Latest / Nightmare Success In and Out / From Guidance Counselor to $3 Billion Big Pharma Sales- Alec Burlakoff

Transcript

From Guidance Counselor to $3 Billion Big Pharma Sales- Alec Burlakoff · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:00
  What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality?
• 0:03
  Hi, I'm Brent Cassidy. Welcome to the Nightmare Success
• 0:06
  In and Out podcast, where we explore how to overcome your
• 0:09
  fears and nightmares and set yourself free.
• 0:12
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:15
  Leavenworth with and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 0:19
  These stories can be inspiring, sometimes.
• 0:21
  Sad. There's some humor, but
• 0:24
  hopefully you can come away with a nugget of something that'll
• 0:27
  help you knock down some of the prisons you built up in your own
• 0:30
  mind. Welcome back, nightmare success.
• 0:35
  In and out, listeners. Wow, do I have a treat today.
• 0:39
  I know you guys come here for what happens when your worst
• 0:42
  fear becomes your reality. Well, Alec Burlakoff is my
• 0:49
  guest, and he is. It's a fascinating story.
• 0:54
  I was just watching another podcast.
• 0:58
  Justin Poperni actually turned me on to Alec.
• 1:00
  And it's, I mean, you could make a movie out of it and there they
• 1:06
  basically are. But this is a school guidance
• 1:09
  counselor that then turns into someone who generates over $3
• 1:13
  billion worth of pharmaceutical sales in the drug industry.
• 1:18
  Alec was a senior VP at Insa Pharmaceuticals.
• 1:22
  You may see him on 60 Minutes. You may have read his book
• 1:26
  Selling Hard Lessons Learned. There's a Netflix movie coming
• 1:30
  out in October, Pain Hustlers, about Alec in the fall of this
• 1:34
  billion dollar company and he helped actually contribute on to
• 1:38
  that movie. In the end of all this, this
• 1:43
  story, there was the founder and six other executives that were
• 1:47
  convicted and a very unique case.
• 1:52
  It's not really happened the way that this happened, reaching
• 1:55
  into the C-Suite and pulling people out and put him in
• 1:58
  prison. And the other interesting thing
• 2:01
  is Alec and I were just talking about this before he got on.
• 2:05
  He did his time while COVID was going on.
• 2:07
  And I just find that incredibly interesting because there's only
• 2:10
  so many different type of things that are certain freedoms you
• 2:15
  have in prison. And when they take those away,
• 2:18
  it gets really small. I can't wait to unpack all this
• 2:22
  with this fascinating story with Alec.
• 2:24
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• 3:06
  Brent from Nightmare success sent you.
• 3:09
  Alec, how are you doing? I'm well.
• 3:12
  How about you, Brent? I'm doing good.
• 3:14
  Thanks so much for making the time to do this, Alec.
• 3:19
  I find your story absolutely fascinating because you know,
• 3:25
  and there's so many different layers to this because you, your
• 3:30
  dad and your brother were in the sales business and you weren't.
• 3:37
  You went a totally opposite direction.
• 3:39
  You, you, you went into child psychology.
• 3:41
  You got a master's in that. Then you became a guidance
• 3:44
  counselor. And as the story goes, you were
• 3:48
  like, man, I want, I want to, I want to catch up with dollars.
• 3:50
  I want to, you know, get into something that that can be
• 3:53
  something that I can relate back to what everybody else is doing.
• 3:57
  And he got into this big world but it's not too far out of the
• 4:02
  realm because you had been in a competitive guy all your life
• 4:05
  you it wasn't like all of a sudden you you put on the
• 4:08
  Superman robe and and said okay I'm I'm Alex Burlakoff and now
• 4:14
  I'm taking off you you've you were kind of already had it in
• 4:17
  your DNA you just decided I'm I'm taking off And then when you
• 4:23
  took off which is interesting Alec is you became I think it
• 4:29
  was the rookie of the year with Eli Lilly right off the bat
• 4:33
  which I had to be incredibly I don't know I would have been
• 4:38
  pretty enthusiastic about that if that was the new new career I
• 4:41
  was going into. So going back into this, just, I
• 4:46
  mean just sprinkling a little bit of that, take us back to
• 4:49
  growing up as a kid. What was it like to be an Alex
• 4:51
  life growing up? I mean, I grew up, you know,
• 4:56
  with Mom and dad. They got divorced when I was in
• 4:59
  college, so I had. I had Mom and Dad at home.
• 5:04
  For, you know, from my elementary school years, my mom
• 5:08
  was a full time stay at home mom.
• 5:10
  My dad was a workaholic. I had an older brother who had
• 5:15
  some very, very severe bipolar disorder and passed away in
• 5:20
  2013. You know, he and my brother and
• 5:24
  I were close. And we, you know, we do what
• 5:26
  most kids did. We hung out.
• 5:27
  We play stickball. We play basketball.
• 5:31
  Any other game that we could figure out, obviously we
• 5:34
  weren't. We weren't.
• 5:36
  I tried to stay not home, you know, I didn't like to be home
• 5:39
  then, like got friends over. You know, it was.
• 5:41
  I had it. Listen, I didn't have a bad
• 5:43
  life. But, you know, there was always
• 5:44
  yelling and screaming and fighting.
• 5:45
  You know, parents didn't have a good marriage.
• 5:47
  And with my brother's mental illness, there was stress in the
• 5:50
  family. But you know, I think you think
• 5:53
  you talk openly enough to enough people and you realize that
• 5:56
  that's pretty much it happens exactly.
• 5:59
  Right. Yeah, so, So one of the things I
• 6:03
  thought was interesting, you had sports and different things
• 6:05
  going on in your world. I think your dad was a big part
• 6:07
  of that in your world too, But you got sick like in junior
• 6:13
  high. Was that the time passed?
• 6:16
  Actually the the summer before my senior year in high school,
• 6:21
  yeah, I got sick. And walk us through that, cuz I
• 6:24
  think that played into where you went in your head in your life.
• 6:29
  Yeah, I mean, you know, to be young and sick, I had a very
• 6:34
  severe bacterial infection called brucellosis that I think
• 6:37
  I caught spending my summer up in Connecticut that year.
• 6:41
  It's very difficult to diagnose and you know to be sick for you
• 6:48
  know, 6-8 months before even getting diagnosed and people
• 6:52
  will understand. There are many people out there
• 6:54
  who've been sick and and not diagnosed or misdiagnosed or.
• 6:58
  We're told that there's nothing wrong with them, you know, And
• 7:01
  at the age of 16, when all you want to go out, all you want to
• 7:03
  do is go out and play ball with your friends.
• 7:05
  Oh yeah, I can't imagine. It's kind of hard to even
• 7:08
  imagine that like some doctors would be like you're fine, just
• 7:11
  go back because the the bacteria was just so rare.
• 7:16
  I think I was the first case diagnosed in 20 years.
• 7:18
  What did you feel like? What was the symptoms of it?
• 7:22
  Just the worst flu you ever had. But they never end, you know,
• 7:26
  just. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 7:28
  Joints. Month after month.
• 7:30
  Sweat. Yeah, that sounds terrible.
• 7:33
  Nausea, losing weight, you know, there's something wrong.
• 7:38
  So it was a relief when I was eventually hospitalized, had a
• 7:40
  team of doctors on my case and they diagnosed me and and then
• 7:44
  and then it got worse before it gets better.
• 7:46
  Like many people know where sick, you know, I had to take
• 7:49
  some serious antibiotics for a very long period of time where I
• 7:54
  was convinced that I was only getting sicker.
• 7:56
  Although I was feeling sicker, my Briselle account was going
• 7:59
  way down, so I was getting better.
• 8:02
  But it took years to feel normal.
• 8:04
  Yeah, so did more or less. You getting better happened all
• 8:08
  through your high school years. So my whole senior year in high
• 8:12
  school was shot. I was on home bound.
• 8:14
  I didn't even go to school. Can't imagine.
• 8:17
  Yeah, and then I always wanted to go to school out of state.
• 8:21
  You know, I went to school. I went to high school in
• 8:22
  Florida. And then, you know, with me
• 8:24
  being sick and the doctors and I didn't want to be too far away.
• 8:27
  So I went to school in state, still 5 1/2 hours away from all.
• 8:31
  I went to Florida State University undergrad, but I came
• 8:34
  home a lot of weekends, first two years, see doctors and try
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  to get myself right. So, you know, you learn at an
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  early age that you're not invincible, you know?
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  And then, you know, like something very, very terrible
• 8:48
  can happen. You could die very quickly, but.
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  It shaped the way I thought. It was my first bout of mental
• 8:55
  illness, right? Depression.
• 8:57
  Being sick. Well, you talk about depression
• 8:59
  because you talk about a couple of things.
• 9:02
  Alec. That thinks interesting.
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  You you really talk about your dad was a big presence in your
• 9:07
  life and that's not unusual. I we were just talking about
• 9:10
  that that my dad was a huge presence in my life.
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  How did that all play out for you as you were growing up?
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  Because as a divorced home of and and being who you were, what
• 9:22
  what? How did that play for you?
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  With regards to just my parents roles yeah and and how he played
• 9:30
  into your life and and because. Yeah, yeah, your dad is your
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  everything. I mean, I had an older brother
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  also commenced for me, but he was already mentored and molded
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  into the box. So I I got a double dope.
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  Sure. You know and you know I.
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  Because I wasn't the sales guy and so forth at the dinner
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  table, you know, I was just a listener.
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  I was an observer. The conversation was between my
• 9:55
  brother and my father. You know, what deals were made,
• 9:58
  how the deals were closed, what was the logistics of the deal.
• 10:01
  And you know, so I was exposed because they were in the car
• 10:04
  business. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  My dad started in the printing business or all of that just
• 10:11
  became obsolete. And then he came down here.
• 10:14
  We moved down here in Florida. Want to whim.
• 10:17
  He didn't have a job. He didn't have anything and you
• 10:19
  know trying to make ends meet, figure out what to do and
• 10:22
  eventually he took a car on the lot and then you know was
• 10:26
  promoted 5 times to you know GM. And my brother did the same
• 10:30
  thing in you know far less time. I mean, you know, there's sales
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  ability in the family DNA, but I think it's like what I think
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  interesting about all that is, is that it probably was in your
• 10:46
  DNA from the beginning, but your dad didn't really want you to go
• 10:49
  that way. I mean, did you go into child
• 10:53
  psychology because you could feel him pushing you into that,
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  or was that something you just naturally wanted to do and go
• 11:00
  the opposite direction of the sales?
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  More that I want to go the opposite direction in sales.
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  You know, I loathed it. I I thought it sounded like
• 11:08
  hell. What is hell sometimes?
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  You know, right and and I'll be you know I'll be selling the
• 11:14
  rest of my life and on my own. You know as a convicted felon
• 11:19
  you're not getting the big you know, public company hiring you
• 11:23
  for a salary. Those days are those days are
• 11:24
  over, right? We got to be really, really
• 11:26
  creative. Yeah, and be able to tell your
• 11:30
  story. Yeah, yeah.
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  And really quite frankly do what I love to do and what I'm best,
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  I mean what made me successful, you know in sales was my ability
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  to speak and get people to listen and follow.
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  So now the now the question is, you know what am I saying
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  because people are going to follow and it's going to be the
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  right message which unfortunately that you know that
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  wasn't the case in the interest scenario.
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  Well, let's let's talk about that because let's let's walk
• 12:01
  through it a little bit cuz you were living a a normal whatever
• 12:06
  normal is. You were a coach a guidance
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  counselor at school. What?
• 12:16
  What gave you the launch to jump?
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  Well. First of all, I worked at a very
• 12:24
  I had a couple of jobs throughout my preceptorships is
• 12:27
  as as an intern and so forth. But my first real job as a
• 12:32
  guidance counselor was at an affluent private school.
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  I was surrounded by people who were easy and some of them were
• 12:41
  very nice and kind and and tried to mentor me and help me and
• 12:46
  guide me. And one specifically said I do
• 12:49
  not see you doing this. Like what are you going to do
• 12:52
  with your life? And he was actually one of the
• 12:54
  people instrumental in getting me an interview with Eli Lilly.
• 12:59
  But the the being around the money and getting to an age
• 13:04
  where I'm no longer like 21/22/23 but I'm starting to be
• 13:08
  around 30 year olds. I'm seeing all the money they
• 13:10
  have and the way they talk and the way they act, the way they
• 13:12
  dress. It all started to mold me and
• 13:15
  then being at the school and seeing these, these parents with
• 13:18
  this crazy money. It got to me, quite frankly.
• 13:23
  Straw that broke the camel's back was, you know, I had to
• 13:27
  monitor the carpool lane after school and we had a guy smoking
• 13:32
  a scar and a Bentley convertible.
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  I went out there and said, hey, would you mind kindly putting
• 13:38
  the cigar out? He took another puff, blew it in
• 13:41
  my face and and said petty rules from petty people, you know.
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  And you know, I'm talking to you about that today because I'll
• 13:48
  never forget it And it it stuck with it drove me.
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  For a long, long time. But now I realized at this point
• 13:56
  in my life, I can't. I can't let you like that.
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  I just got to go through one ear right out the other, you know,
• 14:00
  because it's completely counterproductive, you know well
• 14:03
  and plus what you've experienced, you've experienced
• 14:06
  all the highs and lows. So you know when somebody says
• 14:09
  that that that's, it's it's pretty what what do we call
• 14:14
  that? I don't know.
• 14:17
  It's it's. It's It's app for pro first of
• 14:20
  all, I mean it's expected it. It is what it is, yeah.
• 14:24
  It's a stereotype. You know, I was talking with my
• 14:26
  girlfriend last night and you know, I was just saying like,
• 14:30
  you know, putting myself out here like this, you know, you
• 14:33
  see you, you're going to get comma and they're not going to
• 14:36
  be positive, you know? And I sat there.
• 14:39
  I said, listen, I can choose to bury my head in the sand like,
• 14:42
  you know, the other six, which I completely respect.
• 14:46
  I have no prompts, you know, I don't question their their
• 14:49
  motives. But for me, the even though I
• 14:53
  changed and prison changed me and my experience changed me in
• 14:56
  here, there's something still in here that says, Alex, that's not
• 15:00
  me. Well, and it's funny to say that
• 15:03
  Alec, because I had the exact same kind of conversation with
• 15:06
  my wife. We're walking the dogs.
• 15:08
  I've got my book coming out. This is a couple of years ago
• 15:10
  And and I said I think I'm going to do a podcast.
• 15:13
  And she said, Oh my goodness, she said what?
• 15:16
  What are you going to do? Because Julie truly, I think,
• 15:19
  would have liked me just to be the guy that was walking the
• 15:21
  dogs in the neighborhood and and living that silent life And.
• 15:26
  And she said, why can't you do that, Brent?
• 15:28
  And I said, I just not. I'm just Julie, you know me.
• 15:30
  You've known me since I was 15 years old.
• 15:32
  I'm just not wired that way. I feel like I've got to go out
• 15:35
  and make a difference. And how I make a difference is
• 15:37
  different than maybe what somebody else might do.
• 15:40
  And but I can tell you this because I was having a
• 15:43
  conversation with somebody the other day by doing that it's
• 15:47
  been the most liberating thing I've ever done because it takes
• 15:51
  all the power away from the person when you walk into the
• 15:53
  room. If I'm out in front of who I am
• 15:56
  and I've gone to prison and I've done what I've done and I've
• 15:59
  I've got my whole experience they can't use that against from
• 16:02
  me. I I've already exposed it out
• 16:04
  there that that's a disabler and I would rather that than wonder
• 16:09
  When I walk into there. I wonder if I wonder if I like
• 16:11
  knows wonder if, wonder if I wonder if Sue knows I wonder
• 16:15
  right. I don't like that.
• 16:17
  It's just better for me as a person and and I'm not
• 16:20
  belittling anybody that's not the other way.
• 16:22
  It's just easier for me to move that way A. 100%, yeah, It's
• 16:31
  again, for me, it wasn't an option.
• 16:34
  You know, I wanted it to be an option, but I quickly realized
• 16:38
  it was never going to be an option, so I couldn't fight.
• 16:42
  Let's go back in, Alec. Let's talk about how it happened
• 16:44
  because you start walking into being immediately more or less a
• 16:51
  guy that knows his way around sales.
• 16:53
  You start winning awards. You move through a couple of
• 16:58
  different companies, big companies.
• 17:00
  We're not talking about little companies, Johnson and Johnson
• 17:02
  and you know, big companies that you're you're rolling through
• 17:05
  and then you come to your final company.
• 17:09
  Tell us about that. Well, the final company, it's
• 17:13
  just amazing how life works and everybody can relate to this.
• 17:16
  You just never know. I was out of pharmaceuticals.
• 17:20
  I want to talk about that cuz you had a five year stint.
• 17:23
  What did you do in those five years that you were out?
• 17:26
  I was the Director of Business Development for Sleep
• 17:29
  Laboratories. We ran diagnostic tests for
• 17:31
  sleep disorders, obviously the most common one being instruct.
• 17:36
  Yeah, you know, I worked for the owner.
• 17:40
  I ran five to seven labs. Totally like people like oh that
• 17:46
  sounds like your stone pharmacy is totally, totally different.
• 17:49
  Talking about a tiny company with 7 lads in Florida and I was
• 17:54
  making a nice salary, no Commission, no bonus.
• 17:58
  Living the life that most people would really, really want to
• 18:02
  live. And interestingly enough.
• 18:08
  At some point during that five years stent, the owner said to
• 18:11
  me, you know Medicare is cutting the reimbursement rates of the
• 18:14
  of sleep apnea significantly. He's like I'm going to have to
• 18:20
  like cut your pay significantly and I'm like, I get it, I'm like
• 18:25
  listen, you've been good to me, we've been, we've been through
• 18:27
  this for years. You never know what's going to
• 18:29
  happen with the Medicare and the reimbursements.
• 18:32
  I said but would you be opposed to me entertaining, you know, an
• 18:38
  additional job, you know to make make up a difference to not at
• 18:42
  all. And while that was going on, I
• 18:45
  got a call from Matt Napolitano, the vice president of marketing
• 18:49
  at Insys. He used to work with me at
• 18:52
  Cephalon and he said we're just launching this new drug, it's,
• 18:56
  you know, we just started, we got a, we got a VP here.
• 18:59
  We're not happy with them. Are you interested?
• 19:03
  And I said what are we talking about?
• 19:04
  He says Right now, just be a manager in Florida.
• 19:07
  I said that's perfect. I work in Florida.
• 19:09
  That's where I live, right? Yeah, I can do both jobs at the
• 19:13
  same time. I can.
• 19:14
  I can do the pharmaceutical job, you know, literally with my
• 19:19
  hands tied behind my back, right?
• 19:21
  Pharmaceuticals is not a hard job.
• 19:23
  Yeah. And honestly, it's not a sales
• 19:25
  job. Yeah, there's there's maybe 2%
• 19:27
  of every company that are true sales people and conduct
• 19:29
  themselves accordingly. But.
• 19:31
  Pharmaceutical sales is the biggest Chris job in the world
• 19:34
  and people are spoiled rotten and all they do is complain.
• 19:37
  Why they, you know, don't make more money.
