Live on the Alcoholic Entrepreneur with Erik Frederickson and Rocky Singh Kandola
Rocky Singh Kandola is a WWASP survivor....twice. If you don't know anything about the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP), it was a horrendous way to try and modify behavior of young adolescent boys and girls. Torture and emotional/physical/sexual abuse were endured day after day usually for months at a time. Children were abruptly removed from their beds in the middle of the night, as if it were a kid napping, and taken far away from their home to one of the WWASP camps. If enduring two tours of WWASP wasn't bad enough for this young man, he also had a destructive past with drug and alcohol.Rocky graciously takes us into his past experiences before discussing his amazing career as an entrepreneur and owning his own hair extension business called Hair Maiden India.
Host:
Yo-Yo thank you guys so much for checking back into another fantastic episode of the alcoholic entrepreneur podcast. The entrepreneur that I have on the show for you guys today, his name is Rocky Singh Kandola, and he runs a successful hair extension business at a Beverly Hills, California called Hair Made in India. Now, before we get to all of Rocky successes as an entrepreneur, he has a pretty horrific past with this company called WWASP that we're going to touch on. And if you don't know anything about this company called WWASP.WWASP take in troubled youth and ''rehabilitate'' them in a very unusual way. And I'll let Rocky explain his experience and let you decide for yourself. If this is rehabilitation, Rocky goes in to talk about his drug and alcohol abuse, and then we close the show discussing hair made in India and why his company is different from those other companies selling and doing similar things in a saturated market in Southern California.
Automated Speech:
Enjoy the episode. Welcome back to another fantastic episode of the alcoholic entrepreneur podcast. The show that features amazing stories of recovery and success, experience the ups and downs of entrepreneurship and sobriety and the mindset it takes to be successful through the lens of our guests. Now here's your Host
Host:
Yo-yo-yo. Welcome back to the alcoholic entrepreneur podcast. My name's Justin. I am Of course your Host, my guests this evening, his name is Rocky Singh Kandola. Now Rocky reached out to me on LinkedIn. He said he's got a pretty powerful story. He said, he's got, he's got some things that he wants to talk about. And I think I believe him. We got to chat and just a little bit before I hit record, not too much because I w I want to hear the story with you guys, but it sounds like he's got some pretty powerful things to say. So without further ado, Rocky, welcome to the show.
Rocky Singh Kandola:
Thank you so much for having me here, brother. Yeah, of course. Of course.
Host:
Thank you for reaching out to me. You know, it's funny, all of the avenues of communication are opening with, with the COVID restrictions. And so you were the first to reach out to me on LinkedIn one and two to chop it up a little bit on the alcoholic entrepreneurial podcast and talk a little bit about your story. So, so that's what, what we're going to do. We're going to rewind the tape right now on you take us back to the beginning. Where did you grow up? What was family life like? What was it like through your adolescents teenage years? You know, the show's called the alcoholic entrepreneur. So what was substance alcohol abuse, anything like that in your past as well growing up?
Rocky Singh Kandola:
So I'll just hop right in. I was born in New York in the Bronx now and my parents are like, you know, first-generation from India out here. A father, he knows a cardiologist still training at that time. Eventually, when I was about four, we moved the entire family and brother and sister and I down to Mississippi you know, basically following this career path without there being not many cardiologists in the south and him seeing a good opportunity to kind of get down there and get his business running and set up. So, you know, being down there, we kind of started to do what the kids around us would do, which is kind of normal. You know, kids are out and about playing sports, you know, hanging out at their friend's houses in this kind of the same thing I wanted to do. My parents travel, you know, kind of traditional Indian back then, especially, and they really wanted us to stay home, to study, you know, to not really be out with friends and to not be trying to, you know, go out and about at nighttime and listen to them. So that kind of was like the spark of my childhood when I started really with my parents a lot and a lot of, you know, talking back and then get in trouble in school and in sneaking out of the house and things like that kinda got me into being sent around. So, you know, at 11-12 years old, the first time I was sent away to India, I was living there as a kid, you know, with a family and you know, it wasn't really horrible. I had some really pretty good experiences. I actually got to help a kid out there. The family, I was a little bit his servant in India. They have servants, like, you know, people that do their stuff and stuff like that. This kid was like 10 or 11, maybe a couple of years older than me. I was 11 or 12, but he was half my size and I used to play tennis back then. So I sneak them into my tennis bag, put them in my backpack and then sneak them out. We'd go shake it in the market and walk around to do kids stuff, you know? So it just like, it was, it was one of those things I can like kind of, I had, I didn't have anything, almost a kid myself. I had freedom and it made me look at life like, wow, like, like this kid and me are in the same situation we built on having to both a lot of our families, our parents to take care of us and look how much more I have of how much I'm blessed with a freedom to be able to walk outside with my bag and to be able to actually bless him and put my bag with me and take him with me. You know, obviously, the kid didn't see it like that. I just saw it as me helping my friend and having fun, but looking back and as an adult I'm like, wow, that's pretty powerful. That that was even in me too since day one back then to just be able to whatever whoever's around me to like elevate and help, you know, as much as I can.
