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John: Welcome to another edition of The Impact podcast. I am so honored to have you with us today, Hector Guadalupe. He is the executive director of A Second U Foundation. Welcome to The Impact podcast, Hector.

Hector Guadalupe: Thank you so much for having me, brother. How is everything?

John: Everything is great and we are still living in this crazy pandemic. I know that. It is such an honor to have you on. I read and learned about you, Hector. I know we are doing this coast to coast. I am in California and you are in New York today, but to do this together is really an honor for me because this is part of my DNA and my soul. Before we get talking about all the great things you are doing in A Second U Foundation, can you share a little bit about the Hector Guadalupe story? Your backstory?

Hector: Sure. Well, to put things and to create an experience for yourself, the listeners, and everybody else out there. My reality of New York was not Disney. You go to New York now, it is beautiful. It looks great, but I grew up in the 80s and 90s and I feel like I have survived a lot of pandemics.

John: Where were you born and when did you grow a lot?

Hector: Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Flushing and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I have had my family throughout the entire Brooklyn, but it was just a different time. It was a dangerous time. It was a corrupt time with law enforcement and the government. People did what they had to do to survive and raise their families. Both my parents are deceased and growing up young without too much guidance like many kids throughout the boroughs, your foster kind of have to find your way. My role models were older peers in the community that were also raised the same way without guidance, family, and parents. These role models were the men and women who traffic narcotics. That became my profession and from thirteen years old to twenty-three, trafficking up and down the Eastern Seaboard from Cape Cod, Massachusetts down to Miami to the Midwest and back. That was my life. It was my means of survival. There was no way out. It is hard for a lot of people to understand that when I am talking at different companies, with clients, or with other communities where I am sharing my story. I pretty much give the example of a picture of you as a young kid growing up in poverty. It is like coming out every day with like a blindfold on, right? You cannot really figure out how to get out of those x amounts of blocks that you grew up in. It is like just trying to navigate without really having a…

John: A map. You did not have a map.

Hector: Yes. It is tough.

John: How many siblings did you have?

Hector: I have one sister.

John: Older or younger?

Hector: Younger. We figured it out. I am very blessed to even be talking to you right now and be alive.

John: I am blessed to have you on our show today because this is a story today for our listeners and viewers, we are not going to give away anything yet, but this is not a story of just survival. You are not a survivor, Hector. In many ways, I see you as a thriver. You have got a great story to share here and I want you to get into it a little bit. Were your parents alive from the time you were thirteen to twenty-three or were they already deceased?

Hector: No, they were deceased due to cancer. I feel like the biggest threat in any community is poverty. It forces you to have to survive. It forces your instincts to kick in and you do what you have to do and hopefully, you make it out. But by the age of twenty-three, the FBI released the indictment and started their manhunt for me.

John: Were you the leader or were you just a part of a larger network of young dealers?

Hector: I kept my network small. We were part of a larger network. I never implemented and that kept me in the range of ten to life. The more people involved, the bigger the indictment. I grew up in the days of gaudy and the mob in New York. My whole thought process was always keeping things small, tight, and simple. Because in the big scheme of things, I do not want a bunch of people affected by my actions. So, I was sentenced to ten years to life, and in the federal system, I have probably visited about five to six different prisons throughout the country.

John: Before we get to that, I just want to understand a little bit more here because it is fascinating for our listeners and our viewers to learn. You were not only taking care of yourself without any guidance and parents but you were also, I assume, taking care of your sister. You were not surviving for yourself, you were also surviving for your sister to make good for her.

Hector: Entire family. And not only that, the guys that I was raised under made seventy to eighty grand a day. These skills that I was taught when I came up under are transferable skills today in business and why we were able to, as you say, thrive. And the reason why I am in philanthropy, we will get to that later, but these men and women that I was raised by and is in the work that I was doing, it was always part of the game to give back. Not only taking care of your family but paying people in the community’s bills that could not make rent. People that could not keep the heat on. People that did not have food in their fridge.

John: You became like the godfather to your community.

Hector: Every real one that had to do whatever they had to do, did that for their community. For me and my team, that was something that was very important. It is the reason why we are still welcomed by the city today.

