The Tim Ferriss Show - #293: Catherine Hoke — The Master of Second Chances

Episode Date: January 21, 2018

Catherine Hoke (@catherine_hoke) is the founder of Defy Ventures, a national nonprofit organization that "transforms the hustle" of currently and formerly incarcerated people. Defy's vision is to end mass incarceration by using entrepreneurship as a tool to transform legacies and human potential.Cat was named a #MakeTechHuman Agent of Change by WIRED and Nokia for being one of 17 Global Influencers Expanding Human Possibility Through Technology. She has received the MDC Partners Humanitarian Award on behalf of Defy Ventures, and was included in Forbes' 40 Women to Watch over 40. She was also named by Fast Company as one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business and is an Ashoka Fellow.Cat is the author of A Second Chance: For You, for Me, and for the Rest of Us. She is amazing on many levels -- personal, athletic, and professional -- and we'll dig into the many facets of her life and lessons learned from her father, among many others.Enjoy!This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. You might remember Four Sigmatic for their mushroom coffee, which was created by their clever Finnish founders. Recently, I’ve been testing a new product -- their reishi mushroom elixir -- to help me get to sleep.As you might know, I struggled with insomnia for years. So, I asked the guys at Four Sigmatic to make a special, custom version of their reishi product. They did, and now it’s become a part of my nightly routine. If you’d like to naturally improve sleep quality naturally, I think you’ll enjoy the reishi elixir.Go to foursigmatic.com/ferriss and get 20% off just for listeners of the podcast. Just use the code “FERRISS” to receive your discount. This podcast is also brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is, inevitably, Athletic Greens. It is my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body and did not get paid to do so. As a listener of The Tim Ferriss Show, you’ll get 30 percent off your first order at AthleticGreens.com/Tim.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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are the best at what they do. And this episode is a very, very special episode. It delivers a lot of the hard tactics, book recommendations, and so on that you would expect from one of these conversations. But it's also very, very unique. And I say very unique to bother all of my friends who say that you cannot have a modifier in front of unique. My guest today is Catherine, otherwise known as Cat Hoke. After being given a second chance of her own, which we'll get into, Catherine founded Defy Ventures, a national nonprofit organization that, in quotations, transforms the hustle of currently and formerly incarcerated people.

Defy has produced groundbreaking results, including a recidivism rate, that means being readmitted to prison, of less than 5%, and an employment rate of 95%. Defy's vision is to end mass incarceration as we know it by using entrepreneurship as a tool to transform legacies and human potential. Kat is amazing on many, many different levels, personal, athletic, and otherwise. And we're going to dig into the many facets of her life and lessons learned from her father, among many others. Catherine has also been named a Make Tech Human, Agent of Change by Wired,

and one of the 17 global influencers expanding human possibility through technology by Nokia. Kat also received the MDC Partners Humanitarian Award and was included in Forbes 40 Women to Watch Over 40. She has been named by Fast Company one of the 100 most creative people in business and is an Ashoka, I think I'm getting that right, Ashoka Fellow among many, many other things. She is the author of the brand new book, and this is how I was introduced to her via Seth Godin, called A Second Chance. And I recommend that everybody check that out.

And you can certainly find her and Defy on all of the socials. But we are going to get into every aspect of that and much more. So without further ado, please enjoy one of my favorite conversations I've had in a very long time with Catherine Cat Hoke. Cat, welcome to the show. Thanks, Tim. I have been excited to connect with you because I received a barrage of texts from a mutual friend of ours, Mr. Seth Godin. And I thought we'd start this with something I've been wondering that I actually don't know the answer to, which is, how did you first meet Seth? I sent Seth a cold email and he responded. I invited him

to five entries. The organization that I run used to have a brick and mortar classroom style teaching model where we would have formerly incarcerated people come to a classroom in New York city. And then we'd invite world-class faculty to come. And Seth was someone I really, really wanted to meet. I couldn't believe when he said yes. And then he came and taught, we call them EITs or entrepreneurs in training. He came and met them. And the way that he treated me was like I was such an important person. And I couldn't believe it.

And then he became my mentor. Just like that. Seth Godin is a mentor. That's a very productive afternoon. I feel like a spoiled brat. Yeah. I'm really proud to say that he's not just my mentor, but my friend and has encouraged me to shoot for the moon. I've done far greater things than I would have expected that I could have done had it not been for Seth. He has believed in me when I even have not believed in myself.

Well, he's an incredible man. And we may circle back to Seth. But I want to talk about this cold email, because you seem to be good at cold emails and cold letters. And I have to be careful about what I believe on the internet. But I'm going to circle this back to something that took place much further back than your meeting with Seth. But what did the email say? What did the pitch look like? I should look, I should look. And so I cold emailed him and one of our volunteers kind of simultaneously cold emailed him, which always helps. Um, but typically when I cold email people, because I've gotten amazing people to respond through cold email, a lot of times I just say, I'm going to change the world and I would like to meet with you to pick your smart brain for 15 minutes. And then I'm persistent as

hell. And I sent it back to them like six times. And sometimes I leave them voicemails as well. And I befriend their assistant. So that's how I got in to meet with Duncan Niederauer, who was the CEO of the New York Stock Exchange. And many people who you would think would not say yes to a cold email. But when I asked for 15 minutes to pick their smart brain, and I tell them exactly what I want to learn from them too. It's not like a random, you know, I tell them you're an expert in this and I need to learn X. And I, and I also tell them I can talk really fast and you can kick me out of your office as quickly as you want if you think it's a waste of time. So I always give them an out, not like I need to do that. But, um, and then I just don't stop. And I was trained in Cutco knife sales, like door-to-door stuff, you know. And I've been a shameless cold caller. I used to work for Summit Partners, a venture capital firm slash private equity, where I would cold call CEOs wanting to get a piece of their pie. And I don't get hurt or reject. I don't get hurt by rejection. I'm able to take it.

And, um, but when I've studied sales, like most salespeople stop after two or three and I keep going to six and it's amazing how many people end up saying yes. And then I always like the typical sales trick. I'll throw in like another five seconds of information of something that makes him go, what? Like I'll tell them something about myself. So I try to find something about their background that we have in common. So Tim, I know that you were a wrestler. So I would say, and by the way, I was also a high school wrestler. Something makes you go, what? Like, and then gets your attention.

So, all right. We have so much, so much that we can cover, uh, and so many different rabbit holes we can go down. So, so a few things I want to, I want to flesh out a little bit. So number one, the Cutco knives, I was going to ask you about the Cutco knives and I'm going to try not to lose my train of thought here, but there's so many ways I want to go with this. Thank you for doing such great research. Of course. Correct me if I'm wrong. Started with selling hamsters at age seven or thereabouts. You really went way back. Yes, I did.

Yes, I did. I ran a hamster selling empire. I would breed them and I had multiple cages and then I sold them back to the pet shop for a buck a piece. My sister took after me and she was breeding rabbits. So we had quite the household. And then selling golf balls yeah um i would go you know take off my shoes and socks and go walk through the disgusting duck muck and and get the golf balls but then i um would also one-up the golfers with

donuts and all types of other things as well to increase my profits. Yes. What is the key to a successful and people listening are like, what the fuck is going on right now? This is all this is all going somewhere. The Cutco knives. So this is door to door. We're talking about like knock, knock, wipe the feet. well so cutco if they were listening might cringe if i say door-to-door because you're supposed to have a developed network and then you every person that you go meet with you ask them for three references you know did you have a good experience with me today would you recommend me to your friends and then send me to three other people so it's not totally door-to-door but um kind of i mean it's that same style yeah so, my biggest problem with selling Cutco is that I was raised by a Hungarian Yugoslav immigrant who came over with $200 in his pocket and thought that buying us a happy meal was too expensive. So I was selling at Cutco $1,400 knife

sets and I was really good at it. And at Cutco, they taught me how to nod my head and smile to get that reciprocal behavior and say, will you buy my $1,400 knife set? And people were saying yes to me all the time. And I was enjoying the fact that I was so good at it, but I totally felt like I was scamming people. And little did I realize that rich people don't mind paying $1,400 or more for an amazing set of cutlery, which, by the way, I still own myself and completely believe in. But because I felt like I was maybe scamming people, I had to stop selling Cutco knives. And I reduced my own profits because I felt like I was ripping people's faces off. So then you get these free products that you can give them like, oh, here, I'll give you my free cake slicer or this or that.

And you're supposed to use those to help get them to a bigger knife set. But I would get them to say yes to the biggest, most expensive set. And then I would feel guilty for selling them on something so big. So I'd be like, I'm going to give you these five free products as well. And by the way, can you tell me the names of three of your friends you would recommend? I also. Exactly. Exactly. And then I would get like economies of scale on this stuff because when I was on the wrestling team as the only girl, we had to raise money for that. So then I would literally go door to door. And after I'd win a match, and my

wrestling photo was in the Sunday paper, I would walk around door to door and be like, hi, and I'd be in a dress and I'd be like, I'm on the Davis High School wrestling team, and I'm raising money and we're pushing cars around the track. So will you give us money? And then I would do that and sell Cutco knives at the same time. So wait a second. Now, by at the same time, do you mean, hey, thanks for the $50 to support the wrestling game? By the way, I noticed that you have a cutting board. No, I would ask for a separate appointment.

I didn't want to totally overwhelm my customer. I was like, that's a hell of a cross sell. Now, the promise I made earlier to kind of wind this back, of course, I went all the way back to seven. But is it true that you were originally turned down by UC Berkeley? It was right. rejected because my dad wanted me to go to UC Berkeley and I wanted to get so far away from home. I had wrestled and gone to high school in Davis. And I looked up the hardest major to get into, which was bioengine be an engineer and I was flunking out of my engineering courses. And then I supported myself through school and I looked up a summer job that was for a management consulting firm, which I had no clue what that was. And I remember reading the posting aloud to someone and saying, this requires an entrepreneurial spirit. And I remember reading the posting aloud to someone and saying, this requires an entrepreneurial spirit. And I didn't know how to pronounce the word. And I was like, what the hell is that? What does that mean? Well, I got the job at the management consulting firm and I discovered what

business is and decided I loved it. So I applied to the undergraduate Hoss program at UC Berkeley and I got rejected. And I'm not surprised. I mean, I was failing literally out of my engineering courses because my brain is not really that of an engineer. And so that's when I wrote them a seven page appeal letter. And I was like, look, I'm a student athlete. I work 40 hours a week on top of it. If you let me in, I promise I'll make you proud. And they let me in. So where does this come from this sort of aggressive drive? Right? I mean, you're, you're spanning wrestling, right? Which is certainly even now, but at the time, I mean, Margolis is really, I think raised the perception of women's wrestling in the U S

tremendously, but certainly back then as a wrestler myself throughout high school and then the very beginning portions of college, unusual that, uh, that, that not very common, I should say that, that women would go to wrestling. You have this entrepreneurial drive really, really early. Where does that come from? So I feel like I was raised in a mini shark tank at my house. My dad is an inventor still. He's 73 years old and he patents all types of stuff. He's an electrical engineer and he taught me to see the world through quite a different lens. So when I was as young as age six or seven, he would have me stand up in front of the family and I never knew when he was going to do it. But he's like, you have one minute to invent something and talk about the market and how you're going to price it and the demand and your strategy for getting it out there.

And I would come up with ridiculous things. I can't even remember. I remember that one of my favorite inventions was shoes that could fly. And what I remember about doing that with my father is that he never told me that one of my ideas was stupid or not feasible. And so he could have just raised a very delusional child who thought that she could do anything. And I guess he kind of did. Um, but I, I, whenever I saw problems and I saw things that I didn't like about the world and I would complain about them, my dad would say to me, instead of complaining about it, why don't you figure out how you can fix it? And he, for example, I was raised super weird immigrant home. I was not allowed to watch television, like almost never. We never were allowed to watch sports. He said, why would you watch somebody else going out there and getting it when you could invest that

same time in doing it yourself? So he told me to get my butt out there and work out, you know, and learn how to become the best at something. He said, if you're going to become a chimney sweeper, just become the best chimney sweeper. So I didn't really know that there was another way. And I really believed I could do anything. And so I thought, um, I was, I was born in Canada, and French was my first language, and we came over to the U.S. when I was seven. And when my dad got invited to come and teach at Stanford, and he told me that we were moving to the U.S., I said, No, I don't want to because I can't become the president of the United States. And I have zero political aspirations today, by the way.

But when I told him I couldn't become the president, he said, I'm going to give you a little time to think about that, about how you could turn that, come up with a solution for that problem. So I came back to him, I don't know, a week later or something. And I said, I've got it where we can move to the United States. I will become a lawyer. I will change the constitution of the United States so that someone who's not born in the United States can become the president. And then I will become the president. And then after we moved to the U S he introduced me to everybody as the future president of the United States. And when he said it, I thought he was serious. So he believed in me. So I believed in me. And I guess that's why I run something called

defy. Now I, I actually believe I can do it. Like I'm that's why I run something called Defy now. I actually believe I can do it. Like Jerry Colonna says, I am pathologically optimistic about my goals. So, all right. That is a very thorough and extremely helpful answer. What was your dad invited to teach at Stanford? Electrical engineering. was your dad uh invited to teach at stanford electrical engineering electrical engineering and what when uh and the reason you moved to the u.s was because of the the faculty invitation uh yeah from stanford yep so he got like a one-year invitation and then it turned into two years and then he could have stayed at stanford but my dad is like a ski freak and he just wanted to be closer to the mountains. So that's why we moved to Davis and he taught at UC

Davis. But my, I'm, I'm a lot like my dad and that he loves to like invent stuff. And so he left university life and now is still like, he works till five in the morning, just inventing new stuff. Sounds like, sounds like a cool, cool gig. Would he call himself an inventor or a product developer or neither? He would say inventor. Yeah. What was your home like outside of, of your father? Was your, was your mom around? Do you have siblings paint, paint a picture for people? Yes. I'm the oldest of four kids. I was like a mini mom. My mother would literally want to bring homeless people back to our house. My mom's like really compassionate and caring. And my mom used

to be a nurse and I stayed at home to take care of the kids. And I developed a lot of my compassion and heart for serving others from my mom. And I remember, you know, my mom would tell me, eat all the food on your plate because there are starving kids in Africa. And I was like, okay, if I don't eat the food on my plate, how are the starving kids in Africa going to get my food? So I think I was seven. This is like from my dad, right? Like find a solution to the problem. So I found some like sponsorship program to sponsor a kid in Africa and the little golf ball money is hamster selling money that I thought I was balling when I was seven years old, but I would send that money overseas to sponsor orphans. So I developed a heart for other people and not just making a buck.

I'm very competitive, if you can't tell. And I love money because I love what money can do to create the world that I want to live in. You are competitive. I'm going to add some more color to that. See if you, see if you can fact check, tell me if any of this is incorrect. California state women's wrestling champ, three-time marathon runner, college rugby player, varsity rower. And you still enjoy, although we talked about this a little bit, the Brazilian jujitsu, uh, which, which has deprived

me of my structural integrity in my ankle as of last week with some snap ligaments. But you are certainly very competitive. And I want to also note something that we discussed very briefly, or you mentioned when we were doing a sound check before hitting record, because I asked you what your breakfast was and you said coffee. And I said, okay, I need a few more seconds to just talk about your coffee for sound check. And you said medium warm coffee. And I said, Okay, I need a few more seconds to just talk about your coffee for sound check. And you said medium warm coffee, I put in ice cubes, and then you kept on going. I thought you were making it for 15. No, I know. And then I thought maybe you were making it up. And I was

like, Wait, what's the story on the medium warm coffee? Can you tell people what the story is? Well, I, I like to be very efficient and fast, and I like to eat fast and drink fast. And so I put ice cubes in my coffee so I can pound it because I actually think things tend to taste better when I eat them or drink them really fast. I don't understand people who like to chew on their food for two hours. It annoys me. I mean, it's fine for them, but not for me. So you and I have a number of overlapping circles. So I'm also of the fast... Yeah, we said we're going to roll, right? After this interview. Oh, God. Yeah. Well...

I'm going to meet you in Austin and we're going to roll. You know what? I'll just let you triangle choke me because I don't think given your credentials that i'm going to give you much of a fight uh i can talk a big game you know yeah i'll be gentle so see we talked about seth there seemed to be a number of other people we don't have to spend too much time on this but i do know for instance i've spent some time with jerry um jerry colonna uh you mentioned he's one of our faculty members too yeah jerry's amazing uh there's another also of course these two know

each other uh brad feld who's just an incredible guy uh and incredible investor also where did the entrepreneurs in training enter the picture? How did that become part of your life? everything in my life, because I used to think that people who are incarcerated were like the scum of the earth. When I was 12, a good friend of mine was brutally murdered by two 16-year-old boys. And so from that experience of one, I extrapolated to think that anyone in prison could rot and die in that place. And it was that first prison visit. I'm 40 years old now. We're like three months apart, Tim. And when I was 26, that visit opened my eyes and my heart. And it ended up, I didn't know it would end up becoming my life calling. But it ended up changing my wallet and my priorities and my time.

And it's what I've devoted my everything to now is the second chance field and working with people with criminal histories who, you know, the world calls them all types of things like ex-offenders or criminals. And I say, we don't work with criminals. We work with people who committed criminal acts in their past. And there's a really big difference. So at DeFi, I believe we're all ex-stumblings. And we call them EITs or entrepreneurs in training. And then they become full-fledged entrepreneurs.

It's a few notes just because I've i've had sufficient caffeine to to want to talk a lot the the first is a really important distinction that you made and uh also as some backstory before we hit record you were like you asked me do i have the right to call you out if they call them criminals? And I said, yes, you do. Because the language we use is so important in this context and many other contexts. For instance, I have tried very hard for myself to not call myself an anxious, I am anxious, to use that language or to say I am an anxious, I am anxious, to use that language, or to say I am an anxious person, but rather to say, you know, I feel anxiety, so to depersonalize it in that way. So think also, people with a criminal past is very different from ex-criminals or criminals, right? I mean, they're very, very distinct labels that create an entirely distinct way of relating to somebody with one versus the other

right so i just want to underscore how important that is not just for how you label other people but also for how you label yourself absolutely and we're big on that really really big on how we label ourselves yeah really really important and the the question then I have is why did this stick? Why did this become what appears to be a lifelong passion and commitment? Whereas you had tried so many things in the past, and you're no longer selling hamsters, you're no longer doing private equity. Why did this stick? Like, why was there a specific conversation? Was there a specific moment? What, what was it that made this stick for you? Yeah. So I didn't think it would stick. And when I went to prison that very first time in Texas, what I saw there shocked my heart. And I have made so many bad decisions and mistakes in my own life. And I'm really grateful for the grace and second chances that I've received. Yet I was so quick to write off and label people who had been caught for something criminal. And so I was just convicted by the ugliness of my own heart because I, when I went and visited in prison, I realized, and this might

sound stupid, but I realized that they were actually human beings, not a rap sheet, not a rap sheet not a number and the first guy that I met in prison that weekend his name was Johnny and when I heard Johnny's story when Johnny was eight years old he watched as his grandfather murdered his father right in front of him and then when Johnny was 11 or 12, he was given drugs and he was jumped into a gang. And by the age of 18, he was incarcerated. And empathy for the people that I serve is what made it stick because I was like, wow, had I been raised in those circumstances, I am certain that I would have ended up in that path as well. And when I, to this day, when I hear the stories of the people that I serve, you know, I was just in a prison last week and I do this exercise called step to the line. And we have all of our CEOs and venture capitalists and executive volunteers on

one side of the line. And then we have our EITs or entrepreneurs in training being incarcerated on the other side of the line. And you step to the line if the statement is true. So it says step to the line if you've ever been arrested. And about a third of our volunteers are at the line. Step to the line if you've ever done something for which you could have been arrested, but you have not been arrested. 100% of our volunteers are at the line. Step to the line if you're arrested the first time before the age of 16, like maybe 75% of our EITs are at the line. And then I count backwards. Step to the line if you are incarcerated before the age of 14,

12, 10, and I get to age eight. If you are first incarcerated at the age of eight, there are four guys remaining at the line. Seven, there's one guy remaining at the line. And I'm trying to picture a seven-year-old or an eight-year-old in handcuffs. And normally a prison cell seems pretty small and stifling, but imagine a little seven or eight year old there. My empathy for the people that I serve is what made this stick for me. And I don't have pity for them. I have a deep compassion. I also have mad respect for their skills. I work with natural born entrepreneurs who started off selling gumballs out of their lockers, not hamsters, and gumballs proceeded into drugs, which, you know, kept going. And then they got arrested. But I have a love of underdogs and a love of entrepreneurs. And I hate injustice. Like when I grew up as a little kid and I saw somebody else get bullied, I would always stand up for them and defend the victim. And here I was in the midst of

people who have been thrown away by society, who are not just aspiring entrepreneurs, but who are proven entrepreneurs with amazing talents. I believe that people I serve represent America's most overlooked talent pool. And that first weekend, when I was 26 years old, and naive as could be in Texas, at the last prison I went to, I went to four prisons. And the last one, the guys are like, will you please come back? And I said, yes. And my dad also taught me to be a person of my word. And I had no idea what it meant to come back. I had never talked to a warden before. But after I said yes, I was coming back. And I did.

I'm going to get this pronunciation wrong, most likely. But can you tell us? I'm all about get this pronunciation wrong, most likely, but can you tell us... I'm all about second chances, Tim. Yes. I've never used that one before either. You're right. I can tell you've been working on your material. Yeah.

