Leadership – How Addiction, Awakening, & Vulnerability made Todd Stumbo a Leader w/ Sarah Pritchard

Hey guys on today’s episode we have our friend Todd Stumbo. He’s the founder of Thoroughbred Wellness and Recovery and we talk a lot about how recovery and business and entrepreneurship align with each other and the principles that go along with it. He talks a lot about being his true authentic self and the challenges that come with that but also the amazing gifts so tune in it’s a good one. Welcome to Impacting Recovery Uncensored. I’m your host Sarah Pritchard. This is a podcast where we dive deep into the real uncensored truths about addiction, recovery, and everything in between. No sugarcoating, no judgment, just honest conversations that can help lift up the solution. So let’s get started today. Today I’m very excited we have our friend and founder of Thoroughbred Wellness and Recovery, Todd Stumbo. How are you? Good, thanks for having me. Yes, thank you for coming. I’m excited because you know today we on on our shows we talk a lot about people’s stories and their recovery and of course we’re going to get into all that but something that I think you’re a wonderful example of is how recovery influences the way you approach business and entrepreneurship and how they go kind of hand in hand and and so I think it’ll be an interesting conversation today around that if you’re if you’re game. Yeah, open book. Yeah, well I guess before we get into the business so I will and I’ll preface this by saying I know you because you were running the treatment center that I went to 10 years ago and I just you know I didn’t know you very well but I do remember you doing a group and I don’t remember what you said but I do remember the way I felt after of just like this guy is like just that you just had this like aura of like this works and you’re very serious about it but it was it was just a very like refreshing group I just remember being like I wish he did more groups around here when I was there but and so since then we have a lot of mutual friends and I’ve known your wife for a very long time so it’s just it’s fun that you’re here and you made the trip over. Well I’m very proud of you you’ve come a long way I mean that’s a it’s a huge testament to be able to go to a center and then accomplish what you’ve accomplished in such a short period of time so congrats to you. Yeah well thank you it’s a it took a village and you were a part of it thank you but yes it’s appreciate that but yeah so before like I said before we get into your business the businesses and all that tell us a little bit about you know your story where you grew up you know kind of what that looked like growing up before the drugs and alcohol. You know it’s odd I was telling somebody the other day I don’t quite remember my childhood like it’s a weird thing I think my sister one of my sisters is the same way but I grew up in southeastern Kentucky so kind of the mountains of the Appalachia you know area and it’s a super small town I think when I was there I always saw the sign said 900 people this might be at a thousand now you know it may even be less than that after the floods that’s where it got kind of decimated but it was it’s pretty impoverished town but also on the flip side of that it’s one of those weird it’s there’s a lot of poverty but there’s also a lot of wealth so whether it was a coal mines doctors attorneys those kind of things live there and you know I don’t I know this I know growing up I never needed anything like my family was super you know my dad’s a doctor my mom was a nurse I never needed for anything but the experiences I had in that hometown were one of like I never felt like I fit anywhere if that makes sense and I didn’t know any of that until after I got sober the the idea of feeling like you you are accepted somewhere you belong and then you become competent and who you are and what you’re capable of doing I never felt that and sometimes I I still don’t feel that within my own family unit at times just I can go home spend some time around them but I don’t still feel that’s like three or four days I’m like okay I need to get out but I remember early on that you know my family my dad mom they didn’t drink or anything like that but my best friends family did we lived on the side of a mountain maybe 150 200 yards apart there’s no other people on that mountain and so we just grew up in the hills I mean it was very different this today like six years old we’re riding four-wheelers and you know off the dinner bell they’d ring it for us come home and his dad would always his dad always perceived him as being super mean just had this face about him but he’d come home and he would get the what we called funny juice out of the cabinet so you know like a mason jar full clear liquid so we’re drinking it he’d become the funniest guy I’d ever seen so at six you’re like oh this is funny juice let’s try some to see if it makes us funny you know and so we get the baby little glasses he used all that we go down in his basement and you know we indulge ourself in the funny juice and quickly yeah quickly realized that yeah it is a different now but it quickly realized like hey there’s something different about this you know good moonshine he doesn’t burn until it hits your stomach yeah sure enough we were drunk and sick very quickly and our parents are like you know it’s one of those like oh my god how did this happen they got into the thing and they just kind of put well for me I and I think my best friend it triggered something because we turned into absolute Hellcats the rest of our adolescent you know from still in beer huffing gas I mean you name it we were in it and you know that was primarily what I remember a lot about just that portion of my childhood again I never that I experienced like any kind of at the time I didn’t view it as trauma you know because you just this is part of being a man you just deal with these things and go on and grow up and you know it just never registered to me some of the stuff that the reason I kept on indulging in that stuff was because I didn’t feel that that I was accepted anywhere I belonged anywhere I was one of the I always say one of the only two redheaded people in my town and I get I didn’t get my sister got told how beautiful her hair was that was not what I got told you know so it at an early age I learned to how do I change who I am to meet or fit within society’s kind of box and and to draw no attention or become somebody that everybody likes so you know I would shave my head and and I remember playing ball my mom would bag me and try to pay me to grow my hair out because they just loved the red hair and I wouldn’t do it I kept the straight razor I’d shave it off every day I’m putting shaving cream on shaving it off and she’s like listen you don’t understand I have to listen to all these opposing moms on other teams talk about how brave number 13 is playing with cancer you know since here I am pale white redhead yeah and I would have rather you thought I had cancer than know that I had red hair I mean I hated it that bad and it you know looking back now it created a pretty hard wedge between me and what I choose to call my creator because the question why would you why would you make me like this you know to where I get made fun of all the time you know all this kind of stuff and so it wasn’t that I didn’t believe in a higher power I was just I was pissed off at it and you know where I was from you got made to go to church and all these