Beyond the American Dream Finding Authentic Fulfillment as a Man

Beyond the American Dream: Finding Authentic Fulfillment as a Man with Mista Yu

D Brent Dowlen: [00:00:00] Mista Yu right off the bat, what's the most profound lesson you've been taught about purpose? 

Yusef Marshall: Most profound lesson regarding purpose. Never stopped seeking it, everybody to have a conversation with about purpose, and it's really been nearly a, almost a 30 year journey in this, where I talk about this, this particular topic, on multiple occasion occasions, everywhere, it seemed like the people who are the most distress and most distressed and the most distraught are the ones that have stopped looking.

They kind of settle into their careers or some particular talent they have and say, oh, this must be it. This must must be what's gonna make me viable and relevant. But when you stop seeking something, something kind of dies inside. So my, my lesson I think is it never stops seeking it. It may not be what we thought it [00:01:00] was.

It may be something so minuscule and so subtle that we don't realize that it's that. But always, always keep seeking and never settle in for what it the world around us offers. So I think it probably the biggest lesson for me regarding purpose. 

D Brent Dowlen: There's a lot of debate and confusion around the topic of purpose.

In fact, one of the few things people agree on is that life is much better when you live with a purpose. Maybe you haven't thought on your purpose much. Maybe you aren't quite sure what your purpose is. There's, there's a lot of people in that boat actually. A lot of people think you have one God-given purpose and you'll eventually discover it.

Just think about the story of Noah building a boat for years and years and years and people making fun of him. 'cause no one understood what he was doing or what this huge thing was, or why you would need it. Until it started to rain. Kinda like that. Some people think you create your own purpose, but what if none [00:02:00] of that is right?

I mean, that's why you're here talking about purpose because you're not really sure. I think you have a gift. I think you have a gift that you can use to serve a purpose. Now, I talk about purpose a lot here on this podcast, but what if I'm wrong? What if, well, today we're talking to Yusef Marshall, AKA, the incredible Mista Yu who has been talking about men and purpose longer than I have even, and Yusef has a slightly different take than even I have, and since he's been talking to men about it a lot longer than I have. I thought it would be valuable for you guys, for us to deep dive into men and purpose together with someone who's been talking about this even longer than I have, so you can get his point of view as well as mine.

We're gonna get to know Mista Yu a little bit, and then we're gonna deep dive into men and purpose [00:03:00] right after this word from our sponsor, Gents as, you know, our friend Mike Lindell has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of their life. He didn't stop by simply creating the very best pillow in the world.

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The Driven to Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men, helping [00:05:00] men go from living to thriving, purpose-filled intentional lives. Welcome to the Driven Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men. I'm your host, Brent Allen. We help men go from living. Thriving purpose-filled intentional lives.

My guest today is the Man of many talents, Yusuf Marshall. He's the founder of Mirror Time Media, LLC, and the host of multiple shows including one-on-one with Mr. Yu. You may know him as the Incredible Mr. Yu. Mr. Yu, welcome to The Driven 2 Thrive broadcast. 

Yusef Marshall: Well, thanks for having me, MC. Brent, this has been so, so already excited already.

So thanks for having me here, man. Glad to be here with you. Fantastic show, by the way. 

D Brent Dowlen: Thank you. I'm, I'm excited about this one. This will be our third collaboration, uh, over the breadth of some of the work you and I do. And I'm really, this is gonna be an incredible conversation, but we like to start out a little bit light.

So how is your trivia skills. 

Yusef Marshall: Trivia skills. Well, they used to be really good because we're taking all this mindless, useless information and pertaining to memory. [00:06:00] But now I'm not sure how good it is. I guess we can find out. 

D Brent Dowlen: Alright, here we go guys. The trivia question of the show. What country ranks first in serial consumption per capita?

Is it a the USAB, Italy C, Ireland D, the Philippines or e Australia. Oh my goodness. 

Yusef Marshall: I thought I saw a stat on this. This tell you where my mind is going already. Uh, gosh, I I thought it was, I thought it was us. I thought it was USA, but now I'm, I'm hesitant. Uh, serial consumption. So you said, okay. USA, Italy, Australia is the last one I heard.

What 

D Brent Dowlen: was the two in between Ireland and the Philippines? I feel like I'm ruling those two 

Yusef Marshall: out.

My guess is USA I'm, I'm gonna say Australia though. 

D Brent Dowlen: Okay, now guys, you know the rules. Don't cheat. Don't look it up. Make your guess. Write it down. Unless you're driving [00:07:00] for God's sake. Don't write while you're driving and we'll come back to that later in the show. 'cause no one actually cares. Mista Yu, you wear so many different amazing hats in all the things you do.

Uh, I love, I've loved getting to know you and just all the things you've got going on. But today, in this moment, all that aside, tell us in your own words, who is Mr. 

Yusef Marshall: UOI keep it short. Uh, right now I'm, like I said, I, I consider myself a jack of all trades and wearing many hats, and I have done a lot of things and fantastic experiences in life, stuff that came out of it.

Uh, I think right now, uh, primarily I am a podcaster and content creator. Uh. I am, I'm definitely, uh, an ordained minister. I, I use that in my everyday life. I guess we can throw in coach and, and, and, and father in that, because those are important roles for me. Uh, [00:08:00] that's who I am. I think I can even add author in there.

Those things are starting to come back. I was an author a long time ago, and now it's beginning to, uh, resurface again. So that's who I am. I'm, I'm all, I'm all of those things. And hopefully my one thing I'd love to be is, uh, walk into my gift as a professional friend.

D Brent Dowlen: Maybe we could all use a few more friends so that, that I like it. That, that would, that, that would be awesome. Mista Yu what do you do for a living? Actually,

Yusef Marshall: my entire, my entire life, every day. Is is is generally spent trying to build, uh, on multiple opportunities for extreme income. So right now, I guess I'm considered unemployed slash retired, [00:09:00] uh, slash you know, step away from being a bum. I mean, that's kind of where things are right now. But I spend every day essentially interviewing people and trying to build, uh, our podcast brand.

That's what I do every day for the most part. And build a nonprofit that we have, uh, just started about three months ago. Uh, save the Children as sees, uh, a nonprofit that we started for children's advocacy, to teach life skills to, and literacy the children in our community who are suffering with that, who are, who are being failed by the educational system and by families too.

So we, uh, that's what I do every day. It's not podcasts. I'm trying to build a nonprofit. Everything else that's going on outside of that, just, uh, opportunities that are developing and growing. But those are the two things I'm doing every single day. That's my living, for lack of a better word. 

D Brent Dowlen: I like it.

Why do you cringe at being called a coach for a mentor?

Yusef Marshall: I mean, look around, dude. Everybody. [00:10:00] I don't care if it's in a podcast community like the ones that we are in, and I'll talk about it, man. Just, just to be real, man. I see it in so many places. Social media especially. It's a glut of that out there. Everybody that has a story or has something that they, they think is significant in their lives, they automatically dub themselves.

I night myself, coach, I night myself mentor, and it's like that, that, that means something to me More than that, because I went through classes and courses and got trained and certified to do that, to have that title, I thought that's what I was supposed to do. You guys out here do it themselves. I mean, talking about being an ordained minister, I'm, people want going in here online and getting it in within seconds paper that says they're a minister, they can go marry somebody.