Cosmarti, is this correct? Pretty good. Yeah, Cosmarti. Marte. Can you tell us who Cos Marte is? Yeah. He's one of our best known success stories. He's a graduate of Defy Ventures. He did five years in prison in the New York State prison system. And he went to prison at age 19. So he grew up in poverty, heroin needles all around him. And he said that the one thing he wanted to become when

he was older was rich. He didn't know how to get out of the system, but he saw his mother working overtime to put food on the table. And so when he was a young teenager, he got introduced to the world of selling drugs and he got incarcerated his first time, I think, at 12 or 13 and bounced in and out. And by the time that he was 19 and got arrested on a kingpin case, he was running a drug empire in New York where he was doing $2 million a year in drug sales. And he had an army of people working for him. And he was a young, natural entrepreneur. And when he was incarcerated, he realized that he was in fact very entrepreneurial, but that his entrepreneurial skill sets were being used to destroy communities rather than build them up.

He had a wake up call in prison when he was sent to the SHU to solitary confinement after having an altercation with an officer. He, um, he was also so overweight and unhealthy when he got sent to prison that doctors told him that he would die in prison, even though he was only doing five years. And he was like, I'm not dying in prison. So he, while he was locked up in solitary confinement in a box that is the size of a parking spot, he came up with a body weight bearing workout and he lost 70 pounds. And then when he got out of the shoe, he taught other incarcerated men at that prison, about 20 of them had to lose a collective 1000 pounds. So he was on to something with his prison style fitness workout. And he got out of prison and he had always

wanted to become a legal entrepreneur. So with Defy's help, he turned that into ConBody. And ConBody is a prison style fitness bootcamp that in less than three years has more than 14,000 customers. He says that he follows around women wearing yoga pants and he asks them where they work out and he gives them his business card. And he's hired nearly 20 people with criminal histories. So he's hired other Defy Ventures graduates who have not started their own business. And we've helped Costa raise more than $250,000 in funding for his business because we run like these Shark Tank style pitch competitions and he killed it in all of our competitions. And then we introduced him to other angel investors. And what I love about Koss is that he's not just about his financial bottom line, but whenever I ask him to give back in the serve, he always does. So we work with Defy in the most notorious prison in

America called Pelican Bay, where they have a solitary confinement facility. We run a program in solitary confinement. Koss came to Pelican Bay with me and led a workout for the incarcerated guys who are currently in the SHU. And I can't tell you how awesome it was to have him. And he was able to tell his story of going from the shoe to being a CEO. And his business continues to thrive and boom. And Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City needed more foot traffic. So they literally opened up a con body gym inside Saks. And now men and women, but mostly women, are flocking through Saks to get to ConBody, where they go to these workouts. And if you go to a ConBody workout, you'll be paired up with your

quote, Sully. And you'll have formerly incarcerated trainers that Koss has hired yelling at you to bring out the best in you and your physical fitness. And he also has ConBodyLive.com. And he now has customers from 24 different countries that sign up for, I think, five bucks a month. And it's amazing to watch his hustling skills combined with his heart and the way that he uses his voice for prison reform and advocacy. I couldn't be more proud for us to be early incubators of ConBody and for us to be behind Cosmarte. And as I understand it, more than 150 businesses, the number may be outdated. Yeah, it's nearly 200 businesses now that we have incubated and funded through our post-release incubator.

So I'm going to play devil's advocate a little bit because I'm sure there are people who should be given second chances versus those who should remain incarcerated because they are genuinely threats to society and are not fit to be in any way reintegrated. And the reason I ask that is that I know people who are incarcerated, who are, have been repeat offenders, violent offenders who are, I mean, I hate to say it, but it's, they, they've at this point at least should not be re-released in the short term, based on my firsthand experience. I mean, watching what some of these people have done. How do you how do you vet and sort of filter and train in such a way that you ensure because your numbers are very, very impressive, right? I mean, the and I will have already read this in the introduction that I record separately, but let's, let's, let's reread the bio because I think we're going to dig into a bunch of different facets of it.

So if you could bear with me boring you by reading your own bio, here we go. After being given a second chance of her own, which we're going to come back to Catherine founded defy ventures, a national nonprofit organization that transforms the hustle, in quotation marks, of currently and formerly incarcerated people. Defy has produced groundbreaking results, including, this is the key here, recidivism rate of less than 5% and an employment rate of 95%. Defy's vision is to end mass incarceration by using entrepreneurship as a tool to transform legacy and human potential. And then you have many, many, many different accolades, 100 most creative people in business, according to the past company, a show fellow, 2013, and so on. But I won't get into all of those.

How do you filter cultivate the right people versus the wrong people? All right. So although I speak with great passion about defies EITs, I never take away from the fact that they have made grave mistakes, that they have hurt society, that they have hurt individuals, and that nothing about that is okay. So I'm not one of these like, oh, no one should go to prison and let the prison doors fly open so everyone can just get out. Um, when people hurt people and they're a threat to society, they are sent to prison. And that's not a bad thing. In fact, I believe that an adult timeout is often a very important element of people's transformation. So I know that people having a consequence is really important. And sometimes that consequence

really needs to be prison. Sometimes people need to be taken out of society. I think we're a way too liberal with the way that we hand out time. And I can get into my opinions about how we sentence people and racial and economic disparities. I can get into that all day long because there's major injustice in that. But let's just go with this, that when hurt people hurt other people, there needs to be a consequence. And prison is often, I believe, a solid consequence for that. It's called the field of corrections. And unfortunately, when people are sent to prison, they're usually thrown away and it's pure punishment. What many people in society don't realize is that 95% of incarcerated people are coming back out to become our neighbors. So yes, the people I've served have done some terrible things, sometimes things that

make my own stomach turn, even though I'm around these people and the crimes that they've, I know their rap sheets intimately. So what kind of neighbor do you want coming back to live next to you? Do you want someone who has not been rehabilitated or do you want someone who has been rehabilitated? And at Defy, we actually work with people who have committed tougher crimes than most. We work at a lot of maximum security facilities. And when I say we work in solitary confinement, you don't go to solitary confinement unless you've made some really, really bad decisions. And 90% of the people that we serve have committed violent crime. People who commit murder, nearly all of them still get out of prison. I think people don't realize that.

And so if we lock them up like they're an animal and give them no resources and then when they get out, offer them no opportunities to make it legally, what are they going to go back to? Right. We as society decide. So the other thing is I'm not the one who decides if they serve time or how much time they do. Our American judges and juries and prosecutors determine that. And according to the way our laws are set up, when you get sentenced to a term, you supposedly pay your debt to society. And unfortunately, when people get out of prison, they're often treated like they're wearing invisible handcuffs for the rest of their lives. And especially if you've been a victim of a crime, you might be like, good, I want them to permanently suffer. Well, I've been a victim of

multiple crimes myself, some of the worst crimes myself. And vengeance can be a really ugly thing. And when I get into a healthy place in my own head, I realized that if I had my vengeance on every human who has hurt me and just tortured them, I think it might bring out even worse things in them. But if they could get healing for the ways that they have hurt me, and then live the fullest life that they could, like live up to their fullest potential, who would we be as a country if they had healing and forgiveness and then didn't make other victims? That's what I want for myself, for the people I serve. We're all offenders. We all hurt people. And I think that when it comes to people who are in prison, there's this real us versus them mentality, like they're in prison, they should rot in there. But when our volunteers come to prison with us, I ask them through that step to the line exercise, some pretty challenging questions, like step to the line. If you have ever been in a fight to prove yourself, go all the way

back to your childhood. Like if you, even with a sibling pulled their hair or punched a boy who was picking on you at the park or something like that as a little kid, as a seven or eight year old step to the line. And I would say that 70 or 80% of our volunteers are at the line on that. And then I say, step to the line if you've ever committed a violent crime. And none of our volunteers are at the line, but close to 100% of our EITs are at the line. And I tell the volunteers, I must not be making myself clear. I did not say step to the line if you've been convicted of a violent crime. Step to the line if you've committed a violent crime.

And earlier, 70% or 80% of you were at the line. When I asked if you've ever been in a childhood fight, step to the line. Almost all of you were there. Well, the volunteers rolled their eyes at me because they're like, come on, you know, the little fight that I got in at the playground, that's not a violent crime. And I'm like, actually, if you looked at the backstories of the people that I serve, about half of them were arrested the first time before they were 10 or 11. And when I asked them for what they say, Oh, my mom was strung out and I broke into my neighbor's house to steal food because I was hungry. Or I was 10 and a 13 year old was picking

on me at the park. So I punched him in the face, you know, stuff like that. And so it's very easy us to turn the other person into a villain, into a wild caged animal to dehumanize the offender. But I can see myself in that offender. And I think that if we all look deep enough, many of us could see ourselves. And if you can't see yourself in that, I bet you could see your brother or your sister or your best friend. And if we were all known permanently for the worst thing that we've ever done, we might think a little bit differently about the labels that we attach to people. And unfortunately, once people go to prison or jail the first time, a lot of times officers will tell them on their way out, see you back here. And in our country, 76.6% of people children of incarcerated people follow in their parents' footsteps. Quite a legacy to inherit.

And the good news is that we can break this legacy and we can break that revolving door. And we're called Defy. And, yeah, we have a less than 5% return to prison rate. And so this is a totally solvable problem. But if we as Americans and society continue to write people off as being less than human and saying, it's gross that you even give them a chance, well, you're going to get a different kind of neighbor back, the kind of neighbor that is going to scare you, the kind of neighbor that none of us want. Thank you.

You mentioned something earlier that I think is worth underscoring, which is the question. And I'd be curious to know how people respond if you actually pose this to them, whether they're volunteers or otherwise. But what if you were only known for the worst thing you've ever done? Do you actually pose that? Or is it more of a hype, a rhetorical question? I do a lot of speaking engagements and I open with that nearly every single time. And I ask people, think back to the action that you regret the most in your life. Think about the labels that would be attached to that, like drunk, cheater, adulterer. I don't know what it is, you know? And now imagine if for the rest of your life, like say it's 20 years later, say you've paid the consequences in full for whatever mistake you made, but now you are permanently known as X drunk, X cheater, X embezzler, X liar, X shitty dad, X whatever it is.

And you go fill out a job application and at the top of your job application, it's the first thing that you have to check the box on, even though it's 20 years later. And next time that you want to rent an apartment or get a mortgage, it's the first thing you have to write your ex label there. The people that I serve have paid their debt to society, but for the rest of their lives, they are known as an ex drug dealer or an ex fill in the blank what would your life be like if you were handcuffed by your most shameful moment well this this is i suppose as good a place as any to segue into forgiveness, but the way we're going to get there, because I remember when I was chatting with Seth, I wanted to know how openly we could talk about different parts of your biography.

And your bio on the website begins with, after being given a second chance of her own. Can you explain what that refers to? Sure. It should probably say after being given so many second chances of her own and third and fourth chances. I will share the mistake, the bad decisions that I am most known for since I ask other people what it'd be like for them if they were known for that worst thing. So the short version of it is that after devoting my life to working with people with criminal histories, I moved to Texas. I started what became known as Prison Entrepreneurship Program, PEP, and I'm still going there today. And I poured my everything

into it. I had $50,000 in my bank account. It wasn't enough. I cashed out my 401k because working with these people and making sure that they had a bright future was more important than my own financial stability. I went all in on this. And for five years, I built up PEP to be a very successful prison rehabilitation program that was equipping men in the Texas prison system to become successful legal entrepreneurs, but more than that, also employees and fathers and voices in their communities. And then I tanked. I made decisions that I thought ruined my everything in my entire future. So I had been married.

