Episode 400: Shame, Identity and Starting Over After Losing Everything with Edward DuCoin

0:00Hey everybody, let me pause here for just a second. I want to talk to you about today's sponsor, Wired for Addiction. I've had Dr. Evelyn Higgins on the show before and her work really stays with me. It's changed how I understand what recovery actually asks of us. Here's what I mean. So much of the work we do is behavioral and that matters. That's important. But underneath the behavior, there's biology. There's a nervous system, a stress response, a brain chemistry that's been shaped by the brain. by everything you've lived through. And when that biology is out of balance, no amount of willpower fully closes that gap.

0:38That's what Wired for Addiction does differently. They actually measure it. Dopamine, cortisol, inflammation, the system's driving how you feel and then build a plan around your unique biology. So if you've done the work and you're still fighting that same fight, this might be what's been missing. Download their free guide, The Biology of Addiction 10 Core Biomarkers at theaddictedmind.com forward slash wired. That's theaddictedmind.com forward slash wired. All right. Thanks for listening. Let's get back into this interview. All right. Dwayne here. As many of you know, I work in the sex addiction and betrayal trauma field.

1:21And I want you to know, if you're a man who's betrayed your partner and you're trying to rebuild the relationship, stay with me here because this is for you. Maybe you've tried therapy, individual therapy, couples therapy, maybe even a group or a community. And you're doing all the work, and I know you are, but the relationship still feels stuck. And here's the thing, when Shame is running the show, it doesn't matter how much therapy you do, you stay stuck. And that is specifically why I created the Shame to Resilience workshop. It's 10 weeks. You'll get videos, worksheets, and every week we meet live on Zoom.

1:59Just a group of men who get it, doing this work together, and I walk you through this process. So the next cohort is starting in two weeks. So if you're ready, and I mean you're really ready to break through the shame, go to workshop.shametoresilience.com and sign up. You can do this. All right, on to the episode. All right, everybody. Welcome to the Addicted Mind podcast. My name is Dwayne Osterland, and I'm your host.

2:30Edward DuCoin: The hard part is the agony nobody sees. I mean, the absolute terror. Several times I left in the morning to go to a hearing or something in Delaware. My children didn't know. My family didn't know. And some of those days, I didn't know if I was going to be home that night.

2:54So my guest today is Edward DeCoin. Edward is a lifelong entrepreneur. He started his first business in his bedroom when he was 18 with less than$500. And years later, he took a company public on the NASDAQ. Then the financial crisis hit and things started to unravel. Edward describes a long, complicated chain of events involving his taxes, his shareholders, and eventually an indictment in Delaware. He lost his home, his cars, almost everything. And he ended up with a felony on his record in a case he says he didn't get to defend. Now, Edward talks really openly about what that was like. The terror of driving to a hearing, not knowing if he'd be home that night, feeling like the only real choice was to take a plea.

3:42carrying a label that followed him for years, and how slowly he's rebuilt and finally stopped hiding his story. So many of you listening have been touched by the criminal justice system, especially around addiction. Some of you are in that dark stretch right now. And I hope this conversation reminds you that there can always be a way through it, even when you can't see it yet. So let's jump into this episode. All right, everybody, welcome to the Addicted Mind podcast. I have a great guest, Edward DeCoin, is with me. And I think we're going to talk about something that's really, really important, how the criminal justice system impacts with recovery and how those two overlap.

4:26And Edward's going to share his story. So, Edward, let's jump in. Tell me a little bit about you and how this all started.

4:35Edward DuCoin: Well, yeah, it's interesting trying to condense, you know, 30 some odd years of entrepreneurship and then the topic we're going to discuss down in just to a statement. But a lifelong entrepreneur, bumped up against the financial crisis in 2007, 2008, was raising venture capital at that time. Raised some money because our commitment was if we raised a certain threshold of funds, then an investment banker would put a million dollars into the business. It was fairly easy to raise those funds because we had a signed contract with the investment banker. We raised those funds, and then the world imploded.

5:15Edward DuCoin: Banking shut down. Everything went downhill. Oh, yeah. People who may not have been really around at that time, it was quite scary. But venture capital just completely blew up. So we had a choice to do one of two things. Beach the ship and burn the sails and keep going or just walk away and hurt the shareholders and walk away from what I still believe to be was a great business plan and opportunity. We were involved in the world in NASCAR, and we were licensing the names and the likeness of the drivers and the teams and putting them on scooters and motorcycles. So, and it even went beyond NASCAR.

5:53Edward DuCoin: We worked with the United States Department of Defense, now the Department of War. So you could get a Navy, Air Force, Marines, Army scooter or motorcycle. And then we also worked with universities. So you get like a Texas A &M. So we appealed to the raving fan, and it was a great business model. Stuff happens. The world blew up. We continued to move forward. I actually was working with not really a full CPA, but a person to do my taxes because they weren't all that complicated at that time. Unfortunately, because I was in a position quite a ways before, years before, where I took a company public.

