Are you a musician yourself too?
I am not.
My business partner, Richie, is.
I am not a musician.
I've been around the music world my whole life.
I had a record label.
I managed singers.
I did insurance for athletes and entertainers, but I myself have no musical ability other
than I think I can sing very well by myself in the car or shower.
Yeah, so you are a musician.
You're just a closet musician.
I got it.
I hear you.
I understand.
I appreciate that.
That's so cool.
Yes, and yeah, you're all about the music industry.
That's fun.
All right, so as we get ready to dive in, before we go in and talk about the keys to
fortitude and strength and what you do and how your whole vision works, you've got such
a great track record.
One of your YouTube channels, 33,000 subscribers on it too, and you got some great depths to
you.
Are there any music engineers who are newer to the process or they're still humble enough
to recognize that working on the fundamentals matters?
What are three books or resources that you recommend?
Three books or resources.
The book that I have based a lot of everything I've thought of for the last 26, 27 years
on and the book that I bought more of and given away is called The Law of Attraction
by Esther and Jerry Hicks.
That's something that I've just lived by, reread every few years and recommend everybody
read at least once.
In addition to that, on that same wavelength is I've personally been to about 23 Tony Robbins
UPW Unleashed the Power of The Inns.
I made an employee benefit.
I brought over 200 plus of our recovery and plug employees and I stopped counting, but
some of my friends that have been with Tony for as long as I have, have told me that I've
perfectly brought over a thousand people in the last 23 years to UPW.
I've done 19 fire walks personally and I like to joke that prior to my accident, I was in
an accident, I was in an explosion and I was in a fire.
But I like to say that fire walking is safe and empowering and the barbecue tank that
exploded on me is dangerous.
So barbecuing can be dangerous and fire walking is safe.
That's my view of the world.
Yeah it sounds like you have experience on both sides of that.
So that makes sense.
So are we going with those two or did you have a third you wanted to drop?
So I have a third, I was fortunate enough last December to get to meet and spend a little
time with Sylvester Stallone and we talked about how throughout my life as I was growing
up, as I was building my businesses and especially when I was in the ICU in the burn unit, Rocky
1 through 6.
At this point in my life, Rocky 6 is my favorite movie for many reasons of inspiration.
It ain't how hard you can hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.
I have that on my wall, I have it signed by Sly for me when I was growing up and prior
to that, Rocky 4 was my favorite for multiple reasons of the idea that overcoming obstacles
no matter how big they are physically, metaphorically, psychologically and also knowing that one
thing about all the Rockies, people can call it cheesy, but there's always a montage.
But the montage represents the work.
You don't just get to hold up the trophy, you don't just get to win, you actually have
to do the work and I think that that's extremely important that a lot of people may have forgotten
in the social media world that we live in today where you may just see a result but
not what it took to get there.
Well said and I love that because it doesn't condemn the fact that people highlight their
results.
That's called gratitude.
At the same time, it can feel like, man, I'm worthless.
Man, I'm not accomplishing anything.
Look at how easy they were able to do X, Y or Z. We play games with ourselves and I love
that you mentioned a movie as one of your resources.
I'm a huge fan of movies and in fact, it was probably three months ago now.
Three months ago, I watched the Rocky series.
I was looking for it.
Again, I was like, man, I'm ready to...
One reason why is Netflix was pulling it off on Netflix.
That's always my inspiration too for getting into the movies I want.
But part of it was because of the...
Only kids who have watched him since they were little.
I got videos of when my boys were younger and now my daughter as well.
Then I was fortunate that when I got to meet Sly, my son, long story, make it short, he
got to ask in a room full of people that some were professional journalists.
He got to ask some questions which were recorded and then used.
He was only 14 at the time, 15 now.
It was pretty amazing to see that.
That's amazing.
Again, there's so much power when you can see how the principle or the virtue or the
integrity of the hard work is applied in somebody else's life.
It becomes a little bit easier to be able to apply it in your own life.
I'm a big fan of learning through all sorts of different experiences.
Vision Pros, write those resources down, maybe look them up and we're going to go to a break.
We'll be right back with Andrew Sossin's Vision.
All right.
Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Calame.
I'm your show host.
We will be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
What's up?
Welcome into another episode of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Calame, founder and CEO of First Class Business.
I am stoked to have Andrew Sossin on the show today.
He runs a program called Recovery Unplugged.
We'll get to that in just a minute.
The mindset skills that he has, the abilities to help people overcome their challenges and
pursue greatness, the ability to touch both sides of life is a superpower that I rarely
come across in terms of leadership development.
Usually the leader has overcome something and moved into something greater, but they
may be focused on either how to get to the greatness or how to overcome.
He's got that unique gift of being able to teach, talk about and expound on both realities,
which makes him very universally applicable in terms of being a mentor.
So I'm very excited for our session.
I'm going to hurry through the sponsors because of that.
Even though they're great tools, I really want to make sure I maximize my time with
him.
So there is Sean Lechuga from The Wellness Shop.
Just go check his episode out.
If I've given goodness to you and value to you, I highly recommend going and listening
to him talk about what he does or catching what I talk about in other shows about how
great his vision is and company when it comes to holistic wellness.
We're going to move over to Melissa Gray in the Law Spot.
Same thing.
She also came through and was on this show and what she's doing to help businesses of
illegal matters tremendously.
If you're already protected, fantastic.
Move on.
If you have not protected yourself, you don't have legal counsel, consider giving her a
call or checking out our episode and seeing if she might be the person to help you.
We're going to move right into the water project, though I will never forget or slow down when
it comes to talking about the water project.
There are millions of people who do not have access to clean drinking water and I have
it in my other room.
I have it right here beside me.
It didn't take me hours or miles of walking to go get it.
There's people in Africa who the water project supports and they are walking three, four,
five miles just to get to an unsafe drinking or sorry unsafe.
What am I trying to say here?
I'm so excited.
A source of water that could hurt their family, not help or their school and they're missing
their education, they're missing work because of it, et cetera.
We are able to create, help them create a borehole well or a sand dam in order to help
them have access to drinking water.
It can have a generational impact on these individuals.
So if you're not in the position to financially give to the water project, my hope and I hope
to inspire you to share this with others, to consider sharing the link, all more to
consider tagging a friend on their page, not on mine.
Go and give.
There's 8 billion people in this world to help and I feel like as long as I have the
privilege of talking to this microphone, I need to do my best to try to make impact on
those who are less fortunate than I am in terms of their resources.
So if you know of a cause too that you'd rather hear us talk about or that you'd rather see
us promote, just drop that in the comments.
Let us know what you would like us to contribute to.
Maybe it's a family's crowdfunding due to a physical or a health element.
Maybe it's something going on in one of these other countries that is experiencing turmoil
right now.
Whatever we can do to support each other on helping the 8 billion, I'm all for it.
So send it our way, please.
Now without further ado, I'm going to bring Andrew on stage.
You guys can go and look at the landing page.
You can go and check out his story on LinkedIn and see his career history and all the past
stuff.
But I really want to talk to him about the vision today because we got to maximize our
time with him.
So Andrew, I'm honored to have you here.
Thank you for all that you do on behalf of everybody who's looking for greatness and
who's looking for hope in terms of recovery.
I love your mission, man.
Thank you.
I greatly appreciate the opportunity to be here.
Yes, sir.
Diving right in, what is the vision?
What is your vision for those who serve?
So for the people that we serve from day one, it's always been not just to help people through
recovery.
That's obvious.
But it's to do it in a way that's both revolutionary, high quality experience that will provide
a long lasting positive change for those that are seeking it.
And it took a little while to understand what we actually were just doing.
But that's my vision.
And that's the vision of Recovery Unplugged is not just to help people, which we do.
That's obvious.
But it's to do it on a level that's going to be both different and long lasting because
recovery is for life, whether it's mental health or addiction.
And it's not an all or nothing.
So the idea is to have that positive change that can be built upon.
And it's just a stepping stone.
There is no cure or silver bullet to anything.
Yes.
I love that you mentioned the word experience.
And most visionaries forget the reality that they can create an experience.
I can put socks on my hands, draw a smiley face and call it the Muppets.
But it's not going to have the same effect or the same experience as when you watch the
actual Muppets movie and the comedians that get involved in that and the depth of, again,
it's not just about the activity.
It's about the thought process, the virtues, the whole creation of the process that goes
along with it.
And I'll be picking your brain a little bit about that soon.
But before we go into that, what is your vision for you?
My vision for myself has always been to be involved in whatever is going to help people
do more and be more for what that means.
And so for the last 10 years of my life, that's been with Recovery Unplugged.
Prior to that, I've been involved in different businesses, but also from an individual perspective,
just always being there for people.
And there's a reason why I've helped over a thousand people go through Tony Robbins'
UPW.
There's a reason why I've personally given out over my last check, give or take, 300
plus copies of the Law of Attraction, because the obviousness is somebody that comes that
needs help right now with recovery.
But the other part is just people that are going through life that want and are looking
for ways to do more and be more.
And that means different things for different people.
So my vision for myself is always how can I help assist in that?
Meaning that just because I believe something is right doesn't make it right.
But if I can share the resources that have helped me with others, then it could potentially
help them.
Absolutely.
Tony Robbins has I Am Not Your Guru on Netflix, right?
And it's about there's a new opportunity for him with people like yourself have been so
many times.
There's like a whole documentary opportunity with you and all the things that you've learned
by being involved and around that culture from personal development to recovery to the
personal training that goes on, the business training that goes on.
There's so much depth there.
I can only imagine.
I'm just going to hint at that.
I'm going to leave it right where it's at.
I hope.
It's also led to if I just look at the straight line or the indirect lines of how I ended
up here today, right?
Because from the Tony world, I met Dr. Peter Diamantis, ended up at A360, sat next to Justin,
who introduced me to you, right?
I can tie into look, there are always good, bad and questionable people and thoughts in
every single environment.
I would say that the good is definitely outweighed the not as good in what I've met, who I've
met over the last two plus decades in that world.
My personal coach, Sean Callagy from Unblinded, I met also at the UPW.
I've been able to assist with that.
I've also had some pretty outrageously crazy people and things that I've met with as well
over the last two decades.
That's part of life, which I experienced.
Absolutely.
With that said, again, I think there's a great opportunity for them to do a docu-series and
the people who've gone and gone and gone and gone again, that reflect what's there.
I also want people to realize that you've been around so many leaders, you've been around
so many different mindsets, we are actually going to dive into that darker side first.
What is the worst leadership experience that you've ever experienced?
My realization that for a minute, longer than a minute, maybe even a year's period of time,
it was the thought and expectation that those that work for me had the same vision as I
did.
And not realizing, right?
It was naive, right?
It was naive.
Yes.
I've now done this twice, but now at least I recognize it.
Probably in the call center that I helped build and now, you know, Recover and Plugged
in the early stages was that, you know, me and my co-founders' vision, right?
Other people are amazing, they're great, but they're doing what they're doing because it's
part of their job.
And so not understanding the difference, which I understand now and I have for the last several
years, but in the beginning, it was getting frustrated with, you know, just because I
may want to work 70 hours a week, well, I'm building something, you know, that I own a
piece of.
And even when you're making a positive difference in people's lives, the expectation that other
people would have the same enthusiasm 24-7, 365 is me.
And that caused some challenges.
I've now done that twice.
And now I know and recognize it for the last several years, understand how much goes into
what we do on a daily basis, dealing with saving people's lives and enhancing it, but
also knowing that, you know, we now, you know, we built this from 20 people when we started
to I believe it was 431 when I asked this week because I always get like a weekly total
of how many team members we have and knowing that, you know, they're all incredible, amazing
people that are doing everything they can.
But it's a different perspective than what I or my co-founders would have.
I love that.
And I love that you attribute it to naivety.
You know, and I would agree.
It's so hard to remember the path of growth, the learning curves that we've had in life,
right, that led us to our dedication.
And so, you know, if I think back to when I worked at Sonic, you know, I have to remember
like why did I work at Sonic?
Did I work at Sonic because I wanted Sonic to be the best company in the world?
No, I worked at Sonic because I wanted to date the car hops.
That was it.
That's the only reason I applied to work there.
You know, that was my 16-year-old mentality motivation to get the job at Sonic.
And so, when people come into my company, if I expect them to have, you know, the same
exact vision that I have for growth, then you're right.
We end up setting ourselves up for failure, in essence.
With those relationships, we also end up kind of disrespecting the relationship itself by
not finding out what's your vision for being involved here.
You know, why is it that you want to work with us and what's your vision for your life?
Those are very important parts of first-class business when we bring people in.
And we don't have 431, but there is something else you said that I want to highlight for
the visionaries, and that was that you get this weekly report of those who are working
with you of the, you know, they have 430 team members, 431.
You care about them individually.
You know they're valuable as human beings.
Dr. Seth Yates, who works with me, he said, Jackson, how do you find these amazing virtual
assistants?
And I said, well, I do find amazing people.
They're not amazing virtual assistants.
When I find them, we do lots of training to help them learn the skills so that they become
amazing virtual assistants.
But yes, they are amazing people.
And it took me years of messing that up and not knowing how to show up for people and
not knowing how to respect what people want to give and where they're at in order to overcome
it.
And I know you and I are not the only visionaries who have our blinders on, you know, initially,
and don't see over that hilltop and realize the opportunity there is to change.
Let's move into the best leadership experience.
If you want to come back to that, we will.
But do you want to move into best leadership or do you want to double down on what we were
just talking about?
I think it goes hand in hand actually for me.
Best leadership experience comes from the worst leadership experience that I've learned.
And so there's, I have two answers to this question, one personally and one professionally.
So I'll tie in the professional one first.
After realizing what I realized and having challenges earlier on, I turned that into
a figuring out what those around me in the company, what their vision was specifically,
right, which is different than mine on why they were working and turn that into identifying
several individuals that the world, their family, everyone had given up on and they
were ready to make a positive change, didn't know how to not just like go through recovery
and staying clean and sober, but both professionally as well.
And so the best leadership experience for me over the last couple of years, if I look
at our team today and I look at my leadership team, I look at the top of my leadership team,
there are three people that nine and 10 years ago were in my program that are now leaders
of this company.
And it is absolutely incredible because it's not like they got clean and got a job.
These are people that are now running divisions with dozens of people under them responsible
for seven figures of bottom line that everyone had given up on.
And it wasn't that we just took them to a seminar and empowered them, right?
It took many years, but they literally have now built a career, a reputation, a positive
one and systems that they were able to learn and develop themselves.
And again, 10 years ago, you would have just walked by them and maybe dropped a dollar
when they were on the street and now they're married, children, just amazing.
They're executives.
I mean, you've described executive behaviors.
Oh, completely.
But both personally and professionally, I'm most proud of what we've been able to do there
because and look, and I'm also cognizant that not everybody that we've helped is still working
with us right now because they got better opportunities and get them and God bless them.
And I'm there to support them.
I've always I've said that since day one.
If you want to be on this journey with us, God bless you.
I'm with you.
And if there's something different that you want to do, God bless you.
I'm still with you.
So that's what I would say.
I learned that and was able to do that only because of the challenges and frustration
that I dealt with not understanding where people's vision was versus mine.
The other side of that would be, I would just say personally, there was an opportunity.
I remember how years ago, a bunch of years ago, was at a seminar, Tony Robbins seminar.
I was volunteering on the crew and there was a situation where Tony grabbed amazing gentleman
named Steve Linder, who owns Neuro Strategies and helped me personally in certain situations
with LLP.
And he looked over at me and he goes, Andrew, I need your help right now.
You're in charge of these 300 people that are about to walk on fire right now.
Literally, I mean, you know, you're in charge of 300 people that are on fire.
It was one of those experiences that you literally had to, again, I'd been around, I had training,
but I'd never done that before.
And so I was thrown into a leadership position.
You know, I was young.
I mean, this is, I'm 40.
I wasn't even 30 yet.
So I was probably 50, 16 years ago.
And so I just, I'll never forget that moment because it wasn't like I didn't know what
I was doing.
I'd been around the world for already, you know, eight or nine years.
But when I was thrust into that right now, it wasn't like in an hour from now, it was
like you have 10 seconds to walk over here.
They're going to say, go, you're in charge of these people.
Make sure everything works out well.
And so personally for me, it was, it was the understanding that had I not had I just showed
up that would have gone horrible.
But I had been around that.
I had been learning.
I had been to many seminars.
I had listened to the training of if in this really less than 1% situation, you are asked
to do somebody else's position, learn all the positions, right?
That was the training at the time I was able to do it.
And so from a, from a leadership perspective, you know, it showed me that what proper planning
and training, you know, having that here, you know, got thrown to the front right away.
So that was the personal and professional leadership experience that I love those.
We're going to expand a little bit on those.
In fact, it reminds me of a resource from a friend of mine named Craig Henley.
Craig runs a fortune 500 company and he wrote a book called hired to quit inspired to stay.
And that the concept of that book, which I just misspelled on the post, it happens is
very much in line with what you're talking about.
It's that mindset of abundance.
It's Tony Robbins train all these people knowing that he does not have to control the
extent to which they're, you know, they go out in the world and do things.
You know, you're not an employee.
You're not somebody who he felt like he needed to have as an independent contractor to do
that.
He gave you an opportunity.
You seize the opportunity.
It probably enhanced y'all's relationship even further.
And he continues to build his dynasty by respecting people in that fashion, giving people opportunities
to belong, participate.
And you in the same, same token, when you talked about recognizing that when it's time
for somebody to move on, you can still love them.
You can.
In fact, there's an opportunity there to love them.
There's an opportunity to help them on that transition even.
And then you've taken people who imagine if every business owner in the world had the
skill set to teach, to have the patience, to have the understanding, to have the systems
in place to take all the people who are in between a rock and a hard place and turn them
into executives.
That would happen to our economy.
It would grow immensely.
And also the concept of even wanting to do that for others.
Some people want, oh, well, I looked at this and they don't have these skills.
Well, look, you have to have a basic knowledge of skill.
You can't just have nothing.
But in different situations, one of the things that took us several years and a lot of money
is putting the systems and policies and procedures in place that we were able to do this correctly.
Yeah.
I'm glad you mentioned the policies.
We overlooked that as visionaries.
Go ahead.
It just had reached like, you know, in our first three years of existence, doing what
we did in our last three years, it would have failed miserably.
It would just have worked, right?
We were still figuring it out.
We were, you know, we hadn't set everything up that we needed to.
Once we had policies, procedures, standards that we're always checking on, I was able
to then take certain individuals.
Okay, you're going to train with this person.
You're going to train with that person.
I'm going to do some outside management consulting training for you.
You're going to learn these things.
But we can only do that because we had other things in place at the time.
Right.
Yep.
Skill, infrastructure, all of that.
You can be great at gathering apples, right?
But if you try to put 10,000 apples on top of each other in a bin, the bottom apples
are going to get crushed, smushed.
You got apple sauce without containers.
And they say one bad apple ruins the bunch.
And so having a system in place to orchestrate the protection and the health of each individual
becomes extremely valuable and important.
And you don't build the 430 people overnight and usually have any type of sustainability
involved unless you're Elon Musk.
Then he's got superpowers I don't.
So yeah, people can get lost.
And again, out of eight billion people in the world, there's going to be a couple that
are able to do super human things that don't seem logical.
And I think it's important.
I appreciate that.
But I think it's important for people to realize the difference, right?
I've heard and had thoughts and everybody has, right?
You see what somebody else can do.
And that's inspiring, right?
You also need to understand there are certain reasons, situations, and things that you may
not know of how that happened, what they had to do to get there, what they sacrificed to
get there.
And I think that just something that I see over and over again and I hear about over
and over again, especially with younger people today and even any age of people, oh, well,
so and so is able to do this.
OK, great.
So you read an article, you heard something.
What did they go through for the last decade or 20 years or 30 years to actually obtain
what they've been able to do?
So I think it's just important to understand that I know that anything is possible.
I'm a walking example of things that have happened that I shouldn't be here, I should
even be alive, right?
I was literally blown up.
So I'm grateful to God and to the ability to be here.
But I also know that there are a lot of things that people have accomplished that you read
this snippet.
But there's a lot of things that will have to have happened for that to work.
Absolutely.
Reading biographies of those types of individuals or I like to watch the movies about those
types of individuals as well.
It helps you gain some further insight into what they went through.
And you still don't know the depths of pain and challenges they probably went through.
You mentioned, go ahead.
Well, as I say on that, I watched the documentary of Richard Branson last year.
And then I got to literally go spend four days with him on Necker Island in March of
last year.
And so yeah, the documentary was great, but getting to sit and talk to him for hours,
which is one of the most incredible things I've ever done over several days, you get
to hear again, the documentary is a documentary.
It can only fit so much in a couple of hours.
Then you get to hear what really was going on when the visionary and the person that's
created so much that he has, when he was up all night long worrying about losing everything,
they don't always add that part of how close to the drink some people get.
Yes, absolutely.
Another documentary that I watched, or actually it's just a movie based on a true story, it's
called A Twelve Year Night.
I highly recommend watching it if you're listening right now, because it's about one of the presidents
of Uruguay and how he had to go, they went to prison because they were resistance fighters
trying to fight for democracy.
And the challenges they went through in that prison before finally, it's very much a Nelson
Mandela level story, but one that almost nobody's heard of.
Phenomenal, phenomenal lessons to learn about leadership and dedication, which I'm sure
you got a lot of those from Richard Branson when you met him and got to talk to him.
My question for you right now, Andrew, is if this were your absolute last chance in
life to share a powerful lesson with visionaries about from your experience, what would the
last lesson be?
The words that come to my mind is just keep moving forward.
And I'll expand upon that, that there is no straight line.
I have never met anyone that's had the straight line up.
And the idea is, and it's a hard idea, right?
It's understanding that whatever you're doing right now, that nothing is permanent.
Success is impermanent, failure is impermanent, but moving forward is.
And some people get stuck.
A lot of people get stuck.
Visionaries get stuck.
Entrepreneurs get stuck.
You get stuck in the daily grind.
You get stuck with finance.
You get stuck with whatever it is.
And the concept that I've always adhered to most of my life, and then I have to remind
myself twice a day, literally, is to keep moving forward.
Because when things are great, it is your obligation, in my opinion, to celebrate them,
but not assume they're going to go on.
And when things aren't going well, it's your obligation to know that you'll get through
it, even when it doesn't seem like you will.
So the reason why I've been able to do what I've done, go where I've gone, and help where
I've helped is because I just keep moving forward.
It's an easy few words to say, but living it and doing it can be challenging.
So that's why every morning, every night, I listen to different incantations, different
people.
Not a lot.
Five minutes, less than.
Three to five minutes every morning, every night.
I write my gratitude journal, but everything is geared towards the forward movement of
everything.
I'm going to let that mic drop, sit there.
Keep moving forward.
Fantastic.
Brilliant.
I love that you tie it to the reality that we're in a constant state of change.
The success won't be permanent.
The failures won't be permanent.
And yet the opportunity to move forward can be something that we can gravitate towards.
And I like that you talk about it's not linear.
