Prison Dialogue Builds Connection
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A story about tech entrepreneurs and prison inmates having group discussions, highlighting the contrast in their life experiences.
"We did these exercises where you sit in your little group and talk about what's going on. It was basically half successful tech guys and half people from Folsom Prison.
The tech guys would say things like 'My kids trying to get into this private school, the admissions process, and my wife...' and then the next guy would say 'I haven't seen my daughter in 25 years, and I just hope she's okay. I heard something happened to her and I'm not able to help and it's gutting me.' Then back to the tech guy: 'My company raised our A round, we're trying to raise our B.'
It was real problems, fake problems, real problems, fake problems. The guys who lead you in there are very wise people. There's one guy BJ who runs the program, and another guy who's recognized as a shaman in seven different civilizations in Africa. They call his nickname 'Beastmaster' because he's able to tame the beasts in the prison.
The Beastmaster said something early on about judgment. When someone asked about not wanting to judge the guys in there, he said 'Okay, so we're going to lie to ourselves?' He explained that your brain is instantaneously going to make a judgment. Instead of resisting it, he said 'Let's just agree to this: you'll make the judgment, but the judgment says more about you than it does about them. Use that reaction to teach you about yourself, don't use it to define the other people in there.'"
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.