The Hilltop Glove Podcast

Culture vs. Ownership | Tanisha "Queen" Hall | The Hilltop Glove Podcast | Episode #9

April 27, 2021 Skip & DJ And ? Episode 9
The Hilltop Glove Podcast
Culture vs. Ownership | Tanisha "Queen" Hall | The Hilltop Glove Podcast | Episode #9
Show Notes Transcript
Mic and DJ And ? interview guest Tanisha “Queen” Hall. Queen is a poet, arts activist, host, media personality, event planner, owner of In All Series-Ness (IAS) Games and creator of Hillman The Game. Topics covered:  the importance of black (pop) culture, creative ownership, perseverance, social engagement, work/family balance, and legacy building. Make sure to subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. Also follow us on Instagram and Facebook @hilltopglove. This episode is brought to you by Turntable City.

TANISHA “QUEEN” HALL INFO.

Facebook:
facebook.com/hillmanthegame  

Instagram:
instagram.com/hillmanthegame

Linkedin:
linkedin.com/inallseriesness

Website:
https://www.iasgames.com/ 

Support the show

Make sure to subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. Also follow us on Instagram and Facebook @hilltopglove. Sponsored by: BOPs, Lynx Recording Studios, Mid Carolina Service Co., Asylum Digital Recording & Mixing, Celeb Studio Cafe, the Simon Marketing Agency, and TruBrilliance Ent. Become a member of our Patreon channel to get access to full video episodes, early premieres, and bonus content!

s01e09-queen-first-edit

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Hilltop glove podcast. We're skip and DJ. And what interview guests and discuss topics such as business, current events and pop culture, the motivational podcast for the hip hop millennials. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to this episode of the Hill's hot glove podcast. I am DJ. And what when my brother Mike, and this is our ninth episode with our same guests, Tanisha hall also known as queen is, shall be Tenicia is a poet arts activist, host media personality event, planner and owner of in all seriousness games and creator of him in the game.

So today we'll have a great conversation but first things first, Ms. Aisha, how has your year been going and how are you feeling today? Thank you so much for having me on this show. Monitoring has been challenging but it has I I'm honestly not going to complain. It's been some that day. Some not so good days, but all in all, I've [00:01:00] taken it as a good few months of reflection.

Yeah. But it's been good. How about y'all? How are you doing excellent. And we've been at man we've been working hard. We've been grinding. We've been trying to create this platform for our folks to be able to reach out man and trying to figure out how

we literally, like we're, we're trying to get to the, to the end of this so we could figure out what we're doing, right. Where we can get better and et cetera. But the main point of it all as our mission statement is for a podcast is to figure out better ways for us to, to adult. As, as we're getting into those ages where we're going to start taking things over, we're actually going to be caring for our parents and those things like that want to know how do we adult better?

How do we. Make sure we make better how you say strategy of success. And so we've been trying to meet with talk to as many people that we know out in our community that are pretty good at what they do [00:02:00] so we can get some, some insights and some inroads into those things. That's why we have utopia today, queen because yeah man, you have been doing some very fantastic things and I know Mike has put us on to what you do and your strengths, energy of success, how you've been moving.

So I want Mike today, if he can to start off with some. Introductory of you, but also just breaking into what you're doing. I'm going to let him lead this part here for you because he knows what's going on better than I do, but we do have some great questions for you. And we're going to have a great talk today.

I have a great talk today. Oh, I'm excited. Mike, his family.

he's on, he's on your from day one's page.

told me about the game. It wasn't my fault. I didn't go there to go pick it up. I meant to go pick it up and play. I'm going to order my own copy today.

[00:03:00] I have my own copy of the play because this is super dope, man. And I was trying to social media council and not looking at who you've been talking to, how you've been actually spreading the word on what you're doing, man. And I think it's a phenomenal opportunity as a phenomenal game that you created for the culture, man, just for the culture, especially as a black artist, and this is amazing, but I'm going to let Mike take it from here, then started saying, and then from there we going to have to keep flowing, right?

Like you're saying. We go back. We go back several years, several years, queen queen and my wife are good friends. Me and your husband recording artist, Hitman black. We, we, we good friends. So I've, I've kind of had the honor of watching this game, like develop from just like one line on your dry erase board into, I've got the game in front of me right now.

You and your wife for the first time. [00:04:00] Yeah, we play it at your house. Oh wow. And y'all laxed, my ass

is hard. It's a hard game.

but you know, I mean, this is one of those things that like, you know, all right, let me, let me just, let me just set it up for everybody. So, so that you understand what's going on here, the game Hilman, the game is based off of. Classic television show from 1987, 1993, a different world, which was a spinoff of the Cosby show when the kids grew up and they went to college, that's what started that series off.

And I watched it growing up and, you know, it was on TBS and the daytime and such. So, but I didn't watch it religiously. Yeah. The questions these trivia questions, they are some of them are pretty obscure or some of them aren't very serious, [00:05:00] but some of them

look, I am, I am impressed by the game theory and strategy on this game. That's, that's really the thing.

And I think an important thing to point out is that this is not just a board game. This is a manifested political statement of an artist, poet and activist. So the very simple concept behind most of what we're going to be talking about today is, is it's simple on the outside, but it's really, really deep matter is that representation matters.

So I'm gonna let you kind of explain your motivations and how this all got started for you because I've heard it many times and you're, you're pretty good at telling it. So what actually brought you. To decide that this was something that needed to [00:06:00] exist and that you were going to be the person to do it.

Great question, Mike. Thank you. And yes, you have heard it a lot of times and I still get kinda I still get choked up when I talk about it because it came from such a pivotal moment in my life. So basically I was working in academia. I was working at a PWI primarily white institution for higher learning.

And I was there for about four or five years. I was one of the few black people on staff. And you know how, when you're working well, for those who work nine to five or have worked the nine to five, that they, they don't work anymore. You know how it is when you those months leading up to when, you know, you buy, get the hell up out of it.

That was last thing about a year and a half. And it was getting worse, progressively worse. So I ended up losing my job and I was devastated because it had, it happened like you see the buildup, but you never really know the day. They're going to say, okay, [00:07:00] here's your box. Worst. As a matter of fact, I was with your wife, Mike, the day that it had, the day didn't happen.

I went out, take a long lunch break. Cause I was like, something's about to be bad. It's about to be bad. And then I went back to work at Shirley enough. I got, I got let go that day. And I was devastated. I mean, crushed. It was for me working at, at that job, as long as I did was a huge, like accomplishment for my friends and family to see, because they're big on, you know what I'm saying?

Work 30 years, you know what I'm saying? And all that. And that was never me. And I'd always try to make that meet. So for me to be at a job that, you know, pay $30,000 for five years I was, I was lit, you know what I'm saying? You don't sound like, it must have some people, but I was like, yo, you know what I'm saying?

I'm on top of the world right now. And then it's a serious adult and job.

[00:08:00] Yeah. So I was like you know, I'm, I'm married, we've got three kids and everything. And at the time I was on the one I'm working. So when I lost it, it was like, yo, what, what do you mean? Like what's about to happen right now? So I was very depressed. My cousins one night. And my husband and I was sitting on sitting at the dining room table and we was just laughing and joking, reminiscent talking about old shows and stuff.

And we started talking about no, no, no, I'm sorry. We were playing the game of life while we were getting ready to play the game. Cause I love board games. Love. I mean, I used to make up my own board games with pieces of loose leaf paper when I was younger. Like my mother didn't like that too much. I, I wasted a lot of paper, but I decided when we were sitting there talking about shows and stuff, I was like, man, it'd be cool to have a board game. Now I had seen card games based [00:09:00] on the culture. I'm from this company. Hello Zumba. And they had the Martin trivia card game.

They had a, what, what did they have? They had a house party. They had a whole bunch of like card games and stuff. I was excited, but I was like, you know, card games are cool. We seen a bunch of card games. I say, man, I wanna play a board game. I love moving the pieces and the characters and just, you know, getting into the roles of board games.

One of my favorites before killing the game was cool. Yeah, so to go through and you know, I get to act out Mrs. Scarlet, and you know what I'm saying? I get to say, you know, I accused you, you know, you really get to the character and stuff. And I was like, man, I wish there was something like that for, for black people.

You know what I mean? And we're here sitting at the table and I'm like, all these shows. I said, man, what if there was a show that was turned into a book? Like how would that work? And we're all like, Oh yeah, that'd be great. 10 minutes. Go by. Yeah. We're, you know, throwing back ideas, [00:10:00] they then moved on to a whole nother subject.

I'm still trying to figure out how the hell I could make a show into a board game. So I'm writing down this, the shows that I love, I went back, I went back to it. That's my mama. I was on was like, I was an eighties, baby TV was everything. Okay. That's how we learned everything. That's how we, I mean similar now, but you know what I'm saying?

That's how, that's how I really started my book. But yeah, but I was late. I'm still talking about it. And everyone was like, okay, that's cute. Except my husband, because he sees, he's like, okay, the wheels are turning. He knows what that looks like when you're in creative mode gives me to look at he's like, all right, just tell me what I got to pick up.

Like here's the heavy lifting. Tell me where he looked ready for it. But surely enough. I was like, no, I'm gonna make, I'm gonna make board games, period. I said And another big thing that made me sick with it was [00:11:00] previously, I hadn't stuck with much because nothing felt like right. Because nothing felt like mine.

So when I was working at the PWI and everything, it, it would hit me every day. I'm like, dang, I can't even hire my people. If a one to two, I can't even get them in here. If I leave here, I'm done. I can't pass this job to my kids. I can't do any of that. I just delete everything I've done. I just leave it.

And I said, I'm not, I don't, I don't want to work for another business corporation and see ever again, I don't want to do it. And what was it now? Four years later, I'm dead ass serious. I'm not going to create in all seriousness. Because and it was a play on seriousness, but it was series because I was paying homage to the TV series that I grew up with and that we all grew up with and I knew I wanted to make more than one game.

So it was going to be a series of board games [00:12:00] and the nest is yeah, that's nest. So that's how it started. I'm Bradley. That's how you knew it though. Yeah. Let's just say that's how you, she's on. That's how you do it. She created a platform on which you can have a continuous series of a product, and that's just, that's so smooth how you did that, how the wheels started turning and instead of just dropping the idea, cause you just thought it was some fly by night thing to it.

And that's another thing that you said being in that position and that PWI, when you realize that you weren't able to build a legacy, that you didn't really have anything to pass on and don't want to create something like that. That's powerful, especially for a lot of folks in our audience who listened to the show at certain ages at West, what you're trying to do, you realize when you get to a certain age that you need to be able to have something that you can pass down.

So that was excellent here. Yeah, exactly. You want to own what you have done? Yeah. So one of the things that I think is really important about this game is that it's not just [00:13:00] a skin on another game. It's, it's, it's not a different world version of trivial pursuit, right? Like this is totally different.

Like there's a, there's an actual new, original game dynamic behind it. Can you, can you tell us a little bit about the game play and what the final game kind of feels like to play? Absolutely. So again, play again. I want it to. Embody my love of play without being so, so complicated because I played role-play games too.

Like like Dungeons and dragons or Warcraft games like that. Now let's start nerded out. I'm gonna start trying to get better. So it I'm trying to get back to it. It's a lot, but it's so much fun. I want us to take that element and have people be able to like, you know what I'm saying, be other than themselves while still being a part of their culture, you know what I'm saying?

It was really, really [00:14:00] hard for me as much as I love the game. Cool. Honest to God. It was really hard for me to continue to play a white woman. There were no black characters and I'm always at that medal. What would she look like if she looked like this? What if she was this? And what if she was at? So I thought about that when I'm designing the game to have characters that, that, you know, were based on black characters or, or look like black people period.

And the final game play is you go from the season, the season premiere to the season finale in the game. You move across the board, rolling dice land on spaces that I will have you either collect the salary or pay rent, or answer a question or follow a direction. And what's cool about it is. In the game when the money is given out.

Okay. So first of [00:15:00] all, I'm really big on, I say, first of all, I said, I said like 10 things. So 11th of all. Yeah.

So I wanted to make sure I follow the theme. So this was going to be a collegiate theme period. And so there's no banker is a bursar. There is. So when you land on rent, you have the option of depending on who, which character you pick, your character might have a roommate. And in that case, then your rent is split.

So you don't have to pay the whole thing by yourself, but every character didn't have a roommate. So you'll have to deal with that. If you want to choose that character, which comes along with more money in the beginning, think about the fact that you're going to have to pay your rent on your own. And so I wanted to kind of put in real world elements, paying homage to the show, having something that was familiar, like roll the dice, move the spaces, something that anyone could follow and make it [00:16:00] challenging enough that someone would want to beat their friends at it.

So and be able to like have the time, because I know monopoly has broken many of friendship and I'm okay with that. I feel knowing the game has that element too, because it's so personal because it's a show you're like, Oh, for those that know about a different world. And you're like, Oh my God. So you want to immediately take care of it.

You want to win. Even if you don't know much about anything of the show, you see it. And you're like, Oh, why is that somebody with locks on the, okay, I want to win this. I'm trying to, everybody asks at the table today. So all of that, but still feeling really good. Like, man, this is a, this is a black game period.

So that's the, that's the final. So I've seen a lot of. Pride swelling in it, just looking at the game when people are like, wow. Even me, my kids look at it and they're like, well, you [00:17:00] really made a board game and to sit and play, it gives me played. That's the that's how it is. The final game play is like not only fun, but wow.

Because one of us did it. Dang. I think as well, even without that, it, there is definitely a wow factor to this, you know? It's and it's interesting too. You mentioned having the roommate suit, you, you get these little ID cards that have your character's face on it. There are all these custom cartoon art that, that really does look like the characters from the show.

And so like, you know, say I'm playing it Dwayne lane, the roommate is, is wrong. So if, if Ron's not playing, I got to pay the full rent. Right. If he is playing now we get to split it. So it almost encourages like some team and up in the real world as you're doing this, like, I want to win, but it's not so much like when you play monopoly or [00:18:00] risk, like the point behind those games is very imperialistic, destroy everyone.

Right? Take everything, give back nothing trust everybody else. Yeah. And, and this game Comes from like a different mindset or a different diaspora, if you will. And if it, really, to me, it kind of felt more like a, like, like I'm playing against chance, not so much the other people you know, I might pull a card that has very little effect on me, but it, it affects two other people.

And I don't, I don't know that that's going to happen. It just does. Yeah. Yeah, it does. Yeah. There's toys in the game. And you know, like I said, when I, when I choose a theme, I like to go in and really make it make sense. So even when you first opened the game, the game doesn't come in a box, the game comes in a backpack because it's a collegiate,

[00:19:00] the rules don't look like regular rules. They look like a welcome address. As if you were being admitted into college, you're going to help on the bat. It, it also has one of the most iconic characters from the show was Mr. Gaines. He ran the pit, which was like the cafeteria at the mess hall on campus restaurant.

And Mr. Gaines is on the back of the rules and he has house rules. Now, Mr. Gaines was like, You know that older, that why's, that why is and in there you, he's telling you how you can play the game differently. You can turn it into a drinking game. If children are playing there's cards that say PG 13 on it, because there was some adult content in the show.

So a parent can go through the cards and take out the PG 13. If they're going to play with their kids, they don't have to touch on that. There is on the trivia cards, if [00:20:00] you when you pick up a trivia card, I want it to so do it so that everyone sitting at that table had something to do. You know what I mean?

They don't have to just sit there and just wait their turn. Like you're, you're ready. And like Mike said, one thing can affect other players in the game. Like when everyone starts to play on their ID cards, they don't start with the same amount of money. And that's because on the show, they came from different economic backgrounds.

So Dwayne Wayne is not gonna have the same money to start as Whitley did because he was well off. But when it comes to salary, Dwayne work more Willy B. So Dwayne will make more money on the salary while we'll eat. We'll make a little bit less. And you got to kind of see the show to that, and then to bring her back to the show on the trivia cards.

When someone asks a question out to the rest of the players and you have your chance to set, answer it, you have ABC answer cards, they're multiple choice, which is why anybody. I was wondering, yeah, I was seeing the [00:21:00] game. You can play it. And I have tested it. And winning, even if you've never seen the game, but seeing the show, excuse me.

And for anyone that wants to you know, debate challenge argue, if you will have spirited conversation where an answer might've come from, I put the season and episode where it came from and I've done a lot of work.

And I just thought it wasn't, you know, it was just a really cool, like. It, it was, it was a challenge on balance for me. Cause you know, you could throw everything into everything. I've been playing video games for years. I've seen it, you can put everything in and everything. It doesn't mean it's good.

Tailoring back. It's still making sure that it's fun and dynamic is, has been great to do. And watch it's been a headache sometimes, but overall it's been dope. I love watching you play it. I know you do because it's your baby and you put it out there and it does well, like it's like raising a child [00:22:00] in Western town and go off and survive.

Oh. And this black faces on the money. That's right. Not only black faces on the money, the globe on the side of the money, usually, you know, we have this very like North American centered globe North America is not on this globe Africa. I did that on purpose.

the detail is, is, is definitely there. Like

Yeah, but yeah, there's the characters that on the money, our deans from the school from the show. So again, Mr. Gaines, Mr. Beans is on, on the one Hellman book. So I had to make sure that we were, I wanted to make sure we were represented. As many ways as possible and in good ways, you know, not just being representative of represented it, being represented in what we see mostly, which can be some mess, but, you know, just [00:23:00] bringing that, that positivity, that happiness, that joy, I'm all about living as happily as possible.

And honestly, it's, it's attainable. Why not? I mean, exactly. And that's not, man. I like the fact that you use the show as they show like it wasn't, even though it was a, it was a spinoff of the Cosby show. It didn't directly go back to the Cosby show that it needed, it built its own storylines, the new SCO.

So the cool thing is like, it still carried on. And I like to say this in a positive way. Cause I know all this crazy stuff that happened in the world with. With bill, but Jerry, on that idea of the, of show that ideology, that black folk can be professionals, black folk can be respectful. Black folk don't have to have a gun and sell drugs.

You don't have to be torquing on the side of the street and to make money, you can [00:24:00] actually have a career, raise a family and do those things, that stuff moved over into that show. And it also dealt with issues, et cetera, in a very poignant way. It was never a wild or anything. That's one reason I always liked it.

So man, like I had a colleague that I worked with at a PWI as well and her name, Ms.  moody shout outs to Ms. Particular moody. But man, she works in the politics realm and works on campaigns and stuff. But the cool thing, we used to always talk about a different world. It was something that we didn't get to see going to a PWI, but we love the tropes from it.

We love the ideology. We loved how they, how they showed us even when we were dealing with issues. Like dealing with Denise, not being able to finish up school probably and have them leave. Like they dealt with it and it was done in such a positive way. And then the show kept rolling off from there. It didn't technically need her to stay in it for a successful and man, I mean that episode, the episode with, with, with Wayne, whatnot, dealing with [00:25:00] racism at the football, and at that time you weren't able to do that.

Technically we're supposed to do that. So it was groundbreaking back then and it's still groundbreaking. So for that, it'd be in a board game is phenomenal, especially for those who didn't have a chance to live through that period or watch or see consistently. I think man, this board game is going to do a whole heck of a lot and let's kind of expose people to, to some culture that they haven't seen.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I've seen, I've had people tell me that they they've binged it after playing the game going on. Yeah. Yeah. And love it. Love it. Well, I don't watch the, I can't tell you how many times I've been binge watched the entire series from top to bottom, back and forth.

I'm saying even before deciding to make the game because I didn't get to go to an HBC. You honestly. I'm from Brooklyn, New York [00:26:00] originally. And I, where I grew up, I didn't hear much about Brooklyn. Right. I didn't hear much about HBC at all. Brooklyn and Brooklyn. And that just lets you know, that there is there's worlds everywhere.

