TERRANCE “MUNCH” WILLIAMS – DIRECTOR OF THE PSA CARDINALS AAU PROGRAM & AUTHOR OF THE BOOK “OUR PSA” – EPISODE 705

Website – https://www.proscholarsathletics.com/

Email – seriousman03@gmail.com

Twitter – @PSACardinals

Terrance “Munch” Williams has been the Executive Director of ProScholars Athletics since 2008.  Under his leadership, ProScholars Athletics has grown from one team of a handful of afterschool students to a basketball program recognized as the top men’s basketball AAU program in the country.  His new book, Our PSA offers hope, motivation, and a blueprint for what it takes to become an emotionally, physically, and intellectually healthy African-American Male in today’s society.

Williams attended and graduated from the Holderness School, a selective boarding school in New Hampshire.  Terrance holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from Wesleyan University in 2002.  After graduating from Wesleyan, Terrance served two years in the Teach for America program and went on to teach 1st grade for three years in a school located in the NYC’s South Bronx.  After teaching he spent two years as Dean of Students at East New York Preparatory Charter School and earned a Master’s in Education/Building Leadership at the University of Phoenix during this time.  It was at this point that Terrance decided to return to his roots and accepted a position as Educational Coordinator of the SCAN “Reach for the Stars” program at Mulally Recreation Center, a program he participated in as a child.  

Within a year and a half of returning to SCAN, Terrance was promoted to Center Director of the Mulally Recreation Center. While returning to the SCAN organization, he began working with the initial group of students who would help create the foundation for the ProScholars Athletics program.  Understanding that team sports can be a spring board to numerous academic and social opportunities, Williams has spearheaded an educational movement that has seen student athletes earn admission to prestigious boarding and Catholic schools located throughout the Northeast as well as numerous Division I scholarship offers for its participants. 

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Grab your notebook before you listen to this episode with Terrance “Munch” Williams, Director of the PSA Cardinals AAU Program in the Bronx, New York and author of the new book, “Our PSA”.

What We Discuss with Terrance “Munch” Williams

• His educational background and how Pro Scholar Athletics got started
• How journal writing during COVID led to his new book “Our PSA”
• How finishing and publishing the book inspired others to finish things they started
• His pursuit to get the book into people’s hands and on to summer reading lists for schools
• Lessons learned through his relationship with his father
• “Even if you feel like, man, my dad is not doing the best job he can. If you know he is not doing the job he can, then you know what he should be doing.  Then as you get older, do that.”
• “Imagine how far you can go if we can give you some of the answers at an early stage…you can tackle the world.”
• “I’m by no means perfect. I am always going to be a work in progress. I am always going to be someone that is continuously trying to grow.”
• “When you say you’re going to do something, you do it.”
• “Think about the future and not just the next two minutes before you make a decision.”
• “Our job is to get kids more things in their toolbox to handle the adversity that’s going to continue to appear.”
• “The book is something that gets you to talk. The book is not something that gets you to read.”
• Why men should be able to cry
• Opening up with people and being vulnerable so you can share experiences
• “That’s exactly what’s going on in this book. I’m trying to give people the answers, the answers to who I am and the answers to those around me, and the answers to the world in which I see it.”

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TRANSCRIPT FOR TERRANCE “MUNCH” WILLIAMS – DIRECTOR OF THE PSA CARDINALS AAU PROGRAM & AUTHOR OF THE BOOK “OUR PSA” – EPISODE 705

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my cohost Jason Sunkle tonight. But I am pleased to welcome back to the Hoop Heads Podcast, Terrance “Munch” Williams from the PSA Cardinals Pro Scholar Athletes. He’s got a brand new book out that we’re going to talk about called “Our PSA”.

Excited to dive into that with him. Munch. Welcome back man,

[00:00:20] Terrance “Munch” Williams: Appreciate you having me. Absolutely. It’s kind of like the Pringles commercial, I guess you can’t just have one.

[00:00:25] Mike Klinzing:  That’s right. Exactly, exactly. Coming into that exclusive club of guys that have double dipped. So we’re excited for that.

I’m looking forward to diving in with you about your book. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Let’s start though by just going back, give people an opportunity who maybe didn’t listen to your first episode. Just give us a quick one minute bio on your background, kind of where you’re coming from, and then we’ll get into the book.

[00:00:48] Terrance “Munch” Williams: Well if they didn’t listen to the first one, my feelings are hurt and  I’m extremely emotional about that, so I’m going to try to do it again. Hopefully they listen to this one. I mean, it’s simple, right? Young man from the Bronx, two brothers, a sister, mom, dad, went to public school early, went to private school for two years in Plymouth, New Hampshire, undergrad at Wesleyan University, Master’s at PACE in the University of Phoenix, So double masters.

Early childhood education and building leadership. Did Teach for America for a couple years. Taught first grade for a few years, was the dean of students for a couple years. Worked at a charter school. Ran an after school program at Scan, New York, which is my local YMCA type building non-for-profit.

Now I’m the executive director of Pro Scholars Athletics, like you said a non-for-profit and we have a huge national level of basketball programs throughout. So from eighth grade on. We pretty much deal with young men on a day to day basis, 365 days, seven days a week. We’ve been fortunate enough to be sponsored by Nike.

We’ve been blessed with a tremendous amount of talent, phenomenal families and great people. We’ve been able to help place over a hundred and some odd kids in college in the last 10 years. 11 of those guys have gone on to professional ranks in the NBA and most of those guys are college graduates.

So I take great pride in that part, and tonight we’re here to discuss me being a first time author, probably last time, who knows, But it was on my bucket list. And here we are, Our PSA. Right? We’re dealing with the book and we’re discussing that and trying our best to get the world to understand what’s inside the book and how it came about and what’s the gist of it and how we can utilize it as a resource in America.

[00:02:47] Mike Klinzing: All right. Let’s start there with the why and when The idea first came across your mind that, Hey, I think I got a book in me, and I think there’s value here in some of the things that I’m going to put into that book. When did that, when did that idea strike you? How long ago?

[00:03:02] Terrance “Munch” Williams: Yeah, I mean, the why I think was heavy during the covid time.

I think at that point in time, we all were trying to find things to keep our minds occupied and our bodies and our souls in the right place. I’m someone that’s normally in heavy thought, but don’t have a ton of sounding boards of where I want to put my thoughts into. Pretty private with those things at times.

So, doing Covid I normally chop my day up and get into a bunch of different things to keep my day flowing. And one of those things was journal writing and being able to utilize that as a free write, but also being able to write down things that I’ve been thinking about as a black male in society.

And just as a man, right? You go through some stuff and you want to write about it and you want to talk to someone. And in a sense, the paper was who I was talking to. So every day I would think of another topic, and I would start writing it down. And then at some point organically, I said to myself, All right, well, let me just keep coming up with the different topics that myself, I go through and those close to me go through.

The young men in my program go through and just people that I know throughout the world and their upbringing and kind of taking you from early childhood to adulthood, right? And all of these different topics. So it just came natural to me. And once I finished, obviously writing, it kind of turned into, more so like a bucket list thing. Like, Hey, you know what, I can actually do this. I can write a book. As long as it’s going to be in the way that I feel comfortable, as far as the structure’s concerned, Right? Which is why you see the book being designed in a different type of form and fashion.

Right. It’s not the traditional form and fashion. Not saying it’s better, not saying it’s worse, it’s just my style. It’s kind of like what we say in basketball. It’s my style of play, right. So yeah, Covid time came and this came out of it, right? I call it a covid baby. Some people were having real life babies and kids, right?

And I was doing this was one of the activities throughout the day, I would spend an hour on, and It just naturally came to the young men in my program started saying, Hey you should write about this and you should write about that. And we go through this and we go through that, and I’m like, All right, this is dope.

Right? Like it’s connecting me to those guys. And then obviously once you get into the process of starting something, those guys are looking for you to, to finish the project. Right. And I think a lot of times with writing, especially when someone is worried about writing a book, they kind of have an idea and start it, and then life happens.

You get busy. You catch on to something else and you just walk away from it and put it down and say, I’ll come back to it. And this space, I always knew like, Hey, life doesn’t normally stop. Like the calendar doesn’t stop. Time doesn’t stop. We didn’t have AAU basketball that summer which was good.

It was refreshing. All of our 2021 class got to college, went division one. So I didn’t feel any anxiety from that or pressure from that. I just felt, okay, well I’m going to finish this, during this timeframe, and then at some point I put it down and say, Okay, we’ll figure out what we want to do with it.

And you type. Because I started from just a pen and a paper, right? And would write like that every day. That’s my style. And then from there, you obviously put it on your laptop. And then you start the process of figuring out, Hey, do I want to deal with a big publishing company? Do I want to deal with big editors?

How does that process work? So Cole’s mom, Crystal she walked me through a lot of that stuff and I kind of felt like, Wow, this is going to be a three, four year process if I go that route and it was, Hey man, this might be cool, but get in the back of the line. Right? You know, from the heavy publishers and the heavy editors.

So I just decided like, Hey, you know what, let’s get a local editor English teacher, right? And do that, and then self-publish it on Amazon and it worked itself out and now it’s alive. Right? And it’s alive and it’s moving. Right? And it’s like I said, the Covid baby is it’s starting to crawl and then it’s eventually going to walk and hopefully it starts to run.

You know, shout out to my Guy, Jason Forde always says that. Right. So yeah, that’s where we are.

[00:07:27] Mike Klinzing: What’s been the most interesting thing that you learned about book publishing that you had no idea before you started the process?

[00:07:39] Terrance “Munch” Williams: You know what? I think it’s a lot of things that I’m learning, which is the reason why I’m so, in a sense, excited about it. Right. Like I learned even from the categories that they put the book in, right? Like this book is kind of like cross genre in my head, right? But they put it in a sports category in a sense, and shout out to Amazon. Like they, I guess they have a ranking system and the book’s been in the top 100 of the ranking system for that category for the past month that it’s been out, right?

And the other day it received five stars. So I’m learning like, what does it take to, to get five stars? Right? And what are the metrics for being in the top 100 and why am I in this category? Right? And these are just all questions, right? And man on Amazon, well, when do I get to the part where they can just mail your book in two days?

You know what I mean? How does that work? Right? So you look at the other books in the category and I started to notice like, wow, like this is different. Like all of these people,  I’m in the category with like Stephen A. Smith and Carmelo Anthony, and books with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and all of these greats.

But they’re like the faith of the book, right? Someone else like wrote the book. So the question for me, a lot of times where people would be like, Hey, did you write the whole thing? And I’m like, This is a weird question. Before I started studying it, like, yeah, like I sat down and I wrote it, right?

Like, it’s my words, it’s on the paper. Like it wasn’t another situation with someone else writing what I want them to say, you know? So I’m starting to learn in a sense how connected the world can be through people that you know, and how much of this can be like in a sense of beacon, a light, right?

Where people say, Wow, like he started that, he finished that. Like, I can do that, right? Like, I’ve gotten so many comments. You pushed me to finish something. Right. And I know it was like doing covid, people were trying to finish the garage. Right? Right, right. And now, like a lot of my friends and close ones and people that I know are like, Wow I’m going to finish, I’m going to finish my book, right?

So I’m going to finish what I started. I’m going to, I can knock it out. And it’s like this natural confidence because the everyday guy did something that most people would be like, You have to really be an author and a writer in a sense, right? For whatever term that means to do this. So I learned the business side from Amazon, right?

Like with their portion question, What’s your pay?  When does it come? You know? So I also learned that like, hey, this project needs to be all. Touching the people and all about getting the word out and all about conversations and sharing dialogue and not have it be about how many books were sold and how much was the revenue and who bought the book.

It’s more like, Hey, how do I get this book in different hands across culture, across genre, across races, across all of that, Right. So I’ve been trying to learn that. And then I’m also learning, I guess to me, somewhat of the ugly part of where do people feel literature should be comfortable at, Right?

Like, Is it comfortable at the local public school? Is it accepted at the local Catholic school? Is it tolerated at the local boarding school? Is the colleges have some space for it to be entertained? Right. So I like that energy also because you get to see a lot of different dynamics to the world and how literature is determined.

You know what I mean? So I look at stuff like the summer reading list at a lot of like private schools and boarding schools and how, and I started to ask the question of, well, when I was in that, in that setting, someone just told me on a piece of paper, this is just summer reading, you never questioned it.

You went to Barnes and Nobles and you got the books and you read them, and then you had an assignment when school started, right? So now I’m trying to learn, hey, what goes into that selection? Of the summer reading and why doesn’t this book fit that category, right? Like that’s the push because this is a book that’s so unique in that you can act out some of the journal entries, right?

And you can have small group discussions with the journal entries and you can share obviously a book club with the general entries. And you can just have your buddies say, Hey, let’s wake up in the morning and read entry 72 about police brutality, right? Or you can say, Hey, let me read entry 47 about, it’s blood is thicker than water.

So like there’s so much going on. I call it the jumbalaya. It’s something in there for everybody.

[00:12:50] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that struck me is just the fact that there’s situations that I don’t care who you are and I don’t care what race you are there, there’s situations in here that you’re talking about, that you’re describing that.

Many people, many people have gone through, have faced, have talked about, have thought about, and I just like how you come at it with just an honest perspective of, Hey, here’s what I see. Here’s been my experiences. And not that it’s always been perfect and not that it’s, Hey, this is just the only way that it can be done, or this is the only way to deal with it.

But the fact that you’re providing an opportunity for people to have those discussions, like you just said, Hey, we’re going to read this and now we can talk about it. And when you start thinking about educating people or you’re talking about putting that on a reading list. Yeah. The reason why, to me, the reason why I would want a book on a reading list if I’m a teacher or I’m a college professor, is because it sparks discussion and it sparks thought and it gets people talking.

Because if you don’t have people talking, you don’t have people thinking then, You’re not accomplishing a whole lot, but when you get people talking, you get ’em thinking. Now suddenly that’s where progress is made. And to me, that’s where the real value in the book lies. And when I go through and I think about this, I know a lot of the things that you talked about deal with family and that’s a pretty general term.

But when you start thinking about your upbringing and your relationship with your biological father and how that impacted you, I think that’s a good place for us to start. Because we know there are a lot of kids in the world that are dealing with similar issues where they’re in a single parent household and maybe they do or don’t have a relationship with one biological parent and they’re trying to figure that out.

And that’s, it’s much, much harder to go through. With one parent trying to do all the financial support and the emotional support and all those things. Then if you have two people, when one person’s trying to do the job, that could also be done by two. It’s a lot harder. So just talk a little bit about that experience for you.

Yeah. And then what you try to pass along to the young men in your program.

[00:15:08] Terrance “Munch” Williams: Yeah. I mean, you start off from when you discuss my relationship with my father. It’s a weird one because I always go back to dear mama, right? Like, my mom’s role was so powerful and  so special, and we literally joke about my energy, my hustle, my drive comes from her, right?

And then you learn how to deal with that. But the father term is so unique. Like if you look through the book, you’re going to find topics that discuss what is it like to be a single parent father in society, right? When you watch the world, it doesn’t lend itself to single parent fathers. And this is not taking a shot at single parent moms because we know how hard they go, right?

Like, everyone knows that, right? And we respect that and we hold them to the highest degree. But the world, the government, like my best friend was a single parent father at the age of like 18, right? And he, he literally has raised his daughter from that point I’m talking about damn near birth, right?

So, What does the world see in that man? And how do you compare that man to a default that that’s in and out the house, right? Like, you’re going in, you’re going out, you’re popping in and you’re making demands. So you’re going to see an entry of me having to say like, All right, well, what is it like when a boy has to be the head of the household?

Right? And your biological dad is coming back in the house and he’s demanding things, but he hasn’t been there to do the work, Right? There’s no sweat equity in that scenario, Right? So what does that look like? What is the true definition of fatherhood? Right? And everybody’s definition is probably different or unique.

And yes a lot of people in these, in different communities grow up without their dad. My story is so different that I haven’t really told a lot of people. When I was young, myself and my dad got into a bit of a scuffle because we were going to the train station, and when we’re going to the train station, I was upset that I had to go with my dad.

Right. We had just got evicted from my apartment in the Bronx with my mom. So my dad picks us up and he’s taking us to Queens now at this time, I, I despise, I do not want to go. He’s taking my brother, my sister, and myself. My oldest brother didn’t go. So we get to the subway and my dad says something that forever stays with me.

His comment is, You need to hurry up and go through the turnstile. I don’t even know if you’re mine. Right. Wow. So I’m a like a young teenager at this time. So here’s where the dynamics is, is, is, is is crazy because there’s two things. If he is my dad, right. And he, if he is my biological dad, to this day, I say to myself, This dude’s a piece of shit and I don’t have a ton of respect for him.

But at the same token, if this dude is not my biological dad, right, I have to give him some credit for doing anything that he did do throughout my life. So you are constantly having that in the back of your head when you’re trying to figure out where does this relationship go? Right? Because you can’t get the true answer.

Or if you have the answer, and it’s not like you’re going and you’re taking, you know you’re taking a test to figure out if this is your biological dad or not. So for my entire life, I’ve always dealt with that concept, Is this dude my dad? And if so, I have a lot of animosity and frustration towards him because he left my mom to do the heavy lifting, right?

But if he’s, if he’s not my dad, then shit, the $2 he gave me for the pizza is at that time it was everything, right? Yep. So that relationship is weird because it’s like you don’t have the answer and as a man, it’s too late to kind of dig back into that. You have to continue to go through life and try to figure out how to be the best man you can be.

So the one thing I will give him, what in a negative sense, I learned how to be a man by doing the opposite, Right? And that’s the thing people can take from this. Like even if you feel like, man, my dad is not doing the best job he can. If you know he is not doing the job he can, then you know what he should be doing.  Then as you get older, do that.

[00:19:38] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that makes complete sense. And I think that’s sometimes times something that gets lost is we can learn. Oftentimes what not to do. Like you hear so many people that are in, Hey, I’m in this situation. It’s bad. Or whether it’s, I mean, you could even take it back to basketball, right?

With coaching, where you could be, you could be playing for a coach, or you could be working as an assistant coach with somebody and you can learn about the things, not only that you want to do, but you can learn about the things that you don’t want to do. So here’s an opportunity of, man, I know what this guy should be doing and he’s not doing it.

And now to your point, you have to internalize that. And as you grow up and as you try to go through life and make your decisions and figure out what you’re going to do, then you have to remember the way that you felt and those lessons that you learned as you were coming up and those things weren’t happening for you.

Then you have make it right. You have to figure out how to do it and make that right. When you have conversations with the guys in your program around this topic, what do those conversations sounds like? What are you, what are you talking to them about? What are you trying to get them to see?

How are you trying to be the man that you hope that they can become, that they can emulate?

[00:20:48] Terrance “Munch” Williams: Man, that’s powerful, right? I had to grow up fast being a director and being one of the, in a sense, figureheads to the program. Obviously I got a ton of great men that’s next to me every day that these guys can look to as examples.

Like, I think the biggest thing I’m trying to get to them is regardless of what your dad’s situation is he, he’s going to love you. You know, you’re his biological son, he’s going to try to figure things out. But as you’re going through your journey, how do you become the best man you can become?

Right? So that internally at some point you’re going to hopefully become a good father if you, if you end up having children. But start with the manhood part first, right? Before you start with the fatherhood part. Stick to being a man, right? Let’s learn those traits and what’s the non-negotiables to doing that, and then let’s just learn how to be good people, right?

