Overcoming Adversity | From Addiction to Building Redcon1

25:48I wrote hundreds of articles. I wrote hundreds of emails. Um, I, uh, put a lot of time in to get to a place where I was considered an authority in the world of bodybuilding. Um, and it happened in a relatively short time in five years, I went from literally nobody to the, the main, one of the main faces and voices in the, in the world that I loved paying my bills, um, not making a fortune by any means, but paying all my bills, saving a little money and, uh, and doing it in the thing I love. I think that the big thing that there's a few lessons that taught me, of course, don't give up, try your hardest.

26:22People will notice if you try your hardest. Even if you're in McDonald's pushing the broom, if you work your ass off, somebody's going to notice if you're going to become a system manager. If you kick ass as a system manager, somebody's going to notice and make you manager. It just keeps happening. You do that, you get a franchise. Yeah, before you know it, before you know it, you get a franchise. I mean, it sounds hard and yeah, it will take a long time, but I guarantee you, whether in here, I notice when somebody hears here longer or working harder or producing more results, they get noticed.

26:46Um, so that's part of life. I worked my ass off when I covered the world of eye building. I would, uh, shoot the video myself. I would set up the interview, the pilot, just like these cameras. And I would interview the competitors. I would rush back to my room to edit the video, to upload the video as fast as I could onto the site, to tag it, to put it onto the webpage, and then to share it on all of our social, various social media that existed at the time. And other people would, that did the same thing as me for flex and for a bunch of different outlets, muscular vellum at the time, they would say, please slow down.

27:17They'd be like, what are you doing? You're making us look bad. I'm not slowing down. I'd be like, yeah, sorry. Fucking keep up. So they hated me. They didn't like it because they were like, well, this guy is all by himself. Because you remind them that they're not doing enough. No, and they didn't like it because what happened is I would beat them getting the product up. And so everybody else at the other magazines was like, why is this guy beating you every time? But that was noticed. It was noticed by everybody. It wasn't just noticed by people in the media space. It was noticed by the judges.

27:41It was noticed by the athletes. It was noticed by the sponsors. And I was able to make a lot of money in connections by working the hardest, by visibly working the hardest. The other thing is that by going to all these places, I met everybody. So the amount of connections that I was able to build by going to all these places and people seeing that I'm working my ass off. And then introducing myself, being kind, being nice, being a caring person, trying to help people out. And then, you know, being, you know, if I can be, being collaborative and trying to be helpful whatever way I can. So that was really big.

28:15Meeting people was big. And being places, I tell people a lot, you can't substitute. I know now it's a virtual world, but you can't substitute meeting somebody, looking them in the eye, shaking their hand, and making an impression. If I meet somebody in a Zoom, man, I can't tell you if I'm going to remember them or not. That's the thing, Aaron. And that's why I love, because I used to do this show virtually. And it was fine. It was what I could afford at the time. And it was something that, it was just a natural progression, right? Then when I was able to get in person, like sitting here with you, if we did a virtual interview, we wouldn't have the connection we have right now.

28:46We got to go on an amazing tour of your HQ, your warehouse, everything. Every single operational thing you have going on in here, we now have connected because of that. And when you don't get in the room, I'm talking about people in general. So people watching and listening, take big notice on this. You have to get in the damn room. Yeah, I agree. It is a virtual world. But if you continue to think it's virtual and not get heart to heart with somebody face to face, you're going to lose. Yeah, I can tell you firsthand with Redcon One, when we have a new manufacturer or a new partner, I make a point to fly out there and see the facility, meet the people.

29:20And it goes a long way because I often will have to call them and tell them, hey, I need this to be moved up in line. I'm desperate to run this. I might need to pay them late. Whatever happens, you know, I want a discount because I'm buying so much. You know, it's very difficult to call somebody, ask them a favor if you have no relationship. If you're text messaging them and you have no relationship and I text them, Hey, we just ran out of Emory light vanilla. I need it to be run. Not two weeks. I need it run today. They're gonna be like, sorry. Yeah. No relationship. No, you don't even, I don't even know you.

29:48So it's, it's everything is a relationship business and don't think that you can substitute a text message for, for in-person visit. 100 % man. I mean, even a phone call to you sometimes, I know people are busy, but it's definitely better than a text message and email. There's no question. Absolutely. You know, and sometimes like someone will call me and I'm not able to get back to them right away but when i do i say thanks for the call yeah you know thank you for actually calling and making this personal because we want to hide behind our text message and our dms and our emails and a lot that doesn't that doesn't get anything done man doesn't have a needle i agree you know everything you've done man so you know you're in houston and then eventually you started blackstone labs with your best friend at the time pj braun um you know take us back to that kitchen table man so um reversing a little bit uh back from there at the time through rx muscle i had made a lot of business relationships and at the time back like when i guess when that started happening the impetus behind that was i had gotten my ex-wife uh now darielle pregnant we got pregnant with asher who is my 13 year old boy now and when we got pregnant i realized uh she was a personal trainer, a corporate trainer at the, at a kind of like a big call center.

30:59She would train the C-level people. That's cool. She was making five grand a month ish. Um, I was making probably 6 ,500 bucks, six, six grand a month, somewhere around there. Not a whole lot of money. Um, we were living in a rental house and, uh, we're making all the bills. We're saving a little money or good life. But as soon as she got pregnant, I was like, Oh shit, like I can't make six grand a month and live in Boca and have a, have a son. It's impossible. You know, even then now it's really impossible. So, so it was, it was like, I needed to pick up the pace. And so I felt for the first time really ever in my life, like pressure to perform for somebody other than me.

31:38And so as soon as she really got pregnant, I was like, okay, I need to start figuring out how to make money. And so I told Dave, who is the owner of Rx Muscle, I need to make money. He said, sell advertising. And so he said, I'll give you 10 % of whatever money you bring in. Cause it's, it's, there was, it's not real estate, right? You know, if it's, we can make stuff up, I would make up new packages and I would sell people on digital ads, digital ads, there's no cost of goods. Right. So 10 % was a good deal for him for sure. It was a good deal for me because it's extra income. The$6 ,500 a month or$6 ,000 a month, you know, I could really supplement that quickly.

32:13So within the first few weeks, I was bringing in a few hundred thousand a month in sales because I felt pressure. And because of that, I started reaching out to all of these supplement company owners that I had met over the years. And I don't have a reason to talk to them about business. And several of them ended up hiring me to help them with marketing. One of which was called Iron Bag Labs. And they gave me four grand a month to be their marketing director. And so I started kind of piling up all these gigs. At one point, I was the marketing director of that i was a marketing director of uh a med spa testosterone placement therapy one a orbitnutrition.com a few other ones this is all at one time yeah all at one time jesus all at one time so i went from making six thousand dollars a month to making like forty thousand dollars a month within six months before the baby was born um and on my wedding because we got married we got married right before the baby came so we were she was seven months pregnant in our wedding pictures which she did not love but we wanted to get married my parents and her parents both Jewish parents were like insistent yeah she wanted to wait till she had the baby and she looked good again but they were like you have to do it so we did it um which was a fine thing it was a good thing to do anyway I'm you know it was a nice wedding and uh anyway so um at the wedding the guy who owned Iron Mag Labs was there and he told PJ and I that our coupon codes because he had been paying B4 grand a month and PGA4 grand a month.

33:36And I had brought PGM on as our main athlete. I told him you have to hire this guy. Now you may have seen the buzz, but let me give you the inside scoop. Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr., Mark McGuire, all the greats. What do they have in common? They have collectibles and they're being sold on whatnot right now. And it brought me back to my childhood. Knowing that I can get my hands on something cool like that really gives me hope. So if you're selling online or out of a storefront, full-time or as a side hustle, you already know the challenges. You're hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk in.

34:08Whatnot flips that right on its head. On Whatnot, you go live and sell directly to people in real time. They see what you've got, they ask questions and buy, and they keep coming back. Whatnot is the largest dedicated live shopping platform, whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury fashion, or heck, even cookies. Sellers are building real thriving businesses. Anyone can sell. Whether your business is big, small, or yet to exist, people selling on Whatnot sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces. That's because you're not just listing products. You're building real connections with buyers.

34:45Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T in the app store. Download, and you can start selling right away. even though pj uh certainly was not worth four grand a month at the time i was like this is my best friend yeah of course you got to bring him on he just got fired from species dave plombo's company who owned arcs muscle also a supplement company he had fired him because he didn't think he was worth a thousand dollars a month he definitely was worth more than that but i told robert four grand a month is a steal the guy brought him on and me and pj went to work selling this guy supplements so at my wedding he told me i want to really thank you guys you know your guys coupon code because back in the time this was all coupon codes you know pj10 and aaron 10 10 % off yeah our coupon codes had generated two hundred thousand dollars that month for him that month that month and um and i was like whoa and like he told us probably not realizing that my mind would immediately went to what are we doing doing this for this guy yeah you know if we make two hundred thousand dollars a month on his website with 10 % off on a high margin product a capsule product.

35:47What can we do? What can we do? And so that was kind of the start where I told PJ right then and there, like, we got to start doing this on our own. And then an opportunity came. There was the Designer Steroid Control Act of 2012, which went to the house and it was basically to make pro-hormones illegal. It was a list of pro-hormones they thought were going to become illegal. And Robert DiMaggio, who and I are in my labs, who made a bunch of products in this category, two specifically, one called Super DMZ, one called Methadrol Extreme. These two products were going to be on the list. And there was a guy named Rick Collins, who was a lawyer, a nutraceutical, dietary supplement lawyer, amongst other things, who said death and taxes and this law are certainties.

36:27This is definitely going to happen. So Robert, we had not had Asher yet. It was like Asher's any day now. And Robert told me he's going to dispose of all this stuff because he wants to get ahead of the law. So it had passed the House. It had not passed the Senate. And it hadn't been signed into law by President Obama. so I was like huh so I was like you know thinking about it thinking about it so I said called him I said how many bottles do you have he goes I have 5 ,500 bottles of Subaru MZ and I have uh 2 ,500 bottles I think of Methadrol Extreme and I'm like okay and I was like you know would you be interested in giving them to me if you give them to me I will sell them I'll figure out a way to sell them I'll give you all the cost of goods back send me the invoices I'll pay you back for whatever they cost and I'll split the profits with you.

37:1533 % you, 33 % me, 33 % PJ. Peanut butter, the whole thing. And say, give it to me, give it to me. And that way you don't lose your money because if you destroy it, it's gone. You're destroying it. So we ended up taking these products and shipped them to my rental house on St. Andrew's here in Boca. And it was like piles of boxes. The UPS people are obviously angry because they piled it up in front of the door where you could not like, it was like a wall. And we saw all of it. And obviously, you know, whatever it was, 7 ,500 bottles, you don't think is that much until you see the boxes. And it's like 50 boxes that are like the size of half a human box.

37:50Yeah. And they're piled up. And so we bring them in. We created a website called superdmz.com. We started marketing it using some digital marketing, which was very rudimentary at the time. Me and PJ's personal brands. And we ended up selling all of the products in about 60 days, which was way faster than we expected. and then something crazy happened. The end of the year happened and they didn't go through the house and Obama did not sign into law. So we were like, whoa. It was like, so me and PJ made 80 ,000 bucks each. Robert made 80 ,000 bucks and he made all of his cost of goods back. So I had 80 grand in my pocket for the first time in my life.

38:27PJ has 80 grand. We had a little other money saved up. Maybe I had 120 grand-ish. Maybe PJ has a little less. And we were like, whoa. And PJ's like, I'm going to buy a Mercedes. I'm like, don't buy a Mercedes. we need to put our money back we have to re-up we gotta get more there's no way like if we're we'll never do this again like we'll never we're never gonna like generate that kind of money there's so much demand for this product now the product's not illegal so i went to robert and said listen let me have the ip the super dmz and the methyl draw extreme ip and we'll create a new company that you so you still have iron mag labs you still own it we'll create a new company whatever new co is i have to make it up to sell these two products and we'll keep selling them until they become illegal and before they become illegal we'll discontinue and uh robert so i said you're completely passive you don't have to do anything you get 33 you even have to put up the money for the new products we'll put up all the money for the products so you're making 33 of every dollar we make any profit here's your ip yeah for for here until perpetuity so he goes great i'm in so we started uh we went to the kitchen table and for went to sunbiz to register a name and we kept thinking of names the names and i said let's just come up with two words like black and stone sounds hardcore.

39:39I never even heard of black stone financial or any of that at the time. I didn't have any money to invest. I was like, these are cool words because it didn't matter anyway. All we're doing is selling these two products. It wasn't going to be a brand. We're just going to be selling products because these products are not going to be there forever anyway. We start selling the products and the law doesn't get reintroduced. We're like, holy shit. The products start selling and we start making money. you know it's like it's very passive so it once we start going you know it was like we're making each making like a thousand dollars a day and then two thousand dollars a day and three thousand dollars a day and we were at i'll always remember this we were at uh the bahamas me and pj and his girlfriend at the time my ex-wife and that day we're at the bahamas and we made five thousand dollars each that day at the bahamas wow and i was like this is fucking crazy that's nuts dude So we're in the Bahamas making$5 ,000 a day and we're not doing anything.

40:34And it's not illegal. And it's not illegal. It's not illegal. And so we started adding products. We made a pre-workout product and other products and we kept adding on it before you know it. It became a brand. And the first year we did like a million something in that first calendar year. And then we did three and then we did eight and then we did 20, 19. And then I was gone. um but yeah so where did it go wrong um with me and pj or just no the the whole the whole thing nothing went wrong the indictment so none of that happened while i was there um i left the business in 2016 in uh in right in the beginning of 2016 we had a big partnership dispute huge fight um i ended up leaving the business i sold my shares of the business um so i was completely out in 2016 I started Redcon in May of 2016, hence the 10-year anniversary coming up now.

41:31And so I was completely out. When they rated, when the FDA rated Blackstone in March of 2017, I had been gone for a year. So I never thought really, like, I never seriously considered the fact that I could even be in trouble. Because in 2017, I'm long gone. I don't own the shares. I have nothing to do with it. I didn't know what it was about. So I left Blackstone because me and PJ weren't getting along at all. And our investor who was there at the time in Blackstone didn't get along with me either. And they thought it would be better if I were to leave and PJ were to run things. And obviously now looking back, that wasn't the right move for the investor or for PJ or really anybody but me.

42:09It worked out good for me. Nobody else did it work out good for. I mean, thank God it worked out exactly the way it did. It's funny. So that's a great example of where anybody else would say you got knocked down, right? Or, you know, like life was tough. I was making, you know,$300 ,000 a month in this business. It's insane. A high margin business. I'm only living 33%. I'm making a lot of money. And I was having a great time. And I was having a great time with PJ. We were having a lot of fights at the time. But, like, it seemed like everything was going great. And then one day I walk into the office and I literally get kicked out.

42:46And PJ and the other shareholder said, like, you're out. And it was a whole drama that ensued with this. Eventually, I was able to stay on because they couldn't kick me out. I got lawyers involved. I owned 50 % of the voting rights. So I had half the board seats. So this investor, when he came on, he had no board seats. He had no voting rights. So it was really 50-50. So we were deadlocked. PG wanted me out. I wanted to stay in. They had to get rid of me. They had to buy me out, essentially. So it ended up working out wonderfully because even though when I left that day, the office, after being kicked out, I couldn't believe.

43:19I was in shell shock that this could happen. that they would want me out. Like, I'm doing everything. I'm the brains of the operation. You want me to be out of the operation? And you brought him there. I mean, you literally. I brought him there. You see what I'm saying? No, I did. I involved him in the business. And that's, you know, like, ultimately, it is what it is. But so at the moment, you can imagine feeling devastated, calling my ex-wife, my wife at the time, and her being like, this is impossible. How could this happen? People are crying. He fired my father-in-law, my assistant, my nanny's husband, anybody associated directly with me.

43:51pj fired that day all these people walk out they're like what happened to my job or my career or whatever you know um and i took a day to be sad i probably drank too much and the next day i got together with that same group of people we fired and i said fuck them let's go and start another company and figure out what we're going to do and that was the beginning of uh of redcon we quickly started redcon one and if it wasn't for pj kicking me out i would never have started Redcon. I would have stayed at Blackstone. I would have been there when the feds came. I would have not created a successful business, much, much more successful than Blackstone ever was.

44:29We had a million dollar a month within the first year of the business. We passed up, in the second year of the business, we passed up Blackstone's best year. In the third year of the business, we more than doubled their total revenue of their best year. In the third year business, we did more than they did in the entire history of Blackstone in that year, and significantly more. so we were doing nine figures in revenue by the time that i was actually indicted we were doing well over 100 million in revenue the year i was indicted and if i wouldn't have been kicked out of blackstone which seemed like a horrible thing i wouldn't have had the red con success all the money along the way because blackstone knows that after that after the indictment they're really after the fda raid it nosedived so this thing that on the outward anybody looking out in from the outside would say wow this is really bad his life he's fucked but because i got immediately back up and started focusing on creating additional successes as opposed to focusing on how fucked up it was that I got kicked out of the business.