It is in mind. I knew nothing about it. It wasn't until I saw the Cosby show that I was like, Oh wait. Well everybody's everybody. And almost everybody, cause there, there are some some white students in the first season, a lot more than there are on other ones, but yeah, but when I saw it, you know, it was predominantly Andy it's a lot.

And I was, ah, I love learning, man. I mean, I used to get picked on for one thing. I love learning. You are blurred,

you said earlier, put us onto your blurb as soon as you bring up Dungeons and dragons,

[00:27:00] like point on point. So to when I found out about a different world and I'm like, what is real places like that? And having not had the opportunity to go when I was, you know, going to look for colleges and stuff, cause it just wasn't popular. As far as what I was being told by, you know, guidance, counselors, family, it wasn't nobody trying to go to HBCU.

Like I said, they were, you know, everyone's thinking. Harvard, Gail, you know, all those other is what I heard the proceeds. So for me to see if there's some good debt,

Oh my God. I was like, yo. And they're all there to learn. And the experiences, man, there's so many episodes that just like rock my whole internal system from that show. So I'm glad I actually, I can say now that, although I didn't get the opportunity to go to HBC, [00:28:00] when I was younger healing, the game has gotten me to HBC.

You

come out and then show the game and I'm at Bennett college out. I've been out there. What was that too? Sometimes I've done two out there where I've had actual HVC U students late in the game. These were freshmen. Oh my God. It was so dope. They never heard of it. So now they're on it. And their, a little baby is exposing them to some culture, like you said, exposing the babies.

Right. Okay. So pivotal, pivotal, pivotal. When I knew that this is what I was sticking with. Cause I tried a lot of things I'm mean unicorn. I like to know what things do. But when I knew I was going to stick with making board games my daughter at the time she was in the third grade and she asked me to take my game up to her class.

So I did pick it up to the to the school and everything and toasted the teachers teach the [00:29:00] principal, everything, everybody was great with it. And when I got to the class and the kids started looking at the game, they were like, Oh, it looks cool. Not even playing it yet. They were like, Oh, that's cool.

Where can we get it there? That's where my daughter, where, where can we get it? And my daughter's like those my mom's game. And they were like, yeah, but did she get it from Walmart? And she like, no, my mom made the game. That's my mom's game. And then they're like, what? So now they're extra interested. And then I'm telling them, and I said, it came from my age, you know, it's the show was based on a fictional HBC U and then I said, how many of you heard of an HBCU before?

And it was only a few of them that we have two agencies in the state. So I said, I told them what it was. Yo, when I tell you I got to be the one to tell young black children what an HBC was. And then they say, I'm going to bed at eight. I'm going to Allen. I'm going. And I mean, when they're looking at the game, they're like, Oh, you look like Julissa.

Pick [00:30:00] her. Oh, I want to be Duane. I want to meet it. I said, okay, that's it. Ain't no turning back now.

Oh, no, I almost cried. I didn't want to make her mom cry.

That's big, man, man, like I said, again, the theme for this show is about adulting and how to properly. And that's one of those cases that you said that light went on and it made sense went off and that's how it's supposed to work, man. So that's cool to see that is cool to see big of adulting, you know, like a lot of people have these, these very creative, I don't want to call them pipe dreams, but we come up with some ideas that we never see make it to reality.

And you didn't, you, you found a way to make it happen. And I [00:31:00] kind of want to talk a little bit about like that process of developing and, you know, you talked about running prototypes and that kind of thing, but going from this concept that you have written down on a piece of paper and, you know, maybe just drawn out on a, on a, a large sheet of paper to actually have in this product.

I mean, you've got to find artists, you've got to find designers, manufacturers, you've got to find funding. How did you do this?

Big answer alert. So. The first thing I did was I researched a lot. I Googled. And when down, I probably haven't been to 80% of the sites that give you advice on how to start a board game. 75% of those are wrong. But I did a lot of research and I went to the only black game developer I knew of at the time, which were the creators of the more [00:32:00] intriguing from hellos number that I spoke about. And It was scary to ask a question about something that I was creating was the biggest thing that you're told that you don't keep it to yourself.

Don't tell anybody, you know, someone's going to steal it. So I was going to do that, but the biggest and most important thing that I did is that I believe that everything was going to work out. Oftentimes we talk about what we don't want and I too have done that a lot, man. And I don't want nobody to steal this.

I don't want nobody to do that. And you know, oftentimes that kind of mentality would yield the exact thing I didn't want. So it's time. I was like, it's going to work. They're going to tell me I'm going to get a mentor, someone who's going to happen. It has to happen. This is too good. And I just stayed on it.

I just say it straight, straight. Matter of fact. Yeah. You know, Mike knows, cause I talked to his wife a lot. I was like, I'm just doing it. It's just going to happen. I put myself,

[00:33:00] put myself out there and ask questions and when hellos humble responded, that's when I was like, okay, keep going. You know, put, keep putting myself out there, ask them how they did it, how they came up with a prototype. They sent me a list of websites that shout out to Jason Gray who is my mentor from hellos nimble now and has been helping me out whole bunch.

Just. Keeping up the research and reaching out to people that are more in line with you and your mission. So instead of me going to just look up how Milton Bradley done it. Yeah. Mel and Brandy did it, but on some real milk and Bradley's white and and had an an amount to allow them to produce something.

I did. All I have is the idea. Now, all I can do is get information. So I would just take, what can I [00:34:00] do with what I had? And eventually the rest I figured the rest would come. And it did by researching, looking up companies that provided prototypes is that there's a lot. And a lot of them aren't good for me, but I'm a lot of them are good.

And then I got into a community of game makers. Cause you know, once you start looking for it's like when you buy a car, now you see your car, all that's that law of attraction, you're bringing those things. So I did that and I got more information on. Pricing as far as how much a prototype will cost.

And I just saved up my money. I think my first prototype was a couple hundred dollars. So once I knew it was going to be a couple of hundred dollars, I just started putting a cup, you know, putting little by little to the side until I could get it and just playing around with what I had. I took my first prototype, honestly, was.

Foam [00:35:00] board that came from my kid's old assignments, construction paper

and monopoly money because I didn't have my own money yet. So I actually was playing in test playing with monopoly money and blank cards that I just wrote on myself. And I mean, I wrote out all the questions myself

to be said about making things too difficult for yourself too. Don't do that,

found the flour and she ground the flour

and I'm glad they know. I know how I don't want to do that. And as far as like the illustrator itself I knew I didn't have it. I wasn't an illustrator like that. I could, I could do a little sign. You know what I'm saying? If you want it to look, I got you. You feel me? We can go out the [00:36:00] window, throw splatters plates.

We can make it a thing. But in order to have it look like characters, like a woman that I knew I was going to have to get an artist and hiring. Okay.

Okay. So the way I found my artists shout out to Quinn, McGowan of legends, press comics. So. On long tracks. And it's going to be my answer with just about everything. Cause I put out here that I'm going to find the illustrator. I mean, I didn't do it. I said, I'm going to find someone to do this. I cannot, and it has to happen.

The game has to happen. And so I went on Facebook and a friend of mine and I'm going to his name out there. So everyone knows how they contributed to this. So when Tony Pearson, who was a poet he had made a series of YouTube videos that were aimed at calling out racism, which means calling all white people for doing messed up white people mess.

So he went on and he knew he was going to [00:37:00] drop a video. And he said, I know the trolls are going to come from me. And I hold myself up pretty well, but it's been harder and I need help. So if anyone could come when I dropped this, just be ready for when they come, please do. Now at this time, you know, I just been let go by PWI

I was like, let's go, you know what I'm saying? And his video was really, really good. It had. I mean, it was funny cause I had a talk in jar Manet's but it was

real, but it was just, I love comedy. I feel like the medicine go down, I could teach you something if I could make so for him to do it the way he did, I was asking me to backing him up. And, and as he said, the trolls came, they came heavy. Like they came in and [00:38:00] me and another person Quinn, McGowan, we were hitting like, I enjoy.

Pissing people off without having to cuss. I love to cuss now that's you know, that's bonus points. So we're on that. I mean, we tagging, we got like one liners we're in the, we're making them think hard. Like it's so much going on. And 24 hours later, the trolls didn't stop and me and Quinn were still going.

We were still backing our friend up and we just looked at each other in the comments. We were like, yo, we're cousins now. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, we're really, really cool. We're good. So we friended each other on Facebook and then the next day there was no more action from that. We let it go.

But the following day, the Charlottesville riots happened. You gotta be kidding me. Yeah. Yeah. But the following so two days after we did the troll stroll, the Charlottesville riots happened. And then two days after that Quinn had a full comment about the Charlottesville rights. I was [00:39:00] like, how the hell he couldn't have already had it done because we know when we saw right.

Just in two days. So I reached out to him and I said, listen, I got this idea. I want to talk to you about it. And I wanted to know if you would be interested in illustrating it. We were on the phone for like two and a half hours from our first conversation. It just, everything clicked. He just knew exactly.

What I was talking about, you know, he loved the show just as much as I did. I do. And yeah, that, that was it. He, I said how much he told me I paid it. He did it

Quinn McGowan, legends, press comics. See, that's that blurting again. So see, when you, when you play, you got them caught, man, that man, it is cool. People don't get to hear stories like that. Like it worked, it came together. [00:40:00] Serendipity. I heard that where I'm whole life meant that it makes sense. And Todd, wasn't a dope Nam is fly.

Well, that leads right into the next line of questions. But,

and this is what's so cool about what you're doing. Like people, they don't always understand the importance of black culture and pop culture and just creating what we see, what we do and what we like and follow even trends and et cetera. And from what you did, what you created, you have, now you have a piece you have contributed to the continuation of this tradition.

Now, you know what I'm saying? Wow. But think about them, but you have, there's nothing else out here like that. So what, what responsibility do you think that we have as creators to highlighting and addressing issues that pertain to racism, [00:41:00] other forms of inequality that we face even at a detriment of alienating, alienating those outside of the culture, because like you said, you all were doing a troll wall, you went through all this stuff, you did all this, blah, blah, blah.

But it was something that was necessary because it was a reason and it was about pushing culture. And then you created this, this extremely amazing board game out of that same sentiment. When do you think your responsibility is though, and how do you think we should exercise that responsibility as creators and making sure that we continue this tradition of, of putting out black culture and pop culture even despite those things that may be barriers or try to stop you or hinder you.

Good question. Thank you for that. I feel like my responsibility is to first and foremost, tell the truth and to make sure that I'm promoting the possible. And for a lot of us, [00:42:00] we don't see where we should have a game for us because. Immediately. We start comparing ourselves to, you know, what we were told we deserve.

We allowed ourselves to believe we deserve what situations we put ourselves in that cause deserving or unworthiness and things like that. So I definitely know that my responsibility is to promote the power and being positive and owning ownership, ownership, ownership of your dream ownership of your happiness ownership of your, you know, your projects.

It's not just ownership to say, Oh, I'm making back. You know what I'm saying? Like this is going to be in, that's going to make me a millionaire. No, it's ownership to say that I did something. And that's something that you're thinking of. You can go do that, to be honest about it and go do that. We lie to [00:43:00] ourselves.

I know I, I have locked myself a budge. I've told myself I can't do this. I can't do that. I don't have this. I'm not qualified. Who I didn't go to school for board games. I can't be an Oregon developer. I tell the truth. Yes, you can't share you. Can't why not the only thing stopping you is you. So that's my responsibility to let my people know.

And. Humans, no period. That positivity is okay. It's okay. You can, you can have it. You can own it and tell the truth about it. So the truth about where it comes from, why do you think that's such a how would you put it? It's, it's such a hard conversation to have, and especially when you go into this part and this one, I, it gets you on, this is even at the risk of alienating others.

It's something that you believe it's something that just, you must do. Like, did you have any fear of alienating, alienating people with this? With helming [00:44:00] game? I only had a fear of it after I listened to what other people had to say. And yeah, first I was like, nah, I'm doing this. And I don't care who has a problem with the fact that me saying that it's a black game.

But then when I started talking to some people, some business people, some people that, you know, had a higher co-op air quotes, I can't see it status. Oh my God. I know, like I had one person telling me, you know, what you need to do. You need to have some young white girls from the PWI that I was let go from.

They didn't know this, that I was let go from that PWI. They were like, you need to have some younger white girls playing helmet. And why, why don't I absolutely do, but that, but that was when I started to doubt it. Cause then I was like, dang, who am I leaving out? And when I think like that, like who am I leaving out?

I was literally only thinking about it from a business [00:45:00] standpoint, but this is more than business. This is my, this is my lineage period before me, after me, this is so I can't just treat it like, Oh, it's about check is not. So if it's not like, I feel like my game and my games are like cake at a birthday party.

Yeah. It might not be your birthday. You can have some cake

come to the party. Like we got cake, I made a cake for everybody. And celebration of that kid over there, you can have some cake, but this ain't your part. You know what I mean? That's a really good analogy.

I felt, I felt the way at first. And then, you know, I have friends that, you know, not to sound like that person, but you know, Wait, can I curse a lot? [00:46:00] Clip's not here. We encourage

earlier, but you know what I'm saying? That would be like, no, that guy to be like, Oh, you know, I have white friends, but I do. But the point of my purpose and my rep, right, my brothers and my responsibility is to tell the truth. My white friends know that this game was made for black people. You can play it, but they know apart who it's for.

And that's my my model for in all seriousness is that when you see one of my games are games, you know, it's it's culture, without question, that's the tagline. I caught you without question

why was created and you know, who did it when you look at it, you know, okay. A black person made this game because it was intentionally made that way to let you know, a black person made this game. I don't want you to fuck it up at all. Black creators. You have a need almost like to [00:47:00] feel like I'm making sure that everybody is comfortable with my expression of myself and that doesn't make any sense.

No worries. I'm a recovering people, pleaser God. So I've done a lot to, yeah, it is real real talk. And also the lack of truth has altered my life more times than I care to admit. So I feel really strongly about telling the truth. So when you do that, you know, whoever takes it, whatever way they take it, that's on that.

You've told the truth period. Let it be what it is. And I think that was a growing point for me, because again, being a recovering people, either I'm not an, a business person, you know, you, the goal quote unquote again, is to get as many people to buy into your, your thing as possible. As many as it always.

Right. You know what I mean is maybe isn't always as many as it always. Yeah. You [00:48:00] can get full on eight pounds of Chinese, but how are you going to feel afterwards? It's unnecessary. You don't have to there's enough for everybody. There's enough for me to be a company that specializes in bite games.

I've been asked, am I going to do a Seinfeld game? No, I'm not.

you can make a thousand dollars or you can make a hundred thousand dollars.

I'm good. I'll keep, I kind of, I've grown accustomed to the soul I got here. I'm good. Yeah. Yeah. I've had a whole bunch of stuff. That was the thing that kinda made me feel, Ooh, am I doing, but advice alert, listen to yourself. If you're telling yourself the truth, if you know, you're lying, then look, look outside.

But if you're telling yourself the truth, listen to yourself. Because when I tried to make it, I even. I tried to make games that will be, I guess, a little more [00:49:00] comfortable. It just don't feel right. It felt like faking and fraud and that's not, no, I want us to know is this is for

me to say, cause you know, the wavering yeah. You could, and things change. I understand that, but it was always sold like that. It sells itself very easily and sometimes it can lose its way. So that's why I just want to, well, you know, that happen when, when you've been told that you come from people that have been bought and that's all you got, that's true.

But it's more than that research.

I'm still not understanding what people found uncomfortable about this game. Like that there's there's eight black faces on these cards more than once it was too black. It's a different world.

[00:50:00] it's like if you made a, if you made a game like zoo Tyco and they were animals and people were angry at animals being in the game

is animal animal game. They're like where the people at keeping the animals

would you say

those words, man? Nate? Yeah, but like you said, I explained the point exactly. Like that. That's what you should be thinking should have pride in yourself. You shouldn't be afraid to express yourself. That's what's so cool about this, this w taken, especially with all seriousness is the fact, I don't think that you're going to ban, I'll see you making a Lizzie McGuire gain or gain just because of like, Hey, here's a bag.

[00:51:00] Would you like to make this game for us? Cause we liked your template. How you do it? Nah, no high point. Like why do asked you to do that? Whenever you can do that yourself, if you want. So that was the thing with, with him in the game. Like when people asked me why I said, because you know, like if I don't then someone will that yeah.

Someone else's story, man, that a white board game company came out with. Well, you had a chance

that's on point and I guess this goes into the next question about maintaining your own shit, man. Cause like we were talking about creative talents and music and arts, but we do have a lack of ownership and business admin when it comes to certain things like often we may not have the knowledge or legal expertise to protect our creations, especially this is capitalists.

[00:52:00] Homebase right here in America. And so, you know, usually like craters, they die broke or they lose control that aren't somebody is out there pimping out their stuff. In your opinion, how important is it for us to maintain creative control of our works? And what advice would you give to some people, someone who's interested in creating something that is culturally relevant, such as Hellman the gang research?

Absolutely. It is extremely important that you own and put your stamp on what it is that you've done. If we think about how much work we've done towards someone else's trailer,

that alone is a staggering amount of hours that has been dedicated to somebody else's dream. It's somebody, else's someone else's a barcode. So it's, in my opinion, Sue, I mean, that's one of the things that had me make sure that I was going to make games that I wanted to own it. And when I spoke [00:53:00] to hellos humble, the first company that I reached out to now, fun fact, when I reached out to is onboard, it had been two years after I had purchased their game.

I was working at the PWI when I bought their game. And I was telling everybody about it. Like, you can go back and look at my Instagram and see where I was last in the March game. It was so much fun and it is it's still is. But when I spoke to them and I sent the email as nervous as I was, I asked them straight up, how did you not get sued?

And they told me, they said, you know, they, they

set of artwork. The Martin trivia card game was a whole title. So it wasn't just Martin the game. It was Martin, the trivia card game. And does that change the [00:54:00] the rules as far as the ownership goes, because we're not saying Martin, we're not saying so they they told me they pretty much just told me how to do it and not get And I get sued.

So that's why him and the game is not a different world game Hillman fictitional college. So we'll have to ask anybody permission for that. The characters are illustrations, so I didn't take any pictures from the show. The rest is trivia that's public knowledge is just, you know, packaged pretty. And yeah, I own the, the, the, I own it.

So now, if anybody wants it, they gotta come to me. That's so fly. What was the process of going through the ownership of it? Like what, like the nuts and bolts. So for people who are listening, they can have some kind of understanding on what you had to do, like paperwork that you had to file. Like, how did you go about that?

So the first thing I did was I I created my business and I got my, my business license and stuff like that in all seriousness. And that was probably like maybe that was a couple of months after I [00:55:00] decided I wanted to do it. So it wasn't, it wasn't too bad. I had to pay a couple hundred dollars to put that paperwork in, but for the trademark and for, for copyrights and trademarks visit U S P T o.gov.

That's the United States department of patents trademarks, and they give all the information you can go in and check on a trademark. You can apply for a trademark there, they show you the whole process and yeah. Yeah. That's where you start. And it also Googling, seeing what companies already out. So when I chose the name in all seriousness, I looked it up, you know, to see if anyone had it, making sure to grab social media handles as soon as possible.

Knocking those down. That was another way to establish ownership. Cause you know, social media is everything, you know,

be [00:56:00] clear about that. So might have to do it for us

to grab it because how many go pass and you know, your.com will have to be a.net/org/gift or something. The people that will sit on him, things, they would just sit on the bike and be like, yeah, give me 500 bucks. This is what is the one on parts when Keenen ivory Wayans passing, it says less than

10, 12 bucks and you got it. Yup. Yeah. Yeah. But that's absolutely important. You want to, you want to make sure you have, and you also want to make sure that you have a plan for who your successors are going to be. Even if you don't 100% know what you at least want to have. Start the conversation of what will happen to your business if you're unable to run, explain like, yeah.

