The Jordan Harbinger Show - 548: Mickey Royal | A Pimp's Secrets of Mind Manipulation Part One

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

Mickey Royal (@mickey_royal) is a former gangster, drug dealer, pimp, mob enforcer, and bestselling author of The Pimp Game: Instructional Guide and The Pimp Guide: Secrets of Mind Manipulation. [This is part one of a two-part episode. Stay tuned for part two later this week!] What We Discuss with Mickey Royal: How Mickey's pseudobulbar affect and bipolar disorder came in handy as advantages in his line of work. What being deemed "capable" in certain circles means -- and why it's a networking mistake among criminals to turn your back on the type of job this entails (even if you've since moved "up"). How Mickey established The Royal Family -- an organized stable of prostitutes that ran with the efficiency of a Fortune 500 company. Why someone who's smart enough to make money through illicit entrepreneurial means would probably find outstanding success in the mainstream under different circumstances. How the mental toll of seeing people only from the levers by which they can be manipulated adds up and makes "normal" relationships difficult to impossible. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/548 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! 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.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy med yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want. Like all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha-chings from every channel,

right in one spot, and turn real-time reporting into big-time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinjury. your show. I tell people in any game you can only rise to the level

of your intelligence. A moron who goes into the pimp game is still a moron. You know, money does not raise the IQ. You know, so if you're a genius and you can't get any other opportunities elsewhere and you go into the drug game and you get, or any other

illegal business where there's no, where it's not regulated and you get a chance to really flourish, it's not that you're a great drug dealer. It's just the fact that you have 140 IQ and you never got a chance to show that. You would have done the same at Chrysler, too, if they had hired you. It's you, you take your brain with you. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills are the world's most

fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game. Astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies, psychologists, even the occasional billionaire investor, former cult member or undercover agents. Each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. If you're new to this show or you want to tell your friends about the show, and of course I always appreciate that, we've got those starter packs. Jordan Harbinger.com slash start is where you can find them. Their favorite episodes, organized by popular topics that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do here because we are so varied.

Once again, Jordan Harbinger.com slash start to get started or to help somebody else get started as well. Again, I always appreciate it when you share this show. Today, Mickey Royal is a former gangster, drug dealer, pimp, mob enforcer, and best-selling author. As a pimp, he opened brothels, after-hours clubs, escort services, swing parties, adult bookstores, you name it, live voyeurs, whatever. He even unionized prostitution. That was a thing. That probably was long overdue, candidly. Law enforcement often uses his book, The Pimp Game, an instructional guide, as a textbook for agents to get into the minds and inner workings of human.

traffickers. He says he was first detained at age five for attempted murder and daycare. I got to get that story. I hope that's a joke, but after doing the show, I'm thinking it probably wasn't. Look, there's a lot I could say about Mickey Royal. He's sort of a gang enforcer type turned pimp, turned entrepreneur, turned author. But I'm going to let this two-part episode speak for itself, because this one is wild, and Mickey is a great storyteller. By way of warning, I was on the fence about doing this one, about airing this one. It's pretty graphic. It's kind of horrific in many ways. This is going to be offensive to many, but it is insightful and it's certainly entertaining. And that said, it's not meant to glorify the industry or any criminal activity.

And I think that'll come through once you listen. And if you're wondering how I manage to make connections like this, it's because my network is wide and diverse. And I'm teaching you how to build your own network for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. By the way, most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course, they contribute to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, here's Mickey Royal. All the people I read about in the books, which I'll link in the show notes. Like, are you still in touch with a lot of these people?

Some of them know, right? They disappeared. They went off about their lives. Yeah. And a lot of them are. People look at my Facebook friends and they'll see women married with kids, hiking up a mountain. They now live in China or Texas or whatever. And she's standing in her square life.

You didn't know that woman 20 years ago. Yeah. I did. We're Facebook friends. And we're, how you doing? And, you know, if I see them in the mall, I walk past them and don't say anything. Yeah, that would be a little awkward if they're with their kids. husband, like, how do you know that guy with the...

With the crushed velvet hat? Yeah. You still wear, like, all that stuff out and about? I tell people, I quit my old job, but I didn't turn in the uniform. I mean, my clothes are my clothes. Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. It would be kind of hard to take everything off. I want to back up a little bit.

I got to say, man, I don't think I've ever read an acknowledgment section in a book that had RIP next to so many of the names. Like, I don't mean to make a joke out of that, but I'm like, wow, okay, no one. When you told me earlier, you didn't think you'd make it to 20. I kind of get why. If almost most of the people you know such hung out with are not with us anymore. Long time ago, they were dropping like flies. I mean, like every three weeks.

You know, I've been shot twice. I've been stabbed once. Mexican mafia tried to kill me in my sleep. Mexican mafia in the United States? I never had problems with the Tijuana cartels or anybody below the border. Never. We did good business for years. I went to jail down there, but that was my own fault.

Usually is, right? I mean. Yeah. They say, why did you go to jail and TJ? I was guilty. Yeah. Guilty people get locked up. That's what happens.

But no, I got stabbed. I was sleep at a halfway house. This is four years after I did what I did. And you figure what you do in prison stays in prison. It doesn't bleed to the streets. And I'm signed asleep. And you can tell the guy was an amateur because he put his hand on my neck first because he was aiming for my temple. I was sleep on my side.

But when he put his hand on my, when someone puts the hand on your neck and your sleep, you turn. Sure. And when I turned, his ice pick came down. I got four stitches right here. I got 11 in my mouth, and the bottom part of my tongue was separated. So I have a lisp now, and it broke several of my teeth. I got on fixed. And interviews right after that, you see me holding my hand over my mouth and stuff,

because it's real cracked up right. I look like a jackalander, but I've gotten them fixed. It was just bleeding and stuff, and he ran out of there, and I'm sitting there with an ice picket in my face, but I told the directors that I fell. Sure. We whack each other, but we don't tell each other's secrets. So you can't tell because if I close my mouth,

it's like straight up and down. Yeah, you can't tell. But on the inside, my teeth are like this, it's off-centered. So a lot of words, sometimes I have to spell them because, like, the word, P-U-R-E, I cannot pronounce that word. It's some words I can't pronounce anymore because my mouth was a- Stabbed with an ice pick. Wow.

Yeah, because I wouldn't give the name up to the police, they wouldn't give me a ride to the hospital. So I had to catch the train there, holding a towel. Oh, my God. That must have been an interesting. Like, I can imagine sitting next to somebody like, hey, are you okay? Yeah, I'm someone. way to the hospital. What happened? Well, I got stabbed in the face with an ice pick. Dude,

it's 4 o'clock in the morning. You know, you've read my bio and you know, my father, you're primarily raised in the Soviet Union. And when I got to Kaiser, the guy who was admitting us was Russian. And my first name was Russian. So he started asking me questions. And he said, don't worry feeling out this. I get you next. I get you good room. And I told, he asked me, was I Russian? I said, no, my father basically is he's from Molly originally. And he said, he's still Russian. Come with me. And I was like, Doc, comrade.

I'm like, bleating. I did read your bio, but there was nothing in there about your dad, your parents, actually, in the value you sent me. So I'm curious, your dad's from Mali, but he's Russian? Yeah, he was a child soldier in Mali. So a lot of child soldiers end up in Israel and Russia. Where else do you get people who've had killing experience since the age of 10? Yeah. So they're already desensitized, and they know what they're doing about the age of 12 and 13.

So he went from there, did a little time in Libya. It's just a job. And he actually was on Russia's side against Afghanistan. Wow. He's a Muslim, but he went to war against a Muslim country. I asked him why. He said, they paid me more. Yeah.

So he was a mercenary from the time he was a kid. Is he still around? Yeah, he's around. He doesn't know it, but he has advanced stages of dementia. But he doesn't know it because he's severely bipolar, so am I, which helped him my line of work. But, and I'm slightly PBA, so you'll see me giggle sometimes or laugh. PBA?

I can't pronounce it because of my mouth. But you ever see the movie The Joker? Yeah, of course. You know how he laughs when he's really crying? Yeah. Sometimes, because along the way, I've had gang names as a child as Dr. Giggles, Mr. Happy, stuff like that. Because if I'm shooting someone, I would laugh. But I'm not really laughing.

