Episode 115 - Black Farming w/ Wayne Swanson

Summary

Grits and Eggs Podcast

Episode 115 - Black Farming w/ Wayne Swanson

Host: Deante’ Kyle
Guest: Wayne Swanson (Swanson Family Farm)
Date: January 23, 2026

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Overview

This episode dives deep into the Black agricultural experience, generational knowledge, and the realities of Black farming in America. Host Deante’ Kyle converses with Wayne Swanson, a multi-generation farmer and entrepreneur, about reclaiming land, community building, the everyday realities and myths of modern farming, and the intersection of business, history, and Black identity. The discussion is raw, uncensored and full of lived wisdom—shaking up misconceptions about agriculture, Black wealth, and rural life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Roots, Migration, and Black Generational Wealth

• Wayne’s Background:

  • Grandparents from Georgia (great migration to New Jersey); family always owned land—even pre-slavery
  • Wayne’s upbringing alternated between farm life, suburbia, and city streets
  • Reinforces how land and entrepreneurship are family legacies, not just new trends
  • Quote: “My people are kind of free. So when you free, you don't mix well with mediocre folks.” (10:22)

• Southern Black Land Legacy:

  • Many Black families still own land, particularly outside the city; not always registered with USDA

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2. The Path to Farming as Freedom

• Departure from Corporate America:

  • Wayne left insurance and corporate success, choosing self-sufficiency through farming
  • Realized food is freedom and material needs are often manufactured
  • Quote: “The best feeling I ever had was the day I was sitting there, I was like, man, I got cows, I got a garden. I can literally eat. Food is freedom.” (10:50)

• Struggle, Minimalism, and Mental Wealth:

  • Surviving droughts, poor market trends (“Oprah said she don’t eat beef no more, sales went through”) led to tough times
  • Adversity prompted new skills and opened up perspective
  • Quote: “I don't need half of this stuff I got… The more active I got, the less concerned I was with the TV.” (12:32)

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3. Realities of Day-to-Day Farming

• Dirty Work and Dignity:

  • Romanticized ideas of farming don’t capture the hard, sunup-to-sundown work and messiness
  • Freedom is actually in the “dirty work”—not just in aesthetics
  • Quote: “Dirty work is where the freedom is…farming is sun up to sundown, never stops.” (14:29)

• Modern Executive Farmer:

  • Wayne delegates more now, but stresses routine in animal care, the importance of fences, and emotional attunement with animals
  • “They [animals] talk to you, your dog talks to you, birds, everybody talks to you…if you’re in tune with your farm, they will tell you if something’s off.” (16:29)

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4. Black Business Models and Community Economics in Farming

• Collective Prosperity:

  • Prefers buying from and supplying Black-owned stores and partners; invests in community prosperity
  • Business is not a zero-sum “drug split,” but about securing everyone—especially long-term
  • Quote: “We as a community tend to find our comfort in the struggle…it's hard for us to talk about the success.” (15:46)

• Scaling and Partnerships:

  • Mentors other small growers; shares best practices and offers premium for quality, local product
  • Emphasizes importance of being a collaborative partner, not a parasite
  • Quote: “If you look from a distance, you can’t tell the difference between a parasite and a partner…You got to get up close.” (36:00)

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5. The Myth vs. Reality of Buying Land

• Land Speculation & Instagram Trends:
  • Warns that “just buy land” advice is misleading; land-use restrictions, ordinances, and soil science matter
  • Suggests due diligence, study of soil ecology, and knowing future land-use maps
  • Quote: “We were bought here as consumer products…The moment you…start telling everybody to buy land without context, they're watching. They're just going to raise prices.” (39:44)

6. Working with Nature, Not Against It

• Indigenous Knowledge and Harmony:
  • Farming isn’t about imposing will on land, it’s about learning from the land, respecting animal intelligence, and working with natural cycles
  • “You can’t beat Mother Nature. You just need to learn to work with her…Just listen. Slow down and listen. That’s the Blackest shit you can ever do.” (49:20)

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7. Urbanization, Food Deserts & Black Disconnection from Land

• City as Capital Hub:

  • Urban life uproots traditional foodways and the skills of self-sufficiency
  • Food deserts and homelessness are part of the city’s exploitative cycle
  • “Homelessness…boils down to not being able to clothe, feed or shelter yourself. Most people who make money in the city don’t live in the city.” (57:19)

• Restoring Food Forests:

  • Initiatives like Atlanta’s Browns Mill Food Forest are bringing back urban agriculture and food access

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8. Farming as Service, Not Just Business

• Humanity for Animals & Ethical Farming:
  • Instead of the exploitative, maximal-profit model, Wayne advocates for humane, slow, rotational grazing and using every part of the animal
  • Critiques fast food, factory farming, and grant-motivated “non-profit” exploitation

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9. Lessons on Failure, Resilience & “Failing Forward”

• Personal Stories of Setback:
  • Losses (like losing a farming lease after a dog killed a cat) turned into even better opportunities
  • “Fail forward”: Be open to what failure can teach and where it can redirect you
  • “The universe paired me all the way down…now that you have success, you realize…I was wasting money.” (20:20)

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10. Black Identity, Cowboys, and Reclaiming Agricultural Heritage

• Reframing Stigmas:
  • Embraces crops like cotton and watermelon proudly—rejecting narratives that demonize Black agricultural roots
  • Cites Jordan Peele’s cowboy documentary as reclaiming space for Black cowboy identity
  • “There is nothing more black than being in tune with nature.” (46:45)

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11. Community, Mentorship, and "The Farming Tree"

• Intergenerational Approach:
  • Patrick Muhammad’s K-8 agri-charter school, Black mentorship and advocacy for ag-centric businesses
  • “I don’t want to sit at nobody’s table. We got everything we need to build all the tables we need to build.” (75:16)

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12. Racism, Local Politics, and Resistance

• Encounter with White Supremacy:
  • Tells story of his activism and leadership at Nash Farm Park, confrontation with the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and white supremacist threats (guns, doxxing, intense intimidation)
  • Memorable Quote: “You want to get in front of this man who would do something to your family?...It was one of those moments, like, I’ve been waiting for this my whole life.” (92:51)
  • Stood firm for transparency and equitable land use
  • “Business is business” but service to people must come first

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13. Navigating Identity as a Black Farmer—Urban and Rural

• Within and Outside Atlanta:

  • Black Atlanta pride can provoke resentment from both white and Black rural folks, but Wayne asserts his competence and confidence
  • “They are offended because you ain't supposed to be that. This is mine...I'm operating in it.” (88:44)

• Adapting and Thriving Everywhere:

  • Both host and guest talk about traveling, blending in respectfully, and the freedom of being yourself in “the Blackest city in America”

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• On finding freedom in farming:
  “I call it a regenerational farmer. We lost two generations in ag, so I’m bringing people back to ag. The start for me, it wasn’t anything unique. I was just doing what my family did.” (09:58)

• On the nastiest work being most valuable:
  “Oftentimes, the dirtiest thing is the most freeing thing.” (13:43)

• On partnership vs. parasitism:
  “From a distance, you can’t tell the difference between a parasite and a partner.” (36:00)

• On Instagram ‘buy land’ movements:
  “Don’t look at anybody else’s farm…you need to be intimately understanding and knowing this farm that you’re on…That’s the Blackest shit you can ever do. Because that’s what we come from.” (48:49)

• On farming as humanity, not hustle:
  “If the animal can’t live the way God intended, I’ve got problems with that.” (60:04)

• On resilience:
  “When a level hits and the universe sees that you’ve accepted and you’re ready, it’s coming.” (31:46)

• On Atlanta as Black mecca:
  “This Atlanta, this is Wakanda. This is the center of the Black universe. 100 years from now, they’re going to talk about this time in Atlanta like we talk about the Harlem Renaissance.” (75:17)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Family land legacy, migration: 04:43–09:16
• Leaving corporate America; food as freedom: 10:21–12:32
• Real day-to-day farm life: 15:16–17:48
• Business, partnerships, and long-term Black wealth: 18:31–20:19
• Failing Forward stories: 33:22–36:20
• Debunking ‘just buy land’ hype: 39:44–42:19
• City vs. country, food deserts, restoration: 57:19–58:43
• Nash Farm Park, white supremacy threats: 89:47–97:43
• Mentorship, the Farming Tree, and schools: 72:45–74:30

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Final Notes: Tone and Takeaways

• Tone is candid, unapologetically Black, nurturing yet no-nonsense, blending humor, realism, and historical reference.
• The episode is a blueprint for reconnecting Black communities with legacy skills, autonomy, and economic power—rooted in the land and self-sufficiency.
• “We ain’t asking nobody for no seat at the table—we building our own tables, and we bringing people to eat with us.”

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Guest Information

Wayne Swanson

• Owner/Operator, Swanson Family Farm
• Website
• Products available at Nourish and Bloom market locations (Trilith, Grady Hospital, Atlanta BeltLine; as of February 2026)
• Instagram and social links in episode notes

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Yeah. Woke up in the morning and to.

[A]

God be the glory Thankful for another day to tell my story Put my.

[B]

Opinions in the universe and let them.

[A]

Orbit I'm from the dirty south with a dirty mouth my knee orbit miss things things on me like a nigga Norbit had to refuse them cause my bitch no rest Fusion she gorgeous As.

[B]

I d my sons up and kiss.

[A]

My daughter forehead Tell them we to get this money to my pocket Morbid. Remember living in apartments now we playing mortgage.

[B]

You tell me about the hats.

[A]

Yeah, well, so we was in, we was having this meeting today and we met at this coffee shop and I was like kind of looking around the shop. I was like, this don't feel like, like a. This don't feel like your regular building and like on the outside looking in just like a regular storefront. And so I started walking around and it's a whole art gallery and it was a church. Oh, right there on. Right there on. Off Mitchell. Mitchell Street. And I was like, oh, like, because they kept the stained glass windows on.

[B]

The stadium side or Mitchell.

[A]

As a matter of fact, it's off Auburn. Auburn, yeah, that's where it's at. South Auburn. So I was like, damn. Cause Ebenezer Baptist Church is like right down the block.

[B]

Oh, I know yet. By the fire hall. The old fire hall.

[A]

I'm like, damn, yo, they turned this.

[B]

Yeah, I didn't know that.

[A]

It's like a co op though. Like they got like three or four black owned businesses in there. And then the entire like the entire like church area where you would have congregation and stuff is art gallery.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

And they got meeting rooms and like that. So I was like, damn, bro, this is a good way to repurpose this while still servicing the community. It's not like instead of like gentrifying it, it's like a renovation. But now it hold three businesses that generate money.

[B]

So I'm gonna say this because how important Auburn Avenue is to me personally, like what came out of when people say they from here or they come here for a reason and Auburn Avenue don't come up in the conversation I have want to be like, you ain't shit you ain't really about shit. Cause you just want to use black to get up. But you had to know what Herndon and them did. I. I take people to the Herndon house and be like, nice. They're still behind Morris Brown College. You want to really know what's going on with Atlanta. Why we can do and move the way we move? It's because of them cats. Maya. What he did. And we was feeling that New Jersey, my dad loved that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He was like, now we gotta have a business. Because Maynard Jackson and this. And you going to Atlanta. You going to school down.

[A]

So you originally from New Jersey?

[B]

My grandparents from Georgia. They moved to New Jersey. The great migration. So we come every summer. I knew I was moving back. Cause y' all got lizards. I just knew as a kid. I was like, I'm coming here because they got lizards. I can catch lizards. I can do this for sure. So I came to Morris Brown at 18. Halfway through my first semester, somebody was like, you know, you can get an apartment for 300. I was like, what? So I robbed my housing money, went down Camelot Road, got an apartment in Clifton Glen. And I forget. The first day I went in there, they came to see me. They was like, yo, what you doing with these jersey tags? I was like, yeah, I ain't in no business. I'm just here to go to school. You got nothing to worry about with me. Right? One of them situations, I said, I'm squared up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it was like, I bet. No get in trouble, just let us know. Said, I bet we good.

[A]

What year?

[B]

91.

[A]

Oh, so.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. I was just fresh. I was just fresh to the earth. Yeah, I was brand new on Earth.

[B]

He brand new. Brand new.

[A]

Yeah. I was born in 90, so.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You went.

[A]

You said you went to Morris Brown.

[B]

I did.

[A]

Okay. So let's go through the journey. Because we rolling. So let's. Let's go through the journey. How do we go from. What did you go to college for?

[B]

Mass communication. I was going to be the newsman. Had a little intern at Channel two. Worked for Channel two in the morning. And then I was like, man, you ain't gonna make no money doing this. And was sending my resume to another radio person. And I don't know if I transposed a digit or God had other plans. But a guy called me, was like, man, your resume is nice. You probably do good in insurance. Would you be interested in an interview at the time? Man, I'm living off of Columbia Drive. I lived in. I had A duplex in where. Who got shot over there died, I can remember. But he cost me a bunch of money when that. What's my man's name? When Gigi then was fighting and the kid got shot on Columbia Drive.

[A]

I know what you're talking about.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I had to get his name.

[B]

I was 26, 27. I had a house there, and I was trying to sell it at the time that happened, and I lost a bunch of money, but. So anyway, went to Morris Brown and had always wanted to be outside because my grandparents, my dad's parents, 18 kids, and they were raised on a farm in New Jersey. So weekends, I'm a bit unique and weird because one morning I can start my day off on a farm. Literally on a farm. By the afternoon, I'm cutting grass in the suburbs, and then at night, I'm in Camden acting a fool.

[A]

Yeah. Getting it in.

[B]

Right. So it's one of them weird experiences. Not everybody gets to experience all that.

[A]

So.

[B]

Always wanted to be outside. My dad's an electrician. I grew up an electrician. As a kid, I love working outside.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the thing that a lot of people don't know about some of these, like, Northeastern states is that there's a lot of land out there. Yeah. But I. Because I didn't know that about New Jersey until I actually went there.

[B]

Yeah. Especially in South Jersey.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah. Because it doesn't. I think the idea is, like, New York is when you. Not when you're from the south and you never, like, been to the Northeastern cities, and you only visit metropolises.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Your idea is that everything up there is metropolis.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So, like, when you go outside of New York City, the further you travel north, the more I feel like you in the South. Right, right. You know what I'm saying? The same thing. New Jersey, same thing. Western Maryland, same thing.

[B]

Right. Especially. Yeah. So west. I just came through there. But a lot of it is the great migration. So most of us are either from South Carolina or Georgia, especially. Going up 85. They just went straight up.

[A]

Up 85, up 95. North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia. Yeah.

[B]

So my family. My dad's family's from Virginia, and both sides of my family had. Has owned land since before slavery.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So we always had land. Still have it to this day.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

But we realized one of our ancestors was smart, and she was like, let me put this thing on this man, so we can have. We could be. All right.

[A]

Let'S keep it in the family.

[B]

Keep it in the family.

[A]

We good. So coming from a, a family where your eldest generation or your parents are from a family of, a sibling, family of 18, what, what type of effect does that have on you as far as like being like family oriented, community driven, wanting to get back into something that could be like a sustainable family business, like a farm, where it's like most people will talk about, let's get outside, let's touch grass. But you actually have operated a business and like foundation yourself around that same ethos of like, no, I'm a build, I'm a start where my grandparents started. Right. I'm a, I'm a return to this. And then I'm a spread the word about that and get people involved.

[B]

So I call it a regenerational farmer. We lost two generations in ag, so I'm bringing people back to ag. But the start for me, it wasn't anything unique. I was just doing what my family did. And my family is on that side are entrepreneurs. So it wasn't anything new. It's just you find a problem and solve it. And if you can do it in a space that you love, it's even better.

[A]

Right?

[B]

So I was in corporate America. I did well in corporate America. Just, I didn't fit in. And my people are kind of free. So when you free, you don't mix well with mediocre folks.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

And they can't stand you and you can't stand them. And the, the most, the best feeling I ever had was a day I was sitting there, I was like, man, I got cows, I got a garden. I can literally eat. I can crush cans and pay this little $1200 house note.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I was like, what am I doing stressing myself out with these folks? And I can eat that. Food is freedom. So.

[A]

Yeah, because it's a. The. I think the thing is, is that a lot of people don't understand, like, the initial grind is for necessity, like bare necessities, just human need. And then we get caught up into the materialism of everything. Yeah. How long did it take you to click to make that, like, for that to click for you, though? Like, I got everything I need already. I don't gotta chase like the look, I don't have to chase a career. I just need to return to what was already laid out for me.

[B]

It was like, it hit me in two stages. So the first stage was in the corporate, where I wasn't getting the bump and a promotion. I was like, well, I don't need to be here. And then I had done so well. I didn't respect what I had come through. So I'm just like, I'm always gonna make this kind of money at it. There's always gonna be grass. There's always gonna be rain. And then the drought hit. Then Oprah got on TV one time and said she don't eat beef no more. Sales went through, and I had left my corporate job. So then I'm broke. When I say I'm broke, nobody. I'm 53 now, so I might have been 42, 40, and I'm broke. Because of me, it's not no situation. I can't blame anybody. And then what clicked in that was I was so poor, I couldn't hire somebody to change my oil. I had to change. I had to learn how to mechanic, had to learn how to fix everything. But I wasn't complaining about it. I just was like, this is what it is. I just know God has put me on this path.

[A]

Right?

[B]

I'm not taking another job.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I'm gonna either be on the under a bridge, or this is gonna work.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it worked. But in that space, you realize, man, I don't need half of this stuff I got. Because you. You doing stuff. You active. The more active you are, the less you concerned with the tv, the less you. You'll watch whatever it is you want to watch. YouTube or movie. But the more active I got, more active I got civically, the more active I got in the business, and the more active I got in mentoring, what I call my farming tree. I'm in demand, answering questions, helping people out, mentoring, and then being mentored in other spaces that you just don't. You'll need all that stuff, right? Like, I dressed up for y'. All. Other than that, I. You know, I bought. Somebody bought me these as a gift two years ago. This might be the second or third.

[A]

Time I wore them. Right? Because most of the time, your clothing is like utility, right? Like, right, this is what I need to wear, and this is what I do, this job, you know what I mean?

[B]

In any instance where I'm between farms or the plant is going to be something, you might have to get dirty. You might have to hop a fence and grab a cow, you might have to grab a carcass because it's about to fall and you can't hit the floor. So you never know what's gonna happen. It's a dirty business, but it's. It's. It's a business I love. Yeah, I love it. Like, I don't know what else I could do.

[A]

Oftentimes the dirtiest things is the most freeing thing. Right. Like I think you think about somebody that's like a plumber and we'll look at that as a situation of like somebody to look down on. But like this man ain't. This is the job.

[B]

They don't know a lot of plumbers. I don't know how y' all look down. Them dudes just paid.

[A]

They paid. But. But they paid. But they' such a necessity.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And nine times out of 10, when you move into a new building, when you buy a new house, when you move into a house that was already there 20 years, your biggest issue is going to be plumbing in H Vac.

[B]

Yes, sir.

[A]

And like those people are so necessity. Such a necessity because they do the jobs that nobody wants to do. Because it's not attractive. It's not like it don't have the glisten glamor around. It's actually dirty work.

[B]

It is, but.

[A]

But dirty work is where the freedom is like dirty work in the farming. Like people think farming is just aesthetic. Right. Like it's that thing that you look at online where you know, people throwing out hay and wooda woo woo and they all cozied up with the animals, but they not looking at the aspect like I got a slaughter.

[B]

They don't consider it work. They don't consider it a job.

[A]

It's not work.

[B]

It's not, it's, it's, it's a place.

[A]

But it's literally a sun up to.

[B]

Sun down, sun up to sundown.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It never stops. Like I think 10 years, I was there for a decade before I had managed to take some time off. Yeah, but you don't, you're not like I can go to my kids games and stuff like that and like there's a funeral or wedding, I can go that. But to take three, four days off.

[A]

Yeah, that just.

[B]

And I got $40,000 worth of calves on the ground and I heard a coyote the night before.

[A]

So yeah, talk about that, Talk about some of the like what are the ins and outs of being a farmer? Like not the, not the marketable aspects of it, but the day to day. What does that look like for you on an average day on, on a slow day versus like peak season? What does those.

[B]

So things are different now. Your boys bossed up a little bit. I ain't throwing a hay out.

[A]

It's changed just a little bit.

[B]

I'm proud of that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It took me some time to get comfortable to say that.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Because a lot of Times, we, we as a community tend to find our comfort in the struggle.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And it's hard for us to talk about the, the success.

[A]

Right?

[B]

It is. It is hard sometimes. So what it used to look like was me getting up like 4, 4:30, going out walking, making sure that, that the fences are clear. It's a system, right. So everything stays inside the fence. So the fence is what you should pay attention to most. And if your fences are good, your animals will stay inside. The next thing you do is you're going to pay attention to your animals and look at the animals and see if anybody's in distress or if there's anything. If they're giving you any kind of feedback, they're talking to you all the time.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You just have to be emotionally available enough to hear them. Animals talk to you, your dog talks to you, birds, everybody talks to you. So once you get that connection where you're in tune with what's going on in your farm, they will tell you if something's off, just on the schedule. Like cows keep a schedule. Like they want to eat at a certain time, they want to go under this tree at a certain time. And if you go out there in the morning and one cow's not there, something's wrong. They don't miss.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So you now have to go figure out what's going on. Is the cow, has she lost her rank and needs a minute? And cows have emotions which people didn't know. I didn't. I had to learn that. And she lost her rank. So she may be out here soaking under a tree for a while before she comes back to accept her position. And then when I come in, it's now time to look at the, the mechanisms of the business. What do we have on tap today? Are we doing orders? Are orders coming in? Are we going somewhere else?

[A]

Am I speaking?

[B]

Is there some other way that we can monetize what we're doing and help keep this thing alive? So it's never. There's a routine to it, but at this stage of my life, I'm more the executive farmer. I still get dirty. I still do those things. But I don't have to be as hands on as I used to be.

[A]

You more so delegating. Yeah.

[B]

And then getting the right people. So what I found was the best product comes from, like, if you want tomatoes, find somebody that's got a backyard that's growing some tomatoes to give you. They come. I don't know why it is. They're going to be better than anything Else you can get crazy. So what I found was my product was better because it was basically my backyard. So when I grew and I needed to scale, I would find other people that were like me that wanted nothing to do with the marketing side of it. They wanted nothing to do with communicating with people. And I would say, hey, not only am I going buy those cows, if you follow all my practices and principles, I'm gonna put a little premium on it. I need you to be able to get a good first basement for your kid when it's time. I don't need you struggling.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Means you make more, less money, but you have more security. And I think sometimes we fall into, especially our age, I'm 52, so down to probably like the 30s. The drug game was so impactful to our culture. We think everything's a drug split.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we don't want to talk about percentages. And you offended by somebody's like, man, how about I give you 5%? Like 5%. I need 100. No, you don't need 100. That ain't real. That's the movies.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This ain't Nino Brown.

[A]

We, yeah, we actually doing business.

[B]

Doing business.

[A]

Yeah. And if you watch Shark Tank, you.

[B]

Know, I didn't think about that. Yes.

[A]

But these are people that are billionaires, but they cool with walking away with 5%.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

Because it's like we looking at long term. Right. What that 5% mean in year one is totally different from what they mean in year 10. And it depends on how to business scale. It could be everything in year 20.

[B]

Look at what NAS. What NAS do it ring? Yeah, it's a percent. But then the thing I had to learn about, like I'm an investor as well, the thing I had to learn about investing was you gotta walk away. Unless they need some help, walk away. Let them do you paid them this money.

[A]

Just let them do they let them.

[B]

Do they let them do their. And then let them know when you're ready or if you see and you know, some maturation. Like some of them there's like a 8, 10 year maturation before you can get something. I always turn it back in. And the benefit for me is now my product is going into a grocery store that we. And I only want to put my stuff in a black owned store.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's just not enough. Product one and two. That's part of my story. I'm raised by black entrepreneurs and I am, I am particular about where my stuff goes.

[A]

Right. As you should be. Yeah, absolutely. And then you found Success in it. So, you know, it's not even a thing about whether it can or can't be done is being done.

[B]

It's being done.

[A]

You're doing it.

[B]

And I want to make sure I make this. I found success because, God, the universe paired me all the way down.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So once I got paired all the way down and I didn't need a Harley Davidson pickup truck anymore, and I didn't need all those, then. Then success started to come because I'm focusing on the mission.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And now that you have success, you realize, well, I was wasting money.

[A]

Brother. It's a hell of a thing.

[B]

You know what?

[A]

I. I feel good knowing, like, how I started, right when I was in the truck. I said, man, I got to be in this truck 12 to 14 hours a day. I can't be concerned with how I look. And sometimes I'm gonna be in some spots where I'm still a little bougie when it comes to this. So, like this. This truck stop specifically, they showers ain't really what I want to look like. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't want to shower here. I don't care about having shower shoes or not. I don't want to be in there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So you know what? We're going to take a whole bath today. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

[B]

Yes, sir. I'm a rock.

[A]

With this sink and some hot water, we're going to hit the main spot, so we're going to get back on that road.

[B]

So I'm on the road a lot. Not as much as you, but. So my farms are two hours away from Atlanta. Last year, I was doing six hours a day. So I. I map out my travel by where the best bathrooms are.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

And then. Your boy is not like people. People laugh at me. But if I hit a bubble gut or something, I might rent a whole room because I'm a. I'm a.

[A]

You know what's so funny about that, though? When you a truck driver, you get every. Every. The best spot to go. Truck drivers know this. The best gas station is Loves.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They the cleanest. They got the cleanest showers. They got the cleanest restrooms. Everything in Loves is clean.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So you want to be. So second place would be probably somewhere like the pilot. That's second tier. Well, yeah. And trucks can't. Yeah.

[B]

For me, traveling with cows.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. Yeah. The last place you want to be is a T.A. you know what I'm saying? You don't want nothing to do with that. That's a. It's like travel something. But this is like, these are all big name truck stops, right? So I would say I was like, so after you get a certain amount of fuel, like after 50 gallons of fuel, you get a free shower. Yeah. It'll be some days like, bruh, I don't feel like. I don't feel like shitting with other people today. I'm gonna burn a shower. I'm not gonna take a shower. I'm just going in there to use the bathroom, bro. So I could be by myself, bro.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Cause I'm around people all the time.

[B]

I tell people that with the. At this end of the business, I'm on stage a lot. So people were like, what you do for Thanksgiving? I was like, man, I just chilled at the house. I was good. I needed a couple days just to reset. Right.

[A]

And to do. Doing nothing is doing a lot. It's a lot because it's like I'm in a. My therapist was just telling me about this seven. The seven forms of rest. Like we think about rest is just like, sometimes we think about it just resting our body. But it's so many different senses that we use that we need to rest. And like, if you're not adequate with your wrist, like, you're gonna really burn out. And a lot of times people think, well, I'm sleeping well. But like. But you also are always on your phone.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So like, you are taking in information. Constant. So your brain not rest.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Even if your body is. You know what I'm saying? It's like, even just communicating with people, sometimes I just need a break from people.

[B]

Sometimes I need a break from people. And then I need a break from myself and my schedule. So if I take time off, I have to take two days. Because the first day is me convincing myself that everything's not gonna crash, everything's fine. It's okay to not answer the phone because I. It'll set you into a panic because you spent so much time building this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That it is very hard to just lay it down.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But you gotta get your. It takes. Me and my buddy were talking about this the other day. It takes me a full day to talk to myself, to be like, it's all right, man. We good. We good. Whatever it is, it'll be there tomorrow.

[A]

It'll be there.

[B]

We're gonna take two days and we gonna chill.

[A]

Yeah. You can't grind this long to not be able to take two days to yourself. But it was Tough for me. I'm coming off of you. My first interview in a month and you've been my first episode that I've recorded in what, when the last time I was here maybe three weeks ago. Yeah. So. And I was like after the, we did the wrap up episode, I had Ali Sadiq and then I did a wrap up episode and I just went home and I was like, you know what? I'm not comfortable with this shit.

[B]

How long did it take you to get comfortable?

[A]

Oh man, like three, four days. Because I knew it was gonna be three weeks. Yeah, I knew, like, I'm gonna take three weeks off.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that shit was like, the first few days was just like, I don't know what I'm doing. Right. Like I. And it's like, man, what if people don't wanna watch the show no more? You know, what if don't nobody wanna come on the show no more? It's like, brother, you being unreasonable. Right? And it's all, you know, it's a fear around, like I am my own security at this point. I don't have a job to fall back on. I don't have like everything that I'm falling back on is what I built myself.

[B]

Yes, sir.

[A]

So I also am in charge of like delegating time off to myself as well. So it wasn't to take three weeks off and I'm gonna go to an island or anything. I'm literally just at the crib.

[B]

I was just at the crib and.

[A]

I was spending time with my kids and you know, we was, we was doing stuff like movies and skating rink and arcade. Like we doing all this fun, but it was still like in the back of my mind, like, boy, I ain't did no work. Like the biggest, the biggest fear for me like on what was this? So the top of this week was the fifth and that was my son birthday. So that was my last day off. And then I got back to it on the 6th and I was like, bro, I do not want to open the email up, bro. Because I ain't answered an email in three weeks. Bro, this gonna be crazy. And that's what snapped me into it. Like. So it was okay to take. So it was okay to take the time off. You scared because of how much work got to be done. But it's also a thing of like, you earn it. You know what I mean? I think we would never hesitate to take time off on somebody else clock. Right, right, right. But for some reason, on our own clock.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, we set it up. So it's like, you gotta. You gotta be able to shut it off, too.

[B]

And it's being able to open your hand. You can't get anything if your hand is closed because you fighting what you built, for sure. And a good example is I had a customer in D.C. and so I'm at this new spot, and they're letting me come in. The videos I sent you of us cutting the meat and everything, and what I. I'm sitting there like, man, I got to get this up to D.C. and they were like, man, well, send us an address. I was like, excuse me. I said, yeah, we. We held you up a little bit. Send us an address. We're gonna move out at midnight. I said, I. I'm looking, waiting to see that. You know, we always looking at somebody to make sure they really are you, boy. Hit me or are you? Yeah, so he said, nah.

[A]

So I said.

[B]

I said, I'll come down at 11. So I go down there at 11, boxes are loaded up. I take a look. I don't want to be. It's my thing. So I don't want to be over complicating things. So I look at it looked good. I said, all right, y' all just call me when you get there. If you need something, let me know. But it was on my way home. I had to breathe and be like, is I. It's okay. You. You. You don't have to get your ass in the truck and drive to D.C. this is why you have partners now.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And this is why you going to trust them to do what partners do. And if there's a mistake, we going to talk about it and fix it.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Simple.

[A]

Yeah, I, I, I give to people that. So the. The technical business of it is they work for me, but I tell everybody they work with me. You know, I do, because I don't. It's not about you being underneath me. I understand what my role in position is. That doesn't mean that it has to be. I don't have to define that every chance I get.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That's kind of like some sucker shit.

[B]

I agree.

[A]

You know. You know what I'm saying? So the people that work with me, I always tell them, like, if you make a mistake, it's cool. I made a lot of mistakes.

[B]

I made a ton of mistakes.

[A]

You know what I mean? So, like, the best thing about your mistakes is I know how to fix them because I haven't made them already. So there's nothing you gonna do in this space that I don't know how to correct. So you good, you didn't make the mistake, you know what I'm saying?

[B]

I usually help people that work with me by telling them this story. I had an opportunity as I'm broke, broke, like so broke. I don't have like, I got no money, like maybe 300 something dollars in my bank, in my checking account. And I had a car accident where I totaled a truck, which is the best thing that ever happened because I'm an ex insurance guy. So that was about. Knew everything was going to be all right. So I'm sitting in the driveway one day, about to go to a meeting about a guy who is about to introduce me up in Dunwoody to some neighbors that I knew was going to be some significant sales. I'm sitting in the driveway, my old lady comes out there and was like, what you doing? I was like, I'm about to go to this meeting. I'm trying to hold it together because I'm broke. I can't afford clothes. I can't. I'm broke, broke. And she looks at me, she's like, you don't have no gas money, do you? I was like, nah, I don't have any gas money. So she slid me a 20 and my. My ass. Drove up the street and cried. I was like, I ain't crying here, right? But I'm gonna go up the street real quick, get behind.

[A]

Yeah, get this out.

[B]

I'm gonna get this out. And went to the meeting. And at the meeting, the guy was like, this is what broke does to you. The guy was telling me, he said, man, look, we want to do business with businesses. We don't want to feel like we are sponsoring somebody. So can you get a new truck? Because these people that how you look mean something to them, and they want to buy the best product from you. They don't want to, you know, Sanford, sign it up. I was like, all right. So I go home and I was like, talking about this now, this after the broke thing, right? I'm still broke in my mind. I got $75,000 sitting in my checking account now. But I'm still broke. Yeah, because I'm broke and I don't. And I'm so afraid to spend money. So I tell my team this. I'm like, yo, no, I. I have been broke. Not just broke financially, broke mentally. Because for a guy, success is, is, is, is our everything, right? If you come from that type of lineage, right? I did. And so not being successful at what I did hurt. And to have People then come around once you get through it, and I was okay with where I was. Then people came to me, and literally, I can't make this up. One of my boys was like, hey, man, come get it. I got a check for you. I was like, a check? Man, I ain't in no position. He said, did I ask your ass if you. What kind of position? What did I ask you to come get this money? I said, all right. So I drive up there, get the money, and as I'm ready to return the money to him, he. He calls me, say, you good? I said, I'm good. Let me bring this money. He said, I put it in the mail. I got pissed off. I said, motherfucker, you. You. I drove to get the money. I'm not about to put it in the mail to you. I'm gonna give it to you the way I got it. It means something to me that you gave me this money. I want to hand it to you in your hand and hug your neck when I do it. So I tell people all the time and take your time, because when it. When a level hits and the universe sees that you've accepted and you arrayed the level, it's coming.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Talk about be about it, but it's coming.

[A]

It's a. It's a thing of you. You. I've heard you mention this before, and I think that there's a theme, too, about failing for. And also that submission. Right. So, like, when I was in the truck, I was just making content, and people were responding well to it. I didn't necessarily look at it as a career. The. The vast majority of people who are doing the same thing, and the. The most I can hope for is that I have a unique voice amongst the collective. Like, that's more than anything you do. Exactly. You know, and I'm grateful for that. Right. And. But it wasn't about a career for me. It was just like, you know, this is something that I actually enjoy doing, and I already have a stable career in truck driving. And if, you know, regardless of all these aspirations and these ambitious plights that I want to go on, if I just drive trucks the rest of my life, and I can take care of my family, and I can give my kids opportunities, and I can be an example for people that come from the same background as me, that there is a way to turn your life around and be stable, and it don't have to be all the glitz and glamour. I'm cool with that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it was that I submitted to it like, I submitted to the life.

[B]

I was living, and then I said, well, what's next?

[A]

And they said, well, get one now. We got a podcast, you know, like, we're gonna open it up. You know what I mean? But it was that. It was that constant idea of, like. It wasn't that I was failing. I was learning.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, like, you spoke about, like, failing forward. Do you have, like, any stories or examples of times that you just failed for?

