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The Silent Addiction Killing Motivation - Eric Spofford · The Hannah Hammond Show

0:00
You have a passion for what you do.
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I'm obsessed. Yeah, I'm absolutely obsessed
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with it. I love it.
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I wake up every day just in awe of the process, the grind, the
0:11
build. It's a game.
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I love the game, and I love the game and the sport for what it
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is. And in this game, money is the
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score. It's not like I need to do this.
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And it's so fun. It's so fun to create and it's
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so fun to serve and it's so fun to impact life.
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I thought I would feel this way when I had those things, but now
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I have those things and I don't feel that way.
0:33
What do I do now? Welcome back to the Hannah
0:37
Hammond Show. I'm sitting here today with Eric
0:39
Spofford in Miami. Welcome to the show.
0:42
Absolutely, thanks for having me.
0:43
And he was just telling me a story about seeing $0.50 at the
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gym right before he came here. Miami is just the craziest
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place. I was at the gym, my friend's
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gym elevation in midtown and yeah, 50 Cent walks in with a
0:54
bunch of security guards. Ended up on a virtual like video
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call visit with my friend who's in jail.
1:00
Either him or a security guard saw that I was on a call with my
1:04
friend that was in jail, and so he literally came over and
1:07
grabbed the phone for me and started talking to my friend
1:09
who's locked up right now. Just another day in Miami.
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Yeah, no big deal. No big deal.
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Yeah. Yeah, That's awesome.
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Crazy, I know. And we were trying to go see him
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last night, but we can't stay up till 3:00 AM We're.
1:20
We're too old for that. Me and my friend Macy, we're
1:23
still in our 20s, but I'm almost at the end of that.
1:25
Old souls. Yeah.
1:26
Old souls for. Sure, Miami's a late city, like
1:29
dinner's at if you're going to do the Miami thing, which I
1:32
don't do. But dinner's like 10:11 PM,
1:35
clubs at 1-2, home by 5. And that's if you don't go to
1:40
the next club and it's like you. Know I don't know how people do
1:43
it. I don't either, you know, it's,
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it's funny. Miami will make or break you.
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Like, you come here and there's access to absolutely everything
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and it's like you don't have good discipline and you don't
1:54
have like the ability to say no and stay focused and know who
1:59
you are and what your lane is. Then I've seen a lot of really
2:03
good people get lost in the saucer.
2:05
But at the same time, like if you want to be around successful
2:09
people and, you know, leave the house and bump in celebs and
2:14
influencers and entrepreneurs and all that, there's no better
2:17
place on planet Earth in the city.
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How long have you lived here? Four years, I feel, it feels
2:23
like 20. I feel like a seasoned vet.
2:26
Yeah, it's been a big four years from Miami because after COVID,
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everyone started coming. And so where did I come here in
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in 2021? After your exit.
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Before, so kind of in the process of I had stepped down as
2:44
the active CEO of that business to Executive Chairman in March.
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At the same time that I made the decision to bring it to the, to
2:51
hire an investment banker and start the process of exiting the
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company, which, you know, a lot of people don't understand what
2:57
that that's a long process. It doesn't happen overnight.
3:00
And so I, I had promoted my COO to CEO as a succession plan and
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I had all this extra time. So that's when I transitioned
3:08
down here. OK, so for those of you who
3:10
don't know, Eric's just a complete badass and I'm really
3:14
inspired to hear your story. I know we're friends with Cody
3:17
Sperber and a bunch of other mutual connections and
3:19
everybody's just like, oh, you're going to love Eric.
3:21
He's absolutely amazing. And he built one of the largest
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drug addiction treatment facilities in New England.
3:28
And you used to be an addict yourself, which is what inspired
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the company. And you ended up having a nine
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figure exit in 2021 time frame. December 21st of 2021, so 4 days
3:40
before Christmas, right at the end of the year.
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Amazing. Like how did you do that and
3:45
what. Yeah.
3:46
Well, first, before we dive into business, I, you know, I my
3:49
brother struggles with addiction.
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I've struggled with addiction and it's just something that
3:56
cripples a lot of people. And I think a lot of
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entrepreneurs are very, a lot of them are addicted to work also.
4:02
And a lot of us just are addicts, even if it's more of a
4:05
healthy channel or not, right. And so I would love to, you
4:09
know, it's just, it really hits home for me and it's something I
4:12
still struggle with and I always have to check myself of my
4:14
addictive behaviors and the kind of, yeah.
4:17
So like, what was your story? What did your story look like
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and how did you fall into addiction?
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And then what was that pivotal moment for you where you you
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turned your life around and then ended up building a massive 9
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figure, you know, massive company that ended up leading
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you to a nine figure exit? Yeah, I mean, I honestly grew up
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in outside of Boston and my environment had a lot to do with
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it. I never in a million years want
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to be a drug addict. I never had a million years
4:50
wanted to be a successful entrepreneur.
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Like I grew up like watching like gangster movies and like
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those are my idols and like people that were like that in my
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neighborhood, but like the guys that I looked up to.
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And so I started selling drugs before I started doing them.
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And I actually talked about an entrepreneurial move.
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I got caught. I think I still to this day am
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the youngest person charged with a drug sales crime in my home
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state. And so I was in fifth grade.
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I was either 10 or 11 years old, and I got caught selling weed.
5:19
Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, I got caught, caught with
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like a quarter pound in my house.
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And a kid named Garrett Pelletier probably shouldn't,
5:27
probably shouldn't say his full name, but this kid that ratted
5:31
me out for selling him a dime bag and cops went to my house.
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It was crazy. But yeah, that escalated into I
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was just always really brazen too.
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Like I was a troublemaker. I was intense.
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I was, you know, in fifth grade, 6th grade, I'm selling weed,
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packing ACO 2 PB gun like a pistol, like listening to
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gangster rap music, like just like looking back, I'm like, it
5:58
seemed totally normal at the time.
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But like this was very clearly not going to end well for me,
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you know, and at the, you know, perfect storm oxy cotton is
6:07
blowing up in the late 90s, nineteen 99, I'm 14 years old.
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I tried an oxy cotton and instantaneously fall in love
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with opiates. And so OCS, you know, a year
6:20
later when I was 15 years old, turned into heroin, you know,
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stone cold junkie very quickly. And then from 15 till almost 22
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years old, I was addicted to heroin, coke and every other
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thing that you can think of. But mainly the like the
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foundation of my addiction was heroin.
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And by the time I was 17, I tried to get help.
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I went to rehab for the first time and and tried to change my
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life and that didn't work. And from 17 till December 21st,
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I'm sorry, December 7th of 2006, I tried to get sober and failed
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to fall flat on my face probably more than 100 times.
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Went to jail countless times, arrested countless times, went
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to rehab, went to detoxes, went to a, a meetings, went to
7:10
therapy, who did like everything you can possibly think of to get
7:13
better. And one thing that I know about
7:16
that, that I've come to know about that is that if someone
7:21
doesn't want to get sober and they don't want to change their
7:24
life, whatever that is, there's absolutely nothing that they can
7:29
do or you can do to produce that result.
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Alternatively, if someone wants to change your life, my case
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wants to get sober, there's nothing, no circumstances at all
7:43
that can stop them from doing such.
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And so on December 7th, 2006, I had hit complete rock bottom.
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Like I was like 135 lbs track marks up and down my arms, like
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didn't have a single precisely press *67 and have to trick
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people into answering the phone. I'd be like, it's Eric, don't
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hang up the phone. Like because I literally didn't
8:02
have anyone that wanted to talk to me because I fucked my life
8:04
up so bad. And, and I had gotten a lot of
8:08
trouble and I thought I was going to prison for a long time
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and my friends were going to prison and people were dying and
8:15
people were getting killed and it was just fucking crazy.
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And so the morning of the summer 7th, 2006, I went on the run for
8:24
some trouble that I got into legally and made a decision that
8:30
that was the day I was just done.
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I don't know why I couldn't tell you.
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I couldn't recreate it. Been working in addiction
8:36
treatment for the last 17 years or something, 16 years.
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And you know, wish I had the formula to wreak, to create that
8:46
moment of surrender for people. I don't, they have to come to it
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on their own. I just had enough pain.
