How to Transform Adversity into Drive (with Jonathan Collins)

00:00:00 Well, my dad is Melvin Cifus. He is uh one of the original mo members of the rule boys. How was it growing up with your dad and the rude boys and how was your relationship with that? So, my my dad initially um I love my dad now. Let me start out by saying that my dad was young. Mhm. He was 17, 18 when he got that deal with Atlantic Records and he was that young. He was 18 years old, I think, when he first got his first deal. So, he was out here running around. He ain’t know he was he a how could he be a

00:00:28 he was a young man trying to raise a man like he don’t even know how to be a man. My dad was famous. It was his name when I go over my aunt’s house, my grandma house. We watching videos written all over your face. He’s on the American Music Awards billboard and Mike Tyson and Bur and all these people that they be around and I seen that I would go home. We ain’t got no food. It’s so many of us. My mother young, she had to leave school at a young age. She didn’t she didn’t go to high school. She finished

00:00:54 at she stopped in eighth grade. She got her she finished and she moved to college and stuff, but she was living a poverty life. Two one. Hey, what’s up everybody? You tuned in to another episode of Strategic Moves. I’m your host, Ken Da. This is a place where we bring art, culture, politics, and business all together and we do it every Thursday right here on this podcast. When I’m not shooting this podcast, I am the owner of Strategic Resources where we specialize in political campaigns, government, and public relations work.

00:01:21 I’ve been doing it right here in the city of Cleveland for over 25 years and I want to make your next move a strategic move. So, this program gives me an opportunity to do just that. I get a chance to bring on some of the people that I met. We talk about some of our experiences and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get something out of it that’ll help you in your business or your personal life. So, if this sound like something you’ll be interested in, all I need you to do is hit that like button, hit the subscribe button, and the

00:01:47 notification bell as well so that you’ll know the next time this program is coming on. So, without that, we’re going to get going on our program today. I want to thank everybody who’s been following us. And please, by all means, hit that subscribe button. If you’re not, it’s free. Don’t cost you a thing. All you have to do is hit that subscribe button and hit that little bell and you will know every time one of our programs is coming out. And that’s important. So, please subscribe to our program so we

00:02:12 can continue doing what we’ve been doing here to get more good guests on our program. And today, we got a guest on our program who’s none different than that. And he’s interesting guy. And we’re going to talk a little bit about what he’s doing in our community and why we bought him on the program. Before I do that, I want to give a quick shout out to the producer of this podcast to help us pull this thing together. DJ TR, what’s happening, son? What’s going on? What’s going on? Everything’s good.

00:02:38 Everything’s good, man. Just ready to get going on the podcast. We got to do this is a redo. We had It’s a redo. We did this one before and had some technical diffic. So, we’re going to try to make this one just as equally as nice as the first one. So, well, speaking of twice, I got something that went viral twice. What’s that? Marvin Sap. You like coming up with this got nothing to do with this. What’s worse than going viral once for the wrong thing? Well, he going viral twice because people take stuff out of

00:03:23 context. He didn’t do what they said he did and it was two years old. And everybody who done been to church know what it is. I mean, come on. I mean, they acted like it was something different. I done been at church where the pastor didn’t ask people to come down and give as much as they can. If you can give a $100, give a $100 and give 50, give 50. That’s all he did. He didn’t tell them to lock the doors. He said shut the doors. He said close the doors. He said close the doors. And the reason why he said close the door when

00:03:54 you listen to him, he said people was getting up, walking out, and he was like, “Hold on, we’re not finished. Close the doors. I want to raise this money.” He said, “We’re going to raise $40,000 online and on in this audience.” He he added up the amount of people there and the amount of people that was online and he said, “We’re going to do this.” And I think he did. a big part is I think I just think that um I mean not saying that it’s wrong to you know people raise money for churches and I’m a firm believer in paying tithes and

00:04:26 offerings you know to my church my place of worship and helping other causes but I think uh the delivery and how you do it can cause you scrutiny and I think that’s what happened at that situation people just started scrutiny ize how it how it went the amount and you know everybody’s social media clickbait happy. So that’s all that that’s at the end of the day that’s all it is. I mean, it was two years ago. He raised the money. He’s still good. And they ain’t canceling. He’s still running around

00:05:02 here, you know, and and he’s getting, you know, he’s getting a lot of publicity off of it. You know, like they say, never should have paid it, you know, never. But that’s why I mean that’s kind of a valuable lesson that you know I guess be careful you know what you do on social media or what you do in in the public’s eye because now since the you know the world is more media hungry you know you could do something that was in context two to 10 years ago and then they it starts resurf resurfacing like it happened yesterday

00:05:46 cuz I didn’t even know that that was a old thing. I thought it was so just happened. But yeah, whether it was old or new is is is the issue of what people talking about it. But again, I I I tell people this. I don’t loan out any more money than I don’t feel that I would give away. And I don’t um I wouldn’t go to a church and give any more than I think I can afford to give away either. And I was talking to um Zeke earlier and he was talking about billionaires and people with just a lot to have and and

00:06:21 or people with a lot to give and and are they giving as much as they can? And again, I think you know God loved the cheerful giver. So if you in a position you can give, give it. If you can’t, you can. So if everybody in there would have said, “We ain’t got it, Reverend.” and got up and walked out the door. We ain’t got it. Sorry, we ain’t got it. And they would. And it was a lot of people who sat there who just didn’t have it. They just didn’t have it. So, they didn’t give it. But the ones who could, they

00:06:48 did. And if they was able to do it, hey, get it done, you know. So, I I I’m a firm believer in that. I I don’t think Listen, I grew up with Reverend Ike. Y’all remember Reverend Ike? And and and them guys used to call and be like, “You can pay $12 and get this prayer cloth that we got angel tears.” Come on. You You grew up in the TV evangelist days. Yeah. TV evangelist. They would run around talking about they got angel tears. You can buy these angel tears for $2. We prayed over this oil. You I mean, we got this snake oil for

