Episode 135
The Power of Purpose: Redefining Recovery and Impact with Amanda Koplin

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Description

In this episode, Chris welcomes Amanda Koplin, Founder and CEO of Koplin Consulting, to the show to engage in a spirited conversation! From hearing Amanda’s powerful journey leading her to work today to grow that passion into a mental health social enterprise, Chris and Amanda look further into needed areas of strength and support throughout recovery. Thank you, Amanda, for your “if not me, then who” approach and for sharing your knowledge as well as Koplin Consulting; for more information, check out Koplinconsulting.com.

Talking Points

1. 
   
2. Introduction to the episode (0:35)
   
3. Amanda’s story (2:55)
   
4. Environments connected to change (4:55)
   
5. Creating a life worth living (6:05)
   
6. Looking into self-esteem (7:01)
   
7. Relapse as a “norm” (8:50)
   
8. “If not me, then who…” (12:48)
   
9. Mental health social enterprise (14:40)
   
10. Success as a moral obligation (22:07)
    
11. Amanda’s “Why?” (25:18)
    
12. Final thoughts (27:20)
    
13. Koplinconsulting.com (27:50)
    

Quotes

People are sitting in the most vulnerable times in their life, and they are waiting for someone to reach in and say I’m here for you, and I’ll help you. . . Whether you think you are ready or not, I’ll sit with you and walk back into life with you”.

