Transformation And The Power Of A Goal, With Andre Norman.

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You're listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser. This is your seat at the table. Hey, guys, this is Darren Clark, the producer of the show. To end the year, we are re airing a couple of our favorite timeless episodes. Today we're featuring a conversation roland had in 2019 with Andre Norman. From maximum security prison to speaking at the White House, he's as qualified as anyone to to talk about transformation. So as you're setting your goals and looking ahead, consider Andre's inspiring story. So happy New Year, guys, and thanks for all your support in 2020 and stay safe out there.

Hey, everybody, Roland Frazier here with Business Lunch.

Welcome to the show and welcome my guest, Andre Norman. Andre, thank you for being on the show.

My pleasure, brother.

It's great to have you here. So you have a pretty cool story and can we just summarize that a little bit? And I know you just did a keynote, so I don't want you to have to do the whole keynote kind of thing, but just can you tell people a little bit about who you are, where you came from and what you're doing now? And then we'll go into the rest of it.

The summarized version of my life. Grew up in the inner city of Boston. Mom went through domestic violence, kicked dad out, went through the busing crisis of Boston. I used to get stoned on buses, throwing rocks at names. Came through that. Realized middle school didn't do well, didn't fit in, drifted to the streets. I'm the classic single mom, six kids. I'm the one who fell through the cracks. I wind up getting in trouble and I wind up in court. I get sentenced to a bunch of time and sent to a maximum security penitentiary at 18. I get there, I'm super nervous and gang recruits me. And they said, I think it's best that you be with us. It was either kind of be with the gang or. Or be on my own. And being on your own in the Maximus security penitentiary at 18 isn't a good idea if anybody should ever find themselves there. And I hung out with the gang for six years and I raised my status in the gang. I became the third ranking gang member in the state through attrition and a lot of work. And I thought I was winning. I thought I had achieved my dream of being one of the top gang leaders in the state. And I realized I was the king of nowhere. I had an epiphany. I turned my life around. I wanted to go to home and be successful. So I picked a school called Harvard University as my destination. You always need a destination point. Taught myself to read, got my ged, went to counseling. Because I had a slight anger management problem. I just kept working every day, taught myself to law, reversed the case on appeal. It took eight years of working 20 hours a day to get myself out of prison. And I got out in 1999, roughly 19 and a half years ago. I've worked at Harvard Law School. I've worked at the White House. I worked at London Business School. I've worked with ypo, I worked with eo, I worked with Genius Network. I'm now here at War Room. I've worked with COO Alliance. I've worked with so many companies I can't keep track of because I made up my mind to be successful and I wasn't going to stop.

That's pretty awesome.

That's a pretty great story. That's the abbreviated version.

So let's go back because I want to look at a little bit of the mental toughness thing. So when you were faced with the decision going in, what would you say your attitude was at the time that you went in? You're 18 years old, you've gone through the judicial process, which is no fun thing, thing to do, and now you're kind of in a place that I assume you don't really know much about. Right.

I knew 100% or nothing about maximum security prison. It's not something you can read in a book or see on tv.

Right.

You know it when you get there. And when I got there, the thing that I knew was I was scared to death and I knew nothing. Right.

And so was it put to you kind of like an ultimatum, Join us or.

Oh, the gang part.

Yeah.

No, I mean, they didn't give me like the ultimate ultimatum. They gave me an option, actually. I went down to the caseworker's office and she gave me a handbook about all the classes I could take. The college classes, the high school classes, the H vac, the plumbing, the welding and calling, every. All the stuff that I could do while I was in jail. And I was excited. I called my mom and said, mom, I can do all this wonderful stuff while I'm in jail and make myself better. Then the gang came to me and said, andre, you're from our neighborhood and we love you. You got two choices. You can go with that lady said in that handbook. And then he pointed out the Aryan gang. He said, see those guys over there? They want to kill you because you're black. And when they come running in yourself with knives, you think that caseworker is going to come help you point out the Latino gang. They said they want to kill you because you're black. And when they come running in your cell with knives, is that lady from the unit team going to help you? Then they show any other black gang. They say, those guys want to kill you because you're black and you're from the other side of town. When they come running in your cell, is that lady going to come help?

And you're like, they got it.

They said, you got a choice. You can go with that lady in that handbook, or you can come with us. We'll protect you from them. I don't know what she's going to do, Right? And it was a real simple choice. Get stabbed by three different groups multiple times or join a gang.

And you chose join the gang?

I chose join the gang, yes.

That's why you're here.

So door one.

Door number one, please. So you went through and rose up to be number three in the gang and felt like you were winning until you felt that you weren't.