Host:
What part of India is your family from?
Rocky Singh Kandola:
My mom's side is from Calcutta like east Southeast San Diego and my dad's side is Punjab, northern.
Host:
So when they sent you back to India the first time where were you get sent to?
Rocky Singh Kandola:
So I got sent to Junagadh, which is basically near Punjab. It's a union territory. Okay. But it's like the same kind of culture as Punjab and it's close to my village as well. Okay.
Host:
Talk to us a little bit about the culture I've never been to India. So tell us a little bit about, you know, just a little bit of back background about the Indian culture. I honestly, love Indian food. I love Indian people. I'm a banquet captain part-time and so I do Indian weddings and I think they're gorgeous. I think, I think they're, if never been to an Indian wedding, they are at least the ones that I've managed they're colourful, they're beautiful. There's they're long, there's a whole processional, you know, that comes in with the groom, right. With the groom coming in. And, and so it's, they're gorgeous, gorgeous weddings, everyone that I've, that I've managed has been absolutely gorgeous, but that's about the extent of my knowledge of India. So tell us a little bit about the culture of India and what you moved from and we're going to.
Rocky Singh Kandola:
Yeah, definitely. So I mean, India is a huge, huge, vast diverse country which is very small. We can fit, I think, three of India, like the whole country into of America, you know, just the size, the comparison, I believe India has roughly three towns of the population as well. Wow. within the population there are over 120 dialects multiple different religious traditions on all this in India happens like when you move one hour, one way or one hour in another way, pretty cool. Actually like my family's religion, we're Punjabi sick. They keep their hair in the south of India. You know, they keep their hair and wear turbans in the south of India. There are other hindered religions, religions that follow other, you know, gods and they cut their hair. So, you know my business's a hair business has been kind of a cool thing to talk about and let you know, clients might even know that as you know, this hair is actually a big thing, a donating affair, sacrificing affair, as well as the keeping the hair. But for different reasons, both in admiration, respect for you know, their own respective gods. And you know, Indians are one of those people, like you said before, the weddings are crazy. That's a huge part of Indian culture. You know, people saved their entire lives and, and mother-in-law's put away jewellery for years. No, did they give it to their daughter-in-law one day? And they go all out at weddings. On top of that Indians, like are very big believers, you know, from the heart type of people. The country just a diverse and beautiful man. You can be walking down the street and see a palace and a temple. That's a billion dollars. And on one side on the left-hand side, a housemate of so Cal you know, where people don't have enough money to, to get clean water, right. It's a very diverse, very, very beautiful country. For me. It's a recharge now is from our business, Rebecca back here to help out my business to maintain a factory to source, but it puts me back in touch, with real life. And it reminds me of why I'm so blessed and grateful to have what I have and be where I am.
Host:
Right, right. And I want to get more into that. So tell us a little bit, I know we kind of got off on a tangent, you got sent back, continue on from there. Why'd you get sent back?
