103: Coss Marte | Staying Out of Prison with Muscle and Conviction

Transcript for Coss Marte | Staying out of Prison with Muscle and Conviction (Episode 103)

Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger, and as always I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFillippo. Today, we're talking with Coss Marte. He's the founder and CEO of ConBody, which is in New York City based fitness studio that hires formerly incarcerated individuals to teach fitness classes. Coss personally served some time, six years in fact, some of which was spent at one of the most notorious prisons in America, Riker's Island. His story is fascinating. Today, we'll discover how at 13 year old immigrant from the Dominican Republic scaled up a $5 million a year drug business, which basically became the Uber for cocaine in New York. We'll explore the power of mindset and fitness to stay sane and healthy behind bars and we'll hear the story of lessons learned both in prison and on the streets that spawned another business, ConBody Fitness that helps those both inside and outside prison get healthy, stay that way, and more importantly, stay out of jail after they're released.

[00:00:56] This story is fascinating, whether you're an entrepreneur, you're into fitness or you just like an interesting story of a of a life other than your own. You will dig this episode, and of course, we've got worksheets for today's episode so you can make sure that you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways here from Coss Marte. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast, and if you want to know how I managed to book all of these great people, manage my relationships with hundreds slash possibly thousands of people using systems and tiny habits, check out our free Six-Minute Networking course over at jordanharbinger.com/course. All right, here's Coss Marte.

[00:01:34] First things first, man. Your story, your backstory is interesting, and I definitely want to get into that because I think it is important for people who are listening right now and who are maybe going to engage with your business in ConBody. It's important for people to understand where you came from, especially when it comes to other incarcerated individuals connecting with you directly. So let's kind of dive into your backstory. I know you grew up in New York. Tell us about the beginning of your journey.

Coss Marte: [00:02:05] Yeah. So the beginning started with my mom basically immigrated from the Dominican Republic when she was six months pregnant with me. And we ended up in the Lower East Side in the 80s where it was a very, very heavily drug infested neighborhood. I mean, even before going to school and just walking down my building steps, I would have to like skip over heroin needles and people would line up coming out of my building, I'd have to like squeeze myself in through a hallway because it was like 50 people lined up to buy heroin off different people's apartments. It was just like something that you see in the movies but it was reality for me. And most of those guys that were like selling the drugs with my family members, my uncles and cousins who grew around the neighborhood dealing with that stuff and my mom was not involved with it, but I quickly seeing that as my way out. You know, my way of making money. And I see my cousins and uncles have the big chains and the cars and the woman, and that was like what I thought I wanted, what I needed, and that's what I aspire to do when I was growing up and when I would go to school, kids would ask me, what do you want to be when you grow up? I would tell them I wanted to be rich, and that became my first avenue in reaching that goal.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:26] And this is forgivable because I'm imagining you're like seven years old or eight years old going past all of this, and yes, junkies are gross and sore needles, but at the time you're not just seeing junkies lined up in a building and some scary drug dealer. You're seeing your uncle and cousin with a ton of customers. It's a different viewpoint.

Coss Marte: [00:03:45] Exactly. Yeah, I thought it was a job to tell you the truth. I mean I knew it was hurting people because I seen how they reacted and I seen people laid out on the street and it was ugly scene. So I know it was not the right thing to do, but I felt like it was a job that they did to survive, and that's how they made their money. I didn't think that -- I don't know, I felt like we were backed up from society as a kid I saw when we played like cops and robbers, we were the robbers. And we were like, we looked at cops like they were the enemy, they were the wrong people and they were the bad people as I grew up.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:27] So were you afraid of police when you were a kid?

Coss Marte: [00:04:29] I mean, I'm afraid of police today.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:30] Oh, yeah, that makes sense actually, yeah. What happens even-- just side note and what happens now when you see police? Like what is your first gut feeling? Because I would assume at some level you run a successful business. So at some point, it's only a matter of time till you're going to have to call them for some other reason. But like what's your gut reaction when you see them now walking down the street?

Coss Marte: [00:04:51] I mean, I have cops coming into workout with us and everything and we partner up with them when we have a good relationship with them. But I also see them and I'm like, I feel like I'm doing something wrong and I have to like double check myself. Am I walking a straight line? Am I doing something out of line that could lead me back into the system? And since I've been home and they're doing the right thing, I've had times where I get pulled over and taken out of the car and searched and had dogs searched me and all this stuff, and I work where I have to go through the project buildings and where these kids still stand on the corner doing negative things and they're saying hi to me and I'm still on the same block. It's a real thing for me, even though the cops in the area know that I'm doing the right thing, but you never know.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:43] Yeah. It's interesting how that programming probably won't ever fully leave you, but I think it also keeps you grounded with the community where you live. If you still live on the same block, you haven't changed your environment that much. I'm wondering is there any pressure? You probably don't feel the pressure as much now, but it's got to be hard not to feel some pressure especially you get out of the system, you move back to the same block. I understand you're running a successful business, but if you weren't doing that it would be almost impossible not to end up going back to prison, and we'll talk about recidivism in a minute, but when did you start selling drugs? At what age?

Coss Marte: [00:06:19] I mean I started smoking weed at 11, but at 13 is when I started selling drugs, started selling coke and crack for this guy on the corner.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:28] And so you were just kind of like out there on the corner you'd take, how does it work? How did it work back then?

