Born To Make It by Jonathan Anthony Burkett is coming soon. Here is the first chapter, free.
Nobody handed me a blueprint.
No diploma on the wall. No family business waiting for me. No safety net underneath me if I fell. For a long stretch of my life, the only plan anybody seemed to have for me was that I would not amount to much. I was told I had no future, and for years I half believed it.
So when I named a song “Born To Make It,” and then named a whole album after it, I was not bragging. I was arguing. I was arguing with every voice that said I would not, including the one that lived inside my own head. I was putting down in music something I had to learn the hard way: where you start is not where you are meant to stay.
This book grows out of that song. It is not a book about getting rich quick or looking successful on social media. It is a book about building a life with your own hands, one honest brick at a time, when you started with nothing but broken pieces. It is about believing you were made for more, and then doing the slow, unglamorous work of proving it to yourself.
Let me tell you what that song means to me, and what I believe “making it” really means.
When I say “Born To Make It,” I am not saying I was born lucky. My story is not a lucky story. I was born in Florida on February 1, 1987. I spent my early childhood with my grandparents in Jamaica, and those were happy years. Then, at about six, I came back to the United States to live with my mother and a man I called my father, and the happiness ran out fast. I grew up neglected. I grew up abused. I had a mental breakdown when I was still in elementary school. I had my first major seizure at fourteen, and around that same age I was sleeping on the streets, in cars and in parks.
That is not the résumé of somebody born with an advantage.
So what do I mean when I say I was born to make it? I mean that something was placed in me before anyone had the chance to tell me what I could not do. I believe God puts a purpose in every person before their first breath. The circumstances around you can bury that purpose. They can cover it with so much pain and so much noise that you forget it is there. But they cannot remove it. It is still in you, waiting for you to dig it up and build on it.
The song is about perseverance. It is about ambition that does not apologize for itself. It is about self-belief that has to grow in rocky soil because nobody planted it in good soil for you. And it is about working hard and then actually enjoying what you earn, instead of feeling guilty for wanting more than survival.
That last part matters to me. A lot of people who came up the way I did learned to expect so little that even wanting something good feels dangerous. We learned to keep our heads down and our hopes small, because small hopes hurt less when they break. “Born To Make It” is my way of saying: lift your head. You are allowed to want more. You are allowed to build something that lasts.
I am not going to print the lyrics here. The song speaks for itself, and if you want to hear it, it is out there. What I want to give you in these pages is the story underneath it, and the lessons I have had to learn to live up to its title.
In 2024 I released the album Born To Make It through my own label, Upstormed Records. The same year I released an EP called Life As I Know It. I do not say that to impress you. I say it because both projects came from somebody who has no high school diploma and no GED, somebody who spent years being told he would never do anything worth talking about.
The album is not one note played over and over. It has different sides of the same life. There is a song called Make Money, which is about the hustle, the plain truth that bills do not care about your feelings and dreams need fuel. There is Taking Numbers, featuring Jae Mazor, and to me that title says something about keeping count, setting targets, and refusing to be counted out. There is Pour It and Crush On You, featuring Mykul Leeric, and Pass That, featuring Troyton. Those songs carry the other side of the hustle, the part where you live a little, enjoy the moment, and remember that you are a human being and not just a machine built to grind.
I am grateful for every artist who added their voice to that project. I could not have made it sound the way it sounds by myself, and that is a lesson I will come back to later in this book. Nobody builds anything worth having completely alone.
But I want you to understand the hustle behind the music in a broader sense, because it is the same hustle behind everything else I do. I run Upstormed LLC. I build online stores and write blogs. I wrote and published my memoir, Neglected But Undefeated, through Upstormed. I wrote the Friends 2 Lovers novels and Fighting To Become Champions, and I have kept writing since then. I call myself an author, an entrepreneur, a poet and a music artist, and every one of those titles came from showing up and doing the work when nobody was asking me to.
None of it came from a blueprint somebody handed me. I had to draw my own, and I had to erase and redraw it more times than I can count.
Before we can talk about what making it really is, we need to clear away some of the rubble. A lot of us are building on bad ground because we picked up a false idea of success somewhere along the way.
Making it does not mean looking like you made it.
Think of a young man I’ll call Andre. Andre is twenty-four and works two jobs. He is tired all the time. Every spare dollar goes toward things that look good: shoes, a car payment he can barely cover, nights out where he picks up the bill so people will see him do it. On the outside, Andre looks like he is winning. On the inside, he is one bad month away from losing everything, and he knows it. He lies awake at night doing math that never adds up.
Andre is not a bad person. He is a person who learned, like so many of us, that you prove your worth by what other people can see. When you grow up feeling like nobody valued you, the temptation is strong to buy your way into being noticed. I understand that. But a house built on appearances has no foundation. It looks fine right up until the weather turns.
Making it also does not mean never struggling again. Some people imagine there is a finish line where the problems stop. There is not. I still have hard days. I still face setbacks. I still have to choose, again and again, not to give up. The difference is not that the storms stopped coming. The difference is that I have built something that can stand up to them.
