The Iconist & The Advocate Featuring Jamie Mustard and Dawne Troupe

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1:56 Hello, and welcome to another moment with Eric Fleming. I am your host, Eric Fleming. And today, I've got two very interesting guests coming on. One has written this book that I think is very, very impactful and timely in this day and age as far as being seen and being heard. And then the other guest is an advocate, somebody that is out there doing the work in the community to try to give people opportunities for housing and financial literacy.

2:43 And, you know, so I'm really glad that they came on, and I'm honored that they came on. And I think that you're going to enjoy the conversations that we had. As always, I wish that we could talk longer and wish I could eavesdrop on some of the off-air conversations. But I think you're going to enjoy the dialogue that I've had with these guests coming on. And, well, guys, we're in it now. And you'll hear a little bit about how we're in it with the news.

3:28 But I want to kind of open a little bit with, well, real quick. First thing I want to kind of talk about, and then after you hear the interviews, I've got something else to kind of dive into. But real quick, I just want to say that if you are a member of FOP, not in the leadership, just in the membership, you have to be discouraged. And if you don't know what FOP is, it's Fraternal Order of Police. I was a member as long as PBA, Police Benevolent Association, a member of both of those organizations in my life.

4:13 And I really kind of, you know, understood that, you know, they always are going to go with the Republican candidate when they endorse people. But they're going to have to get out of that. Because if this election didn't make them realize that, I don't know what will. And I think they're going to suffer for that. Now, the organizations do good work. As far as protecting police officers from frivolous lawsuits and all that stuff, and even if police officers do cross the line, at least they make sure that those folks have legal representation, right, which is a constitutional right. So they provide that for them.

5:11 Regardless of how you feel about those particular officers and all that, they are entitled to representation. And so those organizations make sure that those officers do at least get that. They may go over the top as far as protecting them, but that's a whole other show. And I've commented on that before. But, you know, I get that there were some people that were upset about some of the people that Biden pardoned, especially this guy that's been in jail for a long time. Peltier, who was a Native American who was convicted of killing two FBI agents back in the 70s.

5:56 And there has been, if you've been in any big city in America, you've seen some stickers say, free Peltier or all that, on a light pole or somewhere. So this has been going on for a long time. And so now Biden pardoned him. And I know the FBI director was all upset about that. Former director Ray and a few other folks. But our new president, Donald Trump, has basically everybody who's been charged with the insurrection has now been pardoned.

6:37 And this is a weird thing, right? Because January 6th, and I know we got to get on with the show, but it's January 6th, man. So just to give you a recap of what has happened over the last few days. So all of the people who participated in the insurrection, as far as being the party of insurrection, have been pardoned. Even the guys that got hit with the sedition charges, they're free to go. One of them even went back up to the Capitol building the first day that he was free or released.

7:18 Right? Right. But then the police officers who tried to stop the insurrectionists had to be pardoned. And the committee members, the members of Congress who investigated the insurrection had to be pardoned, too. I think that is really, really insane. And I think if you are a member of a police organization that endorsed a guy who forced a previous president to pardon the police officers who were doing their job, and when that guy gets in office, he pardons the people who created the problem.

8:01 And y'all endorsed the guy who created the problem. I think you need to revisit this endorsement process. I think you need to revisit how you evaluate candidates. Maybe you shouldn't even be involved in the endorsement process at all because, as the Capitol Police officers have shown, they have to protect the people who didn't even want to recognize them for the heroic act they did. They had to protect the guy while he was being sworn in. That attacked them. They had to protect that guy because they had the inauguration at the Capitol building.

8:43 So I just wanted to get that off my chest before we got started. Maybe the police organizations don't need to publicly endorse candidates. And if you do decide to continue to endorse candidates, do a better job of vetting them, because that's really awkward to pay my, you know, pay FOP dues. And then the organization I'm paying dues endorses a candidate that is totally against what we stand for. Anyway, I just had to get that off my chest. All right. Now that I've done that, let's go ahead and get the program started. And as always, we start off with a moment of news with Grace Cheek.

9:27 Music. Thanks, Eric. Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, declaring that America's decline was over in his inauguration speech. The Trump administration intensified efforts to dismantle diversity programs by urging government employees to report hidden DEI initiatives and placing certain administrators on paid leave. President Trump pardoned nearly all individuals charged in the January 6th Capitol attack, Ending legal consequences for most participants while directing the U.S. Attorney General to dismiss all pending cases related to the incident.

10:10 Former President Joe Biden, before leaving office, pardoned the late Marcus Garvey, Don Leonard Scott, and Kemba Smith-Pradia. Biden then commuted the sentences of Robin Peoples, Michelle West, and Leonard Pelletier, while offering preemptive pardons to several people including Mark Milley, Anthony Fauci, members of the January 6th Select Committee, and members of his immediate family. A six-week ceasefire officially began in Gaza, reuniting three Israeli hostages with their mothers and allowing Palestinians to return to devastated neighborhoods. TikTok briefly went offline in the U.S. due to national security laws but was reinstated while in negotiations with the Trump administration.

10:53 A U.S. Justice Department report highlighted excessive force and accountability failures in the Louisiana State Police following the 2019 death of Ronald Green. The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to revive a civil rights lawsuit by Janice Hughes against a Houston police officer who fatally shot her son, Ashton Burns, in 2016. CNN settled with a U.S. Navy veteran after a jury found the network liable for defamation, agreeing to pay $5 million in damages. And the U.S. Justice Department questioned a $2.8 billion NCAA settlement, suggesting it might inadequately compensate athletes.

11:33 I am Grace Gee, and this has been a. Music. All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news. And now it is time for my first guest, Jamie Mustard. Jamie Mustard is a conceptual artist, artistic director, futurist and writer, including his work on perception in the physical world relating to art, imagery and ideas. Jamie believes that emotional art is an accelerator of social change. His work on the endurance of ideas has been featured in Ford's Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, ABC News, Flaunt Magazine, Psychology Today and NPR.

12:23 Growing up in severe poverty and illiteracy in inner city Los Angeles, Jamie overcame obstacles to eventually reverse engineer ideas to help humans stand out based on primal laws. He believes that because of digital overload, we are all struggling to be seeing and experiencing the same invisibility he felt as a child and calls this the economics of attention. His books have won the National Indie Excellence Award, The Owl, Outstanding Works and Literature, given by the largest e-commerce bookseller in the world and runner up for the Pencraft Book Award for Literary Excellence.

13:07 Jamie is co-author of the groundbreaking book, The Invisible Machine on the Biology of Trauma and a children's book about resilience. His latest book, The Iconist, is currently in-flight entertainment on American Airlines. A graduate of the London School of Economics, Jamie's work has included the world's leading universities, business, science, technology, art, design, creativity, and nonprofits. Nike, Cisco, Intel, Adidas. Symantec, Parsons, the New School, the Pratt Institute, Georgetown University, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Holt International Business School, U.S.

13:51 Army Special Forces, U.S. Army Special Forces Psychological Operations, the Portland Art Museum, Content London, the California Department of Health, and TEDx at creative giant WeedInn. and Kennedy. In late fall 2025, his first graphic novel, Hybrid, will be released, a world written, conceived, and art directed by Jamie, with all images drawn and colored in a little stone town in southern Italy with artist Francesca Filomena. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest on this podcast, Jamie Mustard.

14:33 Music. All right. Jamie Mustard. How are you doing, sir? You doing good? I'm doing good. It's been a rough start to the day, but we're getting there. Yeah. Well, I understand. I work another job, man. And it's been snowing down here. Well, not snowing. We've had real icy conditions. And so I had to make sure employees got to work. I I had to kind of do some things I normally don't do at my job, but I'm here too, brother.

15:14 So we're going to go ahead and push through this interview. I'm really, really excited to have you because I read your book, The Iconist. And I think people are going to benefit from this discussion. But let me go ahead and do what I normally do. So this first icebreaker I do is a quote. So this is the quote that I want you to respond to. This excessive, the excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction. What does that quote mean to you? Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

15:54 I think that quote means that when, I mean, I almost see that quote as a political, you know, right now with the politics going on in the world. I just think when there's, when people get overwhelmed with something, when there's too much of something, we tend to go the other way, you know, and I could say that in relation to information overload, you know, we get overloaded with all this information. We think we're taking it in, but we're all, but really we're hiding from it and kind of turning our backs and trying to keep it away from us because it overwhelms us. But I could also say that it, it really speaks to our politics. You know, as an artist, I try to not be political and look at things from more of a humanitarian lens or a humanist lens is a better way to say it.

