Locked In & Breaking Out | Ian Bick - Part 2

0:00Look, as a manager of people, as an employer, as an entrepreneur, and as even an investor in startups, I can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the quality of people. you hire. The best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

0:42And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great big candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. then promoted to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash Altachirk. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

1:23So what happened to Ian when he went to jail? He was a 21-year-old kid, basically, going to jail. What happened to him in jail? And then the amazing ways in which he transformed his life afterwards. So here's Ian again.

1:42This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher show.

1:58What did the judge sentence you to? So he ends up sentencing me to three years in prison, one year home confinement, and three years of supervised release, which is like probation in the feds. And how long did you actually think you would serve? I didn't know. I mean, you hear mixed things, especially as a kid and stuff. I thought maybe 50%. I didn't know. But then there was programming. See, like the thing about prison and everything, you ask one guy the same question. You ask 10 different guys like the same question, you're going to get 10 different answers. No one really knows. Every person's scenario is different.

2:32Even the idea of COVID changed everything. Now so many people can get house arrest, this and that. But in my scenario, I ended up doing 26 months inside, three months of halfway house slash home confinement, and then a year on an ankle monitor on home confinement under probation. And were you in like in a low security place or? They put me through diesel therapy. I was everywhere. I went from the Wyatt Detention Center in Rhode Island. I went to Brooklyn. I went to Fort Dix, a low security prison. From there, I went to the Danbury, Connecticut, low security prison, which is where I was from. I was in Philly Detention Center for a little bit.

3:13I was in Brooklyn again during transportation. They sent me all the way out to Chicago for a little bit. I was in Chicago. I was in Oklahoma City. I went on. Why'd they send you so many places? So the first time I got caught up in like a cell phone investigation, which I was found not guilty of. And then they just moved prisons. But the second time when I got to Danbury, which was my hometown, which was going to be great, you know, I was right next to my parents and the guard, one of the guards ends up reporting that I used to date his cousin. So it was a conflict of interest. So they lock me in the shoe, solitary, the whole, I was there for almost six months.

3:53and then I have my parents calling every day. They get a state senator to call. They get a lawyer to call and that pissed the BOP off, the Bureau of Prisons. So they send me on Conair, the airplane ran by the US Marshals. That's when they transported me through the system where you go. It took me two weeks to get to Wisconsin from Connecticut. You go to Oklahoma City, you go to Chicago and then eventually I landed in Wisconsin, which the camp was great. Oxford, Wisconsin prison camp. This thing was cushy. You know who I was there with? George Papadopoulos from Donald Trump's initial team. He was there for two weeks.

4:30But there's cell phones getting in. People are running through the woods to hook up with their wives. People are smuggling in McDonald's, sushi, pizza. I remember eating Chicago deep dish pizza one weekend. We're watching movies. It's crazy. There's a track. This is what they mean by club fed. But I mean, it was crazy. and then I got out in January 2019. And what was the most violent prison you were in? Like, were you ever, was there a point where you were scared? I would say Fort Dix would have been the most violent. Guys were definitely like trying me, I guess you could call it, because I looked like a sex offender in their eyes.

5:07Because in these federal prisons, there's not that many young white kids in there really at all for fraud. That's more like the average, like fraud guys in his 30s or 40s in these prisons. And I'm 21 years old. which is hard to believe. It's seven years ago now, but yeah. And when you say they were trying you, what does that mean? So they would try to extort me, try to get me to buy them commissary, buy them a cell phone, things like that. So it's really about just navigating and learning how to survive and get through the system. How do you survive that? So I just played it smart. I found this clip actually went viral when I told it on TikTok.

5:48talk, I went out, I started befriending some of these big guys in there and they didn't really have much money. So I started buying them commissary every week and playing cards with them and hanging around them. And because of that, other guys weren't going to bother me because they didn't want to like, say, interfere with those guys' hustle because the other inmates are looking at it as those guys are hustling me. But really, I'm just paying them commissary as a friend, as whatever, an acquaintance. And that's how it was structured. And everyone left me alone at that point. And then there's the process of like showing paperwork to show that you're not a sex offender, you're not a rat or anything like that.

6:26And then guys left me alone. And they gave me the nickname McLovin in prison. Yeah, you do look a little like McLovin. Yeah, McLovin, Squints, and Bieber. They called me Bieber for like Justin Bieber. And so were you, you're in prison not with like violent offenders, but with other fraud offenders. No, you're with the, in the lows, you're with violent people. You're guys that have committed murder, sex offenders, some of the worst sex offenders, anything, robberies at the camp. There's no violent people. So, I mean, what, when someone, did you, did you know what everybody was convicted of? Like if someone was a murderer or sex offender or whatever, you could find out if you wanted to through the grapevine, or you look it up on a cell phone.

