What do you do when you’ve impacted the lives of MILLIONS and you want to walk away because you’re miserable? Annie Grace’s book, This Naked Mind, and her free online course, The Alcohol Experiment, blew open the conversation around alcohol. It’s a legit cultural phenomenon. But after years of making a difference, she had to face the fact that some of the things that had animated her drinking - the scarcity, the unhealthy competition, the never-enoughness - were still there. Her old animating energy was still running the show and it was tainting all the good things. Annie’s willingness to share how she confronted that old animating energy is inspiring and she was so generous in sharing her hard-earned wisdom. Also, she answered a bunch of questions from our TMST PLUS members. The paid community plays a key role in helping us make this show and you can get in on that at https://tmst.supercast.com/ Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community. Support TMST, hear uncut interviews, and keep it ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/ Join our free online community (it’s not a Facebook group!): https://www.tmstpod.com/
Tell Me Something True with Laura McKowen
Annie Grace on What Animates You
[00:00:00] Laura McKowen: Hey, it's Laura. If you're listening to this, you're not hearing the complete unedited version of this conversation. If you want in on that, you can get it by becoming a TMST plus member. Just head over to our website@tmstpod.com and click support. All right. Enjoy.
[00:00:32] Hey there.
[00:00:33] It's Laura. Today's guest, Annie Grace, has impacted the lives of actual millions of people. Her book, This Naked Mind blew open the conversation around alcohol when it came out in 2015. It's a book that grew into a company that has grown into a movement. It's been a legitimate game changer and a cultural phenomenon.
[00:00:58] I hear people mention her work constantly in the reasons they were able to give up drinking and she almost walked away from it all because she was making herself miserable. It's one of those stories we've all heard. Someone sells hundreds of thousands of books, has millions of podcast downloads, and is leading a massively impactful company.
[00:01:20] But behind the scenes, they're exhausted and empty. A few years ago, Annie had to face the fact that her family, her friends, and her deep self were getting short changed because of her work. Her old animated energy was still running the show and it was sucking all the good stuff of life away.
[00:01:41] I've known Annie for years now. We got started in the recovery space around the same time and we've become real friends. I know a lot of people are probably going to wish I talked to her about her takes on alcohol addiction and sobriety, but luckily there's more than enough of her perspective on those things out there.
[00:02:04] What I wanted to talk to her about was this: Why she hit the wall despite being so outwardly successful and what hitting the wall looked like, and then how she went about creating an entirely new way of being in the world and approaching her work. Annie's story is awesome. And as usual, she's so generous in sharing what she's learned and is brilliant at communicating complicated things in a simple way.
[00:02:31] She also answers a bunch of questions from our TMST PLUS members. The paid community plays a key role in helping us make this show run, and you can get in on that if you want at tmstpod.com. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Annie. I loved every minute of it.
[00:02:54] All right. Thanks.
[00:03:07] Annie Grace: I grew up in a tiny little log cabin on the backside of the mountain, which is kind of the unique thing about me. We didn't have running water or electricity. So we had to snowmobile to get there in the winter time and go to the bathroom outside in an outhouse. And baths were... we just had drilled some holes in the wood planks that were the floor and we had to haul water from a spring that was about 150 yards away, and then heat up the water on a wood-burning stove and we'd pour it over ourselves, very sparingly. And so it was a pretty unique upbringing, but somehow born out of that, I found myself super ambitious and I think it was a lot driven by scarcity.
[00:03:44] I mean, it was a really privileged choice of my parents to do this. They were hippies in the seventies. They had the choice to sort of abandon everything and live this off the grid life that they wanted to live. But as a child, that wasn't my choice. And I was looking around at my school mates and sort of looking.
[00:04:02] You know, just wondering, like, why am I different? Well, why, you know, why don't I get those toys? And, why don't I have a toilet? Like, you know, just silly things and showers. Yes. Well, I didn’t have a mirror. I mean, honestly, like there was a cracked mirror from a car hanging somewhere in the cabin and, you know, so as I grew up and became really self-aware and self-conscious, I found myself in a place of just kind of wanting and desiring more.
[00:04:34] And so I went through scholarships, thankfully, so thankful for scholarships, but I was able to go through a lot of schooling. So I ended up graduating with a master's degree in marketing and pretty quickly getting some jobs that felt really big through a sequence of events. So I was the marketing manager at a credit union.
[00:04:53] That was one of my first jobs, the head of marketing, you know, the VP of marketing got let go of within three weeks of me being there for some scam. And so the CEO promoted me into his role. So I was in basically a director level role at, you know, 23 years old. And I rose to the challenge and it was a cool time because it was in, you know, 2003, 2004, when the internet was just coming out.
[00:05:22] And you, as the youngest person in the room, had the huge advantage of knowing more about what was happening in internet type media and websites than anyone, right? And so it was, you know, great. My husband and I got married in 2005 and we moved immediately to New York City. Uh, literally went on our honeymoon and then drove across the country to New York City.
[00:05:46] And I got a job at Chase Bank. I remember the first night out on the job, I was asked by my colleagues. They were like, “Hey, you know, come out for drinks with us.” And I was like, all right, you know, whatever, I didn't really drink a lot. But we went out and I'd watched a lot of Sex and the City.
[00:06:02] So I didn't know anything about what to order, but I was like, okay, I'll order a cosmopolitan cause that's what they drink. And it got chuckles because nobody else was ordering cosmopolitans. So they, you know, made fun of me in a funny way. But I remember, Laura, they were all 25 bucks a drink. And I just looked at that bill and I was like, okay, well that's not, you know, and they paid for it that night, but here I am just out of college, you know, just married.
[00:06:30] And so I was just like, all right, that's not my scene. And I ended up getting recruited into another company and I got recruited as their head of marketing for North America. And I remember at this company, I was not going out to the happy hours. And my boss literally took me aside one night and said, “Hey, like, what's the deal? Why don't you come?”. And I was like, oh, I don't really drink. And he's like, “Oh Annie, it's not about drinking. It's about like, getting your ideas out. And it's like the golf course, blah, blah, blah. Like, this is where we do it”. And so I was like, all right. So I actually had a method. Go out and I drink a bottle of wine or a glass of wine, and then a pint of water. A bottle glass of wine was later, that was later for grasping, but I drank a glass of wine and then I drank an entire pint of water.
[00:07:19] And that was my process for, you know, making sure I never got too tipsy or too drunk. And sometimes if I even just felt tipsy, I would go to the bathroom and throw up that last glass of wine just to stay out and keep drinking because I was so ambitious, and I was really just fueled by scarcity, by there not being enough, by feeling like, you know, somebody is going to get there before me, by a huge sense of competitiveness and competition.
