The Jordan Harbinger Show - 274: Darren Prince | Hitting Bottom at the Top

Episode Date: November 7, 2019

Darren Prince (@agent_dp) is a prominent sports and celebrity agent and global advocate for addiction and recovery. His book Aiming High: How a Prominent Sports and Celebrity Agent Hit Bottom at the Top is out now.[Featured photo by Ryan Hartford of Ecliptic Media] What We Discuss with Darren Prince: How Darren was making multiple six figures by the time he was old enough to drive.  What got Darren started on a 24-year journey of addiction and how he found the exit to a recovery that's been going on for 11 years strong now. What it's like to go drinking with Dennis Rodman and rely on him to be the responsible one when it's time to wake up and go to work the next morning. What Darren does to fulfill his mission to help others avoid and break free from addiction. Lots of celebrity stories from someone who's not just an agent for his clients — he's also their fan. And much more… Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/274 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! The Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast presents interviews with exercise, diet, and medical professionals, and an entertaining mash-up of ancestral wisdom and modern science, along with Q&As and mind-body-spirit optimizing content from America's top personal trainer. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts. Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with producer Jason DeFilippo. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most brilliant and interesting people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Darren Prince, the Prince of Cards, is one of the most successful sports agents with an absolutely insane origin story. This is a guy who was addicted to opiates for 24 years, starting at age 14. 14. He was making multiple six figures by the time he was old enough to drive, and reppping Magic Johnson, Smokin Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali, Pam Anderson, Charlie Sheen, Chevy Chase, Evil Caneval, Hulk Hogan, and others even in his 20s. Today, we'll hear how he held his empire together while his own life was falling apart, and some of the lessons, many of which

are quite humbling, during his tenure as an agent and his sobriety, now 11 years strong and counting. I really clicked with Darren, and I thought this was not only a great story, but there were a lot of teachable moments as well. I met Darren through my network as I want to do, and I'm teaching you how to network for personal and professional reasons, all for free in six-minute networking. It takes five to six minutes a day, hence the name. Jordanharbinger.com slash course is where you can find that.

And by the way, most of the guests on the show actually subscribe to the course and the newsletter. So come join us and you'll be in great company. Here's Darren Prince. I read your book a long time ago, and Jen was like, hey, there's this guy who's an agent. You should check him out. I was like, oh, I already have this book.

I was like, oh, interesting. Sports agent, like, probably a lawyer. No. Complete opposite. And that's interesting for me because I went to law school and a lot of my friends are like, oh, I'm going to be a sports agent. I'm going to be a sports agent. You know, this is what we're going to do.

I'm going to be a sports agent. And so I figured, oh, this guy's probably like, I could have just done what this guy did because he's probably a lawyer too. Not quite. So you like to start by my dad, fly fishing in Alaska? Yeah. I got that. I really want to be an agent, but I'm not a lawyer.

May rest in peace, he looked at me. I remember like, yes, she goes, lawyer. If you got the most amazing relationships in the world, any lawyer would kill to have access to go to Muhammad Ali's house and Barry in Springs, Michigan, and go to Magic's house in a Beverly Park and call up Joe Montana or, you know, Hulk Hogan. It's all about who you know, Darren and like, not what, you know. It almost seems like you fell into some of this stuff.

In the book, I'm sure it's condensed, but it's like, dot, dot, dot, oh, I'm running into Magic Johnson. And then I called Pamela Anderson. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, who are you calling? How do you even start these relationships? It started from the baseball cart business that eventually evolved into sports and celebrity memorabilia. That was very, very unorthodox. On the show, I'm a big fan of using people's past or even current adversity as a competitive advantage or a superpower.

And what I think is interesting is your clients are, among us, others, Dennis Rodman, Hulk Hogan, Charlie Sheen. It's a little bit like looking at a TMZ roster of people that may or may not have had some other issues in the past, you know? Do you think you have an ability to relate to some of your clients better like Dennis Rodman, maybe because of your past struggle with sobriety? I think so. I also fully believe that America in general loves a good comeback story. I think all those guys have come back tremendously. Dennis, I always say, is a rebound king in life. You know, you can never count them out. everybody's had something. Nobody's off the table. Even Magic Johnson had his issues years ago, obviously, and with the HIV announcement, I mean, what he's done, what he does to give back to the community and to businesses and all over the world, nobody's done it like Magic Johnson is.

You started as a special ed kid from New Jersey. Yes. Yeah. I mean, that's not the usual path to becoming one of the most successful sports agents. I assume at that age, you yourself might have even written yourself off as somebody. You listen to teachers. They tell you what you can and can do when you start believing it. Yeah. My intro to business teacher. L.A. L.A. L. Loeve was his name, and I had a class with him, and he wanted everybody to go home and create a business. And I remember being 13 years old and having this imagination that I was kind of this awkward.

I don't want to say geeky, but it felt like an outcast. I had this big baseball card collection that I amassed. And that became my business. Eventually, I turned into a real business and gave me a little bit of self-confidence. So you weren't planning to turn it into a business. it was an assignment from your teacher? Exactly. Oh, that's interesting. Did he ever know that you were crushing? To this day, I went back and I spoke at my high school three months ago when we still talk about it. He's still there? He's still there. He's a legendary tennis teacher, a tennis coach. He's won several state championships.

And he's probably in his early 70s now. Wow. And he knew that something was different about me and something was special because he would tell me to stay after class that I'm going to spend a little bit extra time. He saw the way my brain functioned and the way my brain worked, the same way my father did. And he pulled that out of me. He knew that 90% what all the kids were doing wasn't good for Darren Prince. But I had this little 10% that none of them had. It's funny that he spotted that because I think public schools actually not set up at all to reward people who are entrepreneurial thinkers. My teachers do the same thing. They were like, oh, your son doesn't listen. He can't color inside the lines. That was literally a critique I would get. And I'm still coloring outside the lines. This is not a real job that I have.

This is a fake, made up sham that somehow caught fire. Absolutely. Lightning in a bottle from what happened to both of us. Yeah. It keeps happening. Yeah. But it screws you up, right? Because you have this imposter syndrome, which there was no name for that back then.

Right. It was just, you're right. You shouldn't be here. Right? Like, that was like, if you feel that way, you probably shouldn't be in the room. Absolutely. And I know you suffered from that a lot, especially when you were starting to meet Mohammed Ali and Smoke and Joe and you're just sitting there.

What's going through your head when you're with these? I only knew how to do it one way. I knew from the business side and the networking side and the entrepreneurial side, I knew what I was doing, but I felt so uncomfortable inside. I was always looking for that outside fix. That was the inside job. And the only way I can do was honestly, I had to be high on opiates for years. It was oxycontin, vikidens, her casets were my best friends. And nobody knew about it but me. And to build a very successful agency through that, but like I tell kids today when I speak, I would have gone back in a time machine in a second. into trade that feeling and I'm not wanting to wake up in the morning.

Really? You must have got pretty dark. And I want to rewind it a little bit because how do you even think to get started on opiates? I mean, you started younger than literally anybody probably that you've met. 14 years old, I was in sleepaway camp. I told a count tried horrible stomach pains. This nurse, her name is Greta. She gave me this green liquid. And I took a shot. It tasted horrible as I'm walking across the soft bill field all those inadequacies and feelings we just talked about of less than not being a part of, not feeling as equal. Went away like that. Wow. In those five, ten seconds, my life changed forever. I wanted more of it. I now felt just as good, just as smart, just as popular, just as cool, just as funny. I got back to the bunk.

