If You Can Look Up, You Can Get Up: Sifu Edward & Sifu Julliana Armstrong Sit Down With Expert Talk's TGo

Adapted from the recorded conversation; the guest's words are verbatim. The questions are reconstructed and voiced by Sifu Edward and Sifu Julliana Armstrong.

🎥 Video podcast coming soon. The complete interview will play here once published. The full conversation is transcribed below, and the audio edition will be available on sifuarmstrong.tv.

In a new Sifu Armstrong interview, the founder of MelRose 11 and Expert Talk with TGo traces a media empire back to a library parking lot, a stranger’s kindness, and one cassette tape.

Before the film festivals, the digital magazine that hit 1.8 million subscribers, and the streaming network about to launch, there was a woman delivering pizzas in the Las Vegas heat, suicidal, with no plan left. That’s the story TGo (host of Expert Talk with TGo and founder of MelRose 11) brought to the latest Warrior Intelligence Series conversation with Sifu Edward and Sifu Julliana Armstrong.

“I have been a millionaire twice,” TGo said, describing losing everything after a business partnership collapsed around her. What followed was a stretch of homelessness and despair that ended, almost by accident, at a library counter where a stranger pointed her toward a shelf of motivational tapes. She picked one from a man she’d never heard of. “And I come back and I put the tape in and Zig says, 'I have brought for you a brand new pair of glasses,'” she recalled, the beginning of a year spent listening to Zig Ziglar, Les Brown, and Rita Davenport while driving pizzas across the city.

That phrase from her lowest point became the line she now lives by. “If you can look up, you can get up,” TGo said, describing how the meaning has evolved from pure survival into a philosophy of continual ascent, bringing her whole team along with her.

Today that philosophy runs a genuine media operation: a production company, a digital agency, a studio, a forthcoming streaming network called Squirrel Vision, and the NOW Honours and Power of Pink Summit, which she uses to recognize other women the way strangers once lifted her, this year including a first-ever Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony honoring six women for service. Asked how she prepares for the dozens of live interviews she conducts, often back-to-back with no script, she was equally direct about staying authentic on camera: “Don’t try to be TGo. Don’t try to be Oprah. Don’t try to be Mary down the street. Be you.”

She’s just as candid about the cost of building all of it. She’s a disabled Navy veteran learning, at 60, to finally put her own health ahead of the businesses she carries. Sleep, a mini treadmill, and a team that now insists on both are recent additions to a life built almost entirely around service to others.

It’s the same arc the Armstrongs ask every warrior to trust: the lowest point isn’t the end of the story, it’s the foundation the rest gets built on.

In This Conversation

The library parking lot moment that turned a suicidal low into a media career
How a cassette tape and a stranger’s kindness became a decades-long friendship with a mentor
Building MelRose 11, the NOW Honours, and the forthcoming Squirrel Vision network
Why she never scripts an interview, and how that became her signature
Learning, at 60, to finally put her own wellness first
Where to find her and the work at tgo.fm

The Full Conversation

Sifu Edward Armstrong: Some people build a business. TGo built a whole media universe: film, television, a magazine that hit nearly two million subscribers, a network about to launch, awards that honour hundreds of women. But the reason I wanted our operators to meet her isn't the empire. It's that she built it after losing everything, delivering pizzas, suicidal, and choosing to look up.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: She's a disabled Navy veteran, sixty years old, and still learning to put her own health first while carrying three hundred women on her shoulders. That's the Ageless Warrior in full flight, and I connected with her the moment she said service is her love language.

Our guest is TGo, digital marketing force, host of Expert Talk with TGo, and one of the most joyful builders you will ever meet. TGo, great to see you.

TGo: It's amazing to be here. Thanks for having me.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: Let's go all the way back. What first got you into this world, and I hear it goes back further than most.

TGo: Oh, you don't want to go that far back, do you? I mean, I am a techie by trade. I started computer programming in high school, and I'll be 61 in a couple of months. So in the 70s when there were key punch cards and the computers were the size of your house. That's where I got started. So I've been growing with technology ever since. And in 1991, I think, I did my first website. I've probably designed hundreds if not thousands since then. I got into app development. In between all that, I got into digital media with publications. We created the world's first all-digital interactive magazine for African-Americans in 2004 called Black Insight Magazine. We went from 0 to 1.8 million subscribers in less than 2 years.