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They're just beating me into a state of willingness and, you
8:55
know, reasonableness to do whatever it is that I had to do
8:59
to get better. And so I essentially fucking
9:01
crawled into Alcoholics Anonymous, almost 22 years old,
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with my life completely fucked up in full blown withdrawals
9:08
from heroin and plenty of other shit, and sat in a meeting with
9:13
a bunch of old grumpy men that yelled at me and told me the
9:16
truth. They used to give me a cup of
9:18
coffee. They would only fill the coffee
9:20
cup up halfway. So I was shaking so bad I'd
9:22
spill the shit all over myself and the floor from withdrawals
9:26
when I was new. And that's where I started all
9:30
this from. You know, I had no license, no
9:33
friends. I had two pairs of clothes I
9:36
had, I was habitual offender. You know, like when you do too
9:39
many things wrong with your license, they take it for like
9:42
ever. So I didn't get it back for a
9:43
while. I think I was like a year or
9:45
sober when I was done that time and I got my license back, lived
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in a 500 at first. I had no apartment then, so I
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was staying on the couch and then I got an apartment with no
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furniture, $550 a month in the middle of the hood.
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They were like selling crack and like hookers out front of my
10:01
building. And I'm like walking to a, a
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meetings. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy.
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I'm sure that was helpful. Again, like if I wasn't in the
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place where I was going to get sober and I was going to do this
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no matter what, I would have found every excuse underneath
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the sun. You could have put me in fucking
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Hollywood or in the nicest neighborhoods in the world and I
10:22
would have found a reason to get high.
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And at the time, I was just, I wasn't going to get high and I
10:26
wasn't going to use drugs and alcohol ever again no matter
10:29
what. And so it didn't matter the guy,
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I'd walk out of my building, they'd be selling drugs, doing
10:33
drugs, get high in the hallway, get high in the neighborhood.
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I'd push past them, you know, walk to my a meeting, walk to
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the gym, come back, do my recovery work, eat my food, go
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to bed, wake up, go to work doing construction, go to my
10:48
meetings, do my prayer, do my meditation, go to the gym.
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And just like there's nothing that was going to take me off of
10:54
that. And that's, you know, been my
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commitment and my day-to-day discipline, which has worked
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really well for me. You know, I like to say that
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sobriety is a superpower for me and it's just been foundational
11:06
to all of my success. So this past December, I
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celebrated 18 years of sobriety. Congratulations.
11:11
Thank you. You know, I've done a lot of
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cool shit and, you know, made a lot of money and and, you know,
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have plenty of stories to tell. But like, I think like
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maintaining sobriety through the good times and the bad times,
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it's probably like the most notable accomplishment that I'm
11:28
proud of anyway, like selling a business for a bunch of money.
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Like that's cool. Not a lot of people do that, you
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know what I mean? But like, staying sober in the
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midst of like an addiction crisis and watching everyone die
11:39
of fentanyl overdoses and like fucking all that crazy stuff has
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been a wild ride. God that's such a crazy story.
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I'm so proud of you. Thanks.
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I mean, you're. It's you know, and it's so it's
11:53
just unbelievable because when you're in the depths of
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addiction or hopelessness or you just feel trapped, like at least
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for me, when I felt, I mean, my biggest thing has been food
12:05
issues more so than drugs or alcohol, though I've done
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definitely my fair share. But it's like when you for me,
12:12
it was I wanted, I wanted to not have that control over me so, so
12:16
bad. But I felt powerless to being
12:19
able to decide. Like if you know, even I pass a
12:22
bowl of chocolates and I'm like grabbing the chocolate, I put
12:25
the chocolate in my mouth. It's so hard for me to even not
12:28
grab a chocolate. So I can't even imagine, you
12:30
know, heroin or some of these other hardcore drugs when
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they're you're powerless over them.
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So I think. Foods tough though, like a lot
12:39
of people struggle with food and the difference between like the
12:42
the different variations of food addiction is that like you have
12:46
to like go over and take that tiger out of the cage three
12:48
times a day and then put it back you.
12:50
Can't be abstinent. Exactly.
12:53
You can't be abstinent. And so I think that is probably
12:56
even more challenging. It doesn't get the respect that
12:59
it deserves of how difficult it is to manage a food addiction.
13:05
And so kudos to you on that. Yeah, it's challenging, right.
13:09
And they, you know, they have crazy like versions of
13:12
abstinence in like Overeaters Anonymous.
13:15
And I've worked with 10's and 10's and 10s of thousands of
13:19
people professionally with addictions.
13:21
And so I've seen everything. And so, you know, it's like no
13:23
flour, no sugar, weighted measured meals pre planned for
13:27
the week three times a day. Like, that's like their version
13:30
of abstinence. My father was the same, really,
13:34
for a long time. Yeah, I was.
13:35
Going to ask you how and it's crazy with that type of thing
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like that type of structure. My brain obsesses it so much
13:41
more if I put so much structure on, you know, 3 meals a day, no
13:45
flour, no sugar. It's like I'll be dreaming about
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ice cream. It's it's crazy.
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So I'm, I'm still working to find that balance, but what was
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your we won't go too deep into this because I do want to get
13:57
into some other topics, but what was your childhood like?
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Because I know, you know, I, I'm in the 100K group with Joe
14:04
Polish and he was an addict as well.
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And now he's a super awesome guy.
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I. Know of Joe?
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I don't know well though. No way.
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But that's a lot of what he teaches is about addiction.
14:13
And he says a lot of entrepreneurs suffer from
14:15
addiction, a lot of people in general.
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And that he says addiction is a connection disorder.
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And a lot of addicts, he has Genius Recovery Foundation.
14:23
And a lot of addicts, they're just disconnected and they're
14:27
numbing something, you know, numbing the pain that they have
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maybe they haven't dealt with or that they're living with.
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And a lot of that stems from childhood.
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And I know for me, I had a very difficult childhood.
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And you know, my, there's some traumatic things like so many of
14:42
us do, right? And it could be so many
14:44
different levels from just your parents ignoring you and you not
14:48
feeling loved by your parents or not feeling protected by your
14:50
parents to being beaten and starved and molested.
14:53
Like there's a whole range of things.
14:56
But that whole array of possibilities causes you to
15:00
disconnect as a child and then seeking things to numb that that
15:06
pain and disconnection. So I'm just curious for you,
15:09
like were you what was your relationship like with your
15:12
parents? How was your childhood like?
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Where do you think that that even I.
15:15
Mean as, as one might expect, like my childhood was kind of
15:19
crazy. My parents are, you know,
15:23
divorced when I was in fifth grade and it was a, you know,
15:26
loud, chaotic, violent household part of that.
15:28
And the neighborhood was fucked up.
15:31
And, you know, it's interesting because I, I, I geek out on that
15:35
a lot. It's actually for anyone
15:37
interested, Joe, I don't, I'm not familiar with Joe's work,
15:42
but a guy that that predates him quite a bit is a guy named Bruce
15:46
Alexander, who's a social scientist out of Vancouver,
15:49
Canada. He actually wrote a forward, the
15:51
forward to a book I published in 2019.
15:54
And his his claim to fame is this is that when clinical
16:00
people, medical people study addiction for a long time, for
16:03
decades in textbooks, they have like a study that really helped
16:08
create the framework of how we look at addiction.
16:13
And the study is this. They take a rat and they put it
16:15
in a cage and they have drinking water and two drinking waters. 1
16:19
is just regular drinking water and one is drug that's laced
16:22
with either morphine, heroin or cocaine.
16:27
And in the experiment it's really interesting because the
16:29
rat will try both and then the rat will go back to the drugged
16:33
water and the rat will continue to use the drugged water.
16:36
The rat will start to refuse food and and prefer drugs over
16:40
everything and it will remain intoxicated.
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It will become physically addicted to the drugs, and there
16:47
is a high rate of overdose for the rats they like.
16:52
They drugged themselves to death in that cage.
16:55
And so the interesting philosophy that was derived from
17:01
that experiment is that this concept that drugs are bad,
17:06
drugs are the problem. Heroin, for example, we use
17:09
heroin or cocaine has chemical hooks.
17:12
Heroin makes heroin addicts. So, you know, if you use heroin,
17:16
you're going to become a heroin addict just like that rat did.
17:19
That rat was a perfectly normal rat.
17:21
We put that rat in there exposed to heroin.
17:23
It became addicted to heroin, but but Bruce Alexander came
17:27
along and he wrote a book called The Globalization of Addiction,
17:31
A study in the Poverty of Spirit.
