Overcoming Addiction and the Power of Authenticity | Eric Spofford | EP 25

Speaker 1 Hey guys, Justin Colby here.

Speaker 1 If you're liking the Entrepreneur DNA and you have an interest in real estate, I'd encourage you to go over to the science of flipping podcast and start checking some of those episodes out.

Speaker 1 I've been doing it now for over 11 years and we have over 400 episodes.

Speaker 1 So, if you have any interest at all in real estate investing, whether it's single-family flips or apartment rentals, go over to the science of flipping and check out some episodes on that podcast on Apple and Spotify as well.

Speaker 1 See you over there. What is up, the Entrepreneur DNA family? We are back with a very special guest.
He's local to Miami. This has been a guy I've been trying to get on this podcast for some time.

Speaker 1 Eric Spofford is here. What's up, brother?

Speaker 2 What's up, bro? Happy to be here. This is fun.

Speaker 1 So we met about a year ago, mutual friends, Sperber, and we all went down to dinner and got to know you a little bit. And the second this podcast came out, I've been excited to get you on.

Speaker 1 Appreciate it, man.

Speaker 2 Been looking forward to it. Yeah, dude.

Speaker 1 So you are speaking at a really large event in Utah coming up.

Speaker 2 Yeah, limitless. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, excited about that. 12,000 person arena.

Speaker 2 Probably the biggest, I mean, that's huge, especially for the personal development entrepreneurial space. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Enormous venue, big crowd, big names, you know, Don Trump Jr., David Goggins, Ed Milet, et cetera. Give me a good time.

Speaker 1 So David Goggins would be one of the guys that I'd be really excited to shake his hand, right? Like, I don't fanboy. You and I have been in the circles.
There's a lot of people we've met.

Speaker 1 Like, I've met Alex Rodriguez. I don't really fanboy over.
David Goggins, I'd be like, you badass motherfucker, you.

Speaker 2 He's a badass, bro. This dude's just a stud.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I think that

Speaker 2 one of the reasons he's such a stud is he just oozes. He's not even trying to be an influencer.
He's not trying to be a motivational speaker. He just lives it at such a deep level.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 It just explodes out of him. It's almost like he can't help but be David Goggins

Speaker 2 because he is David Goggins so hard. Isn't that the truth? And so I love that where like he's not even trying to

Speaker 2 at all. At all.
You know, he's living it and as a result, it's permeating all around him.

Speaker 1 I would make the argument the people that we either look up to most or probably even have the biggest following.

Speaker 1 Joe Rogan is another great example.

Speaker 1 Great example. He was a comedian that was an okay comedian.
He gets on Sirius XM or he gets that, or he gets a serious contract because he's just just so authentically Joe Rogan.

Speaker 2 You just nailed the word and you beat me to it, which I think that's what wins today is authenticity.

Speaker 2 You know, I mean, you have to be cool. If you're like an authentically a boring geek, then that doesn't work.

Speaker 2 But, you know, good for you. But, you know, these guys are just filled with authenticity, but also committed to their mission, committed to, you know, whatever their thing is.
Yep.

Speaker 2 And yeah, it's cool.

Speaker 1 So how does that play into your success? And so for those that don't know, Eric, you guys need to go follow Eric immediately on Instagram. Where else do you want to point him?

Speaker 2 Instagram, YouTube. That's really the two platforms I'm native to.

Speaker 1 You need to go follow this guy. He will inspire you.
He will be a champion for you. He just gives to entrepreneurs in all levels, but he's had a 10-figure exit already, right?

Speaker 1 Nine-figure exit already.

Speaker 1 You don't have a formal degree.

Speaker 2 I don't have any degree.

Speaker 1 And you've made more money than probably most of the people watching this or listening to this right now.

Speaker 2 How? How did you do that?

Speaker 2 Oh, man, that's such a broad question. I mean, one thing is I've been unapologetically Eric Spofford since the beginning.

Speaker 2 And, you know, my story, just as a means of background, guys, you can go look this up.

Speaker 2 There's a ton of media out there on, you know, my history, but, you know, early drug addicts, you know, addicted to heroin by 15, dropped out of high school, right? After that, 10th grade,

Speaker 2 you know, run the streets, living this very, very crazy life until I was almost 22 years old.

Speaker 1 You did all that before 22.

Speaker 2 70s and heroin addiction, you know, drug dealing, crimes, all of that.

Speaker 2 I grew up in it. That was my whole life.
And so just before 22 years old, I find myself

Speaker 2 really just a broken dude. I'd gotten my ass whooped out there.
Committed an armed robbery, got in trouble for it, went on the run December 7th, 2006.

Speaker 2 Got on my knees, said a prayer in a closet, hiding from the police and said, God, I don't know what to do.

Speaker 2 I can't picture living my life like this any longer. I really don't want to.

Speaker 2 And I can't really picture my life any other way than what it's been either. I need a little bit of help here.

Speaker 2 And strangely enough, man, one day at a time, I haven't used drugs or alcohol or any mind-altering substance in any capacity since that day in 2006.

Speaker 1 That's incredible.

Speaker 2 And so that's one thing. I say that sobriety is a superpower.
Yeah. You know, God, discipline, and sobriety are the foundation of everything that I've done.

Speaker 2 And I'm, again, very unapologetic about that.

Speaker 1 Speak to that. I think it's been more popular now than I've seen it for a very long time, which is sobriety.
I, you know, I myself, I was just telling a story. My wife has been pregnant.

Speaker 1 We just had our second child. Congrats.
So I really haven't been drinking. I haven't gone straight to sobriety.

Speaker 1 But when you have a pregnant wife, like there's no real reason to drink, not even a glass of wine. You're just like, I don't know, we're just going to hang out.
Yep.

Speaker 1 So I just recently had two cocktails with another family. The husband brought some tequila, and he was like, hey, let's have a congratulatory cocktail because he just had a kid, we just had a kid.

Speaker 2 Awesome. I have two.

Speaker 1 Smashed. Just smashed.
My wife is like.

Speaker 2 Here's a real question, though. How'd you feel the next day? No, awful.

Speaker 1 That night, I literally had to feed the baby twice that night, right? Like, I'm just like, why?

Speaker 1 Why even have the two?

Speaker 2 Yeah. You know I think that there's a broad spectrum of people that are

Speaker 2 put sobriety or a sober lifestyle within their as a target one being people like me that are left without a choice because of the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction sure I can never use again yeah it's not a choice for me I don't get to go do two drinks and feel bad about it and you know go what was I doing that would literally ruin my life right and then all the way to the other side of you know people that live normal productive lives they have complete control and the ability to moderate the amount that they take around alcohol.

Speaker 2 They don't really have a problem with it. But ultimately, from one side to the next, what I tell people is this.

Speaker 2 Let's forget about this for a second. You have a vision for your life? Can't hit a target you can't see.

Speaker 2 So let's talk about what your ideal life looks like, right?

Speaker 2 What are you in your best form, your best shape, showing up up the best way possible, getting the best results? What does that look like? Write it down, define it in detail, excruciating detail.

Speaker 2 Yeah, picture, close your eyes, squint at it. You know, what does that look like?

Speaker 2 And where does alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs fit in there?

Speaker 2 How does it help you get there?

Speaker 2 What role does it play, right?

Speaker 2 And if you, I believe,

Speaker 2 I believe that

Speaker 2 every human being

Speaker 2 has a purpose. They have a mission in life, right? It's our job to find that mission.
It's our job to find that purpose.

Speaker 2 And I call that alignment, right? When we find out what we're supposed to be doing, right? When you get in alignment with that,

Speaker 2 I think that your life becomes so cool. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So exciting. That's what it's supposed to be.

Speaker 2 You're supposed to wake up pumped.

Speaker 2 Even when life's tough,

Speaker 2 people get that messed up because they're like, oh, well, you know, life's hard. Dude, I have been through the hardest things you could possibly imagine and woken up pumped about it.
Right.

Speaker 2 Like, yeah, this is really hard right now, but I get to show up. That's right.
But I get to show the world what I'm made of. But I get to show myself what I'm capable of.
Right.

Speaker 2 And so when you have that alignment and you have a vision, a goal,

Speaker 2 you understand your purpose, you're aligned in that. Life is just so exciting.
It's like, why would I want to alter my state of being?

Speaker 2 Because it's a form of escapism. Of course.
Like, and so, you know, for me, I have to be sober because I'm in recovery. But for everybody, like,

Speaker 2 dude, I value things like mental toughness, perseverance.

Speaker 2 will, grit.

Speaker 2 It's not tough to have a couple drinks, get smashed, and feel like shit the next day. That's right.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 You're not mentally tough smoking weed. Right.
Like, you're, you know, I'll watch my language, but, you know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you don't have to on this show.

Speaker 2 You're a fucking pussy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, you're a fucking, like, you're, if you're tapping out,

Speaker 2 to me, at this stage of the game, how I think about it is like, if people want to defend their weed and defend their drinking, of course you do. You suck it on it like a fucking pacifier.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Of course you do. The baby doesn't want to give up the binky either, does he? You know what I mean? You little bitch.

Speaker 2 Like it just, it is straight up soft and weak and a form of escapism to be relying on something that alters the way you feel and the way that you experience reality.

Speaker 1 Now, the other point of that, for those watching or listening,

Speaker 1 if you're hanging out with me or anyone, right? So I basically don't drink anymore, but I'm not as extreme as you.

Speaker 1 If someone orders a cocktail around you, are you...

Speaker 1 I don't care. Are you shaming them? Are you not at all, dude?

Speaker 2 Not at all. Right.
I'm extreme with the sobriety, but that doesn't mean that people can't have a cocktail list. That's right.
Having a drink and having a healthy relationship with alcohol, please.

Speaker 2 That's not what I'm talking about. That's right.
But I'm talking about the people that.

Speaker 1 Escapism. That's probably the best.

Speaker 2 That's the best word.

Speaker 2 They have to drink to take the edge off. That's right.
They have to come home and have a couple drinks because life's just so hard and I'm so stressed and life's so tough.

Speaker 2 That is an entirely different thing than I met up with the boys after work on Friday and we had a beer. That's right.
You know what I mean? Like that's a social event. Like, God bless, dude.

Speaker 2 Like, do that for sure. But when it becomes a working part,

Speaker 2 when you turn alcohol, marijuana, or whatever other substances into a tool, into a survival mechanism, and how you get through life and how you experience life, brother, you are a long mile from anything that resembles what i would respect as mental toughness amen and i would say the reason why i think this is such an interesting subject these days i'm seeing more and more successful people come out like dan martell for example love him unbelievable and this is part of his story whatever it was 12 years ago or wherever 12 years sober i'm just like dude but then you look at the people you have had a bigger success business-wise than probably most people watching you're listening to this right then there are think about even break that down like the competitive edge and business y'all were were doing that.

Speaker 2 I was on the grind. I was clear-headed and

Speaker 2 mission-driven and focused while you guys were distracted. That's it.

Speaker 2 You guys are out doing whatever you're doing, smoking weed, you know, taking the edge off, drinking, weekends, nights, all this stuff. And I didn't not one bit.
Yep. And again, that's it.

