Tony Hoffman
Appearances
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
You can have a desire to quit, but there has to be action that's followed up with it. And the only way that you can achieve that action or for that action to achieve what you want is to actually connect with people that have done it themselves. Right. We know that as business people. Right. If you want to make a million dollars, you better get around people that are making a million dollars.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Because you don't know how to do it yourself. Right. So when I tell myself I'm never coming back, it's on this idea that I don't have a problem. I just was using drugs and I made a dumb decision. Well, a month later, I'm back at it. SWAT team raised my apartment. I went through the whole gamut of, you know, another one, like the other one stories. And, uh,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
This time, though, for the next two and a half years, what I see myself doing compared to the first time was way worse because I was still miserable on the inside. That has always been my thing and still my thing. I don't really care about money. I love business and I love the idea of being successful in business, but money itself doesn't make me happy. It allows me to do more things.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And so because I was so unhappy before and I was able to find this happiness within myself disconnected from money, I now understand what was missing. So even though there were great things happening in my early childhood, I absolutely hated who I was. Then I get on drugs and I'm trying to stop the hatred. Well, that doesn't work anymore.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And that's anybody that's listening to me right now that's, you know, you started with a six pack or it was just one beer a night. Yeah. as a release or one bottle of wine. And next thing you know, it takes three. Next thing you know, it's four. You got to keep pushing it up. And neurologically,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
If the science can prove why that happens, the body will never produce the same reward it did the first time because of a normalization process where your body just won't allow it because that's how it keeps your body in a state of equilibrium. And so one bottle, it takes two in six months. It's going to take two bottles. In 10 years, it's going to take you four bottles.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
But by the time you get to four bottles, you got to wake up and drink. You got to have lunch. You can't have lunch without drinking, right? And so for me, started shooting dope because smoking wasn't working, snorting pills wasn't working. And man, I was on a suicide mission. At that point, nobody wants to be around me. I'm 22 years old, shooting dope.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I came from an upper middle-class neighborhood. And nobody was raised that way. We didn't see that kind of stuff. And so for them to see somebody that was putting needles in their arm and banging dope every 30 minutes, it was like, bro, you're not allowed to come over here anymore. And that was when I started walking the street.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
So the six months final in my life until I get to prison is me just walking the street. Most of the nights, just walking the street, strung out on meth, staying up for 13 days at a time, six days at a time, on average, five days at a time. Oxycontins were so expensive, I couldn't afford them anymore. Those were like $20 to $40 a pop. But I could get heroin for $5 on the west side of Fresno.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And back then, heroin was still a thing. Now it's not anymore. It's just fentanyl.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And... Fentanyl is even cheaper, I think. Even cheaper. Yeah. And it's just so deadly.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
But I was so miserable, man. And I didn't think that there was any way out of the thing that I was in. At that point, I had accepted that this is what your story is going to end like. I'm walking around the street and I can still think about good things that happened in the past.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
But every time I thought about something good that was happening, I always thought to myself, why isn't this happening to anybody else? Why is this happening to me? When you get on this wavelength that you and I are on, you recognize that it's just victim mentality. Right. Like you've victimized yourself and you find a way to justify staying stuck.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
You find a way to not have to get uncomfortable and make the big decisions that you need to make. You find a reason that you're never going to be able to do what somebody else has done. Right. As you put yourself in a position of a deficit that's so deep you can't get out. And that's exactly where I was. I didn't know how to get out. I wanted to get out.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I tried to go to Oregon one time and got on a bus. My friend's family had two or 300 acres of wine grapes. And the dad says, I'll make you the ranch manager. Just get out of Fresno. The place sucks. Come up here. I'll train you. Seven days later, I hitchhiked to the bus station, snuck on the bus with no money and went back to California because the withdrawals were so painful. I had to get back.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I wanted to stop. I just didn't know how. January 21st, 2007, I have a spiritual awakening. changed my life. That was it. People ask, how'd you do it? I needed something to show me that I wasn't in control like I thought. And once I surrendered to my own ego or my own idea that I was the maker of everything, which to a degree I will say, sure, but to the biggest degree, no, I'm not in control.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And once I relinquished that That was when the source of every piece of information that I needed and the eyes for me to see the opportunities that were all around me that I was passing by were going to open up and be able to see things that I needed to see so I could start beginning to do what I was doing today.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And the very next day I was arrested and sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Four and a half years for what? The armed robbery that I committed. So my parents used this big wig attorney and he kept me out of prison, but it got me felony probation. So I was still on felony probation from the home evasion. Yep.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And so the sentencing when I went was basically a violation of probation, but it's attached to the robbery crime. So now you got to go off and serve the time for that robbery that we should have sent you to prison for is what they would have said. Four and a half years. Yep. And I ended up doing two years on it. You got out early.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
There was a big mistake on my paperwork that we found out years later when I got out. It's a wild story, bro. My story's got so much stuff and we only got so much little time.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
No, I always did opioids. And I was around a lot of dudes that were meth users. And so I would use meth. And then if I was around a couple other guys that used crack cocaine or cocaine, then I would just always baseline opioids to stop the withdrawals. Then meth or cocaine or crack cocaine if it was around. So...
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Same answer we would have if we wanted to build a millionaire out of a 13-year-old. create a structured environment that holds them accountable for their behaviors. And then you teach them in that environment accountability what to do, right? So this is where I believe that we fail as a society is specifically with this misunderstood population.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I'm totally in agreements for safe injection sites, which is like a wildly progressive idea, right? Conservatives are like, you're just going to let them shoot dope. Well, hear me out. Give them a spot. That's the only spot. You shoot dope in public outside of that spot, put your hands around your back. We're gonna put cuffs on you. We're gonna take you to jail.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
We're gonna have a psychologist who's trained come in and actually tell us what's wrong with this individual. Because what most people don't understand is A large majority of that population is struggling with the acuity in the mental health department beyond what we can actually do with our health care system. So many men develop things like schizophrenia.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
before they turn 20 or in their mid to late 20s, they start to develop schizophrenia. A lot of people think that the guy talking to themself is just drug-induced. That is not always the case. Many of these individuals have had very tough mental illness struggles for a very long time, and they don't have anybody that can take care of them.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
They find themselves using drugs because sometimes the drugs can stop the voices. Or you have women who have been raped in their environment from a very young age and develop these personality disorders that make it very difficult for them to sit down, listen to somebody and not have outbursts. And so then they find themselves on the street using dope.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
The problem with this is they actually need to be in an institution that can care for them, get them away from the drugs, put them in an institution where we can provide medication to them and they can't leave. We shouldn't let some of these individuals leave the institutions that are struggling with mental illness.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
So if you act outside of this safe injection site, we're going to arrest you and we're going to find out whether you're a drug addicted person or you're a person who struggles with high levels of mental health or mental illness. And you will go to an institution or you will go to a court order rehab facility in which we treat you. There has to be some type of accountability.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
You and I don't want to walk outside of this business and see a dude taking a shit right there. Nor do we want him banging dope or smoking meth. Nobody wants that unless you go to some of these cities like San Francisco that believe they're human beings. They've had hard upbringings. They have really tough stories. We need to just let them live because who are we to say something to them?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Well, the problem with that is what's the difference between that and putting them in jail? Right. So the left says when we put them in prison, there's no compassion that jailing them doesn't change them. I would agree. But you saying leave them there is the same fucking thing.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
It removes you from having to be accountable for fixing the problem. And as business owners, we don't like problems, right? When a problem pops up for you, I guarantee you with your success, you want to figure out how to solve that problem right away. If you can't solve it, you find somebody that can solve that problem.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And you say, let's make sure this problem never happens again because we don't need problems. Right. But we're not doing that with them. Because politics, as we've learned, is a big game. We've got billions of dollars in California that just disappeared to the homeless population. Why could I have told you that was going to happen? Because politicians don't ever do anything good with our money.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Congratulations. Thank you. No nicotine, no alcohol, no drugs, nothing. I've been sober straight up for 17 years.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
The desire to use is not there, but there has not been a day in 17 years where I haven't thought about using drugs. So this is the interesting thing. So remember when I talked about the needle, right? And how 17 years ago, that needle had the power to control everything about me. I can now hold that same needle and it does not have that same power.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I liken it to this way, an ex-girlfriend or an ex-wife, right? There was a time when you were so in love with that person, you couldn't think about another woman. You only wanted to be with that person. And then you go through this breakup where your heart hurts, you're anxious, you can't, everything triggers a memory about this person.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Thanks, man. Yeah, you know what? I grew up in a pretty average home. in the middle of California. My mother and father were in the trucking industry. They retired from the trucking industry 40-some years. So I grew up around hardworking people. Dad was up at 5 o'clock in the morning, out the door at 6 o'clock, come home 10 o'clock at night. Same with mom.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And then there comes this point when you've been separated for so long, you can run into that person, see her with another man and actually think, oh, that's cool. She found somebody. Yeah. She no longer has the ability to control your thoughts, your emotions. Because it's been so long. And so for me, it's like I can think about drugs because my brain, that's what they do to us.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
