Leadership & Alcohol with Ruari Fairbairns

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive Coach to Global leaders and high performers. In every episode I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you lead your life and business on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

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How many leaders reach for the bottle when times get stressful? Look, I know I did a lot. I reached for beer and wine and rum and Cokes. But you know what? High performance leadership is not just about achieving above the standard norms. It's about making sure that we're sustaining our well being and our relationships. So a few years back I saw this one Year no Beer challenge and it sounded interesting. It was actually my partner Caroline who brought it up. She says, look, I'm going to do that. That's going to be interesting. I delayed on that a little bit and then eventually I slept on it, woke up and said, you know, I want to try one year, no beer too. So give it a go. And it's not about quitting alcohol for life. It's about reshaping your relationship with alcohol. And I find that interesting. I like a challenge. It was set up as a challenge and I know that you can do a 90 day challenge or you can do a year. I decided to go the whole hog. Let's do the year. And it has been transformational. It has changed my life, it has changed my energy levels, it has definitely transformed my business. And today I'm actually interviewing the founder and CEO of one Year, no beer. So I want you to sit back and enjoy. And if you enjoy alcohol like I did a lot, maybe after listening today, you might be interested in, in just reshaping your relationship with alcohol. I hope you enjoy the show.

Rory, a massive welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast. How are you doing?

Thank you for having me on, James. I am very well. I'm very well. And yourself?

I'm great. I'm actually all the better for you. And usually I would say I'm all the better for seeing you, but I'm actually all the better for you being in my life. And this is the first time we've actually managed to connect. But one year, no beer. The whole ethos of what you're about has transformed my life. So I just want to say thank you.

It makes this job of being on a podcast so much easier when somebody has been through it and understands it and has come out the other side. And I mean, all credit to you, right? We're just, we're, we're just some tools. Yeah, I've been described as a tool in my life. That's interesting, isn't it? I'm still describing myself as a tool, but no, we provide tools and ultimately it's up to you, but it is a life transforming program and yeah, I'm sure we're going to get into that. So well done. So where are you on your alcohol free journey? Are you still alcohol free or still fully alcohol free?

So it's two years, just over. So it's two years in April. So two, two and a bit years. And I have not looked back. It's been really transformational in a lot of ways. So just. Yeah, I would never look back. It's been brilliant.

What would you say were the key things that transformed you?

So. Energy. Like a lot more energy. Getting up earlier in the mornings, more patient. That's a big one. Really a lot more patient. I've got a little boy, he's six now, so he was four when I went alcohol free. So I'm a lot more patient with him in terms of my business. My business has gone from strength to strength. Like massive growth there. Retention, just being able to remember things when I'm reading and my skin has improved my weight. And I'll tell you what, I've got this little app and it tells you how much you've saved. And so I've saved about $27,000.

Yeah, I mean, just to qualify that. It's not that you are, because of course the app is counting in all the Other associated costs. Right. Not just alcohol or is that specifically the alcoh, the units that you were drinking.

And that was specific alcohol unit. So $27,000 over the last couple of years. And that was me being kind of conservative. And look, I'll be honest, that was me having a couple of drinks a day. Maybe there's one or two days I did, that's a couple of drinks. And I seen that as totally normal. And there's probably somebody listening right now going, that's me. And it's normal. Yeah.

And I mean, then when you go out and you spend five times the amount on one drink and you have 10 of them and you know, it's. But. But this, you know, what you just said there, I think very specifically on the. About being a parent, about being a dad. This is what drives me so much. It what's wake me up every single day is what makes me work till the small hours in the morning and be so unbelievably passionate about what I'm doing. Because I feel like I have this gift. And it's not me personally, it's this program, right, that if I can get somebody to take this magical pill, right, this magical pill that I'm wandering around advertising everywhere, I'm almost guaranteed to change their life. And not just that, but probably improve their family's life and improve the lives of people around them and insight what I just said. There is quite a lot of frustration, right, Because I'm like, I wish I could just get this out to the world. But also a huge amount of drive and purpose from hearing stories just like yours from people who've had such a huge transformation. And more importantly, like, I almost guarantee you had no idea that you would feel this way. You just had no idea. You were like, quietly questioning just in the back of your mind, you know, should I stop drinking? Do I have a problem? Should I? And then take this challenge and suddenly bang. I'm sorry, we've got a builder in of all days. It's hopefully only going to be five or 10 minutes, but he is banging upstairs if you're picking that up.