Speaker 2 People think it's like it's not going to be this explosive differentiator right out the gate between the person that's committed to sobriety and and the one that's not

Speaker 2 but as months years stack up it's inch by inch inch by inch inch by inch how many years did it take you to sell your company and all of a sudden you look back and you're a long mile ahead of all these other people with all these other distractions i started my business in october 2008 and i sold it for 115 million dollars in december of 2021 that was 13 years two months start to finish congratulations my friend that That is really, really incredible feat.

Speaker 2 It was a wild ride.

Speaker 1 But your point, you kept your head down for that whole damn ride. You didn't let yourself get distracted.

Speaker 1 Because, and we can get off the kind of substance stuff, but you just didn't let yourself get distracted.

Speaker 2 You just kept your head down. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I think that speaks to a lot of

Speaker 2 it speaks to the contrary of a lot of what's out there on social media and influencer land today, which is, you know, entrepreneurship is

Speaker 2 in in businesses, pictures of Lambos. It happens fast.

Speaker 2 You know, it portrays this fast lifestyle and it's really cool. And that's just not my experience.

Speaker 2 I got my dick kicked in for a fucking decade. Yeah.
And nobody knew who I was. And I was stressed about payroll.

Speaker 2 And the amount of nights that I sat there laying in bed, staring at the wall, staring at the ceiling, fucking sick to my stomach, like not with the next problem of the day, not knowing how to figure it it out because I've never been in a situation before.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it was endless, right?

Speaker 1 If you notice, I'm smiling, right? I mean, this is the real, that's the fucking journey.

Speaker 2 I'm not laughing at your brain. I'm like, dude, this is what we got.
It's just not my experience. And so when you look at my content, it's a lot of that messaging.

Speaker 2 And I think one of the differences, not I think, one of the strong differences between me and a lot of your favorite influencers online was I had a nine-figure net worth before I started making content.

Speaker 2 So, there's a lot of fake people out there, and so you have to be careful what you're listening to because the messaging, if you just plugged into Instagram today, which thank God when I started, it didn't exist.

Speaker 2 Right. Because if you just plugged in, I'd be like, What am I doing wrong? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 There's all these people with all these cars and all these girls and all these boats, and I'm over here working 16 hours a day, inching my way along.

Speaker 2 And my message for entrepreneurs is like, listen, my experience, if you want to know how I got here, and if you want what I have, you will, you will look at what and study what I did to get here, is that I endured very difficult, challenging things, and I chose hard every day, and I worked my face off for more than a decade.

Speaker 2 And that's what it took. And it took everything I had to fucking give.

Speaker 2 And it wasn't overnight. And when I could have bought a car, I put the money back into the business.
And when I could have gone on a dope vacation, I put the money back in the business.

Speaker 2 And I just had to persevere persevere and

Speaker 2 stay the course. And it took an immense amount of grit.
It was incredibly difficult.

Speaker 2 And most of the people that started along the way, the difference between me and them and why I made it over the finish line is they fucking gave up. And I didn't.
Say it louder for those in the back.

Speaker 2 So, you know, but was it easy? Was it fast? Absolutely. No, dude.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. It was the most difficult thing in the world.
No doubt. But also the most valuable, right? Well, look.
That experience.

Speaker 2 Sorry. No, go ahead.
That experience,

Speaker 2 I love talking about this.

Speaker 2 People look at

Speaker 2 the $115 million exit, nine-figure net worth. If you go on my social media, you'll see my yacht.
You'll see a bunch of fancy cars. You'll see a bunch of fancy friends.

Speaker 2 I was out with Jorge Masfidal last night, took him on my yacht to his press conference with Nate Diaz for their upcoming boxing match. We see all this crazy shit, right?

Speaker 2 To me,

Speaker 2 that's the the aesthetic that gets people's attention, that brings them into my world, that gives me the opportunity to be like, yeah, yeah, that's cool. Now listen, let me tell you something.

Speaker 2 It was so much more about the person that process created

Speaker 2 than it was the end result.

Speaker 2 Like the tangible, the asset that became so much more valuable for me was

Speaker 2 the man that got to nine figures,

Speaker 2 not the nine figures, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because if you lost it all today,

Speaker 1 you can go recreate it.

Speaker 2 There's a sick part of me. There really is.

Speaker 2 There's a sick part of me that, I mean, obviously I don't really want this, but you're always looking at your downside and you're always looking at, okay, worst case possible, what could happen.

Speaker 2 I still take a lot of risk. Like a lot of risk.
Today you do. For sure, but that's the only way I enjoy the game.

Speaker 2 It has to be all stakes in, right? I'm fucking sick in the head.

Speaker 2 And so I look at it and I'm like, all right, well, since i'm a guy that takes a lot of risk and i take all my chips and i put them into the middle of the table i have to consider the downside the downside is i lose everything do i want that no of course i want to win and i want to go to that next level but there's a sick part of me that is like

Speaker 2 but if i did

Speaker 2 but if i did lose it and i had my back against the wall and i was down and out again

Speaker 2 It's almost it's almost like an analogy of I climbed this mountain, I got to the peak. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It'd be fun to do it again. Yeah.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 It's either I go climb a bigger mountain. I have to find a bigger mountain to climb.
That's it. Or I do it again.
I do it again. Well, I think there is a lot of people.

Speaker 1 So I personally, maybe you relate to this. I personally have found, now I'm 42, right? And I've been in business now since I graduated college.
Again, pointless degree, who cares?

