Matt Waltz
Appearances
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
Dr. Drew said the best way to quit drinking is by going cold turkey, and he's a doctor, so why would you question doctors?
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
So great to be with you, Dr. Drew.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
So the history of New Freedom, a banking contact of mine about six years ago said, hey, I've got three guys you should meet with. They've got a really unique idea. So these three guys came to my office, sat down. These three are my partners in New Freedom today. So one of them was serving a life sentence in prison.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
And he got sick of seeing these young guys just come back over and over, leave for two months, come back, leave for four months, come back. He became aware there were some federal funds available for recidivism programs. He applied for those funds, got them, and started teaching a class inside the prison, basically how to not come back to prison.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
There were two guys in the addiction recovery world who heard about this. They started writing letters, supporting the guys in the program, started to have tremendous success. At the same time, a partner who was serving a life sentence was working on his appeal. Much to his surprise, he won his appeal and got released.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
So these three guys then said, hey, let's take this program and let's scale it up. Let's find a way to do a lot more good, help a lot more people. So they wrote a fantastic business plan, went to some banks. The banks said, great idea, great business plan. No fucking way am I giving an ex-convict and two ex-addicts any money. And about the fifth banker said, no, but I know a guy you should meet.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
So they came to my office, they presented this plan. It was a fantastic business plan. They figured the funding out and I just couldn't understand why it hadn't been done already. So we decided to push forward with this idea at the same time, try to answer the question, why didn't this exist already? And I think what we found talking to ESG funds and family offices is
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
people don't love the idea of helping ex-convicts. And so when I learned that meeting with these fund managers and family offices, I became even more encouraged because I think that was the answer to why new freedom didn't already exist.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
You ever heard of this thing called the coronavirus? So when we would look for a space, the coronavirus lockdown happened the day before. So we walked into a 250 room conference hotel that was empty. The owners basically begged us to buy it. They sold it to us for an incredible price. In order to get licensed, the city had a special use permit hearing.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
No one attended because it was in the dark of COVID. So we got approved. It came together faster than anything I've ever been involved with before. It was incredible.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
So the way New Freedom works, it's a combination of clinical staff, you know, licensed clinical professionals, also peer support. So we have over 220 employees today. 85% of them are formerly incarcerated, formerly addicted. what this population believes. If you haven't been through what I've been through, I don't want to hear it. I want some college students to learn this in a book.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
I want to talk to people that know what I've been through. So in our facility, we have guys, men and women, who used to be shot callers in the prison gangs. I mean, truly terrifying human beings. who are now generous, successful, charismatic, capable people.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
And so when someone comes walking through our doors and they see this man who used to be an absolute terror, and he gives them a hug and says, hey, man, you can have a different life, it sparks this hope that's just incredible to see.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
Yeah, so the big picture of how New Freedom works is we're trying to reprogram a formerly incarcerated person's day so it matches a successful professional. So the day starts off with exercise first thing, then breakfast, then about six to seven hours of clinical programming.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
group therapy, individual therapy, you know, dealing with the traumatic events that probably caused someone to have this incredibly self-destructive behavior, right? After that, dinner, then the night shift. And the night shift consists of secondary education, the same way a young professional would be improving themselves after hours.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
We have vocational job training programs, GED, commercial driver's licenses. So we're really training people to use what they already have. A lot of people have these skills already, but to address what the root of the problem is that causes self-destructive behavior, give you tools to deal with that, and then give you a real future, training you for not just a job, but a career.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
You know, we've thought about that. We've talked about it. It's a really unique population set that's just that's formerly recently incarcerated. You know, it could be possible that people that haven't been incarcerated, they just they wouldn't have the same needs. They wouldn't have the same challenges.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
And I mean, good news or bad news for us in Arizona, there's 40,000 people who are incarcerated over 18,000 coming out of prison every year. And we're helping about 15% of people coming out of Arizona prisons. So there's still so much more work to do.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
I'm so glad you asked that question. Yeah, both Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Dr. Oz, who's gonna be in charge of Medicaid in the incoming administration. The majority of our funding in Arizona comes from Medicaid. And there's so much talk in today's world about government waste and inefficiencies and all these things. And what I'd like them to do is,
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
This is one of the successful programs that uses government funding. So they should know. There are amazing things happening at New Freedom. In fact, we have some outside consultants coming in to analyze our funding. For every $1 of government funding New Freedom gets, we return $10 to the citizens of Arizona in value. Almost $200 million a year back to the citizens of Arizona.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
So for RFK Jr., Dr. Ross. That's amazing. Just know we exist. We're creating miracles. We're helping people become good citizens, good neighbors, good fathers, good sons, and helping the community with adding to the GDP, reducing crime. There's so many benefits.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
I'm not, that term does not ring a bell for me.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
So what we're doing, we're providing discrete services, peer support, you know, group therapy. So it's just the clinical services that are being reimbursed.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
Correct. Shall we bring in Fred?
