Latest / Nightmare Success In and Out / Homeless, prison, then builds National Co. Helping Justice Impacted- Harley Blakeman

Transcript

Homeless, prison, then builds National Co. Helping Justice Impacted- Harley Blakeman · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:01
  What happens when he works here? Becomes your reality.
• 0:04
  Hi. I'm Brian Cassidy.
• 0:05
  Welcome to the nightmare success.
• 0:07
  And Now podcast where we explore a, how to overcome your fears
• 0:11
  and Nightmares is set yourself free.
• 0:13
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:15
  Leavenworth with and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 0:20
  These stories can be inspiring. Sometimes sad, there's some
• 0:24
  humor but hopefully you can come away with a nugget of something
• 0:27
  that will help you knock down some of the prison's You built
• 0:30
  up in your own mind. Alright nightmare success in and
• 0:35
  out listeners we are back and I have got a good one today and we
• 0:42
  talked about what happens when your worst fear becomes your
• 0:44
  reality, how do you adapt? How do you survive?
• 0:46
  How do you overcome? How do you set yourself free?
• 0:50
  Well, this guy has an unbelievable story and I ran
• 0:54
  across his name is Harley blakeman and I ran across his
• 0:59
  story back when I was working on my book and thinking about
• 1:03
  speaking and back of my mind podcast and he did a tedx talk
• 1:09
  and I ran across into man, his story goes from, you know, a
• 1:14
  tough childhood to homeless to prison together.
• 1:20
  Himself out of that going to a community college, getting good
• 1:23
  grades and get into Ohio State making great grades graduate in
• 1:27
  the top of his class and then you can't get a job.
• 1:29
  Can I get a job because of his background and what do you do
• 1:35
  when you hit a wall like that, he just created a company that
• 1:40
  it's called honest jobs, and it helps people with a criminal
• 1:43
  record find meaningful work helps businesses excess
• 1:46
  population of highly motivated and overlooked employees Honest
• 1:50
  job is the nation's largest fair chance employment platform.
• 1:55
  It's just everything that I hope, you know that happens and
• 2:00
  you know the second chance world of getting people out so that we
• 2:04
  can stop the recidivism rate of the close to 75 percent and it's
• 2:08
  these type of people who are making a difference.
• 2:12
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  deserve, Otto Plaza direct, tell them that Brent from Nightmare
• 3:10
  success, since you, okay, folks. Let's get into this Harley.
• 3:15
  Welcome in. Thank you, Brent excited to be
• 3:20
  here. And in great job with the intro.
• 3:22
  Well, you got quite a story, I mean, I we've kind of gone back
• 3:27
  and forth on trying to get together, but I thought they're
• 3:29
  not giving up on this guy. This is this is, this is an
• 3:32
  interview I want. But man, your story Harley is
• 3:37
  like one that you you click on to the streaming services and
• 3:42
  you look for like inspiring overcoming getting to the other
• 3:46
  side and it should say. A like, Harley blakeman.
• 3:51
  Unbelievable. So Harley, I think if I remember
• 3:55
  right? You're from Ohio.
• 3:59
  I'm actually I grew up in Florida, near Gainesville
• 4:01
  Florida but I've been living in Ohio since 2012.
• 4:06
  Okay. Well, the reason why I thought
• 4:08
  Ohio was because of the Ohio State connection.
• 4:11
  So I thought maybe you were from the state there.
• 4:14
  Yeah, I have family, I family from Ohio, but I was actually I
• 4:17
  grew up in Florida, so your Florida kid.
• 4:19
  Yeah, the nice weather. Yeah, well, take us back a
• 4:24
  little bit Harley into your world.
• 4:26
  Growing up as a kid because I know that there's a lot there.
• 4:30
  Can you help us unpack? Some of what was happening to
• 4:33
  you as a kid growing up? Yeah.
• 4:36
  I mean I was a goofy kid. So like I see pictures of
• 4:41
  myself. I don't have a lot of pictures
• 4:43
  so when you grow up, I guess the way I grew up.
• 4:47
  There's just not a lot of records of my childhood like I
• 4:49
  have like four or five pictures total that's crazy.
• 4:53
  Like no photos of my childhood which is sad.
• 4:57
  Luckily my grandma has photos of like my, you know, my father and
• 5:02
  stuff. So I have more pictures of him.
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  But anyways, the pictures of me as a child.
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  I'm like cowboy boots a diaper and a mullet because I'm in
• 5:10
  Texas. Yeah, I lived in, I live in
• 5:12
  Texas. So I was three then Arkansas and
• 5:14
  tell us five and then Florida and Florida Cowboy.
• 5:19
  Yeah, exactly. I was just a goofy kid, you
• 5:22
  know, like bright blond hair, super straight bright blond
• 5:26
  hair. And my parents were kind of the
• 5:32
  black sheep of their family. Like my dad didn't talk to his
• 5:35
  family much, my mom didn't really talk to her family much
• 5:39
  so it was really just my mom. My dad, my my older brother and
• 5:42
  myself and we grew up in a place called Keystone Heights,
• 5:49
  Florida, which is about probably 25 minutes, maybe outside of
• 5:53
  Gainesville, Florida, which even Gainesville.
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  Florida has a small town, there's like nothing there, but
• 5:57
  the University of Florida. So, really the closest city with
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  Jacksonville, Florida and, you know, everything north of
• 6:05
  Orlando is not what you think of.
• 6:08
  When you think of Florida, like anything else for day, you're
• 6:10
  thinking of like Miami Beach in Orlando, where everything north
• 6:13
  of Orlando is just kind of Woods and trailer park and
• 6:18
  prescription pills. And, and people scrapping metal
• 6:21
  and, you know, everyone goes to jail.
• 6:24
  Nobody goes to college. So, anyways, I grew up in this
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  trailer part fairly poor. I mean, my dad graduated high
• 6:30
  school but didn't graduate college.
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  My mom dropped out of high school and they both worked at
• 6:35
  the steel manufacturing plant. My mom is a receptionist, and my
• 6:38
  dad started like just welding. He was just like a welder.
• 6:43
  Okay. So as you can imagine, Janae,
• 6:45
  you know, very blue collar, you know, low education and
• 6:50
  household was was pretty good though.
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  You know, my dad really loved music.
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  So I grew up playing music. We had a drum set, we have
• 6:58
  guitars and a bass guitar and I kind of learned how to play all
• 7:01
  the instruments a little bit and I love to skateboard and Surf
• 7:05
  and my dad would take me to the skatepark like every other
• 7:07
  weekend. We go to the beach and go
• 7:08
  surfing, you know, but we just didn't really have money.
• 7:12
  Like we didn't was your dad in a band.
• 7:16
  Harley was that, or was it just a hobby?
• 7:20
  When I was a kid? He was yeah.
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  Intact, when I was young he was big time in like a bunch of
• 7:24
  different bands but in Florida it was just like me and him.
• 7:27
  So he would play guitar. I played Robinson and yeah, even
• 7:31
  I don't have them anymore, you know, I had an eight-track where
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  I would record you know, myself playing drums and myself playing
• 7:39
  bass. My dad would play guitar and I,
• 7:41
  you know, we piece together song so that these are like the best
• 7:44
  memories of my childhood. We just Mr. Like a whole
• 7:46
  generation of people there. When you said 8-track, I
• 7:52
  couldn't describe it to you. That's what it was.
• 7:55
  Yeah you know and later in life I ended up buying myself like
• 8:00
  kind of what you have in front of you there.
• 8:01
  Right? Like a mix, I like Pro Tools and
• 8:04
  like the all that more fancy stuff.
• 8:07
  Yeah. Back then that was kind of, you
• 8:09
  know, before everything went South.
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  Let's say I was 14 15 and And things were pretty good.
• 8:19
  I mean we were poor but other than that, I think things were
• 8:22
  good and it was about 14 years old when my mother divorced my
• 8:29
  father and it was you know completely unexpected for me and
• 8:34
  my brother. Mhm.
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  And just completely shocked us. And we were felt like betrayed
• 8:40
  by her mom because she just was like, I'm leaving.
• 8:42
  She wasn't Jim really come to us and talk to us about.
• 8:45
  About it and then when she left, she just kind of disappeared.
• 8:49
  She didn't like make an attempt to like see us every week or
• 8:53
  like anything like that. And it turns out she was like,
• 8:55
  heavily addicted to drugs and after divorcing, my father, it
• 8:59
  became really apparent that she was not.
• 9:00
  Okay, she was suffering from, you know, extreme Mental Health
• 9:05
  crisis, drinking drugs, and she even ended up in the hospital
• 9:09
  twice. It had to be tough Harley.
• 9:12
  We when you were a kid Did you did you recognize that at all?
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  Or was it something that was just kind of kept behind closed
• 9:21
  doors that you didn't realize that she had issues like that?
• 9:26
  Yeah. I had no idea until she was,
• 9:33
  like, leaving. No reclose.
• 9:37
  Yeah, I mean, was it like a close-knit, you know, mom's son,
• 9:43
  type relationship? Yeah, yeah, I mean, I it's hard
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  to like, recollect stuff from when you're 13, 14 years old and
• 9:52
  then like like remember why didn't I think why?
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  Didn't I know it was coming? Yeah.
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  But you know when you're 13 14 years old.
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  Old don't have any outside family.
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  Like maybe an aunt or an uncle could have been like, hey, is
• 10:03
  everything okay at home? It seems like some no one did.
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  So because I didn't really have that.
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  So, yeah, when she left, it was shocked me in.
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  Unfortunately, you know, I think My dad wasn't quite emotional,
• 10:23
  you know, I don't know the best word to use, but may be
• 10:26
  emotionally intelligent enough or thoughtful enough to like,
• 10:29
  protect me and my brother from it.
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  So he like, when my mom left you like was like, You know, talked
• 10:35
  about about her and was like, you know, I can't believe she
• 10:39
  did this. She doesn't care about you guys
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  like she must like you know she must not care at all blah blah
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  and the truth is is you know he wasn't wrong for that.
• 10:48
  I mean she had been married to her for 20 years though and then
• 10:51
  she left him kind of with no explanation but you know Looking
• 10:58
  at as I've been an adult I'm like I would never tell my kids
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  that, you know, their mother isn't is doesn't love them or
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  like doesn't want to be a part of their life.
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  No matter what's going on, you know, you protect them.
• 11:08
  So Well, you're selling fresh Anibal to at that age.
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  I mean, you're talking about 13, 14 years old and that's when
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  you're just trying to figure things out, you know.
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  That's that's seventh and eighth grade and sixth seventh.
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  Eighth grade in your world which that world is coming at you fast
• 11:25
  at those years. Yeah.
