Jeff Smith: Lessons in business ... from prison

80,480 views ・ 2012-12-05

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:00
Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
0
0
7000
00:15
B.J. was one of many fellow inmates
1
15513
2870
00:18
who had big plans for the future.
2
18383
2285
00:20
He had a vision. When he got out,
3
20668
2231
00:22
he was going to leave the dope game for good and fly straight,
4
22899
2855
00:25
and he was actually working on merging his two passions into one vision.
5
25754
5127
00:30
He'd spent 10,000 dollars
6
30881
1514
00:32
to buy a website that exclusively featured women
7
32395
3284
00:35
having sex on top of or inside of luxury sports cars. (Laughter)
8
35679
5889
00:41
It was my first week in federal prison,
9
41568
2986
00:44
and I was learning quickly that it wasn't what you see on TV.
10
44554
3817
00:48
In fact, it was teeming with smart, ambitious men
11
48371
3903
00:52
whose business instincts were in many cases
12
52274
2741
00:55
as sharp as those of the CEOs
13
55015
2402
00:57
who had wined and dined me six months earlier
14
57417
1829
00:59
when I was a rising star in the Missouri Senate.
15
59246
4552
01:03
Now, 95 percent of the guys that I was locked up with
16
63798
2841
01:06
had been drug dealers on the outside,
17
66639
2740
01:09
but when they talked about what they did,
18
69379
3408
01:12
they talked about it in a different jargon,
19
72787
2703
01:15
but the business concepts that they talked about
20
75490
1784
01:17
weren't unlike those that you'd learn in a first year MBA class at Wharton:
21
77274
3680
01:20
promotional incentives, you never charge a first-time user,
22
80954
4504
01:25
focus-grouping new product launches,
23
85458
3571
01:29
territorial expansion.
24
89029
2237
01:31
But they didn't spend a lot of time reliving the glory days.
25
91266
3271
01:34
For the most part, everyone was just trying to survive.
26
94537
2849
01:37
It's a lot harder than you might think.
27
97386
2197
01:39
Contrary to what most people think,
28
99583
2787
01:42
people don't pay, taxpayers don't pay, for your life
29
102370
3378
01:45
when you're in prison. You've got to pay for your own life.
30
105748
1790
01:47
You've got to pay for your soap, your deodorant,
31
107538
2752
01:50
toothbrush, toothpaste, all of it.
32
110290
2298
01:52
And it's hard for a couple of reasons.
33
112588
1352
01:53
First, everything's marked up 30 to 50 percent
34
113940
2395
01:56
from what you'd pay on the street,
35
116335
1367
01:57
and second, you don't make a lot of money.
36
117702
2582
02:00
I unloaded trucks. That was my full-time job,
37
120284
2269
02:02
unloading trucks at a food warehouse,
38
122553
2289
02:04
for $5.25, not an hour, but per month.
39
124842
4353
02:09
So how do you survive?
40
129195
2158
02:11
Well, you learn to hustle, all kinds of hustles.
41
131353
3519
02:14
There's legal hustles.
42
134872
1599
02:16
You pay everything in stamps. Those are the currency.
43
136471
2168
02:18
You charge another inmate to clean his cell.
44
138639
2416
02:21
There's sort of illegal hustles, like you run a barbershop out of your cell.
45
141055
4903
02:25
There's pretty illegal hustles: You run a tattoo parlor out of your own cell.
46
145958
4222
02:30
And there's very illegal hustles, which you smuggle in,
47
150180
3283
02:33
you get smuggled in, drugs, pornography,
48
153463
4103
02:37
cell phones, and just as in the outer world,
49
157566
3467
02:41
there's a risk-reward tradeoff, so the riskier the enterprise,
50
161033
3503
02:44
the more profitable it can potentially be.
51
164536
1864
02:46
You want a cigarette in prison? Three to five dollars.
52
166400
4936
02:51
You want an old-fashioned cell phone that you flip open
53
171336
3305
02:54
and is about as big as your head? Three hundred bucks.
54
174641
3646
02:58
You want a dirty magazine?
55
178287
2336
03:00
Well, it can be as much as 1,000 dollars.
56
180623
3384
03:04
So as you can probably tell, one of the defining aspects
57
184007
3106
03:07
of prison life is ingenuity.
58
187113
3550
03:10
Whether it was concocting delicious meals
59
190663
2404
03:13
from stolen scraps from the warehouse,
60
193067
4199
03:17
sculpting people's hair with toenail clippers,
61
197266
3150
03:20
or constructing weights from boulders in laundry bags
62
200416
5624
03:26
tied on to tree limbs, prisoners learn how to make do with less,
63
206040
4769
03:30
and many of them want to take this ingenuity
64
210809
2671
03:33
that they've learned to the outside
65
213480
2186
03:35
and start restaurants, barber shops,
66
215666
2246
03:37
personal training businesses.
67
217912
2345
03:40
But there's no training, nothing to prepare them for that,
68
220257
3495
03:43
no rehabilitation at all in prison,
69
223752
2295
03:46
no one to help them write a business plan,
70
226047
2201
03:48
figure out a way to translate the business concepts
71
228248
3258
03:51
they intuitively grasp into legal enterprises,
72
231506
3023
03:54
no access to the Internet, even.
73
234529
2575
03:57
And then, when they come out, most states
74
237104
2584
03:59
don't even have a law prohibiting employers
75
239688
2352
04:02
from discriminating against people with a background.
76
242040
3720
04:05
So none of us should be surprised
77
245760
2304
04:08
that two out of three ex-offenders re-offend
78
248064
2844
04:10
within five years.
79
250908
2588
04:13
Look, I lied to the Feds. I lost a year of my life from it.
80
253496
5312
04:18
But when I came out, I vowed that I was going to do
81
258808
3659
04:22
whatever I could to make sure
82
262467
1826
04:24
that guys like the ones I was locked up with
83
264293
2433
04:26
didn't have to waste any more of their life than they already had.
84
266726
4047
04:30
So I hope that you'll think about helping in some way.
85
270773
3648
04:34
The best thing we can do is figure out ways
86
274421
2568
04:36
to nurture the entrepreneurial spirit
87
276989
2688
04:39
and the tremendous untapped potential in our prisons,
88
279677
3244
04:42
because if we don't, they're not going to learn any new skills
89
282921
3075
04:45
that's going to help them, and they'll be right back.
90
285996
2549
04:48
All they'll learn on the inside is new hustles.
91
288545
2876
04:51
Thank you. (Applause)
92
291421
4000
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7