Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - Pain Hustlers: The real story behind the movie with Alec Burlakoff

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

In this episode of Escaping The Drift, John interviews Alec Burlakoff, the real story behind the movie “Pain Hustlers” Listen as he shares his journey through the pharmaceutical sales industry, from early struggles to ethical dilemmas. Throughout the episode, Alec shares his insights on success, morality, and the pursuit of greatness. His story is one of redemption and transformation after navigating the turbulent waters of the pharmaceutical sales industry.Highlights:"I pushed morals and ethics to the back of my mind so I could be successful in sales." "Even though this was a horrible thing that happened, not just for me, but for so many people... For me, it's a blessing.""You can always bounce back, you can always make a change... It's never too late to change."Timestamps:00:00 - Alec's journey from manager to Vice President03:02 - Reflecting on past moral and ethical decisions05:54 - Transition from guidance counselor to pharmaceutical sales08:12 - Lessons learned from the car sales industry10:00 - Ethical considerations in pharmaceutical sales16:58 - Transition to selling pain management medication26:48 - Reflections on wealth, success, and morality31:30 - Concerns about the influx of fentanyl into the country35:00 - Surrendering to authorities and the arrest experience39:50 - The mission and purpose of White Collar Advice💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below! ☑️If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford using this Link! ⤵️ / johngafford. .💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full service title and escrow company.➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:Instagram ▶️ / thejohngaffordFacebook ▶️ / gafford2🎧 Stream The Escaping The Drift Podcast with John Gafford Episode here:Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80g...Listen On Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...*************#EscapingTheDrift

Prior to getting promoted to the vice president, I was a manager. So very quickly, we were like the number one team in the country. And all I did was bring over one or two reps that I'd worked with at Cephalon, good buddies of mine. And I knew that they knew exactly what this business entailed. They were in the pay management space. So they went right back to the same doctors that were speaking for that company and simply asked them based on their relationship, would you stop speaking for that company and start speaking for our company? And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to

be. I'm Jon Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again, everybody, for another episode of Escaping the Drift. And today I got something a little different, man. This is going to be an out there podcast today. It's something, you know, again, we talk about life, we talk about money, we talk about success, but we're going to talk about something a little different today. We're going to talk about maybe a story of redemption, maybe some lessons along the way on how to achieve things. But this is a weirder story because I was watching a movie the other day on Netflix called Pain

Hustlers. If you haven't seen it, it is essentially about how a pharmaceutical company in Florida was part of the opioid epidemic and led to that based on incentivizing doctors to push their drug that contained fentanyl. And when I'm watching this, something kind of struck a chord with me. I'm like, something about this is very familiar. I remember something about this. And what I remembered was in my fraternity at Florida State, we have a sub 2000, yeah, I'm that old, I get it, we have a sub 2000 page for all the brothers that were there or pledged early nineties, two thousands, whatever. And I remembered this story being talked about because one of my fraternity brothers was actually involved.

And as I'm watching this movie, I'm thinking, oh my God, this guy that Chris Pine is paying is based on my fraternity brother. So after I watched the movie, I started thinking, you know, A, I wonder what he's up to. B, how much of this is accurate and how we got here. So I reached out to him. His name is Alex Berlikoff, and he was nice enough to take time out of his schedule to be with us today to tell his side or his or what happened with the real movie Pain Hustler. So welcome to the program today, Alec Berlikoff. Alec, how are you, buddy? I'm doing well.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, we're glad to have you. You know, I want to get into this fully, but when I was thinking about how to do this interview and I was thinking about how to talk to you, man, I wanted to make sure that we did it in a way that people would listen to the story,

would listen to you. And I think the only way to do that is to start out with the one thing that I think everybody's going to be waiting for, which is where are you? Where were you then? And where are you now with the morality of what happened in this story? So where was I then? You know, on a scale of one to 10, one being the lowest, as far as morality, I think I was pretty down there, like maybe three, two, maybe a one. And as far as ethics and those things, they were not at the forefront of my mind, which they should be. They were in the back of my mind. I pushed them in the back of my mind so that I could be successful in sales.

I thought that was something that I needed to do. But through a lot of introspect, a lot of memorializing, a lot of time, a lot of struggle, I've come to the conclusion that you can be very successful and very passionate about something and provide something to people that they want or need in a way that's very ethical. So I'm very encouraged by that. Do you take personal responsibility or do you still feel a personal responsibility for the people that were affected by that drug in Florida? Is that something you live with every day? Yeah, I do take full responsibility. I play guilty.

