Faith and Branding with Mirthell Onyx

From Pastor and Marriage and Family Therapist to bringing his family into full on entrepreneurship, Mirthell Onyx tells us what it takes to build your own brand.

Show Notes

Mirthell, is the Founder and CEO of the Onyx brand. For years, he worked as a pastor and marriage & family therapist, but it was his dream to one day work with his family. One day in 2015, he took the giant leap and quit his job; he never looked back since. Now, the family has a multi-million dollar enterprise, which includes a YouTube Original talk show, Onyx Family Dinner (featuring guests such as Jemele Hill and Emmanuel Acho), an animates series, Onyx Monster Mysteries (which has been distributed to platforms such as Peacock and Apple TV), books, a health & fitness app. and more. He tries to inspire and motivate other black men to take the leap too and start their own business too.

What is Disruption Now?

A podcast to disrupt common narratives and constructs to empower diverse communities. We provide inspirational content from entrepreneurs and leaders who are disrupting the status quo.

Sitting down with Mirthell Onyx was a

really enlightening experience.

He has really guided

his whole family through faith

and you're going to learn so much from him

about how to how to be entrepreneurial,

have an entrepreneurial mindset

with your family,

how to do so, but not lose your family

and keep your family

through that process.

I hope you

hope you get a lot out of it.

I certainly did.

And if you're if you're into building

your brand as a family or building

your brand

as an individual,

there's something you can

definitely learn out

of this episode of Disruption.

Now, of course, as always,

we are powered by Disrupt Art and

I hope you enjoy this

Welcome to Disruption Now.

I'm your host and moderator

Rob Richardson.

With me is Mirthell Onyx with the Onyx brand.

I'm going to call it

So many brands under,

under

under your empire

that you have over 7 million

YouTube subscribers collectively

between all of the brands

and about 4 billion streaming views.

Woo that's a lot of views. Yeah.

That's a humble I'm very humbled

that you're on our podcast

and really excited

to learn more about what you're doing

and really learn from what you've done.

I mean, it's

it's really impressive.

Looking at what you've built as a family,

how you were able to build that out

and how you're working together,

not only what you've built out,

but the fact that you're working together

as a family unit to kind of do this

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for being on the show.

It is a privilege

for us

to be on the number one

Christian broadcast.

All right.

So we are we are

we're people of faith and family.

And so this is an honor

for us to be speaking with you.

Oh, well, so are we. You're in the right.

You're in the right.

You're we got the right company here.

So let's talk about your entry into

starting a YouTube show for your family.

That's a lot, right?

You it's it requires a whole lot of time.

And in some ways, it requires

your family to kind

of balance out between being

just your family.

And being this public personality.

Walk me through how this started

and how you got to this point.

Well, I'm an ordained minister

and a marriage and family therapist.

Marriage and family

therapist came a little bit after.

But it was necessary

because if you anybody knows

what a pastor

does, most of his stuff

is working with the sheep and

and families in particular.

And so I felt

I needed to be more comparable

to be able to do that.

So I went and got my master's

in science in marriage

and family therapy and

and then began to just

that was always my passion.

Anyhow, I've always been a family guy.

So if I'm on the rostrum

and I'm preaching, I'm always preaching

about that from the angle of family,

one of the greatest institutions

that God has put on this earth.

So so that was that was who I was prior.

I had a, you know, my my practice.

And I was also in the church.

My wife, she was

she became a nurse practitioner.

So she was in school

during some of the time that I was

in ministry.

And she became a nurse practitioner.

as time progressed,

she started to look into

different things.

She's always been an entrepreneur,

so I'm not here.

You know,

if you want the business business

side of this algorithm stuff, that's her.

You know, she's the brains.

So she started studying YouTube

and she was like,

wow, people are making money off

of this thing.

And I think that, you know,

this is an opportunity for you

to be able to

to have a second chance

because I had left ministry

and at that point in time.

I didn't know what I was going to do

at that point in time either. Right.

And so and that's how I kind of started.

And within a month of us, well,

we launched in like November 2015,

but not a real launch.

We kind of got into it

and we failed miserably,

if you want to call it failure.

It's not really failure, but.

Right.

$0.50

for the month is,

you know, some people would say that's failure.

So so we got $0.50

and then she started studying it

and when she started studying it,

she realized, OK, no, we need to do this

and do that.

We'll talk about that

because people

part of what we're talking about

is developing your brand.

It sounds like, oh yeah, right.

You developing your brand as a family.

And I know your wife

sounds like the chief operator.

You're kind of the person

that's the presenter, it sounds like.

Right, right.

Which is good. You need both

the visionary and implementer, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

So I,

I frankly,

I understand it now,

but she was the one that was doing it.

So what she did

was she started studying the algorithm

and she started to look at the trends

and she started realizing

that there's a connection

between the algorithms

and the trends started

looking at keyword optimization

and search,

looked in the search engines to see

which keywords

were critical in order to get your

your brand

or your video into the algorithm.

And so when she started studying that,

she came back and we relaunched

and we launched as a kids channel

and we began to do like

there was a trend

that was going on back then,

which was getting into like,

you know, getting into costumes.

It required costumes

and things like that.

And so we got into that

and so we got our costumes

and we did our thing.

That was the trend at the time.

And frankly, to tell you

the truth, I wanted to do ministry.

I want to just jump right in

You're kind of like

like you're helping me.

This is something

because I do a lot and I stick to this,

but it's like at the end of the day.

You also have to make sure

people are paying

attention and it's following.

We won't say they're following

the trends, it's understandable.

You didn't follow the trends.

You just set your own path,

but you understood

where the trends were going

and use that to basically hook people

into the content.

That's how I see it .

Is that right? Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah.

I want to get right into ministry.

I want to get to the serious parts

about the black family

and get into things where,

you know,

we need to be there

in this particular way

or that particular way.

We need to be the face.

And, you know, all this,

all these things that

my understanding

from a marriage and family background

and just understanding politically

where we are as a country, as a nation,

where the family is, where society is,

I wanted to get into the meat.

The the and my wife said no.

She said no.

She said, you've got to entertain.

You've got to speak

the language of the people you've got to

you got to speak

the conversation,

have the conversations

that they want to have.

And so so we started to do trends

and that's why we became

the superhero family

before we became the Onyx family.

You know, we were

we were doing

what was trendy at the time. Yeah.

And it her her idea was this it is that

if you

if you give them what they want at first,

then what will happen is on the back

end you will be able to say

anything you want to say

because you'll have the numbers,

you'll have the audience,

you'll have everything,

and you can do anything.

And that's where we are today.

We are able to say

and do anything that we want to do

drop mic

I mean, it's it's about it's

about going

given the consumers what you want

and then giving them back

what you feel that they need.

But you first

have to give them what they want.

What they want.

You have to speak their language.

Absolutely.

You helped me like

just this conversation

right here is like, OK,

this is an adjustment

we need to make

in really how we go about the YouTube and

how we go about branding.

So we we teach branding now.

And one of the things that we teach,

one of the things that we teach is

we teach always entertain first.

I don't care what you are.

You could be a dentist.

Dentists, come to us.

People come to us

with a gardening, gardening,

you know, landscaping,

whatever your business is,

it doesn't matter. Entertain first.

It's incredible how the human nature is.

But we don't like chaos.

We don't like catastrophes.

We don't like wars.

We don't. Of course we don't.

We don't we don't like these things

So what we do is we like to laugh

and we like to be distracted.

So there's nothing like a good ball

game during a war.

You know, there's nothing like true,

you know,

things go up

when money goes down

and people are struggling

financially and economically.

No better time than to laugh

because you know what?

And to drink to drink, to laugh, to eat,

you know what I'm saying?

And so what ends up happening is

we know great people in history,

you know, very wise people.

Empires and emperors

have come up with games

like the card

game and different things like that

as a way to take their people

who are going through struggles

take their minds off of the fact

that you're living on a hill

and you're living down down here

and you're struggling and you're

and you have to pay me

taxes as the emperor.

So here

here's a card game

and let's get them playing cards,

you know,

whatever works, whatever works.

And so it's the same concept.

Entertain people

if whatever

your business is,

I don't care what it is,

Right. entertain them,

do a funny skit about it.

Nobody does it better than

people like Dave Chappelle.

Well, he's the best, isn't he?

Absolute I,

Dave Chappelle, as another moment as Dave

Chappelle is really,

really, really good

at taking serious content,

but then making it funny like

I don't know how anybody could have made,

like, the death of George Floyd

entertaining in some way

or police brutality,

engage it in some way.

Profound.

It's I mean, it is profound

because I'm like,

I don't know how you do that.

And this man just was able

to bring all of that together

and still make it funny.

He like, wow, how did he do that?

Like, so how do you do that?

Like, how do you

that feels like magic to me, right?

And that's the thing.

It's like, to me, he's a preacher,

but I know he's not

Christian, but he's a preacher.

To me

because he takes the most serious things

and he's able to speak to it and we listen.

Even if we don't agree with him,

we are able to take it.

It's like a pill that you're taking

you put it down

with a little juice or whatever.

Like he makes it palatable.

Yeah. And so and so that's what we do.

So our mission statement is tell

the story, feed the soul,

make them laugh, heal the heart.

That is Onyx Family's mission story.

It's entertaining.

First, this is

I think there was some struggle with me.

Mirthell it's like, OK, do I entertain first?

Do I inform first?

Like, do I

do you lose your brand if you do this

but but you can't have a brand

if people aren't there, right?

You cannot be a famous secret.

So like you got to get people there.

So you can call it

you can do a great blend of edutainment

where you're entertaining and educating

at the same time.

That's that

that is a great strategy to do that.

And some people,

what they're dealing with

is so serious

or they don't know how to

to just entertain.

So edutainment is fine.

It's a blending of both

educating and entertaining

with probably a little bit

more leaning into the ed

education side

My friend calls it infotainment.

But yes, there you go. There you go.

And so so that's what we did. And so

one of the

one of the things that we are disrupting,

if we're going to, you know, yeah.

Let's go with it. For your disrupting.

We needed to disrupt the market

in the media

where black faces are not seen and

our stories are told,

but they're told in only a certain way.

And so what ends up

happening is the entire world

sees the black family or sees a black man

or sees a black woman

or sees a black narrative

only in a very narrow way.

Yep.

That when you walk in China,

they automatically assume

that you're a rapper

or they're automatically assumed

that you're a criminal

or whatever nature.

It doesn't matter where you.

Rapper, athlete, entertainer,

there you go. That's it.

That's it.

And that your

families are full of just single mothers.

The fathers have kids all over the place.

So there is a narrative

that is being told.

And so it's not like

we are not represented

or underrepresented.

In fact,

we are probably

very much represented,

but we're just represented

in a very narrow way.

Yeah, we're overrepresented

with the stereotypes

and underrepresented on the truth.

There you go.

And so I don't think

that our family is unique there are

I know too many families

that are just exactly like our family.

So we are actually representing

a big slice

of who African-American families are

that has a father, that

has a mother, that has children

that, you know, that

have their education

or that are entrepreneurs

or that, you know,

that are law abiding citizens,

you know, that love their country.

You know, whatever.

This this narrative is just simply not

told.

No, it's not

and it's been

it's been a very profitable narrative

to just focus on the most

the worst examples,

the stereotypes of our culture

without actually having a full,

comprehensive scope.

Because, again,

I mean, part of

goes to what you said is not

that's what's been used to entertain.

That's what people have found

entertaining, entertaining,

and what I love about you

is that not only

are you changing the narrative,

you're using

that you're using that algorithm

and turned it on its head, right?

You use the algorithm as entertainment.

and turned it on its head to say, look,

this is who we are.

This is a more complete picture

of who we are,

not just what you get in entertainment.

So I think what you're doing

is revolutionary.

I definitely want to come to the family table

at some point. Let me put it out there. OK.

I want to come to the family table sometime

second season. Yeah.

We'll have to be there for that.

So how do you keep everybody grounded?

This is a lot, right?

This is in principle.

You've done it. You've done it.

You've done a great job.

How do you keep your kids grounded

throughout this process where they

they certainly have

a certain level of celebrity

and now you want to make sure,

of course, they're grounded

in the principles of Christianity

and in the family values.

How do you balance that out with

with them being celebrities?

Because that I would think that would be

one of the biggest challenges.

Well, you know, it's really hard

to build a home

after the foundation is set

and to restructure

it, you'd have to break up the foundation

and start over.

And so I would say that

while it is possible,

we were blessed and

fortunate to set the foundation right.

And so before they were superstars,

they were just humble pastors, family.

I was a pastor.

My wife was first lady

in a very small church in Ontario.

Canada.

Membership was probably maybe 250.

That's where I began.

And

and I've pastored other churches

where there's been a thousand plus.

But, but where I really began,

like from my own senior

as a senior minister,

it was in a small country type church.

And and we would go to we'd go to prayer

meetings on Wednesday night,

you know, and, and interesting story,

I remember and we homeschooled

we homeschooled our entire life.

We really believe in homeschooling

So when I say homeschool

and a lot of people think

I think everybody needs

to be homeschooled first and foremost.

OK,

every family.

But I don't mean homeschooling

in the traditional sense

where people think like

you keep your kids

away from the school system.

Now, that's what we did.

We homeschool them in the home.

But when I say

everybody needs to homeschool,

what I'm saying is, is that you

as a parent

are responsible

for your children's

education and raising them

so even if you send them to school,

which is fine,

you're responsible for what they learn,

you're responsible

for their values, you're responsible

for teaching them how to live

and then ultimately launching them.

And the school system does not

launch your children.

They don't set them up for autonomy.

They don't set them up for for life.

You're responsible for that.

And so each family needs to homeschool.

A few things that can break down

with that statement.

People like to blame

the public school system,

and there are issues

with the public school system. Right.

But ultimately, it is your responsibility

to empower and educate your family.

Schools are never going to do that.

They weren't even designed

designed to do that.

Schools were designed

to basically make workers

and factories from that point of view.

Right.

An old model

that needs to change doesn't even.

There

kind of

looks like the prison system, too,

if you look at. It.

I mean, kind of.

Right.

The yard the yard

where you go out to play,

you know, you have to sit in don't

you have to move from this class

to that class?

You're told

constantly what you have to do next.

You know, the

the the lunchroom looks

just like the chow.

You know, where you go and slop the food.

I mean,

the bell rings

and, you know, the time to move.

Time to move.

Everybody moves in the same direction.

You know, when you stop

and look at the school system,

it really designs our children

to be able to to be good workers, to be.

But it doesn't design

them to be intelligent, free thinkers.

And to be entrepreneurs.

So you have to learn the same thing.

And

the learning

style is systematically designed

you know, for a certain type of thinker.

Yes.

And so if your child is sitting there,

you have some geniuses

inside your classroom.

That will never reach their potential.

And it's when they drop out of school

and I'm not suggesting

that you need to do that,

that's when they thrive.

And that's where we have the millionaires

and that's where we have great leaders

and that's

where we have huge corporations.

You know,

they came from people

that we're not successful

in that prison system.

No, there's not.

There's no question about that.

It's

a very monolithic way of teaching,

of learning.

And and I will make this

very clear for my kids,

because sometimes I say

the same things that you're saying

and we had this debate with my wife

at home and everything. I'm like, yes,

school is important

in terms of learning how to learn.

I get that.

But they're not going to teach you

how to think like an entrepreneur.

You can't depend on them to do that

because the system was not designed

for that.

The system was designed

to make you

be a worker,

to put you in debt and make you oh,

yes, you contribute to the system

and make other people wealthy.

Like that's really what they teach you.

When they teach you how to go about saving.

They don't teach you

normally about investing.

They teach you to go about having a job.

They don't teach you

about what it means

to be an entrepreneur. Conformity.

Yes, conformity.

They don't teach you

how to leverage your money.

And they don't teach you

that saving your money,

and just putting it in

the bank is actually losing money

because of inflation.

So these are things you don't.

And then the bank takes your money

and then your bank invests it

where you should be investing it.

So when you go to the bank

now, especially in these days

where they limit

how much you can take out,

you can go to the bank.

and you can say, hey, can I have

can I take out my 100,000?

And they're like, No, I'm sorry.

You know, you give me 30.

Wait, wait, hold on, hold on.

You know, I need 100,000 out of my money.

No we can only give you 30

because what we're doing is

we have this invested in this

and this and this.

But don't worry,

come back tomorrow, make an appointment.

If you want that kind of money,

you come back.

Wait a second. I want my money. You know

what I'm saying?

My money is being invested. So.

So no bank accounts, is not it?

It doesn't teach you

your children about taxes.

Doesn't teach you about full history.

Let's keep going with it.

I mean, it does it.

You got to teach your kids

and take time with your kids

to inform them

because otherwise, you know,

the most powerful

the only thing we have

the ability to control

is our thoughts actually.

Right. Nothing else.

If we really.

Don't have the ability to control anything else so.

Much.

I mean, my wife, we were in our Ph.D.

programs

We literally

and then we were like,

wait, wait, hold on a second.

Why are we going to go into this Ph.D.

program? You know, we both have Masters.

I have two. She has one.

So we're educated people.

Like, you know,

but the thing about it is,

is that we realize, wait,

why are we going to get a next degree

when we have all this debt?

Why are we going to have another degree?

Why don't we use

the knowledge that we just had

so we're not anti-education

because we're very educated.

We are just

we just understand the system.

So that's

why we're able to even help people

who are educated

take the education that they got

and now leverage it

to find how they can use it

in a way that will work best for them.

Because we're both we're both

we respect both worlds.

Which you have to right?

there is like you got to have

if everybody was an entrepreneur,

no one would be a worker so the

and there's you need both, right?

You need both.

But I think everybody needs

to have an entrepreneurial mindset.

Even if you're not

even if you're not an entrepreneur.

Like,

how do you make sure

that you have other sources of income?

How do you leverage

what you have

the knowledge

you have beyond just where you work

and how do you leverage and

leverage the income

you have now

so you're not always dependent

on one source of income?

That's really the part

everybody doesn't

have to be an entrepreneur.

Everybody needs to be entrepreneurial

in their thinking

and how they apply things

and never assume that

a companies are going to be there

to take care of you

because those days are long

gone and done.

All right.

So what's the

best advice you've received

and what's the worst?

Best advice that I've received.

I think that the making sure

that you are

trying to own as much as possible

your yourself,

brand yourself branding yourself,

I think that God has given us each one

giftedness inside of ourselves.

And so I think that

learning how to discover

what God has placed inside of you

and then and then branding

that finding a way

to monetize it,

finding a way

to let it become attractive to others

so that others can get to know

who you truly are.

I think what happens is, is that

most of us are told

kind of what we should do

or what we should be.

You know,

we're looking at other people

and we're saying maybe I should be that

because that looks lucrative.

And I think we're missing the opportunity

when we are not following our

the path that was designed for us.

That's not the easy way.

But if it's following,

the path is designed for us

and then and then learning money,

money, skills and how to monetize it.

Yeah,

those are two things

that if you can do that

and if you teach your children

that, that will be great.

So I was doing an interview

with Matthew McConaughey over his book

and the Green Lights.

It's a great book.

Yeah. We were helping promote that.

And yeah,

we thought it was fascinating too it

was a concept that he had in there

that I resonate with.

And the concept is

is this thing where it's like

many people consider themselves

almost like they're the arrow,

an arrow and a target.

And so when they see themselves

as an arrow in their life as an arrow,

they're constantly looking at ways like,

I got to hit the target.

If I don't hit this target,

if I don't get this test,

if I don't get this job, if I don't get

if I missed the mark, then that's it.

I missed the mark you know what I'm saying,

but Matthew switched it and he said,

I'm more the target

so the opportunities come to me.

I let yeah, I am like a magnet.

My wife prefers magnet

because she's like, We're black.

We can't be targeted.

Yeah, but it might be better.

So we're the magnet, not the target.

Yeah.

I'm with your wife, right?

But.

But but I get what Matthew say.

You get. Yes, target.

Because the target means

that opportunities

come into you. You're drawing

opportunities to you.

And that's what our God given gift to do.

When we align

our God given gifts with our purpose,

we become targets.

Or we become magnets

where we don't have to shoot our shot.

Yeah. Shots get shot to us.

So let me give you an example.

When?

When what's his name?

The Dr. Fauci

Yeah.

You will see us doing an interview

with Dr. Fauci

at the height of the pandemic

Dr. Fauci called us.

We didn't call Dr. Fauci

Wow, Dr. Fauci

Saw us working in our element.

His team called us

and said we need to work with this family

because we need to make sure

that we are connecting with

the black community.

Then Biden

and Kamalas team,

they're having

a tumultuous time in our country,

culturally and in everything

they called us to to rock the vote

Then they invited us to the inauguration,

and we were part of the inauguration

with Kiki Palmer.

They called us

That's pretty awesome.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

So these are examples that I'm saying.

And when you're in a situation

where you're not

at the mountaintop experience,

you don't see the future yet.

So you need your faith.

You needed

the eyes of faith, the faith

that is the substance of things,

hope for the evidence of things

not yet seen.

So I'm sitting in my car now coming back.

I'm ordering them pizza

we're coming back.

You know,

I'll put on SpongeBob

or I'll put on a cartoon that they like

and they'll be in the

back and la la la la la

fast forward now to that

future that you had not seen that that

that time where the Bible promises us

that the faith is

the substance of things, hope

for the evidence of things not seen

now we fast forward.

My children are sitting around

the writing table

with the director

of SpongeBob movie, the president of Nickelodeon.

Oh, wow, OK. Wow.

Their favorite shows

and their favorite actors,

they're now operating in that circle

so when I saw God do that miracle

and then the miracle of taking me

and my family

so that I will now

be able to be a representation

because mission to me

matters far more than money.

Like the money is there.

Yeah,

but the mission is everything for me

because I already know that

this money's gone

Like, like at the end of the day,

this money is going to be Gone

And for me,

our mission is important

because there's too many kids of color

that is

does not see

representation of themselves,

do not see accurate

representation of themselves.

And I be I believe in beholding

you become change.

So I don't need to preach.

We don't preach.

We don't preach.

Anything except for we make them laugh.

We tell the story, make them laugh,

feel the heart. That's what we do.

Because by

beholding you become change

they will get our spirit.

They will get our positivity.

They will see us

just like we saw The Cosby Show.

And we will feel like

I could become a doctor.

I can become a lawyer because I see. Yes.

Yes.

Barak Obama doesn't have to do one thing

for black people.

He just has to sit in that position.

And he already accomplished

what he needed to accomplish. Yep.

Because I can become the president.

That's exactly right.

Brown Now

she is sitting on the highest courts.

She doesn't have to do a ruling

that I agree with

from this point on.

Our daughters know

they can sit on the highest court

by beholding.

We become change

so we can shift our culture.

We can shift

the trauma that we've been spewing

since slavery.

We can shift the trauma

that we have experienced

through drugs infiltrated in our homes.

We can shift the trauma

that we experience

as a family has broken up by beholding

and seeing that it's possible

for us to change the narrative.

What's a what is a theme?

A Google

ad that stands for What You Stand For

or the Onyx kind of brand.

What is that theme?

What does that saying and why.

A Google ad. It could be.

A Google ad.

It can be a it could just be a

a billboard that has a saying,

whatever you're saying is,

what does that say and why.

So if there was a billboard,

it would say that billboard would say

We each are loved

perfectly, eternally.

Mirthell Onyx, pleasure having you

on, please come on again, man.

All right, man, take care.

Thank you for having me.