The Social Capitalist. Josh Lannon

it go?” Lisa asked me when I returned home later that night.

      “Well, it was a great ten minutes,” I told her, stunned by how good I still felt in our plan, and buoyed by the tools Spencer had provided to me and his seeming confidence in my ability to pull it off. He hadn’t seemed to question me or our decision at all. “Lisa, maybe it’s because we asked for his support rather than just taking from him. I don’t know. But now, we get to go to Florida.”

      Fortunately, she trusted me and this new mentor of mine, Spencer, enough that she was willing to hop on board a plane to Florida along with me. There was absolutely no hesitation from either of us. We booked our flights for a week in Florida with our own money, and completely, willingly submitted to Spencer’s directives. Later we discovered that he and his associates had only scheduled about one full day’s worth of meetings for us, involving travel to several locations around Orlando and talks with many people who were experienced in the addiction treatment industry.

      Looking back, we’re convinced that this was Spencer’s test to determine how serious we actually were about this decision. And it appeared that we’d passed.

      By the end of the day, we were only more convinced of our decision, and were eager to hit the ground running. However, we had booked a week in Florida. So after the day with Spencer was complete, we decided to take a few days out for ourselves before this new venture and visit Disneyworld.

      It was during this time that our daughter, Haley, was conceived. We took it as a universal sign, the third in a series of signs that included my near-death experience and my dad’s providential Christmas gift, that told us we were about to begin the life we were meant for.

      We had years of management and leadership experience between the two of us, a solid foundation of financial education through Rich Dad, the policy and procedure manuals containing information about licensing, a supportive colleague and mentor, and, I was shocked to realize, my father’s blessing to separate from his business and begin our own. Everything seemed to be pointing us in this direction.

      The Foundation for Success

      Over the next couple of years, we were involved in the long process of establishing Journey Healing Centers. We set about on a challenging journey that included securing capital, finding a location for our business, becoming licensed as a treatment facility, establishing a niche market, finding and growing a clientele, enhancing our variety of services, and expanding our territory by adding locations. How that all happened is a story we’ll be sharing with you.

      We were successful, eventually, but we had to make a lot of mistakes along the way. We faced a lot of challenges and had to continually remind ourselves of what we wanted and why. We had to recommit dozens of times – times when it would have been a lot easier to throw up our hands and say, “Forget it, let’s do something else.”

      But when it came right down to it, what we cared most about was being part of the solution by serving the roughly 140 million people around the world who struggle with dependence on alcohol. In 2002, when we were in the beginning stages of creating our business, we found that more than 80 percent of people who needed addictions treatment didn’t receive it.

      We found that addiction affects every culture and every socioeconomic class; it does not discriminate. This mission was deeply personal for us, and we had a strong “why” for building this socially conscious business. From that passion and deep sense of personal commitment grew a series of steps that we believe to be the foundation of a social enterprise: