Well, then I'm sure you've heard the parallels to, what's her name, Piper from Orange is the New Black. Like, there's, right? It's just like, yeah, this pretty blonde girl in prison, she sticks out like a sore thumb and found a way to, you know, make friends. Did you have somebody that kinda took you under your wing in there?

There was one girl. Her name was Sandra. She had been in there for, like, ten years, and she told me all these wild stories. I mean, they're not my stories to tell, but, you know, it was just learning all the different background stories of people that I've been in there and realizing, you know, like, everyone was suffering so much. Like, from like, I I was lucky because I grew up in a great household. I didn't go or grow up in a cycle of abuse or substance use in the family. You know what I mean? There are so many common themes as as to why people get incarcerated. And, like, I was the odd one out.

What did you learn most from the people you met in there?

I think that we all want a a, like, a comeback. I I saw, like, love in everyone. I saw life in everyone, and I saw compassion in everyone there, which is, like, not what's usually thought of when you think of an inmate.

Right. And when you say you lived every day sort of with intention while you were there to try to make the best of it, What does that look

like? I reframed this whole situation in my head. Number one, I told my mom I was just going to camp. So I was like, mom, don't worry. I'll be okay. But number two, I was like, okay. We're gonna spend all this money on legal fees. I'm I hate wasting money, so I'm gonna spend that that fifty grand on something. And, because legal fees are exorbitant. Like, they are so much plus, like, all the travel fees, but at the courts, like, a lot of it's transportation for them to skip back and forth from from the court? Four zero seven fees. I don't know. Got dinged for those. But, where was I going with that? I saw it as an investment. I was like, okay. If I'm gonna spend all this, I'm I'm not gonna see it as something that's going to continue to ruin me. It's going to be something that's gonna make me better. And so I saw it as an opportunity to educate myself. What I do in there are eighty two books. I also saw this opportunity to get off, like, the the draw like, I went, like, I was, like, a heavy drug user, but I needed to get away from it. Like, I needed to I wasn't, like, an alleyway from doing cocaine, but I needed like, it's something that I did every week, and I need it and I knew that it impacted my life in multiple more ways than once. I needed to get off that and the and the and the bills. And then the other thing I saw, it was, like, kind of like a sabbatical just as a chance to get away and, like, kind of reflect on your life. So it was all those things. I was like, rehab's fifty grand a month. So I'm going for a year. So I'm getting a deal here.

Yeah.

Plus, you know, I get to kind of give myself my own MBA by reading all these books.

Yeah. One of the things I think about is this idea of reinvention, and yours is certainly a a great, example of that, and I wanna talk about, comeback snacks in a second. But I don't know. I think a lot of people are kinda looking at their lives, and thinking, yeah. You know, I maybe they're looking down the barrel of the last twenty or thirty years of their lives. They're like, you know what? I've you know, things are going well. It's not a disaster. I don't wanna blow my life up, but I there's gotta be something more. But they just they've only seen themselves or only done one thing for a while, and all and they don't wanna this idea of fear, they don't wanna fail. They don't wanna be seen as failing this fear of judgment that holds so many of us back. And yet, you look at you where you had basically every freedom stripped away, And it's easy to look at your life and go, god. Like, if Emily can do it, surely I can get over my fear of what strangers on the Internet will think of me, for example. But I'm wondering how you think about this idea of reinvention because the truth is, you're proud this won't be the last time you do it. We're always sort of reinventing and changing ourselves.

We're always on the comeback.

Yeah. Always on the comeback. Exactly.

I think for me, it's not reinventing myself because I've always been a nice person and a good person and a good person with with good intentions. I just got distracted and by the wrong incentives. I call it recalibration. You're just recalibrating. Like, you got a little compass. You know? Sometimes you go this way. But I'm not, like, this whole new person inside. Like, I'm still Emily. Like, I'm still the fun, little, spunky Emily that I was. Even when I was on even when I was, like, doing drugs and using substance, whatever, hanging with the wrong people, I still had that nice energy. So I just had the wrong kind of focus, and so that's why I call it recalibration.

Interesting. I do like that. I had never thought of it like that before. So how has this experience changed your maybe your purse your perception or your understanding of time? Because it when I talk to people too, they're like, oh, I always wanted to do this. I always wanna write a book or start a podcast or start a business. Oh, but I don't have time. I'll do it in a couple months. Things will settle down, and things never never settle down. You never have enough time. You had all the time in the world. So I'm wondering what people could learn from that.