Rocky Singh Kandola:
The beginning of India was just, I was just like a tough to deal with kids. You know, my parents are just like, it's a cultural thing. We want you to go forward later in life. There's like, you're tough to deal with than from there when I got back, you know, I kind of got a taste of freedom and I got back in it again. The next years from 13 to 18 in and out of boot camps, military schools, private and public schools, some of the boot camps I went to were actually shut down and names change now to the child abuse, rape torture, and all kinds of things. Paris Hilton we all know Paris Hilton, the famous celebrity she's actually recently done a documentary on Netflix called this is me. And that documentary really details one of the schools in particular in Utah that, you know, it was very, very abusive and traumatic too, to kids even currently to this day, as we're speaking of the ones I went to were called the worldwide association of specialty programs where you were kidnapped out of your bed, your parents' bed at two o'clock in the morning by two guys that are so tall, they have to turn off the fans in your room just to go to walk in. These guys, escort you across the country to a program where when you walk in the lights, get dim, the air gets cold. People start screaming at you and grabbing at you. Your clothes are stripped off. Your hair is cut. You sleep in the hallway for days at a time. You wake up at 2:00 AM to stand outside in the rain and count. You're not allowed to have any communication with the outside world nor with the person right next to you. The medical care, the food that the patient has is next to nothing. You're not taken care of daily. You face mental manipulation, brainwashing verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. I had all three done to me, you know, just in my short time in Mexico at the Bootcamp I will send to and Baja, California, you know, everything from being kicked down the hallway, put on my stomach and my chest on the ground and my feet and my hands tied behind my back and forced to stay there for hours and days at a time and keep them on. I was 12/13 years old, you know, at this time after I got out, that was different. You know, I told my parents a little bit about how, you know, essentially play with I was physically messed with. And I don't think they believe me. You know, these schools are very smart. They manipulate the parents and the kids into not believing each other, not trusting each other and make the parents want to have to keep sending them back and make the kids feel like they can never get out. And, you know, they didn't really, my parents didn't believe me anyway, at that point. So I just made a rule to myself to never talk about it again, three years later, after going through military schools and then a Catholic boarding school and some other schools that got kicked out of, for fighting all my teachers for drugs, for alcohol, for all kinds of things. I was sent back to the same place I went to as a kid in Mexico, the same guy, Jason Phillips. And they kicked me down the hallway. The top of my hands, my feet behind my back that, you know, kind of had nightmares about, honestly, till this day, I still have nightmares about this stuff. I was going back there again and that's when I finally graduated high school. And once I got to the point of being 18 and graduated high school, I knew I was, a man. That was it. You couldn't tell him anything. I didn't respect authority. I didn't want anything. Except for alcohol drugs, girls, parties, cars, money, be the man, Rob shoe, steal her, whatever I had to do, whatever happened to me, I dove headfirst into that lifestyle. I didn't have to do it. I didn't, you know, get the circumstance and, you know, come from me. I picked it. I was like, this is me. This is who I am, is what I'm gonna do is what I vibe with. And that's what I'm doing. And that was my identity. There was really no question about it. Shortly later, I ended up in prison for prison. There were rehabs, there were jails, there was inpatient outpatient. There were addictions to opiates, to marijuana, to alcohol, to pills, to cocaine, to selling all those things, to being addicted just to the lifestyle and to the money into the craziness. And, you know, even to the women, to the sex, it just almost became a game, like show off and see how much he can get and you can do. And the type of person I am, you can't scare me. Trick me, change me, hurt me into changing and become better, has to come from me. And you know, when I got out of prison, I dove right back in the same lifestyle and I'll kind of want to fast forward here, but I said it to say that at a certain point, it finally took outside energy, a higher power greater for us to just be like, you know what, maybe there's something else where I can, maybe you don't have to hold on this identity. Maybe you want to be a dope boy, party, animal player, whatever, you know, everyone started calling you, whatever, you know, you started kind of believing yourself. You don't really have to, you know, identify that you can do something else if you want to. And I was scared. I didn't know if I was going to work or what I could do, what friends I would have again if I would have girls again if I would have fun again if I would be validated as a person again, you know? But I try, I just let it all go. And David is shot and started over. And, you know, seven years later, like I was telling you before it has been a journey, but blessed to be where I am. And I'm in a place now where I never really thought that it was possible in the past. Not monetarily, not materially, not anything besides spiritually and internally. I never really thought any of that was possible before.