16:43 But I do think that we swung so hard in one direction that it caused the world to go another direction almost as a reflex. And I could be more specific about that, but that's what I'll say for now. Okay, that sounds good. And so now I want you to give me a number between 1 and 20. 17. 17. All right. So your question is going to be, hold on. There we go. What's something about people who see the world differently than you that you've come to appreciate? Yeah.

17:26 Oh, wow. That's such a good question. I'm so glad that I picked 17. I think that I had a really, really rough start to life. I grew up in urban Los Angeles under. Horrifically poor conditions or poverty conditions in an orphanage or an institutional-like environment. And I had, I didn't go to school. I was semi-literate until I was 19. I could read, I could read well, but I couldn't write beyond kindergarten at 19, 20 years old. I didn't know how to use a comma.

18:06 So I've had a rough start to life. And then I look at what my life is now, what I do now. You know, I, I ended up going to a very kind of rarefied university in England. That's hard to, one of the more rarefied in, you know, after being semi-literate most of my life, you know, and I did that very quickly. And now I do what I do now, which is, you know, I'm writing books, I'm making art, I'm doing lots of different things. And a lot of times people asked me, like, how do you, when you have such a brutal gauntlet at such a young age, how do you not, how do you become you?

18:49 Like, how does that happen? Right. And I do think that this goes to the question. I do think that a major part of the reason that I'd be able to do the things that I'm able to do. And I was able to overcome the things I've been able to come. I had help. I don't believe in, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. I think it takes a lot of people to pull somebody up. And I had angels that pulled me up. But I think that I was always curious about people, like no matter who they were, if they were rich, if they were poor, if they were different than me, if they were the same as me, I kind of always wanted to hear people's stories and what they'd been through.

19:33 And I think that I was always looking, no matter who the person was. I mean, I remember one time walking down the street in London and a guy asked me for some money. And I said, I won't give you some money, but I'll buy you breakfast, thinking that he would then not want me to do it. And he said, okay, let's get breakfast. And then he took me behind the fancy restaurant that was right there to a side street to this little kind of working man's cafe. And I sat there with that guy for an hour and a half and listened to him tell me about his life.

20:15 And it was very representative of British classism. His life was predetermined for him before he was born. And so whether that's a story from somebody that succeeded or a story from like that guy, everything in the middle, I just think that you can learn. I was wanting to understand how to get out of my circumstances. And by talking to everyone you could possibly talk to and hear every circumstance you could possibly hear. I think I, that curiosity in other people is, is really, and, and kind of taking in their stories and synthesizing them.

20:55 And what can I learn even from someone that you think you can't learn from? You can learn from everyone. And that's kind of, it sounds cliche, but it is the most powerful. If you think like that, it is the most powerful ray gun in the world. It'll help you to dematerialize any, you know, wall in front of you. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, it really is. That's pretty cool. That kind of explains a lot. And there's a question I'll kind of get to to kind of flesh that out a little more. But the name of the book is The Iconist that you've written and I wanted to talk to you about.

21:40 So define Iconist. An iconist is someone that understands that the world is now overloaded with too much content. So they understand that no one can see them because there's, you know, we're bombarded with, you know, 1950, we all saw about 250 advertising messages a day. By 1970, that was a thousand. By the 19, late nineties, that was 7,000. Today, thought experiments, they were hit with about 15,000 messages a day. The human brain couldn't process a thousand. So what that means is you're invisible because there's too much stuff going on around you.

22:22 So an iconist is someone that understands that and uses, looks for and uses techniques. And I have one in the book. I come up with these things that I call primal laws of why we pay attention. They seek to use the laws of what causes a human being to pay attention and to adjust themselves into those laws so that they can be seen despite information overload. That is an iconist. An iconist uses these primal laws to get attention, to get the attention they deserve for the passion or message or work or whatever they want to put into the world. All right. So I'm going to name some former presidents and you tell me if they fit the definition of iconist you just gave and you can just say yes or no if you want to expound on why or why not that's fine too first one donald trump.

23:19 The ultimate iconist, whether love him or hate him, he's the ultimate iconist. He understands how to read the room, whether you like what he's reading or, you know, whether you like it or not, doesn't matter. I'm not, I'm not, you know, again, I don't want to get political personally because I don't, I see it as very nuanced. But Donald Trump's the ultimate iconist. I kind of had a feeling he was going to say that. Gerald Ford. No. Barack Obama. him. Yes. Barack Obama's up there. Top five. Jimmy Carter. Top five. You know, maybe not an icon as a president, but one of the most important human beings to walk the earth in the last 100 years.

24:08 Bill Clinton. Number two. Behind Donald Trump. I met Bill Clinton when I I was in college and it was one of the, you know, I was at a private kind of dinner with him when I was interning in D.C. It was him and a room full of Republicans, actually. And that was one of the most profound experiences of my entire life, being shockingly being in the room with that guy, watching him take this crowd that was hostile. I mean, they were grumbling. It was a hostile, hostile crowd. And I remember walking, seeing this guy get up in this small kind of event space.

24:52 You know, there was maybe a couple hundred people there, maybe less, maybe a hundred, you know. And within 90 seconds, he had them on their feet. And I was confused by it. How did this guy do that? I spent a lot of years trying to figure out how Bill Clinton took a hostile crowd to their feet in 90 seconds. Yeah. George W. Bush. No. Okay. That went about the way I kind of thought, but, you know, and I definitely wanted to touch on that. And I totally agree. Regardless of your political affiliation, Donald Trump is, by basis of what I've read in your book and your definition, he is the ultimate.

25:33 Why did you as an artist feel the need to write this book? Now, I know you've written other books, but why this particular book? Well, you know, as we were saying, I think we were saying this before we came on the air, I had a very strange childhood because my family, you know, had accomplished some things. And then my mother got caught up with some strange ideas. I mean, it was, you know, that time, you know, in the 70s, people were doing some crazy stuff. And I ended up being born in a under very difficult circumstances where I was in an institutional type environment not run by the government run by kind of a course high course of control group and raised in a kind of abject poverty and place of psychological abuse that one can hard be hard to imagine so it was urban Los Angeles it was drought ridden it was the burning You know, Los Angeles was burning in a different way.

26:35 It was just a constant thrum of heat. And I was an invisible person. I had been thrown away and I was in an environment where I was invisible and didn't matter, would never matter. And through hard work and the help of people and, you know, angels that came along the way, I was able to. Rise out of that environment and become who I am now. And I did that by reverse engineering. I would look around me at people that were, had things that I wanted and I would study them in a very deep way.

27:16 Not just like, Hey, I'm studying that person. No, I would sit down and go, how did that, what is that person doing that makes them have that? Whether it be great communication skills, education, money, popularity, you know, whatever it was. And I would reverse engineer how they did it. And after, you know, 20 years of that, I had a pattern of how people, why people notice things and why things endured. I kind of had kind of done that without even thinking. I did it to survive and I did it to overcome. And I'll never forget, Eric, the invisibility I felt as a child, just being, I mean, if you had driven by me in downtown Los Angeles or east side of Los Angeles as a kid, I would have been as about as you, I would have faded into the brick.

28:08 I couldn't have existed less. And that feeling of feeling invisible I believe we all feel that now that information overload has made us all feel like we can't, Get our expression seen And I didn't like feeling that way and I don't want anyone of any class or any race to feel that way so I wrote this book so that people could, Get their expressions Of who they are seen in the world because I think that is a massive component to, personal fulfillment in life So that was the reason I did it I didn't want people to feel the way that I felt growing up So Do you have family still in LA now?

28:57 I do Yeah, everybody's good as far as you know. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's been a, it's been a really strange week and watching my, you know, hometown burn has been really emotional. I feel, I kind of feel like I saw it coming. It's one of the reasons I left over a decade ago when I drove out of LA and put my stuff in the moving truck and drove out of LA, it was on fire. But, you know, I have a very, you know, ambivalent, you know, kind of an interesting relationship with LA. It was a crucible for me of suffering, which I hated. But I did grow up in these incredible neighborhoods with Mexican people and Guatemalan people and Nicaraguan people and Filipinos and Armenians and Koreans, and I hated it.

29:48 But when I got older and I started traveling the world and moving around and being around different types of people. I was so grateful for living in such a cultural mix and seeing so many different perspectives of all the people that live in Los Angeles. So grateful. So, and I love that place. I love the mountains. I love the beaches. I love downtown. I love Hollywood. I love. It's the city that made me and there's so many people in that place when I was really not going to make it you know that stepped in and did things for me so I mean there was even I mean there was when I was nine years old and really really down and out you know there was a a male prostitute on hollywood and vine that kind of you know saw me as somebody that was kind of by himself and alone and and he helped me so you know i feel like that city saved me and you know it burned me and then it saved me and so yeah i have watching it be on fire has been you know.

31:11 Difficult, emotional, because I do, at this point in my life, I have deep, deep love and much, much affection for the city of Los Angeles. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I hope that the people that you care about there, that they're okay. But I have to ask you that, considering. Yeah, my people have done well. They're not living in the Palisades, you know, but my brother, you know, lived in, I had a brother that lived in Altadena for a long time. And I, you know, and my friends have, you know, I've been, I've been lucky. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So getting back to the book, what is the significance of blocks? A block, you know, sometimes I wish I didn't call it that, but a block is taken from a toy block that you would, you would give a baby.

32:02 I want to say for, because we're on here that this book, if you're traveling on American airlines. Okay. The iconist audio book is part of in-flight entertainment on American airlines right now, which I'm really proud of by the way. Okay. But a block is basically, you know, if you take a toy block and you put it in front of a baby, it will transfix them. They will fixate on it. And, and I studied why, you know, well, first of all, a toy block to a baby. Is massive. It's close to them, right? It's in it. And there's something about the kind of the geometrical simplicity of it with the intricacy of the number that magnetizes a baby's attention.

32:50 And so I started studying this and, and when we have something really, really simple and then something complex within it, those two poles, the simple and the complex magnetizes human attention like a tractor beam. So I started to research, is there something about the way a baby looks at a toy block that continues on through human development? Is there a version of that that will cause a human being, a human adult to fixate and pay attention. Right. That was kind of what I was getting curious about. And the answer is 100% yes.

33:32 And so a block is this kind of simple thing that if you repeat it over and over, you can take any audience and make something iconic in their mind in a matter of minutes rather than months, years, or decades? You know, why do we call a Kleenex a Kleenex or a Coke a Coke? We think it's an accident or a coincidence. And in many cases, it is. But what if you could make something iconic to your desired audience that. At will, in moments. So I break down those laws of how you can use the repetition of a simple image to make anything iconic in the mind of your desired audience.

34:14 And a block is that simple thing that you're repeating. It's an icon waiting to happen. It's an icon in progress. Like if I started iconing a phrase or a word to you right now, that would be a block. If I did it to you 15 times, you wouldn't be able to get out of your head. Now it's an icon. It's an icon to Eric. Yeah. Yeah. So why is perfection deception? Well, let's take this back to Donald Trump. Okay. You know, people, I, when I look at Donald Trump, I'm more interested in how and why, you know, and I think there it's complicated. I think part of the answer to that is it goes to the first question you asked.

34:56 When there's an excess of anything, we have a reaction in the opposite direction. So there has been a, and again, I'm not saying this as my own political affiliation either way. I tend to be a pretty compassionate guy, but I don't think it's my job to look at things through a political lens. I think it's my job to look at things through a humanist lens and I'm pretty disciplined about it, but we've had a lefting of the world in a very, very fast way. Ideologically, doesn't matter whether you believe it or not in terms of gender, in terms of race, in terms of, you know, all these things, it's been very fast and very strong. Okay.

35:42 And so you just, and, and so I think that too fast and too strong. Like if you look at even say, and again, I'm not talking about wrong or right. I'm just trying to about understanding. Okay. If you look at say the majority of America is still barely white, still, still white, but barely, but it's still white. You know what that means? That means that the majority of poor people in America are white. Now, when you go and you, and again, I'm not qualifying this, but when you go and you tell those people that they're privileged or they're fragile, doesn't matter if they are or not, they're going to go vote for Trump.

36:23 It's too much ideology without their brains being able to understand it or wrap their head around it. And so then you get this reaction in the opposite direction. So that's the first part. But what was the question again? Why is perfection deception? Okay. So I think that's the setup for Trump. Okay. So that's the setup for Trump. If you look at politicians, okay, you know, politicians that are good, you know, I really, people are going to hate me for saying this, but I, I had, I liked Hillary Clinton. I thought she was a policy. I like policy wonks. I liked. Mitt Romney. He was a policy wonk. Obamacare is based on Romneycare.

37:09 I like people that are really, really into policy and creating change through policy, despite whatever their political affiliation is. If you look at those politicians, the ones I named, you can include Joe Biden in this. You can include Kamala Harris in this. You could include Jeb Bush in this. You could include ted cruz in this when they go and do speeches they're they've surveyed everyone they've surveyed the world they've surveyed america and they're trying to tell you based on those surveys or based on how how they're reading the room what you want to hear okay am i allowed to swear in his podcast yeah you can you can swear okay donald trump doesn't give a fuck about that okay he okay.

38:02 He's he's in a world where everybody sounds canned he sounds like he's shooting from the hip and telling you what he actually thinks bill clinton had that gift barack a lot less but he still had it. But Bill Clinton really had that gift. I would say him and Trump are probably similar in that gift. Trump has other things that he does better. Bill has other things that he does better. But that gift of making it seem like it's actually coming from you and not some sort of populist survey –. It is, it's not, he's not trying to be perfect and give you this exact thing that you think he wants. It's flawed. It's imperfect.

38:42 And when something's a little flawed or imperfect, we think it's more honest, even if it's not, that's really what it comes down to. And we like imperfection more than we know we do. There's a great designer who designed the talking heads covers and these incredible covers in the eighties named Tibor Kalman. and he used to say perfectly off, just right. So because he doesn't sound canned, it doesn't matter. You could have somebody that sounds canned that isn't, that's completely heart-driven. And then you could have somebody that's a diabolical and nefarious that doesn't sound canned and actually sounds like he's speaking from his heart or his gut.

39:27 We're always going to be more attracted to the person that we think isn't just telling us what we want to hear based on a bunch of data analysis. And so that's what I mean by perfectionist deception. You know, we're advertised to, like, if you look at American advertising, it's a bunch of people talking about themselves and saying how great they are. And by the mid, by the nineties, the lid, that was really effective in the beginning of the 19th century, all the way up to the 1950s and even 70s, by the 80s, 90s, people started to not believe advertising. It's full of unsubstantiated claims. Another word for an unsubstantiated claim is a lie. You come out and tell the truth about your product or service, but you're doing it in a climate of liars.

40:11 We don't trust self-promotion anymore. We don't trust advertising anymore because it's too perfect. So we actually, because we were so, perfection was marketed to us for so long. Actually drawn to things that seem imperfect. Imperfection, we now associate imperfection with authenticity. I'm not saying it is. I'm just saying in the lizard brain, if something is not perfect and rough around the edges, we're going to be far more drawn to that than a bunch of polish, which we all think is bullshit now. Right. Yeah. And I mean, I think this last presidential election really illustrates what you were saying and it was the one reference i think it was about camel cigarettes when you when when you put that down i was like i remember that ad about the most doctors prefer camel cigarettes yeah yeah i i remember that as a young child i remember that which chapter in part three best describes an iconic strategy for a political campaign is it road signs magnetize signals arrow and shaft or breed god then you this is good man you did read the book you read the book man you read the book god i mean that's a it's a really tough one.

41:39 I would say it would be between signals or error with shaft, really having a deep understanding of what people care about. And then. Repeating it to the point where it feels ridiculous. That's the mistake that people don't make is like, what is it that people actually care about? And then repeating it. And again, I do have a chapter in there where I say you need to do that and tell the truth. So I'm not, you know, you know, a lot of the book, one of the things that I give Orwell, a lot of credit for the book, you know, I say basically like he talks about how, you know, in 1984, how, you know, if you use repetitive imagery and repetitive language that you can sway opinion, even when it's not true.

