"The Inclusive Event Planner" w/Laura Nelson

DeAnn's conversation with Laura Nelson, founder of Front Office Rocks and Sober Life Rocks. Laura discusses her journey from starting her own business to advocating for sober professionals. She shares her personal struggle with alcohol, leading to her sobriety in early 2020, and the founding of Sober Life Rocks to support sober professionals at conferences. Laura emphasizes the need for inclusive event planning, highlighting issues like the lack of non-alcoholic options and the pressure to drink. Her book, "The Inclusive Event Planner," targets meeting planners and HR to improve event inclusivity. She shares information on the Sober Life Rocks community and LinkedIn group for support and advocacy.

Reference Links:

Sober Life Rocks Website:
https://soberliferocks.com/

Sober Life Rocks LinkedIn Group:
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14532282

The Inclusive Event Planner
https://inclusiveeventplanner.com/

If you have questions or comments or would like to be a guest on the Recovery Discovery Podcast, send an email to:
deann@showupandstay.org

More information about our project is available at:
https://www.showupandstay.org/
https://www.soberpositiveworkplace.org/

For podcast updates, follow us on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/showupandstayorg/

Music and Audio Production by Katie Hare.
https://www.hare.works

Transcript

DeAnn Knighton: 0:00

Hi, welcome back to the show. I have always been confused by the phrase, it's just business. It's not personal. How can that be true about a place where we spend so much of our time? My napkin theory is that this was a way to regulate dissenters and errors of top down leadership styles. Whether or not that's true, it's not realistic anymore to say that work is not personal, and the trends support this, individuals are increasingly looking for ways to align their work with their values, taking to heart perhaps Erickson stages of development, which reminds us that midlife is the space where we find either generativity or stagnation. Today, I welcome Laura Nelson, founder of front office rocks and most recently, sober life rocks, which is a community dedicated to supporting sober professionals. She's also the author of the recently released book the inclusive event planner, a quick start guide to planning sober friendly conferences. Laura, I'm so glad you're here. Awesome.

Unknown: 1:02

Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

DeAnn Knighton: 1:04

We have so much to talk about, and I want to jump right in with your story. I love hearing the ways in which people have turned passion into work. Maybe. Let's start with your path to founding front office rocks for

Unknown: 1:20

sure, yeah. So I married a guy out of undergrad and have my degree in Human Resources and organizational development, and he went to dental school, graduated dental school, and I joined him to run his dental practice over the 20 plus years that I was running the practice, one of the things that I thought was missing in our industry was good team training, employee training, and so I started an online website that teaches customer service and systems to dental teams. And then from that, I've had the opportunity to start speaking and traveling around and doing the conferences. And that is now primarily what I do, is I do online team training and then go from conference to conference and speak on it in front of live audiences. So that's my day job.

DeAnn Knighton: 2:04

Got it so you're very comfortable being in front of people advocating for things it sounds like. So how did that move into this work that you're doing now related to sobriety?

