Locked In with Ian Bick - Kingpin Reveals How He Built A 5 Million Dollar A Year Drug Delivery Empire | Coss Marte

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

Coss Marte, a native of New York City, went from being a kingpin in criminal activities to serving multiple years in state prison, where he underwent a transformative experience. During his time in pr...ison, he had a profound realization and decided to change his life. Using his prison experience as inspiration, he created the ConBody fitness program, a unique initiative that provides effective workouts and fitness training while offering second chances to formerly incarcerated individuals, helping them reintegrate into society. Additionally, Marte established the ConBud dispensary, likely focusing on legal cannabis products, showcasing his commitment to creating opportunities for those who have faced obstacles in their past. His journey from a life of crime to becoming a fitness innovator and community leader is a powerful testament to redemption and positive transformation. Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Big thanks to Find A Great Attorney for sponsoring this episode. If you are injured anywhere in the country, visit https://findagreatattorney.com, a free service that can find you one of the best lawyers in your area. You focus on getting better and they’ll do the rest. Connect with Coss Marte: IG: https://www.instagram.com/cossmarte/?hl=en Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:04:40 - Growing up in the Neighborhood 00:07:05 - Overcoming Challenges and Changing Narratives 00:11:39 - Growing up in the Dominican Republic 00:16:21 - Rearrested Multiple Times 00:21:00 - The Rise of the Empire 00:28:12 - The Drive for Wealth 00:32:49 - Arrested in the Stash House 00:39:44 - Operating a Business 00:51:33 - Starting a Business 00:56:18 - Working Out in Prison 00:58:30 - Overcoming Doubters and Inspiring Change 01:00:58 - From Advocacy to Working with Mike Tyson 01:03:22 - Carrying the Brand and Overcoming Hurdles 01:07:59 - Advice for Former Prisoners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 There's a lot of headlines about you and interviews and articles that you were selling to celebrities and making millions of dollars through this business that started off little and went to like a whole entire empire. That's when the delivery service started popping. I was just passing on my car. My phone number on a piece of paper and then my boy, Joey, who I partnered up with at the time, he was like, hey, let's make business cards. And so we went to Ken Co's. We printed out, you know, 5,000 business cards and rest of his history. We blew up. You know, we had generally $5 million of revenue.
Starting point is 00:00:38 Welcome back to the Lockton with the InBick podcast. On today's episode, I have Koss Marte, a native of New York City, who went from being a kingpin in criminal activities to serving multiple years in state prison where he underwent a transformative experience. During his time in prison, he had a profound realization. and decided to change his life. Using his prison experience as inspiration, Koss created the Kahn Body Fitness Program,
Starting point is 00:01:06 a unique initiative that provides effective workouts and fitness training while offering second chances to formerly incarcerated individuals, helping them reintegrate into society. Additionally, Koss established KahnBud New York City-based dispensary, focusing on legal cannabis products, showcasing his commitment to creating opportunities
Starting point is 00:01:28 for those who have faced obstacles in their past. His journey from a life of crime to becoming a fitness innovator and community leader is a powerful testament to redemption and positive transformation. This episode is brought to you by my good friends over at findagateatorney.com. If you are injured anywhere in the country,
Starting point is 00:01:47 visit find a great attorney.com, a free service that can find you one of the best lawyers in your area. You focus on getting better and they'll do the rest. Huge thank you and shout out. to find a great attorney.com for sponsoring this episode. Guys, we got a new studio coming for you and a total rebrand coming up. Look behind me. I got this nice wall.
Starting point is 00:02:09 If you're watching this on Spotify or YouTube, going to have the new logo up here. We're getting serious. It's really exciting. And when we launched a three episodes a week starting February 1st, you're going to see all the new graphics, sound effects, everything. I can't wait to share it with you guys. And I hope you guys sit back, relax, and get ready to live.
Starting point is 00:02:28 lock in with cost marty cost welcome to the show man it's a absolute pleasure you know i met you a couple weeks ago at the tyson event the tyson 2.0 event and um rod was like hey do you want to meet the owner of con bud and con body and i knew that name since i was in federal prison um you you built a crazy brand that's well known all over the country and then um i start researching you in the last couple days and we actually have a lot in common. You were on Johnny Mitchell's show. Yeah, yeah. Johnny's a good friend of mine. Oh, nice. And you did Mark Gagnons, which I actually first saw you on months ago when I did Mark's show. Yeah. And you looked so familiar and I realized that's what I was from. And then the last thing was Vice. I was a part of that series that Vice did too.
Starting point is 00:03:27 Oh, nice. The teenage fell in. And so I had actually seen you years ago. So, you know, the world knows your story. You're on all these different outlets and you have a great thing going on. So, you know, I'm grateful for the opportunity that you came out from New York City to do our show today. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:03:48 So hopefully I could do a little bit of a different spin on what you're used to. So I know it gets repetitive telling the same story over it over and over and over again. I don't mind it. I don't mind it. Awesome, man. Well, so where did you grow up?
Starting point is 00:03:59 Where are you from? I grew up in the LES, lower east side of New York City. It was a crazy neighborhood when I was growing up. A lot of gangs, a lot of drugs. You know, it was wild, you know. And I grew up in that culture. I grew up in that community where we saw drug dealing as, you know, the epitome of success.
Starting point is 00:04:24 You know, and that's what I became. And that's what I thought when I was a kid. What kind of family did you come from? My family, Dominican family, hard work. my mom came from the DR when she was pregnant with me. And we ended up in this neighborhood because my whole family was down here. And I grew up in a building where, like,
Starting point is 00:04:47 the fifth floor was all cousins and uncles. So, like, if I got a bell-whipping from my uncle across the hall, you know, I'll come home crying, and then I get another belt-wipping because I did something wrong. And that's how it was. but it was very community it was very community
Starting point is 00:05:07 centric and it was fun you know I didn't I can't I can't lie I didn't I had a a good upbringing even though we were poor even though we didn't have a lot of things
Starting point is 00:05:20 but I had fun Did you have a lot of siblings or was it just you? Yeah it was four of us at home and then my dad had a few other half brothers and sisters If we had siblings here today with us, what would they say about you? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:05:40 Well, I think my daughter's over there. She's having fun. Yeah, she lost the shoe. But I don't know. I hear my brother talking about me all the time. My brother's actually the city council member of the downtown area of Manhattan, District 1. But, you know, when we were growing up, we used to be in the park.
Starting point is 00:06:03 all the time, you know, and he saw me getting into drugs at a very early age. He saw me smoking at 11 and growing up in that culture and that side of the business. And he started shying away from me when I was 13 and he saw me get arrested for the first time. And that was a very traumatic experience. So at that time, he felt like he needed to separate himself and he was scared of it. And so I didn't care. You know, I was, every time I got arrested, I just thought I needed to figure out a different way not to get caught, you know. And so that was my way of thinking. But he, I think he would say that, you know, I'm somebody that's, that goes hard, you know. And I think that's what, you know, we grew up, you know, seeing our family and our parents do is just, like, go extremely hard in terms of, you know, whatever hustle, whatever.
Starting point is 00:07:03 you know, you want to accomplish in life, you know, just don't stop until you get it, you know. Yeah. Did your brother run into complications as he pursued his career being tied to you as a family member? Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's a, there's a whole truck that during his campaign, two of his campaigns, uh, that said that he's, uh, legalizing prostitution, that he's bringing up the crime and that, um, he's a drug dealer. Uh, and it was all tied to like my story. And it's wild because he's gotten a whole bunch of interviews, backlash and all this bullshit. But, you know, I think the neighborhood reads between the lines and sees, you know, what the reality is, is that we're really trying to do the right thing and leave that past life, you know, technically behind because now I'm selling cannabis. But, yeah, legally.
Starting point is 00:07:56 But, you know, I'm not, I'm not selling anything that's, you know, going to danger someone's life, you know. But I mean, the narrative has to be flipped now, too, because you've created success from a bad situation. So, you know, that's got to play a fact into how people look at him now. I feel like people look at you differently than they did maybe when he was first running. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people in the neighborhood know and respect us. You know, they know that, you know, what we're doing is something positive. I mean, there's always a few haters and Republicans and things of that nature.
Starting point is 00:08:30 but the press has it out for him. And it's literally, if you look at the whole heat map of the areas that he won, he won everything except for like one housing complex in Chinatown. That his opponent, you know, basically is part of like a community, you know, president board or whatever, you know. So they have a huge amount of Chinese people going out in the polls and they go out And they have one of the poles inside the building. So, you know, they basically, like, try to gain the system.
Starting point is 00:09:06 So he won by, like, a 70-30 split, landslide, you know. So people know around the area, like, we're about doing the right thing and redemption. And just continue tackling what people need in the neighborhood, you know. Did you ever feel bad that he was tied to you in a negative way? Like, how did that make you feel? It just made me go harder, you know. I felt, I didn't even feel bad. I was just like, oh, we're going to take these motherfuckers down.
Starting point is 00:09:36 You know, like that's how, that's my mentality is like he lost his first race by 1%. And then after that, he just went, like, kept going, got, you know, dusted his old ass shoes off. You know, my brother walked about a marathon every single day. You know, every day he walked and there was fucking holes in his shoes, you know. just knocking on doors and sharing what he was about, you know, what we were about, you know. And yeah, I mean, there's people that I've stopped on the street and these, like, older people that just get these mailers. It was crazy. Like this, I don't know if you know, like the Equinox group.
Starting point is 00:10:19 Yeah. Yeah, they have like a whole bunch of real estate. And my brother's like against, like, gentrification and these big high rises coming into the neighborhood. and he stopped them from converting one of the project buildings to being a high rise. And they sent out these mailers out to everybody in the neighborhood. You know, they spent the million dollars to bash his campaign. And I was stopping people in the street and telling them, hey, my brother is Christopher Marte.
Starting point is 00:10:48 He's running for city council. This is what he's about. Blah, blah, blah. And they were like, oh, he's a drug dealer. I got the mailer. You know, he's increasing crime. around the neighborhood, which is not true. Actually, crime has dropped, even though we see more illegal activities happening in our eyes.
Starting point is 00:11:08 But that's not his fault. You know, that's enforcement's fault. Yeah. I mean, people always have something to say no matter what. Yeah, no matter what. So now you and your brother came from the same family. You grew up together. How does one, I guess, go down to a dark path, whereas the other one didn't?
Starting point is 00:11:25 I think because of my, hey, I think because of my sisters, I thought she wanted more cookie. The cookie monster. My daughter's here, Camilla Rose, Marte. She's munching away on cookies. Sorry, can you repeat that? No worries, man. Why you went down a bad path, whereas your other siblings didn't, or at least your older brother didn't? No, I think because of my sisters, my sister's, my sister.
Starting point is 00:11:55 just went down the right path. You know, so two of my sisters, highly successful, one worked at, like, Goldman Sachs for nine years. Now she's at Merrill Lynch as a CFO position in London for the last, like, 20 years. She's been living out there. My other sisters, like, had this Berkeley insurance doing incredible work there as a head of an underwriting group there. They became very successful, and I think that that's because they didn't grow. up with me. They grew up in the Dominican Republic and they came when they were like 12, 13 years old.
Starting point is 00:12:32 And so when they were blended in into the New York culture, it was a shock for them, but also they were just like all about going to school because that's what they had to do in the art. They grew up in the middle of nowhere, like in a, they call it a campo, you know, where it's like the farmland, you know, had cows and, and all they were doing was going to school and working in the farm and they actually were extremely smart and they got, when they came here, they got skipped a grade because they, they were super advanced and my mom was actually a teacher in the Dominican Republic. So they were learning like the times tables before they even went to school, you know, and myself as well. But I was exposed to a lot of crazy shit when I was a kid just growing up in
Starting point is 00:13:23 the neighborhood. So I didn't meet my sisters until I was like six, seven years old. And that's when they came. And I was already bugging out in the streets, doing wild things. And, you know, the drug dealers in the corners were raising me. As my mom was going to work, like the people that were watching for me were the people that were on the streets and some of those were my cousins. And so I followed their path. And then my brother was four years younger than me. So, you know, he was following my path too but when I when he got that shock way I got arrested at uh when I got arrested at 13 um he was nine and he just said I'm he started hanging out with my sisters after that uh and my sisters like sheltered him like a baby uh and didn't like expose him to the stuff that I was
Starting point is 00:14:14 already exposed to you know and I think growing up you know the the environment the community goes to show that, you know, it matters where you grow, where kids grow up at, you know. Do you ever think about what if you had grown up with your sisters out of the country, how your life would be now? Oh, a completely different. I would probably be milking cows right now. I don't know. But, yeah, no, I mean, I went over there in Dominican Republic and I spent a summer
Starting point is 00:14:44 because I remember getting arrested. and my dad was like, hey, you need to go out there. We don't want you to come back. And I was going to move out there for the rest of my life. But I had to come back to court. And they wanted me to be like a fugitive. And I'm like, I'm not leaving. You know, I'm not staying over here.
Starting point is 00:15:06 Even though I loved it because it's beautiful. And I was working in cocoa fields. I was, you know, taking down the cocos and opening them up and drying them. putting them in these long-ass rails and sun drying them and then bringing them, putting them in these huge 50-pound bags and shipping them away to chocolate factories. And so that, that's what I was doing out there. The real life Willy Wonka right here. Yeah, it shows crazy, but that shows so good.
Starting point is 00:15:36 So that first arrest, what happens after that? So you got arrested at 15? I got arrested at 13. And then after that, I mean, they let me go. I got caught with selling two bags of weed, two nickel bags, and I was a, I was a kid, you know, but that little slap down the wrist was like, I got away with this now. Like, I'm going to go, I was not even scared. I was actually laughing due to the fact that my brother was actually crying when I got arrested.
