Can recovery make someone better at business?
In June 2020, I spoke with Kate Bagoy, a designer and business coach and the author of Secrets of a Six-Figure Freelancer. She stopped drinking in 2012, and she now coaches creative people to earn what their work is worth.
This is an archive episode, recorded when the show covered addiction and recovery broadly. Most of it is about money, mindset, and running a small business. Yet the thread that kept returning was how the drive that once fed her drinking became the engine of her work.
What is the difference between a freelancer and a business owner?
At 0:26, Kate described her years in design with startups. After growing her own freelance business to six figures, she kept meeting people who struggled as she once had, so she created a program for them.
In her view, the biggest difference is a way of thinking. A freelancer keeps hunting for the next job, while a business owner builds systems, a brand, and a marketing strategy. She admitted at 7:57 that she tried several times to start her own business and failed, because she was still hunting for jobs and competing on price.
How can a painful childhood shape the way a person works?
At 1:11, I said that nearly all of my patients are intelligent, creative people, and that good things often follow once they stop drinking or using. From 1:54, she described becoming an achiever at an early age to please a narcissistic parent figure, and she saw alcohol as her way of turning off the voice that told her she was not good enough.
At 3:14, she explained that this was a step-parent who left her life when she was young. She chose to prove him wrong, and that gave her drive. Still, she carried his critical voice for years, and it took therapy, sobriety, and self-development work before it mostly went quiet.
At 4:27, she called herself a people pleaser who never said no, even when a corporate job already had her working very long weeks. Her verdict was blunt. All of her problems, she said, were of her own making.
Why does a money mindset matter so much?
At 5:17, I asked about how a job can teach a person they are worth only a small hourly wage. Kate answered at 5:41 that what you receive is what you believe. If you believe you are worth very little, that is probably what you will be paid.
In her view, being rich is not a dirty word, and neither is asking for money. Unfortunately, people who do not believe they deserve more find ways to sabotage themselves and avoid the actions that would bring it. So, for Kate, all of it comes back to mindset.
Who is worth working with?
At 6:29, I mentioned an idea I had read from Tim Ferriss: only work with the people you like working with. Kate had recently become certified as a Book Yourself Solid coach, and at 6:54 she described the same principle as a red velvet rope. Picture your business as a nightclub, she said, where only the people you want to dance with get in.
At 7:29, I brought up Grant Cardone’s book Be Obsessed or Be Average and the idea that a customer can find the service cheaper but will not find the same person. Kate agreed that someone will always work for less. Her advice was to compete on value, not price.
Which books changed the way she thought about work?
From 8:55, Kate named the books that shifted her life. The first was Secrets of Six-Figure Women by Barbara Stanny. Within a few months of reading it, she had left a struggling startup job for one that paid much more.
She also credited a book by Gail Evans for teaching her that business is a game with rules many women were never taught. After she stopped drinking, Brene Brown’s first talk on the power of vulnerability moved her to tears. In fact, she said it helped her see that she was not alone.
Do women face different obstacles in recovery and in business?
At 10:39, I said that recovery is not easy for women, since many recovery meetings are made up mostly of men and it can be hard for a woman to find a sponsor. At 11:00, she said that most of the people she coaches are women, and that she first built her business for women only.
Interestingly, she found men easier to coach. In her experience, women tend to worry more, try harder to please people, and take longer over decisions, while men usually decide quickly and take direction more easily. She opened her practice to men because, in her words, they get results so much faster.
What is passive income, and where should someone start?
At 12:40, Kate explained that a seminar called the Millionaire Mind Intensive gave her a definition she loved. Financial freedom means being able to work because you choose to, not because you have to.
Saving and investing are routes too. However, she starts the people she coaches with products they can sell in their sleep, such as an ebook, a customized WordPress template, or a package of pre-written social media templates. The goal, she said, is income that is not tied to hours.
How can someone leave a high-paying job they feel trapped in?
At 15:06, I asked about someone with a large income, a family, loans, and a nice house, who feels trapped in a job. Kate said at 16:02 that many people she works with are in exactly that situation. Her plan is to build the business on nights and weekends until enough paying work is lined up to give notice.
At 17:57, I told the story of the monkey trap, in which a monkey is caught because it will not let go of the food in its hand. Kate offered a gentler way out at 18:41. She has people work out what they need to survive, what they need to thrive, and what their dream is, then build a business that at least covers the first so they can step away from the golden handcuffs.
Does recovery open the door to a bigger life?
At 20:47, I said that a six-figure company is a realistic goal, unlike the promise of a billion-dollar business. Kate agreed at 21:08 that anyone with a product or service a client needs can get there with the right foundation and strategy.
At 22:04, I said that people who stop using may have the highest potential of anyone for success. Kate’s answer at 22:18 was personal. Once she got sober, she said, few other things in life felt as hard, and life became bigger and more fun. Her message to anyone struggling was to hang in there. It is not easy, she said, but it was the best decision she ever made.
Who is Kate Bagoy?
Kate Bagoy is a designer and business coach who worked with startups before building her own freelance business. She holds a master’s degree in business, is a certified Book Yourself Solid coach, and is the author of Secrets of a Six-Figure Freelancer. Her website is katebagoy.com.
What can listeners take away from this conversation?
Kate’s case was that the way a person thinks about money and work matters as much as their skills. Knowing who you serve, charging for value, and planning an exit before leaving a job turn freelance work into a business. Her own story also showed how the drive that once pushed her toward alcohol could, with time in recovery, be pointed somewhere better.
How do I approach this today?
Today my practice focuses on helping people come off benzodiazepines and other medications gradually, and on medication for alcohol and opioid dependence. Physical dependence is not addiction, and the safest way off is usually slow.
This page is educational. It is not medical advice, and listening to the episode or reading this page does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Decisions about starting, continuing, or tapering any medication should be made with your own physician.
Full transcript
A note from Dr. Leeds: my guests speak from their own experience and expertise, and the terminology they use is their own. Whatever the topic, this show holds to one distinction: physical dependence on a prescribed medication is not addiction. This transcript is educational content, not medical advice, and nothing here creates a doctor-patient relationship.
Read the full transcript (23 minutes)
Announcer [00:00] Welcome to the Rehab Podcast on the Mental Health News Radio Network. Here is your host, Dr. Mark Leeds.
Dr. Mark Leeds [00:08] Kate Bagoy, welcome to the Rehab Podcast.
Kate Bagoy [00:10] Thanks, Mark. Good to be here.
Dr. Mark Leeds [00:12] You are the author of the book, Secrets of a Six-Figure Freelancer, and you also have a course, the Six-Figure Freelancer Accelerator Course. Can you tell me more about the program? Tell me about your book and the course that you’re offering.
Kate Bagoy [00:26] Sure. My background is in design. I did that for a long time with startups. A few years ago, I started coaching after building my own freelance business to six figures. And I started meeting a lot of people that were struggling to do so as I had for years. So I created a program called Six Figure Freelancers that really guides people through the mindset of thinking like a business owner instead of a freelancer, which the biggest difference is that freelancers tend to be just looking for jobs over and over again, whereas a business owner actually builds systems and creates marketing strategy and all of that. And so I created a program for mastering that mindset shift and learning how to up your money mindset so you can earn more money and then create the brand and business strategy to grow a six-figure business.
Dr. Mark Leeds [01:11] I see that you like to work with creative people and helping them to become more successful. And also you mentioned that you got sober from, you know, I think alcohol use disorder in 2012, and you’ve been sober since then. I treat addiction and I treat alcoholism, and that’s one thing that I’ve noticed with nearly all of my patients is that they’re all very intelligent, creative people. And as soon as they get sober, they get clean, right away, good things start happening. But sometimes maybe they need some motivation or direction. Have you found that? Have you worked with other people who are in recovery and found that also that they tend to have a lot of potential for success?
Kate Bagoy [01:54] I have. I actually, I love working with anybody that’s been in recovery from anything. I have a number of clients that have been through 12-step programs for various addictions and disorders. And I find that, yes, like you said, I think as alcoholics and addicts, a lot of us turn to drugs and alcohol because we are such creative people and sensitive people and we’re so hard on ourselves and we’re so driven that we need something to turn it off. I think that was a lot of me. I became an achiever at an early age to please a narcissistic parent figure. And my whole life was just about getting things done and having to achieve to feel okay. And I think alcohol was my escape from that. It was the way to turn off that little voice that told me I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t smart enough, all of that sort of thing. And once I actually got sober and did all of the self-development work in that and I had a spiritual awakening and started tapping into that, you know, my life became much more purposeful and fulfilled through that.
