#1144 Eric Spofford | Shocking Story Of Former Drug Addict Turned CEO

Eric Spofford is an entrepreneur, investor, and recovering drug addict. In this conversation, we talk about addiction, sober living, the Affordable Care Act, business economics, and real estate. This is an emotionally charged conversation that will impact many.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Eric Spofford is an entrepreneur, investor, and a recovering drug addict. In this conversation, we talk about addiction, sober living, the Affordable Care Act, the business economics behind a massive business that he built after he got sober, what exactly it means to build real estate and an operating business, and then how behavioral healthcare has been changing. This is an emotionally charged conversation, and Eric has lived a wild life, including drugs, crime, and a whole bunch of things that many of you will find absolutely shocking. I really appreciated this conversation with Eric. He was incredibly honest and forthcoming,

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  and I think a lot of people will really appreciate and also benefit from this conversation. Here is my episode with Eric Spofford.

• 0:53Speaker 01

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• 2:04Speaker 06

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:28Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Eric here with me. I thought a great place to start is exactly why I started following you on Instagram is I saw you talking about addiction one day and I was like, oh, all right, let me, you know, go learn more about this. And I don't know that much about it, right? I think I probably have like an obsessive personality. So I've always been somebody who tries to avoid a lot of vices because I'm like, I probably would end up in a bad place. But you've got a very personal story with addiction and then you turned it into this massive business opportunity. And so maybe just like, where did this all start? Did you start getting addicted to things when you were in high school, earlier, or college? Like, tell me some of your story.

• 3:06Speaker 07

  No, no, much earlier. You know, alcoholism and addiction is a funny condition and I think that it shows up in people in two ways. One is, I do think that you can use and drink yourself over an imaginary line that you're never going to come back on the other side of. You see people that have a normal relationship with alcohol and then at some point in their life, maybe something happens and they're responsive to that and they become an alcoholic. Others, I think, are born that way. And that was me. I've, I had addiction since I was very little. I did everything in excess. And so, you know, I grew up in a town called Salem, New Hampshire. It's about 35 minutes north of downtown Boston, suburb of Boston, very blue collar.

• 3:51Speaker 07

  My father was a logger. He cut trees down for a living. My mom was generally a stay at home mom, kind of a crazy childhood with, you know, a wild household and two wild parents.

• 4:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Was it fun?

• 4:04Speaker 07

  No.

• 4:05Anthony Pompliano?

  No, okay.

• 4:05Speaker 07

  Like, I mean, I had a generally decent childhood. Well, when you're a fucking kid, you don't know, I swear.

• 4:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 4:12Speaker 07

  You don't really know the difference, right? Like, you could grow up in Iraq and bombs are going off and that's your normal, right? And so for me, that was my normal, but it was loud, it was crazy. You know, I was around drugs, alcohol in the neighborhood and.

• 4:27Speaker 07

  And my parents got divorced when I was in fifth grade and that was kind of like this pivotal moment for me. And I started drinking and I started smoking pot and I was 10 years old. I've always had been the kid with this lemonade stand and fixing up bikes and making a buck. And so that was the beginning of the journey for me. I started using drugs and alcohol. I also started selling drugs at 10.

• 4:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Wait, wait, at 10 years old, you're drinking alcohol and you are also smoking weed, doing crack?

• 4:58Speaker 07

  Smoking weed.

• 4:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Smoking weed, smoking weed. At 10 years old?

• 5:00Speaker 07

  Smoking weed, I'm drinking stolen beers out of the, you know, the friend's parents refrigerators. I'm drinking wine. I'm drinking Mad Dog 2020s. And I remember.

• 5:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Whatever you can get your hands on.

• 5:12Speaker 07

  Old heads, right? But, um, yeah. And then, then an older kid in the neighborhood

• 5:18Speaker 07

  fronted me at first an ounce of weed, which turned into a quarter pound. And I think to this day, as far as I know, I still, I still have the state of New Hampshire's record as the youngest individual charged with a drug sales charge.

• 5:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Really? How old were you?

• 5:31Speaker 07

  10 years old, fifth grade.

• 5:32Anthony Pompliano?

  You were 10 years old, you got arrested for selling drugs?

• 5:35Speaker 07

  Hand to hand, uh, to a confidential informant.

• 5:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Really? So like, so walk me through what that looks like. So, uh, you're 10 years old, an older guy in the neighborhood, he gives you some weed and he's like, go sell it.

• 5:46Speaker 07

  Go sell it and come back with the money.

• 5:47Anthony Pompliano?

  You basically just get the difference?

• 5:49Speaker 07

  Yeah. I wanted, I don't know if you remember anyone that's old enough to remember, these were cool, at least up in the north at the time, they had Jinko jeans. Remember Jinko jeans? My parents would never buy me any fucking Jinko jeans. I was like, I'm getting them jeans. And so that's what happened. I started selling weed and hustling to get things that I wanted. It progressed very quickly for me, you know, alcohol, weed turned to trying coke, turned to trying pills, turned to big on ecstasy. By the time I'm like 14.

• 6:19Anthony Pompliano?

  But at, but at 10 years old, you're selling drugs and like, walk me through when you get arrested for the first time. Cause it, cause to me it's just like fascinating experience where. You're selling drugs, you said to a confidential informant, like, is he like, yo, are you 10? Right? Like, is it a shock to him how young you are?

• 6:34Speaker 07

  It was another kid that had got busted by his parents, his parents called the cops, and the cops had this other kid.

• 6:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 6:43Speaker 07

  Set me up, for real. And so, so I'm in fifth grade, my parents just got divorced, the bank just foreclosed on the home that I grew up in, I'm living in an apartment building with my mom and visiting with my dad at the time. And I'm on the bus and the bus pulls up to my apartment building and there's like four cruisers out front and one of them is, has the dare, you know, the drug program rap on the, on the car. And I get, I remember getting out vividly off the bus and walking up with my backpack and be like, oh, somebody fucked up. You know what I mean? Like, why are these guys here? Like, what's going on? And I walk into my apartment and there's like five cops, my weed, my scale, and I'm like, oh shit.

• 7:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 7:25Speaker 07

  I'm pinched.

• 7:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so from there, once you got arrested, I'm assuming they take you down to like the city or county jail or whatever, like?

• 7:35Speaker 07

  They actually didn't. I was so young, I don't think they knew what, it was such an unprecedented event that, that they never actually put handcuffs on me, but I had to go to court and I ended up getting a juvenile probation officer. I was on probation, like, my entire childhood.

• 7:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And was that an accelerant? Like, the fact that there was, you know, because I think a lot of people could be like, hey, law enforcement intervened, I'll put that in air quotes, because whatever they want to call it, whether it's an arrest, whether it's probation, whatever. Oh, let's get them back on track. Or you almost like realize like, eh, it's not that bad. Right? And then you basically just like, let me go do worse, bigger, badder things.

• 8:12Speaker 07

  That's exactly what happened.

• 8:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, and so you go from weed to eventually you get to ecstasy and now you're personally taking, you're not just selling, but you're using all kinds of pills.

• 8:19Speaker 07

  All of the above.

• 8:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, and what are your friends doing? Are they into this stuff? Or they just think you're like the crazy friend that everyone has?

• 8:26Speaker 07

  I hung out, my friends were like, other kind of kids from broken homes that

• 8:33Speaker 07

  had similar backgrounds, similar types of families, and they were, you know, getting in a lot of trouble. You know, one of my best friends, Frank, got arrested at 12 on a gun charge. Got caught with a 22 caliber pistol. You know, we're fighting all the time, where it's

• 8:49Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a rough life.

• 8:50Speaker 07

  It's a rough life.

• 8:51Anthony Pompliano?

  All right.

• 8:52Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 8:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, how do you get from like fourteen, fifteen to eventually being, you know, eighteen, twenty years old, where I would consider, society at least says like, hey, now you're a young adult, right? What is that path like? Are you just continuing to use all the way up through that?

• 9:06Speaker 07

  I'll tell you about it. Okay. Um, you know, I'm selling drugs, um, using drugs, I'm in that lifestyle, you know, and to put a mental picture to it, I'm ten years old on like a huffy bicycle, packing a BB gun with the Discman and the headphones, listening to like Dr. Dre, The Chronic and Snoop Dogg and like Tupac and Biggie, like.

• 9:29Anthony Pompliano?

  You're a gangster just with a BB gun.

• 9:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like in the suburbs. My dad's a logger, you know what I mean?

• 9:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, got it.

• 9:37Speaker 07

  And so, I don't know, as confusing as that is, but, um.

• 9:40Anthony Pompliano?

  How much impact did the music have? Cause I don't know how old you are, but like, a lot of that.

• 9:46Speaker 07

  I talk about that all the time. I think the culture of the music, which today I talk about, like our diet and the things that we consume, the content we consume, the music we listen to, the books we read, the podcasts, the people we allow into our inner circle, all of that is so exponentially influential. And so coming up in that gangster rap era, like, that was cool. You know what I mean? Like, that's what I emulated as a white kid in New Hampshire.

• 10:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but I think that was across the country. I mean, even my friends, like, the more that we listened to it, the like, more bad shit we did, right? And everyone's got kind of different severity in terms of what bad was for their area, their friend group, whatever. But I, I also think at the same time that the rap artists from the nineteen nineties into the two thousands ended up being some of the best entrepreneurs of our lifetime as well, right? And so in some way, kind of knowing that you ended up going and starting businesses and really understanding kind of the business and investing world, do you think in hindsight that your experience in your teenage years taught you a lot about entrepreneurship and the ability to sell things?

• 10:51Speaker 07

  Uh, yeah, mental toughness, perseverance.

• 10:56Speaker 07

  FIU muscles, figure it out. You know what I mean? You, you get yourself in a lot of jams on the street and so you're constantly survival adaptation like.

• 11:05Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the worst situation you got yourself in?

• 11:07Speaker 07

  Oh God, I mean, there's so many, you know, let me walk you through a little bit of, dude, I'm 14, 15 years old and this is 1999 oxycontin pharmaceutical grade heroin being mis marketed by Purdue Pharma as a non addictive painkiller. It's really heroin in a pill is running rampant. Kid that I grew up with down the street comes over with a 40 milligram pill. We sniffed the thing. I do half, he does half. I get high in opiates, that drug class of like same thing as heroin for the first time.

• 11:38Speaker 07

  And I fall in love on all the drugs I'd ever done. I was like, this is the one like, I'm like Superman on this shit, right? And, um, and six months later, I'm 15 years old. I stopped going to high school. I drop out and I'm fully addicted to oxycontin and I'm in the process of moving from oxycontin to heroin. And at 15 years old, in, in my 15th year, I, I finished it as a full blown IV heroin addict.

• 12:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 12:07Speaker 07

  Yeah. I dropped out of school hardcore junkie running the streets like a, like, you know, in a man's world.

• 12:14Anthony Pompliano?

  And as somebody who, uh, after surgeries, I've had to take, uh, some of these painkillers, right? And in pill form, uh, and I literally, I've told a story before, uh, I took one of the pills and I went, uh, I was in college and I went to class and I fell asleep like the shit. It just, it didn't make me addicted. It just like, I couldn't operate on it, right? Crushing them and snorting them versus the actual just like IV heroin. What is the difference in terms of like how your body reacted? Was the heroin that much more addictive? Or did you feel like it was actually pretty similar in terms of crushing and snorting versus?

• 12:49Speaker 07

  It's pretty similar. I think that it's just a different delivery system.

• 12:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 12:53Speaker 07

  And so, um,

• 12:56Speaker 07

  Crushing and snorting and, uh, you know, takes longer for your body to, to get the euphoric effects, for it to filter through your system and for it to start to get in there. It also isn't as potent, so you have to do more.

• 13:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Sounds like amateur hour compared to the IV.

• 13:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, everyone that's, that ends up there, if they stay in the game long enough, they end up IV, because what happens is you build a tolerance.

• 13:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 13:18Speaker 07

  And so I start off sniffing one bag of heroin and it gets me high as a kite, but in a pretty short period of time, I can sniff 20 of them.

• 13:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Geez.

• 13:28Speaker 07

  And that's expensive. But then I'm watching other people, cause now I'm in the world and I'm watching these people, they're IV users, and they're getting just as high off of one or two bags as I am 20, because they're shooting it.

• 13:42Anthony Pompliano?

  And that's like a economic, uh, evaluation of like, I can spend less money and get more high?

• 13:47Speaker 07

  And it's more intense. It's, it's about the rush. An IV, when you use it and shoot it, it rushes you, it hits you in seconds. And so that becomes a part of the thrill as well.

• 13:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you're 15, you're now full on heroin addict. Uh, where are you living? Are you still living at home?

• 14:06Speaker 07

  Um, my mom, I was such a badass little kid and my mom, you know, had her own issues that after I spent two years with her from 10 to 12, um, she dropped me off at my dad's and pretty much disengaged from my life.

• 14:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 14:21Speaker 07

  Um, and we, we weren't seeing eye to eye. And so now I'm staying with my dad. Um, you know, from 13, maybe around 13 years old, I spend a year sleeping on a mattress in the corner of a bedroom that he had rented. Um, he saves up some money, we're able to get a small modest little ranch, one story house, and we move into that together. I, I take up the basement, you know, cellar dweller and kind of created my own little drug den world down there by the time I was 14.

• 14:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Does he know any of this is going on, or he just kind of doesn't want to really pay attention?

• 14:53Speaker 07

  I think he kinda knows, he doesn't know, I'm constantly in trouble, right? Like I'm constantly getting arrested, you know, when I was in school, I'm getting suspended all the time. The people at the school know who and what I am. The police know who and what I am like. And so, but you know, my dad is like a lot of parents where he just wanted to see the best in me. And I think that, I think there's also this thing that people think for young people like that especially that like, it's a rite of passage or I'll outgrow it. I don't know that he knew the severity. Like I knew that he probably knew that I drank alcohol and smoked pot. But you, you fast forward, I, I, I shoot heroin for the first time at 15.

• 15:34Speaker 07

  At 17 years old, I'm working with him. We're cutting trees down. It's a dog hot summer day in the middle of New Hampshire in July. I remember it like it was yesterday. And my dad had some heavy equipment that we would work with and he had an excavator. He's running the excavator and I'm on the chainsaw notching and back cutting trees, taking down trees. And, and I'm dope sick. When you don't have heroin, you go into withdrawals. And so I'm sick. So I'm like, you know, sweating. I got sawdust all over me. It's like, you know, late morning and I'm, I'm sneaking off and like puking in the woods. I mean, life is just miserable and I'm tired. And I've been doing this for two years now and I think that I'm done.

• 16:17Speaker 07

  And I remember just putting the saw down and walking up and, and jumping up on the track of the excavator and telling him, you know, turn it off. And he kills it and he's like, what's up? And I look him right in his face and I'm like, dad, I need help.

• 16:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 16:30Speaker 07

  Yeah. And he's like, what, what do you mean? I'm like, I'm addicted to heroin.

• 16:35Anthony Pompliano?

  What was his reaction?

• 16:37Speaker 07

  He was floored. His eyes were this big. I mean, as a parent, you have to imagine that's like the most terrifying fucking thing in the world. Your 17 year old baby that you've done your best with and he, you know, he's a good dad. And looks you in your face and tell you, tells you he's addicted to heroin. I mean, you go around the world, heroin addicts don't exactly have a great recovery rate. And so we shut that down. We, we left the job site. We were back at the time. We got on the phone book, went to the Yellow Pages, started calling through and, and found some professionals to help detox me off of heroin. And that was really my first solid attempt at trying to get sober.

• 17:17Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it was almost like he may have known some bad stuff was going on. He didn't want to necessarily see it. And then when you said it to him, it almost sounds like you kind of smacked him in the face and said, hey, I need help.

• 17:27Speaker 07

  He knew, there was no doubt in anyone's mind. My friends were criminals. We partied, we lived a fast life, we made money a fast way. I think he knew all that in a general, but he didn't know that I was like addicted to heroin. He probably thought I just partied too much and, you know, didn't have a whole lot of regard for the law or a regular civilian lifestyle.

• 17:51Anthony Pompliano?

  When you go to detox, what is that experience like, especially at seventeen?

• 17:55Speaker 07

  That, that one was out. I've been to plenty of inpatients because I was seventeen and, and a adolescent, a minor, that was outpatient. And so they actually gave me the drugs and sent me home with them.

• 18:06Anthony Pompliano?

  And they just say, here's some drugs to take. This will help you get off. Here's a regiment to follow.

• 18:10Speaker 07

  I had to go see him every day and check in and they told me what to take and, you know, they, they oversaw the process. It took about a week. The problem with, that a lot of people get twisted with addiction is they think that addiction is really about heroin. And they think that the solution to addiction is sobriety. I thought that. My dad thought that. I'm on heroin. What's the very obvious answer?

• 18:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Get off.

• 18:36Speaker 07

  Get off heroin. You know what I mean? Like, but the problem is, and this is what I suffered from the, from the next five years almost. I would get off heroin and I would get off all drugs and alcohol and I would be so uncomfortable in life. I didn't know how to, I didn't know how to do anything.

• 18:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 18:53Speaker 07

  I would be depressed, anxious, restless, irritable, discontent, full of fear, paralyzed.

• 19:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Because, because you missed the drugs or because you didn't know what else to do?

• 19:03Speaker 07

  Because that's what addiction is. Because people totally miss the mark on what addiction is. Heroin and alcohol and other drugs are some of the best forms of treatment for the disease of addiction. The disease of addiction is an internal condition. You talk to any alcoholic or watch them and they're in a state of sobriety. And you watch them crack a bottle and.

• 19:29Speaker 07

  You could hear a noise and watch a reaction. It's this.

• 19:35Speaker 07

  You don't need relief from life right now. Like you're having generally a good day, right?

• 19:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I'm here with you.

• 19:40Speaker 07

  Exactly. What's better? But this guy, he can't stand, he's in unbearable psychic, mental and spiritual pain until that alcohol hits him, until that bag of dope hits him. And so what happened to me was I would intuitively, with well-intentioned people, get told you have to give up heroin and give up drugs and alcohol. And I would, and I would just be a complete disaster. And so over any period of time, it would get worse, not better. And I would feel totally out of control emotionally and mentally. And then I would eventually use and drink again to gain emotional control and, and take over my emotions. And, and the heroin and the drugs allowed me to

• 20:25Speaker 07

  regulate my affect. And that's really addiction. And so the, to fast forward that,

• 20:33Speaker 07

  the solution starts in abstinence. It's a prerequisite to getting better from addiction. But you must be in some sort of recovery or personal development process that will bring about an internal transformation, a rearrangement of what's going on inside of you. And so that's, that's eventually what happened. There's a lot of story between here and there.

• 20:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, how old were you when you eventually got sober?

• 20:58Speaker 07

  I got sober, I was 21 years old. It was two, two months, almost three months before my 22nd birthday.

• 21:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 21:05Speaker 07

  December 7th, 2006.

• 21:07Anthony Pompliano?

  How many times do you think you went in and out of any sort of rehab or detox?

• 21:11Speaker 07

  I, I tried to generalize it in attempts to get sober, times that I was like, this is it, I'm done, fucking, I'm all in, a hundred or more.

• 21:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 21:22Speaker 07

  Constantly. I hated it.

• 21:24Anthony Pompliano?

  So you, you knew that you were addicted and you wanted a solution, but you didn't kind of know what, what the actual, like sustainable solution.

• 21:32Speaker 07

  Struggled finding a solution for five years. I was constantly like trying to storm the castle. And then just, ugh, and getting high or drinking and going on another relapse.

• 21:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you look back now, when you did get sober, what ultimately like that was the time that you got sober? Was it not necessarily just like get off of the drugs, get off the alcohol, but it was replaced by something?

• 21:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'll talk about it. So the events of that day were very dramatic. At this time, you know, I'm 17, 18 years old. My dad tells me, you gotta leave. I can't help you no more. Right? I'm bad. I spend the next few years out on the street, living like an animal. December 6th, the last day I ever used drugs of 2006. There's a drug deal gone bad. I pull a kitchen knife. The other guy's trying to buy the drugs. I don't have any drugs. I'm dope sick. I'm desperate and I rob him with a kitchen knife. And he essentially calls the police and, and doesn't tell them it was a drug deal,

• 22:38Speaker 07

  but reports me for armed robbery. They swarm the neighborhood. I hide all night. I take, I robbed him for $82. That was, that was my courageous.

• 22:46Anthony Pompliano?

  So you, you needed drugs so bad. You were so addicted that you basically set up a fake drug deal?

• 22:54Speaker 07

  Set up a fake drug deal.

• 22:56Anthony Pompliano?

  To rob him?

• 22:57Speaker 07

  For 82 bucks. That's what he had. I took him for $82 and I bought four bags of heroin with it and I hid in a closet and that was the last time I ever used drugs.

• 23:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 23:07Speaker 07

  And that was December 6th of 2006. The next morning, I woke up, dude, I'm like 197 pounds right now. I was 135 pounds. I was emaciated. I was disowned by everybody that I know. I didn't have a friend left in the world. I'd run out of lies. I was tired. They say you have to hit rock bottom. If that's true, that's exactly where I was. I had, I knew with a moment of clarity that I was dead or in prison if I didn't change now. And so I had been up in Portland, Maine for the last, for those two years of addiction. I took off from there, um, went down to New Hampshire, um, reconnected with my mother,

• 23:48Speaker 07

  who I hadn't really had a relationship with in some time, and she let me, um, sleep on a couch for a couple of weeks. And what changed for me there was I walked to 12 step meetings and a group of unbelievable men that I will forever be grateful for. They were all like 20 something years older than me or more that have been sober for considerable time, grabbed me up and sucked me in and started to teach me how to live.

• 24:13Anthony Pompliano?

  So the cops never caught you for the armed robbery?

• 24:15Speaker 07

  No. Um, yes or no? Uh, I ended up cleaning that up and along with a bunch of other legal stuff when I was like a year and a half sober.

• 24:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. So it's one of these situations where like you knew it was so bad that it wasn't just the drugs and alcohol too, right? Like there was the legal stuff there. Like it was so much pressure. It almost to me feels like you're describing like the world is like closing in on you. And you were like,

• 24:38Speaker 07

  I had nowhere left to go.

• 24:39Anthony Pompliano?

  It is going to catch me, right? It is going to engulf me if I do not go and do something different. And what is the 12 steps? Like, what is that group?

• 24:48Speaker 07

  Sure. It originated from Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935. Um, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous, a fellowship that has meetings around the world now of people that have found sobriety. And it, you know, the origination of that group is that a New York, um, stockbroker named Bill Wilson was struggling with alcoholism. Uh, and he was introduced to a religious movement called the Oxford Group. Okay. In the early 1900s, the Oxford Group was an interesting group where they broke off from the contemporary church, basically because they were more, uh, they were more radical in, in kind of a born again transformational experience than a lot

• 25:29Speaker 07

  of the contemporary church. And in the Oxford Group, they had a six step program of spiritual action. And this guy, Bill Wilson, gets sober in that. He does this spiritual work. It is an inventory of your character defects, a confession to the congregation, restitution to everyone that you've ever harmed. It's prayer and meditation. It's turning your will over to, you know, Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior, uh, hardcore Christian stuff. He gets sober in that. Six months go by, he's trying to take this to other alcoholics to help them. Alcoholic number two gets sober in Akron, Ohio, from his help. That guy was Dr. Bob, a proctologist, a drunk alcoholic butt doctor in Akron, Ohio.

• 26:13Speaker 07

  And in that, that was the birth of Alcoholics Anonymous.

