#955 George Taylor On Teaching Entrepreneurship To Gang Members

George Taylor is the Co-Founder & CEO of TRU Colors, a company with a new business model of attempting to solve gang violence in Wilmington, North Carolina by hiring gang members in an attempt to reform them. In this conversation, we discuss George's business, the tactics of hiring the gang members, the opportunities he presents to the new employees, why he is taking on this mission, and what are some the tangible results of this new business model. ======================= Brave Wallet is the first secure crypto wallet built natively in a web3 crypto browser. No extension required. Store, manage, and grow your portfolio, get NFT & multi-chain support, and more. Download the Brave privacy browser at brave.com/Pomp, and click the wallet icon to get started. ======================= The Pomp Podcast is powered by BetOnline.ag, the world's largest sports betting, casino, poker and horse racing website that accepts cryptocurrency for wagering. BetOnline.ag gives you the ability to use Bitcoin and more than a dozen altcoins to make deposits and withdraw your winnings. There are no crypto transaction fees, and processing is instantaneous and secure. Visit https://promotions.betonline.ag/pomp and use PROMO CODE: POMP100 to receive a 100% matching bonus on any crypto deposit. BetOnline.ag is available in nearly every country around the world, making it the top global gaming destination for crypto users. =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. George Taylor is the founder and CEO of True Colors, which is a very interesting, brand-new business that is going ahead and trying to solve gang violence in Wilmington, North Carolina. In this conversation, we talk about George's business. We talk about why he's doing this, how the business works, what the results are so far, and why they want to scale this nationally. I really enjoyed this conversation with George, and I hope you guys enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I first want to talk about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by FTX US. FTX.us is the safe, regulated way to buy

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• 3:00Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:11Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:35Anthony Pompliano?

  George, how are you? Here's where I think that we should start is you live in the Wilmington, North Carolina area. And this is what, maybe five years ago, six years ago, when you started the True Colors Project?

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, we got together, yeah, like six years ago, almost today, frankly, yeah, is when this whole sort of idea sparked.

• 3:56Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, and so you've been a successful serial entrepreneur. You've built multiple companies, but while living in Wilmington, I didn't know this. You actually were the first person to tell me about this. There's been a growing gang problem. And eventually the gang issue spilled over. And there was one specific, I think, shooting that really caught your attention and the attention of many other people. So maybe let's start with kind of like what the problem was six years ago with gangs in Wilmington. And then we could talk about how you're solving this problem in a very unique way.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was, so I was, six years ago, I was working at a software company that we had founded Untappd. If any of you guys are beer drinkers out there, you might know Untappd. And just a handful of blocks from my office, there was a 16-year-old who was killed in a drive-by. And man, I didn't even know at that time, Anthony, that we had gangs in our city. That was sort of how oblivious I was. I was sort of, you know, hands down and head down, working on, working on my software company. But when it happened, it pissed me off. And I wanted to understand what was driving the violence. And so, I reached out to the DA who I knew. I was like, hey, man, I want to meet whoever a top gangster in, because this is bullshit. And, you know, I want to understand. And he connected me

• 5:12Speaker 02

  up with the gang task force, who hooked me up with three guys that they said had status on the streets. And that's sort of how I got involved in this. And, you know, I spent the next sort of three years hanging out with gangs, trying to understand what was going on, as nuts as that sounds.

• 5:27Anthony Pompliano?

  So, as you're doing this, like, first of all, it takes a very unique individual to say, hey, there was a shooting. I want to go meet the people who potentially are involved in this situation. So, when you get connected to a couple of these individuals who are involved in the gangs in Wilmington, like, what was your general, maybe, perception? Or like, what were you expecting? Do you expect you're just gonna go and like, kind of tell them, like, hey, knock it off?

• 5:50Speaker 02

  No. I mean, so, first of all, I mean, startups are pretty gangster anyway, right? So, if you're in startups, you're sort of used to this sort of stuff?

• 5:56Anthony Pompliano?

  You're in a gang?