Dr. Mark Leeds [02:57] And that’s another thing that I’ve noticed with some patients is that they are dealing with a narcissistic parent and that may have been what led them to using drugs or drinking. Are you in communication with that parent now or have you cut off contact?
Kate Bagoy [03:14] No, fortunately, this was a step-parent and he’s been out of my life since I was 14. They were married for seven years. And for about seven years on a daily basis, I heard how stupid fat ugly and worthless I was. And I think when you’re a child at that formative age, there are two options. You either believe that, parent, and spend your life thinking that, or you say, you know what, I’m going to prove you wrong. And I went the opposite way. I went, you know, I’m going to prove you wrong. I’m going to show you how not stupid I am. I’m going to go get my bachelor’s degree and get my master’s degree and run my own business and all of that sort of stuff. And so in a way that experience is one of the best things that happened to me because it did give me that drive, but it was a painful experience. And I took over for that parents mentally for a long time in beating myself up and telling myself I wasn’t good enough. So it was through lots of therapy and sobriety and self-development work that I got to the point where I most of the time don’t feel that way anymore.
Dr. Mark Leeds [04:16] Do you think that your experience in childhood led to your negative experiences in jobs early on as far as getting into jobs that you didn’t like or being treated poorly by an employer?
Kate Bagoy [04:27] Oh, absolutely. I mean, I was a people pleaser for a really long time. Definitely some codependent issues there. And doing things that I felt that I should do instead of doing the things that actually were fulfilling to me. I didn’t understand that I had a right to say no and to push back and set boundaries. And so when I had that great corporate job, great on paper, and more work came my way, I never said, no, I can’t do this. No, that’s too much. I’m already working 60 hours a week. Don’t give me another project. I just took it on. And I repeated that through the years. And part of that was the achiever mentality as well. It’s like, oh, I can do this. I will do this and I will make everybody happy. And so it was definitely a self-fulfilling thing that all of my problems are of my own making.
Dr. Mark Leeds [05:17] You work with people now and help them through that. And I know you also help people to improve their relationship with money and to, you know, to really get to believe that they’re worth, you know, what they’re worth. As far as people tell you when you work at a job, you’re only worth $15 an hour or $20 an hour. And that gets ingrained in your mind that this is all I’m worth and you need to change that mindset. That is something that you help people with.
Kate Bagoy [05:41] It is. I mean, I have come to believe over the last five to 10 years of intensive personal growth and self-development that what you receive is what you believe, right? So if you believe you’re worth $15 an hour, that’s probably what you’re going to get for the rest of your life. But if you can change those beliefs and understand that you are worthy of getting everything you want, you are worthy of being rich, and being rich is not a dirty word. Earning money is not a dirty word. Asking for money, receiving, all of those things, they’re not dirty. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting more money or deserving that. But you have to adjust your mindset in order to receive them, or you’ll keep yourself stuck. You find ways to self-sabotage. And you don’t take the actions that will bring more money because you don’t think you’re worth it. All of it comes back to mindset.
Dr. Mark Leeds [06:29] There’s things I’ve read in some different books, success books and motivational books that I think I’ve heard in your message as far as, I think from Tim Ferriss in the four-hour work week, he says, only work with the people that you like working with. It’s not worth the money to work with the people that you can’t work with or that you don’t get along with or the people that take up all of your time and make your life difficult.
Kate Bagoy [06:54] Absolutely. And so I just recently got certified as a Book Yourself Solid coach, which is really the whole premise around that is that there are some clients you’re meant to serve and there are some not so much, right? And you want to put up a red velvet rope in your business. And when I talk to clients about it, I’ve said, think of your business as a nightclub and you only want the cool kids in town in your club, meaning you only want people you want to dance with in there. So don’t let people in that drain your energy because they will make your life difficult. And if you’re spending your time working with people that are draining your energy, you’re not going to have enough leftover to serve the people you’re both meant to serve.
Dr. Mark Leeds [07:29] And another thing that I read in another book, it was Grant Cardone, Be Obsessed or Be Average. And he’s also another person who’s in this field who’s in recovery. Somebody told him that they can get the same service from the guy down the street cheaper. And his response was, yes, you can, but there’s one thing you won’t get with that. You won’t get me. And I think that’s also a principle that you teach that you’re not a commodity. You bring something unique and useful to the service you provide to people.
