In this episode of Finding Peaks, Chris sits with Peaks Recovery Centers’ Director of Operations, Tyler Kea, for a grounded and insightful conversation on what operational excellence truly means in the world of recovery. Tyler shares his journey from case management to leadership, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how structure, consistency, and intentional systems directly impact client care. Together, they explore the philosophy of “chop wood, carry water” and how mastering the fundamentals creates lasting change, both personally and professionally. The conversation also dives into Peaks’ evolving intake process, the role of personal experience in shaping leadership style, and why perspective is one of the most powerful tools in recovery and in life. Tyler opens up with a personal update and message, while Chris reflects on an experience that continues to shape his approach today.
Talking Points Introduction to the Show What is operational excellence? The importance of structure From case management to operations director Chop wood and carry water PRC’s new intake process Personal experience shaping professional approach Tyler’s life update A personal experience for Chris Perspective is key Tyler’s message Final thoughts Quotes “Clients coming into our care need structure. Maybe they are coming from an environment that doesn’t have much of that.” -Tyler Kea Episode TranscriptsEpisode -160- Transcripts
Clients that are coming into our care need structure. Maybe they’re coming from an environment that doesn’t have much of that. The opposite of addiction is connection. Well, the opposite of disrupted and disconnected mental health is also connection, right? Like they won’t do the bad thing if we give them the good thing. I just I get to be there. I get to be present. I can’t solve everyone’s problems, right? That’s all their owns to figure out. But at least I can sit with you in it. Peaks is a special place. is different.
Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of Finding Peaks Recovery Centers. Your host. Grateful to be here today. Christopher Burns, president, founder, CEO, recovery cheerleader. I’m just on fire today. I’m really on fire about 2026. I’m on fire about raising the standard of care within Peak’s Recovery. Um the internal standards are are raising. The vibration is raising. I can feel it. I just came from the facility celebrating a lot of wins today. Um but one of the biggest wins right now is uh how we’re pursuing operational excellence. It’s something very near and dear to my heart and something that uh I struggle to connect, but Tyler’s been with us right around five or six years now. He’s now our director of operations. I have Tyler on the show today. Grateful to have you, sir. How you doing? Good, man. Thank you. Awesome, man. When I say operational excellence, um, what does that mean for you and what does that mean for Peaks Recovery? For me, it’s just plain and simple, structure. Mhm. It’s just structure. Um, all around. If I if I connect this to my own recovery journey, I need a structure to begin with, right? Clients that are coming into our care need structure. Maybe they’re coming from an environment that doesn’t have much of that. Mhm. Right. So, they come to us and they expect structure. So, if we create that operational excellence around our treatment center, that’s all it is is structure. And clients feel that. Yeah, I agree. It’s interesting what you say about clients feeling that we have um I think we’ve been producing excellent outcomes for years, but one of the things that I was always kind of sad to hear when I came down to the discharge table with these families that were so grateful um and these are families that had spent quite a bit of money with us and walked through the family program and been with us a considerable amount of time. something they would always harp on um is this was excellent care. I don’t know how you guys do what you do. Really awesome. Grateful to have my loved one back, but boy, you’re unorganized. Yeah. You know, and I and I admit that humbly and proudly. And so inserting you into that role is something that you’re very very passionate about through the structure of your recovery because it not only informs operational excellence, but like safety, right? And that’s an undertone kind of vibration for people that’s hard to quantify you know from an operational perspective. So grateful to have you in that role man. How has the transition been from case management? What have you brought from case management? That’s cuz case management is like connected with everything. Yeah. You know you get you get bird’s eye view into everything. How are you taking what you learned in case management integrating it into the operational side of things? Well, I was just speaking about this before we started here. Um, with case management, you know, we’re managing the clients, we’re managing the case load. You step into the operational role and now we’re managing staff. So, not that much of a difference, right? It’s just on a bigger playing field, more bird’s eye view. Um, as a case manager, yeah, you dip into every department because you’re connecting with the client, you’re connecting with the provider, the therapist, even outside organizations. So you get that bird’s eye view of how everything operates, right? Um, and for me it’s like, okay, maybe this can be tweaked, maybe this can be tweaked. I think this could flow a lot better. So stepping into this role, I get to actually implement it and play it out. Mhm. Yeah. It’s really cool when you could kind of like zoom out, right? It’s kind of like an org chart game, if you will, to make sure the right people are in the right decisions. And it’s interesting today because you know we often get stuck in a phrase I think in our industry and in business in general about you know a year ago we went through layoffs but I was talking more about optimization. I wasn’t necessarily talking about cutting the team, even though that was a little bit about what the story was in community, but it was it was really about client care and an emphasis on optimization and the integration thereof, right? When you have too many people in too many places, we can’t do the work necessary or the work in front of us and we can’t adhere to the job description. So, having you come in and really fit that well, right, um creates teams and systems that can do the job and perform at a high level. Yeah. Yeah. And then I mean we can always tie this back to recovery, right? Um you know for for myself coming out of treatment, go to AA meetings, do this, do that, meet with this person, go to this, go to that, right? So it’s throwing a bunch of things at you, right? When really we just need to stick to the foundation, right? Stick to the foundation which is therapy and working on myself, right? time for myself, meditation, setting up that morning structure and routines, things like that. Really the foundation. We don’t need all this extra things. It might look nice, it might feel nice, but I feel like that just operates on emotion. Yeah. Right. This doesn’t feel right, so let’s throw this at it. When really it’s just it’s foundation and structure. Yeah. You bring up something really cool in regards to leadership in in the way that we show up like consistently. Yeah. And that is something that early recovery really teaches you is is is to do the same thing over and over and over and over and over and then do it over and over and over and then when you’re done with that do it over and over and over, right? We’re very very good at that. Yeah. It’s like indoctrinated and ingrained into the foundation of our being. Yeah. You know, so coming into that role and some of the best operators I know, man, are in long-term recovery. They just see it clearly. There’s this uh phrase, I’m not even going to try and say who, maybe it’s a Buddhist phrase. I’ve said it on the show before. You’ve probably heard it, but it’s it essentially says when things are good, we chop wood and carry water. When things are bad, we chop wood and we carry water, right? We don’t we don’t stop. And that’s something that’s been really really cool for me in this season. And I’ve never been able to connect with that in any other season personally or professionally. What I used to do is I’d chop wood, carry water, and when things got good, I let someone else chop wood and carry water. Yep. But today, it’s this very cool thing in our director room and in our teams where we have people showing up one day at a time, chopping wood and carrying water. And even when things get good, we just chop wood and carry water. And then when they’re bad, we just chop wood and we carry water. And that’s the consistency that we’re talking about. Um, and that’s something that’s really been highlighted in this season for me, the benefit of that relentless approach to not just passion and purpose, but client care, dude. Yeah. You know, Yeah. And I mean, the way I’m approaching this is the main objective is the clients feel it. Mhm. Starting as a BHT, right? starting as a then a moving on to a case manager, you get the reports from the clients, right? Different reports than as a director now that I get from clients. When you’re on the ground level, you hear, you know, kind of the truth from the clients. And you know, and it it seemed it seemed all over the place if I’m just being honest. Yeah. Um we would ask the same question to six different people, get six different answers, and that’s fine. It’s it’s not a reflection on the staff that we have. It’s just a reflection on the system, right? Um and so just making something solid and structured in the time of good time, the time of bad time. This is what we do and this is what we do always. It’s not proactive. Yeah. You know. Yep. Yeah. That’s a really really good thing. It’s um we’ve been so reactive in the past, right? You know, and and that decreases safety. Yep. Um it decreases connection. And and it’s really important, too, is I say it all the time on the show. It’s just like I just want to keep bringing it up because I don’t hear people talk about it enough, but like people are making the most courageous decision of their lives. They’re trusting strangers with their care, right? They’re walking in to live with you, right? Like that’s got to be a magical moment that matters. It really does, dude. We better know what we’re doing. Mhm. Yeah. you shared something really cool before the show and it’s like it’s I I talked about the small victory that we that we had but you maybe you talk about it like you you had the opportunity to sit with the guests you’ve been to seven or eight programs probably all substance abuse treatment centers you Yeah. Yeah. So what we did with our intake process, right, uh the initial intake, client walks in, we greet the guest. Um what we did was remove all the administrative task in that that first hour that the client is on the property, right? And we really just connect and we ground. Often times we see the guests coming in with their family. So we get to connect that way, right? Because not only is it scary for the guests, it’s also scary for the family, right? They’re handing over their loved one to us in our care. Mhm. Right. So, if we can just sit down in that our new intake room, nice. Got some water fountains going on. There you go. Um, it calms them, right? It’s not here, sign this, sign that. Here’s a policy for this. Here’s a policy for that. Right? And so, this guest that we’re talking about just kind of explained, hey, I’ve been to seven or eight treatment programs and this is the smoothest intake process I’ve been a part of. I think he also mentioned, I feel like you guys really know what you’re doing and it’s just that connection piece, right? And that’s where operations can step in, right? How do we make this go a lot smoother? Yeah. Not only for the staff, but for the client. And when we pull back and we see the whole system laid out, we see the client’s journey. Yeah. Right. We see any bottlenecks, we see any hiccups, any friction. Client will usually get stuck here. Why don’t we take out all the intake forms and move it later? Right. Right. We just hit the essentials right now and the client feels that and now we got proof of that. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a huge deal and it feels so simple, but it’s like, you know, like let’s fix the light in here, right? Let’s have a little water thing, man. Let’s get some distilled water in the corner. Let’s do simple [ ] Let’s not have a computer, not a desk. Let’s not block the energy. Let’s sit on the couch. Let’s be a real human. Let’s get an iPad. Let them know, “Yeah, I got some [ ] here. We got to sign it.” But like otherwise, like this is is your show, right? Sure. Sean, I’m here for you, right? I’m going to serve you, right, man? That would be a diabolically different experience than I had when I walked into treatment. And the program I went to, I thought was really great. You know, it’s just those small things, man. Integrate humans in a deep way. And if we go back to like 2018, I think it was 2018 when Simon Synynic came out with the opposite of addiction is connection. Well, the opposite of disrupted and disconnected mental health is also connection, right? like they won’t do the bad thing if we give them the good thing, right? We got to work hard to show them that it’s still a good and valuable thing in their life, right? Because prior to coming into care, and most providers know this, but they’ve been disconnected, isolated, and at times felt like they’ve been thrown away. Yeah. So, we have this very novel experience and opportunity to cultivate something real special. Right. And then, I don’t know about you, but for me, then I get to spend the best 30 days of someone’s life with them. Yeah. you know, and it’s rocking. Yeah, we’re doing it. So, yeah. And I I think it’s a plus, you know, myself, even yourself, you know, coming from this background, right? Like we get it. We’ve been through that journey. And like speaking for myself, it like when I was using it was mostly like nobody wants to hear me, nobody cares about me, what do I have to say? You know, you’re thrown to the gutter. Yeah. Maybe not like literally, but that’s sure feels that way. Feels like it, right? So, for a guest to enter onto our property and the first thing we do is just sit down and connect with you. Mhm. Like that’s a game changer. Like this this place is different. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. When you said that, I’m I was almost thinking in my head like, what can we do like one more additional thing to make it even better? You know, what if it was like admissions? I love that we’re solving this problem on the podcast. Um, what if it was like admissions on the front end, you know, what’s your favorite coffee? What’s your favorite tea? What’s your favorite snack and like with the journal? Like you got your fig newtons or whatever. You know, I mean, just like small thing. Hey, admissions told me that you like cake donuts and so I had the team go out. They grab some donuts for everybody anyway. Yeah. I got you a blueberry cake donut. So, here’s a cake donut. Here’s the process. It’s like something