Locked In with Ian Bick - Ian Bick Speaks To Inmates At The Lonoke County Jail

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Ian Bick travels to Arkansas to give a presentation to the inmates inside the Lonoke County Jail. Interested in having Ian speak at your next event? Please email [e-mail] Connect with Ian Bick: https://www.ianbick.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey guys, it's Ian Bick, and I have a very special bonus episode for you guys today. I had the honor and the privilege to travel to Arkansas this past week where I got to do a speech at the peer recovery conference. And while I was in Arkansas, I was invited to the Lowenoke County Jail by Sheriff John Staley, where he let me into the jail. I got to explore the entire jail. We filmed a commissary cooking competition inside the jail. I even got to interview Sheriff Staley, and that interview will be coming out in the coming days or weeks. And he also gave me the opportunity to give a presentation to some of those that were incarcerated inside this county jail. So I wanted to share that with you guys today.

It gives you a little bit something different than you're used to hearing on this podcast. It dives into my story. It has some humor and some comedy in it. And at the end of the day, it serves as a tool for motivational purposes. So I hope you guys really enjoy this speech that I presented to these inmates. And it'll kind of give an inside look of what a live show will look like when I eventually start touring and coming to your cities to bring the locked in with the in-big podcast live. And in addition to that, there would be live interviews where I go to different cities and invite certain guests where I would interview them in front of an audience on top of doing like this kind of intro comedian type speech that you guys are about to hear. So anyways, guys, thank you guys so much for all the support and the love you give week after week.

We've been a top 200 podcast in the world for society and culture. and I wouldn't be here without you guys. And I'm just honestly, I'm really grateful and it means the world. So I hope you guys sit back, relax, and enjoy this speech I presented. And as always, thank you guys for the love and support. My name's Ian Bick.

I'm the host of the Locked In with Ian Bick podcast. I know you guys were watching some of the clips on YouTube, which is actually pretty funny because when I was in prison, I had to use a contraband cell phone to watch YouTube clips and stuff like that. So it's weird actually kind of like being back in here and being on the other end of the spectrum of things.

It's super interesting to see that and see how you guys live. And it's very different from like the federal system, which is interesting. But yeah, let's start at the beginning. This is like a practice run for me because tomorrow I'm speaking at the peer recovery conference. I'm the opener speaker. Are you going to be there too?

Cool, yeah, so because of our friend Jimmy McGill, great guy, as you guys know, he's the one that got us to come here and meet all you guys, and he got me the keynote speaker spot. So a lot of pressure. This is actually my second ever public speaking. So you guys are the second bunch. I did my first speech in Pensacola, Florida back in April. That's when I met Jimmy. And my story is a bit different because when you guys hear about addiction, you usually think like alcohol. drug abuse, substance abuse, maybe gambling, maybe even sex addiction, that's a thing.

But mine, you know, mine is a story about addiction to popularity, chasing popularity, wanting to be liked, wanting the attention, wanting to just be the center of everything. And that's really where my story starts, and that's what leads me down, like this path of destruction. And, you know, in elementary school, I was bullied a lot. I was that nerdy, chubby kid. I was called Twinkie. I was called a lot of mean names. You know, kids could be mean in school.

And it was miserable, and I hated going to school. And I remember we had like this island counter at my parents' house, and I stormed around it one day saying, I'm not going to school, like a chant. I'm not going to school. I'm not going to school. And then my parents finally said, all right, you don't have to school. go to school, we're going to look at alternatives, and I ended up going to a private school.

From fifth grade to seventh grade, it was a Montessori school. And the thing about Montessori school is, it's very different in the sense where there's no desks. There's animals, there was a pet bunny running around the classroom. We had snakes, we had frogs, and you sit on the carpet. When you take exams, you would sit down. When we had lunch, we would bring whatever tables that were around.

together and we would all eat together. It was weird, you know, there's only, there's fourth through eighth grade in one classroom and there's about 15 students altogether. So there's like one or two, maybe three kids per grade in this whole entire classroom. And I think that really promoted, you know, independence for me and learning and thinking on my own. And then I left there in seventh grade to go back to public school because my parents and I felt that I needed to get reintegrated back to have like a social life with the public school seeing kids that I knew and you know right away I was already hanging out with a bad crowd seventh grade the skater kids I remember I was a kid that was carrying around a skateboard thinking I was cool but I couldn't skate for shit and I was carrying

the skateboard around one of my best friends in the neighborhood his dad smoked a lot of pot and this was the first time I ever tried it, and he would get film capsules full of weed, and he would give it to me for free, and I would sell it for $20. Now, I had no business being a drug dealer whatsoever. I was probably the worst one, because I was selling a dub for $10.

So I was losing money, even though I wasn't technically paying for it, but that started trying to fit in to be cool. And then I get to the high school level, and I was put on the list of kids to watch out for by the school, because I was a kid that believed you didn't need college to be successful, you didn't need schooling. And the middle school always said, you got to get good grades in middle school to get up to a good high school class and then get into a good college. I said, that's not true at all. So I had all C's D's, I failed gym. I was a kid that failed gym class.

And because I wouldn't change. I would always wear like cargo shorts. I wouldn't put on the gym clothes. I didn't see the purpose in it. So they put me on like this naughty list. And by the time I get into freshman year, I'm like, because I want to stand out so much, I'm like, okay, I'm going to show these guys wrong that I'm actually smart and that I could be what they said I wasn't. So I start getting good grades. And before I knew it, I was the top of my class and by sophomore year taking AP classes. And things were going good. I was like number seven in my class out of a class of about 800 or so. It was a big high school, Danbury High School, about 3,000 kids.

I was in the play. I was a theater nerd. I didn't play sports, but I was in the play. And actually throughout middle school, I did the summer camp where they would dress me up as a woman at Milton Borough, like this famous actor. And I was a guy because I loved attention. That was my drug. I loved being out there, the attention, the spotlight. I loved it. So sophomore year of high school, I got into my first bit of legal trouble. I lived in this private Jewish community that's around. There's like a lake in the middle of it. and we lived on the lake. It was my parents' summer home that they renovated. And there's a president, a vice president, board of directors, all of this.

And what happens is I had a dirt bike and I had a golf cart, and we played paintball, and the board of directors didn't like that I was doing that. So they made bylaws or rules for the neighborhood saying, no dirt biking, no golf cart riding, nothing, no paintballing. So we wanted to get back at them. So me and my friend one night took insulating spray. spray foam and my friend, you know, he's like this redneck type of guy, you know, very outdoorsy, woodsy and he's like, you know, if you spray the insulating foam on the car handles, it'll

just lock their cars. Nothing bad will happen. And what ends up happening is the foam drips all the way down, the doors, causes like $5,000 worth of damage. Cops come to the house and they did the whole, you know, classic cop routine. They went to his house at I snob. They went to my house saying he snitched on me. I wasn't buying that. I'd watched a lot of criminal minds back in my day. So I knew that wasn't the case, but he fell for it. He ratted me out, and I also left the insulating foam in the garage.