And if, I think that’s the heavy thing and understanding, if you use my situation as an example, regardless of how good, bad, and different my dad was. It didn’t hinder me or stop me from, from being able to get to what I need to get to, right? Like, I worked around that and that’s the essence of life.

There’s no roadblock that you go through, you can’t figure out how to get around, right? Like people tell you either go through it or you go around it, you have to figure it out, right? Planes, trains  or automobiles. Get there, right? There’s a song on that. So for me, I’m trying to teach these guys like, look, I come from less than your starting point, right? And wherever I am now today, you view that as some level of success. So imagine how far you can go if we can give you some of the answers at an early stage, and you can tackle the world. So if your dad or whoever is in your way, figure out how to work around them as you guys are building your relationship and your relationship doesn’t stay bad forever.

Like even to this day, my relationship with my dad was terrible then , maybe it’s just bad now, right? . And it’s a lot of me though. It’s not necessarily my dad at this point, right? It’s me holding grudges and it’s me harboring these feelings and it’s me not being able to get past the past, right?

And it’s a lot on my side. And if I want a real relationship with him, at some point I have to do the work, right? I have to do the labor. I have to be the bigger man, quote unquote. So for me it’s always going to be how do you put your best foot forward in representation of what a strong black man in society is supposed to look like, sound like, carry himself.

Like I’m by no means perfect. I am always going to be a work in progress. I am always going to be someone that is continuously trying to grow. But I think I’ve earned the respect of the young men in my program and I know that they hold me to a high standard. So I need to meet that standard. Right. And even writing this book, I see the smiles on their faces when they’re like, Look, my director’s not just into basketball, or My director said he’s going to do something and he does it. Like that’s the biggest thing that comes out of this, right? When you say you’re going to do something, you do it. And I think that’s the that’s the most important part.

[00:24:08] Mike Klinzing: I love that. I think talking about getting around or getting through roadblocks when I look at kids that I’ll see in different scenarios and different settings, whether that’s.

At my school where I teach, or whether it’s in a basketball program that I have, I, I think that one of the things that kids struggle with is being able to overcome that adversity where the situation is difficult or they’re faced with something that they haven’t had in front of them before. That there’s a challenge.

And a lot of kids will back off from that challenge and they’ll look at it and they’ll be like, Oh, man, this is too hard. Like, I, I just, I can’t, I can’t do it. Whether that’s schoolwork, whether that’s figuring out how can I navigate through the social setting that I’m in and, and make sure that I’m getting along with people.

And, and you have a lot of the you know, you got a lot of the bravado where somebody challenges you and then before you know it, instead of me being the bigger person or me making a decision of, Hey, if I walk away from this, I’m not going to get in trouble at school or I’m going to open up another opportunity.

Instead, I might take a swing at somebody or I might say something that gets me in trouble. And that’s what I, that’s what I see a lot. And I think that’s one of the things that if there’s, if there’s anything that, that I could wave that magic wand to figure out how to get kids to be able to see that.

That’s probably the biggest one is how do I take these things that are right in front of me and be able to look not just at the, what’s going on in the next five seconds, but how does what I’m going to do in the next five seconds impact me for the next five years or 10 years? I think that that to me is a huge challenge.

[00:25:47] Terrance “Munch” Williams: And let me intercept your thought, right? I think that’s what makes this book one of the best books probably ever written. I’m joking about that part. But No, but it does, It’s what makes the book unique, right? The multiple choice. To every situation and the adversity that comes in all of these different shapes and forms.

When you’re growing up in certain environments, you’re taught maybe one style of dealing with adversity. And many a times that style is violence. Yep. Right? Yep. And you’re taught that from the top down. Right. And who, I mean, you can’t defeat your parents or your uncle or your right.

They’re the adults and people tell you to listen to the adults. And at a given time, there was one answer to every problem. Violence, Right? Yep. So when young men and women react to something, they’re reacting with their toolbox, right? And in their toolbox is one hammer, which is violence.

Now, when you read through this book, it is trying to train you into saying, Hey, a lot of these scenarios are going to come up. Especially in the black community when they come up and when they appear in your life, young black boy, think about these four options, A, B, C, and D. Discuss them four options with as many people as you want to discuss them with, Get perspectives, get knowledge, and then figure out when this happens, how I want to handle it. Right? E 48 says everybody got choices. And that’s so true because if I don’t react in this way, then how am I supposed to react? And if you think about it, if you look at it and people say, All right, well when that happens, you should do X.

And we grow up not knowing what X, Y, Z is. So if someone said, Hey, you should go to therapy because you have anger and, but the world in society tells you you’re a punk, or no black man goes to therapy. You’re conflicted. Can therapy be a tool or can it not be a tool? Right? If someone says, Hey, you know what, you should write in your journal, your thoughts, but then society says, Oh, that’s too feminine.

You shouldn’t write in a dear diary right form. So now you’re like, All right, well, can I use that? Oh, you should walk this off, or You should pray, or you should go to church, or you should do all of these different things. That is saying, stop, breathe, Gather yourself to your point. Think about the future and not just the next two minutes and before you make a decision, you’re going to make a decision that’s.

But be prepared for the decision, right? Be able to read the room and then be able to think long term and then come to the decision. So our job is to teach these men, whether it’s adults, young adults, or teenagers. Our job is to get them more things in their toolbox to the adversity that’s going to continue to appear, like I consider myself pretty successful, but this adversity that comes towards me every single day in different forms.

So how do you handle the adversity? That’s why the book is so unique in that the read itself isn’t complicated. You have a 15 to 20 minute read, but you have an endless amount of conversations. That’s where the money is, right? Where people are able to talk to each other and be analytical and listen to each other’s thoughts, and then pick what you want to.

Like, I might start something saying, I would’ve did a, and then I’ll listen to three or four people go and I’ll come up to a conclusion and say, You know what? When the police pull me over, you know what? I am probably going to put my hands on the steering wheel and just remain calm. Right? Like, come up with the answers because the problems are going to keep coming.

So that’s the thing that I’m trying to get people to say. Right? If you think about the times when Black Lives Matter movement was at its highest a lot of times during Covid, Right? A lot of the conversation was us as black folks, felt like we get treated one way and we wanted the white folks to say, All right, cool.

I understand you and I’m with you. But in turn, a lot of time they were just kind of oblivious to some of the scenarios. They weren’t necessarily saying, I hate black people. Right? Or I just like Latinos. They were just basically saying, All right, I don’t understand how your stance is versus mine, right?

And this book, if you take the white male from Wisconsin and you take the black male from New Jersey and they both read the same thing, they’re going to start to have dialogue. So that way both of them can understand the two people’s thought processes and what they’re going through.

