Kathi
Hey, my friend, what is up? And welcome back to another episode of Do Life Big. I'm so excited to have you here today, because today we have Colleen on the show. Hey Colleen.
Colleen
Hey Kathi, thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk to you and your audience.
Kathi
Oh my god, I couldn't wait to get you on the show. I have been eagerly waiting for the countdown. I'm like, yeah, she's on the show. So why don't you start out by just telling us who you are and who you help, what you do.
Colleen
So I am Colleen Freeland Kachman. Can't really decide what my name is right now, because I went through divorce, so I'm working on that. So if I can't get past that first question, this is going to be a tough interview. So I'm Colleen, and I am an intuitive drinking coach, which means I teach high achieving, coachable women who need to reduce their alcohol consumption by 80% so that they can get out of their own way. You know, we all have the thing that we know is holding us back. And I have a PhD in holding myself back with alcohol. I drink every single day for 15 years. Was a heavy daily drinker. And then, you know, of course, decided that I was worth more, I deserved more, and that I wasn't gonna, I wasn't going to let this life go by where I'm pretending to be fine. You know, I used alcohol as a coping mechanism. I had four of my own kids, three step kids, and I taught Hot Power Yoga and ran marathons, and I did all the things for all the people, and I was perfect at all times.
And the only way I could manage the completely unrealistic expectations that I put on myself and signed up for on the committee was to have something that allowed me to keep going and ignore my own needs. I always say I traded my opinions for drink tickets. You know, it's like by the by the time I managed seven kids and not one, but two husbands, of those children, you know, who were always telling me everything that was wrong and I needed to do. I just basically was like, Fine, I'll do all that. Pour me a double and by the end of the day, you know, I was very high functioning. I didn't drink and drive. I didn't, you know, oversleep. You know, I was teaching hot power yoga at 7am you know, so I but I was consuming large amounts of alcohol and just lost myself. That's the thing with alcohol use disorder, is it corrodes you from the inside, because you have to project an identity and a version of you that more and more you're like, I'm not who I say I am, I'm full of shit.
And so this disconnect in your own relationship gets to the point where I couldn't be alone, you know, I didn't have a lot of time for myself. But when the garage door closed and the last kid was going to be gone for, you know, an evening, I'm pouring vodka down my throat like it's an IV and passing out within an hour or two, because I did not know how to sit in stillness. I did not know how to be with myself. I did not know how to do anything but operate on 100 miles per hour at all times. And so it was now. I can see dysregulated nervous system. I can see, you know, a perfectionistic black or white mindset. I can see self-neglect and when I work with clients now that's the missing piece that everybody's like, well, what is this self-care thing? Like? I don't even understand. Like, for me, I would have told you I have self-care. My highlights were always fresh. My makeup was perfect. My ass is a size too. Oh, I'm pretty sure. And my house looks good. My bills are paid like what else do you want from me world? And I had no idea that self-care was actually about your inner dialog and your relationship with your own emotions. And so, I always said I was kind of like a shark. I'm moving real fast, and if I stop moving, I die.
And that's why I needed the alcohol. Alcohol was my medicine for a long time, which is why there's no shame, because everybody's got some sort of medicine. But what happened with me Kathi, is that I did what women that I work with now do. I fought it forever because I thought if I raised my hand and said I have a drinking problem, then I'm going to lose custody of my kids. I'm going to lose my job. Nobody's going to trust me with their kids, like my whole life is going to fall apart, and I have to admit an alcoholic, go directly to AA, do not pass go. Do not collect $200 pick up a copy of The Big Book, sign up for a sponsor and start making that list of amends that we know alcoholics should make, and apologizing to everybody you've ever known in your whole life for being such a drunk asshole. And I didn't want to do that. So I resisted that, you know, and that is the auto immune disorder of emotions is shame and fear, and so I allowed those emotions to drive me until I literally could not keep going one more day.
I woke up about four weeks into COVID, five years ago now, and said the only thing worse than the idea of quitting drinking is the idea of not quitting like I cannot keep doing this the stress I broke. I just broke. I could not continue to perform with the charade anymore, and I knew I needed something. And so I did what most people do at that point, because they only think there's one of two options. You're either a normal drinker or you're an alcoholic, right? If you're a normal drinker, cheers, knock yourself out. Yeah. And if you're an alcoholic, then you know it's this disease model. So I went to AA, and I adopted the identity of being a sober alcoholic in recovery. And I did that for 18 months. And I gotta say, if you need to have an all or nothing mindset when it comes to alcohol, for sure, the nothing mindset rocks. I got the alcohol free T-shirts, or the alcohol or, what is it, sober as fuck T shirts, and I really adopted the identity. But what happened is, 18 months into that story, I discovered that I was more anxious and more depressed than I'd ever been in my life.
