Druski: They're Lying To You About Overnight Success!

How do you transform childhood trauma and crippling doubt into a relentless drive for greatness? Druski reveals the psychological forces behind comedy, life, and self-belief to help you break past rejection and master your ultimate purpose. Druski is a cultural phenomenon, megastar comedian, and the creator of an independent production empire who has rapidly ascended to the top of the entertainment industry. He breaks down how humor was used to navigate a traumatic childhood and manifest his current success. His insights provide a playbook for silencing external noise, overcoming avoidant attachment, and betting everything on yourself. Trigger Warning: Please note there are mentions of child abuse and violence within this conversation. In this episode, he explains: ■ The Trauma of Humor: How growing up in a high stress, physically abusive household forced him to use comedy as a tool to read the room and defuse tension. ■ The "No Plan B" Strategy: Why facing the barrel of a gun during a street scam triggered a radical mental shift, empowering him to commit entirely to his vision. ■ The Avoidant Attachment Trap: The reasons why successful individuals often struggle with romantic trust, and how a lack of a healthy parental relationship creates deep rooted intimacy fears. ■ The Power of Silence: Why discovering your true calling requires the painful, counter intuitive act of isolating yourself in total silence. ■ Bypassing the Gatekeepers: The exact mindset required to overcome corporate rejection by self-funding your own creative projects. Chapters 00:00:00 Intro 00:02:24 What My Childhood Tapes Meant To Me 00:06:45 When He Knew He Wanted to Be an Entertainer 00:09:25 Healing From Childhood Trauma 00:12:23 Why Letting Go of Grudges Matters 00:18:41 How Childhood Trauma Shaped His Fear of Commitment 00:22:49 Why Druski Dropped Out of College 00:28:06 Druski Opens Up About Depression 00:29:54 How Comedy Changed His Life 00:33:34 Ads 00:35:56 The Video That Changed Me 00:38:50 How Druski Got His Start in Comedy 00:55:07 What It Really Takes to Be Successful 00:57:56 What Greatness Really Means 00:59:58 How Long Does Success Really Take? 01:04:25 Ads 01:05:34 Proving My Mum I Was Right 01:11:23 Why Relationships Matter in Business 01:14:52 How Druski Protects His Brand 01:18:40 Trump-Duski Moment 01:24:03 How Netflix and Amazon Rejected Druski 01:29:21 When He Realized How Big He Had Become 01:35:39 What’s Next for Druski? 01:39:04 What He Would Tell His Younger Self Follow Druski: Instagram - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/AFJZRtQ YouTube - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/3aPmgjD X - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/ERpL6Qo TikTok - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/44HhZzn Twitch - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/CBSxHy9 The Diary Of A CEO: ◼ Join DOAC circle here - https://doaccircle.com/ ◼ Shop The Diary Of A CEO collection: https://thediary.com/collections/shop ◼ Get email updates - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/5IB1H6E ◼ Follow Steven - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/AGU9QP4 Sponsors: Cometeer - https://cometeer.com/DOAC use code DOAC for $20 off Eight Sleep - http://eightsleep.com/steven use code STEVEN for up to $200 off Wayfair - Visit http://Wayfair.com to start your home refresh

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  A lot of my friends that I grew up with were going to jail or ended up dead or shot in the streets. So I fell victim to doing illegal stuff. But it was the moment that we got armed robbed, where I have a gun to my head now. And once I saw the barrel of that gun being pointed at me, that was the moment I noticed, okay, if I survive this, I'm going to become a comedian or die trying.

• 0:26Speaker 00

  My comedy comes from that place of a healing, wanting to make our situation better at home. It's like, one time I watched my brother get beat for wetting the bed. It was a lot. So I would always try to step in to try to be like a coping mechanism for him. Maybe it's my mom. So I knew I was funny. I knew I was very entertaining, but it didn't hit me until like college. And I started to figure out, okay, wow, all the people I look up to are all like comedic legends. And I feel more connected to them than anything I've ever felt in my life. That is my purpose. So I left college. I went home. I wrote all these goals down on a sheet of paper. Now I'm locked in. I have no other option. I'm sitting here in a room, no mattress. My car got repossessed. I actually made that like a content piece. But I feared nothing because I'm like, I have nothing left.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  But I knew I'm like, I'm gonna keep going. I'm gonna continue to keep pursuing, making videos, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then the thing that changed my life was Drake calling for the Laugh Now Cry Later music video. Everything shifted after that.

• 1:22Steven Bartlett?

  Druski, I heard this crazy story that they accidentally sent you Jim Carrey's money.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  No, that they sent an email showing how much he would be getting paid for that hour.

• 1:30Steven Bartlett?

  People are saying it was in the region of

• 1:32Speaker 00

  Insane. I hope he didn't see mine, because that would have been a little bit embarrassing.

• 1:36Steven Bartlett?

  And then in March, you did a skit and it did hundreds of millions of views. And then it sounded like Trump did ask to sue you.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  I don't know if that's true. I'm not looking to get sued by nobody. I'm not looking for it.

• 1:46Steven Bartlett?

  Who's he talking about?

• 1:49Steven Bartlett?

  Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know. And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. But also, it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make this show better. I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much.

• 2:24Steven Bartlett?

  Druski, I really believe that to understand somebody, somebody who is an anomaly, and you very much are an anomaly. You first have to sort of understand their earliest context. And I went through all of these old photos of you as a, as a young boy to try and build some of that context in my, in my own head. What is it that most people might not know about that earliest context that's most informative to sort of who you are today? What remains?

• 2:49Speaker 00

  I still literally feel like this little boy in all these pictures. Like, I see these moments and it reminds me of how free I was able to be as a kid. And I wanted to be so much. And my mom and my grandparents, they always supported me being just open and free and having this, what is that?

• 3:09Steven Bartlett?

  That was your dad and your brother?

• 3:10Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. My dad and my brother right here, for sure. Even looking at these pictures, I had no idea around this time who I was gonna become. This is, this is dope. How did you get these pictures, by the way? Where did you find all this? Did my mom send you these?

• 3:26Steven Bartlett?

  I was looking through some of the, the videos that your parents recorded of you at that time. And you've got, like,

• 3:39Speaker 05

  It's hard. Do you have any more questions about?

• 3:44Speaker 06

  About your teacher and how you're doing at school?

• 3:47Speaker 05

  Great.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  That's me in character right there. That's literally in character. So she would put on these, these camcorders to let me be free. So that was like my outlet to be able to do these characters and, and be myself, you know?

• 4:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have multiple videos. I know you probably got bored. There's one of me in a, in a diaper, like, rap.

• 4:19Speaker 07

  I wasn't sure if this was last week, though.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  That's my cousin Bree.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Oh my god.

• 4:39Steven Bartlett?

  Why did you come up with those, those bars?

• 4:40Speaker 00

  Nah, it's just, that's the beginning of Could've Been Records, right?

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Nah, tho- those are the moments, you know, we used to put on these performances for my family. And I'm just grateful that we were able to be ourselves. And, and, and I was able to be supportive somewhere because you do get confused in these settings, sort of say, you know? You look like you have something to say to that.

• 5:05Steven Bartlett?

  You know, I've interviewed a lot of comedians and one of the things that I tend to find is that comedy is some sort of like tool. And when I spoke to Jimmy Carr or some of these other comedians that I've interviewed, they're always able to sort of understand in that early context, how they were using that tool to often solve a problem that they had in that context. So I remember Jimmy saying to me, he goes, you often think of comedians as being depressed. But actually, for him, it was a case of comedy was a way to help his mom who was depressed. It was like how he saw her smile.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:34Steven Bartlett?

  Was comedy for you at that age a tool?

• 5:37Speaker 00

  Very much so. Very much so. I, I, and I speak about my dad because he was one of those tough guys to deal with around that time. He wanted us to figure it out early. And like, my dad was like the lead person of pushing that narrative. My mom somewhat would do it, but she would always try to tell him, relax, it's, you know, he's still, he's still a kid. Like, he's, I'm, at the time, I'm like eight, nine years old. And my dad was like, what do you want to do? Figure it out. You're either gonna go to jail, you find a craft, or you're gonna end up in a warehouse or something. You gotta figure out, um, whatever you're gonna do, or you go to the military, get your ass blown off. And that was the only two options.

• 6:20Speaker 00

  Yes. So imagine me at like eight, nine years old. Those are my three options. Is school, find a trade, or you go to military, get your ass blown off, because we're going back to war. He was always talking about, we're going back to war, we're going back to war. And I'm like, what the fuck? Are we going to war? Like, so, so

• 6:40Speaker 00

  early on, he pushed that he wanted me to figure it out. And he had great lessons, but his teaching skills was, was very tough and physical, you know? He's old school. I'm, I'm sure you heard it before. He's very old school about his teachings and how he goes about doing it. So he has a short temper. Immediately, he asks, he used to ask these rhetorical questions all the time of like, he'll be like, go get me a Phillips screwdriver. And I'll go get a regular screwdriver. He's like, this is not a Phillips screwdriver. Bam, upside the head. Then my brother goes, he's like, I want you to go get me a Phillips screwdriver. My brother goes and get a, a hammer, the dumbest shit, right?

• 7:23Speaker 00

  And he would come back and bam, upside the head. So that was like the immediate of teaching. It's not the best way of teaching. And from an early age, I learned that, speaking to other people's fathers and parents, I learned that this is not a normal thing. And I didn't know that until we would go to like neighborhood parties and stuff. And maybe my dad would be like, oh, these are my boys right here. He'll reach out his hand and we'll, and we'll flinch like that. Because it became a, a normal thing for him to always lift up his hand, like, if we said the wrong thing. So I wouldn't say that my comedy necessarily came from that, but it definitely came from like a healing, wanting to make our situation better at home.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  It's not like we, we don't come from a, like a broke home. I ain't gonna say we wasn't a broken, we were a broken home. We weren't a broke home. My dad was a airline pilot for United Airlines for entirely my whole younger life. Um, my mom worked for the CDC. Very two good jobs. Uh, my mom was always home. My dad would travel in and out. But I think what I wanted to do and my personality as a kid was always to make the family smile. No matter through all this stuff that we're going through and these teachings being too far sometimes, or maybe this ass whooping was too much.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  The ass whooping went too far, because I don't gotta, I'm not gonna get into details on it, but yeah, some ass whoopings in the house that went too far. But yeah, I think, I, I, I feel like my comedy comes from that place of, I never tend to punch down. I like to find the funny, but also the good side of funny and not look at the negative for my type of comedy. I can find a negative situation and bring the funny out of it for both sides, me and the other person.

• 9:18Steven Bartlett?

  So I guess as a child, very perceptive children, you're, you're on edge a little bit then.

• 9:24Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 9:24Steven Bartlett?

  And it's funny because I remember sitting with Gable Mate and him telling me how kids that have an early context where they are, they have to be a little bit more aware.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:33Steven Bartlett?

  They often become very good at observation.

• 9:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:37Steven Bartlett?

  And they very, they become good therapists. They become the most empathetic.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:41Steven Bartlett?

  They also sometimes have struggles with mental health because being hypervigilant or being aware comes at a cost. It's not free. For all the upsides, there's always a downside. Does any of that resonate?

• 9:53Speaker 00

  1,000%, man. And I think sadly, in my brother's case, that went a negative direction. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as we continued to go through puberty and got older. Whereas for me, I feel like I might have found a coping mechanism with comedy. And maybe he never found that coping mechanism from that trauma. And I feel like trauma can sometimes give you the, the good route or the negative route. And I feel like a lot of that going on in our house early on may have played a role in him being diagnosed with that. And yeah, that's the, that's the sad side of the story. But yeah, I, I, even with him, like, I think early on, I would always

• 10:38Speaker 00

  try to make him laugh because I knew we were in a fucked up situation. One time I watched my brother get beat for wetting the bed. And it was the simplest thing and I couldn't understand. I was like, why is he like, like getting beat this bad? It was very far, very, not the normal belt type thing. It was very, very far. So I would always try to step in either after or during these moments to try to be like a coping mechanism for him. Or like, maybe it's my mom and, and he's arguing with her and they're getting physical as well. So I would always try to be, oh, the funny guy, maybe at the dinner after. Or maybe after the next day goes by and I'm trying to lift everybody's vibe up.

• 11:22Steven Bartlett?

  So you watched your mother get hit as well?

• 11:24Speaker 00

  For sure, for sure, for sure. Not, not physically hit, but I've seen different things of like the choking and, you know, pushing her out the door and then locking the door. And then I gotta go and be the one staring at her at the door. And she's like, open it. And he's like, you better not open that door. And I'm in between a rock and a hard place, trying to figure out, do I open this door for my mom? Or is he gonna come? So I, it, it was a lot of different situations of trying to figure it out at a very young age. And, and it started so young that I, some, back to, some things are kind of blurred for me. But I do know that my comedy comes from that comforting type of space.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  I can read a room and, and sense any type of danger. I can read a room and sense any type of happiness, sadness, anything. In any situation, somebody could be mentally ill, somebody can be physically hurt, somebody could be anything. And I always have been a good judge of character as well. So I feel like that has helped me in my career for sure.

• 12:24Steven Bartlett?

