Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete

Speaker 1 You can have a desire to quit, but there has to be action that's followed up with it.

Speaker 1 And the only way that you can achieve that action or for that action to achieve what you want is to actually connect with people that have done it themselves, right? We know that as business people.

Speaker 1 If you want to make a million dollars, you better get around people that are making a million dollars.

Speaker 1 You can get lucky, right? You can hard work yourself into a million dollars. And I've seen how that's kind of worked into my life, right?

Speaker 1 I can get to seven figures, but seven figures on hard work alone isn't going to show me how to scale that seven figures into eight, how to make the proper investments, how to understand tax codes, how to make sure that I'm doing X, Y, and Z right.

Speaker 1 Because I have to get around other millionaires to understand how that works.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business.

Speaker 2 Now, your host, the Home Service millionaire, Tommy Mellow.

Speaker 3 Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today.

Speaker 3 To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you.
Just text notes, N-O-T-E-S to 888-526-1299.

Speaker 3 That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode.
Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out.

Speaker 3 I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy.

Speaker 3 Now, let's go back into the interview.

Speaker 1 All right, guys, special podcast day today. I got Tony Hoffman in the house.
This guy is a little bit different than we normally talk about.

Speaker 1 He's been through a lot of life challenges. He's a pro at public speaking, mental health, and addiction recovery.
And I know you're asking yourself, what does this have to do with home service?

Speaker 1 Well, first and foremost, all of us are addicted to something, whether it's health, whether it's Netflix.

Speaker 1 It's just what are we going to be addicted to, especially a lot of us have alcohol problems. A lot of us overdo it.
We don't even realize we have a problem.

Speaker 1 And, you know, this isn't for everybody, but I'll tell you this. We're going to talk a lot about business, public speaking, marketing yourself, becoming a marketer yourself and a personal brand.

Speaker 1 But Tony, it's a pleasure to have you here. I'm glad you made it into the place here.

Speaker 1 From prison to the Olympics, let's hear your story. Thanks, man.
Yeah, you know what? I grew up in a pretty average home in the middle of California.

Speaker 1 My mother and father were in the trucking industry. They retired from the trucking industry 40 some years.
So I grew up around, you know, hardworking people.

Speaker 1 Dad was up at 5 o'clock in the morning, out the door at 6 o'clock, come home 10 o'clock at night. Same with mom, worked in the same office with my dad for 40 of those years.

Speaker 1 We never didn't have what we needed, but one of the things that I was missing was kind of my parents even being around.

Speaker 1 And that was a confusing thing for me when I started to get to my teenage years was like, you know, I need my dad around here.

Speaker 1 I feel like I need my dad around here to kind of validate my existence and kind of these things that I'm starting to question that we've all questioned starting in our teenage years.

Speaker 1 You know, it goes from recess to feelings and wondering how to do things and really quick overnight almost. And so I was a really gifted athlete.
That was my thing. I sucked in school.

Speaker 1 I didn't like books. I didn't like reading.
I didn't like taking tests or studying. I liked the basketball court.

Speaker 1 I wanted to go to the NBA when I was a young kid and I lived for that dream for many years of my life and was very good. I was one of the best athletes in my town.

Speaker 1 But one thing that made me unique as an athlete was I didn't just play one sport. I could play any sport.

Speaker 1 And at a young age, you know, when you have a kid that can play every sport better than everybody else, then you have a whole town of 60,000 people that know who you are and your gift and how special it is.

Speaker 1 But right around the middle school years when I was really starting to take the turn towards, you know, MBA, this is where you go, middle school, high school, college.

Speaker 1 I started really struggling with my behavior.

Speaker 1 And a lot of that was just my father, you know, not being around and me not having kind of that structure that a father brings a child and me being real confused about why my father wasn't around.

Speaker 1 And I really started to personalize my father's absence. For me, what that meant was I believed my father was absent because I wasn't good enough and that my father didn't love me.

Speaker 1 And so what I really started to do was just say, fuck it. If my dad doesn't care, why should I? The big mistake that I was making at that time was I never even talked to my dad.

Speaker 1 I never asked him about why he was absent.

Speaker 1 And the reality was my dad dropped out of high school to drive trucks because grandpa told my dad he couldn't marry his daughter if he didn't have $5,000 in the bank.

Speaker 1 And my dad, being the hard worker he is, dropped out of school, said, I'll go make some money right now, got the $5,000 and married his daughter.

Speaker 1 And that put him in a position where, you know, he was going to have to work the hours he worked in the industry he was in. And that was trucking, where there wasn't a big team of managers.

Speaker 1 He was the manager. My mom's was the salesperson.
And so if my dad left, who was going to run the business? He couldn't.

Speaker 1 So he was up at five o'clock in the morning, running the thing from six o'clock till 10 o'clock at night, which meant he wasn't around for a lot of the stuff that I wanted him to be there for.

Speaker 1 And that was my sports games when I was in middle school. So I started making dumb decisions, thinking that my dad didn't care.
So there's no hope. And I was really struggling with anxiety.

Speaker 1 And suicidal thoughts were killing me at that time. Oh, man.

Speaker 1 Really, and not understanding why I wanted wanted to kill myself, not understanding why I felt so uncomfortable and why I felt like life was so miserable.

Speaker 1 And I ended up getting kicked out of school in seventh grade.

Speaker 1 Fast forward. I get on a bike after that.
My brother was racing BMX. My dad was a former professional motocross racer.
So we had kind of racing in our blood.

Speaker 1 And we'd been around a lot of the big motocross champions before the new age guys took it over. And so we just were exposed to a lot of racing.
Well, BMX was something my brother was doing.

Speaker 1 And I got involved because my parents wanted me to kind of be around my brother and not just doing my own thing because I couldn't make good decisions for myself.

Speaker 1 And I did it for from middle school, so seventh grade up to my senior year in high school. I was on the cover of the largest BMX racing magazine at that time, the BMX or Racing magazine.

Speaker 1 I was sponsored by Fox Racing, Airwalk Shoes, Spy Sunglasses.

Speaker 1 It was really clear that all I had to do was just show up to the track, train, and I could have easily been a pro and been one of the best in the sport.

Speaker 1 But as soon as high school ended, that's when the shit started for me. I just really didn't know what I wanted to do in life.

Speaker 1 I didn't want to race BMX because I thought my life was all about making money, you know, and I'm a business guy now too.

Speaker 1 And I love making money and I love making investments and trying to scale the things that I do to a degree that I can create more revenue streams and then go take that money and build more cool shit to help more people.

Speaker 1 But in my early life, I didn't have that kind of understanding. All I had was, I don't really like who I am.
I don't like myself. I'm in that phase, you know, 18 to 25.

Speaker 1 You experience a lot of betrayal. You experience a lot of heartbreak and a lot of confusing moments in life where things don't turn out the way you thought.
People aren't who they say they are.

Speaker 1 And you're just trying to navigate all of these experiences at once. And I was in this place where I don't even know what I want to do, but everybody says I'm supposed to go to college.

Speaker 1 If you go to college, you know, they sold the millennials that if you go to college, you'll make, you know, thousands of dollars and be more successful than all your parents, which turned out to be a total crock of shit for 95% of people that are still paying off their student loans right now,

Speaker 1 making 60 grand a year. And it just didn't, nothing the world was presenting me felt like I like that.

Speaker 1 So I started hanging out with dudes that were partying, which is what most kids are doing, you know, 18 to 25 years old, smoking weed and drinking. And back then, smoking weed wasn't what it is now.

Speaker 1 You know, everybody thinks smoking weed is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Weed was a drug back then, right? So if you smoked weed, you were a druggie.
Most people drank.

Speaker 1 Drinking really wasn't my thing. I had a soft stomach, always threw up too soon, and never could really get drunk and have fun with everybody else.

Speaker 1 So smoking weed became my thing until I was introduced to OxyContin, which was a pharmaceutical drug that most every one of you probably listening right now knows what it is now because of the opioid epidemic.

Speaker 1 And something about that drug fixed everything I felt was broken in my life.

Speaker 1 It was the first time I did it. And I explained this to people.

Speaker 1 I was so miserable on the inside that the second I split this 80 milligram pill with my friend, what that drug offered me was an answer to every problem that I needed a solution to that I could not find before that.

Speaker 1 Starting at 12 years old, the suicidal ideation, the anxiety, the depression, becoming addicted to sleep. Yeah.
And then all of a sudden, one moment, I could just split this pill.

Speaker 1 I have energy, no more social anxiety, no more suicidal ideation.

Speaker 1 And all of a sudden, I think, well, this is what the doctors need to give me because now I feel like there's something worth living for.

Speaker 1 You know, and at that time, none of us had education on pharmaceutical drugs. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Every one of us had education on heroin and PCP, crack cocaine and these drugs that you couldn't find in the neighborhood that I grew up in. But nobody said anything about the pharmaceutical pills.

Speaker 1 So it just seemed like, well, this is a drug prescribed by a doctor who's, you can't get addicted to this shit. Yeah.
So I started taking them.

Speaker 1 Well, then you stop taking them and then you go through the withdrawals and you find yourself in this really dark position. And that's where I found myself was I started selling drugs.

Speaker 1 I started selling drugs to support my drug habit. Yeah.
And I actually liked that.

Speaker 1 So like looking back on everything and everything that I've done and like when I got to prison and I started really examining my life, I was an entrepreneur from the gate.

Speaker 1 Like I sold the candy apple suckers at school until the school stopped me. Right.
Like I liked providing things to people, meeting people's needs with a product. Right.

Speaker 1 So through school, I sold candy apple suckers. Then I got a CD burner and I was putting together mixtapes and selling mixtapes and giving people mixtapes.

Speaker 1 Then when I got into drugs, it was like, well, I could just buy weed or lots of cocaine and I could sell this to people, support my pill habit. And I'm just in this realm of

Speaker 1 being needed, so to speak. And that was really at the heart of my problem was I wanted to be validated, but I wasn't making the right decisions on how I was going to be validated.

Speaker 1 First, I needed to validate myself.

Speaker 1 Then I needed to find out how I could be useful, build a skill around that gift, and then become really effective at giving it to people as a solution or a need that they had.

Speaker 1 And then I would receive everything that I kind of was trying to do for myself as a teenager just miscalibrated.

Speaker 1 And so you want to keep going, bro? No, dude. Well, I love, it's good.
No, yeah. Just you, I can keep going.
You tell me, bro. No, I want to keep hearing.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So once all this stuff starts happening, I get hooked on OxyContin. And that's when people really start doing things that they would have never thought, you know, and that's why I have such a

Speaker 1 compassion for people who struggle with addiction or even the homeless population, because they are truly still a misunderstood population of society.

Speaker 1 Because a lot of people think that addiction is a choice.

Speaker 1 A lot of people think that homeless people are just lazy individuals that just need to go get jobs and they don't actually understand the realm of like what's happening, how it happens, why it's happening, and how a person finds themselves in that position, right?

Speaker 1 Well, now I'm becoming that person. I'm completely being controlled by this little fucking green pill, bro.
Like just this little. And I just recorded a video on my social media with a needle.

Speaker 1 This little needle at one point had the power to control my thoughts, my behaviors, the places I went, who I was hanging out with, what I was going to say.

Speaker 1 Everything was determined by this little four-inch needle that I was going to put in my arm with heroin. Well, before that, it was just this little green pill.

Speaker 1 This little green pill had the power to take away everything that i wanted everything i could think about and shape me into this person that could only be obsessed with this one thing and i committed a home invasion robbery at 21 years old we robbed one of our best friend's mothers she had oxycontin in the house and we couldn't get him on the street and we were withdrawn and that pain from opioid withdrawals and i know there's listeners listening to me right now that know exactly what i'm talking about is the most painful thing the world.

Speaker 1 Like I had that delta variant of COVID put me in bed for 14 days.

Speaker 1 I'll take that every three months over an opioid withdrawal ever again in my life because the opioid withdrawal will make me put a gun in my hand and come and rob you for everything that you have to stop that pain.

Speaker 1 With COVID, I just know it's going to end at some point, right? It's not going to take, it's not going to last 14 days every time. It's going to get a little bit worse.
You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 And so that's the scary part of it all. And so I didn't see my family for years.
So you did at home home invasion? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Me and another person. And you got away with it.
We got away with it for six months. Okay.

Speaker 1 Then he gets caught doing several robberies with my other co-defendant.

Speaker 1 And one of them is dead now. The other one is still on the street strung out on drugs.
And I'm 40 years old. This was when I was 21.

Speaker 1 And they got caught. When they got caught, there was a pill bottle from the house that we robbed in the back of the truck that he got pulled over in.

Speaker 1 And it tipped cops off that he was was probably involved in this home evasion robbery that had happened you know six weeks prior to that yeah and so that when that investigation started everybody that i knew knew i was involved and they stopped like letting me come over to the house and be around things and uh that's when i i started my first homeless stint which was only three days before i ended up calling my parents and begging them for help They got me help, which was an attorney that kept me out of prison.

Speaker 1 As soon as I got out of jail, fighting the case on probation, within a month, I was right back out using.

Speaker 1 Because I thought at that time that if I just said, I don't want to do this anymore and I don't want the consequences that come with it, that that would be enough to stop.

Speaker 1 Like as much as I know that there's somebody listening to me right now that knows what a with withdrawal is from opioids, I know that there's even more men right now that tell themselves they're not going to drink tonight and they do it every single day.

Speaker 1 Even though when they wake up, they tell themselves today is the day. I'm not going to do it again.

Speaker 1 smoking cigarettes hitting the vape pin there are so many people right now that have woke up and they told themselves i'm not going to do it today because my wife found out i'm not going to do it anymore because my kid said something to me that shows that my drinking is affecting my ability to show up as a as a father in this household right but by the end of the day you're doing the same

Speaker 1 and you can't figure out why because your thoughts aren't powerful enough for you to break free from addiction. You can have a desire to quit, but there has to be action that's followed up with it.

Speaker 1 And the only way that you can achieve that action or for that action to achieve what you want is to actually connect with people that have done it themselves, right? We know that as business people.

Speaker 1 If you want to make a million dollars, you better get around people that are making a million dollars.

Speaker 1 You can get lucky, right? You can hard work yourself into a million dollars. And I've seen how that's kind of worked into my life, right?

Speaker 1 I can get to seven figures, but seven figures on hard work alone isn't going to show me how to scale that seven figures into eight, how to make the proper investments, how to understand tax codes, how to make sure that I'm doing X, Y, and Z right.

Speaker 1 Because I have to get around other millionaires to understand how that works. Yeah, 100%.
You have to understand what to do to get sober, to stay sober and never be controlled by this substance again.

Speaker 1 And the only people that can do that are the ones that have actually done it. If you've never done it yourself, you might be able to feed me great inspirational quotes, right? Right.

Speaker 1 Great mindset tools.

Speaker 1 But if you've never been trapped in the grips of addiction, where you're doing things you don't even want to do anymore and you're doing things you said you would never do, the only way you're going to get free from that is to surrender that you know how to do it and give that to somebody like myself or somebody else that's been sober, gotten sober, and let them show you how to do it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Because you don't know how to do it yourself.

Speaker 1 So when I tell myself I'm never coming back, it's on this idea that I don't have a problem. I just was using drugs and I made a dumb decision.
Well, a month later, I'm back at it.

Speaker 1 Swap team raised my apartment. I went through the the whole gamut of, you know, another one like the other one stories.
And

Speaker 1 this time, though, for the next two and a half years, what I see myself doing compared to the first time was way worse, you know, because I was still miserable on the inside.

Speaker 1 That was always, has always been my thing and still my thing. I don't really care about money.

Speaker 1 I love business and I love the idea of being successful in business, but money itself doesn't make me happy. It allows me to do more things.

Speaker 1 And so because I was so unhappy before and I was able to find this happiness within myself disconnected from money, I now understand what was missing.

Speaker 1 So even though there were great things happening in my early childhood, I absolutely hated who I was. Then I get on drugs and I'm trying to stop the hatred.
Well, that doesn't work anymore.

