Welcome to Counter Culture, a talk show normally in a diner.

- Your body temperature is normal.

- On tonight's show, I welcome wardrobe consultant Gregory Jerome, - if you put on clothes that make you feel great, you put on those colors, the right fit, the right textures, you can shift your emotional state at any moment.

- Comedian and comedy writer Glenn Tickle.

- My wife and I had our first daughter, and then I started telling jokes about her.

And those jokes worked better than whatever abstract, absurd nonsense I was trying to make funny.

- And Philly entrepreneur and restauranteur Aaron Anderson.

- The world actually needs a lot of people to get back.

Everybody is not as fortunate.

60 days, I believe, of first responders ate free.

- All right here on Counter Culture.

Mmm!

Hi, folks, Grover Silcox, your host here.

You're in for a treat.

Our guests tonight cover the worlds of fashion, comedy and food.

Up first is a man who follows Shakespeare's advice to dress to impress, or, as Shakespeare puts it, the apparel oft proclaims the man.

But as a professional wardrobe consultant, my first guest believes that the apparel should also reflect the man or woman and this is how he helps his clients, who range from CEOs to job seekers, from students to fans of style and fashion.

And it's a pleasure to welcome Gregory Jerome to the counter.

Gregory, hello.

Welcome.

- Hey, thanks.

How are you?

- Very good.

You're looking spiffy in the trench... Is it a trench coat I see?

Or something....?

- No, actually, it's a safari jacket.

- Oh, right.

So it's like a sports coat, but it's a short jacket.

- How do you become a wardrobe consultant?

How does that happen?

- Good question.

Actually, I started when I was an adolescent.

I grew up in a single parent home with two other siblings, didn't have a lot of means to purchase the latest trends and fashions of my peers.

And it affected my confidence, my social aspect, my attitude, things of that nature.

I wanted to get the latest trends, fashions of my peers.

So I got a job when I was in high school at Footaction.

And it just propelled from there, going to work for Dillard's, Joseph A Bink, Wilson's Leather, Coach.

All these different places to get that education.

- Where did you grow up?

- I have a very interesting journey.

I was born in Oklahoma City.

My parents in our family actually relocated to a place called Texarkana Texas, at first.

And then we migrated to Texarcana, Arkansas, went back to Oklahoma, Tennessee, Los Angeles, Philadelphia.

It taught me a lot of life lessons.

It also opened my eyes to different cultures of the way people live, communicate and even represent themselves in style and fashion.

- Who are some celebrities that you admire for their fashion style?

- I like the way that Dwayne Johnson dresses.

He's athletic, but he still dresses the part.

- Right.

- And I relate to that because I'm an athletic guy.

Justin Timberlake is a very good dresser.

I would also say H.E.R.

H.E.R is a artist.

I love her style.

- Define your role as a wardrobe consultant because in reading about what you do and your work, I was fascinated by how deep it gets.

- My approach to the world of what I provide for services is to educate, uplift and empower my clients to help them understand their personality traits, as well as the cognitive, perceptual, behavioral and emotional factors of the image as well, I believe in co-creating.

That's bringing both of ideas together, inspirations, understanding the person and where they're trying to go in life.

- How does the process start?

Say, I'm your client.

Where do we begin?

So, typically the way it starts, it starts with a 30 minute complimentary consultation, and that's the understanding you, who you are as a person, ♪what you're looking to do, what industry you're going into, because different industries have a different message when you go and interview.

Then we start looking at which stores we should go into.

It's a sense of consultation, style analysis, and then we go shopping.

- Can you do it on a budget?

Believe it or not, I took on a client who I knew very well and his budget wasn't as great.

And believe it or not, his budget was around $200.

I was able to take him to a place called The Wardrobe and purchased him a jacket at a relatively... at a good price.

- Right.

- I took him to Men's Wearhouse and got him a pair of trousers, shirts and a couple of T shirts and a dress shirt.

And we went to...

I think it was like 215, so it was $215, 15 over budget.

Yet he was willing to pay that 15 over budget.

And when he went to his event, after he purchased these items, he responded to me via Instagram message telling me that people noticed an instant difference in his attire.

