Locked In with Ian Bick - The CARTEL Connect | Johnny Mitchell

Episode Date: April 30, 2023

Johnny Mitchell knew as a teenager that he wanted to sell drugs. By the time he was in his early 20's, Johnny was able to form connections with Cartel Distributors and create a Marijuana business that raked in millions of dollars. It didn't take long for the law to catch up with him, resulting in spending time in Oregon State Prisons. Listen to Johnny's story unfold as he goes from small time drug dealer to a rising comedian and social media star.Connect with Johnny Mitchell:https://johnnymitchellcomedy.com/ Connect with Ian Bick: https://www.ianbick.com/Subscribe to our membership program on YouTube to get early access to interviews, see behind the scenes photos & more:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRvVklIft6DMelVW18M0oBw/joinPowered by Q29 Productions, LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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36 month lease, 4,49 to its signing. Tax title license and dock fees extra plus government fees and taxes. 7500 miles per year expires 6126. Who available at this payment? PH 71529 PH71465. On today's episode of Lockton with Ian Bick, I interviewed Johnny Mitchell, who has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers across the social media platforms known as The Connect after he ran a marijuana business making millions of dollars in profit as a young adult. Make sure you guys like, comment, subscribe, and share. And if you're listening to us on our audio streaming platforms, leave us a review.

As always, thanks for tuning in and enjoy. Locked in with Ian Bick. Johnny Mitchell. Yes, sir. Welcome to Locked in with Ian Bick, man. Thanks, Ian. Great to have you here. Really excited for the interview.

I remember seeing you on Flagrant. And then I saw the clips and stuff. And I was like, we got to get this guy. And really thankful like you answered because not everyone answers their emails nowadays. Well, I mean, you offered to fly me in and drove me up, you know, five hours north. I don't know where I am. I thought you were taking me to my death almost. Like you were driving on like a bumpy dirt road with some big taty.

convict. I was like, yeah, this might be where I get kidnapped and found later. Imagine if I picked you up in like a crappy car, like a little beat-up Honda Civic. I kind of expected you to because you said Poughkeepsie and I know the reputation this area has. Okay. Well, thankfully Mark put in the good word for me. Yeah. Yeah. Now, starting at the beginning of your story, I like to always start at someone's beginning. How did you grow up? Where are you from? What's your family like? Portland, Oregon, solidly middle class. Really nice. area, you know, I'm from the city of Portland. So I'm not from the suburbs. I hate being labeled as a

suburban kid. Like we looked down on that back of the day, you know, and, uh, and it wasn't hipster Portland, Oregon like it is now, Portlandia, you know what I mean? We didn't have goofy mustaches. You know, we didn't know any trans people. Like it was different. I grew up in the 90s where it was diverse, if you could believe it. Like I lived in a black, uh, blackish neighborhood at the time. It's all been gentrified now, right? If you go to Portland, you won't see any of what it looked like when I grew up. But it was just a really good place to grow up. Like it wasn't spoiled, but it was it was just affluent and it was real. And yeah, that's how I grew up. My father was a lawyer. My mom worked in the hospital. So there was never any kind of deprivation, poverty, nothing like that. What's middle school and high school like for you?

I went to an elementary school, Catholic, raised Catholic, but I kept getting to. to trouble, kept fucking up at a young age, you know what I mean? And there's various reasons we go into it. But middle school, that was public school. That was really getting like where I first got turned out by like hip hop culture. And I would say black culture, you know, it was very like, that's when we really started to get mixed in with like poor kids and and kids that would get bust in from like the ghettos. You know what I mean? And I was fascinated by it. Most kids would get scared of it. I was like, I ran towards it. You know, know, high school is when I started to get into, like, smoking weed, right? This is like 2001 now,

right? How old are you? Like 16? Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it was just kind of a natural progression from like listening to hip hop and, you know, being around these kids, my friends, whose fathers were drug dealers maybe, right? The one's a pimp. This one sells crack. But it was weed. was the main racket back then. Weed in Oregon, back in the early 2000s, it was a gold rush. I would liken it to the way that crack was to Harlem in the 80s. That's the way that weed was to white people in the Pacific Northwest in that era. So my best friend and I, to this day, he's my best friend and my drug dealing partner.

we went and got our first ounce and, you know, that was the genesis of what happened and what was to come. What about like any trauma during high school? Did you experience anything? Like that led you to do certain things like this? No. No, not at all. I mean, uh, I guess I was, you know, we could get into like the psychology of it. I guess my, I was rebelling certainly against, uh, you know, you might call it like middle class doldrums, right? Like, I, I didn't, you know, I saw my parents go off to work every day and doing something that didn't really like to do. And, you know, I just never wanted to work.

I never wanted a real job. And so as soon as we found out that you could actually like pay your rent, like, like make a living selling marijuana, we thought you had to be like Scarface. You know what I mean? When I found out, you could just be like a dude that was just plugged in as a good business person and actually make a living selling weed. That's like all I wanted to do. And how illegal is it at the time?

Like if you get count caught like with like just like a little piece of it, are you going to jail? No, no, no. Not even as an adult. I think back already like weed is like medically, uh, legal at this point in Oregon. Um, so, you know, if you get caught smoking a joint, like you'd probably, you know, get written up, get a citation or something like that as summons, right. Um, but it was still illegal to sell. It was still, you know, you'd be, if you were caught growing it or or selling it, you'd be, you know, charged with a felony. When you guys first started. selling was the motivation money or was it just like to do what it was an identity first and foremost like at the very beginning it was like we wanted to be the weed guys the stoner guys the guys who were cool

the guys that had uh i guess money but we wanted to be those guys like you'd come see johnny if you needed some some bud if you wanted to buy some weed right so i think i think every person paints they narrate their own life in their head uh and you you create an identity and, you know, it manifests itself if you keep, you know, uh, thinking about it long enough, right? But I think deep down I wanted, I wanted to be like a kingpin. I definitely wanted to be a kingpin. I just didn't think it was possible. I couldn't, you know, tell anybody this dream, right? Because they'd be like, what, what's the matter with you? Your fucking father's a lawyer. You're not a gangster. And of course, I'm not a gangster, but I was like, no, but I could be a, I want to be a

millionaire. I can, I'm a drug deal. I'm a businessman. I'm not a gangster. Gangsters don't make any money. There's no money in gangsterism. It's money in this drug shit. So I think deep down, yes, I absolutely, uh, money was the motivation because money means freedom. So you never worked like a regular job? No, no, no, I would have like high school jobs, summer jobs and shit, but I would always have weed on me. I'd be, you do it, I'd be delivering pizzas and on my pizza delivery route, I would, my phone would be, would be buzzing. I'd be selling weed on the fucking route.

What is it the flip phone or you had a paper? Yeah, yeah, it was the flip. Exactly. the first phone wasn't even a flip phone Ian young Ian the first phone was like a little sprint phone that was just like your basic I don't even know how to describe it it was like a rectangle sprint with a pad on with and you pull the fucking you pull the antenna out and you could play snake on it yeah and yeah that was that that was the phone so do you end up going to college at all yeah I went to four years graduated from the University of Oregon and what's the degree had a B average you know The degree was like politics with a focus on like business and I took language.

Why the fuck did you waste your time doing that? It was wild. I would be sitting in class and my burner phone would be going off and I'd be missing drug sales because I was in political science class trying to hear about this asshole, telling me about the branches of government. And I got people hit me up for Coke and pounds of weed and shit. So I did. I was losing money at a point just by being in school. That's how that's how busy.

the business got. Did you finish college for yourself or for your parents? No, I mean, I guess both, right? Like, in hindsight, I wouldn't have even probably gone to school. I would have gone into business or, you know, if I had had some kind of direction, if I had some sort of like mentors at all, they would have been like, you should go, should move to New York City and, and just start doing comedy, right? Or, you know, like, they could, somebody could look at somebody like me now knowing what we know and be like you're not really meant for like traditional school but back then it was like nobody thought like that you just middle class like robotic you go to college and then you go start in a company and work your way up and you know but i just wasn't i'm not built like that so at

what point do you take drug dealing full time uh probably by the time i'm 20 21 years old this is right after college this is in the middle of college okay i paid i paid for college with weed. I paid for my rent with weed, my car, everything like that. It was all paid for basically by marijuana. There was other things in there, you know. The weed would dry up and we'd start selling cocaine and things like that. But yeah, by the time I achieved what I'd set out to when I was 16 years old, just paying my living off of weed by the time I'm 20 years old. And you'd think like, wow, that's the dream. I've made it. But of course, like now I, it's not enough. It's never enough, right?