The guys are laughing with me. I got the courage to go to the bunk next door for the first time of my life. I was flirting with girls at 14 years old, fearless. And I went to bed thinking nothing of it. The next day I woke up did all my activities that you do in summer camp. And that next night, I'm looking up at the sky thinking that feeling was amazing last night. But there was no stomach pain. I looked at the counter, I healed over. I said, man, my stomach is killing me. We've got to go back. I did it for three straight weeks. That magic rain liquid, until I found that it was liquid demoral.

Demerol for a 14-year-old kid. I mean, wow. Any license you may or may not have had should be revoked, I would imagine at that time, as a nurse. Is it not insanely irresponsible? Hey, Darren has a stomach ache for three weeks, two weeks in a row. Maybe he should see a doctor. Nobody thought about that. Back then, I guess not.

I mean, I know there was points where she was kind of telling me, you know, Maybe you should get some x-rays. Maybe you get some ultrasounds done. And I was like, no, it helps. I go to sleep every time I take it. And it was my parents that came up for a visitation day to meet with her because they heard about it. And my mom obviously lost her.

Yeah. Lusher crap. You know, when she found out said the same thing. Why would you not call me? But here's the thing. And as an advocate, I don't blame the nurse because it's still what it happened. Six months later, I was at a dentist deployment, getting my wisdom teeth removed. And I lied to my mom after the eight vitinans were gone.

I went downstairs holding my cheek. I said, Mom, I don't know what's going on. I got to go back to the dentist. that's an argument for addict behavior being genetic or inborn or something like that, right? I know doctors will tell you that. I don't believe in genetics for me. I believe I never spoke up about feeling less than. I believe that it was a personality dysfunction that because I didn't have the courage

and I couldn't be real enough with my teachers and my friends and my parents to speak up and say, I feel this way. Why do I feel this way? I need some help. That's why it all spiraled out of control. Yeah, that's, oh, man. But at age 14, you're not thinking I'm addicted to this. you're thinking, I found the magic

freaking potion. I took Adderall and I started in college and I remember this resonated really well with me from your book because I took this Adderall pill that I'd gotten from my girlfriend because she's like, you're ADD, I can tell. You're just like my brother. You're just like my brother. So she goes and grabs one

and I took one and I went, holy shit, this is how normal people feel every day. They're not trying so hard to pay attention to what the teacher's saying and then being like, I wonder if that light is like the same kind of light as the shit where we are again in the book and then the teacher's like you're an idiot what are you doing here you know and i thought if i can take this every

day i'm going to be just fine in college i'm going to be just fine in law school i just doubled my capacity to learn i feel funny i feel awake and alive everyone's laughing at my jokes and those that aren't i don't even care whereas that would have sent me back to my dorm room like she doesn't like me none of that anymore. All gone. And that was a scary feeling after a while because I was taking it every day. I got a prescription for it. By the way, by the way, by telling the doctor, hey, so I took my friend's brother's medication and it worked great. And he's like, sure enough, here you go. Some amphetamines, which is what adderol really is. Looking back, I'm going, what, what are you thinking? Isn't there a test for this? But that's a little scary now because I remember taking it and taking it and taking it. And then summer came around, the beetle juice chair is so loud. I was taking it and taking it. I was taking it and taking it. I was taking it and taking it. taking it, taking it, summer came around, and I go, well, I'm just going to

keep refilling this shit. And my girlfriend's like, why? We don't have school. And I was like, have you seen me on and off? I mean, why would I stop doing it?

If you stopped doing it. And I go to the doctor and he goes, hey, you know, kids are dying from taking because they're having heart attacks. And I was like, and that won't happen to me, which is what all add-ins,

I think, do. But when a doctor prescribes it, it's okay. It's okay. That went on for years until I went, you know,

the doctor that prescribed this to me was an idiot and I knew that at the time. So I don't think the fact that I have this piece of paper means that my brain is fine with this. There you go. But that took me a long time to come around. And I don't know if amphetamines are as addictive as opiates. I don't really know if there's a scale or... There's a lot of people in the world of recovery from Adderall and Riddle.

Yeah. If I hadn't been taking extended release, I think we might be having this conversation while I'm crushing them up in the bathroom and put them in my nose. Yeah. Absolutely. It's hard to say. It didn't even occur to me until I read this book that I probably had that. So you're 14. You're kind of hooked on Demerol. How are you getting it at 14 after camp?

Well, it took me probably about a year until I was able to start getting it, either from the streets or just friends, parents that had had it. I started making money. I sat down with my dad one night. I was 14 years old. I said, I need to get insurance in my baseball courts. He thought I was nuts. He said, what do you mean insurance? I said, I need about eight or nine worth of insurance. He's like, all right, can you bring down a list so I can see this? And he's like, Darren, that says eight or nine thousand. I was. was like, yeah, I'm not talking eight or nine hundred. He goes, how to hell do you have eight or nine thousand worth the cards? I show them in this price guide. Anybody that collected back in the 80s about CCP. Now everybody says Beckett. Current card price guide. It was a newspaper. Okay. CCP came out before Beckett. And I sat down with him and he challenged me.

He goes, who's going to buy these stuff? This Mickey Mantle card for $200. Just is Reggie Jackson rookie for $75. I said, oh, it's funny. You should ask. I pull out this newspaper ad. And there was a show at the holiday in in Livingston, New Jersey for $25. I got a table. And I shared it with my good friend Steve Simon, who runs my agency to this day. He went into it. We shared the table. He went into it as a hobby, just maybe have a fun day selling cards. I went into it as a business. I spent two weeks every night, the perfect holders, the perfect price guides. And I made over $1,000 in a Sunday afternoon at 14 years old and the life bubble on. So now I had money. I was deeply insecure, you know, apparently a severe learning disability, had this passion and this

lover for a ready with opiates. Yeah. Oh, man. That is a recipe for disaster. insecure, starts making money way too early. I mean, if there was a YouTube back then, you'd just be I'd be a billionaire, guys. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it might have ended tragically a little earlier. Yeah. But I would imagine, like, you're in school, your ADD, you can't focus. Amen, brother. I hear you on that. I mean, that's story of my life. My mom was a special ed teacher. That's probably why I wasn't in special ed, because she's like, no, my son's not in special ed. I teach special ed. But I think half my teachers were like, this kid is going to be in prison. The other half that were teaching things I was actually interested in, like science,

they were like, he should be in the gifted program. So they were budding heads like, wait, he's not a total A-hole idiot in your class. And I'm sure you had one or two teachers that thought you were special. And the rest of them were like, is this thing on? You're at knucklehead. I have two teachers. That's exactly what it wants. Who that believed in me.

The other element of this, you're in the baseball card trade. I would imagine that you're thinking as a teenager, I got a car. or two, I've got my magic potion that nobody has to know about. Girls are starting to pay attention because I'm the only guy who can fill the car with gas and drive a new car and not picking her up on my bike. You probably thought, I can hold this shit together. I'm faking it. Everyone's believing this, so I'm good.

Absolutely. I went to an AA meeting with a friend of mine, several times because I'm curious about that stuff. And a lot of people told stories like that. Like, you fake it until suddenly you realize everyone knows, but you're the only one. You're the last one in on the joke. that the gig is up. Yeah.

