When Your Worst Fear Becomes Your Reality

What keeps you stepping forward when you feel things are hopeless? My guest Brent Cassidy shares his story of standing at the gates of Leavenworth prison as his life is about to change forever. 
Brent had to step through his fears to adapt and survive. Brent has a life experience he does not want to go to waste if it could help people believe a second chance is possible. He shares the survival tools he used in prison. Tools you can use every day to help if you are stuck and fearful to take the next step forward. Brent has business advice on strategies to build a national company and minefields to avoid. Brent shares how trust can be a comfort or a knife to your personal growth.

https://www.brentcassity.com

Transcript

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 1:08

i guess today is brent cassidy how are you doing to day brent

[brent_cassity]: 1:13

i'm doing great keith harry you

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 1:15

i'm doing phenomenal great talking to you looking forward

[brent_cassity]: 1:17

i'm

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 1:17

to having

[brent_cassity]: 1:17

glad

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 1:17

you on

[brent_cassity]: 1:18

to

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 1:18

the

[brent_cassity]: 1:18

be

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 1:18

show

[brent_cassity]: 1:18

on excited about it

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 1:21

great so i'm going to give you an easy question to warm you up what's the best advice you've ever received

[brent_cassity]: 1:26

well you know i'm going i'm going to throw this out i'm going to explain it because when i was going through all my stuff that i was going through i had a really good friend mike shanahan say it don't hide show up suit up and shut up now i want to explain the shut up part is the shut up part is don't complain don't whine what you got to do but don't hide go out and be yourself because people will see you as the guy that you're being strong you're being yourself you're being who you need to be but don't show up in wine don't try to plead your case don't do those things that people are like but i really lived that in the six years of going through the nightmare that i went through it was i kept going and i kept doing and i kept being me through that and that was really good advice the other thing that i came across eh that i heard from it was damon west on a podcast i thought it was just good advice period so damon west was a guy that was a popular football player and he was down in texas and he went to prison and he was having a really hard time in prison and wasn't fitting in wasn't getting into the the rules of the life of prison and an older guy came up to who've been in prison for a long time and he said damon this prison life like a boiling pot of water and david said okay said so he said what happens if i put a carrot in the water he so well characted so he said okay you can't be soft in here so you guys keep being you what happens if i put the the egg in the water so well it gets hard can't be hard got to keep your heart open okay you said what happens i put the coffee bean in the water amonson i don't know should the coffee being changes the water coffee so he said that's what you've got to be in here you've got to be the coffee thing you've got to be the change you can't be the thing that changes you you have to be the change and i love that is something that whether you're in prison or with your outside of prison that speaks to me so strongly because be the coffee being change the water

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 4:07

i love that now i have to give him credit for the first few times but that's such a good one that's goin to become like keith that's all keith always says

[brent_cassity]: 4:14

yeah

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 4:17

yeah

[brent_cassity]: 4:17

i wish i could put my name on the front of that

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 4:19

that's right

[brent_cassity]: 4:21

but i was only a little smarter

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 4:23

m i love it so you mentioned that your your best advice came from someone named mike shannon now is that the mike shannon that i know from from cardinal fame

[brent_cassity]: 4:32

no mike shanahan

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 4:34

oh shan

[brent_cassity]: 4:34

and

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 4:34

the hand

[brent_cassity]: 4:35

and his dad actually was part of the saint louis blues

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 4:37

a

[brent_cassity]: 4:38

so

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 4:38

oh cool

[brent_cassity]: 4:39

so

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 4:39

i

[brent_cassity]: 4:39

you

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 4:39

know

[brent_cassity]: 4:39

might

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 4:39

that

[brent_cassity]: 4:39

know

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 4:39

one

[brent_cassity]: 4:39

a little bit that keats because you

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 4:41

i

[brent_cassity]: 4:41

were

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 4:41

do

[brent_cassity]: 4:41

in the saint louis world at that time so he he was so yeah mike's dad was one of the owners of sales blues and was a great ambassador for the blues and really brought the blues back into from the early eighties into the nineties brought the the great one wing gretski back into saint louis and he was a heck of a guy super super dad super funny man and quite an entrepreneur and business man

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 5:09

this phenomena so

[brent_cassity]: 5:10

and

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 5:10

to get

[brent_cassity]: 5:11

mike shanahan junior has been a wonderful friend to me so

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 5:14

yeah

[brent_cassity]: 5:14

i'm

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 5:14

i love

[brent_cassity]: 5:15

glad

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 5:15

the blues

[brent_cassity]: 5:15

i was

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 5:15

those

[brent_cassity]: 5:15

able to bring him up on this podcast

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 5:17

yeah good so tell us something about yourself that most people don't know about you

[brent_cassity]: 5:23

m i think the thing that really surprises people if i sit down and talk to him and we're at a round table is that my great grandmother was chinese and you know i and all the things going on in the world right now is so crazy but my my great grandmother and i knew for i knew her well she lived to be ninety five years old and so that makes me what keith ate eight chinese my mom would be a

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 5:56

i

[brent_cassity]: 5:56

fourth

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 5:56

guess so

[brent_cassity]: 5:57

my grandmother be half so

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 6:00

ah

[brent_cassity]: 6:00

she was just she was such a great inspiration of a lady she came over here when she was seventeen years old it was before the communist took over a sheet she was at in a village where she taught english and her dad was kind of like the mayor of the village and would be my great grandfather came over as a missionary and they he took her back funniest part of that story was that he told her he was going to take her to manhattan and he took her pretty close to man haddon in kansas and it was called chatofaans so she thought she was going to new york she ended up in kansas but she ended up with you know five great kids and they all did great things and she was uh you know in my life growing up just an inspiration of a person who and she never saw her family again because communism came and she was never able to go back and once you know life goes on and i would love to be able to go over and make those connections with those people though and see where and what that family is doing and how similar our lives are around unsimilar our lives are

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 7:10

well that's pretty powerful that's really interesting so i had you on because i ran across your profile and your story just seems so compelling so could you share with us your story

[brent_cassity]: 7:21

so keith i've been

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 7:22

i

[brent_cassity]: 7:22

through a heck of a journey and you know some people would say you're lucky and some people would say you're unlucky i don't know that i i don't know what i would change in my life because what's happened to me is who i am and made me who i am but growing up as a kid gosh i couldn't have had a better childhood you know we were the kind of kids that you know wrote our bikes and and went to the field and picked you know the know the football teams in the baseball and played until dark and went in and you know at our dinners and everything was scrat in the neighborhood i did have something happened that that wasn't quite normal when i was fourteen years old i i had a dad that to me was bigger than life um just kind of a quick thing about him he you know he came he came from a really small town i think they only had like three thousand people and he won the state championship of basketball he was a victorian he went on to be a d one athlete basketball and track and he went to you know law school and graduated number one of his class and zoomed out of that and on some big cases and then got into the business world and was kind of the guy with a golden touch and as a kid he's in as like oh my gosh wow i want to be him be just like him one night my world is the best it can be on the six foot one eighth creator which makes me like seven foot

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 8:52

oh

[brent_cassity]: 8:52

tall you know i mean everybody else was maybe five six i was couldn't wait to get into high school and now you know sports was my life and loved everything around everything with my friends and i called in to after dinner with my dad and he says boys like i tell you something i've gotten into a heap of trouble with the bank that i own i've been going through this and um i think i'm going to plead guilty so that we can move on and keith i got to tell you my what he was saying and watching his mouth move it wasn't connecting to me i was like how in the world could the guy it has the golden touch the guy that i idolize is telling me that he's gotten in so much trouble

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 9:43

what

[brent_cassity]: 9:44

that he's with this fhedule situation and he's going to plead guilty

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 9:47

wow

[brent_cassity]: 9:48

i couldn't put it all together but the biggest thing that happened was he said to get a clean start he says i think we need to move and i oh man wow so we picked up moved from the small southwest missouri town that i was in that i loved and we moved up to saint louis which seemed like a very big metropolis of the unknown and moved in in the summer time when we didn't know anybody and there weren't any kids you know to go with me at school so it was it was a difficult transition my whole life changed it all worked out and that part of my life when i say it was different it was also a part of my life that i understood that you can adapt move on you know you don't have to stop you can continue to move and adapt so i couldn't have been you know one of the things i thought though keith was when i went and we went to visit my dad he didn't get a long prison sentence it was a six month prison sentence so we had a couple of things that happened that are things that stick in my mind one way we moved into a new neighborhood and we didn't have a dad and that's not normal especially if the mom is saying she's married so that answers that question is because she's not widowed she's not divorced where is the dad and so we decided that we would say something that wasn't alive it was kind of kind of in between and a grey