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  Yeah. So when she laughed it wasn't a
• 11:34
  whole lot longer. I was just living with my dad
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  and my brother. I was still in school kind of
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  suffering. My grades were suffering a
• 11:44
  little bit. And you know what?
• 11:46
  15? Unfortunately, like where I grew
• 11:48
  up. Like it was common for 15 year,
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  olds, dog, drink and smoke. I like parties.
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  They get invited to the parties where the 17 16 17, 18 year old
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  kids are. Yeah and it's just like funny
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  till I get Younger brother to like try we ate or drank or
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  whatever. So I was already like exposed to
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  drugs and alcohol and I don't even really mean drugs.
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  Just like, Weed and Alcohol. Yeah, and maybe about a year
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  year and a half after my mother left my father, my dad got in a
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  motorcycle accident which was really just that pivotal point
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  for me, where I completely went off the rails as well as my mom
• 12:27
  went off the rails. Even deeper because Does it hurt
• 12:30
  her a lot too? When my dad passed in the my
• 12:32
  brother also went off the rails to just like every it all fell
• 12:35
  apart, my father passed. I just can't imagine because you
• 12:39
  your you were probably clinging to that with that you've had
• 12:43
  your dad. You didn't have any other family
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  around your mom's gone. Wow.
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  So what are you? What's going through your mind?
• 12:52
  At that point, Harley me. What you've, you're 15 years
• 12:55
  old, your dad's died in a car or a motorcycle accident.
• 12:59
  I don't what? What happens in your world?
• 13:02
  Yeah, I mean, first off like I got called out of school and
• 13:06
  brought to the hospital. It's like see my father and You
• 13:10
  know, it's taking me a long time to like, be okay with it but for
• 13:13
  the longest time I was really troubled by like why they did
• 13:17
  that like they asked me to go into the room and like say like
• 13:20
  say goodbye to him and he was an extremely bad shape.
• 13:24
  I mean like it was scarred in my mind like seeing my father.
• 13:27
  The way he was because it was a motorcycle accident and it was
• 13:30
  really really bad and at that point they asked me to go into
• 13:33
  like say goodbye to him. They knew he wasn't going to
• 13:36
  make it. They had already told me that he
• 13:38
  wasn't going to make it and She's a really.
• 13:42
  It's a lot. Yeah, yeah.
• 13:44
  I mean, I don't necessarily regret doing it.
• 13:47
  I just it it's been one of the things on my mind.
• 13:49
  It's like, is it healthy to have that like last image be so bad.
• 13:54
  So was unconscious at the time when you went in there?
• 13:58
  No. No, he wasn't no.
• 13:59
  They said he was, you know, brain-dead and that they were
• 14:03
  going to he was on life support but that the they were, you
• 14:07
  know, gonna pull the plug can imagine.
• 14:11
  Yeah. So So, you know, I'm not really
• 14:13
  thinking what's going to happen in my life.
• 14:15
  I'm not like, oh, what am I going to do?
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  I'm just devastated. So, after that, my dad's family
• 14:22
  comes down from Ohio like two, three days later to prepare for
• 14:27
  the funeral because he did have family in Ohio, we just I had
• 14:30
  only met them maybe three times. It was like for Christmas every
• 14:32
  couple years we've go to Ohio, right?
• 14:35
  In my mom shows up for the funeral as well.
• 14:39
  And at the funeral, my mom tells my dad's family that they don't
• 14:44
  need to worry about me that she's going to take care of me
• 14:46
  in that she's going to step up and do the right thing and all
• 14:50
  the stuff. And my dad's family just goes
• 14:53
  back to Ohio. And just over the course of the
• 14:56
  next month, it became really clear that she was not capable
• 14:59
  of stepping up, or take care of me.
• 15:01
  She didn't have her own place, she was staying with some guy
• 15:03
  that she had just met and I like she's like, oh just come and
• 15:07
  live with us and I get There and they're like, you're just going
• 15:10
  to sleep on the couch for now, there's like no food in the
• 15:13
  house was like beer cans everywhere and like, wow house
• 15:16
  was super far away from school so I can really have a way to
• 15:19
  get to school. So anyways, I ended up basically
• 15:22
  leaving after like a week because I was like, this isn't,
• 15:25
  you know, I'm enough of a double to know that like this isn't
• 15:29
  going to be good for me and like, I don't want to be here.
• 15:32
  So I know that leaving and you know, in my story, I talked
• 15:35
  about being homeless That was my home was to go live with my mom
• 15:40
  at some guys that I didn't know and she was bouncing around from
• 15:44
  guy to guy and like living in these extremely volatile, drugs
• 15:48
  and alcohol environment. So I just chose not to do that,
• 15:50
  and I chose to go stay with friends on Friends, couches.
• 15:53
  And That wasn't really sustainable either, but that
• 15:57
  that's what I ended up doing was kind of living on one couch, for
• 16:00
  two or three weeks that I moved to another person's house and
• 16:02
  stay there for a week or two and and move around.
• 16:05
  And it wasn't that uncommon for me to kind of be stuck without a
• 16:10
  place to stay for a night or two, you know, sleeping in a car
• 16:13
  or wherever I could what you do for money.
• 16:15
  Did you have any money at all? That the you could bounce
• 16:19
  around. And, I mean, that's one thing to
• 16:20
  bounce around from, from house to house from front to front,
• 16:23
  but If you don't have any dollars that you're walking
• 16:26
  with, I'm sure that becomes even more stressful.
• 16:30
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 16:31
  I mean, yeah, so after my dad passed, I just Really started
• 16:39
  hanging out, you know, I dropped out of high school shortly after
• 16:42
  like I don't know maybe a month after I just stopped going
• 16:45
  because I didn't have clean clothes.
• 16:47
  I didn't have a consistent place to sleep those.
• 16:51
  Your brother gone also is, he are you guys not connected at
• 16:55
  that moment? Yeah.
• 16:57
  My brother still lived in the same town.
• 16:58
  So I'd see my brother but my brother I was working full-time,
• 17:04
  like bagging groceries at a grocery store, so there's no
• 17:06
  good jobs in this town. There is absolutely.
• 17:08
  No, like everyone works at the gas station or, you know, the
• 17:12
  best job in the town is working for the local electric company.
• 17:16
  Like that's the best job in the town, so, right.
• 17:19
  My brothers working but also my brother is getting pretty
• 17:23
  severely addicted to drugs. I don't know at this point, my
• 17:27
  story if he was On heroin yet. But by the time I got arrested,
• 17:31
  he was full-blown addicted to heroin, and he was homeless, as
• 17:34
  well. You know, I never got addicted
• 17:37
  to heroin. I never never tried heroin, but
• 17:44
  at 69, when I dropped out of high school, I was selling weed,
• 17:48
  consistently and pretty much add.
• 17:50
  So anything that I could get my hands on that.
• 17:54
  Where I knew someone, who, like, I knew people wanted to buy
• 17:56
  these and if I could get them cheap, I would buy them and
• 17:58
  resell them. I mean, I was pretty much the
• 18:00
  name of the game for me was if I if I knew where I could buy
• 18:04
  anything with the amount of money, I had that I could turn
• 18:06
  around and sell it for more, I guess where you do.
• 18:09
  Hmm wasn't really consistently. One Drug it was just whatever.
• 18:14
  Pretty pretty consistently prescription pills.
• 18:17
  Okay I sold weed but when I started selling prescription
• 18:23
  pills is when I started making real money and that's also when
• 18:26
  I started getting really addicted to drugs because I was
• 18:28
  so Medicating while I was selling.
• 18:30
  So Annex, there's these things called Roxy code own so it's
• 18:38
  like Oxycontin and basically but they're blue and in Florida at
• 18:41
  the time, they were everywhere and people were heavily addicted
• 18:45
  to them. You know, opioids and I actually
• 18:49
  had a registered nurse that knew my brother really well and she
• 18:54
  would like tell me come over if you want and hang out and she
• 18:57
  would like, give me food. She's like cook a meal and she
• 19:00
  was a registered nurse, but then she'd also be like, are you
• 19:03
  doing okay? She'd like check in on me and
• 19:06
  I'd be like, yeah, she's back. Like do you have money?
• 19:08
  Blah blah. And I feel like I have like a
• 19:10
  hundred dollars but it's not enough to get like enough weed
• 19:13
  to like make money, right? And she's back.
• 19:15
  Well here, you know, do you know anybody that wants Roxy Roxy's
• 19:20
  and I bet? Yeah, I know a bunch of people
• 19:21
  who do those and she just be like, well, here's 50 of them
• 19:24
  just like, pay me back when you get the money.
• 19:26
  Wow. So, that's how it all started
• 19:29
  was was, I was, you know, a vulnerable sixteen-year-old.
• 19:32
  That was a different drugs, homeless in, this woman knew, I
• 19:36
  skate skate board at around town, and I was just moving from
• 19:38
  place to place all the time. So, basically, my routine became
• 19:42
  coming to her house once or twice a week.
• 19:45
  Giving her some money and getting a new basically.
• 19:48
  A front should front me stuff. And that went on for quite a
• 19:53
  while as I got like severely addicted and, you know, I'll
• 19:57
  pause here for a second, but I eventually took a trip to gain
• 20:02
  some, sorry, Savannah Georgia. And that's whenever I really got
• 20:05
  into selling, like a lot, when I met some people in Georgia in
• 20:09
  this person in Florida, basically was willing to front
• 20:12
  me, you know, hundreds at a time.
• 20:15
  Several hundred at a time. And that's ultimately what I got
• 20:18
  arrested for was getting caught with a couple hundred pills and
• 20:21
  enjoy. Raja.
• 20:22
  So Harley when that all was going on.
• 20:25
  I mean, I'm sure you were like, in a survival mode.
• 20:28
  You're getting addicted. Were you hanging around other
• 20:33
  people? I mean were there other did you
• 20:34
  have a group of people that you were with?
• 20:38
  Because usually what, you know, at that age you're in school and
• 20:41
  you so you weren't in school. So were you with people that
• 20:43
  were out of school and you hung out with them?
• 20:46
  Like what was your how was your life?
• 20:48
  How are you living your life? Yeah.
• 20:51
  So I had this like split we're part of the time basically
• 20:55
  during school hours. Yeah I'd hang out with these
• 20:58
  like people that were in their 20s late 20 sometimes 30 times
• 21:04
  40 is. I mean I was sometimes going
• 21:06
  into places where it was like a house full of people all in
• 21:10
  their 40s doing drugs well, And I was there like 16 17 years
• 21:16
  old. Yeah, yeah.
• 21:18
  And then, but when school got out, I would grab my skateboard
• 21:21
  and I'd skate down like down to the school and meet up with a
• 21:24
  couple of my friends that I knew from like a year prior that I
• 21:27
  went to school with and you know, by the time they're 16
• 21:31
  their skaters, the in a small town, they all smoke, we eat and
• 21:33
  hang out and stuff. But but you know, now I realized
• 21:36
  like I was the kid that all their parents were worried about
• 21:39
  Cheryl I cure him, but they also knew that my father had passed.
