We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Breezy Nowlan a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Breezy, appreciate you joining us today. One of the most important things small businesses can do, in our view, is to serve underserved communities that are ignored by giant corporations who often are just creating mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Talk to us about how you serve an underserved community.

Taste Recovery is serving a community that has been judged, pushed to the side, and neglected because of the lack of education on addiction. Addicts and alcoholics are viewed as less than because the general population believes they “do this to themselves”. Addiction is a disease of the mind and body and most addicts do not know how to escape the grips of their disease. It is nearly impossible to stop by yourself, which is why we created a platform that makes it easier to find help throughout the United States through recovery homes. Recovery homes are safe, sober, supportive houses that people transition to, usually after going to detox or residential treatment. They teach addicts how to live life on life’s terms and to be a useful part of society. Our job is to make sure that the people who want help can find the right kind of help. We also have started an annual retreat called Camp Sober Fest, a weekend sleep away camp for sober adults. The entire weekend is filled with fun activities such as high ropes courses, rock climbing, archery, karaoke, talent shows, and so much more! We love seeing peoples perception on sobriety change throughout the weekend!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Breezy Nowlan and I am 7 and a half years sober. I myself went to two different sober living homes after leaving residential treatment. I had a very negative experience in my first home and a magical experience in the second home. In the first sober living, our house manager was unfortunately in her addiction and the owner of the house lived in a different state. This caused a lot of the women to relapse because they were not being held accountable. The second home I moved into was ran by a phenomenal woman who had over 20 years of sobriety and truly cared about us and our wellbeing. We drug tested weekly, had daily and weekly chores and attended meetings regularly. I could see that peoples lives could change for the better or for the worse depending on where they ended up. There is not a lot of information on sober living homes and the industry has been based on word of mouth since it started. That is why I chose to create Taste Recovery. I wanted people to know what they were signing up for and empower them to choose recovery, choose a safe environment that could launch them into a beautiful sober life. We have helped thousands of people find safe, supportive housing. I still have to pinch myself when I see people recommending our app to people who are asking for help! The major thing that sets our platform apart from other businesses is that we allow these homes to add themselves directly and allow feedback from those that have stayed at these homes. This helps give a greater picture into what is truly going on at these recovery homes and to help people decide what place to live at. I also started Camp Sober Fest last year, which was one of the best weekends of my life. I got to meet 130 other sober individuals out in the forest and act like a kid all weekend. We laughed and cried together and I could see my purpose in this life as clear as day.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

There are unfortunately a lot of people in this industry that are doing things for the wrong reasons. They think they can get rich quick, but what they don’t know is that the people who are making that kind of money are doing it by taking advantage of addicts and alcoholics trying to get sober. There is a lot of unethical behavior that happens, but it is a small industry and most of the time people know who is doing the right things behind closed doors. My business was posted in a Facebook group because someone wanted the group to look into whether we were doing things ethically or not and after a lot of questioning, they discovered I was doing everything I could to make this industry better. That is when the industry started pushing my app to their clients and to other people helping addicts get sober. Our app is recommended ALL the time when someone is looking for a safe place to land.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Our platform has been running for three years and it took A LOT of work to get it to where it is today. We have built a name for ourselves in Southern California and we have finally pivoted to creating a paywall. The app had to be free to build awareness, recognition and to show our customers that they will have people finding them through us. Now that we are well known in the industry, we are finally ready to take it to the next level so that we can grow into other areas! I could’ve given up one million times before this moment because it took a lot of hard work and a lot of nights questioning if things were ever going to work out, but I am so grateful that I made it to this point.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.campsoberfest.com www.tasterecovery.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tasterecovery/