[00:57:00] Explain that to us. Cause yeah, that's some real business plan and stuff. People can get something off of this. So what do you mean by having somebody in place and give us an idea of who that person could or could be like.

So I'm married. My husband and I are we both have businesses, so we both started having conversations about what would happen if I'm unable to run it, because now we've always known any of that happened. But now, you know, we've got to be more conscious about what we do, what we leave behind, how things are carried on when we're not here, even if we're, you know, down and being sick a couple of weeks, something like that.

So it's just putting a plan in place of who is going to know who has access to the important [00:58:00] information and who is able to continue your work after. And for me, it's my husband and my 19 year old son for now. Oh, I'm sorry. My husband, my 19 year old son and my my brand ambassador, Monita lemons, they're all employees of in all seriousness and they know what to do if I'm unable to do.

And is this written in business documentation? Is it a part of your business plan? Yeah. Yeah. We actually started doing it before it was conversation, but we're, yeah. We're putting everything in writing and getting all the stipulations there. And so just to have that backup plan, you don't want to, you don't want to think about what if you're not able to, but it sucks so much to, you know, the community that you built up when you're not able, this goes away because that's not why you created it.

Even just having like, like an envelope with your passwords written down on paper [00:59:00] and, you know, stuck away in a safe somewhere in case somebody has got to fill the orders. You know, even if you are just injured for a few days, somebody's got to fill the orders. Exactly. If someone's injured, if, if anything happens.

And I like I like thinking of stuff like that because I'm a puzzle person. So I'm going to be a little difficult. I feel like I'm going to have something buried. And there's going to be a scavenger hunt.

We have to be on no morbid shit, but I'm telling you

game

jerky. Oh, he was amazing. Beautiful.

yeah, we [01:00:00] got to figure this out so we can get through this stuff, man. Yeah. But I think it would be cool, but yeah, definitely having that having that, having your successor lists and it's cool to have, you know, we don't think about having things that we leave. I mean, you know, we say it for, most of us have heard we say, yeah, I want my kids to have this here.

We have the well, but yeah, let's, let's let's, let's, let's do more. We can. Yeah. And especially in this day and age, like we can rebuild them stronger is an understatement. Like we got it. We got it. If you take a lot of times, I feel like we don't take. And myself included. We don't take value in the little things, but little things make a big thing.

And so I think it's all really important to just make sure that those, you know, and even, and even like, when I, when I had to go, you know, [01:01:00] I want it to be culture without question remains. You know what I mean? So it's like people take over they become their successors and they take over companies and now the names changed and now the mission has changed.

Like you want to have in place. This is what it is. Let's build on that. If it's working, let's go, you know what I'm saying? If it's not the work to fix it. But just think we just have to take more value and consider more value in the things that we've done. Like we've done so much. I don't think taking out the garbage ain't shit you've taken out.

The garbage means I didn't have to.

No, but like you said, it's you, it shows that you put value into your creation and what you're doing, because that's the reason, like you said this, the reason why a lot of our people, they end up either that, or they lose control. The art family doesn't have it in that 40 situations, not related to this, but it, it, [01:02:00] it does build on this, this idea, the whole idea of, especially in Charleston, people do this all the time, but heirs property, where family doesn't get together, they don't write anything in a will.

They don't decide how they're going to split the property. Here's property. People come in, they split up the land. They take one family member, put them, I guess another. And then somehow this gets bought by some developer, from Oregon who comes in and steals all the land from the family and no legacy.

They don't have any money on it. And he lost control of it. Entire property has been in the family since the 18 hundreds.

Yeah. So yeah, that makes, that makes so much sense. I appreciate you talking about it. Cause I say, even though it was kind of morbid,

it's better to think about it before being stuck with it and having to think about it when you have a choice, it's a lot different than when, like, cause I remember when I went to my mama passed, like my family, we scrambled a little bit because I mean, we had an [01:03:00] idea and I appreciate that. We had an idea, she had some things set, but man, it was so much this and that and nah, y'all don't y'all gonna shoot it out in a power fight.

that? Wouldn't be fun.

No one has to shove anybody. You don't have to get physical.

That'd be even way to do it. Yeah. Look like American gladiators to make it relevant to the person. Cause I'm all about the theme. You use things that that person would like, like for me, you would have to run through a wall, a glitter. Glitter is amazing and effective and it's, non-debatable,

[01:04:00] it's a whole, a whole wall, like, okay. So let's see. I'm almost to the whole point.

all right. I'll move on to the glitter wall. This is something that I hate to do. I'm very bad at this. I'm trying to become better, but social engagement,

you got to have, it is pivotal in business, in life, more so now than ever. You have to have it. And with the plethora of platforms available to connect with individuals, you have your Instagram, you have your tic-tac, you have YouTube and et cetera. What are your preferred methods of communication and engagement for your business?

How do you reach out what?

Well, Mr. Mustard, my preferred method is for [01:05:00] him in the game is Instagram. That's mainly where I've had the most engagement and that's because I'm able to connect more with other HBCU organizations and other companies of black game developers. And And the visibility is great. One of the most platforms and tech talk, I do use Tik TOK to listen to clock is fun.

Okay.

And but I prefer Instagram and and Tik TOK now actually I've been on Twitch a lot more because my stream games as well, and I talk about helmet, a great deal. I've actually designed a couple of things for other projects while on Twitch, while streaming

social media is a lot at times. So I use posting. [01:06:00] Yeah. Yeah. Mostly I use later, later.com and I send my posts up in advance so I can just let them go. Yeah. Yeah. Because I tried doing it every day. Waking up everyday new bad idea makes me hate everything.

I have the posting schedule and you run a lot of accounts. Yes, I do. I was about to say, yeah, you have to run that like a business I'm asking, get my my son is going to start running. Some of them for me, that's the family business, because why not? Who's nepotism.

You can make sure that workers are moving

and also to have that with [01:07:00] social media, having a group like a, I don't know what to call it. I don't want to call it a. Yeah, I guess like a share group. So I have a group of friends and when we, whenever we have something, we post it in this group and then we all blast it out. So automatically we got like 10 different accounts sending the same image, but they're going out to massive different folks and networks got a squad, still have that common.

Yeah, we have squad. We had that common thread. So we, you know, our followers and our communities are along the same lines with, you know, our our same mindset and what our goals are and our missions. So we just expand out. Yeah. So later.com has absolutely helped any publishing sites like that.

That do, man. It is a lifesaver. I mean, I publish to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest at the same time using later man, every time that's what I'm gonna have to do because I [01:08:00] hate going out into different things. The free one, the one that you paid you get let's see for the free, when you get 30 posts a month and that's per account.

So it's not just, you have four accounts up and you have 30 for that four to share from no it's 30 for Twitter, 30 per month, 30 for Twitter, 30 for Instagram, 30 for Facebook, 30 for pets are amazing. Wow. That's amazing to me because yeah, so you're checking in every day automatically. If, if you want to jump on and do something specific, you can do that from your phone and it doesn't hit that couch.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. I switched through and I'll spend and scheduling my time so that I don't overdo on social media because you know, you take one wrong swipe and your day is fucked up. You know what I'm saying? Your whole mood and everything. So I give myself time limits to be on each aggravation.

I try to stick to it as best as possible. And sometimes I just cut off because I have things on [01:09:00] autopilot. And you know, I'll take a couple of days and come back, but that's how I manage my gate and I, I talk, I respond to everything. Man, does that become burdensome? Yeah, it can. But after I put them into my schedule, not so much do as many as I can up until that time often.

I'm good. Smart, man. That's good. It was, it was not disciplined. I was born with, let me go ahead and put that out there. I had to train myself on this because. Right. Okay. So you are human. You are here

for three minutes. They knew

you and tell you in your face, where did she go? Oh, we're over at the glimmer important.

[01:10:00] So those are, so those are some of the strategies that you use to ensure that your engagement is effective so that you reach your folk properly. I know I'm gonna cry. I'm looking at it right now. I'm gonna look at this because I mean, that's one of the things when you're running a business or are you doing anything that is supposed to be professional?

It's nice having uniformity. And that's an easy way of getting it to be uniform. Make sure you're reaching your people through this social engagement that they, that people do expect nowadays. So you have to do it, but finding an effective, efficient way to do that without having to stress yourself out.

I even like the fact that you, that you use the timeline, you have a schedule. So like when that alarm goes off, it's time to, so you get off you go, I go for right now. I may come back to a time to start, but you're scheduling a stop because once you, once you start scrolling, you might say, never stop. Right.

Right. And then at times all hours are [01:11:00] gone. Yep. Hard stop. And it took some working up to, it took some, took some it's still taking work into too. Cause every now, you know, you see like something happens in the news or something, you know, there's a, there's a birthday, new shoots something and it grabs your attention.

So that hard stop and you deserve that hard stop it's setting boundaries. Like any little thing that I can do that I can bring parallel to something else of meaning I will. And I know that I've spent a lot of time or things that it made me miserable. Dang. I understand that. Especially when it's not yours,

emotions, bills, like whatever I spend a lot, most of us have spent a lot of time work working hard. Hard to be unhappy though. I mean, I can go into me. All right. I ain't going to be good. I can go Ray. I [01:12:00] can go hard to be happy. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You got to think about like that. Like you're working for yourself.

That is a good mindset to have. I hope our listeners are paying attention to that as a great mindset. Following up with, make sure you're taking care of yourself. Mental health self-care during COVID of course is important. Everybody needs this, especially since you're unable to connect and communicate with strangers per se, but some, even some family members that you can't even see at the moment, but this is going to lead into something we were discussing before we got on our conversation today, the knees up dance.

