61: From Recovery to Reinvention: After Getting Sober | Women and Work

Building a successful business, achieving financial freedom, and checking every box on the path to success should have felt like the finish line.

For Heather Simco, it wasn't.

After growing up in a difficult home, Heather pursued stability through teaching before helping build a thriving martial arts business with her husband. But behind the success was a battle with addiction, unresolved trauma, and the realization that external achievements couldn't heal internal struggles.

Everything changed when she hit rock bottom, got sober, and began rebuilding her life from the inside out.
Today, Heather helps women navigate transformation, wellness, recovery, and entrepreneurship through her coaching practice.

In this episode of Women and Work, Heather shares her remarkable journey from survival to self-discovery:
• Growing up in a difficult and unstable household
• Choosing security over passion early in life
• Building a successful martial arts business from scratch
• The hidden challenges that came with success
• Addiction, recovery, and finding sobriety
• Rebuilding identity after trauma and injury
• Entrepreneurship and creating a purpose-driven career
• Raising a daughter while building a business
• Why community is essential for personal growth
• Finding freedom through reinvention

How has a major life challenge reshaped the direction of your career or personal life?

If you want to transform in mental, physical, and spiritual ways, check out Heather’s Concierge Coaching at: 
https://link.communicake.io/widget/form/LcdbEIlwhPc1Vz8LQxm3?am_id=diane8572

You can join Heather’s Sober Boss Babe Community at: 
https://www.soberbossbabe.com/sbbcommunity?am_id=diane6312

Leave behind your toxic lifestyle behind by embarking on the Sober Boss Babe reset here:
https://soberbossbabe.com/sbbcourse?am_id=diane6761

Come together with other women in recovery at the Sober Boss Babe Retreat here:
https://www.soberbossbabe.com/sbbretreatoptin?am_id=diane1165

Struggling to find the right child care? Get a video interview of your ideal nanny at https://www.momsub.com/child-care-options

#WomenAndWork #SobrietyJourney #Entrepreneurship #PersonalGrowth #WomenInBusiness

Transcript

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I actually was on my own since I was 17. And so going to college in New York to become a school teacher, I knew I could take care of myself. So that was the stable ticket out of the tumultuous life upbringing I had. And I met my husband, so I was the stable income while we built the business. And so finally I realized, wow, this isn't I'm living someone else's dream. I only did this for stability. I woke up one day and go, I really don't want to be here anymore. And he said, Well, if you can make as many, you know, as much money in this, then you can leave your teaching job. And I did it in like 30 days. I was like, I'm out. So it was a very quick turnaround. Um, and so that's that's really where that transition came from. And it gave us a good stability while we were building that entrepreneurial, you know, mindset. Welcome to Women and Work, the show where we take an inside look at how women are overcoming our own unique challenges as we grow our careers or build a business while nurturing relationships and family. I'm Diane Mocha, founder and CEO of MomSub, the app that connects you to a substitute mom. And I want you to know that work can fit your life. Each week we meet a woman who has done that. And today we're with Heather Simcoe. She is the owner of Complete Concierge, which includes services for businesses and individuals to take control. She started her career as a teacher. She spent five years as a fashion designer, ran her own school eventually, and became a director at a martial arts gym and an administrator at a church. Wow. Thanks for being here, Heather. Thank you. You among many things. Yes. I'll never say too many, right? You gained so much from each of those things. Yeah, absolutely. Wow. So you went wide instead of deep. And so there's no right or wrong way, but it is quite a varied career. So I'm sure that you interacted with lots of different kinds of people, both on your own when you were running your own business and when you were in high levels at other organizations. Yes. And so as we interact with people, we get all kinds of things coming at us that we might not necessarily expect. And I want to know of all the things that you've done, what do you think was the biggest challenge in your career, specifically because you are a woman? Oh, when I ran a mixed martial arts school with my husband. Okay. And why being one of the few women and having them take you seriously, respect you, it was an extra I'm always an uphill battle because it is it it is the industry. And now, I mean it's way more mainstream, but when my husband and I started it, it was in the late 90s. So in its infancy and it's not really a a female sport, but like we see it now, especially with the huge fight, I think that's coming up with Rhonda Rowsi and um this weekend. So it's it's insane. But when I was doing it years ago, I was like, what why are you why are you here? Like, what do you do? You can't tell me what to do. Uh especially when I'm in charge of their paycheck and all of the other nitty-gritty stuff. It just it was definitely an uphill challenge. I I conquered it, but it was definitely one of the hardest. All right. I I love that confidence. You conquered it. So, you know, there's lots of choices that we can make in the world. And you obviously had other things that you had done. So why did you choose to do this and to, you know, go in partnership with your husband? And then after you realized, like, oh wow, this is going to be an uphill battle to get people to respect me and to do the job I'm here to do, why did you continue? I I love being self-employed. I actually grew up in a self-employed household. I joke that I've been self-employed since I was 11. I was a neighborhood babysitter. And so what's really funny is I've just I've had I've grown up with that bug inside of me. And so every time I find myself in not a constraint, but in a more formal worker employee relationship, I just I'm never fully comfortable. And I I have and I practice this with who I coach as well, where your passion, paycheck, and purpose all line up, you're no longer working. And I every time I find myself in a position that's making me feel less than or doesn't feel quite right, it every time I'm self-employed and around being a creator, that's where I feel the most free. And so that's where I made the eventual transition, putting down the teacher hat and moving full-time into that because it just gave me the freedom to be who I am inside and out and and have that, you know, control of illusionary control of my life of what I'm doing. A lot more movement. A little obviously a lot more stressful, but definitely uh so much more conducive to who I am naturally. And that's beautiful self-awareness, you know, which is so important for people to really find that right place that works for them, that brings them happiness, is to know what they want. People think they know what they want, but then they get there, and like you said, there's just something that feels a little bit off, a little bit of discomfort. So I notice in your background, you had periods, you know, for like a decade of, you know, working for others. Were you doing that as consultant in the sense that you were still kind of running your own business, or were some of these other positions, you know, as the church administrator, you know, and and as the director um at the at the gym, you said that was owned by you and your husband, but some of these other positions were those positions where you were working for someone, or was it more something that you were doing through a company and so you felt like you had that self-employment? So it's an interesting timeline. So what happened was we ran the gym up until about 20, like 90s to about early 2014, and we opened up a third location in Florida from New York, and I ended up in a car accident, and so we ended up having to the whole thing kind of ended up dissolving and fading away naturally as a result. Um, and part of my story is I am in recovery, I actually hit rock bottom in April of 2014. So I'm totally 12 years sober now. So that was a lot of my reinvention was coping. You I was enabled. I was able, uh the more successful I was, the