Unknown: 2:15

So I was married for 22 years, have two wonderful children, speaking, traveling, building a business, and found myself in my mid 40s, separated. My ex husband and I went our separate ways for our reasons, alone. My adult children now out of the house and all through my career, I drank like it seemed like everybody else did. I go to the conferences. I do the sports thing. I do, the moms thing, you know, the whole thing, but ended up really starting to struggle with two things. One, I the only real relationship I had in my life every day was alcohol, which was not necessarily a good thing when you're depressed and alone and questioning my relationship as I'm in this dark space with what am I doing? What is this right? Continue to grow my business and speak while I was alone, but also recognizing that I was leaning more and more to alcohol that I ever had in my life, and was getting in a really kind of dark spot. Didn't consider myself an alcoholic. You know, my dad always said, careful. We have alcoholism in our family. And I thought, Well, okay, but I don't know anybody who doesn't drink, so I guess we just try to control it, you know, like we get all done in different moments in our life struggling. I'm just like, I don't understand why I am doing this, but I can't stop, and everybody else seems to be doing it. And then I went to a conference in 2019 where I was had the opportunity to speak a day early, like I was supposed to speak on Friday, but they asked me to speak on Thursday because something changed, and I hadn't prepared to speak on Thursday, so I drank more than I would have drank the night before I speak, therefore not wanting to get on stage, because I wasn't feeling 100% as I would if I'd known I was speaking the next day. And that kind of hit me like a, you know, ton of bricks of like, this is my career. Yet I can't just jump on stage because of the drinking that I did the night before. And then in January of 2020, I went to a conference, woke up again with a headache because, you know, did the social thing that we do at the hotel bars and all of that. And went to the gym that morning, tried to make myself feel better, and got on the treadmill and tried to find something that was going to, like, inspire me for the day. And I came across the TED talk about gray area drinking. And that morning was the morning where I was like, I finally could put a name to what my problem was. I didn't consider myself an alcoholic, whether you are or aren't, that's an internal decision. But that day, I was like, Okay, this is my problem. And I really related with the TED Talk. And then thankfully, that same day, I saw somebody else speaking, and at that time, she was sober, and she mentioned from the stage, she's somebody I looked up to in our career, somebody a couple. Years ahead of me, and she mentioned how her best friends were Ben Jerry and Chardonnay, and she had to change that, because she needed relationships with humans and not alcohol and sugar. And because she told that story and she was sober at that moment, I thought, if she can do it, I can do it. And I came home that day, and that was the last time I drank, which was early 2020

DeAnn Knighton: 5:20

There's so much I can relate to in that. The first thing I want to mention is how cool it is that she was out there speaking and that that inspired you. I think that is so important we have all of these old understandings of what we think sobriety looks like, or what people might think it looks like if they haven't explored this. And it's so important to see that it's not this dark thing, but actually is very bright and vibrant. So I love hearing that story, that you were empowered by that speech. I also can relate to the conference thing. I was in sales and marketing for most of my career. I did multiple conferences and traveled well into my late 30s, and drinking was at the center of all of it, to the point now that I still even have kind of some weird feelings in certain spaces, like hotel rooms, where I used to spend a lot of time that like, remind me of kind of a dark time. And I also can mention to you that when I first got sober, one of my first sort of experiences that led me to starting this podcast, and this work had to do with the convention that I attended as a sober person, where it was like, so eye opening to realize this is like college level pressure drinking happening here, and maybe I never realized it before because I was on the other side of it, but being on this side is that this isn't right. This is not creating an environment that's inclusive. Tell us about your book. Maybe share a tip or two of your favorites out of that as well. That'd be great. Last

