Season 2025 Episode 14: Ken Miller Beat his Own Demons and Now Mentors Men in the Black Community to Find their Way

Ken Miller is one of the good guys -- after he straightened out his own life, he knew he had to pass it on. He now mentors Black men and gives presentations all over the country. His journey included going to an Ivy League college, then to jail, being homeless for several years and then to overcoming addiction and growing his businesses and becoming successful (he is a millionaire today). 

Bio: Ken Miller is an author, speaker, and the founder of Denali FSP, a consulting firm dedicated to helping organizations achieve sustainable funding. His book, Becoming Ken: One Black Man’s Journey from Ivy League to Prison and Back Again, chronicles his powerful story of resilience, redemption, and authenticity. Through his keynotes and programs like “From Rock Bottom to Resilience,” Ken inspires audiences to embrace truth, face adversity, and make meaningful life choices.

His work has him doing a lot of speeches and podcasts for free. He has published one book and he has three more on the way! Ken is definitely inspired by the men he helps and the connection he feels to his Creator. He has mentored men all over the world. Some he has mentored for 10-15 years.

"I give you permission to dream" is what he tells them during his mentoring sessions. Even grown men have had their dreams crushed over their lifetime.

Talk about a rewarding life based on his own story!

His website is:  www.kenmillerspeaks.com

Ken is on LinkedIn: KenMiller84

AIVAlution LLC |  | Denali FSP

Purchase Ken’s Book: Becoming Ken

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Original music "Saturday Sway" by Brendan Talian (for all interviews before 2025)

Transcript

Speaker 1  0:20  
Ken. Hello and welcome to the storied human. My guest today is Ken Miller. He's He's a survivor of addiction and a thriver, and he's built businesses, influenced others, done a lot of healing in the world, and I'm so happy to talk to him. Welcome Ken

Unknown Speaker  0:54  
Well, thank you, Lynne. I'm looking forward to it.

Speaker 1  0:58  
Your story is so inspirational. I mean, a lot of us have struggles in our life, but not all of us turn around, heal ourselves and then really help others. And I always wonder, like, what do you think makes that happen? Like, what makes you, what made you able to do that,

Speaker 2  1:17  
and what drove you? Yeah, a choice, a decision. Yeah, I think a big part that motivates me was motive was a sense of gratitude, because I was given so much from where I where I was, and therefore I wanted to, you know, then give back, because I was so grateful to God and just so grateful for my mere existence due to some circumstances that I was alive, and therefore I wanted to get back in particular I wanted to give back to a specific community, because I knew that community well, and I knew the struggles that that community entailed. Now what I talk about is universal, but the community that I'm speaking about as black men. As a black man in the United States, I understood some of the difficulties that we had, some of the difficulties I had, and I also knew the great, great need for leadership, for mentorship, for friends that you know had an interest in those individuals that I was helping from that community. So answers that

Speaker 1  2:37  
I love, that that sense of purpose and that almost debt, you know, you felt the debt to God and to to for your recovery, that you had, that you were, that you were able to feel that gratitude and then turn it into helping others. I especially like that you help your community, because there's just this so many psychological things you know, not that I totally know. But, you know, being a woman, I know a little bit there just seems to be so much psychological stuff that you carry, as a person of color in our society, and you think you're doing fine, but you're carrying it. You know, it's almost like a generational thing, like it's just so hard to feel okay inside yourself, when the whole world growing up, especially right, treats you a certain way, or you learn a certain thing about yourself, it's so wonderful that you're setting this example as a leader, that you're showing the way. Because we need that. We need a way more of that. And like I get back to my same old theme, we need everybody to be the best they can be, because I believe deep in my soul that we were sent here, each one of us with our own gifts, right? And if we're not using them, if we're not being the best we can be. And for me, it's a spiritual thing, but it's really a practical thing, right? But for me it's a spiritual thing, like, if you're not being who God made you to be, then you're smacking God in the face, in my opinion, you know you're not. You need to be fully who you are. And I learned that kind of recently in my life. I didn't really have that viewpoint, but I believe that it's just a gift to the world to be who you are, because nobody's you, and if you're hiding it under addiction or fear or shyness or timidity, you know it's time to not do that. And so you model that, right? You model you like, get going do stuff, get better. That's very powerful to me. And it's so wonderful to be that force in the world to just show though what you're a way shower.

