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.
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.