Starting point is 00:16:08 And he was wearing a dare shirt, and I remember them putting cuffs on me. and taking me away. And my brother's like, please don't take my brother. I'm part of the dare program. And all the officers laughed and I laughed. And whatever. I spent a few hours in custody and they let me go.
Starting point is 00:16:31 And then I went back to the streets. And then I got re-arrested at 15. Then I got re-arrested at 17, 18, 19, multiple times. Find a great attorney as a service revolutionizing the way injured parties find one of the best personal injury attorneys in their area. I've known the founder Richard Hastings for a long time, and honestly, I'm impressed with his abilities as a lawyer and how much he really cares about his clients.
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Starting point is 00:18:05 Now let's get back into my interview with Cost Marta. Why do you think it was a wake-up call for him and not for you? I think he's so young. And I think my, you know, when you're, when you're that age, that 13-year-old age, it's like nobody could tell you anything. You know, it's just like the coming of your teenage years where you're, where you're like agile to fucking, you know, jump off a roof if your friend tells you to jump off a roof. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:18:33 Like, you're just more risk-averse. And I thought I was right, you know. Yeah. So where does that go? Like, how does it go even worse for you? I mean, so I was selling weed, and then from selling weed, it started getting into the Coke game, and then I started selling Coke and weed, and then...
Starting point is 00:18:56 The cookie monster? Cookie Monster's back. There you go. You want some water, Mama? Okay, she didn't want anything. She came to visit. She's making a cameo. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:10 Yeah, no, I mean, I started selling weed and I got introduced to Coke. And I was not like looking forward to selling Coke. It just happened as like a supply and demand. I was like literally standing on the corner when I was 14. And it was a Coke spot and a weed spot. And some guy came up to me. It was like, yeah, I need a couple bags of Coke. And I was like, oh, the guy's going to come back.
Starting point is 00:19:36 And he was like, no, I got to leave. And he handed me the money. And I was like, all right, I'll be right back. And so I went to the next corner. I knew somebody else was selling coke. And I just got a cut off of it, you know. And from there, it was just like I got an eight ball. And I was just walking around with a couple of bags.
Starting point is 00:19:55 And from there, just started expanding, you know. What year was this? This is 2009, 2009, 2009. 1999. And you were how old at then? 14. 14. Okay. I was born 95. Yeah. So is it, have you ever watched Power at all?
Starting point is 00:20:13 A little bit. Is it like that, like to be a kid out on the corners and in the streets like that selling? Is it resemble that at all? So I didn't, I didn't see that episode. But if you look at the movie Fresh, I don't know if you still. I've heard of it. I've never seen it. Yeah, it's like, I felt like my. My realization and my life was like his, except for like his dad was and his family were drug addicts.
Starting point is 00:20:45 But in terms of like selling, that's how I grew up, you know, and it was literally standing on a corner all day or night, you know, and that was, and that was, and it was just clockwork. You know, people would come to that corner to get their stuff. And it was nothing that I, the branding and the marketing of that corner was already done by generations of past, you know, that, you know, hustled on that corner for years. Brumman Eldridge was made millions and millions of dollars, you know, Rivinton and Eldridge, Staten at Eldridge, Heston, Eldridge. So, like, that whole strip. And it was different corners that were ran by different people. Like I, my mom lives on Riventon and Eldridge and I couldn't, you know, sell drugs on that corner because, you know, I didn't rent. I actually got into a fight because I made a couple sales there, you know, and that's literally my mom's block, you know.
Starting point is 00:21:47 And so I was selling on Brewn and Eldridge, you know. So it was, that's how I operated back in the days, stash houses, people bagging up, you know, heroin was crazy. It was, yeah, like a movie. No, there's a lot of headlines about you and interviews and articles that you were selling to celebrities and making millions of dollars through this, like, this business that started off little and it went to like a whole entire empire. Yeah, that's when the delivery service started popping, you know. So when I was standing on the corner, it was just like weed, coke, crack, you know, and that was like a 24-hour block that I was operating. But the delivery service started really in like 2002, 2003, where, you know, the neighborhood we started getting gentrified and people started coming in.
Starting point is 00:22:41 And we basically increased our profit margins. You know, we were selling 20 bags of cokes. We were doing 0.4s, 0.3s for $20. Now we're doing 0.4.5s for $50. You know, so it almost like tripled our margins. And it blew up, you know. It started with me just like writing my number on a piece of paper and just passing it out, you know, to the people that were like literally in a happy endings block. There was a bar called Happy Endings, which was a real happy endings back before that that bar got gentrified.
Starting point is 00:23:21 It was actually like a Chinese spot, that massaged by people getting, you know, jerked off and shit. and then it converted some guy got it opened up the bar and it blew up i remember like tuesday nights was fucking wow do you see like there would be like hundreds of hundreds uh hipsters coming in with big ass bikes fruity bikes with making noise down the block and they will all end up and bike and parked their bike right in front of the club and just hang out there and i was like hey it was a and gold mine. I was just passing on my car, my phone number on a piece of paper,
Starting point is 00:24:02 and then my boy, Joey, who I partnered up with at the time, he was like, hey, let's make business cards. And so we went to Kinko's. We printed out,
Starting point is 00:24:14 you know, 5,000 business cards. And the shit, what the rest was history. We blew up. You know, we had generated $5 million of revenue. And shit was crazy.
Starting point is 00:24:26 A week or a month? A year, a year. So you got to be the first drug dealer I've ever heard of that had a business card? Maybe. Maybe. So you're just passing about casually? Yeah, it literally said it said it was a black card, white letters, it said happy endings, and then I had three phone numbers.
Starting point is 00:24:44 It was my number, Joey's number, and somebody else's number on it. And we were like operating as dispatchers and doing bike deliveries around the city. And from bikes, we went to cars. And at the time, at our peak, we had 20 drivers. We had two different shifts. We had two dispatchers. That was a real business. Was there a dangerous aspect to this?
Starting point is 00:25:10 Like, were you guys carrying guns? Do you have security, bodyguards, anything like that? I mean, we had guns, but we were not carrying around guns. You know, once we started the delivery service, it was way more safer because we're not dealing with, like, Like, you know, somebody, a crack user that's coming up to us and saying, like, begging us on the street or, you know, is willing to kill us for two bags of crack or whatever. You know, like we're dealing with sophisticated, high class, high, you know, and people that are willing to pay whatever it is, you know, just to get this stuff delivered. And that was it, you know, it was like we're dealing with doctors, lawyers, celebrities. she was crazy.
Starting point is 00:25:57 Were other gangs or even mobs frowning upon you guys because you're these young kids that are taking over this market? Well, nobody knew we were doing any delivery service and there was no like, you know, like the mob and gangs and all this stuff. Like those people stood in their block and stood in their corners, you know.
Starting point is 00:26:19 And for us, we expanded just from the corner to being more incognito. So we were like wearing suits, ties, dressing up like professionals, and we left the block, you know. And we would come back to the block just to like hang out and party and do shit like that. But for the most part, we were just out there doing deliveries all day, all night. At Hyundai of Glendale, Lisa New, 2026 Hyundai Tucson SC Front Wheel Drive for 269 a month plus tax for 36 months with owner's assurance in America's best warranty. 10-year 100,000 miles. Stop by Hyundai of Glendale today or Hyundaiofglendale.com.
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Starting point is 00:27:18 Why didn't you use that mindset, that power? you had to do something different. It's hard. You know, a lot of people ask me that, like, you know, why you didn't start a business or anything like that? It's hard to make that transition. You know, when you got thousands of dollars coming in every day and then you want to start a business, you know, you have to dedicate a lot of time to start a business.
Starting point is 00:27:43 You have to do a lot of shit to do it. And then you got to stop, you know, hustling and having that, you know, recurring income coming in every single day. So like, it's hard. You know, we had ideas of like getting into the real estate market, buying houses and flipping it and all that stuff. And we invested like, I don't know, like 50 grand on a like foreclosure spot. And we got scammed.
Starting point is 00:28:16 It was a commercial on TV that was going on. Like, hey, buy foreclosure homes. I don't know if you remember that. That was like 20 years ago. And we're like, oh, shit, this is how we're going to do it. You know, we got caught out there. We were fucking stupid and young and, you know, had no idea what we were doing. But we had a dream.
Starting point is 00:28:35 And then that shit happened. So we were like, we didn't even think twice. We just kept hustling. But even before that, does it go back to an environment? Like, kids in the environment I grew up, like, I feel like I'm a natural-born entrepreneur. I was out there selling candy and doing lemonade stands. Does that tie into your environment and that not being available to you to do that? Yeah, I mean, I did do stuff like that.
Starting point is 00:29:00 I didn't have a lemonade stand on the block. But I, you know, in the summertime, you know, as a five, six-year-old, I'm opening up the fire hydrant and cleaning cards. I'm shoveling snow. You know, I was collecting, like, canned bottles when I was like five, six years old, then going to everybody's apartment and exchanging them for nickels and a bodega. you know, I kept doing that, you know, and as a little kid. But when, you know, that's chump change, you know, when you see something that could sell for 100 bucks,
Starting point is 00:29:34 rather than you, you know, spending 30 minutes for $5, like, the math doesn't make any sense. What was your childhood dream? What do you want to grow up to become? I wanted to be really rich And that was pretty much it I didn't I didn't really have any You know at one point I thought when I was in high school
Starting point is 00:29:59 I thought I was like I think I want to get into To become a stockbroker But then I already had a felony And you know you got the series seven That you have to do and You know I just thought that because my record was going to deter everything that I wanted to do. I was like, fuck it.
Starting point is 00:30:21 I just want to. I'm just going to hustle and this is what it is. Where do you think this desire for money came from, that you wanted to get it and you wanted to get so much of it? I think not having it, you know, and having my family tell me, like, no, we can't buy you this because of money. You can't get this because of money, you know, and I didn't want to hear that. You know, I was just like I'm going to, like, and to prove people wrong and get what I want. You know, I would go to school with, like, my sister's clothes, you know, and people would make fun of me in some sort of way. And I would get into fights and shit like that.
Starting point is 00:31:06 And so it was like the desire of, like, not being broke, you know. Has your view of money changed since that time period? Absolutely. Absolutely. Even though I mean I love nice shit and I want a nice shit, but like I don't think is the definition of success, you know, just seeing so many stories of people having so much money and not being happy. And I feel like I'm not rich. I'm not loaded. I'm not a millionaire. Like fucking Google says, like I'm worth $4 million. I don't know where they get that shit from. I got a little bit of money where I could provide for my family and I'm happy. you know, I'm happy where I'm at. I think it's more something I've learned as I got older
Starting point is 00:31:49 is it's more about like the people that are around you. Yeah. And, you know, and providing and just being happy with your surroundings. Like I keep my circle very small, which I'm sure you do now too after everything you've been through and I'm sure you have so many people coming at you because they see everything you have going on and they want to be a part of the circle.
Starting point is 00:32:08 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to keep it tight, especially when you're back on the rise and stuff. And I don't, I don't know, I don't really keep it tight. I keep it tight in terms of like, there's so many people that have my number that hit me up. And sometimes I wake up with like 500 text messages. But I don't really get stressed out over it.
Starting point is 00:32:32 I'm like, I'll get to it when I get to it and I'll figure it out. But I do, you know, hang out with mostly just my staff and my family. You know, like the people that work with me, you know, is basically my family too, you know. So what was the, like, the nail in the coffin that led to the long prison sentence? I got caught with, basically they hit me with conspiracy, kingpin charges, A1, you know, drug felony charges, all that because somebody told, you know. And so there was one of the delivery drivers that they basically told them exactly where everything was, you know, where the stash house. They had my phone tap already. They already had an investigation for like a year before they even raided me.
Starting point is 00:33:26 But when they took down our first driver, that motherfucker told them everything. And they caught me in the stash house. You know, as I went in the stash house because my drivers are not picking up that day. You know, we were operating with Nextelts, and the Nextel bleeps were, like, being blocked. And I just found it weird. I thought it was a technical difficulty. But it was actually the feds blocking my phone. And I kept getting calls and kept getting calls.
Starting point is 00:33:56 And I was like, I'm going to make these sales myself. So I went up to the stash house. I got over 100 bags of Coke. I got probably like 50 bags of weed. I went, grabbed it. And then I stepped out of the house. and this big like six foot four fucking white dude and I'm in the South Bronx where the stash house was he like says my name and I'm like what the f like you don't even
Starting point is 00:34:28 belong in this name like I don't think I have a sole white person in that that block you know on Beck Street and like Longwood area and so and so he says cost Martin and I'm like, yeah, and he pulls out his badge from under his shirt. And he's like, this is Detective Joseph King from the drug enforcement agency. Your whole operation is done. I'm like, what the fuck is you? I'm like, I turned around on him. And they fucking tackled me on top of the car.
Starting point is 00:35:00 And I was with somebody that was, you know, doing some deliveries for me. And they let her go because I said she had nothing to do with it, even though. she was operating with us. But she was driving around in my escalate and I had my BMW M3 and they threw me on top of the car and they cuffed me and then they brought me back to the house
Starting point is 00:35:25 and they were like, where's all the stuff? And I'm like, I don't know what the fuck is you talking about. I ain't got shit, you know? And I got like mad drugs in my fucking nuts in my underwear. And they point at a box
Starting point is 00:35:39 and I had like a couple, maybe a hundred Jordan boxes there. And they go straight to that box and they open it up. And they were like, we know where everything is. You don't have to tell us anything. I'm like, what? I was like, there's only three people that knew where that shit was. And so right away, I was like, I think I know who told.
Starting point is 00:36:00 It was that driver. And so they found that shit. They fucking brought me down. They found about a kilo and a half all bagged up. and half grams and grams, and then they found five pounds of sour diesel. That was an amazing salad diesel back then. And they took me down to the precinct all the way downtown.
Starting point is 00:36:24 They were driving right next to me with my fucking BMW with the hard top down. Like they were fucking pimping. The feds took your car for a ride? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. They drove right next to me. They put me in like a little minivan. with somebody else and I'm cuffed in there.
Starting point is 00:36:43 And I'm actually like trying to fucking, I was so stupid. I was trying to like bribe the guy that was driving me down. I was like, yo, just let me out right here. I won't say anything. I was like, yo, you got this thing right there. And, yeah, he's like, are you fucking trying to bribe me? And I'm like, nah, I'm just try that.
Starting point is 00:37:03 You know? I was bugging out. And then we get down to the precinct and I walk in there. and like the officers are like clapping and and they were they were excited that I was fucking finally took him down um yeah and then and then they walked me towards like the tier where all the cells were and every cell I saw all my drivers in and I'm like fuck that's when everything came into play like damn all my drivers were being caught one by one and um
Starting point is 00:37:41 Yeah. They looked at you as a big fish then. Yeah. Do you know all the agencies that were involved in the investigation? I don't know. Just DEA, probably local police detectives too? DeA, feds, and they didn't turn it into a Fed case. They were looking for guns.
Starting point is 00:38:02 Oh, so this never became a Fed case. It never became a Fed case, only went to the state. Okay. Yeah. Do you wish it had become a Fed case? I don't know. I don't know. You tell me about the feds. Well, I guess it depends. I guess you get better commissary. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:38:16 Yeah, well, you ended up getting, what, nine years? Seven years. How much did you serve on the seven? I did an early release program before. Okay, so you were better off in the state because in the feds you probably would have done, you know, five or six. Yeah, and if you got the drug, I don't know if they even had the drug program back then. Well, I got very lucky because I got locked up at the right time. So I was facing 15 in life. And that was like my mandatory minimum sentence for my third felony.
Starting point is 00:38:47 And because I got caught with an A1 felony. But at that time, the drug laws changed while I was going to court. And I was sitting in Rikers Island. And so I don't know if you remember Governor Spitzer when he cheated on his wife with the ex-prosite. Yeah, I've heard of that. And so he was impeached out of office. And so the lieutenant governor, Governor Patterson, came into play, and the first thing that he amended was the Rockafar laws.
Starting point is 00:39:13 And the Rockefell laws, one of these drug-mandatory state laws. And that's how I got seven years. You know, I got seven years and five parole. And this show's crazy. Did they still keep the kingpin charge? No. Okay. I know in the Fed, I think you had been facing life.
Starting point is 00:39:30 Yeah, I would have been done. Okay. Yeah, no, I pleaded guilty to A2. And then what about your co-defendant? Did you have co-defendants? Yeah. So it was 10 of us. Including your business partners, too?
Starting point is 00:39:45 No, they didn't go down. They didn't go down? So my business partner was actually, he was inside, he was locked up while I was operating the service. He was doing a year in prison. He got caught with some stupid shit. And then while I got locked up, he came out a couple months after and started the phones again. And so the phones never stopped operating.
Starting point is 00:40:08 Even while I was inside, I was still like, you know, I had more drivers. I had probably half of my fleet of drivers still out there, still doing deliveries, still making, I'm still making money in Rikers Island, managing shit through, like, phones and the pay phones. I was not using my personal, you know, as you know, like everybody has their phone tapped, but I was always paying like some immigrant that was, you know, and I was talking crazy on their phone line. And it is what it is.
Starting point is 00:40:38 You're operating a whole drug business just out of prison. Yeah. That's wild. And then he came home, so he kept operating. And the same fucking DA agents that caught me fucking took him down. Because his lines were probably still tapped. Yeah. It was the most stupid shit.
Starting point is 00:40:57 But then when he got locked up, somebody else took the phones. And they switched all the numbers and contacted a lot of the fucking customers and did it right and made a lot of money. And I'm not going to share more of that story because they're doing pretty well. So you really did have a whole, like, business model. You were, like, way ahead of your years. Like, imagine if you applied that to now
Starting point is 00:41:20 with today's technology and everything? I was... The shit is that there was not too much noise, you know? Yeah. I feel like today, like, social media, we got... Everybody has fucking ADHD with all the fucking platforms and shit like that.
Starting point is 00:41:35 Back then, we only had a phone. So there was not real distractions except for like you going home and playing PSP and whatever. We had PS2 or three at that time. I don't know. But imagine if you guys could have created like an app or something.
Starting point is 00:41:50 I don't know. Yeah, no. We would have done this shit like early on. Like it would have been fucking wild. You have to watch power because this is literally what they did in power. Yeah. Through the college campus,
Starting point is 00:42:02 they did something where like they created a whole drug ring pretending that kids were, you know, having their homework done for them. And then the drugs would get delivered through this app called like course correct. It's literally the same thing. Just wild. It's so crazy how like it operates and the ins and outs to it and stuff. What was your first conversation with your mother like after you got arrested for that big bust? Well, I remember calling my mom.
Starting point is 00:42:30 she was one of the first calls that I called and I don't know she was just disappointed you know and she was like I'm gonna go visit you and she visited me and I told her like what went down and she she was a little bit
Starting point is 00:42:51 in disbelief because she didn't know that I was, she knew that I was selling drugs but she didn't know that I was operating this whole enterprise you know she thought I was just like involved with friends and on the streets and stuff like that but when she saw like the whole shit she was like disappointed you know uh i my mom doesn't really cry i only see my mom cry twice and um but i could see her her eyes you know swelling up a little bit did that change your
Starting point is 00:43:23 opinion on your lifestyle at that point or would it be years later how no um i was sneaking in drugs in Rikers Island. I was, because I, you know, while I was sitting in Rikers Island, I thought I was facing a whole lot of fucking time. And so I'm like, whatever, you know, I'm going to be at least maybe a decade, a decade and a half inside the system before I'm out. And I just got to deal with the situation on hand. I didn't see, I didn't see exit.
Starting point is 00:43:58 I didn't see that I was going to come out in a few years. I saw myself coming out in 12 years, 15 years. And I actually got married while I was in Rikers Island to my fiancé at the time, who was my child's mom. And she was sad. She was devastated that I was in there. But, you know, she knew that I was involved. And I was bringing in shit. I had other people bringing in stuff.
Starting point is 00:44:29 And I had officers bringing in stuff. And I started selling a lot, a lot of weed in there. Because a little scratch of weed fucking gets you a lot of money in there. How old are you when you got arrested? I was 23. 23. How do you know when to approach an officer to get him to do something for you? So this motherfucker, this officer, I don't know if he's still there, but I'm going to blow his ass up because he tried to set me up.