Speaker 2  4:45  
Yeah, I you know the be that force in the world that's interesting. You, if you so choose, to identify gifts and strengths, there's a lot of people that have. Of gifts and strengths, but they don't utilize them. They don't share them. Sometimes because they hold themselves back. It's nobody else they're like, why is that old Marianne Williamson, when she tells her, who am I to be great? Who you not to be great? Yeah, you know, if you manifest God's will and you're shining light, let that light shine. So I have some skill sets. I have some gifts, and I've taken it upon myself to share those, those who want to, you know, take part in the information I share. I welcome them and those who do not. I respect that, you know, but I have it, and I will continue doing it. I've done I'll do 95 podcasts this year. I'll speak on 20 stages. My gosh, I wrote one book, and I have three more coming out that's amazing as a value added. I don't do it for money. Let's put that off to the side right now, I speak for free. Many times I do podcasts, obviously, for free. I pay to be a podcast. I pay to be on stages.

Speaker 1  6:21  
I is, no, that's wonderful. You're driven by more than money. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2  6:29  
Because, I mean, I hate to bring it up. It's it that is small. I'm driven by the gift. I'm driven by the reaction and or response from those that I share with,

Unknown Speaker  6:45  
and I'm mainly driven by it's the right thing to do, right?

Speaker 2  6:50  
It's God's will, okay? And I don't lot of times, I don't really talk a lot in the spiritual because I'm so much dealing with the temporal world. I'm dealing with the solid world. I'm dealing with our actions and what we do. So I mentor men all over the country. I've been mentoring men for 15 years, and I explicitly mentor people. That means I am the mentor. They're the mentee. They have a name. We meet regularly. Some men I've been meeting with for 1012, 1314, 15 years. But even when I'm mentoring them, one of the things that I explain to them and share with them is that there is information and knowledge that's out there that can assist and support you in your journey. Because, in the end, as a mentor, my sole purpose is to engender dreams. That's what I do. As a mentor, I try to make your dream come true. So let's articulate a dream. Let's go from there, but in the in the end, I always go back to what is truth, what is real for you, and all I care about is what you do. It's not what you think. It's not how you feel. I care about what you do because I understand action. I understand to do, to do put you in prison. To do puts you in dangerous situations. Not your thinking. People say, Oh, it's your thinking. No, I thought, believe me, I would probably be in prison for the rest of my life, if it's the things I thought about, okay, or the feelings I have, if a feeling put you in prison? No, it's what you do with the feeling. It's what you do with the thought. But I've had a lot, 99% of my thoughts, I don't act out. I mean, the negative ones, and you can still tick me off, but I'm not going to do anything. I haven't put hands or physically accosted someone in 21 years, I haven't threatened anybody in 15 years. That's a miracle, so, you know. But that's it, believe me in my head, maybe my wife, I might, she might have said something last week, you know. But you know, the key thing is, again, is what you do, and you one of the things that I teach, and I don't want to go too far into this, but one of the things I always try to teach is, is there alignment with what you say and what you do? And I teach on this, and believer, and there has to be we have the word, the fancy word is congruence is congruence? Is your alignment? Let's use a simpler word, okay? And when you have that congruence, when you have that integrity, where your words, where your. Communications are in alignment with what you do. It engenders trust, and also allows you to feel a lot better about yourself, because you know what you say is going to be word, it's truth, and someone can, you know, go to the bank with that.

Speaker 1  10:20  
So I love that. I love all of that. I wondered if you could just tell us a little more about that phrase you engender dreams, because that is a powerful phrase. How do you do that? How do you help people find their way to making their dreams a reality?

Speaker 2  10:40  
So when I first started mentoring, I didn't know what I was doing. But when you've been doing for 15 years, you teach classes on it, and you've worked with 6070 men. Because I only work with men, you learn how, at least I have learned how they always say the best way to learn is to teach. The best way to learn is to teach. So I teach classes on mentoring. I'm writing a book on mentoring, hopefully it'll come out in December or January, mentoring in communities of color. But anyway, so the first thing I do is someone approaches me, and either they approach me or a family member usually will approach me and say, Hey, will you mentor me? Or will you mentor my cousin, my son, my brother, usually a woman, because they know me and they know what I've done working with other black men. And so I'll either I used to sit down because it used to always be in person, but now I'm national, yeah, and remember also, please understand mentoring always, is free, always. You never charge. Wow, believe me, I get I give money to my mentees. I support them. I don't give them, I support them. And things. I'll talk about that in a second. But anyway, the first meeting, I sit down with them, and I say, you know, whether it's online or offline, in person, I say, Hey, my name is Ken Miller. You know, you've asked to be mentored by me, or someone has put us together. Let me give you a little my background, and I'm talking one or two minutes on the background, and I'll say to them, Do you want to be mentored? And the reason I do that, number one, is it makes it explicit, yes, I am the mentor. You are the mentee. Let's not get that confused or twisted. Quote, unquote, we're not equals. We're not equal. I have a wealth of information that I'm willing to share with you, and I'll do three things, which I tell them, but just want to make sure mentor. Mentor, if you want to be friends, we can just be friends. But do you want any mentor? And please understand this, I have mentors. Okay, then there's me. I have four generations of black men mentoring black men for generations. That's phenomenal. Yeah. So then comes the the pivot question, the pivotal question, and what I say to them, I have one goal with you. I have one responsibility to you, and they're like, what's that? What's that? And I said, that's to engender your dream. Then I say to them, what is your dream? Take your time. And this is probably the most important thing. I say, Lynne, and I didn't do this in the beginning, but I do it now. For the last 1010, 12 years, I say to them, I give you permission to dream, and then I shut up and you like why do you tell a grown man? Because he's a grown man. You give him permission to dream because their dream has been taken away from them. Many they

Unknown Speaker  14:00  
didn't have it, right? They don't have family,

Speaker 2  14:02  
peers, parents, counselors, teachers. You can't do that. You can't do that exactly.

Speaker 1  14:10  
You hear story after people being told that. That's so beautiful. But my first thought was they probably, some of them, don't know their dream, right? They haven't had time to even think about that,

Speaker 2  14:23  
but I give them time. That's a key so many people think a conversation is someone says, we ever used to have a thing called extemporaneous speech? You could say a word like tomato, speak on five minutes, extemporaneously on tomato go. That's not how communication has to go, right? I'm a fundraiser. I teach fundraising. That's one of my skill sets. I teach it nationally, internationally, fundraising, and then fundraising, or the thing called Making the action. Ask, we have to ask a major donor to support this vision for this nonprofit. Would you be willing to give $100,000 to expand this wing at the hospital? And then we are taught to shut up and allow people to think, but 99% of conversation is back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. So I shut up and I started eating or I'm looking at them on thing, I said, I give you permission to dream. Take your time. I've had people take up to five to 10 minutes. I don't say anything. I'm cool. I've been here, bro, I've done this.

Unknown Speaker  15:38  
I'm comfortable. I love that.

Unknown Speaker  15:44  
Yeah, so

Speaker 2  15:47  
had one not come back with a dream, and if they didn't, I'd help them come up with a dream. What's your aspiration? What's your mountain top? Yeah, what have you always wanted to do that will make you feel good as a human, as a capable What did you want to do when you were 17, when you were 25 but then you had the kids, the marriage, and you got the eight to five job, Da, da, da. But what's the dream, bro? Yeah. So, and we always come up with it, and then I say, I will do three things for you.

Unknown Speaker  16:28  
I'm going to provide

Speaker 2  16:33  
information, either in writing or podcasts or dialogs. That's number one. Number two, I'm going to introduce you to people, because I know a lot of people, a lot of people.

Unknown Speaker  16:49  
And number three, I'm going to

Speaker 2  16:53  
support you with empathy and emotionally. Okay, I'm going to do those three things, and then number four, and I do this often. If you need some support in something, you let me know you need to go to a conference. I'll pick up the airfare. I'll pick up the hotel you gotta have, but you will have skin in the game. I'm not gonna do the whole thing, right? You eat something you need this, course, let's talk about it. I got you, bro, it's not a loan. This is a gift. I've done very, very well financially. I've been very successful. It's an honor to give back. Okay, you know, so literally. And then what we do is we meet every quarter for one hour. At one point, I had 28 men that I worked with. How did you do that? I know you. It was over four days. I started six o'clock in the morning. Got people on the East Coast, I'm on the West Coast, and I would go eight to 10 hours, four days in a row, and I finally had to cut it back. It was too much. It was just too much. Yeah, I had 52 volunteer commitments. I'm on boards, I'm on committees. I'm on, you know, Task Force subcommittees. And I finally, I I cut it back. I got off of every volunteer committee that I was on, 23 of them, and then there was 28 men that I mentored, and one man that I sponsored in the anonymous program, because I'm 21 years clean and sober.

