Heroes in Business - Cheryl Canzanella - Navigating the Financial Impact of the Opioid Crisis with Carter Wilcoxson and Tim James

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Carter Wilcoxson and Tim James In this episode of the Health and Wealth podcast, hosts Carter and Tim are joined by their special guest, Cheryl Canzanella. Cheryl has a unique perspective in the financial industry, specializing in raising awareness about the opioid crisis and its impact on financial health. The opioid epidemic has significant financial and economic implications, costing approximately 696 billion dollars in 2018 alone, which is about 3.4% of the GDP.  https://www.thehealthandwealthpodcastshow.com/episodes-1/episode/7d31dd0d/cheryl-canzanella-navigating-the-financial-impact-of-the-opioid-crisis

Shut up and sit down. Welcome to the Health and Wealth Podcast with your hosts, Tim and Carter. What's trending, enrichers? Carter Wilcoxon, founder of CSI Financial Group here, with my co-host and former wealth advisor, Tim James, founder of? ChemicalFreeBody.com and your new health advisor. This is the show where we reveal the connection between physical and financial abundance. Hey, welcome back, enrichers. Carter Wilcoxon coming to you again from Phoenix,

Arizona. Summertime out here in Phoenix, Arizona. Enjoying the nice, you know, warm weather for those of you who might live in other parts of the country who think you have it better than Phoenix. Let me just say, I just got back from Nashville over the weekend and you can keep it. You can keep the summers, you can keep the humidity. I got no interest. I was there and I was just like, man, I cannot wait to get home back to my dry heat. So anyway, as is normal, I am joined by my amazing, spectacular, fantastic co-host, Mr. Chemical Free Body himself, Tim James. Tim, how are you, my man? Hey, doing good, Carter. Glad that you're back home, and you got a lot of contrast, so you decided you don't like humidity and chiggers.

Yeah, well, I was pretty much in the city, although it's interesting, I did get a chance to go out to visit one of our advisors who I've known for almost 15 years, you know, in the in the space that we give them the opportunity to do business with us in. And they live out in a city called Franklin, pretty far away from downtown Nashville. So I was way out there, but I stayed right there in the city. I was way out there, but I stayed right there in the city. If any of you enrichers are listening, if you have never been to Broadway in Nashville, it's a must. It was my first time. It was so much fun. But as far as the weather goes, I'm like, I don't even know how you can handle that. Of course, most of the enrichers know I'm a golfer.

So all I thought to myself was, I couldn't play golf in this. Most of the enrichers know I'm a golfer. So all I thought to myself was, I couldn't play golf in this. Well, you just have to change your attire, I guess. You need to get one of them big hats with the fans on them and the misters. Yeah, maybe change attire multiple times during that round. Yeah, lots of sweating. But, you know, it's like a perpetual sauna out there in the summertime. Yeah. And you just get used to it. I mean perpetual sauna out there in the summertime. Yeah.

And you just get used to it. I mean, you grow up in that environment. You're just used to it. People get used to their environments. I know. I moved out here 26 years ago from Kansas City, born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas. So I know all about it. It's just when you've been acclimated to your surroundings as long as I have, I guess that kind of sort of happens. But interestingly enough, we are coming into a hurricane that's getting ready to hit,

and we are joined by our guest today who is batting down the hatches, so to speak, in Jacksonville, Florida. Not really, based on the conversation we had pre-show and everything, but I want to go ahead and welcome in our guest today, Cheryl Canzanella. Cheryl, how are you doing? Doing great, aside from a hurricane coming, but nothing new for us, so we're ready for it. Yeah. You gotta give us a break about that humid heat. You know, this is probably one of the worst summers and high heat that we've had in a long time. Yeah, well, we really are honored to be able to have you on here today. And we're going to be talking about some fairly serious stuff today.

You are in the financial services business, but some of the things that we were introduced on LinkedIn about that was the connectivity for the two of us is some things that we're going to be talking about today. But we really are honored to have you join us on the show today. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Our pleasure. So, well, hey, Enrichers, as I just alluded to, we are getting ready to get into that probably more in the second segment.

is normal and take Cheryl back to her beginning on the influencers or things that happened along the way that brought her into the financial services, you know, generally speaking in the first place. So Cheryl, you know, what was it about, you know, the financial services that originally had your interest, piqued your interest and and what were some of the things that led you to this path? It was a job. I was 19, so I had no idea what a stock or bond was and kind of fell into the industry. It wasn't something that was on my checklist out of school saying, hey, this is what I want to do. It just kind of fell into my lap and an opportunity opened up to get securities licensed. I worked for a company called Merrill Lynch and had an opportunity to understand kind of stocks and bonds background, but understand the insurance side of the business as well.

And that kind of opened up a whole list of opportunities outside of just sales. I've had an opportunity to work on the compliance side, internal sales, external sales. I had an opportunity to recruit new young talent into the business. And that's kind of opened up the doors, which led me to where I am today. I actually work for, I wear a couple of different hats. I have my own insurance company, but I also work for Movement Mortgage and I work on the retirement side. So I connect the dots between the financial planning world and in the mortgage industry and reverse mortgages. Nice. Awesome. So so now here you are, you're 19 years old, have no idea what you're going to do in the future. But when you say you stumbled upon it, like, did somebody go, hey, you know,

you would be good at this? Or I'm just curious, how did you stumble, quote unquote, onto, you know, into the Merrill Lynch world? Well, someone was looking for, she's actually, I consider her a mentor because she's the one that opened up the door to a lot of where I am today. But she was looking for a job for someone to be an assistant, kind of a marketing person. And I got to fill that seat for her as well as have an opportunity to sit for my licenses as well. So when I say it fell into my lap, it was just a job to me at the time at 19 years old. It really wasn't my career, but it turned into something so much more and has shaped me into who I am today. So it really was just, you were looking to, you know, 19. Well, that's college year. So were you still in college while you were doing that? And then you

went full-time after you got out of college? Talk a little bit about that. Yeah, actually, I was very fortunate. I was going to a university that took credits. It gave me college credits. going to a university that took credits. It gave me college credits. So I was able to get my securities license, my series six at the time, which was the first license that I achieved, my insurance license. And they gave me college credit towards graduating by having the work experience as well. So yeah, I was working full-time and going to school full-time and made my way through college with my experience working at Merrill Lynch. Nice. Now you're in Jacksonville, Florida now. Is that where you were going to school then or was that somewhere different in the United

States? No, I grew up in Palm Beach, so Floridian, but Jacksonville is at the time where I came while working for Merrill Lynch. They have a campus up here and had an opportunity to get involved with the company, get promoted and work at the campus here in Jacksonville and went back to Palm Beach after Merrill Lynch. But it kind of opened up the door for a lot, including my personal life and where I live now. Gotcha. So when you started, when you first started there, you're just basically administration. Is that right? You're answering phones and being a gopher. Is that what it was to start with? And then you got interested in more of the financial planning side of the equation?

Well, what it was is I was a marketing assistant for a wholesaler, annuity wholesaler. So I was kind of an internal annuity wholesaler. I didn't quite know what that was yet because I was more in the assistant role, but that's what led me to becoming an internal wholesaler was starting off as a marketing coordinator. But this is back at Merrill Lynch when you could sell proprietary. We were selling a ton of variable annuity companies at Merrill Lynch and you could sell proprietary, we were selling a ton of variable annuity companies at Merrill Lynch and they wanted to, they were actually incentivizing the sale of their proprietary product. So this is a time when, you know, you were throwing darts at a wall and, you know, you were making money with the stock market. So variable annuities really weren't

all that sexy at the time. So it was a really, it. So it was a challenge to get people insurance licensed with a lot of these stock guys that really weren't into the insurance products. And it wasn't long after is when variable annuities really started to make their mark in the map. Yeah, that's interesting. So Tim, who is a former wealth advisor, He knows a little bit about that world. So how many years ago was that when you first got broken to the business then? 24 years ago. 24, 25 years ago. Okay. So Tim, how long has it been since you were in the financial services world like that? The past doesn't exist. I only live in the present moment. Oh, I forgot about that. I forgot. You're just present now.

You don't. Yeah. When was it? Like 2009, I think, is when I got in. Oh, what time was that? Yeah, 2009. I had to wait until everything fumbled and then I started over again. Yeah.

Yeah. I was in right before the dot-com era. So no one was sure what was going to happen when we moved over to the year 2000. The whole Y2K thing, right? Y2K, that's right. It's all coming down. Yeah, it was going to crash anyway. Fear, fear, fear. Everything's always fear. Yeah, for sure.

So just out of curiosity then, did they kind of sort of promote you based upon some of the skill set that they saw then and incentivize you to go that direction or encourage you to go that direction? Was that something that you yourself, because marketing and sales, similar but not the same, right? So you were this marketing guru, it sounds like. Then you're like, well, maybe sales are more for me. guru, it sounds like, then you're like, well, maybe sales are more for me. Well, my mentor, her name is Suzanne Norman. She worked for Merrill Lynch for a long time, and she was the one that encouraged me to get licensed, encouraged me to get exposed to as much as I could. And the company was actually taking all of the annuity marketing coordinators at the time and consolidating them into one location in Jacksonville. So I was one of two that took that leap. And I have to believe that that was because I was licensed

and because of the encouragement that she gave me. But that gave me a taste of sales, being on the phones, encouraging other people to sell. It was still based on what anybody, what, what the advisor was producing and how I would be compensated. So I wasn't really in control of sales, but it was pretty intimidating to see advisors start in this business and fail. I mean, there were so many, they'd come on, it was like a revolving door. They'd come in and, and, you know, you'd have to have a network of people that, you know, high net worth. You know, I think at that time it was like you had to have a household that had at least, you know, 150,000 or maybe it was 500,000 or something like that. Otherwise that they, you know, you wouldn't get credit for it. So I was a little intimidated to get into the

sales portion of things. So it didn't happen overnight. So it took me gradual steps to get into full on, you know, running my own business, but that was definitely a taste. So you did that. And then, and then from there you left Merrill Lynch around when, and then what was your, what was the next stepping stone for you? I was with Merrill for five and a half years. And then I had another, had an opportunity to work with someone else who brought me on. Kind of, she took me under her wing. Her name is Toni Harris.

And I went to work for a company called Valic. And I had an opportunity to work with the sheriff's office in Palm Beach County and in a couple of other groups. So again, they were giving you an opportunity. All you had to do was, you know, walk through the door, extend your hand and shake your hand and create a relationship and then follow the steps. So they opened up that door for me. And so I worked with Valak and I did pretty well in excelling until things started shifting. And my biggest group that I had was basically the sheriff went from like three or

four different providers to one and we weren't that provider. So just like that, my clients were taken. Wow. That sucks. Yeah. And then, so now you're going with the ebbs and flows and the ups and downs of, you know, the financial services world and, and, and living in that eat what you kill kind of a mentality. Right. So, so what was the next pivot after that then from there? Well, I went into compliance. I thought maybe I'd climb the corporate ladder, you know, and I figured once I started doing that, you know, I was a nice compliance lady. I got securities, the 24 supervisory licenses, but I realized that that was going to take me a

long time to climb that corporate ladder. And I really liked and enjoyed the relationship part of the business. So I got into some recruiting, which ultimately led me into the last 10 years. I was with a company called Mass Mutual in their brokerage. And I had the opportunity to make hundreds of relationships. And this is this is where, you know, work started to become personal because I made a lot of friendships and, and, and being in brokerage. So my role was kind of like a wholesaler, but I was marketing an entire insurance product lineup to hundreds of people outside of MassMutual that wanted to sell our products. And that's where I really got a taste of having an operating your own business and really, you know, you know, business. And really, you know, I only eat what I kill.