And I learned early on that taking responsibility was going to be critical for me in order to be able to live with myself and move on with my life in some way. Moving on in a way that was similar to what I, or how I lived before, that's not an option, but that's probably a good thing. I move on from my kids more than anything in the world. But my morals were poor and unethical and I broke the law. So we're not just talking about morals and ethics, we're talking about breaking the law. I would say that once you start to work in the gray and you cross or you lose sight of morals and the importance of ethics in your decision-making, oftentimes you're going to end up on that slippery slope where you actually do break the law. So you got to really pull it all the way back and make sure that you have values in place that you can live by. Okay. Well, no, I think that's a fair statement.

So for those people who don't know the story, who don't know what we're talking about, now we're going to go back, right? Because I think certain people are going to listen to this and they wanted to hear that portion of it right away. So if that's all you wanted to hear, great. You can go ahead and tune back into something else now. But if you want to hear more more of the story that's where we're going to go now so i want to back up so first off you went to the greatest university in the history of universities the florida state university and i can say that because as anybody that's ever listened to this program knows i always say i love florida state football as much as as much as most people have the capacity to love a human baby. Well, you know, my daughter goes to Penn State, so I've been following them a bit too.

But they're at least at a different conference. For now. For now, they're at a different conference. Yeah, I know. They're supposed to move over. So anyway, I digress. But I'm loyal to my daughter as well. There you go. So you get out of school.

You graduate with a degree in sociology. Was this the first job? No, no. Getting out of college, I was selling cars and I hated it. My father and my brother sold cars at six days a week, grueling hours, and not a great way to make a living, although you can make a living. I was doing that through college and after college. And then I realized very quickly, this is not what I want for my life. And I said, I want to go back to school and get a master's. I asked myself, what do I want to study? I'm going to pay for this. I might as well be doing something I'm interested in. And so I got a master's in social work. I went to camp my whole life, grew up around sports and athletics.

I just loved coaching and being around kids. So I thought I'd be an adolescent guidance counselor, social worker, things along those lines. So got my master's degree. While I was working on my master's, I was coaching basketball and working as a part-time phys ed teacher, gym teacher out of middle school. Got my master's and they gave me a guidance counselor job. I was there about four years and thoroughly enjoyed it, but money started to get to me as well. And I started to get that little bug for more. For sales, because it's interesting you talked about the car business. You said your

father and your brother were both in that business. Yep. Career salespeople in the car business. Yep. Career salespeople. That's actually, it's funny. That's where I learned a sell. Uh, when I first got out of the restaurant industry, my buddy said you can sell Kirby vacuum cleaners, or you can sell cars. Uh, but either way in 90 days, you'll have a PhD in sales. Did you find that some of the skills that you learned on that car lot transferred into your future sales career? Yeah, some of the sales. But I mean, some people will say sales is sales. I understand that. But I would also say that car sales specifically is very unique to most sales. Car sales is very aggressive. It's very cutthroat. It's a lot of stealing deals, backstabbing, fights in the service lane. I mean,

I remember all that. I remember my father having troubles. I have a lot of respect for people in that business. And that's very different than what most people think, right? Most people think, ah, he's a used car salesman. He's a bum. Those people work very hard and they fight hard to earn a living, put food on the table, which is what my dad did and my brother did as well. Yeah. So you're being a guidance counselor. You're doing that. And money starts, bills start to stack up a little bit because obviously that's not a high paying job and you see other things. So what did you do then? Yeah. So, I mean, I had just gotten married. I was still working as a guidance counselor. My wife at the time was working as well, but yeah, it was very tight. And we found out that we were fortunate enough. My wife was pregnant and started thinking,

hey, we're really going to have to make some decisions here. So as a guidance counselor, I worked with a particular student and he was always in trouble. And I gravitated to those kids because they needed me. I thought I could help them. I helped them tremendously, kept them in school. He went on to do unbelievable things, things that I only wish I could do. His dad was a doctor and said, Alec, I really don't see you doing this forever. I said, well, what do you see me doing, Dr. So-and-so? He says, I see you in pharmaceutical sales. I said, you get me an interview.