It was a true gift. And, you know, like, when am I ever gonna get get a chance to read eighty two books in a year again? Like, reading was fun for me. I grew up in a library, and, like, now reading is, like, a fucking discipline. You like, you have to play until you read, and it's, like, it's not as fun when you have to discipline yourself to do it. Right? I guess when it comes to time, I think there's no situation in life that can't be productive for you as as long as you look through it through a certain lens. But if you're always playing, like, oh, poor me, whatever, then you're gonna just you're gonna collect that energy from other people, and things aren't gonna go well. And, yes, it's I did I do that at the beginning? Absolutely. Did I live there forever? Absolutely not. You know, you can't just dwell in this emotional and mental anguish forever because it's boring. It sucks. Like, what's the point? Right? Like, yes, I felt bad, and then I had to fix things, but I couldn't, like, I couldn't live in that place forever because I just love life so much, and I love seeing people happy and making people happy. And that place that I was in when I was on house arrest wasn't me. And so I just got really freaking bored of it.

You're right. It is boring. Yeah. I've never thought of it like that. What a beautiful way to put it. Okay. So tell me about how you start a popcorn company because I'm I'm sorry. Again, TV and movies, I thought you'd be making wine in your toilet. That's I didn't know that people could make food and popcorn.

Well, I went to prison. I said no more

sauce. Right.

I said no more sauce. I had to be off the sauce.

Okay.

I was like, I'm not here to I'm not even gonna have a fake cigarette in here because people people make something called tobacco, and they take tea and they smoke it. I was like, I'm not even having that. Like, no way. Like, I went in there with a very steadfast focus, and, like, that was, like, gonna get in here for a year. I literally planned, like I was like, oh my god. This is gonna I was looking forward to it and, like, you know, because I knew that I had the strength to make something really good out of it. So I didn't know what that was gonna be. And, like, you know, my dad my dad and I were talking about this earlier. It's, one of the things he said was, like, Emily, like, the way that our family has always raised you, it's like, you know, something good has to come out of this. Yeah. We don't know what it's gonna be. Something good. And I knew that I was gonna share my story because what's the point? And I also knew that I wasn't gonna live a life where I couldn't share the story. I wasn't gonna let that be another prison that I was stuck in of my own experience. So popcorn was a popular prison snack, and I talked to so many other people in there about, like, their stories and their lives. And what I like about popcorn is, like, popcorn has to be in the right environment for actually for it to pop. And each popcorn kernel is its own unique it's like a snowflake. It's every single one is different. But if you put it under too much heat, it's gonna burn. If you don't put it under any heat, it's not gonna pop at all. So, like, that's kind of, like, how people get involved in mess up situations. It's all their environment. And so that's kinda where the popcorn theme ties in. But, like, we'd also put, like, different recipes on there. And then one day, I was just like, why don't I start a popcorn company and I can employ people? Because I knew that I was gonna start something. And I was reading books about social enterprises when I was in there. I'm just trying to get getting ideas, and I was reading stories of other people that had became successful after incarceration. So he's used to collecting all this ammo. And I was I wanna say, like, I was in prison at exactly the right time. I was in prison at the best time because in two thousand eighteen, prison reform was really starting to take hold in the United States. If this isn't two thousand, people wouldn't give them a shit. They're like, whatever. Shut up. Just do your time. But now people are starting to realize, okay. Okay. We need to actually help people when they're incarcerated and and believe and support people. So there was kind of already this this thought process that had evolved from people. So that's when I knew that I could launch this thing, this idea, and have some sort of social back into it. And so that's how it started. Like, I've messed I played around all the recipes. I sketched logo designs with my now business partner back and forth through snail mail. I got people to, like, print off food trends from the Internet and send them into me so I could, like, experiment with recipes. And I wrote letters to eighty two of the author eighty two of eight so I wrote eighty two books. Sorry. And I wrote letters to every single one. And, yeah, I got letters back because, you know, if you send a letter from a prison, people are most likely gonna open it.

Yeah. I that's a letter I'd open.