Speaker 1  18:35  
Congratulations. Wonderful, September 23 and you know, that's a really good point that you're making about sometimes we have to balance like, I say yes to volunteer commitments, and I don't realize sometimes how much time it really takes. And well, I know they can drive you nuts. Yeah, I mean, because I have a full time job and I do these other nonprofit things, and if it's not bringing you joy, if it's stressing you out, like it's time to take a look at balancing your you know your time.

Speaker 2  19:08  
I love I love volunteering. I do too, but it it because I teach this so we have capacity only two things, two things, time and money, time and money. They're limited time and money, and there's only 2080 hours in a year, 52 weeks, 40 hours a week. And I had gotten up to 900 hours a year in volunteering, my 100 hours two different volunteer so what it does is impinges. Because I have family, I have church, I have five businesses. Wow. So where do I so I dropped them all, except for I. Had 10 mentees. I'm back up to 12. And then I started one more. I started though it's something I wanted to do again, integrity, which is alignment of what I've say I'm going to do. The reason I wrote the book was because people have been you need to write a book. You need to write a book. You need to write a book. Took me three years. I said I always want to do a black men's book study and discourse group. I started in January. We're on our second book, cry like a man. Great book. First Book, though, was my, probably my favorite non fiction book, which is six pillars of self esteem by Nathaniel Brandon. So it's called the six pillars black man's book study. So every man that I mentor, and anybody that got on this call and they heard they I would you just say, what two books that Ken start you with? I start everybody with the same two books and then give them different depending on where their background what they may need. But every guy starts off with six pillars of self esteem, by Nathaniel Brandon and the Speed of Trust, by Stephen Covey, because trust is so important and self esteem is so important and most individuals are lacking in self esteem, and they really don't understand what trust is, and how do you engender trust?

Unknown Speaker  21:33  
So I always start my guys with those two books.

Speaker 1  21:37  
I love that it's like you, and then after those two books you prescribe, almost like a doctor, you prescribe the books that you feel they need. That is such a great way to get someone on a path, because I'm sure it becomes more of a habit for them. So many good things about what you do. Could you remind us that the title of your book that you published?

Speaker 2  22:00  
Yeah, it's because becoming Ken, a black man's journey from the Ivy League to prison and back again. Let me just give you the high level story for the listener. So my name is Ken Miller. I'm 62 years old. I'm a biracial black man. I live in Blaine Washington in 1962 My mother was a white runaway teenage girl in New York, and my father was a black pimp and drug dealer. I am the union of that relationship. I was put up for adoption at birth because in 1962 biracial children were not raised by 17 year old Irish Catholic white girls in Queens. Okay, that's just the facts. So I did six years of foster homes. At age six, I was adopted, and at that time, I could not read, I could not write, I could not tell time, I could not even tie my shoes. At age six, in first grade, first summer, my mom taught me how to read. I say, my mom, I adopted mother, Irene Miller taught me how to read. I fell in love with reading, and what we would call precocious by second grade. Within six months, I was reading at the fifth grade level, and was I just love reading, and by the time I was 17, I was a national merit scholar. I was accepted to Harvard. I went to Dartmouth College. While at Dartmouth, I was exposed to alcohol because it's fraternity. Why did you drink? Well, that's what you do in college. Within a month of my first drink, I am a full blown alcoholic, and I was also exposed to drugs. I graduate from college, go to my first treatment. 1984 stayed sober for two years. I relapsed, and I was to spend the next 20 years homeless, homeless on the streets of Seattle, Sacramento, Reno, Jackson, Mississippi. I also am a three time convicted felon spent many years behind bars, and in 2004 September 22 I was arrested for what I hope is the last time I was told by the judge that the next time I went into his courtroom after with another felony, I was to get the habitual criminal statute, which is 25 to life. For my $51 I could have stole, and I would have had 25 to life. It had been like the three strikes in California. I was in the mic, and I did three years for sales of a $10 rock of crack cocaine. The best thing ever happened to me. I got cleaned up. I went to counseling. I worked on my physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual while in prison, the third time, I got out with $22 gate money and a box probably a foot wide, knows all the possessions I owned in the world. But I had my freedom and I had hope and I had sobriety and I had a god, and within three to four year, well, got out of no seven and 10, I started fundraising for a nonprofit soup kitchen, which I was very familiar with did very, very well. And four years later, I started my first company as an entrepreneur, Denali FSP, which is 11 years later, going still today, I am a millionaire. I own property here I have property in South America. I have five companies. I write books, I speak from the stage. I have employees, I have, you know, contractors, and I have a wife. I got grandkids. I mean, I have a beautiful, beautiful life, and I tell people and that reason why I titled it becoming kin. That's not what I was called on the streets. That's not what I was called in the penitentiary. I just wanted to be Ken, Ken Miller, and I wasn't. You don't call me, you know, crack addict. Don't call me ex con. Just call me Ken. That's all I am. I'm a kind and gentle man today, and so I come on podcasts like this to share a story. If you want the book, get it. It says Amazon. It's on Audible. Do you want it? No. Big thing is i i want to share, because I want people to hear that you can get well, I was broken. I was broken. I was broken when my father shot my mom six times that broke me. I was broken when a man raped me. I was broken. I was broken when I went to kill three different individuals. I was broken when people came to kill me on the streets, I was broken. I had a lot of trauma, but today I'm whole, and not only that, I can talk about it. I was broken when I was a male prostitute. That's what I did. I was a hustler and I was a male prostitute, and for years that was my big secret. You could not know that. Today I speak about it from the stage. Everybody knows who knows me. They know that's what I did, and they still like me. They're not like me.

