Part 1 - From Gang Violence To Redemption

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Welcome to this edition of the million dollar mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wyd.

I'm talking with Casey Diaz this afternoon. Hello, Casey.

How you doing, Eric?

This is a return visit from Kasey, and he was in the middle of restarting his business and life after Covid. I think you had like 200 speaking engagements lined up when Covid came along, and it just completely shut you down. And I. I think you had written a book or you're getting ready to write a book, but now you've got your second book out. Is that right?

I got my second book out, yeah. And, yeah, that lockdown really threw a wrench at my whole program, but we're back on track and going all over the country.

Talk about your second book.

So we just released our second book called okay, I will. And it is a bunch of testimonies from correctional officers, prison chaplains, nurses, people that have experienced a dramatic change in a loved one who received the first book, which was the shock collar, and put it in the hands of a friend, a stranger. They read through it, and, I mean, it was just a drastic change in their life. And so we thought there was no planning. The strange thing happens when I'm a big guy that loves to plan, but then there's moments when you just don't plan and things happen and you just gotta roll with it. Right. I think all of us have that. Those moments from time to time. And this is one of those moments for us where we thought, you know, we need to interview these people that were eyewitnesses to the changes in complete prison blocks from death row to solitary confinement situations. And so we decided that it was important to interview these correctional officers, these law enforcement officers, as well as prison chaplains and nurses and gamper engine counselors and have them, by their own words, tell us what took place, what they saw, and how things changed in the lives of those that received our first book. So what excited. And really, it's. It's a thrill ride to. To see and to capture their side of the story.

Yeah. And I want to get into what would cause someone, you know, because business is about making a profit. You know, you're making a bigger, better, faster, newer version of something, and you're delivering good service, and you do it right.

Do it.

You're conscientious, then you can. Your business can grow. But the idea is to make an impact And a bigger and bigger impact. Now you're on the side of life that there is a surprising number of people would be a good thing if there was an even larger number of people who have said, I'm going to go in a different direction to make my impact. I'm going to go in the direction of helping people and standing with them and work with them on the spiritual side. The help them reorganize their life for greatness and you get a chance to see a whole kind of different positive impact. But a lot of people will do this after a successful business career. You know, they might have 10, 20, 30 years and they say, this is not satisfying me the way I wanted. You know, I'm looking for more out of life. You know, the thing was when I was starting out that at college, I remember people saying, you know, I don't want to be the guy at 40. They said, I worked hard and all I did was make a bunch of money. I want to be somebody who makes money, but I want to make impact. And so a lot of people don't get a chance to address that issue or have that put in front of them before they launch out into a all consuming business career. And that realization a lot of times comes later down the road. But I hope we can get into some of that thinking as we get into this, but because that may be a change to make it. The idea of being a winner is to live the kind of life you felt you were, you were designed to live and to make a positive impact, to be improving and accomplishing things on a daily basis that are important to you to accomplish, rather than being a victim, beaten down by life, kicked around and feeling sorry for yourself, you know, that that's the other side, you know, and so winners can be winning in their careers, in their lives in a lot of different ways, not just business success. And so you're someone who's having like monster success winning and impacting other people. But for people who have not heard, we can give them a little teaser about your first podcast where you get into your story. Why people should be interested and why your story is so unique is that you weren't like in a gang at a young age. You were like consumed. And you are really good at it, which means you are a real bad boy. That's where the shot collar thing came from. And so how about doing a quick review of that for the people who haven't had a chance to hear that podcast and so that they will or maybe to remind them and so they'll have a better framework from understanding where you. What you're speaking from.

I think a recap is well needed for even new listeners. Right. Well, I did get involved in the whole gang culture at a very young age of 11 years old. And just like any gang, there is a structure, there is organization, and you move up the ranks by way of violence. That was my cup of tea. It wasn't. There's different type of gang members out on the streets in every gang. And I can only speak for the LA gang structure, but there's different grades, just like in anything. Just like in, in business, you know, there's ranks and how you move up ladder.

Minor leagues in games.

Exactly, yeah. And you know, to get up into the. To the major leagues, you're gonna have to catch the attention of your crowd, your oikis, your circle of influence and by way of violence. And for me, that was so easy for me to get involved in. In the violence side, you had guys that joined gangs for just the purpose of meeting girls and partying and the fast money and all that stuff. But then you have the 1 or 2% that is just about violence. And then, unfortunately, that's the route that I took. I started getting noticed by not just only my gang, but rival territories throughout Los Angeles where, I mean, my name was just everywhere in that era. And unfortunately, at 16, kind of like.

The star Tiger woods coming up through the ranks in golf when he was young, everybody knew about this young golfer, Tiger Woods. They knew about you in the gang world.

