 Hi, I'm Tyler Jones and I recover loud. Hi and welcome to another episode of Recover Loud, brought to you by Recovery on the Road, a TV talk show dedicated to ending the stigma of substance use disorder. I'm Mike Paddleford and I recover loud. Tonight's episode, we're going to speak with Tyler Jones of Holton, Maine. Tyler started Purpose Pups as a way to give back to his community. He's got an interesting program that he's going to tell us about, bringing service animals into the courts in Aristote County. This is a piloted program I'm very happy to hear about and I'm sure you will be too. Let's listen to what Tyler has to say. Hey guys, how are you? We're great. Thanks for joining us tonight. I think you have a very interesting story to share with us all and I want to get right into it. But first, can you tell us what your life looks like today? What it is you do for work and how you're interacting with the community? Sure. So I run Purpose Pups LLC, a dog training outfit out of Holton, Maine. We specialize in basic and obedience training as far as your sit, your down, your recall, things like that. And I also provide service dog training. We're actually introducing the very first service dog into the Aristote County court system. Working hand in hand with Todd Collins, the DA of Aristote County. And we are actually training Holiday, a beautiful yellow lab from Northern Woods Labs. And she's going to help witnesses and other victim impact people that have had like domestic violence or otherwise been betrayed for trust that for people that they thought that they could trust. So she's going to play a pivotal role in not only the investigation process, but also during the trial and just offering endless love and compassion to those in need. Are there any other programs in the state that you know of that are doing something similar? We are the very first program that has ever been approved in the state of Maine for a service dog in the court system or in a working environment period. So it's going to be a big program. I think it's going to gain a lot of traction. I think when courts and other businesses see the benefit and what Holiday actually provides to those children and those domestic violence victims, it's going to take off. And that's my sincere hope because that's what I love to do. I love to get back to the community. When did you start getting involved with dogs? You know, I actually went to prison for eight years and I had to learn a trade in there where I didn't have to. I took the advantage of learning a trade by the needs program at Western Massachusetts Outfit called the prison program and in there they taught us how to train service dogs. And I also got Department of Labor certified while I was in there. And I really took the most of that program and really applied myself, learned everything I could about dogs. And the last dog that I placed before I left prison, his name was Philip. He was 19 months when I got him. I trained him 86 commands in five months and eight days. And then he ended up going to a child with autism, a child that had never had any friends or been able to talk to anybody or have any type of social outlet. And Philip actually makes it so he can go to sporting events and things like that. And so I think I definitely played my role in what I was supposed to do. As a result, I started Purpose Pups and that's kind of, you know, why I do what I do because I love to provide useful, reliable partnerships that our society employs. And that's what Purpose Pups stands for. Wow. You know, what brought you to the point where you started working with the dogs? What brought you to prison? What was life like before? Life like for me before getting involved with the dogs and all of that was chaotic. I ran a recording studio in Bitterford, Maine, and that stemmed from my marijuana trafficking, which started when I was 18 years old. Just, you know, I was smoking recreationally. And then I realized that I could make money off it and I've always been a salesman my whole life. And then as soon as I figured out that that was what was going to make me money, I took the ball and ran with it. And eventually, after, you know, years and years and years of doing what I was doing, I ended up becoming a very big marijuana smuggler. And to the point where I was getting, you know, tons of marijuana in the mail and also bringing in U-Haul trucks and also RVs full of marijuana. And it made my life crazy. I mean, I was always on the go. I never had a chance to just kind of hang out. I was always on edge, couldn't trust anybody. I don't even think I trusted myself then because I was literally responsible for millions and millions of dollars of other people's money in the beginning until I could get my own money. And it created a lot of stress. It created stress between my friends, my family who was non-existent at that point because I didn't put them first. I put my drug empire and my drug use above everything else and everyone else. All I cared about was making that next million. And I think that it's important for people to see that even though I was at the top of my game, I was at my lowest point in life and I didn't even know it because as I was going, I just did everything that everybody else would want to do. You know, I had a yacht when I was 28 years old. I had partnership with a nightclub and an investment firm with a lawyer in Portland. You know, I had a lot of things going on. But what I think I lacked the most was true friendship. At that point, I don't think I knew what a real friend was. I think that everybody was a chess piece to me. I was moving them on the board of life. If you didn't make me money, you weren't my friend. You weren't even around me. And now I realize that that not only was wrong, but it was detrimental to me being who I am today because I literally sacrificed everything and everyone just to make