Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Untold Story of America’s Top Bath Salt Trafficker | Justin Smith

Episode Date: October 20, 2024

Justin Smith has since turned his life around and developed Contractor+, a mobile software company that helps contractors systemize, streamline, and scale. Contractor+ is improving the relationship management processes of contractors, real estate investors, property managers, and master developers. If you’d like to make an investment in Contractor+ check out: https://www.tinyurl.com/mattcoxcontractorplus To learn more about Contractor+, their website is https://www.contractorplus.app Follow me on all socials! Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/matthewcoxitc Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxcrime Follow my 2nd channel - Inside The Darkness! https://www.youtube.com/c/InsidetheDarknessAutobiographies Want to be a guest? Send me an email here! [e-mail] Want a custom Con man painting shown up at your doorstep every month? Subscribe to Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/insidetruecrime Get a custom painting done by me! Check out my link! https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart Listen to True Crime Podcasts anywhere! https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my prison story books here! https://www.amazon.com/Matthew-Cox/e/B08372LKZG Support me here! Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69 Cashapp: $coxcon69

For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for $5.00 plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. And it would like the tumor would just shrink in size. And he had hundreds of testimonials coming in from his customer saying, oh my God, this is, it's getting rid of my tumors. Right. And so it was actually curing these people.

and the FDA is like, whoa, wait a minute. They're just, my opinion is they're just protecting profits for big pharma. This is how much I want, how much will you charge me? Okay, send it to this address. Here's the Bitcoin transaction. Right. So it's like, he said, dude, if you go to trial, you're going to prison. There was a computer screen glaring, and I'm talking like 5.30 in the morning.

Computer screen's glaring, and I walk over there, and there's all these, like, witchcraft cutouts and, like, weird stuff on the table. I didn't know what to make of it. And I read on the screen, there's an email that went out to all of our investors where he had channeled the spirit of Nostradamus. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I am here with Justin Smith. Justin was in federal prison. He's got a super interesting story about it's basically, it's like a story of redemption and a comeback. story and really interesting stuff that he's doing. So check out the video and check this out.

I mean, we've met a few times, right? We met with Brandon with investment joy, which is in Ohio. What's the name of the little town we went to? Circleville and Chila coffee. Chila coffee. Chila coffee. All of his businesses. And I've done a bunch of videos with Brandon and we met and you had been you were locked up at Yazoo or Coleman also? I was at Coleman yeah yeah not at Yazoo yeah so so what happened so let's let's yeah yeah so started the beginning yeah started the very beginning where were you born so Columbus Ohio so grew up in a really conservative family I was always an entrepreneur as a kid I was like running around trying to mow

the neighbor's lawns, snow blow, you know, shovel snow, selling stuff door to door out of magazines to earn points to cash stuff in. At 13, well, before then I'd start like 12 or so I started building computers. And at 13 years old, I started a dial-up internet service provider. I say it started a, I white-labeled a dial-up internet service provider called verta.net. So white label is, white labeling is when another company actually has. Handles the fulfillment. Yeah. And so you're really just putting your face on it to sell that their product so kind of it was a little tricky back then I don't know if you probably remember but back in the day when dial-up came out like you had to configure the internet settings through internet properties inside of internet explore you go to

internet explore properties internet settings I believe it's been a while right and then you would like there was like a box where you'd add your connections okay and so to have an ISP back then like you couldn't just like white label it you actually had to build your own auto dialer and have a temporary account that would prove that people could log into and provision their account so like connect to that account temporarily it would provision their account save the settings um and then it would disconnect okay and just hopefully not more than two people or one person is doing that at a time because you're using one account okay we weren't smart enough to like rotate accounts and stuff like that at 13 years old but um so hired a guy one of brandon's friends i believe um i want to say

His name was Corey Hennig. He was also a teenager, C++, coded the auto dialer, a little disc, and I put it in hardwheres and gas stations and laundromats. And I put the discs everywhere, sign up for $14 a month, I think, is what we charged. And then we actually bought the spam app. Back then, you know, Gmail didn't exist and Hotmail. So they didn't have the algorithms they have today to prevent spam from hitting the inbox. so we spammed like 40 million people and I'm assuming like most of the about about 40 million Americans got our email okay so got quite a bit of customers left public school went to homeschooling Brandon was actually homeschooled so and it's funny because Brandon like witnessed this happening he like witnessed me start this business my parents took out a HELOC on their house and gave me the money to buy the software and you and pay the developers I was 13 I mean I can give him a 13 I

I'm putting a lean on my house to give my 13-year-old son anything, but that's insane. Yeah, that's... Yeah, well, my parents believed to me. They must have been pretty impressed or, you know, wow, okay. That lasted like a year, DSL came in the area. So I convinced this guy. And wiped you out when DSL came in? Yeah, we started losing customers pretty quickly.

You know, it wasn't like a... I didn't know what I was doing. I was 13. but but you know I I've been an entrepreneur my whole life I played Brandon and I actually met playing paintball at a place called Agape Farms paintball and it was like a it was like recreation for us as kids but I started playing isn't paintball always recreational oh no it's a professional sport are you see oh yeah so I started uh I was thinking like military use so there's different times there's like rec ball and like they play in the woods and then there's people that just play for fun and then you know and then there's there's people that play competition tournament paintball we went we had five events domestically a year and there's actually two leagues there's the mp.l the national professional paintball league and then there's

the nxl league which which has x ball and that's what i played so i started playing for a field. The only reason I got on the factory team was because I built their website. I wasn't like exceptionally great at paintball or anything. I just loved it. I played three, four days a week. And I built the website and it impressed the owner of the company that handled all the fulfillment in their pro shop. His name was Jeff Lizick. And he's out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And it impressed him. I was working night shift one night at Office Mac stock and shelves. I was like 17 years old. And Jeff calls me. I've never talked to this man before. And he says, you know who I am. I said, no. He said, well, I own the company that fulfills the

pro shop at the field you play at. I saw the website you built. I think he got my number from John Howard or someone gave my number. He said, how soon can you come to Pittsburgh? And how old were you? 17. He was like, just quit your job, leave right now, come to Pittsburgh. I said, okay, so the next day I went to Pittsburgh. And I built their new website for Action Fanatics. And so that website got a lot of traction. And it raised some eyebrows at even larger companies. Key Action Sports in Sewell, New Jersey is the largest, most definitive name in the sport of paintball.

And they wanted to acquire that company. And they offered the CEO of that company and me both a job. I think they offered him like $180,000 a year. They offered me $35. I was 17. I turned the offer down instead. I went to college. So that's what brought me to Orlando.

Went to Full Sale University. And, you know, I'm not really sure why I decided. I always was drawn to like the entertainment industry. So when I saw ads, they could get a business degree in entertainment. And, you know, the law component to it, I said, you know, this is for me. I went and I did it. I jumped in head first and racked up $120,000 in debt. But yeah.

So it's funny because Brandon was homeschooled his whole life, never went to college, and he's worth like $10 million. Right. But I'm not far behind and look out. Sometimes it works like that, you know? Yeah. I mean, some of the most successful people on earth don't have a college degree or they dropped out. Right. So 2008 got my master's.

2007, I started working at a property management company called Reed. So you got your degree in entertainment business and law. And your master's degree? Entertainment business and law. And you went to work for a property management company. Yeah. As a web developer. Okay.

I can still see it being artistic and I can still see the connection there. Yeah, you're still in the art, in a general kind of art field. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, somewhat. So within, and that guy owned many business. businesses, Reed Rental Management, Reed Resort Realty, A to ZCDs. I mean, he owned a bunch of businesses. He was very successful. Top 30 under 30, broker. I mean, he sold GEN Reunion.

Very impressive guy. Hired me on the spot. It was the only job I applied to. And hired me on the spot, not even six months later, I was running the business. For $35,000? Oh, no. He paid me pretty good. Yeah, he paid me pretty good. I know. Yeah, I think I started at 60 and um five years then I was making 120 nice it wasn't bad um so yeah we start when I joined the company there was like 12 12 properties under management and they were he was just focused on sales sales sales contractor plus is growing really fast we've already got 18,000 contractors using our software we're hosting our seed round on we funder with really great early bird terms to put it into perspective a thousand dollar investment today could be worth as much

is $850,000, assuming we reach a $3 billion valuation by 2030. If you're interested in making an investment, there's a link in the description below. Thanks. And we started growing really fast, hired rental leasing agents, property managers. It ended up bringing our own handyman team in-house, a Reed handyman. And that division ended up being our most profitable division of the whole business. We were subbing all the workout for 800 property. I mean, we grew to 800 properties in five years.

Right. So, and we were managing properties for everyone. I mean, the presidency of Nespresso, the guy that's high up at Bridgewater Associates, some really big remote investors. And these guys never stepped foot inside their properties. Right. And so that's actually what led to what I'm doing now. Back then running that business, there were all of these operations.

inefficiencies like we had a foreman that would go out and do an estimate for example and he would bring it back he would do it on paper and he would write like how long it would take on the left on the left column he would write what what needed done and then he would write any materials he needed and like the quantity and the an estimate of how much they cost and then he would bring them back and either the bookkeeper or I would have to type them up in quick books take he would take photos on digital digital camera and he would bring the SD card so we'd have to take the SD card put it in the computer zip it, attach it to an email with a PDF that we exported from QuickBooks.

So there's all this double data entry. And then the investors get this email and they have to open up a zip file and they look through this. And they're like, what the hell is this? Right. So I realized there was a huge market opportunity. Nothing existed that would actually make it to where you could have full transparency and people could see exactly what the before and after photos look like on a per line item

basis. And not to mention the inefficiency of having to do all that twice. So build a little app that we used internally. We never published it called Handyman Estimator. And it solved that specific problem. And then it just got shelved. And never, I always recognize that like, hey, listen, if it solves our problem, it probably solves a little bit. What do you mean it got shelved? Like you used it and you thought, hey, this is a business opportunity and you just never follow up on it. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't really... But you guys continued to use the app. It wasn't really my property anyway.

It was part of the property of the business. Right. But you guys continue to use it? Internally, yeah. Okay. So, um, crazy story there. That CEO kind of fell off the deep end. 2011, that's actually what led up to me doing what I did.

They got me in trouble. Um, 2011, he had been living in Miami, Tampa. I saw him three, four times a year. Uh, we're up emailing late every night. But, you know, I never saw him in person. He shows up in Orlando, and he said, let's go for a ride. And I'm like, okay.

So we get downtown, and he said, you see that building right there. And I said, yeah, what about it? And he said, that's where you're new offices. So he'd already signed a lease on the seventh floor for just him and I. And then the goal, or he'd basically wanted me to manage the development of the top two floors, the penthouse suite. I started feeling uneasy. We had the money to do it, but it was like why. You know, part of the reason our...

It worked perfect. I mean, it didn't look good, but part of the reason our investors trusted us to manage our properties is because of how frugal we were. And we had cat five cables running under area rugs in, you know, a ghetto. Literally, I don't know how much you know about Orlando, but Rio Grande, Rio Grande, whatever you say it. Okay. I'm right by like OBT, by Jones High School.

Like, it's in the ghetto. That's a rough area. Yeah. Right. Oh, but... Like, Ebor-type area, right? Or Nebraska-type area. Yeah, similar.

Exactly. But, you know, it's not rough to the point where you, like, have to worry about anything. Like, it's just not aesthetically pleasing. Right. Like, you know, show up and I guess you could have to worry about it. I was going to say, like, you don't really have to worry walking through down Nebraska or E-Bore, but you could. You could go wrong. Like, you're in an area where there's questionable characters.

Like, you could might be great for months and then one day, boom, there's a shootout in front of you. It's kind of funny because I always had this stigma, like, this. I always thought Tampa was like worse than Orlando because like our office was in the worst part of Orlando but then when I came to I came to Tampa to take a girl on a date and we went to the driving movie theater and we stopped at a gas station and clearly in the wrong part of town and she gets out and goes in and I get out she said you should probably stay in the car and I'm like why I get out anyway and follow them this guy shows she's rougher than you like yeah right no it was just like you don't want to have any confrontation

And I was tried. And that never happened to me in Orlando, ever. So I thought I just kind of always just imagined Tampa was a little bit rougher. You just had a bad night. It was all it was. It was just a coincidence. Wrong place, wrong time. Yep.

He's been known to cure insecurity just with his laugh. His organ donation card lists his charisma. His smile is so contagious. Vaccines have been created for it. He is the most interesting. man in the world. I don't typically commit crime, but when I do, it's bank fraud. Stay greedy, my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. So you're in the penthouse. Yeah, so we renovated this penthouse suite, the old Angeville building

and like Henry Ford and Walt Disney had stayed there when it was a hotel, right downtown Orlando. We were getting ready to put our sign on the side of the building. Our We increased our burn quite a bit. We had the money to do it, but it wasn't the smartest business decision, in my opinion. We still had to commute to the warehouse, and that's another thing. We didn't get rid of, we got rid of two of the three units that were connected. You just took on more, to be in a nicer area and have a nicer parking space. You took on an extra $15,000 or $20,000 a month.

About $15,000. Yeah. Which is just, it's just, it's all, that's just an ego move, right? It's just, that's right. That's basically what it was. I disagreed with it. I think a lot of our investors did as well, but it is what it is. I like nice things.

