Hope Summers

First and foremost, I attribute my success to my Creator. We are Native Americans, Cherokee and Lenape, and I know that knowing who you really are, not who you are told that you are, is essential. It's about your connection with something that's other than you, that you can't see or hear in the traditional way, but that you feel. My mom has been passed since 2008, but I know when she's present. There's definitely a higher power than us, and you have to get up every day and be thankful. My willful curiosity is my success, because I'm not a typical person that will accept certain things. There's gotta be more to it, or a different way of doing things that can benefit everyone. It's all about relationships that you have with your Creator and other people, because we're not islands, we can't do it by ourselves. My mother was a really influential driving force, because I could see how she, with the help of really no one, just kept it moving. My grandmother went to college at [AGE] and couldn't read or write, and instead of condemning her, I used to gently influence her until she finally came around. Success is relationships. I tie everything back to that. When I pass away, nobody will be able to say that I knew there was a need and I didn't help.

Do it anyway, even if you're scared. Don't let too much time pass by. Align yourself with the people that you want to aspire to be. It's okay to be uncomfortable. You can't grow if you're not uncomfortable, because life is not a straight line for most people. The last thing is you have to be willfully curious to find things that you're not meant to know.

I would tell them time moves so fast. Don't waste it. Get around people that are going places, and I don't mean just people with money. I mean people with morals, people with a direction, or people who's speaking the direction. When people tell you just go for your dreams, they never tell you how. That irks me, because that's all I heard when I was young. Find out how to go about your dreams. It's not like when we were in high school, we didn't have phones to look up things. We were taught go to school, get married, have some kids. Nobody tells you how. Get with people, even if it's not your family. Because sometimes, 9 times out of 10, it's not going to be who you think you are that's gonna help you. My success comes from my mom, my godmother, definitely, because she was more the mommy side. My mom was not soft, but she made sure I went to school. And my own drive that the Creator has given me. Even with all this craziness going on now, you feel like you're tired of fighting. There was a spirit put in us to fight, because most other people couldn't endure what we endure. But yet, we keep rising.

The constant change in the rules as far as artists getting paid, and the pushback. The streaming services are very competent. They purposely make the language as though you have to either hire an attorney, or you have to really spend the time to research what it is, and it's still not interpretable for some situations. This is why the platform for a colleague of mine was formed, to give the opportunity for artists to see their money, see who's given it to them, where it's coming from. It's always been a mystery because there were other elements involved in the entertainment industry that are very unsavory. That's why you see some of our biggest artists who are not with us anymore. Case in point, Angie Stone, who is in the group with Cheryl of the sequence, there's an investigation going on of how she actually really died, because she just released a video that said she was going to fight to get her royalties back, so it can be very dangerous. Besides the men trying to keep women down, some of the women have taken on that persona with the challenge of each other. But the good thing is I have a good core of women that we uplift each other in this business.

Connection is most important to me. People say honesty all the time, but you shouldn't have to wait for somebody to ask for help. If you see that it's a person that's always grinding, a person that's always extending themselves, sometimes that person gets overlooked because people don't think strong people need help. The person that's usually the most in need sometime is a strong person, because they're so busy helping other people. People don't think that they need help, and 9 times out of 10, that person that's always helping others won't ask. So, check on your strong friends. You shouldn't have to ask. Can I do something for you today? You know, connection. People say honesty all the time, but you shouldn't have two faces depending on who the person is.