  There's two things I wanted to add to that. Part of the reason I noticed this, obviously I've sat here 700 times or something doing these interviews.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:29Steven Bartlett?

  And you're one of the first people to stop mid-conversation as you're speaking and say, you look like you had something to say there, Steve.

• 12:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:37Steven Bartlett?

  Because you were looking at my face.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I can read.

• 12:39Steven Bartlett?

  People don't usually do that. So it's funny because I meet some people who are much more aware of me. You know, some people there are just talking and they're giving their answers to my questions. And then there's this other very rare group of people, often comedians, who I almost feel like I'm speaking to them even when I'm just sat here thinking. Because they're like hyper aware in that sense.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 12:58Steven Bartlett?

  And you just did that to me. So I thought, oh, he is super, super aware, which kind of correlates to everything, you know, you were saying then.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  For sure, for sure.

• 13:04Steven Bartlett?

  But it always comes at a cost.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  Yes, I agree.

• 13:07Steven Bartlett?

  All gifts do. I sat with, I think it was Michael Jordan's trainer, um, who also then trained Kobe. And he said to me, he goes, our dark sides are linked to our light side. So the things people clap for are inherently linked to the, the things that we then struggle with.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:21Steven Bartlett?

  That, that's true for yourself, I'm presuming?

• 13:23Speaker 00

  Very true. And I think through life, I've learned that not all teachers have the best way of teaching, which I speak on his lessons. Like he had many of lessons that were really good and on the positive side of life, where I had to eventually come to sources and just tell myself like, wow, like, I cannot look for more success and look for the light at the end of the tunnel without forgiving any and everything in my past. And that came with having to forgive my father in my head and also to him face to face of like, it's all, we just let it all go. And I think that helped me continue to move forward and not have any grudges.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  Grudges can really hold a lot of weight on you. Maybe his mother was abusive to him or, um, his upbringing was in a different type of area in the world. Whereas like Northeast DC, very trauma neighborhood that's very like, you know, a, a negative place to grow up in. And he's from like the project buildings of that. But yeah, I, I think the lessons he had were very good. He always talked about not half-assing anything. If you're gonna do something, do it all the way. If you're gonna mop the floor, don't just do this side of it, do it like this. If you're gonna clean the dishes, do all the dishes. Don't just, don't half-ass rinse it and then put it in there. But his lessons would be over the top. He's gonna break the dishes if you do it.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  He's gonna throw it up in the air and watch it crash on the ground. And then he's yelling to the highest he could yell. And it's just so, it used to be a lot, you know? And I think it, it almost like, you know, people talk about you, like, how can I be broken? If I've already been broken at an early age? And I, and I kind of feel that way. Like people are like, oh, it's not too much of a burden on you in your career. There's not too much. And I'm like, how could I be broken if I feel like I've already gone to my furthest extent? I, I, I can only continue to push myself to higher levels. Because I, I feel like I've gone through everything that could be the worst possible situation, at least in my brain.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  But yeah, he had very good lessons and, and always had quotes and sayings on things like, I, I actually, I actually have to bring it up. It's, but it's confusing because at, at, at an early age, I had no idea. Oh, okay. It only takes one whoa shit. I really fucked this up to negate 10 atta boys. I have no idea. Still to this day, I get confused. But I understood, I'm gonna tell you when I understood that. I understood that as life went on. And I started to notice a lot of my friends that I grew up with in the area I grew up in were going to jail or falsely being accused of things or ended up being dead or shot in the streets.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  And like, we've seen a lot of that stuff because I've, I come from a neighborhood where it's the suburb, but it also had a mixture of the real Atlanta in there as well. But yeah, so these things were very confusing to me early on. But as I continued to grow in life, every single lesson that he had taught me and that he had told and talked about and constantly over, over, over, over again spoke on, it started to come back to me in my later years of life. And I began to grow an appreciation for it. After I forgave him for, you know, all these, you know, past trauma situations and everything that happened, but yeah.

• 16:56Steven Bartlett?

  And when you say forgive, are you, do you have a good relationship with him now?

• 16:59Speaker 00

  Yes, very, very good, for sure. Yeah. And, and I think you just, you, in anything in life, you have to move on from things and continue to push. I think you can, you can never grow to do great things without looking back and being like, okay, I have to close the door on this. I cannot hold this grudge. Because if you hold a grudge, you gotta think about what a grudge is. A grudge is on you as a burden. That's a burden to everything. It's not just physical. It's a mental thing that can really rot people's brain out. It's a thing. And I'm sure you probably, you know.

• 17:35Steven Bartlett?

  Of course, yeah. But a lot of people think of forgiveness as letting them win or justification.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Or they feel like a loser because, oh, I'm not gonna forgive them for that. I've never, I'm gonna hold that grudge to the death. It's like, yo, you're not helping yourself. That's actually a, a you thing. That has nothing to do with them or what they did. If you, if you hold on to that, that's a forever thing for you.

• 17:58Steven Bartlett?

  And one of the things that will give you is great resilience, I imagine. You talked about it there. You said, how can anything break me when I've already been broken to the fullest extent? Again, with that comes a set of issues you contend with as an adult. I mean, I experienced it myself, which is you, if, if my parents were quite, there wasn't a lot of love between them. So I, I, one of the lessons I inherited was that relationships look like this. And this isn't necessarily a great thing that I want.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:24Steven Bartlett?

  So I swerved relationships every opportunity I was presented. I'd pursue people. And then the minute they turned to me and said, do you want to be in a relationship?

• 18:30Speaker 00

  It's too much. It's too much. Yeah. I've seen this before. This is, I'm, I'm getting away from this. Now I know where this goes. I know what you mean. I, I, I deal with that as well, for sure. I know exactly what you mean. Yeah.

• 18:41Steven Bartlett?

  Have you, have you, you've experienced that yourself as well?

• 18:44Speaker 00

  Yes. I, I feel like I continuously have grown a relationship with women in a way where I feel like I almost get scared with getting too close, kind of like how you explain. Because of maybe I haven't seen the successful home of two parents or two people in a relationship. Yeah. Maybe I haven't seen it with my own two eyes to work. And I feel like that kind of does hinder me a little bit because it, it, it does come in between when I, I feel these feelings for this girl and I almost jump back immediately as soon as I'm like, nah, nah, I don't trust it.

• 19:28Speaker 00

  Because I know what this comes with. And they're like, yo, what do you, what do you mean? We never, we didn't even get a chance to fully, and I don't know. It's, it's a natural mind thing that happens to me. And I still, to this day, I have no idea. If you want to be my, my doctor for this.

• 19:46Steven Bartlett?

  No, no, I just, I'm, I'm just hypothesizing.

• 19:48Speaker 00

  But I have no idea why. I feel like that has something to do with it. Maybe I haven't seen it in a way that's healthy. And that might be the reason why. But I still, that's a, that's a question that I need answered.

• 19:59Steven Bartlett?

  If I spoke to someone that you were in a relationship with and I said to them, is Drew affectionate? You laugh and you know the answer. You just don't want to say.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  No, no, no. I, I feel like they, they would tell you that I am until I'm not. And I eventually just, I just pull out, like I, I pull back. I like, I almost feel, once I, I get too close, I can't trust it. It's, it's, it's almost like a magnet when you reverse it on the other side. It's like when it comes too close, it starts to repel itself. That's how I feel when it comes to me getting more and more closer with a female.

• 20:35Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 20:35Steven Bartlett?

  Mm hmm. That makes sense. I think that's what I experienced up until I was about twenty seven years old.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  For sure. And. But I'm thirty one still.

• 20:42Speaker 08

  Yeah, it ain't that, it ain't that.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  I gotta find a wife. I have to find a wife. You have to find a wife. No, it'll, it'll happen. It'll happen.

• 20:51Steven Bartlett?

  Does it, does it matter increasingly as you become more successful to you? Do you, do you think more about it as you go?

• 20:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's just, it's hard to trust after you become. I think when you're, when you're, when you're kind of successful at the beginning, it's not hard to trust. You're just like, yo, she likes me for me, but also she can still like me for the celebrity I am. And it's kind of fifty fifty, but as you become more and more successful, you have this doubt in your mind, like this could absolutely be her in love with just Druski and not Drew at all.

• 21:25Steven Bartlett?

  Is that just a convenient excuse for the whole avoidant?

• 21:27Speaker 00

  No, no, no, I'm, I'm serious. I, I, I promise. Like it's, it's a question in every superstar's mind, I guarantee you. Even with, when they are with somebody fully, they still have a question in the back of their mind. Does this person just love the superstar of me?

• 21:45Steven Bartlett?

  That's so interesting.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  And it does bother somebody who is super successful because you see all these people will scream and, and chase you. And you have a show or maybe a meet and greet and you see how people react to you or you go on the street. And you almost want, you want to believe that this person that you're dating also is genuine. Like how these fans are like, yo, okay, maybe she just loves me for me. Maybe this is a not kind of like how the fans are just loving me for that. You want her to believe that this is the same type of real thing. But it's hard to believe after you see all of this stuff, you only know me for that. You didn't meet me when I was just at home, living with my mom, broke on the sofa.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  You know what I'm saying? Like you didn't see the real side of who I actually am. You know, if you get what I'm saying, you see the, you see the new personality. Sort of say, yeah.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  It's tough. It's tough out here, man. Could have been love.

• 22:46Speaker 08

  Could have been love.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  Fuck.

• 22:48Steven Bartlett?

  So you go off, you go off to college and you, you last, was it two semesters before you dropped out?

• 22:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I, I, I started at a, at a, a, a school that was in Gwinnett County where I grew up. So I spent like a year and then a, another half of a semester there. And I got my enough credits to transfer because I was like, okay, I've got to get out of here. Like I know my life is bigger than this. And I also at the time, I wasn't thinking, oh, I want to be a superstar. I was just thinking, I wanted a real college experience. I wanted to go to a four year college. I didn't have the grades to do it in high school and go straight there. I want to find a way to do it in college. So I think when I went to Georgia Southern as the school following that, I just wanted to find the college ecosystem of like, what's the vibe here?

• 23:38Speaker 00

  Oh, this party, let's do this. And I didn't find that as soon as I got there. It's almost like I didn't get the immediate, this is college. Like I thought I would get after I got there. And I went into like a deep depression because I had two guys that I knew went to the school from like, like you know, somebody from your county, of course. And I was like, oh, okay, I'll link up with him. He'll be a great friend to be along with on this ride of whatever this new school is. And I would try to link up with them and for some reason, it always was a hassle for me to link up with them. They always would be like, oh, we always got to pick you up. You don't have a car. And I'm like, no, I'll, I'll get an Uber to y'all.

• 24:22Speaker 00

  Well, if you don't have any money to get into the game, there's no point in coming because we can't pay for you. Or I want to come to the party with y'all. Oh, well, you have the same shoes that you hoop in. Why would we bring you like you? They will always have jokes about, maybe I, I felt like I wasn't deserving enough to be around them. Sort of say, and I felt like almost very, for the first time in my life, very depressed. And that kind of bothered me because I started to just not even go to classes anymore at this new school. I was just staying in my dorm room. So I went to not even go into class anymore. I stopped going to classes for like the whole second semester of being at that school, no classes. Sat in my room and would just sit and think I'm calling my friends back at home.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  They're not doing nothing. So I kind of didn't want to go home because I'm like, damn, they're not doing shit. I'm not gonna go back, but also like, what am I doing here? I'm not doing anything here either. What is my purpose in life? So sitting in there and being depressed and sad and looking at myself in the mirror, I started to figure out, I'm like, damn, what do I really want to do in life? Is any of this really makes sense? Like I'm here for sports journalism, but do I want, I know I want to be on TV. Like I took sports journalism to be maybe an ESPN sportscast just to get my face on TV. I didn't know. I was like, maybe I want to do that. It sounds cool. But as I continued to do more, I guess, soul searching, sort of say, just sitting in the room and thinking about what I want to do.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  These, I would sit and watch Steve Harvey interviews on like, what is it? Do you want to do in your life? Jump, jump off a mountain top and take a risk. And like, I would watch all these videos of everything of people I looked up to, Kevin Hart and, and I started to figure out, okay, what's my purpose? These are the people I look up to, but what exactly do I want to do? And as I continued to do more search and I started to figure out, okay, wow. I think all the people I look up to are all like comedic legends. I'm watching Will Ferrell stuff, Chris Farley. These are guys that I find as my heroes.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  I think since I've always been the funny guy in every classroom, everything I've done, sports, I get kicked off the football team for being funny. All this stuff is because I am a comedian. I, I, and, and it was almost like, I'm an, I felt like an idiot. So I'm like, damn, I'm sitting over here in college. That is my purpose. This is it. I'm, I, I feel more connected to them than I've ever felt to anything I've ever felt in my life.

• 26:59Speaker 08

  Why?

• 27:00Speaker 00

  The things they would say in a Kevin Hart interview, the things he would say in a Steve Harvey interview, the things Will Ferrell would say, or Chris Farley would say, or Jim Carrey. I felt more attached to it because they also felt a need and a purpose to become like a hero of comedy. I don't, I don't know. It, it sounds dumb because when you tell your parents, oh, I want to be a comedian. They're like, oh, you're like basically a clown, I guess. And you'll go start doing stand up rooms and maybe you make it, maybe you don't. It sounds kind of silly telling people or your hometown friends, oh, I'm gonna be a comedian. But as I continued to do more and more research on everything I wanted to do, I started to figure out, okay, this is my purpose and it always has been.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  And I see these videos of me as a kid. I, I'm remembering memories of all this stuff early on. This is it. And that, and that's when I just had like a, I don't know what they would call like an epiphany. You know, um, but yeah, that was, that was a big, uh, change for me in my career. Well, not even my career, at, at the beginning processes.

• 28:06Steven Bartlett?

  When you say I was depressed, that word can mean lots of things to lots of people.

• 28:10Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 28:11Steven Bartlett?

  What, what does it mean in your definition in that moment of your life? If I was a fly on the wall or, you know, just in the room, but also if I was inside your head at that time, what would I hear and what would I see if I was a fly on the wall?

• 28:22Speaker 00

  I think you would just see me in there confused, man. I would sit in my room for hours. I would sit there and play two K. I would sit there and play music for hours and not, I, I wasn't really doing anything. I had no friends at that school. I would walk to like the corner store. My mom will send me like twenty dollars. I'll buy as much as I could get to be able to stay in the room and not go out and socialize with all these people at this huge school. I would get as much food as I could get at the time to go back and just be in the room. And that's when I knew I was like, yo, I'm really like in a state I've never been in in my life.

• 29:05Speaker 00

  Imagine I'm used to being at a high school where I was known as the class clown. And anybody in my family knows me to be the, the guy that brings the warmth to the room and to make everybody laugh. And he's, he's always bringing good energy to now I'm sitting here almost hiding away from society. And very, very dark on myself. I was, I'm, I'm very like hard on myself about everything that I want to do. And I, and I was, it took, it took a while for me to understand what it was. I think me going on YouTube and trying to research successful people. I started to line up the people that I, I found inspiring and every single one of them were all comedians.

• 29:49Speaker 00

  I, I, I felt more attached to every single one of them than I've ever felt attached to anybody else in my life.

• 29:54Steven Bartlett?

  It's funny because through your childhood, you were, you were a comedian, you know, clearly from all the videos that I've seen. And people think of comedians as giving, like you, you make us laugh.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:05Steven Bartlett?

  But obviously that you get something from that too.

• 30:08Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 30:09Steven Bartlett?

  And then suddenly you're in this room and you're no longer getting that thing.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:12Steven Bartlett?

  Whatever it is.

• 30:13Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 30:14Steven Bartlett?

  What is that thing?

• 30:16Speaker 00

  I knew that was a thing early on when I was a kid. I would have these conversations with myself of at home after elementary of, did I make the class laugh today? And why was, why does that feel so good to me to brag about? Or I would ask other students, who's the funniest to you in this class? Or who's the funniest in our grade? And I would really ask, I was like, why, why do you feel like he's funny? Like, why is, why is Mikey funnier than me? Tell me, tell me why. And it was almost like a competition in my head that nobody knew about, but it, it was in me, you know what I'm saying? Like I, I felt like it was, it meant something if they told me, oh, you're, of course, you're the funniest guy in, in our grade, duh.

• 31:00Steven Bartlett?

  And how would that make you feel?

• 31:01Speaker 00

  That made me feel successful. It felt like I won the Mark Twain Award of the school. Like that is like the Oscar for me at a young age. If somebody to be, oh my God, you're the funniest at the school.

• 31:14Steven Bartlett?

  I think it's, it's interesting often that your, your nature was clearly you're a comedian. But that's not a career that kids are taught about. They're taught about, like you said, like your dad said, like go get your ass blown off and all these other things. But they.

• 31:24Speaker 00

  Find a trade.

• 31:25Steven Bartlett?

  The final trade, yeah. But instantly you have, you're given a word for it sometimes. It doesn't, you don't, you don't have that epiphany. I thought that about like being an entrepreneur. I didn't know it was a thing until I was nineteen and I was already doing it. And then I heard the word and someone gave it meaning and was like, oh, that's a thing you can do as a job.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:42Steven Bartlett?

  And then suddenly, you know, mind expansion.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know what it was? I, I knew, I always knew that comedy was a thing. I didn't know that I

• 31:54Speaker 00

  wanted to do it as bad as I was doing it. I was always watching it. I always watched. My mom would show us in Living Color, movies like What About Bob early on. My dad would always have the Chappelle show on and I would try to sneak and watch that because I was very like much rated R. And the kids mind, they would, they'd be like, oh, you can't watch this stuff. Get upstairs. And I would still try to sneak behind the stairs and look like, oh my God, that's so funny. And I would try to say these jokes back at school that I hear Dave Chappelle saying or Blank Man. Like he was like, he was like a guy in a wheelchair from, in Living Color that ended up becoming a movie. And they made this whole thing called Blank.

• 32:39Speaker 00

  But the fact that matters is that I, it was always in front of me. And I always was a big fan of comedy. I just didn't know that my mom

• 32:50Speaker 00

  sort of say was influencing. And she, and I, and I say my mom because she would always put this stuff in front of us. Because she wanted, she wanted the best for us, but she always, she, she was the like, almost like the seesaw to level everything out. If something bad happens with my dad, my mom was always there to level it out. She was the one that would come in and tell him like, David, that's too much. And sometimes he would bark at her and be like, get the fuck out of here. Like these boys are gonna end up being men. They need to learn this now. But she always had like quotes or, or, or good things she would always say like, just, just continue to believe in yourself, continue to know this.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  So she was, my mom was always a big believer in anything becoming big, you know? Yeah. So I gotta, I gotta give her a lot for that.

• 33:42Steven Bartlett?

  You'd think the former president of Nespresso would be a pretty hard person to convert to a new coffee company. But just one sip of Cometier Coffee made him invest.

• 33:57Steven Bartlett?

  But let me tell you the reason why I became an investor. So I had a big box of this arrive on my desk in the London office. And then I'd say within about an hour and a half, the Slack channel that we have starts blowing up with people asking, what the hell is that thing that's been left in the kitchen? It is unbelievable. So instead of trying to make it yourself at home and balance the flavors, they flash freeze it at the perfect moment. So all you have to do is pop it out of here into a cup, pour hot water on it. And it tastes like nothing you've tasted before. You can also make delicious iced coffee drinks as well. Just pour it in.

• 34:30Steven Bartlett?

  No machine, no brewing with plastic and all that nasty stuff. And you can get thirty dollars off your first order at cometeer.com/steven today. That's cometeer.com/steven.

• 34:44Steven Bartlett?

  I went to lunch with a very, very successful founder. He told me about this vision where in the future, your mattress will be able to check your entire body. He is the founder of a brand called Eight Sleep and it's a brand that has quite frankly changed my life. Me and my fiancee Melanie, we have very different sleeping habits. She likes the bed to be a little bit colder. I like it to be a little bit hotter. And so that often causes a little bit of an argument until we discovered Eight Sleep. The Eight Sleep Pod Six is this mattress cover that sits on top of your mattress and it regulates your entire bed while you sleep. So my fiancee Mel can have it as cold as she wants on her side. And it knows that I have a different preference on my side. If Mel's getting up earlier, her side can wake her up by sort of slowly vibrating and heating up so that she wakes up while I stay asleep.

• 35:26Steven Bartlett?

  And Pod Six now delivers temperature relief twenty percent faster than the previous pod with a fifty percent smaller hub. And I spoke to Mateo, the founder, and he has given me a code to give to you now that he sponsors this podcast, which will allow you to get up to two hundred dollars off the new Pod Six. Use my code [email protected]/steven. You'll get thirty days to try it and if you don't like it, you can return it, but I'm confident that you will. So went off to university, you discovered these great comedians. You discovered, you said Steve Harvey, who's a, I think he's sixty nine years old now. He's an American comedian and TV host, stand up comic as well.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  One of the kings of comedy.

• 36:06Steven Bartlett?

  One of your idols in comedy?

• 36:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. Hell yeah.

• 36:08Steven Bartlett?

  What was it that he said in particular that you recall that really sort of pushed you forward in that moment?

• 36:14Speaker 00

  I remember he had a video that talked about just taking a risk and just jumping. And he spoke on just take the leap of faith and just jump. Stop overthinking everything. Nothing happens without taking this risk. And I knew he was, he, he continued to say something in these videos of, if you believe there's something more to your life, there is.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  If you have that vision that keeps popping up in your head, that means it, that very much so is in your life. And I just kept hearing him say that and I played the video back, played the video back again, played the video back. I'm like, damn, what the hell? That means there is something, because I, I kept feeling that feeling. I kept having, I'm like, there's more to my life than what it is right now. And I knew it. In the back of my head, I was like, I know it. I know it. I know it. There's more to this than, than what I feel. It's in the back of my, and I, and I continued. And that's what resonated with me from the video that I watched on him. That was, it was like life changer.

• 37:13Steven Bartlett?

  I spoke to Steve.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  Oh, man. What you got to show me, man?

• 37:18Steven Bartlett?

  He wanted, he wanted to send you a little, a little video message as well.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Hey, what's happening, Druski? Hey, look, man, I, I heard they was doing something for you. So I wanted to jump on here, man, and just give you some, some big ups, man. Let you know, man, I've been watching you for a while from a distance, man. We've only spoken once, but look, man, I think you're special. You got a gift, man. You're really, really special. And with that specialness, man, comes some responsibility. And so just be careful, man. Remember everything your mom and your grandma told you because you're gonna need all of that. Because you're killing the game and once you start killing the game, it's like chess, man. We're out here playing chess. The object is to kill the king. Sad, but true. Keep your faith, brother. Stay funny, man. If you need me, call Unc. I got you.

• 38:05Speaker 00

  This is crazy.

• 38:08Speaker 00

  That, that is nuts, bro. That is amazing, man. And that, and that really is a full circle moment, even hearing him say that. And wow, man. Somebody, somebody that definitely I looked up to him amongst, you know, the other kings of comedy as well is like, wow, man, that's, that is, that's deep. That's deep.

• 38:32Steven Bartlett?

  What happens from there? You go from being in that room, you're watching these Steve Harvey videos. Presumably you've got to call your mom and you've got to tell your mom that you're dropping out.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, she, uh, she wasn't happy about that. She, I remember she cried and she, she hung up on me and she was like, this, this is just so dumb. Like what are you talking about?

• 38:51Steven Bartlett?

  What did you say to her?

• 38:53Speaker 00

  I couldn't get any words out. She hung up. But I remember seeing her crying on the FaceTime after, I just wanted to tell her what my vision was on. Cause you know, you, you say I'm dropping out, but then of course I have a rebuttal. I have a great idea.

• 39:07Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 00

  And she hung up immediately. So then I called my friend. He came and grabbed me from the school in the middle of the night. I was like four hours away from Atlanta, Georgia. I'm deep down in Southern Georgia. And we drove all the way back. And when I got there, of course she let me in the house and. I think it was just a confusing time because I'm also not making any money. So she's like, now what? Like now, what are you gonna do? And I had this big plan and I told her what I was gonna do. I'm like, I'm gonna be a comedian. I'm gonna be on TV. I promise you in a year, I'm gonna make sure I'm on TV. And if I'm not, I told her this wild story. I'm gonna kill myself.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  I said, if I don't become a comedian and I don't become a famous comedian on TV, I'm gonna kill myself. And she's like, don't say stuff like that. That is, that is so dumb. I want you to go hard for whatever you're doing. But that is just, why do you feel like it has to be comedy? And I was like, this is something that, and I continued to break down everything. I'm like, this is what I've always wanted to be. And I had, it's almost like you had this great idea, but nobody sees the vision. So then I went to my grandparents. I told them the same vision that I had. They lived down the street from her and they're like, this is so, what, like, what are you talking about? Go back to school, get your education and then you do all that other stuff. Because they had the old school mindset of, they probably seen people that didn't go to school and they seen people that did go to school. People that did go to school get a job.

• 40:35Speaker 00

  People that didn't go to school became maybe crackheads in their era. I don't know, like, or became failures in life. So they didn't, they never really saw the good side of what is. And I was like, the, the point one of people, maybe even less than point one percent of people that are able to accomplish that after dropping out is like, very unlikely. So immediately when I told my grandparents, they were like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. They said, don't, we know what's gonna happen. You gonna drop out, you gonna be calling us asking for money. Don't be calling our house and pulling up and you gonna be doing drugs. And I'm like, guys, listen, I'm not gonna be doing that. They're like, no, no, no, no. You know, your grandparents, black grandparents, they don't give a shit. They like, don't be coming over here and bothering us.

• 41:20Speaker 00

  We know what's about to happen. Like, you gonna be a crackhead. And I'm like, listen, guys, I have a plan. And essentially I didn't do it immediately. I started trying to work at Red Lobster and then I worked at like a Longhorns and I worked at Outback Steakhouse and McDonald's. I, I started to work jobs because it was like a quick money thing. And then I fell victim to being, living in Atlanta where I was doing illegal stuff. And now I'm seeing myself go into this whirlwind of damn, I came home to do this?

• 41:51Steven Bartlett?

  Drug dealing?

