How Never Giving up the Fight Became a Life Cause for Greg Lindberg

When he came out of prison looking 10 years younger

While building a billion-dollar business starting with a newsletter created in his dorm room at Yale, Greg never expected to one day live in a prison. Yet that is where he found himself, in Federal Prison Camp Montgomery in Alabama in 2020. Wrongly convicted of bribery in North Carolina, his seven-year sentence would later be overturned by the Fourth Circuit of Appeals, but fighting the legal battle took almost two years and millions of dollars.

There was a silver lining. Finally, the always super-busy executive had time to work on himself, and he instituted a personal health regime that left him, 633 days later, looking ten years younger than when he went into prison.

“Inside” at FPC Montgomery, Lindberg learned that the vast majority of his fellow inmates had taken plea deals due to a lack of funds to pursue an extended legal fight. Lindberg shares stories of his experiences, about transforming himself personally and helping other inmates, in his second book, 633 Days Inside: Lessons on Life and Leadership.

Now, to inspire others struggling with personal battles of any kind, Lindberg is also making a series of videos on YouTube to explain the concepts and methods that helped him survive as a prisoner and teach fellow “cellies” principles that would help them in the “free world” when their sentences were finished.

He tells one particularly poignant story in his second video about a man without many resources who simply refused to give up the fight.

“One of my fellow inmates stopped by my cube one day… a young man sentenced to a sentence of life in prison, effectively 25 years, and he kept fighting, filing appeals… and that day he walked by my cube it was within a couple of years of getting out.”

FPC Montgomery is a minimum security prison, and the young man had managed to get transferred there from a high-level institution, which was quite an achievement. “That means you're on the way out if you're at a minimum-security camp like FPC Montgomery,” Lindberg says. “You are on the way out, if you behave, and he did. From a life sentence for a young man of 25 years to getting out in a couple years, he persisted.”

Initially, Lindberg hadn’t felt as much like fighting as simply following prison rules and shortening his own sentence, hopeful but unsure of how his appeal might turn out. As such, he greatly admired his new friend’s determination. It helped encourage Lindberg when he began fasting, to try to improve himself mentally and physically.

“Some days you don't feel like fighting, some days you want to give up the battle. I've talked a lot about fasting… it’s the same way when you're doing a 48-hour weekly fast or a 90-hour weekly fast or an 80-hour fast. You're tired, you're weak. You're out of energy. You can't sleep. You want to give up the battle. But ultimately, if the battle doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger.”

In his second “633” video, Lindberg makes the point that the hyper-complex legal system in the U.S. makes it very easy to trip up a law that you don't know exists, and get prosecuted. “The legal system is stacked against defendants because it requires lots of dollars, hundreds of 1000s of dollars to take a federal case to trial,” he states.

In addition to regular fasting, now unplugged from his formerly super-busy life as a corporate executive, Lindberg began weight training. This is a well-known activity among prison inmates, but it was new to Lindberg, and it had startling positive results. He began feeling years younger with a much clearer mind.

A new study from the Department of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan revealed that muscle-strengthening activities like this are “associated with a 10–17% lower risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease (CVD), total cancer, diabetes and lung cancer.”

And then, there’s your attitude. Lindberg learned that being determined to gain release from prison was a determinative factor in success, despite the apparent odds against a person. He eventually began teaching classes to fellow inmates, achieving the best success with those who simply would not quit in their quest for freedom and a better life.

Lindberg had witnessed how unscrupulous prosecutors would get financially disadvantaged arrestees to give up the fight. This prompted him to take up a new cause. He vowed to spend his time and substantial financial resources to help people in such a position. As soon as he was released from prison, he wrote his new book.

“There’s some wonderful federal defenders out there who do an amazing job defending inmates. However, most people make a decision to stop fighting because they can't afford to fight. I've seen every trick in the book… prosecutors threaten to indict your family, your loved ones. Quite a number of my fellow inmates said ‘I only took a plea because they threatened to indict my children’… That's why there's a 97% conviction rate in the legal system in this country.” Which might sound unbelievable, but it’s true.

Lindberg greatly appreciated the wisdom he gained from fellow inmates. Now he is reaching out to share what he learned to any prisoner or their loved ones who need hope and a strategy to better cope. “Never stop fighting,” he says. “Stick with your convictions. Stand your ground, hold the line. Whatever you believe in. Your faith, your belief in your own innocence and your own position and your own ideas. Whatever it is you're fighting for in life, hold the line.”

Greg Lindberg on Never Giving Up the Fight: The Need for Criminal Justice Reform is his second video in the series. 

The ebook of 633 Days Inside: Lessons on Life & Leadership can be found on Amazon, GooglePlay, Apple Books and many other major outlets. The paperback is available at Barnes & Noble and, via IngramSpark, around the world. Through his website www.greglindberg.com, he is making digital copies available to any currently incarcerated inmate or their family member. His company, Global Growth, has a stated policy of not turning away potential employees because of a criminal conviction.

Listen to the second podcast here: