The Money Mondays - From Rock Bottom to $115 Million Dollar Exit: Eric Spofford's Journey to Entrepreneurial Success 💰 105

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

In this episode of The Money Mondays, Dan Fleyshman sits down with Eric Spofford, a trailblazing entrepreneur and recovery advocate, to discuss his journey from overcoming addiction to building multi-million-dollar businesses. Eric shares his raw, unfiltered story of resilience, transformation, and the mindset shifts that helped him turn adversity into an opportunity to thrive. Tune in to learn: How Eric scaled businesses with purpose and grit. The lessons he learned from hitting rock bottom and rising to the top. His approach to leadership, growth, and staying true to his values in the face of success. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or looking for inspiration to overcome life’s challenges, this episode delivers actionable insights and motivation to take your life and business to the next level.

If you understand addiction, it ends in only a couple different places. The person ends up in recovery or they end up in jails, institutions and death. And the thing you need to consider is what are you going to regret if the worst case situation happens? And that is a tool, the mechanism that you need to overcome your anxiety and your fear on confronting your loved one that has alcoholism and has addiction. Ladies and gentlemen,

welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays. As you guys know, I've had a very strict rule. I only record podcasts inside of the RV motor home, but sometimes you gotta break the rules for very special, special guests. So I'm here in Miami inside of Eric Spofford's mansion. This gentleman built up his career. We're going to go through a bit of his story, but really focus on what is going on in the world today, because it is the number one money Monday in the history of

society. Today is the inauguration. Today, TikTok is back. Today is Martin Luther King Day. Today, cryptocurrency's through the roof. You've got meme coins worth billions of dollars. You've got Bitcoin breaking records. Everything is very exciting about this Money Monday. And so, what we're gonna do is get a quick two minute bio

from Eric Spofford so we can get straight to the money. Straight to the money. We're out here breaking rules. I like it. That's appropriate, right? For you, for sure. 100%. If anyone's gonna break the rules, I'm honored.

It's me. Quick bio, folks. Listen, grew up in the Greater Boston area, lived a very crazy life, got involved in drugs and alcohol, young age, state's youngest convicted drug dealer. I believe I still hold the record for that fifth grade. I believe I was 11 years old selling weed.

Yep, got a kid named Garret Pelletier ratted me out. I still fucking hate him. And you know, that led to, you know, the next 10 years of just an insane life, got addicted to OxycontContin which turned into heroin, crime, violence, jail, streets, yada yada yada. And I got sober on December 7th of 2006, just before my 22nd birthday.

Went on to find a passion in helping others recover from addiction and alcoholism. Did it at first on a volunteer basis. That turned into an entrepreneurial idea, started my home state's very first sober living home, scaled that over 13 years, two months, to the largest provider of addiction treatment services in New England, sold it for $115 million to a private equity-backed strategic. Alongside that, I've done a couple hundred million

in real estate transactions, invested in many other opportunities, and built a little bit of a personal brand. I've been messing around here on social media for the last few years, having a good time, connecting with like-minded folks like Dan. Now, today, back at it in the addiction treatment space, active day-to-day CEO of two explosively growing businesses,

one Treatment X, a national collective of treatment centers. We acquired two businesses in Q4 of last year, was set to acquire four more this year. And so we're currently operating facilities in California, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and growing expeditiously. And then a separate business, which is Turnkey Real Estate,

where we are taking ordinary average Americans and giving them the opportunity to buy investment grade single family homes under $100,000 that are cash flowing with low low-income Section 8 tenants. And so that's the majority of my day-to-day. I also oversee a transportation chartering company consisting of a private jet, my Challenger 604, a 92-foot yacht, the bonus round,

and many other things. So. We could do do like 17 minute bio. It was hard to get into. I get it. It's a fun. It's a fun journey. All right. So the money money is as you guys know, we cover three core topics and to make money

and invest money and how to give it away to charity. But what I want to first ask is once you sell a company for one hundred and fifteen million dollars, what do you do the next day? Like you get that wire, it comes in. It's Monday morning. It's Monday, Monday. Like, whoo. Nine a.m. Nine one. And you click refresh. Yeah. And if it shows up, it's funny.

