The TRUTH About The New York Mob (Former Mobster Reveals Secrets)

today in the studio folks do i got a real treat for you you probably have heard from him or you know about him even if you don't know about him but now you're gonna know exactly who he is michael francies what's happening michael you got it right man you said the name right that's good good start that's right now if you guys are not aware of him you better just google him he you know again i don't want to get it wrong but he used to be like high up in the actual mafia families you know uh which one colombo so he's got books up the yin yang he's you know a real deal boss of the mob so i'm going to be talking obviously a little bit of mob stuff but i'm going to try to translate it to where we can pull that value out and apply it to our own lives whether it's tales of something you don't do or tells us something you do um follow the guy on instagram but mostly youtube if you guys want to see a kick-ass youtube channel go to uh michael's youtube channel just google michael francis f-r-a-n-z-e-s-e on youtube i'm sure you'll find him subscribe to his channel find him on instagram michael francies or go to michaelfrances.com but thanks for coming in man thanks for having me man i'm glad you were in the town i am now when you were back in the old mob where did you ever come out to vegas came out to vegas first time uh i think was 1978 79 that's when vegas was a good place really good place because we ran it in part but uh yeah started early here is there any left you know not really is there any left in new york in new york sure uh absolutely it's not the same watered down but it's still there yeah well you know when you were coming i was thinking you know i want to ask you questions that like people can use lessons from being in the mafia like like if i'm an entrepreneur what culture it wasn't just fear i mean you guys were were committed and that you have to have culture for that so like what are those key points of mafia life can someone put into their business to create that freaking loyal culture well you know you know you mentioned fear everybody thinks that we did everything by scaring people and that's not true i mean you get more out of people when they like you and they want to be around you and they think that you have value for them in whatever way it is and that's the way i went i mean there was times when we had to use muscle so to speak but normally that was street stuff it wasn't with legitimate people but uh for me you know get people to like you you know we had a we had a uh a a a kind of aura of respect about us those of us that handled and carried ourselves the right way and people wanted to be involved you know one of the things brad people thought that we would sit around in our social clubs and we would plan on the next business or the next person we were going to corrupt didn't happen that way 9 out of 10 times people in business would come to us want to be involved with us we could finance them we can protect them we've got ideas they got a family you know environment around them that's how most of our businesses came about you know and you and remember this too you know there's a lot of different groups out there but cousin austria mafia in this country survived and prospered uh very successful for over a hundred years and that's because we infiltrated or were involved with every segment of society from the guy on the street in the numbers business right up to the white house and you know there was a period of time that i called the golden years of the mob were really from the 50s right through the mid 80s when we had major control over this country we controlled all the unions you control the unions in america you control the country in in a in a big way and that's what we had and it did it lasted right that uh right up until uh giuliani in new york started to use the racketeering laws very effectively and then things started to crumble what about um law enforcement in the military i would think if you if you control those you control the country we didn't control law enforcement but we certainly had influence there same with politically i don't want to say we controlled you know the country politically but we had a lot of influence and that matters military you know a lot of us not myself but a lot of us were ex-military we had respect for the military and we looked at it in that way but we didn't control it i don't want to get that far yeah but you had uh there was i think j edgar hoover said there's no such thing as the mob you know something about why he said that j edgar hoover used to visit a place in new york called a store club and it was uh it was a mob owned place and as a result of that we had things on j edgar hoover because she was at the time you know if you were gay that was a problem you know you didn't talk about it whatever but we had certain things on on hoover and he would never even admit the existence of the mob you wouldn't do it until uh you know joe valachi kind of blew the whistle and he had to admit it at that point but he wouldn't bother us he left us alone because we had we had things on him photos photos what he didn't understand is in the store club the guy that owned the start club or ran the store club he had the tables bugged because he wanted to get there's a lot of celebrities that would come in he wanted to get dirt on celebrities to keep them coming in we had the bathrooms bugged at the time and hoover got caught in certain things there and i know that for a fact i mean you know my father was around during that whole time told me all of this so how did you get into the mob your dad was in the mom my dad was the underboss of the columbo family back in the 60s very powerful guy very high profile and uh basically i got in because my dad drew a 50-year prison sentence i was 20 years old when he went off to do that time and i had to basically you know take over help my family out and my dad thought the best way for me to help him get out of that case which was a frame uh was to be part of that life so he proposed me and if he wasn't in it you wouldn't have been in it no i wouldn't have been in it it didn't you're not automatically in just because you know you come from italian descent no not at all i mean you have to be uh proposed or sponsored by somebody that was in there already there's a lot of nepotism in that life because it's more security reason than anything else if you bring in your family and we don't have to worry about anything but then you still got to prove yourself at that point you know you can't be just anybody and say yeah you know this is my son bring him in you got to prove yourself how how easy was it to get whacked well if you were in trouble was pretty easy i mean you know in that life uh one of the horrors of that life brad is you make a mistake your best friend walks you into a room you don't walk out again and unfortunately that's something i witnessed throughout my 25 years in a life and who makes those decisions you know normally only the boss can sanction a hit on somebody's life it has to you know look murder was taken very seriously a lot of people think everybody started shooting everybody it's not true it was taken very seriously and if somebody that was part of that life a maid guy a guy that took the oath you know had that serious a problem it had to be approved by the boss so the boss didn't necessarily want it he just approved it yeah i mean if it was something that you know for instance you know when you take the oath you're told you know you can never violate another man's wife or daughter or you know something like that and if somebody were to do that and it was proven well he's going to get killed so so if a made man fell in love with like a maid man's daughter right no that's a no it's not a no unless she was married or he was doing something with her that he shouldn't have done and it was disrespectful to the other made guy then then you're in trouble e so so you eventually got popped right popped meaning busted went to jail several times yes indicted several times but but you beat a bunch of them yeah i had seven indictments all together i had uh two federal racketeering cases and the rest are all state but you only only got actually popped pop means like you're busted dude yeah once or twice i went to trial five times i was either dismissed or acquitted each time i finally took a plea on a major racketeering case and that's the one i went to prison on so you were like teflon don number two actually i was number one because i was before him oh really trouble yeah but uh yeah i was i was quite fortunate in court i had a good record now when when for the people listening i'm sure they're going to google you but your main like win in in that life was you figured out how to just take a little bit of dough off the gas stations or taxes or something and it amounted to a [ __ ] ton of money yeah you know basically i was fortunate i knew how to use that life to benefit me in business because i had a lot of different things going on but by far the the biggest scam i was involved in was gasoline tax and basically we were defrauding the government out of tax on every gallon of gasoline it was it was a complicated system it was uh i mean very easy in that we were just stealing the tax money but it was complicated to do it and not get caught and we had to have a lot in place in order to do that but you know give you an idea of the numbers i ran that operation for about eight years i was involved with russian mob guys from brighton beach and at one point i had 350 gas stations i either owned or operated and we were selling to all stations my own and branded and unbranded stations we were selling about a half a billion gallons of gas a month and the tax on that was um anywhere between 30 and 40 cents and when you when you included state local federal taxes so do the math there was a lot of money and and how much of that ended up in your pocket because you gotta you gotta pay homage to the boss yeah we're pulling in you know average about eight to ten million dollars a week and um you know a couple of million were coming in my pocket now how did that feel felt good yeah i mean uh listen you know people had said to me michael why didn't you stop you had enough money and i said well look you know in our country you do just as much time for a billion dollars as you do for a million so once i'm in it already may as well keep going right uh you know look i mean i had all the toys i had a jet plane i had a helicopter at houses all over the country and you know we were doing well so i mean you know i was young too brad and it