Coss Marte: [00:06:33] I began with some weed in middle school and then this guy named, we call him Junebug, everybody had a corner. So he owned the corner of Eldridge and Broome, and then there was like another corner on Delancey and Eldridge and then [indiscernible][00:06:52] Eldridge. So every corner was a drug dealers turf in New York City. Junebug had one of the biggest corners in the hood, and it was a 24 hour service. Somebody was always standing there and I was like clockwork sitting on a milk crate, working for this guy. It all started with just me being a tip from the neighborhood, I guess, and just smoking with them on the corner, and then eventually I wanted to make money and that was simply it. My mom, when I was a kid, I would tell her, I want this, I want that. And parents who was like [indiscernible][00:07:27] like I can't afford it, and that was basically what she told me every single time. And I got frustrated, that everybody around me had all the things, even though we were in a poor community, I mean people that had more than me and I felt like I was the poorest kid in school, poorest kid around my area and I wanted more, and I saw this avenue as an opportunity.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:53] How did you scale the business from that point? So if you're 13, you're selling coke and crack on a corner, how do you move up in an organization like that? So you're not 30 years old standing on a corner. I mean, I don't think anybody would last that long in a corner. You just eventually get caught, go to jail, that's the end, right?

Coss Marte: [00:08:09] No, I mean I've seen people last a long time on a corner, but they do eventually end up lying dead or in prison. But I've moved up because Junebug, I guess he saw my dedication. I was there like day in, day out, breaking night, nonstop, no sleep. I was up for, I remember being up for three days at a time. And then sleeping like eight hours and then going back for three more days on the street like I was just nonstop, relentless and hungry. And then Junebug, basically a retired, he took his money left, and he went somewhere in PA, I’m not going to tell, put his information out there and he did his own thing and when I was like 16, 17 was when I basically took over. I inherited the corner from him and I took it over and this was like 2000. How I moved up and I changed the way people sold drugs at one point in the early 2000s. What came to my mind was that I always was getting stopped and I was arrested a couple of times as a kid just for like minor stuff, weed and mostly just smoking weed and doing dumb shit. And I saw one day when I went to court, I caught a case and I got caught up in a crack house, and I was found with like 40 bags of crack.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:32] Wait, hold on. You said you caught a case. What does that mean?

Coss Marte: [00:09:35] I got arrested.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:36] Okay. No problem. No use the jargon. I just want to ask, I just want to clarify what it means because when I used to listen to Tupac in ‘96, which is basically my experience in this area, that meant like doing drugs or something like that. So I always want to clarify because not everybody listening has experienced in this niche as you might imagine.

Coss Marte: [00:09:54] Right, yeah. I feel you. I feel you. So yeah, I received the case. I was arrested 16 with a little bit over 40 bags of crack in a crack house, and then I was going back and forth to court. But when I was going to court I was wearing like a suit and a tie and nobody in the neighborhood realized that I was wearing a suit and a tie. I was just like walking through the blocks and people would walk by me and not notice me. And before then I was getting stopped left and right because I was wearing like a backwards hat, my T-shirt was under my ass and like my pants were all the way down and I looked like I was up to no good. I look like Jay-Z in 1996, like in a Reasonable Doubt album covers.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:47] Yeah.

Coss Marte: [00:10:48] And then I realized like this, I could start hustling and changing the way I look and start going after people that have more money. So I make 10,000 business cards. I started wearing a suit, my friends that were smoking weed with me on the corner. They became my, basically my drivers and my delivery messengers. And then I started hold delivery service and it was like a legit formal wearing business service. It looked like we were running a taxi cab service. I had a couple of dispatchers was rotating in and out, add a little bit over 20 drivers, eight hour shifts. It became a proper business and we were so incognito that I thought I was never getting caught.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:36] So it's like a black car service. Like this is pre-Uber dispatch. I assume you use phones instead of radios. And did you use like text messaging codes or do the dispatcher call you and tell you?

Coss Marte: [00:11:49] Yeah, so I had seven cell phones because each phone only 2,500 numbers. So my dispatcher was like literally answering two phones at a time and putting two phones down and answering so more phones because it was like nonstop ringing and so many phones. It was just insane. And we were using a radio service out, you probably remember the Nextels, so the Nextels was like our radio service and then I hired a few ladies that were really good at texting back in the day, you had a press like bb, cc--

Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:22] C9, it was T9.

Coss Marte: [00:12:23] I mean you had it like really press so many numbers so make a word out. And I had two girls doing that, texting, discount blasts at certain days and it was just, it was insane. You go look up like my case, you search like most significant case in New York City in 2009, I was like the top case. They mentioned that we were running like a whole text message deal thing.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:54] Wow! What was on the business card? That's my question. It's like well what kind of business card do you print? 10,000 of, because you can't be like Coss Marte, drug dealer extraordinaire, right? Like what do you put on the card?

Coss Marte: [00:13:08] So it was, oh my God, the first branded card. So we had a few branded cards. The first brand new card was not the right, we didn't shoot the right branding. So it was this club back in the day call Happy Endings.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:24] I've been there a bunch of times.

Coss Marte: [00:13:26] Okay. So when Happy Endings first open, that's when like the neighborhood was getting gentrified, and there was a whole bunch of like [indiscernible] [00:13:35] going in there and there would see us in a quadrants as house ceilings and we would just approach them and be like, we got blow, we got blow, you got blowing, and it blew up. And so we made our first business cards and named them Happy Endings. And what was funny is we were getting other calls for other services, like people were asking for real happy endings and we were selling blow, so that was one of the cards. And then we had another card called Trees for Pleasures, and that's when I started doing like the weed the logo service, and then I started doing party services and it looked like a July for caterings service type of deal. And so I had three different sets of business cards.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:21] That's insane. That's so funny. And how do you know who to give the card to? Just people at the bar, people at the club?