You know, Florida ceiling glass, if you're going to be there, spend 80% of your waking life in your office. Like, okay, it's okay. It's okay that your office looks good. Long story short, one morning I come into work, and Scott had left prior. He'd been there all night. There was a computer screen glaring, and I'm talking like 5.30 in the morning. computer screen's glaring and I walk over there and there's all these like witchcraft cutouts and like weird stuff on the table I didn't know what to make of it and I read on the

screen there's an email that went out to all of our investors where he had channeled the spirit of nostridamus and said something like of the 942 quatrains that no stradamus something like that had written um only one of them didn't rhyme and that one that didn't rhyme predicted that the world would come to an end in your 2032 so I'm like okay something's wrong with this guy like I don't know it's the office medicine something's not right um so you know I didn't I didn't know anything about him his personal life so I just I always admired him and like respect like when he walked in a room he commanded attention like like we built a massive business like he's he's no dummy Right. How long have you been working there at this point?

Six years. Holy shit. Okay. Yeah, five. Yeah, this wasn't six months in or a year in. No, no, no, no. I was running the business. Yeah. So, but I immediately did damage control, said we had been hacked, tried to clean up the mess, logged into his social media profiles, deleted all the crazy stuff he'd been posting.

I was shortly thereafter terminated without severance. so to maintain the lifestyle that I had well so who he yeah he fired me and what was his reason for firing you insubordination insubordination because

I just I he'd gone off his head and did something that I thought was in the best interest of the company that wasn't mine to do to cover up him going off his meds I was trying to protect our company right right but I always had his best interest at heart I had the company's best interest.

Did he not realize? Did he not realize what he had done? How insane. I mean, so I think, you know, I don't know exactly what was going on there. I know that clearly he was dealing with, you know, in my opinion, something spiritual. He probably shouldn't have been messing with. I don't know. I can't speak to it.

But I know that I have. had later discovered his mother had asked so when we walked you know that there was a time where he took his suit jacket off and took his shirt off and he had Egyptian hieroglyphics written all over his body and his mother had asked if he had been taking his meds and right that's how I discovered that he wasn't on his medication um I don't know what medication that was but I'm guessing an antipsychotic or something um but it's just so crazy that you can see someone that like that's physically fit mentally fit doing so well has their MBA that everything is together like Like, their business is running perfectly, making millions of dollars a year.

Everything's running above the board. Our books are super clean, and everything is, like, done by the book. And then out of nowhere, like, just overnight, it all implodes. Right. Yeah, I can, I've got plenty of examples of that. But so, I mean, I know exactly what you're saying, where people are, everything's going great, and then suddenly, you know, and I even, you know, just, I even dated a, a, a that you know she just she would get on her medication she was perfectly fine you'd never she was

amazing wonderful to be around and then every two or three months she'd go off her medication and she was a nightmare and then she'd go back you know for a month and then she'd go back on her medication she was amazing again and it was like wow that little pill is keeping you sane so that's like that one thing is well what happens is a lot of times they take it and then they do great for a couple months and then they start thinking I don't need this anymore okay you know yeah you kind of yeah yeah it's like it's like I'm fine look the doctor gave to you for a reason yeah you're you're only fine because of the pill so but yeah so I can see I can actually see that happening for six months or a year or two years and then the thing is though like in prison the people that were on

antipsychotics like they're walking around like staring at the ground with their tongue out they're doing they're giving them a ton of it and they're not giving them them stuff that's like really tailor made they're giving them it's like thorazine yeah they're giving them like sarahquil syracill like syracill like okay yeah back in the 40s and 50s you gave this to schizophrenics now but the prison will give it to pretty much anybody like they're not saying well wait a minute this is really designed for schizophrenia they're saying wait a minute you're saying you've got mood swings you know what take this thorazine yeah thoris yeah or yeah or syracill or whatever it is for a mood swing yeah and then they're drooling out of their mouth but we know not medicalism

in prison it's a nightmare yeah yeah that's what i used always say is that look medical kills more inmates than the other inmates they do for sure i i remember um it was at coleman actually there was a there was a young guy that right before count he'd went he'd just come to the compound um he came and i believe i believe in a move so what was happening is if you remember yazu and coleman was exchanging inmates right is this guy with inhaler yes yeah yeah yep and he went and told the coo he couldn't breathe and needed his inhaler and the CEO said get back in your cell it's time for count yeah they don't care we'll deal with it after count and the guy's like but i can't breathe yeah well you're talking you know go back to yourself so they walk around and do count by the time

they get there the guy's purple he's dead he died and then they posted notices you remember the notices they posted on the wall it's like you can't talk about this if we hear about like don't talk about this on the phone don't talk about on email don't tell your don't email your family don't talk about it don't because they're in the process covering it up they don't want you to you to fuck up their cover up um but it's i mean it's clearly a cover up yeah they're putting it on the bulletin board saying you're not a lot of talk about this yeah listen i i've got a dozen uh a dozen examples of where people died a guy went to medical like three days in a row and they kept telling them come back on monday come back on monday and you know friday night he died yeah yeah yeah but any but anyway so

so what so you got you lost your job yeah and and and so then what happened so i I got one video client, an aesthetic, like a plastic surgery center, did some video production work for them, and that paid like 60K for a couple days worth of work. Nice. I paid out. My college roommates flew in from Philadelphia to help with that job. I paid out like 10 grand, I think. So I lived off of the proceeds from that job for five months or so.

and then started running out of money it wasn't bringing in new clients so i uh or at least at least not enough work to maintain the lifestyle that i was accustomed to right um so uh one day i was playing poker and uh this guy who owns some smoke shops um he asked me if i knew what chemical was on this loose leaf like green substance which ended up being damniana and marshmallow two legal herbs that they just they spray back in the day they would call it popery or they'd call it spice or you know then everyone called it k2 where k2 was really just the top brand um and then you had other brands like mr nice guy i was just going to say is that the mr nice yeah i know i met him they burned his factory down yeah so yeah so i was a distributor and

And I came in, I imported 100 kilos at a time. So you figured out what the process, what the chemical was? Yeah, and I made a good relationship with the manufacturer. Okay. So to the point where they would give it to me on consignment, I'd pay a little bit more for the consignment relationship. Pay them net 30. I would sell it in three days, so it was no problem.

And let me tell you, that's like I couldn't get enough of it. people like people that there was their number like that is that product is what was carrying the smoke shops that's all they were selling right people were going in there to basically get high yeah and at the time it mimicked marijuana you know jwh 18 and all the synthetic cannabinoids they triggered the similar receptor the cannabinoid receptors like marijuana so when you'd see someone using it it would they would look like they were on weed right i mean but in prison i'm sure you remember yeah well that was something different that was they were calling it still call it K2 yeah called it's not K2 right yeah so uh um you know so one thing led to another then the head shop

started selling little happy pills right they're they're in like a foil bag with a walmart smiley face on it right right and all and all that was perfectly it was perfect at that time it was perfectly legal to have and and and the problem is is that and and you've met multiple guys like this where they come up with they jump on the bandwagon you know of a product that's not illegal they start making a lot of money and then suddenly one day the federal government two years later realizes you know what this is an issue we have a problem with that we're going to make this illegal right and now suddenly where you've got a stockpile of stuff and all these stores and you've built a whole business around something that was perfectly illegal guess what now you're now

you're a drug dealer yep so in the u.s it's it's like they can do an emergency schedule as well so they can schedule something tomorrow if they realize like hey like this people are misusing this substance let's get it on the schedule right and china it's not like that in china they do it once a year january first they update the schedule so they give their all the distributors and manufacturers and the people doing this stuff they give them ample time to liquidate to get rid of all of their right inventory um you know push it to the civilized world yeah yeah let's uncivilize you know it's illegal i know i'm getting rid of the rest of my you know people are buying it like yeah yeah exactly so money was good business was good um

and you know I told myself like I'm only going to do this until I have enough to fund all of my own businesses my own agency all this stuff it didn't work out like that you know 100 kilos turned into three the DEA seized 284 kilos in the mail going to addresses that I controlled but at the end at this point when did you know that it was illegal I mean I knew it was gray I knew it was wrong I knew people were misusing it

I knew I knew it was a drug right so I mean when did it become illegal so it was always illegal per the federal analog act so the federal I thought we were just saying that it wasn't by the time you entered into the thing you knew it was illegal oh yeah oh okay I didn't know that I didn't realize

yeah there's the controlled substances Act, and there's the Federal Analog Act. The Federal Analog Act states that any substance that produces a similar, like-mind-altering effect, they can charge you with the nearest related substance. The controlled substances, I didn't know that, but the Controlled Substances Act is very cut and dried. It's like cocaine is illegal. Methamphetamine is illegal.

Like, marijuana is illegal. Don't touch these things or you will go to jail. Right. But I didn't know, you know, I figured since we're selling stores. Yeah, yeah. I didn't realize that, you know, I didn't even know what that. the federal analog I'd never been in trouble before I didn't know what the federal analog act was so or that they could rush something through to to get it scheduled right away they can arrest you on the fAA

and then while you're setting in jail they can change the they can get it scheduled so before you're sentencing nearing and they actually so they rushed that bkmdMA which was like synthetic molly okay a fake knockoff right china's version of molly um they they rushed it through there was a case in Tampa and then there was they waited on that case and then and then there was mine and they just decided how they're going to charge us and it's weird how they do it in the federal system they like relate it to marijuana the marijuana equivalency table right and they charged us at 500 to 1 so one gram equals 500 grams of marijuana and so that seizure was a massive amount of marijuana yeah like that those each one of those kilos turned into yeah like yeah so but it was

wrong. So they were wrong about that. I was in prison for maybe a year or so and got called to R&D and my lawyer had good news for me. They had sent the substance to a DEA toxicology lab. And the report came back and showed that it was less than half as potent as the substance they charged me with. So they had to adjust my sentence to reflect that. Now I was like, oh, this means I'm getting out soon. Like, no, it doesn't. It means they took three years off, you know, three years off of 12 years so so so what happened so they you're doing great you're making money and then one day you get they this seizure happens did you know that they were investigating or this is just something that came through the mail and you know so caught it or i i didn't really i didn't really know too much

um i had seen other people in the business starting to getting in trouble uh we had gotten letters prior to prior to my door getting kicked in and our warehouse and office getting rated I had gotten letters from the FDA telling us to like season desist like we're not allowed to basically sell these substances and people are misusing them and stop selling them

why didn't she stop right then because we could just change the chemical okay so I would just communicate through encrypted email I use PGP pretty good privacy which not sure how they did it but somehow the feds cracked they had well yeah

It was pretty good. Not perfect. Well, my lawyer came to see me in jail and said, listen, so I got the evidence that they have against you. You decide what you want to do. He said, this is what they sent me. And they had all of these emails that were encrypted, mind you, all right? These emails were encrypted. Right.

They had somehow decrypted them. They probably own a server you were going through. Yeah. They probably own. They probably set up that order. It's dual factor. I still can't figure it out. Like to this day, were they running the honeypot?

Was the federal government? Yeah. Are they the ones that were selling it to me? Like, I don't know what happened, but. All I know is I'm pretty sure that the PGP is pretty secure. Unless you have both private keys, you can't decrypt that. Somehow or another they did. Maybe the guy on the other side helped out.

Well, that's what I'm saying. So I figured maybe, I don't know. I still to this day, and I told my lawyer that, I said, I don't know. Couldn't this be like fruit of a forbidden tree? Like, this seems pretty sketchy to me. Like, how did they get this? But the emails are very clear. It was for me to them saying, this is how much.

I want, how much will you charge me? Okay, send it to this address. Here's the Bitcoin transaction. Right. So it's like, he said, dude, if you go to trial, you're going to prison. Yeah. I said, man, what's it look like? He's like, honestly, he said, I don't know, but I couldn't see you've never been in any trouble.

I couldn't see you doing more than five years. I'm like, five years. Five years. Five years. Five years. It's nothing. Now I know it's nothing. But, but I was sentenced to 151.

months. It's bad. It's almost, what, 13 years? 12 years? 12 years? Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, it was a sad day.

But, you know, I ended up not doing that. So when that came back, that was three years. That took me down to nine and a half. I got a year off for completing the ARDAP program. Art app, eight and a half. I got a year of halfway house and home confinement. Seven and a half. First Step Act came through and, like, saved the day.

Right. Like, I was at a compound when this came through. So after you complete ARDAP, they let you choose the compound that you want to go to. Yeah, yeah. Well, I chose it and I got it. I went to Big Sandy. And this place is like, they call it Big Candy. Right.

Got an officer there selling, wait, I shouldn't say this stuff. But, yeah, like it was a very good spot. Yeah. You got a cell phone. We were set out back by the handball court and drink moonshine every night. on our cell phone with an extended battery pack. You don't plug your phone in the wall. If the cop does walk, all they're going to find is a battery pack.

51 inmates there, all but one had a phone. And the guy that didn't have a phone, he was Amish. And he used phones. So a good friend of mine at this day. They actually locked him up for selling chickweed salve. It's like totally legal. It's not a controlled substance. But the FDA went after him and said, listen, you're not putting a disclaimer at the bottom of your

products that are saying this product has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and has not proven to mislabeling or something right that yeah exactly they get him seven years for that would you go to trial yeah yeah of course they probably would have given him a year he went to trial but i mean he wasn't guilty he was saving people's lives in matter of fact so he called he called his he called his he had a couple products one was called the federal government disagrees yeah yeah he's innocent that's not what the jury decided yeah and they got him for other stuff like tamper, witness tampering. They got them with a bunch of stuff.

And the more you talk, the more it sounds like he should have gone to jail. Maybe not seven years, but I'm sure they could probably offered him a plea of a year or something. Probably, but you know how principled old order Amishar. They're very like, seven years worth of principled. Yes. Yeah. It would have been 20 years worth of principled.

Like, he would have been death worth of principal. Oh, yeah, for sure. Oh, hell, no, no. Well, don't worry. I agree with you. Those people are being wet. His boys chased them off. their farm with sticks like it was pretty funny um horrible but so he had a product called tumor gone

like two m o r g-o-n tumor gone and people were put had like dmso a driving agent and it had some kind of like chickweed and stuff in it that dandelion root i forget what he told me his ingredients were but the driving agent would drive this stuff down to the tumor and it would like the tumor it would like the tumor would like the tumor would just shrink in size and he had hundreds of testimonials coming in from his customer saying, oh, my God, this is, it's getting rid of my tumors. Right. And so it was actually curing these people. And the FDA is like, whoa, wait a minute.

They're just, my opinion is they're just protecting profits for big pharma. Now, if you look at the board of the FDA, a bunch of big pharma execs, it's all a racket. You're going to get me demonetized. Well, we can delete this. I'm joking. So. So it might actually. what is it disseminating like um oh god like like bad information like that's what you know

what's bad though it's like I said very clearly it's my opinion I they're gonna demonetize because I have an opinion they don't care listen Boziac complained on one of his videos where he went he actually got an infection because he'd been wearing masks and he was wearing the same mask he said I only had a couple masks but most of the time I wear one mask and so he ended up getting an infection like a sinus infection or something from the bacteria in the mask yeah and so the doctor you're supposed to wash the mask well I understand but he said I didn't think it was it wasn't that bad it wasn't like it was never well on Boziak but he said um he went to the doctor and the doctor came back and the doctor said to him he's like yeah listen man you you're gonna have to swap out

mask wash them more regularly do this do that and he was like and Boziac just made that's all he did was kind of tell the story and they demonet they gave him like a strike and demonetize this thing and he was like well you have to listen to to what I was saying. I was telling you what the doctor was saying. You know, you're, you're giving out bad information. You're, I'm telling you what the doctor's. Like, I didn't say not, he never said not to wear a mask. Well, doctors give out bad information all the time. But it wasn't that. It was that they were saying, trying to say that he was saying, don't wear a mask. He didn't even say that. They just saw her mask, COVID, infection. It might have not even

been a manual review. It may have been an algorithm. Right, right. He just did it automatically. And he got upset. I think he might have had him a reviewer or something. I mean, he was just yelling about it. But, yeah. But then it takes like three weeks to do it. It takes a while. We've had pretty good results, a few days, right? Two, three days? That's not bad.

That's not too bad. So anyway, so you're the Amish guy saving lives and he had to do seven years. In my opinion, he was, yeah. It's horrible. So what happened next? What's going on? Yeah, so when I find out I was, I wasn't intending on being released for another year and a half, two years.

And depending on how much halfway house I got. and when the first step act thank you Donald Trump or should I say Jared Kushner but you know I think it was Trump Trump passed the second he's yeah but Kushner is the one that push it yeah his father was in federal prison oh yeah okay so and so I think you know I think that's Trump's son-in-law so you just said Trump again like I'm gonna get demonetize it oh man come on it's never I'm gonna have major issue I'm being what is it shadow band okay that's crazy law enforcement

often questions him not because he's suspected of a crime but because they find him fascinating he is the most interesting man in the world I don't typically commit crime but when I do it's bank fraud

stay greedy my friends support the channel join Matthew Cox's Patreon so kick me out went to well they pulled me in the office and said listen you are leaving on the Greyhound tomorrow. And I said, what? What are you talking about? And he said, you're going to Ohio.

I was planning on coming back to Florida. Oh, you didn't have time to switch your address. He said, you're going to Ohio. That's where your family's at. And that's how I got you a year. He said, I got you a year of halfway house and home confinement. And they make it sound like he went all out of his way to do it. Oh, yeah, of course. I fought for you. He probably just got an email saying, we're sending this guy here. Yeah, right. He didn't do anything. Yeah, he didn't do anything. They don't do it. Case managers are a joke. about like the re-entry coordinators yeah how much is a re-entry coordinator paid these guys are getting you know between what they're hiring people at the bop that it starts at like

38,000 a year and that oh well it's okay all you need is one year military experience or one year incarceration experience you don't even have to have your high school diploma they'll give you 18 months to get your high school diploma and they'll extend it if you have a reason if you just have to write a letter like, hey, look, I had a bad whatever. I tried to get it. I didn't have time. I have two kids. I have this. I didn't know that. And they'll extend it. So you can go up to three years. Without a diploma. Yeah. So you can basically go to the military. Get out of the military. Apply. Get hired at 38. That's your base. Then you can work overtime. They have an amazing retirement program, medical, everything. As soon as you get there, boom. Yeah. So these guys,

these guys after two years, they're making $80,000 a year. They're not going anywhere. Yeah, they're not going anywhere. And they don't want to help anybody. I mean, nobody wants to help you. Well, that was my experience. All the teaching that's done in prison is done by inmates. Yeah.

There's some college programs and stuff, but... Listen, the guys, the COs running the programs don't want to help you at all either. They usually have an inmate doing all the work to try and get the... Yeah, and you can just pay an inmate a few. stamps and they'll sign off for you. I mean, saying that you took the class, you didn't even have to go to it. So you get all these great programming credits that you didn't even earn. But the thing is, is like, even if you go to the classes, like a lot of the stuff is so dated.

Like, what they're teaching is irrelevant and it's not practical in the real world today. So I've had a, you know, a stance on this for a long time that they need to be doing more in the way of giving people a real world education that can, that will end these revolving door policies and actually get them on solid footing when they get out when they leave prison but if you don't want them to keep coming back if you truly don't want them to keep coming back then you need to do something to make sure they don't yeah because these guys aren't used to living in cockroach infested slums like they we were driving around in ferrari's or mazaratis or like living in very nice neighborhoods like we had very nice lifestyles you know and we want to live a nice

lifestyle right the majority not everybody but a lot of us and federal prison at least And if we can't maintain that lifestyle, then a criminal mindset is, I'm going to figure out how to get that lifestyle. Right. I'll break the law to get that money if I have to. Exactly. I'm going to commit bank fraud. Like I'm going to order substances from China. Right. You need an alternative. Yeah. You need an alternative to that. No, we had enough time. I think we did enough time where like I learned my lesson definitely. It's like, don't do that shit. It's not worth it. I think I feel like, although I feel like I've made a lot of these leaps in my mind, prior to ARDAP, I definitely think ARDAP helped. Like, I really... CBT is awesome.

Like, still to this day, I have this app called Bloom. Shout out to Bloom. I just, it's a CBD journal. It's kind of expensive. I paid like $70 for it, $70 a year. But it's no different than like going to the gym. So you stay physically fit. Like, you've got to exercise your mind.

Like you've got to keep track of your feelings and your thoughts and like your emotions and and be in tune with that like know what's going on inside of your head now whether you're getting there through talking to somebody or whether you're getting there through prayer or meditation or or a CBT journal you know as long as you get there I think that's that's okay and for me bloom helps tremendously so every day before I go to bed I read and then I do my update my journal and I just tap the feelings like the emotions it sounds crazy it's funny because when you're in ARD app there's like most inmates are like anti-Art app they're like oh they're they're like brainwashing you yeah yeah yeah no dude they're

teaching you what you're thinking we have like 70,000 thoughts a day and of those thoughts i think they said like 60 70 80 percent of them are irrational most of them are not founded in objective reality in fact so all of that irrational thinking some of it we actualize like we say it or we do it or you know without all subconsciously the stuff is happening inside our brain and we're taking action without being aware of it. So what the process of CBT journaling or CBT, you know, like in ARDAP, we had attitude checks and RSIs, RASA's, rational self-analysis. So the process, all it's doing is it's showing you like, okay, so this is what I was

thinking that resulted in this outcome that was unfavorable. Right. If I had thought this instead, then there's a good chance it would have resulted in this outcome and sit. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's a, that's a really good thing. Like, that's a, that's a good tool. It's, for me, it's been a game changer. Well, you always say, look, the, the, the, the, what our app does, you know, obviously, it's, it's, it's more, it's not really designed for drugs. It's not a drug. It's not a drug course at all. It's not. It's about. It's a

behavior. It's about behavior modification. Thinking patterns. And addressing your, your, your erroneous thinking patterns and behaviors, getting to the root of it. Like, people, it's, when we see someone acting out or doing something stupid like it's easy to just blame the person or like that instance like just you know but like when you really drill it down there was an activating event there was something happened before that that and the only way you can really fully understand or get to that where that seed was planted is if you really analyze the thinking that led up to the book club on monday gym on Tuesday date night on Wednesday out on the town on Thursday. Quiet night in

on Friday. It's good to have a routine. And it's good for your eyes too. Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam. Eye exams provided by independent optometrists. Happening.

Well, you know, I used to always say is that the thing is all Ardap does is teach you to think like a rational person with, like what most criminals don't think rationally. So what most of society does automatically, criminals tend to not think in that manner. And all ARDAP really does is try and get you to think like a rational person. Right. Take these guys that have these criminal thinking errors and get them to a position into a point where they'll think like a normal person. And that will probably normalize their behavior. And as a result of that, they'll just be a normal person.

And I think the biggest thing with ARDAP was talk was, was, you know, basically it's just, just humbling you and making you appreciate what you have. Because to me, that, like, changed everything for me. Gratitude is the attitude, for sure. Yeah. Well, that, that to me just altered my behavior and my attitude completely. I'm constantly having to kind of like, what is it, do an attitude. You know, I was that, you know, or check, check my attitude or whatever.

But I'm constantly doing that every day. For a second, there'll be a moment of disappointment or a moment of anger or a moment of what. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, bro, what are you doing? You've got it good. Like, this is a great life. You live a great life. Like, you should be appreciative, be this, be that. You know, where I think, man, I'd really like that car.

I can afford that, too. And I think, whoa, you've got a great, you've got a brand new vehicle. You've got a warranty. It starts every time. It's got, everything works. It's a good vehicle. Is it a Ferrari? No.

Yeah. But a Ferrari's not going to make you happy. You're buying like a false sense of that. That wears off in like six months. It's a false, you're buying the reputation of the car. It's not actually making you more physically fit. It's not making you smarter. It's not making you anything. You know what it's definitely not doing? It's definitely not making you a better person. Hi, I'm Justin Smith. In my 20s, I made a series of bad decisions that led me to federal prison. I used my downtime to better myself and start a scalable high growth software company. Do you believe people deserve second chances? If so, come make an investment. and Contractor Plus. There's a link in the description below that will take you to our we funder. Thanks for your support. You know what I'm saying? So in the end, that's the whole thing was like I used to love prison because to me prison was a great equalizer, right? Like you're

a billionaire and you come in and your cell is a crackhead. We're on the same level. Yeah. And guess what? We're all going to childhood at the same time. We're all like, is there, is there a chance that the billionaire lives slightly better than the crackhead in prison? Yeah. He's got five or six different lockers. Yeah, he's, he's doing it a little bit better. So he can take in a little bit more calories. He can maybe, you know, drink his soda whenever you want. You know, maybe he's got somebody who's keeping his room clean. But...

Folding his laundry. Yeah, overall, he's pretty much got the same. Yeah, he's got the same. He could have every luxury that you can buy in prison. And it still sucks. And it's still sucks. Yeah. So it's funny, like, I dogg on the BOP for their reentry program and, like, how much effort they put into education.

But our death's not reentry, really. it's not but I think that's the one good thing about prison no that no art app's definitely it definitely like it definitely altered my attitude toward getting out yeah I'm glad I'm it's weird to say this but I'm like grateful that I had

the opportunity to go through that program yeah I've never been a drug addict drugs aren't really my thing smoked a little bit of pot in college but but I definitely wanted the year off and so when I everybody should have to take

They told me when I was in, there was some guys saying, listen, if you want to get some time off your sentence, make sure you tell them when they interview, make sure you tell them to use, yeah, make sure you tell them to use, yeah, make sure you tell them that you're addicted to drugs. So I, like, checked everything, stuff I'd never even done before. Yeah. And. Oh, listen, I'd never take an opiate. I told them I was, I was addicted to opiates. I had a couple guys tell me what the, like, they told me everything to say, and I said I was addicted to opiates. And I had, but I had no proof. They were like, do you have any proof of that? I'm like, no. But my lawyer in front of the judge said, you're on.

he's addicted opiate it says this it says that and the judge says well then I'm going to recommend the drug program as long as they recommend it you're good yeah otherwise because I couldn't approve anything right yeah yeah so that's you know I'm I'm I think maybe everything happens for a reason I don't know but I'm glad that I got to go through that built some of the facilitated some of the best relationships I've ever made my entire life help me look at the man in the mirror and address myself instead of just pointing a finger everywhere right blaming everyone else and everything else for the conditions I'm in, you know, that accountability system and having a different

perspective on life and myself. I think it definitely made me a better person and I'm glad I got to go through that. I think it may make sense because it's not a drug program. Let's just face it like you said. It may behave. It is literally like the person around the program is a behavior. This is a behavior modification program. Yeah. So why should drugs be the the, because, they should shift the focus and make it about, like, I think everybody should qualify for the program. I feel like we never, we almost never talked about drugs in the program. Like, like, they might say what your drug of choice was, but then they never really

talked about it. Right. But, but you have to think about, to sell it to Congress. Right. They had to package it that way. It's a drug program. Well, that's a problem that the Congress needs to reevaluate. Like, they need to just, I think there needs to be an, you know, open dialogue and

everybody should have to take it. I think everybody should, should at least be given the opportunity to take it. and benefit from it. Yeah. Let everyone benefit from it. Not just someone who, you know, who had a drug problem. Yeah. Well, you know, the problem is, so that one year, the benefit of the one year,

getting one year off if you passed the program. Like, if you didn't give them the benefit because nobody would take it. Even people that felt like they deserted and they needed it, they wouldn't take it because of the environment they're in. Yeah, they get put on the outs by everybody else in the compound. Right, because there's a stigma about it. Sure. Everybody in there, they all hate on the guys in ARD app.

