Transcript of The Recovery Expert Who Danced In R. Kelly's Video: 'What If I'd Been Near Him?' | Ep 294 with Amanda Marino Founder of Next Level Recovery Associates

You have a fascinating story. You're helping people now with addiction and rehabilitating their life, becoming better. But at one point, you were a professional dancer in hip hop music videos.

Yes.

In the heyday of, I think, the videos. Obviously, now, I mean, videos. Back then, it was MTV and stuff. Like, videos were the thing. Everyone was watching these. So tell me about that experience.

I had some lovely experiences, but I also was... A lot of the things that have been coming up now with the whole P. Diddy thing, and then R. Kelly prior, really just triggered I was abused as a child, and that's what brought me down my dark path, I believe. And then being in the entertainment industry, the second I turned 18, sent to auditions for hip hop music videos, a dance for... A quality thing was like a Ricky Martin Shee Bangs video in the Bahamas. That I was on MTV making the music video. That was a whole big thing, right? But then I also did straight hip hop videos. R. Kelly, Feeling on your Booty, which makes me feel nauseous, video is what I was in. I think back to that time, I think I was placed with Method Man and Red Man, and thank God because they were cool and they were funny. But what if I would have been put near R. Kelly? Could my life have been different? I was definitely put into some uncomfortable situations in that field.

That's an interesting take around You could have gone down two different... You're right there at the edge of the possibilities to go down two different paths, and one being very dark and could have traumatized you. How does that feel knowing the path that you did take.

So grateful. It had to get worse before it got better, for sure. However, I think that I would have been... It was around the time Britney Spears went off, popped off. I think that's when my issues were. And I just am so grateful that I was brought down this path, and I get to help people with all kinds of things today, like anything that they're struggling with eating disorders, mental health, addiction, all these things. And it's such a gift. And I think because I've been in so many dark situations, I can say I've been there in a lot of ways to people.

Yeah. So when you're talking to somebody and you're hearing these stories from them, I find it tough sometimes to listen to some people's stories because it almost brings up anxiety in me. How do you handle those situations generations when you're hearing these things? How do you disassociate yourself or also not then take it home with you?

I'm pretty good at keeping it, leaving it out the door. But there are times where I cross my own boundaries. It happens. I'm human. So I'm pretty good at keeping it separate and not taking on people's things. I work on energy, do energy work, spiritual work. I have to do extra, extra self-care just to be a status quo with the stuff I deal with because some of it's crazy, some of it's light and fun, but most of it's really hard work, dealing with really families that are going through a lot for generations, usually, like generational wealth and people are entertainments, athletes. It's like it's heavy things.

It's like we look up to celebrities in the sense that we all say, Hey, Amanda, I want to be a celebrity. I want to be this famous person, but we probably don't realize what that person is going through. What are you finding that these people What's the reality?

The reality is I used to think that that was the trajectory I was on. I was going to make it. I had really good opportunities that I messed up. That was all I wanted from age 4 to 22. I just started making porch choices towards the end. But it's a dark area. And this has been going on for 20 plus years. So this is not something that's new. And these things that are just coming to light, that's hard for me to hear. How did this just come out now? These things have been going on for 25 years. So yeah, anyone in that space, it's harder. You and I have presence on social media. That's even hard. I had comments on some video the other day about saying you have a million surgeries. And I'm like, actually, I have no surgery on my face, which is a first for me, which I've never heard. But I have mean messages. So they have to deal with that on a scale of mass. And you have to have some thick skin to take some of this stuff, and you have to do work on yourself and remind yourself who you are.

I would definitely want to hire somebody to manage. I would say, Look, I don't even want to look at... Don't even give me... I would take a flip phone. Give me a flip phone because I don't want to see anything about anything because I couldn't handle it. I would not want to be mass famous.

Well, I'll tell you, because I worked on the show Intervention, when that came out, I was warned by my colleagues and friends that have been on it for a long time, just wait, you're going to catch some shit. And sure enough, boy, People were coming into my website, to my back of my social media and my email everywhere, threatening things. It was wild. But it made me stronger. It helped me ground myself in terms reminding myself who I am. It only matters what I think. It only matters what me and God think. It doesn't matter what the world says about me. And that comes from being bullied as a kid and all these things. I've gone through so much that there's nothing that anyone can say that can hurt me at this point, honestly.