was just to me we just just wanted to keep accumulating everything i had and then you know once you're in it it's hard to back out this is your life now you know so it felt good was were you like the star of the family in other words like if i were the boss and you were doing that kind of dough everybody else better stay the [ __ ] out of your way well in 1980 the boss of my family carmine persico who who died two years ago in prison he was uh convicted on a mafia commission case by giuliani got a 100 year sentence he came to me in 1980 he said mike you're doing a great job for the family going to make you a copper regime a captain and that's a powerful position you know you kind of uh it's like anything else in life in that life you kind of make your own way we had in the columbo family we had 115 made guys guys that actually took the oath we had a lot of associates but guys that actually took the oath out of 115 maybe 20 of us were earners we were bringing in the money for the family the rest of the guys who had a no-show job who was struggling on the street and a lot of them were doing the you know the grunt work you know we got to kill somebody well we'll give it to these guys you know they don't want to hurt the guys that are bringing in the money that's not to say if you're told to do something you don't do you have to do it but they're going to give that kind of work to the guys on the street that aren't bringing in the money and that's that's just the way the structure went at that time so yeah i mean they they valued what i was bringing into the family so all of those principles and things how can one like apply that to today's business without the killing well you know business is business whether you're doing it on the street or you're doing it legitimately and there's certain principles that you had to have uh you know to be successful on the street also my gas operation was very complicated and you know we had to have systems in place you had to have discipline we had to have a plan you know first thing people come to me for business advice and i said what's your plan and normally they don't have one i said no you need a written out plan a well thought out written out plan that you're going to follow and you're going to stick to and give it some thought and it was the same thing in business we had to have a plan we can't tell you how many meetings i had with my partners to figure this out you know to have it run we ran it almost like a legitimate business we did you know and then i always say this you know my thing was i had so much going on there's things brad that i can do that i'm i'm pretty good at and there's things that i'm not good at and i don't even like doing but they need to be done so what do you do you hire the right people and uh you know i always say do what you do best delegate the rest and then manage those people properly and that's what i did so we had a lot of good people in place that were doing the jobs that needed to be done and uh you know if you follow some of those easy principles whether you're on the street or you're in business here you know the chances of you being successful are going to be good now if if you have i mean i doubt this is how it probably is happening but if you have somebody especially in the cities or boroughs you know someone show up and say if you don't uh pay us some money every month we're gonna you know you're you're not gonna like it because that's a racket right yeah how do you get out of that is there any getting out of that or would you tell someone if they were your family hey if that's happening just pay them no i well listen every situation is different you know you got to be pretty silly to do things like that especially in today's day and age because brad there's a lot of informants out there you know i'll tell you what happened in my life at one time people were more afraid of guys on the street than they were of the government when the government came on strong with all these racketeering laws and all the sentencing reform act and and the bail reform act all of a sudden the government became more feared than the guys on the streets that's why so many guys in our life turned informant because you know used to be 10 15 years ago no longer than that 30 40 years ago you know you're in the mob you get a 10 year sentence man you do five six years you get on parole life goes on anybody can do that today you get under these racketeering statutes i had 29 counts each count carried 20 years you get convicted on that you're going away forever there's no more parole you're gonna do 85 percent of your time you're dead in prison so now the government goes up to you and say hey you know what you want to spend the rest of your life in jail you want to help us out we'll put you in a witness protection program change your identity give you some money every month those guys are going away forever you don't have to worry about it that's not too many people turn that down that's why there was so many informants on the street so what i'm saying today you know you know somebody tries to extort you you go to the government whatever you let them know i mean in in a heartbeat they're going to go after the guys that are doing that it's a different world today the govern the government is the new mafia 100 and i'll tell you what you don't want to cross them just just like the mafia 100 people someone the other day was talking about you know how they're doing something to you know not pay taxes and i said dude i do the opposite i don't claim [ __ ] i can claim i got audited here they came in for three months left no nothing out of place why because they realized dude this dude pays more than he's supposed to right i think that's the wise move you know i had a state tax issue a while back and uh advisor told me he said it wasn't a lot of money it was like it was from when i was in prison it was a capital gains thing that my wife had and we sold something i was like 50 grand we owed right so we made a deal with them this was um i think 10 years ago i pay them a thousand dollars a month i don't even ask what i own i'm just paying them thousand dollars they haven't bothered me ever since at some point in time they're gonna owe me money and he said you're better off living your life like that let them owe you let them be you don't want to mess with them with taxes trust me and i tell everybody the same thing pay your taxes if you can get around it legitimately that's fine do it you know people in government do that all the time they probably pay they pay a lot less taxes than we do they got all the loopholes but pay your taxes it doesn't make sense so so now you you eventually got popped and went to prison yeah for a spell and that's where you you found your faith correct and what what was what was that about like before then you had no faith or that's when you got serious i grew up a catholic catholic school kindergarten right through high school i was an altar boy the whole bit but you know for me catholicism was like a subject in school that was about it you know and i'm not knocking catholics it just didn't work for me at that time but you know i married a young girl a young christian girl strong in her faith her mom strongest woman of faith i haven't met in my life until this moment um they started to have an influence on me i fell in love with this young girl wanted her in my life um but i was basically just being nice to them and listening and understanding because it was really meaningful to them and i didn't want to be you know disrespectful but when i went to prison is when i said you know what i really need to look into this thing because you know i spent almost three years in solitary in a hole six by eight sell 24 7. and that's tough brad don't let anybody i don't care how tough you are anybody tell you any different we weren't meant to be solo creatures we were meant to be social and a lot of guys at night you know when those lights went out you heard a lot of moaning and groaning in a hole people don't don't handle that very well and it was a time when i really searched my faith and just came out of there after three years believing you know strongly in what i believe in the christian faith and that's when this transformation people say you found god and i said well i didn't find god i think he found me god finds us uh but it just uh it stuck and over the past 25 years i've only seen more evidence of that not only in my life but in other people's lives and you know i can get into that for the next six hours but you know you don't want to hear me preach well i do only because like you know i don't know yet what i believe i i i think if i died right now and someone said you gotta pick well i'm picking uh christianity only because so far that's kind of what i'm leaning towards but the muslims they've got some good points yeah believe it or not the jews got some good points absolutely um but the when i start doing the research i get back to a certain point where you find out that number one his name wasn't jesus so why does everyone in the christian faith talk about jesus that wasn't his name do you know that i've heard that but his name was joshua well yeah yeah but like if if you're the the chosen one and someone says his name's michael and then 2 000 years later everyone's calling you mickey your name's not mickey it's michael and it's not even close yahshua and jesus they're not close why because yahshua is now joshua so they tell you that what's translated well no his name was yahshua and it would be joshua how do you know because there was other yahshuas back then and they're now joshua's how come they didn't get translated to jesus so that name jesus to me is where uh oh someone better pay attention here because when you start looking at some of the scripture it says that we will be deceived the whole world so anyway i'm still seeking so i always like asking especially you know people that have read the bible a lot biblical scholars i've asked i've had a couple of them go dude how do you know this well you you seek and you and you and you look and that's what the scripture tells us to seek exactly and ye shall find so i think if i die between now and when i found whatever it is it is i'll be okay why i'm just doing what i was told dog i'm just seeking yeah and we're constantly seeking you know and and the bible tells us that test everything hold on to the good and it doesn't say test everything for a time and then hold it you test everything all the time and i think the more research that you do and if you read my book blood covenant i do a lot i'm very into apologetics defending my faith because throughout