Lessons in business ... from prison
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0:00 - 0:03B.J. was one of many fellow inmates
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0:03 - 0:05who had big plans for the future.
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0:05 - 0:08He had a vision. When he got out,
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0:08 - 0:10he was going to leave the dope game for good and fly straight,
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0:10 - 0:16and he was actually working on merging his two passions into one vision.
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0:16 - 0:17He'd spent 10,000 dollars
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0:17 - 0:20to buy a website that exclusively featured women
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0:20 - 0:26having sex on top of or inside of luxury sports cars. (Laughter)
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0:26 - 0:29It was my first week in federal prison,
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0:29 - 0:33and I was learning quickly that it wasn't what you see on TV.
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0:33 - 0:37In fact, it was teeming with smart, ambitious men
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0:37 - 0:40whose business instincts were in many cases
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0:40 - 0:42as sharp as those of the CEOs
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0:42 - 0:44who had wined and dined me six months earlier
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0:44 - 0:49when I was a rising star in the Missouri Senate.
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0:49 - 0:51Now, 95 percent of the guys that I was locked up with
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0:51 - 0:54had been drug dealers on the outside,
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0:54 - 0:58but when they talked about what they did,
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0:58 - 1:00they talked about it in a different jargon,
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1:00 - 1:02but the business concepts that they talked about
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1:02 - 1:06weren't unlike those that you'd learn in a first year MBA class at Wharton:
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1:06 - 1:10promotional incentives, you never charge a first-time user,
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1:10 - 1:14focus-grouping new product launches,
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1:14 - 1:16territorial expansion.
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1:16 - 1:19But they didn't spend a lot of time reliving the glory days.
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1:19 - 1:22For the most part, everyone was just trying to survive.
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1:22 - 1:24It's a lot harder than you might think.
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1:24 - 1:27Contrary to what most people think,
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1:27 - 1:30people don't pay, taxpayers don't pay, for your life
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1:30 - 1:32when you're in prison. You've got to pay for your own life.
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1:32 - 1:35You've got to pay for your soap, your deodorant,
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1:35 - 1:37toothbrush, toothpaste, all of it.
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1:37 - 1:39And it's hard for a couple of reasons.
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1:39 - 1:41First, everything's marked up 30 to 50 percent
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1:41 - 1:42from what you'd pay on the street,
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1:42 - 1:45and second, you don't make a lot of money.
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1:45 - 1:47I unloaded trucks. That was my full-time job,
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1:47 - 1:50unloading trucks at a food warehouse,
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1:50 - 1:54for $5.25, not an hour, but per month.
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1:54 - 1:56So how do you survive?
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1:56 - 2:00Well, you learn to hustle, all kinds of hustles.
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2:00 - 2:01There's legal hustles.
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2:01 - 2:03You pay everything in stamps. Those are the currency.
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2:03 - 2:06You charge another inmate to clean his cell.
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2:06 - 2:11There's sort of illegal hustles, like you run a barbershop out of your cell.
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2:11 - 2:15There's pretty illegal hustles: You run a tattoo parlor out of your own cell.
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2:15 - 2:18And there's very illegal hustles, which you smuggle in,
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2:18 - 2:22you get smuggled in, drugs, pornography,
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2:22 - 2:26cell phones, and just as in the outer world,
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2:26 - 2:29there's a risk-reward tradeoff, so the riskier the enterprise,
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2:29 - 2:31the more profitable it can potentially be.
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2:31 - 2:36You want a cigarette in prison? Three to five dollars.
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2:36 - 2:39You want an old-fashioned cell phone that you flip open
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2:39 - 2:43and is about as big as your head? Three hundred bucks.
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2:43 - 2:45You want a dirty magazine?
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2:45 - 2:49Well, it can be as much as 1,000 dollars.
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2:49 - 2:52So as you can probably tell, one of the defining aspects
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2:52 - 2:55of prison life is ingenuity.
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2:55 - 2:58Whether it was concocting delicious meals
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2:58 - 3:02from stolen scraps from the warehouse,
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3:02 - 3:05sculpting people's hair with toenail clippers,
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3:05 - 3:11or constructing weights from boulders in laundry bags
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3:11 - 3:16tied on to tree limbs, prisoners learn how to make do with less,
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3:16 - 3:18and many of them want to take this ingenuity
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3:18 - 3:20that they've learned to the outside
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3:20 - 3:23and start restaurants, barber shops,
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3:23 - 3:25personal training businesses.
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3:25 - 3:28But there's no training, nothing to prepare them for that,
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3:28 - 3:31no rehabilitation at all in prison,
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3:31 - 3:33no one to help them write a business plan,
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3:33 - 3:36figure out a way to translate the business concepts
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3:36 - 3:39they intuitively grasp into legal enterprises,
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3:39 - 3:42no access to the Internet, even.
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3:42 - 3:44And then, when they come out, most states
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3:44 - 3:47don't even have a law prohibiting employers
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3:47 - 3:50from discriminating against people with a background.
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3:50 - 3:53So none of us should be surprised
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3:53 - 3:56that two out of three ex-offenders re-offend
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3:56 - 3:58within five years.
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3:58 - 4:04Look, I lied to the Feds. I lost a year of my life from it.
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4:04 - 4:07But when I came out, I vowed that I was going to do
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4:07 - 4:09whatever I could to make sure
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4:09 - 4:11that guys like the ones I was locked up with
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4:11 - 4:16didn't have to waste any more of their life than they already had.
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4:16 - 4:19So I hope that you'll think about helping in some way.
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4:19 - 4:22The best thing we can do is figure out ways
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4:22 - 4:24to nurture the entrepreneurial spirit
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4:24 - 4:28and the tremendous untapped potential in our prisons,
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4:28 - 4:31because if we don't, they're not going to learn any new skills
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4:31 - 4:33that's going to help them, and they'll be right back.
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4:33 - 4:36All they'll learn on the inside is new hustles.
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4:36 - 4:40Thank you. (Applause)
- Title:
- Lessons in business ... from prison
- Speaker:
- Jeff Smith
- Description:
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Jeff Smith spent a year in prison. But what he discovered inside wasn’t what he expected -- he saw in his fellow inmates boundless ingenuity and business savvy. He asks: Why don't we tap this entrepreneurial potential to help ex-prisoners contribute to society once they're back outside? (From the TED Talent Search event TED@NewYork.)
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 05:00
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Lessons in business ... from prison | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for Lessons in business ... from prison | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Lessons in business ... from prison | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for Lessons in business ... from prison | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Lessons in business ... from prison | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |