July 28, 2025 • 50 mins
Right Thinking with Steve Coplon.
This week's show called "Right Thinking Foundation – A State of the Union." Tune in and hear Steve give a "State of the Union" message of Right Thinking's past, present and future as he explains its purpose and how the foundation is helping to change the lives of many in a positive way. Want to do something with your life? This show will help you know that you can.
https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/right-thinking
This week's show called "Right Thinking Foundation – A State of the Union." Tune in and hear Steve give a "State of the Union" message of Right Thinking's past, present and future as he explains its purpose and how the foundation is helping to change the lives of many in a positive way. Want to do something with your life? This show will help you know that you can.
https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/right-thinking
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
There must be lies learning rider somewhere got to be heard.
Why I am high in the sky.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Good morning, Welcome to Right Thinking with Steve Copeland. I'm
your host, Steve Copeland, and thank you for tuning in.
Let's have a great day.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Good morning everybody. I don't think there could be another
person listening to this show. It could be as absolutely
is thankful and is excited about living this life that
I am. As I speak to you today, Today's going
to be a sh sh where I'm going to reflect.
(01:02):
I'm just going to reflect on things that I've gone
through to get to where I am and to where
I'm going. I've called it a sort of a not
a sort of a I've called it Right Thinking Foundation,
a state of the Union message. And the purpose of
(01:23):
my message today is to have everybody that's listening get
inspired to realize that whatever it is that you may
be stuck in, you don't need to be to have
you decide that it's time to just get up out
(01:47):
of that chair and go do something. And many many
more thoughts like that. But I am just thankful that
the Good Lord has blessed me the way that he
has in this life. If you think that I'm going
to get a little emotional and teary eyed. I probably
(02:10):
will some of you that might go to church, and
when you just feel the Holy Spirit, you cry sometimes
and we seek that that's a tears of joy that's
just letting go. So today, for the next forty five
(02:30):
minutes or so, I just want to talk to you
about a journey that Steve Copeland has had. And you
don't have to listen to the twenty two previous episodes
or the interview that I first got started when Jeff
Heiser interviewed me and asked me that I can have
my own show, or we got that going. So I'm
(02:53):
going to try to stay focused and organized, but I
might just end up going into direction a little bit
that that I hope that you'll go along with me
and follow. I'm sitting here in my office in my house,
looking at all these different materials that I've laid out
(03:14):
in front of me in preparation for the show, and
i just want to tell you that my life has
been blessed. As I've said, it's been wonderful, but it's
also been filled with hardship and uncertainty. And I can
tell you this the hardships that I've endured. When they
(03:37):
affect other people, that's probably the hardest that they hit
me and my wife Donna. Everybody says Donna is a
saint because they know me and they know that she
must have to be a saint to be able to
go through. When I met Donna, we had our fourteenth
(03:58):
anniversary July, the second we met. We got engaged in
three weeks and we got married two months later. I
went for it, Donald went for it, and it's greatest
blessing in my life that my children. So I just
(04:20):
want to say thank you again. Today I want to
talk about Right Thinking Foundation, and it's sort of a
follow up to last week's show on Choices. I'm gonna
have a show in the next week or two. The
exact date of this show that's going to be the
follow up on last week's show is going to be
(04:41):
with Dave Richards. Is going to be back next week.
Day's actually gonna be back next week. I'm getting ready
to leave tomorrow and I've got my maps in front
of me, and I sort of have an outline, and
it's to tell you where I've been, where I am,
(05:02):
and where I'm going through Right Thinking Foundation. I want
to give you a today's scripture which I've used for
right Thinking Foundation every presentation that I make. This is
on the cover of my book. I was in prison
(05:23):
and you came to visit me. Whatever you did for
one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine,
you did for me. That's Matthew twenty five. It's in
verses thirty six to forty that we're going to get
onto here today. But God, I want to be too
(05:46):
preachy here. But my life has evolved into what I'm
doing right now, and this gets very, very deep. And
I chose that verse for the covers of all my
right Thinking presentations because I serve the Lord and I'm
not shy about it. I'm not embarrassed about it. I've
gone through a lot of changes in my life and
(06:09):
a lot of people don't understand me, but I hope
that someday they will, And if they don't, I guess
they don't. But I'm still doing what I do to
serve the Lords. So let me just read what this
is and then we'll give up a quick analysis of it.
When the Son of Man comes in his glory and
all the Holy Angels with him. Then he will sit
(06:31):
on the throne of his glory. All the nations will
be gathered before him, and he will separate them one
from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats,
and he will set the sheep on his right hand,
but the goats on the left. Then the King will
say to those on his right hand, come you, bless
(06:54):
it of my father inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the founder of the world. For I was hungry,
and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you
gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took
me in. I was naked and you clothed me. I
(07:17):
was sick and you visited me. I was in prison,
and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer him, saying, Lord,
when did we see you hungry and feed you, or
thirsty and give you drink. When did we see you
a stranger and take you in, or naked and clothe you.
(07:40):
Or when did we see you sick or in prison
and come to you. And the King will answer and
say to them assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as
you did it for one of the least of these brethren,
you did it to me. Oh, praise the Lord. I've
(08:00):
got a note in my Bible here that I just
wanted to make sure I did not forget to say.
Sometimes when I'm doing my show, you know, and you
move on and you say things that are you're forget
to say something you wanted to say. I write right
there in the margin next to those verses, I am
one of the least of them. Thank you. The Lord
(08:23):
wants us to serve, He wants us to do for others.
And with that, that's the motivation behind Right Thinking Foundation.
Why did I start a nonprofit foundation and got my
IRS approval my letter of approval from the IRS in
(08:46):
twenty thirteen. It took eighteen months. It was very very
hard process. Why because my life had gotten very very difficult.
My illness with multiple maloma incurable bone cancer was causing
incredible financial trouble. I had finally gotten to where I
(09:11):
was doing very very well, probably the peak of my career.
And I've had some other places that might have been
a peak. I had a marina, I was self employed.
It was going very very well. I was a good provider.
(09:31):
I took care of a lot of people. I changed
the whole nature of the marina to a family atmosphere,
and then I just started knowing that I had to
do a better plan. I had to do a better
plan for providing for my family if I were to die.
(09:54):
As they had said in a five and a half
year average life expectancy for my illness. Everything was going great,
but then I realized that I couldn't keep the marina
forever because I didn't have a buy sell with my partner,
and if I were to die, my family wouldn't be
taken care of. They would have been at the mercy
(10:16):
of my partner that I wasn't sure it was going
to take care of my family the way that I
wanted to take care of my family. So I set
out on a quest to find something that I could do,
and I knew I had to sell that marina. I
(10:37):
decided that because of tremendous financial difficulty, and I got
into a real estate deal that was just the worst
timing that anyone can imagine for people that follow the
economy and get involved in the financial world. October two
(10:59):
thousand and eight eight was when we entered into the recession.
That's when everybody's four to one cave plans and all
their investments. When the stock market just plummeted, That's when
all these people that had a life plan to live
like we always have been told to live as we
were being raised. Buy a house, build your equity, sell
(11:20):
your house downsize, have investments your whole life, live off
your investments, rent free, mortgage free, because the equity of
your first one would get you there. For the one
that you just sold, well, that went away. And I
realized that I was in a very very terrible financial
position because of the economy crashing. And when I got
(11:42):
into the real estate deal in August twenty eight, two
thousand and eight, I put together a group of investors,
a couple of partners, and we basically entered into buying
property in North Carolina and later an economy tanks. Our
project basically just has suffered for nine years and just
(12:05):
about force me into bankruptcy, but I keep staving it off.
I've lived off for cashion and insurance policies and things.
But I decided that since I'm probably never going to
be able to retire and that I would just have
to live off of Social Security, and that's not going
(12:27):
to ever be enough. I don't want to live off
the government. Because I knew that I was probably never
going to retire. I knew that I needed to never
work another day in my life, which meant I need
to do something productive that I love to do, so that,
in the quotes of some of these wonderful men, if
you love what you're doing, you'll never work another day
(12:49):
in your life because your work will be something that's
not called work anymore. So I decided I made a
life changing decision. This was about eight and a half
or nine years ago. I decided that I was going
to devote myself to working in nonprofit organizations I wanted
(13:12):
to do for other people. I went through years being
a man in his late fifties with a terminal illness
that's been self employed most of his life. All my life,
actually nobody would hire me. Everything was on a project assignment,
(13:34):
consulting there was. I was spinning my wheels, but I
worked hard. Ran my health down a great deal because
I was always working hard, trying to face the pressure
of keeping mind my family fit. But I kept fighting,
and I realized, you know what, why don't I stop
(13:57):
thinking about myself and my own financial needs and just
see if there's a way that I can transition and
get into the nonprofit world. So I did. I almost
landed a job as the executive director for a fabulous
nonprofit that's been going on for years and years out
in Virginia Beach and Feed the Homeless, and I went
(14:20):
to about five or six months and I really came close,
I thought to getting the job, but they needed a
figurehead kind of a person, not a person like me.