I'm out here taking classes and courses for years to be able to have the distinction of being called a a, a minister. I'm like, so I, I'm, I'm seeing, I'm, I'm cringing when I see somebody who's a coach and a mentor, not because they're not, it's just [00:11:00] because I'm, I'm more already, I'm skeptical. Okay. I'm like, okay, everybody does, does this, and they call themselves, I mean, I interview people who call themselves coaches, and I ask them say, why do you think you're qualified to, I ask those questions on air because even though my Certific kids probably have lapsed by now, I got a lot of years experience in doing this, and I'm like, I don't take it.

I don't take it lightly. So now the market is so saturated, oversaturated, if you will, with coaches and mentors and people who are putting themselves in the spot where they counsel people about their lives and life stuff. And I don't know what kind of good they do a good job or not. I'm not, I'm not speaking to that.

I have no commentary there. But I, because now I'm like. When people know me as that and they do throughout history, history, know me as a mentor and a coach, I, I almost don't wanna be as, I, I want a different title. Something that makes me distinct from everybody else because it's so much of it out there and they're not, they're not really doing a good job.

So I wanna try to get away, I wanna separate myself from them by [00:12:00] having a different name, something get me outta this circle because I don't like what's happening. So that's why I cringe, if that makes sense. 

D Brent Dowlen: No, it makes sense entirely. I, trust me, uh, I, uh, I was interviewing, I don't, in all the years now, 370 some odd episodes, um, of just the show rest brother.

That's awesome. I have only had about three interviews I didn't air that I recorded, and, and one of them was this like 20-year-old life coach and he was like 20 or 21. And like, I. Just talking like, bro, you, you aren't even, you don't even have enough life to coach anybody on what, who 30 year olds what to they should do with their life.

You don't even know what you're doing with your life. What is one thing everybody should know about you? Before we dig into [00:13:00] purpose for men today, 

Yusef Marshall: what should they know about me?

How do I say this without sounding self aggrandizing? I don't know how to word, I dunno how to word this. It's gonna sound pompous is all get out, but it's not.

I think what people should know is that. I mean, people, people describe themselves this way and they label themselves as straight shooters and say, I'm honest, I don't, I don't, I don't Fluff and all, and all that kind of stuff, and, and they just harsh and crude and, and rude and, and arrogant and they just talk to people any, any way they want because for the sake of being real, you know?

But I, I'm, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just me. I, I, I don't, I don't, I don't try a lot of folks that I don't try to get them to, to, to do things I want them to do. I'm just, I mean, I'm not gonna sit and say I'm, I'm the [00:14:00] last honest man. I'm, I'm not gonna do all of that. But I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm, I'm pretty honest about where I am.

I don't, I don't, I don't lie to folks. I don't say, I'm gonna do this for you, and then I don't do it. You know what I'm saying? When I, when I, when I had you on the show, I told you when you came on the show, I said, the goal of the show is not to boost my numbers. I'm a different podcaster. Those things are gonna happen.

In my mind, they have to happen through consistent progress and consistency, it has to happen. So I'm not worried about that. I need you to help me with that part, which if you wanna support me, that's great. I, so I said, well, my goal here with this show and having you on, is to support you and boost your profile.

I told you that from the very beginning. So we, in the pre-interview, and I said that after the show was done, I'm gonna be promoting your show, the episode perpetually. And I said that, and I've been doing it. I've been promoting your show. Every time I get on my computer and, and I see the episode, I'm still push, I'm still sharing, I'm still pushing it, I'm still adding new captions.[00:15:00] 

I'm saying, check the show out. Check out my guy. You'll love to hear what he has to say. And I've been doing that and that was months ago. So I, I think to answer your question, I hate the word honest, because I don't, I don't know another way to use, find enough a different word. I'm just authentic about this.

If I say I'm gonna help you, I'm gonna serve you. It's going to happen. I'm not gonna forget about it. I'm not gonna get so big that I forget where I came. It's not, it's, it's not happening. I'm saying I'm gonna do what I said I'm gonna do, but I write it down, got on in this call. It's in my calendar. I'm not gonna forget.

And I really care about the people I'm trying to help. And, you know, people don't get that. They think it's a motive and an angle all he wants, likes. I'm not trying to get any, I, I'm an introvert. I shouldn't even be doing this anyway. I, I, I shouldn't be on any, on any TV screen or laptop screen. I shouldn't be even be doing this.

I wanna get away from the, I don't wanna be in the light, so to speak. I don't want it, but the purpose that's greater than me and that's why I'm doing this. So [00:16:00] maybe that, did I answer the question? Because I don't even know if I did. I'm just ba babbling at this point. I have no idea what I was talking about.

But, but that's what I, that's what I want you to know. 

D Brent Dowlen: Straight from the heart, man. We're good. Alright. Love it guys. We've been just a little bit of time getting to know Mista Yu and. Who he is, what he is about, uh, where he is coming from and, and the direction he is going. And the next part of the show, we're gonna go ahead and dive into why men need their purpose, why it's so important to find your purpose.

And then later in the episode we're gonna start heading towards helping you find your purpose, if this is something you're struggling with. Now there's, I I, I've been looking forward to the conversation, man, because this is like one of the most convoluted questions I ever get asked and talked about.

Talk about, uh, is helping people find their purpose or why, why they should pursue their purpose at all. Right? I, I've met so many guys. Like, I, I [00:17:00] was truly, truly sad. I was talking to a guy one day at a, at a men's breakfast, right? And. Uh, he was asking about my shirt. I was wearing one of my podcast shirts and he was asking about what I do and what I talk about, and I was like, well, you know, I, I help men move towards their purpose and, you know, go beyond just living and, you know, just being the breadwinner, right?

Uh, the whole protect, provide, preside kind of thing that you hear talk about in men's circles. And this guy was like, and, and he's easily in his fifties. It's like, what else is there? And like, my heart just hurts this, this is the reason we're having these conversations is there are so many men who don't realize there's so much more.

Okay, you know what,

let's start [00:18:00] with.

Well, I'm the elephant in the room. Why? Why should men seek out a bigger purpose in their life?

Yusef Marshall: One of the things that my old, uh, leader, party mentor, uh, Dr. Miles Monroe, he was a well-known speaker, minister, author, his books and his, his, uh, teachings have shaped my, my family's life. And one of his quotes, uh, but there's two quotes I just love, I always share because it just, they just hit me that way.

The short version of one of 'em is that the richest place in the world isn't the oil fields of Saudi Arabia or Texas or Go, or, uh, or Fort Knox is the graveyard books, poems, inventions, stories, ideas. They rest there because they weren't. They weren't walked out, they weren't lived out. It's the richest place in [00:19:00] the entire world, the graveyard.

And his other quote is, you know, without the understanding of a thing, abuse is inevitable. To paraphrase it, and as men, we are known to be fixes and, and, and doers and put, like you said, providers and, and and such. But there's just so much more to us than that. We were created for a lot more than just to be, uh, husbandman over a garden.

We, we would, there's more to us than that. We, we do more than that just being a provider and to show up and give, uh, our children the last scraps, the last remnants of our time because we we're spent from working 16 hour days. There's more to our life than that. So I believe that men, not men versus women, but just speaking to men specifically, we need to seek purpose because if we don't, we would have lived a full life and never done.

