August 4, 2025 • 35 mins
Discover how Dr. Cali Estes transformed from being homeless twice to becoming a renowned transformational coach and founder of Sober On Demand. With just $300 in her bank account, she took a leap of faith that led to landing her first $2,500 client within 24 hours.
Known as the "female Dr. Drew," Cali breaks barriers in the male-dominated addiction treatment field while staying true to her authentic self. Her innovative approach focuses on addressing the root causes of addiction, considering genetic, chemical, social, and behavioral factors.
Dr. Estes' story proves that childhood challenges can fuel extraordinary success. By age 30, she had achieved what many thought impossible, including financial prosperity and creating a loving home. Today, she maintains balance through fitness, music, and self-care while helping others overcome their struggles.
🎧 Tune in to hear how one woman's journey from rock bottom to remarkable success can inspire your own transformation. Her story proves that with resilience and determination, any obstacle can become a stepping stone to greatness.
Known as the "female Dr. Drew," Cali breaks barriers in the male-dominated addiction treatment field while staying true to her authentic self. Her innovative approach focuses on addressing the root causes of addiction, considering genetic, chemical, social, and behavioral factors.
Dr. Estes' story proves that childhood challenges can fuel extraordinary success. By age 30, she had achieved what many thought impossible, including financial prosperity and creating a loving home. Today, she maintains balance through fitness, music, and self-care while helping others overcome their struggles.
🎧 Tune in to hear how one woman's journey from rock bottom to remarkable success can inspire your own transformation. Her story proves that with resilience and determination, any obstacle can become a stepping stone to greatness.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What do you do when challenges seem insurmountable and your
own resilience is put to the ultimate text, how do
you reinvent yourself to overcome life's toughest obstacles. For answers
to these profound questions, there's no one more fitting to
(00:20):
speak with than doctor Cally Essen, also known as the
Battery Recharger. Welcome to another inspiring episode of Life Tack
the Resilience Podcast. I'm your host, Doctor Rode. Doctor Kelly
is a renowned mindset coach, addictions professional life coach, and
wellness guru. She had dedicated her life to helping individuals
(00:42):
unlock their true potential through her revolutionary work with Sober
on Demand and the Addictions Academy. Her innovative approach blends
talk therapy with positive change, transforming aspirations into reality. Recognized
by the hofitin Huffington Post as one of the ninety
nine limit breaking disruptive Females, Doctor Kelly continues to obliterate boundaries,
(01:09):
supporting a diverse array of individual from top tier CEO
to renowned musicians. Despite facing homelessness not one but twice
and beginning her journey with less than three hundred dollars
in her bank account. Doctor Kelly started two thriving companies,
so posting her indominable spirit of resilience, powered by hustle
(01:32):
and a relentless mindset to join the show today, can
share her journey of transformation and resilience, setting light on
how you too can ignite your pussons for a life
brimming with possibilities.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Sometimes life gives us limits, Sometimes it gives us lemonade.
Other times it gives us something entirely out of left
fields that makes us say w t F. But no
matter what obstacles come, there is most often a way
out on the other side, and we are once again victorious.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
My name is doctor Rooke, and you are listening to
my podcast about resilience. Every guest shares a tragedy to
triumph story to give listeners like you the inspiration to
push through every single day.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Listen now as my next guest shares how they.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Were like Jack, Hi, Doctor Tally, Welcome, Thank you so
much for me a guest on my show.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
How are you hi?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Good, Doctor Red, thanks for having me awesome No doctor
call your journey from facing homelessness to becoming a six
time number one best selling author and a renowned coach
is truly inspiring. But you take us through the early
days and what fueled your drive to push through those
particular challenges you had. So I've always been slightly resilient.
(03:06):
I mean I grew up in a rough childhood and
learned quickly on that if I didn't do it for myself,
no one else would. So that's sort of always been
my mentality. I think they call that the hustle mentality
or being resilient in today's day and age. But I
was always with you for what's next? What can I do?
How can I get there? What does that look like?
(03:28):
And I left home pretty early. I was nineteen when
I left, and I ended up homeless pretty quickly, because
you know, you're nineteen, you don't have resources, and you
know you have a college degree, so it's AOK a
little while. But I was able to, you know, put
myself through college. I got a bachelor's degree, I got
a master's degree, and I was always trying to figure
(03:48):
out how to make things happen. And as I did that.
After the master's degree, I went to work in the
addiction mental health space and realized quickly that I was
the working poor. I was making enough money I couldn't
pay my rent, my car payment, and my student loan
in the same month. And that's when I said, something's
wrong with my industry. And I started looking at how
(04:09):
to help people but still be able to make a
good paycheck. Realizing I couldn't do it very well. I
ended up quitting the industry, starting a fitness company and
then lost that in the economic downturn. That was an
eight figure company, and I went from having millions of
dollars in my bank account, cars, houses, all of it,
to homeless overnight, literally overnight, and all my stuff burned
(04:32):
up in a fire. And I had to sit there
and figure out how I'm going to dig out, how
I'm going to do this and how I'm going.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
To scale it.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
And I always say your experiences are so important, because
everything I learned in building that fitness company, I took
into building sober on demands and I just switched back
into what I know really well, which is addiction to
mental health, went on to get my PhD and then
put this company out there. So that's my quick quick
(05:00):
ten second snippets. Yeah, wow, I mean facing homelessness, of fire,
losing everything from millions of dollars, like you absolutely have
been life jacked, that's for sure.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
And you know, it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
That although you, like you said, you kind of came
from broken home type background, tough childhood, but you still
were able to bounce back.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Again and again and again.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
And so that makes me wonder sometimes when it comes
to resilience, how much of your childhood is really an
influence or a factor onto how you show up as
an adult. It's a lot. I mean, your childhood really
sets the stage for who you are and how you think.
And I can remember I was fourteen. I was sitting
(05:48):
at the dinner table with my stepdad, who never graduated
high school. He was a welder and a truck driver,
my mom, who graduated high school, who had the basic
like file clerk job and never had any other job
her whole life, and my sister, who's six years younger.
And I remember my stepdad saying to me, you know,
what's your plan?
Speaker 4 (06:08):
What are you going to do life?
Speaker 1 (06:09):
And I remember saying I have four goals and he went, oh, okay,
what are they? And I said, well, I want to
make a million dollars my first goal, and he said,
we're poor, Like, we're welfare poor. You're not going to
make a million dollars. We don't come from money, you
don't have resources. That's not going to happen. Okay, I
want to buy a new car off the showroom floor
because we always had like old Conkers that were, you know,
(06:31):
rusted out. My mom had an old Camaro. When you
went over a puddle, you had to lift your feet
up because there was holes in the floor. So he
kind of laughed and he's like, Okay, I don't know
we're going to get the money for that. I'm like,
ce point one, make a million dollars, you know, And
I said okay. I said three, I want a house
by the beach, because we're in Philadelphia and we're two
and a half hours from the beach. And he said,
you can't afford a beach.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
House, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
We live in a forty thousand dollars house. Where are
you going to get that money. I'm like, see point
one again. And the fourth one was I want to
find a real man. And he laugh and he's like,
you'll never do it. And that stuck with me, and
I was like challenge acceptance, and by the time I
was thirty I had all four and he had already
passed away at that point. He had passed away two
years prior. And I remember thinking to myself, I did it,
(07:13):
you know? He said I couldn't, And here I am.
And that was right before I lost everything and started
over again. So it's your childhood really determined who you
are and how you're going to get there. And you're
either resilient or you're not, you know. And my sister
went the other direction. She married a local boy, had
the babies and that's it. And I'm over here, like
(07:34):
what else can I do?
Speaker 4 (07:35):
You know?
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Can I write another book? Can I be another show?
Can I what can I do?
Speaker 4 (07:38):
You know?
Speaker 1 (07:39):
It's a complete opp with it, and there's a piece
of it. I think to this genetic it's not just
your social environment. But some children have that like spirit
and some just don't. And I think the environment shaped it,
but I think their attitude really determines how they do it,
if they take you know, the bull by the horns
or they don't.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
No, I couldn't agree with you more. I think it's
the same thing like with the athletes.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I'm a former athlete. Is you know, it's really a
drive that you have inside. Either you have it to
get out there and chase those championships or or you don't.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Or you know, either you're.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Just playing the game or you're like playing the game
to win one every single time. And whether you win
or lose, you still pick yourself up and you keep
moving forward, and you have demonstrated that, hey, you've won
and you've lost, you've still been picking up and making
sure that you're going after that championship every single time.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
I love that. I love that exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
And some of us are team players and some of
us aren't. I've had most of my companies I've been solo.
I've built both my seven and eight figure companies with
less than three hundred bucks on my bank account and
no business partner and no safety in that and no loans, nothing.
And then some people say, can't do it without, you know,
a business partner or alone, And I've always said, well
why not. What's stopping you? You know, if you have
(08:54):
an idea, roll it, roll the idea and watch what happens.
And when you put people you know behind that eight
ball and tell them you can do anything you want
and they do something small and they watch it happened
They're like, wow, this just happens, and I tell them
my story. You know, when I built this brand supper
on demand, I was working for a treatment center. I
was making forty eight thousand dollars a year, could barely
(09:16):
pay my bills. I lived in Miami and one day
I went to work and the owner threw a notebook
at my head. The owner who pulled up in a Bugatti, Well,
I'm there in a crappy jeep rang or a four cylinder,
and I remember I walked in and I said, I've
got two words for you, and he goes, what f me?
I said, no, I quit, and he said you can't quit,
you need me. And I looked at him and I
said for what. And he goes, you can't pay your
(09:38):
bills in Miami, and so I can't pay my bills.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Now with this job in Miami.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
You know, let alone get ahead. I said, I will
outdo you. I can do that, and he looked at
me and laughed, and I said, challenge, accept it. It
was just like my stepdad all over and I went
on and I did it, and it felt good when
I did it.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
I came home.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I told my husband at the time. You know, I
quit my job. And he said, but how are we
going to pay the rent? But how are you? How
are we going to pay the rent? In two weeks?
There's three hundred bucks in the bank account. And I said,
I will make the rent. I promise you and I
will make more than the rent. I will make more
than my monthly salary in the next couple of days.
And he looked at me and he goes how And
I said, watch. And all I did was print business cards.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
That was it.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Basic Visa print cards for free. I paid for shipping,
and I've put them out everywhere, Jim, Starbucks, gas station,
little billboards everywhere. And I got a call twenty four
hours later from a guy that picked it up at
the gym, and he said, I would like to meet
with you. And I met with him for free game,
free sessions, and he hired me on the spot and
cut me a check for twenty five hundred dollars. And
this is going back to twenty twelve. And I walked
(10:41):
in and handed it to my husband and he just
stopped and he goes, wow. I said, you can do
anything you put your mind to. There's no limits, but
you have to be confident. You can bring it.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
No, that's it. Hey, who does to you for using
visa print?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
I think a lot of ours entrepreneurs at the beginning,
visa print is our friend.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
Ye pay for ship and love it. Now you've been
named the female.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Doctor Drew and also a limit breaking disruptor.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
So how do you embrace these roles while.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Maintaining your authenticity? Because you do have your own identity right,
I mean sometimes it's like, please not comparing me to
somebody else because I'm home. Just said, you know.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
My own identity.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
But when you're being compared right to people like this
are giving these kind of nicknames, how do you maintain
your authenticity and then stay true to your own unique approach?
So I got that female Doctor Drew on the Red carpet,
and that kind of came as a surprise to me.
I wasn't expecting that I had actually got asked to
open the last Factory with the cop with such a
(11:51):
famous comedian, and I was like, this was on my
bucket list, I'm going to do it. So when I
came to the Red carpet, they were like, you're like
the female Doctor Drew and I didn't what. I was like, Okay,
if that's all right. People roll with that. And then
I came to find out what they meant by that
was there was no other woman that had built a
brand as big as doctor Drew's. They didn't mean I
(12:12):
was competing with him. It was like you hit the
glass ceiling. And that's what they meant. They're like, we
now have some a female in that vein that's done
a body of work like this, that scaled the company,
that is a figurehead that's not just male. And I
started realizing I'm going to male dominated industry. All the
big guys are men, all the guys on reality TV
(12:35):
were ment and it was like, oh wow. So they
started pitching me for A and E. And I kept
getting turned out and I said why They said, you're
not a man. A and E likes men, they don't
like women, and.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
I was like, WHOA.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
You know this is a couple of years ago, and
I started thinking.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
This is crazy.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
So I started pushing back and I said, I want
to be in some of this stuff. And then I thought,
you know, if I can't get in it, I'm going
to put my students in it. Because I have a
whole training school for addiction and mental health and I
started pitching my mail students and I got four on
reality TV show in the first thirty days. That's how
I got the limit breaking title because I thought, if
you're not going to let me in, I'm going to
(13:10):
figure out a way to get my brand in there
without me being the faith. And that's how I did it.
That's that if they won't open a door, then you
find a window. I love it, singo, Yep, you open
that window, you put your brand in there, and then
eventually they can open the door for you and you
can go in the door. And they did invite me
to go on two reality shows and I said no.
(13:31):
At that point, I'm like, no, my brand is now
very different and I'm not going to be known as
a reality star because I have a PhD. And I
built some you know, good clinical background behind what I break.
But I'll send my students to you.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
Oh wow, that moming.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
People struggle to build resilience in the faith of adversity.
So what advice would you give to someone who's starting
to they are in the rebuild process after a significant
life challenge. You're in the messy face and everything gets
messy first, and it feels like you're not going to
get through it. It feels like you wake up some
days and you're thinking, why am I doing this? And
(14:07):
I totally get that. Keep going because it will get
better and better and better, and you will still have
days that are like that down the road. I had
one today. I had a client call me screaming today
because she wanted to pay thirty minutes before one of
my companions showed up, and I said, we can't do that.
That's that's just disrespectful to everyone's time. And I got
called every name in the book that you canceled the
(14:28):
service and said, Okay, you're not the right client for us.
Everybody's going to have problems in your business. You're going
to have adversity. You're going to have angry customers, you're
going to have angry clients. You're going to have angry workers.
Figure out who's on your bus and what teeps they
need to be in, and then figure out which way
you want to drive the bus. And when you build
(14:48):
that team, they will surround you and you'll have it going.
And that's how you do it. And sometimes you have
to kick people off the bus because you're stop get off,
How can I stay and pick up a new person.
But you got to keep on top of that and
you have to stay true to you don't let anybody
tell you different.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
So I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
It's like sometimes you have to drown out the noise, right,
and you just have to stay focused and just like
believe in yourself. And it's like it's like you have
to train almost right, and you have to be disciplined
and focused and just keep your eye on the prize
and drown out the noise because there are going to
be the nay fayers. You've had nay fayirs all throughout
(15:30):
your life, some who are very close to you, like
your stepfather and your you know, former boss. I mean
just people all around you going you can't do that.
But it's like, you know what, like you said, challenge accepted.