John: That is so wonderful. I cannot even imagine people out there that have grown up with at least one parent, and they thought that was tough to have no parents. So many people complain about little things every day and they got an intact household. So, to do what you did for those ten years, I just cannot even imagine but I am glad you are sharing it because we can all learn from each other.

Hector: Totally. Experiences and stories, man. Stories are everything. The more we are open to listening to the next person’s story, it will totally give perspective and change our lives as well.

John: Amen. So, you get sentenced to ten years to life. You know, Hector, even though I grew up not with a lot in Queens. A little bit even on welfare because we had a little bit of a tough time. It was nothing like your thing. Is prison like it is on television or is it exponentially worse? I do not know anything about it.

Hector: To be honest with you, the stuff you see on TV is like a joke. It is like fabricated stuff. But the film that Second Chances Matter, which is our media company, is going to be putting out is probably going to be some of the strongest and most authentic film and theater created, and podcast. Obviously, you will be in touch so you will be first on deck to receive a lot of this material. We are definitely going to shed light on the real issues that go on in there. I got guys in there right now with COVID and everybody in the prison who has COVID, they threw them all in one dorm together. All the sick people together in a dorm instead of separating them, and then shut down all the phones in their lives of communication with the family members. They are not going to talk about that shit on Netflix. You are not going to see a TV show expressing or showcasing the harsh realities of that shit. It is tougher than what you see.

John: That is tough. And you were transferred over those ten years? You must have been the exemplary person there to get out in the most minimum of your sentence, ten to life. I cannot even imagine thinking about one night.

Hector: I was about empowering people in there. Not only just dudes that were working out because wellness was like my tool. I already knew how to manage teams. I already knew how to get people excited. I already knew how to prospect. I already knew how to close sales before landing there. So, once I learned something that was positive and legal, I just bridged communities while I was in there. It became a thing. My first experience of training people and thinking about entering the fitness industry was with my experience in prison.

John: Wait for a second, here is where I get confused. When I see prison on television or read about it, it sounds like the food is high carb and not good. How do you find two things? How did you start figuring out that wellness was your thing given that you were just coming off of a very chaotic and hard way of living from thirteen to twenty-three? How were you able to implement it in a prison structure where typically good food, vegan food, plant-based food, low-fat food, or the better high protein food is not the way it typically is? Explain how that all came together for you.

Hector: One of the prisons I was in is in Fort Dix, New Jersey. It is our nation’s biggest military base in the country. They have a federal prison on the base and that is where I spent four years out of my ten. I ran the gym near me and two other brothers. That was my job. So, having access to the equipment is the first place that I started selling personal training. Once I started making a profit off of our personal training services in the prison with a lot of high-end clients in there that were doing time. From Enron guys to you name it. They were all in there with us. These were like our clients.

John: Were you given the gym because you were such on the best behavior? Was that a reward to give you the gym? Was that a sort of a penny because you were already showing signs that this was not who you really were?

Hector: John. I wish it was that easy. You do not get rewarded in prison no matter how good you are.

John: Okay. I am living in a fairytale.

Hector: You gave them a lot of credit. The better you do, the more you get beat down in there. But what I did was the person that I knew could get me the job, I gave him a thousand dollars under the table to get me the job. That was how I got the job.

John: Transferable skills. I like it. You are a closer.

Hector: I had to survive. So, once I got the job it was a great way for me to gain all this experience and all this material I have been reading. I got all these certifications. While I was serving time, this presents five thousand people. That is the clientele of a corporate health club in Manhattan. I had way more clients than we could handle. What I started doing is we have access to what is called The Store, which is a commissary. All of the systems in the country are the same as schools and the military. Everybody has a commissary. You have this, you have that, right? So do people that are serving time. You are allowed to spend three or four hundred dollars a month on food. So, instead of going to the chow hall where the food, you were mentioning d-class food, instead of going there I would spend all my money at the canteen commissary and get all the vegetables and meats I need. We cook. A lot of us cook our own food in there.

John: Really? Can you explain that though?

Hector: That is a whole another podcast.

