802: Michael Santos | Conquering a 45-Year Prison Term

802: Michael Santos | Conquering a 45-Year Prison Term

[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Special thanks to Peloton and Nissan for sponsoring this episode of The Jordan Harbinger Show.

[00:00:05] Coming up next on The Jordan Harbinger Show.

[00:00:08] Michael Santos: I did not see myself as a criminal, despite the reality that I broke the law every day from the time I was 20 until the time I was 23, by presiding over an enterprise that distributed cocaine across the country. I convinced myself, well, there's no weapons, there's no drugs. I mean, there's no violence. It's consenting adults. I wanted to delude myself that says, who's going to see me as a criminal? And then, I really made it difficult when I went to trial and I took the witness stand and lied. You know, you got your hand, you put your hand on the Bible, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth to help you God. And then, everything I said was a lie. That was a very bad strategy. And it wasn't until I was convicted of that crime facing life, that's when I had my epiphany and I realized how that I'd gone down a really bad track and it's time to make amends and reconcile, and that made all the difference in my life.

[00:01:01] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with scientists and entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional former cult member, war correspondent, undercover agent, or gold smuggler. And each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better thinker.

[00:01:26] If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, our episode starter packs are a great place to begin. These are collections of our favorite episodes organized by topic that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show — topics like persuasion and influence technology and futurism negotiation and communication, disinformation and cyber warfare, and more. Just visit jordanharbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started.

[00:01:52] Many of you have been using the AI chatbot to search for show sponsors, find things in Feedback Friday. I highly encourage you all to check that out, jordanharbinger.com/ai. A lot of popular questions. How do I identify a financial scam? How do I draw boundaries with my parents? What's the Better Help promo code? You guys are really getting a lot of use out of that. Once again, jordanharbinger.com/ai and ChatGPT will filter everything we've ever done on the show to try to answer your question.

[00:02:18] Today on the show, when Michael Santos went to prison in his early 20s, he would spend more time behind bars than he spent alive up to that point. He went in with a criminal mindset and came out an incredible human being that I'm proud to call a friend. With his company Prison Professors, he helps other inmates prepare for their stay in prison and helps them rehabilitate and become better people behind bars so that they're in a position to succeed upon release. Today, we'll hear the story of how Michael radically transformed his mindset in prison, developed himself in ways most of us can only dream of. And actually made more money behind bars than most of us do here on the outside. I'm going to jump around a bit more than usual in this interview just because there's so much to cover and that doesn't always lend itself to a linear conversation. I think this is a really interesting look into a world many of us just never see and I think you'll find it enjoyable and inspiring to boot. Now, here we go with Michael Santos.

[00:03:17] Your story, or I should say the story as far as it is relevant to this show, because I hate saying your story because you have a life outside of all of this, but the story starts with essentially selling cocaine in Seattle, the Miami to Seattle pipeline. This is what got you in trouble. Obviously, this is not the beginning of your life as a regular guy, but tell me a little bit about this. Because I think the first thing, unfortunately, when people hear that somebody's been to prison is, what did you do?

[00:03:42] Michael Santos: Sure. I sold cocaine and they charged me with that. But the reality is I'm a kid who didn't pay attention to his parents.

[00:03:48] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:03:49] Michael Santos: And you know, they tried to put me up. My father immigrated from Cuba, really to build a better life here. And really I had every opportunity to build a better life. I was always drawn to a faster life when I was a kid. And despite the best efforts of parents to try and discipline me, I made bad decisions. And by the time, I was 20, I saw that movie, Scarface, and it just spoke to me. I think, because the guy played a Cuban and he sounded like my dad.

[00:04:13] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:04:14] Michael Santos: And I went to see the movie and then I just started calling because he had escaped with some other guys. And these guys grew up in Miami. Their children grew up in Miami. So I knew them and I called him, his name was Tony. I said, "Tony, you grew up in Miami. You must know somebody who sells cocaine, don't you?" And he said, "Yeah." I said, "Could you tell me the price?" And that's kind of my market research, the wisdom of a 20-year-old.

[00:04:34] Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

[00:04:34] Michael Santos: And then I knew kids in Seattle that were my age from kind of the fast life that used cocaine. I didn't use it, but I knew people who did. And I said, "Well, if you use cocaine, you must buy it. Do you know somebody who buys it in quantity? What's the price?" And just that little simple market research just showed me there was a huge spread. And then, I have not knowing the criminal justice system very well, really not knowing anything about it, I figured, well, if I don't touch it and if I don't hold it, I'm really not breaking the law. And so I started hiring people and saying, "Hey, I'll pay you to go to Miami. You pick it up, you drive it, you store it, you deliver it." And of course, all that was doing was getting me into a much deeper problem. I just didn't understand that until after I was convicted. I made bad decisions and then I exacerbated those decisions by not taking responsibility when authorities caught me.

[00:05:23] Jordan Harbinger: It sounds like you thought of yourself as an entrepreneur or more of an entrepreneur as opposed to a drug dealer because you weren't touching the drugs, which honestly, as a 20-year-old kid, if I'm honest with myself, I can kind of follow that logic.

[00:05:35] Michael Santos: There's nothing to be proud of in that backstory, right? I mean—

[00:05:38] Jordan Harbinger: No.

[00:05:38] Michael Santos: —I didn't pay attention to family, didn't pay attention at school, didn't pay attention to teachers, had every opportunity to become better. I met a lot of people that didn't have those opportunities. Of course, while I was in prison, I was not one of them. I just made really bad decisions and just, I think it's a reflection of bad character of this particular 20-year-old.

[00:05:56] Jordan Harbinger: I'm not making excuses for this, but I'm—

[00:05:57] Michael Santos: Sure.

[00:05:57] Jordan Harbinger: I'm just trying to sort of say like, hey, when you're 20 and you think, but I'm not touching the drugs. If you're smart enough to stop and think about it, you do realize you must be doing something wrong. But I could also understand not quite understanding how bad this really was, especially with the war on drugs going on.

[00:06:14] Michael Santos: Well, it's not going on yet, see, right? This is Ronald Reagan is in the White House, so this is like the start of it. So it's not—

[00:06:19] Jordan Harbinger: I see.

[00:06:20] Michael Santos: —mainstream. That doesn't really happen until I'm already deep involved in it. So when I'm starting, cocaine doesn't have that. There's no crack yet.

[00:06:28] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:28] Michael Santos: You don't know about gangs and you know I saw Scarface.

[00:06:31] Jordan Harbinger: Sure.

[00:06:32] Michael Santos: And it seemed kind of glamorous in, as I said, the, the wisdom of a 20-year-old, and I just really went off, as my judge said in sentencing, "You didn't walk down the wrong road. You ran down the wrong road." And he was right, you know? And so I certainly saw it that way I wanted to delude myself into believing these are consenting adults. If I could buy shoes for 20 grand and sell it for 50 grand, I'd do that but I made really bad decisions.

[00:06:58] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I assume then did you get hit with the kingpin statutes and stuff like that?

[00:07:02] Michael Santos: Yeah, that's the actual crime was the title. I think the title 18, might be title 21 US C-848, which is Continuing Criminal Enterprise. And that has five elements, three elements to it. You've got to have manage or control five or more people, which is, you know, somebody drives a car, somebody buys an airplane ticket. That's it. So five or more people certainly check, they could prove that. At least three or more overt acts, you know, check. Did somebody fly to Miami? Did somebody drive it? Did somebody deliver it? Three or more acts, check. And then the third is substantial amounts of money and that's in the eyes of the holder. So 10 grand could be that, and certainly my crime involved a lot more than that, so check. So, I certainly should have known, but my whole mindset at that time was listening to an attorney who told me that with the right amount of money I could win. Not, "Hey, what can I do to make amends?" And that mindset made it much more difficult.

[00:07:56] Jordan Harbinger: You end up facing life even though you never touched the drugs, which is really like, ugh, when I read that in the book, I just thought like, man, life is a long damn time.

[00:08:05] Michael Santos: I'll clarify the record there as far as never touching the drugs, I mean, I coordinated in a way to minimize my exposure to everything. I hired people, I put them in, and I tried to separate myself, but I'm guilty of what they charged me with. I just wasn't a drug, a substance abuser.

[00:08:21] Jordan Harbinger: Right. The story of you getting arrested and getting convicted is hard to read really. But then the disappointment of your family, like your parents, your grandparents, your wife, that was hard to read. I wonder if that felt even worse than the conviction itself in the moment.

[00:08:36] Michael Santos: Well, it was the lies, right? That I'd lived during the entire time. I mean, I wasn't willing to admit what I had done. I pursued a strategy and I had to go all in. And that strategy was to deny that I had anything to do with it, which really exacerbated my problems. But that was the real pressure. As I'm sitting here looking at my family, my father and my mother, who are just torn apart, broken apart, humiliated, my sisters humiliated, and knowing I did all this. And you're locked in the hole, or I'm in a custody, in a detention center. And they just wanted to love me. And I couldn't even have the decency to say I was wrong. That didn't happen until after I was convicted, and that was kind of my wake-up moment.

[00:09:22] Jordan Harbinger: So you end up with 45 years. How old were you at that time?

[00:09:25] Michael Santos: 23. I started when I was 20, got arrested when I was 23, convicted and sentenced. And started the journey that was in for 9,500 days.

[00:09:35] Jordan Harbinger: Could you even wrap your head around 45 years at that time? That's more than twice your age really, at that point.

[00:09:42] Michael Santos: The problem was I didn't understand the complexities of the criminal justice system. I didn't understand. You know, we tend to see ourselves one way and we think the world sees us the same way. And I did not see myself as a criminal, despite reality that I broke the law every day from the time I was 20, until the time I was 23 by presiding over an enterprise that distributed cocaine across the country. I convinced myself, well, there's no weapons. There's no drugs. I mean, there's no violence. That's consenting adults. I wanted to delude myself that says, who's going to see me as a criminal? and then I really made it difficult when I went to trial and I took the witness stand and lied. You know, you got your hand, you put your hand on the Bible, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and help you God. And then everything I said was a lie. That was a very bad strategy. And it wasn't until I was convicted of that crime facing life, that's when I had my epiphany. And I realized that I've gone down a really bad track and it's time to make amends and reconcile and that made all the difference in my life.

[00:10:41] Jordan Harbinger: So you decide to focus on using prison to become a better man, essentially. You say in the book, living in the penitentiary, but not living of the penitentiary. Can you tell us what that means?

[00:10:53] Michael Santos: I can tell you what it means is that I can't change the fact that I'm in here, but I don't want to be a part of this. I hate prison. I hate the culture of prison. I don't like being a criminal. And I would love to say I figured this out on my own, but the reality, like every other person, we learn from leaders, people that are smarter than us and stronger than us. And I learned from Nelson Mandela and Viktor Frankl and Malcolm X, and these people helped me craft a strategy. It started with Socrates during that awkward stage of conviction before sentencing, and it was there that I just had a complete mind shift. That has governed my life from that moment.

[00:11:30] Jordan Harbinger: There's so much in the book that really, you do a great job of building up, like where you're heading and then, you hit a wall and you get knocked down a peg and you build up again, you get knocked down a peg. Like one anecdote here is you find out that your marriage is over because you call one day and this dude answers the phone and is like, "Yeah, I'm your wife's boyfriend. You probably shouldn't call back." And it's just like you just keep getting kicked while you're in there. You know, you file an appeal and it doesn't work. Like at what point do you lose hope? Because I feel like I might've lost hope at many points in your story.

[00:12:03] Michael Santos: And if I wasn't inspired by Socrates, maybe I would have, but the reality I think is this is life, right? Life is filled with obstacles and struggles, and maybe they're not of the complexity that I had of my own making, but at any given day, something's happening. You know, there are people in America right now getting fired, dealing with the market crashing, dealing with obesity, dealing with divorce. You know, life happens. and the story, what I hope people see is that this is a human story. It's really not about prison. It's about life and the complexities of life and more importantly, what are we going to do about it? How are we going to become better? How do we live a life of contribution and meaning and relevance and dignity, even when bad stuff happens? And certainly, it happened to me. I learned how to look at it differently from a different lens.

[00:12:46] Jordan Harbinger: So tell me a little bit about your mindset on prison and what you were determined to do, right? The whole not living of the penitentiary, because you say, "Look, I'm not going to come out the same person I was when I went in.

[00:12:57] Michael Santos: And that started really early, right? It started during the time that I was convicted to the time that I was sentenced. That's when an officer passed me a book about philosophy and I didn't know how to spell philosophy. I didn't know what it meant but I wanted to find wisdom and that helped me stop thinking. When I read the story of Socrates, it really helped me stop thinking about where am I and what can I do. It helped me stop thinking about people like you and your audience is, you know, with a really simple yes or no. Is there anything I can do when I'm in here that will cause the world to see me, not for the bad decisions that I made when I was 20, but rather how I responded to those decisions? And that type of Socratic questioning leads to said, well, yes, then what is it? And then you've got to start answering that.

[00:13:41] And so my whole strategy was, let me find a three-pronged plan that's going to help me. And one of them was, what would you want? Not what I want. What would you want? Or the people I want to meet, what would they want? Well, they would want me one to focus on getting an education because you can't fake that. If you focus on education, you, it shows you don't want to be a criminal. And two, how can I contribute to society in some kind of meaningful, measurable way? And then three, how can I build a support network? If I can find that path, I can restore confidence and feel as though I'm not just waiting for calendar pages to turn, but I'm really living that message of say the self-made man where you're kind of carving yourself out of a block of stone and figuring out what am I going to become rather than what did I do.

[00:14:25] Jordan Harbinger: I know you were, you're big on education. You enrolled in college via correspondence. Not something I really knew you could do. I mean, I've heard of correspondence courses, but I thought they were kind of like a 1970s, 1980s thing. I didn't know they still even existed actually.

[00:14:38] Michael Santos: Well, remember, I'm pre-internet. So this is, I went to prison before there was some such a thing as audio video, because this is the thing that you might see on the Jetsons, but it was something you could have comprehended.

[00:14:48] Jordan Harbinger: That's right.

[00:14:49] Michael Santos: So there were correspondence courses back then and there still are some limited ones for people in prison that do not have access to the Internet. So I was just writing to anybody, just simple letter. I made really bad decisions. I'm in prison, I want to become better. I want to go to school. Does that opportunity exist? And I sent the letter out, probably not going to get a response. I was going to say, you send 10 letters out, you've got a 10 times better chance of not getting a response. But if you send a hundred letters out, you hear and I was really fortunate to find a university and that really changed my life.

[00:15:23] Jordan Harbinger: Is that how you resist the mindset of hopelessness in prison? Because you wanted to learn, but in the book, it seems like a lot of other guys were just convinced they're going to go back to crime after they get out, and they say, "Hey, I know you're learning now, but you're just going to go back to your old ways the second you get out of here." And even in the classes that were in prison, you talk about a lot of these guys being really intelligent and then they get out of class, they drop their vocabulary and they act like idiots to kind of blend in with everyone else. It's like social pressure, but it's the worst kind of peer pressure almost.

[00:15:54] Michael Santos: There is a mantra in every jail in prison that I'm really passionate about changing, and it's that the best way to serve time is to forget about the world outside and just focus on your reputation in prison. And that's a recipe that leads to what we have the greatest social injustice of our time with mass incarceration and intergenerational cycles of recidivism. And I try to change that but it is really sad that at the time that I was in prison, anybody could have done the same path. It could have went and gotten an education, but I was the only person in the penitentiary that graduate. It really stuck through it because the irony is we call it a system of corrections, but the longer we expose people to corrections, the less likely they are to succeed or to function, or to prepare. People learn how to live in prison, and those skills are fundamentally different from what it takes to succeed in society. So I'm always striving to change that. That started though, really, because I learned from guys like Mandela and Viktor Frankl.

[00:16:50] Jordan Harbinger: You'd think, okay, we know that prisoners get books and things like that, but getting mentors is brilliant and unfortunately, you're dealing with prison bureaucracy, right? So it's very difficult, and you really illustrate this well in the book that it's hard to get mentors because even if a college professor is like, "I see potential in you, you're a really smart guy. Let me help you." The prison authorities, they have all the power in the world to deny requests for basically what seems like no good reason. I mean, they always say that's for the security of the institution. But you see, and a lot of your anecdotes are, they won't let me have my textbooks because they don't want outside stuff coming in, which, okay, I get that, but like, I don't know, flip through the book. All you have to do is flip through the book once and realize it's not hollowed out and there's not something in there. And now this guy can take his political science class or whatever, economics class. And it's just so clearly designed to almost mess with you. Like you have these petty tyrants who just go, "I'm going to say no because I can."

[00:17:45] Michael Santos: So I want to write that this book is going over a cross section of multiple decades, right? So you are, we are just talking about what's going on during this era of the buildup of prisons.

[00:17:56] Jordan Harbinger: Right.

[00:17:56] Michael Santos: I would like to say I'm really optimistic that things are getting better. I mean, I was in a prison earlier this week speaking, and I speak with wardens and I speak with the directors now, and the fact that they're bringing me into prison, the fact that people that used to lock me in the hole and block me are now bringing me in to try and change lives of people in prison, gives me a tremendous amount of hope because it's showing there's a change. And that's both legislatively and also just by personal leadership within the institutions. I'm very optimistic that we're going to see things better. I just have a different timeline than a lot of people, because I already gone through a quarter century and I have to help people inside see, hey, the hope, because there is hope.

[00:18:38] There's a new law called the First Step Act, which really changes things. There's financial resources going into it. There are incentives that did not exist when I was in. And so I know that Earning Freedom tells this story of what I went through because those didn't exist when I was in prison. That is corrected. When I was in prison, the mantra was, we don't care about your life after relief. We only care about the security of the institution. But fortunately, things are changing now and we're incentivizing people to pursue a better path.

[00:19:08] Jordan Harbinger: And thank goodness for that because it really, again, you know I said when I went to do some of my volunteer stuff in prison, which you can call it that, it really is just such a battery of untapped potential of human potential with a lot of people who, they don't just want to go out and start committing crime. They want to start a business or they want to work, they want to raise a family, these guys with dreams. And it really is something that I would love to see change. Tell me about Professor Bruce.

[00:19:33] Michael Santos: Bruce is incredible, was an incredible part of my journey. I was very early in the system and through somebody I knew in prison, got an introduction to this professor who was at from Chicago. I think he was from the University of Illinois in Chicago, and the University of North Carolina. I wrote him an unsolicited letter like I did to many people and just said, "You know, I'm in prison for a long time. I want to get better. I'd really like to learn. I'm in college just trying to grow." And I was just so thrilled what he wrote me back and said, "I'd love to help you. I'll come and visit you, see if you can get me on your visiting list." And we succeeded in overcoming those challenges.

[00:20:08] Then, he would come visit me probably three or four times a year since I couldn't go to the university. He tried to bring it to me by sending me work on art history and music and plays that he was going to. He was an educator and the only thing he wanted from me was to become an educated man and to find a way to, to live a life of meaning and relevance. And he was just a huge source of support for me in many ways throughout the journey. Unfortunately, he passed away when I was probably my 14th or 15th year, so he didn't get to see me when I came home. And that really happened with a lot of the people that had such an influence on my journey. Just so much time passed, they died. Historically, they were in their 60s or 70s when I met them and they just had the time to give me and the wisdom to give me, but they didn't have the lifespan.

[00:20:57] And so, they weren't going to be around at 115 or 120 years old, but I have a duty to try and live up to all of the trust they placed in me and the help they gave me.

[00:21:08] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I was going to ask if you felt like you needed to prove yourself worthy of his generosity of, not just now but when he was alive, because if I'm inside and somebody is taking their time and—

[00:21:17] Michael Santos: Expense.

[00:21:18] Jordan Harbinger: —It's expensive, right? They've got to take a lot of time. They've got to deal with a lot of grief, right? They're dealing with the bureaucracy just like you are trying to help you out. And they're getting stopped all the time. And I won't say it's thankless because you're thanking them, but I don't know how many other people are making it easy on them.

[00:21:34] Michael Santos: Did you remember in the story where I had to architect that transition, that transfer from the high-security penitentiary to a medium-security prison and we published this article together?

[00:21:44] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:21:44] Michael Santos: Bruce was that kind of guy where. For your readers who haven't read the book, I'm in a high-security pen. It's getting more and more violent. It's time to go, but you're a cog in the bureaucracy and so you've got to figure out, you got to have the critical thinking skill, and say, "Okay, how am I going to overcome the complications of just making a request?" Bruce just was so willing to any suggestion I offered, I agreed to publish an article in a peer-reviewed journal that would help us influence the agency and he would then travel to prison, to prison, to prison. I just really just have so many fond memories of his mentorship.

[00:22:25] Jordan Harbinger: You are listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Michael Santos. We'll be right back.

[00:22:29] This episode is sponsored in part by Grammarly. Look, there are a few tools I use every day and that I can't live without. Grammarly is definitely one of them. I've used Grammarly for years. Inside all of my show notes, documents, everything that I write, my email. It's like having somebody over my shoulder gently and very non-annoyingly, most importantly, reminding me ways I can improve all of my written communication to be more clear, concise, professional, and friendly. The tone thing comes in handy for me. If you haven't tried it, you're missing out. As I mentioned, one of Grammarly's awesome features is the tone detector, which checks how your message comes across. I may or may not come across as a little curt sometimes. I don't want that. I don't want to sound rude. I'm working fast. It's not my intention. Of course, Grammarly's tone detector is working in the background to help me be more mindful of how I'm coming across, which is quite helpful, especially in professional settings or if you're emailing your wife where you want to build stronger relationships and better collaborate with your team coworkers, clients, like I said, family, sometimes the last people I think about in terms of being polite and probably should be the first, and it's easy to implement because it runs in the background in everything that you write. Just install the plugin or the browser extension and you are good to go. Grammarly will underline incorrect words or grammar and show you what to replace it with and why, which I kind of like if you simply hover over it. The right tone can move any project forward when you get it right with Grammarly. Go to grammarly.com/tone to download and learn more about Grammarly Premium's advanced tone suggestions. That's G-R-A-M-M-A-R-L-Y.com/tone.

[00:23:58] This episode is also sponsored by Athletic Greens. Jen and I take AG1 by Athletic Greens every single morning. We add a scoop of AG1 to a bottle of water and just shake it up. We started taking AG1 because, well, we don't always have time to eat a balanced, perfectly nutritious meal. I mean, I think I've just only eaten peanut butter today. I'm sorry. It's gross. Some days I just eat a meat stick for lunch. That's all I have time for. Like I said, today, I'm, I'm on the peanut butter food group, so I'll take my AG1 is a quick and easy way to make sure I'm getting all the nutrients that I need in a way that's easy for my body to absorb. AG1 is like all-in-one nutritional insurance. Each scoop has 75 vitamins, minerals, whole food source, superfoods, probiotics, and adaptogens, 75 different things. Can you imagine sourcing all of that on your own? 75 different pills? No, thanks. Plus no GMOs, no nasty chemicals, no artificial anything. It tastes good. Okay. There's enough green where you know it's green, but it's not like you're holding your nose and downing it and chasing it with something. I appreciate that. It's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition, especially if you're heading into the flu and cold season. Oops, guess I should have taken more AG1 because I am sick as a dog right now and my entire family is too, so that's been fun. To make it easy Athletic Greens is going to give you a free one-year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D, which I obviously could have used and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/jordan. Again, that is athleticgreens.com/jordan to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance.

[00:25:23] If you're wondering how I manage to book all these great authors, thinkers, creators every single week, it's because of my network and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at jordanharbinger.com/course. The course is all about improving your relationship-building skills and inspiring other people to want to develop a relationship with you. And the course does all of that in a super easy, non-cringe, down-to-earth way. No awkward strategies, no cheesy tactics. Just practical exercises that are going to make you a better connector, a better colleague, a better friend, a better peer. Six minutes a day is all it takes, and many of the guests on our show subscribe and contribute to the course. So come join us, you'll be in smart company. You can find the course at jordanharbinger.com/course.

[00:26:04] Now back to Michael Santos.

[00:26:08] I heard you made your first million dollars behind bars. Now, how does that work? First of all, how do you make money in prison? A lot of us are trying to make our first million here on the outside, fam.

[00:26:19] Michael Santos: So this happens. I was lucky. You know, I'll take luck over skill every time. So yes, I definitely live in gratitude and that's not just a cliche for me.

[00:26:27] Jordan Harbinger: Sure.

[00:26:27] Michael Santos: So I was in prison perhaps in my 10th year, and you read about Gary. I don't know if I called him Gary in the book. I don't recall. But Gary, this is his real name. And Gary came to me and he said, "I want you to read my case. I think my lawyers are ripping me off." And I'd been in jail already for probably 12 years, I think, at that time. And I was in law school at that time. I'd already gotten my undergrad, I'd gotten my master's and I started this law program. And really, my first two universities were great. The law school was like a diploma mill, but I'm going through it and he could see that I was really a serious guy and I didn't communicate with him. And he just came to me and said, "Would you read my brief?" I said, "Gary, I don't do that." And then he says to me, "Money is no object." And this shows the wisdom of being in prison for 12 years and somebody tells you money is no object. And I told him, "I don't have time to read your brief. I don't do that." But I said, "If you want me to read it, I'm going to charge it two grand and all I'm going to do is read it and then, tell you what I think of it. That's all." And he said, "Okay, where do you wire the money?" I didn't know what that even meant.

[00:27:30] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Wire it? I'm used to dealing with cash in briefcases, man. You're going to have to explain that one.

[00:27:37] Michael Santos: So, I said, "Look, just here's the deal. Here's my sister's address. Send her $2,000. If she sends the check, then we'll talk. If you don't send the check, probably means you thought better about it and it's probably the right decision. We'll go from there." And great. So one day I call home and my sister says, "Do you know anybody in New York?" And I said, "I'm in New Jersey. I know 500 people here from New York. Why?" And she said, "Oh, I got this check for $2,000. I have no idea what it's from, but it's from New York. So I figured it's something you're doing." And I know this is over the phone, the prison phone. I said, "Holy, my gosh, he gave you the money." And she said, "What do you want me to do this?"

[00:28:12] This is like 1997, you know, '98, and I'm reading about the Internet. I've been reading about the Internet, but it's like reading about playing tennis. It doesn't make you a tennis player. You know, I couldn't get my hands on it, but I really believed what I was reading and I said, I really want to invest in this internet and I want you to open a brokerage account for me." This is how I made the money. She says, "Well, how do I do that?" I said, "There's a company, I think it's called eTrade, and you could open this account online and put two grand. And with 2000, I can open a margin account. And so we do it." And she says, "What do I do?" I said, "There's a company, it's called Yahoo." And she says, "What's a Yahoo?"

[00:28:50] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:28:50] Michael Santos: I said, "It's Y-A-H-O-O and it's got an exclamation point, but just look it up and see if we can buy the shares." And so she does. I have $2,000, I think, it was trading like 60 bucks a share, pre any splits. And I said, "Okay, I want you to buy $3,000 worth. And she said, "But you only have two." I said, "No, you can borrow against what the equity." And she did it. And then, as soon as she hung up, she goes, "Wow, you've already made like $300. It's worth that much."