00:07:24 you. Yeah. He didn’t do that. He just said, “We going to raise this money for the church if you got to give it to me.” and and the people standing behind me. Don’t think y’all out of it neither. We getting y’all too. All the deacons, the preachers, all of y’all. He looked right say everybody in here. It’s time for everybody to everybody to Annie up. And that’s what they did. So, you know, hey, I’m I’m just I’m just uh it’s definitely been a conversation piece. So, it’s been, you know, I just wanted

00:07:54 to, you know, run that by you, Mr. Kenda. Man, it’s more BS as we would say, more BS. Well, today we got a gentleman on our program and and and you familiar with this guy as well and some of the work he’s done. And last time coming on the program, we found out who his father was. At least I did. I didn’t know that. So, he got some R&B royalty. Yeah, he he turned out to be R&B royalty sitting in the studio and his and all of that. I’m like, man, I didn’t know none of that the last time. So now we got and

00:08:25 we’re going to change the conversation up a little bit and talk a little bit about a few things today. So today I want to welcome to you guys if you’re just tuning in to another episode of Strategic Moves with Ken Da where we expand we explore powerful interactions of emotional intelligence and community development. Today I’m privileged to host Jonathan Collins a visionary leader and founder of Intelligence Over Emotion Foundation. Jonathan was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Johnson transformed his personal tragedy into a catalyst for

00:08:57 change and creating foundations dedicated to teaching resilience and emotional awareness to communities affected by violence and trauma. His efforts focus on healing and strength in strengthening individuals through education, awareness, embodying brief understanding of our emotions is the key to societal progress. Jonathan is Jonathan is an honor to have you on our show today. And I want to thank you again for coming back out here, man, and doing this with us. And not just me, but enlightening the world because we are a

00:09:31 worldwide about everything that you got going, brother. So, welcome to the program. Appreciate y’all for having me again. Thank you. No problem. No problem, Jonathan. We going to get into it because I know you was a busy man. You came back here. So we going to jump into this podcast and have a like they say we here for a good time not a long time. How about that? Understood. Jonathan, so share with us your personal journey that led you to creating intelligence over emotion foundation and what was your

00:09:57 pivotal moment for you to say you know what this is what I want to do? My the life I live um as a child growing up in Cleveland with a single parent. You go in some details about that. Single parent mom. Okay. 15 years old, eighth grader, and I was a child raised by a child, you know, and through my journey in life, I was able to see a lot of different things in Cleveland. You know, Cleveland got a lot to offer. And it’s it’s an interesting place, especially if you go through the real heart of Cleveland. You know, it’s a lot of

00:10:28 struggling. It’s a lot of turmoil. It’s a lot of pain. And um I was able to experience that and utilize that in my favor and turn that pain into power to fuel my journey. Um my probably my pivotal moment to push me in this direction was in 2011. I lost my brother um to gun violence. Um it was a it was a tragic moment. It was a sporadic moment that nobody seen coming. But it was a reflection of the lifestyle that the people around me were living and it was like again I get messages from the creator and it was showing me like if

00:11:06 you continue the same thing you’re going to get the same results. My friend who died in 2005 Reggie Brown May 23rd uh thank God he died my brother died 6 years later 2011 on the same day. And so again, it was just a eye openener and it really broke me spiritually. And sometimes you got to get broken to get rebuilt. You got to knock down your your old version of yourself, your old lifestyle in the old direction and change that trajectory. And so sometime most of the time turmoil and loss is what really

00:11:38 fuel you. Either it can either motivate you to do bad or it can motivate you to try to find the best version of yourself. Well, you know, um uh one of the things you uh we talked about before and um I’m not gonna let y’all skate through that. You say your mom Yes. say what? 15 of you guys. 14. 14 of you guys. So your mom had 14 kids and you are the oldest. I’m the first. You’re the first of 14. Yeah. First one. You say 15 when she had you. And then give me the rundown. That’s what we did. So it’s myself, it’s my brother Quinton who

00:12:11 is incarcerated doing 11 years. Okay. I have my sister Maria who’s named after my mother Na ne Dominique. Uh Cassandra Bubba. Um Africa, one named Africa. I have a sister named Africa. Okay. Um I have Malik, Robert. We call him Malik. He live in Atlanta. Okay. And then we got Destin. We got Emmanuel. We got Immani. Wow. Um, we have, and I’m sorry, it’s just up so I get draw. We got Imani, we got Divine, we got Naa, and we got Jabass. And hopefully I didn’t miss nobody, but that’s for 14 of us. And And

00:12:49 I did. And what’s the most all of you guys ever been um living together in one home? Um, probably like seven. About seven of you guys. Well, yeah. I mean, when I was a small child, eventually I end up moving with my aunt. Okay. We was living in Garden Valley in like 95 96. Um, and it just got a little my my mom and my grandma and them like, “No, you can’t stay down here.” Cuz it was just everything was happening, right? But they got me out of there and I end up going with my my dad’s mom on the west.

00:13:19 Uh, well, she was down the way at that time, but then I went over with my aunt on the west side. So, I was between my aunt and my my grandma was on 30th. I went to Marian Sterling at, you know, my elementary school, but I end up going on the west side with my aunt, too. So, I was going back and forth. So my grandma moved to Colinwood area and I ended up moving out to out there by Collinwood. So you graduated from high school. I went to Collwood. Yes. And then I went to Texas to a prep school after my

00:13:42 senior year and um I played sports. And so eventually, man, I did a lot of stuff. I ended up like kind of dropping out of school, man. Um athlete, had everything going for myself. Dropping out of college. High school. High school. Oh, you know, we did talk about that’s right. It was high school. Again, I was making knucklehead decisions. Right? I was a young man making decisions on my own and it wasn’t to throw nobody under the bus. I just I got to a point where I thought I need I knew everything and I I had everything going

00:14:09 for me, but I just didn’t do it the right way and I was behind and I thought I wasn’t going to be able to make it. So, I just made the dumb decision which was like I ain’t going to do nothing no more. And that was a bad thing. But my coach end up helping me, my high school coach and got me into school and then got me in the right state. So, I did end up going to college. So, so what what would you would you say is the u advantage of being a part of a big family and what’s the disadvantage of being in a big family if there’s one?

00:14:37 The advantage would be you’re never alone. You know what I’m saying? It’s always somebody there. Um my advantage it taught me certain things. It taught you how to share. Okay? You know, you got you always you have no choice. M I remember at one point was I wouldn’t eat like snacks and nothing without my little brothers and sisters and they probably don’t remember they were so little but like I cut up a nine letter in six pieces and we all get a piece. Okay. And it again it just taught me it taught me some good things about life

00:15:05 and family and people and how you supposed to sacrifice for them and assist them in all areas and and there no no man left behind. M um but it also can be a disadvantage because if everybody’s not on the same page then you got all these different personalities and everybody got these different viewpoints and then if it don’t come together then it clashes. Okay. Right. And it ain’t got to be a physical clash. It could be a psychological. It could be a clash of differences and beliefs and expectations

00:15:35 and then then and then that kind of hurt because if you all don’t come together then y’all spread apart, right? And so if we not working together and building things together and using that advantage cuz it’s a lot of us and we can put money together like the average family that work together. Okay. Um then that can be the that can be that could be a big advantage like you said if everybody was just okay a little bit like you say we can put some wealth together and probably do some things. Yeah. Build

00:16:02 generational wealth. But other families the rich people do the the wealthy minded. It’s a mindset. And so um that was just the most difficult. But again, at the end of the day, it’s nobody nobody’s perfect. We was all this is our all first time living this journey called life. So we we we was learning. I love my family, but it just I feel like like you said, it could have been it could have been advantages and disadvantages. Some things could have hurt us and slowed us down. So So how mom meet dad? Um so everybody who don’t

00:16:28 know his father is a R&B royalty. We here in Cleveland. He was part of the Rude Boys and um he was one of the singers that helped get that going. And your father, tell everybody who your dad is. Mel, my dad is Melvin Cifus. He is uh one of the original mo members of the rule boys and founder members of the rule boys. He went to from down the way 30 went to East Tech. Mhm. Uh my mama as well, she from 40th and Cedar. My dad from 33rd in Central. Okay. So they were all in the same neighborhood right

00:16:56 there. Uh my I believe my my mom lived down the street from Frank at one point. Oh, okay. Yeah. 36 37th or something like that. Okay. Okay. My family from really from down there and stuff like that. And um you know just too young I guess my mother was young. Okay. 15 16 he was 17 you know uh probably about 14 15 I mean he was probably 16 17 you know backyard day was it was okay. It was in the same area the same um um generation sure to say and they just I guess they So how was it growing up with your dad

00:17:27 and the rude boys and how was your relationship with that you know? So my my dad initially um I love my dad now. Let me start off by saying that before I say anything that you know could be utilized in the wrong way. Like you said, you don’t want to get Marvin. We gonna call it You don’t want to get Marvin S. I want to be politically correct and say things as as as logically and smart as I can. Exactly. Now, what you say is how you say it, right? So, I want to be mindful. Yeah. You don’t want to get sept here. No, not

00:17:52 at all. No. But, um, my dad was young. Mhm. He was 17, 18 when he got that deal with Atlantic Records. M and yeah, they was that young. He was 18 years old, I think, when he first got his first deal. So, he was out here running around. He ain’t know, he was he a how could he be a he was a young man trying to raise a man. Like, he don’t even know how to be a man. He’s not a man yet. He’s a young boy, teenager. And he, you know, he was chasing his dream. And with chasing your dream, you got to make a choice. You

00:18:22 either going to get time to what that or you going to get time to that. You got 24 hours. What you going to do? Especially if you ain’t thinking, you moving fast. You end up moving and chasing that way. and it left me unoccupied and my mom to do a job alone. And my mother was My mother’s a strong woman. She just had a birthday on the 28th of March. Turned 57 years old. Young. Yeah, that’s what she was telling me cuz she might. I was like, “Wow, your mom.” Yeah, my mom just had a birthday and I love her. Um, and you told me she

00:18:49 out here working and everything. Well, I guess so. She 57. I’m still working. Yeah, she’s here. She got a lot of She own businesses and stuff like that. She really is my motivation. I the reason why I’m I’m who I am is I’ve watched her. I got you. She was grinding and going to marches and I had families with black nationalists and all type of stuff going on around me and I was just like the young I I looked at I said we was like Tupac mom and Tupac, you know. Okay. She was just moving and running

00:19:13 and like doing what she was doing, but life was taking advantage of a great soul and I was watching good, bad and different, you know, and it just molded me into who I was. But we kind of went on a journey that was my dad was famous. It was his name. When I go over my aunt’s house, my grandma house, we watching videos written all over your face. He’s on the American Music Awards, Billboard, and Mike Tyson and Vert and all these people that they be around. And I seen that I would go home, we ain’t got no food. It’s so many of us.

00:19:44 My mother young, she had to leave school at a young age. She didn’t she didn’t go to high school. She finished. She stopped in eighth grade, but she got her she finished and she she went to college and stuff, but she was living the poverty life. Oh, I’m going go back cuz you know I tell your mom every time you going to be SC. So she stopped going into eighth grade. Yeah. Cuz she was having kids and she had 15 14 of you guys. So she was having them. Yeah. Yeah. And so she did go back to school. You said eventually. Yes. But um but she

00:20:10 my mother was paralyzed like briefly when she had me to where like I kind of damaged her, you know, on the way out and kind of had her in bed. She still had 13 more. Yeah. And so Wow. She was bedridden for like 6 months as I was as a child. So her mom, my grandmother, and you know, some of her family was she was like 15, 16 around that time. But she was bedridden. She couldn’t walk. And so I was going back and forth and you know, I I was kind of learning a lot by myself as a young man. Not again. And my mother

00:20:42 did everything she can, but she was learning, too. And so, um, yeah, she was learning because she was a young girl. It was roller coaster ride. It was roller coaster ride. I mean, she was she she taught me love. She taught me about life. I honestly say if I didn’t have my mother in my corner and I didn’t learn what love was, not the word love, but the feeling of love. Cuz those are two different things. That’s correct. I can tell you I love you and then I can I can abuse you or do something. I can hurt

00:21:07 your spirit. Then I can actually create the feeling of life and you can feel it and it’s like you can feel it and bring those activate your your sympathetic nervous system and make you feel better your parasympathetic and you feel good. You feel it euphoric feeling and so my mother she directed me with that we ain’t have a lot. We was we were lacking resources but we was she was rich with the universal um bank. Her universal bank was rich and she taught me that. She taught me yours was too. It’s everything is in you. And

00:21:39 so by going through that, like I said, it can either make you a monster, a [ __ ] or it can make you can humble you. So it humble me and it brought me closer to the higher self within me. And that’s what really pushed me to. So what what Melvin doing now? He’s he last time you say he was not doing too well, right? Yeah. My dad, he probably going to call while I’m here. He um he had a stroke. That’s 2019. Okay. Yeah. At the end of the right when CO was about to start like that next year, CO started

00:22:04 and he I had custody of him. He was living with me and we were going back and forth through the hospital. He had a gout in his feet and he was just dealing with a lot of different things and um honestly gave me time to spend time with him. Mhm. The times that I probably missed, right? And it was something that I needed so I can evolve to the man that I needed to be. Like I I had to do this with my dad. That’s right. because I I love my dad and I’m a part of him and it’s something that he needed to tell me

00:22:31 so that I can grow into the man that I need to be or I need to see where his weakness was at and I can compare like oh maybe that we got cuz we so similar. They say we we look just like oh y’all look just alike. So we’re so similar in so many ways. But the the difference is is I learned those things and I made those things a point to change to improve not just change. You got to improve and grow and be better. That’s correct. And and so that’s that moment that I spent with my dad was was everything, you know. That’s really

00:23:00 good, man. I want to um damn give shouts out to your dad for all the work he’s been doing and everything else. And big shout out to your mom, man. Like I told you last time, I think that’s really remarkable. And see, she should have went back to school and did everything else. So big shout out to both your parents, man, and all the stuff to help you become who you are. So now we gonna get into the question of why you’re here today and some of the stuff you’re doing with your program. The mission of um

00:23:27 your organization is intelligence over emotion foundation is deeply connected in fostering self-awareness and resilience. How do you see these elements playing a role in community development and personal growth? Well, honestly, the um the community what we we’re dealing with with uh a tremendous issue, not just in our community, but all over the country. every everywhere where a brown and black man reside, we having this issue where we learning how to manage oursel. Mhm. Emotionally, we we got a lot of impulse

00:24:01 decisions. Again, I’m a big Tupac fan, and I can use Tupac as a point of reference where he was out the window spitting and he was this amazing artsy, great thinker, but he had this side of him when he lost himself where he would he would overreact and he’ll become impulsive, right? And as a whole, the brown man, we deal with that. And I feel like if you want to change our current situation, that is a primary focus that we should look into because that’s everything you think of is invented twice. So it comes, it starts in your

00:24:37 mind and then you act it out. So if we want to really change the trajectory of what’s going on around us, we needed to go do some internal searching. And I wanted to make sure before I tried to go say and teach somebody else something I started with myself. This was something that I had to go through because I was in the projects in the trap. It was a project, you know, and I was a specimen and they was looking I can either fail, I can rise, or I can fall. And so I made it through the project. And the only

00:25:05 reason I made it through that project as a black man is because I I took a look deep dive into myself and I started to just figure out because I know like you know you got to inner you know that fourth dimension that’s in you like when you ain’t talking in that mind is just that how you communicate with the creator when you get in there and you be really asking and you be praying you know this really that’s really a art and it’s really until you are acquainted with that a lot of people in our community They they really not they’re

00:25:35 disconnected from that. They’re not really paying attention to that. We we caught up in the everyday rig and roll life. We running fast. We trying to make money. You know, we we lose sight of what’s really this life really about. And that’s the most important thing is the inner you and staying connected with our source, with God. And so poverty and moments alone and and the things that I went through really put me in a seat and made me sit down in myself and learn that spend time with me. Can you tell us

00:26:04 about a couple of maybe one or two stories that you think that inspired you towards making this transformation? Um, again I again watching my mother, she was so creative. She was so spiritually inclined and she was building from the inside out. She was always trying to build herself. She was reading. She wanted to learn. She was learning from everything around her. She was like the sponge. And it really motivated me to want to know more about me because she showed me that there’s more to me. That

00:26:36 was that was one thing. And then growing up here, being alone, not having nobody like not her, but my man, a male figure showing me and walking me through life and helping me understand me, I had to go out there and learn myself. And luckily, I was in tune enough from what she showed me that I was like, “Okay, I was always in there.” And I was always understood that it was a inner me, a inner powerful that uh version of myself that I needed to connect to. And so being an athlete, father, being famous,

00:27:07 being poor, being um out in the street selling CDs and losing my brother, all these different moments, they were really just like they were eye openeners and they were helping me before I knew it, it was like I got a message from my creator and he said it’s like it’s something I got to do. You got to do this. You got to do this. It ain’t what you want to do. It’s got you gotta do this. As a matter of fact, here, give me everything that I gave you. Give me your talent. Give me your music. Give me all that. Wow. You going

00:27:34 to sit down and think about it and I thought about it. Luckily, he ain’t sitting me down in jail or anything like that. I sat down in life and I was in a situation where I was like, I was homeless. I was like, I was poor. I I remember I was sleeping in the back of my mother’s car and this was like 200 beginning of 2009 when my grandma died in 2008 and so I um I was sleeping in the back of my mother car and I was doing my CD. I was coming out with my second my first really CD that by myself and I was like my mother said she

00:28:05 remember the day she I was like my I got to go. I’ll be back. I got to do this and I I burned all my CDs up. I had a one disc CD burner and I sit up and I burned like 500 CDs, thousand CDs with one disc burner. I had burned the CDs so long that I I was falling asleep and I hear ding. And I thought I thought I was hearing a CD burning. It was waking me up like I was hypnotized by it. But I put my bag, I filled it up, I left like I I slept in the car and my and it was this it was a young lady that I was

00:28:35 interacting with at that time and she slept out there with me. She ain’t have to. She had her own house and stuff. You know what I’m saying? But she cared about me so much. She broke that bread with me, which was her time. And I set up like again, I’m this high school basketball star, went to college, all this stuff, father famous. And I’m like, I’m [ __ ] up. You know, I mean, I’m making bad decisions. I’m I’m this ain’t where I’m supposed to be. And I can hear that voice in me like, you ready? Listen

00:29:02 to me. You did it the way you want to do it. And now go do this. And I just start having these visions of intelligence over emotions. uh the this this this grand idea of saving humanity by fixing us psychologically. That’s what that’s how we going to get fixed. That’s our issue is something in here that’s off. And that is really the driving force to our behavior. And again, I was sitting on St. Clair. I was I had did a case study on people cuz I sit outside alone so long. I just was watching people. I

00:29:36 was learning people. the the tendency how people talk. People from Cleveland, we instrumental thinkers. Instrumental, you can be um empathetic, instrumental thinker or analytical. And to be analytical, you like that’s like your your strategy like your math and figuring out puzzles. And then in instrumental is when you think to figure out the who, what, where, when, and why of the individual you’re dealing with so you can take advantage of them. That’s like a lawyer, a car salesman. They see the person walk on there, they like,

00:30:07 “All right, let me,” you know, mean they pick your brain apart. That’s the person that sell the DVDs or the hustler or the person that’s going to rob you. He like, “Yeah, what’s up? Where you from?” Oh, okay. Mhm. Look over at him and now they, you know what I’m saying? They on you. They instrumental thinking, or you can be empathetic, which is interacting with people based off of experience and concern. And that’s that’s the most healthiest way to really deal with a human because analytical is you’re not a

00:30:35 math problem. Instrumental, I’m not trying to get over on you, but empathetic, I’m really connecting with you and I’m really concerned of who you are and so we’re really dialogue and bouncing ideas and we really being genuine with each other. So I learned that in the streets. Like I said, I learned all these tips and tools and I’m like, damn, man. Why are people kind of really messed up? And this is the only thing that’s going to do it. And so he gave me visions and I did it. He gave me I started piecing. I start connecting

00:31:00 the dots and I I I had nothing. I had absolutely nothing. Like I had no money and I still like I’m still not where I’m at. But I had everything I have. I had everything I needed. That’s what I learned about the universe. Like it ain’t about what you got monetarily. It’s about what you can do with absolutely nothing. Right. Right. And if you listen, he going to tell you how to break the code. Well, you know, that’s how black folks survived. If you think about it, is working with nothing to make something. It’s like even when we

00:31:30 talked about the Eli Whitney and the cotton gin and some of the stuff that was made, um, a lot of it was made because you had nothing and out of necessity. You know, you got tired of picking cotton. It had to be a better way to do that. And, and the white man was really happy with the way he was doing it. He didn’t care as long as you was out there every day and he can make you and whip his whip to get you to pick it up. that’s what he was going to do. He wasn’t trying to figure out a better way to help you do that. You had to

00:31:59 figure out a way and it comes out of necessity like what you’re saying. I want to go into uh we talk about your organization and everything and I explain it. Why don’t you explain to everybody exactly what your organization do, where you located and and some of the stuff that you guys out there doing now. So, um my my company is the Intelligence Over Emotions Foundation. Okay. 501c3. Mhm. I’m the founder and I’m the executive director. I’m the mentor. I’m the emperor, the king. I’m everything. I do everything. I I meet

00:32:31 with the kids. I I do the uh meetings with um constituents and stakeholders around the community. Um I’ve been doing this for now two three years. Like technically like I’ve been doing it for like 10, but I’ve been doing it on paper for two years going on three years. What y’all do? like with the organization though. So we well my my primary goal we have programs we program um I started off teaching it through basketball. Okay. Through sports. I was at Hawin High School uh maybe 2021 to 2023 and I taught kids emotional regulation.

00:33:10 I was like a mental performance coach basically cuz I know how to deal with adverse situations like you know when when you shaking up and and your nervous system is triggered. And again, I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. I learned this in the city, in the hood, and just and so I just took that information that I knew and just was using my life as a a tool to help other people. So, I was helping the players. I keep them under control of the bench, try to make them focus and play harder. Um we our primary goal is to teach

00:33:40 self-reflection. Mhm. Mindfulness, self-awareness so that they can have positive socializing interactions and outcomes, make better decisions. And um I connected with uh Case Western professor by the name of Dr. Richard Buasis who is the founding father of emotional intelligence and organizational development. And I he became like a mentor toward me, started giving me insight as I probably was like my 30s at that time. And uh I just fell in love with the whole phrase of um again cuz I didn’t know this is what I

00:34:14 was going to end up doing. I didn’t know it was just a piece of paper and information. And I knew I wanted to help people. I knew about emotional intelligence, but I just didn’t know how I could make what could I do that differentiates from what everybody else was doing. And my first thing I noticed is like there’s no baseline or no information and no study for brown people and the where they are psychologically. We’ve been through a lot. We never we’ve been through SLA. It’s layers of trauma we’ve been

00:34:42 through. We got generational, we got slavery, we got abuse from family. We got so many different layers of trauma. And they talk about it, but they really don’t dive into it. Right. All right. So I I chose and personally I was like I’m going I’m going to figure this out and so I connected with different people different doctors and different stuff like that and I started building this formulating this idea. So now we have programs we have the fundamentals of thinking program where it’s a 8 to 12

00:35:09 week program and they come and learn the curriculum of seed social emotional enlightenment and development. It’s it’s similar to cell social emotional learning. M it’s the relationship between psychology and neuroscience. We’re breaking down psychology of the like the what and then the neuroscience is the why like what transpires when we have an amygdala hijacking the process just of how your thought travel to where you become emotional before you become rational prefrontal lobe neoortex before

00:35:42 you start thinking rationally. So it’s like basically you have no choice but to feel before you think rationally but it’s a process and so again I wanted to learn that and I wanted to share that with other people. So I created this curriculum which I created. Um, how much is that is um proximity? You know, how much is your thinking and all of that based off is based off of your proximity of where you live and um your community and the neighborhood and Oh, it is. Oh, your thinking is that’s a that’s a huge thing

