struggle because of my hubris. I thought I can Whoomp! (There It Went) my way through anything. There are some things you come upon that you can’t. There’s no way under it, above it and around it. The only way to it is through it.

I got frustrated and I was like, “These coaches don’t know what they’re doing. These coaches don’t know nothing,” but I kept with it. I started looking a little bit. I worked for Apple radio, so I got a little supplemental money on the side doing voiceover and doing the radio, but this is different. This is a professional voiceover. Fast forward to the pandemic, everybody had to ask themselves a question, “What are you going to do?” Can’t do shows, can’t do this, can’t do that, but I can do this. Let me reinvent yourself.

There are a lot of people thinking the same way you’re thinking, so you better be good at it. You have to get better at this now. Everything I do, I record. If I go to a conference or acting class, I record everything because I’m paying for it. I want a record of it. I bring it back, transcribe it and archive it. I went back to 2009 and 2020 and had to hear my old self years ago. I had to hear how I thought and what I was doing because these are whole sessions and we’re talking. We’re not just training, but we’re talking about life and all these things. It was heartbreaking because I heard my script in my first voiceover and it was cringe-worthy.

It was also inspirational because I was like, “I’m an actor now and I’ve been doing voiceover. The reason you struggle is that you didn’t know the language back then. He just gave you the notes and you understand what he’s saying. You know what you did wrong and do this over.” When I did that script over, it was angelic because, for the first time, I had mastery over my voice. I started booking instantly. I went through the beginning of March 2020 all the way through March every day, a two-hour session, going through all those old recordings and getting masterful at voiceover. Now, I’m ready. All these are byproducts of hustle.

You said you had to reinvent yourself and that’s something we talk about a lot with entrepreneurs. Not only do you have to reinvent yourself but you can’t just run to where everybody else is running. You got to think about where everyone’s going to go next and get that way.

It’s bad to say this, but the pandemic has been the greatest thing that’s happened to me in my life because we’re all in the Serengeti where you’re going to be predator or prey. We’re all in this together. We are all in the Serengeti. Are you an alligator? Am I Impala? Am I going to be eating? Do I get to hide in the hole so I don’t get eaten? What are you going to do? I choose to be ferocious with it. I’m going to reinvent myself because this is what happened with the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. Auto manufacturing jobs were lost. People were brutalized by it because they’ve never known anything else.

They were sitting around waiting for the manufacturing jobs to come back and they never came back. You think people would have learned that lesson from that, but they didn’t because we’re in the pandemic and everybody’s sitting around complaining and waiting for it to come back the way it used to be. You’re sitting here waiting for it to get back the way it used to be because everything passed you by a year ago. This is a new frontier. This is us going West and claiming the land because this is all new. Think about it. If I had to go to New York, now I could do Zoom. I could do The Dan Patrick’s Show. I would have had to go to New York to do that. After I dropped a press release, two days later, I’m on a Zoom call on The Dan Patrick Show and the whole world is seeing me.

A friend of mine said to me a passing comment that stuck with me. He said, “Don’t let a crisis go to waste.” If you think about this, this is a once in a generational thing, hopefully. You can sit on your ass and lament about all that went wrong or you can use this time to take some important action, change it, and wind up on the other side of this thing so much further ahead.

My father has a perfect saying and it’s relevant. We were having a discussion about something and I was like, “It’s not happening for me. You know I’m praying and I’m trying to do the right things.” He’s like, “You can pray all you want all day and all night, but if you don’t get your ass off one of that apple tree, nothing’s going to happen for you.” Telling me things like this throughout my life are the catalysts to get me out of the ruts because we all get in ruts. Life is an evolution. If you do it right, it’s an evolution that you can leave for other people. It’s like the Bible. The Bible is whatever you want it to be, but the Bible is evergreen.

The saying, “All the good things in the Bible are still relevant today as they were 1,000 years ago.” A lot of things aren’t, but the good things like trying to be a good person and all those things don’t go away because that’s human nature. I look at that the same way as me. I’m going to do what I got to do, but I’m going to do it in a way that I give what I want first. I learned more from sitting here talking to you than I would if I wasn’t. Get up and do something.

I go back to where the publicist didn’t want to do anything with me and I signed up for the Public Relations Society of America. Two days later, I get on a Zoom call with a CEO of a PR firm. I paid $20 to get in on a Zoom call. They give you little workshops and stuff. I got a question, “Are press releases relevant? Is that what the press release for?” I was like, “I’m featured in a GEICO commercial, Scoop! There it is!” I’m looking at the chat and he’s like, “I love that commercial.” The chat blows up and the moderator was like, “What is going on?” “We’d like to welcome DC to the Georgia chapter of PRSA. We’re going to talk about the GEICO commercial after, DC.” Those are her exact words.

She went to the guest and was like, “Are press releases relevant? That’s a good question.” The guest was like, “Yes and this is why. It’s been all doom and gloom. Everybody’s been fighting each other. Everybody’s been doing this. Everybody’s used all their content. Everybody’s been stuck. Everybody’s had to figure out what they want to do. You come along with a commercial that everybody loves and brings joy to the world. Of course, your press release is going to stick. Not only that, you want to do this to get in front of all the journalists and get in front of all the TV shows. You want to do this to get this. You want to make sure your pitches are like this. You want to do this and that.”

For ten minutes, she gave me the whole PR game and I haven’t looked back. That has produced many things I could have never imagined. All these seeds I’ve laid, I stand before you in a forest of opportunity. I’m standing in Red Woods because before I got on this, I got a call from GEICO, “We got an idea.” “Let’s do it.” I’m getting calls from all kinds of brands talking about it. I could look at that a certain way, but I don’t. I look at that as I got to work harder because now, these opportunities are coming. If I’m not prepared, it’s my fault.

That to me is the epitome of the difference of hustle right there because the majority of people, once they feel like they’ve hit that tipping point and they’re standing in the forest, they get complacent. They’re wondering why suddenly, they’re back out in the middle of the sun and everything’s passed them out. The hustler says, “This is just the starting line. I got to be better. I got to work harder.”

I got to be better because it happened to me before. My life is littered with opportunities that could have changed my life forever, and because I wasn’t prepared, they didn’t. I had a chance to make a song for the Olympics, but because I can’t do my own production, I can’t do the song and I got to rely on somebody else who’s not reliable. I don’t get to bring that to fruition. I got an opportunity to do a whole season promotion for the Cleveland Cavaliers but they couldn’t find me on the internet. I’m like, “It’s a lie.” They’re like, “No,” I said, “What did you type in?” They said, “I typed in Whoomp! (There It Is).” It’s like, “You only SEO Tag Team.” I thought everybody knew Tag Team was Whoomp! (There It Is), but I guess not. I lost the deal, so I had to correct that error.

I’m wrong a lot, but that’s your chance to correct errors. Now I’m putting together five demo reels because I’m throwing it out there to Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni. I want to be a part of the Mandalorian. I want to be a part of the Star Wars Universe live-action or animation. Somebody goes back and said, “DC gave you a shout-out on his podcast. You might need to holler at him.” He called my agent and he’s like, “Let me hear something.” If I don’t have a demo ready that spectacular from the best in the business, I’m playing. People are like, “They’re going to take you because of who you are.” No, they’re not. Not entrepreneurs. Not people who got money. Not people who’ve been doing this.

It may take a meeting but that’s it.

That’s disrespectful. It’s like when somebody goes into the bank and says, “I need a loan.” The banker is like, “What are you trying to do?” “I want to do this and do that.” There I know, they’re not going to give them money but they let them regurgitate and do that. If somebody comes in and be like, “I like to apply for a loan. Here is my prospectus.”

I want to change the subject. You’re in Atlanta, Georgia. What the hell’s going on in your state? Tell us what your perspective is.

What’s everybody doing? Everybody’s huffing and puffing, reacting and pissed off. It’s not fair for the love of God, but that happens all the time in our lives. You got family members that hate on you. You got family members that try to stop you from doing things with their negativity. They say, “You can’t do it. You’re not going to be able to do that. Why are you trying to do that?” It’s the same thing. It is messed up and you’re supposed to fight. It’s not even a question. To me, it’s nothing because I don’t care what you do. If you say I got to have three IDs, I’m going to have three IDs. If you say I got to do this, I’m going to do this because you are not going to stop me from voting.

The world has lots of unfairness and things that are unjust. The world is brutal. More so for some than for others. No question.

I know that nobody’s going to stop me from voting so you can make any law you want to make. I’m going to figure out a way to vote. People are like, “What about the old people?” I was like, “Do you know anybody who has no ID? If you know people that don’t have IDs, then it’s your responsibility because you don’t want huffing and puffing. You got enough time to make sure that old folks go down to DMV and get them a free ID that they’re given out to the state so they can go vote, and then make sure they have an absentee ballot on day one and make sure they turn it in on day one. If they went from 38 to 8, then you don’t have to pack a little sack lunch and you’re going to have to drive a little extra lot but you’re going to be able to turn in your ballot.”

It’s going to massively backfire because in my experience when you tell strong, resilient people that they can’t do something, they’re going to do it.

We turned the state blue. We did it because they’ve been doing this forever. What Stacey Abrams did is she went to the rural areas because what they do is clog up the city so everybody gets discouraged. In the rural areas, there are not that many people so you can walk in and out. They went to the rural areas and all the people who have never voted or don’t vote and haven’t thought about voting for whatever reason is, now they’re voters. You wouldn’t get the people who mattered and now you can’t take it away from them. They tasted it.

Keisha Lance Bottoms is the mayor of Atlanta. She said, “I’m mad. Now it’s time to educate everybody. We’re going to know how to combat everything they throw at us with 5 or 6 different ways.” It’s like having six hustles in the hole, “You blocked me here? It’s a ten-hour line here? What other ways can I do it?” You need to know these ways today. I already know how I’m going to do it. I’m going to know who’s on the ballot. In 2020, I voted at the end of September. My absentee ballot came and I already knew because I did my research. I filled out all and made sure the signatures matched. I took it right around the corner and I was done. I looked up the next day online, I’m in.

All that I have control over is what I do. Sure, I’m mad and it irritates me but that’s what they want you to do. They think that you’re that dumb that you’re going to huff and puff, and then give up. It’s like the seed, “Grow seed. I quit.” No. That’s not going to happen. It’s true. They’re banking on some people are lazy and dumb. They don’t care and they’re young so they don’t care, but those days are over. Many years ago, if you voted or not, they don’t care. Now it’s like, “You’re trying to take it away from me.”

It’s going to backfire massively because there’s no way you’re going to stop me from voting. People stood in line for eight hours, can you imagine that? Do you think you can stop them by making them stand in line for ten hours? No. Some of these things are going to be rolled back because they’re going to be court cases that you win. They’re going to be some that you lose because the courts are stacked with people that were put in those positions to do that. When the minority is in trouble, they got to do whatever they got to do, but we got to do whatever we got to do. It’s been that way since the beginning of time.

For you to act like it’s something new and something unfair, you’ve been through this before and you go through it all the time. You go through it in the workplace. You go through it here and there. Are you going to be the victim or are you going to be the solution, the problem solver? It’s a simple question. You take that anger and you use it to teach other people. Say, “You can use my voice. I’ll do PSAs. I’ll make my own videos. If I see something everybody should know, I’ll make my own video.” You’re like, “I put you all on the game. This is all you got to do. If you run up against this,” then somebody is going to take it and make it into a national commercial. Now you’re teaching everybody. There are ways to do it, but everybody caught up in their own thing that they can’t even see it.

It all comes back to the things that you’ve said throughout this, learning how to learn, hustle, taking the things that are obstacles and sticking them in your pocket, and use them as fuel. It’s all the same life lessons just applied to different situations. DC, this has been awesome. Any last words for the readers here that you want to make sure you get out to them or encourage them or suggest to them? Anything else you want to share, please do.

I’ve made it easy for you to find me. You can type in DC or Tag Team or Scoop! There it is! or GEICO and I’m going to be on the first page of somewhere. People kill me like, “I hate social media.” It’s because you don’t know how to use it. You’re looking at it like kids. Kids are looking at it in the wrong way too because they’re looking at it as gratification, acceptance and attention. People need attention so that’s why they use it, but then social media is about engagement. It’s about getting in front of the people that can help you and let them see you do what you do. Now they’re interested and you’re engaging and you’re having a conversation.

That’s two-way. If you get in front of people and you can help too.

I live by you give what you want first. Don’t think about it. If you give a bum $5 and he says he’s hungry and you watch him go to the liquor store, you can’t be mad because you’ve already done what you’re supposed to do. You’ve given.

I call them karmic boomerangs. You toss them out there with no expectations and they’re going to come back.

It hit you in the head 3 or 4 years later. You’re in a speedboat and they come back in your way. You look back, “I forgot all about that one.” I am grateful that I am who I am. I try to help everybody. I try to help artists. They’re like, “DC, put me in the game.” I’m like, “There’s a folder. It’s got a book in it. Read that book and call me back.” Ninety-eight percent of people don’t do it. Every now and then, somebody does it and they call me and they’re like, “I tried to get this. I don’t understand it.” I tell them what it is and they’re like, “That’s incredible. Why is it relevant?”

I said, “Because now, you will never be taken advantage of in the music industry. I’ve given you the back end instead of the front end. The front end is the cars, money, girl and star. The back end is you own the rights to your own music publishing and being able to use that music publishing as a pension plan forever.” It’s how you think about it, but I had to learn that the hard way. If I had the more people I could tell that, the more people that won’t have to go through what I went through, I made the world a better place. That’s my mission.

Great mission and great conversation. Thanks for doing this with me. I do appreciate it and thank you. I’m a lifelong learner. I could do this all day.

I’ve learned a lot. Most people just let me talk, but you’re breaking it up. Thank you.

My pleasure. Thanks for joining me. Take care, everyone.

Important Links

• DC Glenn

• Article – Was Barack Obama In the 1993 Music Video For ‘Whoomp (There It Is)’? By Gawker

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