Could you explain to us what knees advances it's going to take us a little bit away from what we're talking about, but it's going to explain this on the phone and then I think they may be interested in yeah, yeah. So

June, 2019, it was months after I had announced Hellman. I was very overwhelmed, extremely stressed. There [01:13:00] was a lot of things going on personally within my family, just with starting a new business, not being used to owning my own and, and getting my feet wet in that and wanting to do so much, not having as much time trying to do everything.

I burned myself out and just. Regular, you know, just unresolved issues that I had throughout my life and with mental health and stuff it all just came up, came up on me, came up on me hard. And that's how that was. I was suffering with some real dark newness, just heavy. And I didn't want to be here flat out in my head.

I'm tired. I don't want to do this. I like what for what's the point? And it scared me because of how serious I was when I was like, I don't want to be here [01:14:00] anymore. And that kind of shocked me what I knew it was, it was it was bad when I told myself and being completely transparent when I told myself in my head and I'm like, yo, I'm tired of this.

I don't like I had had her whole blow out. I had an episode and everything. And I told, I said, if I said, I don't want to be here. And then in my head, I said, yeah, but you got kids. And I said, no, lie in my head. I said, man, fuck them kids. I said that. I was like, okay, I got a problem. I got a real problem and I have to do something.

And so I reached out for help and I started seeing a therapist and therapy is, is wonderful, but you are. The thing about therapy is that you have to go home, you know what I mean? And then you're connect with yourself and now it's up to you to keep yourself together until your next appointment or till the next day or until the next day.

So [01:15:00] around that time, I kind of felt like I felt like a zombie and I was watching binge watching YouTube and this video popped up. You know, how you just let you two go, just let it go. I let it go. And this gentleman by the name of Oggie Shaw, O G I E Shaw, H S H a w came on and had a Ted talk where he was talking about physical fitness and being active.

And he spoke about 20 minutes of cardio a day, would help reduce the likeliness of a lot of illnesses you know in addition to reducing obesity. Right. And I know I was new. I was you know what I mean, knowing damn well, I wasn't, but so. When, when he said that the, the 20 minutes, he was like, you know, it's not supposed to be fun.

It's not supposed to be, you know, a good time immediately. I was like, fuck you [01:16:00] say

I'm trying to stay here. Like, I don't want to, like, I don't want to let go, but I feel like I want to let go. So I said, let me do something around the same time that this came on. Like I said, I had just announced Hillman months before, and I was getting ready to go to the first annual event in Omaha, Nebraska called Afro con Nebraska Omaha.

Let me tell you,

okay. So the person Jade Rogers, who is the founder of Afros, capes and curls blurred in Omaha, started a convention called AFRICON. And for the first year she had heard about my game. She reached out to me. I mean, I don't know who she, I did not know her amazing person didn't know her at all, but she reached out to me in my inbox on Facebook, asked me if I wanted to come to our Afrikan and said that they would help.

It was a small [01:17:00] organization say we can't pay for the full thing, but you know, we can help you get there. So. And there was that, that I was getting ready for it. And shout out to my husband hit man black, who started selling, Oh my goodness. To help get a fish fry. Friday is starting to fish out about Instagram.

Sounds delicious right now, no 803. That is my husband. He started it to get me to Omaha because they were covering half. And we were trying to blow that up the rest and shout out to the community that came through and donated and just, it got me to Omaha, but in preparation for Omaha module it's same time.

I'm low. I'm super sad. I'm really depressed. I'm going through all these things. I've got to get ready for Omar. So there's an obligatory part of it like, Oh, I don't want to let everybody else down. So now I gotta make myself available to do that. And when I was trying to figure out how to incorporate what I heard, Augie Shaw, say what I knew I was getting ready [01:18:00] for an Omaha.

Have you really showed his game? And to keep myself there. One of my favorite things to do is dance. I love dancing. This was also around the time that homecoming by Beyonce came out. So every day for maybe. A week I would watch homecoming and I would just get inspired. And, you know, it's the whole HBCU vibe is big.

I'm watching her employer, all these black people and people of color and just like, it's just so dope. I'm getting inspired. And I'm thinking about what all he shots and I'm thinking about Africa and I'm like, you know what? I can't just present my game. Like, you know, a regular game, I must dance. So I said, I was going to put together a routine to go ahead and dance and Omaha.

Then I was like, okay, here I go. Do it too much. Again, I don't want to choreograph nothing. So I went to a different world and looked up the episode from the sex show. And I learned that step from the episode is called step a stepping stone. And then there's where [01:19:00] they're battling Libby hall or Gilbert hall battling Libby hall.

And I learned the set the entire step. It took me every day, 20 minutes a day I would have on homecoming. And I would switch over to that video and learn that step. And at day four of doing this, I said, I can do this. I can do this every day. I can dance for 20 minutes everyday. I can do this or day four. I said, you know what?

To make sure that I don't Slack on myself. Let me put on this button. Let me press this button, this loud button on Facebook. So stupid. I mean, stupid but genius. But so I said, let me go ahead and press his live button. And I would tell people that I'm going to do this every day. And if you don't see me call me out and I don't like to be called out.

So I said, if you do it, then called me out. And I stuck to it dancing every single day for 20 minutes. And I go on a Facebook live for my last song and I dance and that's it. [01:20:00] And today when I danced today, it'll be day home and look at my phone because I don't want to get it wrong. And I have to be mixing days up today will be day 673.

I have not taken a break. And I I do it. I posted it up. I didn't think it was really going to be anything other than to keep me accountable. But I went to Africa and it was amazing. I did the I did the dance and my friend actually learned it. She She drove from Tulsa. I didn't even know she was in Tulsa.

She heard Afrikan. She said, you know, I'm in Tulsa. There's only like six hours away from Omaha. I'll meet you there and I'll help you with, cause I was going alone on an Omaha home and yes, there are black people in Omaha. That was the first thing, Jay Toby. It is amazing. The history and the culture of Omaha, Nebraska credible.

That's the weird part you are, right. It just doesn't seem like we're out there, but it does [01:21:00] have an excellent, Oh my God.

I couldn't believe all the things that like I was being told about them. I was like, what? And I went I was down the block where I stayed at my Airbnb was down the block from Warren buffet

and the weekend I was there, he was there. But the weekend I was there. So again, manifestation of attraction. I'm like, yo, you know what I'm saying? Like, I can do this. And I just kept going. And a couple I want to say maybe two months after dancing every day, a friend of mine hit me up in my DMS and said, I just want to tell you, I'm proud of you.

And every day that you've been dancing, I haven't smoked. So I'll be following you. Every time. I see you post up. I know it's another day. I don't have to smoke and I don't believe he's smoking. No, he's not. No, he stopped. So yeah. So 600, about [01:22:00] 600, 670 days for him

and the knees I came from again, tying it all in from when I watched the Cosby show, there was an episode with Claire trying to lose weight in real life. Debbie Allen, who played an aerobics instructor was like giving her hair. She was like, do you want to get into this dress? I got you. And when they started doing the aerobics one-on-one she was like, come on, get the knees up, knees up.

Let me get my knees out. And that's why it's you, man. Okay, man. I'm trying to tell you like your understanding of that, cause you are not lying. When you say you're a bait baby. You got yet aerobics all at listen. If you go through my videos on my Instagram, this will be on the Queenie. Shall be Instagram, not my own helmet, even though I have used my my [01:23:00] dancing and incorporated it with him in the game, which has been Tik.

TOK is fun. Cause I use Tik TOK, dancing in Hillman and for advertisement and marketing. So it just encompasses all. All of it. And and again, that, to the cancer, before starting these up, I told myself I can't do this. I'm like I was almost 40 I'm 40 now, but I was almost 40 at the time. And I was like, I'm too old to start dancing.

Like what I look like, I'm too big. I'm too old. I'm a parent. I like, I'm a mom. What I look like, and yeah, don't lie to yourself.

You won't think that I'd ever had those issues, but that's why I dance and tell people that, yes, I absolutely, that's something that I, I struggled with and I do it now. Like I do one thing every day that makes me happy is dancing. I encourage everyone to do one thing every single day. That makes you happy.

No matter what, I dance through food [01:24:00] poisoning. I dance through. Wow. You sick? Yeah. When I came back from Omaha I had food poisoning and I didn't get an Omaha. I got him when I got back home.

Yeah. So I danced through that. I've been sick. Just as an adult and a parent and a married who are our best arguments, like through the pandemic through that still I still dance every single day. And I don't have a set time to do it. And that's the cool part. Like when you do things on your own, you get to give yourself that leeway, but do it.

That was my thing. My thing was, yeah, I can do it anytime, but dammit do it done and it feels good. Like even at you know, at like they seven, I was like, yo, I did this for seven days. And then you want to see yourself go to eight and they didn't want to see yourself go to 21. And then when you see yourself do a month of anything, and now I'm not just talking about dancing, but for me, just seeing myself, like just seeing those, those notches and knowing that I did [01:25:00] it it's evolved.

Like I started dancing in my bedroom. Now I'm downstairs. I have a nice sized living room and I've been blessed with lights. Like my dad, my dad messed up. Okay. He gave me led lights. It isn't my fault. Okay. You can't put lights on a child of the eighties and tell them that it's not flashing.

I'm telling you, I already know.

Is a trick of the devil and the smoke machine was not planned.

The dry ice is pulling it out. Ah, the first time, the first time I dance with the smoke machine I did was so embarrassing, but I'm not, I turned it on and it was, it was incredible. I had to dance for okay. So you know the [01:26:00] song I'm holding out for a hero.

You can't tell me nothing. I'm an answer. That's it is that one on film.

It's all public. You can see it. It's on my Facebook and it's on my Instagram. You can, you can see it, but I'll send you specifically the day that I did that dads, because it is, it's hilarious to me, but it's so cool. Like even that was production work though. A lot of production work on that.

Do what you can. I turn on my phone and I just go that's my daughter, daughter. Yeah. I can't remember who told me that quote, but it came from somebody else. Start where [01:27:00] you are, use what you have, do what you can. Gotcha. Yeah. I live by that. My daughter dances. She's in some of my videos and she's dance myself is incredible.

