#213 - This might be tanking your productivity, with Sarah Rusbatch
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What if the one thing standing between you and peak productivity isn't your morning routine, your task management system or even your mindset—but something you never thought to question?
Most business owners are constantly searching for that next productivity hack, the secret sauce that'll finally unlock their full potential. We optimise our schedules, invest in the latest apps and consume endless content about peak performance. But here's what's fascinating: sometimes the biggest breakthrough comes from examining what we're not doing, rather than what we are.
Recently, I stumbled across some content that stopped me in my tracks. It wasn't about another productivity system or time management technique. Instead, it challenged me to look at something I'd never considered as a productivity factor—gray area drinking. Not alcoholism, not rock-bottom stories, but that middle ground where many high-functioning professionals find themselves without even realising it.
This conversation with the amazing Sarah Rusbatch, a gray area drinking coach, isn't about lecturing or judgment. It's about education, awareness and potentially uncovering a blind spot that could be quietly undermining your best efforts. Because sometimes the most powerful productivity hack isn't about adding something new to your routine—it's about recognizing what might be holding you back.
If you've ever wondered whether your evening wine ritual or weekend drinks are impacting your weekday performance more than you realise, this one's for you. Let's dive into a conversation that might just change how you think about productivity entirely.
Is Alcohol Affecting Your Productivity?
Why should you care about alcohol in the productivity context? Sarah explains it beautifully: even those few glasses of wine that seem so harmless could be the culprit behind disrupted sleep patterns. REM sleep, which is crucial for a well-rested mind and body, can be severely impacted. The result? You might find yourself feeling perpetually tired, struggling with low-level anxiety and just not performing at your best. Think about it – is that Friday night glass of wine really worth a Monday morning slump?
Sarah shares how just one evening of indulgence might impair our brain’s ability to tackle complex tasks for up to four days. Imagine the impact on our businesses if our weekend habits are dragging into our workweek!
Sarah’s Journey: Experimenting with Alcohol-Free Living
Sarah’s story is particularly inspiring. She took a break from alcohol in 2017 and found her energy, clarity and confidence soared. Her business thrived as a result. It's a simple reminder that sometimes the best productivity hack is about what we take away, not add on.
Empowerment Through Knowledge
What truly resonates with me about Sarah is her non-judgemental, educational approach. She’s not here to tell you to quit alcohol completely. Instead, it's all about understanding the impact and making informed choices about how we want to feel and operate daily.
Beyond personal coaching, Sarah’s book Beyond Booze: How to Create a Life You Love Alcohol-Free provides guidance for those curious about a less alcohol-dependent lifestyle. It’s packed with insights and strategies for creating a fulfilling life that doesn’t revolve around that evening glass of wine.
If our conversation has sparked some curiosity, why not start your own experiment? I’ve been cutting back, especially on those Friday night indulgences, and I’m already feeling a bit more energetic come Saturday. It’ll be interesting to see if this more mindful approach to drinking improves our professional lives too.
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[00:00:21] Tracey: Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Rise Up in Business podcast. I'm joined by a guest today and the reason I wanted to bring this guest on is because I was reading some of her content on LinkedIn recently and it resonated with me in terms of productivity hacks.
So there's reference in the content to productivity hacks, impact on productivity. And I don't know about you, but as a business owner, whenever I read anything like that, I'm always curious and I'm curious to dive in a little further and that's what this content did. Today's guest is Sarah Rusbatch. Sarah is a gray [00:01:00] area drinking coach as well as many other aspects of coaching that she does for women, and I've known Sarah for a long time.
She's a client of mine, but I've really connected with her content recently, which is around gray area drinking and what is it? And the light bulb moment for me. To get really curious about this and explore it a little more was the impact gray area drinking can have on our productivity in our day to day.
And I thought, gosh, I'm all about the hacks and I wanna dive into this. What I love about the way Sarah communicates her content and her message and and operates in her business is that she does not lecture us. This is not an anti-alcohol podcast. Far from it, that That would never come from me. It's an educational piece, it's a knowledge piece, and if you're a longtime listener, you know that this podcast is all about educating and empowering and sure, most of the time that relates to business legals and documentation and setting ourselves up for success in our business.
