Burn the Ships 6: From Drug Dealer to Entrepreneur and Mentor: Donte Wilburn #155

Highlights

• Donte’s upbringing … and its challenges (3:01)
• His skill and success as a drug dealer (9:16)
• The cruel cycle of not being able to quit selling drugs (12:23)
• When it all went sideways (15:26)
• Getting the job that changed his life (27:54)
• Setting sail in a new ship (32:25)
• His vision for significance (36:55)
• His book, BORN HUNGRY (43:21)
• How his purpose was born out of his darkest time (46:20)
• Donte’s final thoughts (51:04)

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.

Donte Wilburn:

I’m sitting there and I’m contemplating suicide when my mom’s sitting next to me and tears are rolling down my eyes and she can tell that I mentally am poor up because I made it past, okay, I’m going to, I’m living by this gun and I survived that. And now, I’m facing eight years in prison. And she’s sitting there looking at me on this couch and she kept telling me, “Donte, it’s going to be okay. I know it looks bad now, but you are going to be okay. I know it looks terrible now, but you will be okay. I know it looks bad, but I promise you, you will be okay.” And what happened after she kept reiterating that, it lifted my spirits and I believed it.

Gary Schneeberger:

It would indeed turn out to be okay for our guest this week, Donte Wilburn. But after what he’d been through, what he put himself through, it’s easy to understand how he could have thought otherwise. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. In this episode of our special winter series, Burn the Ships, Warwick and I talked to Wilburn about how he wound up selling drugs in his teens and 20s, recognizing the danger, but embracing the lifestyle that dealing allowed him to live. But that lifestyle, he explains, came this close to ending his life. It was only after he leaned into his faith that he found a new ship to board, starting out washing cars for minimum wage at an auto detailing business he now owns.

His success has fueled his desire to pass along the lessons about truly succeeding he learned the hard way to the young people who work for him, so they don’t have to learn the hard way. It’s wisdom he passes along in his soon to be released book, Born Hungry, You Were Made for More.

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, thank you, Donte for being here. I really appreciate it. Your story is really remarkable. It is a story of redemption in every sense of the word. And I love what you do now with your auto detailing business. In particular, just have a real heart for mentoring folks, for younger people. But let’s start at the beginning a bit about your background from what I understand you were born in Gary, which for those not in Indiana or Chicago, I think is like suburban Chicago, not that far away from the city. And moving to Lafayette is probably very different. So, just talk about what it was like growing up. And it was not easy, just the challenges of poverty, racism, just growing up in a town that was very different than Gary, where your parents were. So just talk about just that upbringing and what life was like for you in Lafayette.

Donte Wilburn:

Yeah. So, first I want to just say thank you for having me on. I’m anxious to be able to have this conversation with you, Warwick and Gary and I very, very much appreciate every listener that’s listening in. So, I just want to give kudos to what you guys are doing first.

And yeah, so my life basically, I was not born in Gary. My parents actually moved down here and birthed me here in Lafayette, Indiana. And coming from Gary, they just wanted to give us a better life. So yeah, like you said that we grew up in a trailer park. We were one of the only African-American families in that whole trailer park. I mean, in the ’80s in Lafayette, there was very, very few African-Americans and I laugh now because we all knew each other. So, if there was an African-American here in Lafayette, I would know their name, who their family is, and everything.

And it’s not that way anymore. We’re much, much more diverse with West Lafayette and Lafayette, but that’s how it was growing up. One time, coming up in the trailer park, there was a kid named Dustin, I won’t give you his last name, but the kid is named Dustin. And we got off the bus together and he called me the N-word and took off running. And so, I’m chasing him, I’m chasing him, chasing him, just trying to get to him and he gets into his house before I can get to him. And he goes in and his dad comes to the door, Warwick, and he says, “What do you want?” I said, “Sir, your son just called me the N word and just ran in here.”

And at that time, I had to be probably 11, 12 years old. I thought that as a parent they would tell me, “It’s okay, my son’s in trouble.” And this guy looks at me and he says, “Well, you are one.” And he tells Dustin, “Come to the front door and you better fight this kid.” And so, we just go. And so, he lets his son come out and we’re just scrapping in the front yard. I mean, I humbly say as a Christ servant, just a fact, I end up winning that fight in front of his dad. But I say that story to let you know at a young age, you think adults are always good people and they’ll do the right thing. And so, when it didn’t happen, I had to grow up quick.

And I can say as a believer now that even though those troublesome things happened coming up in a trailer park, I never held any of that animosity and hate inside my heart. I now understand it was just like a poverty mentality and we were all struggling financially. And when you have lack of resources, your mentality is just a certain way. But thank God, we got out of that location. When I got into middle school and the high school, we got into a house, I was so happy. We were in Pineview Farms, much better neighborhood. And when you get into a better neighborhood, as I’m grown now, I knew financially that my parents actually are paying more money. Your expenses go up to live in a nicer neighborhood, right?

Warwick Fairfax:

Right.

Donte Wilburn:

And so, money, cash flow actually became tighter in our house. And I’m seeing this kid in the back of study hall counting all of these 20s, and I said, “How did you get that?” And he says, “Meet me after class and I’ll teach you.” And that’s when he taught me how to sell drugs. And I had this twisted mind that me somehow selling drugs is actually helping my parents because it’s relieving them from having to pay for the things that I want. And so, I was able to get them on my own. So then, that whole next segment of my life happened and I started down that road.

Warwick Fairfax:

What were you thinking at that time? Because obviously, you probably understood that your parents were doing okay, but it was not easy for them to finance living in a nice neighborhood. What was your thinking about, “Gosh, this would be a great way to get money.” What was the motivation that led you down that path?

Donte Wilburn:

Great question. So, this was the motivation. And I’m going to just tell you, I hate saying it because it’s so ignorant and I’m looking back on my ignorance and saying, “Wow, I can’t believe I thought that way,” but I just got to tell you the truth. So, my thought was they were telling me in school, “Get out of high school, go to college, get a great job, buy a house, have a happy family.” And when I’m a sophomore, junior in high school and I’m seeing this guy with new shoes, I’m seeing this guy with nice clothes. I’m seeing them going out on the weekends and they’re having a great time. And I’m thinking, “Man, I literally got to wait another six years just to have a halfway decent lifestyle that I want now.”

And so, my thought was if I sold drugs, I can get the things that I want now, and it’s so easy and quick that I don’t have to actually work a job and have my education suffer. So, I still was hitting my books, still doing my schooling, but I figured if I sold drugs, then I can have the things I want. And then my goal was, after I graduate from college, I’ll quit and I would have this beautiful job in the future, but had no clue that what I’m doing now can definitely affect my future. That’s why I say it was so ignorant. But that was my mentality at the time.

Warwick Fairfax:

So, talk about that. You started doing that and were you, probably a terrible question, were you good at it? I mean, selling drugs? Did you do well at that profession?

Donte Wilburn:

I did, man. So, I started out super small, one ounce here, one ounce there, and so half of it would be profit. And it was just very, very small when I was in my junior year in high school. And then, I started to get better and better and started to get bigger and bigger. And then, in my senior year I was like, “Man, I can really do better.” And so, I kept going, kept going. And then, so, when I graduated from my senior year and I understood that I couldn’t do this forever, I still had a focus of going to college and getting a good job. And so, what I did was no matter what, when you surround yourself with people that are not doing the right things, you go down.

So, my grades started to slip in my senior year because I was in that kind of atmosphere and I had a lot of C’s and different things. So, when I applied to Purdue, I didn’t get right in. So, I had to go to Ivy Tech first, a small community college, and I focused hard. I got three A’s and one B that catapulted me over to Purdue. I just transferred over. So, I get into Purdue freshman year. And what I realized is it’s shameful, but it’s true, is that all the kids on campus wanted to smoke weed. And so, I started selling even more. And then, when I got to my sophomore junior year, I said, “Man, you know what? I can do this really big.”

And so, I got a connection out of California to give me a lower price amount, and I really started doing this big push up into my junior year. But I can’t say, Warwick, selling drugs is just smoking cigarettes. People are always trying to quit. And so, this whole time I knew it was wrong, I would try to quit and my money would deplete and then I would sell and get something back. And so, I had this yo-yo of selling drugs until that one day I said, “This is my last drug deal I’m going to do.” And that’s when everything went crazy. I was going to do one more and I was going to quit. I was done. And that’s when everything happened.

Warwick Fairfax:

But before we get to that moment, which is really the turning point in your life, I mean there’s a couple of things. It’s obviously you’re an entrepreneur, you could say, “Well, where did you find out you are really good at running a business?” While selling drugs. You were really good at it. So, a tough way to learn that. But you mentioned, obviously, people can be addicted to drugs, cigarettes, gambling, I mean a lot of different things. You were maybe addicted to success, the money. If you quit selling drugs, the money’s going to go down. You can’t buy things, go to places.

So, talk a bit about that because people understand being addicted to drugs, they get why that’s hard to get off of that. But talk about how even though you knew it was wrong, and I’m assuming obviously your parents probably had faith and values, talk about how difficult it is to stop selling drugs once you’re there because that’s the kind of addiction that very few people would understand.

Donte Wilburn:

Well, so the love of money is the root of all evil. And you’ll see in my story when we talk about it here in a bit, I was running through all of these roads, these flashing lights saying stop, but I ignored them, I suppressed them because main two things is, I can buy and go the places I wanted to go with no problem. And when we went out, I was able to be, I’ve always been a connector, a connector of people. And so, the life of the party at my house when we go out, I’m the one that had more money than all my friends around me. So, I was the one paying for everything. So, there’s this, I hate to say it, but there’s a glory that comes with selling the drugs. And so, when you stop, what happens is that glory starts to fade, right?

You can’t buy everybody drinks, you can’t have the nicest clothes anymore. And when that glory would start to fade away, which was perpetuated by Satan, but when that glory would start to fade away, I would want to jump back in it. So, that was the addiction. It was the glory and the lifestyle that it provided. And to be honest, I used to smoke marijuana and, oh my goodness, I stopped smoking just because I said I could make more profit if I sold more of this and stopped smoking it. So, the exact same principles that I use now on growing businesses, bringing people together, everything was the exact same thing I was doing then, but it was twisted.

Warwick Fairfax:

So, let’s get to the main event, so to speak that changed your life. So, you were doing incredibly well selling drugs. You were kind of, as they say, the big man on campus. People say, “Donte, he’s got it. He’s successful. He’s a nice guy. He’s cool. Who wouldn’t want to be around Donte Wilburn? He’s a terrific guy. He’s successful. He buys us all stuff and hosts these big parties.” I mean, who doesn’t want to be that kind of person? So, let’s talk about that event where you could have easily lost your life. So just talk about just that incident, what happened, and just give us a bit of background and what happened that particular day.

Donte Wilburn:

Yeah. So, in selling drugs, you always run into someone you’re going to have beef with. And so, I end up having a guy that had owed me money that I had threatened in his life. And so, he said to me, “Well, let’s make this right. Let’s do a drug deal. I’ll bring people up and they’ll buy it from you and you’ll make a great profit from me bringing these people up, buying it from you.” So, I said, “That will satisfy your payment to me. Let’s make this happen.” So, this day, I said, “Let’s do the deal at 4:00.” He was going to bring his people up. They were going to buy 15 pounds of marijuana for $22,500. And I was buying it for $17,500. So, on this one exchange, I was just going to make $5,000 profit. And so, I said, “Yeah, just bring them off and we’ll make this exchange and we’ll be okay.”

Well, we were supposed to do the deal at 4:00, 5:00 comes, 6:00 comes, 7:00 comes, 8:00 comes, 9:00 comes, and this is going to be my last deal. Okay? My girlfriend at the time, I told her, I said, “This is it. I’m going to make this and we’re going to have it for a little bit, and then I am going cold turkey. I’m flying straight.” So, the night comes, it is 10:00, 11:00. And 11 something, he says, “We’re here.” And I said, “Man, I really don’t want to do this, but I have to do it.” At that time, I just came off of a stint of not selling drugs and all my money went down and my phone was cut off at my brother’s house and his gas was cut off. And so, I needed to pay those for him. And so, I said, “Well, I’ll make this one drug deal because I had quit for a while and I said, “I’ll make this last one and I’m done so I can get this gas cut back on and I can get this phone bill paid.”

And 11:00 that night, my girlfriend at the time had done many, many drug deals. Well, she didn’t ever do them with me, she just rode along. And so, she understood how I moved and how I acted. And she was numb to it because she was always with me. And so, she comes up and she’s telling me, “Don’t go, don’t go.” And she stands up. I’ll never forget, she gets off the bed and I’m about to go. And I told her, “I’ll be right back.” I even told her, “Hey, you come with me. It’ll only going to be 15 minutes. We’ll go in. We’ll make the exchange and we’ll come home. Just come with me. You sit in the car.” And she says, “No, I’m not going.” I was like, “Why not?” And she almost has these tears in her eyes and she’s looking at me and she says, “Please don’t go.” And I said, “I have to.”

And so, I leave, get to the place, and I was supposed to make this deal with two people. It was supposed to be this one guy and another guy. And so, when we pull up, they have a white Expedition, they opened the doors, there’s four people in the vehicle. And so, when I see four people get out, I’m thinking, “What in the world? It was supposed to be two.” And you know what happened? So, remember the love of money is, and I’m consumed with that, I got to make this money. I was thinking that, “Oh, this is a big purchase for 22,000.” And I was 22 at the time, and I’m selling to other 22-year-olds. So, I figured they just need to pony up more people to get to this dollar amount. So, I said, okay, it’s four of them. Come on in. So, they came in. They go in and out, in and out, in and out.

And my friend Chris, that was my connection, he gets suspicious. He pulls out his gun and I said, “Guys, what is going on?” He says, “Well, we see you have the product.” And I said, “Well, you see the product. Well, show us the money.” And he says, “Well, we’re afraid that if we show you the money, you’re going to rob us.” And I’m like, “We’re not going to rob you. You see it clear as day.” And so, what ended up happening is, my friend Chris was probably 35 at the time and we’re like some little 20 something year olds. So, he was, you know what you call an OG. He’s older than us. And so, he says, “I’m going to pack this up.” He packed it up, takes it to the front door, and he looks at me standing there while he’s at the front door and he looks at the four guys and he says, “Either you buy this or I’m going to take it home and put it up and go to bed.”

After he said that, it was quiet. No one said a word. And I’m thinking in my mind, “Buy it, buy it, buy it.” And so, he looks at them one more time. They don’t say anything. He goes out the front door. After he goes out the front door, one of the guys scrunched up his face so evilly and goes out behind him. So, there’s three guys remaining. And what happened at that time, I didn’t know that they were here to harm us, but all of a sudden, I’m filled with this knowledge. I know that they’re here to steal, kill, and destroy in a moment of a time. And so, my only reaction was I got to go warn Chris and let him know.

So, I ran to the front door, I go to open it, and I’m frozen. Literally, my hand is frozen, I can’t move, and I hear all the gunshots. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. They go off. I run upstairs. And guess what I was going to do when I ran upstairs? Gary, take a wild guess. What was I going to do when I ran upstairs? What would you think?

Gary Schneeberger:

You were going to were grab the drugs and get out?

Donte Wilburn:

Okay, good guess. But really what I was going to do? I was going to hide underneath the bed. That’s all I wanted to do, all I knew to do. I hear the gunshots out front. I run upstairs and I just want to hide underneath the bed until this all goes over. I run upstairs. As I go to bust in the room to hide the person’s house that we’re at, assume that we just got shot and killed, and they were running up the stairs to come kill her. She grabs her gun and she points it at me and I bust in. She points it at me and I was like, “Whoa, whoa. It’s just me.” I run downstairs. I go to go out the back door, and as I go out the back door, there’s a gun at my head and I don’t know who it is. I’m like, “Whoa, whoa.” And I look, and it’s Chris. Chris got shot three times out front, comes around the back. And as I’m trying to go out, he’s trying to come in. He pulls a gun on me and he comes in, collapses on me, and he says, “I’m hit. I’m hit, but I don’t know where.”

And he’s bleeding and he gives me his gun because he’s losing blood, he’s losing his strength. And so, I hold him up with one hand. The girl comes down, she says, “I called 911. The police said, they’ll be here in a few minutes. Take this gun. It’s unregistered. You got to take it and get out of here.” I take her gun, I take his gun. I got two guns in one hand. I’m holding him up with the right hand. I’m go out the back door and all I could envision was someone coming around and just finishing both of us off. I thought they were just going to come kill us both. Well, that didn’t happen. I have seen them pull off in the Expedition.

I go out front, as I’m sitting Chris in my car, as I’m sitting him in, I dropped both of the guns and as they twill to the ground, boom, they go off one more time. And Chris asked me, did you get hit? I said, no, no, I’m not touched. So, I picked the guns up. We pull out. As we’re pulling out, I’m driving very slow. Cops are blazing past us. I got this weird looking car, and I’m almost past the last police officer. I’m on 10 and two just trying to make it out. The last police officer looks over at me, turns on his lights and makes a U-turn. We throw the guns out, they pull us over, they take Chris to the hospital, they take me down to the station.

Now, in my junior year of college, I had an 8:00 A.M. exam in the morning. And I kept telling the cop, “Get me out of here because, I go to Purdue University, I got to exam at 8:00 in the morning,” and I made this big lie up. They end up letting me go. And from there, my whole life changed forever.

Warwick Fairfax:

After that happened, what was going through your mind?

Donte Wilburn:

So, what happened was three days straight, I did not sleep, so much anxiety. I was afraid that my mom was going to get killed, my mom and my dad, because they knew where they lived. They knew where I stayed at my brother’s house. I was afraid that my brother would get killed. My girlfriend going to work, would they kill her? And so, literally I slept every night with a gun under my pillow. And if there was a cat that stepped on a twig, I was at the window with a gun at the window. And after three days of being so confused, what I did was, I said, “You know what? I don’t know where I heard this before, but I heard that if you live by the sword, you’ll die by the sword. If I live by this gun, I’m going to die by a gun.”

And I took the top slide off, I took the clip out, I went to my backyard, I scattered it. And I went into the room and I said, “God, I don’t know if you’re real. I don’t know if you’re really real. But if you are, I heard that if you live by the sword, you’ll die by the sword. You’re going to have to keep me.” And I went to bed for the first time after three nights, and I woke up the next morning. I was so happy. I was so happy. I thought I was going to get killed that night. I didn’t have no gun. That was my protection. And I woke up that night and things really, really turned after that.

Gary Schneeberger:

And that, for a series that we’re calling Burn the Ships, right, Donte? That seems to me like the period, at that moment you figuratively struck a match and you burned the ships that you had known. In a sheet that you filled out for us, when we asked you what prompted you burn the ship’ moment, you said this. You said, “Well, my choices were either suicide to end it all because I just made a huge mistake or dig in and pull myself out and pull myself in.” I mean, there’s a reason why the word recidivism is a word, because people who are in bad situations, even when their life is threatened, that’s all they know and they go back to that. You did indeed put a stake in the ground. You did indeed set your ships on fire and you did indeed work a new path to a new destination.

You did finally right what you said was so hard to do, stop doing it. You quit several times. You said when you were selling drugs and then you ran out of money and you sold them again. This was the moment where you finally stuck by it where you did indeed light those ships on fire. I am no longer someone who sells drugs. You weren’t really sure what that was going to be.

Donte Wilburn:

I didn’t have a clue.

Gary Schneeberger:

Right. Whatever it was going to be, you felt this need, you were going to follow God, you felt this calling, and you went and pursued that. And what was the next thing that happened that got you on a course to keep your back completely turned on the ships that were still burning behind you?

Donte Wilburn:

You. No, you hit the nail on the head. I appreciate that, Gary. So, the next thing that I did was I said, “Okay, I’m going to start going to church a little bit, dibbling and dabbling in church, trying to figure out what’s really going on with my life. And then what happens is, after a month later, it all comes out on the news, all on WLFI. All the news channels, “Wanted: Donte Wilburn for conspiracy to deal marijuana.” And they had the whole story of the shootout, who set it up, what happened. And so, my mom calls me, she comes over to the house, she says, “Donte, you’re in big trouble. They have you all over the news that you’re facing eight years in prison.” And she’s super embarrassed. My dad is super embarrassed. Going to Purdue University.

So, we had to go get a lawyer. And after we got the lawyer, I went home to my brother’s house and I’m sitting there and I’m contemplating suicide when my mom’s sitting next to me and tears are rolling down my eyes and she can tell that I mentally am tore up because I made it past, okay, I’m living by this gun and I survived that. And now, I’m facing eight years in prison. And she’s sitting there looking at me on this couch and she kept telling me, “Donte, it’s going to be okay. I know it looks bad now, but you are going to be okay. I know it looks terrible now, but you will be okay. I know it looks bad, but I promise you, you will be okay.” And what happened after she kept reiterating that, it lifted my spirits and I believed it. And so, at that moment I said, okay, I’m going to be okay, but I’m still distraught.

So, the next day comes, I’m lying in bed. I didn’t even want to go to school. My mom calls me and she tells me she has a job for me detailing cars. I go get this job at auto detailing. There’s a deacon there that started teaching me about God, taking me to church, and helping me through what I’m going through. So, I started at minimum wage, just detailing cars. And people in my case, Gary, got 60 years in prison, 40 years in prison, 20 years in prison. I was the last to be sentenced. And in my junior year at Purdue, I got straight A’s. So, from the time my mom kept telling me, I will be okay, I made an effort and she got me that job at detailing cars. I literally said, “I am going to be successful. I’m not going to let this define me.”

And so, I got straight A’s at Purdue and I went before the judge and he had straight A’s in his hand from Purdue University, and he had this terrible past. And he told me that, “I just sentenced a 20-year old to 40 years in prison. Do you think I’m going to let you off?” And I tried to justify it about, “Hey, I was born with not much money and different things.” And he got mad at me. And he looks at me and says, “Who do you think you are? Do you think that you’re Robin Hood, rob from the rich and give to the poor?” And I didn’t know what to say.

So, my pastor raises his hand, goes up there, talks with the judge, they start talking. He looks at me and says, “What am I going to do with you? You’re going to church, you got a pastor, you’re getting straight A’s in school, but you did this God-awful thing?” I had looked at him in tears. I said, “Judge, just give me one chance. Please just give me one chance.” And he said to me, “I’ll give you your one chance. I’m going to sentence you to three years in community corrections. You got to go to jail. You only can get out to go to school and to work, and you got to live in that jail.”

He says, “If you get in any trouble again, I’m going to throw the book at you.” I’ll never forget that. And I said, “Give me the one chance.” So, he gave me the chance. I still had to go through community corrections. I had to be in that facility and only get out to go to school and to work. But I ended up graduating Purdue University while in work release.

Warwick Fairfax:

I want to sort of switch here, but I think a lot of listeners are listening and thinking for every Donte Wilburn, there’s a bunch of other people that take a different course. I mean, was it that moment when you felt like I should be dead? I mean, there’s many that would just keep going on and be in jail for decades or be killed by some other drug dealer. As you look back, it’s like, well, how come that happened? Is there any, other than this divine intervention? Is there any reason that can explain why you made that change? Because there’s a scenario where Donte doesn’t make the change.

Donte Wilburn:

Right.

Warwick Fairfax:

It’s easy to say, “This is my last drug deal.” But how many times do people say, “This is my last drug deal,” and it’s not, right?

Gary Schneeberger:

They don’t burn their ships like you burned your ships.

Donte Wilburn:

Yeah. So, here’s the million dollars in burning the ships. When I realized that I should have been dead, the judge gave me grace and God gave me grace. I got a human that he clearly gave 60 years, 40 years, 20 years. But he looks at me and says, “I’ll give you three years community corrections to see what you can do with it.” Once I realize how big of a feat that was, I get out, I’m off of it. I’m done with everything. And I’m going to tell you what happened is my friends, my brother, all of them, they said, “Donte, you’re off of everything. Come on, let’s go out tonight.” And I was like, “Ah.” He’s like, “Come on, come on.” But they pressured me in.

I went to the club one night and I’m looking and I’m seeing all of these people, and literally I go out of that club and I go sit in my car all by myself and everyone’s asking, “Where am I at? What are you doing? You just got off of everything.” And I said, “I’m done.” I went home and never again did I go to another club. All of my friends were so mad at me, I never talked to really any of them again. And I dove hard into changing my life. And so, I got really focused in this auto detailing, end up buying the business. And I can tell you this is the truth that just two years ago, it’s like I was separated, focused on this drive of focusing on going forward. I had to get rid of all my friends and those bad associations.

And just two years ago, have I started going back to them because I’m in a place after 20 years where they can see the fruit of what I’ve done and the lifestyle I live. And they’re still, some of them are still in the same place that I left them 20 years ago. So, when you say burn the ships, it’s not only leaving the lifestyle, but I had to leave a lot of close family members and friends to attain the life that I wanted to live for my family. So, I got myself in this pit, and in order to get myself out, I had to come up with this plan and this ladder. And as I’m working it, I wanted to climb this and I had to cut off all ties for me to be able to climb it. And they say that you’re a sum of the five closest people around you. I find that to be true.

And also, what really helped me is I found good mentors. They say success leaves tracks. All you have to do is find success and look at those tracks and get in those tracks, and you’ll go to the same place that the person before you went. And so, I started to learn those things and I found good mentors and I started to, what they did, I just emulated and copied and I got in those tracks and it was very opposite of what I was taught in my previous life. But that was the big thing, man. I cut everything off. I got in these tracks of these mentors that I found, and I stayed on that over a duration of time.

Warwick Fairfax:

So, I want to talk a bit about what you do now with your auto detailing business. I mean, you grew this business, you bought it. I think you mentioned in 2011 you grew sales over 180%, purchased the company in 2018, purchased this Legacy Courts and Legacy Sports Club for 6 million to bless children. So, talk about your vision. You’re not only successful, but you’re successful for a purpose. You have a heart to mentor young people. Maybe other young versions of Donte Wilburn who maybe could go down one track. And you’re trying to be that guy who’s going to be in their life to help him not go down the track that you went. So, talk about how you are both successful, but you’re successful with a purpose. So, talk about how who you are now, if you will, and what you do.

Donte Wilburn:

So, the transition came when I was sitting down and I was reading these different scriptures and I came across something that said, “Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him work with his hands so that he might have to give to those that are in need.” That hit me like a ton of bricks. And I looked at it and I said, “Man, I used to steal. I’m not supposed to steal anymore, but I’m supposed to work really, really hard so that I might have to give to those that are in need.” And so, it gave me the whole map, right? Work really hard to be able to bless others. And so, I just got really busy into doing it. I created a vision for Premier Auto Detailing. And we went from, I don’t know, 200 and something thousand dollars in 2011. And now currently, I think this past year we did over $2.2 million at an auto detailing company.

And so, I created this vision and our purpose. And I can tell you what it is, it’s servanthood and creating joy and happiness through professional auto detailing and window tinting services. So, my philosophy was how can I help as many employees that work under my umbrella? And how can I bless as many customers that we touch? And when you take employees and customers, those two things are really just people. And that’s been my main focus in business is serving both sides of these people. So, we have two auto detailing businesses here in Lafayette. We do auto detailing, window tinting, remote starts, vehicle wraps, all kinds of cool stuff. And then, in 2020, we opened one in Kokomo, which is doing great.

And then, Legacy Courts came up because my kids were in basketball and they said, “Hey, do you want to buy this place before it gets turned into something else?” And so, we bought into that and I just was so happy that I can bless more kids with that in sports. And Warwick, what I’ll tell you is sports, the reason why I really like it so much is because it gives you disciplines in life. Me, hiring 17 to 25-year-olds inside of Premier detailing, I realized I get a lot of them and they don’t have discipline. They don’t even know how to take someone yelling at them. And so, that’s what I felt like sports would do if I can get as many kids in it. They understand when a coach says, “Get over here now. Run as fast as you can, go and jump.” They start to get this discipline of being spoken to and actually carrying out the order and which is so much needed to be successful in business.

So, really, Warwick, I’m going to be honest, man. So yeah, I really am just speaking to my 17 to 25-year-old self when I wrote my book. And I took 10 chapters and I dumped, what was happening was everyone was asking me, “How did you do it? How did you do it?” And I could never tell them in a few minutes. And so, I wrote this book and I put all of me into it. If they obey the strategies in the book, they too will be successful. But I’m just basically talking to my younger self.

Gary Schneeberger:

This is a great time for me to jump in as the color commentator and pull some balloon strings together about what we’re talking about. First of all, I have to address, not the elephant in the room, but the hoodie in the room. Donte, your hoodie says Hope Dealer. Now, what you’ve just described is how you’re offering hope to those who work for you. But what you cannot have any idea of is that Warwick has used that phrase, we at Beyond the Crucible are dealers in hope that your worst day doesn’t have to define you. He has used the phrase, we are dealers in hope, on multiple occasions.

Donte Wilburn:

Really?

Gary Schneeberger:

It’s a remarkable thing. If you look right now, listener, if we’ve made a video clip of this, or if you’re watching on YouTube watcher, you can take a look at Warwick. You can take a look at Donte and think, “These two guys got nothing in common.” Guess what? They’re both hope dealers. That is fabulous. That’s the kind of thing that happens when you help people get past their worst day. So, that’s the first point I wanted to make is that you’re both hope dealers.

Donte Wilburn:

Awesome.

Gary Schneeberger:

The second thing, when you first started talking to us here, Donte, when you first started talking to us, you said this, that when you were in school, that kid who taught you how to deal drugs, people were asking him, how did you get that? He had things. How did you get that? When you and I talked about you being on the show, you said that the young people who work for you at your auto detailing shop say to you often, “How did you get here? How did you get those things?” And I think it’s just poetic that the very questions…

Donte Wilburn:

Oh, my goodness.

Gary Schneeberger:

The very questions that led you down that life that you should not have gone down, that you realized jeopardized your life, those very same questions are now what you’re pouring into those people to whom you deliver hope.

Donte Wilburn:

Wow.

Gary Schneeberger:

What’s your response or reaction to that?

Donte Wilburn:

Wow. To be honest, I’ve never even thought about it. I’ve never thought, that’s the exact question I asked him, how did you get here? And that’s the exact question they ask me. But the responses and the trainings are completely different. I’m teaching them something completely different.

Gary Schneeberger:

Right, right. And the destinations…

Donte Wilburn:

Wow. Yeah, of course. Wow, man, thank you for pulling that out. That was, I’m probably going to meditate on that for days to come.

Gary Schneeberger:

And I have one more thing since you’ve mentioned it a couple of times. The book is still in process as we’re recording this, but the book is called what? And when’s it coming out so that people can know how to get their hands on it? Because you’ve indicated there’s a lot of stuff in there that does indeed offer hope, that does indeed deal hope to folks. So, what’s the title of the book and when can people expect to have it?

Donte Wilburn:

Yeah. So, the title of the book is Born Hungry: You were Made for More. So, the whole premise was, when I was born, everyone’s born hungry for something. And then, knowing that some somehow as we grow in this life, we settle, we settle. And I settled for being a silly drug dealer. And so, we settled for things. And then, something has to shock us to realize that you were made for more. Go figure out what it is. And so, that’s what my book is about, is really a jolt or a shock. Really, I wrote it to people graduating high school and people graduating college to hit the ground running to be successful. That’s really, really who I wrote that to.

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, I mean, that is really profound what Gary has brought out, that you are at a moment in your life, sophomore in high school, and he asked, “Gosh, how did you get there?” And if somebody had given a different answer, somebody said to you, “Donte, it’s about faith. It’s about having a course, had of beliefs. It’s about working hard. Don’t take the shortcut.” Maybe you would’ve listened, maybe you wouldn’t. But the course of your life could have been radically different, right? If you’d had a Donte Wilburn in your life, somebody, let’s say maybe a bit older, 10, 20 years older, it’s unknowable. Would you have listened? We’ll never know. You’d like to think you would have, right?

Donte Wilburn:

Yes, for sure.

Warwick Fairfax:

You’d like to think. Sometimes, we can be stubborn, and often, the only way to learn is through hard times. But I love some of the things that you write in the book because you are really a dealer of hope from a drug dealer to a hope dealer, I mean, hope is eternal. There are eternal consequences of hope. It’s not something that’s going to run out. And I love some of the things that you say in your book. You say, “I’m here to say that no matter how monumental the setbacks are, never give up. While there is breath inside your lungs, there is still hope.” And I love this next sentence. “I found that my darkest time was the beginning of my best times.”

It’s hard to understand how that darkest time when you were close to being killed, and in front of the judge when you could have been in jail for 40 plus years, talk about how nobody wants to go through that again, I’m sure. You know you don’t. Who would? But yet out of that, the pit of darkness, out of the ashes of the crucible as we say, something beautiful, something good came out of that. So, just help us capture that, what that means for you. What was the good that came out of that really dark moment?

Donte Wilburn:

So, it’s really weird when I look back, but I’m almost happy it all happened. I’m going to be honest. I’m happy it all happened because now, when I face, my wife is so good at reminding me. But now, I’ll be like, “Oh my gosh, this is happening. We’ve got this going on and this is going on, and everything’s like, and then I stop and I remember, where did you come from? What have you overcome before that is greater than now? So, out of that dark moment, it’s given me the understanding of true resilience, perseverance, motivation. If these things are possessed inside of you, no matter how bad it looks and feels, and if you possess this grit, you can overcome no matter what the darkest day is. So, I would say that was the most beautiful thing that came out of being so low is that it’s possible. No matter what. It’s possible.

Gary Schneeberger:

That sound you heard, listeners, is what I normally say is the sound of the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign, saying the plane is about the descent. But since we’re talking to a guy who has made his bones in auto detailing, I’m going to say that sounds you heard are the vacuums going, because it’s almost time to get out and your car is clean, and it’s almost time to go. So, the vacuums are firing up.

Donte Wilburn:

Yeah, yeah.

Gary Schneeberger:

But before we go, there are a couple of things I want to make sure I do, Donte. One is, I want to call the listener’s attention to Donte’s tone of voice, Donte’s demeanor as he’s talked about some of the things he’s talked about. He started this conversation talking about the very abject racism he felt as a young boy, but he didn’t talk about it defeatedly. He talked about it oddly enough to me when I first heard it, he was laughing. Now, he wasn’t laughing because it was funny. He’s laughing because he’s moved beyond it. He’s laughing because he’s found hope beyond that difficulty.

Donte Wilburn:

For sure.

Gary Schneeberger:

And throughout this conversation, from the drug dealing conversation to his life being threatened, there was a sense of humor about it that we all can experience when we put our worst times, our most challenging times behind us. That’s one of the things that Beyond the Crucible endeavors to show you all the time that your worst day doesn’t define you, and it doesn’t have to remain your worst day in the sense of you can look back at it and go, “Okay,” you can even have a sense of humor about it. So, that Donte really impressed me the way that you talked about that.

You have transformed more than just the ship you’re in. You’ve transformed your whole demeanor in the way that you live your life, and that is a beautiful thing to behold. The other thing that I’ll do before I let Warwick ask the final question, which is always his prerogative as the host of the show, is to give you the chance to let our listeners know how can they find out more about your business, about you, about your book? Where’s the good place to find everything Donte Wilburn on the worldwide web?

Donte Wilburn:

Yeah. So, you can look me up at www.dontewilburn.com. Also, our business is called premierindiana.com. So, you can connect on both of those things. You can get a hold of me, you can email on the business site the info that comes to me, and also on dontewilburn.com. That contact all comes directly to me.

Gary Schneeberger:

And for people like me who don’t always spell great, how do you spell Donte Wilburn and dontewilburn.com?

Donte Wilburn:

Oh, my goodness. You hit the nail on the head. It’s D-O-N-T-E-W-I -L-B-U R N. So yes, I’m D-O-N-TE, not A.

Gary Schneeberger:

All right. Warwick, take it away.

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Donte, thank you so much for being here. I mean, your story is so inspiring. I mean, one of the things we say on Beyond the Crucible a lot is your worst day doesn’t have to define you. And you had, well, the worst day was almost getting killed. It could have been not quite as bad in front of the judge, but it could have gone a different direction. But one of the things we say, you don’t always have a choice of what happens to you. Yes, you had a choice about some of the decisions, but growing up in a trailer park and racism, there were things that happened that were none of your doing, and horrendous setbacks and challenges.

One of the things we say is you don’t always have a choice of what happened to you or you can’t undo your mistakes, but you do have a choice of how you move forward. You do have a choice of is it going to define your life? Is it going to defeat your life? Or you’re going to move in a more positive life-affirming direction where you live, as we say, a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others? You are both successful financially and monetarily, but you’re successful from a faith or kingdom perspective. You are investing in the next generation. Successful in the full sense of that word.

So, just as we close, talk about that word choice, because there may be some people who today are in the situation you were in years ago, or maybe it’s a physical challenge. Maybe it’s they’ve failed, maybe their marriage is broken up. Maybe there’s all sorts of things that are going on. Maybe today is the worst day for some. Just talk about that word choice and why that’s such an empowering concept.

Donte Wilburn:

Thank you. Thank you, Warwick. So, when I think of choices and I think of people of where they are, or they could be where I was, the first thing I think of is grow where you are planted. And I want the listener to know that out of eight billion people on the planet, you’re in the city that you’re in, or the town that you’re in, the state that you’re in. Whether it’s the spouse, whether it’s the family, whether it’s the job, out of all the world you’re in, the place that you’re at. And oftentimes people also think, “Oh, I got to go here. I got to go there.” I’m telling you, you can grow right where you are.

It’s all about, change happens when you are serious and you got to get serious. This is all in my book, but I talk about having this creative wand of what you want things to be like in your life if you can have them. And once you get really, really serious and you create this vision for where your life, where you want it to go, then you can just simply take steps back and figure out each step that you need to do to get there.

And then, you get a mentor. He’s your guide to help you get there. But that’s where change happens. And I often tell everybody, “I know what change looks like because I had to do it myself.” The very first thing is you got to look in the mirror. You cannot be a victim of anything. You have to get serious. Look at all of your flaws, look at all of the bad, and then know that you can grow and change right where you are.

Gary Schneeberger:

I have been in the communications business long enough to know when the vacuum’s stopped running and it’s time to drive away and when the last word has been spoken on a subject. And Donte Wilburn, our guest, has just spoken it. Always remember listener as we move forward in this series, burn the ships. If you find yourself in a place as Donte found himself, where he was drifting off course from where he wanted to be. He wanted to not sell drugs, but then it came in and he did it again, and he did it again, and he did it again.

If you find yourself in whatever situation you’re in, where you’re drifting from that vision Donte was just talking about, you have a vision, but you’re drifting from it. Know that this is always available to you. If you’re drifting from that vision, you can strike a match. You can set the ship that you’re in that’s not taking you where you want to go on fire, and you can then move to a better destination, a destination like what Donte’s found and giving away what he has been given, that very grace. So, we’ll see you again next week.

If you enjoyed this episode, learned something from it, we invite you to engage more deeply with those of us at Beyond the Crucible. Visit our website beyondthecrucible.com to explore a plethora of offerings to help you transform what’s been broken into breakthrough. A great place to start, our free online assessment, which will help you pinpoint where you are on your journey beyond your crucible, and to chart a course forward. See you next week.