Michael Santos – Why Prison Should Be Like America (466)

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Episode transcript below:

00:00 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Hi everyone. Mike Malatesta here and welcome back to the how it Happened podcast. On this podcast, I dig in deep with every guest to explore the roots of their success, to discover not just how it happened but why it matters. My mission is to find and share stories that inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you.

00:19 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
On today’s show, I have the honor of talking with Michael Santos. Michael takes us on his journey from working in his father’s construction business, which he hated, to becoming a drug trafficker, and how that led him to spending 26 years in federal prison, during which time he got his bachelor’s degree and his master’s degree, became an author, made a million dollars trading stocks, got married and became a major success. We also talk about why life is not lived in the shallow water.

00:49 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I was in prison for 26 years. I was as ready to come home after eight years as I ever would be. At eight years I was 32 years old. I had a master’s degree.

00:59
I was an author and I was as ready as I could ever be ever. But I had to do another 18 more years. At a cost of what? 35 grand a year. And all that money for what? There comes a time where you have to figure out are we doing the right thing? I became financially successful, but other people don’t, and all that I’m doing is creating this intergenerational cycle of failure.

01:22 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
This episode is sponsored by the Dream Exit. The Dream Exit is a private, bespoke program for successful entrepreneurs with annual revenue between $5 million and $100 million who realize that they have one chance to get their Dream Exit right and that the odds of realizing that dream by themselves, all alone or at the last minute are stacked against them. In less than 90 days, we teach you how to design, build and execute a customized Dream Exit playbook that gets your business ready for sale at its maximum value and gets you ready to maximize your meaning and purpose in your post-exit life, even if today you are not ready to sell. You see, dream Exits just don’t happen. They are the result of early, professional and proven planning. So if you’re an entrepreneur with annual sales between $5 million and $100 million and you want to learn how to 10X to 100X your chances of achieving the Dream Exit you deserve, go to dreamexitplaybookcom. Today Michael’s got an amazing story and here it is. Michael, welcome to the how to Happen podcast.

02:36 – Michael Santos (Guest)
Hey, I’m super excited to be here and I’m looking forward to a great conversation.

02:41 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, me too, and this is I love. So the way I connected with Michael. I want you all to know it’s like it’s one of my favorite ways to connect with people. First of all, I heard him tell his story, or part of his story, on Jordan Harbinger’s podcast, which is something I listen to regularly. I suggest that you listen to it as well, jordan. He brings on some really powerful guests and sometimes I click with them and sometimes not, but when I heard Michael tell his story, I was like man, I really got to connect with that guy, so he’s just got something. And so I reached out on LinkedIn and over the course of many, many months we weren’t consistently back and forth, but many months I had the chance to talk to him a little earlier this year and then here he is today and you’re going to understand why I’m so excited once we get into this.

03:34
So let me tell you a little bit more about Michael Santos. Michael is an investor, he’s a speaker. He is a multi-time author I don’t even I tried to count him up on Amazon, michael, but it’s four or five, six books, I don’t know. It’s a lot. We’ll get into that, okay. And he’s an entrepreneur. He creates learning resources to teach strategies and tactics others can use to become more successful.

04:00
He has an unusual but well-documented path from struggle to success. As you’ll see and we’ll talk about, michael made a series of bad decisions during his youth, and those bad decisions led him into the criminal justice system, where he spent 26 years of his life, from 1987 until 2013, in federal prison and during this time as a prisoner, he recalibrated I love that word becoming more mindful of his responsibility to live as a good citizen while creating a disciplined plan with hopes of reconciling with society, which you’ll see he’s done in spades. Today, michael is the director of Earning Freedom Corporation, the founder of prison professors and a real life example of what’s really possible when you point your energy and your mindset in a positive direction. So, michael, I ask everyone the same question to get started, and that is how did it happen for you?

05:04 – Michael Santos (Guest)
Well, it happened. I mean, I’d love to say it happened because I started making bad decisions when I was 23 and went to prison. But the reality, I think, is it happened for me many years before, when I was a kid and started to choose the wrong friends and didn’t listen to my parents and didn’t pay attention in school, as a young man, as an adolescent, and by the time I, because of those decisions, you can kind of, you can look, you can see it better when you introspect and look back and it’s something I learned how to do while I was incarcerated is to look back and say how did I get here, what happened? And I could think of the friends that I chose. I could think of the decisions that I made. I could think of the bad decisions I made and the good decisions and say I’m really not here because I sold a lot of cocaine. I’m here because I was undisciplined and I lacked a purpose and I lacked the right motivation. And because of that, when I saw the movie Scarface it, it spoke to me in a way that was different than perhaps other people. It wasn’t just a movie for entertainment. It was a movie that said, hey, that looks like a great way to go live, and I then began pursuing that path of finding out what is cocaine costing Miami, what does it sell for where I am and how could I put a network together to start capitalizing on that.

06:28
I was 20 years old and that led me to a very long federal prison sentence, and while locked inside of a solitary cell, I’ve already been convicted and I was facing life in prison. An officer gave me a book, a couple of books, and those books changed my life. The first one I don’t remember if it was the first one with Socrates and the Republic, or the first one was Frederick Douglass, his biography, but those books had a profound impact on me and started to help me change the way that I think. So I wouldn’t be thinking about the challenges that I’m facing or where I am, but rather what could I do and in what ways could I use this time to recalibrate, make amends and become better? And that’s really why I’m here is because an officer gave me books while I was locked in a solitary housing unit waiting to get a prison sentence that turned out to be a 45 year sentence.

07:23 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay, so, just so everyone knows, this is the time period between when you were convicted and sentenced. So you’re in, you’re waiting, basically to hear what’s.

07:34 – Michael Santos (Guest)
Yeah, I got arrested on August the 11th 1987. And when I got arrested, the only thing I wanted was to get out of custody and get out of prison. I wasn’t thinking about the, the harm I’d caused or what I had done. I was just telling myself well, there’s no guns, there’s no weapons, there’s no violence, we’re all consenting adults. I didn’t do anything wrong, and so I wanted people to see me a certain way, and I had a lawyer telling me what I wanted to hear rather than what I needed to hear. And a jury saw through that and convicted me. And it was after that conviction, but before I was sentenced, that my life changed. So I’d already been in custody for about a year when that happened, okay.

08:18 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay. So you, you’re living in Seattle. I believe at the time that you saw the movie, you were working for your you’re working for your dad and I think people are probably listening and they’re like okay, so you saw a movie and that was enough of a Patalyst, yeah, yeah To to essentially learn from scratch. You make it sound and it probably is learn from scratch how to find by traffic. You know all these things with cocaine.

08:58 – Michael Santos (Guest)
Well, here, here’s how that happened. Yeah, it was. I was driving down the road, I remember, and I, my dad, had a construction company and I worked there and I and I hated it because I was, I wanted to be with my friends who were all out doing fun things, and I was, you know, digging trenches or driving a backhoe or something, and it, you know, with the wisdom of a 20 year old, wanting what I don’t have instead of being happy with what I do have or building a pathway to what I could create, it’s wanting what I don’t have. And the movie came on. The advertisement for the movie came on in 1984, or so I think I was 20. So it was 1984.

09:42
And I the accent that Al Pacino used. It was a Cuban accent and it was really good. It sounded a lot like my dad. My dad was escaped from Cuba and so it sounded like my dad and I said that dude sounds like a Cuban. And they didn’t say he sounded, they didn’t say it was a Cuban, it just sounded like a Cuban.

09:57
So I went to see the movie and I just thought man, hot chicks, fast cars, what, what’s not to like? How do you do that? And I called and I remember picking up the phone and calling this other guy that my dad escaped with from Cuba and he lived in Miami. So I said well, if you live in Miami, you must know people that sell cocaine. What’s the price? How does that you know? How much does that cost? You know by the kilo. And I said you must know that. He said, yeah, of course I know people. I went to high school here. So he tells me the price of a kilo.

10:29
Then I remember having the guy who cut my hair. He used to use cocaine and so I said well, if you use cocaine you must buy it. Find out what that guy will pay for it. And so I’m doing my market research, never contemplating. This is against the law, you know this is. You know I can get in serious trouble. I’m just trying to say, well, how does this work? And I find out, oh, I could buy kilograms of cocaine for 20 grand in Miami and sell them in Seattle for 50 grand. And I said, geez, that I can get somebody else to go pick it up and drive it across country and I don’t do anything. And that’s how I saw it at a 20 year old, and so I did not see my bad decisions. I only saw this looks like a fun way to live. And it’s how I got in trouble, because I went in and you know, as the judge said, I didn’t walk down that path. I ran down that path. It came with a very serious consequence, and how did you like fund this?

11:32 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I mean, you said so.

11:33 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I told a lie to my father. My father, you know, loved me and trusted me and, you know, gave me a lot of authority in his company and we were dirt, we were highway contractors. He, you know, he was like electrical contractor and he put street lights up and signage on freeways and things like that sort. And I told him, hey, when I found out how much it cost and how that I would need some capital, I told my dad a lie. I told him there’s a company that’s going out of, going out of business and they’re having an auction in for all of their equipment. I said why don’t I take a hundred grand and make them a cash offer and See if I could buy this before the auction, so he won’t have to pay the auctioneer?

12:18
And my father, just you know, trusted me and didn’t, you know, think at all. So I went to the bank and I pulled out a hundred grand and Took that cash over like it was like a weekend and bought I Remember was three kilos, I think was the first deal and and Turned the hundred grand into like I don’t know, 140 or 130 in like two days and it was just it avalanche from there and then I went into this in a big way and it got me into a lot of trouble.

12:51 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Hmm, and when you Went to your dad with this sort of false request for the money I, I, I just like to get inside you know people’s head because I’ve made a lot of bad decisions in my life too and I’m. When it it, it often doesn’t feel like a bad decision when you’re making it, it seems very practical, very.

13:14 – Michael Santos (Guest)
Exactly seems practical, and that’s what it felt like. Well, that’s what I deluded myself into. I used to, you know, I recognized, okay, there’s gonna be a little pain here, I’m gonna cause my family a little pain, but I was, I remember, having this number in my head. I said, well, if I could do this for a year, I could probably make a couple million bucks. And then I could make amends and make everything right. And and so I just lived this series of lies From that first transaction.

13:42
Because once you make it, do it one time and you make, you know, 30 grand or whatever I made in your 20, and that’s like all the money in the world. And you realize, jesus, I could have made 300 grand, you know, if I had more, and that’s a lot of money. In 1980, you know. Or 87, 80. No, this is like 84, right, so was a tremendous amount of money. I mean, put that in perspective. You know, a 9-11 SC poor show cost like 30 grand. Back then 35 Grand. Sorry, that’s the cheese. I just made a new Porsche this weekend checks are coming.

14:16
And then I deluded myself into believing that if I don’t do, if I’m not the one that’s picking it up or Transporting it, I’m not really breaking the law, so I would hire other people to do it for me. And that, of course, exacerbated my problems and I moved it. I told my parents I was Going to work for my girlfriend’s father total lie and Move to South Florida and just lived a life for like a year and a half until I got caught. Well, till other people started getting caught around me.

14:48
And when they started getting caught, I Realized I’m in trouble and I and I hired a lawyer and the lawyer told me what I wanted to hear, not what I needed to hear, and I just proceeded to keep digging myself in deeper because I had some cash at that point and I wasn’t really to do, willing To do the right thing, you know, to accept responsibility and say, hey, I mean a horrific decision with my life, I’m only 22 and you know I just used to tell myself I didn’t really break the law because I didn’t have any weapons and nobody got hurt and we’re all consenting adults. I mean, that’s the wisdom of a 20 year old or 21 year old. You know, I just did not see the totality of my decisions and how it influenced other people, I only saw myself and and I proceeded to make a lot of bad decisions until a jury convicted me, and rightfully so. I was guilty and you, yeah, it’s as you describe it, and you know kind of what the 20 year old mind is like.

15:44 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
It seems like you are kind of saying to yourself Well, I’m really in the brokerage business. I’m not really. I’m not a manufacturer and I’m not you know, I just I’m a middleman, I’m just facilitating transactions, like you said, between the world. It was a different era, mike, you look a little younger than I am, and and so it was a different era, in the mid 1980s.

16:05 – Michael Santos (Guest)
This was when Ronald Reagan was in the White House, and it was before this whole campaign began, called the war on drugs, and at that time, there was a A hint of glamour to cocaine. You know, there was no crack epidemic yet. Cocaine was like for sexy people, cool people, and and and and so, yeah, that’s who I wanted to be, and so I’m trying to live something that I’m not, and and you know. So you, you just, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know.

16:39
So you tell yourself what you want to believe, rather than reality. And and I just Dug myself deeper and deeper and deeper into trouble. And and then, when I got caught a year and a half later or so, I wanted to get out, and I didn’t want, I didn’t want to get out the responsible way, I just wanted to get out. I wanted to pretend it didn’t happen. And it did happen and I did break the law, yeah, and a jury convicted me, and rightfully. So you know, and so that’s why I went to prison.

17:10 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Did you? You mentioned your lawyer and the advice I think the lawyer was if I’m reading between the lines was saying hey, michael, we can get, we can, we can win this, we can get you off of this. I’m not sure if that’s what it was or not, but it sounded like there was some sort of false hope, or maybe he wasn’t like, hey, you have to tell the hundred. Well, let’s, let’s, let’s let you know you can break that down right and that, and it’s not a good thing.

17:32 – Michael Santos (Guest)
You know, like, assess who is the lawyer right, the lawyer is a businessman and lawyer has one thing to sell and that’s time Some lawyers, hopefully, are going to be honest and and fight valiantly and counsel you and guide you on what you don’t understand. Other lawyers are going to try and get a sale and I was a sale, an easy sale, because he could tell me what I wanted to hear. And he said you know, there’s a big difference between an indictment and a conviction. Well, it turns out that’s really not accurate. There’s not a big difference in the federal system between an indictment and a conviction.

18:01
If there’s an indictment a conviction is generally going to follow, and he would tell me that there was. You know, with the right amount of money, you could win. And that’s exactly what I wanted to hear. Well, I’ve got some money, let’s go win. And? And so that’s not a good counselor, right? A good counselor would say look, you’re 22 years old, 23 years old when I got caught, so you’re 23. I mean, I retained him when I was 22, before I got caught, and he should have told me you’re on a bad path and you’re going to prison. You know, you haven’t been caught yet. Let’s go cut a deal, let’s get your life back in order. It’s gonna, you’re gonna, you’re gonna probably have to give him back some money and maybe you’ll do five years in prison, or three years or seven years or something. But it’s time for you to go to college and make things right and put this behind you and start the next chapter of your life. But instead he told me, with the right amount of money, you could win. And that’s all I wanted to hear, because I told him I would plead guilty.

18:58
When I did get caught, I said look, if you want me to plead guilty, I’ll plead guilty. If you want me to go to trial. I’ll go to trial. The only thing I didn’t want to do was testify against somebody else, and so I said I need your guidance on what I should do. And he was telling me you know, you’ve got to stay tough and stay strong and we’re going to beat this at trial.

19:14
And it was just the stupidest thing in the world. I mean, first of all, you got to think about the lawyer, right? The lawyer is, you know, he is a professional and he’s got so much time to sell. And if he sees a kid like me that’s green and has some cash, he took it okay, and and I don’t begrudge anybody but myself for the bad decisions that I made. And then you think about the jury, right. Who’s on the jury? Right? They’re typically nurses and teachers and firemen and postal workers, you know, and those are very clinical minded people. And when they say this kid’s 23 years old and driving Porsches and cigarette race boats and living on the ocean in Miami and he’s guilty already, right yeah, we don’t really need to hear this more, oh my god.

20:03
So you know, you’re just not thinking things through when you’re that young, and that’s who I was, and that led to. Well, it led to who I’m here. Right, that’s why I’m here, because I went through that period of time and then I’ll always live in gratitude that an officer gave me a book and that book helped me see things differently and it caused me to start. I better figure out a way to make amends and reconcile with society and build a better life, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

20:33 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Were you this sort of a dumb question. But did you repay the hundred thousand to your dad? Oh yeah, like in three days. Okay, so it was sort of like yeah, okay, alright, that’s, I mean I got back.

20:43 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I put up a hundred and I probably got back a buck forty or something, and then by the time I had credit and I didn’t need his money anymore, and yeah, and then we sold a lot of kilos and that was the journey.

20:54 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And the move, the move from Seattle to to Florida. What just helped me with the business part of that? You set this up so that you could get material and move it to Seattle. Well, I mean I wanted the lifestyle right, miami Vice, I wanted the race mode. I wanted the chicks.

21:11 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I wanted, I wanted Miami, and I didn’t want to work and I didn’t want to be in the backyard of my parents, so that was a good spot to be.

21:23 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And when you had this realization that some of your friends were getting caught and you know you could see the writing on the wall you said you retained the lawyer before you were indicted, before they, even before you even talked to, I guess. Well, a year before, yeah, that was. That seems pretty smart. Like that seems like a smart thing to do, even though maybe the lawyer choice didn’t turn out to be I learned that from Michael Corleone, okay, right from the Godfather. You gotta have a lawyer. Okay.

21:59 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I hired a lawyer to really help me figure out next steps, because you know you have money and you gotta figure out what do I do with this money? How am I gonna put this money to work? You know? I mean, it was just a totally corrupt mindset of a 21 year old, 22 year old that is living a delusion and not thinking about the broader society at all, is only thinking about his own selfish pursuit of a fast, fun life With no consequences just a fast fun, no consequence.

22:31
No, I didn’t see any. I mean, I did not see violence, I did not see gangs, I did not see the things that are associated with drugs, and particularly the quantities that I had a role in distributing and how many people struggled with addiction. I just saw, you know, bags of cash and said, this is awesome and it was just a very bad path for a young man.

23:00 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
When you um. Well, let me ask you this first this you went to trial I might have to see you already talked about being getting convicted on all the charges. Were you offered a plea agreement that you rejected?

23:12 – Michael Santos (Guest)
Well, that was a no. I did not. I did not get offered a deal. The prosecutors offered a deal to my lawyer and he turned it down without telling me that was an appealable issue, but it didn’t matter because I would have done whatever he told me to do. So you know.

23:30 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And he was going to tell you what he was going to tell you.

23:32 – Michael Santos (Guest)
He was going to tell me, well, he couldn’t have gotten. I mean, I paid him 600 grand in 1987 money, so that was a lot of money. He wanted that money. And if I pleaded guilty, what’s he going to get? 50, 100, you know. And I was in custody and I was vulnerable and I just made really bad decisions all the way through until after my conviction.

