Fredrick Douglass Bussey joins us to discuss how his childhood, shaped by constant movement as a pastor's child, taught him invaluable skills like adaptability and listening.

Fredrick emphasizes that while he faced significant challenges, including failures in business and personal life, these experiences forged his resilience and shaped his entrepreneurial journey.

He passionately believes that everyone has a unique purpose and the potential to achieve their dreams, often greater than they realize. Together, we explore how embracing our gifts and nurturing a loving mindset can lead to a fulfilling life, both personally and in business.

Takeaways:

1. Fredrick Douglass Bussey emphasizes the importance of family as his greatest legacy, valuing relationships above all else.
2. Growing up as a pastor's child taught Fredrick how to connect with diverse communities and navigate social dynamics effectively.
3. Fredrick's journey into entrepreneurship was influenced by his upbringing, which fostered critical thinking and resilience in the face of challenges.
4. He believes that every person has a unique gift with a purpose, and that understanding this can unlock their potential for success.
5. Fredrick stresses that true fulfillment comes from aligning one's life with their unique purpose, which is often overlooked in society.
6. He encourages individuals to embrace the idea that not only is success possible, but that it is desired for them by God, promoting a mindset of hope and potential.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. tiffanyfeatherstone.com

You can connect with Fredrick on his social media platforms:

YT: https://bit.ly/ICONSTATUS_YT

FB: facebook.com/frederick.bussey.7

FB Group: facebook.com/groups/7FigureCircle

Instagram: @ Fredrick.bussey

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredrick-bussey-iconstatus/

X: FredrickBussey

The music in this video is copyrighted and used with permission from Raquel & The Joshua 1:8 project © 2025 All Rights Reserved. All rights to the music are owned by Raquel & The Joshua 1:8 project © 2025 All Rights Reserved. You can contact Raquel at https://YourGPSForSuccess.Net

Welcome back to another episode of A Warrior Spirit brought to you by Praxis33.

I'm your host, Darrel Snow.

Let's dive in.

Today I have Frederick Douglass Busse.

And Frederick is an investor, author, speaker, advisor, and serial entrepreneur.

And although he's helped hundreds of individuals and companies realize their untapped potential and create the life they deserve as a husband and father, though, he claims his family is his greatest legacy.

And that's always important to me, those who put family on the top of their list.

Frederick, thank you for joining me today.

So glad to be here with you.

Darrell, you, you're currently in Atlanta.

Is that where you grew up?

I did not.

I actually grew up all over the South.

My father was a minister, so we traveled, moved probably every few four or five years and throughout my childhood.

And so I got to see a little bit of the south from various standpoints.

So it was a kind of interesting journey.

As a child, what's it like?

I know I've talked to a lot of military children who have to move a lot.

What's it like for a pastor's child who has to move a lot?

And what precipitates.

Most people don't think of traveling pastors unless they think of the old pop up tent evangelists, you know, so what, what was it like for Frederick as a, as a young boy having in that environment?

It was interesting.

I appreciated it from the standpoint of getting to meet new people all the time, getting to acclimate myself to different environments, some better than others.

Mississippi is not what you would call, never has been, I guess, really a thriving metropolis.

And so it's country.

So I kind of grew up as a country boy, but I always had an affinity for cities.

And so the thing that I think I learned the most was the skill set of making friends quickly, how to ingratiate myself into different communities and things of that nature, how to be a good listener because listening helps people feel closer to you.

So my father, the denomination that we're in, we grew up Seventh Day Adventist.

And so the denomination just moves pastors from church to church.

They give them, you know, what they call districts.

And so my father's district was about three or four churches in each area.

By the time we moved to Prattville, Alabama, which is right outside of Montgomery, he had just two churches.

And so that was actually lightweight for him to carry versus navigating all these different churches up and down the highways and the roads.

It was interesting seeing him navigate those things.

Relationships, leadership.

I think there's A lot of things that I learned from him.

Growing up culturally, understanding different types of people, you know, it's a very intriguing sort of experience for a child.

If you can endure the pressure, there's a lot of spotlight on you.

Luckily, we weren't in huge churches, but not every child.

And I grew up with a lot of friends who were pastors, sons of pastors, and daughters of pastors.

And not every one of them enjoyed that experience.

And so I can.

I can truly say that it was.

It was an honor for me because I think the things that it built in me, but I think I was particularly built for it in a way that many of them are not.

Did you have siblings or were you an only child?

Yep, I have two younger brothers and my sister is the youngest.

So you're the oldest of the four?

I'm the oldest, yeah.

That in and of itself puts.

I'm the oldest in my family, too.

And that in and of itself puts a certain responsibility on us, you know, that our siblings don't often get to carry.

We carry a little bit more of the helping of the raising of the children and, you know, more leadership around the house, if you will, and more of that.

Was that true in your household, too?

To some degree, yes.

I think I have two daughters and a son, and my oldest daughter is very much leader helper.

I think that girls tend to have it a little tougher than boys when they're the oldest because they become like surrogate moms in a way.

They have the comforting and nurturing.

And it's not that boys can't do that.

Certain responsibility.

My father was the oldest of his family, and he did a lot of that, that heavy lifting in terms of taking care of his siblings.

I was the one responsible, but not always the one in charge, if that makes any sense.

Oh, absolutely, yes.

It's funny how we.

We are given the responsibility, but somehow we try to also take charge and oftentimes are reminded really quickly that you have the responsibility, you don't have the charge.