John: Okay, that is another podcast. That means you are going to come back on and we are going to do that as another podcast.

Hector: Totally.

John: So, because of what you were doing and how you were creating this ecosystem, you got access to good clean food. You were able to start eating right and getting your clientele to eat right.

Hector: Totally. And what is sad is law enforcement people that are hired to watch inmates or people that are serving time, correction officers, these people are not really paid much. These people are not treated well, so, they can be bought as well and end up bringing you Starbucks. We were walking around with Prada shoes on and so forth, right? You can laugh about it but that is how sad the whole system is, right?

John: It is broken. You are saying it is broken on every level?

Hector: On every level, you can imagine. With our projects, we are going to be touching this on as well as what I am talking to you about. Not everybody in the prison obviously, but we made sure we had access to good nutrition and we just made the best with time.

John: Explain this to me. Now you are in charge of the gym, you are doing the food the right way, and making the best of what you have. Were you starting to train? Some of these are, like you said, Enron, other visitors, and you were building up a clientele list already?

Hector: We had a huge clientele list. When I was about to leave that prison and go to another one, which was in Maryland, I pretty much sold the business to somebody else in that.

John: Really? So, you really had your own private gym, and now, you are selling it to the next person?

Hector: It sounds funny because you are in prison, right?

John: It is funny, but this is great. Listen. Besides doing another podcast, Hector. I am not telling you what to do and I know you already thought of this because you have got already an entrepreneur spirit and brain, obviously. This is who you really are as a human being. I do not know how many books in you, but you got books that you have got to start getting down, man.

Hector: Well, John, before the Second Chances Matter podcast launches this fall, I will talk to you again.

John: We are going to do it. We are going to talk about that. That is going to be awesome. So, you go to Maryland and you start all over again there? Do you have to start from the bottom?

Hector: Yes, I know, but it is fine. The main thing is finding productive ways to kill time and it is the same thing during the pandemic right now. All of us and your listeners right now, right? Some people are going through a lot. You cannot pick and choose how life goes. So right now, everybody has something in common with me because of the pandemic.

John: Wait a second. We are all going through this tragic and horrific period together. It sucks for everybody, Hector. Not only Americans, but everyone around the world is going through it. Is your message really how you choose to deal with it, was what will define you?

Hector: A hundred percent. People have to understand that no matter what is going on in the world, the time is still yours. You still have control of your time and how you use it. A lot of our clients that we have been coaching it is like, “You got to get back to your basics, regiment, rituals. All of that works within you. How do you serve yourself at this time?”

John: Hector, we are very blessed to have this company now. We built it from scratch. And my message to the employees here, we have about twelve hundred employees, is when I started hearing in the media that all one day, we are all going to go back to a new normal, new normal sounds like the white flag is up. It is like we are defeated. I tell people, “Use this time to make the company and to make yourselves first a new better, so when we get to the other side, let us all be a new better.” Is it not that the way you live as well with what you have created?

Hector: Before the pandemic, everything I do is eighteen months ahead of time. If you are not innovating, you are going to die. You have to be innovating during a pandemic or not.

John: So, you spent ten years and now you are twenty-three to thirty-three years old. You went to five different prisons. Now, you get out at the bare minimum. Something went right and God was on your side. Whatever it was, all the stars aligned for you and you get out at thirty-three years old. Your life is starting new. What happened? How did you even imagine what the next step is? I cannot even believe coming out and seeing a whole new world. What did it look like and what were the first steps that you took?

Hector: Put it like this. When I had like six months left on my sentence, I had these ideas of putting together a transportation company where family members can be driven to prison to visit their loved ones and back home. I had that put together and there was a couple of other ideas. A friend of mine, a gentleman named Corey Leftwich, laughed at me so hard. He shot holes through my businesses. He was just a very intelligent person and an entrepreneur himself. He made a lot of money from the market even before he came home. It was just very sharp. He said, “All these years you have been training people in shape. What makes you think fitness was not a good idea for you.” I was stuck. I was looking at him like the biggest fool and he was like, “Stop playing. Go home to Manhattan and kill it.” That was it. And I am like, “After all these years of living my life dedicated to wellness while in prison, how did I not think about being a personal trainer when I got home?”

