Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - SEC EXPOSES FRAUDULENT INVESTMENT SCHEME

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

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On second thought, I might not be the right person to tell you. Oh, you're not? No, just ask your doctor. About Wagoe. Ask for it by name. Okay. So why did you bring me to the circus? Oh, I'm really into lion tamers.

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Everybody was a criminal, raising millions of dollars, you know, driving expensive cars for the judge. He said, you should have known better. And as a result, I'm going to make an example out of you. Where are you born? Boston, outside of Boston, Framingham. Yeah, that was my quintessential childhood years. Okay. You know, there up until eighth grade.

So, yeah, I think those are, you know, whether you read psychological books or, you know, you recall it, those are like your childhood years you remember. but it was really the tale of two cities with with mom and with dad you know that behind the walls of the house where everything looks good at the white picket fence that's really where you start to figure out what life is about what was the what was the issue it wasn't leave it to beaver no man it's never leave it to beaver is it no right no it's never leave it to beaver we always say that if like if the person if it looks like it's just a perfect family and the guy's perfect the woman everything the wife and everything is phenomenal you find out

Like, you know, 15 years later, you're always like, wow, man, the Cleavers were so amazing. And then you find out that Ward had like a sex slave chained up in the basement the whole time. And you're like, what? You know, the whole neighborhood was taking turns. And he was, you know, it's like, what, what? Yep. There was an oxy issue. But yeah, no.

Beaver comes out on a podcast talking about how he was abused. He's probably go viral. What? No, but you're totally right, though. But I think we don't talk about a lot of that. At least that generation didn't talk about a lot of them. Yeah, no. You bury that down deep, deep, into a ball, a hot ball that eventually it turns of cancer and it kills you.

But it's good, but for the bulk of your, of your, for the first 35 years. Yeah, you're fine. You're fine. Fine. Yeah. Men have two options, right? We're either sick or we're fine. Yeah.

That's it. That's it. You can't complain about it. But yeah, man, no, behind closed doors, it was rough. You know, my dad was an addict, you know, was involved in organized crime. And mom was trying to take us to church on Sundays and figure out. How do you take the ideas of, you know, secular religion and pour them into this individual that you're married to and you love, coupled with, you know, a massive addiction?

What is, what, will you say organized crime? What kind of organized crime? Like bookmaking or just everything in general? Everything in general, you know, back in the day, I think, you know, before Twitter existed and you could get away with some stuff. You know, it was really just neighborhood type stuff that everybody talks about. You know, it was hard loans here. collections there and there was never really a nine to five job everybody just kind of had a hustle and

you know worked for a guy here and worked for a guy there drove somebody around picked things up Joe he didn't have like a regular job no no real regular job during those years so there was always duffel bags of cash you know I remember it vividly two things about him was always a red duffel bag of cash and the fanny pack and the fanny pack was where he walked around with his his addict tools that was you know the growing up years was trying to figure out you know you go to church on Sunday and you'd sit there in church and you'd go man what kind of monster are we going to walk into after church is it good is it bad sometimes he'd be there with chicken on the stove and you'd be vacuuming and other times he'd be you know completely strung out walking around with a 357 in his hand

um i'm sorry that's just remind me what my wife has a friend that he's every once in while he'll get arrested for being in the street with his you know half naked with his gun you know walking around screaming he'll go on a bender and walk around and scream or he'll think somebody's breaking in the house walking around pointing the gun everywhere and it's like this guy shouldn't have a gun period no yeah people are just they get insane so yeah so how i mean but you're going to school the whole time go to school the whole time yep the whole time yep the start to me and my sisters you know it was just life as usual when you left the house you know we walked to school we had good neighborhood relationships, barbecues, you know, literally the, you know, your analogy was

spot on to leave it to Beaver. Yeah. You know, it was true. It's funny because I remember sneaking out with my brother-in-law because my dad was on like a week-long bender and removing, we would remove the, we would take the, shoot, what is it, the distributor cap, right? We take the distributor cap and we pop it off so the car wouldn't start. funny because my mom was like he's he keeps saying he's going to go to the bar he's going to do this he's going to do that go fix the car and we'd go out and pop the hood you know we creep out you know in the middle of the night and take this thing because he's too drunk to figure and he knows he's like me he knows nothing about mechanics but we knew enough I'd learned enough that you can pop the

distributor cap off in a way that he couldn't realize that what's happening like I don't you can't see that it's off but it's actually just a little pop so it's not making a connection So he, so, okay. Couldn't go anywhere. Couldn't go anywhere. Yeah. Godly. Just trying to keep him from driving around and killing somebody.

Was it alcohol? Oh, yeah. For him, it was, for my dad, was alcohol. Okay. Because alcohol and it was probably at some point, it was a combination of alcohol and pills, but I don't, you know, he'd had some surgery. So I knew he had, he had painkillers. Okay. I'm never, and I know it later in life, it was definitely painkillers.

But it was always alcohol, too. Okay. Yeah, but it's amazing seeing this person that when he's sober was amazing, funny, charismatic, everyone loved him, had money, no problem, let's get, oh, you want to go to the movie, absolute, like just this out of the year. Right, absolutely. And everybody loved them. Correct. And that it would be for three months after the rehab. And then you come home one day and you could nothing.

You could feel it. Initially, you could feel it. Yeah. It might take a couple days before you started to realize, oh, he's drinking, but you felt it days, I felt it, days before that. It happened. And my mom would probably, we would all be like, something's wrong. I'd feel it walking home from school. Really?

Oh, yeah. Like signs, I don't know if you're, like if the garage door was up, it was all bad. Because you knew that he was just completely out of his mind. He was the type of guy that, you know, everything was closed, locked, tight, right? The car doors were locked. They were clean. The house was locked. It was clean.

and everything looked good from the outside. So if the garage door was up, he was like, oh, it's game time. When I was 17, my father took his car, wrecked it, came home, said, give me your car keys. I gave my car keys. Drunk? Yeah. Well, you know, what not drop, you know, he wasn't falling down drunk. Okay.

Yeah, I just wrecked my car. But he wrecked it because he was. Give me your car keys. I got to go to work. Give me your car keys. Give me the car keys. wrecked the car. Your car.

Two, we both had, he had a BMW, like a 635 CSI, which was like $65,000 vehicle, which is like $100,000 a day. It was a, it was a BMW two-door sports car. Rex that, given my keys of my like 318, wrecks that. I thought two fucking BMWs in one day. Wow.

Two BMWs in one day. Was your mom the same as mine? Was she trying to figure out how do I, how do I keep the family, Enabler, right? 100% enabler, right? Like trying to keep everything. Don't let the neighbors know.

No, the neighbors were the worst. The phone, well, State Farm would call and say, and he would, he's so, oh my gosh, he's so sick. He's this, always covering, always covering. Sure. And then eventually, State Farm would put him into rehabs. One time, we had to go, the whole family had to go to, like, what am I doing in rehab? I had to go to N-A meetings for, or Al-Anon, I think it's called, Al-Anon meetings for, like a month or something.

We're going like two, three times a weekend. I'm thinking, why am I in rehab right now? I don't train. I'm 18 years old, 19. And they put him in. That's how much he would, how good of a salesman he was. A trainer, he was a, you know, like an earner that you've got State Farm who's putting him into rehab every couple of years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that's a, I don't think that would ever happen now. No. I think they fire you. Yeah, well, at best. Yeah. So, yeah. But he made a.

teammate he is his kind of sales team was always in like the top 10 out of 500 or 1,000 sales teams he always won the trips always they always brought him in flew him in to give the big speeches because you know he was that guy once again you seem perfect yeah but you've really got people in the base you're you're really got you're really a serial people chained up in the basement exactly yeah that's to say it's so wild I didn't know any of this this is exactly the same story. So, I mean, mine was to a tea almost, but it wasn't the alcohol. It was the drugs. Right. And so, but literally, we'd walk into the gym together, you know, and he, you know, my dad was, was a bodybuilder. And so it was this odd, right? Like, like, even worse, right?

Even worse. You know, you're big, you're tan, you look good. You know, you walk around. Like you said, everybody gets to eat, you know, your, your father of the year. You already look like the top one percent of society. Everywhere you go, anyway, people think you're amazing. Correct. looking at you. Yes. Oh, that's got to be even worse. Yep.

Your, your dad's BMW was my dad's Corvette. Right. Yeah, it was. It was literally the same. It was, it was an interesting, right?

And then in this whole life, you're trying to string together, but, but the entire time going and figuring out life on your own. Because here you have this monster, you know, that's supposed to be your dad.

It's supposed to care. But he'd show up at Pop Warner and he'd be in the stands and like a good Saturday was everybody went home. A bad Saturday was, he took the Rolex, off and came out of the stands and just started beating up the other coach.

I mean, he literally just unhinged. Have you heard me tell that story? As I was 15 years old, I stopped. I was a, the top league for soccer, it's called Black Watch. Okay. Loved soccer, great at it. And eventually just when it came time to sign up again, when I was 16, I told my mom, I don't want to sign up.

Why not I just don't want to sign up. Like, she didn't understand. She's like, I don't understand. Then when she asked my dad. Because you were good and you loved it. yeah like I don't understand you're good you're you love this this is great this is your friend this is where your friends go and it goes to my father to ask him and he says if you don't want to go you don't have to go you don't have to go and she's like okay like she was just

completely confused but the truth is I was tired of my father showing up at the games not a lot three or four times a year showing up drunk in the stands seen yeah Matthew get over there get out and it's like the scene of no dad here's my area Right. I know you think I should be running all around chasing the ball for your entertainment. This is how the game works, my guy. But my coach said, yeah, and it was just, it was just humiliating. Yeah, it has a result of that, I don't want to go anymore.

Well, I don't want to give him the opportunity to show up. Correct. But so just like your thing. Same story, bro. Coming down for, yeah, this is. This is weird. Same story. And it was, it was, you'd have, you'd have, we had one neighbor who was like my mom's go-to.

I don't know if you had one. everybody else was just like quiet she had one or two friends in the neighborhood there you go a woman correct that you could call and be like hey john you know this is what's just a heads up and he'd kind of come over sometimes and you know like check on the fridge or you know be that oh you have a hornet's nest outside i heard i had to knock it down you know that type of guy that but other than that quiet quiet and my mom was raised that way right you just swept it west swept i i think they probably taught it on nick nick at night or something you know you didn't talk about it the ideas of today like the self-help and a lot of it's social media which you know you're contributing to

the idea of self-improvement self-actualization self-understanding they didn't have that back 30 40 years ago no no listen my father was kind of like diagnosed as an alcoholic in the in the 60s when he he kept not being able to stop drinking yeah and he and my mother went to a doctor and said look here's I'm having an issue right and explained it to this is how this is how this is how the absolute um lack of knowledge in that period of time was as far as addiction we've got a guy who's making amazing money he works for a great company but my parents and when you're younger you can kind of handle it better yeah so they're in their 20s they've got a couple of well they've got one they've got at that point they had a couple kids and they're saying i think they're probably in

their 30s and they go to the doctor because my father it's like hey he when he drinks he can't stop and the doctor very matter-of-factly says well he's an alcoholic my dad almost gets into a fist fight with him because back then if you were an alcoholic you were a bum only bums were alcoholic so if you walk by a bum it's a guy's an alcoholic he's a drunk he's a loser he's this and he was fear they were furious because i have a good job i have a family man right i have a family of a good job i make good money what the fuck you what are you talking about and he's like well you're just a functional alcoholic what fuck are you sure i mean just gets in his face my mom I'm like, I'm in between them.

I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, your father's about to get into a fist fight in the doctor's in the little doctor room. But that's how absurd the idea that that could happen was back then. Correct. Totally absurd. You know, the first time that, the first time I knew what it was, the fanny packs were always, same story. Like you go on, you go on like, we go to Disneyland and he take it everywhere, took it everywhere. And it was always like, it was a bodybuilder thing back then.

Oh, you know, they wore it. It was normal, you know, in the gym, this, that, and the other. But that's where he kept all of his stuff. And so I remember taking it. I was probably eighth grade. And I walked it down to the local, like, drugstore. Yeah, I turned it in. And I just said, hey.

What is this? Yeah, you let me know what this is. Yeah. And the gal was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Leave your, leave your, uh, information here. And like, I'll come and I'll let you know. What was that beating like? I didn't get to the beating, brother.

The cops beat me home. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was the, that was that beating came to my mom when, when he came back out around. very physical, you know, with mom. And so it was always, at the moment I could get in front of them, or in between the two of them, I would all the time.

But yeah, that's when I first realized, you know, the cops go, hey, so you turned this in and, you know, they have the whole, you know, here I am, like, yeah, you just let me know. And that was the first time, you know, there they were in the driveway, you know, with our beautiful French doors and, you know, our rot, the whole thing. Right. And that was the first time the neighborhood was like,

what in the world? And then, you've got a monster here, you know. But he sat in this recliner when you get so high, he sat in that recliner and when he was gone for those few days after they took him like I sat in that recliner that was my like oh yeah I got you um so how how long does how long do you stay in the house like do you graduate high school do you yeah my mom fought that good fight for the better part of two decades did she ever did he pass away or did she he's dead now okay or did they stay married they didn't stay married she finally left after about 20 years okay so that

was her enough is enough finally got to that point thank god yeah my mom went down with a ship um kidding yeah oh yeah you know like like uh what i used to say she was the worst case of stockholm syndrome i never seen in my life okay um and she never drank no well she she would have like a glass of wine sure but not yeah and drink didn't smoke didn't didn't like to take medication didn't nothing my dad was you know if it said take give me one you know it was give me four too. I'm a big man. I can handle more than that. It's like some of the things he said now looking back on it, I think, this guy's such a jackass. Like at the time I was like, you know, dad, you know,

well, dad said give him two. My mom was giving one, give him one. You know, but looking back on it, I just think, the fuck is going on. Mm-hmm. You know. Um, so you graduate, so you graduate high, like, are you trying to get out of the house as quick as possible? No, because I wanted to make sure my mom was okay. My sisters were okay. Okay. I hear that. I see. Yeah. We had a basement house. And so my sisters would stay in that basement room. So whenever I could feel, you know, you start to feel it bubble up. You remember those days. Like, okay, is it going to be good night, bad night? So I would go down in the basement. They had these trundle beds. And they'd sleep. And we'd put all the trundle beds together. So it was like four beds in a row. And I'd sleep in that far corner of that trundle so that I could see my line of sight was that when he walked through the door. And so that he would, it just gave me enough visibility to go, okay, if something pops off. you know, I'd be the first one to see it.

And then it was never a case of me leaving or wanting to leave. It was me trying to figure out how can I best insert myself into this problem, if you will. He wanted to be, I'm not sure about yours, but he wanted to be like dad of the year. He wanted to be proud, you know, and I was his only son. And so it was like, you know, let me show you how we do things. Let me show you around here. And, you know, now looking back, like you said, he's a jackass. I would go with my dad, you know, when pay phones and beepers,

existed and you know that was the good days where he'd go and he'd collect you know you'd go to a certain store go to a certain pay phone and all of a sudden you know here i am in the front seat and people would just open up my door and it was you know cash and envelopes and duffel bags and things and you know all all the accoutrements if you will you know from place to place and i'm you know six seven eight nine 10 11 12 years old just growing up with this and so it's it's funny that you look back now and people go oh my gosh you've got every reason to be on jerry Springer tomorrow. Right. Like your dad's bringing you with him on collections. Like that couldn't possibly have go wrong. Correct. No, no, no. And I'm in the front seat, right? Like, why wouldn't

you be? You know, but it was, it was everything. You know, the 357 was here and the bat was there. And it was, you know, the toys were here and the taser was there. I mean, it was. At some, at what point, how old are you before you kind of realized like, this isn't normal behavior? It was about 15. There's like my, my, my buddy Timmy down the, you know, two blocks over. His dad works for an insurance company. His dad has a briefcase that we can open. He doesn't have a fainty pack. I've never seen him with a fanny pack.

It was about 15. But again, I realized how could I, I tried to realize how do I put myself in that situation. So it started out with nightclubs. And so my dad was a big guy. Have you ever wondered what happened to the legendary Chuck Norris? I recently saw a video he made and I was shocked. He's in his 80s and still kicking butt

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Watch his method by clicking on the link in the description box below or go to chuck defense.com slash Matt. I was a big guy, you know, we lifted, and then he had a buddy that ran a nightclub. And so here you are at 15. And he was like, you want to work the door. Okay? I knew if I worked the door,

then I'd have visibility on him. And then I'd be able to just, like, almost look into the future and goes, it's going to be a good night or a bad night. Right? But I knew if I worked the door, and I had visibility on him, I knew that my mom and my sisters would be all right.

Totally crazy when you say it out loud now, but when you're that young, it makes a boatload of sense. I'll give you one step further with the door. Everybody at the door gives you the cover. And so the guy that owned the bar was like, hey, the people that don't come in are the guys that don't have this blue card.

Okay, I don't know what that means, but whatever. You know, it was one of the, you know, a friendly club, if you will. Only people that are allowed in, you know, get in. okay well a lot of guys wanted to get in and so they would pay a lot of money to get that that card so then I go well I you know come back give me a call we'll figure it out and it became my hustle you know 200 bucks later you know I go talk to the owner this is the guy that wants in take okay write down his information on his driver's license and bring it to me so I'd bring it to him and then you know two or three weeks later they go yeah if he comes back around he can come in and it was 200 bucks to me

right so he gets a phone call hey show up Tuesday night right exactly right so and so and so's good so-and-so's, they're okay. And so here I am, you know, making $1,000 a week in cash, you know, running the door. What year is this? Oh, golly. This is, this is late 90s. Okay. Yeah, so $50,000 a lot of money. Oh, it's a ton of money. It's like making an $150,000 a year now. A ton of money. And you're a kid living at home. Correct. Yeah. And it's right before you get your driver's license. So all you're thinking about is the vehicle. That money allowed me to go get the truck I wanted, this big black-lifted Dodge Ram, you know, on 36-inch wheels and loud as hell, you know, and so then it became this stereotype. I'm, this is who my dad was, you know,

he was a known individual, relatively violent. I pulled up, you know, it started to kind of coalesce together. It was, if I can live in this world, but not become him, then I can kind of sort of protect, you know, what goes on at home. Do you go to college? Do you go on to college? Yeah, for sure. And your father wanted to. And your father, wanted you to go college or... He wanted me to do what he wanted to do. Right. What he was doing.

Yeah. Yeah. I knew that... So, when the straw finally broke for him, my mom wanted to leave and she did. It got ugly like it always does. It turns into, you know, financial and what do you owe me and what am I going to pay? And then you play the game of, I don't make any money.

And, you know, well, if you don't make any money, how do you afford the house? You know, this whole thing unravels just nasty, right? It's just horrific. And he was sitting in the room and that's when he, you know, he opens up his arms and he's like, this is this is the reason that we're here you know he explained you walked me through that so i knew i didn't want to go down that path and so for me it was never a choice of you know i didn't drink because i didn't do drugs because i didn't fill in the blank i saw what it brought the pain it brought to my family so i had like the perfect example of what not to do right so i tried to do the right

things. For me, it was, all right, I knew that I had the ability to sell. I knew I had the ability to, you know, earn and work, but I had to do it the right way. And so I was definitely going to go to college. Uh, so I have a quick question. Have you ever, uh, ever done drugs? Never. You ever drank? Never. I've never drank. Seriously. Never had to drink alcohol. I've never smoked a cigarette. Serious. I've never smoked pot. Same. The only thing I've ever had. No, right hand to God. Never. The only thing I've ever done was when I was about halfway through college, I got a prescription for Xanax, you know, went to the doctor. And the reason I did that was that I was taking 15 hours of courses. That's like we're working a 50-hour-week job. I'm

studying. I'm not a good student. You know, I have dyslexia. I'm busting my ass. I mean, granted, I got a degree in fine art. So it wasn't that. I mean, you crushed it. Wasn't that difficult. And you're now using the degree in fine arts. Exactly. Yeah, that's what got me into prison. Well done. So the red wall, Colby? Absolutely. The wall.

Jeez. So, but I just, you know, I was so stressed out. I remember one time I drove right through like a, I was just zoning out. I drove right through like a red light. And I was having hard time like, oh, I started having panic attacks. And so I went to my parents and I was like, listen, this is, I don't know what just happened. And I explained the whole thing. And my dad's like, you had a panic attack.

Like, that was wrong. No big deal. Like, I don't know what a fucking panic attack is. There's no internet. There's no, it's so true. We got three channels. And I had to turn them. Right.

Right. I'm watching Hogan's Heroes. Okay. You know. Green Acres. Cheers. We want, cheers. Remember cheers?

I love cheers. Yeah. And what was the other one was? Friends. Oh, friend. That's, they're still off. We're still basically out. So, anyway.

Just a different version of themselves. He said, I go to Dr. Mills. He'll cut. I had a doctor. This was how doctors were back then. Oh, man. As soon as you walked in the door and you said, so I, he pulled out. He'd pull out his white pad, the pad.

As you're talking, he's like, you need a prescription for Xanax. And he starts writing, it's like, you've talked to me for all the three fucking minutes. Like, these guys are ready for, back then you could say, my fucking shoulders killing me. My buddy has the same problem. He said he needs oxycodone. Oh, say less. Oh, yeah, of course. You know, I'm going to start you on this.

You need more holler. Right. That's how it was back then, right? Like, now you could go in bleeding out of your eyes. They wouldn't give, they won't give you anything. But that's, yeah, he sent me there. I got a prescription for hands. I probably was taking, you know, one or two a week.

Okay. Even break them in half because if I took them, I wanted to go to sleep. I got really sleepy. So that is the only thing I've ever taken, although I did get art at because I said it was addicted to opiates. That was a lie. And I feel bad about that case my judge is watching, but for God's sakes. You're remorseful, though. I feel bad.

So, yeah, so that's it, that I've never drank. No, never. And I would date, you ever have your, you meet buddies and stuff? And you tell them like, yeah, you want out there? No, I don't drink. And then you say, no, I don't drink. And then three months later, they would, one day you'd be out somewhere and they'd go, you really fucking don't.

Like, I thought you were full. I thought it was a thing. It's been three fucking money. You really don't. Yeah. And then I have friends who would be like, bro, he, he's never drank. Correct. Never.

Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. as he's 15. Never. Yeah.

I can't even have a fathom it. I don't even have a desire to do it. No, I have no desire. And actually, and I have no patience with people that drink, which is very weird because while they're drinking or when they get to the point where you know that they shouldn't be. As soon as I get to that point where you're. I'll tell you right now. This is, by the way, this is going to be horrible because so many people in the comment section

to be like, yo, bro, you're supposed to be talking about this dude's story. stop telling stories got you think so people will they do it there's always there's all about four guys that tell me this all the time but okay fuck them i can do without them so and you'll understand so but this is a good example okay i went to it wasn't miami it was close to miami uh whatever one of those little towns down there like palm beach or something i forget so i'm down there went down there to talk with someone about a business meeting um we all go out with his investors I'm there drinking my buddy's drinking these other guys are drinking

my wife is there this guy's asking me questions about this project that we're trying to put together which never got put together but I'm like yeah look here's how it works and he's drinks like yeah what about such and such and I starts you at the point

they start interrupting you I can't fucking stand to be interrupted although I interrupt everyone but that's my problem so he apologizes yeah I feel bad So this guy, he asked me a question. I start to answer it.

None of these are simple. Yes. What about? Interrupts me, interrupts me, interrupts me. And then I finally looked at him. I say, hey, bro. I said, if you want to talk about this, we can talk about this. I said, but you keep in, like, I'm now, my wife's there.

She can, she's looking at me like, and I don't get mad. But she can tell. She's like, oh, I could tell you were getting fucking irritated. And I was like, I'm trying to answer your question. You keep interrupting. He's like, I'm sorry, bro. I'm sorry. now my buddy's kind of looking at me like like are you getting upset but he's drinking too

and and now and then I start to explain again and he goes well how come such as that he interrupts me again I said okay listen bro I said we're going to get going I said excuse me the waitress and she was I go excuse me excuse me and she comes out I go I said can I get the check for these just this meal and this meal I said as quickly as possible and she's like um yeah I and my buddy's like yo bro you're leaving I said yeah I'm done I'm done you guys like oh I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry no I get it I get I understand. No, we're done. But I mean, I was done. I love it. And I mean, and my wife's putting stuff up. She's like, no, I could tell. This is about to go really bad. Yes. And she comes over. She goes, I'm sorry, man. I'm so, no, I understand. I understand. And I'm

this, you know, I get the bill. Boom, boom, boom. You know, oh, I got it. No, no, I got it. And we got it. And we grab our stuff and we leave out. I mean, I'm just done. We're not talking anymore. We're not, I'm not, you've interrupted me over and over again. This was the dumbest fucking thing to come to a place and start drinking while we're trying to pitch a story so that this jackass can lend us money to start a business and he's a fucking drunk you're drinking like i don't know who fucking does business like this yeah not me no and no and so and i i left and i remember my wife she's like you were pissed she's like i love it never and i don't know why it ups i think it upset me so much i do because of the alcohol correct

if it had been any i'm super calm in any other situation but when you're getting drunk you're interrupting you're being a jackass and i'm supposed to to placate you because you've decided to drink. Yeah. I'll fucking hate that shit. Yeah, that drives me nuts. Yeah, no tolerance for it. Yeah.

But it goes back to that's why. You know why. Yeah. Well, I'm not that sure. Listen, I didn't figure out a lot of this until I went to prison. Like, you know, like half my mental problems I did not realize until I wrote a memoir in prison and was reading books about how to write memoirs and you're reading stuff and you're like, Well, if I had to pinpoint something, you start thinking about it,

and then you start thinking about what happened specifically, and then you're sitting in your cell crying, you know, and it's like, the fuck is going on. What is happening here? Why is it me thinking about this thing that I haven't thought about in 30 years or, well, at that point, 20 years? I haven't thought about this in 20 or 25 or 30 years, and now just thinking about it has me in fucking tears.

Like, there's probably a mental issue there. Maybe. But that's good stuff. That's self-understanding. That's horrible, bro. I would prefer to be able to bury it. No, we're not bearing anything. No.

Burry it down deep until it turns to cancer. Can't do it. We've got to save the world. You've got to save the world, man. Oh, my God. How many of them have gone this path, though? Almost everybody I talk to you. Sitting by and bars.

They all can pinpoint 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. I think they could, but I think they don't because I think that they are manly men that live in a manly man world of the streets and you don't talk about it. You don't think about it. You bury it. And what you do is you take drugs to drugs and alcohol. To numb the pain. Yeah.

You become just this belligerent prick that wants to live off a society because they owe you something. Right. You tattoo your city on your head. Right. People start calling you 21. Right. Why are they calling you 21? Because they're 21 bodies on my case.

That's why. I try to get people to call me a chainsaw. Okay. Nobody would do it. Nobody? They do now. They do now in the comments. I love it.

You know, chainsaw, what's up? Love that. You were like, you guys were like, you're not, bro, you're not dangerous. Chainsaw's a dangerous guy. Chainsaw is a dangerous guy. You're like, your paper cut. We'll call him thumb tag. Paper cut.

That's a good one. I'll be in the comment section, Colby. So, so, okay, so what happens? So what, so dad, you're at the bar. I'm so sorry about interrupting, but this is so shocking how fucking similar. It's so similar. So you do go to, you do go to college. Yeah, yeah.

Your parents are divorcing, you go to college. Parents are divorcing and mom is finally, we go through the whole, like just the, the horrible stuff, right? Like, you lose the house because dad's a jerk and, you know, we're living in the, in the minivan and house hopping and, you know, going from friends at the church's houses, you know, as my mom's going to school to become a teacher and she's like delivering pizzas at night prior to, uh, my mother went back to school to get her degree in education. go ahead wow there you go and they never got divorced but while he's going through this she starts going what do you want to go back to school for and she's thinking motherfucker because this is going to end soon it never does but there are many times we moved out slept on people's couches crawled out the whole family crawled out the back window as my dad's screaming and throwing things and trash in the house and yelling we all go back to my my brother's back

bedroom climb out the window sneak around get in the car leave and go have to stay for a week somebody's house been there sounds that sound been there been there oh yeah yeah yeah we had a two-story house and and i would i'd be at the top of that two stories right and just you know you'd be looking over metal rails when they were a thing like in the 80s and 90s right and it you could see into their bedroom they had these two doors and you just hang out there just hang out there perched like what's going on is it going to pop off is it and then if it did you know he'd come out and we just the first thing would like he would destroy the Halloween ornaments you know and the the little ghost at the front door is shattered.

And next thing, you know, it's like the palm tree plant that was there. And then sure enough, just like you said, then it was just like, all right, everybody gather their things. And we're going to go to, you know, Aunt Susie's house or, you know, grandma's house. Or, yep, down the stairs you'd go into the minivan. And, you know, then, of course, like the incessant calling would begin when he became sober. I'm super sorry. It'll never happen again.

You know, it was because, you know, I was watching Hogan's heroes and it really got me fired. No. But yeah, I'm going to let everybody go in the basement. I promise you. Oh, my God. And then, you know, then we'd all go back home. And then it was you and I dad of the year, right?