• 19:40
  I never had a lot of respect for pharmaceuticals, so I worked in
• 19:43
  IT many, many years. But quite frankly I despise
• 19:45
  everything about it. So, and I want to go back into
• 19:49
  Alec because in their world where you were at at that point,
• 19:52
  are you married? Do you have kids?
• 19:54
  Are you rich? Because you've done all these
• 19:57
  things and and become successful in your job.
• 19:59
  What? What's going on in your personal
• 20:01
  life? Before I went to this, yeah, I
• 20:06
  am. I'm exactly where where someone
• 20:09
  would want to be at that age. I mean, no, I'm not rich, but
• 20:13
  I'm very comfortable. You know, I have a house paid
• 20:17
  for in cash, a modest house, modest neighborhood.
• 20:22
  You know, we drive nice cars. You know, we could go out to
• 20:25
  eat. Do we travel all over the
• 20:26
  country and do we go spending thousands of dollars shopping?
• 20:29
  We don't have that, kind of. But I had a nice life and I had
• 20:33
  an easy job, You know, I mean it.
• 20:36
  And you got girls, right? You had two daughters, is that
• 20:39
  correct? Two daughters.
• 20:40
  OK. I have three daughters.
• 20:41
  So we're we're very much in relation to that.
• 20:44
  My 2 little girls, you know, and I was home every night and
• 20:48
  wasn't traveling anymore, which I was, you know, prior to that
• 20:51
  when I was in pharma. Yeah.
• 20:53
  And then, you know, I just literally, when I talked to Matt
• 20:56
  and then I talked to the CEO and the owner, I gave them the the
• 21:01
  most arrogant, cocky questions a man could ever ask cuz I.
• 21:04
  Like you ever met Kapoor before? No.
• 21:07
  OK, No. And I'm like, I'm not taking
• 21:09
  this job. Kapur being the CEO of the new
• 21:12
  company. Yeah, well, Kapur is the
• 21:14
  executive chairman, founder of the board.
• 21:16
  Mike Babbitt was the CEO. Yeah, I know either one of them.
• 21:19
  Anyway, I went out there and I just asked him like, off the
• 21:23
  wall crazy questions and they're like, it's your show, whatever
• 21:28
  you want to do, you know? And and I I I ran it
• 21:32
  accordingly. And I was convinced, you know,
• 21:35
  in 15 years of pharmaceuticals that if I could run the show and
• 21:39
  call my own shots. You could do it.
• 21:42
  I'm going to freaking do something that nobody's ever
• 21:44
  done in that way. That's how I've always.
• 21:45
  OK. So did you know, did you know at
• 21:48
  that time, walking into that interview and then kind of doing
• 21:52
  your research about it that the founder of the company wasn't
• 21:55
  really happy with his investment and he wanted a bigger return
• 21:59
  and and he was looking for? Better sales, Yeah.
• 22:05
  By that time I also already knew that the Vice President, Sales,
• 22:08
  who did not know at the time was going to be replaced.
• 22:12
  They didn't know it was going to be replaced by me, but knew that
• 22:16
  it was a possibility if I came in and performed in a, you know,
• 22:20
  quick period of time. Because they were after bigger
• 22:23
  sales. That's all.
• 22:25
  Yeah, it was. It was go for broke.
• 22:28
  Whatever. And this wasn't Kapoor's first
• 22:30
  rodeo. He'd been in several different
• 22:32
  companies. It was this company that he was
• 22:34
  really looking at that he he didn't feel like the sales were
• 22:37
  performing the way that he planned on it through his ROI
• 22:41
  and his projections. And he was looking for a better
• 22:43
  way, somebody to come in and kind of save the day and build
• 22:46
  some new sales. And and I will say at the
• 22:49
  beginning, his disappointment was absolutely warranted and
• 22:52
  realistic. I mean, the company was going to
• 22:54
  go under. It wasn't like we were doing OK
• 22:58
  And you could say, hey, we just started with building momentum.
• 23:00
  Things are projecting in the right direction.
• 23:02
  No, it was horrible, right? So I also knew that you know.
• 23:06
  Was that part of the intrigue for you?
• 23:09
  Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
• 23:11
  Because I'm like, I'm just going to do a complete 180 on this,
• 23:14
  you know? And you know, I made some crazy,
• 23:17
  bold decisions, decisions that I made as a child and as a team my
• 23:21
  whole life and it always prospered in.
• 23:24
  But this time, you know those crazy decisions in the big boys
• 23:29
  world? You know, specifically the
• 23:31
  federal government at Department of Justice.
• 23:34
  All right, well let's talk about the decisions, cuz I've been all
• 23:38
  around in doing research. Tell us about Tell us about what
• 23:42
  happened. Well, I mean, for example, my
• 23:50
  entire career in pharmaceuticals, although I had
• 23:52
  a college degree in a Master's, IT annoyed the hell out of.
• 23:57
  People in pharmaceuticals seem to have their nose up in the air
• 24:01
  because they had this college degree and thought that they
• 24:04
  were like in the elite of. Running with professionals.
• 24:08
  Yeah, exactly. And and although they're right,
• 24:13
  you know, they should pat themselves on the back for their
• 24:15
  education and so forth and so on.
• 24:17
  And their A's and their biochemistry degrees, which I
• 24:20
  didn't have any of that. They, they're not good
• 24:25
  salespeople. 90% of them are not good sales people.
• 24:29
  And I came to the conclusion, you know within a couple of
• 24:33
  months of eliability that this isn't about helping patients and
• 24:39
  saving patients lives. There may be a department
• 24:42
  somewhere in the company where there's three people sitting by
• 24:46
  on a desk, maybe the guys in R&D, right, research and
• 24:50
  development. But we all know sales trust, and
• 24:54
  this guy was planning on going public from day one.
• 24:56
  So I fired salespeople. If somebody came across my desk
• 25:05
  and they happen to have a college degree or a master's,
• 25:08
  great. But if they couldn't stop not
• 25:11
  firing. And so I I went above and
• 25:14
  beyond. I started to think back to the
• 25:15
  people that I went to school with from my child from college,
• 25:19
  that are some of the best salespeople I've ever seen in my
• 25:22
  life. Not because I've watched them or
• 25:24
  observed them in pharmaceuticals, but because
• 25:26
  I've seen them at a bar. Yeah, you know what I mean.
• 25:29
  Such a good Such a good point Alec.
• 25:31
  Cuz you know we had we had four or 500 people that were
• 25:35
  salespeople and and that person who can tell a really good story
• 25:40
  and it brings everybody in and they play the movie in their
• 25:43
  head while they're telling the story.
• 25:45
  That's a good salesperson. Yeah.
• 25:47
  I mean I got a guy sticking out in my mind right now.
• 25:49
  This guy, this guy you just you discern people you don't forget.
• 25:54
  But you know one of them, one of them I took with me, you know I
• 25:57
  took him, I took him to Eli, Lilly with me, took him to Seth,
• 26:01
  par with me and then I took him to interest with me.
• 26:05
  He wanted to be a manager. All three companies he never
• 26:09
  made manager, but in inches. I brought them into the wrap, I
• 26:12
  promoted them to the managers and I promoted them again to a
• 26:15
  director. One of my best friends in the
• 26:17
  world. I mean, I lost a brother to
• 26:18
  death, and then I lost a brother to this because we got wrapped
• 26:21
  up in the fiasco and we'll never speak again, you know?
• 26:26
  And you get that. No, that's sad.
• 26:27
  I, I, I I feel that for sure. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:32
  But it was just, it's always about the bottom line in sales.
• 26:38
  And so I hired people with no degrees.
• 26:42
  And the human resource manager who didn't even have a master's
• 26:46
  time, she said you don't have a college degree.
• 26:47
  And I'm like, but who said you need a college degree to sell,
• 26:49
  right? And it was kind of like, yeah,
• 26:51
  but in pharmaceuticals, that's usually the criteria.
• 26:55
  I'm like, but we don't even have a compliance department.
• 26:58
  We don't have a legal department.
• 26:59
  You're the HR manager. You don't even have a master's
• 27:02
  like like I. So you decided to go in there
• 27:07
  and build build the world the way that you saw it.
• 27:10
  Completely different than what I've ever seen in my.
• 27:12
  Life the way you wanted it? Yeah.
• 27:15
  And all I had to do with Kapoor was I'd say, John, listen, I got
• 27:18
  to hire somebody. I want to hire.
• 27:20
  Doesn't have a college degree. And he said, can he sell?
• 27:24
  Yeah. And I.
• 27:25
  So he understood. He understood in that regard.
• 27:29
  He understood. Unfortunately, you know my
• 27:32
  decisions got bolder and bold. You know I want to go back to
• 27:35
  this dialect because one of the things I noticed I can't I can't
• 27:38
  remember where where it came up but but the the meetings that
• 27:42
  you guys had and these were hardcore calling people out,
• 27:46
  meetings that you know people are taking notes and the the
• 27:49
  founder or the CEO's, you know he's saying this is the way what
• 27:57
  what was going through your mind and and those type of meetings
• 28:00
  were you thinking. Holy shit.
• 28:02
  I got to get this thing really rolling.
• 28:04
  Or or these guys are really getting what I'm doing and I
• 28:07
  just got to do more of it. What?
• 28:08
  What was going on in those meetings with your head?
• 28:14
  Sometimes I let it get to me. First of all, you know, by the
• 28:17
  time I got to the meeting, I was high.
• 28:18
  I was throwing that in my mind because I knew I was going into
• 28:21
  the 8:30 with Kapoor and I got to just keep my cool.
• 28:26
  But I got to a point, I mean sales were so good.
• 28:32
  I mean we were doing amazing things.
• 28:35
  I got to a point, quite frankly, where I just been, there was a
• 28:38
  while where I didn't care, you know, I mean you got, you got to
• 28:42
  eventually begin to tune this guy out.
• 28:44
  Because you were safe. You were creating, you were
• 28:46
  winning the numbers. I was killing it.
• 28:49
  I mean, it's undebatable. OK, well let's let's talk about
• 28:52
  cuz when we're talking about winning the numbers, one of the
• 28:54
  things you you did is is creating this this.
• 28:59
  World of of billions of dollars sales you you had the speakers
• 29:04
  Bureau and I thought one of the things that was interesting
• 29:08
  about the speakers Bureau and I think it was when you were with
• 29:11
  Justin talking is is it wasn't easy to find these guys you had
• 29:15
  to do some deep research really kind of go to school and and
• 29:20
  study these doctors but when you brought them in and said hey
• 29:25
  listen we're going to give you. Speaker fees.
• 29:29
  And you're going to, you're going to, you know, prescribe
• 29:31
  drugs for us. Is that good?
• 29:33
  You said maybe less than one out of 10 would agree to that,
• 29:37
  correct? Yeah.
• 29:39
  I mean, you know how many doctors are in the country?
• 29:43
  I can tell you that we uncovered every stone, went to every city,
• 29:50
  cities that you've never even heard of in the middle of
• 29:52
  nowhere. And in my book, you know others
• 29:56
  will say they were more, but in my book we found 20.
• 30:00
  Well, and you, but you kind of knew who that was.
• 30:02
  You know that they had, they had a profile where the people were
• 30:05
  standing outside. There was, you know, that you
• 30:08
  found the thing in the government where you could use
• 30:11
  their profile of who prescribed what how often.
• 30:14
  All those different things that were red flags for you guys and
• 30:19
  in a way for sales ways that I thought was interesting.
• 30:23
  Use data that was already there that you could profile.
• 30:27
  Well, yeah, that day is there and it's, it's, it's it's
• 30:30
  accessible to anyone. You know, we we pay for it.
• 30:33
  I think. I believe it's called IMS.
• 30:36
  But yeah, you're right. The doctors that clearly would
• 30:40
  have risen a red flag to the government are the doctors that
• 30:44
  clearly raised the green flag to us, the path to least
• 30:48
  resistance. But you know, it took even more
• 30:52
  than that. I mean, just because you go to
• 30:53
  an office where there's a line around the corner and clearly
• 30:56
  it's a pillow mill doesn't mean that, doctor.
• 30:58
  Is going to take money from you? Yeah.
• 31:01
  You know, even when we did our extensive research, you know,
• 31:07
  when we prequalified and so forth before I went out there
• 31:10
  with one of the directors or managers to have that
• 31:12
  conversation, you know, it can still blow up in your face.
• 31:15
  You could be fully prepared for an exam and literally, you know,
• 31:18
  in the middle of the dinner he walks out.
• 31:20
  Or you tell him, listen, let me take care of the tab.
• 31:23
  I'll leave. Enjoy your dinner, you know.
• 31:25
  But Alec, it wasn't a lot of money that you were getting
• 31:27
  giving it for these fake speaker fees.
• 31:30
  I mean, it was money, but doctors make a lot of money.
• 31:33
  But you, you know, you raised a good point.
• 31:38
  So it's all relative and you got to take this into consideration
• 31:43
  when you're doing your analysis. Again, we're trying to look, we
• 31:47
  were very we're looking for divorce doctors.
• 31:51
  We're trying to hide money, pay them in a different name.
• 31:54
  We're looking for doctors who, you know, are introverts and
• 31:58
  single and they never go out ever.
• 32:01
  And the money is just an added bonus to the camaraderie and and
• 32:06
  socialization and the bottle service and the VIP.
• 32:10
  You got to do all of the above, but also you have to be
• 32:15
  cognizant of where this model will work.
• 32:19
  So and because you got to right, you only have so much money.
• 32:24
  The doctors that we're targeted were primary care physicians,
• 32:30
  general practitioners, internal medicine.
• 32:33
  The average salary, and someone will correct me if I'm wrong but
• 32:37
  because it's been a while, I've been out of the game, but the
• 32:39
  average salary is like 150,000 to that primary care physician.
• 32:43
  If you can add another 200,000 to that.
• 32:46
  Deal. Yeah, it's a different lifestyle
• 32:50
  now. If you call on a plastic surgeon
• 32:52
  or an orthopedic surgeon or you know, even a dermatologist for
• 32:57
  them, it's probably not worth, Right.
• 32:59
  Right. So, so again that's all part of
• 33:02
  that. To all the research, right, Even
• 33:05
  even if on college prescribed pain meds for cancer, which most
• 33:09
  don't for very good reasons. One, they don't want to give the
• 33:13
  patient the idea or the notion that they've given up on them
• 33:16
  and they're just treating it for pain.
• 33:18
  And two, they want to treat the tumor, right.
• 33:20
  But but calling out again, they're in a different bracket
• 33:23
  financially. So you're right to them it's not
• 33:25
  a lot of money. But to the doctors we were
• 33:27
  talking, it was fun. Okay.
• 33:29
  So talking about money, I thought it was interesting that
• 33:32
  you just volunteered when you were talking to Justin that you
• 33:35
  had this gambling thing. And I I don't.
• 33:40
  I didn't find it anywhere else. But you talked about it and and
• 33:42
  what you're talking with Justin. Did that play into anything that
• 33:46
  you like or is that just you? That's just you play on the edge
• 33:49
  and and and you like to push it to the edge and gambling's part
• 33:53
  of where your adrenaline goes. Or did that play into how you
• 33:55
  were playing your world? I mean, I think that you know, a
• 34:01
  compulsive gambler, you know, loves the adrenaline rush and
• 34:07
  loves the risk taking and and gambles in all aspects which.
• 34:12
  Sales is a great place to do that, a good place to do it now.
• 34:16
  You know, it's interesting. I gambled in some of my
• 34:19
  decisions. I thought they were calculated
• 34:21
  risk, you know, hiring people without a college degree.
• 34:24
  I I mean, I hired an ex felon. I had an ex felon, Yeah, Who
• 34:28
  literally had a felonies. They can sell, I said to myself.
• 34:31
  This guy, if this guy can make money.
• 34:34
  So I ran his own pieces. Exactly.
• 34:37
  And that's the thing I found fascinating.
• 34:39
  I had a guy, Strobie, who I lived with for a year and a half
• 34:42
  at Leavenworth, unbelievably. Smart on his setup, you know,
• 34:48
  with the whole string of, you know, distribution and and
• 34:51
  incentives and and the whole play out of how the earning
• 34:55
  happened. These guys were doing it.
• 34:58
  They were operating a big company that was layered.
• 35:02
  They just weren't doing it on the legal side, right?
• 35:05
  Right. I mean, and you know, my boldest
• 35:08
  decision, which you know I'll never live down, was I hired a
• 35:11
  stripper. You know, I was entertaining
• 35:14
  positions in an adult entertainment club, strip club,
• 35:17
  and I met her. Or she sat down and did her
• 35:20
  thing and was talking. And I had just accept the girl
• 35:24
  for vice president, my manager in Chicago.
• 35:27
  I knew I was getting rid of her. She lived in Michigan.
• 35:31
  And I'm like, I'll tell you what, get dressed up tomorrow,
• 35:35
  meet me at Starbucks. Let me see if you can.
• 35:38
  Sell. Look the part, look the part and
• 35:41
  make it through the interview process without a badge for me.
• 35:44
  And she did it, and I gave her the job and you know, every
• 35:47
  night it. Was was she good?
• 35:50
  Well, why is that a bad thing? If she was good at still, if she
• 35:56
  was good at selling, I mean, it's the old story of, you know,
• 36:00
  that the the strippers working her way through college and
• 36:03
  trying to get but what she was doing.
• 36:05
  Yeah, so, but, but I'm just saying, who's to say that his
• 36:09
  stripper can't be an incredible salesperson?
• 36:11
  That that can make good money? Well, I mean, I told Kapor she
• 36:15
  was a stripper and he said that's fine.
• 36:17
  He's like. Can't you sell?
• 36:20
  Can't you sell? So, but you know, people are
• 36:22
  outraged by that. People.
• 36:23
  Well, sure, you know, and and I have to, I have to accept that
• 36:28
  and acknowledge that. And, you know, I guess maybe
• 36:30
  just at my age, at this point in my life, maybe, you know,
• 36:33
  decisions like that, risk taking behaviors.
• 36:36
  Suppose, you know, you got to grow up, you know, And there's a
• 36:40
  part of me who thinks that I'll never be anywhere even remotely
• 36:43
  close to as successful as I was in the past because I don't have
• 36:48
  that edge anymore. To take those risks.
• 36:50
  Yeah. And make more decisions.
• 36:53
  Yeah. And I'm okay with that.
• 36:54
  I don't want, you know, I want I I want peace and happiness in my
• 36:58
  life. I want moderation.
• 36:59
  Yeah. I want to make a living.
• 37:01
  But I don't need to be like successful like that.
• 37:04
  Yeah no and I I think you know and talking to Justin when he
• 37:07
  was telling me about you you you you went did a speaking deal at
• 37:12
  USC and and I can see you being that guy that can get out and
• 37:16
  and and convert people to understand and learn things by
• 37:20
  what you've been through and that that fills you up quite a
• 37:24
  bit. I've been able to do that at
• 37:25
  colleges and and and speak and I I it feels like what I was doing
• 37:29
  as a CEO and as an owner. Right.
• 37:32
  And that feeling is, is if you can get that back, that's a big
• 37:35
  deal. It doesn't matter about money.
• 37:37
  It has has to do how? How does it make you feel 100%
• 37:41
  and a lot of people don't understand that.
• 37:43
  I've tried to explain that to others, even people now are so
• 37:46
  like again, it's about money and I'm like no.
• 37:49
  It's not about money, it's about the other things.
• 37:52
  Yeah, that I'm. Well, especially if you've and
• 37:55
  you know you and I can back up to this.
• 37:58
  When you are sitting there and you realize that everything that
• 38:01
  you had in your life, and it was a great life, you're at a
• 38:05
  plastic chair, a bunk bed and a locker, and you can adapt to
• 38:08
  that when you get out, I think there's somewhat of a liberating
• 38:12
  feeling as is. I can do that.
• 38:14
  If I can do that, I can pretty much do anything.
• 38:16
  I might be a little bit scared of what you're presenting me,
• 38:19
  but I know I can do it because I've adapted to pretty much
• 38:21
  anything. Yeah.
• 38:23
  I mean, I think about that every day, you know, and recently
• 38:27
  getting off probation and getting in my car and not having
• 38:30
  that weight lifted off my shoulders.
• 38:31
  I mean, you know, you don't get out of prison.
• 38:36
  You're not trying to brag. You know there's nothing to
• 38:39
  brag. About nothing to brag about,
• 38:41
  right? Although I will tell you that I
• 38:42
  do have a tremendous amount of respect, as odd as that says,
• 38:46
  for those guys that have been there for years and.
• 38:48
  Years, absolutely. And the way in which they do
• 38:51
  their time, I mean it's it's it's just it's amazing.
• 38:55
  Yeah. And you know, the little things
• 38:57
  that I picked up and learned, I don't condone what they did to
• 39:00
  get in there. I'm just simply saying what
• 39:02
  they're doing now is it. To me it was very impressive.
• 39:07
  Ally going back. Because you, you're building all
• 39:11
  this up. You've got the sales going,
• 39:12
  Everything's happening as you want it to happen.
• 39:15
  You're you're you're making a name for yourself, a bigger name
• 39:19
  for yourself. You were already a name for
• 39:20
  yourself in the business. When things start coming down on
• 39:26
  you, is it a surprise or. I mean, is it a knock down the
• 39:31
  door? Holy shit, this is the FBI.
• 39:34
  Or were you feeling it? I was feeling it.
• 39:37
  I had to feel it because there was an investigative reporter,
• 39:42
  Guy Roddy Boyd, that had written like a piece or two and then
• 39:47
  reached out to me. You know, I mean, I had been in
• 39:51
  pharmaceuticals before at lower levels, but, you know, was very
• 39:54
  aware that these things are pretty commonplace.
• 39:58
  I think we were the first pharmaceutical executives ever
• 40:00
  to be put, you know, in prison. Yeah, it was one-of-a-kind,
• 40:03
  really. Yeah, so I thought that I kept
• 40:06
  trying to tell myself. I don't like this.
• 40:08
  I don't want to be a part of this.
• 40:11
  But this comes with the territory.
• 40:13
  Part of it. You meant.
• 40:15
  Yeah, man, you know, like, don't, don't waver.
• 40:18
  Keep moving. Plus, you're the leader.
• 40:20
  Yeah, I'm supposed to be the leader, you know, So and I told
• 40:24
  myself that every day and and I did it, you know, I did it right
• 40:27
  to the end. I even made a speech in the
• 40:30
  national sales meeting. It was quite controversial, you
• 40:33
  know, just around. Making sure that nobody had any
• 40:37
  questions or concerns or doubts Company and and the standard but
• 40:43
  so I I felt it And then I read a couple articles where a doctor
• 40:48
  got in trouble because the patient died not on substance
• 40:53
  alone but on a plethora of medication.
• 40:55
  Substance being one of them, you know and I'm like oh this can't
• 40:58
  be. And then then another doctor got
• 41:01
  arrested for. Multiple things, one of which
• 41:06
  over prescribing substance. So yeah, it started closing in.
• 41:11
  So yeah, when it did close in Alec, what happened?
• 41:15
  So I mean, first I got a civil attorney, you know, to handle
• 41:18
  all that there was. He was representing a group of
• 41:21
  us and then my I'm sure he got scared off of me when he found
• 41:25
  out that it could go criminal. Yeah, he called me right away
• 41:29
  and he said I can't represent you anymore.
• 41:31
  You got to get a criminal attorney.
• 41:33
  Your person of interest moving to a subject any day, you know,
• 41:37
  and I'm in California doing business, you know, and at that
• 41:41
  point, you know well, I mean a person of interest is one thing,
• 41:43
  moving to a subject or a target, well, subject and target is
• 41:46
  pretty much the same thing at that.
• 41:48
  That's what I understand that once you're subject, you're
• 41:50
  pretty. You are a target, yeah.
• 41:51
  You're done? Yeah.
• 41:52
  Yeah. So the target means indicted and
• 41:56
  yeah. And once indicted, you are, you
• 41:58
  are cooked, tagged and cooked, yeah.
• 42:02
  Yeah. So yeah I got the news in
• 42:06
  California and I was like listen not feeling good.
• 42:10
  Went back to my hotel, called our in house attorney who
• 42:13
  finally had one at the time and started looking for attorneys
• 42:18
  you know and had an attorney and continued to work at instance
• 42:22
  for you know an extended period of time.
• 42:24
  What's going through your mind though, when you think it's
• 42:26
  going criminal Is, is, is These things could work out, or
• 42:30
  because you haven't been in this, what whatever.
• 42:33
  What's are are you like, thinking, Waking up with it?
• 42:37
  Going to bed with it? I was.
• 42:43
  I was still sleeping and eating, so I wasn't that bad because I
• 42:48
  got to that point, yeah. But no, I was functioning
• 42:51
  family. What do they they know anything.
• 42:53
  I told my wife, OK, you know, and what's she think?
• 42:59
  I mean, you know, I mean, we're, it's my exwife now, you know,
• 43:02
  it's been too much, right? But I she, I don't think she
• 43:08
  knew what to think. She's just shaking her head.
• 43:10
  And I mean, she's been around me long enough to know that
• 43:12
  pharmaceutical companies get sued all the time and paying
• 43:15
  hundreds of millions of fines. Yeah.
• 43:18
  And I said, you know, I'm sure it'll go that way.
• 43:20
  Yeah, but. You know, once I got that
• 43:23
  criminal attorney thing, everything changed.
• 43:26
  And you know it does. Once you get the criminal
• 43:27
  attorney, it gets a slippery slip.
• 43:29
  So the criminal attorney probably comes back to you and
• 43:30
  says, hey Alec, I went and talked to him, here's the deal.
• 43:37
  That's usually the way it happens.
• 43:39
  Yeah, I didn't want to, I didn't want to continue an interesting.
• 43:43
  I wanted to be done. Yeah, I I resentified two or
• 43:45
  three times finally. The last time you know we I
• 43:49
  stayed on as a consultant for a couple months but.
• 43:52
  You know, I wanted to separate myself from them as far as I
• 43:58
  possibly could, even though I was completely, you know, guilty
• 44:04
  in in the whole thing. But I still just wanted, I'm
• 44:07
  like, get me away from these people, you know, they didn't
• 44:11
  want me to go at that point. Because even after all that,
• 44:15
  clearly sales were still wanting sales.
• 44:18
  Yeah, you would think they'd be like.
• 44:21
  There's the door. You're the perfect scapegoat.
• 44:24
  It had a sound. They were addicted to it.
• 44:27
  No and needed it. We had another drug that was
• 44:30
  getting launched and I said, tell you what, just stay on for
• 44:33
  the launch. And the drug that you guys had,
• 44:36
  it was a fentanyl spray, right? Yeah, that's what I thought.
• 44:41
  And and all these things are very common, but people don't
• 44:44
  think of them as common. But like in the cancer universe,
• 44:48
  like there's the lollipop, the fentanyl lollipop, there's all
• 44:51
  these different things. But your founder came up with a
• 44:55
  fentanyl spray that made it easy to intake and all those
• 44:58
  different things. But interesting how all that
• 45:04
  comes to. Yes.
• 45:07
  And the product, I mean, there's like six or seven products in
• 45:10
  the class. One's A nasal spray, one goes
• 45:12
  between the cheek and gum. One's the lollipop, one's
• 45:15
  underneath the tongue. It's honestly man, it's 6 1/2
• 45:20
  dozen. Yeah.
• 45:20
  The other, you know, you know, he he liked to think that he
• 45:24
  came out with the greatest product.
• 45:25
  Then I read about that. He's like he was the big
• 45:28
  inventor of the and it was an invention of the spray of that.
• 45:31
  I mean, there wasn't that. I mean, I'm sure you could sell
• 45:35
  that because it was one of that. Listen, we sold it, right?
• 45:40
  I mean, you don't have to actively administer the tablet.
• 45:43
  You don't. Yeah.
• 45:44
  No, I read up on it. Yeah.
• 45:45
  Makes sense. I get it.
• 45:47
  Kids, to get a hold of the lollipop.
• 45:49
  I mean, there's something like that.
• 45:50
  So many different things, yeah. Yeah, I can.
• 45:52
  I can belong to any other product, but that's not the
• 45:54
  point. The point is, how long did it
• 45:56
  last for you, Alec, when they say, you know what, Alex the,
• 46:03
  the guy at the top of the chain here selling, we're going to
• 46:06
  indict him. And how long did all this last
• 46:09
  for you? Well, I mean, I got indicted in
• 46:13
  2016. I didn't go in until 2020.
• 46:16
  Yeah. For years knowing you're going
• 46:19
  to prison wondering what the heck you're going to do now then
• 46:24
  and after and had a weird life to live in limbo like that.
• 46:27
  I went for six years and it's I went pre trial for three and
• 46:32
  it's a very strange and you can't talk to anybody about it
• 46:36
  unless you have somebody that you know you maybe you talked to
• 46:39
  Jason and Justin and Michael about that but mostly you don't
• 46:47
  have anybody to talk to. You're on your own island and
• 46:50
  and you want to talk to people, but you don't want to freak him
• 46:53
  out either. Correct.
• 46:55
  Yeah, it's a dark place. It's a very dark place.
• 47:01
  You know, I had kids, so you know what I if they needed a
• 47:05
  ride somewhere, I took them for a ride.
• 47:06
  They needed to go to the mall and pick some up and needed to
• 47:08
  go to the drugstore if they want to go for ice cream like I just
• 47:12
  did. How old would they have been
• 47:13
  when you were doing this in those four years, your girls?
• 47:18
  Like 15 and 7? Yeah, I had teenagers, so it was
• 47:21
  about the same. Oh, not seven, but teenagers.
• 47:24
  Yeah, you. Know.
• 47:24
  And my 7 year old tells me that she doesn't remember life.
• 47:28
  You know, before she was Daddy's going to prison.
• 47:31
  Yeah, you know, which is horrible.
• 47:33
  Yeah, but listen, we talk about that.
• 47:36
  But you know, for me personally. This isn't about my negative
• 47:45
  experience. It's about the negative
• 47:48
  experience that I put out there, you know, based on my efforts to
• 47:52
  others that you know, it's something that I have to, I
• 47:59
  gotta, I gotta live for. I gotta live with, you know, and
• 48:01
  but I also have to, I think you bring up, you bring up a good
• 48:06
  point, Alec, because it's the the experience that we go
• 48:09
  through is excrucially it's it's it's it's an unbelievably
• 48:16
  humbling experience. There's no way to get more
• 48:20
  humbled than to go through processing as a prisoner, to get
• 48:25
  prisonized and enter the world that you don't know but you have
• 48:28
  to live in. How did you handle that world?
• 48:36
  I mean, I listen, when I first got there, I had to go to
• 48:39
  quarantine. Which was basically the shoe
• 48:42
  Solitary, yeah. Yeah, you know.
• 48:45
  And you know, by yourself, obviously not a very big room.
• 48:49
  Small, small, no mirror. You're supposed to get a welcome
• 48:53
  kit when you get to prison. A welcome kit is a toothbrush
• 48:56
  and a razor. Maybe a bar soap.
• 48:57
  I can't remember. I didn't get that for two weeks.
• 49:01
  They just kept forgetting. How long are you in this
• 49:04
  solitary? The Shoe Special Housing Unit is
• 49:08
  what Shoe stands for with a lot of prisoners.
• 49:10
  Just call it the whole. You know, and you know, you
• 49:12
  think you're going to the minimum security and four years,
• 49:15
  people telling you, oh, it's not going to be that bad.
• 49:17
  You're going to a minimum and then, you know, and then you're
• 49:21
  like, oh, I'm going to the shoe. Like, you know, there are people
• 49:24
  who go through their entire prison life without ever having
• 49:26
  been solitary. Alec, I want to.
• 49:28
  I want you brought up a really good point because here's the
• 49:32
  weird thing about going to prison and and processing
• 49:35
  through you went directly to the shoe and and when I went in you
• 49:39
  you process at the big ugly 18179.
• 49:44
  That's how old the building is and they process you through
• 49:47
  this basement and they put you in the cell and and and you just
• 49:50
  sit there and and you sit there for a long time.
• 49:53
  You sit there like four or five hours and and your mind, if
• 49:57
  you're not ever put in a situation like that, you can't
• 49:59
  really talk. But if you're put in a situation
• 50:01
  like that, you're like, I wonder, I wonder if this is just
• 50:07
  where they're putting me. I wonder if this is.
• 50:09
  I wonder if this is going to be where I'm going to be for the
• 50:12
  next three to five years here. Because what in the world am I
• 50:16
  going to say to them, I'm not supposed to be here?
• 50:20
  Nobody and everybody would say that.
• 50:23
  So your mind just goes into like this.
• 50:26
  We I started doing pushups and walking around and you know,
• 50:30
  finally they came and got me and then they processed me and did
• 50:34
  all the stuff that they do to you, the kind of dehuman.
• 50:36
  And then I ended up back and going in this van down to this
• 50:39
  place that I originally thought I was supposed to go to.
• 50:42
  But for those four or five hours of thinking, this could be my
• 50:46
  life for four or five years, That's a big thought.
• 50:50
  Yeah, and I had those, you know, I'm.
• 50:56
  You know you don't. I mean, I spent the entire time
• 51:00
  in the shoot just thinking, I just gotta get out, Get out of
• 51:03
  here. Gotta get out of here.
• 51:05
  That's my first goal. And when I get, when I did get
• 51:09
  to, you know, the actual minimum.
• 51:11
  What you doing there, Alec? That time being written, Yeah.
• 51:16
  I mean I tried to do push ups also sit ups.
• 51:19
  I try to run in place, but I. I didn't have any success, like
• 51:24
  I couldn't do it. Yeah, I just.
• 51:26
  My brain was so filled up. Yeah.
• 51:29
  Yeah. I mean, like I I was losing my
• 51:32
  cognitive ability. People are in there, you know,
• 51:36
  for nine months. I don't know.
• 51:37
  They come out looking different. Yeah.
• 51:40
  You know, not just looking different, but they are.
• 51:43
  They act different, yeah. I I think that how long were you
• 51:46
  in there? Four weeks going in four weeks.
• 51:49
  That's a long time. I got a friend of mine that went
• 51:52
  in that way during your time and he wasn't in that long, but he
• 51:57
  was in. I mean he didn't do time that
• 52:00
  long, but those 6 to 8 weeks and he had to do solitary so changed
• 52:04
  his life. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, just
• 52:09
  little things. Like I if I'm going to bed, that
• 52:12
  door's got to be open. Like I went to the doctor's
• 52:15
  office, they put me in exam room, closed the door.
• 52:18
  I sat there for 10 minutes. I get out of here.
• 52:21
  I opened the door. She said, Can I help you?
• 52:23
  I said, yeah, I'm not sitting in here with the door closed.
• 52:27
  I'll sit outside the way you call me when the doctor's ready.
• 52:30
  It's no big deal. Yeah.
• 52:32
  Yeah. These little things that you
• 52:33
  never even thought of all of a sudden are coming to fruition.
• 52:36
  And you're like, wow, Yeah, there's been some change.
• 52:39
  Yeah. And I I I had the same thing,
• 52:41
  Alec, we had a dog that my, my, my Stanley, who's a black lab.
• 52:46
  He ate some latex gloves and we had to cut it out of him.
• 52:49
  And we went into that small little room there, and we had to
• 52:52
  wait forever. And I told Julie, I said, I
• 52:55
  don't feel good in here. This this isn't feeling right.
• 52:58
  This is this little room that we're closed in on.
• 53:01
  I've got this feeling that I got to get out of here.
• 53:05
  I didn't have that before. And when you're the type of guy
• 53:09
  that doesn't know if you have it or you don't, and all of a
• 53:11
  sudden you're in a cell and you don't know what time it is,
• 53:15
  Yeah, you only know by the meals and breakfast comes like, I
• 53:19
  don't know. Well, the weird thing is, Alec,
• 53:21
  you were the guy calling the shots.
• 53:22
  So that's why I say it's so humbling, is that you go from a
• 53:28
  world of calling the shots, going through the world of being
• 53:31
  indicted. You, I mean, it levels down.
• 53:33
  But once you get to that point, you realize you don't have any
• 53:36
  control anymore, and that's an adjustment into a whole new
• 53:39
  world. You once you entered into your
• 53:42
  world of being in the prison, how'd you adapt and adjust to
• 53:47
  that? What was it like?
• 53:50
  I I mean, all things considered, I adapted pretty good.
• 53:54
  I mean, honestly, I felt like, I felt like I died and went to
• 53:56
  heaven when I got out of bed. That was the only positive.
• 54:00
  All of a sudden I'm walking around people.
• 54:02
  I hear voices. I feel normal again.
• 54:06
  Like, you know, you know, initially, you know, I just
• 54:10
  pretty much spent all my time, you know, on my bed, You know, I
• 54:14
  got my job. And what kind of job did you do?
• 54:18
  I worked outside, did gardening and stuff like that, yeah.
• 54:23
  You know it was hot as hell. Where were you?
• 54:26
  Where'd you go? Miami.
• 54:28
  Miami. It would have been hot as hell.
• 54:30
  Yeah, hot. You know, but, you know, and
• 54:34
  then one guy gave me a radio and, you know, you're told
• 54:37
  before you go into prison, don't take anything from anybody.
• 54:40
  Yeah. And I said no to the guy, like
• 54:42
  10, and he was just enormous, man.
• 54:46
  Yeah, there's two guys. Like you never do him to kind of
• 54:49
  run it, you know that. Yeah, he was going to two guys.
• 54:52
  He's like, he's like, listen, man, he's like, it's OK, take
• 54:55
  it. You know that that is such bad
• 54:57
  advice because once you get in there, you realize that there's
• 55:00
  really good people that want to help you.
• 55:01
  I mean, I had big Watson that was in the next to me and he
• 55:04
  said I'm giving you these shower shoes because I don't want any
• 55:07
  side bunkie that smells. And I didn't even know what how
• 55:10
  important those shower shoes were at the time they gave them
• 55:12
  to me the very first hour I was there.
• 55:15
  And you know, I was told that too, that don't take anything.
• 55:19
  People are going to use you, and there are so many guys that just
• 55:23
  want you to get through because you're living in their world.
• 55:25
  They identify with you coming in there.
• 55:27
  I mean, one of the things they do do is they do look at the new
• 55:30
  guy coming in and size him up and see if he's, you know, yeah,
• 55:33
  who he is. I mean, literally.
• 55:36
  Within the first hour, I had a pair of sweatpants.
• 55:38
  Big deal. I had sneakers.
• 55:40
  They're like 3 sizes too big. But I'm so freaking happy mine
• 55:43
  were too small. Yeah, you know, I don't know
• 55:45
  which is better. Yeah, and it was like 3 months
• 55:49
  before I could finally, you know, get sneakers at the
• 55:51
  commissary. Like, you know, the craziest
• 55:53
  things, little things that you don't even think about adding up
• 55:56
  your grocery list manually. You had to be.
• 55:58
  Yeah, actually to me, I had to be shown how to do that because
• 56:01
  it was to me. My mind was just like,
• 56:04
  scrambled. Like, I I'm confused.
• 56:05
  How do you fill this thing out? Me too, you know.
• 56:08
  And again after coming out of solitary.
• 56:12
  I was having a hard time just getting my thoughts together and
• 56:15
  thinking the whole time I was solitary.
• 56:18
  They give you that long code for your phone.
• 56:21
  I kept trying to memorize it. No matter what I did, I couldn't
• 56:24
  memorize it. I mean it just your brain.
• 56:26
  Well, I want to explain that cuz that is one of the things that
• 56:31
  happens like when you have in prison, you can go to a computer
• 56:35
  and you put your thumb on the computer and that's actually
• 56:38
  easier because it'll like let you in to to be able to type.
• 56:41
  And I think it's like $0.05 a minute.
• 56:42
  But when you make a call you have to rattle off your, I think
• 56:47
  it's a PAC number is what they call it.
• 56:50
  And and when you're new, that's a big deal because this PAC
• 56:55
  number is like, comes out of a computer and you've got to
• 56:58
  recite that thing before you can ever talk to anybody on the
• 57:01
  outside world. And I remember thinking when I
• 57:04
  first got there, probably you too, Alec, is I got to figure
• 57:07
  this stuff out. I want to talk to the outside
• 57:09
  world. I want to be but I've got to
• 57:12
  figure it out cuz it's not easy. Right.
• 57:15
  You know, you get the e-mail, you get up the phone.
• 57:17
  But I'm telling you, the weeks while I was in there, I couldn't
• 57:22
  get that number down. I'm like, I'm losing my mind.
• 57:24
  I can't, I can't remember 1 number.
• 57:26
  I was a lawn number. It is a long number.
• 57:28
  It is a long number. But I'll do you one better.
• 57:30
  I couldn't. When they asked me in the gate,
• 57:32
  in this big cage I was in, going into this ugly look in prison to
• 57:36
  be processed. They asked me my Social Security
• 57:38
  number. I can remember it and they said
• 57:40
  you can't. You can't fucking remember
• 57:42
  you're. So I said I, I, I, I I don't
• 57:45
  think I can. I don't really think I can.
• 57:50
  I remember when I when I first got there, I got processed.
• 57:53
  He's walking me over. He goes, you know where you're
• 57:55
  going. I said, you know Sir, I was told
• 57:57
  I'm going to the minimum. He goes, you are, he's like, but
• 58:01
  you're going you're going to the shoot first.
• 58:02
  Yeah I'll the square court. He started coming down Then he
• 58:07
  says to me, hey man, can you fight?
• 58:10
  So I tried to give him the politically correct answer, and
• 58:12
  I said. So I think I can handle myself,
• 58:15
  I said. But my goal here is to, you
• 58:16
  know, avoid, you know, confrontations, right?
• 58:20
  He goes, yeah, that's good, but it'd be better if you could
• 58:22
  fight, you know. So it's like, you know, that's
• 58:25
  from mentality, Yeah, it scares us.
• 58:27
  It's scary thoughts cuz you're entering into, you're entering
• 58:31
  into an unknown world and and your world was different than my
• 58:36
  world because you went into COVID world and there's never a
• 58:41
  good time to go into prison. But I think the worst time to go
• 58:43
  into prison in the United States is in COVID because everybody
• 58:47
  got locked down whether you were in prison or not.
• 58:51
  In prison, you lock people down in prison and converge that
• 58:54
  world into a smaller world. That's that's a whole different
• 58:58
  way to do prison. What did you start thinking,
• 59:02
  Alec, when you were getting close to the door?
• 59:04
  You're you're getting close to getting out.
• 59:08
  What are you thinking about reentry?
• 59:12
  What was I thinking about re entry?
• 59:17
  I mean, I knew I had the halfway house ahead of me.
• 59:20
  I had nine months in my halfway house.
• 59:21
  There's nothing good about the halfway house either, and
• 59:24
  sometimes some people. But for me, 1000 times better
• 59:28
  than being a because you're out. You're out of work.
• 59:31
  You come home. You come home.
• 59:32
  You're tired. You grab your phone.
• 59:34
  You sit in your bed. You watch a movie.
• 59:36
  You know this little iPhone. And it felt like I was lost to
• 59:39
  the biggest screen. Oh yeah, Different world, Yeah.
• 59:42
  Right. So for me, you know, I felt like
• 59:47
  the halfway house was going to be another hurdle that I had to
• 59:50
  jump over. So I wasn't thinking a whole lot
• 59:53
  about my career and finances. I was thinking, OK, this is the
• 59:56
  next hurdle, but this is a positive step, and it's going to
• 59:59
  be better. And it was.
• 1:00:00
  And then I got moved to home confinement for three months.
• 1:00:04
  So even at home I felt like. I really tried hard not to bite
• 1:00:09
  off more than I can shoot for a while.
• 1:00:11
  What? What year was it that you got
• 1:00:13
  into home confinement? 2021.
• 1:00:17
  OK Yeah. And then, you know, at this
• 1:00:22
  point right now where I'm at, I'm very, very ready to go.
• 1:00:29
  Very, very mortal, you know, You know, I take, you know, it's
• 1:00:33
  been years. Yeah, and thank God.
• 1:00:36
  Well I mean I I think eventually you go through a tenure spans
• 1:00:41
  it's the way I looked at I you know I I I feel like you know I
• 1:00:44
  was 40 when it happened I was 50 when I came out.
• 1:00:50
  It took a little bit of while for the reentry because you just
• 1:00:54
  what you I mean you you you talked about it you know just
• 1:00:57
  being in certain situations it's it's it feels a little bit
• 1:01:00
  different and the weird thing about Alec.
• 1:01:02
  I mean, you and I are just sitting here talking about this,
• 1:01:04
  but it's weird because you can't really talk too much to people
• 1:01:09
  about it because they think that you should be so excited about
• 1:01:12
  being out of prison and you are. It's like coming down it as a 5
• 1:01:17
  year old, seeing all your toys times 1000, but you've got all
• 1:01:21
  these other things running through your mind.
• 1:01:22
  How am I fitting back into the family?
• 1:01:24
  Who's paying? Who's paying the bills?
• 1:01:25
  How do I get a job? Am I going to get a?
• 1:01:28
  How are my family? How's my friends treating me?
• 1:01:30
  How's this and that and that? You've got all these things just
• 1:01:32
  like running through and it's like jumping into a moving car,
• 1:01:36
  but on the outside you're trying to act like I'm just Brent, just
• 1:01:41
  act that I'm back. But inside you're like, man, I
• 1:01:45
  hope I can fit it back into all this, because I feel a little
• 1:01:48
  bit like I got some sea legs here, 100%.
• 1:01:55
  And you can't be the same person because it is who you are now.
• 1:01:52
  And you're not. At least for me, you're not the
• 1:01:54
  same person. It's who you are now.
• 1:02:00
  So you have to adjust to your new self and then figure out how
• 1:02:06
  that's going to play into all of the elements that you just
• 1:02:08
  talked about. I mean, yeah, my kids need me.
• 1:02:11
  You know, I didn't make money for a while.
• 1:02:15
  And my excuses, I'm not going to not make.
• 1:02:19
  I need to support, you know, my responsibilities don't go away.
• 1:02:24
  But you're right, everybody. I mean, I, I even some really
• 1:02:30
  good friends, like, they don't want to hear you, you know?
• 1:02:33
  So you don't. Complain, You don't complain.
• 1:02:35
  You know, you just, you just do what you got to do.
• 1:02:38
  I mean, for me, the four years after I was indicted, before
• 1:02:42
  going to prison, if that wasn't walking through the motions with
• 1:02:45
  a smile on my face, you know, if I could do that then now you
• 1:02:50
  know. I had a good friend of mine that
• 1:02:52
  had gone through the same thing that I was going through and he
• 1:02:55
  was telling me as I was going through it.
• 1:02:57
  Advice, and he said, Brent, you you suit up, show up and shut
• 1:03:01
  up. He said suiting up means that
• 1:03:04
  you're there. Showing up means it must not be
• 1:03:08
  as bad as everybody thinks. And you shut up because they
• 1:03:10
  don't want to hear about your stuff.
• 1:03:13
  Yeah, that's strong. I.
• 1:03:14
  Like it, but it was, it was really strong.
• 1:03:16
  It was like strong medicine because you you don't think
• 1:03:20
  that. But I I think in essence it kind
• 1:03:22
  of works. And you're you know people
• 1:03:27
  obviously are close to you you can talk to them about whatever,
• 1:03:29
  but in the general sense so Alec, where you are now and you
• 1:03:35
  you haven't been somebody that's been hidden.
• 1:03:39
  You're out. You're about and you're and
• 1:03:42
  you're what's. What's your world like now?
• 1:03:47
  It's a hybrid, you know, I've got a girlfriend.
• 1:03:51
  We live together, you know, That's really nice.
• 1:03:54
  Yeah, just to be able to work all day and have something to
• 1:03:58
  come home to my two kids. But I work, I work, you know, a
• 1:04:03
  nine to five, six day a week job in a cubicle, You know, phone
• 1:04:07
  sales. I make a good living.
• 1:04:10
  I'm very, you know, I can't. I'm sure you're good at that
• 1:04:14
  because I'm good at it, you know?
• 1:04:16
  I mean, God gave me a couple of gifts.
• 1:04:18
  You know, there's a lot, I got a lot of weaknesses, but there's a
• 1:04:21
  couple of things that I'm good. At well, I think, and I think
• 1:04:24
  that you bring up a good point too.
• 1:04:25
  You can put a sales guy in a cubicle, but if he has really
• 1:04:29
  good sales experience, he can outlap anybody around.
• 1:04:33
  I was talking to somebody the other day and they were talking
• 1:04:35
  about making phone calls and I said, you know, I said if you're
• 1:04:37
  making a cold call, I said apologize to him first.
• 1:04:40
  I said they said, well, I don't understand what you're saying,
• 1:04:42
  Brent. I said, well, I said it's kind
• 1:04:44
  of like this. I said when I was 15 years old,
• 1:04:47
  I was told by my dad, I need to make these appointments for
• 1:04:49
  these sales people. So I would call and I'd say,
• 1:04:52
  hey, Alec, this is Brent Cassidy.
• 1:04:54
  I'm calling from Pennington Funeral Home.
• 1:04:56
  I want to apologize to you. I was supposed to get some
• 1:04:58
  information out to you yesterday and just ran out of time.
• 1:05:01
  What would be a good time to get that to you?
• 1:05:03
  So I never asked them if it was okay to bring the information
• 1:05:06
  by. I apologize to him.
• 1:05:08
  That and it confused him. It totally confused him.
• 1:05:11
  So I'm late now, but once my point is, Alec, is that you
• 1:05:17
  can't confuse a good sales guy because a good sales guy always
• 1:05:21
  has it in his brain of what works.
• 1:05:23
  You just put it parachuting down and and he will figure out the
• 1:05:27
  lay of the land because, you know, certain things work.
• 1:05:32
  Yeah, you have to do that. You have to be a chameleon.
• 1:05:34
  You have to mirror, you have to understand these people's social
• 1:05:36
  style, what they take. I mean, my experience through
• 1:05:40
  the years of having to, you know, people say clothes is the
• 1:05:44
  most important part of sales. But for me, I'm not.
• 1:05:47
  I'm not debating that. But for me, targeting is right
• 1:05:50
  there with it, because the way I do my business, and I've done it
• 1:05:54
  my whole life, 98% of my time, money and resources goes to 2%
• 1:05:59
  of my customers. So that 8020 rule has never
• 1:06:02
  applied. No, you got a 2% rule.
• 1:06:05
  It's the extremist of it. I know I'm going to get more
• 1:06:08
  from that 2%. If I do it right, then I'll ever
• 1:06:10
  get from 20%. But if I choose the wrong 2%,
• 1:06:13
  then I I kill myself. Yeah, well I like where you're
• 1:06:17
  at right now and and I I like that you're getting out and and
• 1:06:22
  you know, I don't know what this pain hustles is going to be, but
• 1:06:25
  I think you know, Alec, the more that you can get out and tell
• 1:06:28
  your story. Be the person you are, that
• 1:06:31
  you're a real person that went through this and how you went
• 1:06:33
  through it is a good thing. Yeah, I'm glad you touched on
• 1:06:37
  that. I mean, you know the movies
• 1:06:40
  coming out I heard for years all they might make a movie on the
• 1:06:43
  instant story 9 times out of 10 don't never come to fruition.
• 1:06:48
  So I'm thinking I'm. Not worried.
• 1:06:50
  This really happened. Yeah, I mean this guy I haven't
• 1:06:53
  used. Phenomenal author.
• 1:06:54
  He wrote the book on the story. I worked extensively with him.
• 1:06:58
  I mean, nothing. Hours and hours, days and days.
• 1:07:03
  And he, you know, he wrote an acting story.
• 1:07:05
  But the movie, It's a movie. It's a movie, yeah.
• 1:07:08
  And they made it crystal clear to him that.
• 1:07:11
  I gotta ask you though, Alec the Emily Blunt person that they
• 1:07:14
  kind of it's in the description is that a real person that came
• 1:07:18
  through is a female that was having a hard time.
• 1:07:21
  And I think she's a combination of a few okay, you know and I
• 1:07:25
  think that I think that the, the lead, Chris Evans is also a
• 1:07:28
  combination of of a few of the key players.
• 1:07:32
  So I there'll be parts where I'll watch and I'll be like Oh
• 1:07:35
  yeah, that's that's I can kind of see me in that and there'll
• 1:07:39
  be other parts where I'll be like 100% not me in any way
• 1:07:44
  shape or form. Yeah, it's loosely based on the
• 1:07:46
  answers film. But you know, the fact that they
• 1:07:50
  are even acknowledging that, you know, it concerns me because the
• 1:07:56
  message that I'm trying to get out there is the exact opposite
• 1:08:00
  message of what that movie will entail.
• 1:08:04
  But again, it's a movie. It's a movie.
• 1:08:07
  Their job is to put people in seats and keep them in seats.
• 1:08:10
  I've got to keep that in perspective and just continue to
• 1:08:13
  go on with my life. And you'll survive it because of
• 1:08:17
  what you're doing. How you're doing it and people
• 1:08:20
  want to listen to you, Alec. You know you've got a story to
• 1:08:23
  tell fascinating story to tell and and you have a lot of life
• 1:08:28
  experience to to share to people.
• 1:08:30
  And I I As far as people getting well, I want to ask you too
• 1:08:35
  before I get to that going through what you've gone
• 1:08:39
  through, living, what you've lived, what do you think's your
• 1:08:43
  biggest take away from where you sit right now?
• 1:08:49
  It could be a couple different things too.
• 1:08:51
  They just takeaways, you know? It is so counterproductive to
• 1:08:59
  try to spend your energy pleasing others.
• 1:09:04
  That's huge. You know, you're you want to be
• 1:09:09
  good to others. Yeah, you want to take care of,
• 1:09:12
  especially the people that love you.
• 1:09:14
  But pleasing others? That's a character flaw, that
• 1:09:18
  that's an, that's an insinuation of something that you're
• 1:09:22
  lacking, right? And you're trying to.
• 1:09:24
  Enabling stops with that, right by pleasing others and getting
• 1:09:29
  it from somebody else when it's got to come from within.
• 1:09:31
  You got to fill yourself up, and if you have that in your
• 1:09:34
  confidence, you know the decisions you make will be yours
• 1:09:38
  and yours long. At least you know that they
• 1:09:40
  won't be influenced by anybody. Else I I think that is a huge
• 1:09:44
  life lesson. You got to fill yourself up
• 1:09:48
  thinking you're going to get your your filled up from other
• 1:09:51
  people, right? Yeah.
• 1:09:53
  No. Good point.
• 1:09:56
  Good advice, Alec. If people want to get a hold of
• 1:10:00
  you, I've got limitless. Let's see what I just do with
• 1:10:04
  that. That's Okay.
• 1:10:09
  Let's see. Yeah, Limitless at a Burlakoff,
• 1:10:15
  And that's BURLA koff.com. And I think you're doing
• 1:10:22
  coaching, right? Yeah, I do coaching.
• 1:10:27
  I'm available. I work long hours.
• 1:10:30
  I mean, all weekends, 6:00 to 9:00 every night.
• 1:10:32
  Yeah, I have a couple of consulting jobs that I like.
• 1:10:36
  I like to take the smaller companies.
• 1:10:39
  I don't want a huge sales force because that's going to bring me
• 1:10:42
  back. To that you did in that world,
• 1:10:44
  right? I'm looking for like A5 sales
• 1:10:46
  force or like 5, yeah. Build them up.
• 1:10:49
  Yeah, something mad where you can really keep your keep your
• 1:10:51
  eye on and then you know, I I love the speaking, you know, for
• 1:10:56
  me that's like what we talked about earlier in the
• 1:10:58
  conversation. You know the opportunity to get
• 1:11:01
  up there and and demand attention and create action and
• 1:11:05
  influence others. Yeah and I and I think that's
• 1:11:08
  that that's the looking at your life.
• 1:11:10
  That's one of the things that you've done Alec and that's what
• 1:11:12
  you're going to be seeing you do now is is is taking action.
• 1:11:16
  Don't be afraid to try take action with it and and things
• 1:11:19
  happen with that. You know perfection is never
• 1:11:22
  born you just evolve and just taking action is where you got
• 1:11:27
  to start. Let's see.
• 1:11:30
  So the I want to send people to your book too.
• 1:11:32
  Selling hard lessons. Learn Amazon.
• 1:11:36
  Hey, if you want another book, I've got one.
• 1:11:38
  So dimer success. You can go to Amazon, Barnes and
• 1:11:42
  Noble for everybody. If you got anything out of this,
• 1:11:47
  and I know you did, please go to Spotify, Leave a review.
• 1:11:53
  Apple, leave a review. It puts the show on steroids.
• 1:11:56
  I don't know what they do with the algorithm.
• 1:11:57
  When those reviews hit they they just keep pushing them up.
• 1:12:02
  Brentcassie.com Check me out there.
• 1:12:04
  Got all my stuff. My daughter Courtney keeps me up
• 1:12:08
  to date and and updating that, I wish I was smart enough to do it
• 1:12:12
  myself. And as I used to say when I was
• 1:12:16
  writing my emails back and forth from prison, stay strong.
• 1:12:19
  I'll do the same. Alec, really appreciate you
• 1:12:22
  today, man. My pleasure, Brian.
• 1:12:24
  I really enjoyed the conversation With a pleasure.
• 1:12:27
  Me too. Nightmare.
• 1:12:28
  Success in and out.