What Getting Sober and Losing 100 Pounds Teaches You About Business

We've never talked in depth about this, at least not publicly, and it's something that completely changed our lives and business. We quit drinking and rebuilt our routines from scratch. This isn't a preachy sobriety thing; it's taking a real look at your habits and whether they're helping or hurting your ability to have what you say you want. Not only did we end up losing weight and changing our health, but we also came out with clearer minds, steadier energy, stronger relationships, and more discipline in our day-to-day lives. We'll also show you the business parallels: raising your prices/positioning without burning bridges, cutting the offers you secretly hope no one buys, and stacking boring, repeatable reps that actually move profit and freedom. If you want more control, more clarity, and fewer energy leaks, this convo gives you the nudge (and the playbook) to make a clean change now

Highlights

00:00 One brother in a tie, one without.

07:00 The decision to stop drinking.

18:45 How did the decision to quit drinking impact your relationships and business?

22:00 Developing the discipline to hold boundaries and follow through in life and business.

30:00 Saying goodbye to our old drinks of choice and Ryan Renold's not saying "Hi".

37:15 Why making exceptions is just a form of self sabotage.

40:00 Want expert results? Hire an expert in that area to get there.

47:15 What in your life right now is no longer serving you?

52:00 Looking back at what we've learned by changing our habits.

Resources + Links

Apply for Luxury Clothier Collective Mastermind HERE

More resources for custom clothiers HERE

Watch on Youtube

Follow

Appointment Only in IG: @appointmentonlypod

Resources + Links
Apply for Luxury Clothier Collective Mastermind  HERE
More resources for custom clothiers HERE
Watch on Youtube

 Follow
Appointment Only in IG: @appointmentonlypod

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

No tie today, huh? You know, so cool. Sometimes sometimes podcasters just want to be more comfortable. Sometimes you want to kick back. Cut loose. Sometimes you just want to cut loose and ditch the tie. You know. That's what that's what we got going on. One of us is in a tie. For those of you listening, Kenny's wearing a tie. He's all buttoned up. I'm the serious one. The serious twin is wearing a tie. The casual, fun, approachable twin. He ain't got a tie on. He says ain't. He yeah, he shortens his words. He's very, very cool. That was one thing that my mom was always like, my mom's, I think, gonna come up a lot in this episode as we're talking about drinking. Because she is a booze hound. Yeah, whoa, no one drinks harder than my mom. Uh quite the opposite, in fact. But uh my mom was always very adamant that there wasn't just a twin. You know, people would say, which one's like the smart one, or which one's the athletic one? And my mom would always be like, they can both be something, or they don't have to only one of them be one thing. But the interesting thing about twins, especially uh only twin men, is that only one of the twins has a penis. And I got it. Danny, Danny got it. That's like my biggest fear is that some I will say something, and it'll be hilarious. But but you listening will think that Kenny said it. Well, just to be clear, for those of you who went ahead and laughed, had a had a good laugh at that joke. That's actually a joke I made up that Danny stole. And now he's he put it out there in the podcast, and now he's hoping to get credit for it because it turns out I'm the smart and funny one. To that, I say, prove it. I can't prove it. There's two words. I'm gonna I'm gonna come at that with a counter and it's gonna be two words long. Prove it. I can't prove it. You're just gonna have to take my word for it. But that is a joke that I made up years ago. And uh, you know, it's quite frankly doesn't get enough play. I feel like that's one that we could be saying a lot more. We could say it every day. We do have, you know, within our the context of our meetings, our appointments, we very much have a lot of things that are scripted and that we do every day and we say the same way every time. There are, and let's be honest, there are some canned jokes as well. Lots of canned jokes. It's not every meeting that a canned joke gets used, but sometimes like a classic one. Here's a classic example of our business specifically in a canned joke. When I'm measuring the crotch, it's always like a big measurement, right? Like if I'm measuring a full crotch, which is like the U shape of the rise, essentially, it's like 29 to 32, is very standard. So I'm measuring in that, you know, the crotchal region. It's like 29 inches. I'm like, does that sound about right? Oh boy, does that get a kick? The crowd goes wild. And sometimes he says, I don't know. And that's when I know the joke didn't land. And then I know I have to make up for it some other way. Yeah. That's when we know this is not gonna be a very fun appointment. If he's not laughing about that joke, then we I've got some I've got some changing course I need to do. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of changing course, wow, that was a great segue. Excellently done. You're learning. Danny's becoming quite the quite the little podcaster here. You know what they say about little guys. Little little podcast. You can tell the size of a of a man by how little how his transitions are as he as he podcasts. Yeah, I think I've heard that before. This is Appointment Only, the podcast for entrepreneurs building profitable high-end businesses. If you want control, profit, and freedom from the endless hustle, this is for you. We're Kenny and Danny, twin brothers from day one and business partners for 15 years. We're sharing insights from our own experiences running a high-end small business, the highs, the lows, and what we've learned along the way that will help you build businesses you enjoy running that aren't running you. We're here to help you continue creating businesses that support the life you actually want to live. Your appointment starts now. This is appointment only. Thank you so much for being here, for being on time, for your scheduled appointment. I'm Kenny, I'm Danny. We are your hosts, and we are getting into it today. We're we're actually going to be talking about something very personal that we haven't really ever spoken about officially, like professionally in any capacity, uh, or even really publicly. In our public lives, I mean, every time we've we've been doing something out in the public. Public. Each time I'm I'm out meeting fans and giving presentations and all of our meet and greets. I will say all of our book signings. Let me say, let me get off track for two seconds and we can go right back in. Saying the word public. I remember being terrified as like a middle school. That I would be reading. Because you know how they would have in middle school, you'd like the class would read out loud and you'd go after like in the history textbooks. Two words terrified of public, terrified of virginity. Virginia. You two? Uh-huh. Oh my god. I hated saying Virginia. And it's like I'm like, I'm gonna say vagina. Because you're reading ahead, you're doing the math, and like, okay, there are three kids in front of me. You're read you're reading the pair, you're practicing, you're making sure you know how to say every word. If I say, if I accidentally say vagina, it is over for me. Well, and I gotta just be honest too, because we went to when we were that age, we were at like a private school, a Christian school. And when we would be reading the Bible, those paragraphs, not so easy to read. You gotta really practice because a lot of those are really weird, and you do kind of end up reading bad, like we're weird words like that in the Bible. Like, why are we doing reading stuff out loud? I do remember we were reading a it was like a a story. And I remember Chris J. That's all I'm gonna say. I'm not gonna get back into it. Chris J accidentally said testicles instead of tentacles. And I'm 37 years old today, and I still remember it. Still talking about it. That's what I was afraid of. Oh, remember when Danny King said West vagina in the pubic spotlight? Oh yeah. I mean, for real. Those were those were hard times. And those were like your biggest fears as a middle schooler. It was simpler times. It was simpler times back then growing up in the uh early late 20s, late 90s, early 2000s. That's because we're 37. So when we're you know you know what you do the math. Yeah, thanks. Go ahead and do the math for us. We are just gonna dive right in and talk about what ended up being a very pivotal time in our lives and and in our business, more so our personal lives, which then led and translated into elements of business as well. And certainly a number of amazing business lessons and business experiences that can be and parallels that can be drawn between these two things. There's a lot of parallels business-wise to going through a physical transformation, which we both did. We did simultaneously. We decided that we were done drinking alcohol, and we decided that not only were we done drinking alcohol, but that we actually wanted to get really healthy. So that was a decision that we made near the end of 2019. And quite frankly, if Ozempic was as popular then as it is now, oh, that would have been so much I would have just done that. It was so much easier, but it wasn't. So I mean, I know it was around because I remember seeing the commercials, but stopping drinking was not just because of weight. I I when we stopped drinking, I hadn't even considered. I mean, I knew I would get healthier just by default, but it wasn't that wasn't tough to get unhealthier. Right. We were trying, we were off to a good start. I hadn't even really considered that. It was just I I had I was the impetus, Danny was the impetus. Um, do I need to talk about myself in third person sometimes? I think you can help the listeners. I think you can just say I, it's fine. You're saying that you were impotent. Omnipotent. I was the impetus behind the we're done drinking. And I I just reached a point in my life and you know, my my family, and I I I I knew I had to make a choice. I probably should have made this choice a while back, but you know, they they talk about rock bob and rock bottom, and we were fortunate where we didn't hit like a a legal rock bottom or like a drunken driver situation rock bottom. But it was it was that that would be my equivalent of in my life what a rock bottom moment where it's like, okay, I have two paths. I can continue to what I'm doing. Yeah, it's it sure is fun. I sure, I sure like it. It tastes good. It it's it's enjoyable. I love the activity of it, I love the rhythm of it, I love certain things about it, but I also have so many things in my life that when push comes to shove, I actually love much, much more. And I can't have it both ways. I have to choose. And the first time I thought of it like that, the choice was so obvious. And and and looking back to that really terrible time in my life, I can still remember thinking very in a very sober way, even though I in that moment was not sober. But it's like I had this fleeting, sober, sobering realization that if my life doesn't change in this moment, then I lose the things that I love the most in my life. So that was the impetus behind stopping drinking. And I called Kenny very early the next morning and I told him, like, listen, I'm done. I'm done drinking. I'm not saying you have to be done drinking, but I'm just letting you know that I'm done drinking. And Kenny said, Well, I guess I'm done drinking too. And this is weird that I'm like getting emotional talking about this. It is, but I've like never