It's just a detail of hard work and you know,
marine type personality that won't sleep if I gotta just
keep breaking through that wall that's there. They are NFL
(14:46):
retired football player, and I don't know how that turned
out with the foundation does incredible things. They serve seventy
thousand meals a year. They have some housing units that
they give temporary housing for some people and it's a
wonderful foundation. And then I love the work that they do,
(15:07):
but that didn't work for me. And then then there
was another foundation that a pastor friend recommended me to
talk to his friend at ran his foundation, and I
came on board there, but they weren't very well funded,
and so I came on working for free, just trying
to help them grow to create a position within their foundation.
(15:32):
But I learned very quickly that if I'm working with
some other people that have a different vision, their vision
was wonderful. Their vision was wonderful. They were involved in
fighting sex trafficking and things of that nature, an incredible foundation. Well,
(15:55):
I decided at that point the only way that I'm
going to really be able to serve the way that
I believe the Lord wants me to is to form
my own foundation. And so that was in my thinking.
But I didn't know what type of foundation. So I
(16:16):
started doing great deals of research on forming nonprofits. Well,
along that time, my financial circumstances got critical overnight. That's
one of the things that I understand about life is
is that life can turn on a dime. And that's
(16:36):
why I really try to teach to have something to
fall back on. I'll be doing a show while I'm
on the trip that I'm going to talk about at
the end of this show about having something in your
back pocket, something to fall back on, having a plan.
That's if you took the time, which nobody probably would
be able to listen to all the shows that I've had.
(16:57):
This is my twenty third show plus the interviews, so
twenty fourth airing, they all say the same thing about
don't quit, plan ahead, it will get better. That's my theme,
that's my motto. But my finances all of a sudden
got awful. That's not the word. It's tragic. It got
(17:21):
almost impossible because my relationship with my banker for thirty
six or seven years now, who is my first board member,
and Don Price, I want to say before I go
any further, that we meet people in our lives that
we treasure our association, we treasure our friendship, we admire people,
(17:45):
we want to be around people like that. Don Price
is one of the people in my life I can
count on my hand that have been there with me
all the way through. I've got a thirty seven year
relationship with Don Price, and I really want to get
him on the show someday so I can really properly
introduce to Don Price. But Don Price was there for me,
(18:10):
but he left his bank because five of the senior people,
the top people in the bank. He was one of
the top people, but he wasn't one of these others.
They ultimately all went to prison. Three hundred and thirty
million dollars of that bank's money was handled fraudulently, and
(18:38):
he ended up leaving that bank along with a couple
others that I that I that I know very well,
that are just wonderful, good people. They needed to leave.
It was an incredible inconvenience in his life to have
to uproot his own career and move elsewhere. But Don
Price he left the bank because of the fraud that
(19:02):
was going on that he was aware of. And like
I say, he became the key witness for the indictment.
And then in the trials, Don Price left and when
he left, the bank replaced him with another loan officer.
(19:23):
And they came after me and wanted to call a loan.
There was my line of credit secured by my house.
I had made every payment. My credit was seven eighty three,
very high credit. I had had this loan for about
three years. I made every payment on time. And I'm
(19:46):
a development guy. Sometimes you have to use lines of
credit to keep your deal alive until you get all
the deals in place. A lot of deals don't happen,
and then you just keep on on the next deal. Well,
they came in and they told me that they were
going to call my loan because my income wasn't sufficient
to support the debt the loan to value the loan
(20:09):
to income rather ratio. Well, I have a lot of
friends that are that are high ups and banksie presidents
of banks, and I'm involved in the banking community, and
I knew that they didn't have to do this to me,
and so I fought with them. But at this time
I risked losing everything because if they called that loan,
(20:30):
I couldn't pay it. I was going to lose my
house and I had I had several thousand, several hundred
thousand dollars of equity in my house at the time. Well,
long story short, it took two years to find out
why they did this to me. But the bank was
doing deals like this. They were calling loans if they
(20:50):
could on good customers like me, taking the equity away
from them and flipping the house. And the owner of
the banks son was the in the mortgage division. So
they were given loans to the sun so he could
go in and they would foreclose at the bank. The
son would come in and buy up the property and
(21:12):
flip it within a couple of days or a month
or something and pull out the equity. Well, I didn't
know that for two years, and hey, I pray for
everyone that did that. I don't I'm not vindictive here,
but so in life, these things happen sometimes that are
(21:35):
completely out of our control. So I had to suffer
through that and that that was very difficult. I was
at church during all this, asking my congregation to pray
for me because I didn't want to lose my house.
Immediately after church, Steve Forbes and Fred they came up
(22:04):
to me and introduced themselves and said, man, we didn't
know that you were a business guy. Could you help us?
And I asked them what they did. They had a
barber shop, they had just got their license to have
a barber school, and they they asked me to help
them grow their school. So I'm going to speed up
(22:25):
the chronological things here because I have many, many things
that I want to kind of just give you more
of an overview. So I went out to their barbershop
and the first thing they said to me was can
you help us get into prisons and rehab centers? And
I did you know what you mean, Willis And they said, well,
that's where we started. It turns out that twenty twenty
five years before they had both been incarcerated for five
(22:47):
or six years, and they said that they wanted to
be there for people when they got out, and so
I took on the assignment. Six months later. We have
a federal program that gives scholarships to people that are
in heart Ship that it's the WE Investment Act of
nineteen ninety seven or something, and so we built their
school and over the next couple of years, including about
(23:10):
a month ago, Steve and Fred and Harvey was the
third person that would go. Sometimes they would go with
me in prisons and we would motivate people that if
they could go through with what they've gone through and
be successful, then you can too. So we started really
trying to help people succeed in prisons. But I'm sitting
(23:32):
right here looking at some documents. I've got a United
States of America United States Patent and Trademark Office for
the words right Thinking, and it's got all the official
numbers and everything else, and I just love it. And
it says that this is a patent on the two
words right Thinking for personal finance and small Business Ownership
(23:53):
Training Services in class forty one, and it goes on
all this technical stuff and it gives me those two words,
and I just want to say thank you for that
that the words right Thinking, those words are biblical words
as well. I wrote almost five and a half years
(24:13):
ago when I started my IRS five oh one c
three application as a nonprofit, I did an overview. I
had a vision statement to help returning citizens to a
better chance of success at becoming productive, contributing members of
society by providing vocational rehabilitation services such as education in
(24:35):
the areas of personal financial management, entrepreneurship skills, and job counseling.
Right Thinking Foundation will help those unemployed returning citizens who
have a job market disadvantaged to stabilize their lives by
providing a platform to which they can communicate and stay
connected with mentors and potential employers in positive ways. His
(25:01):
groom and it's saved the same all the way through.
But I learned a lot. And that's one thing we
all have to do in life, is we have to
learn from what's going on around us. And so I
embarked in a process, and part of that process was
I called up a friend of mine when I was
(25:24):
went to high school with it worked in the workforce area,
and he was an executive and one Stop is the
name of the program. His name was Bill Coley and
went to high school with and he was a pretty
cool guy. We played a lot of basketball together and
we had a few beers. I don't drink anymore, but
he was a fun guy. Anyway, he sent me to
(25:46):
Nancy Stevenson at the One Stop in Nawfolk, and when
I told her what I was trying to do, she
told me to call the Angelo White at Saint Bride's
Prison because Steve and Fred wanted me to get him
into prisons. And so she connected me with a person
that worked inside the prison for the Department Corrections and
(26:08):
Workforce Development. Workforce Development is a program that they work
with inmates that are called returning citizens to help prepare
them for release by getting their job skills, getting them
understanding better about how they can re enter the job
market and go through interviews and be trained for something.
(26:29):
And so I met with him, and so I went in,
I went into Saint Brid's and he said to me, Steve,
We've never had anybody with your background and your financial capabilities.
I've been an executive and large companies put together a
(26:49):
lot of things, handled handled a lot. I'm going to
count it. So anyway, d'angela asked me would I like
to start teaching a class, and I didn't have any idea.
I just wanted to get get Master Stokes Barber School
into prison so they could start introducing themselves to people
to see if anybody wanted to learn how to cut
hair when they got out. So I started a class,
(27:12):
and I started that class at Saint Pride's and that's
been in February of twenty twelve, five and a half
years ago, and I had seventeen men in my first class.
The shortest sentence that was sitting in that class had
been in there for eight years, and the longest was
(27:32):
twenty three. And this is when I really started understanding
there were there were people who had been convicted of murder,
sex offense, robbery, armed robbery, just all sorts of things.
And so I started teaching a class called personal Finance
and Small Business Ownership with the premise of what right
(27:53):
thinking is all about, which is to basically be able
to get on top of your finances so that you
relieve that stress in your life and so that you
can be better focused for the other things that come
at you that just come out of nowhere, Like I
said my banker, he left and the guy they came
in to call al, well, things happen out of our controls.
