[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to "Side By Side."

My guest today is a reason to believe in second chances.

He received a 100-year sentence for serious criminal activity when he was just 18 years old.

When he was released from prison 14 years later, he made a vow to turn his life around and to become a Harvard fellow.

He did, and then some.

He became an entrepreneur, a motivational speaker, a man who has helped millions of people worldwide.

Today we'll meet the Ambassador of Hope, Andre Norman.

- [Announcer] Funding for "Side by Side with Nido Qubein" is made possible by... - [Narrator] We started small, just 30 people in a small town in Wisconsin.

75 years later, we employ more Americans than any other furniture brand.

But none of that would've been possible without you.

Ashley, this is home.

- [Narrator] For 60 years, The Budd Group has been a company of excellence, providing facility services to customers, opportunities for employees, and support to our communities.

The Budd Group, great people, smart service.

- [Narrator] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors, locally, thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[bright music] - Andre Norman, welcome to "Side by Side."

I'm glad to have you here.

Your life is an amazing story.

You're 18 years old when you were a convicted felon.

You were put in jail, and you had a sentence of 100 years.

What did you do to deserve that?

- Well, first I didn't listen to my mom.

She tried to give me a lot of advice early.

So not listening to my parents was why I ended up in court, and why I went to prison was for robbing drug dealers.

- You robbed drug dealers?

- The drug dealers had the money, so I robbed drug dealers.

- That's not funny, but I'll tell you what, I've never heard that before.

And then they caught you, and- - They caught me.

They took me to trial.

I was convicted, 7 to 10, two 9 to 10s, two 10s, two 15 to 20s, a 5, and while incarcerated, I picked up an additional 10 years for two attempted murders.

- While you were in jail- - [Andre] Yes.

- You attempted to kill somebody?

- Yes, I ran criminal activity in jail, and I was a prison gang boss, is what they called me.

- [Nido] What does that mean?

- That means I control contraband, I control gangs.

I control everything that happens inside the commerce, the black market inside of a prison, I'm in charge of.

And every now and again, you have a dispute.

And in prison when you have a dispute, it usually gets extremely violent really fast.

- Now, I know you turned your life around.

You're doing great things.

You're traveling the world.

You're helping a lot of people.

But I wanna talk a little bit more about your experience in prison because so many of us don't understand that.

First of all, how did you get to the point where you managed all that in prison?

- When you come to jail, I mean, if you fight really well and you think even better, leadership is leadership.

It's just a matter of who are you leading.

And if you put me into prison with 10,000 people, I'm gonna find a way to become the leader.

And that's what I did.

When I went into prison, I looked at the systems.

I looked at the hierarchy.

I looked at what needed to be done, and I'm efficient, and I'm effective and a little bit violent.

And those three combinations helped me propel myself to be in charge in leadership and take over different businesses to the point you take over the entire business.

- So what happened to you growing up to cause you in the first place to rob drug dealers?

- The thing that set me off course was my mother used to get beat up by my dad.

So I watched my mother get beat at a young age, and in my mind, if my mother can be hit, anybody can be hit, was my mindset.

There's nobody off limits that you can't hit.

And then I can give you the classic story of parents not being on point, my father walking out and growing up to a bad school.

All that is true, but the truth was, I went to programs.

I went to schools, I had a lot of teachers who tried to intervene in my life.

But because I was waiting on my dad to be my hero, I refused to let anybody sit in my life.

You couldn't help me because I thought you would replace my dad.

And a lot of people helped me.

A lot of teachers, a lot of counselors, a lot of coaches tried to help me.

I refused their help because "This seat is for my dad.

He's coming back one day."

And it wasn't until I was in prison that somebody said to me, "Let me help you."

I'm like, "No, this is kind of for my dad."

He said, "Well, how about we just put a second chair down?"

Nobody ever, I'm like, "Okay," and I was able to receive the help.

'Cause I just, I wanted my dad to be my hero, and I went looking for heroes, and I couldn't find 'em.

- And what, I mean, did you wake up one day and said, "I think I'll just go on the street somewhere and find a drug dealer and beat him up-" - Oh, people teach you.

- "and steal his money"?

- No, every criminal activity in the inner city is not something that's random.

People teach you.

People teach you how to be a drug dealer.

They teach you how to be a car thief.

They teach you how to write bad checks.

They teach you how to rob people.

Somebody has to actually mentor you.

It's a internship.

So it depends on who you get a internship with.