17:34
It's a textbookie read, but fantastic if you're interested
17:37
in the stuff. And he said, well, wait a
17:39
minute. The one thing that we're not
17:42
considering here for for this rat's addiction problem, as well
17:47
as the human addiction crisis that is rampant and despite a
17:52
war on drugs that has gone on decades that we've spent more
17:54
than a trillion dollars on, that addiction has gotten worse
17:58
arguably day over day for decades, right?
18:01
We've never even slowed it down. It's gotten worse and worse and
18:04
worse. It says the one thing that
18:06
that's not being considered here is an environment.
18:09
And so he took made a big old rat cage.
18:13
It was enormous. It's like 10 feet by 8 feet and
18:16
it had everything that a rat would want.
18:18
It had tin cans and wood chips and balls and little wheels and
18:23
it had nutritious rat food. And then he introduced a whole
18:27
bunch of rats, male rats, female rats.
18:29
They're playing, they're building tunnels, they're
18:32
procreating, they're having rat sex, they're having little rat
18:35
babies. They're doing what rats should
18:37
be doing. And in that environment, he
18:40
introduces the both the regular drinking water and the drug
18:43
drinking water. Now, if it's about the
18:45
substance, this, what should happen in this study is pretty
18:50
simple. Those rats should try both.
18:53
And every rat in here that uses the cocaine or uses the heroin
18:56
should become addicted to heroin and cocaine, right?
18:59
Not a single rat gets addicted. And he he called that experiment
19:04
and that rat thing, he called it Rat Park.
19:07
And no rats become addicted. And what's more interesting is
19:10
that he takes a rat, puts it in an isolated box, which is
19:15
essentially the worst. You know, when you get in
19:19
trouble in America, if you kill somebody, you go to prison.
19:21
If you get in trouble in prison, they put you in isolation.
19:25
It's the worst thing we can do to somebody, right?
19:27
That's what we're doing to this rat.
19:29
And so he takes the isolated rat that becomes addicted to heroin
19:32
and he puts that rat into Rat Park with the other rats with
19:36
access to heroin. Now you would think that the the
19:40
the junkie addicted rat is now in the rat community and it's
19:44
going to cause havoc and be addicted to drugs.
19:46
And you know, it's going to be an outlier to Rat Park.
19:49
The rat goes in there, it's aware that the drugs that it
19:52
needs to feel better and and not going to withdrawal that's very
19:55
painful are available, but it sees the rat community and it
19:59
chooses to withdraw off of the drugs and join the Rat Park
20:03
Community. And so, you know, we could make
20:06
the entire podcast about this and we want to talk about other
20:08
things, but the take away is that that yes, childhood trauma
20:14
is, is an interesting focal point of addiction.
20:18
And I think that it's it, it gets its due respect, but I
20:23
think the larger scale is that we as human beings are operating
20:30
in an environment in Western civilization that is all of us
20:35
are underneath an immense amount of stress.
20:39
And what Bruce Alexander talked about in this whole thing and,
20:42
and called this is called the dislocation theory of addiction.
20:46
That even though like we now, like you're saying, I like what
20:49
you said about a connection disorder.
20:51
And so it's saying the same thing, but the plausible reasons
20:54
are a little different that because of environment, right?
20:58
And then tie that to economic and, and and the environment as
21:01
a result to it is that, you know, you look at my
21:04
grandfather, Arthur Spofford, He bought a home for $5000 in 1953.
21:11
He raised my father and his two brothers with a stay at home
21:13
wife. And he was a steel worker in a
21:15
mill, the American dream, 2 acres of land, single family
21:18
home. He went to the mill everyday,
21:21
worked, came home, had a wife and a family.
21:24
You can't do that today. And so as you grow up, as you
21:28
come up in this environment, like the future is pretty fucked
21:31
up for people. It's the haves and the have
21:34
nots, it's the high performers where, you know, we rise to the
21:38
top or what, you're going to go out and get a job?
21:41
Can you even get a job for 60 grand and afford an apartment
21:44
and a car and to live a decent life?
21:47
And what's the average American income?
21:49
You see what I'm saying? And so like this stress response
21:52
and there's a lot of different things that you can chase down
21:54
on this I think has really caused a lot of this addiction
21:59
crisis. Yeah.
22:01
Because childhood trauma, like here's the thing, like if it was
22:04
just about childhood trauma, I know a lot of people that are
22:07
really fucked up childhoods that are perfectly normal people.
22:10
And I think that trauma is like, I in the eye of the beholder,
22:13
right? Little T, big T, And if you
22:16
follow all that stuff, but really interesting, you know.
22:19
And I think, you know, it might be having that disconnection
22:24
from such an early age from yourself, where we the argument
22:29
is that we lose our authenticity in order to survive in the
22:32
environment that we're in, whether it's in our own
22:34
household or in our school community or these things that
22:37
happen to us. We start to lose the identity of
22:40
who we really are because we get rewarded for these things that
22:44
we should be doing. Like, oh, you get rewarded for
22:46
getting good grades or you get rewarded for closing your mouth
22:48
or you get rewarded for obeying the rules.
22:50
And then we become so disconnected with ourselves, we
22:53
don't even really know who we are.
22:54
And we end up growing up into this person that is some ego and
22:57
identity that isn't even who we really are deep down, but we
23:00
don't even know who we are because we've been acting that
23:03
out since we were two years old. And so it's just an interesting
23:06
concept, but for me, and I was anxious, depressed, addicted
23:12
OCD, I mean, on antidepressants, anorexic binge eating, like all
23:18
the things for so long and, you know, suicidal at 20 years old.
23:22
And it wasn't until I realized like I, it was funny because I
23:24
actually did a psilocybin ceremony, like, you know,
23:29
mushroom plant medicine guided ceremony after I had joined
23:34
Genius Network. Not that he recommended that.
23:36
I just happened to and I kept hearing Joe say in my head for
23:41
six hours, the opposite of addiction is connection.
23:43
The opposite of addiction is connection.
23:45
And it made me realize that statement.
23:47
Actually started with the guy that I'm talking about, Bruce
23:49
Alexander. Really.
23:50
Yeah. Most of this stuff stemmed off
23:52
of his work, like Johann Harry's book, and I forget what it's
23:57
called. Yeah, all that stuff came from
23:59
Bruce. Yeah, really.
24:01
Cool, but it was so cool to see that and it really gave me that
24:04
awareness of am I, you know, now I'm I'm functioning right, but
24:08
am I still addicted? And it made me feel that I am
24:11
just addicted to work and I'm addicted to accomplishment and
24:14
I'm addicted to producing and I'm addicted to relationships
24:17
or, you know, food or I still have all these addictions,
24:20
although I'm very high performing and they're what
24:22
society rewards. But am I really coming from a
24:27
place of connection or am I still addicted to these things
24:33
and disconnected? And so that's what started my
24:36
transformation journey to do the work and to start to have this
24:40
understanding of addiction versus connection and transform
24:44
into really coming from a place of passion and creation and
24:46
abundance and love versus disconnection, scarcity, fear,
24:50
anxiety and life. So it's a definitely interesting
24:54
and it's especially in the entrepreneur space, you know, we
24:56
meet all these incredible people, but you see some of them
24:59
are pretty really miserable deep down.
25:02
And that's sad to me. And so I love to see people who
25:07
are pushing themselves to their highest potential in all areas
25:09
of their life, health, relationship, spirituality,
25:13
business, all those things and bringing other people up with
25:15
them. But truly coming from a place of
25:17
connection and not just, you know, I meet people that are
25:20
they're they're they're high all the time.
25:23
They're on some sort of dopamine hit all the time.
25:25
Whether it's closing the next deal, whether it's smoking weed,
25:28
whether it's having sex, whether it's eating food, whether it's
25:30
doing drugs, whether it's drinking alcohol.
25:32
And I see that a lot in this entrepreneur space.
25:34
Totally. Yeah.
25:36
So good for you for not doing that.
25:39
Do you think that work and accomplishment became like your
25:45
healthy channel of addiction One?
25:47
1,000,000% yeah, but I don't, you know, I'm not, I'm not
25:54
objectionable about it. I love it and I wouldn't change
25:57
it. Yeah, and but you're, you have a
26:01
passion for what you do. I'm obsessed.
26:04
Yeah, I'm absolutely obsessed with it.
26:06
I love it. I wake up every day just in awe
26:10
of the process, the grind, the build, you know what I mean?