42:25 And he writes about it in this way where he's basically saying this is a nefarious act. And what I argue in the book is, no, this is not a nefarious act. This is like saying a phone is nefarious or a computer or TV. It's a tool. And it can be used in a bad way or it can be used in a good way. It has more to do with the way that you, Eric, and everyone listening takes in information. We like repetitive simplicity. It's how we interpret the world. So I think taking something, repeating it, explaining it, repeating it, maybe arrow and shaft, repeating it, explaining it, repeating it, explaining it, but repeating that one thing over and over and over and over again to the point of discomfort, far beyond discomfort, that is probably the one.

43:08 Well i i know i wasn't often because i i felt arrow and shaft would be the one because the concept of an arrow is like you have to have that arrowhead to penetrate and then the shaft as you you you allegorize i guess for lack of a better term the shaft determines the direction so it's like you can have something that penetrates but if that shaft is not attached to it one it may not hit where you want to hit and you know it makes sure that it that that is stable, exactly and so the information the the information behind the slogan or the idea is what validates the slogan.

43:54 Absolutely. I mean, I think it works in two ways. I think it's directional because it puts substance behind this kind of simple thing that you're going to repeat. I mean, the other thing that Donald Trump does so well is the way he would give people nicknames and they would stick, you know, like Sleepy Jeb or, you know, Crooked Hillary, you know, like he had this really incredible way of like giving an enemy a nickname and then repeating it. And then it would, people would take it up and they would start calling them, you know, it was incredible the way he would use stuff, the way he would do that. But yeah, I think that the complexity and the substance behind your simple arrowhead. Is what gives it direction.

44:34 But I also think there's a component of like the toy block I talked about in the beginning, when you have something simple, like a triangle, a square, or a circle, and you put any sort of flourish or intricacy in it like a letter or anything when when you mix the ultra ultra geometrical and simple like a circle triangle square rectangle with some sort of intricacy i don't i i it it really grabs the eye and yeah yeah but the repetition factor with some sort of substance behind it is the most important part, for sure. Yeah. So let me close out the questioning with this one.

45:16 In this modern political era, why is it important for politicians to embrace the concept of radical simplicity? Because people are so overwhelmed with content. Like, you know, there was a woman that was doing research. I talk about this in the book for Microsoft and Apple in the late 90s. And she, Linda Stone, she coined the term continuous partial attention. Basically saying that we're overwhelmed with so much content now that the people that you're talking to about anything are only partially paying attention because there's too much content coming at them. Okay that was before the internet what is if that if we had continuous partial attention in 97 98 when linda was doing this research what's our attention like now because we're overwhelmed with content so you need to recognize everyone needs to recognize that that the people that they're trying to communicate in the world have no bandwidth they're distracted by everything coming at them so if you take something really really simple and you add emotion and you just repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it.

46:29 It cuts through that distraction like a laser. It causes someone to stop being distracted and lock on you because you're repeating the simple thing. And so radical simplicity, coming up with a really simple way to communicate who and what you are, and then repeating it to the point where It makes you feel very uncomfortable, like naked in a public space. When you embrace that, anyone can be seen for anything at any time. So it's, it's urgent. And I'll say this last thing about it. It's urgent for our happiness too. You know, there's that concept in Maslow of when we get above the basic needs of food and shelter, we start to get, we, then we become concerned with self-actualization, transcending into ourselves.

47:17 If we can't get the expressions of our human self seen by others, whether it's our work or our art or whatever that thing is that we care about that we want to put in the world, we feel small, depressed, anxious. It ruins us. So radical simplicity is the only way to get the attention that we deserve. It's it's it's not just a problem for work or advertising, you know, promotion or mute or art. It is essential for the human soul. So, Jamie, speaking about putting out in the world, this is the time where I allow the guests to do their promotion.

48:00 So how can people get the iconist? You'd already mentioned that it's on in-flight entertainment for American Airlines. For free, for free. But, you know, it's five hours long. You can listen to my dulcet tones as I read it. It's over five hours long. But, yeah, it's there. The Iconist is available everywhere. It's on Amazon. It's in bookstores. You know, it's all over. The Iconist, The Art and Science of Standing Out by me. Yeah, so that's that. You know, and I'm very proud of that book. You know, that book was critically acclaimed and it's done well. But I feel like that book should be one of the most known books in the world. What's in there is so important. So I feel like, you know, I want people to know what's in there.

48:46 Well, I'm glad that you did the Audible. I always prefer the author to be the one reading their book as opposed to a voiceover person, even though they're professionals and all that. But it means something when the author does it, so you can really get into it. So I'm so glad that you did that. But what else are you working on, and how can people get in touch with you? That's good. Okay, well, I have a website called iconist.ltd, so I-C-O-N-I-S-T dot L-T-D, and you can message me there.

49:27 Most people tend to message me on Instagram, and I respond to every message, and that's jamie, J-A-M-I-E underscore mustard, M-U-S-T-A-R-D. At jamie underscore mustard, jamie underscore mustard. I'm on X as the real Jamie mustard. I'm less X acted these days than the night probably should be. So that's how you, what I'm working in that. So that's how you can reach me. And I love to hear from people that curiosity is, that helped me overcome my circumstances. It hasn't left me. And I've written a lot of different areas. My last book that came out almost two years ago, April, is on the biology of trauma.

50:12 I wrote a book about how trauma is a biological injury, not a mental disorder with a prominent scientist. So this prominent scientist had this new science. They can now reset the fight or flight system in the body. And only the military was using it. And I, and a couple other cohorts, maybe sexual assault victims were finding it and first responders. And I thought everyone in the world, this needs to be in the living room. So I wrote that book with that scientist so that people would understand when they're experiencing the effects of trauma, reactivity, hypervigilance, anxiety, suicidal ideation, violence, aggression, you know, all these things that there's actually a biological injury that's causing that.

50:57 We can now see it on a brain scan and we can actually now reset it. So that book I'm incredibly proud of because it's taking that. The military has been using this thing for two decades. Obama endorsed it back in 2008. But I wanted to bring that when I was working with Fort Bragg, actually for the iconist, teaching them about special forces, about art and communication. I was learning about post-traumatic stress while I was there. And when I saw the symptoms of what they call operator syndrome, which is post-traumatic stress, I didn't see soldiers. I saw the neighborhoods where I grew up. So I became obsessed with, could the stresses of poverty cause the same biological injury as someone that went to war?

51:42 The same symptoms? And the answer is yes, it's a biological mechanism and the symptoms are identical. But, you know, I've been working on ideas for my life and kind of doing art in the background. My dream has always been to kind of move my art to the foreground. Not that I would stop writing about ideas, but like, you know, I'm more interested and obsessed with fine art than I probably am anything else in the world. And so this year is a big year for me because I have a book coming out at the end of March about my life, which is my family, what they accomplished from 1865 to 1940, 75 years after slavery is pretty astonishing.

52:23 And this is going to sound strange, but I was born a slave. How did that happen? I've been living in shame and hiding from that truth most of my life. And I've written a book that is the most, it's a painting of how that happened and how I overcame it. I'm still overcoming it called Child X. So that is a true expression. It's my life, but it is truly a work of art. It is a written painting. So I feel like that is me really coming out as an artist.

53:03 And then a couple months later, I have a graphic novel coming out that I art directed and wrote called Hybrid, which is a kind of beautiful, fine art, fictional account of my life done through fiction. But like you know altering it but it's about artists with super natural abilities growing up in an alternate sci-fi future adjacent version of los angeles and i'm really proud of that like it basically when i it's it's an a really it's a story told in 60 double page paintings and so both those things are coming out next year so this is really my really people understand this This is the first time I really, I've been doing art for a long time, but this is really the first year that I'll be bringing myself in terms of my passion for our things that are artistic and, and bringing that to the forefront of what I do.

54:05 Well, I hope those, those, those two projects are as successful as the iconist. And I just want to thank you for allowing me this opportunity to talk to you. And, you know, one of the cool things about doing this podcast is just meeting interesting people and, you know, some people are famous, most of them are not, but it's a great way to get people to appreciate other folks that are out here doing tremendous things. And the fact that you agreed to come on, I'm really, really honored by that. And I thank you for that.

54:51 And you have an open invitation to come back whenever. So hopefully when your next project drops, we'll revisit. When we get off today, go Google Child X, and then the Simon & Schuster site will come up and read the book description. Okay. But I want to say, Eric, you know, that I'm really honored when I got your invitation. I went and looked you up and I was like, this guy is a soulful dude. And he's, I could tell instantly that you're kind of driven to help and empower people. And so I'm honored that you would see my work and see something in it and have me on. I really appreciate it.

55:33 Well, thank you so much, man. All right, guys. And we'll catch y'all on the other side. Music. All right. And we are back. So now it is time for my next guest, Dawn Troop. Dawn Troop is a thoughtful and curious pathfinder with a passion for understanding society and the forces that shape it. Her work spans housing, financial education and community development, not just as areas of expertise, but as essential avenues for improving lives and creating opportunities.

56:25 With a career that includes roles in the federal government, nonprofits, higher education, and the private sector, Dawn has led initiatives that deliver real impact. She has provided strategic consulting for political campaigns, managed statewide financial literacy programs, and advised small businesses on growth strategies. Her federal policy expertise is grounded in understanding real-world challenges, enabling her to craft actionable solutions that reflect communities' needs. Currently, the Advocacy Director for the People and Places Collaborative at the Community Opportunity Alliance, Dawn works alongside community organizations to drive progress, create opportunities for growth.

57:12 Her drive comes from the desire to spark meaningful conversations and inspire solutions that make a lasting difference. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest on this podcast, Dawn Troop. Music. John Shroop. How are you doing, sister? You doing good? I'm doing okay today, you know, just happy and glad here to be with you and your audience and excited to kind of be a part of your journey here.

57:53 So thank you for including me. Well, I am honored to have you on. And just so you know, what I tend to do is like, you know, like every other show or anybody else, I, you know, if I can get somebody that's quote unquote quote on the news all the time, a high profile, that's fine. But what I like to do is get people doing the work. And even though you've been on a lot of shows and interviews and stuff, you know, it's like I like to highlight people that's really in the trenches because, you know, being a former legislator, that's who I had to deal with. You know, I had to deal with the lobbyist and, you know, every now and then I might get a CEO of a company or whatever talk to me. But basically, it was those folks in the building trying to get stuff done and community people.

58:43 And and you are one of those folks that is a mover and shaker. And I might be messing your game up because I'm giving you a little shine. But but I think you deserve it. And I think you're somebody that we can we can gain some wisdom from. So I'm glad that you came on. So what I normally do is do some icebreakers. So the first icebreaker is a quote, and this is the quote I'm going to give you. Housing is absolutely essential to human flourishing. Without stable shelter, it all falls apart. What does that quote mean to you?

59:24 Right. It's accurate, right? It's so important to have housing because how can you go into the world, do what you want to do every day, not knowing where you're going to go home to? That's the same place that you can count on and rely on, that you could hang your coat up and put your keys down. And it's yours in your private space. It allows people to, to your point, flourish, right? When you come home, you can either study more, be more with your family, depending on how you look at flourish, right? Floors could be work floors could be interpersonal relationships with like friends and family and time or with yourself to you know you know what's it like mental health and well-being so i the home is where the heart is but home also is where everything has a hard stop to be able to go out into the world yeah all right so now i'm gonna play this game called 20 questions um i got this idea from you ever heard of this app called meetup oh yeah yeah yeah yeah so one of the groups i was in had this questionnaire to kind of break the ice about political discussions so and i said this would be this is pretty good so let me try it on the show and see how it works so what i need you to do is give me a number between one and 20.

1:00:39 Seven. Okay, seven. All right. All right. What do you consider the best way to stay informed about politics, current events, health, etc.? Are there all political ones? Because I was like, oh, that's kind of what I do every day based on what it works. But I think like. They, there's two ways, right? And I learned this a couple years ago when I was doing campaign work. For me, I like living in like mostly urban areas for the last, I don't know, almost 25 years or so. I do spend a lot of time watching the news or reading, you know, The Economist or The Atlantic.

1:01:21 I kind of go through and through different news channels. I'll go from CNN, the News Nation. I scroll through them all just because I have to like track legislation, see what members of Congress are doing and any administrative or companies kind of things that are popping up and trends. But when I realized when you move into rural areas where my parents actually ended up moving to a long time ago, but in general, even recently, a lot of people get the news from their local church and like the epicenter of where people convene. And it might come on Sunday. And then that's where like news happens or things that you need to kind of watch out for. So I think it really back to like when you talk about home, home is also where it's located and how you receive information, get information and like where you use it is based on your environment as well. Yeah.

1:02:08 And the black church was so vital. I used to one of the things when I was in the legislature, I used to remind some of the colleagues because, you know, we have in Mississippi, we had like porters that, you know, took care of certain things, janitorial, maybe run us some errands, whatever the case may be. And I noticed some of the members were not being very respectful to them, especially some of the black ones. And so I reminded them, I said, there was a period in time within my lifetime that these were the only black people in the building. And what the church would do, especially in Mississippi, what the church would do is like guys that had jobs like that where they were on the inside, they would make them like deacons of the church so they could get their news, find out what was going on in the Capitol. They give them a spot during the service.

1:03:08 So it was that's why, you know, when you said that about getting news from the local in the rural communities, that reminded me of that story, because I think it's important that we share information and try to share good information as possible. That's kind of hard in this day and age. But yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the church because it's still a vital part of the fabric of a community, especially in the black community. Define affordable housing. I'll see. So affordable housing, and there's twofold. I was talking about this with a colleague, and when thinking about the answer to that question for what I do every day, it would be like, it's making sure you don't spend 30% of your income, right?

1:03:56 Like that, by the government definition of affordable housing. But really affordable housing is just a place you're able to call home where you have your money to spend on your heat and water and electric, like electric, provide for your family and put food on the table. So I think affordable housing has really two definitions. If you want to look at it, like kind of like in a very kind of everyday news aspect or what it really means to families and individuals. Because one of the things when we were discussing you coming on, you wanted to stress something about accessible housing as opposed to affordable housing. So what, I guess, in your work, accessibility is more important than affordability?

1:04:43 Think to have accessibility because it's twofold, right? You could have money, but you have no housing in your area to get to, right? And where is it accessible to get it? So that's why, I mean, when you have the definition of you can have money, but for a lot of people, it's like, I have a place, I want to stay in my place, but there's no place for me to live here anymore. And I think accessible housing is important, being able to have it in, because if you look, this is like personally speaking, when you look at a lot of like towns and urban areas and places, you have suburbs and you don't have many multifamily housing there, like apartments and things, right? And this is still more suburban urban based because you could go and there's rental homes, like you can actually rent a house in other communities that don't have like six story buildings or four story buildings.

1:05:29 But that's the thing. It's just being able to have it be accessible. Like you shouldn't have to move, you know, 25 miles or more to find a home because it's not in the place near where you work, right? And then you have transportation issues and it just changes everything. So accessible housing is important. And a lot of the times people, that's the hardest thing to get, right? Is to be able to be close to where you work. Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, so. Yeah, see, I'm based out here in Atlanta. And the short time I've been here, the thing, if I see a green space, I said, oh, boy, they're about to build some apartments of condos in that space in no time. And that's basically been a formula.

1:06:16 But I've seen I've seen scenarios where, you know, it's like in the like in the inner city part of Atlanta. You know, people say, well, you know, that's tough to raise a family and all that. But I have literally seen families move into like upper scale, like condos and all that stuff. and they have little kids and it didn't seem like it was a good fit there. So that, that to me, I think that plays a part in accessibility too, doesn't it? Like, you know, what, what, what you're, cause like you said, home is where you feel comfortable and where you can, like we said, flourish, but you know.

1:06:58 Not every scenario, not every Jefferson's that's moving on up scenario is best for people. Would you agree with that? No, no. I mean, yeah, I think that's twofold because when, so that comes down to when apartments are built, right? Before that almost is like planner, the developer. So when towns build homes and apartments or luxury condos, there's a lot of first homes, like for starter homes that aren't on the market anymore, because necessarily you can, you do private partner business and you'll have market rate and affordable housing, which is kind of like either condos or, well, really condos necessary or just apartments, luxury apartments.

1:07:38 And before they build, they're supposed to figure out like what the area really needs. Is it a lot of one bedrooms or two bedrooms or studios? So it's more or less being able to figure out if that meets what the family is looking for, but that that's all they can afford. Then they can't afford that first starter home without moving 50 miles outside of Atlanta. That's a part of that accessibility problem. So it really is based on the region and the city and what the, like I wouldn't say demographics, it's not about the people. It's just like, where are the family sizes? Is there larger families or a lot of single people? And that plays into development of homes too. Yeah.

1:08:19 Why with your various political experience, have you devoted a lot of your professional time to the housing issue? I mean, for me, when I think about my own experience with my family, right? My grandmother was one of seven sisters and she was the youngest of the seven. They were born in South Carolina and then they moved to New York. And the thing is, all of them had businesses. They owned liquor stores. They owned shopping centers. My grandmother owned an apartment building. The other ones owned bars as well. And they worked together. It was a family unit. Everyone shipped in together. Whatever money they had, it went to the sisters and they just kept doubling down on things, right?

1:09:01 And that, to me, is so important because, like, grandmother bought my mom her first home and then her second home. You know what I mean? Like, it's so meaningful to see what that type of leading on your family support, and especially within, like. Groups of, like, ethnicity groups, like, people really rely on their family to help them. And that's how a lot of wealth, it's not just one person, it's a collective unit that are able to work together. And my grandmother helped her siblings and their children and my mom's first cousins. And so it just systemically is really important to me knowing that my mom, my parents, they decided to move out of New York City to upstate New York.

1:09:47 So I didn't make sure I go to a better school district because living in Harlem on 132nd Street, they were like, well, this is the 80s. What can we do here? Should we stay? Should we move? They had the opportunity to move, so they did it. But not everyone has that. So I've always kind of put back into wanting to ensure that I was able to help others that just didn't have the opportunity that I got. Yeah. And your family sounds like a success story in that there is some generational wealth put in. And that's that that's one of the key things I've been trying to stress on my podcast and in my politics that we need to.

1:10:28 You know, there's still some issues we have to fight for as far as on the civil rights front. But. You know, the key to building wealth in this nation is, to me, is owning property, housing, whatever. And it sounds like you had a good foundation. And because of that, you've dedicated your political life to helping people have that same experience. Yeah, ever since I graduated college, I went from working in higher ed thinking I was helping the people I wanted to help. And not necessarily because, you know, fundraising, there are the families that are donating over millions of dollars. I'm kind of like, that's not what I was trying to help, but great that everyone's getting education here.

1:11:12 And so I kind of worked my way into figuring out if I want to help children, the best way to do it is build better communities. And what are those like prongs and items that are needed to build a better community? And one of it, you know, like, yes, I saw the education piece, the financial literacy. And most importantly, even without all of those, housing is it's between housing and financial literacy with one or the other. You almost need both tied together. Right. So I'm going to get to financial literacy in a minute, but I wanted to talk to you going back even further. What got you involved in politics? Why did you feel that your skill set fit in the political world, especially, you know, doing lobbying work and all that?

1:12:00 I'm not a lobbyist because I'm a. All right. Yes, ma'am. All right. I'll take that back. So but with. It's just interesting, I think for me, I kind of I will honestly say I stumbled into it in some different ways. I've always been curious. I've always wanted to learn about different things. I was a kid that never didn't want to miss a day of school, right? I was just like, I don't know why. I was just really fixated on going there. But I... I did organizing for action. It was like an Obama kind of grassroots campaign to help with the 2013, like different elections.

1:12:41 And I actually went to the celebration for Martin Luther King's Day March on Washington that they had. And my grandparents had went, my dad's mom and father and my dad's mother. She's an Australian citizen and British. They're like going heritage wise. Her parents were in the military and moved to Australia. My dad was black and he was from Georgia. And they went together. So I had went out of being like, oh, wow, like this is great. I get to like celebrate something that they did together that I can see on my own terms. And I had volunteered and then I was in that kind of network of news, you know, like email chains. And they had a, what do you call it, like a job fair or different things within either running for office, you know, running, working for campaigns or what have you. And there was one there for people at the White House.

1:13:30 And I was just like, oh, the government must have the answer for me to figure out how I can help kids. Like, I don't know what it is, but I'm just gonna just throw myself into this whole environment, being curious and wanting to know. And that's kind of what happened. I went down on a Saturday. I made a last minute decision. I was like, I guess I'm gonna go. And then I got there with an hour left, met a representative from the White House, kind of was like, I just came here to see you. Like all these other things, like this is what I wanna work on. And how can I do this? And they were like, go online, say that you met me. And we'll like work to get you into things that make sense that you can be a part of. Yeah. Yeah. Never say you always start off with no. All you can get is a yes.

1:14:13 So that I would tell, that's my, what I usually tell people that I mentor or any like students that I've worked with. All you have is your name and you, you just, you're always, always going to start with no. So don't be afraid to ask to get a yes, because that's going to just change everything and keep asking, right. Until you find someone who tells you yes. Yeah. That's good advice. because a lot of people... Let that fear of no hold them back. And if you go in with understanding that you don't have the job, so it can't get any worse than that. Just go ahead and, and, and, and, and push for the yes, that, that that's encouraging. I mean, that's kind of the same way it is running for office too.

1:14:55 You just, you know, you know, that all you need is half the people to show up to vote for you, you know? And so you don't take it personal if 49% of the people don't like you or don't vote for you. You know, you just you go in and you try to convince as many people that you deserve this position. And I think you deal with you've dealt with young people a lot. I'm going to say a pet peeve to you. And I know this might be a little off topic, but one of the things that discourages me about our kids, black kids, is that, you know, I see them in a relaxed setting and, you know, they're loud and they're boisterous and they're active and all this stuff.

1:15:43 And then when they get in a situation where adults enter the room and say, well, hey, look, I need you to, you know, tell me a little bit about yourself and, you know, and then they get real timid. You know, it's almost like you have to pull stuff out of them. As somebody that's dealt with young people, how do you what is your best strategy as far as getting young people to to to be relaxed and to be confident about themselves? Yeah. I mean, I always say anything that's kind of tied to children starts with adults, right? So in one, it's were they ever taught to be open with adults and have conversations and to have that confidence? And that's really where it starts.

1:16:25 It starts with adults teaching kids things of those kind of nature. Like, and sometimes kids are just thinking. Like, you could be in a room talking to them. They're not necessarily not interested. They could just be listening. Or even if they are doing something else, they don't tune everything out. And I do think that it's not the fact that it's, it doesn't fall back on them. They have to be taught that. So most of the time, anytime I think of things that relate back to children, and if it's like, why did they do that? Or why isn't something, doesn't make sense? It's like, what didn't the adult do to make that accessible to them? To have them realize that this is what they should be doing in this environment or in this interaction.

1:17:05 It's all learned. And I didn't even say today, like when you think about, you know, younger, like people just starting in their career that have been working from home that actually probably are missing out on things in the office, even though a lot of people love working from home. But it is that it happens even now when I work with like colleagues who are younger. It's there's certain things that nuances that they just don't know. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I forgot. You wouldn't know this because you haven't worked in an office. Yeah. OK, so that's good. Good information for me to kind of pull stuff out because, you know, I haven't done a lot of speaking lately. But, you know, when I when I used to go and talk and try to get the young folks to interact. But, yeah, that gives me some ideas on how to go with it. OK.

1:17:48 All right. Let's get back on track. Explain the importance of financial literacy. Yeah. I mean, financial literacy is in so many, it's such a huge facet. Financial literacy is one with what you know about being able to keep like stable credit and savings and things, but it's also emotional. Like financial literacy doesn't just start on what I know today, how to open a bank account or like most things are online anyway, like brick and mortar banks are sometimes even hard to find in certain neighborhoods, right? And it's what you've learned from your family that teaches you what money really is because it's an emotional sense some people are very comfortable with it some people are afraid of it some people find it to be scarce so they like hoard on to it right where it's like oh you know it'll come and go and it's okay to be have things in debt so financial literacy is it it it's an encompassing of like in a holistic person and how they view their way to spend it how they earn it the way they get it and then what do you look at this dollar what does that dollar mean to you right and because you're like i went online and bought like you know a new app or another song or what have you know whatever it is and it's kind of like well i wonder if i what what else could i be doing this or putting 20 away a month for ira it there's just so much to encompass it but it is very important to every day where sometimes you know like a long time ago everyone's you need to learn how to read and be literate you also need to be have financial literacy it is far to be able to

1:19:18 move forward in this current atmosphere that we live in. Financial literacy is very necessary. Yeah. And, you know, what I've always observed in America is that whenever we as Black people start. Going toward either a particular profession or start advancing in certain ways, these creative things come up. And one of the examples is this credit score thing. Cause you know, all of us at Christmas time have watched the Jimmy Stewart movie. It was a wonderful life. And it was like, you got a loan on a handshake back then, you know what I'm saying?

