(Dallas, Texas) Cheri Chafin has always been bright, but her life took a detour while she was a high school cheerleader.
Rather hear the story?
K-LOVE's Monika Kelly sat down with Cheri to hear about her incredible turnaround story and how she's helping others.
Monika: My guest today is Cheri Chafin. She is the founder of Cornbread Hustle. It's a staffing agency for Second Chances, but more importantly, she is a woman that loves God. It's great to have you, Cheri.
Cheri: It's so great to be here. Thanks for having me, Monika.
Monika: I understand that you just celebrated six years of sobriety. Congratulations!
Cheri: Thank you so much.
Monika: What led you up to that point?
Cheri: In high school, that's where my troubles began. I tried a drug called meth. At the time, I was a cheerleader and so what motivated me to try the drug is that I had heard that it makes you lose weight and have energy and those are two things that I was after.
It was a really bad decision because the second I tried the drug, I was hooked. I did it every single day for two years from that point. I did end up getting kicked off the cheerleading team. I did end up getting kicked off the softball team. I barely graduated high school. And I tell people all the time that for me at that time in my life, that was a rock bottom. Even though I was so young and I didn't have a lot to lose yet, I lost everything I did have, mostly my joy.
And, you know, I always ask people, think of something that you once loved that you don't have any interest in anymore. And whenever you can think of a few things that you loved that you don't have interest in anymore and you're struggling with addiction, that's a sign that you're doing something that you no longer want to do.
And that's what I realized. So at the time I picked myself up by the bootstraps.I don't like using that term because it's not, it doesn't solve anything. But at the time I replaced the highs and lows that I was getting from meth with the highs and lows of entrepreneurship and achievement.
I started seeking validation from people and the world. I started to really find my worth in my work and what I could perform and provide. That was a destructive path. It worked until it didn't.
I did become successful. I invented a product and I worked in the newsroom and I started doing PR for all of Mark Cuban's Shark Tank companies. It was a fun journey, but I also had developed alcoholism without knowing it.
For me, I thought, well, I used to smoke meth, now I don't. Alcohol is legal and I work hard, so why not party hard? But I started volunteering for the prison entrepreneurship program and I was going into prison and helping them look at their business plans and go to market strategies. And as they started getting out and needing real help and taking that first step in getting a job or starting their business, that's when I realized I was pouring into other people while filling myself up with alcohol. Because being around people who were, they weren't in similar situations as me, but similar mindset, which is why I was attracted to helping them in the first place.
I got a DWI as a person that's helping people coming out of prison get jobs. So here I was in jail and that began my journey of self-realization and just trying to get off the alcohol because I had to.
Monika: That's amazing. Once you got sober, I'm guessing Cornbread Hustle (a staffing agency for second chances) started.
Cheri: I wish I could say that. Cornbread Hustle started, then I got sober. So that's another rock bottom of my life, is being the CEO of a staffing agency that helps people coming out of prison in the backseat of a cop car, arrested, going to prison.
I obviously didn't end up spending time in prison. I went to jail. I was convicted and I ended up on probation. And so the people that I was serving that had very similar mindsets, now I had a similar situation and I also couldn't afford to pay my bills. I also started to be in a situation where I'm living out of my car which had a breathalyzer by the way, and was about to be repo'd.
My life had truly become unmanageable. It was at that point that I started to realize that something needed to change. I got sober on Christmas day of 2018.
About a year later, I was one year sober and good old COVID decided to come around. I was petrified because I was watching the news. I had just got my company to where I was making barely enough money to not have to do side hustles, just to pay my company's insurance.
I just thought to myself, the disease of alcoholism almost took me out, but I can't let this virus take me out.
So it was God, honestly, if I wasn't sober, the prerequisite to hearing God was getting sober. So since I was sober, I heard God and God gave me the idea to just quickly pivot and make Cornbread Hustle a disinfecting company.
I did, I bought all the tools and everything I needed before everyone bought it all out. I told the guys that worked for me, I was like, 'hey, do you guys mind disinfecting COVID? Because that's the only job we're going to have.'
They're like, 'no, it's cool. We'll do it.'
And so we were disinfecting warehouses, so they could keep shareholders happy that they're keeping the workplace clean so they could get employees to keep coming to work.
Well, one day, one of the managers tapped me on the shoulder. I'm in a hazmat suit cleaning the toilets. And she asked, 'Hey, where'd you find your employees?'
I just shrugged my shoulders. I said 'prison.'
She said (about her own employees) 'They're not coming to work because they're making more money sitting at home on unemployment. How do you get your employees to come to work? They don't want to make more money sitting at home?'
I explained, 'Oh, they're not eligible for unemployment. They don't have work history. They just got out of prison.'
That was the day my company started to take off. That's when we got our chance. That was when my company literally went from a company making zero dollars. We were janitors and hazmat suits cleaning toilets to being a multi-million dollar agency because we were able to prove that people coming out of prison are resilient and were willing to work.
Monika: That is crazy. That makes me want to cry.
Cheri: Oh, it makes me cry all the time. I usually can't tell it without crying.
Monika: All I can think of is the least of these, you know, that that God will take the last shall be first, you know, and it's just such a what a poignant story, because I think about COVID and when you could not find people to show up to work. For these people to be showing up and probably grateful to have income...
Where does the name Cornbread Hustle come from?
Cheri: Have you ever seen the movie Life? It's Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. There's a scene where they get in a big old fight over some cornbread. And it was kind of just an inside joke when I was helping the guys before I started my agency. I let them name the company and I was asking them what I should name the company. They (explained) 'Well, when you're here in prison, you you eat like you're in prison.'
I said, 'Wow, thanks.'
They said, 'No, seriously, like you guard your food like you're an inmate. (They joked) 'Are you going to eat your cornbread, Cheri?'
It was more of like a joke amongst me and the guys who were in prison when I was volunteering. I (suggested) you know what, if I start a staffing agency, how about I name it Cornbread something?
Monika: It's so good. It definitely stands out for sure.
Cheri: Trust me, when I got sober, my first few years of sobriety, I had a whole bunch of and I still do have imposter syndrome today. God is dealing with me on a whole bunch of stuff right now. But when I first got sober, I was like, what did I do? Why did I name my company Cornbread Hustle? I was drunk when I named the company. And I was like, oh, no, I copyrighted this and trademarked it and everything. Too late. But it ended up working out because people remember the name. And so many people were like, OK, so let me get this straight. You want to get HR people to pay to hire a felon and you're going to call your company Cornbread Hustle and you want people to not think they're going to get hustled? I didn't think that through.
Monika: Do you have a meaningful story about somebody that you've helped with your staffing agency that you'd like to share?
Cheri: I'll share two with you. The first one is Benny. He's the very first person that I ever helped that came out of prison. And he's the reason I Googled "How to start a staffing agency.'
He got out of prison and was like, 'Hey, Cheri, you helped me when I was in prison. You helped me come up with some ideas. I just wanted to run some things by you.'
I went by his halfway house and he said he had a job at being a dishwasher somewhere at a restaurant. He wasn't happy about it. And I said, 'Well, why aren't you happy about it?'
He said, 'I just I have bigger dreams. I can draw. He said, you know, those mural paintings in Deep Ellum, I can do those.'
I said, 'Really? Let me see some of your artwork.'
He had taught himself in prison how to paint and it was great. I said, 'Well, who's to say you can't do what you want?'
He said, 'Well, I'm a felon.'
I said, 'Well, I didn't go to college and people said I couldn't do what I do. All that whenever I got a job in the newsroom, they said I had to have a communications degree and I still got a job. So who's to say you can't do what you want to do with a felony?'
I truly didn't think he'd have any barriers. So my ignorance, I guess it was a bliss. So I got on Google and I just typed in Dallas Mural Painting Company. A guy answered the phone and I pitched him.
I said, 'I have this guy sitting next to me. He's amazing. His artwork's great. It's comparable to the gallery that you have on your site. And if you would like to hire him, he just wants to get his foot in the door. He'll work for $10 an hour because he wants to learn through entrepreneurship and one day become an entrepreneur.'
The guy was like, 'Sure, I guess. But what's the catch?'