23:56 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay, so one more question, and then I want to get to the post um your parents. So this happens, you’re in jail. What’s the conversation like? The first conversation like with your parents?

24:10 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I’m not guilty.

24:12 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay, so you’re playing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah this is.

24:15 – Michael Santos (Guest)
This is terrible.

24:16
They’re just doing this because I’m half Cuban it was just awful, you know, and they’re crying and and and wanting to um, wanting to tell me Please, let’s do the right thing”. And I’m saying this is on the prosecutor’s side I didn’t do anything. This is just awful. They’re just doing this because I mean I lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied. My grandparents quit talking to me. It was an awful time in my life and in my family’s life, and all because of the reckless decisions that I made and the lying went.

24:50 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So when did the lying stop? Did the like? When did?

24:56 – Michael Santos (Guest)
After I read Socrates Okay, I mean, I read that book and I’ll always remember reading that book the Republic and realizing I’ve got to stop thinking about myself and I’ve got to start thinking about the broader society. And I remember it was very profound because, for those in your audience who don’t know that story, he was in jail, socrates, because it was against the law to teach people from a lower class at that time and he was convicted and they sentenced him to death. And the story that changed my life was called the Crito and it was when his friend his name was Crito came to visit him in the jail cell and he told don’t worry, socrates, you know you’ve been sentenced to death, but everybody wants you to go on and live your life. So they’re gonna the jailer’s gonna open the gates and you’re gonna get out and go live for free and have a wonderful life and they’re gonna support you in exile and that’ll be fine.

25:55
And Socrates says no, I’m going to stay here. And he said what do you mean? Why would you stay here? You’re gonna die. And he said yes, I’m going to die. He said but why would you do that when we’ve gone all the trouble of changing you and Socrates, as I remember it, said you know, because I live in a democracy, in a democracy I got to take the good with the bad and this society has closed me and fed me and protected me from foreign enemies and I’ve taken all the good. But in a democracy I’ve got to change the laws I don’t agree with. I don’t have the right to break laws and I broke the law and I’d rather die with my dignity intact for something I believe in teaching people rather than running away like a coward for a problem I create. And I remember when I read that, I put that book on my chest and stared at the cell above me and just and said, well, I’ve really messed up my life.

26:43
I got to do better. I got to figure something out. And I was already. I’ve been in the hole for a year, so I wanted something better. And now I knew I wasn’t going to get something better. I’d gone to trial.

26:57
I lied on the witness stand, I committed hergery, I made every bad decision a kid could make and that was the end. I said, okay, this is where I’m gonna change my life and this is where I’m gonna draw a line in the sand. And I wrote a letter to the newspaper and they’ve been covering me my case and I said you know, you’ve written a lot about my case and if you wanna know the story, this is when I tell you. And then the journalist came out and I explained I made a lot of really bad decisions and I’m guilty and I wish that I had done things differently. But I’m gonna use all my time in prison to find a way to make things better and to make amends, and I don’t know how, but when I get there I’m gonna figure it out and I’ll find a way. And you know, socrates kind of gave me that path, that you’ve got to have a plan. And that plan for me was to stop thinking about my own problems and think about people like you and your listeners and say is there anything, anything at all, that I could do to let them in here? That would cause people to see me differently? And there’s an answer to that, and that’s yes, probably. So what is it Cause? You’re not gonna get that answer from the prison system. So you’ve got to introspect and figure it out and I came up with this three part plan.

28:05
It says okay, people will want me to get an education. If I can educate myself, people will see that I don’t wanna be a criminal. You can’t fake that. And two, I gotta find a way to contribute to society in some kind of meaningful, measurable way. And three, I’ve gotta find a way to build a support network. If I can get people like Mike to believe in me, maybe somebody else will believe in me. If I can get Jordan Harbinger to believe in me, maybe Michael will believe in me. Then if Mike believes me, then somebody else will believe in me. And so it’s that pattern that really guided me and that became my compass all the way through the 9,500 days that I served in prison, and it’s still what I live by today.

28:50 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Were you surrounded by anyone else in the prison environment. That thought similarly. That kept you sort of because what you just described sounds amazing and I know you actualized it, which probably a lot of people don’t actualize it. They have it’s sort of a pleading thought perhaps for them, but it’s lonely and I’m wondering. It sounds lonely so I’m wondering were there people? Did you have a club, did you have a network or to? Yeah, I had obstruction.

29:28 – Michael Santos (Guest)
A lot of it. But I had a commitment and when I was inside of that environment I was in the most violent federal prison of the nation at that time and I needed to find my way and stay on my path. And I found a lot of mentors in books that I read and I’d read about people and they’d kind of like become mentors to me, even though I wouldn’t talk to them, and then I would reach out and bring mentors into my life. So I’d write letters unsolicited letters to people that I wanted to learn, because I wanted to help me, and if I read about somebody that was interested and interesting to me, primarily they were from academia, professors, that’s who was.

30:11
I mean you send out. I used to say you gotta send letters out. When I’m teaching other people, I said if I send one letter out, you’re probably not gonna get a response, but if you send 10 letters out, what happens? You got a 10 times better chance of not getting a response.

30:29 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Right, that’s exactly not a 10 times better. Not getting a response, not getting a response, yeah, yeah, yeah.

30:35 – Michael Santos (Guest)
But if you send a hundred letters out, maybe you do and that’s what I had to do is I had to send a hundred letters out to get one response, and that helped a lot. And professors came to visit me and they would become my friend and I wrote to them and developed correspondence with them and that helped me through like the first phase of my journey. And then toward the latter phase, I knew I was going to be in business and I started reaching out to business leaders and trying to build connections and relationships that way and I built a whole life in prison. I even got married in prison. So you could build anything if you’re willing to be persistent and to persevere and to do hard things. Yeah okay.

31:24 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So you let’s dig into this a little bit, cause I think there’s something really valuable here for people who are not in prison and people who are in prison. When you made this decision that you were going to become the person that you really are, or the person you were meant to be, and you needed help, you wanted to reach out to people. How did you decide who the people would be? That you first reach out to these first 10, these first hundred, whatever? Because you know you told us that you really didn’t apply yourself in school, so I’m thinking that you know a lot of these people may not have been super well known to you.

