Latest / Nightmare Success In and Out / Turning Adversity into Opportunity: Lessons from Good Planet Foods CEO David Israel

Transcript

Turning Adversity into Opportunity: Lessons from Good Planet Foods CEO David Israel · 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 In and
• 0:06
  Out podcast where we explore how to overcome your fears and
• 0:10
  nightmares that set yourself free.
• 0:12
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:14
  Leavenworth with and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 0:19
  These stories can be inspiring, sometimes sad, there's some
• 0:23
  humor, but hopefully you can come away with a nugget of
• 0:26
  something that'll help you knock down some of the prisons you
• 0:28
  built up in your own mind. All right, welcome back everyone
• 0:35
  about where you come for what happens when your worst free
• 0:37
  becomes your reality. How do you adapt, survive,
• 0:39
  overcome, set yourself free? Don't forget to follow,
• 0:42
  subscribe, share, like comment. That just helps the show.
• 0:46
  I so appreciate it. Wow, do I have, I have a guest
• 0:51
  that I have been so excited to interview.
• 0:55
  And I believe if you looked it up that David Israel would own
• 0:59
  the phrase turning lemons into lemonade.
• 1:02
  I I think he might own that one. He's turning adversity into
• 1:05
  opportunity. This guy, this guy owns it.
• 1:10
  David Israel is an Uber successful serial entrepreneur.
• 1:15
  The guys owned a nightclub, a jewelry store, a chain of
• 1:17
  upscale pawn shops, a maintenance company.
• 1:21
  David went through a riveting nightmare that had him
• 1:24
  eventually serving A5 year prison sentence.
• 1:26
  Then what he do? Then What would you do if you
• 1:29
  had to go serve a five years? Well, David founded Pop Gourmet
• 1:32
  Foods, whose idea originated by what inmates were doing,
• 1:36
  creating their popcorn, making their popcorn taste good in
• 1:39
  prison. This company took over the stack
• 1:42
  industry by a storm nationally, internationally.
• 1:46
  And then 2017, David did it again by creating the wildly
• 1:51
  popular company Good Planet Foods to address the demand for
• 1:55
  people who want to eat better, healthier, environmentally
• 1:59
  friendly products. This is I can't wait to jump
• 2:02
  into all this. And I also want to say that this
• 2:06
  last weekend, David was the featured keynote speaker at the
• 2:09
  annual White Collar Conference. And just I can't wait to get
• 2:14
  into all this. Before we do, I want to
• 2:15
  recognize our show sponsor who likes spending a couple of
• 2:20
  weekends walking the car lot looking for a car.
• 2:22
  Then you spend a four or five hours in the dealership to buy a
• 2:25
  car. It's kind of like a trip to go
• 2:27
  get a root canal. Well, there's a better way to
• 2:30
  take away all that pain and hassle getting a car.
• 2:31
  It's called Autoplaza Direct. They're your personal car
• 2:34
  concierge. Just tell them the car you want,
• 2:37
  what you can pay, and they'll go find that car for you.
• 2:39
  Negotiate your best price. They also offer you warranties
• 2:42
  and financing. It's all full service.
• 2:44
  Go to autoplazadirect.com to get started with your personal car
• 2:47
  concierge the new hassle freeway, the car buying
• 2:49
  experience you deserve. Auto Plaza Direct telling Brent
• 2:52
  from Nightmare success sent you. All right, David Israel, here we
• 2:55
  are. We made it.
• 2:58
  Nice to nice to see you in person and well sort all over
• 3:01
  the meet you there face to face for sure.
• 3:03
  But yeah, thanks for the nice intro, boy.
• 3:05
  Well, I I that. Was an award.
• 3:10
  I am so impressed by every time you got knocked down, you got
• 3:15
  back up and you figured out a way.
• 3:17
  And for anybody who, and there's a lot of entrepreneurs that
• 3:19
  listen to this program because it's all about getting knocked
• 3:21
  down, getting back up. But I'm curious, David, were you
• 3:25
  always like that growing up as a kid?
• 3:27
  What were you like as a kid? Were you always trying to do
• 3:29
  things, figure things, scale things?
• 3:31
  What was going on as you were growing up?
• 3:33
  Yeah. Well, you know, I was, I was an
• 3:37
  unplanned child to older parents.
• 3:40
  So they had me when they were 46 and 45 and I had three older
• 3:45
  siblings that were all 17 years older and up.
• 3:47
  Wow. I was basically had a bunch of
• 3:50
  parents by the time I was 4. You did.
• 3:53
  And I had a lot of energy, tons and tons of energy.
• 4:00
  So I kept my parents young and busy.
• 4:03
  But I remember, you know, I, I was always, always interested in
• 4:07
  in when I found something I'd liked, I liked to hold on to it
• 4:13
  and try to make it better. You know, I know it's hard to
• 4:15
  say cars or whatever, Hot Wheels and stickers.
• 4:20
  And I remember I, my mom, I had all these stickers and she told
• 4:24
  me to go out to the end of the driveway when I was 7 or 8 and
• 4:28
  sell them. So I took two of those old
• 4:30
  grocery boxes and I set up a stand like you would lemonade
• 4:33
  back then and started selling my stickers and trading.
• 4:37
  So I would say that. And you were, what, 7 or 8 years
• 4:40
  old? Yeah.
• 4:41
  Yeah, and, you know, she really ingrained that into me.
• 4:43
  Then when I was 14, she made me get a job.
• 4:49
  I worked at the local Denny's, the graveyard shift that's a
• 4:51
  dishwasher. And she would drop me off and
• 4:53
  pick me up and then bring me to school.
• 4:55
  So she had me, she had me working and doing things out of
• 4:59
  the gate. I mean, I, I was not afraid to
• 5:01
  work. Trust me.
• 5:02
  I you know, I wasn't. No, I mean, if you're working
• 5:04
  the graveyard shift at 14, that's not something people are
• 5:06
  standing in line for as 8th graders.
• 5:09
  No, you know, and you're not just the dishwasher either yet.
• 5:11
  Because at Denny's at that time there you were the only guy
• 5:14
  there besides the cooks and the waitress and you would be the
• 5:16
  busboy too and the vacuumer and every.
• 5:18
  So I really learned how to work. I was AI had a really good work
• 5:22
  ethic. I had a lot of respect for
• 5:25
  people and their who they were. And I think that was really
• 5:30
  important because I just drove into everything head 1st and
• 5:34
  really took my everything I did I took very seriously.
• 5:38
  Did it did that role for you into high school?
• 5:40
  I mean, did you, were you a normal like high school life kid
• 5:44
  playing Sports and Social and all that?
• 5:46
  Or do you? Were you more of trying to
• 5:49
  tinker and figure things out, kid?
• 5:52
  Well, I listen, I played a lot of sports until I was 14, or,
• 5:57
  well, until I had to work graveyard.
• 5:58
  Yeah. Then really, I became more of I
• 6:02
  started recognizing what I wanted.
• 6:05
  I was always trying to think of how I could create something, a
• 6:08
  business or whatever, right. I mean, not when I didn't have a
• 6:10
  business when I was 15 or 16, but I worked.
• 6:14
  I always had a job. I got out of the the graveyard
• 6:17
  thing only lasted about six months because they didn't like
• 6:19
  me falling asleep in school. So but it like I said, it did
• 6:26
  teach me a lot. I like, I was never afraid to do
• 6:29
  anything. So when I in high school, I
• 6:31
  became a doorman at this nightclub.
• 6:33
  It was underage, but it was from they were open from 7:00 AM or
• 6:37
  7:00 PM until 5:00 AM and I started as a doorman.
• 6:43
  Then I became the manager and then I, I started seeing how
• 6:48
  much we were paying the guys, the janitorial staff, how much
• 6:52
  we were paying the guys to come and sweep the parking lot.
• 6:54
  I'm like, well, I'll do it. So I, I literally just did, I
• 6:57
  was doing everything. And like I said, I wasn't afraid
• 7:00
  to get my hands dirty. I just wanted to work and earn
• 7:02
  because I didn't come from a prominent family and I had to, I
• 7:07
  had to work. So it taught me, look, it
• 7:10
  teaches you a lot. You know, when when you're not,
• 7:14
  you're not working with an ego, you know, And I think again, it
• 7:20
  just taught me a lot. Well, and I think that's a, you
• 7:23
  know, what you just said there as a guy that started working
• 7:27
  the door at a nightclub, the natural transition is not
• 7:31
  necessary to look at their expenses and what they're paying
• 7:33
  and what you could do and what you could save.
• 7:36
  So I mean, I think that you're wired that way and that the
• 7:38
  other thing that I think is interesting about you, David, as
• 7:41
  far as how you tackle things. And I think you have to be wired
• 7:45
  this way, especially if you're somebody that's going to try to
• 7:47
  build or scale or be an entrepreneur, is you're not
• 7:50
  really afraid to go in and and just try it and do it.
• 7:55
  And you know, if you see it, you figure that there's going to be
• 7:58
  obstacles you're going to have to overcome.
• 8:00
  So you might as well just jump in and figure that out as you
• 8:02
  go. And I think that's what keeps a
• 8:04
  lot of people on the sidelines. I think that's something that,
• 8:09
  you know, you hear a lot of people in their 60s and 70s, you
• 8:12
  know, they've worked the same job at the same place and they
• 8:15
  think, I wish I could own my own business.
• 8:17
  And I think a lot of it is, is just the the scare fear factor
• 8:20
  of just jumping in the in the deep end.
• 8:23
  I agree. I mean, fear is 1.
• 8:25
  The other is that you overthink it, right?
• 8:27
  So I've had, I've remember, I've been at trade shows and I've had
• 8:30
  guys come up to me and they go, can't believe what you've done.
• 8:34
  You're a genius. I said no, no, no, no.
• 8:35
  If I was a genius, I would, I would have figured out why it
• 8:38
  didn't work up front. I just believed I could do it.
• 8:42
  And I jumped in and and and did it.
• 8:44
  I said I, I've become really good at getting hit by trucks.
• 8:47
  You know, I mean, it's going to happen.
• 8:48
  Nothing is nothing is smooth sailing.
• 8:51
  OK. I mean, right.
• 8:52
  The largest companies, Boeing, just recently, Boar's Head, I
• 8:56
  mean Nestle, they all encounter problems and you just can't help
• 9:00
  it. No matter how great you are or
• 9:01
  how big you are or how many controls you have in place,
• 9:05
  shit's going to happen. And you just have to realize
• 9:08
  that and know that there's always a way around it.
• 9:11
  You can always put it behind you.
• 9:12
  You have to learn, not do it again.
• 9:13
  Hopefully don't get hit by that same truck.
• 9:17
  Well, that's, I mean, that's probably the biggest key is, is
• 9:19
  there's nothing at all wrong with making mistakes because
• 9:22
  that's all the greatest books you read.