You're not Daddy.

Yeah, we didn't grow up in democracies.

The other experience that I have found in my lifetime is that those who grew up in a religious household or with pastoral parents, their life seems to go one of two ways.

And sometimes it mixes later in life, but in the early ages, it seems to either go really rebellious or really dive in and overly, almost zealotly religious.

Which of those roads or pathways or, you know, spectrum did you choose?

I chose the much more boring.

Although I would say it's a balance of the two.

I wasn't, like, really zealous religiously.

I was.

I'm a very spiritual person.

I think I always have been.

But my parents were not exceptionally strict.

Every parent, every child tends to think.

I think that their parents are strict because when they don't, let them do what they want to do.

But I definitely know friends whose parents were far more strict, far more conservative in terms of their approach.

My parents are fairly conservative religious.

Growing up in the south in the 80s and 90s, it was not a very liberal experience.

But I will say that they wanted us to be able to have a relationship with God for ourselves.

And so there was not a lot of imposition.

There were clear rules and boundaries for how we conducted the home.

But there was not a pressure that you have to do it this way.

This is what you have to do in terms of education or even religion.

They just wanted us to be good children, good people, good students to learn.

My mother homeschooled myself and my three siblings for all 12 years.

I think my sister was the only one that got to go to academy when she was in high school.

And so that experience taught me a lot about just how to be able to navigate your own thinking.

My mother was very, very high on critical thinking.

Being able to think for yourself, articulate your thoughts, know what you believe, and really lean into those types of things.

And so I think it helped me.

It was not a big push for me to feel very rebellious in terms of how I lived.

And I did.

When I, you know, left the house, I did branch out and have some experiences.

But I think that their measured approach kind of tempered that desire in me.

I kind of had more of a sense of who I was and what I didn't want to do.

And over time, as you get older, you may question certain things, But I didn't feel that it was imposed on me.

You know, I always felt like I had a choice.

And so I think it allowed me to be able to choose the level of spirituality and relationship that I have with God to this day.

I think that some of that critical thinking allows you to.

Well, you combined your need for listening and learning the nuances of the people around you, because they were constantly changing.

But then the critical thinking, to discern the good information from the bad information, I think some of that had to have helped you in your journey into entrepreneurialism, you know, and also, I know I didn't state it on your intro, but you're also an enter.

You started an entertainment company that's received Grammy nominations and, you know, musical things.

All of those, I think, attribute to, from that lesson, life that you lived as a child.

Do you see how that.

That kind of led you in that direction?

100%.

I think the combination of being homeschooled, so I was outside the box in that regard.

My father, being a minister, technically, he worked from home to a large degree.

So I saw him in the home, he had an office, saw him writing his sermons and dealing with people on the phone and things of that nature.

And then he took us with him when he would go.

My father was very hands on in terms of mowing the lawn at the church, you know, cleaning up the organization.

So we had deacons and elders and people who had responsibilities as well.

But he took it personal to be hands on with that approach.

And so there was an ownership of his leadership position that I think he passed down to myself and to my brothers and sisters as well.

I also believe that the, as you said, the push for critical thinking allowed me to kind of think about things outside the box as well.

And so the type of business that I've.

I've kind of leaned into here through the evolution of my entrepreneurial journey, because I've kind of done scan the gamut, if you will, of types of businesses, has allowed me to be able to always be able to be in a position to be able to pivot and to think about what the next move is, and as I progressed, lean further and further into my own gift, into my own interests and passions and things of that nature.

So, yeah, I would say that my upbringing definitely had a large role to play, even though my parents, neither one of them has ever had a business, a side business.

I think my mother sold Amway for a few years, if that counts.

But other than that, it was pretty much, you know, more of a conventional path in terms of their leading us or guiding us in that direction.

But for me, even from the time I was probably 10 or 11 years old, I was always thinking of ways to be able to make money.

How could I be able to carry that load if there were extra things I wanted to be able to buy, you know?

And I think that can be attributed very directly to the way that my mother especially raised us to think for ourselves.

Was there any desire for you to go into the pulpit?

Oh, so when I was about 11, 12 years old, I got tormented with the idea that I had to be a preacher.

I thought that was what I had to do.

I was, you know, growing up, growing up in a small Church, the children of the minister often are the.

The choir.

They are the surrogate, you know, speakers with different entities, different functions or whatever.

And so I learned to lead from the front a lot.

And I. I felt like God was saying, you have to be a minister.

And my mom sat me down one time, we had a conversation, and she said, you don't have to be a minister.

You know, it's.

There's other opportunities for you to be able to serve.

And I'm grateful for that because I think that had I been a minister, I would not be as strongly spiritually attuned to lead in the way that I do now.

I think that ministry has been put into a certain bucket, especially when I was coming up.

Nowadays it's far more diverse.

You've got completely different range of types of pastors and the ways they present themselves, some of which will probably have appealed to me more if I was still in that phase of my life.

But now I think it's the path that I've had.

The experiences that I've had have led me to the point where I'm able to influence people in a spiritual manner with more practical teaching because of life lessons learned, and also felt free.

I felt free to be able to give myself to the influence that God would want me to have versus forced into this one way of thinking about how to do it.

Certainly I'm not a hoot and holler type of guy, and you don't have to be.

My father was that type of preacher either.

But is that how you classify the torment feeling like your service to God had to be in this one direction?

