The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 304: Scott Strode—The Shadow on the Wall is You

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Scott Strode, founder & national executive director of The Phoenix, reveals why rock climbing and marathoning helped him break the cycle of his addiction and how he is transforming the way our country approaches recovery with fitness and community.

The ocean moves us, whether that's surfing a wave or taking in an inspiring view. The ocean feeds us. Sustainable seafood practices bring the ocean's bounty to our plates. The ocean teaches us how our everyday choices, big and small, make an impact. The ocean delights us as playful otters restore coastal kelp forests. The ocean connects us. Find your connection at monterey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects. Well, hello, friends. It's episode number 304 of the way I heard it. And it's called The Shadow on the Wall is you.

Because surveys suggest, Chuck, that it very well might be. Yes, I believe that's how we all start in the cave, staring at ourselves, chained up, looking at the shadows on the wall. I don't think that's really how we all start. No, no, that's not how it all starts. That's an allegory that comes up in the conversation you all are about to listen to, courtesy of my friend. friend Scott Strode, who's referring, of course, to Plato's famous rumination on the journey to enlightenment vis-a-vis a caveman shackled in place inside of a cave. We'll get to all that. It'll be made much more clear than Chuck just did. But, um... Thank God. But yeah. By the way, Plato, what a name dropper. I mean, honestly.

That's Plato, not Play-Doh. Totally different conversation. Oh, right. My friend Scott, I met several years ago at a stand-together event. Stand-together, if you haven't heard, is, and even if you have, an organization that funds and supports a number of nonprofits and bloody do-gooters. Myself included, they've been very generous with micro-works over the years. And so I went to one of these gatherings years ago and found the same thing I found with returning the favor. It was like a giant repository of people who woke up every day, just annoyed that the world wasn't the way they thought it should be. People trying to make a difference in their communities, except on returning the favor, it was usually pretty modest, you know, zip code central. This is a whole different deal.

Stand together supports organizations that are not only making a difference locally, but can be scaled and can really blow up. that's what's happened here. Scott Strode is an alcoholic. He's a recovering addict, and he was addicted to virtually everything a guy can be addicted to. And he hit rock bottom. And then he not only got himself turned around,

he created an organization called the Phoenix, which is essentially, you'd be tempted to look at it and say, oh, he built gyms and outdoor activities all over the country. No. That's not what it is at all. It is at a glance. But what he really did was he really did was, he figured out a way to create a community among like-minded people.

And he's not alone. A lot of people have come at this problem in a similar way, but I don't know of anybody who's had results like the guy you're about to meet. 87% report remaining sober after three months. That just completely blows away the standard metric of people who are trying to get their life turned around. This thing has grown like a weed. 162,000 members as of now,

They've got affiliates in 45 states. So it's really tempting to talk broadly in a macro way, and we do for part of this, but we also get pretty micro in this, if you will, pretty granular. And I think what you'll find, at least what I found, Chuck, was that you really can't separate the two. So a really personal story with a giant success story that's impacting, I mean, tens of thousands of people at a time when I, I just don't know if the country's ever been more in need of something. some kind of solution. No, and it's not only nationally, Mike, but it's also globally. And they have an app called The Phoenix, a sober community that people are using to get together. And you're right,

it's not that he created gyms or whatever. He created places or he created a system for like-minded people to come together, be sober together in an activity that gets us out of our heads. People do stuff like climb a mountain, mountain bike, yoga, could be just taking a walk. it brings people together. And one thing I just want to say, because we didn't cover it in the conversation, was what he's doing with concerts. He's also using this app. Like if you're sober and you want to hang out with sober people in the music industry,

or like people at concerts, you can go wear your sober shirt, show up there, get a gaggle of people. And they're going to support bands that are sober. And people in the bands are sober because the music industry is filled with alcohol and drugs and whatnot. So it's great for a guy to look out into the audience and see a bunch of sober shirts if he's in recovery himself. It's like a really cool idea. Having said that, the final thing I'll leave you with is there's no panacea. There's no playbook.

There's no secret pill. Different people are going to respond to different ways, especially when it comes to recovering. But look, you're listening to a guy right now who has a line of whiskey, right? I drink a little whiskey every day. I enjoy it. This isn't a lecture. This isn't a sermon. This isn't about scolding.

It's not about shaming. It's just about the undeniable reality, for me anyway, of acknowledging that 100,000 people died last year because of fentanyl. I don't even know how many died as a result of other chemical and substance addictions. But we're in a really tough time. And the people that stand together take this very seriously, what Scott's doing at the Phoenix, has just been hugely impactful. And by the way, not to beat the horse to death, but, you know, Chad Hauser was on a couple of weeks ago.

He came out of the Stand Together program as well. Todd Rose before that and get used to it, folks. I'm not going to do it every week, but at least once a month, you're going to hear somebody plucked from this end of the pool because they're remarkable people and they're doing things that have to be done. The shadow on the wall,

is you with Scott Strode. Right after this. Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time? Do you miss the rotary phone? Well, get over it.

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That's netsuite.com. Netsweet. Like, Mike. Hello, Scott Strode. Hi. How are you? I'm great. How are you doing?

I'm doing well. I don't want to alarm you, but there's a bicycle, wheel growing right out of your head. I know. I was wondering if that was like a halo-ish over me. Where are you sitting as we speak? I'm sitting in the Phoenix Boston, which is one of our flagship locations and we're in the heart of Boston by an area really impacted by substance use. So it's a perfect spot for our front door to open onto this community. In the imaginary thing that I do called preparation, I clicked through a couple of links that Chuck helpfully provided. I didn't learn much that I didn't already know about you. You and I have met

a couple of times over the years at various stand-together functions. I know your basic story, and I knew you were from Boston, but I didn't know that you had made that deal with the Red Sox. That's a huge inroad, I would imagine, and, you know, probably a very personal thing, given you grew up in Beantown. Yeah, yeah. It's, well, I moved here, lived here, for about 11 years, the first part of that, I wasn't in recovery. And Boston is a pretty good city to be not in recovery in. Well, you should write vacation brochures. Yeah, when I did get sober, I truly thought I was the only sober guy here. But, you know, love the city, then moved to Colorado where I actually started the Phoenix. And then coming back here was sort of just a dream of

mine and to launch Phoenix here. And the partnership with the Red Sox was just, yeah, so exciting to be able to kind of tell the story about the Phoenix at that scale. Obviously, I want to hear the story from start to finish, but it is worth just ruminating for a second on the impact and the power of going back home. You know, I mean, Thomas Wolf said you can never go home again. And I know what he was getting at. It's like going back to high school, everything feels smaller and familiar but different at the same time. And I do a lot of work in Baltimore, some on the Tourism Bureau. And every time I go back, it's just such a weird combination of familiarity and newness. It's hard to articulate, but I imagine it's doubly true for you because you're kind of a new person.