I explained, 'He just got out of prison for murder, but he's a nice guy, like big old teddy bear. You'll love him.'
I said, "Look, hear me out. Interview him at a Starbucks. I'll meet you there. I'll sit somewhere nearby. If you don't hire him, no harm, no foul, but he'll at least get some, just some feedback.'
The guy did end up hiring him on the spot. And on his Facebook page over the next year, you'd see him posting selfies in front of the hallways.
This is what gets me really teary. Um, he was painting the hallways, the murals for kids and churches. So those murals, you see that kids walk through with all the paintings on the wall in churches was what he was doing for a living. He found so much purpose for that.
Fast forward to today, that, that was the first guy I ever placed. And that's why I Googled "How to start a staffing agency." We still are in touch. He makes six figures doing his thing. He's doing great.
Cheri: The other story is during COVID a guy came to us and he was a six figure earning recruiter. He asked if we had any roles because nobody would hire him because he had a pending charge. He had got a DWI (driving while intoxicated). He's a veteran, no previous charges. I don't believe it was his first time in trouble, but he assaulted the police officer during his arrest. So he was in big trouble and he assaulted the police officer in a way that was all over the news. So nobody would touch him. You Google his name and it was everywhere.
He was like, 'Look, I'm waiting for my trial. I am like, I already am going to plead guilty.'
He wasn't waiting for his trial. He's waiting for sentencing.
'I'm facing 10 years. And he said, but I have to make money in the meantime.'
I was like, 'Well, all we have is disinfecting right now. I'm glad you're a great recruiter and I would love to have you, but we're just disinfecting because that's all we have. If you want to disinfect churches, because we had just got a sponsorship from a Christian company, they gave us money if we would disinfect churches for free to keep churches going.'
He said, 'Fine, sign me up. So he was disinfecting churches. And since he had to sit through so many sermons and wait to disinfect the chairs in between sermons, he ended up deciding he wanted to be baptized. He came to us and asked us to help him get baptized. And we did. Then we sent him on his way to prison.
We went to his hearing and he did get 10 years. And he went in. So that was COVID, you know, that was like four and a half years ago. He got parole. While he was in prison, he got so far in the Word, like he's totally surrendered to God, completely changed his entire mindset.
God protected him in prison. When he got out just a few weeks ago, actually, we met him at the gates and hugged him and welcomed him back. He's with us today. Not working for us, but he's with like, he's part of our...I guess he's our family.
Monika: That's so amazing. I love it. Okay, so what is your website?
Cheri: www.cornbreadhustle.com.
Monika: Which is the best. Cornbread is the best. It tastes it's amazing.
Cheri: My personal website is just cherrychaffin.com. And that lists all my investments and projects, which all have to do with recovery or hiring people with criminal records.
Monika: Speaking of that, if someone is struggling with addiction, and they're feeling hopeless, what would you say to that person?
Cheri: The first thing that I would say is if you think you have a problem, you probably do. I say that as gentle as I can, because I spent five years writing in my journal going back and forth. Do I have a problem? And I am I an alcoholic? Maybe I'm not. Maybe I just need to try to drink (and) manage my drinking and trying to decide if I was an alcoholic or not wasted many years of my life. And the next thing that I would say is, if you decide to quit drinking, life doesn't automatically get better. Well, I should say it doesn't get easier, but it does get better.
My car got repo'ed when I was one year sober. Just because we change our intentions and we change our mind doesn't mean that we don't still have to struggle through our consequences. One thing that I wish I would have heard when I got sober is, hey, it's really not going to be easy.
Getting sober doesn't change your life, but it's the prerequisite to change your life.
Cheri: And lastly, I would just say that all you have to do is find somebody who has what you want. If you find if you see somebody who openly says they're sober and you reach out to them, they want to help you. They want to see someone else get sober. They want to help you have that gift. So reach out to somebody. You can even go to any of our websites. And I have a 12 week starting over program. If you find me or reach out to me or email us, we'll give you a code to have some access to it.
Monika: Well, thank you so much again. My guest today has been Cheri Chafin. She is the founder of Cornbread Hustle. You will never forget that name, which is a staffing agency for Second Chances.