And the cop asked my dad, hey, do you mind if we take a look around? My dad's thinking his kid can't be that much of an idiot to leave the evidence at the scene of the crime, open the garage, and there's like four empty cans of this insulating spray foam. So it was pretty bad. bad I got caught ended up getting community service well what happens is I couldn't have just been like a normal kid that did community service at like the local gym or the local charity or anything I end up taking things to the next

level and one day I'm sitting in it was sophomore year English class and we're reading an essay on homelessness and I get the idea to start this charity project which is selling wristbands you know like the live strong wristbands I was going to create those and sell them for a dollar a piece and raised them for the local charity and this was called fight for the homeless. I called my organization and before I knew it a week later the front page on the newspaper local kid you know starts this charity we're selling thousands of bracelets we're raising all this money no one knew that it was based on the fact that I had gotten myself into trouble because it wasn't out there

because I was a kid the records were sealed no one knew that so in a way it was formed on bad intentions but it turned into something way more than I could ever have imagined. And the probation officer ended up expunging the record, thought it was great what I was doing, and I'm like, okay, I need to take this thing to the next level. So I decided to come up with an idea to start a school dance. And I marched myself into the principal's office one day because the board of directors for the high school

would not allow me to do a school dance because I'm a sophomore. No one cared about a little sophomore. I wasn't popular. No one knew me, but by this point, you know, I'm getting a little bit of attention because of the bracelet thing, and I just decide to start wearing a suit and tie to school. And I'm carrying around a briefcase, and I'm wearing the suit and tie, and I'm thinking I'm hot shit, you know, wearing this, you know, my dad had this old tie set, so I'm wearing a different colored tie every day, that to this day I do not know how to tie a tie. So every morning, he would take me to school and he would tie my tie in the morning, and I'd carry around this briefcase, and I end up convincing the,

high school principal to let me throw a dance. He lets me throw a dance. It's a big success. We rent this corporate center out in Danbury, a brand new one. And that night, the CEO of it was so amazed by this whole thing that he offered me a job when I turned 16, because I was 15 at the time. So he offered me a job. And again, everything's with the best intentions.

I'm super ambitious. I'm hardworking. I was always a hard worker. I always had a job when I wasn't working for my dad's catering company. I was working for an event rental company setting up tents. dropping off tables and chairs. I worked in kitchens. I was always very hands-on.

I was never lazy. I loved doing that. I was a kid that had the lemonade stands. The kid that, you know, across the street from my house, there's woods. I had a great idea I was going to build a candy store. So I went across the street with a saw and started sawing the trees down

until we got a cease and desist letter from the neighborhood saying, you can't cut down the trees. So that killed that thing. So I do this dance, and the night of the dance, I'm staring at 300, at 300 kids having the time of their life, you know, watching this dance that I put together, just a 15-year-old kid. And I start thinking, you know, that young Ian Bick that was doing the

lemonade stands and making money and selling candy out of his backpack in middle school, I was like, how do I make money off of this? And I love the attention. Everyone was writing on Facebook, you know, great event, great party, and it's just fueling that, you know, And I imagine you guys feel that type of way when you're trying drugs for that first time, or you're trying alcohol. And I never got to experience those types of drugs, but I knew what that rush was of these parties. So I started throwing house parties. I wanted to keep this going.

The thing with the event business is once you throw one, it's over. The second that those doors close, the night's over, no one's talking about you anymore, you're old news. So you're only as good as your last event. So I convinced my parents to start letting me throw house parties. And I told them there's only going to be 30 or 40 people coming, the first one.

Well, 200 people showed up that first party. And I assured them that I had them go upstairs in their bedroom. And I was like, you know, everything's OK. These are all people I know. There's no issues. No one's drinking. Meanwhile, down at our patio, we had a bar that we were running selling solo cups full of liquor

for $5 a cup for the night and making money off of that. And the parties just kept getting bigger and bigger. And there's a gate to our community. So I was paying a guy to stand down there with an earpiece in and a clipboard. Like he was a bouncer. And everything was larger than life for me. Because I loved, love, love people talking about me.

The Facebook post. I was sending Facebook event pages. I don't know if you guys know what that is, but you can make an event page. And I was doing that for house parties. So I don't know what 15 or 16 year old kid does this, but that's what I was doing. And eventually my parents put their foot down.

They said, listen, we're on to your shenanigans. And honestly, we were lucky. The cops never came. No one got hurt drinking and driving or anything like that. Extremely lucky, because my life could have turned out much differently, even though I'd still end up in federal prison, but it could have been a different scenario. So they said no more parties.

So I end up looking around, I'm like, I've got to keep doing these parties. But I want to make money, because the house parties didn't necessarily bring me in a lot. lot of money. So I start a business and I call myself this is where it's at entertainment or this is where it's at productions because if our parties were going to be where it was at for the night I wanted you know a play on words this is where it's at and I go through the process of getting an LLC and and doing all that just all off of Google Google could teach you so many things

it's crazy you know just putting it in and learning and I rent this palace theater out in Danbury turn it into a nightclub for the night charge you know 20 bucks to get in and making $15 or $2,000. I hire the police, I hire a DJ, we put bars in non-alcoholic because it was all kids and it was a great night. And it would have been a success story, but what happened was the landlord didn't want the liability after that, so he said I couldn't do any more events there. So what happens is I stumble upon this local nightclub, which is an infamous nightclub in Danbury, Connecticut called Tuxedo Junction. And I go into the owner and keep in mind I'm 16, and I'm

I'm in this cheap suit and tie. And he's a baby face, like I still have now, but it was even babyer back then, a little chubby. And the guy's looking at me, like, who the fuck is this kid? And but he gives me the time of day. He sits down with me, a nice, you know, this Italian guy, probably in his 40s or early 50s at the time. And I say, listen, I'm going to sell out your club.

Now this guy has seen hundreds of promoters come through his doors saying that same thing. And they couldn't do it. So how is a 16-year-old kid going to? do it and what happens is he agrees to let me rent out the front room which was a smaller room that could hold about 200 people and he gives it to me on a Wednesday night so it didn't affect his business and it was a teen party non-alcoholic they lock up all the liquor and I was gonna charge 10 bucks to get in cost about

750 to rent well that Wednesday night he doesn't end up coming his partner comes and his partner tells him there's a line around the corner and we sold the thing out in like 10 minutes everyone came we had like three or 400 people there made some good money and he gives me like three or four more dates and so I start selling date after date they're getting bigger and bigger we called them raves so it was a Halloween rave it was a theme party the Christmas rave I remember being dressed as Santa Claus on stage dancing around having the time of my life we did a paint party where we threw paint on all the kids we got

washable paint and went to Michael's craft store and loaded up a thousand dollars worth of paint and we're spraying it on everyone and they kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and I was getting so much attention everyone's talking about me the Ian Bick parties this this this my name's out there but I was so ambitious and I would say I guess you could say greedy that I wanted more and more and more and I wanted to take it to the next level so I get this great idea to start throwing concerts large-scale concerts with big rap stars and the first one I wanted to do was Big Sean you guys know who Big Sean is the

rapper I said I'm gonna book Big Sean in Dan And I end up booking Big Sean and Danbury like six months later. The thing about me is like whenever I had my mind set on something, I'm going for it, no matter what. And that ends up getting me in a lot of trouble down the road because no matter what the cost was, a lot like, you know, in drugs and alcohol, we tend to hurt people around us while we're trying to fuel our addiction. So I'm fueling, you know, myself and the popularity and everything. And what ends up happening is that I do this concert, it loses money. I had other partners on it.

