Owen Hanson

Hello, my name is Owen Hanson. Some of you might know me as the “O-DOG” or the “Kingpin”. I went from USC athlete → international drug kingpin → federal prisoner → entrepreneur. My life has been a series of extremes. 🏐Top 50 volleyball player in the U.S. 🎓USC athlete 🏆Back To Back champ 💰Built a multimillion-dollar criminal empire 📚Earned my master’s degree while incarcerated ⛓️Served nearly a decade in federal prison 📖Wrote The California Kid 🍦Built California Ice Protein from a 6x8 prison cell 🚀Came home and turned the idea into a real company 🏆Won an Emmy award Some achievements I’m very proud of. Some not. But every chapter built the man I am today. Welcome to my X account. Follow me for daily lessons from my past and from my comeback. Fight On✌️

Six months in an Australian prison had me thinking: “Maybe just keep me here.” Compared to the American prison system I knew, the conditions felt completely different. Then one day, Australian authorities came to my door. “Hanson, there’s a G6 waiting in Melbourne for you.” The U.S. government had flown a private jet over to take me back to America. They moved me from Sydney to Melbourne, where U.S. Marshals were waiting. Handcuffs went on. Then I was flown back to Victorville. And that’s when everything changed. COVID had the prison system locked down. For the next year and a half, I was eating box lunches three times a day. I got one shower a week. No coffee. After joking that I wanted Australia to keep me, I suddenly meant it. That year and a half became some of the hardest time I did during my entire sentence. Life can change that fast. Never get so comfortable with today that you forget how quickly tomorrow can humble you. Appreciate the good days while you’re actually living them.

I’ve learned that success isn’t about winning every single day. Some days you’re productive, focused, and everything clicks. Other days, it feels like you’re just trying to stay afloat. The mistake is believing a bad day means you’re failing because it doesn’t. A bad day an opportunity to learn, adjust, and keep moving forward.

I spent years trying to improve everything around me. More money. Bigger business. Better connections. More status. Then I lost all of it and ended up in a 6x8 prison cell. That’s where I finally had to work on the one thing I’d ignored: Myself. I went back to school and got my MBA. I trained. I built structure into my days. I started thinking about what I wanted my life to look like when I eventually walked out. Today, that work continues. I meditate, train, eat right and build Cali Ice. Because self-improvement isn’t reading a book and suddenly becoming a different person. It’s building a routine that makes yesterday’s version of you harder to recognize a year from now. Let’s go.

I was sitting in a Sydney apartment with $10 million in cash. And I was freaking out. The money was everywhere. In the dishwasher. Stuffed inside cabinets. In the attic. In the microwave. Anywhere we could put it. I thought someone else was eventually going to show up and deal with the problem. Instead, I was told: “That’s your responsibility.” That’s when the reality of what I had gotten myself into hit me. Everybody sees a number like $10 million and thinks you’ve won. I was standing in an apartment surrounded by more cash than most people will ever see, and all I could think about was the problem sitting in front of me. Years later, I understand that moment completely differently. Having more doesn’t mean you’re winning if what you have owns you. Real wealth is being able to walk into your house without $10 million hidden everywhere and actually have peace.

I used to think being a good speaker meant knowing exactly what you were going to say. Prison taught me the opposite. When I got out, I had a story to tell. But telling that story in front of people was a completely different skill. Podcasts. Interviews. Cameras. Rooms full of people who already knew the worst chapters of my life. I couldn't hide behind some polished version of myself. So I learned to speak about what actually happened. The wins. The mistakes. The prison sentence. The people I hurt. And the second chance I'm building now. The more I did it, the more comfortable I became. That's what people get wrong about speaking. Confidence doesn't come before you speak. It comes from getting the reps in until you stop worrying about sounding perfect and start worrying about saying something real.

I owed the cartel $4 million, and I was told I had to figure out how to get their cocaine into Australia. Before that, I wasn’t a drug smuggler. Now I was in a position where, in my mind, prison was better than what could happen if I didn’t repay that debt. I flew to Fiji and met with a kingpin from Australia. We sat there drinking wine and talking about the problem. That conversation eventually turned into a plan. I went back to California, brought in someone I trusted, and we started working on it. The first shipment was 10 kilos. It made it to Australia. And after taking a risk that could have put me away for the rest of my life, you know how much of that $4 million debt I’d wiped out? About 5%. That should tell you everything about the hole I had dug for myself. One bad decision had turned into another. Then another. Each one felt necessary because I was trying to fix the consequences of the one before it. That’s the trap. Lesson: When your solution requires you to keep risking more just to get back to zero, you’re not solving the problem anymore. You’re feeding it.