(28:16):
So let's get on top of our money. And you know,
as I go through that, I'll tell you the mission
of right thinking. The second paragraph of my program description.
The program that's based on the premise that a properson
is under financial stress, he or she will make bad decisions.
A person that has been incarcerated and is making bad
(28:37):
decisions as a very high chance that he or she
will recidipate. The program teaches an overall awareness of how
money works in a person's life and provides tools that
will assist them as they learn to plan ahead, making
right decisions, reduce the amount of stress in their lives,
and not reverting back to the old ways of thinking
that resulted in their incarceration. The program provides motivation and hope.
(29:03):
The components of the program are personal finance and small
business Ownership seminar, personal budget class, business plan, class one
on one sessions, research and business ideas, and mentoring of
exitfendors upon release. So the program has been evolving since
my very first desire to be a nonprofit and then
(29:24):
I got hooked up from church with Steve and tread
and then I got into same bride's and that's where
I really started cutting my iteeth so to speak, on
working with the population in knowing that this is where
I belong. And I was doing the seminar of the
(29:45):
PowerPoint one day and I was about an hour into it.
The seminar that I did, I had written about twenty
years earlier when I was working with a small business
development center, and basically I changed the name of it
and modified it a little bit. It used to be
called Managing to your Gross Profit, and it talks about
(30:05):
how your personal life is affected by your business life
and you got to meet your goals and so forth.
I've done episodes on all this. But I stopped about
an hour n because all these men, they were sitting
right there paying close attention to me. But all of
a sudden I felt the need to explain something, and
(30:29):
I said, gentlemen, I gotta stop, I gotta stop. I
got to answer a question that I know that some
of you are thinking. And they a couple of them said,
nasty man, we love you being here. When I go
to prison, I think the main thing that people get
out of my business to prison is that they know
that somebody cares. When I was in Brunswick Women's Correctional
(30:51):
Cassandra Taylor, who's recently retired and she's a she is
one of my most wonderful close friends in the prison system.
She retired about a month ago, and she's a huge
New York Yankees fan, and so we've got that in common.
And she's got a niece that's a great niece that's
probably going to be Olympic track star. Cassandra's absolutely wonderful.
(31:14):
She had risen up to assistant warden years ago, but
she elected just to take a pay cut and be
working where she really wanted to serve, and that's in
an area of the workforce development and the women's prison
up in Brunswick Women's work Center. And she told me
one day, she said, you know, Steve, everything that you're
(31:35):
doing to try to teach them about how to handle
their money and all the other things that you do,
they're really really good. But I want to tell you
that the number one thing that they get out of
you being here is that having a man come into
this prison and treat them with dignity and respect as
(31:58):
a real human being. That's something that most of them
have never experienced in their life, and that's the main
thing they get just you being in here communicating with them,
is there as an equal, and I thank the Lord
forgiving me that ability, and I love it, and I've
had some incredible experiences there. One of the best stories
(32:20):
that I have, just I want to slip this in,
is I always wore I always wear one of two suits,
a brown suit and kind of a dark gray suit.
Always a white shirt, never anything but a white shirt
whenever when I go in, and the same tie with
the brown suit, same tie with the darker suit. And
I just was trying to tell them one day, I said, hey,
let me just tell y'all something about I know y'all
(32:42):
see me wearing the same thing all the time. It's
either this suit or that suit. But I want you
to know I do it because this is not about me.
I don't want to be a GQ kind of a
personality in here where it's about how nice seed looks today.
And look at that tie he's got with that check shirt.
He's got it. Whatever you no, I say, I wear
a simple shirt with the same tie because y'all need
(33:03):
consistency in your life, and I just want to be
one of the consistent people in your life. A woman
raises her hand in the back and says, well, mister
carpland don't worry about it. We wear the same thing
every day too. That's just one of my best stories ever.
Another piece of advice that I got from my friends
up there in Brundrick was a woman one day said
(33:24):
they encouraged me so much. I get more encouragement from
being among people that are incarcerated than I do for
most anywhere else in my life. I just love being
in there. Like I said, I am one of the
least of them, and it's true. They are trying so
hard to rebuild their lives. Some of them, not all
(33:45):
of them, haven't got it yet. But I was talking
about some writing that I was doing, and I started
going to Don Green and Poland Hill Foundation three and
a half years ago to see if I could get
in the Paul and Hill Foundation to co write a
book with me, because they do so many books. Don
Green has got his name on two hundred and fifty
books either that he's written or that he's co authored with.
(34:08):
He's That's what Napoleon Hill Foundation does is they put
out positive words everywhere, and if you've got a positive message,
then maybe you should take it to Napoleon Hill and
see if they have an interest in it. They just
really want to get the word out of the Poland
Hill philosophy positive mental attitude. So I went for it.
(34:29):
I decided that I was going to call up there
and introduce myself, and I just picked up the phone
one day and I Don Green, the executive director, met it,
and I asked him could I come visit him? I
said an appointment, and I did, And that was the
beginning of my relationship with Don Green and his book
on everything I learned about success I learned from Napoleon Hill,
Essentials of Positive Thinking. At this time of my life,
(34:52):
that's one of the best books I've ever read and
listened to. I'm on my sixth listening to it. I
just leave it in my car. I listened to it
over and over again. Every time I hear it, I
get another positive detail of something that I don't want
to miss. And so Don Green's been on the show twice,
so I'm surrounding myself. Associations in life is so important,
so Anyway, the inmate in Brunswick said to me, Steve,
(35:15):
when you write right just like you talk, Well, what
a compliment I like to talk. I like to have
y'all listen to what I have to say and give
me the positive feedback that you do. It's worthwhile for me. Well,
the program's evolved. And Dave Richards, who's a regular on
the show. Dave Richards is a very very very very
(35:37):
high level guy and I had a previous relationship with
him where I taught his wife and his son karate
about fifteen years earlier, and I went to a seminar
with some clients that he was a speaker, and at
the end of the day he said, hey, good to
see you, Steve, and I didn't recognize him. I hadn't
seen him in fifteen years. Well, he said, let's get together.
(35:58):
You know what are you doing about right thinking? Getting
off the ground. He helped me do things, and I'm
looking at something right now and this is a looks
like a half pipe, like a like a like a
skateboard and half pike, and it's the right thinking foundation model.
Identify those passionate to succeed, then connect and surround them
(36:20):
with right influences, and it's this curve all the way
on the right, were starts on the left. Rather, when
they're incarcerated, we want to give them some awareness, we
want to give them education. We're going to get them engaged,
and we want to have them make a commitment, and
then they transition out and then we receive them when
they come out, and then we connect them with other
(36:41):
people and they get back into the community. Well, then
Dave gave me this amazing graphic. It's the three pillars
to attack recidivism. You've got to have a place to live,
so home is the first pillar. The second pillar is
(37:01):
you've got to work. You've got to work. You've got
to be able to be responsible and be productive. If
you're not working, you're going to be just homeless and
destitute and being out there just depending on so many
other things. And you have to be connected with community.
(37:22):
You have to be connected to other people. Well that's
when I put that together, and Dave and I have
kept those things going forever and it's evolved, and so
as I went into prison, I started getting more and more.
I started my relationship with the Virginia Department of Corrections
and from Saint Bride's. There was Tracy Trumana, and she
(37:44):
was the connection to the state. But it took me
like eight months. I could not get introduced to the
headquarters in Richmond. I wanted to apply to become a
statewide volunteer so I could go other places, but they
wouldn't let me. I had to prove myself first. I
went to Saint Bride's in Indian Creek Local and then
(38:05):
my program is getting better and better. To go back
to go back to the men that I took a
big deviation here. I hope you stuck with me. So
the seventeen men at Saint Bride's I stopped for the
PowerPoint and I said, I got to say something to
you that I know you're not asking, but I will.
And I've done this on other shows. But what it
is is this, I said, I know that you're wondering,
(38:28):
why is this sixty one year old white dude standing
up here, dancing around in front of you telling what
your life's going to be like when you get out
of prison when he's never been incarcerated. And I said,
I said, I know you're thinking that some of you
are No. No, Steve, no, no, we don't care you
know whatever, And I said, no, look at my life's
an open book. I'll share anything you want. You know,
I got arrested for drinking in public when I was
(38:48):
a minor. I got another couple of minor things like that.
And I said, I haven't ever been incarcerated like y'all
have here. But I said, let me give you my
definition of a prison. The prison is a place where
you don't have personal freedom. Everybody shook their head and
I said, in a prison is also a place where
you don't have control over things. They shook their head,
and I said, well, we all have our own prison.