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, come on. And it's an aggressive culture, and we got to get shit done. But, no, I mean, so, I had no idea what to expect at all. But, you know, what I found, and I guess frankly, I went into it thinking that if you're in gangs, then your primary role in life is to, you know, sell drugs and hurt people every now and then again. Because you watch the media, that's what you think, right? But man, what I've figured out and found out over the next handful of years was that that's just not true, that the majority of gang members are not doing anything illegal. And by the way, I'm not talking just about our city here in eastern North Carolina. I'm talking about across the state and then across the country.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  You know, I've been fortunate enough over the past years to meet the number ones in most of the gangs in America and, you know, whether it's in Chicago or LA or Indy or Atlanta or wherever it might be. And what I learned is that, you know, gangs were originally started to lift communities, not to tear them down, and that most gangs have written, believe it or not, written key values and mission and vision statements. I mean, legit, right? And nowhere in it does it talk about guns and drugs. In fact, just the opposite. It talks about community and brotherhood and loyalty and knowledge and growth and all this sort of thing. In fact, one of them, one of the groups has a 67-page book called the, you know, called The Blueprint, that if you read it, you'd want to join.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  And so, you know, the big question is, okay, so if that's true, like if that's what gangs are trying to be about or were originally trying to be, what the hell went wrong, right? And, you know, the answer, the sort of epiphany I came to a handful of years back was that the real drivers of violence on the street are not, it's not gangs, it's lack of economic opportunity and societal exclusion. You know, you take a group of people, you carve them off and you put them into, say, a housing project, and they don't see a way out and they don't see a future, then, you know, people do what they have to do to put food on the table, and it really is like that. And that was sort of the spark that generated the idea that eventually became True Colors,

• 7:59Speaker 02

  which is a sort of gang-inclusive economic opportunity.

• 8:05Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you think about this, the idea of True Colors, essentially to create a brewery and a beer and a brand that brings together multiple gangs to work in unison to create this business. And one of the things that just strikes me is getting people to work together is all about economic incentives, and capitalism tends to have a really great way. Of driving economic incentives and kind of you could see the outcome with those incentives. And so is it fair to say that True Colors was simply, hey, you have one path where you guys can continue to fight with each other and kind of do all these things for economic opportunity? Or there's a second path where actually by working together, you're going to be able to create that same economic opportunity, maybe even bigger economic opportunity.

• 8:50Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you really were just the driving force of bringing these people together, showing them a second path. And then they've taken it from there and have really kind of driven this brand and the product to the heights that you guys have achieved?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  I mean, absolutely. It's like in the beginning, it was very transactional, you know, I'm going to pay you this. And in return, we're going to come together and we're going to do that. And it was freaky. I mean, the first, don't get me wrong, like in the very beginning, way back there when we were trying to figure out how all this worked. You know, it was sketchy because I'm bringing in gang leaders who had not gotten along for a long period of time. And you know, that first meeting was nuts, you know, people are, people are speaking very loudly and um, yeah, and they were all convinced I was the cops and it took a while for that to sort of subside as well. But in the end, absolutely, like they came together, they realized that they had the same dreams that the other person had. You know, they both, they all have kids, they have girlfriends, they have all these things that they want to achieve.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Nobody wants to, well, with rare exception anyway, almost nobody wants to, to sell drugs and do things that hurt people. Like they just don't. But you know, when there's not another opportunity, people do what they have to do to move forward.

• 10:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so when you start to think about the actual body of work that these individuals are doing, most of them have never worked at a brewery. They've ever built any sort of, you know, company at the size and scale of what your aspiration is. Walk me through, you know, how do you take somebody who's in a gang, who doesn't actually run a business, has no experience doing so to, now you're part of the True Colors team and you're a productive member of what we're trying to accomplish?

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Great, great question. So, you know, it's not like a normal company, if we're gonna go out and hire someone today to for marketing, I'm looking for marketing experience and cultural fit, and that person generally sort of slides into the position fairly easily. Uh, with us, you know, there's, there's skills, like definitely, street skills transfer into legitimate business skills. So if you're good at sales, marketing, collections, right, all this stuff counting money, uh, it, it transfers into the, into the company fairly well. However, there's this, the guys coming in off the streets, they've never worked in an environment like this, certainly. Maybe they've had a job flipping a burger for 20 hours a week. They also come in with what we call limiting beliefs, man, I can't be successful in life, and they begin to believe us.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  I can't be successful in life because, I don't know, I grew up in the wrong zip code, went to the wrong school, have the wrong sk- skin color, the world's against me, like, and not that there aren't bits of truth to that, but if you become that guy, you're a victim, right, you can't move forward. So, we have a five-month onboarding program, uh, and it starts with what we call, uh, disrupt you, which is two months of effectively bootcamp, and you come in, we hire you at a low-wage job, uh, give you health insurance, and you're in this group, with this group of people, uh, in a two-month sort of onboarding situation where the goals, the goal, there's three primary goals. One is to remove all those limiting beliefs and get you to understand you can be amazing.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  It's a lot easier today than it used to be, because I've got 65 guys out here now that have already been through it and are kicking ass, right? In the beginning, it was a little more challenging. Um, secondly, though, um, basic, um, like, life skills, because if you don't have your personal lives, like, you know, reasonably well together, it's really hard to grow fast. So for us, that's, you know, housing, transportation, relationships, money. You get that shit together, then you can begin to grow fast. And then lastly, you gotta understand that this guy you've been fighting with maybe for years, uh, is not the asshole you thought he was, and you gotta overcome all of that. And so you might imagine, like, that first week can be nuts, because there's all this, like, angst and trauma, frankly, and grief, like, all this stuff that people have been through has gotta come out and gotta come out quickly.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  We have two months, basically, to get it out. So, you know, it's loud and it's a little crazy. Beginning, but by the end, as they get to towards the end, it's it's amazing the transformation that that happens during that two month period. People start getting along, people start working together. And and at the very end, we make it through and about eighty percent of the group usually makes it through, I would say. And by the way, the ones who don't, it isn't because they didn't think nuts. Usually it's that they were late to something. If you're one second late to anything in the first sixty days, you're bounced.

• 13:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And so is that just like a discipline thing? Is that like a seriousness thing? Like, what, why are the rules somewhat akin to maybe like the way the military would work? Or, you know, the most strict kind of environments? Like, why do you think that's such an important part of the ethos and the culture of what you're building?

• 13:19Speaker 02

  You know, everyone has to have, both sides have to have skin in the game. And that is there like that's your air commitment is we're going to deliver this curriculum. We're going to deliver these experiences. We're going to deliver this opportunity. In return, you need to take it seriously. You need to show up on time. That's that is the one requirement. The rest of it, you know, it is what it is. But that is the one requirement. And, you know, in the beginning, people used to like, oh, he's got to be full of shit. He doesn't really mean that. And so people would test in the early classes and, you know, someone would get bounced. By the way, you can reapply in ninety days and some of our best guys have been through twice, maybe three times, actually. I don't know. But certainly it happens. But at the end, if you make it out, then if you make it through and you graduate, then we have our initiation in true colors, which is you have to jump out of an airplane, which scares the shit out of people.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  But that's the whole point. Like, you'll throughout this whole thing, there's all these experiences to kind of like reset people's minds to understand they can be amazing. And we learned from, we've learned from Tony Robbins, actually, was one that taught us this is you want to, you want to sort of rewire someone's mind quickly, put them in a situation that's really challenging, maybe scary even better, and help them overcome it. And they do, and all of a sudden, boom, like they have a whole new view of life. And so when their feet hit the ground from jumping out of the plane, they then become an intern, they get a $5,000 raise, and they have to earn their way onto a team. So they might be sales, marketing, HR, beer, canning, or brewing, or whatever it might be that they have wanted to become part of. They have 90 days to earn their way on the team.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  When they do that, once they do, then their salary and title goes to whatever position they were pursuing, and they get an equity position too. We use stock options just like we did in the software company. So everyone here that's been here five months or more has some sort of an equity play in the organization.

• 15:00Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you think about this, another piece of it that I find fascinating is you guys raised about $18 million for True Colors. What was the pitch to investors? How'd you raise the money? And then what are you guys doing with that amount of capital, right? And the reason why I think it's so important is like, this isn't like a small business, like, oh, maybe it works, maybe done. You've got 65 people out there, you've got $18 million raised. Like, this is a big business, potentially, if you guys are able to execute.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we're trying to build a national brand quickly, based on peace and unity and this sort of thing. And so, a lot of the capital was used just to get our facility. It's crazy. I come from the software bit, in the software world, you know, Anthony, you and I could start a software company this afternoon for 100 grand if we wanted to. Beer is not like that. We have a 58,000 square foot building that we bought and then completely redid. You know, we've got a lot of equipment that's expensive. It's a large brewery. We can brew about 1.6 million cases of beer a year here, and so it's built to scale. But as far as, you know, raising money, I put in a fair amount. A lot of private investors also who believed in the company and believed in the mission and cared a lot

• 16:08Speaker 02

  about, you know, what we were trying to do on the mission side, put some money in. And then we were really fortunate. We've got some good corporate equity investors. We've got Molson Coors is a minority, has a minority position in the company. Believe it or not, PNC Bank took a position in the company, which was wonderful. So we've just been fortunate throughout all of that, that people get the, like, they get the mission and they understand, like, the majority of America's, hell, the majority of the world's social problems, I think. Certainly in America, it's economically based at the core of it. And so this idea that entrepreneurship and capitalism can solve a problem like like street violence, they got it.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  And in the end, you know, we had our, I would say our first sort of full year where we were fully engaged on the streets and in the mission would have been last year, started like the middle-ish to end of 2020 and then through last year. And Air of City just released the statistics about six weeks ago on violent crime and downtown areas where we work here in Wilmington, it was down 43%. And there ain't anybody in there but our team making that happen. So, you know, it works. I challenge anyone to show me a city last year that had violent crime down 43%. Most of them are up.

• 17:26Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you start to think about this, are you mixing people who are in gangs or previously in gangs with what many folks would think of as like normal folks that you would go try to hire? So there's gang members and non-gang members and part of it is like integrating them? Or is it 100% just people who are in or were in gangs?

• 17:46Speaker 02

  So we've got about 80 employees. I'd say roughly 60-ish or so are gang and the rest are what we call civilian. And while not required, everyone here is in the gang and stays in the gang. And the way, in the way that that works for us, because if you believe, if you believe that economic, lack of economic opportunity is driving the problems on the streets, I can't hire every gang member in the city. There's too many. And so what we have to do is hire, we get leadership, we get middle managers, we get guys who are very active out there on the streets, and that's who we hire. And then they use their influence within their organizations to begin to lift them.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  And so the idea is like, it sounds nuts and, you know, somewhat ironic that the, that maybe our best potential to stop street violence is with, is to join the gangs and work with them to lift them and show them better leadership and help support them so that they can influence their organization, but it works. I mean, clearly, like I said, 43% reduction, that's nuts, right?

• 18:48Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you think about this, it's obvious that it's working. There are still some incidents where there's violence, there's murders in the city, etc. How do you think about kind of the aspirational goal? Like, could you get to 100% reduction and there's no violence? Is it, hey, if we get to 50% reduction, that's success? Like, how do you measure what success looks like? And then also, how do you think about like the ongoing challenge of not just getting to a point and then you've reached the finish line, but continuing to keep violence down?

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Great question. So, you know, 43% is not 100%. So, yeah, people get hurt. And that is one of the challenges. I mean, we've, our team has saved dozens and dozens of lives. That I know. But nevertheless, some people get hurt. And that's, that's a really hard part of this. And, you know, from a success standpoint, I don't consider 43% successful. I think, I mean, I'm proud of what our team has been able to do. But it's, we're, it's not successful because somebody, people got hurt last year, right? And 50% is not either. Until you get to 100, it's like, how do you say success? Like, it's, it's not like a software company where we have buggy software that we can correct, right? These are people's lives.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  But what we know and the way I look at success is sometimes, I mean, these impact startups, these impact companies are so much harder than traditional ones I've worked in anyway, on so many varieties of level and varieties of, variety of levels. And you'll get, like, there are times where like, man, I can't, I don't know if I can deal with this anymore because, you know, there's just so many pressures coming in from the outside, frankly. But all you're gonna do is like, look around here. And I got, because I got 60 guys that prior to True Colors were a threat to our community, didn't get along, didn't even, half of them didn't even know each other. And today, I got all these guys working together, side by side. They're raising families, they're going on vacation with their kids. I mean, they're buying houses. Like, that, that's, to me, that is success.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  And then out on the street, you know, numbers like we're putting, like, we're able to accomplish are better, but it's, it's still really tough. You know, our goal, though, is to take this model, like, we're trying to develop this blueprint and, and move it out into other areas across the United States. And we're being recruited by a number of cities to put in something like True Colors. But the idea is, what I hope is that other entrepreneurs see this model and how effective it is. And it doesn't have to be beer, it doesn't have to be True Colors. I mean, if you're a particular entrepreneur and you have the ability to do something like this, the idea is that it is entrepreneurship and capitalism that solves this problem. Good jobs change people's perspectives. You know, it gives them hope for the future and they begin to behave differently.

• 21:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and when you start to think about that, is the idea that you'll take True Colors and you'll build out breweries around the United States kind of in the in the full vision of this and then you can go city by city and do it? Is it something where you continue to take people from Wilmington, train them, and then go move them to other places? Like, how do you think about rolling this out on a broader scale?

• 21:44Speaker 02

  We do want to put breweries in other cities across the across the country as we begin to continue to expand. However, to scale quicker and more broadly, the educational component that we talked about, we're looking to put into other cities and then have, so people that graduate could go to work for any company. We tested that before COVID. We had people that had gone through our True Colors Disrupt You program and then gone to work for other companies, which was amazing on a whole variety of levels. I mean, aside from allowing us to hire more people and have more influence, it also allowed our community to go in and meet some of these guys or work side by side.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  And, you know, they're like, oh, my gosh, you won't believe I'm working next to this guy's an active blood gang member. Not what I would thought. The guy's amazing. And then that person tells another person, tells another person, and the whole community's perspective begins to change.

• 22:40Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you start to think about this, is it fair to say that True Colors could not only train people to come work there, but in some way you're doing entrepreneurship training? And like, is there a world where Silicon Valley became what it was? One, because people came to build stuff. Two, there was risk capital. But three is, you went and you worked at a company, you learned how it worked, and then you left and you started your own company, and there was more capital to kind of invest into it. And so have you seen or do you anticipate people will actually leave True Colors and go start their own businesses in the community, etc.? And you kind of have this multiplier effect?

• 23:13Speaker 02

  We haven't seen anyone leave and start their own business, but we have seen people leave to take other jobs that suited them, especially if they had to move, like if their girlfriend was moving to another city. Because of the work that they did here and because of their resume from here, they were hired by a marketing firm or a sales firm, or whatever it might be, right? And so we have absolutely seen that. We haven't had anyone leave and start their own business yet, but you know, there's no reason why that shouldn't happen. Especially, you know, our goal, because everybody here's got stock options, our goal is to eventually get to a place where we would exit, just like any other software company we've done in the past. And at that point, you know, everyone here has an equity position that's worth a significant amount of money. Some will decide to stay and continue, some will, I think, probably decide to go and do

• 23:58Speaker 02

  something on their own.

• 23:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What's been the most fun or fulfilling part for you in this entire journey?

• 24:04Speaker 02

  I mean, that's easy, just looking, the most fulfilling thing for sure is just looking at the folks and knowing where they were when we first met and the challenges they were going through. And Anthony, people like you and I, like, don't really understand what it's like to grow up in some of these neighborhoods. You know, I certainly didn't before I was introduced to the True Colors team and others. And seeing their lives today and seeing them, so here's a good example, we had a Halloween party last year, and we, I love, we've done it every year, but it's the most amazing thing in the world, because all the kids come, all the moms come, all the guys are there, and everybody's smiling, everybody's dressed in these ridiculous outfits.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  And I'm looking around, I'm thinking, well, he's Blood, he's Grip, he's GD, he's BD, and on and on and on. You know, he's a leader in this gang, and here he is, dressed in this absurd costume, with his children smiling and laughing and having a great time, like, that just didn't happen before. And so, I mean, as I said, there are days where I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? I gotta do this again? And you just wanna, like, you can't take some of the things that began to happen because of the pressures. But, all you gotta do is look at that, and it's like, all worth it, it's very easy.

• 25:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you start to think about this, one of the pieces that I see people talking about in the chat, but also I think just naturally comes to mind is like, how can people help? Is it just go buy the beer? Are there other things that they can do to raise awareness or kind of help you in this mission?

• 25:30Speaker 02

  I mean, follow us, support us, you know, if you're interested, we're always raising capital. So that's one way. Buy our beer. Yeah, just engage with us, frankly, you know, and I would, I would challenge everyone to do that because if you get, if you begin to engage with some of our team members online or maybe, which often ends up in a Zoom call or something like that, they'll blow you away. I mean, it is amazing. There, no one is what you'll expect it to be and you'll be, you'll be surprised and inspired and hopefully energized to go and do something similar to True Colors.