more you know, the more people gave me free stuff and the more enabled my behavior for my addiction. And so I had to transition to working for other people to rebuild myself. And that was part of coming out of that. And then once I had the confidence, the clarity, the sobriety, and the background behind me, that's where I was like, okay, fine, I'm done working for other people. That's my transition out of my recovery, and I've become self-employed again. Uh, the church administration, it's more of a volunteer. My husband's a lead pastor now. So I got vol I joke, I've voluntoled onto the board and now been doing that for like 14 years. So it's I I wear many hats. My dad joked. Um, she wears as many hats as a baseball team. And so it's kind of how how I work. And I I like having the challenges. There's never two days that are the same. So um kind of where I'm at now. So it's just an interesting transition. But usually I'm doing more than one job at any given time. It's like how many jobs does Heather have? We lost count. So wow, now that's a lot there to unpack. Yeah. So let's go back to what you said about growing up. You knew that being an entrepreneur was just natural. It was part of your family, it was something that was in your blood. So, did you even go to college? Uh, or did you recognize that, you know, nowadays, especially, you don't need to necessarily have a degree to run a business. It can't hurt, obviously, to gain more knowledge, but it can hurt you in your pocketbook if you're going uh it through college and then getting student loans at the same time. So, what were your goals when you were younger in terms of your education and then launching yourself into the work world? Yeah, so eventually what I did, I I moved from California to New York. That's I my plan was to become a school teacher. That's to because it was stable. That was the healthy thing to do. And it was my ticket out from my childhood. I had a very Cinderella type of upbringing. Um, so I actually was on my own since I was 17. And so going to college in New York to become a school teacher, I knew I could take care of myself. So that was the stable ticket out of the tumultuous life upbringing I had. And I met my husband, so I was the stable income while we built the business. And so finally I realized, wow, this isn't, I'm living someone else's dream. I only did this for stability. I woke up one day and go, I really don't want to be here anymore. And he said, Well, if you can make as many, you know, as much money in this, then you can leave your teaching job. And I did it in like 30 days. I was like, I'm out. So it was a very quick turnaround. Um, and so that's that's really where that transition came from. And it gave us a good stability while we were building that entrepreneurial, you know, mindset. And so we've kind of been uh that kind of couple where one of us might be stable. Like if we're building a business like me with my consulting, he's a stable. Like, so we've we've been we've been partnership for so long that we know how to balance our work life relationship and know what income is a stable one versus all right, you're on the entrepreneurial roller coaster, I got you. So that's where you know we've been at since we've we've been dating. So you have a lot of uh awareness of you know where you are in the world and what you need to help you to get to the next step that sometimes people don't always have until they have that hindsight. So you said you recognized growing up that you needed to get away, you know, so far away you went to another coast. Yeah. You said it was a Cinderella upbringing. You know, sometimes people think Cinderella, they think princess, but you were in the Cinderella role, I'm guessing. The cleaning, the the not fun side. I found my prince charming. I got the fire fairy tale ending, but was very much that, you know, upbringing of abusive relationships, stepmom, like being the clean, the mom number two, cleaning up after my brother. So that was my my general childhood with my stepmom. Yeah. Wow. Did you lose a a parent when you were young? Uh my parents were teenagers when they had me. So my dad, they divorced. Actually, they were got married in their teens, uh, in you know, the the time it was allowed to happen, and that quickly dissolved in a couple of years. And then my dad remarried my stepmother when I was four. And through circumstances, she was cut out of my life. So I never really knew her growing up. We reconnected with her in my adult life. Your biological mom. My biological mom. Yeah. So they she was kind of cut out. She what it wasn't what she wanted to do. So we kind of, it was a convoluted, like she's my dad took care of me and my stepmom, and um, I didn't know her. I reconnected when I was 21. And so I'm still I'm I have a new relationship with her now. I've rebuilt over the past 20-some odd years. Um, and even in hindsight, I've worked on a lot of forgiveness with my stepmother. She was 14 years older than me. So there were kids raising kids and her own baggage. So I'm like, they did the best they could with what they were given with their lot in life. And so um, I'm fortunate that I've I had a lot to learn from it. It was a lot of what not to do. So if anything, there were good bad examples of of you know, the banner of don't do this, maybe do that. I actually ran, I usually did the opposite. It worked really well till it didn't, but for the most part, it did. But you've been dealing with trauma, uh obviously, and that may have led to some of your issues with addiction. So did you have step siblings? Were you doing younger? Uh half brothers, yeah. So younger half-brothers. Okay. So I'm my mom's only child, but yeah, younger half siblings. Wow. So you grew up in this dysfunctional family. Yeah. Escaped, went to college, figured out your own way, you know, got a career that you thought would give you that stability that you didn't really have, right? Yeah. That safety and stability that you didn't have, but realized that, you know, that wasn't for you. And so the first journey as an entrepreneur was together with your husband, with your partner. And and so you had a successful journey. So what was going on in your personal life? You said people were giving you things, but