That's exactly what happened. You're getting heavy in the baseball card trade. I'm finding it really funny that the guy that you started with now works with you. I mean, what are the odds of that? I know, and he's great. We still laugh about it to this day. I mean, he's does amazing on my agency. So he's the vice president, and he was with me during a very special time in my life,

and he's there again now. Terrible selling baseball cards, really good at wrangling A-list talent. Exactly. So you're dealing with adults, though, as a kid. You're 14, 15. I was the only person. in school, teachers included that had a cell phone. Back then, it was called Bell Atlantic. Not the big rubber ones that you saw in a night at the Roxbury. These were a big metal aluminum battery on the bottom of a leather kit's with a rubber antenna. It was Bell Atlantic. It would be in my locker in between class and it was $3 a minute to use this phone. So I would call stockbrokers in between class, find out what cards they wanted. There was no internet back then, no texting. I would have to call different dealers, get the cards. Hey, bring it to the show this week and I'll pick it up. I'd buy a Mickey Mano card for $2,000. I'd flip it to the investor for 3,000. That was my life. Unbelievable. And your teachers didn't care

that you had a cell phone in the school? Well, it was in between class. I was so respectful enough to not, because my dad always put me on notice. And he was big on education. My mom was more so up, but my dad had that business hustle. He was always a successful business. He knew this was my calling. He knew school wasn't for me. That's lucky you, though, right? I mean, they could have just tried to hammer you into that square hole. I got in a lot of trouble in college because my business, I dropped out after one year. What did your job? dad, think of all this. I mean, he must have at first been like, eh, you should probably focus on school. Like, what was the turning point where he went, okay? He knew the second weekend, because I think I made

about $2,000 after making a thousand league before. And being an old school Jewish father, it really, like, lit him up. Yeah. Like I said, he was a big time entrepreneur, very successful at a very young age. And what did he do? He was in direct mail coupon advertising, something similar to BALPAC. Got it, yeah. But it was all over the state of New Jersey. And so to see his son have this hustle in And having no clue what I'm doing, but saw me go to one end of the room with a lot of cash, come back with a bunch of cards. And then see, by the end of the show, four hours later, those cards get into a double wad of cash that I had the morning we got to the show. Right. Like you have twice as many cards and twice as much cash.

What's happening right now? Yeah. Because again, the insecurities and the feeling of less than. And in that show on that floor, I felt so alive. But I was back in my bedroom by myself and night, I felt like that broken piece of crap again. I always felt like I didn't belong. so I would lie about the money. He would ask me how much did I make? Let's go over it. And I would stuff a couple thousand under the mattress because, hey, it's a 15, 16-year-old kid where I'm in a high

school. I needed it. I needed to have that money in my pocket. So I could take people out for lunch for dinner, take my friends out, you know, take my friend shopping. I wanted to simmer to Dennis Rahman with the watches. I was that way with that money. I needed to buy people's love and attention and affection. And that's what I did with it. We're talking about how Dennis Rodman stole 50 watches while he was a janitor at the airport and then just gave him away to his friends. And the idea was, I want people to like me. You're weirdly, right? Like, sneaking money away from your dad so he doesn't do anything responsible. Exactly. And then turning around and like... Doing something completely irresponsible just to buy fake friends. Like, not horrible. Like, well, the drug thing, not so good. But you

weren't going to the strip club or buying hookers or whatever. You were like, let's all go to McDonald's. I take everybody at a mall. Yeah. Go for a nice Italian restaurant. restaurant and I got the taxis taken care of because you weren't driving at 16. I would just get, you know, 10, 12 of my boys and we'd all go for the batting cages for the day and play mini golf. And it was always on Prince. Everybody knew that Prince was covering the tap. That's like the weirdest sort of like drug dealer bling ever though, right? Like baseball cards, batting cages, arcade and I don't know, like macaroni grill or whatever you have bowling? Ballin. Bolling out of control on Prince. But are you like high during this time or you just spending money to stay out?

Sporatically, not as much. It didn't really start until my senior year in college with getting high. But I would party occasionally on the weekends. I wasn't the biggest like party animal. I have a lot of my guy and girlfriends call me to come out. Some of these girls, I remember I wrote about it in the buck. I get these message, stop playing with your stupid baseball cards and come to this party. And nothing got in the way my baseball cards.

I didn't care. I was on a mission. I was just so focused that I was a late bloomer with dating. It didn't matter. I wasn't bothered by it. Plus, when you're an entrepreneur, you're like, are you kind of still kind of a workaholic? I am. Yeah. Yeah. It's the thing I like doing the most. I love it, man. I'm married and I have a kid and my wife, like, she gets it. She's like, just be there for your kid enough. Be there for me enough. But I get it if you like, don't want to watch Netflix, but you want to go over your show notes five more times.

And in my business, too, as an agent, I truly have this mindset that I'm only good as my last deal. So no matter how close I am at Hulk or Magic or Dennis or Rick Flair or somebody on any given day, I got to bring the heat. again. I tell my office you celebrate that deal today, you get up tomorrow morning. Let's go out and find another one. It's that never-ending hustle. But that requires never-ending energy. You can't rest on your laurels. Not everyone can handle that. It's like drinking water to me at this point. It's so easy. You know, you've been doing it so long. So many people in my life don't understand how I'm able to function and it's super easy. You know, a lot of it is the balance, too, my 12-step program. I know how to take time to myself when I need it and check out. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Darren Prince.

We'll be right back. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. And to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard from our amazing sponsors, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget, we have a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways from Darren Prince. That link is in the show knows at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to Jordan Harbinger.

dot com slash subscribe. Subscribing to the show is absolutely free. It just means that you get all of the latest episodes downloaded automatically to your podcast player so you don't miss a single thing. And now back to our show with Darren Prince. How long have you been sober? 11 and a half years. So that's a long time.

Congratulations. Thank you. That's a long time. I met you today. We talked before, but we have mutual friends. You know, you're a warm guy or at least you're really good at faking it so far. But everybody... We're talking about Jennifer Cohen.

Yeah, talking about Jennifer Cohen. I think what she's... saw in common was that vibe of like going out, getting it, doing it right, hustling your ass off, and also being a competitive son of a bitch a little bit here. And like my dad's saying, his favorite expression, it's not what you say it's what you do. So if I'm going to tell Jordan, I'm going to do something and then give you a contact or hook you up at something, you better believe Darren Prince is going to do it. I think that's the way we are from the East Coast, to be honest with you because she always tells me, I cannot believe when you said you're going

to do this. It's just in me. That was what she said we had in common. I always do what I say I'm going to do. That in L.A., it's like, you're an alien. You're an alien, man, out here, California, Southern California. So I said I was going to do this thing and I did it. Yeah, but I didn't, I thought you forgot. I didn't think you're going to show up. I mean, you don't have to call and confirm 14 times. Like I said, oh, I'll be there on Tuesday. I'm still coming on Tuesday. Yeah. So you're 16 years old making, what, like 200 grand a year? A couple hundred grand a year. And what year was this? 1986. Okay. So inflation calculator. That's like $300,000. Probably at least.

imagine, if not more. 30 plus years ago, 35 years ago, almost. So suddenly you became a cool kid. You went from special ed kid to like, this is the kid who makes more money than both of my parents, all of our parents put together. Renting up in the daily news, USA Today, all these things started happening. How did you learn to conduct business? Some of it's instinctual, but what's the rest of it? Again, I always go back to my dad. You know, I miss him so much and you just taught me, you know, it's not what you say. It's what you do. Your reputation is the hardest thing to uphold the easiest thing to lose and you only get one chance at it. The idea is 1% carrying it to lose the other 99%. And I always took these three things with me. And he was so big on personal relationships, not just when I became an agent,

but baseball cards, sports memorabilia, get to know them, find out what their special interests are, when their birthdays are, find out about their family, brothers, sisters, their friends, know what their passions are. And I did that and I studied that on almost everybody because when it came to that, it was exciting. It wasn't like reading U.S. history or Spanish. And I gravitated to it. I kind of storted. So I knew when I would see somebody, hey man, how's the dog doing? And it was almost like they were so taken back. And that are so attentive to those details that just continuously cultivate a relationship. Do you keep the notes in your head or do you keep them back then? You didn't keep them in your phone. Back then you didn't keep in the phone.