• 21:43
  It away, and they knew my situation and they were sympathy
• 21:45
  for you and they would help me occasionally.
• 21:49
  But at the same time, I think they were like concerned about
• 21:52
  like me rubbing off on their own kids.
• 21:53
  So I mean, over time some of my high school friends basically
• 21:56
  just like stopped hanging out with me or I stopped hanging out
• 21:59
  with them because I thought they didn't, you know, they were too
• 22:02
  boring and they thought I was, you know, criminal but basically
• 22:07
  yeah. But I see more and more started
• 22:09
  hanging out with these people that were way older than me.
• 22:13
  Basically, I look up to because they were providing for sure
• 22:18
  these adults were like come over and they were my only Role
• 22:21
  Models rings to be like your family since you didn't have
• 22:24
  really anybody like that. That was kind of like your
• 22:27
  family of people. Yeah.
• 22:29
  And a couple of them would literally be like here.
• 22:33
  To me as like a homeless, poor sixteen-year-old.
• 22:36
  They'd be like, Well here, here's a quarter of weed for
• 22:39
  free. Yeah, you sell it, and get some
• 22:41
  money for yourself and to me, I'm like, oh my God.
• 22:44
  What? A thank you so much about.
• 22:46
  Yeah, yeah. But if you're selling pounds and
• 22:48
  pounds of weed and you're an adult and you feel bad for this
• 22:50
  kid, like it's not that big of a deal to them, right?
• 22:53
  But to me it was like, oh, in my mind I'm like this is someone I
• 22:57
  can look up to. This is someone I can depend on
• 22:59
  and that was pretty much the narrative for the next, you
• 23:02
  know, two years between this woman who was a nurse and that
• 23:06
  was gay people that you met in Atlanta.
• 23:09
  In Savannah, Savannah and then yeah and when I met the people
• 23:15
  in Savannah I realized that the pills that I was getting in
• 23:19
  Florida sold for like three times more in Spanish and that's
• 23:23
  really where they were like hey if you can bring more come back
• 23:26
  and just two or three times I did it it got to the point where
• 23:29
  I was bringing like 5 600 at a time and I was starting to make,
• 23:32
  you know, a lot of money so I wasn't homeless anymore.
• 23:36
  I've got a car, I got an apartment, I got all this, so
• 23:38
  you're amazing. Right?
• 23:39
  All of a sudden, you're not homeless.
• 23:42
  Yeah, but I had nothing to live for.
• 23:43
  So I was just blowing all the money on drugs and partying and
• 23:46
  God knows what because I didn't really have like a reason too.
• 23:52
  Save or like so down or bring them before the white.
• 23:55
  But yeah, looking back, I'm like, I don't even know what I
• 23:58
  was. I have no idea what my plan was.
• 24:00
  Well, I mean it's amazing that you survived really.
• 24:02
  I let's let's take a break right here because I want to get into
• 24:06
  and we pop back in how this happened.
• 24:09
  Your nightmare happened when it all came down on you.
• 24:12
  And you had to start walking through the possible.
• 24:14
  Ways of you're going to go to prison our sponsor.
• 24:20
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• 24:23
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• 24:27
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• 24:31
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• 24:35
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• 24:39
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• 24:42
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• 25:26
  Aaron Duncan dotnet. He's the crisis management guy
• 25:31
  for everybody, who's got a crisis, talking about crisis has
• 25:37
  Harley. So you start making money, you
• 25:40
  start. Now you have a place to live.
• 25:43
  You got a car, did you know that that you were getting into kind
• 25:47
  of squeeze a getting high? Where did you think people were
• 25:51
  investigating around you? Or how did that, how did it come
• 25:55
  down on you? So again like a my adult life.
• 26:01
  I've tried to like reconcile and understand myself, back then,
• 26:04
  and it's really difficult because I'm such a professional
• 26:07
  now. Like, you know, I've been
• 26:08
  trusted with millions of dollars at manage pay your employees.
• 26:12
  I have government contracts over the national company right into
• 26:17
  think, back to what I was doing back.
• 26:19
  Then it's interesting to like it's not, it's not who I am and
• 26:24
  now it also it's so hard for me to think about, but at the end
• 26:27
  of the day, I think, What drove me to be who I was, was a
• 26:31
  complete lack of self-worth and care.
• 26:37
  Like I just was like, no one will cry.
• 26:39
  If I go to jail, I have no one who's concerned about me.
• 26:44
  And, you know, I was listening, you know, I was really into
• 26:48
  hip-hop and rap and I was, you know, I would just listen to rap
• 26:53
  music. And I had 20 inch speakers in my
• 26:55
  trunk, I just Blair rap, music and drive up and down, I know.
• 26:58
  85 someone drugs just thought like I'm like these guys.
• 27:01
  I'm making money. Yeah, system wasn't for me.
• 27:05
  Like I don't have, you know, but I'm doing something great.
• 27:09
  Like I'm making big dollars more than most.
• 27:12
  I'm making more money than most of the people in my town even
• 27:14
  though I'm not even an adult yet.
• 27:15
  Yeah, you know, I had no plans on what I was going to do with
• 27:18
  it, but in my mind that was it and, you know, I don't think I
• 27:24
  really spent too much time thinking about the consequences
• 27:27
  of being arrested, like, most people committing crimes.
• 27:30
  I think are aware that it's illegal, but they don't sit and
• 27:33
  think about what kill likelihood it arrested today.
• 27:37
  And that what would happen if they did write?
• 27:40
  Your mentality is just day to day.
• 27:43
  Like, I'm just trying to get through this transaction.
• 27:45
  Yeah, you know, oftentimes criminals are like, oh, I'm just
• 27:47
  gonna do this one thing and then I'm going to be done.
• 27:49
  I'm done. Thank.
• 27:50
  So what do you guys say that? They were out of it by the time
• 27:53
  that they Finally got hit, you know, the they did do the one
• 27:56
  thing but the one thing is the one thing that got them into the
• 27:59
  prison sentence. Yeah.
• 28:01
  And so I didn't see it coming at all.
• 28:03
  I had no idea that it was coming.
• 28:06
  I was pretty oblivious to it. In fact, I was Getting more and
• 28:11
  more Reckless. And to the point you said
• 28:13
  earlier is like, I'm very lucky. I didn't die because I wasn't
• 28:16
  only just selling drugs, you know, before I got arrested, a
• 28:20
  friend of mine said, we need to go to Atlanta Atlanta.
• 28:23
  You can get weed, super cheap. We can get like lots of it, Dirt
• 28:27
  Cheap. Well, I drove up to Atlanta and
• 28:28
  I got robbed. I got robbed.
• 28:30
  So some people in Atlanta just took all my money man.
• 28:33
  And I, so that happened and then when I was in Savannah, I would
• 28:38
  get blacked out high on Xanax and oxycontin and a couple times
• 28:43
  I just I have no idea why but I broke into cars.
• 28:46
  I like a Slim Jim and I was just like going through cars.
• 28:49
  I never even got anything from a car like nothing of value.
• 28:53
  I don't think I've broken a three or four cars like looking
• 28:55
  for stuff, but I didn't I didn't need money.
• 28:58
  Yeah, I you know, I don't even know what I was thinking.
• 29:03
  I think I was just bored. Trying to be something and you
• 29:09
  know I'm lucky because back then Savannah.
• 29:13
  Was like the armed robbery, you know, capital of the country.
• 29:16
  One of those years when I was there and just a, it's not a
• 29:20
  great City. Like there's a lot of shootings
• 29:22
  and all types of stuff. So, you know, I could have
• 29:24
  easily taken a bullet while breaking into someone's car or
• 29:26
  for no reason at all. I didn't even have a reason to
• 29:28
  just be going. Now, you didn't have, you didn't
• 29:30
  even need to do it, right? Yeah.
• 29:33
  So yeah. But yet I, when I got caught the
• 29:38
  guy that I was working with and Savannah, Just had this kid that
• 29:43
  he sold weed to and the kid was 17, when I got caught I had just
• 29:48
  turned 18 and this maybe 16 or 17 year old kid that was selling
• 29:52
  weed sold to an undercover cop and you know I don't know the
• 29:58
  truth. It's been 11 years I kind of
• 30:00
  blocked out of my brain but That kid claims that he didn't snitch
• 30:04
  that his mom snitched. Sure.
• 30:06
  But whatever, you know, somebody told the police.
• 30:10
  Oh well, arrest Harley. He comes to Savannah every week
• 30:13
  with a trunk full of drugs and basically either him or him his
• 30:18
  mom or him and his mom who knows basically like worked with the
• 30:22
  Chatham County more comics Department too.
• 30:26
  Arrest me. Whenever I was coming up the
• 30:28
  next time, it's just sitting at a red light on Abercorn Street.
• 30:32
  In Savannah Georgia when I was surrounded and arrested, what in
• 30:37
  the world did you think? Because it had to be an
• 30:40
  adrenaline surprise of? Oh my gosh, I know what I'm
• 30:44
  doing. But I didn't think anybody on
• 30:46
  that side. Thought they knew what I was
• 30:49
  doing. What like was it Justin
• 30:51
  immediate? I'm caught.
• 30:53
  What did you know that the big Enos of the situation like how
• 30:56
  did it? How did you how did you deal
• 30:58
  with that moment? Yeah.
• 31:01
  Well what's really weird is I'm going to try to not spend a lot
• 31:03
  of time talking about it but it let me take a step back because
• 31:05
  I was surrounded and a red light.
• 31:07
  But what actually happened was someone knocked on my, the
• 31:10
  apartment I had in Savannah, someone knocked on the door.
• 31:12
  Like 5 a.m. yeah. And it was this kid's mom and I
• 31:16
  did not know that he had been arrested yet but she just woke
• 31:19
  me up and I was like the cops are at my house.
• 31:20
  They just arrested my son. You need to get out of your
• 31:24
  apartment. They're going to come here.
• 31:25
  R next, I heard them on the radio.
• 31:26
  They said your name well, oh, crap.
• 31:30
  I slam the door in her face and say we got to get everything and
• 31:32
  get out and we put everything in my trunk and I hit the road.
• 31:40
  Well, when I was, you know, it's still dark outside and I'm like
• 31:43
  hauling ass down the road and I see that his mom is behind me
• 31:47
  and she's following me every turn and she's on the phone and
• 31:51
  it kind of hit me. Yeah.
• 31:54
  I think she might be following me.
• 31:56
  So I start doing really weird stuff.
• 31:57
  I do a U-turn, she's following me.
• 32:00
  And ultimately, I floor it. I'm going like 90.
• 32:04
  I'm going through neighborhoods and Savannah going like 90 and I
• 32:07
  eventually loser and I come out on the main Abercorn.
• 32:10
  Street, I turn, right? I'm sitting at a red light on a
• 32:12
  Bourbon Street, you know, I'm sitting there waiting times
• 32:16
  going slow super slow. I'm like tapping like waiting
• 32:19
  waiting waiting waiting for it to turn green and that's when
• 32:22
  there's just like three, four cops around me.
• 32:24
  So she actually worked with the police to get me to come out of
• 32:28
  my apartment with the stuff. Because they yeah so like I
• 32:32
  don't know maybe I woke up and found out he got arrested I
• 32:34
  would have liked Hit everything or left town or whatever but so
• 32:38
  that's what happened and when they surrounded me so I already
• 32:40
  knew my dream with Run Race already flying through running
• 32:44
  from this woman and I have a mission that she's like setting
• 32:47
  me up but yeah what's the cops surrounded me?
• 32:51
  I mean yeah explosion of energy my heart's racing so much
• 32:54
  because I'm like okay I'm not. I'm not running.
• 32:57
  Yeah. No, I'm not gonna.
• 32:59
  I mean there's like six cop cars here.
• 33:00
  I'm not going to run from them. So I just stopped and you know,
• 33:04
  they tell me, put your hands out the window or whatever and they
• 33:07
  clearly I pulled me out of the car, put me on the ground and I
• 33:10
  just remember them taking me to a cop car and they shut me in
• 33:13
  the back door for like 20 minutes.
• 33:15
  They didn't say anything to me. Then they came up to me and said
• 33:17
  mr. Bleakman, can we search the
• 33:18
  vehicle? And I was like, no because it's
• 33:22
  not even my vehicle because before I had turned 18, he was
• 33:26
  actually my mom's name even though my mom and I never saw
• 33:30
  each other, the car was in her name.
• 33:31
  Yeah I said it's not my car. That's my mom's car and they
• 33:36
  were like we need to just let us search it and I was like no you
• 33:39
  can't you got you can't search it until I talk to her and then
• 33:42
  they shut the door and they went and searched the car.
• 33:44
  Anyways, they're just like open the trunk pulled everything out
• 33:46
  and as soon as they pulled out the backpack and they opened it
• 33:49
  You know, I knew what was in the backpack as soon as I saw about
• 33:53
  I literally just laid down in the back of the cop car and went
• 33:55
  to sleep. Wow.
• 33:57
  Because your adrenaline probably this crashed.
• 34:00
  Yeah and I think looking back part of me is just like a peace
• 34:05
  came over me. Yeah this like piece of Wieck.
• 34:11
  Like it's like I've been trying to control myself for two years,
• 34:14
  three years as a kid with no like I've inserted and like now
• 34:17
  I can just like a like I'm in their control.
• 34:19
  I can't control what happens from here is kind of peaceful
• 34:22
  actually, that's interesting. Yeah, do you were in their hands
• 34:26
  so what are the next steps that happen?
• 34:28
  I had. Did you get a public defender
• 34:31
  and turning? How long did this process take
• 34:35
  before you were walking into the gates of somewhere?
• 34:39
  It was a long time. Actually, it was almost, I think
• 34:41
  there's 11 months before I actually got said.
• 34:44
  Yeah, because II got out on bail so I went to jail.
• 34:47
  Yeah. And I called this girl, that I
• 34:49
  was like kind of dating and Savannah and she came and bailed
• 34:53
  me out and it's funny as she was, like, I need the money
• 34:57
  back. It was my mom's money.
• 34:58
  I took it without permission and I told her, I was like, I don't
• 35:01
  have any money, they took all my money.
• 35:02
  They took my car, they took everything.
• 35:05
  And then she was basically, like, stop talking to me.
• 35:08
  She was like, You know, after that, Joe build out, she could
• 35:11
  pay her back and that was it. Yeah, relationship.
• 35:15
  She was like, why don't you go down to Florida and get some
• 35:17
  more drugs, and make the money. And I was like, you fucking
• 35:20
  kidding me. Like, I just got out.
• 35:21
  Like, I'm not doing that anymore, and then she basically
• 35:23
  never talk to me again, but I was out.
• 35:28
  I didn't have a car, didn't have money, actually.
• 35:31
  My like partner in crime and in Savannah, he actually, let me
• 35:37
  move in like he moved in with his mom and his mom, let me move
• 35:40
  in with his mom to okay, because I knew his mom pretty well.
• 35:43
  So I went back to living with him but like I was super
• 35:46
  depressed. I knew I'm going to prison.
• 35:48
  I have no one to call. No one to help me.
• 35:50
  I don't know what to do and I was still extremely addicted to
• 35:52
  drugs. So I was still abusing drugs
• 35:54
  heavily, even though I wasn't selling medicated probably to
• 35:57
  try to get through all the stress of what you were going
• 35:59
  through. Yeah, and I still felt a lot of
• 36:03
  Shame for the fact that people were having to basically like
• 36:07
  these people didn't want me living with them.
• 36:09
  I just they knew I didn't have anywhere to go, right?
• 36:11
  So like twice while I was out on bail, I got arrested for
• 36:14
  shoplifting, go. Mike is idea of barley, I get
• 36:17
  blacked out on Xanax and I went into a Walmart, just walked out
• 36:23
  with a grocery cart full of groceries.
• 36:25
  Got arrested, woke up in jail. Didn't even know why I was
• 36:27
  there. I had to explain it to me and
• 36:30
  then, Another time I got arrested shoplifting, hello
• 36:33
  pants from Macy's because I thought I was going to sell them
• 36:36
  for 60 bucks and then have some cash.
• 36:39
  And let's while you're out on bail Yes, while I was out on
• 36:45
  bail but that they'll let you out on these like very Petty.
• 36:47
  Sure, you know, Penny shoplifting charges But then my
• 36:53
  friend's mom was like, you got to leave.
• 36:54
  I'm sorry but like it's not good for for my son like can you know
• 36:58
  we really need to figure out a way to go back to Florida so I
• 37:01
  went back to Florida and I was living on couches in Florida and
• 37:06
  I was actually doing okay I mean I wasn't really committing any
• 37:10
  crime, I was just Skin and Bones hungry, starving withdrawal and
• 37:16
  cops suck on my friends door and say hey we have a warrant for
• 37:19
  Harley blakeman's arrest. Is he here?
• 37:21
  And he's like yeah let me get them and I walk up and I'm like
• 37:25
  what's going on? And they say we have a warrant
• 37:28
  for your arrest for stealing a diamond ring.
• 37:31
  Oh my God and I was like what? And they're like yeah these two
• 37:37
  people, these two women in Florida, wrote witness statement
• 37:40
  saying that you stole their mother's diamond ring.
• 37:44
  And I was like, I don't know what the hell you guys are
• 37:46
  talking about, and they're like, look, we have a warrant, so
• 37:49
  you're going to go to jail, you can either come with us or, you
• 37:53
  know, we can come in and get you.
• 37:54
  And I remember is interesting is such a small town and they knew
• 37:57
  me so well. Like even the cops in the town,
• 37:59
  knew my story, like my dad had passed and all this stuff.
• 38:02
  The ended up, telling me, I can meet them at the police station
• 38:05
  that I can. I told them, I said, look, I'm
• 38:07
  out on bail already and I said, yeah, and I ended up buying
• 38:11
  whites because it was like my fourth time going to jail.
• 38:12
  So I knew I got like white Shirts, and white underwear, and
• 38:15
  all this. I ended up turning myself in
• 38:17
  like eight hours later and they let me do that.
• 38:21
  But then, when I turn myself in, they explain these two people.
• 38:25
  Were claiming that I stole a diamond ring.
• 38:26
  They said that. I came to their house and sold
• 38:28
  them. Drugs, and that when I was
• 38:29
  selling them drugs, I went into their parents bedroom and took a
• 38:32
  diamond ring. So anyways, I don't talk about
• 38:35
  this a whole lot because it's just a crazy, long story, crazy
• 38:38
  nuts. Yeah, so basically this one
• 38:43
  woman who was a drug addict that I sold drugs to, she was
• 38:47
  arrested for stealing her mom's diamond ring.
• 38:49
  But after her arrest, her girlfriend.
• 38:52
  So she was with a woman and that woman And she was was a was a
• 38:56
  correctional officer in both of them were drug addicts.
• 38:59
  Well anyways after she was arrested for stealing her mom's
• 39:01
  ring together. They wrote witness statement
• 39:04
  saying that it wasn't her. It was actually me.
• 39:06
  Wow, and I just wrote a letter to DeSantis two weeks ago asking
• 39:12
  for a pardon so we'll see how that goes but that as of today
• 39:15
  that's actually the only crime on my record was.
• 39:17
  I was arrested for grand theft supposedly.
• 39:20
  This ring was worth like 350 bucks and I was already out on
• 39:25
  bail, I couldn't get bail, so I'm sitting in jail in Florida
• 39:29
  for a grand theft charge. There's nothing I can do to get
• 39:31
  bail. And this is all before I even
• 39:35
  get sentence for the drug charge unbelievable.
• 39:38
  Yes, I was in jail for three, three and a half months in
• 39:40
  Florida, trying to fight this. And all I have is opposed to
• 39:43
  Fender and they basically, like, look, you've been arrested for
• 39:46
  shoplifting twice. You've got a pending theft drug
• 39:49
  charge, you know, and two people said they saw, you do it.
• 39:54
  So if you want to beat this thing, you're going to have to
• 39:56
  go to trial and there's still a good chance that you're not
• 39:58
  going to win. Because, you know, it's just
• 40:01
  pretty obvious to a jury that there's a high likelihood that
• 40:04
  you may have done this. And he said, look, I'm gonna go
• 40:09
  talk to the DA and do yada yada yada, I can try to get you a
• 40:12
  deal and he came back and said after three and a half months,
• 40:15
  they said, we'll give you time serve.
• 40:16
  No probation, no parole, no jail time.
• 40:18
  You leave today. Wow.
• 40:21
  And I'm going to ask that they keep it off your record and
• 40:24
  there's a chance. They might you're so young,
• 40:26
  there's a chance they might. Well, I did what's called a no
• 40:29
  contest? I plead no contest went in front
• 40:31
  of the judge and the judge said okay we're going Give you time
• 40:36
  served, you can leave today but I'm keeping it on your record,
• 40:40
  so I just did. Wait, I thought you were
• 40:41
  supposed to. I took the advice of my attorney
• 40:43
  multiple times. He kept telling me to just take
• 40:45
  the deal, take the deal, I found it for three and a half months
• 40:47
  and I eventually gave up because he basically was like, you could
• 40:50
  sit here for another year and still lose and actually have to
• 40:53
  do more time. So anyways, that's what usually
• 40:57
  happens. I mean that that what you just
• 40:58
  described is how people end up pleading to so many different
• 41:02
  things is just to get, they want to get it through the system,
• 41:04
  get it over with it, get it off there.
• 41:06
  At their desk. And that person has it on the
• 41:08
  record and they walk away but it stays forever.
• 41:12
  So whenever I left the courtroom, they brought me back
• 41:15
  into the jail, the Pod where there's like 20, 30, 40 people
• 41:19
  or something in that night there.
• 41:22
  I was told they were going to be letting me go.
• 41:25
  They came and called my name. I said blakeman, I get up and
• 41:29
  I'm packing it up and I'm like am I getting like oh and they're
• 41:32
  like no you're actually going to interstate compact, you're being
• 41:34
  transferred to Savannah, Georgia.
• 41:36
  Shh. Wow.
• 41:37
  So they didn't even let me go, they sent me to Savannah and I
• 41:39
  had to sit in jail and Savannah until my court date to be
• 41:42
  sentenced in Georgia. Wow, what an experience.
• 41:48
  So, finally, you get to the point of the original deal with
• 41:53
  the drugs, what what's your sentence on that?
• 41:57
  Yeah, so I know I did like 14 months in a couple days total
• 42:03
  State Prison. Stay no federal prison.
• 42:08
  It was it was a State Correctional Facility but it
• 42:11
  technically wasn't even a prison.
• 42:12
  It was a Work Camp. So I don't know if I've heard
• 42:14
  about the work items. Yeah.
• 42:16
  Yeah I don't know, the technicalities this stuff, you
• 42:17
  know, it's for people who are doing over a year and a day.
• 42:20
  Yeah, so similar to prison but there's like more structure and
• 42:24
  they make you work and stuff. So and I was very lucky to get
• 42:28
  sentenced to one of those facilities.
• 42:29
  I mean, the real hardened criminals tend to not stay
• 42:34
  there. I even saw multiple times where
• 42:38
  people would get in arguments or fights the correctional officer
• 42:41
  and they would send them to the State Penitentiary.
• 42:43
  Yeah, I'd say hey this isn't maximum enough security.
• 42:46
  We need to get these guys out of here because they're causing
• 42:48
  trouble. So for the most part there was I
• 42:53
  imagine less. Extreme violence.
• 42:58
  Yeah but there was I mean there was fights almost every day gang
• 43:02
  violence like crazy. Bloods Crips Vice Lords TVs like
• 43:05
  it was Savannah Georgia. I mean it was Georgia between
• 43:08
  Savanah and Atlanta. And like if you weren't from
• 43:11
  Savannah, Atlanta or Macon, You were either with people from one
• 43:16
  of their cities, or you were with people from a gang and I
• 43:18
  wasn't from any of the cities. And I wasn't with any gay and it
• 43:21
  was like Harley how just fascinated to know.
• 43:25
  How did you do in that world? That's totally, you know, you
• 43:29
  entered into this unknown world. What how did you do walking into
• 43:33
  this? How did you survive it?
• 43:36
  I mean, it was the scary by far. The scariest thing you can
• 43:39
  imagine. You know, barely ate I guess at
• 43:45
  that time, I had just turned 19. It was like barely 19 one week
• 43:49
  after my 19th birthday. Are you going through
• 43:51
  withdrawals or anything? Or were you awful things by
• 43:53
  that? This point, is that at that
• 43:55
  point, I'd been in jail for Co? Yeah, I actually had gotten in
• 44:00
  shape. I was pretty, pretty healthy,
• 44:02
  but I was still even though physically, I wasn't We, you
• 44:07
  know, like I've never heard anyone.
• 44:10
  I've never physically hurt anyone.
• 44:12
  So, like to go into prison and never have been in like, a real
• 44:15
  fight. Hmm.
• 44:17
  You know, like you I wasn't super confident that like, oh,
• 44:19
  if someone comes at me, I'm just going to, like, defend myself
• 44:22
  right now familiar, right? Yeah, they just shaved my head
• 44:28
  so I'm like, fresh meat, everybody can tell.
• 44:31
  And then this work Camp, there's eight dorms with a big central
• 44:35
  circle you have to walk around. The circle.
• 44:37
  And as we walk around the circle there, like they name off the
• 44:40
  people that are going in each of the, you know, the eight dorms.
• 44:44
  And as soon as we walk out, everyone's banging on the glass
• 44:46
  with cops and yelling, and hooting and hollering fresh, me,
• 44:49
  and all this stuff. And, you know, I was one of
• 44:56
  three or four white people, and my 87 person dorm room.
• 45:00
  Mmm. And as I'm like standing, they
• 45:02
  tell me to stand right here that this is your door.
• 45:04
  And people are hitting the glass looking me in the eyes and like,
• 45:07
  someone's like that. White boy is mine, that white
• 45:09
  boy is mine, and I'm just like, oh God, like it's over like
• 45:14
  this, I don't know. I'm gonna do.
• 45:17
  I mean, just try to be tough. You know, that's all I can think
• 45:20
  is. I keep your chin?
• 45:21
  I'll try to be. Tell us, don't let him walk all
• 45:22
  over you. But I thought like I'm about to
• 45:24
  just get, you know, beat up or whatever and it turns out like,
• 45:30
  as soon as I open the door when we walk in, there's like four of
• 45:32
  us walking in no, one comes up to me, everyone's just hootin
• 45:35
  and hollerin and stuff. I walked to my, it's an open bay
• 45:38
  door with triple story bunk beds.
• 45:41
  Wow. And I walked to my bunk and I
• 45:44
  set my stuff down and the guy above me, Just leans down and
• 45:47
  goes. Hey man, what's your name?
• 45:48
  My name is. My name is rat.
• 45:50
  He went by the name rat, like a snitch basically.
• 45:53
  And then he just said, don't worry about these guys, man,
• 45:55
  they're all talk. They don't really do, they don't
• 45:57
  really do anything. You're going to be fine.
• 46:00
  And sure enough. He was right.
• 46:01
  I mean, for the most part, They're excited.
• 46:04
  They leave. Yeah, and it, you know, it took
• 46:07
  me a good week to feel comfortable and then every once
• 46:12
  in a while, by once a month, something would happen that
• 46:15
  would remind me that you can't get comfortable like this place
• 46:17
  is not really present myself, being really comfortable and
• 46:22
  every once in a while, get a reminder that these some of
• 46:24
  these people are not so they can hurt you.
• 46:30
  So did you? And I've heard a little bit
• 46:32
  about About this prison camps are the prison work camps were
• 46:38
  because I think if you're there, they can deduct time off and all
• 46:41
  those different things, but you can't get in trouble or they
• 46:45
  ship you and you do your full sentence.
• 46:46
  So, was it really like what you think about?
• 46:51
  Like you see in the movies, they wake you up at a certain time.
• 46:54
  You go, you do your work, and you're basically on this
• 46:57
  hardcore routine. And then if you do it, stay in
• 47:00
  line and they'll let you go. Yeah.
• 47:03
  So in Georgia, I was sentenced under What's called the first
• 47:05
  Offenders Act. Which means if I complete my
• 47:07
  sentence, they clear my record. Okay.
• 47:10
  Fortunately, the sentence was pretty extreme.
• 47:12
  It was you know a year and a day with another nine years of
• 47:19
  parole probation. It was probation.
• 47:21
  Technically. Yeah.
• 47:23
  And basically yeah they said we're going to instead of giving
• 47:27
  me three years in state prison. We're going to give you one year
• 47:29
  in this Camp. Yeah.
• 47:31
  But yeah to behave. So there's Has two things in
• 47:33
  Georgia, they can do. They give you a split, which
• 47:36
  means they'll say you're to do 12 to 18 months.
• 47:42
  Okay, depending on your savior. So when you show up day one,
• 47:45
  you've got a 12-month sentence but every time you get in
• 47:47
  trouble, they can control whether to come on up to a half.
• 47:52
  And it's also at the sole discretion of the like, the
• 47:55
  warden or whatever, to just send you to a State Penitentiary, if
• 47:58
  they're like this person's, cause causing problems.
• 48:00
  I just want him gone. So there are a couple cases
• 48:06
  where both of those happen. I had two weeks added to my
• 48:09
  split because I got caught getting a tattoo like an idiot
• 48:13
  night. The whole ride together sometime
• 48:15
  today. Yeah, yeah.
• 48:16
  I'm trying to get it removed since then.
• 48:17
  But apparently, like melted plastic doesn't come on your
• 48:20
  arm, break easily. And then, you know, I saw other
• 48:24
  people get sent away because they basically would like step
• 48:28
  in the wardens face and tell them like I'm gangster.
• 48:32
  Like he won't touch me. I'll be true.
• 48:34
  You know, whatever. And then the word would
• 48:35
  basically say get him out of here.
• 48:36
  Yeah. But yeah, we woke up every day
• 48:39
  and worked and it was interesting because they made
• 48:42
  us, you know, make our bed perfectly like the military
• 48:45
  style. Yeah, they did count and
• 48:48
  everything. So yeah, I mean, we had to like
• 48:49
  March to chow hall. Basically, but these people
• 48:53
  were, I mean, like I said gang violence almost every day.
• 48:57
  I mean, yeah. Just a lot of young guys, you
• 49:01
  know, the average age where I was at was like 21 2003 on
• 49:04
  people. Well, I'm curious Harley is
• 49:08
  you're going through this and you're working yourself into
• 49:10
  basically a new routine in your life.
• 49:12
  Being in this environment. You start getting close to the
• 49:16
  door knowing you're going to be free from this.
• 49:18
  What do you think you're walking out to like, what are you?
• 49:22
  Do you have like a new plan or what are you thinking is?
• 49:26
  Okay, they're going to release me from here and I was living
• 49:28
  this. World and dealing drugs.
• 49:31
  I can't do that. So what do you?
• 49:33
  What's going through your mind? Yeah, it's interesting is I
• 49:38
  never really had a grand plan. I never really had that much of
• 49:41
  a plan because I in my mind I was going home to nothing right?
• 49:45
  I didn't know what I was going to do.
• 49:46
  Ya in a few months before my release I was communicating with
• 49:50
  my my aunt's and my grandmother and Ohio because our my dad's
• 49:53
  side of the family started writing me and they started
• 49:57
  writing me then they started putting a little money on the
• 49:59
  phone so I can have a 15 minute phone call once a week.
• 50:03
  They would even send me like 20 bucks a month for commissary the
• 50:06
  Last couple months I was there and really what we know our
• 50:09
  Communications are letters, they kind of acknowledge that they
• 50:13
  can tell my writing skills have gotten better and that I'm
• 50:17
  talking about stuff, that's more looking forward rather than
• 50:20
  looking back. And now they said it, I think
• 50:24
  that you're young and you still have a chance to turn your life
• 50:26
  around. If you want, you can move to a
• 50:28
  Columbus Ohio when you get out, okay?
• 50:30
  And you can actually stay in my basement for a month or two
• 50:32
  while you get on your feet and it was hard for me.
• 50:36
  Because all I knew was like, the people I grew up with in
• 50:38
  Florida. Yeah.
• 50:40
  The same time I had been reading books.
• 50:42
  I got my GED and some of the people in the dorm room.
• 50:46
  And I've talked about this before, I think it's an
• 50:48
  important point that gets overlooked.
• 50:49
  A lot. Is that like Older guys that
• 50:52
  were in the dorm with me, encouraged me to move somewhere
• 50:56
  new to get my idol environment. I mean, not everyone in prison,
• 51:01
  is a terrible person that can't be changed.
• 51:02
  Many of them are good people, exactly what to do.
• 51:05
  Well there are some bad apples who like this isn't their last
• 51:09
  time going to prison because they haven't changed.
• 51:13
  But these some of these people encouraged me.
• 51:14
  They said you know you're young you got so much you can do.
• 51:17
  Yeah, just go. That's forget your past and go
• 51:20
  make a clean break. Great advice.
• 51:22
  And I went to Columbus Ohio and guys, just taking just a Carly
• 51:26
  if you hadn't done that. I mean, just I mean what what a
• 51:30
  difference your life would have been probably but it's um
• 51:34
  something in you and these old guys telling you man you're
• 51:38
  young, you can and you just something instilled in you just
• 51:41
  like I'm going to I am going to make a clean break that's a big
• 51:44
  deal at your age when you're at that age that you're going to go
• 51:48
  somewhere, you've never been before people you really don't
• 51:50
  know. That well and estate.
• 51:53
  You've probably not lived in and you're good as live in the
• 51:56
  basement of somebody's house. I mean that's, but that's
• 52:00
  probably the thing that saved you, right?
• 52:03
  Absolutely. Yeah, I talk about it all the
• 52:06
  time with, you know, some time I talked to like legislators and
• 52:10
  policymakers and stuff. When I talk about how it means
• 52:12
  to be incentive programs, to incentivize people coming up
• 52:15
  from prison to move, multiple states away.
• 52:18
  Yeah. Is I actually believe, you know,
• 52:21
  as the lower you are on like the socioeconomic status, the more
• 52:25
  likely you are to be stuck in like a really bad situation.
• 52:29
  Yeah wealthy. And you go to prison, you come
• 52:31
  home. You can move.
• 52:32
  Yeah. But like Like, if you're in
• 52:34
  poverty, there's you're most likely going to go right back to
• 52:37
  the, you know, the place you were living before the exact
• 52:39
  same people. And I think that is a huge
• 52:42
  driver to recidivism as well as just that it has to be because
• 52:46
  it's so much easier because the thing I think is so, I mean,
• 52:51
  we're going to get on and all this because I think it's this
• 52:53
  why you're what you're doing is so important that recidivism
• 52:57
  thing is, if somebody doesn't mean you're a perfect example of
• 53:00
  somebody has to have a place to go or place to stay.
• 53:03
  So then they'll it's so much easier just to fall back into
• 53:06
  the people that they knew that we're in the bad part.
• 53:09
  But it's the only thing that you know and it's the only people
• 53:11
  are going to take care of you. And that's why it's so easy that
• 53:16
  those people fall back into, then they catch another charge
• 53:19
  and then they're back into the system and then that's how you
• 53:21
  get, you know, two thirds and three years, three, four and
• 53:24
  five. It's just crazy.
• 53:26
  Yeah. And they've interviewed with 20
• 53:28
  companies, they keep getting rejected in place hard and There
• 53:32
  are old. Friend is saying hey man, just
• 53:34
  let's just do those. We just brought you a half pound
• 53:37
  of weed any time. Just let me know.
• 53:38
  It'll be easy. Why you better head up against
• 53:41
  the wall, man. Nobody's gonna hire you.
• 53:43
  You're an ex-felon. Yeah, it was funny at that to
• 53:46
  there's plenty of people in prison saying good luck.
• 53:49
  You're never going to go to. You're never going to get a good
• 53:51
  job now, so well. So Harley, let's get into this
• 53:55
  because this is the stuff that that people, it doesn't matter
• 53:58
  if you've gone to prison, everybody's trying to figure out
• 54:01
  how do I I was talking to a group the other day and I said,
• 54:06
  I was giving a speech and I said, you know, we're at the
• 54:09
  point where at the turn of the Year, everybody says I'm going
• 54:11
  to step out of my comfort zone. I'm going to make a New Year's
• 54:14
  resolution and we lose 25% of those people right off the first
• 54:18
  week, they just too hard. I'm sore from working out.
• 54:21
  I can't lose that much waiter it.
• 54:23
  By the end of the month. We've lost 46 percent of the
• 54:25
  people, out of 330 million, there's 200 million people to
• 54:28
  make new users by the end of the month.
• 54:30
  We've lost half of them and mostly it's because it's easier
• 54:35
  to stay in your old routine than it is to step out into something
• 54:38
  that's new makes you uncomfortable, makes you a
• 54:40
  little bit nervous, makes you possibly fear something, but if
• 54:44
  you can kind of start stepping into it, you start getting
• 54:46
  confidence. And I think from following your
• 54:49
  story that's kind of what happened to you is, you started
• 54:53
  feeling different and you start getting different results.
• 54:56
  Can you kind of talk to us how this started happening for you?
• 55:01
  yeah, I mean First off, I was living in that basement for a
• 55:07
  very short period of time. I was lucky enough.
• 55:10
  My aunt new of gentleman who owned a restaurant and I was
• 55:14
  able to get a job washing dishes, she gave me a bicycle
• 55:18
  and, you know, I was Off to the Races.
• 55:20
  I rode a bike to work every day, but it was like a mile and a
• 55:23
  half away. So it wasn't too bad but it
• 55:26
  wasn't an Ohio. So, sometimes I was riding a
• 55:29
  bicycle. A bike to the bus, stop in the
• 55:31
  snow to get on the, you know. Yeah.
• 55:34
  But really I felt like for the first time I was sober and I had
• 55:37
  like something to do like I didn't want to let my aunt down
• 55:42
  who had invested in me and I didn't want this guy down who
• 55:45
  gave me a job. And for the first time in, like
• 55:47
  a very long time, I just had people to let down.
• 55:50
  Yes, he felt a cat. I didn't see them, but they're
• 55:53
  helping. Yeah.
• 55:54
  Honorable Tom. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 55:56
  And I just think that that alone was like really important but
• 56:01
  then, as I was working, You know, for the first time I
• 56:05
  wasn't drinking, it wasn't doing drugs.
• 56:06
  I didn't have friends, I didn't really like, I was happy.
• 56:11
  I had money. And I was I was saving up money
• 56:16
  because I was living in an apartment, I was five hundred
• 56:18
  bucks a month. I got a car on Craigslist for a
• 56:20
  thousand dollars to it was living in a cheap lie and you
• 56:24
  know, eventually I had like saved up like five grand cash
• 56:27
  and I would look at it. I've got like it's amazing
• 56:29
  because I'm actually not spending it on drugs or alcohol
• 56:32
  or anything. And I started to really find a
• 56:35
  sense of Pride and owning my own car and having my own stuff and
• 56:41
  a bunch of the workers at this restaurant were high school kids
• 56:44
  with the servers and stuff, and many of them were going to
• 56:47
  college that just graduated And I was like, man, I wish I could
• 56:51
  go to college and study business because the way they run this
• 56:55
  restaurant socks, like I do better, and the kids were like,
• 57:00
  you know, to college. And I was like, no, I have a
• 57:02
  prison GD. Like there's no way I'm going to
• 57:04
  get in there. Like, just go to Community
• 57:05
  College. Yeah, one of them told me.
• 57:07
  Here's the website, go to the website and literally that
• 57:09
  night, I just filled out all the applications online and
• 57:13
  everything and like it was only like a month or two later they
• 57:15
  let me know. I got accepted for financial aid
• 57:17
  student loans. Awesome, and that I kissed the
• 57:19
  next Yeah, and I, you know, I was Off to the Races.
• 57:24
  There was a bunch of times where I didn't know, like the student
• 57:27
  loan, they gave me some a surplus check and between that
• 57:30
  and my work, I thought I had enough but then like I find
• 57:34
  myself short on cash and struggling and I'd be like,
• 57:37
  okay, should I drop out of college to go back to work, you
• 57:40
  know, 60 hours a week and you know, luckily there was a two or
• 57:44
  three times before my aunt's helped me in a way that I've
• 57:47
  never had help in my life where someone gave me 500 Dollars in
• 57:50
  just said, go, you know, we want you to finish college.
• 57:54
  Here's your rent for this month. So some which, you know, I'm
• 57:59
  privileged in that way that I had family first time that, you
• 58:04
  know, I didn't grow up in a household, where College was
• 58:06
  ever talk about. No one talked about college.
• 58:08
  I would not have gone to college if I had not moved to Ohio
• 58:11
  because your way around. Oh, right.
• 58:15
  Your environment with people that did that, nobody was going
• 58:17
  to college. Yeah, yeah.
• 58:19
  But you know, I I really did find a sense of pride in Proving
• 58:25
  to the people, I knew that. I'm not just floating along like
• 58:30
  I'm not here just to be here. Like I still have.
• 58:33
  You can make a difference. I still want.
• 58:35
  Yeah. Well I want to make something
• 58:37
  for myself and you know, that resulted in me getting to Ohio
• 58:41
  State University as a transfer student and doing really well at
• 58:44
  Ohio State and all along the way.
• 58:46
  I did extracurricular stuff. I was a treasure of a student
• 58:48
  organization. I did that because I wanted to
• 58:51
  be able to talk about my grand theft charge.
• 58:53
  Yeah, you know, I have a grand theft charge.
• 58:55
  People are going to ask me about it.
• 58:56
  If I'm the treasurer of a Student.
• 58:57
  Or I can say, I manage all the money's exactly year.
• 59:00
  I stood, and I did that Harlan. How hard was it for you to get
• 59:04
  into Ohio State? Because I mean, I know that you
• 59:06
  did well in your community college.
• 59:08
  And then what was it? Was it difficult to get into
• 59:11
  Ohio State for you at that point in your life.
• 59:15
  No, no. I mean, I just applied and then
• 59:18
  they got it. I got it.
• 59:20
  I mean, it blew my mind. I had, I had no idea.
• 59:23
  I was going to get in because the kids that were servers and
• 59:26
  stuff at this restaurant, we're like really good kids that had
• 59:29
  like straight A's. Yeah.