But today, it's about education and empowerment and setting [00:02:00] ourselves up for success for those who resonate with this, because it might just be really informative and it might just be the thing that's missing. And I know for me, I'm exploring it because I think it might be the thing that's missing. But anyway, more on that later.
Let's dive into the interview. It was such a fun down to earth, open and honest interview with Sarah. It wasn't really an interview, it was more like a chat, and I think you're gonna love it. dive in. I'll be back here with you at the end. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
[00:02:33] Sarah: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:02:35] Tracey: I've been really looking forward to having this conversation to share this topic with so many of my listeners because this is something that I am really curious about. It's like a little rabbit hole that I've been going down myself, and it all started.
For me, a little spark. When I was reading some of your content on LinkedIn and you were talking about the impact alcohol can have on our productivity, [00:03:00] and I'm all about productivity hacks, I'm all about hacks for everything, but that as a business owner, that really got my attention. Do you wanna just start by tell us what gray area drinking is because I know that it's a phrase, I know what it means now, but so many people still won't.
[00:03:15] Sarah: Yeah, and I think that's a really good place to start because the way that society talks about alcohol is you've got a problem with alcohol. You don't, and historically we've used the term alcoholic. And with that term has come the stereotype of someone who has lost their job, lost their home, they're on a park bench, drinking from nine o'clock in the morning out of a brown paper bag, and to shuffle into a basement church hall to go to a meeting and confess their sins and, and all the rest of it.
That might be true for the teeniest tiniest percentage of drinkers, but the majority of drinkers are like me and, well, not anymore, but where I was, which was in the gray area [00:04:00] drinking category, and I like to explain it. I think this is a great way for your listeners to put this into context, is if you've got a scale of one to 10.
One is someone who doesn't drink, or maybe they have a glass of champagne at a wedding once a year, and that is their alcohol use. Like alcohol just isn't there for them. It's not a part of their life in any way whatsoever. And 10 is the stereotype that we've just talked about. It's someone who has physical dependence on alcohol needs to safely withdraw under medical care from alcohol, who has perhaps reached that point where they're drinking.
Every day in the morning, all day. so those are the two extremes. Not many people in western culture are a one, and not many people are a 10. Gray area drinking. I put it as being about a four to an eight on that scale. So we've passed the point of being a take it or leave it drinker. So we are not someone that is like.
Uh, Do I feel like a drink? Do I not feel like a drink? [00:05:00] Oh, yeah. Don't care. We are not that We've got an association with alcohol. We've told ourself a story that alcohol is what I use when I'm stressed. Alcohol is my reward on a Friday. Alcohol is what I need to ensure that dinner party is fun.
Alcohol is what I need to have when I have a lunch with the girls. Like we've got all of these associations that alcohol needs to be present in those scenarios. And the thought of Changing that has got a negative connotation with it around either I can't have fun without it. My life will be boring without it.
What am I gonna do to unwind without it? What's gonna be my reward without it? but we're not yet either at the stage where we meet physical dependence, alcohol, we probably don't drink every day. We certainly don't drink in the morning. from the outside world, it doesn't look like we have a problem. So we're still going to work. We're still running our business, we're still doing all the things, but often for gray area drinkers, there's a shift in our inner world. So for me, there was this rising [00:06:00] consciousness of, alcohol's making me feel a bit shit and alcohol's impacting my sleep, and I'm feeling.
Four or five out of 10 more often than I want to feel, four or five out of 10. So that would be where the gray area drinkers are sitting.
[00:06:17] Tracey: That's just so many of us, and as you are talking, I'm not, I'm nodding along because I, I'll reach for a glass of wine on a Friday because I'll tell myself I've earned it.
that's so many of of people that I, that I know and, and talk to. you know, full transparency. I tell myself that that's my stress management tool.
Well, I was, until diving into your content, I've really started, I've really started questioning it now, which is why I wanted to dive into this with you, to share it with so many people. when you just said, we feel four or five outta 10 more often than we'd want to, let's go there. Because that then, as a business owner, affects our productivity.