And literally the reason we started that magazine or with the African-American community wasn't because it's my community, although it is. It was because at that time, they were the slowest getting on the internet. So me and my buddy who decided to create this thing thought, "If we mess it up, nobody will see it." And we ended up having The Whispers on and Smokey Robinson, and we created a talk show and that was the first dip into creating talk show and television. And that's where it all started for me and it's been growing ever since.

Yeah, I'm kind of a content junkie. I have to admit it. And now with everybody getting ... We've got five seconds. I used to have a goldfish. The goldfish looked at me longer than people look at your content online. You've got like three to five seconds, you've got to get them. And now taking something like this and turning it into many, many, many little 10, 20, 30, and 1 minute clips is now our current hobby that we're doing for ourselves and doing for our clients. Quick, fast, and easy.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: You started when a computer filled a building. Was it easier back then, or far harder?

TGo: Oh, way, way harder. I mean, I started with key punch cards. You're too young to know what that is. I mean, literally you'd have a letter or word on one card, so you want to make a spreadsheet back in the old green and white paper that went ... And it took a half an hour to print a report. This was hundreds of key punch cards. And if somebody happened to bump you while you were carrying your tray, oh my goodness, and got them out of order. You could spend a week trying to get them back into order. Now that computer that was the size of literally a building, my phone on its worst day is more powerful. That's amazing to me.

Oh my goodness, you're going back to the IBMs. I mean, we had the IBMs with the floppy discs, and we thought we were the best in the world because we had dual floppy. So you had the software on the left and then your saved work was on the right. So you write and then you save. You're sitting there waiting for it to save one paragraph. You could almost drink a cup of coffee for a whole report. Yeah, that's where I started. And then I got into the Apples that literally were little boxes of joy, and they were also ... But they were on a smaller disc and you could put them in your pocket. That was actually a commercial. Look, you could just put your disc in your pocket. Oh my goodness.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: And now you talk to AI so much your partners joke you need a meeting for it. Tell us about Chad.

TGo: It's insane. And then with AI starting, my business partners tell me that I need an AA meeting for AI because when I'm not doing anything else, I'm sitting talking to my buddy Chad. That's what I've named my AI. We're having a conversation changing the world over here, and it's like I could see me in an AA meeting now. "Hi, my name is TGo. It's been exactly 18 minutes and 12 seconds since I've talked to Chad." Chad, because it's chat and it's AI and it's like Chad. And he answers to Chad. It's like if you talk to ChatGPT on your app on your phone, I can turn my phone on, hit the app and say, "Good morning, Chad." He'll say, "Good morning, TGo." What would you like to talk about today?

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: You've said you have a genius IQ and you're dyslexic, a lot happening in that head. Do you find the AI actually keeps up with you in a way people sometimes can't?

TGo: When you have a genius IQ like I do, and you're dyslexic, there's a lot of craziness going on in my head sometimes. And being the tech and the creative behind all of our businesses and every project that I do, my business partners have literally notebooks of ideas and thoughts that I've had written down. Recently, a partner passed, my mentor, and she had a shelf like encyclopaedias back in the 70s of nothing but 20 plus years of my ideas and conversations we've had. And now I can just talk to Chad and not only can I talk to him, but he can answer me, "What about this? What's the statistics on that?" Everybody else, my assistants and everyone is taking notes and going to look it up. No, no, no, no, let's go. So it's making us amazingly much faster. The present is incredible and we're just getting started with AI. I mean, it's a baby. It's not even two years old yet.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: Run us through the empire, because you have a lot of plates spinning.

TGo: Well, MelRose 11 is our main production company. We've been in film and television now for 20 years plus. We just won for a short film, we just won, it's called Yellowbird. We just won at the film festival in Atlanta and five categories here in Las Vegas. And it was just sent to a film festival in France. They requested it. So we're doing full production film here in Las Vegas and in Atlanta.