And making it does not mean leaving your values behind. I have seen people treat success like a contest where the only rule is to win. They cut corners, they use people, they lie when it is convenient. They may get money, but they lose themselves, and that is a trade I will never call making it. This book will keep coming back to one simple idea: build it the right way, or what you build will not be worth living in.
Finally, making it does not mean somebody else’s version of a good life. Your parents may have a picture of success for you. Your friends may have a different one. Social media will show you a thousand pictures every day. Some of those pictures may fit you, and many will not. You do not have to build a house that was designed for somebody else.
So what is it, then?
I have thought about this a long time, and here is where I have landed. Making it means building a life that is stable enough to stand on, honest enough to be proud of, and meaningful enough to be worth the work. It means you are no longer at the mercy of every bad wind that blows. It means the people who come after you will have something better to start with than you did.
Think of a woman I’ll call Keisha. Keisha is a single mother of two who cleans houses. For years she worked for other people’s companies, and the pay was barely enough. One day she decided to start taking a few clients of her own on the side. She did not have much. She had a phone, a used car, cleaning supplies she bought a little at a time, and a reputation for being honest and showing up on time. She kept a notebook with every client, every dollar in and every dollar out. Slowly, her own clients grew until she could leave the company she worked for.
Keisha is not famous. She will never be on a magazine cover. She still drives that used car. But she sets her own schedule now, she is home when her children get off the school bus, and she has a little set aside for emergencies for the first time in her life. If you asked me whether Keisha has made it, I would say yes. Not because she has arrived at the top of anything, but because she has laid a foundation that will hold, and she built it herself.
That is the kind of making it I care about.
For me, making it has meant a few different things, and they have grown over time. At one point it meant surviving the day. Later it meant not giving up after surgery. Later still, it meant finishing a book and publishing it. It meant building a label and releasing music, and building a business that could carry all of those things under one roof. Each of those was a floor in a building that is still going up. I am not finished, and I do not expect to be finished as long as I am breathing.
So I want to give you a definition you can actually use. Making it means three things.
First, stability. You have enough ground under your feet that one hard week does not knock you flat. That might be savings, steady income, a roof that is yours, health you are taking care of, or people you can call. It looks different for everyone, but everyone needs it.
Second, integrity. You are proud of how you got where you are. You can look at what you built and not have to hide part of it. Nobody can take that away from you, and nobody can buy it.
Third, purpose. What you are building is pointed at something bigger than yourself. For me, that is honoring my grandparents’ hopes, showing the mercy of God in my story, and giving other people who started where I started a reason to believe. Your purpose will have its own shape. But a building with no purpose is just a pile of materials.
When you have those three things, you have made it, even if you are still building. Especially if you are still building.
There is one more piece of the song I want to talk about, because people who come from hard places often miss it. Working hard is only half the message. The other half is that you are allowed to enjoy what you earn.
Some of us were raised to believe that pleasure is a trap. If something good happens, we wait for the other shoe to drop. If we get a little extra money, we feel guilty spending any of it on ourselves. If somebody compliments our work, we brush it off. We have been in survival mode so long that we do not know how to breathe when the pressure lets up.
I understand that. When you have slept in a car, you do not take a bed for granted. When you have been told you have no future, you are not quick to celebrate the present. But a life of nothing but grinding is not a life. It is a sentence. God did not build you only to labor. The Bible says there is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” Both are part of a full life.
That is why the album has songs about celebrating alongside songs about the hustle. They belong together. The man who never stops to enjoy anything eventually burns out, and the man who only enjoys and never builds eventually runs out. Making it means holding both. You lay the bricks, and then you stand back and look at the wall you built and let yourself feel good about it.
Enjoying what you earn does not mean blowing it. It means marking the moment. It might be a meal with people you love after you finish a big project. It might be buying one thing you have wanted for a long time, with cash you set aside on purpose. It might simply be a Sunday afternoon with your phone off. Gratitude and celebration are part of the foundation too, because they remind you why you are building in the first place.
Ambition is not a dirty word either. Wanting more is not greed when the “more” you want is a stable home, a business that feeds your family, work that matters, and the freedom to help other people. Greed is when wanting more makes you willing to hurt people to get it. Ambition is when wanting more makes you willing to work harder, learn faster and stay honest while you do it. There is a big difference, and you get to decide which one lives in you.
I will spend a whole chapter later in this book on celebrating your wins the right way, and another on whether a person of faith can want big things. For now, I just want you to hear this: you do not have to choose between being a hard worker and being a happy person. You were made for both.
There is a hard truth inside the title of that song. You have to believe it before you can see it.
If you wait for proof that you were born to make it, you will wait forever. Nobody hands you proof at the beginning. The proof gets built one day at a time, and you have to start building before the evidence shows up. That is what faith is. The Bible says it plainly: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith comes first. Evidence follows.
