Beauty, brains, and charisma, Krystal Garner is a young lady with a very impressive resume. She’s an actor, model, event coordinator, manager, radio host, and philanthropist. Garner’s most recent accomplishment is being a competitor on BET’s ‘The Grand Hustle’ starring music mogul, Grammy award winner, and entrepreneur, Clifford “T.I.” Harris. Garner along with 15 other competitors, are all battling for $100,000, and the opportunity to win an executive position in T.I.’s entertainment empire.
Garner is no stranger to television. She also stars in ‘The Ave Series’ and ‘Anything but Love’, both on Amazon, as well as ‘Super Model’ on Netflix. Garner has a strong love for entertainment, and an even stronger love for the youth. She’s a highly sought-after motivational speaker, who uses her words and her influence to encourage young people, to dream while wide awake. Garner says it’s a quote that she lives by and wants others to live by as well.
The Season Finale of, ‘The Grand Hustle’, aired last night, Thursday, October 4, 2018, and she WON!! We were able to catch up with the winner, for an exclusive interview about her time on the show, as well as other projects she’s working on.
MillBuzz: We’ve read your bio and watched an interview you did recently, and obviously you were a hustler long before ‘The Grand Hustle’. What inspires you to keep going and to take risks?
Garner: Honestly, what really inspires me is spending time with my family and understanding our history, and where we come from. I want to be that person who breaks that generational cycle of struggling and not having things already out there for future generations, as other cultures have. I want to be the person in my family to show them and other people with similar backgrounds that it is possible to go after your dreams and achieve them to the next level.
MillBuzz: You’re on T.I’s show, ‘The Grand Hustle’. Can you tell us about your experience on the show?
Garner: My experience has been super phenomenal. Watching it on TV, I can really see what we were doing, and how we were representing the culture very well. We’re all young entrepreneurs, all with the same goal in mind, to use our hustle to get to the prize. We had to set aside our differences, and work together as well as compete at the same time. It was an interesting dynamic, and I’m grateful I got to experience it with such cool people from across the United States, and hello, I got to work with T.I. When he walks in the room, you can feel his presence before he starts to speak. To be around a person who I aspire to be like and work with, is so dope.
MillBuzz: When you saw the advertisement for the show, did you know immediately you wanted to do it?
Garner: Of course. As soon as I saw it I was like this is an opportunity to showcase my skills not only as an entertainer, because that’s the industry I’m in, but also as a hustler. That’s how I’ve survived. It’s how I’ve gotten things done. I’ve taken on so many side gigs, and I feel like my experiences from the past eight years prepared me for this moment. I get to utilize things that I’ve done and use them with the different challenges.
They didn’t tell us, in the beginning, it was T.I. They just said a multi-media, Grammy award-winning mogul, and I said whoever this is, I want to be around them.
MillBuzz: You were competing to become an Executive in a male-dominated industry. What challenges or setbacks have you experienced?
Garner: Yes, super male dominated, but the challenge is not letting that cloud my vision. I know from working in the industry the past few years that it is like that, but I also know my power, and I know it’s the year of the woman, so if awarded the opportunity to work with T.I. I’m not looking at it as male-dominated. It’s time they have a highly powerful woman in their midst, to help everyone be even more successful, and if I get there I would love to bring other women up with me. If I’m the winner, that would be a dope accomplishment for myself because I don’t want to be up there by myself. I want to be with other females in that industry going hard.
MillBuzz: So, your mindset is what you used to overcome those challenges.
Garner: Exactly, your mindset is everything. I grew up without having too many positive influences around me, but one thing that was positive was church. I started going on my own at a young age. The next thing that helped me was reading personal development books when I was a young teenager. I knew going in that house with a whole bunch of people, that my mindset had to be on point.
MillBuzz: I love your motto “Dream While Wide Awake.” How do you explain that to young people who can’t see past where they are right now?
Garner: This is very passionate for me. My younger brother at age 17 went to prison, and he’s been incarcerated for ten years now. That has pushed and motivated me. Anytime I can, I speak to young people that are from underprivileged neighborhoods. I can show them that where they’re from doesn’t define who they are. It doesn’t make them a criminal. It doesn’t make them someone who can’t graduate and go to college. It doesn’t make them someone who can’t be the next top CEO of a company. The only way I can get them to listen is by being that example. I do a lot of motivational speaking in the schools, and I keep it 100 with the kids. I tell them I’m from the hood-hood. I let them know I can relate to them, and if I can make it out with all the odds against me, they can make it out as well.
MillBuzz: Other than ‘The Grand Hustle’, can you tell us about other projects you’re working on?
Garner: I’m working on my first personal development book. It’s called The Survival Guide of a Hustler. It’s like Who Moved My Cheese, in that it’s not a large piece of literature, but it’s going to be powerful enough to make people talk and think about it. This is my way of paying it forward, and giving others the tools that helped me, so they can also dream while wide awake.
MillBuzz: Congratulations on the show, on the book, and all your many projects. What can we expect from you next?
Garner: If I win ‘The Grand Hustle’, I’ll work for T.I as an Executive to help him continue to build his empire, and if I’m not the winner, then I’ll continue to pursue my vision because I know my vision and my purpose is bigger than me, and bigger than whatever I can think it could be, so I’m going to continue to ride the waves and hustle hard.
Congratulations Krystal!!!
We are very proud of you and can’t wait to see what’s next…