It comes out as laughter. Pseudobulber effect. Pseudobulber effect. Yeah. Because of my mouth, I can't pronounce that way. I mean, it's hard, it's hard for everyone to pronounce. Pseudobulber effect it typically occurs in people with certain neurological conditions or injuries, which might affect the way the brain controls emotion,

characterized by episodes of sudden uncontrollable and inappropriate laughing or crying. So that's right. So from the Joker, he would be upset and he would cry laugh. Oh, so they called you that because when you were in tense situations, like you're doing some violent thing, you're just starting laughing. That would be weird. Yeah. Yeah.

And they would really freak people out, especially when we're all like 15 and 16. Yeah. That's why I don't go to funerals, because I don't want to be chased down the street, about 300 people going, I wasn't laughing. No, I didn't find it funny. Right. You know, so I don't go to funeral because I may start laughing.

So, okay, so your dad was a child soldier and then moved to the United States. I mean, that's kind of a journey, right? If he's working for the Russians in Afghanistan and from Africa, what does a child soldier do for work when you get to the United States? I mean, what did he even, you know? Well, he eventually got his master's degrees because he's always in school. If you go to any college campus in the U.S., you'll find Asians and you'll find Africans. The Asians might go and then graduate.

The Africans never graduate. You'll see him at 60 because they're thinking school, school, school, school, school, then death. So even once they're working, if they're driving calves, they're in school somewhere. It's this thing about school. So he's always been in school. He has a master's. My mother has a master's. My background does not reflect my resume.

Yeah. That's interesting because I was thinking, okay, I wonder how this guy grew up if he got into like gang violence and stickups and pimping. All of that. And all that. And meanwhile, like mom, dad, master's degree. But I mean, if he was a child soldier, he wasn't probably in school back then. He's making up for lost time by being in school.

Yeah. He doesn't talk about his childhood. He doesn't talk about much of anything. He was mostly in St. Petersburg, Leningrad, I think it was a term. And I hear little stories, but not too many. I mean, what's he going to tell you? We went from village to village shopping people's heads off, I was 12. I mean, what kind of stories?

I don't ask him questions. You know, I don't call him father. I call him teacher. You know, he speaks Swahili Northern dialect, and I would come to him every morning. I would say, hatu, hatu jumbo while he moved. And that means, how are you this morning, teacher? I didn't know he was bipolar. Sometimes that might mean I'm going to go outside and ride bikes with you.

Sometimes that might mean I'm going to slam the door on your face and sleep for the next two days. Sometimes that might mean I'm going to cook you a big breakfast. Sometimes that might mean you're on your own. I didn't know what that meant from day to day. I know he taught survival classes to mostly women, anti-raped kind of things. Wow. So by the time you were 18, you had $70,000 under the mattress. And that might sound like a lot, but it was a hell of a lot more when you were 18.

That's for sure. A hell of a lot more. And in my crowd, that's like maybe a million normal people's money. You're the line of the jungle. That's a lot, especially in small bills. And I used to throw it up and play with it and throw it in my bed and roll around in it sometimes. Because I'm still a kid. You know, I'm a man child.

Yeah. You know, I'm man enough to make it, but not man enough to do with it. right with it. Right. You're not investing it. No, God, invest. Yeah. Yeah, I invested in a shoebox in my closet. You know, in my mattress and stuff like that. Yeah. No, that makes sense to me. I mean, look, that makes a lot of sense because I don't really see, if you're growing up in that environment, you're not thinking like, hmm, how do I put this money to work and get some interest payments or put it in stocks and securities? You're thinking you might lose it. Right. Soon, right? I mean, maybe even spending it faster than you get it or as fast as you get it. To me, it just meant

buying some kilos and trying to become a. kingpin. That was everyone's goal back then because that was during freeway Rick's heyday. Mm-hmm. And everybody wanted to be him or be like him. And with that kind of money, you really couldn't because he had a direct connect. So he would have to be your connect. And usually you would connect to someone who was dealing with him. He was moving like four or five hundred kilos a week. And the people I knew weren't nowhere near that. Right. So you would deal with someone he dealt with. You know, he had it almost at a manufacturer's level. He did. When I had him on the show, I forget what episode number that is, but I'll link it in the show notes.

In today's money, he had made like over a billion dollars in sales, which is just like, yeah, that's like drug cartel except for it's, like he was like El Chapo, but just in like California or the West Coast area. Or he was all over the U.S., but still like to have an operation that big at that time is, like it boggles the mind how big that operation was. It depends on how you look at it. Lucky enough to be living with one of the city's biggest drug deal. and one of the original crypt founders.

So I got to meet a lot of these people personally at the age of 14, 15, because when it came to enforce the work, I was a little more advanced than everyone else. So I was usually in the company of adults. I really didn't like selling drugs. I had a couple of bad experiences. I didn't mind backroom sales and things like that. But as far as hand-to-hand on the street where you start, yeah, I have some near misses, you know, and some hits.

I mean, I got shot in the chest. again, coming from my background with my parents who, see, my life changed once they got a divorce. We were from living up the hill on 104th in Crenshaw to down the hill, what they call the bottoms. Because now you're going from a two-parent income to a one-parent income and then one parent gets cancer. So I'm basically living with my aunt and uncle. And, I mean, you go from having your own bedroom and a pile of toys to basically sleeping on your relative's floor and sleeping back. Oh, man.

So it was like a big shock to me. So now when you walk outside, that neighborhood is so different. There's only predator and prey, and I don't do prey too well. And because of the bipolar, you became an extreme predator, you know, so you do something long enough, it becomes who you are. How did you get into the Pimp game? I know you started as a stick, is it fair to say, like, stick up kid in a way? Like, there's some early stories in the book where you're kind of like robin jeweler's houses and stuff like that. Well, I really wasn't big into stealing because, believe it or not, I try to live by a moral code.

I remember Whoopi Goldberg said it best in the movie Burglar. It's not what you steal, is who you're still from. I've done three bank robberies in my life, two on purpose, one by accident. How do you accidentally rob a bank? Would you like to know? Yeah, finish your thought here, but then, yes, I want to know how you accidentally rob a bank, for sure. Stealing wasn't really my thing. The first stick up I did, I think I was like 12 and a half.

And I robbed a liquor store in the neighborhood from a guy who used to pay me $5 to go get his lunch. His lunch came to about $2.20. and he would let me keep the change, which I would spend in this video game called Punch Out. It was a boxing game. Oh, yeah. Everybody our age knows Mike Tyson's Punch Out, man. Yeah, and I would play the get-th.

I basically gave it back to him. And when I came in with a mask, he could tell from my body type, my voice, of course, who I was. And I remember doing that at 12 and a half. And halfway down the street, I remember crying because I felt like I had hurt somebody who trusted me. And the next day, I brought every penny back. I didn't spend anything.

I just cried the whole day. And when I brought it back, I remember his looking, he just kept shaking his head. And I kept saying, it's all there, just that, I'm sorry. And I couldn't look at him. And he just kept shaking his head. So it's like, I can't steal from a human being. I don't see institutions as human.

And I think that that's our money anyway. You know, you twisted way of... You rationalize it, yeah. You rationalize it. So, yeah, banks were never... That was all high school stuff. Again, coming from my background, I kind of thought that was beneath me. It's like I was going into crime, and I wasn't quite set on what type of crime.

I wanted to be. So I tried everything. And I was good at a lot of things. And some things I could do enforce the work with no problem. But my mentor wants told me, he said, I can rob a bank with you, but I can't snatch a purse with you. He said, I can't do that. Yeah. I can't take from a working person, you know, a person who had it as rough as me or my father growing up. It's just something sick about that. But an institution, oh, no, they're in trouble. That's not sure about a government. But yeah, by accident, I loaned a friend because I don't have friends in the life. I learned early because it's like a chess game. Sometimes chess pieces have to be removed and you can't be in the situation where you hesitate.