Now, I truly believe I was a statistical genius when it came to math. I would study the back of baseball cards as a teenager. And I can tell you what Darrell Strawberry hit in 1983 playing in the minor leagues, how many home runs, how many RBIs. And that was one thing that gave me. a sense of self and some self-confidence because my mom of boys would be arguing about sports or like how many singles a guy got like three nights ago. They would say, ask Prince. As he would know. So it made me actually feel good about myself. And I think that's why I gravitated more to studying statistics of basketball players, baseball players, because I was the go-to guy. You could have been an actuary. That would have been exciting. Sorry actuaries. We do have some

that listen to the show. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry, guys. We're laughing with you. How did you find mentors? You mentioned mentors in the book, and I was wondering if maybe because you had a great dad, you had good radar for other good people. You know, people just pop into my life, too. God's plan, whatever it might have been in any sector of the business or whatever business it was at that time, I always had great people. Like baseball cards, Barry Halper lived 10 minutes from my family's house who passed away. He was the legendary card collector, memorabilia collector, had the holy grail of all collections of all time. And then when I got into sports memorabilia, I had my friend Jeff Hamilton, a renowned leather jacket designer, introduced me to Harlan Warner, who's Muhammad Ali's agent for close to 30 years. And he brought me into the Ali family. And then it obviously evolved into the agency of Magic Johnson to this day all in my life. I mean, the guy took a chance on me and gave me the opportunity to bring him opportunities. And I thank him every day that I'm with him.

Yeah, the story with Magic is interesting because what, you were setting up signings of member Amelia? I was doing his autographed signings through his agent of the time, Lon Rosen, who's also a dear friend, and Lon was his player rep for many years. And, you know, they didn't allow many people into that shell. I mean, it was a very tight circle, but, you know, Lon liked my hustle. You know, I did things right. I was honest. I worked my butt off and magic-likely organization when he would show up at certain appearances with Mike Frue. I would always pay extra people to be there because I'm like, this is about building a relationship. I don't want to be understaffed. And to this day, I still deal with his private jet information, with his assistant, Natalie Wilson, who I love. Um, his car is.

services, I don't let anybody in my office even go near that. There's little things because if there's a scrub, it's on Darren Prince, you know, and I'm like that with most of my guys. Wow. You're really hands-on with your clients, even to this day. I'll double-check their hotel complications. I'll double-check with security airports for Hulk Hogan with my boy, Chris Volo, who always make sure it's hard for Hulk to walk to an airport for Hulk Hogan. Oh, yeah. We'll make sure the golf courts are in a certain area. Rick Flair and his wife, Wendy, they know the way I am. I'm very OCD with it, but they're my family. I want to make sure when they get somewhere, it's as easy as an experience as possible. I don't want them getting bombarded by 300 fans. I want them getting

in, getting out, getting to the hotel, getting rested. There's a certain food they like or shirt and drink. I make sure it's there. Jeez, man. It's hard to even buy that kind of care. Yeah. And then the most important thing when they hurt and when life happens to them, one of the first people there to speak to them. Yeah. Wow. Dennis was saying, Dennis Rodman earlier, was saying a lot of people are fair weather fans. Like, they like you. when you're up, but then when you're low, it's like they're laughing at you or they're just ignoring you. I was there for all the North Korean trips. And yeah, there was some ugly times after that third or fourth trip, I think it was the fourth trip in January 2014. It got very scary. And

I went and turned my back on him. I talked to him to going to Rehab because he, his drinking was escalating. And that's when you find out the true meaning of friendship. I don't want to just be there for people on there on top. I want to be there when they're struggling. You know, because I know firsthand living through it that I found my real true self from the adversity in my life. And if people turn their back on me, I wouldn't be alive right here. Sure. I wonder if there's a part of you that looks at the opiate problem in like a kid who grows up in rural Montana and you go, of course it's hard for you to get sober.

I'm an agent with money and resources and access to anyone in the world that I want to fly to. And it was hard for me to get sober. Like what chances a kid have who works at a gas station? Same thing. Exactly. Everybody needs to, you know, just accept the fact that there might be a problem, have the courage to speak to somebody about that problem. It doesn't matter. I say it all the time, whether you're from Park Avenue or Park Bench or Yale or jail. Diction doesn't discriminate. It all comes down to taking that first step, taking that action to identify that. How did it get to this point? Or I don't want it to keep escalating and I'm going to stop it now. And I can't do it by myself. Yeah, how do you do that? I heard you on Dr. Drew, who's a mutual friend of ours. dinner two nights ago with Dennis. That's right. He texted me. I texted him right before that. I said, do you know anything about this Suboxone drug? And he's like, got to go. And I was like, oh, well, hit me later. And then it turned out he was, yeah, with you guys looking at brain scans or

something. I have a crazy story about Suboxone with Dr. Drew. When Dennis was on Celebrity Reab in 2005, Dr. Drew called me. And I thought I was sober. I truly did. I was on Suboxone for a year and a half at that point. And this is like a drug that's supposed to drop opiate? It's an opiate blocker. It basically takes away the cravings. If you do happen to take an opiate, it blocks it. There's no psychological euphoria effect from it. I thought I was living my best life. And he called me out right on the phone. He goes, Darren, I don't really know you, but I'm going to tell you that's highly dangerous. And the Suboxone after a year and a half is even more addictive now to your system than real opiates were. And

damn, he was right. I mean, that was a nightmare getting off that stuff. So we knew each other. He's done some press with my book. He attended a big event that Jason Bindon in New York with Magic and I and been a big supporter, so we kind of laugh about it. But it was a turning point because who knows I might have just stayed on Suboxone the rest of my life thinking I found the cure. Jeez. So I didn't realize that it's kind of like methadone, right? It's exactly like methadone. They come out with this and then it turns out it's just as bad or worse and harder to get and more expensive. Exactly. So, all right, we can sort of come back to that in a second because there was a little bit of a downfall at that point that leads to all this. But you're a big dog at the card

conventions. And I love this quote, money and power don't mean anything if you yourself don't mean something. How do you come to that realization at age 16 when you're balling out of control and all your friends love you? I don't think I did. I think I realized it when I was sober when me and a Christian were writing the book. You're right. Because back then it was about the jewelry and the diamonds and I would have three or four beautiful models coming to these shows with me and everybody wearing Prince of cards jackets. And I wasn't there in Prince anymore. I had an alter ego was Prince of Carts. And it's just the coolest thing in the world, whatever, 16, 17, 18 walking into the convention. Satin jackets? Yes. White satin I'm envisioning. I don't know. It's like now. I think it was, I think it was Navy with gold.

But certainly sat. Flashier, the better. Yeah. That's what it was back then. And you're this like Jewish kid, who I assume had a bunch of really gaudy ass jewelry on. Exactly. I had a diamond dollar sign ring. No. If there was the last piece of jewelry in the world, I wouldn't be wearing it to this day. But it was horrendous looking. I lived in that thing. I slept in it. I bought it at like a flea market vendor for like five grand one day. And it was like everything to me. People would stop me.

I guess back then in 86, 87, it might have been considered cool. Oh, man. But, you know, I looked back to see how deeply insecure and hurt that Darren Prince was to have to wear a dollar signed on. I'm in right. Look at me now. Yeah, no rings. You know. Is that like a.

Yeah. This is a recovery bracelet. And this is a, you know, same thing about spiritual energy and good vibes. I, I'm trying to even think. who had a dollar sign diamond ring made. Not cubic sarconia, real diamonds. Right, real diamonds. Yeah.

So, like, this is like some stuff that got pawned when a drug dealer got arrested in his drawer. Some like iceberg slim lost it in a bar. Oh, my God. But you're still in the high life. Like, you're going on Arsenio Hall, successful teenagers. Well, no, that one never happened. That would never happen? That would never happen.

