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AS A CEO, I COULDNT LIVE WITH MY FEAR. I KNEW ID HAVE TO OVERCOME IT SOMEHOW.

TONY HSIEH

MAY 2011

25 14 31

THE HARD WORK DO KNOW WHAT YOUOF GETTING TO LOVE... DONT BE AFRAID TO SAY NO.

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The best lightning-rod for your protection is your own spine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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RULING MY RECOVERY
An Interview with

TOD MAFFIN

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Im not sure where the strength came from inside of me - it may have just been necessity.

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Ishita Gupta: How did you get your start in broadcasting and then technology forecasting? Tod Ma n: I was working with a PR rm in Vancouver in the early days of the web doing corporate websites. I moved to a web services company, which initially was myself and a programmer,

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but it grew quickly to about forty employees and I eventually became a marketing vice president. At this point I began to feel a little nervous because I didnt have any sort of formal training; Im a high school dropout. I took some college courses and barely got a two-year diploma. IG: Thats actually common to feel that one lacks training or formal education. How did you grapple with that? TM: Well, ever since I was in the PR rm, I had the idea to create a way of monitoring what people were saying on the Internet, an automated way to be able to provide companies with a sense of how their brand is being viewed. Today, wed call it sentiment analysis, but back then the category didnt really exist. I talked a couple of friends into becoming my partners in the company, and we launched it in 1999 and were eventually selling services to major brokerage rms and stock exchanges. Even though it was fun to program, thats where it started to get antsy for me. At that point when we turned the switch on the prototype engine and it worked, thats when my life changed. I was 29 years old. We signed with a nancer who gave us two million dollars, and in about six months the company went public. My partners and I were each worth about ten million dollars, on paper. IG: Talk about a fast track! TM: We took a company that was empty, purchased the shell, and basically bought our way into the OTC; thats how it was done so quickly. Suddenly, it became a very di erent world for me. It went from being president in name only and having these casual meetings with developers to work on the products, to all

At this point I began to feel a little nervous because I didnt have any sort of formal training.

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of a sudden getting the next round of nancing, talking to nancers, dealing with legal matters. It was just a totally di erent world. At the same time this was going on, Canadas public broadcaster similar to NPR in the U.S. called and o ered me my own national show about technology. Id always wanted to be in radio, ever since I was a kid. I mean, when most kids were playing doctor and reman, I was playing Radio News Announcer. So of course I jumped at the chance. So now, in addition to working full-time plus running a publicly traded company, I was working yet another full-time job producing and hosting a live radio show. It was all terribly stressful all good stress, but still unbearably stressful. IG: So what did you start noticing about how you were feeling? TM: I was aware that I was

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becoming successful, but there was still something in the back of my head that said, You dont really deserve all this. Youre making it up as you go, you dont know what youre doing. It needled me. It was like I feared someone would nd out that I had no business training and reveal me as a fraud. IG: Ive heard about that like Imposter Syndrome? TM: Classic. At least thats the way I perceived it. I really did. I perceived that running the company and doing what I was doing was an act of fraud because I didnt really know what I was doing. But in reality this is how technology companies work! Theyre run by people who are making it up as they go along, who have that entrepreneurial spirit to get it done. Then, it got worse. Each Friday afternoon, my partners and I would blow o steam with a glass or two of wine late at night after work. I remember one day walking back home and something in the back of my head said, You know, you dont have to spend twelve dollars for a glass of wine. Youre an adult. You can walk into a liquor store and by a bottle of wine and drink it whenever you want. And that was the day I became an alcoholic. The rst couple nights I probably only had a glass of wine, but within a couple of weeks, I was drinking a bottle each night. And more. Meanwhile, of course, like nearly every active addict, I didnt realize I was sick while I was still trying to run this company. IG: So nothing in your life stopped because of the addiction, it was just compounded on top of everything else? TM: Unfortunately, I was a highly functioning alcoholic. I was able to manage my workload, but I wasnt teaching my brain healthy ways of responding to the stress. What happens in addiction is that if you continue to treat negative feelings with alcohol, eventually the pathways in the brain that give you options for healthy ways of resolving that feeling, disappear they literally disintegrate. Its an absolute breakdown so that the only pathways that are strong are the ones that say, Enough. I feel a feeling that

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Im not comfortable with, therefore I will drink alcohol and thats the solution. It doesnt take long in the brain for those pathways to become solidied. Thats exactly what had happened to me. IG: What did you notice as your addiction progressed? TM: Actually, I felt at the top of my game. Thats what was so peculiar about it. The addiction began around 2000, and I didnt at all see it as addiction. Its like every alcoholics story. I was in denial. I didnt feel like it was a ecting me at all. I continued on with the company, and eventually I started spending more time with the radio show and said to the guys in the company,

I was aware that I was becoming successful, but there was still something in the back of my head that said, You dont really deserve all this. Youre making it up as you go.