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I've never been a W-2 employee. I've owned my own business all along the way, but I've found probably a couple years ago,

Speaker 1 I've created this, what you're talking about, without knowing I would create the chaos in my life to prove to myself I could do it again.

Speaker 1 But I would create this chaos without knowing I'm creating the chaos.

Speaker 1 I would almost intentionally, unconsciously fuck some shit up so I could have to go back, rebuild it, and look myself in the mirror and say, you did it again, dude.

Speaker 1 You fucking saved the day again, brother.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think that's the importance of having a clear, defined vision that's big enough to keep you on track.

Speaker 2 Like, relate, and I'm the same way, but hopefully, at this, and I've done that plenty of times. Hopefully, at this stage of life, I've learned that lesson enough that I don't do it again.

Speaker 2 You look at that, well, what does that mean? It means that

Speaker 2 I have enough that I never have to fucking work again.

Speaker 2 I can walk out of this podcast studio and be like, you know what?

Speaker 2 I'm out. Fuck it.

Speaker 2 I'm done. You know what I mean? I'm going on my boat.
Fuck it. That's it.

Speaker 2 But instead, I've created this enormous vision for myself. And so it has me up at 5 a.m.

Speaker 2 It has me dialed. It has me training.
It has me learning. It has me chasing.

Speaker 2 And in that,

Speaker 2 the process

Speaker 2 of all of that brings me contentment. It brings me peace and I'm content in it.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, because otherwise, if I didn't have that bigger thing to chase, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs like you and I and others have this in common, I would fucking fill my life with chaos and destruction.

Speaker 2 Totally. I have to stay on the course.

Speaker 2 And they're like, Eric, why? And here's the funny thing. And this is where the wires get crossed between entrepreneurs and the general public.

Speaker 2 I like to call them civilians because they don't really understand what this is like. That's right.

Speaker 2 You nine to fivers. God bless, dude.
I wish I was one. You guys probably have a better quality of life than I do.
You know, it's fucking crazy. But

Speaker 2 is that they think it's about, oh, you have so much. What do you need more? You need more stuff.
You need more money. And I'm like, you're so fucking lost.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 You were the materialistic one to think that this is still about money. Right.
You think this is about money? Yeah. I don't have anything left to buy.
Right.

Speaker 2 How the fuck is this about money when I've literally run out of things to buy? Right. Right.
I agree with you 100%. Plainly.
But they're going to call you money hungry and the whole thing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But they're going going to call you money hungry. They're going to call you whatever those negative ways of saying it's always about money.
I hear the same thing. People think I'm too money hungry.

Speaker 1 Like, no, no, no. I like the chase of this whole thing.

Speaker 2 It's exclusively for love of the game. That's it.
You know, it's about the process.

Speaker 2 It's about, you know, getting up every day and executing at a high level. And I think a lot of that reverse engineers into this one moment that's very, very important to me every day.

Speaker 2 And it's right before I go to sleep, when I sit down and I get in my bed and I put my phone on silent and I put it on my nightstand and I sit there and I start to recap my day and I ask myself one question.

Speaker 2 Am I proud of me today?

Speaker 2 I am. Yeah, I'm proud of me.
And anything that comes up in that moment that speaks to the contrary of my conscience of like,

Speaker 2 then I know what I need to do. I got to clean that up.
I know what changes I need to make. There you go.

Speaker 2 You know, but staying on the grind and staying on the mission and practice of discipline and hard work and obedience,

Speaker 2 the result of that is I'm proud of me. But there's not a lot of people.

Speaker 1 And so I'll ask you a very direct question. Do you think we're the crazy ones as entrepreneurs, or do you think the nine-to-five worker is the crazy one?

Speaker 2 I think there are 8 billion people on planet Earth. And

Speaker 2 I think God's in charge. And I think the answer to that question is probably more spiritual than it is, you know, who's crazy and who's not.
I view life

Speaker 2 as,

Speaker 2 you know, school for spiritual beings, having a human experience.

Speaker 2 You know, if you have to come to planet Earth and be the guy that flips the cheeseburgers and pumps the gas and works the fry at later at McDonald's, and that's what you do for this lifetime,

Speaker 2 then, you know, I don't know why you need to have that experience. You know, in this human, you know, form that I'm in now, I probably will never understand that.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But that, that's what you're meant to be doing.

Speaker 1 Bro, you're blowing my mind right now because aesthetically looking at you, no one watching this on YouTube or anywhere

Speaker 1 is thinking Eric Spofford is a spiritual motherfucker. Nobody.
You just are looking at you, even just how you talk. They're saying this motherfucker is going to invite me, right? Just

Speaker 1 but no, but here's what I'm talking, you're blowing my mind. I'm sitting here and I've already had dinner with you.

Speaker 1 I've already had the personal, you know, I had no idea the depth of what you believe in, the spiritualness that you believe in that helps you every single day, A, be sober, A, continue to fight the fight of entrepreneurship.

Speaker 1 But it is mind-blowing, and it shouldn't be, is I think what I'm getting to, is

Speaker 1 no one should be judging a book by its cover because the depths that you have,

Speaker 1 it's obvious why you've had the success, right? It's obvious why you're on a mission to help others, why you're speaking on a stage of 12,000 people to impact other people's lives, bro.

Speaker 1 Because I never would have guessed you would have brought up something that I believe in. Now, I'm West Coast woo-woo a little bit, right? I was born and raised on the West Coast, right?

Speaker 1 So that's a little bit normal for me to say you're a spiritual being and a human, you know.

Speaker 2 Dude, talk to us about that.

Speaker 1 That's incredible, man, because I think this needs to be heard for entrepreneurs, right? Because otherwise we can drive ourselves crazy.