I'll never forget the call. This was another lesson from my dad, Danny Zucker. Oh, I know it's very big time in the industry still. Calls me up. I was at Bridgeport. I was a freshman college, said we read about you in the USA today, and our Cine Hall is doing an amazing segment on successful teenagers. And he's got you.

I think the girl was from Soho Soda at a Long Island and one other person, because we're going to fly you out in two weeks. We'll have her office call you. So, of course, as an insecure, cocky, arrogant Jewish kid, start calling up my friends. I'm going. Everybody in the dorm room's going nuts. We're all going out, going out that night getting wasted to celebrate. I call my dad the next morning because he didn't tell anybody yet, did you?

I was like, go out of. I told the couple people. He goes, Darren, learn one thing. Until you're on that set of that studio, not on the plane, until you walk in and they mic you up, you have nothing. And about four days later, he called me to break my heart and say they're moving away from the segment. But I dig at USA Today. I think there was like Sally Jesse Raphael and New York Post Wall Street Journal. But Arsenia would have been in.

Yeah. I could have had Jeff Hamilton's jacket on with the diamonds. I mean, what an entrance. You have shown up with the ring and the jacket. Forget about it. Oh, man. The Versace glasses with the gold on the side. Yeah, you look like Jewish tea eyes.

A Jewish flave of flave. Oh, man. Your dad did have some good advice, though. He said, your reputation is the hardest thing to build and the easiest thing to lose. That's a very dad quote, right? Your whole scene is based on reputation. But, man, there's a lot of people that are around Dennis Rodman, around Hulk Hogan, all your clients, you, yourself that are out to get you, out to get something from you,

all the time. How do you know who to trust? How do you know who's going to have your reputation in mind? I mean, at this stage, I don't think we bring many new people into the personal circle. It's more corporate. You know, any type of business partnerships. But most of my guys are so smart. They know. You know, Hulk's got his tight circle. Rick Flair does. Charlie Sheen does. Everybody's got, obviously, magic is, you know, it's like Fort Knox to get in there. And I think they know at their age at this point who the real people and who are the ones that you have to kind of keep away and out of that little tight-knit spot because everybody wants something out of them. And that's the other reason I tell my guys in my office. I think we're so successful with them, not just profession,

but personally. I'm not that guy that asked for anything. I've never been. I did it one time of my life. And it's in the book on the back cover right there. And it's the fact that Magic Johnson wrote the Magic Johnson with the forward. They know me. I don't do that. I don't want to be that guy. I want to be the guy that's calling them because I have an opportunity for them, not to take something from them. I have trouble with that, too. It took me years to even ask for help with things that people wanted to give me. It took me a long time to even go, well, I really need this thing and I know that this person can do it. What do you think that is? It goes to the unworthiness, right? I think there's a little bit of unworthiness to go a little bit. I think that still obviously always stays inside to us to a certain degree. But see, this one I went all for it. I mean, when I emailed Mark Cuban Genie boss, All my people, they got right back. Social media, I met Patrick and you know this here, and we were talking about it two nights ago.

The amount of social media support he got when aiming high came out was just unbelievable. But that was because I knew it was helping so many people. I felt so secure with asking because I knew that so many were affected by this. And there's not a person in this hotel today or in the city of Los Angeles that doesn't somebody affected by the opiate epidemic or alcoholism. And, you know, that was one time in my life. I truly felt like I deserved this. God's given me this platform, and I'm going to ask them to help me excel it to a whole other level to help save lives.

Of course, yeah. Like if this book was just about you and there's a bunch of selfies with you and famous people, it would have been harder for you to ask for that for sure. Going back to our wild insecurity as teenagers, you started lifting weights and doing steroids and stuff like that. You know, that obviously is the same pathology coming into play. That caused all kinds of health problems. I mean, at this point, give us a picture of what you're doing on a day-to-day basis. You're drinking, popping pills. I'm drinking on popping pills, making tens of thousands of dollars a week, flipping and buying and selling vintage baseball cards.

And finally got beautiful women in my life, you know, the pick of whatever I wanted, which again was something new that I wasn't used to. And in the gym six days a week, injecting steroids, taking pills of steroids. And I thought life was great, that this was it. I mean, everybody wanted to hang out with me, everyone did it be in my inner circle. And I wanted everybody to be my inner circle. Sure, yeah. I needed it. I loved it. I loved the attention. I loved the fact that I finally felt like something in my life. Yeah, I can totally identify with all this. I think that's why I like the book because I was just

like, oh my God, I took a lot of these boxes. That's why I'm careful. We got a laugh. We made it through, man. Well, yeah. When I look at addictive behavior and things like that, I go, well, I don't really have that. But it's so not true. I definitely have that. I just don't have it with substances and that's probably dot, dot, dot, dot, yet. Right. Like, I'm always wary of that now looking in L.A. Some of my friends that were like the fitness trainer guys, they're freaking snorting heroin now. I'm like, what happened to you? You know? And it's not just Hollywood. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. Oh, man, it's terrifying. So you must have been having a great time, but at some point it hits the fan, right? You hit the wall. 21 years old. What happens? I was arrested four times and six months.

But of course, all that was a coincidence, right? It wasn't. Yeah. The cops never should have been there. Yeah, it was bad timing. And I was put into a program called the Alliance by the judge. I lost my license for a year and it was mandatory. I stayed sober. Otherwise, he said it was 120 days in jail. So, you know, I got my life in order and maybe a few days to go on the program and I knew I was graduating per se. I called my friend Dave up and I said, hey, man, I got this great idea. Let's go to New York City and celebrate. Let's go do some mind to raise your shots. What should go wrong? At Jimmy Cafe. We were just 21 and we just partied our ass off there on the way and we took a handful of Xanax, which I thought were better than the opiates

because the opiates is what also got me in trouble. And between that and the mind, erase your shots, we're on our right home from New York City, and I wake up in the ER with a hundred stitches in my face. He fell asleep behind the wheel. His car went into a ditch, my basement into the windshield. Concussion, broken nose, my lip split open.

You wouldn't have recognized me. And the first two people I see are my mom and my dad. Cures rolling down your face. She just, they can't help their baby boy. Did they know? They knew, but a little blind to buy. the fact, how can he be this successful? Yeah, I wondered about that. If there's really a problem, you know? Like, no, he's got a car and a business and his friends and he's always...

My first condo at 21 years old. It's unheard of at that. Yeah, that's crazy. You know, for $400,000, but I knew there was an issue. I knew something wasn't right, but I wasn't ready to give it all up. I wanted to kind of adjust it. I knew that maybe the Xanax with the booze wasn't right, and I couldn't do Coke and, you know, the ecstasy. doing it two, three days a week wasn't good for me. And I eventually wanted to find that balance of what worked, where I could still feel the way I wanted to feel, but not go overboard. What's crazy to me is you're working with at this point athletes and...

Back then I was doing the signings, yeah. I wasn't in the aging game yet. But even still, you're working with like these world class athletes and personalities. And I think it was Joe Frazier waking up at 3 a.m. doing five-mile runs with ankle weights. Or was it both of them? Joe Frazier would tell me those stories. I mean, and you're working with them and then you're thinking, cool, well, what did I do last night? I did a bunch of pills and then drank a bunch and then hit the gym and injected some steroids.

And I mean, how are you squaring their greatness with like your lifestyle? Well, you know, when I started working with the athletes and I had morality clauses in my agreement, that's when I got rid of the illegal drugs. And I really had sciatica. I mean, I had real hardcore sciatica, probably from the stresses and not knowing how to release them. and a lot of those underlying insecurities that were compressed that I didn't know how to deal with. And, you know, when the craziness of the agency game would happen, I just knew to go right to the bottle. I was functioning for a while. Most of my guys will tell you that were around me.

