Being the Person You Always Wanted to Follow, Making a Difference, & Living Above the Hype with K-Rahn Vallatine

“Wherever you go, there you are.” ~ K-Rahn Vallatine

Guest Bio: K-Rahn Vallatine is a successful author, curriculum developer and training consultant. He is the CEO of Inner Sun Inc., a company that supports the personal development of youth and young adults, and also the professional development of educators, service providers, leaders and corporate staff. K-Rahn has a profound ability to facilitate conversations on complex and uncomfortable topics. He is the author of Live Above the Hype Life Skills curriculum, a curriculum that uses hip hop culture, pop culture and street culture as the backdrop to cultivate self-development and offer practical, life applicable education. His book, “Beyond The Crack Generation: Surviving a Trauma Organized Culture” is currently used as college level coursework and is excellent for undergrad or graduate level studies in Education, Social Work/Services/Welfare, Sociology and African American Studies.

SHOW NOTES: 

• Website: http://www.innersunconsulting.com
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin/kvallatine
• IG: @liveaboveit

REMARKABLE LISTENER SPECIAL OFFER(S):

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CORE THEMES, KEYWORDS, & MENTIONS:

• culture, single mom, handling business, crack epidemic, roles, trauma, PTST, withholding accountability, balance, MTV Generation, gangster rap, reality rap, violence, abuse, solution, scholar, teacher, intelligent, self identity, gang banger, human connection, training consultant, validation, live above the hype

For more Remarkable Episodes, Inspiration, and Motivation, please visit https://davidpasqualone.com/remarkable-people-podcast/. Enjoy!

Transcript

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Being the Person You Always Wanted to Follow, Making a Difference, & Living Above the Hype with K-Rahn Vallatine 

Hello friends, I'm David Pasqualone and welcome to this week's episode of the Remarkable People Podcast, the K-Rahn Valentine story. You're going to hear his story in a few minutes, and you're going to see how he not only accepted the status quo, social, cultural, you know, what he's being taught, but he said, stop.

Is this true? Is there a better way? And how can I be the man I always wanted to follow? So you're going to get all this and [00:01:00] more in this great, remarkable episode. Before we get started, you're going to have contact info for K-Rahn at the end, reach out to him about coaching, reach out to him about programs he has to offer, reach out to him about motivational speaking he does.

And if you want to just continue the conversation, stick around to the end. The links will be in the show notes, but also after you check out his episode, look at our sponsors websites, MyPillow. com forward slash remarkable. You get up to 80 percent off. Everything on their website. I love MyPillow, not because they're a sponsor, because they have great products.

I have the slippers, the pillows, I have the sheets, I have the blankets. I love MyPillow products. Everyone I've tried is quality, American, and just comfortable. So check out MyPillow. com. They're a show sponsor, and not only do they help keep us on the air, so you get great content like Karon, but you also get up to 80 percent off your entire order every time you purchase.[00:02:00] 

With promo code, Remarkable. And that's whether you visit their website or call. So that is awesome. Thank you, MyPillow. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, our friend Karon is going to take us through his life journey. You're going to hear about how cultural norms can sabotage our lives, how false beliefs can sabotage our lives, and how a lack of action can sabotage our lives.

He's here to help us today, strain that out, and let you live a life full of purpose and power. Driven by the Passion of Christ. So, I'm David Pasqualone. This is our friend Karon. Enjoy.

EPISODE KRahn Vallatine 22 Jan 24: Hey, K-Rahn, how are you today, brother? Great. I'm great. Happy to be here, man. We're excited to have you here. I just told our listeners a little bit about you and how you have the coolest birth name ever, K Ron Valentine.

And we're excited to hear your remarkable story. If our listeners stick with us the entire hour. What do you guarantee that they're [00:03:00] going to learn? Like, obviously we're going to go through a lot of your life and truths that can make people's lives better. But if they stick with us this entire episode, if there's one truth or one point you want to communicate, what is that point?

Point is, they will have, they will know the importance of giving yourself permission to be great. Giving yourself permission to be great. Yeah, and that's so important. There's a lot of people who feel guilty with greatness. They feel ashamed. They feel like they're doing something wrong. So this is gonna be an awesome episode.

So. Karon, the man with the coolest first birth name I've ever heard, right? Appreciate that. Where, where's your origin story, man? Were you born mother, father, aunt, uncle, orphanage? Were you born from an alien farm? Where, where were you from, my friend? I descend from the heavens, man. No, I was My mom, you know, grew up single, single parent household type situation.

Mostly in Pasadena, Pasadena, California, [00:04:00] also lived in Indiana and a little small town for a while. But I always share the time I grew up in the eighties, you know, grew up in the eighties and nineties. And around that time was the I don't know if people are familiar, but if you're familiar with the inner city, the I was doing that crack epidemic, and I'll talk to you more about why I bring that up, but yeah, that's where I grew up during that, during that era.

And you have brothers, sisters in the house, or just you and your mom? Just me, only child, man. Just me and mom. That's crazy. I'm from the other side of the world, in Boston, it was just me and my mom, same time period, so very interesting. So talk about that. Your mom, I'm sure she's working. She's trying to be a mother, father, aunt, uncle, cousin, you know, friend.

She's trying to do everything to keep you going, keep you out of trouble. So what was your journey like growing up? Yeah, my mom, she was strong support system, you know, but like you just said, yeah, she worked, you know what I mean? So she had to work, grind. She also taught me the importance of entrepreneurship.

So even when she [00:05:00] had a quote unquote job, she still had her own business and she always taught me that I'm not raising you to work for anybody, you know? So it was always instilled in me to be my own boss one day. And she was, she was very, like I say, very engaged as far as parenting, but during that time, regardless of how engaged a parent is, you know, depending on your environment, you still got to go outside.

So even though I had these strong values instilled in me, I still was affected by the culture around me. And that caused me, you know, to, to make certain decisions and to get caught up in certain things that now that I'm older, I realized I didn't have to go through that. But during the time, the culture was street, street stuff.

And that's what I ended up getting caught up in. But I, but the interesting thing about that, even in getting caught up in those type of environments. I still had a way of knowing how to handle my business. So even though I may get [00:06:00] caught up in some of the activities in my, in my neighborhood or my community, I still went to school.

