This week we talk about a controversial topic… alcohol and business. Watch now!
VIDEO SUMMARY
Alcohol is one of those topics they do not tell you about in business school. I think it is a shame, because I guarantee this is something that is going to dramatically impact your career, whether it is yourself or somebody you work with. But no one is going to talk to you about this. Especially in the accounting community, alcohol is not something that is discussed. Which is a problem, because if you have to deal with this in your career, you are completely unprepared. So today we are going to have an open and honest conversation about alcohol and business, and we are going to get into all the uncomfortable details.
I need to start by saying there is no judgement here. It does not matter whether you drink or do not drink or how much you drink, I am not judging you in any way. Everybody handles alcohol differently, so it is a personal decision that is up to you, about how you use alcohol in your life. My goal is to help you understand how alcohol shows up in the business world and the impact that will have on your career.
The first thing you need to realize is that alcohol is a part of business. Drinking alcohol is a big part of our society, so you are going to run into it at work. I am going to list a few ways you find alcohol at work:
- Networking events
- Office parties
- Gatherings after work
- Drinks with customers
- Business gifts
I have seen some pretty extreme examples of alcohol in the workplace. I have worked in businesses where people have had bottles of hard liquor in their desk. Many of you know, I used to work in Hollywood, and I remember a particular talent agent. She would go out to lunch and have two martinis. Then she would come back to the office, and she would have a water glass on her desk that she would fill up with vodka. She would then spend the afternoon sipping from this glass.
You might be thinking to yourself, “Zach, these are extreme examples. This is never going to happen to me. Why do we need to talk about this?” Let me tell you what will happen to you. If you are successful in your career, there is a high probability that one of two things are going to happen:
- Your job will require frequent travel
- Your job will require you to move to a new city
In either of those situations, you are going to find yourself in a new city where you do not know anyone. On top of that, since you are so successful, you probably have a job that is high stress. So you are stressed out, lonely, and probably depressed. For a lot of people, alcohol becomes an easy solution to these problems. Alcohol is socially accepted, it is cheap, it is easy to get, it works quickly, and you can drink all your sorrows away. It seems like an easy and harmless solution.
What you need to realize, is that the extreme examples I talked about, all started as occasional drinking. I am not an expert in medicine, but as general example, I categorize drinking behavior in three phases:
- Occasional drinking
- Regular drinking (Drunk 3-4 days a week)
- Extreme drinking (Drunk at work)
A doctor would probably say that nothing below the first phase is healthy. The point I want to make is that alcohol is an addictive substance, and so progressing from one phase to the next is a lot easier than you think. Throughout your life, you are probably going to watch a number of your friends progress through these stages.
Let me share with you my personal experience with alcohol. I do not drink at all. Nothing. I do not smoke. I do not drink. I do not use drugs. Again, I am not judging you if you do drink. I am not someone who thinks that no one should drink. This is just what I have found works for me, and I have not always been this way. I stopped drinking about three and a half years ago. Since that time, there has only been one day where I drank. So I have not been perfect, but I am pretty proud of my record of one day in three and a half years, because before I stopped, I was an extreme drinker. I never drank at work, but I was drinking every single day. I was a daily drinker. I would come home from work and pour myself a drink. Then on the weekends, I would hang out with my friends and drink. I became an extreme drinker exactly the way I described earlier. I was doing well in my career. I moved to a new city. I had a stressful job. I did not know anybody, and I went to the bars to meet new friends. After a while, drinking alcohol just becomes a regular part of your daily routine. You almost do not even notice it, because it sneaks up on you.
I am going to share with you how you can tell you need to deal with your drinking. We are all business people here, so you should be able to do this exercise. Review your bank statements, and on an Excel spreadsheet write down every time you have spent money on alcohol in the last year. I realize that some of your receipts are combinations with other things, so it will not be exact. But you should be able to get a good idea, week by week, how much you have spent on alcohol. If you do this, and you notice that your spending on alcohol is going up, and up, and up, that is a sign you need to deal with your drinking. I actually did this, and the great thing is that numbers do not lie. I could see that I was spending way too much money on alcohol.
One of my problems is that I have always been the type of person who enjoyed alcohol. I enjoy the taste, the smell, the way it feels going down your throat, and the way it makes you feel overall. It is very enjoyable. I used to drink every kind of drink there was, but my favorite drink was vodka, water with lime. I would buy the most expensive vodka I could find, put it in a glass with ice, fill up the rest with water, and add a lime. This shows my type-A personality, because the reason I liked this drink is that it is the most efficient drink at the bar. It is cost effective, you can get drunk fast, it is the least amount of calories, and since you are drinking so much water, you stay hydrated throughout the night.
I had many reasons to stop drinking, but I am only going to talk about the one main reason that drove my decision. Something happens when you start to get older. You start to notice how important “time” is, and how little time you have left to live. One day I woke up and I had this realization that I was wasting a lot of time being drunk and depressed. So I just decided I was going to try to stop drinking. What is so crazy looking back, is that it was not until after I stopped drinking that I truly realized how much time alcohol was eating up in my life. What I experienced was the amount of time I had in my week doubled. If you think about it, that makes sense. Let us say you are drinking four days a week. I was drinking a lot more than that, but let us just say four. For each of those four nights, from the time you start drinking to the time you go to bed, you are pretty much checked out of life. That evening is gone. Then the next day, you have a hangover. I know some people here will argue that they do not get hangovers. I do not believe that. You and I both know that the day after, you are about 50% as productive as you would normally be. So between the time you spend drunk, and the day after, that is about half of your week. So when I stopped drinking, my available time doubled. When I realized that, my perception changed. There are so many amazing things in life to experience, why would I want to waste any time being drunk.
I do not want to give the impression that it was easy for me to stop drinking. Any habit like this that you do on a regular basis is really difficult to change. Quitting drinking was one of the hardest things I have experienced. What made it possible for me was the results. Since I stopped drinking, the results have been so positive that I have no desire to go back. Some of you may have figured this out already… but I started this YouTube channel about 3 ½ years ago. What happened was I suddenly found myself sitting around with all this free time, and I had to figure out something to do. Today I have over 100 videos on accounting and corporate finance, and I have loved making every one of them. This channel is a physical manifestation of what can happen when you take all that time you spend being drunk and depressed and instead you spend it doing something you love and you are passionate about. You only have so much time in life. How you choose to spend it, makes a difference.
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Neither Zach De Gregorio or Wolves and Finance Inc. shall be liable for any damages related to information in this video. It is recommended you contact a CPA in your area for business advice.