talked about it before, really, to this extent. And that set up certainly one of one of we we talked in in an earlier episode of like what's a moment that you're really proud of in business. This is a moment that I would say I'm really proud of personally. And uh thank you for being there to uh help and support me in that because I do believe that I could have done it on my own. So forget about you. So actually, never mind. But it is so much easier to do something like that when you have like that built-in support. And that decision to change drinking changed, I believe changed the course of our lives. I mean, I'm I'm still married, I'm still, you know, amazing family. And I can confidently say my life wouldn't look that way had I not made that decision. And um a lot of business parallels to draw. A lot of business parallels to draw. So that's the lead, that's the lead in to what we're talking about. And at that time, like getting healthier was a byproduct. I mean, I knew it would as soon as I decided to stop drinking, it's like, well, yeah, it's I'm not gonna gain weight. I'm not gonna get better, not yet, anyway. Just you wait. Uh, so it just let's just sort, I want to paint the picture because I think the tendency may be for people to make some assumptions about what it looked like when we say we were drinking too much. Now, it looked very uh, I think overall pretty tame. It was one of those things where it was a very kind of slow burn where you start working and then it starts with like happy hour after work. You know, harmless. And but and then you, you know, you you just started drinking more and more. And then and then all of a sudden happy hour gets earlier, and then it becomes happy hour after work every single day. And then and then it just it starts to take hold of you, and some of you are not like this. Most of you actually are not like this. Most of you are not like this, most of you aren't gonna deal with alcohol in the same way that we did, but you know, being twins, we are pretty similar, and there are certain things that uh we have very similar uh behaviors, and the way that we are drinking was really similar. We had a hard time knowing when enough was enough because you know, one beer is is great, so just think how much better 10 beers will be. Just think how great so many more could be. And I like the taste, so I'm gonna keep drinking it. And I what's what could go wrong? If I like the taste of this, just think about how much I'll like it after I have more, how much I'll love it. And I know it's like funny to laugh about now because it's you know, years, years in the past. Uh this we actually are coming up on six years since we made this decision, which in some ways it feels like so much less, and in other ways it feels like so many more. Well, and that's how I like uh whenever I uh talk about our business story, I I always sort of say, Well, what do you want to hear? Do you want to hear post-2020 or pre-2020? Because I see them as two completely different businesses. And yeah, and when we quit drinking, it was actually October of 2019. So it was like, you know, six months or so before the pandemic really kicked in, uh, about five months actually before the pandemic started. So it was very in line with that same time. And so it's very, very interconnected the pandemic with us in our early days of sobriety to finish painting the picture. It was not this thing where we were like stumbling around, slurring our words. We were very much, I think the term would be functional. And I do believe probably the term is alcoholic. I, although we would be do we do this thing, this the whole 30, which is that horrible, you know, crash, like a metabolic reset diet thing. It was very new and trendy at the time. My experience was it was a metabolic killer. It was crazy because you basically cut out so many things, including alcohol, obviously. But that was at the time we were by the time our drinking was really ramping up, we were in our, you know, it was like late 20s to early 30s, and our metabolisms had slowed way down anyway, just naturally. And so it was really hard for us to pinpoint, you know, why why is it exactly that my suits aren't fitting the same way? Why can I not keep the weight off? And the way that we found was by every, you know, six months or so going through the whole 30, which is like a month of this metabolic reset, and which includes not drinking. So that was, I think, kind of our kind of our like benchmark for ourselves. You know, it's we're telling ourselves, well, we're not alcoholics because we can on a dime quit drinking and I don't have the shakes, I don't have any issues physically with quitting drinking. I'm not laid, yeah, I'm not going through any sort of a withdrawal. So I'm not an alcoholic, so that's good to know. Check, and then you know, the the whole 30 would end, and then we would just be straight back to our old ways, and it would just be this thing. And we did this for a couple of years where we would use the whole 30 as like a metabolic offset, and we would drop some weight and we would get back comfortable in our clothes, and then we would build it back up for a while. And like Danny said, there was never this big, huge, crazy thing that was the impetus behind it. And we'd each had our own struggles with alcohol in different ways. You had some different experiences that I had. I did go to jail, uh, I did get pulled over, uh, which that you'd think that would have been a wake-up call, but it, you know, it sort of was for a while. But you know, you forgive and forget, and then you move on old ways. Right. You do get smarter. I mean, when I got mine, Uber wasn't around. So as soon as Uber became available, I mean, thank goodness for that. I mean, that's a great, that's a great thing to have, but that wasn't an option when I got my DUI. But uh, you know, our experiences were were different, but then when we started working together, it was, you know, we're so good and we're very great at being together, but we we do have a tendency, and I think the alcohol example is a is a perfect one where the negative things also kind of impact each other. And you do end up sort of feeding on each other. And it's really, really helpful in business when we're able to do that and funnel our energy and our uh sensibilities into a positive direction, but in a negative direction, that's really what we were also experiencing as well. And it was just this battle that we were that we were fighting silently and that we were both very much aware of, but we didn't see it as a battle. It didn't feel necessarily like a problem, right? Which is why it was hard to identify. Yeah, it was it was tough to identify because it's you you look up the, well, I mean, you look up the medical definition of an alcoholic and it's like everybody is. Right. It's like more than a drink a day or something like crazy low. And I'm not here to tell you what is or isn't an alcoholic. I can confidently say though, that most of the people that I have, you know, all of my friends and like none of them do I look at and say, here's a friend of mine that I think has a drinking problem. And and of course they're curious about it, like they ask questions and and and and things like that. But I wouldn't say that anybody really that I know, I can pinpoint this person has an alcohol problem. I can't think of anyone off the top of my head that I would say, oh, they they don't realize it, but they are. Here's a little scene. Here's a little thing for you. If you're if you're wondering, I wonder if I'm an alcoholic. And you have like an actual reason to maybe wonder that, you maybe you are. I would say if you've had more if you've had somebody tell you, somebody close that knows you well, that tells you I think you have a drinking problem, you probably have a drinking problem. I'm not gonna say that you're an alcoholic per se, but just something to think about. But that that's the thing is is you look at like the medical, oh, well, if you have more than two, two drinks, if you had two drinks a day or if more than more than five drinks a week, you're you're on paper and alcoholic. I'm not talking about that definition. I'm talking about the definition of like the person who gets the shakes, who can't function without it, who needs it first thing when they wake up. Like that didn't fit what we were experiencing. I also love, I love that show intervention. And I realize now looking back, I would watch that show and I would compare myself to the people that were being featured on the show that would at the end get sort of surprised with an intervention. Well, that's how you do an intervention. Surprise. That's how you do an intervention, is you got to catch them off guard. Otherwise, they don't want to go, you know. So uh it was, I would, I would compare myself and I'd be like, well, I'm not, I'm nowhere near that. So we're good, you know. Check. I'm not sleeping on the streets, so I think I'm good there. But a little bit of an unfair comparison there, obviously. We are far from the first people who have dealt with a drinking issue. I do think we are have always been a little ahead of our time because I mentioned the whole 30 and that we are doing that. There are so many products you can buy now: salad dressings, mayo, uh new zoodles or whatever, uh, pre pre-made things that fall in line with the guidelines of whole 30. That was not the case when we were doing whole 30. And I feel like sobriety now, there's so many more. Maybe it's just because it's, you know, there's people on like sober talk and there's there's people that are, you know, out there talking about it. But I I remember when we made this decision to quit drinking, there weren't a lot of people I knew who had done that. There were plenty of people I knew who never drank. Well, and we were still, I mean, it being in your early 30s, getting sober, I feel like is pretty early.