I mean, you've truly been reborn. So to go back to the place where you grew up as a new creature, if you will, that's just got to be a kick. Yeah, it is. I mean, I spent my really younger years in Pennsylvania, actually, not far from Baltimore. So I have some living amends to Baltimore as well as Boston. But, you know, coming back to Boston in recovery, having been a very different person when I was here before, it's just one of the gifts of recovery is being able to give back to a city that was there for me in a pretty tough time. In a really general way, how important is the give-back notion in general? And look, a lot of people who listen to this know I'm a broken record on this subject, but I'm only asking because I think there's great value and selfishness when it comes to helping yourself, even in the course of helping other people. And when I worked on a show called Returning the Favor for a few years, it was, you know,

I call guys like you bloody do-gooters because I try and take a little. bit of some of the piss, some of the earnestness out of this very serious conversation we're about to have. And I don't do it out of, like, it's not a lack of respect by any means. It's just, it's an attempt to keep things as human as possible and as real as possible. And your whole Phoenix, your whole life, man, it's, it's about as real as it gets. Yeah, it is. But it's like, you know, I mean, doing this, being drawn to this work after having sort of my own lived experience struggling with addiction really is part of, I believe, a life of purpose is what we're all ultimately seeking.

And having sort of have walked in the dark in my addiction, I have this different appreciation of what it feels like to stand in the light, you know? And because of that, I have a unique ability to be able to translate to folks that are still in that dark place. what life can be like on the other side of addiction. So to me, it's a gift for my life of purpose. Well, let's jump into that in a minute, but first, just on a macro level,

where do you think we are as a country in terms of our, is there some kind of benchmark, is there some sort of chart I should know about that tracks addiction in a very general way? And if so, what is it and just how bad is the problem overall? Yeah, I would say we're in the one of the darkest moments in our country around this issue. And the pandemic, you know, was I sort of often say was the sort of gasoline on the pandemic of the addiction. So the social isolation and the disconnect that people are experiencing, you know, through the pandemic has increased by almost 30.

percent the impacts of addiction and deaths of despair in our country. But I also think that people have realized that we need to do things differently. It's gotten bad enough that I think some innovation and some creative thinking is now being used to address this issue. So the Phoenix is one of those things. It's just a different way to approach the addiction crisis. And a personal way to, obviously. This was, I'm assuming your idea from the ground up, but maybe let's make it small then. You know, walk me through the process whereby you became resigned to the fact that you were an addict and then somehow something must have happened. Something clicks. There's always an inciting incident. What are you doing here? Yeah. Well, I can sort of tie it back really early to

a term they call adverse childhood experience, but is really experiencing trauma as a kid. I grew up with a father with untreated mental illness. And when my mom remarried when I was a kid after my parents got divorced, that introduced alcoholism into our family. And so growing up around untreated mental illness and alcoholism made for a pretty dynamic childhood. And so I turned. to drinking and drug in pretty early. I was, you know, found it because I could break into the

liquor closet at the house and, you know, show up with a bottle of vodka. And then all of a sudden I was kind of the cool kid and other kids wanted to hang out with me because I had access. And that led me to other things and eventually to my drug addiction as well. But somewhere in there, I had this little window of time where my mom knew that I was in trouble and tried to get me into a program to help help me turn my life around at the time. And I went onto a boat, onto this program on a ship. And something about being at sea was just the power, this, like, instant cause and effect. The captain would say, don't do this thing. And, you know, being sort of defiant, I'd say, yeah, whatever. And then a wave would crush me on the deck of the ship. And as it washed off,

and I was in the scuppers, and I'd climb my way up, I'd realize, like, hey, maybe he's got a good point here. He's the captain for a reason. Yeah. But what happened there is pushing through those challenging experiences and facing that adverse, sort of adverse conditions with the crew. I started to build this camaraderie with them and this belief in myself that I didn't have in my addiction. And I was still drinking and using, but I came ashore in New England and started working in shipyards. and, you know, it's a pretty grueling work. And the crew that I was working with, you know, we worked hard and we partied hard.

And that's just how we did it. And the thing is, they would all go home, and I would go to the bar, then I would go to the after party, then I would be the after party by myself, you know? And it just kept going on like that for years because... How old are you at this point? I was in my... I was essentially 21, just turning 21 and 22. here in Boston. And I worked in a shipyard in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and also the Charlestown

Navy Yard here in Boston. So was it a sense of community that the shipyard represented? I mean, because it doesn't sound like a classic, you know, treatment situation. But it gave you something. It gave me something. And the programs I worked in in those spaces were primarily focused on experiential work with youth. So, you know, we'd bring sort of youth experience and challenges in lower-income neighborhoods in Boston into the boatyard, and we'd build boats with them. And it was this sort of teamwork, team-building experience,

but sort of I was a hypocrite in some ways because at night I was leaving there and struggling with my own addiction and getting sober enough to come in the next day to work. And but it was actually an, interaction with one of those kids that, you know, it was like as if he could see through me that what I was trying to share with him about how he should live was hypocritical and that he knew on some level that I was struggling to. And it started to raise my awareness about

wanting to change my life. The whole notion of hypocrisy in every element of life today, it feels to me anyhow, especially coming out of the lockdowns, that it's been a on display like really we've never seen before, and not just in our political figures, not just in our educational world. It's just everywhere you look, right? And what is it about hypocrisy as it applies to recovery? Do you have to completely rid yourself of those hypocritical tendencies, or is it enough to simply acknowledge them? Or is it all of it, baby steps? Yeah, I think that, that I think there's some risk in folks that step into recovery in this sort of more extreme way of thinking about that they are sort of now have their act together and everybody else is sort of broken, you know, and that they have reached this pinnacle. And because when you feel like you're at a pinnacle, the ability to fall is also there, you know.

Whereas I kind of think of it more as I developed an awareness in recovery that I think we're actually all in recovery from something and we're all sort of healing from the human condition in some way. And my thing was just drinking in drugs and really born from my adverse childhood experience. But for other people, it might be what they look like or how much money they make or how many likes they have or how many followers. many of us have ways we're seeking our emotional well-being externally. And at the time, I was just trying to do it through a bottle of rum. Ho, ho. So we're all addicted in that scenario. We're all addicted to something. Food, relationships, dopamine, likes, right? Exercise. I mean, how much of what you've done with Phoenix has been replacing one addiction with another?

You know, it's something that is certainly sort of present at Phoenix. I think of it more as developing a positive coping mechanism. We're all sort of seeking these coping mechanisms. Often the mechanism itself, it ends up being pretty destructive in our life. Right. But something about exercise inherently, you know, kind of gets to the self-esteem wounds. You know, you stand on top of the mountain for the first time. you cross that finish line for the first time.

The pitfall is do you then have to cross that finish line faster? And then you have to do it as a pro athlete. Then you have to lose X amount of weight to do it better. Then you start getting in this cycle of it starts to affect you and the people you love negatively. And that's really my lens for if you have a healthy relationship with something, is it affect you or your loved ones negatively. And if it does, then you should look at your relationship with that thing. And I certainly went there with my own exercise.

You know, when I got sober, I felt great being sober. So I quit smoking. And I felt great quitting smoking. So I quit coffee. And then I started racing triathlon. Then I had to go faster. Then I wanted to go to the World Championship. Then I had to do 24-hour mountain bike races.

And they just got more and more extreme. And if I didn't have something on the calendar, I felt empty. And then I realized that the real magic of it was sharing the training with the people I loved and hiking up the mountain, not necessarily whether or not we got to the summit. And it's in those relationships that I really began to heal. And that extreme sort of relationship with exercising started to lose its power. So when the Phoenix started, I actually could be sort of a little bit of a regulator for folks whose regulator wasn't quite working yet. as far as how intensely they did those sports. Because it's really tempting.

And I think a lot of people do what I just kind of glibly suggested, you know, one addiction with another. And I think there's some truth to it, right? It's either healthy or it's not healthy. But you're saying that underneath of the activity, there's this other thing. And maybe it's an artifact from some preexisting trauma or some unresolved thing in your own self. but there's something there. I just met a guy that you might be interested in.

His name's Ed Curry, and he grew the Carolina Reaper, the hottest pepper there, the ghost pepper. He's the guy down in one of the Carolinas who's growing things that are basically just liquid fire and getting them into all sorts of sauces and sauces and things. And he's got a great business, but Ed was a full-on heroin addict. And at a glance, you know, hanging out with him. with him and growing his peppers and eating his peppers, which my God help you if you do this, you know, you're tempted to just sum up by saying, all right, he replaced heroin with capsaicine, right? One active ingredient with another active ingredient. And really, to my shame,

I think I did that. But when I was looking at the footage of the piece we shot the other day, listening to him talk to me on camera, it was never really about the pepper. It was about a new relationship with his wife and it was about this new community of people who just get off on swallowing liquid fire and then somehow right so I I get it I think I think whether it's exercise or hot sauce you know there's always a human under that trying to deal with something a little bigger and broader and I think that's a great that's a really insightful observation because I say this often at the Phoenix you know we do stuff other than just working out we do meditation and yoga and book club and art and a whole bunch of other things anything led by somebody who's been

touched by substance use whether it's a loved one or somebody who's in recovery themselves but exercises one of the core pillars because that's what we started with and was my story but um i always say that you often come for the workout but you're staying for the friendships and you don't always know that Like sometimes you become a student of the activity and you're, you know, you learn the Olympic lift. And then you're getting more focused on how you lift off the ground and your high pole and how you receive the barbell. And then you're going up and weight and the bar is getting heavier and you have to refine your form even a little bit more. And then all of a sudden you find this little group at Phoenix where you're really focused on that. You're meeting in the gym on days when there aren't even programs.

And then you're Olympic weightlifter. You take on this identity. But what happens also is that when you're having a tough day and you're shocked by the realities of life like we all are, you realize you're starting to turn to that core group of people as your support network. And that that's actually the magic. It's not how much weights on the bar. It's the folks that you're high-fiving after you drop the bar. Well, people are still raving, raving, I tell you.

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Pure Talk. I swear, man. I wish, you know, Chuck and I, and I, and I, another life sang in a big organization called The Course of the Chesapeake, which was part of the Society for the Preservation Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet singing, right? This is one of these random little subcultures that you've heard of, but most people don't know anything about. And we were lucky to have a director who was renowned in that space. And there's sort of a working assumption when you join a chorus like that and become a part of a big singing mechanism,

you know, you realize you're getting closer and closer to the guy to your right and to your left and in front of you and behind you. These, right, and so the default position is this music is making this incredible fellowship. But Chuck, how many times would he pull us to the side and say, no, no, no, no, no, no. The fellowship makes the music. That makes the music. Again, it sounds kind of glib and it sounds like a small thing. But the chronology of how you think about whether you're trying to, become a great world-class chorus or a world-class weightlifter or using any of these things

to, you know, overcome another thing in your life. It just seems like the more and more, like the longer I live and the more I look around, the more I realize it's never the thing I'm looking at. It's the thing right under the thing. Yeah. Always. Yeah. That's true. And I see it at Phoenix as well. And I think that, you know, on some sort of instinctual level, we know that. You know, sometimes we're sort of drawn in by the singing or by the weightlifting or whatever it might be. But on some primal level, we're looking for that sense of community and connection with others. I think it's one reason the Phoenix has been able to scale across the country is that there's other people out there with this desire to help people who are experiencing. addiction and struggling with substance use because there's so many people that are loved that are gone through this and

there don't seem to be a lot of resources out there. So that's how we get all these inbounds from communities across the country, people wanting to volunteer to start Phoenix. So then go back a bit. When you were at your low point, were you looking around for the Phoenix and not finding it? Or were you finding, you know, a poor substance? for it, it's difficult to know because so many people, Scott, get to a low point and they stay there. They'll punch their own ticket, right? Or they look for help that they can't find. So I just wonder why you? Yeah, I think I, I mean, I was searching. You know, I was, I knew I didn't want to keep living the life I was living, and I felt as if the addiction has really been stripping away the dreams of who I thought I could be in life.

would be in life. And so I started sort of seeking something else to do. And for some reason, I was really drawn to getting into the outdoors. And I thought to myself, I want to get outdoorsy. So I went to an outdoor store and I said, what do I need to be outdoorsy? And the guy's like, oh, you need a Gortex jacket, which was actually pretty good advice. So I got one. And I was walking out and I saw this ad for ice climbing.