Kate Bagoy [07:57] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s always somebody in the world that’s going to do it cheaper. You don’t want to compete with that. Don’t compete on price, compete on value. When I started my design business, and by the way, I tried multiple times to start my own business and failed because like I teach, I was really thinking of it more as I was hunting for jobs. And so I was taking whatever came my way and competing on price with everybody else. So it wasn’t until I flipped that mindset and started really thinking like a business owner that I got good clients. But once I did that, when I did that in my design business, I’d have consultations. And on the call, they’d say, well, I talked to somebody else and they said they’d do it for $10,000 less. And I’d say, yeah, you’re right. If you want the cheapest, you should go with them. If you want the best, you should hire me.
Dr. Mark Leeds [08:39] You know, when you were working for other people and kind of unhappy with things, was there a book you read or a speaker that you heard that kind of sparked you to want to go further with that, to work on yourself and learn more about how you can improve your life and improve your business and that sort of thing?
Kate Bagoy [08:55] Oh my goodness, so many. But the one that comes to mind that really shifted my entire life, I bought a book called Secrets of Six-Figure Women by Barbara Stanny. And at the time I was working at a startup and pretty struggling. I had already quit my big corporate job. And then I had gone back, I got my master’s in business and then started working for this startup, but was still just struggling. And I read that book and within three months I had left that job and found a new job paying $30,000 more. It just shifted my mindset. There’s another great book called Win Like a Man, Play Like a Woman, or maybe it’s the other way around, Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman by Gail Evans, I believe. She’s the former CEO of CNN. And that helped me learn a lot about the business dynamic as a woman. So women and men are socialized different as we’re raised, particularly in America. And then we go into business and we wonder why women hold themselves back. They don’t understand that business is a game. We don’t have the rule book. And until you know how to play, you’re going to struggle in that environment. So those were two really big game changers for me. And then after I got sober, I think one of the biggest things that shifted for me was stumbling on Brene Brown’s TED Talk. I watched her first TED Talk, The Power of Vulnerability, and I just, I lost it. I cried for like an hour. It shifted something to realize like I wasn’t alone. And particularly in America, we’re one of the most addicted cultures on the planet. And I think a lot of that has to do with not living authentically and trying to spend our time pleasing everybody else instead of focusing on ourselves and being real.
Dr. Mark Leeds [10:39] Recovery is not easy for women. I know in meetings, AA and NA meetings, in a lot of meetings, it’s mostly men. It’s maybe hard for a woman to find a sponsor in those groups. And like you said, in business, a lot of the books and the motivational speakers and the business consultants. And do you work with a lot of women particularly?
Kate Bagoy [11:00] I do. I would say probably 80% of my clients are women at this point. When I first started, I focused my business exclusively on women. And I opened it up a couple of years ago because I had a couple of male clients. And frankly, men are so much easier to work with because of all the stuff that we just talked about. As women, we tend to worry more and people please more and have lower confidence. And it’s harder for us to make decisions. I had a conversation with a client last week. It’s really interesting when you have a consultation with a man and you tell him what you offer and what your program is. It’s either a, this sounds great. I’m going to make a decision tonight and I’ll let you know. You have the same exact conversation with a woman. She says, this sounds great, but I have to check with my husband. Well, what if your husband says no? Men never say I have to check with my wife. I’ve never had a man say that to me. It’s just ways that we hold ourselves back. That’s why I opened up my practice to men because they get results so much faster. They take direction a little bit easier and they have less self-doubt typically.
Dr. Mark Leeds [12:05] […] Now, you say freelancing is a $1.4 trillion industry, a million million. So if we all wanted to make $100,000, I calculated that there’s room for at least 14 million of us. I mean, so it’s a huge opportunity for people to get into freelancing. Now, you also teach people about passive income, you know, beyond just trading your hours for money, but also, you know, making money all the time.
Kate Bagoy [12:40] I do. Yeah. So I took a seminar a few years ago called the Millionaire Mind Intensive. When I was at that seminar, we were talking about financial freedom, financial freedom, the way that they defined it. And what I loved about it is that financial freedom is being able to work because you choose to and not because you have to. And so how to get there’s a lot of different ways. You can just start saving and earn interest on your money. You can invest in things like real estate and other passive income that way, but you can also create passive income products. And that’s particularly where I teach my clients to start. What can you sell, whether it’s an ebook or a download, or if you’re a web designer, you can sell a customized WordPress template, or if you’re a content strategist, a package of pre-written social media templates, that sort of thing. What are the things that you can package up and sell in your sleep? And then there’s other forms of passive income, such as affiliate revenue. For example, there are a handful of software companies that I use every day in my business. And when I work with new clients and they’re like, well, what programs should I use for this or that, and I make a recommendation, I can send them an affiliate link. And then if they sign up for that program, I get, depending on the product, $10 to $100. And I’m just basically getting reimbursed for a product that I’m already recommending. So there’s no shortage of ways to build passive income, but you want to look at ways that you can start earning money that is not attached to hours so that you can reach for that true financial freedom.
Dr. Mark Leeds [14:14] And when you mentioned that I remember you did run an event with NVIDIA, which is an incredible product. I use that also, and it makes it really easy to put together marketing videos. And I imagine that you must use products like that. And just like you say that you’re going to recommend it anyway, why not benefit from that recommendation?
Kate Bagoy [14:32] Exactly. It’s a perfect example. I’ve done that with them. I did a webinar a couple of years ago with Hello Bar, which is a pop-up software. And that was a joint venture. So I did a webinar with them that teaches their audience. They share it with their audience and then I share it with mine and anybody that signs up for Hello Bar, I get a little tiny cut of that pie. So it’s a really great way to get started with passive income. There are people that make their entire living off of affiliate revenue. I don’t tend to recommend that. I’m more of a fan of promoting things that you really love and why not get rewarded for it?
Dr. Mark Leeds [15:06] Now, as far as working with clients one-on-one, you work with a very limited number of people as far as one-on-one coaching or consulting. Now, suppose that you had a client that came to you and they are making six figures. Maybe they’re even making three, four, $500,000 a year. And they have a family and they have school loans and expenses. Maybe they live in a nice house and they’re not really even putting a lot of money away for savings. They’ve got themselves in that trap of making a lot of money and spending a lot of money. They feel like they’re trapped in that job and they want to get out of it and they want to do their own thing, but they just can’t see a path from going from being trapped and having huge expenses that they can’t even get out of all of them. And how are they going to move from that job? You know, if they quit that job, they’re going to be in a lot of trouble now that they won’t be able to make those loan payments, mortgage payments, keep the kids in the nice school. What course would you go to get out of that situation into a situation where you’re happy with your job or with your company?
Kate Bagoy [16:02] Yeah, that’s a lot of the clients that I work with are in that situation. And that’s why they company. They know they want to get out of that corporate job and out of that cycle and they want to run their own business, whether that’s because they want their own legacy or they want more freedom. And my job is to help them deal with that fear and create a plan. And typically our plan is to have them do all of the work I just talked about in terms of identifying the client, the pain point, building their brand, their sales system, their marketing funnel, and getting to the point where they have a pipeline of clients lined up before they put in their notice at the corporate job. So they can literally go from side hustling, spending five to 10 hours per week on nights and weekends, building out this business to putting in their notice and going straight into having a company ready to go and getting income so they can replace that salary. So I’ve had a couple of clients that are like literally switching from one career to an entirely different field. And that’s the biggest difference between somebody that’s like basically taking the job that they’re doing now and they’re just going freelance and building a business around it. Because not only are you starting a business, which is hard enough as it is, but you’re actually learning something entirely new and how to deliver an entirely different service. But really the action steps are the same. I have all of my clients get really hyper-focused on who it is. Who’s the client you want to serve? Who is your ideal client? Who is that rockstar client? What’s their personality like? What are they looking for? What do they need help with? And then understand those pain points that client has that you can help them with. And once you have those, then you can develop, you know, copy that converts on your website. You can have conversations with clients that make sense to them. And you learn how to talk about your services and solutions in ways that make sense to that client and are compelling enough to want them to work.
Dr. Mark Leeds [17:52] Are you familiar with the story of the monkey trap?
Kate Bagoy [17:55] It sounds familiar, but remind me.
Dr. Mark Leeds [17:57] Somewhere in the world, they trap monkeys by putting food for the monkey in a hole in a tree. The monkey reaches his hand to grab the food. And then when he has a handful of food, he can’t pull his hand out. The monkey’s unwilling to let go of the food because he doesn’t want to let go of it. He really wants it. He’s stuck there in the trap and they can come collect him. Right. The story is that a lot of us are trapped in the monkey trap that we’re unwilling to take the chance of letting go of what we have in our hand. And so we can never really move on. And I kind of see those people, those high earning people that they don’t see a possibility of getting out of it, that maybe they have to let go of the high income and change their life for a while to let go of the income and the prestige and walk away and maybe live a different lifestyle for a while.
