Brian Rand grew up in chaos in South Dakota and was arrested for drug dealing at 19, facing prison time. A mentor named Eric offered him a second chance if he'd pay it forward. Nine years sober now, Rand runs nonprofits helping incarcerated youth and his mother hit eight years sober too.
Hello, my name is Brian Rand and this is my One Shot. So I grew up in Brandon, South Dakota, which is near Sioux Falls, South Dakota. If you've never been to South Dakota, you may have heard of Sioux Falls. I'm the oldest of 7. I grew up in a pretty, very interesting environment with 7 kids and there's 5 dads and 3 moms that create the 7 of us, so there's quite a bit of Chaos and sibling rivalry, etc., but love my family very much. But the way we grew up was unlike most of the people that I was around. From a young age, just kind of always been an entrepreneur, started my first company when I was in high school, and the federal government showed up when I was 19 to tell me I was no longer in business. And I was in a unique situation of being 19 years old and Looking at a number of years in prison and really having an alternative of, you know, do I go to prison or do I really take this one shot at life and do things different? And through the transaction of me getting in trouble selling drugs, I lost my family, I lost my girlfriend, I lost my friends, I lost my car, I lost everything in a matter of literally hours after being found out that I had been set up. That's when I had a group of men kind of walk into my life and really give me a second chance at this thing. They told me they could introduce me into a life that I had never dreamed, and, you know, they could show me how to do this and they would walk with me. The only thing that I had to promise them is that I would never walk away without giving it away to somebody else, and that I would stay true to that passion and that commitment, that no matter what came of it, That I would turn around and help someone else. You know, I'm proud to sit here and tell you that 9 years later, I just celebrated 9 years sober, and I've built a relationship with my God, and I've really built a tremendous amount of friendships and relationships across the world. I've lived in the best city in the world, Los Angeles. I've been self-employed primarily my whole life. I always tell people that I've always been a salesman. I've sold drugs, Jesus, and websites, and it's been the same script, different products. But truly and tremendously, what I've tried to do is live my life to be the fullest to that promise I made to my friend Eric that day in his office, that if he would show me a new way of life, which he did, one far beyond my wildest dreams that I could have ever imagined. That I would commit my life to helping others. And so we've started a number of nonprofits working with incarcerated youth and helping them take their life from incarceration and hopefully taking some of those street skills they've learned and really learn how to apply that for the positive and have a positive change in society. I've seen God do miraculous things in my family. My mom, for instance, just celebrated 8 years of sobriety, which I'm so proud of her. And our family is considerably different from essentially that one decision that I had to make was, do I continue to live the life I was living and spend a good amount of time in prison and probably the rest of my life? Or do I put that way of life down, go find a spiritual solution to life and an altruistic solution to life of helping others and pouring into others' lives that, you know, same way that had been poured into me? I decided to do that. I've been having a lot of fun ever since. I've been able to change some, you know, some things in my life, been able to help some people, and I'm living a dream. I truly feel like I had that chance to make that decision on one shot. There's always those things I continue to push myself for that I want to accomplish, that I want to do, and kind of that same one-shot mentality. But truly, my one-shot story is That turning point when I decided to put down the drugs, put down the alcohol, and put down living for myself and start living for other people and start doing my best to give back the same way that people had given to me. And today I'm very grateful and thankful for that. And that is my One Shot story. Thank you very much.