[00:29:15] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:29:16] Michael Santos: And I said, "This is awesome." And I said, "And every time it goes up, I get more buying power. Let's leverage that." And so then I go see Gary and I said, "Dude, I read your case. I don't think that you should be advancing on this deal with your attorneys. They're just trying to charge you a lot of money for nothing. And you're going to get out in like nine more months and your attorneys are asking for a quarter million dollars to file this brief but you've got risk if you file this brief because you're getting out in nine months right now. You are getting deported. You're from Russia. That's a fact." I said, "If you file this brief, first of all, it's going to take longer than nine months for you to get before a court again, and you'll be in Russia, okay? Second, if you file this brief and you prevail, just hypothetically, the court's free and open, the laws changed and now they can consider relevant conduct that you weren't convicted of. And there's a possibility you get more time than you have right now, and that's a real risk for you." Because I'd read all of this case and I said, "Why take the risk? It's nine months." And he goes to me, "How can you do this? How can you do nine months in here? I mean, I don't know how you've been in prison for 10, 12 years and you always do this." I said, "Dude, I got a plan."

[00:30:26] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:26] Michael Santos: That's why. And by then, I'd known that he was really successful because I'd read all of his stuff. He said, "What do you mean you have a plan?" I said, "You know, I'm going to get a law degree. I'm going to learn about the system, not because I want to be a lawyer, but I know that I can build something. I'll earn like 10 grand a year and I'll put it in the market. I got 15 years to go. I'll have a buck 50 invested well." I said, "I'll probably walk out with like 300 grand I can start my life." And he said, "300 grand? That's not enough to start your life." I said, "Well, it is for me," and I said, "That two grand you gave me, I've already turned it into six." And he said, "What do you mean you turned it—?" And this has been like a month. He said, "What do you mean it's six?" I said, "Yeah, I bought $3,000 worth of stock. It's since doubled. It's split, and it's on the rise again. And it's amazing." He said, "That's the stock market." I said, "I've read about the stock. I don't know anything about stock. Could you teach me everything?" I said, "Well, I've been reading about it for 10 years, but I'm happy to show you what I want." He said, "I don't want to do it with $2,000. Let's put some real money into it and make it happen." And I said, "Gary, the thing is I was willing to take that high beta stock play with two grand." I said, "If you want to put real money into it, I mean, that's life changing for me. It's nothing for you." And he said, "Look, I need to get through these nine months and if this'll help me, it's worth it to me." He said, "Here's what, the one condition I make, I'm going to send you," and I think it was a hundred grand, "I'm going to send you a hundred grand. We're going to invest it, but you can't start buying mutual funds and conservative blue chips." I said, "You need to be aggressive."

[00:31:50] Jordan Harbinger: He wants to gamble.

[00:31:50] Michael Santos: Yeah.

[00:31:51] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:31:51] Michael Santos: He said, "I make 50,000, 100,000 while I'm sleeping." He said, "This is going to help me get through there." And he said, "And here's the promise I'll make to you." He said, "If you lose it all, I'll make sure that you have 50 grand before I leave." And that's the deal. And so, it was like, that's luck, right?

[00:32:08] Jordan Harbinger: Right.

[00:32:08] Michael Santos: How do you find that kind of guy inside of a federal prison? And I would argue that you sow those seeds very early so that guys like that believe in you. Because if it happened once, it was luck. But it happened many times as I've described in the journey. And that's how I started. So I was really lucky to be buying Yahoo building big positions in Yahoo, in America online in the late 1990s. And those stocks were the equivalent of, well, Tesla or—

[00:32:35] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:32:36] Michael Santos: —crypto when crypto was 20 bucks, you know?

[00:32:38] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:39] Michael Santos: They just skyrocketed, yeah, and I kept leveraging it and got to a peak of 2.1, I think, in equities with like a million plus in equity because I had a lot of margin. But yeah, what goes up, what comes down?

[00:32:54] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, what goes up must come down, exactly. Exactly, what I was going to say, yeah.

[00:32:58] Michael Santos: But you know, it changed my life. Making that money changed my life. It allowed me to get married to the love of my life in prison and support her and put her through nursing school and rebuild my career and I'm really grateful.

[00:33:12] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I want to clarify that you got married and put your wife through nursing school while you were inside prison. So you were providing and supporting your wife as good or better than many guys outside, and you were doing it all while not having the ability to just go use the phone for however long you want. Not having the ability to go clock in at a regular job, not having the ability to use the internet. Being hobbled at every turn in many ways. Well, are you even allowed to make money in prison? I'm not sure why. But it sounds like it might be against the rules. I mean, you can't even get your freaking philosophy textbooks in. They don't mind that you're margin trading on eTrade.

[00:33:50] Michael Santos: So there's just two questions, rules and laws, right?

[00:33:54] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:33:54] Michael Santos: Are you allowed? Well, the law does not prohibit anybody from making money in prison. The rules do.

[00:33:59] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:00] Michael Santos: And I didn't break the rules. So before we opened the account, when I got the two grand, I went to the captain of the prison and I told him, "I want to ask you. Is it okay if I open a brokerage account?" Because initially I wanted to do it myself. He said, "No, you can't do that from prison. I would consider that running a business." And I said, "Look, dude, they stopped me from getting my PhD." I think at that time I had like 18 years to go. I said, "I've got to prepare myself for the future, and I have a little cash and I want to do it." And he said, "Well, open a mutual fund." I said, "I know 10 guys on this compound for running mutual funds that broke the law for stealing people's money."

[00:34:40] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:34:40] Michael Santos: I want to run my own ship. And he said, "Give someone power of attorney." I said, "So you're saying that if I have my sister do it, I could advise her on what to do." He said, "As long as you're not pulling the trigger, you're fine." And so that is what prompted me to tell my sister to open the account and then she did it. And now it didn't mean I didn't have problems. They would routinely give me shots, with discipline infractions, but I always prevailed because I got that in writing.

[00:35:04] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:05] Michael Santos: That I could advise her on what to do. And that also happened when I  became a published author. The market had a great run until the early 2000s before Web 2.0 came, the market crashed and I lost out of that million I made, I lost significantly a portion of it and I walked away with like a hundred grand, which was supposed to be set aside to help me get out of prison. And that was phenomenal. And then, I had to shift my focus and that's when I shifted to publishing. So when I shifted to publishing, I also made money and had to do it the same way by assigning royalties to somebody else. And that's when I would get a letter from counsel. So I always went through the path to protect myself. It didn't mean that I didn't face complications of going to segregated housing multiple times and being transferred from prison.

[00:35:52] Jordan Harbinger: Segregated housing is a euphemism for the hole, by the way, for people who don't know.

[00:35:55] Michael Santos: Yeah, so the rules of the prison state that you can't run a business. Okay. The rules also state you have the authority into the First Amendment to publish without requesting. So I published those published writings, generated revenues. I got a letter from counsel that said, as long as I don't control those revenues, I'm not even violating the prison rules. So that's how I built my career in prison. I like to say I'm the only guy that came out of prison who had to take a pay cut.

[00:36:27] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, exactly. And no more free lunches, buddy. Actually, speaking of free lunches, you didn't eat free lunch. You didn't go to the chow hall, which I thought was a kind of almost a throwaway anecdote in one of the books, but tell me why you avoided the chow hall and bought all of your food from the commissary. It's not because you're a fancy-pants gourmet, right? There's a reason behind it.

[00:36:47] Michael Santos: No, no. Everything is strategic, right? We've got it in life. We've got to visualize success as the best possible outcome. And then, you have to have a plan. You know, put priorities in place and tools, tactics, and resources you have to develop. Always assessing risk. The problem with prison is that I can control my behavior. I can't control the behavior of other people around me. So I became really strategic in what time I would go to bed, what time I would wake up, the people with whom I would associate, where I would put myself in the channels. Because I can't eliminate the volatility of prison, but I can minimize my exposure to it. The chow hall, the television rooms, the table games, the organized sports, all of those have a higher level of risk because there's personalities involved that I can't control. and if I put myself into a position that I don't control, I also put myself into a position that could threaten all the great things that I'm doing. And because I place such a high value on my marriage, on my relationship with mentors, on my preparations for success upon release, I don't need to go to the chow hall. It's worth a few hundred dollars a month that I spend on buying my own food. And you're right, it's not gourmet food. I lived on chicken and—

[00:38:03] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:38:03] Michael Santos: —and mackerel.

[00:38:05] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, hey, at least you get protein and it's not like instant noodles. I'm thinking of prison commissary food and I'm just imagining the stuff I ate in college, like those ramen noodle bricks.

[00:38:14] Michael Santos: A lot of people do eat those things.

[00:38:16] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:38:16] Michael Santos: There are those. Okay. But I was a big fan of StarKist or Chicken of the Sea.

[00:38:22] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:38:23] Michael Santos: Mackerel and fish bait basically. But, you know, I developed a taste for it. It's kind of strange. There's some funny stories about serving so much time in prison and how it influences every aspect of your life.

[00:38:34] Jordan Harbinger: Do you have any sort of weird prison quirks that you still have? Like, I have to sleep with the light on, or I still eat the crappy low-grade mackerel because I have a taste for it. Is there anything like that?

[00:38:45] Michael Santos: Definitely, I mean, I did 9,500 days in there, so I don't sleep without earplugs and I live in a very quiet place, but that's how I slept in prison. So any place I am, I have my earplugs. I used to sleep with those things that mask that goes over—

[00:39:04] Jordan Harbinger: Like an eye mask.

[00:39:04] Michael Santos: —your eyes. Yeah.