And if I know your parents and your parents know mine and we grew up together riding big wheels, I may not be able to do it. So I kept my friends separate, my real friends. And these were just coworkers as I looked at at chess pieces. Sometimes maybe mine had to be removed a couple of times they tried. So this was a friend friend. And I didn't know then. You know, we knew he was different, but looking back on it, he was autistic.

He wanted to sell drugs and have things too. And I kept trying to tell him, no, no, no. So he borrowed $1,500 for me. And then he said, he'd pay me back in a week. I said, okay. Remember, I'm like 17 this time. And he came back and said he got robbed. Now, I know him.

He probably got robbed by a bunch of girls. I mean, it really wasn't for him. He was what you call a good kid, but business is business. And I was trying to scare him in the car. I wasn't going to hurt him. I just said I was going to. I would never lay the glove. I probably would have shook him up a little bit. Like I said, he was my friend. And I gave him this big long lecture about the rules are the same for everybody. And I said, I'm going to be at your house at 12 o'clock midnight. Now 1201, not 1159. If you don't have my money, there will be damage of a collateral nature.

And I guess the way I said it, he said, pull over. When we pulled over and I got in out, he got on the front. I thought he was going in to get maybe some of his college money to get it back. He comes out walking real fast through the cars and screaming at me to drive. Now, I'm queuing up my tape. It was a show stuff. I remember by salt and pepper. And it's a certain part because you remember how vain I am. I'm queuing up the part so that because when the girls walk by, I want them to see me driving off looking cool and leaning to the side on my favorite part, you know. So I'm queuing up my theatrical. I'm like, would you hold on, man? Be cool.

Give me about 30 seconds, man. Relax. And he hands me a bag with about 4,500. Apparently he just hit one telegraph someone left. And I'm like, this is more than you owe. And I'm seeing people come outside. See, thank God this is not the day of cameras. So I've been all on YouTube for I got on.

But they were coming outside and screaming and pointing, and I'm putting two and two together, and I'm screaming, what did you do? What just happened? He said, well, you said you was going to kill me? I was bluffing. And I drove off, and that's the only time I can remember being scared because I said, oh, my God, I'm going to go to prison for something I didn't even do. Well, you didn't plan anything, right? So you don't know, like, anything. I didn't know what he was going to do.

I thought he was going in there to make an honest withdrawal, come out, maybe with about six, because nobody has that kind of money in high school. Yeah, he's going to give you $500 to get rid of you and say, give you that. next in a week. And I was going to give him a lecture on stay in your lane. You don't have to be like me for me to like you. I like you for who you are. You read books. You play basketball. When I come with you, I just want to be around the books and the basketball. Yeah, you had real friend. So that must have been kind of a stress reliever if you're like beating people up and jacking stuff and doing enforcer work. So when you say enforcer work, that's like you're the muscle for some other crime organization. Is that what that means? I don't use, because I like to separate

reality from Hollywood. Uh-huh. So the term hitman, never heard used in real vernacular. Right. That's television. It's like some 1930s stuff or whatever. Yeah, and that's not what they say. I've dealt with the Russians.

I've dealt with the Italians for over a decade. They use the word capable when they're introducing you. I've never heard, I've heard friend. I've never heard friend of ours. Never heard that. No, actually, I did hear that once. Friend of ours is old Italian mafia stuff. Yeah, I've heard that once in the room, but they weren't referring to me.

me. They were referring to somebody. He's like, I don't remember. He said, oh, he's a friend of us. But I had already seen Donnie Brasco, so I knew what that meant. I just, you know, sat quietly. But when they introduced me, they usually said, this is Mickey. He's my guy. He's a friend of mine. He's capable. That's the only word I ever heard was capable. And that means everything from you can trust him. And I also heard, I was there when he introduced me to a lot of guys. He said, let me tell you something about this guy. With him $1, $1,500 is $1,400, not $1,49, not $1,000. And I shook everybody's hand. So when I say enforcer, that's just to let people know, because if I said, yeah, we were capable. I was a capable employee. They wouldn't know what I was talking about. So I used

the term enforcer. But when I was pimping, it's like when you get associated with certain people and they depend on you, when I'm making so much money in pimping, I really don't need that anymore. But I can't tell them no because down the line, when I need certain permits, pass or whatever, I can make a phone call. So it was almost like, charity work at a certain point. You go from where you need that to survive and that's who you are to when I elevated past that. It's like, can you do me a favor? I don't do those kind of favors anymore. You know, I drive a Mercedes, man. I got nine women living with me. Yeah, but I need you to put this on the all black on again. I'm like, oh, God, damn. So, but I have to do it.

Why do you have to do it? Because that would forever burn that bridge. And there's other things that come across that bridge. So it's like me paying my fee to be a part of that group, which I didn't need anymore at that time. But they had certain connections that I don't have. So it's like, okay, let me bring my Auntie a fruit cake for Christmas because I know graduation is coming up, and I do want that brand new sweater. So technically, that $5 fruitcake bought you a $60 sweater. But you don't feel like going over there. You don't feel like sitting there with them. You don't feel like them pinching your cheeks. But if you want that sweater for graduation, I suggest you go over there and just take your deep breath and take your pinches. I had moved past that at that point, but even in my late

30s, I still had to keep ties because it was good relations, you know? Yeah, yeah. You kind of have to maintain your rep and also not disappoint people. And I guess if they're calling you for that, you know that they've already tried other avenues and they don't really, like they're in a pinch. So you're buying some social capital, some goodwill with these guys. Yeah, not being directly one of them. It's like how America sometimes, they say America goes into Guam. No, America didn't go into Guam. Blackwater went into Guam.

They just went in with American guns and American money. It's like Mission Impossible. But if you're caught, we never met you. We didn't authorize this and you're going to prison. But if you don't get caught, we have more work for you. Yeah, so mercenary work. But you know the risk before you go in. We know you, but we don't know you.

Yeah, that makes sense. And by the time I got in with my Hollywood parties and my women and the call girl rings and stuff, I really wasn't doing that anymore, you know, only for certain people. And I'm like, I know some guys, no, no, we don't know them. We don't trust them. We trust you. I'm like, damn. Right.

Yeah. Well, there's some stories in the book of like guys bugging your women and chasing them down, stalking them and they don't like they start their car one day and that's the last time they start their car, right? Like that kind of thing. Yeah. Well, that was my business. You know, that was things I had to take care of.

And, you know, and I did my business to the fullest. You know, some guys, they windowed dress. I said, you get a lot of that on television. You know, the guy with the pink hat and the girls across it, that's not really reality. It's a good Hollywood narrative. I mean, you do have a crushed velvet hat, though, right? It's just not pink.

The vanity. Yeah. The vanity. I mean, you see me in line at the store with GQ magazine under my arm. I mean, it's like my mother told me one time, she said, how are you still alive? And I said, I know funny, huh? Because she was like, I can't believe it.

She said, you live in this warped, imaginary world of black exploitation movies. She said, but your prison time is real. Your scars are real. You're actually doing these things, but it's like I'm watching Shaft on a movie because I didn't go by there much. Yeah. And I said, I don't know. I just, my thing is, I never said no.

Because when you go mingle with certain people, during the conversation, an opportunity is going to arise. and whether I knew how to do it or not, I always said, I'll take care of it for you. And then when I walk away, I'm like, why did I agree to that? I've never done that before. I have no idea how to do that, but I did it. And it became, I mean, you just keep saying yes. Like at any job when you're there and they say, can you work the so-and-so computer?

Yeah, like a Samsung night gorilla trying to open a suitcase. Yeah, sure. But you say that, I can work it. And then you go over there on YouTube, how to work it. But then after a couple of weeks, you're actually working it. And this is our top computer analyst. And I'm like, actually I'm an ex-con who was in high school for six years, but yeah, I'm a top computer analyst, yeah. Well, we need you over here at such and such.

Would you mind working for so-and-so? Right. Pays double. Yeah, I can do that. And then you get there and you just keep going and going and going next thing you know you're meeting with wise guys and stuff. And I'm like, I'm from Englewood, California. How did I get this far? I just kept saying yes.

Tell me about Al-Ustra. So you mentioned this in one of the books. It's hard for me to even keep them. I think it's called Along for the Ride, this book. Is it a black Muslim gang? Is it Nation of Islam, like Nation of Islam, kind of? No, Nation of Islam is more of an organization. Okay.

You know, and they're out front. These are just criminals. Okay. I would say a Muslim mafia is primarily black, but you do have a few Palestinians and things like that for international connections. They're underground. I don't like to talk about them too much, but they're there, but not there. You know, but make no mistake.

They're not an organization about helping kids or anything like that. They're heroin traffickers primarily. And like I say, I don't. don't like to talk about them too much, but you have a lot of organizations like that. You have one called the Swahili family, which is basically Africans. You'll see them in L.A. all the time. They have on these outdated suits. They drive Mercedes about 30 years old. They have wild hair that they don't comb. They have these out-of-date ties. They look like they're from the 60s and 70s, and they have a lot of money. They have Nigerian oil, this, that, and the other. And they look

so out of date. And all you have to do is have Africa be, born in Africa. So you have Kenyans, you have Mao, Mouth, you have Ashantis in there, you have Wattuces, you have Zulus. They're just Africans in American immigrants, just like no different than Jamaican posseys. I also exist almost like the masas. They're there, but they're not there. They don't have big meetings and things like that, and they choose you. You don't choose them. You know, I know a member when I see one, but if you see maybe five members in your life, it'll be a miracle. They're really extremely underground. But they wear suits that maybe your grandfather threw away a long time ago.

And they have these, you'll see them always in Mercedes, but the Mercedes are like from 82, 86. I'm not lying to you. And you see them all the time. Why? Just because that's what's in fashion in their organization? Probably, or that's just their signature. You see them all the time.

And right now they're heavy into white collar stuff. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Mickey Royal. We'll be right back. And now back to Mickey Royal, on the Jordan Harbinger show. Because you got to sell a shit load of cocaine, which is even the highest margin stuff. And it's all, I had a couple FBI agents

and gold smuggler experts on here. And they say the same thing. They say, if you get caught with a two grams of cocaine, you're going to jail. But if you get caught with a stolen painting or an artifact, you just say that it's yours and you produce something that you printed off in your inkjet printer that says that it is

and the customs guys are like, whatever. And that's worth $3 million, and your cocaine is worth $100, 50 bucks. Right. So, I mean, their thing is fraud. Right. You know, I'm sure you've gotten emails before to say one of your Nigerian relatives just died. And if you're sending them $1,500, they can release a gazillion to you. Yeah, I'm going to head over there next month. I got a prince who's trying to be friends with me, right? I've got my flights booked. Yeah. I mean, you know, that's pretty much what they do now. You know, I don't worry about it. I'm so, I started so early

and I'm so trusted in a lot of groups. I just, you know, I am what I am. So you start to get the royal, and there are many stories. I'm skipping over a lot. So people who are sort of interested in this can read the books. And again, we'll link to those in the show notes. I plowed through like three books in one weekend because I was just, it's, you know, it reads like fiction. I'll say that.

I know you call it faction where you change a lot of the detail so people don't go to prison. Yeah. Mainly me. Yeah. Yeah. That's wise. Whoever told you to do that was probably, you know, good lawyer. Yeah.

Change the date, change the name, changed everything so that we can. credibly claimed you don't really know what you're talking about and this was all made up even though i have pictures but right yeah forget that part though those are those are well hidden uh except for the ones that are in the book so so you start how did you end up with the name mickey royal right because a lot of people are going to go that's not a russian name that wasn't the russian name that you mentioned at the top of the show well my first name is michael like gorbachev like uh berishnikov and my last name is Turkish, it's Sharif. And you know how you're in America, and they're going to give you a nickname. I don't care how long your nickname is, what you're called it, they're going to give you one.

You know, like, my name is Shaquille O'Neill. Okay, we're going to call you Shaq around here. And that's going to be your name from now because why? Shaquil is too goddamn long. It's just too much for me to think about and try to pronounce your name is Shaq. So people were calling me Mick, you know, because I don't like when people call me Mikhail. My name has three syllables, Mikhail, not Mikhail. It's three syllables. So when they started calling me Mick, I like that better because you can't screw that up.

And when people hear, hey, Mick, come here. Hey, Mick, Mick, you know, Gorgeous has started calling me. She just assumed Mick, Mick Mick. Gorgeous is one of the women that you started. What's the proper term here? I don't want to be, you know, what do you call? You can't say turnout because she was already in the life, so she was actually my turnout because there's only two ways into the pimp life, the pimp game, either through an older

pimp lets you in and teaches you or an older prostitute lets you in and teaches you. You as an amateur pimp can't just have an amateur prostitute and enter the pimp game. You guys don't both end up dead, in prison, or broke very soon. Someone has to teach you. Now, you can come in through a woman or you can come in through a man. A lot come in through a man. They have an older mentor. I had an older mentor in that game, but the intricacies and the details that came from gorgeous.

She was almost 20 years my senior. And she had been doing this a long time back when I was playing with toys. She actually danced on Soul Train in 1982. I can see you the clip of her dancing on Soul Trey. And I'm like, you know, I was 10 years old when you were doing that. You know, I was like, and sometimes she'll say something out there. What year was that? She was like, I was back in 74, 75.

I said, you know, I was three? And she'd go, God dang, you're just a baby. But what was my original when I was talking about? So it was gorgeous as her name, and she couldn't pronounce your name, right? She couldn't pronounce my name. And I don't butcher my name. And she kept saying Mick. But the other girls would hear her say Mick.

And of course, being in America, they assume Mick is short for Mickey. So they started calling me Mickey this, Mickey Dad, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey. And she asked me, you mind if we call you Mickey? Because that Mick, whatever, it's too hard. For now, so I said, I don't care what you call. You call me anything but collect, okay? And she said, what's your last name like that? And I told her Sharif.

And she said, what does that mean in English? I said, it's Turkish, but she said, what does it mean? I said, it means royalty. And she said, so in English, your name is Mick Royalty, Mickey Royalty. And they started laughing. Mickey Royal. And she said, Mickey Royal.

She said, that's your name from now on. That sounds better. Mickey Royal. And I was like, don't you call me? I like that. And I said, and it's a play on my act. So when people ask me what's Mickey Royal,

I say, it's just my real name in English. And that's what I went by ever since. So you get in the Royal Family together, which is a great name for a group of anything, for that matter. The book reads, it's like they're setting up a Fortune 500 company, right? Like, I've got a lot of entrepreneurs and founders on the show, and there's stories from the, well, not your stories that you're telling now,

but the stories you mentioned in the book about setting up the business, it's very similar. So I'm thinking, man, I'm going to hear this guy on some NPR show about how, you know, you started the mattress company, except it's a totally different kind of company. You know, you've got your adult photo shoots, you've got escorts or whatever the euphemism is. You've got after hours clubs. You've got, I think, at one time gambling and things like that. I mean, you had a lot of different verticals and a lot of different properties and a lot of different

business arrangements staff. I mean, you had all kinds of, there were like management issues you were dealing with. You had managers. I mean, it's really like an interesting parallel that shows me how, I don't know how blow too much smoke up your ass, but like, yeah, how intelligent you are. Like, you didn't go, yeah, screw it. I'm going to make a bunch of money and buy bottle service everywhere. It was like, we're investing in this. We're taking this money. We're putting it over here. I'm giving this to the account manager. She's going to invest and do this and take her percentage. Like, you didn't, you were not winging this shit at all. Not at all.

I mean, it's, like I say in the book, the Pimp game, it's a universal law of transference, which is mathematics. And anything you learn along the way you take with you, you come into it the way I knew it. Like I say, television has a narrative of what Pumps are, and they put them all in one monolith. That's actually not true. You know, you have coaches like Bobby Knight who will choke his players, literally on the sideline. And then you have coaches like Phil Jackson, who will pull out the, Buddhist scripts and start talking about Zen management. Now, they're both champions and they're both

coaches, but they're nothing alike. So once you know who you are, you do things your way. So I set it up the way I would set up any drunk family, any mattress company, it is the same exact structure. And we were producing movies. I did over 500 adult films. I mean, I've done them for Hustler. I've done it for gentlemen, Cinderella. I kept the activities going to where they can work around the clock. They made money too. You know, traditionally pimps keep all the money. And to me, that's just a bully or an extortionist. I said, I'm not doing all the work. And how much fun is this if she can't get rich too? You know, so I said, no, I modeled myself after Charlie's Angels. You remember the movie Planet of the Apes, the new ones? Yeah, yeah, sure. Okay, remember when

Caesar was trying to organize the Apes, when he first got captured, and the orangutan, he was a little smart like Caesar. And he said, Caesar, they're not going to organize and you're wasting your time. And Caesar said, why? I'm trying so hard with them. He said, because apes are stupid. In the very next scene, what did Caesar do? He made them smarter. He got the thing and he gave them all what he had. Now he can organize them. So as long as we're on corners, as long as we're doing this, and as long as I'm keeping you stupid, we can only rise so far. If we want to rise to a certain level, then what's the next level? I must make you smarter. So they were all managers in and of themselves, you know, and when I did that, things just multiplied and you found out that they had

talents that you didn't know they had. I'm like, really? You have a degree in marketing? Really? You were a paralegal? Really, you managed three restaurants before you did pornography. We need to all sit at the table, and we need to all put our best qualifications forward and see how we can all all all work off of each other. And how we can build something really, really big here. You know, so I model myself after Charlie's Angels, not Iceberg Slim. This is fascinating. Iceberg Slim is a famous pimp for people who don't know.

And he wrote a book that is, it's got a lot of kind of interesting manipulation tactics in it. I'm not sure how else to phrase it. As far as I know, though, he also died broke as hell. Like, he didn't have anything. Most of them did because I tell people in any game, you can only rise to the level of your intelligence. The Pimp Game Instructional Guide is more like an ink-blotch test. It can pull out the innate which is in you, but it can only add gasoline to your flame.

You have to strike the match. So a moron who goes into the Pimp game is still a moron. You know, money does not raise the IQ. So if you're a genius and you can't get any other opportunities elsewhere and you go into the drunk game or any other illegal business where there's no, where it's not regulated and you get a chance to really flourish, it's not that you're a great drug dealer. It's just the fact that you have 140 IQ and you never got a chance to show that. You would have done the same at Chrysler too if they had hired you.

You take your brain with you. And I remember one thing, an old wise guy told me that I was doing porn films for, he said, I want you to keep in mind something. And they said, what? He said, Hugh Hefner made a lot more money selling pictures of naked women than you ever will selling naked women. He said, think about that really, really hard because he was transitioning me into pornography. So I want you to think about that.

He said, there isn't a pimp alive or a high-class call girl ring alive that makes more money selling women naked than we actually do selling women on film naked. He said, we're a billion-dollar industry and there's no sex involved. There's just a DVD. He said, think about that. He said, don't add, young man, multiply. Because he was in the 70s, and I'm at the time late 20s, early 30s. He said, don't add. Multiply.

And he put his arm around me. He said, if you're going to do business with us, you're going to have to do business like us. So he was more so, people say, y'all had a father-sum relationship. I said, no, it was actually a grandfather, grandson relationship. You know, he was more so a teacher as we were working. I was working for him, but he would come in and let me show you something. Let me teach you this. And you have to be humble enough to listen and learn.

And anything I learned, I take back over there with me. So I kind of weaned myself. You know, because I kept thinking about Hugh Hefner. He made a lot more money selling pictures of naked women than guys make selling naked women. Can you imagine that? Yeah, it does make sense, right, because it scales better, which is kind of what he was trying to say, right? Like, you can't really scale. If you're trading time for money, you can't really, you can only scale that so much because you only have so much time.

But now if you're talking about printing things off and mailing them out, or nowadays it's all, digital, it scales infinitely, you know, given the inputs. Anyway. So, look, it sounds like it, and it reads like such an interesting business, but a lot of people are going to ask me, hey, doesn't this gloss over the downside of these women's existence, right? Like a lot of what you're talking about, it's like, oh, it's a lion pride, all of our heads together. But there's definitely a downside to being sold for money or selling yourself for money. And people are going to say, well, this guy enabled these women, they were all damaged, as it was. result, you know, what do you say to people who would accuse you or allege things like that?

I would say that right. There's the downside to anything. I mean, you can play football all of your life and you can make a lot of money and you win the Heisman trophy and you won a couple of Super Bowls and everybody's praising you. But see, they don't see at night about the concussions. They don't see the nightmares. They don't see the fact that you can't get out of bed because you have two broken vertebrates in your back. And they want to penalize you for getting addicted to painkillers, but without painkillers, I couldn't even do, they couldn't even do that certain interview because they've been trying to get dressed for two hours. See, that's the part you don't see. I like that movie, North Dallas 40, because it shows that part, you know, so I tell people,

money, yes, infamous, yes, power, yes. They said, but it costs. And they always ask me, what did it cost you? I said, everything else, everything else. Some relationships with your You don't have time to do both. So it can be your relationship with your children. It can be time. Sometimes there's penitentiary involved. So, yes, there is a dime. And the psychological effect.

I mean, it's almost, I haven't been with a non-porn star since I was 26 years old. I was married before. My ex-wife is a former porn star. When we got divorced, I've been with a former porn star for 15, 16, 17 years. In between there, when we had our breakups, that was another former porn star. So between prostitutes and porn stars, other than my high school sweetheart, that's all I've had. So when it comes to talking to women at Walmart, it has reconditioned your mind to the point where all you see are angles, numbers, because you've been in that so long. And you can develop a PTSD to where your mind has been reconditioned.

Like a soldier, imagine a soldier been on the battlefield for 30 years, not three, 30 years. And now all of a sudden someone bumps him at the 99th store. he's not going to respond. He just got off the battlefield. He's not going to respond the same way a normal guy would. He hasn't learned that type of normal life diplomacy yet. I tell people, soldiers don't carry handcuffs. They don't detain.

They just kill. That's it. Like I say, SWAT teams show up and surrender because they don't have handcuffs. They don't have a squad car to put you in. They just have snipers. When they start setting up the perimeter, just come outside with your hands up because they're not going to miss. they're not going to miss

and it's 50 of them so that's when the jig is up but yes it does have a deep psychological effect and the only way to avoid the effects is to stay there is to stay in the industry you mean in the game it is hard to make that transition even the woman I told you who lives in the $11 million

house I said do you cook she said I have a staff and I said I have two kitchens in my home I said ooh and I know where she's from so I know how this must feel for her and she has two children with him And I said, do you clean up? She said, again, I have a staff for that too.

And I said, are you very happy? She said, I'm very happy. She said, but I'm bored out of my effing mind. I said, I know you are. I said, but this is the right thing. I say, you know, I've never lied to you. I said, I'm happy for you and I'm proud of you. This is the right thing.

And she said, I know. Because we're older now. She's in her 40s. She's like, I know. Yeah, she's set now and she's safe now. and she's got a family now. And so boredom is like it's a luxury item. Yeah, but I asked her one time,

because we don't talk much once a year. Yeah. I try to stay away from her because I don't want anything to bleed. I'm not going to mess that up. Yeah. And I say, we just got quiet one time, and I said, you ever miss it?

And she said, every day. Hmm. And then we just hang up. We don't talk more than 20, 30 seconds. Because I don't even want my number in her caller ID. You know, I'm not going to mess that. up for you, you know. Interesting. So you mentioned in the book, you say that you have to cut contact with

family and friends, like outside the life friends. One of the things you said is you must step above your flock so they can look up to you. But it does seem like you're damaging yourself and those around you, not just the women that you work with, but it's like, okay, if you're in a happy family, it sounds like you wouldn't want to do this because it wouldn't be worth it, right? Like you might not, how do you feel about having traded the relationship with your kids to do this? I told a story on Facebook, I think that put it best. I was with Shine Fox and two other ladies. We were at the 24-hour fitness on Slossom. And they were feeding me graves and sitting all in my lap. It was like 10 o'clock at night. And I said, it looked like a soft core porn scene. Oh, Daddy. Oh, that rubbed all of our

face. And the other guys had just had their mouths open. Like, how does this guy do it? And they were inviting women who walked past. Would you like to join us? When they got out the hot tub, and they went into the women's locker room, I was going into the steam room. And one, it was Older gentleman, kind of tall, kind of heavy, he said, and this was in my late 20s, he said, Youngston, when I die, I want to come back as you. And I started laughing, and he said, man, I've been married 32 years. Let me take my old ass home to my wife, my kids, and my grandkids. And then when he was walking away, I slapped him on his arm.

