On this week’s episode we have the founder of the Academy of Hope – Andre Norman. Andre is one of those fascinating individuals who, even with the odds stacked against him, managed to turn his life around. At one time he was facing up to 100 years in prison and now is the one reforming prison systems. We dig into Andre’s upbringing and focus on the programs that he’s putting in place around the United States today and how’s he managed to take on the task of changing countless lives.
Make sure to tune in later in the week to hear part 2!
Episode: 38
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Andre Norman, Founder of The Academy of Hope”, and a Motivational Speaker and Social Advocate
Subtitle: “Trying means nothing,accomplishment means everything”
Final Show Link: https://iknowthisguy.com/episodes/ep-38-academy-of-hope-w-andre-norman/
In this episode of I Know this Guy…, Norman Farrar introduces Andre Norman, founder of The Academy of Hope and a motivational speaker and social advocate
Andre is the #1 prison story in the world. He immersed himself in prison culture, gaining status and recognition within the system. In this episode, we dig into Andre’s upbringing and focus on the programs that he’s putting in place around United States and how he changed countless lives
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Andre 0:00
I had to learn not to be a quitter. When my dad left the house, he taught me to quit and I didn’t understand it at eight years old and nine years old, but that’s what he taught me. That’s why I invested into my life, I embraced, but I quit everything and when I finally got to the point of wanting to turn my life around, I look back at my life, and all the things that I didn’t achieve. But I asked myself, why didn’t I do these things and the one thing was, I quit. I quit. I quit. I quit. So I started asking myself, why are you quitting everything Andre? Then I went back to, I learned to quit for my dad.
Norman 0:45
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of I Know This Guy. The podcast where we dive deep into the lives of some of the most interesting people I know. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to I know this guy, wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, my kids want me to say something about ringing a bell. What the hell’s a bell?
Hayden 1:19
So Dad, who do we have on the podcast today?
Norman 1:22
Alright. So a buddy of mine, Rich Goldstein reached out to us just after he listened to the podcast, and he said, Look, you got to check out a buddy of mine. His name’s Andre Norman and he went from spending I think it was 14 years in prison, to receiving a fellowship at Harvard and this guy is an incredible entrepreneur, so I can’t wait to interview him.
Hayden 1:48
Yeah. I mean, he’s done so much. He’s really involved in prison reform too. So it’s always interesting to touch on those topics.
Norman 1:54
Yeah, for sure.
Hayden 1:57
Alright, let’s dive in.
Norman 1:58
Alright. So welcome to the podcast Andre.
Andre 2:02
Thank you for having me Norm. I appreciate you for the invitation. Happy to be here.
Norman 2:07
Well, I got your name from Rich Goldstein. He told me that you got to check this out. We were just talking about what our podcast is all about. He goes, Oh my God, have you talked to Andre Norman and I said no. He said, Okay, I gotta get you guys together. So I am excited to have you on the podcast today.
Andre 2:26
Anytime Rich calls me and says, Hey Andre, this is something you need to do or consider. Rich’s a great friend. I mean, it’s hard to find honest people in 2020. So Rich is just a rock solid guy and I appreciate the connection.
Norman 2:39
Yeah, he’s a great guy. So look, we’ve had a chance to talk. I just started doing a lot of research. Because the more I read, the more I just kind of went, Holy crap. This guy’s incredible. So why don’t we just dig into your backstory and tell everybody what makes Andre, Andre.
Andre 2:59
What makes Andre, Andre is I went through a lot of turmoil and trauma as a kid. I watched my mom fight with dad, and he’s 6’6, so it was never a fair fight. I went to public school in Boston in the 70s and we were doing integration where kids would throw rocks and stones at us and call us negatives, because we were trying to get an education and then I finally watched my dad move out of the house because mom had enough of the beatings. So single mom, six kids living in the city and of course, that his goals were poor. I didn’t know what poverty was. I didn’t know what poor meant, we were just poor. Nobody tells an eight year old you’re poor, and he understands it. But when I got to middle school, I realized what poor was. I didn’t have what the other kids had. I didn’t have the cool sneakers or the cool bag or cool hat. I was a free lunch kid and they let me know what poor meant and it sucked. It was just hard and so I started selling weed after school. So I wouldn’t be perceived as poor. We’re still poor. We live in the same house, same family, but I could buy this stuff to pretend not to be poor and I started down that path of negativity and criminality, which eventually landed me in front of a court at 18 and they started reading off sentences. When a judge finished reading, I had 100 years and put your band and took me to prison and they dropped me off. When I got there, I was a little bit nervous, really scared. But it turned into a reunion of all my friends from the dummy class, all my friends from the juvenile hall, all my friends who quit football and basketball, who just had home like I did and it was just like a giant reunion and I got it with those guys and I was like, Hey, this is what I’m supposed to be. I found my groove. I found my tribe and I went all in on being a criminal and a gangster and six years after running down this path, I realized I became the king of nowhere and I don’t want to be the king of nowhere. So I said, Okay, this isn’t working. So what am I going to do differently? I said, Well, I want to be successful. I said so to be successful, I need to get out of prison, go home, go to college, then I can be successful. I picked a school called Harvard University and nobody believed it was possible. Everybody thought I was crazy for wanting to go to Harvard. So you can’t go to Harvard, you’re black, you’re a gang member, you’re illiterate, you’re violent, you’re in solitary confinement, you try to kill people, and tell me all the reasons I couldn’t go, and I was poor. But I didn’t believe them. I said, I can go. So I reverse engineered my little plan, got my GP, taught myself the law, I went to management, I went to self help groups, I stopped getting in trouble when I spent everyday all day working on bettering my life. I got out of prison in 14 years instead of 28 years and I started doing counseling and therapy in the black community, then in a white community, then in Asian community, then in Latino community. I started working at colleges, and I just kept working and helping people. My goal was to help people and that was 91 I made the change. In 2016, I got a fellowship to Harvard Law School. Now along the way, I’m working at London Business School. Along the way, and working with the White House and George W. Bush. Along the way, I’m working with Congressman Dan Arena. Along the way, I work at YPO, what’s the number one seal network in the world and along the way, I’m speaking to the number one ask no network in the world. Along the way, I’m working in Africa, Honduras, Guatemala along the way, but I never quit my dream. The other things came in my path. But I never gave up on my dream. My dream in 91 when I was sitting in that cell was awful. So in 2016, I got the email, Hey, norman@hls.edu and it was like 25 years, but I got it and I never quit. I never turned around. I never gave up and I see my friends now who were with me back in 91 in that said, prison, they told me it wasn’t possible. I don’t tell him I told you. So I said, Hey, what do you want to be? What do you want to do? Because it can get done, I’m just been hungry. So I wake up now, because once I hit that goal, it’s like now what? That’s the thing you always have to worry about. When you set this giant goal, and you hit it, be ready for now, because I can’t go to Harvard twice. So I had to come up with something else. So my next thing was part of the work that I had been doing, which was helping people and communities with substance abuse, addiction, and I worked in prisons, so I said, I want to fix the prison system. They said the $50 billion dollar problem, there’s about 20 million people affected directly not including family members and community. So I’m gonna go fix the prison system, was my next thing. So I started out trying to fix the prison system and I went from being a gang leader in prison to now I run prisons around the country. So I was the first gang leader, who has been given control of a housing unit, where I run a housing unit in South Carolina now with the top gang leaders from the state tasked with making it safer and better and so I’ve been doing that for two years now and when I first got in, it was seven people had been murdered on one day, that’s when they brought me in and over the last two years, we went from 7 people murdered 30 wounded, but we’ve had one fistfight and at the same time span of two years, and about a week ago, one of the guys from our program was doing his stuff and somebody attacked a guard on another unit, it was trying to kill him and my guy intervened and said lieutenants fight. So we took somebody who was doing a life sentence, he was extremely violent and didn’t like people to the point where he saw something happening. He didn’t say that’s a guard, that’s my enemy. It’s not my business. He said, That’s wrong. It shouldn’t be happening like that and he put his own life on the line being stabbed five to six times to save that man’s life and so we’re trying to take this program and grow it nationwide. So we can actually fix the prison system, which is totally hindering our country from being one of the greatest. It’s great now, but we can be a lot better when we start fixing what we have the least.
Norman 8:56
So you’re a low achiever.
Andre 9:00
I’m a quitter, man. I call myself a quitter. When my dad moved out of the house or left us when I was a kid, the message that I got was it’s okay to quit. He quit on us slash meaning so I can quit on anything. Anything that was hard, tough, whatever I quit and the real reason Andre was in prison wasn’t because I was a criminal, wasn’t because I was out of control, wasn’t because wasn’t because because I learned how to quit and I quit on everything positive in my life. I quit the band, I quit on leadership. I quit on sports. I put on exchange. I put on everything. When I quit everything positive, it only left me negative, which put me in prison and when I was in prison, I embraced the negative which only put me deeper in prison. When I learned how not to quit, then I started doing things and completing them. I completed my GED. I completed the law class. I completed anger management. I completed and that completion took me from the basement of prison to the White House, from the basement of prison to Harvard Law School and the London Business School and the Genius Network and it brought me here. I’m here because I don’t quit. Not because I’m talented. I’m not because I’m something different. I’m here because I don’t quit and that’s the lesson I teach people first and foremost, you can’t quit.