unknown 20:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Or it can be. I mean, I I know of of other people who have had other addictions and they they quit in their 20s. Or sometimes, you know, I've I get these videos in my feed of like who is it? Is it Bradley Cooper who like got sober? Yeah, he's sober. And he was like 19 or 20. So he had like gone through the whole rigma role and like realized it wasn't for him before he even turned of like legal drinking age. So there are, of course, those exceptions, but I think part of it was just based on our age. It's like kind of on the young side, it's like, man, I barely got 10 years of this. Right. I think the the best thing though is uh a friend of ours, uh Matt O'Keefe, he is sober, and we were talking with him, and he said, I got my reps in. I love that. I and I say that now every time someone's because you know how people are, maybe you don't know, but when you don't drink and people know that you don't drink, they feel really that was one of my big things that I didn't want. Not that I was not gonna quit drinking for this reason, but I was very self conscious about being sober right away because I didn't want when I was out with people for them to feel weird about drinking in front of me. Like I was gonna somehow be like, you know, they turn they turn away and I grab their drink and chug it. And I can't handle being around. I think that comes from a place of they're checked in, they don't want to. To be the reason why why we feel uncomfortable, but I will feel uncomfortable if you're thinking about how I'm feeling because I'm good. Like I decided I wasn't going to do it anymore. And I haven't done it, except for the one time on accident when I was in Colombia with Anna, and we were barely spoke, barely spoke the language. That makes it sound like I'm like kind of fluent in Spanish. Like can barely piece a couple of words together that make sense. And we're at our first dinner, and I'm like, I know, I know seen alcohol, no alcohol. So I'm ordering like, you gotta be careful with that though, because it you could it could sound like you're saying si alcohol. Si bueno, deliciosa, or or or like no alcohol. They know the word no that's good. So I mean, I ordered mocktails, and and you can tell. Like when you take a break, you can you can tell that you're not drinking alcohol. And I drank something, and it's like this is this is alcohol. I know that, I know that taste. And then I we finally got to the bottom of it through Google Translate, and like, yeah, it was brandy. And they like didn't consider brandy to be alcohol, where we were. Brandy's alcohol. Yep. So that's a little life hack for you. If you want to know the name of the restaurant, they'll serve it right up. You can trick people. It's gonna be, yeah, you you have to really want it though, because you got to go to Columbia for it. But I think that's the that was the best way to sort of calm people's nerves was just say, I got my reps in. I don't have anything against it per se. I got my reps in, been there, done that. I think that was one of the reasons why it was so easy to like discredit our parents for their decision not to drink and be like, well, yeah, that's not gonna work for me, was because they never did. Yeah, never really did it. And anytime they were like, oh, well, drinking's bad, don't drink. I was always like, Well, you don't actually know. Yeah, what do you know? You actually don't know that. And that's true. They don't. They've never done it. True. So it was very easy for me to say, I uh agree to disagree because you do not have that experience. I do think I would have taken the advice a little more seriously if they ever had. Yeah, and whatever, whatever conversations I have with my kids when we're having those conversations very alcohol, it's gonna be a much different conversation because I mean, unfortunately, my kids were of the age where I bet they could think back and identify some times where dad had too much to drink. And that's unfortunate. It really is. I it it bums me out, it makes me really sad to think about that. But I do think it could be a good thing in the conversations that we're inevitably going to have down the road as they're growing up about alcohol and why it's not a bad thing as a whole, but why it can turn into something that becomes a problem, just depending on who you are, your relationship with it, your patterns and your rhythms surrounding it, it can turn into a problem. Why we're even talking about this on appointment only is because there are so many parallels that making a transition like this has to business. Now, I did mention we didn't just decide to quit drinking. We decided that, well, you know, we're not going to happy hours. So now what are we going to do? Let's get healthy, let's go to the gym, let's get serious about our uh, let's get serious about our health. And that's exactly what we did. And because we were so far in the other direction, it really didn't take long before we started. They always say you feel it first, and then you see it, and then other people see it, as far as when you start to, you know, drop pounds. First, you'll feel it in your clothes. It was like a week before your pants were falling down. Remember that? We were in Buffalo visiting a friend, and I remember calling him right after I had made the decision to stop drinking because close friend of ours, his name is Mark. Mark, if you're listening, you know who you are. But I remember calling him and telling him, like, hey, listen, man, like the trip's gonna look a little bit different. I don't drink anymore. And he was like through the moon. He was so happy for for both of us. And he was just awesome. And it was like the first person. I think I maybe told a couple, I think I told a couple of our other really close friends right away. We were just about to see Mark. And so I told him he was awesome. And it was in that he lived in Buffalo, and we were in Buffalo, and my pants were like you needed, you missed that beer bloat. The beer bloat was keeping your pants up. I I it was it happened so fast. And I remember driving around all over looking for a store that sold suspenders because we were still quite poorly, so the suspenders were the move. Like the like I'm wearing suspend suspenders to functionally keep my pants from hitting my ankles. Yeah, it was wild. I remember you could you could hardly keep them up. Photos in the show notes, by the way, of uh it's sad. Yeah, think about that. I don't have a lot of photos of us at our peak because I wasn't feeling comfortable to take photos. So there's there's a there are a few photos of us at our peak weight, but you can see the difference. It's quite quite shocking. But I do remember, yeah, Mark was great, Steven was great. I remember we talked with Kingford about it. Everyone we told was so overwhelmingly thrilled for us. There wasn't a single person that was like, oh man, oh, I'm gonna miss grabbing a beer with you. No, everybody was totally on board and super supportive. And I remember feeling the love in such strong ways that I'd never felt in that. And you know, it's one of those things where you really, you really end up experiencing the people who love and support you in a much different way, too. Because most people, you you don't owe the conversation, you know, right? You don't have a tight enough circle where you owe anybody an explanation, really, at all. No. And and you know, most people you know in general in life never need to know. And by the time you're seeing them again, they're like, you know, whatever. Oh, oh, you okay, they're not drinking, no big deal. Well, and the way that life goes is like most of the people in my in my active orbit right now never knew me then. Just uh in the the life that we live in like the the people that we know from from kids' sports or from school events or from other things, it's like they never knew me then. And that's just this is who I am, it's who I've always been