26:13
And it's really not about, I think this is gets lost on a lot
26:17
of people where like I have a lot of fancy shit, right?
26:22
It's really not, I don't care about it that much.
26:24
Really don't. It's not really about that.
26:26
It's not about like getting another car or getting another
26:28
plane or whatever. The thing that like really makes
26:31
me tick the most is the process, the building, the creating, the
26:37
camaraderie, the teamwork, the leadership, the building
26:40
something of value to having an idea, an inspirational thought
26:44
and going, Oh yeah. And then putting it into reality
26:47
and creating something. And then you think about how
26:50
interesting entrepreneurship is and how special entrepreneurs
26:53
are. We have a fucking idea.
26:58
And then we turn it into an actual business that provides a
27:02
product or a service. Like that's crazy.
27:05
It is. And then to scale that and grow
27:07
that. And like right now, you know, my
27:09
head counts. Probably sitting at probably
27:12
about 250 employees across all my employee, all my shit.
27:18
And so like waking up every day knowing that I have 250
27:21
paychecks that I'm responsible for.
27:22
How many kids are, you know, being supported by that?
27:26
How much like the impact, the bill, the jobs created, like all
27:29
of that, like that is that's entrepreneurship.
27:32
That's the shit that I love. That's what I obsess over.
27:36
And so when I say I say that to like balance, like they like,
27:39
oh, I'm obsessed. Because people I think that
27:42
don't really get it. Look at it like, like I'm
27:44
obsessed, like Scrooge, like counting my coins, like I need
27:48
more money. And I'm like, it's really
27:49
fucking not about that. It's a game.
27:51
I love the game and I love the game and the sport for what it
27:55
is, and in this game, money's the scoreboard.
27:58
Yeah, I love it. I'm obsessed too.
28:01
Yeah. 100% but. It's coming from a different
28:03
place now. Like I love the game.
28:05
It's not like I need to do this. And you know, it's just a whole
28:08
different. And it's so fun.
28:10
It's so fun to create and it's so fun to serve and it's so fun
28:13
to impact lives and it's so fun to pace more.
28:16
We said this when he was on my podcast.
28:18
He's like every imagine we all have a light switch on our back
28:21
and every morning you wake up, somebody's got to flip it on for
28:24
you because you can't reach it yourself.
28:26
And when you lay down at night, the light switch turns off
28:29
because you lay down in bed. And so he said, my goal is every
28:33
single day to flip as many people's light switches on as I
28:36
possibly can and create and like I'm born a creator and that's
28:40
what I was put here to do and that's what I'm going to do and
28:42
that's my purpose. And that's an A calling, you
28:45
know? And so I just love and it really
28:47
stuck with me because I feel that same way.
28:49
And I love the nice shit too, don't get me wrong, but it
28:52
represents things that I'm proud of in in myself or what I've
28:56
done or people I've served or but it's not like I'll be happy
29:02
when I get this next thing. Because it once you have it, it,
29:04
it, you know it's. It's a fleeting moment, yeah.
29:06
People don't understand that it doesn't last, right?
29:09
You get the Lambo, you get the whatever The thing is for you,
29:12
right? And it's a cool moment.
29:15
And then, like, move on. You don't really care about it.
29:18
Yeah, You know, and. It feels good every time you
29:20
drive in them though too 100. Percent, but it's not, it's not
29:23
like the, the, the fixation of, on the materialism of it at all.
29:29
It's, it's a representation of all the hard work, the blood,
29:32
sweat and tears it took to fucking get it, you know, So I
29:36
think that's the difference. It's lost on a lot of people.
29:39
There's a lot of people, a lot of people have this hyper focus
29:44
kind of going back to almost that addiction, you know,
29:46
conversation as well where they have like a hollow, shallow,
29:50
empty core because they haven't done the work yet.
29:53
And they think that they're going to find the solution in
29:56
the money, the success, the accolades, the material shit and
30:00
all of that. And I always try to point people
30:03
in the direction of like, I want you to have all of this, but you
30:07
also have to do the internal work because otherwise you're
30:11
going to get all those things. And it's going to be a very
30:13
dangerous place for you to be because the effect you think
30:17
having all of these things is going to produce is not going to
30:19
happen. And you're going to be left very
30:22
disappointed, my friend. And when you're sitting there
30:25
and you're like, fuck, I, I, I achieved all the things that I
30:29
thought were going to be it for me.
30:31
I thought I would feel this way when I had those things, but now
30:35
I have those things and I don't feel that way.
30:39
What do I do now? It's like pointing people back
30:42
into that internal process at whatever level, whether you're
30:45
just starting out, are you worth millions of dollars or you're
30:48
worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Like it's all the same
30:51
for everybody really is at every level.
30:55
Yeah, and it never changes. And that's what I realized,
30:57
always being the youngest entrepreneur in the room and
31:00
being in rooms with people that were worth hundreds of millions
31:02
of dollars. I.
31:03
Miss being able to say that I used to be one of the youngest
31:06
entrepreneurs in the world. Well.
31:08
That's a long time ago now 2. Days ago, I interviewed Dre
31:11
Medici, who is the youngest. The first person I interviewed
31:14
younger than me is 24 years old out here in Miami and just
31:17
killing it. And I'm like, Oh my God, I'm
31:19
going to be 30 in one year. I'm not going to be the
31:21
youngest, but it fortunately for me, because I was always the kid
31:25
out with the parents asking them what they did, trying to figure
31:27
out how to build well, trying to figure out how to build freedom.
31:29
And so I was just a sponge learning from a young age.
31:32
And I, I saw very quickly and then now, you know, now I paid
31:35
to be in masterminds and all these things, but I saw a very
31:38
common theme of people having exits and then being miserably
31:42
depressed, miserably empty, like no purpose, no passion, like
31:47
what is my life? What have I come to?
31:48
What did I just do for the past 40 years?
31:51
And because they were just in it in the business building,
31:53
building, building, building and really disconnected from who
31:58
there's a quote that says if you don't know who you are, you'll
32:00
become what you do. And I that's why now like I
32:04
still, I want to be a billionaire.
32:06
I have massive goals, but it's not coming from a place of I'll
32:09
be happy when I get there because I knew and that's why I
32:12
stopped to do the work and zoom out and like really figure out
32:15
who am I? I'm not what I do.
32:18
Like I want to come from this place of connection.
32:20
Who am I without my business and my work?
32:22
Am I truly fulfilled and happy? What is my real purpose in this
32:24
world? So then I can create from a,
32:26
from that place and not be in that position where which it's
32:31
easier said than done because I'm sure if I solve my business,
32:33
I'd be like, I'll just be building another one right away
32:35
because I love it. But it's, it's sad to see
32:38
people, people just continue to. And I want to ask you what you
32:43
felt like when you sold your business because I know for me,
32:46
I don't know if you've read the book Relentless by Tim Grover.
32:48
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it's
32:50
him. Tim's a friend.
32:50
Yeah, he's I love. Him to death.
32:52
He's one of the real ones, yeah. But he says, like those real,
32:57
you know, athletes or professionals or entrepreneurs
33:00
or the real relentless people, a lot of times as soon as they
33:03
feel that feeling of victory, it's very quickly followed by,
33:08
oh, shit, what's next? Like, now I have to raise the
33:10
bar higher. Now I have to set a bigger goal.
33:12
Now I have to train at a new level.
33:14
And almost like this feeling of anxiety and fear.
33:16
So when you sold your company, what was that feeling like for
33:19
you in that emotional process? There was so much focus on
33:25
getting over the finish line because a lot of deals blow up.
33:29
Like there are probably more deals in selling a business that
33:32
don't close than do. And so much was at stake.
33:38
It was a huge deal. And so I never spent 5 minutes
33:42
thinking about the day after closing day.
33:45
Like all of my focus and my attention was on getting the
33:48
deal done, surviving due diligence, not getting
33:51
retreated, not getting a price adjustment, continuing to make
33:55
sure the business performs. You have to run a marathon with
33:58
these people, right? Like these are private equity
34:00
guys. They're Harvard MBA's, some of
34:03
the most sophisticated business minds on planet Earth.
34:07
And they're going to you have to run a process, but you also have
34:10
to maintain running your company the entire time because you
34:12
start to flat line on your on your projections on your
34:16
revenue. Like they're going to come back
34:18
and go, well, there's a problem with the business.