Pete Carroll thought his stopwatch was broken because of me. I was 240 pounds and had never played football in my life. I was a volleyball player showing up to USC’s walk-on tryout in volleyball shoes while everyone else had football cleats. Around 50 guys were there. High school All-Americans. Junior college All-Americans. Then came the 40-yard dash. Pete had the stopwatch. I ran a 4.6. He looked at the time and sent me back because he thought something was wrong. So I lined up and did it again. 4.62. Now Pete Carroll, Norm Chow, Steve Sarkisian and the other coaches were coming over wondering who the hell this kid was. We went into the weight room. 225 pounds on the bar. I hit it 26 times. About a week later, someone told me to go check Pete Carroll’s door to see who made the team. I walked up expecting a list. There was one name on it. Owen Hanson. That was it. A kid who had never played football had just walked onto Pete Carroll’s USC team during the dynasty years. I eventually walked away with two national championship rings. That experience taught me something I’ve carried through every chapter since: You don’t need to look like you belong before you take your shot. Sometimes you earn your place after you have the balls to show up.

$ $ $ < TIME STATUS < PURPOSE PAST < WHAT YOU BUILD NEXT

People respond to what you repeatedly allow. Every time you sacrifice your peace to keep someone else comfortable, you’re teaching them where your boundaries are. Setting boundaries isn’t about pushing people away. It’s about respecting yourself enough to protect your time, your energy, and your future. The hardest part isn’t saying “no.” It’s accepting that not everyone will like the new version of you, and being okay with that. What’s one boundary you’ve had to set that changed your life? 👇

I lost $3.2 million of cartel money. That mistake eventually put me in Mexico, preparing to look the man I owed in the eyes and tell him exactly what happened. I knew the consequences could be deadly. I went anyway. There are a few lessons from that period of my life I’ll never forget: 1. Know exactly who you’re getting into business with. The wrong person in the wrong position can create consequences far bigger than the original deal. 2. Bad news gets more expensive when you hide from it. I couldn’t avoid that conversation forever. Eventually, I had to face the situation in person and tell the truth. 3. Own your mistakes before you start blaming everyone involved. Other people played a role, but I put myself there. That part belonged to me. 4. Money isn’t worth living scared. I was dealing with millions of dollars, but what good is money when one mistake has you wondering whether you’ll make it home? 5. Shortcuts eventually send you the bill. What looks like the fastest route to money can become the longest road back to a normal life.

23 people got arrested because the business kept running while I was already sitting in jail. That’s when I realized this wasn’t just about me anymore. When I first got locked up, I was denied bail. I looked at the charges against me and thought I could handle it. So from inside, my mentality was basically: Business as usual. The gambling operation kept moving. Then about three months later, everything changed. The government came back with a racketeering case. Twenty-three people were arrested. People connected to my business. People connected to my personal life. My decisions weren’t only putting my own freedom on the line anymore. They were reaching into the lives of everyone around me. For years, I thought being the boss meant taking the biggest risks and making the biggest decisions. Sitting in jail watching other people get pulled into my consequences taught me what leadership actually means. The higher you climb, the more people your decisions can hurt on the way down.

I was on a plane to Australia convinced I was about to spend the rest of my life in prison. I was already serving a 21-year federal sentence in America. Now Australia could give me life. Three Australian officers had shown up to take me out of the country, and nobody would tell me what was going to happen. The U.S. Marshals handed me over at LAX. They put me on a Qantas flight with an officer on each side of me and another behind me. In my head, I was flying toward the place I might die in prison. Then the captain walked back and asked: “Mr. Hanson, are you going to behave?” I told him of course. A few hours into the flight, I figured, fuck it. I’d already spent six years locked up and thought I might be heading toward a life sentence, so I asked the captain if he could bring me one of those cheese plates from first class. Three hours later, he came back with one. There I was eating a first-class cheese plate on a plane to Australia, having no idea if I’d ever be a free man again. That experience taught me something about worrying over the future. You can scare yourself to death over a tomorrow that hasn’t happened yet. Handle what’s in front of you. And if there’s a cheese plate available, ask for the damn cheese plate.

I had guys pay me in kilos. I had guys pay me in AP watches and Rolexes. I had guys pay me in sailboats, Lincoln Continentals and Hermès bags. I even had a guy try to pay me in meat once. When I was a bookie, I never wanted to walk away empty-handed. If someone couldn’t pay everything they owed, I’d take something rather than nothing. That mentality taught me a lesson I still understand in business today: A slow pay is better than a no pay. Sometimes patience gets you paid when pride would have you walking away with nothing.