They did. And, you know, and it's nothing that I glorify now as an adult, but it was, it's part of my story. And I have to share that, you know, because I think business in conferences, I speak all over the country, and platforms, whether it's in business or a gang prevention convention, whatever the case is, I think that when you share your entire story, both the good, the bad and the horrible, and then the redemption side of that, which is, who doesn't like to hear a redemption story? And you know that that's where I was at, man. I was a slave to what I was doing, which was sin in atrocious ways, punishing my rival gang affiliates with extreme violence. That earned me a title, I would say, in the streets and then in the prison system, I was voted in as a shot collar at a very early age of 18.

And explaining shot collar, when you become.

A shot collar, it gives you great responsibility. Not everybody wants to attain that title or that figure just because you're a shot Caller doesn't mean that you could just do whatever you want. You're still. You got to be careful in there. And a shot collar has the ability to move drugs to murder individuals inside and outside of prison system. So there's a lot of response. A lot of weight goes on your shoulder. And for that responsibility to land on my shoulders at about 18 years old, 18 and a half, it's a lot. But you also, this arrogance and this pride comes upon you that you do have power that others don't have. But again, you know, just like in anything, you make one brutal mistake, it can cost you your life in there.

And the Shot Collar is the name of your first book, right?

It is, yes.

And so they talk about how you arrived at age 11 with the mentality that, this is the way I want to go. You know, events have. Their shadows are cast before events happen. This is a big event in your life, big transition. How did you wind up there? How do kids wind up to where they're just ready to go all the way to the other side?

For me, there was the violence that happened inside my home, in our apartment. For me, it was a father that didn't work who sold drugs and loved drinking, loved drinking his life away and was violent and would, I mean, just unleash terrible violence to my mother. Physical, emotional, verbal was his record. And, boy, did he beat my mom just like a man would beat another man. And so watching violence there, the age of eight, I would witness a triple murder. So this individual walked up to his three victims, dished out some rounds on each one of them, and then reloaded and finished the job. And he didn't run to his car. He very slowly walked to his vehicle and didn't burn tires or anything. He just drove like he was going to the supermarket. Very calculated, very cold. And you could tell now as an adult, you could tell that this was not his first walk in the park. This guy has did something similar perhaps in the past as well.

So, Kim, you grew up in a world of violence that was. Say you did. Probably didn't know any other world. I mean, kindness, things like people doing nice things for each other. This was not the world you were in.

No, it wasn't. I mean, I saw. Witnessed violence at a very young age. And I had this perception that, well, this is how life is, right? Like, if you're used to pattern in your life, early in your life, and it's a repetitive pattern, well, this is how it is. This becomes the norm. And for me, for me, that was what it appeared to be and I just ran with it. And it was easy for me to incite violence of any degree upon anybody. I mean it was that easy.

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And so you got started at a grassroots level, kind of a minor league sty thing. Improved your way, prove yourself. And moved up through the ranks pretty quickly, didn't you?

I did. And again, it was just the repetitive violence that I would, just uncontrolled rage that was within me. And it was just easy. I mean, and it sounds horrible, but it was very easy for me to unleash. I mean just with a murderous heart to unleash this kind of rage upon an individual. It was as easy as getting a cup of water. It was, it was just that easy.

Well, now you obviously did not have. How close were you to your mother? You obviously had no bond between you and your dad. How many kids were in the family? Hell, were you the oldest at this time?

My brother wasn't born, so I was the only one that got to see that type of violence. I was very close with my mom. I still am. There's this bond of being raised by a hardworking mother who tried her best with the cards that she was dealt with. And even up to this day, there's moments when I have, have talks with her, you know, mother, son type of deals and she always finds herself trying to apologize to me for not doing something better. And, and I have to step in and say you don't have to apologize for anything. You know, this is the hand that you were dealt and you did the best what you had and it's, it's fine. You know, we came out okay now and we're, we're good.

Do you feel like there was a, when you went over there, did you feel like that was like a surrogate family for you? You know, like they, you got approval from these, even though these, for these Horrific acts. You got Pat's on the. You got approval and. Way to go, Casey. You're the man. You got no other place.

Absolutely. And that's what the false sense of family, that, that the gang pitches to a young gang member, a young recruit, it's that validation, right? If you don't have a father figure, a leader in your house, in your home, in the family, a counselor, and it doesn't even have to be a dad, of course, that's the what you really want, right? A father figure who's responsible, who will direct you in the right path when that's missing a recipe for disaster for any kid. And it doesn't matter if you're in a wealthy neighborhood or in the ghetto, right. With the absence of a father, the success, success rate of being honorable, being ethical, being moral is absent. I mean, that's how important a dad is to the family structure.

