Holly Pasut was a successful real estate agent, who found herself entwined in one of the largest investigations into mortgage fraud in the country. She has readily accepted responsibility for lapses in judgment and being too trusting.  Holly ended up pleading guilty to charges and, ultimately, was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison.  Despite the depression, shame and guilt, Holly decided that being incarcerated wasn’t going to break her and instead she turned it into a lesson of gratitude. She now shares her story in her book, A Strange Path to Freedom: White-Collar Professional Finds Inspiration and Gratitude in Federal Prison.

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If you prefer to read, here’s a transcript of the interview!

Kathy:                   So we’re here with blogger and speaker and now author Holly Pasut. Congratulations, by the way, in your new book, Holly.

Holly:                    Thank you. Thank you. I’m so excited. I can’t believe I actually wrote a book.

Kathy:                   Fantastic. Well, for everyone listening, the book is called, A Strange Path to Freedom: White-Collar Professional Finds Inspiration and Gratitude in Federal Prison. So your a book is described as how an educated, singled mother and successful real estate broker became a federal prison inmate. And the title just caught my eye. I have to be honest with you. So Holly, let’s go back to your earlier beers. As a real estate broker. You were, it sounds like, an extremely successful real estate agent and you’re a named rookie of the year and established yourself in the community. And I read with regard to marketing yourself, is it true you positioned yourself using your name with the tagline? Who would help you with all your real estate needs? Team Holly-would! Did you come up with that tagline yourself?

Holly:                    Yeah. That’s so funny. I have so many stories about that tagline. It’s kind of a little bit crazy. Yeah, I did. I, I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to market myself with a sign in front of me saying, just sold or you know, I can sell your home faster than anybody or pick me, pick me. And I kept thinking, you know, what would be fun, what would be fun? And I just came up with Team Holly-would, you know, something with Holly and Holly, Holly-would and, and so I, fortunately I met a lady who sold movie advertising and she approached me and she said, why don’t we look to do some advertising in the movies and we’ll, we’ll work with the Hollywood thing. I’m thinking to myself, that’s a great place to go with it. And so I had an advertisement at the movie theater and it said at the end, who would help you with all your real estate needs? Team Holly-would! And I said, this is really brilliant because nobody needs to have a paper and pencil. They’re not going to write a phone number down. They just have to remember team Holly-would. And it was very, very easy for people to find me. So it really took off very well.

Kathy:                   It’s very catchy. Very catchy. Yeah, that, that’s a unique one, that’s for sure. So Holly, how long were you in business before you noticed things starting to change?

Holly:                    Oh Wow. Well I was licensed in 1999 and it was during the time 2006, probably six years. Then where the market was just going fast and furious and I would say that if you were breathing you could probably get a loan. There were the no doc verification loans and etc. I, I wasn’t in the lending industry. I know nothing about mortgage applications and so forth, but I guess during that time there were so many fraudulent deals going on or right before then because then the market crashed because of a lot of that, a lot of the fraudulent loans.

Kathy:                   Right. So everything was going pretty well until 2006, 2007. Could you explain to us basically in layman’s terms what happened to you that eventually got you to prison?

Holly:                    Yeah. Okay. I was a real estate agent working and taking care of my family. I used to drive a Mercedes, so I met a certain person at the Mercedes dealership. When I would go into lease my car. He seemed like a normal person. He had a picture of his wife on his desk who happened to be a pharmacist at the local pharmacy where I actually got our prescriptions filled. And pictures of this children and so forth. So it just seemed very normal. And as you’re a licensed realtor, you know when you talk about real estate or you tell someone you’re a realtor, you, they usually start asking you some questions and he. He did the same. He had a passion for real estate and he mentioned to me that one day he hoped that he could do some building and bring some of his country’s beautiful products and materials to our country.

Holly:                    So you know, you just had a passion for real estate and that was the end of that story. Well, years later he had called me up and he asked me if he could see one of my homes that I had listed. And I was predominantly a listing agent and I predominantly worked in the luxury market. The higher end homes, and of course I showed them the home. Well what happened is he asked me if I could pay him a referral fee and this was the beginning of the slippery slope for me as a licensed agent. For those that are listening, that are not licensed agents, we are not permitted to pay someone else a referral fee. People ask all the time if we’ll share the commissions and we’ll pay them something, but we’re not supposed to do that. And I said to him, no, I can’t because you’re not a licensed agent. Well here’s where I start to get wrapped up. He said, Holly, he said, it’s not really a referral fee. He said, because I’m not referring my friend to you. He said, I’m working with my friend. We’re, we’re really more unrepresented. He said, you, you represent the seller. He said, how about if I just send you a consulting fee because I am doing a lot of consulting.

Holly:                    Well, that’s where I went wrong and I take full responsibility. I’m not making any excuse. I didn’t want to say yes, but I did. I said, well, you know, it says it’s a cost of doing business, Holly. I said, oh fine. I mean nobody really wants to pay anybody anything. So I said, if the home closes then I’ll send you an invoice to your company and your company. Thinking in the back of my mind. I was kinda hoping it wouldn’t happen or maybe he will just forget about it or maybe he just wasn’t even serious about it. But as it turned out that the home did close and it happened with several homes and they all closed and he did. He sent me an invoice and I paid it from my company account. I kept it in my file. I wasn’t hiding it. It was all right there and that’s, that was the first involvement that I had with him.

Holly:                    And you know, there were, there were, there were some other things that also happened, which I was charged for, but I think what I did is I didn’t want to dis… It sounds so silly now. It really does. I didn’t want to disappoint him was when he asked if I would. And I said I would. I felt like I didn’t want to, I don’t know, for some strange reason. It is a strange reason I hear myself talk, you know, I, I feel like I just didn’t want to disappoint him. I wanted to please everybody. These, these homes were not selling and I thought, oh, what’s the big deal? I’ll pay it. It. No one else is hurt. It doesn’t come out in anyone else’s pocket. I’m giving up the money and my sellers will be thrilled. Their home will be closed and they can move on with their life. So I, I felt like I was taking it for the team and I really did. I really did. I went, bye bye. That was my first that there were other things. My case was so involved. It probably, I wasn’t charged probably after about six years that the FBI was targeting and looking at things. I don’t know all that they were doing, but it was, there were over 100 people involved in this case and it was a very, very involved case. So that’s, that’s part of it, right.

Kathy:                   I read in a recent Forbes.com article, it said that then came the crash and the beginning of one of the biggest investigations into mortgage fraud in the country, operation wax house, which led to the rest of nearly 100 people, one of whom was Holly Pasut. Gosh, that was a long extended time from the moment that you met the guy all the way until the when they finally charged you. And reading your book, there was a struggle because your attorneys were saying, well, you know, it might be better for you to just plead guilty and I knew you didn’t want to.

Holly:                    I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand that. You know, to me when I would read about somebody pleading guilty, I took it as well, they’ve confessed, they’ve confessed. They said, I am guilty. I’m guilty for everything you’re accusing me of. Well, when I was told I would probably be better off to plead guilty, I kept saying, but I didn’t have any intent. I wasn’t trying to commit fraud. I said, I would never willingly are knowingly commit a federal crime. I would be too scared to do that. I would never do that. But they said, Holly, you don’t really have to have intent in that Ignorance is not an excuse. And I said, well, that’s ridiculous. I said, how can somebody be charged with something that they don’t know is going on? Well, that to me is why I speak to other people because it’s not that

Holly:                    we know. Let’s just say you and I, you and I, we know not to commit fraud. We know not to murder somebody. We know what we’re allowed to do and what we’re not permitted to do. Right. I did not realize when I gave him that consulting fee slash referral fee that he was doing mortgage fraud. If I had known that he was masterminding fraudulent mortgage and money laundering and drug trafficking and all these things that he was doing, I would never, I would have been scared to death to be around him. I never would have done that. Unfortunately. And he’s very crafty. I thought he was a friend. He was very, very nice to me. Um, I was actually divorced that I’ve been married a few times and I’d been widowed and he said he did not like my last husband.

Kathy:                   He knew him?

Holly:                    Yes, he knew him. Hello world. Everybody knows. He said, um, he said, yeah. He goes, you just let me know if he ever bothers you. Oh, what are you guys gonna do about it? I said, I’m fine. He said, yeah. He goes, he goes, that guy’s not the nicest guy in the world. I’m sitting here and here he’s committing mortgage fraud. So in a way I kind of felt like, you know, he likes me. He’s kind of got my back, so to speak. Right. So maybe that was part of his mastermind, I don’t know, but he was always really good. I have nothing unkind to say about him. I don’t continually see people that I know are breaking the law. Right. Anyway, that was just part of it.

Kathy:                   Well, I mean, I know you’ve been probably asked this a million times, but, and I’m sure our listeners would probably want to know too, did you suspect anything wrong what was going on?

Holly:                    Yeah, absolutely. When I began to listen to the news like everyone else, after the market crashed and I was hearing words like Straw buyer, which I had not heard before, the inflated appraisals, what they used to refer to them as liar loans. I started hearing these things and of course all the foreclosures. Well, one day I had a builder call me up, and I represented him as a seller, and he asked me if I would look up a piece of property that had foreclosed and I did and he asked me for a few and I looked him up and I told them and all of a sudden one of the names I recognized and it kind of concerned me. I said, this is so weird. Why does this guy have a home? And I know we have a home somewhere else, and I just started like connecting dots.

Holly:                    I started thinking back and I started just making this the. I started to become very clear with what I thought I might be seeing and I went to my broker and I said, you know, I said I’m getting concerned that maybe I was involved in some fraudulent deals because this guy and this guy knows this guy, this house is foreclosing, but I was introduced from this guy, from the guy at the Mercedes dealership. So things started happening and the guy at the Mercedes dealership always had a connection to something. So that’s Kinda how I started connecting the dots and I told my broker and I said, should I, I know the FBI’s out there investigating, should I talk to them? I asked her and she said, no, she says, don’t do that. If they want to talk to you, they talk to you. And I thought, well, okay.

Holly:                    So I let it go. Well, yeah. And I also went to the North Carolina Real Estate Commission and I, I went with a real estate attorney, not a criminal attorney. I didn’t think I was a criminal. I went with a real estate attorney and we went in there and I said everything. I told them about the referral fee. I told him I had accepted some commission checks that I wasn’t a part of. I, I told them everything and I don’t think anyone who is in there trying to commit fraud that doesn’t want to get caught, would go in there and do those things. I just didn’t know that I was breaking federal laws. So I did. I did start to connect the dots and when I did I tried to take action, but the, you know, the FBI doesn’t care whether you, you know, at some point you’re going to get charged. And that’s what happened, which was about six years after it all happened.

Kathy:                   So you ended up pleading guilty. And what was your sentence?

Holly:                    Um, I was sentenced to 21 months and I ended up serving 13 months. This is funny, I was eligible to come home after 10 months, but there was a typo in my paperwork. And so instead of sending me back to my home, they were sending me to a different state and I said, wait a minute, I don’t want to go to that state, that’s not my home state. And they said, oh, well there’s a little typo you’ll have to hang out here until we get it straightened out. So I had to hang out for, for three more years.

Holly:                    Well, how long is it going to take you to straighten this out? Because I’m just hanging out in in prison, you know, I said why don’t you hang out in prison for awhile.

Kathy:                   No sense of urgency.

Holly:                    Yeah, Easy for you to just say, Oh, you just have to wait it out. We’ll let you know when it’s time. That’s pretty much what, what happened.

Kathy:                   So I understand your kids dropped you off at prison when you surrendered yourself at the Alderson federal prison camp in West Virginia. I read somewhere that that’s the same prison that Martha Stewart served time. Is that right?