Once the lack of alcohol normalized, you know, my body healed, my cortisol levels came down. I was sleeping, the same problems that caused the need to escape myself were still there. It was my mindset. It was it was the games I was playing, the rules I was following, the unspoken agreements and the lack of boundaries. And so by quitting and staying perfectly sober, I had just upped the ante on my own expectations of me being perfect for everybody else all the time, and so through a series of events, we you can ask me more, but basically, I woke up one day and realized, oh, shit, this is another story. This is a matrix of, if you will, where I'm seeing myself, and the only reason I'm not having a glass of wine with someone is because I've decided I can't trust myself, and this fear that I'm going to slip down back into slipper slope, or there's some angry addiction monster that's going to come out and, you know, put me into a ditch. You know, one drink is a relapse, and I'm going to go all the way back, which, if you study the science that's not even possible, like the neuroscience shows that you know your brain is always changing within six months of changing your habits. Within one year, the prefrontal cortex, the gray matter, is denser after you overcome an addiction, not less. So this idea that once an addict, always an addict, is complete bullshit.
So once I realized I was living in a story, and then also decided I was no longer going to identify that way, and therefore I was free to have a glass of wine. Then I had to go through the process where sobriety doesn't teach you how to drink in moderation, right? And so all of those thinking processes and the fears came back, and I got to observe myself going through that process. By then, I was already coaching as a sober coach, and my a lot of my clients were moderating, and so I was coaching them through that. So basically, my program just co evolved between my clients, what they said they wanted, which is valid, you know, all the other programs out there, the goal is decided for you, that you're going to be sober and that if you want to drink, the problem is that you want to drink because alcohol is a poison, and you should not ever want to drink again. Yeah. Well, everything's poison. Lunch red diet is poison, you know. So this idea that there's something wrong with you because you want to participate in a social ritual, you know, or, God forbid, call it a drug. It's a drug you want to use a drug to help you relax, just like you would any other drug. Then there's something wrong with you. That's where I stepped into my own power and was like, what if every person is perfectly capable of deciding what they need and what they want, and it's always changing. And it's not alcohol or the relationship with alcohol that needs to change, it's your relationship with yourself and your commitment to taking care of yourself and honoring where you're at in any given moment. So that's the long story of how I got here.
Kathi
No, that's so good. Oh, my God, that is so crazy. I have I wrote down so many questions as you were going. But so if you flash back now to you know that five years ago, like, two weeks into COVID, when you made this decision, did you lose a lot of friends? Like, did you have to avoid being around people that were drinking when you were going to AA, like, what did that look like, relationship wise? Like did? Was that hard?
Colleen
Well, the fact that it was in COVID was a little bit of a hall pass, yeah, because I didn't have to make any big announcements, nobody could see my behavior change. And everybody's different, right? I very quickly decided, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. I have a long history and skill set of being an extremist. I have been a hardcore vegan. I have been a marathon runner; I have been a workout addict. And, you know, I teach boot camp and marathons and personal training, and I lift weights, so I knew I had the skill of stepping into an identity. So, on the first day.
Kathi
Yeah, very disciplined.
Colleen
Yes, on the first day that I decided I wasn't drinking, I still walked my ass across the street to the bonfire with my girlfriends who were drinking and didn't drink. Now, I didn't tell them my decision. I didn't tell them that I wasn't drinking. I just brought my Yeti, and everybody assumed it was full of vodka, because that's how I had always rolled. I just didn't say anything. Yeah, it took me about seven or eight months before, let's be honest, I made my first social media post. That's kind of how I came out as sober at the time, and now, like I've created this program where you can just bypass that, that whole sober lifestyle bullshit, you know, like, yeah, so did it change my relationships? Not really, because it was COVID.
Kathi
That's good. That's really good. So when you work with people now and you bring people into your program, what do they say? Are some of the emotions that they're feeling that trigger them to want to drink? Like, I know you said, like, shame. Is there anything else, like, do you see any other common characters, characteristics of those people?
Colleen
Yeah, the so it's all the same. First of all, I want to be clear that when women come into my program, I don't have them stop drinking. In fact, stay away from my 10-day detox like you need to be in my program a couple of months before you engage, because otherwise you're just white knuckling and willpowering your way through a behavior change. And your brain is always learning. And so what you're teaching your brain, you're reinforcing is that sobriety is hard and that you're going to struggle with this. So I have a completely different approach, where your behaviors with alcohol will change very quickly and naturally. As a side effect of you doing more instead of drinking less, you're doing more self care, check ins, awareness work like it's kind of just like two ships passing in the night, your desire to drink goes down as your felt sensation of relaxation and being okay goes up. So to answer your point, the women that come into my program are all high achieving performers who will not slow the fuck down. And so that is, they don't even know what they want. They don't necessarily even have the ability to articulate that they're dealing with shame. They're dealing what they will cop to is perfectionism, maybe people pleasing in bad boundaries.
Otherwise, they are so disconnected from their own emotions, because in order to perform at this high level, you got to unplug your brain from your body, which means you can go hours without even knowing you have to pee. You can go days without even realizing you're pissed off at something you know. You're so unaware of yourself because your framework, your context, is watching yourself to make sure you're performing perfectly and thinking you're managing your thoughts about or what everybody else is thinking, but the hack on that is your thoughts about other people's thoughts are still your thoughts. So what I bring women in to do is they just start listening and decompressing. They just start binging my content. I have over 1500 hours of this sort of thing, where I break it down into one little concept a day, the five minute, check in, you know, changing your inner dialog, stop trying to drink less. And what would you need to be doing more of where the side effect of that would be less alcohol consumption. So we look at lifestyle design and you can't change everything overnight, so the first thing we do is adjust your goddamn expectations. Right? You are not going to change your habit now. You can willpower your way through, but at some point you're going to wake up and you will have done it again, because habits are 95% of your thoughts and your behaviors, and so the more stress and pressure and distractions that you have in your life, the less capable you are of changing within the 5% that you have access to every single day. So the emotions that most women come into my program with are overwhelm, burnout, exhaustion and perfectionism.
Kathi
Wow, that's crazy. So that's really interesting, because I just this is why you intrigued me so much when I saw, like, your whole page and all about, like, reducing the drinking to 80% because everything I've ever heard has been like, well, you've got a drinking problem, so you can never do it again. Just get rid of it totally. So when people come to you, women come to you, to work with you. You actually don't have them stop at all. Like, what's their first step? When people come to you like, what's your very first little tweak that you have them do?
Colleen
We start with mindset work. We start with creating a vision. You know, there's an a blind spot with alcohol use disorder or any other addiction, it's literally a blind spot. You are so focused on the problem, which translates to what you don't want. I don't want to feel like shit. I don't want to wonder what I said last night. I don't want to wake up with a hangover. You're so focused on what you don't want that the whole mental construct of what you do want has atrophied or doesn't exist. Oh, yeah. And so you have to build out those neural pathways for what you do want. And so in the beginning, we look at, you know, where do you want to be one year from now? Most of them cannot answer that question, and I completely understand it, because they're like, I don't know. I hate my husband; I might need to get a divorce. Or, you know, I think I need to get married, or I need to change my career, or I gotta get my kids out of the house like they are so not focused on what they want. So I translate the question, you make it real simple, how do you want to feel? Yeah. So good feel Yeah. And then understanding you have access to that feeling today, right in the middle of a hangover, you can feel clear about something, you can feel confident, you can feel connected, you can feel calm. And so the skills that I teach my women is how to identify the emotional state that they want, and then how to expand their skill of holding and staying connected to that emotional state.
So for example, going to a party, we don't say, Oh, well, I'm only going to have two drinks while I'm there. Who the fuck cares how much you drink? I want to feel connected while I'm there. Because here's the cool thing that the neuroscience shows with the brain. It is designed to get you whatever you think you want. If you tell it what you want, it is going to solve that problem. The problem with alcohol use disorder is you've been telling it what you don't want, and that's what you're manifesting. Oh yeah, don't want. Oh my god, we set positive, emotional goals, which you can do today. It does not require your next college degree, your next promotion, the divorce or the marriage. It doesn't require anything except, I just want to feel that way today. What could cause me to spend more time in those emotions? And so that's the skills we work with. And then we start building out the 3d world for that. You know, if you felt completely confident and capable of doing anything you wanted, what, what would you be doing? Like if you did know, what would you be doing? And then you just start to dream. But in the early days, it's not necessary to overwhelm yourself with big plans, because, as you know, the skill that will allow you to manifest whatever level of wealth and abundance and freedom and happiness and joy is the ability to cultivate those emotions and operate from with inside of them. They're not out there to go get, they're in here to tap into. And so that's the skill that we start with. Is just practicing feeling like, just taking a break from stress for 60 seconds. What? What would that look like?
Kathi
Oh, yeah, that sounds nice.
Colleen
Oh, I know, yeah, yeah, just taking a break from stress. Like, how could I give myself a break for 60 seconds right now and then, feeling that, you know most of the time. I know my day is highly scheduled. I have three minutes between calls. The difference between me and someone else who's struggling. It looks the same from the outside. I got three minutes between calls, but in that three minutes, I am noticing, oh, I have three minutes right now. Oh, that feels so good. Yeah, take it off and just let myself breathe. And other people like, Fuck, I only three minutes. I never have enough time. And this is ridiculous, and I can't keep doing this. And I just, Oh, I hate this. I hate this. Why am I doing this? Like, that's how you're spending your three minutes, right? I'm over here trying to figure out if I can have an orgasm in three minutes.
Kathi
You’re hilarious. You’re so funny! It's all about perspective, right? You can choose one or the other, right?
Colleen
What you do with those three minutes that really counts, my friend.
Kathi
Oh, my God,this is awesome. I am loving this. This is so good. So if we backtrack just a little bit, I'm going all over the place because my notes are out of control right now, like, we probably are going to need to have like, a part two podcast with Colleen. But when you flashback now, you went through the AA for 18 months. At what point were you like, okay, because you do drink occasionally now, right?
Colleen
Oh, yeah, I love to drink.
Kathi
Yeah, exactly. Okay. So, like, at what point were you like, after you went through the 18 months of, like, the AA, you weren't doing any drinking, nothing, blah, blah, blah, at what point were you like, seeing that it really wasn't the alcohol that was the problem and that you really needed to make this inner change, and then, like, what was that like, that first time that you decided to have that first drink after, yeah, sober.
Colleen
So, so I was actually sober almost three years. I was kind of active in an AA lifestyle for about the 18 months. And then, of course, there's a period of transition where you just let go a little bit at a time. You know, you don't wake up and become the person that you want to be like. These changes are slow, so I can look back and see the change, but at the time, you just live in your life. So what happened was, all of a sudden, I was at my brother's, I was at my parents house, and my dad said, hey to my brother, do you want a glass of wine? And my brother said, no, I'm not drinking right now. And as the sober representative of the family, I was like, ooh, ooh, what'd you do? Why are you not drinking right now? Like, did Molly tell you to knock that shit off? Did you get a DUI? You gonna get a divorce? Like, would you do you bad sober boy, welcome sober cloud. And he looked at me like only a brother can look at you like you're the biggest idiot on the planet. Saying no to a glass of wine does not indicate I have a problem with alcohol. It might just indicate that I don't. And I was like, glitch in the matrix, what the hell? And I suddenly saw myself as I'm just living in this story. So, I sat with that for a while. Bottom line is, over the course of a few months, I realized that I wanted to reintroduce alcohol, wait for it, as a professional investment in my clients, to make sure that I understand what they go through. Oh, yeah, I want to be very clear that it was very altruistic to be a better coach, yeah. And so, I came to, first of all, understand why this would be okay. But I thought about it for a while. I used to be an all or nothing person with an addictive personality. If one is good, 20 is better. Order me a case. If one is good, five drinks would be better. And I noticed as I became more connected with myself that I like living in balance. I don't so much like to overdo things, you know, like, one cookie is good, 10 cookies sucks, right? You know, one drug. Or, you know, all of these other addictive substances, like, I get, got rid of coffee kind of on accident. I don't like to, you know, pour caffeine and get myself all jacked up. I went off my pharmaceutical meds. I have a raging case of ADHD. I don't know if that's obvious, but I weaned down off of my Adderall to where I take it when I need the extra support, but I don't need to take it every day. I was a vapor like it was my fucking job, you know, hand to mouth, hand to mouth, and I was able to stop that. And then I've got four adult children. Somebody's always got a vape in their pocket. I can have a little puff and hand it back and enjoy it and not have a thing with it. So I noticed that I had become a less is more person, so that aligned with the mindset of maybe one glass of wine does sound fun, because I had made a commitment to myself. As long as the idea of one glass of wine sounds stupid and like a waste of calories, and I would bother then I'm not going to have it, but suddenly the idea of one glass of wine sounded fun and relaxing, and maybe I could so here's the deal I made for myself. I don't know that this is going to be okay. I can't know that until I experience it. I can't plan for this. What I do know is that I know how to ask for help, and I'm not willing to live like that anymore, right? So if one glass of wine wakes up, you know, the addiction, and I find myself, you know, with a I said, If I ever see a bottle of vodka in your closet, we're done.
But I had changed so much, and that's why I now I teach intuitive drinking. There's 100% chance your body does not enjoy a whole bottle of wine or half a bottle of vodka, right? It's not enjoying itself. And so, I reintroduced the wine, and like I said, that woke up a lot of fears and anxiety. This is why I teach that. You know, going sober, you know, even dry January, for example. You know that's part of the all or nothing cycle. Sobriety is the nothing in the all or nothing cycle. Exactly. All you're doing, if you are not drinking because of past bad behavior, you're trying to make up for that, right? All you're doing is avoiding the shame that is laying dormant there. You didn't process it. You're avoiding it with good behavior, which feels amazing. Two thumbs up, good for you. But at some point, when you pour alcohol or make some other mistake that triggers shame, you're going to have to deal with that. So I knew that I could ask for help, and I knew that it would be okay, even if it wasn't okay. And then I introduced and here we are,
Kathi
Wow. So you just, yeah, so you're just, it's very intuitive. If you want to have a glass and you're out, you will. If you don't, you don't, you don't have to go all the way to the extreme anymore. That's amazing, like, that's incredible.
Colleen
Yeah, I have it when I want it. I you know, only a person you know. I teach my clients as you do. We don't solve problems that don't exist, right? So sitting in a coaching call on a Tuesday, talking about how much you're going to drink on a Friday night would be the definition of a problem that doesn't really exist. Only somebody who thinks they have to think about how much they're going to drink on Friday because they don't trust themselves, or when they go to Italy for their trip, or at the wedding, you know, whatever, only somebody. The problem here is not how much you are going to drink in the future. The problem is, why are we asking that question in this moment. What is the belief that's driving that behavior? What is the emotion that we need to process? What is the new belief that we need to seed and feed and lean into?
Kathi
Wow, so good. So this is like, this is an ongoing process, though. I mean, right? You must constantly and even with your students, right? Like, this is something just like everything else in life, that where they have to practice and keep working on like all the time, right? There's no like end point would you say?
Colleen
No, it's this is the beautiful part of being what I call emotionally sober. That's kind of what I am framing all of the skills that I teach. It's emotional sobriety, it's when you are no longer intoxicated by your own bullshit. You know how to manage your mind. Most people, their thoughts are an attempt to manage their emotions. I need to come up with a plan to make me feel better. I need to get you to say some words to make me feel better. I need to I need to tell myself a story to change the way I feel. I teach No, no, you need to use your mind to or you need to, to learn how to control your emotions, and don't use the tool that is your brain to solve problems in the wrong gear, in the wrong energy, in the wrong mindset.
So, I teach them to go within always, and to learn to drive, if you will, their bodies from the inside out, like how you feel is telling you the quality of your thoughts period the end, like you're either heart open mind open, confident and forward thinking, or you are heart closed, defensive, in pain, struggling, and in that case, you have to process that feeling, but don't solve problems with that mindset.
Kathi
That's right. Yeah. So good, yeah. A lot of I feel like the lot of the stuff that you teach is very similar to what I teach with the like, basically reprogramming of the mind and your thoughts, right? It's everything. It is literally the root cause of everything. It's incredible. So what about have you ever worked with someone, or have you seen someone in the past who, like, doesn't go for help, they don't do the work that you're teaching, and they're just kind of like, holding on, gripping on for dear life, trying to just not drink, yeah, like white knuckling. It is even possible to do that forever?
Colleen
To do what specifically?
Kathi
Literally like never drink again.
Colleen
Oh, of course, there are people that live sober lives, and I would be crazy and wrong to sit here and not admit that part of my journey included a sober period. Sometimes the biggest act of kindness you can take until you figure all this, all or nothing, perfectionism bullshit out is to take the nothing route. Yeah, it is not necessary. Like most women in my program, don't they listen to me, and instead of avoiding the shame and thinking this is about the alcohol and riding high on the false confidence that you get from using your willpower to achieve something you know, there's nothing wrong with that. And if that's your springboard, if that's the shortest distance between point A and point B, there's nothing wrong with that. So, like, whatever you do, if you are moving forward in the right direction, you are, that's how you do it. There's no right answer for everybody. Is it possible to never drink again? Of course, that's what the whole sobriety industry is based on. People who have bought into the belief that they can never drink again. And some it's not even all bad. You know, I see that the mindset that causes someone to make that decision is often based on shame and fear that they can't control themselves. And some people rock that out. We know amazing, powerful, wealthy CEOs who are like, sobriety, humble AA meetings, they're doing the thing like, whatever you do, wherever you do, the work, it can work. It's not the work that works, it's you that works. And so whatever you're willing to work and believe in, then that can work for you. So you absolutely could never drink again. I guess the thing that I would say you have to acknowledge is you don't know if you're going to achieve that till after your bed Exactly. And it's, that's the goal. And, you know, some people are just like, I never want to drink again. Okay? Like, you don't have to. It's not healthy. It there's, no like amount of alcohol that you need. It is a drug, a mind-altering drug, like you don't need alcohol. There's it's not like a food problem, right, where you have to learn how to eat like you don't have to learn how to drink like, take the rest of your life off if you want. It's just acknowledging that. Saying you're taking the rest of your life off is a story. You can change your mind at any time I was hardcore, sober as fuck. Alcohol is a poison, you anybody that drinks it is just unintelligent, you know? And I did that, and it worked for me. It moved me forward, right? And then I woke up one day and went, just kidding, I'm not that sober.
Kathi
It's hilarious. It's so good, though. How do you help determine if someone should be that person who like, Okay, you really should never like drink again, versus no, I think that you can learn through my program. Or do you believe everybody should and could learn.
Colleen
I don't determine that the patient, the person, determines that neuroscience shows that our human brain, it's neuro plastic. You can learn whatever you set your mind to. People can have debilitating strokes and lose part of their brain, and you learn to use a different part of their brain to speak or walk or do certain things. We can train kindergarteners to stop drop and roll when they catch on fire. You can train the brain anything so I do not determine that the person who's saying I'm in pain, what is my next step determines, and research shows that giving people the choice, you know, telling people that this, this intervention thing where your whole family gathers around you and tells you are absolutely out of control, which maybe you are, and you have no choice but to go into a rehab or go like, giving them a choice of how they want to approach their own problem and assuming that they are perfectly capable of solving it, assuming that they're actually doing the best they can with the tools they have, and we're just going to need to get them some better tools, assuming they want that for themselves, and giving them the choice. Science shows that the recovery is so much faster that being said, people who are in relationships with people who are in active addiction that are destroying people's lives, it's your job to take care of yourself and not allow a person to abuse you. You know there is no such thing of well, you're just choosing no you're choosing now. You're choosing to put up with the abuse. You're choosing to allow them to abuse you, you know. And so that's where you know, anybody who's functionally capable of driving a car and going to work and doing these things like you have to assume they're perfectly capable of change if they want to change, and if they're not changing, then it's you that gets to change. Bye, bye.
