When I committed a crime. I was 16 years old. I was still a child. When I got released from
prison, my state of mind was just simply I was
going to go get a job. You have that box and
that question asks you, "Have you ever been
convicted of a felony offense?" And once I seen
that, I just lost all hope. I didn't know the
collateral consequences that I was going to face
having a felony conviction attached to my name. When I got tired of those
doors closing in my face, I just seeked out other
ways and cleaning was the one of the things that
kept me calm. It kept me at peace. My name is Marquis
Mckenzie. I'm 32 years old and I'm
from Orlando, Florida. Last year, I made over
$150,000. So between my income with
The Dirt Master and Florida Rights
Restoration Coalition, I support my spouse and my
three kids between those different two incomes. I'm doing about 70 to 80
hours a week. FRRC sometimes can go
well over 40 hours just because of the commitment
that I am to the organization. And then
with The Dirt master, it can go anywhere from 30
to 40 hours or more, depending on if we have
projects that come up. So growing up, I was very
almost independent. I was one of those kids
that wanted to be the class clown, wanted to be
fun and wanted to be known. But I caused a lot
of bad energy to come my way. And I would say
about the age of 15, I just decided to give up,
drop out of high school and make my own
decisions. I hung around a lot of people that was
older than me and I felt like I had a point to
prove. I thought because I
didn't have any criminal record, that was my first
offense that I was going to get released. When I
went to court, I found myself being told that my
case can no longer be seen by the juvenile justice
system, and that it's going to be turned over
to the adult system. And the only thing I can
remember is my mom crying in the courtroom and
begging the judge to please, you know, saying,
give me a second chance. And the only thing that
the judge would say is that I'm sorry, this case
is out of my hands. I went out and made a
mistake and I should have been held accountable for
my actions. I just don't think I
should have been held accountable as an adult. When I got sentenced, I
believe I was 17 years old. Out of 24 months. I only had to do eight
months in prison. It was a very crazy
experience and at some points it was very
stressful. But every time I cleaned despite that, I
was cleaning the dirtiest thing inside of the
jails. And jails are dirty. It just made me
feel that peace, right? It made me forget about
my court date. It made me forget about
the time that I was facing. I kind of made
the comparison, when you change your life,
when you clean your life up, you feel good. Same thing. When you
clean something physical, you just feel good about
your house. You just feel at peace. My mom, you know, she was
very hard on us about cleaning. And be honest,
I said, I hate it. I just never knew how
that was going to change my life. So I figured
that I found my niche right then and there. And
I knew from that point that I want to start a
cleaning business. So when I talk about my
lifestyle and my expenses that I take care of,
including my family as well, which is my three
kids, and then a lot of stuff that I do for the
community, and then also running a small business,
I'm just be transparent. It's been very hard to
even try to think about saving. So in my 401(k), I
currently have just under $3,000 in that savings
account. The total that we're
paying for our apartment is roughly close to
$1,800 dollars a month. My phone bills, we have
it in our business name. We have about seven lines
on that account, including smartwatches. It
fluctuates between $700 and close to $800 a month
for our cell phone bills. A lot of my expenses go
towards food, and that's either buying groceries
for the house or because I want to move every day
just honestly eating out. So on an average day, if
I eat breakfast, lunch and dinner out, I could spend
close to $100 a day on food if I don't decide to
eat at home. When I got released, that
was the same year that I was supposed to walk
across the stage. A lot of people that I
grew up with was going to be graduating and I was
just going to be coming home from prison. So I never finished
college. I just dropped out. It can be very
difficult if you don't have that family support
or you don't have someone who believes in second
chances that's willing to give you an opportunity.
It could be very hard for you to transition and get
back into society and be a productive citizen. That really kind of
pushed me to the edge. And when I was told that
I couldn't get that actual promotion, I look to
becoming an entrepreneur. We give second chances to
individuals. Matter of fact, one of
the ways that can get you hired with The Dirt
Master is having a felony offense. Now, I'm not
encouraging anyone to go out and get a felony
offense to get a job with us, but that's one of the
things that we look at before we hire an
individual. Have you been through the
system? And we're able to relate. My spouse name is Sharnisha Ousley. She is
one of two sole owners of The Dirt Master and also
one of the full-time employees with The Dirt
Master as well. Almost 80%, I want to say
90% of our staff either have a felony conviction
or been incarcerated. We try to be an
organization that's for us and led by us and being
able to compare and give opportunities to many of
us who's coming through our doors. One of my long term goals
was to purchase properties and will rent to
returning citizens. And this room here is
very special to me because this was my room growing
up and I spent a lot of time in this room. You can see the walls are
painted. When I purchased the
house, it was for $222,000. So my mortgage
on that house is currently $1,300 dollars. Now we have the property
and we're trying to turn it into a transitional
house where we actually give opportunities to
guys, women or youth coming out of
incarceration system to be able to have a place to
live. I know a lot of returning
citizens who need an opportunity just to have
a safe place to lay their head so they can think
about the next day and the opportunities that they
can probably take advantage of. But if they
don't have a proper place to shower, a proper place
to eat, or just to be at peace trying to be a
productive citizen, it's the last thing that's on
their mind. If we want to reduce
having victims in our communities, we have to
think about giving opportunities to those
who are coming out of the criminal justice system
so they don't go back out and commit more crimes
and create more victims. So in the next 5 to 10
years, my goal is to be the youngest
philanthropist in the state of Florida. So of
course I will have to acquire a lot of wealth
so I can give back to many others in the community. I want to make sure that
my kids, if they decide to go to college or they
decide to be an entrepreneur, that they
have an easy financial success path for them. I want to be able to say
I own multiple properties across the state of
Florida. And then the biggest thing, of course,
I want to continue to build and expand the dirt
master. So within the next two,
five, ten years, I plan on being a corporation where
we can actually franchise our model out to
returning citizens across the state of Florida and
many other states as well. If we want to create a
better and just society and impact our
communities, we have to pick up those who are the
most weakest. And when you talk about
the state of Florida, the ones who are most weakest
in the community are the ones who are most likely
been incarcerated or have a felony offense. And if we're not picking
those people up, how can we thrive in our
communities? I'm very hopeful that the criminal
justice system is actually going to be way better
and create more opportunities for
individuals right there in the system alone. Your
past does not define your future. What you did in
the past shouldn't hold you back from trying to
be successful in the future or should stop you
from being a productive citizen.