- You have degrees in psychology and behavioral health.

And actually those two things are at the base of what you do, isn't it?

- That's correct, that's correct.

Being able to tap into how colors may affect not only a person's internal but external behaviors as well, as well as having individuals from the outside looking at you and how they perceive you with the colors that you wear.

- Speaking earlier about feeling better when you are dressing better, that you empower people, and that's what gives you such great satisfaction, is to see people feeling more empowered, more capable because they're dressing the way they should.

- And that goes into, you know, the fake it till you make it cliche.

It really helps internally if you're feeling a certain way, If you're feeling great or depressed, if you put on clothes that make you feel great, you put on those colors, the right fits, the right textures, like those things make an impact on you, so you can shift your emotional state at any moment, giving you an opportunity to present your personality to people.

Gives you an opportunity to actually show who you are.

Start putting in colors and textures together, which I call combinations.

It creates a whole different world for yourself.

I get the most satisfaction of working with people to get them to the next level in their personal life for success or even in their professional life.

- You also have a music career.

That kind of works together.

- I started out as a lyricist in hip-hop.

I conscious hip-hop music and what I do is I collaborate with different genres of music, anywhere from acoustic to rock and roll, blues, jazz, soul, hip-hop.

I've even done classical and performed with an orchestra before.

♪ I'm the questions and answers ♪ ♪ A lover and a fighter ♪ Equal power is my coat of arms.

♪ It's been a very unique journey in the music career, being able to go from a performing artist to an arts educator, where I've been able to create an after school program called Elements of Hip Hop, where I taught like the four distinct elements of hip-hop and later was able to develop a team of artists to go out and teach these same things to schools.

And then I started to actually present these showcases for artists.

Eventually, that turned into formulating a hip-hop festival in Oklahoma.

- What are things looking like going forward?

I know we've had the pandemic.

That's thrown some roadblocks.

- So, moving forward for me, I'm continuing to grow my business, expand it, looking to work with corporations, universities, individuals.

So, marketing strategies is definitely on my list of moving forward to get those people, as well as being able to actually one day own my own boutique store with my own brand of luxury clothing.

- Well, Gregory, that's great.

Good luck with it all.

And maybe one day you and I can walk into my clothes closet and you can pull a few of those real loud plaid suits from 1983 out of there.

- That's a great year, man.

It was a great year.

- Absolutely.

Thanks so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

I appreciate it.

- Same here.

Gregory Jerome, a man who believes that your suit should suit you and give you the confidence to be your own best self.

- Being dad is my favorite thing in life, it's wonderful.

It is also a horrific nightmare.

- My next guest has a name which has given him both trouble and tons of great material as a prolific comedy writer and comedian.

He doesn't go for the easy punch lines unless they get a laugh.

This fellow sees the world as a bouillabaisse of tragedy and comedy from which his humor bubbles up.

Please welcome, for your entertainment pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, the very funny.

Glen Tickle!

How was that?

- Thank you very much.

Still giggling at bouillabaisse of despair.

- I was thrilled with that.

You know how it is.

- Thank you for having me.

- Oh, my pleasure.

My pleasure.

I was fascinated by your technique where you bring the audience into your act.

Tell them, now, here's a joke.

I don't think you're going to like it.

But you're constantly like putting it on pause and then talking to the audience, like an inside.

- This is a true story.

My daughter was four months old.

I got woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of my daughter crying and the sound of my wife pretending to be asleep.

Thank you.

It's fun, is the reason I do it that way.

- Yeah.

I lay out exactly what's going to happen.

I'm like, I'm going to tell you a story.

We're going to do a fun thing together.

I'm going to leave.

But then you guys are going to give me a standing ovation, so I have to come back and tell you the PS of this story.

Otherwise you're not going to get to hear it.

So they know that they're going to give me a standing ovation.

And if they don't, then they don't find out like the next bit of the story.

So, I dangle it in front of them so show ends well.

it's really fun when a show is going well.

It's actually a little bit more fun for me when the show's not going great and I still do that.

And they play along because they want to find out the end of that story.