[00:39:05] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:39:06] Michael Santos: And my wife, after about a year and a half, she said, "That's enough. You got to learn to take that thing off in bed. So I don't do that anymore. Other quirks of prison that's a reminiscent of prison, I think is, I mean, I start my day at like three in the morning still, because I learned to do that in prison and I go to bed pretty early. I am really obsessed with protecting myself because I know who I am. I was in prison a long time and I love what I do. I love writing, I love producing, I love being creative and I love to help other people in challenging times get better. So for me, this is my life and it's very different if I'm not talking with somebody either about business or about that experience and how do you use it to apply it to your life, I'm really kind of a deadbeat. I don't do small talk just because I didn't learn how to do that in prison.

[00:39:58] Jordan Harbinger: I can imagine there's either only small talk in prison or no small talk depending on the interaction that you're in prison.

[00:40:05] Michael Santos: There's non-structured life in prison. A lot of prisons is about trying to deal with the pains of confinement, of being separated from the people you love and the people who love you. And because of the infrastructure of prison, a lot of people revert to watching sports or gambling or table games or anything that can kind of lessen it, and just living in prison. My focus always was about where am I going to be in five years, 10 years, 20 years and what can I do today to advance and move the needle a little closer to the direction where I want to go?

[00:40:37] Jordan Harbinger: Do you get up at three o'clock in the morning because in prison if you don't get up at three o'clock in the morning, it's noisy and you have no privacy.

[00:40:43] Michael Santos: Yeah. In prison, I learned that there is advantage to sleeping when other people are awake and being awake when other people are asleep. I didn't have a keyboard or a computer. So every book I wrote, I wrote with that wonderful technology called a big pen and white paper. And that requires concentration and it requires time and quiet and so that's how I learned to produce. And it's just a habit that stays with me. I don't use an alarm clock, I just wake up, you know, sometimes one, two, three in the morning. And it doesn't matter if I'm on East Coast, West Coast. I mean yesterday or earlier this week, I was in Missouri, which is Central Time. And I started my day at 3:00 a.m. Missouri time. So it was one o'clock California time. And then, I came over here and I was in Las Vegas yesterday, and I was starting my day at 2:30 in the morning. I mean, I've got so much to do and it's just kind of part of the path that got me through prison and it has helped me build my career since coming home.

[00:41:42] Jordan Harbinger: How did you start studying law in prison? Because I assume you're not doing a law degree in prison. Are you just reading about the law and figuring this stuff out?

[00:41:52] Michael Santos: That's a great question. So what happened with me? I got my master's and was in a PhD program at the University of Connecticut.

[00:41:59] Jordan Harbinger: Let me pause there for a second. You got your master's degree and you're in a PhD program, so people who are like, oh man, I just want to highlight how impressive that is. Imagine if you weren't locked up, you know, oh, actually, who knows? You might not have had as much time to pursue this but still.

[00:42:12] Michael Santos: I'd gotten into undergraduate program, had a goal of a timeline to get it done. Got it done, wanted to go to law. And I had Bruce, so Bruce was in Chicago. The ABA was in Chicago America Bar Association. And he went to try and find what are the accredited law schools, and he gave me a list of all the accredited law schools. I started writing the same letter. "I'm in prison. I want to get a law degree. I was a bad student in high school, but I got an undergrad with summa cum laude. And I'm serious. I don't want to necessarily be a lawyer. I just want to learn about the law. I think it'll help me."

[00:42:45] Jordan Harbinger: Law school is actually one of the worst places to learn about the law. Take it from me. I went to law school.

[00:42:49] Michael Santos: I read that.

[00:42:50] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You know this already, huh?

[00:42:51] Michael Santos: I read about your impressive background. And I wrote to all these law schools and they all wrote me back and said, "We can't, maybe it won't allow us to issue a court law school by correspondence." But the dean at Hofstra Law wrote me back and said, "You can't go to law school, but if you want to get through a probation period, we have more flexibility in the grad program and would you like to get a master's degree?" And so we structured that. Then, I got my master's and through that I met all of these mentors who were like the leading penologist in the nation. And one of them was George Cole, who was at the University of Connecticut. And he ran the criminal justice division and said, "Yeah, let's do the PhD. It's going to be structured, but we'll figure out a way to get you through it, at least the coursework until the teaching component we'll have to solve later." The warden blocked me after my first year and that put an end of the PhD and I needed to do something. And that was what led me to start. I knew that there, although the ABA, American Bar Association accredited law school would not allow you to study law through correspondence, but there's the great liberal state of California—

[00:43:49] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:49] Michael Santos: —that does allow you to get a law degree without participating on campus. So I wrote to some of those schools thinking I was going to have the same experience that I had at Hofstra or at Mercer University where I got my undergrad, paid for it, got all the books, and really worked hard to impress my professors and I got the paper back for that one single mark on it, just an A. Then, I knew I was in a diploma mill. This is not a real law school.

[00:44:16] Jordan Harbinger: Oh shoot.

[00:44:17] Michael Santos: I'd already paid the tuition. So I went and finished first year and that's when I met Gary and then, shifted my focus first to the market, which lasted about a couple of years. And then when the market kind of imploded and we went through the dark era of between Web 1.0 and 2.0, I shifted to publishing and that carried me through the journey. But there are some stories, great stories — do you know the story of my friend Sean Hopwood?

[00:44:42] Jordan Harbinger: Why does that sound familiar? That name sounds familiar.

[00:44:44] Michael Santos: My company is Prison Professors. That's my website. It used to be just Prison Professor.

[00:44:48] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:44:48] Michael Santos: Sean was a partner of mine. He started as a partner because he was an armed bank robber and he had a meth problem and so on when he was a kid. And while he was in prison, he became a pretty skilled jailhouse lawyer. And to tell you how skilled, he took two cases that granted cert at the Supreme Court and they won.

[00:45:05] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. That's impressive.

[00:45:07] Michael Santos: Yeah, it's impressive. He gets out of prison after 10 years. He never got his undergrad in prison, but he just was skilled as a jailhouse lawyer. He gets out during the recession, he goes and finishes an undergrad program. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation kind of learned about him through some awesome advocacy. They give him a full scholarship to UW Law. He graduates UW Law, his first job as a clerk at the DC Circuit Court, and then Georgetown Law School. He's a tenure track professor at Georgetown Law right now. This is a guy that was an armed bank robber and clerked at the second highest court in the United States, the DC Circuit Court. You think a guy in prison can't really learn the law. The standard thought process might be that, but the reality is a person in prison, as I learned from people can lead a life of relevance and dignity and be a contributing citizen.

[00:45:55] Jordan Harbinger: This is The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Michael Santos. We'll be right back.

[00:46:00] This episode of The Jordan Harbinger Show is brought to you by Nissan. As a pioneer in the electric vehicle space, Nissan is always looking for ways to deliver new, meaningful technology to EV owners. After all Nissan has been making EVs since 1947 and their EVs have now traveled eight billion miles by Nissan LEAF owners since 2010, eight billion miles. That's the equivalent of driving to Pluto and back. I guess, I don't know, it doesn't matter if it's a planet, maybe when we're doing this. Think that's electrifying? One of their EVs tracked all the way to the North Pole, and Nissan even tests their EV technology on the Formula E racetrack. But Nissan knows you can't get an EV just for the E. You get a Nissan EV because it makes you feel electric, because it sparks your imagination. It ignites something within you. It pins you to your seat, takes your breath away. At least that's what Nissan thinks about when they're designing their EVs, like the Nissan ARIYA and the Nissan LEAF. It's about creating a thrilling design that electrifies its customers. I like Nissan's focus on creating a thrilling drive and electrifying life. In today's world, it's so important to look around you, pay attention, look for all the tiny ways that life can electrify you. For me, that's reading an audiobook outside and preparing for this show. Nissan EVs that electrify.

[00:47:04] This episode is also sponsored by Shopify. Hear that that's every entrepreneur's favorite sound. Another sale on Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. I wish I had stock in them. Whether you're selling towels or t-shirts, spoons, or sneakers, Shopify simplifies selling online and in person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Shopify covers every sales channel from an in-person POS system to an all-in-one e-commerce platform. It even lets you sell across social media marketplaces like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. Packed with industry-leading tools ready to ignite your growth, Shopify gives you complete control over your business and your brand without having to learn any new skills and design or code. And thanks to 24/7 help in an extensive business course library. Shopify is there to support your success every step of the way. What's incredible to me about Shopify is how no matter how big you want to grow, Shopify is there to empower you with the confidence and control to revolutionize your business. Now, it's your turn to get serious about selling and try Shopify today. This is possibility powered by Shopify.

[00:48:04] Jen Harbinger: Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/jordan in all lowercase. Go to shopify.com/jordan to take your business to the next level today, shopify.com/jordan.

[00:48:17] Jordan Harbinger: This episode is sponsored in part by Peloton. Trying a new workout is like learning a new skill. It can be overwhelming, and the uncertainty can be a major barrier to actually getting started. Peloton's approach to convenience is very helpful for people who are looking to take on a new fitness skill or routine. Everything is designed to be as simple and streamlined as possible from the easy-to-use touchscreen interface to the wide range of class options and personalized recommendations. You can access a variety of live and classes, including cycling, running, strength. Now, there's an incredible rower, which I really enjoy, all from the comfort of your own home. Rowing is great as a full-body workout, which means you'll be engaging multiple muscle groups at once including your legs, core, arms, and back. This will help you burn more calories. Of course, it'll help you build more strength especially and improve your overall fitness. Correct rowing form isn't intuitive, at least it certainly wasn't for me, and doing it correctly is harder than it sounds, especially once you start getting tired because of course your form always breaks down when you get tired. Form Assist shows you a figure of yourself as you row, and when you screw up a portion of the body, your body turns red. That's a good way to avoid getting super, super injured or tweaking something and not being able to work out, which stops a lot of people who are diving in either for the first time or getting back into it after a long time. So try Peloton Row risk-free with a 30-day home trial. New members only. Not available in remote locations. See additional terms at onepeloton.com/home-trial.