I felt that I was winning because in America, as a black man, you gauge yourself by being tough. And the tough guys where I come from don't go to church, they don't go to work. They don't go to any place. They go to prison. They go to the street, and they go to prison. The toughest black men that I know are all in prison. And when I went to prison, that's why I measured myself against. These are the toughest guys in the state. And I wanted to know, where do I measure up? Am I tough like them? And they're from all over the place, and I wanted to measure myself against them. So I was doing the fighting and the stabbing and all the wonderful stuff you do in prison and earning my mythical pound for pound champion status, or pound for pound best. And I got to be number three in the state for being, hey, that guy's really, really, really tough.

Right?

And I thought I was winning. I got respect. I got to sell drugs. I got to extort people. I mean, all the stuff that comes with being one of the toughest guys, the fringe benefits.

So what happened that caused you to sud decide you wanted to do something different?

I was actually in segregation or solitary confinement for trying to kill eight people. And while I was in there, I'm just laying back laughing like, hey, this is what I do. I had an opportunity. A situation arose where some friends of mine had gotten stabbed, and my response was, retaliate against their friends. And before I could do it, God spoke to me. And God said, andre, don't do this life choice. And I got mad that God spoke to me because I'm not a religious guy, and I actually don't like church people. I literally used to beat up church people. If you came within 50ft of me with a cross on, saying hallelujah or quoting any scripture, you most likely would get beaten. Because I had a lot of problems with what church people did to my mom when I was a kid. It was not a good experience for me. Maybe she thought it was fun or whatever, but I really did not like the relationships that happened between her and people at the church. I'll leave it there. And I was too small to intervene at the time. When I finally realized what was going on, I wasn't big enough to go hurt those people.

Right?

You know what I'm saying? So now that I'm big enough, I always had this thing about not liking church people because of the situation with my mom. So when they came around me in jail, all the years of not being able to defend her or defend my anger would come out of me. And that's why I didn't like them. So when God spoke to me, I got mad. I said, you need to go see your people. Because all of my life, you've not been there. My mother used to get beat up, you never showed up. When they threw rocks and names at me, you didn't show up. When my father walked up, you didn't show up. My sister became an addict and a prostitute, you didn't show up. When I was poor and had to eat free lunch every day, you didn't show up. And I just went down the list. My mom was dating people in the church, and they were married, and the whole. We were little bastard kids, you didn't show up. All the shame and embarrassment I went through my life, you didn't show up. I don't need you now.

Right?

I run this place. And when I commit this act of violence, I will be the number one guy in this whole entire system. I would went from the last to the first without you, right? And he said it again, don't do this. Life choice. We argued, he won. And if anybody ever tell you to argue with God, that's fine. But if they tell you they won the argument, that's a problem. Because they're crazy.

Didn't work out.

No, no. If they won the argument, they. They're on heavy medication, right? So I go back to my cell. I said, if I Can't be a psychopath, why be in jail? First thing I did is I looked around, I said, well, I want to be free, because if I can't be crazy, why be in jail? But I looked at the whites, the blacks, the Spanish, the church guys, the Muslims, the kitchen workers, the basketball players, the chess players. Every group all went home and came back. So I said, free doesn't work for anybody. So I switched my goal to successful. I said, successful people don't come here.

That's an important distinction.

I'll become successful and I won't have to come back. And I said, I go to Harvard, I'll be successful. And that became my focus. And everybody around me, my friends, the gang, my mom, my dad, all thought I was crazy. How do I go from being an illiterate gang member, locked in a basement selling drugs in jail, to wanting to go to Harvard University? But I believed it. They didn't. And they all tried to talk me out of it for their own reasons. But I wouldn't shake this time. I said, no, this is something that I want to do and I'm going to stick to it. And I kind of distanced myself from the gang. You don't really quit the gang. I distanced myself from the gang. I stopped with the day to day operations and I started going to school every day, I started going to programs every day. I spent my time doing constructive, positive things to build me and to build the person that I needed to be to get into Harvard. Because the person that I was when I had the thought would not be accepted. I needed to build that person. And that's what I began to do. And over the next eight years, I built that person.

That's pretty impressive. And how did you. Because I know that when you have a Release, so you're 1999 now and you're out, you are free, but maybe not yet successful. Correct. So there's no guarantee that you will be able to stay that way. The system is kind of built to get you back in. It's looking to trip you up. It's waiting and watching to see what you do wrong. What was the step once you got out and what were you thinking?

The first thing I had to do was understand the system that I was fighting against. The system is designed to, A, put me in jail, B, drive me crazy in jail, then C, if I managed to get out, put me back in jail. So I can be mad at the system or I can learn to understand the system and what are the mechanisms and the triggers that they use to do the things that they do. So you give us bad schools, you give us no recreational. You can list all the things that don't happen in the inner city that contribute or give the opportunity for someone to go the wrong way. It doesn't mandate it, but it gives the opportunity. And so I took all the escape routes that they gave me, all the triggers and trapdoors they gave me as a young kid, I took them. When I got in prison, there was school, there was ged, they were plumbing. The first week I was there, I just didn't access it until year six. It was there, but there was a lot of things in between it that I couldn't get past. So they gave me all the. I took the tricks and the trapdoors in the first six years. Then when I finally got on track, now I'm coming home, I'm saying, what are the tricks and the trapdoors coming out of the prison doors? And I saw them, I recognized them, and I moved around them. So most guys coming home from prison will get a job because you need to have money, or they'll go back to their family.

Right.

I love my mother. I am my mother reborn. But I will tell you this. No disrespect to my mom. Andre and mom in the same house for 18 years equaled prison. So I'm not gonna do 14 years in prison and go back to the same equation and expect a different result. So I went to a program that I would go visit my mother, but I wouldn't live with her. I'm not saying it was her fault, but us two together equated to prison. So I didn't want to have that same result and not blame her twice.

That's a pretty significant observation. So there were a few things that you said. One was the trap doors and things like that that you took them, then you saw, and they're there, and you kind of figure out a way around them. And how does that translate into now? When you're talking to folks about business, about their kids, about all the things that you do, what are the applications of what you learned in that to what you do now?

Well, the first thing I learned in prison, well, I came from a world that's called get it right or die. So when I'm faced with a decision, I'm faced with an assessment. I'm faced with an interview. I'm faced with any dilemma in prison. If I don't get it right, I. I'm subject to die.

Right?

So I meet a new gang Member, I want to recruit him. If this guy turns out to be weak and he doesn't hold his ground and hold his job, I'm going to get killed. If I bring somebody in and he turns out to be a government witness and a snitch, I'm going to get more time.

Right.

If I bring somebody in and they can't do what they say they're going to do, I don't train them to do what they say they're going to do. I'm subject to die. So my training, my intuition, my intelligence has to be at an all time high because the first time I get it wrong, I'm subject to die. So I took training people extremely serious because my life depended on it.

That's awesome.

Yeah. And I'm training people who are illiterate, who are drug addicts, who are emotionally disturbed, who are frustrated, who have all these issues. But I have to train them and teach them to stay focused, attentive and responsive to what I need them to do and consistent.

How do you do that?

I used to do it through emotional wellness. I would sit with somebody and I'd find out their inner pain. Everybody has inner pain. And if you can identify that inner pain in somebody and help heal it, it creates a bond between you and them. And once that bond is created, they will run through a brick wall. Let's just hypothetically say you were an unwanted kid and you were dropped off in a shelter and your parents just walked off. You would have issues with abandonment. You have issues with your parents not being there, issues with being unwanted. I would find that from you, counsel you, and coach you in that. Take that pain out of your life. So for the first time in your 39 years, you don't have that pain. It's freedom. You feel so much better about your life and possibilities and things you can do because there's no grief, no trauma. And you would do anything in the world to not get that back. But I hold it so you would do anything for me. If I'm in your presence on another building, on another planet. Cause you psychologically perceive that Andre's holding your pain and there's nothing you wouldn't do for me.

Do you apply that in any way in business as well?

Yes, when I go into businesses now, I walk into a room, there's 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 people who work for you. I need to find the weakest link. I need to find the arrogant person. I need to find a person who's not gonna follow policy. I need to find a Person who really believes in you. I need to follow a person who has that skill set but is not getting a chance because he might have started later than somebody else. And I look at all the people who is the best for what. I don't care when you started. I'm saying when Michael Jordan came to the Bulls, it didn't matter that he just started. He went to the front of the line because his talent was obvious. So it's the same scenario, but it's not his obvious talent. You have to go in and find the talent and sometimes develop it.

You mentioned if you brought the wrong person into the gang and he was weak, then you were subject to die. And then you just mentioned finding the weakest link. How do you spot that?

It's personality traits. I have a thing that I understand to be called projected weakness and projected strength. Everybody omits something, as they call it, your energy, your vibe and all the rest of that stuff. You've seen people when they have a vibe of intelligence. You've met a nerd, like a really, really, really, really big nerd. You're like, yo, he's a nerd. How can you tell? You can look at him and tell you what I'm saying. He admits the nerd factor. Nerdiness. There's like the jock guy. You know what I'm saying? He admits that I'm a jock. I play sports. You know what I'm saying? So it's that level of confidence that he can do that. It doesn't mean he can do other things, but he's confident in that he can play sports, and sports is cool. So he's cool. And you can see these things in people that are obvious. The athlete, the president, all these other things. So I can see in people what they project in their range. How far will you go? What is your breaking point? I can just sit and talk to somebody and know where their breaking point is. How much pressure can you handle? When are you going to testify against me?

Right, right, right.

When are you going to call the cops and say, Audrey did it?

Yeah. At what point do you fail and I die?

