Podcast Transcript - Episode 0018 - Building a Sober Community with Ryan Owens

Welcome to.

The professional drinkers podcast brought to.

You by choosesurrise.co.uk. I'm Janet Hadley and this is for you if you're an HR professional, a business.

Owner or a leader.

Who'd like to explore the.

Drinking culture in.

Your workplace. I'll bring you lived experience stories, expert views and.

Tips for creating.

An alcohol safe workplace without killing the buzz. Hello and welcome back to the professional drinkers podcast. I'm sorry if I sound a little bit croaky today. I am just on my way back outside of the other end of having had COVID, the dreaded COVID, which is back for another bite, which is not ideal. I never go anywhere, and yet somehow I managed to miss out on so many things by having COVID. I was absolutely gutted that I couldn't take part in the York marathon relay race last weekend, which was running to raise money for Yorkshire Brain Tumor charity. I genuinely mean that. It's not just an excuse to get out of running, I promise. I really, really wanted to go, especially because some of the team had traveled from Oxfordshire and South Wales all the way up to York to take part. I really was devastated. But luckily, I have good friends and found someone to run for me and we still raised two and a half thousand pounds. So a huge thank you to anyone who donated to that. Really proud.

Of that total.

Coming to you today, mid-October, 18th of October, as I record this, day 18 of Sober October. For those of you who haven't already done so, if you check out my LinkedIn profile, Janet Hadney. You'll see there's a tip every single day of Sober October. So if you're not bored with me by now, you can obviously click on my profile and go and have a look through. There are 18 short videos to help you stay on track for any 30-day challenge if you're looking for some inspiration to live your best life without the booze. What else is happening? So I'm just on my way out the door to go to something very excited, which is the very first Sober Business Networking Group, our first in-person meet-up. So I'm very, very excited about that. We are going up to the Functional Drinks Club in Orkney, which is run by Kevin Gillespy, and we're going to be having company-coached and functional drinks and a talk from Kevin about how he's gone from idea to launching his shop within three months, which I think is really, really inspirational. So I'm very excited to go and meet some of the group tonight.

We have a very lively set of founding members in the group. We've had some great discussions on our WhatsApp channel this week. In particular, we've been debating something that's just been released in the news, which is about alcohol labeling and whether or not we go to all alcohol that is currently 0.5% alcohol to be labelled alcohol-free or not. And it's a very lively debate. There are people with strong opinions on both sides of this. I think from a simplicity point of view, the half % is less than a white banana and does it really matter? There's lots of foods that have more than half a % of alcohol that are not labelled as such. And then there's the argument that actually, if you've been a dependent drinker, half a.

Percent could be dangerous for you.

And it could be triggering. And then there's also a religious point of view where someone who doesn't drink for faith reasons might not be comfortable with half a %. So I think the conclusion, after much debate that we came to, is that actually it probably is better to tell people what's in the bottle that they're drinking, whether that be half % or 1.2%..

Although.

It's a difficult one because I think from a clarity point of view for customers, sometimes it can be quite difficult. I'm not going to come down one side or the other on this, I have to admit. I'm staying switcher than neutral. Yeah, it's been a real adventure getting the Sobe business network set up. I am just in the process of building our directory as well, which is very much a minimum viable product that's up and running. If you want to have a look at it, just take a look at soberbusinessnetwork. Co. Uk and let me know what you think. You can even go in and list yourself. It is, as I said, an MVP, but it works. You can actually go in and create. If you're a sober hero, you're a sober business owner, you're an entrepreneur, you're a business leader who doesn't drink alcohol, you don't have to be in the alcohol's free industry. You can be in any industry. We've got a sober accountant, we've got some sober marketers and social media experts, and it would be brilliant to have more and more people in there so that as our businesses grow, we can support each other and even get to a point where we can refer work to each other.

I certainly want to employ people in my business who understand the ethos on it and people who ideally it'd be great to outsource work to a sober copywriter, for example. I don't think that someone could write copy for my business if they were a drinker. I think it could be a real good and lively space where we can all support each other and collaborate to grow our businesses together. I'm super excited about that. In other news, I have a webinar coming up on the 26th of October, which is all about how to create an alcohol-safe workplace without killing the buzz. You can book into that by heading to the Choose Sunrise website and just click the big yellow events button or just check it out on LinkedIn. You can sign up for the event on LinkedIn as well. Then also just give a little listen out for us. If you're a Soberawkwood fan, which I have to say is one of my all-time favourite sober podcasts, I absolutely love what Vick and Hamid do. I love their honesty and the fact that they don't shy away from the fact that sometimes being sober is really awkward, really, really awkward.

They are so funny. They make me laugh out loud every single time I listen. If you normally skip through ad breaks, do not skip through the ad.

Break.

Because you will hear a Choose Sunrise ad on the Soberawd podcast for the next four weeks. Listen out for that, doing a little test to see if it works to drive any sales of the 101 days to Sobercourse. So watch this space.

I'm going.

To be chatting today to a guest called Ryan Owens, who is the founder of Sobecom, which you may or may not have heard of. It's Sobe, C-O-Double-M, the monkey at the end. There's a podcast called Sobecom, obviously, and a very lively and free Slack community. If you don't know what Slack is—because I think this is the first time I'd heard of Slack on an interview, Rob... It's basically a little bit like WhatsApp, but better organized into different channels. It's very good, actually, and it's used a lot in the States, a lot of work is organised into Slack channels, a little bit like we might use trailing or something like that. It's a very lively community, well worth a join. Ryan shares what is actually a really deeply personal story with me on the podcast today. This is a good one to settle down and have a listen to.

My guest today is Ryan Owens. Welcome, Ryan. Ryan is the creator of a group called Sobercom, and I'm going to let Ryan tell us a little bit more about that.

Yeah, thanks for having me on, Janet. So Sobercom right now, as it stands, is primarily a Slack community that I've created for people who are in seeking or curious about what recovery looks like in that community, we have about 40 or so members, and it's a peer driven environment. So sure I created it, but the happiest parts of my day are seeing the engagement between the members, and I let them do their thing. And we also just released our first podcast episode earlier this week. So one of my members and cohost, Cassie and I do a podcast which will be coming out every two weeks. And as of right now, that's what Sobercom is. It's really just a community for people to engage, collaborate and grow together.

Okay, that's brilliant. So we're going to talk a little bit about that and your motivations in a minute. But first of all, let's just back up and I'm going to ask you about your own relationship with alcohol, if that's okay. So I'm guessing there's a bit of a story there. So I'm always sharing my story about my love affair with wine, which is well and truly over. So yeah, I'd love to hear your story.

Yeah, I like actually how you just put that like your love affair with wine. So for me, I would say that my love affair with alcohol was not at all to do with the drinking, but how I felt when I was under the influence. So my love affair with alcohol was the experience I had that it enabled me to feel a different way than my current state at the time. So I think of my drinking as a massive tool and thing I use to mitigate feelings of shame, guilt, feeling different than, feeling like I didn't belong and that when I was drinking, all those feelings were alleviated, and it allowed me to navigate life as I would have assumed other people were. I didn't really grow up in a household that drinking was super prevalent. I would say my upbringing was really fortunate. It was very traditional of someone in a middle class America, and my parents did not endorse or allow drinking in their household underage. Naturally, I found alcohol at a young age, given I got sober at the age of 23, so people are always like, What happened to get sober that young?

What happened is a lot of pain and consequences for me directly and my family. And it was a very intense, a lot of trauma, a lot of negativity. I like to make the joke that I did not get sober on a winning streak, right? I held on tooth and nail to the idea that I could consume alcohol and have a normal reaction to it. And fortunately, today my experience always proved that it was not true. So I ended up getting sober through a series of, it should be a book title, I know it is a series of unfortunate events, which ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me today. So to keep it really generic, I drank as hard, as quick, and as much as I could until I couldn't. And then once I realized I couldn't, I had to stop. How I realized I couldn't was a near-death experience, and I won't dive into that too much. But at the end of my drinking, I literally had to make the decision of Ryan, do you want to live or do you want to die? And in that moment clearly it was a very negative experience but today, as I mentioned, it's the best thing that ever happened to me because I had no other out.

There was no if I can do this, then maybe I can drink successfully. My higher power life made it very apparent to me that if I chose to drink, I was going to die as a direct result. So with that led to me finding sobriety and sticking with it.

Wow. Yeah. That is quite an adventure to have gone on with alcohol in a relatively short space of time, presumably as you were about 23. That's impressive. I have to say, although it does sound like it was very traumatic in some ways, how smart are you to have realized that at 23? I managed to drag mine out for a good 20 years. So yeah, you did great.

I do think it's something that I know there's... Part of my story that I get questions on is my age, because as you mentioned, it's not super normal for people to stop drinking at such a young age. And all I can say to that is that today, as it stands, it's the best thing that ever happened to me because I was able to... In't have to build my life as I have it today, starting from the bottom that I was then. And fortunately, things that I interact with on a regular basis today, I didn't have children. I wasn't married. I wasn't truly started in my professional career yet, so I don't want to say it was an advantage, but I didn't have to drag out and enter those points of my life yet before sobriety. So I've been able to go through all of those things now as a sober individual.

Yeah, which is fantastic. I know I've said it before on this podcast, but the one thing that I... I mean, I try not to have regrets in life, but one thing that I do regret is not getting sober sooner and having outI wish I'd been sober when my children were really young, is my only, that's my thing. I am sober now. I've still had time when they've been children, while I've been sober, and I'm grateful for that. So let's talk a little bit about your career then, because you mentioned to me, as we were chatting just before, that you work in the tech industry, and that's partly what's led you to set up Sobecom, isn't it? Some of the observations you've had about the boozy culture.

Yeah. So I currently work as an account executive for a tech start-up, and I have pretty much my whole professional career. Working for a tech startup, it's very appealing and attractive to a lot of people for obvious reasons, the way the world is working, the opportunities, things like that. But what people don't see is what I would consider the dark side of working in tech and the culture that comes with it. So my passion currently is connecting the dots and raising awareness behind the drinking culture that is massively prevalent within the tech community and really corporate America at large. It's something that, Janet, as we talked about before, once you realize the severity and the issue there, it's really hard to not see it. So a lot of what I do today is really just simply trying to shed a light on what I view as a massive problem.

Okay. So tell us a bit about the problems that you've observed then in the workplace.

Yeah. So a couple of examples come to mind specifically that as a person and recovery and more importantly, just as a person, period, are not acceptable or the agendas of some of the companies that I've been fortunate enough to put eyes on that were shared with me of how their company-based, how their sites are structured, let's say, an agenda of a four-day offsite to team-building events a day. And all eight team-building events were centered around a drinking experience or a drinking environment, let's say. So for me, that's a big red flag. Other things that come to mind when I think about this topic are the talent that these companies are losing by not presenting an inclusive culture for people who prefer not to drink and the opportunities that they are losing out on by hiring really good people. And all this is obviously, arguably more importantly, the people that they are making feel not included that are active members of their workforce.

Yeah. Let's just go back to that event for a moment. So a four day team building offsite with eight drinking based activities within it. I mean, that's just going to make anyone ill, isn't it? For a start. Within that organisation, what happens if you are a pregnant woman? Yeah, it's a great question. What happens if you're a Muslim who doesn't drink? Are you just not hired or are you sitting at the sidelines? What's going on there? Do you know?

So I have a little bit of context, additional context I can share about that example specifically that really gets my blood boiling. And when I heard this story, it was about two weeks and to me testing the waters and determining what the Sobercom was to answer the question you asked at the top of the show. And the context and the story I was told is it was by an employee of that organization at the time was newly sober. They were finding sobriety on their own, going through support groups, whatever things they were finding, and after they realized they didn't want to drink anymore. So they were around like 90 days sober. They got the memo put out about this company offsite. A couple of days later they got the agenda and then they realized what I just shared with you like, oh, crap. Like, all of these events are centered around drinking in some way or the other or an environment that is going to have a lot of alcohol involved. So they had enough courage to take all of that information to their HR leadership within that organization to disclose that they had recently found sobriety, they don't drink, and asked if the HR team could maybe adjust the agenda or asked if the agenda could be adjusted to have it be a little more just neutral, we'll call it.

A little more just things that didn't involve as much alcohol or potential use of alcohol. And from what I was told, the person heard that person out. They listened to their concerns, but then no action actually got addressed for the company offsite. Other things that really got me upset when I was told the story that I think are super valuable to bring up as someone in recovery, my own experience are typically those things are located in cities where the company meets up in a city sometimes rather exotic. And so when you go there by default, you're leaving your support group as someone in sobriety. So you're leaving your support group, you're traveling to this location to meet people potentially for the first time. And there's a lot of anxiety and stress and things that go into meeting people for the first time in general. On top of then what the company has laid out is going to be the formal company agenda that are all what I would consider, higher risk engagements and environments for someone, especially newly sober. So there was just in my mind, like a perfect storm of a lot of things that are potentially setting someone up for a lot of failure.

Yeah, it is. It's very hard for drinkers to understand this. So as a drinker, I don't think, if I'm honest, that I would have really understood the impact that this could have on someone. And that's how I see my role now. When I got sober, I felt like I joined a minority group for the first time in my life. I'm a CIS white, middle class female with a good job and never really experienced discrimination before. I felt as though I was being discriminated against that. I think that's really what drove me to set up this business and to say these people who are sober, they need a voice. They need a voice in the workplace to say, Actually, this really isn't okay for us. It's quite a taboo topic, isn't it? It's interesting you talk about someone having taken their story to HR who listened and heard them out and did nothing. It's hard to imagine other issues of inclusion where that would be the case. I feel as though it is an inclusion issue. It is a discrimination issue, actually. And yeah, there's just... We're put into a box of people who, well, it's your own fault that you can't handle drink or it's your choice not to drink, therefore we're not going to accommodate you.

Actually, the truth is we've been marketed an addictive substance our whole lives, and we're trying to... We're trying to recover from an addiction to it. You, Mrs. Dr. Dr. Drinker, you may well find that you're there one day. It would be my my counsel. I never expected this to happen to me. Yeah, exactly.

I think one thing that you unpack there that is truly upsetting to me, and I'm sure I actually probably feel like I do know where the disconnect comes from, but if the allergy aspect and the clinical implications of what it means to be an alcoholic in 2023, the medical, scientific and clinical diagnosis we have and how that's recognized in that world specifically, and then the massive disconnect of how it's interpreted when you tell someone that you're an alcoholic or recovering alcoholic, right? We break it down pretty simplistically in Sobercom, and it's just like anything else, right? Like if you have a nut allergy, you're not going to be asked to eat a bag of peanuts. If you have a shellfish allergy, they're not going to take you to the crab shack. But if I'm an alcoholic, they're still going to ask me to go to the bar. And I know that's super simplified, and we don't live in a simple world, but the implications need to be the same, especially as it pertains to the efforts of inclusion in the place of business. And what you said specifically that really frustrates me and makes me upset is they don't recognize that because they still expect you to go to the bar and just drink club soda or get a Sprite or get a water or whatever.

So they put all of the hat back onto your shoulders. And in my experience, aren't willing to meet you halfway. And that's my ethos behind Sobercom. Because all I'm asking for is to be met halfway, right? I'm a very, very realistic person. I don't expect the world to be changed upside down and to have this be top of mind and running a business. But I am expecting and have the desire to be met halfway when these topics are brought up and to have companies to ask like, hey, how can we support the people with an organization who would prefer not to drink? And not put them at more risk.

And for anyone who is listening, who is in a position where they can make a difference in the workplace. Do you have any suggestions of the types of initiatives you'd like to see from employers?

Yeah, I would love to hear those. Some types of initiatives that I would like to see from employers starts with taking on some of the responsibility to get more educated on all these topics. We're unpacking a lot here. We're talking about things at a very high level. They would need to be drilled down to granular, actionable items, but it's like anything else. I mean, corporate America, any companies. We have budgets for training. We have budgets for professional development. We have budgets for all these things. So it's not as hard as I feel like it should be. It should be rather straightforward. I'd like to see companies and leaders get more educated on the topic to answer your question directly. I think that would be step one. Step one is actually for them to admit that it's something they need to be educated about, to admit they have a bit of a gap in their knowledge. Step two would be to take the action and have the resources available to be educated on it to provide a more inclusive workplace and be a front runner and what it could be like to have a culture where people can open up to their employers and you can actually have real support.

Yeah. No, I think you're right. And education is the number one thing that I think can make a difference. So if we take other taboo topics like, 20 years ago, I don't think that people could say, I have depression, in the workplace. They used to make things up to be off sick or just continue to try and work with really quite severe mental health issues. And the education that people have received in the workplace has really destigmatised that and it's really helped people to reach out and find the help that they need, and actually to recover faster and to get back into work. Employers have seen the benefits of that. I really feel like it's the same journey that alcohol now needs to go on. When we think about the benefits for employers, I mean, it's huge. There's a charity in the UK called Alcohol Change UK, and they have some brilliant research into this. One of the key stats that stands out for me is that between 3 and five % of all workplace absence is due to, in some part, to alcohol, which is just like, that's huge. Imagine if you could make a dent into that absence figure.

It's massive.

Absolutely. I think what you're bringing up now, and my mind, Janet, is amazing. An amazing direction to navigate the conversation to, which is I've always lived in the world of when you present a problem, Ryan, to bring a solution along with it. So education, I feel like, is going to be the biggest solution to the problem that I'm trying to shed light on. On top of acknowledging, like you said, how far, and I do, and I give praise here to everyone of how far we've moved the needle in the right direction of talking about things like anxiety, depression. It's great. It's outstanding to see. It's highlights of my year when I see mental health awareness days and mental health bugs and people really boasting about the things they do to unplug and disconnect and internalize. It's awesome. I have a passion for all of that. And we have trended so far in a positive direction. And it's been great to see we'll just say mainstream globally, everyone catch on to the impact that's have. That and how we can all do better as society. Outstanding. I agree that the same change and awareness, education and recognition needs to happen when it comes to destigmatizing what it means to be an alcoholic and how that we could be more included in the place of work.

And we are also getting there, I feel like, right? So here right now, two people on a podcast talking about it. This wasn't happening five years ago. So we are trending in the right direction. And I love to highlight how much progress we are making. Sober October, dry January. All these companies that are spinning up that are doing non-alcoholic beers, mocktales. Guys, it's amazing. Keep going. If you're in those scenes, in those cultures, you're outstanding. I have a lot of love for you, and I'm very excited to see us continue to move in that direction. But it's going to take a while and we're not there yet, but we are making an impact already, I feel like.

Yeah, absolutely. And my company, Choose Sunrise, our mission is to become world leaders in eliminating the stigma associated with alcohol use disorder. That's what we're doing. One day at a time. So I might not be a world leader by tomorrow, but that's where I'm heading. And I think that as well as education, I think there's exactly what you said. There's actual training for line managers. So how to have a difficult conversation, I think, is something that is broader than alcohol. But leaders are sometimes, I call it the what are we going to do about Dave, workplace environment where there is somebody who clearly has an issue with alcohol and nobody wants to talk about it, nobody wants to do anything about it, it's swept under the carpet. I think being able to create an environment where that can be tackled compassionately and confidentially is something that employers could make a huge difference if they were able to do that. I think education about grey area drinking, I don't know if that's the term that you use so much, but nobody goes from being a social moderating drinker to being an addicted, dependent drinker overnight. People tend to think of drinkers as being just normal or alcoholic, and there's actually a huge grey area in the middle, which is where a lot of people find themselves.