45:24Like saying like, I brought this fucking guy in and like, I'm so sad. And how did this happen to me? I didn't even think about it. You handled it like a winner, not a victim. No, I wasn't a victim. I immediately started the other company. The company immediately started winning. And because of that, before I, uh, before I went to prison, I closed a private equity deal, um, which is you, I know it's in the beginning of the chapter of the book I sent. So I made generational wealth, but because PJ kicked me out of the business instead of, you know, being there, like literally in spite of it, I guess you could say being kicked out, I figured out a way to create generational wealth for my family and my kids in a period of time where most people would have been devastated because of leaving the business, but also getting indicted by the federal government, the impending potential prison sentence and all the bad things that happened along the way.

46:08Yeah. So that's why when I, when I opened up the show talking about not the Instagram version, not the motivational poster version, the real version of determination. Most people would have taken a breath. Most people would have lost momentum. And a lot of other people would have sat there and blamed external forces for the shortcoming or the adverse moments they're about to have. You looked at it and like, this is the best thing that's happened. Because of this, I have generational wealth. That is a special quality. Yes. Now, you may have seen the buzz, but let me give you the inside scoop. Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr., Mark McGuire, all the greats.

46:47What do they have in common? They have collectibles, and they're being sold on WhatNot right now. And it brought me back to my childhood. Knowing that I can get my hands on something cool like that really gives me hope. So if you're selling online or out of a storefront, full-time or as a side hustle, you already know the challenges. You're hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk in. WhatNot flips that right on its head. On WhatNot, you go live and sell directly to people in real time. They see what you've got, they ask questions, and buy. And they keep coming back. WhatNot is the largest dedicated live shopping platform, whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury fashion, or heck, even cookies.

47:27Sellers are building real, thriving businesses. Anyone can sell. Whether your business is big, small, or yet to exist, people selling on WhatNot sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces. That's because you're not just listing products. You're building real connections with buyers. Search whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T in the app store, download, and you can start selling right away. Yeah, I've heard that before. It's almost like I don't really have the ability to feel sorry for myself or look back at things when they happened and like dwell on them. I'm able to move past things very, very quickly.

48:12Which, you know, I've also been told that that could be a negative by people, but it's served me very well. Yeah. You know, I'm talking about with relationships with anything, you know, when things go South and I can't see a way out, I can't figure out a way to repair it. Yeah. You know, then I move on and, um, and then I don't look back. I don't get sad about the past. I can reminisce like every once in a while um like now we're reminiscing um but i really don't go and like feel sorry for myself you know i think it's a special that's another special quality right because it's something that i've had to work through my whole life when i was younger i did get the victim mentality but now i look at okay this thing happened what's the reason how what is this doing for me instead of why me right why me right i lost this massive deal oh my god what's gonna to happen what's going to happen is something better is going to come along yep and i can believe it yeah absolutely and i can look back to two months ago thinking oh wow this this this is bad and then where i'm at right now thank god that didn't happen because i caught that in like five different lies that's not a partnership you want so you know i think what people need to understand is no matter how bad it gets no matter what you're going through it's focus on potentially what is is doing for me instead of to me and then find a way to move forward every single day with just a little bit i agree i agree you know i mean you know you were sentenced to 52 months long ass time you served 11 months right in pensacola yes and the first thing you did when you came out of those gates in pensacola you took a video with your kids yes how many about that moment man um well you know you you sit in there so first off i went to uh unfortunately this was during covid times i I mean, even though it wasn't during COVID time, it was like completely past COVID time.

49:59It's fucking 22. I was not COVID time anymore. I mean, was it ever COVID time? I don't know. It's a good question. But I mean, this was definitely not COVID time. Nobody was scared of COVID. The guards weren't scared. None of the prisoners were scared anymore. We wore these masks that you hung down off your face. I mean, it was like ridiculous. But because of that, it made my time much, much harder. So when I initially went to, when I got sentenced, I went to county jail for two weeks, which was terrible. And then I went from county jail to the Miami holding federal holding facility for almost 100 days.

50:30And you were locked down in a cell for 23 hours out of the day. Was it eight by 10? Yes. Very small with one other man. Thank God I had a very nice guy in the cell with me for most of the time. And it was very, I was very like difficult in comparison to the rest of my time and difficult compared to most people that have to do minimum security camp time. Usually you don't have to do this. Most people are able to turn themselves into the camp where you just walk in. It's almost like you're checking into a hotel, but you don't have any bags. You know, you want people like, well, they walk in, like walk up to the, they walk through the security and walk up and like, Hey, turn myself in.

51:04They're usually not that happy, but they're turning myself in. And then I'm here to bring them into intake. And then they sit in there for the next 10 hours while they do the intake. Cause they're slow as shit. Anything related to prison is they're on prison time, which is slow, slow, slow. They do not care. They don't get any more money for speeding up. So they're going to go as slowly as possible and as inefficiently as possible. So I went through a process of going through that and then being shackled up and put into a school bus, essentially, and driven 15 hours to Tallahassee and then spending the night in Tallahassee and then taking another bus and going to Pensacola.

51:41So when I got to Pensacola, it was like freedom almost because that was so bad. The other part was so horrible. And being shackled was horrible. Shackled to another man. You can't get up. I mean, it's bad. That was a really bad part. And then I got to Pensacola and the first thing they do after intake is they go, have you been vaccinated? And I'm like, no. And they're like, you've got to go to quarantine. And I was like, oh my God, this is my fourth quarantine. So every time they would quarantine you for 14 days. So I went, I feel like I'm in freedom. I'm seeing people walking around. I saw there's a weight pile.

52:13You know, that's the reason I went to go to Pensacola. I requested to go to Pensacola. And when I got there, I was so excited to be able to walk around and stuff, get commissary. And then they put us in the holding facility for 14 more days, which was like, I'm so close. So close. It's a long time. Yeah. So by the time that I was getting out, I had been in the drug program for months and months and months. The drug program called RDAP, the Residential Drug and Alcohol Treatment Program, was absolutely horrible. It was the most ridiculous thing I've ever been. And it made the whole thing so much worse.

52:47And I have a bunch of prisoners, prison guys that work here for me now that I'm at in that school. I have like a, I should have introduced you downstairs in the warehouse. Could have looked for some of them. Lance, I don't remember if you remember Evan, who I introduced you to, who works for, he was in the office with the neon lights. Yes. That guy, he was in prison for six years. He runs the first class fulfillment center downstairs, the warehouse. And I found a lot of great guys there. A lot of great guys. but in that drug program man they just beat you down and the whole idea of it isn't they don't even talk about drugs and alcohol they talk about um behavioral changes altering your behavior by basically beating you down and whatever self-confidence you have it's like art of war it was it was horrible it was a horrible experience but every morning i would um sit in the chapel when we do our morning meetings i would look out the window as because you could see people coming and going because i would see the gates and i would be like one of these days i'm going to walk out of those gates my three boys yeah and they came and uh it was amazing it happened very quickly um it was like you know i found i was getting out and then like a few days later they were there and i'm wearing my uh my gray uh sweatpants and sweatshirt and like anonymous you know whatever it was like uh adidas shoes that they sell at the commissary and uh it's funny my friends were they're like, didn't even recognize me because like, this is like, were you smaller?

54:09No, I was fatter, but I was, I was, you were fatter. I was two 50. I trained every day and I was on a strict diet the whole time, but I was fatter and I was very, very hairy. Oh really? I never shaved anything. Right. Yeah. My face, but everything else is like fully. Yeah. The manscape, bro. Oh my God. Well, in prison, you're probably. You can't do, yeah. No, no, no. No, I'm not. No, I'm saying when you got home. Yes. Do not manscape in prison. No, no. You don't. That's a bad thing to do. it's a bad idea yes bad don't do that shit no it's funny because the the the people that would uh manscape in prison it's like i would see them shaving their arms and stuff like probably a bad idea yeah oh yeah but um yeah so uh that uh looking out the window i would imagine that so having it happen was unbelievable and the kids coming up and you know um and crying and being excited they had signs and stuff it was it was really it was unbelievable the whole thing was unbelievable man it was great i know how i feel when i come home from a shoot and i'm gone two days oh yeah and i walk through the door my my seven-year-old that we've talked about a lot my nine-year-old they'll run to me oh yeah i mean full-on sprint like i've been gone for you know 17 months so you can imagine how they did i yeah i mean i can't imagine you know i don't even want to put my mind there but i can that was the toughest part yeah i bet I bet, man.

55:25Not having family, you know, I had a lot of visitors. So I had the good fortune of owning a private jet at the time. Okay. So they would get on my plane from the Boak Airport, and I had visitors every weekend. Unfortunately, my ex-wife and my kids did not often come, even though I tried to make it. So there was no reason for them not to be able to come, but they didn't come as much as I would have liked. They came only a few times when I was there. A few times seeing your three boys. Yeah, it was shitty. That's very shitty. um so but when i when they picked me up we went and got i mean literally you gotta imagine the incredible juxtaposition of one minute you're in prison you know eating your canned tuna or really it's a packet packets of tuna um and microwaving your your white rice and like you know living with you know my cell i had six other guys and in a little dorm room and then literally within 15 minutes from them picking up, we're on a private jet eating caviar, wearing, they wanted, because I know I love caviar, they brought it, and they put, I'm putting on my watch, I'm putting my clothes back on, it's like, it's weird, you're in the plane, literally being like, you know, having a vodka, being like, I didn't, like, where did I go?