Speaker 1 And that's anybody that's listening to me right now that's, you know, you started with a six pack, or it was just one beer a night

Speaker 1 as a release or one bottle of wine. And next thing you know, it takes three.
Next thing you know, it's four.

Speaker 1 You got to keep pushing it up. And neurologically,

Speaker 1 if the science can prove why that happens, the body will never produce the same reward it did the first time because of a normalization process where your body just won't allow it because that's how it keeps your body in a state of equilibrium.

Speaker 1 And so one bottle, it takes two, in six months, it's going to take two bottles. In 10 years, it's going to take you four bottles.
But by the time you get to four bottles, you got to wake up and drink.

Speaker 1 You got to have lunch.

Speaker 1 You can't have lunch without drinking. Right.
And so for me, started shooting dope because smoking wasn't working, snorting pills wasn't working. And

Speaker 1 man, I was on a suicide mission. At that point, nobody wants to be around me.
I'm 22 years old, shooting dope. I came from a upper white middle class neighborhood.

Speaker 1 And those, nobody was raised that way. We didn't see that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 And so for them to see somebody that was putting needles in their arm and banging dope every 30 minutes, it was like, bro, you're not allowed to come over here anymore.

Speaker 1 And that was when I started walking the street. So the six months final in my life until I get to prison is me just walking the street.
Most of the nights just walking the street,

Speaker 1 strung out on meth, staying up for 13 days at a time, six days at a time, on average, five days at a time. Oxycontins were so expensive, I couldn't afford them anymore.

Speaker 1 Those were like $20 to $40 a pop, but I could get heroin for $5 on the west side of Fresno. And back then, heroin was still a thing.
Now it's not anymore. It's just fentanyl.
Yep.

Speaker 1 And fentanyl is even cheaper, I think. Even cheaper.
Yeah. And it's just so deadly.
So deadly. But

Speaker 1 I was so miserable, man. And I didn't think that there was any way out of the thing that I was in.
At that point, I had accepted that this is what your story is going to end like.

Speaker 1 You know, like I'm walking around the street and I can still think about good things that that happened in the past.

Speaker 1 But every time I thought about something good that was happening, I always thought to myself, why isn't this happening to anybody else? You know, why is this happening to me?

Speaker 1 You know, when you get on this wavelength that you and I are on, you recognize that it's just victim mentality, right?

Speaker 1 Like you've, you've victimized yourself and you find a way to justify staying stuck. You find a way to not have to get uncomfortable and make the big decisions that you need to make.

Speaker 1 You find a that you're never going to be able to do what somebody else has done, right? Is you put yourself in a position of a deficit that's so deep you can't get out. And that's exactly where I was.

Speaker 1 I didn't know how to get out. I wanted to get out.
I tried to go to Oregon one time and got on a bus. My friend's family had two or 300 acres of wine grapes.

Speaker 1 And the dad says, I'll make you the ranch manager. Just get out of Fresno.
The place sucks. Come up here.
I'll train you.

Speaker 1 Seven days later, I hitchhiked to the bus station, snuck on the bus with no money, and went back to California because the withdrawals were so painful. I had to get back.
I wanted to stop.

Speaker 1 I just didn't know how.

Speaker 1 January 21st, 2007, I have a spiritual awakening. Changed my life.
That was it. People ask, how'd you do it? I needed something to show me that I wasn't in control like I thought.

Speaker 1 And once I surrendered to my own ego, or my own idea that I was the maker of everything, which to a degree I will say, sure, but to the biggest degree, no, I'm not in control.

Speaker 1 And once I relinquished that, that was when the source of every piece of information that I needed and the eyes for me to see the opportunities that were all around me that I was passing by were going to open up and be able to see things that I needed to see so I could start beginning to do what I was doing today.

Speaker 1 And the very next day I was arrested and sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

Speaker 1 Four and a half years for what?

Speaker 1 The armed robbery that I committed. So, my parents used this big wig attorney, and he kept me out of prison, but it got me felony probation.
So, I was still on felony probation from the home evasion.

Speaker 1 And so, the sentencing when I went was basically a violation of probation, but it's attached to the robbery crime.

Speaker 1 So, now you got to go off and serve the time for that robbery that we should have sent you to prison for, is what they would have said. Four and a half years.
Yep.

Speaker 1 And I ended up doing two years on it. You got out early.
There was a big mistake on my paperwork that we found out years later when I got out. It's a wild story, bro.

Speaker 1 My story's got so much stuff and we only got so much little time. Little time.
I'm trying to. So, no, so

Speaker 1 you were using crack cocaine, heroin, crystal meth, oxy. Yes.
And it switched drugs depending on how much money you had? No, I always did opioids. And I was around a lot of dudes that were meth users.

Speaker 1 And so I would use meth. And then if I was around a couple other guys that used crack cocaine or cocaine, then I would just, but but always baseline opioids to stop the withdrawals.

Speaker 1 Then meth or cocaine or crack cocaine if it was around.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 there's so many questions here. I don't even know.
Let me just start here.

Speaker 1 So when you meet these homeless people that literally, if you go to California, like it's literally like people shooting up in front of kids on a corner and pooping in the streets.

Speaker 1 Is it better to just say, give them as much as they want? Because one of the guys that works here, it's a great friend of mine, Josh.

Speaker 1 He's like, dude, it's like, it's almost like you're trapped because now they're giving it to you. Now they're giving you clean needles.
Now they're like, do it anywhere you want.

Speaker 1 Now they'll give you tents. It's almost like, go here, do it safe, right in public.

Speaker 1 What's the right, based on your experience, you've been involved in this a long time. What is the answer to these vets and these young kids on the streets?

Speaker 1 Same answer we would have if we wanted to build a millionaire out of a 13-year-old. Create a structured environment that holds them accountable for their behaviors.

Speaker 1 And then you teach them in that environment accountability what to do, right? So this is where I believe that we fail as a society, specifically with this misunderstood population.

Speaker 1 I'm totally in agreement for safe injection sites, which is like a wildly progressive idea, right? Conservatives are like, you're just going to let them shoot dope. Well, hear me out.

Speaker 1 Give them a spot. That's the only spot.
You shoot dope in public outside of that spot. Put your hands around your back.
We're going to put cuffs on you. We're going to take you to jail.

Speaker 1 We're going going to have a psychologist who's trained come in and actually tell us what's wrong with this individual.

Speaker 1 Because what most people don't understand is a large majority of that population is struggling with the acuity in the mental health department beyond what we can actually do with our mental, with our healthcare system.

Speaker 1 So many men develop things like schizophrenia. Within their, you know, late, like early,

Speaker 1 before they turn 20 or in their mid to late 20s, they start to develop schizophrenia. A lot of people think that the guy talking to themselves is just drug-induced.
That is not always the case.

Speaker 1 Many of these individuals have had

Speaker 1 very tough mental illness struggles for a very long time, and they don't have anybody that can take care of them. They find themselves using drugs because sometimes the drugs can stop the voices.

Speaker 1 Or you have women who have been raped in their environment from a very young age and develop these personality disorders that make it very difficult for them to sit down listen to somebody and not have outbursts and so then they find themselves on the street using dope the problem with this is they actually need to be in an institution that can care for them get them away from the drugs put them in institution where we can provide medication to them and they can't leave We shouldn't let some of these individuals leave the institutions that are struggling with mental illness.

Speaker 1 So if you act outside of this safe injection site, we're going to arrest you and we're going to find out whether you're a drug-addicted person or you're a person who struggles with high levels of mental health or mental illness.

Speaker 1 And you will go to an institution or you will go to a court order rehab facility in which we treat you. There has to be some type of accountability.

Speaker 1 You and I don't want to walk outside of this business and see a dude taking a shit right there, nor do we want him banging dope or smoking meth.

Speaker 1 Nobody wants that unless you go to some of these cities like San Francisco that believe they're human beings. They've had hard upbringings.
They have really tough stories.

Speaker 1 We need to just let them live because who are we to say something to them? Well, the problem with that is, what's the difference between that and putting them in jail?

Speaker 1 Right. So the left says when we put them in prison, there's no compassion that jailing them doesn't change them.

Speaker 1 I would agree. But you saying leave them there is the same fucking thing.
Yeah. It removes you from having to be accountable for fixing the problem.

Speaker 1 And as business owners, we don't like problems, right? When a problem pops up for you, I guarantee you with this year's success, you want to figure out how to solve that problem right away.

Speaker 1 If you can't solve it, you find somebody that can solve that problem and you say, let's make sure this problem never happens again because we don't need problems.

Speaker 1 But we're not doing that with them because politics, as we've learned, is a big game. They've got billions of dollars in California that just disappeared to the homeless population.

Speaker 1 Well, I could have told you that was going to happen because politicians don't ever do anything good with our money. No, no, it's a bureaucracy that they just get rich.
You know, I had RFK Jr.

Speaker 1 at my house. I'm kind of a Trump guy.
I mean, I don't care who you vote for, by the way, but I think people understand once you make money, you don't want to pay taxes. Yep.

Speaker 1 Not ridiculous taxes because they just spend the money in the ways that you, you, most people that are wise believe in philanthropy, but he, he was on big addiction.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't know if you know, RFK was like, understands everything you're talking about. He was on heroin for a long, long time.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 One of his brothers is a big speaker

Speaker 1 on addiction as well. Yeah.
I mean, he's massive.

Speaker 1 I mean, the guy works out every day so you now when was the last time you you did a drug 17 years ago 17 and uh it's may 17 2007 i just celebrated 17 years congratulations thank you no nicotine no alcohol no drugs nothing i've been sober straight up for 17 years what is the feeling i've never talked to somebody like about this because a lot of times people just it's not the first thing you talk about at dinner like do you ever feel like like this itch

Speaker 1 the desire to use is not there, but there has not been a day in 17 years where I haven't thought about using drugs. So this is the interesting thing.
So remember when I talked about the needle, right?

Speaker 1 And how 17 years ago, that needle had the power to control everything about me. I can now hold that same needle and it does not have that same power.

Speaker 1 I liken it to this way.

Speaker 1 An ex-girlfriend or an ex-wife, right? There was a time when you were so in love with that person, you couldn't think about another woman. You only wanted to be with that person.

Speaker 1 And then you go through this breakup where your heart hurts, you're anxious, you can't, everything triggers a memory about this person.

Speaker 1 And then there comes this point when you've been separated for so long, you can run into that person, see her with another man, and actually think, oh, that's cool. She found somebody.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 She no longer has the ability

Speaker 1 to control your thoughts, your emotions,

Speaker 1 because you. It's been so long.
And so for me, it's like, I can think about drugs because my brain, that's what they do to us.

Speaker 1 When I say us, to us, people have been addicted to addicts every day you will think about it but not every day does that thought create a desire and like this urge to i have to use that's gone thank god yeah thank god i mean so a lot of people fall off the saddle and sometimes it's a long time sometimes it's a decade yeah what do you think goes on They know where they were.

Speaker 1 Yeah. They know how bad it was.
Your story, it sucked.

Speaker 1 Five days up thinking about all the worst shit trying to like beg and try to just do the cheapest thing possible you've had success what do you think causes the relapse or falling off the wagon or just somebody to go back to that was this just one time one day one bad decision one not if no it's never that it's so much more i don't want to say complicated but when somebody relapses or somebody gives in on their sobriety it happened usually months before

Speaker 1 weeks before. They just didn't recognize it.
I had a kid ask me, how'd you get sober? I thought about it.

Speaker 1 I could have told him my spiritual awakening and everything that I did with my studies in the Bible to transform my thinking, but that's not going to be relatable for most people.

Speaker 1 So I created the sobriety model that now exists at my own treatment center.

Speaker 1 It's a foundation of spirituality and self-affirmation with a pillar of willingness, honesty, discipline, structure, routine, community, and giving.

Speaker 1 When somebody relapses, one of those pillars or their foundation is not correctly built.

Speaker 1 Spirituality and self-affirmation is really just about positive thoughts and positive thinking, is making sure that you're not operating from a place of self-centeredness, selfishness, where it's all about you.

Speaker 1 Or when something bad happens, what do you tell yourself? Do you tell yourself that you're a piece of shit, you're never going to figure it out? Or do you say, you know what, we all make mistakes.

Speaker 1 I got to figure out what this mistake was and move from this situation to where I don't ever make that mistake again. Honesty pillar is the big one.

Speaker 1 Most people don't recognize in recovery that honesty with self and honesty with others are the two most important things for a person who's in recovery.

Speaker 1 Because if I'm dishonest with you and I lie to you and I steal something from you, whether you know it or not, there's a subconscious guilt and shame mechanism that hits you.

Speaker 1 And that starts to create weighted emotion. I don't know about that.
I don't think so. In my first book, I wrote about this thing that I call creative justification,

Speaker 1 where

Speaker 1 you say, this guy's rich. He's not going to miss it.
No one's going to care about this. Hey, listen, this guy buys all these openers.
He's not going to miss a remote if I give one away. Sure.

Speaker 1 I really think people

Speaker 1 justify things really easily. Now, watch.
It's honesty with self and others.

Speaker 1 You can justify all the shit you want, but self-deception is self-deception. If we brought a turd in here and gold plated,

Speaker 1 but I feel like people, they bend the rules all the time.

Speaker 1 That's self-deception. And that's a big, that's a big part of if you get into the 12-step program, self-deception is a big part of it.

Speaker 1 Is packaging an idea as something new or creative or okay without realizing that underneath the intent is completely miscalibrated. So, yeah, you're a millionaire.

Speaker 1 I could take one garage door and free. You're not going to miss that.
That's what I have to tell myself to justify the behavior.

Speaker 1 But whether you know it or not, you're carrying a level of shame and guilt after that, even with that justification. Well, well, how do you stop that shame and guilt?

Speaker 1 You have to make another impulsive decision that can spike your brain and create a dopamine rush so you don't feel like those emotions are taking over you anymore.

Speaker 1 And then you end up finding yourself in this cycle of addiction of where you're trying to create a dopamine rush.

Speaker 1 The rebound takes you low and you have to actually face yourself, look in the mirror and see that you're not as good as you should be or could be. And then what do you do?

Speaker 1 You make another decision that's impulsive to create that rush in your brain neurologically, which halts all of the shits you don't want to feel for a moment's time.

Speaker 1 But after that moment's over, you go right back down.

Speaker 1 So when a person doesn't hold themselves accountable for their thinking, their behaving within themselves and how they treat others, you start to build a mechanism where you're carrying weighted emotions.

Speaker 1 Resentments is another one. So if I hate you for doing something wrong to me, I can be mad at you, but I'll never hate you for it.
I won't hate you anymore for it.

Speaker 1 I'll just say, you know what? I won't put myself in position to be around that person anymore, but I forgive him because I understand that. Because as a person, you do

Speaker 1 exactly like I did with my father. You said, hey, he was kind of born into this family curse.
Like he had to do this and he did the best he could. Because at the end of the day, is it my dad's fault?

Speaker 1 No. No.
My dad doesn't have that power. No.
He doesn't have the power to make my decisions. I made my own decisions.

Speaker 1 Through self-deception, I justified my behavior and the way I was thinking because my dad wasn't there. But that wasn't actually the truth.

Speaker 1 And so then the next ones are willingness, discipline, structure, routine, giving, and community.

Speaker 1 You've got to stay disciplined, structured, routined in what works, what has always worked, and evolve that routine because what works for five years won't work from five to 10 years.

Speaker 1 You always need to make sure that you have a component of philanthropy in your life where you're giving with no expectation in return and only to make other people better.

Speaker 1 But the community part is one of the other big ones is you got to stay connected, man. I have conversations with a few guys every single day and we can talk about anything.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Any mistake that we make, we can talk about it because holding on to the anxiety and stress or the being overwhelmed in business is not good for men.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying that you need a safe space, quote unquote, but you need a group of men or a group of people that hold you accountable, but also let you take the floor and talk about whatever you need to talk about and give you a hug if that's what you need.

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Speaker 1 Man,

Speaker 1 you know, the more I sit here,

Speaker 1 you know, I do long walks and I work out and I eat pretty healthy, at least for now. There was a time I could drink five nights in a row and not give a shit,

Speaker 1 but I don't feel burnout. I don't feel like I ever go to work.
My brain is always moving, though, but I could, I could go chill, watch a movie, go bowling tonight.

Speaker 1 I might think of something and put it in my Google notes. I know how to turn off.
Yeah. But man, there's a lot of shit.

Speaker 1 Like I think about people and they got this burnout and they don't know what to do and they don't think about themselves very highly. And I've been around a lot of psychologists.

Speaker 1 Actually, Robert Czadini was sitting where you were, the guy that wrote the book Influence, 79 years old. And man, I guess I'm very blessed.

Speaker 1 And I, sometimes you take for granted just the fact you get out of bed and have energy. And, you know, I do believe in Jesus Christ.
I believe he's my Lord and Savior. And

Speaker 1 he's just,

Speaker 1 there's a lot of things that shouldn't have happened that did. I was not supposed to be in this spot.
And I, you know, I know just as quick as I got here, he could take it away.

Speaker 1 And it's just, I always try whenever I'm on a stage to just say, listen, you guys don't need to believe in Jesus, but I do. And it's, I made a deal with him.
That's what's worked for me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You don't need to do that, but it worked for me. And, you know, the other thing is them watching me like and saying, I want that, not talking to them about why they should believe in heaven and hell.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But it's nice when somebody says, I want what you have.
That's what real leadership is about, right? Yeah. It's about showing up, talking to the talk.

Speaker 1 I used to think that it was, and I never wanted this responsibility when I was younger because they always said, Don't you want to be a leader? You could be the best at this.

Speaker 1 Yes, and talking about my sports. And I never wanted that because I thought that as a leader, I had to go and tell everybody what to do.

Speaker 1 Then I went through everything I went through and I got into recovery and I realized that leadership was actually about me, right?

Speaker 1 I would create a strong vessel with a story, with values and a North Star. And I would move that direction and somebody would see me and be like, yo, I want to be with that fucking dude.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And he would come around me and I would say, look, you can come here, but when you come here, you better show up like this. Because I don't have, I don't tolerate anything else.

Speaker 1 So you get on my value system, you get on my daily walk, you get on my way of doing things, and then we come together, iron sharpens iron, and we start to make a community that's moving forward.

Speaker 1 That's called culture, right? People is getting people to buy in

Speaker 1 100%

Speaker 1 and be a part of what you represent. And I believe that we all have our own form of leadership, but until we can lead ourselves, we can't lead anybody.
Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Leading is easy.

Speaker 1 Once you truly know why you wake up every single day, once you have released all of the power that the vices of the world have to offer, and you can exist within yourself without any of that, and prison is what taught me this, you now have the ability to truly change somebody's life just by fucking being within five feet of them because you're not being blown every direction of the wind.

Speaker 1 You're not taking every opportunity to go out or be with these people, or just because somebody has this car or this much success, you don't feel like you actually need to be around them because you know something about what they do is not in alignment of what you do.

Speaker 1 So you'll pass on that opportunity, right? Then people can actually see how you do things, what you do and how you think, and you can give that to them and then they can build themselves up.

Speaker 1 And if they decide to go a different direction with the foundation you gave them, then hell yeah.

Speaker 1 You served a strong purpose in that individual's life for a time that gave them the tools that they needed to go on their own journey, wherever their North Star is at.

Speaker 1 I'm just thinking about like when I was drinking, I was like, dude, I still go to work. I show up for meetings.
Like, I looked at the picture.

Speaker 1 Like, I get out of the shower and I took a picture, like, but I, you know, I had my boxers on. And I look at it now and I'm like, why did I allow myself to get to that point? Well, I said, hey,

Speaker 1 I work my ass off. I got a lot of people.
I don't have time for this. Then I realized there's 168 hours in a week, 50 for work, 70 for work, whatever you want, 50 for sleep.

Speaker 1 That's seven hours of sleep or more. It's 10 hours for working out.
You still got 60 hours left. You know, and a lot of people send that.
I had this gal that wrote Dopamine Nation on a few weeks ago.

Speaker 1 Talks about how your body releases dopamine. And all the drugs you're talking about is dopamine releases.
So a scroll is scroll, like these quick dopamine releases.

Speaker 1 Human beings are meant to get dopamine by doing hard things. That's right.
And, you know, Dr.

Speaker 1 Oh, he's the biggest psychologist.

Speaker 1 He's from Canada. And he says, like, your life's not supposed to be easy.
You're not supposed to be able to order Uber Eats and just sit in your bed and like just, it's not supposed to be comfortable.

Speaker 1 Jordan Peterson. It's like, and now that I'm doing hard things, man, I tell you, that's where my dopamine, and it's a better form of dopamine.
It's fucking awesome.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but my question to you is, if you don't know how to do the hard things, where do you start?

Speaker 1 The hard things are all, you know, cold plunge is hard because you go into a cold plunge and you just, your body doesn't want to deal with it.

Speaker 1 But, you know, making people's, people making their beds, people getting out of bed is hard. Like, but when it becomes easy, it's not hard anymore.
You got to do other hard things.

Speaker 1 You got to find new hard things. So this is what I learned in prison because I couldn't manage anything.
Yeah. Nothing.
Like not even a clothes. Couldn't manage that.

Speaker 1 When I got to prison, there were these rules that you had to be up at six o'clock in the morning and you had to have your bed made. And so I couldn't get up in the morning.

Speaker 1 I slept till like six o'clock at night. That was my routine.
I didn't

Speaker 1 all day, every day before prison. Oh, okay.
So you have to. So when I get there, now I got to get up at six o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 1 But on the street, I would sleep till five, six o'clock at night, bang dope all through the middle of the night and morning, early morning, and go to sleep and sleep all day again, right?

Speaker 1 And I had set four goals: I'm going to get out of here and race BMX professionally. I'm going to go to the Olympics.

Speaker 1 I'm going to start a nonprofit organization for kids, and I'm going to go to the Olympics. But I don't know how I'm going to go from this prison cell at Wasco State Prison on D Yard to the Olympics.

Speaker 1 And I read the verse in the Bible that said, Those who are trusted with little will be trusted with much. And I thought to myself, okay,

Speaker 1 I got to start building trust in all of these little things. Because if I can't be trusted with making my bed, why would I ever be trusted with the Olympics?

Speaker 1 Or why would I ever be trusted with a million dollars in the bank account and be able to actually manage it without that money controlling who I am as a person and what I do with it, right?

Speaker 1 So I started to realize that. I needed to start with something very small that I could control.
And for me, that was learning how to brush my teeth every single day, 23 years old.

Speaker 1 I didn't know how to do that either. And making my bed.
Making my bed was forced, but not brushing my teeth.

Speaker 1 If you follow me now on social media, every single morning, it doesn't matter where I'm at in the country. And if I'm in a hotel, my bed is made and you'll see a picture of it.

Speaker 1 And I'll say one, two, and three, make your bed, brush your teeth, organize your stuff.

Speaker 1 Because every single morning, I've never strayed away from this baseline that I built when I was in prison for 17 fucking years, dude. Now, check this out.

Speaker 1 Discipline to me is just the ability to do good work when you don't want to do good work at all. And it starts with the ice cube.

Speaker 1 So I always ask people, you ever dropped an ice cube when you went to get it out of the freezer? Yeah. Of course you have.

Speaker 1 And I also know that there's many times that you looked at the ice cube, knew you should have picked it up and put it in the sink, but you just kicked it under the fucking fridge. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Because that was the easy thing to do.

Speaker 1 That's actually the hard thing to do. Putting your shopping cart back in the shopping cart rack is actually the hard thing to do.

Speaker 1 Cleaning up your piss off the toilet seat is actually the hard thing to do.

Speaker 1 And you'll know where you're at in my mind, because if you're on an airplane, if you fucking leave the piss there because it's an airplane, you're still not quite done yet.

Speaker 1 You got a lot of work to do, right? Is you start to learn how to take all of those little things just as serious as you would closing a deal in business. And then you start to realize that doing

Speaker 1 what's hard becomes easy.