[00:06:54] Sarah: and the scales of that, but we know that even one or two drinks massively [00:07:00] impacts our sleep. We do not get deep restorative sleep. After we've had any amount of alcohol, and that is because when we sleep, we sleep in sleep cycles that are about 90 minutes long. And each sleep cycle has different stages, which includes a process called REM sleep, rapid eye movement, sleep.
This is the part of the process of sleep that's associated with dreaming, for example, and neuroscientists now know the impact that this stage of sleep has on improving our emotional processing. On ensuring that our brain, can help fight certain diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia. Like the lack of REM sleep has significant impact in our mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing.
And we now know that when we drink any amount of alcohol, that rem stage of the sleep cycle becomes non-existent in several of the sleep cycles. So let's say you have five sleep cycles a night where you. In [00:08:00] a healthy sleep, you would go into REM sleep. In each of those sleep cycles, science now shows us you'll maybe go into REM sleep in only one of those sleep cycles after you've had even just a small amount of alcohol.
So what this means is the next day you haven't had restorative sleep. Alcohol is a sedative, so you might go into deep sleep because alcohol helps us to pass out. But deep sleep is not restorative. Sleep sedation is not restorative sleep. You're knocking yourself out and then you wake up and come into light sleep, but you are missing an entire part of the process that is essential for emotional and physical wellbeing.
So what this means is the next day you're not gonna feel like you can't get out of bed. You have had some sleep. You might feel lower in mood because emotional processing happens when we're in REM sleep and we've had less of that, and you don't feel fully well rested because you haven't had all of those, those sleep cycles.
The background story to my life for years [00:09:00] as a business owner was, I'm not hungover, I'm just tired. And that was because I didn't realize even just that one or two glasses of wine was actually really impacting my sleep. So that's one part of it. And another part of it is if you've had a bigger session, say you haven't just had one or two glasses.
You've had more, you've had a big 50th birthday party or a work drinks or something. Maybe it was on a Sunday afternoon, you had a boozy Sunday session. It takes, neuroscience is now showing up to four days for the brain to be able to complete any kind of complex task effectively after having a binge drinking session.
So. We now know that small amounts are gonna impact our REM sleep. And big amounts don't just impact our our REM sleep. They're gonna massively impact our productivity.
and our ability to perform more complex tasks. So what happens then? Well, we probably [00:10:00] try and avoid them. We probably put off the things that.
We can't be asked doing because we don't feel terribly hungover, but we just feel a bit unmotivated low in me mode. Maybe we've got a little bit of low level anxiety because alcohol causes us to have more anxiety and we just don't have that fire in our belly to go about doing the more challenging tasks that we might need to do in our business to help move it forward.
And as a result of that, the business doesn't fall apart. It just kind of stays still for a really long time because we're often not having the confidence, the self-belief, the mental energy, and the clarity to do those extra things. So that was definitely the case for me.
[00:10:40] Tracey: Goodness me. There's so much to that to unpack there. I just wanna pause here and just say to listeners, by no means is this an anti-alcohol episode. This is not what Sarah is about, and I know this. It's not about that. It's about making informed choices and understanding the impact on your health, and that's what really pid my interest when I [00:11:00] started reading your content.
I've known you for a long time. But just really reading it and diving into understand it. And the more I was reading, the more I was realizing perhaps this is why I'm not feeling so great. Perhaps it's not in fact my workload. Perhaps it's not that there's so many moving parts.
Perhaps there's something else and you've hit the nail on the head. When you said there a moment ago, I'm not hungover, I'm just tired. And I've said that to myself a number of times, and I really started noticing this, my daughter started playing netball and I needed to be outta the house at 7 45 on a Saturday morning.
So it's no different to school, but did drink through the week. So I, on Friday night, I'd have. Couple of glasses of wine, but I'd wake up in the morning and think, Ugh, I just don't feel like it. I just feel a bit sluggish. And gosh, I've had a big week and it's the weekend. But the more I've started reading about it, the more I've started learning.
Actually, perhaps it's not that. So when I choose not to have any wine on a Friday night, just because it's my choice not to, oh, I wake up with so much zest on Saturday and off we go to netball and it's very different experience.
[00:11:59] Sarah: and, [00:12:00] and I think that that's what I noticed. I took my first break from alcohol in 2017. 'cause I've just got to the point where. I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired all the time, and I decided to do a 30 day challenge, which I ended up extending to a hundred days. And at the time I was running my own executive search business and I made more money in that a hundred days than I made in the entire year, the year before.
[00:12:27] Tracey: Wow, what an experiment. Wow.
[00:12:30] Sarah: because I had more energy, more motivation, more productivity, more mental clarity, and more confidence. And what business owner doesn't want that.
you know what it's like when you're a little bit hungover or tired, if you can send an email rather than pick up the phone, you'll send an email rather than have to speak to someone and, and the energy that that is involved in.
But I wasn't doing that because I had the energy, I had the mental clarity. I was picking up the phone and because I was having a phone call, instead of sending an email, I was able to go, oh no. [00:13:00] And oh, just while we're talking about it, you got any other jobs that need filling at the moment? How's that role going And.
That was giving me more work that was giving me more opportunity to make money and, and the knock on effect in that hundred days was incredible. And then it was really interesting for me to notice, I decided to go back to drinking. thinking, oh, I've taken a hundred days off. I'm now gonna be a grownup drinker that just has a glass of red wine every now and then at a Sunday lunch.
And it wasn't the case that the alcohol use increased again. And very quickly my desire to pick up the phone and have a conversation really, really disappeared. And it was like, oh no, I can't be asked. I'll send an email instead. And it's all those little moments. You don't realize that you are losing your competitive advantage over your competitors because the ones that are having more of that energy focus, clarity, confidence, they're doing the things that you are shying away from just doing the bare minimum to get by.
[00:13:56] Tracey: and, Sarah, how did you know then that, how did you identify [00:14:00] that it was the alcohol that you wanted to pause on because you were sick and tired of feeling sick and tired? How did you decide, look, I'm gonna pause on the alcohol. What was it that triggered that or sparked that for you?
[00:14:10] Sarah: There was a couple of things really. I think that the first was. Everything else in my life, I was doing healthy. I was exercising. I was going to the gym. I was going to yoga. I was eating really well, and I still was feeling tired, lethargic putting on weight and having constant low level anxiety. I went to my gp.
And I remember asking her about anxiety because I've never been an anxious person before in my life, and all of a sudden I was finding myself. I was overthinking everything. I was worrying about, well, how did I sound? Did I sound like an idiot when I said that on the phone to that, I was just going down rabbit holes in my brain that Sarah had just never gone down before and I couldn't understand it.
And so I went to my GP and she happily gave me a [00:15:00] script for anti-anxiety meds, but never asked me about my alcohol use. Something just didn't feel right to me. I suspected I didn't need the medication. I knew there had to be something else and my drinking had increased, so I, I didn't drink every day. I didn't drink in the daytime.
I didn't drink at a level that was meaning I couldn't get up and go to work or go to the gym or anything. I had built tolerance, so I could definitely drink three quarters of a bottle of wine and. That barely touched the sides, and then just be able to go to bed. Obviously I wasn't getting restorative sleep, but I'd get up and go to the gym and I was living off caffeine.
And then I had a couple of parties I'd gone to where the alcohol use had been quite high I was in my running group and somebody in my Facebook group on my running group said that they'd just, taken a break from alcohol and how they'd done it to improve their running, but they couldn't believe the impact it had had on their energy, their confidence, how they parented their mental health.
I remember reading it and going, [00:16:00] Well, maybe I'll do the same. So that was what led to me taking that first break. And it was literally so fast, Tracey, the anxiety disappeared, the energy returned, and I felt a sense of joy and happiness that I had not felt for years.
[00:16:22] Tracey: Wow, Just wow to that.