Point A to point B sounds so linear that it's easy to forget that if you jump in your car
to get from point A to point B, you're going to have all sorts of stops, turnarounds, left
and right turns, whoops, lots of things that can happen.
Well, the same is true when you're trying to move your vision forward with a world that's
resistant.
I find and builds our greatest strengths.
And sometimes it's hard to recognize and appreciate, but the more we can align with that, usually
the happier or using more peace we can have in life.
That's what I found.
So thank you for the thought.
I want to know keys to fortitude and strength.
That's the topic that we named the show today.
I want to ask you about that.
I do want to give some context.
So recovery unplugged for those who are listening is a drug and alcohol addiction treatment
program that has both in-person locations in addition to online treatment strategies.
You're based out of Austin, correct?
You are.
So we have facilities in Austin, Nashville, DC Metro, and I'm based in Fort Lauderdale.
Fort Lauderdale.
So we have our headquarters.
You got Lake Worth, you got Northern Virginia as well.
Yep.
So we have the DC Metro, Northern Virginia area.
And then as of March 1st, we will be opening in Charleston, South Carolina, and also Southern
New Jersey.
Those are our inpatient facilities for people that are in need of detox or residential treatment
for drug or alcohol substance abuse.
And then we have our online program.
So one of the best things that's ever occurred since COVID, COVID was horrible.
A lot of bad things happened.
One of the greatest things that came out of it was the ability to help people remotely.
So when somebody comes to our program or other programs, if they had to get a DUI, got detox,
they could come to our online program anywhere.
We have people throughout the state of Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Virginia, they come to
our online programs on a daily basis.
And then I'm very excited that also next month we are opening our first inpatient mental
health facility here in South Florida.
And then we'll do the same elsewhere because we have so many people that are battling anxiety,
depression, and PTSD without using drugs or alcohol that our program, which is now 10
years, 14,000 people whose lives we've helped and a seven year outcome study from Nova Southeastern
University showing why we're doing this working better.
There is no cure or silver bullet, but increasing the chances of success is what we do.
And as you're scrolling through here, I think the two things that I think is important to
highlight is we believe in meeting people where they're at.
And so there used to be this argument about medical MAT.
And I've always believed in both MATs.
And we're the only people that do both MATs, medication assisted treatment and music assisted
treatment, which we came up with because they both work together.
And we created the first pet friendly treatment center in America.
So we have dog parks at every one of our facilities.
I ironically came up with the idea and I'm allergic, severely allergic to drugs and gas.
So I now can't even walk into our facilities.
I was at our facility yesterday for more than five minutes without having an asthma attack,
but I was able to understand and see how beneficial it is for people to come to treatment with
their pets.
And if that's what's going to work, and it has, and we've got a lot of data behind that,
then we'll do it.
Yeah.
So that's the, you know, we went from just recovery unplugged treatment centers to now
recovery unplugged behavioral health.
And we're really doing a lot more work on both the mental health and addiction side
because we see what is working.
It's so amazing.
And yes, I do see that, you know, it's funny, you get great Popovich or I can think of name
him his, oh, his assistant who's Bud.
I think he's still, I think he's still the coach of the Milwaukee Bucks.
These individuals that are amazing coaches are the most elite, elite athletes.
And you put them in the room with a child and they're still some of the most amazing
coaches.
And they have this ability to transition the way that they go about it.
They have this super passion and knowledge for how to go about influence at different
levels.
And that is to me what represents such the opportunity for those who are listening in,
you not only know how to teach people who are recovering and who are in great need,
I would say in many cases, probably desperate need for hope and help.
And you also have the unique ability to apply that at the highest levels of visionaries
too.
How much of that can we credit Tony Robbins and his organization for over those 23 years?
I got to ask.
I mean, it's invaluable.
You know, I'll take it a step back real quick and just acknowledge, you know, my first mentor,
still my mentor, Steve Einhorn, my best friend's father, who when I was 14, you know, brought
me to here, Zig Ziglar gave me the tapes, then Les Brown when I was 16.
And he's the one that brought me to my first Tony Robbins seminar when I was in college.
And so it was the starting point when I was a teenager of the idea of personal development
that he gave me my first book, Thinking Grow Rich.
You know, that's where it started.
And then through the Tony Robbins world, I've been able to build upon it with Tony Robbins
world and the Steve Linder world and now with Sean and the Unblinded Mastery world.
You know, it's been it's been absolutely incredible.
And just on the basketball analogy, over the last couple of years, I've become good friends
with Vin Baker, who has an amazing book, God and Starbucks.
You know, he went from an NBA All-Star to living under a bridge.
He's now assistant coach in Milwaukee Bucks.
And he's, you know, working with Giannis and working with Willard.
And he's also got the Bouncing Back Foundation and works with us.
So so he sends people to us, you know, every month that need help.
And he's opening his own outpatient place in Milwaukee.
And he's able to take what he's done on the basketball court, helping the top, you know,
basketball players in the world right now.
And when he's not doing that, he's helping people in recovery at night.
So you know, just thought that'd be amazing.
No, I'm so glad and to all these references, all these names, they all have stories.
Most of them have documentaries and have systems that we can go learn from and pick up what
you're putting down for us as a path and foundation.
And even though we probably can't access your original Rich Dad, not that you necessarily
had a poor dad, but it's that Rich Dad, Poor Dad story of you, the best friend's dad who
was able to help put you on a.
I will say I talk to my dad every day.
I love my dad.
My dad was had the school of thought, go to school, get an education, get a good job.
And Steve was don't worry about school, build who you are.
It sounds like Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
It was direct.
I mean, I literally almost I dropped out of college three times.
And my wife, who was my friend at the time, kept re-enrolling me.
I have a degree, but I mean, she really got it.
So I ran different businesses, always worked, commissioned only things because Steve's got
me on the mindset that if anything was going to be created, I would have to create it.
I was not going to work my way into success.
I would work my way into success working for myself or building something myself.
And so, you know, it's been it's been fantastic to have both my dad, Bob and Steve, you know,
because my dad is also very logical and I'm not.
So it's amazing to have him in my life every day.
That grounding is necessary because you could get, you know.
That's a key to fortitude and strength, I would say is the grounding.
And we're not all born and blessed with it.
I love my dad.
A lot of a lot of great.
If I am being dad at my best.
I am scratching the surface of how my dad was at his best.
Yeah, phenomenal.
And most people know the know me know that my dad is the darkest of the blackest of black
sheep in the family.
And you know, but there's so much good that can be learned from both experiences.
There's honor to be had in that process as well.
Those of those of you out there who didn't have a dad, I don't have a dad.
Find one now.
I mean, I hope you're 60.
Find one now.
Go find those mentors.
Go find that tribe that's willing to help you go to Andrew.
Call me up.
You know, ask me who's been on the show that you want to connect with.
Incredibly important to know that men and I love that I learned this image that poor
dad, I think I knew it.
But like it was like, oh, now it's obvious.
And Robert Kisaki said, mentors love to mentor.
They're ready.
They're just waiting for you to call them.
If you call somebody who you want mentorship with their leadership from, they're going
to give it to you.
And I also love that he said and and you know, go pay for their dinner.
You know, take them out to lunch.
They're going to want to pay for the probably beat you to it.
But do the things that help them understand you value them in your life.
Give to their charities.
That's another thing I've heard to do is make sure to support their charities.
It's amazing what can happen when you show up to give and you show up to give with the
right people.
But anyway, we're going to go back to recovery unplugged and what's there and people being
able to go.
And so the online treatment, but I'm not going to call it a facility, the online treatment
process.
What does that look like?
How are you guys going about delivering that?
How do people sign up?
So we have 24 hour life saving center, amazing people, 24 7, 365, we're open on Christmas,
we're open always.
So if anybody needs help, I'm old.
So I talk to people, people can call at any time.
But we also have live chat.
You know, we're on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, people can reach recovery unplugged at
recovery unplugged on any one of the social media platforms or recovery unplugged dot
com.
And we have people 24 hours doctors that can do an assessment.
If someone needs help, whether it's you know, they're struggling with mental health and
just feel like they need more or they're struggling with alcohol or substances or a family member
is, they call us and we figure out how we can help them.
And if we can't help them, we find someone that will.
And that's one of the things we try ourselves on.
Always have always will.
Oh, you know, I think 70% of the people that call us, we can't help right there in a different
state, you know, or whatever it may be.
But one of the things I will mention is as of 2024, most of 2324, we now are in network
with every major insurance company, as well as TRICARE for the active military, VA for
veterans and Medicaid.
So you know, it took me several years to be able to do that.
But the goal is to be able to help everybody where they're at.
And I never wanted money to get in the way of somebody getting help.
So we do give out scholarships as well.
But we take every single insurance that's available, as well as with the military and
the government offers.
I love that a lot.
I love to extend our conversation about potential partnership with some of our programs as well
and what's there.
I'm a big fan.
When I was in the medical co-op program studying to be a pediatrician in high school, my teacher
told me I would never be able to be a doctor.
And he said it would love he said, Jackson, you love people too much.
I know you wouldn't be able to handle this.
You wouldn't be able to do what was needed when a dad comes in and says his daughter
fell on the stairs, but she's got a ring imprint on her face that matches the ring on his.
I was like, you're right.
I'm telling you.
I was like, OK.
But I started thinking about therapy too and like being a psychologist.
And I had the same realization for me.
I realized I don't want people to feel like that to pay me to talk to me.
And so I then decided I want to be a teacher like he was, like the guy I was learning from.
And I was like, well, I can be a teacher.
Then I can be there for people outside of my teaching hours, not charge of anything.
Anyway, all that process has led to where I'm at with first class business and building
passion pro and our different programs for Latinos.
And I've been through many therapy programs myself.
We need one that I can refer people to.
Go ahead.
Yes, I want to add.
Thank you for reminding me so much amazing things going on that we just launched our
program in Spanish.
First language.
It is live.
We have two programs, one for people battling drugs or alcohol and one for people just for
mental health, 100 percent in Spanish, virtually in any state that we're in, all covered by
insurance.
So that is live as of yesterday.
Oh, wow.
Cool.
What timing.
That's awesome.
And my 14 year vision for Latinos and finding work that I've been building for a long time
went live three weeks ago.
So what a weird, cool set of timing.
God is good.
Yes.
I'll say that.
And the so what I hear about Recovery Unplugged 2 is it reminds me a lot of which I believe
there's more room for in the world.
Reminds me a lot of better help.
You know, that type of program that people can go to and get help from is, is there some
alignment and harmony with that type of a program and therapy?
That's the Spanish version.
Sorry.
So, you know, we we offer again, our virtual offering and our online offering is in the
last year.
That's the direction that we're going into.
Yes, we're offering our focus is intensive outpatient therapy, where their focus is just
individual therapists.
Right.
You call therapy, spend 45 minutes with them, whatever it may be.
We're offering is what you would do in a group therapy session, intensive outpatient, three
hours, three days a week, and then separately having that one on one with the therapist.
But that's what we're taking everything that we've been successful with people coming in,
you know, on the outpatient side and doing that online as well.
Nice.
That's awesome.
And while I'm really excited to see the vision continue to expand, we'll be happy to do everything
that we can to support the growth of what you're up to.
Andrew connections, anything visionaries who are listening in.
If you have the desire to connect, of course, on the landing pages, use those.
I'm sure you can connect to Andrew on LinkedIn.
Also subscribe on YouTube to their channel.
And if you're in need or you have a family member who's in need, then I'm actually curious
if somebody is a family member that's in need, Andrew, do you guys have like a recommended
starting point introduction of like how to ease people into that reality and experience?
Well, I was that family member, right?
I took several family members to rehab many times, didn't know what I didn't know at the
time.
So my whole thing is always, you know, that's what we do.
That's what our 24 hour life saving center does.
We have trained interventionists, amazing people that also work directly for recovery
unplugged, that will go out and do those as well.
It's need be.
So just call us and have the conversation of what's going on.
Everybody's got a different story.
There's no do this or do that.
It's in other words, I can call you guys and ask, like if I have somebody in my life who
needs help, but they're just not willing to seek it.
I call and ask you guys how I can go about that.
Nobody wakes up that I've met in 10 years and says, I want to go to rehab today.
We nobody's not showing up and be like, I'm here, right?
There's always a situation, conversation, intervention.
There's always something that will need to occur for that individual to take the next
step.
And a lot of times it's just a phone conversation where somebody calls up and they'd say, I
get it all the time.
People call me, Andrew, I know you've been through this.
My mom, dad, sister, brother, husband, wife, kid, whatever, name it.
What do I do?
And then I call one of our trained, amazing interventionists and they do a phone call.
And then the next day, we're helping that person.
That's awesome.
That's really, really helpful to know.
I wasn't sure if like, what if you had a spouse, for instance, and you just kind of left recovery
unplugged open on the computer so they might see it when they go in.
I don't know.
I'm not an interventionist, but that's also why I wouldn't follow what I just said.
If I were in a position where I had somebody that I wanted to go through that, then calling
and working with somebody who's an expert and can help me know how to navigate that
would be really helpful.
And visionaries, a lot of us have gone through addictions or have addictive personalities.
And this is not something to shy away from because when we can resolve whatever inner
turmoil we have, and if you listen to some of the greatest coaches of all time, mindset
is one of the most important things to be able to control is what's going on internally
so you can get the external results that you're also hoping for.
Last thing, visionaries, if you want to be on the show, if you've got a vision to share
in the top right corner, you'll see a button that says, be our guest.
That's your opportunity to apply to be on the show.
Feel free to leave your questions and comments as well in the comments section so that Andrew
and I can get back to you if you have any feedback, any insights.
Also, if you have feedback for the show, we're always open to feedback.
Andrew, this is an absolute honor, man.
Thanks for taking the time.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate the opportunity.
Absolutely.
Everybody, we'll see you on the next episode.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show, and thank you for giving us your time
and attention.
I hope you have an excellent time building out your vision.