that next dollar. And I think that people that idolize or glorify being at the top of the game, it's not where you want to be. You know, you want to be able to have what's important in life. And that's moments with your family, like Christmas and things like that. And when you do what I was doing, all of those things are taken away from not only yourself, but from the people that love you. And that was a big problem for me. And it wasn't until 2013 when I got indicted by the FBI that I realized that, hey, what I was doing was not only wrong, but it was wrong on so many levels. My mom, my dad, my son didn't have me in their life because I chose selling drugs and using drugs over them. And I really, when I sit back and I think about it today, I look at everybody that I came in contact with and I say to myself, I don't have any regrets, just lessons learned, but I do have a lot of angst in the fact that I looked at life like, hey, if you're not doing something for me, I'm not doing nothing for you. I never had a real friendship where I was generally like, you know, I would go and rescue somebody from their lowest point until I went to prison. And when I went to prison, it was dark every day. And I don't mean in the sense of just light. I mean, in the sense of spiritual enlightenment, you know, I have no self worth. I thought about it all the time. I thought about, you know, what was I doing in my life that led me to this point where I'm down on my knees in my sweatsuit, you know, asking God for forgiveness for choosing the lifestyle that I did. But at the time when I was doing it, that's what I wanted. I didn't care about anything else. I wanted to do all the things that I was doing so that I could be at the point where I was at. But it's funny, because when the shoe hits the ground, you say to yourself, is this really what I want to do? Absolutely not. Because when the federal government comes into your life, they take over. They take everything you have, you know, I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in jewelry, millions of dollars in cash, all kinds of assets. But the thing I lost the most was respect for myself because I realized that everything that I was doing was frivolous. There was no point to it. On October 4th, 2013, I was rated by the FBI, the ATF, all the main state police in Portland, P.D. And I never got out, you know, the judge said that I was a flight risk and I was a threat to society. And it was at that point that I realized I was literally at the end. Of my rope, OK, I realized that as I was sitting there in the county jail. Going, oh, my God, like everything just changed in a matter of a second, you know, like I had everything. I had the world by the skinnies and then boom, nothing. I was at my lowest point. So I was at a fork in the road. I had a choice at that moment. I said, I'm never going back to prison. I'm never going back to that lifestyle. And I'm going to change from here until all 200, you know, 2,160 days that I did inside. I was all set, you know, because I took every single day from the day that I went to jail and never got out as a reforming and a regrowth and a reborning of myself because I realized that that David Tyler Jones wasn't who I am today and who my mom and my dad raised me to be. And so when I realized that I took advantage of every single program inside and I started out medium security. So it wasn't nothing that is fun at all. And I was in South Carolina. So I was thousands of miles away from my family. I didn't see any of my family members for the first five years. And it was scary, you know, because I didn't know anybody there. I was not king type of the weed world. I was nobody. I was the same guy in khakis that was right to my left and my right. And there was black people, Spanish people, white people. And we were all in the same struggle. And at that moment, I realized I was on an even playing field for the first time in my life, because even if you had all the millions of dollars left, you still had $360 a month you could pay. You could still only go to the laundry and get khakis and clothes three times a month, and that was it. And so everybody that was there felt the same struggle. Sir, some people had relationships that they tried to hold on to. Some people had family connections that they tried to fix and try to rebuild. And other people like myself literally had nothing. You know, I clean people's cells. I clean laundry by hand with buckets and rented out cells and hung lines just to be able to make money to survive in there because I'm naturally a hustler. I'm a producer. I'm not a consumer. And so I used my intuition in my whole like aspect of being a hustler that I used illegally before to survive inside. And I realized that this is not the life that I want. This is not the life that anybody should have. And I think that when you make that choice, it's just like when you're in recovery, you know, it's a lifelong journey. And so when you take that bull by the horns, you better hold on because there's going to be a lot of ups and downs. There's going to be a lot of Mount Everest that you climb. And there's going to be a lot of concrete that you hit your face off and hope that you can bounce back and heal because it's very difficult to make it through federal prison in eight years to go from a medium all the way down to the camp where I ended up working my way to get to so I could take the advantage of the dog training program. And that's why I have such affinity for what I do and why I give back to the community that has embraced me because without that, what does that say for what you just did with all that time of your life? Is it wasted time or is it something that you can say? Hey, you know what prison was probably the thing that saved me in my life because without it, who knows if I'd even be alive today to tell you this story? Because I didn't