6:34Edward DuCoin: But it was a series of events. One of the things I always say, if you want to have a little money, start with a lot of money and start a NASCAR race team. Because, boy, that will really… That will do it. Oh, yeah. People think golf's expensive. Well, a pit stop can cost$1 ,200 in 15 seconds for the tires and the fuel. So, at least the golf game… It goes fast. Yeah, you could many hours, but long story short, I had a CPA who, for whatever reason, hijacked my books, went to the IRS, did an audit behind my back, claimed that I owed almost$700 ,000 in taxes. The whole reason why I went to this accountant is because the one tax preparer that I had was saying that I was due a$20 ,000 refund.

7:23Edward DuCoin: And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I can do basic math. I think I owe about$20 ,000. Right. And I didn't feel comfortable. And with everything going on, I'm like, look, I cannot have a problem with my shareholders, with my personal accounting, with my professional accounting, and certainly with the IRS. Well, boy, did I fall into trouble with the IRS. Six months later, I finally tracked down the IRS agent that was doing an audit completely behind my back. Now, your listeners may be like, well, how does that even happen? Well, when your CPA has power of attorney, which is fairly common, they don't have to really inform you of anything.

8:00Edward DuCoin: I don't know whether this CPA did it out of malice, out of some sort of mental breakdown or believed to be true. But regardless, when I finally tracked down the IRS officer and I said, listen, OK, here's the deal. I was told by a tax preparer at Jackson Hewitt that I was due a$20 ,000 refund. I didn't think that was correct. So I hired the CPA. I didn't want to have any problems. Looks like I now have problems. I'm sure I can't write just a simple check to make this go away, but perhaps, you know, a payment or two. I'm sure there's fees. I'm sure there's interest. I'm sure there's penalties. And I'm mentally thinking, OK, you know, is it 30?

8:45Edward DuCoin: Is it 35? Is it 40 ,000? Well, when he said almost$700 ,000, you would think that it would send panic, but it kind of did the opposite. it because then I knew I was dealing with inaccuracy at a best case, malpractice at a worst case. And so the IRS officer, his first name was Jeff. We got to know each other pretty well. And not too many people say IRS officers are great people, but this man was wonderful. He let me work with a bookkeeper that I've discovered on Craigslist because I was having some severe money issues at this point. No income coming in and trying to keep the company alive through savings and credit cards.

9:29Edward DuCoin: And this woman, I've worked with her to this day, she just was an angel. We cleaned up the books over about a 10-month period. And when it was all said and done, I owed$22 ,000. I was right all along. Wow. Yeah, but that's not the issue. That's the foundation of the issue. This CPA went to my shareholders that I was trying to protect, said, listen, I'm a CPA. The IRS says Ed's using, and this is a quote, your money as his personal piggy bank. And the IRS has them under audit. Now, at that time, I had about 30 shareholders. It's like 32. 30 of them knew it wasn't true because it was friends, family, friends and family of friends and family.

10:15Edward DuCoin: And this is important. They were in several states. They were New Jersey, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. However, one shareholder in the state of Delaware did what I, to this day, don't blame them for doing. They went to a prosecutor and said, hey, wait a second. I put, it was approximately$30 ,000 into this organization. I've got a CPA saying that Mr. DuCoin has misappropriated and used funds personally. And an IRS officer has substantiated that. With that information, after an interview with me, which I regret to this day, I was indicted. Wow. I went to Delaware and basically completely naive, thought that the truth would just, you know, okay, here's the situation.

11:06Here it is. You can see it. It's clear as day.

11:09Edward DuCoin: Yeah, exactly. And no, no, no, no. At that time, Beau Biden put an edict out. Beau Biden's the son of President Biden. Unfortunately, he passed away from brain cancer. I do believe that he probably could have been president someday. But with the financial crisis, they had a mandate to go hard on white collar crime. I was an easy, easy target. And I was indicted at that time, believe it or not. I went from a board member and a senior executive of a publicly traded company with substantial funds to being qualified for a public defender. The public defender said. So you lost everything. Oh, I lost everything.

11:53Edward DuCoin: Oh, 100 percent. At this point, my house was in foreclosure. My cars were repossessed. I was getting actual assistance to keep my utilities on. So I went from a three-time Inc. 500 CEO, raised$44 million in an IPO, took my company public on NASDAQ to boom, boom, boom. And that's okay. I mean, you learn. One thing I'm proud of is I've never blamed anybody. I've never blamed the economy. I've not blamed other people. I can hold them accountable. But when it's all said and done, I still have the responsibility. So what was it like during that time as you're watching this kind of collapse around you?

12:32Your life is falling to pieces. Here you were way up here and then you lose everything.

12:38Edward DuCoin: Yeah. How did you handle that? Because it was over a period of, say, six, seven years. It was death by a thousand cuts. There wasn't necessarily one, well, there was many bad days for sure. But I'm always an optimistic person. I also love a challenge. You know, one of the ways I grew, kind of the claim to fame for a long time, and still to this day slightly, is when I was 18 years old, which sounds cute, I started a business in my bedroom with less than$500, which sounds cute. But that company ended up 18 years later receiving all kinds of accolades, best management team training program in the state of New Jersey, Inc.