Speaker 1 We take the spiritualness out of everything and everything becomes math, KPIs, data-driven,

Speaker 1 sales, but you don't take just be a fucking

Speaker 2 spiritual human. You take God out of the equation, and I don't mean that in the traditional sense of any set religion, spirituality, the universe, your creator, whatever, but

Speaker 2 you take God out of the equation and everything just becomes so shallow, hollow, and meaningless.

Speaker 2 You know, and it's such an

Speaker 2 inexhaustible well of

Speaker 2 power and guidance and inspiration and motivation that I think one thing that's lost on me in my story is that,

Speaker 2 bro, when I told you,

Speaker 2 it started by me on my knees with the surrender to God in a closet hiding from an armed robbery charge, you know, coming to know God. And so it's been about God every day since.

Speaker 2 My day starts with prayer. My day ends with prayer.
My day, you know, and I think I also said that I'm unapologetically Eric Spofford. Well,

Speaker 2 that does not mean that I'm

Speaker 2 unapologetically Eric Spofford in his own will.

Speaker 2 I'm unapologetically Eric Spofford in alignment with fucking seeking what God wants for me and what he would have me do and who he would have me be and what he would have me you know what i mean yeah and and with that because so many people

Speaker 2 even once i talk to talk very few seek and and challenge themselves and are willing to to you know put themselves out there like god's got such greater plans for your life than you could ever think of yourself

Speaker 2 look at my life A recent epiphany, there were a lot of questions that I had to answer to find peace. One of the big ones that I had to find a long time ago was,

Speaker 2 why didn't I get all this pain? I've lived a very painful life,

Speaker 2 a very hard life. It's been very blessed.
I'm not complaining at all.

Speaker 2 But my life, if you really understood the places that I've been and the things that I've been through, has been incredibly hard and difficult.

Speaker 2 including being a heroin addict. And, you know, I breezed through that.
Seven years of heroin addiction. Do you understand what that was like?

Speaker 2 Like, do you understand what a single fucking day of survival in that world was like? Not even a little bit. Most people never could, but it was

Speaker 2 unbelievably painful. And so I come out the other side of it and

Speaker 2 I have to make peace with the question of like, why me? You know what I mean? Like, how did I get this set of cards? Well,

Speaker 2 you know. The ultimate answer is this, is that I believe that God, you know,

Speaker 2 put me through those things as a prerequisite to make me uniquely useful to a lot of people. I get messages by the hundreds

Speaker 2 on Instagram mostly and all over the place

Speaker 2 that, and I, and people come up to me every single day.

Speaker 2 I promise you, if I leave my house every single day, someone comes up to me, happened five times while I was outside last night.

Speaker 2 And I'll get more than 100 messages this week where people come up and say, you inspired me to get sober.

Speaker 2 That's why.

Speaker 2 That's fucking why. That's why you were given the codes you were given.
Yeah, so then I look at it and I'm like,

Speaker 2 well, why am I this crazy entrepreneur?

Speaker 2 Like, how do I end up with this house? How do I end up with this boat?

Speaker 2 How'd I end up with all these people on social media? Because, you know,

Speaker 2 when you look at it, when you reverse engineer it, if you look at, all right, you have this guy, he was a drug addict, he got sober. That's, you know, that's a powerful story in itself, even if you

Speaker 2 had a job, you know, had a family, whatever, like, good for you, man. Yeah, proud of you.
But that's not my story. I'm a guy that was a ruthless criminal drug addict, brutal, bro.

Speaker 2 Fucking robbing people, staring them in the fucking eyes, like psychopath. Yeah.

Speaker 2 that gets sober, comes to know God, has a transformational experience with God and,

Speaker 2 the work that I've done around that,

Speaker 2 but then goes on to build a net worth of over $100 million

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 ends up with all this fancy, shiny looking stuff and ends up with social media following and ends up with all this attention.

Speaker 2 And at a certain point, as my life started to change, because you have to recalibrate. People don't understand that, right?

Speaker 2 Like a guy that nobody knew, and now I go outside and people ask for pictures with me.

Speaker 2 This is fucking strange. Right.
Right.

Speaker 2 And, and so I'm like, how did I get here?

Speaker 2 And it hit me. And I was like, oh,

Speaker 2 God did his thing.

Speaker 2 God did his work.

Speaker 2 And then he shined a flashlight on it. He wanted to show it off.

Speaker 2 That's crazy. Yeah.
You know?

Speaker 2 And so I really, you know, for whatever reason, I think that

Speaker 2 you talk about the guy, you know, who

Speaker 2 is going to flip cheeseburgers for the rest of his life and, you know, and then the difference between him and us.

Speaker 2 I think that it just comes down to there's a purpose and a reason for absolutely everything. I can only speak to my journey.
I have 110%

Speaker 2 belief that I had to go through the things that I went through to give me a unique message to qualify me for people to listen to me because I have the lived experience of going through what I went through and changing my life.

Speaker 2 People will listen to me that will not listen to fucking anyone else. You can't go get a PhD or a doctorate.

Speaker 1 You earned one just in a different way.

Speaker 2 For sure.

Speaker 2 And then all the rest of this stuff will have put me on a stage in front of 12,000 people next week.

Speaker 1 Brother, man, proud of you in that.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean? And so that's like the answers to the questions. And so that's God.

Speaker 2 That's the underlying

Speaker 2 spirit of all of it.

Speaker 1 You brought up the cards you were dealt. I have my own thought, but I want to hear yours.
Do you feel as if some of the more successful entrepreneurs come from a pretty shitty hand of cards to start?

Speaker 2 A lot of them do. Yeah.
Yeah, no, as I think about that, most that I know.