I still found a way to handle business and go to school and do all of those things. So I consider myself blessed. Now, when you were being raised and all this is going on, would you say, was there anything, because we don't want to skip segments here, life, you know, good, bad, ugly, pretty, pretty ugly. It all makes us the men and women we are today.

Was there anything in your childhood between birth and, let's say, high school that was significant that you're like, this was definitely part of my development and who I became?

Yeah, all of it. So when I talk about, I'll give you an example. When I talk, I'll have a book called Beyond the Crack Generation, Surviving a Trauma Organized Culture. And you know, when you, you know, when a person grows up and certain things are just the norm, you don't know that that is not the norm, if that makes sense, until you're older.

You know, when I got [00:07:00] older, I realized a lot of the things that I went through or that I was exposed to was common, but it wasn't normal. Okay. So with that being said, going back, the reason I talk about the crack epidemic and all of that, you know, you know, it's not, I'm not one of the guys to try to share war stories and you know, those types of things.

I talk more about the culture and the psyche. So during the crack epidemic, the reason why that was so important, and a lot of people may be familiar with either directly what happened, or they may learn it through music, you know, quote unquote, gangster rap and movies and stuff. The interesting thing about this time period is the crack epidemic was taking over the whole nation, going across the whole nation, right?

But, ironically, what people fail to really highlight is, during this time, the crack cocaine business was a child's business, not an adult business. So if you look at, and I'm telling you that for a reason. So if you look at like, you know, I like a lot, I like mob movies and stuff like [00:08:00] that. Right. You know, when you, when you see somebody that was moving up the ranks, they had to start off, be a runner.

Then they have, you know, they had to work their way up into the, into the life. During the crack epidemic, it was none of that. A kid, if a kid had 20, he could get in the business. Right, all he had to do was save his or her lunch money for a couple days, next thing you know, they talked to the right person, 20, give them a 40 double up, you know, 40 turn to 80, that whole thing.

The reason why that's so important is because what it did in many of our communities, it inverted the generational ranks. Where the kids was the crack dealer, the adult was the crack user. So during this time period, you know, myself and my peers, whether we were directly involved or not, it did something to our psyche, where it started to break down our communities where many of us grew up in what I call adult less communities.

You know, we had grown people [00:09:00] there, but adults The role of an adult is to provide, protect, and teach, right? If the kid is making more money than the adult, then the kid, the adult is not providing. If the kid is the one carrying the pistol, then the adult is not protecting, right? And if the kid has shut off his mind from what the adult has to say because he or she has found that they, they have found the magic beans, you know, then, then the adult is not teaching.

So a lot of us grew up totally disconnected from adult guidance. You know what I mean? And we have a whole generation of that all across this nation. No, I think that's very interesting how you pointed that out, because there's a lot of truth to it in cultures throughout history. You know, Satan always tries to break down the good.

And one of the ways he does that is to have the juveniles [00:10:00] disrespect the elders. And when you said, even though it was. The drug chain, it was reversed. It was flipped over on its head. Everything was out of balance. And now you have people without the wisdom and leadership of even knowing the history to predict the future.

They're pulling, they're calling the shots. So were you realizing that as you were involved in it, or was it something that looking back hindsight's 2020? Looking back, see it, you know, we had no point of reference, you know, I had no point of reference. I'm 13. This is my first time being 13, and I think this is how it always was.

I'm thinking every generation went through this. This is how it is, right? It was like the Lord of the Flies, if anybody has been familiar with that story. You know, where the kids were just running everything, you know what I mean? It wasn't until I was an adult with my own children looking back like, wait a minute, they're growing up totally different.

And again, you know, totally different the way I grew [00:11:00] up. And again, I'm a guy who had a strong support system in my mom. It wasn't like I was, Just had to fend for myself. My mom was, was there, you know what I mean? But even with that, and then you couple what I just talked about the communal, aspect, couple that with at the same time, there's millions, if not billions of dollars being invested in the music industry to perpetuate a certain message.

And then it's in the movies. So it was like the perfect storm of creating this mentality that To this day, if you look, a lot, a lot of people in our generation do not want to get older. Like, you know what I mean? Because we're so used to the kids, you know what I mean? Even if it's subconscious. It's like, we're taking, you know, not literally everybody, but culturally a lot of people are taking our cues from, from children.

You know, a grown man trying to fit in with what the kids are doing. Because that, you know, part of that, that's how a lot of us was nurtured culturally, you know, unfortunately. [00:12:00] Yeah, I thought, there's social media platforms out there and they're, there's these 15 to 20 year olds making millions of dollars a month and then you have all these adults trying to fit in.

Yes, and while they're doing it for money, it's really sad because these kids don't know any better and they have a completely substantial. There's no substance to their life. It's all fluff and they're making a bunch of money, but they're really being used by the big companies and while they're having fun and making a ton of money.

All these adults, instead of saying, wait, this is wrong, you're being exploited. It's, they're trying to jump on ship. And like you said, act like these young kids. And that's why I think it's, you can agree or disagree. We have men who aren't men and women who aren't women. And it's a broken generation.

Listen, see, and see, you know, no, I agree, you know, unapologetically and a part of it becomes when we say [00:13:00] men being men and women being women, we're at a point where. What does that even mean? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, like a man doesn't even know what it means to be a man or a woman doesn't even know what it means to be a woman.

You know what I'm saying? Like, the lines are so blurred, you know, that we don't even understand because For a lot of different reasons, we have gotten away from roles and everything, you know, and I don't mean roles in the sense of oppressing somebody or anything like that, like, this is your role, stay in your place, but just different roles, like, in anything that works, when you have people involved, whether it be a business, a household, a family, a church, everybody has roles that we have to play.

And right now, it's like, we're so far away from it, that it's just a lot of confusion. Yeah, and who's the author of Confusion, right? You already know. Yeah, the Bible says straight up, same is the author of Confusion. So, you don't have to believe like I believe or believe like Karon believes, [00:14:00] but ladies and gentlemen, if you're listening, the Bible's got all the truth in the world just sitting there for you to read, and it says clearly.

The father of lies, deceit, that's Satan. And if he can confuse your mind on the core basics, fundamentals of life, then you're, he can keep you helpless in so many ways. So what we're talking about now, when you have to define what a man is, what a woman is. Listen, Kindergarten Cop sums it up, Boys Have Penis, Girls Have Vagina, right?

That's for our 80s. That's it. It's it's it. You're born a male or female, and there are definitely exceptions, rare exceptions. It's in the Bible, right? But the thing is, they're rare and they have a special place of God. Mutilating your own body, changing your own gender. I don't care if they shut our show off or you hate me.

You have a psychological issue and you need to get help. We're saying this because we love you. And the people spreading the lies and the confusion, those people don't love you. They're trying to just ruin your life and [00:15:00] laugh at you. So what Karon's saying is so important in his generation and ours in today's generation, because truth is truth and lie is lie.

And you gotta embrace the love and the truth, not the lies. See, the key is, you know, when we're talking about, any type of success, to be successful in anything, any role, anything, we have to know what we're aiming at. We have to have some kind of foundation, you know what I mean? And right now It doesn't really seem to be a foundation on anything.

So we're all drifting and it's like we're creating and, and defining things as we go. So the challenge with that is we never know if we're on the mark or not. Right? Because again, if, if, if I'm a businessman, I have to have a mark on where I want to lead my business. If I'm a father, I have to have a mark of where I want to lead my family, you know, and whatever.

If I'm a man in the community, I have to have a mark on where, you [00:16:00] know, where I'm aiming to lead my community. And that's the key. So right now, it seems, We've gotten so far away from having these definite marks on where we're leading, you know, in the community and all of this type of stuff that is making it a real challenge, you know, to really even define what success is, let alone achieve it.

And when I say success, I'm not talking about a bag of money. I'm talking about defining what success is and then aiming at that, you know? Yeah. And that's such a good point because If you're out there, you, me, anybody listening, if you're trying to chase happiness, Karon. I mean, I can give you a Snickers bar, I could give you a Corvette.

They're both going to make you happy for a little bit, right? Right, right, right. One, one might be a little bit longer, but eventually it's going to get old and boring too. If you're always chasing happiness, you're never going to be satisfied, but God will bring you joy and peace. And like you're saying, you have the vision, you have that standard and you know, you go and you serve the Lord and you can have good success, that [00:17:00] deep, peaceful joy.

But the point you made about similar is not the same. You know, if you, if you're a, there's kidneys and livers and hearts in our body, They're all organs. They're similar, but they're not the same. They do very different jobs. One's not better than the other, but they're all crucial. So talk about how as you're growing, you know, you're, you're seeing your life unfold and you're seeing these, these changes through today.

I mean, when we were teens, things are very black and white in many of these, what would seem common sense areas. Yet today our kids are growing up where it looks like people lost their brain. So. When we're talking, Keron, through your story, anytime you feel that's part of the frame of reference that matters, just jump in with that.

Yeah, no, so I think what goes on. So I also let me share this. I also do work with trauma. I do a lot of work when it [00:18:00] comes to trauma, psychological and emotional trauma and trauma informed approaches to community engagement. And I'll start with this. So to kind of segue from what we're talking about and how it's the same point.

So. Again, I work with my, my, my background is working with gang and drug impacted communities, right? Incarcerated youth, quote unquote, at risk youth, all of that. Okay, so at one time, especially like when I was a kid and going up, the way society dealt with our communities was, they're bad, you know, so they need to be punished.

Suspend them from school, lock them up, it was everything was, was punitive. Then we said, Oh, they're dealing with trauma and all of that. So we went from one side of the spectrum all the way to the other. And we said, Oh no, these communities are not bad. They're sick. The challenge with seeing communities as sick is we withhold accountability.

You know, if I'm your [00:19:00] caretaker and I'm taking care of you and you're in my, in my, on my couch in the living room and you, you know, you throw up on my floor, I'm not going to hold you accountable and be like, what's wrong with you? I'm going to say, lay down. I'll clean it up for you. Right? So we went from one side of the spectrum to the other side of the spectrum.

But the key is many of our communities are not necessarily sick and they're not necessarily bad. They're injured. See, the difference between sick and injured is if I'm your caretaker and you're injured, yeah, I'mma go get, I'mma say lay on my couch, your leg is broken. I'mma go get your orange juice right now.

I'mma go get the remote for you right now. But tomorrow, I'mma need to put you, I'mma need you to put some pressure on your leg. Cause if you don't put pressure on your leg, you'll never heal. Right? And the reason I'm telling that story is what I see with a lot of things, you know, when we're talking about whatever it is, you know, we go from one extreme to the next.

You know, and we don't take the time to, [00:20:00] to observe. Content or context, excuse me, context. We just say, okay, it's this, now it's this. No, no, no, no. We have to take the time to really observe context to make sure we're really hitting that mark. And I think we're trying to please everybody with everything. And we're just throwing these blankets on communities or throwing these blankets on populations.

And it's not one size fits all. And again, it's causing more confusion. You know, like you said earlier with certain things, there are exceptions. Right? But we can't make this the exception, the blanket, you know what I mean? And I think that's what's going on in many sectors of our population. Yeah. And again, cover to cover Old Testament, New Testament, every part of the Bible talks about balance, how balance is good and a false balance is abomination to the Lord.

Like you said, if you're all the way to the left, Right. That's crazy. You're all the way the right. That's crazy. But we're trying to find that balance. That's what you're discussing. [00:21:00] All right. So let's do this. You're a teenager. Yeah, you're growing up as part of the culture. Like you said, everything is feeding our generation for generations.

It happened, but I think with the, just, we were the MTV generation. I mean, 24 hours a day was actually music, television videos, and we were being pumped a culture visually audibly, like through our ears, through our mind, through our eyes, the clothes. We had just such a first time high tech instantaneous generation.

That it really impacted people's view on life and our parents are wrong. So you're growing up. West Coast. Take us from there. Yeah. So during this time, yep. Like you say MTV generation again, for many of us, the music became our doctrine, right? I got my social cues on how to engage with my community from the music, how to engage with a young lady from my music, how to engage [00:22:00] in conflict.

From the music, you know, it became our doctrine. So again, like I said, this is the time of quote unquote gangster rap, where gangster rap is being marketed, you know, it's a category of its own, it's a genre, and it's being marketed, like, heavily. You know, before it was called gangster rap, it was reality rap.