13:19Edward DuCoin: 500 three years in a row. And we, an investment banker came to us and made us part of a roll up to go public on NASDAQ. So you go from a bedroom operation to public. What I've done since then being indicted and no means to support my family and losing everything, you know, I've built myself back with a great partner, a great team, and a little luck to be, I believe, Orbital, my company now, I don't believe, I know, is very successful. We actually, just this past week, for the third year in a row, were rated one of the fastest growing companies in Philadelphia. So to answer your question, though, parts of me felt like it was a challenge.

14:02Edward DuCoin: I remember being a kid, if I was ahead I didn't like the game of horse or playing basketball or a volleyball game or even horseshoes. I would kind of like screw up a little bit. If I was winning, I'd screw up a little bit to make it more challenging. And throughout this whole period of time, first and foremost, I knew that I was there to protect the shareholders. I can't do the math, but like 95 % of my shareholders thought I was tremendous and that I was going, frankly, they said above and beyond what they would even do. I also knew that the reason why I mentioned those states before is that Delaware approached New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

14:47Edward DuCoin: And investigators in all of those states either directly told me or indirectly told me through a resident of those states who were shareholders that this is ridiculous. There's nothing here. But, you know, because. So how did you deal with the injustice of that, right? Like you got hit with this, everything's falling apart, like death by a thousand cuts. And you're an optimist. Obviously, you're like, I'm going to take this challenge. I'm going to take this on. But at the same time, it's got to be really, really difficult to mentally weather that storm, especially when you feel it's so unjust.

15:30Like it's like, this is so whatever's going on here, it doesn't match my reality.

15:36Edward DuCoin: And no, it was the frustration level and the hypocrisy was horrible and still is still is to this day. So I've always believed one time when my company was, you know, I wasn't young, say we're 10 years into the 18 year time it was growing. We lost literally our largest client in one day. It was TV Guide, Rupert Murdoch Walk TV Guide. Tony Rizzo, the president of the time, calls up and says, Ed, my hands are tied. We're just going to have to let you go. And they knew that it was literally 95 % of my company. I mean, 450, 500 people were going to lose their jobs. Now, they gave us 30-day notice, which turned into 90, which turned into six months.

16:20Edward DuCoin: But I will share with you, I look back on that day as one of the best business days of my life. Because had that not happened, we would have been fat, dumb, and happy printing money because it was an easy account where we're making a lot of money. But we would have never gone public because we had too much of our in there. So you learn, I think, being an entrepreneur and the nature of entrepreneurship, meeting payrolls every week, overcoming pissed off clients, issues with employees, issues with insurance or the Department of Labor, which are just natural. You kind of get in that mode of, okay, things can always be worse and things can always be better.

17:05Edward DuCoin: The frustration, though, to answer your question about that, is I found it fascinating and I found it like there's a reason why this is happening. One of the things that kind of gives me great comfort in a very screwed up way is on January 1st, 2000, I literally remember sitting there watching the Rose Bowl. And I'm thinking, okay, I can do one of two things. I can take this money that I had, which was seven figures. It was a decent amount. And just put it in the stock market. Don't touch it. Go get a job, which I could get a job. I was kind of in demand at that time. Or I can believe in myself and start my own business.

17:47Edward DuCoin: So, okay. So I was at that juncture in my life. But I also know based on my age at that time, which was 35, I think. Yeah. I didn't have the maturity level that I needed to have to handle that, frankly, that amount of wealth and what I would have done with it. So I probably would have bought, I mean, I had a nice car, but I probably would have bought a really nice car, like maybe a Ferrari. And I would never buy a Ferrari today. I wouldn't even want one. I couldn't even get one in one with my knees. But at that time, I thought one day, you know what? What if I went that route and what if I bought the Ferrari and what if I was on the New Jersey Turnpike and what if I was driving too fast on a rainy day?

18:33Edward DuCoin: God forbid I didn't hurt anybody else, but what if I wrapped the Ferrari around the tree and killed myself in 2003? I'd rather be going through this today than going through that. So the grass is not greener. You also, I think, I've become such a better human, a better entrepreneur. I mean, I wouldn't bet against me. I would not bet against me right now. It's funny when people for years, because of what happened in Delaware, I became I had like a scarlet letter on me. That was frustrating because it's like, well, wait a second. I got in trouble for protecting my shareholders and doing everything I could do to save this company.

19:12Edward DuCoin: That's the type of entrepreneur you want to invest in, not the guy that just declares bankruptcy and walks away. So you're talking about a mindset shift, you know, that promotes growth, that promotes opportunity by shifting perspective on it. Like you can have this perspective or you can have this perspective, but one of those perspectives is going to do you a lot more in the long run than this perspective. and do you see that as something as you reflect back on your time do you see that as as something that you've grown or was part of you or see it more concretely because i i see when i interview a lot of entrepreneurs and i'm i'm i'm a little entrepreneurial myself you said something about like just the the challenge of it and the there's a reason this this bad thing is happening right now.

20:09And you make up the reason, which is positive. I don't know if that, if what I'm saying rings true.

20:14Edward DuCoin: I heard a story around this time that really resonated and I think it's valuable because to me, this is a foundation of all of our lives. A young man, I think he was 35-ish, 33, had a horrific cancer. I don't remember what the cancer was. Okay. Basically considering going on hospice. During this process, he met a nurse and there was an attraction there. And that nurse and their platonic relationship up to this point, but very strong friends, gave him a reason to live. Well, fast forward five, six years later, he lived, they got married, they had two children by then. And he said he would go through the chemotherapy and the agony over every single time to have his wife and his children.

21:01Edward DuCoin: So when you live into the perspective like that, now it's not easy. Okay, here's the thing. Yeah. Back to entrepreneurship. People look at my company like, oh, wow, you know, they didn't see the sleepless nights. They didn't see the, I mean, I'm not too proud to say that there was many, I can think of three specific nights where I was in absolute tears. How am I going to meet payroll? My clients are upset. I got employees quitting or whatever the issue was. So nobody sees that, but nobody sees like Michael Phelps. You know, Michael Phelps goes and wins all these gold medals. They don't realize, OK, but he gets up at four o 'clock in the morning on a cold winter day in Baltimore, Maryland, and goes off to the pool while we're all sound asleep in our warm, snug beds.

21:42Edward DuCoin: So, you know, that's part of it. I mean, I want to come off like, oh, everything was rosy. It was horrible. But the other thing that I was blessed with is a family. And I'm the provider for the family. So maybe if it was just me, maybe I would have given up. And I don't know how we define giving up, but maybe I would have given up. But I had no choice. I had children to feed. And I also had children to protect. So we just had a little technical issue, but we're coming back. So we were talking about how that mindset, that necessary mindset to be able to have that really promotes positive growth, especially when you're in those dark spaces.

22:29And a lot of times, like you were saying earlier, people can see the success that you may have, but they don't always see the struggle behind the closed doors, like employees leaving, whatever, all this other stuff, lawsuits that go on, the criminal justice system being indicted and all that darkness. And you were talking about how framing that differently for you and reflecting back now from your 35-year-old self to where you are now and just giving a reflection on that. In some respects, I try to put myself in the listener's role if they're listening to this.

23:11Edward DuCoin: In some respects, I can make it sound overly simple. Is that you learn through experience. You also learn from learning. I mean, one of the books that I always felt was very powerful is Thinking Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And it talks about what the mind, and again, it was written back in the 1920s. So I'm going to quote it exactly, what the mind of a man can conceive and believe he can achieve. You know, when I use that in professional settings, I change it to being neutral because women should rule the world. But, you know, what you believe is going to happen will happen. And that served me, you know, very well.

23:47Edward DuCoin: So that's the simplistic part. The hard part is the agony nobody sees. I mean, the absolute terror. Several times I left in the morning to go to a hearing or something in Delaware. My children didn't know. My family didn't know. And some of those days, I didn't know if I was going to be home that night. Right. Yeah. And it's like I remember driving back and seeing because, you know, Delaware is right next to New Jersey. So you see the sign. Welcome to Delaware. When you come back and see Welcome to New Jersey. And I remember praying I was going to see Welcome to New Jersey in four or five, six, seven hours because the criminal system is blanked up.

24:36Edward DuCoin: You insert the word however bad you want to get effed up, whatever it may be. And people don't know. They just don't know because they've got no real reason to know. And what I mean by that is like in the state of Louisiana, just to call out an extreme, public defenders per year spend less than 20 minutes on their cases. That's just insane. And my point behind all this and where I think I can affect change maybe a little bit is if we brag as a nation about the scales of justice and the balance of justice, okay, wealthy people are always going to have the best attorneys and the best investigators and the best of everything.

25:24Edward DuCoin: That's fine. But we have to do a better job at the public defenders. The other thing we have to do a better job of is realizing that mandatory minimums have created a path to plea agreements or plea bargains. And something like 90 % of all cases, criminal cases, are solved by plea bargains. Why? Well, like in my case, I was told by the prosecutor that public defender can't defend you. They don't have the funds to defend you. You don't have the funds to hire a real criminal defense attorney, which I knew was going to cost me$100 ,000. So guess what? You can either take this plea bargain or I'm going to put your ass in jail for two years for a guaranteed minimum sentence of two years.

26:13Edward DuCoin: And, you know, you see it on TV. I've heard people say it. Oh, I would never admit to a crime I didn't do. Bullshit. You know, come on. you're going to go sit in jail for two years versus taking probation yes you're going to have a felony on your record but you can always deal with that later right but again so so the high level you what your mind you know you you you use your mind to think of the best but for your listeners it's like yeah but yeah but you know it's still pathetically terrorizing right and And, you know, I was going to say, you know, this is the Addicted Mind podcast, and we work with a lot of people that get caught up in the criminal justice system for a lot of nonviolent offenses.

27:02And they get caught up in a system that isn't fair to them, right? Because they can't get the support and the help that they need to navigate that. And they see these bigger consequences that come from that, where, like you said, it shouldn't have even been that way. They shouldn't even maybe be in prison or dealing with all the stuff that they're dealing because they didn't have the right attorney and they plead out just because that's the only leverage they have.

27:30Edward DuCoin: Well, you also have to realize what you can control and what you can't control. I mean, you can't control what time of day your case goes in front of a judge for sentencing, but it's been documented and proven that your sentence will be affected by the time of day, whether it's after coffee, before lunch or after lunch. So, I mean, again, that's something that it sounds easy, but when you're sitting there sitting in jail, you don't really give a crap about that. But I think you have to worry about what you can control. whether it's an illness, whether it's success. And that sounds crazy, but it's also true.

28:10Edward DuCoin: Some of the most unhappy, depressed people I know are incredibly wealthy and have successful businesses. So that's kind of proof that money does not buy you happiness. I can assure you of that. The other thing you learn is the discipline of time. I've literally given myself permission for 30 minutes to watch a sitcom or two hours to watch a movie or a weekend. And I give myself permission not to think about things. Now, that comes from training. That's not just something you flip on. And where that came from, and I promise you, I'm thinking about this for the first time. My company has always been paid on a Tuesday.

28:49Edward DuCoin: There's a reason for that, but I don't want to take the time here. I can't tell you how many times leaving my office on Friday, I really had no idea how we were going to make payroll on Tuesday. I had to get lucky. I had to make two or three phone calls Monday morning. They had to agree to wire the money in, whatever it may be. But there was absolutely nothing I could do Friday night, Saturday, or Sunday, especially back then. When I say back then, 96, 2000, you know, whatever. I mean, 90s, because work was at the office. There were no cell phones. There were no way to get a hold of the client.

29:23Edward DuCoin: There was no text message. So you didn't have a choice. Maybe that was a good thing. You had no choice. So what you had to learn to do is you learn to departmentalize or compartmentalize these things. It's like, I give myself permission not to think about this till Monday morning. Now, is that easy? Absolutely not. But it also becomes muscle memory of controlling your mind and giving yourself permission. I will think about this and worry about this at that time. And the best thing I can do is rest or sleep or go out with my friends or whatever it may be. And that's a skill that you can learn. It's a skill.

30:02Edward DuCoin: That's the point I'm trying to drive home. It's not something, oh, I'm going to read a book and I'm just going to think positive. No, I think I was able to go over all of these things because entrepreneurship is a battle. It literally is a war. And when I say it's a battle or war, it's the same thing why people are addicted to playing football or sports. You get into that competitive nature. Well, to me, this whole thing in Delaware and everything I came over came was strictly just a challenge to me. Right. And it gets back to those days where I do remember, you know, again, the game of basketball where you play horse and, you know, they got to make the shot.

30:48Edward DuCoin: Well, I remember missing shots to let the other person to catch up because I wanted the challenge. Right. It made it more exciting and more fun. Yeah, yeah.

31:26the representation that they need to navigate the criminal justice system. Yeah.

31:31Edward DuCoin: Well, I think most humans are sympathetic, but there's a difference between being sympathetic and being empathetic. Empathetic, you want to have a game plan. You know, you just, when you put yourself in other people's shoes and really live in that moment, it's one thing to think about it. It's another thing to do it. You know, there's a young man who, I don't know his name. I saw a YouTube documentary where he went out and literally lived on the streets as a homeless person. And he was always sympathetic, but then he really learned what it was like. So you don't know till you do know how screwed up and unfair and unjust our defense system is.

32:18Edward DuCoin: Now, here's the thing about that, or criminal justice system. I mean, even the word justice. But here's the other thing. If 99 % of the judges, 99 % of the prosecutors, 99 % of the attorney generals or the assistant attorney generals, which every state has hundreds of them, if 99 % of them are great, there's still thousands and thousands and thousands that are horrible. And it's the luck of the draw. So what I'm trying to bring, I actually did a market research study. And why did I do it? I did it for two reasons. I wanted to have something tangible to share with people and not just say, these are my opinions.

32:55Edward DuCoin: So I went out and did a market research study with interviewing judges, public defenders, prosecutors, assistant attorney generals, politicians, criminal defense attorneys. And maybe it's skewed because the people I met with were willing to participate, but they all say it's screwed up. Minimum sentencing screwed up. It doesn't give judges, it doesn't give the judges the ability to judge. Yeah, you need guidelines. I can see that. But there's no, like in my case, the prosecutor said, now I cannot validate this because I didn't record it. But what I heard her say was something to the effect of, you can be as charming as you want, but there's nothing you can do.

33:43Edward DuCoin: The judge could like you, but the minimum sentence is two years. And it's like, wow, you know, so. So you're really put in that bind once again, like you were saying earlier, like, do I just plead this out, even though I don't feel I'm guilty about it? I know I'm not guilty about it. Like, it's, do I just plead it out and just do that so I don't get that? Is that where you were kind of stuck? And I don't have a public defender to help me fight for myself. Well, that public defender openly stated they can't help me. I mean, everybody's telling me to take the plea because not only can they not defend you.

34:19Edward DuCoin: Here's the thing. To this day, I have not spent one minute defending myself. None of my evidence was ever submitted. And, you know, that's part of the way the system works. And so to answer your question, I feel that not only does this experience make me a better person, a better entrepreneur, or somebody that when people truly know the story, like I wouldn't bet against Ed, you know, look what he overcame. I would like to raise funds in the future. I would like to grow my company dramatically. So that's part of it. But then the other part of it is going through experiences, try to really truly help people.

34:59Edward DuCoin: I'm getting involved in entrepreneurship inside prisons, at least so that there's a game plan. And one of the things I just came up with recently is oftentimes, especially in the past, If you had somebody that was incarcerated, it was up to them to get the job skills and training. But with the advent of artificial intelligence, there's things that families and friends can do with that person so that when they get out, they have a job, not a job, but they have a business that they can literally walk into. So these are some of the things I'm trying to help. I mean, it's kind of like if I'm a well-paid consultant to help small to mid-sized companies and even large companies, we have a client that's a Fortune 500 firm, help them through the process of better operations, better marketing, better sales to increase profitability.

35:46Edward DuCoin: Well, I'm an ideal person to help these people not only start a business, but also help them not make the mistakes. You know, sometimes the best advice you can give is do not start that business. You don't have the capital, there's too much competitors, whatever it may be. So in that respect, it's very satisfying to be able to help. And in that respect, I'm very lucky to be, quote, a lifelong entrepreneur because it prepared me for the terror. You know, when you got to meet a payroll every single week from the time you're 18 years old and I'm 61 today, there's many, even if only 99 % of the time, it was great.

36:27Edward DuCoin: Well, I can't do the math, but 52 weeks out of the year times 40 years, there were some terrorizing terrible feelings when you're not going to be able to make payroll. That's scary. We always made it. My mom passed away in 1988, and my team, especially the biggest company I had, they would say, oh, there's Angel Edna. You walk in the morning, Monday morning, and it's like, oh, we've got to come up with$62 ,000 by five o 'clock today. And then lo and behold, FedEx shows up with, I swear this happened one time, with a check, with a letter from an executive saying, we need to prepay the first quarter billing of the new year because we want to get it on this year's books.

37:10Edward DuCoin: And they sent$94 ,000. It's like, oh my God, you know, that was Angel Edna. Yeah, that's amazing. So really trying to share that entrepreneurial spirit that it, you know, I think the entrepreneurial spirit empowers people to, I think the entrepreneurial spirit empowers people to take a chance, to take some risk, to empower themselves and really bring that kind of thinking, that critical thinking that comes with that too. Like you said, hey, maybe that's not a good idea for a business. Let's look at it. But still, that's empowering. And it's exciting that you're trying to bring that to people who would never get access to that way of thinking, if that makes sense.

37:59Edward DuCoin: No, absolutely. And I think that that's very valuable. I mean, I also know to be true, if you take pretty much any human, anywhere, actually, it's a good example, anywhere in the world, you take some people who may be, yes, we have immigration issues. We absolutely have immigration issues. But if you took some people that are anti-immigration and you picked up their body, transported it back X number of years, and now they've got three kids in Guatemala and their husband was murdered, you're probably going to try and get to the United States. You have to live in those shoes. So that's part of it as well is the empathetic.

38:42Edward DuCoin: But then in this particular case, my ability to be an entrepreneur and bringing things, because if you're not been exposed to it, you've just not been exposed to it. So if nobody, you know, we hear all the time about the first person in a family to go to college. Well, if nobody in the family and no friends own a business, where do they go? You know, and who is that mentor? Who is that guide? And I think that that's something, especially in the future, I would like to have an effect on the individual because it starts at one at a time. So the individual person. Then I'd also like to have an effect on policy.

39:23Edward DuCoin: I mean, as crazy as it sounds, I'm a member of the American Bar Association. I'm a member of the Prosecutors Association. I'm a member of the Criminal Defense Attorneys Association. Because A, you can join. You don't have to be necessarily one of those people. But I'm in these organizations to share my story and hopefully affect change. at the local, state, and national level, especially the state level. That's really where I think I can have the most impact moving forward. So really for you, there's those two things that you're doing. One is trying to bring light to this issue of our criminal justice system.

40:04And hey, we have to advocate for some reforms here because this isn't a fair justice system. It needs to change. And then also at the same time, putting that entrepreneurial spirit out there, helping people change their mindset, that there's opportunity, that there's things that they can create, that they can do, that their mind is really a powerful vehicle once they can have that empowering perspective.

40:34Edward DuCoin: It's interesting, too. Somebody just said to me, because I'm working on a book, which I think is going to be incredibly important. It's important for my children to read because they don't have a clue of half this stuff. I mean, actually not even half, they don't have a clue of 90 % of what I went through. And I'm proud that I was able to block that. It's also written for, you know, friends and family. It's written for entrepreneurship. It's written for criminal justice. And I also think it's a good human story. Actually, at the end of each chapter, it says, you know, something to the effect of here's the human message, here's the criminal justice message, and here's the entrepreneurial message.

41:09Edward DuCoin: And they're all very different messages from each story. So I'm working on bringing that book to the forefront to further help spread the word of what we have going on. So I was talking about my book and somebody said to me, well, why don't you just contact Delaware to get your record expunged or be pardoned? Really, it wouldn't be pardoned. It'd be getting my record expunged. I don't care. I don't care because the, quote, damage has been done. The expungement is irrelevant to me. And in some respects, I wouldn't necessarily give them that satisfaction. Yeah. Because an expungement to me would just be like, oops, we're sorry.

41:50Edward DuCoin: But yet, one of the things that people wouldn't even think of, and you may see it every day, or you could see it every day. It's probably on the local news or certainly in newspapers. And again, this gets back to 2005. where newspapers were a bigger deal. Everybody got their newspaper delivered to their home. Well, Delaware put out a press release that I was indicted for corporate theft. That made my local newspaper. My daughter went to school and her friends were saying, hey, we hear your dad's a criminal. That's not a really great thing to hear as a teenager. And so my point being is that if you're innocent until proven guilty, but yet you put out a press release that you've been accused, that press release lives on the internet forever.

42:43Edward DuCoin: So you giving me an expungement doesn't take that press release away. And I also feel, and this will never happen, but for every press release that goes out that somebody is indicted, the prosecutor office or the attorney general should have put out a press release that they were found not guilty. Yeah. It seems logical and fair to me, but that doesn't happen. Yeah, I mean, that is a really, really good point. I guess, as we're kind of getting close to our time here, I think it's exciting that you're going to put this book out there because I think it's really important for people to be able to see this and really, once again, as I was saying earlier, change the perspective of their mind, empower themselves to do better in their lives, that they have some power to be able to do this.

43:40So I'm excited that you're going to put this book out there. When do you think it's going to come out? What's the...

43:48Edward DuCoin: If you would have told me two years ago that it wouldn't be out by October 2026, I'd be like, you're crazy. I've been working on it for a while. Now, here's the thing about it. The book is absolutely being written by me. But artificial intelligence has made the book so much easier because I have tens of thousands of emails, of documents, of case files that I would literally sit down to work on the book and I would go through emails and I go through files. I have files here that are, I think it lasts count, 17 banker's boxes full. So I would go find that file. And I dig, dig, dig, dig, dig. Or I'd look on the computer and I'd do a search.

44:33Edward DuCoin: Or I'd look on the internet and do a search. And I'd get one page in and I'm three hours in. So the AI, I've loaded up everything I have. And I'm able to then extract literally in seconds what used to take me hours. So the book is completely done. It is completely written. It's in editing. But my attitude is the book will come out when it's intended to come out for two reasons. One is if I wrote the book in 2025, it would be a completely different book than in 2026. So being positive, the book that's supposed to come out will come out. The second thing about the book, though, is when you don't know a world, you don't know a world.

45:15Edward DuCoin: When people sign and I'm going to work with a publishing company, but not that they're paying me, it's a joint venture. But people don't realize that if you have a Simon & Schuster deal, it can take up to three years from the time the book is written to the time it's in the bookstore. So it's not like you flip a switch. Now, to answer your question, I believe strongly it will be out in the first quarter of 2027. if I had to have it out, if my children's lives depended upon it, I could have it out next week. But the other thing about it is a book that's out that nobody knows about is kind of like, you know, a tree falling in the forest.

45:56Edward DuCoin: If nobody, you know, does it make a sound if nobody sees it or is there? If I have a book that goes out, but nobody knows about it, I feel it's going to be worthy of a bestseller, but that will take some marketing promotion. And I also want to give you a compliment, I guess me a compliment and you trust, is I have said more on this podcast today about this situation than I have ever publicly spoken about this topic. And from 2010 to about a year ago, I was hiding in the shadows. But now with the book coming out, with the accolades my company has won and I guess just time it's like no I can come out and I can tell my story and I can tell my truth I've always been very proud and this is that you know how did you've asked a lot of good questions like well how did you get through I was always proud of myself I protected shareholders yeah I was going to ask you a question and this is kind of a good segue into it, I guess, because I was thinking as you were talking a little bit earlier about, you know, back in the day when you experienced that, you experienced, you know, in a way, the humiliation of that coming out in the paper and your daughter seeing it and how dark that is.

47:16And when we have bad things that happen to us, right, we can go into that really dark space. But you're also talking about the transformation to pride and taking that piece and saying, you know what? I don't want that off the internet because now I can look at myself and as I've got through the other side of it, I can be proud of who I am, where I stood, and what I've done with that hardship. And I think people also have to hear that message. I think that's a really, really powerful message that we can transform those things, right? With some thoughtfulness and some work and some effort to that.

48:02And I hear that in your story. And I think that's important for people to hear because, you know, a lot of people listen to the podcast and sometimes this is the Addicted Mind podcast. Sometimes they're in really dark spaces, right? And I want to offer them hope that you can transform this with that mindset shift. And you can overcome. For sure.