Become all it was supposed to be. And I use the word evolve, [00:20:00] not because we talk, talking evolution. I mean, for lack of a better word. We need to evolve into this. And we can't do that without being on this seeking journey of trying to find purpose. What we do is we'll settle in into a temporary place and make it permanent, and it's supposed to be temporary and we start camping out in a place that you're supposed to be just be passing through.

And we do that in life. I've done it. That's how I know. Ask me how. I know that's how, that's how I know because I went to a place I should have been passing through as a Sona and I camped out there and hung out, put up a tent and said, this is my house. And started putting up signs and this is my house.

This is not my house. I'm supposed to just be passing through it. Moving on to the next bigger and better thing. But I didn't do that because I didn't reckon I didn't, I didn't discern the times and the seasons that I was in as man, we can't afford, we can't afford to do that. Look at, look at the perception of men now.

Whether it be in the media, just around the world, even in books and stuff, you know, some stuff deserved. But overall, men get a very [00:21:00] rap and people don't really take the time to understand men. Even men don't wanna understand men. We could be, we have an inability to connect or, or unwillingness to learn how to connect with each other.

So nobody understands us. We don't even understand us because we just come walking around like zombies, just doing things that we think men are supposed to do. And there's just so much more to us. We have so much flavor, so much creativity, so much purpose inside of us. Gotta tap into it. So, I don't know who wants to see a bunch of dead men that you know are for, to be leading homes, their household being the priest, practicing kings in their household and they just, they don't care.

Pop on the couch, veg out, and stop living, starting to slow. Death process we owe to ourselves to seek purpose.

D Brent Dowlen: There's a whole lot there. Um, but I, I, I don't want to derail my thought process [00:22:00] just yet, so 

Yusef Marshall: I'm sorry. 

D Brent Dowlen: No, I'm sorry about I, it's like you, you, you know, as podcast host, right? Someone says, something's like, it's something I'm, it's, you know, sitting on my, my head about that, going to add to the conversation or detract from what was just said, right?

Yeah, yeah. Wanna detract from what my guest said. So let's push forward and, uh, how, how about this, right? You are in a place where you know that this is, this is reality to you, that this is important. So let's take a half step back and can you share a, your experience, your story on what led you to discover your own purpose in life?

What pushed you there?

Yusef Marshall: Yeah, this is, uh, there's a lot of different little factors that kind of led to this. I'm trying to just pinpoint one [00:23:00] thing where I just, where I just feel like I just got here. Uh, I don't know. I think, um, if I just pick one thing that kind of just pops up, uh, I, I would probably say in 2016 was probably the year that that really became, uh, life for me personally.

Uh, I was coaching before that I was doing, um, I even had my own coaching practice. I was, I was doing the pur, I was having purpose conversations with people long before 2016, but that, that was the year that I wrote my first book and it represented, uh, therapy for me because of some, uh. Serious hangups and some serious, uh, wounds that I had as being a son without a father.

And in writing that book, you know, I, like I said, it was therapeutic. [00:24:00] I, I, to a degree, I got some healing outta that. There was more that came afterwards, but to a degree, to write that and put it out there was healing for me to have conversations about it, to have to discuss it openly with people who were reading the book.

Uh, it was, it, it was powerful. Uh, but in that, I was like, okay, everybody that writes a book, you know, it doesn't mean that you, you need to continue to be an author. But no, it j it just means that, you know, you had a story and you were able to share it and it resonated with somebody. But in right now, I was like, I got so many questions and I even begin to re, uh, reassess my own work.

I wrote the book, but I was still in it. I was still in the book even though I wrote it, and it was already published. It was already out on Amazon and all these, uh, retailers. But I was still, I was, I was still processing this book and I'm like, it made me come to some questions about myself. There was some hard questions that were not in the book.

It made me, made me [00:25:00] wonder, okay, so who are you? You spend this whole, this whole time writing 194 pages in six weeks about all your hurts and your struggles and the things that you lacked and missed out in life. Who are you? And it made me begin to start getting into a journey. That book helped me do that.

Start, start taking a journey about to find out who I am. So I think that year was pivotal for that. Uh, but it created some questions because, you know, when we do things and we think, you know what, okay, I did it. You know, now what? You know, it, it made me just realize that, you know, there's so much more.

This, this areas and, and, and chambers of our heart that we haven't even touched yet. There's so much more to us that's, that's valuable. So much more that we gotta get out of us. We got the, uh, the journey of healing and restoration. It doesn't just start when we do something good and we're supposed to pat on the back.

There's just so much more, and it never ends. When I figured that [00:26:00] part out that it doesn't end, I'm like, oh my God. Okay, so I should still be doing some more work. This should still be more journey happening. I thought I was gonna be, that was a hard stop. I wrote the book. I'm GI Simon, done. You know what I'm saying?

But there's just so much more, and that's when I realized that, you know what? I gotta do work and it's perpetual. It don't quit until I'm done. Like, I mean, like as in end of life done or end of days done, whichever one comes first. That's what, that's when I realized, you know what this is, this is the journey.

I gotta, I gotta stay in with a secret mentality. And I've been teaching that ever since that year. No about the secret, a mentality, and we gotta have it. We, we need to, uh, foster that and not let it go into your bureau withdrawal on your nightstand. We gotta continue to ke keep doing that because we find ourselves in that.

And I think even we find God in that when we continue to say, you know what? I need help. I don't have this down pat. I can't trust immediately in TV shows to teach me stuff. I can't even trust the next [00:27:00] podcast extraordinaire to teach me stuff. I need to, I need to continue to keep seeking. I continue to keep trying to find him and, and find me.

And find us and find we, you know, it's a, it's a process. It's a journey. So I'm pretty sure that I forgot your entire question, but forgive me. But 

D Brent Dowlen: that's what, that's where, that's, that's where we are. So that's how you found your purpose. 

Yusef Marshall: Yeah. I mean, that's how I found, that's how I found out that I, no, I need, I need to be on the journey towards that.

I honestly. When people talk about purpose, I think they always think about one singular thing. Mm-hmm. And I'm not saying that that's bad, but I just feel like in my case, it's, it's not, it's not that, but all those things lead you to it. All those things. It's almost like a, uh, like streams that lead into, you know, into [00:28:00] geographically, like at tributary, whatever.

It's, but you know, all these things that I'm doing right now, and I didn't see this originally, just to be, just to be fair, all things that I'm doing right now, even things I couldn't even talk about earlier because they're still being developed. All those things lead to the one singular thing. And for me, we can talk about what the purpose is if you, if you're, if you're willing to do that, whatever.

But, you know, all those things that I'm doing right now, they lead to that. It's not, it's not about me getting likes and, and, and being famous and being on platforms and billboard, excuse me. But they all lead to one singular thing. And I think once we figure that part out, because a lot of the conversations I had with folks about this, if they're not so inclined as you and I are and they don't, and they're not people of faith, I'm, those conversations, they can only go.

But so far, just to be honest, so if people are wanna do free conversations with me, I'm good with it. But at some point we gotta get to the, to the faith component because if you think you're here just [00:29:00] because, and somebody popped you out and they popped you out with no design in mind and you just, here, our convos going to go.

But so far we can have some great conversations about life and experience and purpose. And I've done it At some point in time, we're gonna, we're not, we're not gonna get to the graduation. It's not gonna happen. We're gonna get to the place where we are gonna end up being almost like at the impasse. We may part ways, we may stay in touch and keep it.

Friendly and casual, but at some point we gotta touch on the whole existential conversation. We gotta talk about it. Why are you here? Do you think you made yourself, why are you here? We gotta have the creation, create creator conversation at some point. Because I think at that point we find out what the purpose actually is.

And spoiler alert, I haven't said this on anybody's podcast, it's probably gonna be the first time. Spoiler alert, everybody's purpose is the same. [00:30:00] People don't want to hear that. I know that's not popular, but everybody's purpose is the same. It's not different, different paths to get to it, but the purpose of all of us, those that are inclined like you and I and those that are not, the purpose is exactly identical.

One purpose.

D Brent Dowlen: You said that, you know, as you did your book, it became a form of therapy and self-reflection for you to kind of point you in the path that you ultimately felt, this is where I need to go. This is the direction my life is moving now. You know, obviously not everybody's gonna stop and write a book and, and kudos by the way, 193 pages [00:31:00] in six weeks.

If you've never worked on a book, you have no idea how hard that is. Just, yeah, throwing that out there, uh, I've started two books. I'm working on one, the other one I started and haven't got past the first a hundred pages. Well, I've written the first a hundred pages, I think three times, and I just keep rewriting it.

Um, the other one's only about. 60 pages in, but 193 pages in six weeks is, it's a lot guys. It's, it's, it's working. It's a lot day in, day out on that book for six weeks 

Yusef Marshall: every day. 

D Brent Dowlen: But not everybody's going to write a book now. I actually really think that a lot of people should kind of, even if they never publish it, write their own memoir as almost a form of journaling, because when you actually start to like write it out and think through all those things, it really does cause some serious, serious deep self-reflection.

But do you think that that self-reflection and [00:32:00] however you get there, whether it's through writing a book or maybe, I don't know, some people meditate or something like that? Right. I, I always, I was never a good meditation person. I tried for a while, like, really? I'm like, squirrel, you know, it's.

Shiny. Yeah. You know, I, I need like a almost what's, what's one of those almost, uh, sensory deprivation tank to be able to meditate. Otherwise, my brain is just like, um, it's like a pinball machine. I, I live with too many women. 

Yusef Marshall: I got a, but I got a buddy that truck, so maybe you could try it out. It's a lot cheaper than a, uh, a sensory deprivation tank.

Sit in a dark closet, lights out and put a blindfold on. I thought the board was crazy, but in hindsight, it, it kind of makes sense because I'm the kind of person, if I don't have a blindfold on, I'm seeing thin, like, oh my God, this, this carpet is dirty. I'm seeing all [00:33:00] type of stuff and these clothes, why I hang that back up.

It's not clean. No, I'm seeing all kinds of, with the, with the blindfold on, you don't see anything. All you doing is you kind of just, you just kind of just press it. So try that. Keep it in the, uh, a deprivation tank. Try that. For me, 

D Brent Dowlen: it's, you gotta block out the sound. Oh, okay. Like, I, I hear everything that happens in my house, even in my sleep.

I hear it when my girls turn over in their beds on the opposite side of the house on two different floors. Like, I, I don't sleep deeply. Um, but how do you think it's, the self-reflection is really crucial for men to try and align with their direction and purpose? 

Yusef Marshall: I know it's, I, I quote, I quote a book whenever I go on show and talk about men, and I don't, I'm not trying to give free pub, but there's a book by John Eldridge that I believe is the book for any man, if you wanna [00:34:00] understand about purpose and, and, and, and self-reflection and stuff.

And it's a wild at heart. 

D Brent Dowlen: Great book. 

Yusef Marshall: That book, that book right there. It, it has sharp edges, man. I'm just telling you that upfront. It's gonna cut you in the way that you haven't been cut, but it's worth it. It's, the blood shit is worth it. But the self-reflection part, I, I don't, I don't know how you, I don't know how we grow without it.

I mean, look at what men are like, just, just generally speaking, this is not for every man. Please don't attack Brent on myself because of this comment I'm about to make. You know, generally speaking, we, we struggle with connection. We can be in a room full of people and still be isolated. I mean, we could be in a room with 50 people and not know one name of the person that, that people that we're in the room with.

So we're in the, we're present. Hey, I came to the event. I'm here, I'm at the breakfast. But we don't connect. [00:35:00] We don't know each other. You're not in a dark room, but you're still isolated. It's not much different. You just change locations. But the mentality you brought into the room is still the same. And we struggle with connection.

We struggle with getting in touch with ourselves. We hear that kind of stuff, man, we laugh, get in touch with each other. What kind of hippie new age crap is this? Get in touch with each, what, what, what, what are we talking about here? But, oh, but, but as humans, just put the man apart for a second. As humans, we need to have this.

One of the reasons why I even started, uh, this podcast journey was because of a revelation that I, I, I personally received. You know? And one of our motto is that we are weekly mirror check before you go change the world. And that's something that I try to live by with everything that we put out under our brand.

Because I don't, I don't know how we do anything, and I don't care if it's entrepreneurship. I don't care if it's podcasting full-time as a goal. I [00:36:00] don't care if it's, uh, you are succeeding in the business world or in a nonprofit space. I don't care if it's you doing ministry and teaching and preaching around the world and doing missions work.

I don't know how we do anything of any kind of note working at the construction company, at the factory. I don't whatev if you, if you are out here laying pipe and, and, uh, whatever you are doing, if you're working in a light and water and energy, whatever you're doing, I don't know how we do any of that kind of stuff without some level of self-evaluation.

We have bosses that, mentors that may evaluate us and give us tests and programs to make sure that we are following the standards, but at some point we gotta do that to ourselves and say, this is okay. This was the goal I have. Where are we at with that? How's this going? I said, I gonna January 1st. I had a New Year's resolution that I'm gonna do this and do this.

Okay, we are in August. How we, how are we doing? We gotta have evaluation on every [00:37:00] level. Are we reading enough? Are we taking the time to reflect on what we read or are we just reading so we can say we did it and check it off? Know what I'm saying? Are we spending enough time, like you said, the meditation.

I mean, I, I wasn't a big meditate. I thought it was like, because I, me, I, the kids and my wife, they laugh about that stuff all the time. I got daddy ears. They, I hear, I hear the siren and it's miles away and I can hear a siren. And my wife like, I don't hear anything. I'm like, a siren come and watch. And then after, after a few seconds or a minute, she'll hear it come.

She like, oh my God, you got daddy ears. I hear my daughters, when they were living in the house, I could hear all you said, all kind of stuff. I'm like, wow. I don't think I want the power of superhero. A lot of responsibility. But I could hear it like that. So, I mean, for me, meditation wasn't really a thing until recently.

Now I'm in a space where it's like, I know I have to do it. I gotta take the time to shut it down, start easy, gotta take the time and excuse me, listen to myself, hear what's [00:38:00] going on, the thoughts that come up, why is that happening? Why are these starts coming up above all the other ones and start dealing with meat.

Start putting some work in, because we work on everything else. As men. We're worker bees. We wanna fix stuff. We wanna try to build and, and make things go, and we neglect ourselves. We do it all around us. When it comes to us. We get uncomfortable when you have those men's breakfast and ministry meeting, like what you were talking about earlier.

Mm-hmm. That's what happens. We get in those spaces and we just try to just, I just try to just get through this. Hopefully nobody won't ask me to say anything. Hopefully they won't ask me to say my name or share a story about my life. I just wanna just get through this, eat these eggs and bacon and get outta here.

To get my car in driveway as fast as I can to go do whatever I want to do, go fishing or hunting or go to the range or whatever. And it's like, we won't take the time to stop and say, Hey man, you need coldness. [00:39:00] You need it. You can't do anything of any note in the future. You can't even be that for your, for your sons and daughters if you don't work on progressive healing for yourself.

You know what I'm saying? So to me, man, it's like this is, this is where it's at. We have to do this. And it's an uncomfortable conversation, but I'm, I'm excited, excited about the opportunity to, to have it with people. I'm saying we have to do this. We can't get around this. Look at the, look, look at history, man.

So going on a long time, man. My apologies man. But just, just look at the history, man. Look at what's been going on in our world around us. Man. You can tell that a lot of people who are in leadership don't have a lot of self-reflection. You can tell. You could tell because what, what's, I don't know what goes in, but you could tell what's what's in there because of what comes out.

Know what I'm saying? And if we want to have value in this life, if we wanna be, you know, uh, successful so to speak, as fathers and husbands and sons and [00:40:00] brothers, where we put in makes a difference because that's what's gonna come out. I 

D Brent Dowlen: love that. I hate, i, I hate cliche phrases. Right? And, and, and part of the reason I hate them is some of 'em are so true, right?

Uh, like, no, no shade on Tony Robbins, but he is like the king of those like cliche catchphrases that like, are so repeatable and they get in your, they're like, earworms. You're just like, uh, and, and a lot of 'em are really true. Like, I, like I said, it's no shade on Tony Robbins. Uh, no disrespect at all. But like, I hate those cliche sayings.

Right. But is is that garbage in garbage? I, I have a background in it and it's that term used. All right. Oh man, you garbage code will give you garbage. Right. Facts. Don't always think about the intake. It, it's one of the arguments, [00:41:00] uh, you know, I've, I've talked in previous shows and I've, I've talked with previous guests about like porn addiction and stuff like that.

Men don't understand. It's gar and garbage out. You put garbage into your heart, you put garbage into your brain, it produces garbage in your life. It's just how it is. Yeah. 

Yusef Marshall: Yeah. 

D Brent Dowlen: And so honoring is part of why I got into personal development when I started my own personal development journey was just like, I need to know what I'm putting in here.

Is producing value. Right. Uh, I, I was addicted to video gaming. I played video games almost a professional level. I, I had the option to a professional level. Um, but I, I, I, hard cr I lost three years of my life on one game. Like I actually calculated, oh my God. That, that's what actually opened me up was I, I realized that ice spent three years.[00:42:00] 

I could never get back on a game. That it was fun. I, I made some great friends playing the game who are still friends now. Sure. Yeah. Like, it did nothing for my physical life. Men are often drawn to video games because we can get those big epic wins and video games that we're missing in our lives. Right, right, right, right.

But it, it was finally that click of, but I'm never gonna get those epic wins in my life if I don't start putting better stuff into here. If I don't start changing the diet of what I'm consuming, I can't expect a great output. Uh, so that's, it is one of those cliche sayings was like, garbage in guards out is, is so important.

And you can tell what a person is putting into their life by what's coming out. Oh, yeah, yeah. You are right. In faith circles, you know, we call that producing fruit, [00:43:00] uh, outside of faith circles, it is really just garbage and garbage out. It's what you put into your mind and into your heart. That's, that's what comes out in your life.

Mm, yeah. It's true man. It, it plays so much into, you know, you were talking earlier about the richest place is the cemetery, and that is my, my father was a minister. And I, so I spent a lot of time at funerals. Yeah. And it gave me an interesting perspective, very young, because I started realizing what actually mattered at the end of the road very early on.

Hmm. That's true. I saw these amazing people, but I looked at them at the end of their road and what, what did people actually say about them? What stood out to people about them? What [00:44:00] mattered? Right. Mm. To their kids. That's good. Talk about them. I listened to their surviving spouses talk about them, and it's like the, the sobering realization of what actually carries weight when this world ends for us, right?

Mm-hmm. And so it, it put me early on to this as like, okay. What do I want my life to say at, at my funeral? What do I want people saying about me and how do I get there? Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so I started trying to look at a bigger picture early on. Now that was a really crazy, like, situational thing when my dad being a minister was like, so I got this early exposure.

I, I, I sat with people in the hospital and listened to their regrets Wow. As they were dying. Um, there's that incredible look, I, I've only read excerpts of it. A nurse wrote it, it was like interviews. She interviewed a, she was a [00:45:00] hospice nurse or something and she interviewed all these people at the ends of their lives.

And it was like the most common regrets that humans have at the end of their life.

I think people don't necessarily,

I think there's a lot of weight. If you can look at the end. It will start driving you towards, there's a meaning for, to an intention to my life, a purpose, if you will, to my life that I need to get to. When you start looking at it from the end perspective. Sure. Uh, it starts to affect what, what carries weight in your life.

But that's my own wonderings about that. Yeah. How do you help people separate the sep passions versus purpose? [00:46:00] I, I think a lot of times we, we start to talk about purpose and we mistake some of our passions along the way, and sometimes, sometimes they're aligned and sometimes they're not. So how do you have that conversation?

Yusef Marshall: Uh. Well, when I hear the word passion, it, it, it, it, it, um, IMOs certain, uh, images that come to mind, but generally speaking, passions burn out. And when I talk to people about things that they, especially young folks, and I don't wanna use generations to describe, I don't know what generation, generation, generation, they fall and I can't think of where that is right now.

But this generation, they talk a lot about passion. This is my passion. This is what I love to do. And, but that passion doesn't drive them to get out [00:47:00] bed before 10 o'clock in the morning. That passion doesn't drive them to be early for an appointment as opposed to being right on time or just a few minutes late.

That passion doesn't drive them to stay up late studying, reading how to do this passion better. Then it's been done. How to go beyond the, the normal requirements and the, and the, uh,

the basics and go beyond and go into the level of advancing and excelling in these areas. But they wanna sell us on how passionate they are about things. I'm like, as a, as, as a old head, I, I, I usually, I'm usually pretty quick to stamp out that part of the conversation. I'm like, yeah, if you coming to me for, for, for help with this, you coming to the [00:48:00] wrong person.

Because I've seen people who are passionate that never accomplished anything, you know, of any kind of note. It always burns out because you were living on passion. And when you got purpose, that's how stuff gets done. That's how inventions get made. That's how people who have long careers and longevity in certain areas, that's how they accomplish that.

If they, they understand what the goal is from the beginning, they begin with the end in mind. They know what it is they're trying to accomplish. And for me, that's the difference. So when I get in conversations about purpose versus passion, we, we start off with passion a lot of the times, but we can't end there.

At some point, the way it burns off in your life, we're gonna burn out in that conversation, in that consultation. We can't spend time there because that's not going to, that's not gonna, that's not gonna keep you, uh, motivated to get outta bed at 3, 4, 5 in the morning and go do this thing. You know what I'm saying?

It, I've never [00:49:00] seen that happen on passion alone. I've never seen it happen. There's a certain level of desire and, and skill and determination that comes to doing anything of any kind of note, but that passion word, it just hits me wrong. I'm like, okay, yeah, this is, this is a, I've never seen anybody who made that, made that their thing, their model, and, and they, and they've done something great.

I've never seen it happen yet. 

D Brent Dowlen: Fair enough. What would you, I, I know a lot of guys, right? They start to key into this idea of purpose in their life. They start asking, in fact, I found a lot of men don't start asking those questions until they hit that quote unquote American dream. Right? Because all life you're told to, you know, your job is to, is to provide and, and get the house and the family and the, the dog and all that, right?

That's, that's the big dream. [00:50:00] Then it's usually guys get there or closer to there, they start to go, wait, it feels like there should be more to this. Right? This, this seems kind of like, that was a daunting realization for me personally, right? Because I had that not there and it's like, yeah, I've got a great job and uh, you know, I've got the dog and the kids and, and my wife and I have been married for years at that point.

And we're just happy that we were still married. 'cause you know, we had the rough patches there mainly 'cause I'm an idiot most of the time, but, you know, my wife makes up for me a lot. But, um, I got there and it's like, huh, I don't, I don't get it. Like, I, I, right? Yeah. But so a lot of times, a lot of guys are already carrying a lot of weight.

Or what, uh, on themselves at the point where they start to go. Maybe there's more to life than this, [00:51:00] right? So when you start to have this conversation with 'em, it's really difficult for a lot of guys because sure, yeah. There's all these expectations already weight on them. So, you know, how, how do we carry that life?

We've built those expectations, that responsibility, and meet those expectations while still trying to find authentic fulfillment and purpose.

Yusef Marshall: I think, uh, if I, if I heard, if I heard the question correctly, and it's a great question, by the way, if I heard, if I heard it right. I think, uh, the why is a, is a big, uh, is a very important component in this, uh. I think as men, I, I don't think we struggle with that as much. You know, when somebody says we need to do something, well, maybe it's not all men.

This is probably another general statement, but whenever somebody tells me, I speak for myself to take it off everybody else, if somebody asks [00:52:00] me to do something, my first question is, why? Why am I doing this? Why do you want me to invest this level of time and commitment to doing this? Why? Even when my girls were young and they would ask me to do stuff, my question to them was, why?

And I know it gets frustrating if you have to have to ask why four or five times, oh my God, you are draining me. Just do it. No, but the why is important and in your scenario and the question you laid out, so, uh, massively, the why is important. I mean, that whole American dream deal. I feel like that was just an opportunity.

It wasn't supposed. I, I don't, I don't think that was designed to, to be the end. And if it was, it's a horrible dream. If that's, if that's the case where the only goal is a house and a white picket fence and a, and a dog and a family and a good job. If that's the goal, I'm like, oh my God, this dream is either is very awful and it's sinister, [00:53:00] or it was just designed to just be a step into opportunity, a step into greatness, a step into, out of obscurity and into relevance.

So I'm not quite sure. I, since I didn't invent a dream, I can't speak to what it was supposed to be. But as far as men, as far as men go, I think we need to understand the why of why we're doing what we're doing. Because if you are on the job 30, 40 years, and that's your why, you miss something along the way.

Because it more after that. Because after you leave, I mean, I see some people who are who've, who worked jobs for 40, 50 years, even. I can't believe you could work at one place for 50 years, but I've seen this. And when they retire, they're closer to the deaths doorstep than they ever were in their entire life.

Why? Because their whole life was wrapped up in that job and they made that their why. They made that the reason why they were here to work for [00:54:00] Acme Incorporated. And once they leave Acme or they get laid off like we saw five years ago, they plunge into a frenzy and don't know what to do. Like, wow, why am I here?

I'm gonna kill myself. They don't have any sense of purpose. They don't understand why they're even doing what they're doing. What would the, what would the point so that you can have a nice retirement? Or do you wanna start a business or do you wanna build something in that, that feeds generations? What was your, what was your goal?

So, I guess, answer your question again. The, you know, the why is super important. If we don't understand that all we'll have is that dream, and then if we don't hit it, then we'll have to spare. 

D Brent Dowlen: But how do we get there? We've, we've gotten there and gone. There's more, but I've already gotta pay the bills.

I've already gotta take care of my wife and kids. How do I start, maintain this life I've built and what matters in there, [00:55:00] right? I gotta keep paying the bills, I gotta keep taking my care of my family. How do I start to explore that idea of purpose and more to my life while I'm already trying to balance all this?

Yusef Marshall: Okay. I'm not gonna say go out and get a life coach, because that's gonna send us down a rabbit hole that we don't need to go down. I, I'll, I'll tell, I'll tell you because, excuse me. What I don't wanna do is see anything that's gonna sound formulaic, like, do this. And it's, it's, it's gonna turn out the way it did for me.

I, I won't do it, but what I'll do is I'll tell you what I, I did and you can decide, you can adapt it to your own life. This is what I did. I had the cushy job with the government corporate job, moved up in the ranks real fast, prominent position, nice pay stability, all of that stuff. But I didn't feel like I, I felt like I, [00:56:00] I was trapped inside myself.

Like this, this somebody in here who is not getting a chance to shine in this. One thing I did, I, I did, and this is just my personal testimony. You guys can decide how you wanna do your thing, or you want Brent or myself to help you with doing what we did. But I, I really began to increase my, my seeking and my reading from a biblical standpoint.

That's the one, that's one of the first things I did because in order to understand who I was, I needed to understand who made me, if I have a problem with a, a car and it's a Toyota brand car, I'm not calling a Hyundai to ask them how to get, how, how to get this fixed. I'm not gonna call Mitsubishi to find out how to fix this Toyota.

That's not what they do. They fix their own brand of cars. So, and I can't, I can't go to somebody who doesn't know me, who hadn't fashioned me in his own hands, out of his own hands to ask them for help. So I, I clung a lot to scripture. I dug into it to try to [00:57:00] find answers for myself and how to get on that path you're talking about.

Along with that, not in front of it. But along with that, I also increased my reading period on topics relating to this. And like anything that you read, no, you need to take the, uh, no, take the meat and throw away the bones. It's just sometimes you're gonna read stuff. It's like, yeah, that's not gonna fly.

No. And, and that's, that's, that's fair. Everybody had their own perspective about stuff that they, and they write about it. And we buy the books and we read it. So we gotta decide how to parse the things that are, are weighted that matter to us, and put the things to the side that don't matter as much. So that, along with it, I, with my script, my s scriptural intake and then reading books about purpose and life stories and, and men's issues and things of that nature.

And I begin to start building a library of information. What you said about journaling, that's spot on. That, that, that opened things up because when you start, ask [00:58:00] yourself those, those deep questions, you'd be surprised by the answers you run into over time. So all those things I was implementing at the same time, or at least concurrently and I began to start seeing some things, I began to start recognizing, you know what, my perspective on this has been kind of off and I gotta build a life outside of the one that I, I've already been building all this time.

You know? And matter of fact, to tell you the truth, I'm still in that journey right now. I haven't, it's not years ago. This is like right now. That's like today, like five seconds ago, it's still, this is still happening. So I had this other life that I built, this other platform, network, and I gotta build another one from scratch.

I gotta tear down all the old junk that. I was wasting my time. And like you said, wasting years doing and build the one that matters, the one that has longevity and value to it, the one that can feed generations and change lives forever. So that was my best way to answer that question. I surely hope it was helpful [00:59:00] 'cause you got some awesome listeners and viewers and I don't wanna screw 'em up.

So hope that help. 

D Brent Dowlen: Now guys, if you're getting something out of this, if, uh, this is ringing a bell for you, be sure and like, share all that good social media nonsense that I hate and that I even hate stuff on air. Uh, I hate the whole promotional side of this crap. I like, I just wanna make a difference in people's lives and provide solid content for them.

And having to play the social media game and stuff to reach people is such a headache. So if this is re really help ring in for you guys, share this with somebody who needs it, that's like the biggest compliment ever. It's when you share this podcast with somebody who needs it. We gotta start landing this plane.

Not we're, we're getting there. But if this is a new conversation for somebody, right? They're talk about purpose, they're hearing is say, Hey, there's more to your life. There's more to who you are. Um, I [01:00:00] really, I, I love that example of the graveyard. 'cause like, there is so many things that will never, ever come into existence because a person didn't realize, wait, I got more in me than that.

I got more to where I need to go and who I am. And if this is a new conversation for somebody, what are the first three steps someone can really start to take into doing this? You know? And, and we're not gonna say, call a coach that that's not the answer here. What are, you know, three steps? And you've already started that conversation with what you did.

But if this is a new conversation for someone, where is the starting point? What are the first couple steps so they can start on their own journey? 

Yusef Marshall: Hmm. And this is, and this is in reference to purpose, right? Yeah. Uh, very first step. I, I think the first step, if I was laying out a plan, haven't done this [01:01:00] in a while.

Uh, haven't had to. I think it's coming, but I'm gonna have to start doing that again. But I think the first thing is, is, uh, assessing the history. What have you been doing up to this point? I mean, I think as, as a man, I have to go back sometime. My wife reminds me of stuff that I've done and I'm like, oh, I did, I should forgot about that.

Because we don't wanna write stuff down. We don't wanna take the time to get in touch with ourselves. So we kind of just, we just drift through it. Do it and leave it in the rear view, and it's like, oh, wow. There's no me, there's no memorial of it. There's no, there's no markers to, to show what happened. We don't, we don't keep a snapshot of it in any way, shape, or form.

Ne physically or mentally. There's no snapshot. So assessing, okay, what, what have you been doing? 'cause you're like 30, 40 years old. What, what have you been doing up to this point? Maybe you're a 20-year-old life coach. What have you been doing? [01:02:00] I'm saying, let's, we, we assess that part first. The second one is, okay, why have you been doing this?

The second step is finding out the why. Why? Because that motivation, I, I see people who, uh, well, were impoverished and they won the lottery. Guess what happened to them? Less than a year later, they're back in poverty, but now they have massive debt attached to it. So now they weren't just poor. Now they owe people.

I'm saying, how'd that happen? Because the motivation. They had the first time, hadn't been dealt with, haven't dealt with. Why you were motivated to do that? Where'd that come from? There's a story of a, uh, a lady and they always, I don't know who, who's she been distributed to? This lady who, uh, she was cooking with her daughter for, for the holiday, for Thanksgiving thing.

It was, and she would take parts of the ham and she would cut it off, and then she would throw a good chunk of it in the trash. And her mother's like, why am I doing that? The mother asked the, [01:03:00] the daughter asked her mother, why, why, why were you doing it? Why you throw away all this meat? And then she would say, when we were younger, we had a really small ice box.

So when we had enough room for a certain amount, so we had to save some in the icebox and we had to throw the rest of it away, which is wasteful. That, uh, makes you cringe. But that was the thing. She, she carried that on into another generation. Her daughter started doing it, her granddaughter started doing it.

They had, they had to do with the motivation of why you were doing that, to explain what's happening in your right now. So the second one is, is explaining or assessing what the why is, why you're doing what you're doing. And then the third one I think for me is, uh, figuring out if you want to actually have help.

I talk the folks all the time who we can walk through that step with. But the third one is like, you know what? Do you really wanna be transparent? Do you really want the kind of community that Brent talks about that I'm talking about? Do you really want to have that? If you do, then we can move forward.

But those first three steps, we gotta cover that first. You gotta assess what you've been doing, get real about it. In fact, get it on [01:04:00] paper is the best thing. Write on paper what I've done it with multiple people, even some couples that that our wife and I've been working with. What have you been doing up to this point?

Write it down. Secondly, why are you doing that? Third, do you want to actually change this behavior or are you so comfortable with it that you don't wanna change anything? We can't assume if somebody wants to change that could be on a call. We're doing a consultation. That's the idiotic mistake. It's a waste of our time.

You gotta find out, do you actually wanna change something? Do you want the kind of community that we have access to? If you do, then we can go ahead and move forward and start taking some steps and start, you know, dealing with some hard things. But that third step, you can't, you can't skip the four. That third step gotta be undertaken.

So those are the best three steps. I, I probably, if I was creating a program and a plan again and back into this coaching space again, that's probably where I would, that's how, kind of how I would look. 

D Brent Dowlen: What advice do you have for men who feel stuck in their careers, in their personal lives where they're at, where they're seeking something more [01:05:00] meaningful, 

Yusef Marshall: they're seeking something more meaningful?

What are they, what are they seeking? What, what are they doing? You said seeking something more meaningful. 

D Brent Dowlen: Yeah, they're looking for more meaning. They're, they're, they're, they're, they've hit this point and they're looking for more meaning something that is bigger than, oh, the house, the dog, the family. Yay.

Yusef Marshall: I think I got kind of a two part answer. Hopefully this makes sense whenever I interview somebody, one of the last questions I ask is, second to last or the last question I ask on the show every single time, without fail, if you were not in your current vocation doing what you're doing now, what would you be doing?

And what that causes our guests to do is to kind of go back in time a little bit, go back into the time machine, look at the things that they put into the bureau drawers that they've kind of put into a safe to kind of hit it away. Maybe society said it was a bad idea, maybe your parents said, you know what?

They discouraged it. Can say you can't do that with your life. That's not a viable [01:06:00] route. You something more stable, like going into engineering. Just do something surrounding math. That's something creative like this idea. So, and they stamp it out and you get discouraged and you put it away. But in going back into that, you, you, you realize that those ideas may not have been as bad as you thought they may have been entrepreneurial gold mines.

Now somebody else is doing it, and you put it to the shelf, put it on the shelf in favor of a cubicle instead. So I think I would, one, I would wanna assess, you know, what, what do you want to do? And I did that with a couple of, uh, people over the, over the past maybe 20 years or so, I would have them write down all the things that they're passionate about.

And that's not easy for a man, number one, because that whole passion thing, again, I would have them write maybe a, a top 10 list of all the things they're passionate about, and it would take 'em forever to finish it. I'm like, because they don't really know, they have to get, they're not even in touch with their own [01:07:00] selves.

But once they write that stuff down, once we can get there, which a lot of times it was rare. We, we struggled with that. But once we got there, I was able to see, I'm like, so most of what's on this list, you're not doing it right now. Why? And then we find out, you know, different between, you know. Hope and, and, and dreaming versus obligation and responsibility and, and, and mandates and, and pressure and, and all these things.