Holly:                    Yes, yes, yes. Yes. So it’s been remodeled since she was there. I must tell you. And the day that I was ordered, I was ordered to, it’s called self surrender. My sister and my three children drove me to the prison gate. It was one of the most memorable and eventful days because you don’t know what the protocol is. What do you say? What do you do? How do you act when you’re on your way to prison? Like do you smile? Do you laugh? Do you tell old stories? I mean, would that be inappropriate while they’re driving you to prison? I mean it was the most bizarre beginning of my, the, the, my prison experience. But yes, but they did. They took me and it was, it was a horrible day. But my kids are very strong. My family’s extremely supportive. I was a widowed mother. My children’s father committed suicide when they were one, three and five, so to, to my children,

Holly:                    they looked at me as the mother, father, but they also thought I was really there. Hate to use the word hero. But I was their. I was their rock, you know? So I felt so dethroned and humiliated, like they could not believe their mother was going to prison. No, nor could I, but I couldn’t waiver. I couldn’t stand there and crumble. You know, I, I told them, I said, this is not a life sentence. I said, it’s not fatal. I’m coming home. I said, and you’ll be surprised. I can still discipline and mother you from prison. Don’t try to get away with anything.

Kathy:                   Like I got my eyes on you, right.

Holly:                    They’re like, wow. She never stops. Never stops.

Kathy:                   You’re like, you thought I had eyes in the back of my head, just you wait and see.

Holly:                    I said, look, this gets going to get really ugly if you try anything because I’ve got your number, but it’s true. This is how I had to go in. I had to, I had to go in like that and continue, you know, the best I could. Okay.

Kathy:                   Right. So in your book you talk about life in the big house. Yeah. I kind of cracked up when I read that you had given special terms for certain locations inside the prison. For example, the location that was called the bus, you called it the low rent district.

Holly:                    Once a realtor, always a realtor. Come on, Kathy. I can’t stop talking like a realtor.

Kathy:                   And then, uh, and then you also talk about using visualization. Sounded like. Oh yeah. You pretended to film a documentary as if your eyes were the camera. And he said that by changing your focus to observe others, it took your way, your own pain. Can you give an example of how that worked for you?

Holly:                    Yeah. I will give you the example. I can. I. Maybe it is just what we’re given to survive. Maybe. Maybe when you’re put into really tough situations that are not your choice. It doesn’t have to be prison. I mean, it could be the death of a loved one or a health issue. These are not things you would hope for. I think for some people, for many people it brings out a change in their focus, a change in perception. And for me that is what I did. I would, I would sit on the picnic table and I would think to myself, wow, Holly, you’re in prison. I mean, I was, I was captain of the cheerleaders. I was homecoming princess. I was not ever slated in my mind or projected to be a federal prisoner. Okay. So I am in such disbelief that I was in this prison and I found myself watching the other women.

Holly:                    It was a bit entertaining to say the least. I thought, look at those two, women. What are they doing? What are they saying, you know? And I saw people from all walks of life, all income levels, all colors, all nationalities. It was hysterical. And, but then as I started to watch them, I started looking at myself and saying, you know, at one time I probably would have judged them and I probably would’ve thought, oh, they look so silly. They look so stupid. They’re so this or that. But I found myself just watching them with affection, with love might even be a big word to use. But I guess because we all had something in common, we all were in prison. We all were the same. The playing field had been leveled. Nobody had better clothes or a better car or a higher income.

Holly:                    Your education level didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. All the things that we have here in the in society, you know, that are so important. In prison, they’re all gone, so I just watched these ladies without any judgment and when I found myself not attaching to to what their behavior, I found myself feeling better. I just, I, I was, I, I had forgotten my own pain, so to speak. I finally stopped looking at my own brokenness and I was just looking at other people I guess is. I’m probably not articulating it in the very best way, but because it felt good, I did it often and it made me feel better and comfortable and it made me feel like I had kind of escaped prison and I liked it. I think it was just a coping skill. I really do because I read a lot and I had read man’s search for meaning. I don’t know if. Have you ever read that book by Viktor Frankl?

Kathy:                   Yeah. Victor Frankel.

