In this motivational monologue, Rico Sharp recounts his 33‑year career as a speaker and mentor, tracing his life from a runaway teenager who fell into drug addiction and repeated incarceration to a self‑made leader who now addresses prisons, federal agencies, schools, churches, and corporations. He describes a pivotal moment during his final prison term (1994‑1995) when he purchased a fellow inmate’s personal library and devoted 8‑10 hours daily to studying encyclopedias, self‑help books, and Bibles, while also completing an Interpersonal Life Skills course that helped him reconstruct his identity. Using a caterpillar‑to‑butterfly metaphor, he explains his personal metamorphosis and the emergence of a new purpose. After release, he founded transitional housing for homeless men and women, started a church, launched a television show, and built a business that funds his mentorship of juveniles, professional athletes, and paying clients. He highlights recent speaking engagements, including a prison in Arcadia, Florida, and a federal training conference attended by over 2,000 employees from DHS, FBI, HUD, Defense Intelligence, and even the Oval Office. Throughout, he urges listeners to view his story as proof that anyone can overcome adversity, tap into their inner potential, and create the life they deserve.
Chapters
My name is Rico Sharp. I'm a motivational speaker, and I have dedicated the last 33 years of my life speaking in basically multiple places: jails, prisons, churches, courtrooms, schools, colleges, for the federal government, for corporations, for businesses, on television shows, radio shows, all that. I, I go wherever I'm invited. Um, just this past Or Saturday, not this past Saturday, but before that, I was in a prison speaking in Arcadia, Florida, speaking to inmates. Some of them would never see the outside again, and yet I went in with a message to tell them, never give up on you. 2 days before that, on that Thursday, the 15th of August, I was in Tampa, Florida, speaking to a bunch of federal employees. Actually, a little over 2,000 employees attended this, this federal government conference, and these are people from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, HUD agents, Defense Intelligence agents, and some even from the Oval Office of the President of the United States. I spoke 3 times at that particular training institute teaching them on leadership and sharing things much like I'm going to share with you tonight. I was at the Kissimmee campus, I think this past Thursday. Yeah, this past Thursday speaking there. I'll be at the Pembroke Pine campus next month, September, speaking there and at the South Miami campus. I believe in empowering people and encouraging people to live their best life, to give life all they have to give, and to overcome adversity. I have a passion for speaking into the lives of people. I mentor juveniles, I mentor professional athletes, and, uh, and I'm also a life coach. I'm a leadership trainer. I have people that I mentor on a regular basis that pays me by the hour to mentor them. My life has, has had different ups and downs. I, I started out as a runaway teenager at the age of 13 and dropped out of high school and got involved in the wrong type of lifestyle, which is the street life as a drug addict and a drug dealer, and ended up going to jail and prison multiple times. And on the last time that I was incarcerated, which I went in in 1994, '93, and got out in '95, at the end of '95, on that last time I made a decision that I am not going to live that life anymore. I want to better myself. I want to be somebody. I want to get away from the plague and the curse of growing up in the ghetto, in the hood, and then becoming conditioned to that lifestyle. And so it was in prison that I made a decision to be the best that I can be. And I came out of prison with a totally changed mind. Um, my story of how my life changed in prison is, is, is about finding a guy in prison named Billy who had his own personal library. He was like 70 6 or so years of age. He was never going home, and I made a deal with him to buy his personal library from him. So while other people were using their money to play poker with and to buy Little Debbie snack cakes and Jolly Ranchers and Doritos, I made a decision to spend my money on buying books. I bought encyclopedias, almanacs, dictionaries, concordances, Bibles, self-help books, uh, commentaries, things of that nature. And I took those books and built my own personal library, and I would dedicate 8 to 10 hours a day every single day for years just studying, memorizing, learning, and training myself to think with a different mindset. I also took a course in prison called Interpersonal Life Skills, and the Interpersonal Life Skills taught me how to look inside and discover who I really am and potential, and then to extrapolate that particular person and bring that person forth so that that person could become my new identity. It's much like a caterpillar. When a caterpillar goes into this cocoon or spins this cocoon around itself, it goes in crawling as a caterpillar, but in this cocoon it begins to go through a stage of metamorphosis, and it realizes that it has the potential to be a different creature. In fact, not only a different creature, but one that flies. Flies instead of crawls through life, and it comes out as a butterfly. And that's what happened to me. And when I came out, I came out with a set of wings, if you will. And I determined I was not going to crawl through life anymore. And I started going back into the street, getting family members and friends off the street, and introducing them to what I consider to be a better way, a better life. I even started my own transitional housing for homeless men and for homeless women to help get them off the street so that they can have a place to live and get their lives back together. I also started a church, started my own television show, started my own business, and I just really began to travel speaking and helping people to realize that they, they have a greater being on the inside. And if you could just tap into that, you can discover your maximum potential and use that to build a life that you really want and that you really deserve. I shared my story with you because I want you to feel in your heart that if you ever run into adversity, if you ever find that life is difficult, if you ever find yourself struggling and just burning rubber, not really picking up traction and not really going anywhere, and you feel like quitting and you feel like giving up, then think about this guy named Rico Sharp. who came out of prison and turned his life around. Say this with me, if Rico can do it, Rico can do it. I can do it too. I can do it too. And I want you to mean that, right? I really want you to mean that. Now I'm gonna ask you,