And I thought ice climbing sounds like the craziest thing I've ever heard of. And there was a picture of this guy on a brochure on this sheer ice cliff. And I signed up for a class. And I went and did it. And I had to stay sober that day so I could climb the next, you know, so that I wasn't so hung over that I couldn't climb. And then I realized if I stayed sober two nights, I could actually climb two days on the weekend. So I started to piece together recovery in that way. but the sort of sneaky part, you know, the kind of the self-esteem healing sort of Trojan horse of that experience was that every time I got to that top of that climb, I believed in myself a little bit more.

And that belief in myself translated into the idea that I could actually stay sober, too. And that was, you know, really catalyzed that I rode to recovery. Getting better is a bit like the frog in the boiling water, right? Baby steps, a little bit more, a little bit more. Is getting worse the same way? I mean, do these things happen incrementally? Or if an addict falls off the wagon, is it just with a thud? I'm not really sure what my question is other than to say that there's a working assumption that, you know,

once you're an alcoholic, you're always an alcoholic, you're always in recovery, right? And then there's this other sort of school of thought. I have some friends who went through something called RR, right, rational recovery. Because the AA thing didn't quite work for them. And so, all right, here's the sensible question. Is there a playbook? Or are there many, many, many ways to try and get to a place where you can, you know, live your life? I think there are many ways.

And I think that we try to be mindful of that at the Phoenix. Like not everybody's going to want to do Olympic weightlifting or yoga or meditation or whatever. But I think the key thing at the Phoenix is creating the supportive environment for people to try and to dare to change their life path. You know, and if they struggle on that path, they know they're supported and surrounded by people who care about them. that gives you the courage to tie into the climbing rope for the first time and try rock climbing or to pick up the barbell for a first time or to go onto the yoga mat for the first time, whatever it may be. But I think if we start getting too sort of dogmatic about how you have to get into recovery,

to me that's often a signal that you're still white knuckling. You're like really holding onto that thing so tightly because if you don't believe that that's the only way, then you start to doubt that you are on a path that can be successful. You know, whereas at Phoenix, we try to say, we support each other. All things are welcome here. If faith is part of your recovery and the 12-step community, great. If you don't do any of that, great. If just weightlifting is your thing, great.

You know, if you stay here today because you have to be 48 hours sober to come to a Phoenix event, and you go drink tomorrow, we want you back next week at the same time because you'll have 48 hours again if you can pull that off again next week. And if you get a couple days like that, now you're sober half the week. You know, so we make it accessible for people where they're at. And through that, people find their path. It seems like the only real rule you have is the 48-hour sober rule. Right.

I mean, it's free, right? Anybody can go to a Phoenix thing. And if you're sober for 48 hours, you're welcome. I mean, that's kind of amazing. Is that because of the ice climbing thing that you experience personally that you wanted to implement, you know, put some kind of sides on this? Yeah, because, you know, basically you have to be clearheaded enough to participate. It also shows a level of commitment, you know, if you're showing up and you're trying to get that 48 hours to be there. And then the only other rules are adhering to this sort of code of conduct, which really,

just says we're respectful and thoughtful of each other. We're here to lift each other up, not pull each other down. I think those principles or sort of surrounding Phoenix events are ways that sort of our society could heal more broadly, is that if we were imagined that our reason for interacting with others within our community is to actually help lift them, not to pull them down, you know, it could heal a lot of things, I think, in our country. But that's sort of the culture at Phoenix. Sure. And so people understand this thing started in Boston. Yeah, it actually started in Colorado where I moved to do triathlon kind of full time. But having gotten sober in Boston, I always wanted to bring it back here. So how big is it now? It has grown quickly and slowly at the same time. I'd say it had been around for 15 years. We were kind of expanding slowly.

because we wanted to make sure we didn't lose the magic of the culture. But we realized we met some really incredible philanthropists who sort of challenged us to think, like, should Phoenix run every Phoenix event, staff, paid staff, or could volunteers do this? So we opened up this tab on our website when we were just in Colorado, California, and had just started in Massachusetts. And people could volunteer to start a Phoenix near them. And we had 700 cohorts across the country apply to start Phoenix. So we took the tab off the website and started to figure out how we actually do that. And through working with some like incredible thought partners and philanthropists,

we came alongside this vision that anyone anywhere can volunteer to start a Phoenix program. And if you're connected to this mission, you can raise your hand to start a hike or a walk or a book club or a coffee social, whatever it is in your community. We'll train you on the model. And through our mobile app, you find support from our volunteer coordinators. And you can start a Phoenix event. So if you have a loved one who's been touched by it and you want to help or if you yourself are in recovery, you can do it. So it's a super broad net for a very big problem.

but what did it feel like when you saw the response? Like once you really put it out there, like the old, if you build it, they will come. And then they show up, and now you go, oh, crap, they're here. And so just speak to that if you would, but also through the lens of that expression you just use, the magic of the culture, right? You get too far over your skis,

and all of a sudden, you know, you're in your own way and you've become something so big you can't control it. That's always interested me, especially in philanthropic endeavors. So there's a couple elements there. Like, I think as we, once we had the capability in the organization to kind of open up those volunteer opportunities, it just started like wildfire. We had somebody at a local CrossFit gym who got a couple hours donated by the gym owner, and all of a sudden we had a CrossFit class in Arkansas somewhere.

Same thing happened in wherever, San Francisco. Somebody wanted to lead a bike ride. Now Phoenix is in San Francisco. Now we're in over 40 states and 150 plus communities. And we have about 1,500 volunteers. And in the 16 years sort of building up to this year, we served 100,000 people with Phoenix free programs. This year alone, we saw.

served another 100,000 people. So now our steady state of people reached with the Phoenix is over 100,000 people a year. And it's all through these incredible volunteers that are raising their hand and wanting to get it started. And what I get a kick out of that from is like, I'll travel a lot for Phoenix. I'll be wearing my sober shirt or a Phoenix shirt. And I'll be in an airport and some kid will come up and be like, yo, man, you go to Phoenix too? And I'll be like, yeah, I do. Yeah, kind of. He's like, where do you go? He's like, I go in Wichita. He's like, I go in Wichita. And we like start talking and it's pretty cool. And he says, what stuff do you like to go to?

And I go to as much stuff as I can. And that really feeds my heart, you know, to get up and keep doing the work on an ongoing basis. So to see it grow like that has been really special. But the trick is that making sure these early adopters that are volunteering to raise their hands share our culture. And that has become the role of the organization. I think that that I think is hard for nonprofits to do and companies in general is to to allow themselves to recreate their role and their purpose, but never lose sight of their core values and their vision.

I would imagine virtually everyone in the organization has been touched by some level of addiction. How many have been touched personally to your knowledge? Yeah, I would probably say everyone. that works here, you know, and sometimes it's not directly in their family of origin or something. It's a loved one or it's something they saw impact youth in their community or something like that. But I think we've gotten really good at seeking out people who have this like EQ IQ empathy kind of combo that makes them, you know, able to help others heal. I think that there's something special, you know, to go off track here for a second. But like, I really like- There's no track, Scott.

There's no track. I love the allegory of the cave by Plato. It's like nine pages of philosophy. It's about all I could manage in my shipyard brain, you know. But it's, I love it. And if you read that, it talks about sort of being shackled, looking at the wall and their shadows on the wall of the cave and whoever those folks are that are shuffled. there, believe that to be reality. And then you're unshackled and allowed to walk in the cave

and you start to think, wait, this is reality. And then you get to ascend into the light and you adjust to the light and then you understand the world as it is. And I think that to me is recovery. And if we can remember what it was like to be shackled, we can also be there for those folks that are still in that place and help them ascend. Everything about that allegory

and everything that I know about you kind of redounds to a modesty. There's a humility about you that I think is the main reason that I wanted you on this podcast because it's very difficult to lead a big organization, especially one where so many people have such a shared experience and not default to some kind of certainty, especially when you have success under your belt like this. especially when your future depends heavily on more philanthropy and more generosity, right? So balancing that humility, I think, with competence is something worth talking about.

But also, the humility that comes with not saying, look, I broke my shackles, I got out of the cave, and now I know. Now I understand what the world is. I don't know if you saw this, but two days ago, the James Webb Telescope, identified a tiny red dot 13.1 billion years in our past. Wow. In a galaxy that has as much star mass as the Milky Way, but is about a third of the size. So picture like a four-foot-tall dude that weighs eight tons. It's like, this galaxy is not supposed to be there.

This galaxy, this little red dot with over 100 billion stars in. in it just turned virtually everything we think we know about the origin of the universe upside down. Scientists haven't even commented on it yet. I talked to my buddies who produce how the universe works, which I've been working on for 10 years. And it's just, it's one of those discoveries that is just leaving everyone just so gobsmacked. They can't find the words yet to make sense of it. So in a very, very large universal, pardon the pun, way, it's like the science just staggered out of the cave and looked around and went, oh. Yeah.

Oh, okay, so that's not going to work. What we thought's not going to work. And so, sorry for the rant, but it's, that allegory never ends. It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And the minute you think, sorry to make it political, but the minute you think the science is settled, you're not a. scientist anymore. Yeah, I agree totally. And I think you're right. I think I think that's where, you know, sort of finding that humility to understand like, I don't even know if I've ascended into the light yet, right? Like, I might just be walking around the cave, seeing the fire and

the images on the wall, you know, and thinking that I know what what life is and what the world is. But if you can stay in that humble but inquisitive place of continuing to learn, then I think that's where the magic is. You know, I running a nonprofit, you know, I worry about folks that sort of apply for jobs that sort of know the way. Like, here's how you do it. And I find that if you're really more curious to learn the best way, that's the sort of trait we want to hire because it means you're going to continue to try and pivot and evolve ideas and get input from other people and make it better. And that's how Phoenix has grown to where it is. It's nothing I did. It's, I got the ball. rolling and then brought people alongside it that could help lean into it with me.

And, you know, it's gotten where it is. Do you have a core group of people that have been with you from the start that you simply couldn't do this without? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, employee number two that started at Phoenix still works here 16 years later. I actually just talked to him today. And his role has changed about 15 times, same as mine. You know, we've all had like a bunch of different jobs.

Anytime you're building something from nothing, carving it out of the wilderness. You know, when I started a nonprofit, I didn't think I'd have to become an expert at installing floors and gyms. But basically, I can put down a floor in an afternoon in a 12,000 square foot gym pretty effectively. So, you know, it's like my flooring skills have gone way up. But executive directors, you kind of have to do it all. Do do, do, do, do do do do. I love stories like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still was a musician.

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and $40 off your first order. Just use code mic at good ranchers.com. Free meat for life, $40 off your first order. Good Ranchers. dot com. American meat delivered. If you could eat a stare, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch, get good ranchers now. Hey-haw! Isn't it funny how those assholes from the past become more important to you? You know, right, the longer you live.

I've known Chuck forever. And now it was like 11 years ago, Chuck's like, hey, man, you know what? I want to sniff around the mic bro business. I want to see what it is you're actually doing. And I'm like, are you sure about that, man? Are you sure? And now I'm shackled in the cave. He's in the cave.

Looking at shadows on the wall. Oh, no, you went all the way back around. When I first read that, the whole Plato allegory thing, the thing that struck me was, if you can see shadows on the wall, it's because there's fire. And if you have fire and you're in the cave and you're looking at the wall, the odds are pretty good. Those shadows are you. Yeah. So, like, if you're your own shadow, staring at that shadow and not quite being in. able to connect the fact that the fire that you were smart enough to make, but maybe not smart

enough to keep just outside of the cave, and the smoke that's coming from the fire is probably slowly killing you. And that mysterious thing on the wall is simply your own reflection. Then you can start to think about maybe, oh, you know, the demon I'm fighting. Look at that. He's me. How about that? Well, that's what's kind of circling back to what I said earlier is like we are often seeking our emotional well-being externally because sort of finding it here is tough. You know, that's where you have to sort of be able to forgive yourself for things and also love yourself for things and believe in yourself in other ways. And, you know, it's, you know, there's a good treatment center that was started called the Meadows and this woman, Pia Melody,

who started it said, we're all perfectly imperfect. And once we understand that, life gets It's a little bit easier because you don't beat yourself up as much if you feel like you're failing because you understand that that's actually part of the journey of growing and getting better. It's actually a great answer to my earlier query, which was how do you balance humility and the certainty that you need to lead effectively. And so, yeah, there it is to admit in two words that you're both perfect and flawed. Perfectly imperfect. Yeah, all of us are.

It's not bad. Well, they say the best leaders only are right 51% of the time, you know? That's all it takes, you know, and you can be a good leader. I feel like I got it done with a much lower percentage. But that's because I work with great people. Well, it's like advertising, right? Only 10% of it works, but nobody knows which 10%. So you got to throw a lot of mud on the wall and hope that it sticks, which begs the question,

how do you deal with failure? because even though you've had a ton of success within Phoenix, I'm sure over all these years you've seen people come in, do their best and fall flat on their face and go straight back into the life. Speak to that. Yeah, I think that, you know, as it relates to sort of addiction, you need to just, we need to take the shame out of it.

You know, we need to stop looking at it as a sort of moral failing and think of it more as a way that we're all of us are trying to cope with something within. You know, often it's pain, you know, for others, it's other reasons. But I think that when you take the shame out of it, it allows people to get reengaged in a supportive community more quickly. So that's why at the Phoenix, it's only 48 hours sober. So if you're thinking about recovery, you can dip your toe in and try it. But also if you relapse,

by tomorrow you'll have 48 hours and we want you back, we miss you, we love you, get back in here. And then maybe we can turn that two-day relapse into just that as opposed to a two-year relapse. It's just being open. That's another reason I wear sort of my sober shirt, you know, just being proud of my recovery and putting it out there. I'm not saying everybody in recovery's got to wear a sober shirt or that everybody's got to get sober. I'm just saying that I'm proud of who I am in recovery. And by making it sort of something that's hopeful and out there as a message of hope allows people that are struggling to step into it and not feel like they're broken or something's wrong with them.

They realize actually they can find a really rich full life in recovery. And that might be the encouragement they need to get sober. Can I ask you about Sam Malone? Sure. Boston, right? Cheers was in Boston. It was a great show. And there's some people in my life who have struggled with addiction. And one of them I remember watching an episode of Cheers with and saying, where do you fall on that kind of thinking where, like for admittedly a fictitious character, a retired baseball player named Sam Malone, part of his recovery is running a bar. It's being

surrounded by alcohol. Part of other people's recoveries is getting as far away from it as possible and simply not not letting that temptation anywhere close. Again, there doesn't seem to be a useful bromide or platitude or playbook. But where do you fall on it? I've never been asked something like that. So I've got to think about it for a second. I would say that for me, if we go back to the allegory one last time, like just knowing there's still people down there shackled, I can't move far away from it.

it. Like I feel like I need to stay. We talk about it, the Phoenix a lot that if there's people still in the burning building, don't you feel obligated you have to reach back in? And that's sort of how I approach it. I understand why people might move entirely away from it. But I also wonder if you're staying too close to that old life, if that's still feeding something in you, some kick, some little high that you get from, you know, being near, and on the edge of you. And on the edge of of the fire so close that you could get burned, you know? So I think that there's a balance of if you step away and you feel like you have the fortitude and the support network and the strength to kind of reach back in for others, then that's what you do. And if you need a little

more time to develop that before you can, then take that time. What about leverage? You said something once. I don't know if it was at a Coke event or maybe it was your TED talk, but you were talking about your mom, right? From one mama's boy, you know, I remember the day my mother picked up the phone and asked me the question that changed the course of my life and drove me into a sewer to produce a show called Dirty Jobs. You talked about a moment when you didn't, I think, you just didn't want to let her down. You would come to that point. How big a role did that play in you just deciding enough already? Yeah, that was probably, me talking about the last night I used and was sort of wrapped up in paranoia from all the drug

use and had been on a bender drinking and using for a few days and I was locked up in my apartment and with the lights out sort of hiding in the bathroom because I thought people were after me and I was sure this is how my life was going to end and I thought somebody would have to tell my mom that that's how our son ended his life ended on the bathroom floor somewhere in, you know, in this sort of drug bender. And that was really the spark that sort of lit the fire that ultimately became the phoenix. You know, that was the last night I drank and used. But the bigger sort of thing there is that my mom was one of those people that believed in me, even though I didn't yet believe in myself. And that little thread of belief kept

me tethered from sort of floating away forever in my addiction. And I think if we can help connect those threads to others, we can do that for them, even if they didn't get it from their family of origin. So finding that thing in any addict who would like to recover that would make them smaller, like finding the bigger thing. Like, I mean, I guess, you know, A.A. would talk about it in terms of a higher power. I just mean it more down here on the corporal plane, where just the idea that somebody's going to call your mom and say, yeah, Scott checked out. We found him on the bathroom floor with two days of cocaine in a system. That conversation was just so hideous that it actually redirected you. But that's an external fear, right? And so is it,

again, I know I'm asking as an overly simplified question, but isn't there always in enough leverage somewhere to get people to get to that place? Well, it depends. I mean, I think of it less as leverage and more so as a moment of perspective on your life. If you're clear-headed enough for a window of time, even if it's 48 hours to come to Phoenix, just that window of time that gives you enough of a moment to have perspective on your life, life and what's possible. And I think that's special about the Phoenix is in that small window where often folks are experiencing something that has them believing differently about themselves.

So you come in, you're anxious, you're nervous, you've never been around a group of people without a drink and a drug in your system, but you have the courage to actually come to that Zoom class on Phoenix or show up at a yoga event or go on a bike ride. And when you're mountain biking down the hill and you crash, you know, you like you get back up and you dust off and you get back on the bike and maybe you need a, you know, maybe you got a road rash or whatever. But, you know, at the end of it, you're like leave smiling and lifted and you believe in yourself in a different way. And you hopefully begin to take that belief into other parts of your life. And maybe that night you don't have to go buy a 12 pack on the way home. And instead you call a friend that you do know goes to a 12 step.

meeting and next thing you know you're beginning some steps towards recovery. Did you ever surprise yourself with with something that you did? What I mean by that is reaching the mountaintop. Did you ever think, well, I can't really do this, but I'm going to try because the effort will be the reward. And did you ever surprise yourself and did that encourage you further? And if so, what was that? Yeah, that's actually, I think that one of those moments was really pivotal for me, which was I still thought I was sort of a fraud or a fake or not deserving of love or, you know, the stuff I kind of picked up as a kid sort of taught me some of those lessons. And I was climbing a mountain with some friends. And it was a big mountain and it was a

dangerous one. And we were climbing with a guide. I didn't think that I sort of could do it on my own. So I went through a guiding service. And there was a moment. where the guide made a decision, a safety decision that I disagreed with. And at that point, I had some years of experience as a climber. And I found myself sort of disagreeing with this guide on the side of a mountain in a storm and ended up going down the mountain with a couple guys. And the folks that went up got frostbite and were pretty severely pinned down by some weather. And the folks that went down were sitting at base camp, drinking tea, looking up at the mountain, you know, with all of our digits intact. And that moment was a time when I realized that I actually had something to contribute

to others. That was something I was always looking for and be able to steal the bottle of vodka, you know, was to actually be a meaningful part of a group and to feel loved and respected and believed in. And I found it in that little moment. Well, what I take from that is you had the courage to question authority. And I'm not preaching rebellion as a default position, but, you know, there's another big recurring theme in a lot of these conversations we have here, which is the primacy of experts, whether it's in the form of a guide like you just had or a teacher. And it's also back to that weird seesaw between humility and certainty. You hire a guide to take you to parts unknown. on the side of an admittedly treacherous environment.

And here he is, pardon me, I'm assuming it's a he for no good reason. With years of experience, you've brought him in because of his experience, because of his wisdom, because of his credibility. And you say, nah, nah, I'm going the other way. Good luck up there. That's huge. Yeah. And it's not just ego.

There's ego in it for sure. But that sort of self-actualization, the kind of dignity that comes with being able to get to a place in your life by whatever means where you can rely on your gut or at least trust it. That's hard to teach. Well, now we can blame Chuck for kicking off the self-actualization conversation now because that is like you're singing our tune. Because I think that self-actualization is actually what's happening at Phoenix. You know, what's coming in. And at first, it's just sort of, you know, trying the activity and starting to become a little bit of a student of that. And then really pretty quickly, you realize you can actually volunteer to give that to other people.

And then you add another Phoenix class to the calendar so we can reach even more folks. But like the allegory, the cave, self-actualization is something that continues to grow. Your gifts and your talents that you can then share with others to make a meaningful contribution get better. over time and the contribution you can make becomes bigger. And that continues to grow and sort of evolve. A point that I want to pull out of your thought you shared is that in the nonprofit space, we see this all the time too. We tend to try to work in a system that's already established and do our little piece within that system. Rarely do we say, let's change the whole way we're approaching this. This industry has been around for 40 years.

who am I to say that we can do it differently or better? And the truth is, I'm a guy in recovery with about 200,000 other people that say we can, you know, all the folks that have ever come to Phoenix. Like we're starting to realize that we can transform the way we approach really complex issues just by having the courage to stand up and say, I think there's a better way. Yes. I think the moral of your story, to me anyway, is not the fact that you were right. It's not the fact that you get to sit at base camp, sipping tea, looking up there and saying, we chose wisely. It's a nice happy ending.

But the moral of the story is, surely there was a time in your life a year or two or three prior to that moment, where had you been in the exact same circumstance, you wouldn't have dared question the primacy of the guide. you would have followed them up or down. Yeah. Right? So as Lance Armstrong said, it's not about the bike. It's about getting to that moment where you have the courage to say, I'm going to have to go my own way here.

I could be wrong, but I'd rather be wrong than just put my head down and follow. And his way was just the opposite. He leaned into the drugs. Yeah, well, you know, bad metaphor. You know what? the shadow on the wall was, looked an awful lot like a bike, which, interestingly, is hanging right behind Scott's head now. See how I land the plane, Chuck?

Yeah. Everything's pretty good. He's welcome to come to the Phoenix, too. We'd love to have him lead a ride, so that would be great. I'll make some calls. Hey, I wanted to ask a question about what you think the biggest challenge to combating addiction is these days. I think one of the bigger challenges.

so is that we're often trying to address the wrong thing, you know? Like, I think using my days in the shipyards as an example could be a good analogy here. But, like, I worked in shipyards before we wore respirators and protective equipment. And, I mean, we used to paint with red lead paint and toxic bottom paint on ships and wash it off with diesel and then go drinking. You know, like, that was what you did. imagine that I got some sort of tumor from that and that tumor would give me a headache. If you treated the headache for me, you would alleviate some of that pain. If you treated the tumor for me, you would save my life.

But what about everybody else that's in that shipyard? You know? So like going to the environment where the toxic sort of root is, is the magic. You know, so like if we're trying to address addiction in our country and deaths of despair, we need to go back to the underlying why to really get after it, not just treat the headache. And that's the trauma? That's the trauma, I believe. Right, with a capital T and it could apply to virtually anything.

Yeah. Not just the big traumas. Yeah. Right? I mean, people have a tendency to think of it always in terms of, well, the thing that you remember, which seems clear, but there's so many little traumas in people's lives, so many little disappointments that stack up, I would think. And, I mean, have you seen that in your work? Yeah, I think that's a great observation as well. And I think that it's, I always think of the big traumas

are obvious to us, you know, like, you're like, wow, that's trauma when you hear about it. And then, so a lot of us say, well, we didn't experience that. So I haven't experienced trauma. But the truth is, like, you know, when you have, like my father was often belittle us as kids and very demeaning and, you know, would walk out on the soccer field and tell you what you did wrong in front of the whole bench and all the other players. Like that was his style. If you won the game, he would yell at you because you could have played better. But if you think about each one of those is a little cut. If you get a thousand of those, it can kill you. You know? So like I think those things stack. up, if we don't really sort of acknowledge it and process it because often we see extreme trauma and we say, oh, I didn't have that, so I should just sort of suck it up. But you so you never actually begin to heal from the thousand cuts, then it's going to come out somewhere. It's going to come out in relationships. It's going to come out in sort of our relationship with substances,

you know, us seeking that emotional well-being externally. So I think going more fundamentally to the system that's creating a lot of these things, I think that's. I think we could address criminal justice reform. I think we could address homelessness. I think we could address mental health differently. Mass shootings, all these things, if we could really get to that core, why, as a driver behind many of these things? I just wonder, I think of most of those traumas really in one of two categories, the ones

you're conscious of, whether they're large or small. I mean, the fact that you remember your old man going out on the soccer field and doing that, yes, that all tracks and I can see how that would all add up. But it's the stuff you can't remember consciously that makes me interested. I'm fairly skeptical of most things and dubious of a lot of traditional therapies. But I do think there's an enormous value and benefit in not recovering memories. That's a whole different conversation. But just recalling some of the small things that added up that your conscious mind is just pushed away.

that's the part of the map that says, here be dragons, right? And if you can identify those, I can't imagine anything bad happening as a result. No, I think, too, it's also, that's why there's something special about community. You know, at Phoenix, you find this community. And I'll have to say, like, we have a reentry program, so folks coming home from the criminal justice system. And I'll go down there and lift weights with those guys. And I would imagine they're probably like, who's this big bald guy lifting weights with us who's talking about his early childhood trauma. Like, I really haven't heard many people talk about that

stuff. And the more he talks about it, the more I'm realizing, actually my dad was probably a lot like his dad. And now all of a sudden, you're starting to find a space where you're actually given permission to be vulnerable. And in that vulnerability is actually where we're building a bond also, not just around the shared activity. It's just so freaking fascinating to me. Barbershop Harmony is a community. Climbing mountains is a community. Working out is a community. But being in prison is a community. And joining a gang is a community. And sitting around a dilapidated house doing cocaine and heroin for, or God forbid, fentanyl, whatever's on the menu these days, that's a community too. So, I mean, it really does make the point that our need to be

around like-minded people for better or worse, that's probably. primal, you know. Church. Church is a community. You know what Chuck does after he goes to church? He plays disc golf. Yeah. With a bunch of dudes for hours. You can volunteer and make it a Phoenix event, Chuck. That would be great. You know what? I'm going to consider that. Why not? I mean, why not? It's such a weird, random, quirky thing to do. But your passion for that, I mean, he'll play golf for three hours. And then he'll call me to tell me about every freaking hole and, well, the wind here and this one, and at disc, but it's great. It's great because it's small and it's personal, and you got half a dozen buddies with you. Well, the interesting thing is that the guy who leads the group that I play in

also leads the sober recovery at my church. So this would fit right in. Yeah, absolutely. All right. There's a new Phoenix event. See, that's how we grow. That's good. Right. Well, speaking of which it's the phoenix.org to find out where it is near you. And you can also go to the app because you guys have an app called the Phoenix, a sober community. And that's how you can find a community and an activity, correct? Yeah, yeah. Just download the app and it'll, you know, turn on the geolocation and it'll tell you what events are around you. And if there aren't Phoenix events around you, you can be the person who starts Phoenix near you. And you can do it by becoming a volunteer and that's how it grows.

I want to say too, since we appear to be landing the plane here, that this doesn't happen a lot in terms of, I mean, there are a lot of wonderful 501 Cs out there. There are a lot of charities who have moved the needle and I've spent a lot of time talking with a lot of them. But the kind of accelerant that it takes to do what Phoenix has done, I've only really seen it one other time. It was with a guy named Luke Mickelson who had a thing, he started building bunk beds for kids who were sleeping on the floor, you know? And we did a story on him a few years ago and they went from six chapters to like 500. And it just goes to the point that when you're

talking about something that's so basic, a kid not sleeping on the floor, people get it. And the degree to which people have been impacted by addiction, all kinds of addiction. You can't turn on the TV now, 104,000 people dead last year from fentanyl alone. This thing is real. It's tearing the ass out of our country in a horrible way. And you're such a big part of the solution, Scott. I mean, really, it's a privilege to talk to you. And I guess the final question is, where's this thing going? I mean, we know the Phoenix rose from the ashes, but what's it going to do next? It's going to grow wings, is going to fly off, going to find another galaxy somewhere 13 billion years ago, see its own shadow on the wall? What happens?

Well, I think with us going to adding virtual programming through the pandemic, we're now international. So people are coming from overseas now to Phoenix, which is great. But I think, you know, continuing to build out our technology to be able to reach even more people. You know, one thing I think about when you, you know, when you hear about algorithms and all the sort of challenges that some of the technology today is causing is that the same thing as adverse childhood experience right if we understand that those experiences exist we have to believe that we can actually create the opposite positive nurturing uplifting empowering places and the

same thing with that technology if we can use it to actually help people rise that would be the magic because then Phoenix is everywhere and it can start to apply to to other things. You know, the model, the idea of creating this nurturing space, we can start applying it to other issues and transform the way our country is approaching many of these things, which we're currently failing at. PTSD, maybe? Yeah, exactly. I mean, I would love to see what can happen in that space. We've profiled maybe a dozen different organizations taking non-traditional approaches to try and combat that. But virtually everything we've talked about applies, I think, to a service person coming home and just looking at the reentry. And what you

said before about shame, you know, it's so true. Although I got to say, I'm sorry, Chuck, I know we've got to wrap it up, but man, shame is one of those things. It's like, I think shame gets a bad rap, frankly. I've written papers called indefensive shame. There's so many people that I know who actually could benefit from a little bit of it. But by the same token, if you're overwhelmed with it, if it's heavy, if it's crippling you and keeping you from getting off the bathroom floor, right? If it's just, then of course, then it's a bad thing.

Last question, how do you know when shame's bad? I guess is when it is doing just that when you're allowing it to, instead of having it be reflecting on something and learning from it so that you can grow and continue on your journey, you're allowing it to thwart you from moving forward. Yeah, that's what I'd say. I have something to piggyback on to that. What you said, Mike, about the shame, what you said about doing something. Aren't all these things like just designed to get you out of your head? Because that's where the shame is. is, right? Yeah. And I think, you know, we see that often, too. It's like you come in, you had a

tough day. The world is piling up on you with all of the stuff we all deal with. And you come in here and you start moving your body and laughing and hanging out with people that believe in you and are there for you. And you walk out forgetting what you were so stressed about in the first place. So it's just being able to reset sometimes and get to that next day. You know, sometimes it is just that. breaking your pattern you know i got dragged to one of those tony robin's seminars many years ago and that's one of the things that stuck break your pattern if you can do it with a mountain bike or an ice climb or a barbershop song or a square dance you just have to break your pattern somehow you have to do it you're doing it you're a jagged little pill you're disrupting things

everybody loves you man keep doing it are you going to be at the next event the next stand together Yeah, I'll be out there for sure. I'm excited for it and excited to keep grinding and getting Phoenix everywhere. Fantastic. You know I have a line of whiskey, right? Yeah, I know. I was telling Chuck, I'll be your built-in designated driver always. It's always good to know a couple sober guys to keep them around, you know. Brother, I'm going to put you on speed dial. Thank you. I appreciate it so much. And good luck with all of it. Appreciate you guys too. And I couldn't get out of here without saying my wife. said, make sure you tell Mike, I said, hi. And I said, why are you so interested? And she said,

she's like, you know, I don't even know him. If I knew him, there might be some trouble. But she really was excited to say hi to you. So if you're ever hanging out in Boston, let me know. We'll buy you coffee or something. Is she there now? No, no. She's back home. We just had a brand new little one. So she's watching the baby. I just got back from paternity leave. So we're not sleeping at all over here. but uh well i dare say you've broken your own pattern scott congratulations thanks mike this episode is over now i hope it was worthwhile sorry it went on so long but if it made you smile then share your satisfaction in the way that people do take some time Time to go on a lot of suck.

I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge. But in this world, the advertisers really like to judge. You don't need to write a bunch, just a lighter two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Not four. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. And not three. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review.

Definitely not too. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. We need five. All you got to do is leave a quick... Even if you hate it. Five-star. Especially if you're ready. Thank you.

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