Be a Lifelong Learner with DC Glenn

In this episode of "Time To Press Pause: A Podcast for CEOs by CEOs," host Ellen Williams interviews DC Glenn, a multi-platinum selling hip hop artist and CEO of CLG Investments Inc. Known for his iconic song “Whoomp” (There It Is), DC shares his journey from music to mastering various skills such as SEO, public relations, and becoming a licensed commodities broker. The theme of the conversation centers on the necessity of pausing to reflect and learn continually.

DC discusses the constant need to "press pause" in daily life, emphasizing the importance of mindset in overcoming challenges and seizing control of one's professional journey. He highlights his proactive approach to learning and adapting, which enabled him to transition from music to acting and voiceovers, and eventually into diverse business ventures. DC credits his success to his ability to stay relevant and self-sufficient, underscoring the significance of writing things down and systematically tackling tasks.

The podcast delves into how DC’s past experiences shaped his innovative approach to business and personal growth, turning challenges into opportunities for learning. He also discusses his engagement with multiple organizations to network directly with industry leaders, bypassing traditional gatekeepers.

Ellen and DC conclude the discussion by emphasizing the value of lifelong learning and the impact of sharing knowledge. DC's story is a testament to the power of resilience, strategic thinking, and the continuous pursuit of knowledge.

Transcript

Welcome to Time To Press Pause: A Podcast for CEOs by CEOs. I'm your host, Ellen Williams, CEO of The Salient Strategist, and today I'm speaking with DC Glenn. DC Glenn is a multi-platinum-selling hip hop artist as half of the ‘90s hip hop duo, Tag Team, who has one of the biggest records in recorded history. “Whoomp” (There it is). Also known as The Brain Supreme, he is a music industry, acting, and voice-over expert and well-versed in SEO, public relations, and marketing. DC is also the CEO at CLG Investments Inc. Welcome, DC Glenn. I'm so happy to have you here. I've really been looking forward to meeting you and recording this episode. 

DC Glenn: Thanks so much for having me. 

Ellen: In addition to your hip hop fame, you are also a CEO and this is all about CEO's. And I'm going to throw it to you and simply ask you to give us a story of when you needed to press pause. 

DC Glenn: A story when I've needed to press pause. It's every day. 

Ellen: Every day. 

DC Glenn: Every day because. It is relentless, right? Like everything is about mindset, right? So. For me. This all started because of “Whoomp” (There it is.) Because of the trials and tribulations and the trauma that I've had to go through with this song. Right? Like being in a, you know, 20-year legal battle over the rights of the song. Well, I could have became an old bitter rapper. Or I could have just had that mindset, which I do, of everything, is that I just vow that it will never happen again, and I will educate myself to the highest level and learning how to do it. So, you know, back in the 9 late 90s. I basically became a paralegal, right? Because that's what I'm good at. They called me The Brain Supreme. They called me DC, The Brain Supreme for a reason, because I figure things out. And when you figure things out as well as I do, you tend to press pause a lot because you have to think differently. You have to think backwards. You have to reverse engineer. There's several tactics that I've developed over the years to help me be able to press pause when I need to, right? And you know another thing that I do, I just like I'm not gonna let people take advantage of my money. So, I became a licensed commodities broker. My goal was just to learn finance, right, so I could understand the language of finance, but I end up being a licensed commodities broker, right? So. Well, fast forward. Me going through life. I end up learning, you know, being in a situation where I had to learn SEO because Tag Team had no presence. Things have dried up well. How do I keep myself relevant? Right? So, I had to learn how to digitally market myself. And the problem with artists and stars is that they expect everybody to do things for them. And that is not my situation. My situation is I'm going to learn it, then build my team because I can teach my team the way I need it to be. Right? So, the original question is, when is the time when you've had to press pause? And I think the biggest time was after, you know, we had prevailed in our legal battle in like 2017. And it was kind of like, you know, when you, you know, when you go to war you're gonna come back missing the leg, missing an arm, eye patch but you're still living. And it's almost like the dog catching the car. What do I do with this car now? And I could tell you I had to press pause for about a month. And, because, you know, just have to figure out what are we going? What am I going to do? And it ended up being voiceover. Right? Because I've been training for voiceover since 2009. So, I end up getting agent for voiceover that agent wanted me for acting. Thus, I became an actor. And now I'm like, wait a minute. Let me figure out some other things. So, I started joining organizations. Because organizations are filled with people who have been loving their profession for 10, 20, 30, 40 years and can't wait to tell you. So, now I get to bridge that gap of intellectual prowess by meeting the people who lead the industry and want to teach me. Right? And they don't even know who I am. That's my advantage because I don't act like a star. And because I don't act like a star, once I tell them who I am, it’s icing on the cake. And that's how I get my knowledge. And you know, on an everyday practical level, when I have to, you know, pause and press play, I always keep a list in front of me. You see this? That's the list. Pages of things to do. Pages of things to do. It could be from the simplest task, the most done mundane tasks, because you're always going crazy with thoughts in your head. If you don't write them down, they don't get done. So, there are days when I get frustrated because it feels like I'm not doing anything. When I look back on the day and I realize I've done a lot, that's a mental, that's mental gymnastics that I have to play with myself. But when I get, when I take my pause, go to the list, I start at the top and I say, “Do one thing. Now do the next thing.” Now it might not have nothing to do with what I was just doing, but the fact that I'm going knocking off pieces of my list that in my discombobulated life, which is comodulated, by the way, because list. I'm able to accomplish a whole bunch of things without even having to think about it. And as I get older, I watch my peers and I watch people not write down things. And I think that's what gets people stuck. Right? Just a simple pen and paper. If you if you think it, write it down. If it's an idea, whatever, write it down. And because I do that, I can handle all the strands that, I call it my “big ball of focus” cause I get opportunities all the time. But does it fit in my big ball of focus? And I have to say no to a lot. So, I can honestly say that me having this list in front of me 24/7 is my saving grace because I'm always getting things done and I think that's the key. And it kind of, you know, it alleviates the stress and the pressure on your mind. But I've got a lot of stress and pressure because it just it could be one little thing, like a software that I need to do a whole bunch of things doesn't work. And support is not giving me any help. They don't know and I'm just like, “Well, why are you trying to sell me this software?” Right? And it's just and then now I'm in, and then I'm in a course to use and they use that software. So now this course for me to do all these things that can make me a lot of money, now I'm stuck. Right? So, I'd take a breath. And just figure out a way. What is the best way to figure this out? And that's how I do things from a day-to-day basis. So as a CEO, I mean, you have to worry about, you know, accounting, you have to worry... I do my own bookkeeping. Right? I do. Seriously, because I get to see my money. And when you get to see your money and you get to see those line items and you're like, “Well, why did I spend money on that? What is that?” We all have recurring accounts which, “Wait a minute. I don't even use that. Why am I spending that $29.99 a month?” Right? Now that seems like little, but it all adds up. Kind of like interest, right? People don't see the interest on their principal. Right? So, they're thinking they're paying down their principal, but they're paying interest, so they stay, they stay the same. You're giving money to the bank. All these little things that we go through in our daily lives, gives us pause to stop, and reevaluate. And if you can't see those things, then you're in trouble. I like to say, “I thrive in the Bizarro World.” Most people don't know what that is, right? But people of my age know that that's Superman’s archnemesis, and you got Bizarro Land and it's all totally upside down of what the regular world is. But then, when I talk to young people, I say, “I thrive in the upside down.” Because of Stranger Things, right? So, I, you know, me doing podcasts, everything has every day has turned into me being a motivational speaker. This started out as just interviews 10 years ago. People wanted to interview me, and then all of a sudden, we're not even talking about, we have not talked about “Whoomp” (There it is.) 2%, but 2% of this conversation. But look, “Whoomp” (There it is.) is the catalyst to everything that I've learned to make me who I am today. 

Ellen: That's heavy. That was. OK, I'm going to unpack a lot of what you said. So first of all, pause every day. I've definitely heard that before. I think that there's a lot of value to that as well. But I think you're your bigger pause, and what I heard that comes out of your pauses, is lifelong learning. You said, you know, you didn't make that mistake again. So OK, it happened. And how do I move past that? How do I learn from it? So that I don't make the same mistakes and I can move forward. 

DC Glenn:  Here's what I tell people, until you can be honest with yourself. You have to take responsibility as a grown-ass man. I signed that contract. I have to take. I could have became an old, bitter rapper. But I signed that contract. I took responsibility for it. It's painful every day because I have to sequester it in the back of my head. But that's ego and pride. And over these years I've been able to sequester my ego and kill the pride, to where my mind is open to every possibility. Not stuck in the past, the past is a reference. The past is a language model. The past is everything that I've been through. That's experience! That experience is a positive thing, right?  

Ellen: Yeah. 

DC Glenn: That is, you wouldn't, you wouldn't be where you are now if it wasn't for the experience. So now I can take, and I love to learn, I wish I'd love to learn like this when I was younger. 

Ellen: Ohh, I totally agree! Totally agree. 

