#458: Your Biggest Breakdowns Are Your Biggest Breakthroughs with JB Copeland, Entrepreneur & Influencer

0:00Feelings can give you the ability to gain clarity. Why am I fearful right now? Even on this podcast, when I know I have 1.3 million followers, I know that I'm getting this business being built. I know there's a book coming out. Why am I fearful? It's okay to question. And the reason I'm fearful is because I'm insecure. And why am I insecure? It's just, you can go down these rabbit holes of being able to like understand what is this feeling in my stomach right now? Why am I feeling like this? I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow.

0:39That's a no-sameer. I'm ready for my close-up. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so excited you're back with me this week. I love our guest. And not only is he talented, humble, and great peeps that you're going to love, but he's letting me read the actual email when I asked him for a bio. He's letting me read it to you. And I know you guys love behind the scenes. Okay, this is real life. Ready? And so know you're not alone. Because I know so many people right now are like, oh, I don't look like that person or I don't have that ability. Here's the thing. Everybody doubts. If you're not doubting, you're not putting yourself out there enough.

1:12That's my opinion. So giddy up, buckle up and get ready for this. OK, so this is what he sent me back when I asked him for a bio. These are always so hard for me. LOL. OK, to you guys right now who are always saying this is tough. I'm having a tough time with this. So everybody is always having a tough time. former collegiate athlete played at a high level on scholarship, dealt with concussions and caused me to retire my junior year. This led me into a spiral of addiction and extreme discontentment in my life. Struggled with drugs, painkillers for about five years until two years ago. I, with the help of my family, was checked into rehab.

1:50Finally started the journey of learning to engage with my deeper pain. So interested to hear about that. From it came a message. I want to help people feel again. A year ago, I decided to start posting and really the rest is history. Growth has been so fast that I'm just now working on projects, businesses, a lot of cool stuff coming. But as of now, I have a creative house production company that helps clients, brands that also have a message, bring it to life in a way to communicate organically pure marketing to the masses. This man has built an incredible community online. Check it out on IG.

2:27JB Copeland has literally amassed over 1.3 million followers in a year. I've never heard of anything like it before. JB, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. And Heather, I have zero clue what I'm talking about. And so that's how I feel. You know, I see other people online and I'm like, they have it all together. And I'm like, what am I supposed to do here? And so my bio is I'm still figuring it out and I might have it all wrong. And so I'm so excited to be on the show and excited to get open and vulnerable with you and answer whatever questions you might have. Okay. So let's take it back.

3:02I love to hear the backstory and the come up because it sounds like on the outside looking in, I bet a lot of people thought you had this thing on lock when you're a high level athlete, it looks like you're killing it. Take us back to that time. Really, I was a late bloomer in high school, but and so sophomore year, I was on JV2. I grew up in Texas, South Lake, Texas, to be exact. And Texas is a huge football state. And so from sophomore to junior year, I grew from like five, eight to six, three and was turned into the starting linebacker my junior year. You're giving so many men hope right now.

3:37Let's go. Hey, there's always room for growth. I'm a late bloomer. I'm still a late bloomer. I feel like I'm still blooming. I don't know. I think we're always blooming, but ended up having a great junior year. And then my senior year was the team captain, was one of the team captains and was getting a lot of looks from colleges and scholarships coming in. And the fourth game of the season, I tore my ACL and just completely devastated. And that was when I didn't know how to engage with pain. I didn't know how to engage with missteps and things like this and numbing and the pressures of life. And so that's when I really started to delve into a bit of drug use at that time.

4:15Within that, though, I had one scholarship offer to New Mexico State University that said, well, stand by you. I understand you just tore your knee. All the other offers were pulled from the table. And at that time, New Mexico State was the worst Division I football school in America. They hadn't had a winning season since like the 1960s. I was like, screw it. I'm going to go. And so I went for my first semester, you know, I rehabbed my knee, ended up playing a lot that year. And we went and played LSU, which is a big SEC school out of Baton Rouge. And as a freshman, I had an amazing game, 10, 12 tackles, a sack or two.

4:54And I was like, I'm not staying at this school. Like I'm transferring and I'm going to transfer to my dream has always been to play at a power five school, which is at that time it was, you know, the ACC, the SEC, the big 12, Pac-12. And now everything's changed with everything, all the new rules and everything. But I went to junior college after my first semester at New Mexico State. I went to Navarro Junior College and people have heard of Navarro because of their cheer program. I don't know if anyone's seen Navarro cheer on Netflix. They're national champions like every single year, but they also are really good at football.

5:28And so I ended up going on scholarship to Navarro. It was in the middle of nowhere. in somewhere, Texas. And I was there for a year from January to December. Well, the drug use even picked up more. My athletic ability and my ability to play the position, I was really, really good. But mentally and emotionally, I was very insecure. I didn't understand my value. I didn't understand still all this pain. That was even deeper than an ACL tear. A lot of it came from childhood, and we can get into that. But had the best year of football in my life, like led the nation in tackles in junior college. And from there, North Carolina, the Tar Heels reached out and offered me a scholarship.

6:10And so I went to UNC that January. So it was the January of my sophomore year. And even before I started the season, that coming season, things started to fall apart. Personally, it was like this very subconscious, like self-sabotage. A few weeks in, I couldn't stop smoking weed because I couldn't stop numbing. And I failed a drug test. And at that time, marijuana, they were testing for that. They're not testing for that anymore, but I failed a test for weed usage, which wasn't a big deal, but it did put me in a place to where if I failed again, I would be suspended. And if I failed another time, I would be kicked off scholarship.

6:48So, and then a few weeks after that, I was at a frat party and I punched someone in the face and broke someone's jaw. And so like bad thing after bad thing kept happening. And like I said, I was very, very insecure. And my insecurity didn't come out in anger, even though I did get in a fight, but it came out with extreme anxiety. And I was shy, wasn't well with making friends, just was not in a good place. I look back and just think of how uncomfortable and how restless and how discontent I did feel in life. Well, the season comes around and I'm splitting time with a guy. It was me versus him kind of out at the same position.

7:27And we're four or five games in the season and I get my first concussion and I'm out for two weeks. We were in the middle of a bye week, which means we weren't playing that week. And so I came back a little bit too quick. And during that bye week, there was a scrimmage, offense versus defense, and I got another concussion. And I don't know, like at that point, they were like, listen, we don't feel like it's good if you move forward. We think that you need to retire because of the second impact concussion and that you came back too fast. Like I'd kind of blacked out and all this stuff and it wasn't good.

8:01So within a couple of weeks, I was medically retired, which meant I was still on scholarship. But my whole life was like, what has happened? Like not even a year ago, I just accomplished what I felt like was the dream of my life to play at a Division I college, to be on scholarship at a Division I college, to play at big stadium from Miami to this, to Georgia, to all of it. And this was in 2016. And I didn't know what to do other than to numb it, which is what I'd always done. and within a few months I failed a second drug test I just couldn't stop and I'd always try and talk myself out of it in my head like they're not going to catch me like I can get out of it like they're not going to do another drug test it's like it's just this inner civil war that's just continuous and then going into my senior year at the very end of that first semester so it was myself, still on scholarship, doing really stupid stuff though.

9:07I failed a third drug test. I failed three drug tests for marijuana usage and they kicked me off scholarship. And at that point, like it didn't even really feel like I was on scholarship in the first place because I wasn't even playing, but you would think it'd be a wake up call, but there was so much pain in me that I just tried to move forward and act like it didn't happen. I ended up failing out my second semester. I was left with two credits that I didn't have to graduate and because I just didn't show up for classes that last semester. And within a year or two, I had went back and finally got that graduation and finished.

9:47So I did finish and get my degree from North Carolina. But there was just so much shame around it and shame towards myself feeling like I was nothing and feeling like I wasn't going to amount to anything. And that's when, you know, things even take a turn for even the worst. Sometimes, sometimes things get even worse before they get better.

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13:17So what did worse look like from there? Yeah. So I grew up in a Christian household. My dad was a pastor, was raised religious. I'm not saying religion is bad, but there is a spirit behind teachings depending on what church you go to or how you're raised or what that looks like. And it was very fear-based. And there was a lot of shame around me and my relationship with God. And really that was with my relationship with my dad as well. You know, as a young boy, you see your father as, especially when he's your pastor and your coach and your dad at the same time, it's hard to separate what dad thinks of me and what God thinks of me.

13:59And so after I'd felled out, I just said, the only place I can go is home. And I don't know if I can be accepted anywhere else. But I ended up taking a job in San Antonio, Texas, which I'm not, I'm from Dallas. And I decided to be a football coach. And I was a linebacker coach at a high school. It was a private school. My uncle was the head coach. And so it was kind of like a family ties thing. And so, but it really, it was just another year for me to just continue to jack up and continue to make stupid decisions from wrecking my car to continuing to use drugs and continuing to live two lives and try to fake it and not know how to deal with all this pain.

14:41Well, after that year goes by, at the time, during all of this, I was also with who is now my wife, her name's Chloe, we were together dating. And I was just like, I have to try and clean myself up. I have to try and figure out how to make me a better person. And the only way I can see doing that is getting married. And that's probably not the best decision, but it was like, I'm going to ask her to marry me and I'm going to move back to Dallas and I'm going to become a pastor. And you think back on those moments of like, why did I want to do that? Well, number one, I did love her and I do love her.

15:17And I'm so glad we're together. And she's walked with me through all of this. But the other thing was, why did I want to be a pastor? And it was to please my dad. And it was to try and fit somewhere. I wanted to fit. I wanted to be accepted. I wanted to feel like I was a part of something. But the intentions weren't pure. It was just, well, if dad did it, then maybe if I do it, like I can make up for all of this and maybe God will forgive me for all of this. And that happened and I excelled. And we ended up getting married in August of 2019. And I was a youth pastor in September of 2019. And COVID hits, you know, church shutdowns, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, online stuff.

16:01And the usage just kept getting worse and worse. And at the time it was, you know, I would get caught by my wife, she kind of knew what was going on. But there was so much disconnection between her and I, but like, I'm literally living two different lives. And there's these kids that are looking to me for advice and I can't even give myself advice, but my dad thinks I'm doing good. And my bosses think I'm doing good and the kids think I'm doing good. And so really from 2019 to 2022, it just got worse and worse and worse and worse from the painkillers and like adding Adderall into the mix just, and it's not like these things are bad things.

16:38It's just like the intention behind why I was using it. It was to, I was trying to feel okay. I was trying to feel normal. I was live up to something. And I couldn't do it without a substance in my head. And in April of 2022, I started to have panic attacks. It got to the point to where physically I couldn't handle the internal pain that I was storing. And I couldn't handle the internal pressure that I was ignoring. And like I said, I'm 6 '3". I weigh 225 pounds. At that time, I was 6 '3". I I weighed 160 pounds and I looked like a corpse. I couldn't eat. Like it's just, everything was off. Everything was off.

17:19Our, my wife and I's relationship was off. I don't even know why she stayed with me. So really having conversations with her. And then I really just had to kind of come clean to my dad and tell him that. And I wasn't even completely truthful. I said, I'm dealing with some addiction. I don't know what to do. And like, I know I'm your son and I I know I'm a pastor and I don't know if I've ever met a pastor that's gone to rehab before. And I don't even know if rehab, like, do I just need to go get prayer or do I need to go to like a church camp? Or, you know, you know, what am I supposed to do? And he brought me up to HR and he was like, we're putting you on FMLA and you're going to rehab.

18:03I think it was such a surprise to him. And I think he was in such shock. And I think his identity was tied into mine as well. I think he was in denial too, by the way. For sure. Because there is an ignorance and ignoring when there's a parent that is in denial. They don't want to believe, you know, and I have two little brothers as well. I'm the oldest and they've had their own struggles as well. And they're doing a lot better. They're football players as well. One's playing right now in college. The other one played on scholarship at Baylor. He's in commercial real estate now. But there was a sense of denial from all of us because of the way that we believed and the way that we believed things could be healed.

18:40And I do believe in miraculous healing. But I think there's also a much deeper level of healing. And so I checked myself into rehab. I went on FMLA. I told the students that I was overseeing and at that point pastoring. And I say that because it's just like I feel guilt that they watched my demise. And really, they didn't know. But, you know, I was overseeing a team of seven to eight people and not showing up the way that I needed to show up and not being the leader that I needed to be in that time because I didn't even know how to lead myself. I didn't know how to deal with this internal pain because there was years of it stored.

19:16And so rehab was a huge eye opener. So I checked myself into rehab. They take your phone. I was there with about 20 other guys, once again, in the middle of nowhere, Texas. And the first thing the person said to me, like the guy that owned it, he looked at me and he goes, are you hopeless? And I said, yeah. And he goes, good. That's the perfect place to be. That didn't really make sense to me. But what that's called is it's called the gift of desperation. I was desperate. Sometimes you have to make desperate moves in desperate times that are dangerous and unsafe. They might feel dangerous and unsafe, but really they're the most safe thing that you could ever do.

19:54And for me, it was dangerous to be open about my struggles in the profession that I was in with the father that I did have, who I still do have, and the marriage that I'm in and getting honest and open and being able to get to a place to where I can actually start to deal with this pain. And so rehab was the first month was one of the hardest months of my life because I couldn't escape. Where am I going to go? Like there's nowhere to go. Who am I going to call for help? How am I going to control this situation? I had to sit with it. I had to regulate. I had to get myself to a place to where I could start learning to trust again, but really not even that.

20:34But it's not even like I needed to be reintroduced to God. It was that I need to be actually introduced to God. And there's a quote that it's coming out in one of my books that I'm writing that I'm really excited about. It's coming out next year. It's actually it's a coffee table book. It's a book full of art and quotes, but it says, Dear Mr. Chaos, and it's a letter. Dear Mr. Chaos, although I don't approve of your ways and your methods, I appreciate that you lead them to me, your friend, Mr. Peace. and the chaos of my life led me to a breaking point. I do believe that your biggest breakdowns are your biggest breakthroughs.

21:11And all of that pain, it's like, you look back and it's like, did I waste all this time? It was all this time, it was all for nothing. But the clarity that came through that reintroduction or that introduction to who God was to me and really who I was to me. We like to take us out of the scenario sometimes, but I didn't like myself and I didn't accept myself. And I had to sit with myself long enough. And I had to sit with this new God that I didn't know. And I didn't trust long enough to be able to trust him and myself in a new way. And that's what that time of isolation and loneliness did for me in my life.

21:50Not saying that everything's been perfect ever since. It's actually since I got out of rehab, You know, I was like, I for sure don't have a job. Like, there's no way that they're going to hire me back. There's no way. Well, my boss called me back and my dad was my boss's boss's boss. And, you know, I don't know if there was nepotism there or what it was, but they said, we want you here. And I was like, are you sure? Because like everything that we teach, I have questions about now. I'm not who I was and I'm not going to be put in a box. And they said, we want you here. And I was like, all right.

22:28And I felt strongly that I was supposed to step back into that role, which at the time, I didn't know why. But as time went on, I realized. But that was two years ago. I stepped back into that role. And I was there for six months. And those six months were a time for me to get really honest with those kids and a time for me to get really honest with those people that I had hired and led and let them know where I was. And it created a space of security and safety. In those six months, I don't even think I really ever even gave a sermon. It wasn't like I was preaching. Really, it was more of a conversation and a place for them to come and bring their baggage and their pain.

23:10Because now that I've learned how to engage with mine, maybe I could help them engage and learn from theirs. And in December of 2022, right before 2023, you know, I'd been back for about four months. I just got done working out and I was in the car, sober, had been sober for about six or seven months. And I felt like I just heard the words jump. It's time to jump. I knew I wasn't supposed to stay where I was at, but at the same time, like I didn't know when that would be. That was kind of after Christmas break. And after Christmas break, I came back and I told them, I said, I'm going to work through March, March of 23.

23:47And then I'm leaving. And I will say I was a little out there and I was, you know, not much of a rule follower. And I did cause some ruckus in the midst of how I led and how I wanted to lead. And it wasn't a fit for me. And I didn't want to bring those kids into the middle of that, you know, like me trying to figure out my own stuff when they're there for a certain reason. And I still haven't figured out all of my own stuff. But what I do know is that I know God. Do I know all the factual things? How could we? I mean, I don't know. But what I do know is that he's made himself known to me and that there's a relationship there.

24:27And so I left in March and I didn't know what to do. And I still don't know what to do. And I think that's kind of what life is, is unknowns and being able to trust those unknowns. But in May, I just said, OK, I'm going to buy a camera and I feel like I have a message and I'm going to start posting. And so that was May of 2023. And here we are a little bit over a year later. Starting the year with a wardrobe refresh, Quince has you covered with luxe essentials that feel effortless and look polished. They're perfect for layering, mixing, and building a wardrobe that lasts. Their versatile styles make it easy to reach for them day after day.

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