Speaker 1 And usually within childhood, young, right? Whether it's really childhood, right?

Speaker 2 So I have my own childhood story, family alcoholics waking up in the streets because all my shit.

Speaker 1 But then you have the younger, teenage, difficult hands.

Speaker 1 I think the majority of the people that I'm aware of, there's a story somewhere in there that they had a shitty hand of cards dealt to them early.

Speaker 2 For sure.

Speaker 1 You know, and then the second part of that question would be:

Speaker 1 do you think some of that is self-imposed? Right? So you choose,

Speaker 1 by the way, I don't know your actual,

Speaker 1 but choosing to do heroin is still a choice, right? Doing any drug, taking a drink, having a beer is a choice to have a beer, right? Do you think some of this was self-inflicted to say, okay,

Speaker 1 I chose my cards, now I got to figure out how to play them.

Speaker 2 A couple different answers. I believe in extreme accountability.
It's all on me.

Speaker 2 I've adopted that in every area of my life. That said,

Speaker 2 I was 14 years old.

Speaker 2 One of my best friends that I grew up with, known him since first grade, came over to the house.

Speaker 2 brought a pill.

Speaker 2 I was smoking weed and doing stupid 14 year old stuff, right? No different than generations before me. I was doing it too.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And broke that thing up, and I sniffed half of it, and it ended up being an oxycontin, which was essentially pharmaceutical-grade heroin. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, and so there were some circumstantial things there that

Speaker 2 you look at the older generation, they were doing qualudes, they were doing, you know, different drugs that weren't oxycontinent heroin.

Speaker 2 And so there's some, certainly some circumstantial things that I didn't even know what I was getting myself into. I was addicted to opiates before I even knew what an opiate was.

Speaker 1 Of course, you didn't even know the word.

Speaker 2 Right. Right.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 there's that whole thing.

Speaker 2 But the spiritual answer, the spiritual belief, I guess, is that,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I'm not like a set religion guy. I actually, you know,

Speaker 2 have some probably, you know, outside of the box thoughts on that as well, where you have a bunch of different groups of people with millions and billions that believe one certain thing that contradicts the other certain thing.

Speaker 2 It's like, well, God, you know, God speaks a lot of different languages, doesn't he? Like, whatever. And they're all, you know.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 there's

Speaker 2 a lot of spiritual beliefs that actually believe, you know, the ones that believe in reincarnation that believe in that process of reincarnation.

Speaker 2 you actually make some choices in your spiritual being before you come back here.

Speaker 2 And that just hits me as true. That's how I filter what I believe spiritually.
It's like, does that feel true or not?

Speaker 1 Are you sure you're not from the West Coast, bro? Because this is how I was raised.

Speaker 2 I'm from Boston. I know, brother.
I'm just saying in the face fast. But so,

Speaker 2 you know, in that, I look back at it and I'm like, well, you know,

Speaker 2 they say that you choose your parents and they say that you choose your pain. Nobody, you were not guaranteed.
You were just

Speaker 2 life is meant to be painful right like life is hard it's supposed to be hard nobody gets out alive and one of the things that you're guaranteed to go through is pain and adversity it's part of it it's supposed to be there are no fucking victims yeah

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 and so when you look at it like that it's like oh

Speaker 2 maybe i just signed up for this tour of duty

Speaker 2 you know yeah doing exactly what i was supposed to be doing that i knew i was gonna I chose it.

Speaker 2 Talk about extreme accountability. I mean, you bring that right back to a spiritual belief of like,

Speaker 2 I literally chose this path. Right.
Yeah, let me go do that.

Speaker 2 Let me go experience that. Let me go learn those lessons.
From a past life.

Speaker 1 I believe in something very similar. Like, let's just use your example of the McDonald's burger flipper.
This is their path for this life. They had to go do that.

Speaker 1 And maybe it's because they're young in their lives, right? You and I may have had 2,000 lives already or whatever, some big number. They may be on life 14.

Speaker 1 So they're learning the harder lessons, the lessons, right?

Speaker 2 And we're going way off what I thought we were going to be talking about, but I'm liking it, bro.

Speaker 1 I think it's real shit.

Speaker 1 So let's get a little bit back into the business because I want people to understand the power that you have as a businessman, what you've been able to create.

Speaker 1 What are you doing now? You've already said you've had your payday. You could literally walk out of the studio and say, fuck it, I'm I'm out.

Speaker 2 What keeps you going?

Speaker 1 What are you up to? What are you doing?

Speaker 2 A lot. A lot.

Speaker 2 Busy. Yeah, no, I'm busy, busy, busy, very scheduled and have a ton going on.

Speaker 2 And so I'll break it down kind of where I spend my time. One, I'm the active CEO of another addiction treatment business.

Speaker 2 Currently, I have two sites, Ohio and Florida,

Speaker 2 probably combined, I don't know, 140 employees.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so it's a lot. That's a big, decent-sized operation.
And so in the day-to-day with that, from a CEO level, right? Not in direct care.

Speaker 2 I'm not at the facilities, but I'm, you know, guiding and running the organization and growing it every day. Okay.

Speaker 2 And then still very active in real estate. Right.

Speaker 2 I've transacted both on the buy side and sell side, probably at this point in the last 45 days, 24, 25 million dollars of transactions. It's great.
Yeah, it's just busy. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Moving this, moving that, doing this, doing that. And so, and that's commercial real estate.
That's a lot of my, I talk about it all the time.

Speaker 2 One of my favorite asset classes, even though it's not sexy at all, is Section 8 real estate.