32:09 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I don’t know. So you’re in prison, remember. You’re blocked off from the world, yeah, okay, and you’ve got to find a manner to create meaning in your life. And I found that by reading. And if I read an article about somebody you know, I didn’t even might not even know how to write them, I would just, you know, john DeUlio is an example. He was it.

32:34
He wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal called Let Him Rot.

32:38
That was the title of the article in the back page on that. You know that on that first section of the back page you used to have those editorial sections and there was a big piece on there called Let Him Rot and he was a professor at Princeton and he was a story of saying you know, we need to build more prisons and lock more people up and they should serve longer sentences. And this is like early 1990s. And I just wrote a letter to Princeton. I had no idea if it’d reach him.

33:02
I just said you’re Professor John DeUlio, princeton University, princeton, new Jersey. And it got to him and in the letter I just basically told him why I disagreed and thought that we should invest in people and open up educational opportunities and that would be a way better approach than just locking people up, and that led to a correspondence and a friendship, and he even brought a class from Princeton students to the prison where I was and allowed me to teach them one day. So you build these relationships and then you know I was studying prisons, so I developed relationships with some of the leading penologists in the nation and that really just helped me along the way.

33:43 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Ok, Did you change the professor’s mind?

33:47 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I think so, and I changed a lot of people’s minds.

33:49 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
At least about you yeah.

33:50 – Michael Santos (Guest)
Yeah, well, about the system. I mean, I’ve been very active in trying to bring awareness to what we as a nation can do to improve outcomes for people in the criminal justice system, and I do a lot of work on that. That’s really a ministry for me to try and open opportunities that will lead more people to come back from prison successfully.

34:11 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So what you did, michael, the letters, and then subsequently, or maybe at the same time, you got your college degree. Then you got your master’s degree. You were on a PhD track, I think I saw, and something had something. The prison system interfered with that for some reason. But tell us a little bit about that. And is that path and this is pre-internet you mentioned I think you mentioned that before Is that path available to everyone? Or was there something exceptional about you that created that path, or you where it wasn’t for everybody, it wasn’t not available for everyone else?

34:53 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I think that every human being has opportunities and we all have choices to make and anybody can make choices that will put them on a path. That will. Every choice we make puts us on a path and that path can lead us to more opportunity and more success, or it can keep us mired in struggle. I don’t remember that quote from Shakespeare, but I write it a lot about. There’s a time in the affairs of men that, taking it the flood, your life goes on to fortune Omitted. You miss that path and you live your life in the shallows and misery forever. And that’s just reality. I mean, every human being can look back, but it starts with that ability to look back and say how did I get here? Well, in prison.

35:42
Unfortunately, when you’re separated from the people you love and the people who love you, it’s easy to lose hope. And when you lose hope, it’s very easy to blame others and just to focus on the immediacy and the stupid things like who’s controlling the television shift, where am I going to sit on movie night? And all of these things have zero influence in your future. But if I focus on what books I’m reading, how do I turn words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs. How do I educate myself on the way the world is changing and in what ways can I participate in that? You are building a pathway to empowerment and personal accountability, and that is how a person restores confidence, and it’s how a person overcomes the crisis, and all of us go through crisis. My crisis just happens to be I was in prison for 26 years. My specialty is how to break through a crisis and create opportunities out of struggle.

36:50 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And so in that creation process though, it starts with something right.

36:54 – Michael Santos (Guest)
So I think it starts with this ability to be ruthlessly honest and introspect, because it’s super easy to want to blame external forces for who we are and where we are and why it’s not my fault and who’s to blame. And geez, you know, if we had a different president, or if interest rates were this, or if I, you know if this person didn’t do that, you know, and I just think we’re stronger when we focus on what can we do Given the circumstances we’re in, what can we do, and that’s how we empower ourselves and reach the next level.

37:28 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I have a saying that I did not make this up but I love it and it’s a chapter in my book and it’s called your Future is your Property, meaning your future is essentially what you choose to make it, and it’s not the government’s future and it’s not your neighbor’s future and it’s not your cellmate’s future or your business partner’s future. It’s your future and that, as you were telling that, that seems like it connects, kind of that, because what I think you were saying is the opportunity is there. The question is, do you have the right mindset to get started on it? And then, do you have the right mindset where, the disciplined mindset to continue on it? Because it’s going to be hard and it may be easier to just just like in life, like the shallow water. The shallow water might just be easier to, feels better, to just stay in the shallow water. I mean, at least I know what I’ve got and I can complain about it, but it also feels kind of comfortable and I just I’m willing to hang out here.

38:26 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I think a lot of people fail to really embrace that concept that I can write the next chapter of my life story and I can start anytime, it’s never too early, it’s never too late to start sowing seeds for a better life. Okay, never. I mean right now there are people saying, geez, I could have bought Bitcoin at 18,000 last year. Well, you can buy it today for 51. Okay, I mean, there’s a person that’s going to say, geez, I really missed the boat on Nvidia, man, I mean, it’s gone, it’s gone forever. Really, are we at the end stages of artificial intelligence or are we at the beginning?

39:01
That’s the strategy of prison, right? Why was in prison before there was email, before there was text messaging, before there was internet? And I had to figure out how do I learn all of that in an environment where I don’t have access to it? And it opened so many opportunities for me.

39:23
I had to learn about the stock market while I was in prison because I felt well, if I could understand how to value companies, or understand price to earnings multiples or growth rates or debt to equity or any of these kinds of ratios, and understand how companies are valued, maybe I’ll be more successful in persuading Mike to invest in me and I’m going to launch something.

39:46
And, mike, I learned how to do this here and here’s why I’m going to bring value to you and I got to convince you. So either I can invest in myself and figure out how am I going to learn to really disrupt how Mike sees me, because Mike is going to have a normal proclivity to see me as a guy who sold coke and went to prison. But if I can flip that script and say this guy could bring me, he could stay motivated, he could help my team, he could bring resources, that is the world. How do we bring value to the lives of others? What does the Exigler say? If you can teach other, get other people what they want, you can get everything you want.

40:24
And that’s just life. Some people get it. Some people have a lot of excuses. I mean, you can believe. How many people tell me you were lucky and I said you’re damn right, I was lucky, I got 26 years in prison. I was so lucky. I mean it’s unbelievable, right? How many people will say that, instead of looking at themselves and say why couldn’t you have done this? Why didn’t you buy Bitcoin at 18? Why didn’t you buy Bitcoin at 18?