56:35You go to like a different dimension, like it was like such a crazy thing to literally be in prison, and 15 minutes later, you're on your plane, taking off, flying over it, changing your clothes, having eating caviar chips and caviar and um and all your friends are on the plane and your kids and it's like what what's like happen like holy fucking shit that's a massive paradigm shift most people when they get out of prison you know they're you know they get their 40 bucks or whatever it's bad when i got my commissary card um named shannon alford who works for me to this day when i got my commissary career had 2100 on the credit card i gave it to him oh i was like here you go man.

57:12It's like, you need more than me, you know? And, uh, and he actually works for me to this day. Um, he, uh, he moved down here, um, right after and, um, we're lived at the gym for a while, worked for me at the gym and, uh, has, uh, has figured out life, you know, and it's very difficult for most of these guys. I'm a very, very unusual story to get picked up by two suburbans full of your friends to bring you to the private jet and fly home to the Rolls Royce. It doesn't exist. Yeah, it doesn't exist. I mean, I've never been on a private jet. Well, there you go. There you go. So it's, you can imagine how surreal it would be to go from prison to that.

57:48And then landing and everybody being there. And then, I mean, on the flip side, you know, you get out and everything is happy. That same day, I went home back to my house with my kids, my ex-wife. And my wife did not get on the plane to pick me up. And when I got home, she immediately left me with the kids and went to a dance contest in Miami that she'd been planning on doing. So like, I was like, oh, we're getting divorced. Oh, so you weren't divorced. No, no, I wasn't divorced. I knew I was divorced then. Oh yeah, you knew. I was like, oh yeah. Wow, when she didn't show up. She didn't show up with the kids to pick me up.

58:19She didn't show up. And when I got home, she immediately left. Who brought the kids? All my friends. All your friends. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, so that's, you know, there's ups and downs. Like it's even, even when you think you're up, you're down a little bit. But it was hard, honestly, being out of prison, it was hard. Like a lot of people were concerned about me because I ended up not going back into the house with the kids immediately. I went into a rental house that we had in Seven Bridges. It's a neighborhood. It's a nice neighborhood. A little bit out west. And the house was rented for two years.

58:49So when I moved in, it was empty. And like people came over because I did like a party in the new house. Get welcome home people party. And I had like 100 people at the house and catered and bartenders. And people are like looking around this house. And they're like, you're going to stay here? it's a 9 ,000 square foot house with nothing. Like a couch, a TV, no pictures, no nothing. Small rental. It was our house that we were renting to other people, but it's a big empty house. Imagine a house that big with nothing on the wall, with no furniture except a bed in the bedroom, a TV in the bedroom, a couch, and a TV.

59:19That's it. I mean, it was a big house with nothing. Yeah, no shit. And people were like, bro, you're going to be all right here? Because honestly, it would have been better to be elsewhere other than there. I ended up moving right thereafter, and I moved to Mar-a-Lago. where I got a bungalow at Mar-a-Lago on the beach for a month. Because I was like, I'd rather be in a small hotel room. I'm more used to that at this point. On the beach with people around as opposed to a big house. Whenever I'd get my kids, which ended up being half the time, I would bring them to the big house and I got them beds in there.

59:52And they had fun still at the big house and the big pool and they liked it. And then when they were gone, I'd go to Mar-a-Lago and stay at the club there. That's awesome. Yeah, it was cool. What's really impressive, you're in prison. Red Con won, still going. And exploding. I mean, again, we mentioned it, five employees to 150, 300 % year-over-year growth. What did that teach you about this company and your leadership in the sense that it still grew when you were gone? You know, it slowed down a lot, I will tell you. It slowed down a lot when I was gone. I had Eric Clark, who you met when we did the tour, who ran the company when I was gone.

1:00:28I would tell you that it is, it was not, we didn't plan it out well. Like if I were to do it again, which hopefully I'll never, ever a million years do it again. I'll never, ever a million years do it again. Because I know you now, then I'm going to be sad. You're gone. No, no, I'm not going anywhere. I don't do anything. So with Eric and with the team here, I didn't have a succession plan. So I never believed I was going to go to prison. So like until the very end, I really didn't believe it. Because my intention was always to go to trial and to win. because I had all the proof that I believed would be exculpatory enough to get a jury to realize I didn't do anything because you have to have intent.

