From an early age, Trey Banz knew music was the path for him. Despite all the odds and mistakes along the way, he overcame and is now pursuing music and more with his trusted team. In today’s episode, Trey sits down with Chris D. Roberts to share his story. He defines success and how his team and family, Royalty of the North (ROTN), keeps him motivated to stay on the journey. The two dive deep on work ethic, investing in yourself and understanding what it takes to succeed. Stay tuned.

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Listen to the podcast here:

The Trey Banz Story

Charging Forward Crew, we have Trey Banz with us. Trey, it’s a pleasure to have you. We appreciate you. Welcome.

Thank you for having me. I’m excited.

Artist, musician, entrepreneur, you name it. Trey is a jack of all trades. What’s the main driver behind your success? In other words, what do you attribute to achieving some level of success and whatever you deem success? Can you share with us?

Music: What motivates me every day is just making sure that everybody’s going to be successful around me, let alone myself.

What drives and keeps me motivated is my team. It’s having a strong team around me. I always tell my team that as long as they and I have goals and dreams, I make their goals and dreams my dream and vision. We try to keep it all one. As long as everybody around me got goals and drive, that’s what motivates me every day. It’s making sure that everybody’s going to be successful around me, let alone myself.

Let me ask you this because you bring up a good point. You talk about the team, and many selfless entrepreneurs or even successful people have teams around them. It’s not them that did it on their own. They might have a lot of talent, but you need a supporting cast. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? Tell us a little bit about, in your world, what is a team? What are the supporting cast and the people around you? Tell us about that.

I call them team, but we’re a family. We all move as one. We argue as a family from time to time. It’s crazy. JoyaVeli is the crazy wild one in the family. There’s DJ Dexx, who’s chill and mellow. We’ve got the comedian in the group, which is Mike Mike, who’s crazy and wild. We’ve got Sonny that’s in love with all the girls and then there’s me trying to keep the glue all together. I’ve got a net in this crazy web of artists in a mess.

Shout-out to my manager for keeping up with all our men. It’s a family thing. We move as one. We take care of each other, pay each other’s bills and take care of each other’s children. We got to keep honest with each other. Communication is strong. We make sure that we understand each other’s problems so that we’re able to help each other and stay successful.

It’s like this whole cast of characters and that’s like any family. It’s like, “I got my crazy uncle. I got my other sister over here doing crazy things and always acting a fool. Everybody comes to dinner and they got to hear all her drama.”

A lot of people look at us like we’re crazy because we’re all ethnicities. We got Puerto Rican’s, White and Black guys. It’s a mixture of all of us in the end. I’ll be quick to say, “That’s my brother.” People look at me like I’m crazy. I’m like, “No. That’s my brother.” It’s a mixture of a lot of different personalities, but we make it work. We’re like the average family. We go by, “Blood doesn’t make you family.” We pick and choose our family and paths. We try to think about our generational wealth.

I’ll ask you to elaborate a little bit more on the players on the team or the cast of characters. We jumped in with what you attribute to success in general, but we want to hear about you and exactly what you do. If you don’t mind, take us through it. It can be a journey from youth into what led you to where you are or talk to us about what you’re doing. Tell the audience exactly what you do and who you are as a performer. Share and bring us into your world a little bit. You talked about the supporting cast, the friends and family paying bills. I love all that. I heard about what you do, but the audience doesn’t know.

You still want to be working when everybody else is sleeping.

I’ve always made music, so I don’t even say I’m a rapper or any of that. I’m an entertainer. Growing up, I’m the baby of seven. You’ve got to imagine everybody’s jacked up for a position, playing sports and doing everything under the sun. There’s little me trying to find and make my way into whatever it is I was going to do. I had a singing group in elementary school. We would run around and sing. The girls chase us after school. It was this big, crazy thing, so I fell in love with entertaining real early. That was something I wanted to chase.

I was writing music in school. The first rap that I wrote was for a school project. My teacher loved it so much. I was performing it for my school in the ninth grade. I got to skip out on all my classes to perform this for all the classes. I’m like, “This is what I want to do for sure.” I fell in love with hip hop, artistry, poetry and everything about music at a young age. Puberty hits, so I’m thinking it wasn’t the same for me. There were no autotunes like it is now. I fell in love more and more with rapping, freestyling and going to lunch. I skipped class and freestyle battle at lunch trying to hone my craft and get better.