DC Glenn:  But I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I would have made “Whoomp” (There it is). I would have been an engineer or something, right? So, you know what I'm saying? Our life is our life. And you get one life, and I'm gonna ride it to the wheels fall off. That's why I'm learning every day. That's why I get organizations. I'm in 30 different organizations, writing organize, I want to do concerts I’ll get into a concert organization because I want to meet the buyers, not the promoters, not the talent agents. They serve their purpose. But if I can go directly to the person who's going to pay me, that's my goal. And that's why I started SEO. Everything leads to the other thing, right? It's an intricate web of success. Everything I'm saying is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. I struggle. There are lulls in your life where you're doing good, and then all of a sudden a year or two might fall off. But the thing of it is. As long as you keep planting seeds, there is always a harvest. And some years might be good. Some years might be bad, but every year there's a harvest. So, it's how you apply that harvest. When it's really, really good do you can all those vegetables so when it's not good, you at least you got something to eat, right?  

Ellen: Yeah, absolutely.  

DC Glenn: Now that all these concepts come from me doing podcasts every day, because I'm actually learning more by talking to you. Right?  

Ellen: Right. 

DC Glenn: That's us conversating with each other is relevant.  And this is in a in a in a form - is my pause for the day. 

Ellen: So, being here with me is your pause for the day. I love that. I love that and I want to go back to something you said. You said, “Pause and press play.” 

DC Glenn: Yeah. 

Ellen: And I like the spin on that. So, it's not just taking the pause, it's pause and then press play. What's the next step? What did I learn? What am I going to do now? You went? You know, you just started talking about voiceover and then acting and then podcasts and now concerts. It's pause and then press play. And I like that. I think that's I think that's relevant. I also love, “The past is a language model.” I mean, talk about exactly what's going on today, right?  

DC Glenn: Yeah! 

Ellen: Artificial intelligence and the language model. And I think you got to learn from somewhere. And you definitely take those lessons from the past. 

DC Glenn: What it is, is history. And this is my I'm building a language model for Tag Team now. So that when all these language models are going to converge eventually, so when they converge when people type in anything about tag team, it will have relevant information instead of those 20-year-old articles that people get, you know to refer to and then try to say we're doing this, and we did this and like that was 20 years ago, this is what we're doing right now. So, every year I have a list of accomplishments of things that we've done. To always put them in my writing so they become, you know, in bios and stuff like that. Now that's a part of the language model. But because of open AI and all these AI entities. Now I can really put all this information, and create my legacy in my narrative to the world and live forever, right? 

Ellen: Live forever through AI, but in a good way.  

DC Glenn: Good way. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. 

Ellen: Not in the creepy science fiction way, right? 

DC Glenn: Hey but and I know that any technology that comes out, I'm gonna learn it because what happens is life passes you by. Life doesn't stop, but we stop. All my all, all of my people my age stop. They've almost given up. And I'm like, “Are you kidding me? I feel like a brand new baby.” But that's because my parents raised me to work. As a grown man I have not known work. So I don't mind putting in the work and I want it to be difficult because I know nobody else is going to do it. That's the beauty of it, right? Nobody else is gonna do what I'm doing. Now, it comes at a cost. Because you're going to become a hermit, you're going to lose friends. People think you don't want to play with them anymore. And it's not that, it's like, I've taken a responsibility to provide for everybody, because that's the only way it's going to happen. So, I put everything on my back. And I just, I just you know, I just trudge forward. I don't even think about play offense. I'm always moving forward and I'm always learning. After I finish this I have a mastermind. I’ve got a mastermind tomorrow on how to make courses. Right? Because I'm building a course to help people learn. 

Ellen: A course to help people learn. 

DC Glenn: Yeah, you have to meet people where they're at, though.  

Ellen: Yeah. 

DC Glenn: That's why I'm doing podcasts because I know how to talk to people where they're at. Right? Not talk to people condescendingly or, you know, judging. I'm like, “I know where you're at in your life. I know how to talk to you about it because I was there.” Once again, that's how experience and the tragedy of your life comes back to help you help others. And my motto is I give what I want first. And I'm always blessed. 

Ellen: Well, there's. I don't. I couldn't imagine a better way to wrap up a podcast than by having someone say, “I'm always blessed.” So, I'm blessed to have you here with me today.  

DC Glenn: Of course. 

Ellen: I really appreciate everything you shared. 

DC Glenn: And I want to thank you for letting me come on here and run my mouth because I learned more from talking. And I've learned five things a day that I'm about to get on off this podcast and go. 

Ellen: Write them down. Go write them down. 

DC Glenn: Yes, exactly. So, I bid you ado and I appreciate you having me on your show. 

Ellen: I thank you very much for being here and loved everything that you had to share with me.  

Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Time To Press Pause. To learn more about DC Glenn, go to tagteambackagain.com. To learn more about me, go to thesalientstrategist.com and be sure to join us again wherever you listen to your podcasts. 

Click here to watch DC Glenn’s GEICO Commercial.