Norman 10:21
When I’m listening to what you’re doing, like if you were to tell me that 20 years ago, I would have been one of those guys saying there’s no way that you could do what you did, like you were in jail for what 100 years, they had a 100 year sentence, correct?
Andre 10:35
Yes. I wasn’t supposed to serve 100. But all my sentences added up to 100.
Norman 10:43
Okay, and a lot of that time was in solitary, correct?
Andre 10:47
Two and a half years in solitary, yes.
Norman 10:49
What did that do to your head?
Andre 10:51
Solitary confinement does one of two things, it either breaks or makes you stronger. So for me, when I was in solitary, I was doubling down, doubling down and doubling down on the psychotic stuff, that when I changed my mind, it was when I first got on it, it was a trained punishment to be locked in a cell all day by myself and this was punishable. Then when I had a dream and a goal and a purpose, being in a cell all day by myself, gave me space to study and grow and do the right thing. So this perspective is not the space. So you can be in the greatest situation but if you see it as a negative, it’s a negative. So that prison cell didn’t change, that prison didn’t change, I changed. When I changed me, I took what they deemed a punishment, and made it a plus. I got all day to study, nobody can interrupt me, nobody can bother me. I can read books all day all night and not bother anybody versus being punished all day, all night not having access to the body. So I learned to see what they saw as a negative as a positive and make it work for me.
Norman 11:55
So I’m curious, when you were able to do your studying, did the prison give you any benefit because you’re trying to do your GED and then what I mean by that is that they give you plenty of access to books to get it done?
Andre 12:10
Prison gives you three meals a day and it gives you a place to sleep. That’s the general concept of prison and eight and if you’re smart, you get enough. So they’re gonna give you a place to sleep, they give you food. The rest is on you. Your survival, your safety, your education, your lack thereof, is all about what you decide to make. So the prison generally doesn’t go out of it’s way to provide you with poverty level education. A lot of times you get basic level stuff, if that, then you take the classroom for GED. 50 seats in the classroom, but there’s 2000 people in the prison. So you can’t put everybody in and GED might take you six months, eight months to complete. So those 50 guys will hold the classroom space for eight months to a year. What about the other 1900 guys? Even when they want to do an estimate to mean realistically, they’re hindered by spacing itself, so they don’t send you to prison to get degrees, they send you to prison to be punished. So a lot of the material that comes in from the state end, is not really designed to have you be earning a PhD, at best of each profession and know how to drive a forklift, or say how to read, write and count. But it’s not really designed for higher learning. There are some programs going to some facilities, but those are generally third party agencies that run those facilities. So in Massachusetts, Boston University has a program that it funds and other colleges fund programs. So it’s not always like the facility. Like right now I work with a company called Security Technologies. They have iPads in the prisons, they call them tablets and we can put educational programs on the iPads and get them inside now. So technology is huge in the sense of how to be able to reach out and help people. So I’m super excited about, I get content from people that say you have training, I can take the training, put it on a security pay tablet, and hit a button, and half a million prisoners can actually access the information. So we have a lot of people from Genius Network and NGO who donate their books, donate their training. Now the prisoners are getting topflight stuff. I got Ben Hardy, Dr. Ben Hardy, who’s one of the top writers in the world donating stuff. I have Jason Kim who’s one of the meditation guys in the world, donating stuff. I have people like Dan Sullivan, donating stuff. We have people who are donating stuff that people pay hundreds of 1000s of dollars for and it has the best value, it’s now going to help the least of these be better because I’m not the only one but great information will produce great people. I don’t care what you say.
Norman 14:58
You know the Canadian in government, I love this about two years ago, I think that was the date Hayden came out and said solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment, and the longest person can stay there is 30 days, which I still think is too long. Anyways, then the government, this is over the last few years, have actually tried to do different types of reform. Actually, I think this is also modeled after I think it might have been Finnish or Norway system where people were actually given housing facilities. You moved into a house, you moved in with a couple of guys, and you did your thing, and you were given access to education, which looks like it’s working out. I cringe at, like what you were saying, you go into, for most part, most US prisons, and they don’t give you reform, they just give you your sentence.
Andre 15:52
Now, the thing with that model in Canada, and Finland, in Sweden, they work in Finland, in Germany, and Canada. When you go to Sweden, I’ve been to Sweden and I’ve worked with some of the systems. 97% of the people in Sweden are Swedish. They’re white Swedish people, they have immigrants who come in, people live there, but 90% of their system is them. So the Swedish people are locking up Swedish people, there’s no differential. There’s white, white, you go to Finland is white, white, you go to Germany is German people, you come to America, now you’re going to get a white black issue, where our prison systems are set up for making a person better or helping to remodel themselves. It was set up as a punishment system, and a way of mass controlling a group of people. So the Finland system is drastically different and its mindset and its objective, the objective of a Finland system is how do we better our citizens? The objective of the American prison system is how do we punish our citizens? Which is a drastically different modality and if Canada wants to know or Finland wants to know, I mean, how does America work or how do we build a better system? Is putting guys in the house a good thing? Is putting the guys in solitary a good thing? At some point, you need to talk to somebody who’s lived it and we can tell you the best things and understand how we perceive it because we have 20 guys at a table and ladies who are the top smartest people on the planet, designing something but they’ve never been it. No shepherd. So what are the effects of sitting in a cell? If you don’t know, then how are you designing something with somebody who is? What are the effects of putting three guys in a house? How does that work? If they have low education, if they have anger issues, if they have trauma, if they have hard passes or drug addiction, how do you do that? How do you address the underlying issues versus the symptoms? Education will fix a lot of stuff, but it’s not going to fix everything. So how do you actually get to the root cause? Having somebody in the room who understands the root cause because they lived it, which is what my talk is about, we come in and say let us eat a piece that you’re missing. We don’t want to take over your system. We just want to give you a piece that you’re missing.
Norman 18:15
I’m curious. I used to live in Hawaii for five years and one of the things I heard about was a technique that they used in a couple of violent prisons called HO O Pono Pono. Do you know it?
Andre 18:28
No, I’m not from Hawaii.
Norman 18:30
You know what Andre, you should check this out. It’s a system of making things right. So it’s people taking responsibility for what they’ve done within a group of people. From what I’ve read that this system really brought down the violence in two major prisons that were violent, violent prisons, let’s put it that way.
Andre 18:52
Let me say this Norm. In Hawaii, you have Hawaiian. I mean, technically, they’re Americans and you have Hawaiian people in Hawaii. There’s not a lot of blacks and whites, there’s a lot of Hawaiians in the prison system and so when you have one system, dominated by one culture, it’s easier to get to change because there’s no animosity and drama. When you look at the American prison system, Mainland, Arizona, Michigan, Florida, Texas, you have all these different ethnicities in one room, or in one building, and then you try to change it. Like when you go to Alaska, you’re gonna have Alaskans, who live up there. So it’s like a small, tiny community where there’s not a lot of racial strife. The Hawaiians can have the same cultural background, they have the same wants, the family, the need to call. So it’s easier than coming to New York City. We have a system, this back ended with no history, no solidarity, a lot of dysfunction feeding into your system, and they don’t have the same cultural norms in New York as much as they were in Hawaii. I’m sure part of the success was predicated on the majority of people being Hawaiian.
Norman 20:08
When you go in and talk to different prison systems about your system, what makes yours so different?
Andre 20:16
My system, or the problem that we design is we go in, there’s no two prison systems alike. So the state of California and the state of Michigan are two drastically different places. Coming up in Detroit and coming up in LA, there’s no similarity and we have to start with all we targeted. So the majority of prisoners will be black or brown, for starters. So let’s talk about the black population, since that’s a mass majority of people in prison. Why are they there? What do they want? What do they need? What makes sense? What makes sense is a GED program, when they have GED and public school there variation. So the number one super power, or the number one thing we do is we do the background on the people in that particular state, because it affects who they are, and how you talk to them. Everybody’s not the same. If you go back to slavery, and being a slave in Virginia is drastically different than being a slave in Mississippi, because the slave owners treat the slaves differently. So in Louisiana, you’re gonna work 365 days a year to the weather, Misty. In Virginia, it’s no happier, you’re not working 65 days. In Tennessee, they grow certain crops, some are hotter than others and Maryland is a different type of crop and then you have different personality types. So you have the world of doing Virginia who might have walked around in suits and coats and want a little bit more pleasant to this place. Versus in some states like Florida, they were just horrendous. For Alabama, there’s no mercy. Then when slavery finally ends, the treatment you got in Louisiana is different in treatment you got in Virginia, treatment you got in South Carolina is all drastically different. So the trauma received by the slaves is different in each jurisdiction. When slavery ends, and the migration starts, Louisiana goes to California, Mississippi goes to Detroit, Maryland goes in New York, I’m saying here goes to Pennsylvania. So you need to know where the slaves came from and the treatment that they suffered, and the trauma that they went through to know what to treat. So when I go to Mississippi, and I follow them up to Detroit, I’m understanding the slave generational trauma that they’ve come from, from speaking to that. So if you’re a descendant of slaves in Michigan, excuse me, Maryland is different from being descendants of slaves in Florida, because the trauma was drastically different and so I speak to the trauma of the people. I’m not going along with the slavery thing. I’m just saying, everybody suffered trauma and we need to speak to that trauma and it’s not one size fits all. So you have to understand the migration patterns, you have to understand the treatment of slaves in certain jurisdictions and like in some places they’d be good, in some places they stole, some places they raped men and women, some places they did different things to get control and what was that trauma and how has it played out generationally down the line, because I come in, I’m doing trauma informed care on people who are evidently traumatized. It doesn’t excuse criminal acts. But if I’m going to fix this person, I need to understand the trauma that they run. So if you’re getting high, you put me in a group or any group, I got 20 people who do dose, they all do it for different reasons.
Andre 23:37
Though is not the problem, though is the reference, which was 82. So when I come into this room with 20 drug addicts, I need to find out their wives. My dad didn’t talk to me. My dad molested me. My name is beat me up. I was made fun of. We were poor. They’re wide matters and how they perceive to live their wide matters. I can’t just say Hey, here’s one cure for everybody. Because I might save two people move at. So when I go into prisons, my number one thing is the research on the people where they come from, and then the mentality and the trauma, then you have to listen. You actually have to listen. I can’t run a million dollar mousetrap and just drop it in South Carolina, drop it in Florida. I need to go listen to the people. So I’m really just talking to the Florida Department of Corrections and I’m talking to the Richmond, Virginia Department of Corrections. In Florida, they have an influx of people from the Caribbean, people from South America, people from Cuba, so you have like 10 cultures in the Florida prison system. White, Black, Latino, and you go Latino, you go Argentina, you go Cuba, you go Dominican, you go all these different nationalities and cultures in one prison system. You go to Michigan, there’s White and Black. So it’s a drastically different approach and understanding on how you’re going to engage the people in Michigan versus the people in Florida. If you go to Texas, it is heavy Mexican. With Mexicans and different things. So it’s not a Hey, the Latino doesn’t matter, no. Understand Mexican culture, understand Mexican trauma, understand Mexican history if you’re going to work with Mexicans, and how does that translate into their lives? So people show up with great, I got this program here. No, if you don’t understand the people, their process, their patterns, their migration and their trauma, you’re wasting your time. So we listen and we research the facts and then we try to use those to help people turn around.
Norman 25:36
How do you get and I’ve been in tons of boardroom situations. So how do you get the DOC to sit at a table with you to listen to you and then implement?
Andre 25:46
The way I get the DLC to listen to me is one, the first one will call me, South Carolina, they had seven dead bodies on a floor. There were seven dead bodies on the floor. There were 30 people in the hospital with wounds and they needed to do something, they had to lock down their entire system. So it was an extreme scenario and they needed an extreme response. I was an extreme response. So they listened to me because they were in need. They had a pain point, they needed to relieve that pain and Andre was the remedy for their pain. So that’s how I got into South Carolina. They had a pain. Who can relieve this pain and they were willing to go outside of the box to fix their pain. So they can get me on the outside of the box. So that’s how we got into South Carolina. But now we’re in South Carolina, we’ve gone two years with one fistfight, and a whole life saved and a bunch of other wonderful stats that other people are saying, Oh, that works. Oh, that works. We’ll take it. So how do we get him over here? Let’s take LeBron James. When he came out of high school, he went to Cleveland, nobody knew he was gonna make it. So Cleveland took a chance on him. Because they were the worst team in the league, they took a chance on LeBron and lo and behold, LeBron called he’s a winner. Well, he said he wasn’t a winner and that he was a great player. So Miami says we won, Miami would have never signed him if he was horrible. So it’s like any other draft pick. You draft because you’re in a horrible situation, you pick what you think and save your agency, then if you’re really, really good, other people try to hire them away. But in this instance, I don’t have to leave South Carolina fully to go to Florida, or to go to Virginia, we can just replicate the program. But South Carolina, Brian Sterling and directly took a chance. He went outside of the box. He said, Listen, we gotta fix this and I want to go outside of the box and try something because what we’re doing is not working and let’s give this man a try. Let’s hear him out and bring them in and lo and behold, two to four, they work. So now other agencies are saying now that it’s worked. We want a variation of what you’ve done in South Carolina. I definitely applaud the director of South Carolina for taking the chance and stepping out on a limb because he put his career attached to me, a former felon, and he’s like, Okay, I hope this guy does what he says he does and we’ve been in for two years, and it’s been going as best as possible. So that’s how you get people to sit down. First some asking prices, then you have to have good numbers. People respect good numbers. If you produce, people will come to you. If you don’t produce, they’re like no.
Norman 28:31
So you’re talking about all these different cultures, gang culture in prison. How do you change that, like you were talking about Okay, there might be 10 or 20, over in this region, 5 or 10 over this. How do you get the gangs to change?
Andre 28:48
We don’t need the gangs to change in the sense that gangs are going to be gangs. Whatever that means, it means. So I grew up as an eight year old in a neighborhood and I played with 10 guys, we used to run up down the street and play hide and seek, play dogs and duck and all the rest of that stuff and as we grew older, we started shoplifting then we started selling drugs. At what point did we become again, we’ve been friends since we were eight. So we’re always going to be friends. So even though I don’t commit crimes anymore, my friends are still criminals. So I know why no, you can’t unknow people. So when you go into a state, it’s not the fact that they’re friends that you want to attack, which is what most people do. How do we get people to isolate versus how do we get them to change their attitude? How do we get them to change what they want for an outcome? So right now, I go into a prison. It’s like, what do we want them for now? I go to companies. I go to companies that don’t have bank debt improvements, construction, British Petroleum, multi billion dollar companies with 1000s and 1000s of employees. How do you get a cultural change in a company? You go in, you identify the pain point and respect the people, you listen to them. You have your overarching objective and you find out the best way to think and I’ve done it in companies for the last 20 years. So going into a prison, don’t look at them as gangs, look at them as departments, look at them as saying different businesses. So I got two banks or insurance companies, I got two different transportation companies, how do I get them to coexist without killing each other. So it’s business at the end of the day and they’re people. Don’t forget that they are people. They have mothers, they have fathers, a lot of them have kids, they have hearts, they have feelings, they have wants and needs. Now they’ve been traumatized for whatever reason, whatever way, whether it’s self inflicted or not, but they are people and the average person wants a basic life, or basic needs. They have basic needs, they want to be loved. They want to be cared for. They want to be respected. For when you come in, it’s not that you do this, because I say so. You need to make it their idea and how do you make it their idea? I have the overarching objective. Now I need to make it their idea and then you have to be considerant and understand the different moving parts. So the way I do it is I listen, collaborate, and I build bridges and unite people. You don’t have to like everybody, but you can work with everybody. I’m sure you work with people you don’t know. Nobody talks, their death is bigger than life. We go into these prisons, the objective is to begin liking the other person.
Norman 31:23
I wasn’t thinking that you were bringing this down to all these different corporate, like on a corporate level. I love building performance based cultures and you mentioned it a little earlier where I learned to do this was EO, and you I know that you’ve talked to EO and YPO and you know, groups of organizations like that. Yeah, that’s interesting. So you create a culture of performance based culture within the prison. Is that correct?
Andre 31:47
That is 100% correct. The strategies I teach EO members, YPO members, in business school clients in the prisons, because it works for the biggest and brightest companies in the world. How do you grow those apples? How do you grow Amazon? How do you grow sabates? How do you grow any of these companies? There’s methodologies, there’s systems, there’s training. So Gina Whitman has traction. That’s the book on how do you get culture running correctly. So we take those models, and we bring them into prisons and guess what, they’ll work for multi beta lanes and why won’t they work with 20 gang members who are technically a business? It’s a small business, compared to a standard, something bigger, like dental insurance about billion dollar businesses. It’s a small business, you have a CEO, you have a vice president, you have a chief of staff, you have all these up, it’s a business, and they’re businessmen in their minds. So talk to them like a businessman and show them they know something, you need a different product. Okay, you have a business, but you just have the wrong product and there’s other products that you can invest in that will give you a better return for your money, and a better return on your life. So we take performance based models from companies in the prison. This is why I say if your business or business trainer loves to have you modalities because we get horrible training from the state because it’s not as proud of everything, educate prisoners. Then we in turn, take what we learn in prison, we bring it to corporate, I do training on corporate retention, based on gang loyalty. So growing up in a gang, I joined, I sat in the corner, I carried my gun, I would never run away, never hide, def can come around the corner, we’re gonna stay in there and I faced 100 years and got it. Stayed in jail, fought every day for my gang, for my color. I would never quit or join the other team. In corporate, $40,000 and I’ve got a pocket spot this guy’s walking out of here, and he’s joining your competitor. So we teach corporations retention strategies based on gang loyalty. We teach corporations how to read people and assess people based on what we do in prison, day to day, minute to minute how to read people. Average corporate God is not reading the Bible. I mean, his true intent, his heart, his passion, how far you push, what’s his breaking point, we need to know all that stuff in prison to stay alive. We teach retention, we teach reading people, we teach projective training, projective training. All of that based on prison stuff we bring out and the corporate stuff we bring in. So it goes both ways. I’m just the messenger. I’m the bridge.
Norman 34:24
I’m interested in that message because I have seen it and you usually see this with really good companies or franchises where it’s consistency, they can nail that message. For companies that or for people let’s say that have a small business or a medium sized business or working for themselves and they’ve got a bunch of outsourcers. They might outsource to the Philippines or something. What are some of the number one things that you can do to help build loyalty within the company or a company?