[00:49:42] If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. All of the deals, all the discount codes always to support the show are at jordanharbinger.com/deals. You can also search for any sponsor using the AI chatbot on the website as well over at jordanharbinger.com. Thank you so much for supporting those who support the show.

[00:50:04] Now for the rest of my conversation with Michael Santos.

[00:50:09] I can almost guarantee you that you are more knowledgeable and useful as a lawyer than I am. I'm not exaggerating.

[00:50:16] Michael Santos: I'm not a lawyer, oh, no—

[00:50:17] Jordan Harbinger: No, let me finish, yeah, I know that.

[00:50:19] Michael Santos: Yeah.

[00:50:20] Jordan Harbinger: That point still stands. I guarantee that you still, as far as the skills of lawyering, you are still, I guarantee you better at that stuff than I am despite my years in practice and having a law degree from Michigan. I would take that bet because I'm almost certain that I could not fight a speeding ticket. Your master's degree was from Hofstra, is that correct?

[00:50:41] Michael Santos: Hofstra, yeah.

[00:50:43] Jordan Harbinger: I want to highlight this because I don't want people to think like, "Oh, well, anybody can get a master's degree from Domino's Pizza correspondent university. These are real schools that are hard to get into, that are challenging, that have real academic standards. I want to highlight that so people don't think like, "Oh, well. Anybody can just mail your money in and get a degree," you know?

[00:51:03] Michael Santos: I was really fortunate that so many people believed in me and I really worked hard to prove for the event and then to pass it along. And so I'm super grateful now because I get a reach of hundreds of thousands of people in prison. Every day is just a blessing.

[00:51:18] Jordan Harbinger: How did you meet your wife? Because the dating scene in prison, there's a joke in there I'm not going to go there. I would imagine it's tough to meet women in prison.

[00:51:27] Michael Santos: The truth is, I always had a chicken prison. Okay. That's the real truth because you need to survive, right? And I did.

[00:51:34] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:34] Michael Santos: And I just got the luckiest guy in the world when it was Carol. I was probably in my, I think it was my 15th year I was writing and publishing. And so remember I'd said I had that three-prong goal?

[00:51:47] Jordan Harbinger: Sure.

[00:51:47] Michael Santos: Educate, contribute, and build a support system. Well, because I was publishing and my books were used, I wrote books that were used in universities across the country, so I'd had students that were studying about prison and profiles from prison, two academic books that my mentors used in school and a lot of professors used them in school as required reading. So students started to, I guess, it would've been called back then, AOL-ing me because it wasn't Google.

[00:52:12] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, yeah. The little profile.

[00:52:14] Michael Santos: And they found that I'd went to Shorecrest High School. They were getting ready for the 1982, 20-year reunion, and Carol is the girl that was kind of coordinating it. I went to school with her in high school, but we were not friends. She was a good girl. I was not a good boy as we discussed already. And we weren't friends. I wouldn't say. But so when this kid wrote to her and said, "Is this the same Shorecrest where Michael Santos went?" She inquired, "Why are you asking?" And he said that "He's in prison." And that prompted her to write me, you know, just saying, "Hey, we're doing a 20-year reunion, really disappointed that you're in prison and that you what you did. I hate drugs."

[00:52:52] Jordan Harbinger: Yikes.

[00:52:54] Michael Santos: Yeah, kind of started up like she was mad at me. And I wrote her back and I said, "I was 20, I'm 35 now, and you know, I made a lot of bad decisions. You're right. But I've worked hard to try and make amends." And that led to a friendship and a correspondence. And she started to visit me and we fell crazy in love. And that was more than 20 years ago. And I'm so lucky that she came into my life and she's been the center of my life since then. So, yeah, the money that I earned put her through CNA school, then LVN School, then she became an RN. Then, she got her master's in nursing. and she worked as a nurse. We were up in your area just as recently as last year.

[00:53:34] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:34] Michael Santos: Then, it was when she was at Stanford, and I just said, "Well, why don't you just work with me full-time?" And so now, I just feel so grateful because she runs our operations side of our company.

[00:53:44] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I know that is. Yeah. My wife does the same thing in our business.

[00:53:47] Michael Santos: Yeah. We love working together and we love being together. And I, my life is just so much richer because she's in it.

[00:53:54] Jordan Harbinger: How do you manage a relationship like this with another, yet another decade left in your prison sentence? I mean, everybody must be like, "Come on, man, you've 10 years left. Get real."

[00:54:04] Michael Santos: That's the way it was. And when it started, she was just so, I would say — she doesn't like it when I say this is but kind of angry at me because we're selling drugs even though she didn't know me. And I remember telling, "What are you? A Republican? You know, I've changed my life." I'm just joking with her and she said, "I'm going to get you out of prison. I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to lost this advocate." I said, " Carol, time out. I'm not getting outta prison. Okay, let's just accept and own that. But that doesn't mean we can't have an awesome life. I'm filled with energy in here and I'm going to build my life when I come home, and I want you to be a part of it. And if that's what you want to do, that's great. But this is real prison. This is not a game." She was so committed. She's just amazing. She moved with me like 19 times to go from prison town to prison, just so that we can visit every possibility.

[00:54:51] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. In the book, it's really they transfer you and then, she's got a pack up her life and move. And they transfer you again with no warning and she's got to pack up her life and move.

[00:54:57] Michael Santos: And it interfered with the pursuit that we'd said to go to nursing school because there were different requirements in different states.

[00:55:03] Jordan Harbinger: Of course.

[00:55:03] Michael Santos: But we are so just lucky that it happened.

[00:55:06] Jordan Harbinger: The logistics of managing a relationship, let alone getting married in prison are just insane. I mean, look, you must be one persuasive dude or charming or something.

[00:55:16] Michael Santos: As I told you, luck beat skill every time. I was just lucky.

[00:55:19] Jordan Harbinger: People must have thought she was just absolutely nuts.

[00:55:22] Michael Santos: Oh, for sure. She's the prison wife, but then they look at her and she's really pretty and super smart. And I'm just super devoted and even today. I'm just so lucky.

[00:55:33] Jordan Harbinger: But her family must have been like, "What are you doing? I want to shake you. He's in prison."

[00:55:37] Michael Santos: You don't have that half of it. Her brother is a judge.

[00:55:40] Jordan Harbinger: Oh my gosh.

[00:55:42] Michael Santos: Her brother is a judge.

[00:55:43] Jordan Harbinger: Oh.

[00:55:44] Michael Santos: Her dad is a dentist. Her mom is a nurse. So from a totally professional family, but she just went all in and I'm just really grateful.

[00:55:52] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. I assume you're on good terms with them now. They probably have come around to you at this point.

[00:55:57] Michael Santos: I don't think I would say good terms, no.

[00:56:00] Jordan Harbinger: Ah.

[00:56:00] Michael Santos: I think that I will always be the guy that stole their daughter or their sister and put her in through this prison term, but you know, we're really happy.

[00:56:07] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:07] Michael Santos: And I am just really lucky. I have reached out and tried, but the judge doesn't really want to have anything to do with me.

[00:56:14] Jordan Harbinger: That's too bad.

[00:56:14] Michael Santos: I've got other judges that do though.

[00:56:16] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I was going to say, you have photos with judges on your Instagram. Has he seen those?

[00:56:20] Michael Santos: Yeah. I've got a lot of judges, other judges that are cool with me and I'm really grateful.

[00:56:24] Jordan Harbinger: Look, there's probably a lot more to these stories. They're complicated, but it's a little bit of an insight into the mindset of somebody who says, "Well, once a prisoner, always a prisoner." It's like, "I don't know if we want that type of person being in charge of rehabilitating people who are trying to change their lives." Hopefully, there's more to the story than that.

[00:56:43] Michael Santos: I don't know what it is, but I'm sure that there is and that's okay with me. You know, I just always say, Mick Jagger was a great philosopher. He said, you know, you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.

[00:56:57] Jordan Harbinger: Deep. I want to hear about your cold outreach process because, you know, you're writing all these letters you mentioned you send like a hundred. You just really had this mindset of connecting and networking and you use those contacts or those contacts helped you get transferred to a more progressive prison, which the words progressive in prison aren't usually something we hear together. You had kind of a strategy for this and it was really, really effective.

[00:57:23] Michael Santos: Incredibly effective. And it started, that particular strategy started with a professor at Princeton. John Dilulio was a kind of a movement in this whole pathway to mass incarceration. And he published an article in the journal called Let 'em Rot, big editorial page in the backside. And I wrote him a letter and that was just always my approach. "Hey, I'm in prison. I think we can do better. We're American society. I really believe we need to invest in people. And appreciate your article and the viewpoint you're coming from. But as somebody who's been in prison for five years and I just got my bachelor's, I'm getting my master's, really like to kind of shape your mindset on something better." And that led John to write me a letter, which was incredible because I'm getting this feedback from super influential people that have the president's ear and have the senator's ear and professor at Princeton, one of the most prestigious schools. And he became a mentor to me and actually brought a group of students to that progressive prison. And I got to teach a group of Princeton students in the warden's conference room in a federal prison when I was in my eighth year.

[00:58:24] But that happened like many times in the journey where Bruce and John and Norval Morris, perhaps the most distinguished penologist in the last 50 years at the University of Chicago and advocated on my behalf, or Joan Petersilia at Stanford, who just incredibly influential, invited me to publish with her and open doors. And I mean, all of those people came into my life just through doing what any entrepreneur has to do, right? You have to build trust and make people know you, like you, and trust you and believe that you can bring value and solve problems. And I was really lucky in that regard, and I always considered that as an obligation of mine to prove worthy and over deliver. It led to me building a professional career. It also led me to become more financially successful when I got out.

[00:59:17] Jordan Harbinger: You started making these quarterly reports on your progress and sending them out to your support network. And I really think that's smart. That's really a good move because it keeps people invested, it keeps people informed. It gives people who are helping you some kind of intangible return on their efforts. So it was basically a prison development rehab newsletter. It was really smart because I think if you're helping somebody and you don't know, like whatever happened to that person. You just don't know. There's nothing there. But if somebody says, "By the way, I meant to thank you. Here's what I'm doing now. Here's where you contributed to that." You just really get people invested in your success. And I think that's part of that, I would imagine that's one reason why you were so successful inside and outside.

[00:59:55] Michael Santos: I'm still doing it. I mean, I'm still reaching out to people and it's really important to be transparent and open and in every way, right? You define what success is and then you document how are you working in incremental steps. And for me, it's really a teaching tool to do that. Like I create these books now that I send into prisons that I'm showing you how do you do it. What are all the ways that you can document your path? First of all, describe what you're going to be and then take steps.

[01:00:22] And one of the greatest exercises that's part of that whole memorializing the journey that I tell people in prison to do is to write book reports because that's something they do. They're in prison, and I try to get them to think about the stakeholders they're going to meet in the future, whether it's a probation officer or a future employer, somebody else. And they said, "I want you to come home with, like, you know, if you said you're going to read 200 books in prison, well, tell us what you learn, why you chose the book you chose. Tell us what you learned from reading that particular book and tell us how that particular book is going to contribute to your success upon release. And document that so that when you come home, people aren't only going to see you as the guy who served a lot of time in prison. They're going to see you as somebody who knows how to face challenges and problems and overcome them." That strategy worked for me in prison. It works for me today.

[01:01:08] Jordan Harbinger: It's funny, in the book there's these anecdotes. You have this prison website, right, Prison Professor, and you end up with like these kind of, I guess I'll say fans. Well, you know, you'll see some guy and you're like, "Oh, this really big dude's in the cell with me, what's going on?" And then he goes, "Wait a minute, I read your website. That was really helpful. Thank you so much." It's just really, really funny because what you were doing was clearly so helpful to these people that were going in and you ended up being, I mean, that also, unfortunately, got you on the radar in a bad way with the prison authorities, right? Because you're already not trying to be a model inmate. You're trying to leave with skills to become successful outside. And that attracted a lot of unwanted attention from staff and bureaucrats who transferred you and threatened you, put you in segregated housing.

[01:01:49] Michael Santos: There's a flip side of that, you know? There's a flip side of that.

[01:01:51] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[01:01:51] Michael Santos: Because it also gave me enormous credibility and strength. And that's very powerful right now. And those people that locked me in the SHU, in fact, my biggest advocate or champion in the prison system right now is a regional director of the Bureau of Prisons which is over 30,000 people. And when I was in Lompoc — you read the book or you listened to the book? So when I was in Lompoc, a federal prison, and I was in the SHU, you may remember some captain locked me in the hole for publishing and so on. And this guy's name is, I'm just going to use his name as Andy, that's his first name. I won't use his last name. Andy came to me as a captain and he said, "You can't do this from my prison, you know?" And I said, "Well, I can. I have it in my file that I can." And he said, "Okay, you know what to do." And then, I litigate my way and I prevail. And when I prevail, I'm still in the hole. And he comes to see me and say, "Well, I still don't want you in my prison. I don't want to write you in my prison. I'm going to ship you." I said, "That's fine." He ships me and I continue the path and then I get out.

[01:02:47] And when I get out, you know, I'm building my career and I'm speaking, I'm a keynote at like a thousand people event. It's a judicial conference and there's a thousand people in the audience and I'm the keynote. And you can't see that audience when they're that big. And he comes up to me after and there's judges, prison authorities, the governors in the audience in Sacramento. And he comes up to me afterwards and he shakes my hand and said, "Do you remember me?" I said, "Of course. I remember you locked me in the hole at Lompoc for basically doing the same thing."

[01:03:14] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. For doing this exact thing that you just paid me to do, pal.

[01:03:18] Michael Santos: And he laughed. He said, "I'm really happy to see what you're doing with your life and I'm now a warden at the penitentiary. I'd love for you to come out at the prison." I said, "You know, I could come out and do that, but that has a lifespan of about a couple of hours. Let's make an impact. Let's change people. And let me create something that I can leave there and give people a pathway. And he said, "Great." And that started my whole kind of career that now, I've reached more than 200,000 people a day in prisons across the country that don't have access to the Internet, but they have access to my books, my courses, my DVDs and things of that sort. And it's really fulfilling.

[01:03:55] So yeah, I went through the challenges. That gives me credibility. When I go into a prison and they'll see me and I go in suit and tie and they'll look at me and they'll think that I look like—

[01:04:07] Jordan Harbinger: Who's this schmo?

[01:04:07] Michael Santos: —probation officer or something, right?

[01:04:09] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[01:04:11] Michael Santos: And then, they'll hear I was in prison, that fool was never in prison. And I'll say, "You think you're giving me an insult? Because I don't look hard enough. You know, but here's a little secret. That was the plan, you know, to come out—"

[01:04:21] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[01:04:22] Michael Santos: "—and be successful." And it's what launched my career in business and in real estate and in everything else because of these skills, I learned in prison. And that's what I want to share with people inside. So all of those pain points of getting transferred and going to the hole and having to overcome and bring mentors in my life, all that did is give me enormous currency and credibility and getting people to believe in themselves. And that's really what all of my work is about. The story is just a catalyst for what I hope the people see they can do.

[01:04:53] Jordan Harbinger: I'm glad to hear that because it is sort of easy to see in the book how a lot of the prison guards and administrators, some of them are drunk on power and control. It doesn't surprise me, but some of them really seem like they live to torment the people under their care. And I kind of get it. I mean, many prisoners are probably horrible people that have spent their lives victimizing and hurting and even killing other innocent people, but it just doesn't seem necessary to antagonize people while they're already locked in a cage. And I feel like maybe I'm naive or soft for thinking that, I don't know. I'm curious. What you think?

[01:05:24] Michael Santos: My response would be there were some, but there were also many who helped me without a doubt. I mean, and I wrote about those people, like the guy who gave me the book on philosophy. That was a turning point in my life. And it started at the right time, right at the start of my journey. And I learned, wow, if I change the way that I think I'm going to get through this. And then, there was Ms. Stevens who gave me the job. By me having that job, she saved my life. I mean, I'm in a very dangerous, volatile, violent penitentiary, and she gave me a sanctuary, or Dr. Ellis, who allowed me to go to the suicide watch program and study, and that allowed me to accelerate my studies, or Warden Luther, who opened all those opportunities at McKean, allowed me to teach that group at Princeton, or the wardens who signed off on me getting transferred to lower security numerous times. There were many staff members that helped me.

[01:06:16] Now, does that mean there were not some that tried to make things a little bit more difficult? No, but I always view this as I have to live in the world as it exists, not as I want it to be. And as Gandhi says, I have to be the change I want to see. If I didn't like that prison system, I have to be, it change. I have to make it change. And that's become my ministry, so to speak, of really trying to change the system in a way that empowers other people to reach their highest potential, not by making excuses. I don't care how many guards are nice or not nice, I care about what can I do in here. And I was really lucky to have had that help.

[01:06:54] Jordan Harbinger: Story reminds me in a way of, and I think you mentioned this in the book, or at least we talked about on the phone, Dave's Killer Bread. Have you ever this?

[01:07:00] Michael Santos: Yeah. What an awesome story that is.

[01:07:03] Jordan Harbinger: Can we go over that just very briefly? I got a couple of loaves of that in the kitchen right now. It's really good bread.

[01:07:08] Michael Santos: My favorite bread.

[01:07:09] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[01:07:09] Michael Santos: Let me tell you, I can give you a great story on how we inspired me and how I use his course as a model of excellence and what can happen for people. I'm familiar with his story. If you got questions for me, I'm happy to respond.

[01:07:21] Jordan Harbinger: You tell me just the brief story.