My parents didn’t see my vision. They would be like, “Stay in school and stay focused.” I was like, “Hip hop is what I want to do. There are girls over here. They love me. I’m getting popular.” I was an average kid, a knucklehead and crazy, but you realize the crazy mistakes you made the older you get. It’s been wild between both my mom and dad. I was the child that would go in between like if one parent made me mad, I’m going to fly to Michigan and if the other one made me mad, I’m going to fly back to Atlanta. I was smart and understood a lot about life at an early age, so I played my cards the best way I could.

There are a couple of things you touched on and I want the crew to take this to heart. One is how girls keep popping up in your conversations. Those were a major motivator to a lot of Trey’s crew and him as he was growing up. That is important. As we grow and mature, our priorities change. We’re not always chasing everyone around. We’re trying to figure out how we pay bills, raise families and do all these other things.

It is funny how that comes up that when you’re young, you have these certain priorities, which you see as the end of days if you don’t meet the right girl, don’t make that extra $20, don’t buy those sneakers or whatever it is. You realize, “I’ve got a power bill, a child and responsibilities. I’ve got to change my ways.” You talked about the importance of team and family early on. I want the crew to absorb that.

Almost 90% to 95% of entrepreneurs, the ones I’ve spoken with, talk about the value of the team, family and support system, even outside of the circle of influence support system. Maybe it’s not in your immediate family, but it’s those friends that you hung around with on the block who were the ones that stuck by you.

I want to highlight that for the Charging Forward Crew because there is no one-size-fits-all in this life. You mentioned, “I was skipping school. I felt passionate about poetry and music.” I’m getting goosebumps because I was on my own at a very young age when I was younger. I had friends and family who also moved out at a very young age. I’m similar to you, likely. It sounds like we have some parallels there where we had to find other ways to get motivated.

For me, it was difficult to stay in school all the time because I needed to make money. I had to work three jobs and figure things out. I didn’t have as much of the local support system. Your parents were in different areas, which makes it a challenge. I want everyone to understand that I encourage going to school and college, but you don’t have to go that route. If you have talent, belief, passion and a work ethic, you can find success in one million ways. Do you want to elaborate on any of that?

I left home at sixteen. I felt like I had everything figured out as well. I was already a hustler at my age. I left home with almost $10,000. My dad wanted to take me to get to the parents-teachers conference and I was like, “I’m not going to do that. My grades are decent, but I’ve been skipping school, so I don’t want to embarrass you.” He’s like, “If you tell me no, you’ve got to leave.” I anticipated so I had already been saving up my money. I was pretty much ready. I didn’t look back.

A couple of times, you bumped your head and I came back home for a month, but I never wanted to go back and I was going to prove my parents wrong. That was a big motivation for me as well. I was being a little big brother taking care of my brother. Out of both of us, he was the one that went to college, stride and did all these great things. Shout-out to him. He’s doing a lot of amazing things too.

That was my motivation where I caught a couple of felonies with guns and pistols. I’m like, “Let me push my brother and invest in him, probably be there as much as I can.” The motivator for me was wanting to show my dad, mom and everybody around me that I could be successful despite the things that I did as a kid.

I don’t want to dive down too much of a personal rabbit hole, but you touched on something about guns, trouble and stuff. Would you mind saying that for the educational piece to some of the audience that doesn’t understand that world? I not only grew up in some rough neighborhoods where that was prevalent, but I also was a reserve officer for five years and experienced that on the other side. I did it to give back to the community and learn. I learned the other side of things. There’s an amazing parallel when you understand both sides.

You don’t have to get into too much detail, but as it relates to growing up in some rough neighborhoods, having to protect yourself or getting into a little trouble, what changed your mindset to go down the correct path? What changed your mindset there? You could go from protecting yourself to getting into some dirt. There are lots of things that could happen. If you don’t mind, share with us a little bit about what happened there.

Music: When you’re an artist, you have to dress a certain way, look a certain way, and be a certain way when people see you.

After you get locked up so many times, you start to see. A week turned into 2 weeks, 2 weeks turned into a month and that month turned into 2 and 3 months. What happened for me was not only was I getting locked up, but I was getting ready to have my son. My dad and I didn’t have the best relationship, so I called my pops and I was like, “I’ve been on the run for three years.”

It’s ironic because our real talk was when I was on the run for three and half years. I told my dad, “I don’t want to be a father that’s looking over his shoulders. I want to drive my kid, go places and not have these warrants and things behind me. I don’t want my kid to see me getting locked up.” That was pretty much the deal-breaker for me. I have to be a role model. When I first started thinking about music, I talked about the streets and what I was doing. That’s what it is. I’m going to live what I’m rapping.

Once I had my son, life changed me. I wanted to be somebody that he could look up to, be able to buy him things that I never had and make sure he had everything he wanted. For me, I don’t want it anymore. I built a relationship with my dad. We went from there and it’s been great ever since. It’s pushing my music 100%. You can’t be 1 foot in and 1 foot out.

If you’re going to be successful in music, you’ve got to be 100% in that because getting locked up and all that stuff is going to slow your progression and slow you down every single time. That stuck for me as well every time we get a small buzz and it’s knocked back down. Those are the main factors for me. Shout-out to my son. He’s amazing.

I don’t know you personally, Trey, but I’m proud of you and I say that wholeheartedly because I was a person growing up that had challenges too. I didn’t get probably as much trouble as you’re describing, but I had challenges and always looked at myself like, “This is the way I’m supposed to be.” I don’t have a pedigree, a fancy college to go to or all these things.

I quickly realized things when I came across the right person and for you, it was having a child, getting in trouble and saying, “Enough is enough. I’m bigger and better than this. What am I doing?” I didn’t come across as much trouble, but there was an epiphany in me that said, “Why can’t I have what those people have? Why can’t I be those people? What is stopping me from doing what they do?” The only thing that was stopping me was the mindset. I’m like, “I cannot work those people. I see them sitting around being lazy and doing whatever. They don’t want to put in the work.”

My dad was an industrial engineer and they were good role models. It wasn’t necessarily just that. I fell in love with music and street life. I was going to public schools and my parents were working all the time. I had workaholic parents. I didn’t have parents that were around you and knew what you were doing. All my parents knew was hustling work. When I was with my dad, he worked an hour away, so I did music and party in my house. What it was for me was gaining that popularity to be able to push my music because I knew I had a fan base and be popular to make my music work.

You just see the boss, but you do not understand all the work they put in to do the things they’re able to do.

To touch on mentors, role models and family. It’s not to take away from your parents, my parents or your environment. I’m not a victim of my environment and circumstances but I’m the result of my actions and attitude. I don’t have time for fear in my life because I’m achieving my dreams. That’s my mantra.

The reason I bring that up is like what you’re saying. I had loving parents, but I was doing my thing and they were busy. It doesn’t mean they were good or bad parents. If you don’t have parents, it doesn’t mean you can’t go out and achieve things. It means you’ve got to find something within yourself that inspires you to keep going or surround yourself with some mentors, volunteer your time and get around some successful people and then you can find a way through that.

For me, once I got a little bit of success and money, I was like, “I’m going to reach back.” I’ve crossed paths with people I met before that I’ve met doing music, which I’m thinking back on my team,like JoyaVeli. We had met a few years back. She’s way older than me. When we met back and I heard her music, I was like, “How are you not famous?” I didn’t have a plan back then, but I was like, “One day, I promise you I’m going to come back.”

A couple of years went by. I got my buzz and everything. I was like, “I’m going on a tour joining my team.” She was like, “I’m down. I’m not signed to anybody anymore.” That’s how I brought her on board, too, because I’ve always believed in her. I didn’t have a plan. It was still hard for me to find that right buzz and outlet to show the people I believe in that they’re great. Sometimes, those things can be challenging too. It plays a major part when it comes to team, family, and all that stuff.

One of the biggest challenges for being an aspiring artist, entrepreneur and business owner is not just support but structure, whether it be building spreadsheets, schedules or a social media presence. It’s not as easy as putting a great video on TikTok like the Kardashians. There’s a structure there that you’ve got to figure out.

When it comes to building a team, especially when you’re talking to an artist, when everybody looks at me, they’re like, “If I joined Trey Banz team, I’m going to blow up overnight, make money off music and be rich. This is going to be a lifestyle.” They do not understand all the work I put in, all the years it took me to get here, all the money I invested, all this time to even be making a little bit of money off of music.

Sometimes, it can be frustrating trying to build a team and a group of people because they’re not going to have the same work ethic or understand what it takes seriously. They look at you and are like, “You’ve made it, so if I’m on your team, you’re going to make me rich.” I’m going to help you. I can lead you to water. I can’t make you drink it. You can look at me and see that, but you’ve got to get your own money. You’ve got to get it.

It’s funny you say that because I’ve been asked a few times like you probably have like, “I’m going to join the team and I see what you’re doing. You’re in these stages and I want to do that too.” It’s funny that one of the things people say when they see what I do in real estate space or software is, “How do I do that? I want to do that.”

I say, “Are you prepared to work 7 days a week and work 2 full-time jobs? If you’re willing to do that for 6 to 12 years, you can have overnight success.” They’ll say, “What are you talking about? I want that stuff like the bank accounts.” Trust me. You name them, Sam Walton, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Tony Robbins, and you name them, weren’t born overnight. Not that we’re any of them, but the parallel is you’ve got to put in a lot of work like an iceberg at the bottom and then you see the top.

You still have to be working when everybody else is sleeping. I’m on the internet. I’m trying to figure out our next move, where we’re going to go next, and the next decision for the team. A lot of people see what their boss is doing, but they do not understand all the work they put in to be able to do the things that they’re able to do.

A lot of people are like, “The boss is relaxing in his room.” You might think he’s chilling and relaxing, not knowing that his phone is on speakerphone. He’s not relaxed. He’s going a whole conversation, but you’re thinking he’s relaxing because the phone’s not up to the ear. I can be pushing all night long, promoting and doing the hard work while you’re sleeping, not knowing this is why I’m the boss. It’s because I work hard. When everybody else is sleeping and resting, I’m still trying to make this company go and make the right moves for everybody around us.

It’s interesting to get in the heads of entrepreneurs, aspiring business owners, and sports figures and try to understand what drives, motivates, and inspires and how they see the business world. Some people have bumpers on. They’re focused on what they’re doing and not paying attention to that. Others are mentors. It sounds you’re trying to guide other artists into some success and you’re saying, “I’ve got to do my thing, but I’ve also got to be a mentor, leader and coach. I’ve got to help these others too.” It is a bigger purpose. It’s not just about you, which is cool that you recognize that and you’re trying to build something bigger than yourself.

What it is about is trying to build and have that platform. My team and I do community events where we put our own money behind it and push it. A lot of people are like, “You can get grants and get people to do this and that.” No. We can show people our hard work and we’re prospering off of what we’re doing so we can invest back into our community ourselves. If you work hard enough, you’re able to do so and invest in each other so that we’re able to give back to our communities.

We would love to find great things that come with being able to get bigger community events and things like that, but we’re completely fine with building and making it continuously grow and get bigger. Every time we come back from tour, I make sure that we have a community event so that we can let the community know we’re back and had a great time. Thanks for your support and pushing us to even be able to go on tour.

Music: Sometimes, you’re investing more money than you’re even making to make your fan base happy, to keep everything around you still flowing. A lot of people don’t understand that sacrifice.

For instance, I’m making $500 as a show and you have a team where everybody’s still trying to get on and make money for shows. You have tour buses, hotels, food and all these things that come with it. People are seeing you make this money but not seeing the money that’s necessarily going out. One of the biggest things in the industry and dealing with artists is they can only see sometimes near-sighted and not so farsighted. That’s why I plan for my team and try to make sure that I build a space and things like that when things go wrong so that their money can make money at some point.

For me, at one point, I wanted the fame and all of that great stuff, but I’d rather have the business, pushing somebody else, putting them in the front runner and helping them to be great artists. I want to be the top artist as well as the number one artist. I strive for that every day, but it’s like, “I love money.” Sometimes, you can be torn because you can be doing other things. Your passion can lose sight of those things when you are working with a team and trying to push other people.

Money makes the world around. It’s a necessary evil to achieve what we want to achieve in life, whether it’s good health, financial freedom, supporting our family that’s unwell or whatever it may be. You need it, but all these other building blocks go around. It’s not just about money. It’s funny when you hear wealthy people say, “Money is not important.” It’s not important once you have it, but it takes you getting there to realize it’s not as important. How do you get to where you have money where you don’t care about money?

It’s those building blocks that you’re putting in place. You’re saying, “I’m trying to create these other artists’ success, build business plans so that I can show them and be successful in my own right so that you can get to where you want to get to in life.” That’s the important piece that young people need to understand. You can have success, but it’s going to take a lot of work, foundation and educating yourself. You touched on some and I want the Charging Forward Crew to take this to heart.

It’s interesting because it doesn’t matter if you’re an artist, an entrepreneur or a business owner. Educating yourself constantly, working those long nights, even if it’s on YouTube, doing research, listening to podcasts and audiobooks, being on interviews or whatever it may be, we’re always learning. The more you can absorb and teach, the better you get. People might look at you as an artist and go, “Look at him on stage. All he does is write rhymes. It isn’t that hard.” “You didn’t see the 23 hours before I got up on stage that I prepared for this.”

The thing is when you’re an artist, you have to dress, look and be a certain way when people see you. It’s those hours beforehand to prep in investing in yourself. Sometimes, you’re investing more money than you’re even making to make your fan base happy and keep everything around you still flowing. A lot of people don’t understand sacrifice. That’s a big thing in anything you want to do, whether a rapper, singer or comedian.

Owning any type of company comes with sacrifice. That sacrifice could be money, your wife or your husband because a lot of people might not understand your vision or dream at the same time that you see it. You’re going to lose friends and certain people chasing that dream. You have to be prepared for those things and understand what you’re getting yourself into, which is why you have to research, have the knowledge and want it as bad as everybody else around you.

If you put more weight on yourself, it causes you to have to work harder.

I read a documentary on Mike Tyson once. It talked about all the money he made and his friends and family success. Everyone started to fall away when he wasn’t making millions of dollars in fights. I met him once and it was sad when you think about people like that. A lot of the people you thought were in your life supporting you that was part of your dream fall away when you don’t have that success.

You’ve got to have a higher purpose or calling and understand that you’re going to lose some of those people that are in your circle of influence. That’s, unfortunately, sometimes part of that journey through success because you’re doing things that not a lot of people are willing to do. It’s unfortunate as a by-product of going out there and achieving your dreams.

That’s a fact and that’s what it is like when I was in Royalty of the North, which is our camp. If you want to find all of us on Instagram, that’s @ROTN_. You’re going to find my DJ, all the artists and all the cool people I try to put underneath one banner. You can find each person’s Instagram because we are still individuals, but we’re underneath the same camp.

If you go down my Instagram and Facebook, you will see that there were other members before that. It’s hard for me to let things and situations go, even if they’re not necessarily good for the business or the company. That’s going back to my street ties and roots. Loyalty sometimes can hurt you. You have to be okay with knowing that people aren’t going to always be there.

It’s a part of life in growing up. It’s like when you’re in high school or junior high and these are all your best friends. They’re your whole world. Everybody goes off to college or even beyond and you’re like, “I’ve got three friends.” You’re in your 60s or 70s and you’ve got your wife or your significant other. You go, “What happened?”

That’s life, which is why it’s important to find that inner peace and success that drives you internally, which brings me to a question. What keeps you inspired and trudging forward daily? I may have an idea and I’m getting to know you a little bit, but what’s that one thing on a daily that brings you back to your foundation or center that keeps you rolling?

It’s knowing that everybody around me has goals and I have my own goals as well. We have to push to be successful and motivate each other. If you put more weight on yourself, it causes you to have to work harder. I believe in that. That’s why I take my team’s dreams and put them on my back. I’m like, “I’m going to figure out how I can make your dreams work.”

That’s why we have a comedian, singers and different people around me because it’s like, “I believe in you so much that I’m going to put that on my back. I’m going to strive for that. We might not know how I’m going to do it, but I believe in it. Let’s try to make this work.” Everybody has to start with having something to believe in, a goal or something that drives them. It’s having that goal board. When I lift my head every morning and open my phone, I see the goals in front of me and I’m like, “This is what I’m striving for every day.”

You said something that I love. It was, “I put more weight on my shoulders to motivate me to keep going and knowing that there are other people that are depending on me and all of us are depending on each other.” Charging Forward Crew, I want you to take that in and think about that for a second. Tony Robbins said, “We were born to survive and not to succeed.” I don’t know if he coined that originally but if you think about that based on what you said, we’re born to survive and not to succeed, so to succeed, we have to push ourselves.

When was the last time you ran 1 mile as fast as you could run to see if you could beat it? When was the last time you worked three days straight with barely any sleep to write that rhyme because you could, not because you could go to bed or watch re-runs of shows all day? I love what you said about, “I want to put pressure on my shoulders because it inspires me to keep pushing,” not, “I want to run away from pressure,” which is what more people should do. When you challenge yourself, it’s amazing what you can overcome.

I’m in love with success. No matter what it is, I want to be successful at it. As much as I love hip hop and music, that’s not what is going to make me successful forever. I want to do so many other things. Elaborating on my boy, Mike Mike, that’s our comedian. He goes by Spider Mike. Mike and I wrote a lot of skits and movies. We have a TV series that we’re writing together. There’s so much more and it’s more than music. It’s so much excitement because that’s what motivates my team and me. Everybody has so much stuff they want to do.

It’s like, “Why can’t we do these things? We don’t have millions of dollars budget to do it, but why can’t we do it?” I don’t understand why we can’t have our movies and series to build an audience and fan base for these things. We don’t need major companies to do these things. We run into people that pretty much believe in each other. For instance, if I like your platform, I would tell my team, “Let’s go push, share and do as much as we can from this platform.”

Vice versa, I would want the same if I’m going to deal with you. Not everything has to be million dollars or thousand dollars transactions. That’s where a lot of time people get lost in this game and industry. It’s like, “How much?” We can build off each other’s brand and help each other build as it would. Sometimes, it doesn’t always make sense. Sometimes, you have to pay for that platform and brand to help you get there. It all has to make sense, so building partnerships is very important.

Music: You don’t need millions and hundreds of houses to be successful or for your money to make money.

The more you give, the more you get. It’s like, “Let’s hustle, work, put in the time and things will work out.” I’m a firm believer in that. Once you realize that money isn’t a motivator, it’s a necessity, but once it’s not a motivator, the success, achievement or help of others is a motivator, all of a sudden, you start realizing the good people gravitate towards you.

You’re leading by example and people want to keep up. They start hustling and working too. Together, everybody makes it happen. Let me ask you this. It could be an author of a book, another artist or a family member. Is there someone in your life like a mentor that motivates you? If so, would you mind naming them and giving us an example of why they motivate you or something they’ve done to help inspire you?

The things that motivate me are off experience. I didn’t necessarily have a book or artist that I got up and listened to every morning where I was like, “This is what I’m going to aspire to be.” It would be life lessons and everybody around me. If I have seen this person that has a nice car, I would ask, “What do you do for a living?” It’s meeting and talking to different people. I didn’t have just one person. I had me. A lot of this was me. If I was living in an apartment and you had a house, I didn’t care if it was a three-bedroom house. “How did you get this?”

What mattered to me was, “How can I get to that next level? What will it take me to get there?” I always tell anybody that I’m around and working with that I will drive them by my two-bedroom condo and I was staying on top of a beauty salon with my family. I can clean my window and we’re on 10 acres. That was me buckling down and saying I wanted more for myself and my family. I don’t have to smoke every day and do all these things that are needed. Things that you want and need are separate. You have to learn how to separate those things. You can be very successful.

