Sep 16, 2019
My conversation with Cheri Garcia,
founder of Cornbread Hustle was very raw, very vulnerable and
opened my eyes to the movement around second chance hiring that’s
growing quickly here in America.
Cornbread Hustle is a staffing
agency for second chances (people getting out of prison or living
in recovery).
Cheri is passionate about helping felons, and people in recovery
find transformation through employment or
entrepreneurship.
Cheri’s story of addiction to
methamphetamines, and alcohol resonated with me and her story of
finding sobriety is going to be helpful to many people. Cheri talks about how she
educated herself as to exactly what the alcohol was doing to her
body, and when she realized that it was increasing her anxiety,
instead of numbing it, she quickly found the necessary motivation
to get help in AA.
Cheri found her own transformation
and recovery through starting a business and eventually building a
career in the TV news industry. As she progressed along this
path, she developed a number of skills in marketing and PR. She now
uses those to help individuals getting out of prison re-brand
themselves to become the person they want to be and get noticed by
the people they want to meet.
Cheri is also a PR consultant for
Mark Cuban companies, and provides strategy plans and media
opportunities for a variety of Shark Tank
companies.
Links:
Cornbread
Hustle, Cheri’s
Twitter, Cheri’s
LinkedIn
Here are some of the things
we talked about:
- Cheri tells her story of
getting over her meth addiction in 2007. She talks about how she
didn’t really get into the recovery community but replaced
her addiction with a love of success and money which led to a whole
set of other problems for her.
- She talked about why she felt a
need to use drugs and drink, and what she was trying to escape from
with that numbing.
Many things led to her falling into addiction including
lacking healthy boundaries, people pleasing and wanting people to
like her because she didn’t like herself.
- Cheri opens up to us about what
she felt like when she got a DUI, how she found herself in that
situation, and what it meant as the founder and CEO of a second
chance hiring business.
- We talked about why she
got help and sought sobriety. Cheri talks about how someone
reached out to her and mentioned their concern. She downloaded a book on
trying to control alcohol. As she learned about what
alcohol withdrawals look like, she learned that a lot of
the anxiety in her life was because of the alcohol, not relieving
her from the anxiety.
- Cheri’s business is,
“Cornbread Hustle,” a staffing agency for second
chances.
Cheri’s team helps people getting out of prison and people who are
living in recovery, find jobs. We talk a lot about what kind
of jobs she helps them get, where those jobs are, and how she
places them. Her
work is truly inspiring and she’s doing amazing things.
- Cheri talks about how it wasn’t
popular to be helping felons a few years ago when she
started. Recently,
with celebrities like Kim Kardashian and others talking about this
cause, it’s become more mainstream. She talks about how a lot of
people discouraged her from creating this business.
- She talks about how she doesn’t go
out and pitch companies to hire her people, but that
companies are proactively coming to
her. She
does spend a lot of time hearing employers talk about how they want
someone with a non-violent background, and Cheri talks about how
she gets those employers to be more open-minded about who they will
and won’t work with.
- What kinds of jobs do you
place second chance hires into? We talked a lot about the
types of jobs she is placing felons, drug dealers, former doctors,
and others in.
- We talked about how many
of the people getting out of prison may be very well suited to be
founders of startups. Cheri talks about her vision for
where this idea can go and how this could turn into an entire
ecosystem of its own adjacent to what she’s doing with the staffing
business.
Connect with the Stigma
Podcast in the following ways:
Website: https://stigmapodcast.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/StigmaCast
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Stigma-Podcast-105616270782583/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stigma-podcast/