Certainly, I lived in that grey area for a long, long time. I tell you what, if someone had come into my workplace and told me how much better their life had got since they stopped drinking, I genuinely think I would have done this a decade earlier. I really do. That's what I see when I am out and about talking about this in the workplace. That is what I see. I get emails every single day from people telling me how they are... Sometimes it can be, I saw you a year ago, and I'm now 30 days sober, but I've been thinking about it since I saw you in the workplace and I wasn't ready, but now I am. Yeah.

That's my experience. I mean, what led me to find... I told my story about a lot of trauma happened at the end of my drinking career, and it was very apparent. It was like life or death for me. But what I didn't tell you was the experiences I had in between the time I made that decision and when I first started having a desire to stop drinking. So I wanted to stop drinking long before I actually stopped drinking. Fortunately, along the way, in that process, once that inclination came into my brain, I sought out people who weren't drinking. And when the time came that I had make a decision, I knew where to go. I knew who to talk to. And I had these stories in my head and these people and these guys and gals I looked up to that were living a very successful life without drinking. And I was able to pick up the phone. I was able to interact with them and get pointed in the right direction. So like you shared, yeah, I mean, having these conversations, regardless of if it makes an immediate impact on someone's life and they hear this and they stop drinking today or it happens in ten years from now.

The point is, that is my experience directly. I needed that. I had a roadmap. I had people who had already paved the way and proved to me that this was possible.

Yeah, I know. It's a magical experience. It's the most rewarding work that I've ever done, is to get that feedback from people, whether they've seen you yesterday or a year ago and they tell you that you've had that impact. It's just amazing. And I really do think there's so much more that employers can do to bring this into their wellbeing agenda in the workplace. It's the next big topic in my view. I think progressive employers are already starting, and I'm sure you're starting to see that as well. Interestingly, I do think it's one of those where if you're not prepared to talk about this in the workplace and you're not going to do anything differently, I do think that you're going to look over your shoulder in five years time and think, flipping out, we're really way behind here, because there are, I don't know about in the US, but in the UK, there are significant numbers of young people who are just starting their careers who just don't drink at all. They've just chosen to never drink or they've had a few drinks, but it's really not as prevalent as it was when I was that age.

The interesting thing with that, Janet, is the reason, in my opinion, the younger population is choosing to drink less is for the same reason that I've never smoked a cigarette. I saw the implications of what it was like for my family as being a long-term cigarette smoker and the results of that on their life and the impact that had. And as a society, we're getting so much more information so much faster, and we're getting educated so much earlier on that. To your point, yeah, people are... I know for a fact, I don't know why, but I do know for a fact that people who choose not to drink and may have never even started to drink, they're not going to go work for these companies that have an eight team building of an agenda and they're all sitting around drinking. You're going to lose out on a massive increase workforce that's about to enter the labor market. And I guess another thing you said that's been very interesting to me when it comes to all the conversations I've had with people since posting about Sobecom and launching this initiative, the common thread and all the dialogues, and these have been from entry-level positions all the way up to executives, are that the workplace is the only and the last place that they have in their circle where they feel unsupported or the least amount of support.

So people who are in sobriety will have support in their family, potentially, and all these other areas. But when they come into place of business is when they have to leave a part of who they are at the door and become someone that they're not always and adapt to a mold that they don't feel comfortable with. It's the place where they feel the least supported in who they are as a person and in their recovery.