-Amanda Koplin, Koplin Consulting

Episode Transcripts

Episode -135- Transcripts

[Music] the mirror cracks you’re looking at this cracked image but you happen to believe that’s yourself instead of realizing the original image isn’t cracked it’s the reflection you’re looking in now you’re building self-esteem because good things and your value are reflected back to you whether you’re you think you’re ready or whether you’re not I’ll sit with you and I’ll walk back into life with you
[Music] hey everybody and welcome to another amazing exciting and you know of course enthusiastic episode of Finding Peaks your host Chris Burns president and founder Peaks recovery centers so grateful to be here today um and I know I say this often because I only bring on brilliant badasses that I truly love and enjoy to connect with but this human in particular um this was one of these situations where I went for a tour up in Vil at a great Treatment Center up there and I had the opportunity to sit down for a dinner and instantly I was connected to this human’s energy her purpose her Mission the way that she shows up and all weeks and she’s agreed to do the podcast with me I’ve been talking about Amanda copelan and Copeland consult things so without further Ado Amanda thank you for coming on the show so grateful to have you my friend thank you for having me this is awesome yeah absolutely absolutely I mean when I first met you I thought to myself authenticity right off the bat and and it was actually a dinner that I didn’t necessarily want to be at and the reason I didn’t want to be at the dinner it had nothing to do with the treatment providers had nothing to do with the people that were showing up in the room but it had a lot to do with what I thought was going to be more of the same which is people sitting around a table talking about things that don’t matter um excluding the things that do like the humans that sit in front of us each and every day so I look at it as a complete waste of time honestly I felt the I felt the exact same way the the crazy thing about that dinner is that by the time we were done everybody thought we were old friends I know yeah they’re like who are you I’m like we don’t even know each other but now we are friends you know we spend the whole dinner just talking to each other no there was like 12 other people there too yeah it was awesome you’re one of the people that I I like went home I told my wife about him like you gotta meet this person like she was she was awesome so I’m really grateful to have you on the show thanks for coming on Amanda’s actually working as we speak I’m so grateful that you carved out some time for us to just kind of let the viewers know um that there’s amazing humans out there doing just phenomenal work so I want to get into kind of my first question is like how did you get into this field I know you talk about it so eloquently on your website and that’s something I really want to affirm you for is not a lot of people have the courage to put their story on their website and how it informs the work that they do and I just think that takes a lot of Courage so I want to affirm you but also just kind of share with the viewers a little bit about what that experience was like so I had my own uh eating disorder when I was younger but my older sister she also struggled with an addiction alcohol and gambling and um so we all know that mental illness runs in families and there’s a genetic component um and so I would always say to myself that if my providers were there when I actually needed them my life would look a lot different I think whether you’re talking about alcohol and drugs Eating Disorders anything like it’s the moments that we battle ourselves that are the hardest moments to overcome and so I knew that uh I’m not such a unicorn and so special that if I’m the if I need that other people probably need that too um and then fast forward after grad school I did in home counseling for kids charged with felonies in Supreme Court in New York city so everybody involved with those kids you know the courts probation schools family everybody we were involved with them so I became very very Adept at learning how to work within systems and recognizing that parents and family they’re not just support people those are traumatized people who need somebody to come around them too and the fact is drowning people can’t save drowning people and yet we put this burden on family members just because they haven’t created a level of such dysfunction that they are forced into treatment and um we forget that they also have their own traumas and in capabilities where they need somebody to sit there and sympathize with them and say hey I’m here for you too and so you saw that throughout your own personal experience is is like really uh putting together a team uh multi-disciplinary approach if you will to serve um your process it just wasn’t available it was probably disconnected and so you started to see like I could have thrived instead of survived in a lot of different areas and that’s what Copeland Consulting has kind of stepped in and and been able to do in a really cool way right 100% I mean it’s the difference between someone coming to your environment and you going to theirs and they feel a lot more empowered in their own environments to tell you to f off or you know you get to see what things are actually like versus the way they present in an office and that’s where change could actually be made is within the system within the moment that is that is so unique and I had never really conceptualized that all the clients had come to us but what you’re bringing up for me is we used to have six to 12 months of programming for young adults in right around five months they would finally be home and and so it’s this really disconnected process where they can’t settle right it’s a primal issue can’t settle it’s foreign different people I got a roommate who snores it’s um I’m in fight ORF flight and so I’m in that same reactive traumatized situation that I was before I left and so it takes a long time and that’s why I always used to pitch to people this just takes time you know um to your point I think we we can not not hurry up that process but engage with it more presently I think the other thing that I’m really passionate about is creating a life worth living and I focus on purpose passion and community and I have this theory that when someone’s missing one or more of those things they default to eating disorders addiction depression anxiety and so a big part of our program is helping them Connect into purpose passion and Community as they are also overcoming the obstacles of their addiction the obstacles of their eating Disorder so that is a parallel process with both building the life to recover too and recovering that is that is so cool because what what we be what the treatment industry has become has let me disconnect you from Passion and purpose we’ll get to that later after you figure out this mental health thing when they’re all actually interconnected and actually can provide a lot of equinity for people to say like I know I’m working through this thing but I can also do this as well and connect those things and stand upright for sure and that’s the thing self-esteem is built on esteemable acts if you’re sitting there talking about self-esteem it’s not going to happen you’re not going to build it and looking at yourself in the mirror and saying I love myself when you don’t believe it makes you walk away feeling worse and like the whole thing’s [ __ ] but when you do things like hey let me be of service to someone else and you see how that’s reflected back to you or you show up to a job and someone says you know I want you to know I saw you do this extra thing and it was really cool now you’re building self-esteem because good things in your value are reflected back to you and you can’t do those things in the context of a bubble or if you can in little ways through volunteering um when you get home you don’t know where to restart yeah you bring up an amazing Point like it’s not it’s not to call stabilization taboo like that’s a very formidable step but once we get there and we move into to like this can all come together in a really really beautiful way that allows people who are dealing with shame to be seen valued and heard and I think that’s a really like unique thing which gosh it doesn’t feel like it should be but it feels like this really unique thing because even when I got well six when I got well 16 years ago and they sent me to Alcoholics Anonymous they said you are these things and you’ll never be that and it’s really really difficult to deal with especially at a young age like life sentences yeah of certain things and you speak so clearly to like hey let’s just take off of the take off those hard rigid edges and you have a quote on your website I don’t want to misquote it but a world where relapse is looked at differently or a world where relapse isn’t the the norm yeah yeah can you talk about that a little bit because when I saw that I was like I definitely want to bring that up I think I think we have this narrative about um you know well recovery isn’t linear and relapses are normal and I think okay yes and sometimes it’s easy to use that as an excuse to go backwards let me relap I already feel like relapsing I’m gonna relapse and then remind you that you told me it’s normal part of the deal you said multiple so I said I’m gonna sit in the excuse of that and let myself off the hook and um I think that the other piece it’s like people can’t figure it out in the context of their own environment you know there’s so many reasons and so when you’re working on recovery at home when you’re setting up systems at home and they’re sustainable systems there’s an easier congruence between like where you started with someone and what they have to maintain even after you’re gone and all they have to do is keep the ball rolling so I think that that it’s a m multifaceted type of answer it’s like okay from the environment you’re doing in also helping the system heal and also eliminating the excuse and say you can have multiple relapses be a part of your story you don’t need my permission to do that and if you want to avoid that you get that choice too yeah like you have autonomy in this potentially and you can move through it with some Grace and it brings up a point for me like I wonder if what if what if relapse wasn’t like this thing that happens because people get in this bad spot but what if it was
more my friend TJ Woodward who I love he he formulated a community- based resource called conscious recovery and he talks about he takes a terminology like maladaptive coping mechanisms and he refers to them as brilliant strategies right just to like lessen the pressure because when we have these mou adapted situations which oftentimes are relapse or behaviors or process or whatever it is I think calling it something different really kind of speaks life into why the freak it showed up in the first place yeah I was really struggling I was super young and it and I did this thing and it just it’s it’s killing me now and maybe if we can take a little bit of light off of the thing then to your point relapse doesn’t have to be such a part of it because we’ll realize that that brilliant strategy served us potentially and it’s not serving us anymore and we can it just feels a little bit cleaner you know yeah for sure and like the big question is maladaptive to who and in what context right because maladaptive is contextual yeah people are very creative in their ability to survive and I think recognizing that resilience is super important so that’s awesome that he talks about that yeah I really love the the approach that you take like with each client before the show we were talking about you know because you’re working right now and I asked you hey what’s the difference between you know you showing up on a job or you showing up with a human and walking with them in the early stages of their recovery and it’s a lot about trust and it’s a lot about orienting the family and it’s a lot about comfortability and um what are some of your favorite things even being the CEO and the founder like you know it’s it kind of reminds me like taking a smoothie and and just sitting down with client being like how are you what are some of your favorite things about because you still even was it eight years in six for which thing for your uh uh your coaching business oh we’re nine years in nine years in okay I eight or nine years nine years in you still carry a tremendous amount of passion to be somewhat of a technician yeah you know I I remember in school they were talking about like uh Martin Luther King when we were all really young and I did a book report on him in like fourth grade and uh I remember hearing his words and he said if not me then who if not now then when and I thought to myself if everybody carried that level of responsibility the world would change and so I really took that to heart from that moment on and asked myself you know okay what needs to be done and what’s my part in doing it and I think so many people are verbally ambitious and they talk about what the president needs to change what and like pting off responsibility to everybody but themselves and um whether it is being a personal uh coach with a family in their home and dropping everything because somebody called for help whether it’s uh stepping up to train a coach whether it’s running uh a multi-million dollar coaching business that’s a social Enterprise you know