Like you couldn't see that it was service to God doing basically what you're doing now with your life?

No, no.

At the time, you know, I was young, I was 10 or 11.

So my concept of what it meant to serve God was very narrow, you know, and you also grow up in Mississippi.

There's not a lot of exposure to a lot of different types of leadership or lifestyles or career paths.

You know, there's teachers, doctors, firefighters, there's people who work in the factories or whatever the case may be, hospital, you know, so it's.

It's a very narrow range.

And I didn't know what I wanted to be at that time, but I just felt like God was saying, you have to be this.

And what I've come to realize in my relationship with him now is that God is never going to force you to do anything now.

He could call you, you know, he may have a mission for you, he may have a purpose for you, he may have a path that he wants you to take, but that path is one built around who you are as an individual, who he created you to be.

So he's never going to call you to do something that you're not built for.

You know, and even when we see cases in the Bible, I think of people like Moses or whatever who felt vastly unqualified.

Moses was actually trained for leadership from the time he was young.

He grew up in the pharaoh's palace.

You know, he just had the mixed idea about.

Mixed up idea about how to assert that leadership on behalf of his people.

And so God had to kind of send him on his journey into the wilderness to be able to kind of refine that, that leadership.

And it showed up in more ways than one.

And of course he made mistakes.

But I think that that's an example of how sometimes we can bury or misinterpret what our path really is.

And I think a lot of people, if you look at most people in this world, they feel trapped with where they are, you know, and my hope is that they get to understand that there is a choice, that there are many choices, and that we can create those paths forward, and that creativity actually comes in alignment with who we were created to be.

God gives us the power of choice.

The love can never compel you to do anything.

So if God is love, then that's really the truest essence of who he is and who he wants us to be.

Well, we're going to take a quick commercial break and then dive back into some of the directions that God has led you in.

So we'll be right back.

I make art as a way of paying attention to change, to resilience and what rises after the storm.

Each pore and mark is a meditation on transformation and survival, reflecting the quiet strength we all carry.

The desert teaches me to endure, adapt and bloom where it seems impossible, where nature meets the cosmos and light finds its way through.

That's where I live.

Explore my work@tiffanyfeatherstone.com.

Welcome back to the show.

And we're talking with Frederick Bussey.

Frederick was indicating the ways that God is calling him.

And I know that you wrote this book.

The lie that keeps you broke, the lie must die.

How were you called to become an author, especially in this fashion?

You know, I think books, for one.

Books have always been a part of my life.

I remember I was giving my credit to my mother one time for teaching me to read.

To read, teaching me to read at such an early age.

I started reading at the age of three.

And I was thanking her, and she said, I didn't teach you to read.

She said, I just looked up one day and you were reading.

So I said, well, you had to have something to do with that, because I just had a natural affinity and love for books.

Since I was young, and especially growing up as I did, I think I was always drawn to the stories and the different places that you could go through the pages of a book.

And I was the type of kid who would sit at hours at the dinner table reading while I was eating or while I was not eating.

I would read books in bed late at night.

I was just.

I was fascinated by those stories.

And so I think it ingrained in me the desire for the Word.

And critical thinking is an aspect of writing, and I feel that very strongly that God is putting thoughts inside of me and things that need to be expressed.

And so writing is really just speaking.

I've been a speaker from a young age, and just being able to take these different thoughts, and as.

As I write, it helps to clarify things for me.

And I've found that as I share them with other people, it helps to clarify things for them as well.

So I just want to ask me the other day, you know, how many more books do you have in you?

And I said, you know, I. I've got a lot.

You know, I'm extremely excited about the things that I'm going to get to share over the next few years or however many years I have left.

I would love to be able to release one or two books a year.

I actually had an ambition at one time to try and challenge myself to do a book a month, but I think that's probably overkill and maybe not even necessary.

But I think there may be a year or so when I get as many as three or four books out at once, because I have several that kind of just been lining up.

I think it's important as an author to be able to continue producing these things.

This is the legacy that we leave beyond wealth and everything else like that.

These are the things that you can leave inside of other people as well as to them.

And another thing that has birthed from you is Icon status.

Yes, describe this.

Icon Status is my business advisory firm.

It actually started out as a PR agency back when I was transitioning from the creative side of business to the.

To the business side of music, from the creative side of music to the business side.

And as the industry kind of dried up, I transitioned from writing, producing to becoming an artist manager.

And I was then introduced to a publicist, celebrity publicist, when I was pitching and one of my artists to him, I did such a good job.

He said he wanted to hire me and I knew nothing about that.

And so I worked there for a number of years.

I actually talk about that in my first book, Breaking Orbit a little bit, but that, that ended in disaster.

And so I decided, well, let me take what I've learned so far and launch my own PR agency.

And over time that evolved into a marketing agency and then later on into a business advisory firm.

Taking all the years of experience that I've had running different businesses, working with different business owners and translating that for business owners who want to be able to scale, who have family as their number one priority and they just want to be able to make more time and less, more money in less time while not having to sacrifice the things that matter the most.

That's what Icahn status has become.

I came up with the name because I wanted to help people who want to build iconic things, you know, want to build iconic businesses, they want to leave an iconic legacy.

And surprisingly, I didn't know this when I first started, but not everybody wants to do that.

Some people are okay with the mediocre and the average and things of that nature.

It is funny when those of us that are driven encounter others and you realize that they're just okay walking through life and not having any more effort than they, than they put into just getting from their job to their home.

So it is a, it is a harsh reality and it's for those of us that are in the coaching industry or in the personal development industry, it's really hard when we care more about their progress than they do.

It makes, it makes it very challenging.

The other thing is you're, you're driven and you're not sitting around just doing nothing.

So another thing you, you know, speaking on stages and Business Unlimited describe these.

So Business Unlimited is a series that I launched late last year.

It's just a series of.

It's going to be a live in person events as well as just a series of master classes and just taking the lid off of business, taking the lid off of people's thinking.

There's just a lot of things that I want to share.

Distinctions and frameworks and thoughts that are going to be, I hope, helpful to people, have been helpful to our clients in the past.

Helping people to unleash their potential to release, limiting beliefs in very practical ways.

This is not just in terms of emotional development, but practically speaking, how do you help the thing that you are building, you know, with your own hands, with your own mind and the tools that you're given?

How do you get it to optimize its potential so that you're not stuck grinding and beating your head against the ceiling, you know, which so many of us do because we're trying to figure out why things aren't working the way we want them to work, why they're not moving as fast fast as we want them to move.

And so there's a lot of things that I, I feel honored to share.

Looking forward to doing much more speaking as well, to kind of take this show on the road.

I love getting up in front of people and interacting with them live and just kind of sharing thoughts that can provoke them to action.

You know, not just good feelings.

It's good to feel good, but it's better to, to be better.

And the ability that we have, the capacity we have as human beings to become better every single day is something that we often lose sight of.

Especially when you're in the muck and the mire and the grind of just doing things over and over again.

I found that it's harder to be mediocre than it is to be great.

It's interesting I've had the honor of meeting you in person and now we've talked here, but I've also seeing you online and some of your things, you're very unassuming in your demeanor and your, your output.

You're not, like you said, over the top, fire and brimstone.

You're very calm, you're very, you know, genuine.

And matter of fact, what's a misconception people have about you when they first meet you?

Oh man, you know, I had, I posted something online.

I was just.

Sometimes I'll post different images of things I'm working on book covers or something like that.

And so I actually had posted some speaker flyers and one person mentioned that you look really intimidating in this picture.

You know, and I think there are people that when they know me from afar, they think of me as being very, very serious.

I'm actually very light hearted in person.

I think I present more serious because I'm usually thinking a lot about what I'm projecting.

But I'm a joker to a degree.

I'm very silly with my kids, for sure.

They will probably think of me, you know, at some point.

They'll they'll grow up a little bit and realize the dad is corny.

But now I'm working it to my advantage.

Do you, do you think you're an overthinker?

Oh, I have been for sure.

I think we all can get to that point.

I think that there are periods when I can fall into overthinking.

I have a mentor, Richard, who says that overthinking is just imagining things that don't that are never going to happen.

You know, it's spending a lot of energy in those things.

Most of the things that we worry about never do.

And so I try to catch myself in that moment.

We call it capturing your thoughts.

Right.

So catch and capture those thoughts that are kind of dragging you into that realm.

As a successful businessman, entrepreneur, author.

A lot of people from the outside, they look at your life and say, man, he had it easy.

He's on top of the world.

What is something you would like those people to know about what you actually had to overcome in order to get to where you are?

First of all, you're going to experience far more failure than you will success.

Especially on social media, people always post the highlight reels.

So it's as if you're scoring 60 every night.

It's as if you got four touchdowns on a daily basis.

And that's simply not the case.

You're going to have little wins and that's where you can build the consistency and momentum.

But man, I've had, you know, tremendous failures.

I've been evicted from homes.

I, you know, right after I started my own PR agency.

You know, I had a business that was running remotely in Alabama.

That business failed.

I got fired from my job at the PR agency with the publicist.

My car got repossessed because they weren't paying, paying me.

So I'm living in my aunt's basement.

I'm a single man, 30 odd years old, trying to figure it out.

My mom and my aunt are asking me what I'm going to do and I got to tell them I don't know.

I'm laying on this bed feeling like a failure, wanting to have a family and get married one day and thinking I'm never going to get there.

You know, and I have to go back to that moment very often because there are low moments that happen over and over again because people think business is linear.

You know, we get this, we see the ads on TV and YouTube, you know, make $10,000 a month, make $100,000 a month.

Nobody does that every single month.

You're going to have good months and bad months, ups and downs.

You're going to have people that are going to change the algorithm on you.

They're going to uninstall code.

There's going to be things that break, fires that happen, natural disasters, pandemics, you know, so the notion that you're always going to be up and to the right is just not true, you know, and so even the idea of making it is a perpetual journey.

It's never just one place, you know, so at any given moment, you could be any different, any given place.

And what it requires is resilience.

And resilience is only built by having to endure those low places.

And that's one of the things that I'm grateful that God has allowed me to build.

It doesn't feel good in the moment.

It certainly doesn't, you know, feel it's not desirable.

It would be great if we could just, you know, snap our fingers and get what we wanted.

I think that the opportunity to be able to grow and through those challenges is something that, you know, as I continue to put out more content and share more with people and speak more, you know, it's more and more of the story I'm starting to tell because I think most entrepreneurs do feel this pressure to show up highly successful, all polished, everything.

You know, I put those pictures out there as well as anybody.

But I think it's important to show the other side of it so that people understand, one, you can connect with them, but two, that this is what everybody's going to go through.