[00:07:43] And, you know, just not enoughness in the world. And you know, it really took a toll. And if I was going to condense the next decade into a few sentences, basically what happened, a lot of things started to fall apart in my personal life. I was obsessed with work. And by the way, he had probably as equal of a high power job as I did. He was working in the trading floor of an investment bank.
[00:08:09] So here we are, both of us in New York City. I was just single focused on my career. And, you know, eventually we did have kids. We had two boys and I got promoted to global head of marketing. So I was in charge of 28 countries. I was flying all over the world, always in business class, which by the way, I talk about the alcohol being free and flowing at all times of day and night.
[00:08:33] And I was really, I had done what I set out to do. I was really successful and I somehow incorporated alcohol into it. And nobody, by the way, knew that I felt like I was drinking more than I should have been drinking at that time, with multiple bottles of wine. In hindsight, I can see. If my animated energy, if what was driving me every single day was painful, like scarcity, competition, you know. That stage in my life was so full of gossip because I almost saw like, okay, if I can have drinks with this person and find out what they know about this person then I'm going to be in a better position. It was almost like the whole thing was a chess game. It was part of my job when I got promoted to global head of marketing was to fly around the world and I had a list of people who were deemed good, a list of people who are deemed cut, and a list of people who were deemed like let's improve them. And so I was to go there, be there in that country with them, watch their performance and, you know, make my determination on the list. But by the way, the list was heavy handedly suggested.
[00:09:35] So it wasn't even that I could even really make a determination. And then I was to fire the people who were to be fired and, you know, without even a lot of knowledge of their background. Oh man, 29, 30, 31... during this time of my life. Yeah. And so there were a lot of tears and a few times where I don't think this was my fault because of things that I did, like in terms of being unkind, but because of how the world works. You know, if you get fired there's lawsuits and I was in the midst of those and I mean, it was just pretty brutal.
[00:10:08] And so I dealt with it by drinking, pretty much almost two bottles of wine every single night. And that took its toll.
[00:10:16] Laura McKowen: Yes, it does. Yeah. Take us to the point where things had to stop and you left that career and then to work on what you're doing now.
[00:10:35] Annie Grace: It's so interesting because so much of it felt really accidental. I see now that everything was kind of laid out in the way it's supposed to be, but really what happened was, I started questioning my drinking. Really feeling like what was I doing? This was too much and I started to try to cut back. I was not successful in cutting back, and really started to lose faith in myself and reached a very painful place.
[00:10:56] So I did a seriously radical thing, which I had no idea was radical at the time. And I said, you know what? I'm going to stop trying to stop drinking. I'm going to do two things. I'm going to let myself off the hook, give myself some self-compassion and I'm going to dig in and understand why. Why did I used to take it or leave it?
[00:11:11] It was no big deal in my life. And why does now alcohol seem like the thing that's, you know, the duct tape that's helping me keep all of this career and motherhood and wife and everything together. And so I did about a year's worth of research on that. And at the end of that, I just stopped drinking and it was a really peaceful moment for me, really happy, no intention to quit my job.
[00:11:34] I ended up traveling to all sorts of places without drinking, which was totally interesting in and of itself, because that was a whole dynamic, but like Brazil and France and London and all of these places. And I just put these journals out on the internet because I just felt people should see them.
[00:11:50] And about 20,000 people downloaded them in just a few weeks. What was the original website? It was This Naked Mind. I thought through what I had achieved and it was so funny because I was eating Bare Naked granola one morning, like pretty new into this, like not drinking, but by the way, by the time I was not drinking, I had already written everything.
[00:12:12] So, the writing was happening. That was one thing that was fascinating because I put this stuff out into the world, very newly sober. And so that had its own whole set of interesting dynamics. And so anyway, it was This Naked Mind. Cause I was eating this Bare Naked granola and I was like, this is great.
[00:12:32] Like, it doesn't have preservatives, it doesn't have chemicals. Like that's how I want my mind to be. You know? And then I found other layers to that name as it grew, but it really did come from a package of granola, which is funny in hindsight. But then somebody was like, Hey, make this a book. And I was like, what, how do you do that?
[00:12:48] I don't have an agent. I looked it up, but you needed a platform. You needed a following. You need it all. I'm like, I don't have any of that. And a person was like, you can self publish. And so I looked into that and then I went through that process while I was working. Just like, yeah, this is important. I felt a burning in my heart like, this is important.
[00:13:05] It's not something that I'm ever going to do. It's not going to be a career, but this is important. Yeah. And I went through that process all while working. It turned out that, I would say September of 2015, I got called to the UK. There was a whole restructure and I got called to the UK where the company was headquartered and told that, um, I needed to move to the UK.
[00:13:30] I had been global head of marketing based out of North America. Although I was living for like six, eight weeks at a time with my family and various countries they wanted me in the UK. We just put our son in kindergarten in Evergreen. And I'm like, I'm just, not a city girl. We're just not a city family. And so I was like, what happens if I don't?
[00:13:48] And they said, well, we can talk about a separation package. I took a severance package on September 30th, 2015. This Naked Mind, the book, was published October 15th. And I just asked my husband, I said, can I just try this? Like, can I just try it? And he's like, okay. You know, based on your severance package, you'd probably have about three months of runway. And so, you know, let's see what you can do in three months. And so I started blogging.
[00:14:15] Laura McKowen: We were on the same timeline. I know we've talked about that before, but it's so weird. We were really like on the almost the exact same time.
[00:14:22] Annie Grace: We have talked about that, but it is nuts. I looked up the date and the date beside the alcohol experiment that I did was December, either 14th or 15th, 2014. That's when I stopped drinking.
[00:14:36] Laura McKowen: Yeah. And mine's September 28th, 2014. What happened after that? I mean, like, you know, just sort of key things and bring us to the present day. And then I want to go back and talk about the sort of transformation that planted the seed for this conversation that we talked about, you know, months ago.
[00:14:56] Annie Grace: Yeah. Well, I mean, I brought all my tools from my career to this new thing. And so all of that pain, all of that. And by the way, that scarcity was amplified because now we had a mortgage and we didn't have a corporate salary. And so all of that was amplified. The busy-ness was amplified because there's an infinite number of things you can do when you're starting your own organization.
[00:15:23] Laura McKowen: Did you plan on starting the company then though? Or were you, what were you thinking?
[00:15:27] Annie Grace: So I had a website. And a book. And my hopes were because if you self publish, you know, just for full transparency, you can make about four to five-fifty four $55 a book. And so December 31st, 2015, we sold a hundred books and I was like, I can live on that.
[00:15:43] So my hopes are that if I can just keep selling a hundred books, right? But in order to do that, because of course that was January 1st, everybody's doing it. So it dropped off January 1st. And so I was like, okay, so how can I get it back to a hundred books? This was my, you know, all out thing. And I knew the book was helping people.