No, it's Grant. No, it's not totally cool. Well, it's really interesting. And for the listener that's listening right now, I'll describe my experience with alcohol. So, grew up in Northern Ireland. And in my teenage years, mum and dad divorced. And I of course used that as an opportunity as a teenager would to get some leverage and kind of get out and party a bit and dabbled in alcohol and that Then went into my 20s, and I was using alcohol to socialize and seen that as a very normal thing. And then there'd be a glass of wine on a Tuesday night over dinner, and that would sometimes be two or three, and maybe not on Wednesday, but then you'd probably get Thursday and head out with some friends on Friday and Saturday. And then maybe a Sunday session, you know, three or four pints on a Sunday over some nice live music, no big deal. And I turned 30 and I felt like crap. I looked like crap. I was overweight, I was foggy, didn't have a lot of spare change, that's for sure. And the vast majority of my social interactions were revolved around which pub do we go to. And living in New Zealand, a lot of people kind of were like, oh, you're Irish, of course you drink. And it was interesting that that was kind of I was labeled like that. And my partner was out for a run, and she was listening to a podcast. And one year no beer came up. And this was during the first lockdown here in New Zealand. COVID lockdown.

Yeah, yeah.

And she came back. She's like, james, have you heard of one year no beer? I was like, yeah, I have, actually. And she said, I think I'm going to do it. I said, you're having a laugh. She went, no, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do one year no alcohol. Have fun with that. And so then I slept on it. And the next day, I'm not doing that. Right. So next day I said, are you serious? One year, Nobody. You're going to do that? Like, no alcohol for a year? She went, yep. I says, why? You don't have a problem? Like, she said, yeah, but, you know, I find that I use drink to socialize and relax, and I think it would be good to try and see how I operate without it and see if I do have a reliance on it. I was like, yeah, but you're not an alcoholic. And she says, well, what about you? I said, oh, well, look, my birthday's coming up real soon. Birthday's next month, and I've got this big event. I'm bringing all these VIPs, and I want to celebrate with some bubbles. And then, of course, Christmas. And when we get out of this lockdown, we want to celebrate some friends with some gin. And then I heard myself, and I was like, wow, I've got all these reasons and justifications to keep this relationship with alcohol alive. So I said, no, screw it. I'm doing one Year no beer too. Let's start. And I said let's start tomorrow. So I said we've got some alcohol in the fridge, let's get it drunk tonight. And we're starting tomorrow morning. And fair play, we did. We had a big night, had a few too many drinks and then the next day that was it. And we have not looked back once and we've helped each other, but we both signed up for one, you know, beer that next day and we went through the program and it was amazing. It was fun and it didn't feel like we were cutting off an army. And it's been a journey and something I definitely don't regret. And yeah, I just want to say it's an incredibly easy program to follow. It's inspiring actually. Some of the things that you get the challenges on around mindset and it's phenomenal.

Yeah, excellent. Great. I'm so pleased. I think that's what we in part identified is, you know, when, when we sort of looked around at what was out there and it seemed that everything was sort of labeled in this stigma and this and this shame and like you had to get to rock bottom. And that certainly wasn't my story. I could have gone to rock bottom. Right. You know, there's. There's these things that happened in my life. There's a. There's a video of me hanging out of a train traveling at 120 miles an hour, absolutely pissed at my head. And you know, I think a month before somebody been decapitated hanging their head out of a train. You know, I fell off the top of a car traveling at 30 miles an hour. It turned right. I didn't. Lost all four front teeth and you know, but hang on a minute. I'm just talking to everybody out there right now. You know, have you been to A E or had any moment with alcohol? Of course you have, right? Everybody has. And most of them are fun and funny. So we are actually only. I love this one and that's chuff away from being in the rock bottom ourselves. Right. Have you nearly been caught in somewhere you shouldn't have been by your partner after having. Or have you been, you know, alcohol like the gateway where you suddenly think alcohol, well, maybe I'm going to go and get some white powder or whatever it is it goes on to next. So we are actually always skating that line of close to something like. And I think the big thing was I didn't want to go in and say, well, I've got a problem. And actually a counsellor Once said to me, you know, you should go to an AA meeting just to see what, you know, if you carry on the way you are, where you'll end up. And at the time, I was drinking two, three times a week as an, as an oil broker, went into the AA meeting and I was like, that's just. It's nothing like me. I'm not like that. And so it kind of gave me permission to carry on because I wasn't at that stage. It was like the reverse psychology. And I've heard lots of people say that before. So we wanted something which was going to be much more positive and catch everybody. So it's like, okay, look, this doesn't matter how much you're drinking. We're not here to judge you on how much you're drinking. What we're here to say is that you're going to get so many positive improvements in your life. Productivity, upgrade, energy, better father clarity, lose weight, reduced blood pressure, I don't know, hundreds, thousands of diseases that will be reduced or, you know, less inflammation in the body, all sorts of things like that. Right. So the impact, the positives are enormous. Therefore, why not just give it a shot as a challenge and instead of seeing it as this, like, deprivation, I'm trying to abstain from something I love and, you know, I'm hiding away from society. See it as this really positive, fun challenge to do with your mates or your partner or your wife or whatever. Let's do this challenge together. Together. Let's keep it affirmations, you know, positive. And you know that I think that's where we've been so successful was in not labeling people, not being stigmatizing and trying to make it something cool and fun and, yeah, I guess really ride with the times, with what's happening in the world because the world is changing its relationship with alcohol. It's just happening very slowly.

Yeah. Well, I'm glad that you guys are at the forefront and you do make it cool, you do make it engaging. And I have to say, you know, I work with some really high performing leaders and I shared this with them when I was at the start of the journey and they said, you're never drinking again. I was like, oh, no, it's a one year challenge. It's one year. And they're like, you're going to go a whole year. That's epic. It turned from you're never drinking again to, oh, you're challenging yourself for a year. They thought that was cool.

Well, there's really deep innate psychology in there. Because of our innate tribalism, right? So, I mean, that is our very prehistoric brain is being triggered when you try to leave the tribe. And all we've known since we were in nappies, right, watching friends, parents, aunts, uncles celebrate, commiserate, congratulate with alcohol, we're like, hey, our tribe drinks. And depending on what sort of avenue you took, you know, if you went into a sport like rugby or if you, if you went to university or the army, you learned that actually alcohol is. And how fast you drink and how much you drink and how quickly you drink is also part of the tribe. And all of this stuff gets ingrained in your brain about, about your identity. And then when you go to say to people, hey, I'm going to stop drinking, they're like, you're leaving the tribe, you're leaving us. Why are you leaving? So, so there's this huge reluctance and they want to try and pull you back. Come on, just have one. Why not? And that people talk about this so much like, alcohol is the only drug that people berate you for not taking. Like, imagine if it was heroin, you know, I'm going to take a year off heroin. Brilliant. Well done. I mean, fantastic. What's wrong with you? Why would you. It's just crazy. So I think a big. So much of our drinking is in this psychological construct of what alcohol means to us on a sort of innate level. And Professor BJ Fogg at Stanford University talks about this lot, about how bad habits are created over time. And so a good habit is. He's all about the tiny habits and shrinking them down and making them simple. But a bad habit grows over time like a weed. So imagine it going into your reward system and your belief system about who you are and your identity and how you relax and slowly but surely over time. You know, when you're in, when you're in your teens and first drinking, it's about fitting in, right? And when you're later, it's about getting laid and having fun and socializing. And then later it's about de stressing and unwinding. And then even later it's about how I deal with the kids. I mean, how can I survive without mummy wine time or, you know, and as we go on and on and on and on, it's infecting more areas of the brain. Well, if any of you are gardeners out there, you'll know very well that if you just go, pull a weed, nine times out of ten, it'll grow back worse. And that's exactly the same as a bad habit. And so the way we change this is not by just going over and ripping it out. What we've got to do is we've got to create good habits. We've got to start working on the various different areas of your brain that it is infected and gently weed it out. And so in the background of what One Year Nobier does, we're steeped in neuroscience, positive psychology.

We're using all of these techniques. While you are thinking, oh, you know what, I'm just going to take a break from alcohol. I'm going to go and join a challenge to do that each day. We're going to give you a daily habit. We're going to help you start thinking about things differently. And slowly but surely one step, one step, one step, one step. Suddenly you look back and you're like, good Lord, I've just climbed Everest. I'm actually, I'm where I never thought I would be. And that is in a place where I don't think I want to go back to drinking again or. Right, I don't want to go back to drinking yet again. What's interesting is that 87% of our members say that or more so they 87% of the members get to the end of the 90 day challenge and they don't choose to drink immediately. And that's absolutely huge when you compare it to any of the other stats in AA or people doing a month of dry January.

And this is because we're using that time when somebody is stopping drinking to really get them to focus on themselves. Ultimately, there are reasons why we drink, right? And we've got to work on those things and we've got to try and understand them. Instead of numbing them and packing them down with booze, we've got to listen to them and make some changes. And that's just what our program does, helps you iterate and make small changes.

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'LL also make sure that we put that in the show notes.

I have to, you know, again, I should say for the listeners right now, this is not a paid partnership. There's no collaboration. This is simply. I'm someone who's went through this and I'm getting the joy of connecting with one, you know, beer right now to send a message through to you guys who are maybe interested in it. But I have to say, from my own experience.