When I say us to us, people have been addicted to addicts. Every day you will think about it. But not every day does that thought create a desire and like this urge to I have to use. That's gone. Thank God.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
You can get lucky. You can hard work yourself into a million dollars. And I've seen how that's kind of worked into my life. I can get to seven figures.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
No, it's never that. It's so much more, I don't want to say complicated, but when somebody relapses or somebody gives in on their sobriety, it happened usually months before. weeks before. They just didn't recognize it. I had a kid ask me, how'd you get sober? I thought about it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I could have told him my spiritual awakening and everything that I did with my studies in the Bible to transform my thinking, but that's not going to be relatable for most people. So I created the sobriety model that now exists at my own treatment center.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
It's a foundation of spirituality and self-affirmation with a pillar of willingness, honesty, discipline, structure, routine, community, and giving. When somebody relapses, one of those pillars or their foundation is not correctly built. Spirituality and self-affirmation is really just about positive thoughts and positive thinking.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
is making sure that you're not operating from a place of self-centeredness, selfishness, where it's all about you or when something bad happens, what do you tell yourself? Do you tell yourself that you're a piece of shit, you're never going to figure it out?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Or do you say, you know what, we all make mistakes, I got to figure out what this mistake was and move from this situation to where I don't ever make that mistake again. Honesty pillar is the big one. Most people don't recognize in recovery that honesty with self and honesty with others are the two most important things for a person who's in recovery.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Because if I'm dishonest with you and I lie to you and I steal something from you, whether you know it or not, there's a subconscious guilt and shame mechanism that hits you. And that starts to create weighted emotion. I don't know about that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
It's honesty with self and others. You can justify all the shit you want, but self-deception is self-deception. If we brought a turd in here and gold-plated it, it's still a piece of shit.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Worked in the same office with my dad for 40 of those years. We never didn't have what we needed. But one of the things that I was missing was my parents even being around. And that was a confusing thing for me when I started to get to my teenage years was like, you know, I need my dad around here.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
That's self-deception. And that's a big part of, if you get into the 12-step program, self-deception is a big part of it. Is packaging an idea as something new or creative or okay without realizing that underneath the intent is completely miscalibrated. So yeah, you're a millionaire. I could take one garage door and for you, you're not going to miss that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
That's what I have to tell myself to justify the behavior. But whether you know it or not, you're carrying a level of shame and guilt after that, even with that justification. Well, how do you stop that shame and guilt? You have to make another impulsive decision that can spike your brain and create a dopamine rush so you don't feel like those emotions are taking over you anymore.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And then you end up finding yourself in this cycle of addiction or where you're trying to create a dopamine rush. The rebound takes you low and you have to actually face yourself, look in the mirror and see that you're not as good as you should be or could be. And then what do you do?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
You make another decision that's impulsive to create that rush in your brain neurologically, which halts all of the shits you don't want to feel for a moment's time. But after that moment's over, you go right back down. So when a person doesn't hold themselves accountable for their thinking, their behaving, their
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
within themselves and how they treat others you start to build a mechanism where you're carrying weighted emotions resentments is another one so if i hate you for doing something wrong to me i could be mad at you but i'll never hate you for it i won't hate you anymore for it right i'll just say you know what i won't put myself in position to be around that person anymore but i forgive him because i understand that because as a person you know your father
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Because at the end of the day, is it my dad's fault? No. My dad doesn't have that power. No. He doesn't have the power to make my decisions. I made my own decisions through self-deception. I justified my behavior and the way I was thinking because my dad wasn't there. But that wasn't actually the truth. And so then the next ones are willingness,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Discipline, structure, routine, giving, and community. You've got to stay disciplined, structured, routined in what works, what has always worked, and evolve that routine because what works for five years won't work from five to 10 years.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
