How many of us have sat down and thought “I need to do something with my life,” and wondered what that could be? Well to Herb Blake, it was less about wondering what he could do with his life and more about how he could accomplish the vision he had for his future.

  Herb Blake is the man behind a popular radio show named Path to Justice. What he does on that show is highlight non-profit organizations and features their causes.

 “A lady invited me to go on her radio show, and she embarrassed me so badly I said ‘you know, I could have my own radio show.’ Then she asked me ‘Do you have any friends that could come on the show?’ and I said ‘Yeah, I have friends,’ but I wasn’t going to invite them to this show, they would get mad at me,” explained Blake about the origin of the radio show. He then went out and investigated just what he had to do to start up his own show then started inviting some of his friends. After he ran out of friends to feature on his show, he started inviting people that he didn’t know through mutual friends. Little by little, it began taking off to the point where people who were featured in the show began giving Blake lists of others who are not only willing to come on the show, but can’t wait for it. “I’ve learned a lot from when I started the radio show." 

#1- You don’t do radio shows live.

#2- You don’t have callers.

 He began using the show as a calling card; he told people to just listen to the show, then they would ask Blake if he could feature them on a future segment.

 The reason Blake started his own show is because among MANY great things, he was once incarcerated. He knew he had to do something positive and was not going to leave it up to anyone else. “I wasn’t going to go through the

humiliation and disappointment of looking for a job, so I had to create a job for myself.”

562CityLife is in part funded by a Long Beach Community Foundation Connected Corridor grant supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's Transformation Initiative.