1:20:04 And, and, you know, So now you've got this credit score where you've got to have a certain score to not only get a loan for a house or a car, but even even to get a job. Now, there's some jobs that if you have a certain credit score, they'll ask you questions because like in law enforcement, where, you know, a lot of my background is, you know, they if you got those credit score, they they're scared that you might take a bribe from a drug dealer. You know what I'm saying? So one of the things when I was in the legislature that I really focused on was teaching financial literacy in the schools.

1:20:48 And I was able to get with the help of the Realtors Association of the state was able to get. I wanted it to be required. I had envisioned first semester you take financial literacy and then the second semester you take entrepreneurship. Right. Because I wanted our children to know those kind of skills. And so I was able to get the financial literacy component in, but it got in as an elective. And but the bonus was, was that the school districts didn't have to pay for groups like the Realtor Association or CPA Association, whatever they would come in and teach the class for free.

1:21:31 All the school had to say is that they wanted it. How early should young people start learning financial literacy? Honestly, as soon as they're able to interact with other people, because the reason why I say that is not just because you're thinking they're going out and like, yeah, I buy your bubble gum here. No, it's just being able to understand maybe people have some have more than others. And that helps like social economic interactions with people, like being able to understand like why, because working in a school, you see that a lot. Like some kids are like, oh, yeah, they have this like fancy jacket. But I also did was in schools that were in Title I districts.

1:22:13 But like you're the jacket. I will never forget this. The jacket still had the tag on the like the alarm. Right. And kids know that they like but they were older, but they weren't being nice about it. It's like, well, let's think about why that's a problem. Right. So what what does money mean and what does it mean when you have or when you have not? I think you, very young, it's describing how, it might not be the concept of this is a dollar. This is what the dollar means. This is how many pennies are in a dollar. This is what you can buy for a dollar. I think it's good to start maybe at like three or something. Right after you kind of hit that mark, it's one of those things of just explaining what, how money affects people's lives.

1:22:55 Like, and just having an understanding. And then I think once kids probably understand the difference between like, maybe I have, I might, because I feel like a lot of parents or children may not understand that their parents are going out of their way to give them more than they can actually afford. Right. And then I know someone that one day, like, it was like, I think during 2008. And she was telling me like, oh, one day I had a drum set. Next thing I didn't. Right. And it was really, and it still affects this person to this day. And the way that they talk about it, right? And I think if it would, just if that was something that could have been communicated, like, you know, money is something that can come and go. It's not always going to be there. And that might help children have a better understanding when they have it, when you spend it or what you spend it on or how you use it and how you interact with others might be helpful.

1:23:47 Yeah. So what advice would you give younger African-Americans on preparing to be financially stable and build generational wealth? Well, to your point, only I think like 26 states have financial educations. So it comes back to the adult. Someone has to tell someone this. Like normally when I would go and ask kids, do you know what a CPA is, like a certified public accountant? Out of the class, generally, like maybe five or six kids raise their hand, like less than 10%. That's because either their parent was CPA or their uncle or their parents used one. Other than that, no one even knows what that really is, right? Or they have like, oh, you're just sitting behind a desk every day.

1:24:28 It comes back to just access to knowledge. So for a child to go and find that might be kind of hard if there aren't outlets for it. I really do think it goes back to adults when you see children. If they have the opportunity to share that knowledge, to definitely share it. But every state in this country has an accounting association. And if you want to get resources, that is a good place to start, because they do try really hard to promote financial literacy within those associations, because it's important, right? Beyond the fact that like accountants will need people to use them. But they do go out of their way to like teach basic understanding of like how to save, what is a like retirement, how to think about that.

1:25:15 And it's because it's really nothing you start to think about until you kind of get closer to it. Like most people don't understand a buy a house like like what? You know, you have to have 20 percent down payment. You need all these things and in reading and a lot of research. So it is, I think, a lot of, I want to say financial literacy needs a lot of earned media, like mouth to mouth, like conversations of just like when you have an experience, make sure to share that with someone else. Or if there are like April is a financial literacy month, I believe. Right. Right. What could be shared around to schools about things. Cause I just, it's not going to come up every day unless someone tells the child that. Yeah, it definitely has to be deliberate. And that was one of the things because I just remember trying to buy the first house and.

1:26:04 You know, it was just all this paperwork and all this stuff. It was like, I just thought, look, I got to find me a bank, qualify for a loan. And, you know, give the people the check and keep it going. And then they said, well, you know, we got to do this inspection stuff. And then there's these closing costs. And I was like, what is just the amount of paperwork, the title stuff and all that? You know, you got to kind of get people ready for that. And then even when I first went to college, it's like you're registering for class. And then you know it's like at the end of the registration table there's like sears and, zales jeweler and all this stuff and they you know v and everybody's trying to give you a credit card you know what i'm saying so you know you at it's like oh i'm really grown i can sign for one of these right but i didn't have you know and my parents were you know educated working class people but they never sat there and took the time you know outside of a checking account and a savings account. They taught me that.

1:27:12 And in school, we had to learn, I mean, we had to literally take a test to graduate from high school in Chicago to show that you were functionally literate. And part of that was you had to be able to read a bus schedule, you had to write a check, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, that's, that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about as far as preparing these young folks. Cause at the minute that they get out of that bubble in their home, um, know, they're going to be exposed to things and not realize it. And you're basically saying that some adult, whether it's in the home, outside of home, has to be intentional in making sure these young people understand that.

1:27:54 Yes, because colleges are not prepared. So think of a college, right? And I always had this back and forth because I worked at universities. And that's kind of why I was like, I got disheartened, even though they're meant to do the right thing. One when you go to college you sign up for classes now there are some schools being started where they track if you sign up for a major they'll show you all the things you need to be taking all the course credits and what have you to get to that degree i don't know how many schools actually do that but there are some but generally speaking once you're there you're on your own like there are some kids that know there's a writing lab there are some kids that know that there's this you know well maybe i want to get involved in student body government or something or there's an extra activity that might help in computer science or what have you.

1:28:36 You have to go find it. It doesn't always come to you. What they kind of give you is, hey, here's your dorm. Here's your RA. Here's some basic things you need to know. And everything else, you have this whole entire campus around you, but you really need to kind of navigate it yourself. And that's where I feel like if you don't know, for instance, I didn't realize you could study abroad. I know you could go, but I didn't really know what that was or how to sign up for it. I still went abroad in college, but I just didn't know, why don't I go to the office and fill out a paper and form and go away for a semester? It just wasn't something that my friends did. And I was like, oh, by the time I figured it out, I was like, well, do I really want to go away my senior year? So that's my point, because if an adult doesn't tell someone, by the time you get to college, you're not necessarily going to find it either.

1:29:22 And then you're really not going to find it, because a lot of people learn by trial and error, usually when it's financial literacy. It's like, oops, I did that. And that was wrong. I signed this paper. I took out too much. I should have gave that money back. I didn't need all this loan money. And I kept it. I just been like, no, no, please take it back because I just rather not have it. And then the other thing is, if you want to start with families, one thing they can do, which a lot of families across, especially in the higher income levels do, they use life insurance to get around estate taxes. So it's just like, you have to, again, who would know that unless you know someone who's been in that industry, right? And that's what people do. And they, when a person passes, they have all this money kind of locked up in different types of like vehicles money wise, and they get to pass it on to their family without taxes, like a tarot of taxes. So it's. Yeah.

1:30:13 Yeah. Little tricks and stuff. But I think it's important. So look, as much as I would like to continue talking with you, I'm going to have to cut this off. But how can people reach out to you? Either for your advocacy or just to kind of pick your brain a little bit, have you speak somewhere or whatever? How do people get in touch with you? I mean, obviously, you can find me on LinkedIn, Don Troop, or they're more than happy to email me personally if they want to. It's just my first name, period, last name at gmail.com. And, yeah, and that's, I mean, happy to share that information And because it really does come back to that's kind of why my mom was like, I did all this for you to do all these different things.

