Mar 2, 2020
Nick Padlo joins us for a very
candid conversation about addiction, rehab, recovery, relapsing,
and mindfulness.
Nick is a long-time friend, and he’s a West Point
classmate from the class of 2003. After a successful career in the
Army, he obtained an MBA from Stanford
GSB and ultimately formed a pledge fund to acquire and
launch the Pet Loss Center. He drove the company to
incredible growth.
In the midst of all of the success
he was having as an entrepreneur, he struggled with
addiction. But
this isn’t a story of “entrepreneurship drove me to addiction”
rather it’s a story of how personal struggles drove him to coping
mechanisms which eventually led to addiction that impacted his
ability to run his business.
Nick ended up going to rehab, then
going again about a year later. After his second trip to
rehab, instead of going to an IOP afterward, he took a trip to
Southeast Asia to focus on something he knew he was weak at, which
is mindfulness. We
spend time talking about the mindfulness facility he attended in
Cambodia, what he learned there, what it was like on a daily basis
and how it has changed his life.
You can connect with Nick
Padlo here: Nick’s
LinkedIn
HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS
WE TALKED ABOUT:
- Nick shares his story of
graduating from West Point, obtaining an MBA from Stanford and acquiring and growing his first
business, the Pet Loss Center.
- Nick was very successful with his
first business, but he was in an unhealthy place in
life. He walked
away from his startup in 2019 and went to rehab for the first
time. After rehab,
he walked back into the same personal life and relapsed
quickly. The
relapse was far worse than the first time he needed to go to
rehab.
- In our conversation, Nick
highlights how he made the decision to go to rehab the first
time. He talks
about how the first time he went to fix himself to be better for a
relationship.
Which wasn’t the right reason. He learned a lot of good
things, but his motivation wasn’t in the right place.
- Nick goes on to talk about his
motivation for attending rehab the second time. This time he decided to go
solely for himself. This time it was “death or
rehab” and he knew it was his last shot. He went in feeling like this
was his last shot, and he was doing it for himself.
- During his second stint in rehab,
he put a lot more thought into the training, education, and
self-reflection because he was doing it for himself. He says that the second time
he really “felt his way through it” versus the first time where he
“thought his way through it.”
- Nick explains that before rehab,
he never considered going to yoga, or practicing mindfulness.
We talked about
how we both viewed mindfulness practices as something that wasn’t
for us, before we went to rehab. We also discussed what we
learned about mindfulness in rehab and how that changed our views
of mindfulness practices.
- After rehab, instead of going to a
sober home or some other traditional after care program, Nick
decided to go to Southeast Asia and dig deep on mindfulness
practices. He
realized that mindfulness was the thing he was weakest at, and
going to a sober home and spending a little bit of time talking
about all the things he learned in rehab wasn’t what he needed so
he went to a place where he could do a deep dive on the thing he
was weakest at, which was mindfulness.
- He made the decision to go to this
mindfulness training program by asking questions like “What is it
that I’m missing?” and “Where is the best place to learn
that?” He realized
the mindfulness was a big weakness for him, so he looked for a
place to focus on mindfulness.
- Here is the program he attended:
Vagabond
Temple in Cambodia
- Nick walked us through a typical
day at the mindfulness camp in Cambodia, and what he got out of
it. We talked
about the mindfulness practices, how he learned to be mindful, and
what kind of diet they encouraged him to be on to amplify his
mindfulness journey.
- We talked about Nick’s recovery
plan now that he is back from Cambodia, and what he plans to do to
remain sober now that he’s back in “the real world.”
- We talked about Nick’s future
plans and how he wants to take his experience as CEO of a high
growth business, his new found sobriety and his focus on
mindfulness and apply those experiences to find a way to work or
build something that delivers the learnings he obtained over the
last few months, to others, including other
entrepreneurs.
Connect with the Stigma
Podcast in the following ways: Website,
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Facebook, LinkedIn, Email
Connect with host Stephen
Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal
Website, Twitter,
LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture
Fund)