So this book is so wow because it allows people from different races to get some type of inside trait of information on what black males go through. It allows the women to understand, Hey, this is what a black man’s going through. He’s dealing with anxiety, he’s dealing with the depression.

Right. He’s dealing with how does society accept me when I did some time in prison, and what do I have to do when that happens? Does that make sense? Like it’s so many different things that that’s thrown at us year after year, after year after year. And the more stories like, Hey, like I said, I think I’m successful, but there’s a lot of different things that I deal with and I’m just a normal dude.

[00:31:32] Mike Klinzing: I think it makes sense, especially from the standpoint of, I love what you said about having that discussion, having option A, option B, option C, option option D, that I’ve thought about before. Before I get into the situation. Obviously you can’t anticipate every single situation that is ever going to come in front of you, but there’s a lot of similarities in situations.

And so if you’ve at least thought about, Hey, when this happens, these are the things that I can do. You give yourself a better option than reacting in the moment where you may end up making a mistake and doing something that you regret or that turns out bad because you haven’t put any forethought into it.

And that could be a situation, that could be a dangerous situation, or it could just be a simple situation, right? Again, I’m going to equate it back to sports where if you’ve thought through, Hey, in the last two minutes of a game, what are some possible situations and scenarios that I could face as a coach, you’re going to put your team through that on the practice floor as a player, you’re going to think through those things.

And if you’ve gone through that mentally, you’re going to be in a much better place when you eventually come up and come upon that situation or come upon an individual who brings the situation onto you. And I think that’s the case where that pre-thought, where you’re actually taking the time to go through and discuss, and especially as you said, if you can have that discussion, not just in your own.

But if you can talk to other people and get perspectives. Because we know, look, with every single thing that we do, right? We all have ideas. I’m sure you’ve had a ton of ideas where you’re like, Oh man, it’s the greatest idea. And then you go share it. Then you go share it with somebody and they’re like, Well, did you think about this?

Did you think about this? Did you think about this? And eventually you probably come out with a better idea. It may not be your original idea, but you come out with a better idea. And I think that discussion and that thought and that, as you said, journal writing, like there’s so many ways that if you can process and think about things beforehand, and that’s, look, that’s a tough skill.

It’s a tough skill for adults. It’s a tough skill for kids. But at the same time, it’s a discussion that needs to be had,

[00:33:45] Terrance “Munch” Williams: Man. I mean, it’s literally that, right? The book is so interactive and, and cross energy where it’s like, I seen it happen with my day one friends, they’re all in a group chat and they’ll read a topic and they’ll be in a group chat without me responding.

And they will literally be going back and forth for like 45 minutes talking about whatever entry they’re talking about. Because, but the one thing I always seen was when I got a chance to listen to everyone’s space, I came away with a lot of dialogue to say, Okay. And knowledge before I had to make the decision.

Right. Like you look at something as simple as most of these teenage kids are going to deal with, the males are going to deal with the females for the most part. Right. And at some point somebody’s going to say something to your girlfriend that you deemed disrespectful. Right? Like, it happened to me in high school.

It happened to my boys in high school. It’s happened in high school these days. It’s, some of this stuff doesn’t have a timestamp. It’s just always happening generation after generation after generation. Right. And you could tell ’em like, Hey man, this is going to happen. So how do you deal with the guy that approached your woman, right?

And for some of us, it’s the guy who approached my woman at work. For some of us, it’s the guy who, who approached my woman at the baseball game, it’s the guy who approached my girlfriend at a high school basketball game. It’s the guy who says something to my girlfriend while we’re waiting online at the popcorn stand in the movie theater.

How do you deal with that? Because it’s coming. And that’s some of the things that’s going on in his book. It’s giving me the things that’s going to come, like the stuff that I go through. It’s not like, Hey, I can’t find 75% of the African American males that say, Yeah, I went through that too, man.

Right? But it’s about how you reacted to it. Cause if you don’t react right, incarceration, man. Right. Death. Violence. Absolutely. Yep. All of that type of stuff. So you trying to figure that stuff out.

[00:35:48] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, there’s no question about that. One of the things that goes along with that, I know at school, whenever I’m, when I’m teaching, one of the things that always happens is kids talking about each other’s moms, right?

So all day long. So I’m saying, Hey, your momma this, your momma that. And here’s one of the things that I always try to do is I’ll try to get the kid, I’ll say, I’ll stop and I’ll say, Hey man, does, does he even know your mom? Has he ever met your mom? So if he’s never met your mom and he doesn’t know who she is, then how much time should you be putting into worrying about what it is, what it is that he’s going to say?  Just walk away.

[00:36:25] Terrance “Munch” Williams: But you, you even go further, right? When people start saying, back in the day, sticks and stones break my bones, but words would never hurt me. Right? People would try to tell you that. And, and when you were seven years old, like, don’t worry about that. The momma joke’s been going on forever.

Now how you handle the mama jokes is where do things get interesting, right? Yep, for sure. So, and they know the mama’s joke is so much more powerful than Daddy’s joke because most of the time we growing up in household where a mom is there and she’s holding it down, right? So you say something about my mom, I’m like, No, that’s the one thing that’s off limits.

Why is it a mama joke versus a daddy joke? Yep, I hear you. I mean, so, but yeah, man, I mean, I think the book, it’s so unique from the standpoint, like the more, the biggest thing is not allowing people to keep you in a box. Not allowing people to tell you what you can do, being one of one.

There’s so many different subjects based in there, man. Like the term the man is holding me back and it’s like, is that a real term, right? Like, where did this come from? You know, how does that actually, is it really happening or is it just an illusion? Or is it really just an excuse because we didn’t want to go to extra mile, Right?

It’s all of those questions, right? It’s all of that like, outgrowing your neighborhood. Like how does that look when you’ve become the person that’s like, Hey, I need to kind of like, try different things. Go to another country, go to another island, go to another state, like chase education, whatever that’s going to be like, how does your neighborhood look at you when you’ve kind of, in a sense, your brain has outgrown the neighborhood and it’s normalcy, right?

Like different family structures, like the black community man, there’s no one family structure that works. You have to come up with something that is you know, It’s cut from a different cloth. It’s custom made and it just have to work. Sometimes the dad have to stay home and the mom’s going to work, but it works for those guys, right?

Like whatever it needs to be. Like, there’s no set family structure in that and accepting that. So, like I said, there’s so much going on in, in this book, and what makes it good also is that you don’t have to do the traditional read page one, read page two, read page three. Like I had a I stopped by a local school today, and, and that was one of my things, like, Hey, you can go to entry 40 and you can go reentry 93. And I don’t want you to feel in a sense, caged in to read the book in the way that the world tells you to read the book step by step, page by page. You know, you don’t have to, like if you told me, Hey, I read the whole page and wrote the whole book in two days, but you didn’t discuss nothing with anyone, then I think you failed.