I didn't put up any personal money. And from there, we get this idea to start doing more concerts, and we start raising money. And I go to legalzoom.com, and I find these contracts, investment agreements, which, if you guys ever need a lawyer, please do not go to legal zoom.com. Rocket, lawyer, any of those sites are not the best advice. So I get these contracts and I start bringing it around to local high school kids and their parents, and I'm able to raise $120,000 with these contracts and to help fund my business. Now, the thing that I was doing, because at first when I went to them and said they thought I was crazy with this idea. But what I did was I added in one line that said, I'll guarantee your money back if you invest in me.

Not I'll guarantee a profit, just I'll guarantee their money back. And so that's what got me into some hot water. But I'm so confident. I'm so cocky thinking, you know, I'm doing these big names, these big artists. Nothing could go wrong. I'll at the very least make everyone's money back. Well, fast forward to early 2013, and the first concert we have fails drastically. And I didn't know it was failing at the time.

But I was responsible for it because it was my money. And I was just laying back, you know, like thinking, had made it by this point. I was high off of the success of it and I don't come clean to my friends who are investors and I lie and say that the show made money when it didn't really make money so I'm already in the hole at that point I'm negative because I promised them there at least their money back so now not only do I not have their initial investment but now I owe them a profit that I came up with some imaginary number so that starts and the thing about lying is when

Once you tell one lie, you have to keep telling more lies and more lies and more lies to cover up those past lies. And I'm just a 16-year-old kid at the time, no guidance, no mentors, nothing. But I didn't want that either. Like if someone, I interview a lot of people on my podcast where I say, hey, if you were given help, would you have taken it? And most of the time, they say no until it comes to a drastic point where they need to say yes. At that point, I wasn't in a drastic point where I needed the help. And if anyone was going to try to come and help me, I wanted to do it my way. So I wouldn't have taken that help as it was.

So what ends up happening is they all tank. Every concert, I could have possibly imagined tanks fails drastically, artists not showing up. You know, the rapper Chief Keith, I booked a show with him. He stood me up one night. When we had a show sold out, we're going to make like $50,000. He decides not to come. Things like that would happen. TIGA, the rapper TIGA, we booked.

all these incidents kept happening and happening and happening. And by the time I'm 18 years old, end of 2013, I'm about $1.3 million in debt to investors, because I'm promising interest rates that I couldn't afford. I'm borrowing money from drug dealers. I'm borrowing money from biker gangs. I'm doing all these crazy, crazy things. And I was just in over my head.

And I did whatever I could to keep going, keep the lies going, borrowing money from Peter to loan money. to pay Paul and do all these different things. And what ends up happening is my friends end up going the local police department. This is 2013, I'm 18 years old, and they start an investigation.

And the detective meets with me for the first time. This is the first time I'm under serious investigation because the things from the past weren't that, you know, crazy with the foam and stuff I was a minor. And I go in and they thought I had spent all the money in Universal Studios. That's what their initial thing was. And had we went on a couple of things

Had we went on a couple trips, yes. And had we bought jet skis, yes, that wasn't the best idea either. We thought it was a business expense. But we were just a bunch of kids with way too much money in this bank account. These investments would get poured into this one bank account at Wells Fargo. And we didn't have an accountant.

We didn't do the books. We didn't do anything. So this investigation starts. And I'm thinking nothing of it, because I don't think I generally did anything wrong. Did people lose money? Yes. Were there lies involved?

Yes. But I never intended to defraud anyone. While this investigation is going on, I got this grand idea to go back to my roots and reopen this nightclub that had closed, Tuxedo Junction, which is where I started. And something I realized by that point was every time I trusted someone else, it always went wrong.

But I was very successful during the teen party days, throwing my own teen nights. So why not get back to doing what I was good at doing? So I end up opening this nightclub. I'm a million dollars in debt. I'm painting the place by myself. My dad gives me a little bit of money to help scrape things together.

And I'm painting it. I'm emptying things out. We're doing whatever we can to make it work. Find a couple new investors. Get this nightclub rolling. And then I got subpoenaed by the Department of Banking. I didn't know we had a Department of Banking. Who would have thought?

So I go to the Department of Banking, and I sit down with them without a lawyer. And I'm just trying to explain everything. I'm trying to clear my name. And I sit with them for five hours, no lawyer, nothing. And I tell them everything. I give them all the documents, I show them the whole nine yards. After that meeting, they said, hey, we have some people that we want to meet with you.

I was like, okay, sure, I'll meet with them. I sit down and it's two guys in these cheap suits, gray suits, a little bit big, they're bald, and I sit at this table, and they hand me their business card. It says, United States Postal Inspectors. I'm 18 years old. I'm like, I don't know what the fuck a postal inspector is. And they're saying they're federal agents, they show me their badge, they show me their gun. These are real agents, but I'm a kid, I don't know what a postal inspector is.

And then they asked me all these questions and I tell them everything without a lawyer. And they never asked me, or they never said I needed a lawyer present. They just said this is a routine thing. They played like they were my friends. They said, hey, if you cooperate, you know, everything will work out. We understand this was a big misunderstanding. standing, you're a kid, we don't want to see you do any jail time, it's nothing like that, whatever. I left that room that day because they ended up at the end of that meeting, they gave me a target letter, and it says in the official FBI letterhead, you are officially a target of the FBI and

the Department of Justice, and that was scary. So right away, I get in my car and I search best, you know, federal defender in Connecticut, back to Google. And I find a lawyer and he says, stopped talking to them and they kept on. They kept investigating and really at the end of the day everyone, the investors were out or out about $500,000. The rest of that money was all interest. But the main bulk of it was about $500,000 and like they're out-of-pocket money. And I'm just running this nightclub. I'm trying to make the money back to pay off other debt. Whenever I'd make money from a show though, instead of paying the rent for the building, I would, you know, pay off, an old investor when I should have been paying the rent,

when I should have been paying the electric. So I remember there would be crazy stories where the electric company would try to shut off my power. And I would take a bunch of wood, a pile of wood, and stick it in front of the meter so they couldn't find the meter. And I would do these crazy things. I'd start selling liquor without a permit, because I was under 21.

So I would take red Gatorade bottles and mix it all together in a big bucket to make jungle juice and pour cheap vodka in it. And then we would repackage it in the gatoried bottles and we would sell those for $10 a piece and when the local police were raiding the place, they couldn't find it because we were selling it right under their noses. So I did all these crazy things and it just kept going on and on and on and then eventually I get indicted by the FBI. And this is in January 2015. Now the other part to this story that I haven't told you yet is that as you guys know I was a risk taker. Like I love big risks.

So that also made me a gambler. But I was I would like to to say at the time I was a good gambler and I was going out of state to this casino in New York called Empire City and I would play this game called Backerat. I don't know if you guys have ever played Backerat, but I loved it. I was hooked on it. That was my game of choice and it was all electronic. So I thought I was good at it but really it was just luck because it's a video machine like there's no technique to it but I would turn $500 into $25,000 sometimes and I would do that and that would help keep the bills going of the business. So this morning, this is January, 2015, I'm 19 years old.

