Ed Hennings spent twenty (20) years behind bars after being convicted of first-degree reckless homicide. But he turned the darkest time in his life into a lesson.
He turned to entrepreneurship after he was released from prison. Today, he is a serial entrepreneur with multiple businesses.
“I wanted to inspire people. I wanted to inspire people even while I was in there. I wanted to make sure that the guys in there knew that we could do it, that we could come back from our situation. That we’re, we’re better than the choices we made to get us there,” Hennings said.
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He first opened a barbershop, then an apparel line, and a box truck fleet company called Go Time Trucking, which happens to be his latest venture, according to Fox Soul.
Hennings said he was inspired by a customer to venture into trucking. “A client sat in my chair, I was cutting his hair, and he was telling me about a truck that he had purchased and the type of work he was doing with it, and I thought to myself ‘wow, man, I think I got in the wrong business,’” TMJ4 quoted him as saying.
The ex-convict now helps to employ other former inmates to work under him and make a living. According to him, his experience puts him in a better position to understand imprisoned people better.
“Anybody that I run into and I meet that has faced those adversities I say, ‘hey man, I have a trucking business. You need a job? I got a job for you,’” Hennings, who is also an author and motivational speaker, said.
One of the ex-convicts working for Hennings is Todd Jones, who went to prison when he was only 15 years old and served for 25 years. He described his experience driving a truck as a whole new world.
“For me, it’s freedom. It’s freedom because I really get to be by myself and see things,” Jones said. “It’s difficult even before you get out of prison to find a job because we are not given [a] mechanism to job search. I didn’t know where to look.”