and taking on a scholarship client um it doesn’t matter to me like what the thing is it’s my passion for that personal ownership and creating the change and then holding everybody else to that same standard yeah that’s beautiful that’s entrepreneurial that’s managerial that’s technical that’s all of the things in there that really speak to like authenticity within a business model and you’re kind of leading that charge and I just love it because in so many ways what you just said disrupts the industry through quality of care for sure that’s one of our core values here um but we haven’t even touched on like how I really feel like you’re disrupting the industry I want to talk about and each person I talked about this with this week it’s the first time they’ve heard of it now I know you got it out of a book that you’ll speak clearly to um in that process but social Enterprise right you you’re you’re helping folks with complex case management which is really really difficult to do it’s a multifaceted approach takes a lot of resources you’re also doing this other thing too at the same time you please share that it’s beautiful yes so uh from the time I was 13 I started volunteering uh my first volunteer job was at a battered women and children shelter and so what I learned is that uh on average it takes women seven times to leave their abuser and it was devastating and um so my little volunteer job was you know babysitting their kids while they did job interviews counseling session you know like they’re not going to put a 13-year-old in charge of something big but I wanted to contribute and so um um in talking to some of the people that work there you know I would say why why is she going back I’d be devastated little 13-year-old me would just be devastated and um they would say well you know like this one doesn’t have money and it’s really scary to go out on your own without money or a resume where you can get a job or you know all these things and then fast forward I work in other nonprofits to uh you know just get jobs or experience or lure hours and each time it came down to money why can’t this kid get more services well this kid is robbing people because that’s the oldest male in a family the mom is on disability that doesn’t pay the bills the dad’s in jail what is he supposed to do can we just give him money and the crime could stop and so understanding how much money played a make or break role in people’s success um is the same thing like think about with mental health like how many people call and they’re on Medicaid how many people call and they don’t have insurance period um or the right insurance or Insurance cuts out yeah so uh I knew nonprofits weren’t the answer because I saw so many people lose grants and they were spread too thin that the money couldn’t make a sustainable difference and I read Blake mosi’s book about creating Tom shoes in the social Enterprise model of you know buy a pair give a pair and I thought that’s that’s what I need to do for mental health I need to create a Mental Health social Enterprise so that I could create more Equitable access to mental health care across the board and um like in addition to giving the free services if you think about a family on food stamps and like one of the kids has an eating disorder and now the rest of the family is looking at them like you purposefully lost weight you need to regain it by eating more we don’t the financial resources who’s not going to eat so that you could regain the weight and what does that do to your feelings about recovery so we buy all the supplements we door Dash meals to the family to practice meal outings we give them uh HB as one of the stores in um Texas but it’s a grocery store so we give them grocery store cards you know so that recovery doesn’t have to take away from the basic necessities of the rest of the family and that takes money yeah so it’s not just free services it’s meeting basic needs and we’re not going to help people get Equitable access even when we give them free services if we can’t also help meet their basic needs yeah wow that is so intentional and beautiful and well thought out is it is it is it every pair of shoes I don’t I want to say over pair of shoes but 50% of everything you bring how does it work on your side of things how do you know what to allocate to the social Enterprise is it 5050 all the way through or how do you do that uh you know that’s a great question I think um you know I heard Mother Teresa talk about giving so much it hurts and I think that it hasn’t been as formalized as I want it to be and every year we give more than we probably should but um you know whether it’s cutting out from my salary or cutting out from an additional thing that maybe I wanted to do with marketing it’s more important to meet people’s basic needs and and have faith that things will come around than it is to have an extra 10 grand an extra whatever in my pocket no I I love that I love that you’re speaking to this clearly and you’re going into community and I think you told me about the social Enterprise first before you even told me about the case management situation because you tend to carry a lot of passion for both but this is like the passion project side of things and um it really just speaks clearly to kind of your mission and vision and you know each and every day that you put that foot forward um you’re disrupting the industry through quality of care it really is unique and Brilliant and well- intended and we love connecting with that kind of energy at Peaks when I don’t know if I told you this maybe I did but when we opened the women’s program Serenity Peaks back in 2015 I remember calling the one referral I had Parker Valley Hope and I was like listen I’m down to scholarship 10 women right now or excuse me five women out of the 10 beds we have and she they’re like are you kidding me and we did my wife went down in the van picked them up three of them are like living beautiful lives you know it’s so cool to be a part of that and then there was a point when uh more business-minded people started running my business my brother he’s like hey man you cannot have 17 scholarship beds here dud we like dude we got 10 people in iops like nine of them aren’t paying I’m like H but they’re doing so good though you know they’re doing good and they’re changing the world you know I’m just that’s that’s the hard part about
scaling 100% you know that I also think business is a spiritual game you know what you put out it just comes back to you tenple I don’t know how to explain it I don’t know you know there’s no kind of business uh book on the spiritual game of business but you know like like there are times when we’re really hurting for clients and then I give a scholarship suddenly the phone rings and we get 10 people that walk through the door and say oh my gosh I’ve been looking for something like this I can’t believe I found it it’s just the craziest thing yeah it always reminds me and I’ve I’ve said this quote probably 10 times on this show but I’ll continue to say it because it’s person in long-term recovery who I think speaks really brilliantly to these types of things and he always says when the heart is true the universe will conspire to support you yeah and I’m just like let’s just keep this thing true let’s keep it integrous and that was my commitment in recovery uh when I had my when I had my dealings with the powers that be if you give me this I’ll do this it was like I I’m gonna walk with Integrity in a big part and I’m gonna ensure that I do that and please just allow me to have my left shoe yeah I love that because that’s what you do it’s kind of a it’s not a blind walk it’s a well ended walk and it’s a spiritual walk and it’s a connected walk and it’s so funny each and every time it’s like oh there’s what we needed yeah there’s we need it yeah 100% I I also think success is a moral obligation because like everybody who benefits from your success when you rob yourself you’re robbing them so pushing yourself to the highest level of of success that you could achieve is a moral obligation um because all those people you’re talking about helping if you are not successful you can’t help one and so recognizing that you know if you want to rest today that’s all good but if it Rob somebody else rethink that yeah yeah I wish people would talk more about that it’s like I I actually need to be upright a strong Foundation maybe I jumped in cold water this morning maybe I didn’t if that’s your thing you know there’s these certain level of showing up for others um that requires us to show up for ourselves yes if I will let myself down I will let you down I love yeah absolutely like if you’re if you’re gonna no call no show yeah we I go back to the the whole thing like uh you know I didn’t used to push my card in at the store yeah and that said something about me and ever since I pushed my card in things have begun to change a little bit Yeah but I love that and and and in that way you’re able to go to work and show up for people and hold the space that’s says like you’re not broken yeah and if you feel like you are we can heal together and it’s it’s this it’s this exuding of energy it’s beautiful absolutely you know uh think about looking in a mirror right when the mirror cracks you’re looking at this cracked image but you happen to believe that’s yourself instead of realizing the original image isn’t crack it’s the reflection you’re looking in and you have to help people return back to the original image and see that they’re whole that they’ve never been broken it was it was the surface we looking at it’s so cool you know we think we grow up and it’s like you do this too much and you’re this and it’s no I’ve had I’ve had I have two boys eight and nine years old I watched those boys be born you cannot tell me for a moment and I would argue with parents that would argue with this who had been there for this experience to say that if that’s not wholeness imperfection what is and so it’s getting back to who you originally are like you’re not broken you’re whole and you’re perfect it’s your essential nature to quote my friend TJ Woodward in the conscious recovery approach so I love that you speak to that so clearly because people feel that and and then it’s like a settling and a potential trust and a relational opportunity whereas like if I’m fixed and you’re broken like I can’t do that know so I always wrap up the show and I know you’ve said it in in a few different ways but what is twoo question twofold what is your why and if you could have your greatest dream come true with respect to serving humans in the next 10 years what would that be and why so you’re why in your dream I think my [Music] why is understanding that people are sitting in some of the most vulnerable times in their life and they’re waiting for somebody to reach in and say say I’m here for you and I’ll help you whether you have money whether you don’t um whether you’re you think you’re ready or whether you’re not I’ll sit with you and I’ll walk back into life with you even when you’re sitting on the edge of death without being scared and uh I think the truth is we all sat there at some point in our own lives and someone did that for us and so I feel such an obligation to turn around and do that for as many people as I can for as long as I live because without somebody doing that for me I wouldn’t be here today so that’s my why and then my dream it’s hard because you know I talk to my team a lot about money because everybody has their own money story and money issue and each dollar we talk about when we set Revenue polls is about the food we could pay for for a family on Medicaid when a kid has an eating disorder each or as a parent we get to help heal who would have to either you know take out a loan or never can’t even take out a loan or you know just they’re trying so desperately hard and having to make horrible decisions um in order to help their family or themselves and so each dollar is talked about in in a very humanized way and where that money would go and what we would do and so my big goal is to get to a $50 million company because providing jobs is my first philanthropy helping other people was the secondary and so I can imagine with 50 million dollars of Revenue what good that could do to change just a corner of the world and if everybody thought that way what their business could do in creating the difference we all say we want that’s huge and people might think that’s a long but I I tend to think that you’re going to be a hundred million doll company because thank you absolutely and and I’m not just like blowing that out there like I’ve seen people um with half of your passion and half of your story and insight and connectivity and boots on the ground produce something that is just so great um I’m so grateful to be connected with you your story your mission your vision um how can the viewers find you um Amanda Copeland Copeland consulting.com correct yeah kopli n consulting.com and you can check it out on there she’s got a beautiful video on there like exactly and she basically said the same thing in the video she just said here um was really well stated thank you so much for coming on the show thank you so much for sharing your servant heart with the world and really really just changing the world one day at a time it’s an honor and a privilege to be with you today my friend I feel the same way thanks for having this conversation with me thank you so much until next time everybody peace [Music]
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