Kathi
Yeah, it's so true. Oh my gosh, it's so good. So now you've been doing this business for how many years? Is it three years?
Colleen
About four. It's coming up on four that I've been doing it, but I've only been doing intuitive drinking about eight the first 18 months again, where I was selling a sober program, I can help you quit drinking. And I was good at that. I could talk about anybody into quit drinking. Yeah, but it was a 12-week program, and then what? And that's what I was seeing, is my clients were sticking around reintroducing alcohol after they got their 12-week trophy, right? Oh, shit, it's all coming back. That didn't work. Okay, just stick around for a little bit. So that's where I changed it to a yearlong program with the intuitive drinking approach. So, I've been doing this about four years. I've been coaching in the alcohol space.
Kathi
Oh, wow, I love that. Yeah, I mean, it makes total sense. You must, you must be helping so many people. Yeah, I can't even imagine.
Colleen
Yeah, we're doing well, you know, my program is a big commitment. It's, you know, it's a yearlong program, and it's seven day a week, support we we're going to get it like, I guarantee the results of my program, you won't have alcohol use disorder. You do the work, but I provide it's like the domino. All you got to do is push the first domino and say yes, and then I will make sure all those other dominoes fall. We have very high touch support me is there's a lot to work through when you've been drinking and avoiding yourself and designing a life that supports that behavior. There's a lot to there's a lot to do.
Kathi
Oh, yeah. I mean, like, yeah, exactly. I mean, you've lived your entire life with these beliefs and these this way of thinking and feeling, and to crack the code, it's definitely a process. But it can be done. I mean, you're, you're proof of that.
Colleen
Yeah, it can be done right in the middle of the life you have, you know, and that's where, if you are functioning, to where most people don't know you have a problem, except you, maybe your partner, then you are capable of doing my program, because we do it. You don't have to, like, quit your job and go to rehab and spend two hours a day meditating. It's like one minute here, five minutes here, you know, a couple hours a week on a call or something like that. Like, it's very doable to the woman who's sick of her own shit.
Kathi
Right, now what's your take on, like, binge drinking? Yep, like people who just, you know, they might not even drink that often, but when they do, it's, it's like, what you were saying earlier. It's not like, oh, like, just have a couple glasses of wine. It's like, no, that's dumb. When I drink, I'm gonna go from, you know, zero to 100 like, as fast as possible.
Colleen
Yeah, I kind of categorize there's the binge drinker, there's the daily drinker, and then there's the person who's daily drinking qualifies as binge drinking, which was me, which was the both binge drinking, honestly, can be my what I see personally with my clients is that actually can be quicker to address than the person who is daily drinking, because that habit and that coping mechanism, it when it's more episodic, it's a little it's actually a little bit more contained, if you will. It's a little bit more contextual, as opposed to the daily. But you know, it can still be, it's still a thing. But I see that the women who binge drink because between the binges, you can make a lot more progress because you're not drinking every single day. But, you know, my homework can be done with a glass of wine in your hand, like, you know, it's like, wherever you are, let's just move you forward. So I don't really see binge drinking as a problem. It's actually one. It's actually the easier end than, you know, the daily drinking.
Kathi
Yeah, that's good. That's awesome. So you've been doing this now for four years. How would you say, how, like, how does your business look now, compared to how it looked like when you first started? I know you said that at the beginning, it was like, let's just catch you sober. Have you like, changed the model of it at all? Like, what has changed? Like, what does it look like today versus?
Colleen
Well, a lot has changed in that we're we've scaled so, you know, it's, I have eight full time support people, you know, we have onboarding process so that when, and really, I have people doing what I used to do. So not that much has changed. It's just now we have a team. And what I really like about it is, I'm awesome and super fucking smart, but you need to hear from a lot of people. You need different perspectives. One of the most powerful things we introduced in my program is something called accountability groups. And I don't go to those. They are actually client led we provide some training, but it's a space where the women can practice, you know, parenting, what I say, and coaching each other, using their tools. So that aspect, because we have a lot of people in the program, we were able to do small groups within the group, and that has been some of the most powerful work, where they can come to me for the bigger stuff. I call it the hot seat, you know, bring your pillows. We're going to roast you. And then the accountability, the camaraderie, the community, the sharing and the vulnerability, all of that they you get your own group to just practice speaking the language of emotional sobriety, which is a language and is a mindset, and as we know, most of the world is not. You need to create that space where you can speak intelligently about your emotions, about personal responsibility, about your goals. So that's what's changed the most, is that the sheer scope of the program we now have so much more. There's learning lounges where I have somebody that's teaching as opposed to coaching. We have accountability groups. I do Breathworks, not me. I hired somebody to do breathe work sessions every month. And we have, you know, an active community platform where everybody's engaged.