48:28Edward DuCoin: Well, and the thing about it too is again, I stumbled upon this mentally I don't know the past week or two, I guess when it comes to the AI and starting a business. So if I'm a listener or you're listeners, there's probably many groups, but we certainly know some of those groups are people that have individually been negatively affected by the criminal justice system. But then by far, a bigger group is the friends and family. Well, okay, friends and family, read the book Think and Grow Rich, study artificial intelligence. The world is so exciting today that you can literally know nothing about AI and within six months be in the top 10%.

49:10Edward DuCoin: And why I say that is because we don't know where the AI will be in six months. It is changing so rapidly that technology for the past 50 years has always been something. The train's running 100 miles an hour, and you have to study, study, study, study to try and get on it. The train is absolutely going 1 ,000 miles an hour, but we're also on a conveyor belt that's going at the same speed. All you have to do is hop on. I mean, never before in the history of man has there been something that you just type in, I don't know how to use you. Give me some advice. Teach me how to work with you. And literally, you establish this relationship.

49:53Edward DuCoin: So AI has enabled entrepreneurship to be at all levels, drop the barriers to entry. But at the same time, we're talking about that family that may have never been exposed. Well, maybe they're listening to this and we'll pick up that book, Think and Grow Rich, or In Search of Excellence, or Good to Great, or find books on their own, or find podcasts. Obviously, if they're listening, they're listening to podcasts. And so - That promote that mindset that you're talking about. They promote that mindset. Yeah. And working in partnership with the individual that they are concerned about or themselves.

50:31Edward DuCoin: You know, I think that that's a, I don't know. I just, from some of my exposure over the past years, I've always heard a lot of people say, well, I don't even know where to begin. And for a lot of years, it was, okay, we'll read a book or be positive, blah, blah, blah. But now there's the tool that we've never had before. And you have access to literally every bit of human knowledge on the planet. There's no better investment in the world than the$20 a month investment in Anthropic Claude or OpenAI GPT. I mean, I would give up coffee. I would give up beer. I might give up chocolate, but I'm not giving that up.

51:14Absolutely. Edward, it has been a pleasure to talk with you. I always like to ask every guest one question before we wrap up, and that's somebody's listening out there and they're in that dark space and you could tell them one thing, what would you want them to know?

51:32Edward DuCoin: May I share a brief story about that? Somebody told me this. So when everything went down in Delaware, I did go down and I did meet with an attorney. He did help me. I paid a thousand dollars. He got it to the point where I didn't have to worry about going to jail the next day and I was petrified. And I sat in his conference room in Wilmington, Delaware in a chair. And he said to me, which answers your question, he said, this too shall pass. He said, there will be an end to this. And the reason why he said it emotionally and with conviction and why maybe I remember it more than I would, because he said there was a man one month ago sitting in that exact same chair, accused, and he killed himself 12 hours later.

52:22Edward DuCoin: And he said, this will pass. You will get through it. There's light at the end of the tunnel. And that's the advice that I would offer. Oh, thank you, Edward. Thank you so much for saying that. If people want to find out more about you, where do they go? How do they find you? I have an unusual name. There's only like two or three Edward Ducoins on the planet. So LinkedIn, I love to connect with people. And then from there, all my other, you know, my business is listed there and information coming out about my book. The book is going to be titled Indicted Loyalty, Convicted Logic. I was indicted for being loyal and the conviction was illogical.

53:03so I like it that's awesome I will put all the links in the show notes Edward thank you so much for coming on to the Addicted Mind I really appreciate it well thank you for what you do too

53:15Edward DuCoin: I mean you don't have to do this and you're obviously helping many people so that's wonderful and thank you for the chance to share my story you got it

53:30I want to thank Edward for coming on and sharing his story so openly. Near the end, he told me he'd said more in this conversation than he ever had publicly. And I don't take that lightly. I keep coming back to the moment he described sitting in his lawyer's office, absolutely petrified in hearing, this too shall pass. When you're in the middle of it, that can feel impossible to believe. And I can understand that. And Edward didn't get through it on a good attitude alone. It took years. It took people who helped him along the way and a lot of really hard days. Some of it still frustrates him to this day.

54:07And he said that himself. But the hardest stretch wasn't the end of the story. And it doesn't have to be the end of yours either. And Edward's story touched on suicide. So I want to say this gently. If you're in the United States and you're having thoughts of ending your life, please call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. It's free. It's confidential. And someone is there any time, day or night. And if you'd like to connect with Edward, he's on LinkedIn. Search for Edward DeCoin. That's where he'll be sharing news about his upcoming book, Indicted Loyalty, Convicted Logic. and if you're struggling with addiction, anxiety, depression, and you want someone in your corner, Novus Mindful Life is the therapy practice I founded.

54:50You can learn more at novusmindfullife.com. If this conversation helped you, please follow the show and leave a rating or review. It helps someone else who's struggling find us. And you can get new episodes and tools you can actually use in your inbox at theaddictivemind.com. So check that out. And wherever you are right now, You're not alone. Take care of yourselves. And I'll talk to you on the next episode.