00:36:15 that we don’t understand that we don’t understand in our community or we don’t pay attention to within our community. We’re we are triggered off of each other. We like Wi-Fi signals. You energetic being. I’m an energetic being. You got You got to You’re emitting an energy off. I’m emitting energy off. I can It could be good. It could be bad. And if it’s bad, you can feel it without me talking to you. You’ll be like, “Well, that young boy or that man got something wrong. I can feel it. You can feel it. Everything.” So when we’re in

00:36:42 this state of mind, when we’re in that mindset of poverty, because poverty, middle class, and wealthy are all mindsets. So when we in that thought process we how you perceive things come attitude and attitude come with a behavior. So when you thinking like that you tend to make a create a attitude and a feeling off your body. That’s correct. And so we so just think about just we can just use Cleveland. Think about some of the crime and some of the stuff that go on. A lot of it is is kind of being

00:37:12 boomeranged off of each other. Like it could be a group of people that ain’t nothing wrong but this one person coming and they in a bad state within themselves they can re overreact and respond in the wrong way to have this whole place turn into an uproar. It could be a good party and this one person turning into a shootout. It be four people got shot. You know what I’m saying? Just from this one energy. So we we have to be more mindful and understand how important and imperative it is to learn about the transference of

00:37:37 energy and how we’re feeding off of each other on a continual basis. And again, that’s what I want. That’s just a portion of learning about emotional intelligence and regulation. You got to know how your trauma is really being affected and triggered by from other people. You know, I I said that is because uh when I was listening to you say um you were working at Hawkins and I imagine what you were doing there would have been totally different. Oh yeah. When you was working at CMSD or one of those schools trying to give them that.

00:38:10 I was just sitting there thinking like, man, I did any of those kids even really needed your help there. So that this is the interesting part about everything. We all got a sympathet central nervous system with a sympathetic and a parasympathetic. We all go through chronic stress. Now, what triggers you and what motivates you is different. And some people here, we get tra we’re traumatized. We got PTSD. Like you can get PTSD from living in the hood on on in the wrong hood and being shootouts, all that all that crazy stuff. Fighting

00:38:40 family, you know, a army person got it from going over in Iraq and they got it. But they it’s the same thing. It’s the same thing. And and to them, they could be having issues at home. Yeah. They got things their parents somebody wrong. Yeah. Some It’s something going on in everybody everywhere. It’s you’re human. And so unless you’re perfect, then you’re you’re going to be if you’re not in that perfect perfection place, then you’re going to be doing making human mistakes and human decisions that affect

00:39:05 other people. Right. Right. And so your it’s the nervous system that is is common. You got a sympathetic nervous system. I got a sympathetic nervous system. We both go through chronic stress on a daily basis, right? Depending on where we grew up and what we went through, it’s going to be worse or less. Like so once that is damaged that’s what really triggers other people or affect how you your mood and your feeling and your decision making your rationality how your how you feel. That’s really the

00:39:37 most important thing. So I just like I said this was I I don’t have I don’t I didn’t learn this the traditional way. I really like experienced this stuff. So, it wasn’t from a clinical space until I became partner with Case Western and and now with the juvenile courts where we’re running measurables and we’re doing surveys, we’re actually taking data to study this now. Yeah. Let me ask you a question. It said collaborating is often the key to outreach and impact. Are there other organizations or sectors um

00:40:07 you want to partner with or you’re partnering with now that’s um helping with your efforts? So, who I’m currently partnering with now, um, Ken State, I did, um, First Start program where I work with, uh, juveniles that have experienced, they’re they’re in the foster system and they had experienced trauma and violence. Um, I’ve also worked with uh the C uh Cleveland P public library where I had an afterchool program and I would meet with kids in the community gave them a space to to open up and speak about their emotional

00:40:40 space and what’s on their mind and it was um the Rockport branch um Cleveland public library on the west 40th purist and they had the best best buy tech center where kids would come and hang out learn how to make all you need to know about entrepreneurship make buttons t-shirts They had a they have they have a um studio in there where the kids can record, make songs and so we did a lot of different stuff. We used to hang out with the kids. Um I partnered with the juvenile courts and Case Western Reserve

00:41:09 and we are now we’re doing it. It takes a village program. Um it takes a village healing circle is I I receive a case load of students that are at risk youth that are going through the system or at risk to go through the system. meet with them weekly and mentor them. Teach them character development, emotional intelligence, how to process them feel their feelings, create an environment where they can sit down and conversate, bring different people to the community. Um, I’ve also been um partnering and

00:41:38 working with Denita Harris, uh, Channel 3 News, Josh Cribs. I am a Shine mentor with Denita Harris organization. I’ve been doing that for um going on a year and a half, almost two years. And we’re currently at Miles Park Elementary. Mhm. um working with students. That’s Yeah, I’m gonna come check you out over there. I’ve been that’s what we was gonna try to do the last time. Oh yeah, you definitely we on we every Tuesday we there one o’clock to two we did financial literacy. Eerie Bank came and

00:42:05 some um other um community partners. Um we’ve been And that’s every Tuesday. Tell everybody again. That’s every Tuesday. Every Tuesday um 1:00 at Miles Park Elementary. Um Mary B Mary Bib’s mom is on the board of Shine organization. So, she spends time and we just try to help the community out in any way we can. Um, I’m currently working on a program where um, which I was talking about, it’ll be at the Rocket Arena um, and the Bridge Spaces event. Um, the date was set for June 27th, but that they’re trying to

00:42:36 expedite it and move it up a little bit. They’re going to give us some some free Cavs tickets. I’ve been able to partner with the Monster. You want those tickets now? Yeah. Yeah. Had them come up there. They they’ll be able to come. I took a group. I took about 30 people. They gave me 30 tickets. Okay. I took kids to the game. We take them out learn to the foundry. Learn selling and rowing. Okay. We take them bowling. We take them fishing. I’m going to do an event I’m working on where they’re going to come and learn

00:43:00 how to fix cars. We’re going to teach them young men. You going to change the tire. You’re going to change the brake pads. You’re going to change the oil. And we’re going to teach them how to do a tuneup. and you know just trying to give them tools, resources, jobs, opportunities, and show them different things um so they can just be the best version of themselves and keep get them out of trouble. All right, we’re going to I got three more questions for you. Going to run through these so we can

