#375: How To Identify and ELIMINATE The Habits Holding You Back with Katy Stoka Inventor, Founder, Real Estate Executive, & Coach

When we are actually being honest with ourselves, it increases our self worth, our self value. And it's incredible then how much things fall away that probably were never important, but you might have thought were important in your mind that was full of anxiety, fear, et cetera. So again, compounding the positives that are created by increasing your self worth, by doing the work of getting out whatever is no longer serving you, Come on.

This journey with me each week when you join me. We are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity and set you up.

For a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close up.

Hi and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to meet our guest this week. Katie Stoka is a patented inventor, award winning founder and business coach. She began her career in management consulting which led to success in real estate development sales. In her first decade, she managed and sold over $1 billion of Miami beach luxury development real estate. In 2013, she invented the concept of magnetic eyelashes. She left the lucrative and safe career she knew to patent, develop and build a company around her invention. Katie sold live on HSN and QVC internationally, Sephora stores in the US and Canada, and has been featured in Allure, Vanity Fair, oh, The Oprah Magazine, New York Times and countless others. After 10 years in beauty, Katie took on another challenge to stop her social drinking habit. She noticed this crutch was no longer serving her and embarked on an eye opening journey that led to much more than just removing one thing from her life. In addition to her high level coaching, Katie is interviewing other accomplished and interesting people who have taken alcohol out of their lives. My last drink is live now. Katie, thanks so much for being here today.

Hi Heather, thanks for having me. Great to see you.

Great to see you. All right, let's get to it. So, you know, a lot of the people listening right now are in corporate America. They're realtors, they're running their own businesses. What made you so successful to reach a billion dollars in sales and real estate? What were the difference makers that allowed you to jump ahead of everybody else?

Yeah, so I started in 2002 when I moved to Miami beach and I just loved real estate, got right into it. I was young and ambitious, but to be honest with you, I just worked really hard. I was always the first person in. I was the last person to stay. As cliche as that sounds, it helped me to really just focus on getting everything that I needed to get done and to really just have an amazing career in real estate. So I knew that there was an opportunity because the Market was really hot. And I was like, I'm just going to take my work ethic and really do it. I mean, I literally remember I got pregnant during my third building that we were developing, and I had a scheduled C section for Monday. And I was in the office helping like a high profile buyer on Friday night at like 7pm and I remember being like, I'm not saying that this is a recommendation, this is not the balance. But if you're saying, how did you do it for the first five years in an industry that I had no idea about, it was really putting in the hours. I have later become a little bit more strategic in how I work. But if you're just getting started and you're like, why am I not making the sales? Try being the first one in. Try being the last one to leave. And in it working, really just focused on your job and the exact project that you're doing. And that's how I did it.

You bring up a good point that I want everyone who's listening to check in with. And that's around being in an industry that's in a growth phase. You knew that the Miami real estate market was growing. For me when I was in radio. It was always in a decline. And it is so much easier to be successful in an industry that's in a growth phase. Take a look at your industry, not just listen. You can be talented as the day is long, but you're going to make it so much harder on yourself if you're putting yourself in a marketplace in an industry that is in decline. So check it quickly. I wish that I had checked that. I was never thinking about that when I was in the radio business. So good on you, Katie. Now, how do you jump from real estate to inventing a product? And why?

Yeah, so in real estate, we got to dress up a lot, get glamorous, and I love that part of it. But what I didn't love was gluing on the fake lashes. So I love the way that false lashes made my eyes look. They beautify everyone. But to be honest, I would put them on and then, you know, rip them off at night. And then I was like poking at the glue and I was like, this is just such a pain in the butt. So I call it my shower story. This was about a decade ago. I was in the shower. I had two young children at the time. I was about to go out to a dinner and I was literally in the shower and saying, okay, do I have time to glue on my lashes? And I was like, gosh, lashes should not be difficult. It should be something that you could just put on and take off, like a ring or a watch. Why does this have to be something that you semi permanently attach to your face with glue? And, and so I thought of it right then and there. I was like, okay, a soft magnetic kind of situation above and below could be this idea. So on Monday I said, you know what, I wanna research this idea that I had on Saturday night. And so I went to the computer, looked up magnetic and eyelashes, and of course nothing was there. This was 2013. I had been in real estate for about a decade and I was like, this is a thing. I called my sister. I'm like, what do you think of this idea? She was like, awesome. You really should investigate this and, you know, call a patent attorney and do all of that. So I went on that journey. I was like, I know nothing about invention. I know nothing about beauty beyond being a beauty consumer. And so I was like, but I know I want this, and if I want this, I know other women will want this. So then I started the process where I went to Home Depot and I bought the paint and I went to a drugstore and I bought the lashes. And, and I like try to create a prototype with magnetic paint lashes, created a concept, went and interviewed engineers, everyone that I could think of that would have some knowledge without being in the industry. Because I knew it was a great idea and I was paranoid about it getting copied. So I did it all very discreetly. I didn't tell anyone what I was doing. Even my own mother didn't know. And I was doing this while still in real estate for the first time. Six to eight weeks. Then after a couple of months, I said, you know what, I need to leave this career. Even though it is lucrative, it's the sure thing. I'm very good at it now because I've been working very hard at it for 10 years. But this is something that's not only new and exciting. I want it. I'm seeing the lash market. I'm seeing people go in for these extensions into the salon. But I know that an at home convenient lash solution would crush it. And Again, this is 2014 by this time. So I leave real estate, I take about a year and a half to build the company. I do all of the patents around it. And then we launched in 2016.

