We recently connected with Robert Holmes and have shared our conversation below.

Robert, appreciate you joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

I am a family man, entrepreneur, and philanthropist living in Durango, Colorado. Although I’ve built numerous successful businesses over the years, my true passion lies in serving my community. This calling to serve was born out of my personal struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction. At 19, I found myself suicidal, feeling hopeless about the future. After spending four months in a rehab facility and recovery home in California, I returned to Colorado and completed my degree at CU Boulder.

Getting sober at such a young age, I initially believed my life was over—that there would be no more fun in sobriety. But the opposite turned out to be true. I was introduced to a young people’s recovery community that embraced me with love and support, and showed me how it was possible to have more fun in sobriety than I ever did while using.

When I moved back to Durango after college, I became obsessed with proving to young people in recovery that an amazing, joyful life is possible without drugs or alcohol. I helped establish a local young people’s recovery group, and 20 years later, I’m still deeply involved in service to the recovery community. I also served on the Board of Directors for the Animas Alano Club, a local recovery facility in need of a permanent home. I felt compelled to lead the fundraising effort for that cause, even borrowing a large sum of money against my home to spark a campaign that helped secure a significant portion of the down payment for the facility.

In recent years, I’ve shifted my focus away from for-profit ventures to concentrate more fully on service work. Along with an incredible team, I co-founded Pura Vida For Good, a nonprofit dedicated to spreading peace and love in our local communities through the development of Affordable Housing Projects that focus on Unity, Wellness, and Sustainability.

Robert, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

5 Years ago I started some music festivals which has been quite the Journey ! I was never a festival goer, but have come to love festival experiences. I have had a transformation of my viewpoint on living a life of service through witnessing the love and community at festivals. Seeing the opportunity to take our tremendous success of the festivals and growing momentum, I decided to start our Non-Profit Pura Vida For Good. Our festivals are seen as an incredible opportunity to raise capital and awareness for our goals with the Non-Profit.

Our newest exciting Project is to establish a large Agricultural/Wellness Village in the Four Corners Area. We are striving to develop a small Village/Town with the absolute interest of the future residents at hand. We seek this to be a Community Owned Property, with some aspects of the property benefitting the Non-Profit. Unity, Wellness, and Sustainability are the Community Pillars.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

For me, being an successful Entrepreneur is all about how to deal with adversity and failure. We absolutely will fail either with a business as a whole or with a divison of a business, revenue stream, etc. My first large business was an ecommerce costume company. We sold about 1000 different items on Ebay, Amazon, and our Website. Everything was fine for 8 years until China started selling Retail. This created a serious problem for us, as we could no longer compete on price and make a profit margin. We had made plenty of money, but we had to close the business and transfer into something else. We had done well and went all in with all our equity into a new Construction Business, which fluorished into a 100+ employee company. If we had clung onto trying to save the Ecommerce business we most likely would have ended up losing lots of money and being very discouraged. Throwing in the towel given the circumstances was the right thing to do and helped me transition in to numerous other enterprises.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

I established a place called Tico Time Resort, an 82 acre Resort, Outdoor Adventure Park, and Music Festival Venue. Originally it was supposed to be a side gig for retirement, but has slowly taken over my life, LOL ! It has become my main focus and blossomed into an incredible adventure of seeing the vision change as we move along. Our intentions were to create a fun semi long-term living community with Tiny Homes and RV’s. This morphed into our main focus being on music festivals with thousands of people.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.puravidaforgood.org
• Instagram: pura.vida.for.good
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/puravidaforgood