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 11:15

yeah

[brent_cassity]: 11:15

are as he's out of town working

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 11:18

sure

[brent_cassity]: 11:18

so and it was true he was out of town and he did have a prison job so it was a weird thing to hold that back you know from people i was meeting new and then i had this elephant in the room my dad was in prison in a new environment the other thing that i remember distinctly was keith is going to prison thinking driving up there first of all his dad going to be okay i'm going to see my dad come out in prison clothes and it's going to be weird because he was such a big person in my world and he was okay and he looked okay but i thought in the back of my mind when i was leaving whatever you do brent this will never happen to you you will never be in this situation regardless

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 12:04

sure

[brent_cassity]: 12:06

and i thought you know isn't it funny you know we go every week end now we're that prison family we are the prison family that goes to and from prison and and we meet and we you know communicate with all his friends and then you know make the natchos and the and the mark wave and then we go back to suburbia and act like that that's not going on and it was just a weird world in that time so dad gets out prison and i couldn't have been more proud of him because there was one business that survived because he put it in our name and addressed you as in my mom's my brother and my name um and keith it was it was a very unsexy business but very important part of what people think about and it was pre arranging funerals and it was you could take care of all the arrangements ahead of time and freeze the cost and it was a newer idea and so when he got out that business grew and i joined that business ten years later i went down to texas that we had started in missouri and i kind of had a knack for selling and and operations and my dad didn't really like selling and so he we had gotten to the point where we had a sales company and we had an insurance company dad liked the insurance side of it and that worked out in a family business it's kind of like when you're dealing with the beetles and fleet with mac

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 13:31

oh

[brent_cassity]: 13:31

everybody's got to find what they can do so we we kind of found our our grove i loved working with my dad he loved and what he was doing i loved doing what i was doing and we grew my brother came into the business and we went to something that actually did gain a lot of attention keith uh nobody had really changed anything in the last hundred and twenty five years in the funeral business and we became the people that did the idea was that we well queen elizabeth just died so when when a person like that dies you immediately expect to see the high light of her life all the things that did you don't get that of your grandparents and your parents and your uncles and your aunts and so we said why don't we become and this came from a cassette type of my grandmother who had died and we got her voice and said oh my god it's only been three years lost that inflexion her voice and we need to do something so we said let's be the film makers for everybody else so in the nineties the cacities became the film makers and we created like twenty thousand interviews and we bought cemeteries and we created a production company uh that did all the editing and in these film stories of people's lives and then we put touch screen consoles on the cemeteries so that you could actually go and meet your grandmother that you had n't that or your great grandmother and be introduced to generations and there's an old african proverb that says when a lot when someone dies a library s and so we wanted to be the library of lives and it became a real passion for us and we that part of our business got incredible publicity i mean it was now from time magazine to wall street journal of fortune of forbes to we were on the two times on entertainment tonight because we bought the hollywood cemetery and we were red furbishing that and h bo came along and did a documentary called the young and the dead and that pond into six feet under everything great now i you know i was in my life i was just about forty years old or so and life couldn't have been any better i had three beautiful girls i had a wife that i ad met at thirteen years old and i was fifteen and we gone through these life experiences together and man is that when something happens keith you hit a bone blind spot and we got hit with a the easiest way to say it is is we had a re insure we were a small insurance company they were a gigantic size of they were the largest re insure company in the world in germany and got into a nasty match of trying to re negotiate a contract that had already been agreed to and my dad being who he was one said no because it wasn't in the contract being who i was because i wasn't very smart in that world i would have just said hey what we got to do it by so it ended up to be a disaster we ended up in an arbitration and that arbitration funneled into getting into the twenty two states that we were in that there was smoke around us and when it gets into the regulatory world i assume that's fire and then that moved into criminal investigation and we went through six years oh a fight of our life as a family and you know one of the things that i talk about to keith a zep you know my kids at that time were teen agers and we all had to go through it you know it was very public you know all all new stations and newspapers and what veran we grouped together as a family and we had lot of support with our friends and and actually people that you know school officials and everybody else that that were supportive and we just locked in said we're not going to read anything we're not look anything we're goin to be casities re goin a be survivors gonta get through this and you know i look back on all that and i think you know first of all how in the world would get through it you know six years a long time in the end uh the federal government came down and there was it was a conspiracy you know even to the point where i had a situation keith where it was allowing an x belan to work in the business of insurance yeah i didn't even know that there was a law that said that a exdncantwere but that carried