I was married the first time for nine years. I got married when I was 22. At the age of 31, I was served divorce papers. And I was living in Texas in a very Christian community where God hates divorce and divorce is sin. And I was so ashamed. I said, the one thing I would never be was a divorced woman. And here I was, um, a divorced woman. And, uh, following my divorce, I also went through a lot of hard times. I was sick with pneumonia. I was hospitalized.

I had to move out of my house. And instead of reaching out to friends or a community that would have been supportive of me in my own shame over my divorce, I put my head in the sand and I felt so alone. And like when I was in the hospital and didn't know who to call to come pick me up, that was one of the loneliest, worst moments that I can remember. Well, the people that I felt comfortable confiding in over my personal failure were released graduates from the Texas prison system. And so the people who picked me up from the hospital, graduates, people who packed up my boxes and moved me out of my house, like, you know, I had been taking care of people for a long time. And now I was at my bottom and needed to be taken care of. In a moment of weakness, I crossed

boundaries. And I had some relationships with people who had been released from the Texas prison system. What I did was not illegal, but I knew better. I absolutely shouldn't have done it. I regretted it right after. I've always taught my graduates a model of full disclosure. Own your mistakes and share it. Don't get caught. And so I, I followed my own advice and I was honest about my poor decisions and it cost me my everything at the time. It cost me everything. I, um, the Texas prison system, when I learned about my decisions, they forced my resignation and they forced it. This was eight years ago. Now

they forced it in the media too, because up until that moment, I hadn't been known. People called me the prison angel who ministered to the dark side. That was absolutely not true. But, um, uh, people had a like mother Teresa image of me. And, um, because I was not, weren't known for big mistakes yet. And then my news came crashing in the media and I became known for a sex scandal instead of the good work that I had poured my life into. And I was already suffering from so much shame. So now to be known for this and to get the ejector seat from my own organization, to lose my identity as a passionate young founder and CEO, to lose my identity as a wife, I felt like I had ruined God's calling for my life. I saw no reason to live anymore. I didn't

want to live anymore. And what saved my life was that shortly before my scandal went out across national media, I sent out a full disclosure letter. And at the time we had 7,500 supporters, top CEOs and investors, and people are respected more than anyone in the world. And at the time we had 7,500 supporters, top CEOs and investors, and people are respected more than anyone in the world. And I said, I screwed up. I made these bad decisions. I'm a divorced woman. I don't know what's next in my life. Sending that letter was super painful for me, but within about 24 hours of sending it, my inbox filled up with nearly a thousand emails of love and support. And you've always preached grace and second chances. And what are you doing next with your life? And if you can't tell, I'm an all in person and I had no plan B, but it was people, other human beings saw potential in me when I saw no potential in me.

I used to think like, what happens to leaders like me who screw up? Is there like some island for castaways? Like, do we all go surf Starbucks somewhere? Like, what do we do? I had no vision for a better future. All I could see was dark clouds and no reason to live anymore. And the fact that people saw potential and a future in me. And more than that, I would say the fact that people, and I took a year off after my resignation

to just, I went through massive therapy. I'd already been through massive therapy. And I went to like these leadership blow up camps where like other CEOs and even pastors go, I guess I wasn't the only person to screw up my life. And when I went there and other people had the opportunity to care for me, like I have these people I call my adopted parents and they said, just come stay with us for a while. I hardly knew these people at the time. And they said, we will love you back to life. I had nothing to offer people. I learned for the first time. Sorry to interrupt. How did you meet these adoptive parents?

So their names are Bill and Andrea Townsend. And Bill had, Bill is a serial entrepreneur who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. And he had sent PEP, my Texas organization, a big fat check. And I couldn't tell it was from him. I had to like do a lot of due diligence to track down who it was from, which was weird because usually I know where the money's coming from. And then when I finally found out it was from him, I requested to meet with him and the logistics as, as it turned out, I had like a super short meeting with him in an airport for like 30 minutes. And when I met with him, he was like, thank you for the work you do.

I was like, thank you for the big fat check that you wrote me. And he's like, no, thank you for the work that you do. His whole like demeanor was really different. He was just thankful that I was serving the world and not everybody's like that about it. And then what really struck me about that meeting with Bill is like, so Bill loves God and grace. And he said, do you serve people with sexual criminal histories? And I said, no, the Texas prison system won't allow us to serve that. I believe all things can be redeemed. And look, I'm going to say this right now, Tim, nobody likes sexual crime, especially not me. Um, having been a victim of

that myself, nobody likes that. But if people with even ugly crimes don't have an opportunity at rebuild, those are the crimes that we don't want repeated in society. Right? So anyway, Bill said to me, do you serve people who have committed those crimes? And I said, no, because the Texas prison system won't let me. And he said, well, what if we started a different organization, like a separate umbrella that served those people? And I said, well, you know, maybe that'd be a nice thing to think about in the future, because a lot of my Texas donors, when they find out that I don't serve people with a certain crime category, they're relieved and they're so glad. And they sometimes tell me they wouldn't fund me if I serve those people, which always like surprises me. Cause I'm like, why wouldn't

you want those people rehabilitated? Anyway, I'm kind of deviating right now, but, um, you know, Bill had a really different heart and Bill had no reason to care about those people. But I think Bill cares about people who have been written off and stigmatized. And Bill and Andrea have this ability to see potential in anybody. It's like they see the world through these rosy colored glasses and they're by no means like naive human beings. So they're the first ones who called me after I sent out my resignation letter to 7,500 people. And I was drowning in shame and self-hate and disgust. And my phone rang. Bill calls me like half an hour later or something. And he said, sweetie, we love you. Come stay with us. And I was like, who are you? You know, who are

you? I'm like a scandalous divorced woman with nothing to offer. I hardly know you. I've never met your wife. And he's like, come stay with us and we'll love you back to life. Well, I had nothing to lose. I was at the bottom of myself and I was willing to do anything. And I thought I was so gross that I said yes. And there was a small group of amazing people who poured into me in that year and made me think that I still had potential. And I tell my story all the time, so I don't know why I feel emotional right now. But it's because people saw something in me when I thought I had nothing left, that I am such a believer in second chances or what I believe is actually legitimate first chances now.

And much of the world thinks that the people that I serve are so rotten or that they have no value. And I know better. I know that hope is a cure for violence. And I know that they've done such horrible, hurtful things. I know that for the most part, horrible, hurtful things have been done to them. And I know that unless there's some intervention, and many people don't want to get their hands dirty and do this kind of work, unless there's some kind of intervention, this will be a generational legacy of incarceration and violence and crime and drug abuse. And so big fat waste of taxpayer dollars and it hurts more people. And the solution that I've come up with that is not just business, but it's also about love and

healing and redemption. It works all day long. And it works with when I start a new prison system, I tell the commissioner, the prison system and the wardens, send me to your hellhole. Send me to the worst of the worst, the guys who refuse to program. And what I see time and time again is that no one is beyond redemption. Some people don't want to change. Okay. And those guys, I have nothing to talk to them about. If they don't, if they want to be criminals, I tell them, get out. Cause I don't cut for criminals. Nobody likes criminals. I hate criminals. I don't work with criminals. I work with people who take ownership of their past and who want a better future. Thank you for that you're welcome i'm just chewing on all that

take your time well there there are many questions and i will ask them all, but I'll start with, with one, which is not related directly to the population you work with. It's much broader than that. But when you talk to someone who is very unforgiving of themselves, And let's just say there is some catalyzing event that they are ashamed of or that they find unbearable in themselves. And the reason that this comes to mind is A, historically, I've been absolutely F minus student at forgiving myself for anything. And I find that that is very often paired with hyper competitiveness, uh, in the sense that if you look at people who are successful athletes and highly competitive throughout school, high school, college, whatever it might be, uh,

it seems to very often be part and parcel of a package that includes a low level of forgiveness. I mean, you are, you have very, very high standards for yourself and that in excess can be very damaging. So when you, if, when you interact with someone who's has very difficult time forgiving themselves, uh, or just for people listening for that matter. Like what are the recommendations that you make? What are the things you say? What are the books you recommend? I mean, it could go in any number of directions, but I'll leave it open ended, uh, because that's all that comes to mind at the moment. But what do you say to those people? You are not your past. As hard as it might be to believe, especially if you're currently suffering the consequences of your past decision, you are not your past.

You are not one decision or five decisions that you've made in your life. And I don't just believe, I know that every one of us is capable of having a better future than we've had in our past, but there's some steps that we need to take to live a better future. So first of all, recognize that you are not your past and you're not that label. Because if you keep calling yourself that, whatever it is, you're going to keep probably acting that way. That belief expectation cycle, when we have a belief about ourselves and we expect that that's going to be true about ourselves, and then we end up acting that way and we have more experiences, which just confirms that belief that we have about ourselves. So in prison, when our volunteers, including our CEOs come in, I say,

talk to, share with your partner, what your voice of shame is in your head, the tape of shame that keeps playing in your head. What does it say? Say it out loud. And people regularly say the same thing, whether they're incarcerated or whether the CEO of a billion dollar company. And that voice is often you are not good enough. You are a failure. You are a sucky dad. You're a loser. You'll be just like your father.

Like these are the same messages of shame. So I don't know what your message of shame is, but start by identifying that. And then I say, can you believe that you talk to yourself this way? It's so ugly. Would you allow anyone else to walk up to you and be like, you're a loser. You will never amount to anything. And I don't know anyone who has any ounce of dignity or even who doesn't, who would allow another human being to walk up and get in their face and say that. But many of us are not only tolerant of that voice of shame that we feed ourselves all day long. It's almost like we encourage it. Like we say, yeah, you are a loser. And we keep pounding that into our own brains. And so at Defy, we do something called affirmations and it's cheesy. And I tell

our EITs, fake it till you make it, pick your head up. And I want you belting this out at the top of your lungs, like you're a proud army. And they say things like, I am worthy of the love I am receiving. I am an entrepreneur. I forgive me. I am forgiven. And we have a whole list of affirmations. And we also go through this exercise where they identify what is called self-limiting beliefs, like lies that we tell ourselves. And the problem with this exercise is that sometimes it's really hard to identify the log that is in our own eye. So sometimes our friends can hear it come out and are like, if I'm like, oh, I'm going to fail in this podcast with Tim.

Like if I say that aloud, maybe a friend of mine can pick up on that and be like, that's one of your self-limiting beliefs. And then we have them write out their self-freeing beliefs. And then we tell them to meditate on it every day, every morning for a minimum of 30 days, and then read it aloud to somebody else. But a lot of reversing the message of shame is what we say is a choice to forgive. And what we teach at Defy is that forgiveness is not a feeling. You're not going to feel like forgiving yourself. And forgiveness is not something that we earn. There's no amount of good deeds that you can make up for your victim's pain or loss. And if you're waiting

for that to happen, you're never going to get there. And I ask questions like like who would you be if you chose to forgive yourself and why aren't you forgiving yourself or why aren't you forgiving somebody else and and I ask think back to the most painful thing that has ever been done to you the person who's offended you the most the person that you cannot forgive or refuse to forgive. When you think back to that incident, what are the feelings that brew in your heart? And the answers are usually like revenge or vengeance or hate, depression, pain. You know, I've never heard of a good thing. And I'm like, all right, well, so you have a choice here. You want to keep that big ball of hate all to yourself? Think back to the last time that your hate decided for you. When we don't forgive ourselves or others, we live in the past.

And at Defy, our program is called CEO of Your New Life. We're all here. And I bet every one of your listeners, Tim, is here because they want a better future. So if you choose unforgiveness, you're choosing to be shackled by your past. Your own past decisions or your past feelings of negativity about somebody else. And the people I serve are physically incarcerated, their bodies are locked up, but we're the only ones who can incarcerate our mind and our heart. And I know so many people on this side of the fences who are not incarcerated,

who live like they're locked up because you pound your brain with hateful messages that keep you from living your best. So what I say is if you want forgiveness, it's actually quite simple. People say, oh, it's easier. It sounds easier than it is. Actually, it's really simple. Say I forgive me or I forgive him. And then I'm a super stubborn person. And so I say, get stubborn about forgiveness. Because if I say, Oh, I forgive me, like I forgive me for my scandal. Then two seconds later, my brain's going to shoot back. No, you don't. You loser. You suck. Like that whole negative message. So then if I get stubborn about forgiveness, I say, no brain, I forgive me. I forgive me. I forgive me. And I say it over and over again. And then the next morning, I guarantee you, my stubborn brain is going to wake up and

tell me how much I suck again. And then I overpower it. And then it's not just me, but if I can find a friend who believes in grace and second chances, I can tell them, Hey, I'm struggling with this. My brain is telling me how much I suck. Do you forgive me? Even if I didn't offend you. And if that person washes the dirty water in my own brain, it's pretty helpful. And at Defy, I think a reason why our amazing CEOs, we have 4,400 volunteers, and I think people keep coming back to us because when they're there in prison with us, and we have events outside of prison too, people are part of a community that rallies around shared values of forgiveness and second chances. And I don't care how fancy your credentials are when you're in prison, you're just a human who has made mistakes. And even though you've

made those mistakes, you are lovable and you are acceptable and you are worthy and you are good enough. And if you come with us, you're going to feel that in your bones. So get stubborn about forgiveness. If there's one message I could share with the world, if there's one impact I could have, I don't think it'd even be about prison. It would be choose forgiveness for yourself and for others who have hurt you. And if you forgive them, maybe one day your feelings will catch up, but it might help you to reshape a whole new future.

So you mentioned a few things I'd love to repeat for myself as much as anyone else and maybe explore a bit the first was hope is a cure for violence and i think that that's true certainly true in many different senses whether that is violence towards others or violence towards yourself right and that violence towards yourself can just be the incessant berating and self-loathing and self-flagellating, which is something that I've been, I've vastly improved in the last six to 12 months for a host of reasons that we don't have the bandwidth to get into right now, but that was the constant companion that I had for 20, 35 years, whatever the total span of time was. And I'd also say that affirmations is as cheesy

as they might sound. And people who are old enough to remember, what was it? Stuart Smalley and the mirrors. I don't know if you remember that name at all, but you know, I am good enough. I am in Doshgarna. People like me. This is a sad, I think it was Saturday night live.

I think it was Al Franken now Senator, right? Crazy. In any case, uh, the fact of the matter is, uh, that many of the people I've had on this podcast use

affirmations in different forms. And Scott Adams is one example, the creator of Dilbert. So he used, he has used affirmations in many different ways, uh, over time and credits many of his biggest career successes to affirmations. So it's not just for, uh, entrepreneurs in training who you work with. So there is, there is a place for that. And the next is something you didn't say, but that I've been, uh, it's been suggested by our mutual friend, Seth, that I ask you about it, uh, which is a quote, and I don't know the context or the

background. So maybe you can give it to me. You can't be angry and curious at the same time. Yeah, I learned that from a friend of mine named Dan Tichini, who does some of our character development courses for Defy. But I've seen that in my life like when I'm angry my brain seems to think it's really right about whatever I'm angry about and so if I realize that my brain can't be angry and curious at the same time if I choose to set aside my own judgments or need to be right then I can ask questions and a lot of what we do at Defy is working on creating empathy and understanding where the other side is coming from and it's amazing what a case I can build in my own brain but then when I start to understand the other person's pain or point of view, how wrong I can be. What would be an example of a situation or a concrete example of an other side,

just so we have conjure an image for people of what this looks like in action? Boy, anytime that I'm in a fight or an argument with anybody, right? I'm like, my, my side is right because I believe this and you're wrong. And my decision is the right way to go. And, um, and my, especially when I am making a decision that I think is based on a lot of experience or data, it's so easy for my brain to just jump to that conclusion. And that's arrogance. I mean, sometimes it's experience or whatever you can call it, but maybe I'm completely missing something new about the situation, or maybe I'm actually right about my conclusion or decision about a certain business situation, for example, but maybe I'm completely missing the way that I'm making someone feel through my decision. And if the way that I'm making that person feel is important

to me, then maybe I should reconsider my course of action as well. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it does make sense. And I wanted to clarify one other thing you said earlier, which was the, I think it was morning meditation on beliefs. Can you walk us through what your entrepreneurs in training are actually doing each morning? What does a session look like? So there's self-limiting beliefs, which is the negative tape that is playing in our brain, whether we realize that that tape is playing or not. And then the exercise is to replace the self-freeing beliefs, or sorry, to replace the self-limiting beliefs with self-freeing beliefs. Now, according to our course in self-limiting beliefs, these can be lies that sometimes we don't even realize that we're telling them to ourselves because we just adopted them through experiences that we might have had when we were three years old.

And we can have self-limiting beliefs about ourselves, about other people, about God, really about anything. So I'll give you an example. One of our EITs was telling me that when he was three years old, he was found by CPS in a dumpster. Child Protective Services, CPS? Child Protective Services literally found him in a dumpster and that was in his file so the self-limiting beliefs if you're found in a dumpster that could form out of that whether you're aware of them or not might be um nobody loves me I can never trust authorities. I do not belong. I was not wanted in the world. I am trash, right? Like there's so many self-loathing beliefs that could come out of

that. And if we never take a moment to realize the values that have shaped us and where they came from, because values are often just handed to us through our parents or our lack of parents or through religion or culture. So if that guy never stops to think about that, then he's now an adult man. He's 30 years old thinking, I am a piece of trash. Well, if we think that we're a piece of trash, and this relates to like hope is a cure for violence. If I think I'm a piece of trash who will never amount to anything, why not just go do destructive things? Because sometimes if I do destructive things, I get attention for it. And sometimes hurting myself feels good. Sometimes it makes me feel alive when I feel like I'm not worthy of

living anyway. So I'll continue to hurt other people and throw myself away because you know what? My dad was in prison too, from what I learned. And I belong in this place. Well, if that guy is able to replace these values with positive ones that he can find from a program like Defy, that he can find from positive friends, that he can find from most religions universally, like my life matters. I can have a purpose. What we tell people when they're writing their self-framing beliefs is if you go from a self-limiting belief to an unrealistic self-framing belief, then you're feeding yourself, uh, you know, something that your brain is never going to believe. And so for example, say you're not a very good looking human being.

And so your self-limiting belief is I am ugly, therefore I will never get a date. Well, if you replace that with a self freeing belief of, I'm a supermodel, and features and I know that some people will appreciate me for who I am and I have a great personality. Therefore, I will I am capable of finding love in my life. So that's a more I just made that up on the spot. But like that's a more realistic version than I'm a supermodel. Um, so the person who was found in a dumpster, if he replaces his self-limiting belief with, I know that I matter to some people in life and I don't matter to everybody, but I'm okay. Even when some people don't see my value, but I'm okay even when some people don't see my value because I do have a community of people who see value in me. And, for example, then their Defy mentors and their fellow EITs reinforce that message for them. That's a reality that can change your life and your future because if you think that you matter in the world and that you're not a piece

of trash, and if you say, I have the ability to develop skills and an education that will lend me a job, I have the ability to not only stay out of prison, but to start a legal business that will thrive. I know that I am in a program that supports me toward my goals. Then you're actually going to start working that way. And when you meditate on that every single morning, and 30 days is not enough to reverse a lifetime of negative brain trash and experiences that back up the brain trash. But if you meditate on that, you might actually see that to become true for you.

So I've done this in my own life, and I've seen so many of my own lies in my head turn. Or for example, some of our EITs, like our male EITs were say abandoned by their mother who is a drug addict or they were cheated on by their girlfriends or their wives. So they're like, I will never trust another woman. Okay. That's a self-limiting belief. And I say, has that been serving you in your life? You know, so a self-freeing belief that might replace that is I have developed judgment and discernment to know that there are some people who will not have my best interests at heart, but that there are other people that I can trust and I'm willing to trust. So that's a more mature, self-freeing belief that might lead to more opportunities in our lives. And is the meditate, when you say meditate on it

in the morning, is that reading a list over and over again for a set period of time? Is it great questions, reading them out loud? Is it memorizing them? Yes. What is it? Read it to yourself, which is great. Reading it quietly is nice. Reading it aloud is better. And then we have them partner up and we have a partner pound it into their brain. So have someone say it to you with conviction. And one of our EITs, I love this. He said, now, every morning when I wake up, I look in the mirror and I say, I love you. What would all of us in this world, who would we be if we woke up every morning and we said with conviction in the mirror, I love you. I believe in you. You can do it. Today will be awesome. Because if we actually believe that about ourselves, we have no idea how much we're

capable of, how many good and beautiful acts we're capable of. You're here. Yeah. What are, what are some of the ingredients that make defy uniquely, not necessarily uniquely, cause that implies that all of the rest are not, but uniquely effective or effective. Right. And I'll give you an example, not that you need the time, but I'll buy some time anyway. And I'll use a different environment. I went to an event, my first Tony Robbins event, I want to say three or four years ago, Unleash the Power Within. And there are many things that you do during this event. There's the firewalk, there are many different practices, exercises, partner drills, jumping up and down, you name it, right? It's kind of like rave plus Pentecostal church plus like Tony Robbins, who I have extremely high degree of respect and admiration for. I've gotten to know over the last couple of years.

All of that said, you have many different tools in the toolkit that are presented and one of them is something called the Dickens process, which I won't get into right now. But that exercise is the reason one of my friends who's a very successful CEO has gone to unleash the power within 10 or 11 times. It's primarily on an annual basis to have Tony lead this exercise called the Dickens process to identify specifically self-limiting beliefs, actually, now that I think about it, and replace them. What are some of the tools in the toolkit or the ingredients that make Defy effective? Our volunteers regularly say that our step to the line exercise is one of the most eye-opening, profound experiences, not just of Defy, but of their lives.

