Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brice Hancock. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Brice, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

I got sober in 2013, and as we know, being in recovery is more then stopping substances so I was about 2 years sober, completely depressed and going through a dark night of the soul, as they say, and doing pretty intense therapy. At some point, my therapist asked me what my purpose was. At the time, I was a realtor but her question led me to question my whole identity. What am I going to do? Who am I as a sober man? Who do I love? Who loves me? What do I value? So I quit my job as a realtor, gave away most of my stuff, sold my nice house in the mountains, and moved to a small condo in Capitol Hill and began to meditate on “my purpose”. One night I was watching a documentary called Bob & The Monster where Bob Forrest a recovered addict, and ex rockstar helped get John Frusciante of The Red Hot Chili Pepers into rehab through an organization called Musicares. I thought “That’s cool! I could do something like that maybe” so I went to a Musicares meeting in Fort Collins and after the meeting I stayed and talked to therapist who ran the meeting Marty Rein. I asked him what I could do to help people get sober and he said “well we need sober houses”. I had no idea exactly what it was or how to start but driving back to Denver that night, my depression had begun to lift and I was sure I was going to open a sober house. From that night, everything just started to fall into place almost as if it was meant to be. There weren’t many sober houses in Denver at the time so my long time friend Andrew Wainwright of AIRCare Health in Minnesota invited me up to Minnesota to learn from the best in the business Chris Edrington of St. Paul Sober Living. I learned his model and then with my father’s help I opened a sober house in 2016 in the Congress Park Neighborhood 3 blocks from York Street AA club. I used all my money on startup costs such as licensing, furniture for 11 people, etc. I designed a basic website and made business cards and I was off and running. I never worried about if it was going to be profitable or not. I just worked diligently on growing my company. I didn’t worry that the 14 hour days were too much and I didn’t complain when I couldn’t pay myself. I trusted the process and I loved what I was doing so it didn’t feel like work.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Brice Hancock, entrepreneur turned founder/CEO of Mile High Recovery Center a full continuum Addiction Treatment Center in Capitol Hill in Denver, CO. MHRC is a Colorado grown grassroots treatment center with a focus on mental health and community. The heart and soul of our business is our recovery community. We have a highly qualified, compassionate staff of clinicians who are dedicated to this work. Our motto is “recover where you live” meaning that we offer acute treatment services at our Residential Treatment Center with the expectation that the clients will continue to attend outpatient services and stay at one of our sober living houses for up to a year. We hope that everyone will achieve long term sobriety and since our model is long term they can overcome the obstacles that usually cause them to relapse in the first year and be supported by our team. The beauty of long term clinical care is that clients can unpack their trauma and heal when it is safe to do so and the whole time they can be in school, working, and engaging in life.

Conversations about M&A are often focused on multibillion dollar transactions – but M&A can be an important part of a small or medium business owner’s journey. We’d love to hear about your experience with selling businesses.

I owned a music club from 2007-2014 called The Toad Tavern in Littleton. I had spent many years as a musician and booking agent and owning a music club was the next logical progression in my music career. Unfortunately, as an alcoholic owning a bar was also literally killing me. In fact, a doctor told me that I wouldn’t live more than a year if I couldn’t stop drinking. I drank for well over a year because I had totally the lost the power of choice and I couldn’t stop drinking. I tried to get and stay sober and continue to own the Toad but I was completely physically dependent on alcohol and was drinking about a half gallon of vodka for years. I had to give up on the life I had spent decades creating and I sold The Toad, got divorced, and made my recovery my #1 priority. I had to totally reinvent myself career wise and it was tough but I don’t regret any of it. The lesson I learned is that failing doesn’t mean it’s over and losing the battle doesn’t mean I’ve lost the war. Never be afraid to reinvent yourself. We all have a certain skillset that will come in handy in the right circumstance and a better circumstance is always right around the corner.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When Covid hit in 2020, we were a brand new treatment center and we didn’t have any savings or lines of credit to fall back on. Most businesses fail in the first 2 years and I was extremely nervous. I decided I would do whatever I needed to do to stay open so I took out a high interest loan for $50k, let some non-essential employees go and even though there was a lockdown we were a healthcare company so I went to work every single day. Instead of continuing our previous strategy of door to door “boots on the ground” guerilla marketing I put my promotion dollars into SEO and I also hired a PR company. Me and 2 of my most loyal “ride or die” employees continued to work diligently to keep the company afloat. Every time it looked like I was about to close, we would get a couple more clients or we would get just enough of a PPP loan to keep going. I closed 2 sober houses and me and my 2 sons moved into another one. It was an incredibly stressful time but we made it through.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.milehighrecoverycenter.com
• Instagram: @bricedoghancock
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brice.hancock/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bricehancock/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/mile-high-recovery-center-denver

Image Credits
Kristi Harvey