• 59:30
  And you have them applied to Ohio State and told me they
• 59:32
  didn't get in that. They were going to have to go to
• 59:34
  Ohio University or some other Regional Coolidge.
• 59:37
  So when I got in, I was very, very surprised.
• 59:39
  And I believe the reason I got in was because I was kind of a
• 59:42
  non-traditional transfer student. is like, If you're
• 59:48
  applying as a high school student, your loot, your Bunch
• 59:51
  dinner with all the kids with all the kids coming in and it's
• 59:54
  extremely competitive. But as an adult transfer student
• 59:57
  it's less competitive, its rise, there's not as many of you.
• 1:00:01
  Yeah, yeah. So adults who are discouraged
• 1:00:04
  about college, like you could actually have a better chance of
• 1:00:06
  getting in as an adult transfer student with good grades than
• 1:00:09
  you would have. If you had just done really well
• 1:00:11
  in high school. When applied right out of high
• 1:00:12
  school, it's interesting. Yeah.
• 1:00:15
  So you end up doing really well in Ohio State And I'm sure at
• 1:00:20
  that point in your life, you're thinking I'm got, I'm on the
• 1:00:24
  right track. All I got to do is get out.
• 1:00:25
  You know, I've done well at Ohio State, graduated top of my class
• 1:00:29
  and I'm going to go out and Take On The World, just need somebody
• 1:00:33
  to hire me and what happens? Yeah, I mean, I might last two
• 1:00:38
  years of college, I was tinkering with entrepreneurial
• 1:00:41
  type things, but I still in my mind was not.
• 1:00:43
  It wasn't that I was going to be an entrepreneur.
• 1:00:45
  Yeah, I think that was Was. One of the things I've learned
• 1:00:52
  about myself as I have a lot of energy, like I can do a lot.
• 1:00:55
  Like I can do a lot of stuff. It's too like a flaw where I
• 1:00:58
  don't give myself relaxation time.
• 1:01:00
  So, like, while I was getting A's and college, I was also
• 1:01:04
  writing a book and volunteering and doing student orgs and all
• 1:01:08
  this stuff. But really, I was doing all of
• 1:01:11
  this with the idea that I wanted to get a job at one of the big
• 1:01:13
  consulting, firms or like rolls-royce's like operations
• 1:01:16
  manager because I studied operations.
• 1:01:19
  And my senior year, I just applied for all the jobs that I
• 1:01:22
  thought looked the best, you know, a couple dozen jobs and I
• 1:01:26
  was making it to like second and third round of interviews but
• 1:01:29
  once I disclosed that that I had a record so I was really
• 1:01:34
  experimenting with all these different interviews.
• 1:01:35
  Some of them, I would wait until the background.
• 1:01:37
  Check some of them I tell them. Yeah.
• 1:01:41
  And then really what I found works best in my book.
• 1:01:43
  I talk about is Is for professional jobs.
• 1:01:48
  So if it's a restaurant Warehouse manufacturing, you're
• 1:01:50
  probably only going to do one interview, but for professional
• 1:01:53
  jobs, they do multiple rounds of interviews.
• 1:01:55
  Usually, and when I found to work best was to wait until at
• 1:02:00
  least the second round interview, get to know you a
• 1:02:02
  little late. If if someone more senior is
• 1:02:06
  involved the more severe the person you're interviewing with
• 1:02:09
  the more likely they are to have the conviction to go back to the
• 1:02:12
  team and say Hey I want to hire this was work on this guy.
• 1:02:14
  Let's bend the rules. Little bit.
• 1:02:16
  Yeah, Yeah. And your employee just doesn't
• 1:02:18
  feel comfortable and confident enough to go to bat for some
• 1:02:21
  random person who has a felony. So I got really lucky, actually
• 1:02:25
  don't talk about it too much, but I got two offers and both of
• 1:02:28
  them were from a more senior employee in the company at like
• 1:02:32
  a third round interview, okay? One would be called American
• 1:02:35
  would Mark manufacturing company and the other one was with Owens
• 1:02:39
  Corning. Also manufacturing company just
• 1:02:42
  American word. Mark wanted me to go to Arizona.
• 1:02:45
  I was living in Ohio Owens Corning.
• 1:02:47
  I could stay where I was. So I ended up taking that job
• 1:02:51
  and I was a production coordinator for about eight
• 1:02:53
  months before. I was promoted to production
• 1:02:55
  supervisor where I actually had quite a bit of responsibility
• 1:03:01
  but yeah. I mean, there were six months of
• 1:03:04
  me applying for jobs before I got that and I was just
• 1:03:06
  rejection, rejection rejection, and the new kind of became an
• 1:03:10
  expert. That's the thing that I think is
• 1:03:12
  so fascinated by your story though, is that that six months
• 1:03:15
  of doing that being told no to being told no to you were
• 1:03:18
  actually using that experience to figure out how you get a job.
• 1:03:22
  You were actually figuring out what you just told me your new
• 1:03:24
  system of. Okay I need a more senior
• 1:03:26
  person. I'm going to actually talk to
• 1:03:28
  them when I get to the second or the third row.
• 1:03:31
  Most people quit in that process Harley and you're learning the
• 1:03:36
  process as you go along which is kind of Incredible that, you
• 1:03:40
  ended up creating a company that that does the the experiences
• 1:03:45
  that you went through. So you, you went into this
• 1:03:49
  world, you can you start creating, you know, more
• 1:03:51
  responsibility for yourself or you thinking at that time that
• 1:03:55
  maybe I've got more to offer as as a guy that could create Yeah,
• 1:04:01
  exactly. So while I was working this job,
• 1:04:02
  sometimes that work night shift, so I was four weeks, day shift,
• 1:04:05
  four weeks night shift. In night shift was slower.
• 1:04:10
  There was, you know, pretty much weed run like one product all
• 1:04:13
  night long, so if nothing went bad.
• 1:04:15
  I just be in my office for like eight hours.
• 1:04:17
  Nine hours, ten hours. So while I was in the office,
• 1:04:20
  you know, I do like payroll one, some paperwork.
• 1:04:22
  But then I'd have these big gaps.
• 1:04:24
  I was learning about Google AdWords.
• 1:04:25
  I got Facebook ads certified. I was learning how to create
• 1:04:29
  content on Michael. Learning management system and I
• 1:04:32
  ended up creating a thing called comeback Collective which was an
• 1:04:36
  online thing that you can pay seven bucks a month and you got
• 1:04:38
  access to the chat room. You got my online course, is the
• 1:04:42
  course is taught you how to build rebuild your credit and
• 1:04:44
  how to get into college, how to find a job, how to find an
• 1:04:47
  apartment. And it was all for people with
• 1:04:49
  records and at one point I had about 3035, people paying me $7
• 1:04:53
  a month while I had my job, huh? Wow.
• 1:04:55
  In the goal was just like I want to share all the stuff I learned
• 1:04:58
  sure like I'm at this I had bought my first house.
• 1:05:02
  I was very proud of like what I had accomplished and tear point.
• 1:05:05
  Like I was learning, I wasn't just like, oh, I did it.
• 1:05:09
  It was like, I was documenting, what worked and what didn't
• 1:05:11
  work. And it's very much like an
• 1:05:13
  entrepreneur, right? Like, I'm still trying to figure
• 1:05:14
  out how to do Enterprise sales and pretty.
• 1:05:17
  It's the same thing. It's just like interviewing you
• 1:05:19
  got to figure out what works who needs to be in the room when to
• 1:05:22
  tell him how to pitch in. Yeah.
• 1:05:25
  What's the environment that needs to be right for this to
• 1:05:27
  work? But yeah, I was creating this
• 1:05:32
  online resource and making some money off of it.
• 1:05:34
  I didn't have an LLC or a company or anything but
• 1:05:37
  eventually I I checked how much money would I get if I cashed
• 1:05:42
  out my 401k? Yeah, it was like NG and I was
• 1:05:45
  like, I'm doing it. I'm just going to quit.
• 1:05:47
  I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to make this
• 1:05:49
  company work. Took the jump and I quit in
• 1:05:52
  about three months later. I was looking for a job again
• 1:05:56
  because I had only grow my audience from 30 to maybe 40.
• 1:05:59
  The three months is a lot harder than I thought but I ended up
• 1:06:03
  actually Two things happen. I got another job, but at the
• 1:06:09
  same time, I got another job. I pivoted the business to just
• 1:06:11
  focused on employment because I surveyed, those 40 people and I
• 1:06:15
  said, what are the issues you're having the most trouble with?
• 1:06:17
  And by far finding a job was the one that people said.
• 1:06:22
  So I kind of pivoted my company and called it on as jobs.
• 1:06:26
  And the, the idea was I'm just going to help companies hire
• 1:06:29
  people with records. I still hadn't really proven it
• 1:06:32
  yet but I went to a manufacturing company and this
• 1:06:34
  was one of my strengths is like I have no fear to just like go
• 1:06:37
  talk to people and ask them would you pay for that?
• 1:06:39
  Yeah. And then if they say yes I do.
• 1:06:41
  When I do it. I say okay.
• 1:06:42
  So which will manufacturers always know if you don't ask
• 1:06:46
  right? Yeah and I yeah this company
• 1:06:50
  said yeah we've hired people from prison before if you send
• 1:06:52
  them to us and we hire them will give you 500 dollars.
• 1:06:55
  Wow. And the next week they hired
• 1:06:56
  someone I sent them and I got 500 dollars and and as soon as
• 1:07:00
  that And I quit my job again and and it wasn't long before.
• 1:07:07
  I met a gentleman who invested a hundred thousand dollars and
• 1:07:11
  helped me create like a real company out of it and we're
• 1:07:14
  still good friends. Today he said an amazing
• 1:07:16
  individual and I guess the rest is history.
• 1:07:19
  Honest jobs is growing, you know, honest, jobs now is a free
• 1:07:23
  platform that right now we have about 52,000 formerly,
• 1:07:28
  incarcerated job, Seekers that use our service and we With
• 1:07:31
  about 1,300 companies, helping them hire people with a record,
• 1:07:34
  which is such a needed service that I love it, that you are the
• 1:07:40
  one that created it early because you have the seat at the
• 1:07:44
  table, you lived it, you walk through it, you know, it so
• 1:07:50
  nobody can trick you into a conversation.
• 1:07:53
  You know what, your you know, what your company does, you know
• 1:07:56
  why it does it? You see these people get place
• 1:07:59
  which has to be such a, I mean, I'm a feeling somebody that's
• 1:08:02
  got a fuel, you up to know that you are placing people in, you
• 1:08:06
  know, there's there's so many people that have records.
• 1:08:09
  I think it's roughly like around 70 million people, there's 330
• 1:08:14
  million people in the United States and then you multiply
• 1:08:18
  that out of people that are around those people that get
• 1:08:20
  effect, you know, families and wives and whatever.
• 1:08:23
  And I just how long, how long is honest Jobs been in existence.
• 1:08:32
  So I've been running this business for a little over four
• 1:08:35
  years but we've been honest jobs officially for a little less
• 1:08:39
  than four years. Yeah, so there's about six
• 1:08:41
  months. There were we were like in
• 1:08:43
  transition. I just think that there's such
• 1:08:45
  a, you know, there's such an appetite for exactly what you're
• 1:08:50
  providing and and you know, here's the other thing, a lot of
• 1:08:53
  companies don't know that they can benefit from hiring somebody
• 1:08:58
  that has been in the Prison system.
• 1:09:01
  And it's just like, a whole world that you're creating,
• 1:09:06
  because there's a lot of people out there.
• 1:09:09
  There's obviously there's bad apples.
• 1:09:11
  So you take that off to the side, there's bad apples and
• 1:09:13
  everything, but for a lot of people, there are so enthused to
• 1:09:17
  actually have a real opportunity, and they're going
• 1:09:20
  to be a good person. There going to be a person who's
• 1:09:23
  going to be dedicated because they're going to be so thankful
• 1:09:26
  to be given this job. You know, it's, it's a different
• 1:09:30
  kind. Of dedication.
• 1:09:33
  Yeah, I was just writing an employer today that there's kind
• 1:09:36
  of like three things. I was focused on which is the
• 1:09:39
  size of the talent pool. Yeah.
• 1:09:44
  The loyalty and then the diversity.
• 1:09:47
  So the size like you said, one in three Americans have a record
• 1:09:51
  you know, about 12 percent of the workforce has a felony.
• 1:09:55
  So a lot of companies will still hire you.
• 1:09:58
  If you have a misdemeanor, which people's misdemeanor still have
• 1:10:00
  a hard time. Yeah, they get rejected.
• 1:10:03
  But when you have a felony, it's really life-changing.
• 1:10:05
  It can stop you from not just a job.
• 1:10:08
  Housing, College, tax benefits of all types of stuff.
• 1:10:11
  Yeah, It's a huge population. So if you're if you're just
• 1:10:15
  telling people, no, because they have a record and that's it.
• 1:10:18
  Like, you're just going to, you're going to drive up your
• 1:10:20
  wages, like the cost. You have to pay an employee is
• 1:10:23
  going to go up inherently because there's, you know, less
• 1:10:27
  people right now. It's just fine demand.
• 1:10:29
  So and then on top of that formerly incarcerated, people
• 1:10:35
  can't just leave because the person down the road is offering
• 1:10:38
  50 cents. More an out with.
• 1:10:39
  Exactly. Like like right now, this labor
• 1:10:42
  Get people are leaving your business because they can make
• 1:10:44
  25 cents an hour more right? And formerly incarcerated.
• 1:10:47
  People are sitting there thinking I got rejected a
• 1:10:50
  hundred times before I finally got a here, right?
• 1:10:53
  I'm not, I'm not spending every night and evening, looking for
• 1:10:55
  another job, I'm just thankful. So that's the size.
• 1:11:00
  And then, you know, the Loyalty, there's a lot of research out
• 1:11:03
  there that shows this populations more loyal.
• 1:11:05
  They stay longer for the reasons, I just described and
• 1:11:07
  then the last one is diversity, Criminal Justice System District
• 1:11:11
  emotionally ACT people, impacts people of color.
• 1:11:14
  There's a widely cited research from the Brennan Center that
• 1:11:17
  shows One in three black men are projected to go to prison.
• 1:11:22
  One in three black men will go to prison, is what it says, you
• 1:11:24
  know, I don't like to say, they will because hopefully things
• 1:11:27
  change, but the data shows one in three black men will go to
• 1:11:30
  prison one and six, Latinos will go to prison.
• 1:11:33
  And one in 17 white men, will go to prison, right?
• 1:11:35
  So there's a lot more white men than there are black and brown
• 1:11:40
  and in America. And that's, you know, you and I
• 1:11:41
  have both in prison cell, right? We're to that statistic, but
• 1:11:44
  when you go from 1 in 3, 2, 1 and 17.
• 1:11:47
  Yeah, Over the last three years, every corporation, especially
• 1:11:52
  the fortune, you know, 1,000 put out big statements about their
• 1:11:57
  diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and how they're
• 1:11:59
  putting money into hiring more people of color.
• 1:12:02
  You literally will not succeed, if you're not able to hire some
• 1:12:05
  looking at that school. Exactly.
• 1:12:07
  Yeah. Because people with color are
• 1:12:10
  significantly more impacted and they're just losing money and
• 1:12:14
  they're not going to get the outcome, they want one reality
• 1:12:16
  is if they just reassess their back.
• 1:12:18
  Check policy, they can get the outcome they wanted without even
• 1:12:21
  having to dump millions of dollars into it.
• 1:12:23
  Just stopped sending people away.
• 1:12:25
  You were qualified because they have a record.
• 1:12:28
  So, Harley if somebody wants to get a hold of honest, jobs.
• 1:12:31
  They can just go to honest jobs.com, right?
• 1:12:34
  You go. And then you start the process
• 1:12:36
  and try to fit yourself into that world.
• 1:12:40
  Yep, completely free for job Seekers.
• 1:12:42
  And, you know, we're growing, we have a lot of jobs.
• 1:12:45
  We're gonna have a lot more over the next month.
• 1:12:47
  We're adding a lot. More jobs but it is typically
• 1:12:53
  more Blue Collar. Yeah.
• 1:12:55
  And this is Partly, you know, we have over 1,300 companies,
• 1:13:00
  companies are a lot less hesitant to give us White Collar
• 1:13:03
  jobs and that's because, you know, there's still a lot of
• 1:13:07
  stigma around people with records.
• 1:13:08
  Even when they are willing to hire people with records,
• 1:13:10
  they're typically reserved the what the higher paying jobs for
• 1:13:14
  like Social Capital right? Like oh well you got to know
• 1:13:17
  somebody have a reference you know whatever but we are getting
• 1:13:21
  more white collar jobs. Well the other part of that is
• 1:13:24
  to Harlow's, you get your, get your foot in the door and kind
• 1:13:27
  of What you did with yours, you got more and more
• 1:13:29
  responsibilities where you were with that first job out of the
• 1:13:33
  Chute and it also gave you some more confidence to think hey,
• 1:13:36
  wait a minute. Maybe I could do this on my own,
• 1:13:39
  maybe I could be that person but I always ask people this.
• 1:13:47
  All the stuff that you've gotten through, Harley lived like an
• 1:13:50
  incredible life. And here you are.
• 1:13:53
  What do you think's your biggest take away from all of it.
• 1:13:58
  But people listening out there. Yeah, I mean My biggest takeaway
• 1:14:05
  from all of it is. Two.
• 1:14:12
  Like just embrace. the like the bad stuff like if something bad
• 1:14:18
  happens to you, like, I have made RS Jobs What It Is by being
• 1:14:25
  extremely public and humanizing the things that are
• 1:14:28
  controversial. So basically all the social
• 1:14:32
  platforms and stuff, you don't get any eyeballs talking about
• 1:14:35
  normal stuff and saying, stuff that blends in we're really
• 1:14:39
  works is saying I was a homeless teenager that went to prison
• 1:14:43
  when I was young and here's a picture of my mug shot on
• 1:14:45
  LinkedIn and literally tell a story.
• 1:14:47
  Got me invited to the White House.
• 1:14:49
  It has allowed me to raise three million dollars to build my own
• 1:14:52
  businesses. So really just being authentic
• 1:14:55
  in the worst of what you have to talk about because you're not
• 1:14:58
  alone. And I think when people see you
• 1:15:02
  publicly talking about something, it actually invites
• 1:15:05
  them to trust you more than if they find out about it later.
• 1:15:10
  So this is going to work for Buddy.
• 1:15:11
  I don't encourage everyone to post their mugshots online but I
• 1:15:14
  think Oftentimes people people can't help you if they don't
• 1:15:20
  know. Absolutely.
• 1:15:22
  And I think that, that was one of the things I learned was
• 1:15:24
  like, the more people that knew I was trying to find a job, but
• 1:15:26
  that my record was stopping me. The more people would reach out
• 1:15:29
  to me and say, Hey, you know, we've hired people with a record
• 1:15:32
  before I could probably help you.
• 1:15:33
  Yeah. So that's my biggest takeaway.
• 1:15:35
  I've learned a lot. There's so much to come for me,
• 1:15:37
  and for my company, but like, that's the thing that has
• 1:15:40
  rewarded me the most, it's incredible advice early because
• 1:15:44
  being vulnerable being authentic, Eric is those are the
• 1:15:49
  qualities that people glued themselves to and builds trust
• 1:15:55
  and ultimately, it will move you along in life if you can do
• 1:16:00
  that. I think, that's excellent
• 1:16:03
  advice. Unbelievable.
• 1:16:04
  Advise, your book or the name of your book.
• 1:16:08
  It's called great G. RIT how to get a job and build a
• 1:16:12
  career with a criminal record. It's like 12 bucks on Amazon.
• 1:16:15
  Love it. Love it.
• 1:16:17
  If anybody else wants another book, I've got 12, it's a
• 1:16:20
  nightmare success. Loyalty betrayal Life Behind
• 1:16:22
  Bars. Adapting.
• 1:16:25
  Finally Breaking Free and get that at Barnes and Noble Amazon.
• 1:16:31
  And for everybody, it's a we're doing really good with reviews
• 1:16:35
  on Apple. It's a really big deal to leave
• 1:16:37
  a review. An apple, it helps promote the
• 1:16:40
  show and and then follow the show to follow the, it's just
• 1:16:45
  you drop that thing down. If you're on your phone, there's
• 1:16:47
  three little lines out there. Just hit follow Spotify, hit the
• 1:16:50
  Bell, it's a big deal. Love it.
• 1:16:52
  When you guys leave me a message on bring cast e.com, we can talk
• 1:16:55
  back and forth. We do have and just remind
• 1:17:00
  everybody who's listening, I've 200 prisoners behind the wall
• 1:17:03
  with adobo. This is this is a very good This
• 1:17:08
  is I love this interview to go out and hear.
• 1:17:11
  Those guys should be able to hear that from behind the balls.
• 1:17:13
  I think there's a 200,000 tablets that are being heard.
• 1:17:16
  Love that for everybody. What I used to type back to my
• 1:17:21
  people when I was in Leavenworth, stay strong.
• 1:17:25
  I'll do the same Harley. Thanks so much for being with us
• 1:17:29
  today, I appreciate it. Thank you Brent crowded.
• 1:17:33
  When here it credible story and I'm your success in and out.
• 1:17:37
  Thanks everybody.