Yeah. And of course, we're speaking in generalities and there are exceptions and all, but it does speak to how seriously people ought to look at this situation. And that phrase you had under the false sense of family that the gangs preach, you know, that's just something for people to be aware of. And the importance of that mature role model, male role model in the equation for a young boy growing up, say this is acceptable, this is not acceptable at the right time. I'll tell you something. Third grade, my father moves to. We're in Oklahoma. Halfway through the year, he gets transferred. He's there for us. He gets transferred to France. And so he's going to go to France, find us a house. And we got me my mom and brother and sister, they're like six and eight years younger. And so we go. We moved to Georgia from January to the summer. You know, I finished out third grade, I think there in Georgia. And so my grandfather and when, you know, school year's over, then we went to, over to, to France and lived over there for a year. But I remember this one is my grandfather and I got along great. You know, he's. I was the only one there at the house at the time. You know, all of their kids had gone and none of the grandkids lived nearby. And so, you know, it was me and grandmother's in there cooking with my mother in a cleaning house and working with the younger kids. But I'm out there with my grandfather and we got along great. He would do all kind of things for us. But there was one time he got madder than hell at me. I still don't know what I Did I said something, I responded to something in a way, you know, here I am, I guess 10, 11 years old. He just really lost it with me. He said, boy, he said, he said, if you would act like that, you go through your life and you're not going to have any friends at all. You need to change. I didn't even know what I'd done, you know, but I got, I got the message. I need to be a little bit easier to live with. Great. And you know, they have a thing and they, they replay it occasionally on the, the nature channel with elephant from. They found in elephants. There was a thing over there in Africa where the, in a certain area the elephants were running around and with their tusks they were like, what do you call it? Not t boning but they were piercing. Killing rhinos and they would just go in and kill them. It was just like leave them and they were just like killing them. Killing them. Killing, violence, you know, like murder. Yeah, it's just like animal murder. And what they found out was that there had been gang warfare in the area and a lot of pirating of older elephants for their tusks. And so this new generation adolescence elephants had grown up in the absence over the years without any adult male supervision. In this whole, you know, multi hundred thousand acre area there was going reign of terror. And so one of them got the idea, they went in, in another part of Africa and brought in, they only brought in about a half a dozen mature male elephants. All they did was turn them loose and that stopped like that.

Wow.

The mature elephants got the message out to the young rebels, teenagers, that's not, that's not acceptable. We don't behave like that. And it stopped just like that. And so it's something to think about that kids need young boys every now and then need a strong hand to just say no, that's, you don't need to do it all the time. Don't need to be whipping them and beating them and it's not a punishment thing but like laying the law down. Like you got to behave in a certain way and in the absence of that, all hell can break loose. And that's what happened in your life.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm a very big believer of, you know, you praise a kid when he does, he does something. Well, when they behave, when they bring back those good grades, you know, when they turn into their homework, you have to give them that pat of the back. You want to take them out and prize them. But when it's time for discipline, you have to discipline. And I think that that is something that. Not an old thing, and it's not an old school thing. It's a proper thing that needs to take place in the home. Very early on, by the way.

Kids, about authority and respect for authority. Because it's like John Mellencamp said in one of his songs, I fought the law and the law won. And that's the way it's going to be. It's just not permissible to be going out and shooting. You know, that one guy may have gotten away with it, go out and shoot three people. Sooner or later, your number's going to come. Someone's going to do that to you, or you're going to be in jail and it's going to run its course because society's not going to tolerate that forever. I know they're testing the balance again out in California for what I hear, but sooner or later, reason comes back into the picture and the people who are most out of line wind up in prison. And that's why you found yourself in a supermax at what age?

I was already 18 years old when I got what we called slammed down. And that was meaning you were put or placed in solitary confinement 23 hours out of the 24. And even when you came out of that cell for that one hour, a state required hour of your time, you were basically walked into a bigger cell to spend time outside of your cell by yourself. So I want to talk about, like, the. The myth of. Because we're so accustomed to movies and prison movies, and. And we think that certain things that take place in prison are the way that we watch it in a show, in a movie or a TV program. And it's not like that. So solitary confinement. And again, I'll speak on the California issues. It's something that a gang member has to earn. So it's not like in the movies where some potbelly correctional officer doesn't like you, and so they just place you in solitary confinement and leave you to rot and give you the worst type of food imaginable unto man. Right. That's not what happens in solitary confinement here in California, in the California Department of Corrections and in the Los Angeles County Jail, you earn that. That inmate earns that cell. And it is a coveted cell, as crazy as that sounds. It's a coveted cell because it speaks on who you are as a convict inside. So there's stages of you getting to and a structure to someone earning that 8 by 10 cell, solitary cell. So for me, again, it was easy I didn't care about life of human life or property. Whatever I needed to do to to get to the next phase, I was willing to do it. And again I think it has a lot to do with how someone a young boy grows up. Again the choices are mine as well, right?

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