Speaker 1 And when the real hard stuff comes, when there's a downturn in the economy and you're having to figure out how to make ends meet or you're trying to figure out how to scale a business or something as silly as where I'm at right now trying to figure out how to actually produce content people want to watch online and you start telling yourself you're not going to make it this isn't going to work why am I doing this I think I want to quit you're going to keep powering through because you've learned how to do it through all of these other little tasks that most people think is insignificant So that's why I always say, how do you do the hard things?

Speaker 1 The hard things are actually the things that most people would say are easy. Sure, making your beds easy.
Do it for 17 years in a row and don't miss a day.

Speaker 1 I just decided so there's this book buyback your time

Speaker 1 i can make my bed i can do a lot of things i floss three times a day like i'm just habitual about certain things yeah but if i could i don't enjoy making my bed but there's certain things i have to do i have to get out of bed i don't enjoy my fifth set of chests and pushing for that last one and getting a spot and pushing past my comfort zone right i don't enjoy when i have to squat i don't i don't enjoy a lot of things that i deal with i don't enjoy taking the phone call from someone that's that's going to bitch my fucking head off.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 I do it. But if I don't have to do the things that people actually like, I've got ladies that just, they clean the place.
They're so good. And I bought back my time.
Sure.

Speaker 1 Things when I change somebody's life, and it's not me that changes that I make them aware of it. And then they do the work.

Speaker 1 And when you know, you told me when you got here, like, when you meet somebody, they could change everything.

Speaker 1 Like, literally, you could go from like, literally, you've got to go to first, second, or third base. Like, you want to be wealthy.

Speaker 1 wealthy you want to be a good father hang out with good fathers and i here's how i know it's a good father because i look at their kids oh yeah and i say that's the guy i want to hang out with man that guy and if you want to be a bad guy hang out at the strip club and cheat on your wife and it's just who we hang around with it's a it's a it's like the one thing that could unrelease us but people say how do you get access to people well i ask

Speaker 1 yeah and i'm not afraid to know sure and i've never been afraid to know if some people like i don't know how

Speaker 1 when you work with these people you were one of them yeah i mean you were in that boat I mean, dude, I don't have patience. Like, dude, I try to, my EQ is probably way higher than my IQ.

Speaker 1 And I try to like think about what are they thinking about? What's going on in their mind? And how am I making them feel?

Speaker 1 But when I'm talking to somebody that's on drugs, you can totally tell.

Speaker 1 I just, I'm not Captain. I'm not Dr.
Phil. Sure.
I say sometimes Captain Save a Hoe. You know what I mean? Like, I can't be here.
Like, literally, I'm not good at this.

Speaker 1 I could have a really intelligent conversation, but dude, you got to have your patience through the roof. But being there, you know, probably like, I know what you're feeling right now.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you got to release this stuff or what? That's why I own a rehab and you don't, right? I know, I get that. And you do this and you enjoy it.
Yeah, because I've been there. Like, everything.

Speaker 1 And you enjoy it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Cause everything makes sense to me.
Oh, you're fucking flying off the handle and say you want to leave treatment right now.

Speaker 1 And five minutes later, you're walking down the street with a $2,000 Ramoa suitcase in the middle of the citrus fields, like, and you think you're going to figure this out.

Speaker 1 Like, I know exactly what they're thinking. I don't judge them for it.
I don't hate them for it. It's like, I hope they come back and they give us an opportunity to do this.

Speaker 1 Cause if they can surrender, the best days of their life are coming. I just know it because I've been there.

Speaker 1 Or like when somebody leaves treatment, I always tell them, if you leave my treatment center, you get my phone number. You can call me.

Speaker 1 Like, there's a part of me that still pours into any person that wants to get sober, right? And most recently, I had a young man that called me every day.

Speaker 1 I mean, just a fucking head case, 22 years old, gifted as hell with music, wants to sell out Madison Square Garden one day. And I think he absolutely can.

Speaker 1 But he's young, he's impulsive, and he has zero idea of how to think. So I just say, call me every day.
So he calls me every day and he's telling me stuff. He's telling me stuff.

Speaker 1 And what I do is I tell him how to stop what he's doing and start doing what I would do. Because I tell him, if you want what I have, all you got to do is learn how to think the way I think.

Speaker 1 That's it. You want what I have, just learn how to think the way I think.
And up to the point that you no longer want what I have, you no longer have to continue to think the way that I think.

Speaker 1 But the foundation of what you wanted. will be there.
And then you'll go find somebody else that can give you the next phase of however you want to be when it comes to thinking.

Speaker 1 They call me every single day. He calls me every single day.
And we work through problems. I think I'm going to move here.
I want to do this and I want to do that.

Speaker 1 And I think I'm going to do this and I think I'm going to do that or why am I feeling this way? And it's helping him understand, let's put this in one small compartment.

Speaker 1 Let's treat one compartment and not treat the whole thing as one.

Speaker 1 Because just because you're having a bad day doesn't mean that your life is over. It just means that you're having a bad day.
Let's take a look at why you had a bad day. Was it out of your control?

Speaker 1 It wasn't in your control. Fuck it.
Can't win them all. Go back to bed.
Was it in your control? What did you do wrong? Okay. Change that behavior and then you won't ever have that bad day again.

Speaker 1 You'll have more days that are just out of your control because those are the kind of bad days I want to have. I don't want to have bad days that was in my control.

Speaker 1 I fucked up, made a bad decision or said something to somebody that caused a problem, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so then teaching them how to compartmentalize or teaching them how to compartmentalize their life in a way that's manageable. Yeah.
You know, that's baby steps, man.

Speaker 1 I deal with a lot of business owners and I get the same questions every time. And when you make a mistake, it's a mistake.
The second time, it's a choice. That's right.

Speaker 1 And I don't think people understand that. And some people, the definition should have been standard.
We all know this. Yep.
And I'll tell you this. No one's failed more than me.

Speaker 1 Nobody that I know has jumped in hardcore and failed and lost. Yeah, I see your ADD even just

Speaker 1 examining you in the chair and your legs bouncing. I'm like, oh, yeah, this guy gets up like my business partner at four o'clock and fucking loves it.
No, I literally, dude, like sitting down is like,

Speaker 1 and I, I, I went, I stayed up late for the first time in a while and just literally had a protein shape. I was talking to a buddy, but now I need seven hours.

Speaker 1 Like, and if I don't get it, like, I do move around a lot. I'm pretty anxious, but at the same time, I know how to deal.
I know exactly what I need to do. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that's your EQ, right? But, but I'm a hunter, dude. Like, the deal is I am not meant to sit down.
and be a spiritual like leader. I am meant to go do things and talk on stage.

Speaker 1 And and like i coach people but i don't want to do the same thing 10 hours in a row like when i make content other than stuff like this like i i don't want to sit here and make content for five hours give me 30 minutes four times a day you know what i mean i like that's cool if you could do that or get it live my schedule wouldn't allow me to do it but yeah well your schedule would when you realize the content you should be putting out is real stuff you think the kardashiers would practice putting out content or you think they just took reality yeah what about if you go out with kids on the street where you grew up and you went back there and you actually recorded it you think people would like that?

Speaker 1 Sure. You said, hey, listen, I'm going to talk to this guy.
He's strung out. He's probably on five days because he was on Neth the last five days, exactly who I was 18 years ago.

Speaker 1 You think people would want to understand that? You think that would be interesting content? Sure. You think people would want to watch that?

Speaker 1 Or do they want to watch you say, these are the five principles of discipline? I mean, don't get me wrong. I get that that's the solution, but it's got to be, in some ways, educational.

Speaker 1 And it's got to be entertaining. Entertaining, yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Especially with the algorithm lately, I've seen it. It's moving more towards, it has to be more cinematic, has to have more transition.

Speaker 1 There's people I love. There's people I love to watch, but it's so, and Xavier and I talk about this, like, it's very great information, but it's the same guy, same chair, same freaking thing.

Speaker 1 Like, dude, Mr. Beast is cool because he's doing crazy shit.
You never know what's going to happen. Like, you got to change it up and live your life.
And people want to know about you.

Speaker 1 They'll just want to know, like, you need to talk about what you do, but they want to know what goes on behind the scenes. They want to hear about this kid that's calling you, what he's going through.