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 18:16

ya

[brent_cassity]: 18:16

a five years sentence

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 18:17

wow

[brent_cassity]: 18:17

um and everything everything else that came into that world um

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 18:22

oh

[brent_cassity]: 18:22

and if i go if i gone to try there is no way to defend that as the owner in the co the company i should have known in nineteen nine before they created a law in congress that said that what i didn't there was a lot of things that i messed up on you know i didn't like math so i just didn't act like there was a insurance company that we owned and i owned it i loved sales and operations so i just saw that as a thing that took care of funding what did and i should have paid a lot closer of attention to because we were sloppy so a lot of things happened keith that in my world but when it came down to it we made a family decision you know the girls were like um m dad we can't have you try to trial and i said i know i'm tired were broke and we need to move on and so that's how that's how we came to that decision but i'll tell you one thing keith that happened to me with that was that when i finally came to that decision we had a family phone call that night and we just we agreed that dad and i were going to play and and they're in the tyler and my mom we're going to take care of the kids and julie on certain things and i became very what would you say the poor me that you know how could this happen to me why me and i began to drink that night the kids were out of town with julie and i was gonna go see him the next day at our vacation house and so it became a nightwhere i felt sorry for myself i thought could julie um shouldn't she just get a fresh start with somebody else shouldn't the kids i mean they're gonna have a stain of an ex fell in as a dad so i got a piece of paper out start writ and it started telling everybody you know what how much i appreciate their support and to julie to to go forward and and for the kids you know the advice that i would give as a dad i had another drink and i grabbed the keys to the car and went down to to the garage and started and i didn't know if i was going to go run into a tree or if i was going to just let the car run and then something hit me like a as i was like oh my god brant what in the world are you doing you're the glass half stool guy this is something that you know you are it looks like a failure you're gonna look like you gave up you're going to look like somebody you would have always said that that didn't that you didn't believe in and at that moment i realized that no matter what happened going forward i was going to be a survivor i was going to try to make my family proud of the way that i was handling things going forward and i was going to step in whatever i had to step into with confidence that i was just going to be me so that was our that was my moment of of trying to get a hold of where i was and what was going to happen next because everything that was in front of me keith was a unknown

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 21:55

sorry about that

[brent_cassity]: 21:56

you're back just finished

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 21:58

yes

[brent_cassity]: 21:58

my story m h

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 22:02

well get thing

[brent_cassity]: 22:03

m

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 22:03

on your side of it still has it

[brent_cassity]: 22:05

oh

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 22:06

but luckily have a back up so

[brent_cassity]: 22:07

cool

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 22:08

you stopped you stopped what you were talking about you didn't you didn't really like math

[brent_cassity]: 22:12

yeah

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 22:12

and all right so we'll hold

[brent_cassity]: 22:15

you

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 22:16

on

[brent_cassity]: 22:16

want

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 22:16

a second

[brent_cassity]: 22:16

me pick up there keith

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 22:18

yeah i'm goin to hold a second hit record again

[brent_cassity]: 22:21

okay

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 22:21

all right all right go

[brent_cassity]: 22:24

i was going to say my biggest mistake keith was is that i didn't really like matt and we owned an insurance company and i kind of ignored it as something that i was supposed to be responsible

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 22:37

i

[brent_cassity]: 22:37

for and i you know looking back on it i'm like how in the world could you be

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 22:42

the world

[brent_cassity]: 22:42

i don't know what would you call that arrogant but you know i thought he

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 22:46

ye

[brent_cassity]: 22:46

if i do all this over here and grow this company and then this is the stuff that fun i i don't like that stuff well

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 22:54

right

[brent_cassity]: 22:55

i should have done more and you know it became and in the end you know ended up being a situation to where when we got into all of our trouble my dad came to me and said you know brent we've got to have somebody go and talk to to these regulators he said i can't go talk to him because i'm an ex fallen and he said i think you would be good you present our case i was like man yah

