Ninety minutes after he walked out, he kept a promise to a kid he barely knew.
Andre Norman spent fourteen years inside. He is now the man boardrooms, governments and prison systems call. This is the method he used, and it did not start with belief.
He did not set out to be a speaker. He went back to a juvenile facility the day he was released because a fifteen-year-old had asked him to, and then he kept going back.
Five days of the method, free
One prompt a day for five days, by email. Unsubscribe any time.
Andre Norman · 1,200 rooms across 25 countries
The promise
Session 7
For three years inside, Andre mentored kids brought into the adult prison from juvenile detention. When his parole came, a fifteen-year-old asked him to come back and see them on the outside. He asked because the men who gave advice always disappeared, and the only time they reappeared was in handcuffs.
“I promised him I would come.”
Ninety minutes after he walked out, instead of a steakhouse or his girl, he went back. He spoke. They clapped. A kid put a hand up and asked whether he would come back tomorrow.
He came back the next day. And the next. Coming back daily meant he could not keep telling the same story, so he had to build new material every morning: leadership, hygiene, responsibility, dating, parenting, education. Ninety days of that and he had become a speaker without ever setting out to be one.
Released 15 November 1999. Back inside a juvenile facility the same afternoon.
“Because I showed up for them, the world has showed up for me. So who are you showing up for?”
“My entire career, the Pentagon, Harvard, London Business School, 30 countries, everything you can think of is all predicated and based on keeping my promise to a 15-year-old kid.”
Five days of the method, free. One prompt from each move of the climb.
Where should the prompts go?
The turn
Session 1
None of that was luck and none of it was mindset. He had a plan before he had an outcome, and he worked it for eight years.
“I’ve achieved above and beyond anything I could ever dreamed of because I didn’t write the story. I just walked the walk. So many people want to sit around and talk about the story. They want to draw the ending in their mind. Just walk the walk.”
Who this is for
Session 2
Most of the people he works with now aren’t at the bottom.
They got further up than they expected and got stuck, or they took a hit nobody knows about.
“You cannot lie to yourself about who you are anymore. I know your Instagram fame is great. I know people think you’re wonderful in LinkedIn. I know, hey, you’re still telling stories about your middle school, high school basketball tournaments. It’s all over. Who are you now?”
The no you didn’t see coming
The funding fell through. The partner walked. The board said no and didn’t tell you why. You’re not broke, you’re stalled, and nobody has handed you the reason.
Higher than you planned, and stuck
You got the thing. It didn’t fix what you thought it would fix. That’s not ingratitude. That’s altitude, and altitude has weather.
What you built stopped working
The company, the partnership, your name. You’re not broke, you’re stuck, and everyone around you only knows the winning version of you.
Carrying someone else
Your kid, your partner, someone you employ. Every resource in the world and no idea which one helps. I’ll show you what moves a person and what never does.
The method, demonstrated
Session 2
He did not write his own list. His enemies did.
“The crazy thing is they made my list. They told me all the things. You can’t go to Harvard because you’re black, you’re a gang member, you can’t read well, you’re violent, you’re crazy, you’re poor, your family’s poor, you’re a high school dropout, you hurt people for a living. When I went back to my cell, I had the list of all the things I needed to do.”
What they said
What he booked
High school dropout
GED
Violent
Anger management
Crazy
Mental health counselling
Serving a long sentence
The law library, then the appeal
“This is not a belief thing. This is an executable work thing. I’m saying, I didn’t need to believe. I just needed to do the work.”
“Most people plan for what they want and not who they’re not, because who they’re not is going to show up more often than not when it comes time to actually getting the thing done.”
Why a person and not a book
Sessions 1 and 4
He asked the wrong room, and the room was full of people who loved him.
Thirteen and a half years in, before his first parole board, he walked the yard asking every man who had made parole what to say. He went in unprepared and got a no.
“And I was sincere. They were good people. I didn’t ask some crazy folks. The thing that I was missing was everybody I was asking had failed at parole. That’s why they were back inside with me.”
Every one of them was back.
“All she could say is, man, go find a mentor. Find somebody who’s done it. I can’t help you with that. That was the greatest advice my mom ever gave me.”
She was his biggest supporter, smarter than him, raised six children alone, and never got to climb. Her gift was telling him to go and find somebody who had done it.
The ask
The Climb Journal
Run five days of it before you decide anything.
Five prompts from The Climb Journal, one from each move of the climb. Not the first five days. Days 1, 6, 11, 24 and 28, so five days walk the whole shape of the thing.
01
Write the polite name you have been giving it. Then the true name.
Decide
06
If nobody could laugh at it, what would be on your list?
The List
11
The work you would do if nobody would ever see it or clap for it.
Climb in the Dark
24
Name the summit. Now write what comes with it that you have not counted.
Summit
28
One person at the bottom of a mountain you have already climbed.
Go Back Down
Where should the prompts go?
One prompt a day for five days, by email. The first unlocks here, straight away. Unsubscribe any time.
“If you have another option, use that option first. Use all your options up.”
And if five days is not enough
Session 5
The five days are the shape. The whole thing is seven sessions, four and a half hours, and the Journal that runs the thirty days.
The Comeback Method Masterclass, $397.
Yours with no time limit. Thirty days to change your mind, no questions and no forms.
“I can’t do push-ups for you. You want to be fast, I can’t do the training for you. There’s some things I can do for you, but some things you have to do yourself.”
“My question of the day is, who can I help today. You get to determine if it’s you or not.”
Where should the prompts go?
Andre Norman served fourteen years, later became a Harvard fellow, and has taught this in more than 1,200 rooms across 25 countries. His live speaking fee starts at $25,000, as listed by AAE Speakers, BigSpeak and WSB.