You were in hip hop videos, dancing, which, by the way, I always wanted to be in a hip hop video. I feel like it'd be an interesting experience. Then at some point, you moved into reality TV. I always say, is it unreality TV? Is it not reality TV or is it legit reality TV? What is that experience like?

I had worked with the executive producer and director. I had worked with him on another show called Digital Addiction. It was From anything I heard from intervention, I've heard different things over the years. However, the year that I went on Digital Addiction and on intervention, both on the A&E network, I knew the people and trusted the team. I said, I have to be able to treat every single person I work with like I'm just being me, and that they were my real client, and I have to be able to work with their families. That, to me, is important for the authenticity, and they were so supportive of it. If they had a question about anything, they didn't know. They would have relied on people like us and the psychiatric evaluations and and things like that. They would ask us. And then we could set boundaries. In Memphis, we almost didn't go because the clients, they were filming before we got there, were trying to run the camera people over and pulling out guns. And so we almost didn't do Memphis, but we just did in a different way. I'll never go back to Memphis. Just.

But yeah, for my experience, it was real. But I have friends that are on other reality shows such as Housewives and other things like that, where that's a lot of staged and a lot of trauma. So I had a great time.

I mean, it's great that you had a good experience, and it wasn't one of those traumatic experiences. It seems like you can also leverage that in business and stuff later on, and it's great talking points as well. You're building your personal brand, I think, online through these shows and stuff. So you have this company now, and now you're dedicated to helping people.

Yeah. So I have two. I have the next level, Recovery Associates, which is also... We've expanded, like I said, the eating disorders, which is huge. Dual diagnosis, people that are hoarding, gaming, gambling, porn, whatever you have going on. You want to have privacy and secrecy in a customized program for you. That's what we do. We bring professionals from all around the world speaking all different languages to go live with people and to create a concierge plan for them or travel with them, whatever they need. Then my brand is Amanda Moreno, which my daughter was the one that found out that I was a TV personality on Google. I guess she was trying to show a friend something. She's like, Mom, are you ever You're a TV personality, and I was cracking up. There's two things that are going on. I worked only in behavioral health for so long. One day I woke up and I was like, I am in the wrong rooms. I'm in the rooms where everyone knows the solutions. Everyone knows that there's this therapy and this treatment. I need to get to people that have never heard that they're not alone, that there's this care out there, that there's this support.

That's my message now is to amplify that. Like I did at your TEDx, the Forbes Park was, I want to reach people that don't have any clue that there's help out there because there's a lot still all around the world.

What type of help are you finding that people really need right now? Because I think we went through COVID. I think we were all pretty much traumatized. Every person on this planet has some trauma. I don't think most of us ever faced it nor dealt with it. And then we just said, go back to your normal life. Everything is open. And it seems like mental health is just on a sliding scale downward. So what are you finding right now is the biggest thing that people struggle with?

First, I'm going to start with the downward is true, but it's also an upward because it had to smash a lot of the stigma and people being scared to reach out for mental health help. So people were left in a position where they had to ask for help. They had to find something or they weren't going to make it. So people that were healthy teetered. People that were on the edge went over. People that were over the edge, it was a bear. But it's made the conversation of mental health. Covid actually helped us a lot. Because I've been posting about it on LinkedIn since 2011, and I was one of the first people to talk about my personal journey on there. We're seeing a lot of depression, agoraphobia, people scared to go out and leave their homes, people that used to travel a ton. So we'll go take them to the airport and have coffee with them. Whatever people need. A lot of hoarding. Hoarding is a big thing. Alcohol is still number one as far as addiction-wise and eating disorders. Men women are at a rise.

So when somebody comes to you and says, I have this problem, is there a... I'm thinking five steps or whatever the steps. Is there a certain step thing that most people should go through, or is it totally unique and custom to the individual?

We customize everything. Because we're concierge and like in a white glove service, boutique, we have a clinical expert, Dr. Jeffrey Huttman. I have a clinical psychiatrist Dr. Alda Morales. Then we partner with clinical professionals and dietitians and different people all around the world, also culturally competent to be in different cultures and speak different languages. It's fun and wild, and it's unique to each person. When we go down our client list every Thursday and do clinical rounds, or every Tuesday, there's so many different things that we're talking about. There's wild and diverse, from adolescents to 70, 80-olds. We're helping.

When When you think about legacy and your mission in life, what comes to mind when you think of those words?

