A former mob boss who made $10 million a week for seven years has revealed what he learned about business in the criminal organization.
New York-based Michael Franzese, who served as the government boss of the Colombo crime family, spoke candidly about the criminal organization and life after it with Steven Bartlett on his Diary of a CEO podcast.
The father of seven, who has now rebuilt his life after a stint in prison as a motivational speaker and television personality, explained how he entered the criminal life following in the footsteps of his father, John Franzese, who was a high-ranking underboss in the Colombo family.
The 73-year-old explained how a certain mafia tactic could be applied to “civilian” companies and which, according to him, was “tremendous” in any commercial negotiation.
He said, ‘Sometimes you can walk into a room and be the smartest person in the room, but you don’t want anyone to know it, you want people to just talk. Throw them a bone so they come back and talk and you can get to know the person’s personality.
New Yorker Michael Franzese, who earned $10 million a week for seven years, revealed what he learned about business in the criminal organization.
“You can learn a lot from people when they talk and you can just keep quiet. There are other times when you’re not the smartest person in the room, and if you keep quiet, no one will know.
“It’s a tremendous technique and in that life it was extremely valuable to me. I was always the last one to speak. It helped me master that art because there were guys (in the mob) who were very intelligent. If they hadn’t been successful in that life, they would have been somewhere else.”
Elsewhere he stated that to be a good boss you cannot micromanage staff, saying: “I do what I do best, I delegate the rest.”
He said: ‘You can’t micromanage because when you do that you’re taking away from your best talent. I always said ‘do what I do best and delegate the rest’ and then hopefully you have the talent to motivate people and get the best out of them.
He added: “I tell people to get their personal life in order because usually their business will be a reflection of their personal life in some way and you can’t do one thing right and the other wrong because they will affect each other.”
The former Colombo family member once made a staggering $10 million a week for seven years through gasoline taxes and shell companies based in Panama.
During this period, as authorities attempted to collect taxes, his company declared bankruptcy, a tactic that was repeated between 1985 and 1992.
This plan cemented his status as one of the most successful mobsters since Al Capone.
Michael, who served as a caporegime in the Colombo crime family, spoke candidly about the criminal organisation and life after it with Steven Bartlett (pictured) on his Diary of a CEO podcast.
Speaking about his 29-month stay in solitary confinement, Michael said “three words” were vital to his survival.
“My father taught me again. He said, ‘Mike, I’m going to tell you three things that are going to help you when you go to prison, because one day you’re going to go there.'”
“He said three words that are going to be very helpful: ‘please, thank you, excuse me.’ And he said the reason is that all those guys who are in prison and who never got respect on the street want it all there.
‘They want to prove that they’re people, you know, that they’re tough guys or whatever. You meet someone, ‘Excuse me’; you want to cut someone off in line, you’re going to eat whatever, you say, ‘Do you mind?’
You know, “Excuse me, can I go ahead of you?” Never stand in front of them and have someone hand you something and say, “Hi, thank you, thank you very much.” Be friendly.
He described the experience as “hard” and “not easy at all,” noting that he saw others who “didn’t do well” in such conditions. Michael expressed his opposition to the isolation of young people, calling it a “form of torture.”
He justified how the mafia kills people by saying that “they only kill their own,” meaning people within the organization.
He said: ‘People think that when we take the oath of omertà, which is an oath to remain silent, it is not an oath to lie, steal, cheat and kill, but does that happen as part of that life? Yes, but we are told that directly.
He said there is an induction period lasting a couple of years where bosses test potential recruits by assigning them tasks.
‘You come into that life and they tell you straight up: We have rules: never rape another man’s wife, daughter, sister or little girl, that will never get you killed.
‘In my time, drug dealing was not allowed. If you deal drugs and you get caught, you die. If you are not honest with people, if you disrespect someone, if you hit another important person, you die.
‘Now we understand that and they tell you that your best friend can be the one to pull the trigger because life comes before everything, you know, don’t break the rules, this is how we maintain control in this life, this is how we exist for 100 years, and this is how it’s going to stay.’
Michael said there was a lot of “nepotism” in mafia life and that it was usually parents who got their children into the organisation.
He said there is an induction period lasting a couple of years where bosses test potential recruits by assigning them tasks.
He said: ‘For two and a half years I was on a recruitment commitment period where I had to do everything I was told to prove I was worthy.
‘There was a lot of authority, a lot of supposed respect, you had a meeting at 8:00 and you weren’t there at 7:30, you were late, you can never be late in that life.
‘Take the boss to a meeting, sit in the car for three, four, five hours, God forbid you leave, you go to the bathroom, get a newspaper, he comes out, you’re not there, oh my God, we could have been in trouble.
Elsewhere, Franzese revealed how seeing the dead body of someone he loved changed his life forever.
He explained that after his father went to prison, a man who had become a sort of “second father,” known as “Arty the Animal,” was murdered.
He said: ‘I was 19 years old or 20 and I walked into the funeral home, I will never forget his sister coming up to me and hugging me, and saying: you have to come with me, you have to see what these animals did to my brother.
‘I’ll never forget the words, the coffin was closed and she opened it and he was unrecognisable, there was a boy there that I loved, I didn’t faint but it affected me, it really affected me, I’d never seen anything like that before in reality, especially someone I really cared about, really loved and had an impact on me, there’s no doubt about it, but somehow I was able to get through that as a young person.
“That was a turning point in my life, being able to move on and then move on with that life because I said this is part of it.”
Michael is now the bestselling author of Blood Pact and I’ll Make You an Offer You Can’t Refuse: Business Advice from a Former Mob Boss.
