In the middle of a rising career, Chuck Gallagher lost everything and went to prison because he made bad choices. He has since rebuilt his career and his life back to immense success. Chuck focuses on the importance of ethics and how that can help you survive and thrive. He learned a lesson about ethics, choices and consequences the hard way by being convicted of a white-collar crime. Today, Chuck shares his inspiring journey and the consequences of his unethical choices. He explains how life gives you second chances when you make the right choices in his book, SECOND CHANCES: Transforming Adversity into Opportunity, which bridges the gap between personal accountability and business success. Chuck’s focus is business—but his passion is empowering others, and he provides empowering techniques to you in this podcast.
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Chuck Gallagher Talks About Prison, Choices, And Second Chances
I’m here with Chuck Gallagher. Chuck was incarcerated for eighteen months and even with his criminal record, he’s been able to obtain success as the Vice President of a public company. He’s a professional speaker, want to be a musician and has a video production company. Chuck is going to share his story with us about his incarceration, what it was like being in prison and how he survived and thrived after prison. Chuck, thank you much for being here.
Julia, it is great. Thank you much for the invitation. I appreciate it.
I’m looking forward to speaking with you. I’d like to start with your story. Can you share your story with us?
The story relating to prison is, back in the ‘80s, a long time ago, I was a tax partner in a CPA firm, had testified before the United States House, weighs and means committee on various aspects of federal tax law, written articles and national magazine stock continuing education courses in 30 states. All of that stuff seemed perfectly great. I had a great career ahead of me. In the late ‘80s, I was overextended and underfunded or the easy way to put it is I had too much debt. It appears that might be going back into one but at the time, we had come out of a recession and I was fresh out of college.
I was wide-eyed. One of the things I remember being taught was, “Buy the most expensive house you can barely afford.” It’s the trappings, the house and the car. All of these things help create success. I bought into that hook, line and sinker. The problem with that is when you incur debt or use a credit card to buy something or whatever it happens to be, you got to pay it back. As folks would say across the country, “Robbing Peter to pay Paul,” I would make one payment and miss another and then make that payment to miss this one. As long as it wasn’t too bad, you could make that work for a short period.
I remember getting a call from my local banker in January 1987 and he said something like this, “You’re two months behind in your house payment. Is there a problem?” Here’s the thing. As human beings rationally, we think from our frontal cortex. This is like a little brain science. That’s where rational thought takes place but when something happens that’s unexpected, that all of a sudden triggers, you quit thinking from the frontal cortex. You go to lizard brain and make crap choices. I went to the lizard brain.
Here’s how it played, “I’m two months behind in my house payment. I’m talking to the banker who sends me lots of business. I’m a CPA so I’m supposed to help people help manage their financial affairs. If I can’t manage mine and he knows I can’t manage mine, is he going to send me business? If he doesn’t send me business, I’m not going to have that much more money. I’ll have less money and I can’t pay my bills the way it is. Am I going to tell him the truth?” That’s lizard brain on steroids.
They’re the only thing I knew to do. I said, “Are you sure that payment hasn’t been misapplied?” which threw him off the scent and gave me a moment to figure out how to solve the problem. For purposes of what we’re doing here, I’m not going to take a lot of time. I’ll make it easy. I ended up embezzling money from a client so that I could take the stolen money, which I called borrowing but I took the stolen money to the bank and pled stupidity.
We had a good laugh about it. I made the house payment and made sure I didn’t skip it in the future but I found out something. It was easy. When I had the chance, I paid it back. In my head, I called it borrowing because you pay back what you owe. It was easy so I did it again and paid it back. I’ve convinced myself, “I must have my little private bank here.” Therefore, I continued that process.
The unfortunate side is from 1987 to 1990, I created a Ponzi scheme. I didn’t know what the term was at the time but I clearly do now. The most famous example in our lifetime is Bernie Madoff, who created a Ponzi scheme for twenty-some-odd years but Ponzi schemes will collapse on themselves and mine did in 1990. At that point, that put me on the track to ultimately going to federal prison. That’s how the story started.
I appreciate your sharing. I didn’t know the whole story. It also gives visibility to the mind of somebody, how somebody so honest and upstanding citizen can do something like that. I like the way that you said that you go to lizard brain and things that wouldn’t normally make sense are now making sense. You’ve convinced yourself. That’s going to help a lot of readers, people that have been incarcerated, people that have loved ones that are incarcerated or people that are going to school and studying criminal justice, how the mind can work. I know there’s a lot more psychology and things behind it. You talk about that as a speaker on the mind and things that people do and how they can be successful. Thank you for sharing that. Let’s go in order here. You were incarcerated. Did you have a family at the time?
I was married. I had two children. The easiest way to put this is when the house of cards or the Ponzi scheme collapsed, I ended up having to go home and tell my wife and my partners in the CPA firm that I had functionally become nothing more than a liar in a thief. To me, the significant thing in both of those cases, partners from business and wife on personal, I broke trust. In our relationships and human relationships, everything is based on trust. We hope our kids will tell us the truth. Occasionally, they’re going to lie but we want to trust each other.
That trust creates a foundation. When you break trust, you have broken a fundamental foundation that keeps things connected. As you can imagine, breaking trust broke the foundation with my partners and eliminated my employment there and a variety of other things, including my license as a CPA. Breaking trust with my wife created likely what was an insurmountable problem that not just took some time but eventually led to divorce.
When you break trust, you have broken a fundamental foundation that keeps things connected. Share on XIt’s hard when you break trust and build trust back. We’ll talk more about trust but it’s pretty common what you went through. For you to go back, confront people and tell them, that takes a lot of courage. It’s difficult to do. I want to commend you on that because I know how difficult that is. Some people go around them and they don’t want to tell people. They hide it. It’s difficult when you’re going to prison and it’s your partners and family but you had the courage to confront them, tell them and take responsibility for what you did.
This is important for families and those who maybe have been incarcerated a whole ball wax. The night before when the card was pulled in the house of cards and it collapsed, I was in Idaho. My home was in North Carolina at the time. That night I considered ending my life. To me that made sense. I had plenty of insurance. I had failed my wife. I was failing my children. I had failed my partner and my clients. I looked at myself as a worthless human being. Eliminating my physical existence would take me out of the picture, open up doors of financial funds to solve the problems and give my wife a new start. All of the things one might think about, I thought about.
I’m a guy and I’m chicken when it comes to pain. There was not an easy way in a hotel room to end my life that didn’t seem to be painful. I remember picking up the telephone and calling a psychiatrist or psychologist. It was the yellow pages in those days. I was dialing. The first six calls went like this, “You’ve reached the office of Dr. Such and Such. Our office hours are from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM. You’ve reached this after office hours. At the sound of the tone, if you’ll leave your name in a brief message, we’ll be happy to give you a call. Have a nice day.” If you’re thinking about suicide and somebody tells you to have a nice day on a message machine, it’ll tick you off.
By the sixth call, I was a little ticked. On the seventh call, I got a human being. What he said is why I had that courage. He made the comment to me. He said, “You have made a terrible mistake but you are not a mistake,” and then he repeated it. He said, “The choices you make tonight will define the life you live in the future and the legacy you leave for your two sons.” That hit home. Not that I am a particularly courageous person but if I wanted to leave a legacy for my two sons, I needed to start by being transparent and telling the truth. The consequences were going to take place whether I told the truth or not. It was better to tell the truth and at least set a pattern for my two young sons than it would be for me to try to hide it, sweep it under the rug, keep it in the closet and still end up in the same place.
Your choices will define your future and the legacy you leave for your children. Share on XWhat you shared is beneficial. You’ve made a terrible mistake but you’re not the mistake of what the therapist said to you. What we say is that the crime is what you did, not who you are. It’s powerful and I love the way you worded it too, that what he told you made you think. You made a terrible mistake but you are not a mistake. That turned you around and made you see that you are a person. There’s still hope. Look at everything you’ve done and we’re going to talk about that. I’m always curious about the relationship with your children. How is that with your sons?