Holly:                    Yeah. It’s a wonderful book. He is a psychiatrist and he talks about spiritual survival when he was a prisoner in the in the Nazi prison camps and he said, you don’t have to be a prisoner, a Jewish prisoner, you can be any prisoner. So just seeing the world a little bit differently and using my imagination really helped take the focus off me and it just helped me to learn to observe other people without judgment. That’s one of the big things that I learned in prison

Kathy:                   And I read also you’re talking about regarding serving the time in prison in. You said, I don’t feel I served time; I feel served myself. What do you mean by that?

Holly:                    Well, let me just say I never want to go back to prison and I’m not an advocate for people to go and have a great experience. I’m not saying that at all. What I want to say is because it’s all I had really was time, One of the most common phrases and anyone who’s been to prison will know this. You’ll hear inmates say, don’t let the time do you. You do the time. So your life does not begin when you go home, your life is being lived while you’re in prison, so you might as well find a way to live it. And I thought, well Holly, you don’t have to return voicemails because you don’t get any, you don’t have, you don’t have any clients, you don’t have to send out any marketing material, you have nothing to do. Zero. Which you can either continue to become bored and mentally disruptive or you could make something of the time. And that’s what I chose. That’s a choice, you know, you have that choice. And I chose to educate myself and learn more about myself, understand why I was afraid to just say no to this person and that’s why I feel like I got to spend 13 months working on me.

Kathy:                   You made the most of it, of the experience. Um, and, and you also said that you’re strangely grateful for the experience.

Holly:                    Yeah, but I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to be any more grateful to me. Let’s work on someone else now.

Kathy:                   Well, okay, let me ask you this before we move onto what you do now. Since your release, other than not being a real estate agent anymore, how would you say that your attitude or your mindset is different than the Holly who first entered prison?

Holly:                    MMM. The Holly that first entered prison was angry, very, very angry. Angry at the government, angry at where’s the truth and the justice system. I was very naive. I regarded justice and I held those kind of people to a higher regard. If you turn on the news today, you can see what’s going on and people getting accused and charged left and right. Those were the people that I thought were so educated and great and polished. I was just extremely naive. I was very angry. While I was there. I learned how to let go of that anger, which was a great thing. I also felt so much shame because my reputation, the life I had created by making very, very good decisions completely got wiped out and I was embarrassed. I was shamed and I thought my whole life is gone. It’s punctured. It’s inside out.

Holly:                    Upside down, you know, I want, I want Holly back. So I, I just felt very, very lost. So when I came home I still was very lost. I had a um, you know, you have to stay in a halfway house. When you come back you have to make you transition back into society and that was very difficult. Painful, you know, it, it doesn’t just happen. It took time. I mean, I was, I was living in the gap, you know, I, I knew what I used to be. But that Holly had died. Right, okay. I didn’t know where my life was going to go and I didn’t know how to get going and I was just living in this no man’s land. So it, it just took a lot of time and extreme prayer and practicing. You can’t just read a book and you’re cured. You have to practice, practice, practice.

Holly:                    Just like an athlete, you know, you can’t just go listen to some speaker and think your life is going to change. You have to put things into perspective and practice. So, Kathy, I’m still practicing, you know, I haven’t, I’m still practicing. I have good days, great days, and I have sad days where, you know, I miss the old life. I have to accept. No, it has changed. It’s just changed. It’s not. It’s not fatal again, Holly. It’s just changed. It’s going to be replaced with something else. It’s time to do something else. Don’t be bitter, be better. Try to do something even better. Kind of my philosophy, I guess.

Kathy:                   Don’t be bitter, be better. I like that. Let’s talk about tour business Freedom Speaker.

Holly:                    Yeah.

Kathy:                   What is freedom speaker and what do you do now?

Holly:                    Well, when I first came out and once I started doing the blogging, I was so afraid to use my name because if you google my name, it’s not beautiful. Like when everything pops up it used to be really great. Okay, well now it’s like, oh, please don’t ask me my name. I don’t want you to Google me. And so that’s why I use. I use the name freedom speaker because I was so afraid to say my name, which is a horrible thing. So I chose freedom speaker and part of it was also because I felt like I had my voice back because for six years while they were doing all this investigating, I was asked by my attorney not to talk about it. And, and so I kept it quiet only, you know, very close friends or family knew my situation and that’s how that, that’s why I called it freedom speaker. Okay. And I thought I would just, you know, share my cautionary tale with white collar professionals, university students, and you know, inspirational audiences. And that’s what I, what I’ve been doing.

Kathy:                   So you recently spoke at the national real estate conference. How has the real estate community received you since you began speaking publicly about it?

Holly:                    I can take some very well and some not very well. Uh, this isn’t real. This is a touchy question. So right before Thanksgiving I read an article and there was a lot of commentary. It was about me and it was about to speak in there and there was a very controversial. I was probably one of the most controversial speakers. Some people did not think it was appropriate for me to be asked to be there and many people have called and emailed me, sent me handwritten letters thanking me for being there. So you’re just not going to make everybody happy. Especially when you talk about what I what I speak about. Okay. It’s a risky business. The risks. Yeah. It’s, it’s a memorable talk. Anyway. Some people were very rude. They said really mean things about me. There was even a comment about something about why does she wear an orange dress and why is it sleeveless and you know, does

Holly:                    she think she’s some Hollywood celebrity, you know, very hurtful. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I was like, what? Very cruel, very hurtful things. Someone said, yeah, she’s a scumbag. We don’t need to be told how not to commit fraud. We know how, you know. Is that kind of these kinds of attitudes. This was just a couple of weeks ago before thanksgiving. I was so taken aback. I had never seen things like that and I was. I was hurt and I thought, you don’t even know the story. I don’t even know if they were at the conference. I don’t even know these people, but I, you know, I didn’t join the commentary. I just closed it and I thought I better not look at that again and what I did learn though, I said, Holly, you can cry, you can be upset, you can be mad at these people, but I thought to myself, you know, their comments, tell me more about them than they have any idea who I am.

Holly:                    And I just held onto that and then the day before thanksgiving I get an email that’s like a mile long from a real estate agent, lives in another state. And she said, Holly, I just read the article about you from your speaking at NAR, the National Association of Realtors. She said, I have to say thank you. She said I was not able to be there, but after I read the article she said it was just what I needed to see because I was just dancing on the fringe of fraud. She said, let me explain this. Yeah. She said, let me explain the situation. She said, I’ve been licensed for over 20 years, never committed a crime, love my career, and on and on she said, but her boss she’s also in property management. Her boss asked her to do something so that they could receive, you know, I don’t know, something I don’t understand property management, but her boss had asked her to do something that was not right, and she took the first step and after that she read the article.

Holly:                    She called her boss and she said, no. She said, I’m not going to do this. And he said, you’ve got to take care of this. We need a workaround and if you don’t, you know, or. He said, you just think about it and we’ll talk Monday after thanksgiving. And she emailed me and she said, I probably won’t have a job on Monday. She said, but even if he doesn’t fire me, I’m quitting. She said, I’m not going to be associated with this kind of behavior. Well, I got an email from her this past week and she said her boss came in and said that he was very sorry for what he asked her to do and he said he knows it’s not right, but he said he’s getting pressure from his boss. I told her, I said, I too have been crying because I felt like I got completely cyber bullied, by like 30 people or something like that. I said, but if I have to get bullied by the public every day, but every day I help one person so that they don’t mess up their life. I’ll do that. I said to her, I said, you don’t want to lose your livelihood. You don’t want to lose your reputation. You don’t want to do this, don’t do it. And she said, when she read my book and she read about the people pleasing and putting yourself in harm’s way at the risk of helping someone else, she said she thought I was talking to her.

Kathy:                   Oh Wow. That just brought chills.