Speaker 1 Then a 22-year-old guy is going to hear that and say, dude, this is me.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go find,

Speaker 1 I need to be part of this thing. That's going to blow it up.
Yeah. And go places and do things people aren't willing to do.

Speaker 1 Like this kid that just came in here, the School of Hard Knocks, all he does is walk up to people and say, What do you do for a living? Oh, yeah. Hey, he came to my house.
That's cool.

Speaker 1 And like, the dude's blowing up. He's in his early 20s.
And like, it's not really even a skill. You just got to learn how to do it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I got this poem that I read to my technicians, and I read this probably

Speaker 1 every two months to my graduation classes. And they graduate, and I he'll edit this out when I'm searching for it, but it's graduation.

Speaker 1 And check this out: I'm your constant companion. I'm your greatest helper, your heaviest burden.
I will push you onward or drag you down to failure. I'm completely at your command.

Speaker 1 Half the things you might as well turn over to me, and I'll do them quickly and correctly. I'm easily managed, but you must be firm with me.
Show me exactly what you want done.

Speaker 1 And after a few lessons, I'll do it automatically. I'm the servant of the greatest people on the planet and the Alice of all the failures as well.
Those who are great, I have made great.

Speaker 1 Those who are failures, I have made failures. I'm not a machine, though.
I work with the precision of a machine plus the intelligence of a person. You may run me for profit or run me for ruin.

Speaker 1 It makes no difference to me. Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I will place the world at your feet.
Be easy with me, and I will destroy you. Who am I? I am Habit.

Speaker 1 And really,

Speaker 1 these little habits make such a big freaking difference, man. Like, it's a big deal.
I'm just thinking about just everyday alcohol. Like, dude, here's the deal.

Speaker 1 I never craved alcohol, but what I was always around, a volleyball tournament, a golf course. Like, we go bowling.
I'm like, why not have a 12-pack? Like,

Speaker 1 and it never seemed like a problem. I'm like, dude, everyone's drinking.
Everyone's here. I didn't realize that they were everybody I was hanging out with.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's why you didn't see it as a problem.

Speaker 1 No, it's like if you came and hang around me and you had to leave all the time because you needed to go drink, you'd be like, i think there might be something wrong with me why do i always have to leave this guy to go drink or go out you know you go out to a bar but here's the thing that's so funny about it is

Speaker 1 not only did i not think it's a problem because i created my own environment but it's like you you literally look at people and you're like what you're not going to drink you're not even going to come out and have a beer and it's almost like you're antagonizing people like i don't and i always say i don't crave alcohol yeah but like i i go weeks sometimes months without drinking but if i put myself in the environment it's like sure.

Speaker 1 And I think that there's a lot of people that literally, they have an eating disorder. They look at their bodies and they don't think it's what that is.
And they literally, but I don't know.

Speaker 1 Like I look at my team and I said this last week. I said, if you do not want to give me 110%,

Speaker 1 I want to write you a letter of recommendation and it's going to be a brilliant one. And I want to pay you to leave.

Speaker 1 Because when you shake my hand and you get to know me, you will become the best version of yourself because I won't have it any other way, but I can't force you to make that decision.

Speaker 1 No, yeah, that's you. And you got to want it bad.
And you got to wake up and you got to want more. And you got to write down your goals.
We're going to reverse engineer them.

Speaker 1 I'm not putting you on a performance improvement plan. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to remind you.

Speaker 1 Remember your dad was sick and you said you were going to take him on that fishing trip for three weeks? I'm going to help you make that trip come faster.

Speaker 1 You said you wanted to buy a house for your kids. You said you wanted to take them to Disney World.
You told me that you wanted to do this.

Speaker 1 This apparently was your why, the big reason you're on this earth. I always say, show me your credit cards.
Show me your calendar. I'll show you where your priorities are.

Speaker 1 You know? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Let me, let me. I'd love to show you mine.
Yeah. They're basically empty.
I don't, I can't stand those things. Where do you, so where do you live? You're using for business.
That's it.

Speaker 1 You live in Dallas? Yeah, I'm in Dallas now, Renee City. And what, so tell me about the, how many clients have you had go through your

Speaker 1 program? Over 100 for sure. We're in Southern California.
So I live in Dallas.

Speaker 1 My business partner is doing day-to-day CEO work awesome guy what's your job my job's the face and communicating the brand and going around and speaking and marketing and branding which is what i'm good at now when i come into town and i'm there i run groups i actually break down groups with a white why don't we blow this thing up dude we're how do we get it to 10 000 we only hit 100 let's get it to 10 000.

Speaker 1 well so we've been open two years and the california model is a little tricky so you can't build a commercial building and put a bunch of beds in it in california it's not the way it works the state won't license you that way so they license you through through real estate, which is six people per house.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, I own a

Speaker 1 house. Okay, sober living.
So sober living, you can put more than six, but an actual treatment, detox, and residential treatment facility can only have six people in it.

Speaker 1 So we have a unique property right now, four and a half acres, one bed up top, one bed on the bottom, and then we have a house a quarter mile down the street. So we have 18 beds total.

Speaker 1 And the thing that makes us unique at PH Wellness is we have a huge fitness component. So all three of the owners have a big fitness part of their story.

Speaker 1 Both of my other business partners are Iron Man or Ultra Marathon runners. And then obviously, I was a professional BMX racer.

Speaker 1 But we have a 5,000 square foot gym and rec center that's on that four and a half acre property.

Speaker 1 Every day, our guests or clients are introduced to physical activity in a structured environment to help get that dopamine release. You know,

Speaker 1 because we strongly believe, like you said, you should be going out and doing tough things to create dopamine because there's a period of time in which the person feels like there's no excitement in life because that's what the drugs created, right?

Speaker 1 It's so much dopamine from an artificial hit that a conversation with the person or even lifting a weight doesn't create any type of rush compared to what the drugs could.

Speaker 1 Well, there's a time in which everything shifts back to normal. And if they're working out, they're creating that natural dopamine.
They're starting to feel better about themselves.

Speaker 1 And so we are building out what we think is a unique model for sobriety that most treatment centers don't have. A lot of treatment centers offer gym, but it's actually a part of our curriculum.

Speaker 1 And my business partner, he's there to help a lot of times because he was a, he owned a gym as well before he got into pH wellness.

Speaker 1 And he'll be there training with guests, training with even our employees. Like we've created a culture now where the employees know that the owners show up, they're fit, they love to work out.

Speaker 1 And now after work, we hired our trainer that works with our clients to work with our employees. Because

Speaker 1 it's just the way culture works, right? Like when you get around somebody and you see that they're winning and they have this certain mindset, it's like the David Goggins effect, right?

Speaker 1 He said, get around people that make you feel like you're not doing enough and don't run from those people, run to them. And that's what we're seeing with our employees.

Speaker 1 Our employees are now working out, losing weight, getting fit. That's still with me.
We lost a thousand pounds last two months at A1. I love that.
So we have 18 clients at the time.

Speaker 1 18 clients at any given time. At any given time.
18 clients, one month program, two month program. It's 30 first, 30 days.
So we're detox and stabilization.

Speaker 1 If you can't stop drinking and you're getting the shakes in the morning, you need detox. That means you're going to need medication when you stop drinking or you're going to seize up.

Speaker 1 Season up, you can die from alcohol withdrawals. Oh, yeah.
Same with opioids and

Speaker 1 it's very dangerous.

Speaker 1 So we have nurses, medical staff that are on site 24 hours a day to make sure that they're getting their medications, their vitals are being checked on 15, 30 minute, or one hour rounds.

Speaker 1 And they'll move on to aftercare typically after 30 days if their life allows them to do that, which would be more of an outpatient setting going for fancy.

Speaker 1 There's a cost. Yes.
So private. So government funded.
No, we're not.

Speaker 1 We didn't do the government-funded route. The reimbursements from the government are about $250 a day.
For those models to be successful, you got to have about 150 to 200 clients at one time.

Speaker 1 And that's a lot of people to manage. And it's also, from an ROI perspective, to me, it doesn't make much sense right now for me to go headfirst into a state-run facility first.

Speaker 1 No, plus the success rate probably isn't as high than this, more of a. Well, you can keep them for longer, which is great.