Now we got to level up. So what's the structure of your business at this point? Like, how does it work? What are the ins and outs of like this marijuana business? Yeah. So weed back then was extremely competitive. Even back then in Oregon, it was flooded with weed. So there were two structures to it.

There was basically two tiers to the game, right? There was people selling indoor, indoor grown weed. And that was like we called that killer or kill, right? And that was the most expensive shit. That was like premium. And then there was what we call commercial weed. That was outdoor weed. Still really good, though.

Looked like a lot of weed grown indoors, but it was actually outdoor bud. And that's, that was where we like to stay because we could buy that in bulk at a good price and offer it at a good price. So I always wanted to be the drug dealer's drug dealer. I never had any interest in like going hand to hand.

So when we met a grower, that was the connect, right? Hence the connect with Johnny Mitchell. That was to get to the source. That was how you moved up in the drug game, in the weed game. Because it's not like now where you just Google search like a wholesale marijuana dealer. Back then, the people that controlled the market were the people who grew it in southern Oregon and northern California. They have the best, still to this day, the most abundant and best. outdoor grown weed in the nation, probably in the world, okay? Mountains and mountains with different

groups, clans, Mexican cartels back then, or we called them the rednecks. These are just people like, you know, guys in upstate New York, out-of-work carpenters, electricians, working class people who pooled their money and would have these huge weed grows. These are the guys you had to get to as a drug dealer, right, to get the best price per pound. Okay? Because when you have the best price per pound, you then get all the clients because you can undercut people, right? This is, this is natural. So this is like it is in any business, right? Uh, so we paid a guy that we knew who knew a grower. We paid him $5,000 just for an introduction. Which is a lot of money at the time. At the time, it was, yeah, it was a good amount of money. So, uh, because we knew how valuable just meeting one of these guys was.

So when we ended up linking up with them, the price per pound that we paid went down by like 30%. And from there, that's when we really stepped up from like making, you know, five grand a month to five grand a week. All cash. Oh, of course. Well, there was no Venmo back then. So for us, you know, 25 grand a month as 21 year old kids, that was like a fortune that we were like, oh, I can't get any better than this. This is crazy. We should quit while we're ahead.

You know, this is what my best friend used to tell me, but like, dude, we fucking made it. Let's graduate and move on with our lives. I'm like, hey, there's something left. We can't quit yet because there's something else to this game, right? Like, let's make millions. So that was, and that's always how I thought. How much weight are you guys moving, like on a weekly basis?

30, maybe 30 units, pounds. That's a pound. 30 pounds yeah now are you a type of dealer that's breaking that down or are you just moving no no no now we're completely now there's nobody higher than us in a place like eugene so we have we have maybe three or four clients each picking up five to 10 pounds so now you know we are the dealers dealers dealer we're the wholesaler the risk is lower i guess because there's less opportunity to get caught um no no the risk always gets higher. It's a two-sided thing, right? The risk, right, gets lower in a certain way because you're only dealing with a couple of people, whereas when you're selling

half pounds and quarter pounds or ounces, you're selling to dozens and dozens of people, right? But, you know, now you're dealing with like drug trafficking. So if one of your guys that you're given this work to, this felony amount of work, 10 pounds back then and get you put in prison, right? So if he gets jammed up, he might turn around and, you know, bring the law to you. So, uh, so it actually, the risk overall gets higher, I would say. And where are you guys storing all this? Like you pick it up, where does it go? Yeah, we had a, a friend whose apartment we used. You just kept 30 pounds of marijuana in an apartment. Yep. And we, the idea was to have them sold before we even got them back to town. You know what I mean? Yeah.

So we tried to like clock work. We want to make sure, okay, this guy, this guy is ready. You know, he's finished up his bundle. He's ready to pick up. This guy's ready to pick up. So boom, we bring 30 pounds back and 20s gone just like that, right? So that's the idea. Are guys taking you seriously being like this young white kid that's pushing weight? What do you mean? Everybody was young and white. So I guess it's a lot different, I guess, in that area then and back then, like to be young. It was normal, I guess, to be a young kid pushing this much weight. Yeah, yeah. Dorks and the nerdy guys were the ones who had the weight. Really?

Like we, I remember like dudes that looked like you, but even less, you know, conspicuous, inconspicuous. Yeah. More inconspicuous would be like these crazy good business people. And, but they were the ones who ended up getting robbed a lot too, you know what I mean? But, uh, but getting robbed, we didn't take that too personally. That was like a business expense to us. So what's like a robbery scenario for you know?

You know, we got stuck up a gunpoint one time. a couple of dudes of ski masks. Like we were playing, we were living in this house on the busiest street in Eugene, okay? Two blocks off of campus. We're playing Mario Kart for N64, okay? This was a popular video game console back in the 90s.

I know if you're fucking, I don't know if your tween fucking listeners can relate to this. So we're playing Mario Kart. It's like noon on a Tuesday. And, you know, half of my buddies are getting ready to go off to class. You know what I mean?

and we just hear a knock on the door and somebody opens the door and somebody just goes, Johnny? And I figured it was just somebody because we always had friends coming over. I'm like, yeah, I'm in here. And we go back to playing our video game,

then we look up and it's fucking two dudes in ski masks. One's got a shotgun. The other one has a little 22. And we're getting held up. Like it's a fucking train robbery. And you just give them the money and the weed? Yeah, but we didn't have any of the work at the house.

So we had like a couple ounces of weed that we were just personal, bud for us to smoke and maybe like 500 bucks. You know what I mean? Because, you know, you never keep the work where you live, you know? So, but I mean, it was still pretty wild. We were like, and one of them was shaking, you know, we were like, hey, relax, take your finger off the trigger.

You know what I mean? Like it was, but that's how crazy the worlds were. Like you have this criminal world rubbed up next to this like, you know, upper middle class, affluent college world. You know what I mean? Like it was just, it was such a bizarre, it was such a bizarre era. You know what I mean? Like, so you had this criminality going on with college kids who would then go off to like, like, I think I went to Spanish class after that happened, you know, shaking because I had just been held up, right? So it was, you know, we were living parallel lives. Where you think about the consequences at all? Like, if I keep doing this,

like I could potentially go to prison. We never thought about prison back. of the day. We never worried about the cops unless we were bringing the work wholesale, you know, back, you know, take an I-5 back north from, you know, meeting one of the growers. We were worried about, oh, if we get pulled over, maybe they'll, they'll have a dog. And that's, that's the only way we thought we could get pinched is if it was an accident. And that's just white privilege. I mean, I hate talking like that. Because that's like what everybody likes to talk about now. But that really is like, uh, we were just, we did not think the cops could possibly be looking into guys like us. Were there ever any like close scenarios where you almost got caught? I mean, we got pulled over a few

times, you know, for, I, because you'd be take these long drives. Like sometimes I'd go to meet these cartel guys down in, uh, Crescent City, California. And from there, back to Eugene, it's like eight hours, both ways, right? So, uh, I remember driving, coming back, hung over one time and just I said, fuck it. I got like 20 pounds of the trunk. And I shouldn't be speeding, right? I should be driving like a grandmother, but I can't help it. I just want to get the fuck home. And so I was just, you know, going fucking 90 in a 60 zone. I got pulled over. But nothing came of it, right? Just got a speeding ticket. That was that. So I mean, no, back then, that was the only kind of close call that we had. It was we were really just worried about getting juked, you know,

getting robbed. So you're very lucky. Like this business was kind of kept moving. forward through luck too, like that you never got caught or anything. For sure, for sure. It was luck and it was timing, which is luck, right? The whole thing is luck. And then just, you know, putting my mind to it. Like, yeah, this is like, I want to keep moving this forward. That business that you used to operate, could you do that same thing now? Have you thought about that? Or that's not? You couldn't do it now. You couldn't really do it now, especially not and make the kind of money that we made because it's just too easy to get to a grower. So we were essentially middlemen. That's how we made our big money was simply by having the

buyers, right, the distributors on one end and being connected to the growers on this end and just charging a markup on every pound. Now those same wholesalers can just go to a grower themselves. They don't need guys like me, you know? But back then, especially on the East Coast where the price of these pounds was almost double what they were paying for them. on the West Coast, guys like me would get rich just by finding a group of buyers like I did, you know, these Dominican guys in Washington Heights, you know, a couple of these Italian kids from the Philadelphia area when I found them and was able to charge them not $2,700 for a pound, but $37 or $4,000 a pound. And I'm paying $2,000 a pound times $30, $50 a week.