So I was out there hustling as much as I could to make sure if my advisors were producing, I was producing. If they weren't, I wasn't. So it made sense for me to support them and to make sure that they were getting the right strategies that they needed for their business and to excel in order for my business to excel. Gotcha. So now, so you had mentioned earlier that you were full-time working and full-time going to college. What, where did you go to college? Was it any kind of a specialized school that, you know, had like a good, you know, business program or anything like that? Or was it just something that was location-wise convenient? Palm Beach Atlantic University, it was convenient because they had a cohort at night. So I would join a specific group of people and we kind of go from class to class to class together. So we had an opportunity to, many of us, if that had work experience, had an opportunity

to get credit towards a degree. So I received a bachelor's degree in organizational management. Gotcha. Okay. All right. So now that you're where those 10 years that you were doing that, is this like the most recent pivot where you're at today now? Is this like the most recent pivot where you're at today now, or is there another gap between what you're doing currently and that?

No, I mean, 10 years with MassMutual, I mean, my role was working with advisors, helping them with strategies for tax planning, legacy planning, building net worth, creating retirement income, all with insurance products. And I was with an organization annual meeting with a group called NAIFA, National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors. A lot of our enrichers that are listening, they're members as am I, a member of NAIFA. So yes. Great, great job. And of course, we advocate for our industry, so it's important to be a member. So appreciate that. But I was at one of their annual meetings and I heard of someone speaking on reverse mortgages. And when I started to get more educated on them, I started to realize that many of the advisors that I was speaking to on a lot of these strategies, they weren't including home equity as part of the conversation with financial planning.

Yet the strategies were building a higher legacy, decreasing and working with taxes and creating more cash flow. And these were the same strategies I was having in conversations I was having with advisors on the insurance side. And yet they were very similar to the conversations on the home equity side, yet advisors weren't including this as part of their conversation. So given everything I've shared about my background and having a compliance background, having internal sales, having relationships built within this industry,

and talking about financial planning, I saw this as a huge opportunity to get out there and partner with financial advisors to educate them on strategies and the benefits of clients, including home equity into that financial planning conversation. That's awesome. I actually, right before I got into financial advising, I was a mortgage professional. And for the last, I don't know, maybe four years, I became kind of the go-to reverse mortgage specialist. And I was teaching these classes free, and I would send out these 10,000 mailers and go to some local place where old people like to eat, basically, and have these seminars with 25 to 50 people. And you'd feed them and then educate them on reverse mortgages. And I thought,

I started talking to financial advisors about it, and they were just very closed down on it. So I just started, every time I had a seminar, I invited a financial advisor. I said, come have a free meal. I want you to come hear about this. And then, then they got to see me as the expert, but then they got really educated every single time after I was like, dude, I had no idea that reverse mortgages like this. What a great financial tool. I had no idea. And then boom, I was like instant go-to. And then the, the people that were selling long-term healthcare insurance, I became their best friend because a lot of times when people wanted it was when their health was too bad or it was too, they couldn't afford it, but with a reverse mortgage, they could afford to get it. So their garbage, they were throwing these people away.

I could turn that back into gold and get them back to them to get what they came to them originally for. So yeah, it was a great financial tool and just a lot of misconceptions out there with that. Yeah, a lot of misconceptions. And today there's a lot of protections put in place for seniors. So a lot of the misconceptions are from back in the day when things were not, you know, as there weren't as many protections in place. So there were people putting people being put into maybe reverse mortgages that shouldn't have been there. Maybe they couldn't pay their property taxes or keep up with their insurance. Maybe they were taken, a spouse was taken off the title in order to actually implement the strategy. Today, you wouldn't see any of that.

There's so many protections put in place with the right reverse mortgage, like heck, where it's probably one of the most scrutinized loans out there and rightfully so. But I think with financial advisors, I think they're coming around now more so than they have in the past. And they're becoming more open to talking about it. Compliance had a big, you know, it's kind of like this, you're not allowed to talk about reverse mortgages and you'd get flagged. And if you had something in your email, you know, they'd pull that right away and give you a talking to. But the reality is we're not, you know, opening up the use of equity to purchase an investment or an annuity. That's simply not what we're talking about. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I know that we're coming up against a break and everything. And what I'd like to get into

in the next segment is really some of the things that we have been connected on with some of the issues that are going on, the opioid crisis and some of the personal things that have happened to you and how you're trying to raise awareness on that. So yeah, let's get into that because this is like part of Cheryl's mission. So when we get back, we're going to get into her story with this opioid crisis that we've got going on, her personal story and how it touched her life and then what she's doing about it today in her life. We'll be right back. Estate planning. What does that even mean? When the inevitable happens for everyone on this planet, your estate plan kicks into action. But first, let's start with what an estate is. An estate is simply everything you own. Now, here's

the issue and what needs to be understood when this event occurs. You only have two choices on this plan. Number one, either you plan how your estate gets handed out and distributed to those you leave behind, or number two, your state decides who gets everything you own. For the first time ever, you can now take complete and total control of this plan that you've been deprived of for most of your life and generations before you. You can get personalized assistance along the way with a team of specialists whose job it is to make sure you have true peace of mind. It's important to understand that estate planning is a journey and rest assured that our team will

be available to you all along the way and at every step. Welcome to eState Plan, home of the last estate plan you'll ever need. To learn more, make sure to reach out to your local advisor licensed with us or go to our website for more what's up enrichers tim james here i'm back with my co-host carter wilcoxon today in the house we've got cheryl canzanella and you know kind of a unique financial advisor guest that we've had she specializes actually in she's a professional speaker in the opioid crisis and bringing that to the attention of people and how it's actually affecting people's financial health, as an example. I was reading through here, and it looks like this opioid epidemic is costing about $696 billion as far as 2018, which is 3.4% of GDP. I mean, it's a massive number, the financial and economic burdens of the opioid epidemic. So we're talking, it ties big time into financials and financial planning. So I guess my first question is like,

how did this all happen for you? How did you get into this little segment? That's our first question. Well, I was been in the financial industry for 24 years and I got married and to my husband in 2011 and he was battling addiction from a back injury and I wasn't aware of anything going on. But right when we got married, everything started to spiral out of control. Although it didn't happen overnight, it did take some time. But being in the financial industry, this wasn't something that I wanted to share with anyone.

First of all, I was most likely in denial myself. Looking back, I can see all of the signs. But at the time, I brushed it off as in denial myself that nothing's really going on and he'll get over it. We'll get fixed, you know, he'll, he'll get better, but it wasn't something that I wanted to share. I thought it would be, you know, career suicide. I mean, why, why would anyone trust me with any of my conversation, financial conversations, if I can't even keep my own head above water?

financial conversations if I can't even keep my own head above water. So my husband was going through full-on addiction and unfortunately he passed away in 2017. And I just had this overwhelming urge to share it with everyone because I knew that I was not the only one going through this. And the minute I started to speak up, I started to realize how much that was true because so many people came to me and said, I understand, I've been through it. And so that shame and fear that I felt of not wanting anyone to know, I felt that it was important to at least educate my peers

in the financial industry on what the opioid epidemic is. You know, how in the world did we get to where we are today and how to help their business? How can they how can they find the red flags within their clients and how can how do they even have the conversation? And and then what kind of financial strategies does that mean for them? So when I started to put all this together, I realized that our industry, it's not that we're talking about addiction as anything new because it's not, but this opioid epidemic is hurting thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. And it's very likely that your client is someone like me who was fearful, unshameful to even talk about it. And as an advisor, you might not feel like

it's your place to get involved, but I hopefully am opening up these conversations to where advisors can help their clients face it for themselves and open up to them about it as well. Well, absolutely. They should be talking to them about it as well. Well, absolutely. They should be talking about it because it affects finances and that's what people are there to get help for. It's just like, I remember, Oh, when we would do meetings, like we were the ones that were pushing people to get their trust in place. Right. And then, okay. Okay. And you know,

that took some work and then we'd have to set them up and connect them. Then let's say they get their trust in place. And that was like, okay, now you need to go review your trust annually, right? And you gotta go meet with your attorney or whatever. Now, Carter has it all set up so you can do it via the phone and Zoom and it's super easy and stuff like that with his system. But the point is, is that like,

what if it's almost like, well, during that review as an example, it's like, okay, you have a daughter, she marries this guy and the guy ends up being some type of a loser or he's an alcoholic or a drug addict for whatever reason, whether it was prescription drugs or he's doing heroin or whatever. You know, you might want to, you know, or you might want to change that. So the money goes to her specifically or it skips and goes to the kids. Like, because if something happens to her, then he's running the money. You know what I mean?

Or maybe you have a brother or your, excuse me, your son and a daughter. And then the son, he has some major issues going on. Maybe he, maybe he gets crippled up in a car accident and he's dysfunctional and he's on kind of like,

you know, he just can't really do much anymore. His brain's not working. He's, he's just kind of messed up. He's probably just can't really do much anymore. His brain's not working. He's just kind of messed up. He's probably not going to be the executive of the state anymore. Special things are going to. It's the same thing with this opiate stuff.

It literally overwhelms people. And the sad thing is, is like it's been prescribed and it's not being talked about. I've actually dealt with this personally myself. And also it's not just the medications, but when they switch the medications on them, it creates withdrawals. And it's just like people start literally losing their minds and the spouses start freaking out. Like it's something to talk about for sure, because if they have power of attorney on stuff or if they're co-signers on certain things, it's a big mess. It can become a

massive mess. So obviously you've built a whole industry or a niche around this to help educate financial advisors, right? To some of the downsides and what you can do pre-planning before something like that does happen, or if people are in the middle of it, what the other person can do. Yeah. And you mentioned, you know, trust. If you don't have a trust set up, so if you're not talking to your advisor or not sharing this information, how does your advisor know how to set up the trust? How do they know how to work with the estate planning attorney? Or how do they know what kind of language to put into that trust? passed away instead of going through that disability. And he had, if the parents passed away, I'm sorry. And that son maybe didn't have a disability, but now you don't have the proper language set up in the trust. It's not about protecting the assets at that point. It's about saving a life because if he has his hands on money, you know, anything can happen at that point. And it's probably not going to be good what he uses that money for. So there's so many different

levels here, but advisors don't feel like it's their place to get involved and they don't feel probably not going to be good what he uses that money for. So there's so many different levels here, but advisors don't feel like it's their place to get involved and they don't feel like it's their place to open up that conversation because they're not a doctor, you know, they're not, you know, you know, rescue, they're not first responder. And, and so they feel like it's, it's not their place to get involved, but ultimately if they don't talk about it and they don't bring it to light, those are very things that can absolutely happen. Yeah, well, I can just say that, you know, working with the advisors and of course, we teach and train this, you know, across the country on advisors on how to become, you know, good estate planning advocates and understanding that really the vast majority of these clients are expecting their advisor to advise them, right? Advisors might be afraid of certain things, but clients' expectations are that advisors are

supposed to be this quarterback of a team of people that they can help. Because guess what? They're not going to just, right, wrong, or indifferent, households aren't just going to pick up the phone as a rule and go, especially in the mass affluent demographic, right? Which is one of the most underserved demographics, you know, in the financial services arena, which is why it's also a great opportunity, but they don't like attorneys. So they're not going to pick up the phone and call an attorney to do stuff. So they'll continue to procrastinate, but they have an advisor that's in their life, whether that's a financial advisor, a planner, an insurance advisor, someone that deals in some of these solutions, right?