Yeah, I echo that. And I have clients in my private sober coaching practice who, I've had sessions preparing clients for workplace events. Specifically, they have reached out and had like an entire coaching session just to prepare them to get through a workplace event where they know there's going to be alcohol. I've got clients who feel that part of their job is to, they might have to entertain their clients and they might have accounts where the customer is a big drinker and the big drinker wants to go out dancing all night and they have to do that with them. And obviously they're having to do that alcohol-free and constantly be defending that position of not drinking. And, you know... I mean, these are some really seriously big obstacles for people in early sobriety to be overcoming, and they're reaching out for help from a private practice. Really, they should be able to go to their employer and say, This is a real problem for me. Can you help me? Can you find a way to make this role easier for me to do and make healthy choices for my body?

I agree 100 %. And even something as I don't want to say simple, but if that was the situation, if I had to entertain a client and the client said, hey, Ryan, I'm flying into town. Let's meet up. Let's grab a steak and let's go out for some drinks and we'll iron out the deal. That's my job. I get paid money to execute on that environment, in that situation. And it's what I'm going to do. At this point in my sobriety, it's something I feel 100 % comfortable with, even though I still would prepare my heart, my mind, and my body to be able to go to that environment and conduct business and maintain not just my sobriety, but maintain my values as a person and not fall into any traps or triggers that are going not made that are 100 % going to be present there. So one thing that I think of that's really within reach is so that message, that email, that phone call comes across my desk. I say, yeah, we'll make it happen. I'll pick you up, blah, blah, blah, blah. I should then be able to make a phone call to my manager, my supervisor, my VP, whoever, and say, hey, Mike, I have to go do all this stuff on Friday.

I'm a little uneasy about it. I'm going to be at a very high risk environment. And then that person should be able to provide resources, budget, information to point me in the right direction to someone like you, Janet, of hey, you know what? We contract with Janet, have a session with her. Don't worry, it's all expense. Let me know what else you need. That for me is maybe not step one, but like a super.

I.

Don't want to say easy, but it's something that could actually happen.

Yeah, it is. You could easily fund places on coaching and support for people in recovery. Easily. It's not... It's not a huge amount of budget that you'd need. And how wonderful for that person to just be able to go and chat to someone to get themselves psychologically ready to go and overcome a number of triggers. And how many relapses would that avoid? You know, that's it's really sad to think how many people probably have relapsed on workplace events. I don't know if you've ever read any of Catherine Gray's books. She was well, she still is a writer, obviously. And then she one of her first major relapse was on a work trip to Italy that she wrote about in a book. Yeah, it's just the triggers everywhere, clients, freeboos, you know, it's tough.

Yeah. It's an interesting thing because in so many other, you talk about high performance, it opens up other doors. But there's a lot of other resources out there that companies will gladly develop a budget for, have a budget for to get the most to max, like you said, to maximize employee productivity and efficiency and maximize their business operation and maximize all these things. Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars willingly to do so to make everything more efficient and better. How this is not lumped into that or can't be or shouldn't be lumped into that is baffling to me because to piggyback on the success and positivity we've had in the space of raising awareness on mental health, depression, anxiety, those resources are starting to become more available to people. If you go to your leadership and you say that, hey, you're feeling a little depressed, a lot of companies now give you a day off, like two days off. They'll have stuff to point you in the right direction.

Absolutely.

It should be a no-brainer to do the same here.

Let me tell you about the Sobecurious Society. So II run something called the Sobecurious Society in the workplace. So what that basically is, is myself going into the workplace and creating a safe space where people can explore their relationship with alcohol with absolutely no judgement whatsoever. So whether they're a drinker, whether they're sober curious or whether they're long term sober, everybody is welcome. And we meet in each company, we meet once a month. It's just an hour's session and it's typically on Zoom now, these days, and we have a guest at each month. And when I go into a new company, the first thing I do is share my story. Then I have a number of guests who I can bring in to share their story. And we always do a little survey. What do you want more of in the group? And people always come back and say, we want more real life stories. This is what we like. This is what we're enjoying. And we record the guest speaker and we put all of that into a little portal so people can go back and they've got a whole bank of interviews to listen to.

