July 21, 2025
‘She wasn’t coming in, calling in all the time. So I was like, OK, you gotta go.’
Tyler Perry spoke publicly about the financial boundaries he had to set with his family members, including firing his aunt, who slacked on the job.
The billionaire media mogul sat down with rapper Jeezy and Big Dave’s Cheesesteaks founder and CEO, Derrick Hayes, on the latest episode of Kirk Franklin’s Den of Kings podcast, where he opened up after Franklin asked about “letting go” of relatives who take advantage of another’s financial success.
Perry shared that he set firm boundaries with a family member he hired after their constant requests for money, only for them to lose the job due to frequent call-outs and a lack of commitment.
“I fired my aunt. She said she wanted a job. She would always call asking for money,” Perry shared in a clip captured by the Art of the Dialogue. “I’m like, OK, I was sending money. I was like, ‘Listen, I want to help you. I don’t want to help you build this thing, not the welfare team. So let me give you a job.’
“She wasn’t coming in, calling in all the time. So I was like, ‘OK, well, you gotta go.’ Because you want me to hand you the money, but you don’t want to work for it. See, that doesn’t work for me.”
Perry applies the same lessons on work ethic to his 10-year-old son, explaining that he earns money by doing chores. The Tyler Perry Studios founder believes that simply giving handouts to family without effort “handicaps” them in the long run.
“That is the worst thing you can do,” Perry said.
He shared how, after his mother’s passing, he set firm boundaries with his family, something she had urged him to do before she died.
“And I’ve had family members that I’ve done that to because my mother asked me to. And when she passed away in 2009, I sent all of them letters saying, ‘Listen, you’ve got 60 days to become gainfully employed because I’m not going to keep supporting you like this,’” Perry said.
“They all got jobs. And it wasn’t even jobs where they’re making a lot of money, but it was a job,” he added. “It was something else for them to do to feel some pride in. That’s the same thing I would want somebody to do for me.”
Hayes also opened up about the lessons in tough love and legacy-building he’s learned as a business owner.
“Three of my early employees now have equity in Big Dave’s. My legacy isn’t just mine — it’s theirs, too,” he said. “I had to teach myself the business—profit, loss, EBITDA—so now I can sit at any table and talk strategy. I didn’t want to just have a product. I wanted to run the machine,” he added at another point in the conversation.
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