And then I told them about my prison with a
(39:11):
diagnosis for the incurable bone cancer and how that changed
my life. And I just let it into my testimony
and I told them that about I want to tell
you something. It took me about a year to finally
just just let it go and give it up to
the Lord. And I'll tell you one thing I know
right now that no matter how hard my life gets,
no matter what life throws at me, I will never quit.
And I want to ask you, gentlemen, something, when you
(39:32):
get out and you're going around trying to trying to
stabilize your life and get hired, and doors are closed
in your face. I want to know who's going to quit.
Anybody that's going to quit when life gets really hard,
when you get out, stand on your chair so the
rest of us can look at you. Well, that was
my breakthrough. That was my breakthrough in the prison population.
(39:53):
And I have to tell you, five men, after I
gave my full testimony like that, it was a deeper
than what I just gave. It started to cry. Well.
Bottom line of what I'm saying is I went through
years of working with the Gender Department Correction. A couple
(40:14):
of years ago, they said, Steve, no one's ever gone
as far as you. They've all quit. It's very, very
hard to get funding. I've self supported this myself. I've
drawn from insurance policies. It's not easy, but it's growing.
And I haven't been able to get funding from larger
organizations because I was just local and so right now.
I learned from them at prisons that the very best
(40:34):
way to fight recidivism is to get to the youth
before they get too far out in the world and
screw up. And so I took that knowledge that I
had and I got into an Achievable Dream Academy in
high school, part of the Newport News Public High School
program for at risk kids, and I teach them real
life stories, real life examples of how to really deal
(40:56):
with life. But I have a very unique approach to finances.
I've taken a forty seven plus year, almost fifty year
business career, and cash is king. It's all about cash flow.
I've taken successful principles that businesses us to be successful.
You can't get alone if you don't go to the
bank and give them a pro forma, a projection of
(41:17):
what your next couple of years are going to look like.
The point is is that I teach cash flow management
at a personal level. So I have adopted adapted business
principles into personal life. And so I've got it going,
and I'm attracting more and more people, and I have
a good number of partners working with me now. But
(41:38):
just recently I've got a new partner and it's Heritage
Wealth Management Group. Chuck Christi is the principal. And this
is the kind of thing that if you keep doing
what the Lord tells you to do and not fear
the unknown, things will happen. You will be put in
with other people and it will and now we're going
(42:01):
to have new production capability. He's doing live video stream
of my radio show and then stripping the sound, and
that's how we get onto the Talk Network Radio with
Jeff Heiser. I want to say thank you to Jeff
this morning when he talked about his thing. He talked
about how you've got to have something to do, You've
got to get into your purpose. He talked about a
(42:22):
six year old grandson and how he wanted to know,
so what are you doing? And he goes, well, I've
got everything done for today. I'm talking about my future.
Jeff'show this morning was incredible, but he quoted me when
we were talking about it before my show. His dad
always told him, if you're not getting ready for something,
you ain't doing nothing. Well, the bottom line is some
of us can't not do things, and if we're following
(42:45):
the direction that the Lord wants us to follow, you
don't have to worry about what you're doing. Just keep
doing it. So, Jeff, thank you for talking about my
journey on your show this morning, and I appreciate you well.
So then I got into redevelopment and housing communities and
off of redevelopment in housing Newport News Redevelopment of housing
(43:06):
trying to help people that are quote economically disadvantaged hardship populations.
We're trying to get to the root of this problem
where we've got so many people that are struggling, but
they've lost hope. Johnny Thomas is one of my people
that I work with that had lost hope. He said
he lost his spark. And so my process is unique. First,
they got to know you love them. Then they start
(43:27):
to develop a relationship with trust. Then they might want
to respect you enough to listen to you. As they
start to listen, they might have a desire to change,
but they might not know how to change. So you've
got to give them motivation for why they should change.
And then if they can go that far with you,
if they're listening to you, they know you love them,
then you can provide tools to them. Well. So what
(43:49):
we're doing right now with with right thinking is we're
going to continue what we do, but now I've had
a goal. Robin Cossargin of Houses of Healing, the Lionheart Foundation,
It's just about networking. This is the Mastermind group in motion.
I'll just tell you. So Don Price, the banker I
(44:10):
told you about, He's involved in many nonprofits. He introduced
me to a man named Steve Hammonds. That's a man
that is a high educator at a private school and
then he practices choice therapy and he's tied into I
think it's the William Man psychology. So he connected back
(44:32):
to that group that's a worldwide group. They connected me
to Frank Ferguson, who's an eighty year old gentleman that
is a publisher. I spoke to him. He connected me
to Robin Cassargan. She sent me. He asked her as
a board member to give Steve the whole video series
and books on houses of Healing. And then I met Robin.
(44:53):
I watched all of her stuff. I've made an appointment.
I traveled to Boston to have a three hour meeting
with her. She adopted me at that point. Has been
one of my closest friends and supporters ever since then.
Then I went from there, and so it's about following
up Grinn Cunningham, she's retired a year ago. She was
my mentor. She was a program manager workforce development for
(45:15):
the State of Virginia. And I've got I've got this
DVD teaching series that Robin Kazargen done. It's been my goal.
My real goal is to be able to just love
and motivate people and talk and have other people kind
of follow up. Right now, the organization is growing. Dave
Richards is getting a rebirth and where he believes that
(45:36):
this can go and his technology is the difference. There's
a lot of us out there that are speaking and
motivating people all the time. There's a lot of x
X felons that go back in because they want to
they want to give more. But there's very few businessmen
that want to go in and kid because there's really
no money in it. So we're getting ready to grow
the foundation. We're going to have new production capabilities. But
(45:59):
Huck Christy three weeks ago when Gary Schaeffer, my racquetball buddy,
that's just a God sent to me that he's such
a good friend and cares so much about this. Gary
has his own nonprofit where he goes into the inner city.
It's called the Victors. During the summer, he goes into
the inner city and he has volunteers from the police
department go out there and help these inner city kids
(46:21):
have some quality time and be mentored through baseball, and
so it's all coming together. It's all we talk about
on some of the shows about we're all part of
the kingdom. We're all using our gifts. So where am
I going with this? I'm going to be able to
the future here. I'm gonna be able to finally get
in the car that don Price hooked me up with
(46:42):
with the Auto connection. They gave me two nineteen a
twenty thirteen Chevrolet and Palette donated the Right Thinking Foundation
so that I could travel across the country because i
have a goal. I want to touch as many lives
as possible, and I want to go into a print
and in every state of this country. And I'm taking
(47:02):
my first trip finally outside of Virginia. I can't make
it financially just being local, but I'm praying that as
I go and spread this message of love, encouragement, hope,
and provide tools and can connect with people, that other
people will pick up on this and want to partner
with Right Thinking. So I'm getting ready to take a trip.
(47:25):
I'm looking at my map right now. I'm going like
a grey und bus driver. I love to travel. I've
been on the road my whole life. I'm going Norfolk, Marrying, Virginia's, Memphis, Tennessee, Tulsa,
Oklahoma to have a fifteen minute meeting with Jim Stowball,
one of the most wonderful people I've met in my life.
I just want to shake his hand. I've compared my
(47:47):
fifteen minutes with him. Why I want to do it
to Eugene Cernan, second man to walk on the Moon,
Fred Pryor, one of the great great motivational organizations back
in the eighties. I just want to be around people
because and you're around greatness, it lasts a lifetime. But
I'm going to Tulsa. Then I'm going to Denver. Then
I'm going to the Archest National Park. That I'm going
(48:07):
to Salt Lake City. Then I'm going to Oregon. I'm
going to see my daughter. But I'm going to go
to a prison called Powder River Correctional Center in Baker City, Oregon.
And I've got my materials together. This is the way
it really works. Though I got a quote from a printer,
they didn't honor the quote. I'm spending four hundred and
(48:29):
twenty nine dollars for the handouts. Materials I'm giving them
and leaving some books with them. But I'm going to
keep investing in this because I believe in it. And
then I'm going to go to Yellowstone. Then I'm going
to go my wife's flying into Oregon to meet me
with my daughter. Then she's going to do the second
half the trip. But we got almost seven thousand miles
twenty three days we're traveling around. But I'm going to
(48:49):
be a different person when I get back because I'm
doing my first go outside Virginia, go all the way
across the country to Oregon, and they already have fifty
five people signed up from for my seminar. But I'm
going to be doing this for the rest of my life.
And I just want to say right now, and I
want to thank a lot of people, particularly my wife.
I want to thank Don Pryce. I want to thank
(49:11):
Dave Richards. I want to thank all my other board members.
I want to thank Robin Casarzan. I want to thank
Jeff Heiser. I want to thank Richard k for getting
my program started. But tune into the show while I'm gone,
and when I get back, I'm just going to tell
you more about the trip. Right now, I'd just like
to leave this by saying thank you to everyone who's
believed in what I do. Thank you for right thinking,
(49:34):
supporting right thinking, and I encourage everybody. Don't have fear,
don't have doubt, just go for it. And if you're
living for the Lord, he's going to take good care
of you. So I'll see you when I get back.