• 41:52Speaker 00

  No, no.

• 41:55Steven Bartlett?

  You said a legal stuff.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  No, it's, in Atlanta, there's like a, it's like a scamming circle of, of where a lot of people fall victim to. It's like you can do quick, easy scams with banks or doing card scams, just stuff like that. And I never was a bad guy. I just, I, I felt like that was an easier way to do it while I'm trying to pursue this stuff. But I felt like the karma of this stuff was weighing on me. It's like, oh, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna try to pursue comedy while doing this. And it never worked out. I didn't even pursue it. I just was.

• 42:30Steven Bartlett?

  Flirting with it.

• 42:30Speaker 00

  I was going back and forth. Yeah, I was just continued to flirt back and forth with the idea of it. And then it was the moment that we got arm robbed, where I had a, a outer body feeling of wow. I came home to be in this predicament where I have a gun to my head now. And now it's like, how did I even get here? So let me rewind back. That was the last moment I said, okay, if I'm gonna do anything, I'm going to become a comedian or die trying. That's it. I have no other outlet.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  Now I know, once I saw the barrel of that gun being pointed at me and my friend at the time, it was a bad scamming situation gone left. That was the moment I noticed, okay, if I survive this, I am going to turn my life around. And I'm not gonna go to a job. I'm not gonna go back to my mom's house and try to say, oh, I'm doing this, that. I'm going to lock in, actually do it. And from there on, I went home, I wrote all these goals down on a sheet of paper. And my mom, she was kinda in the mix of what happened a little bit too. She had heard, cause she saw me walking around the house, being stressed out. I told her what's going on.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  And I wrote down all these goals because she would always say, you can't do anything without writing things down. Ever since I was a kid, she was like, you should write that down. If you wanna remember something, write it down, write it down.

• 44:05Steven Bartlett?

  Do you remember what the goals were?

• 44:06Speaker 00

  The first one I ever wrote was, don't have a plan B, your plan A will work. No plan B, your plan A will work. The second one I wrote was about.

• 44:17Steven Bartlett?

  Was there, about hosting a tour on there?

• 44:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, hosting a tour was definitely on there.

• 44:23Steven Bartlett?

  Hosting an awards evening?

• 44:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, that, both of those was on there. I, I wrote down that, I wrote down being a comedian, I wrote down amongst a lot of other things. How do you, how do you know that? What is it, what is it on that? How do you know that? That was, that was on there. I haven't seen y'all production that big.

• 44:41Steven Bartlett?

  So we got this scamming thing we do where we can scam. Star in a major movie?

• 44:46Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm, for sure. All that is down there, man.

• 44:50Steven Bartlett?

  And you were 23 at the time, roughly?

• 44:51Speaker 00

  Yes, 23.

• 44:52Steven Bartlett?

  So what's happened then? So you left college at what, what age?

• 44:55Speaker 00

  I left college around 21, 22.

• 44:59Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  In between 21, 22, I left college.

• 45:01Steven Bartlett?

  So it's a year or two at home with your mom?

• 45:03Speaker 00

  Year and a half, I'll probably say a full year has been at home before all that transpired. Tried the jobs and tried the legal stuff, that didn't work. And now I'm here and I start to actually do the things that I wrote down.

• 45:16Steven Bartlett?

  What does that mean specifically?

• 45:18Speaker 00

  I think the first thing that happened, after I wrote these goals down, the first thing that happened, everything was taken away. It felt like everything dropped out before it got good. Everything. I wrote down these goals, wrote the date on there. Boom, I'm doing it. I, I was like, all right, now I'm locked in. This is it. I'm, I'm all in. I have no other option. There's no other plan B, nothing. Immediately my car gets repossessed. I'm like, yo, what the fuck? Now I can't travel and do nothing. So it's funny because it's like, as soon as you wanna pursue all these things, everything has to come out.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  And, and you're, it's confusing because most people never get a chance to see the real side of success because they quit. At that moment, that breaking point of everything falling out of your life, they're like, oh my God, I done prayed for all this stuff. I done wrote everything down. I got this, this board of, this mood board, I got everything. And then I'd lose this and ah, see, it, it don't work. But I knew, I'm like, I'm gonna keep going. I'm not gonna stop here. I actually made that like a content piece. I recorded my car getting repossessed and people were like, yo, what the hell are you posing this for? I was like, well, there it is. There she goes. But really I was sad as shit. I was like, damn, I got nothing.

• 46:39Speaker 00

  But I, I feared nothing because I'm like, I have, I have nothing left. I'm sitting here in a room, no, no mattress. I'm laying on the floor. I'm using my little sister's blanket that she has as a blanket on the ground. Like, I don't have any dressers in here. Like, you know, when you, you go to college, your mom gives away all your shit. Like she, she sells it or she puts it in some warehouse. So I didn't have none of my stuff. I just was laying on the floor and I was like, yep, I had my car, but now that's gone. So what else could I lose? Like, I, I'm, my back's against the wall. I'm gonna continue to keep pursuing, making videos, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And that's what I did. I continued to boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I wasn't gonna stop and I was using my mom's house as essentially a, a movie set.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  I started to flip the couch upside down. I wanted to do a surveillance camera at the top left side of the room to make it look like I'm on First 48. I'm interviewing myself on the First 48 episode. Boom, that's one of the skits. I have another skit where I'm using this jacket that my mom had in the closet and I'm putting that on and I'm acting like a news reporter. Fox 5 in the backyard and I, I'm putting the phone cropped up on the trash can outside in the backyard. And my mom used to come home, she'd be like, what the fuck are you doing? She, she used to see the house in shambles. But I gotta give it to her cause she, she stuck through it with me. I would always give her these updates, like, I have 10K followers now. I have 15K followers. She's like, okay, so what does that mean? Did you make any money? I'm like, no, but I have people watching.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  And I was like, oh, I got 100K followers. Did you make any money yet? No, but people are watching. And I continuously just kept giving these updates as eventually I started to make money through promotion. I would promote people's music and their, their videos and throw it on my story. And I would do a full day of promotion. It would make me a couple hundred dollars maybe. And that would be enough to maybe go out that night or, uh, uh, it just wasn't like, it wasn't anything real fulfilling. Or I would help my mom with groceries. Like I, I would try to do things to, you know, make money, but it wasn't really making any real money at the time. And then I continued to keep building. So yeah, no, I think those, those early moments really shaped a lot for me.

• 48:53Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, I've got a, a video here as well that I found. Um, you can explain what this one is to me.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  Man, yeah, man, you know what the fuck going on, man?

• 49:03Speaker 04

  Turning me up. I ain't never been at the game so long before you.

• 49:07Speaker 00

  That was, that was fresh off of scamming right there. Fresh off of scamming.

• 49:10Speaker 04

  Shot me up, shot me up now. So when I got this ice on, shot me up. Shot me up. Yeah, they know I'm going up like this now.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  That was actually my first video I ever posted on socials.

• 49:23Steven Bartlett?

  Ever?

• 49:23Speaker 00

  Ever. First video ever. That's when Instagram first started the whole 15 second video post thing. You know, Von was doing it for like six seconds and I didn't, never was on that. And I came around and it was like 15 seconds on Instagram, you could post a video. And my friend Chauncey, and now he's like my lead comedic writer. And he was like, bro, just go, like just post it. And I was like, this is kinda silly. I'm just acting like, I had like, those are like one dollar bills, bro. I was acting like I, I was fucking ones. And I'm just, and he was like, just post it. And I, I think that got like, maybe 80 comments, 60 or 70 comments, something like that. It was like hometown people.

• 50:05Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 50:05Speaker 00

  And they were just like, oh my God, this is so funny. We see what you're doing. That's, that's dope. Hopefully you do more. Like people were just supporting it. I was like, all right, well, I'm more creative than this. And I started to continuously become more and more creative because I was like, all right, I did that, but that's like silly stuff. I know what I'm capable of. But yeah, that, that was the very first video I ever threw up.

• 50:27Steven Bartlett?

  This one I found really interesting. I'm just gonna play it first.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  Meek Mill's performed for us. He's like, yes, brother. I'm telling you, no. Yo, Meek Mill's my, why I dap that? Well, I said, yo, we'll be on your level one day. He shot at, hit you. I'm the pharmacist. I, like, I told him and I said, yo, I'm gonna be on your level one day.

• 50:43Steven Bartlett?

  You're saying in that video that you, you're gonna be on Meek Mill's level someday? And that you dapped him up and told him that?

• 50:49Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. I lied about that. I did not dap him up and tell him that. I saw him at a party and I was so influential. I, I shouted it over somebody like, yo, Meek, I'm a big fan, man. I, I'm gonna be on your level someday. I didn't shake his hand. I was just, I was just chatting. But in our, in our county, we have almost like what you would call like a hood legend, Lou Williams. He went to the same high school I went to. He made it to the NBA, played amongst a bunch of teams, sixth man. You probably know him. Drake did a song about Lou Will, you know, balling out of Saltonet like Lou Will. So he was almost like the hero to us.

• 51:27Speaker 00

  He would throw these parties, which were like essentially like, you know, have all these celebrities come to Gwinnett County. And at the time, Gwinnett County's not on the map. It's not like a known thing. Like we're just like a suburb outside of Atlanta. And he would have these celebrities come to these parties and we would be able to go because we're locals in Gwinnett. So you would see all these celebrities and I was like, wow. I would look at Lou Will's house. He's currently in the NBA and I'm like, wow, this is insane. And Meek Mill came one night and I, I said, I told him that, but I just shouted it. And he had a bunch of security with him. They didn't let us over there. But yeah, I was, you could tell I was, man, I was.

• 52:07Steven Bartlett?

  It's a kid manifesting in some way.

• 52:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, manifestation and like, there was no stutter in my speech right there. I, I definitely felt that way about everything I was doing. And I probably have said a lot of things around that time that probably weren't recorded where I was very like trying to pursue greatness. I've always been a big fan of pursuing greatness my entire life. I never wanted to just be good. I always wanted to be great. Um, so yeah, that, that just shows right there. Now, I'm surprised, one of my friends, he still had that clip. They sent it to me and I posted it, yeah.

• 52:38Steven Bartlett?

  The thing I find interesting generally is i- in that situation, look at that context. You're in your mother's house, you're using the, uh, front room and a blanket as both your bed and also your sort of like creative studio. Objectively in that situation, the odds are stacked against you. But, but in your head, you're thinking, I'm either gonna be great or in your words, I'm gonna kill myself.

• 52:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was a little far.

• 53:01Steven Bartlett?

  A little far?

• 53:02Speaker 00

  A little far.

• 53:02Steven Bartlett?

  When you said that, what did you actually mean? What did you mean?

• 53:06Speaker 00

  I felt like I.

• 53:08Steven Bartlett?

  You meant it.

• 53:09Speaker 00

  But I was, I was, I was, you know what it was? I was so, I was, I was chasing being great. And I, and I might've been farfetched and, and me to say something as wild as that, but that's honestly how I felt. Like I was going to make it happen or I was gonna see, perceive myself as a failure. I didn't see anything different. I saw nothing else but a green light down this tunnel. I saw nothing. I, I, I, I knew in the back of my mind what I was capable of. I already knew. I felt like my entire life I knew, but I just didn't put the pieces together.

• 53:49Speaker 00

  But when I told my mom that, I knew, I said, okay, I have committed to something that I know there is no possible in or out. I'm going to do this or die trying, truthfully. You know, like I feel like I, I'm either gonna do this or I'm not and I'm gonna make it happen. So I knew I wasn't gonna kill myself. Essentially, I knew.

• 54:11Steven Bartlett?

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:12Speaker 00

  I'm not gonna kill myself.

• 54:13Steven Bartlett?

  Because you believed.

• 54:13Speaker 00

  Because I believe I'm going to do it. But if I don't, I'm out of here.

• 54:19Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 54:23Speaker 00

  Sounds crazy, but it's true. Sounds crazy, but it's true, man. That, that's how much belief I had in myself. And that's how I felt like with my back against the wall. Like I really did want to do it that bad. And still like, I do feel the same about achieving greatness. I don't tend to like things that are just good. And people are like, oh my God, I became rich. I'm, I'm good, man. I'm going on vacation. I don't do any vacationing. I, I, I, I, I, I find it soothing to be in a chaos situation of work and juggling a, a, a multiple projects at once. Like, that is what I wanna do. This is what I got into it for. So that, that's my full goal, yeah.

• 55:07Steven Bartlett?

  And when you look back on that season of life where you, you first moved home with your mom, as, as a 31 year old now, what has it taught you about what it takes to be successful broadly? Again, remove luck from the equation. Let's remove, some people get unfortunate with lottery tickets, whatever else. But generally, what has it taught you about what it takes to be successful in the pursuit of a goal like that? Where to, to be honest, not many people ever make any money.

• 55:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:31Steven Bartlett?

  The odds of you being successful as a comedian, defined, let's define.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  Slim to none.

• 55:35Steven Bartlett?

  As, as making, being able to provide for yourself and a family.

• 55:38Speaker 00

  Slim to none.

• 55:38Steven Bartlett?

  It's crazy odds.

