People sometimes ask me how I went from a 45-year sentence in federal prison to building a life of meaning, business, marriage, and nonprofit service.
That question is not easy to answer in a short video or one blog post.
The full story fills the pages of my book, Earning Freedom: Conquering a 45-Year Prison Term. I wrote that book because I wanted to show the whole journey, step by step. I wanted people to see the bad decisions, the consequences, the turning points, the plan, the discipline, the setbacks, and the strategies that helped me build a life after prison.
Still, I understand why people ask.
When someone is facing prison, or when someone loves a person in prison, they want to know whether change is possible. They want to know whether a person can overcome a bad decision. They want to know whether a person can start at the bottom and build a pathway to something better.
My answer is yes.
But the answer requires work.
The answer requires a plan.
The answer requires a person to stop blaming, stop waiting, and start preparing.
That is the message I try to share through Prison Professors.
Bad Decisions Led Me to Prison
I did not go to prison because of bad luck. I went to prison because I made bad decisions.
When I was a young man, I did not understand the full weight of the choices I was making. I was 20 years old when I came to Miami and saw the movie Scarface. With the poor judgment of a 20-year-old, I let that movie influence the way I thought about money, power, and success.
Instead of building a lawful path, I chose a criminal path.
I became involved in trafficking cocaine.
At the time, I told myself stories that made the behavior seem less serious. I thought that if I did not personally carry drugs, I was not really breaking the law. I hired other people to pick up drugs, transport drugs, and sell drugs. I was guilty.
The government charged me with operating a continuing criminal enterprise. That charge exposed me to decades in prison.
At that point, I had another opportunity to make a better decision. I could have accepted responsibility. I could have acknowledged the harm I caused. I could have begun the process of reconciling with society.
I knew that I was guilty, but I didn't know the system. So I went to trial, believing my lawyer could liberate me from the charges.
Even worse, I took the witness stand and lied. I committed perjury, testifying that I didn't have anything to do with trafficking cocaine. The jury and judge saw through the lies.
By telling lies under oath, I influenced the judge's perception of me. To him, I was not only a person who had trafficked in cocaine. I was a person who had disrespected the courtroom and refused to accept responsibility. He sentenced me to 45 years.
I was a young man, and I did not even know what 45 years meant. I did not understand how long a sentence like that could feel. I did not understand how federal prison would work. I did not understand how I would survive, how I would grow, or how I would build a life.
I only knew that I hated being locked in prison.
The Beginning: Solitary Confinement
I spent my first year in solitary confinement. In the the closed cell, I began to think about how I could create meaning out of this experience. I would like to say that I came up with the answers on my own. But that would not be true.
Books helped change the way I thought.
I started reading. The Bible became one of the first books that influenced me. The parable of the talents taught me that each of us receives gifts, opportunities, and responsibilities. If we develop those gifts, more opportunities can open. If we squander them, we lose what we have.
As a young man, I realized that I had squandered opportunities.
I had been blessed with a strong family, a good mind, and the ability to work. Instead of using those gifts to build, I used them to break the law. I had to accept that truth before I could begin building a better life.
The Bible and other books helped me start thinking differently.
I learned from Socrates.
I learned from Frederick Douglass.
I learned from Nelson Mandela.
I learned from Viktor Frankl.
I learned from business leaders, writers, and people who had gone through adversity without allowing adversity to define them.
Those leaders became my mentors. Their examples helped me understand that I could use time to write the next chapter of my life. I could prepare for success.
a Three-Part Plan
Leaders taught me how to plan. Although I could not control the length of sentence I received, or the system that held me, I could control how I responded. I created a three-part plan that would guide me through every day of my sentence.
First, I would educate myself.
Second, I would contribute to society in meaningful and measurable ways.
Third, I would build a strong support network.
Those three goals gave me direction.
Education would help me think differently. It would help me develop skills. It would help me communicate. It would help me prepare for opportunities that did not exist yet.
Contribution would help me stop thinking only about myself. If I wanted to reconcile with society, I had to find ways to bring value to society, even while I was still in prison.
A support network would help me connect with people who believed in growth, accountability, and preparation. I knew that if I wanted a better future, I would need people who could see me as something more than a prison number.
That plan became my compass.
Every decision had to connect to one of those three goals.
Would this decision help me educate myself?
Would this decision help me contribute to society?
Would this decision help me build a strong support network?
If the answer was no, I had to question whether the decision would move me closer to the life I wanted to build.
Education Changed How I Saw Myself
In prison, education became a way to build a new identity.
I earned a bachelor’s degree. Later, I earned a master’s degree. Those credentials led to my becoming an author. By publishing articles and books, I built my support network. Success would not come from wishing the system were different. Success would come from preparing myself to deal with the world as it exists.
I could not wait for prison administrators to create opportunities for me. I had to create opportunities from where I stood.