Coss Marte: [00:14:26] Yeah. So basically I was South smoking like 50 blunts a day literally. I was like weedaholic. And I was going up to random people saying like, “Hey, you want to smoke with me?” And then I'll give them a card and be like, “Hey, you need more? Any of the services we have blow this, that. I make delivery 24 hours a day, blah, blah, blah.” And from there just started growing. People were like, that's how you obviously got quiet and it wasn't a reason that we got arrested. We got arrested for -- it's a longest story we can probably get into in a bit. But yeah, I mean it became just a little five second punchline. “Hey, we got blow,” or “What's up buddy? Do you want to smoke marijuana with me?” And it'll be from there. Just say you have like, “Hey, I got cocaine. I got this, I got that.” So it was pretty intense.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:20] Oh wow. How much did you scale up to, at what point, what was your sort of peak annual income? Did you track this?

Coss Marte: [00:15:28] Yeah, so I was profiting myself $2million a year. We were selling or revenue, probably half of $5 million a year.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:37] Wow! Where do you put your money at that point? You can't use a bank or were you laundering the money at this point or do you just have like a ton of crap that you spend it on?

Coss Marte: [00:15:45] I bought a lot of dumb shit. I bought a lot of dumb shit, bought a lot of cars. I was buying like chinchillas and Rolexes and then just stashing cash in different stash houses. I was taking like all my friends from the block, I would take like 20 people to like Puerto Rico and splurge on a casino and go crazy. It's just gets harder.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:16:16] You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Coss Marte. We'll be right back after this.

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:36] I'm assuming that at some point now that you have a kid and you're running a legit business and you see how much $2 million profit per year is, you're probably like, I could have skipped one of those trips and retired like five years earlier, right?

Coss Marte: [00:19:50] Absolutely. I mean I felt when you live in that lifestyle and the money keeps coming in and you have this like lucrative business going on, you just get caught up in that, keeps spending, keep making, keep spending and keep making, and it's a hard cycle to escape.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:09] I can imagine that. I could imagine. Was there a part of you, and this is a leading question, so feel free to disagree. Was there any part of you that felt like, “Well, I made this money illegally so maybe I don't necessarily deserve to keep it.” So the best thing to do is to spend it? Because I would feel that way, I think.

Coss Marte: [00:20:27] I didn't feel any guilt like that.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:31] No.

Coss Marte: [00:20:32] I'm sorry, I don't want to feel like I want to sound like an asshole, but.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:35] No, the truth is what I'm after. It's fine.

 

Coss Marte: [00:20:39] I was a kid. I mean I was 19, 20 years old with so much cash, and like everybody in the hood is looking up to me and I'm driving like -- this was like 2006, and I'm driving like the 2007 M3 with the hard top convertible, straight from Germany, you know what I mean? And like you see kids going to school and they're like I want to be this guy. So you're getting that ego boost and having all this stuff, it was insane.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:14] It reminds me of that ludicrous track, Jason, was like, that car don't come out until next year. Where the fuck did you get it? You know what I'm talking about?

Coss Marte: [00:21:23] Exactly.

 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:23] That's clearly what he was referring to, in that as well. Yeah, man, this is so fascinating for me because when I look at businesses like this, they seem easy to run, but they're not. And that I think a lot of people get caught up and the money's plentiful, but from what you're telling me, this wasn't some simple operation where you're sitting at home playing Xbox and you've got this line out the door and then every day you're making five, 10 grand. This is an operation. You have employees, you have overhead, you have management, you must have had middle managers making sure that deliveries were made and people were packing the packages, like this isn't a two or three man operation. You said you had what? 20 drivers? Two dispatchers. Who else? What else is involved and logistics wise in a business like this?

Coss Marte: [00:22:13] So I have them around 25 people, people bagging up, people, texting, people, dispatching, and then drivers, and then I had a partner as well. I slept, he was up, he slept up, and then I was up. So we just ping pong back and forth. I mean, it was not a thing that I did by myself, and I mean I started it by myself, but it grew and it's not like easy business. A lot of people are like, “Oh, that's the easy way out. That's easy money, blah, blah, blah.” I mean, I had to work my ass off. I mean like people don't understand, and I guess entrepreneurs on the stand, because I go through it now. Running illegal business, like how much work needs to be done and people make it look easy and media makes it look like everything is shiny and they don't know what is going on in the background.

[00:23:10] I mean, I remember days where I'm like selling cracked in the corner and I'm like going asleep on a milk crate. And like for three days, like brushing my teeth out in the street with a quarter water and using a bathroom between cars, crazy shit, shit that I can't make up, man. And it was not easy, it was not, not easy, it was a lot of looking behind your shoulder and then making sure the next guy's happy and that person's that happy, and then also getting robbed and tied up. And I got caught in my stomach, like this is so many, so many obstacles.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:56] You say you got tied up.

Coss Marte: [00:23:57] Yeah, tied up and robbed.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:59] Wow! That's scary. That's got to be scary, because I would imagine it's not even a professional job. These are probably junkies that are coming up to you. So you're like, are these irrational people just going to kill me or like stab me with a bunch of dirty knives, that's what I think about when I think about this. There's no glamor involved in this angle. I used to work in Detroit and I used to see drugs and drug deals go down all the time, but I also saw a lot of dead people and that for me was enough. But it seems like that for you, you kind of had grown up with it and internalized it and thought, okay, cost of doing businesses, this is risky.