I'll be there. He was a big prescriber for a particular company. He got me an interview. I didn't get the job the first time around. I got beat out on the last interview by someone that had already been working the territory, but I had my mindset that that's what I was going to do. So I ended up getting a job with that company and, you know, moved on from there. What was the, what was the company? Which was it? Eli Lilly and company. Eli Lilly. That's where he started. My background was social work psychology. So I thought it would be a good fit because

the medication that I would be promoting at the time was an antidepressant, Prozac, of course, and then another drug called Zyprexo, which is indicated for bipolar disorder. What did you find different about the sales process working for pharmaceuticals and, say, cars? What was different about it? It's a much slower process. There's much less sense of urgency, for example, in the car business, but in many sales businesses. Oftentimes, it's 90% of the time, you get them on the first call or you don't get them at all. That's not going to happen. But in pharmaceutical sales and other

types of sales where you're really selling genuinely, you're speaking from the heart and you're trying to do something good for somebody and fulfill a need. It's a much slower process and people get to really resonate what you're saying and think about what you're doing. And sure, relationships are built. Relationships are important. They're not the only thing that's important in the sales process. But I think trust is key. And in the pharmaceutical industry, you have the time to build that trust. Question is, what do you do with that trust? Do you take advantage of it to get more business? Or do you use that trust to strengthen a relationship and bond that could be far more valuable? So those are the types of things. So how long did you spend at Eli Lilly? How long were you there? I was there one year. I was there long enough to win rookie of the year. And then just after that,

I was let go as part of what was called an aggressive marketing scheme in any case. So I was let go. And then three days later, I was fortunate enough to get a promotion with a competitor, Johnson & Johnson, selling Risperdal, which was a direct competitor to Zyprexa, also indicated bipolar disorder. Okay. Go ahead. So they let you go because of something they said was aggressive marketing. So Eli Lilly, trying to toe the line there?

Actually, that resulted in a settlement because it was a nationwide marketing program. That's the thing. I learned really quick in my first job in my first year that pharmaceutical sales is not quite as genuine and heartwarming as you think it is. There's a lot of cutthroat there too. In the end of the day, they want to move product. So, you know. Okay. So let's talk about the Eli Lilly thing. So you didn't come up with this nationwide program.

No, no, no. You were just doing what you were told. Yeah. And listen, in that respect. Yeah. Say there's 500 reps, right? Based on morals, ethics, and values and the merits of that program, 490 reps in their brain were thinking, I'm not doing this. It just doesn't feel right.

But I was one of the 10 of the 500 that said, this is my order. I got to drive sales. Here's how I'm going to do it. I'm going to follow it step by step. And I was like one of the first ones to get it done. Unfortunately, it happened so quick that the I's weren't dotted, T's weren't crossed. It was a mess. And they had to make examples of people and that's business. That's something that I learned very early. And again, I also learned that it is very aggressive, the marketing and the sales that are behind pharmaceuticals.

And I can't really speak to many other industries. I've been in a lot of phone rooms and so forth, car business. But aside from that, that's to the extent of my sales experience. Well, I mean, what I was going to say is, you know, I'm actually sort of sympathetic to that. Because right now, I mean, you know, there's class action lawsuits going on all across the United States against the real estate industry. And my company is our real estate company here is the second largest company by volume in the state of Nevada. And we are personally named in one of those class action lawsuits.

And we're essentially getting sued for doing exactly what we were told by the National Association of Realtors and our local MLS. We had to do to do business. getting sued for doing exactly what we were told by the national association of realtors and our local mls we had to do to do business and so now we are holding the bag for that so i'm a little sympathetic to doing what you're following the rules and then getting in trouble for it apparently yeah it's interesting so there's two ends of the spectrum for me. For one, going back to my past and my criminal action, full responsibility, I totally messed up and people died as a result of my aggressive marketing efforts. And I understand tragedy. I lost my brother when he was 40. He was taken away from me, my only older brother. People ask me about prison or tell me about prison. There's not really much to tell other than there's nothing

easy about being taken away from the people that you love and care about. And I was away for 22 months. And then I think about the people that lost their loved ones to opioid addiction. They're gone forever, just like my brother. So I understand tragedy. I think I'm able to finally really just be empathetic and process all this. That's how long it's taking. It's 2024, and we're talking about what went on between 2012 and 2015. So this is a lifelong journey for me. Yeah.