So, the larger program means that, you it's almost like a business networking, you know, because most of my clients are very successful, and, you know, they're they are very good at what they do, and they just all happen to share this one, this one little thing which doesn't become their problem anymore. It becomes what binds them. Alcohol Use Disorder is your teacher. If it wasn't this, it'd be something else, right? You know, bad things lead to better things, and this is just the obstacle you chose to overcome. And of all the obstacles you can get in life, you know, partying your way into a problem is actually, you know, you're pretty damn lucky, right?
Kathi
Oh, I love that. That's awesome. Now, is your program always open for enrollment, or do you only open it up and let people it's always open.
Colleen
It's always open, which is the beauty, because when people come in, they see, can see the life cycle of the change. You know, when they join their accountability group, it's their first day. Not everybody's I don't have a bunch of hot messes on their first day going, I don't even know what to do. And like you, get welcomed in to people. And people are one week, one month, six months, nine months, one year ahead of you. I have a lot of women that come in for the second year, and that's when they become the accountability hosts and stuff. And so, you get to see, oh, just relax, enjoy your glass of wine tonight, do your homework. You're going to be fine. And they get to see that it's going to be okay if they just show up and do the things.
Kathi
Oh, I love that. That's that is so amazing. I love that so much. This is so good. I mean, You must be, like, booming, there must be people you were mentioning that you had an ever, like, a webinar that people can…
Colleen
Oh, I have a private podcast.
Kathi
Oh, I have a private podcast. Yeah, how can people get to that? I'll make sure all that is also on the show notes.
Colleen
Yep, no. I mean, publicly. I mean, you know, social media, you can put me on in the show notes, I'm the “Hangover Whisperer”, and so you can find me on the platforms. And then on my podcast is “It's not about the alcohol”, which I just ramped up to three episodes a week that I'm going to be releasing in 2024. So doing that. And then, yes, I'll give you. I have a link for a private podcast that will tell you all about my program. It will walk you through how I specifically address alcohol use disorder, the biochemistry of addiction, the mindset work. You know, it's multifaceted approach. I have a very multi-disciplinary approach to this. We get to the root cause so that you no longer have alcohol use disorder. I explain all of that. There's, you know, testimonials, where a lot of my clients sent me Voice Memos with their experience. So, we made an episode with testimonials. So, and I talk about the cost and the time commitments and the framework and when the calls are. So, if you are actually interested in working with me, that private, free podcast would be where you start.
Kathi
That's awesome. I love that. Now, before we wrap it up, I just have, like, one or two more quick questions, just because we do have a lot of people too, also listening. Who they are, entrepreneurs. They own their own businesses, whether it's full time or part time. So I do always like to ask, since you've owned your business now for several years, what would you say was the biggest mindset hurdle that you've had to overcome since becoming an entrepreneur?
Colleen
All right? That would be the fear of investing in myself before I have the money or the proof that I'm positive. Last year I lost $110,000 in 2023 I guess it's 2025, right? In 2023 I spent $110,000 more than I made, which is not sustainable, obviously, right, but it's set. But when you look at any large business, when what really shifted for me was, I watched the darn documentary on, I don't know if it was Uber or Spotify, and they had a million dollar burn rate a day. And I was like, what? They're not profitable in the first whatever. And when I saw my business separate from my personal, of course, you have to invest money like the program I've created, we can now scale this into two eight figures. I couldn't have done that if I wasn't willing to invest in coaching programs and consulting consultants that helped me with technology and business. So, the biggest hurdle I had to overcome was the idea that maybe I'm going be successful. And I had to fully commit to doing whatever it took to be successful, including make it happen, so that I can invest money in myself and my business. I had to commit there is a book, if you are listening, that is called 10x is easier than 2x Yes, and that has rocked my world, and I 10x last year. I literally, I more than 10x last year in terms of revenue, and I need to do it again this year. And that book, it just, it's, it clarifies things. So, the mindset that I had to get over was that, you know, that there was any doubt that I was going to be successful.
Kathi
I know so true. I feel like so many people, they just don't have that belief that they're going to make it happen, like this is going to work. And so they don't make the investments that they need to make. You can't do it by yourself. At the end of the day, you have to invest before you actually have the money.
Colleen
And there it's like, you can't do it all by yourself when I look back, which, of course, there's always that place where you're doing too much, and that's where you realize I need to hire somebody. But the best investment I made, the reason I was upside down, is I had two full time employees before I had the income to cover their expenses. But that's what allowed me to grow. Because I wasn't working in my business. I was working on my business. Oh, so good investment. I made a lot of mistakes and I wasted a lot of time, but the biggest time I wasted was having any doubt that this was not going to happen for me.
Kathi
Wow, that's awesome. I love that you shared all that. It's so relatable. I love when people share what they had to go through, because so many people just they look at someone successful and they're like, Oh, it's just so easy for them, or they probably had money to begin with, or people just were flocking to them, or maybe somebody you know invested in them. But it's like, no, this is how it is.
Colleen
No, I went through a divorce a little over a year ago where I right at go time for my business. I cut the safety net of having a husband who could cover me and said, I just bet that, literally, bet the house on myself. I had about six months in savings that I could, you know, make, make it go. And I spent that money. I didn't save it. I spent it on coaching and consultants and more team members I grew instead of contracted in the moment where, like, my mother would have been like, What the hell are you doing spending that money? I was like, I'm either going to live in a van down by the river or I'm going all the way up. If I'm going to fail, we're going to fail hard. That's how this is going to go. And I took the money and I invested the money in myself and in my future, instead of hoarding it, because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to pay my mortgage. If I can't pay my mortgage, I guess I'm moving.
Kathi
Right. And I know it's so true. It's like, it's just a house, we'll figure something else out. I think just having that mindset, like it's going to work out one way or the other, right?
Colleen
Yeah, that same mindset when I reintroduced alcohol, I know it's going to be okay, even if it's not okay, because I'm going to make it okay. And that mindset right there, like I will make it okay, even if it's not okay, I know I have the capacity to handle it. What we really don't realize, as you know, the only thing they're ever scared of is your own goddamn feelings.
Kathi
I know it's so true.
Colleen
I'm not afraid of losing my house. I'm afraid of being embarrassed and having to pack up all my shit, and, you know, like, my house could burn down. I gotta go get a different house. Like, life fucking happens. But it's when you realize you're only afraid of your own feelings that you're free. Because, as a coach, you're like, oh, I can handle my feelings. Let's go.
Kathi
It's so true. I know I always say, like, stop being so afraid of your goddamn self, right? And again, it's like taking that power and the control back and putting it within you, versus constantly giving the power and control away to all these other external things that are going on around you. That's no way to live.
Colleen
No. And as a matter of fact, you read 10x is easier than 2x you don't have time. You don't have time to worry if this doesn't work out, you have time to take the actions to go and then adjust every single day to whatever, you know, squeaky wheels and fires you have to deal with. But otherwise, you just look forward. You look forward. You don't not have time to worry about what other people think or what might happen if that doesn't work out, right, I know. And you just say, I'll handle it. I'll gonna handle it. Yeah, exactly. That goes away, I will handle it. That's the source of my business right now. And if that goes away, I got the team, we will handle that.
Kathi
You will handle it. It'll be fine. You're either. And I always say, like, no matter what's going on, it's like you said, like you don't have time right, to worry about all these other things and all this other bullshit. It's either you get what you want or you get what you need, and you're going to learn what you need to learn. And it's keep on moving forward, baby. One foot in front of the other, we're going to the ball.
Colleen
Throw the ball. Throw the ball. Give me the ball. Throw the ball. Give me the ball. Throw the ball. That's, I don't even like sports or sports analogy. That's kind of what I'm doing. Like, just get the ball to me. I'm gonna throw it down the field. That's what I do. That's what I do on my team. I throw the ball down the field.
Kathi
Yeah, oh my god. I love it so much. This has been so awesome. Colleen, thank you so much for being on. Do you have any last-minute words or anything else that you wanted to leave the audience with for today?
Colleen
Okay, so the new one for me that I'm using, I think somebody credited Tony Robbins, although I never heard him say it. But what I love the most is when I say go, I go, whether you're drinking, whether you're starting a business, when I say go, I go. And I every single morning when I turn my shower to freezing, because I always end my shower and I'm standing there in the nice warm and I'm like, when I say, go, I go, and my hand fucking does it? Here we go. And I stand there for at least two minutes counting and loving it. I love how much this suck. And when I say go, I go. And if you're listening right now, whether it be a drinking problem, get your ass in the show notes and find the free podcast that will explain the big picture, and then go again and schedule a discovery call, or, if you're starting a business, order that book, or just take the action. When I say, go, I go, go.
Kathi
Oh, that is so good. I love that so much. And what was the name of your podcast? Again, again. This will all be in the show notes guys.
Colleen
It's not about the alcohol.
Kathi
It's not about the alcohol. I love that so much. So make sure that you subscribe to colleen's podcast. I'll put all the links in the show notes, that way you can reach out to her. She's so knowledgeable. Her content is amazing. I love following you on Instagram. I'm over on Instagram. I don't really use tick tock that much, but thank you so much for being here today, Colleen. It has been so much fun, and thanks guys for listening. You know I love you. I think you're awesome, and I will see you the next time. Bye.