• 26:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And when you start to think about the local community, what's your message, I think, to folks in that community in terms of either one, how they can help you or, you know, how you think about the impact that you've had there?

• 26:18Speaker 02

  I mean, locally, it's like, so when you're involved in, involved in something like True Colors or probably any impact business, I guess, but this is one what I've been part of, you know, we're dealing with race and poverty and violence. And these are very, very emotional topics that people are very passionate about. And so, you know, within our community, we have, we have a handful of people who, you know, would like us to do things differently. And so that we know that's, you know, our message to them always is come in and see because often people just don't fully understand what's going on at True Colors. And there's a lot, you know, because of all the passion around it, there's a lot of rumors and frankly, the media doesn't help. The media has long ago learned, not

• 26:58Speaker 02

  just in our city, but across the country, that if you can cause some consternation and anger people, then you get a lot of clicks. But the large, large, large majority of our town has been, city has been amazing. I mean, we get such good support and, you know, that's all the way across the board from politicians to business leaders. You know, we have events here frequently from the Chamber of Commerce to businesses here that come because they want to Bring their folks to see what's going on at True Colors. They invite us out to speak. Uh, we, we get invited to all sorts of conferences. And by the way, if anyone's got one, I'm telling you, our guys will blow you away on what's possible, uh, in the world. Uh, we've spoken at conferences as small as a few hundred to as large as several thousand people.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  And I don't think they've ever left and not gotten a standing ovation. But, you know, in general, you know, we're fortunate. Our community has been very supportive, uh, of what we're doing. Uh, both financially and, you know, just getting behind us and encouraging us to, to continue on.

• 27:58Anthony Pompliano?

  There's people asking, uh, is there any plans for this to become a, a movie? They said, this is definitely on the way to, uh, to, to kind of international prominence.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  We, you know, man, we, we had, uh, a streamer. We, there was this whole idea around a docu-series. Uh, and I was like, okay, that sounds maybe okay. I don't know. And so la- it last year we had for two months, I think it is, we had cameras in here. And at the time, man, I was worried that, um, I was worried that the gangs weren't going to open up and give them any content. Well, man, the gang members were incredibly open and told them all this stuff and took them into their community. So it was the business side. I was like, no, you're not coming to my fucking meeting. And so it became very awkward and, um, I, I don't really know how to do it. Uh, just because, I mean, imagine if you had cameras in your meeting. I don't, I don't know about you, but I don't want to be like Jersey Shore or something.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  I, I, I, we just were like, no, this isn't working. So if we could figure a way to do it and didn't have to have cameras all in what we're doing, it's hard, right? Imagine if everything you did was on camera.

• 29:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, for two hours a day it is, but other, outside those two hours, it'd be weird.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  It'd be weird. And, and then there are times where you want to say, you know, if that fucking, you know, there are business relationships that at time become challenging. And I might say something ugly in a conference room, which doesn't mean I don't love that person, but at the moment I'm kind of pissed. And I don't really need that on, um, on TV.

• 29:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I think that's a, a fair way to, uh, to view the world. Uh, where can we send people to, uh, to find you on the internet or find out more about True Colors?

• 29:30Speaker 02

  If you go to truecolors.co, there's no M on the end, T R U colors.co, there's also no E. And by the way, true, to help you remember that, true stands for truth, responsibility, and unity, which are the core values of the company. And that's why there's no E on it.

• 29:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then, are you on the internet anywhere? Like, if someone wants to get in contact with you, what's the best way to do it?

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Hit me up on LinkedIn. I mean, look for George Taylor, True Colors. Would love to connect.

• 29:56Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. George, listen, I think I speak for everyone that the work you're doing is absolutely incredible. And the numbers speak for themselves, not only in terms of the individuals that you've hired, trained, and are employing today, but also the reduction in crime. And I think that this is a story that hopefully more and more people will learn about over time, and see that, you know, in some unique way, capitalism and economic opportunity ends up solving problems that other forms struggle to solve. It's pretty cool to see this.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Thanks, Anthony. I really appreciate you having me on. Cheers.

• 30:28Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Sounds good, George. Talk soon.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  See you. Bye.

• 30:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more, and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.