[00:16:00] I was getting letters from all over the world. It was really great. So I was like, okay. So I would do things like a 99 cent promotion, or, you know, just trying to pull out my marketing tools to like, get the book in the hands of more people. I was always giving it away for free, by the way, on my website, which was directly correlated with more people buying it.
[00:16:20] I entered a period of time that there are certain songs that will come on the radio that we were listening to a lot in those years of 2015, 2016, 2017. And they just give me a pit in my stomach because of the level of pain and stress and intensity and scarcity, and barely holding it together and doing something new.
[00:16:40] And by the way, being introduced into a whole new world of criticism, which I was not prepared for and did not know even existed. I thought we were all kind of on the same team. I was getting criticism from all types.
[00:16:53] Laura McKowen: What, like what types? Just to give people a flavor, what was the criticism about? What was it, where was it coming from?
[00:17:01] Annie Grace: A lot of criticism from the recovery community. I think the recovery community has changed immensely in the last six, seven years. So it's very different now, but then, the fact that the book was titled Control Alcohol was a huge no. Because if you're an alcoholic, you can't control alcohol.
[00:17:17] And you know, my point was that number one, I actually don't believe in the black and white. I think that you shouldn’t make a behavior based goal. You should make a goal based on how you want to feel. I want it to feel that alcohol was small and irrelevant in my life. If that meant I drank on occasion, like at a wedding, fine.
[00:17:31] If it meant I never drank again, fine. But my goal was on how I wanted to feel, not on my behavior. And I would have never myself picked up a book that said stop drinking because I was not at the place in order to get flipped to being somebody who's like, okay, I think I have a problem. My biggest fear is that I'm going to have to stop drinking, to be somebody who is like, okay, I know I have a problem.
[00:17:53] And my biggest fear is that I can't stop. And that's like a smaller percentage, right? And so like, for people who are going to, you have to go further down the road and a very painful road to get to a point where your biggest fear is that you won't be able to stop drinking, entertaining stopping drinking.
[00:18:12] And so, you know, at the same time I was having literally dozens of letters of people thanking me because they're like, I would've never picked up this book and it's changed my life. So I knew that title was right, but there was some very intense criticism about that. I also talk about the term alcoholic in the book and kind of deconstruct the fact that I don't think it's a valid and useful term for our society.
[00:18:32] And people who identify as alcoholics were very upset. You and I had a brilliant and beautiful conversation about that early on. And then equally I was getting, you know, just all sorts of, I wouldn't call it criticism as much as it was sort of caged sympathy from others. Oh, I'm so sorry, what must have happened?
[00:18:54] You know, kind of like, tell me your story. And I was just like, okay, you don't know what to do with me cause I'm just not drinking. So you have to pity me and then you have to wrap that pity in sympathy.
[00:19:09] Laura McKowen: Right. It's that's a whole, that's a whole conversation. Okay. So would you say 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018… What was going on in you? What were you animated by?
[00:19:23] Annie Grace: So I did, you know, some work I think was recommended to me like Dark Side of the Light Chasers. Like, some journalist, Debbie Ford. So you do a meditation, you go into yourself and you meet parts of yourself. And I remember opening a door and seeing a part of myself in this meditation.
[00:19:42] And she was in this dark room. There was this one bright, overhead light. There were books and papers, stacked everywhere. And she was just walking in a circle with almost this black cloud of like thought and anxiety and frustration, and everything was urgent and everything was frantic and everything was intense.
[00:19:59] And I was bringing, by the way, that energy. I could see it so clearly in that moment, I was bringing that to my family. Bringing that to my little kids, that to my husband, that to my parents, not even friends, friends were just cut off at this point. There was no time for friends. I was way too busy for friends taken every single person who wrote me an email thanking me.
[00:20:18] Laura, I wrote that email with a pit in my stomach because I said, what happens when it doesn't work for you? What happens when, like I was taking everybody's salvation and putting it right on my own shoulders, like I had decided. I was the savior of this. Like I was so important in this conversation. This was vital.
[00:20:36] I was doing this important work. So it was everything that I was animated by in my early career, the scarcity, the comparison, the urgency, all of this stuff, combined with the savior complex of which I was just taking on all of the pain and all of the burden on everyone. And I was absolutely miserable.
[00:20:59] Laura McKowen: Because by 2018, you ended up selling a lot more copies than a hundred a month. So like what started to happen with This Naked Mind?
[00:21:10] Annie Grace: Everything that I did was, and it's such a success story from like an organizational business point of view, but when you're not prepared or ready or, and I think everything has to happen as it happened. Like with drinking, I had to reach a point of pain before I was ready to change.
[00:21:29] Right. And the same thing had to happen with this journey. But every single thing that I did, I'd set a goal of, like I launched The Alcohol Experiment in September of 2017. And I had, you know, had been working with some and by the way, I had a baby in May of 2017. So I was doing all the things all at once.
[00:21:47] So I had three kids now and I was working with some developers in Vietnam and we'd launched this site where I could deliver content every day. For 30 days, you could choose your own start date. I was really excited about it, really proud of it. And by the way, that brought it to a whole other level of criticism, because it was not a black or white solution.
[00:22:04] It was an experiment. Dip a toe, see how you feel, and then figure it out. No, nobody likes that. And so I hoped for like 50 beta users in it, because I knew it was full of typos and I just wanted 50 people to go through it and just tell me what they thought. And 2,500 people joined and that just kept happening.
[00:22:22] Right. So I'd launch or I do something else. And I'd expect like, you know, I had a live event. I expected, again like 50- 60 people, an intimate gathering and we had almost 300 come and it was just like I was being pushed, sort of out of my comfort zone in terms of the speed of growth over and over and over again.
[00:22:42] And I remember answering every single email because I was committed to answering every email written to me in the inbox. Wow. And I looked at how many emails I was getting a month and it was like 2000 emails a month and doing everything else. And I was finally like, okay, I have to find some help. And you know, I'd heard this thing that I don't think served me well in a business book when I was in business school, that was like only hire when it's painful.
[00:23:09] Laura McKowen: Well, especially when you have a very high threshold or tolerance for pain, you know, completely bleeding out. There's so many forces at play here because there's this ambition of wanting to succeed and sort of accidentally as it seems or accidentally like succeeding way more than you thought. But also, you know, you weren't at a credit card company. It's like, these are people's lives. And so feeling super responsible and connected to that.
[00:24:01] Annie Grace: And I felt that anyway, if it's on me, great. And, if I'm not treating every single person that comes in here, like an individual and investing in their story, then what does that make me? And feeling responsible for their results when you're really not, you know, because on top of everything else, I think there was just this huge dose of imposter syndrome because I would get letters like, well, who are you?
[00:24:17] You're not a counselor. You're not a therapist. And I was super upfront about that. I was like, no, this was just my own story. And if it helps one other person, great, but it was just my own story. I'm just putting my own story out there. It was intense because I'd be like, well, maybe I should have looked into doctorate programs just to maybe get that sort of insurance for myself that I had like some right to be doing this in the world.
[00:24:43] And that was very painful too, because there was just imposter syndrome on top of everything else. And as usual to the outside world, I was presenting just like I was presenting when I was drinking two bottles of wine, nothing was wrong. Like it was smooth and calm and put together, like how does she do it?
[00:25:03] Laura McKowen: Which you feed off of. It's like, that keeps you going, keeps you, kept me going anyway. You keep that up and get really good at performing that because you get so much validation from it. So you saw this dark energy vision of yourself. What was like a breaking point?
[00:25:21] Annie Grace: So I saw that and I started, I started talking to my husband, Brian, about it and just saying like, oh, I don't, I don't want to be like this and how are you experiencing this? Which is a question I had never really been brave enough to ask him before. And he's like, I want out. This isn't fun.
[00:25:38] Laura McKowen: Like I want out of the relationship?
[00:25:40] Annie Grace: No, no, the business, like he wanted us to just go back to something that was way lower cost. Thanks for clarifying that, not out of a really important thing. That's important. And so, you know, I started doing some personal development work where you looked at opening your wallet. And open your calendar, you know? And, where are you spending your time? And for me, the wallet was kind of irrelevant because Brian really manages the money, but the calendar, it was clear.
[00:26:09] Like I had prioritized This Naked Mind over my kids, over my husband, certainly over my friends, over my parents over absolutely everything else. And I didn't know how to not do it. I really felt for the first time, I think, the pain that possibly a breadwinning parent has where they're thinking they're doing everything for this family, but all the family really wants attention and they're not actually giving the only thing that the family translates as love. So, you think you're acting out of love, but no one in your family is receiving love because they don't hear I'm working really hard at this business venture as love or feel it. They especially don't experience it.
[00:26:50] Laura McKowen: Yeah. They don't kids don't care.
[00:26:55] Annie Grace: No, they don't care. They just want more of your time. And, so I remember just looking around and I think we had gone to a conference and we saw Tony Robbins. And then I remember looking at like, Richard Branson or someone, but I had a few people who I was looking at their lives and I was like, wait a second, you do that. But then you also do this. Like you're operating at this level, but you're also, you know, really operating at this level. So, and of course, who knows from Instagram?
[00:27:29] Laura McKowen: Like what do you mean? Like give an example.
[00:27:31] Annie Grace: So if you take Richard Branson, right. And I don't know much about him at all, apart from Instagram, but you would see him cutting a ribbon somewhere with some new flight to space or something like that.
[00:27:44] And then you would see pictures for two weeks straight on his Instagram of him with his grandkids on an island. And like water skiing and parasailing and, and then, you know, Tony Robbins, you would see he's out there doing all this stuff. And then you'd see a week of pictures of him and his wife, just touring Italy and it's a funny example because I don't know these people at all, and I know Instagram is fake, but it created this seed inside me..
[00:28:13] I have always believed that success and stress are linearly related. Like they go up together. Right. And then all of a sudden I was seeing these people. I was like, well, what if that's not true? You know? And, I started looking at other people. I started looking at people who I could see that they're animated again.
[00:28:32] You know, it was just so dark and so intense and they'd achieved a level of success, but you could just tell that it was at such a cost. And so I really started to, you know, question and I think it might've been a Rob Bell podcast because that's usually where a lot of some ahas come from for me, but just really started to question what is driving me and saying, okay, all right.
[00:29:01] And, I really had to journal a lot about it and I realized everything I told you today. I saw the story clearly. And of course, awareness is the first step to seeing anything. I saw that what was driving me was a savior complex and scarcity and competitiveness, and you know, this desire to win.
[00:29:22] And again, very similar to my sort of journey with alcohol. I kind of saw where the train was headed. You know, if I kept on this track, it was not going to very good places. Yeah. And I made this thing, I sat down with Brian. I remember it very well from conversation. I drew out a graph for him and I said, this is how we're seeing growth in stress.
[00:29:46] And I said, give me a little bit of time. I think that I can make those two things be inverted. I think that we can, over the next few years, figure out a way to grow, allow the growth that's happening naturally, because I wasn't really even ever trying to grow as much, but allow the growth that's happening naturally and decrease the amount of stress that I'm under.
[00:30:07] And it was like, all right, let's try that. But, if we don't, you know, I always was like, I'm okay with that. That's our agreement. If I can't make that work, if I can't create this inverse relationship with growth.
[00:30:21] Laura McKowen: I want you to like, just drill down into what it felt like.Because at that point you have a company. You have employees, like what was the scale of the work at that point?
[00:30:34] Annie Grace: So This Naked Mind in 2017 was really where this big conversation started happening, maybe early 2018. I had just signed a deal with Penguin Random House, a very large deal for publishing This Naked Mind and that was huge. We were well over a few hundred thousand copies at that point in time of the book sold, which was really big.
[00:30:57] Laura McKowen: Which, if people don't know in the book publishing world, it is uncommon for a book to sell more than 10,000 copies. That's considered successful within a year. And extraordinary. It doesn't happen that often. It's very rare.
[00:31:14] Annie Grace: And so The Alcohol Experiment that I had created, I think we just crossed like 40-50,000 people in it at that point. And so I'd say one or 200,000 copies of the book, about 40- 50,000 people in the alcohol experiment. In 2018, I opened This Naked Mind Institute to train coaches because I had been getting that request from so many people and we put 60 people through the initial class of that.
[00:31:40] So that was a big deal. So those were sort of the metrics. Oh, and I had a podcast that was probably at about 10 million downloads at that point in time.
[00:31:47] Laura McKowen: Then what was it feeling like when you say, you know, I was competitive and running on scarcity. Like I have a feeling because I've been there, but explain how that actually plays out.
[00:32:02] Annie Grace: It felt two ways. Mainly it felt number one, like I was in the middle of a pond trying to hold things above my head and treading water with no arms and people kept handing me stuff. So, that was the organizational stress. And at the same time, it felt like everything was just going to fall apart all at once.
[00:32:23] Like it just felt like danger was lurking. Unnamed danger, danger that the rug was going to get ripped out from under me at every corner. And when I would see things. I remember very early on One Year, No Beer, an organization out of the UK, they'd launched a website. And it was just, I mean, you could tell, they had spent a lot of money that I did not have on this website.
[00:32:45] And they had video, it was beautiful. It was amazing. And it had all this functionality and all this stuff. And I just felt it like a punch in my gut. Like I can't do that. You know, I'm not that person. And it was like jealousy, I think, like a feeling of I'm running this race as fast as I can. I feel like I'm literally about to drown. I'm terrified that the monster is chasing me and I'm losing. Yes, that's fun.
[00:33:14] Laura McKowen: And I'm not even winning. Right. Which is this elusive thing, right? And then what happened?
[00:33:20] Annie Grace: I really sort of just said, okay, well, first of all, I have to let go of the thing that in my head says I can't hire because I can do it better and faster. And I have to say, okay, if I were still by myself, I had an assistant, but barely, and I made a big hire. That was very scary from a salary perspective, but actually said, you know what? I'm going to pay somebody what they're worth and get somebody who's really, really good at hiring.
[00:33:51] You can have people who you have to keep in mind of your mind's to-do list. Then you tell them what to do. Then you have to know that they're doing it, and then you have to check on it. And if you're not continuously doing that, then everything will fall apart. Or you can hire somebody who's going to take the to-do list, at least a fraction of it or half of it out of your mind.
[00:34:07] And then hire the people to do it. And that was this hire. So it was a very different dynamic. There's a relationship between growth and control that takes so much mental fortitude for the person at the helm. Because of course, with all of this, you know, all of these lives are depending on me, you want to have so much control, but you cannot maintain as much control and grow.
[00:34:31] And so I had to do the mental work to allow that I was going to have less control. And what that work looked like for me was really realizing that I am not the savior. I am not the same scenario. Right. Um, and, and realizing that, you know, I'm invited into this entire movement, like I get to be invited into this beautiful thing, like into this awakening of humanity, into living, you know, a more mindful and more awake life.
[00:34:59] I get to be invited into this, but I'm not required. And I really made peace with that. Like, Annie Grace is not required. This will happen. This has been happening. All these ideas have been coming. This time has been coming. People are rising up everywhere. This will happen with, or without me, I am invited and not required.
[00:35:16] And that, that changed really everything for me. And I'd say it to myself over and over and over. And the thing about the brain is the brain can change neuroplasticity obviously, but not if you're telling yourself something you don't believe. So, like I had started this journey trying to change my thoughts, but with, with things I didn't believe, right.
[00:35:34] I would be saying like, you're not responsible for them, but I didn't believe that I believed that I was responsible for them. But then when I realized that, like actually, you know, I had to, I had to start with like baby steps in my thinking. And I had to find things that I could actually believe to change my thinking.
[00:35:50] And you know, one of those things was that if I burn out, none of this is going to move forward. So I'm going to have to give all of it up. And it's such a funny goal, but my main goal was to be playful. And so I started doing things. Like every time we had a team meeting, I'd be like, okay, who has a funny YouTube video?
[00:36:15] And we still do it to this day. Every Friday, we all play funny YouTube videos. Every time I'd find myself in a moment of stress. I think when you see something that you don't like in yourself and you are trying to move away from it, you almost have to move away from it. And like, you have to be intentional to the point of it being awkward.
[00:36:33] Like, yes, it was awkward for me to stop the meetings and be like, okay. Finding something like the Chuck Testa video on YouTube. And everyone's like, okay. Yeah. Like, especially because I've been like this, like hard, and all of a sudden here I am, and by the way, it's not feeling natural to me yet either.
[00:36:51] And the other thing was that scarcity, that urgency, I would just force myself. So every time I think scarcity, I would write a check to a cause or a charity, or like if I felt any of that, I would give money away just like tens of thousands of dollars. Just give it away.
[00:37:09] Like every time I felt it, I would give it away. Every time I felt competitiveness, I would literally force myself to call that person, reach out to that person and just like get myself into a really wholehearted space and just a hundred percent congratulate, just be so excited for them and find out how I could make their success more.
[00:37:26] How can I support you? And like, just like forcing myself the other way. It was hard. It was super hard, but it was like, I had to do it. I had to do it because otherwise it's like the amount of that Ironman energy of scarcity and saviorship and everything. Like in order to unwind that I had to intentionally go the other way, because the whole thing was on the line. The whole thing was on the line because I'd made this promise to my husband and that kind of was the process and it took time. I mean, and I did a lot of personal development things. I did this emotionally focused course.
[00:38:04] I did, you know, all these sorts of things, like really looking into who I was, what was my brain thinking again? I heard this thing that the organization only grows as fast as the owner grows and it changed very slowly. So I would say 30 days out of the month, old me. All 30 days of that black, intense frantic energy.
[00:38:22] First year I'd maybe get three or four days kind of like, oh, I'm not forcing the playfulness. I actually feel kind of playful. Second year. I'd maybe get two weeks out of the month. Right? Third year I was really at three weeks out of the month and now I'm pretty much four years into this. And I'm like, okay, there will be a few days a month where I get sucked back into the void, but I'm really aware.
[00:38:46] And by the way, I stop what I'm doing. And I have it written into our company values and it's called selflessly selfish that you can not bring that energy into the business. If you do stop, stop, go for it. Turn off your computer. I don't care if you're missing a deadline. Go get yourself back into a space of positive animated energy before you come back.
[00:39:06] Because what I realized as it just happened is I would look at the times that I was spending in this really positive energy, I was getting more done. I was more effective. That's the weird part, it was amazing. And so now here I am, you know, our podcast just hit 11 million downloads where I'm at 750,000 book sales.
[00:39:27] Laura McKowen: I just gotta pause on that. That's incredible. And not from a business standpoint also that yes, but 750,000 people have a different way of approaching this massive cultural thing that's so cool.
[00:39:44] Annie Grace: Alcohol. It's so cool. So it worked and it was funny because it does not feel like it's going to actually work.
[00:39:52] It does not feel like there should ever be an inverse relationship. Growth and stress. We've been conditioned, like everything else, that you got to burn yourself out, that you got to work as hard as possible. And now, my days look so different. I have so much margin in my days. Like I have like a two hour break after this.
[00:40:09] I exercise literally almost every single day. I meditate almost every day, twice a day. I walk my kid to school in the morning, but I've really focused on things that only I can do. And, then the hours I'm putting in, they just have so much more value. And it's really only five things I do.
[00:40:29] I do interviews, I create content, I write more stuff and I steward sort of the culture of the company in a way that is really authentic to me. But like, that's about it.
[00:40:41] Laura McKowen: Iit helps so much to hear that it was like a four year process, not a four month process or in process, of course, but that's massive transformation. As my friend Jim' Zartman says, information is not transformation. And it takes so much to actually integrate that into your being. So what does your husband say now?
[00:41:10] Annie Grace: Oh, he just can't believe it. He knows he can never really believe anything we do, but yeah. I mean, we just spent a week in Hawaii and it was amazing.
[00:41:18] We just had such an incredible time. We're going to go visit my grandma on the Cape in two weeks. And yeah, life is really, really great. And, you know, knock on wood. I know I have to work hard to maintain this and it is so counterintuitive. It is so counterintuitive to feel like you have a thousand things on your to-do list and you're like, okay, but what I'm going to do now is I'm going to spend three hours on this coaching call, trying to get coached, trying to dig into why I do this. Because there's a reason. There's a reason for my scarcity. Of course it has to do with my upbringing. There's a reason for my competitiveness. There's fear inside me that was driving all of those emotions.
[00:41:57] And I had to get to the bottom of that. I went on a two day solo retreat, locked myself into a cabin for two days, just to journal and write and to seek. Right. And to just have that solitude in that space. How is that going to affect this? It doesn't make sense. It's not linear, but it has more of an effect than anything. And it's just so interesting.
[00:42:39] Mikel Ellcessor: Hi, I'm Michael. I'm the executive producer of the podcast at TMST. We're passionate about having conversations that bring us together and help us stoke our love of life. That's why we created a dedicated site for the show; it's free. It's not a Facebook group and we aren't mining your data to target you with ads.
[00:42:58] So check it out. And while you're there, please join TMST PLUS, our paid membership group. TMST PLUS members will play the critical role in keeping this going and ad free. There are no corporations backing us. There's no advertisers. I mean, it's really up to us to pull together and make it. You can make a one-time contribution or you can join our monthly program where you can help shape the show, hear the complete unedited interviews and join regular online experiences with Laura.
[00:43:31] But know this, you can make a huge difference right now for as little as $10 a month, you can find the link in the show description, and then please head over to tmstpod.com right now. And join us.
[00:44:17] Laura McKowen: What are some really tangible things maybe that people could ask themselves like old animating an energy? Annie animated out of scarcity versus new energy being animated out of a playfulness or joy. What is a situation where you could catch yourself and choose the other way?
[00:44:41] Annie Grace: I think the most important thing is you have to start listening to your feelings, which feels so counterintuitive because we're such a, we're such a cerebral or species at this point in time and just saying, does this feel good?
[00:44:58] And is this good for me? And if those two things aren't true, if one of those two things, aren't true, then you need to look at it. And I probably am a little bit extreme, but I'm in favor of, if it doesn't feel good, stop until you figure out how you can do it, where it feels good. And to the point where I was willing to, I was literally willing to let it all go.
[00:45:17] Like I was willing to let it all go because of the cost. And I mean, I don't think people necessarily have to reach that point, but I think there has to be some sort of a reckoning and there has to be some sort of a listening to yourself. Imagine that it's fuel. And that old me, yes, I was successful.
[00:45:34] I was so successful, but I was fueled on something akin to gasoline, like insight. And literally, if you think about the alcohol, but inside that fuel was eroding everything, it was stinging my insights. It was painful. It meant that in order to just keep it together, I had to drink two bottles of wine a night.
[00:45:51] It was intense. And then now I'm fueled on something that like is much more like solar, right? Like, it's clean and it doesn't produce any negative effects in my life. It's not bad for me. And so I think that just really tuning into how you feel. I really like the emotional guidance scale by Esther Hicks, because you can see that emotions are really on a spiral.
[00:46:17] And what we try to do is jump from the bottom of the spiral, feeling really bad and really negative and shameful to the top to feeling really joyful. And she makes the case, no, you just have to take one step up. Like even if you feel shame, anger is a better feeling than shame because anger has energy in it.
[00:46:32] And then from anger, you can access the next emotion. Right? And so it's a spiral up, which we try to take. These massive jumps will feel super negative. We're trying to jump to feeling super joyful. And then we beat ourselves up because we can't do it. And so we just have to be like, okay, this doesn't feel good.
[00:46:47] What could feel slightly better? Could answering these emails feel slightly better if I put on music? It is amazing. It actually, it does feel slightly better. And then from there, would it feel slightly better if I opened a window and got a breeze or what if I took my laptop and did it at the beach, like, oh, that feels slightly better. And just kind of like really listening to how you feel.
[00:47:07] Laura McKowen: Okay. That's awesome. And I want to ask a granular question there, because I know that fear comes up a lot when you're making these types of decisions and fear is something that we tend to want to move away from. So when you say feel better, cause sometimes the fear can be uncomfortable, but the fear is telling you something, right?
[00:47:33] Annie Grace: I think that this comfort that you need in order to move forward, doesn't have. Well, that's a really good question. I can think about it literally. I remember where I was. We were traveling. I was in an Airbnb. I was up till like midnight sitting. It was a studio. My husband was in the bed. I was up till midnight sitting in the emails.
[00:47:56] And I just had this moment of the feeling that I had. It was that these people I didn't know on the internet had infiltrated every single fiber of my life here. They are literally in the bedroom with Brian and I, like there was no protection. There was no self in that. And I think, you know, the concept of differentiation is a great one to bring up here because it's from Marie Murray and it's from the 1950s, she's a psychologist.
[00:48:26] And the idea is that a differentiated human is fully self and fully connected. And then the spectrum, there is fusion where you're fully connected and you've lost self or cut off where you're fully self, but you've lost connection. And so in that moment, I was fused to all those people emailing me.
[00:48:50] I was taking on their emotions as my own. I was taking on their stories as my own. I was taking responsibility for their outcomes and I was losing myself, you know, and what is natural to do? And the response would be like, well, I'm going to cut off. And by the way, there were parts of that in my journey where I'm not even going to look at email because it's like I have such PTSD from reading. When you read all 2000 emails, there's a percentage of those that are pretty nasty.
[00:49:15] And so like there was this cut off, but then cut off isn't being connected. And so the journey I think is allowing that yeah, you might get cut off, but there's a place in between where you can be fully settled. And fully connected and the connected part can be scary. The pushing yourself out of the comfort zone.
[00:49:33] It can be scary, but if you're pushing yourself out of your comfort zone from a place where you can say, I'm fully and definitely myself, then you can allow for that connection and that moving forward into the work you're supposed to do without giving up self. And I think that's the difference. If you're giving up self to move into discomfort, then it's not the right move.
[00:49:56] If you're keeping self and moving into discomfort, then I think it's always the right move.
[00:50:02] Laura McKowen: I think that's totally spot on. What came to mind for me is how the difference between the discomfort of dishonesty or lying, which feels very constrictive versus the discomfort of telling the truth, which feels also uncomfortable, but there's a feeling of expansiveness and possibility.
[00:50:27] Annie Grace: I love that.
[00:50:28] Laura McKowen: Right? So both ways are uncomfortable, but you have to be able to sit there. I mean, the prerequisite for all of this is to be, to sit with yourself in your body, feel in your body and start to really discern what's going on.
[00:50:48] Annie Grace: And the prerequisite to feeling in your body is stillness. You have to have enough margin in your days. You can't be like the Annie who was frantic and rushing because I had no sense of what was happening in my body.