I got a internship with robbers, so they taught me the art of armed robbery, and I became a professional armed robber.

- And now that you're inspiring a lot of people and showing how to live life in a better way, how much of your experience is prevalent in America?

- My experience, if you go to rural America, you can go down to the border where we're having a lot of issues, you can go to any inner city, there are people struggling, and there was a time where those people were just forgotten about.

And now we see them, but we still don't engage them.

So we're sitting back at meetings and conferences, deciding and talking about how are we gonna help the illiterate, how are we gonna help the poor, how are we gonna help the downtrodden, but we're never go help them.

We just talk about it.

So there's 1,001 meetings around helping people, but there's very little action on the actual help.

- We don't help them because we don't know where they are or how to help them or don't have the skill to communicate with them?

Why don't we engage them in dialogue?

- Because it's hard work.

When you have to walk into somebody's life and walk into their shame and deal with their trauma, that's a lot, and everybody shouldn't, but you should allow other people to, if you don't wanna go, empower somebody else to go.

I can tell you right now, Skid Row, L.A., there's 20,000 people homeless.

You can go to San Francisco.

There's 30,000 people homeless.

There's 2.2 million people in prison.

I can get a address to every last one of them.

And if you wanna really make the hugest difference, I tell people all the time, you go to any elementary school in a urban city or a rural city, the next gang member, rapist, robber is sitting in kindergarten right now, and all he or she wants is a hug and a sandwich, and he'll do whatever you say do.

But if you don't give him a hug and a sandwich in kindergarten, you are gonna see him at 18 on his way to prison like I was.

- And and this was where, in Boston?

- I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts.

- In Boston, so you committed your crime on the streets of Boston?

- [Andre] Yes, sir.

- And how long was it before you got caught?

- About two years.

- [Nido] Two years?

- About a two-year run.

- So you would literally go on the street or somewhere and rob somebody?

- No, no, I didn't rob people on the street.

I would find out where the drug houses were.

- I see.

- I didn't just run up and down the street.

I would find a drug house where they sold drugs from or they stored them, and I would get the information, and I'd go into that house, and I'd rob 'em.

- And what did you do with the money?

- I kept it!

[chuckles] I spent it on myself.

- So the people who trained you did not expect a- - No, you move on.

Somebody taught you, you got a bachelor's degree, and you got a master's degree, how much, you donate to the university, but it's your money.

That was my money.

I earned it.

- Yeah.

- And they didn't get any, I had to do all the time, too.

- And then you went to jail, and what did your mom think of that?

- My mom was heartbroken when I went to jail.

And I tell people, for 14 years, my mother couldn't say my name with respect.

Mothers go to work, and they talk about their kids.

She couldn't talk about me.

They go to church, and they talk about their kids, getting married- - You mean after you were in jail?

- After I was in jail, my mother couldn't really say my name.

- You didn't exist, basically, in her conversation.

- In her conversation, and that hurt, 'cause for 14 years, she was embarrassed to say my name.

- Yeah, you have siblings?

- I have, there's six of us total.

- And where are you in that?

- I'm number five.

- And the others did well or?

- Yeah, they're struggling, doing okay.

It's a range.

- But I mean, growing up, did they also go to jail or did they- - Just me and my younger brother went to jail.

He did about 24 years.

- So now you're traveling.

You're speaking to companies and schools and people in prison.

What do you tell them?

- I tell them that success is possible.

This doesn't have to be your life.

This is the greatest country on the planet.

There are spaces and places for you and people wanna receive you.

And the same way I say people don't go to help, there are people on the bottom who won't receive the help.

So it's both ends turning away from each other.

I'm trying to say, "People wanna help you.

There are people on this planet who want to help you.

They might not look like you or come from when you come from, but they earnestly and sincerely wanna help you."

And I have to show people not just how to give help, but I have to teach people how to receive help.

- And when did you start doing all this?

- When I was in prison and I finally had a mentor, I had a GED teacher who inspired me and helped me turn my life around.

- Someone from outside who would come into the prison?

- Yeah, they teach, they have schools in jail.

- I see.

- And I'm going to school, and I had this dream of, I realized I was a king of nowhere.

I became the king of the prison.

I'm the king of nowhere, and I didn't wanna die there.

And so I said, "I wanna go home and become successful."

So I picked a school called Harvard= - You served 14 years.

- Yes.

- [Nido] Of your 100-year sentence.

- I became a lawyer, and I overturned my case.

- Wait, wait, wait a minute, you gotta take me a little bit, a little bit, slow down.

You're in prison.

- I'm in prison, in solitary confinement.

- You were the head of all the criminal activity in prison.

- Yes.

- You were collecting money and doing stuff.

- [Andre] Doing stuff.

- But then this teacher comes in, and slowly you study and you became a lawyer?

- I became what they call a jailhouse lawyer.

I became proficient in the law, and I started studying my case, and I overturned my case on appeal.

- And you mean you went to court?

- I went to court, and I fought the district attorney, and I fought the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

I won my appeal.

- Give us a minute of your argument.

What did you say?

- I'm at a double jeopardy clause, whereas when I was initially arrested, I was charged with larceny of a motor vehicle, and subsequently I was charged with armed robbery of the same motor vehicle.

So on both documents in both courts, I stole the same item twice.

I was initially convicted of the lower court first and subsequently convicted of the second court, of the higher charge.

So when I won on appeal, my argument was both courts knew about each other.

They both drove me back and forth, and they allowed me to have dual prosecutions.

So therefore, I was convicted for stealing the same item twice.

So the second charge was actually removed, which was the armed robbery and the larger charge, and the larceny became a lesser included offense of armed robbery.

And subsequently the country committed and created a statute called armed carjacking, which was predicated on my case, 'cause it was a landmark case.

- Now Andre, listening to you, I'm hearing a man who is fluid in your conversation.

You speak with clarity and persuasion, and I'm gonna tell you what I'm thinking at this moment.

I'm thinking that this gentleman has a lot of skill.

It's unfortunate that he directed it in the wrong, with the wrong focus early on, paid the price, came out, and using basically the same skill of persuasion and leadership in a much better, positive, helpful way to society.

- Yes.

- And where did you get the skill to speak like you do?

- My mother, my mother just passed a few months ago, but my mother is a natural orator.

She speaks, she's fluent.

She taught me my thinking strategies, everything.

I get everything, I am my mother reborn, so all my skills- - What did she do, your mother?

- She worked, she went to Boston College, and subsequently she worked for the federal government in the passport office.

But she raised six kids, went through a ton of trauma with all of us, but she got us through.

And regardless of what we did, she never disowned us.

She got upset a few times, was extremely disappointed.

- So forgive me for asking this question, but you were 18 when you went to prison?

- Yes.

- Or 19 or?

- 18.

- 18.

You was there till age 32.

- [Andre] 32.

- How old are you now?

- I'm 56.

- So for 24 years, you've been out of prison.

- [Andre] Yes, sir.

- And what got you into this work of traveling, and how did you create demand for your speaking and counseling?

- The demand is people are in hurt.

People are in pain, people are in need.

I see pain.

I understand, I've been seeing it since I was a baby.

So when I walk into a room, I have the ability to see somebody's trauma, somebody's pain beyond who they are, and I just help them.

I wake up every single morning, and I say, "Who can I help today?"

Then I go out.

It used to be I helped prisoners and I helped addicts from the inner cities.

Then I started speaking at companies.

YPO would bring me out.

London Business School hired me in 2001.

So I'm in the room with all these wealthy people, and I'm realizing their kids are addicted, their spouses drink too much, and they had the same problems we had except they didn't have access to the same type of resources for help.

There are far fewer drug addiction centers in the suburbs than there are in the city.

So I started helping wealthy people with their kids and their spouses kick addiction, getting the treatment, suicide ideation.

And I started going in, and I'm saying, "Why aren't you helping your own kids?"

"It's not politically correct.

We have so much money, we have so much.

We can't ask people for help."

I tell 'em, "Don't ever jump over your own kids to save somebody else's.

Your kid counts, too."

And that is my primary message when I go on stage that your kid counts, too.

And they have to be reminded 'cause they feel guilty for being wealthy.

I say, "Wealth has nothing to do with being a parent."

- Wealth has nothing to do with being a parent.

- [Andre] None.

- What makes a good parent in your mind?

- A good parent is attentive.

They're there, they're engaged.

They share from their own experiences.

They don't try to hold that child into who they were.

I can tell my son, "You don't know my life."

He doesn't, I respect his life.

So being a friend, being a listener, being present, and just being there in person.

Kids spell love time spent, not gifts, not trips.

Not, being on your phone in the car is not being there.

I know a lot of kids would tell me, "If I could throw my dad's phone away, I would, 'cause 24 hours a day he has a phone stuck to the side of his head, and he calls."

- Andre, what causes that in our society?

Is it that we are such a competitive nation, and everybody is working like crazy to get ahead, to make money, support a family?

Is it a competitive edge?

What do you think is the cause for this inattentiveness, let's say, or this busyness that all of us in one way or another feel?

- Everybody believes they have more time than they do.

They think and they tell themselves, "I can make it up later.

"I can fix it later.

I can fix it later."

And you can't.

You can't change now later.

You can only change now now.

Your kid needs you now.

Your wife or your spouse needs you now.

Your community needs you now.

"So I'm gonna go make this one more deal, and then I'm gonna come back and help.

I'm gonna do this one more trip, then I'm gonna help.

I got one more call, and then I'm gonna play games with you."

And it doesn't happen.

We believe our kids grow up slow and they'll be there forever.

The next thing you know, they're off to college.

Or we believe we have more time than we really have.

This is a short life, and you should live your life in a way that reflects what you want it to reflect, not to dream of.

- You have one son?

- I have one son.

- What is it that you're doing with your son that's different than what you grew up with?

- My son, his mom, PhD, MIT, master's, Harvard, super intelligent lady, she wanted our boy to go to college immediately.

I realized my son's not an academic like his mother, and he's not ready for school.

He wakes up late, you know what I'm saying?

The basic kid stuff.

So I made him do a gap year, and he's sitting with me, and he's studying business, and he's studying taxes, and he's studying federal government contracting, and he's just spending time with Dad.

He comes on trips with me, and he's learning to be an adult.

We didn't just drop him off on somebody's campus and say, "Well, you fix him."

Then you would've called me and said, "Hey, your kid's not getting up for class."

I know my kid, so I'm being honest, and I'm saying, "He can go to college next year."

So he's just spending a year with me just shadowing Dad, because at the end of the day, I don't believe there's a better teacher for my son on life than me.

- Forgive me for being intrusive, but how does a convicted felon come out of a jail where he had some misbehavior even in jail and marry a woman who has a master's from Harvard and a PhD from MIT?

- Her description was- - Is it your personality?

Is it your good looks?

Is it your charm?

Is it her sense of grace and forgiveness?

What is it?

- I'm gonna give you what she said.

- Okay.

- She described me to all of her friends of, "He has range.

This guy does everything."

So I would go to school with her.

I understand, she's an academic.

She was a professor at Tufts University.

No, excuse me, I was a professor at Tufts.

She was at Brandeis.

So I would, I have range, so I can walk into, I was in state prison yesterday, Mississippi.

I'm in one of the worst prisons in the worst units dealing with people who've been dealing with murder in real time.

I leave that prison, and I come here, and I'm sitting with you at one of the nicest universities.

I'm gonna leave here, I'm gonna fly to Arizona, and I'm gonna be sitting with two extremely successful businesspeople, Lance Armstrong and Danica Patrick, and I'll leave them, and I'll fly to a drug treatment center in Ohio.

And I function in every space, because it's not about me, it's about the space.

So she saw what I did working with from addicts to working with politicians to working with businessmen.

She said, "I've never seen anybody walk in all these different rooms back to back."

And she just liked my personality.

- Mm-hmm, okay, well, congratulations to you.

You should write a book exactly about that.

- I have a book, it's called "Ambassador of Hope," but it's not about that.

- Yes, I understand.

What is the Hope Academy?

- The Hope Academy is about helping people.

There's no one specific demographic.

So I work with large companies.

I help their family members with addiction, suicide ideation, and just depression.

I go to prisons, and I help them with training for staff, and I help them with integration and reentry programs for the prisoners.

Then it's just my vehicle to help people.

So there's no boundaries.

It's just, if you call my phone, I will show up.

It doesn't have to fit into a certain box.

If you call my phone, I'll show up, and that's what I do.

- You grew up in Boston.

- [Andre] Yes, sir.

- Where do you live now?

- I'm based in Atlanta and in Tempe, Arizona.

- I see.

- So I go, I'm back and forth.

- I see.

Let's talk for a minute, Andre.

You made the point that a lot of these children in our society today grow up and can go in the wrong direction, and their life can have various levels of challenges.

Maybe they don't all go to jail, but various, whether it's addiction, whether it's social issues, whatever it might be.

Let's talk about what we can do to correct that.

I realize this is a big question.

Is it the, you said it's responsibility of parents.

What are the one or two things parents ought to change?

You've made the point, time, give time, be there, be present, and so on.

But parents don't go through some academic program that teaches them how to be parents.

They use their frame of reference more often than not.

And school systems have challenges with all kinds of regulatory matters, with resources, finances, and others.

But if you were not just the Ambassador of Hope, but you were the king of the world for a year, what are the two or three things that you would do that can practically, pragmatically, and sustainably redirect our country?

Because if we don't, it's gonna get worse, not better.

- If you made me king of the world, and we're just gonna stay in America, the first thing I would do is fix our school system.

- [Nido] And how would you do that?

- Starting at K-1, because most kids from kindergarten to second grade, mom has to drop you off.

You're too small to get there on your own.

So we're gonna create programs for those kids, and we're gonna create programs that engage the parents, because around the second and third grade, mom disengages because the kid can now get on the bus.

He can get to school back and forth on his own, and they disengage around second, third grade.

So knowing this, we build a training component or a comprehensive component, include the parents to keep them beyond the second grade.

Don't wonder why they're not showing up in the sixth grade because we're not engaging 'em in first and second grade before they disconnect, because their lives are traumatic.

So my first thing, if I could do any one thing, it'd be fix the school system, and that would, A, education changes the world.

It makes things equal.

It makes things better.

Secondly, for just addiction and trauma and just life in general, we need to communicate.

So I don't subscribe to any political party.

I subscribe to better people.

I'm happy to be an American.

So creating conversations like this, so to have a former gang member, to have somebody who's currently helping people around the world sit with you, it brings this information to another audience.

They might now, "Oh, wait a minute, I can help my kid?"

There are so many people who believe it's not politically correct to help their kid when there's so many people starving.

That's wrong.

I want all audiences to know they can be helpful to their own child and to their own community.

And if you don't know how, 'cause my mom didn't know how, my aunts didn't know how, communication, how do we foster communications where we can sit down and my mom's experience and your mom's experience can be shared.

And then they can both be better, and our kids would be better.

So minus communication, we get silos.

And with silos, we get bad things.

So communication amongst adults, how do you cross people from whatever communities and spaces into the same room?

There's great conversations.

And then secondly, and primarily, fix the kids, save the babies.

My thing is, if you give me adult man in prison, you give me a sixth grader in kindergarten, man's on his own, save the baby.

We have to save the babies, and we save 'em with education and trauma-informed care.

- Do you, this is a hypothesis, but listening to you, do you make the point that people who have lesser means have greater problems, or all kinds of people of all kinds of means have problems but at different levels in different ways?

- The people who have lesser means' problems show up on TV.

The people with better means, their problems end up in Utah in a drug treatment center.

- Elaborate on that.

- Rich people can send their kids off to drug treatment and to the six-month program in the mountains or to the forestry retreat, like, "Sh, you're going to visit your aunt."

Whereas if you live, you don't have the means, then prison systems and public school and alternative schools become your thing, and you're the six o'clock news because you acted out.

Whereas the kid who has means, their parents will give 'em some kind of doctor or some kind of therapist or some kind of long-term treatment that they can afford, and it generally doesn't make it better because I tell people, "Denied access is not treatment.

Sending your kid to Utah or to Montana for six months, it's not treatment, it's called denied access."

If I deny you access to- - [Nido] Denied access to the parent.

- Denied access to drugs, denied access to trauma.

- Oh, I see, I see.

- You deny a kid access to drugs for six months, he'll be clean until he's not denied access.

So most programs operate on denied access.

- Why didn't you slip and go back to criminal activity?

- Mentors, I have a host of mentors who hold me accountable.

I didn't have anybody holding me accountable, look me in my face and say, "Andre, are you paying your taxes?

Andre, are you going to PTA meetings?

Andre, are you taking care of your wife?"

I didn't have accountability as a kid, and I didn't have accountability as a young man.

Now I'm accountable to people.

- Andre, your life is fascinating.

You've educated me today, and you inspired me.

And I want to thank you for being with you on "Side by Side."

- It's my pleasure, brother.

[calm music] [calm music continues] [calm music continues] - [Announcer] Funding for "Side by Side with Nido Qubein" is made possible by... - [Narrator] We started small, just 30 people in a small town in Wisconsin.

75 years later, we employ more Americans than any other furniture brand.

But none of that would've been possible without you.

Ashley, this is home.

- [Narrator] For 60 years, The Budd Group has been a company of excellence, providing facility services to customers, opportunities for employees, and support to our communities.

The Budd Group, great people, smart service.

- [Narrator] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors, locally, thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[upbeat rock music]