Now you've got a million dollar, multimillion dollar a year business. just getting the pounds from one guy and giving them to another guy. Now the money you're making, how are you spending it? Like are you living large? Where are you living? No, no, no, no. We were super like, you know, in college we weren't making, we weren't getting rich money. This came after.

But by the time I was making like, you know, I was making that like 80,000 a month. I was pretty much just living like free. I was just flying everywhere. I was going everywhere. you know, I would give each of my buddies five, 10 grand in cash and be like, let's go to Vegas and just spend it. Just just fucking go put it on black, right? Let's not blow all of it, though, because then they would give me my chips and then I would go cash them out and get a receipt and file that like that was legitimate income. To launder the money. Exactly. So,

so I would do shit like that. But I mostly just stashed the money and I got ready to get out of the game. Like I was planning on, you know, going legit, going straight. But you kept going and going and going. Of course. I got too greedy. That's how that happens to everyone. Sure. Where's your family during all this? Do your parents, do they think you're working a regular job or do they know that you're pushing weight?

They always knew that I was involved. They just didn't know to the extent that I would do it. But, you know, I would come home for the summer in college. And I would still get like a summer job just to make them happy, right? And just to show that I had a source of income. But like, you know, my mom. would be cleaning my room and she would find like backpacks with like 50 grand in it. Which is not normal for a mother.

No. And she'd be like, um, sweetie, you're not going to be allowed to continue living here. Because clearly you are still involved in illegal business. So I would get like kicked out of my mother's house during the summertime and just go, I would just go get an apartment like a 21 year old kid, you know, with a waterfront apartment in Portland. Is there a credit? Credit checks or anything like that?

No, because, because, you know, especially back then. like landlords were desperate. This is like the recession time. So, you know, if you own a building and I come to you and I say, look, I don't really have any credit, but how about six months rent right now? And you're probably going to take it, you know, and say, ah, you know what? You seem like a good guy, Mitchell. I won't do a credit check.

So money really unlocks a lot of things. Are you dating at all during this time, too? As a college kid? Yeah. I wouldn't call it dating, Ian. But, you know, there was some women around. Okay. Yeah. Any that stuck with you like through the whole time?

No, I mean, I was dating this one, you know, I've talked about it on the Connect, but I was, you know, had this love affair with like this Colombian woman down in Columbia, South America. And she was, you know, she was dating a guy. Her fiance actually was like a big time money launderer for a cartel. So the wrong, the wrong dude's chick. You know what I mean? To be fucking with. But I did anyways. I was, you know, a cowboy back then. But no, I didn't, I didn't want to let anybody in, especially in the United States. I didn't want to let anybody get too close to me. You know what I'm saying? I, because I was just, you know, at that point, I was like, yeah, I can't, I can't let somebody I love, you know, get roped into my mess, you know, if something goes bad. What's interesting is, like, you had this whole mindset of building this empire before shows like power and, you know, breaking bad, like the shows I grew up watching that would have made

me want to be like you in that sense. You had this mindset like automatically. Yeah. Were you watching like shows to get ideas from? Like where where did you brainstorm? Well, Scarface was the huge generational, uh, movie for the drug dealers, right? Like, if people say that movies and music don't influence people into crime, they're just, they don't know the reality. They absolutely do. I mean, you talk to any drug dealer from the 80s, black guy, you know, like Scarface was it. Right. So that was a little bit of. of an influence, but I'm like, oh, that's not my time. That's not who I am. But I think rap music was big. It wasn't shows. It was rap. I was listening to guys like Jay-Z. It was listening to a lot of

guy, like the E-40, who's a huge on the West Coast. And everything is about the street game and about making something out of nothing. That was really cool to me, right? Like, these guys were making, it was so fascinating. The drug was... world is so fascinating to me because it was like people were taking this thing. It was pure capitalism. They were taking this block of Coke, right? Like, what is it? Like, it's not, it's not regulated by anybody. It's made in the jungle. Like, it's, but these are like jungle chemists with no education. They got this product, unthinkably difficult past the biggest, most powerful law enforcement bureaucracies in the world. And now it's on the streets of

America and I can just a guy with no education, I could just take it and it just gets gobbled up by the streets and money comes back to me. It's like magic. That's why in the 70s in Colombia, they called these new people that sold this chalky white substance, which it's like drinking a cup of coffee, right? Like what does it even really do? But they would take it and just send it off to this foreign land of the gringoes and billions of dollars would come back. That's magic. That's why they called the machicos, because they were magicians. So that was a a fascinating thing to me. It's pure capitalism. It's immediate demand meeting supply. And so I just liked that. I was titillated by it. I'm like, that's like the American dream is to be like,

go make your money unfettered. You don't have to have a business license or a degree. You just have to be motivated and you're meeting the customer's demands. And so, and it's instant feedback, right? you're like, this Coke's no good or this weed is too short. I need a bigger bag for what I'm going to pay you, right? And that's how drug cartels operate now. They absolutely, the Sinalowans, because we've been down to Mexico and we've talked with these people, they absolutely test their fentanyl to see what the market says about that, you know, and it's wrong. And, you know, fentanyl's probably, you could argue, it's ruining America. But still, it's kind of fascinating that these uneducated peasants treat their product like they're selling Pepsi or something like that. So that's

what appealed to me. The mindset you had though, that was a normal for someone your age to have. Like, what are your friends thinking of you at this time? I don't know. I mean, I think, I think they kind of liked it. I think they thought it was a little sketchy, but I think they were maybe deep down a little envious of it that I would have the gall to go do something like that. Not at the beginning. Because everybody sold weed in high school in this era. Like everybody was like, you know, because everybody was a pothead. Everybody was trying to sell it so they could smoke for free. You know what I mean?

Just to get their money back. That was whatever. That was normal. But when they saw me like step it up and keep stepping it up, that's when they were like, oh, Mitchell's got some, he's got some balls of this kid. Who does he think he is? This skinny, goofy fucking kid. Always making people laugh.

But he's like, he's got this hustle in him. So I think I liked that. I liked being the underdog. So I think they were kind of, they admired it in a way. But like when we ended up getting robbed, like that's what's fucked up. It's like my friends who had nothing to do with the game were there when we got stuck up. They were there when my house got raided one time. And my best friends, Tim and Pat, sorry fellas, fucking walked out of the house by narcotics detectives and handcuffs.

So they got none of the benefits of drug dealing. They only got the downsides of it. Were you driven by like being different and being liked in that sense? Oh yeah, yeah. Like that's what I mean when I talk about identity. Like that's that's what I was trying to build like this, uh, this persona. I think me and you relate to that on that level too because that's, I was trying to build the persona when I was promoting parties and, you know,

selling concert tickets and building like that nightclub business. Yeah. Because that was like unique and different for me. And to build that, it was just very much different than what my friends were doing. Yeah. And it's like a cool way to. get money. Like you're not just making money. It's you're making money a flyway. Yeah. You know, like back in the days, the only acceptable ways to make money in our culture was like sports,

drugs or entertainment, right? Yeah, yeah. Because why else? You don't want to be like a lawyer and it goes, you know, off to some corporate office and yeah, you make a hundred grand a year, but you fucking, what? Like a lame, like a square. So that's kind of the mentality that we took from hip hop. I mean, it's even like that now. Like people think being a social media influencer is cool. you can get into that and leave a nine to five to go do that or be a podcast or anything or a comedian. Like people love that shit. Yeah. That's why a lot of people are and a lot of people are succeeding in it. So, you know, that's why you, you know, you have people like that get into the game, this game that probably shouldn't be in it. But, you know. Now, what is the relationship between you and the cartel? Like, how does that evolve? Because I've seen videos.