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 23:23

oh

[brent_cassity]: 23:24

this is the one this is the one company that i should have paid more attention to so anyway i wanted to do that i wanted to put the cape on i wanted to be the hero i wanted to save the company i want to make my dad proud but it also made me the face of the company in something that was a fire storm and as it ended kate it wasn't good you know there was six people that got indited and hand and played out and you know when you get in when you get into a dark place you know there's nothing more in timid in the united states of america versus your name and you've got to be you got to be really strong and really you know have a huge team behind you to go to court and by the time i'd gotten there my daughters told me dad you know with what we were looking at they were teen agers at the time so we've been very open about everything and they said they had we you can't you know there's no way this has been a senamia bad and i realized you know after six years i was tired i was worn out we didn't have any more money so i understood that that the game was up and the one night i remember pretty vividly get um pretty dark moment for me but i go back to it because i realize that i'll never want to go there again i decided that i was going to do the play bargain and so it was a family call i had you know my mom my dad my brother my wife on the phone and so we know tyler and my mom were going to help take care of the girls and julie with certain things and i got off that phone call i was by myself because they were up at our vacation home and i was going to come up there the next day and i really started feeling sorry for myself and i you know started thinking you know julie needs a fresh start she doesn't need somebody an ex felon you know to be with for the rest of her life and my kids are going to be stained by me being an ex felon and you know would i just be better to off you know stage left never thought of something like that ever in my life and i even got so far and just say to keith this was also i was drinking and probably wasn't thinking as i should have been and i got out a piece of paper you know thanked all my friends you know told julie she needed fresh start gave my fatherly advice to my girls and had another drink and went down grabbed the keys to the car and i didn't know if i was gonna go hit a tree or if i was going to go just let the car run i remembered it was yesterday that something hit me like a bolt lightning it's like my gosh print what are you doing what and this isn't you you're the glass half full guy you're the guy that's that's looking for the best part of things not the worst part of things if your girls saw this they would be so disappointed this is the worst way for you to act and at that moment my rock bottom mel nut key i realize that there's a big difference between a victim and a survivor a victim usurps all year energy you point fingers you get into a corner and you blame and a survivor if you just take that on it gives you strength it gives you whatever that is that wants motivate you forward from that moment forward i felt different i knew that everything that was standing in front of me was ugly unknown stuff but i also knew that whatever it was that i was going to be me and i was going to try to make my family proud of whatever i was going to have to deal with and that's how i dealt with not only that moment but for the next three to four years of what i had to deal with and i think something is interesting when you hit a rock bottom moment it hits you to your soul you either go one way or the other way you know the whole thing of shaw shank redemption was one of my favorite movies is you get busy living you get busy dying there's some people that just choose you know they get busy dying the fetal position and they give up but if you get busy living you can always find a way and i always think of this keith everything that i've been through because i went through a five year i was sentenced to five years to love and worth and it took my breath away when that happened but i came from a background in my in my world i was a wealthy man i had accomplished things that i never thought i was going to accomplish but when i was standing at the gates of leavenworth everything i loved and everything i knew was behind me and everything that was unknown and i feared was in front of me but one thing i found out through all of that was that nothing i mean nothing is ever as bad as your mind makes it out to be not even prison not even prison you can adapt survive and even thrive in situations that you would have never have thought you could have made it and i think for me you know where i'm at now i thought it was pretty well accomplished keith at the time that i went in you

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 29:42

oh

[brent_cassity]: 29:42

know i thought before anything happened

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 29:45

yeah

[brent_cassity]: 29:45

to me i thought my goodness this is this is more than i could have ever imagined

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 29:49

more

[brent_cassity]: 29:49

but i've learned so more about

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 29:53

oh

[brent_cassity]: 29:54

what i can do and i've also found other passions in my life and what i wanted

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 30:01

i want

[brent_cassity]: 30:01

desperately want to tell people is that if you if you feel like you're stuck or if you feel like you're in a rock bottom moment don't look like that as an end look at it at the beginning look at it as a new beginning because if you start stepping out of that and i'm a big believer in that first step is the biggest step because that's the one that makes you feel lighter to take your next step and once you take a second step you start believing a little bit of confidence in your third step is oh my gosh i'm into this and even if it scares you and my my book name or success people say well brent why did you come up with the what's that nightmare success

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 30:43

yeah

[brent_cassity]: 30:43

and you know i was i was walking the track keith and i you know i was like what do i do with this you know i was really on a great path and now i'm walking this sidewalk next to a fence with bob ware at levenworth well you know what i need to do i need to use this experience use this experience to try to help people going forward and i thought what are the words that i can use of what's real of what you have to actually step through what you actually have to step through to get to where you want to get to your passions or wherever you are what makes you feel you what makes you feel like you are succeeding in life is that you have to step through your nightmares and your fears and your unknown to get to what you want to be so everybody steps through their nightmare to get to their success and everybody's nightmares are different and everybody's success is different but if you can will yourself and grit yourself to see whatever that is to take that step through that that's the thing that's going to set you free

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 31:51

that's powerful i want to you said a lot there but i want to really kind of home in on how did you turn i love this

[brent_cassity]: 31:59

yeah

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 31:59

idea of you know get busy live an get busy dying so

[brent_cassity]: 32:03

ay

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 32:03

what

[brent_cassity]: 32:03

oh

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 32:03

were the five rules that you learned in prison help you get busy living versus dying

