#19 Lee Pepper — Breaking Stigma, Ethical Marketing, & Lessons from 10,000 Recovery Calls

Lee Pepper has spent nearly two decades helping behavioral health organizations reach more people, grow responsibly, and better understand what individuals and families experience when they make the difficult first call for help.

A military veteran, author, marketing strategist, four-time Ironman, and longtime friend of the recovery community, Lee brings a unique perspective shaped by leadership, service, data, and thousands of conversations about addiction and treatment.

After joining Foundations Recovery Network as its first Chief Information Officer in 2008, Lee helped the organization achieve extraordinary growth while building a marketing approach rooted in ethics, transparency, and measurable impact. Along the way, he listened to more than 10,000 calls from people seeking treatment—and discovered that many organizations don’t have a marketing problem. They have a listening problem.

Lee explains why the first question a caller asks—“How much does treatment cost?” or “Where are you located?”—is rarely the question they truly need answered. Behind that question may be years of pain, fear, uncertainty, and the courage required to finally pick up the phone.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Lee and Jonny explore the stigma surrounding addiction, the importance of approaching recovery without judgment, ethical storytelling, the hidden practices that can mislead families searching online for treatment, and why helping someone find the right care matters—even when it is not your organization.

Lee also shares lessons from serving in the military, working for Ross Perot, completing four Ironman triathlons, mentoring veterans, and writing his book, Never Outmatched: Using Military Tactics to Master the Art of Business and Marketing.

You’ll Hear:

• What Lee learned about addiction by attending open recovery meetings
• Why people outside the recovery community can mistakenly view addiction as simply a series of bad decisions
• How listening to more than 10,000 treatment calls changed Lee’s understanding of the first call for help
• Why asking “How much does treatment cost?” may be a caller’s way of saying, “I don’t know what else to ask”
• Why Lee says, “If you’re talking, you’re selling. If you’re listening, you’re caring.”
• The common training mistakes treatment centers make when answering calls from patients and families
• Why many perceived marketing problems are actually problems with how calls are handled
• How Foundations Recovery Network grew while using data to make smarter marketing decisions
• Why helping someone find appropriate treatment is a win—even when they are not admitted to your program
• How unethical online advertising can mislead families searching for trusted treatment providers
• Why Lee believes “anonymity is not secrecy”
• How Betty Ford inspired the creation of Heroes in Recovery and helped change the public conversation around addiction
• Why ethical standards are essential when marketing addiction treatment
• How military concepts such as force multiplication and commander’s intent can strengthen organizations
• What Lee learned about leadership while working with Ross Perot
• How Veterans Treatment Court helps veterans access treatment, purpose, community, and support
• Why completing four Ironman triathlons reinforced Lee’s belief in discipline and incremental growth
• What recovery and endurance training have in common
• Why meaningful change can begin with something as small as reaching the next mailbox
• How the principles in Never Outmatched apply beyond marketing and military service

Why Listen:

• To better understand the courage it can take to make the first call for addiction treatment
• To learn why listening without judgment is essential when supporting people affected by addiction
• To discover what treatment providers often misunderstand about patients and families seeking help
• To understand how ethical marketing can connect people with care without exploiting their vulnerability
• To learn why growth and business success should never come at the expense of patient care
• To hear practical leadership lessons from Lee’s experiences in the military, behavioral healthcare, and working with Ross Perot
• To understand how small, consistent actions can create lasting change in recovery, health, leadership, and life
• To be reminded that treatment is not a quick fix—recovery is a lifelong process of building a stronger foundation

To learn more about Lee Pepper and his book, Never Outmatched: Using Military Tactics to Master the Art of Business and Marketing, visit leepepper.com.

If you or someone you love is struggling, help is available.

To learn more about National Addiction Specialists and the Breaking Down Addiction podcast, visit nationaladdictionspecialists.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

When you send your loved one to treatment, they don't come home fixed in 30 days. That's just trying to establish can we get some solid footing.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hello, and welcome to a new episode of Breaking Down Addiction. I'm your host, Johnny Phillip. This podcast is brought to you by National Addiction Specialists. And we have a very special guest today, Mr. Lee Pepper.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Great. So glad to be here, Johnny.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Thank you, man. Thanks for making the time. You are a consultant. You've done a TED talk. You're an author, marketing specialist, Iron Man times four, friend of AA. The list goes on and on. So I'm excited to get into the meat and potatoes and also the fat of your life and just learn more about your background and also gain some knowledge from you too. Because I am a marketing.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

And I always we're constantly learning, right? Because marketing changes over the years.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Well, I feel like that's what's so important in um the recovery community is that everybody is so willing to share. And I think that that was somebody, you know, Joey Darby, a good friend of mine at Cumberland Heights, you know, he, you know, you know, he's he's like me. They they call us normies. And I always felt weird being called a normie. I'm like, what? What am I really? And I feel like that that was one of the things that the recovery community just poured into me. And I think I I told you earlier, you know, I my first open meeting, you know, was here in Brentwood at the United Methodist Church.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

And I mean I've been to that one.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Yeah, and I don't know how many it was eye-opening for me. And this is many, many years ago. And I and I feel like that's how I really became a friend of AA and so supportive of the recovery community.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Well, what have you learned being in those rooms about addiction and recovery?

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Like what's what's some of those things that you I think the first thing, you know, Johnny, I had a very unusual childhood in that I was not exposed to drugs and alcohol. You know, and it's very, you know, when I think back about it and I see like what my kids have have grown up and been exposed to that at a much younger age than than I was.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Um And this is not even coming from your family's side too?

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Well, yeah, they just it just wasn't something that was um available, you know, in in my household and and even extended families, you know, going and visiting grandparents and aunts and uncles. And and so I I I think part of it was because I grew up in a military family. So my dad was active duty. Uh, and I think my mom, you know, she used to say, oh, well, you know, she had an uncle that was an alcoholic. And so she was always very, you know, cautious about drugs and alcohol, but it really was just abstinence. And for whatever reason, I just didn't really ever push the boundaries about it. It just was if somebody offered me, you know, back then in the 80s, you know, somebody offered me, you know, marijuana, you know, in the locker room, it just wasn't something I was ever even interested in. You know, and so uh maybe there was just it was just kind of some interesting circumstances that happened. And anyway, and so what I learned in the rooms going into the rooms was boy, there's a lot of judgment, a lot of judgment. And so I think that helped reinforce in me personally that I really had to make sure that I was approaching everybody and every situation without judgment because you just don't understand. Like I thought I had a kind of a normal childhood, but I had an abnormal childhood, not being exposed to everything that I was exposed to. So I think that was the first thing that I learned in the rooms.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

So you say judgment. Go into that a little bit more. What did you expect?