He was like, we're going to go to the gym, and we're going to talk about protein. And then we're going to hit 7-Eleven and pick up some money. And we're going to get slurpees. Then we're going to go to church. And then we're going to beat people up for some more money. And then we're going to come home. We're going to make rotisserie chicken and grab some pizza. And then we're going to leave it like midnight with a bat and go pick up some more money and come back.

and the the the mental battle that had to be going through not only in your head but even your dad's like he oh they sober up and they realize what did I do last night and then you have to somehow or another justify it to yourself or and it's over and over they concoct a story yeah why they did it over and over and over but it I don't know about you but that all of that even to this day is what makes me great self-aware i think i'm amazing i know thank you we're both amazing i'm telling you not everyone else does that's okay but but but think about it right like your idea of probably showing up is probably similar to mine like i have to be here if i said i'm going to do something i'm going to do something yeah yeah i can't i don't ever you'll never have to

tell me that I did a worse job than I think I did. That's funny. Yeah, yeah, super hard on myself. I always want to be, my dad's big thing was being on time is being 15 minutes early. Oh, golly. If you're late, I've got a problem. If you're, I can't stand it. I can't stand it. Oh, yeah. Traffic. That traffic, you account for traffic. You knew they were, are you an idiot? Do you don't know that was going to traffic? You've never seen to go. You've never been here before? Even if there's not. You didn't know there was going to be traffic. What's the worst that happens? You show up 30 minutes early. So what? Yeah. Get to know people. Hang out. the same story man yes so i look at some of those things and this you know what you don't want

to know one that sticks with me forever here i am in the front seat we're doing collections right like running around boston turnpikes like psychopaths we get off the turnpike and we're and we're turning right and this car's coming like they always are his cars come in this direction they're their blinker on they're going to turn past us and he looks at me one of those sober moments and he's like the guy with this blinker on you can never trust those people right what he was like his and so the story was you know here you are your eight you're like i'm just trying to eat my hostess bro like i don't even know what's going on right now i mean right i don't even have a seatbelt on his story as you got older was if you pull out in front of this guy

your excuse is going to be he had his blinker on you can't trust him to know what he's doing he's an idiot and he would he would have these euphemisms all day long and and now that i look back and and i have kids of my own i laugh one of the funny ones. I tell it to my kids. My wife's like, please stop saying that. I say, and we have one boy, and I say to him, you know, my dad used to tell me, if she had a different face and a different body, she could be attractive. It's horrible. Bro, you're like nine years old, right? Like, and he has all of these like one liners, one at a time. And now they all start to come out. You know, you're like, geez, Louise. At some points, like you said, funny, charismatic, sales 101, like good father, like wanted to

tell you these stories, but was just a complete disaster and couldn't get out of his own way. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, my dad did the whole, you're always going to make money. You're a salesman. He's like, the secret to sales is sincerity. If you can fake that, you got it made. He said, and you got that in spades.

And I have no fucking idea what you're saying right now. Yeah, I'm sitting there like, I don't, I don't know what sincerity means. Sincerity. You know? Mine was with the money thing. It's so funny. Mine was this. All right, so, Trab, you're going to grow up and you're going to make a ton of money

and you're going to marry this beautiful girl and she's going to get this great little minivan and your neighbor's going to hate you. You're going to grow up, you're going to make no money, you're going to be a drug addict and a degenerate, and you're going to marry this ugly girl and your neighbor's going to hate you. So just be the first guy. Good, good, yeah, good times. Can I get out of the car now? Who's on first?

But literally, you start to run through all these things. now I giggle about them because you're older and you can look back and you can remove yourself from the psychosis of what was childhood and go, oh, I think what you meant to say in your drug induced verbiage was, you know, oh, you were looking out for me. I do believe. Yeah. Yeah. That was your version of a life lesson. Oh, totally, right? All of them. But yeah, it was interesting. So that was the story. That was like the foundation, but I can't tell you how much it's helped me from the beginning was the foundation that was the foundation bro the foundation was exciting but yeah mom got away from him thank god you know she'd never never never never fell into any of the the the lifestyle if you

will she wanted to make sure the kids were good that was her focus so she she delivered pizzas and we couch hopped until she saved up enough money we got an apartment two bedroom you know four kids and and that was like her like i've made it moment like who here we go Yeah. So I try to take the path less traveled, went to college, started college, and then actually went on a mission for my church. Okay, so you started college, or you complete a college? No, you just start, and then you go on the mission for two years, and then you come back and complete college.

You go on a mission from 19 to 21. Oh, wait, this is your Mormon? Correct. Okay. Yep. Yeah, like you have to go on this church mission. Church mission. So you go on and you're basically knocking on doors. knocking on doors yep knocking on doors 101 but you know it's so funny you look at this you have

400 boys from 19 to 21 on a mission in an area if you will and all of the things that were like negative about the upbringing were why it was good so when you'd show up and you'd knock on a door and it'd be like oh oh there's abuse going on here like bro bro i could smell it from the gate from the beginning and so when you start to just meet people and it was like you'd most of the time you come across people in dire situations right tough spots rock bottom we call it right whatever that means in today's world so you're able to zone in and say i know there's issues here 100% i'm like i've been here yeah and so what was wild was like for me that mission experience was healing for me because i was able to go and show people you can be broken but you're

still going to be alright. Right. And that was interesting to be able to use all of the stories, because you show up in a white shirt and tie. Yeah, yeah. You know, you're 19, you're clean cut. You're, you know, typically good looking, typically, you know, small areas. What year is this? This is two, this is 99 to 01. Yeah, so people, that's still when they knocked on the door, not everybody really knows why you're there. Correct. Correct. Yeah, we still had cords on the phone. Yeah. Yeah. You open the door like, what's like, you know, now if I open the door, I'd be like, Oh, yeah, well, you see him from your ring camera from like, you don't even go outside. You don't even go.

No, no, yeah. You do like, we have a little dog bark on the ring camera, you know. Yeah, so it was, it was, it was two years of just, you know, opportunity to tell people like my, my story that I didn't know I was telling, right? Because here you are and you sit down with people and you look perfect childhood, right, just like yours and mine. And then they'd go, yeah, but I just don't know. like, dad does drop. You'd be like, I do. And then all of a sudden the floodgates would open.

They'd be like, what? Tell me more. But you're here because you're perfect. No, no, no, no. Check it out, bro. No, we're here because we're broke. We're here because we're a mess. And that's what I would tell people, unbeknownst to me.

You know, this time you didn't have any training. It was just like, go knock doors, go figure it out, and tell people the story. Okay, sounds like the plan. And for me, it was two years to get away and actually like walk through the trauma. that was my entire childhood. And so you'd get these kids from broken homes. You get these like parents that couldn't figure it out. And here you are.

You're like a therapist at 19 sitting on people's couch is like, tell me why you keep going back to the bar, Matt. Like you know you got the same result on Wednesday, right? You know, it was so interesting. They're like, how do you know this? I grew up with this for the last 20 years. And you're what, 20? How old are you?

19 to 21. Yeah. 21. Okay. So when you leave there and you go back to college, you finish college? Finance, yep. Yep, finance 101. It was-

You married the pretty girl? Yes, yes. Yes, I did marry the pretty girl, married way above me. Good gracious, way above me. I didn't even have anything at that time. I just was a good salesman. It's convinced her. Oh, golly.

This is the right call. This is the right move for you. Sign here. Yeah, you wanted to know. It was a funny story. I call Melissa, my wife, and so I call her, her nickname is June. It's June Cleaver. True story.

True story. I'm like, okay, June, she's perfect. She fits in that perfect little mold. We couldn't be, you know, further opposites, beauty and the beast. The dirtiest thing ever said on TV was, Ward, you were a little hard on the Beaver last night, weren't you? If you've ever watched Leaving the Beaver, you know, it makes complete sense. I hope you got that cold. I was the wife saying that.

Yeah. Yeah, Ward is the husband. Ward, you were a little hard on the beaver last night, weren't you? Dirtiest thing ever said on TV. It's a good one. It's a good one. But yes.

Yeah. Yeah, so go, you know, finish college. And for me, it was like continuing to quote unquote, do, you know, whatever he didn't do, do the right thing, whatever that is, right? You know, as your kid trying to figure that out. But yeah, all the, all the good stuff. So I got into the world of high stakes finance, hedge funds, money, all the fun stuff, investments. And for me, it was a numbers game.

You know, growing up with him, I didn't realize, you know, all of these things were math. And it was just, he immersed me in it, you know, literally from a young age, you know, you'd get, in our garage, we had money counters. Right. Like that was normal, right? Didn't everybody, you know? Like, we had the old, the big, like, 200 pound coin one that, you know. and it would go like quarters, nickels, dimes, and pennies into the old cloth bags. Yeah.

You tie him up. Like, yeah, of course. Everybody has those. I mean, you know. So I don't know why. So was it like a, did you work for one of the boiler room style things where you're called, just cold calling, cold calling, trying to get investors. Got it.

Okay. Kind of the, the boiler room, boiler room, Jordan Belford, you know, Wolf Wolf Waltz, the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That sucks. Yes.

It's got to be horrible. But that's how you cut your teeth, though. it's like the modern day like door knocking guys right the solar or the windows or all the guys that come around I do love that that scene of him when he goes to the

the penny stock place in the movie and he picks up the phone he's like so you're telling me if I sell this much and the guy's like yeah absolutely and he's like he picks up the phone and rambles through it and the guy buys like $6,000 worth or something he's like oh okay

whatever and it's just like everybody's like you can hear a pin drop how did you do that bad yep uh that's a great uh great call it's how you cut your teeth though in the industry yeah yeah my dad had a you'll love this story my dad had a uh commercial space and um there's TVs everywhere old school TVs like the big tubes that you have to like hang up and screw into the wall and everything disco balls hanging from the sea of what in the world this is random so it would always just go into the front there's like two

offices in the front he had this secretary named devie she wouldn't she was bigger than your table and he'd always see that was always his thing like oh yeah you got to have just an obese secretary that way you never want to bang her it's just a headache yeah like what no like you're 10 like oh yeah you never want to bang your secretary dude like okay just make sure she's just massive like literally like yeah okay fourth grade moving on and so you you you you you eventually, like, grow up, make your way into the back, and you're like, what in the world is going on here? You know, it's like 40 black girls back there.

They're coming through the roll-up door, getting dropped off from, like, the bus stop and picked up in the van, and this is how long ago it was. They were selling porn tapes over the phone. And so he created this company called Professional Management Solutions. And so he'd sell you a baker's dozen, you know, back in the day when you had a VHS and a DVD and all that fun stuff. But the kick was, as soon as you picked up the phone, it was, hey, Matt, this is Kimmy with PMS. And that's what would happen.

And then I got you. And then it turned into a conversation. I was like, that's the type of stuff. He had that stuff, I mean, more of those types of industries and wacky ideas than you can shake a stick at. And it was just, you grew up in it. And I'm like, okay, here we are. We're just sales 101, I guess. That's what we're learning here, sort of.

I was going to say, we used to have the VCR, one of the first VCRs where you, you push the button and it went, and you loaded it from the, yes, and shut it down. Yep. And if you didn't get it right, it would pop back up and you'd argue with it. I would meet these guys. And it's funny, the thing, I met a mobster I was locked up with, and he had a whole, he must have had 50 or 100 women in a room, and they were all doing like, this is back with phone sex. Yeah. They did phone sex.

Oh, yeah. That's nice. So it's funny. It's funny. And he was a mobster. He was a, he would tell you that running a pump and dump scheme was perfectly legal. Like, he went to fucking trial on that. Really?

Of course we, we pumped the, we got it. Of course, why wouldn't we pull out the money at the top of the market? That's what everybody does. Right. Wow. And it's great, but you got to do 20 years. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, but he went to trial and argued it. Oh, that's curious. This is a normal. strategy and this is this is the way it's started goldman is doing yeah yeah he had tons of those man oh i can go i can give you stories after stories he had this this this diamond saw blades you know back in the day they they'd call contractors and they'd give them the soft for free if they bought like a dozen saw blades with it and then he had a whole other crew that would go out stealing yeah throwing them in the river yeah throwing them in the river yeah so you get

them delivered and then all of a sudden you go to your you know your truck on monday morning and your blades are gone they're stolen they tossed in the river so now you got to call and you got to reorder okay it was it was it was a it was a scheme start to finish it was i can give you these all day long it was just one after the other after the other after the other it was just like hey man if you just put your energy into yeah something legit something like you probably keep some of this money you probably crush it probably crush it you probably do really really well but yeah no it was always left, right and center. So, yeah, I came back, cut my teeth on the financial services industry, and then wanted to start my own gig. And my own gig was 2007. So I wanted to hang my own shingle,

raise my own money, build my own fund, you know, do all of that, all of that everybody dreams of. And it was good. You know, we raised a lot of money, a lot back in, you know, 2007, over 100 million. and in 2007 it was a great it's a great time to be investing right great time to be investing how did that perform how was that performance in 2008 through the roof rocket ship baby yeah it was interesting times that's for sure yeah set up a fund you registered what it's not like of course we're going to put it into uh you know mortgage back securities of course We're going to bundle these. Yeah.

You can't possibly think that the entire market's going to collapse. That's crazy. The housing industry has never gone to zero June. This is the safest thing you're looking at. Yeah, no, we actually, we did well on the fund. So knock on wood for that. I didn't have any issues raising and have any issues deploying capital or creating an investment. It was good.

Yeah, that's not what I'm concerned about. No, no, no, no, no, that always comes back around. Yeah, so I got 2007, quarter four to 2008, quarter three, we raised a significant amount of money, shut that fund down when the world went to hell in a hand basket or was about to return the investor dollars and then deployed into a different strategy. The state of Arizona came and said, hey, buddy, so we should have had those regulation dollars. We should have had the taxes that you should have paid to the federal government. We should have, any of the dollars you raised in our state, you should have been registered with us. And anything over $99,000 is a felony. Securities fraud.

Anything over how much? $99,000. Oh, that's $9,000. This is the fuck you're talking about. That'd be a tough, yeah, be tough for the dollar store people. Yeah, $99,000 and I had 66 of them. You open up the company. Yep.

Do you hire people? Yeah. Hire several guys. Lots of guys. Okay. Lots of guys. And you guys are called. You're calling.

You have a lawyer that sets everything up. Everything's registered. You're registered. You have all your licenses. Register with the SEC, Security and Exchange Commission. You do everything except for go to the state because you just have no idea. Correct. Okay.

And in today's world, it doesn't even exist any longer. Guys like Cardone who are raising money on Instagram, so those securities laws are so far antiquated now that you can now send people peer-to-peer lending and, you know, the Internet has completely transformed the way that securities are looked at. But the simplest way I explain it to folks is like the medical marijuana craze.

I call it goofiness. You can go to a particular state like Oregon. you and I could smoke all the weed that we never wanted to smoke. We couldn't put it in the back of a U-Haul and, you know, drive it to California. The moment you do. The federal. It's gone. You're done.

So how much money did you raise? Millions. In that state, over three million. Okay. So anything over 99,000 in that state to the tune of just over three million. Yeah. Class four felony. So you've closed it out, giving everybody their money back.

Did anybody lose money? Nobody loses money and the, so you hear this, the federal, it's the FDLE, it's a federal, no, Florida Federal, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. So is that who showed up at yours? That's the main, that's like the FBI for Florida. Yeah. Is that who shows up? The equivalent, correct.

Yeah. Yeah, they show up and they just indict me. I just been indicted. No questions asked? Nothing. I wasn't even arrested. Okay. Ever.

And would they knock on your door? Knock on my front door. Yeah. Yeah, three guys, one in a suit, two in vinyl jackets that had had nothing to say. And the one guy handed me a thesaurus of paperwork. And that was it. It was literally an indictment. They didn't read me my Miranda rights.

They didn't take me into custody. They didn't raid the house. You know, none of that fun stuff that you see, you know, all over HBO or Showtime. Well, what are they hoping for? I mean, to do that, are they hoping that you go get a lawyer, your lawyer contacts and says, let me pay a fine? Correct. Okay. Yes.

That's what they want you to do. That's what they want you to do. It's a shakedown. It's a shakedown. Yeah. And I was so ignorant at the time and so egotistical for being honest. I drove downtown. And I was like, hey, who's this guy that, like, you know, this attorney on the top corner?

So I go to the building, the lady, you know, she's there down. She's behind the bulletproof glass. And I'm like, hey, can I talk to this guy? And I do the, like, this guy right here. And she's looking, she's looking, she's looking, she's looking. And she goes, oh, sweetheart, you should go get an attorney. Right. He's not talking to you.

Yeah. I was like, oh, this is for real, for real. Right. In my world, I'm not misunderstanding this. No, no, no, no. And I thought it was a misunderstanding. Like, no, we're just going to pay, we're just going to pay a few dollars and just kind of move on. So instead of spending the $500 for the license, you've charged me with 60 something or six or 60.

66. 66 felonies. Correct. Because I didn't fill out some paperwork that I clearly had I applied for the paperwork, I would have been approved because I'm already federally. I'm approved to the feds. I'm going to, the state's a joke. 100% correct.

You're totally spot on. Right. Yep, totally spot on. Security laws were just that way. And a lot of it came from the 0708, the Dodd-Frank, all of the paperwork bullshit that everybody believed was relevant at the time to protect people. You know, countrywide went away and bank of a morning, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Banks were just being eroded left, right, and center, you know, during the quote, quote,

great recession. They were going away. Lehman brothers got locked up, you know. It was everybody was a criminal, you know, who didn't. didn't do everything that they said or should do. So I was a poster child. You know, here you are some, you know, young 20-year-old kid in my early 20s, raising millions of dollars, you know, driving expensive cars, living the life, if you will.

And I remember I walked into one of the very first meetings because still, hadn't been arrested. So you're still running the company. You're still running the company. I still have my investments. You know, I'm married. My wife and I have things going on. So life is continuing day to day.

And, you know, the attorney general's office wants to sit down. with you. They want to have conversations because they've got nothing but time and money. And I get into this elevator and it was me, my two attorneys, and there was one guy who had met us there from the AG's office. He was about my age, maybe a little bit older, but about my age. And this was the first time I understood that something was not going to go my way. Because when the elevator doors closed, he goes, what kind of money do you need to make to drive a car like you drive? Right. Right. That's bizarre. And so I don't, and so my, my, one of my attorneys, one of them's next to me,

and the female is across from me like you are. And she gave me the like, you're not saying a word, bro. I was like, okay. She didn't say anything, but I got the look. Because he's driving a Toyota Corolla and he doesn't like you. 100%. Here you are, you know, at the time, you know, you're in a custom one of 100 Jaguar, you know, that shipped over from London and yada, yada, yada, and you're a big deal.

You know, you're trying to figure out which exotic car to drive at, you know, the age of 23 years old. You get in an elevator with a guy who just spent eight years, you know, paper cuts, you know, through law school. And now he got a job for maybe 47K. He still owes $300,000 in student loan. You know, he hasn't been laid in a decade, you know, and here we are in an elevator. And he's the one that's looking through my, you know, he's the initial paperwork investigator. And I thought, oh, boy, this is interesting.

Yeah, it's funny. I had a friend that went to trial. I mentioned this guy all the time. his name, we called him Red Bull because he was selling Red Bull vending machines. It was a business opportunity scam. So, and he goes to trial because he's like, I don't

feel like I'd done anything wrong. So he went to trial and they spent, he corrected me the other day or one. I always say they spent a whole day. He didn't. He said they spent several hours, not the whole day. I was like, okay, they had other things to do, but they spent several hours just questioning him on

purchases he'd made. Like, what'd you spend $1,200 for? And he'd be like, you know, at the whatever resort. And he'd go, they'd go, that's dinner, right? And you'd go, yeah, yeah, that's me and two guys, we went to dinner. You spent $1,100 on dinner. What'd you got was, I mean, you know, whatever. How much was this, how much was your Bentley?

And it was like 800, you know, how much was, like, just when you went on, I mean, and they, he's like, you know what you're saying, they went over and over and over. Or the checks, he's like, anything they asked you sounds ominous. Horrible. It sounds like, like he is, and you're sitting there thinking to myself, what they're trying to do is make sure the jury hates you. 100%. And he said, I'm sitting there telling them like, look, I don't have any money. I'm broke because of this whole thing.

He's like, and here's the thing. He's like, they've taken this. They've taken that. They did call this. He said, the one thing, they left me with one car is our cheapest car. He didn't, this is just him telling you this. Yeah, yeah. He said, the cheapest car they left.

left him with was he said, my wife's BMW is probably two years old. He said, but it was like an $850, whatever. $140,000 car. Yeah, it's a $140,000 vehicle. He was paid off. Yeah. So he said, I'm sitting there telling the jury, I'm broke, I'm broke, I'm broke, I'm waiting for them to foreclose on my house. Here's your picture. No, no, it wasn't even that. He said, so when that day was over, he goes down, he goes into the parking garage to get into his car he says I chirped my car I go to get in and he said

one of the jurors was parked like two or three cars down he said he's driving like a beat up rusted out Toyota that's fucking 10 years old 12 years old whatever and he said this guy looks over at me is I'm in a fucking suit and I'm getting into

a hundred and something thousand dollars sports car And he just listened to me the whole day explained, I have no money, I'm broke, I'm broke. He goes, so I know he looked at me. He said, I desperately wanted to say, hey, bro, this is, wait a minute. I know how that, like he said, I immediately thought, fuck, how does this look? Correct. And I wanted to say, hey, wait a minute.

I really am, bro, I've got no money. This is all they left me with. Like, I have to drive something. This is what they left me with. It's paid for, like, he said, but I, he is, we looked at each other in the eye, and I know not to talk to him. But I looked at him and I thought, Fuck. I'm going to lose this fucking trying.

100%. But they can... Same story. Same story. And everything like you say gets read out loud. And the way it looks on paper, every email that you've ever sent or joked with your buddies, you know, when you're reading it out loud from a third party perspective. It just sounds horrible. It's just sounds horrible. It doesn't matter.

Mr. Cox fed the homeless. It sounds horrible. Like the way they can say. you're sitting there thinking, oh my God, I didn't know that was illegal. I'm so sorry. I didn't realize they didn't have a home. I'm so sorry. It is, man. And everything gets read out loud. Everything. We fought this. We fought it from 08 to 2012. So you went to trial? Oh, okay. I was going to say, you're just fighting it trying to get them. Fighting it in the back, you know, here I, and we did everything that we could do. I hired, I hired the best friend of the attorneys general that was, you know, overseeing the case. Now I have three attorneys that are just there because they're all buddies and they're the

who's who. And I bought a Cartier watch and I bought a Ford Explorer and I gave a money for down payment on a cabin. I gave bags of duffel bags of cash. It was five years of just nausea over, I mean, mentally, emotionally, physically financially. You're just drained. Every 30, 60 days, you're going back to the courthouse. You know, you're putting your three quarters into the meter. You're walking in. They're reading all sorts of things you don't understand. You know, they just, and that sound just incredibly terrible because you're a horrible human. Like you said, he's fed the homeless. He actually, there's good proof that he kicked a dog one time, even though the dog was biting somebody.

He's mean to children. Right. He's definitely mean to children. We impersonated Santa Claus in the mall one time to give away candy canes. I mean, it was just wretched. And you'd hear this every, every month, every other month, every month. And it was just, you guys have an agreement? Nope, we're still doing this.

And it was just, okay, move it, move it, move it, move the goalpost. 2011, fourth quarter, I was just done. I told my wife, like, whatever's coming after this can't be this bad. I mean, this is just, I had a, I had a little bit of bravado still left in my, in my briefcase. I got a letter of a clean bill of health from the FBI. They went and poured through all of my documentation and said no fraud, no misappropriation, you know, all the things that would be sexy typically in a case like this. The West Coast director wrote me a clean bill of health.

I still have that paperwork. And so I thought, okay, that kind of bodes well if you kind of get in front of people. You know, hey, to your point, had I filed the paperwork, you know, super big misunderstanding, I wasn't over here just knocking over 7-Elevens or beating up old ladies, wasn't a credit card, wasn't a pump and dump. It was none of that nonsense. And my charges, I thought, reflected that. You know, a lot of times, especially now you and I removed for so many years, like wire fraud,

bank fraud, you know, misappropriation of funds. I see those a lot. I didn't have any of those charges. It was quite literally, I was charged with transactions of an unregistered securities dealer or salesman. That just seems like a fine. That's where it is, brother. That's the way it is. So I go to my attorney and I go, you know, 2011, like, hey, we're done.

We're dead. Like, I'm just, I'm so emotionally exhausted from this thing. I've got, I'm still trying to build. I still have investors. I still have a wife. Like, I got a whole life out here. I'm still trying to go to church, be a good human. I'm on the front page.

Like, this whole thing's bad, right? And she says, uh, well, get through the holidays. Okay. That was probably the best advice I ever got from an attorney. Everything else was just ridiculous paperwork. So January 20th of 2012, I stood in the courtroom, stood before the judge, and he read all of the things, because you went to school, because you have a degree, because you had

an attorney, because, because, because, because you should have known better. And as a result, I'm going to make an example. out of you. Two years, Arizona Department of Corrections, immediately remanded. How does that, how does that work? Like, where do you go from there to, and did you expect to get some type of incarceration? You're thinking, was there- We all said probation. We all said, we've paid the money, we've gone through the, we've poured over documentation, we've gone through this, like, nobody's screaming and yelling. about the district attorney? What are they saying? We want prison time? They always wanted,

they always wanted jail time, yeah. Okay. So did they say two years? Or were they, did they have a recommendation? No, no, we agreed to put it before the judge. I'll let the judge do it. I've never seen that really go, go well. No. With the exception of maybe one time, and I didn't even know the guy. It was a guy that knew with a guy. It was a California, no. California life, they're supposed to give you life if you of so many, got in front of the judge, pled his case, and the judge actually said, I'm going to give you, like, eight years instead of what they're asking for, you know. Jeez.

But I don't, like I said, I don't know that guy. That somebody told me about his buddy. I got you. Yeah. Which I'm sure it's true, but still, very seldom was it when you give it up to the judge, because they're so, they're so callous that they don't even fathom what they're doing. Mm-hmm. So.

It is interesting you say that, not to jump ahead, but I had a probation officer that woke me up to that. like term limit idea, the callousness behind them. And when I got him, he said, you know, I've been a P.O. longer than you've been alive. And he told me this in his office. He said, I'm so conditioned that when I lease, when I let my mom stay at my time share, I make her sign a lease. Like, he's that messed up. Yeah, yeah. He's that screwed up. He's seen so many things go wrong. He's that screwed up. He's like, my kids, when we get pulled over by the cops, you know,

for speeding or whatever, like they have, he goes, I open up all. all the doors. I open up all the, like, he's so conditioned. He's so, like, to the point where you go, man, I don't know if you should be doing this any longer. Like, everybody's a bad guy. Everybody's out to get you. The world is always ending. The sky is always falling. I'm like, brother, I don't know if that's a good place to live. But to your point, yeah, these judges are reading, in my opinion, a vast majority of them are reading sentence structure, sentencing guidelines. Yeah. That's it. There's very little conciliatory thought process of, If this, then that, could this, then we should.

Here we, like, how do you in any world take a seven-figure earner off the street who's paying taxes, you know? Who simply didn't pay the 500 bucks to get the license to do what he was doing, even though he was licensed to federal government, which really probably should supersede your state licensing. And almost every other state it does. That's the interesting part, right? I don't even know that. I just instinctively, I'm just. You are smart. Yeah.

Amazing. I think we agreed upon. I know. I tell my wife that all the time. Yes, you are. And she repeats it. You are. That's not what she says at all.

Okay. We're not there yet? No, it's the, no, there was a, there was a brief moment, but in time, but since then it's, I get a scoff. She was like, shut up about the red wall. Okay. You've had one amazing moment, okay? Jesus, Louise, it's red. Yeah, man.

And there we go. Immediately remanded handcuffs. Bing, in the courtroom, you're there. You've got your suit on. I'm an idiot and I thought that would help. Right. Literally. And it's so funny you mentioned, and it's only funny now because we can laugh about it now,

mentioned your buddy in the garage. So the day I get sentenced, I thought, you know, we're going to be like the people. And so we pulled up in my wife's Lexus. Right. Right.

I was just like, this is a four door. This is what normal people drive. Pull up in the Lexus, you know, I put my three quarters in because I'm coming back out. Got my suit and tie on, you know,

let's like prim and proper and there was immediately. I mean, literally, he read it out loud and it was all the things I thought, oh, this sounds, yeah, that sounds, yeah, it's good, yeah, totally. You're right. I do have a degree. I didn't swindle anybody. There's not anybody over this, you know, who's my investor pool that's 75 and living on SSI, you know, like some degenerate, you know, there's no, oh, he took your money and bought a yacht

or a lamp. No, no, no, these, I told you where it was going. It went there. It went there, everybody got, Bing, bang, boom. And he's reading all of these things out loud and then just sucker punches you in the throat. Yeah. Bam, two years. They put the clinks on you.

My wife's in the courtroom. My mom, all my supporters. It kind of hit you like a ton of bricks. You don't really know. I wasn't expecting it. So it's, you know, what to expect when you're expecting. Yeah. Because you've done all the right things in life.