40:57
I’m writing this course. It’s kind of in my head right now because I write courses to help people in prison understand how to think differently and how to be thinking about how you’re going to emerge as a law-abiding, contributing citizen. And it’s very easy to live in prison as a victim and not look at yourself and say how did I get here or what can I do to make things better. It’s hard to stay self-directed and self-motivated and I write about how I had to learn about tech.

41:27
While I was in prison, I didn’t touch a keyboard. I used to dream about what the internet is, but I had a website and I was publishing every day from prison in 1999. And building a support system and building a network and doing whatever I could, and right now I’m creating this course on crypto because I’m saying I really missed something, because I got out of prison in August of 2012. I transitioned from prison to a halfway house and at that time. I’m writing in this course to help people understand DeFi and decentralized finance and crypto, and because I’m saying you need to learn this. If you do not understand this now, you will be in a weaker position when you come home.

42:11
And you have to learn, and you have to learn about decentralized finance and you have to learn about artificial intelligence. These are the two biggest things happening in the world right now and there’s no reason you can’t learn, because I guarantee you, the guy that’s pumping, that owns four gas stations. He does not invest in learning about open and artificial intelligence and he doesn’t want to. He’s already okay, he’s making 300 a year and he’s comfortable with his life. But if you could go into and show him, let me build this for you and I can take your four gas stations into 15. And this is what we’re going to do, this is how we’re going to get there, and I just want a piece and just let me do this and you can motivate somebody to do that. I said then you’ve created your own job and nobody cares that you have tattoos on your face or you’ve got 17 felonies, they just care. Can you bring value? So this is the time to learn and even if you can’t access a computer, you can learn by reading, learn the vocabulary, learn how people are using it, and all you’re going to do is accelerate your pathway to success. So I try to teach that to people and I had to give this analogy.

43:18
I didn’t. I learned a lot while I was in prison, but I didn’t learn about crypto, and it started in 2009, 10. And I said in 2012, when I got out, the price of a coin was $13. That was the highest price of a Bitcoin. When I transitioned, I said if somebody had $1,000, just do the math he’s going to get about 76 bitcoins Today. That’s worth $4 million. $1,000 is worth $4 million in 10 years, and I’m not saying there aren’t. Those opportunities exist right now. The question is are you investing in yourself in such a way that you can seize those?

43:59 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And that’s what I had to learn how to do in prison, and that’s what I remember when we had our first discussion, that was one of the things we sort of landed on was the entrepreneurial world. For someone that went through a situation like yours or anyone that’s in prison, is it probably one of the best pasts that’s available, because corporate America is going to look at most people and say nope, nope, nope, and you don’t even get an interview. It’s just nope, nope, nope. So someone that’s looking at you and following you and watching you and saying, okay, so this is all about me putting effort into myself to make whatever value I have stronger and noticeable and then, like you said, people don’t care about it. From an entrepreneurial standpoint, it’s like what results can you produce for me? Not, you know, were you in prison or where you went to school or any of the other things that people ask in a regular work world?

45:07 – Michael Santos (Guest)
Yes, so there’s a lot of people that live with the entitlement mentality and then they’ve got an excuse it’s not my fault. It’s not my fault, it’s not my fault, it’s not who cares, who’s fault it is? Can you bring value to the marketplace? And if you can do that, then it doesn’t matter, nobody cares. And so you try to emulate people that have that mindset and I mean I’m going to tell you, I’ve met a lot of people outside that were, in a way, bigger prison that I’ve ever been in, and they’ve been home their whole time. It’s just the prison of their mind, and how they create their own.

45:41
And what they? The excuses are unbelievable. You know that people have. It’s just that’s something you can’t have and emerge successfully from prison. There is an alternative, and you know there’s a lot of homeless camps that need new people, and that’s what I tell people when I go to prison A lot of homeless camp waiting for you. Don’t worry about that. If you want something different, you better think differently.

46:05 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So let’s, that’s, that’s a I’m glad you drew that. People create their own prisons and put themselves in it, and that must drive you crazy. When you run into people like that, Either say, either say oh, you’re so lucky.

46:20 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I imagine the complexity of my work. I was in prison for 26 years and I create pathways for people in prison to succeed and hopefully to get out earlier. And I have enormous adversaries from the people that work in prisons who don’t want that. You know they. They don’t want people to come back successfully. Many, many people don’t and they object to it and they tell me they flat out I don’t think you should be letting people out early. You know they, they should do. And here’s the irony, and I tell them this I was as ready to come home after eight years as I ever would be. At eight years I was 32 years old. Right, I went at 23. I was like, yeah, 30, something like that, maybe 30. I would have been 20, 30, 31 somewhere in there.

47:11 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I had a master’s degree.

47:12 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I was an author, I was young and I was as ready as I could ever be, ever. But I had to do another 16 years at a cost of, or 18 years, okay, 26 years. I do 18 more years at a cost of what? 35 grand a year. And all that money, for what did I learn? Was I supposed to learn something? Was I? I didn’t feel as if I was being punished. I mean, it was my life, it was where I was. That was just life.

47:41
You know, there comes a time where you have to figure out are we doing the right thing? Is it important for somebody? You know, is society going to be better off putting somebody in prison for seven years or 17 years? There comes a point where it doesn’t make any sense anymore, because the guy I used to say I’m in prison, I go, why am I here? Again? I don’t remember.

48:03
I came in so young and now I’m you know, I’m almost 50. And it was the. Here was the weirdest thing when I was in for like 20 years and I went to minimum security camps or so, and every day I would get in a vehicle with a key and drive on the highway at midnight. That was my job and I’m saying I know you’re driving in society and I got to drive back to the prison. I don’t even understand this. What is the sense of this? And all it’s doing? You know, I became financially successful, but other people don’t, and all that I’m doing is creating this intergenerational cycle of failure because this guy’s not going to be not preparing for retirement, which means he’s going to be a burden on society. He’s not owning property or assets. He is making himself less likely to function. He doesn’t understand how to work in an evolving society and there’s a very good chance he’s going back to prison because he won’t function out here.

49:03
And statistics show that. Those aren’t my words, that’s their statistics and it just. It is absurd the way that we run our nation system. In my view, we should be focusing on result. What do we want? We want people to emerge as law-abiding, tax-paying, contributing citizens. Well, if that’s what we want, we need to change the system. What needs to change? What would you do?