Were people telling you that you were crazy to be leaving an established career that you were already successful in? And how did you push through that?

Absolutely. One of the main things That I tell people is have a trusted group of people that you confide in. Do not tell everyone what your plans are, particularly if they are something that is new, something that you're not 100% certain on what your path is. When you just have that gut feeling you need to run it by your trusted friends, but you don't run it by everyone because everyone has an opinion and sometimes those people are really close to you and you know who I'm talking about. It's like maybe you don't want to hear that energy, but you do need to hear it from someone that you respect and trust and perhaps has done that before.

Right.

So you will know kind of the ups and the downs to be prepared for. Because when you leave something for something else, you know, the danger is you don't know what you don't know. But if you have a great idea and you have a game plan. So my game plan was just to copy paste what I had done marketing wise and in real estate to this new invention.

When you look back now, would you have done it differently or are you glad that you didn't know what you're doing and you just solved the problem for yourself and said, I'm launching a company out of this.

Yeah, of course there's always things Monday morning, quarterbacking everything that you do. So there could have been different things, however, at the time, by taking the solutions that I had had and built through real estate. And that's why I think to encourage anyone that if you've been in an industry for a minute and you want to shift to something else, take the things that you have done in that industry that have been proven successful and then just copy it over here because oftentimes those same best practices really do benefit you.

But don't you find, I go back to my career in corporate America. There's hard work ethic made me successful in corporate America. Hard, hard work ethic makes me successful as an entrepreneur. However, some of the things that made me not successful in corporate America make me so successful as an entrepreneur. I'll give an example. I'm always coming up with new ideas. I always want to innovate, I always want to test and try new things. And I was constantly being reprimanded for that in corporate. But as an entrepreneur, that's how I get my best ideas. To create something, to make something new, to launch something new. How do you find that balance of saying this worked over here? I believe it'll work here as well.

Yeah, no question. I started out in corporate America as well, right out of college. And there were so many things that I didn't like about it, but I just extrapolated some of those things that I rolled my eyes and I had to learn about it, but then also put them into the new thing. I think it's just as important, particularly when you're starting out, to realize what you don't like just as much as what you do like. Because then you can easily say, because there's always going to be those temptations to maybe go back in, particularly if an industry starts to gain traction again and you're like, oh, well, I have experience over there, maybe I can go back here. And it's like, you know what? Stand your ground. Remember what you didn't like about this so that you can have the ability to say, no, I'm not going back into it. And then take what you did like about it and what you were good and what resonated with you.

Right?

It's all about what resonates with you because it's different from the person on the other side of the zoom or in the cubicle next to you. So it's like you've got to take what works for you and you know, the whole concept of like, what do you gravitate towards?

Right?

What are you also naturally talented in what is an industry that is growing right now to your earlier point and then put those all together and that is your combination of what you can pursue with a little bit more effortless ease versus, you know, I always feel you flow with a flow of life instead of that feeling of pushing a boulder up a mountain as the air.

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Yeah, but sometimes you do have to push a boulder of a mountain. Because I'll tell you, when I look back on corporate there were many years where I was pushing a boulder up a mountain. But then once I hit that tipping point, it became much, much easier because of my level of confidence, because of the level of expertise. Similarly, as an entrepreneur, it was pushing a boulder. Oh my gosh. My first year I got fired writing a book, having no idea what I was doing, then trying to find a book agent, then trying to figure out the speaking business. Like all of this was pushing a boulder uphill until the moments where it wasn't. So how do you discern? Okay, am I in that right. Ideal environment. Am I doing that right job? Because I do feel like I'm pushing a boulder up a hill. Right?