You should have known better. Yeah. You're going to use all of my accomplishments against me. 100%. And, of course, the thing is, had you had no, none of those accomplishments he would have used that against you you got you know so there's just no winning no no no not at all but yeah i went downstairs you know they put they they take you through the the jail and the elevator and the whole process of just nastiness and i will tell you though the first

moment of gratitude was when i was 30 60 minutes into this process there was as we all know everybody listening to this jail and prison is very you know political very color racially motivated so you know in in your in your holding tank you sit with people who look like you and act like you and sound like you and i was sitting by myself everyone else was a drug addict and this guy walked in and he had a suit on and he was white he was about my age and i thought oh okay so he came and sat down next to me and you know the first question you don't ask is oh what did you do yeah right right no it's more like as you're getting to know each other in this weird holding tank, he went to trial and he got eight years.

Right. That was my first moment of gratitude, Matt. It was like, could I got, yeah. I could have got, I could have got eight, nine, 17, 46 doesn't matter. Yeah. Right. Two felt for the first time in my life, two felt like palatable. I can do two.

Okay. Yeah, no, I, I, it's, the funny thing is, is that it doesn't matter how much time you get. It's always, it's always, I have only met two people the whole time I was locked up that said I got a girl. Like basically they were like, I'm, I got a deal. Like I really like, I deserved more. I got this. I'm thrilled.

One of them's John Boziac who was supposed to get like 10 or 12 years. He ended up with two because they, his lawyer by happenstance, he said one thing. She said, you know what? Don't sign that. Hold on. Went and looked into something. came back and said, I got this thrown out because somebody had opened up a package that had no right to do it. And the, they had been lying, secret service had been lying saying that

they had like a warrant to open it when in fact, the mail person just opened it. Okay. And found it and called them. They showed up. They arrested him and he played guilty. I got it. So you pled guilty to everything. He's ready to sign for, well, it was like 10 or the range is something like 10 or 12. I forget. And then while he's doing it, he's like, man, if that fucking got, he's like, I can't believe him. I got to go to jail for 10 years because that guy opened that package and she was like whoa what guy opened what package the secret service open the package and he's like no no the guy at the uPS store opened and called the secret service she's like oh she goes hold on really and this by the way this is a public a public defender

whoa which never happens usually they'll yeah yeah sign but she goes i'm gonna be at she leaves comes back says i got him to drop this it's but i couldn't get him to drop the aggravated identity theft i'm sorry you're going to have to do two years he's like what so let me see sign. Whoa. The other guy was on meth, had been up for four or five days, was driving a truck through a, through a national, a federal national,

a national forest, you know, like the highway went through it. He's driving through it. He dozes off. The truck veers off. He runs over two hikers that are just hiking along the, boom. Now, there's no such thing as vehicular manslaughter in the federal system, and it was on federal land so he got charged with murder

and then he got 15 years and when I was like I don't know why I said this I just when he told me I was like can you appeal it or you and he looked at me he goes I killed two people

he goes I think I got a deal I mean he was listen start teared up started crying got up and walked out of the room just cold well like he you know what I'm saying yeah he'll I mean obviously

it's horrible that these two people died but you could see it was killing him and he was actually I think he'd done he was getting out in like a year or two. Wow. Yeah.

But those are the only two people who were like, man, I got a deal. Everybody else, it's, you just don't, no matter what they give you, you've already justified your crime to yourself and you feel like I don't deserve five years. I don't deserve that. You know, I don't. And then they give you five years. And then you're like, I don't, they could give me probation. They could.

Yeah. No, I'm talking to, I got a phone call last week from a guy. He just signed a federal 60 to 96 months. And, you know, that was this question to me. Did I do the right thing? Did I do? And I'm like, bro, and his is, his is blatant. It's, you know, it's blatant.

Right. You know, it's bad. And so I'm like, bro, you could probably got 30 if they took this to trial. Right. You know, I mean, the way that these things stack up, I mean, he's got like hundreds of victims. Right, right. Downloaded lots of pictures. Lots of, there's a lot of people in the basement.

That's funny. I feel like I know exactly what this case is about. I'm just like, oof. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm like 60 to 96 on a federal, you know, maybe you can fight for 48.

Well, you know, it's really funny about people is the people that are, that haven't been through the system are still in the mindset of it's about justice. And because they're focusing so hard on what I really deserve, they don't focus on what these people can do to me. And if you focused more on, listen, like they can give you 20 years and you're saying, no, no, I don't deserve 20 years. You're still thinking justice. Correct. You're thinking the right thing to do. Correct.

They're not thinking about the right thing. They're thinking about a conviction. They're thinking about getting, you know, names on the board, years on the board. That's what they're focus on. So stop thinking. Like, they have enough evidence to give you 20. They're now offering you 10. You're saying, I deserve probation.

It was a mistake. Stop it. That does not remove that from the equation because you're the only one thinking that way. Yeah. The agents aren't thinking that way. The prosecutors, prosecution is not thinking that way. The judge is not thinking that way. And, you know, the, so they have all the guns.

They have all the prisons. They've got all the barbed wire. They've got the court system. They've got everything on their side. You have nothing. So it's about, it's about getting the, the best possible sentence versus the worst possible sentence. And justice is not a part of it.

So and then don't. And then the other thing is like, don't, stop complaining. Oh, bro. Complaining. It doesn't do anybody good. It does nobody good. People end up hating you. Yeah, they do.

And you hate yourself. You hate everybody else. It ruins the person that you could be inside. You could walk out. Like, she's like, what's your name? Yesterday, right? We interviewed a chick name, Portia. Portia louder.

Yeah. I know, right? Portia? She said, I know, Portia. She said that somebody said, stop. Yeah, federal. Yeah, she said, stop thinking about how horrible this is. Start thinking about the amazing person that you're going to walk out of prison as. And she was like, when she walked out of prison so many years later, she walked out.

She was like, I was an amazing person. Heck yeah. Like, you know, and people are like, you're an amazing. She's like, I am an amazing. She was like, it was amazing. Yeah. And she's got a boatload of confidence. Yeah.

But that's, that is the right attitude to stop thinking, I shouldn't have gone to jail. I shouldn't have this. I shouldn't have. Did they didn't stop it, bro? You got to look at, your best bettors to look at this time as a gift. You'll probably walk out a decent human being. It's funny you say that because that's the same advice I give to everybody is that you cannot, you can. I know, I hope the four people in comments roast him.

Seriously. You were saying, sorry, you were saying you cannot go in. You cannot go into this. And when you walk out, nobody wants to hear, my baby mama did this. My district attorney hated that. My co-defendant, whatever. This guy snitched on me. Nobody wants to hear that.

Yeah. Nobody wants to hear. The best advice I give to these cats on the way out, the blueprint for employment is this. Hey, Matt, I'm Travis, and for the last two years I've been incarcerated. What I learned about myself while I was incarcerated is one, two, and three. The reason I applied for this job is because I think I can bring A, B, and C to your company based on what I learned. What did you get yourself incarcerated? What do you tell them when they ask that? It's irrelevant. Well, I know, but people ask. No, I know, but that's the conversation that brings you accountability. Well, I understand, but I'm saying if somebody, if an employee were to ask. You go, yeah, this is the charge. Yeah. Yeah, period.

Oh, see, I was going to say, like, I would absolutely own up to it. Like, anybody who's, I wouldn't say anything that mitigates the circumstances all. No, no, no, no. I was a drug dealer. I was young. I was stupid. I sold drugs. Period.

This is the charge. Yeah. That's it. Went to prison. Here's what I, here. And then I, you know what I'm saying? Like, that makes sense because then I would try and end on that note. Like I would start by, even if they said, I would start with, here's what I did.

I was stupid. I went to prison. Here's what I've learned. Here's where I'm at now. You have to. Because if you do it reverse, in their mind while you're talking to him, I think they're thinking, he's a drug dealer, he's a drug dealer. They could.

I was a drug dealer. But a lot of these guys get out and they want to go, they don't want to check the box. That's what I hear. Of course. Oh, I don't want to check the box. Then I, no, man, like stop with the lion bullshit. Yeah. Just from the jump.

Hey, man, this is where I've been for two years. The box is actually, if you look at it correctly, the box is not bad. Because if I check the box and they call me back after I've checked the box, now I know I got a chance. 100%. I'd rather, let's, I would hate to not check the box, get into the interview, and now I have to explain. Or worse, I get the job. Oh, oh, yeah.

Oh, and now I'm just, every, every time somebody, you know, hey, can we talk to you over here? You're just vaugh. I'm nauseous. Wade, that's Wade, our buddy Wade, who, uh, who had, got one or two jobs and, and as soon as they figured it out, they quit. Or if the company gets sold, the new company fires them. You know, and this, by the way, was never convicted of anything, was just arrested for, on a murder charge and was fighting it the whole time, but every time they saw that he had been arrested for a murder charge, fired him.

Like, I wasn't, I'm not, I'm still fighting it. I'm not guilty there. See you. So I can't be here. Yeah. That's not, that's not easy one to. What's funny is as far as recidivism is concerned, it has the lowest recidivism right out there.

Oh yeah. Fraud. High. Very high. Yeah. Fraud and drugs. Yeah, very high. But both of those guys usually never accept responsibility.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I found, at least. I get a lot of those guys. I was in prison last couple weeks ago. This guy screams from the back. He had a, anyways, I won't tell who he is, but he was, anyhow, he says, I need to make Elon Musk money. I go, my guy, like, when do you get out?

Nine months, so you'll be back in 13, right? Like, you'll see you in about 13, because that'll be about your life. cycle like you don't even know what that means yeah so the idea that you're going out there with you know just shut up like stop like people really say that yeah you said it out loud to me too i would see i'd be like i'd laugh i'd be like the fact that you have the first of all the fact that you have the confidence to say that out loud is actually pretty good but the statement itself was horrible yeah ignorant but the fact that you thought it was the right thing to say i mean is that a joke or if he was like no no no no he was like offended because i tried to

I go, well, let's reverse engineer that. Like, do you have a family of like 900 or like, what's the story? Yeah. You have kids? No, no kids yet. Okay. So in this county where you're locked up, you're going to stay here? Yeah, I'm going to stay here.

Okay. So about 65K would be really good for you in this particular county. Right. Right. So like, let's get you to 90 and then you just be king of the world. Like, you could sell three hondies a month at the local dealership and make 90K. And that's a good living. And then if you made like 140, like you'd just be out of your mind.

That guy's got bigger problems. Massive problems. Because he's, in his mind, he thinks that success is based on an income. Yes, a dollar amount. Yeah. And that's a huge mistake. I know guys that are middle of the road, teaching their kids, little league soccer teams, able to go to all the functions, are married with a wife, happiest people in the world.

And I go guys that are worth $30 million. I'm having dinner with a guy. He'll never watch this. On Tuesday, it's probably worth 20 or 30, I've mentioned him a few times, $20 or $30 million, super successful, overweight, not in good shape, kids can't stand them, ex-wife, miserable human being, unhappy. You have everything in the world. Why do you think that is?

He values money so much. It means everything to him. And I, you know, money and respect mean everything to him. And money and respect have probably destroyed his life. You know, his ego, just like every decision I have ever made in my entire life, every single bad decision I've ever made was not 99, 100% of every bad decision I ever made was based on my ego, every single one. and he he just you know it's it's it's horrible he's not a bad person he's yeah i say that but um he's not

but his his values are so jesus i talked to another guy yesterday that i was in prison with that once again this guy's worth million i always say this i always say every person i've ever known that has owned a Lamborghini is an asshole every this guy's owned two um and he's a guy was on the phone with it. No, no, no. The guy that I did, that was on the 16th and 96. Yeah. He had a black lamb off.

Of course he did. Of course he did. And what's so funny is all of these people are miserable and they don't understand why. And the whole conversation I had with this guy yesterday for 45 minutes was him rambling on and on name dropping, talking about money. And I'm like, how's your daughter? a minute on the daughter, how's the, you're in the middle of the divorce, are you still talking to her? Is it okay? How is she, you know, she's a whore. She's this. She's that. She this. She that. She did this. She did that. And here's the funny thing is that everything was her, her, her. And I'm thinking to myself, I know she caught you in a motel room with a fucking prostitute. I know that you fucking lie all the time. I know that you're fucking drunk and you're drinking. You're constantly, you know, you've lost your license. Like, you've lost your license for life. In Florida, for them to, take away your license for DUIs for life, you've really fucking, you're a bad drug, especially if

you're rich. And you are rich. You can hire the best attorneys. You can go to the rehab. You've done, you've got so many DUIs. You're still drinking. Yeah, you're a mess. Yeah, he's just an absolute mess. And talking to him is so frustrating because you cannot explain to him that if he would just change his thought process, he would be, he would just become more appreciative and humble and stopped thinking that everybody else was stupid and he was smart he would be such a happy person and you went to prison with him

yeah he's been to prison that's the scary part so what like this is what's interesting right I love this this is this we can do a whole series on this why does one person go to prison and become the best version of themselves and one person goes to prison and becomes the worst version of themselves

why do some people go to prison yeah why do some people go to prison you and I both know guys that have gone to prison and gals come out the best version of themselves. Yeah. And then we know the other nine out of ten that come out worse. Yeah, you think it's nine out of ten? I think it's like 99 out of a hundred. But yeah, it's, well, I think. Is it a choice? Is it the environment? Is it we haven't dealt with? Okay. Absolutely a choice. I agree. I think that most people go in there. They're angry, bitter. They hang around other angry, bitter people. A lot of resentment. Yeah, they don't look at this

as a chance to improve themselves. They don't, of course, a lot of them go in. They don't think there's anything to improve. Oh, no. And I taught GED. So, I mean, I would have. I taught. Did you?

At the community college. No, I taught at, in prison. I taught in prison at the community college. Bro. Hold the phones. What kind of prison? We're about to get crazy around here. What kind of prison did you go to do?

Monday through Friday. You're working. I left the yard. Oh, that's insane. I'm not leaving anywhere. I left the yard. So, and you went, and they allowed you to go teach GED? 200, yes, at Cochise Community College.

250 of us left the yard every day. Oh, that's nuts. We worked for the sheriff's department, fire department, the school, the whole, yeah. Elementary school? Elementary school. Yeah, it'll be a good TikTok. That's nuts. Oh, I'll tell you, here, Colby, you can chop this one up.

Literally, you want to talk about nuts. So in this tiny little shit town that the prison was located in, well, there's four prison yards, right, in this little tiny town. From my cell at night, you can see the Mexican flag. That's how close we were to the border. A lot of these COs would walk over, drive over, would work in the prisons, walk over, drive back, that close. I, one of my jobs was at the elementary school, Monday through Friday, eight hours a day. Okay. In the lunchroom, in the maintenance room. So when the kids would go and rotate to recess, we would go and we would go and we would We'd clean the classroom.

Right. Okay? And we'd be on this rotation. So you'd clean up the entire school throughout the day. And a portion of that was the lunchroom. Myself and four other guys were opening chocolate milk for children. Right. In our oranges, in our inmate uniform.

That is. Walk yourself through this as a parent for everybody in middle America. Right. Right. So you've taken a guy like myself, a seven-figure annual earner. You've thrown him in prison because he's no longer good enough to be on the outside. He has to be inside, but then you've let him leave the yard every day to go to work for 35 cents an hour. With children. With children. Now, imagine how screwed up this town has to be.

Walk yourself through it. I'm a parent. All of you parents out there. Pretend you're a parent. You're walking in and it's your kid's birthday. Fourth grade. And you walk into the lunchroom, it's that, you know, you've got the balloons, the helium, the cake, the whole nine. And there's five inmates there. And we're standing at the counter. And we're helping children with their pizza slices, the rectangular pizza. I've got the pizza cutter. I'm opening chocolate milks because they're like, been out too long and you gotta open them

and pull the whole thing and, okay, here you go. How screwed up of a town do you have to be to realize the only way this town works is if the inmates are actually there doing the jobs and you're okay with it. Yeah. I, you know, it's so funny is that I wonder to myself, like one, I think, yeah, that's,

and it's inappropriate, but then I also think, those guys are out custody, they're harmless. They're not going to do anything. They're on their best behavior. They're happy to be outside of the, so I don't, I'll bet you there's never been an incident with any of these fucking guys.

You know what I'm saying? Correct. That's why they continue to get off. And they show up. Every day. And they're getting paid big money, 35 cents an hour. And the state is getting the contract.

Oh, the state's probably billing them out of $12. 15 bucks. You know it. Tons of money. Right. Tons of money. So, yeah, we would do a lot of good around town. We had a community garden.

that the inmates would take care of. They'd do wildland fire. They'd work at the sheriff's department. They'd work at the administration for the school buildings. So my job, my job for about a better portion of a year, was I was a tutor at the community college. And so the four yards would feed, and so you'd have, you know, like the GED program,

and you'd have, you know, different vocational programs that would take place inside the community college that we would be dropped off at. In my particular area, there was a thing called a small business development center, The nonprofit, they go into prisons and churches, all sorts of stuff around different communities. And that SBDC came in and the gentleman who was responsible for it, he starts teaching like Business 101. I start teaching it behind him. And I'm like, hey, but like, I just came down.

So the stuff that you should be teaching these guys is, you know, this about business, that about business, this about. And he's like, what, what's your story? How do you know about this? And literally it turned into a year of therapy for me. I came from the financial services industry. It came from how to build a business. I came from entrepreneurship. And so here I am with this opportunity with hundreds of guys from four yards going out and saying, all right, what do you want to do when you get out? I want to build a business.

Okay, like not in dope or like legit, right? I would tell them. I made a joke. You guys are entrepreneurs. You're just in the wrong industry. I also taught the, they have something called ACE courses at night, adult continuing education courses. And I taught the real estate course.

And I would, there'd be 30, 40 guys in the class, the first thing. And I'd be like, who's here for, who sell, here's, who? I would say, who is here for selling drugs? And you've got like, half the guys, you know, raise their hand. They'd be like, boom. And I'd be like, are you guys like street level? Like you, at one point were you on the corner talking to people, shaking them out, you know, hey, man, what's up with it?

You want something. You want. And they were like, yeah, I said, you guys will kick ass. I said, because you're fearless. You'll knock on doors. You'll talk to anybody. You'll, you know, and I would, and I'd be like, This is, I said, this industry, I said, is one of the few industries.

I said, where you can take everything you already know and you could apply it to real estate. And I said, here. And then I would, you know, explaining knocking on doors, selling, you know, flipping contracts. You know what I'm saying? Bird dogging. And that's what I do the whole thing. And I'd explain it. They'd be sitting there going, you're telling me I can go knock on somebody's door,

convince them to sell their house for $100,000. Then I can sell that contract for $150. And I make the $50? I can wholesale. And I don't have them any money. involved? Yeah. No, none. Exactly. They would be like, oh, my God, it's so funny. I tell these guys the same thing behind bars. We have a whole real estate course behind bars on their tablets, teaching them exactly that. Go knock on doors. The whole idea of the, you know, the sign in the ground,

we buy houses, you know, like put your number on that thing. Start dialing for dollars. I mean, man, that's so funny. It is. It's an industry that you, and I say this to these guys all the time, like if you just take all the things that you did, you're not afraid to take a risk, obviously. It's why you're here buying bars, you know, but there's this idea that you're, you know, but there's this idea that you don't understand what what you don't know about yourself continues to bring you back here yeah well you know most of them get there they get into prison like I said they hang out with other guys they hang out with other negative people they talk about selling drugs or or whatever crime that they committed they talk about that with other like-minded individuals and they start to

learn how to do it better right and then so they're get there basically we're and I say this all the time guys would be explaining something to me I go what do you think I go I think you're working on your next indictment that's what I thing that's what it sounds like to me it's good um and and they would you know or and they so these people hang out with those those guys it's a very negative um environment they're not they don't read the books that they should be reading they tell them to self work right they tell themselves they're gonna do this when they get out do this when they you know how many guys i would meet and they'd say yeah yeah because i wrote stories when i was i wrote true crime stories when i was locked up and guys

would say, yeah, yeah, I'm going to write my story when I get out. Because I'd say, hey, man, I heard you have a great story. I heard this or that. Tell me the story. And they tell me the story. They go, bro, that sounds like that sounds amazing. I'd love to write a synopsis on that. And they'd say, man, I don't know.

Because what I would do is I'd say, once, if they were okay with it, I'd say, well, what I want to do is I'm going to attach your life rights to the story I'm going to write. And I'll put it on a website that I've already gotten. I'll hopefully I can sell your life rights. I'd already sold some guys life rights. So they already knew. And I got some guys in Rolling Stone magazine.

So they already know this is possible, this is a coccas, this is what he's doing. And so, because somebody's got, yeah, I don't know, bro. Like, I think I want to write it myself when I get out. And I'd go, well, wait a minute. You've been locked up seven years, right? Like, you've got two more years to go, right? And I was like, you'll never have this much time in your life. Never.

And I said, if you haven't written it by now, I promise you, you will not write it when you get out. I said, you can keep telling yourself that. You know, I had that conversation. Yeah. Like, or you can let me, you've read six of my stories. You know I wrote so-and-so. You know I got two published books at this point. Like, this is the smart move.

But if you're, that's fine. You know, and I said, if you want, you can write it in here. I'll help you. And I'd explain it all to them. Like, if you're really serious, I'll help you knowing you're not going to do anything. None of it. Because I see you on the rec yard every day, walking the track, playing, you know, playing volleyball with your friends or doing whatever, you know, handball, whatever you're doing. You're not doing anything.

You're not serious about it. And that's what? happened is I'd end up writing their stories. But, but they were always saying, when I get out, I'm going to do this. I'm going to open a restaurant. I'm going to this. I'm going to that. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to go borrow money from my friends and family. I'm going to open up a restaurant. What do you think? And I said, I think you're going to lose a lot of friends and family. That's what I think, you know, as well as their money. Yeah. Like I think that restaurants have a huge failure rate. Huge. And, you know, I'd explain the whole thing to them,

how it's going to go under. You have no experience in this. I said, I think you should go work for a restaurant. That's what you should do. And I think you could become a manager and learn how the whole thing. I said also they have a culinary school here that tells you are you are you in that man fuck that that okay got listen so you're not going to do any of this by the way you're just going to get out get frustrated and start selling drugs again and I'll see you in two years because I'll still be here um that's got it yeah yeah and you know you would have these conversations with them and half of them would get frustrated and upset and walk away and the other half would walk away but they come back those are the good ones and they'd be like I don't know anything about restaurants

like and they'd say you're right I thought about what you said yeah what do you think I should do because I'm serious about this? Do you have a business plan? Have you looked into it? Have you had your friends and family send you books in on how to start a restaurant and anything? It's because all I see you you read is hood novels. They read hood novels or the urban novels? That's all you read.

Correct. So there are these guys that they don't have anybody. It's kind of like the black kid born next to the projects who, grandmother's raising him because his mother's a prostitute, his father's in and out of prison, all the guys and family members in his life are selling drugs. And then he starts selling drugs. He gets in trouble. He goes to prison. He hangs out with those same people again. It's like you're hanging out with people that are selling drugs and going to prison. They're saying the same thing. You go to prison. You keep hanging out with him. Like nothing has changed.

Pete, my buddy Pete says, you cannot go to prison. and continue to behave in the same manner that led you to prison and get released and not expect to come back. 100%. You know? Nope. So I'm like, this is an opportunity. It's like, first of all, there's three guys here from NASA. There's guys, I'm not joking.

Like, NASA. There's guys here that have master's degree. There's guys here, there was Lance, I forget his last name, he was a billionaire. There's guys here that owned, worth $100 million. There was a guy there that had, that owned two. nuclear power plants and was building nuclear power plants in China. You know what I'm saying? Like there are guys here that are you could never get into the same restaurant.

If you were the bus boy, you wouldn't be in the same. Well, maybe for you the bus boy. But so the idea that you're here with these people and you're not spending time with them and talking to them and taking the classes that they're teaching because someone like me, I'm teaching class. Like this guy who's a drug dealer, like the only opportunity you have to mix with me, is in class. Correct.

Maybe we sit down at the same table, but pretty much it's you and your car, your little gang members are all sitting together and there's four people there and I'm not going to sit there or I sit there and you guys talk

and you don't want to interact with me in front of them. Like whatever it is, the situation is to start taking these classes. You can talk to these guys on the record. You're taking none of those opportunities. You're laying in bed at night,

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Just visit ghostbed.com slash Cox and use the code Cox at checkout. Again, that's ghostbed.com slash Cox with the code Cox at the checkout to save a whopping 50% off site wide. Or borrowing money from your drug dealer friends. And you picture yourself with Lamborghinis parked in front of your restaurant while you're walking around. handing out, you know, champagne bottles to everybody, and you're a big shot, but you haven't thought about one fucking time on what the square foot of that restaurant is or how people are going to figure out that you've got a restaurant. You even put one ounce of thought into that.

What equipment you're going to do. Yeah, I'm going to pass out flyers at the strip club. Yeah, that'll work. It's such, oh, man, it's so interesting. It's such a topic for me that's just like near to my heart because I'm like, I really wish that you could get, I love the stories of success. and I think that's why I'm addicted to it, of the guys that actually get out

and actually do something and actually change their life inside. Yeah. You know what's funny about this is that I would talk to these guys in prison. And it's funny because I would talk to them in prison. And then when I got out, I started thinking about it too. And it's more, it's more, it's truer getting out

and seeing what's happening with society than it was in prison when I was trying to explain to them, just like you said, where it's like, look, you were born in the project. projects, right? Your grandmother raised you or your grandpa, whoever raised you, you're in and out of prison, your entire life, you're a drug dealer. In their mind's success is I open a music studio. I get a bunch of music artists. By the way, you have no experience doing any of this. You get them to sign a bunch of contracts. You set up some agreements. You get them a record deal, whatever it is. And you end up making, you're the next ditty before, you know, no ditty before the ditty. Before the ditty. Yeah, he was dead. We don't want the did. Yeah.

Puff Daddy before the indictment. Mace. Yes. Mace era. Right. So, yeah. So that's, you're, you want to be, you're going to be 50 set. Okay.

So that's what your, your idea is when you get out, either you're doing nothing to lead yourself to that. But that's success to you. Correct. But true success for that guy is getting out, becoming apprentice to a plumber, learning a trade of plumbing, getting his license as a plumber, which you can do as a So you're become a plumber bidding out jobs, getting those jobs, getting yourself two or three people that work underneath you and get a bunch of plumbing jobs and making $150,000 a year

because guess what? Plumbers make $150,000 a year. Or you could go back in time, go to school, become a lawyer, get a job at an insurance company. You could work, go six years of college to get your law degree, go to work for a an insurance company where you start at $50,000. And in five years from now, while you're still trying to pay off your $300,000 worth of student loans, maybe you'll make $150,000 a year because the average lawyer makes like $130,000. Correct.

So plumber, immediately almost, lawyer, 10 to 12 years you're making $150 or get out of prison and in two years you're making $150. Your idea of success, that needs to be your idea of success. That's drywalling. These are trades that you can do that they can't stop you from doing with a felon, a felony. They need them. There's nothing wrong with them. Like, get rid of all your friends when you get out.

Don't hang out with any of those fucking people. You can't go to the same people. You can't go to the same places. You can't do the same things. They don't know any of that. No. Don't talk to any of those guys. None of them.

If you can move across the state and get a room in a decent neighborhood, do that. So they don't make it a game of saving money. Yeah. I got out of prison, 300 bucks, went to Walmart, bought $300 worth of clothes. I'd never been in Walmart in my life. I went into a super Walmart, bro.

Fucking huge. Like, I remember being overwhelmed. I've never been in anything this big. Home Depot's weren't this size. And I went in there and I bought $300 worth of clothes. I bought a pair of rubber boots that I wore for over a year. It's Florida. Rubber boots don't sweat, man.

I mean, they don't breathe. Like I'm walking around sweaty socks, working at the gym. But I made it a game of saving as much money as I could, everything, washing this. Bought a pair of clippers, cut my hair. You know, clippers were like $20 for the clippers, but it was $30 to get your hair cut. Who the fuck's paying? When they, I heard 30 bucks and I got a tip, $40 for a fucking hair, for our haircut? Time to get the clippers.

For 20, 25 bucks I can bear it. And I put the thing, and it came with all the clips. Oh, yeah. Jess will remember when I would go in and cut my hair And come out with my hair buzzed And that was it Give a fuck with my hair Nobody cares what I look like

In a halfway house working at a gym cleaning toilets But see these guys daydream about getting out And being big shots Yeah Their daydreams are wrong Their idea of success is wrong That's the big one right there Their idea of success

Yeah That's the big one They think they're going to get out They're going to be a big shot All their friends are going to be impressed how they bounce back and they're going to be big shots and they're going to have tons of money. They're going to drive the Lamborghinis that the truth is they would be happier if they could find a wife, have a couple of kids and run a company laying drywall, you know, hanging drywall. Don't you think that that's peace though? What, hang, that that second version?

Absolutely. It's a total peace, right? Absolutely. I've said many, many times, I wish I'd just been a middle class guy, you know. The piece is I think, I think the version of success that should be taught to these guys is, being able to lay down at night head on your pillow nobody looking over your shoulder

I think that really you never go back yeah if somebody knocks through the door and you open the door and it's two cops you're like what's up what's going on hi guys you know correct hey there's a guy ran through your back can we walk in the back

absolutely of course correct you know as opposed to fuck there's two cops out there nobody's a word as opposed to Bozac we get a knock at the door interviewing a guy my buddy Bozziah

and we get a knock at the door he up, runs out, goes out the back door. And I remember, and Jess is here, and my, my wife is here, and he comes back, she is, you ain't living all right. You're not living right. That's a good one. He's in Thailand right now. He's in Thailand right now.

