“I've Experienced Six Firings. Lived in Thirteen Cities — The Story I’ve Never Told About My Radio Journey Until Today.”

Anything in life that has tremendous value has a difficulty factor attached to it. If it was easy to have the lifestyle you want, everybody would already be living it. People don’t want to accept that being a successful RADIO personality comes with things that will shake your life up. One of them? You MUST expect to be fired. That’s the baptism into this business.

I’ve been let go from radio stations at least six times in my career—some quiet nudges out the door, some painful, blindsiding endings that still sting when I think about them. I’ve lived in 13 cities, from Chicago to Aiken, South Carolina, and somehow I still can’t tell you how I ended up being inducted into the National Black Radio Hall of Fame in 2023.

I wish my parents had been alive to see it. Their son… the boy who used to lock himself in his bedroom after school and run a four-hour radio shift until dinner time. That was me. 

I always tell my friends:
We are NOT the only people who dreamed of having a radio career.

But I always saw myself traveling the country, climbing those ranks, touching New York, touching Chicago. I turned down a job at 98.7 Kiss in the late 90s. I had a two-day audition at WBLS in 2007. At that time I was at V103 in Chicago, so I was living my dream — from Goldsboro to touching the mic NEW YORK. It took me 20 years to get there… From college graduation at Shaw University,  that period was from 1987 to 2007.

I’ll go into more detail later because that journey deserves its own chapter. What I want more than anything right now is for somebody reading this blog to say:

“Thank you for sharing this… because I thought I was the only one who felt weird and strange about how I saw myself, my dream, my calling.”

From 2007 to today is several chapters of personal growth as a man and crossing over the bridge of discouragement.

Let me tell you about my blowback.
For eight years. Maybe a decade.
I denied it at first.
But the truth is — that blow was catastrophic.

I was in Dallas, Texas. Doing mornings. Winning. Syndicated. One year into my syndication. On my two-year anniversary, they brought me in the office and ended my show. Just like that.

They wouldn’t release me from my contract. Wouldn’t pay me off.
They gave me the keys to the station van.
And I had to drive around Dallas–Fort Worth giving away prizes…
during the Steve Harvey Morning Show.

That was my fault.
My CONTRACT wasn’t tight.
My structure wasn’t right.

And I had just left Charlotte after a nine-year run.
I didn’t have to leave.
But I wanted to grow.

Dallas made me grow up as a man.

I thank Almighty God for permitting that to happen, because I wouldn’t be writing this blog today if He didn’t. Somebody reading this needs to learn how to manage disappointment. Learn how to walk through disappointment and still hold your head up.

I went on a journey where I looked poverty dead in the face… and didn’t fall.
I looked poverty in the face… and it didn’t overtake me.
Yes, I lost things.
But they didn’t break me.

When 2022 hit — that trial?
I came out of it not because I hit a windfall, not because money dropped out of the sky, but because I passed the test.
Relief was coming. I knew I had changed. I wrote about it in my diary. I will always remember where I was when that feeling came over me and made me to know, this part is finished. Not to say I did not have more trials, but that leg of it was finished. Did I have more trials? Hell yeah, because God is always putting the finishing touches on people who have a mission.

I had to cross what I call the Bridge of Surrender.

I learned that the BJ I thought I was… wasn’t the real me.
The BJ Murphy of yesterday is not the same man at all. I don't talk the same talk I use to.
In my personal development done in isolation I had to shed the fake self.
I had to discover the real one.

During that time, I learned to put my COMPLETE trust in God. All of it. I had to go through a battery of tests to prove that I depended on Him for everything.

When you’re given a mission tied to your talent:

Your road is NOT like everybody else’s.
Stop comparing your path to somebody else’s.
You’ll get there — but your highway is DIFFERENT.

Look at how many interstates run through America.
The one you’re on is designed for YOU.
So don’t turn around at the first construction sign.

There’s a Bridge of Discouragement on this journey that you have to cross.
But what God has for you is just for you.
A setback is NOT the end.

It might be raining today, but the sun’s still coming back out.
Don’t make the mistake I made — taking too long to recover.

I want you to be stronger than I was.
Don’t waste ANY time in disappointment.

Never give up.
Never surrender.
Cross over that bridge when you come to it — because after difficulty… comes ease.

There is so much more I will share with you.
Just know this:

You are not alone.
If disappointment has entered your life, I’m not ashamed to tell you the truth…
I know.

And I'm still here.