Ariel Fitz-Patrick | The Deal with Nissim Black (Full Episode)

[Music] so ariel thank you so much for joining me today on the deal i do appreciate it uh you're coming from the cold uh continent of canada i know it's not a continent but it's so almost like you guys are up there by yourselves because i feel like canada never gets enough love thank you so much for coming on the show thank you so much for having me thank you i really appreciate it really okay so let's let's start this thing so take me through your journey what inspired you not only to commit to creating content but you're doing faith-based content you're doing christian content uh on the platforms which isn't so prevalent so well it's it kind of began um basically at the end of 2020 where i was already on youtube i was doing like hair tutorials and beauty tutorials and i was just getting really really tired of it to be honest like i always knew i wanted to be on social media and be my own creator and all that stuff but i was like i wanted to be able to express myself more i felt like i had more of a personality to give that i couldn't showcase through my hair videos so and plus there was like a lot going on as well i didn't know where to go in life i was just confused so i remember a very specific day where i got down on my knees and i went on my like by my bed and i was literally like so frustrated and i came to god frustrated and i was like god like i need a change i don't know what to do i'm like the school brought i wasn't working for me this wasn't working for me so i'm trying this so i was like talking to him pretty like in a pretty anger sorry anger in a pretty like angry mood and i said okay here's the thing there's a new thing that's popping called tick tock and i want to try it i said if it's for me then bless it if it's not for me then you know just let it flop and then i'll figure something else out and long story short i started creating content i had no intention really to create faith-based content that wasn't really my my goal i never had a problem with it but i wasn't thinking about it but it kind of just naturally flowed into that because i wanted to make day-to-day relatable content and honestly god is in my day-to-day like in every little thing i do i'm talking to him or having some kind of discussion or being reminded of god and everything so it kind of naturally just came out that way and people really related to it which was kind of surprising to me but i was happy about it because i'm like okay cool so now i could actually talk about god but be myself at the same time so that's kind of where it started so i'm not i'm not a huge user of social media myself and and but you know obviously it's there you can't escape it everybody sees it right yeah you believe though because you were able to take it and make it more faith-based content right that it's improved social media a little bit you feel like more people are getting improvement for it because at the end of the day it's funny stuff is comedy you're putting on stunts you you know um you're doing your thing but at the same time you feel like people leaving something leaving with something from it yeah at first i didn't really notice that it was really having that much of an impact on people i was just doing it thinking that you know whatever this is just chill it's for fun and it's really when my parents like one day they're like no ariel like this is actually good for social media doing something good for people and then receiving it's honestly when i started receiving all these messages from people saying like oh my goodness you have no idea what your content does for me your content literally made me start talking to god again i forgot about this and i'm like oh wow so i'm happy that i can do this on social media because you know people said sometimes they're tired of seeing the same old same old all the time that doesn't necessarily bring like a good change so yeah i can now i can definitely see that it actually does affect people in a good way and i'm happy that i can do that that's amazing so you have over 200 2 million followers i almost said 200 2 million 2 million followers with 2 million people uh turning to your account every single day now this is obviously you know amazing and i'm sure it didn't happen overnight although it may feel like it happened overnight whatever request or maybe it did do you feel because of that you have a lot of pressure um people are like people watching me you know um yes but to be honest because i'm i'm i'm a pk so i'm kind of like used to that feeling of people always like looking at me and expecting things with me and it probably is about pk meaning a preacher's kid right yes right if we just gotta explain that to my audience nobody knew everybody was like a pk everybody's probably like at the moment they see this like on google like what's a pk okay preacher's kid yeah my man features kid so when you grow up as a preacher's kid like you kind of feel that pressure already and it used to bug me more before but as i got older i started you know being able to just handle it better where i know like you can't please everybody and i think the most important thing for me is that i please god and that i'm the best example that i can be and but i think the pressure that's still kind of like i feel more is um when people ask me questions and they're like okay well this is what i'm going through my life right now and i feel like you can help me and i'm just like sometimes i really don't know what to say sometimes i don't know because sometimes people look at you and they think you have all the answers because they think you know your bible so well and all that stuff and i'm like i'm still growing too so sometimes i feel like i do feel that pressure people think i could i have the answers for them for everything and i don't and but i try to be as honest and down-to-earth so whenever i try to give my advice i come from a place of like you know this is this is what i've been through this is what god has taught me so far so i could tell you xyz but yeah that's the kind of pressure that i feel most no i totally understand you know i i i as much as i'm not always on the social media youtube there's also a form of uh social media also too but i'm saying that the content once it's out there you you essentially you're putting yourself out there right uh yeah and no matter no matter how you look at it you putting yourself out there especially even if you're a person of faith um you're putting yourself out there for more criticisms right yeah so yeah people leave i'm sure they probably have