[01:07:23] Michael Santos: Yeah. So here's what I know about Dave, right? And I know about him through, the Last Mile, Chris Redlitz at San Quentin and their program. But Dave is a guy that had a serious problem with drugs and criminal behavior as a young man. He came from a family of bakers and I think his father, I don't remember if his father was an immigrant, but he had a little small bakery in a small town in Oregon, and his brother was kind of a successful executive that had kind of been disturbed by his brother's criminal behavior. I think it was Dave was the older brother and the younger brother went in the father's path, and Dave went in the bad path and was in prison for a long time, and he became a baker, and a good baker. That was his path in the prison, was to become a baker. People, there are bakers in prison. He got out, his family had the bread business. And Dave wanted to try something different, and I think it was healthy, was his goal. He was a fitness fanatic. You see him, he looks like a bodybuilder and wanted to build this machine. And he did. And they started selling it at a, as I recall, like a little swap meet or something like the local fair in Oregon. And it was a big hit and started growing and growing. It got some venture capital. I believe he built it into like a 50-million venture. And then, I think private equity bought him out. But a great, great story of resilience and inspiring, and I take that to people in prison every day.

[01:08:46] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And it's some good-ass bread, Dave's Killer Bread. We'll link to it in the show notes.

[01:08:49] You got a ton of willpower, a ton of focus. You're running marathons in prison within the yard there. But I am curious, how do you make peace with events happening outside prison when you're locked up inside? Friends and family are dying when you're not there. And I know your grandfather died while you were in, your father got Alzheimer's and went to a home, he couldn't talk with you or visit you. It sounds so horrible because, of course, those people want to see you and you want to see them, but you just simply run out of time and there's nothing that you can do about it. And maybe the worst part is that you run outta time and so do they. Only the situation, it wasn't their choice, you know, it was yours.

[01:09:28] Michael Santos: Yeah. I think I bore a lot of responsibility for that and it still weighs on me somewhat that I cause pain because you know, it's not only me serving time, my family wanted me home and life does go on. Sisters get married, they have children. My father got Alzheimer's but also died and my grandfather died and Bruce died, and Norval died, and all these people who had influence on me, and it's one of the things that my wife says is that prison made me less emotional in a sense where I'm really stoic and really obsessed with what I have to do. And I had to train myself in there to shut that out. It's one of the after-effects of my life and why I'm so grateful to have Carol because everything revolves really around what we're building and what we're doing. And I strive to, I've got great relationships with my family that is alive. I was grateful that my mom got it to see me become emerge and become successful, but she's also passed away. It's just part of the journey. You know, for me, we're on a journey and this is a part of my journey and work is a big part of my journey but I lost a lot. Yeah, I lost a lot because of the choices I made, and I gained a lot.

[01:10:40] Jordan Harbinger: Well, you've accomplished more inside prison than most people accomplish outside prison. And you're making me feel a little bit bad about myself here, Santos. I got to step up my game, man. I'm really honored to know you. I'm so thankful you spent this time with me today.

[01:10:52] Michael Santos: I'm super grateful to have spent time with you. I would encourage you and your audience to realize that mass incarceration really is a great social injustice. It inflicts the people of color and the poor more than anyone else. And we as a society that can do better, should do better. And anybody that wants to get involved in that, I would encourage them to visit us at Prison Professors and particularly people that are entrepreneurs and digitally savvy help us get those people ready for prime time.

[01:11:22] Jordan Harbinger: I've got some thoughts on this episode, but before I get into that, I speak with the infamous Fyre Fest, Billy McFarland from Inside federal prison, where he's serving six years for fraud and on the hook for 26 million dollars in restitution. Here's a quick bite.

[01:11:38] Female operator: You will not be charged for this call. This call is from—

[01:11:41] Billy McFarland: William McFarland.

[01:11:43] Female operator: An inmate at a federal prison. Hang up to decline the call or to accept dial five now.

[01:11:51] Jordan Harbinger: When I asked before on our first call, if you were a conman, we had 10 seconds of silence. Is this the new Billy that we're hearing or are you the same Billy that tried to pull off the Fyre Festival?

[01:12:03] Billy McFarland: When I think the mistakes that were made and what happened, there's no way I can just describe it other than what was I thinking, I was wrong and I hope now that I can in some small way make a positive impact.

[01:12:15] Jordan Harbinger: Once you knew that the festival wasn't going to go as planned, why didn't you call it off?

[01:12:21] Billy McFarland: So a lot of people don't know, but the decision to cancel the decision can't was made when I was told that three people had died at the event. Thankfully, no one was actually physically hurt in any way, but up until the last second I believed incorrectly, we could pull it off. And obviously, I was wrong.

[01:12:37] We had something called the Urgent Daily Payments document, and basically it was this Google Excel sheet. Essentially, it was a list of payments that we had to make that day, or else the festival couldn't proceed. In the couple of months leading up to the event, it went from a couple of thousand dollars a day to a few million a day where had to wake up at nine in the morning, find three million by noon, and then make the payments by four.

[01:12:58] Jordan Harbinger: How was solitary confinement essentially being locked in a box? Like that? Sounds terrible.

[01:13:03] Billy McFarland: It really makes you think. And I think the biggest takeaway was, you know, there was one guy who's serving a 30-year sentence and he was already locked in the same room for over three and a half years when I was there.

[01:13:13] Jordan Harbinger: You had a big vision. I mean, it was huge and you got so close to something great that everyone wanted to be a part of, and people still want to be a part of it. I have to wonder if there's going to be a Fyre Fest version two. I assume you wouldn't call it that. But are you thinking of doing something similar?

[01:13:27] Billy McFarland: If there's anything that makes you want to create and build and do, it's being locked in a cage for months or years. Are you good to come?

[01:13:35] Jordan Harbinger: For more with Billy McFarland, including lessons learned on the inside, the value of trust, and Billy's plans for the future once he's served the time he agrees he rightly deserves, check out episode 422 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.

[01:13:49] It really seems like harsh sentencing and mass incarceration is an epidemic. Nobody wants violent offenders on the street. I totally get that. But it sounds like a lot of people behind bars were mostly harming themselves with drugs and were not actually violent. It's crazy to me that a prison administration can deny anything like a textbook, for example, from the outside, just because they are, well, frankly, too lazy to inspect it when it arrives. And I get that it's prison, but it seems like they should at least pretend to care about rehabilitation. The petty bureaucracy is really just wild. From the books, there's just constant example after example.

[01:14:26] In one book, Michael describes a lady who would make you knock and wait before opening the door, and then she would wait a really, really, really long time before opening the door. If you knock again, she would get mad that you knocked too many times, and if you didn't knock again, eventually she'd answer the door and go, "What are you going to do? Just stand there. You got to knock. I didn't hear you." Which is obviously not true because if you knock again, then she yells at you. So she was just looking for a reason to get pissed off. And maybe we all know one person like that in real life, but we can avoid them. Here, they know that you have to go through them to get basic needs done, like try to get an education or try to get something signed so you can get outta prison eventually. And these people know they have all the power. It's just really screwed up.

[01:15:07] And again, I get it's prison, but does it need to get worse? Does it need to get less efficient? And it was very smart In the books, you really see how Michael learned to navigate the system, negotiate for jobs that gave him alone time, time to write, take correspondence courses, et cetera. Him knowing how to read the law and knowing the prison rules better than the administration turned out to be a saving grace. There's a lot of nonsense with disciplinary infractions and guards and staff trying to mess with your rights while you're in there, your privileges while you're in there. A lot of these guys are perfectly nice people, a lot of them are not, and they want to Lord over somebody and this is the perfect job for them. If you don't know what you're entitled to. Prisoners who are released. Do better with a support network. That's a mystery to nobody, but prison officials and policies are actually designed in part to prohibit the development of this exact same support network and make it as difficult as possible. Part of that's for security, and part of that is simply by poor design.

[01:16:03] By the way, Michael later met Justin Paperny behind bars. He's another show guest. That's episode 226. Definitely worth a listen for sure. Oh, and now Michael is a successful business owner as well as an adjunct professor over at San Francisco State University. Talk about a turnaround.

[01:16:19] Big thank you to Michael Santos. All things Michael Santos will be in the show notes to jordanharbinger.com. Check out our GPT chatbot at jordanharbinger.com/ai. If you want to search for anything we've ever done here on the show. Transcripts in the show notes, videos on YouTube. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, all ways to support the show are at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. I'm at @JordanHarbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.

[01:16:47] And I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using the same software systems and tiny habits that I use every single day. That's our Six-Minute Networking course. That course is free. Over at jordanharbinger.com/course. I want you to build relationships before you need them. Dig the well before you get thirsty à la Michael Santos here. Many of the guests, by the way, on the show, they subscribe and contribute to the course. So come join us, you'll be in smart company.

[01:17:11] This show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is you share it with friends. When you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who's just getting out, maybe just going in, still in, maybe needs a little pick me up, this is definitely the type of episode that you should share with them. The greatest compliment, by the way, that you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. 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.

[01:17:48] Special thanks to Peloton for sponsoring this episode of The Jordan Harbinger Show.

[01:17:52] By the way, if you're a regular listener of the show and you get some value from me or the guest we have on the show, there's a really easy way to show your support. Download the Fountain app on iOS or Android, follow The Jordan Harbinger Show, and start listening over there. You can share your thoughts on this episode with me by sending a boost, which is like a little payment with a message, and see what other listeners have to say. Getting started is easy. You can top up your Fountain wallet with a bank card, and you can also earn money just by listening to the show on Fountain as well. It's a no-brainer. I donate this money to charity, by the way. Visit fountain.fm to learn more.