Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Joshua Green. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Joshua , thanks for joining us today. It’s easy to look at a business or industry as an outsider and assume it’s super profitable – but we’ve seen over and over again in our conversation with folks that most industries have factors that make profitability a challenge. What’s biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?
The biggest issue is managing your regular life and life as an artist. Managing consistency to be able to expand upon the needed areas to gain more exposure.
Joshua , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My journey started since I was young but I’d never taken it seriously until 19. Everyone has their fears and doubts; well my own was changing due to either circumstances such as money or yes men. As a kid I had always had an exaggerated way of showing my feelings. Learning and seeing others do it via things like music, dancing, cooking, writing, and etc made me interested in which ways I could. My thoughts at the time were to find things I could resonate with and overtime I had. I loved hearing spoken poetry artists compose their pieces and use the silence of a room to express either their own emotions or familiar issues that may be dealt with wherever they may be. So, I tried spoken word during high school, that wasn’t so easy. As an elementary school kid surprisingly enough and most of my life I hated attention. Damn near had stage fright from a dancing class back in 2006 or something, but that’s another story. Poetry as an expressive thing for me became null and void I could write and show it but for some reason it didn’t feel fulfilling to me to others yes but me not at all. So I moved forward. Obviously dancing wasn’t and still isn’t my thing I love watching it but I have horrible rhythm don’t ask me to two step my two step is a football fumble in a field of dozens of truck sized individuals. “FUMBLE !” I tried a bunch of other things as well, parkour wasn’t my strong suit I didn’t like the idea of breaking a bone or falling. Skateboarding became a possibility but I can’t see myself doing Ollie’s I can cruise though. I love cooking but I burned water so that’s not even close; granted I can make a mean sandwich, maybe some other things but ehh. Eventually after trial and error I realized I’m in love with music. I taught myself how to play guitar with a book, literally, I was forced to read books because I was always watching tv and a bunch of anime and my mother grounded me. Imagine that, I went from a tv screen junkie to a book worm and found my passion within that, God works in mysterious ways I guess. Anyways, I mustered up enough money from one of my first jobs ever one that I loved at that; then started reading and callousing my fingers and going to school with a guitar. Consistency and boredom met constant preparation. Eventfully, high school talent shows and holiday shows I’d be approached and asked to perform, this was before I ever knew I had a voice. I’d play my heart out granted I wasn’t like an A-list guitarist or highly talented like that one kid whose really good at math. Each opportunity I had to play or every time I’d have free time guess who was with me, ol’ reliable; good times, good times. Throughout my journey like most people I assume I’d met different people good and bad. Some were there for a moment others were there for a lifetime it would seem, but music was forever. My first time recording was in an internship at Brooklyn College. I was very adamant about working in a studio and luckily I was directed there by an old friend from back in elementary school. He’d told me it’s a good opportunity to be in a studio and make money. Obviously at the time I’d been skeptical because of my own doubts but I’d chose to pursue it and found something I’d loved just as much as working in a studio. It was working with kids, granted I was still a teenager myself literally 16. We would all gather up with my then mentor and his protege and go crazy writing and creating with just the span of 3 or 4 hours. This job at the time showed me that I could write bars like pac on some poetic shit but I had no idea how to count bars, how to read a spread sheet of music notes ( I still don’t ), or even remotely create a beat again bad rhythm, but for some reason watching these kids who are all probably in high school today create so flawlessly as if it was second nature even though it was their first time much like my own made it fun because we’d been growing together through the good and bad. I remember vaguely resonating with one kid who’d thought being around gangs and being cool and fly was awesome due to the environment and I sat there and had to just break it to him; it’s not what it’s cracked up to be; again that’s another story. As I’d gotten older reached 17 and 18 I started to progress with my new found talents and eventually met people within the community who’d had talents of their own. Even though I’d been aware I never approached them because I knew I was different. I found reason to constantly be within my own world and exclude others, my issues were my issues and no one else’s for a reason. My world consisted of multiple stories that I was not only told but lived. I am a jack of all trades if you will. I found myself constantly learning from others and still staying to myself realizing how much it would help me and then others to achieve the unbelievable. But like others much like myself I had bugs in my ear and gnats in my hair. I always crossed someone or multiple people who just thought they were better or worse, to each their own. I was taught how to sing by another artist and he is very talented. His singing range alone was something to awe at, not to mention he could also record and produce his own music. I loved the process of finding my voice but again found people doubting me, due to music inclination being more towards rap, rock and generally anything that I could relate to and translate to others. Within the span of three years before finally graduating and then afterwards I’d found myself falling in love with myself, I found self love amongst chaos. I approached a lot of situations with ease when it came to my talents, I’d constantly communicate with others and learn to find the meaning between each interaction. What could I learn? What did I learn? Can anybody become more the wiser? The world really will never know. Nonetheless, I’d graduated and took a hiatus before finally going to college and branching out further. I made new friends, found myself amongst a larger world of talented people, found my other passions with ease and other things that resonated with me from psychology, to playing basketball, and working out, and then some. As an artist piece by piece this became fun, but nothing could have prepared me for what would have followed. Prior to beginning my first year of college I’d fallen in love which kind of explains my music and etc. I found myself putting a lot of time into my talents and a person I’d given the world to. I pushed away dozens and became closed off I lacked the ability to detach from this relationship which then in turn affected current and future relationship’s at the time. I didn’t give myself time to feel or heal or acknowledge what I was going through I just knew to work through it like I’d always did. Lucky me I guess. At first my brand was seemingly to people about unity, though it never really was. It was only meant to be about facing yourself and your issues. I’d constantly be a shoulder to lean on to multiple people older, my age and younger and that made me want to fight for not only them but myself. My brand at first glance is not what it was. My brand now is to consistently “put in pain”. The idea seems insane to others but realistically, if pain is a precursor to success then why not utilize it the way it was meant to. I may have watched dozens of motivational videos, been an inspiration to many and maybe more but I never realized what that meant until I was in those shoes. I didn’t find myself feeling the words being said but I knew they were enough to put a battery in my back, like a teacher had done in my earlier years as an after school teacher; she’d told me that children of my color and my demographic within the same area didn’t see a person coming from where I was coming from be an example. Those words alone shaped a lot of my heart. My proudest moments were those filled of hurting and helping, showing not telling, and constantly passing the initial norm that was set upon me or those around me.
The label I plan on building after a few years of hard work is going to be “Only The Strong Inc.”. What I intend on selling to my supporters, to those I’d called, “los perdidos”, the lost ones is music.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
Be transparent. Don’t lie to your friends or family. Even if it hurts be as real as possible. In the famous words of Dr. Seuss
“ Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind. “
Your morality isn’t build because of others telling you this is right and wrong it’s built in those moments where your choose to know what’s right and wrong and acknowledge it.
Management itself starts with you as a person micromanage and the manage at the surface. Itll
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Two things specifically illustrate my resilience.
Heartbreak and Accusations.
I’d mentioned falling in love earlier. Wellllll…… I didn’t express the details behind what and how that ended or began.
Truth be told I was shitting where I eat, I was doing it horrendously at my first job (really my second one because my first one did not count). I was accused of liking kids literally in those exact words. At 19 I’d started dating this girl who was 17, she’d seemed like my type. Quiet, funny, sweet, a lil spunky, nice ass, high drive, cute face and she wore glasses, oh and she was family oriented. I was not wrong in the sense of her as a person because those were things that made her beautiful to me at the time. Though she was the worst of experiences in my entire life. I fell in love and to some that would seem like the best thing ever but at that time at that age it wasn’t. I failed to detach from someone who didn’t know how to love themself. I found myself learning not only how bad sex could be with the wrong person but what obsessiveness, manipulation, lies, rumors, and worst of all heartache felt like. She made me think I was with the love of my life and altruistically it was the case then. She was always needy and failed to ever give me space and a part of me loved that but I couldn’t see the bigger picture regardless of how big my world was. I pushed away from dozens of relationships after this heartbreak I drowned in my work and tried my hardest to ignore her and at the time it was easy, shit damn near clock work if you’d asked me then. Was it all true that I was blocking her out, yes. It was quote unquote a mutual choice but obviously I was naive. She’d found someone who’d interested her. Not to mention she’d failed to control me and that alone changed the entirety of what was a relationship I’d adored in all honesty.
