 I am James Swanik and we're talking about how much money people spend on alcohol. Right at the moment that I started the episode, I just had a little cough, sorry about that. How much do people spend on alcohol? What's your drinking really costing you? So there's a website that I saw recently called alcohol.org. It's an alcohol use disorder resource. And I looked at how much people spend on alcohol over the course of a year and lifetime. And they used life expectancy to work out the number of drinks consumed over a lifetime and the cost of drinks in different cities. What was really interesting I thought was that those people who lived in New York, Minneapolis and Miami all averaged close to $2,000 a year on drinks and $116,000 in an average lifetime. I think that's modest. I think that's low to be honest. People in New York, Minneapolis, Miami all averaged close to $2,000 a year on alcohol. And then over a lifetime, it seems to be, here's the top 10, I'll give you the top 10 cities. New York, Minneapolis, Miami, Los Angeles, Denver, Sacramento, Charlotte, North Carolina, San Jose, California, Chicago, Illinois, and number 10 with San Francisco, California. So New Yorkers spend $121,000 over a lifetime. And according to this, San Francisco folks spend $99,312.28. So, and in just a moment, I'll actually give you the top 10 list of the cities that spend the least amount. But before I do that, while those numbers may surprise you, I actually believe they're mostly inconsequential when compared to the revenue, if you're a business owner, or income, if you're an employee, that you're probably leaving on the table because you're not operating at your best. For sure, you may spend an average of $2,000 a year on purchasing alcohol. But you're probably missing out on generating tens of thousands of dollars or more because of the amount of time and energy you're devoting to your drinking habit. Because alcohol has been proven to sap your energy and slow down your brain's ability to process information. For example, it's the phone call, you don't make it work because you're tired. It's operating at 60% instead of 90%. It's the irritable boss who doesn't inspire his team or her team. It's a project that you keep putting on the back burner because you don't have the energy to tackle it. So what's important to stress is it's not just the day after drinking that affects your performance because most toxins remain in your system for seven days and some as long as 90 days. In fact, they can take a strand of your hair and put it under a microscope. And as long as 90 days later, they can still, they can determine whether you have alcohol in your system or not. That's fascinating. If optimal performance is your goal, rationalizing drinking on Fridays and Saturdays and believing that you'll be at 100% by Monday isn't gonna work. Because studies and countless anecdotal evidence demonstrates the drinking effects your next week and beyond. So let's take a cold hard look at the facts. What is your drinking really costing you? I created a popular online quiz. It's called the Alcohol Lost Revenue Calculator. And it allows entrepreneurs, business owners, executives, employees to calculate just how much their drinking is actually costing them in lost revenue. If you'd like to take that quiz, if you send me a direct message over on Instagram with the word calculator, I will very happily just send it back to you and you can take it online. You can send it to me on Facebook as well or any way you wanna get to me, just say the word calculator and I'll know what you mean and I'll shoot you off the quiz. But let's just do this now in your head whether you're driving or walking or running. Let's forget for a second the amount of money that you spend on alcohol and alcohol related activities. Instead, let's just focus on the amount of money that you're possibly not generating because of your drinking. So here's a three step calculation. Okay, so first step is to ask yourself with your drinking habit, the way it currently is or at least the way it's been, how much revenue did you generate in your business last year or if you're an employee, what was your salary? All right, so I'll give you a moment. How much did you make last year? If it's a business, how much revenue did your business do? If you're a person, sorry, if you're an employee, I should say, what was your salary? Okay, so that's the first step. Second step, if you were consistently alcohol free in 2021 and you enjoyed a clearer mind with more energy and less stress and extra motivation and you were laser focused and therefore you increased your productivity and your performance and your impact and therefore if you own a business, if you owned a business, you generated more sales or clients or customers or if you have a job, you got a razor or promotion or you secured a better job at another company, how much revenue or income could you generate this year? That's the second question. So let's pretend for a moment that you are consistently alcohol free enjoying all the benefits that that brings, greater focus, greater concentration, productivity, happiness, joy, fun, happy people make more money or they're more productive. How much money could you make in 2021? Got that number? So the first question was how much money did you make last year? And the second question is how much money could you make this year if you were consistently alcohol free? Okay, so I will assume that you've got those two figures in your mind. The third step here involves a some subtraction. So what I want you to do is I want you to subtract number one which is what you made in 2020 from number two, which is what you could make in 2021. What could you make in 2021? And then subtract what you did make in 2020. What is that number? Whatever that number is in your mind right now after doing that equation, that's what you're drinking is potentially costing you in lost revenue or income each year. And particularly in 2021 because I asked you, you know, what would, how much money do you think you might produce if you're alcohol free in 2021? So whatever your figure is, that's what money you may leave on the table and not generate if you choose to continue drinking. So just think about that for a moment. Because every time you drink that's what you're potentially losing in annual revenue or income which can add up to big numbers over time. The difference between what you could make this year and what you made this year or the difference between what you could make this year being alcohol free and what you could make this year drinking alcohol that's your number. That's what you're drinking habits are costing you. That's money you're not generating or receiving you're leaving that on the table. I squandered money for years when I drank only to generate millions when I quit. I've created two seven figure businesses. One of them is the alcohol free lifestyle coaching business. This is the podcast version of that. Obviously I have programs that help people quit. The feature program is project 90. Also have the 30 day no alcohol challenge. We do a five day