Yeah. And I haven't really like figured out what exactly happened in that. Yeah. Well, I never worked. for a cartel. That's a myth. Nobody works for a cartel in the United States. They work with them. Okay. So these were pot growers from Sinaloa, Mexico. This is where the, this is Chappos, Sinaloa. This is the Sinaloa we know today even. Still probably one of the most powerful drug trafficking groups in Mexico. They were the first ones in the 70s to make the Sinsemia, right weed without seeds in it so they revolutionized the marijuana business in the united states by creating this pot that wouldn't just fall apart when you broke it up and have all these seeds and

stems in it right so that's originally how the cartels got formed so weed growing is in their blood these huge mountains the sierra madres or something in the the dorango chihuahua sinaloa area this is where over generations they've learned how to grow pot so what started happening when the domestic weed market started to blow up in the United States, maybe in like the 90s, I would say. They, the cartel sent their guys to the U.S. to set up these huge illegal grow operations in the United States, but they were still Mexican run. Does that make sense? So we had guys, a group of guys that, you know, just through the business, I got hooked up with. One of them was like a lieutenant for the Sina Loa cartel.

operating out of the redwood forests in northern California. So these guys, and he had a group of guys, and these are farmers. You know, these are Indians, Indios. These are, they probably didn't even know what state they were in. Okay. These are just like Campasino poor peasants. And they march for days up into the thickest forest you can possibly imagine. But they're so good at what they do.

They're the only ones that know how to like run irrigation from fucking rivers to, make it hit their grow patch with the sunlight hitting it perfectly. I mean, they're, they're genius pot growers. So they, and, and when they cropped in September, early October, they would get thousands and thousands of pounds. So if you got to one of those guys, you could really get huge weight at the lowest price. So, uh, so, you know, they would get me pounds for like 1,800, 2,000 a unit back in the day, back in like 2008. And now I can go turn around and ship that to the East Coast for 3,500. It's a huge markup. So these were the guys that, you know, really changed it for me. But yeah, there was never, they were just one of my suppliers,

right? So if they, I had guys like them, rednecks, I called them, several groups of growers who I could play off one another, right? Like his price is too high over here. Let me go see what the Mexicans are doing. Their, theirs is maybe a little too high or they don't have what I need. I can go down to this guy, right? So I became almost more powerful than the growers. They came to need me almost as much as I needed them, especially as the price of weed started to go down and there was more and more competition. Growers, especially illegal growers, had a much harder time selling their products. So they were like begging me to take their weed, you know, towards the end. And they were basically like, name your price, you know. So that was my involvement with them. And how old are you when this is gone?

23. You weren't afraid at all that like you were working with the cartel. No, I mean, of course I was afraid. I'm like, you know, the feds could be on and the DEA could be looking at them. Yeah. No, there was at this point, I'm like, I was fully conscious of the fact that if I got pinched, I was going to go do some time. You know what I mean? Yeah. But I was never afraid of them. they were just good business people normal you know humble kind of quiet people and they were fucking scared too when we first started dealing with each other right they probably thought you were a cop of course and i went in speaking like perfect spanish and they were like what the fuck and i was like no no no no no i just i took it in college man i'm just trying to just trying to relate to you guys

so i realize don't do that if you're dealing with mexican cartels speak a little spanish but if you speak flawless spanish that's that's what a DEA agent does you know did you learn Spanish because of your drug business? No, I learned it. I lived in my senior year of college. I studied for a semester in Argentina and because I was really behind in my school. I was fucking up in class. I was not going to graduate on time. So, uh, so I studied in Argentina to get a bunch of credits through like the, you know, they had like an inter, you know, an exchange program with U of O. So I was down there and there were a bunch of kids from all over the country, all over America that were studying at the same International School. And I got to know this kid, Joey, really well.

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Their fathers are in the garbage business and shit like that. And he's the one that originally linked me with my first group of East Coast distributors, which led me to, you know, making this crazy millions of dollars. So that was the trip that I learned Spanish. and I eventually got, you know, changed my business. Now, back to the cartel for a second, were you able to walk away from that relationship with them? Or was there a danger?

Like, if you cut them off? No. So you could have walked away at any time. Of course. So you were dealing with like the safe side of business with the cartel because the average American that hears business with the cartel, they watch shows like Ozark and stuff. They're going to think it's dangerous.

Yeah, it's all bullshit. So you stop watching Ozark. That show sucks. If you fucking watch Ozark, you're a sucker. I guess I was soccer. It's not good, dude. It's not good like Starbucks coffee. They fucking, the marketing is so good that they fooled you into thinking that's good coffee. They fooled you into thinking Ozarks a good show. Watch the first season. That's, that's it. First season was good. There's nothing like that. It does not exist in America. They come here to do business.

If I'm, if I'm not selling their weed, somebody else will come and find them. You know what I mean? Now, do you think that they get mad at all when you talk? about it, like now on social media? Like, do they listen to that at all? They have social media teams down in Mexico. The cartels do. I don't think they care anymore because they don't operate growing weed in the U.S. anymore.

Not really. I mean, not the way that they did back then. They still have, like, big illegal grows, but, you know, they could raid a greenhouse in Palm Desert, California with 80,000 plants in it. Something that will get you a minimum 10 years back then. They will raid these, the sheriff's department, arrest everybody, write them a ticket and then let them go. Really? But yeah. So it's a, I don't think, I don't think they give a shit. And in fact, Sina Loa is a brand.

That's a, that the cartels brand themselves. So they want their name out there. You know what I mean? Because I can bring you Coke from Sina Loa because these guys also had a line on cocaine and heroin. So they were my Coke suppliers. Whenever the weed was dried up, meaning like the product was sold out, their, their crop from the fall by the following summer, that might be all gone. And we would have to wait a couple of months for them to harvest their new crop, right? So I had no dope to sell. So they would, they would be like, what about the coca? You know what I mean? So I would start selling Coke for them. And to tell kids at, you know, the University of Oregon, white kids, like this is cartel Coke from the Sinaloa cartel. They would go crazy, but like, give me all of it, you know. So branding is good for for cartels. So yeah,

They appreciate me talking about them. How long? And you're welcome. Daynada. They got to send you a check. Yeah. When did you get to the point where you were making, you know, hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars off of this business?

So this was 2009 and 2010. So you had a good run. Yeah. Yeah. So it took me a long time. It really was like a case study in business, any kind of business, right? You're, you might be having a startup for the first five years. So we didn't really take profit until maybe three or four years into the

business. And then it was another year and a half or two years before I finally made those connections in 2009. I had the growers. I had the best price on the buy side and I had the best highest price on the side that I sold it to. Right. So when I finally made those, that's when just the money, you know, it came so fast. I didn't even know what to do with it. And how big is your team? It's you, your business partner and who else? Yes. So I eventually when I started moving Bud across the country. We're now talking about like federal DEA, illegal level shit.

That's when my business partner said, you know what? I'm moving on. I've got everything I needed out of this game. You know, I'm in love with this woman. I'm engaged to be married. He went and bought a house with his weed money.

And so I bought him out of the business. And I said, great. Now more money for me. So it was just me. And then the people that I had working for me. So I had guys driving it up, you know, taking different trap cars down to Southern Oregon to pick up the product and drive it back. I had a spotter car to follow the guy going to pick the product up to make sure he didn't get pulled over, right?

I had people back in Portland with the safe house to stash the product. And then I had another girl would help me, you know, I had like a factory operation, like a big, you know, table in a basement. where we would meticulously bag up the weed and prepare it to be, you know, shipped FedEx or UPS out to the East Coast. So this is like TV and the movies in a way, like this whole setup. And you're how old are you in 2009? 23. You're only 23 and 2000. That's crazy that you have like this whole.

Yeah. Are you making LLCs? How are you like washing the money? Yeah. I didn't get into that until, you know, later. But by that time I got arrested, you know. So it was pretty much just hiding the money, spending the money. making plans though for sure but I was like yeah I got to have a million dollars in my possession

before I can really start to like launder it or turn it into like a legitimate business but now I know that that's like I should have started doing it right away did you have a number in your head that you were going to leave the business at first it was 250,000 next it was 500,000 next it was a million and I was like you know what let me just get a clean two million and then I'm out then I'll have one million to invest and one million to live off of and never happen. I made a million bucks, but I couldn't get to that too mark. You know, I got popped. Is your business partner ever arrested too?

No, he got off out of scratch, not a ticket, nothing. And he made off pretty good. Of course, but he didn't reap the benefit. You know, he didn't get to make millions, right? But like, in hindsight, he got to avoid jail time and he used it right. He used how you should use the drug game. You know, like just get what you need out of it at the time and then don't get too greedy. And he was very good about that.

How do the cops first become aware of you and start investigating you? So in 2009, one of our safe houses got raided. You know, a guy that I was given work to, you know, giving him 15, 20 pounds at a time. He ended up getting pinched. She was one of my best workers, but he ended up getting jammed up, right? And he made a couple of controlled buys, they called them. So the cops will give a rat, a snitch, marked money. And he'll go in and pay for the drugs with that marked money.

and then they got a warrant and they raided the house. They didn't find out. They found maybe five pounds or like a couple thousand bucks. But they arrested me. I wasn't at the house at the time, but they put a warrant out. So I got, you know, I got hemmed up, got arrested. I had a good lawyer already, though. So I was able to get it basically got a suspended sentence.

But I still had a felony. I was still on probation. Now the heat's on. You know what I mean? Like if I fuck up again, I'm gone, right? First time ever arrested. First time ever arrested. And so by 2009, you know, I was a good college kid, never been in trouble. So, you know, a black kid probably what I got a year in in the county jail or something like that. But, you know, had a good lawyer, had all these privileges. And so, but I had a felony, right? So now, now it's like, now things are really serious.

And my lawyer was like, you know, you can get this expunged. You can, if you just stay out of trouble, like you can have a normal life, you're going to be okay. Just stop doing what you're doing. And of course, I was like, okay, and I went and did the exact opposite. I just ramped the business up 10x, you know, because I was like, I'm getting too much money. I can't stop. And then a year and a half, yeah, a year and a half, close to two years later is when I ended up getting arrested for the crime that sent me to prison. Did they know you were a bigger fish at the time they arrested you or they had no idea? No, I think they didn't know. I mean, one of the guys that was there, the first time we got raided up showing up with the group of cops that arrested me the second time.

And I recognized him. He recognized me. It was like, holy shit, Mitchell, you really fucking, you really didn't learn your lesson. You were really, you really out here doing good. But they had no idea. They had no idea. And that's why they originally gave me a federal charge. They charged me in federal court because they thought, to your question earlier, they were convinced that I was working with the Mexican cartels, that I was. was working for them that I was trafficking something much heavier than weed because they found, you know, close to a half a million dollars just in one day. They found a half a million. Yeah, in cash. So, you know, and fucking egg on my face for not protecting that cash better.

But I just, I was getting sloppy, right? So they were trying to get me to cooperate, of course. And they were trying to get me, get me to give up my sources and especially my sources in the cartel. This is the second time you're arrested. That's right. So now I'm in jail. I don't have bond. I don't have bail, right? Because I was out on parole from the earlier crime. So I'm on a no bail hold, they call it. In federal. Yeah, correct. I'm in the county jail, but I'm being charged in federal court. So now, you know, every week, they send somebody from the DEA down to meet me in jail. And they say, you're ready. Come on, you must be ready now. You've been in this place a week. You fucking, you hate the food. Come on. Let's start talking.

like, well, we can get you out of this, right? Like, they're very, like, matter of fact. And they just, they assume that I was going to roll over. But my lawyer was like, look, the reason they're asking all these questions is because they don't know anything. And they think they've got like this whale. So all you got to do is keep your mouth shut. They have money. They don't have any product.

So, you know, like, we can, they're going to be more. The longer you can hold out and suffer in the county jail because it is suffering. I promise you. Especially if you've never. ever been in the system before, the longer you can hold off, the more, the more motivated the prosecutor is going to be to make, make a deal. You know what I mean? But I knew I was going to prison. My lawyer was like, there's no way you're not doing time over this. What are you facing at that point? Like, what are the charges you're facing? They were talking about like seven years, 10 years,

you know, they're talking about originally like roping me in with like a bigger RICO case, which is a continual criminal enterprise. You know, that's what they used to bring the fucking mafia down, right? But I wasn't involved in any greater criminal enterprise. It was, you know, I was basically a one-man shop. Was there drugs sitting somewhere that you were worried about them finding? No, I'd liquidated everything. So again, you got lucky. It was good time. Totally. Totally. Exactly. So they just found the money. They just found the money. Did you have other assets in your name too? No. No, I had cars and different people's names and, you know, a couple of different apartments, nice apartments that I used, stash shit. But I didn't own anything.

which is the good thing. You know, the back to the county thing in the federal prison system, everyone always says counties like the worst of the worst because it's literally designed to get you to like expedite taking a plea deal or snitching or anything like that. It's terrible. And I was at like the detention centers. I never made it to a county. Right.

I was at just a private detention center and that was bad. So I couldn't even imagine like a county. On the East Coast, they do it a little different because there's, it's so much population that if you're getting charged with a federal crime, they'll send you to like MCC. just for people getting charged with fed crimes. In Oregon, they'd lump everybody together. People facing state charges, county charges, right next to people that are just doing county bids.

You know, junkies, people withdrawing from heroin. Have you ever heard or smelled what that's like? It's torturous, like that people are screaming in the middle of the night, aching, wailing for their fucking mother, and they smell, you can smell the heroin coming out of their pores. You know what I mean? And then you got gangbangers fucking fighting. COs running in because a drug package will make it through and they'll make everybody get up at

2 a.m. and they'll toss everybody's bunks and throw their shit everywhere and call you a faggot and insult your mother and then just leave, right? And it's just like, it's brutal. And yeah, it might be designed that way because they're trying to squeeze you. They don't want people to take their cases to trial as you have the right to by the Constitution because that would just cripple the system. Yeah. What are your parents saying to you the second time? I can imagine the first time they're not happy, but the second time you're sitting in the county. They never found out the first time. They never found out.

They never found out. I bailed out in like two hours and I was home for dinner with my grandfather who was visiting. You know what I mean? So again, I'm living this lie. I'm living a huge lie. So when I got pinched the second time and I, you know, they obviously had to find out. They were devastated, you know. But they were, they helped me at the beginning facilitate with my lawyer. And, you know, I gave them money before I went away.

And they put money on my books and they wrote me letters and they were just, you know, they were just good people. So how much time do you eventually get sentenced to? So I got sentenced to 36 months, but I had time served. Eight months in the county jail. Did six months in maximum security prison. And then I got shipped off to a minimum security on the Oregon coast. and I did a drug program there, so I got a time cut.

Were you ever in fear that the cartel might think that you could be snitching or making a deal or anything? I thought I'd considered that, but, you know, I knew that my county jail record was enough to probably show that I wasn't cooperating. Because normally, when the cops first arrest you and they pinch you with drugs, they try to get you out right away. They try to get you back on the street and get you. you drug dealing. They're like, we're going to let you work. I mean, imagine that. The DEA or the drug cops who are supposed to be stopping drugs actively encourage their snitches to sell drugs, except now you got to give us, you know, we got a quota. Every month, you know, we're going to need people and we want you to keep moving up the ladder. So I figure, God, I've been in county six months

now. It's pretty clear that like, I'm holding on and I'm not cooperating. I'm not taking a deal. Was there any inclination in your mind to snitch it all? Yeah. You wanted to. No, I didn't want to, but I considered it. I was like, it's the last thing I want to do is rat, but like I also don't want to be in here. So, you know, it's a human nature to self preserve, right, to survive. So why did you decide against it?

Because my lawyer was like, look, you know, he laid the, he laid out possibilities, right? He was like, you could cooperate. I'm not going to, I'm not going to judge you for that. I have clients who cooperate all the time, and I'm able to get them time cuts. But he's like, look, they don't really have you by the balls. You know, they do and they don't. You fucked up and you're going to go do some time. If you cooperate, you're probably going to end up doing some time anyways, right?

So I would say let's hold on and see what they're offering us first in terms of prison time. and then we can revisit, you know, if they want to give you 10 years, maybe then we can revisit cooperating. But he's like, your crime isn't serious enough if you really are about who you say you're about and being honorable and living by the code. What you got caught with is not quite serious enough for you to consider cooperating. And I knew that. I knew that from the jump.

I'm like, they don't have enough. So, you know, maybe if I got caught with 20 kilos of code, it would have been a much, would have been a much harder decision. But for me, I'm like, I'm going down either way. So let me go down with my honor. Now, by the time you make it to prison, how old are you, 25? Yeah, I'm 24, about to turn 25. What's it like being like this young white kid first week in a high security prison? Yeah. Yeah. It was really culture shock. It was really, really rough. I thought it was going to be great. I was so thrilled to be leaving the county jail that I was like, oh my God, I can't wait to go to my new home, you know. J.D. tell you that. Like you're, you spent enough time in county, you're like, please send me to prison. That's all I want to do is go to prison. Um, but I found that it was still really uncomfortable. Uh, and there was fighting and, you know, my cellie gives me a shank. The first day I walk into the cell. And, um, and, um, and you know, it was, it was a tough transition. It takes a couple of months to get acclimated and to get your program going. You know what I mean? What are the politics like in the prison? Yeah. So in Oregon, they're not as as as as like being in a

California maximum security prison in terms of like racial segregation, but the rules are still there. You know, like I, um, I had to run with a car, but I refuse to like put in work. You know what I mean? Uh, and I refuse to like not play basketball with the blacks or dominoes, right? Like I didn't, I didn't put up with any of that like, um, well, you can't be seen a rubbing shoulders with somebody outside your race. I'm like, well, you're going to have to come, you're going to have to come see me then. you got a problem with it. And plus, I'm sold up with a shock caller who runs the fucking hell's angels.

And, you know, I'm doing favors and putting in work for him. And he likes me. So he's, he's kind of letting me slide a little bit. So you're going to have a problem with Jimmy if you, if you want to have a problem with me. So I got lucky there too. You know, the fact that I had good paperwork. You know, I was respected because I had

a pretty high level crime. There's not a lot of big time drug dealers in the state system. So already I had like this respect. And, you know, and I carry myself with an air of intelligence. I was also, you know, uh, sold up with a shock collar, right? And they for sure did that on purpose. They put the most harmless guy in the prison in with the most harmful guy to try to dissuade any kind of, you know, collusion. So I, I think that's kind of what saved my ass. It's interesting. You called it a car. You're the first state prison guy I've met that calls it a car because in the feds that's it's not a gang or at least on the east coast it's called the car the

people you ride with but most of the state guys like i talk to it's always like a prison gang yeah it's a set or yeah we call it a set or a car but you know i'm just speaking in your language you know my language yeah thank you um now sex offenders are you interacting with them at all because it's a higher security prison um yes they're around they weren't in the cell block um they were but you would see them like at the, uh, I worked in the prison kitchen, so they would be there. Uh, and sometimes you, you know, the library, right, uh, you know, they didn't have like completely separate wings, but they wouldn't put them in on mainline, uh, on in the specific cell blocks that I was on. Are they trying to approach you at all? Like, I know in my scenario,

I got approached a lot because I'm this young white kid, but we probably carried ourselves very differently from one another. How would they approach? What would they be approaching you for? So I would get like tried a lot. Like, I would be. sitting in the library and I would have, I would be like reading or working on something. And one day, this is the first instance that this happened, a guy, a sex offender comes up to me and he passes me a note. And he's like, I'm here for child crimes. Are you here for child crimes? Meet me at the library at 7 o'clock tonight. Doesn't say a word. Just hands me this note. And I open it, I'm reading it, I'm looking around because I don't want to be seen associating with this guy.

and I fucking go to the bathroom, flush it down the toilet, walk out, and I never go back to that library again. That was like the type of shit that was happening to me like all the time. I'd be standing in the line at the chow hall and these guys would just come up next to me and they're like looking at me. And it was just like the weirdest thing. You absolutely look like a pedophile. I think that's what they're trying to tell you. With the glasses. I was really chubby.

Written all over you, dude. Exactly. Or at least just hard drives full of kitty porn. That's what I would pinch you as. Yeah. Well, and the worst thing, too, you said you had, like, drug charges. I said I had fraud charges. They didn't believe that because in the federal prison system,

there's very rarely anyone at 21 years old there for fraud. So they thought that was a cover story. And, like, one day I was sitting at, like, the Chow Hall table. And my very first time at Chow Hall, I sat down, the guy said, you can't sit here and you belong with them. And he points over to a table with a bunch of sex offenders because there's a sex offender table. They made me sit at that table. It's shameful.

very first time ever. Shouldn't have sat at that table, dude. I didn't know how to offer it. It was just like, I was nervous. I had no paperwork yet. And I was just like, I didn't know how to adapt it and walk around. Well, we have our paperwork in Oregon. Like, we take that with us.

Like we literally, they give you your physical paperwork. You take that from your sentencing onto the bus, onto the gray goose to Coffee Creek, which is the sorting facility where they hold you until they find what prison you're going to go to. So immediately you have to show your paper. work. Um, but, you know, my reputation preceded me. I'd been fighting fading since the day I got into jail. So no, by, by that point, like, if you were going to be a creep and approach me, like, you might have got snuffed right there. And that's not to sound like a tough guy. I was just so, uh, I was so stressed out and, and just in war mode the whole time, uh, that, you know what I mean?

I was just, I was operating on a really, you know, high level of fucking survival. Did you get into any prison fights at all? Yeah. Yeah, of course. I mean, I faded the first moment pretty much that I got into the county jail when I was arrested. I was at the Multnomah County Detention Center and then shipped me to a long-term county jail and I had to fight there. And then I got to fight at county, the sorting facility after I got sentenced. It's called Coffee Creek Correctional Facility.

You know, I got in fights in prison. I got to fight at a minimum security prison. I farted on this black kid. You farted in his face. I didn't mean to, you know? So it was just like there were little beefs and like even beefs not even over like your first time mandatory fade just to make sure that you're cool and you can stay on the main line.

It would be shit, you know, like insults. that I would have to, or problems that I didn't even create, but people wanted to test me. I was like, people saw me as like the test dummy, especially new inmates that felt like they had to prove themselves. They would try to look around for somebody that didn't look too dangerous. So I just stood out because I was clearly not a gang member. I was not affiliated with anybody. And I was there for a nonviolent crime. So they would single me out sometimes. So I would just have to go head the problem off right away, right? Instead of letting it get bigger and bigger and bigger,

you have to confront your problems right away and you have to meet violence with violence or else it's going to become much worse very quickly. Did you have to spend any time in the shoe? Well, we didn't have, we don't have the shoe in Oregon. That's a special housing unit. I think that's a California thing. But yeah, spend time in the hole for sure.

We just call it the hole. Okay. Yeah. And what was that like for you? Yeah, it's brutal. I mean, like, in county jail it was okay. I went for 30 days in county because I was so sick of being just around,

bunked up with, you know, all of these new people all of the time, right? The junkies and these creeps who would just come in for parole violation or just come in because they got caught with like a little bit of heroin, right? It's brutal when you have to spend time in an institution with people that are changing every week, right? you much rather be around like long-term criminals. So I remember I got in a fight and they sent me to the hole for 30. And, you know, for the first couple of days, I'm like, this is awesome. I get to be alone.