You always need to make sure that you have a component of philanthropy in your life where you're giving with no expectation in return and only to make other people better. But the community part is one of the other big ones is you got to stay connected, man. I have conversations with a few guys every single day and we can talk about anything. Yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I feel like I need my dad around here to kind of validate my existence and kind of these things that I'm starting to question that we've all questioned starting in our teenage years. You know, it goes from recess to feelings and wondering what how to do things and really quick overnight almost. And so I was a really gifted athlete. That was my thing. I sucked in school. I didn't like books.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Any mistake that we make, we can talk about it because holding on to the anxiety and stress or the being overwhelmed in business is not good for men.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I'm not saying that you need a safe space, quote unquote, but you need a group of men or a group of people that hold you accountable, but also let you take the floor and talk about whatever you need to talk about and give you a hug if that's what you need.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I didn't like reading. I didn't like taking tests or studying. I liked the basketball court. I wanted to go to the NBA when I was a young kid. And I lived for that dream for many years of my life and was very good. I was one of the best athletes in my town. But one thing that made me unique as an athlete was I didn't just play one sport. I could play any sport.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And at a young age, you know, when you have a kid that can play every sport better than everybody else, then you have a whole town of 60,000 people that know who you are and your gift and how special it is. But right around the middle school years, when I was really starting to take the turn towards, you know, MBA, this is where you go, middle school, high school, college.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We'll be there and then you'll go find somebody else that can give you the next phase of however you want to be when it comes to thinking. They call me every single day. He calls me every single day and we work through problems. I think I'm going to move here.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
But seven figures on hard work alone isn't going to show me how to scale that seven figures into eight, how to make the proper investments, how to understand tax codes, how to make sure that I'm doing X, Y, and Z. Because I have to get around other millionaires to understand how that works.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I started really struggling with my behavior. And a lot of that was just my father, you know, not being around and me not having kind of that structure that a father brings a child and me being real confused about why my father wasn't around. And I really started to personalize my father's absence.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
For me, what that meant was I believed my father was absent because I wasn't good enough and that my father didn't love me. And so what I really started to do was just say, fuck it. If my dad doesn't care, why should I? The big mistake that I was making at that time was I never even talked to my dad. I never asked him about why he was absent.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I want to do this and I want to do that. And I think I'm going to do this and I think I'm going to do that. Or why am I feeling this way? And it's helping him understand, let's put this in one small compartment. Let's treat one compartment and not treat the whole thing as one. Because just because you're having a bad day doesn't mean that your life is over.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
It just means that you're having a bad day. Let's take a look at why you had a bad day. Was it out of your control? It wasn't in your control? Fuck it. Can't win them all. Go back to bed. Was it in your control? What did you do wrong? Okay, change that behavior and then you won't ever have that bad day again.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
You'll have more days that are just out of your control because those are the kind of bad days I want to have. I don't want to have bad days that was in my control. I fucked up, made a bad decision or said something to somebody that caused a problem, right? Yeah. And so then teaching them how to compartmentalize or teaching them how to compartmentalize their life in a way that's manageable.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And the reality was my dad dropped out of high school to drive trucks because grandpa told my dad he couldn't marry his daughter if he didn't have $5,000 in the bank. And my dad, being the hard worker he is, dropped out of school, said, I'll go make some money right now. Got the $5,000 and married his daughter.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Especially with the algorithm lately, I've seen it. It's moving more towards... It has to be more cinematic. It has to have more transitions.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Oh, yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And that put him in a position where he was going to have to work the hours he worked in the industry he was in. And that was trucking where there wasn't a big team of managers. He was the manager. My mom's was the salesperson. And so if my dad left, who was going to run the business? He couldn't.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Yeah, that's why you didn't see it as a problem. No, it's like... If you came and hang around me and you had to leave all the time because you needed to go drink, you'd be like, I think there might be something wrong with me. Why do I always have to leave this guy to go drink?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
So he was up at 5 o'clock in the morning running the thing from 6 o'clock to 10 o'clock at night, which meant he wasn't around for a lot of the stuff that I wanted him to be there for. And that was my sports games when I was in middle school. So I started making dumb decisions, thinking that my dad didn't care. So there's no hope. And I was really struggling with anxiety.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I use it for business. That's it. You live in Dallas? Yeah, I'm in Dallas now. Rent a city. And what, so tell me about the, how many clients have you had go through your, your program? Over a hundred for sure. We're in Southern California. So I live in Dallas. My business partner's doing day-to-day CEO work. Awesome guy. What's your job?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
My job's the face and communicating the brand and going around and speaking and marketing and branding. which is what I'm good at. Now, when I come into town and I'm there, I run groups. I actually break down groups. Why don't we blow this thing up, dude? Why don't we get it to 10,000? We are. It's only at 100? Let's get it to 10,000.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Well, so we've been open two years and the California model is a little tricky. So you can't build a commercial building and put a bunch of beds in it in California. It's not the way it works. The state won't license you that way. So they license you through real estate, which is six people per house. Yeah, yeah. I own a... I own a sober living house. Okay, sober living.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
So sober living, you can put more than six. But an actual treatment, detox and residential treatment facility can only have six people in it. So we have a unique property right now, four and a half acres, one bed up top, one bed on the bottom. And then we have a house quarter mile down the street. So we have 18 beds total.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And the thing that makes us unique at PH Wellness is we have a huge fitness component. So all three of the owners have a big fitness part of their story. Both of my other business partners are Ironman or ultra marathon runners. And then obviously I was a professional BMX racer, but we have a 5,000 square foot gym and rec center that's on that four and a half acre property.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Every day, our guests or clients are introduced to physical activity in a structured environment to help get that dopamine release. Because we strongly believe, like you said, you should be going out and doing tough things to create dopamine because there's a period of time in which the person feels like there's no excitement in life because that's what the drugs created, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
It's so much dopamine from an artificial hit. That a conversation with the person or even lifting a weight doesn't create any type of rush compared to what the drugs could. Well, there's a time in which everything shifts back to normal. And if they're working out, they're creating that natural dopamine. They're starting to feel better about themselves.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And so we are building out what we think is a unique model for sobriety that most treatment centers don't have. A lot of treatment centers offer gyms. but it's actually a part of our curriculum. And my business partner, he's there to help a lot of times because he owned a gym as well before he got into pH Wellness. And he'll be there training with guests, training with even our employees.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Like we've created a culture now where the employees know that the owners show up, they're fit, they love to work out. And now after work, we hired our trainer that works with our clients to work with our employees. It's just the way culture works, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Like when you get around somebody and you see that they're winning and they have this certain mindset, it's like the David Goggins effect, right? He said, get around people that make you feel like you're not doing enough and don't run from those people, run to them. And that's what we're seeing with our employees. Our employees are now working out, losing weight, getting fit.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And suicidal thoughts were killing me at that time. Oh, man. And not understanding why I wanted to kill myself. Not understanding why I felt so uncomfortable and why I felt like life was so miserable. And I ended up getting kicked out of school in seventh grade. Fast forward, I get on a bike after that. My brother was racing BMX. My dad was a former professional motocross racer.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
That's the deal with me.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I love that. So we have 18 clients at max right now. 18 clients at any given time. At any given time.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
It's the first 30 days. So we're detox and stabilization. If you can't stop drinking and you're getting the shakes in the morning, you need detox. That means you're going to need medication when you stop drinking or you're going to seize up. Season up. You can die from alcohol withdrawals. Oh, yeah. Same with opioids and benzos. It's very dangerous.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
So we have nurses, medical staff that are on site 24 hours a day. to make sure that they're getting their medications, their vitals are being checked on 15, 30 minute or one hour rounds. And they'll move on to aftercare typically after 30 days if their life allows them to do that, which would be more of an outpatient setting going for five days a week. There's a cost.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
So private insurance.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
No, we didn't do the government funded route. The reimbursements from the government are about $250 a day. For those models to be successful, you got to have about 150 to 200 clients at one time. And that's a lot of people to manage. And it's also from an ROI perspective, to me, it doesn't make much sense right now for me to go head first into a state run facility first.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Well, you can keep them for longer, which is great. But the way I see things, because I did the nonprofit thing and I don't ever want to do that again. I want to build this up to be so successful that I can use the profits that I have to build my philanthropic arm without having to worry about what somebody says in a grant that I write and how I want to spend that money, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
So we'll just build this thing up. We want to do about 30 beds in California before we start moving it around the country. And when we move it around the country, then we can build commercial buildings. You can build a 60- to 100-bed facility because the other states will allow commercial buildings.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I mean, I get that, too. We do, and we don't cause problems, but it's like, hey, look, this is what we have to do in this state. They're the ones...