It was December 21st was two thousand twenty one was my money. I don't know if it was a Monday or not. It's just called Money Monday. Yeah, it was my money Monday. And and you I sat, you know, for the closing call, and they clear it, and they say all the wires have been set. And then you sit around all day fresh up refreshing your online banking app. It was like

535 that night. Now sit in my kitchen with my feet on my table honestly getting frustrated. So I'm like, yo, it's after banking. Where's my money? And I refreshed it for the last time and boom, all that money Just showed up and it was that was the probably the craziest feeling That it was a wild experience You know what I did next I went to fucking work guys. That's what I did. I got up the next day Yeah, yeah, and so I got up the next day. I drove with Lori, my right hand,

chief operating officer, been rocking with me a long time. And the next morning we were standing in front of some brick mill buildings that I was considering acquiring and renovating into apartment buildings. Like two hours away from home, outside of Boston on the south shore, freezing cold, holding a hot Dunkin' Donuts coffee. It's like nine o'clock in the morning. We've been up since five on the roads and seven. And

she whacks me in the arm and looks at me. I mean, we just cashed an enormous check you think we'd like go to an island celebrate or something. And she says, we're never fucking taking a day off, are we? I said, probably not. That's three years ago. And we haven't we haven't taken five seconds off. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Because what people don't understand frequently is that like they see these oh this guy's worth 1 billion or 200 billion or 50 whatever There's a certain threshold where life doesn't change. You run out of shit to buy. I have a ton of exotic cars. There's not a car on the planet. I couldn't make a call and have it dropped off. So it kind of it's like, all right, whatever. I want a plane, a boat, we're sitting in a fucking 20.75 million dollar home in the Venetians islands,

Venetian islands of Miami right now. What else are you going to buy? And so it has to become for a love of the game. It has to become about the sport of business and entrepreneurship and the grind and the grit and the and the team and the camaraderie and like and so when you love it as much as I love it, it's really not about the money. It really isn't. Like the money's the scoreboard,

but you play the game because you love the fucking game and you want to win, but you still love to play. So I always say, I still get excited when I get like a $41 random commission, the same way I get with 41,000 or 400,000. 100%. I just like it. Winning's winning. Yeah, 41 bucks came in, I'm like, $41 random commission, the same way I get it with $41,000 or $400,000. 100%. I just like it.

Winning's winning. Yeah, 41 bucks came in, I'm like, oh, that's cool. 40,000 comes in, oh, that's cool. I just like the action of it. Okay, so you've mentioned a couple different markets that you're into, real estate, Section 8 housing, and then diving back into opening sober living places. Walk us through.

There's treatment, yeah. Why go back into the treatment centers? Just because you know it inside out. I know it inside and out. I understand the business intimately. It's, you know, for me, I had this conversation recently with the addiction treatment business. That is as much of an entrepreneurship

and the sport of business journey, as it is a spiritual journey for me, right? Like you go back into, I come off of heroin and all these other drugs, you know, more than 18 years ago, and I'm confronted with, you know, some guys in 12 step recovery, alcoholics, anonymous, narcotics anonymous. I get put into that process, which changed my life, right? And part of that process is you actually make a decision, and it's a prayer that you turn your will

and your life over to the God. It's the third step in the 12 steps. People obviously probably wouldn't know much about this, but it's a contractual process between you and God that says left to my own devices I have destroyed my life this is my best thinking got me here fucking you know not in a good spot right and so I need some help and so the deal you cut with God is that you know he's got a job for you and it's your job to do that job and in turn if you do the job and the work

that he's assigned to you, that he'll take care of you. And so when I sold my company, the next day we were busy, but my phone was just silent. And over the coming months, it left this like void of like, I'd spent 13 years every day doing something that had a meaningful impact on other people and all of a sudden like real estate's cool and I've made a lot of money in real estate

but like you're not really helping anyone. You know what I mean? And it's not and so it just, it felt like a labor of love and I kind of got called back to it. So there are a lot of reasons. Are you looking for the same goal? You want to run it back sell for 150 million? Do you want to get to 116? Like what's the goal for the next run?