34:20
It's like, no fuck face. I'm just distracted doing this.
34:24
The business is fine and they know that.
34:26
And they played this big game. And so it was really high
34:28
pressure, high stakes poker for 10 months.
34:32
And yeah, it was, you know, March to December.
34:35
And and because of that, I never thought about life after.
34:41
I was like, well, I'll be rich and I'll have more money than
34:44
I've ever imagined I'd have. And I don't know what I'm going
34:47
to do. And so on the morning that I
34:50
closed, December 21st, 2021, I showed up in my office and not
34:57
not of that business. I'd started another office,
35:00
family office around the corner from my business.
35:04
I had a couple team members there and started to, you know,
35:07
prepare to be separated at a conference room.
35:09
Walked in the conference room with Lori, who's my chief
35:14
operating officer of my right hand at my family office.
35:17
Anyone that follows me sees me torture her in my Instagram
35:20
stories. She's the only person that's
35:22
like social media famous that never wanted to be, you know,
35:25
like people see her all the time.
35:26
Like you're the girl from like shit.
35:29
And and then there was a call that was the closing call
35:33
scheduled for 10 AM and we go on speakerphone and there's
35:37
lawyers, investment bankers, other people from my leadership
35:41
team that had like a little bits of equity.
35:44
They're getting paid the buyer, you know, a whole bunch of
35:48
people. And so they go around and
35:51
honestly, it was anti climatic. I imagined like I thought we'd
35:55
all be in person. We were on a phone call.
35:58
I thought it would take a long time.
35:59
It didn't. It was like 9 minutes and
36:02
everyone just went around and they're like, you know, Are you
36:04
ready to close? Yep, Yep, good to close.
36:07
Yep, good to close. Yep.
36:09
At the end of the call, I of course me.
36:12
I'm like, hey, when do I get my money?
36:14
Like I was set on the wires right now.
36:16
I was like, cool. And they hung up the call and a
36:19
couple things happened right then.
36:20
I breathe a giant sigh of relief and literally it felt like I
36:25
toppled over the finish line of a marathon and I was like, I was
36:29
like exhausted. Like I hadn't done shit yet all
36:32
day. It was like 10 in the morning.
36:33
And I was like, oh, God. And then I remember I looked at
36:37
Lori and, and one of the first things that I said was I said, I
36:42
wonder how long it's going to take for people to start suing
36:45
me And the bullshit to start it was I intuitively knew that I
36:48
just changed my life for the better.
36:50
But I also kind of fucked my life up because I put a giant
36:54
target on my back. I publicly just sold in my
36:57
hometown a business for $150 million.
37:01
Like, what's next? Who's coming right in the bull?
37:07
It didn't take long. And within months I had fucking
37:09
more problems that I knew what to do with, so much so that I
37:12
hired a full time litigation attorney, went everywhere with
37:15
them. I was like, guys want to smoke?
37:17
We'll fucking smoke it out. And I went to war and I had a
37:20
couple options. I could like retreat and become
37:22
a recluse and become one of these rich people with high
37:25
walls and like blah, blah, blah, and not be me and not say the
37:29
things I want to say. And I'm out of my fucking mind.
37:31
I'll say whatever I want, whatever I want, like, and I was
37:33
like, I'm not willing to like compromise my freedom in my
37:37
authenticity for it. And so I just doubled down and
37:40
gone to litigation, gone to spats and was like, you want it?
37:44
We're, we're going to take this couple years right now and draw
37:46
a, you know, proverbial line in the sand that like, I'm going
37:49
to, it is what it is. Like, I'm not going to be a
37:51
fucking target. It's not happening.
37:53
And, and so all of that happened, but 8 minutes after I
37:58
hung up the phone, you know, you as an entrepreneur today, and
38:02
I'm sure you're the same way. And for most of my professional
38:05
career, my phone isn't like nonstop.
38:08
It's text, calls, emails. Like when I pick my phone up
38:12
after this podcast, there'll be more than 100 emails.
38:15
There will be, I don't know, 10/20/30 text messages and I'll
38:18
have missed probably fucking half a dozen calls at least at a
38:22
minimum, right in an hour. And so it's just non-stop Bing,
38:26
Bing, Bing. Like you're in the mix, right?
38:28
You're busy. And and after 8 minutes after I
38:34
picked up my phone and my company e-mail that I'd had for
38:37
more than 10 years that I owned that business asked me to enter
38:41
my own password because they had locked me out.
38:44
You know, I was like how the fuck did they do that that fast?
38:47
They took them 8. And like they had pre planned it
38:49
with my leadership team that was staying.
38:51
They must have talked to them and the IT company.
38:54
And in that entire day and the next day my phone was just
38:59
silent. And it was the weirdest thing on
39:02
planet earth. And I was like, I think I fucked
39:04
up. Oh, my God, I think I fucked up.
39:07
Yeah. Get a little emotional thinking
39:09
about it. And it's like, I had, at the
39:12
time, 325 employees, all sorts of shit going on, and my life
39:19
just became I had money, a giant number and a bank account and
39:22
silence. And I had nothing going on.
39:26
I was like stagnant water just sitting there.
39:28
And I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do.
39:31
And I was down here and there's this period of time, it was
39:36
probably in hindsight, the most dangerous time of my 18 years,
39:42
you know, of sobriety that I had because I was bored.
39:47
I had way too much money. And so I was like going out in
39:50
Miami, drinking Red Bulls till 5-6 in the morning, staying
39:54
sober, but like hanging out with people.
39:57
And I remember looking around so many nights and it's like 2345
40:01
in the morning and I'm at. The nightclub or wherever I'm at
40:05
and I'm like, what the fuck am I doing here?
40:09
This is not me. This is not my.
40:11
I hate these people. I don't even like the people
40:14
that I'm with. I'm looking around and I'm like,
40:16
I hate you. You're a loser.
40:18
It's fucking Tuesday night, 5:00 in the morning and we're doing
40:21
what like, and I made it like 6 months or less and I was like,
40:26
I, I just couldn't fucking tolerate it for another second.
40:30
And mind you, like I got sober at 21 years old.
40:33
There's almost 22, but like I never went to nightclubs.
40:36
I never like went clubbing. That wasn't interesting to me in
40:39
my 20s. I was fucking sober building a
40:41
business like, you know, and I was a millionaire.
40:45
I went, I went from homeless, fucking absolute rock bottom,
40:49
could not get any lower from at 22 years old to fuck a
40:54
millionaire at 26. Like I wasn't going out.
40:57
And so it was the first time kind of doing that stuff.
41:00
And I, I called Lori, I remember the day I called her and I said,
41:05
we have to do it again. And she was like, what are you
41:07
talking about? And it's like we're starting
41:10
another business. And so that was the middle of
41:12
22. And by January 1st of 23, I had
41:18
hired A-Team, purchased real estate, got a healthcare
41:21
facility licensed, accredited by the Accreditation Bodies Joint
41:26
Commission, KARF and we admitted our first patient in a new
41:30
facility in Columbus, OH that I started on January 1st of 2023.
41:36
So that business is now a little more than two years old.
41:41
And we have, I was just looking for, I came in, we have 112
41:46
patients that facility today in Ohio.
41:49
We have another facility in Southern California that's
41:51
rocking and then we have another facility in Pennsylvania that's
41:55
killing it. And then we started a real
41:57
estate business where we're moving, you know, right now 40
42:01
to 50 single family homes a month.
42:04
Like wholesale deals or flipping?
42:06
No, no. No, we buy them, we renovate
42:08
them into rent ready, we place tenants in them and then we sell
42:11
them to investors. OK, so wow.
42:14
So we have two large scale operations and you know, every
42:18
day is chaos. It's madness.
42:20
My phone is back to being very busy again and it's my sweet
42:25
spot. I love it.
42:26
You wouldn't. Have it any other way, right?
42:27
Wouldn't have. It any other way I tried like
42:30
that's the crazy thing is like, and I think I come from like
42:34
this place of like weird life wisdom and lived experience
42:37
where I could say things because it's like everyone has an
42:39
opinion about it, but I've actually been there.
42:41
Like I've sat there with like an ungodly amount of just liquid
42:45
cash in an account, an airplane sitting in OPA Locka, an almost
42:50
100 foot boat in the Marina. I would like get bored and like
42:53
fucking order cars and have them dropped off at my house.