kind of things so that didn’t help with it and by the age 18 I had spiraled into an absolute disaster you know and and by 22 first treatment by 24 drug-induced psychosis been arrested for armed robbery strong armed robbery I’m going to treatment you know and and kind of life changed at that point yeah that’s so crazy so you so when you had that drink at six it pretty much it like there weren’t a lot of gaps like it was continuing I mean I’m sure you weren’t drink obviously drinking every day at six years old yeah no but we were still in cigarettes I mean it was like it was just not necessarily the alcohol and drug consumption as much as the behaviors that came with it of stealing things stealing road signs still in rocks at cars I mean just were an absolute nuisance to society and as we aged it was like hey how do I how do I either calm that side of myself or actually pour fuel on the fire and what I learned was alcohol caused fuel on the fire I became aggressive angry opiates calmed it so it was like okay I don’t want to be the one I drank tequila like I became an absolute terror and I didn’t want to be that guy so it’s like the opiates were in Xanax’s and all that’s the way to go for me just kind of chill out right yeah and so did like when you were growing up did you have like any dreams or you know like in school they’re like when you want to be when you grow up was it did you have any yeah my dream was always to play professional baseball I mean it was always I call it now after doing some work on myself with a coach and how we got to start thoroughbred was I had to look at that back pocket dream because I don’t know at what age we get but at some age in our life we we put that away and we stopped living in that that creative side of ourself that daydreaming and the possibilities and we just now turn to what we’re supposed to do in the world and you know it takes part of your soul you know so I always wanted to play pro ball and and I mean I had the opportunities to do it I just for this lack of a better way to put I chose drugs and alcohol over that experience you know and I went to talent showcases all over the country and and had the again the ability and the opportunities but then at some point for whatever reason drugs and alcohol became more important than that you know and so it kind of slowly that disappeared things unraveled I know well and I mean I was never going to be same for me with cheerleading like I did competitive cheerleading I loved it it was my favorite thing and my alcoholism wasn’t fully progressed at this point but when I was going to college I may have mentioned this on another episode but when I was going to college we I tried out for the coach and he watched me tumble and he was like okay you made the team but you just have to decide like do you want to be it down on the field cheering or do you want to be up in the stands with a beer and I was like thank you for bringing that to my attention I never thought of this before like see you later cheerleading I’m going to be in those stands and that probably was you know because I loved that part of my life and so it’s interesting how that will just you know the alcohol and the drugs just get bigger and bigger over time what it’s like it I don’t know how to explain it’s like the authentic self is like where I felt the most alive was playing baseball and on that field yet when I consume drugs and alcohol because I thought if I mix the two that made the most sense initially which obviously doesn’t work out long term but it was do I want the feeling of feeling most alive or do I want to get rid of the voices in my head that that caused the pain which is itches which is more right and so and it wasn’t a conscious decision it was just like oh so when I do this I don’t have to deal with these things and that’s better than just playing baseball right you know yeah and so in overtime the self-talk went from rationalizing well you can’t you can’t play baseball the rest of your life like you got to figure out something else to do and then the other parts well that sucks yeah I don’t want to do anything so I’m just going to get high and so just stayed in that cycle yeah and so when I guess when did you realize that you did have a problem with everything um that’s hard to say because I don’t know that I viewed it as I was the problem as much as I viewed it as everybody else now when I went to jail the last time and when it slipped into psychosis I was fully aware something bad had occurred I was like oh this is not good because I would come out of the psychosis for a minute and I when you know that you’re crazy it’s like well something bad has went down here yeah so I knew there was a problem at that point and when my family they got me out of jail because I’d I was in pretty rough shape and they took me to the for the treatment center in Georgia and I woke up like three or four weeks into it I had no idea what state I was in where I was at you know and I had delusions for months after that of things that never happened but they were real to me yeah and I knew that I didn’t want to go back to smoking crack or anything I knew that you know but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be sober either because I didn’t know what that entailed you know like why I know I don’t want that but I’m not 100% sure I want what you’ve got and what was wild is you hear the saying all the time you can lead a horse to water you can’t make it drink and I get that but what I experienced is the idea of you can lead a man to a well make him thirsty and so I was in this treatment center long enough I stayed around it long enough that I saw these other men that were genuinely happy and had a debt they were well I will say they were at peace I wouldn’t even say happy but it’s it’s more of a contentment and peace with their life and I was like I’ve been around long enough know that guy’s not lying about it at this point he’s not putting it on so what does he have and how do I get that right you know and so it it took a few months for me to get to that space where I was thirsty enough to have a life that was different than what I was currently experiencing was kind of just a stalemate of like I don’t want to go back but I also don’t want to go forward right yeah I’ve never heard it put that way but that’s a good way of putting it in and also how the contentment piece and not necessarily like happy all the time because I think that can get an early sobriety that can get people tripped up a little bit because it’s like if I’m not happy then I’m sad and I got to change the way I feel and I can’t handle this and like no we can move through these things even though they’re painful but drinking the drug is you know we can be content and at peace even though it’s hard one it’s I tell people all the time cycle you get asked hey are you happy and it’s like well if you are happy then sadness has to be around because you can’t have one without the other but could you be serene and serenity is not the absence of conflict it’s the ability to cope with it so I always looked at my life is there can I chase serenity you know what I mean and what does that look like for me how do I get to a space where I understand life is full of challenges and I don’t try to medicate myself when I face a challenge I just look as did I can go through the storm completely serene and know because the book tells us that that we’ll be able to deal with situations that once baffled us and that was I would hear those promises and be like do this is like if that’s real that’s what I want you know because for me it wasn’t I know a lot of people do that I was the not step promises what kept me in in the rooms that always meant the world to me to hear somebody saying those over and over because I want that you know if you could put it in a bottle and say here’s what getting sober and recoveries about that for me early on that’s what it was yeah it’s like how do I have that experience right and so and so you got out of treatment and then did you start working in the substance abuse industry right away not right away I was actually a pilot and going to kind of follow my brother brothers footsteps to become a commercial pilot well we have the background I had the FAA’s not too keen on that so they ended up grounding me and I went through this HIMSS program so it’s a monitoring five-year monitoring as well because it was you know here I am trying to do all the right things and then all of a sudden the thing I’m trying to do to move my life forward and the person I’m supposed to become to be a pilot because I was still focused on the external and not the man I’m supposed to be versus here I’m gonna go do this and it got taken so here I am on hold and I’m like God I don’t you know why is this happening yeah so I went back and volunteered at the treatment center I went through to do some of their recreational stuff and I just fell in love with leaning against the other dudes and trying to help them navigate those challenges of life that they were up against and then I went from that to being an overnight tech to slowly working my way up which was the hardest thing I’d ever done cuz I had to look at my dad and say look I know that you paid all this money for flight school and I’m supposed to do this but I want to take a $10 an hour overnight job as a tech and it was the first time in my life my dad looked at me said son look I want you to do what blows your hair back I don’t want you to think you got to be a doctor a nurse or all these things because my whole family was like high achievers and then there was me and I wasn’t the go-to-school guy I wasn’t any of that I was the complete opposite of I didn’t like gangs fraternities groups I’m like solo leave me and my love languages don’t touch me leave me alone you know so I had to start to find like okay this makes me feel alive internally and you know I just worked my way up the chain of doing that to become the operations director the clinical director end up leaving that program went to another one and was a clinical director there the place you went through and they ended up becoming a CEO there and then just back in June left that program started my own yeah that’s crazy well and I I’m so glad you share about the the growth of that because I mean and I’m sure you see it too with clients that you’ve seen in the past but and I think it’s a natural thing for us as addicts and alcoholics like we get to treatment we get sober Mike I want to work in the industry like I want to start a treatment center I want to do this and and I remember this last time when I got sober and I was a couple months sober and I was sitting down with Lindsay and I was like I want to do something like sober living or data and she was like that’s great definitely do that if you want but just know like that’s not the service the book is talking about and like that’s different than getting a paycheck kind of thing and I’m so glad she told me that because I can so see how and this is totally off topic but just like how people in this industry relax rates are high and all that I can totally see how that’s a thing because you kind of pour your whole heart into into that work and not do like the true service work but also the starting kind of from the bottom where a lot of you know a lot of people that I’ve met over the years like they just want to get out of treatment go start their own like work your way up learn like see how everything you know works and operates and so that’s like very you know kudos to you for you know going with your intuition the book talks about this like six cents like leaning into that and instead of what you were supposed to do well and the thing that it is like I don’t for me the experience I look at it is it wasn’t really about like a lot of people say that’s like hey and they may have that mentality of like I want to go start a treatment center to help people that was not my my mindset so I’m a built-in creative I love to build and grow and help other people build and grow so I didn’t necessarily care what the lane was I just knew I had to lead and I that terrified me because I am NOT like going back to my childhood of having red hair filling an oddball out all these things I never viewed myself as that what I now felt that was that God was calling me to lead not follow because I’ve followed most of my life and there is a part of followership that you have to learn but now you’re saying look I need you in a different position and I’m going to use the vessel called substance abuse mental health treatment to do that but for me what I’ve learned over the 20 years of doing it is it was it was never about the actual job or industry so to speak it was I know the lane and so this makes sense to stay in it and do it here but it was like how much can I grow as a leader and come into my own authentic self which I’ve never done in my entire life and even when I go to these talent showcases to play ball I was not the guy that volunteered first or tried to stand out and then in my brain I would I would judge all the people that are doing that you know make out he’s just trying to you know and those are the guys that made it and so then it became so how do you get into the leadership role and how do you stand out and be yourself despite what everybody else says in this specific industry or whatever it is how do you show up and that was where I started to have to develop kind of my philosophy of leadership and got into servant leadership transformational leadership and it’s those have been two of the vessels that I’ve used in in my own life to move myself forward yeah yeah I love that and so would you say that’s the most influential those two things like approaches for your business and your career of how you yeah because servant leadership matches up with similar to you know it’s the principles of a 12-step program the spiritual principles anyway of a 12-step program they they correlate straight over to business practices I mean it’s it’s a mirrored image you would if you read down the spiritual principle yeah I’d love to work for a business that has that right and so I mean it can have others but it was that was the easy transition because in the book it that specifies something that says these words in all my affairs and so what I knew about me prior to getting sober was I couldn’t do anything but destroy things in all my affairs I was never the same person like I’d sit in front of my parents and be one guy my siblings and be another guy my friends and be another guy you know and you had all these lies that you had to keep going well what a freeing kind of thought that what if I was just this one guy in all my affairs whether it’s business whether it’s at home whether it’s in a you know a church or whatever you do and I have the same set of principles that I impose across my entire life if I’m on a softball team if I’m in the gym all of that stuff yeah and so that’s what I started to try to practice and what it did was it’s like have you ever heard of the sit decision fatigue so like all the the big-time CEOs and all these they don’t they have the same clothes so they may go out and buy like 15 of the same shirt because they don’t want to even have to waste the energy on making a decision on what to wear it’s just this I just wear this if you ever look at Steve Jobs that you wore the same stuff all the time right so it’s the same thing is why would I want to expend the energy trying to be this different guy in all avenues of my life when I could just come up with 10 to 12 sets of spiritual principles that I impose across every aspect of my life made life so much easier you know so it was like you know I didn’t have to keep the helium balloons up in the air all the time right you know I could just be this guy no matter what and in servant leadership you know it there’s all different kinds of avenues to do it but like for me I read a book called the servant by James Hunter which just I don’t read fast and I read this book in a weekend and and the guy that had a spiritual experience at the end I cried when I read what he was like that’s exactly what I need to experience you know as a human and as a person so that kind of kicked it off for me you know which over the years has led to all different kinds of things we got into the brought this idea of Damon West he’s in recovery you ought to try to get him on this podcast one time but he’s the original creator of a story called the bean and so he got it’s all about kind of servant leadership too and he goes around the country and preaches it but ultimately the story came down to Damon was you know like a meth addict out in Texas and all this came from a great family it’s like a five-star recruit in football got injured got on opiates I think it was and it just kind of took him down the path well he even worked in in the Capitol or the White House at one point on yeah no he was like made it way up got turned on the cocaine and methamphetamine and his whole life fell apart he ended up getting he became part of some ring out in Texas that was robbing he’s called the uptown bandits I think there’s all over the news and and he when he tells the story he talks about the last day he remembers like SWAT comes in his apartment and they’re like his guardian angels because they plucked him out of sure death you know and took him to jail and so he goes to jail and he’s sitting in front of the judge when they come to sentence him and you know the judge is tapping his gavel and he’s like already sent him they sentenced him in to life in prison for nonviolent crimes which is a pretty hardcore thing go to maximum security prison state of Texas yeah the worst place you could possibly end up because there’s nobody was ever home not that he didn’t do damage to people but they weren’t home when they robbed him and all that so he’s trying to prep to go into prison he’s in County Jail and he meets this guy well he’s going around everybody’s telling him dude you got to get in a gang to survive you know there’s no way you’re gonna go to maximum security prison not and survive without a gang his mom said look I want you to make two promises no tattoos and no hate gangs like white supremacy any of that so he kept telling it’s like I can’t do it I told my mom you know all that people would laugh at him over it but then he met this guy he calls him I think mr. Jackson and mr. Jackson says hey man look don’t listen to those yahoos and he’s like if you want to survive prison you got to become an independent and he’s like what that what are you talking about he’s like you’re gonna have to fight every gang to become that independent and he’s like here’s here’s the deal what prison does to you he’s like he tells him the story of the carrot the egg and the coffee bean he’s like so when you go into prison you can go in like a carrot you know hard and unrelenting thinking you’re a tough guy you spend enough time in there it will weaken you it softens you and you ultimately will die you know or you can go in as the egg you got this hard out outer shell but you got a really soft heart genuine person prison takes the idea of love away from you it doesn’t exist the only language in prison is violence and that’s it so you can become that hardened egg or you can go in as a coffee bean and Damon’s like what do you what do you mean a coffee bean and he’s like well think of this if you put that coffee bean in a pot of boiling hot water like he did the carrot or the egg which is called prison what happens to that water what turns into coffee so so the very circumstance that was meant to change that coffee bean didn’t it didn’t change it the coffee bean actually changed the circumstance and so he got this idea of how do I go in be a coffee bean you know and how do I carry and it took you a while to understand the concept of it and a lot of times you’ll hear the story they don’t tell it in former prison it’s more of a little girl and her mom in the kitchen and they got three pots of boiling water that kind of thing but how do I show up as a coffee bean because my job is not to necessarily serve you as a person it’s for me to serve the environment that I’m in you know it’s like if you ever walked in a room and you got somebody that just brings this energy in the room and you’re like okay well that changed the dynamic you know and so I had to quit looking at servant leadership always as about who do I help outside of myself because it really is not about that it’s about a selfishness from within how do I change the negative environment that lives inside of me because we all have it right the self-talk on so if I can’t change that I can’t be of service to you but if I can change it and I can live by that principle of always trying to bring a positive energy and not just some you know flu flu oh let’s all smile it but a true definiteness of purpose like I deeply believe in what I stand for in the direction I’m going it will change the environment around you yeah you know and that’s what true servant leadership’s about it’s not people get it mixed up of like hey let me go and find somebody and serve them and that’s not it because you can go do that you look at Ryland Williams look at all the people he served with his humor yet he lived internally a miserable life right and so I didn’t want to do that and so from servant leadership to transformational the only way you get there is you understand that servant leadership starts on the inside and if I can change what’s going on in here and then here and create what’s called brain and heart coherence where they flow together now I’ve got an energy a sphere about me that vibrates differently and for me it came off as authenticity like now I can go around former guys and girls that I was in school with or using with and I I feel no sense of like I don’t fit in because I don’t it doesn’t matter if I fit in or not in fact I don’t want to fit in I want people say God that guy’s a lot you know I mean I want the vibration they said well I don’t know what it is but I want to be around the dude right you know yeah well and that just goes hand-in-hand with like the recovery piece of like writing inventory making amends because that’s what I didn’t get for so long was how much was going on internally that I really wasn’t even aware of because I just lived that way my whole life and then when I’m so worked up on the inside then yes on the outside I’m not or I’m not of service or I’m just not here yeah because I’m in my mind and so that’s really neat how that just goes like