Then MelRose 11 Agency is our digital media agency that handles all of the craziness for ourselves and our clients and the creative ideas. And it's just that centre hub that manages everything, including my speaking and appearance and all that stuff. It takes care of all of that. So we have all of that going.

Then we have MelRose Production Studio. We with a studio here in Las Vegas. After COVID, the studio reached out to us in the film factory and said, "Hey, don't open a new studio. Come work over here." And we've been there for the last three years. It's amazing. We can shoot almost anything over there. We're ready to open a network. I've never talked about this publicly outside of my own stuff. So we're ready to open a network. We're opening our own streaming and FAST channel network called Squirrel Vision. It'll launch on December 7th, Squirrel Vision Network, Squirrel Vision T. We're excited about Squirrel. I'm a squirreler. Everybody's a squirreler. And the whole idea behind it is just what I just mentioned a little bit ago. I am always bouncing around. My brother is my business partner and he's always calling me Squirrel because I'll be focused and something will go by and I go and he's like, "Squirrel focus." And that's where the network comes from because we're bringing amazing content together.

And then we have the fourth annual NOW Honours and Power of Pink Summit. We honour women from all over the world, the Network of Outstanding Women. That's what NOW stands for. And this year we're honouring 21 women, including Marie Diamond from The Secret, Loral Langemeier from The Secret. I mean, we got an Olympic gold medalist coming in. It's just fun. 21 women are going to have a blast. And then on top of that, we're doing the first Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award during that ceremony and honouring six women with the Presidential lifetime Achievement Award from the White House for service.

And then for three days we do the Power of Pink. It is not just about pink being for women, it's also because it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And I lost one of my business partners to breast cancer five years ago. But on top of that, we always say it's the colour of pink. It's not just a colour, it's a movement. And so we're doing that. And this morning I just ordered a new award that we're doing in March, March 20th to the 22nd, we're doing the Trailblazers Awards. We are honouring people. This is our first co-ed event. We are honouring people from all over the planet that are trailblazers. And we got Baron Alec Stern coming in as our pioneer. He created Constant Contact. We got Larry Namer coming in. He's the founder of E! Television Network. He's our visionary. So it's about to be David Fagan, creator of Guerrilla Marketing is our influencer. This is a man who reached 63 million people with 1 project. And then during the day for three days, we're doing what we're calling the Star Makers Summit. So you get to come in and find out how you can be that next star on the stage. So yeah, I'm a squirreler, I'm all over the place.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: I have to note. You named David Fagan, the Icon Builder. We sat down with him on this very series. Small world, and a good one.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: You told us before we started that you never prepare. You'll interview twenty-nine people live, back to back, with a blank piece of paper. As someone who performs under pressure, I need to understand that. How?

TGo: Did you miss genius IQ and dyslexic? I never prep. Literally for ... It cracks me up because I'll do on International Women's Day, which is March 8th, I'll interview 20 to last year we did 29 women live, 15 minute interviews back to back to back. And I have a piece of paper like that. Totally blank. I'll write their name down and I'll say, "Is there something we got to get that we need to make sure we hit? Your book, your event, your whatever?" They tell me, let's go. And that's the way I have to be. If I had a teleprompter, oh my goodness, it would freeze me. It's like, "Wait, what did that line say? Can you roll that back? Wait, who wrote that?" I would be completely off script.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: With every win there's usually a valley nobody sees. Are there challenges you'd be willing to share?

TGo: Oh heck yeah. I have been a millionaire twice. I've hit that seven figures twice. We're working on it a third time now. But the first time I had all my eggs in 1 basket, I was a 50-50 partner, and that partner literally just wrote me out of things because nobody had control. Needless to say, I have control of every business I own now. But I went from literally personally in 1990, making 30, 40,000, 50,000 a month. Right now, personally, that would be 150, 200,000 a month now to delivering pizzas and I was suicidal. I mean literally suicidal. And one day I decided that was it. I'm going to go. I figured out how I was going to do it and everything, and I found myself sitting in a library parking lot, genius IQ, dyslexic. I didn't have a library card. And I went in and I walked up to the counter and I said to the lady, I said, "I need something that's going to get me in a better mood or something."