Kate Bagoy [18:41] Yeah. I mean, that’s a great way to go about it. Or you can just look at getting as close as you can to replacing that income, which is an even better way to go. One of the exercises that I have my clients do is really looking at your finances and understanding what you really need to survive. If you had to take half your income away, what can you survive on? And then what can you thrive on? And you basically want to continue living the same lifestyle or a slightly better lifestyle. And then what’s your dream? Where do you really want to be? And if we can build a business that at least fulfills the survive goal that allows them the freedom to step away from the golden handcuffs, the monkey trap there, to replace their basic expenses and then start to build that and get into the thrive and the dream goals.
Dr. Mark Leeds [19:27] I heard somewhere that Tony Robbins, to get him as a consultant for your business, charges, I think, a million dollars a year and he wants a percentage of your company. Do people have to give you a percentage of their company for you to work with them?
Kate Bagoy [19:38] No, I don’t do that. I’m not Tony Robbins level. I love Tony Robbins. I’m a big fan. I believe he actually now charges a million dollars per hour for personal coaching, if I remember correctly. But no, I don’t take a percentage of my client’s company. And I take a flat upfront fee in order to support them for a certain period of time and give them all the strategy and support they need to get kicked off. And then if clients want to continue working with me, then they pay a maintenance fee. But no percentage. I have talked to some people about that. They’ve requested that I forego my fee in lieu of revenue share. I’ve only done that once for a company that I really, really believed in. Generally speaking, it’s just not how I work.
Dr. Mark Leeds [20:24] Actually, I think you’re right about the million dollars per hour. I think I heard it on an interview with his son, Jairek, where he said you can get him for $500 an hour. He can get his father for a million dollars an hour plus a percentage of your company.
Kate Bagoy [20:36] Yeah, exactly. Probably worth it. I don’t have that kind of money to be spending on an hour with Tony. I’d rather just go to his events. They’re pretty, pretty freaking awesome.
Dr. Mark Leeds [20:47] And also I like how what you’re offering is realistic. People can imagine that it’s possible for them to build a company that can make six figures where, you know, when you talk about making millions or billions of dollars, there’s a certain amount of luck involved with that and a huge amount of failures. And to promise people that you’re going to have a billion dollar company is not realistic, but this is something that anybody can do.
Kate Bagoy [21:08] Yeah, it really is. If you have a product or service and there’s a client out there that needs it, there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t get to six figures. You just need the right foundation and the right strategy for getting there.
Dr. Mark Leeds [21:21] Is there a podcast you like to listen to that you would recommend? Do you have a favorite podcast?
Kate Bagoy [21:26] I haven’t listened to podcasts in a while, but one of my favorites is The School of Greatness with Lewis Howes. I think he does a really great job. He interviews a lot of really interesting people and seems to just be a pretty good guy.
Dr. Mark Leeds [21:40] And what would be a book that you would highly recommend? I mean, of course, other than your own book, what would be a book that you would recommend someone get today and start reading?
Kate Bagoy [21:48] Either Secrets of Six Figure Women by Barbara Stanny, if you’re a woman, or Secrets of a Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker. I think both of those are really great books for getting your mindset wrapped around that money stuff and learning how to start thinking bigger.
Dr. Mark Leeds [22:04] Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And people who get clean and get into recovery, I think that addiction has held them back. I think they’ve taken a wrong turn in life. And, you know, but they’re the people I think that have the highest potential for being more successful than anyone.
Kate Bagoy [22:18] I agree. And I think, you know, if you can, for me, it’s like, once you get sober, you realize there’s just not a lot of other hard things in life. Life just becomes a lot easier and a lot more fun once you go through something that is so challenging and so tough. But if you do the work and make that shift, life becomes a lot more open, a lot more full than you ever would have imagined when you were stuck behind a bottle or a pill or whatever. Life has just gotten really big and really fun. And I just can’t recommend it enough. I am super grateful for my sobriety. And I hope that anybody out there that wants to get sober, you know, you’ll do the work. It’s not easy. It’s worth it. If you’re struggling to get sober, hang in there. It is not easy to get sober, but it is absolutely the best decision I ever made in my entire life. And it is absolutely worth the struggle.
Dr. Mark Leeds [23:09] Kate Bagoy, thank you for joining me today on the Rehab Podcast.
