To Be or Not to Be… a Sober Entrepreneur

If you got sober and one of your first thoughts was “I need to make a business now,” you might be an entrepreneur.

Because I’ll tell you, that is not what most people first think when starting on their sobriety endeavor. Even for me, a born-and-raised entrepreneur having grown up on my family’s tropical fish farm in Florida, I had bigger things occupying my mind for those first several months of sobriety.

The cravings to drink were at the forefront of my mind nearly every day. I had been working in a new career at a local hospital for only about 3 months, and I’m sure it would have been a lot harder to stay sober if I had all the freedom I was used to having when I worked out of my house.

The structure of my days at work, along with the freedom to plug in my headphones and gorge on Recovery Podcasts, kept my head in the game and only left me with a few hours after work to fight off the demons, which I was lucky enough to get to spend with my wife keeping occupied with our TV shows and puzzles.

I had had ideas of side hustles, and other business concepts that I wanted to try out and see if I could be successful at something else other than the business my dad and his brother had created in the 1970’s, and I had a notebook full of notes from business podcasts I had listened to and books that I had read, but they were not ready to be put to work yet.

I needed to get the rest of my mind right first.

And that did take some time. As my brain started to relax a little bit about the fear of the drink, and the obsession began to fade, my old interests that were buried under years of selfish, self-seeking behaviors started to percolate back up to the surface.

After listening to probably hundreds of episodes of sober podcasts, I started to resonate with some stories more than others.

I had been into entrepreneurship podcasts before I got sober, but I distinctly remember the focus some of them had on the networking at bars or the role alcohol had played in their idea generation. There had become a mental barrier against being an entrepreneur while sober.

But the more I listened, the most sober entrepreneur episodes I would hear, and I started to think a little more about what I would want to do in the sober community.

So in late October of last year, after having nearly 1 year sober, I started this website, dedicated to the Sober Entrepreneur. I joined Instagram and searched out recovery-themed pages, and was inspired by their inspiration. I started posting quotes and questions of my own, and the reception was incredible. In 7 months, I gained nearly 1200 followers, all organically with no paid promotions.

I could see from those following my page that there was an audience of people that are interested in sober entrepreneurship, and what it could do for their life in sobriety.

I’m still an avid business podcast fan, and take every opportunity to join webinars put on by some of the top internet marketing specialists, because now that the alcohol is out, I can feel more than ever that business is in my blood. I’ve just had to retrain my brain and my body as to how to do it without alcohol.

So Sober Ventures was born, and in March of this year, I published the first ever Sober Ventures Summit, an online gathering of sober entrepreneurs from across the country, sharing their experiences and journeys and how they were able to make a business succeed in sobriety.

And with the warm reception that the Summit had, I’m gearing up to launch a podcast dedicated to the sober entrepreneur movement. Over the coming weeks, I will be scheduling time to speak with more sober business people to share their struggles and successes and hopefully inspire more to take up the journey as well.

You can join the fun now at our Facebook Group, The Sober Venture Club.