introductory challenge on occasion as well. But me coaching people on how to live an alcohol free lifestyle is a seven figure business. It's a coaching business. Let me tell you something. If I was drinking I wasn't having the ability or cognition or productivity to create any seven figure business. It just wasn't happening. My other main business is Swannick Sleep. That's a sleep company which produces blue light blocking glasses named Swanis that help people sleep better. I started it with my brother Tristan in 2015. Entrepreneur magazine featured us in an article that year about how we generated a million dollars in sales in those 12 months in 2015. And I credit being alcohol free with giving me the clarity and focus and confidence to achieve that level of success with that business. Because when you're clear in mind you make better choices. Particularly if you're in sales if you work as a business owner or you're a sales person. When you've got clarity and focus and energy you make an extra call. You try an additional marketing effort. You put in that little bit of extra that changes the outcome. These things all help you succeed in business and generate wealth. And it's often the intangibles that lead to the biggest differences over time. One of my clients, Tim Steele is his name and he won't mind me publicly naming him because he's very kindly been interviewed by me on this podcast. You could go back and listen to the episode. He's a commercial real estate lender. And he quit drinking with my help. Tim said he was leaving a quarter of a million dollars on the table because of his drinking. $250,000 a year because of his drinking. I had another client, Amy McFadden. She's also featured in the podcast. So I invite you to just scroll back and you can listen to the Amy McFadden podcast interview that we did. She has an interior design company in Boston. Amy said she tripled her business within 90 days of quitting drinking. She joined project 90, 2000, I think it was late 2019. She tripled her business within those 90 days. Jessica Gaines-Jabo is another one. She's a realtor from Louisville, Kentucky. She's featured in the podcast as well. You can scroll back and listen to that episode. She said that the quality of her clients improved dramatically when she went alcohol-free. So it wasn't so much that she got more clients, it's just the quality of her clients improved dramatically. And then Suzy Vaughn, who's another realtor, and she went through project 90 in 2020, she said that she doubled her prospects and increased her close rate by 20% within 100 days of quitting alcohol. Pretty remarkable. So I couldn't find the numbers of those podcast episodes, I'm sorry, my screen has decided to just freeze at the most inopportune moment, but in any case, if you scroll back, you can find the episodes there that I did with Tim Steele, Amy McFadden, Jessica Gaines-Jabo and Suzy Vaughn. And they, so particularly if you're business minded or you're productivity minded or you're looking for a promotion or you're wanting to change jobs and you really wanna perform better, they would be interesting episodes for you to listen to because not only did they all have health breakthroughs and a reduction in stress, but they also had financial breakthroughs. Now, I said earlier, I was gonna come back to that study which showed the cities which did the least amount or drank the least. So let me just try and find that. Oh yeah, here we go. Okay, so the cities that spent the least ranked one to 10. Birmingham, Alabama, New Orleans, Louisiana, Memphis, Tennessee, Cleveland, Ohio, Cincinnati, Ohio, Richmond, Virginia, Jacksonville, Florida, Buffalo, New York, San Antonio, Texas, and Indianapolis, Indiana. Folks in Birmingham, Alabama spent $57,838.58 which is the least amount. So there you go. The folks who spent the most, the top three, New York, Minneapolis, Miami spent the least Birmingham, New Orleans, and Memphis. It's surprising on New Orleans, isn't it? I always thought that's a big party town but maybe the folks who live there, maybe a lot of the big drinkers are the people who are flying in there to party but the folks who actually live there long term and are not spending as much. So it's interesting. So yeah, I hope this was interesting. What felt valuable for you? What was kind of like an aha moment for you on this call? I would love to hear from you. There's a Facebook group if you'd like to join. It's called Over 40s Getting Clear with James Swannick. You can find it on Facebook. Send me a request and I'd happily accept your request and get you into the group if indeed you are Over 40. You can send me a message on Instagram direct message. If you'd like that calculator, just send me a note that says the word calculator. If you wanna tell me how much you figured out your drinking was actually costing you, if you did that calculation, you just wanna share it with me and you wanna ask my opinion of it, what I think, give you some feedback on it, reach out to me, Instagram or on my Facebook page, James Swannick official. There's plenty of ways to get a hold of me. Just shoot me a message. I'd love to hear from you. And you got any questions? I'd love to do my best to answer them for you. All right, I hope you enjoyed the show. Talk to you on the next one. Thanks for listening to the Alcohol Free Lifestyle Podcast. I wanna load you up with some free stuff right now. So if you wanna go to Jamesswannick.com slash guide, I will send you my quit alcohol guide, which has helped six figure entrepreneurs and top professionals reduce or quit drinking. You can also text the word quit guide to the number 44222 if you're in the US of course. It doesn't really work anywhere outside of the US. But if you're in the US on your mobile phone and you'd like that guide, text the word quit guide to the number 44222 or you can go to Jamesswannick.com slash guide. If you'd like to schedule a free 15 minute call with one of my top coaches, just an exploratory call to see if or how we can help you then you can go to Jamesswannick.com slash schedule or you can text the word project 90 to the number 44222 if you're listening in the US on a mobile phone. That's Jamesswannick.com slash schedule or you can text the word project 90, that's one word, project 90, to the number 44222. Feel free to send me a direct message over on my Instagram account, which is at Jamesswannick. You can also watch video episodes of this podcast and a series of other educational videos on my YouTube channel, which is Jamesswannick one or you can direct message me on Facebook at Jamesswannick official. And finally, a request, would you please now write a short review of the podcast inside of the Apple podcast app on your phone or on iTunes on your desktop computer? Would you please give the show five stars and write a quick one or two sentence review? This will help the show get in front of even more listeners, potentially transforming someone's life. You can rate and review the show inside of your Apple podcast app on your phone or over on iTunes on your desktop. Thank you so much and I'll catch you next time.