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
Well, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've started and exited about five businesses in my career. I've never seen anything come together the way New Freedom came together. The employees love working there. I mean, the second we started hiring, we had lined up out the door to get in there. And great people who have turned their lives around. I mean, it's been nothing short of amazing.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
And I would love to give you a tour in person, Dr. Drew, because you hear about this program and it sounds amazing. Every time I've given a tour, people tell me, I can't believe what's happening here. You're walking, you feel the energy. The employees are fired up. The program are fired up. You feel this energy of success and hope and change that's hard to describe.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
It's like nothing I've seen before. So we didn't realize when we first started, we didn't even plan on doing vocational training. It's something that evolved. People are saying, hey, we want jobs. Can you help us get jobs? So we developed this vocational training program. I've been in construction development for close to 30 years. So I brought some of my trade contractor partners in.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
They started teaching classes and then hiring these people. Today, there are over 90 employers who hire out of New Freedom. Some of them exclusively hire from New Freedom because they're the best employees I've ever had. I mean, the average incarceration... That's a major piece of this.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
There are about 15 different vocational tracks, commercial driver's license. We offer peer support certification so they can go out and work in other behavioral health facilities. We have a commercial kitchen, so we're training people how to work in restaurants and do food service.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
um yeah but the overwhelming majority are in the trades I mean it's a natural fit if talk to any general contractor or subcontractor finding people who want to work in construction is incredibly challenging and the men and women coming out of prison love that work they're not afraid to work hard they roll up their sleeves they're again you hear all the time they're some of the best employees that our employer partners are hiring
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
That's correct. We started with our first facility was men and women. And about three months ago, we opened our women's only facility. So we have two facilities in Phoenix. We're serving just over 400 people total. So we're really proud of our success.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
Well, you're right. And I told you when we first started, you know, the coronavirus affected, we went through our special use permit process without a person showing up. Well, a few months later, the neighborhood group found out about us and they came with the proverbial, you know, pitchforks and torches. But once they came inside and saw what we were doing...
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
The Neighborhood Group is now our biggest supporter. They love us. They support us every way. So it's just been magical to watch what happens. When you help people get better, the American people at large, they want that.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
So we've got a team of people that does nothing but write letters to incarcerated people in Arizona prisons. In fact, we write over 7,000 letters a month.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
And so what happens is we build a relationship with people inside prisons, and when they say, hey, I'm done with this life, but maybe I don't know how to be done with this life, our mentors say, great, that's exactly what we're here to do is help you do that. So the first thing we do is we send them six courses. There's a six-course curriculum that is basically homework.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
They do the homework in prison. They send it back to us. And for the last six to 12 months of their incarceration, we require that they don't get into trouble. So no gang activity, no drugs, no fighting. And those two things are the cost of admission to new freedom. And if those two things can get completed, then they can fill out an application to be accepted at new freedom.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
This program is not for everyone, right? You need to fit a specific criteria. You can't be currently addicted. We don't take SMI. There's a few parameters. And again, we're helping about 15% of the people that are coming out of Arizona prisons today.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
Yeah, so there are a lot of options at New Freedom. It's not compulsory. There are some faith-based options. There's a lot of different paths. Fred's a great example. Not everyone chooses the path of faith. A lot of people do. But really, and Fred's right, the people that come to New Freedom, they want to change.
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
One interesting thing I want to tell you, Dr. Drew, is the thing that I've come to realize, especially as a business owner, The skill set that it takes to be a successful criminal in the criminal world is almost identical to what it takes to be successful in the business world. The main difference is the stakes are so much higher. Someone like Fred, who was a leader in the criminal world,
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Navy SEAL: How To Make Your House A “Bug-In” Fortress Before Disaster Strikes w/ Joel Lambert + Matt Waltz & Fred Santor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 439
If he doesn't do his job right, his life might be at risk. You know, in the business world, if you don't do your job right, you lose a client, maybe some people quit. But so what we're doing is we're taking those skills all these men and women already have and repurposing them for good and success in the business world.