Unknown: 6:52

year, actually, a year ago, November, I was at a conference where the idea of silver Life Rocks birthed similar to you, where we were at a conference, my business partner and I, and we thought we were the only two sober people there. We didn't know. And I was on a panel, a wellness panel, and I asked how many people in here consider themselves sober, sober, ish or sober? Curious, and like 15 to 20% of the people raised their hand. But the issue was, there was no good options for non alcoholic drinks. The event planner only had beer and wine. Most of almost everybody didn't know about each other. So many times, when you go to a conference like that with the peer pressure, it's already awkward. Anyway, it's already hard. Some people it's triggering, but also you feel very alone, and that's really where we started sober life rocks is to build a community and connection, where we don't feel alone at these events, a member in our community that was on our podcast, you talked about, if you know there's just one other sober person in the room with you, you're not alone. So many people are sober in silence. I feel like you know, in our professional world, we're so proud of all the things that we do, the accomplishments, the accolades, but we don't celebrate and honor our sobriety, and that's one of the biggest accomplishments we have. I mean, that's one of my superpowers, is like I overcame the peer pressure of society and as a norm, to be on the side of not drinking and not that. It's, you know, it's not for everybody, but for me, it's great, and I want to celebrate it. I want to, I want it to be part of my story. So that's where it kind of started a year ago, and then we have started to really focus in on conferences, events, meeting planning. Because in your personal life, you can choose where you go to, what restaurants you go to, what bars you go to, who you hang out with. You have the option. But in your professional life, many times you don't, you can't choose, as a salesperson, which sales dinners you're going to go to, or which after hours events you're going to go to, which conferences you're going to go to. We roll up the black bar at the end of the night and everyone stands around and drinks. And that's the way we connect, and that's the main thing we do. We're just standing around the bar drinking. And so I really wanted to make an impact in this part of our industry or in our world, because if we have more people who are raising their hands saying, I don't want to drink, even if you aren't sober, but you just don't want to drink at industry events, like you don't want to drink at work, because it's many good reasons potentially not to it. We're not doing it. We're faking it by putting a lime in our drink and hiding that we're not drinking because we don't want to deal with the peer pressure. So we have more people who would be okay with just saying they're sober they don't want to drink, and then have better options at these conferences, so that we can feel more included, and they can have more evening events that's not just focused around the alcohol, more people would feel included and be part of it. And so that's really where the book idea came from. Because now it's not just building the community like you're doing and I'm doing and people talking about it, but now we have to actually change this part of the industry. We have to really change the meeting spaces and the convention spaces, which is what I talk about. Out and I'm tackling in the book,

DeAnn Knighton: 10:01

is the audience for the book, like vendors at these events, who's it targeted for?

Unknown: 10:07

It's actually, it's targeted for, you know, meeting planners. HR, but I mean, we're coming into holiday season right now, and there's after our events for all of your teams and stuff. So anybody, basically, who is hosting an event that wants to have the people coming to you included. And I'm learning so much of this last year, like a lot of people are like, Hey, Laura, you're coming to our thing. We made mocktails for you, which I super appreciate. But usually the mocktails are some sticky sweet, you know, lemonade thing in a picture over by the kids table, and they're putting a sign that says cocktails. And for me, it's like, I can still have an adult beverage. It doesn't need to have alcohol in it. That's the only difference. The meeting planners are trying to get there, but we're not quite there, and if the event still just centers around drinking, that is one of the major issues. People don't feel included. If we're just doing the alcohol, like we can be doing other things. And so it's really to anybody who hosts events from 10 to, you know, 10,000 really starting to think, because a lot of people who aren't on the other side don't know what it's like to go to these events when they are still part of the, you know, the regular society and drinking. I think that's

DeAnn Knighton: 11:21

really smart. And I think you're, you're right about it's, it's great to be inclusive in practice, I shared an experience on this podcast about a time that I tried a non alcoholic wine tasting experience with other people at the table who were drinking, and the server got the glasses confused, and it was this whole thing. Now I'm a person who identifies as in recovery from substance use disorder, so having a drink to me feels like a big deal. It would have been upsetting to me and to my experience. And so there's this element of Yes, be inclusive. Yes. It can feel good. Also, be careful thinking of that. What are some ways for it to not feel like an afterthought, and to not necessarily call attention in the wrong way. What does a good experience look like

Unknown: 12:07

when we go to these conferences? Typically the people who stand behind the black bars. And you know what I mean by the black bars, they roll them up in the conference room, and then they have all the drinks out, and they just want to pour drinks. They're just and most of the time they are not trained cocktail bartenders. They're the food and beverage people, so they don't realize, and yours is a good example of like, if they were to hand somebody a drink who's in recovery, who is counting days, that is huge detriment, like a huge problem, but they're not trained in because, you know, if you go to a restaurant, you're held accountable when the bartenders right, if they over serve you or whatever. So there's that, there's the miscommunication between the meeting planner, the conference food and beverage person, and then the bartender, and so we need to improve that communication. I was at an event just last week where my friend was the meeting planner, and he said, we have mocktails for you. And I'm like, thanks. And I went up and I said, What are the mocktails? And the waitresses or the bartender is like, I don't know, I guess it's this stuff in this picture, and then even ordering, it's awkward for some people to go up in order. There's the pressure of people standing around you, so having like, a sign with some mocktail options, or having the drinks, having options more than coke and sprite, and having it right there where somebody can point to it, they don't have to make a big deal out of it. They don't have to say, Do you have anything that doesn't have alcohol over the music? They can just easily point to it, serve it in the same type cup everyone else is getting it in. Don't give it to me in the kids cup. Give it to me in adult glass, because just because there's no alcohol and it doesn't mean I'm not an adult. And so there's things like that. You know, attendance is down at conferences. We can get a lot of this stuff on podcasts and YouTube videos, so the reason we're going to these events is to feel included, to get connection. But a lot of people who are in recovery or or choose not to drink in excess, choose not to go to these conferences, because most of the time they know, and I'm finding in every industry, it's the same. There's so much happening around alcohol that people aren't going so before you even throw your event or start to invite your your people to your event, put in wording that allows people to know that this is going to be an inclusive event, inclusive space, and there'll be options for other things to do and drinks without alcohol, like let set it up so that people feel included before they even book their ticket or plan their travel to come. And then set it up so that people can get connected. See, because a lot of times the way we use alcohol is for the connection. So we need to have programming events, things in the schedule that allow people to connect, not just using the alcohol, right? Maybe a coffee meetups in the morning, or have some sort of a an event where people can come and laugh and do things together, which they can they can have alcohol there, but just don't make that the main point. So, so the book kind of runs through from before you. Plan it all the way through. You know what's at the bar? That's just one part of of the whole thing about being inclusive all the way through the end of the event, to make sure that everyone who comes feels like they're included and treated the way they should be.

DeAnn Knighton: 15:14

That's great. Well, we'll make sure that we put a link to information on the book in the show notes. I want to hear about the community. What's going well for people? What isn't we

Unknown: 15:25

have at sober life rocks for $9 a month, you can join our community, which basically is just a connection with other people within the community, and a daily email that goes out from my co founder, Margie and I, and then we've started a LinkedIn group. One of the things we're targeting is getting with professionals, and we're trying to combine the sober professionals, or sober ish professionals, and the meetings and conferences into one group to say we need to fix this issue. And so we have a LinkedIn group that's sober life rocks that anybody listening to this wants to come over. That's where all our conversation is happening. That's where we're sharing stories. We just had a story of one of our members who they canceled last minute a mocktail bar like this meeting planner was just going to do mocktails. It was an afternoon, two, three o'clock. They were going to have mocktails. Thought it would be fun, and the hotel canceled it because they said, If you don't have alcohol, we can't provide a bartender. I was at an event where they had mocktails at two to three in the afternoon. And I said, Why didn't you have the mocktails during a happy hour? And they said, We didn't want to mix it with happy hour. We wanted it to stand on its own, that I appreciate the mocktails, but the whole time that the reason we have them is during the social hour. That's like telling vegetarians your meal will be served at three, because we don't want to mix you with the meat eaters at five. We're moving forward. We're just it takes, you know, one step forward, two steps backwards. And so we're really trying to build a community where we can get everybody on the same page to say, Do you see how this doesn't really make sense? Do you see how this could be improved a little bit? And that's what our hope is. I

DeAnn Knighton: 16:57

like to think I surround myself with a lot of people who are very forward thinking and spend a lot of time in these spaces, and I think, oh, yeah, everybody's on board. We all get that this doesn't have to mean something that it doesn't. But I sometimes wonder if I have this bubble around me, and so I want to know, like, how do you feel about readiness for people to be out and open about their choice to not drink and to not feel that it could limit them professionally.