Host:
That's, that's a lot, you just packed in there, brother. And thank you. Thank you so much, for going there. And, and for letting us in a little bit, I want to go back to this, to this boot camp. Like what, how do you think your parents come to the decision? Like, what are they fed? What's the information that your parents hear, about these boot camps? You know what I mean? Like where do your parents have to be in? And I guess like, were you just like the devil child that they just didn't know how to take care of? You know what I'm saying? Like, where does, where do your parents have to be? Because I was a pretty bad kid too, in my PR. And I think, you know, my parents would scare me with about like sending me off to a boys school and things like that because I had a bad temper and like, you know, I was dealing with a bunch of and I didn't know how to deal with my feelings. I'm just curious, like where do your parents have to be? Or what kind of information did they get sold to say like, let us come steal your kid in the middle of the night and not talk to them for X amount of time and not know what's going on.
Rocky Singh Kandola:
And that's a good question. An important question. It's a question that I told you like there's other people that went to the schools with me, my brothers and sisters survivors, we talk about and I envisioned it like this. Imagine you're a father and you have kids and you're working really hard and you're trying to throw a family together. And then, you know, you have a kid there's just crazy. You can't deal with him. He's running around outside. He's talking, the back is getting in trouble. You're getting calls from here and there making babysitters cry. What you said about the devil. If my parents were here, they'd probably be like, yup. That's, that's the one right there. That little kid, you know, I don't think I was that bad that, I mean, I that's up to them. I was definitely, I'll still have to deal with it. You know, I'm still kind of them the same way. Like when it comes to even present relationships, I'm very strong-willed, strong-minded. I taught back, I stayed on point of views. I know that I can run into, hot water, sometimes being so passionate about saying it, but I do anyway. But I envisioned like this that father's tired. Working comes home late at night. He's dealing with all of these taxes, life, whatever. And he knows this kid has trouble. Doesn't know what to do about them. And eventually comes across a newspaper ad that says you know, troubled teen, want to get your family life back, looking for help to, you know, bring your family together and have love again and make it all work and make your kids successful. Call us now. And back when I first went, I don't think the internet was really a thing. So I think it was like a newspaper ad from there. You know, they've gotten more elaborate. And as I said, these are a for-profit company. They know they need a market and they know they need to sell a certain story to parents and the kids and to make it, you know, work. And I think that's what it is. I think it's just a good ad. Good people talking, you know, that sounds good because they said to my parents like he's going to be on jet skis. He's going to be swimming. He's going to get the best medical care. Isn't get this and that. And like that, none of that could be farther from the truth. And finally now, and then thank God for technology. I don't have to say that with being kind of scared to like, because I can't prove it. Right. I was a kid. I was there. I didn't have it recorded with, but now enough of us have found each other because we want to know each other's names were there. We found each other, our Host brothers and sisters survivors. And we talk about, and we all know, we call it, talk about it out loud saying, yeah, this is what happened. This is what they did to us. It wasn't, you weren't dreaming it or thinking it or exaggerating it, it happened all of a sudden, what was the name of this place? So the place that I went to is called the worldwide association of specialty programs. Say it again, the worldwide association of specialty programs, wasp, if you Google it or YouTube at BBC CNN, a lot of people have done some big coverages on it that the Mexican ranchers shut them down. What blows my mind is it that some of the videos that literally like give me chills and I'll watch it. And we had like 20,000 views. So it tells me that people still don't really know this is a problem in our country and in the world.
Host:
You know what is funny?. And I was, I wanted to hear more about it because, because this, this happened to one of my buddies at school and I want to say it was probably freshman year, sophomore year, maybe early on in high school. And it, what you explained, how they took him out of his room and the kid has never been the same. Like after he left and came back, we, we never really, he never really fit back into the, to the group. I don't even know that. I remember him back in school. Really. I remember maybe seeing him here or there, but what you explained about and he said, it's so nonchalantly, there was something off about it when he tried to explain. But he said basically, you know, he was taken in the middle of the night. It was like a kidnapping. And they dropped him off in like the middle of the wilderness or in the middle of the desert or something. And like he had to survive, you know, by himself for a long extended amount of time. And then when they finally got him, then it was something similar to what you, it sounds like what you experienced with was like beatings and, and just like kind of min