my life evidence has been a major part of my life i mean i defend myself seven times in cases i've been to more grand juries and parole hearings that you can imagine so i always look for the evidence hard evidence and without getting totally into that um to me the evidence is very strong in so many different areas so many different areas of the christian faith being the one true faith people get offended by that you know look we're not knocking other faiths when we say that you know i describe it best like this you know we're obligated as christians to share our faith share not impose not push it mark 16 15 go out and share preach the good you know the good word to all of creation so i tell people like this i said look don't get offended because i'm not knocking you but let me give you an example we're in a burning building we're up on the 19th floor you've never been there i've spent a lot of time there there's five doors only one of them is going to take you out should i say to you hey take your pick or should i try to lead you through that door i can't drag you i can't make you but i'm telling you that's the door to safety it's up to you to believe me or not and that's how i look at you know my uh my faith and and i've been sharing it all over the world for the last 25 years and um you know i believe it strongly so yeah i'll tell you another thing you want to call him jesus you want to call him yahshua look at the character of jesus from the time i was a kid five years old my dad used to tell me the standard in life you have to live up to you have to be a man's man that's it you walk down the street you got to hold your head up high you got to have integrity people got to respect you got to be respectful you always said that when i got into the life same thing we're men of honor we're men above men we're men's men that's the standard was it true some people but you know life is life so when i came to jesus i did something different because that was so ingrained in my head i said you know what jesus was a man jesus of nazareth i want to separate his manhood from his deity and i want to study the gospels in the new testament i want to see what kind of man he was because that's what i'm going to be attracted to and without a doubt jesus was the only perfect man that ever lived and ever walked the face of the earth and there was nobody that could ever match to him so here is my thinking okay i analyzed this thing and i said okay if i try to emulate jesus even though i can never get to that point but i try to emulate him i'm going to be a better husband i'm going to be a better father if i'm in business i'm going to treat my employees the right way if i'm an employee i'm going to give my boss an honest day's pay on honest day's work rather everybody in the community is going to benefit from me emulating the greatest man that ever walked the face of the earth and throughout my life i'm going to benefit and when i die if he's not the savior of the world well i'm dead anyway what do i have to lose but throughout my life everybody benefited from me emulating the greatest man so i look at jesus as a win-win situation and i try to live my life that way now not before but now and so um but to me again the evidence brad is too powerful and i can spend a lot of time with you on this um it's just there it's there in every which way you do a lot of keynotes around the country and a lot of times the ones i've saw you're at a church yeah or a men's group or something yeah do a lot now what about you ever get the the haters talking about oh now you want to claim that after you already freaking did all the bad [ __ ] of course what do you tell them what do you say to them you know look um you don't ever argue with people like that you say look you know you know fortunately we're not here to prove ourselves to other men you know we're here to prove ourselves to god and along the way other men are going to see that in us that's how we look at it that's how i look at it people say well michael you know um do you regret anything that you did in your life and i'll answer your question i said i have regrets but i can't change anything what's done is done i'm not doing this to make up for my past i can't make up for my past as a christian we believe that if we're sincere in our uh quest for forgiveness and we do turn to christ and acknowledge him as being jesus christ well then we're forgiven and we have to believe that's all we have to hold on to and um but you get the haters you know yeah you're a mob guy and now you turn to religion like everybody else well i don't know who everybody else is you know people used to say you know you turn to religion in prison uh so that you you can get parole or they'll treat you better and i just tell people you know anything about prison i'm a mob guy i don't care if jesus was sitting at my right hand i'm not getting parole no matter what so it's not helping me in here being a christian people don't realize that it doesn't do a thing for you nothing at all so you know you just tell them look i am who i am and uh you know god fortunately be the the judge of me and not people here on earth and i just continue doing what i'm doing you don't argue with them it doesn't make sense yeah it's good advice i always tell people listen stop worrying so much what other people think and two guys show up yesterday out of the blue these guys are you know real dudes they just wanted to meet me shake my hand i'm like why they said dude i watched a video of yours where you talked about the million-dollar morning which basically i talked about gratitude ultimately and your sacred six which is basically stop worrying about everybody else and start worrying about what you think of you and once you're convinced of that you know the rest doesn't matter right because what you're saying right there like dude doesn't matter what other men think of me what matters is what i think of me and ultimately what god thinks of me well i'm going to tell you something brad there's certain checks and balances that we have in life and there is a passage in scripture that worries me and it's my check and balance all the time because i'll tell you over the past 25 years i've gotten more accolades i mean i come off the stage at times and i don't mean this it's it's humbling to me you think i'm a rock star people in the audience are standing and you know wanting to grab me and touch me i just gave my testimony you know it's very humbling but there's a passage in the bible where people are in front of jesus and they say lord god you know i drove out demons in your name i healed the poor i did this i gave every and jesus turns to him and said i never knew you those four words because those people obviously were doing it for themselves weren't doing it for the lord they weren't doing it out of love they were doing it to build themselves up jesus in the bible had the most problem with who hypocrites hypocrites he told the you know the pharisees straight out you know you come here you put on a long face you know you do your fasting and you're misleading these people this is all about you it's not about you know what you really feel for me so my check and balances all the time is who am i doing this for because if i'm doing this for me i'm in trouble you know look i pulled a lot of frauds in my life when i was on the street i was pretty good at it i'll tell you the truth you know i'm pretty good at it but you can't pull a scam on on god he knows our hearts he knows our intent and so we have to like you said know ourselves first are we doing this for sincere reasons yeah because if we are we're okay and if we're not we're gonna have to deal with that yeah you gotta answer yourself you know it's funny when you said you know i was fraud when i was little when i was little most people don't know this because i don't run around talking about it and that's another thing you know there's people out there that judge people and you're no better than anybody else anyway like i know people that are straight-up felons but they didn't get caught so they're not a felon and then they sit there and point bad at felons like dude you're a freaking felon you just didn't get caught right but but i used to when i was little i was a little ingenious son of a gun like i'd go i'm talking about you know 11 12 years old i'd go to the mall i didn't have much parental supervision i'd go to the mall and i'd find receipts on the ground and the receipts had serial numbers to what was purchased so it would say like men's black leather jacket serial number whatever and you go look at the tags and you're like oh [ __ ] there's the same serial number and it's a black leather jacket what do you know so i would grab the thing off the shelf and walk up and say can i get my money back and they'd go well do you have a receipt and i'd give them the receipt and they'd go they'd be looking at me like oh here they'd get my money and so literally every weekend i'd go to the mall find receipts and return them and i was making a thousand bucks you know hanging out at the mall my my dad wouldn't couldn't imagine how is this 12 year old kid coming home with all this money but my dad again one time i i found a receipt for a for a norelco you know razor and he would always use one so i got one and i brought it home and i and i gifted him and guess what he said how'd you get this because i'm a kid dude i shouldn't have this money and i said i found it and he said oh what else what else can you find like he wasn't a good you know role model he was like say what else is out there you know i brought home vcrs and all kinds of stupid [ __ ] but i was an ingenious son of a [ __ ] and and you know never really got caught thankfully but when i was 18 i realized now the consequences are serious and i stopped but i did change what do you think about people saying leopards don't change their spots well let me tell you so if we see an increase of people at the mall right now we're going to know why but yeah because of this ingenious uh i got other ones i'll tell you but listen i would have been i would have been like one of those uh what's that movie where the little guy's named kalojo or whatever oh bronxdale yeah i'd have been i'd have been like you know i'd have been liked by the mob for sure i think my uncle he wasn't my real uncle but i think they were in the mob because i went out to new york to live there i thought i was gonna move there only spent a couple weeks but my uncle was his name was rocky savastano and my and his brother was a police uh detective in some precinct anyway rocky we'd go hang out with him and all they'd ever do there was just a bunch of italian guys sitting around play cards hey go get some sandwiches from lucy's you know tell them it's for rocky and we'd go we were west coast visiting so we had no idea but no one really worked and now looking back watching the mob movies i'm like dude was was he in the mob he wasn't a high-powered dude because they just sat there but you ever see those movies where they're just sitting around oh yeah well i was in those movies but those but those in real life were those the social clubs you're talking about oh yeah yeah social clubs in new york they were all over brooklyn queens new york but if you were in one did that make you a model no no i mean you could have been an associate you could have been hanging out there you weren't necessarily a mobster but we all had social clubs i mean i had one everybody had one and people would come and meet you you know there was a point in time when i had so many people wanting to meet with me that i had to have a specific place and i would say on monday night i'm going to be here from six to ten o'clock come in you want to propose something to me or whatever you come at that time so social clubs where people would come and meet and you know whatever whatever issue they had to talk about they talked about there to answer your question you know can a leopard change your spots i do a lot of prison ministry i speak to inmates all the time juveniles are going a lot right and um they all tell me that they want to change and i tell them you know what change is temporary i said a lot of you guys you know you're struggling in here when you get out i'm gonna change i said what do you mean you're gonna change well i'm gonna get a job okay how much you think you're gonna make well you know maybe i can make 15 20 bucks an hour it's okay i said that mentality you think it just goes away no okay so what happens when your friend comes hey bro i gotta score we can make 25 30 grand all of a sudden you know that mentality kicks in because change is temporary but what i say transformation through jesus christ is permanent and i've witnessed that throughout my life i know some hardcore guys i i went and spoke in angola prison one of the deadliest prisons in the country right everybody in there is doing life without parole or a hundred years the people that have transformed their life through christ there's a certain peace over them that you you just feel it you see it in the way they talk their eyes the way they carry themselves they're never going home they're in there forever there's consequences to your actions whether you're you know you're a christian or not but you see the transformation is real it's not change it's transformation and then it happens from the inside out and i've witnessed that brad you know even more powerful than it is in my life because i'm still on the street and i'm enjoying things my life and all of that but these guys that have been transformed their their spots have changed no doubt about it yeah well i've changed again i mean don't come at me with any plan i don't give a [ __ ] how much money it is like dude i i freedom is is worth more than any amount of money to me i like freedom which is why i'm a little bit concerned with what's going on nowadays we were talking about it earlier we don't need to talk much about that online otherwise they might shut us down with the you know with the [ __ ] that's going on but dude freedom i value most and i think that's what changed me well well you know brad what people don't understand and grown up on the street and seeing it all my life they don't get it you know this country was built on limited government this country was built out of a revolution to a tyrannical government okay and our founding fathers always wanted limited government because what people don't understand the more leeway you give government it never goes away yeah you give them uh extra authority they don't take it back all they do is build upon that and before you know it there's a major intrusion on our lives you know and i i we're we're witnessing it now and and people are just ignorant and i don't mean that in a demeaning way they just don't know they don't have knowledge they're not well informed and um you know it's scary we have a behemoth of a government i mean well you know actually again let's let's talk about this for a minute because i want everyone listening to this to understand one thing especially if you're in military or law enforcement because there's only six seven hundred of them until they empower the military and the law enforcement like if the law enforcement our brothers and sisters even though the governments are brothers and sisters if the if the government's being leaned upon by these elitists and or you know lobbying groups or you know because it's all about money at some point the military the national guard you know the homeland security tsa the law enforcement our brothers and sisters have to do the enforcing right so i'm hoping that if it gets too stupid no we're not going to go to the streets and have a civil war the military and the police officers of this country are going to basically say go [ __ ] yourself i'm not doing it so you go do it can you imagine biden running around trying to get everyone to wear their mask it'd be like [ __ ] a joke and guess what like you know tsa you know hey [ __ ] you they can come through here without a mask no i'm not checking people's records you know but everybody's worried about this you know what's gonna happen well dude as long as the military and the police and the law enforcement communities you know if i'm in law enforcement dude i'm going to enforce the law because i i took an oath to up until a certain point like i'm not going to arrest my brother because he's not wearing a mask i don't care what the law says i'd quit first well if all of those people kind of united where there was there was no ability to penetrate that call it a brotherhood from military and law enforcement then we have nothing to worry about because the government isn't that big until you bring in the military and the law enforcement so so this is for you guys if you're in military and law enforcement just make sure at the end of the day dude do what's right you know enforce what's right that's you know and just in keeping with that the uh uh sheriff in orange county california where i live um he said i'm not enforcing this mask thing he said we're here that we're here to protect society we're not trying to enforce people to wear a masking on here and he wouldn't do it he wouldn't enforce it yeah yeah because dude if you ask me those people are the ones that are gonna win over the the we because the problem is we the people according to the constitution are in charge but there is no we anymore why because we don't communicate we are separated the government is a we like they get in meetings and they vote and they record and they can prove so when i walk out of a meeting and i say we've been ordered to do this it goes down through the ranks with all this official communication and everyone does what they're told just like the military but we the people we we don't have that so there is no we that's the problem and they don't want a we no i'm going to tell you this brad i i growing up on the street we had a machiavellian ideology an italian statesman and when we went to prison it was practically required reading that we would read the book the prince in that book machiavelli advises the prince how to maintain control of his kingdom and he was brilliant guy brilliant guy no doubt about it and and some of the quotes if you see it you'll get scared because you're going to apply it to what's happening in our government today but one of his main one of his main philosophies was her ideology was he advised the prince he said in order to maintain control of your kingdom you can do anything that you need to do you can lie steal cheat you can murder but to the outside world because that's the most important thing maintain control but to the outside world to all your constituents you must appear honest upright and have integrity i want to ask you this and this is this is for everybody out there you're in business if you have a partner discussing something you catch him in a lie okay you're upset with him you talk to him about it second time it happens again huh what's going on with this guy third time hey man what's going on you're not going to accept that we see our politicians get up there and continuously lie to us on video day later two years later what a total contradiction to what they said to before and they do it constantly and what do we say well that's politics but what they don't understand that affects our lives we would never stand for that for a partner a friend a relative but we just let it go and i'm writing a book right now it's almost done it's called a mafia democracy because unfortunately i see so many similarities with the way we ran our operation mafia kosonostra on the street and the way our government operation is running right now i see it it's it's scary to me people say to me michael the mob should run the united states i said no you don't want the mob running the united states just the opposite you want the government a proper government to run the country um and i'm going to point out all of these things and there's only one reason for this and it's not republican democrat independent it's across the board because at the end of the day there's one big social club you know they go in the back room and they talk and they work things out and a lot of stuff goes on and i know this because i participated in it but one thing hold them accountable that's it that's it we have power in the booths to vote we have power these people do worry about that and we need to hold them accountable we need to write all that hey we caught you in a lie we don't like that you know these things mean something to them trust me because i had politicians when we were doing things one of my constituents are going to say we got to be careful we got to worry about how they do it we got to do it undercover michael we got to watch they do worry about that because that's what keeps them in office and ultimately that's what they want they want to stay in office yeah but look at look at newsome from what i hear nobody wants him in office but he's ain't leaving well we don't know that i mean he's this recall looks looks like it's pretty you know i'm impressed with the people of the state of california who i never thought it would get this far but they got all of the the votes that they needed you know to at least have this recall and we'll see what happens in november