[brent_cassity]: 32:10

love it because these rules and some of these

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 32:13

yeah

[brent_cassity]: 32:13

rules too each were things that even as i a twenty something kid that was trying to grow a company worked i found that some of these things blended when i went into prison i think if people will do this and use these five things they can pretty much accomplish anything because it's it's about mind set and mind set can overcome whatever you need because your minds so strong so the first thing very first thing is something that you have to get kind of comfortable with because you got to humble yourself to humble yourself and you got to ask for advice and for me going into prison my thing was is that look a lot don't speak much and see who's getting it right see who's doing their time in a way that you'd like to do your time you know did they have a good job did they have a good routine where they're reading certain books and then i went up and talked to those people i said you know i'm just a new guy here i'm just trying to figure things out but it looks like you're getting along pretty well with your time and we would talk now i was able to get a good prison job by doing that i was able to get some good books to read i was able to get into a good workout routine so that's that's a big key is is to first humble yourself look around and see who's who's doing what you would like to be doing and of those things could you go talk to them and ask them for advice humble yourself and say listen i want to be doing what you're doing cud you help me tell me how it's working for you it's like getting the answer to the test before the test if you were able to do that it helped me so much in prison because i was able to make the right connections with the right people and doing the right thing and it got me on the right path so that's the first thing yourself ask for advice seek out the people are making it work and implement what they're doing and put it into your life works in prison definitely works out of prison the second thing was as i already said keith i'm a gigantic fan uh shawshake redemption and for those who haven't seen it get it it it's a big deal um andy defrays in prison because he he wrongly convicted of killing his wife my big thing and whenever i make go out and speak to people as find your zaanan and in that movie andy's want to nail he speaks about it to red and in his mind you can see when he speaks about it it's the bluest of the bluest oceans it's the widest of the widest sands is his old little place he's goin to fix up as a little end and he's goin to fix up this boat and pet p out on fishing excursions and you can see as he explains it he lives it in his mind and he chips away at a wall nineteen years it is freedom and every day gives himself the victory of letting that wall out into the yard yeah so everybody needs to find what that is what could make you so passionate that you would shift through a wall for nineteen years to set yourself free what is it that gets your juices go in them makes you feel like alive that is the thing that you need to find because those are the things that when you get eighty five nine years old and your rocking in that rocking chair and you're thinking back on your life you're really going to say i did it all or i try to do it all i don't have any regrets or you're going to say boy i wish i wouldn't have been standing on the sidelines and watching the game go by so that's to me having goals put it in in action and action such a big deal lot of people do you know have goals and plans they just don't take action on it the biggest thing is don't even think about it being perfect just take action put it in play you can always re do and let it evolve and tweak and ed it the third thing keith was big for me because i was in prison so it was like win the day one day at a time unfair things happen move on and make a difference regardless so for me i was dealing with a five year sentence and my daughter my youngest daughter always sent me a calendar and i had our family pictures in it in each calendar month you know and then my thing that i did every night was part of my routine is i would ride in the little square of the day my my routine was i that i needed to find a win for the day what happened today that made me a better person a better man who i am i would feel a lot that little square now i'm not going to say that i try to be unrealistic because there weren't wins every day so if i had a bad day i would go all the way down i'd let myself go this is the worst day and prison is a dark place but the thing about it was kit i would never let myself have two boxes on my calendar of bad days i couldn't do it i forced myself to find a win for the next day so i did never and it's so important i think people if you focus on that it's okay to have a bad day but if you have two bad days that can run into a week and that week can run into a month and that month can run into a year and you know like jack nicholas said i'm going to make a bad shot just on wanta make two bad shots in a row you know be very conscious of the fact that it's okay to get down because we're all human we all have things in things happen life happens but boy if you if you allow yourself to keep sliding it's a slippery slope because there's enough bad things out there that can grab you in the wrong direction you have to fight m you have to fight for your win the day and if you if you just have that in your mind don't have two in a row don't have to in a row the fourth thing yeah i think he's obviously very trouble with me is you learn from your mistakes um m these mistakes how you handle a mistake will make you a winner or loser and life and business is all about making mistakes what i fear with people nowadays is there there they won't they're fearful of making mistakes they feel fearful that i've got to be perfect and your biggest growth in business and in life is making mistakes tore like okay i got it not going to do that again keith won't do that but

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 39:15

yeah

[brent_cassity]: 39:15

i'll do this

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 39:16

exactly

[brent_cassity]: 39:16

that's

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 39:17

right

[brent_cassity]: 39:17

that's that's something we need as humans you know but that's growth they don't mistakes don't define you they make you wiser i think if people would more understand that if you read all the books of the people who have made it big they've all made tremendous mistakes they just didn't let it stop them they kept going with it the fifth thing for me keith might be my biggest thing because this is the thing i was probably most fearful of when i was in prison is don't give in don't give up keep being yourself regardless of the circ umstances otherwise you will lose what makes you you for me i saw a lot of people getting institutionalized in prison you know they get into these ugly routines and kind of lost them you know they became going back to shashank i think red says you know that when you come in these walls are the things that keep you in and when longer you're here the walls that comfort you and hug you and i saw so many different people when they were getting close to the door they would catch another charge and put hands on a guard or something that would give them more time because what had become the ugly reality the warden to their freedom they were scared of what they really wanted and that was to be free and so they were willing to give that up to be n a horrible environment and the weird thing is keith is as i got out and started looking around i started noticing that wasn't just in prison that is that's all around us people are institutionalized with a bad job a bad marriage a bad health crisis a bad mistake whatever that is and they don't live any more forward and that's the thing that i think people have to somehow find that they say again they want to nail whatever that is that makes them feel like they got enough confidence to step forward live their lives don't get institutionalized don't be afraid of what you want because you're so in the ditch on your ugly routine you'll regret it and you like we were talking about keith when you're at eighty five nine years old and rocking in the rock and sireyoudon't want to be that guy this is man i stood on the sidelines it could have been that could have been in the game so my thing was in prison is find a good job don't lose yourself i had the food warehouse i was i learned how to for cliff get for cliff certified i was driving a big truck i did all the inventory it was the things that kept my mind alive and i kept i always thought don't don't turn into prison brand breath don't please don't turn into prison brent be brent and i think you have to do that on the outside too don't don't get lost in in worlds that you don't feel like yourself don't lose yourself because if you lose yourself what do you have i don't know

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 42:35

exactly right and you met some interesting people i know in prison but

[brent_cassity]: 42:40

i did

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 42:40

one story we shared before before we got on was the story of darrow could you kind of share with the audience darrow and what he did when he got out of prison

[brent_cassity]: 42:49

yeah darrell woods i actually didn't get to serve time with darrell wood senior but i wish i would have he was on my

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 42:56

what

[brent_cassity]: 42:56

podcast nitmarsuccess

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 42:57

my

[brent_cassity]: 42:57

in and out and he was wrongly accused of

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 43:01

i

[brent_cassity]: 43:02

murder and can wrongly convicted of murder at a young age got a life sentence without parole and for most people that would have been a death sentence and what do you do with that you just curl up in a corner and say lies unfair and and and i can't believe this has happened to me and poor me not darrell darrell actually changed the system and the prison system law he was and he became a leader he got on the boards he got on the board that made recommendations to the warden he eventually was able to get exonerated he was wrongly convicted after twenty eight years twenty eight years in prison wrongly accused and wrongly convicted what did he do he got out of prison and immediately hit the ground running and he was all about because he found out in prison it's all about communication is all about people understanding people from the other side and finding that common spot so he started putting together police officers and gang members unmarked they didn't know they didn't have police officer uniform on the gang members were not wearing their their gang member insignis and things that they had and so they showed up at these barbecues that darrell would put on this is a detroit area and they would play you know horse basketball and corn hall and then they would get in a round table at the picnic table and introduce themselves what happened was something pretty magical was that these people realized that they had things in common they enjoyed being together and what began to happen with that group and these groups that darrell has created is that these people will now talk to each other and call each other hey i'm in this i'm in this jam what do you think of this to the police office and the police offices talk to the gang member hey you know we got problems in the neighborhood what do you think of this it's become a huge thing that darrell was able to put together and i hope it becomes something that goes national because it makes so much sense communication familiarity common ground we've got so far away from that in our society right now and i think it's you know i don't know keith people can narrow cast themselves into hearing what they want to hear from the people they want to hear it from and they don't ever hear from the other side because they don't have to but darrell is such an inspiration and me and and i think the people who listen to that podcast that life doesn't have to end i had a stacy lannard who was on and her story was that she killed her father and that sounds horrible and you have to hear the rest of the story to understand that but she was she had been sexually abused by her father from eight to eighteen years old and she was trying to protect her sister and she she got life in prison without parole she eventually got exonerated she eventually got pardoned but i thought one of the things that she said because she later became an attorney and now she sits on as a public defender helping people with parole in missouri which is absolutely wonderful because she has a seat at the table with somebody who understands she is eighteen years in prison and her quote i think is so powerful it as noma what has happened our past choose the life we want to live never allow your past to dictate your future and man is that so true i mean there's always a chance for you to start this is this is day one instead of one day this is day one big difference between the two