Holly:                    Yeah. Some people, some people just won’t. They just. It’s just a no, and some people have just let their shields down and you know, more people come up to me and they tell me about incidences that they were fairly close to fraud. I had a lady came up to me from the convention and she said, your story resonated with me. She goes, I’m a two time cancer survivor. She said, I see the world so much differently now. She said, when you were talking about filming your documentary. So she could relate in other areas, and I guess I just, I just made made it safe for some people to have these discussions and so they liked it.

Kathy:                   So your business, your professional speaking business. How are you different when people go online to to look up who should be our keynote speaker at our event or be guest speaker? Most people probably looking up motivational speaker, inspirational success speaker. How are you different than the other or most of the other guest speakers out there?

Holly:                    Well, this is how I would answer it. I would answer it and say there is a huge, huge, huge bucket of people that speak about leadership and success and sales and getting referrals and they, they are the expert in all of those areas. I don’t think you have a lot of speakers that are experts in overcoming making horrible decisions. You know, how to gather up some, some good life lessons through failing. So my story, I’m not the cheerleader on this stage, you know, trying to get the audience all hooped up and you know, all jacked up and all excited. But I share a story of humanity, of overcoming, of being able to brush themselves off and still stand and hold their chin up. Even though even though you screwed up Holly, you, you’re not a disease. You screwed up. You went to prison. You’re not a murderer. Prison is not who you are. It doesn’t define me.

Kathy:                   It doesn’t define you.

Holly:                    It doesn’t, no. And you know, I tell people, I said, you know what, the title felon, it’s horrible. I tried to get a job and I checked the box, felon. No one’s gonna hire me. You know, I’m not going to get hired as a felon or a job where you could really make the ends meet. It’s always a struggle. But I decided. I said, you know what, I’m not going to let the title felon do me anymore. I am going to do the title. Felons can be productive, useful, purposeful, beautiful contributors to society. They can. They can.

Kathy:                   Yeah. I’m just so happy to hear that you’re using your experience in which you lived through and as horrible as it was to show that it’s easy. It’s a slippery slope to some of these actions that we do may seem so benign, but be careful because Holly’s been through that. Yeah. Well, if anyone is interested in learning more about you and the services that you offer, how can they get ahold of you?

Holly:                    Well, they can go to my website of course, and that’s freedomspeaker.com. That’s probably the best way. Or they can email me. My email is Holly@freedomspeaker.com

Kathy:                   and we’ll have links to your business and your book and email on our website as well. We’ll have it there at theinspirecafe.com. So make it even easier for people to find you. Holly. is there any last thought that you’d want to share that we didn’t talk about?

Holly:                    Well, you know, people listening to your, to your Inspire Cafe. I know that they probably, you know, they hear stories that adversity and overcoming and, and, and humanity type stories. But I also know that all of us share something in common and I say this in my speech and we’re all going to have chips and turbulence and little dings in our life, but for me and what I share is that they can turn the positive. You know, like being a realtor. I say sometimes to a foundation will shift, you know, during the whole a horrible storm. But those chips in life can also create like a pearl or, or that thorn in our side that will cause us and give us that passion to stand up and do the right thing and maybe maybe speak about it or it becomes your why. And I just hope that for others that have gone through struggles, you don’t have to forget them. You don’t have to say, well, in a couple of years you’ll be, you’ll forget about it. Just our act like it didn’t happen. Your life did change. It did happen for all of us or whatever it was. But that can also be a great fuel, an igniter to move into something different. Something something better, something more passionate.

Kathy:                   Yes. It’s so true. Yeah. We can’t forget the things that happened to us. That’s so true.

Holly:                    And I nor should we have to try. Yeah. Right. Why should you try? It’s part of who you are. It makes, makes you who you are today.

Kathy:                   It does. It makes us who we are today, makes us stronger. That’s for sure. Holly, thank you for being such a great role model in that respect. I appreciate that.

Holly:                    Thank you, Thank you for asking me, Kathy.

Kathy:                   Well, thank you so much for your time, Holly, and talking about your experience, your book. The book is titled a Strange Path to Freedom, so please go out and get it and thanks for helping others and using your experience as a positive. Holly. Thank you.

Holly:                    Thank you so much. Kathy.