And then we stop recording and we have a group discussion. And that's where some of the magic happens, where people are starting to support each other. And then each one has its own private Facebook group where people can chat to each other. And what starts to happen is you get more and more people from the group then coming forward and sharing their stories. I don't need any more guests from the outside. I still have the odd person who comes in, like we have like in our or we'll have free drinks tasting or someone really special will come in, but most months are booked up with people who've come to me and said, I'll share my story, and it is absolutely magical. That is, I think, a wonderful product that you can put into your workplace and it's really not that much of an investment and it's just wonderful. And I love delivering it.

Absolutely. So since posting about Sobecom and the podcast that released a couple of days ago, that's been something that's been resonating with me are the stories that people are bringing to me from within the community. But honestly, some of the more impactful ones are from people outside of the community. Maybe not people who are directly impacted by alcohol themselves, but stories that are being shared with me about their sons or daughters, nieces and nephews struggling with alcohol, resources that they could have for them, how to help them vet future employers, all of this stuff. And it's awesome and scary and a lot to tackle. But hearing the work that you guys are doing really gives me a lot of hope and optimism, because I don't know of anyone stateside, and I haven't been around and had a lot of these conversations yet, but I don't know of anyone stateside that's doing specifically the amount of work to the extent and offering the services that you are. So that's awesome. I hope you can bring those here. There are people here and we can walk back and continue to address the issues.

Yeah, I know a couple of people stateside who are doing work in this space, not specifically the same as I am, but I'll connect you with a couple of people who I think will help you actually, who I think would be great contacts for you. We'll do that offline. But yeah. Cool. Perfect. Is there anything else that you want to tell our listeners? Do you want to tell them what's next for Sobecom or how to find you?

Yeah, outstanding. So Sobecom can be found on Spotify, Apple Podcast. You'll find our podcast there. If you go to my LinkedIn profile, you can just search for Ryan Owens. There's a link there that will take you to enter the Slack community. If you're curious about drinking, really just want to meet some like minded people who have a lot of experience on this topic, feel free to join. It's all free. The podcast can be listened to at any time. We were expecting to drop an episode about two times a month. So if you like what you hear, you can stay tuned there. And then what's next for Sobecom is hopefully, Janet, more of these for me right now, more conversations with awesome people like yourself. I do hope and aim to formalize this a bit and actually develop some platform to be a mechanism and a vessel to have these conversations and share internally. I personally am going to try to work with some companies and comment and tell my story because as you mentioned, I do believe that's arguably the most impactful thing is for people to hear what it's like from someone who doesn't do these things anymore and still is within the profession they're in.

And that's about it for now. I'm excited for the future. Don't know exactly what it entails for Sobercom, but one of the coolest thing for me with this initiative, and we touched on it briefly, is if even one person listens and hears and makes a change at any point in time, it'll all have been worth it, right? I love just the idea that any of this can impact one person, and immediately it's all worth whatever effort went into making it happen.

I totally agree. Absolutely, 100 % agree. What an absolute pleasure it has been to meet you, Ryan. I'll make sure that all of the links to find you are in the show notes. And yeah, I just wanted to say a massive, well done for seeing this huge elephant in the room. As you said earlier, once you see it, you can't unsee it. And it's just fantastic to find other people in the world who are striving to make a difference in this space. So I applaud you for that. Thank you, Ryan.

Yeah, thank you, Ryan. Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Ryan, for sharing that story. You can find out more about Ryan's work either on LinkedIn, Ryan Owens, or @sobacom. Com. On all the social media channels, as you'd expect. That's it for this week. Do go and take a look at the Sobe business network website. It's a lot of fun to get involved in. This is a brilliant time to come and join us because the prices are super, super low, the lowest that they will ever be as we get everything up and running and you can get a listing in our directory, an absolute bargain price if you come and join us now. So don't check it out, see what you think. Thank you so much for listening and see you next time.

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