- Did you start out doing that or is that something that evolved?

- Definitely evolved over time.

When I started, I mean, I think like most people, I wasn't particularly good at comedy yet.

I got like a couple of laughs early on or I wouldn't have kept doing it.

And then a few years in, my wife and I had our first daughter.

And then I started telling jokes about her and those jokes worked better.

So I kind of let the audience tell me that they were more interested in hearing me tell jokes about my daughter than whatever abstract, absurd nonsense I was trying to make funny.

But then the longer I did it, I still found interesting ways to work in kind of weird humor.

I do a bit with my daughter's toy robot that I put on stage and I make him tell jokes.

And the whole point is the jokes that he's telling are not funny.

- And you have the robot right there, don't you?

I do actually.

- Just do... - Yeah.

- Your daughter's robot.

Yeah.

- Yes.

This was a toy that somebody got her.

We registered for him at Babies R US.

We did the baby registry and somebody gave him to her.

And then when I started touring after she was born, I couldn't bring a baby everywhere.

So I just started bringing him and he just like became my little friend on the road.

And I started putting him on stage and making him tell jokes.

He's got a Bluetooth speaker in him.

And I wrote an app on my phone that controls what jokes he tells.

- As with most comedians, and I think you really take it to perfection, bad news is more material.

- Yeah.

The last special that I put out at the beginning of 2020, it's an hour of comedy that I wrote after my younger brother died in a car accident.

- Yes, I watched it.

It was brilliant.

Good Grief.

- Thank you.

- A comedy about grieving references...

It doesn't mean me.

Like I think I'm...

I was really good at it.

I think everybody else was messing it up, because so much of the material came from things that people were trying...

Things people were saying to try to be helpful, but ultimately absolutely were not helpful in any way.

So I wrote them down and then later mocked them on stage.

And I scooped this little bug up and I put it on the deck next to me.

I took a nice picture of it, put that picture up on Instagram.

A friend of mine commented, you know what?

That's probably your brother.

To which I replied... You know what, no, stupid, that's a ladybug.

My brother was an adult human man.

I present kind of a list in the show of things that I don't want people to say.

I end it by giving them one that they can say, but they have to mean it.

If there's anything I can do.

Like you can say that one, but you have to mean it.

The joke in the show is that I kept trying to get people to go mow my lawn, because I didn't want to.

And no-one would do it because they all thought I was kidding.

But I genuinely... Like in the best of circumstances.

I don't like mowing my lawn.

So if I could have gotten somebody to do it out of pity, I absolutely would have taken that deal.

But everybody I asked just thought I was making a joke.

I'm like, no, really, it's quite long and I don't want to do it.

- I loved your material about your kids, - the two daughters.

- Oh, thank you.

- Tell us a little bit about the whispering thing, because after I heard you do it, I think I heard it on your album, - On the first album I did, which I actually recorded next door to where you are.

- ArtsQuest.

- SteelStacks.

When my older daughter was probably two, and she was going through a phase where she just whispered everything that she said, and you think that would be adorable, but it's incredibly frustrating because you're constantly bending over, making her repeat.

What did you say?

But then anything she said would then sound creepy.

I fell asleep on the couch one day for a nap because having a two-year-old is exhausting.

And I got woken up.

She just leans over and is right next to my face whispering, it's apple sauce time.

It's apple sauce time.

Which like...

The sentence Daddy, it's apple sauce time isn't frightening, but when it's being breathed on you by a toddler as you're waking up, it does feel like the last words you're ever going to hear.

- Yeah, it's amazing.

See, this is why having families, getting married, all this stuff is more material.

Are you from New Jersey?

- Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

My entire life.

The town that I that I live in now, I've been here since I was two.

There's very little comedy going on in the rural part of New Jersey I live in, which is why I go to Bethlehem a lot to perform.

When ArtsQuest first opened up, that was that was huge for the Lehigh Valley comedy community.

It gave us a permanent place to kind of build things around, rather than just whatever bar would have us that week.

- Right.

Right.

How many albums do you have?

- 20 16.

Yes, Really was my first one.