The boulder up a hill is a real thing. Clarity comes with more information that you have about your own personal journey. So I like to work, walk people through. What about the boulder is the biggest problem right now, right? Because is it really the project that you're doing or is it something else that is underlying your difficulty right now and your challenge and how it feels like it's a struggle?

Right.

So I have a hierarchy that I walk people through, and it's basically that same idea of just like a triangle and the bottom of it is the foundation. The foundation of anything that is something that you need to overcome. Basically. If you don't have that foundation laid, then trying to do anything else that's higher up the hierarchy. Like the ultimate is, you know, your legacy or your bliss, things that really get you, you're passionate about. All of those things are so much harder to do if you don't have those foundational needs met. So oftentimes in corporate America, you don't feel the recognition or any sort of support or, you know, those are fundamentals that you need. Some of the good corporations are now looking at it saying, hey, listen, they need the fundamentals. I love also the idea of needing to pursue more of what you want by being who you authentically are. Right. The old adage like, you don't get more of what you wish or what you want or what you think, you get more of what you are. That idea really resonates whenever I'm looking to explore something new. It's like, okay, so what more do I want in my life and how am I being that and what do I need to do in my own day to day to be more of that? Because you are getting more of what you are.

So let's go back to the hierarchy for a minute. When you talk about that foundation and challenges in that foundation, what are some other examples of issues that people would have in that foundation? Because when I hear you explain it, I'm thinking about different relationships. If you don't like your boss at work and they're treating you terribly day in and day out, that seems like a foundational problem for setting you up for a lack of success or for the relationship is in your personal life and you hate going home every night, right. What are some other examples of what these foundational problems can be?

No question, that first step is the yielding of the bad people and influences and maybe habits that you have in your life. I was a very heavy social drinker. It was always very acceptable in my life. I was just like, okay, yeah, top me off. Another rose, another. And it was all a part of a habit that I had formed that I didn't realize was. Was such the habit. Just, oh, I deserve this glass of wine. It was a hard day at work. We're having a corporate dinner. We're doing this lunch, celebrating this. And then all of a sudden, I realized, this is a habit. It's no longer serving me. So once I took it out, first of all, I couldn't believe taking this one thing out, how my life changed on so many levels. And it's incredible, you realize that that was a habit, that maybe for someone else, if they took it out, maybe a few things, you know, here and there. Oh, yeah, I could get to the gym earlier or whatever. But if it's really something that you realize that you needed to take it out, once you do, right? And then once you take out these bad habits or perhaps you're able to get rid of bad relationships, then you can go to the next level, right? And so healing is the next level. So healing in any modality, right? I always tell people, every human having this experience needs to heal. So choose whatever modality you want. If it's therapy, if it's acupuncture, if it's yoga, do whatever makes you feel good, but also allows you to take a beat, right? Take a beat, realize that you've been dealing with this person or this thing or whatever, and just start to heal up that wound, right? So then you can kind of get to the next level of it, which is tuning in on it. And tuning in. Is that getting quiet, sitting, meditative practice, any sort of just being able to be by yourself. This, for me, was so hard to be able to sit by myself for even two minutes. I would have rather started a company. I mean, working hard and fast, long hours, get it done. Da, da, da. That was the mode. But you realize at the end, it's just you. And during the whole process, you speak to yourself more than you speak to anyone. So let's get comfortable with ourselves, let's get comfortable with our silence. Let's obviously get all of these huge benefits of mindfulness and of meditation. We've heard them. It's now based in science. There's no question. It is a superpower. I call it a magic pill. If you had a magic pill, that would reduce anxiety, create focus, literally, it creates more time in your day because you are not Creating from a place of fear, panic, worry, strife. You are creating from a place of calm and clarity.

Right?

So it's truly like a magic pill. And then you can build up to your mission and then ultimately your legacy. And obviously these things can be done without the earlier healing and process. It's just going to again feel like you're pushing the boulder up instead of flowing with the flow of life. That's how it has been in my journeys.

So when you look back and we'll link the hierarchy in the show notes below so everyone can go take a look at it and see what their fundamental challenge might be or opportunity to remove something to greatly impact their life. When you look back at your career, it's so interesting to me because you had so much success before you removed your thorn in your side, the drinking in your story. How different would it be now? If you think back, had you not been drinking then, would it have been easier? Do you see any correlation between the success that you had earlier on in your career before you made that big switch, or no.

Looking back, I think that it would have been easier to come to a place of peace. I don't think anything would have been achieved earlier or anything like that because I was a very high functioning person that achieved my goals. I just didn't have the inner peace. So I was on paper doing all of it, but I did not have that peace. I always felt in a rush. Anxiety was my go to emotion. So that is why I thought that the glass of at the end of the day was my treat and it was a double benefit because it was like, oh, it's a take the edge off. I earned it. And it also allows me to chill. And we are now finding out by research that actually any amount of alcohol is really not beneficial to you. And this whole taking the edge off thing, it's fundamentally changed through research now. Literally when I was growing up, it was a doctor's order. Two glasses of red wine with dinner helped. Helped you. I remember the healthiest people with me growing up, their parents, these healthy people would always have this two glass of red wine situation. I took that philosophy through me all the way into adulthood. So I just was like, this is. This works for me, right? Until it didn't.

So interesting to hear you describe that because for me it's super clear relationships were my thorn in my side, specifically with men, whether it be my boss at work and how he was treating me or my fiance at the time and what I allowed for in that relationship and and removing, not simultaneously but it was like a domino effect. Once removing one of the poor relationships from my life, I suddenly couldn't tolerate the other relationship any longer. Neither one was healthy for me. And there was no peace. There was anxiety when I was driving in the car. This sense of having so much pressure on me and to rush to get this done and never performing well enough at work or never making this other person happy enough in my personal life. And to your point around peace, even though it was super scary, which I'm sure there was fear for you too, in removing something that was playing such a big part in your life, it seems really crippling in the moment to make a decision, to make a big change like that. But I will tell you just in what I saw, it was such a positive experience in the end, even though I didn't know it would be, even though I had tremendous fear around it, just the idea of change and, you know, what would my life look like? What would the ripple effect be? But over time, what I saw is suddenly I wasn't having anxiety driving on a highway anymore. Suddenly I wasn't researching, you know, what are natural remedies to fall asleep faster. There was these slight changes that I would notice that I think ultimately opened my mind up to, wait a minute. If that ended up benefiting me here, maybe that's going to benefit me at work too, or maybe that's going to benefit me in my personal life here. And then once you start clearing out those negative relationships or situations for you, positive people started showing up. So I believe, like, it's different for everybody, right? Whatever someone's thorn is. And sometimes it's hard to even notice in your life because you've been in these habits or relationships or jobs or situations for so long, you think it's normal. And I see that with a lot of people. That idea of, well, is it. Aren't you supposed to hate your job? It's work. Like, people will say that, you know, often to me, I don't know. Does anyone really love their job? Yeah, actually they do. You know, if you're just so customized and you've normalized something. So how do you advise people when they're saying, maybe someone's listening right now and they're like, I don't think I have that. Like, no, I don't really love my job or, you know, I mean, whatever. I've been married 20 years. It is what it is. What do you say to those people that are like, I don't know, that I have something that I need to Remove from my life, right?

And just like you were talking about, I always call it the snowball effect that it compounds. So when I removed alcohol example from my life, I then all of a sudden had all of these positive compounding effects. So I naturally woke up earlier. That means I naturally got to the gym earlier, had that natural euphoria from that, then that compounded a great idea on the way home for something. And then you execute that because you have the energy. Then you do a meditation and then you get your brain functioning at a high level and then you have the compound effects of you have the energy now that you've meditated. And then when my kids come home, I am engaged with them, I am not short or annoyed. And same thing with my spouse. And all of these positive compound effects instead of those negative compounds which are, oy, kind of stressed at my job. Don't really love it, you know, but it is work and I just have to do it well. But I. Okay, whatever. Just going to get through the day, going to get home, have a glass of, have another one with dinner, go home, go to bed, wake up kind of groggy, miss the gym, stressed, get to the job that you don't love, don't have time to meditate, kind of cranky, most of all with yourself, right? You're annoyed with yourself that you're not creating, carving out the time to really give yourself a break. And so those things compound. And that's when it starts to feel tough. That's when it starts to feel hard. Of course you're going to have hard days. So for me, it's been about two and a half years that I completely cut out alcohol from my life. There are still days with challenges. It's the human experience, but the relief of zero anxiety, so much clarity and the deep, amazing relationships that I have, most importantly with myself. I am no longer critical of every single thing that either comes out of my mouth or that's in my head. Because that was kind of something that I was noticing, right. Because I started my spiritual journey 10 years ago, right. So I started that meditation, observing my thoughts so that you start with that. Interesting that it then took me, you know, six years later to completely cut the alcohol out. But what happens is at least that habit started to become a little bit ingrained. And then I think when you can positive habit compound, it just makes it easier in any category.

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Learned now that you've launched the podcast and you're sitting down weekly and meeting with people that have given up alcohol from their life? What are some of the lessons that you're taking from these shows and what are you learning from your guests? Because I know just in the couple of examples that you had shared with me, you shared some massively successful people that I didn't realize started finding massive success when they actually pulled alcohol from their life. Can you give us a couple of those examples?

