In this autobiographical motivational speech, Rico Sharp recounts his transformation from a straight‑A student who became homeless at age 13, fell into drug addiction and repeated incarceration, to a self‑educated prison inmate who turned his life around. He describes a pivotal mentorship with an older inmate, his intensive self‑education, and the promise he made upon release in 1995 to never return to prison as an inmate. Since then, Sharp has spent 33 years speaking, mentoring professional athletes, delivering leadership workshops for federal agencies (FBI, HUD, Defense Intelligence) and the Oval Office, and founding a transitional house for formerly incarcerated and homeless individuals. He emphasizes the concept of “mental incarceration,” the power of mindset, and his ongoing mission to empower others through speaking engagements in schools, churches, prisons, and media platforms worldwide.
Chapters
Now, I want to talk to you tonight for a few minutes about where I come from and what my passion is about and how I've arrived to this place. But before I talk to you about my story, I want to tell you a little bit about my success, a little bit about my accomplishments. I've been speaking motivationally For 33 years, 33 years. And I'm a mentor to professional athletes in the NBA, NFL, and a couple of WBO boxers. I've started my own speaking television show several years ago that broadcast around the world and also was, was advertising on 3 different television stations. I also had a couple of radio stations that I spoke on that advertised my voice and my impact in the local communities. I started a transitional house for homeless people several years ago to get homeless people off the street and people who were incarcerated, who were coming out of jails and prisons, people that no one else wanted. And I would bring them into my facility. And I will help them to renew their thinking, to change their minds, to recalibrate their dispositions, to overcome their dysfunctions. I will help them to get their lives together, to get jobs, to be restored back to their families, to get off of drugs, to get away from the criminal lifestyle. And I will help them to be able to gain a new identity and begin to live a successful life and become a contributor in society. Some of the other things that I did is I started speaking in jails and speaking in prisons. And not only do I speak in jails and prisons to men and women and, and juvenile detention centers to young juveniles, but I also speak for the federal government. On August 12th and the 15th, I was in Tampa, Florida speaking to FBI agents, teaching leadership workshops to FBI agents, to HUD agents, which stands for Housing Urban Development agents. to Defense Intelligence agents, and even people out of the Oval Office with President Joe Biden. A couple of weeks before that, I was in New York for a leadership conference where 30 colleges came together in Times Square, and I was their keynote speaker, and I did a workshop teaching on leadership. A few days after being in New York, I was in a prison in Arcadia, Florida, speaking to hundreds of men, telling them not to ever give up. to keep their hope, to keep their faith, and to utilize the time that they have incarcerated learning how to become the best version of themselves and realizing that the issue is not with being in the physical jail, but the issue was being in a mental jail. Because before someone is ever arrested and thrown in the back seat of a squad car and hauled off to the county jail or the state penitentiary, they had to be arrested first in their mind. They were confined in their mind. They were bound in their mind. They were incarcerated in their thinking. And whatever you're incarcerated in your thinking, you're incarcerated in your life. Whenever you're incarcerated mentally, you will eventually become incarcerated physically. So I talked to them about that. I go into high schools and I talk to kids in high school. I do workshops for teachers. I'm a speaker. I go around the world wherever I'm invited. I go, I speak in churches. I speak on other people's television stations. I enjoy empowering people to overcome adversity and to live their best life. And it is important to understand not only what I do today, but it's equally important, if not even more imperative, to understand how it all started and where it all began in my life. You see, my story, ladies and gentlemen, does not start with me being a mentor, a counselor, a life coach, a motivator, a public speaker. My story does not start with me being a leadership trainer. My story does not start with me being an interpersonal skill developer. My story began when I was 13 years of age. At the age of 13, ladies and gentlemen, I was a straight-A student. In high school, having some problems at home, having some issues because I felt unloved, unwanted, unaccepted. I felt like nobody really wanted me around. My mother, who loved me dearly, who did her best, gave birth to 3 sons by the time she was 16 years of age. My mother, who loved me dearly and did her best for me and my brothers, Could not afford financially to take care of me because I was born at the age— at her age of 14. So she handed me off to someone who was more financially stable, and that person took care of me and raised me until I was 5 years of age. And then about the age of 5, she handed me back to my mom because she had to go into the hospital for an extended stay. And when she handed me back to my mom, my mom did her best with me out of pure love, out of pure effort. She tried, but there were times that times got too tough and she would hand me off to a family member to go and stay with a family member. Then there were times that she would say, hey, you can go and stay with church family members, you know, not real biological members, but if you're in a church together and you're real close, you're considered family. Then there were times he said, you need to go live with your dad. My dad was a drug dealer living on the other side of town. My dad was a very abusive man, somebody that I was terrified of, because whenever he did come home to be with my 2 brothers and my mom and I, he came home to beat us up. He would be there for about a week. He would Mentally abuse us, physically abuse us, verbally abuse us. And then he would turn around and head out the door and go back over there when the coast was clear at his other family's house. And so I was afraid of this man. And when I got 13 years of age, my mom came to me and she said, Rico, I can't do anything with you. I have to send you to go live with your father. And in my mind, I'm thinking, no. No, that man will kill me. I can't go live with him. Consequently, at that same time in the 9th grade, there were some kids in my class, and these kids had it going on. They had money in their pocket, they had on nice Adidas, they had gold chains around their neck, they had gold teeth in their mouth. The girls wanted to be with them, and the guys Wanted to be like them. Right. And they found me as being a cool fella to hang out with. And I started building a little attachment with these guys in my class. And one day when I decided that I couldn't go live with my dad, I decided these guys, they accept me, they understand me, they embrace me, I'm gonna go live with them. And so at the age of 13, with an undeveloped, immature mind, I made an immature decision to run off from home and to go live on the side of town where these guys lived in my class. I had no idea at that time that these guys were drug dealers. I had no idea that these guys would not take me into their home. I had no idea that these guys didn't really care for me like I thought they did. And the very first day I ran off, I found myself homeless at the age of 13. I'm sleeping under an oak tree, eating out of trash cans, waiting for people to finish eating their food, and whatever leftovers they left, I would come out and get it and go back to my little hiding spot under the oak tree. And I survived like that for months in the wintertime. No clothing, no money, no food, no family, no support, no toothpaste, no toothbrush, no change of clothing, no soap, no bath rag, not even an extra pair of underwear. And for months I'm sleeping under this oak tree in the rain, in the cold. At the age of 13, trying to stay up all night long because there were several times I found myself having to get up and run for my life just to survive the night. And then one night under that oak tree, this car passed by and stopped, and the guy let the window down and he said to me, why are you always sleeping out here under this tree? Why are you hanging out here at this time of night? Every time I come by, I see you here. I replied back, because I don't have anywhere to go. I don't have any place to live. He said to me, come and get in my car. I went and got in his car. He took me to his rooming house where he and other drug dealers lived. And when I arrived to the rooming house, I felt what I considered at that time love. I felt accepted. I felt embraced. I felt like I found my family. And in my little heart, I became loyal and committed to those guys. They fed me. They bought me a change of clothing. They put a couple of dollars in my pocket. But after a week or so, the guy who picked me up, he said to me, he said, Rico, if you're going to survive in these streets, You gotta learn how to hustle. You have to make money. And he handed me a bag of crack cocaine, and he said to me at the age of 13, go out there on the corner and sell these drugs and bring me so much off of this bag of drugs, and you keep the rest. And this is how you're going to survive out here in the street. In my immature mind, I had no idea what I was about to get myself into. I had no idea that I had options. I had no idea that there were other alternatives for me. So what did I do? I took his offer. I got the bag of drugs. I went to the corner and I started selling drugs. And at the age of 13, I became a drug dealer. One of the guys that were also a drug dealer introduced me to alcohol. He said, hey man, you can't buy it, but you can drink it. And he handed me alcohol, and I started drinking. And at the age of 13, I became addicted to alcohol. Another guy walked up to me and handed me a joint of marijuana. And he said, I know you're only 13, but here, hit this. And I grabbed it and I started smoking that joint. And then sometime later, I'm hanging out with these guys and we're having a party, and a group of guys are snorting powder cocaine. And I walked over and watched them for a while, and one of the guys walked over to me at the age of 13. and handed me powder cocaine and said, sniff this. And I sniffed it. And at the age of 13, I'm addicted to alcohol, addicted to marijuana, and addicted to powder cocaine. And from that point on, my life fastly began to encounter a downward spiral. It wouldn't be long after I'm standing up on the corner and a police officer come up And he see me standing there drinking a beer at the age of 13. I was so naive, I didn't even realize that it was illegal for me to have an open can of beer in front of the police officer. While he's walking toward me, I'm turning the can up, drinking like I got a cup full of Kool-Aid. He grabbed me, put my arms behind my back, handcuffs on me, hauled me off to the juvenile detention center. When I got there, I called my mom. My mom came and got me out. I went right back to the streets. Sometime later, I got arrested again. Mom got me out. I went right back to the streets. Sometime later, I got arrested and went back to the juvie, came back to the street. A few years would pass. Now I'm 17. I got arrested. I'm 17. and taken to the adult county jail. A couple of years would pass. I got arrested again, arrested again, arrested again, arrested again, arrested again. Then the judge says, I'm sentencing you to the state penitentiary. And he sent me to prison. I went to prison, I got out, continued to do it wrong. A year later, I got sent right back to prison. Went to prison the second time and got out. 10 months later, I got sent right back to prison. I would be arrested 19 different times and sent to prison 3 different times. But ladies and gentlemen, something happened in my life on that 19th time. Something happened in my life on that last time in prison. There was an older Caucasian gentleman who saw how young and how lost I was And he decided to take me under his wing and be like a father to me. His name was Billy. Billy had did like 30 years in prison and was never going home. Billy had accumulated his own personal library, but Billy had no family on the outside to support him. And so Billy made a decision or an agreement with me that if I would give him my commissary money, So that he can buy cigarettes and coffee, then I can buy his library. And that meant a lot to me because I had dropped out of school in the 9th grade as a straight-A student, and I felt like I needed to educate myself and begin to take my life serious. I made a deal with Billy to buy all of his books. I bought from Billy an almanac. What's an almanac? I bought from Billy an encyclopedia. I bought from Billy a dictionary. I bought from Billy Bibles, self-help programs that were in books that were being sent into prison by outside organizations. I bought commentaries and everything that Billy had, I bought. And I would go to my dorm, my little room, and I would sit down and spread all my books out on my box. And for 10 hours, 12 hours a day for years, I would read, I would study, I would learn, I would memorize. And I became self-educated in prison. And I made a decision, ladies and gentlemen, while in prison on that night, on that third time in prison, 19th time being arrested, that I have something special. That I have greatness in my life, that I will not live and die a drug dealer. I will not live and die as a criminal. I will not live and die as a young man who has a mistaken identity. I will not live and die as a lawless, ruthless young man with no purpose in life. I made a decision to change. I made a decision to look interpersonally and to look internally and discover what my potential is. what my gifts and my creativity is. And from that moment on, my life began to change. And on November 30th, 1995, I was released from prison. And when I walked out of the prison, down on my knees I went. I bowed and I kissed the pavement, and I made a promise to myself. What was that promise? That I'm never coming back to prison again as an inmate. I'm never coming back as somebody who is incarcerated. But if I ever come back, I'm coming back to help those who are incarcerated to get free in their mind, to get free in their thinking, so that they too can discover the life that I discovered on the inside. November 30th of this— of '25 will be 30 years. November 30th of 2025 will be 30 years that I've been out of prison. And if nobody else celebrates my breakthrough, I celebrate my breakthrough all by myself. Now