Oh, you guys are snitching on each other. You guys are fucking weak. So you wouldn't take it. But then if they gave everybody the benefit of the year off, if you can pass it, they'd be lining up. The guys that are saying you're snitching on each other, they would be right in line. Then they'd all get out immediately and say, you know, oh, I faked my way through it. I fake my way through it. Yeah, but you know what?

Something stuck. Yeah, you learned something. I don't know. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was weird. You know, everyone else was hating. on it saying even people in the program like I'm just doing it for the year off but I enjoyed the program you know I wrote a book called the program no I didn't about Ardap no I had no idea

it's about me going through Ardap you have like bro it's hilarious it's basically it's a comedy because it let's face it it is a cult like atmosphere and there were people that were cutting each other's throats and they were terrified and they were you know there's there's a lot of it's very much like watching a reality TV show like every morning at the morning meeting you like read the morning the morning rich or the rich or the rich The morning ritual, yeah, yeah, yeah, the morning ritual. We recited at the beginning of the meeting and the end. Yeah.

It was literally like a cult. It was, oh, it felt so. The first time I heard, I heard 150 guys reading the, not the pledge or whatever they call it, but when they read it. Commitment statement. Yeah, when they, when they, 150 guys said it, it was, it was goosebumps up my arm. It was like, oh, my God, this is a cult. Look at these guys. You would get held accountable with.

The doctors would be scanning the room and if they saw someone's lips not. moving, you would get held, you would have to pull yourself up. Yeah. And these guys are terrified. And you're, you got to think, like, Connor, like, if you, if you got kicked out of the program, you lost a year. They just added a year to your, like if you thought I'm getting out, I'm getting out in a year and half, if I pass the program, I get out in a year. Well, guess what? If you don't pass, you're getting out two years. So you just got a, you feel like you got a year added. So you would be sitting there, you know, doing whatever. Like, you could be listening to you guys talking and if you lean to the guy next to you like like man they got like that's

that guy's a jerk or that's did you hear that if you said anything like hey bro did you the guy besides you would it wouldn't be like yeah man don't talk to me right now I don't want to get in trouble they would do this they would go they'd be like they're terrified they don't even want to lean in to say yeah bro man I'm trying to listen because then one of the they call them the drug treatment the DTSs would see you and they might be be like, Mr. Cox, do you have something to say? Stand up. No, no, hold on a second, John.

Good morning, community. I'm Mr. Cox. Yes, yeah. You stand up and say, morning, the community, my name is Mr. Cox. Green Group phase two. They would have a cell to group and then they, well, what did you have to say, Mr. Cox?

What did you have to? I mean, you're like, you understand, you could get kicked out for something like, bro, I. Or rolled back. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Or they would call it, yeah.

They hate, they don't want you to call it a rollback. No, it has a negative stigma to it. Listen, it was so. You have the opportunity to get more treatment. Terrific. I knew a guy that was about to graduate, and he went into a team meeting, like with all the DTSs, right? And he went in, and they were sitting there, and they were talking to him, and he was being very honest. Like, he was like, you know, like, honesty is a big thing about the program.

Honesty is the foundation of change. Thank you. So he goes, they're asking him questions, and they said, okay, so, you know, how do you feel about this? Oh, I feel like this. I feel like I've learned this. I feel like this. I have a better thought process. And as they weren't on,

somebody happened to say something along the lines of, so you realize like, you know, so obviously you realize, you know, you committed a crime and this and that, and you feel like you, you, you've changed. And, you know, you certainly wouldn't do that again. And he went, well, I mean, I wouldn't do it again, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that I, like that it was,

I forget what he said, but they were like, They said, what do you mean? And he goes, well, I mean, like, I didn't hurt anybody. He said, I. I think it was fraud. He was like, he's like, I didn't hurt anybody. I took money from the federal government. He said, I ended up keeping a lot of that money.

He said, so I wouldn't say it wasn't worth it. Like, in a way, it was worth it. I'll be getting out of prison here, you know, in a few months. He's like, so I'm not saying it wasn't worth it. I know I shouldn't have done it, but it wasn't, I'm not saying, I wouldn't say that. He definitely did not respond. He did not tell them what he needed to tell them. nine-month program, Homeboy was about to graduate in like a month all the way back to the

beginning, all the way back, because the first phase of the program stole that from him. And then if he chose to quit, then he'd lose even more time. He tried to quit. You know, how many people did you know tried to quit? They drag him for two weeks. They call them in the office. They get inmates to try and talk you into staying. He eventually stayed because he went to his wife and said, look, they held me back. They brought me all the way back. And he said, I'm just going to, I'm trying to get out now. And she's like, oh, no, no, no. She said, I've been down with you for five years.

She said, and you're saying you don't want to put up with some crap for the next nine months so that you can get out six months earlier. I just have to, it'll only be another six months. And he's like, well, I mean, yeah, but you don't understand. She's like, I don't care. She's, you're going back. You're doing it again. No. You take it to.

I took it with Dr. Smith, but I'm saying this guy's wife told him. Oh, I got you. The guy's wife was like, so you're saying you don't want to put up with some crap so you get out six months earlier so you can enjoy your time? She said, and I've been waiting five years for you to get out? She says, no, you're going back to the beginning. You're going to put up with the crap. And the next time they ask you if it was worth it, you're saying it wasn't worth it. That's what you're doing.

And he said, man, I've never seen my wife so pissed off in my life. He's like, I mean, she's. So he went back and ate crow and went through the program and got the year off and, you know, didn't get out when he thought he was. and it obviously added another like seven or eight months onto his time. But, but yeah. I saw, there was a guy, so I took it to Pensacola. Interesting story. So I, someone ratted on me for having a cell phone at Yazoo.

Held you accountable? No, I wasn't in the program. No. Still holding you. He's just trying to, he cares about you. Yeah, yeah. He wants the best for you. He just wanted my phone.

Oh. But so they, and I was actually sharing. cell with the head orderly so a good dude and older guy and um when they told on us they the lieutenants came and flipped the lieutenants came and flipped our cell upside down and couldn't find the phone so they put us in the shoe and they said tell us where the phone is and i said what phone there is no phone phone that would be contraband like you got to tell them you got to i was like dude you use that phone as much as i do i'm not telling them nothing right so they left us in the hole from August 15th, my dad's birthday actually, all the way to December 15th, four months.

And on December 15th, they came, I had camp points. They couldn't give us a shot. So there was no shot that could stick. So they left us in the hole for four months to the day. Trying to get you to admit to a phone that they never found. Yeah. They never found it. Because some guy said they have a phone. Yeah, in fact. So, so interesting story there. So, Mr. what was his name? Really cool dude. The unit manager, I forget his name in our building of Yazu.

He came to see me in the hole and he said, Smith, I hopped out of the rack. And he said, I need your thumbprint. I need your signature. So he said, you're going to Pensacola. I said, what? I went from the shoe to a camp. So as soon as I got to Pensacola,

I was there for like a month. and I jumped in the program. I'm like, I'm going to go, you can get the points off now because I, you know, there's some legislation pending right now. I want to make sure, it was still early. Yeah, I started six years left. So it's like, it's, it's like, but everyone else was like, don't do it yet because you can lose those points.

If you get caught with, you know, a phone or something, you'll lose it. Yeah. They'll take it back. I was like, nah, I think something, something's coming down the pipeline while I was right. Yeah. So I didn't have a phone while I was in R-Dap. That was the only point in my entire bid where I didn't have a phone. But even while I was at Pensacola, when I worked off base, I worked at an Air Force base, and an inmate drove the bus.

And we would drive like an hour and a half there, an hour and a half back every day from Eglin to Pensacola. Oh, okay. And I didn't realize it was that far. It was pretty far. Yeah. It took us almost two hours of traffic. You know, Florida traffic is crazy. So you can do all of about four hours of work and you've got to get in the bus and go back?

Yeah. So we would actually wake up early. We would wake up at like 4 o'clock. Early, they had early chow. So then you go to the bus barn, you get on the buses. There's like three or four buses. You're followed by a CO in a car, but it may drive all the buses. Right.

They had a CDL program there, so which is pretty cool. Then we would get out to the airport space. We'd actually work a full day, and then we would just get back late. And so I'd have to work out late on the week. And then after. And they paid you, what, like $30, $40 an hour? $17. Yeah, right.

$17 a month. What? Big money. Yeah, big money. For that, you can get three, maybe four things of Keefe and a couple of a couple creamers. Can't even buy the boots. You have to wear to work. Oh, but they provide you with boots, so you don't have to worry about that.

Maybe a bag of Cheetos. BOP issued boots. So, yeah, I was on a deforestation crew at Eaglin, and that was actually fun. The guy, it was a civilian that, like, supervised us. Right. And he went by Yee-Haul. And he'd been in the military way too long. This guy would always be like, Ye-Haul, after everything he said.

But he would give us ample time. He would always leave. And we had a little hole we drilled in the garage door of the shack in the woods where we were. And we could look out that hole. We'd take turns looking out the hole for CO was coming or not. And the rest of us would be there on our phones. so we'd have like an hour and a half a day or so on a phone and I took a piece of I'm not going to say where I got my phone that's probably still a good spot so good luck so yeah it was okay like at the camp level federal prison's not that bad of course it's not what it was prior to who was that lady was it Barbara Walters she messed up for everybody the BOPS swimming pool She did a thing on like 60 Minutes called Club Fed.

Yeah. And they interviewed. About how we had disc golf and movie theater. Yeah, they have played. They have golf. They were street clothes. Yeah, they have, like, it's, and the problem was, is like, they interviewed guys that were, you know, they interviewed people, guys that were, like, they had this one guy they interviewed, where she was like, so, so they serve you chicken and. And you can get either chicken or steak, anything else?

And he's like, well, we used to get, like you could get lobster. He was, we haven't seen lobster in a long time. And had ice cream at the end of the. Oh, like it was, it was, and he didn't really understand what she's doing. But she's like getting him, goading him into saying more. And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah. Well, no, you get this. You know, he's not thinking it's a big deal because that's his environment.

And he figured that's just federal prison. That's how it was. Right. And then when she was, they were done with the episode, Listen, they went in They bulldozed the tennis courts They poured in Like they just completely gutted

Started gutting across the board All these things And that's when they started locking in Just after that They started locking up They started going after all of the Crack dealers And gang members

And before you knew it Federal Prison ended up being basically Almost like a big state prison Not as bad but That was tough on crime right Clinton administration Yeah. Yeah. Prison, you know what's so funny about... That was actually Biden's doing.

Well, you know what's so funny is that like under the Clinton administration, Clinton built more prisons than any president in history. So it's just, it's funny. That doesn't surprise me. You know, so they were phasing out everything. When I got locked up, they still had fountain coax. Like the first month or so I was in prison, you went up, you got scrambled eggs, bacon.

Man, I've been locked up for over a year. bacon and then you could go get like a coke a diet coke a sprite like all coke products it was like oh my god i know and within a month within a month they kept the founts but they got rid of the bag in a box yeah they went to like the the fruit punch fruit punch yeah it's just horrible yeah um or lemonade or water and then now it could be a lot worse man oh no i i i i stay prison like no oh i was shocked listen i was shocked i was like bro this is this is amazing this but then of course it when all that got phased out, even then, and people would complain about the food, I would say, I would think, well, what did you think they were going to feed you when you were robbing those banks?

Like when you kidnapped that guy and tortured him, like what did you think, well, at least if they catch me and I get to federal prison, they'll feed me good? Like when you were selling that, when you were selling that methamphetamine, did you think, yeah, yeah, I'm cooking meth in the tub of my double wide and I'm selling it to kids or whoever I'm selling it to. but at least when I get to federal prison they'll be steak and lobster like bro the food's edible it ain't great but it's okay and every once in a while you had a good meal like fried chicken yeah

sometimes you're fried chicken like you can't fuck up fried chicken even if it was baked man chicken days always Thursdays were great it wasn't too bad yeah I got Zied out like now I'm like done on Italian I used to love Italian food now like I won't even look at Italian food what about the holiday meals yeah the holiday meals they actually have

holiday meals where you got you got like Thanksgiving and Christmas and they would give you bags to take back yeah like you got all this good stuff and guys would complain bags half as small as it was last year motherfucker like you deserve a bag a bag of Cheetos and like you like aren't you here for aren't you here for smuggling drugs or didn't you rob like 12 you got a big clear bag full of stuff you got a bag with Cheetos and all kinds of different cookies and food and all kinds of stuff like what did you think you deserve Santa Claus to bring you a bag in prison you know and they would have

food like you would you it's a good thing though like you have I think like you have to do something like every now and then they bring a popcorn machine out and or a snow cone machine here yeah yeah like you got to do something like these guys like first of all people deserve second chances right not everyone's there's a scum back right well if you ask people on the street they'll tell you like they shouldn't have they shouldn't have TVs yeah they shouldn't have but The truth is, it's like, wait a second, bro. Like, those TVs, if you didn't have those TVs, these guys wouldn't be-

Yeah, they wouldn't be reading books. They'd be fighting and stabbing each other. They'd make the guards job five times as hard. Those TVs are babysitters. Yeah, sure. They keep them subdued. You know, it's funny, I never watched TV in prison. Like, hardly ever.

I hardly ever did either. I read almost all the time, but I'm not, you're not the normal inmate. I'm not the normal inmate. Right. So, but yeah, yeah. I heard you right. And so do they give you little treats to keep you happy and pacify? Yeah. To pacify. Like they're not doing this because they care about you. They're doing it because it's like, hey.

They realize that the consequence of not doing it. Think about how childish this sounds. If everybody's good this week on Saturday, we're going to make popcorn and you guys can all get a bag of popcorn. Be good. That's exactly what it is. That is what it is. We're going to have snow cones. What kind of snow cones? We have two different. flavors. Are you going to have cherry? Yes, we are. I'm going to be good all week. I'm going to make my bed. For a cherry snow cone. It's pathetic, but at the time, you know, your expectations of life are so low at that point. Getting a bag of popcorn is amazing. Having a movie night on Wednesday night, like they're going to show the new jeep on. Yeah. I don't deserve that. Like,

that's like amazing. And I was thrilled. I'd be like, bro, fucking casino royale on Wednesday. No. Absolutely. Absolutely. You're going to be there. Of course I'm going to be there. I'm posting my chair up all day. I'll sit there all day for you. I love that.

Like now you realize like that's a big deal. Like that's insane that. But that was that guy. I was like, we're watching Walking Dead on Sunday night. I'm ready to fight. Yeah, we did have our shows. That's true.

Yeah, we had our shows that we watched. I only watched like I would watch maybe a movie every other week because they were sometimes they were just horrible. And then every Sunday I would watch Walking Dead. That was all I watched. Yazoo, we got, see, at Coleman, it wasn't like that. There was hardly any phone. When I was on the comment, there was hardly any phones.

There was very few. Yeah, very few. But at Yazoo, everybody had a phone. And if you could come up with $2,400, you could have a phone. Well, you had good COs there. The COs were the ones bringing it in. Oh, I know that. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But at Coleman, you understand now at Coleman, they had a, like a, whatever, they, a shaked down the other day, and they took 200 cell phones off the column. Recently? This was at the low. How many phones? 200. Off Coleman.

Over 200. Over 200, really. Wow, that's like a record for Coleman. Because, you know, what's happened? When COVID came through, the BOP with- 10% of the compound. I understand. Yeah.

I'm saying when COVID came through, they pushed a bunch of the older guys, older CEOs to retire. They hired the most senior CEO at Coleman Lowe has been on the job two years. Really? That's the most senior guy. No way.

The guy that has the most experience. So there's no one there right now. they were there when we were there. Like every time they do a sweep, it's 100, 200. Because you have to think, if you can get the guys that have been there for 20 years and 15 and 16 years, those are guys making $100,000 a year. We get rid of them. They don't have to pay them that anymore.

Right. You can bring more people in for less. We shift them back. We get new guys for around $36,000, $38,000. It takes them, you know, a while to build up to where they're making more money and working over time. We pay them a lot less. So that's a good thing for them.

But the problem is is those guards are supplementing their income by bringing in drugs, phones, do what you want. And they're going to get knocked off. When I was a big Sandy, there was a guard there named Hank Williams. Nice. No shit. Nice. And he was actually the coolest guard on the whole compound.

Super cool. We worked in the penitentiary kitchen. See, all the, and we actually, they told us, the guy that ran the kitchen at the camp told us face to face. He was like, listen, gentlemen. He said, I've done things in my life that could have easily put me in the same situation you're in some people get caught and some people don't right um so i'm who am i to judge you he said the real reason you're here the only reason you were here and not at home with an ankle

monitor on is because we need help run into prison right nice yeah he said when they're on when it's just a camp and a penitentiary when the pen and they're always locked down some some guards branding drugs in or the people are falling out on crazy chemicals and doing stupid stuff killing each other you know someone gets killed they have to do a big investigation they lock the whole yard down they're always on lockdown so we ran that kitchen so while the penitentiary's on lockdown we would go down there and cook yeah me and i started on the line about a month into it i was i was cooking uh me and my buddy sam gerard uh the the the the the Amish guy. We were on 18 cooking at the penitentiary. So he, Hank Williams worked in the kitchen

at the pen and I guess he was braining phones and methamphetamine and all kinds of spice and stuff under his vest. Okay. And he got sentenced, I think, to 27 years or something like a 27 years? Yeah. Or 17 years. It's something. He got a sentence to a long time. That's insane. I didn't think they were going to hand him that kind of a sentence, but his boy, I guess, was buying it off someone on the street, was bringing it to him, and he was taking it in the prison. Him and his son both got arrested. So I don't know how that went down, but I know that he was the coolest cop there and I didn't figure he was selling drugs. There was the, there was the lieutenant who's at Coleman, whose wife was in the pen, and she had, she'd basically set it up so that another

inmate was supposed to break another inmate's arm in the shoe like one of my inmate was giving her a hard time like you know blowing her kisses and talking saying dirty things to her and got under her skin and then she had another inmate that she liked so he was always very respectful they were in the shoe and so she he said put me in there with him I'll teach him a lesson and she goes and so she switched him and the guy of course they got to a fight and the other guy fought back and he ended up like choking him to death he broke he ended up killing him and so then the FBI comes in they've got her on film they've got the talks they've got this they've got not video but you know and then of course the guy that killed them you're about to get a life sentence

you know and he basically said look I'll I'll plead to this much time and I'll tell you what happened with her and so they she went to trial they offered her 10 years it was like you know kind of like manslaughter type like you didn't mean you didn't you didn't mean for him to die and she said no fuck that I didn't mean for it to happen at all like she tried to say no no in the cell with them. I understand, but she went to trial because she's watched too much law and order and thought things were fair. And she lost at trial and she got like, I think she got 30 years or life. It's a bad that I said, I'm glad she learned things weren't fair. I mean, you know, I don't think she meant to. I think that if you don't have the, if you don't have the right

attitude, then you shouldn't take the, it's like the police officers that pull people out of there and they're just complete jerkoffs to them. It's like, you know, it's like, you don't have the temperament for this job. You're taking advantage of this situation. Sure. So, you know, I don't know. But what went, but anyway, so what, what happened when you, so ultimately, you just got kicked out to Ohio? Yeah. Did you go stay with Brandon? No, she's, you know, Brandon's been a really good friend of me. A lot of people, when this, when I went to prison, they just kind of forgot I exist. Of course. Most people, even. That's what all your good buddies do. Family. A lot of people.

Listen, I hear you. It's wild. The people I felt like I did the most. Brandon never passed judgment on me. Right. He knew. I think Brandon knows me, though. You know, they say it's not what you know.

It's not who you know. It's who knows you. And Brandon knows my heart and he knows my character and he knows my values. And I think that's the only reason that Brandon was able to, you know, not be like that. Right. He's been a very good friend of me. In fact, I've helped him in his business, set up his production studio and recruited team members and systemized some processes and had TV mounds made and developed the curriculum for five master classes. We're now bundling together and he's now taking on coaching clients and he's not doing it for, he doesn't need $3,000.

He doesn't need money. He's doing it to help people because he remembers just. just 12 years ago, he was in a warehouse making $11 an hour. Yeah. His parents never had any assets at all. And if it wasn't for someone extending a hand to help him, he would have never accumulated the wealthy us today. So he's genuinely helping people.

And I see so many people in the program are making, like, Jacqueline and her husband, Andrew, their goal, she works full time. They have a nine-month, one out, 10-and-a-half-month-old baby. Um, he's a stay at home dad out of Austin, Texas. And she, one, she was interested in learning how to do this stuff, but she was nervous. Like she, you know, I work full time. I want my husband to be on board. They were kind of back and forth for a month. And I said, listen, if you show up and you take this seriously, their goal is own one laundromat. I said, I promise you, you'll, you will own a laundromat. So Brandon's going to hold your hand through the whole process and make sure you know exactly what to do to get into a cash line. business and it sounds like how can someone guarantee me that I'm going to own a laundromat it sounds

pretty it sounds like a tall order but as long as you know what to do you know how to approach a situation how to negotiate the deal you don't need to have money and you don't need to have credit to acquire a business that's cash flowing from day one right that is the reality 65% of businesses in the United States are sold with some level of seller financing and most people don't know that You've got 10,000 baby boomers retiring every single day. And 19% of them, close to 20% of them, have our own local businesses. Yeah. They don't want to deal with it anymore.

You need to be shocked how many people are willing to do owner financing on their houses on real estate. MLO deals. But people don't want to, people don't want to even ask. Like the real estate agents don't want to ask. You mean, I've got to call 50 people to find a landlord that's willing to let me take over their house on a contract? Right. Yeah, you do. Yeah.

It's just going to take five hours. actually you have to take you probably probably 10 yeah i mean i used to do it all the list you filter the list down right like it's all about knowing what to look for yeah and in it's all it's all public information i mean you've got eviction records you've got you've got you've got you've got all kinds of well no i'm saying you don't have to go knock on doors no i was going to say i used to i literally would go in a day and take a real estate agent go to five houses on houses that weren't willing to do under financing they're not even offering over and i'd put it the best deals are off market i put it no

no, these are listed. Oh, they're listed. And I would put a contract on every single house where I'm putting down 10% or 5% and I'm asking for owner financing. And then they would come back and they'd say, well, I can't, I have a mortgage on my house. We'll do a wrap-around.

Well, what if? And then I have certain things that I say when they say they have the reasons that they don't want to do it and then I have rebuttals to those. So there's stipulations and rebuttals. And they would say, no, no, I've got an issue with this. I'd give the rebuttal, issue with this, rebuttal. So I do that.

And you go through five of them or ten of them, one of those people says, it's a numbers game. Okay. As long as both people feel like, if you can illustrate the value of the deal, and as long as both people feel like they walked away from the table benefiting, then the deal will happen. Right. So, well, so, okay, so what you, so you didn't end up living in Brandon's spare room. You went to, you went to a halfway house.

Yeah, yeah, so I went to a halfway house. How long did you get for a halfway house? Six months. Oh, okay. and six months home confinement. So a year combined. The halfway, I ended up getting, they ended up letting me out, I wasn't there the whole six months. So you really got a year, half a house.

You just happened to do six months of it at home. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, yeah, so I did more than six months of it at home. I did like nine months, I think. I did like three or four months in the halfway house and they sent me home. As long as it took them to figure out that they could put an ankle monitor on you. Yeah.

That process. Yeah, that's it. you were allowed to have a phone at the halfway house so that was nice i actually brought the phone that i had from prison i everyone's like dude they're going to go through your stuff when you get there and then i called someone that i was um they are in prison with i think i called tyler tyler cox uh from pensacola your cousin um he lives in columbus and he said no they they didn't check nothing oh they went through they went through they went through they don't get you're allowed to have a phone now right so you're good right but you can well i was going to say but

you could always say my brother gave it to me yeah like you know before i got here yeah exactly did they make you turn it in every no or they check no they checked the sex offenders phones but they didn't they came around did phone checks but they only checked the sex offenders and i saw sex offenders getting locked back up from the halfway house like it's a sickness they've got something wrong with them and and like there was one guy i remember he was in the room next to me they were locked down due to covid they ever in the room had covid and they would have to lock everyone else down to let them go take showers and use the bathroom and go outside then have to sand sanitize the bathroom before everyone else everyone got covid except me i don't know how i didn't get it so

but anyhow this guy had like a remote monitor like a wireless monitor for his phone so you could like swipe it adds an extra screen yeah and he would set in the table in the halfway house in the corner back in the room and and stream porn on these on these on that screen well someone told on them held him accountable and someone held him accountable and uh and they went in into the phone check and found where he had like downloaded um uh tour and he was accessing he like he had the browser still open and he was accessing yeah and they locked it back up the marshal came and took him back to prison major a couple weeks later they came and locked up another guy young guy yeah i guess child pornography like there's something it's like heroin like you know these guys are yeah there's

something something's wrong but so so so so you you went home like i mean what did you a regular job like i mean something led to the to where you are now and i know it has goes back to the yeah i'm in a pretty good situation now um and it actually um so when did you decide i'm saying when did you decide so there was a there was a point i was reading a book and i read this book at big sandy in probably 2019 um i'm reading this book uh written by david rose and he's the president of new york angels association or whatever the chapter it's like an Angel Investment Group. Okay.

And he has written a couple of books on angel investing. And this book, this particular book, was called The Startup Checklist, the 25 steps to build a scalable high-growth business. And it, you know, it just basically walks you through how to do everything per Silicon Valley standards like Delaware C-Corp, cap table management, your different classes of stock, your common stock, your preferred stock. drafting your bylaws, making sure everything is done properly per the standards of the investment community and the VCs. So once I read this book, I mean, I read it like the Bible and I read it

two or three times and I started implementing this stuff. So I had a phone the whole time. So I set up my Delaware C Corp. I said I actually David Rose has a has a platform called gust. Gust.g.com. It's a legal platform they handle all of your cap table management they connect you with a law firm they the law firm waives their retainer and they give you a month of free um consulting every month so it's three grand a year for gust but they give you a month of free consulting no they give you one hour a month okay one hour from everything else anything actionable is billable yeah um but we've got a really good lawyer um and it's all a result of you know me finding that book right so i set up the the the c corp and i still have my connections in India, one of my best friends.

We had built and sold a little software startup in 2011, 2012, as a side hustle. We've been friends ever since. I went to India to visit him, spend a few weeks there, and we've been best friends ever since. So he never turned his back on me either. And when I came back to him and I said, hey, you remember Handyman Estimator? I said, I've been thinking, like, long and hard about this. I've been doing research, some market research, and I realize there's 25 or so competitors competing in the field service management software space,

and none of them are really addressing the needs of these companies. They're solving problems at the company level, like some problems, like sending estimates or invoices, like kind of. Honestly, they've all kind of half-assed it. And I'm sorry, but like a cake half-baked is inedible. So I said there's a huge market opportunity for someone to come along and solve problems at the network level and address the way these contractors are working with one another and how they work with property managers and project managers and master developers.

And if you can streamline that whole interaction, that whole engagement, like this is at the time it was growing at a compounded annual growth rate of like 11, 12%. Now that's even growing. So right now the field service management software market is growing at 20%. So by 2030, we are looking at a $25 billion market opportunity. And I see a world where every contractor in the developed world will have at least a free contractor plus account. Okay.

So what you're saying is, so right now, if I'm a contractor, what does this do for me? What am I? So I put in crown molding and door casing and I put in French doors. Sure. So we've actually partnered with the home deal. Depot. We've partnered with Next Insurance. We've partnered with Chase for payment facilitation. We've partnered with Thumbtack for lead generation. So as a contractor, what it does for you is, one, it helps you find more customers. Two, it helps you

systemize and organize your business. You can manage all of your scheduling. You can delegate to team members. So everything's on a schedule. Here soon, we're launching a live map with live map delegation so you can see where everyone's out at on a map. So is this something, does it, do you have to be like a big contractor? No, no, it's free. For a solopreneur, for like, if you're just a one-man show. Solopreneur, how do you say? Solopreneur.

Solo pernure. Like the artisans, you know, the guys that are just out like the electrician is just going doing odd jobs or whatever. He doesn't need to pay for it. It's totally free for life. It's a freemium app. And the reason we make it free is because we've monetized free. You know, like we, every time he sends an invoice to a customer

and his customer pays with credit card or ACH, we get 40 basis points or we make a percentage. So off of that transaction. That sounds like a lot, but that's like that's less than half a percent. Yeah, it's less than half a percent. But when you're doing, yeah, but when you're doing 70 billion dollars worth of invoice volume. Right. No, no, I'm saying that's not like you're charging a lot of money.

That's very little money. Yeah, exactly. For that guy. We've actually made it. And we're the only solution that does this, but you can actually pass the processing fees onto your clients. So if you enable that, then it'll mark the invoice up. When your client gets the invoice, it'll say, okay, well, if I pay with credit card, then I've got to pay 2.9% plus 30 cents.

If I pay with ACH, I've got to pay a flat 1%. But the idea here is, like, you're doing half a million dollars a year in volume as small as an SMB contractor. 3% of half a million dollars is, what, 3% of a million dollars is $30,000. So it would be $15,000, $15,000 a year in bank fees? Right. well we make a seat don't have to right um so uh we launched uh we actually launched our beta in june of 2020 i was still a big sandy and launched our MVP in December and um our minimum

viable product i was just going to say what is MVP yeah so uh and then we've it's been we built a team you know we've built a great team we have 14 employees now um we're all still wearing a lot of hats. You know, I'm still doing customer service and sales and HR and, you know, but we have a great team that's dedicated. We're all united with the same vision. Like we, we see the problem that people are having. We're very customer-centric. Like, if you haven't read our reviews, like, if you download the app Contractor Plus and you read the customer reviews, they're overwhelmingly like really good. And the reason is because when customers come to us and say, it would help me better if it did this instead of

if you could put this here, if you could do that. Like, we take that stuff to heart. Right. And that's the thing. Like, initially, when we started the company, our goal was just to raise endless rounds of dilute of capital and just prop up our valuation and exit in five to seven. But now I've realized, like, this has become a passion.

Like, I actually, I'm connected with these contractors. Like, I have skin in the game. Like, I care about their experience. I care that this actually solves their problem for them in the best way possible. And when you, what I found is, typically when companies start working with venture capitalists they come in they kick most of the founders off the board they take control of everything they formalize everything they hire a new CEO the company loses its soul right it's just another soulless entity that doesn't really give a

crap about their customers all they care about is the bottom line and I don't want that to happen to contractor plus so I think the way to preserve that is to remain lean remain frugal and remain customer-centric. And the only way we're going to be able to do that is by not getting into bed with VCs. So that's why we're raising a regulation CF or crowdfunding campaign through WeFunder because you don't have to be accredited to invest. So retail investors, accredited investors, regular people who recognize like, hey, this software is making a big difference in a lot of people's lives and it's going to be a multi-billion dollar company. Like you'd be crazy even if we were worth what a billion dollars in five years from now uh $100 would be worth

$20,000 right it's so early stage like you put a hundred bucks and you could turn it into 20 grand um now it's a startup so right how long nothing's guaranteed but how long but you've you've already got like you've already got like over a thousand uh people signed up or something like that oh no we've got 18000 18000 how long have you been doing it since 2020 okay yeah and we've never 18,000 people have signed up. And we're getting 50 a day right now. Our customer acquisition cost is zero. We've never paid a dollar for customers.

Mostly getting them through the app stores through search engines. And we haven't even shipped our viral network effects. You know, subcontractor management and compliance, our staffing solutions. And we have a lot of stuff that addresses the way contractors work and network with each other. Right. That when that hits the, the market, viral network effects basically, it makes it so irresistible because if it's like a glove, whether you're an artisan with one employer, one helper, or whether you're a master

developer with 500 employees or hundreds of subcontractor or vendor relationships, we give you the solution to us all those problems. So what happens is we don't make our, you know, the master developers aren't our bread and butter. We might make 100 bucks a month off of them. And it, it, it's usually the other way around, you know, like you only make $100 off of a company that's doing $200 million a year. Right. Well, yeah, but they're bringing us all of our customers for free. Right.

So, you know, it's a win-win relationship. Like I said, if everybody walks away from the table feeling like they won, then everybody wins. So I'm really proud of our team and what we've been able to accomplish. And this is out of Ohio? Yeah, so I'm in Ohio right now. our office is in Orlando. I'm constantly between Ohio and Orlando. We have team members all over the world. We're mostly everybody, but our DevOps team is remote. So we've got a couple guys in Atlanta. We've got a guy in Tampa on our senior leadership team. We've got, we've got. So you didn't get the top two floors of a building in downtown Orlando to run everything out of? No, definitely not. So Jason Fried fried, however you say his last name, he started a company called. called 37 signals. He wrote a book called Remote. And he makes a pretty good argument for the benefits of working remotely. Now, from our DevOps perspective, a lot of our team is remote

right now. We have an office in India that we pay rent on. A lot of our team is working remotely. But it's in India. Yeah. So you can get somebody with a master's degree for $2 an hour in India. Oh, no, not quite. So like the talent that we need, like they're at an, for engineers, if you really want like rock stars that are that that are like kind of like a master of all um that are as creative as they are technical um you're going to pay $3,500 a month for that. Um, it's changed. Right. But, but you can get people who are really technical and really good.

Oh, I couldn't afford it here. It'd be prohibitive. I wouldn't, we wouldn't, contractor plus wouldn't exist if I had to rely on American labor. Pay at least 150 an hour here. Hmm. And they would like, they would milk the clock. Yeah, I was going to say, and they'd be bitching him the whole time. So I've recognized, like, one of my agendas for this coming year,

upon completing this raise, is getting our DevOps team centralized. We're going to put an office right in the middle of everyone in Mumbai, and we're going to relocate our senior Android developer and his whole family to Mumbai. He's the only one that lives afar. He's got to move to Mumbai. Yeah. Where he live now? He lives like three hours away.

Oh, it's fine. Okay. I thought this might be a guy that lived in Orlando. Oh, no. No, but I'm going to have to spend a lot of time there as well. One thing. Right. Have you been to Mumbai?

No, I'm just joking. It's actually, India is actually beautiful. You know what I'm saying? Like, they show parts of, whenever you've watched the news, it's always just crap, you know? But it's actually, there's actually some great spots in India. Like, there are great spots. I think everything is perspective. Well, I think, look, you can go to Tampa.

And I could drive you around Tampa for five hours and you'd see nothing but, just trash and garb you'd be like this place sucks then i could drive you around for five hours in tampa and you'd be like oh my god everybody in tampa's rich yeah yeah you know it's like that in every city you go to yeah Mumbai not so much like the best part of the city is lower perell and it's connected by the whirley link which is a big bridge and the tic tic tuk's on the other side of the bridge so you have to like get out of a tic tuck and get on a taxi and all the taxis look like they're from like the 1950s but so you go over to lower perell it doesn't look much cleaner or better but that's where the wealthy people are

and everything's nicer that the real estate's nicer but you can't tell from the outside from the outside looking in it's like everything's pretty and the slums like from I stayed at the four seasons for like a week and on the rooftop of the four seasons you can look out over the slums and it just stretches for miles and miles and miles further than the naked eye can see

and I'm talking and I actually spent some time in the slums I wanted to see what it was like to you know to live there and I wanted to see all sides of that culture. There's families of five and six living under a painter's tarp, totally common, burning their trash. And like, it's, people say India smells bad. Well, it's because people are burning their trash everywhere. We went to this, well, we went to Elephenta Island. And then we went to a place called Essel World. It's like Disney World. It's like India's knockoff theme park. The largest theme park in Asia, it says. You have to get on a ferry and they take you out

to this island where Esselworld's at and uh there where we were waiting on this this this boat there was like 15 feet of trash from the shoreline that would know they just never clean it so india is that sound good at all pretty bad it's pretty rough but i enjoyed it i like indian food um i don't know i never got sick everyone's like don't eat the street food don't drink the water i'm like whatever dude nothing ever happened to me so what's really what's really funny though interesting story so i'd love to hear you know how they put the funny story the red dots they put on your forehead um so when i when i got off the plane said there was a doctor on the plane and an indian doctor yeah i was the only white guy on the

plane and it was a female doctor and she was like do you want some like five doctors and they're all patel yeah so uh she said trust me you want some put this on it was like in a roller vile but i she was a stranger i didn't trust i'm like i'm not rubbing that stuff on my skin but it was like neem oil i guess it was something to keep the mosquitoes away right and i was like no i'm okay and she was like i'm okay i got off the plane i got bit by a mosquito where the red dot would usually go swole up when i got to the hotel the hotel was like you were married i thought i was going to have malaria so they were like did you have a malaria you don't think any of this stuff's funny he listen Connor doesn't find me amusing at all at all

everybody else laughs and smiles and Connor just just shakes his head like this guy Anyway, sorry So, yeah, so they sent The hotel actually bought And they paid a doctor to come to the hotel And she came and she gave me a pill A malaria blocker So

It prevents the malaria from metastasizing And like taking root, I guess Just in case there was malaria So yeah, no malaria Malaria free But so long story short I said listen guys I don't have a whole lot of money right now

but I can give you equity in what could eventually be a billion-dollar business. And I know there's a lot of coulds there, but you know what I'm capable of. Do you believe in the vision enough? And here's the market research. I do all the market research, like 30 pages of market research. Here's what I came up with, and this is what I think we can do. And my counterpart in India was like, hell yeah, let's do it. Is that how he sounded, or does you have an accent?

So how would Russian say it? oh yeah yeah i'm a good idea i'm sorry roche i'm all in i'm all in i like you yeah so my name is tom your name's not tom uh uh rocian is the best partner i could ask where i couldn't ask for a better partner he's he's a great guy listen the most competent person i i dealt with like i was designing my website which was pretty easy right to design it was a wordpress website but i wanted to do certain things and little thing and the guy that I dealt with in India was the only competent person I've dealt with like anybody else I called like they wouldn't call back for four days or they I'll get to that and all this this guy was you know I can barely understand him but let me

tell you something he was he was a worker yeah you know and he worked and he did everything he spent enough time around him you can understand it a little better yeah yeah he was good so I learned some I learned some of the language there like tunson dada ho it's that's what you say to a pretty lady where's the red where's the red light district See? That's funny. You know, what's wrong with you? He laughed. We did go to the red light, did he laughed. He laughed. You just, this guy, this guy. So yeah, started a scalable high growth software business from the confines of federal prison on a contraband cell phone. Nice. We have great investors, advisors, team members. We've grown 18,000 users, 520 paying customers, and we're growing by the day. And now we're at a point now where we realized,

instead of getting into bed with VCs and going the traditional route, I mean, we've heard so many people say, listen, you'll never see a billion dollar valuation unless you take venture capital. Can't what to prove them wrong. Right. Well. Never say never.

Maybe 0.04% of businesses could pull that off, but we're going to be in that percentage. The viral network fix is what makes the difference. I was going to say you're keeping all your overhead low. You're not, you're not like, you know, well, you know who Gary V is. right so listen how many times you heard gary v so talk about these companies these guys go out and they're like raising all this money and they're and but they're not really working on the business and they're blowing the money he's like and then you go through their instagram and

every weekend they're at they're at some different they're going on vacation they're going to yeah it's like i put a million dollars or four million dollars or half a million dollars into your company and you're in you know you're in Vegas you're in, you're in Jamaica, you're in Bermuda, like, and every time I ask you what's happening, you're like, oh, you know, we're not moving as fast as we were hoping, we're doing this. Yeah, we have excuses. When are you doing anything, though? That's fraudulent, yeah.

Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, you're paying yourself $250,000 a year and you're going on vacations. Like, where's my money going? Right. And that's something else. Like, our senior leadership team, nobody in our senior leadership team has taken a paycheck. None of us have been paid a dollar. Now, obviously, we can't expect.

that can't continue right but then that can't so for so for most of the what we've decided is instead of going to go in the VC route what we're going to do is we're going to get the three million ARR hopefully by the end of next year and as soon as we hit that threshold with 70% net operating margins are better we're going to start paying dividends right so people that invest not only people that invest in contractor plus now not only do they not have to wait for that eventual exit that may never come but or acquisition but they're going to earn they're going to cash flow off of their investment until that acquisition happens if it ever happens we're in this for the long game so we're taking a different approach and thankfully I'm in a position I have I'm pretty diversified and I have

enough income to cover my lifestyle my living expenses I've done you know I've set myself up pretty nice, all through legal means, which, you know, I know it sounds silly, but I'm proud about that. And so, you know, I'm in a situation where I can focus on the business and give my full undivided attention and not have to worry about my bills and not have to pay myself. And other people on the team, they may not be able to work 60 hours a week, but everyone on our senior leadership team was working at least 30. And they're balanced in other full-time jobs. And we're doing amazing things. our guy Joe here in Tampa, he set up a relationship with an insurance company that netted us

$6,000 in the first month and like made us, got us to break even, like got our business to our break even point. So, you know, like there's really big things happening and just had a call with the home, I guess I can talk about it, the Home Depot the other day who we've actually been partnered with for over a year. They basically are for phase one integration with Home Depot. They gave us all of their product data. So when you're building an estimate inside of our app, you can see, you can search from materials and know exactly how much it costs at the Home Depot and you can add it to the estimate. That's a huge benefit for Home Depot too. You know what I'm saying? I mean, it's for everybody, but in general, especially if it's Home Depot, you know.

Exactly. So the Home Depot actually called me the other day. And she's, I didn't believe her when she said she worked from the Home Depot. She was asking me some crazy questions about like our revenue, new our customers, a lot of stuff. But she sent me an email afterwards from at home depot.com. Like, she really works with the Home Depot. I plan on going to see her in Atlanta here soon. So the Home Depot recognized our level of integration is something different than what anyone on the market's ever done.

And they wanted to know if we could handle the bandwidth, if they were to start to promote us to their pros. And I said, not only could we handle it, All of our servers are, all of our architecture is fully scalable, auto scaling. Not only could we handle it, but the Home Depot, we will make sure the Home Depot benefits off of that relationship. Right. Tremendously. So, especially if we could work out an exclusivity deal,

where you're exclusively pushing your pros to contractor plus. I don't know what's going to come from that, but I know it's going to be good. So right now it's pulling from what they, from their sales, or from what they you know what the cost is for home depot is it pulling from other platforms like is it pulling for loads yeah so we do have lows data as well we have lows um sherwin williams uh are not sherwiams i'm sorry ace hardware um lumber liquidators um we have a few right and and we have some connect like we're working to try to work get the data from granger and fast and all and some other special ABC some other specialty suppliers um so what what we have

done that was we made it so that as a contractor you can import data so if you have your own product or pricing sheet you can just import that CSV in bulk and map the fields to our database so even if you have like Sherman Williams is pretty good they have like local reps that they assign your account so if you're a painting company a painting contractor and you have a Sherwin Williams account you have a rep you can talk to your rep they'll give you that CSV or their data feed so you can import their most recent pricing into contractor plus and you can get it you can have them send it to you four times a year or whatever and then when you

upload that it'll it'll remap the pricing so um although we don't have a direct integration with shirle williams you can still upload the data if they'll give it to you so what if you have what if you're like not tech savvy like i'm in some ways i'm amazed at what i can figure out because certain applications are so easy i'm like even i can do it you know right but but like what if you're not super tech savvy what if you're in your 50s well most contractors aren't right so that's why we we develop their own service do you have customer service we do yeah so we do uh daily office hours and daily live demos as well so where we walk you through how to use everything it's a very i mean it's so you're actually talk to a person oh yeah oh okay yeah chances are you'll

talk to me bro you can't you keep in mind you know you there's i can't well you know this like you know how impossible it is to talk to like there there's stuff where i'm like there's got to be a human being i can talk to and it's just it's an endless cycle of just of just of just churning you through all of these you know even our competitors are that way i mean once they so they'll do a demo a group demo but then like once the it's like a 15 20 minute rough demo after the sales it's a sales pitch right after the demo or sales pitch is over it's like once you're in the door like good luck yeah you're on yeah yeah so and we never want to be like that yeah yeah no that's like to me i'll like i will pay more if i know at some point i can talk to a human being right like that's

what i'm concerned about that i'll try and make the effort to go through the process of sending this you know and asking the bot this and asking the bot that but at some point i have to be able to talk to somebody. If I can't get it myself, it doesn't resolve problems. Right. So at some point, like, it's, it's cool to be able to say, look, you can't actually talk to somebody that will tell you, go here, do this, click this. Okay. Good. No doubt. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, you know, we've been building out our SOPs, our standard operating procedures. And our senior leadership team, you know, Robert Posey, our CRO's implementing all of our sales processes and onboarding. And we've actually partnered with a company out of Tel Aviv. They're called Tolstoy. And

And what are, you're all over there. You're like international. Well, so right now, yeah. So right now our app is available in the United States only. And by the end of the first quarter of next year, we will be in Canada, the UK, and Australia. And our goal, we're currently tapping into some like grant funding and stuff for our private limited in India. The Indian entity is owned by the American corporation. So, but that grant funding will go to basically make an Indian version of this solution.

that we're going to give to India. We're just going to make money off the transactions. India is not a market where you can really sell subscription-based SaaS software, but it can once you've got a strong enough user base and following, then you can implement a pricing strategy on the base subscriptions. But initially, you have to give it away. You won't be able to penetrate the market. Kind of what we did here.

I mean, we launched with really poor unit economics. We're giving three seats for $15 a month. That's $5. piece. After Apple takes their 30%, or Google takes their 30%, you know, that really, that you're not left with the whole lot left. But now that we've got a strong following and we've built this solution out, it's worth a lot more than $15 a month. And we have a lot of customers paying us $100 a month for an ultimate account. And what we're going to do is when we launch this seed round, we're making it. So all of our existing customers can

be grandfathered in and they can they'll always have access to our current pricing and plans for life they'll never be forced to switch to a new plan which is on a per user pricing model as long as they make an investment of a certain amount in contractor plus so they help us we help them they never will never increase their pricing ever so if and contractor plus you know hits unicorn status in a few years they just made millions of dollars right well how so how do you so how do you invest what was the the website you said you're this so it's on we funder we funder dot com slash contractor um is there a minimum you can invest it's on we funder um you got to edit that part out the the the we funder part uh because i i dropped the direct link

because we're going to want people to go to your link okay okay yeah keep going yeah okay so so how how if somebody wanted to invest how would they invest like and is there like a minimum investment so yeah you can actually invest online you don't have to be accredited you just have to create an account at we funder you there's no minimum investment the minimum is $100 so you can invest as little as $100 or up to an unlimited amount there's different perks along the way for investing like we'll give away our like ultimate accounts corporate accounts some other stuff like swag like t-shirts and you know nonsense but the real the real benefit is the convertible note that you're getting which is an instrument an investment vehicle that will convert to equity

plus interest so not only are you getting in with early bird terms our valuation came back we had a third-party valuation come back put us between the 3.8 and 4.6 million dollar range pre-month money valuation. And so we're based on our raise off of that. The first 25% will get in at three and a half million, at a cap of three and a half million. The last 75%, so the first $250,000 raised, the last $750,000 raised will be on a $4.6 million, or $4.6 million cap. Right. So you want, I mean, do you want me to leave like a link? I can leave a link in the description. Yeah, that'd be great. What about, like, for what? Like the app, I can leave the app for for the app and for the uh check out the app um we yeah put a link for the app and uh it's totally free

so you can check and the we and the we funder page okay there's some on the we funder page we're actually doing a weekly meet and greet and uh like a webinar for people that are interested in investing uh so you can come and meet the team behind contractor plus we're doing it every friday to 11 a m um where's that it's on zoom oh okay so on the we've hunter page uh the link in the description below, you'll see where you can register for the upcoming webinar. You can come say hello and we'll give you a little demo of what we built and what we're building. What we have today and where the product will be in the next six months is so vastly different. I mean, the stuff we have on our roadmap right now is just mind-blowing. It's unbelievable. We're addressing

both ends of the market. You know, you've got service tighten over here and you've got ProCore over here um and we're we're meeting the needs of both of these guys and we're facilitating the relationship between them so by doing that uh i believe will be unstoppable cool and sounds good yeah do you um what uh what what what else is going on that's it i mean do you have anything yeah i mean that's that's pretty much what else we talk about good. Is that a good in-cap, though? Not really a good in-cave, it's a terrible in-cats.

Right. We went straight into promotion. Huh? We should what? He'll cut this part out. Okay. What else do you want to go over? He does this every time. Well, let me think. Because otherwise, I'm about to jump into... How can we tie it back into, like...

Should we tie it? Oh, you know what? You should kind of like, be like, at the end of the day, you know, second chances whatever blah blah oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah okay okay okay ready so what would you maybe ask me a question or something what would you think well no i can i can i got it i got it you ready okay um all right so but so basically sorry i'm sorry i'm saying that's sorry make your laugh that's the thumbnail

did you see that one Danny did one the other day we were talking about getting on a testosterone replacement therapy and I like had just started it I gained like 15 pounds and he was like get the fuck and you're doing it

and he said let me see your guns I said man I'm not doing all that and he kept bugging me bugging and he was come on just do it do it do and I was like there okay he goes that's the thumbnail and he put it up it's the thumbnail that's hilarious so anyway um okay uh so yeah so you're so you're running this whole thing

out of from orlando and uh for all from florida and ohio and you're you're doing a raise for investors and you came up with all this in prison got out implemented it because i can here's it that what's interesting to me is like how many guys in locked up have these huge dreams. So, and I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this. You know how many times I would talk to guys? And I think about, I got 13 years. So how many guys had these huge dreams? They had business plans. They had everything. And you get out and you talk to them a year later, two years. First of all, if they're not already coming back, if you just happen to call the guy or you hear somebody, you speak with them, and you find out that they ended up getting a job

as a plumber's helper, met a girl. She's got two kids, moved in with her. And now it's everything they can do to pay their bills and all of their dreams that they taught we you you walk the track with them for five years yeah those are they're not even trying to attempt to do anything yeah like when i was locked up i kept telling myself i'm not going to do that like i'm not going to do that i'm going to i'm going to live in someone's spare room and i'm going to work on what i want to work on and i'm going to try and make it work and i'm going to do this for 10 years however long it takes right and in 10 years if it doesn't work out then you know maybe I'll go get a job selling used cars and be a normal guy, but I can live in a spare

room for 10 years because I've already done it for 12 or 13 years at this point. So, and I told myself, and I'm not going to get off that path. Like, I'm going to figure out a way to make it work. And so many guys leave. And so it's just comical because you just don't meet anybody that does, that gets out, says, you know, here's what I'm going to try and do. And they actually get out and they start taking the process and they do. don't really get off course like I didn't know exactly what my course was going to be I had a

general plan of what I wanted to do to make myself happy sure but you kind of came up with this this plan and you've been slowly implementing it and really not even slowly because you've been out I was in prison and I was like I would like fold the paper to make a ruler and I was so I was also the clerk at the at the garage that took care of all the vehicles on the compound so I got to drive the wardens charger and everything but i would be setting in the in the clerk's office you know i didn't have any any preventative maintenance orders or anything to do right and i'd be sketching mockups and i mocked it up perfectly i still have them on paper the physical mockups and over 400 screens every screen every modal every label every i mocked every detail up because

you you can't leave things the chance with engineers in india right have to tell them exactly what it needs to look like how it needs to work where these fields relate in the database how you know how this data is all managed and how it works so i would i would mock them all up and take them put them in my folder and take them back to the unit and uh after 4 pm count we would get our phones down and i would we would pay someone to watch out the window and i would go back to the back of the unit and lay all these papers out all over the table turn my flash one and scan these pages in and i would send them to my team in india and a few days later i would get back the final designs.