My kids. I'm doing this because of that. I mean, originally because of them. And now for me, I had my son, I My son at 24, and he's the reason I decided to work on my trauma and work on my issues and change my life. And I got to bring him to the Philippines to watch me do a TEDx. I come from living in the hood. When I was a poor, poor single mom, I never thought in a million years I would go to all these countries and do all these things. It's been such a gift. So my kids are, I want to leave a legacy for them. I want to be able to help them buy a home. That's my dream. I want to help them do the things that they want to do. Not spoil them by any means, but give them great life experiences that they remember and cherish and know that mom was a woman of integrity and mom pushed herself, even if she was scared and did all these things. My son, when he graduated, he said he wants to work for me and he wants to be a firefighter.

So he just got accepted in a fire academy, and he's done some training to work with me. So he's on the path. He's 20. You met him. He's massive.

No one's going to talk about us but our kids, essentially, right? At At some point, every person will be forgotten about, except our kids and family, hopefully, will continue to talk about us in the future. I know resilience is a big thing for you. It's also probably the most successful people had have told us, resilience and entrepreneurship are pretty much tied together. When you look at resilience for yourself, how have you remained?

I get knocked down and I crumble behind the scenes in my home and go into the jam a day and go through dog. I sit. My dad actually sit with it. I sit with it sometimes, and that's the hardest thing to do, and just move through it. With resilience, it's being scared of doing it Anyways, it's failing, but failing isn't failing because failing, you're actually trying. So if you try something and it doesn't work out, that's still a win. And people need to realize that. If you try something else, if you want to leave your job and build your own company, figure out what your worst case scenario is if you put a strategy into place. So for me, my worst case scenario was, if this doesn't work out, then I will have to get a job doing this. So I went for it with $100 in the bank account. I built an international brand in COVID.

What would you say was a turning point? You started with basically no capital. We could say $100 is basically no capital, right? What was a turning point in the company when you said, Wow, This is going to be a legit thing.

Well, as my mother was telling me every day about people dying and people losing their jobs and businesses closing, and I was thriving because, of course, the need for my services. I was in the younger population. My mentors and teachers were older, and they couldn't do these things. They couldn't travel. They couldn't be in person. It was just getting it done and doing whatever you have to do to get it done.

You definitely solve a need. I feel like some people go into business because it's something that they want. But you and I know it doesn't mean other people will want it. If I'm solving a problem, only I have, or I'm solving a problem, I like to say it's the supplement versus the medicine. If I'm solving a problem that's a supplement, people may or may not want it, they may or may not pay for it. But if it is a medicine to them and they absolutely need it, then that is something that I can create a thriving business from.

Yeah. And COVID, it was just like I had the survivor's guilt at I was like, Oh, my God. My mom's calling me every day. Am I telling me about all these people losing their business? And I'm killing it. I felt bad, but I also was like, No, I made myself a first responder in my mind. I have to help people that are in crisis, that their families can't come help them because they're high risk. I had to show I was at Atlanta Airport. I saw one person in the whole airport. That's weird.

We went to Vegas six times or five times. No, but we got presidential suite for free because there was nobody there. I liked it a little bit. The traveling then was... I did like that.

It was wild, but I just felt grateful to be of service in a time that was so hard. But I knew we took off right away. Then a year later, with the rebrand, do we want to have people everywhere doing everything? No, we want to I have a hand-picked people that we know. I'm not going to just put someone in someone's multimillion dollar home that I don't know and trust and have a background check on that's representing my own company. I feel like also when we did, we were almost bought a lot. Once we did that valuation and whatever they do with the accounting, I was like, Wow, we actually are worth something. That was a cool moment because I had no idea.

I love those moments. Well, Amanda, this has been amazing. Always great to have a conversation with you again. I'm sure people want to get in touch with you because they want to follow the journey. Maybe they need help, and you can provide that. But how can people get in touch with you?

They can look at Amanda Moreno, official. That's my Instagram and my TikTok. Then I'm also, amandamerenospeaks. Com, to book me for any speaking gigs, motivational, inspirational. That's my thing. Then you can call me, 561. 1735-2590. My number is everywhere at this point, so I don't even mind. You can text me, call me, schedule a call if you're struggling. I will personally speak to you.

Only a few people have ever given out a phone number. That's when you know that you are there for the people. You are a person there for the people. But Amanda, you are one of the best speakers I've ever heard. I've seen a lot of speakers. Your speech was incredible. I cried, I laughed, I learned. What else do you need to do during your conversation? But this has been great, really diving in more about your story and your life. I appreciate you coming on today. Thank you for joining us.