1:31:04 And I'm like, would people talk about like survivor's guilt? I don't have that type of thing, but I understand the concept of it. I'm like, how could I be so happy doing all these other things if I wasn't bringing other people with me? So I think that's the most important thing. Well, I'm glad that you you've chosen to be one of the the good people and try to lift up other folks in your work. I think we'd be a much better place if there were a gazillion people like you, as opposed to what we're dealing with. But I won't get into that too deep. Dawn Troop, it's been an honor to have you on the podcast. A general rule I like to express to the guests is that you have an open invitation to come back whenever you want to come back. If there's something burning in your chest and say, Eric, I need to talk about this, just feel free to reach out. and we'll get you on.

1:31:57 But again, thank you for coming on today. Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here. All right, guys. And we're going to catch y'all on the other side. Music. All right. And we are back. So I want to thank Jamie Mustard and Don Troop for coming on. I greatly appreciate it. Not only meeting them, but having the conversation with them. And I hope that y'all enjoy the conversations as well. I usually don't do two rants on a show.

1:32:37 I usually do one rant and kind of close it out. But I had to do my rant at the beginning because so much stuff has happened. This week. But the other thing ties into something I've been trying to highlight on this podcast and we could see it coming. But now it's really, really in our face. And that's this push by the Trump administration to shut down diversity, equity, and inclusion. He gave a speech, I think, I can't remember where it was recently, you know, since he's been in office where he he said the end of all that stuff is here.

1:33:28 That we we don't need to we we need to be merit based as opposed to trying to fill gaps, historical gaps. And, you know, people have been criticizing Elon Musk for the Nazi salute, and, you know, everybody's talking about he's enacting Project 2025 and all that stuff. Here's the real simple thing People For whatever reason Have created a tension point In their lives They may say That they were voting To get cheaper eggs Cheaper milk, cheaper bread Cheaper gas, They may have said that they want America to be more simple or more competitive in the world.

1:34:30 But what they have unleashed is a trip back in time, a time where those of us in the black community had to fight for respect. As a child of the generation that was told that we have to do twice as good or be. Better than average, just to be considered equal. It's disheartening that now we're at a point in our history where we have a president that is openly more open, I think, than Woodrow Wilson even was.

1:35:15 Because Woodrow Wilson, thank God, didn't have social media and the internet. But now it's being perversely pervading throughout the world, that America is now no longer a country that believes in equity and equality. Now, merit-based sounds innocuous, but if you're white, that's great. If you're black or anything else, that's harmful.

1:35:58 That's, I can't even, that's really gaslighting us. That's, you know, the type of language that is alarming. Because that's what they were saying to us, our parents, our grandparents, you know. Well, we would have gave you the job, but we gave it to somebody else. Now, they don't want us going to their schools to increase diversity, but if Johnny's dad donated money and they built a dorm in the daddy's name, he can go to that school. with no problem.

1:36:45 Where's the merit in that, right? And then you say that you want to be merit-based, but I'm trying to figure out of your nominees for your cabinet positions who actually qualifies in that merit-based category. You could say Marco Rubio. Maybe, you know, the treasurer, although he doesn't have a heart. I guess background-wise, he fits in. You could probably say Pam Bundy because she was an attorney general of a state, but not really, right? If your agenda is to say merit-based in the literal sense, then these positions should be filled by the top people in those respective fields in the nation.

1:37:38 These are not the top people, period. These are the most sycophantic people. These are the most loyal people to you or your cause. but they're not merit-based. So, you know, the whole thing is that we have somehow become immune to hypocrisy in the United States. We just accept because we want to strongly believe in something that's not really happening, but we want to believe it is happening. We're putting our hopes in people that don't really care about us We're putting our faith in somebody that doesn't have faith, If you were offended Because a pastor asked you to show mercy At a church service.

1:38:39 What more evidence do you want that these people are not on your side? Right? A literal pastor literally asked the President of the United States to show mercy. Period. Oh, that wasn't a good sermon at all. Really? How many sermons have you been attending? What part of Jesus's teachings do you not comprehend where mercy and love is involved? Ladies and gentlemen, we are in a bad place. Now, we're going to make it because there's enough of us that's going to fight to make sure that we make it.

1:39:22 Whether it's in the courts, whether it's in the streets, whether it's in the halls of government, We're going to make it through because we asked y'all to come through and only half of y'all did. So we have to kind of take it from here, right? But we're going to make it through. And I hope that when we make it through that people learn something and do better. It's one thing for those elected or appointed or hired to take an oath to uphold the Constitution.

1:40:05 But at some point in time, those of us who are citizens of this nation need to uphold it, too. If you don't understand anything else, just understand the preamble. Just understand that we're supposed to be a place that respects individual liberty. We're supposed to be a place where we provide defense for our nation. We're supposed to be a place where we promote the general welfare of everyone. That's what the preamble basically says. But we don't vote like that. We don't do our politics like that. I mean, you know, it's not just the Republicans either.

1:40:47 I mean, the biggest voting bloc for Democrats was African Americans. And yet the most viable candidates to be the next chair of the DNC are not. We have one African-American running, one. Everybody else is running for vice chair, this, that, and the other. Now, I don't know if the memo went out as like, well, we had a black chair. We didn't win. So we're going to go with a white guy. I don't know. All I know is if we are supposed to be defending diversity, inclusion, and equity, then we need to practice what we preach, right?

1:41:29 And that's nothing against the people who are running. But there's I mean, it's kind of ironic that we're upset that Donald Trump is saying we ought to be merit based. And the Democratic Party is, yeah, we don't pick a white dude this time. This is this is tough sledding, ladies and gentlemen, we're we're in for a bumpy ride. This roller coaster, it just reminds me of a street in Jackson. There was a street called Riverside Drive, and it's actually in a pretty nice neighborhood, but it was notorious for having potholes and having dips and all that stuff.

1:42:13 It's to the point where folks were selling T-shirts, you know, saying you want to go for a ride, drive on Riverside. You know what I'm saying? That's what we are getting ready to go through. We're about to go through our dips in our potholes. We're about to traverse a road that is not going to be smooth at all. And if you want to hide in your self-deceit that this was about economics, feel free. But the end result of what you got is that you have a leader in the White House that wants a nation divided.

1:43:00 Wants a nation that's unstable. And I don't know where the financial benefit of that is. I don't know what the transactional benefit of that is for him, but it's not a good transactional benefit for us. It's not going to be a financial benefit for us. It's not going to be a mental benefit for us. In some cases, it may not be a physical benefit for us. It may even cost a lot of us are mortality. That's how serious this is. So, you know, people try to warn folks. Didn't want to heed the warning. You're grown. You can do that.

1:43:44 But now we got to deal with the consequences. So be thankful that some of us are not discouraged and are going to do what needs to be done. But understand, when the opportunity comes again, whether it's this election cycle or the election cycle four years from now, you've got to do better. We got to have leaders, American leaders, not selfish leaders, not corrupt leaders, not evil leaders. We need American leaders. We need people who understand that the beauty and the strength of this nation is that we're diverse.

1:44:30 We are the only nation on the planet where every country in the world is represented, the only one. And we need to elect people who understand that and have the gumption and the fortitude to manage it. The easy way out is to just try to kick everybody out that ain't white and male and Christian. That's the easy way out. The real leaders are the ones who embrace the diversity that we have and want to make it better for everyone. If you want everybody to take the hyphens off American, Second.

1:45:13 Stop lifting one group of Americans up and discarding the rest of them. Leadership is about being tough, true, but not tough toward the followers. It's being tough through the challenges. And the people that are in positions now, the overwhelming majority of them are not. And you might say, well, Eric, well, where do we get these leaders from? There are people in the community that should be in positions to look out for the community, other than just being a community activist, other than just being the president of the local NAACP or whatever.

1:45:59 There are people that need to be in positions of power to make sure that government does right by the people and does no harm to the people. And that has to start happening now. Some of us may be too old to step into that role. That's fine. Then we need to train and teach young people to fill that void. Because we're at a very, very precarious position. Democracy as we know it, the lifestyles that we have known and grown accustomed to are on a cliff.

1:46:41 And it's not going to take much to push us over that cliff if we do nothing. So when you hear people saying, well, we're not going to practice DEI and we want the government, government employees to snitch on folks who are doing DEI work. If we want to be a merit-based society, then we have to focus on building up people of merit. And the only way we can build up people of merit is that we give everybody a chance to be people of merit, not a select few.

1:47:22 All right, guys. Thank you all for listening. Until next time. Music.