Right? So that was, like, my little marketing hack. And, that's how I began to build my mentorship network, and I also became very close with a lot of volunteers that were inside prison. I continued this those connections when I got out. And when I got out in early two thousand nineteen, I worked at the gym because I had to have another job. And, I I worked I think it was within, like, a year and a half. After working at the gym for a year and a half, I was able to go full time into which is now come back snacks. So here we are. And I went over eleven hundred stores across Canada, and I've hired, like, twelve or thirteen individuals all at different times because come some people come and use it as stepping stones for the next thing, that have all been formally incarcerated. So it's great.

It was funny when as I was doing reading up on you, I went to the website. I went to the store locator, and there's a store that's, like, two blocks from here that we shop at all the time. And then and I'm like, oh, shit. I've had this stuff before. My wife bought a couple bags of it. It was just, like, the most decadent, delicious, you know, dark chocolate drizzled on caramel, and I was like, oh my god. I did I had I had no idea that you were that, girl from Comeback Snacks. I guess I should've turned the package over and read a little bit about the story and about the company.

That's okay.

It was just funny. I knew about you long before I heard about you from you know, to have you on here. So it's absolutely incredible stuff. And, yeah, eleven hundred stores, that's huge. What's been the hardest part of that entrepreneur journey entrepreneurship journey for you?

I mean, I would say there's a hardest part. I would say there's hard days, and so knowing how to get through the hard days is the hardest part, If that makes sense. Because I knew going into it, like, any, like, enter entrepreneurial venture, it's gonna be hard. But now I have, like, the tools that I need to get through those those challenging times. Like, I have the comeback toolkit because, you know, I I did it inside prison, but, probably a more practical thing. I would probably say working with the bigger retailers is challenging because they're so complex and they're so giant and they're so expensive. They have been great in terms of volume, but in terms of connecting with people there, it's it's very hard to kind of get someone that really works with you. And there's always things that are messed up financially, like fees that aren't there that shouldn't be. So you spend a lot of time fighting for fees that you shouldn't have been charged and all the stuff. So I think that's the the most challenging part.

What are a couple of the things in this comeback toolkit that you rely on?

I call it my comeback blueprint. So you gotta commit, take ownership, have accountability, teach people, educate people, and have good morals. And that's kind of, like, all the the steps that are involved in making a comeback. So you gotta number one, you have to commit to it. You have to take ownership. Take you have to accountability. All these things. And then once you, once you realize that the step those steps can be applied to any situation and life that like, personal life, prison life, business life, you can use it anywhere.

Yeah. Wow. I love that. And I love the idea of creating a circle of mentors based on authors that you have written. Maybe it was a bit of an advantage to get to be able to send that from prison, stationary to get people's attention, but that's something that anybody can do. And we always think, well, nobody's gonna, you know, nobody's gonna respond to me. And that's true. But, shit, if you send eighty two letters, you don't need eighty two mentors. You need two or three good mentors. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

So everybody at the company had was previously incarcerated?

Not everybody, but, so my business partner actually has his MBA from Ivy. So he's very well versed in finances because I like, I'm in marketing. I'm in branding. I am in people. So you need to have both. So he's and he's great with the operations. The people that I hire that are formerly incarcerated do everything from, like, infield, like, sales and sampling to events. So they're I always have them out meeting meeting people and trying to work with people in different cities as often as I can.

And talk to me about the work you're doing around reintegration because I honestly, I didn't know that was a thing. I had never heard of that term before. Maybe I should've. I don't know. What's that work about?

So what number one is, like, hiring from within. But you as you're a small company, you can't hire everyone. So I was like, what else can I do to kind of help people create more income for themselves when you have a a criminal record? Because it's hard to get employment. So last year, I got funding from North Pine. Me and my cofounder, Lucy Kellen, she, like, knows how to build programs like this. Like, she's got the backbone. She's trying, like, all, like, the structural acumen to facilitate a good online program. And I, so it's all about how to start your own business with a criminal record and how do you make your own money as an entrepreneur with a criminal record coming out of prison. So by the end of the year, we will have had a hundred and thirty five graduates coming out. So because it's, like, number like, a very common reason. I don't know if it's number one, but a very common reason. It's either number one or maybe, like, substances. I'm not sure. But it's income. It's finances as to why people come across. So if you can teach people how to create their own income via entrepreneurship, you can actually be part of the solution. It's called Comeback Catalyst.

Oh, Comeback Catalyst. That's amazing. And so do you work with people, that are already that are still inside, that are that have been released and wanna start businesses, finds jobs, all of that?

