OG Arabian Prince eyes healthcare transformation with metaverse

Healthcare. Top-tier modern technology. Gaming. The metaverse. Gangsta rap. These ideas share space in the mind of Kim Renard Nezel, better known to the world as Arabian Prince or Professor X. He is one of the fathers of modern rap, a founding member of the widely-acclaimed, hall-of-fame inducted rap group NWA. He is a technology enthusiast, a gamer, and a seasoned master of the visual effects space. He has worked on projects ranging from video games to The Silver Surfer, Power Rangers, and various Universal productions.

All in all, he has more than forty years of experience in tech and visual effects. In the early days of video games, he set up his own BBS to share the fun with his friends. His industry experience has given him a deep understanding of the high-tech entertainment space, including the ongoing development of the metaverse. 

Arabian Prince enjoys consuming media as much as he likes creating it. He is a big fan of cartoons, which he views as a metaphor for the two-dimensional world many live in. This might sound heady, but it checks out. We’re all savvy to the constant flood of doublespeak and bullshit spewed upon us by politicians, sleazy executives, and other ‘inspirational’ figures. Don’t take things too seriously because most things aren’t that serious. “If you take it that way,” says Arabian Prince, “you will live a happy and blessed life.”

This strategy has worked well for Arabian Prince. He is not just a successful musician and VFX artist but also a widely sought-after speaker at high-tech conferences and an expert on advanced technologies, including the metaverse. So how did he go from DJing at parties to being a foundational member of the world’s most famous Gangsta Rap group to being a tech guy, a VFX artist, and an entrepreneur? 

Arabian Prince and American healthcare

Arabian Prince has had to navigate the American healthcare system like anyone else. Both of his parents passed away from cancer. His father, a prolific author, and editor who wrote over 100 books died of brain cancer. His mother passed away from a mysterious illness that turned out to be blood cancer, a diagnosis which unfortunately was not made until her autopsy. His mother’s death left Arabian Prince with a lot of questions. How is it that she showed the signs and symptoms of a specific disease, but none of the medical professionals involved in her care saw what was happening? How could so many doctors in so many specialties miss her diagnosis? 

This experience helped Arabian Prince identify one of the most significant shortcomings in American healthcare: there needs to be meaningful information sharing among stakeholders. Patient data in America’s healthcare system is incredibly compartmentalized. If you go to Hospital A but later need to go to Hospital B, your information doesn’t follow you. If you switch doctors or health systems, your old records are opaque to your new providers. Despite spending billions of dollars on complicated electronic medical records, there is no interoperability between systems, primarily because interoperability has no financial benefit to the EMR companies. It would be easier for doctors to use carrier pigeons than to get helpful information from an outside EMR. Why is it so difficult for healthcare providers to communicate with each other?

Complex laws and bureaucratic malfeasance

The sharing of patient information is governed by many complex laws, which often seed the development of incredibly inefficient, byzantine processes for sharing information between health systems. If you are seeing a great oncologist at one hospital and a great neurologist at another, they are unlikely to communicate formally. They may need help to see one another’s notes in their respective medical record systems. People who want to get their health information to share with other doctors or healthcare professionals must fill out paperwork and sometimes pay a fee, apparently for the intense labor done by the clerk who presses print. 

Communication breakdown

More than just information sharing between systems and providers is problematic. Some doctors are very good at explaining things to their patients in an understandable way, and others are not. Patients who don’t get adequate information from their doctors turn to the internet. The internet, of course, is a demon that will always provide you with information, but only sometimes with good communication. You’re as likely to find relevant information as you are to be sold snake oil or misdiagnose yourself. Because online communities are driven by engagement and not by accuracy or truthfulness, it’s easy for bad advice to proliferate across social sites. 

The net effect of all this is that health information is majorly compartmentalized. Health systems greedily withhold information and knowledge that could save lives. Despite their best intentions, people trying to share helpful information online often play into the hands of hacks and quacks. As a result, it is hard to find or share relevant health information, which could be better for patients. Arabian Prince’s mother might have been able to explore other avenues of treatment or even receive an appropriate diagnosis if she and her family had access to high-quality information or her medical record readily available. Amidst the chaos, Arabian Prince saw an opportunity.