i mean it's it's serious for why wait see what i'm saying like how many people are needed to say hey get the get the effort out of here the problem is it's a democratic you know he's got a lot of allies there but the people are the ones that have to force this and they've risen up and they're saying we had enough because look i mean come on do you know what the uh you know what that restaurant is the french laundry i mean it's one of the most expensive restaurants in the country maybe in the world who knows this guy's mandating to everybody we have to wear a mask we can't do this we can't do that and he's in the place with nomads sitting in a bunch of people and then he lied about it but he was caught on video somebody with everybody has a phone now he was caught i mean how do you do things people are saying hey enough man you're imposing on our lives but you have a different set of you know circumstances for you same thing with nancy pelosi she goes into that hair salon let me tell you this brad she goes into a hair salon in her district in san francisco that's where she was elected from her nephew is the governor of the state newsom okay but she doesn't know the law she doesn't know that she has to wear a mask in her own district and that poor woman the salon owner allowed her to go in to get her hair done and what does pelosi do throws her onto the bus the woman was getting death threats she had a cl and she was already suffering throughout covet and what if his nancy boy i made a mistake sorry whatever what's going to happen to her nothing okay but these things we should not stand for i don't care if it's republican democrat or anything it doesn't matter and i'm not you know i'm not taking sides here any of our politicians we should just hold them accountable that's it i think if it was feasible you just what are there 435 total what congress like congress senators they got 100 governments yeah 400 and change close to 500. good or bad sorry you know because of these times everybody's fired like everybody's fired let's have a new election and by the way well they don't do that who's they [ __ ] it's we that's what i'm saying like can't we all agree we're no longer gonna acknowledge any governor any senator anybody we've all decided how do we communicate that to the world and then it would happen because that's the way the constitution is where we just say look all 4 35 sorry dude it's like when you get home from from uh from being on a trip and your kids are having a party in your house you're not trying to figure out who was being polite you're saying everybody out you know it doesn't matter you weren't doing anything anyway you're out and then just re-elect a brand new government stop lobbying stop you know put term limits so you can't get term limits i totally agree people should not be in office for 45 years impossible it's that that's corrupt and by the way like like you said you you you've corrupted you didn't corrupt them but the mob had dirty politicians dirty cops dirty mayors i i had 18 licenses when we were in the gas business when they changed the law from the retailer paying the taxes at the gas station level you had to become a licensed wholesaler you had to go through a process i had 18 licenses with 18 different panamanian companies they weren't even american companies how do you think i got them i had politicians helping me we were paying them they were getting us the licenses i mean you know look money talks in a lot of in a lot of ways in this unfortunately in this world um there's so many things i can get into that i won't now i'm saving it for the book which will be out shortly but uh where do they get that book well they're going to get it online through my website and it'll be everywhere you know all them all the uh you know major outlets will have it from amazon but may if you wanted my website we'll sign it for you and send it out but uh we're probably going to start pre-selling the book maybe november and be out in january i believe you guys better go to michaelfriends.com it'll be talked about you can order it there dude so so you got the bible in prison you started reading it was there any particular thing i noticed you have a tattoo that says proverbs something was there anything that stood out yeah this one here uh you know i'm reading i'll tell you what happened brad as long as you're interested i'm i'm uh i had done five years in prison government was trying to put a lot of pressure on me they wanted me to cooperate because when i walked out it was all over the street that i was going to get killed contract on my life you don't walk away from that life life magazine wrote a big story on me and so i had trouble on the street no doubt about it but i didn't want to cooperate i wasn't looking to put people in jail but the government put a lot they came into the prison said francis you're a dead man anyway it's all over the street we got word from our informants you're going to die cooperate with us i didn't want to do that so they put a lot of pressure on me i did five years got out on parole and i'm on the street for about 13 months and it was a very tough time for me i was basically dodging some bullets my dad was upset with me uh government told me he went along with the contract is what they told me and i'm trying to earn a living out in l.a under parole had some very serious parole restrictions on me you know i'm basically dodging bullets my wife is afraid every time i walk out of the house you know because the feds put in my head i was going to get killed and after 13 months i like a fool i'll tell you truth i i violate my parole they locked me up coming out of a bank leaned on my bank accounts you thought i was robbing the bank there was 15 agents come to lock me up i'm walking at him i don't know why they were there and uh they threw me in a hole the first night and they're going to bring me back to brooklyn to face the it was probation actually it wasn't parole face the judge same judge that uh gotti was on trial we had the same judge judge nicholson dead now but um so they put me in that hole and i'm saying okay words all over the street they're not going to put me out on the yard they're telling me to bring in new charges they're only going to charge me with murder they're going to bring new charges against me another racketeering case i said my wife we're married you know we got two little babies she was 20 when i met her 27 now she waited for me for five years now i'm going back into jail i said i'm gonna lose the girl i did all of this for i said i'm going to spend the rest of my life in this 6x8 cell that's it i'm 40 years old my life's over it was very very tough night you know i tell people all the time i've experienced every emotion you can feel in life from ecstasy right down to grief everything in between lived a full life but hopelessness when you really have hopelessness like this is it nowhere to go i'm done dead it's scary and uh i'm laying on a cot you know i used to tell people i say look i used to i used to berate people that were suicidal i said you're weak you don't face up to your troubles how can you kill yourselves weak i don't do that anymore and i wasn't suicidal that night but honestly i wanted to lay my head in that pillow and not wake up it was too painful to think of you know look i had i had visited my father for 20 some odd years my whole family fell apart as a result of my dad being in prison he did 40 years family was destroyed people going you got to visit him every much it's just it's it's you can't even imagine how bad it is and so i said god take me if you're really up there a prison guard walked by my cell long story short he said francis you're okay you don't look good i said get away from me i chased him right he came back about a minute later and he pushes a bible through the slot on the door honestly i got mad i don't want to read the bible but i jumped off of that card after a little while and i just picked up the bible i slammed it against the wall i was that you know everything came out of me then i picked the bible up again because honestly i believed in god as a catholic guys all right there's a god up there i don't know how all this stuff got here without god you know i believe everything has to come from something i i cannot even fathom the possibility of some little speck of dust that nobody can understand how it got there in the first place and out of that little speck of dust it exploded in some big bang and what did it explode into everything that makes no sense to me whatsoever i can't reason or rationalize that i've debated with people that you know talk about evolution they can never answer that question it doesn't make any sense god to me makes sense i believe in intelligent design i don't understand how god can always be there always was always will be some things are beyond our human capacity to understand maybe when we get to heaven he'll explain himself maybe not it's up to him so i picked up the book and i started to read it and it opens to the book of proverbs i had never read that book before really didn't know anything about solomon other than his name and i started to read it i don't know if you've ever read the book of proverbs brilliant book i don't care what faith you are i don't care who you are it's a brilliant book if you can abide by the principles of solomon and i wrote this in my my business book i'll make you an offer you can't refuse i i actually compare solomon's way of life and business to machiavelli's way of life and business and solomon wins hands down and i make those comparisons king solomon king solomon yeah brilliant and i'm starting to read i said wow this guy is brilliant and then i came to a verse i'll be honest with it just stopped me cold it was proverbs 16 7. when a man's ways are pleasing to the lord even his enemies are at peace with him now that night in that situation i had nothing but enemies and it kind of i thought of that the enemies thing struck me and then it kind of brought me back to when a man's ways are pleasing to the lord well you can look at that in a lot of ways am i a good person or not okay if there is a god am i a good person if there isn't a god am i a good guy or not well i can't lie to myself you're so almost like i'm looking in the mirror and saying who are you kidding you're a street guy you did a lot of bad things in your life and it was almost if you know i said well you know if i was a good guy maybe my enemies will be handled that's how i interpreted that verse and i started to read on a little bit more and i came to a verse um you know brad that's been the verse of my life and i think everything starts