500 million to a billion this next time. Three years, five years, 10 years, five to seven, five to seven years on the outside. Five to seven years, $500 million. At a minimum threshold. Correct. And are you so hard? It's a billion. But but also understanding

market cycles, the world changes. There's a lot of things that we know in twenty twenty five. Then in twenty twenty seven are going to be different. Sure. You know, interest rates come down, the multiples go like so there's a lot of things that you

can't you can't perfectly plan that process, but it's a lot of things that you can't you can't perfectly plan that process But it's 500 million at a minimum It is a much different grind this time because it's much more about a roll-up strategy acquiring businesses not building them organically It's much faster. Yeah, explain the roll-up strategy. What do you mean by that? We're buying businesses, buying existing, so by existing addiction treatment facilities. Yeah. And so where we bought two,

I bought one in October of last year, 2024. I bought another one in November. And right now we are ramping up to with the target of buying four additional businesses, facilities this year. We'd like to close and integrate one per quarter. So every three months be acquiring a new one. Well, let's say it's 2030. You get another wire transfer, this time for $520 million.

You hit your goal within five years. The day after that, you're getting back into the same game? I don't, that's the same game? I don't that the other that's the other information that I have to consider when I think about selling the next time, right? It's it left me so fucking bored. And so it's like you give it like, okay, now you have an enormous pile of cash. But the day to day of what I'm doing right now is so fun. It's going

to be hard to let that go again knowing that I've already had the experience of selling a business once, I've already experienced the void. Like this is the stuff that they don't talk about in everyone wants to talk about the exit and selling their company. And I mean, how common in the business world

is that conversation? We don't talk about the void after. How close are you with the people that you work and grind and build with every day? Because you just divorced all of them. You left, you packed, they're on another mission with another leader, with another group, and you're off on a fucking island alone

with a bunch of money. I'll always have to do something, right? And so I don't know if it's back into this or too far to tell. So you mentioned that here, or we see on social media, a lot of people talk about the exit. How many people do you think actually have had an exit in the social media?

Very few, very few. That's one of the reasons why I got into social media was I looked out at the landscape and saw a bunch of people that I thought were fake. I looked at them and I was like, you're talking all this business and entrepreneurship and, but you haven't actually built it. You're only good at making content and using buzzwords that sound good to get attention, but in the world of Instagram and social media influencers, the amount of people that have actually built

a real business is a small fraction. Kind of on our hands. And of that, the amount of people that have actually sold one to a successful exit is a fraction of that. So it's a small minority. Okay, other category dove into was section 8 housing talk us through Why put so much money and time and energy into it and why teach people how to do it? I? Love section 8 housing because it won

I love third-party payer reimbursement systems and understanding that the government if you can cut through the red tape will actually pay you significantly more to provide quality low-income housing to the people that are in their program over and above market rate tenants because they know that they need to incentivize landlords to overcome the stigma of Section 8 and deal with their government bureaucracy,

paperwork, and red tape. And so once you can kind of figure all of that out, the ability to make money in it is astronomical. And it's the one thing that I've found in recent times that cash flows at such a rate that it overcomes the objection of the high interest rates and the cost of capital, destroying cash on cash returns in traditional real estate investing.

So walk us through the general concept. So section eight, how, as you mentioned around one hundred thousand dollars, someone's out there like, OK, I can I can come up with that or I can come up with a 20 or 30 percent I might need to get down. What's the general idea of what they should be looking for if they were trying to dive into the market? Three bedroom and higher homes because Section 8 doesn't reimburse on square footage a reverse on bedroom count

So the more bedrooms the higher the rent you're gonna get doesn't matter if it's a 10,000 square foot mansion or an 1800 square foot four bedroom home And then just solid bones to the property You know you want to get something that's in decent condition one of the one of the mean is a couple get something that's in decent condition. One of the one of the mean, there's a couple, there's a couple pain points within it. One is screening the tenants and making sure that you're bringing in quality tenants. And that'll pay off in dividends over time. And the other is looking at properties and overcoming a lot

of the deferred maintenance. So you want to make sure you have something and try to like when we come in and we rehab it, we try to make it so it's not going to need someone to come back for quite some time. All right. So we talked about your business stuff. Let's talk about the world's business. Talk about the world. Today's a big day. And this episode is literally never done this before.

We're filming it right now at nine in the morning and in an hour this can be live. It's the biggest Monday, Monday of all time. I'm not just saying that, it's literally, at 12 o'clock, it's the inauguration. What do you think about the economic impact of just the energy that's happening with the new president stepping in today?

I think the entire world changes today. I think that the economy is gonna be on a crazy run for the next four years, because people's fear is subsided. They have a lot of faith and certainty in what the future looks like. Love Trump or hate Trump, you remember what that four years looked like? It was good four years, right?

And so I'm excited to see what happens in the markets when they open this week. I'm excited to see what happens in crypto. I'm excited to see what happens in real estate with interest rates. And just watch the I mean, the energy of the country is like, yeah, electric vibe. And it's electric. You know what I mean? It's like, everyone's like, we're back, baby, we're back. And it's really, really, really interesting to see how many people are more vocal this time

than they were the last election cycle when he lost or during his first presidency. Like people are no longer like, who do you vote for? Right. Trump. Oh thank God, they're like, you know what I mean, they're loud and like, and aggressively no longer scared to come out

and just say it how it is. So what's interesting is I've always wanted, I think people have talked about before, like you want a business person in the White House, but also this time, unlike any other time, you have a bunch of billionaires and venture capitalists as the advisors. There's obviously team Doge,

but there's also like just legit billionaires like David Sachs that are just like wealthy beyond imagination that are there in the White House or next to the White House advising for our country. What are your thoughts about having strategic advisors over our actual country? Because I think our country, I don't think,

I know it's an actual business. So what do you think about that? I love it. I absolutely love the idea of having real operators operating the country, right? Politicians aren't meant to. I mean, politicians, politicians look at what they've done so far. So very excited to see people with operational experience.

I think the amount of money we're going to save alone is gonna be so efficient. Absolutely. You just hear about how many programs or employees are overhead or they have like entire massive buildings that no one goes to work at Because they're working from home. So what are we paying? 800,000 a month for that rent for example, but only that can we just talk about how Donald Trump and the support of teams? Attitude around you know, how much we give away to the world. Like, he's a funny dude. You know, entertaining. Bare minimum love them, hate them, love something about them, whatever your opinion is, you got to give it to the duties entertaining. He comes out and

says, This is now not the Gulf of Mexico. It's the Gulf of America. You know, that's what you're thinking about. You know, you just sitting there on like a Wednesday morning and said, you know, it really pisses me off. They call that the Gulf of Mexico, we're gonna rename it, you know, Greenland, by Greenland, you know, one of the things I'm excited just that he's thinking about and taking actionable steps towards is like I'm sick of listen, I'm a taxpayer, man, like I have paid the government 10s and 10s of

millions of dollars. So when I say this, I'm not coming off of like, you know, I have significant revenue that I've contributed to this. And so to turn around and watch us provide assistance and aid to countries like Ukraine makes me fucking sick. Like, listen, I care about Ukraine as much as I care about fucking Uganda and South Africa and China and like generally everywhere else. It's not my country. It's not my problem.

Like I live in America and this country has problems. This country has homelessness, homelessness, a drug epidemic that I personally watch on the front lines every day. 112,000 people died last year of fentanyl overdoses. We just had fires in California and they fucking send them $770 apiece after burning half the fucking city down. It's shameful, man. It's absolutely disgusting. And so like I don't mind paying taxes. I pay them one way or the other, so I like to sleep good at night.

But I feel a lot better about seeing that money come out of my businesses and my ecosystem, because I mean, you look at it when you really understand tax, everything that fucking moves gets paid for sure. Access seven or eight times. And so like it feels a lot better to know that they're paying attention and then gonna be making America about America. Right.

And people like have been so scared to say that, but it's like, yo, there are no other countries that I'm aware of. And mind you, I'm not like this great, you know, geopolitical guy, but I don't see any other countries just fucking handing money out across the globe. We didn't get a wire to Los Angeles from anybody, right? Exactly. Yeah, who sent us money? You know, who else is funny? And so to see us kind of repurpose

and refocus on spending American tax dollars on American people and American problems and like, yo, Hakuna Matata, like best wishes to all these other countries and like, but it's on I don't go to bed sleep thinking about fucking Ukraine, or any of this other shit. I do go to bed thinking about those parents that lost their kids to fucking fentanyl. Sure, I do go to bed thinking of like feeling terribly about these people that were displaced in Los Angeles, or the hurricane that whacked North Carolina that was totally mismanaged No one's talking about that any faster. I mean it just like

Yeah, so I'm excited to see the focus turn back to To America with the external revenue team. Yeah, like it was the IRS and the ERS, yeah exactly external external revenue service So you see something like Los Angeles. Last week I had 19 in-person meetings. I don't know how many phone calls. Meeting with people in the construction space, which you understand construction and remodeling very well.

My concern for Los Angeles, besides the $150 billion in growing number that's impacted, is there's no Calvary coming. And here's why. If you have a construction company in Dallas, Arizona, Utah, Vegas, the surrounding areas, you're not coming because you're not going to get licensed. And you're going to have to go through a big headache to get licensed. And so like when I posted about it, I was getting a quarter million views, half a million views of posts and all the comments were, I'm not going there.

I got 80 employees here. I'd love to go there, but I'm not going to get licensed. I got 400 employees, but I'm not coming and I can't deal with the headaches, blah, blah, blah'm not going there. I got 80 employees, or I'd love to go there, but I'm not going to get licensed. I got 400 employees, but I'm not coming. And I can't deal with the headaches, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, well, who's gonna build it then? And these people are so fucking stupid that they won't give them reciprocity like their home state licensure. You're approved in Dallas, you're approved in LA, come on,

100% please bring the Calvary. Like think about when the fire truck showed up from like Oregon or something, they stopped them and made them go through a smog check You stopped smog check there's 40,000 acres burning What smog matters when the whole freaking cities on fire? That's unbelievable. Literally. That's not a joke literally so fucking dumb. It's crazy It's hard to imagine what's happening. So another fun one real quick. I mean, when Trump, you mentioned about like, I'm going to change golf in Mexico or Greenland or buy that or whatever. He also did it with Canada and talking about making Canada another state

and adding it as the 51st or 52nd state. And then a week later, the evil ruler of Canada resigned. You know, like the guy that was holding Trudeau, like again, I don't even talk about politics very much. I talk about math and reality. I like to talk about money. That's what we're here for. He hurt them by hundreds of billions of dollars Trudeau. And within a week of basically saying we're going to take over Canada,

the guy's gone. He resigned. And we never hear from him again. Like the impact of that for that entire country, whether we end up merging with them or not, is staggering that someone could literally do a couple of tweets and all of a sudden you take away an evil dictator. Yeah. The guy that was literally like not letting people go outside their homes for a year or two during the shutdown.

Like, anyways, I get too emotional about how frustrating he was to that society. And I am like, again, like Canada is not our thing. But it is right next door. And every time I tried to fly there, I go through like three hours of inspections at the border. And it's just like a hard, hard country to deal with. Hopefully, we can work something out with them because that'd be a great add to our economy. Okay. Next topic. You saw all

over social media last week was TikTok. Everyone was freaking out who was going to buy it. Who's going to figure it out. Is it bad for our society? Isn't amazing. Here's the thing. 170 million Americans have a TikTok account. So people think like, Oh, that's about half the people.

Wait a minute. Out of the 340 ish million people we have in our society, there's a lot of them that are babies, they don't have TikTok. There's a lot of them that are senior citizens. They don't have TikTok. So it's basically everybody else, like 170 out of like 250 or 220, whatever the number is. So it's a vast majority of society. And 2023, it was $1.5 billion on TikTok shop. Last year, it was 1.4 billion a month. So think about the revenue of people that are just making money in the middle of Michigan out of their apartment. A 17 year old girl or 36 year old guy or a single mom with three kids who's 52.

And she's just making money as an affiliate on TikTok shop. People don't realize the economic impact. They think it's just like dancing around videos. That's serious money that's been had there. What are your thoughts about the fun situation where everyone freaked out and cried on Saturday. Tick tock's over and then you wake up Sunday morning. Tick tock's back. Literally, Trump went on in a speech and he said, Tick tock's back.

Yeah, I mean, it's just too big to fail. Right. They couldn't let it stay down. Yeah. So I didn't have a lot of concern that it would be down for very long. I think TikTok had to do what they had to do to stay in compliance, protect themselves, but also kind of stay on their ground. And so, you know, the 12 hours that TikTok was down, I mean, God, how many people are complaining about that? You see how dependent people are on, you know, these platforms for a lot of reasons for the social.

But also their own entertainment. Right. You know, so I didn't have a lot of concern that it was going to stay down for very long. OK, so on the money Mondays, we talk about the making money side. Let's talk about the investing side. You get pitched a lot. Oh, my God. And as your personal brand keeps growing

and growing and growing and growing and everyone keeps sharing your videos and you keep growing and growing, bada bing, bada boom, you're gonna get pitched even more. Sorry to tell you, you're gonna get pitched way more. How do you interact with people that are trying to pitch you? Like, what do you want from them?

What do you wanna see to like sift through it all? Honestly, my answer to almost everything right now is no. It's and here's why the cost of distraction is unbelievable. Right. And so I'm tunnel vision on these couple initiatives, these operating companies that I have, they're explosively growing. And if I take 30 minutes, 15 minutes, 10 minutes away from my day to day to disengage from what I'm doing,

pay attention to some pitch on some idea, and then potentially say yes, it takes time and energy even to just get that deal done. And to get it over the finish line and to deploy capital into it. Do diligence, review it in attorneys. And then review it and all the while, you know, when you look at it,

like if you say I'm three to five years away from 150 million, I mean, I'm sorry, a $500 million valuation, right? I'll hit, this year I'll hit 150 to $200 million enterprise valuation, not liquidity, but just the business. This is what it's worth if I sold it. So take three years from now I've been in for two, I'll be in for another three, right? 60 months. What's 500 million

divided by 60? A lot. A lot divided by 4.3 weeks to the month. It's eight million a month. Eight million a month, all right, so that's two million dollars a week. Right, and so when you look at the value of time. Two million dollars a week. If I, I will get it done, but for the sake of conversation, if I transact in three years, or if the business is,

say even if just I grow the business valuation to 500 million in the next 36 months, that means that when you take that value that I've created and accredited it backwards, that my time right now is worth two million dollars a week. It's five days a week, I mean I work seven, but we'll call it five. It's 400,000 a day. It's 400,000 dollars a day. So mean, I work seven, but but we'll call it five. The four hundred thousand a day.

Four hundred thousand dollars a day. So this is fifty thousand an hour. Yeah. The answer is fucking no. And so I under I acutely understand the value of my time in that context. And so when I look at it, I'm just like, I can't afford to even stop long enough to listen to what it is you have to say right now. Even if a deal crushes it and someone pitches you, you're like, hey, invest into this deal,

and you're like, okay, I'll throw in 250K. 250K becomes 450,000 or 600,000, it does really well. You were doing $400,000 a day in this theoretical number, right? Right, exactly. And that would take three to five years from you putting in the 250 to wait for that, compared to you doing it on your own.

That's fascinating. It's, it's a really interesting way to think about time management and the value of time. Like when I look at my 13 year, two month run, I had the math done, but it's been a while, so I forget what it was, but it was like every dollar that I made from the beginning when I didn't make any money the first couple of years, all the way through the end, when the business was cash flowing a million dollars a month. And then the equity proceeds at the transaction of the 115 million and then looked at that

and credited that for the 13 years, two months. And I had that boiled down to like what my hourly rate was. And that's where I first started to think of it like that. And so now I think of it like this It's like you know there because it's 13 years at 115 million. It's around a little less than 10 million a year So that's like 800,000 a month 200,000 a week. It's almost the same concept Exactly, but at a much faster rate this time, right? Well, yeah now you have the game down You've got the team the lawyers the accountants advisors that

understanding the insides and outs. Moving quick. Okay. What do you see people doing wrong on social media? Here's the moment where he pissed the entire internet off, you know, I just fucking hate these people that are that are making money online with things that they they have no business selling because they don't have the expertise or the experience to back it up. Right. And so the space it's the only reason I remain to stay in the space with my business coaching

mastermind is because I'm an actual operator and we bring real value to people that own companies that want to take them to the next level. But seeing these people that you have business coaches that have never owned and operated a real business, that have never hired or fired human beings, scaled, you know, headcount, scale sales, operations, seeing, you know, just all these coaching offers and it just become this big like yuck, you know what I mean? And I really dislike it. And so I'm looking forward, I think this year, and I think right now, the tide is it has turned and is in the process of turning. And more and more people will be aware of kind of consumer behavior of being like,

kind of weeding through what's fake and what's real and what's bullshit. So that's one, like if you have coaches that are coaching coaches on how to coach other coaches, it's like, what the fuck are we talking about? Jesus Christ, go get a job. And then second, people are just, they're just not authentic. You know what I mean?

When I watch people's content, like the stuff that I see go wrong is that they create a stage character that they think is the thing that people on social media wanna see, and they try to placate absolute everybody. Like they're scared of pissing people off. And I guess what I'm saying is that the people

that have the greatest personal brands are the people that have mastered being able to be authentically them and totally okay with creating a division. You're gonna, if you're authentically you, at some level you're going to be polarizing to people. There are gonna be people that don't fuck with you at all and people that love with you.

But people become so scared of what people think and the rejection of the people that don't fuck with you that they try to placate everybody and in that nobody loves them. So on the charity side of money, are there things that you care about or is like you helping get people back into reality and help them get off of drugs?

Is that your form of charity or is there certain charities that you like? My charity comes, is my purpose, like my God given mission here is to help people with addiction and alcoholism. That's very clear. And so everything I do in a charitable sense is around that. And so it's very frequently helping people get into treatment, finding resources for people

that can't afford it, helping families, et cetera. That's my main area of focus. I think all these other things are great, but this is my thing. Yeah, because you care about it deeply. Totally. Okay, there's a question I ask on almost every episode, but I've never, ever, ever, ever gotten the same answer,

and I know I'm not gonna get the same answer right now. Eric Spofford, you have a few children and one day you're gonna sell for 500 million, probably in five years. Another time you'll probably sell for a billion or two billion. And by the end of your journey, 100 years from now, maybe you're 136 years old one day, you finally pass away.

But you've accumulated billions and billions of dollars. What percentage of billions and billions of dollars do you leave to those children? What percentage of billions of billions of dollars do you leave to those children? I? Don't know if I've ever thought about it in the context of what percentage right I Have thought about it in in how is it managed and so I have an estate plan that's set up For my kids that has taken the core issues that I think that my wealth could cause harm to them and try to de-lever that and manage that from the grave

after I'm gone the same way that I would here in real life while I'm still on planet earth. And so some of those things are in my estate plan, my kids don't get a fucking dime. I mean, I will let them starve on the street if they can't pass a drug test. And so they're getting, I think it's like twice a year, hair tests that go back six months. Like if you're using drugs,

you're on your fucking own, Omi. They have to be full-time enrolled in school or employed full-time. And so there's no sitting around, you know, spending dad's money. And they have to have, and that's at the discretion of the person that'll be in charge of my estate. If they wanna go out pursue the entrepreneurial journey,

cool, but you have to be doing it at a full time. You have to be productive. It can't be just a charade and smoke shirt. Like you have to be gainfully like doing something. And even then there are a lot of mechanisms where they never get access to all the money. Like you one of the one of the most over underrated, I should say one of the most underrated attributes of a human being that I have to a painful extent is hunger

And so I don't want to spoil them and give them everything I don't do that now I've never done that when they're since their children and I'm not gonna do it later in life from the grave So we've heard famous stories over the years about either child stars or people that have very wealthy parents go down the drug Path, why do you think that is that they you know? either child stars or people that have very wealthy parents go down the drug path. Why do you think that is that they, you know, they grew up in a rich household or they get tens of millions of dollars and they inherit a bunch of money or a rich kid, for example.

Why do you think they go down so heavily in the drug path sometimes? I think it gets more attention because people can't make sense of it because they don't really understand addiction, right? If you come from a nice family and mom and dad are still together and there's lots of money and a nice home

and fancy cars and all this stuff, people look at that and go, why would you ever do drugs? Why would you destroy this? But when they look at different socioeconomic classes, they can reconcile it and they're like, oh, well, they're from a bad neighborhood, their parents were divorced, It makes sense. The

truth is this is that addiction falls squarely across all people, regardless of economic status, race, neighborhood, etc. It's inexplainable. And so it happens in the neighborhood like this one with $20 million dollar homes, 50 million dollar homes, and it happens in Section 8 housing projects in middle class America and everything in between. And so addiction is just a disease that doesn't discriminate. It does not respect that you come from a good family.

It doesn't respect that you come from a high net worth status. It doesn't give a shit about any of that. So, last question, I'm gonna ask you, stare right into that camera for someone watching that is impacted by someone in their life that has gone far down the drug path, and they're too scared or nervous to have the conversation with them to try to help them.

What would you say to that person to give them confidence to talk to their friend that's going down the path of potentially dying? It's somewhat of a brutal conversation and a little bit morbid, but you have to think about it in the context of this because this is the reality. If you understand addiction, it ends in only a couple different places.

The person ends up in recovery or they end up in jails institutions and death and The the thing you need to consider is what are you going to regret if the worst-case situation happens and That is the tool the mechanism that you need to overcome your anxiety and your fear on tool the mechanism that you need to overcome your anxiety and your fear on confronting your loved one that has alcoholism and has addiction. Because let me tell you something, I have consoled hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of grieving moms and dads and loved ones of people with addiction. And the amount of regret of I wish I had I wish I hadn't enabled them.

I wish I'd said it. I wish I'd thrown them out of the house. I wish I'd had, that I've heard at funerals and in deep grief post losing their loved one, it is some of the most painful shit that I've ever seen anyone go through in my entire life. I, nor any other person in recovery or the addiction treatment industry can guarantee

that your loved one will find recovery. But what I can guarantee is that if you do the right things, no matter what the outcome, as painful as that might be, you will not have the excruciating pain of regret. And so it's something that you have to do. A lot of people die and lose their life in vain in addiction and there are co-conspirators, A lot of people die and lose their life in vain in addiction. And there are co-conspirators, there are co-defendants to that situation.

And they are the loved ones of that person that love them to death literally. You see that addiction lives off of co-dependency, right? If addiction is a fire, co-dependency and enablement is the oxygen that keeps it going. Without enablement of some sort, addiction itself as a fire is arrested and extinguished. And so a lot of these lies and hiding between,

well I'm not the one doing the drugs, and it's not me, and it's their decision, and they have to make their own decision, and the fucking million things that I've heard from loved ones to excuse them not having to have these uncomfortable conversations and do very uncomfortable, painful things to do what's right for their loved one. I assure you that's not how they'll feel,

how you'll feel at their funeral. And so you have to close your eyes and really envision that very painful moment and think about everything that you're gonna regret and then use that information to dictate what you're gonna do next. All right guys, so you're listening to the most special edition of the Money Mondays because it is the biggest Money Monday of all time

and we're not inside the RV Motorhome for once because we're inside of Eric Spofford its home. Check him out across social media. If you want to learn about section eight housing, how to build real businesses, what he's up to in the real estate game and just telling real things of what to do in business because he, he lives it, he shows it and he shows all aspects of it. I call it building in public and he's showcasing real time. Like, hey, I just bought 70 units and here's why. Hey, I'm doing this deal here. Hey, I'm rolling up these clinics to eventually sell for 500 million.

He's showing you in real time and he has the receipts to back it up. Unlike a lot of people across social media. So check us out on the money Mondays, make sure to have discussions with your friends, family and followers about money, because we know growing up, it was rude to talk about money. And finally, in our society, especially this last couple of years with this podcast, we've been able to change that narrative, to have discussion with your friends, family and followers about money, because it is

part of your daily life. It's not rude to talk about it. It's rude to not talk about it. People need to talk about loans, taxes, finances, accounting. How much do they ask for their salary? What should they be doing with their money? Should they borrow money from their friend or how do they pay back or what if they're owed money? People feel scared to talk about money. You have to discuss it. It is part of your real life.

So check us out on the money Mondays dot com. Follow Eric's pop right and we'll see you guys next Monday.