small that like matters to the individual, right? Y I think it’d be pretty cool. Yeah. And then they’re like, “Holy [ __ ] dude. I had my favorite thing and I’m and I’m potentially going through one of the worst experiences of my life.” That’s that’s comforting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have I had clients like, let’s use Bob, for example, as a name, you know? Hey, what’s up, Bob? How you doing? You know my name? Yeah, I know your name, man. You know, so like just that little piece of knowing someone’s name that you never met before. He never met me, right? But the way that made Bob feel Yeah. Right. special. So, yeah. I mean, if it’s we have their favorite drink or we have their favorite snack on hand like that, I mean, that takes it to another level. Mhm. That’s what we get to do in an intimate setting. Yeah. I uh I don’t envy having 200 beds um and not remembering people’s names. And I I think it’s um maybe it’s valuable to us, should be valuable to other providers. Um but somewhere along the way it’s it’s lost a little bit of value and that makes me really sad. Yeah. Like we don’t know our guest. We have too many people in care that I I’m sorry but I can’t remember your name. Right. I just feel like a number the same way they felt before coming into treatment. Mhm. Right. So, if we’re trying to disrupt that and change that, then we can’t represent what they’ve been feeling outside of our doors. It has to be a different feeling as soon as they walk in. Yeah. Yeah. And boy, what a what a simple yet really beneficial tool. Connection, kindness, and compassion are. Yeah. They’re so simple. And actually, they might be better than any like therapeutic tool. You’re going to actually learn within your graduate program because when you anchor people in a space, they get present. When people get present, they get purposeful. When people get pres purposeful, they get hope, right? When people like us get hope, people like the people down on our campus get hope. You better watch out, man. Yeah. Knock down. The world on fire. Yeah. You know, so it’s beautiful stuff, man. How’s it been for your family? You know, you’re in recovery. You You’re married now or you’re engaged? Engaged. You’re engaged. Yeah. He never asked you if she said yes. She said yes. Yeah. Well, obviously after thinking it was a joke for maybe the first 10 minutes. Oh my gosh. You’re like, “No, no, no. It was real. Cut.” Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool, man. What has it been like as a you know, a a man, a provider, a father, a human in recovery? You know, you start out just trying to like sketch this thing and you know, before you know it and with a lot of hard work, you’re in a position that may maybe you didn’t think you’d be or maybe you thought you’d be or maybe you’re happy you’d be, but what has it been like for the family? Like you have a daughter and a wife and brother and people back in Hawaii. Yeah. I mean, for the for them, I feel like I’m I give them somebody to look up to now. Right. Which is which has not been a thing for a long time. Mhm. Right. I would say I was probably the one that you don’t want to be like you see him don’t do that. Yeah. Right. So now like that whole narrative has switched. Right. Um I just I get to be there. I get to be present. I can’t solve everyone’s problems, right? That’s all their owns to figure out. But at least I can sit with you in it, right? I can pick you up. We can go to lunch. We can go to dinner. Um, and that’s that’s the biggest piece for me is that I can just I can be there and provide the support. Yeah. And it’s consistent. Yeah. And Yeah. It just it just goes back to the structure thing, right? like as a as a provider like I’ve I’ve always felt like it needed to be financial. Mhm. Right. This is what my dad did for me and my brothers, right? The provider you provide financially. Mhm. But it’s it’s a lot more than that. Yeah. Right. It’s providing stability, right? Providing presence, providing that when I show up or when I come home from practice, I know dad is going to be home. Mhm. I know dad is going to be outside of the door at that gym every time I finish practice. Mhm. Right. So, it’s stability. And I mean, it’s five, six years ago, man. I I I could not imagine this right now. Mhm. Not even close. It was It wasn’t even It wasn’t even a dream. Yeah. You couldn’t You couldn’t have dreamt it. Not at all. Yeah. It’s a cool thing, man. stay long enough in this thing, you show up and you chop wood and carry water one day at a time. Yeah. Life will just just blow you away, right? Wildest dreams beyond it will blow you away. I did this thing one time. I moved from and maybe may have said this on the podcast coup um but I did this thing right because I’m like six years into the field about to get my undergraduate degree in counseling but then this opportunity to go do peaks opens up and I remember I bought cuz I had it like that I was buying stuff on Amazon and I bought these coffee filters. Have I ever told you this story? No. And I bought these coffee filters and it was cheaper to buy 24 of them but you only replace a coffee filter every month. So, I set the reminder and I place cough filter every month. But I’m packing it in a box out of my rental home. Okay. Leaving Prescat, Arizona. And I thought to myself, I wonder will uh I haven’t told this story in a while. Um I wonder where I’ll be when I put this last coffee filter in. Like I’m I’m a program director of this program. I’m running this program. Doing this thing. Finished up my degree. I’m moving. I’m making money. I’m doing the thing. I’m about to open a program. Yeah. all these things. And I thought to myself, well, I wonder what it’ll be. Yeah. And boy, I was in a the first piece of real estate I ever owned when I opened that box. And it was uh about 8 months later. Yeah. And I thought to myself, boy, boy, I’ll just let this universe take control because I will sell myself short every time, man. Right. I will sell myself short. And every day of this chopping wood and carrying water and serving the world thing, things just get a little bit better. Yeah. You know, as I draw nearer and dearer to the things that matter, which are the simple free things, right? I love what you said about money cuz I thought too was this money thing. Man, I got to share this on the podcast cuz like you don’t get the opportunity to sit in front of somebody who’s 82 years old very often who has a life experience and successful kids and serve the country in the military. Well, I met with them yesterday and I met with them last week and I’m just like feed me, bro. So, I asked him I was like, “Yo, well, cuz kids are real successful, man. They all got degrees and some are dating or married to like authors and actors.” I was like, “Bro, yeah.” I said, ‘Who’s your most successful kid? And he goes, right away, he goes, “The happiest or who has the most money?” And I was like, “Boy, 82 years later, he said it.” I said, “Oh, the one who is the happiest.” He said, “Yeah, he’s got this. He’s got that. He’s got this. He’s got that. He’s got this. He’s got that.” My other boy, they’re happy, man. They’re good. They have good lives. Yep. But he’s happiest. Yeah. Yeah. And I just thought that was really really profound. Um because I I I don’t think like I’m not calling for the absence of of monetary goods or anything like that. I think it’s a solid foundation. But we can learn a lot in the absence of those things, you know. Yeah. Right. So that we have real
presence for what’s on the other side. Real reverence. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean with the absence of it, you got to you got to find ways to be creative and connect without it, right? And like I mean I I have big ambitions, right? Like I I strive high and I shoot high. Mhm. But at the same time like I’m happy where we live right now. Yeah. Right. It’s a small place. It’s tight and it’s fine. If I move to a bigger spot, I might look back on this time and be like, “Man, I wish we could all just sit on the couch and be together.” Yeah. I miss how our rooms were so close together. Mhm. You know, so like in every moment like that, I’m sure there will be times where I can look back and be like, “Man, I miss that.” Even though when it was happening, it was like, “I can’t wait to get out of this.” Yeah. Tired of parking in this parking lot. Yeah, man. You know, so it’s interesting you say that, man. We have a pretty good size house and we’re always like the next one the next one can be half the size. Yeah. Like we all just hang out up here anyway. Yeah. We don’t we don’t need all that, right? It’s funny you say that too cuz I remember one time I picked your brother up to go to jiu-jitsu and I was talking with him like you like this area. He’s like, “Bro, this is so nice. Look at this pl bro. Look at this place.” You know, we’re like, “Man, I need to give me a new spot.” You It’s just like when you can zoom out, man, you get a different perspective. You’re like, “Oh, yeah. You’ve seen where I used to live, huh? Yep. Yep. There’s actual sidewalks now. Huge ones, man. Yeah. Really huge ones. I don’t love, you know, and I want to put this out there cuz I haven’t said it in a while. I don’t love running on the sidewalks. It’s bad for you. Not. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not good. You ever have any like sort of like glute injury back here and you go from like asphalt and then you go on the sidewalk, it’s like you could feel it. You feel the difference. Definitely. It doesn’t have I don’t I I don’t know what the scientific situation is behind it, but it doesn’t have shock absorbers, right? Whatever that is. Right. Right. You know, so Well, let me ask you this. If you had a plan for the next year, like what what type of plan would make you proud personally and professionally? Like what is what is executing Tyler’s goals look like this year outside of becoming a winning the lottery or whatever? Winning the lottery. I played the lottery. That would be play lottery. I played lottery twice. You play lottery? Play lottery. It was probably like 600 million. Yeah, it was insane. Yeah, dude. Take a 30 minute on that. Think about that for a moment. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I guess outside of winning the lottery. Yeah. I think it’s just to continue the balance that I have with my family. Mhm. Right. Um, and balance is like a hard word to define. I mean, some days it’s work, right? Some days you can chill and you can relax, maybe watch a movie. Mhm. Um, so balance is hard to define, but it’s just I want to continue to be there for my family. Mhm. Um, haven’t missed one of my daughter’s volleyball tournaments yet. Um, I want to continue that. Right. So, like with this new role and with the ambition that I have, with the changes that I want to make, that we want to make, um, I can I can get lost in it, right? And I can there’s there’s days where I I just love to stay in the office till 7:00 p.m. just, right, and not come out when it’s dark. Arrive dark, leave dark. Yeah, I love that. Right. And I can get I can get stuck in that, right? So, my goal is to just remain the dad that I’ve always been. Mhm. Despite all these external things that are changing. Yep. I like that, man. You got to bring him up the hill with you. Yeah. You got to bring them up the hill. That’s one thing I learned as a young entrepreneur was I got up, I was scaling this mountain, scaling it, scaling the [ ] out of it, and then I got nobody was there. Yeah. Bring them with you. Yep. You know, I like that goal. I’m really um you know I was driving over here and I was thinking I was like you know what I am just so excited. I’m so excited. I’m so pumped up. And then a thought came into my mind. I was like why Chris? You don’t even pay yourself. And I was like you [ ] better man. Let’s go. You know like I let’s go. We we are in the rhythm. We are in the groove. And frankly it feels like we’re just getting started here in year 12. Yeah. You know grateful to have you in the position you’re in. so grateful to have you on the show. Um, anything you want to say to the people before we exit here? I know I put you on the spot like that. I would just say it like and it’s it’s hard to say it right because I I talk to clients about this all the time too and it’s it’s hard to get your point across because yeah, I work for Peaks and I’m an employee there, right? And like whenever I say like Peaks is a special place, it’s different. Mhm. Right. So, it’s hard to push it because I work there, but it is, you know, and just the the connection that is there, you know, I see the behavioral health techs, right? Just connecting with clients, right? You got an issue. You’re not just a number. We’re not just going to pass you off. We’ll take the time to figure this out with you. Mhm. Um, and either even in leadership and you know, as a director, if there’s anything that we miss, we’ll own up to it, right? Like I know other programs that would be and put it back on the client if something is missed. Mhm. Right. Like hey, yeah, this is our fault. It’s something we missed. We’ll we’ll make sure we get this handled. Yeah. You know, and it’s the little things like that. It’s just treating people like people and not just a number and not hurting them through any program. Yeah. I mean, that’s that’s what I would want to say about Peaks that everyone everyone cares there. Everyone has their story that they’re leaking out into their work. Yeah, I love that, man. And they’ve found a way to do it in a really synchronized, efficient way, right? Cuz in the past it was like, let me just sit under this tree and do this thing. And yeah, it’s fine. But now it’s in the flow. It’s just built and packed into the flow are these touch points that you’re talking about. And I love that you mentioned the BHTs, too. We got to get them on a show. I was talking with uh Tyler about it before the before we got on here. I was like, he’s like, “Why don’t you get these people on?” And I was like, honestly, I I’ve been talking with them about it for a couple months. They’re just so valuable on campus. I don’t want them to come down here. But we got to get them on, man. Because your point is solid from the ground level troops. Often times a position that’s overlooked, underpaid, and overworked. Yeah. Is now being attuned with, seen, valued, and heard in peaks in a really, really cool way. And the output we’re getting on the ground level by those freaking warriors, right? Is something fierce, right? You know. Yeah. And that’s powerful, man. Yeah. Because we’re very reliant on them in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Across the board. Yep. So, well, all right, y’all. Okay, man. Man, let’s wrap this up and let’s get back to saving lives one day at a time. Yeah. Grateful to have you on. We’ll have you on again. Definitely going to get the BHTs on here shortly. Some of the team members, man, talk about how they’re rocking and moving throughout the day. Uh again, appreciate you. Until next time. Perfect. Thanks, Chris. Yo, people, check us out. Podcast, YouTube, you know the drill. Until next time, stay beautiful and blessed. Peace.
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