Once I figured out these things that I didn’t necessarily need, I was saving so much and was able to understand money. Once you can understand money, you’re going to be okay. You don’t need millions and hundreds of thousands to be successful for your money to make money, even investing in the stock market, having stocks, certain bonds, 401(k) or certain plans for yourself and your team if things were to go wrong or left in your life. Your money can make money for you and it doesn’t take lots of money for that to happen.

What I like about that is instead of you nay-saying and looking at others with some success, you said, “How do I achieve that?” You had a positive mindset, like a glass-half-full mindset. It’s like, “I’m not nay-saying you. I’m not trying to downplay what you’re doing. I’m trying to understand how to get there.”

What inspired you was the world around you. The success perhaps that you hadn’t achieved yet drove you to want to have some of that success. It could be a three-bedroom house, money, a gig at a show or whatever but you use the environment to inspire you and not a person, though there’s nothing wrong with that. What’s great is that you found an environment that you could be inspired by, which is something that a lot of people don’t even have.

They’re stuck in an environment where it’s all negative and got to get themselves out of that, which is why mentors come into play, books, or move away. Maybe a single parent moves them into a whole new environment. That’s awesome. Trey, I got one last thing for you. This is simple, but it’s fun. Tell the Charging Forward Crew one thing that might surprise us about you. It could be anything but something that isn’t total public knowledge. Maybe your boys or crew might only know. It could be anything. I hope I didn’t put you on the spot.

I train guard dogs. I have amazing pit bulls that I train. A lot of people don’t have a lot of faith in the breed. My two-year-old son can command my pit bull. I trained our dogs to run perimeters, go off temperaments and things like that. That’s something that I’m passionate about in all my free time. It’s having great and better pit bulls in the world. That’s where I’m about.

It’s not unlike in law enforcement when they’re trained German Shepherds. You approach one of those things and they’re huge. You don’t want to go up on it because you’re like, “That dog looks aggressive.” They’re trained a specific way. I’m a firm believer that every breed can be trained so that it’s family-friendly and that you can approach it. We happen to have Shar Peis and they can generally be aggressive, but they happen not to be. We’ve never had problems with them. They protect our environment, but no problem when strangers or family come over. It’s because they’re trained properly.

It takes a great owner and a village. All my little ones are always helping me. This little guy, he was going to be on the next up, by the way. I love my dogs.

Every Charging Forward Crew member loves their animals, whether it be turtles, fish or puppies.

We got two lizards and guinea pigs. We are an animal house on all our acres.

Trey, we appreciate you so much. Thank you so much for sharing all the knowledge. I would like to allow you to share with the audience if there’s any place we can find you, hear about you and join your social sites. If you want to give a last shout-out to anyone that’s in your circle of influence or any of the places we can go, I would like you to do that, if you don’t mind.

Everybody has to start with having something to believe in.

Thank you for having me. It’s Trey Banz, King of the North. This is baby Banz, Prince of the North. You can find me on all platforms on Apple and Spotify. On Instagram, if you type in ROTN_, you’ll find our whole family. Everybody’s underneath the same banner. There are a lot of unique and dope artists. We’ve got street artists, aware artists, rock artists and turn-up artists. That’s me. I love to turn up. I let it stay lit.

We got an album, dope music and a few tours. We got an HBCU tour and a little baby tour that will be coming up as well. We’ve got Pimpin Ain’t Good, which is the movie we shot in Vegas and the Netflix series that we’re going to start shooting for coming up soon. It’s called Become A Royal. Be on the lookout for Royalty in the North. Shout-out to my manager for having us here. Shout-out to your platform for having us here because we’ve only heard great things about you. I’m very excited to read this for sure.

Trey, it’s been a pleasure. I love hearing your story, the family and the dogs. We all love our animals and families. I appreciate you dropping all that knowledge for everybody. We’ll be sharing this. If you ever need anything, please reach out. I hope the Charging Forward Crew got a ton of this knowledge from Trey. We wish you all the luck in the world. Trey, thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you.

Important Links:

• Trey Banz – Facebook
• Instagram – Trey Banz
• Apple – Trey Banz
• Spotify – Trey Banz
• https://YouTube.com/playlist?list=PLCRw4qd2zDAMv_KmlD2yhZiXo92jAt-dh

About Trey Banz