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Yeah. So in Southern California, we have business development guys, sales reps would be the worst term to give them, but business development guys, community organization guys that work with other treatment centers, outpatient clinics that may have 100, 150 people in their outpatient clinic. If one of them relapses, they need to restabilize them and detox.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
We build partnerships through the work that we do, the quality of work that we do with other treatment centers where they say, hey, go to pH Wellness, go there for your 24 days, and we'll send them back to them for outpatient. Because we can be trusted.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
They know that if they send it to us, we're going to send it right back to them and not to some other treatment center, which is what a lot of other people do. Then we have a huge marketing arm, a call center. pay-per-click, which is a big thing, but it's very difficult in our industry.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
We have 88, all five stars.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
No, we have a team doing the local stuff, but in this industry, it's not as simple as you would think. It's just get local SEO. Most of our clients are from out of state.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
So we had kind of racing in our blood and we'd been around a lot of the big motocross champions before the new age guys took it over. And so we'd just be exposed to a lot of racing. Well, BMX was something my brother was doing and I got involved because my parents wanted me to kind of be around my brother and not just doing my own thing because I couldn't make good decisions for myself. And...
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And the dude is like... We're building something special, bro. We really are.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
You sound like my business partner right now. Sleep.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Reach out to me. Instagram, Tony M. Hoffman. Facebook, Tony Hoffman Speaking. But Instagram is probably going to be the easiest way to find me on social media. You can go to my webpage, TonyHoffmanSpeaking.com and hit the contact button. And I'll get back to you obviously there too. But if you know somebody that's struggling or if you're struggling, reach out to me.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I'm happy to share advice with you or if my team needs to get involved and I stand behind every one of my employees. They're all world class. They're truly in it for the right reasons. Even if the person doesn't come to our treatment center and you need to be somewhere else, my guys will make sure that you get handed to the right facility and
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
teach you all the things that you need to know the things to watch out for the decisions you need to make for a loved one if the loved one is struggling and just really like you said you don't need to go from first second third base to get the home base and in this space when it comes to addiction it's really important to make sure you get on the phone with somebody who knows what you're doing because running the bases with addiction can cost somebody's life mm-hmm
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Just go straight to home base by getting to somebody like the umpire that gets to watch the whole game and knows exactly what's happening and why it's happening and how the score works. And they'll make things way easier for you. So reach out to me. I'm happy to provide any type of insight.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And if, like I say, if I got to get my team involved with Mike or Jacob, they'll get on the phone and they'll answer the phone at three o'clock in the morning. Those guys don't sleep. They work around the clock and we love what we get to do.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I did it from middle school, so seventh grade up to my senior year in high school. I was on the cover of the largest BMX racing magazine at that time was the BMX Racing Magazine. I was sponsored by Fox Racing, Airwalk Shoes, Spice Sunglasses. It was really clear that all I had to do was just show up to the track, train, and I could have easily been a pro and been one of the best in the sport.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I would love that, man. I'm climbing the ladder. You know, me going out and trying to do these podcasts was recognizing that, you know, for me to climb the ladder, I've got to get in front of people like yourself.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Yeah. I haven't been doing everything. I've been very specific. Yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Sure.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I want to say this, you know, we talk a lot about friends and drinking with friends and going out, but I also don't want to forget the person right now that's drinking by themselves. That's true. You know, there's somebody that isn't sure if they have a problem. And I can assure you that if you're drinking alone, you have a problem.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Even if it's not an addiction to the degree that you need to go to rehab, you're drowning yourself. You're not doing the best that you can. You're not the best husband if you're drinking alone. You're not the best brother, sister, employee.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
If when you clock out, you go home and you have a six pack or a 12 pack in your hand and you're sitting in front of a fucking TV and you go to sleep with that alcohol, like you're better than that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Thanks.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