[00:16:25] Sarah: Yeah, because we know that alcohol causes depression. We know that alcohol destroys our gut health, which is where serotonin is made. We know that alcohol causes the brain to release more cortisol. That makes us feel more anxious. Well, we, I didn't know that then, but I certainly know that now. So now it makes so much sense to me that when we remove the thing that is impacting.
Our poor mental health, we are gonna start to feel happier and more joyful, and that was certainly what happened for me.
[00:16:56] Tracey: And we know that now. And you've just said you didn't know that then, [00:17:00] but you know that now. Let's fast forward to now. I know what you do now. We work together. listeners don't necessarily know what you do now. Can you just explain that and then I'd love to talk about your book.
[00:17:10] Sarah: So I quit drinking for good in 2019 and I was running my own, legal recruitment business at the time. And then 2020 the pandemic hit. And so all the law firms were like, nah, we're not hiring with the hiring freeze. And so for me, that was actually a defining moment because my business had gone on hold.
I had no work to do. I was at home homeschooling a lot of the time anyway, and so I decided to go back and study. I was just coming up to a year alcohol free. I'd been immersed in the alcohol free world for a really long time, even prior to that with learning about the impact of alcohol on our mental health, our physical health.
So I decided to retrain and become a health and wellbeing coach and a gray area drinking coach. So I studied for all of 2020. And then 2021, I set up my business and I decided [00:18:00] to launch the business with an interview that I was lucky enough to have with Mama Mia and Mama Mia interviewed me in a very, very open, honest, and real way.
And we shared my story and I remember Polly sent me the interview to read before it went live, and I was like. Oh Polly. I don't know if I could have this go live. Like what if my kids' teachers read this? What if like those school mums that don't know like what my inner world had been like with alcohol, read this and she said that, Sarah, think about all the people it's gonna help.
[00:18:31] Tracey: Yeah.
[00:18:32] Sarah: So the interview went live in March 2021, and within 24 hours, 8,000 women had contacted me and said, you've just told my story.
[00:18:43] Tracey: Oh
[00:18:45] Sarah: Right.
[00:18:46] Tracey: wow. Oh my goodness. I did not know that part of your story.
[00:18:51] Sarah: Yeah. So that was the start of my business. So since then, I built a business whereby I do a few different things. So I [00:19:00] support people to remove alcohol, and I do that through 30 day programs, and then I take them, those that want to on a deeper journey of, well, who am I without alcohol? Because for many of us, our whole identity is tied up with, I'm Sarah, the party girl.
I'm Tracey, the Friday night drinker. I'm, you know, whatever it is. And so I help people to actually dismantle the identity part so that we get to create the person who we are without alcohol. And so that's a lot of the deeper work that I do, which I love. I then started doing corporate wellbeing talks with businesses around what is gray area drinking and why gray area drinking can be impactful.
And none of it's election, none of it is, you must not drink. But I always say, knowledge is power. And the whole thing that I have about alcohol, like if you wanna go and enjoy a few drinks, go and enjoy a few drinks if it's not problematic for you. But let's not hide the fact that it does have this impact on our mental health.
It does have this impact on our physical health. It is a [00:20:00] level one carcinogen. It is a major cause of breast cancer. It does do all of these things. So when we're gifting someone a bottle of wine to the teacher at the end of the year, is that really an appropriate gift when alcohol has now been called out as a level one carcinogen that directly causes breast cancer?
And I just really am passionate about supporting people to really rethink their view on alcohol because we live in a world where it's marketed and promoted and advertised and sold as self-care. As you know, you look at Mother's Day and all the shops that have got pajamas with wine bottles all over them and like it's so screwed and messed up our, our whole society around our views on alcohol.
[00:20:41] Tracey: I agree with you there. I was just actually thinking about the Peter Alexander pajamas that, we walk past Peter Alexander, my daughter and I all the time, and she loves them and, and so do I. And usually we get some at around Easter they've got bunny rabbits on them, which is her favorite animal. But uh, there must have been last Mother's day where they all had the dash hound dogs with wine.
And [00:21:00] then I read a post of yours on LinkedIn, which was around, this is not okay, this programming that we have in society, that this is what we should be doing for self-care. And I thought, gosh, what I really love about your content is it's, you're right, it's not a lecture.