Coss Marte: [00:24:36] If you go to MBA school and or course, that's the mindset that you have, like the cost of businesses, it's risky, but when you in the streets and you grew up on it, this is what you got to deal with. And I felt I felt trapped in a way where I felt like I didn't ask for this and I felt in some sort of way as a victim and a product of my environment. I was brought up in this world and this is the opportunities that I have in front of me and I want to take full advantage of them.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:13] Do you still feel that way?

Coss Marte: [00:25:14] I mean, I started my own business now, doing other things so.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:19] Well, yeah, we'll get into that. But I mean, do you still feel, of course, I know that I know that you're a productive member of society, but do you still feel like you're a victim and a product of your environment in that way?

Coss Marte: [00:25:30] Definitely. I mean, just growing up and just seeing pretty much all my friends that I went to school with were at least arrested once. I was stopped because I fit the description, there was days I was getting stopped two or three times a day for months at a time. The cops knew me and the cops just messed around with me and put me on the ward, start searching me in, I know cops while I was locked up, put drugs on me and set me up. And then as you see your environment, you see, and you go onto the system, you see that the system is primarily Hispanic or I mean black or Hispanic.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:14] The prison system, the prison system.

Coss Marte: [00:26:16] Yeah, when you go into the prison system, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:18] So how did you end up in prison? Six years is a long time. So we already know you weren't selling in dime bags. They caught you for something big. What happened? How did you get caught?

Coss Marte: [00:26:29] So one of my dispatchers began another phone and another business card and he started getting supply from somewhere else. He was not feeling my work and he was selling this other product, well coke, but it was like cut. And there was one loyal customer who I knew from back, back in the day who had my personal number, and his name was Dominic, and Dominic calls me, he's like, “Yo, this guy’s selling some other shit, can you check him, blah, blah, blah? And by the way, he also gave me another number, and I'm like, “What? Another number? Like what are you talking about?” He's like, “Yeah, you guys have another number, right?” And I was like, “What's that number?” So I got that number and then that number is not part of our service. And I call that number and the dispatcher picks up and I'm like, “What the fuck is you doing with his number?” And he hangs up right away and he had all the phones his possession at that time and he had probably, I don't know, a little bit over half a key coke on him in his possession, who is distributing like the packages throughout the day. So he basically ran away. I retrieved all the phones because I had all prepaid phones. I had a connection with like T-Mobile had all the phones, start a new phone lines took that number that you had and opened up another line too. So this time I had eight phones.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:02] So you took over his business basically?

Coss Marte: [00:28:05] I took over his business. This guy like disappeared. I saw him once while I was with my friend. We try to attack him. He like ran into a cop car. It was like a whole scene. Cops like stop those. They said they had guns, we had guns, all this stuff, whatever. Eventually this guy disappeared. I haven't seen him or heard from him since then, and that was the last time I saw him. But I took off of that phone that he was just distributing his own personal business card with and that phone was being tapped by a federal agents. Some way, somehow he gave out his car to a federal agent or detective and that phone was being tapped and I didn't know that was phone was being tapped. So I was just sending at that time I was working with this other dispatcher, me and him. And I was dispatching at that time because I didn't trust anybody and I started just making, sending people to the delivery routes and they eventually got us, they had like a whole year investigation. They had 40 direct sales, they had my phone, voice recorded or whatever, but didn't have proof of me like doing any transactions. And so it was all conspiracy, but they knew my name and they knew obviously where I was running the operations from. So they basically snatched up one of my drivers the day. They snatched him up, he folded on the pressure in the precinct. They took him into aggregation room. He basically told them like everything, it was funny as I didn't know it was around, we got caught, it was like 12 of us who were arrested. So some people got away because they were not working that shifts, but he basically told them everything and they started doing a sweep.

[00:29:55] So every time I was sending people over to different deliveries with the number, they called me and they was like, “Oh send somebody here to 23rd and third or 25th and six. I was sending my driver over there and the walkie talkies on the next house or no, if you remember when they used to like flick sometimes, it's like beep, beep, beep, and he used to like mess up and it kept doing that at driver after driver after driver. And I was like, “What the hell is going on?” And it was like after like the 10th driver, I was like I don't know what's happening. And I had an easel board set up with a chart of everybody I was calling and how much they want it and the address. So I was just like, “Yo, this is going crazy. I have 50 people waiting. I'm telling everybody.” I got like, “I'll be there in five, 10 minutes, and nobody's getting their services.” So I was like, “Fuck it! I'm going to do it myself.” And I go up to the stash house in the Bronx. I had this other house over there, where it has some drugs at, and I grabbed probably like a hundred grams of coke all bagged up and I stick it in my underwear and I'm like, “I'm going to go delivery.” And as soon as I stepped out, federal agents, just like, actually there was only one federal agent, this guy and I won't forget his name ever in my life. His name is Steven. Steven something.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:21] I won't forget it ever, except for right now.

Coss Marte: [00:31:23] Yeah, except for right now.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:27] It’s funny.

Coss Marte: [00:31:27] Because I was going to say Stephen King, but it was nice. Yeah, it was actually Stephen King.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:32] Ah, that's why.

