The Wealth of My Mother's Wisdom: The Lessons That Made My Life Rich

by Terrence J

  At Christmas and Thanksgiving, when—as the youngest, newest talent at the station—I had to come in and cover everyone else’s shifts, she and Jaime would come down to the station with me. They’d sit there in the DJ booth, wearing headphones so they could listen to the show. And we’d celebrate the holidays right in the middle of the radio station: string bean casserole, candied yams with marshmallow topping, mac and cheese.

  Their support and encouragement helped me grow for three years at Soul 92 Jams, and the opportunities I had there ultimately led to the career that I have now. I’d found the thing I was best at, and I never looked back.

  “I can’t believe that you were fifteen and you had your own radio show.” Tiffany sounded shocked. “That would never happen in New York.”

  When I was fifteen, I may have desperately wanted to leave Rocky Mount, but in retrospect, I’m really happy my mom moved us there. It’s true—the decision to raise me in a small town ultimately gave me far more career opportunities than I would have had if I’d stayed in New York City, or even Raleigh. In a big city, there’s big competition early on: The application line for the Foot Locker in Times Square goes down the block. I may never have gotten a job there. And DJ-ing an afternoon shift at the local commercial radio station? In a big city? Crickets.

  In Rocky Mount, I was an ambitious fish in a small pond, able to get all the work experience I wanted, working with people who were happy to nurture me. In life, things aren’t always in the order you want them, but you have to follow God’s plan. Sometimes you just have to make the best of your environment. Whether you’re in the biggest city or the smallest town in the world, there are opportunities everywhere. It’s up to you to find and take advantage of them.

  That was the opportunity that my mom unknowingly gave me. But what she also gave me was natural ambition. I inherited that from her; I was born with it.

  The result of my mom’s encouragement was that I was always thinking big. The second I walked into the door of a new job, I would be analyzing who was doing what, and what it meant. And then I would try to figure out how I, too, could get to the top of that food chain. What did it take to be the absolute best at what I was doing? It didn’t matter if it was a minimum-wage job: The minute I walked into Foot Locker, my goal was being Employee of the Month by selling the most sneakers, and eventually owning my own Foot Locker. And then, once I got on air at Soul 92 Jams, it was moving from a weekend show to a coveted day shift. I was always looking up. I was always looking for the next opportunity.

  In life, you’re going to hit stumbling blocks. It happens to everyone. What’s important is what you do after you hit that stumbling block. Do you give up and sulk? Or do you find another path? Do you keep looking up, and try to find a new way to get there?

  After you get told no, what happens next is really up to you. The person who tells you no doesn’t have that power. They may be blocking that opportunity, but your attitude toward that no is what’s going to shape your life. If you have a negative attitude about being defeated, not getting a job, getting cut from a team—if you take those life failures and sit in a corner and mope, decide not to put yourself out there anymore—then nothing good will ever happen to you. That energy is very transferable. But if you take that no and use it as an opportunity to figure out what you really want to do with yourself? That’s how you make real progress in your life.

  In Rocky Mount, I was horribly embarrassed that I didn’t make the basketball team. All the cool kids played basketball and football, but I was too short for basketball and too skinny for football. Instead, I found something different. Radio was unique and special; soon, people would look at me and say, “That’s the guy from the radio.” That was my in.

  If I’d been playing basketball I might not have found the radio station; and if I hadn’t found the radio station I might not have chosen the path my life has taken. Honestly, even if I’d made the basketball team, I never would have made it to the NBA. But that job at Soul 92 Jams? The hustle that I learned from my mom? The drive that pushed me to find the thing I truly was “best” at? That is what made me the man I am today.

  * * *

  In Her Own Words: Lisa on Hustle & Ambition

  Ambition and hustle are the mothers of invention. You have to find your own opportunities. Scholarships that are available to pay for school. Services that no one else is offering. You should never sit back and wait for the phone to ring. You need to be on the grind, as we say; looking for that next opportunity. Constantly trying to move forward.

  Hustle is having to chase the things you want. You have to be dedicated to put in the work that it takes to get there and stay there. If given an opportunity, you need to seize it and go for it with full gusto. And when the opportunity is not there you have to go find one. Blaze your own trail.

  Right now we have really high unemployment in America. So maybe you’ll have to create your own job. Find something people have a need for and create it yourself. Like our company, Coremaster—we were blazing our own trail. When we moved to North Carolina, we found that the only concrete-cutting company here was really big, and wouldn’t do small jobs. But we were happy to take those small jobs, give customers an option for small projects. And now we have fifty-eight clients. We blazed a trail that wasn’t here, made our own opportunity.

  Anyone can have ambition, but if you’re going to make things happen, you need to hustle, too. People can move mountains with their mouths. But what is it that you’re really doing? We can say “Oh yeah, I’m gonna do this!” but are you really putting in the time and work?

  I’m more of an action person than a talking person. Talk is cheap. What’s the plan to put things into action? The hardest thing in life is starting something and getting it completed. The best way to get it done is to show it, not talk about it. What you do tells the world who you are and what you’re really about.