And for anybody who goes to follow Sarah on LinkedIn or read Sarah's book or go and check out Sarah's website with, put all the links in the show notes, but you'll notice that none of it's a lecture, none of it's dictating, you must not do that. What I love is that you're shifting the landscape and that you are educating anybody who wants to be educated, but you are educating us around, this thing called gray area drinking.
And there's no shame attached to it. And this is where so many of us will identify, myself included. And you don't have to be there if you don't want to, but it's your choice. And I love that you what underpins your content is just be informed. Do what you want, but just be informed because we haven't really been informed up until fairly recently.
This is a fairly recent, um, discussion topic. We haven't really been informed, but if you wanna be informed, here you go. And here's all the fabulous things [00:22:00] you can do about it if you want to. And I love that about your content and the marketing in society. You're right, it is problematic, I think, because there's such a focus on, this is what you should do when you're stressed. This is what you should do to relax. This is what you should do when you've got some kid free time. Treat yourself to a glass of wine and a chocolate. And I also identify, I've done a lot of work on this, but I also identify as an emotional eater. And I got to the point where I'll say to myself, Tracey, you're not a dog. Don't reward yourself with food. Because I would say to myself, oh, it's a Friday night. You know, order some takeaway and, and have a chocolate. You are not a dog. Don't reward yourself. Don't give yourself a treat. That's food. That's what I had to, I worked through that and I'm very pleased to say that I've worked through that, but it's exactly that.
It's what we associate with, reward and that treat because we've deserved it and we've earned it. So I love that you are opening our eyes to a completely fresh and different perspective that's there for the taking if we wanna take it.
[00:22:59] Sarah: Yeah. And I [00:23:00] think that it's just having the opportunity to share, because we do live in a world where we've normalized alcohol as the solution to so many of life's stresses. You know, like I just think big alcohol are just rubbing their hands with glee that women are the most stressed and anxious that they've ever been because they just come in and going, it's all right.
Don't worry. We've got the solution for you and we're falling for it, hook, line, and sinker, because we all want a quick fix. And there's no denying that alcohol works in the short term because it does. We wouldn't do it if it didn't. It numbs us. It depresses us. We can pass out all of those, you know, we can fall asleep, all of those things.
But long term, it's not a great solution and what I find is for a lot of women that I work with most are kind of aged between 40 and 60, and they've got to that point because of perimenopause and hormones and the havoc that alcohol plays on that when they're like, alcohol's not working anymore. It's making me feel crap and I need to create actually a healthier toolkit to deal with life.
Life is still life. It's not that you remove alcohol and then [00:24:00] it's all sunshine and rainbows and every day is a dance around the park. It's not, I still have hard days and difficult days because life is life, but you learn and develop healthy tools to manage the adversity that comes up in your life that isn't just drinking a bottle of wine.
And with that comes resilience, self connection, and deep sense of self worth that I think we don't have when we're drinking, because most of us don't want to be drinking the way that we are. And then you wake up in the morning and the first thought in your head is. Well, I'm a loser. Oh, well, I'm rubbish.
I drank that wine last night and I said I wasn't going to, I promised myself I was gonna have a clean week this week. I promised myself I was gonna go to the gym and not drink, and here I am on a Wednesday and I just drank a bottle of wine and if that's your negative self-talk on a constant loop, how are you ever gonna show up in your life with the confidence, the clarity, and the fulfillment that ultimately I think we all want.
[00:24:57] Tracey: Oh, I love that. Oh gosh, Sarah, this is [00:25:00] just resonating with me on so many levels, of course, but I know that this will be resonating for so many people listening along to this. Can you just share a bit about your book? Because I think that this is really important because people will be listening to this and now thinking, well, you know, where do I go to find out more? So yes, there's the website, but there's also the book.
[00:25:18] Sarah: Yeah, so I wrote the book, it's called Beyond Booze: How to Create a Life You Love Alcohol Free. And the reason I wanted to write it was I wanted it to be a how to book because I remember when I got sober and I removed alcohol, it's six and a half years ago now, and there were some great books out there that were memoirs of other people's stories of removing alcohol that I found super inspirational.