Arabian Prince and MDDAO

Today, Arabian Prince and a team of experts are creating a new space where patients and care teams can easily and freely collaborate and share health information. There will be communities where people can talk about their symptoms or share real-life experiences. Patients can meet with multiple people at once, offering new opportunities for providers to collaborate and share information. It will be a space where information can be shared freely between people who are relevant to the care of a person and is indispensable for high-quality healthcare. No matter how good your hospital or doctor is, says Arabian Prince, no man is an island. “There’s stuff out there that they don’t know. And until they plug themselves into the interactive world, it will not get better.” 

How did Arabian Prince tackle a niche at the intersection of health and tech? As it happens, Arabian Prince was approached by a few friends who work in the medical space. They wanted to get his help strategically investing in the metaverse. But the metaverse didn’t have a dedicated space for health and wellness yet. In addition, the metaverse itself is still developing, and many ways in which people will access and engage with the metaverse are still speculative or in development.

In other words, there was no viable way for his friends in the medical space to invest strategically in the metaverse. A viable space for the medical industry did not exist. So Arabian Prince decided to create the space himself. He had a vision of something new, a better way of managing healthcare. “Let’s build something different. Let’s build something that has inherent value,” says Arabian Prince. So he began working with doctors, schools, health experts, and patients to “take all the complaints that everybody has from the doctors to the patients, and go do it better in the interactive space.”

That interactive space is named MDDAO. MDDAO is built around a “vision of making a better, healthier world for humans,” says Arabian Prince. The space is “a collaboration, a health community where we bring together professional healthcare, health and wellness, and regular people into a ‘health bubble.'” 

The idea is to decentralize the patient experience. Today, you must travel to specific locations overseen by rigid, profit-driven hierarchies to experience medical care. If you’re going to see your PCP and then visit a naturopath, a chiropractor, or a therapist, you’ll need to spend half of your day driving around and navigating complex bureaucracies. While the patient is ostensibly at the center of modern healthcare, the reality is that the dollar is at the center of contemporary healthcare, and the patient – and especially the patient’s convenience – is an afterthought. 

Not so in MDDAO. Arabian Prince creates a space where the patient is at the center. “Anything that can make you a healthier human being, we’re putting into a metaverse interactive space,” he explains. You could see a doctor, talk to a pharmacist about your medicine, and then immediately join a supportive community discussion about your specific conditions or even explore alternative medicine. Likewise, patients could explore psychedelic medications, which are likely to become more mainstream as the evidence shows that psychedelic drugs are not the demons that the moral panic crowd likes to paint them as. Putting the patient’s experience first across all disciplines is a radical new idea. 

Evaluating the market for MDDAO

Contemporary online health spaces may offer helpful consumer information, but they could be better at helping people put together the pieces of the health puzzle in a useful way. Instead, someone is hawking dubious health supplements or pushing objectively false narratives for every valuable resource. 

This is especially problematic in social spaces. The prevalence of misinformation and malicious information on Facebook and other social media sites has proven difficult to handle. How will MDDAO balance the need for free and open communication against the tendency of human beings to warp information in self-serving ways? 

The first step is acknowledging that humans are what they are. Arabian Prince has a very realistic view of human nature. “Most people are, unfortunately, only about themselves and self-gain,” he explains. But rather than viewing that as a negative to be counteracted, he believes that the way to get people to participate constructively is to find a new method of incentivizing positive behavior in the space. For example, MDDAO’s user moderation structure is based on a positive incentive system. Users who provide helpful information to others might get some token or reward–and while a virtual reward may have no intrinsic or monetary value, we still get a dopamine rush when we get one. Look how excited people on Reddit get when they receive an award or how addictive the momentary satisfaction of a like on Instagram can be. When people are rewarded for a behavior, they will seek further opportunities to engage in that behavior. Leveraging the human tendency to crave rewards is an excellent way to build a positive community and drive pro-social behaviors. Arabian Prince believes this will create an environment where health-oriented information sharing can thrive. 

Building a healthy community

MDDAO is not just going to impact the virtual world, it is going to affect real people in real life. It will change lives and bring value to people who struggle to access healthcare, whether in the inner city or the rural countryside. Although the United States is home to some excellent and world-renowned hospitals, most Americans have mediocre healthcare access. MDDAO provides a space where patients and doctors can gather without having to contend with the physical and bureaucratic hassles of the physical world. “This is a severe platform,” says Arabian Prince. “My ultimate goal is to help save lives. And to give inherent value, connectivity, and access to people in the inner cities and rural communities. There are a lot of people out there that don’t get the health care that they need or want. And if we can make it so that you can get your device, you can get your phone and get as close to real healthcare as possible. I’ve done my job.”

Risky business

Healthcare is intrinsically risky whether you run a hospital, a pharmacy, or a doctor’s office. The stakes are high when you’re dealing with people’s lives. So how will Arabian Prince and MDDAO contend with the real risks of operating in the health space? 

After all, providing medical advice in a virtual space or a platform where people are encouraged to share medical advice, could lead to unintended consequences. 

This, after all, is a world in which people will eat tide pods or charge their phones in a microwave because they saw it online. While we might like to think the best of others, the harsh reality is that our intelligence and rationality can be put on the bell curve: not everybody is always lovely, and not everybody is always intelligent. So what does Arabian Prince envision as the mechanism for preventing MDDAO from becoming burdened with spurious claims, malfeasance, and other human problems? 

In Arabian Prince’s view, such behavior is inevitable. Try as we might to build a foolproof world. There are always new fools. Arabian Prince says, “I’ve seen car wrecks where it’s like a solo car that ran into a wall. Like, he didn’t want to do it. But he still did it, right?” Humans are prone to folly. But one of the most effective ways to keep humans in line is to lean on the power of the community. 

“Community ultimately rises to the top,” says Arabian Prince. “There’s going to be people saying like, hey, if you drink chlorophyll seven times a day, this is going to happen or, you know, I found out if I chew mercury, cancer goes away. Yeah, everything goes away if you chew mercury. So you know, you’re going to have those crackpots or people that say certain things, but I think that’s all on the internet now. But the problem is, in text or Reddit, it’s more text-based. It’s not real-time. People read what they want to read. People will believe what they want to believe and not look at everything else.” 

Changing the way we interact fundamentally changes the dynamics at play. “If we install the proper interactive system where the community is going, this works, or it really was helpful, it’s going to overshadow the small microcosm of bad information or bad people. And eventually, we can weed that stuff out,” says Arabian Prince. 

Launching MDDAO

Despite launching MDDAO amidst the pandemonium of the early 2020s, Arabian Prince says the startup was reasonably uneventful. But, argues Arabian Prince, the chaos of 2020 continues churning to this day as more and more people become dissatisfied with the status quo. As a result, there is a massive appetite for change. “People are looking for something else because what we’ve had is not working right now,” Arabian Prince explains. 

Among the things that are not working is the American healthcare system. So why not use modern technology to build an entirely new system? The metaverse is an ideal environment for innovation because it is a blank slate. Technology is unique, the market is changing rapidly, and people are getting more interested in it. Establishing a strong presence now will likely be advantageous later. Plus, the novelty is empowering. MDDAO is blazing the trail. “We haven’t had any obstacles because it’s kind of like this open freeway now,” says Arabian Prince. That ability to innovate attracts partners. “Nobody knows where it’s going. But everybody’s hopping on. And if you mention that you’re a part of this thing, people are just giving you more parts for your car to go on. Oh, you need more horsepower. You need better tires. You can go to get us to the end, and everybody’s trying to jump on board.”

While the metaverse is trendy right now, and many people are trying to cash in, Arabian Prince’s innovation in the space is built on pure motives. “I could have just said, oh, yeah, we built a medical metaverse, and we’re selling land for hospitals. Buy land. We’re going to make a lot of money. And that’s all I needed to say. And people would have just thrown a bunch of money at it,” he explains. “But I’m not trying to do it that way. I’m trying to get people to become healthier humans.”

It’s good to be the king

One of the keys to MDDAOs success is collaboration. A space that is designed to be patient-centered needs to include all of the various stakeholders that the patient relies on. Arabian Prince has taken great pains to make the space inclusive for regular people and primary industries. His background as a founding member of NWA has helped him get the attention of collaborators. “It got me to press. They put it out there because people are like, what the hell is this? The name gets you in, the word NWA, or whatever gets you into the story. But when they read the story, people start going, ‘damn. Okay, I get it.'” In other words, his fame often acts as an avenue to connect with people, and once they meet him, his expertise closes the deal. “Once I talk to people in the tech space, the moment they meet me, they go, ‘Oh, NWA, I grew up on that.’ So I’ve got their ear. And then 10 minutes or 15 minutes in, they’re going, ‘Oh, I get it.’ So I at least get in the door, as opposed to just Kim Nezel, the black guy trying to talk to the CEO of Intuit. I don’t think that would happen.”

His image also helps Arabian Prince dodge obstacles that might hamper other founders. People don’t see him in the same light as a greedy pharma bro, a ruthless and evil for-profit hospital chain, or a profiteering insurer. Instead, people see a famous rapper who is honestly trying to change the world. When big companies say they want to change the world, they are not credible because people perceive businesses as engaged in a ruthless pursuit of profit above all else. Insurers, pharma companies, and other stakeholders in our current disaster of the healthcare system have financial incentives to maintain the status quo, which makes it impossible to trust their motivations. Arabian Prince, on the other hand, is someone who understands that the current system is not functional for the average person and who wants to build something better. “I’m this outside person trying to help,” he says. Arabian Prince is creating a new space where the rules are different and the customer, not the shareholder, is at the center of the operation. “When people talk to me, they go, ‘He doesn’t have any alternative motives.’ I’m not Big Pharma, and I’m not a big hospital organization going ‘we’re the metaverse.'”

Happy is healthy 

A critical part of Arabian Prince’s vision is that people’s health and happiness are intertwined. Being happy reduces your risk for certain kinds of medical problems, improves resiliency and positive thinking, and helps one function at a higher level, both mentally and physically. As such, the goal of MDDAO is not just to provide essential physical health services but to help people bring together things that make them happy. “Healthy is happy,” says Arabian prince. 

Indeed, happiness is not assessed in American medicine. Your doctor might do a basic depression screening and throw you some happy pills, but your joy–and your mental health more broadly–is not evaluated like physical symptoms. If you need a psychiatrist or a therapist (and many people do), you will probably struggle to find reliable mental health care. Whether you are dealing with depression, addiction, a mood disorder, intrusive thoughts, or other mental health problems, our current healthcare system is not well-equipped to help you. Stubborn social stigmas around mental health compound this problem. Arabian Prince, however, takes a more helpful viewpoint. Understanding, he says, is key to mental health. “I’m a firm believer that every case is different. Right? You don’t treat the same symptom with the same cure. You have to go deeper and understand why that thing is happening. So like you say, I could have diabetes, I could have heart disease, I could have, you know, a hernia or something. But that may not be caused by what traditionally can be caused. It can be caused by mental illness. I mean, your brain is more powerful than anything in your body. And your brain can cause physical injuries to you. So I think treating physical and mental illness should go hand in hand, but inherently, they’re always separated, right?”

Part of helping people understand what they are going through is to connect them with people who can empathize and share helpful information. Instead of isolating mental health problems behind the sterile walls of a psychiatry clinic, people struggling with their mental health will have a supportive environment in MDDAO where they can engage with peers and professionals to understand their mental health and how they can manage it. Talking to people who share your struggles is invaluable. Since mental and physical health is inextricably linked, providing a space where patients can address all of their needs is helpful. “I think everything needs to be an online bubble,” explains Arabian Prince. 

Putting the patient at the system’s center provides a more holistic perspective on what is happening in someone’s life. Diagnoses do not exist in a vacuum. Someone might have diabetes, but that illness does not just exist in a bubble. It is likely tied to socioeconomic factors like access to affordable and nutritious food, having safe places to exercise, and being able to afford medication. Contextualizing what is happening in someone’s life helps shed light on diagnoses and allows people to see what kind of support would make the most significant difference for them. Providing a patient-centered community where people can share relevant information about their experiences is a better way of connecting people to helpful resources because the people who have been there know what works and what doesn’t. 

Teach the younglings

Arabian Prince’s interest in helping others doesn’t stop with healthcare. As an enthusiastic technophile who experienced the world before the dawn of the digital age, he profoundly appreciates how modern technology makes life easier. 

“I hate to sound like the old dude, but when I was growing up, there was no internet, I had to read books, and I had to, like, do it myself,” he says. “Now, I can talk to Google or Alexa and go, tell me this, I want to build a rocket…[and it will tell you] here’s how you build a rocket. So we live in a world where you can succeed if you want to succeed. And that’s my vision in life to show kids that people that look like them, or people they admire, or people who came from where they came from, can succeed and do anything they want.” 

In short, Arabian Prince believes that technology should empower the user. We’re used to hearing stories about how technology exploits people and how gigantic tech companies are raking in money by engineering addictive products and selling our data. But technology is not good or evil. It is a tool. It can be used to empower people just as quickly as it can be used to monetize them. Arabian Prince wants to teach young people how to leverage technology to improve their lives. “I want them to see a person like me and tell them something nobody else tells them: that it’s easy. Like with technology, doing what you want is easy. We live in a world where every piece of information is right there at your fingertips. But people forget that. People use their phones for TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and all these things, but they don’t use them to further their knowledge.” 