I did not have much evidence for a long time. When I was sleeping in parks, there was no evidence I would write books. When I was lying in a hospital before brain surgery on January 30, 2006, feeling defeated and not even sure I wanted to come through it, there was no evidence I would ever start a record label. If you are in that kind of dark place right now, where you are not sure you want to keep going, please do not carry it alone. In the United States you can call or text 988 any time, day or night, and talk to someone. Reach out to a person you trust today. Your story is not finished.
After that surgery succeeded, something changed in me. I decided I was not going to give up. That decision did not come with proof attached. It came with a choice. And over time, the choice started to produce the evidence.
Think of a young man I’ll call Quentin. Quentin makes music in his bedroom. He has been posting songs for three years, and almost nobody listens. His friends tell him to get serious and find a real job. Some days he believes them. What Quentin does not see is that every song he finishes is a brick. He is learning to write better, to mix better, to finish what he starts. If he quits now, he walks away from a half-built foundation. If he keeps going, keeps learning, and keeps a steady job alongside the music so his bills are paid, he is building something even if the world has not noticed yet.
I am not promising Quentin fame. I am not promising you fame either. What I am saying is that people who believe before the proof arrives are the only people who are still around when the proof finally shows up. Everyone else quit in the empty lot.
Believing first does not mean believing blindly. It does not mean ignoring your bills, skipping the hard lessons or refusing to listen when someone gives you honest feedback. Real belief is practical. It says, “I am going to keep building, and I am going to keep learning how to build better.” It checks the foundation. It fixes what is cracked. It asks for help when the job is bigger than one pair of hands. The kind of belief that refuses to look at reality is not faith. It is wishful thinking, and wishful thinking has never laid a single brick. What I am asking you to do is harder and better than that: believe you were made for more, and then let that belief put you to work.
Now let’s get practical. A song can lift you for three minutes. A book can lift you for a few hours. But if nothing changes in how you live this week, the feeling fades and you are back where you started. So here are some things you can do, starting now, to begin drawing your own blueprint.
Write your own definition of making it. Get a piece of paper or open the notes on your phone. Write one sentence for each of the three parts I described: what stability would look like for you, what integrity would look like for you, and what purpose you want your life to point toward. Do not write what you think you are supposed to say. Write what is true. You can change it later. A blueprint gets revised as the building goes up.
Take an honest inventory of what you already have. Most people skip this step. They only look at what they are missing. Write down what you have right now: skills, people who care about you, time you could use better, things you know how to do, things you have survived. When I started building Upstormed, I did not have a diploma or a pile of money. But I had a story, a stubborn will, and a habit of writing things down. That was enough to start. Your list will show you that you have more materials than you thought.
Pick one brick you can lay this week. Not a whole wall. One brick. If you want to write a book, write one page. If you want to start a business, write down three people who might pay for what you offer. If you want to get healthier, make one appointment you have been avoiding. If you want to go back to school, look up the requirements for one program. Small, real actions beat big, imaginary plans every time.
Separate looking successful from being stable. Look at where your money and time went last month. How much of it went toward things that build you up, and how much went toward things that only make you look built up? You do not have to fix everything at once. Just notice it. If money is tight or confusing, it is wise to talk to a qualified financial professional or a reputable nonprofit credit counselor who can help you see the whole picture.
Find one voice that believes in you and stay close to it. It could be a friend, a pastor, a mentor, a counselor, or even a book that speaks to you. When I faced surgery, a hospital worker named Marise supported me at a time I could not support myself. One person believing in you can carry you until you can believe in yourself.
Plan one small celebration. Decide now how you will mark the moment when you lay this week’s brick. Keep it simple and affordable. It might be calling someone who believes in you to tell them what you did, or cooking a meal you enjoy. Training yourself to notice progress is part of building. If you only ever look at how far you have left to go, you will quit long before you get there.
Pray, or sit still, and ask what you were made for. If you are a person of faith, bring this question to God. If you are not sure what you believe, sit somewhere quiet and ask yourself honestly. What do you keep coming back to? What would you do even if nobody paid you? What pain have you lived through that you might help someone else survive? Purpose often hides inside those answers.
Before we move on, I want to end this first chapter with something I know is true, because I have lived it.
Where you start does not get to decide where you finish. It only decides what ground you start building on. Some people start on smooth, level ground with a crew of helpers and a stack of materials. Others start on rocky, broken ground, alone, with whatever they can scrape together. I started on the broken ground. Maybe you did too.
But here is what I have learned. Broken ground can be cleared. Rocks can be moved, one at a time. And a foundation laid on hard ground, by somebody who had to fight for every inch, is often stronger than one that was poured for somebody who never had to struggle. You know exactly what went into it. You know it will hold, because you tested every piece.
That is what the song means to me. Not that I was born with everything. That I was born with something, and so were you. Something no abuse, no neglect, no seizure, no night in a parked car and no missing diploma could take away. It was waiting under all of that rubble for me to dig it up and start building.
It is waiting in you too.
You were not born to just get by. You were born to make it. Let’s start building.
To be continued in Born To Make It, coming soon.
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