Jim Wahlberg, Keynote Talk "The Big Hustle" at The Inferno Men's Conference 2024

Jim Wahlberg gives his true story from his book, The Big Hustle, about his redeemed life and a family’s healing. This is the no-holds-barred, unvarnished, and sometimes brutal true story of his life, the fifth of nine kids growing up in a working-class Irish Catholic neighborhood outside of Boston, hustling for attention any way he could get it, which led him to the biggest hustle of his life.

This was at the Inferno Men's Conference on November 7, 2024 at the Antlers Hotel in downtown Colorado Springs.

Learn more about Inferno Men at www.infernomen.com

Table of Contents
00:00 // Intro
06:52 // Growing up
12:36 // Age 12 Summer - Life out of control
14:17 // Age 18 - State Prison
16:23 // Mom Visit
24:19 // Second Prison Sentence
27:49 // Clean Prison Chapel for Mass
32:04 // Meets Mother Theresa
41:13 // Transfer to a minimum security prison
48:00 // Goes on retreat
56:12 // End Talk

When Jim Wahlberg went to prison the second time at 22 years old, he was sentenced to six to nine years for breaking and entering, bargained down from life for home invasion. He had staggered into a Boston cop’s apartment, helping himself to the sellable stuff and all the beer in the fridge. The cop came home, found Jim passed out at the kitchen table, beat the hell out of him, and arrested him.

But Wahlberg, a 130-pound kid from Dorchester, had learned some things from his life on the street and his first prison sentence. He knew how to survive. And he knew that if he wanted to avoid serving the full sentence, he would have to do something.

He did what he was best at: He hustled. He would create the illusion that he was trying to change, that he’d become the model prisoner, not a guy hell-bent on getting out while he was still young enough to drink more, steal more, and do more drugs.

He didn’t know, though, that the Catholic priest he was trying to hustle was actually hustling him.

The Big Hustle is the story of a redeemed life and a family’s healing. This is the no-holds-barred, unvarnished, and sometimes brutal true story of Jim Wahlberg, the fifth of nine kids growing up in a working-class Irish Catholic neighborhood outside of Boston, hustling for attention any way he could get it, which led him to the biggest hustle of his life. Against all odds he got clean, he got out, and he got the girl. Jim dedicated his new life as a former addict to working with addicts, and for years has spread the word that recovery is possible.

But nothing could have prepared him for what came next. His discovery that his own son was an addict threw Jim into a crisis—one that led him deeper into his faith and led to healing he never thought possible. This book is a testament to God’s power and an invitation to all of us to hope in the darkest places.