[00:51:03] Laura McKowen: Totally. It's a great way to not feel.
[00:51:05] Annie Grace: And I'd say the other litmus test is you were talking that really comes to mind is just the litmus test of hiding, you know, because in dishonesty you want to hide, but in honesty, like it's still really uncomfortable, but there's no sense of hiding.
[00:51:19] And I think when you're fully self, you don't have to hide it and cut off your hiding. If it makes you want to hide or disconnect, then I think it's that negative point, because there's a sense of shame in there.
[00:51:31] Laura McKowen: Okay. So that's one, do you maybe have another sort of distilled learning about making the trek from one energy to the other?
[00:51:41] Annie Grace: I think I would just share that of all the mantras that I have, you know, come up with for myself. The one that has been most effective and most pervasive in this journey has been, I am willing, I'm willing to do the difficult thing because by the way, the journey through being run on gasoline to being run on solar or sun, you have to be willing to uncover it.
[00:52:07] Like there's a reason that that energy even existed. And so it's almost like you have to be willing to look under the rock. And, I had so cut off from that my thought was okay, my childhood was fine, everything was fine, you know? And by the way, if I go back there, if I even think about that stuff, then somehow I'm passing a judgment on my parents.
[00:52:29] And like, there's so much fear around that. And I mean, literally some of this transition for me was having these conversations with my parents that I couldn't even, like every part of me felt terrified to do it, but not terrified in the hiding. Like almost an indescribable way. And then I would talk to them about certain things and certain times where I realized in my childhood, I had created these meanings, this meaning that I had to be right. Or I had to be a certain way to get attention, or I, you know, all of these meanings.
[00:53:08] And they came from moments and I had to do it with such an open heart without any blame, with full love, but I still had to communicate it. And that was so scary. And it was something about the communication itself that was so healing, no matter how they received it. And I had to be totally unattached to how they received it.
[00:53:28] Like if I went in expecting an apology, that discounted the whole conversation from the beginning, because the communication was just completely and totally for me. And every time that I went into that dark cave, I don't think I can do this. I don't think I can have this conversation. I don't think I can look at that part of my life.
[00:53:47] I don't think I can go there. I don't think I can confront that. And I came out the other side every single time. I was like, oh, that sense of relief. That sense of expansiveness. That sense of that was worth it. I can't believe that it took me so long to do that. When we set intention to go on this path to say like, I set an intention, my intention was that I wanted to be driven by joyfulness and playfulness.
[00:54:10] I wanted the thing that our families want most from us. Our children want more than anything from us is for us to be happy, that our partners want more than anything from us as for us to be happy. And we think it's all this other stuff. We think they want us to look better or they want us to be more present or they want anything.
[00:54:24] But no, they just want us to be happy. And so when I was like, okay, my happiness is actually the biggest gift that I can give to my family. And I reframed it like that. All of a sudden, I wasn't just doing it for myself.
[00:54:35] Laura McKowen: That's really, really, really good. Okay. So I think that's a beautiful place to end.
[00:54:41] And we have a few questions that people have written in. We have some paid members or premium members for the podcast who get to submit questions for guests. And I knew they would be very excited to submit questions for you. But yeah, before that, I just want to say we don't talk a lot when we do talk I really listen to what you say, because I know that one, I do feel like you really do have the best intentions for me, which is very rare or among women and being in the same industry. Like, I don't feel competitive with you. That's such a gift to me. And I think that's largely, that's a reflection on you.
[00:55:26] And two, I just, I want to commend you for doing, for being willing to do this work because you've affected, you've changed so many people's lives. You really have.
[00:55:36] Annie Grace: Thanks, Laura. I feel the exact same about you. I love our conversations. They light me up. I just absolutely love it and I think it's so, so important.
[00:55:49] And I think it just does reflect what we both bring to the relationship. You know, there is just a sense of we're in this together and that's just really beautiful. Yeah.
[00:55:58] Laura McKowen: I agree. Thank you. And, okay, so there's three questions. This came from Jenny. So she says This Naked Mind, The Alcohol Experiment and Annie Grace helped me quit booze and become alcohol free. In 2020, I am 589 days as of this writing alcohol free. And I write this and I credit it huge to Annie. So tell her thank you for everything she does and has put out into the universe. My question is how does Annie fill her tank when she's empty and does she ever want to freak out or fly off the handle?
[00:56:37] I know she has a quote unquote, duck mode in her toolbox. It must be something that you talk about, but what does she do on the days that even that doesn't work?
[00:56:51] Annie Grace: Oh man. Gosh, there are those days for sure. And I think part of it is just recognition that those days happen. And I lived in a place where through this journey, I would say, dead set on eradicating any discomfort. You know, I was going to get to a place where I was always happy and I was always playful and I was always joyful.
[00:57:13] And I realized at one point that, you know, I really looked at emotions and I did kind of a deconstruction of our emotions. And I realized that there's really three layers, right? There's like our affect, which has the word for what you actually feel in your body. And then there's the meaning that you give that.
[00:57:28] So say I wake up and I'm just feeling anxious. I'm feeling uncomfortable. And there's the meaning I gave that. And historically my meanings would be, you know, everything's falling apart. Everything's wrong. My marriage is in trouble. My kids are in trouble. Everything's wrong. And then there's the layer of judgment, how I'm judging myself for that meaning.
[00:57:47] And so on those days where I just wake up and the feeling in my body is restlessness or anxiety or dread, or a pit in my stomach. And my mind immediately spins to the right. I just have to sit there and I usually journal and I just pour all that meaning out. I just let it all come out.
[00:58:08] And then, at least the thing you have most control over in that moment, you're not going to be able to make yourself feel better necessarily. And you have to acknowledge that you have to acknowledge that some days are just going to suck and that's okay. But the thing I have most control over is not judging myself for that.
[00:58:22] Meaning that is the lever. If there's a lever, there's three levels, right? Aspect, you can affect your affect with exercise or meditation over time. Right? So you can change that. You can affect your meaning with all of the work that Laura and I have been talking about, but then judgment, you can just change that. You can just decide that I'm not going to judge myself for feeling bad today.
[00:58:43] Laura McKowen: Yeah. It's so it's happened so automatically that we don't even realize that we do it. So even just knowing like, oh yeah, that extra layer of judgment, I just added there made everything worse. So that's brilliant.
[00:58:56] Well, none of us, I certainly didn't realize how judgy I was with myself. Thought I was very compassionate and I was wrong. Okay. I love that. So there, these are two questions that I rolled into one about, well, I'll just read them. I love Annie's judgment free, compassionate approach to going alcohol free and to carry that as a non-drinker into social situations.
[00:59:18] So as to not alienate friends with the holier than thou attitude, I often think about this and how it will relate to parenting. As my kids grow, they are only five and seven, but I'm already thinking about how I'll handle the drinking narrative. Then this is the other question that's related. Could you talk about that dynamic of having these conversations?
[00:59:38] If you have a spouse or significant family or friends that still drink normally? I think Annie’s husband quit after she did, but I'm guessing her kids are still around adults that drink. So one example is like the whole drinking and driving scenario. I want to tell my kids never to get in a car if they've had anything to drink or with someone that has had something to drink, but their dad has certainly driven them home after a beer.
[01:00:01] So I want to be respectful of him. I don't see him having a problem, but I still want to send them consistent and strong messaging about drinking.
[01:00:11] Annie Grace: So, I think there's a few things here. First of all, in that specific example with the dad, I would just have a conversation with the dad about like, Hey, like maybe you could talk to our kids about just making sure they never get in cars with people and have that, that whole narrative come from him. Because I think that would just alleviate that.
[01:00:34] Laura McKowen: You don't add the surface because he drinks. That's why you're recommending it, right?
[01:00:37] Annie Grace: Yeah. Right. Because he's the one who's drinking. And so he can, you know, delineate kind of like, you know, what he thinks. Let him have that conversation.
[01:00:47] He has the same concern I would assume for your children as you do. And so letting him lead that conversation will take away any chance that you're going to be judging him or distancing from him or painting him in a bad light. And I mean, he's a dad, he should have that conversation with his kids. That’s what should happen.
[01:01:03] So, how you frame that to him though, needs to be well thought out and very much like, okay, I think we should talk to our kids about things like nicotine and drugs. And these are some of the things. What parts do you want to talk about? What parts do I want to talk about? Let's have a holistic conversation about how we talk to our kids about all of this stuff in terms of people in your life who are drinking.
[01:01:25] The thing that I just remember at the core of it is that nobody takes advice. They don't ask. And so it is, I believe the most important thing that you can do with your kids, with your spouse, with your friends, is to maintain judgment-free rapport, to maintain that connectedness in the relationship. And again, going back to that scale of fusion, where you feel all their emotions, and you're totally connected to cut off where you're just like, whatever, I don't even want to talk to you, you have to maintain full self.
[01:01:54] You don't drink. You're proud of it. That's great. And that's your choice and your decision. And so you're not bringing any of that judgment to the people around you when you do that. And when they really feel loved first by you, despite their behavior, you will be the one that they talk to when they are ready to ask for advice, you will be the one that they ask that's happening with my kids already.
[01:02:16] You know, my kids ask me questions that I'm like, what, you know, you're totally asking, this is amazing, but because I’m connected first, they feel loved first because they never ever feel like I'm trying to change them. And that takes a lot of work as a parent, because again, the control versus, you know, they're growing, your control is diminishing.
[01:02:39] The tendency is for us to try to lock down, work, control as they get more independent, which kills the rapport. And actually we need to give them more freedom as they get more independent and have a lot of trust that if, if we are maintaining the relationship above all things, the rapport, the connection above all things, thenwe will be the one that they come to when they want to talk about it.
[01:03:02] And then when they ask, that is the time that you can say what needs to be said.
[01:03:06] Laura McKowen: Yeah. I think it's really good that the two thing that you can be very proud of being alcohol free, not drinking and not being judgmental of other people. Okay. Last one. Or we talked about this quite a lot actually, but maybe you have a couple comments.
[01:03:24] How do you balance going from a personal brand, you to a company and all that growth, which means that you, the person are not touching everything or everyone that comes across this naked mind. Has there been backlash to getting bigger and impersonal?
[01:03:50] Annie Grace: So two ways. First I'll answer the latter part of that. First, I think there will always be backlash, especially when you have your people who have come right at the beginning, they got me in the inbox, for example, and then all of a sudden they get an email signed from Annie's team or from Shelby on the team and it like that just, it's never going to feel good. And so I fully understand and respect that. And I think that's just a natural thing that happens. And, I think that it's carefully considered on my part on one hand, the growth has sort of happened to me in a lot of ways.
[01:04:29] On the other hand though, I also think, well, I now want to make it my job to empower people who are going to be much more personal. So, you know, we've put 150 people through this Naked Mind Institute and they're creating these websites and these platforms and it's them, you're getting them.
[01:04:48] And so, here I am, a mom of three living in Colorado with brown hair, blue eyes. Like I'm not going to relate to everybody. You know, all of a sudden I have a coach who only speaks German and she's working in Germany or somebody who's an expat in Hong Kong. And like, they're just going to find the people that they are meant to find. And I think allowing that ripple effect, allowing that growth to happen is really, really important. But to answer the first part of the question that does not come without me spending so many hours on principles, and those are the guiding values, the guiding principles by which anything that is going to have This Naked Mind, the brand attached to it exists within because my worst nightmare would be that somebody would use the name and use it to shame somebody about their drinking or because it caused some kind of harm.
[01:05:40] And so there's just this, you know, really well thought out. I mean, the coach's core values are like five pages long. The tone of voice that we use with people inside This Naked Mind. And, you know, in Facebook groups that are tens of thousands of people. It's all well thought out and it's all mine.
[01:05:57] And then, because everything is principle driven. You can allow it to expand, but it's expanding in a really thoughtful and intentional way. Yeah. But it's tough. I mean, it's just tough.
[01:06:09] Laura McKowen: Yeah, it is. It is. That was beautifully stated. That was the last of the questions. It's just so good to hang out with you this morning and get some time and I know everything you said is going to be really, really impactful for people. Thank you.
[01:06:30] Annie Grace: Yeah. You're so welcome.
[01:06:39] Laura McKowen: Thank you for hanging out with us today. We want every episode of Tell Me Something True to give you something you can use in your life. We also don't want there to be any barriers between us. That's why we built our own online community. It's free. It's not Facebook. And you can head on over to tmstpod.com to connect with folks around this episode.
[01:07:06] Also, have you noticed there aren't any ads on TMST - that's by design. We want to keep the show and our digital spaces ad free, but that's a goal we can only accomplish if we work together and that's where you can make a huge difference. TMST is being built as an ad free subscriber driven project. The subscribing members will play the critical role in keeping this going and keeping it ad free.
[01:07:35] There are no corporations backing us, no sponsors. So it's really us. And the good news is folks are signing up. Thank you so much to all of you who have come on board for this very unusual way to do things. You can join them when you make a one-time contribution or join our monthly program.
[01:07:56] We have cool opportunities for you to help shape the show. There are the complete unedited interviews. Ask our guests questions before they're on and connect with other TMST folks. I cannot stress this enough. You can make a huge difference for as little as $10 a month. So head on over to tmstpod.com right now. Tell Me Something True is engineered and mixed by Paul Chuffo. Mikel Ellcessor and I dreamed up this show and we're looking forward to joining you online and next time at Tell Me Something True.