There were books on how to do 30 days off alcohol. There weren't books around, well, how do I create a life where I don't need or want alcohol because my life is rich and fulfilling and interesting, and I've got a toolkit of strategies that help with stress and I've perhaps healed any of my past stuff so it's not coming up [00:26:00] and biting me on the ass anymore and, and all of these things.
And so it's a book that has a lot of my story in it. But interwoven with some science, with some neuroscience, with some really hard facts about the female body and alcohol. And then going on to how do I find my purpose? How do I live in alignment with my values and how do I have fun? As a midlife woman who's been led to believe, the only way to have fun is to drink a bottle of wine with your girlfriends, pass out and wake up with a kebab in your hair in the morning and like that, I thought that was fun for years, but I've decided now as a 49-year-old woman, that's actually not my idea of fun anymore.
[00:26:36] Tracey: Oh, Sarah, oh, thank you so much for sharing that. We will put the links in your links, your contact links in the show notes, but just quickly, how can people find you? And I know that you've got some self-paced courses on your website, so could you just share a little bit about those, because I feel like this is so interesting.
[00:26:54] Sarah: Yeah, so go to my website, sarahrusbatch.com. Follow me on Instagram, which is at Sarah Rusbatch. You can [00:27:00] follow me on LinkedIn, which is Sarah Rusbatch. And there's a couple of different avenues in to work with me. So I, I have 30 day alcohol free programs. I do corporate talks and workshops, again and not lectures.
And the feedback I've had from all of the companies I've spoken with is that was incredible because you have shared information with our team and with our staff where they don't feel judged. They don't feel criticized. 'Cause at first they were like, oh. Oh Sarah, we wanna have you speak, but we're worried that everyone's gonna feel like they're being lectured into not drinking.
And that's not my approach at all. We have a lot of laughs and a lot of fun along the way with a session that can feel quite heavy and, and and quite emotional. Um, so I, I definitely offer a lot around there. And then also, I'm a menopause coach and a menopause weight loss coach, and there's programs on my website around, um, changing our relationship with sugar and emotional eating and the protocols to follow as a menopausal woman that will enhance your mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing.
[00:27:55] Tracey: Oh goodness. That's just all nuggets of gold right there. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate your [00:28:00] time so much and I really look forward to hearing stories from people who have reached out to just explore a little more around gray area drinking and what it is. And I'm really looking forward to hearing more stories when speak to listeners and many, many clients of mine in relation to the productivity hacks and just how much this really does impact productivity because I'm running a bit of an experiment of my own at the moment, which I'll report back on. Thanks, Sarah. Thanks so much.
[00:28:26] Sarah: Thanks, Tracey.
[00:28:28] Tracey: Can you see what I mean when I say that Sarah's not about lecturing or dictating, that alcohol's bad and we shouldn't drink it? She's all about educating women. Educating everyone really. But her focus is primarily women, educating women on choices, and I'm sure there were many light bulb moments in there, particularly those around our productivity and the way we feel. And for me it's been really eyeopening to understand the impact on REM sleep as well. So I'm exploring that, in more detail and I'm running a little experiment, which I'll report back on later, [00:29:00] but I hope you got real value out of it. And if nothing else, just enjoyed learning something new potentially in relation to the impact that alcohol does have on us, and make informed choices is the takeaway.
Sarah's all about saying make informed choices. So much of what I do is about supporting business owners to make informed choices, and this is just a part of it. So I hope you loved it. I did. Sarah's contact details are in the show notes, so feel free to reach out and explore a little more. And as always, I would love to hear your feedback and if this is something that's really triggered you or really piqued an interest in curiosity, I would love to hear from you and chat a little more about your journey and um, let's talk, let's communicate and let's hold space to have these discussions, which I think is really important. As always, thank you so much for listening. catch you next time [00:30:00]
LINKS:
Connect with Sarah:
Website: https://sarahrusbatch.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-rusbatch-4b189128
Book: Beyond Booze: How to create a life you love alcohol-free
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