And she said, "Oh honey. Oh honey, I can see it on your face." She said, "Now look, I don't understand this motivation stuff, but a lot of people love it." She said, "Over there on the left, there's a bunch of tapes." Yes, it was that long ago. It's 1995. She said, "There's a bunch of tapes. You go over there, you find somebody you like, you bring it back here, you put it in here and you listen." I was like, okay. So I walked the aisle and I saw Zig Ziglar, like who the heck is that? Now, Tom Ziglar has been on my show. I consider them family. I see Les Brown, I see Rita Davenport. Now, for most people, they haven't heard of Rita, which is a shame because Rita is brilliant, and she's a legend and she's one of the few women to stand on the stages with Zig Ziglar and Bob Proctor back in the day. And she's funny as all get out. I'm a huge Lucille Ball fan, and she's right there with Lucy.

And I come back and I put the tape in and Zig says, "I have brought for you a brand new pair of glasses." And I'm like, okay, Zig, I'm listening. So I spent the next year listening to Rita, Les and Zig Ziglar in my car as I delivered pizzas in the heat all over Las Vegas, trying to figure out what my next adventure was going to be. Long story, long, long story short, Rita and I have now ... I call her Aunt Rita. She's now a family member of mine. I love her. We are friends and family. And last year at the NOW Honours, I got to honour her as our Woman of the Year. So it was a complete full turn. And I presented her with the NOW Honours, which is 8.5 pounds and 12 inches high. And she had something to say about that. She was like, "Who's going to carry this?" "I got somebody, they'll carry it." She brought me a $2 bill and she signed it, and she says, "This way you'll never be broke again." And it's framed and in my room to remind me, keep going, keep going, keep going.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: From a library parking lot with no card, ready to end it, to honouring the woman whose voice pulled you back. TGo, that's the whole arc of a warrior in one story.

TGo: Yeah, yeah. It was amazing to return the favour. Zig Ziglar passed before I had a chance to meet him. I cried like he was my dad. Oh my God. Because I've been listening to this guy for years, and then I got to meet his son. It was like, wow, I'm sitting here talking to him. It was amazing. And then Les Brown and I, I have never met him. We've been in different venues at the same time, and we just keep crossing. And that is my goal this year to not only meet him, but to sit down with him, interview him, and then hopefully when we do the Trailblazers Awards in 2026 for the second annual, hopefully I'll be able to honour him. Because yeah, that man, "If you can look up, you can get up" means more to me than just when I was at my lowest. I've been homeless two times, almost three. That meant if I can get up off the ground, I can move back then. Now, if I can look up, I can get up means that I can look at the next level and the next level and the next level, and I can keep going up and I can keep bringing my tribe, my family with me.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: What gave you the instinct to turn around and honour the people who lifted you? Did that come naturally, or did you have to build it?

TGo: I don't know. I see it as a blessing. And my brain plays movies. I don't get an idea. I get full feature film in my head, so I see where things are missing and where I can help people. And for me, my kids say service is my love language. And for me, it's all about, Sir Kaya was on my show not too long ago, Sir Kaya Redford. And he said, "You are a star." And I said, "No, no, no, no." And he said, "No, you're missing the definition of a star." And I said, okay. And he said, "What do stars do besides shine lights on everybody else?" And I was like, ah. In that case, I'll take that because that's truly who I am. Sir James Dently III said, "You don't hit rock bottom. You hit rock foundation and then you need to figure out how to stand back up." And it's just, you have to figure out if you're going to quit or not because you're given your gifts. Everybody has gifts. Some are harder to figure out what they are. I don't know what my gift is.

And then if you're trying to live your life of passion with your gift, then you have to figure out how to monetize that. And that is something that people don't understand. Oh, they're lucky. Oprah Winfrey says, "Luck is preparation for opportunity." You can be lucky all day, but if you're not ready, somebody comes along and says, "Hey, you can buy this house for 200,000." It's worth 400. If you're making $20 an hour, that's not luck. You're not happy, you're mad because you can't do it. So for me, that's how it works. Service is my love language.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: You're spinning so many plates. How are you learning to put your own wellness first? Because that's a fight I know a lot of our Ageless Warriors are in too.