42:57
And then like, I'm fucking bored out of my mind and miserable and
43:01
kind of depressed. This sucks, you know what I
43:03
mean? Like one of the most dangerous
43:06
things that can happen to you is to like, catch what you're
43:08
chasing and then what you know, then you have to figure it out.
43:12
And it's almost like red pill, blue pill, like matrix stuff
43:16
because you're sitting there and you're like everything fucking
43:19
most of these people that are on this journey chasing the stuff
43:22
believes is a fucking lion. They don't realize it.
43:25
And when you do catch it and you have all these things and then
43:31
you have to figure it out. And then I like what you said
43:33
about knowing who you are. And you have to really figure
43:36
out who the fuck you are and what you're about and what you
43:39
want to do and what's important to you and what fills your cup.
43:43
It's a whole new experience, you know, And so I learned, I think
43:48
that period of time is when I really, really learned a lot
43:53
about myself and a lot about what makes me tick.
43:58
And it changed how I operate and how I think about operating from
44:04
when I get this, when I get to this level, when I cash this
44:07
check, when I get this net worth, when I I obsessed over
44:11
owning a jet for five years. It's like, I want a fucking jet
44:15
so fucking bad. And I just thought it was cool.
44:17
I just thought the freedom of like, calling the pilot and be
44:19
like, hey, we're leaving. Yeah.
44:21
It's awesome, yeah. It's the, it's the best and, and
44:24
you know, like all that stuff, it was like when I when I, when
44:28
I and now it's like just enjoying the fucking ride.
44:31
Like there's no rush, you know what I mean?
44:33
There's no like I'm not trying. I'm I'm working my face off.
44:38
I mean, arguably outwork fucking everyone.
44:40
I know you're not going to outwork me.
44:43
Like you may keep up, but I promise you you're not going to
44:46
get an operating on me. And so it's not like about doing
44:50
less. It's about how I approach every
44:52
day in having like urgency in the day-to-day, like 16 hour
44:58
days, as fast as I can do it, as much as I can work my fucking
45:01
face off, but at the same time having long term macro patience
45:07
like I'm doing it for the love of the game.
45:09
I'm doing for the sport. I'm not doing it because I also
45:12
aspire to be a billionaire, which I do and I'm going to do
45:16
that. But I also intuitively know and
45:18
I'm in touch with the truth that at a billion dollars, it's not
45:21
going to feel any fucking different than 100 million did.
45:25
It's the same shit. It's just more money with more
45:27
problems. And but you have to have your
45:30
own reason to do it. And like mine is unique.
45:32
We're like, I really take it seriously that like, and it's
45:36
kind of an honor of mine to be a representation of every
45:40
motherfucker in America that never stood a chance.
45:43
You know, like I see people happen five times today already
45:46
just out in public and they're like, yo, respect and everyone
45:48
wants to tell me their life story because they see mine
45:51
online. And like, yo, you inspired me to
45:53
do this. You inspired me to do that.
45:54
Fucking I got sober, you know, I got 100 messages a week and
45:57
people told me they got sober watching my shit or whatever it
46:00
is. And it's like, that's cool.
46:02
And so if I hit a billion coming from, I'm a 15 year old high
46:08
school dropout, I still don't have a GED and I got a fucking
46:12
criminal record and I don't have a GED.
46:14
And if I hit a billion dollars, like what the fuck is your
46:17
excuse? You know what I mean?
46:19
And so that's kind of my obsession about it.
46:21
It's like setting the bar that you can be what I am, come from
46:24
fucking nothing, absolutely hopeless and do absolutely
46:28
anything that you want to fucking do.
46:30
You really can. So that's the drive today.
46:34
It's not about do I want a bigger plane?
46:36
Fuck, yeah, I want a bigger plane.
46:37
Do I want a bigger boat? Fuck yeah.
46:39
I want a bigger boat. I want a bigger boat.
46:41
You know what I mean? I want all the shit.
46:42
But like, it doesn't mean as much to me.
46:44
It's not, it's not what it was on the way to get the stuff
46:48
like, you know. What I mean?
46:50
Totally. I'm on my second airplane, my
46:52
third yacht, my fucking 5th mansion, you know what I mean?
46:56
Like I've had more cars than I can remember.
46:58
It's just like it just doesn't matter anymore.
47:00
It's about all this other stuff. It's so good, so good,
47:05
everything that you've been through And and I, I think it's
47:08
hard for people to like conceptualize and understand
47:10
when they're in it because it's so many people are thinking, you
47:15
know, when can this just when can I just be there like they're
47:17
always that's. What I mean right?
47:19
And so when you can finally be, I want to be right here.
47:24
Like every day I wake up and I want to be doing.
47:26
That's a great way. It's kind of that brings about a
47:29
thought for me, which is like, I spent so much time while I was
47:33
building that business, doing work that I love with people
47:36
that I loved and a team that I loved, fixated on the
47:40
destination of getting the result and getting there.
47:44
That when I got there and I had to sell everything that I love
47:48
to get it, that I had all this money and I was like, oh wow.
47:52
I got to where I wanted to be. And what I didn't realize is
47:55
fucking the best years I've ever had fucking we're back then.
47:59
I love that way more than I love this.
48:01
And that was kind of the very emotional bottom that I hit in
48:05
that six months, you know, and I thought, you know, the good news
48:09
is I thought that I would never recreate that magic like that
48:15
business that I, I started that business.
48:17
I was 23 years old, brick by brick, piece of real estate,
48:21
facility by facility, bed by bed, higher by higher.
48:24
I remember my first employee. Do you remember your first
48:27
employee? You know, and like my first
48:32
sale, I remember my first client, this guy, I don't
48:35
remember his name, but he drove a pickup truck.
48:37
He's at the sober house, He's from Connecticut.
48:40
And he had this business where like you had a donate a clothes
48:44
donation business, which is a really strange business that I
48:47
was interested in learning about from him.
48:49
And he was the first client at my sober house.
48:51
I remember getting my furniture for that first sober living
48:54
house. So that first property that I
48:56
bought donated from guys from a, a meetings like picking shit up
48:59
at everyone's houses with a pickup truck and moving it in
49:02
and like to the next house, to the next house, to learning
49:05
this, to starting that, to the treatment center, to this, to
49:07
that, to this, to that. I remember the first year I made
49:11
$1,000,000, I remember calling my dad and I didn't even realize
49:14
it. I just kept throwing money
49:16
behind me and looking forward-looking forward-looking
49:17
forward. And like, I met my accountant
49:21
who's just like a small local accountant that we outgrew
49:25
eventually, pretty quickly actually.
49:28
And, and he's like, really? She made $1,000,000 this year.
49:31
I made a fucking $1,000,000. He's like, yeah, I was like, no
49:35
shit. I remember calling my dad like
49:37
dad, you know, I believe this. She's like, what?
49:39
I made a fucking $1,000,000, you know what I mean?
49:42
Like all of that stuff. And so it was like the, the, the
49:46
reconciling all of those memories and all of that process
49:50
in being like, God damn, that was so magical.
49:53
And that was so much fun. And now it's over and I don't
49:56
know what the fuck I'm going to do.
49:58
And that was the that was like that moment where I'm like, I
50:00
think I fucked up. Can I have it back?
50:03
You know, like, can I have it back?
50:05
Do you? Regret it?
50:06
Now, no. Then I did, which nobody wants
50:09
to hear you complain. You sell a business for that
50:11
much money, no one really cares to hear your fucking gripes.
50:14
You know what I mean? There's no one to really listen
50:17
to that. But at the time I was unsure of
50:19
what the future would look like. And now I feel like God like
50:24
brought me to different things. You know what I mean?
50:26
Like I never I never did social media prior to like I did that
50:30
around a lot of people do social media to make money.
50:33
I did it backwards. Like I went and made a bunch of
50:36
money and had no social media presence, sold the business for
50:39
115,000,000 then started making content.
50:43
And so like life's just so different now.
50:46
And I think the impact and the influence that I have on on
50:51
people is so much more widespread.
50:53
I was doing a lot then, but it's even more now with social media,
50:57
the facilities all around the country.
50:59
Like it's, I just know that like, I'm exactly where I'm
51:03
supposed to be right now, doing what I'm supposed to be doing
51:06
with the people that I'm supposed to be doing it with on
51:09
focus. No regrets dialed in.
51:13
But it wasn't always like that. There was a period of
51:15
uncertainty. How did you scale from, you
51:21
know, you just got sober and you decided you want to start a
51:24
rehab treatment facility And what were the key?
51:27
I mean, what would you say was the secret to your success and
51:30
scaling from a startup? You didn't buy a company.
51:34
You were bootstrapping everything.
51:35
You didn't have a bunch of money.
51:36
Like what did that process look like for you?
51:38
For someone like myself who is at that part where I have the a
51:41
small team, a lot of courage, a lot of belief, but what is that
51:46
game plan of if you want to scale something that you know
51:49
can be AI? Don't know how much revenue were
51:52
you guys doing? The last few years we did just
51:55
north of 50 million and we had EBITDA of like between a million
52:02
to a million, 2,000,000 three a month.
52:04
OK. So yeah, so someone maybe that
52:07
has a sub 10 million revenue company, a newer entrepreneur
52:12
versus and then wants to scale that company to 50 or 100
52:15
million. What would you say is the
52:16
recipe? I think.
52:20
There's a lot of different ingredients to the recipe on how
52:23
to scale a business from 1,000,005 million, 10 million to
52:28
you know, 50 million or wherever we got that worked for me.
52:32
One is work ethic, right? Like I worked seven days a week,
52:37
holidays included 12/14/16 hour days.
52:41
I was fucking relentless and I did it for a long time.
52:45
I think that is another thing that a lot of people don't
52:49
calibrate on is they see me now and I'm like, you didn't see the
52:54
13 years of work that went into that.
52:58
They think about what year is it, 2025?
53:01
Like where were you in 2012? Like 13 years is a long time.
53:06
Like 13 years from now is 2038. Like think about how far away
53:12
that seems, right? Or how much life has changed
53:15
since 2012. That's how long I took building
53:18
that business. And so people don't realize that
53:21
it's really is just about work ethic, day-to-day speed, but
53:25
long term patience in putting your head down and realizing
53:29
that everything is going to take so much longer than you think
53:32
it's going to take. Another one is risk.
53:37
I constantly and still am. That's the interesting part
53:43
would like get my chips, my money from the business and I'll
53:46
turn around and I put it right back in the middle of the table.
53:50
And then I double down and I grow a little bit more.
53:53
And in that situation would work out and they would give you my
53:56
chips back. And I'd always constantly hit
53:59
these, these these certain breaking points in the business
54:02
where I had the option to either stay safe where I was at and
54:09
it's a sure bet, or push it all back into the middle of the
54:13
table. And almost like this has to go,
54:16
well, this is either going to make me level up to the next
54:21
level or I'm going to lose everything.
54:24
And I did that over and over and over and over again.
54:28
And I put 100% certainty in the bet on me.
54:32
I hate the stock market. I don't gamble, I don't play the
54:34
slots, I don't play cards. I don't do any of that.
54:37
But like the amount of gambling that I've done putting my entire
54:40
net worth on the line over and over and over and over again is
54:44
insane. And so with that comes grit and
54:49
fortitude. Because when you, when you push
54:54
on, when you're working as hard as we work and you have, you're
54:58
betting your entire fucking life, like if this goes bad, I'm
55:01
going to lose everything. It's going to be really
55:04
embarrassing and I'm going to fail and I'm going to fail
55:07
really publicly in front of fucking everyone.
55:10
And it's going to be really painful.
55:13
And you still have to sleep 7-8 hours a night and you still have
55:16
to hold a steady hand every fucking day.
55:18
And you still have to look at, you know, the people in your
55:21
life, your family, your employees, your friends, then
55:25
just be 100% certain and confident that like you're going
55:28
to fucking make this happen. You know, you can't like let it
55:32
like putting everything in the middle of the table and taking
55:34
all that risk is good. But you also at the same time
55:38
have to do it with with having enough personal development to
55:42
like stay calm and stay steady and enjoy your life and, and
55:48
tolerate that amount of risk. I think a lot of it, I guess
55:50
it's a great way of saying this risk tolerance.
55:54
And so you know, when you put all those things together and
55:58
and the other one is obsessive self education.
56:03
I think a lot of entrepreneurs I see stunt their growth.
56:07
And I think, you know, how I know someone's a loser and I
56:09
don't want to be their friend is because I watched them and they
56:13
walk in the rooms or situations or life or whatever it is.
56:17
And they are concerned with controlling and altering the
56:22
opinions of that other people have of them.
56:26
And it prevents them from learning.
56:28
And so they're the people that show up to the dinner party or
56:31
the networking event or the mastermind and they're telling
56:34
you and telling stories and giving advice and, and boasting
56:40
and like trying. You could just tell like it's
56:42
really important to them that you know that they're successful
56:45
and you know that they know whatever that thing is.
56:48
And that's like just so much ego driven stuff that I think really
56:52
holds people back. What I've practiced to the best
56:56
of my ability, probably imperfectly, is to be an
57:00
obsessive student of the game. Like we'll get together and I
57:03
don't care if I'm worth incrementally more than you or
57:07
you're worth incrementally more than me.
57:08
It's irrelevant. I have questions like I'm going
57:12
to fucking sit there and drill you and relentless
57:15
unapologetically try it with as much taste and class as I
57:18
possibly can. But like I really don't care.
57:21
You're going to, if you want to know things that I know you're
57:23
going to have to ask me questions because I'm not here
57:25
to impress you. I'm here to suck value from you
57:29
and be a sponge. And so that quality right there.
57:34
I mean, how do you gain a skill set and a knowledge base to grow
57:39
a business? The 325 employees, 55 million in
57:42
revenue, make $1,000,000 in free cash a month for years and then
57:46
sell it for $115 million. You have to learn, you have to
57:50
have the ability to be a, an obsessed student of the game, a
57:54
sponge and just self educate yourself in every single way
57:59
that you can. And when you put all of those
58:01
things together and then wrap them with mental toughness, like
58:06
this game's not easy. You're going to get your face
58:08
kicked in, dude. Like straight up, like if you're
58:11
weak, if you're sensitive, if like you just can't take a
58:16
fucking complete ass whooping and then wake up the next day
58:21
smiling like fuck, give me some more motherfucker.
58:25
What do you got? You know, then like this isn't
58:28
for you. But if like you don't put those
58:30
things together, I think those are like the core character
58:33
attributes that made me me and and gave me a path to
58:39
accomplishing everything that I've have and getting the
58:41
results that I've gone being. Relentless.
58:44
I talk about that with Robert Kiyosaki all the time and it's
58:49
never being a never ending student.
58:50
Like I want to die and have in my graveyard that I was the best
58:53
student that ever lived. You know, just I do the same
58:55
thing. I suck information for
58:57
everybody. Join every single high level
58:59
group that I can ask. I mean, that's why I love this.
59:01
I would do nothing but just ask people who inspire me questions
59:04
the. Podcast is a great idea, Yeah,
59:07
let me go find a bunch of smart people and sit them down for an
59:09
hour and ask them everything I want to know.
59:11
Yeah, I just love it. I just grill them and I love it.
59:14
I love to learn, but I think people, Jeremy Minor, I had him
59:19
on last week and he said there's four types of people in life.
59:23
There's dab or there's wannabes who are the victims.
59:26
I'm not cut out for it. I'm not smart enough.
59:29
Right. Yeah, then there's the dabblers
59:32
who like read a book on sales or read a book on entrepreneurship
59:35
one time and then like, OK, you know, I'm an entrepreneur or
59:38
something. And then there's the the know it
59:41
alls who are those cocky people that they're like, I already
59:43
figured it out. I'm the best there is.
59:45
I know everything there is to know.
59:46
They stop learning, they stop growing.
59:48
They they, you know, think that they're God's gift.
59:52
And then there's those committed to mastery and they are obsessed
59:56
with continuing to learn to grow.
59:58
That's probably. The one like one who are
1:00:00
obsessed, you know, like I can't think about anything different.
1:00:06
You know. What I mean, it's like it's
1:00:07
really painful for me to be around any other type of people
1:00:11
when I'm around Cody or people like you and like our other
1:00:14
friends that are in the space, like we're working out and all
1:00:17
we're talking about is business and this and that and like
1:00:21
paying mental sparring and that's it.
1:00:23
But if you come in there and you try to talk to me about football
1:00:28
or drama or what other people are talking about other people
1:00:33
and what they're doing and they're like, I don't give a
1:00:35
single fuck about any of that. Like I will leave so fast.
