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We’ve covered a lot in this series already—my surrender unprepared, wasting time, finding Michael, the U-shaped curve, the quadrant, iPhones, shots, the hole, Tracii Hutsona documenting and earning resentencing. Now I want to narrow it to one point that runs underneath all of it—reputation. And reputation, if you’re in this system, is built from the inside. Not later. Not when it’s convenient. From the inside.
That was the conversation I kept having with Michael when I was in prison. He was writing on MichaelSantos.com. My mom was mailing me his blogs before I surrendered, and I kept tossing them aside, telling myself I was fine, I didn’t need to prepare. Meanwhile, he was profiling people inside through Profiles from Prison. When he asked to interview me, I agreed—but told him not to use my name. Use my middle name, Matthew. He laughed. “Bud, you’re in prison with your name in national press releases,” he said. I still insisted. Don’t use my name. Because I was pretending it wasn’t happening. Even though the headlines were there.
That’s where the flip begins. You stop pretending and start treating the whole experience as an asset. Not because you like it, not because you’re proud of it, but because people thin-slice you in seconds. That’s what Malcolm Gladwell wrote about in Blink—snap judgments that shape how people see you. DOJ press release. Prison term. Headline. They decide in an instant. And it’s not just a judge, case manager, or probation officer. It’s everyone you’ll need later.
So the way through is simple and hard at the same time. You address it. If you plead guilty, you say so without excuses. You pivot. That’s why I hired Michael to help me write Lessons from Prison. Not to hide the story, but to put it at the front. “Oh, you heard I went to prison? Yes. Here’s the book. Here’s what I learned. Here’s what I’d do differently.” I wrote every day. That work turned into a book I still hand out. Professors at USC now assign it. I never thought any of that would happen when I walked in. But that’s the point. Change the conversation by leading it.
Because everyone thinks in slices—including you, including me, remember the “too blessed to be stressed” tattoo and Arthur’s commentary? Quick judgments everywhere. So put yourself in their seat and ask, if they only had a minute, what would they see? If the answer is just a headline, add more. Earlier is better than later, during is better than after, and after is better than never.
Document publicly. Live openly. That’s why Montaigne mattered to me—he kept asking questions: who am I, what am I learning, how should one live? To answer, you have to introspect, you have to name what influenced you, you have to describe what comes next, and then implement it. And yes, you will feel like a contradiction, because what you write today will look different thirty days from now. Montaigne said you can’t see the world exactly the same way you did half an hour ago. That’s the point. The record shows you moving.
Put yourself in the shoes of stakeholders: what someone can actually see in seconds: DOJ press release, sentence, headline. Add to it a dated plan. Updates. A biography. Journals. Book reports. Release plan. Testimonials from people you’ve helped. All time-stamped. That changes how people slice you in a blink.
Because thin-slicing is coming whether you like it or not. If you leave the frame empty, someone else hangs the picture (that last line is a little clichéd, but it worked!).
Justin Paperny