And the challenge with that is not to blame a rapper because people will try to point the finger at the rapper, but if you remove this rapper, guess what? They're going to put another one in this place. It was plug and play. It was a systematic thing where they're like, this is what we're, what we're promoting.

You know, I'm not sure if you remember the time, but I remember like right after Public Enemy came out with Fight the Power, that was around 89, 90. You had a lot of people, here's the interesting thing, you had a lot of people who loved Public Enemy, they was a, more of a quote unquote revolutionary rap group.

But here's the thing, and I'm very, I'm very [00:23:00] transparent when I talk. So, Fight the Power was like the number one song of that time. Interesting thing about Fight the Power is, they were selling out arenas. In these arenas, it wasn't kids that looked like me in these arenas. Right? Kids that look like me who couldn't buy tickets to go to no concert.

So you can imagine who was in these arenas. So you had all of these middle class, you know, kids singing Fight the Power. And I could be wrong, but it seemed like at that time, somebody said, or some people said, hold on, we can't, we can't have a, a whole nation talking about Fight the Power. You could do that in these little hoods, but we can't, we can't make that mainstream.

And if you notice, right after that, around 90, 91, there was a dramatic, drastic change in the focus of music and hip hop. This is when, like I say, respectfully, this is when Death Row made its rise, and they was making, sonically, some of the best music I ever heard. [00:24:00] But, the balance was taken out. So, for every Death Row, there was also, like I say, there was a public enemy before this, you know.

I mean, for every Snoop Dogg, there was a public enemy. For every Dr. Dre, there was quote unquote an X Clan, like there was always balance. Around the 90s, they stopped the balance and all we were getting was this gangsta rap, so to speak. And this is the time where I'm 10, 11, 12, with no point of reference, this is what I'm being nurtured in and a lot of people around me.

So we grew up thinking that this was the norm, you know, you're supposed to disrespect young ladies. We don't have a point of reference. We felt bad if we had emotions towards young ladies, like, you know, I really like her. They'll make fun of you. You like her, right? Like we're supposed to have this, this animosity towards our female counterparts, which was crazy, right?

We're supposed to handle conflict with violence, which is crazy, you know, and this, and I'm using that word literally, like it [00:25:00] became a psychopathic, Culture that was, that was created and manufactured that many of us lived out. So growing up in that, this is the environment that we're growing up in. And I'll fast forward because I mean, again, violence, abuse, all of that type of stuff, we get it.

You know what I mean? That, that we got that. So, but what happened was I was blessed to have somebody to really help me and see the greatness in me. And her name was Ms. Ramsey. She was my, my college counselor, helped me get into college. And when I got into college, thankfully, it put me in a different environment.

Now, wherever you go, there you are. You bring yourself with you wherever you go. So at the time when I got to college, I would almost totally fumbled that opportunity. Because I still hadn't, my mind hadn't transformed yet. So I was still using this college experience as another [00:26:00] hustle or something. But as I got more exposed to different information, cultural identity, cultural empowerment, all of this type of stuff.

I came to the realization, God bless me, and it was like, K Ron, you're, you're a part of the problem. You, you have the opportunity to be a part of the solution and you're part of the problem. And when that light bulb went off, I literally started to shift my mindset and all my focus and became a part of the solution.

And at that point, I became a scholar. And when I became a scholar, that's when I started to be about empowerment. And as I continued to be a scholar, I wanted to be a part of the solution. I became a teacher. I went back after I graduated and became a teacher because I've never had a black male, I've never had a male teacher of color, period, in my whole entire public school experience.

And I wanted to help, instead of complaining about it, I wanted to be a part of the solution. I became a teacher. And I'll tell you more [00:27:00] about that, but you know, that's, that's That's, that's a part of my conversion on to where I'm at now. No, that's beautiful, man. This is your story. So feel free to share, as, as you see fit.

And it is true when we're kids in America, you know, I grew up in America, so that's, I can read books and I can hear stories of people overseas, but the American school system is primarily women. Teachers. Yes. And so right off the bat, we're emasculating little boys. Like not that there's anything wrong with a female teacher.

That's not what I'm saying. I had some amazing female teachers, but when every single day, kindergarten through like high school, pretty much all you see is ladies all day. They model behavior. They model reactions. You know, that's, that's not how we're supposed to be built. We're supposed to be balanced.

Men are hopefully gentlemen. Women are hopefully ladies and we grow up mimicking what we see, but like you said, [00:28:00] you grew up and not one male teacher in your entire school system. Not, not one male teacher of color, like no black males, no, none of that. So, and the reason that's so important, it's like, let's say we took a picture of your class, your graduating class.

And you got a graduation class, it's just for 500 people. It's a picture of 500. When I pass that picture around, and I hand you that picture, the first person you're gonna look for is yourself. Right? That's just human nature. If you don't see yourself, if I give you a picture of 500 people and you don't see yourself in it or nobody that you know, you're not even going to be interested in the picture.

You're going to be like, Hey Ron, what'd you, what'd you give me this picture for? Who are these people? Right? Like why? Right? Same thing goes when we're looking at education. Think if I never see myself or a reflection of myself subconsciously, I start to think this is not for me. Right? So that's just, that's a human nature.

So like you're saying, if I only see women, or I never see anybody that [00:29:00] looks like me at all, subconsciously, I'm thinking it's not for me. And then, culturally, there's certain nuances of every culture. See, back to what we was talking about, I think we have gotten away from, what is it, accepting and acknowledging each other's differences.

We're trying to be the same with everything. No, no, you know, like, like if somebody say, I don't see color, I say, I want you to see color. Like you're supposed to see, there's nothing wrong with seeing our differences. If I have to remove your color to see you as a human, I'm moving, I'm removing a whole part of your identity.

I want to see color. I want you to see my, you see what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So when we're talking about like in the education thing, there's certain nuances that come with certain identities. Right? That I'm not privy to if I'm not a part of that culture. So growing up in a whole education system and very few [00:30:00] people understand my cultural nuances or vice versa.

I misunderstand my teacher's cultural nuances. That leads to a lot of misunderstanding. Just that right there. You know what I mean? And that's a, that's a huge piece of why I got into education. Yeah. And that's anybody who's listened to our show the last four years, anybody who knows me, they hear us say that all the time.

There's one race, the human race, but there's a ton of different cultures. And there's even within America, how many different cultures are there? And it's, it's. makes life beautiful, but the stereotypes between people, like we grew up embracing that. Like I grew up from an Italian American family. My neighbors were poor cheese American, Irish, American, you know, it doesn't matter.

We were all from a different region of the world. We were proud of that. We'd make fun of each other's weaknesses. We'd make fun of each other's strengths. We'd make fun of everything, but we'd have fun with it. And we knew. Okay, there's differences in us, but that's a two way street, good and bad and all [00:31:00] kinds.

Right? And what you're talking about, if you're in an environment and there was not one, like you said, man of color, who was a teacher, it does. I mean, I can, I'll never be you. I'll never understand what you went through because I wasn't there, but I can see how, yeah, it feels like I don't belong because nobody else.

Right. Is growing up through the system and stayed. That's exactly it. So then what happened is, okay, once, once I became a teacher, it was great. The students just gravitated to me. Like I, I, I taught in the school that went up I taught middle school and it went all the way to high school. Now, before you go on, before you go on.

Between your birth and between when you went to college, got your degree, and came back to teach to be that scholar. Is there anything we missed in your life before we jump into this? Because there, there is like a switch that's happening here. And you go from kind of finding your own way to, okay, now I'm here to lead men.

So [00:32:00] is there anything else we missed? Not, not necessarily. I mean the fine details, but you know, I was, I was involved in a lot of the community, you know, mischief. Thank you You know, that type of thing. But again, nothing, nothing, nothing new, nothing that nobody's ever heard before. You know, I was a very disengaged young man, but very intelligent.

So I did not take school, serious, you know, as far as high school, I was able to maneuver and manipulate my way through because I was intelligent, you know, like many of the young men and young ladies that we work with, you know, intelligent and knew how to do it, but nothing, nothing, nothing worth like really diving into, just, just.

Basically, you know, use your imagination, just being involved in the mischief. And then I decided, like, once I did make that change, I didn't want to do this. Because, again, a lot of it was self identity, you know, based on this is what we were taught. Like, let me give you an example, especially since we're talking about [00:33:00] identity, and we're talking about the human race, but the differences and things of that nature.

Let me give you an example in college, and I share this story a lot, I actually talk about it in my book. I remember being in college, I was in San Diego, and if I give you details, it's for a reason. So I'm partying, and I'm partying with these white guys, right? You know, it's a college party, and we just having a good time, and they like, K Ron, you know.

We're about to study abroad. Now, I've never heard of study abroad. My mind went totally somewhere else when they say study abroad. I'm like what does that mean? Right. And they explained to me that even though I'm going to this school. There's a program where we can go overseas into another country, go to school, and still get our credits and come back to our home school.

I said, wow, man, that's tight. Y'all gonna have a blast. When you get back, man, I want to hear all about it. Right? Went on with the party. Never thought nothing else of it. [00:34:00] It wasn't until I was a grown man in my 30s. That I looked back and said, why didn't I study abroad? Why did I could have went to Brazil?

I could have went to Greece. I could have went, I went to college. So I tell, it never crossed my mind. Why do I tell you that story? It's because When I was at that party, instead of telling them, please when you get back, show me pictures, I should have asked them, what office did you go to so I could go fill out the paperwork and do the same thing?

Now, the reason I gave you the details that these are white guys and all of that is because my self identity at the time wouldn't even allow me To entertain the thought that I could do it. At this time, I'm thinking, this is what white guys do. This is what white girls do. I didn't realize, we go to the same school.

I can do the same thing. So, when I do my work and I'm, when I'm working with communities, a lot, a big piece of the, a [00:35:00] piece, big chunk of the work that I do is working with self identity. Because my self identity wouldn't even allow me to entertain the thought that I could do the same thing. It never, it never once crossed my mind, right?

So, that was a big piece. That was an eye opener, but that, but again, I didn't get this eye opener until I'm in my 30s. Like, wait a minute, you know what I'm saying? That type of thing. Yeah. And let's, we have listeners, thankfully, from all over the world, Charon. Yeah. And if you're listening to this, you might be completely tracking with what Charon's saying.

You might be so confused because you're coming at it from outside an American perspective, and that's greatly different. You might be born in the caste system where it's just like, this is your place in life because they tell you. Well, God doesn't have it that way, and listen to Charon's story, and these opportunities that, like he said, he missed, he didn't even consider back then until he was in his [00:36:00] 30s.

If there's something going on in your head now, stop and pray about it, pause this recording, pray about it, ask God where he wants you to go, what he wants you to do next, but have the hope to know that just where you are today, even if everybody in the world, even your own parents, has told you this is where you belong, That may not be where God wants you.

You know, you look in the Bible, and King David, even his own parents are like, there's no way this guy's going to be king, and he ends up being king. And you have Joseph being sold by his own family into slavery, and then he ends up being like 30 years, accused of every crime the man didn't do, and then he was put second in command of the entire nation.

So you If there's greatness inside of you, we talk about this all the time. Charon's helping you understand and see little glimpses of it. But go to God, ask him for the next step in your life. Reach out to Charon, get some more information. We'll tie into that at the end of the show. But don't be checking out right now because it sounds [00:37:00] so foreign.

Because at that moment, it sounded so foreign to Charon that he didn't even think of it. For how many years was that? 10, 15 years? Years, yeah. And that's, that's those self limiting beliefs, right? Not, not feeling I had permission to be great, right? I can only go so far, you know, who are people like you, whatever that means, right?

People like you only could go this far, you know, and a lot of times, regardless of, you know, demographics, many of us have self limiting beliefs, whether it be This is what my family has always done. So this is what I'm going to do. This is what people from my community have done. So this, as far as I'm going to go back to how you started, when we talked earlier, sometimes we feel guilty.

You know, that's what they call a survivor's remorse where, you know, I am, you know, achieving some things that are, that are different than what my family or my community has achieved, you know, so now I feel, I feel guilty [00:38:00] about it, so then it leads to self sabotage. And it's like, no, no, no, no, go as far as you can, live, live your fullest potential, you know, and sometimes you got to stumble your way forward, and that's what I had to do, I had to stumble forward, but the key was, make sure I'm going forward, you know, I had to constantly be intentional about not self sabotaging.

Yes, and I believe, yeah, keep going Karon, and ladies and gentlemen, just stick with it because the Bible talks about how there's a friend that's closer than a brother, you know, Jesus, and then Karon and I, this is our first interview together, but we could be best friends for life, has nothing to do with the color of our skin, it doesn't have to do with our culture, it has to do with that bond and the moral value and compass, and we live in a society that says the last thing we should talk about with people is politics and religion.

Hey, you know what? Politics is corrupt, but it's the, it should be the reflection of the morality of your relationship with God, your quote unquote [00:39:00] religion. So the things in our society that are most important, we're told not to talk about. And whether Akira and I have different shades of brown, Whatever you're, whoever you are, if you're listening, you're a shade of brown too.

And there's different cultures and there's different customs, but there's only one blood. There's only one life. So thank you for being so transparent about this, Karon. Yeah. Now you get out of college, you are. Pouring into your students, probably loving it. They're responding to you. Well, where does your life go from there?

Yeah. So at this point, I'm like a magnet. These, these students love me just, just my own students. And Eva, I was sharing with you that I was a middle school teacher, but it went up to high school. The high school students would come during lunch period and want to talk to me and hang out with me. And it was drawn to me.

So, I think a lot of that had to do with my transparency. [00:40:00] You know, me, me being honest about a lot of these things, like how I talk now and being real and being unapologetic, but still not offensive by it, you know, with it, right? They just, they would always, I was a breath of fresh air for them. So I did that, but then I wanted to impact our communities on a different level.

So I ended up working with incarcerated youth, all right, in LA, Los Angeles. Before you go on, I have a question for you. And this is something that the older I get, do you think you can actually offend anybody with truth? And what I mean by that is this, people can get offended for anything. I can say the sky is blue and it offends somebody.

That's not what I'm talking about. You know, you can't fix crazy. But when you and I talk to people and we say something in love, as long as they're willing to talk through it, I mean, I can't think of one instance in my life where I ever offended anybody or they offended me. Because we even had a difference of opinion.

So when you're standing there and these teens are seeing you and then they're bringing the older [00:41:00] teens, cause they're telling each other about you. Do you think that's all it was just the truth of transparency? Like it wasn't that you were saying anything. You were just being real with that. Yeah. I think when it comes to truth, I think truth itself is not necessarily offensive.

But the way it's presented and the time and the way it's presented and timeliness, you know, truth spoken out of season can, can cause damage. Like if you give me some truth that I'm not ready to receive, I may be offended by it because I'm not, it's like flicking the lights on. If I've been in the dark and you flick the lights on too fast, I'm like, Hey, hold on, you know, I'm on defense.

So I think the approach is so important. Yeah. And I think you hit it. You actually clarified. I said that wrong because. Jesus obviously was without sin and he offended a lot of people. But I guess what I was trying to say is it wasn't his fault. He, the people he offended, they were the morons. They were the people that were weak.

So I guess what I was thinking is if we're just honest [00:42:00] and real. Should we ever be,

if you were just speaking, you offended someone, be like, man, I'm sorry that offended you. I didn't mean it that way. And then to try to talk to them, but if they still walk away offended, is it really your fault? To an extent. And you know, and this comes, this comes from my, from my doing this work to, to an extent.

And let me give you an example. Okay. Working with youth, I'm working with highly gang and drug impacted. Young men, right? I'm talking the quote unquote gangbangers that you read about in the newspaper or the news, right? So let me give you an example. Let's say I'm working with this young man, and he's, he's brilliant, right?

But he's, but he's heavily involved in his gang. And I may be trying to help him and I say, you know what? I mean, you have so much potential. Why are you living this gang life? Gangbanging is stupid. Why don't you do something better with your life? [00:43:00] Right? Now, somebody may say, you just gave him the truth.

You know, he's throwing away his life and you just gave him the, the, the cold, hard, you know, unapologetic truth. But here's what we don't know about this young man. His mother is in the gang. His father is in the gang. His uncle, his aunties, his brothers, his cousins are all in the gang. His grandfather, at this point, is in the gang.

So, even though what I may say may have good intentions, and we may even consider a truth, I say gangbanging is stupid. Without approaching it properly, guess what he has heard? I just called his granddad stupid. I just called his mom stupid. And I could say, you know, it's his fault. I just gave him the truth.

No, no, no, no. I have to back to what we said earlier. I have to understand the context. Of who I'm speaking to, and the conversation, and I have to even understand the [00:44:00] context of my relationship with this young man, and be very intentional about how I approach it. Now, what not my approach is, I'm really just trying to deter him from throwing his life away, and trying to encourage him to live a higher purpose.

But my approach may have been very offensive because it was spoken, either spoken out of season or it wasn't the right approach for what this young man needed. You know what I mean? So that's what I mean when I say we have to be very intentional, even when we have the right intent, because intent doesn't determine impact.

Yeah, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. All the time, right? All the time. Yeah. All right. So I'm doing this work. So keep going, keep going with your story, Karon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, okay. So then I'm, I'm there now I'm working and using that as an example. That was a real example. You know, I've talked to young men and they've not, instead of telling them don't gang bang, I've asked them why.

And I've literally heard young men tell me. My mom is in my gang. My dad's [00:45:00] in my gang. My granddaddy is in my, you see what I'm saying? So these are real stories. So I'm working with these young men. And again, these are the most at the time I was working at the most high, high risk facility in LA, you know, one of the most high risk and they were drawn to me.

You see what I'm saying? It wasn't that I was so tough. It wasn't that I was sharing all these war stories. It was my connection with them. So I'll tell you that for a reason. I'm seeing how I'm impacting these young people, whether it be in a school, whether it be in a juvenile hall, whether it be in a detention camp, and I'm getting the same results.

And what I wanted to do is I saw a lot of these young men. I work with young ladies too, a little bit, but mostly young men. I saw that a lot of them didn't have. Programming that fit their needs. Like, they may have a program that comes in and say, Hey, don't smoke weed, gangbanging [00:46:00] is bad. You know, but they needed something deeper than that, right?

So I end up writing a curriculum called Live Above the Hype. And I wrote this curriculum to help these young men. But I'm committed to excellence. So when I wrote it, I had to make sure it was written a certain way, I packaged it a certain way, all of that. And long story short, it ended up becoming bigger and people wanted to buy this curriculum.

Now, a friend of mine was like, Hey Ron, you got to be careful about selling your curriculum without giving some kind of training because you're taking for granted that everybody has the same lens that you had. So I pulled it off the market, and I created a train the trainer, right? Because going back to why I was telling you that people was gravitating to me, these young people was gravitating to me, I recognize that there's a lot of people who have a heart to work with these young people, but may not have the lens.

There's just certain things, we don't know what we don't know. So I started doing, building trainings to train people on youth engagement, on just kind of like [00:47:00] what I just shared with the perspectives, and you know, we don't know what we don't know, and I did a whole training on this. And that took off. And from there, I end up getting in demand to being a trainer.

So then it becomes, do you have training on de escalation? Do you have training on implicit bias? Do you have training on all of these things? And I'm like, yeah. And I would build it. And that led me to becoming a training, a training consultant. And that's taken me all over the nation, where I, where I work with school districts, where I work with juvenile halls, I work with, non profit organizations doing these train, these trainings, these, these professional developments to help people be more impactful with the work that they're doing in the communities.

And now I've even pivoted where now I'm even working with corporate. Now the corporate side of things obviously is not trauma and youth engagement. I also do trainings on professionalism, public speaking, you know, [00:48:00] all of those type of things as well. But I found that one of my gifts is I'm able to take a subject matter Process it.

Translate it in a way where it's digestible to the world, right? Whether it be again, community or corporate professionalism, I'm the guy that people tend to go to, to, to, to build their capacity of their, of their team. Yeah, that's a great gift. I mean, Mark Twain said, why use the word metropolis when you could say city?

And Einstein would say, if you can't give your simple Concept very clearly to a child and it's too complex. So he said, wait, why say metropolis? But you could say city. Yeah, that's, that's it. Exactly. Why, why, why, why do I have to say that? We're not going to just say city and make it simple. Absolutely. Yep.

And then, but any kind of even comp, like again, Einstein and so many great minds, their minds thought complex, but they're like, if we can't break it down to the simplicity of a child, [00:49:00] then we don't understand it fully. It has to be, Basic. So man, it's been a great day spending some time with you, Karon. So before we transition to where can we kind of get a little bit of where you are today and where you're heading and where, how people can get ahold of you, what classes you have available, but between your birth and today, is there anything else we missed about your life or your impact or a message that you want to communicate to our audience?

Yes. Yes. So again, with all of that, some of the details, my turning point. When it comes to, okay, I did my transition I told you about from college, you know, all of that type of stuff, my mentality, but it really hit me to take it to where I am professionally, where I was having a conversation. I used to always do work and try to attach myself to somebody else.

Meaning, yeah, I have all this stuff that I'm offering, but I want to attach it to your non [00:50:00] profit, to your, to your organization, because I didn't have the confidence to step out on my own. And somebody told me, they said, Cairo, I asked him, Cairo, why do you feel you have to always, you know, pretty much hide behind somebody else when you have it, you know, you have the it factor.

And she said, it was a woman. She said, if you need it, I, it was a woman I really respected at that. If you need it, I give you permission to go out there and be great. She said that. And as ironic as that sounds, as, as strange as that may sound to some people, guess what? I really needed that validation. I needed somebody to validate me.

Somebody who I respect to be like, no, K Ron, go out there. You, you have it. And when she said that to me, it really validated me. I, for whatever reason, my self image, back to my self image, my self identity needed that validation. And that's why I started off talking about the importance of [00:51:00] giving yourself permission to be great.

Again, sometimes we feel kind of like, I hear a lot of Bible references, it's kind of like with Moses, where he was like, who am I to speak to the people, right? You know, I stutter all of this, who am I? You know, a lot of times we have those questions by ourselves. Who am I to do this? Who am I to be great?

Who am I to go out there and speak in front of these people? And I encourage you, just like I was encouraged, to go out there. A lot of us, you know, we move in a way where it seems like we got it all figured out, but a lot of us don't, right? And we just, we just have the courage to go out there anyway. And I encourage whoever's listening, whatever that great idea is, whatever that great vision is, go for it.

Because if you notice, as you asked me what, what like, what, is there anything we missed? One thing I want to highlight is I didn't, once I moved in, in my greatness, I didn't have a big budget behind me. I didn't have a big [00:52:00] organization behind me. I'm literally, and I'm used the word just literally, I'm literally just a community resident who wanted to be a part of the solution.

You know, I became a teacher because I didn't want to complain about I never had a black male teacher. No, no, just you be the black male teacher, right? And be a great one. You know, we talk about the youth and all the youth are doing all of this. They have, you know, they're, they're running amok. I don't want to complain about it.

I wanted to work with the youth, right? I want to be a part of the solution. Oh, the school districts aren't teaching what the kids need to learn. I don't want to complain about it. I'm gonna write a curriculum. You see what I'm saying? Oh, the teachers or the staff don't know how to engage the youth. I don't want to complain about it.

I'm gonna create a training and I could go on and on but I say that to say there was nobody who contracted me or summons me to do it. It was a vision within me that I was just, I had enough faith to just go [00:53:00] for it. When I used to sit there and write my curriculums or something people were like, who are you writing this for?

I said, I don't know yet. You know what I mean? I don't know what I'm going to do with this training. But I don't, nobody's asked me to do a training. It's not like somebody asked me to do a training and then I went and made a training. No, I made the training. Cause I saw the need, you know, when they say, if you build it, they will come.

Yeah. Literally that's been my path the whole time. I just see a need and not create it. And then I trust. You know, that it will be impactful and, and I encourage anybody, whatever your vision is, walk in it. Don't wait, don't wait for somebody to come and summons you to do it, do it. You know, so that's, that's a big piece of my story.

Yeah. And I think that's so true. And ladies and gentlemen, if you're listening. To Cairon, God put greatness inside you. The sin isn't being great. The sin is not being great. You know, we have the heroes. We have the, everyone inside of us has that inner hero, the Holy Ghost, release it on the world. That's what God intended.

Don't become an arrogant, you [00:54:00] know, jerk. But that you can be successful and not be arrogant. You can be successful and you can have a powerful impact on this world and not be bad. It's good, right? So let's do this, Karon. You kind of talked about it and we hit a bunch of points, but let's get the rubber meets the road.

If we were going to reverse engineer, The steps that made you great. Someone now they need to release their greatness on the world for God's glory and the benefit of mankind. Like you said, you saw the vision. Give us just the next steps. What are the things they should do? Cause action is clearly part of taking action, right?

But what are two or three things that our listeners can, when they end this episode, they can do to start at least acting as the catalyst for the change in their life and others. Be first of all again, like I said, without being repetitive, give yourself permission to go forward because regardless of, [00:55:00] of the greatness that everybody else may see in you, if you don't give yourself the opportunity to move forward, you won't do it.

So that's the first thing. Then be very clear. about where you want to make your impact. You don't have to know exactly how it's going to unfold, but be very clear, especially if we're talking community. There's there's there's so many fights, so many fronts to fight. Right. Like people will ask me, you know, hey, Ron, can you can you know, what about the homeless situation?

What about domestic violence? What about drug abuse? Like all of these. Come with their own challenges. And I had to be very clear, like, that's not my lane. I can support you in that, but my lane is, at the time, working with youth, particularly gang and drug impacted youth. Like, I was very clear about my lane.

So, be very clear about what your lane is, because if you're running all over and trying to, trying to save the world in every lane, you can't be great. You know, power doesn't operate in A diluted form. It operates in a [00:56:00] concentrated form. So get very clear on where you want to make your impact. And then how?

What do you want to do? Right? Is it, you know, again, is it, is it you want to create a curriculum? Do you want to be a mentor? Do you want to start a business? Whatever it is. And then do the research on what it takes. You know, and make sure every single day You're doing something towards that goal. You know, slow motion is better than no motion.

If it's writing a book, yeah, you don't have to write a chapter a day, write a sentence, write a paragraph, but make sure every single day you're doing something towards your goal. Because one foot in front of the other, would they say a thousand miles start with, you know, begins with one step, you know, making sure that you're being very intentional.

And then what starts to happen is you start to. From once you lock in and you have your goal. Now you can decide how you allocate your time is what I'm doing right now, pulling me closer to my goal or pulling me away from my goal. Right. But when I don't [00:57:00] have a goal, then I'm drifting. I don't know. You know, if, if this is.

Good or bad, like, towards my, towards my goal, because I don't have one. But if I know my goal is I want to make this type of impact, then I don't need to be spending 10 hours of my day over here. I need to be over here with my goal. So being very intentional about how you spend your time, being very organized and, you know, that's a whole nother conversation on how to do that, but be, but I will say being very intentional.

Once you decide where you want to make your impact, be very intentional on how you spend your time. That's, that's a big one. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. And, you know, if you think of Elon Musk, you think science and technology. I'm not going to ask him how to bake a cake, so you can't be everything to everyone.

Right. And he very well may know how to bake a cake, but that is not his lane, right? Yeah. Ask him about science. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I just, that's the first thing that came to my head, but no, you're so spot on. So Karon, somebody wants to get ahold of you to continue the conversation, maybe hire you [00:58:00] for a speaking gig.

What's the best way for them to reach you? Yeah, that can go to InnerSunConsulting, that's Inner meaning I N N E R, consulting. com for my website. I'm also online if you want to tap in on Instagram, at liveaboveit, those are probably the best ways. If you want to know more about my Success Academy, You could go to mysuccesspathway.

com. Any of those ways would, you know, you get straight to me. Got my email and all of that on there and just feel free to tap in with me. I would love to work with you. Beautiful. I'll put a link, whether you're listening on Spotify, Apple Google Podcasts, whether you're on our website or YouTube channel, Rumble, we'll put a link in the show notes to Kayron's contact info.

So make sure you check them out. And Kayron, it's been a pleasure to talk to you today and get to know one another. Anything else we missed or any final thoughts that you want to leave with our audience before we [00:59:00] go? Yeah, I, first of all I salute you for creating this platform. This is, this is you going forward, right?

You know what I'm saying? Have a vision and creating, not waiting for it to be created. You created it. So, first of all, I want to thank you for creating this platform and allowing me on it. And again, just encourage everybody, whatever that vision is, go for it. Don't wait for anybody else to give you, permission.

If you need it, I'm here to give it to you. You have it, go for it, go for it and be great. And I'll leave you with that. Amen. And you know what? If you go for something, Karon, and you fail, first off, you don't normally fail, do ya? No. No, you learn. Yeah. And then you learn. And if you did, quote unquote, fail, you're proud of yourself.

It's like, yeah, that guy knocked me out, but I got a good couple of swings in before I went down, right? That's right. He knew I was there for sure. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So ladies and gentlemen, don't be afraid to try and don't be afraid, you know. When you [01:00:00] were just talking, Kayron, it's so motivating.

And I always thought you'd hear the stories about the elephant on the rope, like when elephants are baby pups. Yeah, you can, people listening, you might know this, or you might think I'm crazy, but it's true. So little elephants are put on a chain, you know, A leash, whatever, and a little piece of rope and they're hammered in the ground and they pull and they tug and they can't get that rope to break because they're little.

Well then they become this monstrous multi thousand pound beast and they could sneeze or fart and break the rope. But they have that same thin rope from the pup to their adulthood because in their mind they're trained that no matter how hard I pull I can't break that rope so why try. So Karon's telling you to pull and break the rope.

I'm telling you to pull and break the rope. God's telling you to pull and break the rope. So for once, and this way, don't be an elephant. Pull, right? Break the rope. That's a perfect analogy. Absolutely. Yes, so [01:01:00] Karon, it's been amazing. You're a remarkable man. Ladies and gentlemen, please reach out to Karon with your questions.

Let him and I also know if we have anything we can help you with. Our sponsors today are MyPillow and we have QuickBooks, so check them out. MyPillow, use promo code Remarkable. You get up to 80 percent off everything. Every single thing you order up to 80 percent off, quality American products. You're going to love them.

I personally use them. They wouldn't be on my show. QuickBooks is a promo code for 30 percent off for six months. So check this out because they give us the funding to keep bringing you great content and men like Kayron. So Kayron, thank you again for being here today, brother. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for having me. Oh, it's been an honor. And ladies and gentlemen, we love you. Like our slogan says, like Karon just told you, don't just listen to great quality content, but do it. Repeat it each day. So you can have a great life in this world, but most importantly, a journey to come. [01:02:00] So I am David Pasqualone, this is our friend Karon Valentine, and we love you.

We'll see you the next episode.