00:43:25 stay on time. Okay. Yes, sir. All right. Challenges are invincible or and inevitable for the kind of work you do. What are some of your biggest obstacles you face and how have you overcome them? My biggest obstacles I face first, you know, initially it’s is funds. You know, it’s it’s hard to do stuff if you ain’t got the finances. Like I said, I I started off with a dream and that’s no dollar. And so, I was just trying to make things happen. I was happy and I was just building off what I had. So, I had to connect and

00:43:56 learn how to get myself in certain opportunities without money. You know, you got to know how to negotiate, got to get partnerships. um the support from your peers and um the in the community at times sometimes they’ll look at you like what why are you doing this you get judged negatively if I was outside robbing and stealing nobody would bother me but when I was trying to do something right for my people it’s like oh you you this and why you doing this and you around the police and I’m like this a

00:44:27 part of life I’m not around the police they here just like everybody else I’m around you I’m around them you know what I’m And it’s like be happy that I’m trying to support me that I’m doing something, but it’s just like the negative flack from sometimes your own peers and then just just it’s like sometimes it’s like and it’s just being honest. It’s like it’s fraternities around here. You know, you got to you No, don’t worry. Keep going. You got to lock in with certain people and if you ain’t doing this and Oh, yeah. the

00:44:53 politics of it. I got I’m I worked for city at city hall uh mayor’s office community relations for three years. I was able to connect and do I did intervention prevention, resume building, mentoring, after school programs, keynote speaking, and I was able to connect and build my, you know, who I am and get some notoriety in that space. But, um, I when I ran for city council, that’s right. You ran for Yeah. I tried that and I kind of got, you know, they taught me a a lesson. I was green. And when I did that, I kind of

00:45:28 made enemies. I don’t know why because my intentions was this. I was coming from outside on the streets. I thought I was coming to help. I was going to bring the idea and they was like, “Yeah, but it was like, no, well, you got to be with us and you can’t be with these people and you got to stop talking to these people and or if you don’t, that’s cool, but you can’t get this opportunity or we ain’t going to help you here.” And so all the doors start slamming because I don’t know, maybe I was bullheaded,

00:45:53 but it’s like I ain’t picking on nobody’s side, man. Cuz you might not be right. I I’m not a follower, you know? I’m I’m I’m going this way. And if we go all going that way, we all can walk that way. But I’m not following nobody. And like I said, it could part of me could have been some of the trauma that I need to fix cuz I was in the streets. I ain’t trust stuff, right? But I’m I told you my feelings. I feel everything. So I feel I ain’t usually wrong. I’m usually dead on when I feel like that. If if you

00:46:18 feeling didn’t feel it, you didn’t feel it. You know, some uh some uh um some uh let’s see, some of the stuff you are promoting put you on the front front uh the forefront of u psychological well-being. What are some of the daily habits you recommend listeners ought to do in able to keep that emotional health going? Um, first and foremost, you got to be honest with yourself and say that all right, even if because we we like to take mental health and and checking oursel and doing certain things to

00:46:52 improve ourel, we take it the wrong way like like it’s bad. It’s not bad for you to check the trajectory on yourself and want more for yourself. And so you got to you got to be honest with yourself and be like, “All right, what what what are my pros and my cons? What can I do better? My reaction, how I talk to people, what can I improve on?” Not nobody else. You need to do that to yourself. And then once you do that, you you you try to change everything again. Once I took my community health worker

00:47:15 class and I learned that poverty, middle class and wealthy, what divide them is the mindset. So I had to change my mindset cuz a lot of us we in the poverty mindset. We can’t get to middle class and wealthy because the way we think. So I had to start refreshing my thoughts. I started to read more. I started to educate myself about certain things. And Dr. Francis Creswell singing the ISIS papers and um how that’s what people think. Well, my question is what do you want the listeners to think? Is there something

00:47:49 you believe they should do every day as part of healthy emotional well-being? Take time to yourself. Meditate. Start your day off by waking up with nothing on, nothing around you. Quiet. Start listening to yourself. get disconnect from everything and feel how you feel. I I try to go to the lake or go somewhere in the nature and and deregulate and regulate myself and take my shoes off and feel the ground and walk in there. Meditate, breathe, work on your breathing. Speak positive affirmations in your mind to start your day off

00:48:24 before you do anything. Yeah. I woke up this morning and I seen an abundance and I shall partake. I used to say that a lot, man. I was waking up and nobody in somebody else’s house in their basement on their floor now with dirty clothes like I got I’m living with somebody and I you know wash my clothes and try to keep myself as clean but I put the same clothes back on and right but I always thought about it how you perceive things come with attitude attitude come with a behavior. If you want to change your

00:48:50 attitude and your behavior, you have to change your mindset, your thoughts, your paradigm, your frame of reference. Some of the things that we’ve been taught and I mean, we’ve been groomed as a society, we need to readjust those cuz some of them are bad. Okay? You know, we got to fix it. There’s nothing wrong with improving yourself. So, I was sorry there. I would say wake up positive affirmations. Change your environment, who you around, your friend. If you if you particular on your diet and what you put in your

00:49:18 stomach, you should be particular about who you hang out with. Be particular about what you put in your head. You know what? That’s that that’s a really good one, too, because you’re right. And what you put in your head and all of that. That’s the first in your head. In your head, what you listening to, who you listen to, what you talk about, right? If you if you hang around five, they say if you hang around five crackheads, you’ll be the sixth one. You know what I’m saying? You you are what you eat. You are your five closest

00:49:41 people, right? So be mindful who you hanging with and breaking bread and exchanging that energy with those mindsets and those thoughts. Don’t get bird boxed and start picking up what other people thinking and then plant that seed in your mind and it become your thoughts and then your thoughts become your habits and your attitude and stuff. So just be particular on those things. Hey man, I want to appreciate you for coming out man. You did a great job. I’m going to got one last question that I’m gonna let you ask. But when I

00:50:06 ask I’m going let you look right into your camera because this will be your closing out and you get to um answer this question, but also leave a closing information. Make sure in your closing you let everybody know how they can reach you, how they can get in touch with your program, website and all of that stuff. But a question that I wanted to ask you is which is we’re going to look into the future. What are some of the new incentives or ideas that your organization is planning to implement and how do you envision the foundation

00:50:38 evolving in the next few years? And you look right there. Well, my my organization I’m sorry, my organization plan on being the the founders or the we’re going to push the narrative and change the narrative. We’re going to plant the seed of thinking. We’re going to plant that new seed in your mind to sprout up new ideas, new ways of thinking, new ways of interacting with each other, new ways of responding to adversity. Uh we want to create a new earth uh echo and in the now the ego. We want to cleanse the ego. We want to get

00:51:12 out of our old way of doing things and get out of some of that trauma and disconnect from that and really want to really share love. Love is the cure to everything. If you want to we want to fix the the current state that we’re in, we got to start loving on each other. We got to start speaking each other up. We got to start being patient. We got to start sharing more giving. Um that’s how you get your universal currency up. How you treat people is how the world and earth going to treat you. And so if

00:51:41 you’re not treating people good, just know that you going to weather away fast and you going to get old. And you got to treat people with love. Love is the cure to everything. Um, I want to open up a school. I want to create an environment where kids learn about this be as much as they learn about anything else because if you’re not a good person internally, then you can’t live a good and productive life. Um, we want to learn and we want to become the best versions of ourselves. We want to really connect ourselves. So we got we

00:52:17 want to connect to the universe in such a great way to where we really a different people like this world can look different in the next 50 years 200 years. I want to start thinking like a dynasty. We want to really create an environment and a new way of thinking to where we shift the whole consciousness on consciousness on the planet. And I I’ll leave you with this Tupac. I’m a big Tupac fan. And he said he he may not change the world but he will spark the mind of the one who will. And I feel like he did that. And so, Intelligence

00:52:47 Over Emotion Foundation, if you want to catch up with me, I’m a high school basketball coach. I’m at Westlake High School. I’m also with the Cleveland Cavaliers youth sports. You can go to my website, intelligence over emotion.com. Um, and you’ll catch me outside because I’m really active. I really I’m outside and um I’m thankful for the opportunity to be here. I like to thank Mr. Kendall. I like to think strate think strategic moves because they’re giving people like myself opportunities to be seen and heard and

00:53:20 without these type of opportunities or know where people like me would be at. And so I want to be show that love and appreciation. But again, our community must change. We must change the way we think. We must change the way we talk to each other. We must change the way to respond. We must heal. We got to heal. We never heal. When the last time you heard about no violence and no fighting and no no negativity. We got to change that. We got to have a moment to where we can say nobody got hurt today. Our

00:53:51 nervous system is healing and we really coming back to ourselves and we really spreading love. So thank you again. You all have a great day. All right y’all. That is Jonathan Collins. Great man. He’s doing some really good things here in the city of Cleveland and we gonna keep up with him as he involved and get more and more in his program. He’s going to keep us in tune with everything he’s doing. And if you go ahead and you look in the description, we’re going to put in there links of how you can get in

00:54:18 touch with him as well as his program. And to everybody next week, we’ll see you then. Peace. Good job, brother. Thank you, man. Good job. Oh, I was nervous again, man. Y’all Oh, you did great, man. You You will see. I’ll be Hey, I got a quick question. I got a after the Oh, go ahead. A after the podcast question. We going to keep it there too cuz go ahead. Um now one of your programs I thought was really really a good program about you know teaching these youth on uh um changing oil, you know, the whole

00:54:55 mechanic type thing. What is the age limit on that? Cuz I know plenty of like young adults and grown people that need to learn that. So that program is the it takes a village healing circle and again we just getting different people from the village to come in cuz again our village is kind of broken down and we need our village to come back together. So everybody plays a different role. So I have different events and different um speakers or different people come and they they will invest and donate their

00:55:26 time or something that they have to offer. So um like I said I took them I take them to the foundry. We we go fishing. Um the Euphoria donated the bowling the bowling alley and they fed us. We took all the kids bowling and so that’s that that’s just a character development program again because we’re trying to help the young man learn different things. It’s like it it’s it’s sporadic. That idea I came up with was with with a mechanic friend of mine. He has a u he’s a mechanic and he has a shop and he’s like um if you want me to

00:55:58 help anytime we should I’m willing to come help and do something. I said I think we could do something. And so I I was over there Sunday with him and um we just breaking down the plan and idea how we would do it. And again, every male, we I have one female that’s in my uh case load, but every male will learn how to change a tire. They going to take the tire off. We’re going to try to get somebody people to bring cars and donate the car for the moment. Get a free oil change. So is that coming up? Is that

00:56:23 coming up soon? Yes, that’s that’s definitely coming up in the near future. Right now, our primary focus right now is they are weekly meetings. We’re just This is That’s one of our uh side that’s gonna be one of our side things that we do. Yeah. See that kind of stuff you get. Yeah. That’s big right there. We We’ll help you push that. So, just even if you want people to come to the meet, even if we, you know, we got a decent social media following, we can put it on there. If you got a flyer or that or if

00:56:50 you get a little quick video on your phone and say, “Hey, will you share this?” We can do all of that and try to help you get there and help people to come with, you know, cards and training and all of that. We’d like to do that. No, definitely. Again, I got I got probably got I got another kid that just came through my email while I was sitting here. So, I got like 10 now about 10 in my program from this cohort. Okay. I had nine the first. So, it’s almost 20 total. It’s like I said, I deal with all type of kids. I got the

00:57:15 kids at the school. We took them to the playoff square to see the LeBron James uh where they did. It’s it depends. It varies. We just try to uh take them into different environments, see different things, learn different things. and mainly, you know, help them get jobs and help them stay out of trouble. Whatever I got to do to help them not do with some of my what I seen and what I know for certain and what these kids out here stealing cars, I I got a couple of them that they revert back to what they know,

00:57:42 right? That’s why I can’t save everybody, but I’m I’m attempting to I’m attempting to at least give them opportunity, present it to themselves, present it to them, and hopefully if if they if they they like it, they can come with us, we play basketball, whatever, whatever they want to do. We meet them where they at. Meet them. That’s the you got to meet him where they at. All right, brother. Thank you. All right. We good? We good. Excellent.