But as soon as high school ended... That's when the shit started for me. I just really didn't know what I wanted to do in life. I didn't want to race BMX because I thought my life was all about making money. And I'm a business guy now too.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And I love making money and I love making investments and trying to scale the things that I do to a degree that I can create more revenue streams and then go take that money and build more cool shit to help more people. But in my early life, I didn't have that kind of understanding. All I had was, I don't really like who I am. I don't like myself. I'm in that phase, you know, 18 to 25.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
You experience a lot of betrayal. You experience a lot of heartbreak and a lot of confusing moments in life where things don't turn out the way you thought. People aren't who they say they are. And you're just trying to navigate all of these experiences at once. And I was in this place where I don't even know what I want to do. But everybody says I'm supposed to go to college.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
If you go to college, you know, they sold the millennials that if you go to college, you'll make, you know, thousands of dollars and be more successful than your parents, which turned out to be a total crock of shit for 95% of people that are still paying off their student loans right now, making 60 grand a year. And it just didn't, nothing the world was presenting me felt like I like that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
So I started hanging out with dudes that were partying, which is what most kids are doing, you know, 18 to 25 years old, smoking weed and drinking. And back then, smoking weed wasn't what it is now. You know, everybody thinks smoking weed is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Weed was a drug back then, right? So if you smoked weed, you were a druggie. Most people drank.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Drinking really wasn't my thing. I had a soft stomach, always threw up too soon and never could really get drunk and have fun with everybody else. So smoking weed became my thing until I was introduced to Oxycontin. which was a pharmaceutical drug that most every one of you probably listening right now know what it is now because of the opioid epidemic.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And something about that drug fixed everything I felt was broken in my life. It was the first time I did it. And I explained this to people. I was so miserable on the inside. that the second I split this 80 milligram pill with my friend, what that drug offered me was an answer to every problem that I needed a solution to that I could not find before that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Starting at 12 years old, the suicidal ideation, the anxiety, the depression, becoming addicted to sleep. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, one moment, I could just split this pill. I have energy. No more social anxiety. No more suicidal ideation. And all of a sudden, I think, well, this is what the doctors need to give me because now I feel like there's something worth living for.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And at that time, none of us had education on pharmaceutical drugs.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Every one of us had education on heroin and PCP, crack cocaine and... These drugs that you couldn't find in the neighborhood that I grew up in. But nobody said anything about the pharmaceutical pills. So it just seemed like, well, this is a drug prescribed by a doctor. You can't get addicted to this shit. Yeah. So I started taking them.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Well, then you stop taking them and then you go through the withdrawals and you find yourself in this really dark position. And that's where I found myself was I started selling drugs. I started selling drugs to support my drug habit. Yeah. And I actually liked that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
So looking back on everything and everything that I've done and when I got to prison and I started really examining my life, I was an entrepreneur from the gate. I sold the candy apple suckers at school until the school stopped me. Right. I liked providing things to people, meeting people's needs with... A product. Right. So through school, I sold candy apple suckers.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Then I got a CD burner and I was putting together mixtapes and selling mixtapes and giving people mixtapes. Then when I got into drugs, it was like, well, I could just buy weed or lots of cocaine and I could sell this to people, support my pill habit. And I'm just in this realm of... being needed, so to speak.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And that was really at the heart of my problem was I wanted to be validated, but I wasn't making the right decisions on how I was going to be validated. First, I needed to validate myself. Then I needed to find out how I could be useful, build a skill around that gift, and then become really effective at giving it to people as a solution or a need that they had.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And then I would receive everything that I kind of was trying to do for myself as a teenager, just miscalibrated. Okay. And so you want to keep going?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Well, I love... It's good. No, yeah. Just... I can keep going. You tell me, bro. No, I want to keep hearing. Okay. So once all this stuff starts happening, I get hooked on Oxycontin. And that's when people really start doing things that they would have never thought. And that's why I have such a...