I get back from the casino at like 5 a.m. I'm exhausted. I'd actually lost that night. I lost a couple grand. It's snowing out. I'm just getting into bed and like a half hour later, banging at the door. And my window faces the road.

This is at my parents' house. And I open the blinds, the yards flooded. FBI in the tactical vests, the guns, IRS in the tactical vest. The IRS has a whole criminal investigation. division and they get guns too it's pretty wild car it's cars are lined up and down the road you would have thought like I was a mob boss the way they showed up to this and they're yelling at my mom step back step back where is he they barge into my room I'm just in boxers sitting on the bed I jump up they're like do you know what you're here while we're here and I'm thinking it's just another

local police department arrest because my lawyer my federal lawyer said I would be able to turn myself in While the feds lied, I wasn't able to turn myself in. And while they were handcuffing me, they grabbed my iPhone. They said, what's the password? Any good criminal wouldn't give them the password. I gave them the password. And they got into everything. It just made me look worse because they had the pictures of the jet skis.

They had the pictures of tattoos. They had all the stuff. And it didn't help my case. And so they arrest me and I get bonded out on a $250,000 bond. The thing in the feds is you don't pay cash towards that. your parents or whoever just come and they sign, my parents signed for their house, but they didn't have to bring a deed or anything like that.

It's just a signature. And I was able to get released. And I went back to doing what I knew best, you know, pissing off the authorities. I was taking interviews. I was doing like what Donald Trump's doing now, which is what his lawyers are telling him not to do. I was doing that.

And I was larger than life, you know, taking news interviews with NBC and doing this and doing that. and I was getting myself into more trouble while I was doing that. And at the same time, I'm running this nightclub, this large nightclub in Danbury called Tuxedo Junction. And I end up going to trial. They offered me a deal, and I'm one of those rare cases where the plea deal was more than what I would have gotten

after I lost a trial, which is very interesting. They offered me like three to four years. I would end up getting three years. And I take them to trial. This is like 11 months later now. And the trial lasts like a month. And they're calling, it was like a high school reunion. I don't need to go to my high school reunion this year

because I saw everyone at that trial. And what happens is we go through the whole, it's a month long about and it comes down to Thanksgiving. And I don't know if you guys have ever been on trial before, but it's scary. Like you're fighting for your life. Over here it's just you and your lawyer. And over there, you got the FBI, they got three FBI agents,

three IRS agents, three prosecutors. The courtroom was, packed. I testified on my day. I testified two days in a row as a witness in my case and they brought the head United States attorney there. They packed the room. It was crazy. It was like a scene out of a movie. Only regret is we didn't record it. That would have been lovely. But what ends up happening is that the day before Thanksgiving, the jury passes a note. This is three days of deliberations and they say we can't reach a verdict. And so they give it to the judge and in federal court, not sure how it works in state court.

but in federal court, the judge is required to tell the jury, you have to go back and try again and deliberate further. They go back, they try again, they say they can't reach a verdict, but what happens if we can't reach a verdict today, and we have to come back after Thanksgiving? And so the judge says, well, we'll look at dates. It'll carry into December. As soon as he said that, they came back like 20 minutes later, and I was found not guilty on, you know, a fourth of them, guilty on some, and then a mistrial on the others. So all and all, out of the 15 counts, I was convicted on about seven, six or seven of the counts. And I was released back on bond, able to go do my own thing because I hadn't gotten in any trouble. The probation department kept trying to get me, my bond violated, my bond revoked, because they banned me from being on social media. but I found a way around it instead of I changed all my social media from Ian Bick to Ian Parker which was my middle name

So I would still post as Ian Parker and that was like my way around it a federal judge would later rule that What they did was was illegal like on my first amendment rights a free speech so I got my social media back So I'm convicted now. I'm a convicted felon and sentencing keeps getting pushed back push back push back and one of the conditions of my release is do not go out of state to gamble and I hadn't gambled at that point I was clean for about a year since that I got indicted and I was following the rules but now you know the club's losing money no one wants to loan or invest into my club now that I was just convicted they were giving me the benefit of the doubt so I did what you know every addict would do you go back to what you're

used to doing and I went to the casino and I thought I was so slick I would take a taxi cab I would put my phone on airplane mode so they couldn't track me I wasn't on home confinement or anything so I put on airplane mode and then when I got back across the border I'd turn it back on paid everything in cash everything and it would I take the train sometimes my license was suspended because I had a Camero and a Mustang from years ago and I racked up to all these speeding tickets because I was an asshole I didn't you know I thought I was hot stuff and what ends up happening is I got lazy a couple times

and I used my debit card at this casino. And my friends that worked with me at the club found out about it. And one of my friends at the club that worked for me was one of my drivers, because then I really got lazy, and I would give him 50 bucks instead of paying the taxi cab 150. And they end up telling the FBI that I was going out of state. And the FBI was gunning for me at this point. They wanted to take the club from me.

They thought they could run the club better than I could run the club. So they tell the FBI, but the FBI doesn't jump on it, right? away this is June of 2016 I just turned 21 years old in September is when my sentencing is it ends up getting postponed my sentencing and then the next day after it got postponed I'm given a letter from my probation officer saying I have an emergency bail violation hearing the next day now I had won like six by violation hearings before so I'm thinking I got this there's no way I'm going to jail there it's not possible like I'm going to get home

confinement or probation or anything. And I got sent to jail. The judge was extremely mad about my whole situation. And he told me, he's like, Mr. Bick, the party's over. And the marshals grabbed me. And I was brought to the holding center in Rhode Island. It was like the county jail, but it was a private detention center.

And it was a lot like this. This is when I was walking around here yesterday, it really brought back that feeling, because you're locked in these small pods, You're locked in the cells and you're wearing exactly what you guys are wearing now. But it was... Wishing you could be there live for the big game. Soaking up the atmosphere in the crowd.

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And that month, you know, I saw like a guy get his finger bitten off. I'd never been a prison before. I'm this young white kid who everyone would later think I was a sex offender because of the way I looked. I had that look. I had the round, I mean, I have round ones now, but you know, you guys know my paperwork's good. But I had these round glasses and that's the, it's a lot. description people gave me. And I end up getting sentenced to three years. The judge didn't buy my whole speech about saying, oh, the last 21 days in prison, you know, were eye-opening, everything's great. And honestly, it was the best thing that could have ever happened to me because had I gotten out that day, I probably would have went back to the club and I'd probably end up dead or in more

debt or who knows what would have happened. But that three-year sentence would later become the best thing that could have ever happened to me. So he ends up sending me to three years in federal prison, but they don't tell you three years. They say 36 months. So I'm sitting there at sentencing saying, how many years is 36 months? Because when you hear years, you know, you don't calculate the month. And he's saying 36 months in federal prison, one year home confinement, three-year supervised release.

I'm like, fuck, I'm in trouble. And I end up going to my designated spot about a week or two later. They put you in, you know, the transport bus, you're shackled. It's a crazy experience. And I feel bad for all the people that have to go to court from holding and county jail. I couldn't imagine doing that every day. The system's designed to make you not want to fight your case. You want to take a plea deal as soon as possible to get out of there.

And that's the problem with the system. And it's screwed up. They make it so uncomfortable. And when I interview current law enforcement and stuff, and I asked them that, they kind of beat around the bush a little bit about that. But it's true. We know that as inmates ourselves of what that that reality is.

So they send me to this compound called Fort Dix. It's a federal low security prison. There's a fence. It's an old army barracks, though. So this is different from the holding sales I was in before, because there's no locks on the doors. You're in a big unit. It's three stories high.

There's multiple units that really looks like a college campus. I tell people all the time, I didn't need to go to college because I went to prison. And there's like a gym in one building, a chow hall, and another. And these are big 12-man rooms, six bunks, six bunk beds in an open room. There's open showers with private shower stalls. It's kind of run down, but it's different. It's not what you think of when you see prison on TV 60 days in, anything like that.

It's not that. It's weird in a way. And I remember my first day at the prison lunch table, the chow hall. It's this big open room. It's like high school, college, whatever you want to compare it to. And I go to sit down at this table. And this guy looks at me. right away, a white guy. I went and sat at the all-white table, because I'm just assuming that's where I needed to be. And I didn't know. I'm trying to navigate.

I didn't read a prison handbook. All I did was watch Orange is the New Black. Because I loved Orange as a New Black. And so I'm reading that all the time. I'm watching that. But I never planned on going to prison. I just never did. You know, when you grow up before you get involved in things,

you never see that happening to you. Like if I brought any of my friends here today, to meet you guys, they would never in a million years expect that could happen to them, but it could because it happened to all of us and it could very easily happen to them because it's those one decisions that we make early on that affect the rest of our life. And what ends up happening is at this lunch table, this is where it gets funny guys. I've got the funny stuff coming for you. The guy looks at me and he's like, you can't sit here.

And my head pops up and I'm looking around. I'm like looking behind me. I'm like, you can't be talking about me. I just got here and he's like no you you I'm talking to you you're not allowed to sit here you belong with them and he points to this table a few tables back and it's a bunch of guys that look like me and they got the round glasses and they're smiling and their heads bobbing up and down they got no necks and they're like and and that's what they're doing and and we all know that's the sex offender table and I didn't know that and I'm like there's got to be a mistake like

he can't be talking to me and then they explain the problem process of paperwork that you needed to show your paperwork to show you're not a sex offender and you're not a rat. I said, great, I went to trial, I'm not a rat, and I'm here for fraud, not a sex offender. He looks at me and he says, that's what they all say. Now get off the table. You know what I do, guys? I get up and go sit at that table, which was not the right decision to make, but that just shows, like, that's who I was. I was this white little nerdy kid looking like Harry Potter, who would later get the name McLove, They called me McLevin in prison. They called me Squintz.

They called me Justin Bieber, because I have a couple of Justin Bieber tattoos. They gave me all these names, you know? And I was just like, I'm not what you think of when you think prison. And I think that's what helps me on social media later on, because when I put up a TikTok and it says, how I survived prison and big red lettering, an adult, you know, say 40 or 50 year old looks at it and is like, there's no way this kid went to prison.

So they start watching it. And it's just like a different perspective. So this whole time, you know, I'm going in and out of the system, or going in and out of different prisons. I had probably the craziest prison experience you would ever imagine. I'll give you guys some of the highlights because I was in prison for almost three years, so we're not going to go through every detail. But I ended up caught up in a cell phone investigation about six months in.

Everyone had contraband cell phones at this Fort Dick's low security prison. And they're hiding them in the lights. They're hiding them everywhere. And you could buy a phone for three grand, pretty much. And they raid our room, and they find these phones, and they crack into the phones. One guy didn't have his password on it. And there's a video of me wrestling with another one of the inmates. It's a bad look, I know.

And what ends up happening is they call us all in. They put us all in the shoe. They said, do you need protective custody? And I was like, we're just wrestling, you know? It was no big deal. But they keep us in the shoe for months and months. And honestly, I was looking to get out of that prison anyways because a couple guys from Baltimore

were trying to extort me one time. And this story actually went viral on every social media platform a few months ago. These guys came and they pulled me into the bathroom and they slapped the glasses off of me. And people still say all the time that, hey, your cheeks are still red from that slap. But they're just naturally red.

Don't worry, guys. And they pulled me in the bathroom. And they said, listen, you need to buy us a cell phone. And then you're going to pay us every week as protection for you. And I didn't know what to do. I was a scared, young 21 white kid. So I did what I knew how to do. And after that, I used my brains.

And I went up to the biggest guys in that unit. It was called the New York car. It's not like a gang. They called it a car in federal prison. And I befriended them. And they had like higher rank in this car. And I started to do. you know, giving them 50, 60 bucks a week in commissary. And I didn't look at it as paying for protection.

I was just helping these guys that took a liking to me and I liked playing spades with them and playing dice and hanging out. And other inmates stopped screwing with me because they looked at that as they would be affecting these guys hustle. But they weren't really hustling me. It was a mutual agreement. So that got these guys to back off. There is, I mean, it's intimidating for If there's a black guy with a white guy and he's paying him commissary, no one wants to get in between that. And that's just a reality of prison. So that happens. They ship me to Danbury, Connecticut prison after this investigation concludes, I'm in the shoe, the hole of the box, whatever you want to call it, for like four months.

It sucked. Absolutely worst. Locked down all the time. Worst experience. And this is my first year in prison. I'm getting the run around. You'll meet some guys in prison in the Fed time. They never see one day of the box.

And I go to Danbury, Connecticut, which is my hometown. That's where Orange is a New Black is based on because they have that woman's security prison there. And it's a low security prison. I'm on the yard thinking, this is great. You know, everyone's coming up to me. The Italians are coming up to me. They're giving me stuff. I'm like, I got my paperwork now.

No one's thinking I'm a chomo. And not even 24 hours on the yard. I get called the lieutenant's office. And when you get called the lieutenant's office, it's never a good thing. And I get called, I get brought in there, and they said, Mr. Bick, show us your ID, showed them my red prison ID. They put my hands behind my back up against the wall. They escorted me to the shoe. And the whole time I'm yelling like, what are you guys doing?

Like I just got here. There's got to be a mistake. I don't know what's going on. This shoe looked like Alcatraz. It had the old bars on it. They're big. They're open. Three tiers high.

Like what you see in the jails and on TV. A couple days later, they finally tell me that one of the guards reported that I used to date his cousin and that he came to my house for a barbecue a couple summers back. So they reported that and they reported it as a conflict of interest so they had to remove me off the compound. I spent another three months in that shoe waiting to get transported and they made me the orderly. This is where I got the nickname Squintz because the CEO let me come out and I was the painter. They started having me paint because I wasn't on an admin hold or I wasn't there under investigation. but I had my lawyer calling every day, and we had a state senator call, my dad called, which really pissed them off.

So they get back at me. Out of all the prisons they could have sent me to on the East Coast, you know where they send me? Oxford, Wisconsin. Who would have thought, you know, you could go to Oxford, Wisconsin for a prison? They put me on Conair. I'm riding on ConAir, which was a terrible experience. The planes like duct tape, the wing. You're getting a bag sandwich while all the U.S. marshals are eating like Wendy's, and right in front of,

front of you in the middle of the plane it terrible get out to Wisconsin it actually was a blessing because this camp was awesome best time ever when they you guys have heard the terms club fed before right this was club fed 100 people on this yard they had a dog program they had dogs in one of the units there were four-man rooms but there wasn't a lot of inmates there so there was usually two or three people in each room there was a track there was a botchy ball court tennis court softball basketball a workout gym, and no fence. That was the most interesting thing.

My first weekend at the prison, I see McDonald's rappers in the unit. I'm like, what? How do you get McDonald's in prison? And one night I look out the window and the inmates are running across the yard with black garbage bags doing an operation. They got contraband phones inside,

communicating coast is clear, because there's only one guard for 100 inmates. And if they call like an emergency count, then they just say they were walking on the track, and had their headphones on. Guys would sneak out to hook up with their wives. Crazy, cell phones, Chinese. I remember eating sushi in prison.

Who eats sushi in prison? Chicago deep dish pizza, because Chicago's close to Wisconsin. First time I ever tried it was in a federal prison. It's crazy. Really is the dynamics. And this is where things take a turn. I can't stay out of trouble, apparently. And I get a job in the bakery, and this is about, like, you know,

maybe six months into my stay. I got six months left on my sentence. And a prison guard tries to come on to me. And I'm the baker in this kitchen. And it's like 4 a.m. He doesn't pull my bunk made out. He just pulls me. He says he could have the day off.

And we're in this kitchen. And he's standing next to me. And skinny white guy, really tall, taller than me, really, really skinny, pants pulled up. know, like over the belly button, like it was weird. And he was always nice to me. Like he'd let me smuggle out cream cheese, which you guys know would go for gold. Hey, commissary cream cheese is terrible.

Okay, so you wanted to get the Philadelphia because I would make the cheesecakes, the prison cheesecakes. Now, if anyone wants to have a cook-off with prison cheesecake, I'll beat you guys all day. I learned how to make non-bake cheesecake. So anyways, he's standing next to me and, you know, he touches my elbow while I'm scooping the muffin mix, and I'm thinking it's a mistake. There can't be, the guy accidentally touched my elbow. There's no big deal.

Well, that elbow touch moves a little bit down my leg. And I look at him, and I look at him in the right, and I go back to scoop in the muffins a little bit. And you know you can't say anything, because I don't want to, there's no cameras in this kitchen, there's nothing. And it then moves to my butt. His hand moves to my butt like this.

And he's just like touching it, and he's rubbing it and I know it's funny but it's a shitty situation you know and this is going on for like two minutes of me scooping this muffin mix and he's touching me and it's a rotation between the elbow the thigh and the butt thank God it didn't get worse and keep in mind this guy smells bad so you know like when someone smells bad like I can imagine like if you're going to like kiss a girl or you're kissing a guy and they smell bad their breast smells bad so worse so I'm sitting here with this all happening and I'm like okay this is a one-time thing like I can't you know I'm done like I end up leaving my shift was over because this

is towards the end of my shift and I tell my bunk bait he's like listen if you tell if you report this you're not gonna get looked at as a snitch because you know there's no such thing as snitching on the police in that environment but you could go the shoe and I didn't want to go back the shoe I loved the place and I was six months away from getting released and what happened is I go back for a shift one day, and this is like a couple weeks later. I'm thinking everything's good. And I'm in the walk-in cooler, grabbing a frozen tray of cookies.

And the COs always come with you to the walk-in cooler because they keep it locked, and they don't want you to steal anything. Well, this is a small cooler. This is probably like two tables lengths. And what happens is, normally the CEO stands outside with the door open. He comes inside the cooler with the door closed. And there's like two, you know, two shelvings. He stands right there, so I have to rub my back and butt against his groin area while I'm

carrying this tray. That was the final straw for me. I told my bunkmate, and we end up reporting it to the kitchen cop. And they launched a PREA investigation, the Prison Rape Elimination Act, and they end up not keeping me in the shoe. They let me stay out because they were able to move him to the medium. And what ends up happening is the prison covers it up. They don't do anything with it.

They say they're investigating, but what do you expect, right? It was my word against his word. There is no cameras. But people, inmates saw the way he looked at me. Like I could skip the ch- I could skip the chow line. I could get seconds. If I walked in and said, hey, I need a brick of cream

cheese. He was giving me that brick. And it was just like it was a weird situation. And you know, I was someone like I was trying to take advantage a little bit of getting this. But then it got to a point where, it's like, you know, I don't want, I'm in prison, I don't deserve this.

So like this is not what's supposed to be happening and who knows what could have happened next. And you know, when I tell the story, people on social media are like, I would have slugged them, I would have done this. I would have still been in prison now if I hit the guy. And what happens is a few months later, I go for halfway house, and this is where we get

into the reentry aspect of this. I go to the case manager. I'm like, hey, I lay out everything. You know, I qualify for six months halfway house, you know, good family. I have a job lined up, this, this, and that. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, great. I get my halfway house paperwork two weeks later. They only give me three months.

Three months halfway house. They send me the halfway house. I don't know if you guys have been in a halfway house before. Terrible. It was worse in prison. I would see guys at this federal halfway house because there's state guys and federal guys in it that would literally go up and say, take me back, call the marshals because it was so bad.

Food is worse than the prison. The state guys were allowed to have smartphones, but the Fed guys could only have flip phones, which didn't make any sense. It's 2019. How are we using flip phones? So I was texting on a flip phone until I started to smuggle in my old cell phone.

It was terrible, and you have these counselors and case managers that are younger than you. Like if you're a grown man, if you're 40, 50, 60 years old, or a grown woman, are you expected to take orders from a 19 or 20-year-old kid that cares nothing about your life. They don't care about what you overcame.

You're just trying to figure out housing, figure out how to pay your bills, write a check, do all these things, and they're not there to help you. They're there for a paid internship to get to the next level. My time there, I think I had like two or three case managers. And so what ends up happening is they put me on home confinement.

Now, when you think home confinement, you're thinking ankle monitor, at least. The halfway house's home confinement system is a phone call. They will call you six times a day to make sure you're at your location. So guys would just turn call forwarding on and they would get, you know, the phone call rerouted and this and that. And they would only show up once a week to check if you're there, a spot check. So if they came on Monday, you knew they weren't coming until the next week because that was a part of the week.

It was crazy. There was no reentry is such a failed aspect of it. It's why a lot of people I would meet guys I was in the camp with because the feds always send you back to your. home location that would get violated they would go out and then they would come right back in and the fist the system just failed in that regard they're not there to help you they're not there to do anything for you and it was a terrible situation and I'm in this halfway house and you know I want to get back in the nightclub business and and I do this article I sit down I end up not going the

halfway house right away I go home and do an interview with the Danbury News Times which ended up getting me in trouble by the way I'm saying I'm going to get back in the nightclub business, I'm going to do all these things. I end up not doing it because I realized that would take money and it wasn't going to work out. And thank God it didn't because a year later COVID would happen. And that dream would have been bust anyways. So I start applying the jobs. I end up getting a job at Whole Foods because before I went to prison, in between sentencing and after conviction and owning the nightclub, I was trying to look for work to get money. I applied to 100 places not one would hire me. Three gave me interviews and I knew it was

bad when I went to Red Lobster and they said they wouldn't even hire me as a dishwasher for nine bucks an hour. Red Lobster because of my pending case and everything and I wasn't someone that killed anyone. I didn't hurt anyone physically. I was just, you know, this young kid and I was looking to work hard but because the news put this image of me that's always there and I'm sure you guys have news articles written about you, but that's like the past. You could have a news article from 10 years ago that could still haunt you to this day. And no one's, when you get out of prison, there's no one sitting down with you saying, hey, let's do a new article on you. Let's get a refresh. Let's put, let's get rid of your mugshot. Let's talk about all the good things you did in prison.

I only have what I have now on social media and the internet because I created that. No one gave that to me. No one said, hey, we're going to, you know, get your website to the top of Google and get rid of the old, you know, Dambury nightclub owner convicted for fraud at 19 years old, because that's what lives on the internet. And if that was all that was existed, I wouldn't be here speaking to you guys today. And I'm going to tell you guys how I was able to get that and how you guys can get that too. And so what happens is I apply to Whole Foods because they had hired me. They were like the hundredth and one person that I applied to. They end up giving me a job. It was 15 bucks an hour, which was great at that time period, for a felon. Whole Foods.

Foods is actually a great place to work at for if you have a felony on your record. I'd fully recommend that. There's just certain like violent crimes. I think they don't hire sex offender crimes, things like that. But if you have a drug charge that they would take you there, obviously you can't have like shoplifting, petty theft like that. But with my background, I was able to get a job there. So I went back to that.

And I almost didn't get that job because the case manager wanted to verify that I actually had the interview, but I said they just called me for the interview. So there was no proof. It was just a phone call. So I ended up going and getting the job against her will, against her saying no. But because I got the job with the job offer, they dropped it. But I could have very, if I didn't have the resources I did, or if someone was maybe a different skin color or whatever it could have happened, that person could have went back to jail all for just going to get a job, doing the right thing, trying to get the right thing and getting a job. And that's the system right there. That's why it's so screwed up. And so I get this job. and I'm able to rebuild my life. I pour my heart and soul into Whole Foods. I go from making $15 an hour to three years later making $32 an hour as a as a manager of prepared foods, putting in the work, working my way up as a hot bar chef to supervisor, then to assistant manager, then to manager, they let me run my own department in a brand new store in Long Island. They moved me out there. I was going to make almost 100 grand last year with overtime. At Whole Foods Market, when I I tell people I worked at a grocery store, they laugh at me. I'll show you my pay stuff if you don't believe me. That's what I tell them. And it was great.

And I was able to get a dog that I loved, adopted dog. I was able to get my own apartment. I was able to rebuild my credit. I was able to get a car. I was able to do all these things that I never had, even owning a nightclub because I had no stability. My life was just like plummeting all the time. I had no money. My bank accounts were always negative.

And what happens is about last. Last year, now keep in mind a couple things happened in my life up until that point, HBO Max ended up doing a documentary on me, and Vice did a documentary on me. But they didn't really get me anywhere. They didn't elevate me. They didn't give me a social media platform. We did these things, and for so long, I was so focused on my story. I thought my story of owning a nightclub, going to prison was going to be the thing that brought me success. That was going to make me millions of dollars, that was going to get me out of the hole, was going to do all these things. And all these thoughts are coming to my mind. And one day I wake up, this was last August, about a year ago.

And I'm like, listen, Ian, you're 27 years old. You owned a nightclub. You don't have a family right now. No kids, no wife. Now's the time to quit and take a risk again. You took all those risks at a young age now. You're smarter. You're wiser.

You could go out and do something. No hesitation. I walked into my boss's office that day and I put in my two weeks. And simultaneously, while this is going on, I was interviewing for an MTV show, some dating, new dating love show or whatever. Can you picture me on a dating show, honestly? But I started on TikTok at this time period, too, because my friend said, Ian, you've got to get on TikTok. You've got to start talking about your story. And he explained how TikTok is a great way to go viral.

The greatest thing about TikTok is that you could have zero followers and post a video and it can do a million views. Whereas if you make an Instagram for the first time, it's not going to do that. TikTok has this great ability, which is why I don't know if you guys have ever been on TikTok at all, but you see a lot of inmates going viral that have the phones and the jails. A lot more prisons and jails are allowing inmates to have phones and tablets, and it's a whole new world out there, which is why, like, J.D.'s post from yesterday performed so well. I took a photo saying I was speaking at this jail, and, you know, everyone's clicking on it and liking it because it's so interesting. And I thought, for the longest time, I never talked about prison.

People would ask me at work, I was embarrassed by it. I was embarrassed of the fact that I went to prison. Because I was someone that was never destined to go to prison, was never meant to go to prison. And I wasn't okay with that. I didn't want to talk about it. I wanted to leave that part behind me. I didn't want anyone to know about it, even though it was out there. I always felt weird going into a room that people knew of me from high school, that knew I went to prison.

And I always felt like people knew me from prison. And Whole Foods accepted me because they respected me for my work ethic. I showed them that I could work hard and that my past was not, you know, my present or my future. But I end up deciding to start talking about prison on social media. And I post five videos. My first ever five, they did okay, you know, 1,000 views, 2,000 views. And then on my sixth video, I was doing one a day at first. This was last July.

My sixth one, I get COVID. And I'm in sick. I'm in bed. I'm stuffy. And I call my friend who told me. to get on social media and he's like, you got to post. You can't take a day off. You got to post.

And this will always stick with me because I'd never missed a day posting after this day last year. And he said, you have to post. And I end up posting. And it was my first viral video, 1.2 million views in like 24 hours, talking about how I went to solitary. The one thing I refused to talk about, I end up talking about, and it was able to elevate me to a level of success that I would never thought was imaginable.

So while they're, you know, because I'm getting this social media fame, I guess you could say at this time period, a producer from MTV reaches out. They want me to do this thing. I start interviewing and I have these thoughts about wanting more in my life. So I quit my job, no stability, no money saved up, just the credit lines I had from rebuilding my credit. And I start living off my credit cards. And I'm thinking, you know, TikTok's got to pay. I'm getting millions of views. You know, I got to be making some money here.

There's no money in that in the beginning. I had 10, 15, 20, 30,000 followers. I wasn't seeing money, but I was simultaneously building up my YouTube page, building up my Facebook page, building up my Instagram, posting videos. I would sit in my car strategically every day, 9 a.m. 12 p.m., 3 p.m., 5 p.m. every single day, no days off, telling a different story about prison. And I would mix in some nightclub stuff, but I would talk about this time, you know, the Chomo story about the lunch table, the time I'm

I got extorted, all these stories I would talk about. And they start going more and more viral. And then comes December, and I'm about like 20, 25 grand credit card debt, because I have no job, no stable job. I think by that point, with like 90 million views, I made about $5,000 off of social media, which isn't, you can't live off that between August and December. I had rent, I had this, I had bills to pay.

And I'm thinking, because I'm watching what's going on in the world, with the other, there's this thing called prison influencers. There's all these prison TikTokers, prison YouTubers that were telling their story. And the market was kind of dying, and you can only tell your story for so much. So I am thinking, how do I turn my story into something more? Like, I can't be three years from now talking about the same story about getting, you know, extorted or sitting at that chomo table or anything like that or being called McLeaven in prison. So I said I got the idea to start a podcast.