49:23
I would make it like America right. What is America? Hard work you earn higher levels of liberty, a better quality of life through merit. A merit-based system to measure justice through the turning of calendar pages serves nobody’s interest except the ecosystem of prison. It’s a multi. It’s a hundred billion dollar a year. Industry that perpetuates intergenerational cycles of failure, and that’s a bad thing.

49:55
And if we were to say let’s measure results instead of. This antiquated concept of justice is turned by calendar pages. No justice, what that does, too many calendar pages results in increased recidivism rates and less safe communities. If we want safer communities, we have got to rethink it and make it more like America. How do you succeed in America? You develop value, you get a better education, you find a way to create opportunities, you create jobs, you contribute to your church or synagogue or to your mosque, you volunteer, you do good and life gets better. Okay, I would say, if you take a guy that’s going to prison for 10 years or 15 years, what would you rather have? I do 15 years and have zero skills and come back at 13 years and have no capacity to function, to become a homeowner, to own assets, to prepare for his own retirement. Or say, wow, this guy earned a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, published this, did this, did that. He’s ready to come home at six and the guy should be working toward that six, so incentive-based pursuing excellence.

51:16
That’s what society is. Aren’t you a private equity guy?

51:20 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I had some private equity. I don’t have a fund or anything.

51:25 – Michael Santos (Guest)
But just think about biz dev, right, biz dev. I invest in success and I want to see I’m going to reward. If I got a sales guy and he’s crushing it, he’s going to get paid more, he’s earned more, right? I mean, that’s just the world. But America is as close as we come in the United States, as close as we come to communism, is in a prison. Because in a prison you take away the value of private property, you take away the value of the individual. You put the state above the individual. You tell a person where he’s going to eat, where he’s going to sleep, what books he can read, what people he can associate with. And that’s not America and that doesn’t position somebody for success in America and it leads to I think a statistic show intergenerational cycles of failure. So I’m on a ministry to change that, and that’s something I feel very passionately about is changing the system so that we would incentivize excellence and have people work toward earning freedom. And how about the people?

52:26 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
you work with directly Michael, so that’s sort of the policy side. But what about? I know you work with you help get people ready to go into prison with that. Well, we have a company that does that.

52:36 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I don’t personally do that anymore. I hire people that are formerly incarcerated, that have gone through my programs, and they become coaches or mentors or consultants and they assist in areas that an attorney cannot assist. So if you’re a non-criminogenic person, you really don’t know how to develop a mitigation strategy and it’s super important to do that. So we have a company that does that. My area is on the nonprofit side. That’s really where I focus on trying to change the system at scale and helping people inside understand what they can do to help themselves.

53:18
I mean it really takes a big ecosystem to change all this. Oh yeah.

53:22 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Well, $100 billion industry.

53:23 – Michael Santos (Guest)
Yeah, there’s a lot of people with a vested interest in keeping it going.

53:28 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, and there’s a lot of people on the outside who don’t really understand the dynamics on the inside, sort of like the professor at Princeton that you were talking about. You know, let them rock, right, yeah.

53:39 – Michael Santos (Guest)
And he’s turned out to be a bigger advocate for these changes that we’re in alignment now in that regard.

53:47 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
You mentioned getting married in prison. I think that may have happened 10 years before you got out 10 years before I got out, yeah. Which is interesting because you were saying, reflecting, like, I got 16 years left here and I don’t know. I kind of don’t know why. Well, first of all, how do you go about getting married in prison, michael, and what did that do for you for the remaining time that you were there and to get you ready afterwards?

54:20 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I think as human beings, we all have to be connected and by the time I met Carol, I had been an author and was publishing a lot and so people were reading about me. This was at the start of the internet, so people started to research who I am and they and through that research is how Carol came into my life and we developed a correspondence and, you know, friendship. And then she came to visit me after like 10 months. We fell in love in a visiting room in prison and we got married after like a year or so, and that was when I was in my 16th year of imprisonment, so I had 10 more years to go. And yeah, it was great.

55:11
She became. I was earning money in prison, I’d launched these businesses in prison and I was earning money, so I was able to support her. And she became a nurse and she went through the whole process of visiting me, transferring wherever I got transferred, and she went to became a CNA and then a certified nurse’s aide. Then what’s next? Licensed vocational nurse, then a registered nurse, then she got her master’s in nursing, then I got out and she became a nursing professor and she was a nurse and a nursing professor and it was always a plan that someday we’d get strong enough where she could just work together with me, and that’s what we do now. So now she’s. She no longer is a practicing nurse, she works with me full time, but we’ve been married for 20. It’ll be our well. We got married in 2003. So it’ll be our 21st year this.

56:02 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
June Congratulations.

56:04 – Michael Santos (Guest)
Yeah. Happy Valentine’s Day too, by the way. Yeah.

56:07 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Doing this on Valentine’s Day. So happy Valentine’s Day to you, oh, thank you. Yeah, and did I read somewhere that you, you and she knew each other in grade school or something, and that’s the funny thing.

56:19 – Michael Santos (Guest)
So that’s how we met. So we grew up in. We grew up, but she had the good sense to stay away from me because I was a pretty wild kid when I was a. She was a good girl, so we were not friends in school but we did go to school together and that’s how we connected. She was coordinating the 20 year reunion for our high school and some student I don’t even know who it is, we don’t know who it is had read my work and he was researching me on the internet and he found that high school and he just wrote an unsolicited letter and said is this the same high school short rest where Michael Santos went to school? And she was the one who got the letter because she was coordinating the reunion. And she said yeah, why are you asking? And the guy said, well, he’s in prison. And and that prompted Carol to write me a letter about how awful it was that I was a drug dealer.

57:11 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
That’s how it started, so she wasn’t like oh, okay.

57:14 – Michael Santos (Guest)
She was telling me you know, I’m a mother of two kids and drugs are so bad and you were always kind of a wild kid and I can’t believe you did that and now you’re in prison and but, by the way, we’re having a 20 year reunion. If you want me to send you some pictures, I will. And that’s how it started. And I wrote it back and said yeah, I made a lot of bad decisions, but you know, I’m not 20 anymore, I’m 35 and and you know, we it started a correspondence and I’ve been very lucky because of that.

57:42 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, yeah, it sounds that’s the one part that does sound lucky Of you know when she.