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Well, I think it's uh really easy for people that grow up in um these kind of situations where they may not have experienced trauma, where they may not have had a dysfunctional home life, they may not have had challenges that we somehow think that it's um a lot more personal decision in somebody's um need to uh you know use drugs and alcohol. And so it we can kind of take a high road and we can be like, oh, look how good we are, and oh, you're just making bad decisions.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Right. Like if you go into a low-income neighborhood, you'll see a lot of bars, liquor stores, cigarette signs.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Yeah, it's designed for comfort for those people. I mean, it's the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

And so it's really easy as a normie to say, well, they're just making bad decisions.

unknown 4:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

And I think that when you go into the rooms and you you hear the stories, because that was one thing I I love hearing. You know, I John Southworth and Brian O'Shea were two people that that I attended a lot of open meetings with. And to be able to hear the stories, um, it really it really opens your eyes that there's a whole nother world that you as a normie might think is not out there that's out there.

unknown 4:50

Right.

SPEAKER_02 4:51

And that you're the minority.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

And that you're learning this through immersion then.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Right. Um, and I think, you know, Johnny, you know, and I'm sure we'll get into this too, you know, uh my dad was 26 years career army. I served eight years, you know, in the army, mainly in the reserves. Thank you. And, you know, I remember that first um that first day in basic training, all of a sudden, you know, you're just white middle class kid, you know, from Tennessee, and you show up to basic training and you're the minority. Again, you're the minority. You know, I was there with a lot of kids from Puerto Rico, I was there with gang members from Dallas, and all of a sudden, you know, so it it kind of I think it kind of fits in where I I kind of learned very early to be to not have judgment. And I think being at that first meeting in in Brentwood, I think it really just helped kind of encourage me to kind of keep going down that path.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Yeah, how was basic training for you that experience?

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Uh for me, I mean, I I will say it's a good experience. People laugh. I mean, obviously it's hard. Um, but I think it was one of those things where it gave me a lot of confidence because when you go and do something like that, uh you really develop some confidence and and and not just being cocky about everything. You can overcome that circumstance of challenge. When you when you go through basic training, um maybe it's like going through rehab, but you know, you come out and you go, I did something. But no, you you really do feel like that you have really accomplished something in those two months, eight weeks. And then now basic training is 10 weeks, because my youngest son just is in the army and just finished his basic training. But you really do come out and feel like I can do anything.

unknown 6:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

After basic, where did you move from there?

SPEAKER_02 6:31

So um, after basic training, I was in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and this is in 1988 when I enlisted. So I had gone to uh college, the University of Tennessee. I had finished my freshman year, uh, and I had tried to enlist right out of high school, but I had I'd had um some medical issues as a kid, so I had to get a waiver. So that had taken a year to get that process through the military. And um, and so I was able to get that, and then I went, I took, I then took basically a year off of college to go through uh basic training at AIT, and then I went to air assault school at Fort Campbell. And then when I finished that, I went back, you know, re-enrolled at UT to continue my um education. And then I was serving in the reserves, and my um my unit was the 49th Civil Affairs Unit there in Knoxville, and they were right on the campus. So it was really easy for me to go to class and then and then you know do my reserve service. And then I um I was able to get selected for officer candidate school a year before I graduated college. Back, I don't know if they still do it, but back then you could apply the year before you graduated. And so I did that, graduated from OCS, got commissioned as a second lieutenant, and then took off another six months or another semester to go to officer basic course. And so I did armor school at uh Fort Knox, Kentucky, and then finished that up, and then you know, finished up my edu, you know, my uh graduated from UT. And then that's what then led me to got my first job, you know, working for Ross Perot right after right after I graduated. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Where where does starting to work in recovery fit in here? And how did that happen?

SPEAKER_02 8:11

Yeah, recur I started working in recovery in 2008. So this was, you know, a good 12 years after I started working for Mr. Perot and then um, you know, finished up my service. And I was the first chief information officer at Foundation's Recovery Network. So they they were a small nonprofit here in in um Nashville, and they had just decided to take some private equity money from a company called Sterling Partners in Chicago, and part of the deal was they needed to hire, you know, a whole C-suite. They needed a CFO, a COO, a CIO. So they hired me as a CIO. And back then, the chief information officer was in charge of the websites, was in charge of the nascent digital marketing and social media. And that's where I had more interest in that. I still was responsible for the servers, the networks, you know, the uh printers, the help desk, all that. But I really was more focused um, you know, on the digital marketing side. Okay. And um, because back then the chief marketing officers were were like just business development, you know, and maybe yellow pages.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's such a different game back then.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

Yeah. But it was right when things were shifting to where digital marketing was really starting to lead the way, and you you had this transition period.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Well, you start working in recovery at this point, and you listen to upward of over 10,000 phone calls with family members, patients. What do some treatment centers or most treatment centers get wrong about that first call?

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Wow. Um, there's so many. I mean, and and that's why I think, you know, you when you introduced me, you know, you led with consultant, and I do do a lot of consulting. And most of the time people call me because they have a marketing problem. When when you when you reach out to me, you've got some question, you're not sure what's going on. And invariably, you have to listen to the phone calls to really understand if you have a marketing problem, what that marketing problem might be. So that's why I've listened to so many phone calls. But what most centers get wrong is that I think they make assumptions into the quality of the training of the staff they hired. They hire really good people most of the time, but they don't train them.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

And so they breathing is a big issue.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

Oh, they totally miss out on the training. They assume that just because you graduated from college with a degree or you graduated from the program or you're in recovery that you know everything. And what they what they failed to miss out on is that there are some fundamental ways that you have to handle calls. And there's things like, you know, when somebody first calls in, they'll say, Well, how much are you? That's a typical uh question from a caller, either the person in active recovery or a family or loved one. That's the first thing they'll ask, Well, how much do you cost, or where are you located? And what we assume without training is that we have to answer that question.

unknown 11:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

The the truth is the reason that the caller is asking that question is they don't know what else to ask.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

And it also that phone is so heavy. And for that person to actually reach out and make the call says a lot. So the first thing is a difficult situation. It's so difficult. And it's and it's many years building up. Yeah. So for you, so for the call center person to answer that question, how much do you cost as an example, just to give them the price, is a big mistake because they need to acknowledge what has just happened. Like you have really done something heroic, either for yourself or your family. So you need to acknowledge that. And you need to uh let them know that we'll get to the price. We don't even know if we can help you yet.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

And for programs that have multiple levels of care, we need to determine what it is they're struggling with before we can even make a recommendation. So we'll get to the cost or we'll get to the location or we'll get to the level of care. But first, I need to know about you or your family situation, what's going on. And so I think most of the time when I do my trainings and I all of a sudden when you do that, the marketing problems start going away because guess what? Most of the time the marketing is working. There are there are phone calls being generated. The issue is how they're being handled and triaged. And there is a there is a difference in a business development relationship. So, like, you know, you I met you through a relationship. Well, people who are calling your program through a relationship with you, they're a little bit more educated, they're more teed up. Right. So it's a little bit, so now the level of service is more concierge versus somebody who's discovering you've on the internet who's maybe at the at the top of the funnel. They haven't quite done. So your your people answering the phones, they need to understand all this. And that's where the training comes in.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Yeah, and I think that's the perfect example and response here. I think a big missing piece with this training is that the patient calling, making that first step, it's not a one size fits all. Because if this patient's calling needing X, Y, and Z that is different from a whole nother patient, instead of saying no, we can't do that, or yes, we can do that, the training should be, you know, I'm not sure. Let me speak to my supervisor because I want to make sure this is going to work for the best of both parties. Absolutely. This is your life here.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Absolutely. Um I have a thing, you know, Johnny, that I say that if you're talking, you're selling. If you're listening, you're caring. And that's where, you know, a lot of times when centers get involved with me, one of the first things I look at is talk time. I want to, because you know, in in in today's day and age, you can use call rail or CTM or Invoca, and you can see how much the the caller is talking versus how much the agent or the counselor is talking. And when I see that the agent or the counselor is talking more, more than 50%, I know there's a problem right there. I don't, I don't even have to have listened to a call yet. I know that they're talking too much because I need to let the caller do most of the talking so that I can learn and pick up things, which is going to help me get to the point of making a recommendation.