Yeah. What I have noticed on the guests that have come on my last drink is that they all had that drive, that mission. They were either successful athletes, business people, they all had this potential in their life. But then once they removed it, they just skyrocketed. And the examples are plentiful from around the world. It's amazing. What I didn't know and what I am hoping then to spread to other people is this idea that even if you don't have this huge problem, even if you don't have people telling you that you need to stop the awareness of something that is not that great for you, that you can have a very fun time and enjoyable life. That for me, that was my being. I was very afraid that I was not going to have fun because I had always attached in my head fun and alcohol. Because every time I went to something, right, a dinner, a wedding, a party, there was alcohol there. So in my head those two things were attached. But all you have to do is separate them and then continue to strengthen that separation. Fun is fun and you can have it without alcohol. And actually it has really surprised me how much I can literally say, oh my God, I had a blast. I had a blast. I didn't think that I was going to be able to do that. So that's a very, very empowering thing. The self worth also has been a huge thing that I've heard from people, because self worth, as we know is basically when we keep the promises that we make to ourselves and when we keep silent promises like I'm not going to drink tonight and then you even just have one or two, that's a promise broken. Right? And so in order to continue to really increase our self confidence, our self worth, we need to align what we tell ourselves and what we do. Those two things need to be in alignment. And so when we are actually being honest with ourselves, it increases our self worth, our self value. And it's incredible then how much things fall away that probably were never important, but you might have thought were important in your mind that was full of anxiety, fear, et cetera. So again, compounding the positives that are created by increasing your self worth by doing the work of getting out whatever is no longer serving you.

Are you surprised with how many people you're now discovering have taken alcohol out of their lives? Has that been surprising for you?

It has, because I didn't know how many people were out there that are these huge movie stars or huge designers or they have taken it out 10, 15 years ago, but people aren't talking about it. I feel that there is a wave coming. People are talking about that, but that is what I want to be. I want to talk to the younger version of myself and say, it's okay, it's okay. Remove will be the greatest gift that you give to yourself. This bad habit that you get rid of, it will create such strength and internal fortitude that you don't even know where it came from. It's incredible. So I'm trying to have these conversations to basically make it normal to talk about some of our human flaws.

And I like how one of the things that you've done is kind of rebrand not drinking or. And I don't know if I'm doing it justice, but this idea of it's fun to live a lifestyle like this, where previously when we were younger and growing up, no one spoke about giving up alcohol as you know, this fun lifestyle. Right. We had seen it. I don't want to say as a negative, but it definitely didn't seem to be like a fun way of life.

How, oh my God.

Rebranded that for sure.

That was my biggest fear. I'm like, ugh, that does not seem fun. I want to have fun. Fun is one of the tenants of my life. And so I choose to use alcohol free, which I say af. So that's kind of one of the hashtags is hashtag fun af fun. Because I just think that being alcohol free and boring are not in the same vicinity. And in my previous head, I just thought that they were. So there's just a lot of this kind of gray area of, you know, no one is telling you what to do because you're still on paper or in the world that you present. You've still got it all together. You know what you need to shed. And most people can think of it like that, right. I'm just here to tell you that it was the thing that I was the most afraid of because I thought that all of my fun would be gone. And it is not true. It's so wonderful on the other side of getting rid of whatever, even seemingly. Even if you're like, you don't have an issue with that. No, you're fine. You know what it is? You are whispering it to yourself. You know what it is. Start to create habits around it so that you can build whatever confidence you need to take the next step.

Yeah, that's so good. There's one voice and opinion that matters, and that's your own. You do not need to listen to what anybody else has to say because everybody will have an opinion. And it doesn't mean, you know, their ideas or their fears are right for you. You've got to listen to your own. So thank you for sharing that, Katie, how people follow along on this journey to keep up with you and hear what's happening on the podcast and how.

Can people work with you on Instagram? I'm the Katie Stoka, and my website is Katie Stoka. And you'll have everything in the show notes, which I really appreciate.

And what about give us the name of the podcast again for anybody that wants to catch up with your show.

It's called My Last Drink, and it's fun af. It is fun af.

Thank you so much for the work that you're doing. Thank you for putting such a podcast positive spin on something that wasn't branded that way to us earlier on and making it acceptable. And thank you for all the amazing work that you're doing to help others remove negative habits from their life.

Thank you, Heather.

All right, guys, until next week, keep creating your confidence. You know, I will be I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably, something will happen. No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it.

Come on this journey with me.