Starting point is 00:44:56 C.O. Lopez. He basically trying to put me in the box for smoking weed. But I knew he was bringing in the weed for somebody else. And so I knew he was bringing in the weed for another unit.
Starting point is 00:45:15 And I got caught like smoking a weed on the count in my cell. And I had my door shut. I had the little fucking drape, a little blanket on top of the in front of the little window. And he smells it.
Starting point is 00:45:30 And he's like, boom, boom, boom. Oh, and I remember my cell number. It was 28. He was, open up cell 28. And I took the fucking joint. I'm on top of the toilet, smoking through the vents. And I threw it in the toilet bowl. And I'm so fucking zooted already.
Starting point is 00:45:45 I start flushing it. I run to my bed. I grab a mitt and I turn around and he's right in my face. And he's like, what the fuck do you just grab? And I was like, nothing. You know, I just grabbed him in. He was like, get the fuck out of yourself. And he put me in front of myself.
Starting point is 00:46:01 Put me against the wall. Search me. And then he cuffed me with the plastic cuffs. And just to hold me there. And then he went to myself and he went under my pillow and grabbed that ounce of weed. And I'm like, bro, like, you know, you just put that shit there. That shit is not mine. Like that shit is not mine.
Starting point is 00:46:28 And, and he was like, oh, follow me. So he takes me to the bubble. And he's like, who you got this from? Who you got this from? And he's trying to get me to rat. And I was like, nah, I just follow that shit is not mine. Come on. I know you know that shit is not mine.
Starting point is 00:46:46 Like, you know that shit is not mine. Come on. And I was like, yo, I just had a little. I confessed a little bit and told them myself, I was like, I was just smoking a little joint. in the fucking yard and I found a little clip in the yard. He was like, that's fucking bullshit. Tell me the fucking truth.
Starting point is 00:47:00 He was trying to put pressure on me. He was like, and he, I'm in the bubble and he's dialing to have like these box phones, the old, you know, phones to call the headquarters. So he's literally dialing and I'm with my cuffs and I'm hanging up his phone. Like, I'm like, yo, come on, come on. I'm like fucking with my fucking finger behind my hands.
Starting point is 00:47:23 I'm like, fucking trying to, he's like and he's pushing me away and then he's dying again and I'm like hanging it up again and then he takes me out to the hall and he's like you know what I'm just gonna put you on fucking
Starting point is 00:47:38 cleaning duty but if I found out you know whatever whatever you know where you got this from you know I'm gonna send you straight to the box and shit like that I'm like all right whatever you want me to do
Starting point is 00:47:49 so I was on cleaning duty for like a month you know and in the in the unit and um and and when i was on a cleaning unit the last people that go into their cells is the the cleanest you know so we're sweeping the tears and all that stuff and he's bringing me in you know little sandwiches and and and and and he brought me some alcohol and i was like yo you can't get me the bag and he was like uh he he was like yo how much you pay and i was like 500 he was like like give me, I think it was like $6,700 for an ounce to bring it in.
Starting point is 00:48:30 And I was like, I bet, bring it. And that was it. So if you're paying him $800, say, for an ounce, what's your profit on that? How much can you sell that for? So I was, so probably off an ounce, I was probably making like three Gs. Wow. Yeah. I'm surprised he wasn't charging more if he knew that's what it was going for.
Starting point is 00:48:55 He had no idea what he was doing. Because, so, like, a 0.1 of fucking weed in there, it's like $5. And what were they using to pay for in that time period? Now there's like cash app and stamps and stuff. It was all Western Union confirmation numbers. Okay. You know, so basically I'm giving, like, a nickel bag was like 50 bucks. And so I'm giving that to somebody, and they, West.
Starting point is 00:49:25 union, my wife at home, and she has a confirmation number. I'm on the phone. She's telling me, like, hey, the numbers, the money went through. I'm good, you know. Now, what if the prison system had, like, a great entrepreneurial program? Like, do you think that would have helped you? Like, or help guys in general? Because you have the, you had the smarts, you have the entrepreneurial spirit, you're hustling in prison. What if there was, like, some alternative in there at that point? Or even now. Yeah, I mean, now there is. I actually set on the board, the national board for DeFi Ventures.
Starting point is 00:50:05 Excuse me. And they believe, like, illegal entrepreneurs can become legal entrepreneurs. And we just lack basically some of the skills that, you know, need to be done to transfer those skills over. And so, yeah, I mean, I think is. It's highly successful. I actually went to that program after I came out of prison, and that's how I started Combody. And they helped me, like, you know, set up an LLC and set up my taxes and a whole bunch of my business plan and a whole bunch of stuff like that. I know a lot of individuals that went into that program, whether they started a business or not, but it really was life-changing for individuals that graduated from there.
Starting point is 00:50:50 What do you think are the skills that these individuals supposedly lack? I think it's just a lot of technical skills, you know. There's a lot of technical skills. I think a lot of the individuals that were like real true hustlers on the street have the entrepreneur skills to transfer over or do something. Entrepreneur the right way. But, you know, I was not dealing with no spreadsheets. You know, I was not dealing with any.
Starting point is 00:51:20 written format of a business plan, you know. Everything was just like, just operating, you know, just like a supply and demand. Somebody needs something. I'm going to get it for a cheaper price and I'm going to make a profit off of it. We didn't have to deal with paying taxes, you know, and it's just a lot of technical skills, I believe that's the only difference. Like having kind of like a mentor, I guess, like a mentorship type program. Yeah, and I, yeah, I think that's,
Starting point is 00:51:50 Part of what Defy does is matches you with like an executive from, you know, Fortune 500 company that knows that has an MBA and whatever. That has a lot of experience in starting or wanting to start a business, you know. And that's what helped me a lot. You know, I have a mentor, Michael Rothman who like sat down with me every single week when I came home like two, three months out of prison. He schooled me on a lot of stuff. Now, I want to get into Con Body because that's something that a lot of people in prison, getting out of prison know about. Like I heard about Con Body when I was in prison a couple of years back. And I know Jesse Crosson, he's a friend of mine.
Starting point is 00:52:38 He was, I think he was at your gym sometime this year. He knows you. Just everyone in the prison community has heard a con body at some point. Yeah. So how did that start? And how did it get to where it's at now? I think I got more fans in prison. Like, I literally get, like,
Starting point is 00:52:59 D.M.s of people sneaking in phones and doing exercises and wanting to work with us, you know, when they come out. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I don't know how it happened. I think it was just like me pushing a lot of word of mouth, a lot of guerrilla marketing and, you know, meeting the right people and getting lucky. I think it's just like continuously just spreading the word and, you know, like how you started the podcast here before you started. You were like, aren't you tired of like sharing your story back to back?