It's the human part of the experience, and it doesn't make you a failure.

The only way you fail is if you quit.

But you cannot be as successful, you cannot optimize your potential unless you are digging into or digging through the rubble when things cave in on you because it's going to happen, it's inevitable.

Yeah, I think the humanity part is really the part that allows you to connect with people.

I remember when I was homeless, living out of my car and selling plasma for gas money.

There was not one moment of that time where I was going, thanks God for the lessons that are going to help me 20 years from now.

You know, I was like, lord, get me the F out of here.

Right?

So, you know, and people see, you know, they see married, they see a house, they see a business.

They don't see that I spent, you know, homeless times in my car, worried about my next meal, not knowing how I was going to, you know, make it from day to day.

And no one really wants to look at the work that goes into getting yourself out of those moments.

You know, you mentioned you were 30 some years old, laying on your aunt's bed and, and you know, wondering what the heck you're going to do to, to get out of things.

Now you're.

Are you married?

You said children.

Okay.

So I just wanted to.

Wanted to make sure.

So now you're married and children and, you know, you're no longer in that situation, but in reverence.

Remembering where you came from helps your head not be so big that you can't fit through the door, and it allows you to stay connected to those you're trying to help.

So how long after you were laying on that bed wondering what the heck you're going to do until you met your wife?

So the irony of it was that I had met her a few weeks prior to that.

We met at a church singles event, church singles potluck.

And we were not.

We didn't start dating until several months later.

But when I started dating my wife, I didn't have a car.

I didn't even have a job at that time.

My business had collapsed.

I had started doing a window cleaning business and I just started that business.

So I had a few contracts and so I was slowly starting to build it up gradually.

I actually drove my wife's car for a number of months as we were dating.

That was the primary vehicle.

Then I got my own and then, then that one died and then that would start vehicle until we got married.

We got married the very next year, top of the next year.

So that was.

That in of itself was an interesting journey.

Right.

But what it taught me was I had someone who was there for me in the low moments.

And it kind of affirmed me in a way because I had always believed that I had to have all these things and I wanted to have this level of stability and financial support.

When I went into the marriage, it was the exact opposite of how I wanted to go in.

But it's been a rewarding journey.

And the thing about it is, because we were at the bottom together, so to speak.

Well, she, she kind of had to reach down to get me out of the bottom.

But because we were there together, it allowed me to be able to.

To recognize that she's there for me.

And then that creates a level of loyalty in any man.

You know, when you have a woman that's willing to support you in that, you know, we want to give her the world, you know, you feel like she deserves that.

And while she doesn't need it.

You know, it's certainly my desire to make sure that she has it at some point.

It does tend to make us a better should.

Not all.

It's a blank, broad brush I was trying to paint with.

I was just speaking from your experience in mine.

It does make us better men who want to give back because they caught us at our lowest point and they saw our true self and they saw potential in us that we didn't see at the time in ourselves.

Their faith in us helped grow our own faith in ourselves and bring us back to the kind of men we are today.

And how long have you shared this journey with your wife?

So we just celebrated our 16 year anniversary.

Sweet 16.

That's awesome.

And what would you say has been key to surviving 16 years through those hardships and difficulties?

Because marriages work.

I don't care what anyone says.

You can love each other all to death, but there's days where you don't like each other and you got to work through those.

You do, you do.

One of the things I think that I've had to realize is that it is very easy to put the blame on the other person for what you're feeling.

They may have some responsibility.

I mean, we all have responsibility on both sides, but we often see the worst.

We read the worst into their actions and read the best into our own intentions.

And when you're not able to realistically gauge, look, you know, turn the mirror on yourself and say, what am I doing right now in this moment to make the situation better?

What could I be doing in the future to be making this better?

How could I serve her at a higher level?

How could I meet her needs in some regard?

Selflessness versus selfishness is always going to be the battle that, that threatens any marriage.

And as I, as I get older and see more and more friends that get divorced and the things that are going through, you know, that seems to be a theme.

It's very, very easy to say I'm leaving you because you don't do for me.

And very rarely do we actually examine what we're actually giving to a person versus what we intend to give them.

Right?

So for me that's, that's required a lot of self reflection, a lot of therapy, letting go of bad habits, different things that were, that were holding me back, and just always learn to see the good and appreciate her for who she is.

My wife has been a soldier.

You know, I've seen my wife pack up entire houses.

It's been her and I moving because we didn't have anybody else to do it.

You know, she's cleaned up broken furniture and turned it into something that was livable and turned our house into a home.

She's been a amazing mother for our children.

She's now transitioned to being the homeschool teacher for them as well and coordinating and doing different things.

And so I love her because she's an amazing person, but I respect her because she just has an amazing will and strength.

And it's very quiet, unassuming.

You wouldn't think of it in that way.

In fact, a lot of people, I think, would think for just so elegant and dainty that she's not.

But she's.

She has an inner strength and resolve of will that challenges me always to be higher, you know, to be better and continue to grow as a man.

And I think if you have that, that ethos, that mindset, it will allow you to be able to do that as a partner.

You've got to want to be better for them.

If you love them enough to want them to have the best, then you and you believe that they believe in you, then you can be the best.

So give them your best.

And that's going to be a challenge.

Like you said, day to day, it's not easy, but it can be done.

When you break it down into digestible, easy to implement steps, which is simply, okay, what could I do?

What's the one thing I could do right now to be able to affect?

And that could be sweeping the floor, it could be clearing her plate from the table.

It could be just being attentive to other people's needs is a huge part of that.

Just being more selfless and less selfish.

And how do you different your parental styles from your own father or mother?

You know, you were homeschooled, you had a pastoral father.

How is your parental style different from theirs?

Was.

I think, one of the things that we as interesting because if you told me that we were going to homeschool our children, I would say, no way.

There's no way I'm doing that it right.

I'm never going to put them through it.

And now they love it.

For the most part.

They recognize the freedom that they have.

And I think that will be the word that my wife and I really want to do, is give them the freedom to learn, to be creative, to be able to explore, Give them those opportunities so they can find the freedom and confidence in knowing that they have the ability to be able to meet new people, to experience new things without fear, to be able to Comfort to confront that fear whenever necessary, to give them the love, they can help them to release it.

In some ways, my parenting style, I would say, mirrors my father a lot.

In other ways, I would say I'm more open.

I think it's a challenge, honestly, because there are some ways that we just assimilate our parental style from our parents and don't realize that we're actually doing what we're doing now.

I think part of that is probably because we don't recognize until we are actually parents and in that position what they're having to experience and deal with, you know, and we children look at it from the outside and say, why are they doing it like this?

And why are they treating me this way?

And when you're in those shoes, you recognize, okay, you're having to make some hard decisions, you're having to deal with them things and juggle them.

And, you know, even the notion of being successful, right, Your parents had ambitions and.

And ideals and.

And dreams that they wanted to be able to fulfill.

They weren't always able to do that.

And it's not necessarily because you were there, but they did recognize that if they had to make a choice, you had to come first.

So now, you know, now wrestling with that.

And that reality, I think, is how do I empower my children to be free and unencumbered of those.

Those.

Those anchors that can hold us all down, those thoughts and negative thinking.

And I don't know how good of a job I'm doing, but hopefully, as I. I try to future pace and say, what would they think about this experience in 30 years?

You know, how are they going to look back on this conversation or this interaction?

And the truth is, you never know which lessons are going to be the ones that resonate the most.

So I think for me, parentally, I'm trying to be as present as possible, you know, And I won't say I'm always successful, but I'm trying.

So the frederick of today versus the Frederick pre your wife, you know, you said you were having some challenges, you were broke, you were overcoming some things.

But as a person, how is the Frederick today different from the man you were then?

That's a great question.

I'm allowed one per show.

You've had several.

You've already reached your quota.

You've already hit it.

Interestingly, I think I'm more patient.

I think I've always been a patient person.

I think I'll be more patient now, more measured.

I actually dream bigger than I did back then because I Realize more of what's possible.

I think I'm more giving.

I might be more present.

That's debatable.

You have to ask my wife on that.

I think I'm evolving too.

You know, I love myself more.

I'm more forgiving of myself.

I think that there were some brutal conversations that I used to have with myself, and it actually held me back in more ways than I knew or realized.

Now I'm able to see how much God loves.

God loves me, and his grace is there for me, and that he's not angry or judgmental with me, but he wants me to be as successful.

You know, he wants me to win as much as I do or even more.

And so that allows me to be more graceful.

Graceful with myself, and we're graceful with others.

You know, recognizing that this is where many of us are.

That many of the people that give you the hardest time, the greatest sources of conflict in your life are often the people that are at war with themselves.

You said that you find even after all the successes that you've had and all that you've done, you attribute your family as being your greatest legacy.

But if we take your family out of the equation, because we all want better for our.

Or we should.

We all want better for our family than what we had or, you know, what we currently have, but take the family out of the side, what do you want Frederick's legacy to be?

Outside of the home?

So, interestingly, I don't think a lot about legacy, but if you ask me what I think it will be, I think so.

I've always defined my purpose here in life in three ways.

You know, to help people dream bigger, go further, and be better than they ever thought possible.

And consistently, I find that my influence seems to be doing that.

And that's the thing that makes me the happiest.

Because understanding my utility in this world and understanding the outcomes that I'm creating and that they align is really important.

That misalignment right there is.

Is, I think, a thing that.

That causes people a lot of loss of equilibrium.

You know, and so I'm finding that I am doing that.

I want to be able to do it at a higher level.

I want to be able to impact, you know, more and more people.

There's not a number that I have to it.

You know, some people, you know, Michael Faber talks about impacting billions.

I love to be able to do that.

But I.

If.

If I'm able to impact the one that impacts billions, I'm okay with that as well.

It's just there's a lot of people that are so unhappy and unloved and unseen in this world, you know, and as a business owner, a lot of times what we're trying to do is we're trying to project that image or that need for validation through our business.

And so we have this other entity that we're pouring into to try and in reverse, have it pour into us some meaning and significance.

And I want people to be able to understand that all the meaning and significance gets created through you.

And then from there you can build anything that you want.

It's an aspect of love that, you know, it's a four letter word that does not get said in business.

But it's absolutely essential.

If you love yourself, you love the ones you work with, you love the thing that you do, you'll provide a structure for it to be successful.

And that's the thing that we call love.

So if anything, I would say that I want my legacy to be that people learned the true definition of love and how to be able to live it and express it throughout the world.

So how do you take these people that come to you, whether they're an entrepreneur or not, just trying to get through life, whether they want to build a multimillion dollar business or not is irrelevant.

They're.

Their need is the same.

Frederick, I hear what you're saying.

I understand what you've been through.

How am I supposed to get there myself?

What do you tell those people.

I love?

What?

There's a quote by the author of the One Thing, Gary Keller, who wrote Keller Williams.

He built Keller Williams Realty.

He says you're in my desk right.

Now around here somewhere.

He says you're only five years away from anything you want in life, first of all.

And it's difficult to be able to understand that until you understand that we all are created for a reason.

You know, I talk in my first book, Breaking Orbit, about how to discover your gift.

Your gift is your unique capacity to impact the world in a singular and powerful way.

There are three laws of giftedness.

The first law of giftedness says that every person is created with a gift.

Second law says that every gift has a purpose.

The thing about the purpose is that we will look around our room.

Wherever you're listening to this, whatever you're watching this, right, you see a chair, you see a table, a light, a bulb, a lamp, whatever the case may be, there was someone who created that, fashioned that thing, manufactured it with a purpose in mind.

No one ever said, I'm just Going to make a table today.

And whatever it does is what it does.

There's intention behind all those things.

Yet human beings believe that we are created without a purpose, that we have to go and find it or create it.

And so understanding what the purpose is that you have in this world, you unlock your utility, you unlock your.

The magic that you're able to be able to impact the world with.

And I think it's all what we're looking for.

People, they say they want to be seen, heard, validated, affirmed.

Yes.

But what you're willing to say is that I want to know that I'm making a dent.

Like, can you even hear me?

Can you see me?

Doesn't matter.

People want significance.

Well, the significance of your gift is that it has a purpose.

It was made with the utility that is going to impact others in a powerful way.

And the third law of giftedness is my favorite because it speaks to that question that you're asking, that people are saying, how do I know?

How can I get there?

How am I going to know that I get there?

Well, the third law of giftedness says that no gift can fail at the purpose for which it was created.

And again, we can look in the natural world.

We can see that birds always fly, the sun always shines, wind always flows, water always.

Wind always blows, water always flows.

Nothing in nature fails at the purpose for which it was created.

And so neither will you.

That's the point.

So, yes, I can tell you, you already have it inside you.

Now what we have to do is one, we need to get you out of your own way.

Right?

So simply accepting that is a powerful thing.

There's a.

There's a book I'm working on now called Anti Beliefs.

And we talk about how there are certain beliefs that we have that are not just limiting, they're actually working against what we actively are trying to create.

And so we can uninstall those things, we can learn how to be able to install new beliefs, new value systems, new frameworks that allow us to be able to access all the momentum, all the power that we want.

And then it's just creating a path forward.

We often work in reverse process, reverse engineer, where you want.

The reason why you can't get where you go want to go is because it may be a wish, but it's not really a clear mission or outcome.

Right.

We want to go beyond goals.

We want to go to a mission.

You know, what's the mission that you have for your life?

Why do you want to do the thing that you want to do.

Because if you want to build a 50 million or $100 million business to prove to somebody in your past that you really are worth it, so you can go and throw it in their face, you know, I mean, that's, that's, that may be motivating, it motivates a lot of people, but it's not going to be fulfilling.

And the chances are when our bodies kind of know that, right?

So there's this doubt there because we're moving from doubt versus love.

And that I know that sounds to a lot of business people practically, that's like wishy washy or fluffy, you know, like, oh, you know, love.

I'm gonna build wizards with love.

But the thing that we call love, you know, what are the things that we call love?

When you feel safe, when you feel seen and validated, when you feel secure and stable, when you feel happy, all those things are just side effects of the structure that we build to do that.

So when a man, you know, when you met your wife and you said those words to her for the first time, you were also implying a commitment to the type of relationship that you wanted to build.

Right inside of this relationship.

I'm going to conduct myself in a way that allows you to feel safe, allows you to feel seen, allows you to feel stable.

So feel supported, to feel heard and validated and all those things.

You didn't say all that.

You said it.

You called it love.

But love is a structure.

It's the foundational principle of the universe.

This is what God did for us.

It's a sustaining principle of life.

And so if you want to build a business or build anything of significance, you need to have a structure for it that allows you to be able to succeed, for it to be alive and breathing and thriving.

And life is a process of multiplication.

Right from the very first cell that we have, that cells divides in two, then the four, then the eight, then the 16, then it's 60, 64, and so on and on and on.

That, that process is about multiplication.

That's what growth is.

It's not one cell at a time.

It's many cells replicating.

And that's what we feel when we feel alive.

When you meet that person, you connect with them, you feel alive.

When you are creating that thing that's going out into the world and serving other people at a high level, you feel alive.

That's love as a principle working.

And the life animating force that's inside of you that God gives to us.

So it's inevitable.

That you will be successful if you align with those principles, if you have a clarity on what your mission is, and you have a path to execute on that day by day to consistently build the momentum.

You know, consistency builds competency, competency builds cash flow.

Cash flow.

I'm sorry.

Consistently builds competency, competence builds confidence, and confidence builds cash flow.

So when you're in that process, you're able to continually be able to move forward.

And as long as you're moving forward, you can't fail, especially when you're walking in your gift.

Earlier you said that you felt tormented that you had to go into being a preacher.

And now you're in this vastly different realm of entrepreneurialship, speaking, you know, music, all that.

When did you embrace that your path was going to be totally different than a 9 to fiver that you were truly built for more?

Probably in my teens, when my best friend and his brother asked me to join the singing group, said, we're gonna.

