Meet Rob Minnick
Rob Minnick is the founder of ODAAT Gambling Awareness, a gambling addiction recovery advocate, content creator, and speaker whose story and advocacy have been featured by Dr. Phil, NBC, ABC, Vice, and other media outlets. By combining lived experience, storytelling, education, and practical recovery lessons, Rob helps audiences understand what gambling addiction actually looks like from the inside.
_JPEG.jpeg)
Invite Rob To Speak At Your Establishment
Who Is This For?
Rob’s presentations can be adapted for colleges and universities, student-athletes and athletic departments, high schools and parent groups, behavioral health conferences, clinicians and treatment providers, state councils on problem gambling, recovery organizations, workplaces, financial-wellness programs, policymakers, and community organizations.
Sportsbooks, casinos, influencers, and gambling advertisements sell the possibility of winning while minimizing the likelihood and consequences of losing. This presentation exposes the psychological traps that keep people gambling, explains why chasing losses becomes so powerful, and challenges the belief that gambling can be treated like an investment or reliable way to make money.
Keynote Presentations
A high-impact presentation designed for conferences, universities, organizations, and large community events.
Workshops & Trainings
Interactive sessions for clinicians, educators, athletic departments, prevention professionals, and organizations that need practical tools they can apply.
Panels and Moderated Conversations
Lived-experience participation for discussions about gambling policy, public health, advertising, sports betting, recovery, and prevention.eature information here to attract new clients. Provide a brief summary to help visitors understand the context and background.
Virtual Presentations
Live online presentations for teams, professional organizations, classrooms, conferences, and community groups.
Presentation Formats
What Will Students Learn?
Gambling Addiction in the Age of the Smartphone
Gambling is no longer limited to casinos. It is available 24 hours a day through smartphones, sports broadcasts, social media, video games, and influencer content. Rob explains how this constant access changes the risk of developing a problem, why young adults are particularly vulnerable, and what families, schools, athletic programs, and communities need to recognize.
What Gambling Addiction Really Feels Like
Why does someone keep gambling after losing everything? Why do they lie, isolate, chase losses, and sometimes feel relief when the last of their money is gone? Drawing from his personal experience, Rob takes audiences inside the emotional cycle of gambling addiction and replaces judgment with understanding.
From Rock Bottom to Recovery
Quitting gambling is not simply about developing more willpower. Rob shares the practical steps that helped him stop, including limiting access to money, self-exclusion, support meetings, replacing the time consumed by gambling, and rebuilding a sense of purpose. The presentation gives people struggling—and the families supporting them—a realistic picture of what early recovery can look like.
Reaching People Before the Crisis
Many people do not recognize their gambling as a problem until the consequences become severe. This presentation helps clinicians, prevention professionals, educators, and advocates communicate about gambling harm without shame, judgment, or language that immediately puts the person on the defensive.
Key Outcomes
Audiences leave Rob’s presentations with a clearer understanding of how gambling addiction develops, why it can be so difficult to stop, and which warning signs are commonly overlooked. Through honest lived-experience storytelling, attendees learn how gambling can affect mental health, finances, relationships, education, and a person’s sense of identity. Most importantly, they leave better prepared to recognize harmful behavior, challenge the easy-money messages promoted by gambling companies, have more compassionate conversations about addiction, and take action before the consequences become a crisis.