• 9:24
  Those are the, those are the things they learn from and grow
• 9:26
  from. It's making the same mistake
• 9:28
  twice that that's a killer. So is that how you got into the
• 9:33
  nightclub thing with with as a 'cause you couldn't have been
• 9:36
  very old then, right I. Was 19 when I got ownership.
• 9:40
  There were three partners. None of them came to the I was,
• 9:43
  I was there doing everything. It was very successful.
• 9:48
  But they would meet quarterly and they would fight quarterly.
• 9:51
  And one day I'm there cleaning. It's a Sunday, I'm cleaning.
• 9:55
  They had their meeting and they, one of the owners walked out and
• 9:57
  said do you want to buy me? And I said, I don't have the
• 10:00
  money to buy you. And he said, well, pay me out of
• 10:02
  the profits. And I was like, that's.
• 10:05
  How it works? And dunk, yeah.
• 10:07
  And that's what happened. And then one of the yeah, it's
• 10:10
  just one of the owners, the one of the owners bought out the
• 10:13
  other guys. It was me and him two, you know,
• 10:16
  2/3 to 1/3 and I don't know, a few years later he bought me out
• 10:21
  so. Yeah, well, and and like I'm
• 10:25
  thinking like the different things because I know your story
• 10:27
  and how some of these things. But so you're the one that I
• 10:30
  don't know so well is the jewelry store.
• 10:33
  Where did how did that fit into your world?
• 10:36
  Well, that's interesting story. That was a complete flop that
• 10:41
  worked out really well in my favourites.
• 10:43
  So after the nightclub, I took the money and I was literally
• 10:48
  buying luxury cars in Los Angeles and then driving them up
• 10:53
  and I would have a free car. I would drive a nice car for a
• 10:55
  month and then I would sell it to a local dealership.
• 10:57
  I had a deal with the Mercedes dealer and the Porsche dealer
• 11:00
  here in in Seattle, WA and they would tell me what they wanted.
• 11:04
  I would go to LA and buy. It was it was a different market
• 11:06
  back then. Everything was in my dad's and
• 11:09
  there was a massive amount of inventory there and there wasn't
• 11:11
  one here. I mean now it's a business for
• 11:13
  people, but for me it was I I got to drive a nice car.
• 11:16
  I would make 34000 a car so it was great.
• 11:19
  Yeah, sounds like a good little, little side hustle.
• 11:22
  Yeah, So I put a chunk away and my older brother worked for a
• 11:26
  jewelry chain before he moved to Los Angeles.
• 11:30
  And I became friends with one of his friends who was 20 years
• 11:34
  older than me. And they had sold the jewelry
• 11:37
  chain. And he said, you know, I'm, I'm
• 11:40
  going to open up a new jewelry store in this mall up up north
• 11:45
  that was a decent mall at the time.
• 11:47
  And he goes, would you like to be my partner?
• 11:50
  I was like, well, that's a slam dunk.
• 11:52
  Well, one, he was, he doesn't like to work, so that wasn't
• 11:55
  good and he wasn't very thorough.
• 11:57
  So that wasn't good. But we had a store and we're
• 12:02
  there maybe seven or eight months.
• 12:03
  It's not, it's not going great. I mean, it's not horrible, but
• 12:07
  it's not going to be successful. We we can tell because all the
• 12:11
  stores are closing. In the mall.
• 12:14
  Yeah. And like Nordstrom's pulled out
• 12:17
  back then, it was a Marshall and Field store there.
• 12:19
  They pulled out or they, it's not that we're, we thought they
• 12:22
  were pulling out. It's not that they were pulling
• 12:23
  out. They weren't the the owners
• 12:25
  weren't renewing the lease because Home Depot and Costco
• 12:29
  wanted to develop the property. So or they they wanted to
• 12:32
  develop. Yeah, they wanted the real
• 12:33
  estate. Yeah.
• 12:35
  So it turned out well for me because my the guy who brought
• 12:39
  me into this signed a four year lease.
• 12:43
  The lease became much more valuable.
• 12:45
  A lot of leverage. Yeah, so I made a decent chunk.
• 12:49
  We thank God that we sold. I mean, otherwise I would have
• 12:52
  lost every penny I had. So I'd made a decent chunk.
• 12:56
  And when I sold that, this is what leads me into my next
• 12:59
  endeavour. Jewelry business is very small.
• 13:02
  I mean, it's very tight knit group, right?
• 13:04
  As soon as I sold and word got on the street, these jewelry
• 13:07
  stores, they start calling me to borrow money.
• 13:09
  Hey, can you loan me some money? I'm like, well, I'll loan you
• 13:13
  money, but I need collateral. I, I don't, you know, I mean.
• 13:16
  I'm I'm right not just a free end loan, no collateral loan.
• 13:20
  You money to jewelry stores, then to coin stores and to pawn
• 13:25
  shops. None of them could get smaller
• 13:28
  companies. It was really hard to get
• 13:29
  financing so so. It's like a hard money loan
• 13:32
  basically I. Called my company First Funds
• 13:35
  and I started loaning them money.
• 13:37
  Then I ended up buying the oldest, largest rare coin
• 13:40
  dealership in Seattle because a guy that I was owning money to
• 13:44
  said the guy wanted to retire and he was selling it for
• 13:47
  400,000 he said, but his inventory is worth like 700,000.
• 13:51
  So I said OK, I'll finance it. You trade off, you sell off the
• 13:56
  inventory, pay me back plus a profit and I'm out.
• 13:58
  So I did that for about nine months and then again, I got
• 14:02
  back to my first funds and I was loaning money primarily now to,
• 14:06
  well, the jeweler is into pawn shops, but I'm in these pawn
• 14:09
  shops and I'm like, they're horrible, They're disgusting.
• 14:12
  And then the customer services, like they treat their customers
• 14:15
  like crap and they look like crap on top of it.
• 14:19
  I was like, boy, this is interesting.
• 14:22
  I get a Fortune magazine and there's, this is in 1991 or 92
• 14:30
  and there's an article on this company called Cash America out
• 14:33
  of Dallas, TX that is buying mom and pop shops and transitioning
• 14:39
  them into retail establishments. And they went public and
• 14:41
  they're, they're going haywire, right?
• 14:43
  So I got on a plane, I went to Dallas and I started checking
• 14:47
  out their stores. Then I came back and I met with
• 14:51
  a local very successful investor, entrepreneur, older
• 14:58
  man. And I told him what I, what he
• 15:01
  said. Well, you have to, you have to
• 15:03
  understand what they do replicate it here.
• 15:05
  He says you need to build this whole plan.
• 15:07
  And he put me, he put me in touch with Deloitte 2, the
• 15:09
  leadership there with his, this very high level attorney.
• 15:13
  And I put a team together and I went back down to Dallas and
• 15:17
  this time I brought an 8mm cassette, you know, and I would
• 15:19
  go to all their stores. And I would say.
• 15:22
  I would like to get a camera for my wife, but I need to make sure
• 15:25
  it works. And they say, OK, and I slapped
• 15:27
  that tape in and I would videotape the whole store.
• 15:31
  And I, I did that for, you know, that's how I, and I came back
• 15:34
  and I literally built everything off of what I saw and read.
• 15:38
  And I raised a little bit of capital and opened up my first
• 15:41
  door in 1993. That's fascinating, you know,
• 15:43
  'cause you know, I love reading, you know, biographies and
• 15:47
  entrepreneurs stories. And that's a lot what Sam Walton
• 15:50
  did when, you know, he got into the deal and he, he started,
• 15:53
  he'd fly in and, you know, look for land, but then he'd go walk
• 15:56
  the aisles of Kmart and, and figure out what they were doing,
• 16:00
  what they were doing right, what they're doing wrong.
• 16:01
  But I mean, the idea of being able to duplicate something that
• 16:06
  you like that you think that maybe you could improve on
• 16:10
  sounds like what you were doing as a kid.
• 16:12
  You're you're, you're just putting it and plugging it into
• 16:16
  a business that, well, these could be more, these could be
• 16:19
  nicer, they could be more upscale.
• 16:21
  They could look like this. I'm going to duplicate it.
• 16:24
  Yeah, I mean our all of our staff had well the managers and
• 16:29
  assistant managers wore shirts and ties, you know, we wanted.
• 16:32
  Everything was a great. Every store looked exactly the
• 16:35
  same, the same colors, the same layout, same cabinets, very
• 16:40
  retail oriented. I didn't understand the
• 16:42
  business. So trust me, my first customer
• 16:44
  came in when we opened up that first day, came in with a Makita
• 16:48
  Sawzall. Now if he came in with a with a
• 16:52
  bracelet or something like that, I, I could have figured it out.
• 16:55
  I had to go in the back, call another pawn shop and say.
• 16:59
  What is this? I have a Makita sawzall I want
• 17:02
  to get a loan on. How much would you loan me, you
• 17:05
  know? How much did you loan me?
• 17:06
  He. Goes hold it up to the phone.
• 17:09
  I mean, he thought I was a customer.
• 17:10
  Right, right, right. No, I'm just curious.
• 17:12
  He goes anywhere from X to X. So I, I'd had to learn it the
• 17:16
  hard way. I mean, I literally had no clue
• 17:18
  what I was doing. We figured it out, obviously.
• 17:21
  I mean, I, I used to tell people, I mean, you know, a
• 17:24
  gorilla could run one of these businesses if they knew how to
• 17:27
  shake their head. Yes and no.
• 17:28
  I mean, that's all they had to do.
• 17:30
  But we wanted to take it to a different level and we did.
• 17:34
  And I mean cash America, all they would have had to do is
• 17:37
  come in and change the sign. It was, it was the same colors
• 17:41
  or just a different name, right? It was called Pawn Exchange.
• 17:44
  So what's funny is in 2007 when they bought us, that's all they
• 17:49
  did is change. Or just change the sign.
• 17:51
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So go ahead.
• 17:56
  Well, we built it from 1 store in 93.
• 17:58
  We had 14 by the end of 96. The founders of Costco and
• 18:03
  Starbucks became my investors, and then their boards joined.
• 18:08
  Wow, you were rolling, David. I mean that that's, that's what
• 18:10
  that's everybody's dream, to have that type of people that
• 18:13
  you're in on part of your team to, to grow something like that.
• 18:17
  It was pretty amazing. I mean it, you know, it was
• 18:20
  blown away and I not part of my story was when I met with Jeff
• 18:24
  Brodman, the founder of Costco. He came back pretty quick with
• 18:29
  an offer to for his group to invest, which included Howard
• 18:32
  Schultz and the the boards of both, basically boards of both
• 18:35
  companies. And I'm like, no, we, we can, we
• 18:39
  can get more money for less equity somewhere else.
• 18:42
  And he goes, well, a dollar isn't a dollar.
• 18:45
  And I'm like, what does that mean?
• 18:47
  You know, I mean, well, I, I just need the money, right?
• 18:51
  He's like, no, no, he goes, you want people that are going to be
• 18:55
  here to help you grow and understand when you need to
• 18:58
  raise more capital and have kind of been there, done that.
• 19:00
  Have access to it, right? Yeah.
• 19:01
  He says, plus you need inventory.
• 19:03
  And he goes, Caso takes a lot of returns that we don't know what
• 19:06
  to do with and we can help you. I'm like.
• 19:08
  Good point. I went home and then I talked to
• 19:11
  one of my advisors and he's like, don't you dare say no,
• 19:15
  right? Right.
• 19:16
  No brainer. He end up being a great mentor
• 19:19
  and. Which is always a big deal.
• 19:23
  You know that I think, you know, people, if they can humble
• 19:26
  themselves to find people that they admire and go and ask them
• 19:29
  questions. Usually a guy that's doing well
• 19:33
  is pretty proud of how they're doing it.
• 19:35
  And they'll tell you kind of how you're doing it, how what
• 19:37
  they're doing because they put their systems together and they
• 19:40
  like to teach other people what they what they know.
• 19:44
  Yeah, it was a great, great experience.
• 19:46
  So I was very honored, obviously.
• 19:47
  And I, you know, then I was in the media for being the hot
• 19:51
  everything around here. So I won the Emerging Business
• 19:55
  of the Year award. I mean, it was just, it was
• 19:57
  crazy, so. It was a fast track.
• 20:00
  Wild ride, Yep. And you know, David, that that's
• 20:03
  what's crazy about the craziness of your story is, is you're on
• 20:06
  a, you know, a rocket ship launch.
• 20:09
  And then I think if I remember right, it's you hear murmurs of
• 20:16
  of like gossip that they're maybe looking at one of your
• 20:19
  stores. And then you call down there and
• 20:23
  say, hey, by the way, are you checking me out?
• 20:26
  And what did they say? No, no, you, you're.
• 20:29
  Just probably people like to talk.
• 20:32
  It's just a bunch of bullshit. Yeah.
• 20:34
  Yeah, Well, it wasn't obviously. I look, I was, I was an open
• 20:41
  book. I I mean, I would have been
• 20:42
  happy to, to speak to them and, and share whatever they wanted.
• 20:47
  But you know, one day I'm at, I'm in my office in 1996.
• 20:52
  We had corporate offices and I was there and one of my managers
• 20:56
  calls me and says, hey, there's detectives here.
• 20:59
  They have a search warrant. They want to take the computer.
• 21:02
  I'm like, what? And some guys, let me talk to
• 21:05
  him. Let me talk to him.
• 21:06
  I'm like, hello? And he goes, yes, this is
• 21:08
  Detective Peterson. He goes, we have a warrant,
• 21:11
  we're going to take your computer.
• 21:12
  I said, well, Sir, that's OK. But if you take our computer,
• 21:16
  you put us out of business because that's where we operate.
• 21:19
  He goes, well, I'll, I'll. And it was funny.
• 21:21
  There's an alarm on the phone system, not on the phones, but
• 21:24
  it goes through the so it beeps now.
• 21:25
  And then he starts. He goes, are you recording me?
• 21:28
  You can't record me. I said, no, Sir, Sir, that's
• 21:30
  just the alarm system beeping. I said, I'm not recording you.
• 21:33
  I didn't even know you were going to call me.
• 21:35
  Right. This is kind of a shock.
• 21:38
  He. Agreed that they shut us down
• 21:40
  for that afternoon and then half the next day they let my manager
• 21:43
  come down and get the computer. But yeah, it was it was most
• 21:48
  bizarre ride. I mean I.
• 21:52
  I well, you got, you got to kind of walk us through this thing
• 21:55
  because it's one of the most fascinating because I've heard a
• 21:59
  lot. I think this is my 145th
• 22:01
  interview. Your story is uniquely bizarre
• 22:07
  on how you got tagged in this thing.
• 22:11
  Yeah, it sure is. I mean, looking back, Brent, I
• 22:15
  mean, I can, I should accept responsibility for listening to
• 22:20
  an attorney and not going to the police to tell him what I knew.
• 22:26
  But I didn't. And that's, you know, cowardly
• 22:28
  and poor choices on my part. But I I did have advice from a
• 22:33
  criminal attorney to just shut the fuck up.
• 22:35
  Which they usually that's what they say.
• 22:37
  Well, I hindsight, right, But nonetheless, this, this person
• 22:45
  had, he did sell us, he sold us items, no doubt about it.
• 22:50
  And we bought them and we put them in our inventory.
• 22:53
  He came through a jeweler that I knew in, in another part of
• 22:56
  Seattle who very reputable jeweler who knew we needed
• 23:00
  inventory. And yeah, so we went down that
• 23:03
  path. Was there any way of knowing?
• 23:06
  And I, I don't know anything about that business, David, but
• 23:10
  that's the one thing, you know, you never know what you're
• 23:12
  getting at a pawn shop because somebody's a lot of times, I
• 23:16
  mean, I don't know how everybody gets their inventory.
• 23:18
  But I mean, what you see on TV is people will just come in and
• 23:22
  they'll find something or their, one of their parents has died
• 23:25
  and they've got all this stuff and they're trying to get rid of
• 23:27
  it. They're trying to put a value to
• 23:29
  it. But you don't really know much
• 23:31
  about these things, do you? No.
• 23:33
  Well, you can tell with some OK, it's pretty obvious when the
• 23:38
  when the retail consumers came in, everything got entered and
• 23:41
  sent off, you know the into the system and then it got sent off
• 23:45
  to the police. OK, when pocket vendors, the
• 23:49
  guys that go to what do you call it like these these shows what
• 23:54
  they call those shows where they have I.
• 23:57
  Forget what you mean, like auctions and stuff.
• 23:58
  Or is but. Also to those where they have
• 24:01
  these little shows where people go and sell stuff.
• 24:03
  Yeah, not trade shows, but I know what you're talking they.
• 24:06
  Go around and they pick people off and they that's their job.
• 24:09
  I mean, some guys sell watches, some guys sell electronics, some
• 24:13
  guys sell tools and they build a reputation.
• 24:16
  This guy had a reputation for selling.
• 24:18
  It's almost like a flea market deal.
• 24:19
  Kind of, yeah. But he would already buy it off
• 24:22
  of people and whatever. That was his business.
• 24:24
  Yeah. And he was selling to all, not
• 24:26
  just to me. He was selling to many, many
• 24:29
  right and rare coin companies up and down South, but he also had
• 24:34
  another side gig, which wasn't helpful to me whatsoever.
• 24:41
  This guy smooth, smooth, smooth. And he, it's funny, I, my father
• 24:49
  passed away. I was not in the store.
• 24:52
  I only came in to help for like an hour a day for a bit for a
• 24:56
  little over probably 2 weeks and I would come in and I would get
• 25:00
  cash for my partner as he needed it, you know, would help out
• 25:04
  whoever paperwork or whatever and I would leave.
• 25:07
  So one day I go in and at our little gathering my mom said I
• 25:12
  ran into Missus Burtenshaw and she sent the best and said that
• 25:17
  she's so sorry this is an old neighbor doesn't live next to us
• 25:20
  anymore. I know she lives in the same
• 25:23
  city, but I'd never been to their house, don't know where
• 25:26
  they live. So I go back, I go to my my
• 25:29
  store and I my my partner who I grew up with, who also knew the
• 25:34
  Burton shods. I said my mom saw missus Burton
• 25:37
  shod. She sent her best regards and my
• 25:39
  mom said she had a diamond the size of her knuckle on her ring.
• 25:43
  And he's like, oh wow, OK, that is it.
• 25:47
  OK, I mean that's end of the story.
• 25:49
  No more comprehend how is she or whatever it may be how right he
• 25:55
  was in the store this this person and he overheard and I
• 26:00
  think 3 days later him and his guys which I didn't know but I
• 26:05
  heard they got robbed on the news.
• 26:07
  I go back into my office I'm not really still not working but I
• 26:11
  come in two days after what I saw on the news and my partner
• 26:18
  my high school buddy says we have a problem.
• 26:21
  I go, what's our problem? He goes, that guy Vince came in
• 26:26
  and he wants to sell us stuff that he took from the Burton
• 26:31
  shots or he's going to wrap us into it.
• 26:34
  And I go, no, I and I call this criminal attorney.
• 26:38
  I go, hey, we have a problem. I mean, I know what to do.
• 26:41
  He says, OK, He says, you tell that guy to take a hike and you
• 26:45
  won't say shit. And that's it.
• 26:50
  Guy comes in four hours later. I said, man, nothing.
• 26:55
  We're not not touching this stuff, not going to say nothing.
• 26:59
  You just need to go away. He's like, well, I got to do
• 27:04
  something. I said we're we're not doing
• 27:06
  anything. And I having a part of this,
• 27:08
  this is, you know, he goes, well, I'll pin it on you.
• 27:10
  If you say anything we're asking.
• 27:11
  We're not saying, we're not going to say shit.
• 27:12
  My attorney said don't say shit. He left.
• 27:16
  Two weeks later he comes back. He goes, you know, he goes, I'm
• 27:19
  going to need a little something though to leave you alone.
• 27:22
  I'm like, well, what do you mean?
• 27:23
  He goes, I need some something. I said, we're not doing
• 27:25
  anything. He goes, you're going to give me
• 27:27
  something and I'd like talk to my partner and we said OK, we're
• 27:32
  going to give you a game like 4 grand.
• 27:34
  Just to shake down just. To leave us alone.
• 27:36
  He left us alone again for 60 days and came back whatever.
• 27:42
  But we think, OK, you know what I think we gave him one more
• 27:44
  time and then he came back again.
• 27:46
  He started threatening me and threatening my wife and I'm
• 27:49
  like, you know what, man? I'm we're done.
• 27:51
  Just this is I'm not going to get into this where it's every
• 27:55
  few months you'd come back. I said not going to work.
• 27:57
  I said we're done. I said I'm I'm not going to say
• 28:00
  he's like, if you say something, you're going to be dead.
• 28:02
  I said, not saying nothing, but you need to go away.
• 28:05
  He went away and I never heard from him again.
• 28:08
  Three years later, that's when the rumblings started and I
• 28:11
  didn't realize it was for that. I had no.
• 28:13
  Idea, right? But boy, once they took that
• 28:18
  computer, then they took my partner in, they gave, they gave
• 28:22
  everybody immunity. That guy, the guy, what happens
• 28:26
  is he got put in prison for something else tries by his way
• 28:30
  out he came up with this story about.
• 28:34
  Not big conspiracy. We were that our me and Brad
• 28:38
  were his their gangs, crime bosses or whatever right?
• 28:45
  Well this guy just FYI 1. I don't know anything other than
• 28:49
  this one thing. Honest to God, I had no clue
• 28:51
  until the documents were sent to me.
• 28:55
  In another part of Washington, he went into a jewelry store.
• 28:57
  He talked to the salesperson she had on a bunch of jewelry and
• 29:01
  he's like oh, and he says I'm in the jewelry business blah blah
• 29:03
  blah. And she tells them they start
• 29:05
  having a conversation and she says I have a done a jewelry.
• 29:08
  Well, he they followed her home. It hits her, yeah.
• 29:14
  Did the same thing. He went to a went and saw a
• 29:16
  dentist. He was literally went to see a
• 29:18
  dentist. He talked to them.
• 29:21
  He was talking about his big house in Normandy Park and he's
• 29:24
  got, you know, his and he went and robbed him.
• 29:27
  I mean, he was driving on I-5. He sees an RV with Canadian
• 29:33
  plate speeding, puts on his emergency lights, pulls him
• 29:35
  over, says he's the police. He finds, I think he founds pot
• 29:40
  or something again. He starts milking them for money
• 29:44
  for months until they finally said we can't take any more and
• 29:47
  they called the police. So he tried to use this to
• 29:50
  negotiate his way out of prison. I got charged on December 2nd,
• 29:57
  1996. It was the last day they could
• 29:59
  charge me under the statutes of limitations.
• 30:02
  But before that, or I think it was the next day, they offered
• 30:05
  me a receiving stolen property in 90 days or something.
• 30:09
  My attorneys like this is a joke, no way.
• 30:13
  So then they filed something, you know, they upped the charges
• 30:17
  and we decided I got an investigator from.
• 30:21
  I didn't, my attorney did. He sent him out to the guy's
• 30:24
  prison to talk to him. He wouldn't talk, but he ends up
• 30:27
  talking to his. They're called counselors.
• 30:30
  Well, you know what they are. Yeah, case managers your.
• 30:32
  Internal. Yeah, your internal case
• 30:33
  manager. Counselors are are case
• 30:34
  managers, yeah. Like your parole officer, but
• 30:37
  inside. So he ended up talking to his
• 30:39
  case manager and the guy's like, oh man, he goes.
• 30:42
  He told me he made this whole thing up and got his way out,
• 30:45
  bought his way out of trouble. So told that to the case
• 30:48
  manager. Yeah.
• 30:49
  So my attorney's like, this is a slam dunk.
• 30:52
  He goes, we're not going to waive the speedy trial.
• 30:56
  He goes, we're going to rush this because we got this witness
• 30:58
  and we did. We got to trial within two
• 31:01
  months. We show up there, Judge Murtel
• 31:04
  is there and we're, I don't remember what they're talking
• 31:07
  about, but the prosecutor says, hey, we're, we're going to
• 31:11
  contest that witness because we believe it's either hearsay or
• 31:15
  privileged information. The judge, I don't know, they
• 31:17
  took a little time and he goes, no, he goes, he's going to be
• 31:20
  allowed. She, she said, well, then we
• 31:23
  need a, we need a recess. And they walked two blocks up
• 31:26
  and filed an appeal on his decision.
• 31:30
  So I, that was the end of the first trial.
• 31:33
  I went home for three years unknowingly.
• 31:36
  I mean, I didn't understand how this worked, but I end up
• 31:38
  starting. Did you think at that time that
• 31:40
  it was over? I.
• 31:43
  What did you think? Like because they were appealing
• 31:46
  it. So yeah, you were in purgatory.
• 31:50
  He. Didn't dismiss any charges he.
• 31:52
  Just so you were living with the charges, they took it on appeal
• 31:55
  and you were having to live basically like you were living
• 31:57
  in pre trial. Yep, yeah, not knowing what was
• 32:02
  going to happen. Hard guy to hire.
• 32:07
  I had to start a company, yeah, which I did and I started.
• 32:10
  It's called Transmedia and we invented and patented the frames
• 32:14
  that allow for truck side advertising with banners.
• 32:19
  It was going really well. But in 1999 they came back and
• 32:25
  they ruled I could not have this witness because it would be
• 32:28
  hearsay, not privilege, but hearsay.
• 32:31
  So we had to go to trial. My partner who I started the
• 32:34
  business was was like, look man, I I can't go through this with
• 32:37
  you. I need to buy you out and I had
• 32:41
  to sell, which became a very valuable company and I have
• 32:45
  anyway I had to put that money towards.
• 32:47
  Legal what? You were, yeah.
• 32:50
  Then we went to trial. That person did not testify.
• 32:55
  The guy in who implicated me because the prosecutor tried to
• 33:00
  revoke his immunity, saying he was a liar.
• 33:04
  Yeah, see, I thought that was really interesting because they
• 33:06
  brought him all the way in from prison, unshackled him.
• 33:09
  Next one. Oh, it's the next one.
• 33:11
  OK, so you this happened twice. No, this time they he wasn't a
• 33:17
  witness because they wanted to revoke his immunity.
• 33:19
  OK, so he had immunity. They said that he was going to
• 33:21
  because I was thinking the guy that was going to plead the 5th,
• 33:23
  but that's that's down the Riddle.
• 33:26
  OK. Yeah, OK.
• 33:27
  So I have this trial without him.
• 33:30
  His Co conspirators were there. They really didn't have anything
• 33:33
  much to say. I mean it was, it was
• 33:35
  ridiculous. I mean, there was no, there was,
• 33:37
  there was no jewelry in my inventory after the date of that
• 33:42
  robbery before there was, I mean, we put in inventory.
• 33:47
  I mean, sure, we're trying to hide anything, but not very much
• 33:50
  either. It was not, I mean, it was just,
• 33:51
  you know, maybe $2000 worth of stuff.
• 33:54
  But nonetheless, I have this trial which goes on for six
• 33:58
  weeks and no direct witnesses. Everybody's got immunity.
• 34:04
  Except you. The guy that I'm one of his
• 34:07
  partners, that's my Co defendant gives my family a note that says
• 34:11
  I'm sorry, I know you're innocent.
• 34:14
  We try to get it submitted. He can't say anything about it.
• 34:18
  They said it's just a note. They can't.
• 34:19
  I have no proof it's him. So that you know, that went out
• 34:23
  the window. Anyway, my attorneys tells me,
• 34:25
  man, this is a you're going to win this.
• 34:27
  It's a slam dunk. So we go into the the four or
• 34:30
  five weeks of or six weeks of trial and then two weeks of a
• 34:33
  jury deliberation. You have a very optimistic
• 34:36
  attorney, by the way, as you tell the story.
• 34:38
  When we come back in, they finally come in and you know
• 34:41
  what? I've never been arrested.
• 34:43
  I had to go in and sign something.
• 34:46
  I've never been in jail. And these are pretty serious
• 34:49
  charge charges, right? Conspiracy, robbery, kidnapping.
• 34:53
  Whatever they did, I was responsible.
• 34:55
  You're part of the conspiracy and you have to prove it all.
• 34:58
  If you're part of the conspiracy, a lot of people
• 34:59
  don't know that. You don't just prove your piece,
• 35:02
  you have to prove the whole thing.
• 35:03
  Yeah, well, they didn't do a good job, but apparently the
• 35:06
  jury, they I remember standing there and the judge looks super
• 35:12
  just, I mean, just, he looks like he, he turned pale.
• 35:16
  And they read the verdicts that I, I was found guilty.
• 35:20
  And you know, the, the, the bailiffs that that King County
• 35:24
  guards start coming towards me and the judge says, hold on,
• 35:26
  hold on. Mr. Israel's not going anywhere.
• 35:30
  He goes, we're going to get this done.
• 35:33
  We're going to let him go home and we'll set a hearing for
• 35:37
  sentencing. He goes, but he's not going
• 35:39
  anywhere. I'm like, wow, that's, I mean, I
• 35:41
  didn't expect that, but it's pretty devastating, right?
• 35:43
  So anyway, my attorney says, enjoy your family and your kids
• 35:49
  as much as the game. They gave me four months
• 35:52
  basically. So we're travelling around and
• 35:56
  remember, we're sitting at a pool and my kids are in the pool
• 35:58
  playing. And I get a call from my
• 35:59
  attorney and he's like, are you? Are you sitting down?
• 36:04
  I go, why is that? He goes, well, I have some news.
• 36:06
  I said, well, how bad could it get?
• 36:08
  I said, you know, I said, it's already over.
• 36:10
  I said, I'm laying down, I'm in the sun.
• 36:12
  He goes, well, he goes, Vince Bryant wrote a letter to the
• 36:17
  judge and to The Seattle Times to declare your innocence and
• 36:23
  that he made-up the whole thing. And he's called us, he says.
• 36:27
  So we're moving for a hearing for to get this.
• 36:32
  Before the judge, yeah. Get dismissed.
• 36:35
  So now I get an extra 60 days because they have to figure out
• 36:38
  how to bring this guy in from prison for this hearing.
• 36:42
  So I'm happy for that. Now I what was going to be a
• 36:44
  July date to September and we go to the show up and they bring
• 36:48
  this guy in this this huge court.
• 36:50
  We had to move courtrooms. There were so many people, the
• 36:52
  media and people, and they bring him in.
• 36:55
  He's in, you know, he's in shackles.
• 36:56
  They undo him. They put him on the stand and
• 36:58
  we're all waiting, you know, and they swear him in.
• 37:02
  And the judge says to my attorney that he says, Mr.
• 37:04
  Chappell, you're a witness. And he stands up and the
• 37:07
  prosecutor stands up and says, excuse me.
• 37:10
  And these they go, yes, I might want to recommend that Mister
• 37:14
  Bryant invoke his Fifth Amendment right.
• 37:17
  And the judge says, why would you do that?
• 37:19
  She says, well, we're in appeals to to revoke his immunity and
• 37:23
  anything he says here today we're going to use against them.
• 37:27
  His attorney stands up and says, yeah, I must insist that he
• 37:31
  doesn't testify here today. Man, what were you thinking,
• 37:34
  David? I, you know, I just, I just
• 37:36
  sunk. But then the judge says, well,
• 37:40
  someone from that prison wrote those letters and someone from
• 37:43
  that prison called Mr. Topel. And I believe those are recorded
• 37:46
  calls. He goes, we're going to go home,
• 37:50
  we're going to get a, we're going to have a handwriting
• 37:52
  analysis done and we're going to get that recording.
• 37:55
  What a good judge. Yeah.
• 37:57
  So I don't know what it was. 3-4 weeks later, he he reverses the
• 38:02
  majority of the verdicts, but not all of them.
• 38:05
  So the prosecutor appeals that and of course we appealed the
• 38:10
  other one. He doesn't, right.
• 38:14
  And I have another 2 1/2 years. So I started a new business.
• 38:19
  Leaving, it's just crazy how I mean, each and every one of
• 38:24
  these times you, you get long spances of time here, you know,
• 38:29
  and, and you build these businesses up.
• 38:30
  And I think this one is really interesting because you take a
• 38:35
  job, I think it's in a fitness place and you're a janitor, but
• 38:41
  you are really good at it. And and you again look at this
• 38:46
  and think, well, you know, maybe I can scale this and and it
• 38:50
  becomes a very successful maintenance company that does
• 38:54
  like 40 some odd, you know, businesses or whatever for
• 38:57
  cleaning. Yeah, maybe I'm wrong on the
• 38:59
  number, but it was, it just blew my mind.
• 39:02
  I mean. You got it.
• 39:03
  I I couldn't look, I couldn't get hired.
• 39:05
  I mean, no one was going to hire me at least and not where I
• 39:08
  could have make money, a decent amount of money.
• 39:12
  My wife became a worked for a property management company at
• 39:16
  the time just to help offset stuff and she came from
• 39:21
  pharmaceuticals but she, we, she we were both at home to make
• 39:24
  sure our kids were safe and taken care of.
• 39:26
  And I, and I meant to ask you, David, because I know that your
• 39:28
  kids, your kids were really young at this point, right?
• 39:30
  Weren't they like? Initially they were four and six
• 39:35
  months when they. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:37
  OK. So they had to go through the
• 39:39
  entire ride. We kept them very well
• 39:41
  insulated. Believe that was our entire goal
• 39:44
  is to make sure that our kids were OK and safe right and
• 39:49
  insulated from whatever I was going through in the media and
• 39:52
  everything else and we did it. I'm telling you we knocked.
• 39:55
  We did that. We did it very successfully.
• 39:57
  And it's hard to do that. I mean, I, I've, I have three
• 40:00
  daughters and, and my daughters were teenagers.
• 40:04
  Well, they've some two of them were teenagers at the time and
• 40:07
  then the other one as the time went on became teenager but.
• 40:12
  It's tough for families to go through all of that and you do
• 40:18
  have to insulate, but you know, we did the best we could to keep
• 40:21
  them up to speed at the age they were about what was going on so
• 40:25
  that they weren't surprised. We were lucky because we had a,
• 40:30
  a good support group of teachers and friends and stuff around
• 40:33
  that, that they didn't get the bullying and all the weirdness
• 40:36
  that happens, which I think, you know, I'm grateful today for
• 40:40
  that, But it's so, so tough. You know, we don't think about,
• 40:43
  you know, like you and I went through it.
• 40:46
  Our families go through it. Our families go to prison too,
• 40:49
  and they have to deal with all that.
• 40:50
  So kudos to your wife too for for. 100% I mean she believed me
• 40:56
  from I mean she's my best friend, I mean.
• 40:59
  She's yeah, you've almost got to have a superhero wife to to
• 41:03
  withstand what we go through, for sure.
• 41:05
  I did, and we were fortunate. And I'm very grateful as well
• 41:08
  for the community support we had for the teachers and the schools
• 41:12
  and yeah, I mean, even. You never forget that.
• 41:16
  No, you know, no, I and I'll, I'll give some real enormous
• 41:20
  credit when they were in public schools and we decided we needed
• 41:24
  to get them out of that situation because of I kept
• 41:27
  being in the media. And there was this all girls
• 41:31
  Catholic school that was very elite near our house.
• 41:34
  And we thought that would be a very good dynamic for them.
• 41:39
  They, we didn't think they were going to let us in, especially
• 41:41
  because I'd already been in the media.
• 41:43
  They did. And not only they'd let us in,
• 41:45
  they were like, we, we really believe in you and we believe
• 41:48
  you. And we want to make sure that
• 41:50
  your kids are OK. And that means the world.
• 41:53
  I mean, you and I were lucky with that because, you know, my
• 41:57
  kids were really heavy into sports, playing tennis and such.
• 42:01
  And, and the coaches couldn't have been any better.
• 42:03
  The teachers couldn't be. In fact, my youngest daughter is
• 42:05
  a teacher today and a coach because of the support that she
• 42:09
  got from her teachers at that time.
• 42:11
  And and you know, that's, that's something that stays with you.
• 42:14
  So important. I mean, docs, you know, but they
• 42:16
  went to us. Bill and Melinda Gates were
• 42:18
  there with their children. They would have our daughter
• 42:21
  over and they would come to our house.
• 42:22
  I mean, they were soup. It was just it sent.
• 42:25
  It sent a message to them and to the community, not just for
• 42:30
  because of the gates, but I mean.
• 42:32
  It's just in general. Yeah, it was really big and big
• 42:34
  to me too, because it's like, you know, made me feel better
• 42:37
  about the situation, so. Well, but in the meantime,
• 42:41
  you're not just sitting on the sidelines, you're building a
• 42:43
  company again, which? Had to, I mean, I, I couldn't,
• 42:47
  like I said, I couldn't get a job.
• 42:48
  So my wife was a property manager.
• 42:50
  She was complaining about the janitors that were cleaning this
• 42:54
  one fitness facility in a condominium complex.
• 42:58
  And I'm like, oh, well, she goes, we pay them 600 a month.
• 43:01
  They come once a week, maybe for an hour.
• 43:04
  I was like, I can do that, right?
• 43:07
  So they gave me her folder boss. The boss gave me that thing, the
• 43:13
  feedback. I was, I was pretty Immaculate.
• 43:14
  I mean, I'm a little anal. So I I mean I cleaned that place
• 43:17
  like no tomorrow. You were good at it.
• 43:19
  Oh, yeah. So then that got back to the
• 43:22
  management company. They said, do you want to do
• 43:23
  this complex? Do you want to do that complex?
• 43:26
  I started out with one. By the end of the year I had 45
• 43:29
  properties that I was doing myself, which is a.
• 43:32
  Lot. Yeah.
• 43:33
  I mean, I was just vacuuming, cleaning.
• 43:35
  Then they asked me if I could do change light bulbs.
• 43:37
  I could. Well, of course I can change
• 43:38
  light bulbs. That's a that's the old joke.
• 43:41
  Light bulbs. So then I hired some people to
• 43:43
  help me and I got more. So by the year, by almost three
• 43:48
  years later, I had 450 properties that we were
• 43:53
  responsible for and I turned into, we called it home pro and
• 43:56
  we, we did facilities maintenance, which is
• 43:59
  janitorial. We did electrical, full
• 44:01
  electrical, we did plumbing and we did not major construction,
• 44:07
  but we could do painting, we could paint a complex.
• 44:10
  Yeah, everything to get it ready.
• 44:12
  I could do minor repairs, but I could not like if, you know, if
• 44:15
  decks need to replace. That was above and beyond us.
• 44:17
  Yeah, nothing structural. So we grew into quite a
• 44:20
  behemoth. But then the appeal came back.
• 44:25
  They they ruled in our favor. But then they had the right to
• 44:31
  retry me and that's what they were going to do.
• 44:33
  They said they were going to retry you even after all this
• 44:36
  had gone through. That's what I find just
• 44:38
  absolutely fascinating about this story, is that you went
• 44:41
  through all these layers and steps and then they still have
• 44:44
  the opportunity to retry on a case that they know is so
• 44:49
  flimsy. Oh, it's ugly.
• 44:50
  I mean, it is not. I mean, everybody in the world
• 44:53
  is apologizing to me. Not, not the judge yet, but.
• 44:57
  And it's been what, 7 years at this point?
• 44:59
  Seven years, yeah. So it happened.
• 45:02
  I got charged in 96 in December and then in July of 2003 is when
• 45:09
  they came back that when it finally was like, now we're
• 45:11
  going to retry you. And I'm like, I mean, I called
• 45:14
  an attorney and you know, you know, you know how this works.
• 45:17
  They want a bunch of money upfront.
• 45:19
  I already spent a million four or something.
• 45:21
  I mean, I, yeah, no matter how hard I worked, I couldn't get
• 45:24
  ahead. Really.
• 45:27
  So I'm like, you know, I need to, I need to, I just need this
• 45:30
  to end. I mean, I can't go through a
• 45:32
  trial again. I just can't do this, you know,
• 45:34
  I can't do it to my family either.
• 45:36
  So we got an attorney. He called them up.
• 45:40
  He goes, OK, 18 months and I forget what the charge was.
• 45:44
  I'm like, I'm not sure. I'm not pleading guilty.
• 45:47
  I said there's no, that's not coming out of my mouth.
• 45:49
  I said, I said, I'll make a no contest plea.
• 45:52
  And for two weeks we went back and forth and they said, OK,
• 45:56
  we'll just retry you or you can do this no contest, but it's
• 46:00
  for, you know, for five year sentence.
• 46:04
  I said to my wife, I'm like, honey, I mean, I I'm not going
• 46:08
  to plead guilty. I said I can't do it.
• 46:11
  I'm not. And she said, OK, she goes,
• 46:14
  well, I'm here to support you. And I said, OK, well, I'm, I'm
• 46:17
  just going to I'm I can't go through.
• 46:19
  I'm not going to risk the trial either because last time my
• 46:21
  attorney said it was a slam dunk and I lost, which could have
• 46:24
  meant I got 20 years or something.
• 46:26
  Yeah, I was like, OK, I'm just going to do it.
• 46:30
  And we explained it to our kids and I just went and turned
• 46:33
  myself in. And what a lesson that was, I
• 46:37
  mean. What?
• 46:37
  Well, I want to talk about that because going into that, before
• 46:41
  we do, I want to recognize Nightmare Success Podcast is
• 46:44
  sponsored by the White Collar Support Group, world's first
• 46:47
  support group devoted to people navigating the white collar
• 46:50
  criminal justice system. I'm a member of the White Collar
• 46:53
  Support Group, and I can tell you that there's a bunch of
• 46:55
  people who help each other through the criminal justice
• 46:58
  journey for free. Whether you're just starting
• 47:00
  your journey or you made it through to the other side, this
• 47:02
  is a great space for you. You can join us on Zoom Monday,
• 47:06
  7:00 PM Eastern Time, 4:00 PM Pacific.
• 47:09
  For information, go to prisonist.org.
• 47:11
  That's prisonist.org. Start here.
• 47:14
  So, yeah, you go through all this, David, seven years, you're
• 47:19
  worn out, tired, don't want to go through to get retried.
• 47:22
  You turned yourself in. What's it like?
• 47:28
  Well, I don't, you know, you don't know what you don't know,
• 47:30
  right? And I'll, I my last day, you
• 47:33
  know, we, we spent the day with my kids and we took them to a
• 47:36
  friend's house. And then, you know, Julie and I
• 47:37
  had some time together and she drives me down to the to to turn
• 47:43
  myself into the local to the, to the jail where you you turn
• 47:46
  yourself into. And I just put on AT shirt and
• 47:49
  shorts because I knew it was going to get thrown out.
• 47:51
  So I walked in and I said, hey, hi.
• 47:54
  He goes, are you here to visit? I said, no, I'm here to to turn
• 47:56
  myself in. And he says, what's your name?
• 47:58
  He goes, OK, may I have your Idi said, well, I, I didn't bring my
• 48:02
  ID. He goes, well, you have to have
• 48:03
  your Idi said. Well, who else would come?
• 48:08
  Can I get somebody else to stand in with my ID?
• 48:10
  I mean no. One's going to come and turn
• 48:12
  themselves in for five years. If it's not me, he says, sorry,
• 48:15
  he goes, I can't let you in without your ID.
• 48:17
  He goes, how much time do you need to get your Idi said, oh, I
• 48:21
  said about an hour. He goes, how long?
• 48:25
  I said an hour. He goes, is 11:00 PM.
• 48:27
  OK, I said no. I said he goes is 11:00 PM.
• 48:31
  I'm trying to help you out here, yeah.
• 48:33
  I'm like, oh, oh, yeah, that's fine, right?
• 48:35
  Wow. OK, so with I went, had more,
• 48:38
  spent some more time with my wife, went to Costco for a hot
• 48:40
  dog, went back and by that time the front was closed and I had
• 48:44
  to go in the back door and they let me in this you know the I
• 48:48
  forget the the breezeway or whatever where you go in one
• 48:52
  door, it closes and then you go through the next one.
• 48:53
  And when I'm walking, they told me to walk down the hall to the
• 48:56
  front desk. When I get to the front desk,
• 48:58
  the guy said are you here to see?
• 48:59
  A client said. No wish I was.
• 49:02
  They just let me in, pretty much, I said.
• 49:04
  They just let me in anyway. Yeah, they throw me in a holding
• 49:07
  cell and that's that's when you're.
• 49:09
  Basically it real. Yep, and you're you're.
• 49:12
  Now you got to figure out how everything works.
• 49:14
  Yeah. What do you think was your
• 49:17
  biggest shock within the 1st 24 hours?
• 49:24
  The. Kindness and humanity that I
• 49:27
  encountered from guys that wanted to help me out, yeah.
• 49:32
  That's exactly what mine was too, David, because you see all
• 49:35
  this stuff on the outside and I know why it's that way because
• 49:39
  you know, it's, it's sizzly and it sells and all that.
• 49:44
  But you know, I, I mean, I was within the first hour for me
• 49:48
  that, you know, my bunkmate was showing me how to make my bed
• 49:51
  military style. He, he was helping clean out my
• 49:54
  locker and you know, he was part of a gang.
• 49:57
  I mean, he, he was, he couldn't have been any nicer.
• 50:01
  Then he goes over and introduces me to a guy that can help me get
• 50:04
  a job. It, it was very humbling because
• 50:10
  you get very, you get very humbled anyway, walking through
• 50:13
  like your freedom sheds off your skin.
• 50:15
  But the perception that probably changed me more than anything
• 50:20
  was that, wow, there's a lot of guys in here that, yeah, they
• 50:24
  made a mistake in that. But they're, I mean, a lot of
• 50:28
  really smart guys that, you know, were doing drug stuff that
• 50:31
  if they knew how to scale market, set up the basically the
• 50:36
  franchises, the commissions, you know, it's just, yeah.
• 50:41
  Exactly. I mean, I would blew me away
• 50:42
  because you go in with that perception of what you see on
• 50:44
  the TV, right? And my whole thing was like, I'm
• 50:47
  not, I'm just going to keep to myself and not talk to these.
• 50:51
  Well, some people say to do that, you know, don't let
• 50:53
  anybody in. Don't let, don't let, don't give
• 50:55
  anything to you. Don't.
• 50:56
  No, I learned, I mean I was like these are there are some smart
• 50:59
  guys that just were brought up in the wrong environment or
• 51:04
  didn't have opportunities. A lot of them don't want the
• 51:08
  opportunities by the way, but I mean, but there are some super
• 51:11
  smart people. Yeah, in any situation, there's
• 51:13
  the bad and the good, you know the and I never want to be
• 51:19
  misunderstood on that. And there's people that
• 51:21
  continually get into could be mental situation, could be
• 51:25
  whatever, but there's a lot of guys that want to do good.
• 51:29
  And, and that's the, that's the struggle is, is that these guys
• 51:33
  want to do good, but they have such a, such a difficult time.
• 51:36
  And that's another thing that you understand.
• 51:38
  Once you learn about these stories of these guys, the
• 51:40
  backgrounds that they have, you then see how much harder it is
• 51:44
  for them to step out into society because we we just build
• 51:47
  walls all around that they can't jump over.
• 51:50
  Well, and plus against, you know, a lot of times the the
• 51:53
  prosecution or their correctional officers are also
• 51:56
  making it challenging for them on top of it.
• 51:58
  I'd like to see them fail, you know?
• 52:01
  So no. I learned a lot about myself.
• 52:04
  About people, Boy. Respect, you mean.
• 52:10
  That's it's a primitive environment.
• 52:11
  Respect is the common denominator.
• 52:13
  Damn right. If you, if you demand respect
• 52:16
  and you give respect, you're, you're golden, right.
• 52:20
  And I, I learned that, gosh, within the first few weeks, it
• 52:24
  was like, you got to hold your own and you get, you don't have
• 52:27
  to be a jerk about it. No.
• 52:29
  And and David, I think would you agree with this?
• 52:32
  I think that guys who have problems on the inside getting
• 52:37
  along and getting in fights, I think they had that same problem
• 52:40
  on the outside. I think guys that can get along
• 52:42
  with people adjust, try to adapt, respect those people do
• 52:48
  OK in prison. I think that there's a dynamic,
• 52:52
  yes, it's it's much more of a primitive environment, but you
• 52:55
  can however you got along on the outside is probably how you're
• 52:58
  going to get along on the inside unless you get into some weird,
• 53:01
  you know, scrape up that you can't get out of it's, you know,
• 53:05
  hit you upside the head. No, I learned a lot, learned a
• 53:07
  lot about people and you know, I mean, I like, I don't know about
• 53:09
  when I went, I went before I went, people said you don't talk
• 53:12
  to the you don't, don't get friendly with the guards because
• 53:15
  then the inmates won't like. Yeah, you're snitching or
• 53:17
  whatever. Yeah, like.
• 53:17
  Well, I don't. I, I started talking to
• 53:19
  everybody. I'm like there people.
• 53:20
  I'm like, look, man, yeah, I'm going to treat people the way I
• 53:23
  want to be treated. I.
• 53:24
  Don't right like you always have.
• 53:26
  What side you're on? You know, it was interesting is
• 53:28
  my days. Working the door at the
• 53:30
  nightclub taught me a lot. About probably helped you out a
• 53:33
  lot. Communicate with people and size
• 53:35
  them up. Right.
• 53:36
  So it's weird how my history and my skills were grown.
• 53:43
  And when I got there, I could really rely on them to.
• 53:45
  Yeah. And I just learned how to, to,
• 53:48
  to communicate with people. And then there's the ones you
• 53:50
  know that you just don't communicate with.
• 53:52
  You don't. You can't, right?
• 53:54
  No, you just figure out how to move.
• 53:56
  Yeah. And, and once you figure that
• 53:58
  out, you figure out what all the inmate rules are.
• 54:02
  Make sure you don't do that. You can, you can move and adapt
• 54:07
  in a, in a society that you know, and, and I think it wasn't
• 54:11
  the other thing too, David, it gives you is, is it, you know,
• 54:13
  both of us came from places where we had things.
• 54:17
  And when you get down to a plastic chair, a locker and a
• 54:20
  bunk bed, you realize that you can adapt to that too.
• 54:23
  It's just, you got to figure it out.
• 54:25
  And but I, I want to get to this thing about when you're in
• 54:30
  there, your brain's still on go. I mean that, you know, that's
• 54:33
  the one thing they don't take your brain, your brain's still
• 54:36
  on go. You're trying to figure out
• 54:37
  what's my next move and you figure out this popcorn thing.
• 54:43
  Can you run this run this through this I'll.
• 54:45
  Try and make it quick. I know we're going along here.
• 54:47
  But my, I was, when I went there, I told my wife I'm going
• 54:51
  to find a business to create to make that prosecutor sorry that
• 54:55
  she sent me. I mean, that she did this to me.
• 54:58
  So initially it was I saw guys working out with, you know,
• 55:01
  towels around the bars to do bicep stuff and all kinds of
• 55:04
  cool. So I was like, oh, fitness from
• 55:06
  the inside out. I'm going to do a book.
• 55:08
  Yeah, that that wasn't where I ended up.
• 55:11
  Then you see them cooking all like you did.
• 55:13
  You see them cooking all this? Really.
• 55:15
  Very creatively. Of making food I'm like, how do
• 55:18
  they do that? So I was like, hey, I'm going to
• 55:20
  do a cookbook from. Aaron.
• 55:22
  Well, that wasn't it. But in my last six months in
• 55:25
  minimum security, these guys, these two guys were cell mates.
• 55:30
  They used to get microwave popcorn off the the store
• 55:36
  commissary and they would pop it, they would put it in a big
• 55:40
  clean garbage bag, sorry, melt some caramels and then throw the
• 55:44
  caramel M&M's Cinnamon Toast Crunch and chop up a rocky road
• 55:49
  candy bar. And they'd blend it all up.
• 55:50
  And then they'd put it into smaller garbage bags and trade
• 55:53
  it off. And everybody used to go crazy.
• 55:57
  I, I followed a strict diet. So I, if it wasn't on my cheat
• 56:01
  day, I didn't eat it. But my parents would say, man,
• 56:03
  you got to try this stuff. You.
• 56:04
  This is unbelievable. I'm like, yeah, OK, so maybe I
• 56:07
  don't know, 1-4 weeks in, I try a bite and I'm like, holy cow,
• 56:12
  this is a business, right? So I, I started asking the
• 56:16
  people from the outside to send me information on the popcorn
• 56:20
  industry and I wrote a short business plan.
• 56:25
  I knew what I was going to call it was it was called, well
• 56:27
  initially it was called Pop con corn.
• 56:30
  And I like that. The original, I mean, the, the
• 56:33
  initial product was the original Big House.
• 56:36
  Still have a bag here somewhere. Anyway, I did that.
• 56:41
  And when I came home, I started mixing this up and giving it to
• 56:46
  friends and they're all going nuts.
• 56:47
  I mean, these are like, this is crazy.
• 56:51
  So I had to write a, a bigger, a larger business plan and I
• 56:56
  raised a little bit of capital. Most of the guys from Costco and
• 56:59
  Starbucks wanted to support me. Not a lot, but a little bit,
• 57:05
  particularly the CFO of Costco was really supportive.
• 57:09
  So I, I got a little, I started making it in my kitchen and I
• 57:13
  took it to a local grocery store and I asked them if they would
• 57:15
  be interested and the guy called me up.
• 57:17
  He said, hey, we're going to, we're going to give it a shot.
• 57:19
  I said, well, I'll bring it to you.
• 57:20
  You guys can pay me as you said, no, no, we'll buy it from you.
• 57:24
  Well, it started selling really well.
• 57:25
  So they put it into their other stores and I started to
• 57:28
  understand how this works. I developed other flavors and I
• 57:32
  was in a maybe a 10 or 12 stores in Seattle in my third month.
• 57:37
  And I said to my, I'm looking at this the shelf and I said to my
• 57:39
  wife, I go, these are really unique, but they're still
• 57:44
  similar to other products on the shelf, you know, caramel,
• 57:47
  chocolate, blah, blah, blah. How do I explain the big house,
• 57:50
  right? I mean, I, that's all I called
• 57:52
  it. I didn't even say it was a, you
• 57:54
  know, plethora of flavors or something like that, but it was
• 57:58
  super good, very high quality. Yeah.
• 58:00
  So I said to my I said, I gotta do.
• 58:02
  She goes, we should do something more of these trendy flavors
• 58:04
  like white truffle or chocolate salt to caramel.
• 58:07
  So I create this white truffle very high end, beautiful product
• 58:11
  and then chocolate salt to caramel and I take it to the
• 58:15
  stores. They put it on the shelves and
• 58:18
  this woman that I knew ate my white truffle and she goes, this
• 58:23
  is unbelievable. She goes, you know, Oprah loves
• 58:25
  white truffle. Oh, really?
• 58:28
  So I I didn't just send, I put together a package.
• 58:31
  I sent it back to O magazine. Why not what?
• 58:34
  What the heck, right? Yeah, Yeah.
• 58:36
  Two weeks later, I'm sitting in now our first little office on a
• 58:41
  Friday, and I get a phone call. Hi, This is Lauren from O
• 58:46
  Magazine in New York. I'm like, hi.
• 58:48
  She goes, yeah, hey, Oprah loved your product.
• 58:52
  She goes, would it be possible to get 4 cases of the white
• 58:55
  truffle by tomorrow? I said on a Saturday she goes,
• 58:59
  we'll give you our FedEx number. Is it possible?
• 59:01
  I'm like, yes, it's possible. It's possible, so I wouldn't.
• 59:04
  Yes, it is. Made it, packaged it up and sent
• 59:07
  it to her. Two months later, she puts us in
• 59:09
  the magazine as one of her favorite things.
• 59:11
  Wow. And you know it was.
• 59:13
  There you go. Off the charts and.
• 59:16
  So that goes off the charts, David, but the, the, the good
• 59:23
  Planet Foods was it, was it your wife that brought you the idea
• 59:30
  that I'm trying to remember how that came to you, sister.
• 59:34
  In law. Sister-in-law, because you had
• 59:36
  the two women. That's right.
• 59:37
  Your wife tells you about the the better tasting stuff and
• 59:40
  then your sister-in-law tells you about the the good plan of
• 59:43
  food. But you're still going to take
• 59:46
  action. Everybody can be given an idea.
• 59:49
  Can I say one quick thing about Pop Gourmet?
• 59:51
  When it turned into Pop Gourmet, I hired over 220.
• 59:55
  Oh, I didn't want, yes. That we're transitioning back
• 59:57
  from prison. The whole thing was built around
• 1:00:00
  I'm going to give these people jobs.
• 1:00:02
  And many of them went on to do bigger and better things.
• 1:00:06
  One Joe, who I hired and did our design went on to Facebook.
• 1:00:10
  Some didn't do so well. Some didn't use it as a stepping
• 1:00:13
  pad. But what I love about that,
• 1:00:15
  David, and I meant to bring that up because I have it written
• 1:00:18
  down here, the the idea that, you know, because there's
• 1:00:24
  there's, there's not a lot of people that have big success
• 1:00:28
  when they get out. But for you to be able to reach
• 1:00:31
  back in and know what those people, they're looking
• 1:00:34
  desperately looking for an opportunity.
• 1:00:36
  Some of those people are the best employees you can get
• 1:00:39
  because they're so desperate, looking for the opportunity and
• 1:00:42
  there's other people that'll blow it.
• 1:00:43
  But the guys in, like you said, used to be a guy at the door.
• 1:00:47
  You can you can evaluate and and the guy that he hasn't been in
• 1:00:51
  prison, he could be doing something really bad.
• 1:00:53
  You don't know about it anyway. Yeah.
• 1:00:55
  We don't know what they're doing in there.
• 1:00:56
  No, no, exactly. No.
• 1:00:59
  I love that. And and I, I thought that the
• 1:01:01
  and one of your guys that was a bunk made with you was didn't he
• 1:01:05
  become like a vice president or something?
• 1:01:07
  Yeah, Yeah. He sure did.
• 1:01:09
  It's a great story. Yeah.
• 1:01:11
  Rex. Rex.
• 1:01:13
  Yeah, he was. Remember.
• 1:01:15
  He told me what he said. I wish I could be a businessman
• 1:01:17
  like you. I go.
• 1:01:18
  What'd you do? He goes.
• 1:01:18
  Why? I sold cocaine.
• 1:01:20
  Yeah, I go. So you were a businessman?
• 1:01:22
  Yeah. You had a.
• 1:01:23
  It was just. Illegal.
• 1:01:24
  You had customers, you had distribution, you had sales,
• 1:01:27
  you. Had figure out commissions.
• 1:01:29
  I said you just had the wrong product, right?
• 1:01:31
  He's like, wow, I never thought of it that way.
• 1:01:33
  Yeah, he was super. He was killer.
• 1:01:34
  He was a great guy. So your sister-in-law gives you
• 1:01:39
  an idea on something that's kind of like becoming a thing.
• 1:01:44
  And right when you were getting into this that that's it's, it's
• 1:01:48
  definitely, you know, plant based foods and all that, but it
• 1:01:51
  wasn't anything that you've done.
• 1:01:53
  No, I thought she was nuts. I'm like, why would I do that?
• 1:01:55
  I mean, I'm not vegan and I don't know anything about
• 1:01:57
  cheese, right? She suggested because she said
• 1:01:59
  the two products sucked, right. Or they wouldn't melt.
• 1:02:03
  Is that what she said? They don't do any of that.
• 1:02:05
  They put them under the broiler or something, but also the
• 1:02:08
  ingredient deck was like this. So I tried them.
• 1:02:12
  I'm like, boy, this would be easy to improve upon.
• 1:02:15
  And I started looking at the market.
• 1:02:17
  But you can't do something if you're not passionate about it.
• 1:02:20
  And when I started looking at the market, I started
• 1:02:22
  understanding the impact that dairy farming has on our
• 1:02:28
  environment and on the, the usage of water and the, I was
• 1:02:33
  like, wow, I mean, I had no, the ozone layer.
• 1:02:35
  I don't. Did you know that that, oh,
• 1:02:38
  flatulence from cows causes more damage to our ozone layer than
• 1:02:41
  fossil fuels in cars? So.
• 1:02:44
  There's a lot of cows. How can I that was passionate
• 1:02:49
  for me that if I could help? Well, that's a big point, David,
• 1:02:52
  that I don't think we could just skirt over.
• 1:02:53
  You do need to be passionate about something if you're going
• 1:02:56
  to build it and you're going to you're going to spend time on it
• 1:02:58
  and. Well, if you're going to get hit
• 1:02:59
  by a truck, you better be passionate about it.
• 1:03:01
  Exactly something. 'S going to go wrong and you,
• 1:03:03
  otherwise you just head for the hills, right?
• 1:03:04
  Right. So I looked at that and I, I saw
• 1:03:07
  that drove me to be more interested in wanting to do
• 1:03:10
  something to change that and Google became my best friend.
• 1:03:15
  I started Googling cheese processes and I, I mean, on
• 1:03:20
  Kraft singles called analog cheese.
• 1:03:23
  It's made from dairy powders and oils.
• 1:03:25
  I'm like, well, we could probably replicate that and have
• 1:03:28
  a similar, you know, as a product with plant based
• 1:03:31
  materials. And I started reaching out to
• 1:03:35
  the, there's a lot analog cheese probably accounts for 70% of the
• 1:03:39
  cheeses in the market. And there's a ton of
• 1:03:42
  manufacturers, producers, and I reached out to, I don't know how
• 1:03:45
  many in the US, 90% of them said no because it was non dairy
• 1:03:50
  product. They didn't want to be involved.
• 1:03:51
  And the others were like, we'll do it, but you have to have this
• 1:03:54
  minimum order quantity and that wasn't going to work.
• 1:03:58
  So I kept Googling and I found this company in Greece that made
• 1:04:03
  what they called the vegan loaf through the analogue process for
• 1:04:07
  the, for the Greek Orthodox holiday and for Ramadan.
• 1:04:10
  So I ordered it and it was very blase but it melted and it it
• 1:04:15
  did a good job. So I reached out to them and
• 1:04:17
  asked if they would work with me and they said no because they
• 1:04:20
  didn't trust me. I'm from the USI go like this is
• 1:04:22
  what you do you make products for other they go no.
• 1:04:25
  So I said meet with me. So I went over and met with them
• 1:04:27
  within 4 hours the CEO says you can have whatever you want.
• 1:04:31
  He goes I, I know I can trust you.
• 1:04:34
  And. I launched that product in mid
• 1:04:37
  2018 and my first customers out of the gate were Whole Foods and
• 1:04:43
  Nestle. Well, here's the thing, David,
• 1:04:45
  and because there's a lot of guys that listen to this and
• 1:04:48
  there's 435 prisons this goes into.
• 1:04:50
  So I I love the fact of you telling these stories because
• 1:04:54
  you get into these businesses. How are you handling?
• 1:04:59
  I'm David and I've also served four years because it's out
• 1:05:02
  there. Did you do you just go with your
• 1:05:05
  brain, your business plan and if it comes up OK or where does
• 1:05:10
  that come up in the world that you live in?
• 1:05:12
  Yeah, well, one I mean I was in the media a ton for pop.
• 1:05:15
  I mean a lot. I mean I went with Oprah and
• 1:05:17
  lived your less lived your best life tour.
• 1:05:19
  I was in magazines. I mean it was non-stop.
• 1:05:22
  I. Mean which helps build
• 1:05:23
  credibility. Yeah, and tell my story, right,
• 1:05:26
  My side and the support that I had from the Department of
• 1:05:28
  Corrections. I mean, I got a letter from the
• 1:05:30
  governor apologizing. I mean, I got the works, right,
• 1:05:32
  Right. So I was on.
• 1:05:34
  I mean, I you can't tell me how many local news channels put me
• 1:05:37
  on. It was crazy.
• 1:05:39
  But you told your story. Yeah, it sure did.
• 1:05:41
  So I was out there and I would lead.
• 1:05:43
  I didn't want people to hear the story from somebody else.
• 1:05:47
  I wanted to tell them about it. OK, David, I think that's a
• 1:05:50
  that's a huge key because Father Joe Saccone and I were having
• 1:05:56
  this conversation of View podcast back and he was talking
• 1:06:02
  about standing out in front of of his story.
• 1:06:06
  Now he got hit. You know, he was he was a
• 1:06:08
  sheriff of the biggest county in New Jersey.
• 1:06:11
  And so he the New York Times exposed out of him as being gay.
• 1:06:15
  And he he he made a very and I hadn't thought about it before,
• 1:06:20
  but he said being in the closet, being gay is a lot like being an
• 1:06:24
  ex felon and hoping that no one says anything or knows anything.
• 1:06:29
  And then they own the story and he's he we talked about when you
• 1:06:33
  go out and tell your story, the way, however you tell your
• 1:06:37
  story, because it's your story, then you own the story.
• 1:06:40
  It's your story. And I think that's a big key
• 1:06:43
  that I mean, you don't, you don't lead with it and and you
• 1:06:46
  know, knock people down with it. But but if you're able and given
• 1:06:49
  the opportunity to tell your story, whether it's a job
• 1:06:51
  interview or being interviewed by the press or whatever, you
• 1:06:55
  own the story, then somebody can't sneak up on you say he
• 1:06:58
  didn't tell me that. No, you've you've been
• 1:07:01
  transparent And and, and then I think that opens up
• 1:07:04
  opportunities for people. Yeah.
• 1:07:08
  And I. Raised a lot of capital at Pop
• 1:07:09
  from very influential investors and I they liked my story at
• 1:07:16
  Good Planet. I brought in some of the biggest
• 1:07:20
  funds and some of the biggest families in in the world in the
• 1:07:23
  food industry. The former CEO of McDonald's,
• 1:07:27
  the former founder and CEO of Nation Pizza.
• 1:07:30
  I mean enormous billion dollar company billionaires.
• 1:07:34
  And I didn't ask them to invest. I told them my story as we were
• 1:07:40
  trying to build business together.
• 1:07:42
  And they were like, man, we, we need to be involved with you.
• 1:07:48
  You know, you persevere, you own who you are, you're you
• 1:07:51
  confident and you believe in what you do.
• 1:07:53
  We need, we need to be involved with somebody like you, one when
• 1:07:57
  you're when you're clear and you're transparent, you build
• 1:08:01
  trust. Absolutely vulnerability and
• 1:08:04
  being honest and just telling it like it is.
• 1:08:06
  People are attracted to that. Well, trust is a key factor in
• 1:08:10
  any business, any relationship. I mean, I with our customers
• 1:08:14
  here, it's all about trust and relationship.
• 1:08:17
  I, I don't want them to find if we have a problem product, I
• 1:08:21
  want to tell them, I don't want them to go find out somewhere
• 1:08:23
  else. I want to own it.
• 1:08:24
  I want to work with them and fix it right.
• 1:08:27
  So my, my team knows that I, I try to live like you always do
• 1:08:32
  the right thing. Doesn't matter how bad it's
• 1:08:34
  going to hurt because you need, that's the best way to, to build
• 1:08:38
  a relationship and build that trust.
• 1:08:39
  And it's worked. It's paid us dividends over and
• 1:08:43
  over. And.
• 1:08:43
  Over well, I mean, it's proof is is proof to the point that
• 1:08:46
  you've gone through all you've got to and you're still drawing
• 1:08:49
  the top echelon of people that wanted to invest.
• 1:08:52
  And I mean, I think that's another thing that you always
• 1:08:54
  got to remember that you can go through a horrific nightmare,
• 1:08:57
  but that they can't take your brain.
• 1:08:59
  And if you can keep your brain tick and and and and your your
• 1:09:03
  goal out there. I always call it the Zeewon
• 1:09:05
  Teneo out there of chipping through a wall for 19 years.
• 1:09:08
  How do you how do you get that fashion?
• 1:09:10
  That's what you've done, David is every time that most people
• 1:09:13
  would have coiled up in a fetal position and just said I give
• 1:09:16
  and those were the times that you really you're most creative
• 1:09:22
  at at getting to the next step. Yeah.
• 1:09:24
  Well, I don't. I don't.
• 1:09:25
  I don't. I don't want to let somebody
• 1:09:27
  else knock me down. Yeah, I think, you know, I'm
• 1:09:31
  going to run my life. I, I have a family, I have an
• 1:09:34
  amazing wife and and I have great friends and investors and
• 1:09:37
  my responsibility is to them to, to live my life and do the best
• 1:09:42
  I can. But I'm not going to let someone
• 1:09:45
  else decide whether I'm going to be successful or happy or not.
• 1:09:49
  That's right. You own that.
• 1:09:51
  I own that right. So.
• 1:09:54
  What do you think, David Atta? I mean, 'cause you, you've lived
• 1:09:57
  quite a deal here. I mean, we could probably write
• 1:09:59
  a movie script and people go to this movie.
• 1:10:02
  What do you think's your biggest take away through all this?
• 1:10:07
  Treat people the way you want to be treated.
• 1:10:10
  I, I, I've always on top of that, I do love to help people.
• 1:10:15
  Yeah. I, I give without wanting
• 1:10:17
  something in return. I like to see people be
• 1:10:20
  successful. I mean, I've learned a lot, I've
• 1:10:24
  lived a lot. You've experienced what we what
• 1:10:26
  we have to go through to survive that and some people, you know,
• 1:10:30
  the smallest things can cause their lives to be upside down.
• 1:10:34
  I want to help them overcome those things.
• 1:10:36
  And you know, I don't know, man, it's I just like to see people
• 1:10:41
  thrive. I.
• 1:10:43
  Like, well, then I mean, and you're in a position, David,
• 1:10:46
  where you've experienced all these things in your life.
• 1:10:50
  You know what's important in life.
• 1:10:51
  So reaching out and helping people thrive.
• 1:10:54
  You you know what some of those ingredients are, which is a big
• 1:10:56
  deal. Yeah, again, I mean, it's I,
• 1:10:59
  like I said, I mean the what I think I learned a lot.
• 1:11:02
  I experienced things differently, you know, I mean,
• 1:11:04
  the Department of Corrections, when I was there, they treated
• 1:11:07
  me. They helped me get through that.
• 1:11:11
  They made, they really did go out of their way to make things
• 1:11:15
  as good as possible for me and my family.
• 1:11:18
  When my kids would come visit, they would let me use a
• 1:11:21
  conference room versus sit in the, the visiting room.
• 1:11:24
  I mean, they were really kind, you know, they didn't have to
• 1:11:26
  be, but I also wasn't causing them a lot of trouble either.
• 1:11:31
  I just learned a lot about people.
• 1:11:33
  I'm still not great judging everybody because I I do like to
• 1:11:36
  give people the chance of, of being good.
• 1:11:42
  You know, for me, like I said, I just want to live a good life
• 1:11:44
  and help people. Yes.
• 1:11:46
  Do I want to make a ton of money?
• 1:11:48
  You know, if that happens, that's great.
• 1:11:50
  I want to, I don't want to have to worry about money, right?
• 1:11:52
  I want to make a ton of money for my investors and for my
• 1:11:55
  partners. I'd like to help, but you know.
• 1:11:58
  That's almost like your scoreboard.
• 1:12:00
  You know you're playing the game, that's your scoreboard.
• 1:12:02
  If you're winning or losing, it's, it's not the material
• 1:12:04
  part. It's it's if you're doing good.
• 1:12:07
  No, no. There's material things you can
• 1:12:09
  take away and you can get them back.
• 1:12:11
  Yeah. Friends, family and health.
• 1:12:13
  You can't, right? No, doesn't do any again and get
• 1:12:15
  to be the richest guy in the cemetery.
• 1:12:17
  Yep, exactly 100 percent. So if anybody wants to go, go to
• 1:12:25
  goodplanetfoods.com, not.org.com and they're everywhere.
• 1:12:31
  I mean, I I've you know, you go to look up David and and his
• 1:12:36
  company, they're they're everywhere and it's it's so
• 1:12:39
  impressive. David, what you're doing
• 1:12:41
  anything else to to you want to throw out there while we're.
• 1:12:45
  No, I think, you know, what's important is like, we can,
• 1:12:47
  everybody can thrive and survive.
• 1:12:50
  You have to own who you are and determine what you want to do.
• 1:12:54
  Yeah. Do the right thing always.
• 1:12:57
  You know, don't expect something in return.
• 1:12:58
  It comes around. But give.
• 1:13:00
  People just do it because it's the right thing to do.
• 1:13:02
  Yeah, and give people an opportunity to, because you
• 1:13:05
  never know what someone's going through.
• 1:13:06
  You can't judge them right out of the gate.
• 1:13:08
  So true. One of the guys I had on was one
• 1:13:11
  of the second interviews in the on the podcast, You're you're 1
• 1:13:15
  is we're in year 3 is he said don't take away hope because
• 1:13:17
  hope might be all they have and that might be the thing that
• 1:13:20
  steps them through For those out there.
• 1:13:24
  I want to 1st. I want to think Homestead
• 1:13:26
  financial here. That helps me and lets me use
• 1:13:29
  this podcast room. I got all this fancy equipment.
• 1:13:32
  So it's it's nice. I appreciate it.
• 1:13:34
  So if you need any home mortgage needs, it's Greg Aftia.
• 1:13:37
  He is your guy. Hey, if you're looking for a
• 1:13:39
  book out there, nightmare success.
• 1:13:41
  I've got one. It's on Amazon.
• 1:13:44
  Again, don't forget to follow, subscribe, share, like leave a
• 1:13:48
  review on Apple. Those things really help out.
• 1:13:50
  I don't know what they do in that algorithm, but it does
• 1:13:52
  help. Go to brentcassidy.com.
• 1:13:56
  That's where the Ty not a DYI spell it wrong.
• 1:14:00
  And as I used to say when I was writing my emails back and forth
• 1:14:04
  from Leavenworth, stay strong. I'll do the same.
• 1:14:07
  David Israel, thank you so much for being here today.
• 1:14:11
  I love your story, love what you're doing.
• 1:14:13
  Just if we could just clone you and and keep a lot of David's
• 1:14:17
  going, it would be fantastic. No, that's what it takes.
• 1:14:21
  It takes a, it takes a village, right?
• 1:14:23
  So. Takes a village.
• 1:14:24
  Thank you, Brent. It was really an honor to be on
• 1:14:26
  your show. Thank you very much.
• 1:14:27
  Love it. Sorry we went.
• 1:14:28
  Sorry I took so much time. Oh, it was perfect.
• 1:14:31
  I remember success in and out.