How ex-prisoners are making cash on the outside
They spent years behind bars for serious offences — now on the outside, Joe Kwon and Nick Houllis have revealed how they make ends meet after discovering a way to turn their prison training into a lucrative business.
Confidential
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Nine years in prison gave Joe Kwon plenty of time to find his purpose in life.
The result of much reflection and soul searching is Convict Fitness, or ConFit, a fitness business run by Kwon and other former inmates to provide pathways and reduce recidivism rates for ex cons.
“We are not glorifying crime whatsoever,” Kwon told The Saturday Telegraph.
“I am actually ashamed to talk about what I did. That is something that I want to put aside but when it comes to helping other people change their lives, I will tell my story.
“A lot of people make mistakes in life, big mistakes, and they will be judged by that for the rest of their lives.
“What we want to do with ConFit is give these guys an opportunity when they come out of prison.”
Kwon, 32, served his nine-year sentence for directing a criminal enterprise and for the supply of large commercial quantities of MDMA.
He has a further two years of parole to serve and is studying a degree in commerce at the University of NSW.
Trainer colleague Nick Houllis, 40, spent three years in prison for assault occasioning grievous bodily harm.
The pair met in prison, where Houllis taught Kwon how to train and now use those skills to run bootcamp fitness classes across Sydney.
“The majority of guys train all day every day,” Kwon explained. “This program is giving these guys an opportunity to be able to do that as a job and give back to the community and society in general.”
In jail, Kwon said inmates improvised with their workouts.
“We didn’t have equipment or anything in there,” he said.
“We just trained with our bodies. We would improvise and make equipment out of water bottles and things like that.
“This started as a joke where we said we would make a gym out of bottles when we got out.
“It was an idea that started in a prison cell towards the end of my sentence, doing something that I love and maybe helping people in the community get fit because it is what I am good at.”
The next step is to start a not-for-profit aimed at upskilling and providing pathways for inmates coming out of prison, whether that be through university or starting their own businesses.
Houllis said he was inspired to help break that cycle of reoffending.
“The recidivism rate is so high,” he said. “When these people come out, where are they going to find a job and what kind of job can they get?
“They often fall into the same pattern and fall into the same things so to be able to show them that they can do something better with themselves and that they can break that by getting some sort of education is what we are doing.”