[B]

Yeah, just recently, actually. So I have a dog that I work with. His name is Tux. He's a Catahoula leopard dog. And he herds for me. And if I'm in the woods and there's wild pigs around, he kind of works with me, keeps me safe. I had this great lease. It was beautiful. The marketing we got from the lease is beautiful. Had some very pretty cows out there with that goddamn Tux. Get out one day and kill these people's cat. So he kills the cat. And I was like, man, I'm sorry. I didn't know you had a cat. And they were like, yeah, I could tell it was. It meant a lot to him. So a couple weeks later, they were like, yeah, you gotta go? I was like, okay. And so the guy was like, you want to ask no questions or nothing? It's like, nah. I mean, my dog killed your cat. I'm pretty sure that's what this is about. I gotta accept that. I don't. I don't have a problem. It's a failure of me thinking I. I have this dog completely under control, that I'm trained. He's trained. And nah, he decided he wanted to kill his cat. So what that did was set me up to ask a question of someone else. Like, hey, do you know anybody that's got any place around here that I can bring some cows to for a pasture? I need another pasture. And they were like, yeah, actually, I'm open to processing plant. Would you be interested in working with me at this processing plant? Because I got a couple hundred acres and I've never really done this end of it. I've been cutting stuff forever. I was like, well, yeah, let me come by and take a look at it. And he knew who I was. I didn't know who he was. And so the. The conversation was, can you help us get fencing? Can we do all this other stuff? I've seen us. Yeah, sure. I said, how about. But let me put some skin in the game. What do you need in the. In the house? How can I help you? Because I'm Going to tell you how you can help me, but I want to make sure that I help you first. And they needed some hooks that could help staff move the cows around. This videos I showed you of them moving the cows around. So I bought all the hooks, got that in there. So that I considered that a failure because I was so comfortable at the other spot. I would have never looked for a processor that way. I was comfortable.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It was good. I go down there and make these beautiful videos. The land looks pretty, Everything looks good. I sell a couple dollars worth of meat. This is a good life for me.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The guy was like, nah, I think we got a little something extra here, buddy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I'm gonna make somebody that really is a fan of yours just be so pissed off with you, the agent's gonna ask you to leave.

[A]

And that's.

[B]

I consider that a fail forward. Now I'm in a processor. I'm able to be there during the fabrication. I'm able to help them out. Like the young lady's having a baby. So I'm actually going to manage their front office while they going. I like to be a good partner as I'm moving forward.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I just don't want to be a taker. And one of the things when I'm talking to people, I said, if you look from a distance, you can't tell the difference between a parasite and a partner. Right. You got to get up close to really be like, oh, no, he's just drawing blood off of them. He. I don't want to be a parasite to nobody.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I want to be helpful in everything that I do. So that was my fail forward mission.

[A]

Yeah. The unfortunate part is a lot of the structure of American business is a parasitic relationship. Right. Especially when you speak about black people and our contributions in this country. It's all been parasitic. Right. And to build on that mindset where I would say our, our plight in the drug game has been very parasitic. Right. And. But this is also us operating staunchly as capitalists, right? Only pure profit, exploitation, business. Right. So when we look at the idea of partnership, to your point earlier, we have to undo the drug dealer mentality, which is something I've spoken about several times. But we also undo this idea of like only receiving.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah. Like being. Being given the willingness to give. Right. Not even the, not even the, the practice of it. And this is what the right thing to do is, right. Like, like that's an optical thing. Like I know. You know, it's give and take. Like you just accept that as part of the thing that might not really be your mindset. So in the long run, you end up taking more than you give. But the willingness to give also, like, just tenfold, opens up your ability to receive and your opportunities to receive too. And I think, you know, in the business that you're in, this is not a business that I know anything about. It's the only thing I've seen, heard about. I watch Yellowstone, you know, I understand that it comes with its own wealth of problems, but the way that people talk about it is in such a simplified way that, you know, get some land. Buy some land.

[B]

Oh, sorry.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I already know. I know. We. We talk about wasn't until my experience with hauling corn, so I was actually working with farms hauling corn, and I saw the processes that they had to go through, whether that's controlled fires.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You don't. Sometimes you don't even realize, like, where this land you getting this corn is. Some places you got to go down into the woods, and then you drive in two miles and then it just popping up.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And it's like a hundred, two hundred acres full of corn, and you there for a week just. Just receiving.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And. And hauling. And you hauling like 80, 000 pounds of corn at a time. Yeah. You just got to go low and slow. But you think about the opportunity for them is like, yeah, there, there is harvest, but I have to pay these drivers. I had to pay for this equipment or rent this equipment. Things could go wrong with this equipment, things will go wrong. You know what I mean? Also, I might not own this land. I might be just leasing this land from somebody for a harvest. It's so complicated and expensive. And we see that now in the Midwest and in the Great Plains region where they kind of like, turn their back on their workforce, and now it's coming back to bite them in the ass. But in your experience, like, what are some of the more complicated aspects of it? What is your idea about just buying land and not knowing what to do with it first? Yeah. And. And then two, like, what's the struggle with finding, like, good people that can work for you as you work with them?

[B]

Yeah. So the first one, the Instagram craze of all these pictures of, hey, just go buy land. You'll understand that you are now a speculator when you do that. We were bought here as consumer products. Right. They make money off us. The moment you jump on Instagram and start telling everybody to buy land without any context, they're watching. They're just Going to raise prices. And then we have discretionary income now. And they know we'd like to buy what we want immediately. We want it. I don't care if it's a Mercedes truck, a $5,000 pocketbook, pair of shoes, man cave, we gonna pay for it. And it's gonna be the nicest thing that you've ever seen. They know that. So I ask people, be careful what you ask for, because you don't have the science or the background to understand what's in the dirt. What you need to know is what's in the dirt. So when you go to a place and you're thinking about farming it and take a shovel, don't ask no questions. Just dig a couple inches in the ground. Is there life there? Simple. Is there life in that hole? If there's no life under the soil, it is not possible for life to be above the soil.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

So it takes decades for life to be in the soil for stuff to break down. So I tell people, do your due diligence study first. I'd rather you take a course somewhere about soil ecology, about husbandry, anything. Just get immersed, because now you're going to meet people who it's been their life, and they're going to give you gems that they don't even know they're giving you because that's been their whole life. And if you're coming from the city, like most of us do, slow down, stop wanting to be seen in the space, because we're changing the price. Trajectory of the prices. But also my consulting side of the business, I wish I didn't have, because there's so many of us that call me like, well, I bought this land. I thought I was going to be able to have a rooster farm. What's inside the city limit? What did the city limit say about roosters? Well, what did the city limit say about these daggone tiny houses? What the city. What did the ordinance say about. They're not doing that to you because you're black. They're doing that because you didn't go find out what their future land use map was. So they. Every city's got a map that says, 25 years from now, that section is going to be this. And if you run over there and then say, well, I'm gonna have a sheep farm over here, they're like, no, no, that's where all our hotels and entertainment's gonna be. You can't get a permit to do sheep farms over there because we don't want you there. We don't want the hassle 20 years from now. So everybody needs to look at the future land use map first. Go in and go to the county and see what they want. What did the ordinance say? What can you do? Work with the system. It's a system.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Work with it a little bit.

[A]

And, and you. You may own the land, but you don't own the county.

[B]

You don't know.

[A]

You don't own the city. You don't own anywhere close to owning a damn state.

[B]

And if you're not savvy enough to have done some legal. This is not. I'm not saying my camera. I'm not saying bribe. I'm saying if you're not savvy enough to have made a political donation, you ain't playing the game.

[A]

Right. Well, that's the game.

[B]

That's the game.

[A]

And land is political.

[B]

Land is very. It's power.

[A]

It's power.

[B]

It's freedom.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Which is why they want it out of our hands.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Which is why they convinced us. This is the thing that. Just to answer this other question, the idea that they gave us that watermelon and cotton is bad. Everybody in here got something cotton. We probably sitting on something cotton.

[A]

Absolutely. It's.

[B]

It's gold. And they convinced us to walk away from it. And now people get this thing. Like, I ain't. No. I don't want no cotton. Don't take no picture. Cotton is a plant, damn it. It's a plant. It don't know nothing about what happened.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It just knows when the sun hit a certain degree, I'm gonna come out the ground and I'm gonna put some flowers out. That's it.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

Get over it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's money to be made.

[A]

You'll love it. If it made you $10 million. You love.

[B]

You love it, but.

[A]

And you ain't got to go out there and pick it, you know? Like, our people have made sacrifice fights. You know, I. I haven't discussed this publicly, but there will come a day in a time, and I've. I've discussed the part about me getting off camera publicly. And they. People hate that idea, but I just understand the ebbs and flows and the cycles. Right. But if. If I ever were going to go into, like, any space of agriculture or anything like that, it would probably be mel. Environment.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Just because of the stigma. Just because y', all, Y'. All, Y' all clowned us. Yeah.

[B]

And it's like, clowned us after doing reconstruction because we figured we was making.

[A]

Money on these Melons, bro. We was making money. We was building our own freedom through these melons and through other, you know, through farming. Like, I come from a family of a granddaddy who cut the chicken head off, let them run around like this. We do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know what I'm saying? This is like how they understand how to be self sustaining. And so the, the city is, is great for one aspect of our skills. Right. Like, we are natural entertainers.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And we would do that whether there was a camera there or not. You know, this is a part of our culture. Right. But the city is, the city is set up for that. You know, the lights, the, the, the glitz, the glamour, the, the business of entertainment is set in the city.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But there's also a whole nother aspect to us. Like we, we talk about reclaiming the term cowboy.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Because that's a term that we turned into something cool that was meant to be derogatory. And now when you think about cowboy, you think about John Wayne and these, all these. That ain't had nothing to do with being a cowboy.

[B]

We don't talk about Bass Reeves.

[A]

We don't talk about Bass Reeves or.

[B]

Set Oklahoma up from Black Wall Street.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. And, and there's such a rich history. And Jordan Peele just made a documentary about this and it's a four part documentary, not only about the history of cowboys, but still the present day practices of cowboy and today. Right. And I think that there's so much that we miss out on certain aspects of ourselves. Right. You spoke earlier about being emotionally available and in tune to listen to these animals.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And that's just harmony with nature. That's.

[B]

Yeah, that's who we are.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's not hard if you can block everything out for a little bit. It that it. Your tuner picks it up.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

You get in tune. You know how it is when you go somewhere, it's only a few black folks and you realize that black person over there is not looking at you. But then for a second, y' all just look at each other.

[A]

Y' all just catch it. Y'.

[B]

All, Y' all have that head nod.

[A]

Like, all right, that unspoken conversation. You know what I mean? I, I'm, I'm interested in these things to the point of like black people back hiking.

[B]

Oh, I love it.

[A]

You know what I mean?

[B]

I have a state park pass in my. I go to all the state parks, I walk, hike. I love it.

[A]

There was this. There's this young lady on the Internet and she does all of these Things She. She hikes, she's into agriculture. She loves animals. And there was a few derogatory comments. And of course, these are. This is black people speaking fear first.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

It's like, oh, you and that white folks. And I made a comment, and I didn't expect for my comment to be like, crazy popular, but yeah, because the comment. My comment took over all the derogatory with likes and. And just people coming under. And I was like, there is nothing more black than being in tune with nature.

[B]

Nothing. That's why they brought. That's why they brought you over. Slavery was working in nature. You.

[A]

This is. This is.

[B]

Captured us.

[A]

This is the reason.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You know what I mean? Like, who understands this land better? You know what I mean? These are people that, like, they couldn't fight their way out. Wet paper bag. So they needed people that understood the land and the movement of the land. And the dust bowl happened purely by people not listening to people who were in tune with nature.

[B]

Or they got us up out of there. That's why the dust bowl happened. Yeah, they got us about. It was like, we could do this better. Oh, can you? Okay.

[A]

And you, you ignored. You ignored the people who are native to this land. You ignore the indigenous people who've been on this land for hundreds, if not thousands of years. And they understand the movement, understood it. They're in tune with it. This is not for farming.

[B]

One of the things I tell people is you can't beat Mother Nature. You can't beat her. It's not possible. So you just need to learn to work with her. And that's what I, when I'm. When I'm consulting you say you buy a farm. And one of the things I'm going to tell you is don't look at anybody else's farm. You need to be intimately understanding and knowing her, this farm that you're on. So every day you need to just walk outside, quiet. Just let her open up. Let her show you who she is, and she'll let you know. You'll go outside and one day you'll be like, oh, the sun hits this spot all the time at this time. So maybe that's where I put my garden. I'm gonna get more sun or over here. I see that the. The moles and the weasels or whatever else animals out there is here. So there must be a pattern there. So don't put a garden there. If you see the devoles live there, don't put a garden there. Mother Nature is telling you this is not a Place for them, for a garden to be. It's a place for refuge for these animals. Give them their space.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So you can do it. But if you're not in tune with the space you're in and you're looking at Instagram and you're like, well, Wayne, you did this. I want to do that. That might not work at your place. You need to listen to your place. Unless you have the machinery and the grit to try to make Mother Nature do what you want to do. But it's only going to last for so long before she takes it back. A flood, a dust bowl, a hurricane. You can drop all the trees down so you don't have anything holding your topsoil. Just listen. Just slow down and listen. That's the blackest shit you can ever do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because that's what we come from.

[A]

Yeah. And there's a piece.

[B]

It's a piece.

[A]

I'll say this. I knew that I. I started the podcast in the truck, and then I started doing small recordings at my granny house in Alabama. But I knew this is entertainment.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And if I'm going to be successful in entertainment, I got to go where entertainment is. I moved back to Atlanta.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And one of the. It was the bittersweetness. Right. When I lived in Alabama, I lived there for five years. This is the simplest I've ever lived life. This is. I don't think about shoes when I go outside. Yeah. I ain't scared to go outside in the rain and just let it rain and just be out there. You know what I mean? Like, being a part of the land. Like, I know where the foxes are. I know at night there's an armadillo that come and try to eat up all, like, just dig throughout the dirt, all throughout them. It's. It's a thing of, like. You get so used to that peace. For the first year I was there, I was discombobulated. Like, I was completely uncomfortable with how quiet it was. And, you know, and if the GPS say it take five minutes to get there, it literally take five minutes to get there. You know what I mean? Like, everything is 15 minutes away. And it was. That was the bittersweet part about moving back. But I knew why I came back. And so it was to. To. It's the. It's. You gotta leave so you can come back. You know what I mean? Because I think the natural plight of anybody that, like, values their piece, it has to be to get away from this. You know what I mean? Like, the city is good for what the city is good for. But at some point, you kind of want to return to, like, some form of solitude.

[B]

I have to once a week. Like, before I came here, I just. I took a long walk. I walked about two, three miles. When I'm walking, I'm looking at the birds. I'm listening. Sun's on my face. And there's no. I'm not. Excuse me. There's no goal. It's just. It's how I kind of recalibrate. If I could walk in woods, I'd always walk in wood. So early. You'll see me always doing videos in the morning. And there's a beaver that's over there, and I'm in there. And that's indicator.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And if I'm at the farm, I'll do videos at the farm. But it's important for me to reconnect. And sometimes I realize I'm a pain in the ass to myself. And I was like, oh, bro, you just need to get outside, right? You just need to get outside and stop fussing. You wanting stuff to go your way, only that's that inside energy. I need to get outside and kind of get my collaborative mind back so I can get some stuff done.

[A]

All right, so let's talk about. Let's talk about being outside. Yeah. What's the process of busting down the cow?

[B]

Busting down a cow. So the process, it takes you, really, three years to raise a cow, right? So from pregnant to about two and a half years to what's up? So we like to do it at about a thousand pounds to twelve hundred pounds. And then we will process the cow, and then we'll kill the cow, and then it hangs for 21 days. Maybe if it's smaller, doesn't need that, but 21 days, so that the enzymes can loosen up the meat, can let the flavor profile come out, and then so that it's not a piece of shoe leather when you get it right. And then from there, we'll take it down in halves. And then the. I call them artisans, but the butchers will then decide on certain cuts. So they're like, all right, Wayne, look. Some of the videos, like, Wayne, this. This one has a really nice London bro. I don't think we should. I think we should take it. It'll be very presentable. The customer probably would love it. Okay, let's do the London bro. And then we literally handcraft with knives and then break down the muscle groups. That's all meat is, muscles break down the muscle group so we can get To a product that we can cut, what we call fabrication. And then after we cut it, there's a little bit. You had to brush them a little bit, make them a little pretty. And then we put them into a machine with the plastic, and then it compresses it, vacuum seals it, and then it's ready to go to a customer. So we like to do halves, holes, quarters, and eighths. So my goal is to get our people out of the grocery store. And when you do the math, what you're getting from me will save you hundreds of dollars, particularly if you start buying halves, because you're getting 60, 70, 80 pounds of ground. And when we bust them down, the difference between how I do it. I'm not gonna give out too much proprietary information, but how I do it is I'm looking at us as a culture. There are certain things we eat, and there's certain things we don't eat, Right? So I'm only giving you what you eat. And what I learned over the years is when I would take boxes to people, sometimes they'd be. I'd scare them. They're like, what I'm gonna do with all this?

[A]

Right?

[B]

Like, I. I mean, I paid, but you can see it in their mind. Like, I know I paid for it, but damn, this is too much. And then some people don't want the tongue. They don't want the liver. So over the years, I started keeping a spreadsheet of what people smiled at and what made them be like, look what I got and what didn't. And I started eliminating.

[A]

I take the tongue, too. Cause I'm feed that right to my dog, man.

[B]

I tell people. I tell them, you got a dog. Your dog will love this. Yeah, you got. You know, you got some knuckleball.

[A]

I got a staffy too, man.

[B]

Yeah, he'll love that.

[A]

He like to break. Damn. I got him some chicken thighs the other day.

[B]

You should have told me you had it. I'd have bought you some. I mean, I'm literally in there cutting stuff. I didn't know you had a bully.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, man.

[B]

He.

[A]

Man, I ain't. It's few times where I just can see him visibly happy as hell.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's always around food. It's either around food or running.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know what I mean? Like, when he running in the yard, it's like he. It's like he ear to ear with it. But when he. When I give him, like, salmon or. Or chicken thighs and he get the crunch, man, he Is he like a pig and, bro, he's so happy I gave. I don't think people understand that, like.

[B]

Because that's what they built to do.

[A]

That's what they meant to do.

[B]

That's what they meant.

[A]

You got these working dogs that, like, you know what I'm saying? They not eating. How they supposed to eat? They ain't getting enough exercise. And then you wonder why they tear up. I know when he tearing up that he need to run, right?

[B]

I got a treadmill for mine.

[A]

Oh, okay.

[B]

Because I'm up here so much. Then he can't. After he killed the damn cat, I was like, wow, I need him out because, you know, cows are vindictive. Like, they'll be like, oh, he ain't looking. Let me get him.

[A]

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah.

[B]

So the dog is. You know, he got my back, but he hate cats. So he see a cat, he's like, oh, man, it's my opportunity. I'm gonna kill this.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

He done so. Yeah. But I got a treadmill for him. And we. He does a couple of miles on the treadmill. I can see it in his face. Like, when I went. I took him for a ride today, went to Douglasville, but he had that look. And I was like, oh, come on, man, get in the car. So we drive to Douglasville, make a delivery for a customer. He wanted to get out. And I was like, nope, you can't get out. Because I could tell right now you ain't in listen mode.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I don't have a collar, E collar or GPS collar on you. And this dog can go. So I took him home and I put him on the treadmill for a little bit, but I gave him a bone. And then before I left, I looked at him, he was just like, yeah, I'm good. I don't even need to come outside. You can go out the garage.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Them hand bonds. And it's. That's another thing that I've been thinking about a lot more too, is just like, our relationships with animals, our relationships with nature. Yes. These are things that, like, are severely severed when we move to these cities because the. The, like, pure capitalism lives in the metropolis where, like, it is like. Like, that is what it's for. It's for capital. You know, it has a capital building in it. Yes. The. All of these things are here to. It's. This is a money hub, Right. And the wealth gap comes from who operates in the money hub and who tries to live in the money hub. Like. Like most people that make money in the city don't live in the city. Right, right. They come in, they get their money, they leave. The struggle and the biggest struggle is for the people who are trying to survive the city.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Without any tools, without any bare necessities. Like, like land, agriculture, food deserts are very prevalent in big cities. And the homeless population. And homelessness really boils down to like not being able to clothe, feed or shelter yourself. Right. So. And people wonder why it always is like in the city is because, like you're dependent on people, you dependent on programs, and for one, it shouldn't exist. Like homelessness in America shouldn't be a thing. But if, if the city is bent on capitalism, then you have. They need homeless people there as an example of what happened if you don't play the game.

[B]

Right. And what's diabolical is we forgot what we were.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Just with that two generations. We talking about my grandparents and my parents, even me, I'm born in 73. There wasn't a block I couldn't walk on as a kid that there wasn't some food on the block. Grapes, pears, apples, pomegranate, something. And that's all gone. That like, I remember when I first got to college over by the Vine City station, there used to be a pecan grove. And the homeless brothers would be down there when it was time and they crack up the pecans, eat the pecans all day. But food was always prevalent. But we got to this capitalist piece where we want you to buy everything.

[A]

Everything.

[B]

And so the food forest that are coming up now, like the Browns Mill food Forest in Atlanta in Southeast, and just now planting stuff that people can just pick off of a tree or a vine is now coming prevalent. And I give the city of Atlanta credit. I do a. I have a 501C3 called Georgia Black Owned Farm Tours. And what we do is we take people to visit these farms and we want you there one because we want you to buy directly from them. We want to kind of cut that middleman out of these, these opportunities. But also we want people to understand the mechanism of farming is not what's on tv. It's not pretty. And most farms, if you go to a real farm, it's ugly, it ain't pretty.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's muddy, it's destructive. It's things going on. We shouldn't stink.

[A]

I'm talking about like animals.

[B]

No, you still shouldn't stink.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

You gotta come to one of mine.

[A]

I done been to some stinks.

[B]

Yeah. So what happens is, and this is another part of when we accepted the colonizers mindset. Right back in the day, your grandparents, our grandparents, great grand. They had chickens, they probably had a pig somewhere. And if you give pigs enough space, a pig will set a latrine in that corner. It better be in that corner and it'll eat over here. Yeah, but they're not what people say they are.

[A]

It's corporate.

[B]

Because you made them, made the space small, they don't have no choice. But if you want clean living, like my grandparents had pigs that could be out and they could be out like dogs. And because they're smart enough. And once you set the system, even in the 1800s, you have like 10, 15 pigs. You get them an ear notch and they just turn them loose. And then them pigs know, like, you ever hear the saying the cows come home? The cows come home at night.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the pigs come home at night. And we lost that because we took the humanity out of farming. And it was just about, I need to get as much out of these animals as possible and rape them them. I'm not going to give them what they would God intended them to have. So when people talk to me about halal and about kosher, I want to see where the animals live. That's a part of it. If the animal can't live the way God intended it, you know, I kind of, I got some problems with that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I know that there's marketing everywhere, even in religious sectors. But I want to know that like our animals live the way they were intended to live. And we're not putting this part of the problem. People get mad at me, right? They're like, hey man, we can sell so much more. I was like, I can. I have a finite product. And the worst thing I did was speed up the process. So I thought for my country folks that I was helping out by speeding this process up to get this cow to your plate faster. Well, the people from the city could care less. And they're like, nah, that ain't fast enough. And they're mad at you. And the way people charge back stuff nowadays, if you a week, you like, I'll give you an example. We had a cold front and it killed a bunch of chickens. And so that throws you off, you telling people and they just hit that button. Refund. We ain't waiting. I'm like, you want to buy from a farm or not?

[A]

That's the process.

[B]

Hurricane's gonna come, something's gonna happen, the fox is gonna get in somewhere. It shouldn't happen all the time, but it's gonna happen. So with that as we, as we allow people to be human beings and we farm from a standpoint of humanity, it's slow, it shouldn't be fast, right? If it's fast, that's McDonald's, right? You were saying? We don't want that, right? So the only way I can raise animals fast is to pump them full of food. I don't care if it's a farm or not. You got to ask yourself what you feeding them or are you feeding them or did you take years to get your pastures ready? It's back to the when you buy something, I'll just buy something. Is it set up for you to get the pastures ready so that the forage can feed your animals so you're not having to put a bunch of money into it. It. And if you have animals that are forage based, they're smarter, they understand there's nothing on the road for me. I need to be here. So I don't need to hop the fence. Let me stay here. But move them. Nobody wants to live and eat in their own right. Move them. Don't just sit on there because you now have a farm. Move. You don't want to sit in that. Nobody wants to live in squalor and nobody wants to eat that. So we move our cows and right now we're bail grazing. And. And the smart thing to do is to use everything that comes from that animal so that manure is fuel. So if you structure your farm so that your animals are tight in an area, let them fertilize it for you, let them chop it up. We call it the buffalo principle, right? So what the buffaloes did, they ran through, they chopped up everything, dropped a bunch of manure down. The turkeys, the, the songbirds, everything. Scratched through the manure, spread it out. It's a great system. Dung beetles come up, they get it. You got fertilizer under there. You just have to be patient enough to let it work, right? And when I'm consulting people, I asked him, I said, well, how arrogant are you to think you can improve God's design?

[A]

Crazy.

[B]

Like we had a whole Serengeti. I don't know if most people don't know that. Like there was a Serengeti from Canada to Mexico. Basically straight down was more animals than outside of the Serengeti. But when you go read like a book, like 1491 and books that talk about what America was like before Europe came in and gave everybody the illnesses. There were bison, antelope, elk, cougars, wolves, Grizzly bears all in Kansas.

[A]

All.

[B]

I mean, we have bison here, we had cougars here.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

We killed them all. It's the humanity of it.

[A]

Yeah. So. Yeah, because that's. That. That's the idea of, you know, the panthers, the. They used to run the east coast. He's called like eastern panthers. And they still mountain lions. They still there, but they hiding like mug they know with him. But that's another thing too is like the arrogance of the human to discredit the intelligence of animals. Right. When like we glorify animals, you know what I mean? Like at the very baseline, we doing the same shit.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We just make it look good and we put buildings and posts that we have. We have great advertisement for ourselves. You know what I mean? We. But if you look at the advertisement versus the product, we have a shit product that we put out into the world.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because everything else has to suffer for us to survive. And this ain't no. This ain't that. This ain't no African product. Right. Remember that. This ain't a system we set up.

[B]

No.

[A]

Yeah, that's not. You know, there's a certain. The Europeans, they. They take illness and destruction with them most places that they go. And then they build it up and put. Put it all in fancy lights and buildings and then we think, oh, this is not move. But it's like anti human, it's anti nature. So it's like in. In it in its essence is anti God. You know what I mean?

[B]

When you. Like when I read. I referenced the book earlier, 1491. There's a section in the book that talks about the population of Mexico City in 1491 and the way we were trained. We were thinking that all of Mesoamerica and America was like hunter gatherers. No, we travel in 85 because that was already there. We traveling on these roads because they were already there. When you go back and reading the 1491, they talked about Mexico City might have had a couple million people in it at the time that Columbus came over. And then that years later when the next group of conquistadors came through, they were talking about whole cities wiped out from smallpox and just bleached bones everywhere. So the country was from sea to signing sea full of people. Full of them that were farming, that had cities, that had mines. Copper from Michigan was all over the world. And they just want us to think that the world wasn't as connected as.

[A]

Yeah, they. They like to kill this idea of like civilization. Right. Like they like to make it like they're the arbiters of civilization.

[B]

Yeah. Which I never understood. Why, why is that important?

[A]

Well, I mean, it's all in their films. In the film, everything is undeveloped, everything is uncivilized. People are living like hand to mouth. Yeah. And things like that. But like these are intelligent people that have systems and things like that. They just not wearing suits. Right. You know what I mean? Like they're, they're fit. Their outfit is also in harmony with nature as well.

[B]

But that's not the only outfit. So a lot of times what they're showing us is basically the people. They're showing you their version of the dark Ages.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So we didn't pulled or killed all their engineers, their mathematicians, their scientists, their political people. We killed them all. Or they killed them all. They did. So now it is the dark ages for them. And they're working through the dark ages for sure. Like every other country goes through through war and famine. And they don't, they don't count that. And you need to really give people credit. These uncontacted tribes.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think more than anything, and this is a thing that we had. Astrophysicist Dr. Dakota Tyler, and one of the biggest things that he mentioned is about what colonization really is, was it wasn't bringing like, it wasn't this thing of like they, they conquered with the sword, you know, they conquered with disease.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

And, and what spreads faster than disease? I mean, we said they showed a whole country. They shut the damn near the whole world down because of a disease.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And we lived through that. But we also saw what came on the back end of that is like we're heavily dependent on our devices now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And people are addicted to their devices because.

[B]

To attention.

[A]

We. Because we shut down the world for two years.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the only thing people had to connect to was these devices. So if you, if you take that same mentality of like how fast a virus or a disease can like spread destruction. The destruction here in America was.

[B]

Capital.

[A]

You know what I mean? Like it was, we, we can't engage in commerce the way we once were because we are subjecting people to a deadly disease if it doesn't go untreated and if your immune system is already compromised. Right. We don't have the type of society that supports a healthy immune system wisdom. So it's just ravishing through people. And if you think about this in a time where there's not a wealth of knowledge about what diseases Europeans carry. Well, we don't have any cures for this.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so they just ravaging entire areas of humanity and making it seem like they conquering it through, like, brute force. When it's like, yeah, man. I mean, smallpox, it's airborne. It's a chemical warfare. If it's anything, it's an airborne illness. So that's something that we've been really trying to, like, change the perspective on so that we could change our perspective on them. In a modern day today, like, there's still diseases being spread, but the disease may be misinformation, it may be propaganda.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

It may be feeding you a false sense of yourself and what your history is.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So this was very important for me to have you here so people can understand that, that. That life that we want to live is. Is real and it's thriving. And you. And it's available to you if it. Enough to go about it the right way.

[B]

And I want to. Before we end, I want to make sure that a couple things that want to hit on, like, the land use, where they talk about we losing a bunch of land, there's some. There's some nuance to that. Not a lot of black people register with the usda. So if you didn't register with the usda, they don't know that you had a farm. So when they talk about land, yes, we lost land. There are some people lost. My grandparents, when I mentioned to my dad, I was, hey, I got. There's a program at the usda, you can get on it. He looked at me like, man, dad said, we ain't never doing that with the usda. I said, okay, but just trust me on this one. They can't take it now. And so a lot more of us have land than we give ourselves credit for.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah. Especially when you get outside of I20 and285, you get down around Macon, it's a lot of us with land.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Just not. They're just not shouting about it.

[A]

Yeah. And it's. It's. The person that's really working at land ain't worried about no phone.

[B]

No. No.

[A]

It's too much to worry about. Then it's like their life isn't consumed by content. You know what I mean? I think a lot of times it's. And for me, it's like, how do we have these conversations? And. And it's not about shedding light on them. It's about shedding light on. On the fact that it's there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We don't have to go physically to these places and exploit these people for content. Just Understand, like, there's a lot of thriving communities out there that you don't know about. And you. And you're there. Right. You know what I mean? And you. You like, you. I know that. Did you. You had a farm to table restaurant at one point.

[B]

Restaurant farmer and chef. Yeah, about a. I was two, three years too early.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

We. We hadn't. Most of my businesses are geared towards us. We hadn't accepted that yet. The idea of a $13 burger, that wasn't, you know, wasn't quite right.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Outside protesting one day, like, you got a goddamn $13 burger in this spot. And I was like, man, I raised a cow. $13 burger.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

But so right now, what we're doing is there. I'm an investor in a grocery store called Nourish and Bloom. It's an autonomous grocery store. It's on Cascade Trilith. And we're opening one in Grady and then another two on the belt line.

[A]

Oh, great.

[B]

So our product will be in there. So we'll be able to do onesie twosie products in there. Not the bulk stuff that we normally do, but those are coming from these communities we're talking about. So as I have relationships in these small rural communities, I'm able to kind of pump dollars into those, and that's where I can lease more space. And we're continuously leasing and growing, and then I'll probably. I'll probably have to move back to a farm in the next two years. Years. So I just miss it too much, man.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I love the city. I love Decatur. I love everything that Atlanta is. But I'm at home with some chickens and some space.

[A]

Yeah. And what is the farming tree? What is that?

[B]

Ah, so the farming tree is the people who come out of my mentorship, which I didn't realize until later. So the biggest one is a brother named Patrick Muhammad. Love this brother. He is just solid. He's a head of schools for Chattahoochee Hills Charter School.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And what that is, it's an ag school. It's a K through 8 Ag school.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And it's, you know, by us. And we were fixing fences. And I remember him saying, man, he's a principal by trade. He said, if I ever get another principal job, I think I'm gonna do this. And I want murals and black doctors and scientists up on the wall. You got to visit the school if you have never been.

[A]

Oh, yeah, man. Let's. Let's set that up. Yeah. When you go there, it's my.

[B]

It's mind altering and it's mind blowing because you watch these kids and I. The best thing I ever did one day I was there, there was there. They got a basketball court and these kids are free. Freer than we ever been. This little boy's at one end. He cherry. I'm thinking he cherry picking, right? He's just waiting for the shot. Then I look close. He got a magnifying glass. He's looking at rocks.

[A]

So he's looking at rocks.

[B]

Then they yell up, ball coming. He get up, play ball like a G, shoot. But it's okay for these kids to be cool and athletic and a nerd?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, we didn't have that. It was either pick a side. You don't get to do everything, bro. You either gonna ball, hang with the ballers, you're gonna be cool, hang with the cool people, or you're gonna be a nerd.

[A]

Right?

[B]

This dude was so free that he was able to play basket when you could tell he was good at it. But he wanted to look at these rocks that he was digging up with a magnifying glass. So that school is. Is it. It. It's very important to. To what we do and to get that exposure to the kids. It's a farm. We set everything up. Patrick did a wonderful job in his staff getting it set up.

[A]

And that's here in lm.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, man, look.

[B]

So that goes for. So, yeah, we get you out there. So that's Patrick. So then from inside of Patrick, a bunch of other farm businesses are set up, including what I consider nourishing, Bloom. I've. I'm an original investor in Nourish and Bloom. And then you start looking at all the people and that were mentored by us who now have ag centric businesses. And that's when I talk about the farming tree versus me just saying, pay me. Come here. I saw some things in some people and I got a. I'm invested in a farm in Jamaica that's going to be getting contracts with the, with the resorts. So. But that's just. It's important to network, but also to build it. Like, I don't want to sit at nobody's table. We got everything we need to build, all the tables we need to build.

[A]

Absolutely quiet.

[B]

This Atlanta, this is Wakanda. This is the center of the black universe. And I tell people that 100 years from now, they're going to talk about this time in Atlanta. Like we talk about the Harlem Renaissance.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

That's how I feel about the time that we are in now.

[A]

Yeah. And I think that's why Atlanta come come up under so much scrutiny. It's like that is rooted in anti blackness. Anytime I hear somebody talking bad about Atlanta, I'm like, yeah, you just don't like the idea of black people thriving.

[B]

You know how real that is?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I was in Wyoming at a conference, right? I'm speaking. I have my part. I'm speaking. Then afterwards we talking and you know, a lot of people from the south have run to, like, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, I guess there ain't a whole lot of us out there or people. I don't know why.

[A]

So I'm telling you. Yellowstone, bro. I'm telling you, bro.

[B]

Yeah. So the guy looks at me, he was like, you from Atlanta, huh? But it wasn't a compliment. I was like, yeah, I'm from Atlanta. He was like, yeah. And we just. When you're here, you don't understand how much freedom it is to be black, but you're not being black, you're just being you. But when you go other places where you're not allowed to keep your head up.

[A]

Yeah. They can smell it on.

[B]

They can smell it on.

[A]

They don't like it.

[B]

No.

[A]

Because they don't want. They acting like that. No.

[B]

Yeah. No, that's exactly.

[A]

You know, our. Know the program right here, brother. Nebraska, Right.

[B]

They're like, oh, he ain't gonna get off the sidewalk. And so I. We do this little social experiment. This is if you just. I go somewhere and walk. And if you're not in Atlanta or if you're not in, like, a predominantly U.S. neighborhood or a city, they're not gonna move. Well, they expect you to get out the way.

[A]

That here's another thing, too. I don't have, like, this thing about me when I go places. Like, this is the neighborhood to stay out of. This is like, bro, hell no, bruh. Is it over there? If it's over there. That's why I'm thinking we going. You know what I'm saying? So I was walking around Harlem and I'm dolo. You know what I'm saying? I was like, I want to go get my hair cut. I want to go get breakfast. I ain't with nobody. I don't know nobody over here. You feel me? I'm just like, I belong here. And so I was posted outside, and this dude had walked up to me when I was at the Harlem Breakfast Club, and he was like, man, bro, like, I really with your shit. Like, he was like, what you doing over Here I was like, I came here to eat. He was like, yeah, but like, niggas don't just walk to spots like this. Like, I was like, bruh, I'm not. Yeah. I don't subscribe to that. Yeah, me, I don't subscribe to this idea. Like, oh, you ain't from here, so you can't. Like, bruh, I'm amongst the people, bro. Like, I ain't tripping on that. Like, oh, really? Honestly, I don't got nothing you want.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know what I'm saying? I ain't over here to on.

[B]

But you don't look like food either.

[A]

Yeah, bro. Bro, for one, I'm not going for nothing. Right?

[B]

That's what I'm saying.

[A]

You don't look like I'm here to shine and on either. That's what up. You go to a. Like, you know, it's like when you walk in somebody house and you see that everybody take their shoes off in the house. You have to acclimate to that.

[B]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[A]

You in my house.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So like, for me, it's like I just go in in a respectful manner everywhere. I don't go big, swinging, dead, acting like I own nothing. And that's where you fuck up at. Because, like, nobody want to feel like a visitor in their own home, right? So when you come in my neighborhood and the majority of people around here poor and you pulling up chains, the big expensive car, like, bro, who the. What is you doing, bro?

[B]

Right, right. I never understood that. That.

[A]

I mean, and it's like, here's the thing. I don't subscribe to the idea that these deserve to be robbed or killed, but I do subscribe to this idea of, like, there needs to be some type of conversation that's had where it's like, bro, don't pull up over here. First of all. Like, the hood is in a zoo. No, it's not somewhere to take a tour of. Oh, I was over here in the 60s. Oh. Like, bruh, these is living real lives over here right now. Right now, bro. You go. You gotta respect the spaces that you in. That's oftentimes people don't respect the spaces that they in or people feel entitled to spaces. And you know where wherever cameras are, be camera ready.

[B]

Right? But you know how true that ain't.

[A]

No cameras in Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles. It's people in there that work, that work there, that live in that neighborhood. There's people that's eating there that live in that neighborhood day to day. And this shit ain't no entertainment. This ain't no zoo or no museum for you to come visiting or like, bro, this is a real world, bro.

[B]

And this is the same thing I tell. I get this phone call three times a day. We just want to come see. We want to come visit. Take us down. And I was like, all right, well, listen, you can. You can. I'm at work and these people at work. But if you want to come down here, don't bring city energy. Come visit. Just come visit. Don't talk about. You can put 8 million houses here. We could do this there. And they don't.

[A]

Yeah, but don't come with that. We don't need you to change anything.

[B]

No, that's the point.

[A]

That be people problem. Like, they. And that is. That is a pure. That's a 101 colonizer mentality.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Go somewhere and what can I change?

[B]

What can I change? And that's. We get. So I get that. And I have to stop telling people I'm one. I'm at work. I can't walk you around. I get paid to speak now, so I can't give you four hours for free. I can't do it now. I have other things to do. But if you go down the block, if I set you up with somebody else, just go spend time with them and talk to them. Glean whatever you can glean. Don't look at their place that maybe their folks left them and start talking about how to cut it up. Why don't you put this tiny house here? Why don't you want more people here?

[A]

That's not telling me what to do with my shit, bruh. I'm telling. I'm showing you what works.

[B]

But you do. Do you know how often how that. So what happens is that the translation is country people don't want to deal with city people because city people have so much stimulus they have to say something all the time. That noise thought we talked about earlier. Something has to be said. The country people not used to that. And you can see them cut off on these tours and stuff. You can see it just go click. You can see the light cut off. Like up that farmer done. Let's move on. Let's move on. Let's keep moving. So, yeah, it's the same if we go. Whether you go into like. And I've done it, you know, I did the. When I went to Hurricane Sandy, when I was in insurance, I was like, I'm here. I'm go to Queensbridge. I'm going to I'm going over to. I wanted to see where Tribe Called Quest is from. I went to all the spots, but I was chill, low key. I wasn't saying nothing. I kept my head up, I put my head down. But I'm not telling people how to live. You want to throw that little wrapper paper out and. Not my place to tell you.

[A]

But that's crazy, bro, because it's like you could really just fall in. Yeah. Because I'm walking. Like, the thing is, is I'm walking around like I know where I'm going, bro. Right. Because I do.

[B]

And I. You know what I really wanted to do the first time I went to New York as an adult? I really wanted to take the train. Like, I was on a job like you, seeing all the movies and stuff.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I went down to. Was that in Manhattan? I think it was. We went to Harlem. We did all this stuff.

[A]

Yeah. My people stay in bed and bedstyle in Brooklyn. So, like, I took the train from Harlem to Brooklyn. I mean, that's a rough chain ride, bro. It ain't even rough like the people, it's just like, bro, that I was.

[B]

Like, God damn, I was so happy to do it.

[A]

Yeah. And then too, when I hop out the train, that's another thing too. It's like my. Some of my people, they like, bro, don't be just doing like that. Like, too many people know you. I'm like, bruh, that don't matter to me.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, I'm not like. Like I said, I don't got nothing you want, bro.

[B]

How'd that work for you? Because I was. A couple of months ago, I was driving to pick up a track that I gave my dad. Attracted. I was picking it up and I'm at. It's 12 o' clock at night. I'm in somewhere in North Carolina and somebody's looking at me and I was like, I hope. Brother's eye. He was like, you're the farm guy, right? Yeah. I was like, you know who I am? He's like, hell yeah. I send your videos to my people all the time. I want you. You know, let me, let me talk to them, let them know you're here. So I'm sitting here talking to the guy, then I get to D.C. for some gas and somebody was like, oh, I know you.

[A]

Yeah, you're the farm guy.

[B]

And it's the weirdest shit to me that people know who I am.

[A]

It's. It's. It's definitely something to get used to. Yeah. And I think also you kind of never get used to. No, you don't, because you'll be having a regular day. And it's like in Atlanta is different because people just show love.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But like, I was downtown Detroit and like, this made a whole scene because he seemed like I was just standing outside. I would just post it up. I was waiting on my Uber, and he was like, oh, my God. Like, what the. And I'm like, but I'm. But I'm thinking, but this ain't got nothing to do with Detroit. This is his person.

[B]

Right, Right, right, right.

[A]

He just. That turned up.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And he was like. The dude was walking by. He was like, hey, take a picture of us.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the dude was like, man, I'm straight. He was like, take a picture of us, bro. And the dude was like, all right, bro. He like, ready to fight, like, yeah, give me a minute. I'm like, I said, bro, just. Just take the picture.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It'll be cool. But it's, it's a. It's a. You know, it's. You know, it's. It's. The thing is, is like, I'm here now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And there will come a day where I'm gonna be walking and nobody know who the.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

And so I got to be okay with the time when people do. You know what I'm saying?

[B]

You know who I used to be?

[A]

Yeah. Oh, my kids see it. That'd be the crazy thing too. Like, they. Teachers know who I am. Oh. You know what I'm saying? So, I mean, they don't cut them no slack, and I tell them not to, but, you know, the teachers might be a fan of the show or principal or, you know, my kids, I mean, we. Even with us living outside the city, everywhere they go is predominantly black.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know what I'm saying? So, you know, my son, his. His. Some of his friends, like, yo, your dad popping, bro. So it's. It's cool. You know what I'm saying? But I think, you know, long term, you know, long term is like, I'm. I'm here for this space.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And when it's time to move from this space, I'll move from this space, find thrive. I'll thrive somewhere else. You know what I mean? I think I, I'm. I'm very self aware to the point where, like, I don't want no farm.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know what I'm saying? Like, I want that. I want to do that type of work.

[B]

Well, so it's systems.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If we set the right systems up the systems do the work for you, and that's where we get back to our indigenous and our African roots. They set systems up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So we set systems up. I. I can be here because I know I've got X number of days of grass, and I know I move them, so it gives me time.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And also I get the animals that are compatible with that system. I don't try to force animals that are wild, never been around people into my system. I want to go somewhere, spend a little time with them, watch what's going on. Like, okay. Yes. Those. Those mamas can be a good addition to our system. We'll bring them in.

[A]

Yeah. It's about getting away and, hey, really taking that time, like, acclimating yourself to a life outside of the one you used to. Yes, I would need some time. I would need some time. I also think I would just need to be a lot older. You think, like. Well, because I'm. I'm running and gunning right now, baby.

[B]

You still can't carve out, really. The way we do it for an assignment, it might take you third. Like, if I got to move cows, it might take me 15 minutes to move them. It's just moving the hot wire, but it's preset.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So the hard work is in setting everything up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The daily task should be easy if you're going out there doing. And I'm not saying farm is not hard work. I'm not saying when you're working in your gifts and talents, it's a different type of work. Okay, so now I can say. All right, well, I'm gonna sit. I'm gonna take a week and get this whole thing set up, but I'm set for a year.

[A]

Okay. Big.

[B]

I'm done.

[A]

I might get Big Cat out now. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Big Cat. Big. Maybe six, four. He good. He look good out there. Some overall. Yeah.

[B]

Come on. And I don't. I don't wear. I don't have a farm. I don't wear the farm uniform. I wear boots. Like, not quite Timbs, but they. They. I spend more money on boots than I. Than I do on sneakers, so people talk about how much they spend on sneakers.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You're spending that on real boots, Right? Real boots.

[A]

I. I want to. We close out in a minute.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I want to talk about this idea and this perspective that you talked about when you are out of the. Out of Atlanta, how people view you.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Being from Atlanta, almost as if, like. Like you are out of line. Negro.

[B]

Absolutely. And that ain't just white people.

[A]

Yeah, well, I'm knowing, hey, look, the coon DNA gets active.

[B]

It's active. You know what I'm saying?

[A]

I've been telling niggas, you don't just wake up and become a coon, you got to come from a coon.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

You know what I'm saying? You taught how to be a coon, so. And all it is is really being fearful of your blackness.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And standing in and you know what I mean?

[B]

Your freedom. So. But also what happens outside, like, when you get, like, outside the city, is they are. They have the mantra that I'm country, that I'm from. The country means something to them.

[A]

Oh, yeah, for sure.

[B]

So for them, you coming from Atlanta and you understanding cows and understand how to move things, understand you hunt, you do all these things. To some people, that's offensive because you ain't supposed to be that. This is mine.

[A]

Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

You ain't even operating in it.

[A]

Yeah. It's an identity.

[B]

You ain't doing none of the stuff, but you think you are more country than anybody that can come out of DeKalb County.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But no, I'm operating in it. But I realize, oh, they can't stand me because I'm doing the thing that they're. They think they're living. And I don't take it personal, but you gotta have. If you need something to hold on to, I don't know what's going on in your life. And that might be the one thing.

[A]

Yeah, that might be all I got.

[B]

And here I come with a shiny car with some rims on it, and I'm hopping out and I'm putting on some overalls. And you like, what? He ain't no farmer. Yeah, I live here. I'm a farmer. And I had to learn that, then be like, oh, pull up.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Keep that identity thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that old truck.

[B]

Because you're offending people by how you're presenting. But then I gotta come back to Atlanta and I gotta present it a way as well.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. You gotta go get you a King's Ranch F250 or something like that. And that's about as shiny as it can get.

[B]

Yeah, I got my baby out there.

[A]

I, I, I brought that up because I know that you had mentioned a time before where you had a run in with the clan.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Can you tell us a little bit about. A bit? Yeah, about that. Before we get up out of here.

[B]

So in 2016, I got appointed over the parks and rec in Henry County. My farm was in Hampton in Henry county. And down the street from me was 209 acre farm farm that I thought was the Confederate playground. They did the reenactments there. They had all the flags. And if you're familiar with the new version of the KKK is Sons of Confederate Veterans. They are organized, they have camps. And this particular camp was the Nathan Bedford Forrest camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. And they're supposed to be local, but Nathan Bedford Forrest ain't from Henry County. He's from up near Chattanooga, Chickamauga. And the boy could fight. And he's. If you ever heard of the Fort Pillow massacre, he's responsible for that. So I get appointed and I don't have a lease for this particular property. And we then realized that they have been basically grifting just getting money off of this place. No occupational tax, a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so I go in to negotiate with them and we're having conversations and things were going very smooth. And then a politician went and told them to take some flags down. That set them off. And they realized that this was like, you know, like something's dying. This is our last gasp. So they went out and it got to a point that it was a lot of guns involved and other conversations. And they threatened to kill the commissioner. They threatened to kill me. We had cops at our house for a little while, but it sent me into both to study them. I'm a bit of a Civil War historian now because I need the. The way my mind works. I need to know who you are right. And why you think that the way you think and why you think it's okay to just take. So I studied that and it was, it was bad for a while. My business pretty much at that time, my business was 80, 90 white folks. And they stopped dealing with us. And I'm not saying they stopped dealing with us because they're white and I'm black. Most people, most folks don't want to be around no mess facts. They want to be around Ole Miss. So I didn't take it serious or take it personally that they didn't want to be around. So it ended with they, you know, we're doing them flag things where they drive the cars with the flags on them. And one of them made a mistake and turned in my driveway way. And it was a.

[A]

Business is business, business is business.

[B]

Going to the drive. One of the moments like I've been waiting for this my whole life. So he came in the driveway, and my. My ex wife, we were still really good friends, but she jumped in front of me, and what I said to her scared him. And basically it was, I ought to just do this anyway and get both of y'.

[A]

All.

[B]

If you want to get in front of this man who would do something to your family.

[A]

Well, he was like, let me leave that. He gonna kill everybody.

[B]

He had a key fob. He was trying to put the key with. Older guy, he's trying to put the key fob in the key. He forgot that he didn't have shoes. And I was like, hey, man. Man, don't do that. But it was. It's one of my. I got to speak in front of the county commission video out there. Yeah. And then, you know. You know how it is with us. Right. Something get good to you. So now my ass is popping up at them Little Confederate 2A rallies, talking, wanting to debate. I guess I was doing like the black Charlie Kirk person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Y' all ain't. Yeah, this. Y' all did this. Look at the South Carolina secession document. This. It says about Africans in a rightful place. That's what this is about. This ain't about heritage. Y' all want to subject us to slavery. Chattel. Slavery is what you want. That's what you think is our natural position in life. So, yeah, we had a real. It was very interesting. And by the end, as they were taking those statues out, a person who was an elected official asked me to sit down with their person at the end, and we sat down, had a conversation. Yeah, it was just like, man, I'm good, if you good, but, you know, I'd like to be able to go to Home Depot. I don't want to carry a gun everywhere I go.

[A]

Right. I don't want to do that. Real.

[B]

Yeah. But that's what we were doing. They were doing it. We were doing it.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It was like Cold war, low key.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah. And they were. They were. I. I've been doxxed because of that. I didn't know what that was at the time. And that kind of was the lead into. I don't really tell everybody why I went broke. It was the lead into. I made a choice to fight. I could have been like, hey, I got a business. How about we ease up? Because these are my customers. Some of them are my customers. I made a choice. My folks wouldn't have. My dad would have been like, what? We could have got a job at a gas station. Boy, you don't you don't let that go out.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So now we fought the good fight and we go to this Nash Farm park. And my name will never be on anything there, but I'm responsible or one of the two or three people responsible for helping them. That park become used by all of the community. And if we had time, I'd get into how diabolical it was with the impact fees where the county commission wasn't what it is now. God bless the county commission there now. But they realized that the black folks were moving into this one zip code, and that one zip code was primarily paying the impact fees for that park, the Confederate part. And it was, it was. It was slick kind of what they do, but it was a very. You find out who you are. And I'm proud of who I am. I was exactly who Wayne and Trudy raised right. When I was broke. And when the fight came, I didn't turn into somebody else. I was who they raised me to be.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

So it was a really good time for me. As I look back on is one of my more fond memories as a grown up. I learned how to be a grown up in those moments.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It was no more of the. I'm from New Jersey, so there probably was a little bit of time where I would tell you what I was going to do. But when you realize when you get older and when you get serious. Nah, I'm not telling you.

[A]

Right.

[B]

If. If you cross this line, it just is what it is.

[A]

Yeah. We're gonna have to show improve.

[B]

We got the money for the lawyer over there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Other than that, we're not. We're not doing that.

[A]

So.

[B]

Yeah, it was. But it was a very important time for the business and they tried to shut it down because they were. They were caging as if I wanted to take over the farm and they didn't know that. My folks were in local politics and were community activists growing up. And I was like, not as the people's money. This is not my money. So I would never run a business on the people's money. This is the people's money. It's not my money.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And I think where we go wrong a lot of times is and ag in spaces where grants are wheat. You think that's your money? It's not your money. It's the people's money. You said you were going to do a service. Do the service.

[A]

Yeah, do the service.

[B]

Do the service. You're not in this space. You understand? You're not in this space to get rich. You're not getting rich. Feeding hungry. So why are you taking $200,000 from a $400,000 grant to buy stuff for you?

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

Service. Yeah. So that was it. That was. It was real. You can Google it. It's 2016 Nash Farm Park. It's called Nash Farm Battlefield. I went to the reenactments. They had a museum in there. This is what really kicked it off. They had a museum in there with a shrine to Nathan Bedford Forest. And at this time, I don't know what a camp is. I don't know what the concerns of Confederate veterans are, but I'm a student of history. I knew who he was and I was like, what, y' all got a picture of Nathan Bedford for us, huh? And they were like, yeah, this is the camp. And he explained it to me and I realized what was going on. I was like, oh, this is. This ain't no museum. This is like a shrine.

[A]

Yeah, crazy.

[B]

Yeah, crazy. You know?

[A]

Yeah, we.

[B]

We did that.

[A]

Well, I mean, it's good that you're on the other side.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Thriving in business. And sometimes we need them foundational moments to see what the hell we made of. Because, I mean, that is another reality too, that people don't.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Often embrace. I think it's a point of apprehension for a lot of people too, is that when you get outside of the city, you kind of get outside of the safety blanket of like.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Progressiveness or racial harmony or things like that, you know what I mean? Even if it is segregated within the cities.

[B]

Yeah, it's not a segregated. But believe it or not, it's not as segregated once you get out of the city.

[A]

That's what I. That's what I know, but that's what the, the apprehension.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

A lot of people don't know what that life is.

[B]

No.

[A]

You know what I mean? So it's a lot of propaganda about it. And I think the main propaganda is to keep you away from it, you know?

[B]

Yes, sir.

[A]

So, yeah, before we sign out, man, first of all, thank you for coming.

[B]

Thank you for having me.

[A]

This your camera right here. You can plug just who you are, where people can find you, and we'll have all the links and everything like that.

[B]

My name is Wayne Swanson, owner and operator, Swanson Family Farm. You can find us at Swanson Family Farm LLC.com. if you're in Atlanta after the 1st of February, you'll be able to get our product at the Nourish and Bloom market locations being Trilith, Grady Hospital and on the east and West Belt line.

[A]

Yep. And we'll plug everything below and we'll put that as a part of the promotional pack, too. Thank you. People can know exactly where to find it, because I think this will come out right before the February.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So that'll be perfect. That'll be. It'll guide people right into it.

[B]

And I'm proud of them hats. So that's yours. But I had more. I had two other hats. I'm sorry, y'. All. I run them up, but I was all doing stuff and was like, oh, I got down. I'm all 20. Was like, I forgot the damn hats.

[A]

Yeah. So, man, thank you for coming.

[B]

Thank you for having me. So if you think about really doing a farm, man, let me know.

[A]

I want to come out there first. Yeah, I want to come out there and just see what it is you do, because I'm interested for sure.

[B]

Well, let's get you out to the school. It's closer. We can hit that quick. And then whenever you want to come to see what I do, because I'm. My. This is a production farm. It ain't a. Like, you might hear some gunshots because we killing stuff. So it's the real deal. Yeah.

[A]

Like we.

[B]

You want to. If you want to.

[A]

I'm with all that.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Come on. We'll run a cow, too. So you can see the. You can see us pop it. And then everything is. I'm. I'm speaking because I'm in the space. But we're very humane. And one of my mottos is my own. My animals only have one bad day in their life, and if we do that correctly, they don't know that day's coming.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

So, yeah, man.

[A]

Wayne Swanson. Swanson family finds man. Tap in. We'll leave all the information here. Thank you again for coming.

[B]

Thank you for having me.

[A]

Yeah, man.

[B]

Appreciate you, man.

[A]

Thank you. I just want to. Rape was mad.

[B]

Faith was.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They say without the proper labor, faith don't stand a chance.

[A]

I put my faith in faith and.

[B]

Stand on fertile land. I planted seeds that'll indeed turn into trees before rest in peace tease get printed to me.

[A]

Raise your hand if you've been putting off a dental cleaning, an annual checkup, or honestly, any kind of doctor's appointment. Yeah, yeah. My hands up, too. When something feels off. I usually doom scroll my symptoms spiral quietly, convince myself it's probably fine, and then do absolutely nothing about it. But this year, I'm doing things different. I'm finding doctors that I actually feel good about seeing and I'm booking my appointments with Zoc Doc and you can see it. You know I only got that good cleaning. Y' all remember y' all used to make fun of my teeth because it was yellow. It's gone baby pearly whites now. Zocdoc is a free app and website that helps you find and book high quality in network doctors so you can find someone you love. We're talking about booking in network appointments with more than 150,000 providers across all 50 states. Whether you're looking for dermatology, dentistry, primary care, eye care, or one of the 200 plus specialties offered on Zocdoc, you can easily search by specialty or symptom to build the care team that's right for you. Want to see your doctor in person? Great. Prefer a video visit? You can do that too. You can also view thousands of verified patient reviews, which really helps you get a sense of who your doctor is. Whether they're super common, explain things clearly, or maybe even they root for the same sports team. And when you're ready, you can see their real time availability and click the book instantly. No phone tag, no waiting around. Appointments made through Zocdoc happen fast, typically within 24 to 72 hours of booking, and you can even score same day booking appointments. What I personally love is how much easier ZocDoc makes the whole process. Instead of putting things off or stressing about where to start, everything feels clear and manageable. It honestly removes a lot of the friction that used to keep me from booking appointments in the first place, which is exactly what I need. So stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to Zocdoc.com grits to find and instantly book a doctor you love today. That z o c d o c.com grits zocdoc.com grits.

[B]

My dad taught me.

[A]

A lot, including how easy it is.

[B]

To forget to cancel things. So I downloaded Experian, my bff. Big Financial friend. Experian could help me cancel my unused.

[A]

Subscriptions and lower my bills, saving me hundreds a year. Get started with the Experian app today.

[B]

Your big financial friends here to help you save smarter. Results will vary. Not all bills are subscriptions eligible. Savings not guaranteed. $631 a year average savings with one plus negotiations and OnePlus cancellations. Paid membership with connected payment account required. See experian. Com for details. Experian.