because it's just the world we live in today anyway as people have anybody left negative comments on your stuff and and how do you approach it and do you respond to them you know how do you approach when you get negative feedback yeah um yeah for sure people leave negative comments there's not a lot thank god like the positive always outweighs the negative how was it right like by so far so it doesn't bother me um i think too because i was on youtube before it kind of prepared me for all of that so negative comments sincerely do not bother me um i rarely extremely rarely answer those kind of comments unless i see it something that needs to be rectified but i don't know i guess because when you have so much positivity coming in it's so hard it's really so hard to focus on the negative and a lot of times the negative is people not even understanding you correctly or sometimes it's people just trying to not even sometimes i have to remember they're not coming after me sometimes they're just coming after god you know like whatever maybe they don't believe in god so they're just upset with what i'm saying or you know those kind of things so i don't allow that to bother me because see me myself i agree with you i feel like if it's somebody who's like anti-god like that's a complete waste of time we already not even in the same whatever yeah that's a you're trolling for no reason at all uh yeah in that case but when it's maybe people who are members of the same faith of the same community that question your uh your devotion to god or your devotion to faith because you don't fit their textbook of what it's supposed to be you know what i mean yeah that's when it gets a little bit it gets a little bit tougher so i'd imagine that it'd be a little bit harder to refrain from some of those those ones sometimes maybe yeah those are the ones that are like out of all the negative comments it would mostly be coming from the christian community and just like you said it's because you don't fit what they think should be a christian so it's kind of like um you know the way i do my hair or the fact that i wear makeup or just the fact that i laugh in my videos or i'm making comedy there's there's so much like there's so many opinions about that so i'm like i can't please you all right you know what i mean so that's why it doesn't bother me completely understand it so a lot of the stuff that you do is uh biblical stories and what's your favorite story i wanted to ask you what was your favorite story that you would say from from the bible or you know spiritual if you have a favorite i have a favorite i never acted it out though it's um well one of my favorites it's hard to choose a favorite but one of my favorites is the story where daniel was praying and fasting and for seven seven days yeah and then um he didn't know at the time but then when the angel finally came with the message the angel was like oh by the way daniel god answered you from your first day it's just that we were fighting feels like fighting the problem with the prince of prince of persia right yeah i thought that was so i still think that's like so cool like and he's like hey he gives this message okay i gotta go back and help the others now i'm like oh okay cool right it's like a nice look into the spiritual realm and no it definitely is it's that's actually one of my favorite stories it's very interesting you mentioned that i talk with this about my kids and try not to scare them a lot or whatever not only that daniel was very very afraid when he sees it there's a so many different details inside of that story he he's he's stricken with fear so much so he can't even stand up angel has to give him power to be able to stand up the other two people with him they're scared and they don't even know why they're scared it's it says he saw it they didn't see it but they got scared it's a very interesting thing so on one of our very you know holy commentaries in the gemara talks about that that sometimes uh we don't see things but our our uh what we say our mazal i don't even know how to translate that see but sometimes we have a certain intuition a higher aspect i'm doing butcher by trying to translate this hebrew word by the way you should know but uh sometimes there's things that we can't see but we we have some type of intuition from some type of uh understanding of something that's there even though that we ourselves can't see it and sometimes we feel fear sometimes we feel different things so um that story is super duper powerful and yeah i don't know why you haven't acted it out yet but okay it's all good you know you gotta get it gotta get it figured out yeah i gotta figure that out okay so you you spoke a little bit before earlier uh about prayer i've had numerous of you know um conversations with other people about it that's my thing more than anything else that's my thing it's a little bit easier i would say probably in the christian world because there's not so much of an emphasis on study as much as there is in the jewish world i i do obviously know the christian world i come from my father's also i'm a pk also you should know so you know even though it says study to show thyself a proven different thing it's not a very big cultural thing in the in the in the christian world especially in the african-american uh christian world so we tend to somehow um fall a lot on prayer and and what i've come to find out more about my uh about myself is that even though i i prayed and i spent a lot of time on prayer i sometimes didn't even realize the benefit of what prayer actually does what it does for me what it does for you know the the my my success my future my everything and what it does for even those around me everybody that's in my bubble gets gets some type of uh benefit from that prayer that bubble that's created by my prayer in terms of yourself do you see that as probably being the key instrument and your way of connecting to hey god it's crazy you say that because um like you said like okay i was born into the christian world you know so i a lot of times i think the problem with that is that you get so used to the i don't know if this is the right word but the tradition of it all that you don't actually start recognizing how important these things that we talk about all the time are and i always knew prayer was important because obviously you know christian you go to church you open the church in prayer you close and pray all these things but i had to really learn when life started to hit me hard like really really hard that's when i had to learn okay this is not just wake up in the morning thank