when your vibration is different so like if you get scientifically like with that thoroughbred the reason we use the horse is because of the heart waves so it’s scientifically proven we all heard studies of brainwaves right but nobody really talks about the heart wave and so the heart wave Joe disbanded did some work around it and what they saw was people that did lived in deep gratitude put off a three and a half to five meter wide vibration that impacted other people in the room like they were studying people that weren’t even talking to these people then they showed the chronic suicidality depression all that almost had zero heart wave vibrating off of them so it’s like is my job in life to hide and shy away from who I’m supposed to be because those people around me that may struggle with depression suicidality whatever maybe my heart wave is meant to impact them to vibrate they through them and create a different experience they may not even know what happens but so I started learning that about a horse that wait a second the horse’s heart wave is so much stronger than ours that if I walk up against it with a heart rhythm of anxiety it actually can change the rhythm of my heart by the way it beats so that was the whole premise of why we use that thoroughbred and I’m from Kentucky so it kind of made sense but it was moving people from the idea of because this is where I struggled in recovery was it’s about the way I think I had somebody respond to a post of mine about oh we’re trying to work on mind and body you know you’re really not my mind is sick like I don’t I don’t want to work on that what I’m trying to do is create a heart inside myself that overpowers the way that I think because the way I think is toxic I mean at 21 years sober I can still walk in a pharmacy and think about I could probably get in here you know I mean it’s insanity so I don’t want mind and body connection what I want to do is is connect with my soul that inner being that energy that God gives us that I believe God gives us that that creates the vibration that impacts people around us and it it was took me years to get to a belief where that was possible you know it’s like okay now I’m just supposed to think my way through this put my thoughts on paper and you know I mean and it just didn’t ever work right so I had to kind of up the game and look at it like how do I connect the brain and the heart yeah how do I get to that point yeah no I love that and we are Kathleen she’s been on here our clinical lead she has a farm and horses and she does a lot of work with veterans yeah and and so she’s and I’m slowly starting to learn more about the horses and everything and she shared like a little on that and she could talk about it for hours but that’s I mean that’s just like so cool and so and so that’s the the horses that y’all have in Georgia it’s that at the is that going to be at those yeah they’ll be at both locations right now we have it at our outpatient and we’re building the barn for the the other location but it’s you know it’s just a tool and and so the whole the whole goal that I struggle with when I got sober was so you and everybody sees it so the here’s the crazy part about how I guess the spiritual principles in recovery correlate over to businesses and we do it as is industry leaders to you see it all the time as we talk more negatively about programs than anything like it baffles me it’s like well isn’t in our our kind of rules or guidelines as a person in recovery we’re not really supposed to dive into the gossip and you know I mean all this kind of stuff I’m supposed to focus on self right and so what I’ve always tried to challenge people to do is like look I’m not that worried about so-and-so down the street or that I don’t engage in that so I don’t have any reason to go tell them how to do what they need to do I’ve got to focus on me and taking this the principles of 12 steps and moving them over to business I think it’s one of the easiest transitions you can make it’s like do we practice with this level of honesty are you constantly going back and doing an inventory I mean it’s all the same stuff right and it’s it makes sense to do it that way because it’s the the spiritual principles of the heartbeat of your recovery as are the of the business so for people out there that come and they say I went to this treatment this treatment this treatment this treatment didn’t work those are the people I want because the reality of it is is it probably had very little to do with that treatment center it’s the wildest thing we get blamed for the lack of success that somebody may or may not have now there are some places probably that could be blamed but for the most part if you got diabetes you come to a doctor and I say well look I need you to take this medicine I need you to change the way you eat I need you to exercise and I outline but you got to do these things you leave you don’t you died does that doctor get blamed right no he doesn’t get blamed same thing and I think it’s a lie it’s it’s an ignorance within our industry that people don’t understand you can have the most well-known trained trauma therapist in the world and they can do work with somebody give them the tools that that person does not utilize those tools and other things in their life they and don’t live by set of spiritual principles they’re not going to survive it right so thoroughbred I beg for the people that have tried to get sober seven eight nine times because what I’ve correlated it to is is like I was telling y’all the other day is the idea of somebody not living their authentic self is the only thing I can come to the conclusion of that that’s why they can’t stay sober they got a sponsor they’re working the steps they’re going to meetings yet they keep drinking well why is that you know well it’s because you got a creative personality that’s teaching history it doesn’t make any sense so at what point as a professional is it my responsibility to say hey it sounds like you know how to do the program what you don’t know how to do is live as your authentic self and it might mean you walking away from the job that you love and it terrifies you because that’s been your security because of the money or whatever and I get it because I had to do that right but it’s the most freeing thing that I’ve ever experienced in my life to live authentically and say this is what God designed me to do right now in my life now it doesn’t mean a year from now I won’t have an epiphany to go do something else but right now my design was to leave corporate comfort and chase this dream yeah that was what I was designed to do and though there’s pieces that are unknown it’s that’s that’s that definiteness of purpose and faith that you know I have to live by this there’s no doubt God’s God’s going to take care of me there’s gonna be bumps but I’m gonna be serene through the process you know and I think the only way I do that in a business is because of the foundational spiritual principles of recovery and a lot of people don’t think they go hand in hand I see people all the time that they’re very kind and gentle in recovery but they are ruthless in business I just don’t can’t operate that way you know it’s it’s where I just had to make amends to somebody the other day with with the state of Georgia that has nothing to do with recovery but I felt like I handled a situation wrong so I have to come there like this is kind of weird but I had to do that for me and the business yeah that makes sense yes well and it’s so