Yeah. So we work with both. We actually just developed a course for inside president. And then outside of people are on parole, they have to get approved by the parole officer because one of the rules is a non association rule, and you can't actually be associated with people that have that have records. But some parole officers have been like, it's fine. So that's what we say. It's like if you're on parole, it's your responsibility to disclose this. But, yeah, we've gotten recommendations from Crisis Canada. I'm doing, like, talks in halfway houses and then other people that are have done their time. So it's quite a mix.

And what are you most excited about next, Emily, with Comeback? What's next for the company, your work around reintegration? What's what's that fuel got you targeted at next?

So I never think of the word as a next because my dad told me one thing when I was very young, and it has resonated with me for a very long time. And he said, never wish your life away. I think it's I really wanted this I wanted to rent a movie when I was thirteen or twelve and it was fourteen. Well, we're at, like, jumbo video, and I was like, I wanna watch this. And he's like, no.

You know? I was like,

I wish I was fourteen. And then he said, I'm like, just never wish your life away. And that has stuck with me. It's like, why do we spend so much time just waiting for what's next as instead of, like, living in this in the moment? I'm like, I'm really proud for where we are right now, and that's why it's so important to be present as well. Because then you can actually pay attention to the things that you created for a reason instead of just being, like, what was one and done, like, next. You know what I mean? So I think next is not really something that I use very often in my vocabulary, but it's more now.

Okay. What now?

Yeah. Like, right now is our final cohort for the combat catalyst we have over the year, and we're also in the middle of making a new flavor. We're also developing new sizes. So instead of having, the one size, we wanna get into more channels. So food service, more hotels, which are, like, every kind of industry has a different size. Like, grocery is the main size, but then there's so many other ways that popcorn could be enjoyed. And then we're in, side like, sometimes, if we do, like, fundraisers or it's for events or whatever. So, gas convenience, if you go to a variety store, you don't you don't want a big bag. You want, like, a snack size. So developing different sizes. And, yeah, just seeing all the cool businesses that our students are gonna launch this, this fall.

Can you tell me what the new flavor is, or is that top secret?

I can't tell you yet.

Okay.

But it's it's with a it's with a very famous brand.

Oh, so intriguing. Love the secrecy.

I know. Concode.

Yeah. Emily, there's just so much about this conversation that I love. I told you at the outset I was a bit nervous about this because there were so many things I wanted to ask, about and just such a amazing, inspiring, powerful story. I know I'm gonna leave here and wish I'd had asked another twenty things, but I I've gotten a page of notes here about the things that you've said, and I'm gonna reflect on them. And I just can't thank you enough. This has been just one of my favorite conversations ever.

Oh, thank you. So flowered. So nice. Oh, go Blue Jays.

Go Blue Jays. Well, that's the other thing. So by the time this comes out, the World Series will probably be over. I I noticed on, social that you were at one of the games, game one or game two against for for the people listening to this, this this will have happened, like, a month ago. So game one when Vladdy hit the homer in the first inning, that place must have been

It was shaking. Bonkers. It was shaking.

Yeah. Yes. And now big game three tonight and game four if we need it, etcetera. Oh, no. Game four tonight. Game five, we need it. So when we listen back to this episode, what's your prediction about how far the Jays go or whether they win at all?

I think they're gonna I think they're gonna beat the Yankees, but I don't think they're gonna beat them tonight.

Yeah. I'm not feeling good about this bullpen night, that they've sort of settled on, but I don't know.

But that's okay. If they have to make a comeback, it's okay because that that means I sell more pop works. We sell on those stations.

Okay. Oh, right. Of course.

No Rogers. No Rogers. No.

Well, Emily, I can't thank you enough for this. God, I really owe you one. This has been awesome.

Oh, thank you.

By the way, so I should ask you, for people that wanna learn more about you, Comeback Snacks, where can they find them? Where can they find you? Where can they connect with you?

Yeah. LinkedIn, just look up Emily O'Brien. You'll find me there. Instagram at e m z dot o'Brien for my personal. And for the company socials on TikTok and Instagram, it's just at comeback snacks.

Yeah. And find the store locator at the, website because this shit is fire. It's amazing.

So good it's criminal.

The Growth Mixtape podcast with Bob Mathers is produced by Bespoke Projects, music by Jumapelle Walter Cronkite. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to follow and rate us. When you do this, it helps to raise our podcast profile so that more people can find us. If you wanna connect, you can find me on LinkedIn using the link in the show notes.