Speaker 1  27:52  
That's so wonderful, because we we always we talk about with a lot of people. I talk about how shame. You know, if we live in shame, it stops us from having our full life. And isn't that wonderful that you broke through that

Unknown Speaker  28:07  
right? Let me ask you, what is shame?

Unknown Speaker  28:10  
I think it's just a big old shadow that you hide under.

Speaker 2  28:15  
What's the difference between shame? Because I talk about this all the time, but the difference between shame and guilt, interesting, I don't know. Okay. They're like, I'm gonna do a real simple version of this. Yeah, guilt is I did. Shame is I am.

Speaker 1  28:39  
Ooh, yeah, that hits hard. Yeah,

Speaker 2  28:42  
yeah. People kill themselves over I am, because once you embody I am, it also takes away the ability to do anything about it. I am less than right. Okay, now I did something that was less than I got no problem, yeah, I pled guilty every time I went in front of the court. I still have guilt, but, yeah, beautiful.

Speaker 1  29:07  
What a beautiful you know, what hit me when you were telling that story, and that is just an unbelievable story, is that you finally got to, I feel like alcohol and drugs addiction really robbed so much from people, and you finally got to be who you really were, which is a kind and gentle soul who wants to help other people, but also a strong businessman. You know, you're really smart, and you got to be everything that you were before addiction robbed it, robbed you of it, like you became yourself again, becoming Ken. It's like, so powerful.

Speaker 2  29:45  
But I said the word, but I don't mean that disagree

Unknown Speaker  29:50  
with you. No, it's okay.

Speaker 2  29:52  
My problem was not drugs and alcohol. My problem was my relationship with God. Right, right, and my relationship with self. We used that thing on the street that we would say, I am the judge jury and executioner, and I was the judge jury and executioner of my own fate. And I would literally hurt myself. I would do it physically. I used to take razor blades, ice picks, cigarettes. I got that's six, that's six cigarettes. Audience, can't see it, but I burned myself purposely to hurt me because I did not like me and I needed to punish me. What I'm saying this is brokenness, and so the drugs and alcohol, to me, that's just, that's what I deserved. I used to wake up, you know, when you're overriding sense upon wakening is fear. That's my overriding emotion, was fear and probably self hatred, and then that fear that somebody's going to find out the secret. Because I had secrets on the streets. I didn't want other guys to know about what I was doing, because that would lessen. I didn't want to know about it in the penitentiary, that's for sure, yeah, that would lessen my stature, or how I came across or interacted with people. But the key thing, and I always say this, my key difficulty, was my conversations with self self talk. Remember, we have three conversations. You have internal, external and spiritual, and most of them. I didn't have any spiritual conversations. I wouldn't allow that to happen, yeah, but believe me, I used to talk to myself all the time inside. Sometimes I lied. I'd stand in front of a mirror and talk to myself very, very badly. I used to tell people I would not give my addiction to my worst enemy. Worst Enemy. Okay, but again, that's just a manifestation of that self hatred, that low self esteem, shame based and so because, and this is important, because many times people take away the drugs and alcohol and are still messed up, right? That's a good point. They don't deal with that emotional baggage. They don't and really, and I could be wrong on this, but one of the main thing they don't deal with the secrets like this you have. There's a great book called The Memory chalet by Tony Judd. And I always think of memories as this big house, and you go on the first floor, and that's like your present, and then you go up the stairs to the second floor, and there's a long hallway, and on that door it says 1985 rape, it says, You know, 1993 kidnapping, it says 1986 shooting, says 1968 1968 adoption, and it's a door, and you don't want to go in that door. You don't want to go in that room and turn on the lights and look at the set pieces and try to identify what is true in there, and take away that power of that room and that secret and what's behind that. And so many times what you can do, you can do a couple of different things, but one of the things you can do, you can go in there with a professional. That's what the professional is going to do. They got to open that door and walk in there with you. What do you see? What do you feel? And I'm not a big one on feelings, because that's just a feeling. Is an opinion. It's just an opinion. Okay, but I'm not big on but what do you see? What really take away the emotion? Because a lot of times, the emotion shuts down your ability to think cognitively, to look and see the different set pieces. The one of the greatest gifts I got in my healing was the ability to put myself into other people's shoes and try to understand where that individual my dad shot my mom went to her job, shot her leg, and then stood above her and shot her five more times and told her the whole time he was going to come to my job and shoot me. Okay, oh, my, that was his plan, my only child. And all I would do is, when I would bring up that memory, all I had was hatred. Okay, I. But there was no depth. And then finally, I said, for my healing, I've got to be able to deal with this. And so I went and I talked to my father,