John: Interesting. You just shocked me. Sounds like that was your calling and then like you said you were literally making a left-hand turn going in a different direction.

Hector: Yes, it was so funny. But anyway, after that conversation and I had all of these national certifications already because I did a lot of correspondence courses. I worked for myself a ton. When I got home to New York, man, it was obviously a new world. But nobody wanted to hire me. That was frustrating. In my first eight or nine months home, I am without a job. It was hard.

John: And just for all of our sake and for our listeners who just joined us, we are so honored to have with us today in The Impact podcast, Hector Guadalupe. He is the executive director of A Second U Foundation. You can find them at www.asecondufoundation.org. Hector, wait a second. When you were thirty-three, what year was that? Just so we have a little perspective on the timing of where we are.

Hector: I am an old man now. I think that was like the end of 2012?

John: Well, you look like you are thirty-three right now so you are not an old man. I am an old man. I am fifty-eight. You do not look like an old man. Let me just tell you that right now. So, that was about the end of 2012. You learn the harsh reality of employers, even though they all talk great games and everything like that.

Hector: It is discrimination.

John: Yes, it is discrimination. They do not want to hire ex-felons and the whole deal. It is just a mess.

Hector: To this day. We obviously have a pretty decent following now, so it is not as bad as it used to be. Boutique gyms and corporate health clubs still discriminate against people that have a past, but twenty percent of the fitness industry, the best lead trainers are all formerly incarcerated. This is something that is a fact but that just shows you the systemic system in place to keep people down. With it being a wellness industry, you would think it would be a loving industry, but it is not.

John: It should be democratized, but it is not.

Hector: It is not at all. It is very fake. It is very phony. It is something that we are here to change. We had to put compassion in the wellness industry.

John: I love it. So now, you are eight or nine months in and you are hitting a wall. How did you breakthrough? What was your breakthrough? What was your ‘aha’ moment? Laying in bed or just figuring this whole thing out how you were going to get to the other side.

Hector: I got tired of sitting around waiting for somebody to call me for an interview. I got tired. It was like eight or nine months. I am tired. I knew a friend that was a trainer at a corporate health club on Fifth Avenue down in the Union Square area. I called him up and I said, “Dude, I want to come by for a workout. Can you get me in your gym?” And he said, “Sure. I will be training clients but come by.” Anyway, he gets me in. I am working out. I am like checking out the gym. It was beautiful. It was all this high-end stuff and I am really excited. I am like, “Man, I really wish I had an opportunity like this.” Towards the end of my workout, I watched the manager going to her office. I walked into the office. I introduced myself, and I told her, “I really need a job. I really need an opportunity. Can you please? Everybody has turned me down. Can you please give me a job?” She laughed because I was so hungry. I was so hungry. I was tired of sitting in the house all day just working out and reading and I wanted to be productive. I wanted to give back to people. I wanted to empower people the way I did for men and the staff when I was in prison. She ended up giving me a shot and fast forward to x amount of years, we took over that entire area. Now it is a couple hundred of us, who were all formerly incarcerated, probably training a little over a thousand clients.

John: Wait a second. So, this was in a name-brand gym that you got to start in? She gave you the start?

Hector: Yes. I would not even give them the credit of naming them.

John: That is not the point, but it was an already named branch. That is when you started then.

Hector: I spent my first four years with no day off. I worked for four years straight to try to build up the strongest clientele I can. And, man, those who did time with me who was coming home, I was paying for their certification manuals and book materials. I was helping them get the experience and teaching them how to pass the test. That is how it all started back then. I did not think of it becoming a company or a foundation. I did not know anything at the time. I just knew how I felt when I came home. I knew what that pain felt like. I knew what that frustration and stress felt like when nobody wants to give you a hand.

John: Going back to what you shared earlier about your run from thirteen to twenty-three. It was not only about you and your sister, you were taking care of others then. So again, your transferable skills from there, when you were on the other side of this you gained, you were basically implementing those same skills of creating a tribe, let us just call it a tribe, that you were lifting up, empowering, and giving a voice to.

