As a wife/husband and your mother/father first but also a daughter/son, brother, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew, cousin and best friend, the goal is to be an asset and rarely a burden to those we care most about. Beginning with the end in mind, when we go, it should be said that we were major contributors to the progress of loved ones and the legends of our last name. There’s always a lot of room for improvement in this area but it’s also the part of life that we feel most effective. We take pride in how amazing our relationship is and how incredible you two beautiful girls are turning out because of how we are raising you. It’s hard work and dedication to keep it that way. The bottom line, the responsibility of fulfilling the family roles we have is something taken very seriously.

In order to be that asset for as long as possible in this legendary life, we wage war every day with our inner haters — who are content with being overweight, hypertensive (your dad), TV watching, junk eating, lazy folks — with working out and eating right as the tools of their destruction.

Lately we’ve been winning almost all of our battles. Some of them end up with narrow victories because of the #hoodfairy herself, your mom, coming in as the cavalry, saving the day with encouragement, reminders, knowledge, homemade remedies, healthy meals and green drinks. Somehow the inner haters come back every day ready for another battle and so do we.

Coming from a lineage of employees, working for someone else is all we’ve ever known and ever done. You are related to quite a few side hustlers and serial hobbyists, but unfortunately, we aren’t related to anyone who could provide any of us with solid entrepreneurial wealth-building skill sets. So in the summer of 2014, we decided to become part-time entrepreneurs to begin building our wealth. It was quickly found out that to build those missing skill sets, we’d have to teach ourselves. As this is written, we still work together as a programs director and program manager at the Social Justice Learning Institute, advocating for the improvements of the community we live in for the benefit of local residents while building social capital at the same time. Since starting the wealth journey, we’ve been personally and professionally developing ourselves, getting all the bumps and bruises that come with that journey.

Just a note to you… Know that entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart who find satisfaction in getting and giving “participation trophies”. That’s part of the reason why your dad doesn’t let you keep those. In this world, you have to know how to take a proverbial punch to the gut or get your nose bloodied but still get back on your feet and keep going. It’s our job to teach you that. There are those who feel that way so much that they don’t even believe that people like us are real entrepreneurs because we still haven’t jumped all in. There are reasons for that and they are being worked through. There is a progression of success, but that road, like all roads in life, has barriers. One of the main barriers to overcome is fear of failure. Our inner haters created all these negative scenarios of struggle and financial hardship for us in our heads developing a limiting belief that if we went all in, our efforts would end in failure and we would be set back for life. We still are developing the ability to stop playing it safe and trust ourselves to win regardless of the circumstances.

LegendOfSteele.com is a part of that development. You get to read the journey and lessons over time, but so will we. It will be a constant reminder of the work in progress and that we are still growing in the commitment toward being a complete –legendary to you ☺ –  entrepreneur and eliminating the interest in being one. Interested people do what’s easy and convenient. Committed people do whatever it takes to be successful. This crossroad where we are today, is a crossroad that many are at right now, one that you may reach if you haven’t already. Hopefully our lived experience – in written word, in a documentary podcast, and in video form – shared through social media and here on our site, will be a tale of inspiring lessons learned meeting you where you are, showing you where you can go.

Along the journey of life, the glaring imperfections of the system, the difficulty of maintaining a facade of success and the increasing weight of my potential on our shoulders all became impossible to overlook and ignore. We have this unquenchable desire to bring to the world what the universe created us precisely to provide. All that is needed was to take a leap of faith. June of 2014, your dad made the first step by becoming an entrepreneur and that’s also the same time we became a parents again with you being born Carter. That was a definitive moment in life, but we had refining to do. This was a new us and we had to develop a new mindset; a growth mindset. We had to understand that mistakes are good as long as we are consistently learning from them. We found that the difference between failing at something and being a failure is one word; quitting. A failure quits. So as long as we kept doing the work, failing forward, and learning, at some point we would be successful. We needed to learn what it meant to become great, change our thinking about what it takes to be successful, and how to be consistent and present in a world of distractions. After reading more books and making more moves in 3 years than we did in 27/30, we both discovered our voices and languages as leaders, and developed new skills to support our journey together on toward solid purpose.

It’s been three years of pulling these pieces together and it all brought us to January 2nd, 2017, sitting on the couch with you Avery as we were talking about the things you wanted to accomplish in 2017. You said, “Well Daddy, it all starts with making a decision.” So taking you advice, we finally made the decision to chase greatness and even dare to document it. Thanks for making it so simple.

Let the legend begin.