have any compass. I didn't have any moral compass. I didn't have any sensor to say, hey, you should probably put on the brakes and stop doing what you're doing. You should stop going to strip clubs all the time and doing cocaine and ecstasy and just being completely in a cloudy fog every day of your life because everything around you that's going on, you probably would have seen what was coming. Instead, I was so overwhelmed with using drugs and trying to be that guy that everybody liked that I didn't care about my own life. And that's the part I really want to illustrate here to you guys as I recover loud is it's not what you want to do. You want to take time to love yourself first. Then you can love somebody else or something else. But until you can love yourself and realize that sobriety is truly a beautiful thing, then what are you doing in your life? You know, take back the moment that you can pause and take that as a blessing because not everybody wakes up tomorrow. You know, and so what you do today inspires the youth and the people around you for tomorrow and for centuries after. So the mark that you leave on earth, what do you want it to be? That's what you have to ask yourself. I remember back when I was a kid and I first started, you know, it was it was about money and power and status, wanting to be the person that everybody liked. And, you know, having the stuff so that people come to you and like you said, that's what we thought we wanted. And, you know, you're a great example of how you can get to the point where you think you want to be and end up with nothing. So, thankfully, when I got out, I actually had a friend that put me to work working for his solar company as a telemarketing sales agent. He helped me get on my feet and by the grace of God and my family. They're the ones that gave me the initial startup money to start the LLC, Purpose Pups LLC. And then I also had friends that, you know, I was training for like Jim Brown from Brown Construction here at Holton and Josh McLaughlin from McLaughlin Construction that really believed in me and they gave me, you know, Jim gave me a location to run Purpose Pups out of. So it was about a month after I got out that I started Purpose Pups. And originally I had started going to people's homes and I was training dogs and homes and that lasted about a month until I met Jim. And he helped me a lot by giving me my location and, you know, a lot of friends and family. Sarah Heath, I want to mention her because she was very helpful. Jen McGarry, they all came in and did all the painting for me. You know, for free, you know, they were like, hey, this is a new business. We want to help you. And it was at that moment that I was like, wow, a Rooster County does matter. Rooster County is awesome because people like see the initiative that you have and they don't just push you aside. Now, I have to also say being an outsider of Rooster County was very difficult, too. But I was very forthright. I said, hey, you know, I went to federal prison for marijuana trafficking. I learned to train dogs inside and became Department of Labor Certified. I got over 8000 hours of dog training experience. And I just put it all out there. I didn't hold it back. You know, I didn't want people to be like, oh, you didn't tell us that. No, no, I'm going to tell you everything because that's who I am, right? And if you don't choose to embrace that, that's your choice. Because everybody has a choice and everybody has an opinion. But because I worked so hard to build my reputation and my work ethic in my drive and the same things that I put into nefarious things like selling drugs has propelled me to be able to run this business successfully. And now I have the first ever contract for the state of Maine for a service dog in court and I've only been open 11 months. Definitely the drive is apparent. And, you know, you're obviously a smart guy, you know, made some mistakes and ended up in a bad situation. But did you did you run into any stigma when you first got up there and telling and recovering loud and telling people who you were and what happened to you? I'll be honest with you, I didn't. I didn't have any pushback. I mean, I had some of the biggest names in this area embrace me because I was so open, you know, I was like, hey, this is me. Boom, right here. You know, I think a lot of times when you get out of prison, you hide behind it because you're like, whoa, I don't know. I can't tell anybody I'm a felon or I can't tell anybody I'm a recovering addict because then they're going to judge me. You know what? God is going to judge you. Whoever your higher power is going to judge you. It's up to you to be open and honest, let people accept you or not and still move forward because not everybody's going to like you and that's OK because I don't like everybody, right? And so if if you think that you're coming out of prison and you already have stakes against you, then you're going to be stuck to the ground. You're not going to rise, right? When I was in prison, I took a program by T.D. Jake's famous pastor in the South that said, in order to fly, you need to jump. And so that's what I did. I put my wings out and I jumped off the cliff and I said, this is me. This is what I do. If you want me to train your dog, I will. If not, that's fine. And you know what's funny is in the beginning, I hid my ankle monitor. I always wore pants, even in the middle of the summer. Hot sweat all the time. And then one day I said to myself, what am I doing? You know what? Because if these people don't like me, that's OK. Because I'm going to prove to them that they can trust me and that I'm reputable in what I do and I'm going to stand behind my work. So I one day just went out and bought 10 pairs of khaki shorts. And that's what I wore every time when I went to people's houses and people would look and they'd be like, they, you