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 46:43

ah

[brent_cassity]: 46:43

phrases

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 46:45

well that's how powerful so speaking of you know your future i love to ask my guest this question what do you want your legacy to be

[brent_cassity]: 46:56

it's a big one okay

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 46:58

yeah

[brent_cassity]: 46:59

i've always told my girls i got three girls i am so proud of them and what they've become in their lives thirty twenty eight twenty five now and one of the things that i have always told them all the way through growing up your cassidy make a difference in whatever you do whatever it is always try to make a difference and if that can be if that can be my legacy of how i've lived my life i think i'll feel fulfilled because if i know that every effort that i've tried to go out into the world and do has made a difference to someone or something i like that

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 47:47

i love it that's great so what i got from this podcast because

[brent_cassity]: 48:01

oh oh

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 48:13

we go i'm not sure what happened just now

[brent_cassity]: 48:17

well we're living in the world of technology keys and i'm not good at that

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 48:20

a good thing my could pause is all right so what i really got from from talking to you today was really cool i got this idea that a coffee bean in life yeah

[brent_cassity]: 48:30

yes

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 48:31

i love that idea is that don't let the circumstances around you change you but you influence the things around you

[brent_cassity]: 48:39

i lost your keys

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth___the_legend]: 48:40

i love that about what we talked about today

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 50:34

m it's been a really weird day

[brent_cassity]: 50:41

i'm glad you're back

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 50:45

all right let me finish up

[brent_cassity]: 50:46

what

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 50:46

this

[brent_cassity]: 50:46

were you

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 50:46

thought

[brent_cassity]: 50:46

going to

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 50:47

here

[brent_cassity]: 50:47

say though keith you were saying that when you when you when you got cut off there you said you thought this is a podcast that was

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 50:55

i love the fact that the theme of this podcast really has been be the coffee bean in life

[brent_cassity]: 50:59

yeah

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 51:00

but don't let the world around you change you

[brent_cassity]: 51:03

change the water

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 51:05

but you change the water around you and to me that's that's a if nothing else out of this people should take that and apply that to their life i think that's just such a powerful

[brent_cassity]: 51:13

it's a powerful

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 51:13

powerful

[brent_cassity]: 51:13

analogy

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 51:14

thought

[brent_cassity]: 51:14

i think when i heard that and i hadn't heard it before but i guess there's a book that he wrote that it's called the coffee bean but i think

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 51:23

yeah

[brent_cassity]: 51:23

i think that's a really powerful powerful way to talk about being forced to change

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 51:30

ah i love that so where can people find your podcast and

[brent_cassity]: 51:33

yeah

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 51:34

find your book and find you in social media

[brent_cassity]: 51:36

okay so my social media is i'm at brent cassidy and brand cast on facebook my website you can find out all my stuff and and all the different podcasts episodes and everything else about the book m that's it brent caste dot com my book nitmare success uh loyalty betrayal life behind bars adapting and finally breaking free a memoir that can be found on amazon and barns a noble and hopefully everybody will check out my podcast because i appreciate this platform chief but the my podcast is nightmare success in an on that can be found

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 52:22

oh

[brent_cassity]: 52:22

and it's all you know

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 52:23

yeah

[brent_cassity]: 52:23

what happens when your worst fear becomes your reality how to adapt how do you survive and i interview ex inmates of what they did to get through to get to the other side and that's on apple and um well i guess it's really wherever you get your podcastguy so it's like on fivers audiscy and all the different ones

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 52:41

yeah sure well brent thanks so much this has been a great conversation and thank you for for sharing your story because i think it's going to inspire people because it's not just about prison but it's about really overcome and like you said your worst nightmare how do you walk through that worst nightmare to see the other side because there is an other side

[brent_cassity]: 53:00

yeah there is another side and it's just you got to step through it and and most

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 53:05

right

[brent_cassity]: 53:05

if i can if i can leave anything with anybody on that keith is even if it scares you just scares the hell out of you nothing is as bad as your mind makes it out to be not even present

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 53:17

right well bred

[brent_cassity]: 53:21

yes

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 53:21

thanks so much this was a great conversation and thank you for what you do

[brent_cassity]: 53:25

i appreciate the key thanks a lot

[keith_haney__the_man__the_myth__the_legend]: 53:28

oh well thanks brent that was great