For whatever real reason it may have been that she’d said I liked my students and younger coworkers I wouldn’t know but that was the most horrendous thing I’ve ever heard said about me besides being gay, everyone is a little gay sometimes. Along with all of the fights we’d had and the relationship trauma that was left I found myself going through substance abuse for a second time and at the worst time, pre-Covid. I kept denying my emotions due to the heartache and lies not to mention how I couldn’t sleep and how I couldn’t rationalize the reasons behind why those words were said even to this day. We’d broken up literally a month before my birthday and tried to be friends which didn’t work and by the time Covid hit I had to face my feelings all alone. Those years during and following the heartache hurt like hell. My hell was literally made from someone else’s ache, I’d smoked a lot more than usual, I’d become bitter, I’d hated myself, I’d hated her, I’d found every reason to not want to be alive, but still sat there and hustled, worked through it. The only thing I knew then was to break the mold and build a new one, a new wall. It didn’t take too long to use the connections I’d made during Covid to amass a lump some of money and go to the studio repeatedly. It didn’t take too long for me to create what I wanted to achieve. Though I may have made 20,000 dollars I couldn’t manage it. I couldn’t manage proper decisions making because at the time I’d been crying to help. I’d been doing it so quietly it wasn’t noticed and maybe at the time it felt right but realistically it was wrong. Reason being why I said I was naive. It got so bad, that even after losing weight within the span of three months, diving deeper into a sort of mental decay, and denying myself freedom from a cage I’d felt I put myself in I finally snapped. At least that’s what I had thought I did. I drowned in the deep end. I thought I’d been okay, I’d thought I’d finally found a way to separate myself from those feelings by smoking, and working and ignoring it all. But, I didn’t. A single interaction through text caused the worst pain ever. It was the equivalent of what I’d been through at my first love ( first job, music, school, being and growing with my peers ). I’d met a kid and for the honest sake of the kid alone I won’t mention names, they’d crushed on me without me even being aware. I’d been high and in a bad mental state and my intent and realistically the sway of a conversation alone were taken out of context due to others. I thought my ex was the only manipulative individual I’d met but after her I’d met mirrors. I’d met dozens of people who had her characteristics and the one thing I didn’t see was this. I’d given her advice two times and realized this kid wanted a friend and with the way I’d thought of it I wouldn’t have thought of her being a sex worker. I failed to listen to myself at first glance because my naive way of thinking every kid was somewhat alike and yet completely different, aware but unaware of certain things made me think I could help. Boy was i wrong. Nothing like my ex at all, but similar due to her neediness, her wanting, and her fears and further or whatever they may have been tell people of my mistake; I’d shown her an old video of someone I’d interacted with because of my realization that either she’d say I touched her or worst. It only took one bad relationship, one mistake for my whole image to be tarnished. In spite of all the hurt, and the ever bearing doubt and everything else I found myself constantly seeing my reasons from my past again.
The ideals I held dear become more than life like they used to and more so alive. My anger become fuel instead of engulfing. My tears become a sense of power and every thing else that I see big or small just become more to reach towards. It may be hard and hell it might as well be but if it’s not worth the pain then what’s the point.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://beacons.ai/luckysadboy
- Instagram: LuckySadboy_
- Twitter: @1luckysadboy
Image Credits
@GoddyWoddy @tahhshotit