Whether they're insurance solutions or reverse mortgage solutions or whatever the case may be. But they need to feel like that they're someone they can turn to to help them in all of these different areas. to feel like that they're someone they can turn to to help them in all these different areas. And if you could be the centerpiece or what I like to call the personal CFO of a household, well, you're going to surround yourself with a team of people that you might not know everything, but you want to be the first point of contact for the household so that you can then coordinate between your team that you've got surrounding you to help these households out in all of these different areas. So you don't have to feel like you're talking about everything, but you want to get at least a general understanding of what's going on. And the best, fastest way to

do that is to be that estate planning advocate and conduit to get all that type of work done. And that's really what we specialize in is becoming that solution for advisors who don't really know where they turn to get that stuff done, right? So they're scared of it, they, you know, hands off or whatever. But I can promise you those master fluent households that, you know, they have $800,000. Well, they need their help more than someone who has $80 million, I think, personally, right? And those spendthrifts that are going to happen from the kids, you know, now we're talking kids. I'm, you know, 51 years old, right? We're talking to these households who are 70, 75. Well, guess what? Their kids are in their 50s primarily, right? And they're, but those are the ones that

are having some of these challenges, you know, with substance abuse, no matter what that might be. So they need to feel like they've got someone that can, you know, help guide them on what's the proper way for things to be distributed. And that all starts with education, right? If you can educate them, what we call delivering the three E's, where you educate, enlighten, and empower these households by going through a process that can address these concerns that happen when they're no longer here, right? You just got through talking about it. We know that statistically speaking, it's the saying of shirt sleeves, the shirt sleeves in three generations, right?

One generation creates the wealth. The next generation inherits the wealth. The third generation is back to work again because all that money is gone. So you have to properly plan and you have to keep these assets and you can't do anything any better than you can with having a trust, right? That becomes irrevocable once the grantors pass away. But that is the optimal way to protect these kids or grandkids, whatever the case may be, from themselves. And it's important to get to that point is you've got to bring it to light. And how do you do that without offending somebody? How do you do that with someone who is in denial themselves on what's going on? And I think that the more I can educate

and raise awareness will help advisors with that conversation. So they can be that conduit. They can be that trusted advisor so they can share this information. I think the Mass Affluent, they have the means to probably cover this under the rug than probably main street client, but that doesn't make them immune to addiction. And I think that's where advisors don't think, well, that's not my client. Those aren't my clients. You know, my clients are not the ones out on the street. My clients are not the ones, you know, begging for money. And that's true. Most of us don't work with the destitute, but you know, and as much as we want to work with the rich and famous, the reality is the rich and famous are failing at, you know, being able to,

to get through this. And, and they're the ones losing the battle too. And they've got all the money in the world. They can, they can take trips for years at a time and not have to worry about putting food on the table or keeping the lights on in a business. So the reality is it's our clients. I don't care what your target market is, that your clients are being affected by this. And reality is if you're working with business owners, 75% of business owners have said that they've been impacted by the opioid epidemic. 75%. I think that number is way under reported because I think, again, just like us as individuals, business owners may not know how much it's really being impacted from this, but 75% is a pretty large number. And when

you think of every day, we've got millions of Americans that are on prescriptions, pain prescription pills, and it's every day that we have hundreds of people that are dying from overdose involving opioids. I mean, the number of people dying from overdose, 75% involve opioids. And I think that that is a major impact. And that's a major reason why we have to talk with our financial advisors. Advisors have to be aware about this and be able to have the conversation with clients. Yeah. So, you know, 75% of business owners are affected. And if you think about that, right, if they have employees and then the employees have families and so, yeah. So, I mean, it's everybody. Yeah. It's, it's, everybody can be affected with that. And, you know, I come from a long line of substance abusers. You know, your story is similar to mine in that I was I'm like, I wanted to kind of just not, you know, tell the world about some of the challenges that I had growing up.

Right. Like I used to hide from the fact of, you know, my dad in prison, you know, seven times and, and stuff like that. Of course, now it's just like, that's, that's just, that's my makeup. That's why I do what I do. Right. It's where I came from. And, you know, it doesn't do any good to hide from that. It's much better. It's much better. I feel to encourage yourself to be, I mean, genuine, right. You're, you're. Sounds like a country song, Carter, seven times in prison. Yeah, right. Oh, I think, Tim, we need to work on the lyrics for that pretty soon. But yeah, that's one of those things that I've had to deal with my life, right? I mean, you know, my dad was, you know, addicted and then, you know, my aunt basically drank herself

to death. And I mean, I've had so many family members that are, have been substance abusers. And I got to say, I'm, I'm so proud of my brother, who my younger brother going to be 50 in October. Shout out to Curtis. He has overcome so much in his life that, you know, rehab center after rehab center, after rehab center, relapse, after relapse, after relapse after relapse and now he's an over-the-road truck driver and you know he just got through one year of sobriety which is the longest he's had of sobriety i think since he was like maybe 12 years old or something like that which is you know it's nuts to me but i've been very encouraging for him. And before where I used to, you know, be very self-protective of my family and everything,

I just, I just made the determination. I was going to try to encourage him, not enable him. Right. And that's, I think the biggest problems that most families have is that they don't know how to balance between being encouraging and being an enabler. Right. Just my own personal opinion on this, but, but I wanted to, I wanted to be more encouraging to him. And I can remember as he was getting closer and closer and closer now, because I've talked so much about it and I, I go, Hey, pick

up the phone. Anytime you're having a problem, you're struggling, you know, whatever, pick up your phone and call your big brother, right? I will be better for you than anybody else that you can talk to. I promise you. So I, he'll call me and he just called me not too long ago. And he was getting to the point where he was getting really close to that one year. And I finally had to say to him, I say, Curtis, the one year isn't like, okay, now I'm there. If you look at it like that, you're going to get to that one year and you're going to like, okay, now I can fail because I got to that one year. No, no. You have to look at like, this is just my life moving forward. Is it nice to have a milestone that you had one year? Sure. But the problem is if you're

looking to achieve this thing and the closer you get, the more difficult it's starting to become. It's because you're thinking of the one year clean thing. And because of that, once you get there, now you let your guard down and you're no longer thinking about what you do day to day. Tim, you talked about it earlier, right? There is no past. There's no future. There's just the present. That's all you can live in. And that's all you can focus on. And I think having that conversation with him helped him to get easier to get, because I'm like now, like, look, it's not like one year and a day, one year and two days. It's like every day. This is just your life moving forward and stay more present. And don't worry about the past. Don't worry about the future and just do what you can control today.

So anyway, I just wanted to share a little bit of the fact that I've been directly affected. I'm a business owner. I'm part of that 75% with not necessarily specifically opioids, but definitely with the substance abuse. Well, it's definitely a big thing out there. So let's do this, guys. We'll take another break. When we get back, we'll wrap up on find out what Cheryl's doing to help these people and to help their financial advisors get through their minds and the societal conditioning so they can actually help their clients preserve their wealth and grow their capital during these tough times with these opiate addictions and how they're affecting everybody. We'll be right back. You want the absolute best for yourself, and you want it to be easy. That's why we created Green 85.

It helps with detoxifying the body gently. We're proud it's chemical-free, unlike almost all other supplements you'll find. Bottom line, Green 85 will get you healthier. We look forward to hearing what Green 85 did for you. To get this product and our other amazing products, go to ChemicalFreeBody.com. That's ChemicalFreeBbody.com. What's up, enrichers? Tim James here.

Psych. I was totally joking about getting more into opioids and stuff. But no, we'll talk about that. I was, because in my show, I actually get into the solutions in the third part. I forgot that this is the Health and Wealth Podcast. So this is actually the section where we're going to flip the script and let, let Cheryl ask me questions on health, but maybe there'll be some on opioids. I don't know. Let's see. So Cheryl, what questions do you have for me? Well, you know, I was thinking about health questions.

I just recently had a baby and he'll be one. Thank you. He'll be one in a couple of weeks. So actually one week, one week to go, one years old. So my first baby and obviously being a first time mom, being a brand new mom, a lot of, you know, nutrition and diet is important. And, and obviously what I feed myself and my child has completely changed. So what do you see as new families, children growing up? And how do we stay away from all this unhealthy food? How do we stay away from the convenience? Because I work full time. I'm running a business on the side.

I'm running now a household in addition to that. And you've got to make time to have healthy meals. How do you do that? Well, first off, you have to get educated a little bit. And so if you realize the pain and suffering that comes with processed foods and these easy foods, I'll just give an example. So I just I'm glad you brought this up because we were and it's so crazy, like the the synchronicities because like one of our coaches is pregnant. She's eight months pregnant. And I'm like, we need to start helping these young mothers. Like, so she's going to start doing some little short videos and putting them on Instagram and stuff like that. We want to start educating

because the mothers, they're like, well, I, God, I've talked to so many women. They're just like, yeah, whatever. And they get pregnant. And all of a sudden it's like everything changes like i'm getting healthy and i got the baby so it's not about them anymore right so let's put this into context it's going to blow your mind so i always talk about life expectancy charts in the united states and how around 1984 the united states started sidelining we our life expectancy stopped growing as like it was with all the other industrialized nations. And then what was really interesting is I talked to Dr. Joan Iflin today. She's a processed food expert. And she said in night, she goes, Tim, you're not going to believe this, but Philip Morris and through 1983 to 1985, the cigarette addiction company purchased Kraft, The cigarette addiction company purchased Kraft, Nabisco, and General Foods.

And they took their cigarette addiction business model and literally took it right over to the food industry and built the exact same model around food. Because what was happening was they were marketing because they have a five-step process. Number one was it has to be affordable. So we got to make sure it's affordable for people. Number one was it has to be affordable, so we've got to make sure it's affordable for people. Number two, it has to be really good advertising. They're really good at doing that. Number three was availability. We have to make sure that it's everywhere and people can get it. And then the fourth one of the five was the scary one.

It was like young age. That's where the A comes from, of onset, young young age so they wanted to be able to get to people for addiction of these foods early right and just like they were doing with cigarettes but they kind of got stopped with cigarettes because you remember joe camel and they were they had little cartoon character for kids and they literally got stopped doing that and so but with foods they can do it all day long happy meals all this other all this other BS, the cartoon characters on the cereals and stuff like that. So 1983, 1985, the addiction companies, Philip Morris from the cigarette companies purchased three of the major food manufacturers. So anything that you're buying from Kraft, Nabisco,

and General Foods, you're buying from an addiction company. You're buying from a cigarette manufacturer, basically. That's who's behind it. And they're buying from a cigarette, you know, a cigarette manufacturer, basically. That's who's behind it. And they're very good. They use system science and they have system scientists. And they understand that you have four different methods in your brain's receptors that you can get addicted to. There's the CBD receptors. There's the dopamine receptor.

There's four of them, right? So, and what ends up happening? And then you also have this thing called, it's built into you. That's really crazy. So it's like back in the day, long time ago, we're cave people, right? You couldn't live by yourself. I always talk about this. Like we are part of a colony, like an ant. If an ant strays, the ant dies. But if the ant stays with the colony, the colony becomes the organism. So human beings were tribal. That's the only way we could stay alive because we didn't have big bangs and claws and we couldn't run that fast. We had to stay together as a tribe so that we could make our food, find food together, not get killed all the time,

you know, raise our children together. It was tribal, right? So deep into our DNA, we're programmed to be together and fit in. That's the fit in so this is why you know just like smoking cigarettes hey come on over here charlie you know you're talking to your friends you try to do it even though it makes you gag in the beginning you want to throw up you do it because you want to fit in just like it is today eating cheese and crackers from nabisco or whatever as an example right because you want to fit in with everybody else. There's a deep physiological need that's built on thousands of years of evolution that we need to fit in. And so we have that going against us. We have those four receptor sites in our brains going against us. And these processed

foods are hitting on all four of these receptor sites and you want to fit in. So it's like what Dr. Jones said, and I've said it before too, it's like, it's, it's not your fault that you're addicted to these foods and you can't get off of them. There's so many things going against you. You're completely completed. You're deficient in nutrients. You're starving for food. Your cells are screaming at you to go eat yet. You can never satisfy your need for nutrition because on a cellular level, it's not in the soil anymore. So it's not in the food because the soils have been raped. There's no nutrition in soils anymore. It's completely gone. So this is where we're at today.

So these people like yourself, working class people like me, we find ourselves stuck because we're addicted to these foods. Our children are now getting addicted to them as well at younger ages. And that's why 83% of us are overweight, obese, or morbidly obese. It has become the new normal, and people are wanting to fit into that because of that biological programming. So you can see how deep this stuff runs. And Philip Morris, running these food companies, knows this. So it's all set up. It's all set up for you to fail.

Now, our job, I believe, my job is to bring awareness to this and start educating people. My job is to bring awareness to this and start educating people. And our product line actually helps people to start detoxing, neutrifying the body, getting the energy back and the mental clarity back so they can go through that process. And that detox is not so rough, right? Getting off of these foods. When I went to Hippocrates Wellness Center back in 2011, the director there said, look, he goes, I'm just a recovering food addict.

And I always will be. So you're either a food addict or a recovering food addict with these processed foods, because once they hijack your brain and those pathways, it's no different than an opioid addiction. It's like no different. It's the same. The same processes and pathways are happening. happening. So think about that. Food is, it's the new drug. It's the biggest dope out there, but nobody wants to talk about it because it's like, it's like, it's, it's, they have this ego and well, it can't, and they don't want to talk about their own shortcomings and whatever. They don't realize like I'm addicted to food. So it's not really addiction per se. I mean, it is, but people don't respond well to addiction because they don't correlate addiction and their foods to that most people don't but they can associate their cravings they have severe cravings for these foods and these cravings will drive them to do what i do like swerve across two

lanes of traffic to get a banana nut loaf bread at starbucks as an example because of a last minute thought starbucks ding ding ding and it's interesting certain people that you hang around you've actually programmed those cravings to those people so certain there's all this sub this deep programming that's going on so as a young mother and you have this young child and you want to help them you have to understand this deep level of programming and engineering that's been done to the processed foods. So one thing you might want to think about is like, there are no coupons for real food. So any food that has a coupon is definitely something to stay away from, right? And so if you want to be healthy, you and your child are actually from nature, right? Your body's made of

water. You find that nature, your bones are water. You find that in nature. Your bones are minerals. You find that in nature. And when you die, you'll break back down into the soil, right? So we are from this planet. The reason why people are overweight, they have all these issues. Their children have tons of throat, nose, and ear infections. It's all the disconnection from nature. It's the disconnection from fresh foods, from living foods, living bacterium, things that

we're supposed to be ingesting all the time from this deep, rich soil. So if you want to have a really healthy child and make your motherhood a blessing rather than a curse, because if you're not healthy yourself, you're not going to have the energy to run your business, take care of your child, manage the husband, all these things that you have to do. But also your child will be sickly and you're going to be up not getting good sleep. And the child's not going to be getting good sleep and lots more doctor's visits. This is what's happening today. You know, one study shows a French study was done quite a while back that children that had zero pets versus children with pets that were indoor pets versus children with pets that went outside. And what they found out was that the kids that had the pets that went outside and brought those bacterium back into the house, 47% less throat, nose and ear infections, as an example.

So nature's the answer. We have to get you and your child outside. You have to buy local, buy local, buy local, buy fresh foods, get to know your farmers, go to the farmer's markets. And especially in wintertime, if you don't have, if you're in an area and you're in Florida, but it's a lot of people don't live in that area. You have to start growing your own foods. And that's why we get people growing sprouts because you can grow them 365 days a year. It's nature's finest medicine right on your countertop. Kids love doing it. Get them addicted to that

and get them addicted to nature because they're programmed for nature because they are nature. And so all of our issues are the disconnection from nature and all of our solutions are coming back to nature. It's always an inside game. Yeah, what I hear you saying is we have to be strategic just like we would in our financial life, as well as our health and our personal life. But kind of like, put your mask on before you put the child's mask on, you're going to make sure you're healthy first, right? That's kind of where I hear you saying, it's like, make sure you're healthy first. And it just becomes so, you're right, they make it so convenient. They make it so, you know, it sounds just like

big pharma when I'm talking about opioids. I mean, it's that addiction and they make it very easy for you to have access to this. And, and, and funny, you say that the companies are buying out those same companies just went through another just recently big buyout of what we would consider the other healthy companies. I don't know the names off the top of my head, but you can probably do a quick search and find them. And there's a lot of the craft and the bigger companies, like you mentioned, going after what we would deem to be healthy companies. Because shelf space is very valuable real estate and they want their crap on there. They want you

addicted to it. They want your children addicted to it at an early age. And that feeds into the medical industry, which is also broken except for crisis care, you know, ER and that kind of stuff there excel. So dairy products have case of morphine in them, a tremendous amount. Glutens have a glutomorphine. So if you know what morphine is, it's a drug. And this is why processed foods are so addictive. Right. And, and, and stuff like this. So it's just, it's kind of common sense. I mean, I have to educate people on all this stuff and they realize, wow, there's a diabolical, these companies like care zero about us and, and,

and the engineers in there are thinking, isn't it cool that we can do this, this, this, we can literally hijack their brain and they're forced to buy our product and they don't even know it. It's like, and they're going to, they have a process. It's a system science. There's a five-step process here. It's affordable. They're good at advertising, availability, and they get people at a young age. I didn't write the fifth one down, but those are the four of the five and that should be enough. And so if you're having, and we've seen this thousands and thousands of times where we help people reduce their stress, get the toxic chemicals out of their body and out of their cells,

and then flood their body with living nutrition. They come back to life. And I'll tell you, I knew a kid. He was called the Raw Baby. His name was Charles. And he was the son of a sous chef that I met at Hippocrates Wellness Center. His name was Kelly. And Kelly had never fed him cooked food.

He've never had cooked food and he never had anything processed. And year after year after year, the doctor kept saying, this is the healthiest child I've ever seen in my whole entire pediatric practice. He ate natural living foods and raw foods that were available. Yeah, he had a sugar, but if he had sugar, it was because he had a date or a fig right there was nothing processed so and think about how much money kelly saved on doctor's visits they never went he went to the checkups and the guy's like this is the healthiest kid i've ever seen in my whole career that was every year healthiest kid i've ever seen and he was the nicest smiliest little kid slept through the the night, no throat, nose, and ears infections, none of that stuff. And so if you have the goal here, it should be about boosting your immune

system and boosting your child's immune system. So for you as a mother, mama bear is not told by baby bear what to do. Give me chicken nuggets, give me fries. Well, you gave them to him in the first place. If you start with that stuff now and you get a phone in their hand, you're screwed as a parent. You're screwing yourself up are you're going to make your life very difficult and your child is going to have a much lower statistical chance they're going to be a productive member of society but if mama bear takes care of herself and she makes her health a priority no matter what and she teaches baby bear how to sprout how to juice the difference between processed foods and then why you have to look out for that? Just like look at it like a big male bear in the forest.

Like he's going to kill you and me. We got to stay away from him. It's the same thing with processed foods, toxic foods, chemicals and all that kind of stuff. Just like you would tell your child, don't stay away from the cliff. Don't put your hand on the hot stove burner. You're going to burn yourself and do not do not eat these processed foods. That's where I would start. And then buy fresh foods, buy fresh foods and local.

And what you'll find out too, is it's actually very easy once you get in the, it's just new and different. You're going to actually eat lower on the food chain. You're going to buy stuff in bulk. And eventually you can literally buy like 50 pound bags of nuts, seeds, grains, and beans. And you can have this stuff

and you can make big pots of food and they can last you throughout the week when you're busy and you can have things good to go sprouts are going all the time you're going to have so much energy you'll be able to handle on you'll be able to tackle all the things you want to do in life you're going to crush life and you don't have to worry about heart attack and cancer and fibromyalgia and colitis and Crohn's and all this other crap that everybody else is dealing with you're just going to you're just going to have a great life and you're going to become a shining light, not just for yourself and your children, your family,

but your community. So what is your tip for saving lettuce in the fridge? Well, I would use something called it. Donate it. Yeah. So, well, number one is there's, there's something called living lettuce, living butter lettuce that actually has the root ball attached, right? So you just keep watering it and pluck it as you go.

That's probably optimal. You grow it yourself. There's tower gardens. You can start doing that. Or everybody should know about green bags, Debbie Meyer's bags. They're actually really cool. They breathe, and they have this mineral in the bag called oya, and somehow it just lets the gases escape and it keeps your vegetables way fresher. And those bags can be used for four to five months. They're reusable. You just clean

them and reuse them. And so Debbie Meyer's bags, those, those are amazing for, for keeping produce fresh. And you want your refrigerator to be about 34 to 40 degrees, very cold, but not too cold. You want the lettuce right where the, you know, the super cold air is coming out because that could freeze it in that little spot. So keep it in the right spot. Great tips. Awesome. Well, Carter, I guess that about wraps it up unless you have any, did you have any other questions, Cheryl, or is that it? No, I mean, I love how this kind of transitioned into the same conversation that we were having. Like you said, the synchronicities of everything is just the addiction, having to detox our bodies. This is all the stuff that people are going through, substance use disorder or opioid use disorder. Same thing. I mean, when we talk about our own

health, they're going through the same thing, trying to detox and get their body better. So I'm glad this went in that direction. The only difference is, this is a big difference, went in that direction. The only difference is, this is a big difference. I want to give people the visual is that there aren't fast opioid centers where people can just drive up and get their opioids, right? Just as 24 seven. I mean, I guess those would be pharmacies. They have to go through a doctor, go through a process, but with processed foods, which is no different, it's a drug. It's like, you've got people in line at mcdonald's and wendy's and kfc and subway and all these other places all these fast food joints rbs you name them all jack in the box blah blah blah they're all fast food i mean if you look at this stuff it's all engineered system

science addictive foods designed to bring you back and it's gonna it's gonna destroy your health and it's kind of obvious. All you gotta do is look around. Right. And then like over in China, when, when all of a sudden all the fast food restaurants like, Oh,

we want to have, you know, Mickey D's over here, no obesity. Now creep, creep, creep, creep.

If you keep creeping up and now these other industrialized nations are starting to get those sicknesses. So remember if you're in these other countries, life expectancy soon to come to a city near you because there's always a five to twenty year man ten to twenty year lag time on what happens the united states always happens in these other countries it's a matter of time so it doesn't have to be that way young mothers i'm actually counting on moms because pissed off moms are the ones that get stuff done and so if you take the responsibility for your health and grab the reins on it, you become the best version of yourself and you become like a wild creature. Very fit, very healthy.

Your skin's glowing. You don't have to worry about doctor. You're going to take care of your child. You're going to be a great mom. You're going to show them by example, by giving them permission slips, by you being that being the example yourself. slips by you being the example yourself. And that's the, I think the most important thing for all of us to do for our family and our friends and our community is like, let's just take responsibility for all aspects of our life. No matter what's happened to us, where we've been, what we've done, let's grab the reins and quit blaming everybody else and take charge of our life.

Yeah, that's absolutely great finishing advice, obviously, right? Making your health a priority. We talk about it on this show all the time and everything. So, hey, enrichers, thank you so much for joining us for another episode of the Health and Wealth Podcast. Make sure to go to our website so you can see all of our other fantastic guests like Cheryl Canzanella at www.thehealthandwealthpodcastshow and make sure to like, share, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify, Google, Podbean, whatever the case may be.

So for my co-host, Mr. Chemical, everybody himself, Tim James, I'm Carter Wilcox, and CEO and founder of CSI Financial Group and Epic Services Company. Thank you for joining us again. Cheryl, thank you so much for coming on, sharing your story, the awareness you're trying to bring out there in your community and everything. It's been

a great joy to have you today. Thank you guys. So until next time, Enrichers, we will see you on the Health and Wealth Podcast. Thank you, everybody. Hey, Enrichers, thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Health and Wealth Podcast. I'm your host, Carter Wilcoxon. And I'm your host, Tim James. And by God, we are committed to helping you guys have fat wallets, flat bellies. So tune in again for another episode and make sure to like, share, and drink a lot of water or beer. You have just listened to the Health and Wealth Podcast with Carter and Tim.