here at least for me and it was proverbs chapter 3 verses 5 and 6 and that's what i have right here and the reason i have these verses because every morning when i'm brushing my teeth combing my hair i remind myself of how i have to act her out today and um it says trust in the lord with all your heart lean not on your own understanding and that got me that night because i'm a guy i think like you brad i can figure anything out anytime don't worry about it no matter what it is i'm going to be okay i'll figure it out well that night i couldn't figure anything out i was dead i said i'm done it's over i'm finished in all your ways acknowledge him if he's god you've got to acknowledge him right and then this verse got me because i really looked up the translation he will make your path straight not he might not he he he could he will make your path straight when you break down my story that's what it is out of desperation i turn to god and he's made my path a lot straighter than it was before just by emulating jesus and so to me it made a lot of sense this system wasn't some supernatural thing this was something that i analyzed and made sense to me and over the past 25 years there's a lot of people that can't understand how i'm alive and you know i they said to me michael how are you still alive nobody walks away from that life he didn't enter a witness protection program you didn't testify as well look there's a practical reason to that and then there's a spiritual reason the practical reason is that you know god never throws us into the fire without fully preparing us i believe that i spent 25 years on the street i knew that light life intimately well when i told you before the horror of that life you make a mistake they walk in a room you don't walk out again well i said they're not gonna walk me into any room they're gonna have to come after me so what do i do i move out to california i change my entire lifestyle what do i mean i don't walk my dog seven o'clock in the morning why create a pattern in my life somebody's watching me they know okay every morning here's where he is i don't go to the same restaurant every tuesday night sit there okay watch me every tuesday night when he comes out i don't go to clubs anymore at least i didn't for a long time why i know who hangs out in there i used to be in a club every night six nights a week that was my life guys hang out in there they spot me i'm in la make a phone call back to new york they want to be a hero i walk out in a parking lot boom i'm gone so i avoided all that stuff i was very disciplined in that and then over a period of time everybody i knew in that life brad is either dead or in prison for the rest of their life i just outlasted everybody so god prepared me because remember even with the enemy meant for bad god will turn around and use for his glory god prepared me okay by having me in that life put me in a hole or allowed me to be in a hole didn't put me there i put myself there but it allowed me to be in there to kind of learn and then when i got out okay my head now is on right and i know what i got to do and that was 25 years ago so there must be something to it and you know i'll give you a statistic and you tell me what you think out of this the night i got made was halloween night 1975 and now they took the oath six of us took the oath that night today i'm the only one alive not one of those men died in natural causes every one of them were murdered we had a big war in our family in the early 90s i think 13 guys got killed i i think something like 28 guys went to 63 guys went to jail and between 18 and 28 became informants family was really hurt um that was in 75. fortune magazine writes this huge story in 1986 50 biggest and most powerful mob bosses was a huge story half the magazine cover thing they featured six of us out of the 50. i was one of the six that they featured they actually had a chart with the 50 of us on there according to rank and wealth and power i was the youngest guy on the list i was number 18 in their rankings right i was five behind john gotti at the time john hadn't been made boss and i always say i don't know how they make a list like that it was stupid they didn't ask for our tax returns and they don't you know they're making lists according to wealth and power but what's not stupid about that list out of that list of 50 some 30 odd years later 48 of them are dead the 49th is doing hard time in prison he's in his 80s and i'm number 50 and i'm walking around publicly and there's got to be a reason for that and my reasoning is god had a different plan and a purpose for my life otherwise i wouldn't be here it doesn't make sense period there's a bomb and and by the way not only are you walking around but you're walking around very successful you've helped a lot of people you spoke at a lot of conferences you you're basically you know preaching so to speak and you're out there doing business you're using some of this knowledge and do you use any connections that you've had for any business or all your connections long forgotten they're all forgotten i mean look there's people i'm going to be honest with that are drawn to me because they're drawn to the lifestyle and hey that brings them to the table sometimes and then we're able to do things you know but i want to ask you a question you got a very successful business right i would imagine that your life outside of your business is fairly well organized correct yeah i mean you're disciplined you just said things you're not going to do anything that's going to get you in trouble no what i tell people is your business is a reflection of your life yeah if your life is in shambles your businesses are not going to be far behind so if you can get your act together in all these areas and then you get into business you're probably going to have an a degree of success what that might be i don't know what it might look like and i know but it's what you tell people when we do coaching we do life coaching also because my first question tell me about your life and if you don't want to tell me about that then we can't i can't advise you or help you because if that's a mess we got to get that cleaned up first and then we'll move over to the business section so people can can can reach out and hire you to coach them and and kind of consult yes we do uh life skills coaching leadership business you know people tell me will you you know tell me what the qualities are of a good leader it's very simple a leader is not necessarily a boss a leader is only a leader when people want to follow him when they choose to follow him not because they're ordered to follow him but when they choose to follow him because he has certain characteristics that make him a leader and people admire that and say hey i'm going with this guy so you know we teach a lot of that because i s look i'm telling you there's so many people that i saw in positions of power that didn't belong there and uh and ultimately it ends up in roon for either themselves or the people that are following them uh but yeah life skills business and um and leadership and obviously that's limited so folks if you're listening you want to be coached you want to get some mentorship go to michaelfrances.com right you also have obviously other business entities we were talking about slices new pizza franchise is that like the best pizza ever uh listen you know i've tasted good pizza all over the world and there is great pizza ours is great too it's it's a roman style pizza we spent two years developing this which my partner was in italy for over seven months every product we have is from italy uh the pizza is great we haven't had any complaints people love it they really do but you know when we decided to franchise equally as important or maybe even more important uh is the system and we've created a great system um happily we have the uh ceo that ran papa john's pizza he's now our president and he had 3 300 uh slices franchises under his control he controlled all of north america brilliant guy and uh you know he's now running our company along with us i do the marketing that's that's me hey come and taste our pizza come and they want to be around they come and they enjoy it thank god it's called slices cole slices we have six stores now we have about 200 applicants uh nationwide we're also looking at now believe it or not somebody in italy contacted me for slices in italy and so we're looking into all of that and we hope to grow over the next couple of years i'm going to be honest i'll tell people out there you know i'm 70 years old i'm looking to run this for the next two three years put in as many stores as we can successfully and then maybe get bought out by one of the big guys or do an ipo or something like that that's my goal so if somebody's listening that's a little bit entrepreneurial and they want a slice franchise where do they apply for one of those um they comply online slices slicesusa.com and there is a questionnaire that they'll fill out and it goes to the right department they'll analyze that and get back to them is there any spot that says how'd you hear about us um i think so yeah i think she'll just make sure you guys put in bomb squad absolutely bomb squad and if you guys you know get him for for for coaching mentorship you follow him just make sure he knows that obl's got a little influence and that you came from the old bomb squad exactly now you got a wine company yeah wine brand started what's that called it's called frenzies wine and uh brand new concept people approached me about it and you know i got a brand out there and uh that that's uh was very attractive to them i didn't really know much about the wine business other than i love napa valley i am italian i love wine tasting so it was intriguing to me my family enjoys wine from way back and so they approached me uh believe it or not brad this wine is from armenia and what got me on this i didn't realize this and if you read the bible obviously you know the story of noah's ark yeah well when uh the flood subsided and this was now fresh land in what's now armenia the first uh um vineyards were grown in this valley in armenia and so that's where the first wine was actually produced so they allowed me to taste the wine i brought it over here i enjoyed very much and i said let's do it so it's it's my name they're doing everything um we're gonna first start selling it you know online uh direct to consumer but the way i'm extremely encouraged over the past four months the way people in the industry have taken to this and we're gonna it's gonna be on the shelves in uh probably in october we're starting to we got all our licenses