Andre 34:54
Well, when you want to build loyalty into the company, it starts with the CEO or the founder. That’s the key thing. I had a conversation the other night with a guy and he works in the music industry. He says he went to his friend, and he told his friend who’s an NFL man, you need to buy all this property in this area because this area is about to go boom. They’re about to build this thing in two years and years after this will be a multi million dollar neighborhood and he told his friend who’s a millionaire, the guy didn’t knew. Lo and behold, exactly what he said happened. They built the thing, the neighborhood is now a multi million dollar neighborhood. So they could have bought it for pennies on the dollar. Now, it’s 100 times over $1. It’s 10 times 10 X with a tricycle and he says, My guy didn’t listen. I said, you need to understand two things. One, you had the message. Two, you weren’t the messenger. People take the wrong role all the time. I said you had the right information. You just weren’t the messenger. You felt as though you were the messenger for whatever reason, and evidently you weren’t. So accepting the things that you are not just because you’re the CEO, the founder, doesn’t mean you’re the messenger. Does it mean you’re this guy or that guy or this lady. Accept and know your strengths and weaknesses. That is the first thing in building the culture because if I’m the boss, and I’m trying to be the messenger, and I keep missing messing up deals, that could have been a $100 million deal. Had he employed the right person to go talk. But he said I’m gonna do it. No, you’re not the messenger. If I can show you my board right now, I have Chief of Staff, Assistant Chief of Staff, personal admin, writer, multimedia, all these different people different things. I got a business deal, none of it. If I do it, I mess it up. So as the head, what are my limitations? What am I not good at?
Andre 36:49
Because when I try to do too much, I mess stuff up and as owners, we feel as though that we have to do it all, use your superpower to do what you do, and subcontract the rest. So get out of the way. Most times we’re in our own way. So people don’t want to work with me, because I keep trying to do stuff, I can’t do it, I messing my deals. In theory, step one, as the owner, founder, person in charge, have you done an assessment on your skill set? Have you done an assessment and know specifically your predicted strength and more importantly, your predicted weaknesses? Where do you fall short? Where do you need help? Then you have to go from and stop making up stuff. I had a CEO I was working with a couple weeks ago. He does lending. He has a $50 million lending company and he said, Andre, I want to do less. I’m going to hire another means where I can do less. So I started talking about the CEO all aligns the COO position, I said, Are you ready to give control up to the COO that you’re about to hire? He said, I’m not giving up control and he explained to me, why not? I said, Well, if you’re gonna hire the replacement for you, you’re talking about a COO, and he has to have authority to make decisions. Oh, he’s not really a COO. He said no. He needs to do this, this, this and this. I said you want an analyst. You don’t want a CEO, but you’re wording it wrong. You’re saying I want to replace myself. You don’t want to replace yourself, you want an addition to yourself who can do things that you don’t have time for. He said, You’re right. Then he said, Well, when they come on, they’re gonna spend six months with me so I can teach them my culture. I said, No. I said this, I got him to keep telling him. I said, you hire somebody who’s great and we’re gonna teach them anything. You have somebody who’s not great, and you need to spend six months. If you need to spend six months with them, you got the wrong hire. Hire somebody who’s above and beyond, ready for the position, knows what they’re doing and get out their way. Maybe three or four days in transitional and get out their way. But he had it set in his mind to hire a COO, and have them spend six months along his side and then never work, because he wasn’t gonna turn over control. He was hiring for the wrong position and he had the wrong idea. So we walked through that, and he thought, Oh I had it all wrong. Verbiage matter. Words matter. Titles matter. Understanding what you don’t do well matters and I called them on this stuff. I said, Man, that’s Bs, which is a shame. You don’t want to give up control. That’s Bs, you don’t want to do it and that’s Bs, hold that person hostage for six months. So I have to walk through as the boss, it starts with the boss and so whoever’s in charge has to know their strengths, has to know their weaknesses. They have to be clear on what it is you’re trying to get done because it communicates to the rest of the staff. I need a COO, they’re looking for a COO. No, they don’t need a COO. They need a data analyst. Totally different people. So step one to getting the culture or getting the retention, anything starts with the head. Because that’s what I do in prison. I do leadership development. I don’t do power training. I only train leaders. If you’re a follower and want to learn to be a leader, I can help but I do leadership development and a lot of it is just being honest, brutally clear and direct about what is.
Norman 40:05
Alright Andre, I wanted to just go back to when you were in prison again. You’re getting your GED what happens after that, like there’s a huge step between getting a GED and then being able to go to Harvard, and then being able to do all these achievements, like you’ve talked about the different parallels between corporate life and the gang life from GED to Harvard, how did you achieve it?
Amdre 40:28
Well, like any other kid in high school, or high school to Harvard or to go from undergrad at another school to Harvard, you have to just keep working, you have to put yourself in a position where they want you. Obviously schools in place, they don’t take everybody, they don’t need to take anybody. They have the biggest endowment on the planet. So you just have to make yourself that valuable, that they can’t say no to you and so I had to think through what does Harvard need? Not what does Andre want, what do they want? I need to be valuable to them, versus what can I do to make my life better, I need to make their institution better. So I got my GED and the thing I would say to people, you have your big objective, but have your day to day goals. Have small goals that you need to achieve every day. I wake up every day, I have three things I need to get done today. Three things I need to get done today. So I’m getting 15 things done a week. I’m getting 30 things done every Tuesday, I’m getting 60 things done a month. It sounds simple till the end of the year comes while the depressed state is that nothing is done. I have all these things, small wins, we call. My old coach called Kendo is called small wins, get small wins, and just keep pushing forward and so at first, I had to learn a lot. I had to do a lot of things on the front end. Get out of prison, because I can’t go to Harvard if I’m in prison. To get out of prison is step one. I got out of prison. Now I had to get my life stabilized step two. Then I had to put myself in position step three, and I just kept every day I just had to go back to school. I started a local community college. They have a thing at the community college where you can do matriculation deals with other colleges. So I went into the matriculation office, I said, Hey, I heard you can take classes on other campuses. They said yeah. So I was literally taking classes on three campuses at the same time. I was enrolled at one school, but full matriculation, I’m taking classes, I was building in the direction they’re up. Then I finally got to a place where I’m in Boston College and because people saw me working, people saw me giving my all, people saw me going hard in the pain, as we would say, to achieve my goal. People have no choice in wherever you see other people, there’s always somebody watching. There’s always not because they’re voyeurs, but because you’re in their proximity. I see my neighbors when they go out in the mall. So we have to ever pass on and put them all out notice it. So know what I’ll do, I put his trash out next week. I mean, I’m not thinking of somebody who’s trying to shop, but he’s been my neighbor for a while. If I see him come out with a cast on his foot. I’m like, Wow, I’m gonna say he can’t put his trash out. He’s being nice and clear to me. So next week, on Monday, I’m gonna put his trash out for him just because I saw his circumstance and I know he needs help if he asks for it or not. That’s how life works. If you’re a decent person, and you’re giving your all and you’re being respectful and you’re pressing, people are watching just because they have no choice and when they see you have a need, if they can fill that need, they will. So in my life, I’ve been working really hard, trying to be respectful, trying to be diligent, trying to be straightforward and when people see me, Oh let me help this out. I can help him in this space and they’ll do that and people will without asking, help you in that space, no different than I would put my neighbor’s trash out without him asking. Now he can come to me like, Hey, Andre, I’m going out of town, we need to hire somebody. I’m not that guy. But if I see he has a scenario that inhibits them, and I can make a difference, I will and it’s the same thing in your business. It’s the same thing in your life. People need to see now My name is Ao, Drew and he’s talking on my lawn and Bob music. I don’t care if he’s in a wheelchair, I’m not helping. But if he’s respectful, decent, hardworking and diligent, I’d have no problem without even question stepping up. Doesn’t matter. I’m a motivational speaker. I fly around the world. I would help my neighbor because he needs to help and he’s been fair and decent to me and that’s how the world works. When you’re fairly decent in the world, and somebody comes across you and they have an opportunity or a chance to benefit or give assistance, they will. But it’s predicated on what you put out. My name is not being nice to me in hopes that I put his trash out three months from now. He’s just being himself and I hope never breaks his leg. I never have to put his trash out.
Andre 45:04
Or people go forward in the world, you get back what you put out. Now when it comes back, how it comes back, you never know. But you just keep putting out the right energy with the right vibe for the right reason and trust and believe. Good people will see you and help and I can say I have at least 150 to 2000 people in my life who filled that void. Joe Powers saw me and helped me. Dan Sullivan and Bad Smith saw me and reached out. Dr. Ben Harden. James from St. James Clatter, Jason Glad. I’m saying Michael Bernal. I’m saying, Brian Hahn is John Riley. I can go down the list rich. I went on the list for three hours. Mike Maddux in Chicago. I’m going down the list of people who just said, that guy’s working. Let me see if I can help him a little bit. People like winners and if you can help somebody win, and it’s not really gonna throw your whole life on the wire and yeah, you do it and I’ve had people, my guy, Keith Alpha, who put his whole life on hold almost to help me because he saw me trying. I’m saying there’s hundreds of people, 1000s of people in my life. I got my sister in St. Louis. So he spends blood. I mean, I mean, that’s spam. I mean, people are looking for connections. The world is about connections and people want to connect with people for doing, trying to be better. The world is about connecting. From the time we’re born, we’re trying to connect. So many people connect with negativity. That is reason one advocate. Those of us out here there’s a lot of us who are looking to connect with positive people. So the podcast I was on before this, the guy saw her post and he reached out to me unless you know we’re on a phone call. Now I’m on his podcast. I’m on his thing and what is he looking gray on this call because you talk to Rich and Rich says Hey, I know a guy. Oh, Andre, and positivity just perpetuates itself forward.
Hayden 47:13
That’s it for part one of our interview with Andre Norman. Make sure to tune in next time to hear the rest of the interview. If you’re a fan of the show, please like our Facebook group. It’d be great to meet some of y’all on the interwebs out there. It’s always great to get feedback on the show. Anyway, that’s enough for me, and I’ll see you later in the week.
Hayden 0:02
Hey there guys and gals. Welcome to part two of our interview with Andre Norman. If you haven’t heard part one yet, make sure to go back and check that out. As always mentioned, like and subscribe to the podcast. If you’re a fan of the show, make sure to join our Facebook group. We’re trying to get that up and off the ground so we can create more conversation around each episode. All you have to do is tap the link in the description. Anyway, that’s enough for me and now for the rest of the interview.
Norman 0:34
So there’s a ton of negative people and I see that they hang around together, that there’s a lot of positive people. But what I’ve also experienced a ton, is that there’s a lot of people that just use you. They become your friend because you can offer something they just are usings and oh by the way, how do you know Jason?
Andre 0:58
I met Jason at Genius Network. Great guy. He’s one of the smartest guys I’ve met on the planet. Roland .
Norman 1:06
You know Roland too?
Andre 1:10
Roland’s. Hands down. Oh my god. Jason, hands down. Oh my God, Kenyans. I mean, some people are like, with coaching, phenomenal, phenomenal. People who are great in your space and Dan is one of the smartest guys I know. But you can take Jason and Roland, they think in like a whole nother stratosphere. Their thinking is nothing against anybody else. It’s just like, there’s Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. There’s LeBron James. They think in a different space. They’re all up in the Hall of Fame. Jason is a great guy, he’s like a brother to me. I go to his house, I hang out. I mean, please call me uncle. Jason is a great guy. Him and his wife, Molly. I mean, their family. To me. Jason is my brother. If you look at my phone, it will say Jason brother.
Norman 2:00
I got into selling on Amazon, which I make my living now coaching for the most part and managing Amazon brands. But it was because of Jason that I got involved with it. Yeah.
Andre 2:11
Yeah. I mean, like I said, I could go down the list of people who I have met, Jason saw me. We’ve never done business together. First of all, me and Jason have never done business. Me and Dan have never done business. Man. None of these folks I’ve done business with, these are just friends. I don’t want you to think. We’re just friends and you speak to people trying to use you and if they’re not willing to be your friend first, then they’re not willing to talk about it.
Norman 2:42
Okay, so you were talking about a positive attitude and I just wanted to come back and talk to you about this. Because I see this happen a lot. I go to a bunch of events every year, I meet a lot of people, I get to meet really great people and just kind of hang out and get to know them, become friends and that’s it, become friends before business. But I’ve also been suckered a bunch of times. I also feel, and I hate saying this, if you’re talking to me, like outside of this podcast, I wouldn’t say this. But I’ve known a lot of people that have taken advantage of just being like you were saying earlier somebody’s got a broken leg, you help them out. I’ve done that in the past to many people and a bunch of those people have just come back and just basically used me either for money, kindness or whatever. Does that not get you gun shy when you start meeting all these people and you’re giving all and there’s these idiots that come back and just sucker punch you.
Andre 3:46
Whoa. One, I’m a sucker punch. If you ever read my shame on you. But Joe Polish has a saying it’s actually one of his books, Life gives to the giver and I’ll quote Ben’s book Personalities isn’t Permanent in a sense of, I give because I want to. I got on this podcast because I wanted to. I’m going to help my neighbor because I want to. If he appreciates or not, or you appreciate this or not or the next person. What I do is not predicated on you, it’s predicated on me. I want to give. I want to serve. I want to help people, not because the lights are on. It’s what I want to do. Period. I do stuff for my kid without question. He doesn’t clean his room. I don’t take it as a sucker punch. He didn’t do his homework. It’s not a sucker punch. I want to buy my son a bike. I’m going to buy him a bike if he cleans his room or not. He’s gonna get a birthday present if he gets good grades or not. I’m saying because I want to do this by hand. So when I do stuff with people, it’s not predicated on them. If you’re doing it for reciprocal reasons, then you set yourself up because you have expectations. In a non-transactional deal, if you’re just trying to help somebody, you help them, I don’t expect my neighbor to cut my grass, because I took his trash out. That wasn’t the reason I did it. So if he wants to cut my grass, I’m going to tell him No. I got somebody. No, I want to pay you back. I don’t need you to pay me back. I didn’t pay you anything. I did what I wanted to do. So the first question is, why are you helping these people? Why are you investing in these people? Is it what you want to do and if you have to be honest with yourself in that space, then secondly, when they double back, you need to take my how to read people course. Because I don’t get scammed because I know how to read people. When they come back with the scam and the user stuff, I can see through that and I’ll sit him down and explain to him, here’s your motives, these are your objectives and this is where you’re off track and I help them understand that this stuff is transparent to me, as far as the user. If you are just honest, never been in a scenario where you have to read people to that extreme, then they’re going to get you. So we can give your folks the how to read people course . I do things because I want to do things and if you never come back to me, like I see the guy at the top of the rack, when I get off the highway, I give him $1. What expectations do I have for him? No. Now if he pulls up at my house and he wants $10, the answer is no and because I gave you $1 today, that gratitude every day doesn’t give you $1 every day. I feel like giving you $1 today. I’m going to give you $1. If I don’t feel like giving a dollar tomorrow, I’m not going to feel bad about it. I just don’t want to today and tomorrow I might want to the next day I might not want. So I’m honest with myself, first and foremost, then I’m clear that there’s a homeless guy who I give $1 to every day has the right to go up at my job and tell me about his electric bill. I’m not listening to that and I’m not going to be overwhelmed or guilted or shamed into doing something. You can give me information, but I’m not responsible for it. So don’t take the weight of the other people into your life. First off, that’s step one, their problems are technically their problems. You can assist them with their problems, but you should never take their problems onto your shoulders. Assisting, and then becoming part owner of the problems is two different things and oftentimes, they try to guilt you, you have to be part of this problem, then you feel obligated to fix the problem because you’re in it and then the next thing you know, you’ve invested who knows how much time energy and money in fixing a problem that was never yours. So knowing how to read people is huge in my life, and it’s helped me probably get away from all the stuff that you had to go through. Because that’s not what you do for free. So I’ve never really had people do that.
Andre 8:35
So people see me and if they don’t know, they find out in short order. I read people extremely well and I will tell them what I’m seeing and be honest with them, I say I think you’re trying to use me. Explain to me why I’m wrong.
Norman 9:03
So you would come straight out and just say that?
Andre 9:06
What are you gonna do? If I think you’re trying to do something foul, Listen, I know something you know. I think you’re trying to get me to share this information about this thing and I wouldn’t feel comfortable. Then you’d be like, Well, okay. You’re gonna say no problem and let it go. You’re gonna try to explain to me why I should have the conversation which tells me that you’re trying to get this information but if I see something I don’t agree with, I speak to it. I don’t keep styling. This is my life. This is my being. So if you come into my space, but we haven’t given the same space, and I don’t feel comfortable speaking up for me, then who’s going? I don’t have to call you bad things. Can you explain it to me back? Then after you explain it, like I still don’t feel comfortable. Can we take that out? If you respect me and it’s about me, then you say, Fine. If you say I’m putting in this great store, and then we can’t do business like that brother. I’m sorry, I appreciate you. But if you can’t be concerned about my feelings, how I see things is one sided then you need to do it by yourself.
Norman 10:21
One of the other things that I’ve noticed, just speaking to you for the first time, is that you are a great storyteller. Have you always been a great storyteller?
Andre 10:29
It’s a family tree. My mom is a great storyteller, not my dad. We grew up before Xboxes and PlayStations, we actually had to talk to each other in the house, and there were a lot of us, and there was a lot to talk about. So there’s that and then I was illiterate for a long time, I had to learn how to live in my head and communicate verbally. That probably helped. The last thing that made me a great storyteller, I did the de facto training that he knows it training. I did like this 30 day training and at the end of the 30 day training, it was like, boom, it was like it taught me to be a phenomenal storyteller. The average speaker can only tell their story. They’ve been trained how to tell one story, what is their rags to riches, the overcoming or their resiliency, or how they won the championship? They’ve been trained to tell one story. I’ve been trained to tell one story in 50 different ways. Because I’ve had 50 different audiences. One audience for me is black boys who do not pay attention. Another audience is black boys in a prep school. Another audience is white kids in suburban school. Now the audience is white kids in a trailer park. Now the audience is prison officials and other audiences are prisoners. So I’ve had to learn,
Norman 11:59
You were mentored and I’ve read this by a nun and Rabbi during an intervention, is that correct?
Andre 12:08
Yes, sir. My number one mentor, my first mentor is Nippon Schaefer, he’s an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, he was a prison chaplain. My next two mentors were Sister Roodman, Sister Kathleen from the Catholic Church from a local parish who came in and when I came home, excuse me, Pat Dempsey, was a Catholic volunteer at the prison, who was the best man at my wedding and when I came home, the first day, I met a guy named Tim Allen, who was a local Baptist minister who became my next mentor and I just kept going down the road. I’m gonna give you mentor after mentor after mentor.
Norman 12:48
Wow. So what were some of the lessons that you learned from these people?
Andre 12:53
You can’t control your fate, but you can control who you are. It’s like me helping my neighbor. I might help my neighbor for six months, lo and behold, my neighbor might be the head of a speaker’s bureau, might be the head of some company that could hurt me, I don’t do it for that. So I help the guy in my unit not be bullied, because I don’t like bullies and then we will speak to each other. He didn’t know I was like a second rank and died in a prison on a prison yard. So he thanked me for saving him from being bullied, white guy, and then he said, What’s your name? You trade names? And he’s like, Hey Dre. I’m like, Hi Bob. So I was teased by maybe twice a week for computer prison and he would say hi, I’ll say hi. No big deal. So I wasn’t too cool to say hi, what would being somebody who’s not had status? They one day I’m walking in the program building, I walked by the room where I saw Bob. So I stopped and went back in the room and let me go say hi to Bob. I go to say hi to Bob, and he’s sitting with the guy and the term introduces him to me. They’re studying. I said, Can I come study with you? They say yes, I go to our study with Bob and lo and behold, Nikons Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, don’t have them on a board. I didn’t really know where it was identified. But when I started studying with Tom, he taught me responsibility, accountability, forgiveness, and ethics, doing better than yourself. He’s taught me how to be human. I learned how to read. I learned the law. I learned substance abuse. I learned anger management. Nobody had ever taught me how to be human. Tom taught me that and that was the lessons I took from the time and he’s still in my life from that day to this one. We spoke like three weeks ago. I’ll never forget him because I wouldn’t be here in this capacity had he not done that and I’d never met him had I not intervened into somebody being bullied one, and then taking it the next step and just having basic interaction with that person. He’s a white guy. I’m a black guy. I’m over here. He’s over there, but I was like, I ain’t gonna say hi to him. But saying hi to somebody does hurt. So by me A, intervening then B, accepting basic human engagement, I got my number one mentor on the planet and I couldn’t say that’s how it was gonna happen. But that’s how it happened. So just do the right thing for the right reasons and you get blessed.
Norman 15:19
Now, I also noticed that you’re involved with substance abuse and counseling. So how important and I’m assuming that you were involved with substance abuse, is that correct?
Andre 15:31
No. I don’t drink. I don’t get high. I’ve never had addiction problems myself personally. My relatives, immediate family and cousins and aunts and uncles and other folks who’ve had substance abuse problems, as I’ve grown up around it, and living in the inner city, you just gonna see it by proxy, because the inner city is flooded with drugs. But you see alcoholism, there’s a liquor store on every corner, there’s drug addicts throughout the neighborhood, it’s just a constant. So you grew up in a city, you grew up with that in your backyard. So I’ve never been an addict. But I’ve worked with people, relatives, and not and it’s just, it’s a huge thing and then when I connect with Joe , I’ve been helping addicts from a standpoint of intervention from my understanding. When I got with Joe, he taught me like Tom taught me humanity. I mean, he taught me how to be human. Joe taught me how to be kind, in a sense of a new mindset of helping addiction. So you have people who try to torture bullies change, train people into being better, instead of listening to them, and helping them process their pain and process their no judgment and being open with them and being honest with them. Just because they’re addicts doesn’t mean you can treat them a certain way and so working with Joe Polish has helped me to understand on another level, how to be more humane in my treatment but it was just a new technique and it’s been extremely effective in helping people transition. Because I’m the guy that comes to pull your nephew off a deathbed off the side of a cliff. Now I have more tools and deeper understanding and that’s the main thing I’ve learned from Joe Polish, not marketing, not advertising, but how to actually connect to people better to help them turn their lives around.
Norman 17:25
So you’re still actively involved with substance substance abuse?
Andre 17:29
Right. So Genius Network is the number one mastermind in the world and Joe Polish is number one thing, aside from marketing is number one thing is helping people with addiction. So we have a program called Genius Recovery and I support and help the Genius Recovery movement. But we go out, and we teach and we share, we show how to actually help adults, with humanity with kindness, with concern that try to manipulate in people’s pain and Genius Recovery is about bringing quality information, real information to the folks in need, whether it’s a loved one, or the family thereof.
Norman 18:08
On the substance abuse side, I’ve seen that a ton as well, where the person is just beat into shame and probably the worst thing that I’ve seen that I hate seeing is that if you have an illness, you’re treated like a criminal and put into jail. I’ve been involved with substance abuse for quite some time, man, the crap that I’ve seen over the last I don’t know, I’ve probably seen hundreds, if not 1000s of people and been involved with it and what’s really interesting about that too, for women, how many women that you ask that are addicts that turn to prostitution and I say that so I find that that’s probably, if I see somebody that’s a substance abuse user that’s a prostitute, usually they’ve been molested at some point in their life. Have you noticed that?
Andre 19:03
The national average used to be one in four girls have been molested.
Norman 19:08
Is that right? One in four?
Andre 19:11
For high school. Prostitution now, because being molested doesn’t mean you become a prostitute. There’s no direct correlation between. So you will have some messed up or some differential posture on sexuality as far as how you should be. But let’s say she doesn’t run into prostitution. Now you take the group of people who have been molested and you put them in scenarios where they’re saying they don’t get the trauma taken care of. It still doesn’t mean you become a prostitute. Prostitution, Johnny comes down to when you turn into addiction and you become an addict and now whatever the reason, whether it was molestation or neglect, you tried it and got stuck. Once you become an addict, now you have to feed yourself and feed your habit and as for females, the number one way to do that is prostitution. So it’s not like, Okay, because I was blessed, and I’m a prostitute. There are addicts who are functional. There are addicts who have money to pay for their drugs, so they don’t need to become prostitutes. But if you’re an addict, and you’re a female, and you don’t have resources, prostitution is the most accessible way to make money. That’s what that is. So you can walk down that path, but it’s not a direct correlation between if you’re molested, you become a prostitute. But if you become an addict, and you’re don’t have money, prostitution becomes a viable way to get money to fund your drug habit.
Norman 20:41
What are your thoughts on addicts being thrown in jail?
Andre 20:45
Well, addicts being thrown in jail for being an addict doesn’t make sense. Now, if the addict breaks into a store, if the addict kills somebody, the addict runs somebody over, then you’re an addict, because now you have a criminal scenario attached to you. Your addiction doesn’t excuse your criminal acts. So my poverty, or racism, or 100 years of slavery doesn’t justify criminal acts. It explains that we can kind of understand. Okay, well, he can’t read his father is abusive, we can understand but it doesn’t negate a criminal act. So if you’re an addict, you shouldn’t just be like, Okay, we’re gonna give you a pass because you smoke crack, or you should know and so you can commit any crime you want. If that’s the case, anybody in jail is claimed to be an addict, you have to let them go. Because 70 to 80% of people in jail have some kind of drug related issue. So we have to treat the person, not punish the person. But in that, if you broke it into somebody’s store, there has to be some kind of something that has to happen in that space. So does it need to be 30 years in prison? No. Does it need to be 10 years in prison? Not necessarily. But it goes down to the act that you’ve been charged with committing, and the circumstances of why you committed it should be taken into account and then treatment, this goes to prison. Prisons in America are designed to punish and not designed for treatment. So there is very little treatment happening on behalf of an addict exclusively and if you are an addict and do get into treatment, you still have to live in a prison that’s most likely violent, so you are trying to survive while you’re going to treatments so you’ve been traumatized in a violent scenario, we try to get treatment of past trauma and it’s just tough. So I believe addicts should just be most addicts thought out Prostitution charges, shoplifting charges, majority, if not all of them are low level crimes. Really small felonies and this shouldn’t be something other than a maximum security prison for somebody who stole some chicken out of his throat, it was selected by crack. There should be another alternative than sending this woman to another thing with the female and they might be in the state of South Carolina is 21 prisons, two of them are for females, 19 for males. So if you’re a female, the way you’re going is still more restrictive than the male, there’s just more options on the male side, because it’s just more male prisoners. So there’s two state facilities for females, 19 for males. There might be one or two off here and there, but it’s the number that is skew male. So if you’re a female you get arrested is definitely one bill. Everybody from murderers to drug addicts to whatever golden is one building, which makes it harder to actually support that because you can’t have a whole facility dedicated to this addiction, because the facility doesn’t exist. So it has to be within this one building, which is the toughest time. If you go to a county jail, and there’s 15 units, 13 for men, 2 for women. So of the 13 men, you can designate two for addiction. You can’t do that on the female side, because it’s just not the space. So we run into logistical problems when providing treatment for females because it’s not adequate with spacing and buildings and facilities on top of most people don’t want to treat addicts as addicts they want to treat them as criminals because it makes it so much fun.
Norman 24:25
I was again back in the Hawaii days, there used to be a program where if you were sentenced, and this could be for misdemeanors as well as some drug charges, but you go through a 90 day program, and you’d have that option, either go to jail or go to this 90 day program and it worked really well. They actually had a great program out there. But then all of a sudden they decided to stop it and they stopped it completely, like not even a 30 day program which 30 day programs don’t work at all, zero, but with these 90 day programs, they cut it out. They rather bring in a private prison and put people in there and it was just a shame. I felt really bad and also you probably, I don’t know if this but meth in Hawaii has made the average person, the average teen just a zombie. It’s a shame, the epidemic that’s going on over there and nobody’s really talking about it. I’m sure that’s in many communities in the US as well. Anyways and the other thing that drives me crazy right now is seeing people come in with Xanax, anti anxiety medication that they get prescribed. I’ve dealt with a lot of heroin addicts here, let’s just keep on heroin. I love working with heroin addicts just being able to see them from the day they walk into the day that they leave, I can see improvement. With Xanax, they could be in a program for 90 days or 120 days, I’ve never seen one person really go through the program and not still be hooked. Anyways, there’s a lot going on, and I don’t understand it and I wish there was some change just like you with the prison reform. People have got to take a look at the substance abuse issues in the US, Canada as well and make these changes because it’s just not a fair system at all right now and too many people are dying from it.
Andre 26:27
Well, right now, prisons, and programs are based on finances. What do people want to do? Is it what people want to do? That’s the system we have in America. If you’re poor, you’re like 99% more likely to go to prison than somebody who has money. So we can commit the same exact crime, and the same exact city on different sides, and will get the same exact bail, hopefully, but you can afford it. I can’t. So you go home, I stay in jail. Why did you get to go home? Because your family has money. Why am I staying in jail? Because my family doesn’t have money. You get to hire a lawyer, I gotta get a public defender. So you’re like 100 times more likely to get a better outcome than a lawyer with 300 other cases, and I’m sitting in jail, you have a lawyer to just work for you, and you’re at home. So the scenario is drastically different. You go to court in your suit and a tie. I come to court, orange clothes and it chains. So it’s just the whole imagery and the whole system is predicated on right now. If you have money, you will do better in court, period. There’s not a lot today. So we can have that. Why is it that way? There’s a lot of reasons. There’s a lot of discussion, but prison, courts, criminal justice is based on if you have money. If you have money, you go home. I mean, that’s it. So I can’t pardon my son, as President Trump is about to do for his kids. I’m not even mad at him. He’s gonna put his kids pre emptive I don’t know if it’s legal or not. He’s gonna preemptively pardon his kids, before they walk out of DC. That’s a great dad . As a dad, I am not upset at that at all. He’s taking care of his kids. If you’re saying politically, it’s a 1000 opinions, I don’t have political opinions. As a dad, that’s great. I can’t do that. I can preemptively quote my son from what he might do or have done over the next five to 10 years, is just that that’s what money can do for you. You can preemptively pardon your kids and people who’ve gotten pardons in the last 90 days, want to get them over the next 60 to 30 days, are mainly going to be people who have relationships with that administration and it happens with every administration and those are people who’ve been able to hire lawyers, advocates and lobbyists to say, Hey, you need to come look at this guy and give them a pardon. So even the poor people who get pardons, somebody lobbied for them. So you have to have a lobbyist or lobby group. So if I’m this poor, and I have a lobbyist, and I don’t have none, I’m just gonna sit here and that’s poverty in prison. They go hand in hand.
Norman 29:27
There’s a lot of people that are affected by your reform using your system. So let’s take South Carolina where this system was initially started. Because they’re using the system and now they’re implementing it where you’re saying that there’s less violence. It’s a better overall system right now. Are you seeing that the sentences are being reduced because the trauma is being reduced?
Andre 29:55
No. What we’re doing is what people don’t understand is there’s multiple parts to the criminal justice system. The first end are other police, the police are the people who arrest you. So the police arrest you, that’s one agency, they stand alone. When they arrest you, they charge you with whatever they write up in a paper, then they turn you over to the court system, which is a completely different agency. Now the court system will trial and charge you whatever they’re going to do. They’ll take the charges from the police station, and the courthouse processes those charges, you go to trial, let’s say you’re found guilty. Now the courthouse turns you over to the prison system, which is again, a completely separate agency. The prison system is tasked and charged with holding. So you will be held in this prison for a determined amount of time and you’re there. After the prison fees, here comes the parole office, the parole office comes in and they give you 25 years, we’re gonna let you out after 17. But now you’re on parole. So now you have a parole or probation officer, which is a completely separate agency from the prisons, from the district attorney and from the police. So you’re dealing with four distinct separate agencies that they technically connect, they overlap, but they don’t connect. So what I’m doing in a prison has zero effect on the police officer that arrested you, the judge that prosecuted you and sentenced you and the prison in which you go. I don’t get you into the end. I’m like an emergency room doctor, that shocks you out when you get shot, they put you in an ambulance, they drive you to me, I patch you up. Now you’re saying Well, does patching people up affect the shooters and affect the crime ministry? Technically no. So what I’m doing is for this specific space, it can grow to that but at this stage we are now, how do you give somebody credit for being in a program but they’ve never been in the program? So if you’re on before you as a judge, and I’m saying well, I robbed somebody, and you can’t say, Well, I’m gonna give him less time because this program exists that he’s not in. So you get credit for the things that you do, or have done and unfortunately, the front end part of the program, the trial part, we haven’t engaged with them and with the academy hope right now, we’re dealing with people who were actively in prison, or being released. So if you were in our program, and you got released, and you’re in an outside program, that technically you shouldn’t be getting re arrested, if you’re in the program. So the objective of our program is you don’t get re arrested. So you shouldn’t be before the court, again, facing charges. But the guy who is going both by the head never been in the program. So it comes to the scenario where how do we create programs for people before they hurt somebody and create victims? We don’t want to keep servicing people after they’ve hurt somebody and created a victim. We want to be able to serve them on a front end and the way you do that is pre emptive. You want to go to the elementary schools, the middle schools and the high school where we know these kids are coming from. If you go to a state prison, I guarantee you 99.9% people came from public school. So in California, all the people that got locked up, the number one source, the people that came from Los Angeles, second might be Oakland. Wherever you go down the line, we know where they’re coming from. But we didn’t have to say we know where they’re coming from. In the state of New York, I guarantee you the state system, which probably has 50-60,000 people, I guarantee you a lot of them came from New York City and almost all of them came from the public school system. So we know where they’re coming from. So it’s not rocket science. At some point, you say, do we want to stop the school to prison pipeline, because we know where they’re coming from. We know where they’re ending up. Let’s service them on the front end. If you give me a seven year old in first grade, I take what he wants. He wants a peanut butter jelly sandwich and a hug. You give me a 20 year old kid, can I do that for five years and that’s pretty prison. He’s extreme therapy, a job, job training and a place to stay. So it is far more costly and intensive to help the person on the back end with a sandwich, catch playing, catch in the park and a hug. It just stopped me from ever going to prison. So we have to start looking at it from the opposite end on how we stop them from going instead of fixing them once they get there.
Norman 34:37
Alright. Do you have any stats on people reoffending after going through the program?
Andre 34:44
My program? Yeah, my program is not really designed for people who get out. My program is designed for people who are staying in. We’re trying to change the culture of the prison. So mine isn’t a reentry program like you need to do this before you go home. This program is focused on taking violence out of prison. So that’s the focus of this program. There’s a lot of violence inside of prisons, and our program is focused on that. So we have stats on decreasing violence. We have stats on no weapons. We have stats on use of force, and those stats were possible going home. That’s not our target. Other agencies, they target on helping you be job ready, this ready, that ready, this ready. That’s not our focus. Our focus is to put out a knife, put out a weapon, don’t attack somebody and then help other people. That’s our focus.
Norman 35:42
Got it. I was listening to a recent interview you had on David Never Sleeps, and got a quote that I like you to talk about. “Trying means nothing. Accomplishment means everything.” I thought that was a great quote, can you talk a bit about that?
Andre 35:56
Trying means nothing. For some reason, somebody came up with this thing. Just try. Just try means get in the okay. You can say you tried it. But trying as adults isn’t the thing. I don’t measure intention, I measure results. Your intent is your business. The result is my business. So the fact that you try, if this is a business scenario, that was in a business context, and this is a business scenario, I don’t care that you try. I care that you got it done. So if something is not working for you, they come back as how come the wheels on a tire I tried, I just couldn’t get it. But this guy needs to take his car. I tried. I tried means nothing. People pay for results. I can’t go into a store and order a hamburger and get some milk. I tried to get the right sandwich on him. No, give him what he results. So people believe trying is a substitute for winning or an excuse, it becomes an excuse and I don’t believe in excuses. I’m saying there’s reality, there’s tracks and there’s excuses. Excuses have nothing, no reality. In fact, this is the reason why you didn’t want to get up and get it done. So yeah, trying to me is meaningless. I’m saying, did you get it done? That’s my question. Did you get it done? Yes or no? If it’s Yes, cool. If it’s no, can we go back and find a way to get it done? But so often people just say I tried and that’s acceptable. It’s like the second place, the trophies are everybody who shows up now.
When you get lost, everybody else gets mad at you ribbons. Everybody is a router. It takes me. I got a whole room full of ribbons, but never wanted me. I mean, if that’s the case, I’m not going to have 50 pageants, 50 tournaments, I got 50 ribbons, and I came in dead last every time. So the fact that you tried is nice, is that marble is all that stuff. But in business, trying does not substitute results.
Norman 38:11
Perfect. Now, you also provided a quote a little earlier today, you want to talk a little bit about that?
Andre 38:19
Yes. The quote I kind of live by because I run into people all the time and like you said earlier, you’d have a hard time believing that things that I’ve achieved and I tell people, I do the impossible for later and for the record, I’ve done it multiple times and I say that because I wasn’t supposed to be alive at 18 but I was. I was never supposed to turn my life around in prison and go to Harvard. But I did. I was supposed to be on a task while working for the White House and the President, but I was and all the things that I’m doing I deemed impossible. It is impossible for Andre to go for maximum security prison to the White House, that is impossible for Andre to go as a game leader now go back and run prison. It is possible to go from seven dead people to one fistfight in two years. These things are all technically impossible and I don’t believe in impossible, because I do it now. I tell people because I kept doing what was deemed impossible. So my thing is, I do the impossible for later.
Norman 39:17
All right, now we’re gonna get into some interesting stuff, too. I love to hear this. I can’t wait to hear what you’re gonna say about this. So every guest that we have on this podcast, they always, there’s nobody sitting in front of a Lamborghini waving cash. We find that there’s so many people that have gone through so many struggles and just your whole story is a struggle. But what was your biggest hurdle? How did you get over it and what did you learn from it?
Andre 39:48
My biggest hurdle? I know it, it’s not even a long thought. I had to learn not to be a quitter. When my dad left the house, he taught me to quit and I didn’t understand at eight years old or nine years old that that’s what he taught me, that’s what I invested in my life, I embraced. But I quit everything and when I finally got to the point of wanting to turn my life around, I look back at my life and all the things that I didn’t achieve. I asked myself, why didn’t I do these things and the one thing was, I quit, I quit, I quit, I quit. So I started asking myself, why are you quitting everything Andre and then went back to, I learned to quit for my dad and I thought it was okay. It was my excuse, or justification, or dealing with hardships or things that just weren’t easy. So I said, when I went to counseling. I didn’t need help with anger. I didn’t help with finance. I need help with quitting. So I went and got help for my quitting problem and once I hurdled that, and I got that under wraps, life became easy, it became doable, because I just did what it was, I was gonna stay the course. So for me, my number one issue was quitting and when I finally got over that hurdle, I had to tell myself the truth, which was the hard part that I had to ask for help, which was even harder and I had to actually do what they told me to do, which was even harder than I had to live it out for like multiple years, studying harder. It never got easier. It was supposed to be easier, every step got harder. But in the end, I won. I’m no longer a quitter and for me, I can do anything now. That’s why I can do the impossible for living. Because I’m not a quitter. Before I could even make my bed because I need to do stupid, I come up with a justification, why not to do it, or follow through. So for me, not being a quitter is huge. That is the crux of everything and everything that I do now, I go in knowing that I’m going to get through to the other side.
Norman 41:54
So when you said you went for counseling for this, was it counseling or did you find really great mentors?
Andre 42:01
No. I was in mental health counseling. I mean, I had a mental health issue because the trauma I suffered resulted in the way I was thinking. It impacted the way I was thinking, the way I was living. So I needed counseling, therapy, and professionals. I had real problems. I mean, I didn’t have big problems, I had real problems and it made me do some real things that weren’t good. So I need to get somebody who’s not my buddy, not my power, not somebody who just happened to want to care about me. I needed a trained professional, who was going to help me get through what has been ruining my life. This is my life. This isn’t like a weekend event. This is my life. So I went and got the best person humanly possible that was available to me and I helped them by being honest with myself instead of them having to dig through five months of what’s troubling Andre, I went in the room and said, I know my life better than anybody that had to just write it out and sketch it out and then say, look at the patterns and I’m not a therapist, but I was able to look through and say I’ve had a lot of opportunity. I wish I could come on and say nobody loves me, they locked me in the closet. Nobody cared, that’s not true. I had tons of opportunities. I just blew them all because I quit and it became clear to me that I had a pattern and then I didn’t know how to break the pattern down or really get to the root of it. Because I haven’t got to the root of it. But I realized I had a chance at a band. I had a chance at leadership. I had a chance at the track team. I put on a list of the things that I had and I say, Well, why didn’t I play and stay in a band? I quit. Why did I run track? I quit. Why didn’t I play football? I quit. It was just that same thing of quitting. The only thing I didn’t quit was negativity. Because you don’t have to do anything, you just kind of have to be there. It’s not really doing negativity, but just show up. So I went to professional counseling for a record and I advocate professional counseling for anybody who thinks that they might have a problem because you get one life and don’t play with trying to fix this. This is a complex thing, this will break and I wanted somebody who knew what they were doing and I had to go in and tell the truth, to the best of my ability, and they helped me tell my truth to the real truth. There’s your truth, and there’s the real truth. You can make that jump, then you’ll get better.
Norman 44:34
Well, how long did it take to get past the quitting part?
Andre 44:39
I’m still in counseling. So this is not a weekend thing or a six month thing. Those things are embedded in my genetics. Instead, I grew up with this man and he taught me this thing and it’s like it doesn’t go away. I can learn to deal with it once it’s like my addiction. Once I say all our problems become problems. So I still go to counseling. Now I don’t need a full on therapist and I’ve gotten what, 21, 20 I mean, 29 years into this. I kind of have a system and I can go to counselors and mentors now, because we’ve done the heavy work. The doctor operated now I’m dealing with rehab, different. So the doctor doesn’t need to come to rehab, but you have to go to the doctor first. I went to the mental health therapist first. For almost seven years, I went to therapy inside. When I first came home, I got a mental health therapist on the outside and for the first two years, I had mental health counseling once or twice a week on the outside. Inside, it was free. Outside I had to pay for it. But I went to mental health counseling with my sister when he campaign and I went to her office twice a week for almost two years, because it was important that what worked to get me out, I didn’t quit doing. So many people do something that gets them to a place and they stopped doing it. Well, mental health counseling helped me get out. So why would I stop doing it?
Norman 46:05
Right. Well, let’s go to the other side now. What do you feel has been your greatest success?
Andre 46:11
My greatest success? Okay, I’m going to take my side of it because that’s too easy. I’m saying my greatest access is I’m still here. I’m actually still here, not defying the odds, I’ve redefined the odds. The fact that I’ve worked in these places and moving these spaces, and I know the people I know and I’ve received, just says that it only gets greater. Somebody’s going to come behind me and they’re going to take my story and elevate the long story 10 times higher. So my greatest success is helping other people succeed. Success is not a success without a successor. So I need to go back and help other people succeed as well. So my greatest success is that here I am, 21 years removed from prison. I have my own company, but I still go to prison almost every day. I do outreach to people in need every day and my greatest success is no longer just black hope. I help everybody. There was a time I helped people to look like me because I understood that. Now I help people. I mean, I’m pro black. Don’t get just twisted. Andre’s pro black. My mom is black. My dad’s black. My kids are black, my grandparents are black. I live in the hood. But I help everybody. My greatest success is I’ve gotten to a place where I can see people as people. I didn’t grow up like that. I didn’t grow up, people were people. I grew up, people were black, white people were good or bad. Instead now, people are people and so I guess that would be a great success for me that I could pass something on. If you can ever get to a place where people are people. They have histories, they have culture, they have ethnicities, but people are people. I’m not judgment free. But I’m way better than I was when I started off.
Norman 48:07
That was an awesome answer. I wasn’t expecting that. But thank you for that. Well, we’re winding down to the end of the podcast and we always like to ask our guests one question and is that if you know a guy?
Andre 48:24
Do I know a guy?
Norman 48:25
Just any guy.
Andre 48:29
I gotta pick one guy.
Norman 48:31
Your most interesting guy that you know.
Andre 48:34
That’s not fair.
Norman 48:37
Well, you could provide two or three if you like, but at least one.
Andre 48:39
My number one guy is in Israel. I’m saying my next number one guy is my son who’s in London. I don’t know if he’s far too young as well. Can you do this with my son?
Norman 48:50
Sure.
Andre 48:51
Ah, listen, I would be ecstatic if you get into my son, which is again, that’s my greatest accomplishment and I had help, his mom. I’d love for you to interview Sally. That’d be phenomenal. Now I give you a guy right now an adult who’s not personally connected to me as a family member. I will say David Chang. You quoted him earlier from the podcast. I met David when I moved to Atlanta, started out and I’m not gonna give you a story. David Chang.
Norman 49:24
Very good. Well, I can’t wait to reach out to David and your son and we’ll get a podcast going. But Rich told me that this isn’t gonna be a one hour podcast. It could go on for a day and I agree. I think we just hit the tip of the iceberg. But anyways, Andre, it has been a real pleasure. How do people get a hold of you or if they’re interested in your courses? Where can they reach out?
Andre 49:51
Okay, I think my name @AndreNorman. That’s my Instagram. My website, andrenorman.com. You could also send me an email. My Facebook is Andre Norman, my LinkedIn. All my social media stuff is my name.
Norman 50:07
Perfect, nice and simple. There you go.
Andre 50:09
If you want to email me is admin@andrenorman, but that’s on the website.
Norman 50:15
Okay, got it. Well, thanks a lot and keep doing what you’re doing.
Andre 50:19
I appreciate it.
Norman 50:20
Alright, see you Andre. Bye.
Hayden 50:27
Thanks for listening guys and gals. If you like what you heard, please leave us a review on YouTube or on any podcast app of your choosing or really anywhere. I’ll even take it in my dms. Thanks in advance. Make sure to tune in next week for our interview with Scott Mayo. Scott is a musician based in LA. It’s one of those guys that’s played with pretty much everyone you can think of. I think he even slips in a cool story about Mick Jagger in there somewhere. So you obviously don’t want to miss this one. Anyway, that’s enough for me and I’ll see you then.