• 55:40Speaker 00

  But the thing is, most people don't really wanna be great. Most people just say it because it sounds good. Like I, I, I would be around a lot of guys and be like, yo, let's do it. Let's wake up in the morning, let's, and it would just fall out. Everybody eventually just goes away. Everybody that said they were gonna do it, they'd do it one day. They're not showing up the third or the second day. Nobody, nobody shows up continuously for the work. And once I noticed, there's a small amount of people that are showing up for the actual work of anything. It, it just showed me that, okay, I'm in a lane of this of my own. I'm pursuing something that most people say, but they're not really trying to pursue. Everybody wants to be number one. You wanna be the top of the list. Everybody wants to be the top of the list, but nobody really wants to do the work.

• 56:23Speaker 00

  Nobody's obsessed with it continuously, every day and night, having dreams about it. Nobody's sitting and editing with their editors, 18 hours plus of like just sitting, looking at clips. Nobody's going and doing tours while trying to continuously film a TV show, Could Have Been Love, in the middle of that tour. Nobody's trying to also shoot a movie, like right now, we're shooting with Universal, The Catch with Emma Stone, Chris Pine. But also still trying to fulfill my social media presence. I'm trying to juggle all these things at once because I wanna be great. I don't wanna just do it and be like, okay, I'm gonna take some time off and just, no, I really wanna be number one.

• 57:06Speaker 00

  I, I, I don't, I'm not really falling victim to being okay with being cool with number two or three. And I joke about it all the time because one of my favorite movies is Talladega Nights. And Ricky Bobby said, if you ain't first, you're last. And I, and we, me and my family, we joke about it all the time. We laugh about it, but I kinda took that vision seriously cause that's really how I live my life and that's really how I feel. Because what else could be other than wanting to be number one?

• 57:33Steven Bartlett?

  What happens when you become number one?

• 57:36Speaker 00

  You still gotta keep pushing the mountain cause somebody's chasing. There's somebody coming. Somebody's on the way. So I feel like the journey never ends because you're always continuously chasing.

• 57:48Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 57:49Speaker 00

  You know, if it's not the people before you, it's trying to continue to set the bar high for the people behind you.

• 57:54Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  So.

• 57:56Steven Bartlett?

  And what does being great mean in your definition of the word? Like if I said, cause you know, you said that, you stated that the goal is to be great.

• 58:02Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:02Steven Bartlett?

  How would you know you've become great?

• 58:05Speaker 00

  I think being great has a lot of different meanings. It, it didn't, it doesn't have a money value or a certain touring value or, or. I think just being great in all ways just comes down to just how far you're willing to set the bar. There's always people before you that have done great things. You got Eddie Murphy that has set the bar fucking. Way up here, then you got Kevin Hart, that's fucking damn near where Eddie's at. And he looks very healthy. He looks like he might take it further than Eddie. Who knows? I don't know. But there's always somebody gaining on that right behind the greats before. He's the same with Kobe, Jordan, LeBron.

• 58:48Speaker 00

  Somebody's gonna continuously keep sending the ball higher. So it's like, we're all trying to just leave a legacy, sort of say. Like, I think that's what we're all trying to do and

• 58:59Steven Bartlett?

  You wanna be in that conversation.

• 59:00Speaker 00

  You wanna be in that conversation. When it's all said and done, I would love to be in that conversation. It's not saying I wanna be surpassed. And we all wanna surpass great things. We all do. But just to be in that conversation and to be remembered and to leave a legacy, that's what matters.

• 59:18Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things that I've observed with people that go in the pursuit of greatness and achieve it is just they have, they have like a different level of like patience and they have a longer time horizon. Cause with Eddie, with Kevin, it takes a lot of like lonely, lonely years, decades sometimes. I sat here with the greatest illusionist in the world and he told me that he spent 10 years doing card tricks on restaurant tables. And you go, what a crazy fucking thing to do. Like, whatever. Or like this other, I mean, even Jimmy Carr said to me, like, he dropped out of his, his great job. I believe it was in marketing and spent five, six years getting paid absolutely nothing, just cracking jokes in pubs and stuff. And you're like, what a, what sane person

• 59:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:56Steven Bartlett?

  would, would think, would take that trade.

• 59:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:59Steven Bartlett?

  When I zoom back into where you were in your mother's house, how, how long was it? How, how from that, I guess from university, from college to the moment where you go, actually, Chet, this is, this might be able to pay my way that I, so I can move out. How long was that period of time?

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  Years, man. Honestly, years. We're talking like years of seeing nothing. And I think people don't see that. People see with social media, there's a bunch of quick reaction to things. And people are like, oh, my God, this person. Oh, they went viral for that. Oh, my God. Now, what can I do with this? People always worried about, oh, I'm gonna take this thing. I, I did this video or I did and, and now I'm trying, I'm gonna go get a team. I'm gonna go. It's like, what are you doing? You don't need a fucking team. Keep gr- do it again. Do it again, man. And, and, and when you're trying to be great, you never get a chance to celebrate the things that you have done. You almost don't feel in the moment because you're looking for the, what's the next thing?

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  And I kinda give credit of that, cause I do the same thing. I do it all the time. We did the BET Awards and the next day I was already flying to go shoot my TV show, Collecting Praise, with Mike Epps that we just shot. I had somebody in the congregation ask why I'm wearing Christian Dior and Christian Louboutins. Cause I'm a Christian and I walk in the blood of Jesus. Give him some praise.

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  Immediately, the next day, we almost, I didn't even get a chance to take it in. I'm like, oh, my God, I just did the BET Awards. Something I always wanna do in my life. Boom, I'm on a plane. I'm at the next thing. Immediately after I do Collecting Praise, we shot that for two weeks, back to back. Boom, on a plane the next day after the final day of that. We're all clapping, everything, on a plane. Next day, we're shooting The Catch with Emma Stone and Chris Pine. The next day. So it's like, you never really get a chance to take a lot of these things in because you're continuously progressing, progressing, progressing. And my mom would always, I feel like she influenced me to be like that. Because I would come home from school all the time and be like, oh, I got a, a B on this test. She's like, oh, you could have done better.

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  Or I'm like, oh, I, I did this. At, at school, they told me I was, da, da, da. Oh, come on, you could, you could have done better on that. Not like it's not enough, but it's like, you always can do better. There's, even if you got an A on this, why didn't you get an A plus?

• 1:02:17Steven Bartlett?

  Do you wanna be a, a dad yourself?

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. Of course.

• 1:02:21Steven Bartlett?

  Where's that gonna fit in this crazy life?

• 1:02:23Speaker 00

  We have no idea. That's

• 1:02:27Speaker 00

  I gotta find a wife first, bro. I'm trying to find love first, bro. I have no idea. No, but I, I, I think both of my parents, they, they, they both did that same shit of like, I would bring my dad math equations and him being a pilot, he would break it down in crazy ways of like, what the fuck? Like, I would say, oh, this is division. Could you help me with this? And he'll take 40 minutes and be like, oh, you, you answered it, but you could have done the long division this way. Okay, let me tell you, mx times bx squared. And you could get this answer reversed. Let's reverse this answer. If you get this, you get it multiple different ways. So I'd be like, yo, what the hell, bro? I just brought you a simple division equation. Why did you make it long division and then go into mx times bx squared?

• 1:03:11Speaker 00

  But these are my parents, though. They're always looking for the greater thing. Always. No matter what it was, even if it was academics, you could have done better, or you could have gotten it a different way, or there's other routes to get to it. It was almost never a, a correct answer in my household because there's different ways you could find an answer to anything. So imagine what that does to my mind of, damn, I've gotta find a way. And not just in one way, I gotta find it in multiple different ways. So when I do my type of comedy, I never sit on doing one thing. If I do one thing that's amazing, I'll come back and hit another situation. I'll, I'll hit another situation. I'm gonna be funny in this way, too.

• 1:03:52Speaker 00

  I'm not just gonna be funny in this way. I can also be funny at a live show. I can also be funny in a sketch version. I can also be funny in a movie. I can also be funny on a TV show. I can also be funny in a commercial. You see a T-Mobile commercial, you see Druski's face on it with Zoe Zaldana and Jeff Bridges. Why the fuck is Druski on here with Zoe Zaldana and Jeff Bridges? I don't know. But it works. It's a comedic relief of this commercial. But I feel like my life has gone in that direction because of these upbringings, of these teachings that both of my parents had set for us.

• 1:04:25Steven Bartlett?

  Listen, I've been catfished by furniture my whole life, where something has looked fantastic in the picture, whether it's a sofa, whatever it might be. And I order it and I get so excited and then it comes and it's something entirely different. The quality was significantly different to what it said or looks like online, or the, the texture was different, or, or it didn't hold up in the same way. And so one of the things that I love about our sponsor Wayfair, who have helped us fit out our green room, which is in the room behind me, is they have this system called Wayfair Verified. Wayfair Verified takes away all of that second guessing. Products are hand vetted by Wayfair specialists for quality. So you can feel more confident when you've found the thing that you love. So if you're looking for furniture for your house, whatever it might be, any room of your house,

• 1:05:10Steven Bartlett?

  go to wayfair.com to start your home refresh today and make sure you use Wayfair Verified. It is amazing. There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribe, you're already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please, could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much. Was there a first check or first opportunity that you really like wanted to tell your mom about because this was kind of proof that you were right?

• 1:05:43Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 1:05:44Steven Bartlett?

  Or was there a moment at all?

• 1:05:46Speaker 00

  I think you're saying like a big check moment.

• 1:05:50Steven Bartlett?

  You know, like one of those moments, an opportunity comes in and you can't wait to tell your mom because suddenly you were right.

• 1:05:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I had a moment. I went, I went to like quote unquote, at the time, it might have been 2022, like kinda after COVID died down. I was gaining a little bit more traction everywhere. And I had told her that a, a celebrity had posted me. And I was so excited. I was like, oh, my God, a celebrity posted me. And she was like, oh, my God. She was like, so, so it seems like, so what happens now? Do they, do they tag you in it? Do people follow you? I was like, no, they didn't tag me. It's just, they just posted the video. She's like, did, did, like, is there opportunity? Like, are you gonna shoot? Like a video? Are you doing anything with them? I was like, no, no, no. They just, they just reposted my video. It's like,

• 1:06:36Speaker 00

  now what? And I'm like, well, I'm back to square one. It's like, yeah. My parents were big on breaking things down. So you feel never really fulfilled. You don't feel fulfilled with anything because you are always trying to figure out, okay, this opportunity is great, but what's next?

• 1:06:53Steven Bartlett?

  Do you feel fulfilled with your work now?

• 1:06:55Speaker 00

  No, not yet. Too young. It's, it's too much more to go, man. Way too much. Look what Jim Carrey did. Look at Eddie Murphy, man. Look what, uh, Chris Farley has achieved. Adam Sandler, man. These guys are fucking.

• 1:07:09Steven Bartlett?

  Are you happy, though?

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  I'm very happy. Very happy. But fulfilled? No. I have so much more.

• 1:07:17Steven Bartlett?

  Is it not possible to be fulfilled and also to be in pursuit?

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  Is there a way, you're saying, to be both?

• 1:07:22Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, like to be fulfilled with.

• 1:07:24Speaker 00

  No. Your hunger has to always continue to live. Any, anybody that's

• 1:07:28Steven Bartlett?

  You look at me like, nice try, man.

• 1:07:31Speaker 00

  Anybody that is pursuing greatness will never tell you that the hunger has stopped. It has to continuously keep going. There's, there's no way. No way, man.

• 1:07:40Steven Bartlett?

  So closing off in this period of your life where you're, you're still at your mom's house, when did that change? What was the moment where you were like, sure, I can leave now?

• 1:07:48Speaker 00

  Well, I had all my clothes stacked in the living room because I, people started to send me so many merch clothes, you know, when you become, you know, at the time, like everybody's, and I've influenced her. They, they would send influencers all type of loads of clothes. They want you to wear it in your next video or whatever you're doing. So I had all these clothes stacked up in her like dining room area. I wouldn't even say living room. It was like the dining room in the front of the house. And I started to kinda make some money to where I was like, all right, maybe I need to find like an apartment now, that now to have some type of money I can actually get out of here. But I think me crowding up that dining room, I started to notice, okay, now I can kinda live on my own. But it wasn't until I started to actually,

• 1:08:32Speaker 00

  the thing that changed my life at the time was Drake calling for the Laugh Now Cry Later music video. Everything shifted after that because brands started to take me seriously. It wasn't no more sending free merch and, oh, you get this, or we'll bring you out to this event and we just want your appearance and you could get in free. Now it's transactional with everything. Once I was seen on a higher level with, you know, Drake, it's, I think at the time, it was Lil Dirk. We had Marshawn Lynch, Kevin Durant, Odell Beckham Jr., all in this video alongside with me.

• 1:09:11Speaker 00

  And me being the comedic relief in this video, which was called Laugh Now Cry Later, this meant a lot more than just

• 1:09:18Steven Bartlett?

  How did that happen?

• 1:09:18Speaker 00

  another music video.

• 1:09:20Steven Bartlett?

  Where, where were you when you found that out that he had called?

