423 The Sober Founder: How Recovery Principles Built a Business — and a Movement

When Nothing Goes According to Plan — and That's the Point

Andrew Lassise didn't get sober because he wanted to. He got sober because a judge gave him a choice: jail or rehab. He chose rehab. And as he'll tell you, that was the best decision he never really made.

Andrew's story is the kind that makes you laugh out loud and then quietly reassess your own life. At 16, he was blacking out at parties. By college, it was a daily habit. By his mid-twenties, he had a 0.24 BAC DUI, three failed breathalyzer readings on his own car-mounted device, and a pocket breathalyzer he'd purchased on eBay to cheat the first one. "I could have just stopped drinking," he admits now. "But that wasn't an option until the judge made it one."

What happened in the years that followed is a masterclass in what recovery actually looks like when you apply it everywhere — not just to the bottle, but to business, failure, and the relentless uncertainty of building something from scratch.

Failure as Feedback

After rehab, Andrew moved to Florida, brought the wrong resume to a job interview, and accidentally landed his first tech job. He joined a small IT company, loved it — and then watched it go out of business. His response? Offer to keep running the tech department for free from his living room. That's the company he spent the next decade building. In 2023, he sold it for 70 times the number someone once told him he was "crazy" to want.

Along the way, there were credit card processors who held his money for years, campaigns that completely flopped, and moments where — as he says — "knowing what I know now, I would have quit." But he didn't. And the program was a big part of why.

"My sponsor would tell me: you can keep fighting reality, or you can accept it for what it is," Andrew says. "Change what you can change. Let go of what you can't."

The Community That Didn't Exist

After selling his company and spending exactly one year in corporate (he quit three hours after he was legally required to stay), Andrew did an ikigai exercise — mapping out the intersection of what he loves, what he's good at, and what the world needs. The answer was clear: a community for sober entrepreneurs. When he went looking for it, it didn't exist. So he built it.

Sober Founders is a nonprofit — Andrew makes $0 as president — built on 12-step principles and designed for entrepreneurs who want to bring their real business problems to a group that gets it. The results speak for themselves: connections made, deals done, and more than a few phone calls where people cry out of gratitude.

Action Items:

• Visit soberfounders.org and attend a weekly meeting

• Try the Arthur Brooks failure journal exercise: write down what happened, then revisit in 3 months

• Ask yourself Andrew's question: When's the last time God let me down?

• Do your own ikigai exercise to find the intersection of purpose and skill

My First Million — podcast Andrew mentioned listening to (about strikeouts before home runs)

Arthur Brooks' Failure Journal Exercise — write down what happened after a failure, revisit in 3 months, then again 3 months after that

The Ikigai Exercise — finding the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, and what the world needs (this is what led Andrew to start Sober Founders)

Sober Founders — soberfounders.org, free weekly Thursday mastermind meetings

Vistage / YPO / EO (Entrepreneur's Organization) — mentioned as peer groups with a similar model to Sober Founders

Soberlink — the in-car breathalyzer brand Andrew referenced from his DUI story

Guest Website: https://www.soberfounders.org

👊🏼Need help applying this information to your own life?

Here are 3 ways to get started:

🎁Free Guide: 30 Tips for Your First 30 Days - With a printable PDF checklist

Grab your copy here: https://www.soberlifeschool.com

☎️Private Coaching: Make Sobriety Stick

https://www.makesobrietystick.com

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