I love to tell Yeah. So, your work with Sober
on Demand is transformative, I mean absolutely transformative. So can
(15:52):
you talk about your multi dimensional approach to addiction coaching
and how have you been able to use this approach
to make a difference for your clients.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
So, I specialize on what's called an executive five day reset,
and it's got memory reconstruction therapy, which is trauma work.
It's got some performance coaching in it, some cognitive behavioral therapy,
some life coaching. What I like to do is get
to the root cause of the problem, whatever the problem
is they're experiencing, and we solve that, which is very
different from the way people handle addiction and mental health
(16:27):
right now. When they say, okay, well addiction is your problem.
You know, alcohol is your problem, drugs are your problem,
your bipolar is your problem. I say, no, none of
that is your problem. Let's figure out what's your problem is.
Solve that, and then all the rest of the stuff
that's noised starts to change. And some of it can
be chemical. We look at chemistry, we look at behavioral issues,
(16:50):
we look at societal issues, all of it. So, for example,
I have a current client that's got an alcohol problem,
and I learned that she's got eight ants and uncle
well seven of which have alcohol problems. So there's going
to be a genetic component there. And she's been drinking
for five or six years, so there's going to be
a chemical component there. So those are the first two
things I've got to look at, and I've got to
(17:12):
break the chemical issue in her brain. So we do
that with certain supplements and nutraceuticals for the brain, not
vitamins for the body, but for the brain, and we
try to reset her brain. And then we look at
social what's causing the stress? Is it a bad marriage,
is it a bad job, is it overwhelmed? What is
it that's causing this issue? And then we look a
(17:33):
behavioral how can we shift it? How can we change
what we're doing in this space right now for her
to have the best life? And where does she want
to go? Where does she see herself in five years,
ten years, What does that perfect life look like to her?
Not to me, but to her, And then we create
a blueprint for that and then go in that direction.
(17:53):
So that's what I do with clients. I really love
that approach that really it's about getting to the root
cause of the problem because a lot of times it's
people think that, oh, we just have to address the
drinking or the drugs, and you know the physical act
of doing those things, although those are concerned, but you
(18:14):
are right, it's like, well, why is the person having
to take a drink?
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Why is the person needing this escape with the drugs?
And usually, like.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
You said, it's something there's an underlying condition, or it's
a set up conditions that are really leading them to
make this choice to cope and use this mechanism as
what they're using to cope with whatever is really bothering them.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
I love that exactly. Yep.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
So you've also been described as the battery recharger. So
I'm like, all right, so how did you get that nickname?
This battery recharger? Right of Mind owns a rehab in Denver,
and I went to train his staff and I came
in nine o'clock in the morning, full of coffee, also
(19:05):
change full excited. You know, we're going to do this
and do this and do this. And he looks at
me and he says, you're gonna do what? And I said,
I am going to work with your sales team to
increase thirty perccond conversions. And he said, you can't do that,
it's not possible.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
So watch me.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
I got them all motivated, and I got his return
within a week and he called me and he's like, how.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
Did you do that?
Speaker 1 (19:25):
I said, motivation. I just just motivation. It's like before
you go play sport, you get everybody else pumped up
that they can do this. You're hoso they can win
the game. You know your skill level. But if they're
not excited for life, but no, you're excited, they're not
going to want to do jobs. And he's like, here'res
like the battery recharger. And then it stuck. So when
people call me from treatment centers that have met him,
(19:48):
or people that I've worked with, they'll call them. They'll say,
we want that same level of energy, So.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Bring it, bring your a game. I love that. I
love that. Now.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
A lot of you know, guests that come on they
talked about having a support system and that having that
support system was key for them getting through very difficult time.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
But you kind of didn't have a support system at
the outset.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
I mean you have had one along the way, but
initially right, and but you still have been able to
thrive and build a successful career, not once but twice, right,
several times. A couple of times you've been set back
and then.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
You've come back.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
So what role do you feel like we kind of
talked about this a little earlier, but what role do
you feel like mindset plays in this journey? And how
can you cultivate the right mindset for resilience so that
you can push through. So, okay, a couple things first.
Some people need the safety net, they need the external motivation, validation,
(20:56):
all of those things. I never had that growing up.
So I grew up in a family that never said
good job. I would make straight a's. It's just expected
that's what you did. And if you didn't, it was like, oh, okay,
you know me, bee's made a's. It doesn't matter because
the goal my mother gave me. And this is how
low she set the bar. When I was in high
school and I said to her, I'm going to go
(21:16):
to college. I was the first person to go to
college ever in my family. And she goes, well, why
don't you just, you know, marry the local boy, move
two doors down, go work at the mall, and have
a couple of kids, And I was like that bar
is so low, Like no, I have no interest in that.
So I learned early on that I had to be
my own cheerleader because there was no cheerleader there. They
(21:38):
didn't care if I went to school, they didn't care
if I didn't. I was just expected to pop out
kids and live next door. And I remember telling my mom,
I'm like any woman can do that. I want to
be extraordinary. She just kind of looked at me, glazed
over and went, okay, whatever.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
You know.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
I was kind of a like to know what to
do with me, So I took that mindset into everything
I did. If I don't do this, no one is
going to do it. And there's no one on my
team saying good job. I'm just going to do it,
and the result of doing it is a good job.
And that's kind of a double edged sword. And I'll
tell you why. When I was working for other people,
(22:13):
which I learned I don't play well in the sandbox,
pretty quickly, they would come in and say, good job.
You know you worked here. Everyone did a great job today,
and I'd be like, okay if they ever faved me.
And once my boss said, why are you not excited
when we give you praise? And I said, if you
truly think I did a good job, my paycheck would
reflect it. Your praise means nothing. I get it. That's
(22:36):
how you want to motivate the masses, But that does
nothing for me. So if you really want me to
feel like I've made an impact on this company, give
me your raise. And she looked at me and she said, well,
that's not in budget. I said that I haven't done
a good job, have I. If it's not a budget,
that means you're not making enough money. So she kind
of looked at me and she's like, you don't belong here.
I'm like, no, I probably blog my own company. And
(22:56):
that sort of propelled me to get started in my
own company because I'm like, I don't I think big,
I don't think small. And that's a double edged short.
So mindset can be great, but mindset can also leave
you to burn out because your expectation and your bar
that you set for yourself is so high and then
you hit have to hit it. Yeah, I do think
you need a balance sometimes, right, And I think that's where,
(23:20):
you know, surrounding yourself with dynamic people who do want
to see you when but at the same time they're
going to tell you the truth.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
They're going to say, eh, you know, maybe you might want.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
To adjust yourself a little bit or think about this
or take a break, because we do have to pause.
I know I had a guess previously and she talked
about the power pause, and you know, sometimes pausing is
really great because then sometimes that's one of the best
things from you come out of that pause.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
And so I think it's really about having that balance.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
So, you know, how do you have that balance in
your life right now? So I do two things that
are kind of strange, maybe not. I have a jeep wrangler,
so I will go put the top down and cruise
up the coastal highway and just jam out to music
and let my brain just veg completely. I will also
(24:10):
go to the gym. I'll put on my earbuds, my
baseball cap. I talk to nobody. Literally is nobody I
come in and out of the gym, and they must
think I'm the rudest person on the planet because I'm
there truly to reset my mental health. And I don't
take any calls. I don't answer any texts. I am
only there for me for that hour, whether it's you know,
lifting or zumba or yoga, whatever I'm there for. And
(24:34):
if I'm having a really crazy, stressful day, and I
tell my clients this, the best thing you can do
is movement and music. So I will crank up salsa
or zumba and just dance. You know, you can just
dance in your living room. No one's watching anyway, and
it gets rid of all that negative energy and the
music helps reset your brain with dopamine, so it's just
(24:56):
amazing and then I feel instantly better. I also travel
a lot as we were talking. Before we were talking,
I was planning a trip to Vegas, LA. I just
booked one for Connecticut, Philadelphia, and I'm about to go
to Colorado. So I'm always on the move and that
makes me happy.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
Travel makes me happy.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
So I tell my clients, you have to figure out
what makes you happy. For some people it's reading a book.
For some people, it's going to the beach. You know,
for some people it's just binge watching Netflix. What makes
you happy and do those things every single day, and
if travel makes you happy, even just looking and booking something,
we'll get you excited, get your dopamine going.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
No, I love that beach, the beach. I'm a beach girl,
so the beach is my happy place.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
And I can't go to the beach everyday, but as
soon as I can't go to a beach, I'm there.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
So I can't tell you that if you were.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
To have a hashtag, I think your a hashtag to
describe your life is a challenge. Excepted hashtag, which I love. So,
you know, how do you keep pushing the boundaries and
disrupting limits in your field? So when in twenty eighteen,
(26:14):
well twenty fourteen, I had a competitor that was slaughtering
me on the internet, like awful, calling me every name
in the book, telling people my degree was fake, it's
not telling people that I've been scamming people out of
money like everything you could think of, because I guess
I you know, challenged his brand, so to speak, because
I was competing in this space. So one of the
(26:34):
things he said was Calli's husband is junkie because my
husband had relapsed. As you the heroine, she shouldn't be
able to help anybody if she can't fix her husband.
And I thought, how can I take this and spin it?
How can I do something with it? So I said
to my husband, you're going to get sober, kicking and screaming,
and we're going to write a book called I'm Married
(26:55):
a Junkie.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
And we did.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
And I took that book and I signed it and
put a few choice words in it and said it
to him because it got me on KTLA TV in La,
It's what got me on TV. And he was an
anchor who got fired from the show because of his addiction,
and I said, this is my mark. Here I am,
and that sort of sent a ripple through the community
(27:19):
of Wow, here's somebody who didn't tap out, who took
the heat because I had eleven people coming at me,
pretty hardcore, and I sewed all eleven of them. Cost
me a lot of money, and I just wanted it
to stop, but I couldn't get the bullying to stop.
I mean, it was a relentless they were attacking my character.
They would draw pictures of me, put me in memes.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
It was bad.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
It was real bad. These are professionals, they're supposed to
be professional. So when my husband passed away, I wrote
the second book called Im Married to Junkie two, and
it's the rest of the story, you know, the rest
of what I did and how I did, what I
did wrong, what I did right, and I put it
out and I had a different response than the first book.
And response was, wow, I can't believe you endured all that.
(28:03):
And I put in there, you know, the bullying and
what that was like and everything, and it was cathartic
for me, but it was also breaking the rules of
my industry because people said, you're not supposed to publish
that kind of stuff. That's the kind of stuff that
you know everyone knows is going on but you don't
talk about. And it got I mean, I got wrong.
My husband was carjacked, he was held up at gunpoint,
(28:24):
swatshirt up at the house, put a gun in my face.
It's all in there. My dog overdosed on his ventanyl
and that sort of changed how people viewed me because
then they went from, oh, you know, she's smart, she
she knows what she's doing too. She just turned the
industry upside down by putting all her dirty laundry out there,
and everybody went okay. That turned I think the corner
(28:50):
for me because they got a lot of clients out
of it, a lot of clients that were spouses of
an attict. Because everyone talks about the mother of the addicts,
the father of the addict and they lose their child,
but no one talks about what happens when.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
You lose your spouse.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
And the book I wrote, I Married a Junkie Too,
talks about what it's like being the spouse of an
active user, knowing you can't stop it, doing your best,
you can, and knowing that if you divorce them and
they get half your bank account, they will overdose in
the first two weeks. It's just inevitable.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
What do you do?
Speaker 1 (29:19):
What does that look like? And that was my testament
to resilience. You know, this is getting through something like
this and helping people the whole time running my company.
It's hard, it's not easy. So a lot of people
come to me now for training because they see how
I did that, and they say, no, what did you
do with your grief? How did you channel your grief?
What did you do? And I say the same thing,
(29:42):
like everybody, how you handle what's coming out? And you
have a choice. You can lay down a girl up
in a ball and cry, or you can say to yourself,
what can I do with this information to help other people?
And then you spin it and you become cathartic with it,
and then it sets you apart from your competitors. Makes sense, No, absolutely,
(30:02):
I tell you one thing that my grandmother said. I mean,
she would say lots of wise, veritu why things that
I totally understand now as an adult, but you would
say them when I was younger, in my twenties, but
now in my forties.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
I totally get them.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Is you're not doing anything right unless people are talking
about you.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
That means that you are.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Once you have people talking about you, that means you're
really doing something great out there in the world that
of the evil side of the universe is trying to stop.
So kudos to you for not giving up and pushing
forward and going, you know what, this is my life.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
It is what it is. You put it out there,
but you've used it for good and look where you
are now. That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Well, Kelly, I can't even believe that our time is
almost up. But I have to ask you this question
because it's the question that I ask everybody because this
is the point of the show and this is what
helps people. So in your opinions, how does one truly
build resilience? Resilience, I think is something you every time
(31:07):
you go through a trial, you get through the other side,
you go, I did that, and then you sit down
and go, how did I do that? And sometimes it's
just you know, put your head down a barrowing through it,
and sometimes it's a strategy to get through it. But
once you've done it once and twice or three times,
you go, you know, what I can do this, and
(31:28):
it's not just you know, something that's going to take
you out or wipe you out. I did this, I
can get through it. And I remember when my husband died.
The first thing I got asked on a podcast, so
I thought it was such an odd question was didn't
you relapse? And I said, I got twenty three years
under my belt at that time. Actually I had twenty
five years in my belt at that time. Why would
(31:49):
I relapse? Why was it the first question you asked me?
And they said, well, that's what people do and it's
a misconception. And I said no, that was the last
thing through my mind was getting high because if I
got I wouldn't be able to cope. I could run
my company, I couldn't do all the things I was doing.
So I think resilience starts with conquering something and then
(32:10):
knowing you can conquer anything. And I tell people all
the time, you know, I lost everything when I lost
that company in two thousand and eight. I lost all
my money, all my cars, all my houses and everything
I had burned up in a fire. I was literally
in a house with no heat, no running water at
Christmas with nothing, and I pulled myself out of it
(32:31):
with mindset, what am I going to do. I'm going
to give a job and I'm going to build from there.
We had no food. I mean there was no food.
I took a coffee cup that I bought for ninety
five cents at Wua Wah and took it back every
day and filled it for twenty cents, and I bought
one sandwich to day. My total budget for food a
day was five bucks.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
That was it.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
And I built my way back out because I had
no other options. So I think you see people that
are resilient because they have no other options. Those people
that have a safety net or if someone they can
call to borrow money or do those things, find it
easier to I don't want to say slack off, but
not hit their full potential because they have a safety debt.
(33:12):
And it's like Steve Harvey said, just jump. You don't
need a safety net. Just do it, and if you fail,
you fail, You've already failed if you haven't tried. So
that's why I think you build resilience.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
So that's fantastic. Thatcha Kelly.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
I definitely have to have you on the show again
because that's just such an enlightening conversation. So if this
opportunity presents itself, will you come back? Absolutely? I appreciate
you having me wonderful wonderful. Well, I want to express
my deepest gratitude to you for sharing your remarkable journey
and valuable insights. Your story is a testament to the
power of relentless determination, resilience, and the transformative force of
(33:49):
a focused mindset. So how can listeners find and connect
with you? So I'm not Sober on Demand dot com,
the Addictions Academy dot com, the Addiction coach on line,
and then if you google calies this, I am all
over every social media platform you can find me. Pretty easy, fantastic.
Any last words of encouragement for the listeners, just keep trying.
(34:13):
If you don't succeed, get up, dust yourself off, and
do it again. Well, doctor Callie, thank you again for
reminding us that life's possibilities are truly limitless. I look
forward to seeing the incredible impact you'll continue to make.
I want to with you and your family nothing but
blessings and abundance. Please take care. Bye.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Doctor Kelly asked this.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Everyone be sure to join me next time for more
uplifting stories and insights on resilience. Until then, keep pushing forward,
embrace the journey, and remember that every setback can lead
to a greater comeback.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Doctor Rowe signing off, it hadn't think
What do you do when challenges seem insurmountable and your
own resilience is put to the ultimate text, how do
you reinvent yourself to overcome life's toughest obstacles. For answers
to these profound questions, there's no one more fitting to
(00:20):
speak with than doctor Cally Essen, also known as the
Battery Recharger. Welcome to another inspiring episode of Life Tack
the Resilience Podcast. I'm your host, Doctor Rode. Doctor Kelly
is a renowned mindset coach, addictions professional life coach, and
wellness guru. She had dedicated her life to helping individuals
(00:42):
unlock their true potential through her revolutionary work with Sober
on Demand and the Addictions Academy. Her innovative approach blends
talk therapy with positive change, transforming aspirations into reality. Recognized
by the hofitin Huffington Post as one of the ninety
nine limit breaking disruptive Females, Doctor Kelly continues to obliterate boundaries,
(01:09):
supporting a diverse array of individual from top tier CEO
to renowned musicians. Despite facing homelessness not one but twice
and beginning her journey with less than three hundred dollars
in her bank account. Doctor Kelly started two thriving companies,
so posting her indominable spirit of resilience, powered by hustle
(01:32):
and a relentless mindset to join the show today, can
share her journey of transformation and resilience, setting light on
how you too can ignite your pussons for a life
brimming with possibilities.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Sometimes life gives us limits, Sometimes it gives us lemonade.
Other times it gives us something entirely out of left
fields that makes us say w t F. But no
matter what obstacles come, there is most often a way
out on the other side, and we are once again victorious.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
My name is doctor Rooke, and you are listening to
my podcast about resilience. Every guest shares a tragedy to
triumph story to give listeners like you the inspiration to
push through every single day.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Listen now as my next guest shares how they.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Were like Jack, Hi, Doctor Tally, Welcome, Thank you so
much for me a guest on my show.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
How are you hi?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Good, Doctor Red, thanks for having me awesome No doctor
call your journey from facing homelessness to becoming a six
time number one best selling author and a renowned coach
is truly inspiring. But you take us through the early
days and what fueled your drive to push through those
particular challenges you had. So I've always been slightly resilient.
(03:06):
I mean I grew up in a rough childhood and
learned quickly on that if I didn't do it for myself,
no one else would. So that's sort of always been
my mentality. I think they call that the hustle mentality
or being resilient in today's day and age. But I
was always with you for what's next? What can I do?
How can I get there? What does that look like?
(03:28):
And I left home pretty early. I was nineteen when
I left, and I ended up homeless pretty quickly, because
you know, you're nineteen, you don't have resources, and you
know you have a college degree, so it's AOK a
little while. But I was able to, you know, put
myself through college. I got a bachelor's degree, I got
a master's degree, and I was always trying to figure
(03:48):
out how to make things happen. And as I did that.
After the master's degree, I went to work in the
addiction mental health space and realized quickly that I was
the working poor. I was making enough money I couldn't
pay my rent, my car payment, and my student loan
in the same month. And that's when I said, something's
wrong with my industry. And I started looking at how
(04:09):
to help people but still be able to make a
good paycheck. Realizing I couldn't do it very well. I
ended up quitting the industry, starting a fitness company and
then lost that in the economic downturn. That was an
eight figure company, and I went from having millions of
dollars in my bank account, cars, houses, all of it,
to homeless overnight, literally overnight, and all my stuff burned
(04:32):
up in a fire. And I had to sit there
and figure out how I'm going to dig out, how
I'm going to do this and how I'm going.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
To scale it.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
And I always say your experiences are so important, because
everything I learned in building that fitness company, I took
into building sober on demands and I just switched back
into what I know really well, which is addiction to
mental health, went on to get my PhD and then
put this company out there. So that's my quick quick
(05:00):
ten second snippets. Yeah, wow, I mean facing homelessness, of fire,
losing everything from millions of dollars, like you absolutely have
been life jacked, that's for sure.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
And you know, it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
That although you, like you said, you kind of came
from broken home type background, tough childhood, but you still
were able to bounce back.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Again and again and again.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
And so that makes me wonder sometimes when it comes
to resilience, how much of your childhood is really an
influence or a factor onto how you show up as
an adult. It's a lot. I mean, your childhood really
sets the stage for who you are and how you think.
And I can remember I was fourteen. I was sitting
(05:48):
at the dinner table with my stepdad, who never graduated
high school. He was a welder and a truck driver,
my mom, who graduated high school, who had the basic
like file clerk job and never had any other job
her whole life, and my sister, who's six years younger.
And I remember my stepdad saying to me, you know,
what's your plan?
Speaker 4 (06:08):
What are you going to do life?
Speaker 1 (06:09):
And I remember saying I have four goals and he went, oh, okay,
what are they? And I said, well, I want to
make a million dollars my first goal, and he said,
we're poor, Like, we're welfare poor. You're not going to
make a million dollars. We don't come from money, you
don't have resources. That's not going to happen. Okay, I
want to buy a new car off the showroom floor
because we always had like old Conkers that were, you know,
(06:31):
rusted out. My mom had an old Camaro. When you
went over a puddle, you had to lift your feet
up because there was holes in the floor. So he
kind of laughed and he's like, Okay, I don't know
we're going to get the money for that. I'm like,
ce point one, make a million dollars, you know, And
I said okay. I said three, I want a house
by the beach, because we're in Philadelphia and we're two
and a half hours from the beach. And he said,
you can't afford a beach.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
House, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
We live in a forty thousand dollars house. Where are
you going to get that money. I'm like, see point
one again. And the fourth one was I want to
find a real man. And he laugh and he's like,
you'll never do it. And that stuck with me, and
I was like challenge acceptance, and by the time I
was thirty I had all four and he had already
passed away at that point. He had passed away two
years prior. And I remember thinking to myself, I did it,
(07:13):
you know? He said I couldn't, And here I am.
And that was right before I lost everything and started
over again. So it's your childhood really determined who you
are and how you're going to get there. And you're
either resilient or you're not, you know. And my sister
went the other direction. She married a local boy, had
the babies and that's it. And I'm over here, like
(07:34):
what else can I do?
Speaker 4 (07:35):
You know?
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Can I write another book? Can I be another show?
Can I what can I do?
Speaker 4 (07:38):
You know?
Speaker 1 (07:39):
It's a complete opp with it, and there's a piece
of it. I think to this genetic it's not just
your social environment. But some children have that like spirit
and some just don't. And I think the environment shaped it,
but I think their attitude really determines how they do it,
if they take you know, the bull by the horns
or they don't.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
No, I couldn't agree with you more. I think it's
the same thing like with the athletes.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I'm a former athlete. Is you know, it's really a
drive that you have inside. Either you have it to
get out there and chase those championships or or you don't.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Or you know, either you're.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Just playing the game or you're like playing the game
to win one every single time. And whether you win
or lose, you still pick yourself up and you keep
moving forward, and you have demonstrated that, hey, you've won
and you've lost, you've still been picking up and making
sure that you're going after that championship every single time.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
I love that. I love that exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
And some of us are team players and some of
us aren't. I've had most of my companies I've been solo.
I've built both my seven and eight figure companies with
less than three hundred bucks on my bank account and
no business partner and no safety in that and no loans, nothing.
And then some people say, can't do it without, you know,
a business partner or alone, And I've always said, well
why not. What's stopping you? You know, if you have
(08:54):
an idea, roll it, roll the idea and watch what happens.
And when you put people you know behind that eight
ball and tell them you can do anything you want
and they do something small and they watch it happened
They're like, wow, this just happens, and I tell them
my story. You know, when I built this brand supper
on demand, I was working for a treatment center. I
was making forty eight thousand dollars a year, could barely
(09:16):
pay my bills. I lived in Miami and one day
I went to work and the owner threw a notebook
at my head. The owner who pulled up in a Bugatti, Well,
I'm there in a crappy jeep rang or a four cylinder,
and I remember I walked in and I said, I've
got two words for you, and he goes, what f me?
I said, no, I quit, and he said you can't quit,
you need me. And I looked at him and I
said for what. And he goes, you can't pay your
(09:38):
bills in Miami, and so I can't pay my bills.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Now with this job in Miami.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
You know, let alone get ahead. I said, I will
outdo you. I can do that, and he looked at
me and laughed, and I said, challenge, accept it. It
was just like my stepdad all over and I went
on and I did it, and it felt good when
I did it.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
I came home.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I told my husband at the time. You know, I
quit my job. And he said, but how are we
going to pay the rent? But how are you? How
are we going to pay the rent? In two weeks?
There's three hundred bucks in the bank account. And I said,
I will make the rent. I promise you and I
will make more than the rent. I will make more
than my monthly salary in the next couple of days.
And he looked at me and he goes how And
I said, watch. And all I did was print business cards.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
That was it.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Basic Visa print cards for free. I paid for shipping,
and I've put them out everywhere, Jim, Starbucks, gas station,
little billboards everywhere. And I got a call twenty four
hours later from a guy that picked it up at
the gym, and he said, I would like to meet
with you. And I met with him for free game,
free sessions, and he hired me on the spot and
cut me a check for twenty five hundred dollars. And
this is going back to twenty twelve. And I walked
(10:41):
in and handed it to my husband and he just
stopped and he goes, wow. I said, you can do
anything you put your mind to. There's no limits, but
you have to be confident. You can bring it.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
No, that's it. Hey, who does to you for using
visa print?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
I think a lot of ours entrepreneurs at the beginning,
visa print is our friend.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
Ye pay for ship and love it. Now you've been
named the female.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Doctor Drew and also a limit breaking disruptor.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
So how do you embrace these roles while.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Maintaining your authenticity? Because you do have your own identity right,
I mean sometimes it's like, please not comparing me to
somebody else because I'm home. Just said, you know.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
My own identity.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
But when you're being compared right to people like this
are giving these kind of nicknames, how do you maintain
your authenticity and then stay true to your own unique approach?
So I got that female Doctor Drew on the Red carpet,
and that kind of came as a surprise to me.
I wasn't expecting that I had actually got asked to
open the last Factory with the cop with such a
(11:51):
famous comedian, and I was like, this was on my
bucket list, I'm going to do it. So when I
came to the Red carpet, they were like, you're like
the female Doctor Drew and I didn't what. I was like, Okay,
if that's all right. People roll with that. And then
I came to find out what they meant by that
was there was no other woman that had built a
brand as big as doctor Drew's. They didn't mean I
(12:12):
was competing with him. It was like you hit the
glass ceiling. And that's what they meant. They're like, we
now have some a female in that vein that's done
a body of work like this, that scaled the company,
that is a figurehead that's not just male. And I
started realizing I'm going to male dominated industry. All the
big guys are men, all the guys on reality TV
(12:35):
were ment and it was like, oh wow. So they
started pitching me for A and E. And I kept
getting turned out and I said why They said, you're
not a man. A and E likes men, they don't
like women, and.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
I was like, WHOA.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
You know this is a couple of years ago, and
I started thinking.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
This is crazy.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
So I started pushing back and I said, I want
to be in some of this stuff. And then I thought,
you know, if I can't get in it, I'm going
to put my students in it. Because I have a
whole training school for addiction and mental health and I
started pitching my mail students and I got four on
reality TV show in the first thirty days. That's how
I got the limit breaking title because I thought, if
you're not going to let me in, I'm going to
(13:10):
figure out a way to get my brand in there
without me being the faith. And that's how I did it.
That's that if they won't open a door, then you
find a window. I love it, singo, Yep, you open
that window, you put your brand in there, and then
eventually they can open the door for you and you
can go in the door. And they did invite me
to go on two reality shows and I said no.
(13:31):
At that point, I'm like, no, my brand is now
very different and I'm not going to be known as
a reality star because I have a PhD. And I
built some you know, good clinical background behind what I break.
But I'll send my students to you.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
Oh wow, that moming.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
People struggle to build resilience in the faith of adversity.
So what advice would you give to someone who's starting
to they are in the rebuild process after a significant
life challenge. You're in the messy face and everything gets
messy first, and it feels like you're not going to
get through it. It feels like you wake up some
days and you're thinking, why am I doing this? And
(14:07):
I totally get that. Keep going because it will get
better and better and better, and you will still have
days that are like that down the road. I had
one today. I had a client call me screaming today
because she wanted to pay thirty minutes before one of
my companions showed up, and I said, we can't do that.
That's that's just disrespectful to everyone's time. And I got
called every name in the book that you canceled the
(14:28):
service and said, Okay, you're not the right client for us.
Everybody's going to have problems in your business. You're going
to have adversity. You're going to have angry customers, you're
going to have angry clients. You're going to have angry workers.
Figure out who's on your bus and what teeps they
need to be in, and then figure out which way
you want to drive the bus. And when you build
(14:48):
that team, they will surround you and you'll have it going.
And that's how you do it. And sometimes you have
to kick people off the bus because you're stop get off,
How can I stay and pick up a new person.
But you got to keep on top of that and
you have to stay true to you don't let anybody
tell you different.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
So I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
It's like sometimes you have to drown out the noise, right,
and you just have to stay focused and just like
believe in yourself. And it's like it's like you have
to train almost right, and you have to be disciplined
and focused and just keep your eye on the prize
and drown out the noise because there are going to
be the nay fayers. You've had nay fayirs all throughout
(15:30):
your life, some who are very close to you, like
your stepfather and your you know, former boss. I mean
just people all around you going you can't do that.
But it's like, you know what, like you said, challenge accepted.
I love to tell Yeah. So, your work with Sober
on Demand is transformative, I mean absolutely transformative. So can
(15:52):
you talk about your multi dimensional approach to addiction coaching
and how have you been able to use this approach
to make a difference for your clients.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
So, I specialize on what's called an executive five day reset,
and it's got memory reconstruction therapy, which is trauma work.
It's got some performance coaching in it, some cognitive behavioral therapy,
some life coaching. What I like to do is get
to the root cause of the problem, whatever the problem
is they're experiencing, and we solve that, which is very
different from the way people handle addiction and mental health
(16:27):
right now. When they say, okay, well addiction is your problem.
You know, alcohol is your problem, drugs are your problem,
your bipolar is your problem. I say, no, none of
that is your problem. Let's figure out what's your problem is.
Solve that, and then all the rest of the stuff
that's noised starts to change. And some of it can
be chemical. We look at chemistry, we look at behavioral issues,
(16:50):
we look at societal issues, all of it. So, for example,
I have a current client that's got an alcohol problem,
and I learned that she's got eight ants and uncle
well seven of which have alcohol problems. So there's going
to be a genetic component there. And she's been drinking
for five or six years, so there's going to be
a chemical component there. So those are the first two
things I've got to look at, and I've got to
(17:12):
break the chemical issue in her brain. So we do
that with certain supplements and nutraceuticals for the brain, not
vitamins for the body, but for the brain, and we
try to reset her brain. And then we look at
social what's causing the stress? Is it a bad marriage,
is it a bad job, is it overwhelmed? What is
it that's causing this issue? And then we look a
(17:33):
behavioral how can we shift it? How can we change
what we're doing in this space right now for her
to have the best life? And where does she want
to go? Where does she see herself in five years,
ten years, What does that perfect life look like to her?
Not to me, but to her, And then we create
a blueprint for that and then go in that direction.
(17:53):
So that's what I do with clients. I really love
that approach that really it's about getting to the root
cause of the problem because a lot of times it's
people think that, oh, we just have to address the
drinking or the drugs, and you know the physical act
of doing those things, although those are concerned, but you
(18:14):
are right, it's like, well, why is the person having
to take a drink?
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Why is the person needing this escape with the drugs?
And usually, like.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
You said, it's something there's an underlying condition, or it's
a set up conditions that are really leading them to
make this choice to cope and use this mechanism as
what they're using to cope with whatever is really bothering them.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
I love that exactly. Yep.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
So you've also been described as the battery recharger. So
I'm like, all right, so how did you get that nickname?
This battery recharger? Right of Mind owns a rehab in Denver,
and I went to train his staff and I came
in nine o'clock in the morning, full of coffee, also
(19:05):
change full excited. You know, we're going to do this
and do this and do this. And he looks at
me and he says, you're gonna do what? And I said,
I am going to work with your sales team to
increase thirty perccond conversions. And he said, you can't do that,
it's not possible.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
So watch me.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
I got them all motivated, and I got his return
within a week and he called me and he's like, how.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
Did you do that?
Speaker 1 (19:25):
I said, motivation. I just just motivation. It's like before
you go play sport, you get everybody else pumped up
that they can do this. You're hoso they can win
the game. You know your skill level. But if they're
not excited for life, but no, you're excited, they're not
going to want to do jobs. And he's like, here'res
like the battery recharger. And then it stuck. So when
people call me from treatment centers that have met him,
(19:48):
or people that I've worked with, they'll call them. They'll say,
we want that same level of energy, So.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Bring it, bring your a game. I love that. I
love that. Now.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
A lot of you know, guests that come on they
talked about having a support system and that having that
support system was key for them getting through very difficult time.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
But you kind of didn't have a support system at
the outset.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
I mean you have had one along the way, but
initially right, and but you still have been able to
thrive and build a successful career, not once but twice, right,
several times. A couple of times you've been set back
and then.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
You've come back.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
So what role do you feel like we kind of
talked about this a little earlier, but what role do
you feel like mindset plays in this journey? And how
can you cultivate the right mindset for resilience so that
you can push through. So, okay, a couple things first.
Some people need the safety net, they need the external motivation, validation,
(20:56):
all of those things. I never had that growing up.
So I grew up in a family that never said
good job. I would make straight a's. It's just expected
that's what you did. And if you didn't, it was like, oh, okay,
you know me, bee's made a's. It doesn't matter because
the goal my mother gave me. And this is how
low she set the bar. When I was in high
school and I said to her, I'm going to go
(21:16):
to college. I was the first person to go to
college ever in my family. And she goes, well, why
don't you just, you know, marry the local boy, move
two doors down, go work at the mall, and have
a couple of kids, And I was like that bar
is so low, Like no, I have no interest in that.
So I learned early on that I had to be
my own cheerleader because there was no cheerleader there. They
(21:38):
didn't care if I went to school, they didn't care
if I didn't. I was just expected to pop out
kids and live next door. And I remember telling my mom,
I'm like any woman can do that. I want to
be extraordinary. She just kind of looked at me, glazed
over and went, okay, whatever.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
You know.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
I was kind of a like to know what to
do with me, So I took that mindset into everything
I did. If I don't do this, no one is
going to do it. And there's no one on my
team saying good job. I'm just going to do it,
and the result of doing it is a good job.
And that's kind of a double edged sword. And I'll
tell you why. When I was working for other people,
(22:13):
which I learned I don't play well in the sandbox,
pretty quickly, they would come in and say, good job.
You know you worked here. Everyone did a great job today,
and I'd be like, okay if they ever faved me.
And once my boss said, why are you not excited
when we give you praise? And I said, if you
truly think I did a good job, my paycheck would
reflect it. Your praise means nothing. I get it. That's
(22:36):
how you want to motivate the masses, But that does
nothing for me. So if you really want me to
feel like I've made an impact on this company, give
me your raise. And she looked at me and she said, well,
that's not in budget. I said that I haven't done
a good job, have I. If it's not a budget,
that means you're not making enough money. So she kind
of looked at me and she's like, you don't belong here.
I'm like, no, I probably blog my own company. And
(22:56):
that sort of propelled me to get started in my
own company because I'm like, I don't I think big,
I don't think small. And that's a double edged short.
So mindset can be great, but mindset can also leave
you to burn out because your expectation and your bar
that you set for yourself is so high and then
you hit have to hit it. Yeah, I do think
you need a balance sometimes, right, And I think that's where,
(23:20):
you know, surrounding yourself with dynamic people who do want
to see you when but at the same time they're
going to tell you the truth.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
They're going to say, eh, you know, maybe you might want.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
To adjust yourself a little bit or think about this
or take a break, because we do have to pause.
I know I had a guess previously and she talked
about the power pause, and you know, sometimes pausing is
really great because then sometimes that's one of the best
things from you come out of that pause.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
And so I think it's really about having that balance.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
So, you know, how do you have that balance in
your life right now? So I do two things that
are kind of strange, maybe not. I have a jeep wrangler,
so I will go put the top down and cruise
up the coastal highway and just jam out to music
and let my brain just veg completely. I will also
(24:10):
go to the gym. I'll put on my earbuds, my
baseball cap. I talk to nobody. Literally is nobody I
come in and out of the gym, and they must
think I'm the rudest person on the planet because I'm
there truly to reset my mental health. And I don't
take any calls. I don't answer any texts. I am
only there for me for that hour, whether it's you know,
lifting or zumba or yoga, whatever I'm there for. And
(24:34):
if I'm having a really crazy, stressful day, and I
tell my clients this, the best thing you can do
is movement and music. So I will crank up salsa
or zumba and just dance. You know, you can just
dance in your living room. No one's watching anyway, and
it gets rid of all that negative energy and the
music helps reset your brain with dopamine, so it's just
(24:56):
amazing and then I feel instantly better. I also travel
a lot as we were talking. Before we were talking,
I was planning a trip to Vegas, LA. I just
booked one for Connecticut, Philadelphia, and I'm about to go
to Colorado. So I'm always on the move and that
makes me happy.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
Travel makes me happy.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
So I tell my clients, you have to figure out
what makes you happy. For some people it's reading a book.
For some people, it's going to the beach. You know,
for some people it's just binge watching Netflix. What makes
you happy and do those things every single day, and
if travel makes you happy, even just looking and booking something,
we'll get you excited, get your dopamine going.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
No, I love that beach, the beach. I'm a beach girl,
so the beach is my happy place.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
And I can't go to the beach everyday, but as
soon as I can't go to a beach, I'm there.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
So I can't tell you that if you were.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
To have a hashtag, I think your a hashtag to
describe your life is a challenge. Excepted hashtag, which I love. So,
you know, how do you keep pushing the boundaries and
disrupting limits in your field? So when in twenty eighteen,
(26:14):
well twenty fourteen, I had a competitor that was slaughtering
me on the internet, like awful, calling me every name
in the book, telling people my degree was fake, it's
not telling people that I've been scamming people out of
money like everything you could think of, because I guess
I you know, challenged his brand, so to speak, because
I was competing in this space. So one of the
(26:34):
things he said was Calli's husband is junkie because my
husband had relapsed. As you the heroine, she shouldn't be
able to help anybody if she can't fix her husband.
And I thought, how can I take this and spin it?
How can I do something with it? So I said
to my husband, you're going to get sober, kicking and screaming,
and we're going to write a book called I'm Married
(26:55):
a Junkie.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
And we did.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
And I took that book and I signed it and
put a few choice words in it and said it
to him because it got me on KTLA TV in La,
It's what got me on TV. And he was an
anchor who got fired from the show because of his addiction,
and I said, this is my mark. Here I am,
and that sort of sent a ripple through the community
(27:19):
of Wow, here's somebody who didn't tap out, who took
the heat because I had eleven people coming at me,
pretty hardcore, and I sewed all eleven of them. Cost
me a lot of money, and I just wanted it
to stop, but I couldn't get the bullying to stop.
I mean, it was a relentless they were attacking my character.
They would draw pictures of me, put me in memes.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
It was bad.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
It was real bad. These are professionals, they're supposed to
be professional. So when my husband passed away, I wrote
the second book called Im Married to Junkie two, and
it's the rest of the story, you know, the rest
of what I did and how I did, what I
did wrong, what I did right, and I put it
out and I had a different response than the first book.
And response was, wow, I can't believe you endured all that.
(28:03):
And I put in there, you know, the bullying and
what that was like and everything, and it was cathartic
for me, but it was also breaking the rules of
my industry because people said, you're not supposed to publish
that kind of stuff. That's the kind of stuff that
you know everyone knows is going on but you don't
talk about. And it got I mean, I got wrong.
My husband was carjacked, he was held up at gunpoint,
(28:24):
swatshirt up at the house, put a gun in my face.
It's all in there. My dog overdosed on his ventanyl
and that sort of changed how people viewed me because
then they went from, oh, you know, she's smart, she
she knows what she's doing too. She just turned the
industry upside down by putting all her dirty laundry out there,
and everybody went okay. That turned I think the corner
(28:50):
for me because they got a lot of clients out
of it, a lot of clients that were spouses of
an attict. Because everyone talks about the mother of the addicts,
the father of the addict and they lose their child,
but no one talks about what happens when.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
You lose your spouse.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
And the book I wrote, I Married a Junkie Too,
talks about what it's like being the spouse of an
active user, knowing you can't stop it, doing your best,
you can, and knowing that if you divorce them and
they get half your bank account, they will overdose in
the first two weeks. It's just inevitable.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
What do you do?
Speaker 1 (29:19):
What does that look like? And that was my testament
to resilience. You know, this is getting through something like
this and helping people the whole time running my company.
It's hard, it's not easy. So a lot of people
come to me now for training because they see how
I did that, and they say, no, what did you
do with your grief? How did you channel your grief?
What did you do? And I say the same thing,
(29:42):
like everybody, how you handle what's coming out? And you
have a choice. You can lay down a girl up
in a ball and cry, or you can say to yourself,
what can I do with this information to help other people?
And then you spin it and you become cathartic with it,
and then it sets you apart from your competitors. Makes sense, No, absolutely,
(30:02):
I tell you one thing that my grandmother said. I mean,
she would say lots of wise, veritu why things that
I totally understand now as an adult, but you would
say them when I was younger, in my twenties, but
now in my forties.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
I totally get them.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Is you're not doing anything right unless people are talking
about you.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
That means that you are.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Once you have people talking about you, that means you're
really doing something great out there in the world that
of the evil side of the universe is trying to stop.
So kudos to you for not giving up and pushing
forward and going, you know what, this is my life.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
It is what it is. You put it out there,
but you've used it for good and look where you
are now. That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Well, Kelly, I can't even believe that our time is
almost up. But I have to ask you this question
because it's the question that I ask everybody because this
is the point of the show and this is what
helps people. So in your opinions, how does one truly
build resilience? Resilience, I think is something you every time
(31:07):
you go through a trial, you get through the other side,
you go, I did that, and then you sit down
and go, how did I do that? And sometimes it's
just you know, put your head down a barrowing through it,
and sometimes it's a strategy to get through it. But
once you've done it once and twice or three times,
you go, you know, what I can do this, and
(31:28):
it's not just you know, something that's going to take
you out or wipe you out. I did this, I
can get through it. And I remember when my husband died.
The first thing I got asked on a podcast, so
I thought it was such an odd question was didn't
you relapse? And I said, I got twenty three years
under my belt at that time. Actually I had twenty
five years in my belt at that time. Why would
(31:49):
I relapse? Why was it the first question you asked me?
And they said, well, that's what people do and it's
a misconception. And I said no, that was the last
thing through my mind was getting high because if I
got I wouldn't be able to cope. I could run
my company, I couldn't do all the things I was doing.
So I think resilience starts with conquering something and then
(32:10):
knowing you can conquer anything. And I tell people all
the time, you know, I lost everything when I lost
that company in two thousand and eight. I lost all
my money, all my cars, all my houses and everything
I had burned up in a fire. I was literally
in a house with no heat, no running water at
Christmas with nothing, and I pulled myself out of it
(32:31):
with mindset, what am I going to do. I'm going
to give a job and I'm going to build from there.
We had no food. I mean there was no food.
I took a coffee cup that I bought for ninety
five cents at Wua Wah and took it back every
day and filled it for twenty cents, and I bought
one sandwich to day. My total budget for food a
day was five bucks.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
That was it.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
And I built my way back out because I had
no other options. So I think you see people that
are resilient because they have no other options. Those people
that have a safety net or if someone they can
call to borrow money or do those things, find it
easier to I don't want to say slack off, but
not hit their full potential because they have a safety debt.
(33:12):
And it's like Steve Harvey said, just jump. You don't
need a safety net. Just do it, and if you fail,
you fail, You've already failed if you haven't tried. So
that's why I think you build resilience.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
So that's fantastic. Thatcha Kelly.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
I definitely have to have you on the show again
because that's just such an enlightening conversation. So if this
opportunity presents itself, will you come back? Absolutely? I appreciate
you having me wonderful wonderful. Well, I want to express
my deepest gratitude to you for sharing your remarkable journey
and valuable insights. Your story is a testament to the
power of relentless determination, resilience, and the transformative force of
(33:49):
a focused mindset. So how can listeners find and connect
with you? So I'm not Sober on Demand dot com,
the Addictions Academy dot com, the Addiction coach on line,
and then if you google calies this, I am all
over every social media platform you can find me. Pretty easy, fantastic.
Any last words of encouragement for the listeners, just keep trying.
(34:13):
If you don't succeed, get up, dust yourself off, and
do it again. Well, doctor Callie, thank you again for
reminding us that life's possibilities are truly limitless. I look
forward to seeing the incredible impact you'll continue to make.
I want to with you and your family nothing but
blessings and abundance. Please take care. Bye.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Doctor Kelly asked this.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Everyone be sure to join me next time for more
uplifting stories and insights on resilience. Until then, keep pushing forward,
embrace the journey, and remember that every setback can lead
to a greater comeback.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Doctor Rowe signing off, it hadn't think
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