Starting point is 00:53:32 And I'm like, I'm literally not because I see it reconverting into something special, you know. It's like a baton that just keeps moving, you know. And so I don't know. I don't know. it's all been a lot of guerrilla marketing. There's, you know, one person that was one of our clients, she wrote a piece, a small little blog on me that got picked up by somebody else,
Starting point is 00:54:01 and I went into like a snowball effect where people started reading about me, and then I got into the news. I started getting fan jail mail from inmates across the country and across the world. I've gotten shipped from Australia to Italy to Africa, you know, to South America, you know, jail mail from everywhere from inmates, you know, who are really about to work out, you know, and go super hard and found that I have a book
Starting point is 00:54:28 that I wrote while I was locked up that came out and, you know, I helped, you know, I got help to publish it and, and that blew up, you know, a lot, I think almost every prison in America has my book somewhere, whether it's an inmate or is in the library. What's it called? Calm body. Okay. Do you have a video version of your workout routine? Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:54:52 So we have an on-demand platform, $14 a month. People could just go in and work out, you know, and see, you know, whether you're a beginner, I'm going to start you're a 10-minute workout or you're obese and you're going to do our 45-minute workout, you know. Is that allowed in prisons that video? So we actually sold. a couple of videos and had licensing
Starting point is 00:55:16 deals with facilities inside. So yeah, I mean, but not, it's not like I could just bring a video and just give it to inmate, but the facilities have to screen it. You know, I actually got blocked so many times from trying to bring it in because it's just too much, too much profanity.
Starting point is 00:55:41 I'm like cursing, though. Like, when I'm like, teaching a class I cursed probably 50 times within 45 minutes. Yeah. And so I was like second nature just to say fuck this, fuck that, what the fuck you're doing? Like, let's fucking move. You know, like, fuck, fuck, fuck. And when they asked me to like to edit it, it was just like a lot of bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, you know.
Starting point is 00:56:04 And then I had to redo a lot of the videos over. I feel like people are rethinking swear words. Like a YouTube just rolled out a thing where they're not being so harsh on creators now. if it contains swears in it. I just feel like it's becoming a part of the language. Yeah, I think if you say it in a negative connotation is different, you know. Like if I'm, you know, like I never say like, you fat fucking piece of shit, you're not worth anything, you know, get your ass moving type of shit. I'm like, you get fucking moving.
Starting point is 00:56:36 Let's do this shit together. You know, that's the context that I'm pushing. And I think we need to rethink. Yeah. I think it's all about the context in that scenario. You know, when I was in the federal prison camp in Wisconsin, we had a little TV, like, you know, in school when they'd roll out the TV. So we had one of those, but we had the insanity tapes.
Starting point is 00:56:57 Someone that had the insanity DVD, and we'd be working out to that. Like, I feel like con body would be a perfect thing to be doing that in prison. Hell yeah. There was this one guy, this white guy, in his like 50s, and he'd burpees, like thousands of burpees every day. every single day and you just like you could become an animal with those burpees yeah yeah no I got I got trainers in the facility right now that are fucking animals they're the bees do you still actively teach classes I teach uh every Sunday every Tuesday night like I'm literally going to today I'm gonna go back to the studio and teach 536 30 class that's awesome I got to come to a class that's the only like
Starting point is 00:57:35 if I'm not teaching that I'm like I'm gonna be I'm just going to be too distracted to go into a gym So I have to put myself in the schedule. Were there challenges becoming a business owner as a felon? Yeah, absolutely. We're actually just, we're going to be viewing that. And we actually had a movie coming out in a six-part documentary in Sundance. We just announced it today. And it's basically a film where it's covering my barriers and all the trials and tribulations
Starting point is 00:58:11 that I had to face while, you know, starting up to business and helping individuals, you know, readap back into society. And, yeah, I mean, it was, it was a lot, you know, whether it was like real estate or investment, like, nobody wanted to invest in me. You know, I was pitching this idea to so many venture capitalists, so many family firms, so many angel investors. And a lot of people just thought that I was fucking nuts. And I think the thrive of keeping, you know, keeping the business alive was because these people told me that I was, that it was a horrible idea and that nobody was going to actually go into our gym to work out with people that have been incarcerated.
Starting point is 00:58:56 And I proved them wrong. Hearing the word no is a huge motivator in life. Like people that just want to see you fail and everything like that, that there's no greater motivation. All right, class, settle down. Today's lesson is on the ARCO rewards app. Try to stay with me. The fundamentals are simple. Earn at least five cents a gallon in rewards,
Starting point is 00:59:15 then redeem them later for up to a dollar off every gallon. Now here's where it gets complicated. Oh, wait, it doesn't. It's as simple as downloading the ARCO rewards app to get started. Class dismissed. Savings of up to $1 per gallon redeemable with $20 rewards dollars in your loyalty account at participating locations, terms and conditions apply.
Starting point is 00:59:36 Then that. And yeah, no, and people thinking that I'm stupid and I had a stupid idea. And I was like, just watch me, you know. And I just kept doing it and kept doing it. And I didn't actually raise money. It took me like eight years of pitching my business to actually raise money for the business.
Starting point is 00:59:59 Really? And nah, I don't really need anybody else's money, you know. What kept you going? Like what made you say this is a, what made you not say this is a dumb idea? I'm just going to do something else or maybe even get back into drug dealing. No, I mean, we were making money and people,
Starting point is 01:00:19 I think the biggest thing is like we saw transformations, we saw people coming in, we saw people like believing in us, and we still have an incredible community at CalMody of like young professionals. was that never have met anybody that's been incarcerated that have like this connotation of like somebody that's been locked up, you know, are not smart. But when they come in and they see us and they meet us and it just breaks down all the stereotypes. And those people's lives, some of them change their lives around, you know, personally because they saw the inspiration.
Starting point is 01:00:55 They saw that, you know, this community was here to support each other. Yeah, I mean, that's what kept me going. You know, so many stories of people with weight loss and or changing our lives. And it's crazy. So how does con body transform into con bud, which is what your hat is? And that's how we met because of, you know, your new entrepreneurial venture. Yeah, no. So I always been into cannabis.
Starting point is 01:01:27 I've been smoking since 1996. And I've been smoking on and off, you know, and consuming, you know, for that long. But I started re-advocating around cannabis in 2017. My friend from Rhode Island, he got one of the first, like, dispensary licenses in the state of Massachusetts. And he asked me to come work with him. He was like, yeah, I would love for you to be like the CEO. He saw that combat. He was getting a lot of limelight and things were going well.
Starting point is 01:02:07 And he was like, yeah, I want you to work for us. And I was like, you know, I just seen the numbers that it was making. And I was like, fuck, yeah, I'm down. You know, I think I love weed. And so I went to, you know, work with him. And I was not allowed to work with him because of my record. So in the state of Massachusetts at that time, And they first launched it, they didn't allow people with criminal records and drugs to work in the cannabis space.
Starting point is 01:02:36 And I just thought that shit was so fucked up, you know. And things change in mass and across the whole country now. But I basically started speaking on panels and talking about it and advocating for legalization and then allowing us to be first. And then 2021, they passed the law. they legalized it and, you know, the first people that they really said that they were going to give out licenses to were for individuals like myself. And I kept following the law and I saw that MRTA was passed and was talking about, you know, helping individuals like myself. And then they passed a card program. And the card program basically was written for me, which was when I was
Starting point is 01:03:27 reading the whole, you know, outline of the program, which said if you have, you know, small terms, it's like if you have a net profitable business for at least two years, if you have a conviction for cannabis, you're allowed to get this license and be prioritized. And they're opening up the application for this. And I was like, fuck, I'm going to put this shit together. And literally when they put that out, within like two days, I launched a company. that's awesome and this is only a couple years ago
Starting point is 01:04:01 yeah and now it's you're working with Mike Tyson and his brand yeah it's it's fucking wild how does that even happen did they reach out to you
Starting point is 01:04:10 did you have to reach out to them yeah no they they reached out to me you know one of my friends you know good people Ben Dobson owns Hudson Cannabis and his sister's Melanie and Freya
Starting point is 01:04:24 Dobson they basically asked me to be the first ones to carry his brand because our relationship, I know them for nine plus year. I know Ben for nine plus years. I actually did a TED talk with him in 2014 and Hudson. And then we reconnected it in the cannabis space.
Starting point is 01:04:46 And she was, they were like, they started, they're the ones that process his bud and the packaging and all that stuff. and they asked me like hey do you want to be the first one I was like hell fucking yeah let's do it you know and so that's how it happened and they just thought it was like a perfect story because a lot of the a lot of the dispensaries that are open now
Starting point is 01:05:10 now are not ran by people like myself they're ran by like nonprofits that are funded by multi-state operators and these big corporations like like Union Square Union Square Cannabis Union Square Travel Agency like they see a lot of people
Starting point is 01:05:29 but they ran by corporations that are coming out of California you know there's a lot of California corporations came to the New York market really you know trying to you know bully us into that
Starting point is 01:05:45 with their money and I didn't want to take any corporate money and so we used my partners and I we used our own money. That's awesome. Yeah, I read you had to go through like a lot of legal hurdles. Oh shit. I saw like the videos of the renovations and all that, but you finally pushed through and got it open. Yeah, that show is a fucking disaster. And I love that like the Tyson brand's a part of it too, because they're so like I love what they stand for. They have great product. I just tried the
Starting point is 01:06:12 gummies, the ear ones, which are so cool. Those things are the best. Yeah, yeah. I like those a lot. I texted Rod yesterday. I was like, dude, these are awesome. He's like, I'm going to send you some more. But yeah, I think they have a great message, too, and I like that they're building this blog aspect of the Tyson 2.0 brand that showcases, like individuals like yourself and myself who have fallen down in life and have been able to pick themselves back up and redeem themselves. Yeah. And I think that's what Tyson is all about. It's about second chances. And, you know, his brand is Tyson 2.0 because it's like his new self, you know. He went through a whole bunch of shit, you know, and as everybody knows, you know, because
Starting point is 01:06:53 it's so mainstream, and he's a redemptive story, you know. He changed his life around for the best and he's doing something positive. And he's a really nice guy. Amazing guy. Like, when I met him, he's so nice. Like, he's not what you to, I guess, expect. He was punking me a little bit. He was, I was like his personal roller all night, you know.
Starting point is 01:07:13 He was demanding, like, fucking hash him. confused joints and I was like damn I you know I had like two hash coins left that I was fucking trying to you know like that I had and it was like dust on them that I had like you know bring up and and I had to buy it for him and roll it up so all night oh he was just like asking like back to bed that motherfucker's a monster yeah I wrote him a one of my staff members rolled him a three gram joint and he chewed that thing up like it was nothing How do you think weed affects you work-wise? I mean, gummies fuck me up pretty quickly.
Starting point is 01:07:56 Yeah, I can't work with a gully. Yeah, but I could smoke and operate, but I can't smoke too much and operate. You know, like I could smoke. I don't like to teach fitness classes or do anything on fitness-related and smoke beforehand. I'd rather do it after. But I can operate.
Starting point is 01:08:17 You know. Do you think there's any negative effects with gummies at all? Or is it just, is it like a safe product to use? It's a safe product. You just digest it a little bit different. You know, everybody has a different cannabinoid system. And for me, you know, a lot of people say they hit, gummies hit within an hour. And for me, I feel like that shit in like five, ten minutes.
Starting point is 01:08:40 Yeah, the same way. I don't know what it is, but it's a, because our different fat cells in our body, that observe it differently. You know, for everybody's different. You know, I could give somebody a 100 milligram gummy and they're like, I don't feel shit, you know. And for me, it's like, I'm in fucking,
Starting point is 01:09:00 what, Elon Musk's in space, I don't know. So we have a lot of listeners that have been to prison and I get a lot of these messages about how they want to come out and they want to create something and do something entrepreneurial and kind of get away from that nine to five life or that job that they don't like.
Starting point is 01:09:15 What advice would you give to them? I would get a job, you know, I would get a job until you really find out what that hobby is and have that side hustle and then really transition. Like when I came home, I didn't just start, like, yeah, I started fitness right away and I started teaching classes like day two out of prison, but it was more of like a hobby, not a business, you know, I was just a side hustle
Starting point is 01:09:40 that I was getting a couple extra dollars for. But I needed to survive. I needed to keep moving, and I had, had a job, you know. It was hard for me to get a job, but I was like cleaning apartments and toilets and a whole bunch of shit, you know, whatever it was, like, whether somebody called me and was like, hey, you can help me move this thing. I'm there, you know, so I didn't say no to any type of money and just humble yourself, you know, a lot of people think, you know, I came out of prison multiple times and I thought I knew it all and that was not the fact. You know,
Starting point is 01:10:15 I ended up in prison. And the last time I came out, I really accepted the fact that I can't do everything by myself, that I need help. And I utilize every nonprofit support, you know, fortune society, career gear, defy ventures, a whole bunch of nonprofits that I just, like, really took advantage of. And what advice would you give to people that have fallen down in life
Starting point is 01:10:40 and that are, you know, going through a tough time and want the struggle or want the motivation to get back up. Just know that everything is temporary. Everything is temporary. Whether you think that that little problem that you're having, that you're facing and may feel like the world is ending and you can't move forward, like, just know that that little problem is temporary.
Starting point is 01:11:06 Awesome. Well, Koss, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. It's been a pleasure. I'm glad we got to meet. thankful for Rod for introducing us. And, you know, I'm sure we'll do stuff down the road if you ever need anything, you know, let us know. And we'll put your links to all your stuff in the description.
Starting point is 01:11:22 I got to come check out the dispensary and do a class to get down there. That's had both of them shits. Thank you. Sounds good, man. I appreciate you. Appreciate you.

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