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. 

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 shit, 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. 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 replace Luke Skywalker with mini-Jesus. 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 it wasn’t enough ; if I was going to make it big in the dropshipping business, I needed to stay ahead of the curve , sell products that aren’t even popular yet , that are on the come-up! Or maybe even diversify into another hustle if the market was getting too crowded. While I had done well so far on my own, at the time I believed I needed the advice of an OG . And this unbelief in myself , to be honest, was the beginning of the end .

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 to ask him what my next move should be . I told him about me, my business, and my desire to level up in the game. He told me my mini-Jesus idea was brilliant! He once had the desire to enter the religious knick-knack business when he was younger, but never had the time to get into it. He could not believe how much religious people would be willing to spend on Jesus! He then wondered aloud, “if Christian knick-knacks are so popular, why aren’t there any other religions that sell knick-knacks? Why have I never seen a Muslim knick-knack store?” That’s when he gave me the idea of selling mini-figurines of the Prophet Mohammad! He promised me he had seen no one else do this before, and that I would be a “disrupter” in the religious knick-knack industry.

I thought the idea was brilliant! I got off the call with Marc and immediately contacted my manufacturer. I told him I wanted 10,000 orders of a brand new religious figure. I told him to paint Jesus mocha-brown and to put a turban on him. I called my brand new product,” Mini Mo’s.”

Once I got my first shipment of Mini-Mo’s, I updated my Shopify site, and began making new viral Tik Tok content. I stuck with the Lego Star Wars theme, 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. 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 didn’t believe I was doing anything wrong : I was just following Marc’s advice! 

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 outside source. In reality, that outside source corrupted me and steered me away from the path I was supposed to be on. This whole experience has taught me that my mistakes and my misfortune are just as necessary to my life as my accomplishments — so long as they are mine. I wanted a “shortcut” to 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.