Success After Prison with Michael Santos

Eric’s testimonial convinced me that through digital programs like Earning Freedom, more people would find hope they needed to overcome struggle and prepare for success. My challenge was finding more purchase orders, as I would need a revenue stream to build a sustainable business.

10. Multiple Revenue Streams:

Throughout this book, I’ve tried to share lessons I learned from masterminds. They taught me ...

Podcasting:

The more research I did, the more I realized how podcasting could serve as a wonderful tool to build authenticity. After watching a webinar on Podcaster’s Paradise, I pulled out my credit card and paid $1,000 to enroll in the podcasting course. Through that course, I learned everything I needed to launch Earning Freedom, which would become my new podcast. I purchased microphones and software to get started. Then I reta...

Earning Freedom Mastermind Course:

Mike Tausek came across the Straight-A Guide course that I created for Justin’s nonprofit foundation. We had distributed the course to several jails, schools, and prisons. Mike contacted me to learn more about what it would take to bring the Straight-A Guide to Maine’s prison system.

The Straight-A Guide was a comprehensive course, with ten modules of five lessons each. The course included wo...

9. Orange County

After teaching my final class at SFSU in May of 2014, Carole and I loaded our Chevy Aveo to make the seven-hour drive south to Newport Beach. Earnings from books I wrote while in prison provided resources Carole needed to live while she advanced through nursing school. Those earnings also allowed her to purchase the small, four-cylinder Aveo. The car brought a lot of memories for both Carole a...

Transferring Jurisdictions:

Since I was still on Supervised Release, making a move to Newport Beach would not be so easy. I reported to a probation officer in a different judicial district. As a resident of the San Francisco Bay area, authorities required that I report to a probation officer in the Northern Judicial District of California.

Tim’s employment offer required that I relocate to the Central Judicial District of Cali...

Corporate Sponsorship:

To succeed in building the Straight-A Guide program, I would need to find a different source of support. My Socratic questioning convinced me that I didn’t have sufficient experience to accept responsibility for $3 million worth of investor money. But that didn’t mean I would have to abandon the idea altogether. Instead of raising money necessary to hire a staff, lease office space, fund travel, marketing, a...

Total Available Market:

First and foremost, I anticipated that investors would want to know the total available market for products that I could create. As I wrote above, I envisioned a multi-billion-dollar annual market. I arrived at that number after reviewing published reports showing that state and federal governments spent in excess of $80 billion per year on corrections. Although I didn’t have any data, I estimated that at m...

8. Raising Capital

The wisdom of Socrates has lived for longer than 2,000 years. His teachings influenced my thinking and approach to problems. To figure out next steps in the development of my career, I turned to his question-based approach to learning. The more questions I asked, the more truth I found in his saying, “The one thing I know is that I know nothing.”

By the spring of 2014, I’d been free from...

First Mortgage:

Carole and I met with a mortgage banker and provided all of the documentation requested. We took the next step of ordering an appraisal of the property. By considering comparable prices in the neighborhood, the appraiser provided documentation valuing our property at $454,000.

To avoid additional charg...

Building Financial Stability:

When I concluded my obligation to the Bureau of Prisons in August of 2013, I set new goals with Carole. We were 49 years old and making progress, but we would have to cover a lot of ground to prepare for a stable future. Although I felt passionately about working to improve outcomes of our nation’s prison system, I also had a responsibility of preparing for our family’s future. Carole had sacrificed a...

7. Finding Markets:

Like anyone starting a new venture, Justin and I had to overcome many hurdles as we tried to introduce our products into the marketplace. Philanthropic organizations provided us with funding to get started, but we still needed to create a sustainable business model. That meant we needed to find markets. The markets we identified included jails, prisons, and schools that served people who we...

During my imprisonment, we developed the literature for this program. It all began under the theory that people in prison would be more receptive to learning from individuals who had transformed their lives while they experienced the prison system. Prisoners sometimes rejected a message when that message came from people who didn’t know the pain of being separated from the people they loved, or from the people who loved them. We wa...

I designed the third class to teach students about evolutions that occurred in criminal justice during the 18th century. Scholars referred to that era as The Enlightenment, a time when people had more hope. Two philosophers, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, presented different theories on human behavior. According to Thomas Hobbes’ view, people were basically beasts by nature. Hobbes’ theory held that people would only refrain from br...

6. San Francisco State University

In early 2013 I began sending letters to professors who taught criminal justice courses in the San Francisco Bay area. If they thought it would be helpful, I offered to visit and provide their students with a different perspective. Many students who majored in criminal justice wanted to pursue careers in corrections, probation, or other law enforcement professions. I knew t...

Through Justin I met Scott Budnick. Through Scott Budnick, I met Chris Redlitz. And through Chris Redlitz, I met Tulio Cardozo. Tulio was one of the first graduates from The Last Mile. As I had done, Tulio made some bad decisions as a young man, becoming involved with drugs. While incarcerated, however, Tulio chose to reinvent himself. Through textbooks, he trained himself how to code computers. Those efforts brought Tulio to the a...

5. Support Networks Accelerate Growth Opportunities

Earlier, I wrote about rules in the halfway house that required me to have a job. So long as I had a job that paid a steady paycheck, my case manager in the halfway house authorized me to leave. My friend Lee was more like a sponsor for me than an employer. He set a schedule for me to work 10—hour shifts, Monday through Saturday. I reported to an office an...

Creative Financing:

I visited Chris and Seth. They were partners of Advanced Building Solutions, a premier real estate development company with more than $100 million worth of properties under development. Although I’d never met Chris prior to my release from prison, my friend Lee could introduce me. Without a doubt, Chris and Seth were the type of people I had in mind when I thought about avatars. If leaders like Chris and Seth w...

4. Real Estate Purchase

When I returned to society, in August of 2012, our nation was starting to emerge from the worst recession in our lifetime. In 2008 the stock market and the real estate market began to implode. Credit dried up. Housing prices fell to historic lows. By the fall of 2012, however, the economy looked poised to rebound. Carole and I wanted to participate in the potential upside.

To profit...

Establishing Credit:

With a driver’s license, a job, and a paycheck, I had to begin building a banking relationship. After I received my first paycheck, I went to Bank of America and opened an account. Charles had told me that I could not apply for credit until after I completed my obligation to the Bureau of Prisons. So I opened a checking account and a savings account.

Just to check, I authorized the banker to run a credi...