  If I give you my word I’m going to do something, I always follow through.

  * * *

  Ludacris Talks About His Mom

  Christopher “Ludacris” Bridges is a Grammy Award-winning rapper, celebrated actor, and entrepreneur. One of the most influential musicians to come out of the South, he has also appeared in numerous films, including Hustle & Flow, Crash, and the extremely successful Fast & Furious franchise. Here he shares how his mom’s hustle taught him the value of working hard.

  I get a lot of miles in terms of hustle from my mom. She had me when she was in college, and she was still working two jobs, at a grocery store and as a real estate agent. She led by example: I knew she was hardworking, and anything less was just not accepted around the household. She was a supermom. I couldn’t fathom how she was doing all that stuff at once.

  I remember her graduating from college. Mothers are always proud of their sons, but it’s very rare when you take a moment and say you are proud of your mom. And then she went back, fifteen years later, and got her business graduate degree, and I was even more proud. It motivated me, and let me know that there’s no limitations on what you can do. And it’s never too late to get something done.

  I used to get whupped a lot, for things like pitching pebbles at a neighbor’s window to get their attention and accidentally breaking it. My mom would make me go outside and pick a branch or stick out of the tree; if it was too skinny, she’d tell me that it wasn’t big enough and make me go back and get another one. That pretty much set me on the path, right there.

  I can honestly say that your parents have to put fear in your heart, of doing something you’re not supposed to do. It helps you think twice about right and wrong, about your morals.

  The most important thing she did, though, was that as I was growing up, once a year she made me write down my goals, what I wanted to accomplish and achieve the next year. It put me in the mind-set of practicing going after what I wanted. I hated doing it at the time; I didn’t understand it until years later. But it’s a reason that I’m so driven. If I have dreams and goals now, I write th
em down in my head and I go after them.

  I remember what my mom used to say to me: “It can work, if you work it.”

  5

  My Mother’s Words of Wisdom About the Importance of Learning

  Tyler is a cute, chubby baby boy—all cheeks. He is, as Tiffany promised, pretty incredible, a happy-go-lucky little guy. She brought him over to the Boys & Girls Club last night to show him off to the staff and mentors. The whole place was buzzing over that baby, passing him around and around until he finally started crying for his momma. Tiffany tucked him up against her chest and soothed him like a pro. Hard to believe she’s only been doing this for three months.

  As for Tiffany—well, she’d lost most of the baby weight but she didn’t look like herself. It was the first time I’d seen her in sweatpants, and without makeup. She looked exhausted and older than her age, a tired mom rather than the fashion-forward teen I remembered. Understandable. Still, despite her game smile as she held Tyler, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something important had shifted.

  I pulled her aside and asked what was wrong.

  “What do you mean? Everything’s great. Just look at him.”

  “He’s amazing.” And then, I couldn’t help myself. “But what about you? You’re feeling good? All set to start college next month? Got the move figured out?”

  “Oh, yeah. That.” She shrugged, pulled out her cell phone and studied a text she’d just received. “Right. I don’t think it’s going to happen. I mean, I needed to register a few weeks ago and I didn’t.”

  Not what I’d hoped to hear. “Why not?”

  “There’s just no way,” she said. She typed a quick response on her phone and then tucked it back in her pocket. “It’s time to get real about it.”

  “Says who?”

  “Well, for one, Sean won’t move. Says he’s only now getting it going in New York and he doesn’t want to have to start over down there. Plus, all his friends are here. I kind of see his point.”

  “I’m sure there are jobs in D.C., too. And you don’t necessarily have to go with him.”

  She ignored this. “You know, he’s actually a great dad? I didn’t know what to expect, but he’s great. He takes him for walks and down to his basketball games in the park, shows him off to his friends. He loves Tyler. So maybe he’s not so good at, you know, punching in a time card. There are other things that are important, right? It just means that I have to go get a job instead. But maybe that’s the sacrifice that I’m supposed to make. You were talking about sacrifices before, remember?”

  “Right, right.” I winced. I’d been talking about giving up partying, not giving up school. “But having to get a job doesn’t mean that you can’t still try to go to college.”

  “Maybe.” Tyler let out a sudden wail and she jiggled him a little bit, not meeting my eyes. “Sean says there’s really no point in going to college anyway. It’s not the real world. It’s a waste of time and money to sit in rooms and learn about stuff dead people did.”

  “That’s not all you learn. You know that.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe I just think I have to go because everyone told me I could. Is college really that important? Maybe it’s more important to be here, with my family. If we can’t pay the rent who cares how much I know about art history or geology.” She brightened her voice. “Honestly, we’re all better off here. This is the right way.”

  My heart sank. I couldn’t help thinking that my mom would have hated to hear Tiffany talk like this. Even though she made the difficult decision to drop out of college in order to take care of me, my mother never stopped striving to finish her own education. And from the day I was born, her number one priority for me was helping me get to college.

  But I could remember, too, how pointless higher education sometimes seemed to me when I was in high school. It was only because of my mom that I was ultimately convinced of the importance of learning—and it ended up being one of the best decisions of my life. So it seemed like Tiffany could use the same sort of pep talk my mom used to give me.