We're gonna start singing group and we're gonna get a record deal and we're gonna be famous, right?

That had to appeal to me in a way that it felt real.

We were extremely talented.

It never came to materialize, but from that path, that moment on, I was committed to it.

I've had the nine to fives, I've had the regular jobs alongside doing this thing, but ultimately, it's just always pulled me away.

I've had that tugging.

And so I think I made the decision when I was in my teens, but I've had to reaffirm that decision every day for decades.

At this point now, it's just an automatic thing.

And believe me, you will be tested.

There are going to be times when your business is not pulling in what you wanted to pull in, what it needs to be pulling in.

And there are going to be people that tell you you need to go get a job, you know, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't or.

Or can't, that there's anything failing in that.

It's just for me, understanding the commitment to who I am and where I'm at has always been the choice that I've made.

And my wife, I'm grateful, has been supportive of that.

Through all the ups and downs of it.

A lot of people who have taken the path that you and I have taken, somewhere along the line, there's been a guide or a mentor or just somebody that really resonated with the belief in us that we can walk that, that life.

Was there an outside factor in that mentorship for you?

Or was it your mother and her belief in you can do what you want to do and be who you want to be?

Well, certainly my mother was the first, but there have been many others along the way.

You know, those who poured into me as a man.

I can remember when I worked at summer camp when I was a teenager.

There was Director Joseph, there was my godbrother.

There was other men who came alongside at various periods of time that spoken to me as a man.

Then there was.

There was different coaches and mentors that I came into contact with who shared things with me and walked me through the process of learning how to grow a business of becoming better mentally, more mentally resilient.

My most recent mentor, Richard Pierce, exceptional, exceptional coach and advisor who's given me a ton of frameworks and ways to think about things.

So it's a continuous process of building that resiliency, of building that frame of thinking.

It's very, very powerful.

And I'm grateful for every man, every person, because it hasn't just been men, but every person that's poured into me.

And I know you said you had a lot of books still left inside you, which means that you're probably going to be in a lot of stages and a lot more TV shows and podcasts.

What is the.

What is the main message you want someone to get out of, who pays attention to what Frederick Bussey has to say?

I think it is possible.

I think every time somebody picks up a book, there's a question in their mind.

We're looking for the answer for something, even if we think it's just entertainment.

I'm just passing the time away.

Why are you being entertained?

I can't remember the last time I was bored.

I have too many different things going on to be bored, right?

There are times when I want to sit down and just watch a movie.

And, like, I don't have time to do that.

I got something else to do.

But I think about how many people are just wiling the time away, you know, and the reason why is because there's not something that draws them, that's calling them.

They don't have a mission.

And a lot of times, and I'll say it very often, people, they think, can I do this?

You know, is it possible?

And the fact of the matter is it absolutely is possible.

But we don't know that people.

You can ask people what they want, and a lot of times they won't be able to tell you because the biggest challenge that they have is believing that they're allowed to want anything in particular, you know, so when you know what you want and you know it's possible, right?

That unlocks a lot for you.

And for me, that's the thing that I want people to be able to understand most of all, that, yes, it's possible.

And.

And this above and beyond even, that not only is it possible, God wants more for you than you could ever imagine for yourself.

And it's hard to believe that in a lot of the ways that we talk about religion, the way we talk about God, the way we think about ourselves.

But imagine that the thing that you wanted the most for yourself, somebody else wanted for that, that for you even more, and had the capacity to be able to not only deliver that, but had created inside of you the capacity to be able to achieve it with their help and their guidance.

And it's a constant reminder, because we are in a world that is at war with our dreams, right?

But we get to go to war knowing that there is a victory that is assured because we were built for the battle.

We were built for victory.

So I think in every kind of subtle way or overtly speaking from books I haven't even written yet, but I think that's the thing that I would want people to be able to pull away, because you exist in that space, either between one of those two extremes, it's possible, or it's impossible.

The Bible tells us nothing is impossible with God.

So if you're aligned with your divine purpose, you're aligned with your divine gift.

How could you ever fail?

You know?

But most people exist in the other extreme, can't do that.

And we walk around with these 45,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day bouncing around our heads, overwhelmingly negative, telling us, I'm stupid, I'm an idiot.

I can't do that.

Why would I do this?

Who did that?

What do they think about me?

So we're consumed with all these thoughts that have nothing to do with our purpose, nothing to do with our gift, nothing to do with what we really want, other than to kind of continually try to derail us of those things.

And so, yeah, I think that will be what I want to leave with people in these books and in everything that I do.

Ultimately, you know, not only is it possible, but it's more possible than you could ever imagine.

Well, I appreciate you taking time out of your day to share that message with my audience and with us.

And, you know, I just wish you the best in all of you.

You continue to do.

Darrell, it's been an honor spending his time with you.

Thank you for having me.

I appreciate it.

And if you'd like to get into contact with Frederick, you can do so on his social media platforms, YouTube, Facebook.

He's got a Facebook group, Instagram, LinkedIn, and he's on X.

So reach out and touch base.

And as always, thank you for joining us on this edition of A Warrior Spirit.

Be sure to like or subscribe so you catch all the episodes.

You can tune in on all the major platforms, as well as on Roku via the Prospera TV app.

And remember, the journey is sacred.

The warrior is you.

So be inspired, be empowered, and embrace the spirit of the warrior within.

It's not just about the fight.

It'S how we rise from it.