And then the special that I put out last year, Good Grief, I released as a special and then also as an album.

But when I put my first album out, I actually started a record label to help other comics put albums out as well.

And in 2019 we put out a compilation.

It's me and a few other Lehigh Valley comedians.

It's called Comedy Grandstand Showcase, The label is Circus Trapeze.

And it's Roya Hamadani, Ian Webster, LeMaire Lee and Kirk Griffiths who are the other comics on there with me.

I did some as well.

- Who are your comedy idols?

Whose albums did you buy?

- Absolute favorite comedian of all time is Steve Martin.

I credit his episode of The Muppet Show more than anything for why I'm a comedian.

We talked earlier about kind of doing the narration of what I'm doing in a joke while I'm telling it.

That I think directly comes from that episode, because it's not just a regular episode.

The set-up is Steve Martin is there, but Kermit double booked the theater because he was auditioning new talent.

So instead of doing the show, Steve Martin just keeps coming out to re-audition for his spot on the show.

It really stuck out with me as a kid.

My grandparents had it on tape, and every time I went there, I wanted to watch it.

They had that episode and the Star Wars episode, because I'm a nerd.

- In any case, before we leave, I think you have a special coming out, don't you?

- I do.

I have a special coming out on Dry Bar Comedy called Glen Tickle The Favorite.

And I don't know when it's coming out because they keep changing the date.

It'll be on the Dry Bar Comedy app at some point eventually.

- Well, we'll look for it.

And in the meantime, I recommend that folks check out your Amazon Prime special.

- Thank you.

- My pleasure.

Thank you so much.

Good luck with everything.

- Thanks so much.

Have a great day.

- You too.

- I'll have the robot wave.

- Glen Tickle.

A clever and talented stand up comic and writer who sees life's absurdities and reports it comedically online, on stage, and currently on Amazon Prime.

My next guest not only successfully owned and operated four of the Original Hot Dog Factory franchises in Philly, but in the throes of this terrible pandemic, when one business after another closed their doors, he partnered with Chef Reuben Big Rube Harley to launch three Big Rube Kitchen ghost restaurants.

This year has been a tough one, especially for restaurant tours, but my next guest has succeeded.

Not only that, he's fed first responders and helped out the kids and families of 150 Ronald McDonald Houses in the City of Brotherly Love, Aaron, how are you?

- Good.

How you doing?

- I'm good.

I'm surprised you even have time to be with us, and I really appreciate that you took it to share your experiences with us and what's going on with the restaurants.

So tell me a little bit about the Original Hot Dog Factory and your new businesses.

- The Original Hot Dog Factory was a franchise that I discovered from watching a TV show.

Once I started to pay attention to the menu, said, you know, I flew down, I tasted the food, I said, this is nothing like it on the Northeast region.

And also, you know, just from an international standpoint, when you think about other hot dog brands, it's just like, wow, this is a good menu.

November of 2019 is when I signed up with the franchise, and in February 2020 I opened up a location.

The pandemic came.

I was already in construction with opening up other locations in Center City, Philadelphia.

So I still opened.

And once I opened, I understood that we weren't going to have customers being able to come in and sit down, and then also the location is predominantly based on foot traffic.

So understanding that these buildings are closed down, I decided to just take the time to start giving back.

And that's how it came about with donating to the first responders, the Ronald McDonald House boys and girls and so forth.

- How did you get together with Chef Reuben Harley with his Big Rube's fried chicken?

Now, I met Chef Rube about a year before the pandemic and I met him at an event, cooking event.

I tasted his fried chicken.

I said, this is amazing.

Like, the best.

I eat out a lot.

I eat at a lot of different places.

So I said, this is really amazing.

But then understanding that he had more to offer than just fried chicken.

Originally, he was only doing pop-ups at the time.

So I would go to them and start tasting a lot of his other food but then also be in a position to where I could get to know him as a person before I decided to present any business opportunities.

And it was like getting to know him and understand that he's a really great person and then he's also talented with the food.

So one day I came to him and I said, I got this great idea.

Let's do a ghost kitchen together.

And that's where it started.

