Videos

Our Prison Professors YouTube channel features inspiring, informative videos to empower viewers navigating the criminal justice system and beyond.

Videos share insights from my personal journey, practical lessons on resilience, and step-by-step strategies to overcome adversity. Some videos offer suggestions for sentence mitigation, preparing for successful reentry, personal development, and building a productive life after incarceration.

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Earning Freedom

In this video, I share my intentions and inspiration behind writing Earning Freedom: Conquering a 45-Year Prison Term. Drawing from the decades I served in prison, I describe the strategies and mindset that empowered me to transform adversity into opportunity. My goal with this book—and everything I create—is to help others facing challenges see that deliberate choices and disciplined actions can open doors to a better future.

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Prison: My 8,344th Day

In this video, I discuss my intentions behind writing Prison: My 8,344th Day. While my previous book, Earning Freedom, explored how leaders taught me to build and sustain a strong mindset over decades, this book focuses on the power of a single day. I describe how deliberate decisions and meaningful actions taken intentionally each day created momentum, helping me advance toward my goals, even from within prison. My aim is to inspire readers to seize each moment as an opportunity to build the life they want.

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Success after Prison

In this video, I discuss my purpose for writing Success after Prison, a self-directed workbook designed to highlight the direct connection between decisions we make during times of struggle and our opportunities for success. Every choice we make carries an opportunity cost, influencing our future outcomes. I feel fortunate and grateful to have learned from leaders like Socrates and Frederick Douglass, who taught me how to think differently during my own difficult times. Their lessons empowered me to make strategic decisions, enabling me to control several million dollars in assets just a few years after returning to society. Today, my mission is to share these strategies, showing others how they can transform their lives, overcome adversity, and achieve lasting success.

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Preparing for Success

In this video, I describe my intentions behind writing Preparing for Success after Prison, a self-directed course built around the Straight-A Guide. This course outlines a clear, step-by-step approach that anyone can follow to overcome adversity and achieve meaningful goals. Through actionable lessons on defining success, setting attainable goals, cultivating the right attitude, and taking consistent action, I share strategies that empowered me—and can empower others—to build a life of purpose, resilience, and lasting success.

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Digital Economy

In this video, I share my purpose for creating Digital Economy, a self-directed course designed to teach students what I've learned about blockchain, Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence. By providing foundational knowledge of emerging technologies, I aim to equip others with practical strategies to identify opportunities and build income streams within the rapidly evolving digital economy. My hope is that participants will leverage this information to create new possibilities for financial independence and personal success.

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Principles we teach

The origins of our self-directed courses began with readings of Socrates, Frederick Douglass, Nelson Mandela, and modern leaders who teach us how to live as if we're the CEO of our life. To overcome any crisis, or build solutions, follow the principles of our Straight-A Guide.

Appreciation

Adversity is part of life, and there will always be more. The 26 years I had to serve helped me learn how to appreciate the blessings of my life. Living in gratitude is a powerful tool for transformation. Even when living amidst challenges, we can open doors to hope and opportunity. Gratitude creates space for growth, resilience, and success.

Achievement

Incremental achievements can help anyone climb out of adversity and into a life of meaning, relevance, and dignity. We start by defining success, then lay out the plan with incremental steps. As we reach milestones, we grow our self-confidence. This strategy helped me grow stronger while serving 26 years in prison. Celebrate little achievements.

Authenticity

To empower ourselves while climbing from adversity to success, we've got to be authentic. We don't grow confidence by talking. We have to take meaningful steps, adhering to a plan we established on our pathway to success. If we prioritize our actions, then develop our tools, tactics, and resources, our commitment becomes self-evident.

Attitude

By adopting a values-based, goal-oriented mindset, I could more easily navigate the complexities of confinement. Instead of seeing all that was bad around me, I could find ways to conquer adversity and work toward a brighter future. It opened a better attitude, empowering me along the way. Attitude influences success.

Aspiration

During my sentencing hearing, I remember Judge Tanner telling me that I'd be an old man before I got out of prison. He sentenced me to 45-years. Life could have seemed bleak. Yet I returned to my solitary cell with a new vision. Leaders had taught me to focus on what I could control. Through reflection and aspiration, I found a path to purpose.

Action

We should expect obstacles, but we can't allow them to define our path or limit our pursuit of success. The Straight-A Guide became my framework for persevering through challenges and obstacles, helping me focus on the action steps I could take each day, regardless of what adversity I had to endure. Take bold action steps to build success.

Accountability

To transform our lives, we need tools that allow us to measure progress. Those tools, which we call our accountability metrics, empower transformation. While serving 26 years, accountability tools helped me take full ownership of my actions. They kept me moving toward the milestones I had to work toward each day.

Awareness

To climb through adversity, we've got to keep our head in the game, staying aware of every opportunity around us. The more we think about what we're striving to build, the more aware we become of action steps we can take. Others become aware of our commitment, too, which creates a virtuous cycle of growth. Awareness opens opportunities to succeed.

Who we serve

We offer resources that people who are going through a crisis or challenge can use to recalibrate. It's never too early or too late to begin building pathways to a better outcome. Each individual can build a body of work that opens opportunities for the next phase, empowering them to live meaningful, contributing lives.

Incarcerated Learners

Get access to our lessons, books, or self-directed courses. Regardless of what staff do, you grow.

Correctional Facilities

Improve the culture of your facility, inspiring people to learn. Be the change you want to see.

Lawyers & Law Firms

Offering resources to help people develop assets for self-advocacy, building mitigation stories.

Family, Friends, & Community

Download daily lessons to inspire people in custody. Help them build self-confidence and prepare.

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Prisons we've visited to make in-person presentations. We don't only teach and inspire, we lead train-the-trainer seminars to promote peer-to-peer learning and improve the culture of confinement.

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1,000+

People in custody taking initiative to build profiles on the Prison Professors Talent platform. They're memorializing steps to prepare for success as law-abiding, contributing citizens.

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1,100+

Jails and prisons that offer our lessons, courses, and books to teach and inspire people. In our self-directed courses, people learn how to accelerate pathways to success upon release.

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900K+

People in custody with daily access to Prison Professors lessons, courses, and books through our collaboration with the Edovo Foundation and direct partnership with government agencies.

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