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
such a compassion for people who struggle with addiction or even the homeless population because they are truly still a misunderstood population of society because a lot of people think that addiction is a choice a lot of people think that homeless people are just lazy individuals that just need to go get jobs and they don't actually understand the realm of like what's happening how it happens why it's happening and how a person finds themselves in that position right well now i'm becoming that person
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I'm completely being controlled by this little fucking green pill, bro. Like just this little. And I just recorded a video on my social media with a needle. This little needle at one point had the power to control my thoughts, my behaviors, the places I went, who I was hanging out with, what I was going to say.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Everything was determined by this little four inch needle that I was going to put in my arm with heroin. Well, before that, it was just this little green pill. This little green pill had the power to take away everything that I wanted, everything I could think about and shape me into this person that could only be obsessed with this one thing.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And I committed a home invasion robbery at 21 years old. We robbed one of our best friend's mothers. She had Oxycontin in the house. And we couldn't get him on the street. We were withdrawn. And that pain from opioid withdrawals... And I know there's listeners listening to me right now that know exactly what I'm talking about. It is the most painful thing in the world.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
I had that Delta variant of COVID put me in bed for 14 days. I'll take that every three months over...
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
an opioid withdrawal ever again in my life because the opioid withdrawal will make me put a gun in my hand and come and rob you for everything that you have to stop that pain with covid i just know it's going to end at some point right it's not going to take it's not going to last 14 days every time it's going to get a little bit worse you know what i'm saying and so that's the scary part of it all and so i didn't see my family for years so you you did a home invasion yeah
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Me and another person. And you got away with it? We got away with it for six months. Okay. Then he gets caught doing several robberies with my other co-defendant. And one of them is dead now. The other one is still on the street, strung out on drugs. And I'm 40 years old. This was when I was 21. And they got caught.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
When they got caught, there was a pill bottle from the house that we robbed in the back of the truck that he got pulled over in. And it tipped the cops off that he was probably involved in this home invasion robbery that had happened, you know, six weeks prior to that. Yeah. And so that when that investigation started, everybody that I knew knew I was involved and they stopped like,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
letting me come over to the house and be around things. And that's when I started my first homeless stint, which was only three days before I ended up calling my parents and begging them for help. They got me help, which was an attorney that kept me out of prison. As soon as I got out of jail, fighting the case on probation, within a month, I was right back out using.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
Because I thought at that time, That if I just said, I don't want to do this anymore and I don't want the consequences that come with it, that that would be enough to stop.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
As much as I know that there's somebody listening to me right now that knows what a withdrawal is from opioids, I know that there's even more men right now that tell themselves they're not going to drink tonight and they do it every single day. Even though when they wake up, they tell themselves today's the day. I'm not going to do it again. Smoking cigarettes, hitting the vape pen.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
There are so many people right now that have woke up and they told themselves, I'm not going to do it today because my wife found out. I'm not going to do it anymore because my kid said something to me that shows that my drinking is affecting my ability to show up as a father in this household, right? But by the end of the day, you're doing the same shit.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
And you can't figure out why because your thoughts aren't powerful enough for you to break free from addiction. You can have a desire to quit, but there has to be action that's followed up with it. And the only way that you can achieve that action or for that action to achieve what you want is to actually connect with people that have done it themselves. We know that as business people.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
If you want to make a million dollars, you better get around people that are making a million dollars. You can get lucky. You can hard work yourself into a million dollars. And I've seen how that's kind of worked into my life. I can get to seven figures.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
But seven figures on hard work alone isn't going to show me how to scale that seven figures into eight, how to make the proper investments, how to understand tax codes, how to make sure that I'm doing X, Y, and Z. Because I have to get around other millionaires to understand how that works. Yeah, 100%.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
You have to understand what to do to get sober, to stay sober and never be controlled by the substance again. And the only people that can do that are the ones that have actually done it. If you've never done it yourself, you might be able to feed me great inspirational quotes, right? Right. Great mindset tools. But if you've never been trapped in the grips of addiction...
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete
where you're doing things you don't even want to do anymore. And you're doing things you said you would never do. The only way you're going to get free from that is to surrender that you know how to do it and give that to somebody like myself or somebody else that's been sober, gotten sober and let them show you how to do it.