Hector: Totally. Which is still the mission to this day.

John: Right. I love it. I just love it. Now, let us talk about that. Now, how many young people are working for you that used to be incarcerated? And how many clients do you guys have?

Hector: You cannot keep track. For example, during COVID we were featured in The New York Times and on CNN. The clients that we had in New York used to be our biggest following. Now, our biggest following is throughout the rest of the country and globally.

John: Now, you treat people online.

Hector: Yes, our entire service is online.

John: Which everyone is getting used to because no one wants to go to a gym anymore and get exposed to potentially get COVID. You literally were way ahead of the game and they had an opportunity now to take your company. You could be the physical trainer for anyone. You become the real-life Peloton.

Hector: We are the real-life Peloton, but with real stories though.

John: Right, which is even more fascinating because that motivates people more. If you are training me and I get to know you, of course, which always happens when you work with the trainer. We become close, I say to myself, “If Hector did this, he climbed this kind of mountain. He climbed Everest. All he is asking me is climb this, shame on me if I cannot even do this. This man in front of me has done this.”

Hector: Oh, the exchange in sessions with our clients and the corporations that train with us, it is unreal.

John: Now, I take it that it is not the only male incarcerated, but also female incarcerated.

Hector: Totally. We welcome more women in anything. It is men and women. We are just really excited and grateful.

John: Oh my God. Hector, help me out here. You said you have a couple of hundred young people working for you and let us just say a little over a thousand clients. This business that you have created can become twenty times bigger than it is five years from now when you are back on this podcast. But way before then, you are going to come back later this year. You are starting something that is unbelievably unique. I am a lifelong entrepreneur. This is fascinating. Because post-pandemic, they say a huge percentage of people are never going back to a gym anyway.

Hector: We are totally just scratching the surface and going to really take off in the next coming years.

John: This is fascinating. You have clients not only in the United States but you have around the world.

Hector: Most of our clients now, at least half, are all throughout the rest of our country and abroad.

John: This is beyond fascinating to me. For our listeners out there that want to hire Hector’s people go to asecondufoundation.org. I am on your site now and it is fascinating. You take on people by themselves, but you also take on corporate clients as well, right?

Hector: Totally. We got some corporate clients that are diehards. They are part of the community and they back us. We are building something that will unify communities globally.

John: This is great and you do not only do workouts but also talk about your experience back in prison. Also, diet and nutrition and you take them on the whole ecosystem, the whole-body approach to get to this.

Hector: Totally. We also work on a lot of yoga. We have mindfulness practices and we work on a lot of corrective exercises, which is like a smaller form of physical therapy.

John: How do people learn about you that are in prison that want to work with A Second U Foundation? How do you recruit new people and give them hope for when they get out, they are going to have a place in society?

Hector: We hold workshops through Zoom and WebEx at prisons. The old employment workshops where we educate people that are on their way home about us and our services. We also partner with federal halfway houses throughout New York City, as well as all other larger dot org that focus on re-entry. We have tons of ways that we recruit and just excited to grow.

John: We were talking off the air earlier, I was telling you about my experience living in LA as a real estate developer during the tragic Rodney King or what they call now the Los Angeles Riots of the early 90s, and how I befriended Father Greg Boyle and how we started something called Homeboy Tortillas. Which was basically a branch that came out of his Dolores Mission proc do pasta real deal. And I said Father Greg Boyle had a great line back then still holds today, nineteen or eighteen years later, “Nothing stops a bullet faster than a job.” Powerful, right Hector?

Hector: I am stealing that.

John: Steal it, man, and use it. I want that. I want you to steal it. It is truer today than ever before, and what the kids that we were helping back then from East LA have used to tell me is that they just wanted a place to belong because they knew that the gang life that they were living on the streets of East LA had two ways they were going to end up. Either dead or in prison. And so, they just wanted a job. They were so happy to be doing anything. I can imagine the massive hope that if I was in prison and I had lived a life of hopelessness before and of all sorts of prejudice before. To hear about what you are doing and to see that glimmer of hope as an olive branch, it must be so wonderful to bring on new and more people on a regular basis because you get to relive what you have done already and give those people hope.

Hector: We love it and we are dedicated. There is so much more to go though. It is so much more with creating. We have documentaries. We have a docu-series soon being put together.

John: Who is working with you on this? Tell me who is working with some of this stuff. How is that going and what are we going to see in the months and years ahead? I know when they start coming out, I will have you back on and we will promote them when they happen. How are they happening? Who has seen you and who wants to do these documentaries and stuff? How is that happening?

Hector: We are working with Honcho Entertainment, which we are putting together partnered with the Second Chances Matter media company. We have partnered to put together a docu-series that is being pitched to Netflix and all the other VOD platforms at the end of this quarter actually. That is exciting. Full 2021. We are super pumped. Wait till you hear the trailer of the Second Chances Matter podcast.

John: You are going to be hosting that?

Hector: Yes. I am the host and my partner Maksim Polsky, who is an amazing producer. An award-winning producer who also did time with me and was my first client in prison.

John: What did he do time for?

Hector: For a white-collar crime.

John: Got it.

Hector: This is going to be one of the strongest things to hit the airwaves.

John: I am sure of it. This is going to be incredible. You are changing the world. You are giving people hope. There is so much hopelessness out there, Hector, you and I know that. You are giving people hope that does not exist now. We talked about the problems that exist for kids that are without parents and for prisons that are broken in every which way as you pointed out, but let us talk about re-entry. One of the things I learned long ago through Homeboy was the recidivism rates in America are off the charts. What are they today? And talk about the people that you trained at A Second U Foundation and compare the general population recidivism rates with A Second U Foundation recidivism rates.

Hector: Well, John, the recidivism rate is still the same as when you last checked.

John: Sixty plus percent, right? Sixty plus percent.

Hector: It is close to that still to this day. And the reason for that is because there is a difference between career placement and giving someone a job. The reason why A Second U Foundation has a zero-recidivism rate is because through our program if you look at the fitness industry, think of what you pay for a session with a trainer. That is the money. So, guess what? Creating programs, education, and employment that have livable wages, that is the cure. We cannot say, “Thanks for doing twenty years. Take this broom and I am going to give you fifteen dollars an hour to go mop a hallway.” That person is not going to spend the next ten years mopping that floor. There is a high chance of that person taking a risk at something one day because they cannot even pay to eat with fifteen dollars an hour. In the fitness industry, once they are employed, they start at thirty to thirty-five dollars an hour. They top out at seventy-five dollars an hour. They receive full corporate benefits. They learn about their 401(k) plan, health care, dental. They get everything.

John: You are really giving the folks that do your program in that work for A Second U. You are giving the holistic way to live in terms of understanding, not only how to make a living wage, but how to also plan for the future. As you say, at least eighteen months in advance of their future.

Hector: When people are provided livable wages, you will never see them go back to prison.

John: Awesome, but that does not get talked about in the media like you said. They get some sort of social re-entry program that could be not a livable wage anymore, and that is where the recidivism rate starts kicking them back to the old life they knew.

Hector: One hundred percent. The hundred and ninety-six graduates we have, can you imagine how many family members and people eat off of that? Are being provided for?

John: The domino effect is massive.

Hector: Totally.

John: Each one of them is a beacon of hope to other people that they went to prison with or other people that they knew on the streets growing up and saying, “Oh my gosh. If Bobby could do it, if Hector could do it, if Johnny could do it, if Shirley could do it, I can do it too.”

Hector: We get a lot of referrals through word of mouth.

John: Is anyone in the system starting to see that and starting to say, “Wait a second. Instead of me referring them over to the Starbucks, I am going to refer them over to Hector instead.” or is the system starting to catch on and getting with it or not yet?

Hector: The system needs you to keep coming back.

John: Maintain the status quo. The system does not become the system anymore if the status quo gets broken.

Hector: Exactly. We network with tons of people in the re-entry space institutions, detention centers, and prisons, but none of them are really that helpful without us pushing and being aggressive with our approach to help others.