know, they were surprised, right? Because I was just so bold. I didn't care what you thought, you know? And I think that that's really what has made me who I am today is because I was just like, you know what? I'm going to embrace what happened to me instead of fighting because prison saved me in so many different ways. People say, hey, you were in a bad situation or you were in something that wasn't good, right? But was I really? Because I was I was led to the to the light, right? At the fork in the road, I chose to take the right. And then when I got out, I took the path less traveled and look where I am today, you know, because I took the chance. I was not scared to say, oh, OK, this is what happened. This is what I can do. Or I can go this way and I can create a better man that I work so hard to create while I was inside and then let people say, hey, this is this guy. He went to prison, but he's a fantastic dog trainer. Oh, and by the way, he always gives back to the community with with holiday oil drives right now. We're running a special where if you buy one box of Girl Scout cookies, Purpose Pups will match you a box of Girl Scout cookies. Then we give it to either a homeless person or somebody less fortunate that could use that little to say, hey, life isn't so bad. Let's have a carnal delight or let's have a peanut butter tag along, you know, and just give somebody a reason to smile. You know, one of my big campaigns that I do is called Three Smiles. And any time that I can go and I can give somebody a smile, if it's, you know, out there and they need something to eat like a kid that shovels my driveway, right? I went above and beyond to find out who was shoveling my walkway for me during these storms and I called them up after I found them out and I said, hey, I recognize what you're doing for me. I really appreciate it. What do you like to eat? And he said pizza. And I said, well, come buy the shop later after you get out of school. Sixteen year old kid comes by the shop. I give him 20 bucks. I said, thank you very much. I very much appreciate what you did for me. And I hope that you have an excellent day and you enjoy your pizza, right? Because I think too many people, especially out of prison, have their hand up. Nobody ever wants to like bring their hand back and then extend it to somebody else. And I think that as a recovering addict, we have what we have because we share it with others. And so when you employ that and everything that you do in life, it becomes your life, it doesn't become work. So when you're using the steps, I don't say working steps. I say using the steps, because when you put that into into practice, you recover loud every day and you employ people to recover loud around you, all around you, because then people that are struggling are like, wow, this guy actually is recovering and he's doing this. That maybe I can do something like that. And those people are the ones that I say, here's my hand. I'm your helping angel. I'm going to lift you up. And if you fall off the ledge, I'm going to try to catch you. But not every time can I catch you because you have to make the choice to get clean and sober and stay that way. I can always lead you to the light, but if you're not willing to embrace it, that's your choice. My Purpose Pups LLC on Facebook. I also have PurposePups.com. That's P-U-R-P-O-S-E-P-U-P-S.com or LLC on Facebook. My YouTube page, I don't really do as many of that because I post lives every day on Facebook. I've worked with I've done 626 dogs in 11 months. Right now I'm doing 71 dogs a week. So, you know, if you want to see me in action, you want to see what I'm about as a dog trainer and as a good person, you can check us out on Purpose Pups LLC. I'm on there every single day. I post lives. If you want to just reach out and say, hey, Tyler, I appreciate what you're doing and I appreciate the message that you gave on Recover Loud. I'm going to say thank you very much. And I want you to Recover Loud. And what do I need to do to help you Recover Loud? And so that's what my mission is now that I've partnered with you guys is I'm going to employ people all over the place to Recover Loud because I see people struggling every day with addiction that are hiding in the shadows and not willing to come to the light because they're scared of judgment. And so when I see somebody like that, I pull them off to the side and I say, hey, I know you're struggling right now, but there's always a better way. It's up to you to take it. But hey, look, here's a recovery community. Come over to the meetings on Wednesday. It's seven o'clock, you know, take the initiative. Even if you just sit in back and you don't say anything, that's fine. Just come, see the fellowship, embrace the new change, get away from the people, places and things that are your triggers, because that's the only way you're going to ever change. If you think that you're going to go back to where you came from, that's thinking thinking and that's a roadblock to change. And so if you're going to continue to do that, that's your choice. But know that there's always a better and more beautiful way of life than using drugs and stealing from your family members and stealing from your friends and doing everything that is in your power to get high when there's no reason for it. Find a purpose in your own life to embrace and be a better person. Thank you for what you're doing up there in Holton. It's important to me that there's people up there in the county where I'm from doing what needs to be done to help the people that, you know, that I my friends, you know, my family are up there. So thank you, Tyler. And, you know, just I appreciate you and keep recovering loud. I want to thank everybody for watching this episode of Recover Loud. Remember, if you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out. No one has to die. Recover Loud.