Okay. Yeah. He's hiding from child support. But you're right. It's funny you say that. Man, it's so literally, this is hilarious back and forth. I was doing, when I got out, they said, hey, we want you to film your financial literacy course.

So I'm filming my financial literacy course. Is this with Bradley? No, no, no. Oh, yeah. No, no. And so I'm filming the course in this guy's house. He was sent to us as a referral from like this nonprofit anyhow. And so we're filming it and all of a sudden it is like, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And the look on his face was the look we've all, you know, that sheer terror. And he's like, dope. We're still miced up like we are right now. And I'm like, am I getting this on camera? This would be so good if we got this on camera. I hope we get this on camera, right? The whole thing. and he's behind he's over there and he comes through his kitchen and he's and he's peeking around

through his doors and you can hear him the cops are outside yeah the cops are outside they're and they're two and three and four times and I'm thinking to myself one of us is going to back to prison it's not going to be me yeah I was going to say what are you what is going on in your life right now that you can't answer that door my man it is not going to be me like and I'm thinking this is all going to play out like they're going to come over it's a first story condo they're going to come over the little four-foot wall, and they're going to come in here. Like, and here we are, you know, set up and I'm going to have to explain this whole thing. This will be great.

And it was that same moment when I was like, bro, you can't do this. Like, this is not freedom. This is not a version of success. I don't care how many dollars you think that you're making. You're obviously not doing, you know, like Jess said, you're not doing the right thing here. This is bizarre. But it's so funny. You mentioned that.

I just wish that version of success. And I don't know how we do it. I don't know how we get it out there because the black Lambeau and the red and the red, in the red Ferrari, like, they're always, like, I guess what we chase. Yeah. Well, you know, so I'll tell you, give it, here's the thing. Let's go back to the drywaller. Okay.

Who has a better shot of being a multimillionaire? The drywaller or the guy that immediately gets out and tries to be a multimillionaire. The guy that has the fantasy of opening a studio or opening a restaurant or, you know, being with Elon Musk money. going for the Elon Musk money without a plan, right? Or his plan is delusional. Does that guy have more of a chance of being a multimillioner? Or does the guy that goes out and says, baby steps, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, and I'll be a drywaller, and I'm hoping to shoot for 150.

Once I get 150, and if I can live beneath my liens, I can save money, I can now, I can take this and turn it into something. Maybe I become a multi-millionaire by having crews of guys laying drywall. Maybe I get connected with the guys that are building the houses and I start building subdivisions. It ain't sexy. No. It's not sexy. I'm sorry, it's not.

But the fact is, I believe it's like 80 or 90% of the multimillionaires in the United States made their money in real estate. Correct. And it's not sexy. No. you know um but it's you know it's doable and it's within your means and it and in time you'll be that guy and you've a better chance if you're not spending every single dime you have to impress all these other people that really hate your guys that really don't care about you yeah they don't care they really don't care about you um and nothing was nothing going to prison if if anything

if you learn anything from prison it's that that the people that you thought were your friends are not your friends that should be yes yeah and that should be tattooed on For me to get out and try and impress those people? I could care less. Yeah. Yeah. No, I could care less. But it's interesting, your version of that guy when you did that, the drywaller,

because if you can make 150 and live on 75, then you can say, well, what if I invest a little bit of money into a retirement account through a vanguard? And in 40 years, I might have something or 30, whatever the number is. When I was inside, the first book that I wrote for these guys was don't buy a cheeseburger with a credit card. Right. And it was just a compound. interest conversation. Hey, you know, if you take $5 every day from your paycheck and you move it

over here, over time, it's going to be like a lot. Or if you take $5 and you buy something on the value meal menu with your credit card and you don't pay it off and you let that interest build, it's going to be like a lot. Just a very rudimentary conversation about your, to your point, the actions over time, if I come out and I drywall and then I get a buddy who drywalls and then I can get a contract for that buddy or two buddies or three and now all of a sudden like you said now I have four houses so now I need a crew and now I don't have to drywall any longer but you know what I need to do I need to collect money so I need an invoicing conversation and a receivable. I need bookkeeping I need because a lot of people get in trouble roll that up

oh that's a bookkeeper like those conversations are not happening when they go I'm going to pop bottles of dom and we're going to have black leather couches in the restaurant it's funny like with like we're moving the studio, like, you know, to another studio. Right. We could have afforded to do that over a year ago. Colby and I are so, and I love Colby, so conservative, it's how, it's almost feels like it's like, how long can we stay here? Right.

And listen, we still wouldn't be looking. And get away with it. If it wasn't from, you know, certain guests that come that, that you start realizing, like, you're talking to that, or guests that I'd actually like to have on. This is really the big one is I have a guest that I would love to have on. I've talked to him multiple times. He's got an amazing story. But he has kind of a training day story.

I got you. Training day from the point of robbing drug dealers. And although he can be very polite, I've seen him turn it off and on and I know what he's capable of. And I don't want you to know where I live. Correct. It's not that I don't think he's a decent person. But I also know that if things ever got bad, I can be a target. I would be, definitely would be a target, because that's how he looks at pretty much everybody is a target.

We're cool, but if I ever need something, I'll just come take what you have. So, I, and there's several people that have come that we've been, we've interviewed more and more people that are violent and have violent pass. And all of them, and it's funny too, because Colby says the same thing. All of them have changed their lives. Yeah. But is that forever? Correct. And if it's not forever, do things go bad and do they look at me and say, I know somebody.

who's got some stuff, who looks like you might have some stuff. And, you know, let's face it, if you hit rock bottom and you're at that point, to me, robin a place for a few, that you think you can grab a couple thousand dollars with a stuff that you can sell for $300. I'm like, I wouldn't do, nobody would do that. No, they would. They would. Drug addicts would do it.

All day long. Right. So we've held out to the point where it's like, hey, let's move. But I love the fact that we could have done it a year ago and didn't. And the other thing, like right now, it's like when we get to a point where it's like, we're almost at the point where it's like, I need to get an assistant to help with booking. And then you kind of like, I can afford it, but how long can I do it? Can I hang on to it?

Can I do this? Continue to do this by myself before I start dropping things. Yeah. You know, I've come close to dropping a few things. Yep. And I always tell Colby, my biggest fear is one day I'm sitting, one day I'm sitting here. I'm in the living room or whatever. I'm getting myself some orange juice or something I hear.

And I go open the door and the guy's like, hey, man, what's going on? Right. Hey. And I'm like, who are you? Whoops. And they're like, bro, I just flew in. I'm booked today. We're doing a podcast.

And I'm like, fuck. Mm-hmm. You know, I don't want to, but that's my biggest fear is that I drop the ball. Totally. Haven't dropped the ball yet. There have been some close calls. But, you know, but so, but most people, what they do is before they can afford the assistant. They're already spent.

They get it. They're already spending. They can afford. They think, we got how good podcastings are going good. Let's fuck. We need to do it. Blow it out. No.

No. To me, we don't know what could. Two bad months. Two bad months that most people go under. And that's living off their credit cards for one of those months. You're absolutely right. Yep. They're not thinking that.

No, they don't. You have to think worst case scenario. You know, you can, you can behave in a manner of abundance, but you have to be cognizant of the fact that things can go wrong. You can't live off of credit for long. It's just a recipe for disaster. You think how much of it do you think also plays into the gratitude? Oh, I think that's like, I mean, I think that's like happiness.

You know what I'm saying? That most people think that they're, I'd say 99% of inmates feel the world owes them something. And every miserable person I know has that attitude. So true. Boziac feels like the world owes him something. I have a buddy who's named Boziac, if he watches this. And he'd admit it. He doesn't want to work.

Yeah. And he just thinks being him, the world owes him something. Yes. And I, you know, it's, it's John F. I love the John F. Kennedy quote, you know, everybody thinks that the government owes him something. But, you know, it's the, you know, don't, I forget. Oh, how much, yeah, don't think what can you do for. Yeah, don't think what the government can do for you.

Think about what you can do for you. do for your, you know, don't think what can my country do for me? You should be thinking what can I do for my country. Correct. And that's so true. And nobody, it's always, what can I get? What kind of? How can I short the system? Yeah. Or I saw some quote the other day from some fucking jackass who was like, why would I go for a country that doesn't care about, or why would I go to war for a country that doesn't care about me? Really? Well, leave, bro. What other country can you go to where you have this much opportunity? And if you think you don't have any opportunity, That's on you.

That's your fault. Everybody's got opportunity here. Every single person. And it's more abundant now than ever. You can be in a wheelchair now and work remotely and make $100,000 if you actually just put some effort into it. You can find out anything, anything for free on YouTube. Yes. Anything.

It is insane how much you can learn on YouTube. Do you see the comedian that can't talk? Do you see that one? No. Yeah. Oh, bro. He walks up with his phone, like on his AI phone. Right.

And it, like, reads his thoughts or whatever. And he's literally telling jokes through the phone. And so the way that he opens up is he goes, I know what you're thinking. Like, who ordered the TEMU version of Stephen Hawking? Right. Pretty good. Like, it catches you off guard because you, but to your point, give me an excuse. Yeah.

And we'll probably solve it with technology pretty quickly. But I think the gratitude's big. And I, you know, I think that's also where you're. at is how much of this I'm you're grateful for, which is why I'm not just going to go screw it off. I'm not just going to go blow it out and put you and, you know, the misses in a situation or Colby and the family, like, no, we really care about growing this thing the right way. Right. And we're really grateful that we can do it. I don't think that you've come to the point of like, I, I've earned this. And so give it to me. I've earned this studio. So give it to me.

And to your point, all the guys that I know that are miserable, even the guys that want to tell their story. I'm sure you've come across that. The guys that want to tell me their story, like, oh, you need to do this for me. You need to do that for me. You need to, like, shut up, man. Like, you're nobody. You've done nothing. You're miserable. You're like a miserable, angry dwarf. I'm not sure where the dwarf came in. I don't like that part. I wasn't, I feel like he's had issues with dwarfs coping. I feel like there's something here in this childhood. There was like a dwarf. You know, I have a buddy who worked for a company that installed windows. Okay. He now owns a window installing, or a company that installs. He now,

so he took that knowledge, turned it into bidding out jobs that he could fill, turned into a company. He's got a business partner. They're franchising it. He makes probably half a million dollars a year. I love it. He's got a gorgeous wife, three gorgeous daughters. I want to say three. Send me a picture of him and two of them the other day. I see him. He comes in town, every once in a while and like who this guy's worth millions who would think that you're installing windows correct there's not millions of dollars to be made in windows there is apparently i'm wrong about that and this is one of those guys that you know went to you know went went went in the middle got out of high school went in the military got out of the military was basically a drunk for

several years you know talks about his relationship every time i talked to him he'll I'll talk about, you know, going to church, doing this, doing that. He talks about AA, getting sold. He was, you know, just a horrific individual for whatever, you know, years, like whatever, four or five years until he eventually got his shit together, started working for this company, took that, parlayed that into opening his own company with a business partner and before you know it. And now he's worked millions of dollars and comes down here every once in a while to have lunch with

me and check on some of these franchises that he's got going. I love it. And it's like $250,000 to buy a franchise. Fuck. You know? It's, you know what I mean? It's just amazing.

I love it. Jesus. And this is a guy that was a complete knucklehead. Colby remember this. This is a guy that when I was, was he 15 or 16 and I was 70. No, no. David,

David Simpson. David Simpson. When I grew up, there's no internet or anything. Sure. You would draw, you go to there would be popular like, areas like a there's like a burger king and there's a strip mall and you would just get in your car

and drive around in circles and it wouldn't be like five guys we're talking about like a hundred people kids 17 18 year old kids just driving around the complex just non-stop girls would hang out groups people would get out david simpson we'd be driving the the strip right and david simpson would go oh hold on boom he'd go let me get out let me get out he'd open the door close the door walk over to a group of girls walk over and go, oh my God, you're beautiful. I saw you. I was driving. I see you twice. You're gorgeous. He's like, can I get your phone number? And the girls would be like, oh, my God. And they would give him their phone number or they would, you know, laugh at him and he would say, you know, oh, well, I'm sorry. You were pretty. I just thought, I'm sorry. He'd get back in the car. And then he'd get in the

car. And so after I saw him do it once or twice, I said to him, bro, you don't even, you don't know her? He's like, no, this is how did you get to know her? And I'm like, I mean, you know, keep in mind, you're subconscious 17, 18 year old kid. And I'm like, what if you walk up to that girl and what if she says no? What if she laughs at you? He goes, oh, he's like, half of them do laugh. And I'm like, he's, okay, he's like, but the other half I get their phone number. He goes, what do I care if they laugh, Matt?

He goes, I don't know that girl. Because I'll never see her again. I've never seen that chick again. He's I've never seen that chick in my life. I just saw her. I go up, I tell her. It's good. Maybe she's got a boyfriend.

Maybe she feels good. Maybe I get her a number. He's like, I mean, what does it matter? It's good. And he just, the look on his face was just, he had no idea why I had no confidence. He had nothing but confidence. He was, you know, of course, I don't realize also he's like an addict at that age, too. He's that, you know, that mindset that these guys, that same reason your father can do things that most people can't do.

And a lot of these guys you talk to that are phenomenal salesmen and amazing people. And then you're like, but you're a fucking, you're a drug addict. nut job. You're a nut job. You're a drug addict, nut job, but you've done amazing things, but yet part of it is the drugs. And then when they get sober, they're 10 times as effective. Correct. But he, that's, that's David Simpson. And it took me a while before I realized, if you want to start dating, you're going to have to adopt this guy. You're going to have to be okay with being embarrassed. That's tough. If you want to be successful, you've got to be Oh, yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, when you're 17, that's a hard to swallow. No, I agree. I agree. But I think coming out, like, we're talking to these guys. Like, if we're talking with anybody who has a past like you and I have, we're going to be embarrassed. I'm sure yours comes up all the time. Mine does. Of course.

Right. I lean into mine. I get no problem. You have to. I got no problem with it. You have to. Yeah, with, I was going to say with the inmates that are getting out, like, it's, you know, I'd say most of the guys I was locked up with are trying to figure out how to hide. you know and you can't hide it so to try and hide it or downplayed you're better off leaning

into it and in a way if you look at it like this it's a it's a great moment because when people find out this when they hear you tell your brief story boom boom boom boom boom here's what's going on it's it boils down to this and people have heard me say this what it boils down to is there are those people that are 100% acceptance of the person you were and the person you are today and there are those people that can go fuck themselves and it's great because those people

that can go fuck themselves I don't need you you're not ever going to be okay with me and that's fine but now I know right away you're good you're are

it's just like checking the box yeah check the box and you tell me to come in for the interview I know there's a chance you might not get it but you're okay with it

you want to hear the story yeah so let's go with the story and you know it's the numbers everything's the numbers game and what is it your guy, David.