They didn't think there was a problem. They just thought Prince was having a good time. And, you know, I was up early. I'd made sure they made their flights. I made sure everybody got paid. The contracts were done right. I had a great team behind me. But eventually, like I said, you know, it's a certain point where it turned on me.

I cannot tell you to this day when it turned on me. but it turned and it stopped working. You can't really pinpoint the time? No, there was a time maybe in my early 30s where it just didn't have the effect that it once had. I remember walking into an event, believe it or not, at this hotel, the Mondrian were out right now. I think it might have been maybe 2001. I was with Smokin' Joe, and it was the Espy Awards after party. And I think Tom Brady just won his first Super Bowl.

And I remember leaving the SP Awards and chopped up a couple percassettes and went in the bathroom to snort. And we came in the limo over here to go to the after party. And I felt nothing. I felt nothing. Nothing. And now here I am walking in with the king of kings. And I felt like I lost my mojo. I'm going to do this. We know, all these athletes, Samuel Jackson's going to see him, which was hosted the awards. I'm not going to communicate. I'm like they talk. I remember my hands started getting all sweaty. And that was probably the first time I walked into an event where I felt like I lost my superpowers. And ironically, I saw Kobe Bryant here that night too. I just worked with an onion. Just had them on. And my boy said, you know, with 10. And my boy said, you know,

with him, I wrote about it in the book. He saw me go over at home and he goes, you had that little flash of greatness. Like you were able to walk over. Hey man, what's up? But then the rest of the night you weren't yourself. Oh, man. So that must have then spoke to your insecurity as not being worthy of being there in the first place, which is really, really scary to have that come crawling back after you've done all this to beat that down to mute that. You're like, how many drugs do I have to do to get rid of that? And here it is creeping back in. It's like wherever you go there you are, right exactly. Oh, man.

And you're doing so well with your clients at this point, right? Because you're not just a businessman, you're a fan and the clients can tell. Exactly. And you'd land a league on Magic Johnson. Evil, Knievel, Hulk, you know, Rick Flair, Roy Jones, Jr., Rodman. There was so many Chubby Chase to this days the client. And always making sure I got the job on. For addicts, the night before looks different, but the morning after always looks the same,

barfing either on Skid Row or into a golden toilet in Trump Tower. That's like the great equalizer, but in a very very, very, very unglomerous way. How did you figure that out? How did that become something you felt viscerally and realized? Whenever I would come to, I think I would look at my surroundings. And although if there was a certain woman there or a lady friend and I just celebrated a certain success, I always knew no matter where the environment is, I always woke up to the same atmosphere. It was always something with that energy related to whatever party I was doing. It didn't matter if I was in a holiday inn or Ritz Carlum. It was always that same.

same, hungover, even if it's an opiate over. I'd like to call off them too many, nauseous, not feeling right, always came down to that, no matter where I was geographically. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Darren Prince. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard so you can check out those amazing sponsors for yourself, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget, we have a worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast.

If you're listening to us on the Overcast Player, please click that little star next to the episode. We really appreciate it. And now for the conclusion of our episode with Darren Prince. I can't barely keep it together after two drinks. Like I wake up the next morning, I'm like, oh, I'm too old for this shit. Your liver must have been on seventh gear. My liver enzymes 11.5 years later are still slightly elevated from all the opiates.

Like Billy Rubin count or something? Yeah, there's a handful of ailments that I have. I lost my hearing completely. Oh, that's from that. I firmly believe, as to some of the doctors, is from excessive opioid abuse. I think Rush Limbo has a hearing problem. It's a very well-known TV announcer, and, you know, he was an opiate addict and one of the big side effects from long-term opioid abuse is hearing loss. Huh.

I guess I never really thought about that. That's terrifying. I guess it's lucky that's the only thing that you lost, right? Is it hearing in one ear? Just the left ear. Jeez. The book reads like part music video. and then part maybe like a crystal method music video.

It's like music, oh, rap music video, oh, EDM music video. You're in strip clubs with celebrities. You're on jets and things like that. But all of this contributes to your sense of not really belonging, right? Like the whole imposter syndrome, it makes it all worse, right? Absolutely. Yeah, it made it all worse. In that moment, I don't recognize it.

I don't realize it. I can identify with it. But there was a certain point like that next morning or whatever it might have been where I couldn't get that feeling back. And I was struggling to find it, no matter how many pills I took or however I timed it to not take them under a full stomach and only snored half of them and let the rest go under my tongue and melt. It was absolute insanity. Whatever I had to do was a full-time job to make sure I got that fixed that I needed.

So you're managing your addiction is like this whole routine. Manage addiction, sleep eats. Exactly. Yeah. Unbelievable. Doing business at the level where you are and where, you were even then, you had to have your reputation intact, you had to have your integrity intact. Didn't you ever think, holy shit, what if I get caught doing all these drugs? No, because they were legal.

They were prescribed by a doctor as we talked about. Doctor wrote them. Yeah. I'm good. So it's all good. Yeah. There was no back then all you need to do with oxyconch or perkins said, I'm sure it's the same. Or Vicodin and just have a prescription bottle with your name on it. And that was it. I mean, like I said, I did cut out the illegal drugs. I knew there was no more, you know, ecstasy, coke, all that I was done with that once I became an agent. So I just shifted into opiates. There was a little scare with the integrity, though, with the FBI. Tell us how the FBI and you got involved with one another, because that was kind of terrifying. So that's why I made my transition into the agency game. I had Prince of Arts, which was my memorabilia company. We were at the

height of the business who were the king of autograph signings. I literally just left Muhammad Alayette at the Essex house in New York City. It was in 1996 in the summer. We spent two days with them signing the photos of him lighting the Olympic torch, which he did two weeks prior. I got a voicemail from an FBI agent. I'm writing a column in Tough Stuff magazine called The Autographed Experience, but all these icons that I'm around and what the experience was like. And I called the officer on a Sunday night. He said, we'd love to have you come to Chicago. There's a case we could use your expertise. We'll fly you and we'll pay you. Of course, the ego, the big shot at. Yeah. This is pretty cool. That's a brilliant move on that part, though. It plays every car.

Of course, they're calling me because I'm Darren Prince. I just left Muhammad Ali. And so the next morning, I got a call from another FBI agent telling me that we may need you to come with an attorney to look at some merchandise that we have. This is really odd. So I call it my attorney goes, don't call them back. Let me call them. He's like, I think you should bring me. I'll charge you a couple grand for the day.

Let's go in and out. And the night before I left, the provider of this merchandise that I bought a lot. of it from hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of autograph memorabilia, told me that the FBI was trying to get them on tax evasion and not to give them any information on them. Developed a relationship with the guy who's like, whatever, I'm bulletproof. I did nothing wrong. Sure. I go out there and they sat with me for about two hours. They recorded everything. And the one question they asked that they kept pushing me on was, did you ever have any inquiries, Mr. Prince for refunds from him of your customers? I go, no, I go, everybody loved the

merchants. It's authenticated by one of your own, an FBI forensic document experts. okay, no problem. So we'll take a break. We come back after lunch. So we're going to ask you one more time, Mr. Prince, are you sure and certain that nobody in your office ever had an issue with the refund? No, never. They had a tape recorder.

It wasn't of our conversation. They were tapping on the phone lines for six months. Wow. One of my sales rep arguing with an attorney in Hawaii. Oh, man. Return some merchandise saying he got word that it was fake and it wasn't really signed by Michael Jordan. They investigated me for about another year and a half. I lost everything.

Yeah. So I started sending out refund letters to keep my reputation intact, and I was devastating. Probably half the people took a refund, to be honest with you. So many of them loved the merchandise, and the autographs look so legit. Some people don't want to believe that it was fake. But I lost everything. I wanted about a million dollars in debt. This is the first time of my life I had financial problems.