now we're starting to import it and again i'm the face of it yeah so so all of these businesses is also a testament to like doing the right thing because you know a lot of times like you said if your if your personal life screwed up your business life screwed up right i can't believe people can just reach out and get you to coach them though just anybody yeah is there an application or you just you do well yeah i have a great team and they you know honestly brothers a lot of people they just want to talk to me they don't necessarily want to be coached but then there's an abundance of people that need coaching especially now after this pandemic i mean it was a lot of stuff done but you know i've been doing this all my life anyway but and i'm gonna be really honest you know i've i've been blessed with a lot in my life i've been up and down i've had it all and i've had nothing so i know what it is and and um i get emails every single day or messages on social media every single day from people i don't know say michael i heard you on youtube i saw you at a church i've read your book my whole life has been changed and for the good and when you get things like that you know i really have learned in my life that it's so much better to receive than to give because there's so much encouragement in that and so when you know you've helped people in that way based upon your experience and the things that you've gone through it's extremely rewarding and this is just an extension of that and obviously i have to have a team together because you can't coach the whole world a lot of people come on but i have a great team uh you know kurt aleck and julian and all the people that we're involved with that have structured this in the right way and we're really we're putting a lot of content that we're developing that's beneficial and helpful to people again in those three areas life skills business and leadership and and then i get involved personally as much as i can with a lot of them and uh it's it's working out well it's very satisfying what if someone's listening to this and they want to maybe use the the momentum and brand that you have to to either help and or form a business you got people uh for that absolutely and michael francis.com google me i mean you get me anywhere and uh and we will get our team in place we'll uh we'll reach out to you speak to you and we'll take it from downs what's that you're willing to have sit-downs sit down well i'll tell you this in my book i'll make an offer you can't refuse uh it was uh published by harpercollins and my editor there great guy when i when i wrote the chapter on sit downs and he really got to understand it he said michael i went to harpercollins and said we're not having any meetings anymore we're having sit-downs because you actually get things done in these sit-downs i said oh absolutely everything is decided in a sit-down and the the uh the result is final there's no appeals that's it but by the end of that sit-down everything's resolved that's it nobody's on their cell phones nobody's being disrespectful to each other uh the boss makes a ruling and that's it win lose a draw that's it end the story you go on and go on with life how how would uh how do sit downs function you know they're formal they're formal meetings okay i don't like to use the word meeting because meetings you know could be a disaster but they're formal and and there's rules in a sit down the rules are two made guys sit down they have a business dispute right can never be disrespectful one another if you're a made guy i'm a made guy we have a business dispute you're lying through your teeth i can't call you a liar at that meeting if i do i lose the meeting that's it i lose the sit down right it's over so you had to be extremely tactful you know especially with me i was a young guy i was in sit downs all the time because in the gas business everybody wanted to get involved and i was constantly working with people because brad when i went to my boss junior persico at the time and i said to him i'm going to show you something that's going to bring you more money than you've ever seen in your life he immediately said we don't do drugs it's not drugs i hate anything to do with drugs i said it's gas and it's taxes i said but here's the deal everybody's going to want a piece of this we have five families in new york 750 made guys hundreds of associates when they realize the kind of money that's coming everybody's going to want to get a piece of it you can't allow that to happen because it'll crumble too many people get involved that's it so here's the deal junior i said every time we sit down i got to win no politics no nonsense i have to win you got to support me 100 percent you do that i'll make you more money than you've ever seen in your life he said show me i was starting to bring him 2 million dollars a week 2 million a week buys you a lot of loyalty i never lost an argument never no politics no nothing i said if you got to make a deal with another boss i'll give him some money rather than let the other guy win and we got to live with him i said that's her pay him off it's okay i'll give you a quick story fat tony salerno you ever heard his name he's a boss of the genovese family acting boss really he's really the chin so he sends for me one day and i was a captain in a family a boss sense for you you go out of respect but i put it on record with my boss i had to tell him look tony sent for me i don't know what he wants i'm gonna go see him yeah it's okay so he had a social club in harlem right and uh you know he's right out of central casting he's got the cigar you know he's a short guy a little bit you know on the heavy side water fedora all the time so um he uh i go to meet him and he says uh he says michael i hear you're doing pretty good with this gasoline thing right and he didn't really understand too much about that she's yeah tony i'm doing pretty good he said you're making money i said yeah i'm doing good he said i need a favor i said tony you're the boss anything you want what could i do for you he said i got these five mama looks around me they can't earn three cents he says you give him a job make him a living i said yeah no problem he said what will they do i swear i have a lot of gas stations how about i put them in charge of a gas station each one of them i said but tony don't let them rob me you know these guys rob you i'll cut off their hands and i said well you have to do that just make sure they play it straight it's no problem he says how much will they make a week so i'm thinking you know i want to make sure i say the right thing he's the boss or something and i said well how about i give him 1500 in cash a week each will that satisfy you he said 1500 he said give them 500 give me two thousand i said hey tony you got it right so you make a lot of friends that way but i didn't want anybody interfering in what i got because when too many people get involved especially in that life you're going to blow it no doubt about it you agreed or whatever because not everybody knows how to run a business there so i don't know what the question was i got off on a tangent i happened at some time but the point being is at these sit-downs you had to be i was a young guy i had to know how to outsmart or outmaneuver some of the old-timers who are very smart and then i have the boss on my side who's backing me up so it was very hard for me to lose you know i wouldn't let them draw me into a trap because sometimes if a guy's got a higher rank than you he can he can goad you into saying something that'll make you make a mistake he'd even be lying well a guy told me that you did this wait a minute i didn't do that how do you you know if i get don't dare insult me if i got disrespectful with him i'm in trouble because now he's goading me so i knew how to keep my calm respond to him the right way because you know i learned another thing that sometimes you're the smartest guy in the room you don't want people to know that let them talk let them talk let them say whatever they want oh really you're educating me okay good yeah i didn't know that meanwhile i know i know exactly how to answer this guy at the end and there's other times when i'm not the smartest person in the room but by keeping my mouth shut nobody knows what i'm thinking but now i'm letting him talk and he's educating me so now by the end of the meeting i know exactly what i'm going to say to this guy and how i'm going to win whether i'm right or wrong and you know you learn those skills on the street and you learn them when the stakes are very high so you have to learn them it's not like okay i'm going to lose a couple hundred dollars here you know these situations like that when i was fighting for somebody's life and if i didn't handle it properly it would have it would have been a serious situation for that person so you learn these things on the street and you can transmit them into your business you're all right and keeping your mouth shut is a good piece of advice anyway absolutely that's the one i've never really learned very well i'm always in the meetings wanting to be you know listen i'm smart too here's here's my two cents and as i got older i started just like realizing like dude it doesn't matter like it's usually the person with their mouth shut doesn't say anything where when you leave you're like who was that guy that's right what what it's the it was the loudmouth like i always was that really just kind of let the cat out of the bag like he's obviously the big mouth it's the quiet one should i say a word even though they may be the dumbest one in the room you don't know you don't know keep your mouth shut kids i always say just like uh well i mean when it comes to the mafia you know keep your mouth shut like that's just a that's just a rule that's what i was trying to get to when i when you were coming i'm like i want to figure out how we can take mafia rules that keep you alive and translate it to business rules that keep you alive and keep you going because a lot of entrepreneurial type people follow the show look negotiation you know brad i tell people all the time you don't realize how much of your life is in a negotiation you know i mean you're negotiating all the time your wife your children you know people every i mean you're always negotiating you have to you have to kind of master that art especially in business and to me one of the principal things is just to listen let people talk you know let them let them give you the information that you need to respond to them properly and sometimes you know i got information out of people that i couldn't i couldn't respond properly