Great Escape Podcast episode 25 - Eric Simms - Loser to Leader

- [Stuart] This is the Great Escape Podcast. Episode 25.

- [Announcer] We are going for liftoff in T minus 30. All systems are a go. Hit it.

- [Stuart] And on this episode, I'm taking to Eric Sims, who, well basically starts his bio with drug smuggler. So Eric, welcome to the podcast.

- [Eric] Hey, thanks for having me, I appreciate it. Good to be here.

- [Stuart] You're very welcome. So, obviously, with an intro like that, there's gotta be an interesting story behind it. Tell us a bit about your life before you made the changes that got you to where you are.

- [Eric] Yeah, kind of the short version is I grew up in a middle class, you know, white family in Texas. And, you know, it's kind of traditional Southern Baptist Christian kind of upbringing that you get in the area. And I was never one that really took to it real well. Early on in my life, I found out that being, one, I was extremely insecure at a young age. And so I found very quickly that I could, you know, kind of control or get attention or do things by being the bad guy, you know, and getting in trouble. And as a kid, it was just little stuff, you know, but that's where it all started. And by the time I was in high school and getting into my late teens, I had already started exploring alcohol and drugs pretty heavily from a usage standpoint and even some incidental selling of drugs here and there and things like that to pay for my own drug use and partying and things like that. So, at that point in time it was just all kind of out of adolescent fun in my mind. It wasn't anything really malicious. It was just something where, hey, I kind of fell into some stuff and then alcohol and drugs gave me that feeling that I could be myself I guess I thought at that point in time, so that was where it kind of originated in the early teens.

- [Stuart] I think for a lot of people that is where it starts and for similar reasons. It's either pain relief, escapism.

- [Eric] Yeah.

- [Stuart] Or it's that sense of control.

- [Eric] Yep. And then I think the big turning point for me after, and I was already getting in trouble and being that kind of idiot kid throughout school. I was a terrible student and learned that I was a fairly attractive kid, so I think I manipulated things 'cause I looked a little kind preppy good boy part, but I wasn't. So I used that to manipulate my way through school and things like that. But by the time I got to my early 20s, age 21, my father committed suicide. And that was a point where everything changed for me, for like a mentality standpoint, a motive standpoint, intention standpoint with everything. And then the drugs and alcohol usage shot up heavily at that point in time because it went from what I would call lightly medicating myself to heavily medicating myself on a regular basis. I wasn't aware that that's what I was doing, but that's what I was doing at the time. That was a very, very pivotal turning point in my early 20s.

- [Stuart] And when did you kind of wake up and realize that this had got to change?

- Yeah, so all of my 20s was spent being a complete idiot. Once my dad died, I like I said, things switched in my head and my new mission was to really just kind, in my mind, my dad had done everything the right way in my mind. He was a good guy, church going guy, deacon at the church and I looked at it and said, well, look what that got him. It got him broke, it got him depressed and it got him dead. So, I'm not gonna follow that route. I'm gonna take what I want and I'll do it my way and to hell with everybody else in the process. And so when I made that call, I didn't really know what that meant. I'd always fantasized about being on the other side of the law. Law of attraction got myself, I think I pulled that towards me maybe. By the time I was 24, I found myself involved with a group of people that were in the drug business, for real. This wasn't like selling stuff on the corner, handing off little bags of weed somewhere. This was distributing and transporting large amounts of drugs all over the continental United States and so all of a sudden I went, and that's when I found cocaine. I had never tried cocaine before, so it was like that took the next step up for me and so that coupled with all the influx of money and the destructive mindset was very bad for the remainder of my 20s. So, to not camp out there too long, it just ended up with a lot of drug use, everything that goes along with that, all the crap that goes along with it. Further loss of my identity into these egos that I created and then a divorce, because I had gotten married at one point in time and had a little girl and finally at age 33, some stuff had happened with the drug business. I had lost everything, I'd burned through all my money because I had such a heavy addiction that at 33, my then ex-wife, I prefer to call her the mother of my daughter now. I don't like calling her my ex-wife. It doesn't sound friendly. 'Cause we are friends. But at 33, she was moving to Florida, which is where I am now and I wanted to try that geographical relocation cure that you hear about where if you just move, things get better and all your problems stay where you were.

- [Stuart] Yep. I've seen it work.

- Yeah, sometimes it works. For me, I landed in Florida and the problem was still there. It wasn't as intense because I was able to leave a lot of the cocaine use back, and the crime, but the alcohol was daily, all day medication for me. And then without having any resources, I very quickly found myself in trouble. And I didn't have anything to pull me out of trouble here, so, I got arrested for a DUI, which is in the U.S. is driving under the influence, I don't know what they call it overseas. Yeah, driving under the influence. I ended up with an assault charge, which was felony conviction on me on that. So, I ended up very quickly, I was looking to going to prison for five years. And so all of a sudden, here's this middle class white boy who had always been able to hustle his way out of everything, right, stuck in Seablock in St. Pete, Florida looking at five years up the road.

- [Stuart] Yeah.

- [Eric] And so that was my moment of truth was at that point in time. I looked at things and said I don't want to be like this anymore. I don't even know what's gonna happen next, but I don't want to be like this.

- [Stuart] Okay, and so in a very real sense, kind of the moment of decision was forced upon you.

- [Eric] Yeah, it was an environmental forcing. It was one of those things that rattled my cage. It took a big shaking, right, but some people it might be a speeding ticket. For me, it was the utter destruction of everything other than my own breathing. I'd lost everything else and I actually attempted that, too. But I had lost all my money, all my friends, all my family, everything and I'm looking at long-term incarceration. That was what hit me hard enough to say holy shit, like there's something wrong with you, dude. It's not everybody else, it's you.

- [Stuart] It easier, yeah, you brought this with you.

- [Eric] Yeah.

- [Stuart] And at that point you probably hadn't worked out what it was that needed to change, but you knew that something had to change.

- [Eric] Yeah. I knew that I needed, I knew that I needed to change. I didn't know in what capacity and all of what needed to take place. I just knew at that point in time, I have to start making changes and I need to move in a different direction.

- [Stuart] And what happened that made you actually thought, no, I can't do this, this has gotta happen?

- [Eric] You know, I went to an AA meeting inside jail. I had been to an AA meeting. It was one that was like court ordered and you sit in the back and some dude signed a piece of paper and get the hell out of there as fast as you can. So I don't think I even heard what was going on, but this was the first one I actually sat in and paid attention. And it was hearing other people talk about recovery and talk about their addiction in a way that I related to. One, I had lived my entire life thinking I was uniquely broken and that there was nobody that could understand me or relate to me because of that unique brokenness. And so that shattered that delusion in that moment. I was like wait a minute, there's other people out there who not only have been like me, have made it to the other side of this. And so that was, for me it sparked some hope, so I was like okay, what did they do? Like that was the question in my mind, like what did they do and how did they do it and what do I need to do to get that.

- [Stuart] Okay, and having heard that and deciding what is it they did, how did you then come up with what it was you needed to do?

- [Eric] Yeah, at first it was a combination of, I mentioned before I came from a Christian background, so I was familiar with Christianity in a sense that was not attractive to me, but being locked up you normally get a couple of free books. One of them's a Bible and the other one's an AA book if you request it. So, again, in that position, I just took that as an indicator. At that point I had opened myself to something that there's maybe a power greater out there than myself and I was like, well, it's just odd to me that I've got these two books. It's the only two books I've got. At this point in time, and I'm looking for direction and they have directions in them. Right, so I started real simply, just reading and writing and journaling and taking notes and trying to apply what I was learning in the environment I was in, right. And one of the things that always sticks out to me is like I had been such a selfish asshole for decades. The act of sharing or caring was so foreign to me. That was something I implemented earlier because I read in both things, like help others, read in the Bible. I was reading through that 'cause I was like hey, there's some nice things in here about sharing and helping and being kind. So I was like I can get into that. So it was like sharing food. Right, like there's not a lot of food in there. Or helping guys that couldn't read and write, write. I was one of the more highly educated people in the room, so there were people who couldn't even read their mail that their family sent to them. So being able to help somebody write a letter back to their mom or dad and tell them what's going on. And then what made me realize, hey, this shit works was all of a sudden when I would do something little like that, like give somebody a pack of cookies or whatever, I felt amazing. More amazing than I ever felt getting high or drunk or anything like that. And so I was like hold on a second, so there's something to all this. There's the proof I was looking for that if I just do simple things, good things can happen. And as I started implementing more and more of those things, I just started seeing more and more remarkable things happen. Like just different books I would need to read would show up whether they were on psychology or whether they were on behavior and self-talk and things like that. It would just to happen that it would be on the book cart and it would come around that week, and so I would read that and write and implement and talk and keep going to meetings. In the court process, I saw some really remarkable things happen that I had no control over and that was new to me, too. This forced me to relinquish control and I had to very quickly teach myself how to control my thoughts because I could very easily drive myself crazy with the intensity of conversation that was going on around what's gonna happen to me next because I didn't know when I was going to court, if I was going to court and if I was, where I was going after that. So, if I didn't control really quickly early on and learn that, I would have driven myself crazy in the first 30 days I was there.

- [Stuart] Okay, so, can I ask how long you were there until court happened?

- [Eric[Yeah, I was there for 90 days, which was like I always call it my 90-day starter program. And then I was fortunate, that's when I got into court where I supposed to get sentenced to prison. I had a few people that had meaningful says in my life at that specific trial that came in and spoke positively of an opportunity to position me to go to a drug treatment center instead of prison. And so, and I requested that, too. And the conversation I had with the judge and the thing that went on they, fortunately gave me that path instead of the other one, so I was able to go to a six-month in-house court ordered treatment center here in Tampa. So I was able to just expand that process and keep working on myself over the following six months and then start adding stuff into it. Right, as you learn, for me it was like really constrictive at first. I was in jail, then I get in here and I get a little more freedom, a little more responsibility in things I've gotta do, a little more learning. And at a certain point in that program, you gotta get a job. So then you gotta get up and that was a whole nother deal for me. Hell, I didn't know what I was gonna get. My expectation of my first job in there was gonna be like I was gonna go out, dig a hole and at the end of the day, they'd tell me to fill it back up and then come back the next day and dig the same hole again. I didn't know if it was gonna be anything other than minimum wage and I was willing to do that. I was fortunate enough to find a job in a contact center, which gave me the ability to work inside in the air conditioning and leverage something that I had done previously, which was sales. But it was entry level, like I hadn't done that since I was 16. So that was big dose of humble pie, but it was good for me at the same time because it was all I could handle. That was going to work every day and then turning around and dealing with the circumstances and people and environments and conflict and all that and having to come back and evaluate and deal with that and how do I deal with this stuff in a new way. 'Cause the old way was just bulldoze, quit, manipulate, whatever it was.

- [Stuart] And that's actually what you say about being in sales, I have spoken to many people who have been on drugs and dealing and yeah, every single one of them can sell.

- [Eric] Yeah.

- [Stuart] 'Cause that's what you did.

- [Eric] Yeah, and I had some legitimate sales jobs and I think what was interesting about it for me was all the sales I had always done involved manipulation, right. And so then I'm like all right, I'm going into sales, but I've got to learn a new way to do sales because I'm working on a program that's built on vigorous honesty, so I can't compromise my vigorous honesty in my recovery to get a sale. And then, I didn't know where that would go. I did understand and believe one time of doing that today might not do anything to me, but a month of doing it every day on 50 phone calls a day creates a mental habit that could be very destructive in another area of my life. So I had to approach sales totally different and learn how to do that with manipulation and being honest with people and having really authentic conversations and being okay with being rejected which was whole nother problem I had. Growing up, I had this huge fear of rejection, so now I'm in sales getting rejected 49 times a day. So I'm like shit, this is another part of my boot camp. Like this is literally the universe teaching me how to deal with what I've always refused to deal with in a short period of time, right? And it was tough. It wasn't easy.

- [Stuart] No, absolutely.

- [Eric] Yeah, I was just part of the process and it helped me immensely.

- [Stuart] Now what's fascinating me is that the strength have tacked, something has obviously flipped inside your head that said if I don't do this, well not doing this is not an option. I have to do this and I'm wondering where that decision came from.

- [Eric] I've always been kind of laser beam focused on stuff when I get pointed in a direction and so for me I would just tell people, I was like pointed to the left and I just somehow something or I turned myself or a combination thereof, turned me in a different direction and it was a matter of staying focused in that direction and I haven't been perfect by any means. I think the awareness that I had and I try to keep still today is that that entire life I had before was not by coincidence. It was by intentional decision making that I made followed by repetitive behaviors and habits, right? And so I know if I can create that, if I can create that much destruction, using poor habits and poor this and terrible mindsets, if I just create good habits and good mindsets, pointed in the right direction, I can create just as many positive outcomes in my life as I did negative. And so that's been my chase ever since then was just like how do I keep expanding the positivity, the growth, the clarity, the awareness and how do I deliver that on a regular basis for my own self and then how does that transition into connectivity with other people, right, and collaboration and contribution to other people.

- [Stuart] And so during that time in rehab, was that a time when you were able to build a plan to what life was gonna look like outside or did that happen once you'd left rehab?

- [Eric] I think it started even before that. It wasn't intentional at first. Like I said, I wasn't like in mind I was like here's the plan. Because I didn't really know what the hell was going on. But when I looked back in retrospect, a lot of what's taken place is what I was focused on at that point in time. So, I had a vision of what I quote prayed or hoped or wanted things to be like for everybody, but for the first time it wasn't a self-motivated selfish vision. I think that was the big transition for me. I spent an enormous amount of time envisioning a future and backing into what needed to take place for that that involved all the people around me being extremely successful and happy. And somehow I knew that if that happened, I would be involved and be able to contribute to that in some capacity. And so that was how it started out. It started out just with simple stuff like meditation and prayer and envisionment of, like I'll give you an example. My daughter's mom, I used to just sit for long periods of time and envision her being remarried and happy, successful, doing a career she loves, my daughter being happy and all of us being friends. So, once I got a clear vision of that, all the behavior that needed to go in place to make that vision happen started to formulate.

- [Stuart] And you bring up actually a scene that's been in the last few episodes of the podcast, is that our minds get set into kind of railroad tracks, the habitual behaviors that we have and actually retraining our minds to go down different railroad tracks can be incredibly powerful, but it has to be something we choose to do. It doesn't just happen.

- [Eric] Yep, it has to be calculated. You know and that was one of the things. I did a lot of evaluation on my self talk. Like I said, when I was first early on, I had to because I was driving myself crazy with the unknown factor and what was gonna happen, so I just tried to reformulate that each time and stay kind of acutely in touch with what am I saying to myself and over the years, I've been able to describe that differently and look at it a little bit differently, but in essence, it's the same practice of just is what I'm saying loving to me. Like how I would say it now, right. And is it making me feel good and is it authentic and true, too, 'cause it can't be delusional at the same time. And so then it was, you're right, habitually, and for me it was, I started out, I wrote a lot of stuff, almost like a kid at a chalkboard. I had to write stuff down every day numerous times while I was in treatment and in jail and even after that. It was years of progressively staying on top of that thought process, like I'm a big fan of Dr. Joe Dispenza, but it's that rewiring and refiring of those synapsis in your brain. And getting that stuff to work differently and so it progressively got better, but you're absolutely right. It was a calculated process that you have to pay attention to.

- [Stuart] Yeah, and that's something I talk about in the "Six Steps to Freedom," is that you have to deliberately go down this road. It isn't gonna happen by accident because you've got to this point because your brain has done the things it's done.

- [Eric] Yep.

- [Stuart] Now, you have to change something. Once you got out of rehab, obviously, were you able to keep the job or did you have to find a new job and somewhere to live?

- [Eric] Yeah, I, well living was one thing. I was making like $12 an hour, right. And in Florida, that's not a ton of money. So I kept the same job. One of the things they told me when I left was try not to change too much because enough is changing already with you moving, right. So, I had no driver's license because of the DUI, I was still on a suspended license, I couldn't drive anywhere. So I ended up renting like a closet is what I call it. It was a boarded off little piece of a house that these people would rent me for like 150 bucks that was in walking distance of the call center I was working at. And so that's what I did. I went there. I didn't move back, the girl I was dating when I went in actually stuck around, she's now my wife. But she was still living in her place, I didn't want to move back in with her because that's what I had done before. Girls were always a part of my formula. So I was like I need to be on my own. So, I'd walk to work every day. Did through that challenge, right, of just being totally, totally different, making very little money, paying my own way. I was fortunate enough, I ended up staying with that company for 11 years or 10 years and learned that industry inside and out. But it was every step of the way I had to fail and succeed and learn and grow and expand. There were times I was real asshole and screwed it up big time and there were times I was a major success. I would go back and evaluate what's the difference. Why was this so different than this? I'm in the same environment with the same people and it always came back to my mindset and my approach and my self-talk, right. It was just that spatial stuff. And so I kept doing that. I also was at that time in my life, was heavily into the religious side of my recovery and so I was very involved with a church that was there. I started a recovery ministry at that church and ended up being a pastor there for a little while for about five or six years. And learned a lot. Again, I also had a mentor. That was one of the big things when I got out was I needed, I had a sponsor, but I also wanted a life mentor that understood what I wanted in life when you were talking about setting those goals and setting those expectations. I learned in recovery, like I mentioned before, I would find people that I knew had something I wanted. They already had it, they possessed it and they already earned it and so I did that when I got out. I wanted to have a family. I wanted to have a successful life. I wanted to be a good dad and a good husband. And so this man, David Towner, who was the pastor of the church I was attending was that to me. He was like good guy and he was cool, really smart, got it, but he was also a phenomenal husband and a great dad. And so I just like followed him around and I let him speak into my life for a long time and coach me and mentor me. And I learned an enormous, I would not be the guy I am today if it had not been for him. And I say that saying like I think I'm a pretty good guy today and that's not being egotistical. I know what a shit head I was before.

- [Stuart] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you bring up something there which we see all the time is if the five people we spend most of our time with are overweight and smoke and unhealthy, then we are likely to be overweight, smoke and unhealthy. If we get alongside or hang around people who have got their shit together, if they're the kind of people we're trying to become, then our behaviors tend to move towards the way they behave. But also, in a way you're taking that next forward. You said I'm gonna look to this guy or this person to be my mentor. I'm gonna consciously try and mimic the best of their behaviors.

- [Eric] Yeah. I had somebody tell me something one time along the way and it really stuck with me as like there's two ways you can learn in life, mentors or mistakes. And I had been a mistake learner most of my life. And mistake learning's fine, but it's very painful.

- [Stuart] And slow.

- [Eric] And slow, right, and so I was like mentor learning is like I get to take everything he's learned and fail, success, everything and it's condensed down in this nice little bite-sized thing and he can hand it to me. He can hand me 10 years in an hour. And so with Dave and some of the sponsors I had in the recovery side of things, it was a phenomenal schooling in life for me. I got a first rate education, first rate, not first grade, first rate.

- [Stuart] And you've taken all of that, okay life isn't perfect. There will always be those moments where something goes wrong or you make a bad decision 'cause we're all human beings and stuff happens. Tell us what like is like now. What do you do, what's the next step?

- [Eric] So I really, I just made a major change in my life in May of this year. So I had stayed with that one company for 10 years. We ran its course, I'd done everything for them I could. We all shook hands, stayed friends and I went to work for another company in the industry, which was another learning experience. It was the opposite. The other one I'd come out of was almost like family, this one was awful. It was like a toxic environment, very negative. And I stayed in that for about 18 months and it gave me another perspective. I learned a lot from a business standpoint, but it gave me a very good perspective on what I wanted to do. And then when that ended, I had always, once I left the church, I started this little kind of coaching practice that I'd done on the side where I did some consulting, I did some personal coaching. But I never really said this is what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna make it part of my life. And the other thing was I'd always been hesitant to start my own business again because I had this major fear because my dad was an entrepreneur that somehow I would repeat his mistakes and fail as a father and husband and all that. And to it became very clear that that was not a good reason to move forward in life. And so in May I went ahead and went on my own, so I opened my own call center. I understand that industry, I've been doing it for about 15 years and I'm also still doing the coaching and pushing that and doing the coaching and consulting. So I'm now a dad of four. I've got one kid in college and the other three are in elementary school. They're at all ends of the spectrum, but everybody's good and happy and healthy. I'm happily married. My ex-wife, my daughter's mom is happily married, very successful psychotherapist now. All those things, and I'm not saying I did it 'cause I envisioned it, but all those dreams I had for her have come true. And it's very exciting for me to see her live such a wonderful happy life and be friends with her. I have an amazing wife. You know, and then you get all the challenges that come along with that. Navigating blended families and teenagers with little kids. My wife started her own business a year ago so we're some wacky crew where we've started three companies in a year and a half and somehow are trying to support our family doing that. All of that is a culmination of all the work we've all done over the last 11, 12 years to get us in a position where we're even adequately prepared to take that challenge on and take that next expansion of capacity for us and do it in a way that's functional and healthy.

- [Stuart] And fun.

- [Eric] And fun, yeah.

- [Stuart] There's no point in starting your own business if you're then driving yourself into the ground and stressed.

- [Eric] No, and that's what would've happened if I'd have done it any earlier in my life. I would have been not in a space to handle it and take things on as they come and be okay with it. I didn't, recovery was really great. I would say I was 10 years into and I'm 12-1/2 years into my recovery now, just to kind of give you a point of reference, I was 10 years into a successful recovery before I actually fell in love with myself. And at that point in time was when I really started feeling like I had something to offer and be empowerful in my position each day. So the last couple of years have been very exciting and fun.

- [Stuart] And that's a really interesting point of honesty is actually that change has taken a huge amount of time to settle in your own mind so that you're okay with you.

- [Eric] Yep. Yeah, and again, it's a gradual awareness, right. It's like people always refer to it like peeling an onion or whatever it may be. You can't take it all in at once, but that was, there was lot of functionality that came back and there's still a lot. But getting into a place where I finally can be okay with who I am, what I am, where I am and at any point in time is such a relief. You know, it's such a great space to be in so that's part of what I've tried to package up in some of coaching and stuff, too, so that's what I want everyone to experience at some point in time. It takes a while, it takes work, it takes effort, it takes dedication, but people can experience that love and peace and happiness that's out there or really in there.

- [Stuart] Yeah, I definitely echo that. There are similarities in our stories and I ended up only in the relatively recent years actually been able to look at the guy in the mirror while I'm shaving in the morning and think I'm okay with who you are. It's nice to get to that point.

- [Eric] It's a good feeling, isn't it?

- [Stuart] Yeah. Rather than run away from who that person is. So, we'll put details of your coaching and the call center if you want in the show notes.

- [Eric] Oh, great.

- [Stuart] So people can get a hold of you.

- [Eric] Awesome, thank you.

- [Stuart] And thank you so much for your story. It's really lovely to have a story of somebody who really has struggled through life and is making it and it's not without its challenges, but we'd be crazy to assume that anybody was out there without any challenges. And there was the sounds of children in the background earlier.

- [Eric] My wife does Survival Swim for Infants. That's what I was telling her earlier. You can't open the door--

- [Stuart] Just chuck them in the pool.

- [Eric] 'Cause it sounds like she's killing kids in the backyard, but she's not. There's always kids, like I said I have three little ones. There's always anywhere between three to 10 kids in this house. Like I said, they're at school right now, so it's a little more quiet. It's cool. That was another adjustment, you know talking about adjustments, that was another big adjustment, coming home from being in an office for 12 years and having like normal business day to your business day being all over the map and in the middle of it, you've got to go get juice boxes and break up fights and things like that.

- [Stuart] Yeah, and I'm trying to have a phone call and there's a child screaming.

- [Eric] I'm on a conference call.

- [Stuart] We've all been there, it's all been fun. Mine are grown up, but I remember that survival swimming. There's a story about my youngest, he's now 21, which I won't tell on the podcast. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Great Escape Podcast. You can find other episodes at all the usual places on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify or at the website greatescapepodcast.com/episodes and if you'd like to contact me to talk about any element of this episode or others we've covered, please go to greatescapepodcast.com/contact and you can find all the ways of getting hold of me there. And if you're stuck in a situation and you can't find a way out, please go there, send me a message and let's see how we can work together to get you unstuck and moving forward with your life again. Please do share this podcast with your friends and family, other people you think might appreciate it and comment on episodes or send me a message. I'd love to keep the conversation going.

Eric's bio and contact details:

Eric Sims is the founder of Sims Coaching & Consulting. A revolutionary Change & Growth Facilitation practice that empowers individuals and organizations to discover, design and deliver high levels of success and happiness on demand. He is also the CoFounder and President of Leading Edge Connections, LLC. a full-service virtual Contact Center Solutions company built for the NOW & designed to redefine the business experience.