you god for this day help me get to this david and then continue about my day that's it i had to literally create that relationship where i was to a point where i was like okay so i can't live without prayer right now it's like i have no choice but to connect with god not just once twice a day but throughout the day build that conversation with him like he said bring everything to him in prayer like like every little thing i had to bring to god in prayer every little thing that i was going through i had to realize okay this is how i live now like now i can't go through the day without praying i used to right but now like i had to even with the tick tock when people always ask me they're like oh well how did you do it how did you get successful in prayer and i'm like i'm in tik tok and i'm like as crazy as it sounds i prayed about it and i didn't just pray but i believed and i was i took i took the scriptures that i saw and i was like i was literally like putting in god's face you said this and if i pray about this and i believe that i've already received it it's mine and i had to like start practicing it every single day and i've seen the like it's crazy just this past year alone i've seen the benefits i just really started praying wow and i'm seeing like doors open like crazy and i'm like oh wow this thing is real and it's necessary like we can't be playing about this like just doing it for tradition's sake like this is our life you know it's it's real and i feel like you know so many people who have had their the ups and downs no matter the even the the the faith no matter the background if it's jewish or live deal christian or whatever the case is whatever it is that people that generally find themselves in a very weak relationship with god is because you find usually there there's been a lack of prayer right uh it is usually that there's something there's a key component missing which is the the entrance to any relationship is communication right once there's communication then we have a relationship once you stop communicating that the relationship is not that strong no matter how close you may be to somebody and there's certain things and people that you'll know and they'll always be there for you and different things like that but without the communication there's a certain there's a there's something missing with it within that bond uh that's there so that's very powerful i'm happy you shared that with my listeners um so back back to back to tick tock a little bit there so not only are you a tick tock star but you also sing uh you sing with your sister you know so you guys uh have something so you you're not only a pk you're also in the choir so i want to know maybe maybe not i don't know if you inquire not but how do you which which which one of those things play more of a a part for you i'm saying at least you know i'm sure obviously the tick tock thing is your passion now that you found like wow this is my passion making people laugh on tick tock or whatever or is it more so than music and and and singing well i don't think i could have one without the other like i i sincerely i love to create so it's not just with music it's with anything with writing with like acting with with everything i really because i've been asked this question a lot and i'm like i really can't see myself just living one even before tick tock started yeah and i was like yes i want to do music but i need to do more i love i love all of it i love being having my finger in you know almost everything it's just it's an important part for me i can't just stick to one thing so music is extremely important to me but also is writing creating scripts and stuff like that it's like it all makes me me got it got it got it yeah so when you let's talk about musical influences what about the what do you listen to because everybody wants to know my you have two million people watching you the what are you listening to who do you listen to obviously in the christian world there's so much i mean you have a plethora of music of great christian music honestly in the modern world also you're more old gospel you like more contemporary people there's the derrick miners look craze gavis all these guys are that really not your speed anyway or you rather listen to secular music um i i grew up listening to gospel so like that was the only music allowed in my house so i'm still like it still is that way so it's like gospel's all i really listen to uh i grew up listening number one was kirk franklin i would say and um mary mary and as i got into my teens it turned to lecrae and the flame and trip uh what's his name oh my gosh that's a baby right now is it the right name tripley why do i feel like that's not it anyway like that the 116 gang and um i love old school music so i love like leandra johnson's music and the choir music so all that it's a mix of the world all of those so yeah one of my last but not least question i want to know about the future what's the future for you do you feel like uh you want to explore more in your um amongst your creative your creative talents more so in the music world more so on exploring other platforms of social media or or what that's what i want to know i would really love to get into acting like that's what i i've always lowkey want to but now i more and more want to do it um acting world i want to get more into music for sure i want to get into like being able to actually sing in front of people and you know perform in different cities different countries and yeah like i feel like social media will always be there but it's not like my whole like my biggest name is yeah it's not my life to be on social media because i have i like social media but at the same time i don't i have my little you know moments on like i really don't like social media but you know so i i'm happy because it's a great tool to get me towards my bigger goals which is to actually you know be acting in movies one day or to be touring around the world or stuff like that but who knows amazing listen having done the touring part i just let you know it's very exhausting so yeah make sure you rest well you eat well i'm i'm heading out this week i am going off to have 18 different places i'm going to and i'm totally wow every bit of it can be very exhausting so prepare yourself very well okay mentally and spiritually for that i have no doubt about it that you'll actually actualize it so uh i wish you only the best thank you so much for coming on my show and i'm looking forward to hearing about even greater and bigger things by you thank you so much it's my pleasure to be here [Music] you