Right? Like this is something that gets you to talk. This is not something that gets you to read. Like the reading is cool, the conversation is where the money’s at.

[00:39:27] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, no question about that. I think if you can get that into the hands of people and then they’re talking about it and they’re sharing and you like, I look at it and man, how powerful would it be to use this in a high school class where, yeah, you can have discussions in small groups and hey, we’re all talking about it.

We’re bringing perspectives, and then you. An adult sort of facilitating and popping in with some interject saying, Hey, have you thought about it from this perspective? And kind of goes back to what you said about getting it on getting it on a reading list, where it’s going to, it’s going to get into the hands of people who can use it and can utilize it.

And as you said, the way it’s organized in that you could pick out a topic and look even if, hey, that thing’s sitting on your nightstand, right? And you have a situation that comes up and I can go, hey, That’s familiar to me. Or I, I saw that, I saw that in the table of contents. Maybe I can go back and I can look at that now.

I can read MU’s perspective and now I can go out and talk to some other people about it. And I think to me, that’s a really powerful tool, as you said about putting things in your toolbox. If you don’t have the ideas and thoughts and the, the different ways of dealing with things. If you don’t even know what those are, then you’re always going to default to what you already know.

And no matter what, I don’t care what walk of life you’re, you’re talking about, whether it’s in relationships, whether it’s your job, whether it’s sports, whatever. If you’re just always falling back on what you’ve already done mm-hmm. , then eventually people are going to pass you by or things aren’t going to turn out the way you want ’em to turn out.

[00:40:59] Terrance “Munch” Williams: Yeah. I mean, one of my best friends was like, and obviously you not comparing it to this, at that level, they were like, Oh, the structure is like the bible right? When you see the pastor and he’s like, Hey, turn to this page. That fits this this verse right here in the middle of the book somewhere.

Right. And it’s like that. And like you said, it gives you that time and perspective to have something that these young kids, especially people trying to learn how to deal with them and just deal with us males, you’re like, Right, let me, there’s something in here. Let me look for that.

And then, like I said, the book is affordable, man, 17.99 on Amazon. It’s not the end of the world for any of us. The thing is, we have to get a bunch, because we have to put ’em in the hands of of these young men these kids. So for me, I’m in a space where, I’m at the point where it’s like, look, if you got a book in the classroom, man, find the article, photocopy it, right?

Like pass it out. But get the knowledge, man. Get the energy, get the conversation. Get that going, right? Like you on your way to work. And for you guys on a conference call, three-way call and y’all talking through it, like, don’t let the finances stop you from getting the, the content, right?

Because if one person got the book, that’s why the journal entries is so strong, because it’s so many different topics that you could just say like, Look, I’m going to print this out and make 15 copies and I’m going to talk to my classroom about this, Right? If you in a boarding school and you like, Hey, I got an advisory committee of five young men, old women, and we’re going to go over this topic today.

What is it like when someone’s trying to mute your voice, right? Like, who’s dealing with that? You might be in a social services department and there’s a kid including myself, right. Deal with heavy anxiety, right? And there’s tons of people that deal with heavy anxiety, and you’re talking about that.

And there’s something in the book to lead you in that direction of just getting the conversation started. It’s a conversation starter. That’s what we are trying to do. We’re trying to have conversations, and we don’t talk enough. Like if you think about when this book was birthed, it was during the time when people were not supposed to be really communicating, Right?

You’re saying, Don’t talk to me. And now we’re saying, we’re done with that. We need to talk. You know what I mean? We need to converse.

[00:43:26] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Have you put this, have you put this in the hands of, through your connections, have you put it in the hands of coaches at either the high school or college level and gotten any feedback from coaches at this?

[00:43:39] Terrance “Munch” Williams: Yeah, I mean, I’ve been on any and everyone about, Hey man, get your copies. Put this in the hands of the kids. There was four public school teams just this week. I think it was Monroe High School in the Bronx. There was Clinton High School in the Bronx.

There was Wings High School in the Bronx. There was Eagle Academy in the Bronx. Then there’s Stepping Neck, there’s Iona there’s, there’s all a bunch of schools that, that are getting there, right? Bunch of prep schools, bunch of colleges. So that’s the thing, right? Like you go through this journey and like I said, I didn’t have any plan for how to sell the book in a sense, or get the book out.

I literally was like, Hey, I wrote a book. And then I’m like, Oh, ok. You have to do something with it. Right? Right. It’s live. So I’m in the place now where, I’m literally like, All right, well, can someone tell a friend to tell a friend to tell a friend? And if you can’t afford it, I could find a way to get it to you.

Right? Like, so the schools are getting it and I don’t want it to be, Hey, only the basketball team kids get it right. There’s regular kids going through depression, right? There’s regular kids and boarding schools trying to learn how to live through the double life of being in, in the New England Prep School and being in the, in the heart of Harlem, right?

Like you’re living a double life. And how does that look? So my thing is it can easily be like, Hey, coach from South can, can you purchase 12 books for your team? But I’m more like, listen, What about the kid that’s not playing basketball and he needs this information too. How do we get that to that kid?

And obviously I don’t have the funds right now to just say, Hey, I got 5,000 books to donate. But you know, some of the guys who NBA players have been they’ll donate some books and say, and I said like, Ty Jeromes, like, Hey listen, I send it to you and I take it to his local high school, or call Anthony.

I take it to your local high school. Like, you know what I mean? So thinking outside the box, there’s even people that say, Hey Munch, I got a book, but send me a contact to someone else. You want to have the book and I’ll mail it to them through Amazon. So I think the beauty of it is everyone knows like, hey, if it’s on Amazon, he’s not going to get rich.

Right? So this has to be something that’s like for the culture and for the people. And you know, just reaching out and saying, Hey man, I know reading isn’t the thing that everyone wants to do, but when you really think about it, I have a lot of conversations with people that are intelligent.

I’m like, Hey, what book are you reading? Absolutely. I want this to right. And I want this to be the book that somebody’s like, Mike, what are you reading? And you’re like, I’m reading Our PSA. What’s that? Oh man, you need to get that. Like, the same thing is not obviously the same level, but shit, if you could tell somebody, go get the coffee bean, right?

And he’s talking about making sure that you’re hard and strong and you know, don’t fold up and man, this guy is the same type of information in it. Right? So  I want that to be the movement, the wave. Like where everybody’s like, Hey, don’t look at the book from Munch the, the AAU guy. Look at it like Terrence Williams, the person that has some information that we should all be talking.

Yeah, I think that’s my, that’s my journey right now, Mike. Not in the hands, baby.