Coss Marte: [00:31:34] And that’s why I was like, “Oh no, it can't be because that's a writer. But yeah, so I stepped out of the house. There was this white guy in the middle of the Bronx, like an a primarily Hispanic black neighborhood. And I look at him and I'm like this weird, and then I go onto my car. I opened the door and he says, Coss Marte. This is detective Stephen King from Drug Enforcement Agency, your whole operations over, and pops off his bags and I'm like, Get the fuck out of here. I don’t know what you’re talking.” Now I try to turn around and run and as soon as I tried to turn it around like about a dozen officers just tackle me and throw me on top of my car and handcuff me and starts searching me, and they had a search warrant for the house. They found about a kilo and a half, and a house money and all types of stuff, and then they took me in and that's how I got arrested.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:32:34] You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guests, Coss Marte. We'll be right back after this.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:39] This episode is also sponsored by Purple. So me, I sleep like a freaking rock. Well, I fall asleep really quickly. Sometimes I can't stay asleep. I wake up, I'm stiff in the morning, I got some pain in my neck or whatever. I often wake up super-hot, sweaty at night, who knows what that is and there's a lot of factors there, but I just got a Purple mattress and this thing is incredible. Super comfortable, stays nice and cool at night. It's different than anything I've ever felt before. I don't wake up with the sore, the crick in your neck. I've been getting the best sleep I've ever had, and the founders of Purple are two brothers. They've been developing cushioning technology for three decades on things like medical beds, wheelchairs. In 2016, they finally decided to use their comfort tech to create, Purple, the world's most scientific mattress. So how's it different than other mattresses? Fine, the Purple mattress will probably feel different than anything you've ever experienced because it uses this brand new material that was developed by an actual rocket scientist. It was not like the memory foam that I'm used to, and the Purple mattress feels very unique. It's both firm and soft at the same time. Kind of hard to explain, but it keeps everything supported while feeling really comfortable. Plus it's breathable, so it sleeps cool and you get that kind of zero gravity effect and they've got a 100 night risk free trial. So if you're not fully satisfied, you can return your mattress for a full refund backed by, of course, a 10 year warranty, free shipping, free returns, and they're going to take your old crappy mattress away. So look, you're going to love Purple. Jason, tell them where to get it.

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:21] This episode is sponsored in part by One Fix. Most diets fail, of course, they make you change way too many foods and make you change everything at once and when you want to fix how you eat, you should do the opposite. You should make one change, do it slowly and let it stick. So with the One Fix app, a nutritionist will analyze your meals. They find one thing that's causing your body to store extra fat, for example, and they give you a little fix. You did that One Fix every day for a month. If you're doing just One Fix, it's easy. When it becomes part of who you are, you begin the next fix. If it's diabetes, heart disease of that stuff runs in your family, an extra 30 pounds can be enough to really make you worried. Yeah, Jen's actually been using this. It's cool. You just take pictures of all your food in a nutritionist is like, “Hey, this is great. Try it with less tortillas chips or whatever. So it's pretty cool. Jen digs it. I'm a brother-in-law digs it. It is kind of funny watching them take pictures of their food and then everybody thinks it's for Instagram, but it goes in the app and then someone's like, “Oh nice.” “Are these potatoes or is it beef?” “Oh okay, It's beef.” “Cool.” It's a little bit big for a portion or whatever. It's sensible. Diets are a terrible way to lose weight and when you want to make it permanent, he got to do One Fix at a time. So go get One Fix. Jason, tell them where they can find it.

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[00:35:46] Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers is what keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/advertisers. We also have an Alexa Skill so you can get inspirational and educational clips from the show in your daily briefing. Go to jordanharbinger.com/alexa, or search for Jordan Harbinger in the Alexa App. And now for the conclusion of our show with Coss Marte.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:11] Wow! All right, so you get caught, you get sentenced. Why did you start working out in prison?

Coss Marte: [00:36:17] So I started working out after being in prison about 11, 10 months. And that's when I first seen the doctor, and that's why they took medical exams. Once you become state property, you start getting medical services. So they take my blood and a week later they call me down to the medical unit and I'm like, “Okay, I didn't know what they were calling me down for,” but they sat me down and they said, “You know that your cholesterol levels are bad.” And I was like, “What do you mean?” And it was like, “Cholesterol levels are through the roof and if you continue living the lifestyle that you're living, that you could probably die of a heart attack within five years.” And I'm like, “What?” I knew I was overweight, but I didn't feel like I was in a point that I could probably die, and being sentenced to seven years and been told that I was going to die in five, I was like, I'm not dying. And what they recommended was start eating correctly, and obviously in prison, you don't get the best food. And they told me start exercising, so that's why I started working out.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:35] I know that you and your trainers with ConBody have started actually going into prisons to train incarcerated individuals there firsthand. That I know from looking at some of the charities that have invited me to go to, to the prisons and things like that. These are really moving and humbling experiences. And is this kind of what's keeping you going? I mean, it seems like this kept you going while you were inside. It seems like it's keeping other people going while they're inside as well.

Coss Marte: [00:38:04] Yeah, I mean, it does keep me going for sure, but also the bills come every month and that keeps me going, but when I was told that I was going to like die, I started working out and started just running lapse and didn't think anything of it, but I lost 70 pounds in six months, with the workout routine and that I started implementing in my prison cell, and the lapse that I started running in the yard and eventually I saw join up a group and I had this one guy called Boss, use literally like the size of the Boss. He was like 320 pounds, 5’6. He'd walked by using a die in five months instead of five years. But he asked to run with me and I started running with him and eventually his friend started running and then we started doing a whole workout routine together and we started building a comradery, and I just saw like the humanist, that person, nobody -- you know, people say that people are born bad. I don't believe anybody's born bad. I feel like society places as in situations that make us or we do dumb decisions does, we're young individuals as we should and learn from them. But yeah, I don't think anybody's born bad and the people that and that's why I want to give these individuals a second opportunity to work for me. I seen the pain that I went through and I seen pain that they went through when I came home, nobody wanted to hire me.