I get to sleep in peace. I get to jerk off, you know, unfettered without some guy staring into my eyes lovingly. But, you know, yeah, after a couple of weeks, you only get 15 minutes out of your cell to walk around. You can see how people can lose their mind pretty quickly. Wait, they jerk off in front of each other and- No. but you got to go to the bathroom. Like if you're not in your own cell and you're in a dorm, you got to go into the stall. They call it getting money. Yeah, be like Mitchell's in there getting money. And that's term for it. He's going to jerk off. Yeah, getting money. Wow. And so you put your hat over, uh, you because they give you hats and you put your hat over like the, the stall door handle. And that's how you know, like, don't come and knock and taking care of myself. The rest of your prison sentence, how are you spending your time? Are you like a studious person trying to figure out your next moves? Are you a gym person? What do you do?

Yeah, so I used to hoop, play basketball every day, worked out a little bit, especially at the end, I was working out pretty hard. And I was writing scripts, trying to, you know, planning on coming to Hollywood. That was my big, radios dream. Yeah, exactly. And then, of course, I would go do these little talent shows that they would throw at the prison every now and then. If you had, you know, good behavior, you could go perform at these, like, talent shows. So I would do stand-up comedy for the inmates. So I would do a little shit like that.

And then I worked, I had a job. I worked in the prison kitchen. You worked in the prison kitchen? Yeah, I worked in the prison kitchen. I was the baker. That's cool. Oh, you were? Yeah, we had like a fresh pastry unit and we would make pastries.

We even made our own pizza dough. Yeah. Every Thursday we'd have fresh pizza. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So did you have like a prison hustle or your parents just supported you the whole time? Well, I had money that I gave them. I had drug money that I gave them. We put on my books.

So I was kind of set, you know? But like I used to do favors for Jimmy, my, you know, the shot caller, my cellie. And, you know, because he was running the cell block. So our cell looked like a fucking 7-Eleven. Like we had all the snacks. We had all the protein powder. We had all the fucking tobacco we could want. So that was nice.

That was nice. I didn't really have to have a hustle. If I was in there longer without resources, yeah, I definitely would have had to hustle. So you complete your prison time. How old are you when you get out and what you got out at 26? And this is 2012. I think the thing I'm most curious about you is how do you go from like this drug dealer that went to prison to now this, you know, comedian, author, writer, YouTuber that has hundreds of thousands of subscribers. How do you get to that from there?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, so like I said, I always, from the minute I got in, I was plotting and thinking about what I could do moving forward, right? And in the back of my mind, I was like, I can always go back to the drug game, you know? and every criminal before they let the dream go that, you know, they're in there. You've got a lot of time to think. And most people are using that time to think about how they can do their crime better, you know. But at a certain point, I was like, I got to let the old ways go.

I have to. I can't come back here because it's just going to kill my parents. You know what I mean? And it's just not who I want to be long term, you know. I didn't even want to be a drug dealer long term when I got arrested anymore. You know, I was like, I made enough money. I don't want to live in the. shadows anymore. Like I think there's something else I could be good at. And so I've always been a writer.

And so I started writing these like by candlelight almost in the middle of the night with these little tiny little pens they would give you and and pieces of loose leaf. I would just start writing out what I thought were like screenplays, right? Things that I could sell to Hollywood to maybe get them produced into movies. And so when I first got out at the beginning of 2012, my only goal was to get to Hollywood. And six months later, I moved there. I just packed my car up and I moved to LA and I just moved in with some roommates off of Craigslist. And I just got, you know, some shitty job waiting tables. And I started auditioning. I started taking acting classes and I started fucking, uh, trying to like turn these stories that I had written in prison to like palatable, sellable screenplays.

But by 2012, already like the game was up. in Hollywood. Like the internet was encroaching. Legacy media was past its prime. You know what I mean? They weren't really making good movies anymore. Like I could see what was coming. I'm like the internet is going to decimate old Hollywood. You know what I mean? They're not going to make movies like Goodfellas anymore. They're not going to make these classics that I grew up with, which is sad, but you know, it is what it is. And plus, I didn't really like the isolation of being like just like a screenwriter, you know? So I had already done stand-up comedy in prison, right? But it was just like roasting.

It was just like I would roast the different sets, right? And I would just talk shit and mimic the prison guards and shit like that. And I was taking these acting classes. And I would just go off script in like the scenes. You would perform scenes from, you know, different movies with your scene partner in front of the other people in the class. And I would just go off book and just improv. and I would kill. Like I would,

I would ruin the scene, but I'd make everybody laugh. And I was like, God, maybe I could be like, and I thought back to prison, and I'm like, maybe I could perform stand-up comedy. That could be a way to like,

get into like acting roles and become like a writer, right? Like, I just thought I'd use it as a means to an end. So I started going to open mics. And very quickly, I was like, oh, no, this is what I want to do. Like, this is it. So I,

and I just expanded. just worked out from there. Just kept just kept moving and building the act and like all of these observations and pent up things that I've felt for so many years, right? Including prison, I started to make light of, make bits out of. And then, and then the pandemic hit, you know, flash forward six years, 2012 now. I started in 2014. You know, the pandemic hits.

And I'm at a crossroads. I'm like, should I just bail? Should I just quit and fucking, you know, move to some island and enjoy the rest of my life? Or should I go buy podcasting equipment? And, and I, that's what I did. I went and I built my own little studio and I just started making content. And then, you know, I had this idea last year. I was like, fuck. You know, I used to, you know, I'm watching YouTube, just like everybody. That's like what I watch on my TV now. I barely watch like Netflix shows. And I see this big fucking Cholo guy talking about the craziest shit that he saw. on like a Mexican prison. And I was like, huh, that's interesting. I could probably do that. I could talk about drug dealing too. Like these vice news dorks, these Oxford journalists that want to talk about

the Cina Loa Cotel. I'm like, well, I've actually been with these dudes. So like, I can fucking articulate this shit, but I've already, I've been in that life. I got stripes. I'm credible. So that was how the connect was born. And when this started last year?

Yeah, it started last episode. So you went from this past September of 2022 to now that many subscribers in that period of time. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. But what are like some of the struggles before that? Like, because it didn't just happen overnight. So what's like the prehistory to that? Like what, what are some things you had to endure? Yeah. Because it's not like overnight success. No. No. I mean, the connect kind of did blow up overnight. But that was after failing at, you know, many different podcast ideas. Um, you know, many different clips. So many. So many. fucking so much content that I've made for Instagram and YouTube over the years. You know, I think podcasts are, or whatever we call The Connect, right, a show like this. It is a podcast, but it's a show. It's television now, basically, for the new digital world we live in. They're much like pilots, like television pilots used to be, right?

So you would get a deal from NBC. We want a pilot. You, we're going to pay you to write one episode. That's a pilot. And we're going to shoot it. And if it tests well to America, we're going to order a full season. So that's kind of like what a podcast is now. It's a pilot. And just like pilots back in the day, most of them won't work. You know what I mean? You had Dave Chappelle had like literally, they called him Pilot Boy in the 90s in Hollywood. He had like 20 pilots that they tried to make of him and none of them worked out. But finally one hits, this show called the Dave Shepel. Chappelle Show, the Chappelle Show on Comedy Central. So it's the same with like YouTube. Like you just need one to go. It's like business. They tell you in business. You just need one. Just need one success. But yeah, dude, I, I fucking, you know, doing open mics in Los Angeles, it was brutal. It was brutal. It was brutal. It was brutal trying to get on stage. Just to find an audience to make laugh. And then you finally got them. Now you got to make them laugh. Stand-up's an ongoing struggle.

What kept you going like through those times to keep you. pursuing it because you're still doing comedy to this day. So you didn't give up. No, no. I think just like being, I was good at it. I knew that like there was something here. Like I would just kill, kill, kill, kill when it was good. You know, when it was bad, it was bombing. But like, I knew that like, I could kill. I had the ability to really like look out into the crowd and see people like holding themselves. And I still, dude, I see white women in the audience doing stand up New York. Sevent 5th and fucking Broadway last night, Upper West Side. Right. like this fucking bored, affluent, white, you know, aristocratic crowd.