I'll talk to you and I get back, there's three
shows waiting for you. God bless you. Have a great day.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Thanks for listening to Right Thinking with Steve Cooper. I'll
look forward to being with you again next week. And
remember it, don't quit.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Plan ahead.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
It will get better. God bless you and have a
great week.
There must be lies learning rider somewhere got to be heard.
Why I am high in the sky.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Good morning, Welcome to Right Thinking with Steve Copeland. I'm
your host, Steve Copeland, and thank you for tuning in.
Let's have a great day.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Good morning everybody. I don't think there could be another
person listening to this show. It could be as absolutely
is thankful and is excited about living this life that
I am. As I speak to you today, Today's going
to be a sh sh where I'm going to reflect.
(01:02):
I'm just going to reflect on things that I've gone
through to get to where I am and to where
I'm going. I've called it a sort of a not
a sort of a I've called it Right Thinking Foundation,
a state of the Union message. And the purpose of
(01:23):
my message today is to have everybody that's listening get
inspired to realize that whatever it is that you may
be stuck in, you don't need to be to have
you decide that it's time to just get up out
(01:47):
of that chair and go do something. And many many
more thoughts like that. But I am just thankful that
the Good Lord has blessed me the way that he
has in this life. If you think that I'm going
to get a little emotional and teary eyed. I probably
(02:10):
will some of you that might go to church, and
when you just feel the Holy Spirit, you cry sometimes
and we seek that that's a tears of joy that's
just letting go. So today, for the next forty five
(02:30):
minutes or so, I just want to talk to you
about a journey that Steve Copeland has had. And you
don't have to listen to the twenty two previous episodes
or the interview that I first got started when Jeff
Heiser interviewed me and asked me that I can have
my own show, or we got that going. So I'm
(02:53):
going to try to stay focused and organized, but I
might just end up going into direction a little bit
that that I hope that you'll go along with me
and follow. I'm sitting here in my office in my house,
looking at all these different materials that I've laid out
(03:14):
in front of me in preparation for the show, and
i just want to tell you that my life has
been blessed. As I've said, it's been wonderful, but it's
also been filled with hardship and uncertainty. And I can
tell you this the hardships that I've endured. When they
(03:37):
affect other people, that's probably the hardest that they hit
me and my wife Donna. Everybody says Donna is a
saint because they know me and they know that she
must have to be a saint to be able to
go through. When I met Donna, we had our fourteenth
(03:58):
anniversary July, the second we met. We got engaged in
three weeks and we got married two months later. I
went for it, Donald went for it, and it's greatest
blessing in my life that my children. So I just
(04:20):
want to say thank you again. Today I want to
talk about Right Thinking Foundation, and it's sort of a
follow up to last week's show on Choices. I'm gonna
have a show in the next week or two. The
exact date of this show that's going to be the
follow up on last week's show is going to be
(04:41):
with Dave Richards. Is going to be back next week.
Day's actually gonna be back next week. I'm getting ready
to leave tomorrow and I've got my maps in front
of me, and I sort of have an outline, and
it's to tell you where I've been, where I am,
(05:02):
and where I'm going through Right Thinking Foundation. I want
to give you a today's scripture which I've used for
right Thinking Foundation every presentation that I make. This is
on the cover of my book. I was in prison
(05:23):
and you came to visit me. Whatever you did for
one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine,
you did for me. That's Matthew twenty five. It's in
verses thirty six to forty that we're going to get
onto here today. But God, I want to be too
(05:46):
preachy here. But my life has evolved into what I'm
doing right now, and this gets very, very deep. And
I chose that verse for the covers of all my
right Thinking presentations because I serve the Lord and I'm
not shy about it. I'm not embarrassed about it. I've
gone through a lot of changes in my life and
(06:09):
a lot of people don't understand me, but I hope
that someday they will, And if they don't, I guess
they don't. But I'm still doing what I do to
serve the Lords. So let me just read what this
is and then we'll give up a quick analysis of it.
When the Son of Man comes in his glory and
all the Holy Angels with him. Then he will sit
(06:31):
on the throne of his glory. All the nations will
be gathered before him, and he will separate them one
from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats,
and he will set the sheep on his right hand,
but the goats on the left. Then the King will
say to those on his right hand, come you, bless
(06:54):
it of my father inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the founder of the world. For I was hungry,
and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you
gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took
me in. I was naked and you clothed me. I
(07:17):
was sick and you visited me. I was in prison,
and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer him, saying, Lord,
when did we see you hungry and feed you, or
thirsty and give you drink. When did we see you
a stranger and take you in, or naked and clothe you.
(07:40):
Or when did we see you sick or in prison
and come to you. And the King will answer and
say to them assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as
you did it for one of the least of these brethren,
you did it to me. Oh, praise the Lord. I've
(08:00):
got a note in my Bible here that I just
wanted to make sure I did not forget to say.
Sometimes when I'm doing my show, you know, and you
move on and you say things that are you're forget
to say something you wanted to say. I write right
there in the margin next to those verses, I am
one of the least of them. Thank you. The Lord
(08:23):
wants us to serve, He wants us to do for others.
And with that, that's the motivation behind Right Thinking Foundation.
Why did I start a nonprofit foundation and got my
IRS approval my letter of approval from the IRS in
(08:46):
twenty thirteen. It took eighteen months. It was very very
hard process. Why because my life had gotten very very difficult.
My illness with multiple maloma incurable bone cancer was causing
incredible financial trouble. I had finally gotten to where I
(09:11):
was doing very very well, probably the peak of my career.
And I've had some other places that might have been
a peak. I had a marina, I was self employed.
It was going very very well. I was a good provider.
(09:31):
I took care of a lot of people. I changed
the whole nature of the marina to a family atmosphere,
and then I just started knowing that I had to
do a better plan. I had to do a better
plan for providing for my family if I were to die.
(09:54):
As they had said in a five and a half
year average life expectancy for my illness. Everything was going great,
but then I realized that I couldn't keep the marina
forever because I didn't have a buy sell with my partner,
and if I were to die, my family wouldn't be
taken care of. They would have been at the mercy
(10:16):
of my partner that I wasn't sure it was going
to take care of my family the way that I
wanted to take care of my family. So I set
out on a quest to find something that I could do,
and I knew I had to sell that marina. I
(10:37):
decided that because of tremendous financial difficulty, and I got
into a real estate deal that was just the worst
timing that anyone can imagine for people that follow the
economy and get involved in the financial world. October two
(10:59):
thousand and eight eight was when we entered into the recession.
That's when everybody's four to one cave plans and all
their investments. When the stock market just plummeted, That's when
all these people that had a life plan to live
like we always have been told to live as we
were being raised. Buy a house, build your equity, sell
(11:20):
your house downsize, have investments your whole life, live off
your investments, rent free, mortgage free, because the equity of
your first one would get you there. For the one
that you just sold, well, that went away. And I
realized that I was in a very very terrible financial
position because of the economy crashing. And when I got
(11:42):
into the real estate deal in August twenty eight, two
thousand and eight, I put together a group of investors,
a couple of partners, and we basically entered into buying
property in North Carolina and later an economy tanks. Our
project basically just has suffered for nine years and just
(12:05):
about force me into bankruptcy, but I keep staving it off.
I've lived off for cashion and insurance policies and things.
But I decided that since I'm probably never going to
be able to retire and that I would just have
to live off of Social Security, and that's not going
(12:27):
to ever be enough. I don't want to live off
the government. Because I knew that I was probably never
going to retire. I knew that I needed to never
work another day in my life, which meant I need
to do something productive that I love to do, so that,
in the quotes of some of these wonderful men, if
you love what you're doing, you'll never work another day
(12:49):
in your life because your work will be something that's
not called work anymore. So I decided I made a
life changing decision. This was about eight and a half
or nine years ago. I decided that I was going
to devote myself to working in nonprofit organizations I wanted
(13:12):
to do for other people. I went through years being
a man in his late fifties with a terminal illness
that's been self employed most of his life. All my life,
actually nobody would hire me. Everything was on a project assignment,
(13:34):
consulting there was. I was spinning my wheels, but I
worked hard. Ran my health down a great deal because
I was always working hard, trying to face the pressure
of keeping mind my family fit. But I kept fighting,
and I realized, you know what, why don't I stop
(13:57):
thinking about myself and my own financial needs and just
see if there's a way that I can transition and
get into the nonprofit world. So I did. I almost
landed a job as the executive director for a fabulous
nonprofit that's been going on for years and years out
in Virginia Beach and Feed the Homeless, and I went
(14:20):
to about five or six months and I really came close,
I thought to getting the job, but they needed a
figurehead kind of a person, not a person like me.
It's just a detail of hard work and you know,
marine type personality that won't sleep if I gotta just
keep breaking through that wall that's there. They are NFL
(14:46):
retired football player, and I don't know how that turned
out with the foundation does incredible things. They serve seventy
thousand meals a year. They have some housing units that
they give temporary housing for some people and it's a
wonderful foundation. And then I love the work that they do,
(15:07):
but that didn't work for me. And then then there
was another foundation that a pastor friend recommended me to
talk to his friend at ran his foundation, and I
came on board there, but they weren't very well funded,
and so I came on working for free, just trying
to help them grow to create a position within their foundation.
(15:32):
But I learned very quickly that if I'm working with
some other people that have a different vision, their vision
was wonderful. Their vision was wonderful. They were involved in
fighting sex trafficking and things of that nature, an incredible foundation. Well,
(15:55):
I decided at that point the only way that I'm
going to really be able to serve the way that
I believe the Lord wants me to is to form
my own foundation. And so that was in my thinking.
But I didn't know what type of foundation. So I
(16:16):
started doing great deals of research on forming nonprofits. Well,
along that time, my financial circumstances got critical overnight. That's
one of the things that I understand about life is
is that life can turn on a dime. And that's
(16:36):
why I really try to teach to have something to
fall back on. I'll be doing a show while I'm
on the trip that I'm going to talk about at
the end of this show about having something in your
back pocket, something to fall back on, having a plan.
That's if you took the time, which nobody probably would
be able to listen to all the shows that I've had.
(16:57):
This is my twenty third show plus the interviews, so
twenty fourth airing, they all say the same thing about
don't quit, plan ahead, it will get better. That's my theme,
that's my motto. But my finances all of a sudden
got awful. That's not the word. It's tragic. It got
(17:21):
almost impossible because my relationship with my banker for thirty
six or seven years now, who is my first board member,
and Don Price, I want to say before I go
any further, that we meet people in our lives that
we treasure our association, we treasure our friendship, we admire people,
(17:45):
we want to be around people like that. Don Price
is one of the people in my life I can
count on my hand that have been there with me
all the way through. I've got a thirty seven year
relationship with Don Price, and I really want to get
him on the show someday so I can really properly
introduce to Don Price. But Don Price was there for me,
(18:10):
but he left his bank because five of the senior people,
the top people in the bank. He was one of
the top people, but he wasn't one of these others.
They ultimately all went to prison. Three hundred and thirty
million dollars of that bank's money was handled fraudulently, and
(18:38):
he ended up leaving that bank along with a couple
others that I that I that I know very well,
that are just wonderful, good people. They needed to leave.
It was an incredible inconvenience in his life to have
to uproot his own career and move elsewhere. But Don
Price he left the bank because of the fraud that
(19:02):
was going on that he was aware of. And like
I say, he became the key witness for the indictment.
And then in the trials, Don Price left and when
he left, the bank replaced him with another loan officer.
(19:23):
And they came after me and wanted to call a loan.
There was my line of credit secured by my house.
I had made every payment. My credit was seven eighty three,
very high credit. I had had this loan for about
three years. I made every payment on time. And I'm
(19:46):
a development guy. Sometimes you have to use lines of
credit to keep your deal alive until you get all
the deals in place. A lot of deals don't happen,
and then you just keep on on the next deal. Well,
they came in and they told me that they were
going to call my loan because my income wasn't sufficient
to support the debt the loan to value the loan
(20:09):
to income rather ratio. Well, I have a lot of
friends that are that are high ups and banksie presidents
of banks, and I'm involved in the banking community, and
I knew that they didn't have to do this to me,
and so I fought with them. But at this time
I risked losing everything because if they called that loan,
(20:30):
I couldn't pay it. I was going to lose my
house and I had I had several thousand, several hundred
thousand dollars of equity in my house at the time. Well,
long story short, it took two years to find out
why they did this to me. But the bank was
doing deals like this. They were calling loans if they
(20:50):
could on good customers like me, taking the equity away
from them and flipping the house. And the owner of
the banks son was the in the mortgage division. So
they were given loans to the sun so he could
go in and they would foreclose at the bank. The
son would come in and buy up the property and
(21:12):
flip it within a couple of days or a month
or something and pull out the equity. Well, I didn't
know that for two years, and hey, I pray for
everyone that did that. I don't I'm not vindictive here,
but so in life, these things happen sometimes that are
(21:35):
completely out of our control. So I had to suffer
through that and that that was very difficult. I was
at church during all this, asking my congregation to pray
for me because I didn't want to lose my house.
Immediately after church, Steve Forbes and Fred they came up
(22:04):
to me and introduced themselves and said, man, we didn't
know that you were a business guy. Could you help us?
And I asked them what they did. They had a
barber shop, they had just got their license to have
a barber school, and they they asked me to help
them grow their school. So I'm going to speed up
(22:25):
the chronological things here because I have many, many things
that I want to kind of just give you more
of an overview. So I went out to their barbershop
and the first thing they said to me was can
you help us get into prisons and rehab centers? And
I did you know what you mean, Willis And they said, well,
that's where we started. It turns out that twenty twenty
five years before they had both been incarcerated for five
(22:47):
or six years, and they said that they wanted to
be there for people when they got out, and so
I took on the assignment. Six months later. We have
a federal program that gives scholarships to people that are
in heart Ship that it's the WE Investment Act of
nineteen ninety seven or something, and so we built their
school and over the next couple of years, including about
(23:10):
a month ago, Steve and Fred and Harvey was the
third person that would go. Sometimes they would go with
me in prisons and we would motivate people that if
they could go through with what they've gone through and
be successful, then you can too. So we started really
trying to help people succeed in prisons. But I'm sitting
(23:32):
right here looking at some documents. I've got a United
States of America United States Patent and Trademark Office for
the words right Thinking, and it's got all the official
numbers and everything else, and I just love it. And
it says that this is a patent on the two
words right Thinking for personal finance and small Business Ownership
(23:53):
Training Services in class forty one, and it goes on
all this technical stuff and it gives me those two words,
and I just want to say thank you for that
that the words right Thinking, those words are biblical words
as well. I wrote almost five and a half years
(24:13):
ago when I started my IRS five oh one c
three application as a nonprofit, I did an overview. I
had a vision statement to help returning citizens to a
better chance of success at becoming productive, contributing members of
society by providing vocational rehabilitation services such as education in
(24:35):
the areas of personal financial management, entrepreneurship skills, and job counseling.
Right Thinking Foundation will help those unemployed returning citizens who
have a job market disadvantaged to stabilize their lives by
providing a platform to which they can communicate and stay
connected with mentors and potential employers in positive ways. His
(25:01):
groom and it's saved the same all the way through.
But I learned a lot. And that's one thing we
all have to do in life, is we have to
learn from what's going on around us. And so I
embarked in a process, and part of that process was
I called up a friend of mine when I was
(25:24):
went to high school with it worked in the workforce area,
and he was an executive and one Stop is the
name of the program. His name was Bill Coley and
went to high school with and he was a pretty
cool guy. We played a lot of basketball together and
we had a few beers. I don't drink anymore, but
he was a fun guy. Anyway, he sent me to
(25:46):
Nancy Stevenson at the One Stop in Nawfolk, and when
I told her what I was trying to do, she
told me to call the Angelo White at Saint Bride's
Prison because Steve and Fred wanted me to get him
into prisons. And so she connected me with a person
that worked inside the prison for the Department Corrections and
(26:08):
Workforce Development. Workforce Development is a program that they work
with inmates that are called returning citizens to help prepare
them for release by getting their job skills, getting them
understanding better about how they can re enter the job
market and go through interviews and be trained for something.
(26:29):
And so I met with him, and so I went in,
I went into Saint Brid's and he said to me, Steve,
We've never had anybody with your background and your financial capabilities.
I've been an executive and large companies put together a
(26:49):
lot of things, handled handled a lot. I'm going to
count it. So anyway, d'angela asked me would I like
to start teaching a class, and I didn't have any idea.
I just wanted to get get Master Stokes Barber School
into prison so they could start introducing themselves to people
to see if anybody wanted to learn how to cut
hair when they got out. So I started a class,
(27:12):
and I started that class at Saint Pride's and that's
been in February of twenty twelve, five and a half
years ago, and I had seventeen men in my first class.
The shortest sentence that was sitting in that class had
been in there for eight years, and the longest was
(27:32):
twenty three. And this is when I really started understanding
there were there were people who had been convicted of murder,
sex offense, robbery, armed robbery, just all sorts of things.
And so I started teaching a class called personal Finance
and Small Business Ownership with the premise of what right
(27:53):
thinking is all about, which is to basically be able
to get on top of your finances so that you
relieve that stress in your life and so that you
can be better focused for the other things that come
at you that just come out of nowhere, Like I
said my banker, he left and the guy they came
in to call al, well, things happen out of our controls.
(28:16):
So let's get on top of our money. And you know,
as I go through that, I'll tell you the mission
of right thinking. The second paragraph of my program description.
The program that's based on the premise that a properson
is under financial stress, he or she will make bad decisions.
A person that has been incarcerated and is making bad
(28:37):
decisions as a very high chance that he or she
will recidipate. The program teaches an overall awareness of how
money works in a person's life and provides tools that
will assist them as they learn to plan ahead, making
right decisions, reduce the amount of stress in their lives,
and not reverting back to the old ways of thinking
that resulted in their incarceration. The program provides motivation and hope.
(29:03):
The components of the program are personal finance and small
business Ownership seminar, personal budget class, business plan, class one
on one sessions, research and business ideas, and mentoring of
exitfendors upon release. So the program has been evolving since
my very first desire to be a nonprofit and then
(29:24):
I got hooked up from church with Steve and tread
and then I got into same bride's and that's where
I really started cutting my iteeth so to speak, on
working with the population in knowing that this is where
I belong. And I was doing the seminar of the
(29:45):
PowerPoint one day and I was about an hour into it.
The seminar that I did, I had written about twenty
years earlier when I was working with a small business
development center, and basically I changed the name of it
and modified it a little bit. It used to be
called Managing to your Gross Profit, and it talks about
(30:05):
how your personal life is affected by your business life
and you got to meet your goals and so forth.
I've done episodes on all this. But I stopped about
an hour n because all these men, they were sitting
right there paying close attention to me. But all of
a sudden I felt the need to explain something, and
(30:29):
I said, gentlemen, I gotta stop, I gotta stop. I
got to answer a question that I know that some
of you are thinking. And they a couple of them said,
nasty man, we love you being here. When I go
to prison, I think the main thing that people get
out of my business to prison is that they know
that somebody cares. When I was in Brunswick Women's Correctional
(30:51):
Cassandra Taylor, who's recently retired and she's a she is
one of my most wonderful close friends in the prison system.
She retired about a month ago, and she's a huge
New York Yankees fan, and so we've got that in common.
And she's got a niece that's a great niece that's
probably going to be Olympic track star. Cassandra's absolutely wonderful.
(31:14):
She had risen up to assistant warden years ago, but
she elected just to take a pay cut and be
working where she really wanted to serve, and that's in
an area of the workforce development and the women's prison
up in Brunswick Women's work Center. And she told me
one day, she said, you know, Steve, everything that you're
(31:35):
doing to try to teach them about how to handle
their money and all the other things that you do,
they're really really good. But I want to tell you
that the number one thing that they get out of
you being here is that having a man come into
this prison and treat them with dignity and respect as
(31:58):
a real human being. That's something that most of them
have never experienced in their life, and that's the main
thing they get just you being in here communicating with them,
is there as an equal, and I thank the Lord
forgiving me that ability, and I love it, and I've
had some incredible experiences there. One of the best stories
(32:20):
that I have, just I want to slip this in,
is I always wore I always wear one of two suits,
a brown suit and kind of a dark gray suit.
Always a white shirt, never anything but a white shirt
whenever when I go in, and the same tie with
the brown suit, same tie with the darker suit. And
I just was trying to tell them one day, I said, hey,
let me just tell y'all something about I know y'all
(32:42):
see me wearing the same thing all the time. It's
either this suit or that suit. But I want you
to know I do it because this is not about me.
I don't want to be a GQ kind of a
personality in here where it's about how nice seed looks today.
And look at that tie he's got with that check shirt.
He's got it. Whatever you no, I say, I wear
a simple shirt with the same tie because y'all need
(33:03):
consistency in your life, and I just want to be
one of the consistent people in your life. A woman
raises her hand in the back and says, well, mister
carpland don't worry about it. We wear the same thing
every day too. That's just one of my best stories ever.
Another piece of advice that I got from my friends
up there in Brundrick was a woman one day said
(33:24):
they encouraged me so much. I get more encouragement from
being among people that are incarcerated than I do for
most anywhere else in my life. I just love being
in there. Like I said, I am one of the
least of them, and it's true. They are trying so
hard to rebuild their lives. Some of them, not all
(33:45):
of them, haven't got it yet. But I was talking
about some writing that I was doing, and I started
going to Don Green and Poland Hill Foundation three and
a half years ago to see if I could get
in the Paul and Hill Foundation to co write a
book with me, because they do so many books. Don
Green has got his name on two hundred and fifty
books either that he's written or that he's co authored with.
(34:08):
He's That's what Napoleon Hill Foundation does is they put
out positive words everywhere, and if you've got a positive message,
then maybe you should take it to Napoleon Hill and
see if they have an interest in it. They just
really want to get the word out of the Poland
Hill philosophy positive mental attitude. So I went for it.
(34:29):
I decided that I was going to call up there
and introduce myself, and I just picked up the phone
one day and I Don Green, the executive director, met it,
and I asked him could I come visit him? I
said an appointment, and I did, And that was the
beginning of my relationship with Don Green and his book
on everything I learned about success I learned from Napoleon Hill,
Essentials of Positive Thinking. At this time of my life,
(34:52):
that's one of the best books I've ever read and
listened to. I'm on my sixth listening to it. I
just leave it in my car. I listened to it
over and over again. Every time I hear it, I
get another positive detail of something that I don't want
to miss. And so Don Green's been on the show twice,
so I'm surrounding myself. Associations in life is so important,
so Anyway, the inmate in Brunswick said to me, Steve,
(35:15):
when you write right just like you talk, Well, what
a compliment I like to talk. I like to have
y'all listen to what I have to say and give
me the positive feedback that you do. It's worthwhile for me. Well,
the program's evolved. And Dave Richards, who's a regular on
the show. Dave Richards is a very very very very
(35:37):
high level guy and I had a previous relationship with
him where I taught his wife and his son karate
about fifteen years earlier, and I went to a seminar
with some clients that he was a speaker, and at
the end of the day he said, hey, good to
see you, Steve, and I didn't recognize him. I hadn't
seen him in fifteen years. Well, he said, let's get together.
(35:58):
You know what are you doing about right thinking? Getting
off the ground. He helped me do things, and I'm
looking at something right now and this is a looks
like a half pipe, like a like a like a
skateboard and half pike, and it's the right thinking foundation model.
Identify those passionate to succeed, then connect and surround them
(36:20):
with right influences, and it's this curve all the way
on the right, were starts on the left. Rather, when
they're incarcerated, we want to give them some awareness, we
want to give them education. We're going to get them engaged,
and we want to have them make a commitment, and
then they transition out and then we receive them when
they come out, and then we connect them with other
(36:41):
people and they get back into the community. Well, then
Dave gave me this amazing graphic. It's the three pillars
to attack recidivism. You've got to have a place to live,
so home is the first pillar. The second pillar is
(37:01):
you've got to work. You've got to work. You've got
to be able to be responsible and be productive. If
you're not working, you're going to be just homeless and
destitute and being out there just depending on so many
other things. And you have to be connected with community.
(37:22):
You have to be connected to other people. Well that's
when I put that together, and Dave and I have
kept those things going forever and it's evolved, and so
as I went into prison, I started getting more and more.
I started my relationship with the Virginia Department of Corrections
and from Saint Bride's. There was Tracy Trumana, and she
(37:44):
was the connection to the state. But it took me
like eight months. I could not get introduced to the
headquarters in Richmond. I wanted to apply to become a
statewide volunteer so I could go other places, but they
wouldn't let me. I had to prove myself first. I
went to Saint Bride's in Indian Creek Local and then
(38:05):
my program is getting better and better. To go back
to go back to the men that I took a
big deviation here. I hope you stuck with me. So
the seventeen men at Saint Bride's I stopped for the
PowerPoint and I said, I got to say something to
you that I know you're not asking, but I will.
And I've done this on other shows. But what it
is is this, I said, I know that you're wondering,
(38:28):
why is this sixty one year old white dude standing
up here, dancing around in front of you telling what
your life's going to be like when you get out
of prison when he's never been incarcerated. And I said,
I said, I know you're thinking that some of you
are No. No, Steve, no, no, we don't care you
know whatever, And I said, no, look at my life's
an open book. I'll share anything you want. You know,
I got arrested for drinking in public when I was
(38:48):
a minor. I got another couple of minor things like that.
And I said, I haven't ever been incarcerated like y'all
have here. But I said, let me give you my
definition of a prison. The prison is a place where
you don't have personal freedom. Everybody shook their head and
I said, in a prison is also a place where
you don't have control over things. They shook their head,
and I said, well, we all have our own prison.
And then I told them about my prison with a
(39:11):
diagnosis for the incurable bone cancer and how that changed
my life. And I just let it into my testimony
and I told them that about I want to tell
you something. It took me about a year to finally
just just let it go and give it up to
the Lord. And I'll tell you one thing I know
right now that no matter how hard my life gets,
no matter what life throws at me, I will never quit.
And I want to ask you, gentlemen, something, when you
(39:32):
get out and you're going around trying to trying to
stabilize your life and get hired, and doors are closed
in your face. I want to know who's going to quit.
