As long as you're consistently working on your craft, your heart is in the right place, and you pair that with being smart on how you present yourself to people, opportunities will appear.

As a young, Black man in America, I look out and (realize) that our community is the most affected by HIV.

HIV is not a death sentence. It doesn't mean life's over. It means that life's going to be different, but you still get to have those moments that people who don't have HIV experience.

You have to believe in yourself and you have to take risks. You know how people say 30 is new 20 and 40 is new 30? Well I think essentially what that's telling us is there are so many opportunities out there, you don't have to rush into something.

You can try your passion for a while and see if it works and if it doesn't, at least you tried. I think that's why I quit my job and went back to acting. I said this is what I'm going to dedicate my life to doing because I didn't want to look up and say, "Man I wish I would have been an actor. I wish I would have tried."

We [African-Americans] are nearly half of all of the new cases of HIV every year, but we only represent 13 percent of the [U.S.] population. So, this is something that's literally bombarding our community, non-stop. We're such a small part of the nation [and] those numbers are alarming. We're putting ourselves in danger, we don't talk about getting tested and we don't talk about knowing [your status].

Once I got my business degree I realized I didn't want to do business anymore. My passion started to kick in and say, "Are you really sure this is what you want to do with the rest of your life? Are you 100% positive?"