Don't even think about doubting Terry Crews.
While growing up in Flint, Mich., the America's Got Talent host dreamed about creating a bright future for himself. After all, he was told in school that anything was possible.
"We would have assemblies where people would bring us all in and say, ‘You can do anything you want to do. You can be anything you want to be,'" Terry told E! News in an exclusive interview. "I would go running up to the speaker at the end of the assembly and say, ‘I want to do this.'"
But something strange would happen to the eager student. Instead of receiving positive feedback, Terry would receive skepticism and doubt.
"They would say, ‘What makes you think you can do that?'" Terry said. "And I go, ‘You! You just said we can do it.' I decided from a very young age to call people on that and to really test them."
What came next was a kid who would challenge stereotypes, exceed expectations and prove any and all doubters wrong.
Terry would start his day in art class before training on the school football team. And while some questioned if (or why) he would do both, the former Brooklyn Nine-Nine star learned the value of being "a multi hyphenate."
"You tend to get talked out of your dreams especially around that age between 8 and 12," Terry said. "You get the, ‘Let's be realistic' speech. It's very, very hard to overcome because it's very sobering...I love just doing things for their own sake because you love it and it doesn't have to be successful. One thing that I really want kids to understand right now is that everything is worth doing."
With that in mind, Terry was inspired to flip the conversation in his debut children's book Terry's Crew. Available on Nov. 9, the book explores the unstoppable combination of a big dream and great friends.
"I was so fortunate to find people who believed in my dream, because you're going to have naysayers," Terry said. "You're going to have people who try to make you be realistic. But if you find just one or two other people that say, ‘You know what, let's do this.' The future is yours."
Today, the former NFL player encourages kids to put down their phones and simply imagine their future. It's exactly what Terry used to do in his Michigan bedroom.
Little did he know that he would prove the doubters and even himself wrong.
"When I got the star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, I was just going, 'Wow,'" Terry said when recalling his 2021 ceremony. "This is way beyond what I ever imagined and it can be like that for everyone."