Anybody that's going to quit when life gets really hard,
when you get out, stand on your chair so the
rest of us can look at you. Well, that was
my breakthrough. That was my breakthrough in the prison population.
(39:53):
And I have to tell you, five men, after I
gave my full testimony like that, it was a deeper
than what I just gave. It started to cry. Well.
Bottom line of what I'm saying is I went through
years of working with the Gender Department Correction. A couple
(40:14):
of years ago, they said, Steve, no one's ever gone
as far as you. They've all quit. It's very, very
hard to get funding. I've self supported this myself. I've
drawn from insurance policies. It's not easy, but it's growing.
And I haven't been able to get funding from larger
organizations because I was just local and so right now.
I learned from them at prisons that the very best
(40:34):
way to fight recidivism is to get to the youth
before they get too far out in the world and
screw up. And so I took that knowledge that I
had and I got into an Achievable Dream Academy in
high school, part of the Newport News Public High School
program for at risk kids, and I teach them real
life stories, real life examples of how to really deal
(40:56):
with life. But I have a very unique approach to finances.
I've taken a forty seven plus year, almost fifty year
business career, and cash is king. It's all about cash flow.
I've taken successful principles that businesses us to be successful.
You can't get alone if you don't go to the
bank and give them a pro forma, a projection of
(41:17):
what your next couple of years are going to look like.
The point is is that I teach cash flow management
at a personal level. So I have adopted adapted business
principles into personal life. And so I've got it going,
and I'm attracting more and more people, and I have
a good number of partners working with me now. But
(41:38):
just recently I've got a new partner and it's Heritage
Wealth Management Group. Chuck Christi is the principal. And this
is the kind of thing that if you keep doing
what the Lord tells you to do and not fear
the unknown, things will happen. You will be put in
with other people and it will and now we're going
(42:01):
to have new production capability. He's doing live video stream
of my radio show and then stripping the sound, and
that's how we get onto the Talk Network Radio with
Jeff Heiser. I want to say thank you to Jeff
this morning when he talked about his thing. He talked
about how you've got to have something to do, You've
got to get into your purpose. He talked about a
(42:22):
six year old grandson and how he wanted to know,
so what are you doing? And he goes, well, I've
got everything done for today. I'm talking about my future.
Jeff'show this morning was incredible, but he quoted me when
we were talking about it before my show. His dad
always told him, if you're not getting ready for something,
you ain't doing nothing. Well, the bottom line is some
of us can't not do things, and if we're following
(42:45):
the direction that the Lord wants us to follow, you
don't have to worry about what you're doing. Just keep
doing it. So, Jeff, thank you for talking about my
journey on your show this morning, and I appreciate you well.
So then I got into redevelopment and housing communities and
off of redevelopment in housing Newport News Redevelopment of housing
(43:06):
trying to help people that are quote economically disadvantaged hardship populations.
We're trying to get to the root of this problem
where we've got so many people that are struggling, but
they've lost hope. Johnny Thomas is one of my people
that I work with that had lost hope. He said
he lost his spark. And so my process is unique. First,
they got to know you love them. Then they start
(43:27):
to develop a relationship with trust. Then they might want
to respect you enough to listen to you. As they
start to listen, they might have a desire to change,
but they might not know how to change. So you've
got to give them motivation for why they should change.
And then if they can go that far with you,
if they're listening to you, they know you love them,
then you can provide tools to them. Well. So what
(43:49):
we're doing right now with with right thinking is we're
going to continue what we do, but now I've had
a goal. Robin Cossargin of Houses of Healing, the Lionheart Foundation,
It's just about networking. This is the Mastermind group in motion.
I'll just tell you. So Don Price, the banker I
(44:10):
told you about, He's involved in many nonprofits. He introduced
me to a man named Steve Hammonds. That's a man
that is a high educator at a private school and
then he practices choice therapy and he's tied into I
think it's the William Man psychology. So he connected back
(44:32):
to that group that's a worldwide group. They connected me
to Frank Ferguson, who's an eighty year old gentleman that
is a publisher. I spoke to him. He connected me
to Robin Cassargan. She sent me. He asked her as
a board member to give Steve the whole video series
and books on houses of Healing. And then I met Robin.
(44:53):
I watched all of her stuff. I've made an appointment.
I traveled to Boston to have a three hour meeting
with her. She adopted me at that point. Has been
one of my closest friends and supporters ever since then.
Then I went from there, and so it's about following
up Grinn Cunningham, she's retired a year ago. She was
my mentor. She was a program manager workforce development for
(45:15):
the State of Virginia. And I've got I've got this
DVD teaching series that Robin Kazargen done. It's been my goal.
My real goal is to be able to just love
and motivate people and talk and have other people kind
of follow up. Right now, the organization is growing. Dave
Richards is getting a rebirth and where he believes that
(45:36):
this can go and his technology is the difference. There's
a lot of us out there that are speaking and
motivating people all the time. There's a lot of x
X felons that go back in because they want to
they want to give more. But there's very few businessmen
that want to go in and kid because there's really
no money in it. So we're getting ready to grow
the foundation. We're going to have new production capabilities. But
(45:59):
Huck Christy three weeks ago when Gary Schaeffer, my racquetball buddy,
that's just a God sent to me that he's such
a good friend and cares so much about this. Gary
has his own nonprofit where he goes into the inner city.
It's called the Victors. During the summer, he goes into
the inner city and he has volunteers from the police
department go out there and help these inner city kids
(46:21):
have some quality time and be mentored through baseball, and
so it's all coming together. It's all we talk about
on some of the shows about we're all part of
the kingdom. We're all using our gifts. So where am
I going with this? I'm going to be able to
the future here. I'm gonna be able to finally get
in the car that don Price hooked me up with
(46:42):
with the Auto connection. They gave me two nineteen a
twenty thirteen Chevrolet and Palette donated the Right Thinking Foundation
so that I could travel across the country because i
have a goal. I want to touch as many lives
as possible, and I want to go into a print
and in every state of this country. And I'm taking
(47:02):
my first trip finally outside of Virginia. I can't make
it financially just being local, but I'm praying that as
I go and spread this message of love, encouragement, hope,
and provide tools and can connect with people, that other
people will pick up on this and want to partner
with Right Thinking. So I'm getting ready to take a trip.
(47:25):
I'm looking at my map right now. I'm going like
a grey und bus driver. I love to travel. I've
been on the road my whole life. I'm going Norfolk, Marrying, Virginia's, Memphis, Tennessee, Tulsa,
Oklahoma to have a fifteen minute meeting with Jim Stowball,
one of the most wonderful people I've met in my life.
I just want to shake his hand. I've compared my
(47:47):
fifteen minutes with him. Why I want to do it
to Eugene Cernan, second man to walk on the Moon,
Fred Pryor, one of the great great motivational organizations back
in the eighties. I just want to be around people
because and you're around greatness, it lasts a lifetime. But
I'm going to Tulsa. Then I'm going to Denver. Then
I'm going to the Archest National Park. That I'm going
(48:07):
to Salt Lake City. Then I'm going to Oregon. I'm
going to see my daughter. But I'm going to go
to a prison called Powder River Correctional Center in Baker City, Oregon.
And I've got my materials together. This is the way
it really works. Though I got a quote from a printer,
they didn't honor the quote. I'm spending four hundred and
(48:29):
twenty nine dollars for the handouts. Materials I'm giving them
and leaving some books with them. But I'm going to
keep investing in this because I believe in it. And
then I'm going to go to Yellowstone. Then I'm going
to go my wife's flying into Oregon to meet me
with my daughter. Then she's going to do the second
half the trip. But we got almost seven thousand miles
twenty three days we're traveling around. But I'm going to
(48:49):
be a different person when I get back because I'm
doing my first go outside Virginia, go all the way
across the country to Oregon, and they already have fifty
five people signed up from for my seminar. But I'm
going to be doing this for the rest of my life.
And I just want to say right now, and I
want to thank a lot of people, particularly my wife.
I want to thank Don Pryce. I want to thank
(49:11):
Dave Richards. I want to thank all my other board members.
I want to thank Robin Casarzan. I want to thank
Jeff Heiser. I want to thank Richard k for getting
my program started. But tune into the show while I'm gone,
and when I get back, I'm just going to tell
you more about the trip. Right now, I'd just like
to leave this by saying thank you to everyone who's
believed in what I do. Thank you for right thinking,
(49:34):
supporting right thinking, and I encourage everybody. Don't have fear,
don't have doubt, just go for it. And if you're
living for the Lord, he's going to take good care
of you. So I'll see you when I get back.
I'll talk to you and I get back, there's three
shows waiting for you. God bless you. Have a great day.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Thanks for listening to Right Thinking with Steve Cooper. I'll
look forward to being with you again next week. And
remember it, don't quit.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Plan ahead.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
It will get better. God bless you and have a
great week.
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