because it's been so many years at this point. But yeah, I I remember experiencing that too. I remember you know telling our close friend Michael probably right away, probably next morning, right after I called him right after you hung up the phone with me. Probably, and he was amazing, and you know, it's one of those things where looking back, it's like we should have done that sooner, but we didn't. And that's that's what appointment on only pot is is things we wish we would have had so that we could have done things differently sooner than we did to have a different result much sooner. So, aside from the lines on the road coming into focus, let's talk about the other things that came into focus as we were transitioning and leaving that in the past and moving forward. Like I said, the the body transformations were happening pretty quick. We we signed on with a personal trainer and we're working with him a couple days a week at the at that time. We also were uh actually pretty slow at work, so we were doing a lot of walking and we were experiencing major weight loss quick. And it didn't take long before people started to notice. You know, we're posting selfies again of ourselves as far as like, you know, oh, we're it's I remember it was pretty quickly that we ended up going to uh our trade show in New York. So there's a lot of photos that are taken at that. So we're posting pictures of ourselves, and these all sorts of people are reaching out, like, what are you doing? Tell me what you're doing. Oh my gosh, you look great. Uh tell me, tell me a secret. And I remember at that point, at first it was it was cool and I was excited to share, but it was also a little overwhelming because I'm like, well, okay, here if you really want to know, I quit drinking. I don't eat any carbs, I'm only eating protein and vegetables. I'm working with a personal trainer, I'm walking 10 miles a day, and uh literally everything in my life is completely different. So if you're interested in that sort of a quick fix, you've come to the right point. I can tell you the secret, but you're not gonna do it. And then I I seriously started saying that. Like, uh, I mean, I can tell you, but I unless you're willing to change everything about your life, it's not gonna happen. And it was at that point that I remembered the lesson that I learned really, really early on in business, which was people are all talk. And most of the time, people aren't gonna do the hard work. They're not gonna actually follow through, no matter how bad they want the result. Most people just do not have the follow-through to do something like that. And it just is what it is. It is what it is, and there's nothing, it's not that those people are bad. It's just many people lack follow through, and many people get bored with doing something the right way over and over and over again because we're so accustomed to a quick result or a quick fix or a cheat code. And that's where I'm actually really glad Ozempik didn't exist because I don't know that we could have afforded to use it. Right. But also I think everyone would have just assumed that that's what we did when we didn't do it. But speaking in terms of business, the same exact principles apply when you're seeking out a different result. If you want something different than what you currently have, it means doing something in the right way and fine-tuning it and doing it over and over and over, saying no to that type of client that you're trying to eliminate over and over and over until pretty soon your business is unrecognizable from what it was. And the changes that you make, they need to be real. I remember before we actually quit drinking, it was all sorts of we would make little rules for ourselves about, oh, I know how I'll keep it in check. Like I said, the whole 30 at one point, you know, that was one way that we would keep it in check. The other was, oh, well, I won't have uh what was your rule about no brown in town. No brown in town, no brown liquor if you were at home. But when we were like traveling for work, you could have brown liquor, right? If you were driving. Yeah, yeah. So it was different, or you know, I'm not gonna have any. I love gin. Oh man, gin. So here's the thing about gin. I I discovered that way too late. I also realized, like after we were done drinking, that brown alcohol is a downer, where tequila is an upper. And it's like, I don't know why. Like when I was like wanting to enjoy like like truly like a nightcap when we're like out for out for work. I don't know why I would go for the brown alcohol because it would just like make me fall asleep and get me grumpy. Yeah. I should have been going for like some sort of a tequila thing. Yes, you should have. Big mistake. That was probably the biggest mistake you made in that stage of life. I think so. I think that was the biggest one you made. No, I love gin. I love the taste, I love everything about it. It was the first hard liquor that I ever liked. You know how you have to be pretty committed to the craft. The first hard liquor I ever liked was rum. And I wouldn't say I liked it. It was like like plugging my nose. I could not, I never could do rum. I just, I do not understand what people like about it. I can't stand it's it's very it always because it with rum and coke. Yeah, it would taste. It tasted like vanilla coke, which I also never liked. True. But ugh, I never liked that. Gin, on the other hand, I loved the pininess. I loved there were some gins like I think this Somalier. I think uh Nilettes is is it and it's more of like a florally gin, but uh you know, a paper plain. I love a gin cocktail. But paper plain isn't gin. Really? What is a paper plain? That's what I would get sometimes at the outsider in Milwaukee. You liked the I think it is gin. All right. Why don't you go ahead and look that up? But I loved gin, that was always my drink of choice. Nothing better than a gin and juice, gin and tonic, gin and anything. I'm on board, but uh I don't even remember why I'm talking about this. Oh, we'd make rules for ourselves and we would try to make bourbon, bourbon, aprol, lemon juice. Yes, it's it's that was like that was my cocktail profile of choice. It was like a a brown with citrus. Is there a drink called Aviation? Is that a gin drink? That's a gin brand. That's a gin. Ryan Reynolds, who we walked past in New York. We did Ryan, if you're listening, Ryan, thank you so much for looking straight ahead and not saying hello. He was with his daughter, and you know what you're hearing about Ryan Reynolds these days. I was just thinking to myself, no way is he gonna be friendly. So we just kept walking. But yeah, here's a here's a paper plane. Bourbon, Aperol, Amaro, Nanino, fresh lemon juice, lemon twist, and orange twist for garnish. That was my cocktail profile at those, because this was also like the the era where like mixologists were they were they were new-ish on the scene and like this this whole idea of like, don't don't order a drink. You tell me what you like and I'll make you a drink. But I remember the paper plane was uh was my drink of choice up in uh at the outsider in Milwaukee, a favorite bar. Like I said, we got our reps in, but I I don't remember why. I was just talking about the fact that we would make little rules and we would try to make like little tweaks. But when you make little tweaks, you're not gonna see big change. And you really do have to be willing and open to making big changes if you want to see a different result. I mean, it's it's very, very basic stuff. And and and you're living for the exception, you're always focused on the exception. And this is one of the things that we found in our coaching business is we talk about getting this result, catering your business to this clientele, making X number of dollars, whatever the result is. And we talk about the path to get there and the plan forward. And one thing that we hear often is well, actually, I do it like this, but how can I still get that result? To which we respond, You can't. I don't think you can. At least not in our experience. And and I'm not in any way saying there's only one way to do anything. But when you're living for the exception and you always want to know, well, like when when can I when can I make an exception? Or when when can I say yes to this client that I know I should say no to, because this client is a poison to my business, or this type of lead isn't even worth entertaining. But when can I entertain it? And when can I, you know, get involved with that type of thing? It's like you can't. But when you practice the same thing over and over and over and over again, and that becomes your new identity. If you want to make that exception, sure, but you're not gonna want to. It's just like I could go right now. Uh-huh. I could go to the bar, I am capable now of having one beer and calling it good. Don't you think we should give it a try? Let's do it. Let's go. Can you imagine? I actually have nightmares about that. Where like I did that and I gave it a try. And then guess what? I that guess what I did next. I had another one. And then I had another one after that. I have I have nightmares like that too. And then I wake up and I'm like, oh. I know I'm so relieved. But that's actually perfect because that's the other another very huge eye-opening lesson that was came completely into focus through this was the idea of making exceptions, because we we ended up from peak weight to peak weight loss, which you know how it how it goes when you like you drop all the weight. Then you then you build it back up a little bit and your body settles at some point. But peak to peak, peak to valley, I guess, we each lost a hundred pounds, over a hundred pounds each. So we had quite the transformation, both of us. And one thing that was true of that time was we were not really making exceptions. We could have made more exceptions. Oh, absolutely. But I tell this to the people that we work with when we're coaching, the the answer to, well, when can I make an exception for this thing or that thing? Well, it you have to string enough days, weeks, months, years together with keeping everything in alignment and your boundaries high. And then at some point, when it actually is an exception, that's when you can make an exception. I mean, you remember how how long it took before we had a donut. Right. Because we were, like I said, we did completely the opposite direction of a swing where it was very lean protein and vegetables. And it was because we were also kind of like we we had a bit of a um mindfuck for lack of a better word from whole 30. Oh, I that's the only word to use for for whole 30. And it really screwed up our mental understanding of food and nutrition because in whole 30, you're not even allowed to have rice or grains or like honey, uh, peanut butter. There are things that are totally fine for you that are actually really important to have if you're eating balanced that you're not allowed to have on whole 30. Like we said, you know, we we did whole 30 at that time. It is not a good strategy. I do not recommend doing it. But we had like this very complex mental hurdle to overcome with what was or wasn't good. And it was, it took us a long time before we even felt comfortable eating, you know, carbs like rice. I remember when our trainer Austin was trying to get us into muscle building mode out of fat loss mode. And he he was like, guys, you're gonna start having oatmeal in the mornings. And we were like, oh yeah, you can't have oats on whole 30. I know. We're like, oh no, what did we do wrong? We're like, I don't think we should do oatmeal because and and you know, him kind of explaining, like, well, you know, things that are common knowledge now about how your body needs carbs to use as fuel and yada yada yada. But it was just like such a foreign concept where like this is such a no-no in this old my only recollection of what healthy eating looked like being the whole 30. And then I'm getting prescribed this from an expert and it feeling so weird. That was another thing that we learned business-wise. Trust the process, trust the expert. Exactly. Is there are people who are great at things that you have no idea about. And as a business owner, we are so accustomed to to being trying to be the expert in so many different things in our business. I'm the this expert. Well, even if even if you are running a business and or and you know you're not excellent or expert level at these things, there is a there is a need to sort of rise to the occasion and wear all those hats, even if you know you're not awesome at them. But I do think that is something that business owners especially struggle with is getting to the point where you're you feel comfortable delegating those things and allowing other people in and acknowledging that there are people out there that are doing these things much better than you. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. There's another lesson that we learned from my mom very early on. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. And that goes for business and it goes for all sorts of different things. But that's that's a huge lesson. And the idea that there's an expert out there who actually might know a thing or two more than you do, and actually being willing to trust them and listen to them and pay them and pay them for that and follow through with what they're telling you instead of going, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but. And the other thing that I think is a really valuable lesson in in relation to paying and trusting the expert and following the expert's process is you have to be willing to do it though. Yeah. And that's I think the thing that I I found a lot of like frustration with in all of the DMs. Tell me, tell me the work, give me the workout plan. What are you eating? Yeah, give me the give me the food plan. What how many grams of protein are you eating? And all of this stuff. How many miles a day are you walking? And it's like I I can tell you, but I can also guarantee you you're not gonna do it. And it's not like everybody is all talk, but most people are. I can't think of one person who asked me what I was up to then that I told and they actually did it and saw results. Right. But that's the thing as as a business owner, is it's uncomfortable doing something differently or doing something in a way that maybe is different than how you would normally do it. But the end result oftentimes is much better, and much better than you could have, you know, even imagine that it could be. There are so many, there are so many parallels with doing something like that, and then you look at it in terms of business. And everyone always asks us, like when we especially when we could quit drinking and we were telling people, oh, well, I bet you know that's a lot less expensive. Nope. No, it's because eating healthier is more expensive than drinking alcohol. Oh, I bet you're so much more uh efficient. Nope. No, because we would write all of our emails and get caught up on everything sitting at the bar. Because, like Kenny said, like we were very functional. It's not like we were going to the bar and getting getting wasted and not doing anything. Like it, that that was our rhythm, our rhythm. Them was like we're at we're at the bar and we're working and we're doing these things. This is the time that we have set aside, yeah, to cram or clunk through all these like clunky things in our business. We would, and we would be sitting at happy hour at the bar, phones on, we'd be writing emails, we'd be getting it back to people. And these days in our business, just the way the rhythm works, we do all of our catch up in the morning, and then anything that accumulates throughout the day, we we try to keep up with throughout the day. But if we don't manage to hit it, we don't get to it till the next the next morning at the earliest. And there's just a lot more things that have a tendency to fall through the cracks because we don't end up sitting together at the end of the day with nothing to do except for sip a beer and write emails. So our lives are actually worse. Actually, well, it's we should go to the bar. Do you want to go to the bar? But the the things that we loved so much about drinking, it it had nothing. I looking back, I can confidently say it had nothing to do with, maybe not nothing, but very little to do with like the way alcohol made us feel. And it had much more to do about like, here is our rhythm that we do things. And even these bars I mentioned in my paper plane was was the drink at the art outsider in Milwaukee. It I just loved sitting at that place. I loved the vibe, I loved the atmosphere. And now when we travel for work, we still go to many of the exact same places. Our drink order is a little bit different, but we drink Heineken Zero's, we drink mocktails, and it's like I I just liked that rhythm. And I don't think we realized that we could have that rhythm without actually drinking alcohol, but we can. And we're much better off for it. And by the way, I think that Heineken Zero is the best NA beer out there. I was just gonna say, I think like just in order of or in the interest of is is have we talked about this? I don't remember if we have, but uh, we are looking actively for Lago Needas to sponsor the podcast, the Hopy Refresher. If anybody knows anybody, I it is here's another uh business tip for you. When you want something, you ask specifically for something so that if that hits home, talking about niching down, if that hits home with anybody niching or is it niching? I think it's either. Let us know. Appointment only pod on Instagram. Shoot us a DM if you know definitively the way that we're supposed to pronounce niche or niche. And how on earth will they will they do that? They'll have to spell it like they say it. Get creative. Get creative. You call that a pronouncer in the broadcasting business where you write a word so incorrectly that you say it right? We're not looking for just any hop water. No. In fact, get the hell out of here with your other hop waters because I've had some nasty ones that taste like ass. We want this. The hope refresher from La Gunitas is the best on the market, and it's not even close. I don't like any of those other ones that taste like skunk. These ones are so good. They're citrusy, they're delicious, they're refreshing, and uh you they also taste better out of a bottle, but it's a little bit harder and way more complicated to get them out of the bottle because they come in four packs. Four packs. Do you know how many four packs I have to buy if I'm gonna stock my fridge? And then I have to carry. It's just it's it's actually not even worth buying them. I drink cans at home just because it's easier. And at work, I drink the bottles, but that's what we're looking for for a sponsor. We're we're looking for something we can get behind. And we are fully behind and have been behind. This is going off the rails. We're we're we're loving Laganitas from behind. Um that's that's where I was like, uh-oh, I better clean this up. Yeah, this on yeah, we got to clean this up. Uh, but here's the deal. For us, it was it was drinking and everything that was unhealthy about that. It just also so happens that we're in a business where we have to wear custom clothes, we have to look good, we are our own marketing, or where it's a very visual business. And the fact that we were not able to keep our bodies and weight in check was not helpful. But this is another business lesson. There are things out there that are not serving you, whether that be substance, whether that be personal things that are not serving you, relational things that are not serving you, people in your organization who are not serving you, clients, clients that aren't serving you well. That's where my mind went. My mind price points. Yes, my mind immediately went to there are clients that are not serving your business well. Price points, things you offer. A lot, a lot of you running businesses are probably selling things or uh offering things that actually you're not really making very much money on, or you know, whatever. Here's here's a little I'll let you finish, but we can't wait. If you're if you're in a business where you sell things, what's that thing that you hope your customer doesn't buy? Stop selling that thing. Yeah, that's a good point. It's not more complicated than that. I yeah. I mean, that was You're the business owner. Seriously. Remember when we did that? Yes. We would like every time someone bought this this one level of stuff of suit, we would just be like, oh man, I wish they'd stopped doing that. Yeah, guess whose fault it is that they're buying this? It's ours. It's mine because we're selling it and we're showing it. What are we thinking? We're the boss, we can change it, and so are you. So if there's something where it's not serving you, whether it's like really bad for you, like we were experiencing, or whether it's just inconvenient or annoying, you don't need to keep that around. In fact, I would strongly advise you don't even need to phase it out. We talk about this in in in our coaching a lot where people are there's they're so hesitant to make changes because they they think they need a an off ramp, an exit ramp. They need to slowly fade, they need to let all their clients know before they're gonna. It's often price point related. Yeah, raising their prices, eliminating something. But you really don't need to draw like drag it out. You don't need to give people heads up, you don't need to do a last call, you don't need to give them advanced notice. Just do it, just make the change and people will figure it out. Yeah. And that's that's one of the things that we found in our time with alcohol is we didn't need to off-ramp it, slowly taper it down. And that's I mean, I think that was probably one of the best things that could have happened in the way that we we did it, where I didn't know that it was my last night drinking. It was my last night drinking. And when you called me the next morning and it was like, okay, I guess that was it. If I would have known that was my last night drinking, you might not be alive anytime. I probably never would have quit that evening. That would have been a long ass night. That would have been a very, very long night and a nasty hangover. But I woke up feeling fine because I didn't think it was my last time, and then it was, and that's it, and it's over, and you move on, you move forward. Here's here's the another interesting thing, and this is maybe ne neither here nor there, but I oftentimes will will watch videos that come up in my my feed about being sober and that the hangover is never worth the evening before, which I you know I agree with in in some capacity. Um but I remember feeling like in in New York, whenever we were there, and I was like so exhausted. I remember thinking, well, yeah, it's because we were out late drinking. And I feel that same way now, totally sober. Yeah, I don't actually think it happens. I think it's just the I think it's just the the you're out late, you're active, you're you're out and about, you're walking a long time, you're you're active. I mean, the city that never sleeps, ever heard of it? Yeah, she never sleeps, she never sleeps, but I I do like there are certain things where looking back, it's like, oh yeah, alcohol, I'm so glad that that's gone. And then there are other things where it's like, oh, interesting. I remember feeling like, oh, I probably feel this way because of the alcohol. And yeah, it turns out I'm just really tired. It turns out I'm just really old and really tired. I'm just old. I'm just an old guy mad. And heartburn is another thing. Oh, yeah. I used to blame it on alcohol, blame it on the goose, you know, but it's not about that. It's actually just about pizza grease. If I have a late night slice of pizza, I'm going to have heartburn. Yeah. It's just one, it's you can't blame everything. Not everything is a scapegoat, and alcohol is to blame for a lot of things, but it turns out it wasn't the only thing to blame. And not everything is a business lesson. And that's certainly not one, but there are a lot of parallels to be drawn from, at least that we've been able to draw, from our journey in quitting alcohol, our life after. What does life look like after that? And if you listen to the first episode, you also heard that coming out of the pandemic was when our revenues tripled and our profits quadrupled in our business. You know, that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the fact that we quit drinking. It's just an interesting coincidence and the timing is interesting and it's worth pointing out. But uh it's, you know, it's one of those things where had we not quit drinking, there is absolutely no way to know what would have happened. And there's no way to know. And it and it's also not not like we quit drinking and immediately profits tripled or profits quadrupled, business tripled. There was the 2020 year in between. I mean, let's not forget about that. So it's not like it happened, it didn't feel like it happened fast. It felt like we were, you know, doing the same things over and over and over and over and changing our, you know, who we're after as a business, clientele-wise, changing, you know, what's the positioning of our business, doing these things really intentionally. And then about a year later is when we experience that. So here's how we want to end a lot of these episodes. We we want to hear from you. We want, we want you to tell us how to end. And the way we're gonna do that is by accepting your DMs and your questions. And we want you to to DM us appointment only pod on Instagram, your business questions. And I guess it doesn't have to only be business. I guess it could be anything, but uh, this is a business podcast, and we are gonna highly, highly recommend that they have something to do with business. We would love to speak directly to you and be able to answer a specific question you have, whether it be about your specific business or your price points or your business partner, maybe you're having issues with staffing or some issue with a customer or a client or whatever it is, we want to hear from you. What do you want to know? Like, what can we help you with? Because ultimately that's what this is. Like we said in our first episode, this podcast, Appointment Only, is the podcast that we wish we would have had. And I also just on a personal note want to say if I would have heard a podcast like this, where somebody was talking about the impact that quitting drinking had on them and that life goes on and that they were able to actually find more enjoyment out of life and business and more success, and that it actually didn't have, you know, as negative an impact on their overall health, like happiness, I think that probably would have been really good for me to hear. And I I was gonna say, because we obviously didn't tee this up ahead of time. Let me just answer a question that an entrepreneur out there may have, which is because we we very much, when we were actively drinking, we very much associated that activity with our business. Because one of the things that we love the most is going out with our vendors and the social things that we get to experience with people who help us do our job really well and and getting taken out when we go to Chicago with the people who provide us with certain things. And very much those those experiences were linked with alcohol. And a question you may have if you're debating quitting drinking or wondering if you maybe should is will this have a negative impact on my business given what I do for work? Maybe you're a consultant and your job is to take other people out. That's super common. I can tell you right now, definitively, the answer is no, it will not have a negative impact. And I think you will be surprised at how few, if any, of the people who know you as a drinker will uh feel weirded out by you not being a drinker. That was just not our experience. And maybe it has something to do with the the people that we have surrounded ourselves with. I mean, amazing, amazing people that help us do our job really well. But even some of the people where I was like, oh, I wonder if they're gonna like be a little more hesitant to take us out now because they're, you know, want to distance themselves. Nope. Just didn't experience that. We still go to the same places, we still enjoy all the same things, our drink orders are different, but they're still picking up the tab, and it's still so much fun. You know what's not as much fun though? Karaoke afterwards. Oh man, karaoke. Let's well, we've tried it, we have given it a go. It's just not as fun. That's the downside. If you're looking for a downside to stop drinking, it's the only thing karaoke won't be as much fun anymore. The only thing that is that is a negative impact having quit drinking is Stacy's mom on karaoke. Sorry, karaoke bars, you don't get to hear it anymore. Yeah, they've seen The Last of Us, that's for sure. Well, we got into a lot today, and I I I'm hopeful that maybe this is helpful, inspiring, or just at least informational, or just interesting. Educational, yeah, just interesting. Something to keep you company. Maybe you were on a long drive and you're like, oh, thanks. Pass the time a little bit. Uh, but for those of you looking for a no-alcohol alternative, this is not an all, this is this drink here, the Lagonitas is not an alternative to beer. It doesn't taste anything like it's not even close. Heineken Zero, on the other hand, and I will I should point out too, Stella Zero and Corona Zero are also very good. They're not as good as Heineken Zero, but those are also great dupes. So that would be my recommendation for you. But amazing the things you learn about yourself and about your business when you actually follow through with changes that are a long time coming. You know that you need to make those changes. And when you finally do, you're never saying, Oh, I wish I wouldn't have done that. You're saying, I wish I wouldn't have waited as long to do that. Hit us up with your questions, uh appointment only pod on Instagram, and we will catch you next time for your next appointment. Don't feel nervous or hesitant to give us a five-star rating. Oh, yes, please, yes, please continue. Please don't feel like you can't do that. We sure, we sure don't want you to feel like you're not allowed to give us a five-star rating because that is the opposite of what we want you to do. We want you to give us that five-star, but only that five star. We're not begging, we're demanding. Ain't too proud to beg. Ain't too proud to beg. Five-star and rate and review, please, please, please. It's helpful for us. It's helpful for the pod. It's helpful for people looking for a podcast like this. Uh, the more rates and reviews we get, the more the algorithms, the almighty algorithms will push this to whoever. I don't know how it works. And if you don't rate us a five-star review us, we are gonna start drinking again. I'm just gonna throw it out there. Do you really want that on your conscience? Didn't think so. And it will be your fault, okay? That's all I'm gonna say about that. I'm not saying it might be your fault, I'm saying it absolutely. Can I pay my beer tab in my sobriety coin? Do you do you take one star? Just something to think about. And that's that. Today's appointment is over. This has been appointment only. Your time is valuable, and we're very appreciative of you spending some of it with us. Thanks for showing up. Thanks for being on time, thanks for being receptive to what we have to say. And if you have a question you'd like us to answer here on appointment only, please shoot us a DM. We would love to hear from you. We would also appreciate a five star review. 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