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We want to inform our listeners that today's discussion includes adult themes that may not be suitable for younger audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
My guest for Episode #269 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is s J.K Emezi. He’s a pornography addiction recovery coach and Founder of the Porn Reboot System, a system of pornography addiction treatment that helps high-performing business owners, executives, entrepreneurs, and professionals who are dealing with porn addiction problems.
He struggled with out-of-control behavior with pornography for over 11 years. Unable to quit using therapy, 12 Steps, and other methodologies, he created a unique system that allowed him to control his sexual behavior within a few short weeks.
In this episode, J.K shares his personal struggles with pornography addiction, the turning points that led him to seek help, and how he developed his unique recovery method. We explore the impact of addiction on his personal and professional life, the challenges of breaking free from compulsive behaviors, and the importance of mindfulness and self-image in recovery. J.K also provides insights into the support systems available for those dealing with similar issues and emphasizes the importance of addressing shame and stigma in addiction recovery.
Again, this episode contains discussions of adult themes, so listener discretion is advised.
Questions and Topics:
- When did you discover that you had waited too long to seek help, and were there earlier opportunities to do so?
- Can you talk about the wake-up call and its consequences on your life and career?
- How did you realize pornography was a coping mechanism for strong emotions?
- Can you describe the impact of early exposure to pornography on your life?
- How did your family background and expectations affect your behavior and recovery?
- What methods did you try to overcome your addiction, and why did they fail?
- How did you develop the Porn Reboot system, and what makes it effective?
- What are the three pillars of ending compulsive behavior?
- What led you to pivot from a successful sales career to running a porn addiction recovery company?
- What challenges do you face in marketing your business, given the subject matter?
- How do you address the shame component in your program?
- How did the pandemic and work-from-home era affect people’s struggles with addiction?
- How do compulsive behaviors impact business leaders and their companies?
- What are the unique challenges faced by high-achieving individuals with compulsive behaviors?
- Do women also face pornography addiction, and how does your approach differ for them?
- Can your system be applied to other compulsive behaviors or addictions?
- How does the relationship with technology contribute to out-of-control behaviors?
- What impact does addiction have on a company when it involves founders or CEOs?
- What advice do you have for those struggling with compulsive behaviors?
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- Full transcript
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Automated Transcript (May Contain Mistakes)
Mark Graban:
Hi, welcome to my favorite mistake. I'm Mark Graban. My guest today is JK Amezi. He's a pornography addiction recovery coach. He's the founder of the porn reboot system. It's a system of pornography addiction treatment that helps high-performing business owners, executives, entrepreneurs, and professionals who are dealing with porn addiction problems. JK struggled with some out-of-control behaviors, as he describes it, related to pornography for over eleven years. And being unable to quit using therapy, twelve steps or other methodologies, he created a system that allowed him to control that behavior. So it's a unique and interesting topic within the podcast here. A lot to delve into. So let me first welcome you to the podcast, JK.
JK Emezi:
How are you, Mark? I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. It's been a. It's been a long time coming, I think.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, well, I appreciate our opportunities to chat and previously, and to think how to frame a subject and perhaps the mistake story or other things we'll talk about with your business that we have not addressed here on the podcast. I will, if anything, try to lean into any discomfort it may sound like. I mean, I stammered through things, but normally. But any discomfort that may sound like I have, we'll get through that, because I appreciate your willingness to talk about this, JK, and the spirit of helping others. So, with that said, enough of my yakking. We'll jump into the question at hand. JK, what would you say is your favorite mistake?
JK Emezi:
So right before we began this, when we were talking about what the possible mistakes could be for me, I mentioned I that when you're a person who has a past with an addictive or compulsive behavior, it feels as if you've made so many mistakes that to find a favorite one is really difficult. But it was enjoyable to have that conversation first, because I did come up with something. And at this point in my life, when I look back, my favorite mistake, favorite mistake was waiting too long to seek a professional help for my compulsive behavior.
Mark Graban:
And when did you discover, I guess, that you had waited too long? Looking back at it and reflecting, were there other off ramps or opportunities to seek that help? Was there a certain wake up call that led you then to seek that help?
JK Emezi:
Yeah, I'll talk about the wake up call. Then I'll talk about the consequences on myself, on my business career, and a few different things. And hopefully it's relatable. I think it will be. I was exposed to pornography at a very young age. At about eight years old, there were a series of events that happened that led me to use pornography as a coping mechanism. I was basically using it to anesthetize strong emotions. Are you good? We got a little bit of an echo.
Mark Graban:
Oh, I'm not hearing that. Sorry.
JK Emezi:
Okay. I got it for like five or 6 seconds.
Mark Graban:
Okay, well, here I can make an edit point. Do you want to go back? Can you sort of start that again if there's. The system's usually pretty good about echo. I can put in earbuds if needed.
JK Emezi:
Okay. Yeah, it's not showing up now, so I think we're good.
Mark Graban:
Okay. All right. So I made a note to do an edit. So, yeah, if you can just start that again about the wake up call.
JK Emezi:
Yeah, so I was exposed to pornography when I was eight years old and I realized when I was about 17 or 18 years old that I was using it to medicate very strong emotions in my life. Whenever I felt lonely, whenever I felt a lack of intimacy, whenever I felt angry or sad, pornography was my coping mechanism. And Mark happy to go back and talk about how it ended up that way, but it really became a serious issue when I was in my early twenties in college. I come from an educated background. My dad's a doctor, mom's in the medical field as well. And they had very high hopes for me. I have a sister who's a famous author and another one who is a photographer for National Geographic. She was the first black female photographer for National Geographic, works for them. And I was their older brother who was held back in college with a less than 2.0 GPA because I was using pornography to deal with every problem. I realized at about 22 years old that unlike other people, I was a little bit weird. And weird means that I actually had a female friend of mine at one point say, jk, you are so weird and you are pretty creepy. I was like, wait a minute, where is this coming from? She's like, you're leering at everybody. She's like, you're checking out all these girls. You're looking at them. And I was surprised because I never viewed myself as the type of guy who would be creepy and leer at women. I didn't have a girlfriend. I wasn't able to get into a relationship. I wasn't prioritizing my studies anymore. In fact, here's how my days went. I think this would help explain it a little bit better. Yeah. I would spend my days smoking weed because I was trying to run away from the reality of my life. And every evening I would go out to a bar or a club, and I would try to meet up with somebody and have sex. When that didn't work out, I would come back. I would view pornography. And then since I was lacking sex in my life, I would get on a video chat sites. After that, it kept escalating. Over the months. The video chat site would go from being on a video chat site to going on anonymous, looking for anonymous sex. There's a site called Craigslist, and back in the day, they had a personals page for anonymous encounters. And I would jump on that, and I would start seeking connection with somebody. And I can go into the story of exactly what happened with ebb. Okay.
Mark Graban:
I think so, yeah.
JK Emezi:
Yeah. I'm trying to be a little bit. I don't want to go too far because of your audience, just to be honest. So, yeah, that's okay. One evening, after going out and doing what I usually do in the clubs, I came back, and I felt a very deep sense of loneliness and depression. And this was after my mom had text me that your sister got on another magazine or whatever. And I was like, what am I doing with my life here? Depressed, I got on a video chat site, chatted with a woman, got on the Craigslist site, and I received the message from somebody who said that she was babysitting and she was free to meet up for sex. It was about 02:00 a.m. i jumped in my car, still tipsy from going to the bar, and I drove out to this suburb in Wichita. It was a really rundown place. I remember this so viscerally, even as I talk about it now, because I was on my BlackBerry in my car, messaging her, and she said, well, just give me a minute. One of the kids woke up. I'll be out in a second. It sounded so legit. So I was like, okay, cool.
Mark Graban:
Well, and for those who are just listening, there were some finger quotes that I feel like I should point out. When JK said she, yes, she.
JK Emezi:
I'll get to that, too. I'm sitting in there, and maybe because I'm tipsy, I don't put my vehicle in park. I keep it in drive. I'm sitting there, excited, aroused, with adrenaline flowing through me, ready to have this crazy sexual experience. And while I'm sitting there, a shadow comes by the driver's side window, and I hear the voices of men. And next thing I remember is the driver's side window shattering in my face. And I don't know who or what it was, but I panicked, and I hit the accelerator. I end up driving through the backyard of this house. Tricycles, toys, plastic pool through the other side. And I remember it was a setup, basically. I remember driving home, my hands gripping the steering wheel, telling myself, JK, you weren't raised like this. You weren't raised like this. You weren't raised like this. I drive all the way home, and that's the moment I realized that evening that I have an out of control behavior that could cause me to end up in jail and that could ruin my life. I'd love to say that. Right after that, Mark, I started working on myself, and everything was happily ever after. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of the journey.
Mark Graban:
So, I mean, we can talk more about that journey when you were eight years old. And for context, what year was that, roughly, was the Internet.
JK Emezi:
Oh, so I'm 40 years old. I just turned 40. So that had to be 1992.
Mark Graban:
Okay. And, I mean, I was just wondering, because imagine, you know, this. This early exposure to pornography is only happening more often with the Internet and smartphones. 1992? Not yet.
JK Emezi:
Not yet. I was a latchkey kid. Mom and dad kept the keys under the flower pot in front of the house, came back and was told not to let anyone in. We had an older cousin who was a nanny who would come by and just check on us sometimes. And one time, she came by with a comic book. I was a big comic book fan. I still am, but I don't have the time to indulge. But I have some good collections, and I was determined to find out what this was. And like most kids, we'll find a way, if we are determined enough, and if we are alone in the house, we'll find it. And I did. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a pornographic comic book. I won't say anything triggering, but I will say that the theme, the story was about a young man who had gotten married, and he brought his new bride home to meet his father. He goes out to run an errand, and the father-in-law ends up having sex with the bride. I'm a person who was raised in a conservative Catholic home. I was shocked at the entire thing. I also didn't know what sex was. But here's the interesting thing, and this is where the problem begins. When it comes to pornography, it doesn't matter whether you know what sex is or not. It doesn't matter whether you're literate or illiterate. It also doesn't matter what your state of mental development is. It is very primal, and you will instantly decode it into whatever it means to you in your reality. Unfortunately, your translation of it could end up hurting you or worse still, end up hurting other people if you perpetrate, and those are the most serious consequences of it. While I was unable to get aroused, Mark, at that age, I did experience this rush many years later when I became a professional, I came to learn that that was just a rush of adrenaline and norepinephrine because it was taboo. However, I had not felt that ever before in my life, and I liked it. I liked the rush of doing something naughty. And from that moment onwards, anytime I didn't get candy, anytime I wasn't allowed to stay up late, anytime I didn't get anything that a kid usually would, I would go seek nudity because that's what I associated with it to get that particular adrenaline high. And that continued till I was about 13 years old and hit puberty. Then I learned what masturbation was and it was off to the races.
Mark Graban:
And, I mean, it sounds like you're describing a very stable home and kind of just coping with, I don't know if you will, very, you know, typical childhood experiences as opposed to anything particularly traumatic.
JK Emezi:
There were some, there was a traumatic incident that was related to that. And I'm sharing this also, so the listeners understand that one can end up with an addictive or compulsive behavior even if they come from a stable home where parents are doing their best. Interestingly enough, we get more people reaching out, asking about their kids these days. We get more business people be like, oh, are you reaching out for yourself? And like, no, dude. My eleven year old, he's out of control. And we've had to, like, lock things down. So we have these conversations a lot. But unfortunately, when I was about 14 years old, an older neighbor, about 17, started bringing pornography over. We were still latchkey kids and my responsibility was obviously to take care of my little sisters. My dad worked late, emergency room and stuff like that. And so he would leave me with pornography, so we would watch pornography, and then he'll be like, you can keep this, right? He thought he was being a big older brother, educating me on this. This went on for a couple of weeks. And then one day, one evening, my sister, baby sister, and they were both under twelve years old, one of them sends a, pushes a note under my door and I open the door and she says, jk, whenever you're done doing whatever you're doing with your friend, please walk him out of the house and lock the door, because every night he's been coming into our room and doing stuff to us and give me a second. And this really devastated me. This messed me up. I didn't know what to do because the first thing I knew about my dad is if I told my dad, my dad was 100% gonna kill this guy. I knew it. That kid was dead. My dad would throw everything away. Um, I felt an incredible amount of shame. I felt that I had. I had really failed my sisters. Um, what I did was I went over to his place and he always liked to show me he was stronger because he's just like, 16, 17 and getting muscles. And he would always try to wrestle me. And I was like, let's. Let's wrestle. And he was like, dude, it's like 06:00 p.m. like, I was like, let's wrestle now. And he still kicked my butt, but I bit him. I hurt him too. And he told me to get the F out of his place, excuse the language. And he was like, just don't come back. You are crazy. What's wrong with you? I was still so conservative. It's still a catholic community. I couldn't tell him what it was.
Mark Graban:
But you were trying to get back at him.
JK Emezi:
Yeah, in my own adolescent, childish way.
Mark Graban:
Right.
JK Emezi:
Years later, when I say years later, I mean, as recently as about six, seven years ago, I realized that that, interestingly enough, played a big role in the trajectory of my career. So I left a very, very successful direct sales position as a director and co owner of a company. And everybody thought I was crazy when I seemingly randomly pivoted to running a porn addiction recovery company. And as I still do work on myself, I'm starting to realize that, yeah.