Unknown Speaker  35:10  
and I tried to get an understanding

Speaker 2  35:13  
of his anger, his alcoholism, his reasoning for his pain. And I, believe me, I have a much better understanding. And it was such a really, I forgave him. I forgive him 30 years ago, 2030, years ago, I forgave him. I was, you know, I talked to him before he passed. I can sit across the table and we could talk Okay, and I had to do the same things for myself and others that have hurt me. You know, people have put me in the hospital. I've had my jaw broken, thighs, my eye orbital broken, my nose broken. I've had guns pulled on me. I've had knives put to my chest. That's but that's part and parcel of the streets. I'm not saying that's anything on you, right? The unusual is, I'm this ivy league educated, national merit scholar, and I can articulate the time, the place, the feelings, the atmosphere, I can go. And I've been in all the rooms I've been in all the rooms. There's not a room that I know of that I haven't been into every once want someone pop up. I said, Well, I haven't thought about that for a while. Yeah, okay, but I said, I'm cool. So you it's like, then what it does, the relief is I can bring up into my consciousness any past memory and not have a negative feeling.

Unknown Speaker  36:44  
And that is powerful. Yeah.

Speaker 2  36:46  
I mean, again, I've had stuff done to me, but can I understand? And then the other thing is, is I had to, I had to forgive others, to forgive myself, if I can't forgive them, how can I forgive myself? Because I was literally my worst. I've done more bad stuff to myself than my dad, you know, I had 2025, years of doing bad to Ken Miller, you know, and I've done some horrible things to me, okay, but here I am today, whole and, you know, and this is something else I like to talk about.

Unknown Speaker  37:31  
Lynne, it's all right to be well.

Unknown Speaker  37:36  
It's all right to be well.

Unknown Speaker  37:39  
I don't work on Ken today.

Speaker 2  37:42  
I don't I'm cool with Ken, and you're like, how you how? What kind of ego is that? It's nothing to do with ego. It's nothing to do with hubris. What it has to do is, again, identifying truth. And when I realized that I am well, I am competent to life, it allows me to give out because I'm not spending all my time self centered or selfish working on me. That was such a beautiful gift, once I understood that and realized that a lot of people always working and the other thing what happened was there was a great series of books by this author, Collins, the good to great series of books. And what he talks about is about being great. And I teach now, man, just be good or be very good. You don't have to be great. You don't have the capacity to be great. And people said, What do you mean? Okay, go win the 100 meter dash at the US, at the Olympics, international Olympics, to do that, you have to train for 20 years, literally, to be great, to be the gold medal winner, you're not going to do it. You're not going to be the greatest, you know, weightlifter. You're not going to be the greatest power lifter. I used to powerlift. They were going to be great, but I was good at it, yeah, and now I can give out because I'm not constantly working on me trying to be great. I'd rather be really good and be the best in that present moment, husband, grandfather, father in law, that I can be friend, that's what I want to be, and that's who I am today. I'm good,

Unknown Speaker  39:35  
I'm good, and I'm good with that.

Speaker 1  39:40  
And that makes so much sense, right? Why? Why constantly be climbing up that ladder to some crazy aspiration that most of us can't really get there? And why do we need to if we're good, right? Yeah, you're good. You have a lot. Info in there. I I just, I'm so struck with your journey and everything that you teach. Is there anything that you'd like to add? Did we miss anything? There's a lot.

Speaker 2  40:17  
It's, oh, what can I What can I talk about? I just, I'd love to drift on one more thing. Let's talk about. But I'm trying to think which one, why don't you? Why don't you ask me what you may think is a deep question and which it is. So ask me a deep question. I'll and I'll share on that. I love questions. You like deep questions. Oh, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1  40:49  
Well, what would you be doing if you weren't doing what you do now? What other thing might you be doing?

Speaker 2  41:00  
Pretty much nothing I would just more of what I really want to do.

Unknown Speaker  41:06  
My favorite thing was, probably is to,

Speaker 2  41:10  
is to share in person, yeah, to look people in the eye

Unknown Speaker  41:16  
and and the audience and share

Speaker 2  41:21  
and have people come up to me afterwards and say that resonated with me, you know, or I've been there too, or this happened to me too, you know,

Unknown Speaker  41:37  
God's a little deeper, right?

Unknown Speaker  41:40  
When I talk from the stage, and I talk about

Speaker 2  41:44  
a sexual assault that happened to me, and I talk about walking away the next morning

Unknown Speaker  41:54  
and feeling dirty,

Speaker 2  41:57  
and Have taking a two hour shower and still feeling unclean.

Unknown Speaker  42:03  
That resonates,

Speaker 2  42:06  
unfortunately with a lot of women, okay, because they know that and then encompassing was my fault. I shouldn't have got drunk. I shouldn't have put myself in that position to be taken advantage of, and then again, it builds that low self esteem I can't make good decisions for myself. Therefore I'm doomed. And in fact, somebody told me when I was talking that I had to be a little careful, because sometimes people will be crying in the audience, and I've had that happen more than once and but I'm not really there to bring people to tears. I'm just telling my story. I don't know how it's going to resonate with you. I just talk about challenges. I talk about problems, and I talk about what we do. I talk about fear. I talk about courage. Courage is one of my favorite words, but for many people, when I talk about it, I always try to go back to what does it mean? Most This is one of the most difficult things for people. They can't define anything. They can't define it. They define it with the word, or they define it with an example. But that's not the definition. I say to people, what's the definition of insanity? Oh, it's, you know, doing the same thing, expecting, no, that's not the definition of insanity.

Unknown Speaker  43:46  
That's a meme. That's a trope

Unknown Speaker  43:50  
made up by some man.

Speaker 2  43:53  
The definition of insanity is not healthy of mind. It comes from the Latin root word SANUS, like a sanitarium, means health. I n means not and it means not healthy of mind. It means the inability to perceive truth in reality. If you're psychotic, schizophrenic, neurotic, you're not perceiving truth, and that's what makes you insane. And there's levels of it, and I can, there's more, probably some I could get in there and talk about the DSM four or whatever. But the key thing is, what is the definition I talk all the time? What people come to me about are problems. And I'm like, What is a problem? What is a problem? I say to him, is two plus a two. Let me ask you, Lynne, is two plus two a problem?

Unknown Speaker  44:49  
No, because there's a solution.