We build empathy through it. Some of our volunteers have said that it's like free therapy. We talk about forgiveness at the line, like step to the line if you haven't forgiven yourself. Step to the line if you haven't forgiven someone else. I issue a challenge like step to the line if not forgiving yourself or others is still hurting you to this day. And then everyone who's at the line, I'm like, you know what time it is now. You know, choose. I forgive me. So step to the line is a really powerful exercise. And it's not just for our volunteers, for our entrepreneurs and training. We create a safe and incredibly emotionally and

physically safe place in prison, even in a maximum security prison, where people can let their tough guy or girl guards down and just be human and be seen and loved and accepted for who they are. And I think that's something that all of us want in life, is to be seen and known and to not have to put up a facade. It's so relaxing when we can actually realize that we can just be us and I am good enough. So step to the line is a really special, unique ingredient of what we do that is empathy-inducing and grace-inducing. And then we do a lot of other things. So I say that at Defy Events, we do the worm where we go up and down. We get high, legally high in prison. We actually,

we use a lot of fun. We do something called the innovative dance, which is you have to get from one side of the sweaty gym to the other using an innovative move. And, um, a lot of our volunteers are like 40 and 50 year old white dudes who have no dance moves, but, um, it must be an amazing scene to behold. It is, it is really wonderful. Um, we tell the guys in a men's prison to work at your own risk. Ladies keep below the waist, um, immobile. Um, it's not totally equal opportunity in a guy's prison, but no, we use, so they don't have to be good dance moves. We say keep them G, rated G, which is G is for goofy, but we use a lot of fun, emotion, and intensity. And then we use our love of the entrepreneurial journey to bring out

the best in people. So everything that we do at Defy, not everything, but almost everything is super competitive. And our EITs are delivering these Shark Tank pitches and the volunteers are giving feedback. And it brings out the best in people. And then we turn the table. So I'm big on leveling the playing field all the time. So sometimes these fancy CEOs and VCs come to prison and they're, you know, they're going to be the shark tank judges. That's great. Well, then at one point in the, in the day, uh, the EITs all get voting tickets and I'm like, all right, the, the judges have been voting on your business ideas all day long. Um, now it's the EITs turn. So volunteers get your toes at the line. So they all line up with this stretchy line of duct tape through the gym. And I tell them, put your hands up with your best

beggars body language with puppy dog eyes, language that says, choose me. And the EITs go and they have 10 tickets and there are sometimes 70 volunteers in the gym. And they walk up to the volunteer and they look them in the eyeballs and they say, Tim, I choose you. And that's all they're allowed to say is I choose you. And then the volunteers compete for who gets the most tickets. And so we see the top volunteers. And if the volunteers don't get as many tickets, because we tell the EITs, pick the ones who are the best judges who gave the best feedback. So when the volunteers don't get as many tickets, I'm like, look, you can say the system is rigged and you can suck your thumb the whole bus ride home and say

you hate DeFi or just like we say at DeFi, you know, you can suck your thumb the whole bus ride home and say you hate Defy or just like we say at Defy, you know, you can use the feedback to up your game and come back and be a better judge the next time around. And so a big thing that we do at Defy, we are a nonprofit organization. We work with people who have been through a lot of things, who have done a lot of things. But we say one of our driving values is partner, not pity. And if you come to prison with us, Tim, or anybody else, you will see. I instruct people when I'm leading an event, you are not to feel sorry for anyone here. This is not some like hug a thug, come feel sorry for these guys. Look at them in the eye with respect and empathy. And that is so empowering and awesome and fun and magical. And people leave prison. And I think it leaves for our volunteers,

it leaves a real mark on them and gives them a lot to think about for their own lives. And many of our volunteers leave going, wow, I can be doing so much more. They feel inspired by the drive of our amazing EIT. So our events are super high energy. I like to think we're a little Tony Robbins ask. Well, that's part of the reason I brought him up. I mean, there's, there's some shared DNA.

Certainly. I'm a big fan. Yeah. Yeah. He's an impressive, very, very effective guy. Yeah. So I did want to revisit one thing you mentioned because it caught my eye when I was reading the About Us page on defyventures.org. And it is the following. Defy offers a suite of services

that includes, this is in the middle of a paragraph, that includes intensive personal and leadership development, competition-based entrepreneurship training, executive mentoring, financial investment, and business incubation. Could you talk a little bit more? We don't have to spend a lot of time on it, but the competition-based is very interesting to me. Why competition-based? And how do you do it right versus not do it right? Well, so I'm a competitor, and I believe that competition done the right way can bring out the best in all of us. And so when we have 100 EITs in prison, and by the way, we run

these competitions also outside of prison. So, um, for real business ideas, like inside prison, it's an ideation competition and an outside prison. They're actually incorporated businesses that are competing for real capital and inside prison. When we have a hundred guys who are competing and the night before we ask them, who's going to win? And all these guys raise their hands. So first of all, the people that we work with are very competitive. They're tough guys, and they like to win. And many of the people that we work with, if I tell them, bet you can't do it, they'll puff their chest out and they will do it and they'll defy a lot of odds. And so we we make sure that we have the affirmation. So we tell I know you can do it.

And sometimes there are people who are lacking in confidence and we certainly we go a long way to reassure them and to tell them that they can do it. And we also tell them, you know, when you're, when you're competing tomorrow in our pitch competition, this is not just about you. This is about what we're doing in our country. Other people wish that they could be you right now participating in Defy. So we get stacks of jail mail at Defy from all over the country with people who are saying, please, all I want is a second chance. So they all want to win the competition. And we have like quarterfinals and then semifinals. And then we have finals. And then the top five finalists get like these IOU checks from the stage that they get to cash out when they're admitted into our post-release incubator,

when they want to start their actual business, if they want to, I don't care if they want to start their business. We get them into jobs, um, when they get out of prison. And that's why we have a 95% employment rate. But the night before, when we're at a pitch practice, and the guys are so nervous about the competition. And some of them, the first time we ever had a competition in prison for Defy, the warden called the night before, and he's like, can you come in here? Because these guys are like having anxiety attacks. And they're crying. And at this particular prison, more than half of the guys had committed the crime of murder. So these are, you know, tough guys. Um, and I walk in there, I was like, what? You guys are crying and thinking about dropping out. Like, don't tell me you're a

bunch of chickens now. Like when you robbed that bank or when you did this or that, like, you know, you didn't, you didn't let your fear stop you from doing what you wanted to do. And I'm playing with them and they laugh, but then I tell them, I believe in you. I know you can do this. And I know that for the past year, Defy takes about a year to complete inside. And they take a hundred courses. And some of these courses are taught by Harvard and Stanford MBA professors. And then they're taking a lot of like courses taught by therapists that are doing deep like inner work. And it's this whole journey. And when they finish it, they earn, our curriculum has been vetted by Baylor University's MBA program. So the next day, they're about to receive a Baylor University MBA program certificate.

And our men and women and youth that we serve average in eighth grade education. So I tell them the day before, I'm like, you are about, for many of you, this is the biggest accomplishment of their lives. And in fact, I say, raise your you, this is the biggest accomplishment of their lives. And in fact, I say, raise your hand if this represents the biggest accomplishment of your life. 90% of them raising their hand. Raise your hand if this is going to be your first time in a cap and gown. Half of them, first time in a cap and gown. Raise your hand if your family is coming tomorrow to witness your proudest moment.

Half of them. Not all of our families can make it. And then I tell them, so guess what? I know for the past year, you have been working on your pitch, but only about 20 or 30% of Defy's program is around entrepreneurship and their pitch. Like the other 70% is around employment readiness and shame reduction and forgiveness and technology skills and parenting courses and all that. So I tell them, although you've been working for the past year on your pitch and this pitch, you feel like your life is on the line. Guess what? Your life is not on the line. And tomorrow, if you fail in your pitch, you are not a failure. And more than that,

I do not care about your pitch. And they all kind of like, look at me and they feel offended when I say that. I really don't care about your pitch. I care about you. And I care about your future. And I have given so many pitches in my life. And sometimes I give a great one. And sometimes I'm like, man, I bombed that. And your pitch doesn't matter. Your future, you and your future matters. And you are arriving to this moment of graduation and you crossing the stage and earning this MBA certificate and making your families proud and making yourself proud. You have defied the odds. How many of you have thought about quitting at some point and defy and every hand goes up? I'm like, see, you know, and sometimes

you guys say that quitting is not an option. Well, guess what? Quitting is always an option. You just chose not to take that option. I am proud of you. I am proud of what we are accomplishing together. Our country needs to see more success stories like yours of people who have made grave mistakes and who are getting back on their feet and who are trying again, because you could have given up on yourselves. You could have given up on your future. You could give up on being a father going forward. So I'll tell you what, I care about your pitch because I care about you. I really don't care about your pitch, but because you want to win and you're competitive, tough guys. All right, fine. I care about your pitch. So when you stand up tomorrow, there's going to be a panel of five to 10 of these sharks.

First of all, these sharks want you to win. They're coming here because they believe in second chances and underdogs. When you stand up in front of the panel and then we say, what's the worst thing that could happen? And they're pretty funny. They're like, oh, I pass out or I forget my words or I freeze up or I look stupid. And I'm like, what's worse than that? What's worse than that? One of them once said, I defecate myself. And I was like, yeah, that would suck. Okay. That would suck. But the worst thing that will probably happen is that maybe you freeze up and you forget some of your words. I say, if you stand up in front of the panel and you just go, and you can't think of a single word, you still win. You graduate, you cross the stage, you make yourself proud. You make our country proud. And then they graduate and they deliver their pitches in an amazing way.

Every time they surprise themselves at what they're able to do. What, is there a place where people can learn more about the curriculum that you use? Yeah. Our website defyventures.org, we're a nonprofit, has a lot of information about Defy. So we have a hundred courses inside, a hundred courses outside. And with our donors, we even share some of our online courses that are amazing. So in prison, people don't usually have online access,

and so our courses are DVD-based. Outside, they're on an online platform, and so for our donors, we are even able to share them because I tell our volunteers, I don't want just our guys to forgive themselves and to be the CEOs of their new lives. I want you to live your fullest life too. So we're happy.

Sharing is caring. What about, I'm looking at the resources section on defyventures.org right now. What about the actual classes themselves, those that have been vetted by Baylor and so on, the actual content of what you are teaching? Is that available anywhere? So we don't just make it available to anybody. So for example, some of our courses that are taught by Henry cloud, a top therapist or the Harvard and Stanford MBA courses, uh, Harvard and Stanford don't want us just like making that available to anybody. So it's available to people who are in our program so i guess you have to go commit a felony first but um um but many most of our courses actually don't have those kinds of

restrictions on them and so we're happy to make those available to people but i would say uh my little hook is i want you doing something for second chances in our country so don't just come and take a course, become a contributor too. If you become a contributor to Defy, we would be glad to make our, we make our courses available on our online platform where you have to have the secret code, but we make our online courses available because I want our volunteers having access to this amazing stuff too. For example, we have eight courses in etiquette training taught by an Emily Post instructor. And many of our volunteers have told

me, is there any way that my husband can get access to those courses? And I say, sure, if y'all make them watch them. So yes, So, yes, we'd be glad to share the resources. Cool. Yeah. And just to come back to something you mentioned in passing as we were chatting, if I were to ever join you at a prison, I'm happy to do that. So we can figure out the specifics of that visit at some point. But I think it would be very helpful. Is that a commitment, Tim?

Did I just hear that? That's not going to get cut out? Yeah, that's a commitment. Sure. Tim Ferriss comes to prison with your 100 closest friends who sign up from this podcast. Yes, we'll figure out the specifics of that. I do think the – I want people to know what Kat just did there. That's a very seasoned pitch artist at work closing the deal.

Cutco sales skills. I do think even just having the names of the courses that you're incorporating from, say, Stanford, GSB, and elsewhere would be a very useful way to drive traffic to your site also. I will make sure that we update our website before this podcast is launched. Perfect. So people can check it out. Seth Godin has taught a course, multiple courses for us on ideation strategies. Jerry Colonna has taught a course on the fear of the entrepreneur and how to get to the other side of that. Union Square Ventures, venture capitalists have, we've recorded live pitches of our released

men and women pitching in their offices and then the feedback that they're giving to entrepreneurs. Tim Draper has taught a course for us. Kleiner Perkins, one of the partners from there has recorded a course. So we have amazing courses in entrepreneurship that range from how to come up with a smart business idea to how to scale it. We have courses in how to market your business and hiring and hiring and firing and creating culture. But the other 70% of our courses that are on parenting. And for example, how to answer tough questions when your kid asks you, daddy, have you ever used drugs? What to say about that? So that the parenting courses and the forming a new identity courses are really valuable. And then I also like to think that our employment series is pretty

sweet. Like I teach a course called how to write a resume when you've done 19 years in prison. Um, and the creative things that you can come up with to put on this man, not lie about it. Yeah. The, uh, what is it? Additional skills or special skills section could be very yeah improvised i would imagine uh what uh well let me let me jump into just with the time that we have remaining uh a number of the questions that i like to to ask towards the tail end of a conversation like this. And the first, okay, good. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm going to get there. I'm going to get there. Yeah. I'm going to get there.

This is the first question I was going to ask you, which is going to lead naturally there is what book or books have you gifted the most to other people? Or do you, I regularly gift books to other people. do you or do you regularly gift books to other people and up until recently the book that i have most regularly gifted is cheryl sandberg's book option b because it's closely related to the work that i do and cheryl is the most inspiring woman that i know and i really respect her she's's on my executive council. And, and, um, so I love her book option B on healing and building a new future. And, uh, Cheryl, I feel very spoiled about this. Cheryl wrote the forward to my own book called a second chance. And so now the book that I'm gifting even more than option B is my own book, A Second Chance.

And where can people find it? Yeah. And Seth Godin has been working as my pro bono publisher. Every dollar from the book goes directly to creating life-changing opportunities for people through scholarships for Defy. And so it's not going into a publisher's pocket. And speaking of gifting, Seth is buying and has donated 20,000 copies of the book back to Defy. He's so generous to us. And I'm really inspired by his generosity and Sheryl Sandberg's generosity and the way that they have supported our Second Chance work. I hope that this book, yes, it will open the eyes of people

about topics that we've been talking about for the incarcerated. But my other even greater purpose for our readers of this book, A Second Chance, is that you will decide to give yourself a second chance. I talk a lot about forgiveness, like we've talked about, Tim, that you will choose to forgive or give a second chance to other people in your life. Or if you know other people who have made big mistakes, who are down on themselves, that you'll use this book as a resource for them to achieve freedom as well. Yeah, Seth. And that was the context with which Seth first reached out to me was related to related to the book. So I encourage everybody to check it out for sure. The idea is if people who have royally screwed up their lives and the lives of other people, if they can forgive themselves and gain forgiveness from other people, get back on their feet, start legal businesses and build an incredibly successful new future, you can do it too. And many of us suffer from this shame of mine is worse than yours. Like, oh, if you really knew what I did, it's so much worse or mine is not recoverable. And that's a message that plays inside our heads. And I don't think it's true. Yours isn't worse. You're human and you can bounce back

to. It's also not helpful. I mean, I think that if that makes sense, even if it is worse, it's, it's the, the replaying of that story, using that as your defining narrative is not going to help create the future that you want to have. Right. You have a choice. You can keep yourself locked up in your head over a past decision forever, or we can help you to get out of your own prison. Your choice. Yeah. If you could have a message on a billboard,

metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions of people so it could be one line can't be an advertisement but just a a word an expression a quote from someone else anything what would you put on that billboard can't be an advertisement so i can't say give me all your money show me i would say i would say, I would say, forgive yourself. And I would, maybe I would put it in Vegas, but I think a better place in Vegas would be, I have a big heart for people who live in a culture of judgment and oppression. And sometimes well-meaning religions, for example, can create this environment where we can say that, yes, we've sinned in the past, or we've made a mistake in the past. But now when we show up at church on Sunday, we're all wearing the perfect

outfit. How's your wife? Blessed. How's your job? Great. How are you? Happy. And there's a culture of oppression. And then I believe that sin thrives in secrecy. And so if there's like an audience, especially, I could say, forgive yourself. You're just human too. It's especially in environments where people are forced to act more perfect than others. And that might be, for example, in the deep South where there's religion, it might be a Stanford business school where everyone has to be the A plus student too, and has to be the very best. What do you do when you're feeling overwhelmed or temporarily unfocused or that you've lost your focus when you've lost your mooring, so to speak, and any of the, any of the above, what do you do just in a very kind of practical tactical sense? Yeah, well, it depends on how overwhelmed I'm feeling. So if I'm feeling like

sort of overwhelmed, then I'll make a list of my priorities and I will bounce them off of staff member that I really trust to help me to get my priorities straight. Because when I have like clear marching orders and priorities, it helps me to become less overwhelmed. When you say bounce them off of them, what are you asking them to do? What's, what does that look like? I'll show them the list and be like, can you help me decide what is really important and what I can say no to? Cause sometimes the more overwhelmed I get, the less good of a decision maker I also become and things can get cloudy. So I recently read the book essentialism and I love the whole framework for making decisions. And I shared that with some staff that helps me to control my calendar and

opportunities and want to say yes to or no. And so if I get overwhelmed, I'll be like, all right, let's take a step back. I also have a one sheet with my priorities right in front of me. And I look at it every day and it says, for example, as my favorite place to be is in prison, but because I love the journey of transformation and the amazing, I feel like I see miracles every day. Um, but my sheet says, if I really love our EITs, my strict number one responsibility will be fundraising so that I can make sure that I'm creating more opportunities for people who are incarcerated who have been praying for a shot at a second chance. So I keep my priorities, not just top of mind, but physically in front of me. I like need to be able to see it. And then I'll ask other

people for help. I'll say timeout. When I get super overwhelmed, I'll actually take a time out and cancel stuff. And just, I need to, I need to have some space. I take like a, I take a monthly monk days, what I call it. No phone, no email. It's one of the best things I do. I recommend it to everybody. Is that, is, does that typically fall on a certain day of the week? No, it can be any day, but it's during the week. I don't do it during the weekend. And it's a time for me to reflect on my leadership, my priorities, new initiatives. It's when I get creative. And my whole life is so extroverted. I travel all the time.

I'm speaking on a stage in prison. And my life is like a flurry. And so quiet, reflective time is deeply important to me. And it's usually when I scheme up good, exciting ideas too, and get perspective. When you wake up on monk day, what does it look like? I mean, what does reflecting actually look like? What does the monk schedule look like? So for me, monk day is just like working out. The process leading up to it is really painful. It's because I know that for a full day, this sounds silly, but for a full day, I'm not going

to be able to email or talk to people. So the day before I'm like trying to squeeze in every last thing. And it's just like with a workout, I'm usually like procrastinating and trying to put it off until I start working out. And then I feel really good about it. I try to make excuses for what I need to cancel it. But it's very important to me to stay disciplined. So I come into my monk day already with a list of things that I'm going to do on that monk day, which might include go for a long walk or read this book or think about this issue. And so my email is off. My phone's off, my staff knows they can't

reach me. And I usually do something that is really nice to me to start off the day. Um, so eat my favorite food or what's, what's one of your favorite foods. I'm going to keep doing this. I don't eat it in the morning but like an awesome medium rare steak is my favorite food steak oysters red wine i'm a happy camper so i don't eat that for breakfast usually um so i love eggs i love poached eggs perfect but when i when i do something that's kind of, sometimes on a monk day I'll even go and get a massage, for example. Because it chills me out and I'm super hyper normally. I wake up and I'm like a crazy honey badger first thing in the morning.

Or if I take a bubble bath, that calms my spirit too. And I play sweet violin music. And I actually have baby lullabies on my playlist. That probably sounds really creepy. But I do things to quiet myself. I'm just imagining you eating a medium rare steak, drinking red wine while the lullabies are playing. There's nothing wrong with that. Stop judging me.

While doing a bicep concentration like a concentration crawl with one arm. Yeah. I also, I have a walking treadmill desk and I absolutely love it because I feel like when I'm on it, I'm being kind to myself. Like I'm burning free calories and I like to be fit and work out. So sometimes, um, first thing in the monk day, I'll get on my walking treadmill desk with a book that I love to read. And I just start reading it and I start taking notes and I have these awesome

headphones and I'm so I'm like blaring. Yeah. My little nerdy violin or piano music and it calms me and it takes me out of the world. And then I start taking notes. Like right before I turned 40, I had a series of really amazing monk days. And I spent the last six months of monk days before I turned 40 doing an in-depth like evaluation, like a review of my first 40 years. And then thinking about my impact on the world and thinking about what I wanted my voice and impact to be for the next 40 years. And I didn't make like really turbo plans for like my 80th birthday or anything. But I have a pretty strong plan until I'm 53. And that's far enough for me. But I felt like so good about taking that time out to evaluate and to say, what do I really want? And then reading a

lot of books that helped to guide me in that direction. So I like to have a good plan because I'm like a freight train. And if I have the right direction, I, I hit it in that direction. I, and then I bounce my plans after my month day off of mentors and people who look out for me to make sure that I'm making good plans. Do you have any suggested artist or album or track for either the violin or piano music for people who want to get a taste? Oh my gosh, that's a good question. If not, I'm looking at it right now. Okay. While you're looking for it i can keep going the uh just look up baby lullaby piano on like spotify or something like that okay perfect and i love the um vitamin string quartet as well vitamin vitamin string quartet vitamin like Vitamin? Vitamin String Quartet Vitamin like Vitamin C

Yeah, I want to go to one of their concerts Trippy Alright, and then Sometimes their songs are not all the most relaxing They play a lot of pop songs in vitamin form but sometimes I listen to that while I'm

cooking. I like to sew a lot too so when I'm sewing stuff I I jam out to vitamin string quartet. And how often do you do monk days? So on those say the monk days leading up to your 40th birthday, how often, what was the interval on the monk days? So I have a personal monk day once a month, and I've done this for like, I don't know, 12 years or 15 years or something, a long time in my life. It's been a longstanding habit. And then I separately have business monk days.