Mark Graban:
Well, and I think there's. We want to talk about, you know, the approach that you found to be effective and the approach you're using to help others. I think there's some other pieces to the story, back to the day when you described this was a setup. Who knows? They were intending to rob you or kill you. I mean, a very close call. But what I heard you saying was, like, you, you might think that that was bad enough to be scared straight, if you will, you know, to change your behavior there. But it sounds like that it wasn't that easy.
JK Emezi:
It wasn't that easy. A compulsive behavior. I think this is probably a good point to make the difference. On the surface, I use the term porn addiction and sex addiction. Years ago, people would just chuckle or laugh and they said, you help people end their porn or sex. Isn't that a good thing? Isn't like being addicted to sex. Good. That's changing a lot. Thankfully, I don't use the term addiction within our programs because it's a very loaded word. It comes with all these ideas of somebody, perhaps, who is on the side of the road, somebody who's made a whole bunch of bad decisions. I prefer the term compulsive behavior. And I realized it was compulsive when I wanted to stop. It was not serving any benefit in my life. But regardless of the negative impact on my life, I would still keep going back to it. So when I was what you would call sexually satiated, there was no need, no physical ability to get aroused. I would still go back to pornography. That's when I realized it was a compulsive behavior. So I tried many things, but whether it was therapy, it was flying out to San Diego to do some woo woo stuff. I did it all. I did the breathing stuff before it was a big deal. I did, I did all sorts of ceremonies. I did the, the rational stuff, and I did it all.
Mark Graban:
And I imagine there are technical barriers of treating yourself using what parents might use to block kids from.
JK Emezi:
Yeah, there were blockers. I would get around the porn blockers, whatever they had back in those days, they weren't called porn blockers, but they were things you could use to block your devices. I would use lock boxes. At one very, very low point, I found myself online searching for physical chastity devices. And it might sound, it might sound ridiculous to some people, but the number of grown successful men who are just like, listen to the podcast and go like, bro, I did that too. That was a super low point for me. What was I doing looking up chastity belts and devices for myself? But that's how low you can go, and you feel hopeless. And a lot of the hopelessness came from not being able to talk about it. Right. Back then, there weren't many people who would talk about pornography addiction, and there were many men, and there are, unfortunately, men today who are getting laughed out of their therapist's office because their therapist doesn't subscribe to the belief that pornography is actually addictive. There's actually a therapeutic belief that the men who think they are addicted to pornography are actually religious Mendez who are dealing with a lot of shame, and this is just some sort of projection in their adult life based on that.
Mark Graban:
I'm surprised the therapist would laugh that out of the room, but they, they have a different view of saying, I guess they would frame the issue with something different.
JK Emezi:
Yeah, the laughing people out of the room is not an exaggeration. Part of our marketing in the early days was actually taking screenshots, blanking things out of where therapists had responded to clients, and said that this is ridiculous. And I'm telling you for the third or fourth time that that is not the problem you have. It is something else. And there's some other root cause. Again, air quotes that I'm using to this particular thing. But the behavior continued eventually. I was not able to stay focused in school because of the shame, the depression that came with it. And there was a lot of isolation, too. When you're dealing with a lot of shame and you're not feeling worthy of being loved as a result of this behavior, you self isolate a lot. You're walking around feeling self conscious. One day a recruiter came by and said he was recruiting people to sell bibles and educational books door to door. And for some strange reason I thought that this is my way out of the midwest. And so I signed up, became an intern. I ended up working with that company for eleven years. And during those years on the road, that was where I learned and put together the methodology that is now called the porn reboot system. It was while being a professional and building an organization and failing at it too, that I simultaneously learned how to control my sexual behavior, which is how I ended up doing what I'm doing today.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. And I'm not asking you to give away the secret sauce or I realize this is your business to help people, but was the process of figuring out what worked a matter of trial and error? Is it influenced by anything from a realm of therapy or counseling?
JK Emezi:
Yeah. Well, first of all, there is no secret sauce. My system is available for free online and I just want to make it clear, the only thing that I and the therapists at elevated recovery help people do is we help you implement. But the material is absolutely free. And that's the whole point. The point is our price ranges is sometimes out of reach to many people. And there are people who were like me, they were in college, they were just trying to make it. And if it's something that's preventing you from graduating, I don't want to charge you for it. Use it for free and reach out and we'll see what we can do to help you. It is a. It's a mixture of different methodologies. I'm a traditional recovery coach, and I use the word recovery loosely in the sense that I believe a good recovery coach should have several disciplines under their belt. So this is based on mindfulness and I'm certified and I literally just came back from a ten day silent retreat and I do one every year. The basis of this is deep mindfulness, but also rational emotive behavioral therapy by doctor Albert Ellis, which I've studied, still study and get certified in whenever something new comes out. That's what the basis is. We've trimmed stuff out over the years and now we've added in trauma informed therapist. Doctor Jessica Eastman is one of our coaches and therapists who works with our clients who have perhaps a traumatic sexual abuse based background that led to the out of control behavior. But to keep it simple, there are three pillars to ending ones out of control behavior, which I learned over the years. There is habits, there's lifestyle, and there's self image. Habits is the, is the. I call it mental masturbation or motivational masturbation that you find on YouTube and social media. Talking about changing habits, replacing habits with a habit, that's wonderful and that can definitely help you get a sense of control over an out of control behavior. However, that habit does have to become incorporated into your lifestyle to truly, actually be a habit. This is the realm of twelve step groups and religious groups. You will often hear in religious groups or twelve step groups that you're taking it one day at a time. You will raise your hand and say, my name is Mark, or my name is JK and I am porn addict. I am an alcoholic, and that's okay. However, there's no way out because you're also. It's also implied that if you leave the group, if you don't do the steps, then you're going to relapse and end back there. I had a big problem with this because not only did it prevent me from growing my business, that mindset, it restricted me severely, but it also, how would I put it? On a very fundamental level, I was unable to accept the fact that I would have to be an addict for the rest of my life. I had absolute clarity as to how I got into this behavior, and I believed that I could get out of the behavior. And even at my lowest point, with nothing, I was not willing to say, I am powerless over this addictive behavior. Now. Some people are, but there are a lot of men out there who will never seek professional help because they're like, I'm not going to say that, I just. I just don't believe that. And I will be resentful if I'm forced to go into rehab for that. So that's the lifestyle piece. But in order to permanently end this behavior. One needs to change their self image. And the self image change involves some deep work, but it also involves being able to sustain your lifestyle long enough. People think that they control their behavior because they are no longer using porn or alcohol or whatever it may be. But when it's time. I've had clients say it all the time. They're like, I'm good, JK. I'm doing so well. I've used your free material, and then three years later, they come back and they're like, oh, my God, I relapse. I need your help. I'm like, well, what happened? Well, I just had my first kid, and I just didn't know what being a father was. Like, dude, this is so stressful. My self care is out the window. Or I just started a business while working on the side, and I just didn't know. It's so much stress, or I decided to scale. I decided to go from being a one man consultant with my assistants to growing up, growing a huge company. And it's overwhelming. Those are lifestyle issues. When your self image has changed and you've built your values from the bottom up, it is almost impossible for you to relapse. Almost being that people can still choose to engage in the behavior later on if they want. Yeah.
Mark Graban:
So, JK, what was the moment, then where you started thinking about, or decided to take the leap to leave that job, that you had the sales job and to start your company?
JK Emezi:
This was about in 2012. I remember I'd grown my organization to about maybe about 90 salespeople across the US. And one day, for some reason, we call it breaking schedule, I should have been out working, but I was at home and I looked at. I was online and I saw something pop up. It was some forum or the other. And when I went into the forum, it happened to be a forum about pornography addiction. And I looked at the members of the forum because it shows you how many members there were, and there were over a hundred thousand members. And at that point, there were a few tens of thousands that were online. And I couldn't believe it. I was like, well, I. I dealt with this, but as a forum, I spent the rest of the day just browsing through it. And I was shocked because I realized that, first of all, I was shocked because the advice they were giving was horrible, in my opinion. And secondly, I was just surprised that so many men were dealing with this. So this led me down a rabbit hole. So what I started to do in 2012, November 2012, specifically, I started an anonymous blog. And I just started blogging about my experiences of overcoming this and dealing with this, and the block just got popular. There wasn't much marketing, a little bit of SEO, I guess. People searched the keywords and it blew up. And I started spending my evenings. I would work in the daytime, go shadow my sales team, do trainings, and every evening I would come back for a few hours and I was just responding to the emails that just kept coming in from men who were desperately seeking help. So, um, the company kept growing. Unfortunately, we got to a point, we were selling books door to door. We ran into tablets and kindles, and it just get harder. It got harder and harder. So, um, at that point, I was the last remaining sales director with the largest sales team. So I had a deal with the CEO and it was sort of a weird exit where when all the salespeople are yours, but the infrastructure is there, how much are you going to give me to move on? And I did that. And I remember driving back then, I used to live in New Mexico. I remember driving back to New Mexico and making the decision to just go all in on helping people to end this behavior. There wasn't any, there was just a lot of fear. I was just willing to screw it all up. I had no, there was no other example. There was no one who was doing something like that. So I just had to figure it out and build it from the ground up.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. And so with this business, I mean, imagine, are there marketing challenges around this where it's one thing to be working in an area where people might be unwilling to admit, embarrassed to admit, I problem. I mean, even if you're trying to advertise, like, I mean, is it blocked as being an adult subject, or, I mean, like, there's probably a lot of challenges, or is it okay because it's in the realm of counseling, recovery, therapy.