At what point do you fail and I die? So I've developed a system of doing an assessment on the individual. Their strengths, their weaknesses, projected strength, projected weaknesses. And everybody has them.

I like the projected strengths and weaknesses thing. I hadn't heard that before. That's pretty cool. Is that something that you heard it?

Because I got good at it, and that's why I'm still here.

Nice. Okay, good.

I like it.

So now, once you identify that weak link, obviously in prison, you wouldn't let him into the gang, but in a team, you kind of have them as part of the team. Do you let them go? Do you nurture them? Do you help them get better? How do you deal with it?

Even with inside the prison? I first assess. Is this person trainable? Okay, can this person. I might meet somebody who's physically weak? I put you in a gym long enough, you lift enough weights, you'll get physically strong. I'll see somebody who's mentally weak. I spend enough time coaching and counseling. Can you get mentally strong? I'm saying I'll find somebody who can't withstand pressure. I'll try to put you through some pressure tests and some stress tests to see if you can adapt to that. Neither you can or you can't.

That's cool.

So I don't throw people out initially. I sit with them and find out, okay, I find your weakness. Then we find out what you need to do to improve that. Make your weakness a strength. Nice.

You mentioned that you had a bunch of friends and the relationship with your mother that you spent 18 years with that led to jail. And so that was kind of your board of advisors, if you would, for your youth.

Yes.

Then you got out and you had your friends saying, you can't go to Harvard and then you can't do that. And they were your advisors at the time and not particularly helpful ones as far as getting you to where you wanted to go. And now you have built a really strong board of advisors or a group of advisors. Can you talk a little bit about that and the people you surround yourself and how that helps and what the best way, in your opinion, is to go about doing that?

My initial board of advisors. What? My board of advisors based on proximity, not based on intelligence, not based on gifting, not based on default. Yeah. You just happen to be the closest person to me. Your best friend from elementary school was only your best friend because he's in the next class. He sat in the next seat from you. Or you met somebody who also named Roland. My best friend in the sixth grade was Andre Cameron. Why? Because his name was Andre and he sat in the next seat for me. That was it. There was nothing else we had in common. We fought all the time because we weren't the same. We had no business being near each other. But because we had the same name, we had to be best friends because that's what society said. So it's proximity in which I pick my first set of Advisors. Then when I go to prison again, it's proximity, because it's who's near me. Then when I finally came home from prison, I started picking people who are actually good at the things I need them to be that I was weak at. So I have people who in my life now who are excellent at business, excellent at family. I'll give you this one analogy. I came home, I got married, and I had a son. And I said to a friend of mine, he's a Catholic. Deacon John McMillan. St. Basil was in the. Thorne, love, y'. All. That's where I got baptized. And I said, john, Deacon John, when my son turns 8, I'm gonna give him the beating of his life and let him know that I'm in charge. And John looked at me and said, what are you talking about? I said, yo, it's a black thing. I'm gonna beat the kid. It's hard in America for black boys, and he needs to understand how hard it is. And all this craziness. I was saying, I'm gonna beat him. I'm giving him the Come to Jesus meeting, we used to call it. We downstairs, I'm gonna beat him, and he's gonna have the fear God put in him. And story, story, story. And he's gonna know how world works for black men. Wow. And John looked at me white, Deacon. He said, no, Dre, it doesn't work like that. I said, you don't get it. You're white. Your kids run around the supermarket acting fit, and they throw fits. Y' all just go for it. My mother would never go for that. She beat me right on the spot. It's just something that we do. Trust me. And he said, no, Dre. He said, your biggest weapon against your son is not physical. Your biggest weapon against your son is called disappointment. His world revolves around you, right? He only knows you. There's nothing else he knows beyond you. So if you pull away from him, the distance will crush him. The absence of you will crush him. And he will do anything to get that distance closed. So before you go to this beat him thing, just try and use disappointment. I said, ah, that's some white people stuff. And we went back and forth, and he said, no, Dre. He said, I love you. He said. We went around and around, said, okay, I'm gonna try it. And my son got a little bit older. I tried the disappointment thing. I'm like. I would get mad and just, like, shut my emotions off from him, and he would go into a complete fit. He wouldn't Know what to do, which way to go. He was lost. And until I accepted him back, he was at a loss. And I realized that John told me, right, that disappointment was the greatest weapon against my son or the greatest tool to use to get him to behave. But I had been trained and taught that physical violence against your child works.

Right.

And the thing that I didn't understand, that John explained to me later, is that that's a slave concept. And it was something that was done to slaves. You beat them to show them who's in charge. You beat them to show them who's in command. You beat them to win their trust and loyalty, and you beat them so they don't go against you. That's exactly what happened on every slave plantation in the world. It wasn't just an American slave thing. That's just a process that you do to control your slaves. And he said, you're trying to use that process now. It didn't work then and it's not going to work now. Now the disappointment thing wasn't going to work on the slave plantation, but the physical violence did. Since you're not on the plantation and this is actually a child and it's your family, you don't have to resort to those tactics.