My friends were giving me two, three hundred hours a week just to eat. My condo was almost in foreclosure. And my last three grand that I had from writing some of these articles and tough stuff, magazine, I decided to take my dad to a fishing trip in Alaska. And that's kind of when everything changed the week before we left. I got sentenced to three years probation. All these icons came through from a Magic Johnson and Lonrose in his agent at the time, sent letters to the judge, Lonnie, Malay, Muhammad Ali, Harlan Werner, Dwight Manley, and Dennis's longtime player rep about my credibility that I made a mistake. But what was your mistake? That's consistent.

The guy lied to the FBI. I got charged with thinking a false statement. Did you do that deliberately or you weren't? No, I truly believed we didn't have any issues with refunds. Yeah. I never heard about it because when my rep was talking to the attorney in Hawaii, he didn't tell me that there was an issue. He's like, you bought these items from us eight months ago. How do we know they're still ours? That was what he said to me. Yeah. So because they couldn't get me on mail fraud, because there was no proof that I did anything intentionally, they cut a deal with me and they charged me with making a false statement to the FBI. Oh, that's like three hours probation. Gotcha. Still a felony. I'm a felon. So can't do jury duty. Thank God.

but I'm allowed to vote. I've been able to vote. Oh, wait. So you could, the only, wait a minute. It's a pretty cool thing in a way. So you just don't ever have to go to jury duty. Jordan, when the jury duty cards come in, I get so excited to go online and fill it in because the minute I checked that box, have I ever been charged the felony, it exes me right out every

couple years it comes in and says, sorry, you're unable to qualify. All I have to do is become a felon. Life hack. Not recommended it. So, you know, obviously it took my way. a lot of come out of it, but I took my dad with my last like three grand to Alaska and he refused to, he didn't want to go with me. He goes, you can't be wasting this money. And I said, dad, come on. We need it. We need it. We were fishing and we talked about it earlier that I said to him,

I need to do something different. He goes, what's your next move? And I said, you know, dad, I think I'd make a great agent. I think I'd be really good at it because I'm caring. I'm good with details. These guys trust me, these women that I represent, they all trust me. But I'm not an attorney. And at 25, I don't want to go to law school. He goes, why do you need to be an attorney? Because life is about who you know, not what you know. Because you have so many incredible relationships to be able to go to Muhammad Ali's ranch in Michigan and to go to Magic Johnson's house and you can call Dennis Rahman on the cell phone right now

or Joe Frazier. These are relationships that any attorney would give their right arm for in the entertainment industry. So what are you saying? What should I do? Because magic stuck by you through all this. He knows about making mistakes. They all do. I would talk to him next time you see him about being your.

first client. And I remember being in Michigan with him. We were in Detroit, about three weeks later. And I remember being a little bit high because it was a really nervous situation from me to walk into his room. He came by himself on this one trip. And I got into his room. He sat me down. He's just the most special man in the world. He sat me down. Come on, boy, sit down. How did it all work out? You're okay. You got through it. He goes, how are you doing financial? I'm like, it's rough. And I kind of started crying a little bit. And he goes, look, man, you're going to make lemonade at a lemon. I guarantee you. You're going to look back. at this time in her life, and you're going to say, if that never happened, these other doors

wouldn't have opened because God test great men and woman and he's testing you right now, just like you tested me. And I'm like literally sitting here like this. And I said, well, Irvin, I call him by his room. I said, Irvin, I got an idea. Because what is it? I said, a business I take. It's okay, you know, let me hear her. What's your next move? And I said, I want to be an agent. So, man, you need some big clients to do that because you have any idea who you're looking to have as your first client. And I still get choked up telling the story because, You know, you hear about these moments in life. I listen to guys like you and Louis Howes and Jay Shetty and Gary Bean.

You have these moments in your life that if you don't go for it, you can regret it forever. And it came out and I said, I would love to have you. It's my first client if that's possible. And because do you have a good entertainment lawyer? So, no, I don't. He goes, well, you better find one and send a contract to the office next week. And it looks at me, goes, I'm going to give you two years to represent me. But if you don't use me and not done every door to bring in all the biggest celebrity,

as you can, I'm going to fire you. Listen to how successful I've become there, and I'm going to be successful. It's how successful I make you and everybody else around me. Wow. Because life is about what you can do for other people. I left the room, like, thinking, did he just tell me that I should be exploiting him to build my company, my agency, and it's exactly what he did. I mean, you know, within six months, I had Chevy Chase, Pamela Anderson, Dennis Rahman,

I met a year later. Smoke and Joe Frazier was actually the second right after Matt. A couple years after that, Magic was in Hawaii with Dave Winfield. I got a lead for a slot machine license and deal for Evo Caneval. You're the one that makes all the weird slot machine. On those weird branded things. So I get evil on the phone with Magic, and Magic tells them all these great things about me. And Evo Caneval is now a client.

And I didn't understand that by them, but now I do because when I look at all these outlets that we have now, we're so dialed in at such a high level to the ad agencies and the corporations, it all helps everybody. It's all one big family. So I now look at what magic said and meant, and it was true. It was spot on. What did you learn from having to call all your celebrity friends and the other card dealer, memorabilia dealers, and have to just come clean about this whole FBI thing? Because that could have destroyed you, but it didn't. Yeah, it killed me, but it was also in a way, I'll tell you,

when I was so broke, I remember telling myself that I'm never going to forget this feeling, because thank God, I had the perspective enough to look at it differently and say, I don't have kids right now. I'm a single guy. I do think I can rebuild. I do believe I'm going to turn this around. I was on Dave Meltcher's podcast about this conversation because he was made and lost it. And I said, Dave, I just knew. I had this feeling inside. I mean, that my time is going to come again. And it was a wake up called to watch my spending. Be more careful about just throwing money out there the way that I was throwing it. And yeah, little by little within a couple of years, it started to happen. Yeah, it just seems like it would be, you really could have turned the corner in a bad way and been like,

reputation shot, you're still using at this point. Of course. So that could have been you flushing it down the toilet at that point. Yeah. Jeez, man. Even later on, I mean, this imposter syndrome, do you think you're over it now? Or do you just manage it differently? No, I think I'm over now.

Really do. Yeah? I truly do. I don't know if I could have told you that four or five years into my sobriety. But man, you put me in front of a football field with 100,000 people at Wembley right now. I'll speak to them like I'm speaking to you and love every minute of it. And it'd be so comfortable talking about the uncomfortable, knowing that. not as much that I needed God, but God needed Darren Prince at a certain point, that my journey

was all about being a recovery advocate and getting this message out there. I don't care what end of the world you're from, that you can turn your darkest days into the brightest delights because I'm living proof. I think it is great that you, of course, eventually made it to sober because there's an anecdote in the book where Dennis Rodman and you are partying for a long, long, long time. I mean, months and months or years and years, whatever it is. And then one day he wakes you up and says, Hey, man, you're going to miss your flight. When Dennis Rodman wakes you up because you're going to miss your flight, did you kind of get on that plane and go, hang on a second?

If Dennis Rodman is the responsible adult in our relationship, what's happening? We did interview Fox last week for ZS PN 3rd, 530, and I told that story. I was still a little bit, like, buzzed when he woke me up. But the amazing thing is after Celebrity Big Brother in England, so he got evicted from the house. And we hit a strip club then I. We went to a bar called Pan G. he woke me off, barely made it on the flight.

We're on the plane and we're on the right side in business class and he looks over. I was like, bro, is that Muhammad? I'm like, what's he talking about? I look to my left. Muhammad Alani Ali or two rows to the left of us on the same flight. So we got up and said a little and gave him a big hug. And I was like, go figure. But now, I don't really think it meant that much.

