Interview

Tommy Procopovich is the right hand of renowned sales trainer Andy Elliott and a key leader at The Elliott Group, a company that built a nine-figure coaching business in just four years. Today he works with CEOs, entrepreneurs, and sales teams to build culture, leadership, and high-performance organizations, but his path began in addiction, immigration struggles, and multiple overdoses. In this interview, Tommy shares how he turned his life around, why proximity and faith became non-negotiables, and the massive vision he’s now pursuing.

Q: Introduce yourself. Who are you, what do you do, and what does the Elliott group actually focus on?

My name is Tommy Procopovich. I’m with The Elliott Group, if you know who Andy Elliott is, that’s who I’m with. I’m his top guy, his right hand.

I handle a lot of the big relationships: business owners, CEOs, entrepreneurs. We help people build sales organizations, culture, leadership, and brands, and we help coaches, too. If you’re launching or scaling a coaching business, we’ve built a nine-figure coaching company in four years, so we just “run the play” that works instead of reinventing the wheel.

“Stop chasing the money. Chase the man. Get in shape. Fix your family. Put God in your life. Raise your standards. How you do one thing is how you do everything.”

Q: Why Elliott? What made you decide to attach your life and career to Andy and this company?

Andy came into my life when I was broke, lost, and didn’t have a good example in front of me. I was searching for something like we all do, purpose, fulfillment, direction.

I had bounced around sales jobs and eventually got into car sales. I sucked at it. I made $600 my first month. I literally went on YouTube and typed “how to get better at sales,” and an Andy Elliott video popped up. I resonated with him immediately, invested in his training, and the next month I made $17,500 selling cars. In five and a half months I made $100,000.

But the real reason I chose Elliott wasn’t just the money. It was his message:

Stop chasing the money. Chase the man. Get in shape. Fix your family. Put God in your life. Raise your standards. How you do one thing is how you do everything.

No one had ever talked to me like that about life, not just income.

“ Stop chasing the money. Chase the man. Get in shape. Fix your family. Put God in your life. Raise your standards. How you do one thing is how you do everything.”

Q: Let’s back up. Where did you come from, and what were you battling before all this success?

I wasn’t born in the U.S. I was born in Venezuela and moved to South Florida when I was two. I was an illegal immigrant for 20 years.

I had great grades in high school and two scholarships to go to college, but I couldn’t go because I didn’t have a driver’s license or Social Security number. I spent years with no license, no car, no clear path. Out of boredom and frustration, I fell into drugs.

I abused drugs for 16 years. I started with painkillers during the big opiate epidemic around 2007–2008. It was the “pill mill” era, and it escalated: stronger pills, then heroin, eventually fentanyl. When fentanyl came, that’s when the overdoses started.

By the time I met my wife, Sierra, I’d already overdosed multiple times. I weighed 145 pounds. I thought I wouldn’t live past 30, and I had made peace with that. My identity was “drug addict.”

Q: What finally changed? Was there a single turning point or a gradual shift?

It was both. I met Sierra in 2018. She’s now my wife, and she’s an incredible woman. At that time, I was what you’d call a “functioning” drug addict, but I wasn’t really functioning anymore. I was hiding everything, but you can only hide so much when you’re nodding off in public.

I overdosed five times. Sierra literally brought me back to life twice with CPR, once pulling a needle out of my arm. She went through a lot of trauma with me, but she also saw something in me.

Fast forward to 2020, COVID hits. I was working in the travel industry for Royal Caribbean. Travel stopped, so I went into car sales, found Andy’s content, and started training. I was still dealing with drugs, but now I had a vision of a different life.

I went to one of Andy’s events, and it completely shook me. He talked about becoming the person you need to become, about faith, family, fitness, standards. I told him, “I want to work for you.” He said, “Get clean. Gain muscle. Become the man first.”

I wasn’t ready yet. I overdosed again. We lost touch for a while.

Q: So how did you go from that point to being his right-hand man?

In 2022, I had this vision, literally a dream, of mountains. It felt like God was telling me to move. So my wife and I packed everything we owned into a Corolla with a 5×8 trailer. Two cats, a dog, and a snake in a box. We drove 55 hours from South Florida to Arizona with $5,000 to our name.

Half of that went to first and last month’s rent and a deposit. The other $2,500 was “figure it out” money. I didn’t have a job with The Elliott Group yet. We were just chasing a different environment and community, a place where people weren’t drinking and doing drugs, but focused on health, faith, family, and growth.

Here’s where it gets wild: Sierra had to fly back to Miami to bartend and bring in some cash. Andy and his wife Jacqueline fly to Florida once a year. On that one flight… they were on the same plane as my wife. Not just on the plane, sitting right next to her.

They recognized her, asked about me, and said, “Tell Tommy I want to see him. If you’re in Arizona, tell him to stop being scared of me.”

We met them at Impact Church in Arizona. That church became our community. It’s where I gave my life to Jesus and got baptized in December 2022.

Andy told me, “You can come work for me, but give me a year: stay clean for a year, gain 20 pounds of muscle, and become the number one salesperson where you’re at.”

I went to work. Out of 120 salespeople, I became number one by my third month. I gained 38 pounds of muscle, stayed clean, and documented everything. Eventually, I joined The Elliott Group, and I’ve never looked back.

Q: Where are you focused now within the Elliott Group and beyond? What’s the big vision for the nexrt 12-24 months?

The last year I’ve been speaking on stages, building my brand, and getting millions of views on Instagram. My goals for the next 12–24 months:

• Create more impact through speaking, content, and coaching.
• Leverage proximity, I invest heavily to be in the right rooms, around high-caliber people.
• Build and scale Elliott Hire, our hiring software division, and be part of a major exit.

Elliott Hire solves one of the biggest problems in business: finding good people. We built a very advanced data-analytics platform that helps companies identify top talent. It can:

• Score candidates,
• Predict churn,
• Indicate whether someone is likely to be an asset or a liability,
• And radically simplify the hiring process.

We already have serious proof-of-concept with big companies. I’m included in the exit plan, and my goal is an eight-figure exit in the next two years. That means I need to help bring in hundreds of accounts and create massive value.

Q: You talk a lot about faith. How does that fit into your life and leadership now?

My number one priority is Jesus. I’m a grateful follower of Christ. I believe what you do today affects your eternal tomorrow.

I lead an all-men’s Bible study every Monday. My wife and I lead The Elliott Group’s Bible study. I’ve baptized people in my pool. For me, the biggest prayer every morning is:

“God, use me. Put me in front of the right people. Let me be who You need me to be today.”

A lot of people will never open a Bible. You might be the only “Bible” they ever read. So I want people to see Jesus in me, through how I live, work, and love others.

On top of that, I’m about to become a father for the first time. My wife is eight weeks pregnant, which adds a new level of responsibility. I want to lead by example and be the kind of man I’m proud of, disciplined, intentional, driven, caring, and grounded in faith.

Q: For someone who’s struggling, maybe not with drugs, but with feeling lost or stuck, what’s the one message you most want them to hear?

First: seek God first. My favorite scripture is Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Not some things. All.

Don’t walk into a day without God. His Word is your armor. Put it on before you step into the world.

Second: endure your suffering and do it now. Don’t keep putting things off. People act like we have endless time. We don’t. The things you don’t want to do, the hard conversations, the workouts, the discipline, the decisions, that’s where the growth is.

You’re not just building a business. You’re becoming the person God intended you to be. That will be uncomfortable. But the alternative is staying stuck, and you already know what that life feels like.