Speaker 2 And so I love Section 8 real estate, which is not weird for me because when you think about my background in healthcare businesses, I'm used to highly regulated third-party payer systems.

Speaker 2 And so the idea that I provide you a service and bill someone else who regulates me, that's healthcare. Yeah.
Right. For sure.

Speaker 2 If you come to my rehab, I'm going to provide you addiction treatment services and bill your health insurance and deal with them and their regulation. It's very similar.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so, and guaranteed payments or whatever. So I'm very busy in Section 8.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 then I've been having a lot of fun with my personal brand. And

Speaker 2 that's a layer. You know, I monetize it in several different ways.
I have

Speaker 2 a mastermind group called the Inner Circle, where I coach seven and eight figure entrepreneurs

Speaker 2 at all different stages of life cycle and business. And then we also have events where we get everyone together.
We have a two-day event coming up May 16th and 17th.

Speaker 1 Where can they go to find that specific Instagram? Just go to Instagram. Just Instagram.
Eric Spofford, make sure you're following him.

Speaker 2 I'm the only one, guys. If you come on my Instagram, you shoot me a message, I'm the only one that has access to it.
So if you get a reply, it's from me.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, I enjoy that very well. I enjoy that a lot.

Speaker 2 And then putting out content, doing stuff like this, speaking engagements.

Speaker 2 And then one of the big projects that I'm actually really, really excited. It's probably the most thing that I'm the most excited about.
right now in the moment is called Operation Comeback.

Speaker 1 Talk to me about about it.

Speaker 2 It is a,

Speaker 2 so give you some context first before I tell you what it is.

Speaker 2 46.5 million Americans have a substance use disorder. Okay.

Speaker 2 112,000 people died of a drug overdose in America last year.

Speaker 2 You are more likely statistically, this is a shocking statistic, but you are more likely

Speaker 2 as an 18 to 50 year old American to die of a drug overdose than you are a car accident. Wow.
It's the leading cause of loss of accidental loss of life in America. Yikes.

Speaker 2 In America, we had 171,000 alcohol-related deaths last year.

Speaker 2 One out of 10 Americans has what would be diagnosed clinically as alcohol use disorder.

Speaker 2 Alcoholism and drug addiction, substance combined substance use disorders are arguably one of the largest problems that America faces, right?

Speaker 2 It's killing our young people, it's killing our old people, it's affecting everyone.

Speaker 2 Almost everybody in America has a story of either their own struggles or them being front row to someone else's. Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 The addiction treatment industry, which I've been an entrepreneur in since 2008,

Speaker 2 now

Speaker 2 as

Speaker 2 an industry, is a $35 billion annual revenue business in America. It's a $35 billion a year market.

Speaker 2 And when you think about that, what does that mean? That means that that's not people that are struggling.

Speaker 2 That's not people that, you know, that is specifically representative of how many people went and received addiction treatment services in a calendar year and what the revenue associated to that is.

Speaker 1 And that's probably the people that receive the help is probably a very small fraction of people

Speaker 1 who need it.

Speaker 2 It's a very small fraction of people that actually received the help compared to how many people needed it.

Speaker 2 That is representative of $35 billion a year industry.

Speaker 2 Nobody has done a goddamn thing for the families and the people that love those people.

Speaker 2 Here's what's interesting.

Speaker 2 If we combined, had a friend right now, say Cody Sperber, we love Cody and Cody's one of the most fantastic human beings I know, so this is not a real situation, but he went off the deep end, right?

Speaker 2 You're like, damn, Cody, you know, got on drugs.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean? Like, intuitively, we know the answer. What's the answer? Cody needs to go to rehab.
Yeah, we got to help him. We're going to go down there, hit him in the head with a club.

Speaker 2 That's it. You're going to rehab.

Speaker 2 You dummy. Yeah.
What about Cody's mom?

Speaker 2 Yeah. What do you tell Cody's mom to do?

Speaker 2 Exactly. And that is the answer that everyone has.

Speaker 2 And so when you have 330 million Americans,

Speaker 2 46.5 million of them have a substance use disorder of some type, you have a giant pain point of a ton of people that

Speaker 2 love those people and they don't know what to do.

Speaker 2 And they suffer in silence and they suffer alone. And you know what?

Speaker 2 They actually have the way worse gig than the alcoholic or addict themselves because the alcoholic and addict goes and gets high and drunk. And when you're high and drunk, you care about what?

Speaker 2 Nothing. Nothing.
not a lot the stresses of life gone are gone

Speaker 2 they're totally gone

Speaker 2 the husbands the wives the moms the dads the children the best friends the employers

Speaker 2 the person that sits in the cubicle next to nancy who's struggling they sit at home and they worry about them Bro, this is hitting hard.

Speaker 1 I come from that. I was the child waking up in the backseat of a car at two in the morning on a Wednesday because my mom and dad were at the bar.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Operation Comeback is an incredibly accessible online coaching program specifically for the family members and loved ones of addicts and alcoholics. I think we launch next week.

Speaker 1 Bro, everyone go follow Eric right this second for no other reason than that because you guys all know someone or that person.

Speaker 2 You are that person and you know that person.

Speaker 1 Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 2 And so there's nothing, no one's doing anything for these people. And it hit me one day

Speaker 2 and probably a God-inspired idea where I was like, no one does anything for these people. And mind you, understanding what it means to me and my why,

Speaker 2 besides everything I just said and how big of a problem this is,

Speaker 2 everyone, when you look back at my life and all that time that I spent using drugs, I was a street kid, right? And so

Speaker 2 I don't have much family and

Speaker 2 my friends were my family.