1:00:39
Like, you'll lose my attention like this and I got to go, you
1:00:43
know? Yep.
1:00:45
So I know. Cody and I were I ran into him
1:00:47
at my gym in Scottsdale and he was helping me with a script for
1:00:50
a VSL for my lending company and 100.
1:00:52
Percent, yeah. It's awesome.
1:00:54
I don't know what else to talk about.
1:00:56
Same, Yeah. But so how did you make those
1:00:59
decisions? Because when you're, when you're
1:01:02
in earlier stages of entrepreneurship, it's like
1:01:06
everything takes twice as long as you think it is or way more
1:01:09
and cost twice as much as you think it will or way more.
1:01:12
And So what if you're struggling with, is this the right decision
1:01:17
to make at this time? That's going to move the needle
1:01:19
in the direction of where I want to go?
1:01:21
Because that's something I struggle with is a little bit of
1:01:24
analysis processes, like who is that right hire to make right
1:01:27
now? Is there the right mastermind or
1:01:29
mentor or coach? You know, do I pull in a
1:01:32
leadership team partner? Do I give up equity or do I keep
1:01:35
it all? Like, there's so many decisions
1:01:37
and there's so many ways to skin a cat, but how do you know what
1:01:41
those right decisions are to make at each moment in your
1:01:43
business and feel confident to actually put all your chips on
1:01:46
the table and not have a shaky hand 2.
1:01:49
Things one you make the decision that you think is the right one.
1:01:55
I don't know that I've ever made a decision and been 100% for
1:01:59
sure certain. I think every decision I've ever
1:02:03
made has also come with doubt and you just, you know, make the
1:02:08
absolute best decision that you can in that moment with the
1:02:11
information that you have available.
1:02:13
And then that goes in part with the willingness to be wrong and
1:02:18
get a little cake on your face. And so like you talked about, is
1:02:22
that the right hire? Well, you're going to think
1:02:24
about that and you're going to, you know, narrow it down and,
1:02:27
and go through your process and your interviews.
1:02:29
And you're going to do everything that is appropriate
1:02:32
to get to a place where you're going to make as well of an
1:02:35
educate as well as of an educated decision as you
1:02:38
possibly can. But every single time you're not
1:02:41
going to be right. You're going to make the wrong
1:02:43
decision. And when you just don't really
1:02:46
give a fuck and you're like, well, if I hire the wrong
1:02:48
person, I'll figure it out and I'll fix it.
1:02:51
I'll fire them. I'll, I'll, and I will look
1:02:54
stupid in front of this entire company and everyone will know
1:02:57
that I made a bad hire and they'll work here for a month,
1:03:01
two months, six months, whatever it is, until I figure out that
1:03:05
they're the wrong person. And I know that the risk that
1:03:08
I'm taking is that, you know, the business will get pregnant
1:03:11
with them. I'll have to terminate them.
1:03:13
And then I'll probably have to undo a lot of bullshit that
1:03:16
they've done and move things in a direction that it shouldn't
1:03:18
have moved. And, and all that's OK.
1:03:21
And I think it's, it's, again, it's, it's being fearless
1:03:27
because you're willing to, you're willing to take the
1:03:30
punch. You're just willing to get your
1:03:31
a little cake on your face and like, it's this what it is, you
1:03:36
know? Did you have?
1:03:38
A it's, it's more about execution than it is anything,
1:03:41
right? It's 95% about execution.
1:03:45
And so you do all your stuff, but at a certain point, like you
1:03:47
just have to go, you have to make the decision and it's going
1:03:50
to be the wrong one. Like I think entrepreneurship is
1:03:52
the game that you fail 100 times more than you win.
1:03:56
You can fail 100 times. You only have to win once, you
1:03:59
know. Did you have a mentor or
1:04:03
leadership team from the beginning or so many?
1:04:05
Different mentors, so many different mentors.
1:04:08
Like that's that, that self education and the relentless
1:04:12
pursuit of of, you know, knowledge and skill set and
1:04:17
education. And so, yeah, I've had amazing
1:04:20
mentors along the way, and most of which weren't through paid
1:04:26
mentorship groups. I've only actually hired two
1:04:32
actual like paid coaches, mentors, executive coach,
1:04:36
whatever my career. But organically, I've met a lot
1:04:41
of people along the way that I've been able to learn from.
1:04:46
Did you find someone specific in your industry to help mentor you
1:04:49
as you grew the business? Hundreds of them is my industry.
1:04:53
Like you look at healthcare, it's very, you have medical,
1:04:56
clinical operations, business development, marketing, billing,
1:05:01
revenue cycle, accounting, finance, banking.
1:05:04
Like there's just so many. Like there's not one person that
1:05:07
could teach me all of this. And so I mean, for every
1:05:10
different vertical of everything that happened to my business,
1:05:12
I've had countless amount of people that I've sought out and
1:05:17
found like the medical billing, like go find the best people I
1:05:23
could possibly find a medical billing and just be a sponge and
1:05:27
just extract that information from that to the point where I
1:05:30
like I'm dangerous in medical billing, addiction and mental
1:05:34
treatment. I know it inside now.
1:05:36
Same thing with clinical and medical.
1:05:38
I don't even have a GEDI argue with doctors and therapists all
1:05:41
day long. You know, I'm not a doctor, but
1:05:45
I understand enough about all of it because I've studied it to be
1:05:49
able to have clinical and medical conversations to the
1:05:51
extent that it's appropriate. Yeah, I think it's so important
1:05:55
to really you have to understand every single piece and inner
1:05:58
working of your business before you go hire for hope you know
1:06:02
and a. 100% God, that's true. Yeah, fully agree.
1:06:07
I. Was talking about that with
1:06:09
Jonathan the he exited Kujabi the online yeah yeah yeah and
1:06:14
we've used. Them.
1:06:15
Yeah, yeah. And he had a very.
1:06:17
It must. Have been a great conversation.
1:06:18
Oh. Yeah, and he said the same
1:06:21
thing. He's like don't hire for hope.
1:06:22
You have to know everything about your business and because
1:06:26
I'm at this position of, because it's a, my lending company is a
1:06:30
new company and I plan to scale it nationally and have a, you
1:06:33
know, if there's a billion dollar potential in that company
1:06:35
and it's do I bootstrap and just hire from the ground up like I
1:06:40
always have? Like I'm working 60 hours days,
1:06:42
seven days a week. Now I'm hiring a processor to
1:06:43
process my deals and then I'm, you know, just the next role
1:06:47
versus coming in from the beginning and hiring a
1:06:49
leadership position or a COO. And that decision there is like,
1:06:53
do I hire from the bottom up or from the top down?
1:06:56
And he's like, you need to understand your business.
1:06:58
And if you just hire for hope that the CEO is going to come in
1:07:01
and build this thing for you, like you're wrong, but I've.
1:07:05
Tried to do that more times than I'd care to admit, and very
1:07:08
rarely has it ever worked well. And he said giving equity too
1:07:12
very rarely causes them to perform much greater than Yep.
1:07:17
So OK, well, I could talk to you for 16 years straight.
1:07:20
I'm sure he's making us wrap up here, but there's another one
1:07:25
coming in. But I always like to ask, if you
1:07:28
could give one piece of advice to your younger self, what would
1:07:31
it be? That's a really good question.
1:07:35
You know, I think one of the biggest struggles that I've had
1:07:41
through this journey is around people and relationships.
1:07:47
And so I think that whatever that advice would be would be
1:07:50
about like insight into how to navigate dealing with other
1:07:54
human beings. You know, I think that's been
1:07:59
probably the source of some of the best parts of this journey
1:08:03
and some of the worst, you know, so they.
1:08:06
Don't teach you that in school. No, they do not, you know.
1:08:10
And so I probably tell younger Eric a little wisdom about the
1:08:14
human condition and what to expect of people for the next 20
1:08:17
years as you're about to go through everything you're about
1:08:19
to go through. Yeah, it's.
1:08:22
Good advice. Yeah, we didn't even get to get
1:08:24
into relationships, but I'm definitely want to hear your
1:08:28
experience with that because I know mine has suffered.
1:08:32
I haven't figured out the code. Just give.
1:08:34
Up. Fuck them.
1:08:38
Exactly. Yeah.
1:08:39
Yeah. Well, you're awesome, yeah.
1:08:41
No, thank you too. Thanks for having me I.
1:08:43
Appreciate you. Absolutely.