Power, responsibility, and freedom

Only some celebrities share Arabian Prince’s interest in empowering people to live better lives. The average celebrity is mainly concerned about their ego. Does Arabian Prince believe that all celebrities should use their power and fame to empower people, to change the world for the better?

“The answer that I like to say and the true answer are two different things,” he says. “I say yes. But the truth is no. Deep in my heart, I believe every person has a duty to do for the human race, their fellow human beings, and others. That’s my personal belief, right? I want the world to be that. But as a realist and a very analytical person, no, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do in life. You can just make your money and go in your house and close the door and say, fuck you, I don’t give a shit about anything else. I’m just a capitalist. I’m doing my thing. That’s the real answer.” 

"Inside every cynical person is a disappointed idealist." - George Carlin

Arabian Prince continues, “I want it to be the Willy Wonka answer. I want everything to be pie in the sky and beautiful. Like the kids, [that] got killed. It’s bullshit. The black people that got killed at the grocery store, it’s bullshit. All of this is bullshit. The whole world of wars, all of that’s bullshit.” Indeed, modern life is a war of words, a seemingly endless battle between ideologies that primarily serve to distract us from what’s really important. “That’s why I said the real world we live in is a fake world,” Arabian Prince continues. “It’s all made up of visions and things that people create. This is not created by everyday people. This is created by individuals, who therefore create chaos. I’m a gamer. And I used to be a big D&D guy–I was totally into that. And my character is chaotic neutral, which means I’m neutral, but don’t fuck with me, right? That’s why I’m neutral. Don’t fuck with me. If you mess with me, I will hurt you, right? But some people are lawful good. Some people that follow the rules of the law also bend the law to get what they want. There are so many different types of people in this world. And I wish everybody would do good, but it’s never going to happen. But those that have that goodness in them should step up to the plate and help create a better world. I think we’re getting there. There’s so much bad going on. People are getting tired and want to create change.”

Making a difference

Despite the massive problems that humanity faces–the slow-motion climate disaster, geopolitical instability, rising rates and transmissibility of tropical diseases, etcetera–many people are trying very hard to change the world for the better instead of just accumulating wealth until they die. If you want to change the world and leave it better, what will you do about it? Wanting to make a difference is one thing, but taking active steps toward making a difference is quite another. 

Arabian Prince says that one of the most significant factors that helps people drive change is their ability to hustle. “I use the word ‘hustle’ around kids, and some teachers get mad. [They say] ‘you shouldn’t say hustle, that’s like a gang word or a gangster word’…But no, it’s survival. Because you could take five of the same people and line them up. One person is going to hustle and make it, and another person is going just to get by, the other person is going to not care, then you’re going to have the two that don’t even succeed, right?” Teaching kids the value of hustling, the value of setting a goal, and working towards it is something that seems like it would be common sense. Teaching kids to hustle is essential to developing a new generation of entrepreneurs and doers. “The house that I hated growing up. You give that to somebody in a third-world country, and they’re living like a king. And that’s the same as when it comes to people’s mindset,” says Arabian Prince. 

Indeed, mindset matters. Arabian Prince explains, “Some people have the idea that ‘I can go as far as I will let me go.’ The only limiting factor for some people is their internal willingness to act. My vision is I’m not shooting for the moon–screw that. I’m shooting for X27, that solar system you haven’t heard of yet. That’s where I’m trying to get to. And if I can’t get there, at least I got to X22. I passed the moon a long time ago. So my vision is always on an upward trajectory. There is no downward spiral for me. Some people are happy and content with their life the way it is, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s the way they were brought up. And I think that’s the world we live in.” Some of us will be born with or develop the mindset to drive significant positive changes, and some of us will be slugs, but most of us will end up in the middle of the bell curve. 

Making a mindset

Where does mindset come from? What drives some to hustle while others are content to half-ass it or do nothing? Arabian Prince believes that there is a neuroscientific explanation. “I believe it is scientific… It’s the brain. It has something to do with the chemical makeup in your brain. I don’t understand it because I don’t study those things. But I think that’s what it is.” In his personal experience, some people will endlessly self-sabotage even when given an opportunity to succeed. In the past, he has tried to show friends and acquaintances opportunities to make money or do something novel, only to find that some people seem incapable of getting out of their way. “All [they’ve] got to do is show up. It’s easy money,” he says. But some people make excuses, never show up, and blow it off. “It’s just the way they’re programmed. And once you reach a certain age, it’s hard to reprogram. So you have to catch these kids young. And that’s why I’m in the schools, trying to catch them young.” Helping children develop a hustling mindset at a young age will help them forge their way when they enter the real world. 

This is sorely needed. Schools, broadly speaking, do not inspire kids or even teach a world that exists. Arabian Prince wants to empower kids to use technology to help them succeed in nontraditional ways. Arabian Prince might offer their parents some unconventional advice if a kid likes gaming. “I talk to the parents like, hey, I know your kid’s getting D’s and F’s in school. And I say this honestly to them, like, if you know your kid’s an idiot who’s barely going to make it, but that fool can get to like level 99–whatever. Maybe that’s his path. He can make a lot of money as a gamer, and he can make a lot of money in these spaces. You need to explore that because he’s not going to be the doctor you thought he would be. But be real. Don’t let him die or push them off to McDonald’s or the street. Maybe he’s not an A or B student, but he loves games. Explore this gaming thing for him. I know game testers making 250 G’s a year testing games, and they’re happy.” New technology brings new opportunities. One can succeed outside of the old ways taught by schools.

I use the word ‘hustle’ around kids, and some teachers get mad. [They say] ‘you shouldn’t say hustle, that’s like a gang word or a gangster word’…But no, it’s survival. Because you could take five of the same people and line them up. One person is going to hustle and make it, and another person is going just to get by, the other person is going to not care, then you’re going to have the two that don’t even succeed, right?

OG Arabian Prince

The key to success is effort. You have to be willing to do whatever it takes. Having a dream is easy; taking action to achieve it is more complicated. But difficult is not impossible. Arabian Prince describes a friend who found success through a nontraditional path. “He’s a surgical assistant at a hospital. Right? That’s what he does. But, like me, he’s a shopaholic and loves Nike. Any other person would spend their overtime. But he went and got a part-time job at Nike so he could get discounts. And by working hard, he’s a hard worker in general, he’s moving up in the company.” Following your passion, putting in the effort, and showing up will undoubtedly put you on the road to success.

Arabian Prince’s idea is to show kids that some tools and opportunities can help them follow their passion and be successful in the new age. “Growing up, I had people around me saying, you shouldn’t do that, you shouldn’t do this, why are you doing so many different things? You know, you need to do one thing. I’m like, well, if I got a whole bunch of eggs in a basket, and I dropped the basket, some of the eggs will break, but some aren’t. So if I got one egg and dropped it, it’s broken. So my vision is different. I don’t want to drop one egg–I want 25 or 30 eggs. And I’m going to eat at the end of the day because one of those things is cooking. And that’s just my mentality.” 

Five pieces of advice for making a positive difference in the world

1. Never let anybody tell you no. “Never let anybody tell you that you can’t do something. If you believe in it, [but people] tell you no, it’s wack, or you shouldn’t do that, it’s too hard… that’s because that’s what they think. What hurts about failing? Like, if you fail, you don’t die when you fail. You may feel bad and embarrassed, but at least you tried.” Indeed, failure can be challenging, but it is an excellent learning experience. 
2. Never give up. Success comes to those who put in the hours. Arabian Prince is an excellent golfer, but his success in golf is built on decades of practice. “They say 10,000 hours is what it takes to be a pro at something. I’m a golfer, I haven’t hit 10,000 hours yet, but I’m winning tournaments because I play every day. I’m figuring it out. I’ve been figuring it out for 41 freaking years. People ask me, how long have you been playing golf? I’m like, well, you want to know how long I’ve been playing golf or how long I’ve been playing for real. I’ve been playing for 41 years, but I’ve been playing real golf for 20 years because the first 21 years, I couldn’t figure it out.” Mastering something, even an enterprise, to do good in the world takes time and experience. 
3. Bring people with you. “Reach back and reach forward,” explains Arabian Prince. Remember the people who helped you get where you are, and do something to help them get where they want to be. There is tremendous value in helping others and building up around you. 
4. Don’t take anything too seriously. “Some people get hard on themselves when things don’t go right. And then they’re just crushed. I take everything with a grain of salt, like life is life. I could die tomorrow. I could go out on this golf course and get hit with a golf ball, right? But until then, I’m going to have a great ass time. I’m going to have fun. I’m going to create, and I’m going to bring my people with me. I’m going just to be this guy that’s going to uplift and uplift. So don’t take anything too seriously. Life’s got so much to give us.”
5. Try to be happy every single day. “That’s my most important thing. I don’t look 57, and I don’t feel 57, and I think that’s because I don’t stress. And stress is a killer. Stress will make you old.”