John: That is incredible. You are a young man still, thank God, and you have a big vision. For our listeners, again, to find Hector or to hire Hector and a hundred ninety-six of his great graduates for either your company or for yourself. Be a better you and be the best you can be when we get through this pandemic. We are not close to the end. It is going to take another six months to a year for all of us to get back saying a herd immunity to happen. So, be a better you. You have got to go to asecondufoundation.org. Where are we going to be five years from now, Hector? Tell me your vision for five years because I want to hear not eighteen months from now, I want to hear five years from now. Where can this be?

Hector: Five years from now, we will be the future of re-entry and rehabilitation. So, what that means is if you could think and imagine right now, Canyon Ranch. You look at Canyon Ranch and that is going to be A Second U Foundation sixty months from now. Instead of being sent home to these fast-paced cities with all this stress and anxiety, they will be sent to a place within nature where they could have a beautiful dorm and not be in a halfway house with metal detectors. They can be released to our property treated as a human with bed space like a normal person. Take their programming and have access to mental therapy. Have access to nature, peace, mindfulness practices. We want to have our own land so they can be taught vegetation and all these great things about being welcomed and treated as a human. Once you graduate, you will enter the city and you will be one of the best trainers they have ever seen in their lives.

John: That is awesome. How long is your training program? I forgot to ask that earlier.

Hector: A Second U program is eight weeks straight, six days a week, and one class per quarter. Aside from our curriculum, we work on tons of soft skills as well. We offer nutrition certs as well and mindfulness practices. There is a lot of yoga meditation, sharing, and mentorship. All the necessary things to make someone coming home feel loved and part of a family. Community is important.

John: For people that are watching, hearing, or reading this podcast, because we give it in three different versions. We transcribe it so people can read it. We of course do this video version and audio version. So, we give everybody access to this anyways. If they are not in prison, but they want to support your great work and they believe in your vision, which I do not know how anyone could not believe in the vision after listening to you, Hector. Honest to good God, thank God for you. How can they get involved and support what you are doing? Give some other methodologies of supporting your great and important work…

Hector: Right now, we are looking for people that can offer resources. On our website, there is a donation button, of course, and sponsorship kits if you want to get your company involved. We also are excited for people to actually want to support train with one of our coaches and help someone keep a strong flow of employment and see what that exchange in that session feels like, and refer a friend. When it comes to community-wise, we urge people to do something for someone. Do something good for someone. Go out your way in your community, no matter what it is, find a way to help somebody.

John: I love it. Do something for someone. Do not only just think about yourself, think outward. So, when you say sponsor someone does that mean corporations and people like me can sponsor someone coming out?

Hector: Totally.

John: How much does a sponsorship per person costs?

Hector: The education and program for each person are about twelve hundred dollars. There is a button on the website.

John: Perfect. The website, again, for all of our listeners and viewers is asecondufoundation.org. Is there a waiting list of people who want to become students that are waiting for sponsors or how does that work?

Hector: Always. We are always recruiting. Recruiting is all year round. Right now, we have a cohort that started December 7th. They have two weeks left and then we will be starting up another class in the next four weeks.

John: So, there is always a waiting list of people that are looking for sponsors to get trained.

Hector: Totally.

John: Wow. That is beautiful. Well, Hector, here is the deal. I love what you are doing. I want to support what you are doing. First of all, I am going to sponsor some of your students. Number two, I also want you to know that you are always welcome back here. I want you to keep coming back here. And even though you are going to have your own podcast, I want you to come back on The Impact because I want you to keep sharing your journey as you keep progressing and creating a bigger and greater vision. It is important in every way we can to get your message out, so more people hear it and more people start becoming part of the solution than the problem. As you say, there are so many broken chains along the way in society. And for our listeners out there that want to find Hector, his great organization, his trainers, and support by sponsoring students by hiring them and for bringing them into your corporation to get people healthy so when we get through this pandemic, we can all be our best selves, go to www.asecondufoundation.org. Hector Guadalupe, God bless you and the work that you are doing. You are a blessing today to be on The Impact. You are a blessing to all of us in America. You are going to change the re-entry world. I have great faith in what you are going to do and thank you for being a guest here today. I cannot wait to have you back on.

Hector: Thank you so much, John. Thanks for having me.