[00:39:41] I went from job interv to filling out probably every application you could think of from every retail store in Time Square and Harold Square and just kept non-stopping knocking on doors. And what kept me away from getting a job was because of my background, and the second line in any New York application back then it was first name Coss, last name Marte, have you ever been convicted of a felony? Yes. And I had to write out my whole funny and as soon as I handed that application over to a manager, they seen that and they'll look at it and already through the body language I was already, I already knew that they were not going to call me back. So I felt rejected every single time. I'm still very optimistic that I was going to get something, but born out of desperation, I did my own thing and then I started getting hit up by friends and people who've been incarcerated, people that I was locked up with, asking to join and that's where my mission began.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:50] I know you lost 70 pounds in prison, but I also know that the largest part of fitness is diet. So how do you eat healthy in prison? I've seen prison food. This is not healthy stuff that they're feeding you guys.

Coss Marte: [00:41:03] Yeah, I mean the food in prison is basically, you get it in a bag with like -- we call it mystery meat and a sauce and they stick it in the cattle and they boil it and then they throw it in a pan and just take a ladle and just like dump it on your tray. And next thing you move on to the next slide, and that's what you basically intake. But if you have money in prison, you can go to commissary, you could get a certain things, and that's what I did. I went to commissary, I've got a couple of things. So you get fruits and vegetables sent from home. So I was also, you know how my family at that time, sending me 35 pounds of food every month, you only could get like fruits and vegetables and then canned food.

So I was mostly eating like tuna cans and Jack mac and you make all this stuff in a microwave, you become very creative. I was actually cooking also with not -- I mean you come up with the most creative shit in prison. You get like these plastic water hotpots that you warm up your water so you can make at least like ramen noodle soup with it. But you rip out the plastic out of it, you take like a Maxwell coffee can, you've melted on top of the burner and you stick a little bit of oil and they like deep frying stuff, and like making sauté the onions and peppers and garlic, you know what I mean? So you get creative and that's what I did. I basically eliminated eating bread, eliminated pasta and rice. Base all my carbs were through like fruits and vegetables and just intaking more protein, primarily eating a lot of fish.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:59] Wow! I would not have thought that it would even be possible to eat healthy in prison. I know you and I talked pre-show about the prison burrito, ramen noodles, cheese rice, Doritos, slim Jim's not exactly what I had in mind for a bodybuilding material. But got to get crafty.

Coss Marte: [00:43:20] I wrote out a few recipes in my book, if you want to check that out.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:26] How do you stay positive while you're inside? Because it seems like these are the worst of circumstances for most people. And I know that you spent, you said you spend a lot of time in solitary confinement which sounds terrible, first of all. Why were you in solitary confinement?

Coss Marte: [00:43:41] I went to solitary confinement a few times, but the lots on I went to solitary confinement was something that I felt like I didn't do. I was walking down towards the medical unit one day, and this also places beyond the wall.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:57] Put you on the wall.

Coss Marte: [00:43:58] Yeah. They take any inmate that's walking by and they randomly like searched you because people sometimes carry like shanks or drugs on them. And so they randomly like search people, so this all surprises me on a wall. It starts searching me become starts getting super aggressive between my legs and I move my body, I like jerk my body because I've felt like a little bit annoyed and he punched me beyond my head and said, “Don't fuck with me. Today's not my day.” When he punched me behind my head, I dropped down to the ground that at the time I was wearing glasses, I went to pick up my glasses and I turned around on the officer and as soon as I turned around on the officer, he pressed this button, his walkie talkie and they call that the pen. And as soon as the pen is pressed, the whole alarm for the whole prison goes off and everybody has to hit the ground and face down, hands on their head, and about a dozen officers come to the scene and they beat the crap out of me. They just started stomping out me, they shackled me up, and they throw me a solitary, and I was in a say fucked up situation. I was placed in solitary confinement and I didn't know what to do. I had two months left, I had two months left to go home. I was coming home on an early release program and I finished seeing my son and I ended up not going home, and I'm in solitary confinement, just going crazy walking back and forth because that's all you can do is just walk in from the front of the cell, back of the cell, sit down, back on, rock your body back and forth from seating position, and there's nothing to do. You only get like two showers a week. I remember it was like the middle of July. It was like the hottest, it was 110 degrees. It was no AC in, no fan, I was boiling, so I was basically like in there naked and the water, my cell was coming out like green and barely coming out of the sink. So I didn't have any water. I was like in the worst point of my life there. And I was like, “What the hell is going on? I didn't do anything wrong.” And because the situation is also was trying to give me three more years, three more years in prison behind the situation.

[00:46:30] And it was not until, I was there for a few hours and my slot opens, where they fee, probably seen them in movies where they open up the slot and they feed you a tray and your food and my slot opens and they passed me a paper pen and an envelope. So I quickly like grabbed that and started writing a letter to my family, letting them know I'm in trouble, in this whole like situation, please get me a lawyer, get me the hell out of here, and then I realized I had no [indiscernible][00:47:02]. I had no way of sending out this message out to my family. I was devastated, I was devastated, and I started banging my head on the wall. I felt like I was a victim. I just felt so bad and I didn't know what to do, I didn’t know what to do. And it was not until a couple of days later, stressed out of my mind, where less sister writes me. My sister, knows basically one of my main points of contact, because I was always calling home and she didn't hear from me for a while, for like a few days. So she called up the prison and ask what happened. And she and my sister writes me a letter and tells me, everything's going to be okay. All I want you to know -- my sister's like really religious, like Mother Theresa's child, hallelujah, Amen, everything, and she writes me and tells me to read Psalm 91 from the Bible.

[00:48:12] I took that letter and I was like, I don't need religion. I need a lawyer. I was just going crazy. I didn't know what to do. And she writes me this letter and I threw it in the corner of my cell, and it was not until a couple of days later where I decided to pick up this Bible. This Bible that she gave me on or early on in my incarceration that I never picked up, never read it. I didn't care about God, didn't believe in religion, but I was bored out of my mind, and I decided to open it out of boredom. And I turned to Psalm 91, it states, He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, "He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust." And as soon as I read those words, a stamp fell out of my Bible, and it was a stamp that I needed to send up to the letter with.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:05] Wow! Well, that's interesting. Did she put the stamp there though? Like, was that like, “Okay, I'm going to put an emergency stamp at Psalm 91?”

Coss Marte: [00:49:13] No. There was not even in Psalm 91. It was in between some page, I don't even know. But like as soon as I open up the binding of the book, it felt in between the Bible, but I had that, I had that Bible for -- she gave me that Bible early on, so I was already in the South. That was like almost my fourth year in prison. So I had it for a while, I just didn't pick it up, and that's the only thing that they allow you to have from your personal items as your religious things. So whatever you have, and as soon as that happened, like chills ran that on my body. I felt like those, I felt weird. I felt like those a bigger presence. I felt humbled. I began reading a Bible from front to back, and then I started realizing that I was now only affecting my son, my family, but the thousands of people that I was selling drugs to. And then I started realizing that these people had families as well. They were probably being affected by the things that I was doing, and I felt like I was creating some blood of destruction, and for the first time I prayed in my life and I ask God, how can I pay back for all the wrongdoings that I've done in my life? And it hit me like a light bulb. Fitness, I'm already helping these guys in the yard workout. Guess it. I love working out, and it became my avenue, my mission to give back to society. So I ended up doing actually a year in prison. They set about pleading guilty. They'll allow me to leave in a year, and that's what happened. And as soon as I came out, I started doing it day one, hitting the streets, working out, asking every few female wearing [indiscernible] [00:51:13] yoga pants to workout with me, that was it.. That's where ConBody was brought up.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:21] What lessons from the drug business have you implemented in your fitness business?

Coss Marte: [00:51:27] I felt like, I mean there’s lot of parallels, a lot of parallels. First, managing individuals, making sure people show up on time, making sure that people present themselves well, you dressing the right way. I think the only difference is that we're, I didn't pay taxes back then, but it keeping the books, even like I mean right now I use like zero, not QuickBooks, but I have like my own book keeping service online and like use spreadsheets and stuff. Back then we were like using marble notebooks and like jotting everything down on a notebook, but basically like money in money coming out, keeping track of inventory, creating the best product. And I think the number one thing that I learned from both sides of the business and to run a successful business is consistency. Just showing up every single day with a great product and delivering great customer service, and that's what I did every day. I showed up on that and sat down on them. They'll create and delivered a great bag of cocaine, and showed up on time, I was always there reliable, every customer knew that I was there, and then did the same thing now today. I was showing up 5:30 in the morning in the park, ready to give classes at 6 a.m, good delivering a great product. We were finding our product every single time, getting feedback, and just same path I always make, same battles.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:13] I know that you want to focus a lot on breaking the cycle for a lot of the guys that are inside, and keep them from going back. And it seems like ConBody, the studio and the company, it's about actually rehabilitating the prisoner, right? Giving people a second chance so that they don't end up finding just the same path that they found before. Do people who are incarcerated or who have been incarcerated see themselves as different from the rest of the population even when they get out of prison? Is that a normal phenomenon in your opinion?

Coss Marte: [00:53:46] They definitely see themselves different from other members of society. I mean, you feel judged and you feel broken. New York State gives you 40 dollars and a bus ticket when you're released from prison, 40 dollars and a bus ticket. I mean, what do you do with 40 dollars? Most people go to McDonalds, spend 20 bucks on Big Macs and french fries because they haven't had fast food in a long time, and then you have 20 dollars off and you'd get on the subway and then the money is gone. What else do you do from that? You go to a homeless shelter, you're surrounded by people that are doing the same thing, and you end up back in that cycle. So we found ways of breaking that cycle. I mean, everybody that works for me today has not gone back into the system, which it's unheard of.

Nobody has a zero recidivism rate, whether it's a non-profit, for-profit entity, I mean, and we've built this community that empowers people. They come home, they start working with us right away. They create this whole community where young professionals, who probably never met anybody that has been incarcerated, changed their views on how they view people that's been incarcerated. So it's just not only empowering the individuals that are coming out of prison, but it's also changing the views and perspectives of people that live with day to day life that don't know what's going on in the prison system and view us as like, you know what they see it as like the A&E channel, and A&E shows every person that's locked up as a murder and a rapists. And when you tell somebody that I've been locked up before, the first thing they think is like, what did you do? Did you kill somebody? Did you get raped in the shower? And I'm like, we need to change this whole perspective on how we view formally incarcerated individual.