And I think we're laughing about it because I was still at that point where it was somewhat working. I realized it obviously a few years later that there's something really wrong with. Dennis Rahman waking up his agent, so they make the flight. I mean, looking back then, were you looking at him and going, wow, he's out of control, but I'm fine. That's exactly what it was. And I'd be on the plane, like, swallowing pills and having a Bloody Mary or show.

And he'd be drinking. I'm like, you got to split down with the freaking drinking, man. You're out of freaking control. They yell, we fight with each other. And don't tell me, you and your freaking pills, Darren. You know, it's just, it was like two brothers. They're from a doctor. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Dude, I would hold it the bottle. Dr. So-and-so gave him to me. Don't start with that. sciatica. Yeah. Like, how's your sciatica? You've had 17 Vicodin and it's 9 a.m. How did you end up sending Dennis and you, by the way, going with him to North Korea?

Like, what happens when you get that request? And you're like, this seems like a good idea. Take me through this thought process here. So I got a call from Shane Smith and somebody from his office. I forget the guy's name from Vice Media. And they tell us about this idea to bring Dennis with the Harlem Globetrotters who be a producer on the special and on her talent. Not a lot of money, but something historic for him to be a part of.

I was like, all right, no, I'll bring it to them. It sounded unique. And the trip got canceled three different times. And like, we had contract signed dates. They started working on flights. They started working on flights. They started working on times. And like, we had guys, we're missing opportunities. Enough is enough. Finally it gets done and they call me and tell me that they got the clearance that they needed. It's like, all right, I just figured they need a clearance to film. I didn't know there was other clearance involved. At the time, Sai was the biggest thing in the world to wrap. Gangnam style, right?

So, yeah. So I go downstairs to Steve Simon, who's the VP of my agency. Good old buddy. Baseball card show with me. Steve is the book smart guy. And I go downstairs with the contract so excited. Bro, finally. I got the deal done with Dennis to go to Korea.

We got to figure out who Sae's manager is so he can see Sai. And he goes, cool, dude, when's he leaving? Let me see the contract. And I go, he's going to North Korea on, he goes, you mean South. I go to North. He's like, bro, are you an idiot? He goes, you can't send him to North Korea. And I said, what are you talking about?

This is going to be a historic. He looks at it. It starts pulling everything up on North Korea on the internetics. Come here, you moron. Look at this. These are showing me all these stories. Yeah, the most isolated country in the world. It's crazy.

I'm like, let me call Dennis. And I called him up. And to his credit, man, if he was sitting right here, he's like, dude, I don't give it damn. Just make sure I'm safe because if nobody's met this leader, this ruler, I guarantee I'm going to meet this motherfucker. And I might be able to open up some doors with him and President Obama and create some seriously historical shit. And he literally said that on the phone. Exactly what Dennis said to me. And I go, man, that's pretty cool.

And, you know, we sent him and they called me at like 11 o'clock that night when he was already in Beijing as, you know, you have to take that Beijing flight into the airport in Pyengen. They said, get ready for your client's biggest press hit of his life. And I go, well, guys, it's not going to be bigger than the wedding dress. I mean, please, they're like, this is going to dwarf the wedding dress. This is an international news. Yeah, it's international. There's social media now. There wasn't social media back then.

When I tell you, when I woke up at 5 in the morning to go to the bathroom, I've never seen more tax messages, more emails, more media outlets around the world. It was like nothing I've ever seen because at that point, he already went to the game. And he was already had that iconic moment sitting next to Kim Jong on like this. Right. And it was everywhere. breaking news and I couldn't believe it. I think Vice's value tripled after that week, at least. How we have wonderful pistachio commercial. Oprah did a interview with him. He was the first basketball player ever over 50 years older. I think athlete in general to open Saturday Night Live from New York

Saturday night. He got a foot locker commercial. And we didn't do it for that. We didn't expect any of this. Did you think at any point, okay, from all I read on Wikipedia, thanks to my buddy, he might never come back from North Korea. I did for a minute, but when he made it back that first trip, then I kind of felt a lot more comfortable. I figured, you know, this is pretty cool. Dennis said they wanted him to come back in a few more months. If he wanted to keep him, he would have kept. Exactly.

Oh, man, you've lived a hell of a life so far. So what's next for you? What's next for me, man? I mean, I'm just happy. You know, like we talk about to be able to find my real self, man, and be out there. The business is going to take care of itself. I'm always going to be a hustler. My clients know that about me, but it's about the recovery.

Just getting my message out there around America, around the world to show kids, adults, whoever it might be that hope and recovery exist. And no matter what you're going through, there's nothing that makes me happier than getting in front of a live audience and knowing that the lights come on in somebody's eyes. And I find one person in that crowd whose life gets changed. Because I've been giving a gift. Sobriety and recovery is a gift. And I've got to work hard at every single day going to my needs.

meetings and giving back. I had a random message on Instagram this morning, 7 o'clock this morning and Guy, New York, hey man, can you call me? I'm struggling. I'm very inspired by your post. Drop everything. I put up conference calls. That's how I build self-esteem by doing a steamable acts. That's how I could tell you that there is no more imposter syndrome, because I know the real Danor Prince. I finally arrived to a spot where most people never get to in their lifetime. I want a feeling that it's a 49 years old when I look how I was at 29 years old, at 19 years old, and you're never too old to make that change. This is the greatest thing I've done for myself for the long and I'm going to spend of time.

And, you know, the agent life, that's good and great, man, that's bullshit. That's not why I was put on this earth. This right here, and like I said, everything I do would get this message out there. This is by calling. I found myself. Thank you very much, man. Thanks for having me. Big thank you to Darren Prince.

His book is called Aiming High, How a Prominent Sports and Celebrity Agent hit bottom. He's just a cool guy. I like him. We're friends now. He helped me hook up Dennis Rodman as well, which I really appreciate. I mean, he's just a good person. I'm so glad to meet good people who are at the top of the industry like this because

it reaffirms all the things that we're doing here because you do see a lot of, I mean, you watch the news. Sometimes there's a lot of scumbags at the top. Darren's at the top, and he got there because he's an awesome guy who does what he says he's going to do. So that I really appreciate about him. Links to his stuff and his book will be in the show notes. There's a video of this interview on our YouTube channel at Jordan Harbinger.com

slash YouTube. We filmed this at the Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles. Special thanks to them for hooking up that room. I really appreciate it. The Mondrian Hotel there on Sunset Boulevard, right in the heart of it all. There's also worksheets for each episode so you can review what you've learned here from Darren Prince at Jordan Harbinger.com in the show notes. And I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems

and tiny habits so you can get your own Darren. Prince tactics going. That's our six-minute networking course, which is free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I know. You'll do it later, right? Yeah, you'll do it later. No, dig the well before you get thirsty.

You've got to help people before you ask them for stuff. Once you need relationships, you're too late. Don't procrastinate. That'll make you stagnate, especially when it comes to your personal and business relationships. The drills, they take a few minutes per day, hence the name six-minute networking. Geez, I mean, I would have chosen four-minute networking,

but nobody would believe me, right? I wish you knew this stuff. 20 years ago, it's not fluff, it's crucial. Find it all for free, Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course and the newsletter, so come join us and you'll be in some smart company. Speaking of building relationships,

you can always reach out and follow us on social or just reach out and talk to us there. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. This show is created in association with podcast one. This episode was produced by Jen Harbinger, Jason DeFilippo, edited by Jace Sanders. and show notes and worksheets by Robert Fogarty, music by Evan Viola, and I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Our advice and opinions and those of our guests are their own, and yeah,

I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer, so do your own research before you implement anything you hear on this show. And remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting, which should be in every episode. So please, share the show with those you love, and even those you don't. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows

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