• 1:09:22Speaker 00

  No, he just, he just was a, was a big fan of a lot of the stuff I was posting during that early time. But it wasn't until then, no real money was coming in. No money at all. But that, that shifted everything because brands started to see me in a broader light. And they started to see me as an actual star, sort of say, instead of just another amongst all these other guys who are doing comedic things, you know?

• 1:09:51Steven Bartlett?

  But were you speaking to him directly on DMs or something?

• 1:09:54Speaker 00

  It was just all through DM at the time, um, up until I met him. But yeah, all that was like, it was very just short back and forth, laughing at this video, laughing at that video, find this funny, find that funny. And then we had like a long conversation once he told me that I would be starring in that music video. And that was just about like leading this generation of comedy and just what I am to, you know, the world at the time. And, and then I'm, I'm hearing his words. I'm like, yo, maybe this dude's just gassing me up. I don't, this is, this is wild to hear from somebody who is, in my eyes, a full-blown superstar, mega star.

• 1:10:31Speaker 00

  But yeah, could, that, that's one of those things is just like, could never repay him, man. Like that was, to take a chance on me at the time, just doing silly stuff of what I, I thought was great. But at the time, it was so, looking back, I've had great stuff, but it's like so minimal to what I do now. It's like, I can't believe he took a chance, you know, on me in that circumstance. But it, it shifted everything.

• 1:10:57Steven Bartlett?

  It shifted everything almost immediately.

• 1:10:59Speaker 00

  Almost immediately, yeah. I think it was, it was almost more of a seriousness that people took me more than just showing up for things. You know, the transactional conversation started to go into play.

• 1:11:13Steven Bartlett?

  When you look back on your arc and you hear about other people's journeys and arcs, what else have you learned about? Again, what it takes. There's the obsession. There's the dedication. There's the hours. What about like the business part? Like, how do you climb ladders? Is it people? Is it knowing a guy?

• 1:11:27Speaker 00

  It's all, all relationships. Even in the biggest buildings, majority of it is relationships. Of course, your talent weighs a lot. But relationships are very much key.

• 1:11:41Steven Bartlett?

  What does that mean for someone that has no idea what goes on in these buildings?

• 1:11:45Speaker 00

  A relationship is key because these people wanna know that you are a good person to be around. They wanna know if, if you're gonna be starring in my T-Mobile commercial,

• 1:11:57Speaker 00

  we wanna have dinner, which we wanna see what type of person you are. They wanna make sure you're not a guy that's gonna go out and do nothing wild after we trust you with this. You're gonna be all over TV. We trust you with these things. You, we sign you to a Nike deal. You're in a T-Mobile deal. These people, it's all about relationship. Who you know, how you treat people. They, they like to sense what type of person you are in a separate environment from who you are as the celebrity Druski. You know what I'm saying? Like, people tend to wanna meet who the real you is before we present you to our world. We wanna see who you are as a person. So I feel like a lot of my upbringing was around

• 1:12:36Speaker 00

  this broad horizon of different, different ethnicities, different genders of everybody. We, we had Indian people, Mexican, white, black, African, Jamaican, everything, you could everything, wouldn't count it. So that type of stuff shaped me to be able to go in these rooms with these bigger brands and be able to talk to anybody. I'm

• 1:12:55Steven Bartlett?

  Did you have to learn something to do that? Did you have to mature or learn a skill of like coming from where you come from to be in a, a room with these big brands and these people in suits in corporate America?

• 1:13:05Speaker 00

  Nah, man, it's, it's, it's funny because I, I always have been a people person. Like, I, anytime I would, as a kid, go into a grocery store, my mom, I would like, if I saw a kid's parent that plays with me on a football team, I saw his parents walking around, I would go up and talk to his dad and like make him laugh and joke. I'm like, hey, man, give me a cigarette, man. Let me get a cigarette. You, you better go outside and smoke, and smoke a poop, man. And just jokingly talking as if I'm not 10 years old. But I think that is a big part of what I've learned about, you know, just the industry in general. It's about, more about relationships and, you know, how you treat people and how this interview goes or how this, you know,

• 1:13:51Speaker 00

  this dinner is with this guy who may not know nothing about you. He may not know your background, nothing. Are you able to have a one-on-one conversation with him and have him trust you? And whatever goes down, whatever you're talking about, are you a good person? And I think it comes down to that regardless of anything you do. Yeah, so.

• 1:14:10Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting because when you're dealing with like corporate America and you're dealing with these big brands and you've mentioned T-Mobile and all these other brands, you've got this, this, this sort of off-camera Drew guy who meets them for the dinner. But then you've got Druski on camera. And Druski on camera, part of your comedy is you really like push the boat out. You say the part out loud that most people wouldn't say. How, what, what is your decision framework there with like, cause there's this term, you know, I worked in advertising for a long time. There's this term, brand safety, which means like, is this person sufficiently sanitized enough that we can use the word like, trust this person with the brand? But then on the other hand, the thing that people love about you is you say the part that other people don't say. You point at it. What's your risk equi- when you're thinking about content? What's the like framework you use to decide whether this is okay or if it's not okay?

• 1:14:55Speaker 00

  For sure. No, that's a great question. Um, I think the way I look at all of this stuff and, and people ask me that all the time in person, whenever I see him, is that I've never punched down with any jokes that I ever do. Any jokes I ever do always come from a good-hearted place. Even if I'm doing auditions, a skit that I do, anything, you can never show me something that I've done that was like, oh, that's punching down. Or that wasn't inclusive of the other person that might have been in that situation. Or, oh, he doesn't, he doesn't touch on this because of that, or he doesn't do that. I always come from a lighthearted place and a good-hearted place of my comedy. I never was the guy to be, cause you do have it. You have those guys out there, like a Sacha Baron Cohen that has like

• 1:15:40Speaker 00

  the dark humor of things. And maybe he might have upset some people that were, you know, and it might come from a bad place. I don't know. I've never met the guy. I don't know. But I come from a good place with majority of all my humor.

• 1:15:54Steven Bartlett?

  I've just got this mental flash of you doing this.

• 1:16:00Speaker 00

  But even then, even, even with that, even with that, comes from a good place, didn't touch on anything because at the, at the, in the same tone, I'm not a political guy. I'm not a guy that's going out here trying to portray this. Like, I know anything about anything. I am just the guy here for laughs. Comedian, I don't care for none of that serious stuff. People ask me all these deep questions. I'm like, yo, I don't look at anything like that. Like, I think I'm just being me. I never was trying to get into no deep side of anything with nothing.

• 1:16:31Steven Bartlett?

  You are consistent. That's why I went through, I was going through all of your, all of your skits. And I was thinking, he's consistent with, with your values and what, you're not aiming at anyone in particular. You're just pointing out the funny

• 1:16:43Speaker 00

  And never punching down. That's a, that's a big one. People can never show me anything where it's like, okay, he's punching down at this. This is a, it's coming from a bad place. It's always me genuinely just speaking on what's funny or mannerisms or things that I, I see people do where I'm people watching or, you know, just exposing things to the world that we see, that we don't notice that we see.

• 1:17:05Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:05Speaker 00

  And it has nothing to do with the fucking political side or the race side and all that stuff. It's just stuff that's going on in real life that we see. Sometimes comedians have a, have a way of showing the viewer something that they don't notice that they see. It could be in the back of your brain and you can bring it to life and be like, wow, I might have saw that 15 years ago, but that's funny because I remember seeing that. You bring these things to life. This is what a great comedic actor does.

• 1:17:35Steven Bartlett?

  I think it's probably, there's probably something in the fact that if, if both sides at some point are angry at you or shouting at you for doing something, at least that means that you're not politically affiliated necessarily because you're trying to fill things down.

• 1:17:48Speaker 00

  Know what the fuck. I don't even, I don't even touch on none of that political or

• 1:17:54Steven Bartlett?

  But it means that you're just finding things funny everywhere versus just finding them funny over there or just finding them funny over there.

• 1:18:00Speaker 00

  I agree. I, I think, I, I just, I, I've never had the want to do that. And some people, like you, you have these late night shows that talk about that type of stuff or, you know, these guys that, that's their spill. That's not my spill.

• 1:18:13Steven Bartlett?

  Same with podcasters.

• 1:18:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, some people have. Yeah, they, they touch on that stuff. And I feel like with you, you never get too in-depth with any of that. You let them talk and you just ask whatever you're gonna ask and it just happens how it's gonna happen.

• 1:18:27Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. And I'll sit with Michelle Obama or JD Vance or Ivanka Trump or Kamala Harris. I've sat with all of them. I'll sit with all of them and I'll ask the questions I'm curious about. And I think it's possible just to be curious, you know? So

• 1:18:39Speaker 00

  I agree.

• 1:18:39Steven Bartlett?

  Sounded like Trump did ask Erica Kirk to sue you, though. But you must be, this is crazy.

• 1:18:45Speaker 00

  I don't know if that's true. I don't know.

• 1:18:47Steven Bartlett?

  Well, it looks like it. It looks like it. I read it and I thought that can't be. That's, there's no way that's true. There's no way that's true. Here we go. In March, you released the video of how conservative white women in America act and it did hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of views. I think I watched it like

• 1:19:03Speaker 00

  Insane.

• 1:19:03Steven Bartlett?

  20, 20 times.

• 1:19:04Speaker 00

  Insane, man. Insane.

• 1:19:06Steven Bartlett?

  And then in April, exactly one week later, Trump made the comment to Erica Kirk that she should sue him. He didn't say who, but I'm just saying, that is

• 1:19:19Speaker 00

  Who knows? I don't know if he was talking about me.

• 1:19:22Steven Bartlett?

  Who was he talking about? He was talking about me.

• 1:19:25Speaker 00

  To this day, I have no idea. But people sent me that video. I just didn't know if it was pertaining towards me. I just

• 1:19:32Steven Bartlett?

  It's crazy.

• 1:19:32Speaker 00

  Just left it alone. I have no idea. I have no idea. I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:19:38Steven Bartlett?

  That's crazy, though.

• 1:19:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:39Steven Bartlett?

  But even in a weird way, it does speak to the impact that you're working.

• 1:19:44Speaker 00

  If, if he was, I don't know if he was, though.

• 1:19:46Steven Bartlett?

  You hope he was. You hope he was.

• 1:19:50Speaker 00

  I'm not looking to get sued by nobody. I'm not looking forward to that. No, no, man, no. For sure, no.

• 1:19:57Steven Bartlett?

  Is it a compliment in a weird way?

• 1:19:59Speaker 00

  Uh, not necessarily. I don't, I don't think I would look into getting sued by anybody.

• 1:20:07Speaker 00

  We have too much shit that we're pursuing right now to be looking forward to that. No, not at all.

• 1:20:13Steven Bartlett?

  That's crazy.

• 1:20:17Speaker 00

  I love how you said that. That's crazy.

• 1:20:20Steven Bartlett?

  No, but that is, it's crazy. Thinking about it, I'm like thinking about you in that room with your sister's blanket. And then, and then I just had this mental, then Trump's like, sue him.

• 1:20:31Steven Bartlett?

  In the White House, which is just, that's crazy.

• 1:20:35Speaker 00

  I don't know, man.

• 1:20:36Steven Bartlett?

  Kind of inspiring in a weird way.

• 1:20:37Speaker 00

  No, but I don't think that was towards me. You're saying.

• 1:20:39Steven Bartlett?

  I think it was. I think it was.

• 1:20:43Steven Bartlett?

  Well, we'll never know until someone asks him. But I mean, yeah, so since then, it's been, you've had a unbelievable career. You've, and you've really managed to do something that very few people who start out making content on the internet are able to do, which is traverse multiple industries and mediums. I feel like I've seen you everywhere from commercials. Did you do the Super Bowl?

• 1:21:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, we did a Super Bowl commercial.

• 1:21:05Steven Bartlett?

  You did the Super Bowl?

• 1:21:06Speaker 00

  Last year was Dunkin' Donuts Super Bowl commercial. This year it was T-Mobile with the Backstreet Boys.

• 1:21:11Steven Bartlett?

  This Dunkin' Donuts commercial?

• 1:21:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:14Steven Bartlett?

  I heard this crazy story that they accidentally sent you Jim Carrey's money.

• 1:21:17Speaker 00

  Carrey's. No, they didn't send the money. They sent an email showing how much he would be getting paid for that hour.

• 1:21:24Steven Bartlett?

  Oh.

• 1:21:24Speaker 00

  Or the two hours that he was there. Insane. And they weren't supposed to. They were actually mad that I even spoke on that, but.

• 1:21:31Steven Bartlett?

  He didn't even show up. He didn't even accept the job.

• 1:21:34Speaker 00

  I don't, I don't think he ever said yes to it, but they accidentally sent it to me, assuming that it was, I guess, Jim Carrey's management. They sent it to my management and I think they accidentally sent the proposal.

• 1:21:48Steven Bartlett?

  Oh.

• 1:21:49Speaker 00

  Which was supposed to be for him. And they might have sent my proposal to him, but his proposal to me. I can only imagine if he saw the amount I was getting paid. That's probably why he didn't do this shit. He probably saw my shit.

• 1:22:05Speaker 00

  Jim Carrey saw the proposal, how much I was getting paid for this shit. I don't know. I don't know. But, um, yeah, no, it was, it was an insane amount of money. And I was like, wow. I, I, that, that gives me a lot of inspiration to become on that level one day.

