Cornbread Hustle

[00:00:00] I’m three years sober. I started Cornbread Hustle five years ago. So that’s two years that I was running this business on nothing but cornbread. Alcohol, In my own self will I hustle and motivate, follow me night.

I’m hustle in the jail, so I get my muscle up, up straight from the bottom. Put on the gas. Yeah, that’s the throttle. I get the smash as I get thero. These people mad because I get the, I’m change lane. My get to the back, my motto.

One of the first things I tell people when they come in is, do you have a background? And they’re like, well, yeah, let me [00:01:00] tell you about Cornbread Hustle. Every single person who works at Cornbread Hustle has a background. I’ve been to prison twice. The last time I went to prison for was for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

And then they automatically, they. Instantly, the floodgates open and they just start telling me everything about themselves. There’s good hustle and bad hustle. Hustle means to me, to do whatever it takes to get what you want. Then when you get knocked down and get back up and try again. When you’re in a position like where I’m at, you start at the bottom.

They know you’re a convicted felon. So you have to basically hustle. Hustle to get where you want to be. My name is Sherry Garcia, and I am the CEO of Cornbread Hustle. Cornbread Hustle is a staffing agency for Second Chances. We employ people who are coming directly from prisons and jails and give them a sustainable living.

I believe everybody has a gift from God, whether you know it or not. [00:02:00] I absolutely know my gift, innovation and entrepreneurship.

And so I was telling a mentor one day that I used to be a meth addict. And he looked at me and he was like, have you ever heard of the prison entrepreneurship program? And I was like, uh, no, but prison entrepreneurship, tell me more. And so he told me that I could go into prison and volunteer and teach men in prison how to write business plans.

And so that’s where I found my purpose to help people. People coming out of prison find meaningful employment or become entrepreneurs. I was in prison for three years. It’s difficult because while you’re in there, you come up with the perfect game plan as to what you’re going to do when you get out. And then when you get out and you try to execute that game plan and you start getting

shut down right away because of your record or what you’ve done, the mistake you’ve made, it starts to get discouraging.

And I’ll get the second interview, then get to [00:03:00] the third interview. To only find out, hey, we can’t hire you because of company policy, you’re felony, you know, automatically disqualifies you. So when you’re facing that challenge time after time again, you start wondering, like, why am I even trying? Or maybe I should just go back to what I was doing before.

I kept cold calling businesses and I was like, hey, I have this guy ready to work and I’d list all the great things about them. And they’d be like, OK. And I’m like, there’s a catch. They just did 20 years in prison for murder, but he’s a nice guy. He won’t hurt her. He won’t hurt a fly. He’s a big old teddy bear.

I’ll come to the interview with him. And people got hired one by one. I’ve been trying to get an interview with the company I work for now for maybe about a month or so. And they finally called me and said, Hey, we’ll give you an interview. I almost didn’t go because of my background and thinking they weren’t going to give me a chance because I had a felony on my record [00:04:00] and, uh, I have to talk to some people that I trusted.

Sherry being one of them, uh, came back to Dallas and got the interview and they gave me the job. Her showing me that first she meant what she said and then second, she delivered and then she had hope in me. Like she put her name out there for me. Not really knowing if I was gonna make her look bad or do good and uh, that kind of like gave me the confidence that hey if this person believes in me then I gotta believe in myself more.

I started just pouring into other people telling other people what they need to do to get their business started and then as I poured into all those people I filled myself up. Not with the Lord but with alcohol. The first two years of running Cornbread Hustle it was like I was looking at my life like it was chess, at a bird’s eye view, and I was moving the pawns.

But looking back, I was [00:05:00] in control of nothing. New Year’s Eve comes around. I was like, nope, I’m gonna start the new year with good intentions. And so I decided to go to church. Not because I wanted to, but because it was the only place that I knew that there wouldn’t be any alcohol. The pastor said something that just really stuck out to me.

He said, this is the year of second chances. When people talk about feeling the Holy Spirit, I never knew what they meant, but I felt it. It was the beginning to my surrender. I still didn’t understand what the Lord was trying to tell me. It

was like I was arguing back and forth with my dad. Like, no, you, don’t take all my pride now.

Don’t take all my ego now. I need some of that to keep building what I’ve done. And he’s like, pfft, you haven’t done anything, Sherry. Give me everything and I’ll build it. If you can imagine my entire company changed, I [00:06:00] now had no choice. I was like, guys, I got to get wisdom from the Bible. Just looking at what she was and what she is now, her leadership style is so unique.

I know without a doubt that I can trust in Sherry because she trusts in the Lord. Today, my role as a leader. is to show up for myself, show up for God, and show up for my employees. Loving others looks like sometimes discipline and accountability. Loving others looks like grace. It’s having that discernment.

It’s being obedient to God. It’s talking to God before you make decisions. Being a leader also means surrounding yourself with other leaders and bringing people in that are good at things that you’re not good at and letting go and delegating. Seeing [00:07:00] Cherry be obedient absolutely empowers me to be obedient to God.

I love my job because I know this is exactly what the Lord wants me to be doing. I know that I’m supposed to be relating to people who are exactly where I used to be. I came out and had no hope of where to work. In fact, I worked at a subway for nine months making seven bucks an hour. And that’s whenever I got hired with Cornbread Hustle.

My whole life I’ve been cooking. Even as a child, you know, I was always in the kitchen with my mom and dad. My dream job would be to own a food truck. Seeing my father always have the finer things made me want them, but I didn’t want to work for him. I decided that going down the easy road for me would be faster.

But, um, at the same time, it’s not always worth the consequences. Starting at the age of 18, [00:08:00] I’ve done about 15 years of my life in prison. When I first got out of prison, I was working, uh, as a server, you know, mainly making tips, uh, staying in the house with about five other people. I started working at the white plant, which we basically make paint.

The old plant manager, um, told me, he says, Carlos, you can cook, so if you can read a recipe, you can batch. Now that I have all the right components, my life is going in the right direction. Now I have a job that allows me to pay my own rent for my own apartment. I’m able to support my kids a lot more. I’m not worried about what’s my next check gonna look like.

They don’t only try to put you in a job, they put you somewhere where you’re going to be a good fit. Cornbread Hustle is not worried about making a buck off the employee. They’re worried about the employee going to make a buck for themselves and doing something with their lives and I think that’s what separates them from the rest.[00:09:00]

I wanted to focus on fixing other people so I could avoid fixing myself. And it wasn’t until I learned all these lessons and surrendered that God taught me that I cannot change the world until I change myself. I’ve always had ideas. I’ve always known how to make money. I’ve always started businesses.

Now it’s from purpose, obedience, And it’s so much better on this side. It’s so much better. In the last year we’ve hired over a thousand people that have a criminal record and that really makes me emotional.