57:47 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I’ll say I engineered it because, like, I’ll even ask her so why do you think we’re married? And she said well, because you know, I, I wrote to you. And I said no, reverse that. How did you write to me? Well, that kid wrote to me yeah, but why did that kid write to you? Because I did all these books. All that was engineered.

58:08
I was in prison and I said I’ve got to figure out a way to transcend these walls. Yeah, and get people to see me, not for the bad decisions that I made, but rather for what I’m going to become. In order to do that, I’d better get an education. And because if I can get an education, then I can perhaps become a better writer. If I can become a better writer, more people will learn about me. And if I’m, more people learn about me. Some of those people will become my friend.

58:33
And if people I mean it was all these connections, and that’s what’s super important to look back and say well, I think, as your first connection, how did you get here? Well, all of that is is like an on, it’s not a one time thing, it’s a everyday thing. Okay, and every day we should be saying well, if I could look back and say, well, how it got me here, what could I look forward and say, what can I create? You know, like right now we’ve spoken about crypto, or artificial intelligence and crypto, and I said well, if I could learn about those things, will I be more valuable or less valuable in the future? And you know, I invest in that. I invest in the future and I invest in myself, and that’s what I would encourage anybody to do. And then opportunities open and then everybody else can say, well, look at how lucky he was. Yeah.

59:23 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
While they stand in the shallow water.

59:25 – Michael Santos (Guest)
Yeah Well, it’s not my fault, you know, he got lucky.

59:30 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So let’s end up here. Most of my listeners are entrepreneurs, business owners, not people who’ve had spend any time in prison. So you know, you talked about the prison reform, you talked about the life in there. You’ve talked about the life out of there, which is most super, you know, exciting as well. What do you want to leave people with? What should they know about you, about your work, about what they can be doing to educate themselves, whatever? What do you want to leave people with?

01:00:02 – Michael Santos (Guest)
You know I just want to thank you. You know I want to start with gratitude and just say thank you, mike, for allowing me to communicate with your listeners. And, you know, hopefully they are living their best life and living in gratitude every day and always pursuing what’s important to them. I don’t know what’s important to me is even relevant at all. We all have our path. You know I run a nonprofit that I’m grateful to be able to influence and make an impact on the lives of people in prison, but I don’t think that’s everybody’s pursuit. You know there’s a lot of people that don’t care about people in prison, and that’s fine. It’s something that’s important to me and I’m in a position that I get to. You know it’s fortunate for me. I get to try and change people’s minds and help people see a better way. You know what? When I tell people that are in the system, I said the one great thing right now is that, regardless of what side of the political spectrum on, you have something in common with people in power because of the Trump family.

01:01:00
Right now, they are thinking about well, what if things don’t go right and there’s a prison cell in my future? They are thinking about that right now. There’s no way. They’re not In the Biden family right now with their son under indictment. They are thinking, well, what’s going to happen if we have to visit him in prison? You cannot be under indictment and not have this massive crisis going on in your life, and I like that. I like that because it makes it more plausible for people to see if they can get them. They can get anybody, and you’ve got a lot of entrepreneurs right now who I have zero doubt that they are doing some things right now that a prosecutor could look at and say I wonder if I could increase my resume by bringing that guy in and that could lead to.

01:01:50
Did he really sign every form? Did he? What was his intent here? What happened here? Did he mislead somebody with that marketing piece? There are so many ways that people should be thinking today about the possible in an era of big government. There are going to be more investigations and every business leader should be thinking about have I done everything to protect myself? Maybe I should learn something, and so, yeah, if this conversation gets people to ask those kinds of questions, the one thing I will say is that every person in prison believes that there was a time that they would never go to prison. But I can tell you that the president is thinking about not thinking about that with his son, and the former president is definitely thinking about that and maybe he’s going to come in and gut the system. I don’t know.

01:02:36
But, I know my job is to help people succeed, regardless of what other people do.

01:02:39 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Well, I thank you for leading that with us. I call that gray line thinking, so it’s sort of like you when you first got into what you were doing. It’s like what it’s not you know.

01:02:51 – Michael Santos (Guest)
I said the assets were 10 million. And who’s going to know? It’s up to me, it’s what the next guy will pay for. I said my buildings were 30,000 square feet, so it’s only 10,000 square feet.

01:03:03 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
What?

01:03:05 – Michael Santos (Guest)
Yes, apply that to a lot of people and sales there are so many sales and marketing people that don’t even realize how prosecutors are looking at it from a very different lens than they are. And that is a big government. In my view, is really bad and we should be, as Americans, be looking at fixing it.

01:03:27 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
OK, we’re going to leave it at that.

01:03:29 – Michael Santos (Guest)
Michael.

01:03:29 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Santos. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Visit Michael’s website to learn more. Michaelsantoscom, and thanks for you.

01:03:36 – Michael Santos (Guest)
That’s really prisonprofessorscom.

01:03:38 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I mean there’s so many websites.

01:03:39 – Michael Santos (Guest)
If you just Googled Michael Santos, I’m like everything that comes up, so there’s a ton of stuff there. But I just want to thank you, mike, for giving me this opportunity, and you agreed to reciprocate. I could take your amazing story into jails and prisons.

01:03:52 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I would love to be on your show, so let’s do that as soon as we can, thank you. Thank you, michael. Hey, everybody, thanks for listening to the show and before you go, I just have three requests for you. One if you like what I’m doing, please consider subscribing or following the podcast on whatever podcast platform you prefer. If you’re really into it, leave me a review, write something nice about me, give me five stars or whatever you feel is most appropriate.

01:04:17
Number two I’ve got a book. It’s called Owner Shift how Getting Selfish Got Me Unstuck. It’s an Amazon bestseller and I’d love for you to read it or listen to it on Audible or wherever else Barnes, noble, amazon you can get it everywhere. If you’re looking for inspiration that will help you unlock your greatness and potential, order or download it today so that you can have your very own copy, and if you get it, please let me know what you think. Number three my newsletter. I do a newsletter every Thursday and I talk about things that are interesting to me and or I give more information about the podcast and the podcast guests that I’ve had and the experiences that I’ve had with them.

01:04:56
You can sign up for the podcast today at my website, which is my name mikemalatesta.com. You do that right now. Put in your email address and you’ll get the very next issue. The newsletter is short, thoughtful and designed to inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you.