[00:46:49] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. I think when you’re talking about being able to spark conversations, Yeah. And you’re talking about being able to put it in the hands of people who are going to benefit from it the most. And I think when you go through, and anybody who picks up the book, if you go through and you look at the different entries and you look at the different conversation starters, and you look at the different experiences that you wrote about, I think that I don’t care, Black, white, Latino, whatever, you’re going to find things in there that are going to represent things that have happened to you in your life.

And when you start talking about real life issues, now you start having conversations, as you said, when that can go across race, when that can go across age, when you can start getting those conversations. And getting kids thinking about it and getting kids talking about it. Cause look as adults, right? I mean, You and I, people who are doing things are trying to, as you said off the top, you’re always trying to better yourself, your work in progress.

And I think the older you get and the more things you do, the more you realize that what little, what little you really do know, and how much further you have to go in terms of your own growth. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. And oftentimes when we’re 15, 16, 17, that’s when our ego is at its highest where we, we don’t want to admit that there’s something that we don’t know.

And we think we know it all. And I, I think if you can get kids talking about it and thinking about it, and as you said, not just kids on the basketball court, but kids just in life, in the classroom, can you get them having those conversations? Now suddenly that’s where you’re starting to make progress or you’re starting to see an impact from the book and from the types of conversations that it’s trying to spark.

And to me that’s, that’s where the real value lies.

[00:48:43] Terrance “Munch” Williams: Yeah, like, I’ll give you example. A couple weeks ago I did a guest speaking appearance and we’re talking about manhood, and I’m like, All right. The low ending fruit,  simplest form of manhood is to be able to do what you say you’re going to do at all times my opinion, right?

Yep. Second part was black, white, Chinese, Mulatto, whatever. Why does the world tell us we cannot cry? If you a man, you cannot cry. Who made that rule up, right? And when do you get a chance to cry? Tears of joy. And when do you get a chance to cry? Tears of pain. And it’s an emotion that God gave us. So obviously he wanted us to deal with it.

And guess what? Me and you are on this Zoom podcast right now, I’m going to go out and limit, say, Mike, I’m sure you cried both , right? Yep. You seen your daughter graduating. You seen your wife come down the aisle, you’ve celebrated a graduation, whatever it is, you cried the tears of joy. And then you also been maybe been to a funeral, maybe hit rock bottom at work, maybe was stressed out and tears came out right?

Tears of frustration, tears of pain. But the world tells us, man, men cry in the dark. Right. And the dark. Why? Why can’t I cry? Get it over with and still be the same powerful man that I was before that 10 minutes of crying. You know what I mean? I know. Exactly. So yeah, and it’s those type of conversations.

Because if I can’t understand and accept that yo, there’s going to be times where I need to cry and then move on, then I’m going to be hiding these emotions from everybody and then I’m going to be hiding these other emotions, anxiety, depression, then I’m going to be hiding these other emotions, right? Sadness and all.

I’m hiding all of these emotions because some place on this planet, some unwritten rule because we don’t know the rules. Some unwritten rule, right? Somebody started to tell the world, You can’t do this, you can’t do that, and you can’t do this. Who made these rules up? And who gets the chance to dictate what I personally, Terrance Williams gets the chance to do when I want to do it, and how I should feel about it?

So it’s those type of things. It’s these topics for the young teenager, the topic for the man, it’s topics for everybody.

[00:51:13] Mike Klinzing: How do you go about, when you’re thinking about having these types of conversations and you’re sharing, whether it’s now that the book is out, when you’re sharing the book, but even before the book when you were just thinking about these topics and you’re sitting down with the kids that you work with on a daily basis. Yeah. It seems to me that one of the biggest things that you have to establish is you have to establish trust with those kids so that they can be honest and they can be vulnerable because we know that all of us in certain situations, we’re going to put on that bravado, right?

And we’re going to be maybe sharing or talking and saying things that we think other people want to hear, or that it’s going to put us in the best light, but isn’t maybe necessarily the truth that can really help us deal with some of the issues that we’re talking about here. Yes. So how do you go about building that trust with the kids you’re having these conversations with?

[00:52:10] Terrance “Munch” Williams: I mean, the first thing is for me to accept being a human and accept being a work in progress and be comfortable in my skin enough to know like, Hey, it’s nothing wrong with me for having to go through these things. I think I’m lucky because a lot of my good friends and people that I love, and I call ’em my brothers, they’re very intelligent.

And they go through stuff and we talk about it, and then we share and we allow ourselves to be vulnerable in spaces that we’re with people who aren’t going to frown upon or look down upon who we are overall because of these couple things that the world says is a weakness. Like we’re trying to acknowledge.

Like 10 years ago, I wasn’t talking about anxiety. I just thought like, damn, everything has to be perfect for me all the time. And you know, I’m superstitious and all in all these different terms, right? But it was really like my mind is always racing. So I think letting your guard down and telling them ahead of time, like, Hey, here’s the things that I go through, right?

Like, yes, on the outside you see Munch the coach, Munch the director, like this. But on the inside. Here’s a list of 10 things that I go through on a normal basis that you guys probably wouldn’t believe, but you’re probably going through some of that also. And it might be one kid going through that, another kid going through this, another kid going through that and me just telling them and showing them like, Hey, that’s okay.

We’re all in the work of progress. Like if, it doesn’t matter if I’m 40 and I’m dealing with anxiety and the kid is 18 that’s dealing with anxiety and the other kid is 14 dealing with it, all three of us are dealing with it. It’s my job to give them in a sense the playbook to say, Hey, this is what I try.

Right? Like what’s the difference in me having eczema, right as 40 and the 18 year old kid having eczema and the 14 year old kid having eczema and me not telling ’em about my dermatologist, right? Like these, these things that’s going on, it’s up to me to be comfortable sharing and opening myself up to some level of criticism or, and it makes you even more powerful when you’re able to break through and tell them like, No man.

I get that. I understand what you saying. I’m nervous too. You know what I mean? When you taking the shot, I’m nervous because of the clock running fast. Right. I got the answers, but the time is moving. So let ’em know. Like, let ’em know you’re human. Let ’em know you fail. Let em know you hit the let know you got back up.

[00:54:43] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. When you do that, I think when you open yourself up, that’s the first step is that they have to see you being vulnerable. They have to see you sharing real things, real experiences from your own life. And then that lets them realize that, hey, this guy’s willing to take the time to, to share something that affected him, affects him.

That maybe is not something that everybody would think, Oh, Munch’s not going to share that. Why why would he say that?

[00:55:11] Terrance “Munch” Williams: But when you do, Yeah.

