Locked In with Ian Bick - I Went from Wall Street to Prison — Over a Technicality | Travis Richey

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Travis Richey was a successful hedge fund owner with a background in finance — until a paperwork mistake landed him in an Arizona state prison. Raised in Boston with family ties to organized crime, Travis built a career on Wall Street before a technicality changed his life forever. In this gripping episode, Travis opens up about his rise in the finance world, the moment it all came crashing down, and how he’s now using his experience to help others through his nonprofit. #TrueCrimePodcast #WhiteCollarCrime #PrisonReform #FinanceGoneWrong #FromWallStreetToPrison #LifeAfterPrison #ArizonaPrisonStory #LockedInPodcast Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop Timestamps: 00:00:00 Travis Richie's Early Life and Career 00:07:01 Growing Up with a Criminal Father 00:14:30 Reflections on Childhood and School Experiences 00:21:50 High-Earning Careers Without a College Degree 00:29:03 Navigating Securities Regulations: A Lesson in Legal Oversight 00:36:44 Uncovering Legal Challenges and Investor Relations 00:43:46 Embracing Hate Comments for Growth 00:51:10 The Courtroom Decision and Sentencing 00:58:29 Courtroom Appearance: The Importance of Image 01:06:42 Learning from Past Mistakes in Business 01:13:36 First Day in Prison: A Journey to the Unknown 01:20:52 From Inmate to Financial Literacy Teacher 01:28:27 Facing Felony Charges and Financial Ruin 01:36:29 Recognizing Privilege and Life's Challenges 01:44:43 Overcoming Probation Challenges 01:51:12 Success Stories and Turning Points 01:58:23 Travis Shares His Inspirational Journey Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The federal statutes, the state statutes are so heavy in terms of charges that they will just overcharge the shit out of people. And now you've ruined them in the public eye. Travis Ritchie grew up in Boston with ties to organized crime, but he chose a different path, finance. He started a hedge fund and found early success until a paperwork error landed him. in an Arizona state prison for two years. Now he's rebuilding his life and using his story to help others behind bars through his nonprofit. This is a journey from Wall Street dreams to prison bars

and back again. Travis, welcome to Lockton. Thanks so much for coming from Idaho, you said, right? Yeah, man, pleasure, thanks. I think you might be one of our first Idaho guests. I don't know if we've had anyone from Idaho. I hope so. Maybe there's a couple.

I don't know. Such a random state, the potato state, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you were originally from Arizona, right? That's where I did my time, yeah. Did you grow up in Arizona? I grew up in Boston, not too far from here.

Oh, you're from Boston. Yeah, Framingham. Oh, okay. My mom's side of the family or her sister, our aunt, is in Cambridge. Okay. So we grew up going to Thanksgiving there every year. It's only a couple hours from here. Yeah, beautiful area.

Yeah. Yeah, fun upbringing. What was the upbringing like? It was the typical East Coast, you know, nobody had. I was telling my wife is we were driving in, you know, through, Connecticut here. Like I miss the, I miss the Cape Cod houses and the no fences, you know, and being able to navigate through everybody's backyard. But summertime was, we'd open up the fire hydrant, you know, fire department would let the kids play on the street with the water.

And wintertime, it was knocking down icicles from the house and seeing who could build the longest one in the freezer before it broke. Those are the magical moments of childhood. And it was fun. It was a good time. But, you know, you don't know what you don't know in child. childhood I've learned. I grew up with a dad who was involved heavily in organized crime, and it was just a day-to-day for us. Now looking back, you can see the dysfunction in the rearview mirror, if you will, but my mom tried to keep it all together. She was the rock of the family still is, you know, and would hide all the ugliness or as much as she could from us, and, you know, dad would come home with duffel bags of dollars. So it was kind of like the best of both worlds.

that you didn't really know about until you knew about it. Did your mom work or was she just a stay-at-home mom? She was a homemaker. Yeah, she was a homemaker. Were you aware of what your dad was doing? I was never aware of what it was. You know, it was just obvious that, you know, your dad didn't have a typical 9 to 5, if you will,

and, you know, didn't have a typical office scenario, you know, where you'd go and visit. And there was always different things that would spur you on to ideas, but you were a kid and it didn't really make any sense. And it wasn't really spoken about, you know, in the 80s. It was much different than today. You know, everybody's talking about what they used to do on social media.

But, you know, in the 80s, no Twitter, no Facebook. You know, none of the accoutrements. And so it was just life on the block, you know. But we had a good idea that something was out of the ordinary. You know, my dad would always walk around with the fanny packs and would always have the red duffel bags full of different items. whether it was guns or drugs or money. And eventually it got the best of him.

You know, he became a heroin addict in my early, about eight years old, about as early as I remember it, up until, you know, the day that he died a couple years ago. Did your friends have a dad that was like that as well? They did. Yeah, they did. And it was kind of, that's what I mean. Like it was kind of a block thing where, you know,

we weren't, none of our dads were leaving in the driveway, you know, at 8 a.m. and waving to us, you know, in shirts and ties, you know, they were waking up when they wanted to, and there was late nights, and, you know, there was conversations on different phones. And now that you look back, you know, a lot of it seems to make a lot of sense. We would we would have different businesses pop up in different warehouse districts and then they would go away quickly, if necessary. But we were never in the life, so to speak. We never, you know, my dad and mom did a great job of shielding us from this is cool. You know, it's not like, you know, we wanted to be on, you know, Dateline or any of the television networks. But I think it was a different time. You know,

I do. One of my current neighbors at the moment used to work for a guy. It was a driver for a guy in New Jersey. And, you know, much similar situation. He's about 30 years older than I am, so he has a lot more fun stories. But he kind of reminisces about that as well, You know, if there was an altercation in the neighborhood, it was typically just handled like gentlemen or quietly. You know, nobody really got out of control. You never really see too many wackos or drunks or weirdos. You know, the neighborhood was taken care of by, you know, the proper policing, if you will. Did your mom ever express how she felt about their relationship and what he did?

Man, you know, I go back and forth on this. It's a good question, Ian. I think I don't know how you're married to somebody for 20 years without knowing the good and the bad of who they are. But I also think, I also know that my mom really wanted a better life for the rest of us. You know, myself, my three sisters, I think she really tried to force us into that. You know, so her goal was to push us into school. Her goal was to take us to church every Sunday. Her goal was to make sure we had, you know, the routines of life.

You know, she was a stay-at-home mom. She was always, they used to call it a homeroom mother, if you remember that. That was, you know, back when you could make actual cupcakes and cookies and bring them to school without buying them. So, yeah, she did all of those things to keep as much normalcy as possible, you know, but the first time that it was like a real red flag for me was about seventh grade, and I was pulled out of seventh grade school by the ATF. And they had, my dad in custody, and they wanted to have a conversation with me about it. Seventh grade, I really knew nothing about nothing. You know, that was the good news of it. I'm not, I don't want to trump it up and make it bigger than anything that it wasn't.

That's not my story. And so I really didn't know any of it. But that was the first time, seventh grade, when I was pulled out, thought, okay, something is, something's actually happening here. And then there was a series of events after that, you know, as you're aware, you know, just prior to the time that I I was able to drive, got my driver's permit, came home, and my dad had a couple of guys in the living room, and none of them had their clothes on and all of their clothes and everything was in the back, in the backyard with the dog, and they were having a conversation about, you know, who was doing what, and who was going where, and who was getting popped. And so you started to kind of put things together, and my dad had a vehicular manslaughter charge at the time against him.

And the only reason I knew that was because I was coming into it. being able to drive. And so I became the old designated driver, if you will, for him for a series of months. So you piece those things together. But I was never forced into the lifestyle. As a matter of fact, many of the guys that my dad was around pushed me the other direction. And I think that's pretty common. You know, I talk to a lot of guys now, even behind prison bars, a lot of gang members now, brothers of gang members who will say, you know, this isn't for you. You know, I wanted better for my son, my nephew, my cousin, my brother. They want typically better for you. So lucky for me, true story, honest to God, I've never done a drug a day in my life. And I attribute it to the

negativity that I saw. And so I think a lot of times you can either run that direction. You know, I can use this as a crutch. The reason I'm incarcerated, the reason I'm, you know, fill in the blank, you know, it's because my mom wasn't there and my dad was a fill in the blink. For me, it's the reason that I'm a present father to this day. For me, it's a reason that I haven't done drugs to this day. I've seen the destruction. And so I'm not, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that that's for me. My life is a life of freedom, you know, physical, mental, financial with Melissa and our four kids. And I learned how to do that by seeing the destruction that my dad caused. Did your dad gravitate towards you more because you're the only boy?

It failed it. Yeah, spot on. Yeah, I was the apple of the eye, if you will. So all of the fun things that he was able to do because of the lifestyle, you know, I was able to meet Don King and sit ringside at numerous boxing events. That was a big thing for him, you know, prior to the MMA world. I'm sure if he were still around and still connected, he would definitely be deep in MMA. But yeah, when Vegas, or I'm sorry, when boxing was really big, you know, during the 80s and the come up of the real fun, some of the pictures you have out there with those guests, the real fun fighters. We were ringside at all of them, all the events. And I was the only boy, and I was definitely the apple of his eye. I would go around with him, and it's funny, you look back now, and you say things. So, for example, he would do collections, and I would be in the front seat of the car, front seat, and this was the days of the pay phones, you know, and so he'd get out, and you'd leave the car running and he'd say, okay, you know, the Louisville sluggers underneath, underneath my knees and the 45s here. And he was just walking from the truck to the pay phone to make a phone

call. But it was constantly that like level of anxiety around him. And when we would go do collections, I look back now as a father of four, and he was doing his best to father in those moments. And so he would try to give me life advice like this. You know, you'd be, you'd be, you come up to a stoplight, you know, north, south, east, west traffic, and you'd go to, you know, make a right on red. A lot of towns, you know, especially out here, no right on red, you know, but when you're making collections, you don't really care. You're just trying to get to point A to point B. And he would always say, if there's a car coming this direction, and they have their blinker on and they're going to turn, you can never trust that they know what they're going to do. You know, I'm eight, nine

years old at the time. It didn't actually resonate with me. But now that I am a dad and now that know we have a 13-year-old boy, having that conversation with him in much more context is what I appreciate. And what I say to him is oftentimes you're going to find yourself in a situation where you could be with people who are doing things that are going to get you in trouble. Right? That was my dad's story of, hey, if this guy's going to come and make a right and you anticipate he knows and he's paying attention and you pull out, this is your fault. Now you're in trouble, now the cops are called. Now you have stuff and things, the trunk that, and he didn't go. go into the dialogue of all of that, but now that I look back, it was actually pretty sound advice, you know, pay attention, don't trust that these people know what they're going to do.

So some of those things that I would pick up on when we were out running around in between the stay in the car and the violence, he was doing his best to parent. How are you as a kid? How would you describe yourself? Man, I, you know, if I go back to my school records, I was a fantastic student. straight-A student. I was an accelerated kid. They started me early in kindergarten against my will. I moved along quickly in classes, but I used it to my advantage. And in the sixth grade was the first time that I realized that I wasn't as smart as I thought I was. And so there was a kid at the time, do you remember fluoride in school? Did you ever have fluoride in school where they'd have like a fluoride container against the wall and they'd have everybody swish fluoride and spit it into a cup. It was like a whole thing in mass. All the waters were worried about

the water and so we're doing fluoride during the day. And so there was a kid and he would he would spit in people's fluoride cups. You know, as he was passing him out, a little tiny like two ounce, one ounce cups. And he thought it was funny, you know, you're passing them out to the students just to be a jerk. And so I went out on the playground one time and tied his shoelaces to the yellow runged ladder that we've all walked up on, right? This is fifth grade. I mean, this is just juvenile type stuff. And sure enough, I mean, I was like, it wasn't me. Like, you know, right hand to God, wasn't me.

Promise you, promise you, promise you, promise you. So then they believed me. And they said, hey, you know, since you're in this accelerated program, we're moving all the accelerated kids. into this room. Well, behind us was a two-way mirror where my mom was back there. A couple of like administrators were back there. And then they put the kid in the room with me. And so I started bullying him. And it, it wasn't 30 minutes before the door opens. And there's everybody. You know, the administrator, the prince, I don't remember, as principal, vice principal, my mom. That was the first moment where I was like, oh boy, this is, this is me being watched. This is me not,

being as smart as I think I could. And so I think a little bit of that was acting out, but that was all it took. I didn't, I didn't get into drugs. I didn't get into, I didn't, I didn't try any of the drinking or any of the thing that was the choice at the time. For me, the first conversation that I had with my dad after that was all around embarrassment. That always kind of stuck with me. And I say it to my kids to this day. We were actually just at the, celebrating one of our girls' birthday and they all walked away and I said don't embarrass me that was something that really stuck with me it wasn't a when I got home he wasn't angry upset violent he walked me through like the steps of understanding of what I've just done people are watching you people are going to call me people now have

you dead to rights if you will that you've done this and that's embarrassing to us and so that was the first time that and the last time that I had to have that conversation with him so I never really bullied anybody in school after that. I never got bullied in school primarily because of who, you know, we were in the community. And it was a good kid in school. School never bothered me. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the process of learning. And my dad really, really, really tried to ingrain like financial literacy to us. We would, another kind of funny telltale thing that you knew something wasn't, wasn't normal. In our third car garage, we had a money counter. like on the counter, you know, an old school, like the one they had at Chase Bank before they put it in the vault.

You know, you had to tie up the, what were they made out of? They were like cloth bags at the time and had the white tie, quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies, and then the ones. And so, you know, I'd come home from school on any given day and, you know, you'd pop the garage, go through the side door and, you know, my dad was in there with the money counters, you know, putting all the dollars together. and he was real big on financial literacy, real big. He just didn't know it at the time. You know, he wasn't explaining to us FICO scores and mortgage statements. He was always ingraining in us at me specifically, you know, how to be an earner, how to make money, that this was your job, your

responsibility. So he was doing the best he could with the resources he had. And I think that now, as I'm a dad, and I can look back, you know, 30 years, I can give him that grace, you know, I've come past the anger and the aggression and the, you know, how did you become a drug addict and you screwed up our family? I've done all of that internal and external work to now realize he kind of probably did the best with the resources he had. What did you want to be when you grew up? A dentist. A dentist. Yeah.

Yeah, that was the goal. Why a dentist? I don't know, to be honest. When I, all the things that I used to write down, you know, I was going to be a dentist. I was going to be a doctor of some sort, but then when I really dove into like the dollars, and again, this is 20, 30 years ago, I realized that the dentist made more money based on their output of work. I thought, man, if I have to go to school for 12 years, I can go and be a dentist, I can get there and half that time. And then if I'm going to go and be a doctor and I'm going

to make $2.50, I can go and be a dentist and I can make $125 and half that time with half as much debt. It was really just kind of a numbers game to me. I knew a couple guys in the neighborhood that were dentists. They had beautiful homes. And I was always a big fan of straight teeth. But it didn't go further than that. I just thought, yeah, I'm going to be a dentist when I grow up. Did you end up going to college for that or no?

No. No, I went to college for finance, ironically. Was that because of your dad? A little bit because of that, you know, but also because I enjoyed the entrepreneurial, like, hustle of the dollar. my dad had had a business when I was about 16 years old and it was a construction supply company and he had a great racket where he would sell you know diamond saw blades and and saws and all sorts of construction equipment and then you know it would magically go missing like in the river or the ocean so we would be before school I would be dialing for dollars as as he would say

calling construction outfits, you know, early in the morning from 5 to 7 a.m. and giving them the pitch, the baker's dozen on the saw blades, you know, $3,500 a package. And that's really where I cut my chops on the idea of sales and finance. And I knew that I wanted to do something in that arena, but I was just gifted with numbers. And I got a little bit of that from my dad. We would drive around and he was always like, count this. And every time you got the money, he would make sure you faced it the right way, and make sure you put the rubber bands in it properly. And, you know, he was litigious about the coins being set up the right way.

And so the dollars and the coins, I think, just naturally moved to a financial perspective to me. But more than that, now looking back, I think the financial course for me was what I thought would give me the freedom of out. What do you want to do with the finance degree? I had no idea. I had no idea at the time. I wanted to figure out how to make the most money possible. Wall Street was super intriguing to me. Managing money was super intriguing to me. I remember reading, you know, Trump's Art of the Deal over and over and over. That was just a fun book for me to understand. And growing up with my dad, it was always like a deal in the garage, you know, whether it was a laundromat, a massage parlor, a vending company, a trucking company. So you'd overhear these conversations by osmosis. You'd overhear them all the time.

And when I was able to go, man, if I could just put this energy that these guys are doing into something legitimate, I really wanted to understand how to do that. How do you really build a business? What does that really look like? How does the money come in and go out? And they would give me certain tips, like garage tips, I would call them neighborhood tips. And one guy would say, you know, you're industry agnostic. the only goal is to sell more or spend less.

And you're 15, 16, 17 years old. It's prudent advice, but you don't know. You have no context around it. Now I get it. Now owning multiple businesses. It doesn't matter whether it's ice cream or whether it's pest control or whether it's trucking. You really do need a higher volume, more dollars on the top line, and you really need to figure out how to cut your costs.

Where do you end up going to college? University of Miami is where we started out at from a finance perspective. Wanted to get my MBA. It was a big deal for me to get that at the time. MBAs were sexy. Now I think they're all online for the most part. Or not needed. Or not needed.

Yeah. That is the truth. We could go down a rabbit hole about education. I just think so many like my friends from college got a degree in business or a degree in marketing and they're either not doing that. field or you don't need it. A lot of it you could learn on your own. Granted, there are some degrees you need in life and should be needed that degree for, but I feel like there's a lot that are just silly and basic to spend that kind of money on. I'm with you entirely, and we've got

four kids. Melissa and I talk about this all the time. I'm pretty bullish on the trades. Plumbing, heating, HVAC, you know, welding. I'm pretty bullish on those. I don't think that, I think there's a shortage, you know, especially with America building as much as we are. And I don't think that a lot of these kids want to go out and they're not being told, hey, you know, you can go be a plumber and make $150,000 a year. They're not being told that in school. Yeah, I made six figures of Whole Foods. Did you really? Yeah, with no college of grant.

It was a lot of overtime, but you could work your way up. I mean, store managers are making $150, 200K. So people just don't see that. And that was no college degree. It's not a requirement. I mean, even I read articles about Target. and Best Buy in Walmart, their store leader, store managers are making, you know, good six figures and sometimes they'll even pay for school for them for the college degree, but the college degree

isn't even necessarily needed to have a position like that. I agree. I agree. There's a lineman college in our town where they do like the high voltage electrical. Those guys are making $200 to $300,000 a year because it's such a niche, right? And it's so experiential, like you have to know what to do specifically. and, you know, there's not a city being birthed here that doesn't need the electrical wires ran to it. And big, massive high voltage.

And those guys are making high six figures. And I'm bullish on it. I really am. So I'm with you. And especially, I can't remember what I was just listening to, but they had made the comment like, I think it was a Jordan Peterson clip where he was talking about, you know, by basically by 10 a.m., you're going to have made more decisions and have more technology than your great grandfather ever experienced in his life. Right?

And so just that moving of that needle, but our school system's the same. Our kids are still doing the Christopher Columbus and the Cotton Gin stories and the Wright brothers. And they're not really being pushed towards any sort of entrepreneurial or trades. I mean, you're... USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usaa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply.

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101. Yeah, it costs me a lot, though, just with all the failures and stuff. But I look at it as like what I went through was like a Harvard degree. It's education. Yeah, it was. It was real life experience that a lot of people don't get. I mean, even now, like I do my own accounting and I do, I run my business. I know how to, you know, look at contracts and I do a lot of things. And grand, sometimes you need a lawyer and things like that. But for the most part, I can run my business on my own, and that's without the college degree. That was just with trial and error and failure. The failure is the biggest, though. I think.

No, it's the most important. I think so, too. My business partner, I talk about it all the time. When something goes wrong, we've just reframed it, and we just go, education is expensive. Yeah, and sometimes it takes multiple failures. Like, I've made the same mistake multiple times just in different settings, and then finally it'll click with you, and you're like, okay, that makes sense. Now I'm not going to do it this way. Okay.

And you learn as you go. How do you think you get over that failure, though? Because usually it just handicaps people. I think for me, it just, I don't, I'm not really the type of person that will just settle for failure. Like when I got knocked down, I think that motivates me more to even get back up and solve it. I'm not just like a stay put on it type of person. I can't just kick it to the side. I got to win at that point.

But I think sometimes that'll hurt me too, or it has hurt me. in the past because then you don't know there is always a time in place to cut your losses and it doesn't necessarily mean it's a failure overall it's just you know you lost the battle but you want to win the war so that's something i had struggled to learn with for a while but i've learned it more as i'm older and wiser and that could be applied to dating or business or anything you know sometimes you just have to move on to the next thing and that doesn't make it a failure yeah and that's something that was one of the biggest lessons I definitely learned in my late 20s. But now I look at things as if it, if it doesn't work out, it's not meant for me. And you move on to the next thing and something

will be meant for you. And I believe in timing and everything happens for a reason, who we meet happens for a reason. I always look at those things. And then I kind of analyze, well, this moment brought me to this moment. So this must be because of this. And I should pursue this now. because those things all happen connected me to that moment. I love that. It's like a serendipitous moment when you look back on it. But it's hard to do in the moment. Yeah.

Yeah. It's pretty interesting to see. So did you do all four years at Miami? No, I ended up graduating through Ottawa University with my degree. Is that Canada? No, no, it's an online degree in like the Midwest. Okay. So ended up graduating through that.

to your point, wasn't necessary to do what I wanted to do. And so I ended up in high-stakes finance, managing a hedge fund. And managing that fund for us, it was mezzanning financing, like bridge capital. So a partner would come to us and say, we're going to build this project, short-term financing, you know, 12 to 36 months, high interest rates, high yields, high risk, high reward. And so we raised a lot of money to go out and do bridge finance. And then the bridge financing led us to smaller business opportunities. I had a lawyer friend who his father was a trucking magnate, big trucking company here in the States. And his father had him become a lawyer so that he could simply do business for sale contracts.

And the idea was, hey, if people are going to come to us to sell their business, we're just going to cherry pick the ones that we want. That concept, sitting down with him, kind of reframed my idea about managing money. It was less about the project. It was more about how can I build a relationship with somebody who's going to continue to build my pipeline. And if I know I have a good operator, let's say in single family housing, right, or multifamily housing, I want to make sure that operator always comes back to me. But there's going to eventually come a point where I'm going to just keep one for me in my own portfolio. And so if I go out there and I tell everybody, hey, I'm your, I'm your guy, I'm your lender, I'm your guy. They're going to start convincing me and doing my due diligence for me on why I should build their product.

And so I kind of got the industry of tribes, as they would say, where you would say, all right, the multifamily idea, if we're going to go out, we're going to build in secondary markets, Buffalo, New York, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Austin, Texas, five years ago. Some of these secondary tertiary markets, they're going to start to convince you, here's why you should build this in. Here's why we're going to be able to refinance this in. Here's why you should give us your capital. And so it really set me back in a forward momentum because I was no longer yearning to do the deals.

I was learning on what deals to do. Warren Buffett has an interesting comment about that. And he says, I've just been at the plate for 80 years watching all of the pitches go by. That's how I know which one to swing at. And so that was a very, very, very, very, very, I want to make sure that's clear. I'm not him. That was a very small portion of where my mindset was, is if I go out and I aggregate hundreds of people who want me as their lender, they're going to educate me on their projects, right?

Why is Danbury, Connecticut blowing up? What's coming in? What's the infrastructure? Is it Amazon? Is it, right? They're going to start to build a portfolio for you. And so then it would be, all right, I'm just going to peel one of these. off. So I got that idea from one of the gentleman who was an attorney, you know, as you're

lending on all these projects, Travis, make sure that you're looking for the right one to keep in your portfolio. So we raised a bunch of money and publicly registered with the federal government under a reg D offering, you know, all 50 states registered for a minimum of $10 million offering per state. So it was a pretty big fund. And in the state of Arizona, they do not recognize the federal exemption as being present. Simply put, for everybody listening, it's medical marijuana, circa 2007. You and I can fly into Denver, buy all the weed that you want to buy, but the moment we load it up in a U-Haul truck and, you know, take it to Idaho, it's a federal crime.

That's the exact same thing that I was caught up in, just the opposite. So from a federal perspective, we registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, told them about all of our offerings and the millions of dollars that we were and did raise. The state of Arizona did not recognize that offering. The state of Arizona said, nope, anything over $99,000 is a class four felony. And in this state, I had 66 of them. So you didn't consult with a lawyer to say avoid Arizona? Why did you need to be in Arizona?

Great question. We did all the states. We did consult with a lawyer, which was one of my sticking points. We did have a lawyer on retainer, and the lawyer actually got charged as well. So it was a complete oversight on our part. 100% dead to rights. This isn't about, you know, my co-defendant did this or the judge had it out for me for that. While all of those things may or may not be true, at the end of the day, the accountability was mine. It was my bank account. It was my company, and the money going out or in the state of Arizona should have been registered with that state. The taxes,

should have been paid in that state on those dollars, and neither of those two things happened to the tune of over $3 million. But who's the victim here? The state of Arizona. So it's not like someone complained, they lost money. This isn't necessarily a fraud case where... Correct. No. No, my exact charge was transactions

of an unregistered securities dealer or salesman. Seems a little, you know, low-hanging fruit to go after. Quite low-hanging fruit. I'm in my early 20s. You know, I was raised a significant amount of money. And if you follow the paper trail, you know, having my dad and his rap sheet didn't help. We had a lot of judges bring up some of my past and some of his past. And this was 2007. And, you know, this is prior to the Twitters and the Facebooks.

And so for education, for anybody right now, either going to, you know, be indicted or are indicted, you know, when you read emails and text messages out loud, it's not a good thing. And what I mean by that is I can make anything sound the way I want it to sound, right? If you've ever sent a text message to your buddy and said, that's, that's effing hilarious. Oh my gosh, I'm going to kill you. That doesn't sound good being read out in court. And I'm not saying that I did that. I'm simply saying all of the things that they read out loud. I did have a degree. I did have an attorney. I did raise millions of dollars. I was public. I should have known better. And so I fought this case for years, years and years. And I even sat down with the FBI. Sat down with the FBI at Applebee's. They gave me a clean bill of health federally. So no fraud, no misappropriation. And for me, it was a, I was able to breathe for like a half second. The state of Arizona indicted me. So what's a clean bill of health, though?

Like, did the FBI reach out to you? Did you reach out to the FBI? They reached out to me. They reached out to me and said, hey, we want to meet. We want to go through your books. We want to make sure and see if there's any federal charges here. And so they poured over my books, poured over our accounts, our accounts, and wrote me a letter and said that there was no charges that they were going to file and that there was no

misappropriation of money. So now, how do you first get on the state's radar with not register incorrectly? How does this even happen? and why didn't they just give like a courtesy call or a letter saying, hey, you need to register and fix this and pay whatever taxes, fees or anything that were missed before you registered? That's a great question. I actually thought that was going to be the case. So when they indicted me, it was just a knock on the door.

And it was two guys in suits and they handed me this thesaurus, you know, of paperwork. But I was never charged, you know, an indictment for anybody who doesn't know, which would be shocking for your listeners. But an indictment is, you know, neither an admission. you know, or a denial of guilt. It simply means that this particular county got a bunch of people together and said, this is a guy who lives here, these are the charges that we think we're going to bring forth, you know, is it true or is it not true? That's all they say. And yeah, they were true. So I thought it was just a misunderstanding, so much so that I actually drove to the Attorney General's

office with my thesaurus and knocked on the window, bulletproof glass for the lady there. And said, hey, I got this, and I was just trying to meet with this guy. And she looked at me like I had three heads, bro. And she said, you should get an attorney. There's no way he's going to meet with you. Oh, okay. This is serious. This is actually real.

And all of the, you know, childhood memories of, you know, the DEA and the ATF and the local police and the sheriff's office and the handcuffs and the Miranda rights and the red, white and blue lights, none of that happened. None of it. from 2007 till 2012 I was never handcuffed I was never processed I was never mugshoted I was never arrested I was never read my Miranda rights like to say that in the general public that's shocking shocking how in the world can you simply say

that you have a case here it's never been stood before court for not registering a business either most people and my attorney told me this he said if most people understood this there would be blood in the streets from a judicial perspective. Right? And so if we want to get super political and you can cut this out later if you want to, but for me, it's the ditty thing at the moment. We have spent tens of millions of dollars on a case

that's basically dead. And I don't, I don't want to condone what he did. I don't know what he did. I wasn't, I wasn't there. You know, I didn't get the invitations. But the federal statutes, the state statutes are so heavy in terms of. charges that they will just overcharge the shit out of people and now you've ruined them in the public eye and so for me there was a very very very very big component to that how long can i bleed out Travis four years five years you're fighting this case right they've indicted you they haven't put you on the news yet because you haven't been arrested they haven't brought charges but you're fighting this case don't get me wrong and so every day you're going to work every day

you're, you know, I'm married to Melissa. We're internally fighting this. Every month, it's $10,000 in legal fees. We're turning over Cartier watches. I turned over the deed to vehicles. All of this is happening behind the scenes while I'm still supposed to be out there doing what I do, which is running a fund. It's the most confusing five years of your life, right? To your point, who's the victim here. There's no old lady on the other other end of the phone, you know, who got whacked over the head and we stole her IRA. You know, there was, there was no Ferraris, there was no Lambos,

there was none of that sexiness, which typically comes with these things. You and I were just talking before this, the guy in I'd in Utah that got popped, you know, right? The biggest thing they wanted to splash was that he bought an Eventador. It wasn't that way with me. You know, we had done well before,

we had done well during, I was prudent during it, and so that wasn't the nature of my case. The nature of my case was millions of dollars that owed a state in tax revenue. That's the nature of my case. Because that was profit. You had made money in Arizona. Absolutely. You need to pay the taxes on it. Millions of dollars. Now, were investors still making money in the business was still fluid while you were going through your legal situation? 100%. Everything was

kosher. Everything was kosher. Everything was kosher. And it's exhausting. For anybody who hasn't been involved in that, it's hard to explain. But it's a mental nightmare. Did investors know what was going on? You had to let them know. Yeah. Yeah, I actually went to all. all of their houses, all of their homes, and explained to them. Weren't they all over the country? Yeah. Oh no, we sat down with everybody.

I sat down with everybody and said, here's the story, here's what's going on. And they had gotten letters as well. By that point, they had received letters and said, hey, you've invested in this fund, we'd like to talk to you. And so everybody was open and amicable. I was friendly with everybody up until the day of sentencing. And did they lose money at all?

Nobody lost money until the state sentenced me. Because then the fund collapsed because you're not there. Yeah. And you were the sole. owner of this fund? Correct. Okay. Yeah. And you were living now in Arizona at this time? Yep. Why did you guys decide to move to Arizona? We were, so when my mom had retired, she had moved out there, and my wife's family is from there. Okay. Yeah. And did you have kids yet at this point? No. No. We were just, Melissa and I got married basically the same year that I got indicted. What was her background when you guys met?

Did she know anything about business or what was going on in the company or anything like that? Good question. question. Melissa is June Cleaver from the 70s. And her greatest role in life is to be a mom. She wanted to be a mom from the day we met. She's the greatest mom still to this day. 17 years later, been together. And she had no business acumen at all whatsoever. Wasn't involved in the day-to-day, wasn't involved in the business. But that being said, was 100%. you know, my partner, always. And so when this went down, she wasn't aware of, you know, any of the day-to-day, so to speak. She didn't understand the regulations or any of that nonsense at all.

But Melissa is like the quiet. She's like the sniper. She got a scholarship for accounting. She's an very, very smart individual. So people who think that I'm smart, she's even better. But no, she was there from day one through the entire process. stayed with me, and is still with me. That's a keeper right there.

Bro. Life is magic with that girl. Life is magic. That's awesome. Yeah, I couldn't have scripted it, brother. Yeah, she stayed, I know we're bouncing around, but she stayed through the entire process, you know, through the whole thing, which is, I don't know, we couldn't put a percentage on it, but let's do it.

Like 10% of all of these stories that you hear, you know, the spouse stays around and stays through it and through the thick and thin. She was going to school at the time at Arizona State to get her degree. She finished her degree. Cudos to her. And so you're running life. I had done what that attorney had told me in the beginning and I had peeled off some of these small businesses for ourselves. You know, we had gyms at the time and we had vending machines at the time and laundromats and investments and houses. And so we were peeled off some of these things for our own. good. At the same time, you know, from 2007 to 2012, you know, you're just fighting the government. And, you know, you look back now and it is always so clear, right? But I remember the first conversation

that the state wanted to have with me. And I went in with my two attorneys. We pulled into the parking lot and went into the state building and two representatives had met us, met us at the time to to get us in the elevator. And we get in the elevator and I'm on this side of the elevator. My female attorney's there. My male attorney's there. The two representatives from the state are at the back of the elevator.

And the one closest to me, about my age, maybe a year or two younger, looks at me and says, what do you have to do to drive a car like that? And my attorney, sitting right where you, standing right where you're sitting, gave me the, don't even think about responding look.

And you look back now and she educated me, you know, obviously a day later, and said, they know everything. These guys hate your guts. These guys have $250,000 in student loan debt. These guys are making $46,000 a year working for the state. And their only job is to actually tell the world that this indictment has to go to trial and that you are a horrible human. Make no mistake about it. They hate the fact that you're driving a six-figure car. That was like a light bulb to me.

Where I came from, it was a sign of respect. Where I came from, I was proud to pull up in valet on date night with my wife and leave that thing there. From their perspective, I was a scumbag. Yeah, and I think I, you see that more than ever now, too, with what's going on at the Jeff Bezos thing. With the wedding? With the wedding. I mean, people are ripping him apart. But the guy worked hard to get that.

You know, he started from the bottom. And he does do charity work and he does all that. but I don't think we limit someone's capacity. That's not what America stands for, saying, oh, you can only make X amount of dollars and do X amount of things in life, you know, or else you're going to get berated. It just, to me, that was crazy.

And I wonder, I wonder if it would have been that level of scrutiny if he would have just eloped at the White Wedding Chapel in Vegas. Because I wonder, and I'm setting this up for, for a yes because I think people want to find the negative wherever they can. Right? And so I think if he were to shut down, you know, Las Vegas Boulevard and him and Lauren got married at some white wedding chapel and Elvis was there, they would be like, look at this guy, he's a dirtbag.

He shut down the boulevard. He thinks he's better than, like, I don't know when really to your point, we stopped celebrating everybody's wins. Yeah, but the same people that hate on him are the same people that use Amazon. And so who's winning really at the end of the day? I mean, you and I are in that same seat, right? Like, I remember, you know, one of the guys we talked about before this told me, like, you have to engage with the haters because the algorithm loves it.

Yeah, I love the hate comments on mine because if you had eliminated every hate comment from the videos, you're losing 50% of your comments. So instead of 3,000 comments, it's 1,500. To me, in my world, 3,000 comments is better than 1,500 comments. Yeah. So let the hate come. Right. And it's interesting how my thing has evolved where, you know, there used to be so many hate comments just on me personally in my videos because the clips were me. But now it's my clips are guess. So it's not necessarily me. And I know that's very hard for some people to deal with that get into content seeing those comments. And I struggled with that when I first started out. But eventually you build up armor to it. Now I'm not affected at all. I like to shoot back a good emoji or a slick comment or something. Because there's literally people in this world sitting in there.

their parents' basement or doing whatever they're doing, trolling people all day and have nothing better to do. Yeah. Like, I could never imagine writing a hateful comment on someone's clip or video, ever. I could never do that. Ever. I would write something that's funny, you know, like a funny hate type thing as a joke, but I would never do what some of these other people do. Like, like malicious intent. Yeah. Yeah. It is an interesting, it is an interesting world, right? Because so much of that, let me go back. to your, because my question... Bonjour, compadre.

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I think it just came naturally. I think it takes in time because I know in the beginning I needed to defend myself with every comment. And that's something that happened when I first got arrested and everyone from my town was posting, you know, really hateful comments about me on the Internet and everything like that. And I'm friends now with some friends that stayed neutral through all that.

We rebuilt our relationship when I found success later in life. And they never posted something hateful. They just stayed neutral. They walked away from me. We were talking about this the other night. They walked away from me to focus on their careers and stuff and distance themselves, but they didn't stoop to the level others did where they actually wrote like a hateful comment. Like I see the Danbury News Times, there'll be articles of someone getting rusted or whatnot.

And people on Facebook will just repost that article. take every single word for that as the truth, 100% and write something so hateful on it. Yeah. That's what people do. But I've learned that nobody who's ever doing better than you will ever post a hateful comment about you. That's what I've learned.

I've learned that when you're trying to get up the mountain, like there's plenty of people who want to be a surpa for you to help you get up the mountain. That's what I've learned. And I think I'm hopeful that that is like a growing class. because I think you can band together a lot quickly because you recognize like we're going to get a boatload of hate for this, right? We're both like middle-aged white guys from the East Coast and people hate our accents or however our black shirts, whatever it is. But us banding together

and us forming an alliance becomes like this beautiful opportunity for us in the future. And nobody that's doing better than us would want to not see us. us succeed. That's what I've learned. It's always the people who are underneath you. It's always the underlings who want to like figure you out and pick you apart. I don't know about you, but like, do you get the, do you get people trying to piece together your lifestyle? Because I do. Yeah. I mean, somewhat. I'm very, I don't necessarily put it out there too much because my podcast is more interview based. I mean, obviously people get to know me more when the guests ask me questions because the guests are always curious. Sure.

But other than that, most people don't necessarily know what's going on in my life because it's interview-based. And the focus is always a guest and stuff. So people might make assumptions and stuff, but I'm just like a very chill person now. I just go with the flow. You know, I don't really engage in a lot of things. And I just kind of keep to myself. And I love the job I'm doing and the work I do. And I'm just super focused and dialed in on that. It's a superpower, bro. It definitely is. It really is. Because I feel like that when, if I'm having a bad day or something happens outside of my work, I could just focus on the work and that fixes everything. And that just goes to purpose. I don't think it's necessarily my job specifically. I think it's just if you have purpose in life, you can drive all your energy into that. I mean, that's how I got through going through my criminal case because my purpose at the time was making the club work. So I could be a trial. I could be doing this. I could have the FBI being on my door at 6 a.m. and what kept me going every day. was the fact that I had this nightclub that I had to make work no matter what.

And I think if I didn't have that, I probably wouldn't have lived to get past that. So that's always been my thing. If a relationship doesn't work out, if there's failure, if I lose money, anything, I always have my purpose, whether it was back then or whether it is now, you could drive your energy back into that. So many people don't have that. And I think that's a big struggle. You have to have that.

Purpose. That's brilliant. Well done. Thanks. I've been working on it. So when did you realize that, you know, you weren't going to be able to successfully fight this, that, you know, you probably couldn't win at trial and you had to work on some type of deal? Yeah, quarter four of 2011. I remember it like it was yesterday. I walked. We, so up until this time, you know, 2007 to 2011 Q4, we had gone in after the indictment every month or 60 days or 90 days, you know, to go before the judge and everybody would, you know, pander back.

and forth in posture, here's what we found, here's what we agree upon, here's what we disagree upon, and it was always moved, moved, moved, delayed, delayed, delayed. And quarter four of 2011, my wife and I were, I was done, exhausted. And I told her, whatever's coming next can't be this bad, you know, and I know that sounds silly to a lot of people who haven't done it, but this is years of mental exhaustion and financial exhaustion. And at this point, it's full-blown public, right? Like, I'm a big deal in a small town. It's millions of dollars. I'm young.

All of the things, right? I have the office. I have the cars. I have the girl, right? So people love to attack all of those things. And so for me, I told my attorney when we walked in, I said, like, let's figure this out. Like, let's make a deal. And the best thing that she said to me, she said, wait till after the holidays.

I said, oh, okay. Didn't dawn on me then. She said, get through the holidays. She knew. She knew at that time that I was going to be sentenced. I did not. Up until that point, I still had the ego and the bravado, and we were going to figure this out. And this is just a misunderstanding. Let's write a check and move on. This is goofy, right? Nobody's dead. Nobody's dying. Nobody's hurting. But you're going to hurt people. I thought that there was some semblance of common sense that I could force down the judicial throat. Didn't work that way. And so she said, let's get through the holidays. And I said, okay, we will. So January 20th, 2012, we walked back in the courtroom and we put it before the judge. We agreed that prosecution agreed and we agreed that we would put it before the judge and we would let the judge make the determination. And in that courtroom, he read my pedigree out loud. All of the things that I thought were in my favor, Ian, you know, this is who you are and this is what school you've gone to,

and this is the law firm that you've counseled with, and this is your funds and da-da-da-da. all of the things in my head were like, that's good, that's positive, that's good, that's positive. And he said, and because of those reasons, I'm going to make an example out of you. Two years, Arizona Department of Corrections were mandated immediately. So was this a sentencing date or was this a trial by judge, he finds you guilty and then sentences happens the same day? Same day, you got it. So this was, you opted for a trial by judge? Yep.

Did you, looking back on it now, would you have rather have had a trial by jury? No. I think I would have got 66 years. What was the maximum on this? What were the guidelines? My first plea deal was 66 years. That's what they offered. That's what they offered me. For not filing paperwork. Yeah, for not killing anybody. I almost fell over dead.

But you have to pause, and I want to, like, I want to like, let's zoom in here. This was the time if people go back and Google a guy named Alan Stanford out of Texas. You know, billion dollar Ponzi scheme. I was actually reading on that on Wikipedia. when I was doing the project that I was talking about, we had access to Wikipedia. And I was looking up like Ponzi schemes and stuff, and I went down that rabbit hole.

But yeah, go on. Yes. I mean, so the Ponzi scheme is a real thing. Charles Ponzi, you know, it's named after him. He was a real guy and it was a real thing. So Alan Stanford, you know, massive Ponzi scheme at the time. And then you have to go to the regulatory environment of 2007. For anybody who really wasn't there.

Bear Stearns on Wall Street gets closed, countrywide financial. The largest mortgage-backed security in the country gets absorbed by Bank of America for risk of default. UBS Bank, you know, gets locked up, you know, literally padlocks on the doors. I mean, we are talking, Lehman Brothers goes under. We are talking a time of financial collapse that the country hadn't seen in decades, decades. And the lynch pin to all of that was a gentleman named Bernie Madoff. And if we understand Bernie Madoff, this is a guy who was in business for decades, half of a century, by the way. And every year sat down with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and every year was audited, and every year was clean.

This is a guy who somehow amassed a hundreds of billions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme and fraud. This is all happening during my time. None of this benefits me, right? None of this. It suffices to say that the judge probably had a 401k that had a 40% slash because of guys like me, right? The climate at the time was not in my favor, right? And so when I look back and when everybody who understands that moment, you'll understand that this was a pinnacle moment for everybody in the country. Financial crimes were literally the four-letter word of the day.

we gave Bernie Madoff more time than the next 10 child predators. That's scary to think about. And I said this years later when I understood the system better to my wife. We will give somebody more time for taking a 401k than we will for taking a child. That's the current status of incarceration here in America. That's a spooky place to be. I digress. Yeah, I got more time in prison than some of these people that touch kids or have sex with a student in high school or anything like that.

Correct. When you, and all right, let's do it. So I interviewed a gentleman, and the synopsis is that he was molested. Yeah. Okay. He was molested at the age of five by his mom's boyfriend. And that started a series of about half a dozen of those same instances. till the time that he was about 15 years old.

And he was working at a supermarket, met this cute girl at the supermarket, her family just moved to this small town, and they got close, and they said, let's run away. They end up running away, and life was good for them. He got him a job, and they were on the run, you know, a little Bonnie and Clyde status, enjoying life, and eventually his employer said,

hey man, you're like your W-2 and your socials, like these don't match. of course it was fraudulent. It was a lie. He just didn't want to get caught. So he kind of bounced around and he had found an ID at a local gym. And he tells the story. He goes, I walk in and I walk into the locker room. I get a day past. I walk in the locker room. The first locker I open. Unlocked full wallet. So of course he takes the guy's stuff and now he's the quote unquote guy. So now he's able to run for longer based on this guy's information, gets a job. So now he's okay again. Anyways, the cycle repeats itself. And I'm not condoning his behavior and theft and for anybody

in the comments who wants to be get ugly this is a young man running away from from childhood trauma period end of story doing a good job getting a job not being a weirdo not steal right so anyhow eventually it catches up to him and then they send him back well when they send him back to where he came from he gets put back in that same environment so the four individuals that molested him he takes a hammer to them all of them in the middle of daylight knocks on their door confronts them brutalizes them all four of those child predators got a third of the time as the boy

who brutalized them with the hammer all four of those child predators got less than nine years they gave him 27 years you molested this boy in my world in our world and going back like that guy gets like a vehicle he gets a medal of honor

right like the only sad part that he didn't take them out completely. And so those are the things that stuck with me in the judicial system that didn't make sense, never make sense, and never will make sense. So as I was standing there in sentencing, being read all of my pedigree out loud, his final words in my court minutes

where, yeah, we're going to make an example out of you. Two years immediately remanded, immediate handcuffs. No turn yourself in, no white collar, no non-dangerous, non-violent, non-repetitive, none of that stuff that you hear, you know, on 60 minutes. This was literally immediately remanded. My wife in the courtroom. My loved ones in the courtroom.

My supporters in the courtroom immediately remanded handcuffs. Boom. Both wrists. And you've never been to prison before a day in your life. No, sir. Not once. Where do they end up taking you? They take me into, they take me through an elevator,

immediately through an elevator and down a couple floors. And I had a suit on because I thought that would help my case. we're both laughing because we know that it didn't help the case yeah i think that's so silly like if i ever have to go to court again i'll just dress casual it doesn't even matter i mean even during my trial my my attorney didn't want me to dress up too much yeah because it kind of gives that image you know you don't want to be the one sitting there with an expensive suit not that i would have worn one to begin with but like some of these guys it makes you less likable yeah i just i just had a federal case that we worked on from a consulting perspective

And he was facing a lot of years. And when I sat down with him, uh, is in the South and he had a mullet. And I said, my man, you're cutting your hair today. Like, you have to cut your hair. I need you to shave your face. Like, this is your judge, you know, she's white.

She's over the age of 60. She's democratic. Like, these are things that really play into it individual psyche. You know, we want to believe that they walk in the courtroom and they read off a matrix and they go off of that matrix. Unfortunately, it's just not true. We're people, right? put our pants on the same one leg at a time. And a lot of those perspectives will influence a judge's sentencing. So they take me in down two floors and then they start going through your personal

property. Luckily, I think I gave my wife the keys and I didn't really have anything else on me. And so after they, you know, they took my tie. I remember that, you know, heaven forbid you hang yourself, you know, from a Nordstrom's tie. So, and then down to intake. You know, where everybody's sitting in the concrete cell and the three concrete blocks as benches and one door. And I walked in, I sat right to the left of that door and just sat down. And in that cell was my first moment of gratitude, Ian. I was in there for about an hour and you're numb, right? You're numb.

The handcuffs are off of you, but you've got two guys over there that are losing their minds. You know, one of them's vomiting. One of them's coming down from Lord knows what. but none of these people look like you. You're not talking to anybody. And a guy walks in who looked like me. And in prison, you know, that's kind of a thing. He looks like me.

He talks like me. He had a suit like me. I thought, ooh, okay. And so he sat next to me. He got eight years. He took his to trial. He got eight years. And I can, I remember that moment like a taste bud.

Because it was my instant gratitude of two years. All right. Okay. What happens in two years? And then you start to add up how many Christmases, how many birthdays, what if I get out early? Will I make one more Christmas? Will it be two or will be? You start to actually walk through it, the mental gymnastics of incarceration. And it was my first moment of gratitude while incarcerated. When he sat down, he took his case to trial. It was a white collar case. I don't recall any of the details, but I recall that gratitude. Never forget that moment. It's interesting that we all have those same thoughts when you get sentenced and you're in jail that first day. I bet you if you lined up 100 people, they would all share those same thoughts, thinking of birthdays, events, counting the times, everything like that, just calculating like that. Yeah. That's what we all think about in that moment. Yeah. I didn't know at the time what good time was.

I didn't know, like, so two years in Arizona is my out was 15 months, 17,520. the hours for the math people in the room. So, but I didn't know that at the time, right? And so then once I finally got in touch with my attorney and my wife, you know, my attorney, my first phone call with my attorney was another sound advice. You know, she said, we can appeal this, but by the time it goes to the court of appeals, you're going to be out. And she said, you can spend another $100,000 on this, but you're going to be out. It was great advice. It was great sound advice. And I know a lot of people don't give attorneys, you know, their due diligence, and I still don't, you know, for the vast majority of them. But the attorney that we got, you know, was world-renowned first class

and really gave me solid advice throughout the entire thing. When I look back on it now and you, and you look up, you know, 66, 27 class four felonies and 29 class twos and a 66-year plea deal, I, by the grace of God, got 15 months, Ian, right? And I look at that now. And I'll put this pin in there because I really believe I was on the trajectory based on my childhood, based on the trauma that I was experiencing, based on the push from my dad to be the best and the biggest and the brightest. And based on where I was going,

$500 million wasn't out of my realm of possibility. and based on the climate, if I would have gone that trajectory, I would have been life in prison. I would have been Ellen, I would have been Bernie, I would have been an absolute American greed story that got decades and lost decades. I know that for a fact. I wasn't going to stop.

I didn't have any other vices that were stopping me. It wasn't an alcoholic on the weekends. I wasn't losing my time to golf. I was fixated on finance. And for me to raise millions of dollars was easy. Easy. Easy. That time of $3 million for Arizona was a period of like seven months. And I know now those numbers don't sound that big, but I mean, we're going back, whatever it is, you know, 18, 15, 16 years.

You know, going back 20 years to raise $3 million in six months for a 23-year-old kid, it was a pretty decent feat. And so I was not going to be stopped. I was going to be an absolute monster. But I had to be because it was... Looking to start 2026 with an unforgettable getaway. Fiji Airways sale is on now. Fly non-stop round-trip to Fiji from just 748. Or enjoy a sunny Fiji stopover on your way to Australia with round-trip fairs starting from 839.

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Oh my gosh. If we were to add it all up, I probably spent $300,000. Wow. Yeah. Do you wish you just took a plea deal right to begin with, like tried to work something out and not fight it? It's a good question. I know. Boy, I want to tell you yes, because that's the right answer.

I want to say yes to you. But I don't know if I would have known what was on the other side of that goodness. Because I don't know if it would have stung as bad as it did. did, Ian. Like, and I'll give you context, because I hate when people say pithy sayings on podcasts. The reason that I put my girls to bed at night and read them a bedtime story and say a prayer with them is because it stung so bad. I don't know if I would have got that if I would have taken the plea deal and moved on. I don't know if my ego would have been checked if I would have taken the plea deal and moved on. I don't know. I want to tell you yes because it's the right thing across from you. Yeah,

Boom, plea deal, six months, nine months, 12 months, who knows. I don't know if it would have stung. I think I would have gotten back out and just been twice as big and twice as angry and twice as aggressive. That's what I think. And so now to be able to spend my moments in peace and my moments in gratitude that I get every day, to be able to lay down on a pillow at night and have absolute peace financially, emotionally, that comes from going through the hell of five years of fighting a case. I'll never get to that place ever again.

Now that we're on the other side of it, we get a lot of pitches. My partner and I, we have a very, very, very small venture capital fund. We do similar what we used to do back then. Now it's just us, our money. We buy small businesses. We buy real estate, but it's just us.

And every 90 days I get solicited. Hey, man, you're doing so good. You know, I just sold my home. Can I give you X? No. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. you couldn't give me $10 million of your money to put to work.

I will write you the entire blueprint of everything I'm doing. I will put everybody's first name, last name, email, and phone number. I'll introduce you to everybody that I'm working with. I have no secrets. I want to hide none of it. But you've got to make those decisions for yourself. I'm not taking your money and doing it for you because of what I went through. And people think it's a little bit zealous.

I went to prison though. I slept in that fucking bed. I had to eat that food. I had to be away from my wife. No, there's no shot in the world, bro. I'm not taking your money. I would rather educate you and give you the blueprint.

You want to buy real estate? Here's how we do it. Here's my lender. I'll give you everything. I'd rather give you everything and watch you win than to take three points, five points, ten points,

30 points. There's not enough money in it. There's not enough money in it. That to me is why I don't know if I could say, I would have taken the plea deal. It stings so bad. Yeah, I feel like once you start taking the money,

you start to lose control. Yeah. Because then you start to have people that you have to answer to. And I've learned that too, just dealing with, like, when I started this journey, I did it with partners, and I outgrewed them, and I got new partners, and I moved on from them. And, you know, I just wanted to go back to my roots

to where it's just me doing. everything and you learn and grow throughout of all that and I go back to when I first got into business all my mistakes became from having partners and taking money from people yeah and I know I just don't ever want to be in a position like that again ever and the beautiful part now is I don't speak for you but I don't think you need it yeah I think I made mistakes because I thought I needed it because I wanted to grow faster yes and I look at when I first started all I had to do was just like you know, not rush the process. And I would have been so much better.

Granted, I'm okay now, but I would have been even better because I did make mistakes, but I learned from it. I made those mistakes and I grew and, you know, and you learn and you grow, especially in a new business. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's just a part of life. But the mistakes are the recipe, bro. And I just feel like,

I feel like social media has forced us into an era that we don't talk about our mistakes, our failures, the dirty dishes in the sink. Like, we're in such a weird, filtered moment at the time. I'd love your perspective, but I feel like everybody's only sharing their wins in front of a rented Lambo. And it's like, like, I literally told my wife this morning in the hotel room, I just thrive on being the actual blueprint guy.

Like, if you actually want to set up a business, just holler at me. It's 85 bucks. I'll walk you through it. There's no affiliate link. There's no, you're right, there's no $3,500. legal Zoom bullshit. Like, I really thrive on that. I love that. I love watching other people win. I love watching people actually run with it because it's so unique. You've probably had, I don't know, a thousand people go, I'm going to do what you do, Ian, you've inspired me.

And I get that when I go back into the prisons every month. I want to do what you do. Okay. How many times have you been here? This is my ninth bid. Okay. So you don't want to do what I do bad enough. right you don't want to be ian bick bad enough you want ean at half a million subscribers on youtube today right you don't want all of the scars that's on ian's back yeah me and matt were talking about this the other day like you don't realize that i was ubering and doing doordash and doing freaking only fans at one point just to keep the the lights on you know the bills paid maxed out every credit card it felt like i was under the same amount of stress as i was as a teenager again And I had a good job and I had a good life and I didn't need to walk away from that.

And I put that all in the line and risked everything to do that. And then you have all the comments from everyone from your town saying, what does this kid do and talking about prison and getting 10 views on a video? So I went through all that. And I'm starting to enjoy it now and enjoy the success from it now. But there was like six to seven, eight month period of time where I had no idea what I was doing and it sucked. and it was a grind. And it took me probably a year and a half

to really build it up to a stable point. And I would say this is the first year, you know, where it's really, really stable. You know, I bought out most of my partners and I was able to get to a good space and be in a good space. This is the first year I paid my estimated taxes, like for next year, you know?

So I'm not going to get hit with those penalties. Good. Whereas last year, like I wanted to, I'm like, but you just couldn't do it, you know? Yeah, it's a big chunk quarterly. It's a big chunk to pay those. So this year I'm on the right track and I'm paying a lot in restitution, which isn't tax deductible. But this year I'm going to pay over $200,000 in restitution.

So just doing things like that is, you know, that's a success to me. And also being able to just be with my family and take them out to dinner and enjoy life more. And not worry about who's picking up the tab, I bet. Yeah, because I used to always be at dinners where I was like, I can't afford this. I need someone else to pay or, yeah, can I have 20 bucks? Yeah. It was a struggle. Like, owning a nightclub and not having any money sucked.

Sure. And you know how it is in business? You need cash flow. You need operating money. Every business I ever owned, I was always severely underfunded. Yeah. Even when I started this, I was severely underfunded. It sucks.

You can't operate. It's super stressful. That is, bro, that is a course in its own. Cash flow is king, right? the vehicle I drive right now, the license plate says cash flow. It's a true story. I'll send you a photo.

You can put it up right now. I think almost everybody I've ever spoken to who wants to start a business, whether incarcerated or not, doesn't understand the length of the runway that they need to get a business off the ground and the sacrifices that they have to make in order to keep it going.

The Ubering, the door dashing, the second jobs, the fivers, the freelance contracts, all of those things have to be in your wheelhouse if you want to make it work from a business perspective. I think a good idea probably dies every hour in America because whether it's lack of marketing, whether it's lack of funding, but it typically comes down to money, cash flow. I didn't have enough money to tell people about myself or enough money to market in my area, whatever it is. So that's something that I just preach on these people to go out and to not forget the foundation. Even if you're coming out of prison, you worked at Whole Foods,

like you said, for years. But I had one of my conditions of probation, if you can even believe it. So I get out. We've totally skipped that. I screwed up your interview now. I failed, and I'm sorry. Yeah, we'll get to the get out part. We'll go there. So tell us about your first day of prison. Mm. First day of prison. We take the bus out to Nowheresville in Arizona from the jail to the prison. So they wake us up at 4 a.m. in the jail. No phone lines. All the phone lines are cut so you can't tell anybody where you're headed. They don't tell you where you're headed. You just get your shackled at 4 in the morning. It's dark and cold outside because it was January and you're headed on to a bus. Eventually the sun comes up. You're still on the bus and you're out in the middle of nowhere in the the desert and you pull up to this concrete fortress with razor wires high as the sky. And that was my, that was my prison. We were so close to the Mexican border that my cell would see the Mexican flag on a nightly basis. It was that close. Most of our COs would walk over and back as a job and they would live on the other side. And when I walked into that prison, it was everything that

you'd seen in the movies, intake, stripped, searched, and then right onto the prison yard, which was just a swarm of people. Everybody working out, total confusion as to where to go. And lucky for me, I had one gentleman who came up to me at the time and said, hey, tell me where they've put you, and he walked me. And he said, oh, you're actually next to me. And I was actually in the room with his workout partner. I had, our prison was an old motel six. It was converted in like a T, one yard on this side, one yard on that side, and then kitchen on one side and work out rec on the other side. That was really the, that was really it. Visitation was a tiny trailer. Medical was a tiny trailer. The very small education was a tiny trailer, very small yard.

And I was fortunate to be on that yard. Very fortunate. non-dangerous, non-violent, non-repetitive. Anybody who had worked down there, there was a handful of lifers that were on that yard, but they'd also been incarcerated for decades and had, you know, worked their time off. That was primarily a workyard. And so I didn't realize the friendliness at the time came from a lot of those guys that were leaving the yard every day. So he gets me to my room, and at the time, there were four-man rooms, if you can believe it. and four-man room, four lockers in the room, and we had our own bathroom.

So conditions for me were not gangland and, you know, we're not horrific. I didn't see anybody's head chopped off and, you know, there was none of that. For us, everybody had kind of the same motto, and they said, we're all going home. We're all going home. We're all going home. I wasn't there a week, and one of the saddest things was there was a gentleman who had just finished 42 years. And he sat on the bench out in the middle of the rec yard until they handcuffed him and brought him to his room.

He was so scared and so institutionalized that he didn't want to leave. That was something I couldn't fathom at the moment. All I wanted to do was leave. And so you get in to prison and you start to understand all of the things that you've heard and seen. At the time, the big show was Oz on HBO. I still have yet to see in that, but I need to see it. And Chuck Zito was a close friend of my dad's, and so I was aware of the show and aware of the stories,

and I would drive Chuck around the lot when he was in town. And... You know Chuck Zito? Oh, yeah. He lives around here. Yeah. Yeah, no, we used to drive him around quite a bit in my Jaguar. All sorts of fun stories. Yeah, I've known Chuck for 30 years. Are you still friends with him? Yeah. That's funny. Yeah, he signed so many books for me when I was a kid and just a fantastic human. Was always one of the few that was like, this isn't for you, kid. This isn't for you, kid. Even when we'd pick him up at two in the morning from a strip club, you know, he knew he could call me because I was the sober kid.

He knew it could call me because he could count on me. But still, to this day, a fantastic, nice guy. And so a lot of those things would come back to my mind as you're sitting there in the yard. Like, okay, you can put two and two together. This car, I didn't know what. what a car was at the time, there's Mexicans, there's the blacks, there's the whites, there's the area, you know, you start to put those things together. So regardless of it being, you know, a minimum institution yard, there were still guys and there were still protocol. We still didn't eat together in the chow hall. We still didn't line up together, you know, we still didn't do laundry together. We didn't work out together. You know, you ran with the people who looked like you

and walked like you and talk like you. I was fortunate. The guy that brought me in, he was on that yard he was in charge of the the woods and so he was nice he was kind he he nicknamed me wall street once he read my paperwork and him and my sally which was his workout partner pat pat had been down for a decade and pat was gigantic swole your typical 40 pull-up guy um and so i lucked out they were like we want to know everything that you know we don't know any of this stuff Pat had been in so long that his teeth were fake. They had rotted out from the drugs that he had done. And so he had new teeth.

And they liked my teeth, you know. And so it clicked. Swear to God, it was like literally an act from heaven. They were workout kings. I was, all I wanted to do was work out because that's what you do to pass your time. And they wanted to talk about business. It was therapy, Ian. It was therapy when I look back on it.

So we would walk that stupid dirt track for miles a day with our good. movie little disc men's. We had a, then the CD player would skip and, oh, don't, don't run too hard. And so we would work out all day, every day, as much time as possible when we didn't leave the yard. And we would talk about business. They would want to know, how do I set it up? What does this mean?

How do I do this? What's an LLC? Can I, how do I pay the least in taxes? All the prison stuff that you hear, right? I want to set up a nonprofit so I can make all the money and keep it. Well, you're going to end up back here. And so it was therapy, brother. And once I finally got through intake, you know, they get your paperwork and they get you processed.

I'm going to say two weeks, they gave me a prison job. And on the yard, by that time, I kind of had a reputation. And I would start to dispel some myths for people because, number one, I just came down. So you're the freshest guy with the freshest information. But number two, financial literacy on the yard was like gold. I didn't realize that. I did not realize that at all. And so there were some guys there that were lifers. And, you know, they had 40 years worth of dollars. And they had family and loved ones. And, you know, a couple of them had savings accounts on the outside. And they were trying to make mutual fun decisions. So I kind of became this counselor. And I didn't realize it was therapy for me and it was an experience for them. That word gets up to education. Education says, you really have a degree or you just, yeah, I really have a degree. It's not some prison politic nonsense. They run my background, take.

my degrees and they go, okay, great. You're one of the only guys here that's got this type of degree, so we want you to leave every day. And they gave me a job at the community college. Wow. Yeah, small business development centers, a nonprofit that was inside the community college and all four of the yards that got off compound approval would meet there, and they'd do their education. There was a welding program and a HVAC program, and my particular one was a small business Development Center. And so when I came in that day, the gentleman who was obviously a civilian, who was teaching it, I started dialoguing with him. And he realized that I knew what I was talking about. And so he said, why don't you start writing a course of financial literacy? And that's what I did.

I had 23 and a half hours a day to do nothing else. And so I started writing this financial literacy course for the guys. Very rudimentary. You know, how do I save money? What's a budget? You know, what's a 70-30 rule? What's a 60-20-20 rule? What are my different buckets? Where do they go? And again, it was therapy. It was cathartic.

And so then this small business development center he'd start letting me teach the guys. We'd start talking about entrepreneurship. And there was four classrooms and a barbershop. And I'm going to say maybe month two is all it took. All four other classrooms were in one classroom. And it was standing room. room only, and it was guys sitting on desks and guys standing on chairs. And it was me literally whiteboarding

how to start a business in prison to these inmates. How did your dad react to your prison sentence? Solid question, bro. I've never been asked that. Really good question. My dad wanted me to go the route of gangland with his friends. He wanted me to go in and he wanted me to do things so that I had clout and so that he would be proud. And I bucked all of it. I didn't even want to have a conversation around it. I think my wife will tell you that he tried to call me several times before I went in and, you know, wanted to offer protection and offer this and offer that. And I didn't want to go down that path.

I genuinely didn't want to do it. Number one, I think if I was, to be honest, in that moment, I didn't want to accept it. I didn't really want to accept my prison sentence, right? At this point, it hadn't been sentenced. And so a lot of his phone calls were in anticipation of like, when you get sentenced, this is who you talk to and this is where I'm going to put for you to go and this but it puts me down that path then I owe somebody you know then I'm going to come out and then they're going to call me and I don't want that path but I think I was partly in denial but partly didn't want to be who he was.

Do you think a part of him was happy you ended up in prison because he knew that his only son was kind of following down his footsteps in some of the capacity? Yeah yeah when I look back you know a lot of the stuff so he started us me started us fighting very young You know, and it was simple East Coast neighborhood fights at the beginning. You know, so-and-so disrespected your sister, so you got to go down there and beat him up. You know, that's eighth grade, you know, then high school, it was like competitive, you know, like we're going to actually get into neighborhood fights. We're going to get you in the ring.

You know, we're going to get into boxing. We're going to see how badly you can hurt people. And, you know, I was a bigger kid and I had a boatload of rage, so it worked to my benefit. And I enjoyed it. I loved the process. I enjoyed confrontation. And so getting involved with his world was almost an exciting time for him to see. He enjoyed the violence, enjoyed watching it.

And I can tell you that when I was 16, 17, 18 years old, him and his friends would control different nightclubs and strip clubs and things. and he would say, hey, you know, do you want to bounce at one of these? Why wouldn't I? Of course I do, right? You think it was fun. It was his ego, was this bravado. I'd been brought up fighting, and then he put you at the door, you know, 16 years old. But then it was his buddies club. So then you kind of had carte blanche who gets in, who gets in, who has the quote-unquote membership. And then you could cause a scene. And it would always excite me, you know, and they'd come out to the front and say, hey, you know, we've got an issue over here. And, you know, do you want to take care of it? Man, nothing more exciting for you. me at 16, just wailing on people and not getting in trouble. And so that environment just bred

this kind of insanity inside of me where I thought it was normal. He would call me late nights, hey, this is going to pop off over here. Do you want to come get involved? So yeah, to your point, looking back, yeah, I don't think that he was disappointed about going to prison. I think he wanted it to be a piece of my legacy, if you will. You know, I went to prison, I was a kingpin, I was a big deal, I was a shot caller. I really honestly, if you look back on it, can ask him, I think that probably was where he was okay with me going. I think he was uncomfortable with me talking to him the way that I talked to him prior to his death, you know, as an educated individual, you know, as a better father than him, you know, as a husband, you know, who was present, I think that made him more uncomfortable

than me being a monster in the streets. How did your wife's family react? My wife's dad is such a good dude. He's such a good dude. He is your dad that everybody deserves. He raised six kids. He was married to the same woman now for 40 years. Just a solid human. Went to work every day at the same job.

Just participated in the community, public servant, church leadership, just a really, really good human. And so he never said anything that wasn't unwelcoming at all. As most families go, a lot of siblings are okay with the downfall of others. And so we had some initial pushback, you know, when this whole thing became public. You know, Melissa was very much beauty and I'm very much the beast. You know, her parents were together 40 years. My dad was hurt people publicly. You know, her dad would put everybody to bed with food and prayers, and, you know, my dad would stash cocaine in the bread box. And so it was very, very polar opposite. So when we got together, you know, it wasn't celebrated, at least not publicly to us. So when the beast actually gets

outed and ends up on the news, you know, for this massive multi-million dollar, holy cow. And the photo that they chose to show, Ian, you know, bam, wasn't a mugshot because I wasn't, you know, arrested, wasn't charged. It was my driver's license photo from the age of 16. So I'm 16 years old in the photo. I've got a black wife beater on. I'm jacked. I have a puka shell necklace to make things worse. So as they're reading this out loud, like multi-millions and Bing, Bang, Boom. And here's the photo of this kid who looks every part, you know, of this criminal mastermind. To your point, like when you read the Danbury Times, you know, this is the photo and this is the editorial and yeah, the pieces fit together. So there was some negativity that we received

from both families, from the community, from our church community, from our neighborhood, from a lot of people, you know, probably similar to what you experienced. People love to kind of knock you off the pedestal. When you're living in a good home and you have a beautiful wife and you're doing things financially and you're contributing trying to do well. And then all of a sudden it comes out that you owe millions of dollars and oh my goodness, you know, some lady was crossing the street and you pushed her. You know, they read it all out loud and it just sounds horrific, horrific. And at the time it was dozens of felonies, right? Like it was. They hit you for every single $99,000 threshold. I had dozens of them. So yeah, it sounded sexy. And you've probably read this a million times like I.

At the end of almost every single one of these indictments or statements, it always adds up what you could face. Right? Yeah, I said I was facing 120 years. Precisely. Exactly. Right. And so that becomes the narrative. I believe nobody remembers anything else.

It's like, oh my gosh, Ian's going to die in prison. Let me walk you. Nobody gets to that context. So, yeah, we've got some negativity and some pushback. The beautiful thing is the redemption story of all of that. 17 years later, she and I, you know, happily married with four beautiful kids. And now being the Tony Robbins of the prison world, using that as my, you know, kind of catalyst, has been a blast because now they get to see the proofs in the pudding. And much like you talked about with the failure, you know, my in-laws, you know, our families, our extended families, our neighborhoods, you know, everybody knows my story now.

and it's no longer focused on, you know, 2007 or the 2012 sentencing. It's focused on the ability to redeem anybody from anywhere and to be able to rewrite your story. That's what you have the ability to do. What happened to your business while you're in prison? Man, half of them died and half of them stole from us. If you want the honest answer, bro, people thought I don't know what people thought. They thought I was never coming back. People would stop paying.

people stop paying my wife. These are like businesses you invested in. Of course. So they're not giving you your returns. Yes. They think that, oh, and I literally like would write these things to my wife. Like, are these people thinking I'm dying in here? Like, I'm going to be out next year and a half.

You know, like I'm going to come knocking. That was super disappointing, man. Like, I'm sure you've experienced that as well with some partnerships. Like, man, we all went in this together. And at the moment you could take advantage of me, you did. That's a bummer. So half of them died, half of them survived, limped along. And when I got out, they were still there, the other half.

She picked me up the day that I walked out, and I went and knocked on everybody's door and said I'm back. You know, let's figure this out. Good news, you know, from that, it's so interesting. You know, you look back, like you said, some serendipitous moments. Like, one of the businesses that we had invested in was a technology company. And, pause. One of the businesses we invested in was a technology company. And we gave this guy $150,000 in 2009 to start his business.

And good dude, solid dude, solid business. That business paid us for a very long time. And when I went away, he stopped paying. And when I came back out, he experienced. some hardships in the business, as every business does. And so the conversations that he and I had when I got out, it was now me mentoring him to get back on track with this business. And I knew nothing about it, but I know a lot about business, not necessarily a lot about tech. And a lot of the businesses are the same. If you're industry agnostic, it'd sell more, spend less and put the right people in the right

positions and then market the hell out of it. And so it was fun for the redemption story to come back and to allow me to consult with him and for us to put our egos aside and the bravado. And we actually exited that company last year. So it was, I mean, geez, Louise, a good, over a decade run with that company. It paid us tremendous dividends. And it was such a success story. He raised his kids on that business. He exited with some money.

We exited with some money. So it was such a fun story to kind of come back out from the ashes, one of the guys that didn't want to pay us. And we had a series of, though, but you learn a lot from that. I learn, much like you, I would imagine, who you want to be your partner. One thing I've learned with partnerships and business off on a tangent here, one thing I've learned with partnerships and business is it's important to qualify what the end goal is for these people. Most people will set out on a business and nobody thinks it's going to fail. That would be ignorant. Most people shoot for the moon. But if you and I go into business together and the business makes

100 grand for you and 100 grand for me that year. Is that a lot for you? Is that a little for you? What does that do for you? That is what I mean by like what's the outcome. Because $100,000 could be the difference between debt payments and poverty for some people. And it could mean the difference between the Bahamas and the Bora Bora's for others. And if you're a partnership and you don't understand what dollars mean to each other, it can become kind of egotistical or acrimonious. So I've learned like, what do I want out of this partnership? If we go into this and it works, and we both make 100 grand. What does that mean for us? Oh, this is what it means and we're aligned in that capacity? Great. And he's not going to judge the way that I spend. She's not going to judge

the way that we spend. And it's a beautiful partnership. The business will typically fail or not based on your ego, typically. And so I like to align ourselves. What are we doing with the money? What are we going to do with it? I don't mean it needs to go to charity or be Mother Teresa, but I also don't want, I also don't want to pull up in a car or purchase home that you feel is out of my realm of possibility because you're settled in debt. So those are the things that we've learned. We're really particular in business. Who we do business with? We look for the jockey.

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Use code summer 15 for 15% off, even if you've shopped with us before. Call it. I want to make sure the jockey and I are aligned. The business is less important. The jockey is super important. What was the biggest change in you from your first day in prison to your last? What kind of person were you when you got out of there? Man, biggest change.

Honestly. It's not going to be politically right. My biggest change is, was my relationship with God in prison? That was my biggest change. The second biggest change for me in prison. You should probably ask my wife that question. That'd be fun. Was my ability to communicate about my insecurities.

Me chasing this goal, this financial monster, was only to validate my past. I was so set in on not repeating the sins of my father. I was so dead set. You know, I didn't do drugs and I didn't, didn't, didn't, didn't, didn't. Those are just like ego points that you chalk up on the board to think that you're better than other people. That was it for me. And so I thought, man, if I did this church service and, man, if I retired my mom and, man, if I bought my sister a suburban and, man, you kind of have these check marks of, I did. That made me better or exempt from this type of.

a pain, the pain of prison. It made me exempt from it. I don't deserve this. I drove around town, and I drove around town in my $200,000 car crying at nighttime, woe is me. You go to prison, I go to prison, I can only speak from me, and I realize how many people didn't have anything that I experienced, anything. They didn't have the food I experienced. The biggest problem I have was too much food because I was 15 pounds overweight still am. That's my number one problem. in life, come on, man, life is good. That's a big pill to swallow. It's an egotistical pill. We like to think that we have a lot of problems. Going into prison, I didn't realize the chasm of education or miseducation that was behind walls. I didn't realize that having a relationship with a significant other

was as pivotal for a lot of people's success as it is for mine. Having a significant other like Melissa that a lot of people don't have, someone to pick you up when you walk out, your family that you talk about, my family that I have. Guys like you and I don't need much more. That's the biggest change. I would write, Melissa, this was the time before all the pen pals and the tablets and now they're on the phones. Jeez, Louise, I would write and write and write. I would write number two pencils all day long. And then she would come to visit, bless her heart, every Saturday and Sunday, made that five-hour trek, and I would tell her, like I spoke it into existence, I would tell her, I'm going to be on stage telling this story. I'm going to turn this mess into a message.

I'm going to make sure our future kids know that anything is possible, no matter your background. And so I wrote this sentence called Your Biography is Not Your Destiny. And the idea was, I have every reason to be on Jerry Springer tomorrow, right? addicted father, organized crime, being all the nonsense, prison sentence, people you've hurt, yada, yada, yada, A-T-F-D-E-A. But I want to be on there

to show people that it's not your crutch. You can take that same ugly opportunity and you can turn it into whatever you want. That for me was the biggest change in prison is I didn't ever... I don't know if I can say ever, which is why I paused, but I'm going to say it.

Once I got to prison, I didn't ever complain about my situation. It was my fault. It was my accountability. It was my cross the bear. And I was damned if I wasn't going to make it right. And so now I lead with it. And that was probably my biggest change in prison, was the ability to say, this is my fault.

But I'm going to make sure the world knows that I was here. And then I came from it. I rose from those ashes. So I think that was probably the biggest change. Tell us about how you've rebuilt after prison and what your life's like now. Yeah, man. Life's magic, brother. My life is a movie.

I say that every week. We still do the same sort of business, except I don't raise money. I don't take money from people. So we do small businesses, investments. I love blue-collar stuff. When the economy is good, business is good. When the economy is bad, business is great. and I'll qualify that for you. Pest control.

During COVID, everybody was at home. Businesses are closing left and right. A lot of people moved into their homes full time, right? They didn't leave to go to school. They didn't leave to go to work. They didn't leave to go to daycare. So now they're there 24-7. They started to see a lot of crickets and spiders and ants and rats.

It's great for the pest control industry. Swimming pools, landscaping, lawn care, roofing, HVAC, plumbing, taking natural gas, piping, in new homes from the street and stubbing it out to people's barbecues and their outdoor fireplaces. Blue-collar stuff I love. Love, love, love. Trucking, plumbing, vending machines, laundromats, the things that are never going to go away, in my opinion. The things that are very blue-collar, the things that need a lot of, what I would say, labor to go behind them. You know, you take like a national tire, a big-o tire, you know, discount tire, who's ever out here.

that job is probably never going to be replaced when you have a vehicle that needs a flat repair or new tires every 30, 60,000 miles, and you need guys or gals that understand what that is, that process. How do I take them off? How do I put them on? How do I balance them? How do I repair them? I love that blue-collar industry. So we look heavily on those businesses.

And I look for the jockey. I look for the guy or the gal who's been through some hell. I made a joke a long time ago, and it seems to be true. I don't really want to do business with anyone who hasn't been bankrupt or incarcerated. Because you've been through it. And I say that jokingly, but I really want to, like, I want to nail that point. Business is going to get hairy, spooky, ugly, messy, fill in the blank. It's going to get bad.

And when it does, I want to know what kind of person you are. I want to know if you're the guy that just goes, figure this out. We'll open up a new credit card. I'll do only feat today. right? But I want to know that you're the guy or the gal. I want to look for that jockey who has it inside of them. That's what I want. And so we look for those people. And so slowly but surely that was my goal. I actually, one of my conditions of probation, man, two funny stories for you. One, I had to get a job. They told me that I couldn't have my own business that I needed a W-2. So, you know, much like your whole food stint, I went and worked at a bread store. And so I would, work at nighttime packing bread trucks. And so this was me and my ego and my bravado and the millions I had made. I was packing bread trucks at night to satisfy my condition of probation because I didn't, I was not going to not go back. There was no way in my mind I was going back to prison. And everybody

would tell you, don't get caught. The drugs weren't a problem or so UA or that wasn't my issue. My issue was like, I was going to get caught up on a technicality because I was so well-versed. So I'd sit down with probation and it'd say, oh, you can't have a business. I'd say, show me. show me the statutes, show me the regulations, and then I'd push back so far, then I realized once I push back so far, then my life becomes a little bit more uncomfortable. So I said, all right, forget about it.

I'm on probation for a short period of time. You know, they gave me my good time rule. It was like 90 or 180 days. Fine, bread trucks, here we go. Stock them at nighttime. Do what I had to do in order to be with my family. So that was like number one priority. But the other condition they gave me,

it was a narcotics anonymous essential. And so they were like, I'm sitting with probation. He's like, I don't even know where to put you. But you have to do a class in order for us to get the money because you're out early in these 90 days. So, okay, fine. So they send me this class. And this was a great. I wish I would have, man, I wish I would have recorded this at the time.

I would have been internet gold. So I roll up to this class. It's like in a strip mall, like multi, multi unit. It's like 6, 7 p.m. After everybody's off work. So it's vacant, it's desolate. There's like one light on, door popped open, eight people smoking. Right.

oh, this is the place. So I cruise in, keep in mind, this is 12 years ago, 13 years ago, fresh out of prison, tan and jacked, shaved head,

no tattoos, everybody, they think I'm undercover. And so the guy who kind of runs the place, he's like, what's the deal? I give him my paperwork.

And he's like, where'd you come from? I came from prison. This is a condition of probation. Nah. They're literally, now they're like vetting me. Like, no,

who do you work? What's the deal? What's going on? You sure? Like, what, who would I know that you would know? Like this whole thing

They thought I was there Like trying to bust people for drugs Three weeks later We're into it I've turned this thing Into like a Tony Robbins You know Unleash the Power Within Seminar

And I'm like screaming at them In the circle like Ian Get it together bro Like three prison stints It's still the meth You're hanging out with methany You know that this is I'm screaming at them

Like get your stuff together man You're gonna go back to the joint Having never put a needle in my arm Having never understood what meth feels like Right now counseling. So I get a phone call from probation, his name's Brent. He's like, hey, so I wouldn't use the term disruptive. That's how he starts the phone call. But we're just going to satisfy that condition.

They don't really want you back there. So I got out of that one. But those are the conditions of my probation, was to get a job and to go to this, you know, narcotics anonymous type class. And I satisfied those. And the reason I say that is for no other reason that, then I know so many people listening to this are either on parole or on probation or will be, the technical violations will get you guys more time than your crime. And it sounds so dumb to get a job at Whole Foods or stacking bread trucks or cleaning the gym as a janitor. But it is pivotal to like rewriting your story. It's pivotal to putting away the ego and making sure that you become the best version of yourself. And to be able to be in a studio like this, build what you've built, accomplish what you have and will

accomplish, in my opinion, goes back to you going to work at Whole Foods for three years. You showed up every day. You didn't care whether it was mopping the floors or stacking stuff. There was no ego involved in that, Ian, and that to me is a pivotal moment of reentry. So many of these guys get out. They ask you, I'm sure, they ask me, well, I want to just do this and I want to leap. No, man, go to work at the gym where you lift weights. Become the janitor, become the front desk guy, become the sales guy. Go to work at the car dealership. to work at the landscaping. I was talking to Amiri King, you know the name?

I was talking with him and he's like Trav, I'm building my YouTube. It takes him like eight years to go viral. He's working landscape like at six days a week, six and a half days a week, like killing himself. And he's like in my little neighborhood, you know, in

Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, everybody thinks I'm a big deal in the South but I'm making no money. I'm making 13, 15 an hour landscaping. Did that for years. And I say that because like these are these are the stories that people don't put out there people don't put out the ubers and the door dash people just put out the fancy studios and the big checks and the youtube accolades and for me the the real redemption's in the grind it's in the grind and i love that

tell us about the work you're doing now man the passion the passion yeah yeah um so when i left the yard i left with that financial literacy book and i gave them the book The premise of the book was called Don't Buy a Cheeseburger with a credit card. It's all it was. It was rudimentary and it was a compound interest. So if I put $5 away every month into an interest-bearing account, into a mutual fund, into an S&P 500, here's what it could be in 13 years. Or if I piss it away and I spend five bucks at Duncan every day and I put it on a credit card and I don't pay it off, here's what that bill could be in 13 years. And so when I left, the prison then called up and said, hey, do you want to come back and kind of give a seminar on this? First of all, it was five hours away.

Second of all, I had just left. So the answer was no and absolutely not. And ironically, from years ago, one of my investors was one of the guys that was the original J-Pay investors, like jail pay. And so he called me and said, hey, we just signed a deal. We sold the company for $400 million. They're going digital.

And I was like, buddy, I don't know what you're smoking in Florida, but like there's no way they're bringing laptops into the prison system. And he's like, Traff, you got to check this out. So he convinced me, I started to look into it, and I made a comment a decade ago. I said, you won't go to prison in America in five years without a tablet. People are like, there's no way. But when I understood it, Ian, if one guard could FaceTime me, if one guard could do movement, if one guard didn't have to let me out of my cell to the phone, cost savings to the prison.

Money, money, money, money, money, buy more, sell less. So I jumped on the bandwagon in 2013. I put my financial literacy course on the tablets at the time. It was very, very simple. And that was our first foray into prison ministry, as they call it, non-church-related. But going back in and giving the guys and the gals information and literacy. And so accomplished ventures is the nonprofit that I run under that passion. And the reason I started that name, the ED at the end is capitalized for education.

But I wanted to tell people felon is just a noun. It's a person, it's a place, it's black hair, it's no hair, it's blonde hair. So when you put an adjective in front of a noun, it gives it color. So why not just be an accomplished felon? That's where I wanted that to be born from. And so accomplished ventures was born in prison. It was an idea that I thought I'm going to come back and I'm going to give these guys real world skills. I had no idea what I was going to do at the time.

No blueprint, none of it. I just knew that there was a chasm of information out there. Got the phone call, denied it. Gabe told me get on the tablets. I jump on the tablets. And 13 years later, 12 years later, accomplished as the largest provider of prison curriculum in the United States. That's awesome.

We have almost 50 courses from financial literacy, the Business 101 to entrepreneurship, interpersonal communication, fatherhood. how to have dialogue with your loved ones while incarcerated, how to accountability is one of our biggest ones. We teach these courses on the tablets or in person, and we teach them kind of as a learn as you go, so they can go on their tablets,

they can run through their ideas, they can blueprint them, and then they can communicate with our team through their tablets if they have any questions or if, let's say they want to start a business about a food truck, and they go, hey, can you send me some listings to different food trucks so that I know how much they cost in Kentucky, for example. So, you know, we'll kind of give them the data and the information points that they can put

into their business plan for some of the people that haven't been out in a while. So they compile these business plans. They have communication with our team to the tablets. And that is now in 1,500 jails and prisons nationwide. That's incredible. Pro. It's so magic, Ian, like, I look back, and that's why I made that comment, like, I want to tell you, yes, I would have taken the plea deal, but I don't know that I could have

created this amount of goodness if I didn't really sit in the muck. I don't know that you could have created this amount of goodness if you didn't go through the Ubers and the DoorDash and the grime, right? It probably would have came too easy for guys like us. It wouldn't have been that sweet. Speaking for myself, not you, of course. And so when I look back now, I had to go to prison in order to make this impact. I had to. And I didn't, when I got involved and still to this day, I sit across every month from inmates. We do one-on-one series. I call them success stories. Because I want to know where did it go left? And most incarcerated people will tell you, oh yeah, July 16th, 2004, like they'll tell you right when it went left or this sip of alcohol

or that first hit of meth or this girlfriend. They'll tell you right when it went bad. I want to when it went bad. And I don't want to do it because it's, I gotcha. I want to do it in hopes that there's somebody listening who's in that exact moment, who can go, man, I wish, man, I wish I would have had Ian's knowledge. Man, I wish I would have had Ian three years ago when I was starting my podcast. Man, I wish I would have known about, I'm so mindful that we are all on this human journey together, going through an experience, sometimes good, sometimes bad. But, most of us have some similar experiences. And if I can put you in a room and I can say, this is a 30-year-old man, he's three years clean, this was his drug of choice, and you're 27, and you're in the middle

of that drug addiction, I hope that you get to 30 and you're him, clean and sober and clear-headed. That's my prayer with doing all of this, going back inside. So I sit across from these inmates, I unpack their story. I want to know their message to the world. I want to know when they wish they would have gone right instead of left. I want to know the message to their loved ones because it's digital. It's going to live forever. And some of these visits don't. Some of these people are out of state. They can't see their loved ones. We've built up conferences around it. We did the convicted conference. It was kind of a play on words. In order to make a change in life, you have to be convicted. And so the convicted conference takes care of the youth of the incarcerated individuals.

I didn't want the kids to have a life that they were seconded. class citizens because their mom or dad made a bad choice. I feel that's some of the biggest wrongs with the system. We don't really take into account where the kids are, where the babies end up. You know, if your mom's a drug addict, she can still be a good mom. And that's not set out loud a lot. If your mom's in prison, she can still be a good mom. I don't think that those are mutually exclusive ideas. I think that we as a society have thrown people away and said, if you're in prison, you're definitely a bad person. And if you're a mom, then you're definitely a bad mom. I don't think that that has to be the narrative.

And so what can I do about it? Well, I'm not advocating or arguing for people's sentencings. That's never what I'll do. I'm never going to get involved in whether it was a Schedule 3 or a Schedule 4 drug or whether it was a RICO charge. I don't care about any of that. I'm not into this to get people released from prison, period. Kim Kardashian can have that shit. I'm not.

I'm in this to unpack people's stories. I want to know if you can impact the world by storytelling like you have. I want to know if you can put the story out there to the world to help the next person through their stuff. Yeah, and I think that's what I'm all about. I'm not into the reform stuff. I'm into the reentry aspect where you share the person's story. It's entertainment, but it's also motivational too because all of these individuals that have come on have turned their life around and have learned something from it. So you mix the two together and you have something.

I feel like I was the first person to mix the entertainment aspect of it with the redemption part. because you find a lot of redemption ones and you find a lot of entertainment ones, but you don't have something that becomes more mainstream and popular where you have people that wouldn't normally pay any attention to it, paying attention to it. Yeah. No, you're spot on. And I think that's the beautiful part of being able to do what you do

is to tell the story that changes the life of other people. That's what I pray for. Like, I can't tell you. Our tablet, like, our email is just blown up every day, with the stories of. I actually just interviewed a kid in Boston who watched my content in prison. Shout out Corey. He's going to freak out that I mentioned his name. He's a huge fan of yours. Corey watches my stuff in prison. His mom's a realtor.

And his mom reaches out to me and says, Corey has some money set aside. I have some money set aside. Like, how do we get involved so that Corey's stable? And I said, this was my blueprint for them. Corey tells the story. He listens to the content. He builds his business plan. For his mom, of course, right? Like, you still have to treat this the right way, even though it's your mom. This is a business.

It's serious. It's money. And you have responsibilities. Corey gets out and basically becomes a trash out guy for realtors. Anybody who knows that, like, your tenant moves out or dilapidated property, you know, a guy buys a property and needs to be cleaned out. Trash out guy. Simple.

Corey tells a story, $35 was his first job. And he couldn't get the sofa down the same. the stairs so they chop it up with a saw and throw it out the window. I love that story for so many reasons, right? He didn't give up. He did what he said he was going to do. He took $35. Like he was hell-bent on winning. He took a $35 job. Fast forward, Corey's been out two years. He's doing six figures now. Still doing trash outs, but a little bit more remodeling, a little bit more. He's moving himself into the space, but he's got his own little business and he's got a guy that works for him that was formerly incarcerated. That's great. Bro, that full circle moment like

means the world to me. I hope he's in 20 years bigger than I am, right? Like, I can't tell you the amount of stories that we have had that have come full circle because of me going inside, me being vulnerable, me sitting behind bars with these people. And I'll tell you this is the last caveat. I don't make any money off of this. I don't fundraise for it. It all comes out of mine in my wife's pocket. I make that a public statement because some people that do it, they kind of bug me. And this is on our dime and our time. And going back inside is my way of telling God like I learned from this. You've given us resources. You've given us time. And now I have the opportunity to change that narrative. Now we have four kids. And now our kids are seeing that arc of you can give back

to humanity and you can give back to some of the ugliest parts of humanity and you can be a light in some of the most broken spaces in the world and now my nine-year-old our nine-year-old daughter a 10-year-old daughter 10 this month sorry Kennedy she's going on 34 she now sees those aspects of empathy and our home has become the neighborhood home that the door is always open and the pantry is always full and the fridge is always stocked because you don't know what the other kids are going through. And having Kennedy go through that at the age of 10 and realizing, hey, dad, I'm picking up that yeah, these people don't want to leave our home because maybe it's not like this at their home. These people want to come here and they go, man, I wish your mom was my mom. And they go,

does your dad have a job? Because he's always home and he's always in flip-flops. I know I've made it at that point, Ian. I don't care what's in the garage. I don't care what's in the bank account when all my babies want to be at home and all their friends don't want to leave and everybody feels comfortable and everybody feels safe and we have the resources to provide, it's magic.

That empathy comes from me going back to prison. I love that. Well, Travis, thanks so much for coming on the show today and sharing your story with us. It was very motivational and inspiring and I'm sure it's going to touch a lot of people today. I hope so, brother.

Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, thank you.