Speaker: 0:01

Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.

Tom Jackobs: 0:36

Well, welcome, welcome fellow heart-led adventurers. Today on the heart-led business show, we have the amazing Laura Nelson, a co-founder of Sober Life Rocks, and the insightful author of the Inclusive Event Planner. Laura is a champion of creating spaces that spark connection without alcohol in sight. So get ready to dive into her inspiring journey as she shares how her heart centered approach is transforming the event industry. So let's rally together to discover the magic of inclusivity and purposeful planning. Laura, welcome to the show.

Laura Nelson: 1:11

Thank you. What a great intro. Very impressive.

Tom Jackobs: 1:14

Well, you are very impressive. I think, you know, when we first spoke, I was thinking about our conversation and I was like, that is definitely an area that people struggle with at conferences and while at networking events and all that is when all the alcohol is flowing. And I know I've been at events where not me a friend, um, maybe had a little bit too much and then the next day it's just like, ah, you know, the, the conference is just, you've, you've wasted, you know, half a day. So I love what you're doing. I love the purpose that you have out there. So excited to dive into that with you. But first, what's your definition of a heart-led business?

Laura Nelson: 1:57

I would have to really understanding what your customers need, what your hole you're filling, what problem you're solving. You talk about like asking, just like really, I think so many times companies or groups or coaches or whatever, they feel like they're. They've got this great thing for the world, but does the world want it? Or does the world need it? Or can you put yourself in their shoes? And so I really think, I mean, that's kinda, with Sober Life Rocks, what I sort of did is,'cause I lived in those shoes, and so it's like while I'm trying to reach out to those who are also wearing the same shoes that, that I did and do. So really it's knowing what your audience, what your customers, what the world needs, which is hard.

Tom Jackobs: 2:40

Yeah.

Laura Nelson: 2:40

It's not easy.

Tom Jackobs: 2:41

That's such a great definition as well because it, it puts the focus on the customer, which is where the focus should be for most businesses. And I know it's hard to do that when you're trying to build your own business and you're like, oh, I love my product. But what about the customers?

Laura Nelson: 2:56

Well, and I think some of that is as a human, we have this thing called an ego that thinks that we know everything and we know the best and they should do this and that, but If your customer doesn't want it or doesn't see a value in it, that doesn't, it only is you and your ego hanging out talking about how great you are. So, I think it really is focusing on whoever the end product is or whoever it is you're trying to serve.

Tom Jackobs: 3:19

Yeah, absolutely. Cool. So tell us a little bit about your business and what makes it heart-led.

Laura Nelson: 3:25

For sure. So, I actually am in the dental industry in my day job, so I am not so I've been in the dental industry 20 plus years. I was married, had two kids doing the everyday life. I'm a speaker and a trainer in the dental industry. But woke up multiple times over the years, like you've said, going, oh my God, I drank one too many, or I stayed out too late with coworkers or at events or whatever, and was really questioning my relationship with alcohol, but never thought about stopping drinking because that just didn't seem fun. It didn't seem like you could do that. I didn't have any role models in that space until I woke up one day at a conference in 2020 and was like, this has got to stop. Like, it wasn't that I was, the drunk mess in the corner and everybody knew it was that I was functioning really well. But still second guessing my relationship with alcohol because it was just, I couldn't function as well the next day. And I didn't remember a lot of the in-depth conversations the way I should have in the networking. So I stopped drinking in 2020. I didn't tell anyone in my industry because I thought that needs to be a private thing, but I went on TikTok instead and I made a TikTok channel and started talking about it over there. With everybody else. Right. And then in 2023 I had an opportunity to speak on a wellness panel about wellness. And my part of wellness was that I stopped drinking. And we were in a room of 125 women and I said, how many people in here super Sober ish, sober, curious, and like a quarter of the room raise their hand. Which made me realize I felt very alone in my journey, like my personal life people knew, but not my business life yet there was a huge percentage of women who also were trying not to drink or not drinking, and we didn't know about each other. And in the evening, all the events had champagne and wine. And so that's really where Sober Life Rocks launched. My business partner now was there, and she's 20 years sober. And she hadn't told anybody either for 20, well, at the time it was like 17 years, and we were like, this really has to change because there's so many people trying not to drink or drinking less or not drinking at all. And yet we feel very alone in this journey. we started Sober Life Rocks as a way to not help people get sober. There's plenty of coaches and stuff to do that, but really to honor and celebrate those who've made sober choices or are trying to make sober choices, at industry events because you can choose who you hang out with in your personal life, but it's very hard when you go to work events and wine and dine and networking and all of that. So we're really trying to help change the industry around that.

Tom Jackobs: 6:02

Yeah, and what a great mission as well. So just on a personal note, what did you find was the biggest benefit of stopping drinking for you personally?

Laura Nelson: 6:12

I honestly, it didn't come right away. At first you feel good and you're excited and you wake up in the morning. I mean, I still wake up in the morning. I'm like, oh, thank goodness. Right? So it was that, but really it came maybe a year or two in when I realized I put down the bottle. But I still had to deal with me. And so many times I think we use alcohol to numb things, to deal with things, to whatever, and I had to learn how to do all of those things. And maybe even like kind of work on me a little bit more because I still had to wake up with me and deal with me and all the stuff of life. So I think the overall benefit for me was I really am, feel like I'm still discovering who I am because not that I had an alcohol problem in high school and college yet, but we've used alcohol or I've used alcohol for. Concerts and parties and deaths and stress, and now I learn how to, just be me. So I really feel like I'm really discovering more of just really who I am.

Tom Jackobs: 7:12

Wow that, that's great. That's a great side benefit of it as well. I know I went through I think it was January, somewhere January and it I felt amazing and just the energy level and not that I drank a lot, but it was just yeah, the energy, the cognition was going great. And of course, I lost weight,

Laura Nelson: 7:32

Yeah, right. There's that too.

Tom Jackobs: 7:35

When your liver isn't processing alcohol, it can actually metabolize fat, which is it's supposed to do.

Laura Nelson: 7:41

The other thing I thought had of it is I started wearing the aura ring, the sleep ring at nighttime, and the last few weeks that I was drinking, I thought I was sleeping alcohol off, right? If I got enough sleep, I could just, and when I started to see what it was doing to my body at nighttime and then I really wasn't sleeping because your body's processing the alcohol. That's when I, the very last night I drank, I didn't even wear my aura ring'cause I didn't wanna know. I was just like, which I was like, okay, right there, there's a problem. Like if you're not wearing it and you're trying to be healthy and I sleep is my superpower, I just, I love sleep. So to realize what it was doing to my sleep, I was like, this is, I've gotta give, something's gonna give.

Tom Jackobs: 8:20

Yeah. Yeah that's great. So, so tell us how are you transitioning people or helping people at conferences be sober when the, there's five bars open and it's all open pouring, and you go up to the bartender and you ask for a club soda with lime, and everybody's like, what are you

Laura Nelson: 8:38

Uhhuh.

Tom Jackobs: 8:38

doing?

Laura Nelson: 8:39

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 8:40

So how are we doing that?

Laura Nelson: 8:41

So there's two prongs. So we have Sober Life Rocks, which is we'll talk, we can talk about it in a bit. That's where we're really trying to help amplify sober voices. But for me personally, going into this space, what I first did was wrote a book, and the reason I wrote the book about it is because it's more, a lot of times it the event planners meeting. Conference planners think that it really has to do with just have a mocktail or have a have soda, which what people who don't drink want is, they wanna feel, first of all, they don't want attention on themselves. They don't want you to, don't ask me 14 questions of why I'm not drinking. They wanna be able to have drinks that others are having just without the alcohol. And we wanna feel included and we wanna be able to stay. And so like,'cause a lot of times we go, if you're not drinking and people are all, you feel like everyone's drinking around you and people are getting sloppy later in the evening, you go back to your room or you just kind of disconnect. So I wrote the book to try to explain to meeting planners that first of all, we need connection people we use alcohol as a way to network and connect and lower inhibitions, and so we need to set up our meetings better so that there's easier ways to connect. Because it's not easy for anyone really. I mean, a few extroverts, I guess to walk up and be like, hi, I am Laura. What's your name? So even, and before they even come to make sure they know it's a safe space. There's gonna be mocktails, there's gonna be na drinks, there's gonna be other things there, and there's gonna be other things to do. Because so much of the conferences, the focus is around rolling up the black bars in the conference rooms, and we stand around and drink. So my call is not to get rid of alcohol. It's not going anywhere. But let's make the focus around the event. What are we doing? Is there a scavenger hunt, a band, a dj? Is there networking games, something? Have the alcohol still there? That's fine, but just don't make it the focal point. And then really it's about the, helping people walk in connected. Because many times when you don't drink, you feel very alone. And when you know there's other people there that also aren't drinking, you're no longer the only one in the room. And so if everyone else is drinking and you and I aren't drinking and we're talking, I might stay longer because we're connecting because we've got this in common. And then lastly, it's about the bar and the bar. Does need to. And this is the biggest challenge that we're having honestly with meeting planners, is that the bar needs to represent having drinks similar to those that you're serving with alcohol, but serve the versions without alcohol and make it obvious for people to order it.'cause the reason that meeting planners don't know about this issue is because we're putting the lime in our club soda and we're walking around. Everybody's assuming everybody got alcohol. And so I had a actual event. I had my first breakthrough at a really big event recently, and they had non-alcoholic beer and they had mocktails and they couldn't keep the conference I was at two weeks ago. They couldn't keep'em in stop. They were running out in the bar because it was a three day conference. And even people who do drink, this was day one. They were like, I can't do three-day binge. Right. So, there is a need, but we just need to give it to them.

Tom Jackobs: 11:51

Yeah, that's great too. So how hard is it for the bar, the event planners and the host sites to come up with the mocktails and to kind of create that experience for people?

Laura Nelson: 12:06

It's harder than I thought it would be, honestly. And it's not. Okay. So in most cases, a hotel has a restaurant and they have mocktails because they have a bartender who knows how to make drinks. And so if they're trained well, they can make drinks without alcohol. So in the restaurant space, this is really moving forward. But in the catering and food and beverage space, it's a little harder because first of all, the people who stand behind the bars are usually not trained bartenders. They're usually someone that works for catering or food and beverage, so they don't. They pour alcohol and drinks in a cup and they hand it to you. So having mocktails are a little harder there. The second thing is they're not trained in this area and so they don't think about the repercussions. It might be to accidentally hand somebody a glass of alcohol, somebody who might be counting days, somebody who might be pregnant, somebody who might be religious reasons, right? So there needs to be better training with it. And then the third issue that we're having is the meeting planners are seeing this. They're, I mean, the new study just came out. 50% of Americans are not drinking now, trying not to drink or drinking. And so the meeting planners are seeing this, but they're going to the hotels or the conference centers and trying to get the right, stuff at the bar. But there's big alcohol involved. There's contracts, and so food and beverage, they're kind of stuck catering because they have contracts with the big alcohol. And so we're having to kind of get through that of pushing the element. And until the. The entity bigger than them can see the value in this. It's a, it's kind of an uphill battle which it will change, but it's gonna take enough people pushing and spotlighting and showing that this is an issue for the, because there's money to be made in non-alcoholic options. It's just how they change their, the way they're thinking about it.

Tom Jackobs: 13:59

If they charge the same amount as they would a alcoholic drink, the margin's gonna be double probably.

Laura Nelson: 14:05

Exactly. Exactly. And if people will buy it more, like if they know it's there and it's an option, like I don't necessarily like go outta my way to go find non-alcoholic beer, but I did at that event because I'm hanging out with friends and I'm like, this is fun. I can stay and drink and people will buy it, or pay for it. So they just have to change the mindset.

Tom Jackobs: 14:24

I ran into a on Instagram. I don't know how it came up on my feed, but it's a guy, a 19-year-old, he calls himself the teenage bartender. And he wrote a book on all mocktails and he, his Instagram reels, it's all about making all these mocktails and it's, it looks great. Like what he does is it looks. Absolutely amazing. So that might be a good resource as well.

Laura Nelson: 14:50

Actually, I'm looking at it right now.

Tom Jackobs: 14:51

Yeah. So talking about the business side of running a heart-led business, what kind of cool surprises have come up from being a heart-led business versus just focused on the profit side?

Laura Nelson: 15:07

That's a good question. Because it's not easy every day to get up and do this. Right. I would say that for me it's. The surprises that come out of the woodwork. You sit behind the computer, you do these interviews, you call the people, you're, doing all the steps. And it's when I go out like to a conference. And somebody comes up and says, I feel seen because of what you're doing. Or I had an example where we were at a conference and they let me get up and speak about what we're doing, and then that night there was an event, and the next morning some lady who I didn't know came up to me and she said, I have to thank you. She said, because of you, I didn't drink last night. Now if you think about that's I don't know her. She has every, she's an adult. She can decide if she drinks or not, but because I spoke on stage, she didn't even talk to me, but she knew there were other people in the room who were not drinking. She chose not to drink and she felt better the next day. That's the kinda wins that me. It's just like, okay, because when I said, put yourself in your customer's shoes or your, or whoever you're serving. I secretly was suffering with, am I, do I drink too much? Do I not drink too much? Do I have a problem? Do I, but I didn't. I didn't talk to anybody about it. I kept that to myself because it seemed like everybody else around me was fine and I was the only one with a problem. I do believe that there are people who are secretly suffering and there are people who are secretly sober, right? Because there's a lot of us. I just met a guy recently. He said his sponsor is 10 years sober and he had never put it out in like his business world until he just turned 10 years and he put it all over LinkedIn and he was like, you go finally. Because in the professional world, we kind of keep our sobriety quiet. It's getting more so, but it's one of those things that you keep private and it's like, why? That's one of the things I'm most proud of. Hard to overcome, issues with, it's an addictive substance. It's hard to overcome that. It's hard to go against societal norms. I should, I'm very proud of it. So I love hearing stories of people who are I feeling like they see, feel, be they're seen and heard because of this.

Tom Jackobs: 17:17

Yeah and that's such an interesting kind of human dynamic that we would be shamed for doing something that's good for us. And yet there's no shame in going off on a bender on the I mean, to the extreme, there is shame in that, but just like regular drinking until, you're like slobbering. That's kind of, yeah, that's the norm, but it shouldn't be.

Laura Nelson: 17:38

Right. There's a really good book you told me about The Teenage Bartender. I'm gonna look up, there's a really good book, anyone listening to this called This Naked Mind. It's first book I read after I stopped drinking. So literally on Amazon I'm like, I need a, I need something to help me. And I read this book and it's Annie Grace and she talks about that. She talks about why is it so hard? And there's so many factors to it. It's societal. We grew up with our parents and people around us going, this is an adult drink. Mommy and daddy get a drink. And so when we're kids, we look at it like a magic elixir, right? Then all the advertisement, if you know you're gonna be rich, famous, and sexy if you drink this whiskey or tequila. So we have in our self-concious. You go to sports events concerts, it's everywhere. It's the big billboards, right? Then you go to events and you're having a baby. Here's champagne. You're sad. Here's a bottle of wine here. So as humans, we use it as a way of connection and we grew up with it and it's just kind of in our subconscious. And then your brain is like, well, of course you deserve this, or of course you need this. And so there is this reprogramming that you have to do, which again is, it's not only help me with this, but it's helped me with so many other things in my lives now, in my life now too, because when you actually can retrain your brain to say, you know what? I don't need that alcohol. Like I choose not to drink. Right. And not saying I don't see a glass of wine once in a while and go, it'd be really nice to have a glass of wine, but the NA, the non-alcoholic versions are getting better and better every day. And I could still sit down with a glass of tea and get the same responses. Or an NA beer, right? So yeah, it's just, it's a bigger thing than just I don't drink, it's, you have to look at the whole picture.

Tom Jackobs: 19:13

Yeah. Absolutely. And what was the name of that book again?

Laura Nelson: 19:15

This Naked Mind, and it's literally a she was a marketing vp who didn't drink much grow, in her early years, but then got into this vice president role and was traveling around the country and the thing was to. to the bar and network at the bar. And then she got to a point where she woke up one day and she was like, well, why am I drinking like a bottle of wine at night? And why can I do all these other things in my world, but I can't control this one substance? And so instead of shaming herself or quitting, what she did is she got really curious about it. that's really the big difference is getting curious about what is my relationship with this substance and not trying to quit. Just start looking at it for what it is, and maybe you choose to drink less or maybe you don't. Like for me, I chose to stop drinking. That's my personality style. I'm all in or I'm all out. But people can just choose to be like, okay, I just need to, I need to make sure I understand that I'm using this for the right reasons.

Tom Jackobs: 20:14

Yeah. So, take us through kind of the, again, back to the business side of running a heart-led business. What kind of challenges have come up from choosing to be heart-led versus just looking at the profit and looking at your product and selling that?

Laura Nelson: 20:30

Yeah. So, well, money is always an issue. Right. I mean, just to put it down there, like my business partner and I, we've had some great companies to support us, which is awesome. But trying to figure out, who are we serving, and then at the end of the day is this, this is our passion project. This is our, we've got day jobs and this is what we do on the side. But I think it's, we've pivoted a lot. We've only been around for, we're going on two years soon and we've pivoted a lot we were gonna do this and then, like I said, there wasn't a need. Like we were gonna do community meetings and we were gonna do once a month meetings and, but people haven't, they're meeting out, they're zoomed out. They had, they, so then we were gonna do, emails and it was gonna be new, daily updates, but you know what our emails look like. And so we pivoted from that. And so we just, it, I think it's a lot of, what do you need? What do you want what gaps are you filling? And really, when it comes down to it for us, is it's when they're in the environment where you feel the pressure. And you feel alone, how can we serve them? And so that's really, it's just kind of learning what it, what do we need to do. And I don't know that we figured it out. We're crossing our fingers.'cause my book has made a big difference. I know that our podcast my business partner runs our podcast. We know that, and, and, we're just gonna keep serving until we figure out what that niche is.

Tom Jackobs: 21:56

Yeah. So how are you monetizing the business? Right now

Laura Nelson: 21:59

it's a lot of sponsorship. It's a lot of companies who support our back, what we're doing. We have our first conference'cause that's really what we have pivoted to now, and we could talk about that in a minute. But our first conference we're really hoping that this is the thing that we make. An annual thing or maybe a regional thing or a quarterly thing, because again, when we're at home, it's a little different. Like you can pick what you do and who you hang out with. But when we're at events, that's where we really need the support. And so we really want, we think events. Getting people back together like w e have the best intention to do the next thing, and then we go off to our, so getting people together to really connect and collaborate and work together is the focus that we're going after.

Tom Jackobs: 22:40

That's awesome. I'm guessing that Jack Daniels isn't one of your sponsors.

Laura Nelson: 22:44

Yeah, no. But honestly, if you look, if you pay attention, a lot of the alcohol brands now are buying NA brands. They're starting, they have their NA because it is, it's a growing market. So maybe one day they will be. And one of the things that I see going, this is kind of a tangent here, but there was the sober like the NA space, alcohol free space, sober. And then there was the non what. What really I think is gonna come next is we have to learn how to blend together. I might go to an NA bar, a bar that doesn't serve alcohol or whatever. But when I'm hanging out with a group of 10 friends, and let's say eight of us are sober, but two drink, just like, we're gonna wanna be at places where there's both where we can blend it together. And so one day, maybe Jack Daniels will be a sponsor who knows?

Tom Jackobs: 23:31

Yeah. Well, if they're smart, a lot of the liquor companies will start to look at alternatives to keep their profits up. Because I, I heard on a another podcast that. Yeah. Alcohol sales has been declining over the years. They were on this podcast, they were saying it because of cannabis taking over a little bit more. But, either way, whether people are just not drinking alcohol because they wanna feel better or for other reasons. Yeah. They're losing market share.

Laura Nelson: 24:00

I actually do think that, so I think of alcohol, like, cigarettes were like 30 years ago, like everyone smoked in the ads and all this stuff, and now people still smoke. It's just not as prevalent and I think alcohol's up that's what it's going to turn into. But then I do believe, and not, I'm not pro or against, but I think cannabis is the, like, our younger generation doesn't drink the way we do, but now the next vice is gonna be cannabis and all of the stuff there. So I, I do potentially agree with that, but that mine is I'm just gonna stay in this segment here. This is my, yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 24:35

Hey, you're not, I don't think you're gonna have non, well, I guess there's cbd, so there's non thc. But anyway, we digress a little bit. So tell us a little bit about the conference and how people can get a hold of you and learn more about having a sober life

Laura Nelson: 24:52

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 24:52

or in yeah at their conference.

Laura Nelson: 24:55

So amplify Sober Voices is our conference. It's our first ever one. It's in January. It's January 15th in Orlando. And what Amplify Sober Voices, what it came up, why it came out is because as Margie and I were interviewing on podcast and talking to people, our podcast and on other people's podcasts, there's a lot of people in the sober space who got into this because this is their passion project too, but they, maybe they're a podcaster and they wanna be a speaker, or maybe they're, they've written a book, but they wanna start a podcast. Or maybe they just wanna amplify their message more. There's also a lot of coaches who wanna coach and help others who are struggling, right? And so this is a movement that we think the more we talk about it, the more we can help people and the more people can feel like they're not alone on this journey. And we think that anybody can amplify their voice. I mean, you might just be one person in a community that people are like, you're sober. Like how are you sober? And how you don't have to be a coach. You don't have to be a speaker, but. We're all making an impact of our environment, and so we decided to have a one day conference where we bring everyone together, where we can all learn and collaborate. Because one of the things we're seeing is that there's a lot of disjointed, like somebody in New York is helping restaurants get better mocktails and somebody in Florida's doing it, but they don't know about each other. What if we came. What a bigger impact we can make and then how can we learn from each other? People who have a podcast, what did they learn? What did they not learn? What mistakes did they make? So we just wanna pull everyone together.'Cause nothing has been done like this where there's creatives people in this space around sober and sober choices. And so amplify sober voices and we're having it at Pod Fest, which is, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's a three day podcaster conference. So it's a conference within a conference, but anybody who comes get a gets access to Pod Fest also. So it's like a win-win for everybody who comes.

Tom Jackobs: 26:54

Oh, that's awesome. That's very cool. And the URL is amplify.sober.liferocks.com.

Laura Nelson: 27:02

But if you go to Sober Life Rocks, you can get to our conference. You can learn about our podcast, you can join us on LinkedIn. We have the largest LinkedIn group around sobriety. So you look at for Sober life, rocks community. And then my book is there also, and it's a free download. So anything in this space, wherever it touches any interest somebody has, it's all at sober life rock.

Tom Jackobs: 27:25

Awesome. Well, cool. Well, Laura, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and being vulnerable on the show with us and sharing the vision that you have for better conferences and better networking without alcohol. And thank you listeners for listening to the show today or watching it. If you're on YouTube, we really do appreciate it. So make sure you're checking out what Laura's doing and we're gonna provide all of those links down in the show notes. Uh, so make sure you're checking that out. And also, while you're down there checking out those show notes, if you could press that little button that says, give a rating and review. I would really appreciate that. It just helps spread the word about the podcast and get more people learning about heart-led businesses like Laura's Sober Life Rocks. So until next time, lead with your heart.

Speaker 2: 28:11

You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.