In this episode, severe transformation, a story of how accountability and causation

motivated Andre Norman from prison gang boss to Ambassador of Hope.

So there's plenty of rags to riches stories that, while I honor them greatly, I don't

think they stand out necessarily. This one just

did. Andre Norman. It's not really about his story so much as, again, what I see is just radical

transformation. He wasn't just in prison and maximum security prison at that. Andre ran the prison. He was king of the inmates and ran gang

activities from within the prison walls. He was granted somewhat immunity from most of all the

rules and regulations by the prison itself, the guards and whatnot. Then on his way to yet another of, I think it was 10

plus attempted murders, he felt a wake-up call and realized he was king, king of nothing.

And this began his journey to educate himself, to work out of a hundred-plus year prison

sentence, and become the acclaimed motivational speaker that he is

today on hope. That's a dramatic life transformation to me, an incredible identity shift. And I wanted to

understand the dynamics of his experience. I mean, most of my guests are authors, but I seldom read the books completely.

Andre's book, however, which is titled Ambassador of Hope, turning poverty and prison into a

purpose-driven life. I read it from cover to cover. His childhood story I just broke my heart with,

and he went from ultimately prison king,

literally to Harvard. But even amongst the success that he pursued, he still had times of

struggle. And I dig into his story. And he brought me to these discussions on what he cites like

the salvation, really, of accountability in his life and our propensity

as humans to get involved in a pursuit maybe originally out of a why but then we get into just

the what of it and we lose the what i mean we lose the why of what we're doing and he shares how he

struggled with this and came back to his why.

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