How Marketing to 50 Million People a Month on Social Media is Saving Lives During the Worst Drug Epidemic in the History of the World

Eric Eden:
0:59

Welcome to today's episode. Our guest today is Adam. He is a marketer, a bestselling author, and he has a very inspiring story to share with us today. Welcome to the show. Eric thanks so much for having me brother us a little bit of background two or three minutes on who you are and what you're doing. I think you have a really remarkable story about yourself before you even get into the remarkable story about what you're doing. So why don't you give us a little bit of context to who you are?

Adam Vibe Gunton :
1:39

Sure, sure, yeah, I appreciate having me on Eric and it's so interesting to say who I am on different podcasts and stuff, because my identity is so wrapped up in what I do a lot of the time to a lot of people. School I went to Columbine High School home run derby hitter of the Little League World Series and had this normal childhood, but I had a traumatic event happen when I was a freshman in college that led me down a deep, dark path of addiction and during this whole time I've got this one deep, dark secret that is making it so I can't accomplish all these things that I want to do, because I've always had these big aspirations and dreams. I used to be coached by really good personal development coaches and people that are New York Times bestselling authors and stuff in my addiction, but I was never able to get the things done because I couldn't count on myself. If I had to do something at four o'clock and I didn't have dope, I'd have to pick dope over it every single time.

Adam Vibe Gunton :
2:43

But November 6th 2017, I was homeless 148 pounds. I was kicked out of the homeless shelter, so I was super homeless and a day a lot of things happened, a series of events that helped me find recovery. So now I'm sitting at like six and a half years in recovery and since I had those experiences and I found that freedom that a lot of people don't get to experience, that's my purpose to help others that are struggling find it.

Eric Eden:
3:13

That's great. You do a lot of marketing that has a purpose. It definitely has a mission and a lot of the marketers out there market things like software. And a lot of the marketers out there market things like software. And we always joke that we're not saving lives here. But actually the marketing that you do does save lives. So why?

Adam Vibe Gunton :
3:41

don't you share a little bit about what you do and how it is saving people's lives? Yeah, we had started with me writing my own book from chains to saved, and then that became a bestseller and it started getting in the hands of a lot of people and I started watching people message me for help or message me saying that my book helped them and the idea kind of spawned that our stories, our recovery stories, are someone else's only hope at finding recovery. Like, eventually, someone that's struggling in addiction has to hear the right message that's going to help them get out of addiction, the right process, the right 12 step program or treatment option or whatever it is. So I started to coach and train other people in recovery how to write and publish books. That started going well and then it turned into this thing where you know all we're doing.

Adam Vibe Gunton :
4:27

It's not necessarily. I don't think of it as marketing. I think of it as becoming the hero of your own story and sharing it with as many people as possible, not being ashamed of your past, sharing it in a way where you're you have a purpose behind it, and I would actually tell you that anything that you market is important, Anything that you are trying to get out with value, with a message, whether it's software or it's a t-shirt brand, I've seen I've literally seen t-shirts that change somebody's life because, just because of what it said on the front. And what we do is we use our stories in the digital age podcasts, videos, social media, books, all these things to reach the addict out there that's suffering. And then we have a 50 state resource guide. We have resources in every single state that are either Medicaid or nonprofit. So when we share our story and somebody gets inspired to reach out, we don't just say, yep, recovery is possible. We actually have a place to plug them into.

Eric Eden:
5:28

That's great and you are able to achieve some pretty remarkable reach. There are some months, you get your message in front of over 50 million people.

Adam Vibe Gunton :
5:37

Right, talk a little bit about how you do that, and I think that's really critical, given what your message is to get their message out, is to build the habit and the consistency and not look at the numbers. Because it's actually really funny, like five or six months ago, this memory popped up on my Facebook and I was so excited because that month I had reached 3000 people. This was like three or four years ago, like right after I had started the page, and the thing is, you can go back from this day all the way back to the start of that page and I'm posting every single day and I'm doing messaging about God, about recovery, about inspiration, about motivation, about all these different things that I'm trying to uplift people with this message. And it was never about trying to find that one thing that's gonna hit and go viral. It was always about consistently sharing a message and staying disciplined with making sure that it's going out every single day. And then, when you're doing that, if you have a hundred pieces of content that you put out, you're much more likely to go viral than if you put out one or two that you work really hard on to make really good and possibly viral.

Adam Vibe Gunton :
6:53

They actually did this study where they had this pottery class. It was a class that make pots and things and they split the class in half and one half they told to make the absolute best pot they possibly could, to work on one for that entire trimester. And then the other half they said make as many pots as you possibly can. And what happened was the class that made as many as they could ended up making a whole bunch of pots that were way better than the one that this one made. So instead of focusing on trying to make one really good piece of content, you want to pump out as many pieces of content as possible, because you're getting the practice, you're learning what your audience enjoys, you're learning what makes that impact. And then you just keep the discipline, you just keep the habit of posting.