So personal monk day is no can have email and I can work on work stuff with some of my closest colleagues, but I have no scheduled appointments, which is freedom for me because my calendar is usually scheduled too insanely. But on a business month day, it's like time for me to just work and get work done with staff, answer emails too. Got it. And I have one to three of those per month. One to three of those per month. Yeah. Sometimes I go away like in an ideal world and I say ideally because I haven't executed perfectly on this, but sometimes I, every quarter I'll take a three day business monk day. And sometimes even I've even gone away for a one week business month day, meaning no scheduled appointments.

And what I've found to be most effective for me, this might sound silly, but like when I get out of the country, so I go to Mexico and I sit my butt like a cool resort. I go by myself. And for some reason, when I'm out of the country, I'm not going to schedule phone calls or other appointments with people. So then I just work. And, and like at Defy, we have, we're working currently on 2,400 pages of new curriculum. So it's a time for me to get away, but it's a dedicated work time, but away from the daily scramble. What, what books helped you when you were leading up to your 40th birthday in the assessing or reassessing and planning and so on?

And closely related to that, why did the planning take you to exactly 53 years old? Boy, so I'm terrible at recalling names of the books that I love just randomly like this. I will say that the book Essentialism really had a big impact on me. Yeah. Um, so I tell you what, we can work backwards 53 years. Why, why 53? Okay. Well, so for defy, um, my vision is that I would like Defy to be able to serve in every major prison in America, defined as having more than 500 incarcerated people there, in every major city within my lifetime. So I started modeling kind of back of the envelope, well, a little Excel involved on a reasonable growth rate for what we can accomplish. And according to my projections, if we keep going right now, Defy, as of 2017, we're in five states, five state prison systems. And so by the time we're 53, I think we can serve in every major prison and have corresponding post-release employment and mentoring and incubator. So, um,

so, you know, if I miss a mark and I'm 58, that's fine. But right now I actually believe that we'll make it by the time I'm 53. Awesome. My, my vision, I would love to put Defy out of business by ending mass incarceration. I know that there will always be incarceration in the world. There doesn't always need to be mass incarceration the way that we do that in America. What would be the defining characteristics of getting rid of mass incarceration as you, as you're using it?

So America has 5% of the world's population and 22% of the world's prison population. We love to lock people up and throw away the key. We are the only country in the world that routinely sentences children to life in prison. So we have a 14-year-old who makes a bad decision, and then they're going to die in prison. And according to everything I've seen, five years in prison is a turning point for many people. After they've served five years, that's long enough to take ownership and then to not recidivate. And there are other countries that are far more progressive about rehabilitation efforts and about not just making

it be about punishment, but about being correction. So I am looking forward to the day when 76.6% of people in prison don't recidivate. But beyond preventing recidivism and also preventing generational incarcerations, and 70% of the children of incarcerated people go to prison, the other piece of this that I want to tackle is the way that we sentence people, the way that we even arrest people. So in our country, some people look more arrestable than others because of the color of their skin or their economic status, how beat up of a car they drive. And a lot of studies show that white people and black people use and sell drugs at same rates. But in some states, if you're a person of color, you'll be sentenced that 20x the amount that a white person might be sentenced or like the Brock

Turner case, the cute little Stanford swimmer boy who raped a girl and got six months for that. I mean, if he were not so cute or so white or such a fast swimmer, he would have gotten life in prison. And so I, I look forward to working on sentencing reform efforts and bail and bond reform efforts, because right now, if you're picked up by the police, um, you haven't been given due process and your bail is 500 bucks and you're sitting in jail and you can't prove your innocence because you don't have an attorney, you're going to sit there maybe for six months until they wear you out and then they convince you to plead guilty to a charge. And if you don't have economic resources to get a good attorney, you're probably going to plead

guilty. And they'll tell you, oh, if you plead guilty to this lesser felony or this misdemeanor, it won't be a big deal. In six months, maybe your girlfriend has left you, your employer has dropped you. The world has changed. Oh, by the way, now you have a criminal history too. Good luck getting a job. And you're super down on yourself because you've just spent six months waiting in a cell, getting dehumanized every single day. That's the kind of stuff, the way that people of color in particular and the harshness and the disparities of sentencing is something that I really want to be able to use my voice and not just my voice or opinions, but defies results and defies amazing community of supporters. I want to fix it. Well, I've been very impressed with

defy the end, the story, and certainly the results, which is the first thing that I look at. So I do encourage people to check out A Second Chance, and that'll be linked to in the show notes, which I'll remind people of shortly. I want to come back for a second to ask you a question. What questions do you ask yourself to help you get centered or focused or anything else? And I'll buy time by bringing up one that is a paraphrase from Jerry Colonna. So I've spent a good amount of time with

Jerry on the phone. And one of the questions that I found very helpful and insightful, which I'm sure I'm going to be mangling a little bit that he asks is how are you complicit in the conditions you say you don't want right so how are you contributing to the things you say you don't want uh whether those are conflicting goals whether those are conflicting priorities whether those are goals you have without any accountability whatever it might be but that question how are you complicit in the conditions you say you don't want i've found very helpful over the last few years. Are there any questions or exercises that you, you use for yourself on a regular basis? Yes. So when I was, um, going through my resignation, I've, I've had a lot of opportunity

to study what leads to people bombing out and failing. I read a book called Leading on Empty by Wayne Cordero. It has sort of like a Christian spin to it as a disclaimer for your audience. But I mean, a lot of us leaders or people who have big goals will lead on empty or drive ourselves to empty. And this book, similar to Essentialism or a lot of other good business books, asks a question like, what is the 5% that only I can do that no one else can do? And why am I spending all this time doing other things that so many other

people can do, even if I can maybe do them better in my own arrogance, right? So asking myself, what's my 5%, like what's my secret sauce? What is my gift that I bring into this world is something I ask myself nearly every day. And I've really been honing in on this lately. I just hired a president for Defy Ventures and his name is Roger Gordon. And I'm so excited to partner with this guy. He will run the day-to-day operations of Defy because that's not me. It's not what I like to do. I don't love managing people. I don't pretend that I'm the best in the world at it, but I do know that I'm highly innovative and I can see problems and come up with solutions. I know that I'm a strong external representative for Defy. So doing more speaking engagements, although I don't love raising money, I'm good at it. So I'm

going to keep doing that. But I also, I know that I have the ability to earn the trust of the people that we work with. And so, for example, lately, I've been working within, within some pretty intense gang cultures at some reconciliation efforts. And for some reason, this white girl here is trusted enough by, by these people to talk about some, some big transformation efforts. So that's what I'm focusing on. And then I'm working very hard and swiftly to get other things off of my plate. So I don't have responsibility for them. Scary to me to lose control over them too, but I have such amazing staff at Defy now nationally that I'm glad to give away that responsibility so I can focus on my top 5%. Like if I died in a year, what would I spend my time doing?

I ask myself that all the time, and I know that that might sound like a little bit – what's the word? Morbid. Morbid. Yeah, I don't care how morbid it sounds. At Defy, we have our EITs write their eulogies and, and I've done that. And in fact, we have them write two eulogies and this is a pretty good exercise that other people could try to, one of them is your current trajectory eulogy. Like if you died now doing your same old, same old, and you didn't make major changes in your

life, what would your eulogy say? And how do you feel about it? Most people wouldn't be super satisfied with it. And then we have them write their ideal, but realistic eulogy. Like if you lived your best life, that is realistic for you also, what would that look like? And then the most important part is write out the 10 changes that you need to make to get from A to B and then prioritize them and pick your top three things that you can start doing today to live a better life. And so I apply all these little defy exercises to my own life. And yeah, I guess I live in a sort of morbid thing, morbid sense, but like time is limited for all of us. And I want to have the greatest impact in the shortest amount of time. So how do I use the gifts that I have

been given to, this is my generous hustle. This is my ability to share something with the world that only I can create. Well, Kat, thank you for developing, sharing, and communicating your gifts with the world. You're doing really important work. And thank you for taking the time to hang out. Maybe someday I'll give you a chance to heel hook me. In person, maybe we can coordinate that with the prison visit that I did commit to. So you have me on the hook for that.

And I really appreciate you doing what you do, number one. But number two, also taking the time to share it today and to have this conversation. Well, Tim, getting to speak with you is one of the greatest honors that I've had. I was really excited about this because I know how influential your audience is. And am I allowed to share my email address, Tim? We talked a little bit about this. Yes. If you're willing to get the hug of death with mass numbers of people emailing, you're welcome to share your email address. Well, here's what I will say to anyone who's listening, is if you email me, I'm in prison all the time. So please keep it really short and sweet and to the point. I'm not trying to be rude or anything. But if you want to get involved with Defy, first of all, you can go to defyventures.org. But if you want to email me, my email of our EITs, we would be really grateful if you would become even more of an

advocate of second chances and share this message with other people. Because I always say, who would our country be? Who would we all be if we lived up to being the land of second chances that we claim to be? So Tim, thank you for the opportunity to share our mission and my story. And I see it as a big responsibility and a huge privilege to be a voice on behalf of people who are incarcerated, who become voiceless and often written off and voteless. And so it's my honor to get to share some of our story with all of you. Thank you. My pleasure.

So everybody check it out, A Second Chance. And for those long-term listeners, you know this part already, but as always, you can find links to everything we talked about, the books, A Second Chance, the Defy website, and much, much more in the show notes at tim.blog forward slash podcast, where you can find the show notes for all episodes, this one included. the time and a lovely conversation that has given me a lot of food for thought and also things to look forward to, including that visit that we're going to take together. And to everyone listening, as always, thank you for listening. And until next time, keep experimenting, keep testing assumptions and give yourself a second chance. Take a moment for forgiveness and that will in turn affect how you are better able to forgive others. So thanks everybody.

Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read

and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. Every year, of course, people look for new ways to become healthier schedule, missed meals, and so on. There are going to be times in the new year when your diet and exercise will get interrupted.

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Here's some recommended copy that they put in the read. So I'm going to read it and I'll give you my take. Quote, a warning for those in the experimental mindset. Reishi is strong and bitter in parentheses like any great medicine. So if the bitterness is too much, I recommend trying it with honey and or nut milk such as almond milk. End quote. So I'm going to say no, you should suck it up and you should drink the tea because it's not that bitter. And maybe you should take the advice of all Chinese people when they're criticizing youngins, when they say, which means you're not able to eat bitterness. Bitter is in many cases, an indication of

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