• 26:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 26:18Speaker 07

  And they went on to take that program of action and develop AA specifically for alcoholics. And that just mushroomed and exploded globally to help alcoholics and drug addicts. And now there's more, I think there's like more than 215 12 step fellowships. It's like a 12 step fellowship for every problem you could have. Gambling Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous. Everything.

• 26:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So as you're doing this, how important was it that the men who kind of took you under their wing and really helped you break the addiction, that they were older than you? Like, I think a lot of times, there's this weird dynamic where if they'd been in the same ages as you, it may not have had the same impact as actually being older guys or no?

• 27:01Speaker 07

  No, I don't think so. I think that then the recovery movement wasn't as popular as it is now. We were at the infancy stages of the nation's opioid epidemic. Young people weren't going through the life cycle of opioid addiction and treatment and finding recovery like they have been for some time now. Now the recovery scene's filled with young people, helping other young people, and it's beautiful. But it just happened to be that at that time, in that town, these guys were older than me. They were great mentors. They were tough as shit on me. I mean, they really were.

• 27:39Anthony Pompliano?

  In what way?

• 27:41Speaker 07

  They, they didn't spare my feelings at all. They loved me so much that they literally did not give a rat's ass about how I felt. They'd tell me exactly what they saw. They would tell me exactly what I need to do. And be like, you are a selfless, self-centered, dishonest son of a bitch, and you need to change. You know, and they were right. I was. It was the truth about me then.

• 28:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Were you offended when they were honest?

• 28:04Speaker 07

  Sometimes.

• 28:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 28:06Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 28:06Anthony Pompliano?

  What'd you do when you were offended?

• 28:08Speaker 07

  Nothing. I sat there and I was offended.

• 28:14Anthony Pompliano?

  It's fascinating because there's so many people today that are afraid of offending other people.

• 28:19Speaker 07

  It's changed that that thing has changed the way treatment is delivered and recovery is delivered.

• 28:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Explain.

• 28:25Speaker 07

  It's what you're describing and how the world has changed about people being scared to offend other people. And now, you know, you're very limited in what you can say. Like, there's a lot of censorship, there's a lot of, you know, I don't know, lines in the sand. A lot of that around offending other people that now, now I think it's really hurt the efficacy of the recovery movement and treatment. Because they care about what people think, or they care about how they feel and they care about offending them. And the problem is, is that people like me, by the millions that come into these systems, we have broken operating systems of how we think, how we feel.

• 29:10Speaker 07

  Like, it should be offended, that's a good thing. The very thing that we're offending is the very thing that we need to smash and disassemble and recreate. And so they end up walking on eggshells around people. It's become very difficult.

• 29:24Anthony Pompliano?

  I recently read David Goggins' new book.

• 29:27Speaker 07

  Love him.

• 29:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Never Finished, and in it, he describes the situation where he came from a broken home, really bad, watched his father beat his mother, I mean, just everything that, you know, you hope that kids don't grow up in that childhood, basically, he experienced. And in the beginning of the book, he describes that he goes back to see his father after a number of years. And at one point, they go to a very late dinner. His father has like a skate rink, basically, and after it's closed up, they go to Denny's. And he said he's sitting there and his dad's drunk, and when his dad drank, that's when the bad shit came out, that's when the demons came out. He basically says, "I looked at this dude and I was about to whoop his ass." And he was just like, "I was an adult now, right? And I wanted him to suffer the same way that I suffer, the same way my brother and my mother and all this stuff."

• 30:13Anthony Pompliano?

  And he says that there's something that changes. I think the way he describes it is the weather changed in the booth because his dad realized, oh, this dude ain't playing. Oh, shit. This ain't a kid anymore. Right. And like, and he just saw it in his eyes. And he said, basically, they finished dinner in silence. He drove him back. He grabbed his keys and he left and never talked to his dad again. And there was something in there about, he wasn't necessarily explicitly saying the truth or the, or offending him or anything. But it's that still like speaking to the core of the person. Right. And now, in that situation, he just did with a look or whatever it was that he was describing. But also, I think what you're saying is like, these men basically

• 30:55Anthony Pompliano?

  told you the truth. And the truth is incredibly powerful. It can be incredibly offensive. But actually, you described it as they loved me so much that they told me the truth. Right? They weren't doing it because they wanted to hurt your feelings or anything. They wanted you to get better. They wanted you to be a better person.

• 31:10Speaker 07

  They cared about me getting better, and they cared about my recovery, and they cared about my life far more than they cared about how I felt.

• 31:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, which is a powerful thing.

• 31:18Speaker 07

  Super powerful.

• 31:19Anthony Pompliano?

  And a pretty mature thing for them to be able to see that.

• 31:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, totally.

• 31:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Because I think the ability to offend people for the right reasons actually brings, it only comes from a place of maturity. Right? In some weird way, like, there's people who are arrogant assholes. Right? And they just go around offending everyone. And there's no rhyme or reason. And there shouldn't be any reason for doing that, nor should society basically tolerate that type of nonsense.

• 31:41Speaker 07

  Yeah, one of the things that they would say frequently is that we carry the truth with love.

• 31:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 31:46Speaker 07

  The truth without, they would say, the truth without love is cruelty. But we carry the truth with love.

• 31:51Anthony Pompliano?

  I like that. Yeah, it makes sense, right?

• 31:54Speaker 07

  Huge. Because, because what they did a really good job with me, and I was, I was out of my fucking mind. Like, I was on, I was a nightmare. Like, I've been on the streets a long time. I've been surrounded by violence. I've been, as much as you can be in that life, I've been in that life. And so, you know, I'm sitting there staring at them, and they're like telling me the truth. And in my mind, I'm like, I'm gonna stab him with that fucking pen. And like, that's where I was at in the early days. And like, they just courageously were able to hold that space with me. But they did something really magical in the beginning was they established rapport with me. And I knew in my heart how much they cared about me and that's why I stayed.

• 32:36Speaker 07

  And that's why I kept coming back because I was like, fuck, they're not trying to hurt me like they're, you know, I know they care about me. It's like that saying that, um, how the hell does it go? That they won't care how much you know until they know how much you care. They did that very well with me, you know, and they spent time with me and they picked me up and they brought me to meetings and they brought me to Denny's and, you know, they also got me very quickly. One of the things they did was got me involved in service work. You know, hey kid, go pick up the cigarette butts. I'm just here because I don't want to shoot heroin anymore. What do cigarette butts have to do with that? And it got me out of myself and it got me started to acclimate me to a life of service.

• 33:20Anthony Pompliano?

  If you had fought like physically fought them, who would have won, do you think? Were they, were they physically bigger, stronger, tougher than?

• 33:27Speaker 07

  There was a, you know, there was a smorgasbord, a really widespread of people. I mean, one of these guys was an investment banker. Another one was an attorney. Another one had done 25 years in prison on a murder bid and got out, you know, a long time ago. And like the, the, the slice of society that this thing affects is everybody. It's not isolated to the tough guys, the corporate guys, the, the whatever it is. And so.

• 33:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think it was a sense of respect that you had for them? Like, like inherently?

• 33:58Speaker 07

  I respected them. I still do.

• 33:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think, I think a lot about, um, in high school, I, I wasn't the best behaved kid and just.

• 34:06Speaker 07

  I can imagine.

• 34:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Similar to you, uh, they knew who I was and they knew, you know, all the nonsense I was pulling.

• 34:11Speaker 07

  A lot of entrepreneurs have that in common though, right?

• 34:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course. Um, and I remember I walked into a, a classroom and, uh, one of the teachers said to us, uh, I went through, you know, this is what the class is about, this whatever. And he just said, uh, we don't have behavior problems in here or we don't have discipline problems in here. And he just said it. And I always thought to myself like, was it because it was a, a, a adult male saying it? Was it because he just like dressed it and he's just like, like, I don't have time for that shit, right? But for whatever reason, I wasn't a single person. There were a lot of badass kids in this one class. Yeah. No problems. Right? And I think about that because it's like, actually, if, if I'm honest with myself, I think we respected them. Like there was a level of like, I don't want to do dumb shit. Because then that's going to cause you to have to deal with the dumb shit and then I'm going to feel bad because I actually respect you.

• 34:56Anthony Pompliano?

  In some weird way. And so this sounds like a very similar thing where you're like.

• 34:59Speaker 07

  Absolutely.

• 35:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Even if you could physically have beat them up or whatever and like kind of brought the same street mentality to it, out of respect, you were like, oh, maybe they do have my best interest at heart. And so I'll go do what they're asking me to do.

• 35:11Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 35:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's fascinating. All right. So how do we get from you're going through this like detox process to eventually you actually start businesses and kind of figure out how to create solutions for other people?

• 35:23Speaker 07

  One of the guys from recovery gives me a job in his call center. I start making a couple bucks. I get a $550 a month apartment in a not so great neighborhood.

• 35:36Speaker 07

  And I'm walking to work and I'm walking to recovery meetings and I'm hanging out on the recovery scene and I'm actively doing this recovery process and doing the work that they're putting in front of me and I'm changing and I'm changing from the inside out. And I like the more I do, the more I get and the more I get, the more I like it and I start to get excited about it.

• 36:00Anthony Pompliano?

  You're addicted.

• 36:01Speaker 07

  I'm addicted to it. And, and part of that excitement was I want to tell everyone else about it. And so I lived in like the hood, right? And, and right on like the outskirts of the hood was this down and out state funded treatment center called Keystone Hall. And it was a rehab I never went to, but the place saved my life. And I used to walk from, I would get out of work and I would walk to the treatment center, right through the hood, past the dope dealers, past all the bullshit, head down and I would get to the rehab and I was so poor, I didn't have any money that would feed me. And I would just volunteer all my time and I would spend it with their clients. And I would talk to them about recovery and I'd tell them about my experience and I'd tell them, you know, I've been here for

• 36:46Speaker 07

  X amount of months. I've been here for a year. It's working for me. And I would show them the work that I was shown and I would start to take them through that process. And, and in that I found what still to this day, I know to be my God given purpose on earth was to help other people just like me. And in that, Everything that I've been through since I was a little kid, all the pain on the street, to all of it, it made it make sense and it gave it a why. And it made it valuable and it made it useful to other people. And in that, I fell in love with it. And so after a little while at the call center, I left, I went back, me, you know, after I've been sober a few months,

• 37:29Speaker 07

  my dad starts talking to me again. I go back working for him, cutting down trees. I start saving money. I'm doing side jobs. I'm with the guys at that facility. I'm at the recovery meetings. I'm with the recovery people. And, and, you know, I save up some money. My dad believes in me at this point. And when I'm about a year and a half sober, we put our coins together and come up with about 50 grand. This is October 2008.

• 37:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, this is you and your dad?

• 37:56Speaker 07

  Not a great economical time, October 2008. I buy, with my dad's help, I buy a three-family apartment building, bank-owned, foreclosed, vacant for 150 grand. And with this vision that I'm gonna go and live here, and I'm gonna put a couple beds in each bedroom of every apartment, and I'm gonna get those guys who are in that 30-day rehab, when they leave, they're gonna come here and live with me. And they're gonna pay me to stay in this bed. It's called a sober house. And this was a sober house before, like I say sober house, you kind of know what that is. This is 2008. Like, this is not popular. The guys in recovery that I was telling, I was gonna

• 38:40Speaker 07

  do this, like, the fuck are you talking about?

• 38:42Anthony Pompliano?

  So, just so people understand, somebody is addicted to whatever the vices of choices, they go to the actual treatment center, but they're only there for some time-boxed amount. So 30 days, 60 days, whatever.

• 38:55Speaker 07

  30 days, usually.

• 38:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so 30 days. When they leave, the problem that you had identified was, they're gonna go right back into the environment.

• 39:02Speaker 07

  They're going back to the environment that got them there in the first place.

• 39:04Anthony Pompliano?

  And so only super, super.

• 39:07Speaker 07

  I saw a problem, and I was like, well, fuck, I'm gonna fix the problem. I'm gonna give them a place to go.

• 39:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 39:12Speaker 07

  And then I provided structure. And so they would leave there and come with me. And we would, I mean, I lived with them for two years. That's how the business started. It was me and a revolving door of 11 guys. And I did the recovery work with them. We cooked together. We went to meetings together. I took them into the jails. I took them into other facilities to do service work and help other people. I mean, we did everything together and a lot of those guys from that early day, they're still sober now. I mean, that was a long time ago, but.

• 39:41Anthony Pompliano?

  What were the economics of it? What were they paying you like?

• 39:44Speaker 07

  They paid me.

• 39:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Couple hundred bucks?

• 39:46Speaker 07

  Like 700 bucks a month.

• 39:47Anthony Pompliano?

  700 bucks a month?

• 39:48Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 39:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And then basically you were able to run this and this is like your full time job like you're just.

• 39:53Speaker 07

  No, I'm going to work. I'm still cutting down trees every day.

• 39:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 39:56Speaker 07

  So I'm waking up with these guys, waking them all up, you know, it's very spiritual based. And so we're, you know, we're sitting in a circle. We're doing prayer. We're doing meditation together early in the morning. We're reading, you know, recovery literature, spiritual literature, whatever. And then they have jobs and so they go to work. I go to work after the work day ends, we all meet back. You know, we're doing family style dinners together. We're, we're every day was something different. We're going to recovery meeting. We're going to speak to new people at this facility, a jail, whatever. And so, and there were rules, you know what I mean? You had to make your bed. You had to, there was just a curfew. There was a lot of structure to it.

• 40:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And so as you're doing this, when do you go from, okay, I have this one facility to now I'm going to like turn this into a business?

• 40:41Speaker 07

  So 2008, 2010, I'm, you know, being a logger is a blood sport. It is a tough way to make a living and.

• 40:49Anthony Pompliano?

  What's so tough about it?

• 40:51Speaker 07

  You're outside all day long in New Hampshire, you know, you get about three months of decent weather and even that's hot. So you're cold, hot in the snow. You know, you're cutting trees down. It's, it's just hard, physical labor all day long, you know, 5am wake up on the job site by 6:30, 6:45. You know, the type of people that work those jobs can be a little rough. And so you can't, you know, your employees are, you know, problematic at times, but it's just always something, you know? And, and I just, I really loved what I was doing with that. And every day I'd wake up and be like, fuck. This sucks. You know what I mean? I got cut by chainsaws. I'm getting whipped by trees. I'm like, it's just, it's like, I don't want to do this anymore. This is terrible.

• 41:35Speaker 07

  And, um, and I wanted to open a second house. And so at that time, I went to my dad, tough conversation, tough moment, his only son, his only child. And I go to him and his business, right? His, I'm the next generation, you know? And, uh, and told him, I said, Dad, I can't do this anymore. I need to go full time with this. And that's when I made the pivot. And so

• 41:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Did he want you to take over the logging business?

• 41:59Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of pressure my whole life. Like since I was a little kid, he was like, you know, when you get up and run this business and, uh, you know, that type of thing. But, and so it put a lot of pressure on having the courage to have that conversation with my dad of like, nah, I don't, I want to do my own thing. I want to be my own guy. Terrified.

• 42:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What was his reaction?

• 42:19Speaker 07

  Saw him, you know, he heard me. He probably saw it coming. I was so passionate about what I was doing, you know, and I was good at it. And so I opened a second one and then I opened a bigger one.

• 42:31Anthony Pompliano?

  How are you financing those?

• 42:33Speaker 07

  Did you know what's crazy? This is one of my sticks about a lot of entrepreneurs today coming out of this economy that we've been in about investors and loans and debt and, and blah, blah, blah. Bro, if people could time travel back to 2008, nine, 10, even 11, you could walk into a bank and be like, can I finance this bottle of water? And they'd be like, are you fucking okay? Like, do you know what's going on outside? Get out of my bag. Like, you couldn't get a loan for anything, right?

• 43:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 43:03Speaker 07

  And so I bootstrapped that business from that initial seed money to buy that first building until I sold it in December of 2021. And I never took a single dollar of investment money for growth. And I never took a single dollar of a loan or debt into the business. My waterfall didn't have debt to pay down at the transaction, right? And the company size at that time, we grew it, we're doing, you know, a little more than $50 million top line revenue. 325 employees. It was real business. And so what I did was this really old fashioned thing that's not very popular is called, I worked hard and I spent less. You know what I mean?

• 43:44Speaker 07

  It takes fucking discipline, though. When you have money in the bank and you're still buying cheap food and driving a shitty car and like not spending, living in a crap place. That's the discipline of like, the entrepreneurship mind was driven by the economy, which I'm grateful for. But that's what I did.

• 44:05Anthony Pompliano?

  So as you're doing this, what, what did you kind of learn, right? In terms of scaling this business with 300 employees is no joke. Also, when you start getting into tens of millions of dollars of revenue, that that's real responsibility and it's real risk. Cause now you could like really screw things up, right? You can get yourself in trouble pretty quickly. You make a couple of bad decisions. You buy a piece of real estate that goes underwater. You know, all these different things that start to happen. What would you say was like the one or two things you did? Because you had what I'll call like the street education. That's big business now. Now, now you're in a game of like, you don't just, you know, wake up one day and like, oh, I know how to do real estate transactions, right? You don't wake up one day like, oh, I know how to manage 300 people, right? Sure, you may know how to sell drugs on the street, but that's a, that's a different skill set. It may be a related skill set, but it's different. Was there one or two

• 44:49Anthony Pompliano?

  things you did that you really credit to like, being able to transition from just a pure street education, actually being able to run a business like this?

• 44:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'm a 15 year old dropout that still doesn't have a GED. But what I do have is an unbelievably developed ability to learn. I'm a sponge. And so that's what I did. I just kept it glass, glass half empty the whole time. And was constantly in this obsessive pursuit of learning from people, learning from books, learning from anything and everywhere that I could find information on teaching myself things.

• 45:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. How many of the businesses in the recovery space are run by previous addicts? Is that a lot of them? A lot. So like, I'm assuming that has a huge piece in you being able to understand the problem really, really well and actually design what seems to be one of the more cutting edge programs to actually be able to help people. Cause I think like, the outcome here is not just like, hey, we're collecting rents, right? The outcome is actually like, no, we are helping people improve their lives, stay sober and kind of become that's right, highly functioning, productive members of society, right? Yeah. And so like, when you think about selling the business, why'd you sell it?

• 46:00Speaker 07

  From, from opening day till transaction day was 13 years, two months. And, um, you know, I started when I was 23 years old and I think I was 35, right? 35 when I sold it. Um, and everything just has a life cycle. I, I was in New Hampshire. I didn't want to be there anymore.

• 46:21Speaker 07

  It was a tough, I love it. I still love it. I'm back in it, you know, a little more than a year later. Here we are. And, uh, but it was just a tough business to be in. It was emotionally, you know, there's a lot that happened there. I, I poured everything that I had into that every single day. I had all my eggs in one basket, which is high risk.

• 46:44Speaker 07

  And I was surrounded by death, people dying, fentanyl happened, fentanyl started coming into America about 2012, 2013.

• 46:52Anthony Pompliano?

  What's going on with that stuff? Cause that seems like the second coming of the opioid crisis, like it was opioids, uh, and then it was fentanyl.

• 46:59Speaker 07

  There's not, there hasn't been a real bag of heroin on the streets in America in years.

• 47:03Anthony Pompliano?

  What does that mean?

• 47:04Speaker 07

  Heroin isn't, there's no heroin addicts anymore. They don't sell heroin. They sell fentanyl. Fentanyl is randomly 50 to a hundred times more potent than heroin. It, you know, prior to fentanyl showing up in the country.

• 47:19Speaker 07

  Overdose death is like, not that common. You don't like, it's a once in a great while that it's normally through a mixture of other drugs and stuff. Fentanyl shows up and it just starts killing people.

• 47:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 47:32Speaker 07

  And yeah. And so, you know, I look back and, and you know, it's funny. You asked me a question earlier and you're like, what was the worst thing you've ever been through? If you isolate that to active addiction, I could answer it. If you put it in my lifespan, it's fentanyl. And not that it affected me directly from using it. I've never actually used it. I've been sober too long, but it killed hundreds of my friends, thousands of my clients. The amount of death that I was surrounded by really honestly fucked me up. And so, I mean, there was. Two thousand thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, I'm, I'm showing up to one, two, three funerals a week.

• 48:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 48:08Speaker 07

  Bro, I'm, I've consoled hundreds of grieving parents.

• 48:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:14Speaker 07

  If not close to a thousand. I mean,

• 48:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 48:16Speaker 07

  Like, there's only so many moms burying their twenty something year old crying through your shirt that like, before it's like, fuck.

• 48:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 48:24Speaker 07

  It took a piece of me. And so there was just all this complexity of it. I was tired. There was a business sense. There was emotional. There was just time for the next chapter. I've been doing this a long time. And so it all came to, to a perfect storm. And I had been ready. I actually transacted four times.

• 48:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 48:44Speaker 07

  And so I sold minority on three different bites to a family office at a scaling valuation and then myself to the same family office. And then to take chips off the table and mitigate risk and have money, you know, off to the side. And then myself and that family office divested out of it and had a full sale when I sold in December of twenty one.

• 49:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 49:10Speaker 07

  And I was still majority owner at that point.

• 49:12Anthony Pompliano?

  As you're talking to family offices or whoever ended up purchasing the business, how much of who they're talking to is like you, the business person versus you, the guy from the street?

• 49:26Speaker 07

  The guy from the, here's the funny thing about recovery and, and the life experiences. I sit here and like openly, you know, with however many people are going to watch this, talk about all this stuff that most people would probably have a lot of shame about, would have a lot of regret, would, you know, be embarrassed and not willingly just put out there. But through the process that I've been through, we say that we die the death of self here. And so like, that guy's dead. Like, I go to bed at ten PM. I'm up at five. I'm a dad to two boys. Like, I take care of my senior dad. He lives with me up north. Like, I'm not, I haven't been a street guy in a very long time.

• 50:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 50:04Speaker 07

  You know, and so, you know, Eric, the business guy, you know, it's still there, of course, but I'm Eric, the business guy, Eric, the family guy, Eric, the friend, Eric, the guy that, you know, has morals and values and anything that had ever happened back in the day has been unthinkable for me for a very long time. Like, I don't think I could even bring myself to do it because. That operating system has just been gone for a very long time.

• 50:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. One of the most impressive parts of the business that you built is you really built two businesses, right? So you've got the, what I'll call the operating business where you're actually servicing these clients. You're able to get them into a better position in life and kind of make them those productive citizens. But there's also a real estate component to it. Talk a little bit about the strategy as you built the company and kind of why you had the two different sides.

• 50:52Speaker 07

  You know, what's funny is a lot of it I learned as I went, but I always, I owned the real estate in the first sober house. I like owning real estate. I believe heavily in real estate as an asset class. It's my most preferred asset class. I still own a lot of real estate. And so as I was growing, I was purchasing the real estate and fitting up the facilities. You know, Eric, the landlord in the real estate holding company and then leasing them back to the operating company and starting these de novo startups, you know, in those physical plants. And so I did that through, you know,

• 51:27Speaker 07

  probably, I don't know, close to 20 sites.

• 51:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 51:31Speaker 07

  Varying sizes, right? Big, small, medium, but yeah.

• 51:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And why just stay in the recovery space? Obviously, there's a whole bunch of different things in healthcare that you could have gone into, right? But you stayed in recovery just because you knew it and then you cared about it? Or was it other reasons?

• 51:48Speaker 07

  It's, you know, to your, to what you recently asked me about Eric, the street guy. It's Eric, the recovery guy is different than that. And so it's my labor, love, it's my passion. And so I'm not a guy in recovery for an eating disorder or autism or a significant mental health disorder. I am a man in long-term recovery from addiction and alcoholism. And so it's, it's just, you know, what I've been passionate about for a long time and what I know best.

• 52:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. This, your entire story is like, has this like emotional component to it. But also, if you can kind of separate out the emotional part and you look at it from a business perspective, what is unique is that you were able to learn a number of the things that you needed. But also you had great market timing, although you probably didn't know.

• 52:34Speaker 07

  I actually, no, I actually did. I almost started to say that when you asked me why I sold. And so I apologize. After I checked all those boxes and I divested those three times in March of 2021, I was tired and I was all of those things, but I was also looking around at the world and going, we're at the top.

• 52:53Anthony Pompliano?

  So well, forget about the sale. I was actually talking about in the beginning.

• 52:57Speaker 07

  Oh, the headwinds of the addiction. A lot of it was timing.

• 53:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Because there was immense explosion of drug addiction, but also there was the incoming insurance coverage of addiction. Talk a little bit about, yes, we know that the drug problem got very bad, kind of 2010 and beyond, but also talk a little bit about the ability to switch from individuals themselves having to pay to the insurance companies now being obligated to cover the addiction treatments.

• 53:26Speaker 07

  So Affordable Health Care Act, Obamacare comes out and prior to that, health insurance policies were not required to cover substance use disorder, addiction treatment or mental health treatment as a required benefit. And they had this section of those policies that was affected by a parody law. Excuse me one second.

• 53:49Speaker 07

  And parody essentially said that we need to stop treating addiction and mental health disorders like they're the little, you know, annoying cousin of healthcare, that these are real diseases. They need to be treated and covered like real diseases, no different than diabetes. And so that law came out and it required insurance companies to provide a benefit for addiction treatment. And that's when the industry started to explode. And I just happened to be in a good position because I'd already been there. Like I'd been in the sober living since 2008. That was 2011, 12. I was already growing. And so that happened. And then another significant thing was.

• 54:31Speaker 07

  Was the 2016 campaign that was essentially run on addiction as a main issue like Donald

• 54:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Explain.

• 54:43Speaker 07

  Donald Trump, local politicians, you know, really highlighted addiction and overdose death and those things as a very important issue of their campaign. I mean, my home state, Donald Trump called the drug infested, New Hampshire is a drug infested den, beautiful place, but drug infested den.

• 55:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 55:01Speaker 07

  And so I'm in New Hampshire, first in the primary, politicians are ramping up and that, you know, the presidential races, they start coming through 18 months ahead of time, two years ahead of time. They're already starting to, you know,

• 55:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Testing, making sure that they got a good message.

• 55:18Speaker 07

  Yeah. And then, you know, the local politician, the governor and all that, all those races. And so at that time, I get, I get really a lot of, of tailwinds through that. And I kind of get inducted into this political scene. I, I testified to the United States Senate in 2015 on the opioid epidemic. I'm meeting presidential candidates that are coming through New Hampshire, um, front and center.

• 55:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you surprised? Like, do you ever like pinch yourself and like, I can't, I can't believe I'm testifying right now.

• 55:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 55:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, if they had only seen me then, right?

• 55:56Speaker 07

  Well, I, you know, what's funny is I walk into, you know, this building in Washington DC with United States senators to give this three hours of testimony and Q and A with them on the issue. And I'm, here I am looking, you know, Lamar Alexander, the oldest sitting Republican Senator from Tennessee, uh, and answering his questions and telling him about how I used to sell drugs and rob people and do heroin. And I'm just like, where, what is going, what is my life? You know what I mean? How did I get here?

• 56:26Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I can imagine that that is, uh, one of those moments where you're like, it's cool, but also shocking. If like, if you'd only told your younger self, like one day you'll testify in front of senators about this.

• 56:35Speaker 07

  Yeah. I mean, and that's been true of a lot of my life. You know what I mean? Like,

• 56:41Speaker 07

  People, people oftentimes are, when they learn my story or they kind of get a gist of it, they're taken back and shocked and have questions. And I'm like, I just, like, I don't know.

• 56:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Figured it out.

• 56:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how I got here either. So I'm as confused as you.

• 56:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. At what point do you start really like leaning into Instagram? Because I think part of what's fascinating, you got this like great story, right? And kind of you've overcome so much adversity. And I think you're a couple of years older than me. I got a cell phone in high school. I think it was the first cell phone I ever got.

• 57:13Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a lot of young kids who they understand how to use this stuff better than, you know, you and I understand pretty good how to use it.

• 57:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 57:19Anthony Pompliano?

  But there's like 18 year old kids running around right now. They literally don't remember a life before a cell phone. Right?

• 57:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, no doubt.

• 57:24Anthony Pompliano?

  And so like, at what point were you like, you know what, I need to get on the internet? Like, I need to like, go build a personal brand.

• 57:28Speaker 07

  I remember it. It's probably 2019, 2020 ish, somewhere in there. And, you know, I have an Instagram. I probably have about like 2,000 followers.

• 57:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Like a normal person.

• 57:42Speaker 07

  Like, yeah, I'm like a normal guy on Instagram. I got.

• 57:44Anthony Pompliano?

  With a couple of friends.

• 57:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. I got, I got pictures of my dog, you know, I got pictures of my kid, you know, I got normal shit on there. And someone sends me a clip from this guy Gary Vaynerchuk. And at the time, Gary was like going hard in content on build a personal brand, attention, and like, that was his stick at the time. And I start watching it and I'm like, he's right. This guy is right. And this could really help a lot of people. This could help bring attention. And mind you, I was also primed. I've been being covered by the media since 2008. I'm hanging out with politicians, talking to people in Trump's administration.

• 58:29Speaker 07

  Me and the governor are frequently meeting and talking like, I'm in the paper, I'm on the news, I'm getting called into this, called into that. Like, I have attention, real world attention, not social media attention. So I just had this thought of like, It's kind of all made it here. And so he was doing this thing called four D's where you pay and you go down to New York to Hudson Yards and there's 10 of you and you sit in his office and meet a bunch of his team and spend time with him and learn about social media marketing. And that's what I did. I went down to, I knew nothing about any of it. And so somewhere around that time period, I went down to Gary Vaynerchuk's office, met him for the first time and, and came out of that. And I was like, this is something I need to do.

• 59:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. You remember how much he was charging?

• 59:11Speaker 07

  10 grand a head.

• 59:12Anthony Pompliano?

  And yeah, so it's expensive, but it's not completely out of the realm for people who have a business or whatever. And good investment.

• 59:20Speaker 07

  I, I would do it again. Yeah.

• 59:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you're sitting in that room, like what, at what point are you like, this could help me with my business? Is it, they could help me personally? Like, like what's going through your head as to like, why you're like, yeah, I gotta do this.

• 59:35Speaker 07

  I, it started to come into focus for me about how attention was a commodity and how that could just have general uplift to anything that I do. And that a personal brand and, and being known out there and telling your story and being the first and having eyeballs and all of that can be beneficial to whatever, you know? Like I get messages every single day of people that I've never met. I probably never will meet. I got one this morning. Guy told me quit drinking three weeks ago and I'm his inspiration.

• 1:00:09Speaker 07

  You know, if I can do that by posting on my story and putting out some content and have a positive impact, I mean, that in itself makes it worth it, let alone business opportunities, drawing attention to whatever it is that I'm doing. And, you know, so it's really worked out for me. It's also helped me network and socialize with amazing people. Time I met you.

• 1:00:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that is how we met. Um, this morning you hit your snooze button a couple of times. I saw you.

• 1:00:35Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, I, I think it's important, like you have overcome so much. You are so disciplined. You have been able to stay sober for so long, but like now, uh, hitting the snooze button a couple of times is not, you know, going and doing heroin again.

• 1:00:47Speaker 07

  That's right. Yeah.

• 1:00:48Anthony Pompliano?

  But, but there are these like, uh, kind of self correcting mechanisms. You're talking about like, look, there's like a discipline component to it. How do you think about your life and the structure of it now, especially like, it almost seems to some degree, you got sober, you had a business, you focused on that business for, you know, 12, 13 years. When you sell the business, you're like, you're not going to work anymore. Right? And you're trying to figure out like, what else to do? Like, talk a little bit about that.

• 1:01:10Speaker 07

  I fell, here's what actually happened. I'll be real on real. I fell apart.

• 1:01:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 1:01:15Speaker 07

  Dude, well, I'm up in New Hampshire, you know, restaurants close at 8:30, you know, they roll the sidewalks up and,

• 1:01:24Speaker 07

  and I sell my business and I have more money than I've ever even seen in my life. And I, I buy a house down here in Miami and I'm down here and I, I got no reason to wake up. I have nowhere to be. I don't, I'm not worried about making payroll. I'm not worried about sales. I'm not worried about, I'm worried about nothing, like literally. And, um, and I ended up staying up late and I ended up being out too much. I mean, you know, in Miami, dinner oftentimes starts at 11, 12 o'clock at night. That's what the reservation's for. You know what I mean? And so now I'm sleeping in and, uh, and I had been disciplined my entire journey in recovery. I've been incredibly disciplined.

• 1:02:08Speaker 07

  And it was just now that this, you know, being out of the business, relocating and spending a lot of time down here and, you know, I, I put on weight, I, I,

• 1:02:20Speaker 07

  and I just hit this thing and I was like, I'm fucking miserable. The outside world's looking at me should be, I bought a jet, I bought a yacht, I bought a, killer house in Miami, I bought a Rolls Royce truck, I bought, I like, I'm like,

• 1:02:33Anthony Pompliano?

  How much shit, hold on, back up. How much shit did you buy? You bought a jet, a boat, a Rolls Royce truck and a house? Is that it? Or you got more shit?

• 1:02:40Speaker 07

  I'm sure I got more shit. That's the big stuff. And like, and I'm sitting here and I'm like, I can go anywhere I want and do anything I want and, you know, and I'm not fucking happy. I'm not happy and it just hit me and I was like, it was the fucking, one of the most profound life lessons that I've been through in more modern times, of course, was like, I'm a guy that I don't give a fuck if you give me a billion dollars right now, I'd be up at 5 a.m. tomorrow. I gotta get up and make the donuts every day. That's what I do. I'm a grinder. I love the process. I love doing, you know, I love building. I love the discipline. I love the structure. That's also what I talked about on my story this morning was like, why

• 1:03:22Speaker 07

  do we do things for the effect produced? And the analysis is, you know, you drink because you like how that feels. You do drugs because you like how that feels, but you also have to tie that to, do you like the result? And so I live a very structured, disciplined life. I'm up at 5 a.m. I get an early morning, you know, for me, it's prayer, it's meditation, it's reading, it's, you know, contemplation, it's manifestation. And, and I'm normally out the door for the gym by like 5:45 ish. And I get my workout in, the world is quiet, my phone is quiet. And I get my workout in, I come back, I shower, I eat my first meal

• 1:04:03Speaker 07

  for the day, diet, very important. And by like about 7:30 in the morning, like I'm ready for the world. And like

• 1:04:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Some of them haven't even woken up yet.

• 1:04:12Speaker 07

  I beat them, you know, I fuck with them all the time. I'm like, I'm so much richer than you. How the fuck am I up earlier than you are?

• 1:04:20Anthony Pompliano?

  But there is a mentality. It's like, one of the things my wife and I talk a lot about is like, there's the easy life and then there's like a hard life. And a lot of people are grinding their asses off to get to the easy life. And so many of our friends have been fortunate to get some version of that. Some of them more so than others, whatever. But once they get a taste of the easy life, there's a fork in the road. Some of them double, triple, quadruple down on the easy life. Nice thing to know, they're like, I'm retired, I'm chilling, you know, whatever. I want the easiest cake job possible, whatever. And some of them are like, yo, I miss the hard life. I need the hard, I need the difficulty. I need the edge. I need the things that keep me going.

• 1:05:03Speaker 07

  Do you know that my investment banker in my M and A legal team and my tax advisors and all this group of like insanely expensive advisory group that surrounded me through these processes?