And I see these white women holding their stomachs while I'm doing my shit. I'm like, those are the laughs I want. Those are like, if I can do that just with enough time and enough growth, I can do that consistently. You know what I mean? So, and that's when like the legend status comes. So that's kind of what drives me, I guess, is just like the challenge. Yeah.

I mean, I feel that so hard, like when you know you have something and you just, you're not there yet, but there's like, there's certain like, like, tell signs that are showing you like whether your views are going up week or week over week or comments or people reaching out. Yeah. I feel like that. You ride with that and you keep that going. Yeah. To kind of like propel you. Exactly. Now, if you had never gone to prison, do you think you would never have gotten into comedy? I don't know. That's people ask me that all the time. And it certainly kind of seems like that, right? I've always kind of wanted to be in show business. You know, I grew up watching MTV and movies and these classic sitcoms and television shows from the 1990s when I was a kid, you know? So I think I definitely wanted to be in show business deep down. What I've ever gotten into it, though? I don't know. I don't know. And certainly if I did without going to prison, I would be a different comedian.

I would be a different person, you know, I don't know what I'd be talking about. Like it'd probably be like some, some, I don't know, some corny shit or, uh, or I would just be talking about like my relationships. Like, I don't know. I'd be a different person. So my comedy would be different. Now comedy is like a comedy and podcasting is a very flooded market. It did prison give you the ability to stand out in that market? Oh, for sure, for sure. So, you know, I finally just leaned into it. Like I didn't talk about it explicitly for a long time. Like I would do little bits about it on stage. But in the connect, I'm like, this is what I did. Like it's, I'm not trying to be funny.

I'm just like saying it as it is. And sometimes it's funny. But I was just like, let me just be, let me just be without trying to make jokes of it, right? Like, Joe Rogan's the king of that. Like, he doesn't try to be funny. It's not a comedy podcast. It can be funny. But he's just like being authentic.

And, uh, but prison absolutely gave me the, the edge to stand out, especially in comedy, you know. Did it take a while for you to be able to talk about it? Like, did you have to go to therapy or anything like that? Yeah, I didn't go to therapy. I probably should have because it was definitely, it was some trauma. It was, my mind was fucked up for a long time, you know. And then when I got into comedy, I was like ashamed of it. So I tried to hide it for a while.

But like when I started talking about it on stage, like the older comedians would be like, dude, you got to talk about that's fascinating. Like you got to talk about that. So it just, but it took me a long time to arrive at it. And I think, you know, because when something like that happens, you got to give it enough time. You got to give it a decade to really put that behind you. you, right? Yeah.

No, I felt the same way. Like, I didn't talk about it for four years. And I didn't just get, I got out four years ago, just started getting into this whole talking about prison like eight months ago. Yeah. And a lot of people reach out and they're like, oh, did you just get out? Because they see that now I'm talking about it. Because there are people that go straight from prison to social media to talk about it.

Right. So it's like interesting how that all pans out. But I think that the second I started owning it and being open about it, one, it took away people's power to kind of like hate in a way because you're already out there with the worst of the worst. And two, it just like accelerated my life in a totally different way that I never would have expected. Yeah. So what's like a day in the life for you now? Yeah. I mean, it's just it's running this media thing. You know, it's taken up a lot of my time. But, you know, I'm on the road now at least twice a month, gone for four or five days at a time, whether that's doing standup or I'm out here

doing stand-up and doing content, right? You know, we're going to Detroit next week to shoot the Connect. We were in Miami. So it's kind of like what is the week in the life is really what it's about. I live week to week, you know? But it's trying to now that the Connect has become this thing. Now it's time to really like move those people that have come over and like comedy as well as what I do with The Connect.

now it's time to convert them into stand-up fans. So I'm getting back out doing more stand-up. First three months of running this shit, it was like I could barely have time to do any stand-up because I was just so dialed in, micromanaging every aspect of the show. You know what I mean? Have you been able to form like a personal life,

get married or anything like that? Yeah, it's coming along. You know what I mean? I feel life coming together and normalizing now. And I'm not married yet, but I definitely would like to be. I would like that structure. It feels very nice to be with somebody, you know, paying taxes and incorporating my business and all that stuff.

So, yeah, yeah, no, things are good. Do you think you needed to put that stuff on hold, though, to focus on what you're building now? Oh, 100%. I mean, I never even thought marriage was a possibility. I was like, because when you're in the struggle of trying to make it in Hollywood, like you're just in it and feels like you're stuck. I'm like, I was slept on a couch for three years. I'm like, there's no way I'm going to be able to support a family. I can't give anybody any of my time.

Like, I felt like I had lost time going to prison. So, you know, for years, it was just like about making that up. You know what I mean? And I was just going on overdrive. And, you know, it's only been the last couple of years where I've been able to just take a deep breath, right? Pandemic did that. Just take a deep breath.

You know what I mean? Take a step back, start working smarter, not harder. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, I feel like, whenever I'm spending time with someone that's not related to business, I always feel guilty because I'm still in grind mode. Yeah. And I just like, like I'm almost there and I'm getting there, but I need to keep focusing on it.

So like even if I'm spending like one night out of seven days with something in that aspect, then it's just like a guilty conscience because I, you hear this notion like all over social media in the world. Like you have to grind and just focus on that. And then everything else will come and fall into place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

they say that. I don't know. I don't know if that's a new phenomena because, you know, that's not how we're built biologically. You're just supposed to like, you know, work and then reproduce and then die. So what do you think like your messages to someone that was in your shoes, like growing up, going down that path, maybe selling drugs, getting into crime to support that lifestyle, going to prison, fails. It doesn't even have to be prison the failure, just failure in general and then finds a strength to get back up, goes into something and recreates a life for themselves. What's your message? Well, failure is necessary, you know. So the earlier you can learn about failure, fail, and climb up out of it. That's really what is going to set you

apart from your peers. Because, you know, having a big failure young is usually okay. but it's got to not cost you your life. So especially if people are selling drugs, it's not anymore a viable business option. Not really. You can't really do, unfortunately, what I did anymore for the reasons that I've laid out, right? You can still sell drugs,

but, you know, especially if you're selling hard drugs, it's like you're going to kill somebody. Fentanyl's ruined it for everybody. You know what I mean? and I don't know. There's just, if you have the drive to be able to make money like that, there's so many ways now with social media and the internet to build a business that's probably going to make you as much money long term as you made selling drugs.

You just have a very low probability of it working, you even doing it right, much less getting away with it. So, you know, it's just like, it's just not glamorous anymore. It's dirty. It's on the marijuana side. It's flooded. It's not like a, it's just changed.

It's not this glittery, mysterious, exceptional thing anymore like it was when I first got into it. So, you know, like build a business. Be your own person. You can fucking do it.

You know what I mean? Like you've got the drive to fucking sell drugs. Like you can have the drive to start an online business. You'll make just as much money. You'll make more. And failure is like a good thing. It's a good thing. You just got to fucking, it's necessary.

It's how you react to that is what makes you, you know, an adult. Where can people find you at? You can watch the show The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. It's all over YouTube. Please follow me on, you can follow me on TikTok. I know this is a TikTok theme show at Mr. Johnny Mitchell. But please follow me on Instagram. That's what I use.

I'm a little older. So, you know, go to go to the Instagram at Mr. Johnny Mitchell. Check me out on the road. I'm all over the road doing headlining dates. Johnny Mitchellcom for tickets. But yeah, the main thing is to connect with Johnny Mitchell on YouTube and follow me on Instagram at Mr. Johnny Mitchell. Awesome, man.

Johnny, thanks for coming on the show, man. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me, buddy. Very cool to see what you got going on. I'm proud of you, man. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. And we'll enjoy this five-hour car ride back to your city.

That's it, dude. Yeah, we're going to hit some fucking traffic.