Prison Experience as a Lasting Lesson

Greg Lindberg on how strength only comes from pain

Greg Lindberg’s post-prison military cot

It’s not unusual for entrepreneurs to reach a point in their life when they want to “give back” to the culture from which they came, even if they had to fight against that culture to carve a path to success. It’s the epitome of the American Dream for someone to start with a small amount of money and with dogged persistence and constant learning, become wealthy and influential.

As chronicled in Entrepreneur magazine, Julian Young grew up in North Omaha, Nebraska and ended up selling drugs. By the time he was 16, he was caught and facing 15 years in prison. Luckily, mentors stepped in - a professor at Wayne State, and a student business organization known as SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise). That turned his life around. For 10 years now, he and his wife have run the Julian and Brittany Young Foundation using entrepreneurship to empower communities.

Greg Lindberg had a much different life, growing up in California with a stable family. They were not wealthy, but he was smart, and his intelligence got him into Yale, where he used a $5000 gift from his parents to start a health newsletter out of his dorm room. He built that into Global Growth, a worldwide company with 7500 employees. Only there was a hitch in his success - Lindberg went to prison in 2020, facing a seven-year sentence for bribery.

With ample financial resources, he fought the conviction and had it unanimously overturned in 2022, but not before Lindberg served almost two years in prison at Federal Prison Camp Montgomery in Alabama. Upon his release, he wrote a book about his time there, what he learned, and how he taught business skills to other inmates, some of whom were serving time for drug convictions.

The major personal development for Lindberg at FCP Montgomery was his study of hormesis and fasting. It caused him to drastically change his lifestyle from what it had been prior to being incarcerated.

“The concept of hormesis is very simply what doesn't kill you makes you stronger,” he says in a new YouTube video. “Pain and challenge leads to strength. That's how biology works. If you stress your body in a non-lethal way, your body responds by rejuvenating itself. That's why exercise works. You exercise, you rip the muscles, you get shredded. It's because it's tearing the muscle fibers and the stem cells come in and repair the muscle fibers and grow stronger. So prison itself was a hormetic experience. Hormesis was what I discovered in prison… the most important thing.”

He evolved a schedule of 90-hour fasts, drinking only water during that time, then eating regular meals the other three days of the week. Once out of prison, he continued that pattern. By the time he published a new book about his experience, he’d put in a year of that routine.

This wasn’t the only thing that carried over. Given amazing physical successes, like having grey hair on his temples grow back in natural red, he wanted constant reminders of his prison experience, including his sleep environment. Prior to prison, Lindberg had been taking a drug for restless leg syndrome. After he began fasting in earnest, he found he no longer needed the drug, as his body had repaired itself due to the hormetic nature of autophagy caused by the fasting.

Now in his new home, Lindberg lives a somewhat monk-like existence as he pursues a project to bring meaningful reform to the American justice system. Instead of sleeping like a king in a massive bed, he slumbers on a military cot each night.

He describes it this way. “When I got out of prison, the first thing I wanted to do is get a prison bunk bed made by Unicor {standard issue in prisons}, and I've been unable to find one. So I got this military cot, which is about as close to a prison bunkbed as I can find here in the free world. My prison bed was a little narrower, about the same size. I want a constant reminder every day. of my time in prison. Strength only comes from that. Strength only comes from pain. Strength comes from adversity…. You have to feel the pain to have any gain.”

FPC Montgomery is a minimum security facility, and having never had an experience anywhere near a jail, Lindberg didn’t know what to expert when he checked into prison in October of 2020. He’d seen tough prison movies but had no true context.

“Did I want to feel the pain?” he says. “No! I wanted to get the hell out of that prison immediately. But I was forced. Oftentimes, our preference for peace and comfort is such that we avoid pain. Most people will not have a hormetic experience unless it's forced on them. I mean, I was forced to go to prison, and prison was a hormetic experience.”

Lindberg provided ongoing mentorship in his 633 days in prison. Asked to teach classes, he schooled inmates in entrepreneurship and leadership and transformed lives. The last pages of his book are moving testimonies sent to him, letters from fellow “cellies” who learned a better way and have proved it after release.

Perhaps some of them want to have reminders of their experience and what they learned, but it’s doubtful any of them choose to sleep on a military cot. Still. it works for Greg Lindberg. He truly learned great things the hard way, and he’s keeping that pattern in place as he shares his story in his ongoing video series that complements his book and efforts in justice reform.

Listen to Greg Lindberg speak on his hormetic experience here:

You can find the video version at this link

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. Even more to the point, his company, Global Growth, has a stated policy of not turning away potential employees because of a criminal conviction.