• 1:05:16Speaker 07

  We're like, you're gonna miss this. And I was like, I don't really think I am like, I don't, I don't know about that. You give me a hundred million dollars and like, I'm gonna be just fine. Don't you worry about me. And they were right. You know what I mean? Like the discipline, the grind, the stress, the hunt, the kill, the, the build, the camaraderie, the team, the mission, all of it. And now, you know, I'm happy. I'm back in it. I'm back in it. I got problems all day long and I'm grateful for them.

• 1:05:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What are your goals now?

• 1:05:47Speaker 07

  You really wanna know?

• 1:05:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:50Speaker 07

  I don't want this to sound, come off the wrong way. And, and I, I need to explain the why behind it for people to, to me, for me to feel understood. But I'm, I'm working on a net worth of a billion dollars.

• 1:06:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. I don't think that's a crazy idea.

• 1:06:06Speaker 07

  I don't think it's a crazy idea either, right?

• 1:06:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 1:06:07Speaker 07

  Small club. Not because, I, I just told you, I have a plane, I have, I have a jet, I have a boat, I have a house, like, I have, like, if I had more money, I don't even know what I would do with it, to be frank with you. So it's not for that, right? And I already told you, I gotta get up in the morning. It's not gonna change my life. I'm not gonna do anything differently. Because I am a fully tattooed, former criminal, drug addict, 15 year old, 10th grade dropout, without a fucking GED. And I wanna be the first one to do that. And not for me, because I wanna show them it can be done. If I can get there, what can you do? You know? If I can achieve this, if I hit that goal over the next 15, 20 years, then what's possible for the rest of you?

• 1:06:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And frankly, I don't wanna say it's gonna become easier over time, but they're gonna have more tools that they can leverage, right?

• 1:06:58Speaker 07

  People don't, people underestimate that. You know, guys in our age bracket, like, we had it a lot harder in the early days of entrepreneurship. I started my business, I didn't even have a MySpace.

• 1:07:10Speaker 07

  Think about that. The internet was not the internet. You still went to the library and checked out books and read them. You know, you went and sat in the seats at Barnes and Noble if you couldn't afford them and read them and put them back. And so access to information, access to creating businesses and opportunity is insane these days.

• 1:07:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think a lot about like the new technology solves problems that other people previously had, but it creates new problems as well. Right? So one of the things that's fascinating to me about your story is you're dealing with these addictions that in 2005, let's say, many people, especially the insurance companies, did not look at drug addiction or others as these healthcare problems. They looked at it maybe in other ways. They didn't want to cover or what have you. Today, I actually think of digital addiction as similar to what 2005 was for drug or alcoholism, right? And one of the things that last year, I told a story before, somebody handed me a physical book and I tried to read and I couldn't read it. And not because I can't read,

• 1:08:10Anthony Pompliano?

  I thankfully had, you know, enough education to read. I couldn't concentrate. I could not sit with the physical book and not reach for my phone every 30 seconds. And I was like, this is bad. And so I told a friend that kind of offhand comment at dinner one night and he goes, get your phone out. All right. He goes, look to see how many times your phone lights up. And so on iPhone, you can see how many notifications and stuff. 750 something notifications every single day. And I just looked at him and he's like, dude, literally every time that thing lights up, he goes, whether you realize it or not, if you see it out of the corner of your eye, if it's sitting next to your desk while you're working or reading or whatever, he's like, you're looking, right? And he was like, and so shut that shit off.

• 1:08:49Speaker 07

  If you're as busy as us, if it doesn't go off for 20 minutes, you're like, what the fuck?

• 1:08:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Something in the world happened, right? And so what's interesting is like, yes, the internet and social media and all these things, they solve all these problems. It is amazing. And it provide all these different things. But now it's introduced new problems where now I look and I see a lot of these young founders, dude, they spend more time on fucking Twitter or Instagram than they do building their business.

• 1:09:15Speaker 07

  We've seen it in the patient population in treatment of how they've changed so much. So I have a couple of things that I really want to tell you about. Okay. Um, one is, is information that needs, that most people should know if they're concerned with addiction. It's, it fucking blew my mind. A lot of how we think about addiction is based out of this early experiment in, in the eighties, in the early nineties where they took a, a lab science box and they put a rat in it. It's like a little rat cage and they put two bottles of drinking water and they had regular water and then they had drug infused water. They ran the experiment with heroin and they ran the experiment with cocaine.

• 1:09:58Speaker 07

  In that experiment, what happens is, is the rat tries both. He feels the euphoric effects of the drugs. He goes back to the drugs. He continues to use the drugs. He becomes physically addicted. And almost most of those rats end up overdosing and dying.

• 1:10:19Speaker 07

  The, that, that is in psychology textbooks for people that are, are healthcare and mental health providers. And, you know, for doctors and nurses and folks, they don't give a lot of education on addiction. And so the philosophy out of that is drugs are bad. They have chemical hooks. If you do drugs that they're going to get you and you're going to become this, like this addicted rat. Out of that, philosophy is also the prohibition mindset, the war on drugs. We have to eradicate the problem. We eradicate the substance. Follow? This guy, a social scientist up in Vancouver, Canada, he's an old man now. His name's Bruce Alexander. He wrote a book called The Globalization of Addiction. It's unbelievable.

• 1:11:03Speaker 07

  And he ties addiction to, to economy and Western civilization. And he comes around and says, well, wait a minute.

• 1:11:15Speaker 07

  We've, we've isolated the rat and he starts an experiment called Rat Park. And he builds a rat cage that's 10 feet long and eight feet wide or some shit. It's huge. And he puts wood chips and aluminum cans and, you know, wheels and rat food and, you know, shiny shit and toys and tunnels and he, and he puts a bunch of rats in there. Male rats, female rats, they're having sex, they're rat pops, they're, they're doing what they're meant to be doing in the best possible environment that a rat could want to live in.

• 1:11:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Sounds like awesome rat life.

• 1:11:49Speaker 07

  Awesome. Yeah. And

• 1:11:52Anthony Pompliano?

  My guy built them tunnels.

• 1:11:53Speaker 07

  Listen, he comes in and he introduces drinking water and he introduces heroin water. The rats, out of curiosity, try both. They watch over time, the rats favor the drinking water and they occasionally use the drug water and get intoxicated because rats like the party every once in a while. No rats become physically addicted to the heroin, unlike every rat in the isolated box.

• 1:12:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 1:12:19Speaker 07

  Not only that, he takes isolated rats, he gets them addicted to heroin and, and then he removes them and he puts them into Rat Park. Now, modern day western civilization thinking and philosophy around drugs is in Rat Park, if the drugs are available, we gotta eradicate them, all these rats are gonna become junkies. It also will tell us, most people would jump to a conclusion that this physically addicted, addict junkie rat entering a productive, healthy rat society is gonna, with access to drugs, is gonna be a menace to society and continue to use the drugs.

• 1:13:01Speaker 07

  The rat is aware there's drinking water and there's drug water, it is physically addicted to opiates, it is gonna experience painful withdrawal symptoms if it does not use that drugs, drugs, and it knows it, and it knows it's available, it kicks the habit almost every time. No rats become addicted and no rats overdose and die in Rat Park. Because what, the one context of the study of addiction and the treatment of addiction and solutions for this is, that has been evaded entirely is environment. Because if we look at environment, all of a sudden, we have to take fucking responsibility. It's genetics, it's trauma, it's, you know, the substance, it's the bad neighborhood,

• 1:13:45Speaker 07

  it's, it's all of these things that we place the blame on. So, out of this, he, he births this thing called the dislocation theory of addiction.

• 1:13:57Speaker 07

  And essentially, if you look at at slices of generations over time, I think everyone would agree that society from addiction and mental health standpoint is getting worse, generation over generation, in decade blocks, the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2020s. Like, we're fucking worse now than we were 10 years ago. 10 years ago was worse than it was 10 years before that. What's happening? Our society is becoming more and more dislocated. Digital devices are enormous. And so when you take, when you think about what a human being is, what are we? Strip away all this bullshit. We're a pack tribal mental animal.

• 1:14:38Speaker 07

  And so we have a basic necessity for human connection, for bonds. We have, we need a life that has hope. And so all of these things and the way that we're living and continue to live, and it's a self fulfilling prophecy, has continued to create an elevated stress response on human beings, that Bruce Alexander would describe substance use problems as a maladaptive response to an overwhelming stress, uh, stress condition. It's phenomenally interesting. You know why it doesn't blow up?

• 1:15:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 1:15:15Speaker 07

  How does pharma make money on that? How do you profit on that? You have to disassemble things. There's no way to make money. Follow? And so when you look at the magic of the recovery community, recovery community, essentially, you look at what I learned this, and it like blew my mind. And I was like, I got sober and I met these men and like, they became my tribe. They became my rat park. They were the fucking connections. They were the people. You look at so many of these different things that, that about the world that we live in, the middle class, you know, you're a Democrat and you think it's the fucking rich people's fault, or you're rich people, you think they take all our money, whatever it is. But the fact

• 1:15:58Speaker 07

  is, is the hope of a young person today is getting less and less. My grandfather in 1952 bought a modest, small, uh, single story home on two acres of land. And he had a wife that was a stay at home mom, and he raised three boys. He was a steel worker in a mill. He owned two acres of land and a home and had a stay at home wife. You can't even be a fucking construction worker and have an apartment, let alone have a girlfriend. You gotta feed her, you know? And so growing up and in this environment, it's just tougher and tougher and tougher for people. The future is bleak for them.

• 1:16:40Speaker 07

  You think about in, in, in the game, in the game of life, what we're told, okay, we grow up. We're either have or have not. If you're not wildly successful, you're, you're gonna get a job, you're gonna go there for forty, forty-five years. You're gonna, you know, hopefully get a job, then get a better job and then get a better job. Most of your money is gonna pay your bills. You're gonna have a fucking life that you can't stand so much that hopefully you get two, three, four weeks of vacation and can afford to get on a plane and go somewhere nice as the highlight reel to your existence. And then at the end of that, what happens? You get a fucking retirement and a pension, you get fixed income. And what do we do to our elderly? We're all facing that road.

• 1:17:23Speaker 07

  If you live long enough, like you're gonna end up with some kids that fucking visit you in some facility, playing chess with some other asshole. And like, it's just the future for most people is not bright. And so when you think about that, like, of course they're using fucking drugs. Of course it's getting worse.

• 1:17:40Anthony Pompliano?

  When you talk about environment, what it immediately makes me think of is, uh, the book, uh, Being Mortal by Tool Gwandi. Uh, he talks specifically about old age death. And one of the, um, assisted living centers, um, realized if we put live plants, not fake plants, not no plants, actual real living plants around the center in people's rooms. They live longer, they're happier. They have, uh, kind of a better quality of life.

• 1:18:10Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 1:18:11Anthony Pompliano?

  If you surround people with life, they end up actually thriving.

• 1:18:16Speaker 07

  Absolutely.

• 1:18:16Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's so fascinating because it also parlay's perfectly into James Clear's entire idea of like, if you change your identity, it changes your habits. So if you tell people, I don't drink, you're not gonna drink, right? But if you just say, oh, you know what, I'm gonna have the, uh, personal will to just say, no, I'm good on the drink tonight. Right? You have to actually start to identify it, right? I'm somebody who goes to the gym. Now you start to go to the gym, right? Like i- if you can make it your identity into your point, if you're a part of the recovery community, right? If you're one of the rats in that park and you're like, no, this is what we do, then you're good. Even if you do like the party every once in a while, you're still able to majority of the time stay where you need to be. It's pretty powerful.

• 1:19:00Speaker 07

  The problem, it is very powerful. And, and when you think about the problem, the frustrating thing that, that has been a problem that's been persevering in front of me that, that bothers me is we've figured out for the ones that make it out that are able to ask for help, we know how to get them well. You give me, you call me tomorrow and say someone I care about has addiction or alcoholism, I have a solution for you. I know how to help them. They have to do the work, but they can get better and recover. What, what nothing is being done about is disassembling the machine that's creating them. And so, you know, which is getting worse day over day, year over year, you know?

• 1:19:46Anthony Pompliano?

  When you look back at the last 20 years of your life, what's the biggest surprise to you?

• 1:19:57Speaker 07

  Honestly?

• 1:19:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:58Speaker 07

  Can't believe I'm still alive.

• 1:19:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 1:20:00Speaker 07

  Yeah. When I was 15 years old, I used to like openly talk about like, yeah, I'm probably not gonna live past like 21. And I used to live like that, you know, five overdoses on life support. I've been stabbed a couple of times. I have my head split open by a crowbar. I've walked away from.

• 1:20:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Back, oh, I'll say, you overdose five times?

• 1:20:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:20:20Anthony Pompliano?

  What is that experience like?

• 1:20:22Speaker 07

  I thought, the first time, I thought I got abducted by aliens.

• 1:20:29Speaker 07

  I did, yeah. You know, I'm in the backseat of a car with some, you know, some homeless couple driving around and I just coughed a bunch of heroin for everyone. And, you know, I mix the stuff up in a needle and I shoot the stuff up in a car and that's all I know. And then I come to, and I got these big, you know, square hospital lights above me and I'm on a cold gurney and, and, and, you know, masks and lights and everything. And it's really confusing, waking up to that. Yeah.

• 1:21:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Does it get easier? Like by the third, fourth, fifth one, do you like know what's happening? Or is it still kinda?

• 1:21:08Speaker 07

  By the third, fourth, fifth one, I'm so fucking miserable in my life that I wake up and I'm pissed off that they fucking brought me back.

• 1:21:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 1:21:16Speaker 07

  I'm like, fuck, this would have been just fine, you know? I would have been fine and you know, checking out today, I would have been alright.

• 1:21:23Anthony Pompliano?

  How'd you get stabbed?

• 1:21:25Speaker 07

  Running around the hood, doing drugs, selling drugs, getting in beefs with people, you know?

• 1:21:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:30Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:21:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you, and this is a weird question, but one of the things about, um, whether it's, uh, projects or, uh, certain communities. Did you ever get stabbed by someone and then friends with them afterwards? Or was it nah, fuck you, you stabbed me and don't let me see you in the street? Yeah.

• 1:21:50Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:21:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 1:21:51Speaker 07

  Um, you know, but I did, here's an interesting thing to your point. Um, nobody that stabbed me because I didn't really know those people all that well. Um, we didn't even speak the same language, so they communicate very well. And, and now, you know, I look back, I take responsibility. I was in a neighborhood that I shouldn't have been in, doing shit that I shouldn't have been doing and trying to get away with things in a game that I shouldn't have been trying to get away with. And so like I knew.

• 1:22:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Increasing the odds.

• 1:22:16Speaker 07

  I knew the risks, you know what I mean? I might get stabbed, but fuck it, you know?

• 1:22:20Anthony Pompliano?

  You weren't walking down Park Avenue.

• 1:22:22Speaker 07

  Part of getting better, this is, this is, this is, I don't know if you asked me this question, but I feel like you asked me something like this. The most powerful experience or the one thing that I attribute my transformational experience to is this one part of the process.

• 1:22:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 1:22:39Speaker 07

  And there's a lot of work you have to do to get to it, to get you ready for it and have a shift in thinking and a shift in feeling and emotions and thoughts. But it's this process that they call amends. And so I sat down with these men and they were like, Eric, if you want to obtain lifelong sobriety and if you want to have this transformational experience, you need to do what we did. And we went through this process of amends and what that was, was I made a list of everyone that I had ever harmed, ever. I didn't get to judge how big or small the harm was. If it was a yes or no question, did you harm them? Yes or no? Yes, they go on the list. And then the rules were this, were that if I could make an amend to them.

• 1:23:25Speaker 07

  As long as it didn't hurt them or someone else, I had to make it. Personal consequence meant nothing. I had to put myself in harm's way to accomplish this. And, and then how you made it was also very structured and they were very disciplined about this. You never say you're sorry. Your whole fucking life, you've been sorry. If people applied what you did to the word sorry, all sorry would mean was fuck, I got caught. I'm going to do it again. So we don't say sorry in this process. People think it's like you go around apologizing. We don't apologize. You might express regret. And so what we would do is I would go in, in these different situations of people and places.

• 1:24:06Speaker 07

  And I would say, you know, I'm, I'm a drug addict, but, and, um, and I harmed you. And how I've identified that I've harmed you is I stole from you. I assaulted you. I cheated on you. I whatever. And I'm willing to do absolutely anything I can to make that right.

• 1:24:27Speaker 07

  What can I do to make that? Did I leave anything out? Is there anything that I've harmed you with that I'm unaware of? And you shut up and you let them talk. Sometimes they're like, no, sometimes two hours of them berating you goes by. And then, um, and then the next question is what, what can I do to make this right? And whatever they tell you to do, you do. There were 300 people almost on my list. I made amends to, for people that I was involved in violence with. I made amends to stores that I robbed. I made amends. I mean, if you can think of it, I, I went and cleaned up all of it.

• 1:25:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the craziest thing someone asked you to do?

• 1:25:02Speaker 07

  Say that again?

• 1:25:03Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the craziest thing someone asked you to do is to make amends to them?

• 1:25:06Speaker 07

  Oh God, um, I was talking about this the other day. Uh, I made, I used to steal from Walmart. I treated that place like a personal ATM, right? And, um,

• 1:25:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Sam Walton wasn't happy with you?

• 1:25:16Speaker 07

  No, no, he's pissed. And, um, and so I went into the Walmart and, um, and, and I asked to speak to the manager and, And I waited around and the manager came up, I went through my spiel. I said, my name's Eric, I'm a drug addict. If you don't know them, you say, I'm on a life and death mission of recovery. My life depends upon being here today. I've wronged your store. How I wronged your store was I stole from here. By the best count, I probably stole 57 flat screen TVs, you know, 100 or more fucking electric toothbrushes. Infamil by the, I mean, like, dude, we used to run in there and put, when flat screens actually cost something back then, we'd stack up the, the flat roll away and, and roll

• 1:25:59Speaker 07

  it through the front door and we would know loss prevention was gonna come. And, you know, sometimes we'd be sneaking, get away with the shit, but sometimes they'd roll out and they'd be like, they'd always say the same shit. You know what they say when you're stealing? What? Excuse me, sir. That's what we called it. You get excuse me, sir'd. And they go, excuse me, sir. And we're like, pack the fuck up. Fucking, you know, and just act crazy. And they'd be like, oh, you know, I make $17 an hour. Take it. Yeah. And don't have a gun. Yeah, exactly. And so, um, so I tell the manager this, and this is a longer version than the story I told the other day. This is what actually happened. And she's like, long faced, like, and she's like, uh, I'm gonna have to get loss prevention. Wait right here. I was like, oh, fuck. I'm like, I'm going to jail. This is like my third amendment I've ever made. I'm brand new,

• 1:26:43Speaker 07

  right? And they told me Walmart would be an easy one. I'm like, this is not easy. And, and so the guy comes out and he happens to be like a higher up in loss prevention. And I go through the process with him. And he says, give me your information. And I'm like, all right. And I'm like, I'm going to jail. Like, they're gonna prosecute me for this. And a couple of days later, he calls me up and says, Eric, listen, we got a real problem with addiction down here at Walmart. And we got a real problem. A lot of people stealing. And we'd appreciate it if you come in and meet with us and, and help us out, figure out what the hell, what the hell these addicts are doing to rob us blind. And so I went down, I went to occasionally, they would call, when they wanted me to, they would call me. And I would go into these trainings and I would teach them all the scams.

• 1:27:28Speaker 07

  Of how we robbed Walmart. It's crazy, right? I mean, do we used to go in and take like those electric razors that cost like a hundred, $200 or electric toothbrushes? And I would get like one of each or a couple of them and, and I would have like a Walmart bag and I would just put them in the bag and I would walk to the return desk and return them and get gift cards and then sell the gift cards for 50 cents on the dollar. And it was like ding ding ding. It was like 15 minutes. I'd have the guy that was buying the gift cards in the fucking parking lot waiting for me. Go up, hit him the gift card. He has 300. Give me a buck 50. Cool. I'm out. It's crazy. And so that was one. Another one.

• 1:28:04Anthony Pompliano?

  What was their reaction when you're telling them like things like that, right? Which are like stupid.

• 1:28:09Speaker 07

  You do what?

• 1:28:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, they're like stupid, but they're still like, damn, 150, 300. Like this adds up quick.

• 1:28:14Speaker 07

  Every day.

• 1:28:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, I can't go to that Walmart. I've been there four times this month, you know? Drive me two hours to some other Walmart and uh, it's crazy, but Home Depot, same thing. But um, I'd have those little faucets, you know, the expensive, you know, thing. Those things like 500 bucks, a thousand bucks. I'd walk it right up, return it and uh,

• 1:28:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And they would just do it because they'd say, give you store credit, gift card.

• 1:28:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. They give you store credit card and have a nice day and you know, you sell. Yeah. And I'd sell those to all the contractors, the Home Depot card. So they're getting 50 cents on the dollar money.

• 1:28:45Anthony Pompliano?

  They love you.

• 1:28:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, they love me. And um, and another time, uh, when I did all those, that overdosing and uh, four of those overdoses, I ended up in the same emergency room.

• 1:28:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 1:28:57Speaker 07

  Parkland Medical Center. And like, I would like overdose like 30 minutes away. And like somehow they brought me to this fucking place. I drove past five hospitals to get here. And um, and I was, you know, I was not pleasant. Like when I thought I got abducted by aliens that first time, I woke up, I was naked. They had cut my clothes off of me. I felt a cold hand grab me to stuff a catheter in me. They're holding me down. I jumped up, punched a male nurse, started running around. They sedated me, put me out. I woke up like two days later. Every time I would come to down there, I'd cause a scene. One time I'm running around the nurse's station, the emergency room with a Johnny wide open, naked. They're chasing me. You know, just crazy shit. And um, I

• 1:29:40Speaker 07

  AMAT every single time. They were like, please don't leave. I'm like a fucking out. See ya. Ripping IV lines out of my arm and bouncing out of the hospital, going to get high and um, powerlessness, just can't not. And so I walk into that emergency room. This was a powerful one and um, And I asked to speak to whoever runs the emergency room. I'd like the little triage desk. And they, I gotta sit there for like three hours. Of course. And this woman comes out and says, can I help you? I said, yeah, can we talk somewhere privately? And we walked through the hospital. We go to this conference room and we sit down and she's like, what can I help you with? And I start telling her the story. I said, hey, listen, you know, a few years ago, I'm a drug addict. I'm in recovery.

• 1:30:21Speaker 07

  I harmed your facility here, your hospital. And a few years ago, there's a span of up like six months and I ended up in here like four times on overdoses. And she's looking at me and I start telling her, I said, you know, this was one time that I came through and I punched a nurse. This other time, and she starts fucking crying.

• 1:30:39Anthony Pompliano?

  She starts crying.

• 1:30:40Speaker 07

  She starts crying. And I'm like, okay, like this isn't going as expected. You know what I mean? To me, it's business as usual, like.

• 1:30:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Like I've done this 242 times.

• 1:30:49Speaker 07

  Exactly. And, and she says, Eric, I remember you.

• 1:30:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 1:30:59Speaker 07

  And, and you came in here so much and you were so dramatic with your stays and then we never saw you again. Honestly, we thought you were dead. We talked about you. We still talk about you occasionally, wondering what happened to you. And, and she's crying. I start crying and she says something that fucking hits me like a, like a Mike Tyson punch. She says, we never see people like you get well. And I was like, and, and I said, what can I do? You know, we're crying, we're hugging, you know, we're having a moment. I said, what can I do to make this right? She says, I'd like to leave your number at the nurse's station.

• 1:31:41Speaker 07

  And when we get addicts here that come here, we see them all the time that overdose, they don't listen to us. We're just some nurses. Would you come speak to them? I said, absolutely. And over years, I probably saw, I don't know, 150, 200 people bedside in that emergency room. They'd call me two in the morning, two in the afternoon. Eric, we got one down here. Will you come talk to them? And true to my word, you know, I'd go down there and sit next to them and help a lot of people get sober out of that emergency room, you know? Not everyone listened, but got a few of them. And so just very powerful, powerful experiences like that. Most of them didn't, it didn't work out the way that I thought they were going to, you know? I had one where.

• 1:32:25Speaker 07

  It's kind of a crazy story. Where, you know, I've been up shooting cocaine for like three days, right? You start losing your mind after a couple of days being up doing cocaine. And we had heard that these dudes that we knew had robbed a mini golf place and they robbed the safe. And, um, and, you know, they robbed the safe and I was with a couple of bad dudes and we were, we thought we were bad at those dudes. And so we were like, well, they robbed the safe. They got the money. Let's rob them. And so that's what we did. And so

• 1:32:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Followed the money?

• 1:32:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, we set them up. We, we went to someone that knew them and they, they said, come over and they came in. And it's a long story, but what ended up happening was we robbed them. One of them had a handgun that we didn't know about. My friend got shot. I got shot at, dumped a clip trying to catch me, uh, coming out of this house. My friend got shot in the chest through here. My other friend got shot through his hand. And, um, and they took off at everyone dispersed and, uh, and it was this crazy situation, you know? And so in my head, I'm like, I'm gonna fuck, kill this kid. This kid's dead. Like you're gonna shoot at me, try to kill me. And, uh,

• 1:33:37Anthony Pompliano?

  That was the first time you shot it?

• 1:33:38Speaker 07

  No.

• 1:33:41Speaker 07

  But in that situation, I'm like, it's on, right? And now I got filled with anger. I'm filled with hate. He ends up getting pinched because some of the other people tell on him. He goes to prison for six years for this. That kid, I put him, listen, my, this is the shift in perspective of old self is dead, new self is different, a totally different perspective. At the time, we on the street, you shot him and you tried to kill me. Fuck you. I go through this recovery process and I start to wake up to some truth around it. And I said, this guy was, you know, in the same life that I was, but I placed him in a position where he needed to defend himself. And as a result, that cost him six years of incarceration.

• 1:34:20Speaker 07

  He went in as a, you know, I think a nineteen, twenty year old dude and came out twenty five, twenty six after doing state prison time. And the state, no one told, but the state prosecuted him off the medical records and, you know, they had enough evidence, but no one testified. And, um, And so I write this, I, you know, I go through this recovery process and like I went from, I want to kill this kid to like, fuck, I feel really bad for him. Feel a lot of compassion for what I did for him. And so I'm ready to make this amends and, um, and I got to this place of forgiveness with him and ownership of my side of the street. I don't know where

• 1:35:00Speaker 07

  he is. And, um, and you know, a lot of people live on the street. We don't have big social profiles. Like, you know what I mean? We're hard to find intentionally. And so my friend dies and I go to the funeral or the wake or whatever it was. And then I go to the after thing and there's a big bonfire and it's at night and I walk up to this fire and I sneak between two people. It's like shadowy and you can't really see, you know? And I looked to my right and it's him. Wow. And I'm like, and he looks at me and I look at him and we're both like this. I go, can I talk to you? I put my hands out, body language.

• 1:35:42Speaker 07

  He goes, yeah, we can talk. And I walk off and I make my approach. He says, you know, I appreciate that and I was wrong too. And me and him shake hands as men and, um, and you know, one last thing to worry about on the street and we're all good. I think the funny thing about the amends process and the spiritual journey and the path is like it places you in positions that you can't see. You just have to blindly do the work and have the faith and, and like, you know, you don't know. I got this cat working for me. He moves from Maryland to take a job for me. There's a city. It's like a top 10 worst city in the country. I used to run, I grew up right outside. It's called Lawrence, Massachusetts. It's like a drug heath and like gangs. It's bad. Spent a lot of time

• 1:36:25Speaker 07

  there. And I'm telling him about it on like a Sunday afternoon. I'm like, yeah. He's like, bro, let's go for a ride. And they got good Spanish food down there. So we went down to the hood and I'm driving around the hood and just telling stories with this guy that I'm friends with that took a job for me. And I'm driving down Broadway, years later, and I see him and he's walking with some prostitute and he's about 50 pounds underweight. He's strung out on drugs. And I'm like, holy fuck. And I bust a Uwe in the middle of the street. I roll up on him. I'm like, bro, I jump out of the truck. And he just puts his head down. And I'm like, what's going on? And he spills beans. He's like, I did a fucked up. I'm living on the street. I can't stop shooting dope, smoking crack. Fuck this hooker, fuck your girlfriend, you know, like, it's a mess.

• 1:37:11Speaker 07

  And I'm like, get in. And, um, you know, we were able to get him to treatment. We were able to get him to recovery. It placed me in a position to be useful to him. And he's sober today. He's in recovery. Yeah, he's living a good life.

• 1:37:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When you think of this process, like that story you just told, what immediately jumps to mind for me is, um, Delonte West. I don't know if this is, he's a NBA player, former NBA player who, um, on multiple occasions, because he former NBA player. So people know who he is, uh, who are into the sports or whatever. And, um, uh, if I remember correctly, there was a photo a couple of years ago that went super viral online, uh, cause he was at a red light begging for money. And, uh, people were like, whoa, fall from grace, right? You go from playing the NBA to now, you know, you're on the street. And, uh, there's a whole bunch of people who tried to help. I think even, uh, there's a story, Mark Cuban, like got in his car or something.

• 1:38:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And I went and found him and like, God, hey, we'll, we'll help you. You know, we use the mass facility. Well, whatever we got, we, you know, it's got billions of dollars. Like, we will do what is necessary.

• 1:38:19Speaker 07

  Every resource available.

• 1:38:22Anthony Pompliano?

  They sent him to a, a treatment center and there was like some photos that came out. He was like riding horses. I mean, like the, the full blown, probably $50,000 a year, you know, uh, we're going to get you, going to get you well. Couple of months later, photos again, he's back on the street.

• 1:38:35Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:38:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And so I think about like, your friend who you saw on the street, you were able to get him sober.

• 1:38:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Doesn't sound like you sent him to a $50,000 a year facility. Doesn't sound like, you know, he was going viral on the internet, any of this stuff. In that situation, it seems like somebody like a Mark Cuban did everything he possibly could. You couldn't ask somebody to do more, right? What do you think is the difference as to why one person ends up being sober and the other one doesn't? Is it just something that they have to want it? Or is there something else?

• 1:39:06Speaker 07

  I mean, they have to want it. They have to do the work, but they also have to be given the proper guidance and direction of what work to do. And so, you know, it really is situational. Them have to want it is huge, you know? Drag the horse to water type of thing. But what's interesting in that is people in recovery can speak to people with this condition in a manner, a language of the heart that nobody else can. Like, I've been here, I've been through that, I'm on the other side of it, and it's really meaningful. You know, and in a broader context, I like to tell people that your pain, your trauma, we all go through it. We're all living a human experience.

• 1:39:51Speaker 07

  We all got something that hurts, right? And, um, and maybe that's a gift, you know? Whatever you've been through uniquely qualifies you to help people that go through that.

• 1:40:04Speaker 07

  But what, you know, one of the things that's interesting to tie in the business aspect to this about now the addiction treatment center business starts to boom off of the Affordable Healthcare Act. Private equity companies and groups and financial institutions start to flood in. And, and, you know, they get slaughtered on their first round and more in the modern day, they're smarter money. But the next frontier that, that private equity groups have to figure out in order to be successful in this business is, is that. And what I mean by that, and I've had management meetings and met with plenty of groups and I'm like, listen, until you guys in your suits and your Harvard MBAs,

• 1:40:49Speaker 07

  until you guys figure out that that kid with a criminal record and a face tattoo, who's an employee. Is one of the most important people in this facility, you're gonna fuck this business up over and over and over again. Cause what they're doing is they're coming in, you look at what they do. They, they buy veterinary clinics, dentists, um, you know, these different healthcare urgent care clinics, and they consolidate and they systemize and they KPI up to death and they sterilize the business and everything is process driven and blah, blah, blah. This is a business that must include the language of the heart. And it's like a different, those guys don't do a good job all the time. Some do, but really understanding that piece of it.

• 1:41:32Speaker 07

  That, you know, when you buy a veterinary clinic, you don't need a dog to help dogs. You know what I mean?

• 1:41:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:38Speaker 07

  And you don't have to be a tooth to be a dentist. But in this, like you need people in recovery. You have to have that language of the heart. And so it's a lot of the trouble that the financial markets and private equity groups are having and figuring it out about this business and how to scale and consolidate, you know?

• 1:41:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Also, it sounds like maybe your star employee doesn't look like your star employee in some of these other businesses.

• 1:41:59Speaker 07

  That's what I mean.

• 1:42:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 1:42:00Speaker 07

  And so they come in and they see that guy's a threat and they see this one that has a degree and a master's degree in, is a therapist. They're like, oh, star employee, bad. That guy has criminal record and purple hair. You know, and they, they start to do what they do in other businesses and they sterilize them. And, um, you know, with the patient facing and the people that are actually going to help the people that go in there. Um, you know, it takes an army, it takes a village, but those people are incredibly powerful and you need them.

• 1:42:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. If somebody's watching this right now and they're addicted to any substance, what is like the one or two things that you think is important for them to hear?

• 1:42:40Speaker 07

  That here's the promise of recovery, that you never have to use drugs or alcohol again.

• 1:42:49Speaker 07

  But what's even more meaningful is you never have to want to. And so that you can absolutely live a life of freedom, freedom from the obsession to drink and drug, and freedom from the pain of what sobriety is, if you're willing and able to do the work.

• 1:43:08Speaker 07

  You know, that that is absolutely possible for you. And that if you can do the work, that you have no, I mean, well, I got sober when 16 years ago, on the run for armed robbery amongst a bunch of other crap. A fucking degenerate that didn't have a single friend in the world. I had no idea my life was ending up like this. One foot in front of the other, do the work, persevere, and you just have no idea how God's gonna use you and what this thing's gonna look like.

• 1:43:37Anthony Pompliano?

  It's um, it's powerful, right? You had the experience and and I think part of uh, what is true of most businesses is the founder, they have to care. They have to understand, right? They they see the problem, they feel the problem, they know how to solve the problem. And many times, you know, all the like bullshit uh, mantras online or whatever, you know, solve your problem or whatever. What is so unique about your story is that your problem, yeah, a lot of other people had it. But every single one of those people have their own story. They have their own experience, they have their specific thing that is gonna be the breakthrough, right? How many times did somebody try to help you before you wanted to do it? Before you found the thing that worked for you?

• 1:44:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, it's such a unique thing. It's not like, hey, everyone needs a, you know, fucking piece of software to do Excel. Like, okay, got it, it counts. This is a much more personal, emotional thing. And uh, while that is more challenging, it's also much more valuable when you figure it out, as you guys did, which I think, you know, people kinda, it's a hard business, it seems like, right?

• 1:44:43Speaker 07

  It's a very hard business.

• 1:44:44Anthony Pompliano?

  But uh, I think it can be very valuable when you figure it out.

• 1:44:47Speaker 07

  I agree. It's a labor of love.

• 1:44:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Where can we send people to find you online if they want to learn more?

• 1:44:52Speaker 07

  Instagram is the best place, at Eric Spofford. Find me there.

• 1:44:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Listen, thank you so much for doing this.

• 1:44:59Speaker 07

  Appreciate you.

• 1:45:00Anthony Pompliano?

  We definitely want to do it again in the future, as you go build the business all over again.

• 1:45:03Speaker 07

  That's it. Crazy.