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Listen, Im going to have to downscale my involvement in the company because this radio gig is my childhood dream. I have to follow it and see where it goes. It was hard to do because I certainly didnt want to leave my partners in the lurch. I still went to the o ce, still did things for them, stayed on as CEO, I was still involved but not nearly as much as I should have been. Inevitably there came a point where it all started to crash down around me. We had this launch party of our rst real product and we invited the venture capitalists, our employees and their families and you have to remember that not only was it a huge deal for myself and my partners worth millions of dollars, but our employ-

In typical alcoholic fashion, I began to hide my drinking.

ees were sitting on options worth multiples of their salaries. This was a big day in their lives as well. And everyone was having a great time, except for me. I was sitting in this old photocopy room with a friend, in tears, completely inconsolable. Something had broken inside. Finally, my body begged, Youre doing too much, too fast, and you need to stop. The next day, I ended up having a full-on nervous breakdown collapsing in aisle 3B of Safeway. I ended up sleeping for two days and waking up with an acute viral lung infection which was extremely painful and brought on largely because I was too wound up and wasnt taking care of myself. So imagine this scenario: Ive already downscaled my involvement in the company to do this radio show, plus I disappeared for two days, and true to every stereotype that you have in your head of evil venture capitalists, I was hauled onto the carpet my partners were told that the meeting was at 8:45 a.m. and I was told that it was at 9:00 a.m. I walked in and there were twelve people sitting around a boardroom table, with one empty chair at the head of the table. Actually, the whole setup was a little corny. They demanded that I give them all my shares or work full time at the company or else. I told them I didnt want to be treated that way and so I left the company. It was an incredibly hard decision to make because I felt like the company was my baby. I really liked being in the trenches with the team, loved playing with the ideas, and starting and creating something. But legal talk,

the tax strategy meetings, the constant nancing meetings I had had enough. IG: Although it was hard, did you start feeling better once you made the switch completely to radio, since you loved it? TM: Absolutely. But I was still also quietly drinking, and increasingly so. I continued to work and in March 2003, I got married. Our marriage was hit by a couple of signicant mine elds, if you will. We both had wanted to own a log cabin even back when we were kids so I cashed in my savings and we bought 2.5 acres on Bowen Island near Vancouver and built a log cabin there. Except the contractor really screwed us over and we ended up having to sell the property before we ever got to use it. It was crushing.

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Then, not many months later, my wife was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Both of these events only increased my drinking. I hadnt told my wife any of this, in typical alcoholic fashion, and I began to hide my drinking. I think at that point I realized that I was an alcoholic, but I wanted to pretend I could pull it together. I worked from home, still producing radio pieces for another show, so I would start drinking as soon as my wife went to work in the morning. By that point, I didnt want to drink any more. I just couldnt stop. Id started adding sleeping pills and isopropanol (rubbing alcohol) to the mix which, of course, is terribly dangerous. I was getting sicker by the week. And nally, on Labor Day 2006, my world fell apart. My depression had come to a point where it was extremely dangerous: I had

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not only planned suicide, but I had been inquiring what I needed for it. I know it sounds crazy, but unless youve been there it might be hard to understand IG: I genuinely dont think that sounds crazy... TM: To someone who was extremely depressed and dealing with addiction, it made perfect sense. One day when my wife came home from work and we sat down at the dinner table. How was work? What did you do? she asked. This and that. Id respond. How was the radio show? Oh it was good. I put this piece together and so on and so on. Then, out of the blue, I said, We need to talk about my funeral plans. Of course my wife was stunned, and I remember being really confused at her reaction. I remember that specically. I remember looking at her facial expression and thinking, Whats the big deal? You know, its just time. Its time. My journey has come to an end. I know it will be sad, but come on, get on board. The next day, I was at an addictions doctors o ce. Come back here each week for four weeks, he proposed. And in between each appointment, just dont drink. The rst week he said, Did you drink? I said, Nope. He said, Really? I said, Well, three days ago I had a bottle of wine, but I didnt really drink. He said, Lets try it again. The next meeting, I showed up hung-over. The one after that, I couldnt even get to the appointment without putting alcohol in my bloodstream that morning. I couldnt go more than a few hours before the tremors would start up again. At that third appointment, he stopped talking to me entirely and told my wife, Your husband is dying. This is how fast his disease is accelerating. He needs to be in intensive, residential treatment immediately. And Im hearing this and still thinking that Im ne. I said, Oh its ne. There are

Then, out of the blue, I said, We need to talk about my funeral plans.

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Turns out I really went there to save my marriage, not to stop drinking.
TM: My wife and my doctor had sort of planned this out for me but when I said no, everything kind of fell apart. The night before she sat down and without me knowing, right before we went to bed, the treatment centre had called and asked, Is he coming? Because if not we have to give up his bed. And she said, Yes, hes coming, hes coming. Even though at that point I had said Im not going. Thank God she did that, because when I woke up and said, Okay, Ill go, the bed was still there. Barely. IG: What was it like? TM: Very intensive. Youre programmed 14 hours a day, seven days a week, immersed in recovery work. And I lived there for months. It was absolutely the most challenging thing Id ever done in my life. But the problem was that though I thought I was processing things rationally, it turns out I really went there to save my marriage, not to stop drinking. Sure enough, three weeks after I left the treatment, I relapsed and couldnt get back into recovery. That was pretty much the end of our marriage. We held on for a few months, went to counseling and things, but I know that for her, at least, that relapse was really where it ended. I cant say I blame her for it. She asked me to move out, so I did. I wasnt done hurting myself, but I didnt want to draw her into it any more than she already had been. Needless to say, the addiction spiraled and at one point I called my treatment centre and said I needed to come back in. The intake

outpatient programs. The doctor got up and walked out of the room. Kim and I sat there stunned. A minute later, he came back and said, Im your doctor and my job is to tell you what you need. Your life is in jeopardy. You need to be in residential treatment before the end of the day. And out he walked. Kim and I drove home in silence, me still protesting and saying Id look into outpatient options. We both went to bed. And when we woke up in the morning I dont know how to describe it I could just see in her eyes that she had given up on me. I said, Do you think theres still room there? IG: And was there?

counselor said, Well look for some space, but whatever you do between now and when you get in, dont stop drinking. IG: Why on earth did he say that? Was he kidding?

TM: My tolerance for alcohol was so high at that point and I was putting so much of it into my bloodstream that if I were to have stopped cold turkey, Id almost certainly gone into seizures and perhaps died. Alcohol is the only drug that you can die just from the withdrawal. Dont get me wrong withdrawal from meth or heroin is miserable and painful, but you wont die from withdrawal itself. I was close to that line. I wasnt able to hold a co ee cup because the tremors would literally shake the cup out of my grip.

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Telling my story to others keeps me alive.

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IG: Im kind of speechless, to be honest. How did you manage to cope during this time? TM: Oddly, I was still able to pull it together to work. I was still giving a lot of keynotes on the speaking circuit, talking about technology trends in business, as Id done for several years prior. IG: That must have taken a lot of strength TM: I dont know whether it was strength or part of my personality; Im not aware of where that spirit came from inside of me. It may have

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just been necessity. Ive got a really good capacity of holding it together in the moment I was giving e ective presentations and sometimes even getting standing ovations. I learned to be pretty good at faking happy, but inside me things werent right. At one point, I had nished a particularly grueling leg of the circuit, and I was in a cab on the way to the airport on the phone with a friend and I was just inconsolable. I could feel myself falling into this depression, it felt like freewheel falling, and I gathered that it was signicant enough that after I got on the plane I locked myself into the bathroom and just cried and cried. I could not stop crying. And I hadnt even been drinking. When I got o the plane I heard Will passenger Tod Ma n please see a gate agent at the top of the ramp? I thought, Hey thats weird, I dont have a connection to make. I get to the top of the ramp and there were two police o cers standing there. My friend had called and said, Hes in trouble and Im worried for his safety. It was pretty devastating to be feeling like this and in situations like this. It was just extremely di cult. IG: How did you nally get some clean time? TM: I guess I just nally had enough. I hit my own rock bottom. I lost the woman I loved, I lost my house, my car, most of my money, much of my reputation, and, in the end, I lost the radio job that I loved so much. Something nally clicked. I nally surrendered and unconditionally put my life in the hands of people who had some solid sobriety. I pretty much locked myself in my apartment for months through the early sobriety had groceries delivered, didnt check the mail for weeks at a time. I started going more regularly to alcohol recovery meetings, and eventually things started to get a little better a day at a time. IG: Has faith played a role in your recovery? Ive spoken with recovering alcoholics who said it was an important to them.

I get to the top of the ramp and there My friend had called and said, Hes in trouble and Im worried for his safety.
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TM: My mother is a retired Anglican priest, so I grew up with the church at my feet, but I dont identify with a God in the same sense that religious people do. But my support group uses a concept of a higher power and that you are accountable to your own concept of a higher power. For some people thats Mohammad, for others its Jesus for me, its much less evolved. I draw my strength from a few things: from the wisdom of the people in my support group. I get strength from my cat, whose 18 pounds of unconditional love. Hes sitting on me right now, in fact. IG: I can hear him. TM: (Laughs.) Did you hear that? I woke him up. He calms me down. And we have a lot of rain in Vancouver and for whatever reason, when it rst starts raining, theres this smell of rain hitting pavement and soil, and I dont know how to

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describe it, but that smell when I close my eyes and breathe it in, it slows my heart down. So I have those things. Thats as close as Ive come to having a higher power, really, but its as solid a spirituality as I need for now. IG: I like the way you said that just now. I know youre now trying to educate others about work/ life balance, about mental health. Can you talk about the presentations you give on it? TM: Yes, I tell a bit of my story sometimes out there and talk about mental health in the workplace, and one thing I always tell my clients is to train people for their next job. For example, if an employee says, I really like being a part of this company, but I also want to be an account manager at another ad agency you should train them for that job! The more training that you do, even if its stu not directly related to their current job that, the more training that they do, the more training you pay for and support them in that follows their interest, paradoxically the more loyal they will be to you, you know? Does that make sense? The same is true for mental health. If you have people who just cant come in that day, tell them thats okay. One thing I say in the presentation is that everyone needs to have the right to pick up the phone Friday at noon and call your boss and say, You know, Ive had a lousy week and Im not coming back this afternoon. Everyone needs to have the right to say that. Paradoxically, the more you give your employees leeway and latitude to take that time o , the more productive they will be, the more loyal they will be. Thats proven in almost every study that Im aware of in the workplace. IG: Youre alleviating that imposed pressure, essentially.

TM: Yes, absolutely. Its survival. In my own world, I have to tell people that Im a recovering alcoholic because if I dont, there are places in the world, like airport lounges, hotel lounges and airplanes where people might not know that Im an addict in recovery. And its those places that I used to be able to hide, where I used to be able to drink and feel protected. If I really want to be fearless in my own recovery from addiction, I have to make my world, all the places that Im in, become completely impossible to

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hide from. I have to make sure that theres always the potential to be exposed and where I know I cant hide. Thats why I tell my story as often as Im given that gift. So that theres always the potential for someone to be on an airplane with me and say, Hey, arent you that alcoholic tech guy? Why are you drinking? Im attered when people say Im courageous for telling my story, but to me,

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its entirely selsh. Its just simple self-preservation. Ill die if I drink again. I know that in every essence of my being. I wont be able to come back from another relapse. My system can take another one. I mean, I used to be so sick that literally one minute after I ate anything, anything, I would vomit. On a regular basis. My body was falling apart. The more groups that Im in front of that I can share that part of my story with, and the more help for themselves they can pull out of my own journey, the better it is for me too. It keeps me alive. Thats the way I look at things.

TOD MAFFIN
Today, is senior strategist and managing partner at tMedia Strategies in Vancouver and Chicago. Hes one of the countrys leading speakers on digital and viral marketing, Generation Y in the workplace, and the impact of innovation on business. He also presents his story and recommendations for creating a more compassionate workplace to conferences around the world. He has been sober since February 28th, 2009. You can learn more about Tod at http://www.takingcrazyback.com.

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Even the Lone Ranger didnt do it alone.

Harvey MacKay