I said, hey, when I die, I want to come back as you. And we just stared at each other. And he understood what I meant. And I just walked into the steam room. So, yeah, it's a big sacrifice. sometimes when you look back on it, the more you gain on one side, the more you lose on the other side.

And time only ticks one way. You know, my son will be 28 this year. And I remember, you know, during the period in the book, the five years in Fremont. Yeah, oh, yeah. Yeah, when he was born. And I remember being a dad.

And I remember changing diapers. And I remember sitting up with him with colic. And I remember walking the floor with him because he had this thing about heat and motion. So I had to put him in the backseat in my car, I put him in the car seat. I had to turn the heater on until he's almost sweating. And I had to drive for long distances on the freeway.

And right when he fell asleep, I would get off the freeway and come back. Soon as I laid him down in this crib, I'm like, oh, God, please, I got to go to work in three hours. Because at that time, I had tried to have a normal life. And I was working a normal job and doing normal things. And the allure was just too strong. I couldn't do it. I said, I'm losing in this world. I'm a winner in the other world.

In order for my son to go to private schools, which he did, his tuition was like seven a month. In order for him to go to UCLA and do all of these things, I have to go. And I pay for those things. And I pay for Mina's first BA and her master's. Her second master, she has a PhD now, by the way. This is your ex-wife who gave birth to yourself. We weren't married. You can go ahead and say it. You can go ahead and say it. I'm not offended. My baby mama is a doctor. You weren't married? I didn't know that. I wasn't sure. No, we were going to. We were going to. and by the time we got to the point where it wasn't a money issue, I don't know what it was. But by the time we were going to, we didn't really want to be married to each other anymore.

So, okay. And what woman wants to marry an active pimp? Yeah, it seems tricky. Like, especially, you said she's a doctor, so that's, you know. Yeah, she's a PhD doctor now. Yeah, so that could be complicated. And you already had the kid, so it's like, do we need to add complication to this particular scenario? So the life was too strong and you realized to provide for your kid you had to do this.

It's interesting. You say you are a winner in one life, but not winning in the other life. And that had to be tough. But obviously, it seems like you wanted to win. And what do you call it, the straight and narrow? But it just wasn't working out. I can tell you a little secret. All of us do.

There's only one world. All of us do. The only reason there's an underworld is because they can't function well in the world. So you create a world. And the Pimp game is not really the underworld. It has one foot in the underworld, but I call it the shadow world. It exists right in broad daylight You don't know what you're looking at

I told Nat G or I remember That when we went out there at night And all the women were half dressed I'm sure you've probably seen the clips and stuff I did she said I drive down this street Every day going to work and I and they're not out here I said yes they are They're even more so out here in the day

You don't know what you're looking at I said oh They're naked at night See in the daytime she has on jeans And she's holding a cell phone Or she's pushing a baby carriage I said but if you look closer it's a stuffed animal at baby carriage If you look closer, those girls on the bus stop, they're going to let bus after bus pass by.

See, they're in and out of Burger King. You don't see them because they have jeans on. They might wear a backpack. But if you look close, that woman's 26 years old wearing a Hello Kitty backpack, I said, she's out here in the daytime. You don't recognize that they're fully closed in the day. And they're walking back and forth on cell phones, and they're standing there by a taco stand, but they're not ordering tacos. They're standing there. I said, I know what I'm looking at, because I've been doing this almost three decades.

And I said, you just don't know what you're looking at. But the customers, they know. Clients know who they're looking at. It's not a mistake. I said, if you watch that girl on the bus, watch our bus after bus pass by. When they pass by, she's still sitting there. And I said, she's fully closed, dresses down to her ankles. I said, no, she's working.

At night is when they take off the clothes. I said, I know it seems backwards. It does, yeah. But at night is decriminalized and more acceptable. If you're going to be in the daytime, you got to understand. are walking down the street. People are going to work. So they're camouflaged in order to let business flow. And if you notice, like, in the book, I was only on the corner for maybe a year or two, you know, because anything sold on the corner is cheap and devalued. I don't care. If it's a

brand new 50-inch screen television that goes for $200, if you're selling it, if you tell me you just stole it from Walmart and you're selling on the street, I'm not giving you more than 50 bucks for it. Why? Because it's on the street. It's out of your trunk. But if you take that same item, and you take it to Macy's. Well, now it's $500. The item didn't change. Just the location of where the item is sold has changed. So once I noticed that, and I started, I made most of my money in that life, other than

pornography, I made most of my money in that life from in-call Bordellos, even more so than the what they call-class call girls, because that's all out-call. They come to you. That's why they call them call-girls, because you're calling them. In-call Bordellos, where I would set up the house, I would always have one more lady than it was bedroom. So if I have a four-bedroom house, there's five ladies in there. I put two houses in a book, but at one time I had six. Some of these were apartments, but I called them stores. I would say, let's get another store open. And technically, I had no place to live. I had clothes

at some of these places, but there was no place I could find peace. I would go to the bowling alley, sit there, watch people bowl or go to the gym. I had clothes at different places. I had cars parked there, but I didn't really have a bedroom. Because if I'm sleeping in a bedroom and all of a sudden, two women are going to use this bedroom for work and live here, I'm going to relinquish that bedroom because that bedroom is going to make me thousands of dollars a day. It's not going to make me any money sitting there. And you get to the point where you got four houses, two luxury apartments, and you're sleeping on relatives' couches because you have nowhere to go just to have peace. Okay, I want to read a book one day. I can't read in those houses. We got customers coming in

and out. I have no peace anywhere. You don't sleep. You know, so you're surviving off energy drinks and cocaine. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Mickey Royal. We'll be right back. Thanks so much for listening to the show. Your support of this show keeps us going. And of course, if you want to help us out

by buying something from a sponsor, we put all those codes in one place. Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals is where you can find them. They're all on that page. So please consider supporting those who support us. Don't forget, we've got worksheets for many episodes, not all but many of this show.

If you want some of the drills and exercises talked about during these episodes, those are in one easy place and that link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. And now for the conclusion of part one with Mickey Royal. I mean, you told me earlier

that you try not to sleep at all. Oh, no. It wasn't that hard for me. I sleep maybe every 48 to 72 hours and I don't call it sleep, I crash. I usually end up in my clothes. I'm on the couch. I'm wearing the last place.

I fell asleep in my car one time. Why? You can tell us about that. You mentioned it a little bit off air. You said, all right, I try not to sleep, right? So you're constantly drinking energy drinks and trying to stay up and not fall asleep. Several reasons. PTSD, I mean, we're being honest here, right?

I'm always honest. Yeah. PTSD, nightmares, some things. I don't have a problem with things I did directly. I mean, if we're playing chess and your peace gets removed, that's just the game. I have a problem with collateral damage and innocence that was affected. by my direct action. And I live with that all the time.

I can laugh, I can smile, I can play music, but if like Cher said, if I could turn back time, you know, but time ticks one way, what do I do? I don't like sleeping because when I close my eyes, it's traumatic nightmares, you know. On my fiance, she has nightmare, and I have to hold her in her sleep sometimes. And she told me, she said,

I have this reoccurring dream. And she said, this hulking figure in all black is trying to hurt me, rape me, kill me, and he's strangling me. And she said, right before I die, this other hulking figure, bushed through the wall wearing like a sweater tied around his neck looking like a preppy. Carlton Banks. Carlton Banks, yes. And she said, and they have this duel to the death.

And she said, the Carlton Banks guy wins. and he picks me up in his arms and he walks off. And I got mad and I said, who's this guy that comes to save you? That I need to go beat up that you care about more than me. She said, it's you. And I said, who's the guy trying to kill you? She said, she's you. She said, you're trying to kill me and then you come save me.

She said, the two different sides conflicting with you. I said, that's why you be kicking this stuff in the mind. She said, yeah, I have nightmares about both sides of you because I've seen both sides of you. If you ever heard the parable of the wolves, I don't know if that's what it's called, I don't know if that's what it's called, but I think it's a Native American parable, where it's,

an old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. A fight is going on inside me, he said to the boy. It's a terrible fight and it's between two wolves. One is evil. He's anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. He continued,

the other is good. He's joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person too. The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, which wolf will win? And the old Cherokee replied, the one you feed. Yeah. Yeah, I sound familiar with that. My mentor told me that one. People think my mentor was pimp. He was at one time, but at the time I met him, he was a minister, and he was a pure-of-heart minister. You know, we would do a lot of Star Wars dialogue with each other, and he has daughters. I remember one time I was going to take his daughter and her friend. They were like 16. I was in

my mid-20s. I said, I'll take you guys to Disneyland if you want. I'll just be a chaperon. They said, okay. That's interesting. I kind of, why do you think, like, why do you think he sort of allowed you to be around his kids. You know, it seems like that would be kind of scary if I'm a minister and I've got kids and there's a guy who's like a pimp or gangster or both and he's like around my kids, I would be a little nervous about that.

Well, he knew me in school. He was also my history teacher. Okay. And I was the last person to talk to him before he passed away. He passed away in 2018. So we're talking about a long relationship. Yeah, that's a long relationship.

He's watched all of this. He saw me as a student. of philosophy and things like that. He saw where I had one foot in, one foot out, and all of that. He knew when I was doing the pornography in the gambling house. All of that, he got a chance to witness all of this growth. He wrote me when I was in prison. You know, ironically, I went to prison saving a woman's life, you know.

I do one good thing, and now I got to go away. What was that? What happened there? A woman was going to visit a friend of hers, a woman that I knew. And she, you know how you go to an apartment complex and they have a signed, parking. She parked in someone's assigned parking. Now, I don't know how that led up to physical violence, but it was three guys and two girls beating her up, and she barely got to her car. The guys had gotten so worked up. They were trying to do things to her, and she text me,

and she called me. You say do things? You mean that it turned into a sexual assault, basically? In front of people. Right. I mean, it wasn't like they were the only ones there, and they were somewhere in secret. There were people watching, and these were young guys, and they had guns. Two of them had guns that I saw physically. Now, when she called me, I was laying with two women. I had no shirt on. I had these fru-frew pajama pants on. If I showed them to you, you laugh. And I put my black trench coat on. And I didn't have a gun at the time because I was on felony probation for another violent attack. And I didn't want to assault or whatever because I didn't want to violate myself. So I didn't have any guns in the house. I grabbed a cleaver from my left hand and a butcher's knife.

And I put them up and you couldn't see them. I had them up my sleeves. So, and keep in mind, I'm, you know, have several black belts. When I walked up and I saw that she was in the car with the door locked and they were standing around laughing and they exposed their guns to me. And she yelled out the window trying to be, because I'm only 5'7. I guess she felt empowered now that I showed up. And keep in mind, I have these pajama pants on looking like a stark rave lunatic.

And she said, now say hello to my little friend like that. And I remember one saying, what are you going to do? And he put out his guns like to shit. show me. But I knew from experience, I don't expose what I have until I'm about to use it. So I had my hands cuff. By the time they slid into my hands and he could raise it up, that hand was gone. I'm moving. I'm skilled at this. So the three gentlemen, I didn't touch the girls. And they're the ones who called on me and the police were there in like 45 seconds, you know. They steal my car. The police take two hours to show up. Now you want to show up in

45 seconds. Okay. But I'm covered in blood. I'm holding two knives. they're on the ground. They left in ambulances. I left in a police car. And I didn't see my fiance again for five and a half years. But I didn't regret it. I mean, I went to prison with a smile on my face because I said, yes, I'm being punished, but I did the right thing. And I told the judge, it was the right thing to do. And she said, I would love for you to date my daughter. I know that she would be protected. And she said, what you did was noble, but stupid. I said, yeah, that's my autobiography, Your Honor. I had to laugh. I said, but I had to protect her. She said, you didn't protect her. She was already in the car. And the incident.

took place. You got revenge for her. And I said, tushay. That's exactly what I did. Sometimes we need to balance things out. I said, Your Honor, I don't feel bad. And she gave me actually the minimum, because I was looking at 15, the life. She said, but I don't think, because my change out of the life had come before this incident. You know, I was living an Ozzie and Herriot lifestyle as much as I could at that time. But bullies are my trigger. What is Ozzie and Harriet lifestyle? I'm not familiar with that term. Does that just mean normal? Yeah, the Brady Bunch. Oh.

It's a synonym for typical 1950s American life. Hello, honey. How are you? Fine. Housewife. I go to work. I read the paper. So look, in the book, there was never, and this could have been sort of like you

selectively editing, but it sounds like you don't use physical force to control the women that you work with. You call that guerrilla pimping, and you say, not only do I not want to do that, I don't need to do that. I don't want to do it. I don't need to do it. And to me, again, that's my trigger. To me, it just seems like being a bully.

Uh-huh. Because I said one, like, Gorilla Pimper, to me, is just a bully and an extortionist. I can do that to anyone. I can find someone smaller me, punch him in his stomach, and take his money.

There's no psychological to that. I'm really against that. Now, was I forceful? I meant what I said. And like, I used to tell them, I don't raise my voice. I don't raise my hand, but I don't repeat myself.

I mean what I say. and coming out of an enforcer background, if you know anything about me, which some of them did, they know that I'm not going to ask you twice. I'm not going to repeat myself, but I'm not going to raise my voice either. So really here, I don't care if it's giggling behind it, really understand that I don't say anything that I make decrees. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't talk back, but I found there was more progress and cooperation. So, no, I never used physical force. And any time a woman actually wanted to leave, which very few.

did. I always gave them quite a bit to go with, but I didn't have to do that because I wasn't taking everything. You know, so they had their own money. A lot of them didn't live at the house. I said, you don't, whenever you're at this house, you had worked. But if you want to have something else on the side or live over here, so a lot of them got a chance to have what we call square life, but regular life. And they would say, honey, I'm going to work. And they would come here for 12, 14 hours, which is not constant work. You don't have customers like that. But the prices they charge, they could make several thousand dollars a day on a good day, but they're working five days a week. So that turns into quite a bit, you know, and I tell somebody I said,

sometimes I'm going from 35%, sometimes I had 50%, usually it was 50 because I didn't see I was doing all of the work, so why should I take all of the money? That's not fair. And at the end of the day, I'm going to be fair, but no, I never had to threaten or anything like that. Well, so why, the question is then why do they need you at all? Why give you any of the money, right? It looks like they're doing all the work. Now, you, I know from reading the book, like you have a business manager role, you're managing the properties, you're taking care of the money. That money has to be laundered for lack of a euphemism, right? It has to be cleaned up so it can be spent and put into properties and investments. And you're handling all of that. But I think a lot of people will go, well,

why can't she do that? Why can't they do that? The same reason Mike Tyson might have Custamato in his corner. Customs model's not getting hit. So why is he splitting so much with his trainer? So that he can just box. I mean, can you imagine if he had to, train himself. He had to do the spit bucket. He had to do the water. He had to do the stretching. He had to call the promoters. He had to book the venue. He had to do all of these things. He's probably going to get knocked out when he gets in the ring. And the activity level. Your job is to solidify the family. My job is to expand. It's like a stair. You go across this way. That's solidification. This way is expansion. Solidify again. Expansion. Solidify again. And I say that's how we

climb the stairs. So I brought them the pornography connection. I brought them the high class clients. I had to constantly keep doing this. Oh, you have magazine shoots. We were in Blacktail, big back butt, jugs. I did see a bunch of Blacktail magazine covers when I was Googling because I was like, oh, what's this person look like? Cover a Blacktail magazine. I'm like, how do I mention on the show that I now have like a bunch of, if my wife uses my computer, she's going to be like, I typed in black looking for a black armoire and it auto-completed to Blacktail. and it was like you already clicked on this page 13 times in the last week. What are you doing?

And that's his job. Now, unfortunately, a lot of people in the Pimp game, they do use violence. And they don't do a job. All they do is bully girls to get out on the corners or to go wherever they're working. They take all of their money. They manipulate them. And when they become smart enough to realize they're manipulated, that's when the violence starts. And that's not what I did.

and that gives an ugly look to what it is that I actually did. And I actually was much more successful than them. If you see me in pictures of my ladies, they're smiling and giggling. Some people can't get their wives to go along with certain things. I said, I lived in the house with nine women at one time. How do you think you get nine women to go along and work with each other, share one individual man for one complete cause? There was no jealousy in between them. There was no envy.

There was no, well, sometimes some wanted more time with me. than others and they didn't want who have to share their time. But it was never really a serious conflict because they saw themselves as sisters. And you have to actually do it. You know, if you say you're doing it and you're not doing it, then you're just a liar. But you have, when they see you actually protect them, when they see you actually come back and go, I just got USC bachelor party. They're paying a thousand per girl up front and tips. And everything is being split equally.

But like I told someone, any illegal venture you want to, you have to have a little bit. least one to two legal ventures you're going to because at that time, when they were receiving checks for me, it didn't say from the game. It said from so-and-so video store, which we had in the dope bookstore at the time, or so-and-so this or this laundromat or consultant fees for X, Y, and Z. It's just that she gets paid a lot to consult. And anyone that they brought in, because I didn't just take anybody. If someone's personality wasn't conducive to our family structure, I told more women no than I did, yes. I said, because you're a troublemaker or she's messy or she lacks experience.

And a lot of these women are big porn stars. And I said, you're not conducive to what we're doing. I'm sorry, I can refer you somewhere and I'll get you as much work as I can. But you can't be with us over here. You know, a lot of money was made in swing parties and voyeur party. Oh, the voyeur parties, geez, those are nice. You know, they were almost like what they call black tie affairs. And you rent a house that has a patio with a sliding glass.

door and you move the furniture out and you make that a bedroom. And you sit up there and you have drinks and cocktails and dinner because you're using the kitchen also. And your women are walking around in lingerie. And then we pull the curtain back. And all of these couples usually over 50 and very professional. And they come bring their chairs closer and they actually get to watch two and three scenes shows. We closed the, they have intermission. They paid a lot of money to see this. And we did those weekly, you know, and those are perfectly legal. Swing parties are perfectly legal. We did those almost every other night. Different ones in different sections. You know, there were some that were so high, highfalutie, you know, the woman Charlotte,

I couldn't go to myself. You know, she would just, I need you to come pick this bag up. So we would take the bag and then divvy up and everybody got fed, even the people that weren't involved. They might only get 3%, 5%, she might get 50, but their extra percentage came out of mind. You know, so we look back on it sometimes with smiles. I'm not going to make it seem like it was all hunky dory. It was some, some, some, of things along the edges. You know, sometimes, especially at USC bachelor parties, I'm saying USC on purpose because that would actually happen. Sometimes testosterone and alcohol don't mix and naked women are involved. And you're in a room full of guys who are about six, six,

300 something pounds, and they're 19, so they have a lot of youth. So sometimes you have to bring friends with you and bring toys with you to let them understand that you don't own these women, you know. So most of my, it was violent, yes, but my violence was directed towards people who directed violence towards my family. Once they became my family, I internalized anything that they went through. So if they come home and they had a problem, then I'm about to go deal with it. And most of the time it turned out for my favor. Sometimes it didn't. I'm not going to say I won all of these exchanges. But the fact that I got up and did that and their fathers never did, their brothers never did, their mothers never did, the boyfriends they had never did. I did. So you put each other

in a different higher light. But as far as forcing women, Yeah, a lot of guys do that. A lot of, you have organizations that do that. It's a difference between a pimp, a human trafficker. I used to pass out my cars at police stations. What I just say, I'm a manager of adult entertainers. And I said, and he kept looking at me like, this was in my 20s. He's like, you've lost your mind.

This was during the gorgeous era. I just didn't put it in there. And he slid it back to me. And like, get out of here. And this was on King Boulevard, I think they're called Southwest Division. And I gave it back to him. And I said, we do bachelor parties. We have swing party, void parties.

And he kept pushing it, like, get out of here. So I just put it on the desk and I walked off, put it on that little counter. And people were praising me like, man, you're crazy. I did the same at the fire department. Then about 13 weeks later, the phone rang. And it was, you know, an officer. And he said, his brother is getting married. Were you just joking?

Or do you really have? Because my business card had pictures of women's faces all on the front and back. Right. And their bodies, he said, do you really have these girls? He said, this is just a basketball party now. Nothing illegal because I'm a police officer. Can't be doing illegal things. He says, it's going to be full of cops.

I said, are you going to do any background checks? Because half these girls got warrants. And he said, no background checks. We just need some dancers and some hostesses. And I said, yeah. And I told him the price because I know they all got good money. You're all employed. So I know it went from there and you pass out more cards.

So at the houses, a lot of law enforcement were customers. I got arrested by one of, on an unrelated charge. You know, and he was apologizing me. I said, man, do your job. Am I still welcomed at the house? I said, this has nothing to do with that. And when I got to Caldy Jail, I remember him giving me a bag of burritos. And I said, stop giving me stuff in front of everybody else.

You make me look like a rat. Yeah. I said, throw me on the ground, punch me or something. I got a reputation to keep. So I shared the burritos with everybody in there. I kept two and shared them. He comes by and he's like, quit looking at me, scumbag. Call me on Friday when you do out of here.

He said, I can still come. I said, of course you can. you can't come by empty-handed, but of course you can. You know, but it's not like he arrested me for doing something that he approved up. This had nothing to do. He just happened to be the guy that showed up. Well, yeah, that's how it works, I suppose. I appreciate if the cuffs are loose.

Yeah, I don't get punched in the face in the back of the car for no reason or something like that. Yeah. Here's a sample of my interview with Amanda Knox, who was coerced into wrongfully confessing that she was at the scene of her roommate's grisly murder without being made aware of her rights or being given access to a lawyer. Here's a quick look inside. I was 20 years old. I was studying abroad in Italy.

The day after Halloween, I came home to find a murder scene. The cops arrive. They break down my roommate's door and find her body there. And for the next five days, I was at the disposal and mercy of the police officers, who unbeknownst to me, had targeted me as a person of interest. My thought was to just take direction. I did what I was told. And what I was told was by the police to come in every day for questioning. And I sat for hours and hours and hours. I often worried that maybe the reason that they were upset or short with me was because I just wasn't speaking Italian well enough. I thought,

That was the reason why they kept asking me questions over and over and over again. No matter how many ways I answered the same question, they never seemed happy with it. I just sort of submitted myself to what was ultimately a very coercive interrogation technique that culminated with an overnight interrogation and broke me. I was made to believe that the reason they were upset with me was because I didn't remember correctly. I realized that the truth didn't matter and that I couldn't count on the truth to save me. People believed it. I was convicted.

I spent four years in prison. Amanda Knox joins us to discuss how she put her life back together and how she lives with the residue of tabloid infamy, even after being acquitted of this terrible crime. For more, including why it's not uncommon for an innocent person to give a false confession to a skilled interrogator, check out episode 386 on the Jordan Harbinger show. That's it for part one. We'll be back with part two in a couple days. Links to all of Mickey Royal stuff will be linked in the show notes. Please use our website links if you buy books from any authors you hear on the show.

It does help support the show. Worksheets for the episodes are in the show notes. Transcripts are in the show notes. video of the interview going up on YouTube at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. Don't forget we've got our Clips channel with cuts that don't make it to the show, highlights, things you can't see anywhere else. Jordan Harbinger.com slash clips is where you can find that. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram or you can hit me on LinkedIn. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits, the same ones that I use to book

S on the show, to do business, all that. That course is free. It's over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course, teaching you how to dig the well before you get thirsty. Most of the guests on the show they subscribe to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. The show is created in association with Podcast One. My amazing team is Jen Harbinger, J. Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. 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. If you know somebody who's interested in the shadow world, human trafficking, true crime, share this episode with him.

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