I was almost killed by the cartel because of one mistake. In 2011, I was looking straight into the eyes of one of the most feared men in Mexico. He had 10 sicarios behind me. I had made a mistake, and I knew there was no talking my way around it. So I told him the truth. I owned what I had done. That meeting left me $4 million in debt to the cartel, and by 2012, I was working for them. Looking back, the mistake started before I ever walked into that room. I hadn’t done my homework on the person I hired to launder their money. I trusted someone I never should have been in business with. That decision nearly cost me my life. People spend a lot of time studying the opportunity in front of them. Study the person sitting across the table just as hard. Because whether it’s a relationship or a business partnership, one of the most expensive mistakes you can make is getting in bed with the wrong person.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people aren’t tired from working too much, they’re tired from constantly switching their attention. One minute it’s the phone. The next it’s email. Then another task. Then social media. By the end of the day, they’ve been busy, but haven’t finished anything. The people who get the most done aren’t always working harder, they’re protecting their focus. Find the system that works for you and stick to it, because finishing one thing is usually more valuable than starting five.

I was sitting in an Australian prison convinced I was about to get hit with another life sentence. I was already facing 21 years in America. Then guys in suits picked me up, wouldn’t tell me what was happening and wouldn’t let me call my lawyer. In my head, there was only one explanation: Australia was keeping me. They put me in MWRC and eventually I got an international call to my attorney in America. He answered and said: “You just won the lottery in life.” I thought he was fucking crazy. Then he explained it. Australian authorities wanted the truth about a corrupt attorney involved in my case. My lawyer had negotiated an agreement where Australia would drop the potential life sentence if I testified truthfully about what happened. One phone call changed what I thought the rest of my life was going to look like. That experience taught me something about fear. Your mind can make you serve a sentence that hasn’t even been handed down yet. Deal with what’s actually in front of you. Not the future you’ve already convicted yourself to.

I played under Pete Carroll during USC’s dynasty years. I walked onto that football team having never played a game of football in my life. Two years later, I left with two national championship rings. I’ve carried a few things from that environment with me ever since: 1. Bring energy. Pete made you want to show up to practice because you never knew what he was bringing that day. Snoop Dogg might walk in. Denzel Washington, Shaq or Will Ferrell might be there. Pete understood that energy changes an environment. 2. Build structure if you want to be great. We were surrounded by elite coaches and players every day. I learned that being around that level of greatness forces structure and routine into your life. That mentality still drives how I build my businesses today. 3. Your résumé matters less once it’s time to perform. Around 50 guys showed up for that walk-on tryout. I showed up in volleyball shoes because I didn’t even own football cleats. I still earned the one name posted on Pete Carroll’s door. 4. Great environments raise your standard. I was practicing around guys who were headed to the NFL and learning from coaches who became some of the biggest names in football. You either raised your level or got left behind. 5. When you become part of something great, act like you belong there. We went 28-1 during my two years and won two national championships. Being around that team changed the standard I expected from myself.

Mexico hits different this time. 🇲🇽 I’m here for the launch of California Ice Protein MX. What started as an idea has crossed a border and entered a new market. That’s what building a real brand is about. 🏗️ You prove the product works. You find the right people. Then you take the story somewhere bigger. Mexico is the next chapter. And we’re just getting started. Let’s go. ✌️

When I first got out, I was living in a Bureau of Prisons halfway house trying to build what eventually became Cali Ice. My days had to be structured. Wake up early. Meditate, train, eat, then get to work. I was spending around six hours a day on R&D, working on the product, looking for the right co-packer and figuring out how to turn an idea I had in prison into a real company. For 20 months, that was my life. There were rules, drug tests, itineraries and passes just to leave the halfway house. But I had something I hadn't had in a long time: A legitimate direction for all that energy. Prison taught me that focus is powerful. Building Cali Ice taught me that where you put that focus matters even more.

The first time I really got hit playing football at USC, I remember thinking: “What the fuck did I get myself into?” You have to understand something. I grew up playing volleyball. My dad never let me play football. Then somehow I walk onto USC during the Pete Carroll dynasty and make the team. Now I’m practicing with some of the best college football players in the country. And I still barely know what I’m doing. One day we’re out on the field practicing. I’m lined up at tight end. The ball gets snapped. I go across the middle, catch the pass and turn upfield. BOOM. I get absolutely smoked. My chin strap comes off. I’m on the ground trying to figure out what just happened. I remember thinking: This is PRACTICE? I had spent my entire life jumping over a volleyball net. Now I had grown men trying to take my head off because I caught a football. I’m looking around like somebody is going to give me a second. Nope. They made me put my chin guard back on and get right back in there. That was USC football. Nobody cared that I was new. Nobody cared that I came from another sport. Once I stepped onto that field, I was expected to play at their level. And looking back, I’m glad it happened that way. Because getting knocked down was never the real test. The test was whether I was willing to tighten my helmet and line up for the next play. I’ve carried that one with me ever since. Life doesn’t give you much control over the hit. But staying on the ground is your decision.