And I was very anti-podcast for a while. I figured, you know, why everyone else in the world is doing a podcast, you Google, how much money can you make in a podcast on Google? And it'll say, don't quit your day job. You know, it takes years and years to build a podcast that's successful. But I said, I'm going to start it. And I'm going to do something different. I'm going to take what all these prison influences are doing, and I'm going to professionalize it. I'm going to make it because they're all filming off of webcams, and they're,

I'm going to get a real film crew and we're going to do these interviews. And the first three interviews I did, we decided to call it locked in with Ian Bick and very cringe. Like I just come up with these questions. I'm reading it question for question. The set was like a wide angle shot. If you look up my first three YouTube videos I've ever posted, these are these initial interviews and there was a lot of echo in the room and we didn't have the sound right and

I would just read, okay, did you go to prison? Did you do this? Question after question after question. But that was my starting point. And very quickly, I read the feedback, read the comments, and I learned, and I pivoted. And I started listening to people like Joe Rogan and reading books on how to become a better podcaster

and learning the art of interviewing and learning all these things and simultaneously making those set adjustments. And at this point in time, this is January of this year, when I posted my very first YouTube long format interview, I had 3,000 subscribers. Fast forward to August. I have 145,000 from January to August. It's one of the fastest growing platforms on YouTube

and this quickly. People take years and years to build something like this and we did it in seven or eight months. And the thing that changed everything, because from January to March, I'm posting these podcast clips. I'm cutting them up. I do all my own editing with like the short clips you see on TikTok.

And I'm putting it out there. And you know, we're getting like a couple thousand views on YouTube on the videos, which wasn't bad. And the audio, like Spotify, Apple, that's getting a few thousand downloads here and there. And then I had JD on the JD that you met. His episode ended up doing a couple 100,000 views on YouTube

and like 10,000 downloads on audio. And things are picking up, but it wasn't the tipping point. You know what the tipping point was? When I figured out my purpose, when I figured out what the purpose of the podcast is, and what the purpose for my life was. And that was giving individuals, who don't usually have a platform, a voice.

Taking people like yourselves, like the millions of people that are incarcerated in America, who never get the opportunity to go on, say, like, a CNN, or do these things that these other celebrities are able to do, or go on these giant podcasts, taking the average person who went through so much trauma in their life, addiction, heartbreak, loss, death, all these things, and giving them a platform to tell their story. and in that process of telling their story,

they're inspiring so many people that haven't ever been to prison, but have suffered a job loss, have suffered tragedy, have suffered a relationship loss. Because when you hear a story like your guy's stories about how you guys have overcame addiction and you've been through the worst of the worst

or a story like mine who loses everything and is able to rebuild, if you're going through a shitty situation, whether you've been to prison or not, you're going to get inspired by your story. And once I defined that as the podcast purpose, it took off. Thousands of downloads on the audio, millions of views on the videos, and I was able to turn it into a business generating revenue,

five figure revenues. Our best month was $26,000 in revenue, all from this podcast, all from finding the purpose, and creating, the thing that's great about this podcast is, yes, it's entertainment, but it's motivational and inspirational too. too. So do we tell the stories about how maybe you stab someone in prison or you did something stupid because you were high, you stole a truck, you did these things or in my situation making fun of the guard that inappropriately touched me? Yes. But at the

end of the day those stories I always say and this is what I love about it, the first you know half of our interviews you're not going to hear anything about a stabbing or something crazy. You're going to hear about the person's childhood. You're going to hear about how they're a human just like the other person that might have judged us in the past and that changes people's perspective and people from all over the world have been you know listening to this podcast I get messages every day saying so-and-so story has changed my life I had guys come on talking about how they were raped in prison all of these crazy situations that the world doesn't know

about we've created this platform and it's just such a it's a great message and it's really it's hopeful and what I've also came to realize is that I could take like these prison influencers and I can put them on my show that have millions of followers, and their videos will do okay. But if I take one of you guys, or if I take someone that had just got out of prison that has nothing, no platform,

their story will perform 10 times better than the person whose story has already been told. So I want you guys to realize that there is a power in your story, that you guys went through so much, and you're at the finish line of finishing whatever it is you have to work through, and it's super important to finish that,

because there is hope at the end of this and there is a future it doesn't have to be working a regular job it doesn't have to be the old stigma of not talking about having a felony be proud of it that was your past you overcame that that's not you know Joe Rogan says it best about your past is not your future that's not you anymore we've all had shitty stuff we've all unfortunately ours is all out in the public but the people that stuff isn't in the public they've been through stuff too. They've done stuff in their lives that maybe they weren't caught for or their stuff didn't get, you know, aired out. So just embrace that, think about that and start plotting your comeback in the

right way. Think about how you're going to use everything, outline right down every little thing that you've been through and figure out maybe I write a book on this. Maybe I go on social media. Maybe I do this. But don't think in your mindset that you're going to be having to be stuck working at a stop and shop or working at some grocery store and being treated like not a decent human being because of your past. So embrace that. That's my message for you guys. Thank you for listening to this. And obviously thank you guys for coming and watching, you know, my videos.

It means a lot. You guys want to say hi to everyone? Guys, thank you for tuning in to this. It's been great. Really appreciate it. It was a lot of fun. Do you guys have any questions? Do you guys want to ask any questions at all?

Okay, she has a question. I'll answer some questions. So with the attention-seeking aspect in the beginning of it, right, and to now, and you said you were way arrogant and everything else, and now that you have a humility factor with this, along with still kind of being in the fallout, how do you balance that? So I think that attention, like that addiction to the attention stuff never really goes away, only now I have something to fuel that energy into. So when, you know, I think when you're, when you compare that to like drug or

alcohol addiction, I think you find something that subsides that. And I know it's hard, but you find something that you could replace that with. Maybe it's an addiction to a dog or an addiction to a girlfriend or addiction to something else, but it's a healthy addiction. And my of wanting to be liked, my attention and stuff, that never goes away. It's always within us in some point. But I'm able to fuel that into this podcast. And it's not about me anymore.

I took it. The second I moved on from it being about me, that's when my whole life changed. Now I don't care. I try to avoid talking about my story. This is different because it's a teaching thing, but I won't go on my podcast really and sit for hours talking about my story over and over and over again

because the people don't want to hear about that. And maybe my story gets turned into a movie or a book one day. And that's great. But it's about the other people. And that's what changed my life. Meeting individuals like you guys. Like walking through that jail yesterday, I felt for you guys. And that's something that, say, a government official,

or a, you know, another state trooper or something that walks through. They're never going to understand that because they weren't in your shoes. And that's why, you know, Jimmy has been able to create so much because he was in there. That's how you create the change. The change starts with us, not the people sitting behind the desks that have never lived in our position before. Yes, sir. When you first said something about not dressing out and PE and stuff, that caught my attention. And then as you told your story, several other similarities came about between your life and my life.

The question I have, though, is this. Is there any way that I can contact you and maybe talk through emails or anything like this? Or maybe a post board or something? A post board? Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'll give you my email, I'll give you my phone number, whatever you want, I'll give it to you. The address, you know, if you wouldn't need a mail letters. I don't know what your guys' communications like, but I'm very responsive.

I always tell people they message me on Instagram. Might not get to it right away, but I'll respond to it and I at least look at it because I wouldn't be here without the audience.