Absolutely. And now here he is successful. Of course. Right. He was always going to be successful. If he could get the addict under control. If he can get it, yeah, yeah. Which, of course, he has.

He's a phenomenal guy. But that's interesting. That idea should be poured into them more often. Like you should use this addiction as a superpower. Yeah. I think of Tyler's superpower. Sorry. We have a buddy Tyler.

He can walk up and talk to anybody. Okay. with 100% confidence. Really? He's amazing. It's so confident that if he walked up to Brad Pitt, it would take Brad Pitt four or five minutes before Brad Pitt would realize, I don't know this guy.

Really? He would walk and be like, he'd be like, Brad, hey, listen, you've got to meet Matt Cox. Matt's got a super successful podcast. He's doing great. He's doing great things. He's in here for a couple of days. I want to put you together with him real quick. And then I'll let you go, Matt, come here.

This is Brad, Brad. and then and so we'd be talking for three minutes before Brad would go I don't fucking know him do I that's how he comes up to you so confident you think I've got to know him right I I've obviously met him we know each other no it's amazing he's the one who connected us yeah Tyler does yeah Tyler saw me on a program contacted me and said hey what can you just start your channel what do you need to do to make it a big because I think you've got, you can, you've got it, you've got what it takes. You can be a big channel. You could turn this into something because I'm just making videos like on my phone

and shit. And I was like, I mean, I need to find us like this is how ridiculous this is. I need to find a guy that will work for nothing until the channel makes money. And then at that point, he'll start making money and donate all of his time. That's what he needs to do. That's what I need. And do all the editing everything. And he's like, okay, well, let me make some phone. calls. Like, first of all, that's the delusional to think that you're going to, that. And three, four days later, he goes, okay, I got a name. I got a guy. His name is Colby. He lives about 45 minutes away from you. Can you meet him somewhere? Like, uh, in between the two, Brandon's in between you and him. Uh, can you meet. Yeah. Next thing, you know, two days later, three days later,

we meet at a breakfast place and sit down and I say, here are the analytics. Or no, I'd already screenshot it. I think I'd seen them to you. He'd already looked at him. He came. He said, okay, well, based on your analytics, based on this, based on this, I think that your channel can do this, I think this, I think this. He's fucking full of shit. He doesn't know anything. He worked for a trucking company. He doesn't know anything about this.

I love it. He had been doing YouTube, right? I love it. He'd been doing YouTube, so he had the better understanding than I do. Okay. But he's not 100% sure of it. But he sounded really confident. Yeah.

You got to change the name of the channel, you know, this and you got a this, you got a this. People aren't looking up, they're not looking up inside true crime. They're looking up Matt Cox, Matthew Cox, Matt Cox, Cox, Cox, Cod, man you know so he goes through that we do the whole thing we come up with an arrangement uh and i'm like but you have to understand bro you may be working for the next fucking year we get a little agreement on paper write up a little agreement sign here sign here say but you may be working for nothing for the next year well actually at that point the channel was making about 600 bucks so it was like you may be working for six hundred dollars for the next year he was like yeah i don't

think so but okay yeah i'm okay with that and then but all of that is because of tyler yeah golly Tyler's a rainmaker He is a rainmaker Yeah He's irritating But he's a rainmaker Did he have an addiction? No

Okay I was just trying to link them all together Power I'm trying to make them Power Is that what it is? Yeah he loves I don't know

He loves to connect people Interesting He's an interesting guy He loves to be He loves to be in the mix Have Tyler call me I'll tell him what I need Yeah

He'll get it Sure In the midst of this podcast He's texted us twice With two different people Matt probably doesn't know that Yeah, I don't know that But listen, here's the problem

The only problem with Tyler Is that he will connect me He'll, I'm like, I'm running a true crime podcast You've got to interview this guy He's got 2.5 million followers on Instagram And I'm like, okay, what's the story? Well, he jumps off of buildings What?

Yeah, he's a rock climber He climbs rocks and then he jumps off the And I'm like, does he get arrested for it? He's like, uh, no, but he's got 2.5 I'm like, no, no. We've had this conversation, Tyler. Yeah. What's the crime?

I need a crime. I need a crime. I need some kind of related to, to, I need handcuffed. Yeah, he could be a, he could be a criminal lawyer even. He could be, FBI. He could be a rock crawling into people's houses through their windows. Anything, anything, anything. Using the rock climbing to steal.

You get out of prison. Do you go to a halfway house? No, okay. My wife picks me up. So you walk out of prison. What is it? You're a felon. Yep.

you're on probation. Correct. And what do you do? Like, what are you doing now? How does that turn into what you're doing now? Yeah, day one, right? I always love that answer. What do I do when I get out? Because it's true. You know, there's all these, all these hurdles in life. And the more that you can plan for them, I think the better off you're going to be. Because, like, the restaurant never comes to fruition. Yeah. We know that. It never comes to fruition. You being a cook at Panda Express is good, is likely. Yeah, my wife picks me up. We went to a hotel.

You know, we've been away for each other. I did 15 months. That was my end time, 15 months on two years. And so, you know, we went and hung out for three days and, you know, figured out life again and together her and I. And then I checked in with probation. Ward, you were a little hard on the beaver last night, weren't you? We got to a hotel for three days and figure life out. Listen, June, you deserved it.

Yeah, my probation stories are kind of funny. So I check him with my P.O. on that third day. I think it was third day. And he's looking at my stuff and he's like, man, I know you got to be with me for 90 days of your good time, but I don't know where to put you. I don't know what to do. So he's like, let me call you back. We'll figure out a program that you have to go in because you have to be here for some sort of rehab.

Okay, cool. Calls him back the next day. He's like, I got an NA class that's near you that you need to attend and here's your days and here's your times and okay sure whatever i show up keep in mind this is 12 years ago i'm younger and way sexier and i hope colby gets that and uh and and i walk in and it's it's in a strip mall right of the lowest rent place you could possibly find for the government to to rent out and it's chairs in a circle metal folding chairs and the moment i walk in like three people are like this thing they think I'm a fed right shaved head yeah yeah no tats oh you if you you could have an

FBI badge on you absolutely bro they think I'm immediately so you know I sit down like I never done a drugga day of my life no a n a none of this stuff right so I sit down and I'm like who's starting the class like I got like we're on a time limit here so this one guy pipes up and he's like, hey, uh, what's your story? I'm like, oh, uh, just got out. Like, got out of where? I've been following you for the last two weeks. Right. Exactly. Hey, Tommy, uh, noticed you got a Nissan Ultima outside license plate. Right? No. And, uh, I just got out of where? I got out of prison, man. What the fuck you put? Shut up. How's that for an answer? Like, what are we doing here? So then we just sit down and they go around the circle and it starts this story and I've been

and ding to ding and this is what I'm struggling with. They get to me and I'm like, yeah, guys, Brent sent me here to satisfy my 90 days of release. I've never done a drug a day in my life. Right. They're immediately like, well, we don't believe you. We think that you're here with, you know, like an investigation, you know, so who do you work for? Like, we don't want this type of energy here.

It's enough of that, Todd. Right. Exactly. Ward, you're going to have to leave. I'm like, no, for real, guys, this is a story. So I show up every day in about two weeks into it, I'm holding the class. And I'm like, Matt. For real, you haven't been sober in six days.

Like, let's walk through why you're a disaster. Let's whiteboard this shit together. I've taken over the class, right? I'm like, nobody gets chairs. Everybody's standing up. I need energy. When we're here, we're focused, right? Probation officer calls, like, four weeks into it.

And he's like, hey, we're just going to mark this off. Like, uh, they've told me or I wouldn't use the term disruptive. That's what he says to me. They don't want you to come back. They don't want me to come back. I'm like, guys, we need results if we're going to waste our time here. You know, like, you're leaving to the car. I see what you're doing outside.

You got a 15 minute. You don't need a 15 minute break. Bro, let's get in and get out of it. They're like, I don't know what you're doing here, man. I don't know who you're involved with. I know what's in that fanny pack. But don't come back and leave your fanny pack. Well, that was part of my, like, release.

It was comical, man. And so during that time, they're making me go and do the, you know, pee in the cup. And I'm giggling. Like, guys, this couldn't be further from my, you know, quote, rehabilitation journey. So I satisfied those 91st days, you know, of good time. I can't remember it was a parole probation type, you know, good time, Arizona thing.

And then they, and then I had, you know, probation from there. And I got into it with the first probation officer because he said, hey, you know, you can't have your own business. I said, why can't have my own business? He said, well, they said you can't. Okay, well, who's they? Well, that was the answer. I said, my guy, I don't think you know what you're talking about.

the state organization that complies with licensure, you know, LLC, S corporation, you know, the articles in court, they could care less whether you're a gerbil, a felon, a transgender, you file a paperwork, you pay the fee, you move on. That's their job. He goes, I don't think so. So I'm going to need you to get like a pay stub job until we figure this out. I think you're a probation officer. I think that's the lowest form of law enforcement. Buddy, I was like, wowsers, all right? So I went and, you know, which I loved your story about the gym and the toilets. I went and stocked bread trucks at night.

That, I love that commonality between us because it's like very few people will get out, you know, with our pedigrees and our abilities, et cetera, fill in the blank, and our awesomeness, and go and clean toilets and go and stock bread trucks at night to satisfy, like, I'm not going back to this place. This is never going to happen again. And that was the beginning of, okay, what was day one like? You know, it was programs, then it turned into like, I had to get this job. I actually kind of fell in love with this goofy little job at nighttime.

You know, it was kind of cathartic, and I would walk people through and probably much similar to you, the people who were working there were trying to figure their life out, you know, at the bread store. If you're working nights at a bread store and stocking trucks, you know, you're something's up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The one kid is going to school, like to be a doctor. The rest of us are just trying to figure our life out. And so from that point forward, I just started to rebuild what I was doing before, which was

merger and acquisition work on a very small scale. And I'll tell you how it started. Anybody that was a solopreneur. So drywaller, painter, landscaper, a pool guy. I call him solopreneurs because, like, Pablo's the painter. He's a phenomenal painter, but he's only so busy. And then he can't take on any more work. And that's usually where they come to and then they stop.

Like the wife or the sister or the girlfriend, somebody will do like their books and try to figure it out. It's hard to scale. They can't scale. It's hard to scale a service-oriented business. Precisely. Without understanding of how those businesses can be scaled. 100%. And that's what I started doing.

I would literally cold call those guys. Hey. You started selling penny stocks in their company. You got it. You're in the pest control industry. I've never sprayed a house a day in my life, but I know that when a woman sees a rat, she just wants to know how quickly you can get there. So can you take on more work?

You know, and then it just started from there. I started with my infrastructure. You need bookkeeping. You know, you need legal work. You need all of these things. How's your insurance? You know, have you gone through your premiums? I'm like, what are you talking about?

This is what I used to do in the private equity world. Much bigger scale. But if you've made 150 for the last three years and you've netted the same, there's a problem here. So like, let's walk you through it. And then it started working with these little itty-bitty companies. It started out actually in the fitness sector. Most of these gym goers, gym owners,

would get to the point where they'd be like, hey, I was a good personal trainer. Yeah, you know it. And then they open a studio. And then if the studio goes well, they open the gym or, you know, some iteration of that. But then they're just like, I don't know how many cancellations I have. I'm training people. That's where I make my money, you know. And so I would walk in and go, all right, we've got a studio.

You've got one location. How do we get to two? Well, this is what I need. All right? I'm Tyler. This is what I need. Great. So we need back office.

We need support. We need personnel, systems, processes, procedures. and that was the beginning of like Life 2.0 in 2013. So once you put that together, you call to get people to invest in the company? No, I took them on myself. Okay. It was just me and my, so my best friend is an attorney, not my attorney, but my best friend is an attorney.

And so him and I, his legal background, my financial background, we would come in with our capital and we would say, let us help you scale or let us help you get from working in the business to working on the business. Right. You know, and we'd help these little tiny companies. and then we would get a little bit of equity in them. Hey, we'll take 10%, 20%, 50%, we'll grow it, we'll help you, and then we'd either exit or we'd hire an operator.

And so that's been the pattern since 2013, and we've been industry agnostic. So we've got a simple, unsexy real estate, HUD housing. Right. It's HUD housing. Government contracts. Section 8. You got it. Section 8, all day long. Industry agnostic, but trucking,

the guy that runs our trucking company, did 20 years. You know, trucking turns into moving. You know, it's all these little itty-bitty companies. The one that we just sold is ice cream. You know, easy hours. The labor costs are low. Overhead is relatively simple, and you don't really need a high degree of acumen to run the place.

Right. So we built those up. We scaled it to four locations, and we sold to a bigger. So that's been the chart of what I've done since I've got out. The passion project is the don't buy a cheeseburger with a credit card. Right. And do you go into prisons on that?

Yeah, every month. Really? Every month. Once a month? Usually sometimes, several times. Yeah, this month I'll be in probably three or four times. And what do you do? Is it like a, do like a 20 minutes?

You talk to these guys for 20 minutes? I do one-on-ones behind prison with people who, either the caseworkers or like the captain of the yard will say, hey, this guy's turned his life around, this gal's turned her life around. She wants to do something. So, you know, she wants to kind of spitball with you, brainstorm with you. We call them entrepreneurs and training. And then the rest is like a massive Q&A.

we'll do it in the gym. They'll bring in a few hundred guys or gals and we'll walk through all of the same stuff that you were doing behind. Like, hey, have you figured out your square footage on this restaurant? No. Do you know what it's going to be called?

No. Do you know what you're going to serve? No. Have you ever heard of Cisco or U.S. foods? Okay, you're going to fail. Right. Like, let's stop lying to each other now. Good news is you've got 28 months left.

Yeah. Let's stop lying to each other. And so, yeah, we go behind prison walls. That little itty-bitty idea of financial literacy is now 1,300 prisons in 26 states. massive, massive. It's not just you, though. It's got to be a bunch of people, right?

A bunch of people, yeah, yeah, guys that have actually were lifers on the inside that now worked for us in the nonprofit, guys that I went inside in California, met one of them. He was a lifer, got life at 15, knew some change, some laws, and he got out. So a lot of really cool redemptive stories, you know, that came from this idea. I never wanted to go to prison. I never should have gone to prison, but I did go to prison. How do you take it and turn your mess into a message? That's the story.

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