My entire life I’ve been lookin for a way to get rich quick. When you grow up poor in the cuts of Fresno, California, with a father slaving away fifteen hours a day installing windows, you develop the hunger for the good life. And that hunger makes you sharp as a knife. I am as sharp as a knife; and there’s nothing more I wanted in this world than to become rich. 

This is the story of my come-up, and how I lost everything because I lost faith in myself.

The Rise

I began my hustle at 15 selling candy at school. I’d go to Costco, purchase a 30 pack of assorted candy bars for $17.99, and sell them out of my backpack for a buck a pop. It was a good hustle, a humble hustle; but I wasn’t going to make it big selling Reese’s Pieces under the cafeteria tables. I needed to scale to something big; to sell something everybody needs. 

I was scrolling through Instagram Reels in my bed one day when I caught wind of something called “dropshipping.” Dropshipping is like, when you’re an online vendor, and you sell things from Temu or AliExpress through your own brand. “This is perfect,” I thought, “I can sell something to the entire world!”  The only problem? I had to figure out what to sell. 

I looked throughout my room for something to inspire me . Spider-Man? No . Tony Montana ? Maybe . I got out of bed and looked in my living room. That’s when I saw it — Jesus ! I’m gonna sell Jesus ! Everybody loves Jesus! 

That was the day I started my business, Divine Enterprises LLC . I found a vendor on Temu that sold mini-Jesus figurines , a 100 rack of Jesus for 50 cents. I made a Shopify website for my product , and started filming Tik Tok’s of our divine Lord. He’d be doing goofy stuff that chicks would like, like sitting near the cookies left out for Santa during Christmas . I’d caption the picture “cookies for Jesus?” Or I’d do a voiceover, “No cookies for Jesus?” stuff like that. I even put mini-Jesus in Lego Star Wars for the boys. You know that scene with Luke Skywalker when he’s flying to destroy the Death Star and Obi-Wan says “use the force , Luke, let it gooooo” I used ChatGPT to insert my mini-Jesus instead of Luke Skywalker. Ya — that was genius .

Business was boomin! In nine months I had sold hundreds of thousands of mini-Jesuses, and earned approximately $80,000.00 in net income . First thing I did ? Bought my dad a new truck. A GMC Canyon . Something he can show off to his friends, be proud of his son. That I earned this money without even graduating high school yet . That was cool and it felt good. Family over everything. 

But a creeping sense of doubt bothered me. No one in my life had ever made this kind of dough before. There was a part of me that felt I didn’t deserve the come-up, that I was a kind of imposter. On the other hand, I still had the hunger to earn more; to think of the next big thing; to expand my empire. It was this dual threat of doubt and ambition that caused me to seek the “mentorship” of someone more experienced than me. I figured, rather than forging my own path, I copy the gameplan of someone else! What I didn’t realize, however, is that by copying someone else’s path, I’d lose myself along the way.

The Fall

This is when Marc muthafuckin Chapman enters the picture. You see , Marc made millions as a vending machine tycoon in the Central Valley. He claimed to own over 1500 vending machines in NorCal . He also had a laundromat empire with over 300 washer-dryers. They called him the “Quarter King.” 

I hopped on a call with Marc, told him my story, and asked him for “mentorship” as to what my next move should be. He first kissed my ass, telling me that my mini-Jesus idea was brilliant! He then went on and described a business venture he would have done when he was younger had he had the time to do it. He told me a story about how he once went to a Christian gift store to buy a Christmas gift for his sister. While at the store, he could not believe how much white people would be willing to spend on “prayer stones” or “prayer mugs.” “They’re literally buying rocks!” he cried. He figured, if these people were willing to spend cash on Christian paraphernalia, surely Muslims would be willing to spend plenty on Muslim knick-knacks. “Have you ever seen a Muslim gift store?” he interrogated me. I answered in the negative. Marc then instructed me that if I wanted to step up my game —”if I wasn’t stupid” (his words) — I would consider selling mini-figurines of the Prophet Mohammad. 

At the time, I knew no better.  I figured, because I had never seen a Muslim knick-knack store, that I would be, like, a trail blazer or “disrupter” in the industry. I also felt that if I earned more, conquered the religious knick-knack market, that I could finally silence the doubter inside and feel less like an imposter. Well, imagine my shock and horror when I learned, through experience, why there are no Muslim knick-knack stores… 

I ended the call with Marc and took his advice. I contacted my mini-Jesus Temu manufacturer and ordered 1,000 units of a custom religious figure. I told him to paint Jesus espresso-brown and to put a turban on him. I called my brand new product,” Mini Mo’s.” I received my first shipment, updated my Shopify site, and began making viral Tik Tok content. Like Mini-Jesus, I put Mini-Mo in Lego Star Wars, except Mini-Jesus was Hans Solo , and Mini-Mo was Chewbacca, and they were flying through the asteroid field from the Empire Strikes Back. What could possibly go wrong?! 

… you will not believe what sort of shitstorm Marc’s idea got me in. First, my Tik Tok content was flagged as hate speech. At first I was flabbergasted. Turns out, Muslim people do not believe in depicting Mohammed! It’s like , blasphemy! No wonder no one else had done it! By the time I realized the mistake, the damage was done: my Shopify store had been taken down. Soon, my contacts in the dropshipping game left me. My dad and I started getting death threats in the mail. My business was ruined, and I had to become just a regular, 16 and a half year old kid again. I was shocked that Marc’s advice was not just a dud — it was life-threatening! I didn’t believe I was doing anything wrong: I was just a kid following an elder’s advice!

While my life and business have been devastated, it is not too late for you to learn from my mistakes. Here are the lessons I learned:

Lessons Learned

This whole process has taught me not to trust people like Marc who are eager to give “mentorship.” I can’t hold Marc accountable for giving me shitty advice. While he gave me the idea, I was the one who acted on the idea. Even though Marc was much older and “wiser” than me , and should have known that the idea was wrong, I can’t re-direct the death threats and the Islamophobia accusations to him — it’s me that has to deal with the fallout! I’m just a kid, how am I supposed to know about the religious practices of Muslims? I shouldn’t be responsible for that, right? I can’t hold Marc accountable for not knowing why there is no such thing as “Muslim knick-knacks.” He is just able to give random bullshit advice to kids like me without any consequences.

Now that I look back on the whole situation, I realize better Marc’s motives for “mentoring” me. You see, Marc wanted to enter the religious knick-knack business like me when he was younger, except he didn’t have the balls or the know-how to do it. So, he may have been jealous of my success, and gave me shit advice and hyped me up just to watch me fail. OR it could be the case that Marc was expressing sincere regret for not having the balls to do what I was able to do. Marc made a mistake by not getting into the game earlier; so by giving me advice, he was trying to make sure I avoid the same mistakes as him. Marc was correcting the mistakes of his life by living vicariously through me. 

The one regret I have is that I lost faith in myself. I sought Marc’s advice because I believed I couldn’t think of the next “big thing” without the help of an outsider. In reality, that outside source corrupted me and steered me away from the path I was supposed to be on. I would have rather failed doing an idea that I came up with on my own, that was authentic to me, than failing with Marc’s idea. And even if Marc’s idea was a hit, I don’t know if I could have silenced the feelings of being an imposter, since Marc’s idea was not authentic to me anyway. I should have had more faith in my destiny, even if my destiny would lead me to only “modest” success — at least I could say the success was mine. I took a shortcut along the pursuit of happiness, and as a result, I lost myself along the way.

So while Marc’s advice turned me into just a regular-old kid again, I hope sharing my experience has made you more cautious about taking “mentorship” from random strangers.