[00:55:51] First of all, 80 percent of the prison population is probably in there for drugs, or has some drug related incident that ended up there. Most of the people that committed murder were manslaughters are mistake, people defending themselves over our fight or something like of that nature or retaliation, very limited amount of people that are psychopaths coming out, trying to become like mass murderers and that's like 0.0001 of the prison population. You know what I mean? And we need to change that. America, not even America. I mean this whole world's view on how they view people that's been in the system.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:56:34] Coss, thank you so much man. You're really honest. It's really a moving story. It's interesting as hell, and I want to thank you for your time. Thanks for coming on the show and thanks for what you're doing. I think it's really important, and I know that a lot of people agree. And I think also it would have been really easy for you to say, “Well, I'm still a victim. I can't do anything with myself because I went to prison and I grew up tough,” but you didn't do that.

Coss Marte: [00:57:00] I'm still living it, I'm still living it and I view life for a whole different way. It's been a mission and a blessing to have this opportunity to raise not only myself out of and break that cycle, but break other people's cycles and join us. This team, this incredible -- I met this smartest individuals. I mean as you went inside the system and you met probably really intelligent individuals who are hardworking, who are very optimistic. But the saddest thing is that when they come out and realities maximum to face is that society has this system that is set up for failure. I feel like as a society, we need to break that system. People say that the system is broken. I don't think the system is broken. I think the system was made to do what it's doing now and in a good documentary that represents and tells you how the system was brought up, was the 13th, if you haven't watched it, I definitely recommend that on Netflix. And it just demonstrates how this slavery was abolished and black people were released from working in the cotton fields and the white slave owners were not going into their own cotton fields and picking this stuff up. So what do they do? They lock up people, the people of color, they send them back to the fields and it becomes modern day slavery. I mean I was working inside jail for Department of Motor Vehicles for 7 cents an hour, as a customer service agent. In New York State when you were calling somebody inside the system, DMV, an inmate is picking up on the other side of the line and people don't know this, this is how the prison system profits, they make money off of this, they make money off of so many other Fortune 500 companies, even Victoria Secret panties are made in prison. A lot of huge corporations that say made in USA, it's made in USA prison.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:18] Wait a second. If I call the DMV in New York and I get patched through to customer service, I'm getting somebody at Rikers Island?

Coss Marte: [00:59:25] Not Rikers Island, Upstate New York, yep.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:27] Okay. Wow!

Coss Marte: [00:59:30] Upstate New York prison.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:30] That is a little shocking. I did not realize that. That's incredible.

Coss Marte: [00:59:35] And that individual is getting paid five to 10 cents an hour, and that's how you accumulate your 40 dollars to go home.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:44] Oh my gosh.

Coss Marte: [00:59:46] Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:46] That's unbelievable. My goodness. Coss, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. This has been enlightening in multiple ways. I really appreciate your time and your honesty, your candor.

Coss Marte: [00:59:57] No. And thank you, thank you for the opportunity here. And as you have had time to read my book ConBody is built by Amazon. Check it out. Thank you.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:08] Jason. What do you think man? I mean this was pretty impressive in multiple ways, right? He's obviously super smart, a true hustler, and just kind of needed to aim the cannon in the right direction here.

Jason DeFillippo: [01:00:22] I love stories like this where you know, you fall, you get back up again, and then you help other people that have fallen come with you. I love it.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:29] Yeah. And I think, look, everyone knows someone who's been involved in drugs. It's just that some people do not get caught. So imagine being judged for the worst thing you ever did for the rest of your life and it locks you out from experiencing other things and changing your life around for the better. When I hang out with these guys from Defy Ventures and Hustle 2.0 which is the sort of inside prison entrepreneurial program that's run by my friend, Kat, this I met Coss, it's really inspiring to see the potential and what some of the -- not even just the potential, what some of these guys who are fresh out are doing, starting these amazing businesses and using some of the stuff they learned both before they went in and inside to really create something special. There's a lot of stories like this and I'm actually going to be going to a prison in LA to talk and meet with some of these guys. I'm pretty excited about that.

Jason DeFillippo: [01:01:24] Yeah, it's interesting. Hustle works well on both sides of the bars, I guess.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:01:27] Yeah, it does, it does. And so it's like they had it before they went in, but aimed the cannon in the wrong direction, so to speak. And then inside they learned a bunch of lessons and then bring them outside and they're just ready to succeed. It's really, really impressive, and I want to be a part of that. So like I said, I'm going to be going to a prison in LA to meet, and I hate the word mentor, because I think there's going be value on both sides, frankly, but I'm stoked for that. It's going to be later on this coming year as well.

[01:01:54] Great big thank you to Coss Marte. He's running ConBody fitness, so if you're out in New York, definitely check that out and if you want to know how I managed to book all these great people, super interesting guests with super interesting stories, I manage my relationships on the regular, I use systems and tiny habits and I'll teach you those. Check out our Six-Minute Networking course. It is all free over at jordanharbinger.com/course. Don't do it later. I know you're busy. I you're planning on doing it later. If you kick the can down the road, you just can't make up for lost time when it comes to networking and relationships, and I see this mistake a lot, people don't dig the well before they're thirsty and once you need relationships, you're too late. So get off the block and go to jordanharbinger.com/course. Minutes per day, you will thank me later.

[01:02:39] Speaking of building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Coss Marte. I'm @jordanharbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. I do a lot on Ig these days. I'd love to hear from you on any platform, and don't forget if you want to learn how to apply everything you heard from Coss Marte, make sure you go grab the worksheets, also in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast.

[01:02:59] This show is produced in association with PodcastOne and this episode was co-produced by Jason “Prison Burrito” DeFillippo, and Jen Harbinger. Show notes are by Robert Fogarty, worksheets by Caleb Bacon, and I'm your host Jordan Harbinger. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which is hopefully in every single episode. So please share the show with those you love and even those you don't. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.