Eric Eden:
7:42

Yeah, I think consistency is very important. Consistency is key in terms of getting the story out, and the marketing you're doing is for recovery centers right.

Adam Vibe Gunton :
7:58

Yeah, so there's two things that I'm doing On the recovered on purpose side. It's nonprofit, and that's why I don't necessarily call it marketing, quote unquote because we're just trying to reach people to help and there's no like financial gain tied to it or anything. We just really want to help addicts. On the for-profit side we do. I work with the drug rehab agency. I'm the director of marketing over there and we help rehabs to reach more people with the right message that's going to inspire them to come to their treatment center.

Adam Vibe Gunton :
8:27

And the thing that we're doing that's different is there's a big problem in addiction treatment marketing right now where they're doing vague messaging just trying to get people to come to their center Right but what they're not doing is creating a message that actually shares what that center is about. Because maybe a treatment center is a 12-step program and this person is looking for a 12-step program. They've got to hear that this is a 12-step program, not just come here for detox. You have to explain why they would come to this center. So we're doing a funnel of congruent messaging all the way to the right treatment centers. So people are. We're having a 25.6% conversion rate on some of our landing pages, which is huge 25.6% because it's congruent messaging. We make sure that the people that are looking for a specific kind of treatment find that kind of treatment, so why would they not sign up?

Eric Eden:
9:23

I think the storytelling that you're doing is very important because lives are at stake. If people don't recover, they can die from the drugs, and the drug problem in this country is just staggering. When you look at the numbers on things like opioid addiction and overdoses, it's nothing short of tragic. So when you think about conversion on telling a great story and getting people to get treatment and getting people to recover from it, it feels every single percentage point matters in terms of how good of a story can you tell, can you persuade people to get help?

Adam Vibe Gunton :
10:06

Exactly, and that's the way that I think about it every day, and I appreciate you pointing that out because that is how I think about it.

Adam Vibe Gunton :
10:11

And I also appreciate you pointing that out because that is how I think about it, and I also and there's this weird duality, because I also have to take the attachment of failure off of it as well, because I try to help so many people all the time and obviously not everybody's successful, right?

Adam Vibe Gunton :
10:27

Not everybody that I try to help get clean gets clean. But detaching myself from the outcome and doing the absolute best I can, I think is actually helping more people than if I was attached to making sure that I do this perfect so that I help this person and this person needs to get recovered or else I'm a failure, right? I think it's the same thing with that habitual storytelling and making sure that you keep that discipline. What I've found is doing the absolute best I can, doing everything I do with excellence and making it so that I know that I did my best and I'm going to do my best for every single person that I get the opportunity to serve. I don't have to beat myself up if not everybody gets it, because it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking.

Eric Eden:
11:15

So, given how critical of a problem this is, I think there's a lesson in this for marketers more broadly. I know that you don't like to think about it as marketing because you're really saving people's lives, but marketing storytelling, however you want to label it I do think there's a lesson in here for marketers broadly, regardless of the product they're selling. What really works in terms of convincing people to get treatment? What has worked for you over the last several years? And you said you can't help everybody because it's a very tough problem. I think we see this over and over again, that it's just a really tough problem thing to conquer. So when you have convinced people to get help, what has been the thing that works the best in convincing someone to do something really hard like that?

Adam Vibe Gunton :
12:13

Yeah, that's a great question and I would look at it as relating to them, because you can't influence someone that you judge A. So if you're judging them for saying no to treatment, you're never going to be able to influence them to go to treatment. Then number two you can't really influence somebody that you haven't connected with in some way some way. When I get to talk to somebody one-on-one, it's good questions asking good questions that get them to open up and talk about their life, talk about these things that they're going through, and then you're able to put the solution in at some point when they're ready. If it's a broad marketing plan, then it's the same thing with the congruent messaging. If someone's looking for alcohol detox, I'm going to have a video and messaging about alcohol detox, what to expect with alcohol detox, what to expect in recovery Also.

Adam Vibe Gunton :
13:12

I think it's a huge thing that people are missing in marketing for treatment centers and doing the influence for recovery is. We talk so much about quitting drugs and alcohol, but we have to talk about life in recovery also, all the amazing things that you're going to get when you quit the drugs and alcohol. I've been able to be the best man at my best friend's wedding. I've been able to skydive in three countries. I've been able to do all these things that I wasn't able to do when I was on drugs, and now that I'm able to do them, I wasn't even planning on doing these things. I didn't even think about this. I just wanted to get clean. But now that I'm getting all of these rewards and recovery, I want to let people know that they're going to get these types of things in their recovery as well.

Eric Eden:
13:59

I think that's a great lesson. I think that's a great lesson you have to relate to people and not judge them. That's a hard thing for a lot of people to do in marketing broadly. And the second piece of that that you said is show people what it means to be in recovery. I would just say show people what it's like to live the dream right, and that seems to be in recovery. I would just say show people what it's like to live the dream right, and that seems to be pretty persuasive on the surface. It seems like that would really work.

Adam Vibe Gunton :
14:30

Absolutely. When I was marketing for my course to write a book, I wasn't marketing saying you're going to sit down and you're going to write every single story of your life out in five words or less and you're going to write 1500 words or more for every single chapter. And not. What I was marketing was you're going to be a bestselling author in 90 days. We have to talk about the dream. We have to talk about what they want, not the process to get there, because everyone's scared of the work.

Eric Eden:
14:56

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes when you talk about big projects or things that are hard to do, like recovering, you have to take the right approach. Otherwise it's just too daunting for people to even think about how to do it, so I think these lessons are great. What other advice can you share for marketers from what you've learned on this journey?

Adam Vibe Gunton :
15:23

What I've learned from marketers. I would say that you can't reach your potential without having something that you're marketing that you really believe in. That's the best way to find the right message is marketing something that you believe the world needs and that doesn't mean that, for instance, software there are absolutely solutions within software that the world needs, that businesses need. So attaching yourself to the importance of people getting what you are offering, that's how you really get the message out to inspire people, because you're inspired. You're inspired not just to sell something. You're inspired that that person that's going to see this message needs this product.

Eric Eden:
16:17

I think that's great advice. The anti-drugs campaign and it was just say no to drugs and I applaud the effort to have that campaign because I think it's good to have it. I don't think it was a very effective campaign overall because I'm not sure that it was the right message. It's a simple message of just say no. It's a simple message of just say no, but I don't think that it really related to people, like you were saying, and I'm just curious what you think about that historical campaign and other campaigns in the space that you're in terms of how effective are they?

Adam Vibe Gunton :
17:19

Yeah, I love this question because you ever heard that all PR is good PR. You've heard that yeah. So even if the newspapers are saying negative things about, you're still getting yourself out. Think about this. There is no study that shows that that campaign did good for the drug problem, and every study either shows that there was no effect or a negative effect by that push.

Adam Vibe Gunton :
17:46

So what was really happening was drugs were being talked about everywhere, the war on drugs. Just say no. And this adult, authoritative figure coming into your school and doing the DARE program, telling you what not to do and then showing you a briefcase full of drugs. As a 10, 11, 12 year old boy, I was like dang, that looks. That actually looks fun. So the main thing is that we can't again it's the judging Like this person that's probably never tried drugs in her life is going to come out and tell us people that have no idea what it's like to live up there. You know we're growing up in middle America or lower income places and you're going to tell us not to do drugs that help us escape this life, you know. So I think that there's a lot that goes to talking about anything If you tell a 10-year-old boy something not to do. Probably going to do it. Yeah, I don't do it.

Eric Eden:
18:40

Yeah, I don't think it was the most effective. I think the things you shared would be a lot more effective, and it's just an interesting case study More effective and less effective marketing. I have to also just say I'm not sure how I feel about the this. Is your brain on drugs with the fried eggs either? I love eggs, but I'm just I'm not sure that was really the right message either. Yeah, so you have some resources for people If people are struggling with addiction. We've joked about some of the marketing aspects of this, but it's not really a joke because there are people out there who are struggling. You have some resources you can share. Can you talk a little bit about those?

Adam Vibe Gunton :
19:22

Absolutely. I actually have the opportunity to give my book away for free now from Chains to Save. You can get a digital and audio copy at recoveredonpurposeorg. I also have a free relapse prevention worksheet on the website. And then we have a 50-state resource guide for addicts and alcoholics that don't have private insurance or finances to go to treatment. So every single state you can click on the map. It'll take you to your state and it'll have a whole big list of all the resources there. Plus, every single page has the application for Medicaid if you don't have Medicaid yet, and it has a message box to reach out to me and my team to help connect you with the right places.

Eric Eden:
20:00

Awesome. Thank you so much, Adam, for sharing your insights here today. Thank you for what you're doing to help with the drug problem out there. I think it's amazing that you're doing this and that you're helping people through this really difficult problem. We appreciate you being on the show today and I encourage everyone to share this episode with your friends. Thanks a lot, Adam. We appreciate it.