That is the thing dancing, saved my life, or rather my decision to allow myself to dance saved my life.

I'm gonna take that. I like that. I like how you write that up. I like that. That's the audience. They can add some gems for them to use right there. Cause I'm always, we've always with these conversations we've been having over the past couple of months, we've always been asking people how they'd been dealing with being in this COVID situation, especially dealing with stress stressors.

And as an adult, you have to figure out positive and proper ways to do it. Because for most of us, we are not the only ones that are, that are dependent on us. [01:28:00] So we can't let ourselves down because we're letting down other people, we have to figure out how to stay strong, but also stay healthy. Both mentally, physically.

Yeah, man, I already, I put always, as people talk, I put everything down. I take notes on everything.

I used to carry a pan around. I used to write

no one, but me, like I used to have I remember, Oh my gosh, I used to be picked on because I was so happy. Like people would literally say, what's wrong with you? Like you're happy. There's so much, it's a problem. And I'm like, Why, why are you here? Why is it a problem? This little piece of paper right here with these sets on football games and I'm never going see me, like, why can't I just have my stats?

It's okay. [01:29:00] It's a problem. Well, you have it one way or the other making choices. Oh, continuing on kinda on the same kind of on the same vein of questioning.

We always ask our guests that About the importance of work and life balance. And, you know, as adults, we want to have a career. We want family and we want a good social life. How have you maintained these relationships while striving to build a legacy as a creative? And I know legacy is a big thing for you.

That's basically been the entire push for you dealing with not having a legacy to now having one, something to pass down to your gentlemen, to your family. How have you maintained your relationships with your career, your family and the people that you know? So you can have a social life because we don't all just want to be here.

And it's fine. Like you were saying earlier, we don't want to be here just working hard to work hard, not to enjoy ourselves. What have you been doing recently to, [01:30:00] to keep those things balanced? Well, I, I communicate a lot and that's it. That's what you say. I talk to them much, but

I'm very open with my, my family. Now we have been quarantined tight. Like we are taking this pandemic so seriously,

we haven't gone out. We haven't been to any gatherings. Nothing. So it's been us getting in touch with us and having a lot of conversations and hearing a lot of things that we previously didn't want to hear from each other. Like I, you know, my kids don't like this about me or about my husband or my husband.

Doesn't like this about the kids or me or himself or where we are [01:31:00] or stuff like that. Or, or even the things that we do like, and we just try to do more of together. It's hard. Cause we have teenagers. So I was about to say, yeah, you have real children. Children's with, they be doing things and they talk, Oh my God,

it's coming soon.

It's already here. Everything is discussion. And, and has to be like, I mean, I know you can just lay down the law, but I'm also trying to like teach to,

you know, like, like. Oh, that's a whole nother, we're trying to be

better than our parents were trying to [01:32:00] roll our children with an iron fist. This is a big conversation I had with my fiance and stuff. Just how do you properly raise your children? Like music communication tools and making sure that you're being fair as you can be, but not letting them, you know, like I said, like you was talking about earlier about boundaries, creating boundaries there as well, but you know, you want it to be, you want it to be positive and fruitful, you know, you want to have positive relationships.

So yeah, I understand that. Totally. Absolutely. One of the things that I did differently on purpose and it was so scary to do was when I had when I had my when I had the panic attack, the one that he was like, yo, I'm tired. I talked to afterwards, I talked to my kids about it. Like it wasn't just a blow out all or my breath out.

And then number one said anything. Like I went up to them and I explained, I said, and listen, I'm going through a lot and I'm going to go get some help. We're very transparent with that because my mama never talked to me like that. I don't know [01:33:00] what she deal with as a parent now. And he's an adult now. I know she had to do with somebody and keep in mind.

I was raised by my grandmother. But that's my mama. So she, she was born in 1931. You know what I'm saying? Some shit I know. Like for instance, I know that factually her brother was lynched and I know she knew about, and everyone in her town talk about it. And my mama never talked to me about mental health and wow.

Told me about how she was feeling never. My mama never even told me she was sad. I just had to see her crying. That's her cry to know that she was because they didn't talk about that. You talk about anything dealing with your mental health automatically. You're what crazy. And no one listens to Adrian.

You have to say after that, or then week, you know what I'm saying? How do you not get ahold of your emotions? Or, you know, whatever. Yeah. [01:34:00] It was really important for me to talk to the kids and let them know what it was and say, you know, and apologize. But also just being like, listen, this is what, this is what happens.

And this is the steps that I'm going to take to make sure that I'm better than that. We're better. So when I do that and when we do that, me and my husband too, and talked to the kids we just keep that line open and we try to come up with. Things to make ourselves happy a lot and always work out.

Cause I teenagers and ain't always interested in, you know,

every now and again, it's again, just utilizing we have around us. I go into pictures a lot and I just finished, I'm looking at it now. I just finished doing a complete overhaul of my file cabinet and I have one of those big ones that the industrial file and I had paper and BS [01:35:00] stored up in it. And I had to go through all that and let it go.

But while doing that, I'm finding, you know, the kid's old drawings. So I'm talking to them about that. I'm letting them see their old notes that they used to write to me and, you know, to their friends. And I kept this stuff like that. And we had those kinds of conversations reminiscing on good times is really, really important.

Me, because there weren't good times, you know what I mean? And celebrate it and we want to create new ones. So when we talk about what we used to do, where like, Hey, you know, let's do this. Like we're planning a cookout with just us. That's right. That's right. Yeah. You know, it's a safety thing. It's a concern, but it's also a connection thing.

And everyone in the house, like we were asking pretty sad because in Columbia where we are, it looks like it's about the rain and we were going to have it today. So the kids were kind of disappointed, but I made Buffalo.

Wait, wait, when you live here, I'm going to

[01:36:00] he's a personal chef. So he added some sauteed spinach in it. You don't got to leave your house

though. Okay. See, that's what I'm saying. That's why it's important to see like how you're working at maintaining those positive relationships and stuff like that. It's good. Especially for our people to see that and see what kind of tools people use what kind of strategies, because a lot of us, we haven't been raised with that opportunity to see that stuff.

Most times you'll see it on TV. You see it from other people that are, that don't look like us, but we never really get to see ourselves doing it. And so, you know, what kind of positive impact you're going to have on your children, because they're going to grow up with, Hey, this is normal. You're supposed to stay and talk [01:37:00] with your parents.

So when they have children, so I was going to pass out to them. So that's something that I know, especially talking with folks in our our era about dealing with those things, because we want to make sure that their next crop of children that come up out of us, that they come out with a very good self-esteem, positive, how they do think that they feel powerful, that they feel loved and all those things are having to search for it elsewhere or lost in the, in the cycle of stuff that is out there.

That is not, not. Yeah, absolutely. We're big on that. And we've, you know, when you are your parent or, or not just when you're your parent, when you're in the village, you know what I'm saying? When you're part of the life of a child in any way, shape or form, there's a responsibility that comes with that.

There's a heaviness to it because you're like, man, I want them to do better than I did, but it's also there's a point of reflection that I know I had to go through where I had to look back at my mama and not be mad at some stuff. You know what I'm saying? Because people were just doing what they knew and but when you know, better, [01:38:00] you do better.

And I think it's so important to keep that communication open, keep that transparency, keep that love and, and just helping foster a, someone someone a human that feels good and can do good and produce. Good and good. And And like, we're very protective over it. Like I said, we're corn, corn seed type, but we're very protective over our energies now.

And especially with what we see and what we have seen, we just, with all types of discrimination. So like, we're, we're a black family, we're a blended family. We there's discrimination. Yeah. Blended families. Because you're like, Oh, you know, I'm, I'm a divorce aid. So there's that, there's a stigma.

That's all. Yeah. We have queer and LGBT too in our family. Like our son we're protective of him and let him know like, yeah. Oh, you're wonderful. You're, you know, you're worthy. You're beautiful. Exactly. Telling yourself that, telling him that telling, [01:39:00] and as you say things, you say it to yourself really.

Right. You know what I'm saying? I think a lot of a lot of people could benefit from really taking that to heart. Like when you talk to someone you're talking to you also who's on the other side, what would you want to tell yourself? You know what I mean? So I live by that. We live by that really, really deeply.

Because there's so much. Yeah. There's a lot of pain because Oh, much joy around. If you take a second, that's actually why I love glitter. I talk about glitter a lot. I make it funny.

So I love glitter so much because well I wrote a poem about glittery and one of the lines that I say is,

I say, glitter is blackness. There is, it's the blackest thing. There is, it gets everywhere. It gets in everything. It's hard to get out, right? Also [01:40:00] it forces you to pay attention to things that you wouldn't make. One spec on the ground. That one, the reflective light will make you look at something like, Oh, I didn't know that was there.

And it, you know, it makes it more visible. It lets you, it makes you pay attention to the little thing. Glitter is so small that you don't have a choice, but to be like, Hey, all of this. And then you look at glitter as a collective, how dangerous or how beautiful can it be? Period. Bold. I was always afraid as a child to get it in my eyes.

Oh, absolutely.

I don't want it in my face. Oh my God. My husband hates glitter. I know, right Mary to unicorn. What was he thinking? Hates glitter. And somehow he's been able to harness its power. And I'll have to say I taught them, but I did. And, but, but that's the thing, like those [01:41:00] little things that make up those big parts, so nothing is insignificant.

You know, what I'm saying is just whether you determine it to be what it is, you know what I mean? So that's where I think it's so important to just faucet. Like love is so important. I know I'm cheesy and I'm a child of the eighties. So think about all that time you used up being miserable, what you do to smile right now.

And how could you carry that forward? It can be done. I'm doing it. I look at that more game every day and I'm like, the impossible can happen. The station and positive thought. I mean, it goes, it goes a long way. It, you know, that it's going to be there, but also, you know, have some actions to put in to work after you make those thoughts, that's supposed to be fueled, focus on it.

You think about it, then you put it. [01:42:00] Right. Right. My friend, I was on a podcast with her a couple months ago. And she talked about being relentless. Like what will you be relentless for? What would you do? No matter what obstacles are in front of you. And so for me, one of the things is, you know the dancing everyday I'm relentless.

Like everyone knows when I say I'm going to go dance, that's it. It's dad's time. I'm going, it's my time. Leave me on, let me do this. It don't matter what time, as long as it's before 1159 at night, I'm going today. So I'm relentless about that. What can we afford? Or what can we allow ourselves? Like, what can we give ourselves permission to be relentless about?

And the biggest and best answer I could come up with is, mm, drop the mikes. Yo, you're right. You're very right. If you can't, if you can't do that, that's all you got, [01:43:00] you take care of it, right? If it's your last, you are the first and last you, right? Yeah. Take care of it. The figure it out. I believe it can be done it.

Speed, speak on it, talk to people. But also realize that you two have a power. You too are smart. You know what I mean? Like don't get wrapped up in someone smarter than you. So let me do exactly what they tell me to. No, you're them. You still have to take care of you when they're not there. So listen to yourself about it.

If you're telling yourself the truth, you got it. Hmm. Hmm. You got something maybe that somebody takeaways from this, because like I said, first, I can tell you, you know, your way around words, first of all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you got to your, your experiences as well, like the way you put this stuff together, man, it has been a refreshing talking to you and I know we're [01:44:00] getting up, we're getting up on the two hour Mark longest interview that we've had thus far.

I mean, it's big, but you couldn't tell, we've been talking for two hours. That's the beauty of it. That's amazing.

But I have, I have one more quote unquote question before, before we started to wrap up,

man, are there any other games in development from the in all seriousness? And if so, if you can let us know about that, if it's okay. And if there's anything else that, that you're producing that may not be associated to that. Oh, yes, absolutely. There are other games in government. Hellman the game is still open, available and running and himself and yes, you're going to go get your,  [01:45:00] get so excited when people buy the guy, like I'm damn near in tears every time

I'm like, Oh my God, they got to get the habit. And yes, I am working on other games. Also in all seriousness, this is a board game company for promoting positive imagery and sitcoms cinema and original content. So you'll see games based on the nostalgia shows. And then you also see original games.

I'm working on a smokers game. I am, I am that. That's going to reinforce it. That's one of the original contents games I'm working on a a couples game that is going to be similar to the newlywed game except no one gets pissed off. Oh, yeah. And he's like that in the crowd or when you have a event, have some folks in, right.

That's fine. Yeah. I [01:46:00] know how the newlywed game is just sometimes like, if you've seen it of courses be kind of crazy. If you try to start argument

I know being out at an event or a kickback and y'all arguing and then some other shit pop over and now you gotta go

and we'll have it all series is to blame for that. No, no. But also I have, I was contacted by a celebrity to develop a game with them. So I'm working on that. I am also a board game development company, so I help people create games and take it to market, man, go ahead and talk to your shit, man. So I think that also, because I've learned so much and and I have such a a good community back in, and I know where to direct people to go to.

And [01:47:00] that's taken all of my years of working in, in academia, working in offices, I've done a lot of different jobs and I just tried to put it, put it all into something useful and providing opportunities for people to make their own way. In all seriousness is also a publishing human. The game is also coming up on a game show on my Twitch channel. So I'm working on that, trying to see what else

I struck dance also for Nisa. So yeah, you can, you can actually learn choreography for me. And where do you instruct this? The dancing, all my Patrion, actually I have a patron.com/queen and shout me as where you can catch my knees up and I'm opening up my discord or my knees dancing also because [01:48:00] I've learned so much being on Twitch.

Shout out to Twitch. You just shout them out. My guy has seen me and my husband are going to have a cold stream later today. He streams on Twitch and I play the Sims. I love the Sims I'm building inside of the Sims and our stream. I stream that. So you can catch me on twitch.tv/queen. It shall be a with no E bars she come through.

And, and just promoting black joy and joy all around. And that's phenomenal. Well I know we're going to get ready to sign off. However, are there any other locations or websites or people that you want to shout out? Yes.

Yes there [01:49:00] is. Oh my God. Okay. So I S games.com is my website. You can purchase held in the game from their helmet, the game, the first board game dedicated to America's favorite fictional HBCU. That's right. Him in the games don't have one year lane. That's where my husband's he says in his house.

Hilarious, but yeah, I have merged, I all my website. I also have tabletop teas, so I had, t-shirts dedicated to the tabletop board gaming culture with favorite, such as banker, because trust issues. That's a t-shirt yeah, recovering table flipper. That's another one. The damn dice. That's another one.

If a role is off the table, it don't count. That's another one. I think I got, yeah, we have a t-shirt that that's called dice game crazy. And also dice game because some people want to use the term crazy and some people don't. So we have both of those and also I have a line of [01:50:00] teas dedicated towards spades, which is another favorite tabletop game.

So yeah, I have a, let's say what is it? Joker, joker, deuce deuce face period. So there's that shirt? There is, Ooh man, what else? Yeah, I'm sorry. And team Hellman. I had t-shirts and hoodies that had the characters from the game on them. I had capitalism, the new hoodies. Cause if you seeing the show, you know, and there was a member of the capitalism, the new fraternity, alpha Delta RO hoodies as well.

Cause that was Whitley's sorority. I had that up there. You can get your Hellman pride on, you know, it's got helmet on the sleeve. Hitman has that's it, my husband, Hitman black, please check them out on Instagram at Fishman. No eight Oh three. That is his his business that when it started to help get me down the hall and now he makes the best fried fish in South Carolina [01:51:00] setbacks.

I said,

and I mean, it's like, he's phenomenal. Shout out to my one of my good friends and that absolutely was pivotal in helping me with, with everything, just life period. One of my best friends, money for lemons who has high cool coffee that also ties along with him because we do a lot of dual promote and cross promote a shout out to hallow resemble Oh yeah.

Shout out to actually, yeah, no, I can tell you we released it now. So little celebrity that I'm working with is a TV personality, more famous for being on college Hill, actually. And he is developing a, we're developing a board game based on HBC use called yard. You so shout out to Mr. Ray, Ray Cunningham for that for who reached out to me and, Oh, he was actually told about me.

So that's why like a celebrity and then he reached out to me and he's, he's so dope. So yeah, I've [01:52:00] met some of the cast members, so shout out to all the cast members of a different world that has seen their character and reached out to me,

Sinbad, who's still recovering from the stroke he had he asked to, got to see his game and character, any, shout me out twice, the video for that too. I'll send you that. It's so cool.

Promote, promote. Yeah. And yeah, that's a check me out. Any any time you feel like dancing, you know what I'm saying? Pull up one of my videos. I, I danced to just about all types of music regain the phone Afro beat, hip hop song,

everything I have danced to wake me up before you go go, which is one of my favorites officer jam though.

Man, he would, he would play, he would force [01:53:00] me to listen to it. He saw it was good for sampling and stuff, having to pay a sample

so we try it

and yeah, I'm ready for season two with y'all. Oh, Oh, we have, we have some exciting things coming up in season two. We gotta, we gotta, we gotta figure out how we're going to do it. COVID is going to be over MIP code

before, before COVID I had for the year anniversary of me and my dance dancing nursery, I had a flash mob planned. Oh, [01:54:00] yeah. You know what I mean? But that's okay. Because we have the technology, I'll figure it out. We have the technology, right. To be back over at your house with some cookouts and to play this game in person.

Right. Some bonfires and stuff. You got to see the baby. Oh yeah. Oh man. Cause it's been a year. It's been a year since he's walking and stuff. He was walking last time.  what he wants to do. Next. You go and you're ready. He wants it. Y'all just security.

Never heard him play. That's true. Isn't true. That's beautiful. You know what? That makes perfect sense. Thanks. Perfect. Well, I, I, I'm not going to hold you any longer. We made it to, we finally made it to two hours.

I'm enjoying that time today, man. [01:55:00] I haven't joined myself. I'm actually I'm on the website right now about the order of my game. I'm going to sign it for you. Please do. We will, we will definitely post some links to the game on our website. Hilltop tribe, if you all have not been to the website yet, check out the website.

We post all of these, all of these podcasts. We also come in regularly and do a playlist. Follow us on Spotify or we'll just post it on the website and you can see it there. And there's some talks about a book club. Oh yes. Yeah, we, yeah, we're going to actually start putting books up there like that. We like to read things that we're interested in.

So, yeah. And if you have things that you would like to

suggestions, because one thing about the era that we're in sitting down and reading the book is so cool because it allows you to stop, pause and reflect low the hell down. [01:56:00] You can actually hear yourself. Thank you. Yeah. And when you're trying to adult properly, that's something that I think is pivotal so that you don't make rash decisions so that you know what I'm saying?

So you take, take, take it together, all the things that you've been getting from the whole day, and you can concise and then getting the useful parts out of it and throwing out the bullshit. And that's what you really, you have to learn how to do that. So yes, we will have that moving in, popping up. And that's one reason why we can't wait to get to season two.

We're trying to make sure we have all these things done so we can understand what we've been doing. Right. I'm so proud of y'all yo like this is amazing. I've heard your podcast. You've had some amazing people come up and the conversations just. The vibe, the energy. I appreciate y'all so much. Mike told me about this a while ago.

And so I appreciate you might, my reach is not far, [01:57:00] but for some reason, the people that I do have reached out and got, they own reach

reaches. We're not reaching. We can get around the globe. That's what we do. But

of course, we're going to have the information, the things, the topics that we talked about, they will be on the side. They will be underneath the description, et cetera.

I always like to say happy Saturday, whatever the day is, is happy Saturday, man, everybody have a beautiful one today. And this is the Hilltop glove podcast. We'll sign off until next time everybody peace. That's it. For today's episode of the Hilltop glove podcast, make sure to subscribe to us [01:58:00] on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, and other platforms.

Also follow us on Instagram and Facebook and bill Tom gloves.



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