They would put it on Figma or AdobeXD and I would see the mockups, I'd go through and make notes. I could, I could drop little droppers on it with notes and tell them what to change. And we went through the design and iteration process where we, you know, we came up with the app that you see today.

And a lot of that happened. While you were laying in bed or in the back room with the contraband phone in prison. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like that's a, that's a, Yeah. Like, that's good stuff. It's like, it's the same thing. It's, it's, it's, it's me writing stories and getting out and trying to push the stories and then selling the

film rights and doing the whole thing. It's like, how insane is that? Like, you're laying in bed daydreaming and then years later, all of those things start to happen. And it's like, this is ridiculous. But back to your point, like, you're on a compound with 2,000 people. Yeah. And everyone has these ideas. Yeah, they just don't, it's ideas, ideas, but an idea without execution is useless. I was going to say there's, I forget what the exact quote, but it was like everybody has a multi-million dollar

idea. Everyone, at some point their life, they have multiple. Do you have what it takes the brain into life or not? It's pulling the trigger. Most people just can't pull the trigger. Well, what's sad about that? It's like half the time, all you really have to do is show up. Yeah, yeah. You make a few phone calls, you show up, you pitch here, you pitch there and eventually... It would be harder. I think it would be harder to be broke

and live in a cardboard box than it would to be a millionaire. Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I get it. I get that. It's really not that complicated. And, you know, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. You've got to stay focused. You know, you've got to be addicted to success. You've got to be driven enough to the point where you're going to show up

and you're going to keep showing up and you're not going to stop and you're going to have highs and you're going to have lows like anything else. But you just don't, when you get knocked down, you just get back up and you keep going and going and you don't stop. You don't let anyone stop. stop you. I didn't let them stop me then. I'm not going to let them stop me now. Which interesting is, it's funny because my dad used to say this. My dad was kind of a prick, but he had some good, he did say some good stuff. And, you know, one of the, like one of the things

he used to say was, you know, don't, don't ever take a job or don't ever do anything for money. Just do something that you really love and be the best at it. And the money will come. And it's the same thing that you're saying. I always say money is a consequence of of adding value or serving one another. So when you're coming to a relationship or when you're coming to the table, adding value, when you're bringing equal value

from what you're trying to take away from the table, the money comes. Money is a byproduct. It shouldn't be the focus. For a long time, before I went to prison, I was focused on the dollar signs. And I was never happy. Oh, me too.

This is the same. Look at what I was doing. I was doing things. I mean, you could argue I was morally bankrupt. I mean, I was doing things. I just justified it saying, well, I'm not forced, I'm not putting a gun to his head making him take these drugs. Right.

It's not me. Like if he uses too much intentionally and overdoses and dies, I didn't make him do that. Right. You know, I didn't sell it to a kid. Right. I didn't, so I justified my actions based on, you know, these things. But like looking back, I can see, well, I would much rather be part of the solution than part of the problem. Right.

We had this exact conversation. Do you know, remember when we were having lunch with Brandon in Ohio, we had this exact conversation where you were set, where I was saying that, like, I had a, tons of money. I was never happy. Yeah. And now I barely have any money. I'm,

you know, I'm, like I love my life. Like, I was talking to some guy who was telling me, who's running a, a YouTube channel

that seems really successful. And he was, you know, and it appears successful, but, and he was, you got to do this, you got to do that,

you got to buy this, you got to buy this, you got to pay this, you go here, you pay these guys to do this. I'm like, I'm not going to do that. Like,

maybe that'll make me a little bit more money, but I like what I'm doing. I mean, I'm not going to risk doing some stupid shit because I enjoy what I'm doing. I like waking up and going and working out. I like coming here. I like interviewing guys. Like you remind me of the guy Ryan Root, which is a guy, steroid guy.

Okay. And he did the same thing. He was like in. Really? I remember you of a steroid guy. No, no. He was in prison and he was telling himself, when I get out, I'm going to build a website. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that.

Like he started coming up. with all the and I'm going to do this all legally like he was in prison for steroids illegally and he's like I'm going to just do it legally like I could have done it legally wouldn't have made as much money but if I had gone through the right the right you know um course I could have legally done this and I he loved doing it he's like I love doing the uh the replacement therapy he's like I loved it and I realized that he got to he said I got to a point where it was like once I got all the toys I realize that like this isn't what was making me happy was making me happy is serving these customers getting to know them proving their lives helping them make and he was telling me about like

all the emails he would get where guys were saying you've changed my life you've you've made me feel great about this I'm showing huge games out of week and you get that BDB well I was and and the and and keep mind if you're older so your libido comes back like you like you save my marriage he's like guys are saying like you save my marriage like this isn't a joke you know him saying like and he was like that made him happy and so when he went to prison he kind of devised this whole system around creating a business that already exists he didn't create the business you know that that model exists but he was going to do it his way right and he was going to do it and now he's doing that successfully successfully he's making he pays all his bills he's and i'm actually

really making good money doing it he said but to be honest he's like it isn't even i could care less about the money right he's like i'm not spending the money i'm not blowing the money it's about living a life of purpose like when you feel like when you wake up every day and and then you actually have an attachment like you're a hundred percent in like you feel purposeful right purpose driven it doesn't matter how much money's in your bank account yeah as long as your basic essentials as long as your needs like there's food on the table your rents paid you don't have to stress about dollar signs beyond that I don't care how much money I have yeah but you know it's um it's uh it's that like everybody's like how man prison like oh how'd you do all that

time how this how that it was like well it really you know i was joking oh the first decade's the hardest um you know after that it's no big deal but the truth is once i started writing but the first three years was horrible but after three years i started working on my memoir and instead of me waking up, like just hating my life, it gave me purpose. And then the worst thing was when I was done with my memoir, I was like, what am I going to do now? So I started working on his memoir. And then I started working on his memoir. And then I started working on his story and his, the synopsis of these guys' story. And then every day I had purpose. And when I was going to get out of prison, I started feeling anxious about getting out of prison because I had built such a

great life to in my I had a great routine I like loved my life I couldn't pay for commissary I had no money but I really loved my life I was more concerned about getting out and saying how am I going to be able to keep doing what I'm doing and pay my bills and that's when I was like oh I'm gonna live in someone's spare room I'll just keep my bills down to nothing I can live on nothing you can do like legal paperwork and have people put money on your books for commissary no no I mean really be honest I didn't you didn't need it I well I didn't really yeah I didn't really need that because one I'm wasn't a big eater and you know I'm living off of chow like I don't need

anything special right um on you make sure you're fed you understand I bought when I was in prison I bought uh two pair of shoes in 13 what two pair of shoes you know whose shoes I was when I was getting shoes one one my cousin bought me a pair of shoes one time because he said I'm tired of watching you walk around in the boots I wear the boots almost all the time or when people were leaving, they would give me their shoes. They'd go, like, bro, you and I are about the same height, say, what size shoes do you wear? Or I would say to them, bro, you're leaving next week?

And they'd be like, yeah, I'd say, are you going to take those shoes? They're like, no. I'm like, can I get them? I'm a size, whatever, seven and a half or eight, eight. And they go, yeah, no problem. So I'd get their shoes. Oh, I did that. To hold that or wear the boots.

People, you look out for each other in there. Yeah. Yeah, some guys do. Some guys, you know, for sure. There's a lot of good people in prison. There's a lot of good people behind the fence. And in fact, there's a lot of scumbags. There's a lot of scumbags.

Yeah, a lot of scumbags, too. For sure. Yeah, I always hated when maybe it was like, no, there's great people. They do have prisons for the reason. About 95% of those guys, I don't want to live in my neighborhood. But yeah, I hear you, there are good people. There's a lot of good people. Yeah.

Especially, like, the lower down, like, when you get down to, like, the camp level, like, you're going to meet. Most of the, I wouldn't have a problem living next to any one of those 51 people from, from Big Sandy. Right. There's a couple that I would rather live a little further down the street, but for the most part, I don't, none of them are a threat to public safety or, you know. What I, I'm just saying, what I think is great is that, you know, you formulated this idea and you've stuck with the idea and it's fucking working.

Like, there's not a lot of people. You'll never be successful if you give up. Yeah. Yeah. So can't give up. Yeah. Well, you know, there's, it's just that whole thing. about failing, you know what I'm saying?

Like, I don't, and I've always said this to all that. It's failing and failing forward. Yeah, I don't have a problem failing. Like, I don't have a problem. I can live with failing. I can't live without, without, not trying. Like, at least I try. Failing and given up are two different things.

Right. Like, when you fail, do you fail or do you fail forward? If you fail forward, then you're not giving up. You're saying, okay, I'm just going to learn a different way to go about this. And I'm going to keep trying until I figure it out. Yeah. Wasn't Einstein that he tried to, was it, did try to create the, uh, was it, Did try to create the electric light bulb, like, something like 600?

Edison, sorry, sorry, Edison, like 650 times or something. I forget what the amount. And he said, and they were like, man, you know, that was. Yeah, that was all those times. Yeah, yeah, he said, all I learned is how many times it won't work. Yeah. But that I only need to work once. That's right.

So, yeah. Yeah, and it's a constant process. I mean, we're like in software, you have to be agile and you have to constantly listen to your, you have to listen to your customers and you have to create a feedback, loop where you're where you're studying their their behavior and you're figuring out how to optimize things and and improve the workflow and and you have to listen like you have to genuinely listen and try to understand their perspective if you don't or if you don't care if you just think you have it all figured out and you know everything then you've created a giant polished turd that

nobody wants to use right you have to make it fit like a glove for your customers and you have to listen you always have to be listening to your customers the second you stop listening to your customers is the second you start dying yeah you might want to work on the polished turd pitch um i probably want to write you might want to go to something else i don't know maybe not a turd but yeah um all right well listen so i appreciate you come by i appreciate the the interview and um i know you drove out here um uh do you should come from orlando you were already here no no so i was in orlando for a couple of days um my sister had of my niece. It was my niece's birthday yesterday. So I flew in for her birthday. Okay. They went to

Disney and I took some sales calls. Brandon's business is blowing up right now and he has a pretty small sales team. I'm not even a sales guy. Right. But I'm helping out on the sales team right now. So, you know, I believe in, I believe in what he's doing and I see it changing. Like I was mentioned earlier, Jacqueline and her husband Andrew, their goal was done one laundromat and they're about to close on three. Oh, okay. You didn't mention that. Yeah, I didn't get.

So it's like, and this other kid, he's like 18, 19 years old, starts the program and not even a month later, he's in a laundromat. Got a guy out in Minnesota that took over a car wash. A guy here in Tampa, he approached Brandon. He's young. He's like 29, 30. He already has 100 plus doors. He approached him saying, listen, I don't care about the course.

and all that stuff all I really care like my goal is to retire by 40 I want to have a thousand properties can you help me get in touch with the right people to facilitate that growth so I can scale my portfolio using other people's money right and Brandon said yeah so so regardless of where you're at like it's just an amazing thing that he's got going on over there there's a lot of people out there selling courses and doing you know just taking people's money right and I have like I can't do that I I can't sell something I don't believe believe in. And I don't believe in it. I won't sell it. But I'm also not a sales guy. I don't

study these rebuttals and these things. Like if you tell me like I need to talk to my wife, I'm not like trying to manipulate you out of, you know, not talk to buy it now and not talk to her, you know, but a sales guy would, a sales professional would. Right. You know, I sell and I and I close more deals than anyone else on the team solely because I have the conviction. I know the man behind it and I know what his values are and I know you know and I and I see it changing people's lives and when you see that it's an easy sell like I know it'll work as long as you show up yeah well you know it's like that's the big problem with most people a lot of people you can tell them look you got to do this this this this is this they do this and they just stop and then they say oh it doesn't work no it does work you just didn't

do it you just didn't finish that's right um but yeah um all right I appreciate you stopping by and um yeah So I'm going to put all your links in the description. And if anybody, everybody should check it out and, you know, click the link, go to the, the WeFund. We funder. We funder and go to, you know, check out the website. I guess you can't check out the app unless you want to download it the app. It's free.

It's on Android and iOS. You type in Contractor, we come up number one. Oh, nice. It's a red icon, Contractor Plus, with the plus icon. Cool. All right. I appreciate it. Everything's going to be in the description.

So I appreciate you guys watching. Do me a favor and hit the like button, leave a comment, subscribe, hit the notification, hit the note, huh? I said, how have you not subscribe? Have you not subscribed? Listen. This is as real as it gets. I mean, and I appreciate you guys.

I appreciate you guys watching and thank you very much. And hey, also, I have a Patreon and all my links are in the description. So appreciate it. And if you leave a comment, I will definitely. try and respond to comment. Thanks a lot and I will see you. Contractor Plus is a fast-growing field service management software startup. We're taking an unconventional approach to building and scaling a high-growth business. And we're growing fast. We've already got 18,000 users.

We're facilitating the operations and networking of contractors while streamlining their relationships with property managers and developers. We're looking at a 25 plus billion dollar market opportunity by 2030. We've already partnered with Chase Bank, Home Depot, Company Cam, Thumbtack, and Next Insurance. If you're interested in making an early stage investment in a fast-growing, customer-centric company that's disrupting an industry, this is your chance. And you don't have to be accredited to invest. There's a link in the description below this video where you can go to WeFunder and make your investment. We're on a mission to get you a massive ROI.

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