So which company was it that was the story of, so you went from Johnson & Johnson. This is not the company that had the problem. No, no. I left Johnson & Johnson. How long were you at Johnson & Johnson? Like two years. I got bored quickly.

I wanted to get promoted. And J&J, you got to be there. It's just, if you haven't been there 10 years, you're not getting promoted. So you made the smaller company because it had more opportunity for upward mobility. Yeah, I went to a biotech company. And again, at Lilly and J&J, I was selling psych medications. And I was actually really selling from the heart.

And genuinely, I was still aggressive. But when I got to this biotech company called Cephalon, we had, or they had, a pain management medication. So now, for the first time, I was going to be selling in the pain management space, completely different animal. And unfortunately, with pain meds, most of them are prescribed for all sorts of pain, even though they're only indicated for a very specific type of pain by the FDA. That's the marketplace. And doctors, of course, can prescribe whatever they want. They're doctors. But we on the pharmaceutical side, we cannot promote off-label. But the fact of the matter is, or at least in my case, I knew doctors were prescribing off-label. I knew that I was incentivizing them to do so. And the sales numbers were going up. And the last thing I was thinking

about was telling them to put a stop to it. So at Cephalon, I learned the pain management space. I was there like five years. I did well. I got promoted a couple of times and then I wanted to get promoted again and they weren't ready. So I went to another company and I got into the sleep lab business and worked there for about five years, got bored because it was just straight salary and actually got into gambling because I was so bored. I developed a very bad habit and luckily haven't gambled since February 22nd, 2011. So I understand addiction and the endorphins and trying to get this rise. And that's kind of what drove me through all of these sales opportunities. I kept wanting more and more. I was getting high off it. Fact of the matter is, is looking back now, thinking about those GA meetings, you know,

yeah, I wasn't betting games. I wasn't betting at the casino, but I was still betting. I was gambling in my job, in my career. The stakes were high. The returns were high and I loved it. So eventually I got out of the sleep lab business because I got bored. Actually, one of my former reps from Cephalon, who I had a good relationship with, was working with this company called Insys.

This is the company. And she called me because her manager was getting fired because the company wasn't really doing very well and asked me if I'd come in and be the manager because it made sense for her to have a manager that she had been working for before and this relationship and so forth. So I took the manager's job. I took that job as a full-time job and I was still working the sleep lab job full-time. So two full-time jobs. And very quickly, they offered me a promotion to vice president.

I should have known right then and there, this is too good to be true. You're not ready for this job. Why is somebody else not taking it? But no, I was thinking opportunity, opportunity, opportunity, let's go. So I moved my family from Florida to Arizona and I took the job as VP at Incest and sales went through the roof because of poor decisions that were made from the top all the way down. Go ahead. Well, let's, let's start with that. So when you get to insist, they're not doing any business. So what did you do to change that? I mean, obviously how much of what is the, was the movie kind of a character, a characterization of a lot of these different instances, or was it kind of a true run through of incest?

I mean, what, what's how, how close was this? Is it fictional? Not very close. Not very close. If they really want to know the answer story,

read Evan Hughes's book, um, uh, pain hussers that that's a real story. He did a lot of research and, tremendous writer and a really good man. Um, the book,

the movie was based off the book, but when they bought the rights to the book, they basically said, we're going to do whatever we want with it. So it's really even difficult to assign certain characters in the movie with actual real people. That's how hard it is. Because they're kind of like a combination of like three,

four people in one. So yeah, it was based on that story but the only one that i could say was pretty darn accurate was uh andy garcia playing dr kapoor yeah i was i was gonna ask that i was gonna ask eventually if he was as when as as lunatic he is uh he seemed in the movie but but let's talk about when you first got to insist sales aren't good what what did you do to turn that around first and foremost um prior to getting promoted to the vice president i was a manager so

you know very quickly we were like the number one team in the country and i all i did was bring over one or two reps that i'd worked with at cephalon uh good buddies of mine and i knew that they knew exactly what this business entailed. They were in the pain management space. So they went right back to the same doctors that were speaking for that company and simply asked them based on their relationship, would you stop speaking for that company and start speaking for our company? And that's where the whole kickback thing comes in, because the more we pay them to speak, by human nature, quite frankly, the more they're going to write the drug, right?

It's going to be constantly on their mind because they're speaking and they're getting checks in the mail all the time. Um, you know, it's, it's not funny, but, but you know, what's interesting about the speaking bureau thing as I'm watching that in our business. And one of the businesses that I'm in is we're, we're completely vertically integrated everywhere in the, in the real estate space. And one of those businesses is more is title, title insurance and escrow.

And as I'm watching this, I realized that was some of the big boys do, I won't name them by name, but I think anybody that's in the real estate space, let's say this will know that the title companies I'm talking about, they will take mega agents and invite them to speak in other markets and pay them to do it. And I was like, holy shit, these companies are, they're essentially emulating exactly what the drug companies got in trouble for is now because it's illegal also to incentivize agents to send business and they're doing the same thing.

Of course. I think about and I talk to people and I hear what's going on and none of it surprises me, but I have made a conscious decision to not even internalize that. I don't want to know about it anymore. I don't want to live that life. I don't want to be part of it. I know it exists, but I also know that I don't have to take part. And so I really try to tune all that out. But yeah, the world is, there's a lot of gray, but that doesn't mean that you can't still live in the black or white. And the company that I work for now, I mean, it's a no brainer. You just get on a phone, you tell the truth, you speak from experience. People either feel the need to take your service or they walk away. It's that simple. We're going to get to that, but I just don't want to gloss so quickly over Ennis.

So you brought in new people. The sales company are growing. You know, as I was reading this story and I'm kind of talking to you or watching the story, I saw some parallels between kind of your story almost in Jordan Belfort. And I want to talk about that because some of it, I mean, was the money, did everything that come with that get as crazy to a certain extent as Jordan seemed to get in his A-Day? Pretty crazy. Yeah. Yes, pretty crazy. I was no saint. And I let the power, even though

was I really powerful? No. I mean, only the people that worked for the company knew me, but I let it get to my head and the sales and the dollars that were coming in, it got the better of me. And I actually saw that movie, Wolf of Wall Street, when that was going on. And believe me when I tell you, that movie didn't do me any favors. Because now you're like, I'm going to one-up this guy. Yeah. I didn't think I was going to one-up him, but I got ideas and I started watching what he was doing and it fueled me. It truly did. And listen, I know that sounds crazy, but I don't think I'm the only one that's been influenced by a movie. And I was influenced

by that movie. So now I take movies with a grain of salt. Yeah, probably a better move. So sales start coming in. And I know in the movie, we talked about the doctor with Andy Garcia. He went from what seemed to be a normal person into a not so normal person. So did that situation happen in your story as well? Is that accurate? I mean, I saw Dr. Gabor get more angry and irritated and less patient over time. He started to get more and more competitive, the better and better we did. You know, originally when we weren't even a public company, then we went public,

then we're the number one IPO in the country, ringing the bell on NASDAQ. I mean, it could get crazy. But my understanding is, is that, you know, even before this company, he had ran other companies and, you know, I can't speak intelligently to it, but if you Google it, there's a tremendous amount of negative press around him and his business tactics. And shame on me. I got to be honest with you. I didn't even research the man before I took the job at Insys. So I had a lot to learn and probably wasn't ready for that level of responsibility.

And I learned it the hard way. At your height of earnings with Insys, what were you pulling down? I don't think it's relevant. I can tell you that my wife and my kids and myself, we had everything we needed. We never wanted for anything. We did try to save. That's all gone. All of that's gone. Oh, sure. No, no, I understand.

Yeah, we tried to make good decisions as well, but we never wanted for anything. We loved to go to dinner and lunch and eat out, and we did a lot of that. And we didn't go crazy, but we lived in a very nice place. We had the nice cars. But no boats or jets or none of that. And we didn't go crazy, but we lived in a very nice place. We had the nice cars, but no boats or jets and none of that crazy. I think the reason I ask, right, and it wasn't about how much did he make off this. If you look at Marcus Aurelius saying that he didn't want to get tainted by the color purple, meaning that his biggest fear in life was being corrupted by power, fame, and fortune. It was always his biggest thing. So the reason I asked that was there's got to be a parallel and

there's got to be an axis, if you will, that the more that you're making on this, the more you get caught up in it. And the less, I think we're seeing that now. We talked briefly earlier about, and we're going to get to what the new company you're working with does, but you're seeing that now we talked briefly earlier about, and we're going to get to what the new company are working with does, but you're seeing that every day online now where I think you see these kids and, and I call, I refer to some of them as the crypto mafia. But you see these kids that get caught up in this,

the more and the faster the money starts to come, the more they get blinded to the morality of it. So I think that was my point of that question. It wasn't a, how much did Alec make? That wasn't the point. It's like, what's the difference? It's, and you know, it wasn't money made the right way. So nothing to be proud of.

The, yeah, the more you get, like I was, my options were investing like weekly, all the time. I just kept selling and selling and selling. And it was like, the thing had just gotten away from me. I mean, you know, we did over a billion in sales, you know, by the second year, you know, when we started with 59 million, you know, that was all the Dr. Kapoor's money. So, and we were pretty much, you know, going to lose that that 59 million and then next thing you know here we are so of course it gets to your head and uh you know i think it's fair enough to say that my head was so big i couldn't fit through the through the door um and now you know

it's a nice nice piece of humble pie yeah let's let's forget forget the the legality of what happened. Let's say we take somebody and put them in a situation where what they're doing is legal. What they're doing is the moral compass is due north. Everything is fine, but they have a rapid gain of success and a rapid gain of perceived power. What advice would you give to that person about how to keep themselves grounded in that moment that you wish you would have taken you know i'm a big proponent of learning through experience like i honestly feel that the only like god did this god's intervention and i'm not going to go into all about god but somebody needed to set me straight because I was never happy. I was always pushing for more and more and more. And so even though this was a horrible thing that happened, not just for me, but for so many people, for me, it's a blessing. I look at it as an opportunity to finally find happiness because that perception of getting more and more and more and that you're getting happier and happier and happier, in my opinion, it's just an illusion. For me, I was never truly happy.

Did you have that imaginary finish line that was always like, when this happens, then I'll be happy if I can get that then? Did you have a lot of that? Yeah, I very, very, very much wanted to retire. I wanted out. I wanted to be done. I tried to get out a couple of times. That doesn't make me any less culpable. That has nothing to do with it.

I just simply want to get out because I just had enough and quite frankly, felt like I had enough money. Didn't need the kind of money that some of the others were looking to make. I had a number in my mind and what I needed to be able to survive on a yearly basis until I die. And if I was going to hit that number, I was out. And I did try to resign a couple of times. It just didn't work out. What was the highest level you reached in the company? How high up did you get? I was the senior vice president of sales.

I worked. So it was the executive chairman of the board and the owner of the company. That's one person. Then right below that was the CEO. And then there was me. There was three VPs, but I was a senior VP. I had a sales. I mean, listen, it was a sales job. Unfortunately, for me and for a lot of people, we were very good in an unethical way of selling a medication that should not have been exposed to probably 90% of the people that got it. Yep. What do you think about now about the amount of fentanyl that's coming into this country? Because back then, I mean, it just wasn't coming in illegally. Now it seems to be, you can't turn on the news without it. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I truly am no, like I'm not an expert on any of this. Like I should, you know, just you would think I am,

but I'm not. But I mean, my, the only thing I could say is it's, it's terrifying. It's everywhere. More and more people are dying every day. You know, they're putting it in marijuana. They're putting it in cocaine. I mean, these are drugs. I'm not saying these are drugs that are okay to do. That's your personal opinion mean, these are drugs. I'm not saying these are drugs that are okay to do. That's your personal opinion. But these are drugs that people have done for decades and decades and decades and haven't died, per se. And now there's fentanyl. It's portioned roulette.

It's crazy. And my daughter is a senior in college, and I worry about her. And there was just an incident at Florida State, in fact. I was having dinner the other night. Her parents sat down. Her son's best friend was exposed to what they called molly at Florida State. And he died. It had fentanyl in it.