And now we have our ghost kitchen and we have about two brick and mortars about to come as well.

- Now, are you from the Philadelphia area originally?

Is that where you were born and raised from?

- Yeah, I was born and raised near the Logan part of Philadelphia.

- Did you ever think that you were going to grow up and be a business owner with multiple businesses?

I mean, were you selling lemonade on the corner or something?

How did it begin?

- I never thought that I would be doing exactly what I'm doing now.

I wanted to be in the NBA.

You know, where I came from, that was your goal - to play some type of professional sport.

So I thought that I would be in the NBA.

I would have never thought that I would have owned an Original Hot Dog Factory, a Chef Rube, or a Rita, or been a majority owner in a water company.

Never in a million years would I have thought this.

- At what point in your life did that opportunity come and then you went for it, and the rest, I guess, as they say, is history?

- Well, I started out with my own spring cleaning company, and it was through that I kind of learned business and a lot about it and how it goes.

So, the Union Printing was a screen printing company that I had, and that's where I learned everything.

And it was when I started to understand and diversify and doing different things and understanding that it was possible, that's when it just took off.

So this is always...

I've always been entrepreneurial.

- And what kind of advice would you give to someone who has ambition to do it but isn't quite sure how to start?

- Being an entrepreneur is definitely a lot of hard work.

Don't think that anything will come overnight, and put the work in, you never give up, and stay focused.

You learn money management and you understand exactly what you want to do.

And just stay to it.

Understand it's not going to...

It's not going to be all good days.

And then even when you have the bad days, understanding that they don't last.

So just keep your head up.

stay strong and learn money management.

- What's your empire look like now?

- I have four locations of the Original Hot Dog Factory, four locations of Chef Rubes, I have three Rita's, and then also I'm an owner of a water company called Billionaire's Whole Water.

- Wow.

Tell me a little bit about the first responders that you've helped as we go through this pandemic and also the Ronald McDonald Houses.

- So we giving back has always been extremely important.

That's just something that the world actually needs - a lot of people to give back.

Everybody is not as fortunate.

But, like I say, with the first responders, understanding what they were dealing with, with Covid, I felt the way to show my appreciation was to offer them free meals.

And we've done... We did it for about 60 days, I believe, of first responders ate for free, and then with the Ronald McDonald Houses, I mean, these are children that, you know, that have needs and not as fortunate, so that was just another way of just saying, hey, you know, you have someone that cares and let me just show you the best way that I can.

- I want to thank you so much for all that you're doing.

And as they say in the hot dog industry, you're on a roll!

- Thank you.

Thank you.

- You're welcome.

Take care.

Thanks for sharing your time.

I know you're probably at one of your restaurants right now and things are moving.

- I'm here with Chef Rube right now.

You can see him.

- There he is.

Chef Rube, how are you?

- I'm living a dream.

- Oh, boy.

Yes, I see.

And you're sharing the dream with your partner there.

That's great.

- No doubt.

A famous hip-hop artist that wrote Beyonce's Baby Boy and a bunch of other stuff...

I just got off the phone with him.

So there is greatness all around.

- It's called spreading the love.

- Yes.

Show them a picture of the matriarch.

That's my great-grandmother.

That's Sugar and my grandma.

They had me in the kitchen with them and they just showed me this.

They say, look... You know, it wasn't written down.

A little bit it of this, some of that.

And there we are.

- Wow.

Well, they must be so proud of you and what you've done and you're just continuing that with other folks and all the people that you've employed.

I'll thank you for the public because it's a great thing.

Thanks for taking the time out and continued success.

- I'll sign off.

Very good.

Aaron Anderson and his partner, Big Rube, entrepreneurs and restauranteurs who simply do what it takes to succeed and to help others along the way.

Well, that's all for this episode.

I want to thank my guests.

Wardrobe consultant Gregory Jerome.

Comedian and writer Glen Tickle.

And restaurateur Aaron Anderson and his partner, Big Rube.

Thank you for stopping by.

Don't forget to check in with us next week for more amazing guests and great conversation right here at the counter.

Now stay tuned for More The Money with Jeanne Dickerson.

Next up.