and but it's recovery first so we focus on you know the twelve steps and going to meetings and sponsorship and things like the literal lot of the literature that's very important like the big book things like how long have you been doing it i've been sober since july seventh so what made you to go into into that i was i used to do it before and then i got caught up in a lot of pretty good stuff i became a loan officer in two thousand and two started doing some real estate few years later very successful and then i started to do a lot of video production and that was really successful you know we made it to some major networks with some of the work that that i did but i you know i've always  what's most important to you in life so my confidence what's most important to me in life now and it's this is always changed though but the thing that's the most important thing in my life is success to me is peace and serenity you know because you know i've chased money before and i've had success and you know i've chased girls you name it anything to kind of fill that void that i've always had him and myself and nothing ever works in my work for a little bit so and you know it's like in our literature you have this saying it's it says you know god will provide everything we need if we stay close to him and perform his work well and that to me a way for when i stand one with god and i'm performing god's work well like helping other people later i would say you know get some sort of a higher power a god of whatever you can believe in something that's bigger than yourself whenever the only reason i can talk to you about this now is because for so long i didn't do that or i'd go back and forth i do it a little then i would stop every time i got some sort of physical financial success some type of success an external successes i all would like automatically stop reaching out to a higher power i would automatically stop caring about helping people and that success would last a little bit and then it would always for it would always drop like my life would fall off a cliff every time so i would say you know find a higher power of god if you're on the stand in and stay with that higher power stay with god always talk to god all day long throughout the day morning night everything in between and my main focus is to see you know i ask god every day and i'm not a religious person so it's not a religious god it's just my the creator of everything that a has been and ever will be and i just ask god you know to put people in my life so i can help them show me how to put other people's needs ahead of my own and when i do that god provides that that opportunity for me every single day and when these houses that i manage now it's a bit a blessing because i'm making i do i get to do service work every seven service work every day of the week seven days a week all day long when i leave here i got to go help somebody move into one of my houses and take them to get some of the things that he needs for his life i do that every single day seven days a week and it was shot that successful to me you don't get rich doing this type of work but i've learned not to chase money you know chase money or chase external things i have to chase god and living a life of service and that makes me successful ok now you know you see something very interesting besides besides you know like you know higher power you know like god assignation what is know that for me that's what i have to do in order to have any type of happy life but my purpose is to fall in love with myself and i wrote that down i say that every morning so it's almost like a mantra you know like you said people change money or they get success and wealth and things like that and sometimes they keep it sometimes they don't but if i love myself because i never love myself i lived in a house there was no love and it was always you know chaos and so i grew up just not loving myself so i don't know but if i if i when we love ourselves we do things for ourselves in a loving way so we can sustain whatever it is that we get you know you just mentioned you just assumptive very still that we could do to keep loving ourselves if i want to love myself i have to love others if i can't love myself then i have to for me to love myself i have to love you so i have to put your needs ahead of my own and do for you and help as many people on this planet that i can many just in the entire planet i'm in service so if i make service first you know forget about mind a little wants and needs and we focus on helping you get yours alan turns out to feel good about myself have a kind of phone we have shows we watch on t v in media and you know we get especially the younger generation some of them come into the houses and into the recovery room that i that i belong to and it's very hard to break them from it's an addiction it's addictions to those things right and so the only thing i can do is share my experience my strength my hope with somebody i could just share what i've been through chasing those same things and what it got me  and that's all i that's all you can do i mean you can just you can talk to people you could tell them not until somebody is ready will they change and the biggest the biggest waste of biggest reason people change pain so if i'm in enough pain then i become willing to do things that i wasn't willing to do a little a little while ago the pain pain is what will because you know think about it if you have a pants on your butt your belt still too tight and it's causing pain eventually you're going to loose in that regard are you know the door to time but so you know you have to people have to go through they have to go on a journey while i when they when they get enough pain there be maybe they'll be willing to change and they may remember something you told them years before about your story and about how you had to go through that pain and what your life used to be like and how it's different today because of the pain that i went through so when they go through that pain they can identify finally with what you were saying and then maybe they'll be more able to change a few things wow you blew my mind seriously now you know it's not easy to stay focused on i mean these days of social media you know a lot of people who fly you out of bars a lot of people just mind their business d when technology more merges with capitalism well making money then i think it gets taken over board you know it's good to be able to talk to people around the world when necessary you know reach people  but what are they looking at on their smart devices you know it's not really it's not all beneficial and it's all kind of paper thin it's just the characters and soundbites and short blurbs and they base opinions formed on those things and that's it just they just seem to do brilliant whoever's in charge of whomever the master of all that stuff seems to do a pretty good job at being able to separate us into into categories like data you know and you know i believe in this you believe in that and we stay separated and we have a phone facing off own so much that we miss what's going on in life around us a lot i found myself doing that sometimes so i get busy with my phone and when i have a spare second i want to look at my phone to look at my social media you know so i mean i get that too but i'm forty two years old so i grew up in a time before cell phones and beepers and there was no cable and we had landline phones and you know we got to go we went outside and played and that was our internet you know we went outside and we played baseball football basketball whatever and when it got dark you went inside and you know i think now sometimes like how did we how did we meet up with friends because we don't have cell phones and stuff but we knew we found the way we were called the houses or we would meet up at a certain place they usually over the place and we'd go and we there was more humanity i think in the olden days than there is now it's more technologically based so i don't know that one on one kind of communication is to first that kind of relationship you mean your neighbors you know in what is happening your neighborhood and all those things so it kind of take that away and it's something that we need to find a way to bring back because i'm so passionate about based on the challenges you went through you know what i mean is that you never really had a mentor or there were no not enough information as to how you can get people like mentors or coaches that you  to and i just when it comes to mentor a grown up i don't think i've ever had a mentor but you know once i got you know clean and sober in two thousand and two in our program you would call a mentor in th program like a sponsor would be the same thing they have had a few mentors and it's very important you know hear what they have to say and it's all based on their experience you know in a bit it's unbelievably important to have a mentor when the students are ready to teach are always appears correct and that's what has happened to me and that's what happened to me again not their longer their you just which is something very striking i think it's also a very good opportunity for people to listen in terms of how can we make sure that it's you know what a lot of people say don't give up don't give up you are not just easily say that more so says something like well i mean i can only speak without my experience so that's all i can do but whenever and i've been in that place that you're talking about a billion times in the past fifteen and a half years since i've been sober clean and sober you know what dolly thing that ever really works for me is when i make the recovery program and i'm in a twelve step program i make that number one of my life that's number one and part of that program is you know you know turning my life over to a god of my understanding a higher power of mind the stand them so when somebody is you know stuck and they you know they can't move forward you know i  i turn myself over to god as a god direct me guide me show me what it is you want me to do use me however you want people in my life so i can help them help me to put other people's needs ahead of my own show me how to radiate love give and receive love because that was something i never had but also a big thing too is when when you know you know you're on a mission to do you want to do something this has happened to me before too it's going to turn into a recovery doors you just were not opening  so i believe that they're not supposed to open yet because like sometimes when when you're praying on a situation and it's not changing you know god's using that situation to change you so i'm the one who has to change before that door can open there's certain things about me that i'm not qualified to do to open that door but when i make those changes in myself i can open up that door and i'll be qualified to be able to hand the what's beyond that door so sometimes it's best to just stop everything don't do anything nothing's working stop don't don't you know i don't bash my head against a door just stop i stop knocking and i let time go past and then usually an opportunity you know you get the right answers inside yourself in the right opportunities come to further you along and at the end it might not be behind the door that you're banging on an opportunity that's best for you might be somewhere else but you're so well i'm so focused on this door opening in this opportunity that i'm not thinking about anything else when really my success of my opportunities lies somewhere else so i have to stop trying to get the success over there stop everything don't do anything maybe even pray about it you know god what is it that you are going to do i'm willing you will be done not mine and stop and then when you're ready that opportunity oh come  streets raise you then you kind of going to do with the streets tell you to do you know i was lucky because we we moved out of there i was like i was a live in years old and we moved my mother got remarried and we moved to north jersey which was kind of the same but a little bit better the only answer i have for anything to be honest with you is just to get over a personal close relationship with a god of your own the standing the creator of everything that is ever has been and ever will be i sound like a broken record i know no no in those two three years to get out of we did it and later here's what i can tell you for fact ok i don't i don't know about what you're talking about as far as physically what it is that a person can do that's not my expertise and there is no expertise there's nothing anybody can say some things might sound good some things won't but what i can guarantee you is that if you have if you don't have a dollar in your pocket your family's broke you live in a gang and drug infested neighborhood anywhere in this world there's one thing that'll always america you know when i do anything that they can't make money in urban america now people in urban america usually don't have money to donate to political campaigns for paul tensions aren't so much worried about that population that i don't care if long as the property values get low  often the people with money can buy them up and create a new or a status for people to live in then they'll fix the schools you know places like trenton new jersey you know the number one reason why train is the way it is is one it's one reason it's poverty it's a it's an impoverished town you know ninety percent of it is impoverished the schools are in proverbs to neighbors the streets the roads i used to live in front for a very long time and i didn't realize how important the visuals were because i'm just living in a new when you're seeing like these old buildings in a lot of them are boarded up and you see the same people in the streets all the time that you know she did people dealing drugs and people who are addicted in prostitution and pot holes the size of this table in a house is a fall apart and you don't have a strong family structure at home and again the schools are terrible what are you supposed to do best be honest there's nothing that you can really do the one thing you can do is in some kids do this as they have a faith and a god whatever god they believe in it doesn't matter but they have a faith and that's the thing that carries them through those situations and they're able to make it out of whatever it is at their end as having a faith that there's something higher than you that's looking out for you and that if you connect to that power you make it through anything how important is  just in jersey but urban america in itself there's a million churches around trenton there's churches everywhere and church does form or it does have a place and it does well for some people you know  but the thing i don't really like so much about the church is that you know you have to become more like the people in the church in order to i guess give you hope to have an effect on the church you know they stay preach to the choir a little too much then you know don't tell me about your religion show me your religion and don't tell me about it show me let me see what you do because there are so many churches in a place like trend that we should and the murders that are happening that happened happened right around the churches so doesn't mean anything to most people they need to come outside the church and not with the church people and go in you know to ask the people in these neighborhoods what can i do to help you how can i help you show me the love don't tell me about it show it to me that's what i would bet safin from talking about churches that's probably what i would do get out of the pulpit take the suit and tie off because a lot of these guys and girls i don't have suits and ties and they don't want to wear them and then that into what you're into that doesn't mean you turn your back on them and don't try to help them show them who you are supposed to be and who you supposed to worship and they'll come kinda reminds you blew my mind trust me you made you sora lawson and we got to the point so we're coming to the end of th