I could not wait for society to trust me. I had to build a record that would make trust possible.
I could not wait for people to believe in me. I had to give them reasons to believe.
Education helped me execute the plan I put in place.
Writing Became a Tool for Advocacy
After earning academic credentials, I began writing.
At first, writing helped me understand myself. Then writing helped me communicate with others. Eventually, writing became a way to advocate for changes in the prison system.
I wanted people to understand that prison should not only be about turning calendar pages.
In our country, we like to believe that hard work matters. We like to believe that people can improve their lives through discipline, effort, and preparation. We like to believe that if a person works hard, more opportunities can open.
But in prison, the system often does not work that way.
A judge imposes a sentence, and the system measures justice by the number of days, months, and years that pass. Under that model, a person who works hard to grow may serve the same amount of time as a person who makes no effort to change.
That never made sense to me.
I believed then, and I believe now, that the system should create incentives for people to pursue excellence. The system should reward people who work to reconcile with society, develop skills, educate themselves, build support networks, and prepare for law-abiding lives.
I call that concept earning freedom through merit. That idea guided my work while I was in prison, it guided the advocacy work I did after getting out of prison, and it still guides my work today.
Frederick Douglass used his personal story of living as an enslaved person to advocate for the abolition of slavery. His example influenced me. I wanted to use my personal story of living through decades in federal prison to advocate for a more rational system, one that would open more pathways for people to earn higher levels of liberty through documented effort.
Writing became part of that mission.
Different Levels of Liberty
A 45-year sentence can crush a person’s spirit. Once I had a plan, I could restore confidence. As I worked through the stages of my plan, more opportunities opened.
I started in high-security prisons. Over time, through my adjustment and through the Bureau of Prisons classification system, I moved from higher security levels to lower security levels. Eventually, I moved to a minimum-security camp.
Those transitions dd not get me out early. The law did not allow that for me. There was no First Step Act when I served my sentence. There were no earned time credits. I had to serve the time the law required. Yet those steps changed the quality of my life while I served my sentence, and opened many opportunities along the way, including when I got out.
That is why I tell people not to wait for release before preparing.
Building Income Streams From Prison
One of the realities I had to accept was that I would likely be unemployable when I got out of prison.
I had a serious felony conviction.
I had served decades in prison.
I knew many employers would not want to hire me.
That reality helped me think more clearly. I accepted that I would have to learn how to create income streams.
I began studying business. I studied investing. I studied how authors earned money. I studied how people built value. I studied how people created assets.
Writing books became one way I could create value. The revenues were not large in the beginning, but they gave me a start. Through independent study, I learned about investing. business, and the stock market. The revenues that came to me through publishing, helped me begin investing. I set a goal of building sufficient resources so that when I finished my sentence, I'd have enough money to live for a full year, whether I got a job or not.
Why I Built Prison Professors
After returning to society and building financial independence, I wanted to spend the rest of my career working to improve outcomes for people in prison. That mission led to Prison Professors.
Through our nonprofit, we create free books, courses, videos, audio lessons, and self-directed resources for people before, during, and after prison. We want people to understand that regardless of where they are starting, they can begin preparing for success.
Our work focuses on ending intergenerational cycles of recidivism and poverty.
That phrase may sound big, but the work begins with one person making one decision today.
A person can decide to read.
A person can decide to write.
A person can decide to avoid disciplinary problems.
A person can decide to build a release plan.
A person can decide to develop skills.
A person can decide to document progress.
A person can decide to build a support network.
A person can decide to stop blaming the past and start sowing seeds for a better future.
Prison Professors offers free resources to help people make better decisions. People should have to pay for basic information about how to prepare for success through the criminal justice system. Too many people are already carrying heavy burdens. Their families are carrying burdens too.
If we can help people learn how to use time wisely, we should do that.
Final Word
I went from a 45-year sentence to earning freedom because I learned to think differently.
Books helped me.
Faith helped me.
Mentors helped me.
My wife helped me.
But I also had to do the work.
I had to accept responsibility.
I had to create a plan.
I had to follow that plan through decades of confinement.
I had to prepare for a world that did not owe me anything.
I had to build value before asking anyone to believe in me.
That work continues today.
Through Prison Professors, I try to be an ambassador for the same message that leaders like Frederick Douglass, Nelson Mandela, Viktor Frankl, and others gave to me.
Adversity does not have to define us.
We can grow through it.
We can build through it.
We can prepare through it.
We can use the experience to serve others.
Freedom is not only a release date. Freedom is a state of mind. It begins when we decide to take ownership of our lives and work toward the future we want to build.
I believe in that message because I lived it.
And I believe in you.
Self-Directed Reflection Question:
What decision can I make today that will help me build a stronger record of preparation, contribution, and readiness for the highest level of liberty?