Right.

He said emotions matter. And my son has had a tremendously different life because a old white guy from Boston, Massachusetts, that guy a letter. I see him all the time. He's still in my life. Son should send that guy. My son should send him a letter.

Thank you for saving.

Yeah. Because in my mind, I'm going to do what hasn't worked for me or anybody else in my family or anybody else in the world. Right. We're going to beat our kid into submission.

Right.

And but because I had advisors who knew better, they taught me better.

That's pretty great. Certainly great for his life. Right.

My son is doing it. Fabulous.

So now you help people who are troubled. You run a prison?

I run a Maximus security prison, Wing Wing in South Carolina. Okay.

And in addition to that, you have a career speaking and helping people and doing consulting and all kinds of other cool stuff.

My primary job is speaking. I go, I get on stages. I give a wonderful story of how I transform my life. And you can transform your family or transform your business or transform an agency or whatever you want to transform from A to Z. If I can go from the basement of a prison with a hundred year sentence to the White House, what can you do? And I can show you how I did it, and I can show you how you can do it. I can show you how to understand your kids, understand your employees, understand yourself. Relationships is what I understand. How to make them, break them, stretch them, all of that. And I've been traveling around the world for 19 years doing that. And I was at a conference a year ago in Minnesota, and a lady came into my conference. It was a criminal justice conference. And I was talking about my life and the gang and changing my life and working at Harvard and London Business School and how I used to be a really, really bad guy. And I changed it. And she came in after it was over, and she said, Mr. Norman? I said, yes. She said, can you do that for real? And other people. I said, what are you talking about? She said, I have a prison system where people are killing each other. We just had a riot where seven people were killed and an additional 17 were wounded. It is completely out of control. Can you come to South Carolina and help these people be and do better? And I was like, lady, my schedule's full. I got all these events. I got places to go. It's on my vacation time coming up. I looked at my calendar and I'm like, I'm booked through, like, November. There's only one Andre. Like, you can find another astronaut. You can find a lawyer or sports guy. There's only one guy who went from the basement to prison to the White House. So my calendar's book lady. And she said, what's your commitment?

That was dirty.

No, it was real. And she's like, what's your commitment to the people? And I always say that I'm committed. I say that I give back. It's easy to write a check, you know what I'm saying? Or to show up to a function and sit in the back and eat a plate of food. So I canceled my vacation. And two weeks after the day I met her, I was in South Carolina. And I went through their system. It had been locked down for 24 hours a day for five months. That means everybody stayed in their cell 24 hours a day for a five month period. And I went in, we opened the doors. I talked to 8,000 prisoners at 10 prisons in six days. Not one fight, not one argument. And they all said, we're with that guy. Whatever he says, we'll do. Then we had a discussion, and they said, can you come set up a program? So they gave me a unit that holds 92 people, and we're transferring in all the leaders, not just gang members, but the leaders from different factions and different elements of the prison. The toughest guys to one unit. And I've been managing that unit for the last two and a half months.

So that just started recently?

It just started. I mean, I used to travel all the time, a lot, so I've cut out probably a third of my travel. And when I finish this podcast, I'm like, almost ready to pack my bags and fly back to South Carolina today because I have to beat at 8 o' clock tomorrow morning because the relationship that's gonna guide these 92 men to where they need to go is kind of centered on me because I'm the story.

What have you identified in this process of transforming other people and transforming yourselves as kind of the keys? Do you have a framework for transformation?

We have a framework for transformation. The first framework is you always do an assessment, okay? Don't guess, assess. If you don't do an assessment, you're guessing, okay? And if you're guessing, you're probably gonna guess wrong. So do your assessment, first of whether the situation or the individual is. Secondly, you have to listen. Don't talk. Reflective, listening to the point of, I need to hear your pain, I need to hear your story. I need to hear how you see it. I need to hear how you feel it. I'm not interjecting, I'm not saying right or wrong. I just need to listen. The ability to listen is huge because most people aren't listen to. And then the more information you have, the better off you are. I got a saying. If you're talking, you're teaching. If you're listening, you're learning. So after the assessment, I want to listen as much as possible because I need to learn. And third, you develop a plan of action and then you go with it. So I designed a program for this specific agency in this specific situation, and it was probably 30 days in, I realized I designed the wrong program. Well, not the wrong one, but I could have designed a better one.

How did you come to realize that.

The program was designed like a million other programs? You come to the program, you sit down for six months, we teach you all this wonderful stuff. I got the world's best teachers that are going to beam in and do trainings. But after six months of sitting here, I give you a certificate and you go on and you say, okay, I did Andre's program and I'm better. Prove it. Prove you're better. How do I prove that you learned anything right? How do I prove that you learned anything right? Because you sat here for six months and didn't cause a problem. That's not proof. So I switched the program up. I said, no, Andre, you could have done it better. So we took the sit in the classroom for six months out.

Was it just. You looked at it and you said, okay, I get it. I can do better. Or were you thinking. Did you talk to somebody? Did you not see the results you wanted to see? Was there any.

The results from the men were phenomenal. They were bought in. They were going. They were there. But I. I'm a jailhouse lawyer, and I'm the type of guy that you would hate to be in an argument when. Because I'm going to win. And if I was arguing against myself in this instance, I would say, prove that they learned anything.

Yeah. So you were doing that assessment.

Kind of every night, I go home and I review my day.

Okay.

And I said to myself, andre, prove that they learned something. Not prove that you taught them. Prove that they learned it. And I couldn't. And I said, well, if anybody ever says to you, prove that they learn anything, you're stuck. I look at every variable that I can be shut down and. Or killed on. Get it right or die. So in this scenario, if I just overlooked that and we were in a prison scenario, that would be my death, because I couldn't prove it. So I needed to be able to prove that they were learning something. So we took away the sit still and just listen. So every classes are the same. Teachers are the same. Instructors are the same. But the difference is every participant now has to create a document on what they learned. We call them tangibles. I need a tangible thing that I can put in my hand. You heard this story or heard this training about financial literacy. Design me a financial literacy course. You heard this thing about forgiveness. Write me a forgiveness paper, and I take those papers, and I turn them into tangible trainings. So we have trainings on de escalation. We have trainings on how to talk to your kid. We have trainings on how to not do drugs. We have 92 minds that have been through extreme issues that know it. So now they're creating trainings and helpful materials. We call them tangibles that I. Can you say, dre, prove that he learned something. I can pull out his four tangibles and hand them to you. They're not just papers. They're how tos. Right.

Interesting. So when these people move through the system and you haven't had anybody yet, I'm assuming, because it's so new, how do you help support them so that the learnings that they're taking away because they've learned it, but it's hard to turn a learning into a habit. How can you help support them once they're through that?

The best way I can make this stick or stay is I teach you to teach it if you just learn it with no application. And I don't know if you can actually use the Mysterio or the skill set. So the program, the original program, which is still the original program, was designed where they would actually become teachers.

Okay.

Or they become mentors themselves.

Right.

So now they're going to become mentors. They can become teachers, but they're going to be teaching from their own curriculum. So the tangibles are their curriculums and they're still going to be the teachers. So I just had that. They were going to teach my stuff, right? Now I got them teaching their own stuff. And we just. We're making a deal. There's federal prison, state prison, county prison. We're a state prison. We just met with the sheriff of a county prison about 20 minutes away. And you've seen Scared Straight where they take kids from high school, they bring them up and people yell at them and they don't come to jail. Who is the most likely person to commit a crime that takes them to state prison? It's not a high school kid, it's not a middle school kid. It's somebody in county jail. Interesting, because they've already committed a crime and they already committed a low level offense. Maybe they stole a wallet, they broke in a store or something. But they're in jail now. That person, I would say, is the most likely to commit a crime that takes them to state prison. So we just made a deal with the sheriff of the county, 20 minutes away, where he's gonna try to bring his guys from the county jail to the state jail. We're gonna do a variation of Scared Straight, even though we don't yell with them. Interesting, because high school kids will and do talk to them. Middle school kids, same thing. But these county jail guys are the most likely to end up in state prison of the whole group.

So you're kind of interrupting the funnel of criminality. Right. They're at the entry point and you don't want them to ascend. It's the opposite of what you want in a funnel.

There's no program in a country where they take people from a county jail to the state jail and do interventions. It doesn't exist. So I try to look at things that don't exist and make them exist. And we have what we call a no entry Program where we go out to work with kids and families before they get in trouble and say, we don't want you. We don't want to work with you at the prison to make you better. Let us work with you before you get in trouble and make you better.

Right.

So we have a reentry program and we have a no entry program.

That's great. What are you doing in your business now? So you've cut your speaking schedule back by a third, I think you said, or two thirds.

About a third. Third to half.

Okay. And. And you're focusing on this, which is. Which is an amazing thing. How are you moving your business forward now?

War Room is wonderful for that because I'm looking as I'm here at becoming digital. If I can become digital, it makes my life easier, and if I can become digital, it makes my life more profitable. Because I don't have to be in these places.

Right.

So I can go on a stage, give a message at a conference, record that message, make it digital, make it into whatever program or platform and repurpose it from a digital platform. And I don't physically have to be there.

Right.

And you're the master of that. So this is like above and beyond a great place to be. So I'm happy to be here to be helpful to your members, But I'm also learning because War Room has tons of stuff to teach.

Fantastic. That's really cool. And on the program side, is that something that can roll out to other prisons? Are we kind of in a pilot program now?

We're in a pilot stage where you hear about programs for the drug offenders, program for the non violent. This is a program for the most violent. Because every state, if you know it or not, has a maximum security lockdown with hundreds of people who are violent offenders who are locked in these units, and 95% of them are coming home. So if your man comes to prison and he's stabbing everybody every other day and you finally stick him in a cage at the end of the hall and you just leave him for the next 10 years, then you're gonna release him to society, what do you think is gonna happen?

Yeah, pretty low chance of.

There's really low chance. I'm not worried about him coming back, but who's gonna have to kill to come back? So I say to the director and I say to the other folks who think, oh, you shouldn't help these people. They don't deserve it. Let's go get the grandmother of the young man who's going to be killed. Let's sit her at this table and let her ask us. You had that man in custody for 12 years. You kept him locked in a cage like an animal for 12 years. He came home and he killed my grandson in two months.

Right.

Did you make any attempts to make him better? And the answer right now, across the country is no.

The answer is the opposite. Right.

We did not. We made them worse.

Yeah, exactly.

So I want to be able to sit down with this grandmother and say, lady, we did everything we could to make that man or that woman better, to make him safer, to make him ready for society. Now, you can't fix or change everybody, but we gave it our best shot. And right now we're not giving it our best shot. We have thousands of men and women locked in solitary confinement because they did things inside. They earned their way into that space. I'm not disputing that. But what are we going to do as the intelligent ones? And we can look forward and say, we have 2,000 grandmothers. They're going to be sitting here asking the same question, did you try to make that man or woman better?

Right.

And right now the answer is a resounding no. And I want to make it a resounding yes.

That's really great. And if you roll a program like that out, is there a way to make it helpful to the world and also profitable to you?

Helpful to the world and profitable. I don't know if this particular program can become profitable in the sense of it'll make money, it'll save lives. It'll save lives. And I'm training these men right now because I do a lot of intervention work on addiction, opioid addiction. And right now, the biggest opioid problems in the white community and what I've done, I've been called in to many different cities and I've done my assessment. And what I've come to find out is suburban cities are not built for recovery. You don't have drop in churches, you don't have drop in centers, you don't have rehab centers, you don't have police who've been trained to deal with people who've dealt with drugs for the multiple years. Your school's unequipped, your church is unequipped, your hospital's unequipped, your police aren't equipped, your parents aren't equipped, the librarians aren't equipped. Nobody deals with drugs in the suburbs. It's just no place to go. You ship the kid off to Utah, Wyoming, send them to a program, they come back, you tell Them that you went to visit Arnie. Don't tell nobody. Now let's look at the other side. Any urban setting in this country, there's tons of people who've been addicts. There's tons of aana drop incentives, churches who've dealt with this, police who've dealt with this, teachers who've dealt with this. We've gone through the crack era, the heroin era twice, and the meth era. So we have countless people who have extreme insights on how to deal with addiction. They live in the hood, as we call it, while in the suburbs, you have none of this. There's nobody who knows. So you're a mom in the suburbs right now with your head cut off, trying to save your kid. You don't know who to call because you don't wanna be embarrassed, you don't wanna be ashamed. And there's no one really to call in the hood. Everybody's cousin, uncle mom. There's somebody that knows somebody who's been affected by this disease. So I'm taking the inner city to the suburbs with the solution for the suburban opioid crisis is the hood lies in the hood. Yeah, that's pretty good, because that's where the solution is. They have the most experience in dealing with this. Every grandmother, every cop, every school teacher in the inner city setting has dealt with drug addiction and drug addiction and drug addiction.

Right.

And they've seen all forming facets from mom high, sister high, grandma high, brother high, dad high. They've seen it all and they know how to deal with it. Suburban teachers don't have a clue about this stuff. If they do, it's just by accident. So I'm bringing and training these guys in this prison to go into suburbia and save rich white kids. Yeah, interesting, because who else am I going to send, Right.

If somebody wants to get a hold of you and find out more, to have you speak, which they absolutely should. You got a standing ovation from our group earlier when you spoke. And what is the best way to get ahold of you?

I was told you have to tell me if I'm right. Was that the first ever standing ovation in War Room?

I was trying to think. We had a standing ovation. There's only been two others. And one was Sarah Blakely, who spoke to the women who founded Spanx. She just absolutely touched everybody. And the other was Ken Cragan, who I think you know, who shared his how to create transformational movements. So you're in pretty dag on good company. And Alex out of Eight years. That's pretty dag on good.

I take that.

Yeah.

People just kept telling me, yo, Dre, this is a different crowd. This is a different crowd. I said, okay. I said, I'm just going to go do me. I'm saying, so if you wanted to find Andre Norman and contact me, the easiest way to do it is go to Andre Norman dot com.

Okay.

A N-D R E A N D R E N O R M A n dot com.

Okay.

And there's an email link on there. I might have an email capture on there.

Are you on social media or any of this?

On social media? I have Facebook, which is Andre Norman. Then I have Instagram, which is Andre Norman. I have LinkedIn, which is Andre Norman. Nice.

You're Andre Norman on all the socials.

I got them so long ago, I didn't even use them. I didn't know anything about them.

You were smart to get them.

The easiest way to get me, though, is just send me an email from my website. That is the guaranteed way to reach me. If you join my email list or you send me something on social media, the world lives on Facebook, not me.

Right? What is the biggest thing you think people could do to help the people that you're helping?

The biggest thing you can help the people that I'm helping is show up. Show up.

What does that mean?

I currently have a prison system. Men and women. I work at one specific prison, but I work at all 21 facilities in the state. I designed a program at one we had last month. A lot of women hurt themselves at another facility. I'm not contracted there, but I don't like to see people hurt themselves. So we put together a team. We go to that facility. We do suicide prevention talks. Our program is behind the wall. It's in the communities. It's in the boys clubs, it's in the alternative schools. But if somebody wanted to make a difference and they're sitting home, cool, you can write a check. It'll be helpful. We'll buy some supplies or we'll pay for something. We'll use that to hire another trainer or speaker or get another tool. That's always a good thing. But the most important thing is your presence. You possess something special. You're one of 6 billion people that nothing or nobody else has. And if it's just, hey, you know how to raise your kids? Hey, you know how to pay your taxes? Hey, you have a specific skill set. Hey, you ran a plumbing company for 20 years. Hey, you were a college dad. Hey, whatever you Just cared about. I was talking to somebody last night, Tucker, Max, and he was speaking about loving his kid and his kid feeling loved by him. And he understood the differential that he says, I wanted my kid to not just be loved, but to feel loved. And he's one of the greatest writers on the planet. Cool. I would want him to come. And he's coming. When Tucker comes, he'll do the book thing. I say, tucker, explain to them the difference between loving your kid and your kid feeling loved by you. That's gonna be my greatest takeaway, that I want him to leave, because that's something that they need. And the small things matter. It's not always the big things. So if you care and you have time, we would love for you to come to South Carolina and come into the prison. We have a men prison. We have a female prison. They need to see people and have a conversation with a real person.

Right.

Doesn't matter what you look like, what you believe in. If you believe in people, we want you.

That's great. And is there anything that I didn't ask you that you would like to share or that you wish that I'd ask you?

How can I help you? Because I know you interview a hundred people 100 times, and, like, you're rolling Frazier. You're special. I mean, people know you as Roland Frazier, and that's a cool thing. And you help people for a living. I get that. I do the same thing at a different level. And very rarely, legitimately and honestly, does somebody say, how can I help you? You did that for me, I'm saying, and your team has done that for me. So I want to legitimately, right here, say for you, everything else aside, what can Andre do for Roland Frazier?

The answer to that is something that's. That's kind of near and dear to my heart, which is having gone through the system and experienced the challenges, with all of the advantages of coming out, the help that you can give to these people that they won't get, that the system fights against is the best thing that you could do for me, because just keep going. Feel good. Yeah, man. That's. That's the thing. Because I, like, with every advantage coming out, the people that I saw, you know, they're coming out of white collar prison and they're coming back. Even like, I was there five months, and I watched people get out and come back during that period of time that quick. And it's because the system is designed. I don't think that they said, you know, how can we get People back. I really don't. I just think that a lack of understanding and a lack of analysis and a lack of attention and a lack of resources all contribute to. Well, that's just how we do it. And there's nobody that gets elected saying, let's not be tough on crime.

That's the. No, let's let them all out.

Right. So I think that's an important thing to think about. So that's it, man. Just keep doing what you're doing.

So I'll tell you what I'll do. We're gonna set up some kind of social media. Cause you're the digital guy, you can help me set up. Cause I do this stuff. I don't really put it up on anything. So what I want to do to make sense for you, myself, and other people who want to know, because I just go work, work, work, work, work, is create some kind of platform where people can see the work.

Sure.

So you don't have to. Is this real? And he really do that? Because people often see me like, he's never been to prison.

Yeah.

Or they'll meet me like he's never worked at Harvard or he's never been to London business school. People who know me from my old life can't believe me in this life.

Yeah, sure.

People who know me in this life have a hard time visioning me walking down a hallway in a prison with a knife in my hand.

Because you are a different person now.

I'm a different person. So we'll do some kind of social electronic thing where people can see the work.

We'll figure that out.

We'll figure that out.

Awesome. Thank you so much for being here.

I appreciate you, bro.

Appreciate it.

You've been listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser. If you're enjoying the show, let us know by subscribing and leaving a review. And for more information, go to businesslunchpodcast.com thank you for listening.

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