The Anthony Reeves Experience

  At some point in your life, you may have the opportunity to not only pursue your dream but also live it. But try not to make the mistake that I did and live your dream and try to kill it at the same time. I know that sounds confusing but when I say ‘living and killing your dream’, what I am referring to is that situation where you are in a great position to live your dream to the fullest but you do things to self sabotage your ability to live the dream to the fullest. One of the dangers and problems that I had when I was running my own law firm was that I had quite a few other friends who were also running their own law firms as well. And I fell into this devastating trap of comparing the success of my firm to the success of theirs. I had friends who had their own office buildings. I had friends who had multiple staff in high-rise downtown locations and upscale locations. I had individuals who had a staff of anywhere between 5 and up to 30. And it was tough because even though no...

  That’s right folks. I was once called militant.  If you know me, you will know that militant and me in the same sentence doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Or at least in my mind it doesn’t. But I still remember having a conversation with someone and being told that there were concerns about me being militant.  This came about in the fall of 1989. I had just pledged my fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity Incorporated in the spring of 1989. Now, pledging a black Greek letter organization wasn’t anything special in my mind. But considering that I was the only person initiated into my chapter that was attending my school, it was a unique phenomena. And for those of you who may not be familiar with what pledging was like back in the late 80s, I would encourage you to see the 1988 Spike Lee movie ‘School Daze’. When young people ask me what pledging was like when I was in college, I point them to that movie. Now, you have to understand that in the spring of 1989, in order...

So you find yourself in a difficult position where you have family members and friends who have expertise in a particular area who can help you.  You have one problem though.  You are actually afraid to ask for their help.  This may seem weird to some other people but you have convinced yourself that you don’t want to make your loved one feel as if you are taking advantage of their expertise or asking them to hook you up. This is a situation that happens a lot more common than you realize. If you are in a situation when you have a loved one who has a professional expertise that could help you, it does not hurt to ask. The reality is, there are three responses you may expect to receive. First, they won’t help you. The harsh reality is that depending on the person’s professional background they may have a long-standing personal philosophy where they don’t want to be in a position to have to help their family members or friends. They may be taking this course of action or ta...

As someone who has changed careers about six different times, one of the things that I wish I would’ve learned early in my career was how important it is to take the opportunity to reflect on what skills I acquired from my last job and how I can continue to benefit and maximize those skills going forward. https://www.blogtalkradio.com/mynameisreeves/2021/06/06/evaluate-your-skills-between-jobs Think about the number of times you’ve actually change jobs and ask yourself how willing are you to just dump everything you learn from your old job and just reimburse yourself into your new one? If you’re like most people who have changed jobs, you probably did not give yourself much time in between leaving your old job and transitioning into your new job. If you were like me, you probably timed it so that they would be no break in your pay and no break in your work schedule. In other words you would quit on Friday, start your new job on Monday. But when you left your old job, have you stopped t...

  There are some organizations that you become a part of that leave a lasting impact on your life. In recognition of pride month, I would be remiss if I didn’t take the opportunity to mention an organization that served as a significant chapter to my life. In this organization is the miracle of love, Inc. It still amazes me how I managed to become affiliated. In 2006, I was a young associate in a law firm and I was looking for opportunities to be active in various communities with the sole purpose of trying to find future clients.   During my search, Hilda, one of my classmates from law school and a Human Resource Director for a 501(c)(3), HIV/AID Service Organization in Orlando, Florida called the ‘Miracle of Love, Inc.’( https://miracleofloveinc.org/ ), called and asked if I would be interested in serving on the Miracle of Love Board of Director.  The focus of the organization was to provide services for those affected by HIV and AIDS with an emphasis on African Am...

  For those of you who don’t know, I have been a member of my fraternity for the last 30+ years. In that time period, I’ve had the honor and pleasure of interacting actively with only one of our national presidents. And that person was brother Darryl Matthews. For our 100+ year organization of well over 100,000 members at any given point in time, our president has the distinction of being a leader in the African-American community at the highest level which provides him access to powerful individuals including the president of the United States. Like the president of the United States, our national president is elected every four years which means that during my lifetime there have been at least eight different presidents whose administrations have governed our organization. I use this point as a point of discussion because we often hear people who like to make reference to a particular person being their elected official to kind of imply that anyone other than that person is not r...

Consider me the Goofy kid in the fraternity. I always knew I wanted to be in Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Considering that some of the people I looked up to which included two of my favorite uncles and a mentor at my church who are all members of the same fraternity, I was groomed at a fairly young age. However, the harsh reality is that I never viewed myself as being a fraternity guy. I have no sense of style. I had coke  bottle glasses.  My social skills SUCKED. Even in my own circle of friends, I still felt a little out of place. So imagine my excitement when I was accepted to be a pledge in the spring of 1989 to Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.   But even after being accepted as a pledge, going through the pledge process, and being initiated into the fraternity, I still felt out of place.  Some of it had to do with the fact that I was a student from another university so, unlike my fraternity brothers who were all on the same campus, I was at another sch...