It’s perfect. I could not ask for it to be better. I broke the trust of my wife. When I opened my mouth, she wondered, “Is it Live or is it Memorex?” In other words, am I telling the truth or a lie? That was fair, I get that. She wanted to make sure that I could be the best father possible for our two sons. I’m giving her all the credit for that because she could have been angry and it could have been ugly but she did not want that. I felt like the best thing that I could do for my two sons is be transparent. The one true thing is as the process was moving forward eventually to prison, my wife was concerned about what would the kids in school do to our two sons knowing dad is in prison.
She felt sure they were going to be bullied. I say this with a big smile on my face, “Nobody bullied my kids because dad was in prison,” and had quite the reverse effect. They were kind of like, “Maybe we don’t want to mess with these guys.” Not that. I’m a white-collar criminal. It’s not that I’m a tough guy. I had been very open in my community.
I had been very open with everybody around about what had taken place. I have found in my experience that if you’re transparent and you’re willing to accept accountability and/or responsibility for your actions, there’s a level of grace for most human beings that may not like what you did but they can at least accept the fact that you’ve owned up to it and you recognize it wasn’t productive for anybody. You’re doing the best you can to correct the poor choices that you made.
A lot of it depends on what the crime is. When you do tell people, you can’t have expectations because people are going to do whatever they’re going to do. I’m happy that your boys were not bullied and that things worked out. Where you are now, it’s a good story for something bad that happened because bad things can happen but good things can come from it. I’m interested in when you were incarcerated, how did you maintain your relationship with your family and people around you? What did you learn in prison? It’s a two-part question.
I was incarcerated in 1995. That’s been a while back. In 1995, the only way to be able to communicate with family or friends was either via the payphone, which with exorbitant charges and somebody accepting those charges on the other end or snail mail. In 2022, there’s email through the system but that was it then.
I wanted to comment on the cost of calls because when my brother was incarcerated in the late ‘90s, it was very expensive. In 2022, there’s been a lot of people working on the costs so that it’s more affordable. I wanted to comment on it to the readers that back then it was expensive.
We may get off into this again but prison is a business. I’m not saying that in a negative way. I’m saying it is business. When people quit thinking about it as criminal justice, it’s a business. Businesses make money. If you buy gas, you put it in the pump, you sell it for a higher price, it’s a business. You might keep your gas price low so you sell more stuff in the convenience store. It’s still a business. the cost of calls and all of the detriments to keeping people connected is a way for the prison to make money. I didn’t say it was fair or right but it’s a business and it’s part of how they make money. My communication was primarily through letters and telephone calls.
Fortunately, my wife encouraged my kids to write letters. They were little itty bitty kids at the time. The letter at Christmas for my youngest son was like, “It’s Christmas. I don’t know what Santa Claus is going to leave. All of the nice things,” then it was like, “Dad, I miss you much. Why did you do what you did? I wish you were here.” We worked through that. That’s the communication side. It wasn’t that I was cut off from people. It just wasn’t easy. I lived for a letter. If somebody wrote me, I would always write them back because when a mail call came, if you’d had nothing, it was debilitating for that day.
If somebody had sent you a letter or a card, anything, it meant that somebody remembered you. You were disconnected from the world. To be remembered by a letter or a card was powerfully uplifted. For those of us that are out, communicating with someone that’s in has more impact than probably we know. Going into prison was a different experience. You may mention that I was incarcerated for eighteen months. I was sentenced to a minimum security prison. A lot of people are like, “That’s club fed.”
I want to help out for a moment. It is a club. I’m on BOP.gov. You can look up my number. I will always be there. It’s like having a freaking social security number. I’m stuck in that system. You will do some perfunctory task in some form or fashion but you will work. That was the first year that I didn’t have to file a tax return because my total income was $243.28. That wasn’t enough to have to file. Side note to that.
Here’s the thing. The prison was a weird space. I was not prepared for this. Ninety percent of the people in the prison where I was located were drug dealers. 70% were Black, 20% were Hispanic, 10% were White and 3% were white-collar criminals, which is my category. I was thrown into a different environment. My cellmate was a young African-American fellow named Buck. We thought it was funny that it was Buck and Chuck. We don’t know if they did it for comic relief but it was Buck and Chuck, Ebony and Ivory. After being there for 24 hours, he says to me and I’m not making fun of him, I need to say it the way it sounded, “What you in here for?”
It was the first time he’d spoken to me. I have been there for a whole day, he never said a word. I became a John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, Bad To The Bone White guy. I said, “I’m a liar and a thief.” He goes, “Word.” I had no idea what he was talking about. He says, “What I’m talking about.” He flies out of the cell and I’m like, “What in the world happened? I’ve been here 24 hours and I don’t even know what this guy’s talking about.” He comes flying back into the cell like the Tasmanian dinner. He says, “I’ll make you a deal.” I have been here 24 hours. This guy is going to make a deal with me and then it occurred to me.
I didn’t read Prison for Dummies. Maybe that’s what’s supposed to be, I don’t know. He says, “You ain’t going to make it in here. You don’t know the lingo and how to act. Here’s what I do. I’ll teach you the lingo. I’ll tell you what you need to know and how to act. I’ll make sure you are safe in here. Teach me how to speak correctly so when I get out, I have a chance at getting a real job because I never want to be back.” Buck was an angel. I could not have asked for a better cellmate and someone that could guide me through a process that I was woefully unfamiliar with.
I say that to say, often we think of prison as a terrible gnarly place. If we’re open to the idea of what might happen, angels can come to us in different ways at different times in different forms through different people. Buck helped me navigate the waters of prison. When he got out, I helped him get his first job. He is not back and neither am I. Prisons sometimes can open doors that we would not routinely and regularly plan to go through. I never ever want to go back but I cannot say in honesty, it was the worst experience of my life. It taught me things that I would never have learned and connected me with people I never would’ve connected with. I have to look at it as part of it is the divine plan and I needed that experience.
Prisons sometimes can open doors that you would not routinely and regularly plan to go through. Share on XWe don’t know why things happen and even though it can be the most terrible thing and you can worry about it, you don’t know what’s going to come out of it. Mostly everybody that I’ve spoken to has learned something. I wouldn’t wish the experience on anybody. However, some things happen in our lives and lessons that we need to learn and we go through different things. Finding your angel is wonderful. I’ve heard that story before. I never heard of The Buck and Chuck. That’s funny, a little levity and everything because there’s not a lot of comedy in prison but it’s so nice that you had that experience. I know that’s weird to say but you’ve seen a whole different culture. People don’t know what goes on in prison.
It’s like my friend says, “You open the curtain and it’s a whole other world,” and you met people that you wouldn’t normally meet. It creates more compassion. The one thing that a lot of people say is that they thought that they were non-judgmental and compassionate before but after an experience of being incarcerated or having a loved one incarcerated, there’s much more compassionate and much more open. Thank you for sharing that story. When you said that you could communicate with your family through writing and calls, were they able to visit or were kids allowed back then?
In those days, there was one day a year called Family Day. That’s when children would be allowed to visit. My kids came and we had the opportunity to visit. Otherwise, it was limited to people on your visitation list. In most cases, I was incarcerated in North Carolina but not particularly close to family. It was a bit of a haul to be able to make that. Fortunately, from time to time, people would come to visit. There are some funny stories. Buck and I were going in one day for a visit. I was substantially younger at the time. There was a young woman there who was visiting some other inmate and was very attractive.
She walked by and Buck is standing with me. He says, “She’s PHAT.” I looked at him and thought, “I’m a pretty good judge of a female body and I’m saying she’s a 0 or a 2 but she is not fat.” He looked at me and says, “No, PHAT or Pretty Hot And Tempting.” I said, “You are bad. If I walked up to her and says, ‘You’re fat,’ she would’ve slapped the crap out of me.” He said, “If I’d done it, she’d given me a hug.” It was one of those things where we were learning that as you look culturally at how people see the world and how they express themselves, it was like, “Huh?” Some things can be learned there and some of them do create a bit of humor that pops up from time to time.
If somebody said, “You’re PHAT,” I don’t think I would’ve taken that as a compliment but I do know the different terms. It all depends on who says it and how they say it.
Also, what the context is.
You’re such a great storyteller. I love your stories. It was an experience when you’re incarcerated and then when you got out, there’s a whole journey of your success and how you move forward and everything that you’re doing. I always like to know about the day of release. What it’s like for each person and who is there?
Let me go down two parts to this. First is in prison. At least for the federal system, by the last six months of your sentence, you are “eligible” to go to a halfway house. I decided I was going to be the model prisoner because I’m not going to get in trouble. I don’t need to fight anybody. I keep my head down. It’s getting close to six months. I said to Buck, “I’m ready to go to the halfway house.” He said, “They don’t go to give it to you.” “Why? I’ve been a model prisoner. I’m eligible. “ He said, “You don’t understand. Prison is a business.”
“What does that have to do with me going to the halfway house?” He said, “The census is down. The number of prisoners in the prison camp is low. They won’t release you.” “What’s that have to do with anything?” He said, “You have to have inventory and enough prisoners for the employees of the facility to keep their job. If the number of people incarcerated is low, they won’t let you go. They need a certain minimum number of people to maintain the workforce.” Sure enough, I was eligible for six months but I didn’t get it. You’re turned down.
During that month, there was an influx of new people. Buck said, “You’ll get it now.” Sure enough, I got it. I’m going to go to get out on the first day to your question. The point to that is it’s important for people to understand, “Get out of your head about justice, reform, education and all of the things. It’s still a business. A political subdivision does not, by nature, want to have fewer employees,” whether it is the state of South Carolina, Texas, Oregon, California, I don’t care if they’re employed by the state. You never hear a state saying, “We have been able to cut back on certain things and we can lay off 20% of the workforce.” That would be a disaster.
Therefore, if you work in the prison system, inmates are in inventory and you need a certain amount of inventory on the shelves to keep the thing running. When you get that in your head, then it becomes easier to understand and navigate how the system works. The day I got out, my mother came to pick me up and drive me to the halfway house. To get there, I had to have a job. I had been working feverously behind the scenes with family members and friends to see if I could secure a job because if you couldn’t secure a job, you couldn’t go to the halfway house.
Keep in mind, I was a tax partner in a CPA firm. In my first job, I screwed that up. Mom always said, “Death and taxes.” Since I screwed up taxes, I began selling cemetery property door to door. I looked at it like this. Everybody breathing is a potential customer at some point in time. If I knock on enough doors, someone will say yes. I did recognize one thing. I get several calls from time to time from people who have been incarcerated saying, “How do I put my life back together?”
Step 1) Take the first job that most people don’t want to do. That’s where you’ll get hired. If people want to do the job, there are plenty of people buying it. Who wants to sell cemetery property door to door? It’s not a sexy job. Nobody wanted to do it so I would get hired or be a person who works on a roof, hammering nails or working for the garbage company collecting garbage. I don’t want to collect garbage. It’s a job. When you get that first job, I didn’t say it’s easy. What people generally don’t want to do is where you’ll get hired, then be great at it.
Always show up. Don’t give any excuses. Don’t talk back. Do the job and be the best cemetery salesperson you can be. In my case, in nine months, I was their top salesperson. I knew if they wanted to lay anybody off, I’d be the first to go. If I’m producing more revenue for that company than anybody else, there’s a pretty fair chance they’re going to find somebody else to let go and not let go of me because I’m generating something valuable for them. When you become the best at what you do, then you become invaluable and people don’t tend to want to let you go.