in that meeting so i said okay we're gonna have to continue this there was times i made believe you know i got a phone hey i gotta go i'm sorry something happened and i gotta digest what he said now when i come back the next time okay i'm ready but he gave me all the information i needed i didn't have it before now i know what i'm doing so i mean but you know you learn those things on the street when the consequences of not doing that could be very severe so and my father you know my father taught me from when i was a kid he said michael remember something in life be a good listener he said be in this life be a good listener he also told me there's something you know again that maybe it applies to business maybe not and i think in many ways it does he said never be the first guy to condemn somebody especially in our life because all life is like a wheel the guy that's on the bottom can one day become a guy on the top and now you're underneath him or when you're in a in a sit down and somebody's life or something serious is on stake if you're the fir at stake if you're the first one to condemn him when your turn comes and it will come my turn came when your turn comes they're going to remember how you were at that meeting but if you're the last guy to condemn you got a shot and believe me you know i had an incident where i was walked into a room and i didn't know if i was going to walk out again and i'll tell you right now i don't care who i was scared i was scared man i i had a 30 yard walk from a car to a basement down those steps when that door opened i didn't know if i was gonna that was gonna be the last thing i saw i mean i almost cut my my knees were weak that's how scary it was for me and uh fortunately i'm here so i mean i we worked it out and it was uh it was nonsense but um they're trying to scare me because you know you know it's funny brad it shows you how life is i'm bringing two million dollars a week i took all the risk nobody from my former life had any risk whatsoever was only my guys in my crew and i'm bringing them money they have to do anything i don't have to borrow money for them to get it started i just brought them money well they write a story i think it was news day where i was getting powerful enough to break off break away from the colombos and start my own family and they said that i was taking down two billion or three billion dollars something like that all of a sudden that gets into people's heads so now they're thinking i'm making a lot of money and i'm holding out even though this is my deal it's all my deal right and so i really got put on the spot as a result of that and when i'm in the meeting i'm saying you know everybody the newspaper writes about everybody it's always a lie now they're writing something about me it's the truth i said come on what do you i'm starting to get mad at the meeting because i'm being put on a spot and then i caught myself as hey looks like i'm going to walk out of here let me keep my mouth shut i'm talking to the boss i don't want to be disrespectful and boom you know i mean it worked out but you know it's oh michael okay and you have a glass of wine and we're hugging each other i was really aggravated at night but anyway so i mean there's things that you learn on the street and you can transfer them into the business world today they're going to be very helpful very very helpful control your emotions folks we were talking earlier i said you see it sounds like the government's the new mafia when you were just talking about you know taking that money it's taxes yeah tax you got to pay tax and you were willingly paying tax now now it's the government dude yeah i can't it blows my mind you hear the people saying you know you don't have to pay taxes according to the law there's nobody that can show me a law where a certain type because certain types you can but the normal person working a normal salary and getting compensated technically supposedly there is no law that you have to pay tax it's completely voluntary but yet they will toss your ass in jail of course which means you know again like the government literally is the mafia you guys probably taught them how to gamble how to freaking tax people the whole number who may who made who made coza nordstrom mafia in this country government made it how prohibition remember something you know at one time guys came over here from italy okay the original mafia wasn't really even the mafia there was a black hand it was just a group of guys who were criminals and what did they do they started to pray on their own in neighborhoods shake them down extort them make some money that's how they did it prohibition comes in and they figured it out right away hey this is an item a product that people want and despite what the government wants we're going to deliver it to them they made hundreds of millions of dollars that's when the mob became an organization and became the mafia that's it the government put us in business so you know it's funny brad i'll get up in front of a church and i really mean this and i'm a christian i believe in god i love the lord but i say listen today right now i have no moral issue at all with stealing money from the government tax money i i would do it in and i'm still going to heaven as far as i'm concerned my wife goes crazy when i say that the pastor looks at me like but you know what they do in the audience they clap they clap i said i won't do it because i'm not going to break the law i'm not going to jeopardize my family and i'm not going to go to jail so i'm not going to do it because that's the law but morally i don't have an issue because remember everything that's legal is not always moral and everything that's moral okay doesn't necessarily have to be illegal you know so there's there's ways to look at that but uh but i want to make that clear in case any government i will not steal taxes i will not defraud the government i have because i'm not going back to jail so i understand you people have the power i don't folks go follow mr francis you guys know his website michaelfrances.com follow him on instagram michael francis my recommendation would be go try to you know at least subscribe to that youtube channel sounds like you drop a lot of content regularly yeah uh good you know your your your uh critique in mob movies what's the best mob movie ever you think again this is uh my favorite mob movie of all the time the most accurate and the best acted only because i knew everybody that was portrayed in the film was the hbo gotti movie where armond asante was john gotti he was absolutely brilliant we've become friends i've just recently had a sit down with him he was brilliant he's brilliant anything he does but he was brilliant in that movie he was very accurate i knew all the players um and it was great you know then you got to go to bronx tale and godfather obviously one and two are brilliant good fellas brilliant donnie brasco brilliant those are all great movies great great movies so it's pick pick one but you break them down you kind of like do a little review on each one yeah because you know i mean goodfellas are mentioned in good fellas they named me in goodfellas i mean i knew everybody so i can talk about what's real what's not real um you know same with donny brasco i mean knew a lot of the guys i mean donnie brasco joe pistone is actually now a friend of mine i only met him once on the street thank god you know i didn't hang out with him uh but yeah i knew all the players so i can review it or critique it from that perspective you know and then there's some movies out there that uh you know we we we go right down the line if they're good we say and if they're not we we say it also but uh we we do that almost every monday mob movie monday and now we've been doing a lot of interviews sit downs we had charles palmenteri amanda sante uh uh you know a whole bunch of people and we got a lot more coming on with us and what we what we try to do though brad is it's not just about i don't ever glorify my former life i've left it i've left it for the right reasons i always say that the mob life the gang life the street life their evil lifestyles now i'm not calling the guys evil i was one of them i just happen to be blessed but i don't know any family of any member of that life that hasn't been totally devastated including my own not my wife and kids thank god but mother father brothers sisters our family was devastated and that's true of every family that i know of every member of that life that stayed in their life so any lifestyle that does that to a family is evil and that's why i tell these gang bangers you're selfish guy if you stay in this life if you have loved ones that you care about because they're going to be impacted in a negative way throughout your existence in this life that's just how it is period so i don't glorify the life i talk about it because it's what it's part of who i am it's why a lot of reasons why people come and listen to me because they're attracted to the life thanks to the media and to the movies but we always try to give a lesson at the end a positive lesson based upon my experiences and people appreciate that they say that they said michael one of the reasons we tune in because we're learning something at the end it doesn't have to be long enough to preach you got to get something out of what we did in that segment that they can learn from and that's what we try to do well i appreciate you coming here dropping bombs from my my peeps and uh i wish you nothing but the best well thank you and and uh i got to tell you i knew you a couple of years ago and and man you're a success story that just keeps evolving so i'm going to stay close to you man see in my former life i put the arm on you but you know in a different way but well any any anytime you want to come back and get on the up another episode dude i'm sure everyone would love to have you appreciate that until next time kids share this out make sure that you always keep it real dropping bombs with the real bradley subscribe now you

Channel: BRAD LEA TV

Views: 71,491

Keywords: Brad lea, trbl, the real brad lea, sales advice, brad lea motivation, brad lea sales, brad lea podcast, sales development podcast, influence podcast, sales podcast 2020, dropping bombs podcast, entrepreneur mindset, michael franzese, sammy the bull, valuetainment, franzese, sonny franzese, fat tony, colombo mafia, sit down michael franzese, american mafia, sensitive social issues, the truth about the new york mob, former mobster reveals secrets, new york mob, the truth

Id: C33C91MuJto

Length: 82min 18sec (4938 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021