  ON THE DAY THAT I graduated from North Carolina A&T State University, in 2004, I stood onstage in front of the entire college student body and gave my mom my college ring.

  On that bright June day, I stood in front of two thousand seniors and their families, and held up my college ring. “My mom sacrificed everything so I could be here. She didn’t get to go to prom, because of me. She didn’t get to graduate from college, because of me. She dedicated her entire life to making a better life for her son, and to making sure that I would be able to get this college degree. The symbol of that degree is this ring, and so she deserves it more than anyone else.” I called her up onstage and, as she cried with happiness, I handed the ring to her. I’d had it engraved with her and Jaime’s initials: TO LG, JG.

  I’ve never seen my mom so proud in my life. To this day, she wears that ring alongside her wedding and engagement bands. She tells me that it was one of the best days of her life. She had officially achieved all her goals.

  In a lot of ways, her plan to get me to go to college was present in my life long before I even know what college was. For instance, she shared with me her love of reading. Ever since I can remember, my mom has given me books for Christmas. Often, they are inspirational books, taking cues from my ambitions—like Images of Movie Stars or 501 Movie Stars—and sometimes they are educational—like Porto Rico: The Story of Puerto Rico when I expressed an interest in learning more about where Jaime’s family came from.

  In the front flap of the book, my mom always puts a bookplate embossed with our family crest—a picture of a sailing ship—and the words Ex Libris Terrence H. Jenkins. Underneath that, my mom will always write a dedication, something like this:

  TODAY I THOUGHT ABOUT YOU

  AND HOW PROUD I AM

  OF YOU FOR BEING SUCH A GOOD PERSON.

  I REALIZED THAT MY DREAMS FOR YOU CAME TRUE

  AND OTHERS WILL SEE

  WHAT I HAVE ALWAYS KNOWN

  YOU ARE AN EXTRAORDINARY PERSON.

  AND AS YOU CONTINUE TO GROW

  PLEASE REMEMBER ALWAYS

  HOW VERY MUCH

  I LOVE YOU.

  . . . LOTS OF LOVE, MOM, 12/2010

  Thanks to her, I grew up loving to read, even when I was just memorizing the words of Goose Goofs Off as it was read out loud to me. To me, books are windows into a different world. That’s how you grow as a person, that’s how you absorb more of the world.

  I think my mom focused so much on reading because she’d never been able to go back to college to finish her degree. That always bothered her. Despite all the things she’d achieved with her life, she felt like she’d missed out on opportunities because she didn’t have a diploma. Even within Glaxo, she wasn’t able to apply for open job positions that interested her because the job description required a college degree.

  IT’S NO WONDER THAT she focused so much on getting me to go to college. From the time I was old enough to understand what “college” was, I heard that if I wanted to get a good job and keep it, I had to take my education as far as I could. “I don’t ever want a door to be closed to you,” she would tell me. “Opportunities will come to you once you have a degree.”

  Because of her, I always knew that school was important: a privilege and a tool, rather than a chore. In elementary school, I never wanted to miss a day. I would hear stories of kids across the world who weren’t able to get an education and realized that I was lucky to be able to learn as much as I wanted.

  School was also an escape—especially in New York City, where the neighborhood was so tough. As an only child, it was also the only place where I saw people my own age. My friends were there. And girls! I couldn’t fathom why the young guys in my neighborhood didn’t want to go to school: That’s where the smartest, prettiest girls were. It struck me that it took just as much effort to goof off as it did to learn. There were kids who were so creative in coming up with notes and excuses to get out of class; i
f they’d put half of that focus on their schoolwork, they’d have done a lot better.

  That’s not to say that I was totally focused on schoolwork. In all honesty, I excelled academically in elementary and middle school, but by the time I hit high school, my grades were average at best. I’d spent so much time focusing on my work at the radio station that, despite my enthusiasm for attending school, I hadn’t always been as dedicated to my homework as I should have been. I did well at the things I could talk my way out of—English, Social Studies, Debate, Arts & Crafts, Gym—but I struggled in Math and Science. In those classes, you either know what you’re talking about or you don’t.

  By my senior year, I’d already been working at Soul 92 Jams for three years. With graduation approaching, my plan was to try to work for the radio station full time. All of seventeen years old, this sounded like a dream come true. I remember thinking: What I want to do for the rest of my life is radio, and I already have that opportunity here—so why do I need to go to college?

  When I told my mom that this was what I was thinking, she was not happy. “Baby, I never got the opportunity to go to college,” she said. “I wanted it more than anything in the world. So it would mean the world to me if you went. If you think that the job opportunities that you have now are amazing . . . just imagine how much better they will be after college. Just give me this one thing.”

  I was finally beginning to grasp how many sacrifices she had made on my behalf. All the opportunities I’d taken for granted—prom, college, first dates, and freedom—she’d missed out on because she was taking care of me. Once I finally understood this, my perspective on college changed a bit. Going to college wasn’t just about me; it was also about her. I wanted to make her proud.