That’s wonderful advice, especially for people that are coming out of prison. We have a reentry workshop and that’s one of the things that we talk to the family members about how they can support their loved ones and encourage them. Take that first job. It’s not forever. It’s getting your foot into something, having a job, being able to move forward and being the best at it. You thrived in that company.
Let me add one other thing to that. A lot of people get frustrated when they’re out of prison and they go apply to McDonald’s or Walmart. They’re going to large-company or big box stores that likely have a policy against hiring a convicted felon. Don’t go there. You’re wasting your time and frustrating yourself. Ask yourself the question, in your community as you drive around or someone drives you around but look at all of the small businesses.
Some of them look like hole-in-the-wall businesses. It might be a tire store. I don’t care what it is but look at all of the small businesses that you see and talk to those people because there’s a fair chance that the owner of a small business may have a son, daughter, niece, nephew, brother or whomever that’s incarcerated and they own a business. They might look more kindly on, “I hope when my son gets out, someone will give him a second chance. I’ll give you a second chance.” That’s the best way to find something that practically works.
That’s when you’re outside. You had to find a job when you were incarcerated before you went to the halfway house. That’s a little bit more difficult
Here’s the reality. Going back to ’95, it’s either a telephone call, which likely is to friends and family or it’s going to be a letter. In most cases, what does that mean? This is not true for everyone but I’m assuming for a moment that we’ve got family that probably loves us and care. The question then becomes, “I’m close to being released. Who can you connect me with that might be willing to hire someone?” I’m making this easy for me and you for a second. I know we’re across the country. If you said, “I’ve got a friend in South Carolina whose son is scheduled to be released in the next six months. Would you be willing to talk with,” I’m making the name up, “Dana, about her son coming out?”
“I would.” Sometimes, let’s use the resources that we have to think about who could we connect with that might be willing to at least give consideration or help navigate the feeling like, “How do I get to a halfway house?” As a side note, Buck said, “I don’t want to go to a halfway house. I’m going to serve my sentence all the way through so when I’m out.” He and I knew each other. I knew who he was and what he was capable of. By that point, I was working in the cemetery business and every cemetery around the country needs maintenance people. Somebody’s got to dig the grave. Most of the time it’s with a backhoe.
Somebody’s got to dig, fill in the grave and mow the grass. If you’re in prison, you’re probably weed-eating or doing something like that. His first job was weed-eating in a cemetery. The people told me six months later, “That’s the hardest working person we’ve ever hired. He was thrilled to be out. It was fresh air he can weed.” He took pride in what he did. That’s part of the reason why making those connections work.
Be the best that you can be always no matter what’s going on. Especially when somebody’s coming out of prison, their pride or self-esteem is down. It’s hard to have that motivation. It’s got to come from inside for people to find that strength. Some people have never had it. I’m taking a side street here. A lot of people who have been incarcerated have had childhood trauma in their life and have never felt that pride. That’s a whole other topic, story and episode about self-esteem and bringing people to a point where they can feel that pride.
One of the things that you had asked earlier and that I had not answered was, “What happened following that?” I became the top salesperson. They asked me one day, “Could you teach other people to do what you do?” What I wanted to say was, “Yes, if you’ll let me hire a bunch of convicts, we’ll be good,” but I didn’t say that. I said, “I believe I can do that.” I was given the opportunity to be the sales manager at this particular cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina. It turned out that we assembled a good team and it was very successful.
A couple of years later, they said, “You’ve shown success here. Is it possible if you could take this to other locations? If we moved you to South Carolina, could you take on the state of South Carolina in Georgia?” I was on probation at the time. I had to get permission from the probation office in North Carolina to transfer to South Carolina. Every month, I had to provide all the financial support and go in and do the tests that they wanted or whatever they needed. I was perfectly fine with it. Don’t argue with authority. Arguing with authority is a crap thing. It’s like, “They got it. You don’t. Suck it up. Be fine.”
Arguing with authority is a dumb thing. Share on XI was transferred to South Carolina and took on those thirteen locations. A couple of years later, they were very successful. They asked me if can I take on North Carolina and East Tennessee. By this point in time, it’s close to ten years in this stage. I became a senior VP of sales and marketing at a public company. I was always transparent. I never hid from my employer my background at all. As far as they knew, I told them everything. I didn’t want anything hidden.
Although I had the mental capacity, because I have a Master’s in accounting to be able to do financial work, I always refused that. I didn’t want to be involved with that. If there was ever a problem, I’d always be accused. I don’t want that as an issue. I don’t do it. It’s easy. By that point, people ask, “How can you be a convicted felon and a VP in a public company?” I made a comment. It was off the cuff as every choice has a consequence.
In the mid-‘80s, I was successful legitimately but I was also crap and had made a bunch of crap choices. In the mid-‘90s, my happy butt walked into federal prison. Choices have consequences. In the mid-‘90s, I made a different set of choices. By the mid-2000s, I’m a senior VP in a public company because your history does not create your destiny. If you understand that, then you’re not bound by past mistakes.
Your history does not create your destiny. If you understand that, your past mistakes will not bind you. Share on XThat goes back to what you did and not who you are that your past doesn’t dictate your future.
I’ll throw this out because this is probably my soapbox moment. I get irritated when people are like, “It’s unfair. It’s this, that or the other.” It’s like, “You got a choice. You can be a victim or a victor,” but it’s a choice. You’re not a victim. If you say, “I’ve been victimized,” there is some choice you’ve made that has helped put you there. I didn’t say you chose the initial thing that happened but you can choose not to be a victim. I’m a convicted felon. There are some things that I can’t do. Some companies won’t hire me. I’m a VP in a public company. My largest client does $140 million worth of business with us.
That client wouldn’t hire me personally because I’m a convicted felon but they’ll do $140 million worth of business with my company. I’d rather have it the other way. It’s okay. I can’t go to Canada. They don’t allow convicted felons in Canada. If they know you’re a convicted felon, they going to turn you around. I can’t own a gun. I don’t need one anyway.
Where am I going to go where I need a gun? I don’t need a gun. It’s okay. I understand there are certain limitations but those limitations are insignificant compared to what is significant in your life if you accept the fact that your history doesn’t create your destiny. It’s part of your past. It’s like all of us were teenagers and probably little crap if you want to know the truth at some point. That doesn’t mean we’re bad people. It’s just a moment in time. We accept it and move on. Our parents forgave us for that. Thank God.
I could relate to your frontal cortex isn’t developed yet. People don’t realize that. We’ve all done things. Going through these experiences does create more compassion, understanding and openness for everybody. Let’s talk about where you are. You have come so far. You’ve shared much with us. I love your stories. Where are you? How are you doing?
I feel fine. There’s not a day that goes by that I am not mindful of the fact that the choices in my life created consequences. I’m always aware that choices of consequences. That’s important for me to keep myself grounded and make sure if there’s that moment in time when I might be tempted to do something crap that I don’t do that. It’s not a problem but it’s an awareness. I’m a VP in a public company. I’m a professional speaker. I own a video production company. I get a chance to spend time and talk about this. My speaking most of the time relates to ethics and human behavior. Why do smart people do crappy things? What can we do to prevent it?
When I do a presentation, I walk in an orange jumpsuit in handcuffs. That freaks people out. It captures attention and sets the mood for, “Let’s work together to learn.” In a lot of cases, I spend time, trying to work in the community where I live and outside of that to help business owners recognize, “You’re sitting back saying you can’t find anybody to work? There’s a whole host of folks who are convicted felons who would love to work. If you would open your mind to the possibility, that might be an amazing workforce who would put forth a lot of effort to be a good and great employee.”
I try to raise that awareness because when I walk in the room, people don’t look and say, “I bet he’s a convicted felon,” but when I reveal it, it’s like, “They could be all around.” The answer is, “We got the highest incarceration rate of any developed nation.” Convicted felons are running all around. You don’t see us because we don’t have that slapped on our forehead.
Any last words to families about how they can survive and thrive? We talk about people that were incarcerated and coming out. You’ve given some good advice and things for them to think about. I also think what you’ve shared is what the families can share with their loved ones. It’s important to keep the family and the communication together and support each other, to be cheerleaders for each other and to have realistic expectations on both sides when somebody comes out that they’re not the same person, both the person on the outside and the inside. Any last words to the families on what they can do to support their loved ones or even themselves?
It is going to be easy for people to judge reading this, “He was only in for eighteen months.” Things changed a lot in eighteen months. If you were like Buck and you had a ten-year prison sentence, the world is different. A lot of people who have longer sentences come out and it is a foreign world to them. They do not know how to navigate that world. It’s important to have understanding and grace to recognize they don’t know how to pay rent, apply for things, get utilities and don’t have credit. There are a lot of things in navigating the world that is important to learn. Our families can help us with that.
There’s a guy I know named Billy who reached out to me several years back. We’ve spoken together a time or two. He was sentenced to murder. I’m white-collar crime. He’s murder. That’s different. He killed four people. He was part of a Hispanic gang. It’s easy to look at him, judge and say, “I’d never had anything to do with him.” He is the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet. He’d tell you what he did was wrong. He will tell you the circumstances under which it was done and the peer pressure as a teenager not using the frontal cortex thought of how this happened. Billy is smart enough to recognize when he went home, many of the temptations that were there when he left were still there. It was important for him and his family to recognize he needed to relocate and go somewhere else.
If you’re faced with the old temptations from years past, it becomes easy to fall into those versus recognizing, “I’m out. I need a fresh start. I need to be in a place where someone is not calling me up, tempting me to go out clubbing or whatever it happens to be. I need to live a different life.” Recognizing that with families is important as well. I wrote a book called Second Chances. I want to say this so the readers will get this.
If you email me at Chuck@ChuckGallagher.com, I will send you a copy for free. If that’s something you feel would be beneficial to the person in your family, either to the family to read or for the person who’s incarcerated that may be coming out. If you think that’s valuable for them, I’m happy to give that to them. It’s my form of paying things forward. I may not be able to talk with them but in the written word, at least they can read something. Maybe there are some words of wisdom in there somewhere that will help them see that their history does not create their destiny.
I would like a copy and I will also send you a copy of my book Prison: The Hidden Sentence, which has a lot of information for families on the outside going through the arrest, the court, going to court through the in the court incarceration and also things they can do to take care of themselves and also to find support groups like Prison Families Alliance. I want to thank you much for your time and your stories. I hope to catch up again and know more stories. I heard you at the International Prisoners Family Conference. I enjoyed your presentation. Thank you for all that you’re doing.
Thank you for the invitation and for what you’re doing. It makes a difference often for you and me. We may not know exactly when, where, how or who read it but both of us know that there is value in providing the information you provide.
Take care. Thanks.
Important Links
- Chuck Gallagher
- BOP.gov
- Second Chances
- Chuck@ChuckGallagher.com
- Prison: The Hidden Sentence
- Prison Families Alliance
- https://988LifeLine.org
- https://PrisonersFamilyConference.org
About Chuck Gallagher
Chuck Gallagher is currently the Vice President of a national public company and former Sr. VP of Sales and Marketing for a public company. Chuck found a sales niche early on in life selling potholders door to door, but it was the school of hard knocks that provided a fertile training ground for Chuck’s lessons in success.
Chuck shares his life journey, the consequences of his unethical choices, and how life gives you second chances when you make the right choices in his book, SECOND CHANCES: Transforming Adversity into Opportunity. This book bridges the gap between personal accountability and business success.
On a nationwide basis, Chuck has helped countless individuals on their journey to success! Learn more at ChuckGallagher.com.
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