7:10If someone had a contraband phone or anything like that, you could find things out. Was it better to just not talk to anybody? Yeah, I mean, if I had a recommendation for someone to go to prison, but I was in everyone's business moving around too much. I was a kid, you know? I was just screwing around. I was gambling. I was doing whatever. I was trying to hustle, make money. I was getting myself into trouble, which I didn't need to be doing, but that's just like the type of person I am, you know? It's like, you know, that expression where they say, or like the people that go and smell the shit or whatever to see what it smells like, that was me.

7:44And why would you do that knowing that I could get you into maybe stay in jail longer? I think I was just curious and I missed the adrenaline. Like I went from having so much freedom running this club, always getting into trouble and sticking up to authority to prison. So you kind of have to, I was getting like that fix, you know, that high, that adrenaline. And what were, I mean, you, you, on your YouTube channel, you interview various other inmates and stuff. What were some of the most, like, what are the stories that intrigued you that you found in prison? um like the stories that i hear about now yeah i think what intrigues me the most is like the times where guys kind of like get bullied um like i had a guy on and he was literally talking about how he got raped in the prison shower and just like hearing how like the the um the system fails in that aspect and why they're they're taking people that are non-violent and putting them with violent people and the politics about that and the gangs and things like that.

8:50Like I'm interested in the psychological aspect of it and what people are thinking and how they're navigating and how they're moving around and just like where the system fails on that level. And, and did you see that any of that in the prisons you were in? No, I didn't physically see it, but I'd hear stories. Like I heard stories about, um, you know, it was always really the sex offenders that would get beat up or someone that like didn't pay a debt. But there were stories about like a sex offender got a mop handle, like shoved up his ass in the hallway and things like that you would hear about.

9:26And then you would see fights, you know, the occasional fight, but like not some of to the extent of the stories that I hear on my podcast, because I was only at that low security prison for like six or seven months. But yeah, crazy things happen. And in the solitary confinement, what does that actually mean? Does that mean you can't go outside and you're in a room with no windows and they give you food once a day? Or what does the solitary confinement mean? So you're locked down, you know, 23 hours a day, 24 hours technically on the weekends. But during the week, you get an hour of rec time, which they handcuff you and bring you to a cage outside, a little cage.

10:04So you're moving from one cell to another cell, which is in a cage by yourself. You get a shower three times a week. No commissary. You're getting three meals a day, no seconds or anything. So you get very skinny when you're in the shoe. They're not big portions. You can get a book. I was reading like a book a day at one point because that's all you could do all day. You wake up, unless you're doing pushups or whatever, you're reading all day and you're just stuck there laying on your bed. You're talking to other inmates for the cell next store at the Danbury prison because I wasn't there like in the in solitary the shoe because I was in trouble they let me become the orderly so I was painting cells it was it looked like Alcatraz with the old bars and they had me paint the cells white so that that got me out of the cell but the the shoe's terrible it sucks it's mentally draining it's just not a good place to be in.

11:02And then, so, okay. So then you get out and you, you, you go to a halfway house or whatever. Like what was your, I go to a halfway house in Waterbury, Connecticut, which is like the hood of Connecticut. Not fun. The halfway house is just like you wouldn't meet guys. It's so bad that guys are like, I don't want it. Cause there's so many rules that they stack up more rules than in prison. And this is supposed to be halfway to freedom, like reintegrating. There's 9 million rules. So guys would want to say, take me back. I'm not following this shit. Take me back to prison. Just so strict, very petty, very silly.

11:39And you have staff that, you know, either just graduated college or they're still in college. They don't care about the job. It's a bullshit pay job, not even 20 bucks an hour, probably. It's just an intermediate step for them. And these are, there's kids younger than me. And I'm young at that time, by the time I got out, but there's people younger than me, these halfway houses are very flawed and they're very for profit. So it's just, it's not a good situation.

12:21Look, as a manager of people, as an employer, as an entrepreneur, and as even an investor in startups, I can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the people you hire. The best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues, who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

13:04And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great fit candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature, then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash altature. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

13:41At what point do you feel like prison changed you? Like, did you start feeling like, oh no, I'm a convicted felon now for the rest of my life. I'm not going to have a career. I'm not going to succeed. Did you ever lose hope that life would continue? No, I was never depressed about it. I think that I remember seeing and hearing on social media when I went to prison or even found guilty. People were like, wow, he's a felony. His life's over. He's got that on him for the rest of his life. I know my lawyer even played that up at sentencing to try to get me house arrest saying, like, you know, this is extreme.

14:20He has a felony. You know, this affects him for the rest of his life. And, you know, I got to say, and I'm grateful for this, but it really hasn't affected me like it would to the average person. Maybe that's just my mindset or maybe that's fate or whatever it is. I think that what affected me the most was when I got arrested up until after I got out of prison, because that's when the media was slamming me hard. I remember trying to get a job before prison after being convicted and not even Olive Garden would hire me as a dishwasher because of the bad press but also I owned the club at that point too so I was kind of doing my own thing but when I got out I was very lucky that I went to Whole Foods and they hired me and I was able to go from making 15 bucks an hour as a hot bar cook to Three years later, by the time I quit making, I was on track to make$100 ,000 last year.

15:16With overtime, I was the manager of prepared foods, 32 bucks an hour. Great job. And that was just based my dedication, hard work. I was able in those three years, I got an apartment. I got my own apartment. I got a dog. I got a car. My credit was never affected throughout this whole thing because I never used credit. So I was able to build my credit up, got a car, did all these things, credit cards, things that I never had in my life before. My life was significantly better after prison because before I was just running a nightclub with no money. And now I fell in love with the idea of working for someone else and having my own money and being able to make four or five grand a month because I hadn't made that since high school.

15:58So it was great. I was loving the grind. I got a second job making pizzas. Never affected me at all. And did you ever feel like, oh, I need to start a business again or get back into the club business? When I first got out, I wanted to get into the club business so bad. I thought that that was my redemption. That was the only way I could ever, like I figured that that was what I was plotting. That's what kept me going in prison. I have all these notes still about what I was writing, just like the plan for the club, what I would name it, all of these things. This was my comeback story. Simultaneously, while like writing a book and selling a book deal and getting a movie made, I studied Wolf of Wall Street, like this is my ticket to success.

16:40And I slowly realized like, I had no money to do that. And I was not going to take investors to do it. So that fizzled out. And it's a good thing it fizzled out because COVID happened, you know, a year later. So if even if I managed to get the nightclub going, it would have been dead. And then I got the job, I finally caved in and got the job at Whole Foods because I'm like, you know, I'm pitching my story actively. emailing writers. I get some buzz like BBC reached out to me, nothing like it was one lead after another. And I'm emailing agents and it was no after no. I remember I made an Excel spreadsheet and I had emailed 150 literary agents, the first three chapters of the story of my book and a synopsis in the news.

17:27Out of 150, six emailed me back. Three of those ended up not being interested. The other three said, after requesting the first chapter, said they're not interested because there's no relevant media or news. The last article written about me was from four years prior by Vice, and it was dead. It was a dead story. So I gave it up. I focused on Whole Foods. And I remember the last piece to getting my whole life together was having a car in my own name. At that point, I was paying for my own insurance. I was totally self-sufficient. And the day I got the car, this was almost a year after I got out.

18:04I get an inbox message on Facebook that went to my spam from an intern at HBO, HBO Max. And she pitches the whole thing. Hey, can we get on a call? And something told me to message her back. I messaged her back. She called me. They said, we're doing a docu-series. We want to hear your story. I tell them the whole story on the phone for like three hours. Didn't hear anything back for like six months. Nothing. I'm like, okay, whatever. At that point, I'm focused on the job. And then two weeks before COVID hit, I get an email saying, hey, this is green lit. This is what's happening. You're a part of the series.

18:42COVID hits, it gets delayed, but they ended up filming it during COVID. And it comes out a year later. And I'm thinking still at that point, this is my big ticket. This is going to blow everything up. This is going to get me to where I need to be at. The episode comes out. HBO Max didn't really promote it that much because HBO Max was new at the time. And I was just one episode of 10 other people's stories. And I got landed on like a big podcast, a mind pump podcast, which was great. And I got that attention, but my social media didn't blow up. Nothing happened crazily. But the story was out there.

19:20And then Vice ends up doing a documentary on me. And that did 3 million views on YouTube, but nothing major is happening. So I was like, okay, maybe this is not my life. This is not my fate. This is not my journey. I'm just going to stay focused on Whole Foods, work my way up, be a store manager. Life goes on. And then a year after that, a year after Vice, a year after HBO, it was last July. I start getting these thoughts of, is this really what the rest of my life is going to be like? Like I went from owning a nightclub, doing all these things, making real money in high school. Like I'm 28, 27 years old at this point.

19:59Is there more out there for me? can I have the opportunity to build something again? Because I don't have a family right now. I don't have kids. Like, yes, I'm in debt, you know, from the past, but is now the time to take a risk? And my friend had been pushing me for months, the videographer from the nightclub days, his name is Mike Squires. And he said, dude, you got to get on TikTok. The way you're able to go viral on TikTok is crazy. It's unlike any other platform. You got to start telling your story. And I was very hesitant, but I start telling my story on Instagram one day a week or once a day.

20:31doing these selfie videos behind the HBO Max poster. And I'm just doing a story, mapping it out. And then I start doing it on TikTok. I'm like four or five videos in, I'm getting like 1000 views each day. This is last July. And on the sixth video, I get COVID. And I call my friend and I'm like, dude, I can't post a video. I'm in bed. I'm sick. I'm not doing it. Because he said, you have to be consistent if you're going to start this. And he's like, dude, you got to do it. And I'm all snuffly, nose, whatever. And I make the video and it was about my time being in solitary. The video goes viral.

21:091.5, 1.6 million views in a matter of days. Blows my TikTok up like I'm getting more followers, this and that. It's getting traction. Not making any money, but it's getting traction. After that video, a producer from MTV reaches out to me and was like, hey, we love your story. We'd love to cast you on this new dating series we're doing. So I'm like, okay, this is it. I'm a big believer in fate and everything happens for a reason. This is what my life has came to. This is my opportunity. And there was a whole interview process and stuff, but I didn't hesitate. I went in. The day after I heard from that producer, I put my two weeks in at my job.

21:50No money lined up, nothing, no deal made. It was because they were already saying, listen, if you get casted in this, you're gonna have to be out of the country for two months. I had just gotten my passport back from the government to after eight years. But in a reality series, do they pay you in a reality series? Yeah. So I would have been paid for that. Not much, but the exposure I was looking at, you know, to go overseas, they would have had my expenses. I wasn't going to be able to work and they end up ghosting me. Never hear from them again. And in hindsight, had I taken that opportunity if I got it.

22:22I wouldn't be where I'm at today because I needed to be dedicated to my social media, which is what I did. Kept my head down, focused on social media, lived off my credit cards for a few months, and just started grinding. Three to five clips a day on TikTok, on Facebook, on YouTube, on Instagram, just telling my stories from prison. And it starts blowing up hundreds of thousands of views. By January, I'm at 100 ,000 followers on TikTok. YouTube was at 3 ,000, all these different things. And there's this, I didn't realize there was this huge community of prison TikTokers. And it's a billion people watching this in the world.

23:02And in about late December, I started thinking, for the first time ever, I'm thinking about the pitfalls. And I'm thinking about long-term. And I'm like, this is not sustainable forever. I cannot talk about my story forever. And I'm not making any real money at this point, maybe a couple grand a month on social media, nothing major. And so I get the idea to start a podcast. And up until this point, I was very anti-podcast because I felt the market was flooded. And there were already prison podcasts out there. So what would make mine different? Come up with this idea for the podcast. I call it Locked in with Ian Bick, kind of the play on prison.

23:41And the first two episodes, they were very cringe, like looking back on it, like the first one, two or three episodes, I didn't have a direction. There was no purpose. It was just Ian Bick was interviewing people. And I remember researching these guests and having like 50 questions. And I literally read each, the conversation didn't flow. You know, it was just question after question after question. and we start like pushing the videos out, chopping it into clips. And I make all my own clips, do all the editing for the clip aspect and no real direction. And then I start thinking and, you know, people start leaving comments and I'm garnering feedback.

24:19And that's when everything like clicks, like in my brain, in the universe, in my mind, this can be an inspirational podcast where you're taking people's stories, their life trauma about going through the worst of the worst, the American justice system, and telling it in a documentary style way, going through their childhood, something that other podcasts in that genre are not doing because your average prison YouTube channel starts off with, what did you get arrested for? This and that. We're spending the first half hour learning about someone's childhood. I'm studying, asking the questions that no one else is asking.

24:53And it's true crime or whatever meets motivation. And the object, it very quickly came to me is if the average person that's at home that just went through a divorce, just got broken up with, can't get a job, struggling to lose weight, listens to someone that is borderline dying from an overdose or addiction or goes to prison, loses everything and is able to turn that around and become successful, that's going to inspire that person that's going through whatever it is they're going through. And when I kept pushing that message and really honed in on it and made it all about that message, that's when things started to go viral.

25:30We started getting a couple hundred downloads. And then within four months, we're doing 10 ,000 downloads per audio episode, which is unusual for a brand new podcast. And the thing that really stuck out was the YouTube channel. The YouTube channel, when I posted the full-length podcast for the first time on video, had 3 ,000 subscribers just off of shorts that I built it. This was January. We're now in August and it has 135 ,000 subscribers, 100 million plays on the videos. And now our videos are doing 20 to 30 ,000 overnight. And it's all just pushing that message. And I think the thing that I love about it is that the first 30 minutes of it is just conversation about childhood, about whatever, it's getting to know that person.