1:01:03So it's one of the things. Intent is required. You have to have this. Intent is required to rate law. So for example, let's say I put a kilo of cocaine in your bag in the airport and they stop you and you had no idea. You can prove you didn't put it in the bag. You weren't with the bag. That's why they asked you to be with the bag the whole time, right? But you prove that I put it in your bag and you didn't know, then you can't be culpable for it. You didn't do anything wrong. So I felt like I had enough proof. I mean, I knew that I didn't do it on purpose. I knew that we didn't sell the pro-hormones that were on the list on purpose.

1:01:31There was no question about it in my mind. And so I spent$6 million on a legal defense. I had the best lawyers in the world. $6 million. $6 million. I had Alan Dershowitz working on the case. I had some of the most famous lawyers in the world working on my case. It was a case of first impression where nobody in the history of America had ever been arrested for this charge because it was the Designer Steroid Control Act of 2014 that passed. So on that list, there were 25 compounds. The two that we continued to sell were not on the list. We discontinued all the ones that were on the list. So we did a lot of things to make sure that we weren't doing anything legal.

1:02:03So what was the crime? The crime was that a prosecutor from the DOJ was referred to the case by the FDA and they wanted to get somebody. And there was many, many, many other people selling the same supplements, but they chose us. And so we got a very, very long sentence for selling pro-hormones. At the time of trial, at the time of sentencing, there was nobody that came for victims. There was no victims to be heard. There was nobody hurt where they said like, hey, I was hurt. I was killed. My family, it was like a fentanyl case. Of course. It was a muscle building case. Yeah, exactly. So the hope was that all these people that had gotten indicted for actual anabolic steroids.

1:02:44There was a police officer, one of the cases we showed, police officer who sold and made his own anabolic steroids in his house, sold them to people at the gym. He's a police officer. And he used a GoFundMe, or not GoFundMe, what's the for donations? I forget now. That's a GoFundMe. GoFundMe. So he did a GoFundMe so he could launder the money through his GoFundMe. So the people at his gym would pay the GoFundMe, he would give them the steroids. And that way he thought he was cleaning the money. He got indicted. He went and served 18 months in prison. Wow. So I wanted to, we showed all this to the judge and the judge gets to make his decision.

1:03:17And they usually follow the point system. And I had enough points based on the amount of dollars and everything else that he gave me right in the normal. He didn't go above, didn't make an upward departure or a downward departure. We were really hoping he would make a downward departure. I paid my entire fine for everybody. 2.9 million, right? 2.9 million. Yeah, 2.9 million, which was everybody. I paid everybody's fine in cash so that I could be done with it because I was told by the lawyers that I would be better served in terms of sentencing to basically pay everything for everybody because he'll go, well, he's already paid his fine.

1:03:54He's already paid the fee for everybody. So it doesn't make sense to penalize him if there's not victims and the fee has already been paid. So that was my thought process. That was the lawyer's thought process. It did not work. It didn't help me at all. It didn't help you at all. It didn't help me at all. It hurt me$3 million,$2.9 million. Yeah,$2.9 million. But you know what, man? You didn't start 52 months. You started 11. Look, in this particular scenario, it could have been much, much worse. Sure. Could have been much worse. Sure, man. Well, look, you obviously are doing very, very well, and it's great to see.

1:04:26I've got one more question for you. With everything you've been through in your life, the drug addiction, death, loss, prison, divorce. So many things. We all have, right? We all deal with a lot of adversity. After all of that, what does being determined actually mean to you? It means believing in yourself and believing in your path and your goals. I think that one of the things that has helped me is being sometimes irrationally self-confident, an irrational belief in myself where I always feel like I'm going to get through it and it'll work out all right. Somehow or another it will. And I think that could be very easily defined as determination.

1:05:08I love it, man. Dude, thank you so much for coming on, dude. Oh, my pleasure. I really enjoyed talking to you, getting to know you, going on the tour, and just the start of a really good friendship, man. Absolutely. Thank you so much. For sure. For you guys, take your butts to Redcon One. Search the internet. Get your supplements. Total War pre-workout. Get the MRE light. It's whole food protein. That's the only thing I touch. So do that. Redcon 1 is a place to go for all your supplement needs. And until next time, guys, stay determined.