Unknown: 17:23

So my business partner has been sober for 19 years, and so she's been through the stigma side of things, where it was, I think there was definitely a time where you kept your sobriety quiet and it You didn't bring it into work. And I love how you started this where, like, professional meets business like we're at a different day and age. Now, it's a learning for society, right? And I think everyone's starting to wake up to the fact that alcohol is not good for you. Alcohol is not your friend. Alcohol. Now, if you choose to drink, that's your own choice. There's nothing wrong with it, just like if you choose to smoke or you choose to have that extra piece of dessert, you're educated around it, and we know that it's no longer a negative thing to be sober. However, there are people who still I mean, and they don't. I don't think people mean to do the peer pressure like I just think it's it's a societal habit. I try to balance this when I'm talking to people, those who are sober versus those who aren't, when, when someone says, Do you want a glass of wine? And you're like, No, thank you. And they're like, Are you sure you don't want a glass of wine? And if you're sober, you're like, oh my gosh, everyone's pushing it on me. Well, they also would say, Do you want a cookie? No, I don't want a cookie. Are you sure you don't want a cookie? They're just trying to be nice, right? And for people who maybe don't identify as in recovery, or, you know, alcoholic, they might be able to see that more. But people in recovery, it can be trigger, triggering, right? It can feel like peer pressure. And so some of it is we as as as those who've chosen to be sober, need to do the inner work. Need to, I mean, putting down the bottle was the first step right now we have to, like, live with ourselves and live with society and and understand that's their issue, not my issue. And then as a society, I think just just like you know, you meet people who've had this issue or that issue, this is just one more thing that a group of people are choosing not to drink. And the more we the more we talk about it, like I shout from the mountaintop since the day I say that I got sober from Tiktok, I started following someone on Instagram, and I started following someone else. The next thing you know, you know, I was searching for it, and I found it on Tiktok. And I'll stand on the mountaintop and yell it all day long, and I feel like I'm called to do that so that those that don't want to can still feel safe in our community and our presence, because they don't have to explain anymore, because I'm up here saying, Hey guys, like, there's a good number of people who don't want to drink, so stop pushing the alcohol on us. You know, I

DeAnn Knighton: 19:54

really like what you said about it really depends on where that person's at. There is still a level of personal accountability. In your whatever your journey is, you know, someone who is really newly sober and really struggled with substances probably should avoid certain events and triggers right? And they have to kind of own that right, like you're kind of a soft shell crab at the beginning, and sometimes you gotta hide a little bit then to know that there is so much support on the other side of this, I think is so great. And then for other people, they don't need that. They're stopping alcohol for a completely different reason, and they don't need that. But either way, the option is there when the time is right.

Unknown: 20:34

So for me, it was just like, it's such a shame that I'm spending time and money and energy to come here to spend time with these people, and I'm leaving because of it or because of the evening event. And Couldn't we just change this so that I could hang out? Because there are other people in here too who don't love this and or are going back to their rooms early and or aren't even coming to the conferences. And I've had since we've started this, I've had some of the best networking at the evening events now, because I know other people also who are sober or sober ish, and so when it gets crazy and silly at the bar, we sit outside of the bar and the little chairs in the lobby and get a cup of coffee and have an amazing conversation, right? And I'm still, I'm laughing and having fun, and I'm waking up in the morning and not regretting what I did the night before.

DeAnn Knighton: 21:19

Yeah, you know, I had this experience at a work dinner after I was sober, where it progressed after dinner, where there was excessive drinking. I kind of went along in the beginning, but then I just kind of cut out. But then what happened the next day is that there was all of this weirdness, right? There had been a weird situation between one of the women and the guys, and he had to apologize to her, and just think of how distracting all of that was from what we were actually there to accomplish. And

Unknown: 21:47

think of the networking that I mean, the reason we go is to network, and one of our taglines is we're here to help for memorable networking, because there's a lot of networking after drink number two or three that you don't even remember the conversation. It's upsetting that we all go back to our rooms because we're not being sober out loud. We're not saying hey, I you know, and we're not being included. When in the book, I talk about spacing of your conference or your events, like, don't put us in the kids room. Like, don't put it like, just put some couches in areas outside of the party, the DJ or the whatever, so that we can sit outside and have conversation, and when a good song comes on, I'm all about 90s and 80s music. I'll run into dance, but then I want to come back out and be able to talk and be included in the event, but not standing around the bar like I just don't want to stand around the bar anymore.

DeAnn Knighton: 22:40

What advice could you give to someone who is thinking about sobriety or has found it and is trying to figure out how to make it work for them?

Unknown: 22:50

One of the ways I got sober was reading the book this naked mind and Annie, and Annie is great, and I put out in the universe. You know that I wanted to meet her, and I got the opportunity to meet her and then get certified in her coaching program. And so I'm a certified coach, not because I coach people, but if I'm going to stand on stage and talk about this or lead a group, I wanted to have a certification after my name. And so I'm certified in it. And one of the things that I can say is, if you are, there's a lot of people who are sober, curious, sober, ish or newly sober, who still live in shame, who still live in fear, who still live in quiet, you know, hidden thing, and that is not going to serve you when you are looking for a life of sobriety or your whatever your decision is right. Shame is going to make you want to drink more. Shame is going to want to make you hide more. And there is nothing shameful about not drinking. There is nothing shameful about wherever you are on your journey with alcohol. The thing is, is it's it's not just about you. Alcohol is an addictive substance. Anybody who drinks alcohol enough in the right situation, would become addicted to alcohol. And so first, stop shaming yourself. Stop, you know, feeling like you're the only one you're not. There's so many of us talking about it now, like, find the follow the people that you follow that you you can relate to and get connected. Because when you start to recognize that this is your superpower, like, this is your like, you've overcome something that a lot of people probably look at you and kind of look at you like, maybe, like, how do you do it? Not because they they're shaming you, but because they're like, I sort of maybe want that, like, live into it. Like, live it up and and take care of you. Because at the end of day, it's just about you. It doesn't matter what it matter what anybody else thinks. It doesn't matter what anybody else does. It's all about you. And get you know, get connected to a community. My community is this naked mind. Listen to podcasts like this great podcast, whatever you need to do to feed you, because it is about you, and it's about changing whatever aspect you've got in your life. That you're not happy with.

DeAnn Knighton: 25:01

What I think is so cool, kind of like, what you said about the superpower is that if you build up some of these muscles and skills, and doing it with drinking is a really great place to start, because it's hard. You know, can be really hard, and you really have to push yourself. And if you do that, then it does become a superpower. Because you're like, oh, wow, I can't. I never thought I would have been able to see myself as someone that doesn't drink, and now I am that person. So now, what else can I do? What else am I am I capable of? What other roadblocks about how I'm thinking about something are standing in my way right now? And that

Unknown: 25:36

is literally the journey if you were to get involved with any any good person in this area, but Annie does this with this naked mind, is it's once you get through the alcohol, then it's okay. Why were you using the alcohol? And what other things in your life do? Can you change? Right? What other habits mean? There's more addictions than alcohol. You know, I got on the other side of it and realized I was addicted to being content, like I didn't really want to feel the highs and the lows. Well, if you don't have alcohol to numb that, then I've got to learn how to deal with the highs and the lows. And we've used, many people have used alcohol for the goods and the bad and the celebration or the depression or whatever that we don't know how to do life. Yeah.

DeAnn Knighton: 26:16

Well, thank you. This was amazing. So nice to meet you. Thanks for all your great work,

Unknown: 26:20

we're trying to build an army so that conferences and conventions and hotels will pay attention. If you're in LinkedIn, please come search out our group for silver Life Rocks. If you're interested in joining our community at $9 a month, you can come to silver Life Rocks. The book is on the inclusive event planner. You can download it for free, if you want to read it for free, or if you want to buy it. There's a link to buy it on Amazon. There are other people around you that also, even at even at events that aren't drinking, don't want to drink, and would love to hear somebody say, I don't want to drink either. So you're not alone. I.