ORLANDO, Fla. – This week on “Black Men Sundays,” host Corie Murray interviews William “King” Hollis, a former pro football player turned motivational speaker who has come quite far, from being homeless to scoring international accolades and making his name known worldwide.
“I was on the brink of suicide, mental health, brink of taking my life. My mother passed of a heroin overdose, my father was incarcerated, I cracked my vertebrae, went over to Canada, ended up not making the team (...) one of my teammates and I played arena football way prior to going to Canada, he was out there and I went out there to stay with him. I was bouncing house to house,” he said, describing how things quickly changed after his teammate got in a car accident and was forced to move away. “Now I’m by myself, homeless in Dover, Delaware. I’m putting suicidal messages on Facebook and one of my old arena coaches, that I broke the single-game sack record against, thought a message and he reached out — at this time he ain’t know I had a L1 cracked vertebrae — he’s like, ‘William, I want to give you a opportunity, you know, to play football.’”
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Allowed to sleep in that coach’s basement for a time, Hollis was given a coaching position himself after revealing his injury.
“One day I was sleeping at the Turkey Hill gas station and a teacher named Ms. Robinson was sitting over there and she was like, ‘You’re the coach that coach with the ASI Panthers, I brought some of my youth to the game and I saw you talking to the players, I would love for you to come speak to a group of young men.’ So I went and I spoke, King,” he told Murray. “On that same day, within five minutes, had them in tears. It was the first time I ever spoke about my story.”
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Hollis now claims over 900 million views on YouTube alone and has a popular book published, “The Best Gifts Come FROM THE BOTTOM,” but he said his first big check was one for $10,000 after he became the first and only paid motivational speaker at Milan Fashion Week in 2019, what he considers his watershed moment.
“I’ve been blessed to make amazing killing, between 45, 65k per speaking engagement. I really never had to sell any product. Everything I ever got and everything I’m obtaining is from my voice and the gift God gave me, man,” Hollis said.
Hear the full interview in Season 3, Episode 9 of “Black Men Sundays.”
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