Got to the one year mark, and it kind of slowly got there. Got to the one year mark. Caroline and I said, let's go out for the most amazing dinner tonight and let's just sit down and celebrate. And you know what, let's get a bottle of champagne if we feel like that's what we should do. So we got all dressed up, we head to this beautiful restaurant, we sat down, we ordered our meal, and I said, what would you like to drink? And we both looked at each other and the body language said it all. I said, Heineken 0. And Caroline was like, Yep, same. Same here. Two Heineken Zeros. And we talked about that. We're like, why do we not want to do that? And I guess it had been such a slow, gradual transformation, and we just felt like it would be weird to drink. Like, it just didn't feel like psychologically there was no desire. Emotionally, there was no desire. And still to this day, people say, will you never drink again? I was like, I don't know. I still say, I don't know right now. I have no desire, but I don't know. And there's nothing at the back of my mind that's like, go and get that bottle of whatever. There's no drive. I don't even think about it. But I always say, I don't know. Who knows? And it's. I think that's the difference between, say, an aa, where it's like, it has to be no versus this, where it's an absolute choice.

Totally interesting as well. And you know what people are looking for and what they think they want. Let's just touch on that for a minute. Because the reality is for many people, they might be listening to you and saying, for goodness sake, I definitely don't want that. I don't want to not drink again. I just, I cannot imagine that like, that I know my friends and they would disown me, right? And this takes me a little bit back to my story, right? I'm. I, you know, played a bit of rugby when I was younger, certainly learned a bit of Boozing. Very party boy entrepreneur from a young age. And. But I worked hard, and I, you know, definitely used alcohol and other things to escape at the weekends. And I was always the first in, last out guy. I was always the one who had to act up. Strong adhd, super hyperactive. If there was somebody doing something crazy, it was always me. And last man standing every time. And then I managed to get a job in London as an oil broker. And this is where literally two worlds collided. I got paid to be the idiot, right? I could go get smashed three times a week, lunches, dinners. And that was part of my job. And it made me better at my job, and it made me earn more money, was getting people out and getting them into clubs and building those relationships with bouncers so I could get people. Groups of guys in at any time of the night, you know, all of that stuff. And so, you know, I was. I was abs. It was totally and utterly ingrained in my identity. And then more importantly than that, you know, over the time where I was starting to think, you know, I think alcohol is actually causing me more trouble than I realize. And I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten so much about myself. I'd got paid too much, partied too much, and built up a great life, met a wife, had kids, you know, now, but still this party thing. And there were lots of. There were lots of sort of teething issues, I felt. And the teething issues were, you know, my wife was unhappy, right. But that was just normal in the broken world. I mean, you know, when I got married, the guys were like, great, well done. Get the first one in early, you know, and there's people there on three marriages and stuff like that. It was a pretty crazy environment. And yet in my heart, that's not who I was. But I was behaving that way, you know, and so. And alcohol enabled me to behave that way. And yet there was this niggling in the back, like, this isn't you, Roo. You know, this is not you. You're. You're roux. And. And so slowly I started to listen to that, and I was like, okay, you know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna take a break from alcohol. And initially, my boss told me I was committing commercial suicide. Now you talk about peer pressure. Up until shortly before that moment, my number one goal was to be the number one oil broker in the world. And I was at the world's largest oil brokerage. I built up a desk from nothing to market leader. In three years, we absolutely destroyed our competition. And yet here I was contemplating committing commercial suicide. So there was an enormous pressure on me and it took me quite a long time to make the decision. So when I did, I sort of fell into it, right? I was like, okay, I'm going to take 90 days off. I might actually stop coffee and alcohol at the same time. I know, crazy. But, but we can come back onto that. Why that? Another time. But yeah, and then I wanted to carry on and I eventually carried on for a year and grew my business. So it didn't actually commit commercial suicide. It was the opposite. I grew my business, I improved how I did entertaining. Instead of taking people out and doing long lunches, I started doing cycling trips or I organized a relay race at the Olympic stadium after the London Olympics. And that was like three, four months of comrade camaraderie rather than three hours of camaraderie drunk, right? And so because of that, I built closer relationships with people. It was more genuine and it was a very relationship driven business. So, so this is the thing, and this is a very long winded way of saying that I know many people will be listening and saying, yes, I don't want that. And I think the truth is I don't think you know what you want, right? I think that you're so under.

The mystique and the. I can't think of the word right now, Help me out. But you know, the lies, the bullshit of alcohol that is sold to us that you think it's totally pertinent to your life. And I can absolutely guarantee you, I will promise you with everything I have in the world that if I can pluck you out of today, which is today, I'm regularly drinking alcohol. And let's just quantify that, right? So if you're drinking than three glasses of wine a week, right? Okay. Everyone's nodding. That's pretty much everyone. If you're drinking more than that, I would like to pluck you out of today and drop you to your 90 day self right now. And I absolutely guarantee you you'll be blown away with how you feel. You'll be like, I can't believe I feel better, I feel younger. Slight caveat. You might sit here and say, oh well Ruri, I've been pregnant before and I've stopped drinking or I've done a bit of stint of not drinking. There's a very big difference between not drinking and one year no beers program. Very, very different. Not drinking is abstaining from something you love, right? I'm going to do a month, I'm going to white knuckle it. I'm going to cancel all my social circle. I'm never going to see my friends. I'm going to go onto Twitter and talk about how bored I am. Life's crap. This is shit. I'm going to hide away and then I'm going to count down the milliseconds to the first of the next month so I can go absolutely arseholed again. Well, what has that done? Right? If 99.9% of your drinking is psychological, all you're doing is reaffirming to yourself that alcohol is pertinent to a good life. What's the point in that? What you need to do is change your perception of alcohol. Change how? You really think it's giving you these benefits in your life. Oh, it's helping me relax. No, it's not. It's actually ruining your REM and your deep sleep. Oh, it's helping me unwind. It's helping me you sleep better. No, it's not. You know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So one of the things, and again, just circling full back onto that is ultimately many people will listen to this and think, well, I don't want to not drink. I can't imagine my life not drinking. And that's where I have to just reiterate one year. No, beer is not about not drinking. Right. We're here to help you change your relationship with alcohol. We're going to. We have to accept, please accept that you're in a toxic relationship with alcohol, an abusive relationship. It is doing you way more damage than you realize. And like a toxic relationship, you cannot see the truth when you're in it. Everyone around you is saying, look, this is causing you trouble, like you're drinking a bit too much or something like that. Well, maybe they're not, or maybe they are. But ultimately, you can't see the truth. And when you separate from it, you will see the truth yourself. You'll see the truth. And then you say, hang on a minute, I just don't want to let that back the same way. Now.

The real thing is here, the magic for people, for you, for most people, is that ultimately, no alcohol in your life is the best. It is the best because alcohol is 100% poison. Okay? It's dead simple. However, it's the most readily available drug on the planet. And many, many occasions, it's circling and some people would prefer to be able to find a better relationship with it. And this is where we are really focused. We're focused on helping people. Yes, 100%. If you get to the end of your challenge and it's never again brilliant, we'll support you all the way through that. But if you want to get to the end of your challenge and drink less, we'll support you all the way through that. And that part of controlling your drinking actually led us to launching a new program recently called Control youl Drinking. And we saw that literally thousands and thousands of people, a high proportion of people don't sign up to one year, no beer. Because what they're searching for, control. Even though the fastest way to get control is actually abstinence or a break from alcohol as we just described. Except the hard thing is for many people, they're just like, well, I'm just not going to, I can't do that, I'm not going to do that. And so we had to develop some programs and this is what we have now doing. We're extremely proud of having launched them that will help people to control their relationship with alcohol. And ultimately the, the big piece that we're saying to people here is in there is that going from drinking heavily or binge drinking or being out of control of alcohol and trying to control alcohol is very tough. It's very tough. There's all sorts of depending on who you are, right? There's all sorts of, as we mentioned before, areas of your brain, there's past traumas, there's stress, your environment, your lack of meaning and purpose, your daily habits and routines, all of these things are impacting your relationship with, with alcohol. And for you to just suddenly go from being a heavy binge drinker or binge drinker or even a daily drinker to being in complete control where you can take it or leave it, that journey is tough. It's actually much easier to separate from it entirely to get control. But that's not what people want. What people want is to try and control. So Anyway, we launched controlyourdrinking.com and yeah, extremely proud of that. Sorry, very long winded down.

I'm so glad you've done that. And I think it's nice for people to know that there is a stepping stone if they want to go that far. And the one thing about the way you set it up, I felt like I was getting an incredibly in depth personal growth coaching program for a year. Like the quality of the content that you sent out and emailed was amazing. It was timely. And when I got to the end of it and still a couple of years in, I didn't Feel like I had to go out and convert people. I didn't feel like, you know, guys, you're, you know, either alcohol free or you're a loser like life is. Yeah, there's none of that rhetoric. And I love that I'm never telling people they got to do it. So I think it's amazing. The way I've experienced the program anyway, is that you don't feel like you have to pressure people to join you on it. You talk proudly of it when asked, but you're not shouting it from the rooftops.

Yeah, I think the big thing is again, you can shout it from the rooftops, but shout for it about, hey, look, there's so many advantages and benefits of taking a break from alcohol. Why don't you just give it a shot? Oh, but I don't drink that much. Well, then it's even easier for you to give it a shot. Right. You know, and what if, you know, what if I had one of the top one very successful entrepreneur in the UK come into our program and he was 90 days into it. We had him on the podcast and he'd built multiple businesses and he was saying, ruri, I have just realized I've spent the last eight years operating on 80%. I don't know what that's cost me, but it's millions. And so you talk about that productivity upgrade. Okay. I mean, he said he wasn't even drinking that much. He was like, I'm in a couple of beers, maybe three, four nights during the week. And yet he suddenly had this light go on. Of course it is not just not drinking, as we've said. Like you said, there's an awful lot of strong science backed, you know, positive psychology and neuroscience in this program. And so doing these small things like, you know, whether it's meditating or journaling or having a good morning routine or all of these things, they have an exponential impact on people's lives.