Speaker 1 But the way I see things, because I did the nonprofit thing and I don't ever want to do that again.

Speaker 1 I want to build this up to be so successful that I can use the profits that I have to build my philanthropic arm without having to worry about what somebody says in a grant that I write and how I want to spend that money.

Speaker 1 Right. So we'll just build this thing up.
We want to do about 30 beds in California before we start moving it around the country.

Speaker 1 And when we move it around the country, then we can build commercial buildings, right? You can build a Santa 100 bed facility because the other states will allow commercial buildings.

Speaker 1 California is one of the only states that makes it put into residential, which sucks too, because now every neighbor in the third house has a sign up that they don't like.

Speaker 1 treatment centers being in their neighborhood. No, no, no, 100%.
I mean, I get that too.

Speaker 1 And we do, and we don't cause problems, but it's like, hey, look, we can't, this is what we have to do in this state. They're the one.

Speaker 1 Call news really students. Gavin Newsome.
So how do you guys acquire clients? I mean, is it word of mouth? Is it Google? Like, what do you guys do? Yeah. So it's

Speaker 1 in Southern California, we have business development guys, sales reps would be the worst term to give them, but business development guys, community organization guys that work with other treatment centers, outpatient clinics that may have, you know, 100, 150 people in their outpatient clinic.

Speaker 1 If one of them relapses, they need to restabilize them and detox.

Speaker 1 We build partnerships through the work that we do, the quality of work that we do with other treatment centers where they say, hey, go to pH wellness, go there for your 24 days, and we'll send them back to them for outpatient.

Speaker 1 Because we can be trusted. They know that if they send it to us, we're going to send it right back to them and not to some other treatment center, which is what a lot of other people do.

Speaker 1 Then we have a huge marketing arm, a call center, pay-per-click, which is a big thing, but it's very difficult in our industry. Crazy sucks, dude.
You got to rank organically.

Speaker 1 What about your Google My Business page?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So had the google my business page which clicks we have all 88 all five stars okay let's get you guys ranking we gotta talk later so no we have a team doing the local stuff but in in this industry it's it's not as simple as you would think is just get local seo like none of our most of our clients are from out of state yeah no i i agree it's probably not local seo but the deal is is uh i got introduced you to joe polish i got some intros dude this is something he get behind this is something he's very passionate about yeah And the dude is like, we're building something special, bro.

Speaker 1 We really are. How long are you in town for? Till the night.
Oh, my. I got a flight at midnight.
I'm going to text you.

Speaker 1 I'm going to make an intro to Joe. At least you guys can chat on the phone for five minutes because anything addiction related, he's going to get behind.
That's his book right there.

Speaker 1 What's in it for them? That's one of his books. That one top middle.

Speaker 1 So listen, I'm going to do this. I love this story, man.
I'm sorry. I'm literally like, I feel like I hadn't slept in two days, dude, because I worked out so hard the last like just today.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, man, I just sleep is, if anybody ever asks you, what's the most important thing? Sleep is the most important. You make bad decisions.
You'll eat better. You'll drink more water.

Speaker 1 You'll get the vitamins. You'll remember to take your pills, whatever it is.
You sound like my business partner right now. Sleep is.
I run on like three and he has to have seven or eight. Oh, dude.

Speaker 1 Every doctor I've worked with, they're like, this is how you make natural growth hormone. Like, I don't ever brag brag about not sleeping.

Speaker 1 Like, I love the guys that are like, dude, I don't need to sleep. And I'm like, I don't know, man.

Speaker 1 I'm not getting enough sleep, but like, you'll live so much longer, but yet you're sleeping a lot of the time. So maybe, maybe you don't live longer.
Maybe you just spent more in awareness.

Speaker 1 But how do people get a hold of you, Tony? I think what's going to happen is someone's going to reach out and say, dude, I just need advice. I got a guy.
I got a kid. I got somebody that's really.

Speaker 1 or I'm that guy, dude. I'm having a really big problem.
What's the best way to reach out? Reach out to me. Instagram, Tony M.
Hoffman, Facebook, Tony Hoffman Speaking.

Speaker 1 But Instagram is probably going to be the easiest way to find me on social media. You can go to my webpage, TonyHoffmanSpeaking.com and hit the contact button.

Speaker 1 And I'll get back to you obviously there too. But if you know somebody that's struggling or if you're struggling, reach out to me.
I'm happy to share advice with you.

Speaker 1 Or if my team needs to get involved and I stand behind every one of my employees. They're all world class.
They're truly in it for the right reasons.

Speaker 1 Even if the person doesn't come to our treatment center and you need to be somewhere else, my guys will make sure that you get handed to the right facility, teach you all the things that you need to know, the things to watch out for, the decisions you need to make for a loved one if the loved one is struggling.

Speaker 1 And just really, like you said, you don't need to go from first, second, third base to get to home base.

Speaker 1 And in this space, when it comes to addiction, it's really important to make sure you get on the phone with somebody who knows what you're doing because running the bases with addiction can cost somebody's life.

Speaker 1 Just go straight to home base by getting to somebody like the umpire that gets to watch the whole game and knows exactly what's happening and why it's happening and how the score works and they'll make things way easier for you so reach out to me i'm happy to provide any type of insight and if like i say if i got to get my team involved with mike or jacob they'll get on the phone and they'll answer the phone at three o'clock in the morning those guys don't sleep they work around the clock and we love what we get to do yeah that's great tony i'm impressed man look i'm glad you got saved.

Speaker 1 I'm glad you're a man of faith. 17 years is a big deal.
I think you're going to help a a lot of people. Thanks.
And if I could open up any doors, like I know there's people listening with problems.

Speaker 1 If nothing else, this idea of maybe just look in the mirror and ask yourself, has it become a problem? Have I avoided? I heard this the other day and I played this to every one of my coworkers.

Speaker 1 If the people you're hanging out with, let's pretend you're a circle of friends. Look at all those friends.
And if they were your kid, Would you want those to be your children?

Speaker 1 Would you want them to be hanging out with that person too?

Speaker 1 And if not, you got to do something and if you're the person that's literally a bad influence that's tough man but i'll tell you what i took a lot out of this i love your story dude we met with tony what's the skateboarder bm he wasn't both tony uh hawkins tony hawk hawk yeah i met him at a party about a year ago great guy really they say he's super cool he's super laid back awesome guy yeah yeah and rfk was at the house twice RFK Jr., I don't know if he's going to win, but he's got, but yeah, I think I can put you in with the the right people.

Speaker 1 I would love that, man.

Speaker 1 I'm climbing the ladder. Yeah.
You know, me going out and trying to do these podcasts was recognizing that, you know, for me to climb the ladder, I've got to get in front of people like yourself.

Speaker 1 Stay consistent. Yeah.
Like, dude, you're not going to hit, like, people always ask me, how does radio and TV work? I'm like, it doesn't for a year. Yeah.
And you don't want to hit everything, right?

Speaker 1 Be very specific. Yeah, I have, yeah, I haven't been doing everything.
I've been very specific. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And to the right audiences, too. Sure.
It's a great audience.

Speaker 1 I want to say this. You know, we talk a lot about friends and drinking with friends and going out, but I also don't want to forget the person right now that's drinking by themselves.
That's true.

Speaker 1 You know, there's somebody that isn't sure if they have a problem. And I can assure you that if you're drinking alone, you have a problem.

Speaker 1 Even if it's not an addiction to the degree that you need to go to rehab, you're drowning yourself. You're not doing the best that you can.
You're not the best husband if you're drinking alone.

Speaker 1 You're not the best brother, sister, employee.

Speaker 1 If when you clock out, you go home and you have a six pack or a 12 pack in your hand and you're sitting in front of a fucking TV and you go to sleep with that alcohol. Like you're better than that.

Speaker 1 Tony, you're amazing. Thank you for coming out here.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 Love to have you back out, man, and show you what we do here and introduce you. Cool.
I would love that, man. Thanks.
Thanks.

Speaker 1 Appreciate you doing this.

Speaker 4 Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy.

Speaker 4 I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization.

Speaker 4 It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service.

Speaker 4 So, if you want to learn the secrets to help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700-plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book.

Speaker 4 Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.