unique how well one you’re like give me the guy that’s been the treatment nine times and knows the technicality of the steps and all that but when we were talking about this yesterday like that was such an epiphany of like this person teaching who needs to like you you witnessed and you saw in him like hey this isn’t working for you and you challenge that and it just kind of reminded me in the book when it talks about like we’re uniquely qualified like yeah because of the experience you had not being the pilot and working $10 an hour $12 an hour whatever it was and then being here now it’s like you can spot it yeah you can help those people because you’re your authentic self well you can try to help it’s like in that case the person chose not to take the job yeah and they continue to drink and here’s the sad part is that’s okay because that’s their their life I can’t I can’t live and die by how well that person does my job is to bring myself a hundred percent to the table and say I’m giving you everything I got to help you move out of that space in that life and if you then choose not to do it I can’t take you any further you know and I don’t think people understand that about this industry is we we cannot it’s not like I can go in your brain and pull out what’s causing the issue and give you what you need back it doesn’t work that way it’s right we give you a set of tools and an environment to change the way you look at the world and the way you think and be willing to be bold brave and authentic and if you’re not I can’t that’s not my responsibility you know and it’s it’s hard for families and all that because you see it all the time a person comes in they get great treatment they go back out relapse and die and who gets the blame yeah the facility you know and it’s just sad because what it sets us up for and I’m sure you all get it is that initial call for help that client knows they need help yet it’s it’s the wildest thing who they’re calling they don’t even know and they already don’t trust them because of what’s getting publicized across the country about treatment yeah and it just is a sad thing to watch because there’s so many more good programs out there then there are bad and but nobody highlights those right you know and it’s just unfortunate yes no I agree I know it’s tough but yeah I mean and I don’t know that’s super important but um okay so let’s see I wanted to talk about the how you leverage mastermind group yeah yeah it’s a very it’s it’s a unique thing that I’ve never again it correlates over to 12-step program and having a sponsor and a home group and a lineage like that again most of my life I struggled with those things I mean I can sit there and tell you in my entire 21 years sober I’ve never had a home group and and again it’s not whether it’s right or wrong well I just have a hard time with that group thing that yet for whatever reason you know I just it was I got bullied a lot by groups like that so I never again go to the meetings I was there ever but that you know it’s like hey you’ll be part of the home group now I’ll pass I’ll just be that lone wolf off to the side well so as a business professional I started to face issues that I couldn’t talk about inside the industry because it felt like well the minute you bring that up all the sudden you know people are you know because you get in fear of like our referrals and this and that and I and I remember when it happened I was going through a divorce and so here I was I had the world by the tail just got named CEO I was finally graduating college because I was I had to become a CEO before I graduated college just to be able to tell my dad I told you I could do it so then I graduated got the four-year degree after 20 years and then got my master’s but I had the world by the tail and here my wife at the time was telling me hey I want a divorce because you’re not happy and I was like wait a minute I feel like you’re supposed to say that so I was in drift mode like I was just going to work but what I didn’t know is when I showed back up like she’d been drinking and all the stuff that I was unaware of because I would leave at 536 in the morning I wouldn’t get home till 11 12 at night six nights a week and so she’s in in bed in pajamas as normal what I know she’s doing that all day drinking whatever so we she tells me my safe space was home she tells me I’m sorry I’ll never say it again because my belief system said if you get a divorce you’re gonna lose everything die and go to hell that was the program that got scripted in me at a young age and it wasn’t running consciously it’s subconscious like if you ever feel it’s a trauma like if you feel these fibers in your body on edge and you just don’t know why yeah and so I fought to try to keep that in place because that was the fear of it I knew the marriage wasn’t gonna work like we weren’t compatible yet I fought to try because of that that underlying belief well over the course of two months she said it like seven more times to the point that one day I grabbed all my stuff and she’s like where are you going I was like I’m leaving and I’ll never forget my my oldest daughter she was five at the time and she didn’t know she just she looks at me like yeah dad get out and and it devastated me because here it hit me that how alone I really was at this point because I had I had nobody to turn to talk to because the fear of like what is it going to do the program I’m running what is it so I start to implode and yeah I’m working out three times a day I’m doing everything I can to run from God and hide and I didn’t know it because my thought was if I get small enough or busy enough he won’t know that I’m getting a divorce and therefore he won’t take everything I’m not gonna die and go to hell why I end up at 12 a little over 12 years sober laying on a bed in Town Lake Parkway this crappy house has rent and contemplating suicide you know and this is like real deal stuff you you struggle with in recovery like a lot of people think well it’s just once you’re sober I didn’t even think of using like it went straight to the world be better off if I just get this over with you know and so at the time my sponsor and some other people encouraged me to go to this program called onsite for three and a half day for a leadership thing and I was like I knew what they did they did experiential work and I was like look you know I want to pass on that I passed for like three years I finally go and for for three days I watched 12 men get up do their work and yeah I was vibrating because I had so much energy build up from 30 years of all the stuff I’ve never dealt with because I was a bad addict and alcoholic when I got sober just stopping drugs and alcohol and trying to do the next right thing dramatically changed my life right but here I was at 12 years facing traumas and internal programming systems that were driving me into the ground and I had no idea why yeah and so I go in and and we’re sitting there the last day comes the therapist Jim and Eli they’re like hey did everybody get a chance to go and the whole room like looks down the road me and I got listen it’s it’s 430 I’m good I’ll catch y’all the next year I promise I’ll go first and they’re like look man we’re not leaving until you go and so I was I was like minute trying to manipulate and thing well Jim he’s clinical I’ll get up and I’ll manipulate where we go well Jim hands it off to Eli and Eli the name Eli means your God and I wouldn’t do I was in trouble because he’s not only that but he had a white beard like the planted script of what God would look like here he is and I get up and and he’s like hey what do you want to talk about so I’ll start talking about surface level stuff he interrupts me midstream says hey tell me about your dad and I’m like what the heck this is not good and the next thing I know I’m sitting in a chair God is a cross for me in the room and I am yelling at him for all the things you’ve taken 30 of my friends why did you not take me why do I have to deal with all this stuff just anger pour out you know and what I experienced next was Eli I was like hey I want you to sit in God’s seat and you play God now and you you talk the talk and to this day I get chills talking about it I don’t know what I said but what I felt was this cylinder top thing come through the back of my chest and in every thing that weighed on me vanished in that my I’ve never felt anything like it all the scripts of you’re gonna you’re gonna get a divorce lose everything die and go to hell at all in a moment left and all I all our experiences was love and grace yeah you know it was that was it and from that point on it’s like how do I how do I keep this experience and I realized why I was around this group of men when I did it it’s not a solo job you know God does come that way but the vulnerability of putting yourself out there is where God really shows up in my life at least so that led me to get in and search for mastermind groups it’s basically a group of guys that come together or women they can be in there too I just happen to get into like a male version and it’s really there is some recovery guys in it but I needed a group that had nothing to do with that and so I got into it and they started to challenge me and and this one guy in particular named Aaron is a coach when he heard about where I was working and what I wanted to do it’s like he that’s where the whole back pocket dream thing came out again he’s like well I want to I want to do work with you and I was like man I can’t afford what you charge like I’ll do it totally free he’s like you’re on the edge and I want to be there to help walk you off and we sat down and started to go through that idea he said like what do you what is your dream and I gave him us like I want to run this do it’s like no no I’m talking about as a kid what is that dream and when I tell him play pro ball it’s like what 45 I’m not gonna do that but he what he said to me next is like look man what kind of man would you have to create to actually live that dream out like what would you have had to be what kind of man so I had to come up with 10 principles what was that guy then I had to define those without Webster without using my phone what did they mean to me because honesty your definition of honesty more than likely is actually programmed into you about what the world told you to think it is so he was trying to dismantle that entire system and so when we walk through that the conclusion I came to because at the end you develop this man and you have these principles and he’s like so is that a God you would want to serve and it’s it’s baffling because you’re like that’s exactly a God that I’d want to serve and so he taught the first lesson was God does live within you and those 10 things those are the spiritual gifts that God has given you the responsibility to live out and kind of thoroughbred three of those were being bold brave and authentic and that those it’s not a talent but that’s a gift that God has given me to go try to live out it’s terrifying because I don’t view myself as any of those three so I have to go do that in all my affairs right well then he had me draw this diagram is like hey I want you to write what’s distractions on this side priorities on this side what it looks like to live big and what it looks like to live small and what I found was everything I wanted to do in my life that was a priority and looked like me living big required me to sacrifice and give up all the things that I thought kept me safe it was a wildest thing money success all of it had to go on the table you know and that was how I walked away from being at that program for 12 years and I could have stayed there forever and just been that person right and that’s not what I could went home and I told Anna I was like look I’m gonna quit my job I need you to quit your job we’re gonna go all in and we’re gonna go do this thing and I would rather be under the guidance and grace and mercy of God and not know what’s going to happen in the future as far as money goes then no for sure here’s this constant check that I’m getting yeah you know and it’s the most freeing thing that’s been terrifying have I had panic attacks that I’ve never had before you know and I had to do all this work around those kind of things is like I say I live by faith I say I live by definiteness of purpose yet here I am questioning all of it right you know and and I don’t want to be that because it’s this this story it always reminds me of these like two twins that are inside their mom’s belly right and they’re sitting there and one of them is like hey do you think there’s life after delivery you know another one’s like what dude yeah like what if like we it’s gonna be more light outside we’re gonna be able maybe to even walk to maybe eat with our hands like all this crazy he’s like now dude there’s no way there’s life after delivery it’s just not going to happen the umbilical cord is how we eat that’s the only way we’re gonna eat walking is not even possible you know and it goes down all this kind of stuff and they they keep on having this conversation the the reality of it is like well how do you how do you know that mom even exists like mother is out there right and he’s like well man have you ever not just been quiet enough for a minute and you can kind of hear this voice outside of us you know and it’s like they have that yeah they have this conversation and it’s it’s the same relationship we have with God it’s like hey can I can I get quiet enough because imagine when those two twins are born the one that doesn’t believe what are the chances of life compared to the one that does and I’m not talking about physical life because there’s many of us that died ten years ago yet we’re physically still here I don’t want to be that guy you know I’ve been there and and have been by the grace of God brought back to life in a sense of using the program with business and then self-examination to say hey what’s my true purpose here it’s not to run treatment centers it’s just not it’s it’s to be an energy in the world that transforms anybody I come in contact with it doesn’t have to be one individual fact I can walk in a gas station and put off a vibration that because I get a choice now I can literally walk in one look people in the eye smile say hey how are you doing or I can put off this beefy tattooed up guy and and put the fear in people it’s it’s the most powerful thing I’ve ever seen and God’s given me a gift of like hey the knowledge of that now and what are you going to do with it yeah cuz I don’t care about your money I don’t care about the success you become as a treatment none of that matters what kind of light will you be for my message the rest of your your life because it the only way I actually shine the brightest is through hardships because that’s where people start looking at oh what’s what’s the God believe we’re gonna do now yeah and and that’s where I have to show up for not just you know Anna my kids but anybody around me it’s like hey