• 1:22:20Steven Bartlett?

  People are saying it was in the region of five million dollars.

• 1:22:24Speaker 00

  It's around that. Yeah.

• 1:22:25Steven Bartlett?

  For two, for two hours of shooting. And they sent you that figure. So you got to see what he was being paid for two hours, which is too.

• 1:22:31Speaker 00

  And I hope he didn't see mine, because that would have been, that would have been embarrassing.

• 1:22:34Steven Bartlett?

  So that's a 2.5 million dollars an hour to shoot a commercial and he said no.

• 1:22:38Speaker 00

  He said no. So imagine what he wants.

• 1:22:42Steven Bartlett?

  I'm not sure if it's money.

• 1:22:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that is something I look up to him about. He's one of those guys that doesn't look at a money sign and just say yes to. He's one of those guys that genuinely cares about his craft and his legacy. He still hasn't done a Grinch two yet. I know they're shooting it right now, but up to this date, they didn't, until last week, they didn't announce that they were shooting Grinch two. So how much money was he wanting before, or was it even about money? Or did he just not want to do another one? You never know. I don't know. But I feel like he's very specific about everything that he does. You ever seen Fire Marshal Bill from In Living Color?

• 1:23:24Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 1:23:25Speaker 00

  Oh my God. You have no idea. You haven't seen shit. That's the like damn near the beginning of the character of Grinch. Fire Marshal Bill is like the teaser of what the Grinch became. And the mask, it has a twist of the mask in there too, but like. I think he was like the only white person on In Living Color at the time.

• 1:23:43Steven Bartlett?

  He's an interesting guy. He's like a very philosophical.

• 1:23:48Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 1:23:49Steven Bartlett?

  Wise.

• 1:23:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's very wise, man.

• 1:23:52Steven Bartlett?

  Have you met him?

• 1:23:52Speaker 00

  Never met him. One day. That's another guy that's on my, um, list that I would love to meet, man. Love, love, love to meet.

• 1:24:01Steven Bartlett?

  Part of the game that we often don't speak about as well with people like yourself is just the rejection along the way. Because your story could quite easily be portrayed as this sort of like, you know, bump in the road here, college, a couple of issues here. This situation happens, Drake calls after you've spent a long time on your own posting and compounding and then off to the races. Happy ending. But there's still rejection along the way. I was reading that you were rejected by both Netflix and Amazon.

• 1:24:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, early on.

• 1:24:29Steven Bartlett?

  What was the proposal you made to them and what was that?

• 1:24:32Speaker 00

  I think it was multiple. It wasn't just one time. I think we've, we've years and years of proposals and I had like different FX proposals. Like we were supposed to get a show with FX. It was a no. We're supposed to do a movie with Amazon. It was a no. Supposed to do multiple different projects with Netflix. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And we just never gave up. And I eventually said, if I'm getting money from these companies

• 1:25:03Speaker 00

  and they're paying me, instead of going and buying a car or another house or maybe a, a nice jewelry and all this stuff, I'm going to invest in myself. And I decided to just go and all these show ideas that I had, I'm going to do it on YouTube and spend my own money to invest into it. And that, and that is essentially what I did. And I think that's brought to you, could have been auditions, that's brought to you, could have been love, that's brought to you, could have been house, could have been daddy. Amongst other things like you've seen in the Druski universe of taking it to another level with all the sketches and the production I've done and the millions of dollars I've spent and all these things, I, I started to

• 1:25:47Speaker 00

  just believe in myself and not turn around and try to, oh, I'm going to come back and try to do the same proposal again in a better way. It's like, I'm just bet on myself.

• 1:25:55Steven Bartlett?

  And then they cool?

• 1:25:57Speaker 00

  Now it's, yeah, it's a whole different story. Now, now they want to purchase these shows that we've made and do more in the future. Yeah. So now it's a bidding war.

• 1:26:09Steven Bartlett?

  What is the lesson there?

• 1:26:10Speaker 00

  The lesson there is just believing yourself, man. Before anybody sees the vision, you have to see it. If you don't see the vision yourself, you're almost doing yourself a disservice. It has to start with you. And I think most people don't understand what they have in front of them. Everybody's like, oh, I'm waiting on the big movie. I'm waiting on my big movie break. Once I do it, da, da, da, da, da, I'm gonna do this. Once they give me an opportunity, I'm waiting on my opportunity. Shit, I'm gonna just keep da, da, da, da, da, until they give me, I'm gonna keep. You don't even believe in yourself, man. All that money you got last year from this and that and all these things, you didn't put not one dime into your content. You still shooting the same shit with the same phone. And that's cool. Some people are cool with that. You don't need much. Not saying you need the big productions I have, but you don't.

• 1:26:56Speaker 00

  But are you really doubling down and betting on yourself if you're not investing in your own stuff? And that was a conversation I had to have with myself. And I was like, damn, I'm gonna show them not by coming back and doubling back. I'm gonna show them by doing it myself and having them wanting what I did in reverse. And maybe they don't want that. Maybe they'll see what I was capable of doing and then wanting to do other things.

• 1:27:22Steven Bartlett?

  But along the way, you're going to have to have a lot of smart people.

• 1:27:25Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 1:27:25Steven Bartlett?

  Who

• 1:27:28Steven Bartlett?

  by their job title or their status or their LinkedIn bio.

• 1:27:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:30Steven Bartlett?

  Evidently know much more than you do, telling you that you're wrong, telling you that that idea is not a good one.

• 1:27:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:37Steven Bartlett?

  And that is something that I guess you have to like conceptualize in your head. Like, how do I deal with that? This smart person at insert streaming platform is telling me no.

• 1:27:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:44Steven Bartlett?

  But I think yes, and they.

• 1:27:46Speaker 00

  Plenty, plenty of people have told me no, man. Even down to the dudes that I was telling you that were making fun of me at the college saying, oh, you don't even have no shoes to go out with us. Why would we pick you up? I told those guys on the, the second to last week, I kind of was going to classes, that I was gonna try to pursue comedy. And they were like, bro, come on, man. They were like, yo, you're funny, bro, but you ain't, you ain't that funny. Think about what you're going up against. You're going up against like Kevin Hart or like the kings of comedy, Bernie Mac and all these guys. Think about it, bro. What they doing? That's big. That's like unfathomable. Like you can't even, till that day, I'll never forget that conversation.

• 1:28:28Speaker 00

  Cause it was like a little side conversation with them. Maybe it was like, oh, whatever. They probably might not even remember that conversation. It was just like a whatever conversation to them.

• 1:28:36Steven Bartlett?

  Were they right when they said, by the way, Drew, those legends are up there and you're down here?

• 1:28:41Speaker 00

  Not a, not a shot.

• 1:28:43Steven Bartlett?

  They weren't right?

• 1:28:44Speaker 00

  Not at all. I believed even then, I, I could already see it happening. Like I had visions of it already being in front of me before I even got a chance to actually do it.

• 1:28:57Steven Bartlett?

  I guess also what I'm saying is like, they, they, they could have been theoretically right that there was a long gap. It's not to say you couldn't close it.

• 1:29:04Speaker 00

  No, it's, no, there's not to say I couldn't close it. I agree.

• 1:29:07Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:07Speaker 00

  But what they were saying is almost like, as if it wasn't even possible.

• 1:29:12Steven Bartlett?

  Possible, yeah, okay.

• 1:29:13Speaker 00

  The way they put it was almost like, come on, man. That's so, that's so wild to think.

• 1:29:20Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know why I say this? It's because there's so many kids right now that are looking at you. Or they're looking at, I don't know, insert sports athlete or insert podcaster and they're going, they're looking up at a mountaintop and they're going objectively, that person is better than me. They have the skills. They have the mannerisms. They have the body language down. Like the gap is so big that I won't even bother. And that's kind of what I'm pointing at is, did you ever feel, did you ever know the gap was big?

• 1:29:45Speaker 00

  I never looked at it like it was a big gap. I always felt, cause when, what, I'm gonna tell you the, the problem with looking at it like it's a big gap. Once you process your brain of thinking this is so far unattainable, the journey becomes not even, like you're not even thinking these steps could happen. There has to be steps. So I, from me seeing that those guys are great, they've all done amazing things. I look up to all of them. But I know it's achievable. I, I had steps in place that I knew. And nobody else could see these steps up to this level of trying to be great. Nobody else sees that. You, you're the only person that is able to see these small steps. So once I started to see the small steps, I'm like, I'm only going up a ladder.

• 1:30:30Speaker 00

  I'm not, not getting closer. I said, I know that this is a far maybe thing, but I'm not looking at it like that. Because every small thing, I'm, I feel like I'm gaining in on it.

• 1:30:42Steven Bartlett?

  So you were just focused on the small steps?

• 1:30:44Speaker 00

  I was focused on the small step. I never, if you focus on the far goal, no, you'll never achieve shit, man. I'm saying it's funny, but it's the truth. It's like, let's say you're like, oh, I'm gonna win an Oscar and you just started as an actor. Yes, you can say I want to win an Oscar, but what are the small steps you're gonna do before achieving? What are the, all these stairs, all the way to where the fuck this Oscar is at? If you don't look at all these stairs, bro, you, it's like looking at a mountain without the ladder. You, you gotta find a way to climb this shit. If you don't see, if you don't have no steps or no ladder or nothing, you don't have no way to get to it. I agree with what he is saying. In a way, but not really. It's like, I'm gonna build my own steps to get in there.

• 1:31:26Steven Bartlett?

  Cause he's saying, don't even bother.

• 1:31:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's saying, don't even bother. That is so far out. Come on, man. You're funny, but you ain't. These dudes is like, he's looking at them like they're like a god. Like this is. Don't look at yourself like that. That's, you, as if they didn't come from the same thing.

• 1:31:44Steven Bartlett?

  Because those gods, those people you're looking up to, they, when they were nineteen, twenty.

• 1:31:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:49Steven Bartlett?

  They, they probably.

• 1:31:50Speaker 00

  You believe that they just were always destined.

• 1:31:52Steven Bartlett?

  Exactly.

• 1:31:53Speaker 00

  You're not thinking that. You, you're thinking, you see them in this light of like, oh my gosh, this is that guy. But you don't see the process. Once you break down what every single great person has done, you start to see they all took these steps. Nothing just was like an overnight thing.

• 1:32:11Steven Bartlett?

  I do ask myself though, because through that, through that journey up the ladder, sane people, it goes back to what I was saying earlier, like sane people wouldn't, like wouldn't bother because there's always up the ladder, naysayers, and there's easier money at Red Lobster.

• 1:32:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:32:25Steven Bartlett?

  There's easier money at this call center over here selling this. You can scam that over here. Like there's, there's other things going on and.

• 1:32:31Speaker 00

  There's easy money everywhere too. That's, that's a thing that most people don't recognize. Some people glorify money, then they glorify the actual pursuit of, of the greatness. Most people will go and grab the money because the money's good and they'll, they will dilute the whole brand and wash it away before it was ever even able to start. The whole thing. I've had opportunities, people were like, oh, come and do my music video, do this. And when I was on the way up and I kept thinking, I was like, damn, if I do all these random music videos, yeah, he got a couple thousand dollars from me. He's a drug dealer. He got a couple thousand. I can go grab this, but I'm thinking about my image. I'm like, damn, this dude's music sucks.

• 1:33:13Speaker 00

  If I'm doing this for a quick $2,000 and I'm on the way, I'm on the way. I see where my greatness is going. But if I grab this quick money, this might kind of take me off of my pivot. I want to only do special things. I'm not, I, maybe I just kind of don't look at the money right now and I only focus on the, the main goal. And that's when I started to change my way of thinking. Cause at first I was grabbing all the money. I'm promoting everybody's music or video and all this stuff. I was like, oh yeah, I'm promoting your, your, your merch and all this. Then I started to see, I'm like, damn, I'm creating these great things and I'm giving these looks to all these other things and not myself. This is not

• 1:33:54Speaker 00

  where I envisioned myself to be. I want to not care about all this. I want to put all this in the back of my mind. I'm not even thinking about money. I'm thinking about where I'm going.

• 1:34:03Steven Bartlett?

  I was gonna say, uh, I was just, you, you look very healthy.

• 1:34:08Steven Bartlett?

  Look like you've been.

• 1:34:09Speaker 00

  Drinking water.

• 1:34:10Steven Bartlett?

  Drinking water. No, but you look like you've been like hitting the gym or lifting weights or something.

• 1:34:14Speaker 00

  No, man, I just, I, I had to.

• 1:34:16Steven Bartlett?

  You're on set, you're filming.

• 1:34:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I, yeah, we're filming, but also like I just had to like start eating kind of right too. Like I, I started to care about what I was putting into my body and not just not caring. I always will continue to be a heavyset guy. I want to be, you know, one of the heavyset legends of all time, but you ain't gotta be the biggest dude in fucking business. I was like, okay, I'm gonna be a healthy, heavyset guy. And once I set my mind, I was like, all right, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna be a healthy, heavyset dude. Cause I, I understand what my image is. I, I know that's what I wanted to be. And I've always looked up to all the great legends that were like, heavyset dudes like Chris Farley, Cedric the Entertainer, Jack Black. These are guys that are like heavyset guys I look up to. So I never not wanted to be that. I just knew, I was like, all right.