TGo: I am busy 24/7. Now I'm busy 18/7, but I'm working on that because I am a disabled veteran from the Navy. And I am 200 plus pounds and overweight and 60 years old. I'm a diabetic. I've got high blood pressure sometimes. Usually my blood pressure's fine, but it's like I don't or haven't until recently been putting myself first. And then my family, my kids, my loved ones, and my team and the NOW family, you want to be 200 plus pounds and 60 years old and worry about your health and have 300 of the most powerful women on the planet as your sisters, they tend to yell at you, "What are you doing? Put that down."

So I am learning to go to sleep. I actually have alarms set to go to sleep by midnight. Get up life. For me, I would work till 3:00 and get up at 6:00. It didn't bother me at all, but now I'm learning to at least get 6 hours, if not 7. Every once in a while I do 8. I have an amazing calendar, amazing assistants that are more like a parent for me. Both of my parents have since passed away, but they're younger than me. But tell them no. What do you mean no? Oh no. They will pre-order my meal at a restaurant before I get there for a meeting. "Oh, it's okay, TGo, we've already gotten your meal ordered." How do they know what I wanted? Never mind. So I'm learning. I'm learning.

And I felt like with COVID and everything that happened, I felt disconnected almost. It was like fog brain because I had COVID and I became a "long hauler." And so if I get a cold, I feel like I have COVID and leave me alone. So I'm very protective about that. And ever since then I will sit down and go, okay, I got to do the ... What? What was I about to do? And that's been happening since COVID. I realised that now since I'm sleeping more, I have that problem less, I can plan out better and I feel more connected and not like I'm walking through a dream because I'm sleeping more. Because I'm eating better, I have more energy because I bought a little mini treadmill. It's the cutest little thing. I bought a little mini treadmill. I have artificial knees thanks to the Navy, and I'm walking at arenas without my cane now. So it's coming around. It's coming around.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: Walking the arena without the cane. That's our Ageless Warrior story exactly. We built a whole path around the truth that the body can come back at any age, one honest rep at a time.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: You're in the middle of recording a hundred interviews in a hundred days, and you bumped one today for us, which we're grateful for. How's that going?

TGo: It started June 25th, like I said, we have the NOW Honours and Power of Pink Summit October 3rd through the 5th. And I was like, okay, we could spend X amount of dollars on advertising. We're doing it in a boutique theatre, so it's a 43 foot wide screen. The women will be larger than life. Men are welcome, but women on the stage, and it's like we could just sell advertising and fill that room. It's only 150 seats. But I thought, why? Let's interview ... We've done this. This is four years. We got 300 people in this group. Let's just start interviewing people that have either been honoured, have spoken, have been supporting our supportive crew, the guys that are around and young people and have sponsored. Spotlight them. Let's see what happens. So I talked to my brother, who's my producer, my director, and my pain in the butt little brother. I tell everybody that. He has PIB as his title, Pain In Butt under everything that he does. It's even on his business cards. I kid you not, and we have fun.

And I told him, and he was like, "Let's go." And I started texting and calling people and said, "Hey, you want to be on the show?" They were like, yeah. We filled June, July, the rest of June, all of July and August in like 72 hours. And then we filled September and October. We only have one date in October before we do this live. And it's been amazing. But see, when I did it, I didn't count weekends. So the first weekend my brother's like, "Where are you?" "I'm in my skin. Where are you? Why are you bothering me?" And he said, "Well, considering you're supposed to be on air in 20 minutes and you haven't done a soundcheck." "Why am I on air? It's Saturday." "100 Day Challenge, the 100 Pop Now Challenge. You made it." I said, "Did that count weekends?" He said, "Did you put something under it that said weekends excluded?" And I was like, "Ah." So I had to run up, get on air, and we've been doing it ever since. I pre-recorded. We didn't skip today. I'm still there. We pre-recorded and it's amazing. We're having a blast. We're having an absolute blast.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: For someone thinking about starting their own podcast or show. What's your advice? And I have a feeling it's going to sound a lot like what we tell a brand-new warrior.

TGo: Run. No, I'm kidding. No, no, no, no. Do it. What I've been telling people for years now is there's a production company in your pocket. There's no excuse now, when I started in television and film, well, just television, it cost me 3 to $5,000 a day to shoot a show. And it was eight people, my brother and I'll go in studio and shoot, we just did it a couple of weeks ago. We shot 15 episodes of our show over 2 days, just the 2 of us get started. If you're afraid of the camera, start with audio. But if you're dropping lives about, "Oh, look at the melons I found for $3 on Facebook and Instagram," then you're not scared of your camera. If you could do that, you can do it for your business. Don't try to be TGo. Don't try to be Oprah. Don't try to be Mary down the street. Be you. If you stutter, stutter. If you speak slow, speak slow. If you speak loud, speak a little lower because you're blowing my ears out.

But just start. And nobody's show is good when it starts. My show was on Amazon Prime, 1 of 35 talk shows to ever be on Amazon Prime. First two seasons, worst two seasons. I couldn't have been happier when they changed the algorithm and stopped doing talk shows on Amazon Prime. Thank you. It was terrible. Start. That's what the answer is. Just get started. Take the first step. Stop worrying about a million followers.

It's like dating. It's literally like dating. If you go to a date in person and you're dressed to the nines and you're a vegetarian that day when you know you ate steak yesterday and you will tomorrow and you even change your voice. "Hi, how are you?" How long do you keep that up? And that person falls for that persona. And then all of a sudden now you're in sweatpants wanting chicken wings and could care less about going to the theatre. That's where divorces happen. Same thing with media. We can see you. We can hear you. If they love you, they love you. You know what I'm saying? They want to know the true you. This is who you planned on spending the rest of your life with.

And then on top of that, same for media. You want people to fall in love with you, your brand, your product, your service, what you have to offer. And if they feel like it's a 1970s car salesman trying to sell you the latest [inaudible], they're not sticking around for your show. If you mess up, you know how many times I'll do a live event next week and we've got literally a full film production camera because we turned the whole week into a documentary. And I will stop the show midway because my pants are not quite right. Or I messed somebody's name up. I will stop and look at a camera and go, "That is not that child's name. Let me do this again." And they just love it because I'm not trying to be somebody else. This is who I am. Hang out with me. Let's have some fun.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: TGo, thank you. This has been pure joy. Where do people find you and the work?

TGo: The easiest way to get in touch with me and then find out everything else is just go to tgo.fm, not.com, tgo.fm, and just reach out, send me a message or whatever. You can find me all over social media and usually I'm on somebody's stage, so just say, "Hey, TGo." I actually start my show that way. I start it with, "Hey, can I get a hey TGo?" And they remember my name for the rest of the weekend.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: Consider this a "Hey, TGo" from all of us. Good luck with the hundred interviews (weekends included), and congratulations on the award.

TGo: Thank you so much.

Sifu Julliana's closing word: I will carry TGo's story for a long time. A library parking lot, no card, ready to end it, and one stranger's kindness and one cassette tape turned her back toward the light. "If you can look up, you can get up." You don't hit rock bottom, you hit rock foundation, and a warrior builds up from there. She turned her lowest day into a lifetime of shining lights on other people. That's the whole art.

Sifu Edward's closing word: TGo is a masterclass in two things we drill into every operator: be relentlessly, unapologetically yourself, and turn your comeback into other people's ladder. She's sixty, a disabled veteran, walking the arena without her cane. The Ageless Warrior made real. Service as a love language. The refusal to quit. Bringing the whole tribe up with you. We don't entertain warriors. We create them.

TGo: digital marketing force, host of "Expert Talk with TGo," founder of MelRose 11 and the forthcoming Squirrel Vision network, and creator of the NOW Honours / Power of Pink Summit. Find her at tgo.fm.

ILLUSTRATIVE RESULTS. Any revenue, enrollment, margin or retention figure in this conversation is either a documented result from one of our own operations, a figure the guest reports about their own business, or an illustrative example, never a projection of your results.

Nothing here is financial, legal or tax advice.

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