Speaker 2  44:52  
No, I hear what you're saying. You got clothes. Not bad. Lynne, not bad. Two plus two is a. Eight meant two plus two. Equals is a problem. You got to have the equal sign, or more than or whatever. Only problem is, whether it's a math problem, a life problem, a spiritual problem, a people problem, is a set of circumstances that seeks a solution. But you got to have the seek part. Two plus two needs to be a car. Call the two plus two. It was a coupe back in the 70s. It's a statement two plus two, yeah. Statement, oh, good, equal. Now it becomes and then what is, you know, now we got to identify what the solutions are, because what people people have difficulties with is they have a problem, puts them into an emotion called fear, which is just the anticipation the future, anticipation or expectation of pain. That's all fear is. It's anticipation of pain at a millisecond away or a month away. But the difficulty is, what do you do when you're in fear? And everybody says fight or flight? Well, actually, there's four different things you do with fear. It's fight, flight, freeze. Lot of people forget the freeze part, because you freeze. Many people, it's the deer in the headlamp, or the other thing you do with with fear is you accept it. You accept them in fear. Okay, now, what do I do? That's one of the greatest things you do. But I'm telling you, all of them have a good there are time. But that's maturity, that's discernment. When do I fight? I always say to people, you can call me anything in the world, long as you don't threaten or hurt my family, I'm cool. There are times I've run. I have run. I got hit over the head with a 40 ounce beer. Cracked my head blood all over. I ran. I ran, I didn't fight. There's five of them. There's one of me, okay, that's discernment, that's maturity, okay, sometimes it's better to run, sometimes it's better to to fight, sometimes it's better to freeze for a momentary time to think, Okay, I teach a thing called gap control. You have input come in. Can you create a gap so that you can do a action as opposed to a reaction? Because that reaction can get you in a bad position, bad place. So can you create a gap? Okay, before your action, and that, you may need to freeze for a minute, think about the situation and then say, Maybe I shouldn't say that to her. I do love her. She's my wife, or my husband, or whoever, maybe. And then the other one is just accept that this is the truth, and there is pain probably coming. And then that goes to courage. Courage, that's the last thing I'm going to say, or talk about on this portion. Courage one of my favorite words. So courage comes from the word liqueur cour. Cour is French for heart. Back in the Middle Ages, in the medieval time, they thought that the seed of your emotions was in your chest. That's why, when we have love, it's a heart, okay? Because that's where they thought emotions came from. They didn't know it came from the brain. They thought it came from the chest area. So courage is the willingness to accept the possibility of pain. That's all courage is. And when you have courage, doesn't mean that pain is inevitable, but I'm willing to accept, yeah, I got to go in there and talk to the boss. Yeah, I got to go in there and talk to the to the the funeral home director, because my mom has passed away, you know. Or I got to talk to the doctor, you know, because she's on, you know, in the hospital for this reason, you know. And I don't want to, because I don't want potentially what that answer might be, okay, but I'm willing to accept that because that's the right thing to do as an adult male, husband, father, whatever your role is, it's the next indicated correct thing to do, which is God's will. And so therefore I'll have courage. It's, you know, it's like the famous story of the women that lift up the car off their child. Okay, I didn't think I could do that. It, and it may hurt. I may pull my back. I might do, but that's my child underneath that car, and I'm gonna lift that car off of my child. See, I'm saying so I love courage. I love courage, and sometimes I have to go into prayer to ask for her, but I trust God and, you know, I can, I can bring up that, that willingness, because so and this is the other thing,

Unknown Speaker  50:30  
a lot of fear is not real.

Speaker 2  50:34  
I had one where I had to my boss, said that he wants me to come and talk to him in the office. I know I'm getting fired. I know that, and I did not want to go into that meeting. Hey, I want to see you Thursday morning at 10am in my office. There are times I just never came in back to work okay, because I know I was getting fired, I didn't want to deal with that. He might go in there and he's like, You're doing a great job. We want to give you a raise. But I had all this fear, okay, or going on stage for the first time, all this fear, and I gotta man, I love this. You know, I got a t shirt that says, you know, your greatest fear is what I do for a living. Okay? I love man. I love being on stage. Come on. So anyway, I That's enough out of me. I have another meeting coming up one of my businesses.

Speaker 1  51:31  
Can you tell us? Remind us how to get in touch with you sure if my listeners want to find out more?

Speaker 2  51:36  
Yeah, feel free. I'm on LinkedIn, and my handle is Ken Miller 84 Ken Miller 84 and then one of my websites is Ken Miller speaks.com I respond to everybody who contacts me, everybody I had a guy contact me two weeks ago. I read your book. I'm from California. I'll be in Seattle. Can I take you to lunch? My wife and I, yeah, no problem. And we had a wonderful lunch. So I love that. Shout to me, please feel free.

Speaker 1  52:12  
That's so good, and remind us one more time the title of your book. So people, if they want to order it,

Speaker 2  52:17  
yeah, it's becoming Ken. It's on Amazon, and it's on Audible, and it's called Becoming Ken, a black man's journey from the Ivy Leagues to prison and back again.

Speaker 1  52:31  
It's amazing what you've done and how you continue to help. I just thank you so much for sharing.

Speaker 2  52:37  
Thank you, Lynne. I'm so appreciative. So good.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai