Seven Years of Sobriety with founder Janet Gourand

Today is Tribe Sobers 7th birthday!

We’re offering a birthday discount of 20% off our Kickstart online course and Annual membership – just go to tribesober.com to book and enter the code “birthday2022” – valid from now until the 16th November

It’s exactly 7 years today since our very first workshop in Cape Town!

We wanted to mark the occasion and say thank you

To say thank you to the Tribe Sober team and of course to all our members. 

To say thank you to everyone who has ever done a challenge or had coaching, everyone who’s ever done a workshop or donated to our annual Dry January fundraiser!

And of course thank you to everyone who listens to this podcast – we appreciate you!

In this Episode

• Janet shares the story of Tribe Sober – how it started and how it evolved
• How it evolved into an international community – all supporting each other to make the transition from problem drinking to thriving in their sobriety
• We pick the story up in May 2015 – that’s when I quit drinking (if you want to know why and how then you can catch that story on Tribe Sober podcast episode 1)
• The day after I quit drinking I started a blog – I’ve always loved writing and I wanted to log my journey, process my emotions and hold myself accountable.
• My blog was called WorldWithoutWine as that more or less described the strange place I found myself in – a world without Sauvignon Blanc…
• Blogging was my therapy and I got lots of comments saying “me too”!
• Suddenly I realized I wasn’t alone in this struggle… so I gritted my teeth and kept it going.
• I was about 4 months sober when I was hit by those early sobriety blues. I was in limbo, I’d quit the booze but didn’t quite know how my life was supposed to function without it.
• I’d got the hang of the not drinking part but I definitely wasn’t thriving in my AF life
• In fact I felt flat, a bit depressed and rather bored
• My friends weren’t helping – they were saying things like:
• “Are you still doing that not drinking thing?”
• “Surely you can have “just one” after such a long break?
• Apart from people who were responding to my blog I had no sober friends at all so felt quite lonely and a bit alienated from our alcohol drenched society
• I began to wonder if I’d done the right thing but was determined to keep going - that was the year when evidence about the link between breast cancer and alcohol was coming into the public domain and I certainly didn’t want my breast cancer coming back so I soldiered on for the sake of my health
• I was retired from my corporate job by this time
• Sobriety had freed up a lot of time but I had no idea what to do with that extra time.
• I did spend time reading QuitLit and discovered Annie Grace’s book This Naked Mind and that was a bit of gamechanger for me.
• That’s when I realized that I’d been white knuckling it and that I had to create a mindshift rather than relying on willpower.
• That made me realise that although I was sober the job was not yet done – I had to learn how to thrive in my sobriety – rather than feel deprived with being hit with bouts of FOMO.
• I’d developed the habit of a daily walk by the sea every day to avoid witching hour and it was on these walks that I began to get ideas
• I could literally feel my creativity coming back..
• One  day I had an idea…
• What if…
• What if… I used my 25 years of experience in training and development to design a workshop which would help other people to get sober and learn to thrive in their sobriety
• I was confident that I could teach people HOW to stop drinking and give them a toolkit – strategies and tools that had worked for me.
• Although I hadn’t quite got the hang of thriving in my own sobriety I wanted to build a community so that we could help each other to learn to love our alcohol free lives.
• We could figure it out together
• We could use our sobriety as a springboard for personal development.
• So I started to design the workshop which I called "New Beginnings".
• A project which was creative and kept me fully occupied
• It was also triggering my happy brain chemicals!
• Once the workshop was designed I had to get a website set up and then do some FB ads
• I now understand that having a big project and then dividing it into small steps is a sure way to stay happy and busy – and it worked!
• It was about that time that my sobriety blues began to lift. With hindsight I realise that my depression was evaporating because I had a worthwhile project on the go!
• So at merely 6 months sober I found myself in a hotel conference room in Cape Town running the very first workshop for 15 people – that was on November 12th 2015!
• So 2015 was when it all started…
• 2016 began with our very first Challenge – The Dry January Challenge!
• I was already a great supporter of an NGO here in Cape Town called Earthchild which provided yoga and lifeskills training for underprivileged children.
• One day it came to me that I could use our fast growing platform to fundraise for Earthchild and our first Challenge was born – that Dry January Fundraiser is a firm fixture in our calendar and we’ve raised more than R300,000 for Earthchild over the years – that’s been enough to help more than 1,000 children.
• Our second CPT workshop took place in March of that year. That was where I met Janis who has been sober ever since and is now one of our Recovery Coaches – she also writes a weekly blog for us called “conversations with Janis” which you can find on the website.
• Building on the success of the Dry January Challenge we decided to do a longer Challenge in the Spring so our first 66 day Sober Spring Challenge was launched.
• Meanwhile we were getting plenty of media attention here in SA – we were featured on tv, in radio programs and the press. In an alcohol drenched society our community was hitting the news
• By 2017 we were running workshops in Joburg and that’s where I met Nick and Lynette.
• They both got sober by attending a Joburg workshop. Lynette trained as a recovery coach and is now our Head Coach and they both still help me to facilitate our regular Zoom workshops.
• 2018 was an important year for us…
• Our workshops were getting great feedback so we ran our first London workshop that year.
• Not only did we have author of the Sober Diaries Clare Pooley as a guest speaker but it was there that we came across the fabulous Lucy!
• Another workshop graduate who is now an essential member of the Tribe Sober team – co-facilitating workshops and coming to the Zoom workshop every Saturday.
• Lucy is master of the reframe and thanks to her we now tell our newbies that “they don’t have a problem, they have an opportunity to ditch the drink and change their lives in ways they cannot imagine!”
• So people who have been worrying about their drinking “problem” start to feel excited about the opportunity ahead.
• By 2018 we had a database of a few hundred people who had attended a workshop and they were wanting more – they wanted not only more content but they wanted a way to stay connected.
• We always begin our workshop with shares and this is a powerful experience for the participants. Not only is it often the first time that they have told their own story and realised just how unhappy alcohol is making them – but hearing other people tell their story makes them realise they are not alone in this.
• The honesty and vulnerability shown during the shares creates a strong bond so that’s why people wanted to stay connected.
• So that’s why we created our membership program.
• Because connection is the opposite of addiction.
• Fortunately for me that was about the time when Sue knocked on my door.  She’d got sober with AA but liked our approach and wanted to get involved. 
• Sue is an Accountant so she was able to implement some much needed structure behind the scenes.  I was doing everything on my own and my little passion project of running the odd workshop in Cape Town was expanding fast!
• So thanks to Sue we soon got more organized as she implemented some systems and created a master spreadsheet listing our members.
• Our aim was always to keep our membership small so we could get to know people and provide a really personal service.  Some sobriety groups have thousands of members but we are happy to stay at around the 400 member mark.
• We want to focus on service rather than growth.
• Sue also mastered our website and was soon troubleshooting and developing it further. 
• Her role has grown along with Tribe Sober and she provides a great service to our members – she welcomes new members, gets them onboarded and holds daily group chats on Zoom for them.  She even keeps a running total of the sober time we are clocking up as a Tribe – that currently stands at more than 300 years!
• 2019
• Was spent establishing our membership and increasing the support we offered.
• Another successful fund raiser and as well as another Sober Spring challenge.
• Our team gained another member when we met Judy at a Joburg workshop. She offered her services as our Tribe Doctor which means our members get access to confidential medical advice on alcohol related matters.
• Then along came Courage – the Tribe Sober team has grown organically as people came to our workshops, got sober and then wanted to stay connected. However I have to admit I did headhunt this team member.
• At the time I was teaching HR in a business college and came across Courage from Zimbabwe. He was in my class and in fact was usually top of that class as he is one clever guy.
• By then our Challenges were getting more and more popular and took quite some organization so Courage came on board as our Campaign Manager – and these days he also helps me with podcast editing.
• 2020 was the year of the rebrand… from WWW to TS – our community had been referring to themselves as the Tribe for a while now so one day I thought it was time for a rebrand – and we became Tribe Sober.
• Which involved a few months developing our new website of course!
• Like the rest of the world we had a Pandemic to deal with – we launched our Lockdown Challenge and the workshops were shifted to Zoom. A format we’ve stayed with as it enables us to offer our workshop to people all over the world.
• 2020 was also my 5 year Soberversary which I celebrated by launching this podcast!
• 2021
• In 2021 Mon joined our Team as Marketing Support, taking over our social media and helping me with marketing.
• Monica had originally joined us as a Tribe Member. She struggled a lot at first but never gave up.  In fact she had 84 Day One’s which is a bit of a record here at the Tribe!
• But she is an inspiration to many and walking proof that if you keep at it you will get there. Monica is now 18 months sober.
• 2022 saw the launch of our online Kickstart course – thats our original workshop which is now available as a Group Workshop, an online course or a private 1.2.1. workshop
• This year we also did our first 5 day Sober Bootcamp via a Facebook Group. We’ll be doing that again in January so if you want to join in just find the Sober Bootcamp Facebook Group and join the conversation.
• Plans for 2023 include a January Sober Bootcamp as well as the launch of the Kickstart Group Coaching Program so watch this space!
• So that’s the story of how one woman with a crazy idea started a community…
• It’s just one example of how life can turn out when you ditch the drink and get back your energy and creativity
• The magic in this story is that as I helped others to ditch the booze I began to thrive in my own sobriety
• I discovered that this kind of work lit me up and gave my life real meaning and purpose.
• Don’t forget that the code "birthday2022" is live now so you can claim 20% discount on Annual Membership and/or Kickstart online course!
• Just go to tribesober.com and you’ll find all the info or message janet@tribesober.com
  
  
• More Info

Subscription membership – you can join up HERE.

• To access our website, click HERE.
• If you would like a free copy of our “Annual Tracker” or our e-book 66 Days to Sobriety, please email janet@tribesober.com.
• If you would like to come to our Saturday afternoon Zoom Cafe as a guest and meet our community, just email janet@tribesober.com.

Episode Sponsor

This episode is sponsored by the Tribe Sober Membership Program.  If you want to change your relationship with alcohol then sign up today
Read more about our program and subscribe HERE

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