Speaker 2 Fentanyl shows up to America about 2012,

Speaker 2 and it kills everyone that I know that I've grown up. Wow.
Every one of my friends is gone. I'm the last of the Mohicans.

Speaker 1 Like right now, those people that you grew up with. They're all dead.

Speaker 2 They're all gone.

Speaker 2 I have a tattoo across my stomach.

Speaker 2 If I took my shirt off, I do not have a piece of white that's not tattooed left on me.

Speaker 2 But the tattoo across my stomach is actually a graveyard. I've had it for a long time.
And right here, there's a path, and there's just one guy walking alone through it.

Speaker 2 And, you know, that the grief of that

Speaker 2 is a pain that I live with every day. And, you know, I try to talk about it enough to keep their names alive, but not enough that I'm always a Debbie down or fucking everyone's day up.
But,

Speaker 2 you know, I miss them all. And what happened with that was

Speaker 2 I watched their parents

Speaker 2 and what happened with them. It's the worst thing you could possibly go through in life.
I do not think,

Speaker 2 I don't think the death sentence is worse

Speaker 2 than a mom or dad losing their child.

Speaker 1 Well, the person that died is out of it. It's over, right? They don't feel anything.
They don't know anything.

Speaker 2 They're gone.

Speaker 2 And so it changes their life forever. I watched them leave children behind,

Speaker 2 right? My best friend, Eric McCollum, died of an overdose. He

Speaker 2 was using drugs and he overdosed, and they waited too long to call the ambulance on a Sunday night and and they eventually did.

Speaker 2 And when the ambulance got him they brought him to the hospital, Holy Family Hospital in Bethuen, Massachusetts and

Speaker 2 And he'd gone without oxygen for too long.

Speaker 2 And so they put him on life support and they gave him a couple days worth of testing and on Wednesday they told me and his family that he had like one or two per I forget one or two percent brain activity left.

Speaker 2 And he's essentially there's just a machine keeping him alive. Right.

Speaker 2 And so they made, they had to make the decision to pull him off. And that next day, Thursday, they pulled him off of life support.
And I held his hand. And Pastor Anthony Miles was in the room.

Speaker 2 And I sat by his side while he died. And that was one of dozens and dozens and dozens of people, but he was like my brother.
And his son, Tice, was nine years old.

Speaker 2 And I watched Tice graduate high school without his dad last year.

Speaker 2 I watched Tice go to Driver's Ed and learn how to drive without his dad.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean? I do. And so, you know, my people are dead.
And then working in addiction treatment, I've seen thousands of people.

Speaker 2 In my career in addiction treatment, I've overseen the treatment episodes of, at this point, about 60,000 people. It's a lot of people.

Speaker 2 And so with that came a whole lot of moms, a whole lot of dads,

Speaker 2 a whole lot of stakeholders.

Speaker 2 People.

Speaker 2 And in the front line of America's addiction crisis with overdose death and all the suffering that's happened, I've buried and watched the passing of thousands of people.

Speaker 2 And I'm not exaggerating, thousands.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 two last week. I mean that.

Speaker 2 And so seeing what happens with the families, I'm like, there's just so much that could be done that's not. Because they don't have the right answers.
They don't, addiction and listen.

Speaker 2 Where do they get that? What do you have a baby? They give you the book. What to expect

Speaker 2 what you're expecting? And

Speaker 2 Appendix Z in the back of the book is like, hey, by the way, if he becomes a drug addict or an alcoholic, fucking read this.

Speaker 2 It doesn't exist. And it's the one illness that is

Speaker 2 so powerful that it not only sickens the host, it sickens the people around them and drags them into the quicksand with them.

Speaker 2 And the catch-22 is like, if you can get the family out of the disease, if you can get them to stable footing, if you can get them to recovery, if you can get them to be sturdy, then you have something to work with.

Speaker 2 And the odds and the likelihood of the alcoholic addict themselves finding recovery, if you can get their family there first,

Speaker 2 is exponentially higher.

Speaker 2 The recovery rate of people with family involvement in recovery is like, I don't know the exact delta because I don't think it's been studied, but just from general observation, is

Speaker 2 so much higher than people that's family are in the mix.

Speaker 1 And what is this called, the mission we're on? What is that?

Speaker 2 Operation Comeback. I love that.

Speaker 1 Everyone needs to look it up.

Speaker 1 Everyone needs to follow Eric.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 I'll be doing the coaching. I have a team of amazing people that will be doing the coaching.
And there's another piece to it, which is community, because

Speaker 2 I can't tell you how many people suffer as that loved one, but they show up to work and smile at everyone because of the shame and embarrassment to be able to tell, where do you connect?

Speaker 2 And so now we've built a community that we're going to put these people together. Common problem, common mission.

Speaker 1 Bro, I'm getting shivered right now because how close.

Speaker 2 It's the thing I'm like literally the most excited about. Damn.
Out of everything that I'm doing right now.

Speaker 1 Anything I can do to help promote that, I'm going to do because I believe in in it. I came from an alcoholic family.
My parents, brother, I could not be more honored to have you on this podcast, bro.

Speaker 1 And have gotten this deep with you, bro.

Speaker 1 Everyone needs to go follow Eric Spofford right now. You are a man on a mission.
Love you, brother. Thank you for doing what you're doing, putting everything out there.

Speaker 1 Guys, that is the end of Entrepreneur DNA.

Speaker 1 Make sure you're following this man, Eric Spofford, on Instagram. Follow the movement.
This guy's a brilliant mind,

Speaker 1 brilliant businessman, very successful, and has a mission that is bigger than all of us.

Speaker 1 See you guys on the next bat.

Speaker 2 Yeah, of course.