Without a doubt. So true. The way I looked at it was this. So if I had a slightly foggy morning once a week, so a bit of a hangover once a week, you know, maybe I said five, six drinks on a Saturday night. Sunday was a bit foggy, or let's say it was Monday, whenever. Well, that's 52 days of the year where I'm subpar, where I'm a bit lazy or where I'm not productive, where I'm a little bit more maybe irritable. That's almost two months of like lacking in productivity. Two months of lacking meaning. Two months of not working on the things that I love working on. Two months of not being really present with the people I love. And when I started to think of it like that, that was just one kind of foggy morning. Imagine if there was two hangovers a week. All of a sudden you're looking at three months of time across a year. And at that point I was like, okay, this doesn't add up. I can't be doing this anymore. I have too much I want to do in my life. And one year, no beer. Give me the structure. It was the strategy that I needed. And I tried a month and I'd done a month before, I'd done two months before. But I think getting past the 90 days.

Cold, yeah, the sweet spot is usually 40 to 60 days for people, which is why I get really frustrated. We're only doing a month and it's like, oh, you're so close. You're so close to finding a bit of an epiphany. And again, you know, so for me personally, I, I, I choose to have a drink now and again. And you know, so there are occasions right now I haven't had a drink for two and a half, ish months, in fact, three months when this podcast will be over. Three months when this comes out. And that's because, you know, we're going through a growth phase right now. We've got an awful lot on. I can't add that into the mix. Like when you've taken a break for an extended break from it, it doesn't have the same impact on you anymore. You really see it for how it is. So again, back to that abusive, toxic relationship. You really don't see it and then you come out of it and now you see it clearly. So I know if I have a drink that it's not that the hangover, right, might be a day or two, but the real hangover, like feeling low, feeling anxious, self loathing, any of those things, sleep, knocked out, it's at least a week, if not longer. But then if you're, and we sort of see this quite a lot, is if you're drinking each week or anything like that, the impact on people is so huge. Ultimately, I don't think people realize how suppressed they are if they're regularly drinking and you remove that, you remove that piece and they just bounce up to a much higher version of themselves. So do you ever get any criticism.

Or flack for having that drink every now and then? Does anybody ever call drinks?

Oh yeah. I mean, bear in mind that there is A huge proportion or you know, there's a big system out there that's been very successful in helping, well, not very. So it's done a lot of good in the world in helping people. People stop drinking, you know, AA and there's a lot of models off AA that say, you know, it's you can't have ever drink ever and all of those things. And I think a lot of people who have had very difficult relationships with alcohol, for them they must say that there is no way to moderate. A lot of people are like moderation is impossible. It's been shown, it's been proven to, moderation is possible. I'm really sorry but I am here to prove that's not true. True. And I'm going to prove that's not true in my lifetime that I believe that anybody can moderate alcohol. And there are books out there and all sorts of authors and people who will say that is not true and it's impossible. So I know I've got a fight on my hands. Don't get me wrong, somebody who wakes up in the morning and they pour whiskey on their cornflakes is going to have a very, very significant challenge in order to be able to get to the place of being able to moderate alcohol. In fact, with their means and things like that, it could be impossible for them. But I know because of neuroplasticity and the way the brain works and from our latest research that we're seeing out there that we can change the brain and we can change the way these things are working and we can change how this reward systems are firing inside your brain. Yeah, you might have to change your job, move house, change your relationship. You might have to totally transform what you do do. Let's look at my life. I was commuting via tube to a windowless office in central London as an oil broker. Probably one of the most high pressured jobs out there, right? Shouting, screaming, swearing all day, doing huge volumes of transactions that if I got wrong were massive costs to the business. I used to talk about this job like every single conversation I'm having with the customer is like that incredible emotional moment when you're lying to a loved one but they've caught you out. But you're trying to stare them dead faced in the eye and convince them that you're the truth. And you're doing that every time on the phone. All the moment the emotional drain and exhaustion on that. No wonder I was looking to act out every evening and have a drink. But.

Could I?

So going through all this Journey, learning everything I have, helping, you know, hundreds of thousands of people. I mean, when you look at the wider impact of one year no beer, and the amount of people who email in saying, I never signed up to your program, but listen to the podcast or I changed my relationship with alcohol, it will be millions of people now over the last seven years that we've impacted ultimately. So, I mean, now totally transformed my life, right? You know, I have incredible meaning and purpose for what I do every day. I wake up every day and I change people's lives. And that's one of my core things. You know, I. I wrote a letter to Richard Branson when I was 14 years old. I said, I'm going to change the world one day, and I'm looking forward to having lunch with you. And that hasn't happened yet, but hopefully it will. But, you know, I was very, very, very driven to help people, and. And so helping people ticks all my boxes and how I operate in the environment I live in. I, you know, I now live in Majorca. We're 300 meters from the beach, and, you know, so totally transformed my life and my environment so that I can. And it's not just alcohol, right? Alcohol is one symptom, you know, one effect. Right. Ultimately, there are all these causes, and it might not be alcohol for you. It could be porn, right? Uncomfortable conversation here. It could be Netflix or Donuts or, you know, I don't know how addiction shows itself, and, you know, people don't want to use that word, addiction, but we are all addicted. We are. We are all, you know, work addiction. And ultimately, I said this recently.

The opposite of addiction is connection, which is. Which is a fantastic phrase. But the root of addiction is trauma. And so this is. This is the work that we need to do so that we are not getting these effects in your life, be it alcohol. So, anyway, do I get rounding that back? Do I get questions? Yes, because people struggle to understand that this is possible. I know. It's entirely possible. I live by that without any problem. Right. I can completely take or leave it with alcohol. I can go to any event. I've just been to a few weddings in the uk, not touched a drop. I just don't want to. I had to get up early in the morning. Plus I was in really nice places, so I did fun stuff in the morning. It's a completely take it or leave it attitude. And this is what I want to help people get to. I want people to get to a completely take it or leave it attitude where most of the time they're going to leave it, right? Because life is busy, life is precious. You know, you've got kids to show up for, or you've got a business to show up for, or you want to show up for yourself. But if you do want to go in, let go, or have a few, or just have one, whatever it is, we want to put you fully in control to have to do that. Interestingly, the first part of the the launching your control your drinking program was a program aimed at busy executives, leaders, CEOs. We launched that two months ago and we were just trying to see if there was a little bit of interest out there and we were absolutely blown away. We give a very big guarantees that we'll give you the tools you need to control your drinking in eight weeks. And for a lot of very busy professionals out there, they don't want to spend a year trying to work this out, or seven years in my case. They don't want to spend years trying to figure out what are the things that's going on for them, that's going to lead them. I spoke to one of the people on our current cohort, you know, is an on the board a major global organization and they said, look, you know, I never had a problem with alcohol. I've never had any problem with alcohol. Lockdown came along. I just started drinking a little bit too much in lockdown. Nothing crazy, just a little bit, bit, little bit more. And now I'm back out and socializing and I've been to a couple of seminars and I'm getting a bit fuzzy later in the evening I can't remember what's going on. And at my level I cannot afford to behave it that way. And also I can't afford to spend the next year trying to figure out what's going on. And I don't want to not drink forever anymore. So we kind of found a sweet spot where we're like, look, we're going to throw the absolute kitchen sink at you with this program brought in some of the greatest specialists I've worked with on myself over the seven years. Using all sorts of research, we found interesting stuff around supplementation.

We use a medical based device to study their heart rate and heart rate variability or on a sort of minute by minute basis, we can see whether they're in sympathetic or parasympathetic. Are they getting enough rest and recovery? All of this stuff is ultimately causing this negative relationship with alcohol. And I'm so, so proud. You know, we're halfway through this first cohort people are already having massive sh. Shifts in their life. So yeah, excited to get this program scaled up and out to the masses.

That's amazing. And so if somebody's listening right now and they're kind of tempted to kind of jump in or even just go and check it out, where's the best place for them to check that out?

Control your Drinking.com is where the whole control programs lie. And then our programs that we've been doing for many years are all on oneyearnobeer.com put them in the show notes. Yeah. And I think coming back onto this here is one thing, is I know that some of this message, the fact that you've listened to this podcast this way through is that some of this message has resonated in the back of your head and it may have just set off just some memories of like, oh, that happened and somebody said that to me and oh, maybe this is causing me more trouble. And I want to say two things. First of all, really, really listen to that because I absolutely guarantee you, you, if you're getting even a small bit of noise about that, it's much worse than you realize and it's causing you way more damage than you realize. I absolutely promise. And you will figure that out yourself when you come and decide to take a break from it. You'll see and they'll be like, you'll say what every single member of one year no beer has said to me has said, I wish I did this sooner. And I never knew, I never realized the truth of what impact alcohol was having on me. So don't wait, don't wait any longer. Don't spend the next few months thinking about this. Don't like, um, and ah, don't stagger around in the dark. Just come and take the challenge. And if you do get through the challenge and you get to 90 days and nothing has changed for you, then please, please get in touch with me because you'll be the first person in over 100,000 people in 138 countries to tell me. So.

Yeah, it's incredible. Well, the statistics of the impact that you've made is just, it's phenomenal. And the one thing just. I know we're getting close to wrapping up, but the one thing I just want to say is that it's science backed and there's neuroscience and you've done the research and that's what I like. And I know there's a lot of other leaders out there that will be listening, going, show me the detail. So I just I know that you guys have done that. And when you jump into the 90 days, you'll actually, you'll see it all unfold. And every day you're getting a training email directly to you each day, training you and inspiring you. And it was a lot of positive psychology. And there's incredible. So the, all the different tools that you bring together to get the focus away from I'm not drinking to, hey, these are other positive things I can be doing. Meditation, journaling, as you mentioned as well. So really powerful program. So thanks for taking the time to put it together.

Thank you. Yeah, no, it's. It's an amazing thing. I'm, you know, constantly frustrated because I'm a big, big vision guy and I see how big think the word opportunity is from the business perspective. But the truth is the pain and the sadness and.

That'S one element or.

The incredible changes we can give to people's lives. This potential that we have is so huge. And I really feel like our product is a half of 1% on its way to where we want to go. And I can't wait for us to over the next few years. So we'll be raising our series a soon and, you know, we're going much further down app side of things, looking at wearables. Of course, you know, sweat is one of the most accurate calculators of whether you've had alcohol in your bloody or not. And enabling people to track and monitor and, you know, giving them that awareness, but also then matching that up with heart rate variability and stress levels and sleep, sleep so that they can very clearly see. Look at that. I had two units yesterday, just two units. And I didn't sleep well for two nights. That's the kind of thing that empowers people to change their relationship with alcohol. So, yeah, really excited about the future and we've got a big challenge on our hands, but I'm excited.

That's amazing. Well, in any way that I can support you guys on your mission, just, yeah, always reach out. And I know there'll be a lot of people down this neck of the woods here in Australia, New Zealand that will want to get on board and check it out. The Oura Ring is a huge popular device down here at the minute you've got yours on. There you go. I love it. It's amazing. And people do love tracking the stats on the sleep and the heart rates. So if you guys can tie some software into that around what you're doing, that would be phenomenal.

Harpreet is a lovely chap I've met him a few times. So he's the founder of Aura.

So, yeah, tying into things like that. Yeah, it's an exciting future.

It's powerful. Well, Rory, I've just got one last question for you before we wrap up. I want us to fast forward and let's say many, many decades in the future, and it happens to be your last day here on Earth, and one of your kids or grandkids says, dad or granddad, how do I lead my life? With purpose. What would you say to them?

I guess leading your life on purpose?

Well.

Having been somebody who chased money and chased, you know, trying to be wealthy and things like that.

Living a life of meaning and purpose and delivering and helping other people, I think is the best thing you can do for yourself and for others.

And I guess the other part onto that is not everybody has to get out there and change the world. And I think there are huge sacrifices that have to be made if you choose to try and do that in the world. As you know, building a business is not easy. I think we can do it simply by just trying to get people to smile more or holding a door or picking somebody up or asking somebody how day is and just caring and being that kind of person. So it's just in the very small ways of shining a light. Yes.

That's beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I look forward to the day that possibly you and I are saying cheers on Necker island and you're getting to hang out with them. Mr. Branson, are you going to go? Definitely. It's on the cards. It's one of my bucket list items as well. I'd love to connect with Richard and his amazing team, and Necker island looks like the place to do well, one.

Of his team, actually, two or three of his team have done one year. No beer. But they haven't yet. They haven't yet come out to him. So we've got to work on that one. And.

Interesting. I was invited to Necker Island. I've been putting this out for years about, you know, meeting Richard Branson one time. And a friend from the US Said, I'm going to Necker island in June. Do you want to come? And the big thing was the reason why I wrote that letter to Richard Branson is because I just tried to take my own life. My dad wanted me to find hope, and so he asked me to write a letter to somebody that meant something to me. And anyway, so I wrote the letter and talked about this many, many, many times. Got invited and I was supposed to go to necker island in 2020 in June. And I couldn't believe how everything was falling into place. And, you know, the guy who ran the whole event out there was like, look, I'll sit you next to Richard. He's going to absolutely love your story. It's going to be amazing. And I was like visualizing facetiming. My dad sat next to Richard Branson and then Covid hit and of course, it all got canceled. And very sadly, my dad passed in July of that year. But. But yeah, I still know it'll happen. He's building a hotel around the corner from us here. So whether I bump into Mallorca or Necker island, it's definitely going to happen one day.

Thank you for sharing that story too, Ruri. It's incredible. It's very courageous of you to share it and I really appreciate it. And I know your dad will be proud when he sees you there sitting. He'll be there watching completely.

He will. Absolutely there with me.

Amazing, mate. Well, hey, I want to say all the best with your mission. Keep up the great work. As I say, reach out anytime that I can support you with it.

Well, you are. So thank you very much for supporting us now.

You're welcome.

Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button. And I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks. And leaders, it's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.