[00:55:13] Mike Klinzing: Right? I mean, now when you do, that’s where the power lies.

[00:55:17] Terrance “Munch” Williams: Nah, it’s in there, man. And that’s the thing about the book. Like so many people are like, Wow, like I didn’t know you went through all this, or I didn’t know this was going on, this happened in your life.

And it’s when you meet people at where you meet them, you only know from that current to whatever the future is. But, so if I met you at 25, you know me from 25 on, right? Like, but if I met you at 12, you know a lot more than the person that met me at 30. So this book is that, like, I’m open, I’m bare, I’m, I’m cool with it.

Like I’m, I’m human. You know what I mean? Like so what? I was hungry. It happens.. You know what I mean? I eat a lot now. Look at my stomach. Fuck it.

[00:55:57] Mike Klinzing: That’s good stuff. I mean, it’s funny. That’s an interesting way of, of, of expressing it, but I think it’s true. And you said depending on when you meet somebody, you might know their story from when you, when they meet you when they’re 30.

But somebody knows you  when you’re younger. It’s funny because as an adult, like as a kid, for me, my identity was a basketball player, and if you met me up until the time I was 22 years old, like you pretty much knew, Hey man, Mike’s a basketball player and that’s, Yeah, that’s what he was. And then people who have met me since then, like there’s people that met me that they don’t, they don’t process that.

They don’t know me in that light at all. They don’t know what my personality was like at that time. They don’t know some of the things that I went through or that I struggled with or whatever when it came to being an athlete, because now I haven’t been an athlete at that level for 30 some years. And it’s crazy just to think about how different people perceive you in different ways based upon, as you said, when they meet you in life and kind of what your, the stage that you’re at in that particular moment.

[00:57:06] Terrance “Munch” Williams: And what was the environment? Right? Like somebody met me and they’re like, Oh, that’s the director of one of the best programs in the country for basketball. And then they’re like, Oh no, this dude wrote a book. Like, Oh, it’s going to be about basketball. And he like, Right, for sure.

Yeah, exactly. Not about basketball. Right. And it’s like, Oh shit, I didn’t even know you thought, And it’s like, Yeah, man, even if I did basketball, it was a couple hours a day. There’s other things that had to go on in life. Right? But nah, you’re right. And, and that’s one of the other things I’m learning now, like how do you get out that box of just the basketball and say, Hey man, just read it for what it is Enjoy.

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, it would’ve been boring to write about AAU .

[00:57:47] Mike Klinzing: It’s not like you haven’t talked about that for forever, right? There’s only so much you could say there that you haven’t already said every day. Man, getting this stuff out in the book is, is huge.

Well, yes. I want to give you a chance before we wrap up. To, if you have any final point you want to make about the book, let’s do that and then share again how people can get the book. I know they have to go to Amazon and yeah, just give your one minute elevator pitch on the book as we wrap things up.

And then tell us how people can find out more about what you’re doing with PSA as well. So just share the social media and where people can get the book.

[00:58:28] Terrance “Munch” Williams: Man, I’ll start with this man. R i p to one of my best friends, Jason Ford. He always says, I’m trying to give you the answers whether you want them or not.

I’m trying to give you the answers. That’s exactly what’s going on in this book. I’m trying to give people the answers, the answers to who I am and the answers to those around me, and the answers to the world in which I see it, right? I applaud you, I commend you. I’m thankful for those who have gotten it.

Let’s continue to push forward and get it and get it done. PSA Cardinals. Twitter @psacardinals, Instagram, nor do I know anything about social media, nor do I care . The book is on Amazon amazon.com, Our PSA Public Service Announcement. And I believe this book is for the community.

It’s not mine, right? It’s ours. Yeah, go get it. And if you take too long on Amazon, it’ll be at the nearest Bodega . You know what I mean? So, like I said, it’ll be in the streets before you know it. So find a way. If you don’t got an Amazon account, call your cousins cousin. Use his or hers it’s on sale 17.99 right now, man.

Get three, four copies spread it, give it out. We spend money on a lot worse than some knowledge Stop letting society have hese theories on us and, and start reading, or keep reading, right? And keep talking. Share your information.

Shit. Write your own for our kid, let’s go and I’ll support it, you know?

[01:00:01] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. That’s it. Absolutely. I would say coaches, parents, teachers, yeah. It’s well worth it, man. Pick it up, take it home, Read it with your kids, read it with your students. Read it with your players. And even if you do nothing except one a week, one journal entry a week, or one journal entry a month or whatever at family dinner, or if you’re a coach and you do a book club or you’re a teacher and you, you assign your students summer reading, give them that and then think about what those discussions are that are going to be generated as a result of, of reading that and how we can hopefully have an impact.

And I. When I hear you talk and when I heard you talk the last time when you were on and you talked about the genesis of PSA and how you got it started and why you got it started and and what you’re all about, I think this book does a great job of telling people what you’re all about. And as you said, it’s not just all about basketball.

I think that one of the themes Munch that’s kind of come through the podcast and I think you epitomized this, is I talk to so many people on here that they love the game of basketball, and yet they love the kids and the people that they get to impact using the game. And when you get to use something that you love to be able to have an impact on the people around you.

To me. I mean, that’s powerful to be able, Not many people get to do that. Not many people get to utilize something that they love, to give them a platform to be able to have an impact on people’s lives around them. And I think that’s what you’re doing. I think that’s what the book does. And I think if people go out and they pick up a copy, pick up multiple copies, and then share ’em and actually get into, as you said, reading it and then having discussions and not just reading it in two days and then setting it on your shelf, but implementing it into your life, I think there’s, I think there’s power in that.

And I commend you for what you’ve done. I think it’s really well done.

[01:01:55] Terrance “Munch” Williams: Sure, man. Appreciate you, man. It’s all blessings. It’s the thing to do right now, and it’s the wave. It’s the movement. Don’t be the cool guy. Get a book.

[01:02:04] Mike Klinzing: That’s it. No question about that.

Hey, look, you’re going to go out and spend 20 bucks on a book? I don’t know that I’ve ever spent money on a book that I regret it. Now, there have been books that are, some books that are better than others, but I mean, don’t bat an eye about buying a book. And if you do, even if you pick up one thing, even if you pick up just one thing, it’s well worth it.

You never know whose life you might change as a result of that. So again, Munch cannot Thank you enough for taking the time out to share your story with the book. And again, I hope people go out and they pick it up. And I hope that it shoots up and it’s not just in the top hundred, but hopefully it’ll be in the top 10, and we’ll get it in the hands of more people and we’ll be able to impact more lives as a result of that.

So again, thank you. Truly appreciative of you and everything that you’ve done. And to everybody out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.