how that’s my purpose it has nothing to do with my career the the job I had nothing and I learned that the hard way of going through this thing with all the treatment centers and growing myself and thinking that’s my purpose and it I hit a dead end and it sucked you know I was miserable and made a ton of money doing I’m miserable this sucks this is not what I was built to do and so when I freed myself without using those principles it man this it’s been a ride already you know yeah that’s amazing I love all that and I went to on-site the leave the women’s leadership for the first time this past April one so I think they changed it did they still do they do like a lot of lectures about leadership and all that if there were I mean there were but not I mean it was a lot of the therapy okay yeah but we had some lectures but cuz see they didn’t originally do that it was just you your group okay you you were in like a pod of guys and every year it was just you guys well then they did away with that and then they brought in that version where it was open to really anybody they could come do lectures all that and then a lot of us stopped going to that and then you know it’s just been one of those things of like how do you get back to that connectedness though of growth with other people yeah and that was very similar to being in the rooms of the 12 step stuff is having a mastermind group outside of that that can help you grow and change because I don’t care what you’ve achieved if you don’t have a coach and you don’t have other men or women around you the challenge and push you to different heights you’re gonna get stagnant and it’s gonna suck yeah you know yeah for sure yeah I and because for me for so long I was just so focused on recovery and like how can I help the next addict or alcoholic and what can I you know the next right thing and this and that but how you’re talking about this like authentic self like that’s really been showing up for me the last you know year and a half two years and and just having and seeking out not just this like straight road of what I thought it was and having it just I don’t know if this makes sense but like branch out in other areas and and so yeah well you have to because it the the our responsibility getting sober there’s not even a question about it I don’t have to wake up and think I need to get it’s I have to carry the message to somebody else right but that’s not my design purpose that’s just a responsibility of being sober right and that’s where I think people get confused is the reality for me was hey that’s not that’s just a responsibility like brush my teeth I can care myself that’s just the thing I have to do no matter what but what my what my true purpose was was about the man I was supposed to become not what I’m supposed to go do but who am I supposed to become so that people around me feel that and and can rely on hey listen my wife said it the other day we were I don’t even remember what we were talking about but I was on like a little self pity thing she’s like look you’re supposed to be the rock that I throw myself again kind of like shut up and suck it up I need you to listen to what I gotta say and let me bounce myself off of you and it just having people like her that put me in check of like no that’s my design gift is is to not be the guy that she just called out yeah I’m not supposed to sit on that pity pot and complain and not like that’s not who I am right and so I think it’s just like your story is you’re designed to be so much more than than a person in recovery a mom a wife there’s so I mean if if God could come down right now and say Sarah here’s the the gifts I’ve outlined and implanted to you my hope is that that before you leave this earth you find what those are because I feel like I’ve found 10 of the ones that I’m supposed to be now I could get the get and talk to him be like no you’re wrong but it’s it’s the the the chase that process of this makes me feel alive to do the inner work on myself not for you not for my wife not for my kids but to become the light and the energy that I was designed to become and I think we all have that but we focus too much on being the best mom or dad we can be husband or wife and that we’re missing the mark when it comes to that we’re just supposed to be this type of person you know it’s like the Chad when we were talking last night it was so interesting because like I don’t know him well but it what it hit me was when he said he hadn’t been married doesn’t have kids I was like he’s living who he’s supposed to be and it’s almost like he has no reservation about that you know when a lot of people especially you know what I’ve seen is people are like oh my god I’m X amount age and I’ve not been married don’t have kids like he seems so serene about that and that’s a gift yeah like no one that’s just not my my journey right now yeah you know and so it’s like a ton I could feel that energy from it’s like that’s a ton of respect for for Chad you know so it’s I think it’s getting sober is just a place where we could get to to say okay now I’m not dealing with all the issues that I create getting high and hurting all these people but there’s so much more to the experience than just that there’s no way that somebody experiences what God has designed them to be without being sober of mind heart and spirit there’s just no way you can’t be drinking and using and all that and it’s wild cuz I’ll talk to my family and they talk in terms of what they do and not who they are and that’s what society has tried to program just get the job do this do this instead of who could you become yes you know at the end of your life when people surround you or even even your own dreams surround you it’s like do you want to sit and look up and be like I wish I would have you know I don’t have any any reservation it’s it’s I got a tattoo that says my kids will follow my example not my advice and it’s like that that reminds me to live the way I’m supposed to live don’t worry about what you do but live the being inside you know thank you is there anything anything else you want to add no I’ve had a blast I loved it I learned a lot so I’m very happy well look anything I can do to help people it’s I love to do coaching all that I don’t ever charge people for us one thing at thoroughbred we we offer is like the executive coaching it’s totally free like people just have to understand I’m one human so I can only do so many folks but that my wife does the nutritional and fitness side of it so it’s a it’s a beautiful piece that you can come in realize this is about whole wellness it’s not just about quitting drugs and alcohol or hey tackling my depression or anxiety it’s about like hey let’s let’s go further than all let’s look at your nutrition your physical movement every day all those aspects down to your career do you allow when you take a personality test do you line up with what you’re doing because if you don’t you’re gonna feel a discontentment yeah and irritableness which the book tells us not a good thing you know so yeah anything I can do to be helpful and stuff like that yeah well thank you thank you thank you and thank you for tuning in to another episode I hope today’s conversation has inspired you open your mind maybe even your heart a little bit but remember you’re not alone share this episode with someone that it would be helpful to and remember we’ll have all the links below I will have all of Todd’s information and links below as well but until next time keep making an impact