JK Emezi:
It'S, it's, first of all, it's not okay. It is just not okay by any ad network. Secondly, to preface all of that, we are, we are a successful, multi seven figure business with very good margins. And I believe that, first of all, that just comes down to really, the principles and values of the company itself. I am very thankful to be surrounded by a team that where everybody, from our operations person to integrators to strategists, therapists, everybody has some sort of personal relationship with pornography. Either they went through a divorce because their husband was addicted to it, they have a teenager who has a problem with it, or they were a former client themselves. When we started, definitely we were viewed as pornography. We had to get to a very, very large ad spend to start getting our own agents in certain, like with, with Facebook now meta. But once the pandemic hit, we lost that privilege because they were cracking down on so many things. So we lost the individual, the contact that we had. So we've had to be very creative when it comes to the technical aspect of what we do. A lot of it is very organic, and a lot of it is really, it started with me being relatable, open, honest and vulnerable about every aspect of this, from the podcast to YouTube. I do not hold back. I'm very direct, and I'm not afraid. There are three reasons, mark, why people seek help for something like pornography, and that is out of love, duty, or fear. If we're talking about the marketing, and I appeal to all three of those in every single one of my messages. And if a man is sitting there going like, I'm afraid that I'm about to lose my job because I acted out on my work computer, he's going to hear that message. If he's like, you know what? My partner, my wife found out, and she's surprised because she thought I was done with this, and I don't want to lose her. Right? That's love. And if he's like, I'm the pastor of the church, I'm a minister, or I am a leader, people think I'm a great example. But the truth is that I live in this fantasy land where I'm thinking about having sex with all these people who are supposed to be my clients or people who are my followers, or people who are looking up to me. That's duty. And once you, you're able to go in there and press those buttons and relate to people, they'll come out and speak to you.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. How much of is this you're talking about men and male problem? Are there women also face this addiction, and do some of them come to you and youre your company for help?
JK Emezi:
Yes, we women deal with this as well. When we first started, I tried working with women. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that, or fortunately, I quickly realized that it wasn't my lane. The reason being, if there are any women who are listening, that oftentimes women who are dealing with a sexually compulsive disorder have some other co occurring disorder, and for them, it's usually just a symptom. So sometimes there's a bipolar issue, there's depression, there's some sort of trauma. It often isn't as clear cut as men. For men, it's so much easier to identify what the issue is. So what we do right now is we refer out our clients to some of the professionals who. Who specialize in working with women. I do think that there needs to be a lot. There needs to be a lot more professionals focusing on women, though.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. And if that was a mistake when you said that you decided that wasn't your lane, I guess that's something you learned from fairly quickly. You realize, okay, we need to do those referrals and take another approach.
JK Emezi:
Yeah. Like once. Once they would show up to the calls and we have a screening system, once they would show up and we would have the conversation, I just came to realize that there was something else going on below the surface. And I want to make it clear, like, I'm not a therapist. I have therapists working for me. I'm a professionally trained coach, which means I show people that they can actually accomplish their goal. In this case, it's ending their out of control behavior. And whenever I run into significant roadblocks, the first thing I do is start looking below the surface to see if there's something else going on. Next is my personality. I have a very masculine. Some would describe it as aggressive personality, and that didn't match with many women. It's mostly really high level guys who are a little bit aggressive and high achievers. They're like, that's the guy. This guy's going to call me out of my b's. I realized after a couple of years that those were the men who were reaching out. I was surprised, but I worked with them because they wouldn't work with anyone else.
Mark Graban:
And, JK, do you think, or have you found, I mean, the approach that you have, is it effective related to other compulsions or addictions of people who use that word, or is there something very specific about the way people are wired, or the approach or what's necessary to help break that pornography compulsion?
JK Emezi:
It can be applied to other compulsive behaviors. And we have Doctor Rankin of the coaches who keeps trying to get me to apply it to gambling and to alcohol. But again, we've been successful, and we've grown and we've served a lot of people by literally staying in our own lane. And we've gone so deep in our own research and the data that we've collected that I'd say that while in general it can be applied to other behaviors, it is catered specifically to porn and sex, mainly because of the shame component. The shame component is huge. It brings up a lot of emotions. I mean, I'm sure even during this interview there were emotions that probably came up for you or thoughts that came up and you had to like, should I? Should I not? I'm gonna switch to questions, that sort of thing. So it's unique in that sense. And the program is designed to address that.
Mark Graban:
I can only imagine that, you know, the pandemic era, work from home era has created more problems for people being unsupervised, being home alone. When it comes to getting themselves in.
JK Emezi:
Trouble, I guess with getting themselves in trouble. Yes. Yes, it definitely has. We grew a lot during the pandemic, and it was a hard time for a lot of people. This may sound weird to say, but I enjoyed the pandemic. I enjoyed the pandemic and being on lockdown because it really allowed me to put the business aside and focus on actually serving people. I really appreciated the fact that there was so much help that was needed and the company as a whole and our system improved. Even now there are a lot of people who are not just dealing with out of control behaviors with pornography, but there is this huge, I would call it an epidemic of a lack of focus with people who work from home, people who keep telling me things like, before the pandemic, I was able to read a book cover to cover. Now I have books all over the place where I start the first few chapters, and markets like, grinning back. Then that start a few chapters here. Are you like guiltily looking at it out of the corner of your eye, just like, ah, yeah, guilty is charged. But there's this pandemic of a lack of focus that has come with an addiction to the Internet. And there are a lot of people that I see who have a lot of potential to be successful, to grow their business. They're freelancing to do many things, but they're really chopping themselves off at the legs because of their out of control behaviors related to these devices that we're using all the time. That was the biggest thing I know noticed. So if there's one area we've started addressing more, it's individuals relationship with technology as well, because most of the behavior with pornography and even sex begins on those little screens.
Mark Graban:
And it could be the quote unquote doom scrolling related to the news or current events or politics or the outrage of the day.
JK Emezi:
Addiction to outrage. Addiction to. I define drama as you just seeking emotional validation for something. And we don't realize that there are healthier ways to seek emotional validation, but we've, we've conditioned ourselves to be sitting on the toilet first thing in the morning, opening up and just going like, let's get my emotional validation, which tells the subconscious that that's what you prioritize. You prioritize emotional validation first thing in the morning, and thus you're conditioned to seek it throughout the day. You're right. Yeah, it's a problem.
Mark Graban:
So as we start to wrap up here, I mean, maybe one other thing. You've touched on this, but this problem is, it's not one that's limited to a frontline employee whose company discovers, or manager just discovering through technology and other things that, okay, well, that employee is looking at inappropriate material, they're fired. There's a different impact when it's the founder, the CEO and executive. Could you sort of talk to that and, you know, some of the impact that it has not just on individual, but their company?
JK Emezi:
Definitely let me try and do it in three ways. There's the founder slash CEO. I don't think you should be both. I try to be both, and it's very bad. Just pick one. But there's the person who is trying to get started or growing, and there's the individual who is established, and then there is the company. Let's talk about the company and the company one is obvious. Whether you like it or not. Those who you lead, your managers, they are looking at you. You are setting the standard. I don't care what the system is you use. I don't care how much you delegate or how much you've bought back your time. At the end of the day, you are setting the pace and they are watching you. When you have a compulsive behavior, there is no way that you are operating at your peak, because in today's day and age, you are often using that compulsive behavior to anesthetize or feel better about stress or strong emotion or loneliness. All things which are part and parcel of being, of leading a company or building a business. So that's the first piece. If you're an individual who is growing your business, you need to have your wits about you. You need to be self aware. You need to be excited. You need to know what your values are. You also need to have physical energy in order to keep going. And a compulsive behavior robs you of all of these things. There are individuals who tell me that, oh, I work with this person and I work with that coach, and I did all these things, and I'm just like, but do you binge watch pornography twice a week? They're like, yeah, but I mean, who doesn't? It's like, I don't. Neither do my clients.
Mark Graban:
Right?
JK Emezi:
And they're doing quite well right now. We have the individual. These are the folks I work with the most, and that is the person who is established. The problem with a person who is established and who's made some money, you know, like the. There are a lot of people out there who might dream of someday making a six figure income, but these are individuals who've already surpassed that, sometimes before the age of 30. They're doing very, very well, and their behavior with pornography is viewed as a harmless pastime. Sometimes it's viewed as something that they deserve. There's a little bit of a sense of entitlement that comes with that. But the problem is some of the beliefs that a successful founder or CEO or career individual consultant has is that there is no rock bottom when you are making a high income. And when I say a high income, I'm saying anywhere from $200,000 personal earned income above. There's no. What's rock bottom? You can always protect yourself with one thing or the other. There's also denial and your self image because you cannot admit to yourself that you are an addict, because addicts don't get to where you are in life. You're like, no, no, no, I don't use drugs. I drink alcohol once in a while. But you're trying to call me an addict. No, no, no. That's not it. The final piece is many of these individuals are very smart. You're smart, you're successful. But here's the thing. You believe that the thing that got you and your company to where you are today, you believe that same grit is the same thing that's going to help you end your out of control behavior. And you get very frustrated when you try all those things, and they don't work. Boundaries don't work. Good habits don't work. Your self talk and affirmations don't work. Talking to your high performance coach doesn't work. Speaking to your pastor isn't working, and now you're very, very frustrated. The final piece is the cost, the cost of actually admitting it. What if your wife finds out? 15 years ago, maybe she wouldn't care. Now she's got a lot to lose. You've got a lot to lose.
Mark Graban:
Right?
JK Emezi:
Right. What if your employees found out that you were doing this? Right. So these are some of the things that prevent individuals in that situation from reaching out from help for help. And that's one of the areas where we, while I we have other coaches in the program. I spend most of my time working with those individuals as even when they sit down with a therapist, the first thing that they are checking is, is this therapist, somebody who understands my unique situation and like, do they understand what it's like to live my lifestyle? Are they going to judge me for a little thing? I said, are they going to be thinking, oh, must be nice, right? So it's rare to find a peer that you can work with when it comes to those very deep emotions and somebody who isn't a pushover as well. Yeah.
Mark Graban:
Well, JK, thank you for sharing your story. And I think setting the example of being willing to share and turn mistakes into something positive and working to help others. I appreciate you sharing all of that. I'll put links in the show notes to JK's company. It's elevatedrecovery.org dot. And I think it's worth mentioning you have a free ebook.
JK Emezi:
Absolutely.
Mark Graban:
In addition to other materials, if you want to tell people about that. And I can make sure there's a link in the show notes.
JK Emezi:
Yeah, we have a free ebook called Seven Secrets of Porn free Men. And we also have a free. Well, it's free. It's a podcast called the Porn Reboot Podcast. You've got close to 600 episodes, as well as our YouTube channel called Porn Reboots, which has about 1400 videos. All of them are tips, tactics on ending your behavior. One thing I also want to make very clear, which might be unusual, is I don't want you to apply to work with me. I really don't. Not now. There is so much shame and so many strong emotions. We've put a lot of work into our complementary material. And if you're a person out there who is seeking help, please take some time to educate yourself on this. Apply it to your life. It doesn't matter. Maybe you're like, well, my problem is not just ending my behavior with pornography, JK, I have some control. It's just that my wife is experiencing betrayal trauma, and we have these issues because she found out about that. We have material for that. So please use the free material. And then final thing is, we have a free, private and confidential Facebook group which allows you to post anonymously where you can show up, and there are coaches who will support you. Nobody. Your friends won't know that you joined a group. Nobody will know who you are.
Mark Graban:
You don't associate Facebook and anonymous usually.
JK Emezi:
Yeah, you don't usually. But nobody's going to find out what you're doing in the group just don't privately message us because I don't trust Facebook and their messaging system.
Mark Graban:
Well, anything could be hacked, so. All right, well, thank you for those free resources, JK, and again, thank you for having the conversation. It's a conversation you have much more often through your work and through other podcasts than I do. So I think that was all if it was a risk, a risk worth taking, I hope it helps somebody who's listening. And thank you so much for being.
JK Emezi:
Part of the podcast, Mark, thank you for taking the risk. I appreciate it. I know it wasn't an easy thing for you to do, but I appreciate the fact that you care enough about your audience to bring someone like me in and explore this. And I'm absolutely confident that there will be some individuals who find this very beneficial. It's been my honor to join you on this. Thank you.
Mark Graban:
Thank you.