A speaker shares their path from alcohol rehab to building a successful digital marketing business, discussing how identity shifts and resilience shaped their entrepreneurial comeback.
I was actually in rehab for alcohol addiction. And I literally wrote the business plan for my company while I was in rehab. And within a year and a half, I was making like 20,000 bucks a month. So, hey, the plan worked, but it sucked. You know what I mean? It sucked when your identity goes from this guy who works all these cool ass companies to all of a sudden you're like, not doing that and you're, you know, getting your life right. But that was 10 years ago. And luckily I never relapsed, never drank again, never even wanted to, but it was really tough. I remember I joined the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce because I wanted some kind of identity, like some kind of plaque on the wall, something to say about myself. Because again, when you leave corporate, you lose part of your identity sometimes. So that's what I did. And to grow my business, here's what I did for everyone who wants to learn that. I joined the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, and I DM'd like every member saying, hey, by the way, I'm a digital marketing expert. I would love to help you grow your business. Here's how. And the results were depressingly nothing. Right? I got nothing out of that whatsoever. But then I was like, all right, I got an idea. I have an idea. What if I approach the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and say, hey, I'd love to do a free talk for your members. Like digital marketing for founders. What do you say? They said yes to that and then invited their members to my event. They gave me like this conference room in town, downtown Brooklyn. It was amazing. I walk in, there's like 60 people waiting to hear me speak. I was like, holy cow, this is way easier than just DMing people, hoping they give me the time of day. That said, I know some of the people in attendance were people that I reached out to because they had very unique names. I'm like, oh, now you're here. Now you're here because someone else invited you. But moral story is I got a few clients from that. And that's the process I've used quite a bit since then, which is speaking to grow my business. Getting paid to speak, but also getting paid through speaking.
That's super cool because that's like, I don't think people talk about that as a strategy, much like a word of mouth or just in public version of the one to many. Were you just dead set right away on not going back to corporate? That's what I'm curious about. Were you cruising job boards or it was just like, hell with that. We're onto a different path.
This is, like, embarrassing, but I'll tell you a story, right? So when I was trying to get back into corporate, I think that was before I, like, quit drinking. So, like, my resume, like, they're chicken typos on top of typos. Like, no one's gonna reply to me because of that. And I was like, all right, bro, you're a messy. Luckily, my wife got me to clean my life up. But then even when I was like, clean, I was like, I don't even want to explain why I left all these amazing jobs. I don't want to lie. I just don't. I'd rather just make my own way and see what happens. I want to bet on myself instead of having my sense of self worth associated with, like, a logo on my resume or something like that.