So, hope I answered that. That's, that's kind of where you wanna start, because you're doing things. It's not like, you're not, you're not lazy, you're busy. You, you're doing things, you're building something. But deep down, you want something more. You gotta find out why, why do you want more? What's, what's, what's wrong with what you're doing?

You don't feel fulfilled. I mean, I, I wanna get into those conversations. I wanna talk about that. Why not? You don't say, the whole world is saying that these, these, these kind of jobs are the greatest things since sliced bread. [01:08:00] Do this. And you have a, you build a career in life and a happy family. Your wife's gonna be happy, your kid's gonna be happy.

You can go on vacations. The world said this is it. They said, this is the answer. You're telling me it's not the answer. Why do you think it's not the answer we gotta get? So, I, I, I get deep with it, man. I wanna find out what's going on. I don't, I don't wanna be, uh, treating the, uh, the sneeze. I wanna find out why you're sneezing, you know?

So, yeah, 

D Brent Dowlen: I like it. What's next for Mr? You probably coming up. 

Yusef Marshall: There's some, there's some things that I can share. There's some I can't, uh, not to, not to sound, uh, mysterious, but just not my, my plan. But I like it. There, there, there, there, there are three, there are three areas that I have, like I just stated, uh, a little bit ago, that I've always felt like I had a, an affinity of awards, but I put it on, on the shelf.

Three very specific areas that I put it on the shelf. People out here doing it, you, you interview 'em all the time at, and they're doing one of those three things, but I wasn't doing any of them, [01:09:00] so I put it on the shelf. Where now an opportunity has presented itself through community, that's key through community.

I'm gonna start doing all three of those things very, very soon. So I'm excited about that. I'm gonna definitely share some of that with you because some of it is relevant to you and maybe we can talk about it in the future discussion. But those three things. So I call 'em the three pillars. My wife, that's how she know me to describe it, the three pillars that I put on the show.

They've been in the draw for years. They're about to come back out and I'm super excited about it. So 

D Brent Dowlen: see guys, this, we've been talking about this the whole time, right? There's, there's something he is absolutely passionate about that it's there that he's had to put to the side for now and, and even now, right?

He is going, 

Yusef Marshall: yeah, 

D Brent Dowlen: it's still there and I'm coming for it now. It's time. It's time, it's time. Mista Yu, where is the best place for people to find you and connect with you? 

Yusef Marshall: They call me [01:10:00] Mr u dot bus bro.com. You can find all of our socials there. You can find the work on all of the episodes that we've been doing for the past five years.

I highly recommend our first three seasons powerful stuff, so you can find all the episodes there. Best way to contact me, and of course, uh, they call me Mista Yu@gmail.com. I don't mind getting emails if it's, if it's spam, I put it where it belongs. So I'm good with it. But, uh, those are the best ways to reach me.

And of course, our YouTube channel or youtube.com at they call me Mista Yu, a lot of recent stuff, a lot of audio, I mean video stuff as well, but not a bad way to reach me. But the first two are probably the best route. Hopefully they're gonna be in your show notes. They can access that really quickly. But yeah, 

D Brent Dowlen: and we'll, I, I just like to have people say it for our audio listeners.

You know, it's, it will be in the show notes are in the YouTube description of Rumble or whatever you're joining us for this episode on Guy. Yeah, of course. We will make sure, and it'll be all his links will be on the actual page for this episode [01:11:00] as well on the website, uh, as well as connections to other projects we worked on together, uh, because this is, I think, the third collaboration together.

Yep. Mm-hmm. So, and I'm excited to share all those with you guys. By the time you hear this, uh, you, you'll, two of 'em are already out, so our will have already been out. Now I know all of you're really worried about cereal consumption and cereal consumption per capita is, oh man, you went with Australia and 

Yusef Marshall: actually, I, my, my gut, my gut didn't say that, but yeah, I did.

D Brent Dowlen: The answer is Ireland. What? Yeah. Crazy. Right. Apparently they like their lucky charms. I'm sure that was, that was probably like racist something. Sorry guys. Oh, really? Didn't see it? That that was just like the first Irish six year. 

Yusef Marshall: They made me be delicious. 

D Brent Dowlen: Sorry guys. No, no shade. I've got Irish family, so [01:12:00] Wow.

Fully came out wrong. And we're done. I'm getting, I'm getting de platformed again. 

Yusef Marshall: Alright. Oh no. That's funny. That's funny though. 

D Brent Dowlen: Mista Yu, if, if the people listening today heard absolutely nothing else from this conversation, what is the most important thing you want anybody to hear today that hears this

Yusef Marshall: Embrace community, man. I don't mean just the guys that like look up to you and like what you have to talk about. Talking about the people who would challenge you. I won't give you a, a handout, but give you a hand up and pull you up to where they are and you guys grow in success together. Us men, we need that.

I mean, I know women need this. Well, and I, I, I respect that and I understand that, but as men, we need that. And it's a hard fight. It's a battle to get out of our comfort zones of the [01:13:00] couch or the man cave and to step out and do things with other men. It's not easy. It's a, it's a struggle. Ask, ask me again how I know it's a struggle, but it's worth it because we find purpose in that community.

We find compassion, we find understanding. We find wisdom in that community. Embrace it. If you don't know where to find that kind of stuff, and you've been listening to Brent and his work on his podcast work, which is fantastic, by the way, reach out to him if he wants to reach out to me or others that he thinks are match.

Let him be connector man, because. By yourself. I mean, look, you've been doing it by yourself for a while. You think it's really good. I mean, if you, if you think it's great, then you know, don't bother. But if you think there's room for growth that you think there's some room for some opportunity, you feel like it's not quite, you know, there's a void there.

Reach out to this brother man, and, and let him, uh, direct you in, in the right way, man. He got your best interest at heart, man. So [01:14:00] this is my best takeaway. Embrace community. Embrace this show. Driven to Thrive is an incredible podcast. So embrace that and keep listening. You're definitely gonna learn something every single time.

D Brent Dowlen: Wow. I, I, I can't even trump that. Thanks. Thank you for that. Share. You can try. No, no. I was like, Hey, I'll, I'll take an endorsement at the end. That, that was beautiful. Thank you. Sure. It's a great show, man. Yeah. Mr. Yu, I appreciate you jumping on today and hanging out with us. Uh, I love, I. Bringing just the best people to my community.

So thank you for being part of that. Thank you. And guys connect. He, he's so right. Like this is something that I was struggle with for so many years and was so bad about. Mm-hmm. Working out in my life is just embracing community. I've, I've always gone it alone, so I'm, I'm trying to grow in that area of my life as well.

Right. Connecting better with people and having that [01:15:00] community. I'm great at like relationships, actually having like a tight knit community and, uh, still working on that in my own personal life. So yeah. Really valuable insights right there, guys, for me. Mista Yu, thanks for hanging out with us today. Thanks for listening.

Thank you all. Share this with somebody who needs it and be better tomorrow because of what you do today. The Driven to Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men, helping men go from living to thriving. Purpose-filled intentional lives. Affiliate disclaimer, MyPillow like any other source cycles, promos because of the extended lifecycle of a podcast.

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