5 Survivor Hacks for Business Learned In Prison with Brent Cassity

Underdog Empowerment

Growing up in Springfield, MO, there wasn’t much that Brent Cassity could complain about; life was good. His dad was a bigger than life character that found success in everything he did, including owning multiple businesses. Brent wanted to be just like his old man. As he rounded out 8th grade, Brent was excited to embark on his high school journey and follow in his dad’s footsteps. Then, a bombshell was dropped on Brent. His father informed Brent that he had gotten into some financial trouble and was looking at prison time. Not only would Brent’s dad be pleading guilty and spending 6 months in prison, but the family had to move to St. Louis. Brent was devastated, and can remember thinking this is the one thing he wouldn’t follow in his dad’s footsteps.

Brent went on to do well in high school and college. He planned on becoming an attorney, but found that he couldn’t pass the LSAT. His backup plan was to work at the one business his dad had left, which was in pre-arranged funerals. Brent’s dad was all for the idea, and when Brent said he didn’t want to be in his dad’s shadow, he sent him to run their new Austin, TX location. Brent did great, and grew the region, before his brother ultimately came into the business. One day Brent’s brother found a tape of their grandma 3 years after she had passed. The brothers realized that when someone famous dies, their highlight reel isn’t far behind, and their memory is preserved. They decided this should be the case for everyone. So, they started a production company that specialized in honoring the dead. The business took off and they got a lot of press, including a documentary by HBO called The Young and The Dead.

Everything was going great, business was booming, Brent had a beautiful wife and 3 daughters, and lots of time was spent at their vacation home. Brent was on top of the world when he got blindsided. Their funeral business got into some trouble, and they found themselves in a criminal investigation. As the trial approached, Brent decided to throw in the towel and plead guilty. Facing 6 years in prison, Brent found himself alone, drinking, and thinking about how his family would be better off without him. Ready to end it all, something hit Brent, and he realized that wasn’t the legacy he wanted to leave for his family. He decided to stop looking at himself as a victim, and instead, as a survivor. At the age of 47, Brent found himself following in his dad’s footsteps.

As he entered prison, Brent found himself thinking that everything he knew, and everything he was, was behind him. He realized everything ahead of him was unknown. The thing that surprised him most about prison was the helpfulness of the other inmates. During his first phone call to his family, he confidently told them that he was going to be alright. He quickly found that the way he tackled certain things as a CEO, could also be beneficial in prison. There were 5 main things that he carried with him that helped him to survive prison. He calls them his survivor hacks.

The first of Brent’s hacks was to not say a lot, but to look around a lot. He knew he had to humble himself and learn from the others around him on how to make it through successfully. Second, he knew he needed to have a passion to focus on, something that would keep him going when he felt otherwise stuck. His third hack was to write down a daily win, even on the days he had to look a lot harder to find one. Fourth, he was committed to learning from his mistakes. So many people are afraid of making mistakes, so they don’t even try, but Brent knows your mistakes don’t define you if you learn from them. Finally, Brent refused to give in or give up. He didn’t want to become institutionalized, and so he decided to keep being himself, regardless of the circumstances.

Brent can recall many people losing themselves in prison. They lost sight of who they were outside of those 4 walls, and let prison become their new normal. It would get to a point where people would be months away from release and they would self-sabotage because they were afraid of the outside world. This phenomenon was also noted by a football player, Damon West, who went to prison for drugs and had a hard time adjusting. He went on to write a book called The Coffee Bean, about an antidote he was told in prison that helped him make it through. Prison was compared to a pot of boiling water, in which a carrot becomes soft, an egg becomes hard, but a coffee bean changes the water. The lesson was that you can’t let prison make you soft or hard, instead you have to be the change regardless of the circumstances.

Since leaving prison, Brent has found success again, even writing the book Nightmare Success: Loyalty, Betrayal, Life Behind Bars, Adapting, and Finally Breaking Free. While promoting his book on podcasts, Brent got the idea to start his own. He interviews former inmates about life before, during, and after prison. Brent says the podcast, Nightmare Success In and Out, is about hope and overcoming. He hopes it will help people to see that prison can happen to anyone, and to not judge a book by its cover, because our past shouldn’t dictate our future.

What You’ll Learn:

• The similarities between surviving as a business CEO and prison inmate.
• The mindset difference between a survivor and a victim.
• The thing that surprised Brent most about prison.
• Why so many people return to prison and how, as a society, we can help change that.

Favorite Quote:

“Nothing is ever as bad as your mind makes it out to be.” -Brent Cassity

Connect with Brent:

BrentCassity.com

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YouTube

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