And that literally just happened a few months ago. I mean, this is real. And it's terrifying. Yeah, my kids will be going to school here in the next couple of years. And it's, it's terrifying. Yeah. My kids are, my kids are, we'll be going to school here in the next couple of years. And, and it's, it's scary. I mean, it's, you know, we try to talk to them about as much as we can, but you know, same time it's like, fuck kids are kids, man. They're going to do kid shit. And you're just, it's scary. Yeah. My younger one, my 15 year old, she's, she's more of the outgoing type. So I'm really going to be worried about her. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me ask you this going back to Ennis. When did you know

that it collapsed quick or did you have a feeling that there was a problem? What happened? I mean, I had a feeling after the first year I was there about three, I'd say after the first year I had a good feeling that there was trouble brewing. The problem is I had been in the industry so long, although at much lower positions where basically no one really cared about me, but I'd been in the industry so long and heard so much of this rambling that took place in every company I worked at. I figured it was just part of the business and that it would result in probably a fine, you know, several hundred million dollars. So I just felt, hey, Alec, you already agreed to take this position. You know what this entails. This should not be a

shocker to you, although new to you personally, toughen up, be a man and muscle through was kind of my attitude back then. Just part of the business at that time was these fines and everything else. Yeah. And again, if I didn't want to be that close to the fire, then I should have never taken the position. So when you were arrested, was that something like, was it, were they portraying the movies where they kicked the door in or did you surrender yourself? What happened there?

Yeah, no, I would have liked to self-surrender. And there's a lot of people that I talk to every day in my business that would like to self-surrender. Government typically doesn't allow that to happen. No, I tried. They said, no, I knew it was coming. I didn't know when. And it was early in the morning and they were kind enough were kind enough to allow me to drop my kids off at school. They clearly knew my schedule and what was going on. So I was able to get the kids to school, got home, was jumping in the shower to coach a high school basketball game. And they came to the front door. They looked like cable guys with a van out there and a vest and said they had to dig a trench in the back and needed me to come out there and look at something.

I knew something was not good. But what am I going to do? So I just went back through the garage. I opened the door. They showed me their badge. And there's guns everywhere and several men. And quite frankly, a lot of it's a blur to me. I think that's a defense mechanism for myself.

But it was definitely blur to me. I think that's a defense mechanism for myself, but it was definitely a traumatic event and more so for my ex-wife, I think, than even me, because to this day, if anything remotely comes up around that subject, that's the first thing she brings up. And I understand. It's got to be a core memory for her, for sure. How long did the, was there a trial? Did you plead? Well, you pled it out. You pled guilty, correct? Yeah, I pled guilty. And thank God. I mean, I understand the people who go to trial.

These are the people whom are innocent, in my opinion. They go to trial because they can't get themselves to plead guilty to something that they did not do. And so they're forced to go to trial. Unfortunately, in these federal cases, you know, like we're talking about 96% conviction're forced to go to trial. Unfortunately, in these federal cases, we're talking about 96% conviction rate when you go to trial. So even if you're innocent, you're put in a very precarious situation. Fortunately for me, that was not the case. I knew I was guilty. So going to trial was not an option. And yes, I pled guilty. So I'm not going to ask about, you already he said 22 months there's nothing to talk about about being in jail other than you couldn't see your your folks your people

um when you got out right right did you have a plan for what you wanted to do while you were sitting in prison or did you or was it like you didn't even want to think about that day when you got out no that's a great question and full and just to clarify, so I only spent 10 months in prison. It was a 26-month sentence. I should have served 22, and I ended up only being in prison 10, but the last nine were in there 22 months type of thing. Anyway. Um, but as far as a plan, yes, I worked with the, with this company whom I actually work with now, uh, back when I was indicted, you know, I'm an action taker. So as soon as I got indicted, uh, sleep was not an option for me. And it wasn't something that was important. I was scouring the internet and I was researching, looking for information I wanted to mitigate. I wanted to immediately begin to turn my life around. It was like a light went off. And I found this company, I reached out to them.

We did a lot of work together, but to your specific point, yes, I did plan. In fact, I built an extensive release plan, which I shared with my case manager, my unit team director, hoping that it would go up the ladder to the AW and the warden. I felt that my whole life by doing the work and actually providing tangible documentation that I've actually put a tremendous amount of time, thought, and consideration into this, that's always bode very well for me. It was no different going to prison. I wanted to be prepared. I'm not talking about being prepared in prison on how to make my bed. I'm talking about being prepared to prepare to get out, right? Because, you know, by, thank God, you know, by thank God, you know, I did not get a crazy sentence. And that was a lot due to my lawyer and the mitigation work that I did with this company.

But, yeah, I built an extensive release plan and I had every detail documented as to where I came from, where I was going, where I was, where I was going. And I continued to memorialize while I was in prison every day and write, write, write. And sure, things changed as I learned more, read more books, discovered more things. But my release plan was a work in progress. And I came out, I don't want to say I hit the ground running because I didn't. I hit the ground walking though. I wasn't at a standstill. I was working right away. Within two days of being in the halfway house, I was working a full-time job and paying restitution. And then I just continued to work and work and

work until I found something quite frankly that made me feel whole. And that's, that's what I'm doing right now. And I probably it's, it's what I plan to do probably for the next, probably till I die. Cause I don't think I'm ever going to be able to retire. So, uh, you know, hopefully I found a home and I think I'm in a good place and I think I can do good things. Well, let's, let's talk about white collar and exactly what that company does and who it's for and what you're doing. So White Collar Advice is a company that is there to help people mitigate. Oftentimes, they're labeled as prison consultants. That's not a name that we truly like to embrace because, again, when you're looking at White Coll collar individuals, generally, they're going to go to a minimum security camp. And to pay for prison consulting, meaning how do I shop in the commissary?

How do I make my bed? What are the bathrooms look like? That's just like nonsense. It's not where we should be spending our time and our effort and our focus. We work with those who want to do the work. We work with those, everyone on the team is a convicted felon. The co-founder of the company, it's a great story, Michael Santos, talk about movies. He saw Scarface when he was 20 and decided that that was going to be him. And he made a name for himself and then got in trouble.

And he was sentenced to a crazy sentence. I think it was like over 40 years or whatnot. Anyway, he served 26 years, started in a max, worked his way down to a medium low, then a minimum where he met the other co-founder walking around the track. And then they put this business together that would help those who found themselves in the crosshairs of a government investigation. We like to see people as, first of all, our goal is to humanize people. We want everyone to understand that this is a human being who did something wrong and it was a bad decision and they're assuming responsibility, but this does not have to define who they are for the rest of their lives. And that's a motto that I live by myself.

And that's kind of the message that we sent. bank fraud pharmaceutical health care big one you know people like that who quite frankly like myself never in a million years that they never in a million years did they think they would see uh u.s government verse their name right never in a million years you don't think that you don't envision that and so is that you saw? You saw something that said that? Of course. Of course. What was that moment like? Jesus. What did I do? The United States of America versus you? And that's the thing. Not that I'm defending these people, but in prison, I met people where I could actually understand and justify why they did what they did.

They grew up with nothing, single family home. Mom could barely put food on the table. And they ended up doing something they shouldn't have done, you know, more times than not selling drugs on the corner. I could almost understand that. I get it. But for a guy like myself and for these white collar criminals that come and call, we're all, most of us are in a similar boat where it's like, we didn't need to do that. You know, and here we are and we've got to face the music. And the quicker we assume responsibility, stop blaming others, understand the situation we're in, embrace it, figure out how we're going to pay back our victims and move forward with grace and dignity.

The sooner we start living again, because, you know, we're not dead, right? Some people might want us to be dead, right? Some people loathe us, but we're not dead. And we have families, we have kids and we have people and we have good things that we could offer and do before our life has come to an end. And that's something that I'm very passionate about. Well, brother, look, it's been an enlightening conversation. Obviously, it's a tough conversation that people are going to have a very polarizing opinion on. But if we did anything today, I mean, I love it to be a story of redemption, but I don't think we can necessarily, and I think you would agree with this, say that the redemption is today. I think it's a lifetime journey and I think you're on that journey. And man, I hope you, I don't think you ever complete it, but it looks like you're going to stay on it. Yeah. I'm just going to stay on the course, but I agree with you. I don't think

you ever complete it. I don't think you get past this one completely, but you can still live and do good things and be a good man. That's my goal. Well, I'm rooting for you, dude. I wish you well. And thanks for taking the time. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks for taking the time.

Thanks for hearing me out. Take care. Yeah, for sure. All right, guys. So I hope that was, man, that was a deep conversation today, a little deeper than we normally go. But again, look, it doesn't matter the mistakes you've made in the past and what you've done in life. You can always bounce back.

You can always make a change. You can always, it's never too late to get on the right path. If you get on it sincerely, genuinely, and push forward in a way that's meaningful. So if you're stuck in the drift, if that's something that's affecting you, letting poor choices you've made in the past hold you back, never too late to change.

We'll see you next week. Thanks, guys. What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list, but do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.