• 1:35:02Speaker 00

  Both, both things can be true.

• 1:35:04Steven Bartlett?

  When did you, when did you think this?

• 1:35:06Speaker 00

  I think like a year ago, it was just like, all right, every decision doesn't just gotta be drinking every night and every decision don't gotta be just gorging yourself with food just because you got money now, you know? It's like, okay, you can eat these things and still go hoop at the gym with your boys. Both things can be true. And that's why I was like, okay. A, a good balance is a healthy lifestyle. I just wanted to have a good balance with each. So I'm at a weight where I feel like, all right, I'm comfortable at. I'm good. I'm good.

• 1:35:36Steven Bartlett?

  You're looking good.

• 1:35:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank you, man. Appreciate that.

• 1:35:39Steven Bartlett?

  What is next for you in your world? What is, what is the big goals, the big aims? You're on set shooting a movie. If we sit down in five years' time, and it's been a great five years since we last spoke, what happened?

• 1:35:49Speaker 00

  I became a superstar. That is my full pursuit right now is now you see, you don't see the blonde hair. You don't see the long beard. You don't see the Druski that you once saw, the social media guy. You see the superstar Druski and what he has evolved to become. That is what my next five year goal is and continuously past that. Like my next 30 year goal is to be the number one comedian of my generation. And be the face of comedy for the next 30 years, how Eddie Murphy did, or how Kevin Hart did, or the list could go on, like Will Ferrell and all these guys that I look up to.

• 1:36:31Speaker 00

  I want to have a run like that. My thing is not just doing one thing for one era. I like to watch people and how they evolve and how they have done different things over their career. When you see Eddie go from the raw stuff into the movies where he's alongside one of the biggest white actors of that time. And he leaves SNL and then he goes and does family movies and all this shit. And then he does like Harlem Nights with, uh, Richard Pryor and he does Life with Martin Lawrence and they team up and you see, come here. I would want to do that same type of stuff for my generation. I want to team up with all the big comedic people of this time. I want to be the face of this generation for comedy.

• 1:37:15Steven Bartlett?

  Have you learned to talk big? Because a lot of people don't have the guts to say, I want to be a superstar. I want to be the number one in my generation. Have you learned to talk like that? Is it a useful way of talking or have you always spoken like that?

• 1:37:31Speaker 00

  I've always spoke that way. Always, always. Even from early on days, like I, I, I, I always wanted to be more than just good. And I know I say that a lot, but that is a, it's a true thing.

• 1:37:44Steven Bartlett?

  Well, I've, I've got the video from you 10 years ago and you're saying, I'm gonna be on the same level as Meek Mill.

• 1:37:48Speaker 00

  No, I know.

• 1:37:48Steven Bartlett?

  And 10 years ago, Meek Mill with it.

• 1:37:49Speaker 00

  See, yeah, yeah, yeah. But at the time, the, the bar was set lower than what I have the bar set now. One of the things that I always wanted to do, I wanted to continue to evolve. So certain things that I've said then, I've noticed that I've grown since then. And I want to break the chains of that. I want to continue to evolve and become this newer person. I want to do the Jamie Foxx and doing the Ray biopic. And you get an Oscar for that. Oh my God, that's amazing. But then turn around and do Django, which is a mixture of comedy and real acting. And then turn around and do a, a, a funny comedy movie. So it's like, that's the type of evolving I'm looking to do in my career where

• 1:38:28Speaker 00

  I can continue to just keep transcending. And I, and I didn't learn to talk that way. That is something that was taught to me from my upbringing, just being confident in myself and just knowing who you are. And that might've been because my mom was recording me from three, four, five, six, seven years old and continuously on and always trying to have home videos of me dancing and making my family laugh and all this crazy stuff. But yeah, the, these are things that I built confidence over time to become, you know, this person.

• 1:39:03Steven Bartlett?

  And if you could rewind the clock and say a couple of words to this Druski on his, uh, in that college dorm room on his own, no friends. What does that guy need to hear?

• 1:39:15Speaker 00

  I would say two.

• 1:39:20Speaker 00

  Believing yourself more than you have ever believed in your entire life. You can be iconic, you are great, you are one of one.

• 1:39:32Speaker 00

  And to stay consistent, even when the road looks rough and you cannot see the hole at the end of the tunnel.

• 1:39:40Speaker 00

  Because that's something that most people usually jump off the railroad for. They can't see the outcome. Once it gets kind of blurry and it's foggy and the nose or like, like I said, my car got repossessed. Most people quit. That's the point. Most people quit. Their girl cheats on them or something bad happens. When you, you, you sat on your knees and you prayed all night and you prayed, pray, oh my God, God, please give me this. I'm looking for this. I want this to happen for me. Then boom, God starts to shift things, shit, things start to shift. And the people, oh my God, this, I asked him for this. Yeah, I don't. It's because he put you through the trial. You didn't even get through the trials and the tribulations yet. You just, he started to remove things from your life as soon as you asked for it.

• 1:40:24Speaker 00

  And now you're questioning why it happened? It's like, this is, this is what you essentially wanted. This is what you asked for. And most people, they get off the track before it even starts. They can't see the outcome, so they get worried and they just jump off.

• 1:40:42Speaker 00

  It's, and, and that's what I would tell myself, man. Stay to it, stay to it.

• 1:40:46Steven Bartlett?

  There's an interesting point here, which is, um, you know, a lot of us, we talk about never quitting, but sometimes you do have to quit, right? Cause like you quit college. I've, I quit college. And, and there's this weird thing because there's

• 1:41:01Speaker 00

  Certain things, certain things. Rappers, if you out there and you still rapping past thirty, quit. Get the fuck off that mic and get the hell out of that studio. Quit that shit. So you're right. Sometimes you do.

• 1:41:19Speaker 00

  Get the fuck out of that studio, man.

• 1:41:24Speaker 00

  I agree. No, that to some sort is, is true. Yes, yes.

• 1:41:30Steven Bartlett?

  And

• 1:41:30Speaker 00

  That's a hell of a way to rap the entire conversation.

• 1:41:33Steven Bartlett?

  But it's interesting because I think it's, everything's nuanced. And when you've got a passion, of course, you pursue it. And when, especially when there's evidence.

• 1:41:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:41:40Steven Bartlett?

  But I wonder in your industry, because there's going to be a lot of people who are pursuing comedy. Who might not have the, and this is the, always the like balancing act. We, I think, you know, I started a podcast and it went well. So I've got a little bit of like survivorship bias in a way like, so the advice I might give to young podcasters is just like, well, just like start it in your kitchen. And then, and then just keep at it for six years and then.

• 1:42:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:04Steven Bartlett?

  But there might have been some advantages that I'm not aware of. In your case, I go, I looked at you at six years old. You were funny.

• 1:42:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:12Steven Bartlett?

  You were funny at six. I wasn't funny at six. So if, if I tried to, to be you.

• 1:42:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:18Steven Bartlett?

  I would, I objectively would have at least had a harder time, if not total failure. So there's almost this weird like self-awareness component of knowing thyself. Because I might stay in the studio past fifty, if you know what I'm saying.

• 1:42:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:34Steven Bartlett?

  Because people like me and you, we, we, we survived, we got there. So we look back down and just go, you know, consistency is the number one thing. But somewhere in there, there's like an element of self-awareness and you must get it all the time. You must have people roll up to you and just start cracking jokes.

• 1:42:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. You have to have a good fake laugh, I will say. Holy shit. Because it does get bad. People just want to come up to you and say random shit.

• 1:42:59Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:00Speaker 00

  But no, I, I do agree with you. You have to have a sense of awareness and your judgment has to be on point. Cause it's not just about staying consistent. It's about knowing the feeling of this is the thing. So it took me some time with that. It did take me time. But I think most people aren't.

• 1:43:22Speaker 00

  They're not okay with sitting down in silence and figuring it out. Most people will say, I'm so confused. I'm, I can't figure out what I want to do. I don't know what I want to do. I, I have all these great things I want to do. I want to do everything. But they don't never put their phone down. They don't never try to sit with theirself and figure things out. Nobody tries to remove themselves from all this stuff. That same person will tell you that. Go get high or get drunk or go and leave and go talk to somebody else. And maybe it hurts for them to do that. And that's the thing that people won't sit with themselves and do. But that is one of the main things that shifted my entire life was sitting down in silence and figuring out what is it?

• 1:44:07Speaker 00

  That I want to do. You go through everything you grew up loving to do. You go through everything that you want to pursue. And you figure it out through all that. But until you sit in silence and sit with yourself as the true you. Not the you that's high, not the you that's drunk, not the you that just wants to go to a friend and talk shit and go back and forth about, oh, we're so, we want to do all this shit. No, you gotta sit with yourself and figure this shit out. And most people don't want to do that. And that's cool. But that is the key to figuring it out.

• 1:44:40Speaker 00

  By far.

• 1:44:41Steven Bartlett?

  Druski, we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you. If you could make it happen, who would you most want to be like in your next life?

• 1:44:56Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 1:44:58Speaker 00

  That's currently alive.

• 1:45:00Steven Bartlett?

  Doesn't say.

• 1:45:01Speaker 00

  Michael Jackson.

• 1:45:03Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 1:45:04Speaker 00

  He's arguably the most iconic individual of all time. He achieved real greatness.

• 1:45:15Speaker 00

  Real greatness of like, of all aspects of perfecting a craft. He figured out a way to do it all. He had gangsters dancing in his music video.

• 1:45:29Speaker 00

  He changed his persona. He continued to evolve with his career. He went from the kid artist. Most people can't go from the kid to the real one and still have success. They can't do that. Most people can never do that, bro. He created a whole new entity, a whole new person. And you forgot that he was the Jackson Five kid. You, this is a whole new guy. I would say it would have to be him, for sure.

• 1:45:56Steven Bartlett?

  I watched your, uh, skit pretending to be his father.

• 1:46:00Speaker 00

  Joe Jackson.

• 1:46:01Speaker 09

  Life in the nineteen sixties where you could get away with just about anything.

• 1:46:06Speaker 10

  How was school, Jackie?

• 1:46:08Speaker 11

  It was good. I finally started passing my classes again.

• 1:46:10Speaker 12

  Jackie got a girlfriend.

• 1:46:13Speaker 13

  Ain't y'all worried about selling records?

• 1:46:15Speaker 14

  Calm down, Joseph. You're scaring the boys.

• 1:46:18Speaker 13

  Talking about hit records. Who the man of hit record in this house?

• 1:46:21Speaker 15

  I'm tired of dancing.

• 1:46:23Speaker 16

  You want me to take this belt off? Fix your face, Michael, before I fix it for you.

• 1:46:26Speaker 17

  Joe, can we get ice cream after this?

• 1:46:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was some aspects of Joe Jackson that my dad had, some personality shit.

• 1:46:43Steven Bartlett?

  Oh damn, yeah.

• 1:46:45Speaker 00

  For real. It wasn't hard to, to rip that belt off, man. I've seen it before. Yeah, hell yeah.

• 1:46:50Steven Bartlett?

  What can people look forward to from you? Where should we point them? What, what are you working on? What's your next big project to talk about?

• 1:46:54Speaker 00

  Next big project, uh, the collecting praise show that's coming out in November.

• 1:46:58Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:59Speaker 00

  Me and Mike Epps. It's a show about mega pastors. I did a mega pastors skit. That was huge. And this show is a huge comedic semi-scripted TV show that'll be coming to Netflix and YouTube.

• 1:47:13Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:47:13Speaker 00

  So, so it is, it is between both of us and it is honestly one of the biggest culture shifting shows of all time, bro. This shit is going to be amazing. So that, that's a big one that's coming. The Catch with Emma Stone and Chris Pine is coming out in May of twenty twenty seven. That's a while out. And then just more of Druski, like you're also just going to see me everywhere, TV commercials, uh, movies that we're doing ourself. We just got a movie picked up by Netflix. I can't speak on what it's called. And yeah, amongst so many other things, man, I'm, I'm trying to achieve greatness. So.

• 1:47:51Steven Bartlett?

  It's super inspiring for so many reasons. It's inspiring because you're so young, but it's also it's inspiring because you're so willing to vocalize your, your focus on being truly great. And I think that asks of everybody listening, how can we be greater? You know, and also considering where you've come from in the turbulent childhood you had. And the odds were very much stacked against you for numbers of reasons, for you to pass your way through that and climb to the very top.

• 1:48:13Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:48:13Steven Bartlett?

  Of your industry with much more room to continue to grow.

• 1:48:16Speaker 00

  Thank you, man.

• 1:48:17Steven Bartlett?

  In sixty, seventy years, you have probably left on this planet is going to be unbelievable to watch. And you're a good human being.

• 1:48:23Speaker 00

  Thank you, man. I appreciate that.

• 1:48:23Steven Bartlett?

  On and off camera, which I, I respect tremendously. So we're all going to be cheering for you. And thank you so much for being here. It's been an honor.

• 1:48:29Speaker 00

  Great to meet you too, man. I'm a big fan of your show. You do really well with everything.