unknown 14:19

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Yeah, I have to listen, I have to consider options. Then I make the recommendation. I I hear a lot of times when when people engage with me, they're making recommendations within the first five minutes of the call and they're doing it solely on the insurance. Yes, solely on the insurance. And that is a big problem because then you create you create all sorts of issues for your clinical team. Because if you've made that decision based on the insurance, what the insurance will pay, all of a sudden they show up and your milieu gets disrupted and you wonder why. Right. Or people AMA and you wonder why. Well, it all starts there. At the beginning. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Yeah. On the front end. Yeah. So you you've been part of multiple marketing teams, worked for foundations. Foundations Recovery Network had 60 times the growth when you were there. What strategic steps were taken to reach that kind of growth?

SPEAKER_02 15:09

Well, I think the first thing was that we identified this is now in 2008, so yellow pages was our number one marketing spin when I got there.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

That's just wild these things. It's crazy. It's really quick.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

They were spending a million dollars a year on yellow pages, and I was new, but I started, you know, we started tracking and tagging all the calls. That was part of the CIO's responsibility. And I could quickly understand that, huh? How is it that that we're spending all this money on yellow pages, very little on digital and and not that much on business development? There, why is yellow pages when I could see all the calls were coming from digital or from relationships?

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

And so once I put that data together, I was able to then convince the board, because I had I had the proof that the yellow pages is not working for us like you think it is, because the data is there. And that's where I tell a lot of companies today, you know, it's like there's so much data out there. You you can figure it out. Um, even if you're just even if you have to use Excel, you know, to track things, you can figure it out. This is not some kind of, it was, it was more difficult back in 2008, you know, when when all of this automation was just starting to come up. But um, but that was the first thing was that I had a we had a board, you know, Rob Wagner was our CEO and promoted to CEO. Uh, but we had people that were very uh data driven and we weren't making decisions just subjectively.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

Willy-nilly, yes, if you will. Yeah. And also, so the yellow pages aren't working. So it's I I think that some of these treatment centers present day, maybe they're living and dying on this hill of one thing that they think is working and it's not working. So you're figuring out those issues right away, the things that are not working.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

Yeah, because and again, it's it's getting the data. Because I I, to be honest with you, uh if the yellow page was working, great, I wouldn't have cared. But I had to know that we only have finite dollars in this space. And recovery, it's expensive. It's not, you know, and so we have to be very uh judicious with the marketing spin because if we're not, we're all of a sudden going to jack up the prices or we're gonna take dollars away from clinical, we're gonna take dollars away from alumni teams. And that would hurt the whole, that would hurt um our treatment model. And so that was something that was really, I think that I think that's why it's important to have uh an in-house team. I mean, we always used, you know, we had different agencies that would help us do things, but but we had an we had an in-house team. And so when you're when you're in the office, when you're going to events, when you're going to open meetings together, you have this passion for the the client. And I think that that's sometimes what uh some centers can miss. And certainly I've always felt, and I think it's still that way today, that the number one competitor that most treatment centers have is not the center down the street. It's these national online marketing companies that basically sell the lead. That's who we're really competing with.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

And legit scripts has not solved that problem completely. And um, and so I think that that today is like I'm I'm a big believer that that when somebody would call into foundations and they weren't a good fit for me. I wanted to get them to Cumberland Heights. I wanted to get them to Journey Pure.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

To the best partnership for that person.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

Yes. It it it helps solve my problem of, you know, when you when you're working in an admissions center or a marketing team, and if you're getting a hundred phone calls, we were we were wildly successful with between a three and five percent conversion rate.

unknown 18:47

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

But think about what that does to you psychologically when you're answering the phone all day, or you've got a even your your blog writers are writing content, your web developers are building websites, and they know that for every hundred calls, 95 people got turned away. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Like that's all these leads that you're paying money for are dead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

And so anything we could do to get those family members or that caller to somewhere that could help is a win. Even if it doesn't come back to us. And so we, and that was why we were so successful with our conferences. You know, we did four national conferences a year. We had our heroes in recovery movement. People saw that it wasn't just about fill our beds, it was really about can we help that person calling? And we hope that we can help them, and we're gonna do everything we can to do that.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Totally.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

But even on our best day, we're at five percent. We still got 95 people we can't help. What are we gonna do? We can't just say call Samsha, because that's what a lot of places do. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Um, I think with growing at that kind of rate, you also have to keep up with that growth. Because it's great. If if somebody wants a thousand more patients per year, great. What are you gonna do and implement to handle that growth properly? Because all those people are gonna need that same level of treatment coming through your doors. Um, thank you for talking about it.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

We were super lucky. I'll tell you, John, we were super lucky that with foundations we had two amazing private equity sponsors. Sterling, uh uh Sterling Partners in Chicago, they were the first. Um, they were super supportive in the mission. And then uh the Pritzkers, it's a family fund, super supportive. So, like when we had we had an issue in Memphis at uh at La Paloma, which was 72 beds, dual license, mental health, and substance use, which is unusual in the United States that you could do a dual license. But when we had the need to spend some money on capital, when we were starting to have some problems, people were turning away, they you know, the the the facility needed some work, you know, we were able to get that, you know, it was over a million dollars that we invested in a few months to kind of bring that facility up. And that sometimes I feel like is hard to do with private equity because they might not understand like what that return's gonna be. But we had really good partners that saw the longer term vision that that we needed to invest, that, you know, um redoing the basketball court is not an amenity. Like, no, that's actually part of the treatment that they're getting, is that they have to have a good exercise program and that we need to bring in new weight sets and that you know we needed to create a park-like environment. They they really understood how that really ties in to the therapeutic model that's there.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

So you were just telling these private investors that like we got you on this argument.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

Yeah, they well, they could see the longer term vision. Um, and and we were able to, with the marketing side, I think a lot of times people feel like marketing's a black box. Well, I'm spending I'm spending all this marketing money, but I don't know what I'm getting. Right. That was not the case with us. I mean, we had it dialed in. And it's not that every channel um was was successful at the same rate. Uh I would say that like for us, the most uh the most beneficial channel was alumni.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

And so I worked I worked an alumni program once and when I started the the reentry uh percentage was 30% when I finished it was 40.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

Yeah. Well and see Betty Ford is like that. Betty Ford has like a 40% alumni. That's your cheapest and your best. But guess what? You have to still put hard dollars into it. Totally. And that was where our heroes program came in. You can't just assume they're gonna and then our our next best was uh was business development and then natural search SEO and then our most expensive was paid search. We still did it because we needed you know so you but we were tracking everything. We also did TV, we did radio we had yellow pages up and you know for a couple years until we completely cut that out. So you have to have all the it's fine to have all these channels but you want to track them and you want to be you you want to be honest about it. It's either working not working or it's part of the mix. You know like for us paid search was something that we could we could flex up and down depending on the season. And our our private equity sponsors they appreciated that we had the data and that we were making decisions based on the data versus just well I think or you know I think Johnny's a good BD rep. You know like we could we could dial it down to the per rep who was being successful and who wasn't. Totally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Speaking of marketing so with your military background you're learning these tactics what do you think is the most important military tactic in marketing?

SPEAKER_02 23:35

Yeah I think the easiest one that I write about in my book is called force multiplication. Force multiplication was something that a Prussian um 18th century Prussian general Carl von Klausovitz wrote about and back then he was using force multiplication to talk about how now we could with cavalry troops uh this is at the beginning of where you could start giving them you know carbines you know uh guns and he was like well while we've got this cavalry which gives us speed and movement let's also give them a carbine to go with their sword so that when we're charging it's not just a slash with the sword but now we can also shoot that was what he was uh espousing and he had a mathematical formula for that and it was x squared minus y squared equals the advantage that a military has meaning that if you have one soldier right and if you can put them on a horse and if you can give them a sword and give them a gun now all of a sudden your advantage is not just one minus one like that that that potential is now squared. So now your soldier now has three weapon system versus just the one but that but it's force multiplied it's exponential I use that exact strategy when I was at foundations I would go into our C suite and our board and I would explain this is why we are going to be on Facebook. This is why we're gonna be on back then MySpace this is why we're also gonna have a website but we're also gonna do paid search because I was forced multiplying what we were doing. We still had to create blog articles back then, you know, just traditional SEO but while I'm writing that blog article I want to interview a staff member. So now I'm getting a quote from a real staff member like a staff spotlight. Yeah exactly and I'm gonna take a photo of the interview to put on social. See now I'm already having to do the work I've already paid for it but now I'm force multiplying it. I'm putting it all these different platforms like Von Klosowitz was espousing that I've already got the soldier let's give him multiple weapons. Right right it was the same thing. And the the board and the C-suite understood that if I had just gone in and said well you know I want to do social media because it's the you know it's the hot thing right now it would get me nowhere. But once I started explaining how with data and how we were multiplying across the channels and how I was breaking that down in the budget, it was a no-brainer to do it. And that's how we went from when I first started Foundation there were three of us in marketing and when we sold to UHS in 2015 we had 30. I didn't go in asking for 30 people up front we built it and force multiplication was the very first one that I was able to successfully use. And it it's a it's a communication tool it's a mental model and uh having that military uh it wasn't just something I made up that it was rooted in in in military history really gave it some gravitas and people were like huh I'm not gonna I don't think I can argue with Lee on this.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

He's quoting Carl von Klausovitz it must be good.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

It worked for him and it's gonna work for you and your team. Yeah. Well how do you grow and you know 60 times growth how do you grow without compromising ethics?

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Wow that's a great question. So one of the first things we did at Foundations was we created a statement of ethics for our marketing team. And we had it I think there were 10 points we had it on the website. So we had things like we are not going to bid on competitor names. And I think it still happens a lot of companies will bid they'll they'll you know they'll they'll use a competitor's trademark name or try to spoof so we we made sure that we were documenting what we would do. We talk if somebody wanted to leave a um to leave us a story they had to be at least one year sober before we would take their story because we wanted to make sure that they were solid in their recovery and and protect their their anonymity and so we we listed all these things that that we were going and so that kind of told anybody who was starting on our team that we were very serious in how we were going to to go to market. We weren't going to take shortcuts because in this business and it's not just in behavioral health it's it's in I think all marketing there's always people looking for shortcuts. And we were making the statement that we were not going to do shortcuts we were not going to do black hat tactics you know when it comes to digital marketing. Yeah um and so I think that really set the standard and private equity and our investors they love that because they knew that we were being compliant and that and that the risk was lower. They want compliance period because otherwise it's a huge mess for the exactly right and you can see it you know what happened in 20 I guess it's 2016 2017 you know there were a lot of bad actors uh and they got they had congressional hearings on it you know with all the people in the behavioral health space that were doing uh unethical marketing practices you know and beyond just the body brokering like that was a huge thing but I mean they were the they were doing illegal and unethical advertising on the web give me give me an example of that because body brokering a lot of people are familiar with and there's that movie that came out body brokers that was just I mean it really displays the disgustingness of the same thing happens um online and if you if you go today um you can type in like any treatment center and I would guess that probably half the time you will see uh an ad. So I'll use the example of uh of Cumberland Heights you know who's been a client of mine for many years and great friends with them. But if you type in Cumberland Heights you will see an ad that will say um thinking about Cumberland Heights try us. So what they're trying to do is they're trying to use the Cumberland Heights trademark name and they're trying to imply that they're either you know they're somehow associated. And what happens in digital marketing is that a lot of people on their phones, they've typed in Cumberland Heights they want they'll just see the first thing that pops up on their phone which is an ad. They are thinking they're calling Cumberland Heights but really they're calling this other place which doesn't even provide treatment they're a call center. They get you on the phone and you're not even you're thinking you're talking to Cumberland Heights and next thing you know they're riding you to some other treatment center right and then and you'll get on the phone. And so that's that's going on still today. Super effed up super eff'd up and um and that and that's why you have to be really smart with when you when you're doing searching now I think AI it's gonna be interesting to see how see how AI is going to handle that.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

Yeah I'm interested in all things AI yeah because it will be helpful. Of course there's there's a downside to everything but um so you're talking about ethics you're talking about storytelling so with keeping anonymous names of people how would how does a a brand or a treatment center do storytelling and and try to keep somebody anonymous but also there's a fine line there maybe they want to share their story.

SPEAKER_02 30:39

Yeah I'm a big believer that anonymity is not secrecy and so what I what I think is that for certain people they want to be anonymous and that's great. We need to respect that but there are also people in recovery who are willing to share and and that takes a lot of different angles. It could be they want to share all the details including their first and last name in their home. And if they want to do that then we you need to have you need to have a platform that allows them to do it. Like for us we would allow that but they had to be at least one year sober right and we were also careful that we were we didn't want them revealing names of their therapists that were in our programs. We wanted to protect our our employees also but we also had people that wanted to share but they only wanted to give their first name totally fine. And so we were trying to meet people where they're at and then there were also a lot of people that didn't want to share at all that they were really wanted to be anonymous and that's totally fine. And so we just tried to make sure that we were keeping up with society and that's where we that's where I came up with this this idea that anonymity is not secrecy because sometimes I think the secrecy I think that sometimes can create um some of these misconceptions about recovery.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

There's the whole recover out loud yeah so you can help the the sick addict that's alone and dying in the corner quietly.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

Yeah you know Betty Ford uh I didn't get to meet Betty Ford but she was a big influence in the way that I approached marketing because uh when she passed away uh my team this is back in I think in 2011 or 2012 when she died but we were sitting around in our marketing suite and we were discussing her impact to the field of recovery because she was really one of the the first people that was able to share on a very large public stage because she was the first lady that she was struggling you know with alcohol what's fascinating is that was in 1974. What's fascinating is uh was that two years prior in 1972, she was one of the first women that shared publicly that they were struggling with breast cancer. In fact the news at the time didn't refer to it as breast cancer. They called it female cancer so we were reading this and reflecting on her life look at how far breast cancer awareness in this country has come since 1972. Susan G. Now this awareness yes now look at recovery and addiction and substance use treatment. So that was two years later she shared she's not but we're still in the dark people still think that we're just you know that people are just drunks under the bridge and that we're no good all this stigma. And so that's when we had this idea that we had to create heroes in recovery because we we felt like there is some there are some people that want to share and so let's create a platform where they can share. We're not gonna force people we're not gonna say if you don't share you're less but for some people if they want to share let's let them share and now you see today you have lots of different programs Faces and Voices Recovery the Anonymous people movie came out after that I mean I feel like you know more people are willing to set up some of these these platforms to to share appropriately right right just like ours. Yeah absolutely yeah and and having podcasts and talk that wasn't around back back then. And I feel like I still feel like there's a high stigma kind of getting back to the judgment thing we talked about very early on um but I feel like it's it's making a positive impact.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

I feel too I mean if what we do today you and I if we touch one person and don't you feel like the rooms are even more full today?

SPEAKER_02 34:40

Totally so I feel like even when I still go to open meetings they're pretty packed. That's a good thing. I mean you know you I guess people can look at it as oh well we've got all these addicts but no I mean listen it's a fact of life in this country that alcohol and now with marijuana being legalized everywhere it's a fact of life that substances are somehow intertwined in our American culture. And so um we have to have programs where people you know can find recovery because you know it's funny I was just in England and uh I was having um uh lunch um uh with Douglas McCann who's a CEO at Castle Health in Scotland they're one of the largest treatment programs there in Scotland and we were he was we were talking he goes he goes Lee and I hadn't thought about this he goes Lee he goes you know you're the only country that tried abstinence like you guys outlawed alcohol yes we did and and I was like I hadn't really thought about it that way I'm like you know it's so intertwined you know alcohol and substance it's so intertwined in our culture I'm from Milwaukee Wisconsin so I I don't know if you've ever been there before no but I I watch LeBern and Shirley and they work in a brewery right so you look you look at Wisconsin our baseball team the Milwaukee Brewers brewing beer yeah um there's eight bars in every corner Miller is from Wisconsin Milwaukee and if they own like 80% of the city yeah I you know you're born with a high life basically put in your hand so it's so intertwined in the culture. Yeah and so that's where it's kind of interesting in it Johnny that that we have this stigma.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

Right.

SPEAKER_02 36:23

It's like we're gonna judge people but yet our culture is just is constantly pounding us that we need to drink we need to use if we can't have billboards for our recovery yeah and we recovery can't own 80% of the city yeah um yeah it's really fascinating um so I want to I do want to touch on Mr.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

Ross Perot. Yes so you worked his campaign and this was probably back in the 90s.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

Yeah 1992 um I had just gotten married my wife and I had gone out to Little Rock Arkansas my my dad was stationed at Camp Robinson there and I had just finished uh my officer basic course at Fort Knox and we got married and we went out to visit them and my dad said hey Lee um I want you to come see this guy Ross Pro. He's running for president now I knew Ross Pearl just peripherally being a political science junkie you know and I and the kid I didn't really know a lot about it. So we went to Little Rock and we were at the I think it was the Excelsior Hotel in downtown Little Rock and all of a sudden we're in the back you know because I didn't I mean there were thousands of people there probably five or six thousand people and Willie Nelson was on stage opening for him and I was so excited I hadn't seen Willie Nelson I was like this is great. And all of a sudden they announced Ross Perot and they had fold up chairs and I'm standing on the fold up chair trying to see all the crowd and Ross Perot walks out from behind us. He comes out from the back not from the front and he's coming through and it took him 20 minutes to get up to the stage and everybody shouting and taking pictures and shaking hands and I was so impressed with his talk. You know and back then it was you know we were you know losing jobs he was very anti-NAFTA you know he he you know everything he was saying I was like wow because I'm kind of an independent person and he was running as an independent he was running as an independent yeah and I was just super excited and so I got back home to to Knoxville and you know I had one more year of college to finish and um I just started a Students for Pro Group and I had been involved in in politics you know when I was a kid growing up and so I I knew kind of the basics. So we back then you had uh press release writer press release and we faxed it to all the TV stations in Knoxville and radio and all of a sudden I got a a phone call from one of the TV stations said hey would you come on TV tomorrow morning? We want to talk because you know it was kind of a dead news cycle Tennessee was not competitive because it was Al Gore's home state he was going to win big time. So there wasn't a lot of a lot going on uh in Tennessee so they were excited so I show up to that new and I talk about how we're starting a students for pro group and and they said well what's your phone number I gave my home phone number didn't have an we didn't have an officer. By the time I got home to my to my uh duplex that we were renting my answer machine was tape back then it was full 25 messages oh my gosh this is all within I don't know 20 or 30 minutes. Word travel fast and it was they were watching it on TV the morning program that morning. And so you write every you write every phone number down you call people back next thing I know we were raising money and we we just said we'll write it to students for pro and we opened up a checking account my wife had a friend that was a real estate agent they donated an office space anyway all this is just within a couple of weeks is just blown up and we started doing things we did a parade through Knoxville and got more people involved we started making our own bumper stickers our own shirts because back then everything was very decentralized. You couldn't just call the Dallas office and I tried to call the Dallas headquarters couldn't get anywhere. Ross Perot uh his uh four of his kids went to Vanderbilt okay and so there was a Nashville connection for him he was also big into Tennessee walking horses some people in Nashville heard that there were some kids in Knoxville doing something so they they uh they drove out uh Steve Fridrick and Randy Campbell they drove over to make sure we weren't doing anything illegal that we were following all the Federal Election Commission guidelines which we were and they couldn't believe it. We actually gave them money. We was like we got all this cash can you guys deposit it in the official account unbelievable. And so then anyway we had a great time made some good relationships and then after the election was over obviously you know we didn't win uh but they were looking to hire somebody full time so they hired me as the as the executive director because Ross wanted to stay involved in politics at that time and then when I graduated they hired me and moved me to Dallas uh full time so I was his youngest campaign staffer and um it's kind of a I I I love telling the story because what what year was that this is well this is 92 so 93 I graduated in the spring of 93. He had started a citizen action group called United We Stand America and then we that then um transformed into the Reform Party which was the third party platform that we used for him to run in 96.

SPEAKER_00 41:14

Right right that was going to be my next question that must have been interesting.

SPEAKER_02 41:18

Well yeah it was fascinating I tr I mean I traveled uh I mean a hundred percent of the time because we were going to every state besides setting up United We Stand America chapters um I was uh in charge of setting up the the it was basically you had college republicans and college democrats we were setting up like a college independent group and so I traveled to I don't know a hundred colleges in my career I mean when my boys are looking for colleges I was like well I can tell you about all of them I've been I've been to almost every one of them um but yeah it was a it was great because Ross and his his team I mean they really empowered you you know they they hired great people and they let you go do your job which is one of the things I write about in my book you know they really apply commander's intent because you know Ross was in the Navy and he had a lot of military people you know that worked on the campaign and worked for EDS and Pro Systems and they really they really do believe in giving you the order and let you go figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

And the freedom.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

So you can pivot absolutely and a lot of people have that misconception about the military and and I always found the military to be very creative and I think that that's a a a a common misconception like we have standards we have a lot of training and you better do what you're supposed to do but in the heat of a training exercise or a battle you have to pivot. You have to think creatively yeah yeah and that's what a lot of my TED talk which you you've seen I mean it's all about pivoting and I think that sometimes we wonder I'm 57 Johnny I love working with millennials I love working with the with with with Gen Z and now Gen Alpha and it's because I'll give them my commander's intent and they'll go do amazing things. I'm not micromanaging but I think a lot of leaders they they feel like that's part of the job that they have to tell you every single thing to do instead of get out of the way.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

Yeah Mr.

SPEAKER_02 43:08

Perot was always big about get out of the way I I you know he'll tell you what he needs done. Now if you mess up he's gonna let you know he'll hold you accountable but he wants you he wants you doing things.

SPEAKER_00 43:20

How was he as a person?

SPEAKER_02 43:22

Because I imagine you get to spend some time with him I mean for me he was um uh he was you know somebody that I like to emulate you know as as a leader so a lot of a lot of things I learned you know was listening and being in being in the rooms you know and hearing how he operated what it what a teacher and he was yeah he was very um he was very demanding I mean a lot of people you know don't understand I mean listen this is back in the day where you know he really uh he wanted you there early I used to get to the office at 6 a.m and uh and he would be there he would be there too oh my gosh he also was really big at um you know one of the things that got him he would tell the story at when when General Motors bought EDS, General Motors back then they had their their they had their executive parking lot, they had their manager parking lot, then they had all their employee parking lot. Ross parked in the employee parking lot the first day and he walked in and he said security came running up and said oh Mr. Pro, Mr. Pro, you get to park up front. He goes nope, I'm parking back here, walk in. And so he would walk in with the blue collar workers.

SPEAKER_00 44:23

Mad respect.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

Yeah and that fit in with my way of thinking because my father had enlisted in the Army and then gone to OCS and that's what he encouraged me to do. And he was always big about Lee if you want to lead if you want to lead troops you need to know what they're dealing with first. And so I followed that same mentality and one of my cousins uh Brent's we uh enlisted at the same time he did the same thing he enlisted and then went to OCS and so I felt like that's also really important in how companies grow like I'm I really respect CEOs uh who have worked their way up yeah and I respect you know when I go to treatment centers I've been to treatment centers before where they have CEO parking right up at the front and I I always know okay they're they're they're either going to buy what I'm getting ready to kind of pitch them on because that's not a good that's not a good look or you know but yeah you can always you can learn a lot about that.

SPEAKER_00 45:15

Totally yeah I'm I'm thankful for those steps too I I started as a BHT. Yeah and so you know I was making $13 an hour as a 40 something year old yeah and I worked from I I walked up every rung yeah and and here we are today absolutely I think I'm stronger and more wiser for I totally agree.

SPEAKER_02 45:33

I totally agree.

SPEAKER_00 45:34

So speaking on politics and this is off of all my questions but just out of curiosity I didn't get involved with even thinking about politicians at all or having an opinion till later on in life and this is pretty much during the the Bush administration I I was I grew up a punk rocker and anti-authoritarian. Yeah um so I I'm just like really against everything that he stands for. Of course he's changed a bit and started painting we all kind of like are ruin for the day of of the George W. Bush presidency. But have you changed your mind on anybody over time that you were so staunchly against no um I well what's interesting it's funny when you say Bush you know because I'm thinking George H.

SPEAKER_02 46:23

Bush's dad because that's that was my generation growing up but certainly I'm familiar with George W. Bush, especially living in Texas. I think that you know for me I'm trying to think how I can couch this politically I grew up very Republican. The first book that my dad gave me was Barry Goldwater's conscious of a conservative I still have it. That was the first political book I read. So I grew up that way but what's interesting about Barry Goldwater is that he was much more libertarian. So I think I've always kind of grown up a little more libertarian than I was Republican. Slightly Republican. Yeah slightly Republican and I think it really it really hit home for me uh in 19 uh eighty eight I was chairman of the College Republicans at UT when I I was I was chairman for two years and George H. Bush came to speak at our college and all the you know the advanced staff they got in touch with the CRs because they wanted us to make sure they gave us all the tickets to make sure we filled you know the front rows and we had all the rabid college republican folks there and and I remember working there at the downtown hotel and we were doing all the paper you know any kind of go for work. That's that's what they used us for. And I remember like after the event was over they everybody just left and we were just kind of just left there and it was kind of a little disheartening. Now I know he's the president and he's busy but it was really interesting not to not to get any kind of acknowledgement or thank you for all the work you guys did leading up and this and that. And I was just kind of like huh well kind of felt a little used. Anyway so I kind of after my term was up you know I kind of didn't I wasn't really super active with the CRs then and then I and then I got to see you know Perot. And what's fascinating about Ross is I went to so many different rallies and events where afterwards he would go meet with all the staff that made it happen all the volunteers that had made it happen people working the doors the people that were doing the phone calls. He was a real dude he was a real and and that's how he worked in his corporation too because at Perot Systems you know you would be in the cafeteria eating your lunch and Ross might come and sit down next to you and you be really surprised. You know it and that's just how he was you see him in the hallways he was just always around. So I say all that to say if I change my mind I think I'm still at the core that that young more libertarian I don't think I've changed okay I feel like our society has changed for sure and I'm still trying to deal with is it because of social media or is it because of news cycle I don't I don't know if I have a good answer on that because I hate to blame social media for stuff. But I do feel like um I'm still the same and we've had this morphing you know uh of both sides kind of to the extreme so I'm still trying to figure out how do we find people that can talk about common ground because I I think it relates back to recovery. I think people that approach things with judgment that is the big problem.

SPEAKER_00 49:21

And so thank you for bringing it back to that.

SPEAKER_02 49:23

Yeah because that's where I find like I volunteer for the Veterans Treatment Court here in Williamson County. Yeah tell us tell us a little bit about that because I was going to ask about yeah that's an amazing program that was started um 11 years ago uh by Ted Scalise who's an Air Force veteran and it's a and and and judge Tom Taylor and it's an alternative sentencing court almost like DUI court but it's for veterans and a lot of times veterans were getting in trouble arrested and it was because they lacked the services that they were owed or had never gotten enrolled in at the VA and so take DUI as an example they might get a DUI but they had never gotten you know services or treatment that's available to them. So so Judge Taylor and Ted Scalise set this up so that they could apply to come into our court they go through they get one year of treatment right where they're going in on an outpatient basis every week coming in for therapy. It's a blessing and we keep them out of jail. They still have to follow the program and then they they're assigned a mentor so I'm a mentor uh we have about I think we have 16 mentors now all of us are veterans and we're just their buddy we're there to talk to them every week they check in um if they have any questions we're trained like if they have an issue with housing or an issue with uh employment you can jump on it they we can jump right on it and we can advocate for them and so um I mean it keeps about 60 veterans a year out of our local jails it's a lot cheaper to have them run through our program to put them in the jail and we get reconnected they get reconnected you know with their with the community and with their their their veterans brothers and sisters and so um that is a program that has wild support from both the left and the right in our county. Yeah and and I and I think it's because we're approaching it without judgment. We're saying you know what this population and it's men and women we're we're we're gonna figure this out and I feel like if more people would approach whatever the issue is without judgment whether it's economics immigration I feel like we can develop the common ground because it's not a Republican Democrat thing. Thank you for saying that I and I feel like recovery's there. I feel like that if people could could approach it without judgment they would realize oh okay maybe some of these decisions that I am thinking was just a personal decision wasn't so personal.

SPEAKER_00 51:50

And how can we provide help that will actually save the community money because we're getting people reintegrated in society successfully giving them a better success yeah absolutely so speaking to veteran treatment um and as far as treatment goes what can we do better for veterans?

SPEAKER_02 52:12

Oh well there's probably a lot of things I think to keep it you know easier for you know the people watching the people listening I think um well we've covered non-judgment quite a bit I think that there are a lot of veterans we assume that when you get out of the service that you are um that you know all the thing all the benefits that are there and that's not the case the army does an amazing job getting you onboarded they know how to recruit but when you're getting out of the service they they don't do a great job on that right so they just they have no idea what their benefits exactly are where to get them I won't say it's everybody doesn't but there's a lot of veterans that don't know they don't know what they're eligible for. They get out and they don't understand that there are all sorts of job training programs, that there are educational benefits, that there's health benefits to the VA and that's what we find in the veterans treatment court is like they they come into the program and they didn't even know. They've never been to the VA. They've never registered.

SPEAKER_00 53:14

So this is another step that you're helping them.

SPEAKER_02 53:15

Yes. And I think that that's where when people listen to this, if they've got a family member who served uh don't just take for granted that they know about everything that there is because I I can tell you just from firsthand experience they don't and there are so many wonderful programs out there that I think could help with the transition from service to the business world the corporate world or retirement. I just spoke at a conference in DC called the Veterans Ready Summit and that was all about transitioning soldiers and um I it was kind of that was kind of new to me also I'm like wow there are so many companies that want veterans um and it's just that but sometimes they miss out on that connection you know and I'll tell you most of the ones that come through our programs a lot of them have struggled with jobs you know and purpose because they had a lot of purpose they had great jobs in the military then they get out after their four years eight years ten years. What am I doing? And what am I doing?

SPEAKER_00 54:14

And I think that that's where we miss out and I think that's where um the community can help in fostering you know you you've served we appreciate that let's help you figure out how you can serve our community you know like thank you for your service and now you're helping all these other men and women it's it's fabulous and I hope you keep up with it as long as you possibly can you've ran four Iron Man. Yes been part of 140 plus races. Yes so how do you train for those and then also how have those races helped you in leadership?

SPEAKER_02 54:49

Yeah I think um I love talking about this because I you know when I got out of the army I told my wife I'm not running anymore. So when I came to her many years later and said I think I'm gonna do a triathlon she was like who am I talking to? Who are you? Yeah yeah and I I think that um training for an event where there's a triathlon and in triathlon you know there are there are four different there's a sprint there's an intermediate an Olympic distance there's a half iron man and a full iron man. So to train for any of those requires you know some commitment and some discipline which I think is not too far from recovery. Like you know you have to you have to maintain your recovery you got to maintain your training regimen if you want to do an event like that. So I've always felt like that was that um and I I know a lot of people that are um that are in recovery that that are that all of a sudden kind of picked up this addiction of athletics too.

SPEAKER_00 55:46

So that's a huge thing. Yeah you all sudden you see these guys in recovery that are working at treatment centers and they're friggin' jacked because they call that cross addiction right but but it's a it's a good addiction I guess if if you want to anyways but I think that for me um the the discipline and and I and I had a spreadsheet.

SPEAKER_02 56:05

So when I first got into doing the my first sprint triathlon, you know I made a spreadsheet and the first day that I went back out running because I had not run I mean in 12 or 13 years at that point. And and I I I mean I used to always tell my wife well I play tennis a totally different thing you know um but I couldn't even run I couldn't run a mile and that without getting completely out of breath but I ran almost to a mile and I got to this mailbox. I live in the country and so the next day I went out I ran to the next mailbox and then the next mailbox and the next mailbox that was your benchmarks that was my I wasn't worrying about the distance I was like I'm gonna go to the next mailbox and I love telling that story because anybody can do that whether it's walking whether it's lifting whether it's swimming running biking you you you don't have to think about the total distance you can just go to that next little marker and I think that the incremental growth is what helped me build a solid foundation which I think about that in recovery. Yeah like you know you want to have a great foundation and just do it incrementally.

SPEAKER_00 57:08

You don't you don't have to solve just don't run a great five miles not running.

SPEAKER_02 57:13

Yeah yeah just take it a little bit at a time I'm always telling families when they call me when you send your loved one to treatment they don't come home fixed in 30 days that's just trying to establish can we get some solid footing? Right.

SPEAKER_00 57:28

It's just footing just a little foundation a little bit of routine exactly change.

SPEAKER_02 57:33

Yeah this is a lifetime and it's the same thing with training for an Iron Man um it took me the first year I did a sprint the second year I did an Olympic the third year I did um the half Iron Man and then the and then the fourth year I did a full Iron Man. I didn't go out and try to do the fourth iron I mean the the Iron Man my first year or the first 30 days. Right. I had to build a great base and keep adding to it adding to it adding to it and you know Steve Lee is a is a is a good friend of mine at Cumberland Heights and you know when you talk to somebody like Steve Lee I think he he concurs. Like you got to keep adding to it you know because you know what grows never grows old friend of mine Noah Binshee that's one of his quotes thank you for that and I feel like that that is we have to continue to grow in our athletic endeavors we have to continue to grow in our recovery we have to continue to grow in our business spiritual family. Yeah absolutely so think about today what are you doing to water you know or to add some nutrients to that growth and it it can be incremental. It could be it's like when I was writing my book I uh had a spreadsheet and I had to make sure that every day I was adding to it if I added 10 words okay if I added a hundred words okay but I wasn't judging myself I was just making sure I was doing something I have to write 20 pages today. Right you're not giving I think that's what stops people a lot in recovery. They see this huge monkey they have that may have been going on for years and they can't even think about getting it off their back in 30 days.

SPEAKER_00 59:04

I cannot not use for six hours how am I supposed to go six years. You're right right I mean dude four Ironmans and without even the 140 races it's incredible. And thank you for sharing that little piece of knowledge that might help somebody push themselves. Absolutely um so I do want to but in closing I do want to talk a little bit more about your book. Yes so when we met at the National Marketers meeting you were you gave everybody a copy but then I I got an additional copy from you for my father in law also he was in the Air Force and you signed it for him. Thank you for good good and he we both have been reading it loving it.

SPEAKER_02 59:45

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 59:45

You're welcome but for the readers out there for anybody that may be curious about this book so never outmatched and it's using military tactics and marketing let's say if somebody's not interested in marketing or let's say they don't have any military background they're not even really interested in the military or army or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:01

Yeah why should they get your book why should they check it out even with those two pieces I think um that's a great question Johnny I think that um most people know somebody who is either in the service or does marketing or works in behavioral health or they have a young person that I think this book is as much leadership as it is marketing. I agree. And so I think that even if you're not sure it's going to work for you, you might just pick it up and just peruse it and go, you know what? I think my son might like this or my nephew might like this, you know, or my niece or and so I think that that's one thing I would say is don't let the title, don't let my background be a barrier.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:46

It's like the big book. It could be of use to somebody else. Yeah that's great.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:49

Yeah yeah and I think that um I tried to make this very accessible because less than 1% of our population will serve in the armed forces. And I don't say that as a judgment. That's just where we are with an all volunteer army. And so I these ideas that I write about were native to me growing up in a military family and then being in the service myself. These were things that were kind of common ideas for me. I just translated them into mental models that anybody can use in their business. They don't have to have served they don't they can they can read this and go, oh I see how Lee has translated this for me as a mental model that I can go in and use. And so that was what I wanted to share with the public at large and to and to be an inspiration that way because these are not just FOMO type stuff. This is not just stuff that oh it's just the the hot thing right now. These are century old ideas that when people ask me what what's the what's the the latest marketing book you're reading I get that all the time and I'll say well have you heard of Caesar's commentaries on the Gaelic War I had that by my bed. And usually once or twice a month I'm picking that up and rereading seg sections of it because there's always something I pick up that Caesar was writing about that I go, hmm, I think I could use that.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:12

It means something to you right now. Yeah but it might have not meant something to you five years ago.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:17

Exactly yeah yeah well and then and these just because you know just because um social media wasn't part of their world or the internet I mean I've been around long enough that uh my parents when I graduated high school gave me a typewriter that was my high school graduation gift because there's something sexy about that. A lot of people have gone back to that haven't they yes they have yeah and so but so I was pre-internet so how does somebody who was was born and grew up without social media without iPhones without internet how is it that I'm now the chief marketing officer and doing all this stuff in digital marketing? And so it just shows that kind of like what we talked about with the incremental like you can continue to stay relevant and grow your knowledge base incrementally and you can transition from you know typing all my papers in college to you know the internet and being involved in that and then you know I mean you you can do it. And that's why I say that um there's always challenges you just have to put your mind to it and say that no matter what I will figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:20

No matter the adversity I will figure it out I love that and also this book I think if somebody's reading it with curiosity I never saw myself with leadership potential. Yeah and I know there's a lot of people out there in the world that don't but I have been given little responsibilities and been trusted with more. So I think that this book would be a good tool for anybody that thinks they have no leadership potential.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:48

Johnny I think you're totally right. Yeah um you know it's interesting in the military you know so I was enlisted and then I got commissioned and I was a second lieutenant and you know all of a sudden you go from being enlisted to being you know an officer to being a leader but you're at the very lowest rung and and what's interesting is the staff sergeants they're still running the show. Yeah yeah you might have some specialized knowledge and some leadership potential they're still running the show um and I think sometimes people don't realize that those first jobs I mean when I my first job at working for Ross Perot, I mean I was the lowest man on the totem pole. You know I mean you know I think they saw potential um and I think sometimes you know I'm encouraging my sons now you know one who's graduating college this year and one who just joined the military like you know just because you're not the CEO right now, you're gonna be fine. You're gonna be fine. That's a very good you just want to keep learning at every stage. You want to you know what are you getting from or what are you learning and you you're gonna keep applying that and moving up. And I think that goes back to earlier when you mentioned that if somebody's just entering at a CEO level they're missing so totally totally um dude thank you so much daily please everybody uh listeners out there uh get at Lee Pepper he's he's all over the internet I I I we're friends on Instagram check out his book Never Unmatched um out matched out matched nevermatched matched check it out because I you can get it on Amazon I saw it's on Amazon it's you know Barnes and Noble Target I mean you can order it you know anywhere online there's audible editions there's you know there's the uh digital edition there's the print you know the hard copy edition yeah there's audiobook too um yeah that was that'll be in the next episode you know that was a uh a two-day ordeal going through that feature book and it's read by you cool read by me all right I wanted to do you know this is I this is a very serious effort that I put into this this was not just you know hey let's just go log into chat GBT and write a book no this was uh many years of I think about this and then really sitting down over to your process of writing the book and being researching it it's very well researched I have a lot of notes in there um and so I I I didn't want it to just I wanted it to be very serious so that's why the publisher who I work with Forefront Books were very good at at making sure that you know everything was was top notch.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:14

Congrats on everything with the book thank you everything that you've accomplished in your life. I mean it's it's really incredible I wanted to try to fit all this into an hour and I know there's so much more to talk about um I'm I'm just I'm glad you're well I'm proud to see what you guys are doing.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:29

You're so smart to be on the pod to do in podcast I mean thank you uh even not even just the marketing side is super smart uh but I think that so many people younger people especially they receive content in shorter formats today and so what you're doing on the podcast I mean it can be chopped up and it will be consumed by so many people we do little snippet videos for each episode and all it is is to share something with the general public.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:59

Absolutely some inspiration.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:01

Yeah yeah well you guys are doing a great job in in helping to remove that stigma and I and I think even the way you approach treatment I mean you know MAT many years ago was kind of like an oh can't can't talk about that. Yes. And so I think you know again removing the stigma and and then understanding that for a certain population it's extremely important.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:22

It is you can't help a patient if they're dead.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:25

Yeah absolutely and I I say that all the time you know I've gotten kickback yeah on MAT virtual MAT because some people don't you know they think whatever they want to about the model. But we are saving people's lives. Are we a fit for everyone? Absolutely not we're a fit for the right people. Right and uh if anybody's curious please check out National Addiction specialists please check out the podcast Breaking Down Addiction for more episodes like and subscribe um and please get at either Lee or I and please be good to yourself be good to your friends be good to your family and much love.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:01

Great. Thank you so much Johnny appreciate it. Yeah absolutely