that doesn't necessarily lead someone to become an alcoholic. Oh no. Yeah, that's always been there. It's it's my I didn't realize how much it was rampant in my family. It was swept under the wrong uh rug, and I had no clue that what I was observing was alcoholism growing up. And so I picked up when I was 17 when I went to college, and my behavior was always there. What happened is in my business because I was successful and most people enabled me, it was able to progress very quickly. So there weren't a lot of like anytime I did something that I shouldn't been doing, or there was a crazy situation, I it got a like a get out of jail free card. Like people just kept excusing my behavior because we're in law, like we we taught law enforcement, or it was just like uh, and they were crazier. So really everyone's kind of covering up each other's behavior. So it enabled me to progress in my alcoholism um through all of that. And what happened, and I didn't realize this, more successful because we went from rags to riches, we were both out on our own as teens, um, to building this really successful business. We didn't realize that the more money you make, you go to places and they just give you free drinks. Like you don't have to pay for it anymore. You're like, I was like, I didn't realize as you got up into these upper echelon, you don't like I I didn't I don't have to pay for you're just gonna hand this to me now. You get like concierge and all this stuff. Like, welcome to our hotel, have a glass of champagne, what's your drink? And you're like, uh it's not gonna go on my hotel belt. Nope, it's complimentary. And so it was it opened up a whole different world that allowed me to continue enabling that behavior because it was so accessible. No one's gonna say no because they're handing it to you. So really opened my eyes. And um, and it again, there was a lot of enabling. There, I didn't suffer the consequences enough to know that that was a problem until the uh consequences started adding up and people were done with my behavior, you know, 12 years ago or realized, okay, we moved and my husband's like, I can't do this anymore. We're sweeping it under the rug. This is too much. Like, we've we've this has got to stop. And so we were in that's where we we started in church um because we came down to Florida semi-retired and completely depressed. Like we live in paradise. Why are we basically spiritually bankrupt? Why are we so depressed? Why what why aren't we happy? And so we realized maybe we need community. And so we weren't church growing up. My husband, we call it recovery Catholic. Um, and so we found the church that we're in now and have evolved in our positions here. But that's where I met uh women in recovery and all the people that have helped lead me to where I am in in my you know complete role of who I am at this point from where I started. So it's it was you know divine timing, I suppose, where I ended up. Wow, so many ups and downs in that journey. And I want to hear about this business because so many people that we talk to and and who listen to the show are interested in in launching their own business, running their own business, or just making the business that they have become successful, and that can be very elusive. And so for you to say, like, oh, we were young, we just started this thing and it skyrocketed and it was so successful, there's a lot in between there. Yeah, you know, what was it? I mean, was it just being young and energetic and naive and working 24 hours a day? Or were there some things, was it right the right timing? You know, what did you have some certain strategy that you figured out? What was it that made this business so successful that you were going to places where you had red carpet treatment? Yeah. So we were really the founders in this area. My husband became one of the first authors. We self-published, we did DVDs. So he was one of the first, at the time, there were less than uh actually a hundred black belts in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in America alone. They were Brazilians who came here. So we was one of the first American black belts at a certain point, and one of the first ones publishing it in English. And so we were on the forefront of you know, everything's so educational and digital. This was, you know, books, DVDs, instructional. So we had like a technique of the week. So very similar to the techniques that are here now, we, you know, implemented almost 30 years ago. And so it was just a lot of bootstrapping, you know, long, long hours, right time, right place. So kind of like we said, all of the above, but it was a long, a lot of hard hours. So we had a lot online presence. We had our in-person brick and mortar classes. Um, it wasn't super popular, so we were in a very specific niche. So as it started to blow up and we were on the forefront of all the publishing, I mean, we sold, he wrote, my husband wrote the largest book in our over 800 pages, which we self-published. I've mailed them all out. Like they've been, I think we I shipped it a hundred different countries. And so we just really put all this together ourselves. So it was, it wasn't just overnight. Like it started, we were sleeping basically on the gym floor, showering in my dorm, to having it all over the world being self-published and figuring it out. It was actually more online that made us so successful that eventually when it became popular, we could our school started to, you know, be very, very successful in person as well. Because it was, it's just that diversified portfolio. So a lot of the the static, the strategies that people use now, we were employing before you could buy the coaching plans with all the mapping out. We're like way ahead of it, way back then. So, you know, email lists and all that stuff. So it's that's where I'm coming into where I'm at now, I have all of the base of having done it previously from you know, the it's so much easier now. You can get Kajabi, like there's all these plans where I'm like, man, if we had we used to actually just burn the DVDs ourselves. Now you can just record it and put it online. Like, oh my gosh, we would have made so much more money back then than we did had we had the tools that are available now. So it's you know, it's quite a journey to say the least. There was no on-demand publishing, so you couldn't just put a book up on Amazon and then people would order it and it would you had to pay in advance, get those books printed, hope they would sell. Like you said, ship them yourself. If they included videos, you know, burn the DVDs. Yeah, that was a ton of work and a ton of risk. How did you know that this was gonna break through not just the martial arts and the MMA, but even the online e-commerce itself? Because there was a time when people didn't feel comfortable, believe it or not, putting their credit card numbers uh in a website or an app. And and so I want you to reflect on that if you just went for it naively and just thought, we'll see what happens, or if you did have some foresight and what you see as the next frontier, because we're all hearing about AI. And now that it is so easy, like you said, with Kajabi and all these other tools, there are many markets that are saturated. So people may look at you and go, well, I can't ever duplicate that because she got in early and there's too many people in in everything now. But there's there's other things on the horizon. So a two-part question, you know, how did you really know that was the thing or did you? And what do you think is the next thing? You know, what would you advise people to do so that they can be on the forefront the way you were? Yeah, well, I think partially we were in a very specific niche, which obviously when you do all this research, finding your niche. And when you there were eight billion people in the world, you just need to find a sliver. There's always gonna be somebody somebody who wants what you have to offer. And so it was a lot of presence, it was a lot of hard work. It was plugging away at it properly. So I don't know that we knew for sure that it was gonna blow up. Um, but we just did all the right things based on what was available. I mean, in the martial arts arena itself, it just made sense. Okay, this is brand new. It's on the forefront, no one knows about it. They're hiding techniques. So if we're gonna be the first ones, and they were not happy about it, by the way. Um who was hiding techniques? Uh, the the founders of the art because they came here, they wanted to hold people back. It was because it was it was a God help me, the the Gracie family who started it, they invented it. So when they brought it here, they would only give, and they called them gringos, they would only give certain techniques so that they could hold the secrets of all of the it's basically human chest. It's a very complicated martial art. Um, and so being on the forefront of it. So my husband was one of the first, even us on the West Coast, um, where we had, or not West, yeah, East Coast, when we had the gyms, but it was really the forefront. And what made it so prevalent and popular is the fact that law enforcement and other people could use it and save their lives. It became my husband and I worked a lot in just tactical helping people self-defense. It was, you know, it was proven through the UFC. It was the whole point of it even starting, was to prove that it was a superior martial art. And so being on that forefront allowed us to really market to Americans what how popular this is, as opposed to just that, you know, basically taekwondo karate mill of buying a black belt, you have to actually earn it. And so it it was a hard sell, but what you know, now at like I said, it's super popular. Now we were in that forefront of of doing it. So I would say niche is really, really huge. And you're not for everyone. And as long as you find what you are very, very good at and can stay consistent with, you'll I think you're gonna pierce through. It's just a matter of of the consistency work ethic. And don't stop before the miracle happens. Because I think a lot of people, there were definitely times we could have given up with plenty of roadblocks. Um, but being innovative, being creative, problem solving gets you through whatever niche or whatever area it is that you want to be. And I think that's where entrepreneurs, we have that grit. I don't know whether it's the upbringing that we've been through. We just we know how to kind of work through problem solving and thinking outside the box to move through life situations that I think if you've got that and you have the right niche, it it'll happen in time, you know. And what means, you know, to blow up for someone could be a hundred grand a year, that's a perfect amount of money to live off of. So everyone's definition of what that looks like will could be very, very different as success. And you talked about gravitate to what you're good at. So your husband was on the forefront doing the teaching and And being, you know, the one to create the the materials. And then you were doing, you know, not not just admin, but basically, you know, running the person running the whole thing, you know, the the CFO, the, you know, the CTO, you're like trying to figure out the techniques. All the O's. And so, you know, in doing those things that you felt, okay, I'm I'm good at this. And they were in this niche. This was not a niche that you necessarily had great passion for. You didn't grow up thinking about martial arts. Oh, never. So many people feel like, well, you know, to be successful, I have to go towards my passion. And then a lot of people have passions around the same thing, right? Not everyone can be Taylor Swift, but there's millions of people who are great singers and that's what they're passionate about. So how did you distinguish between, well, I'm good at this and I enjoy working with my husband, but this isn't my, you know, the most important thing in the world to me to of all the things I could do, but you threw yourself into it anyways. Did the passion grow in the way the more you're with someone, you grow to love them or sometimes hate them, you know, depending on what the passion is or who the person is? Or did you just say, it it doesn't matter that I'm passionate? As Mark Cuban says, don't look at what you are passionate about, look at where you're putting your effort because that's a sign of what is going to be successful for you. So, how did you reconcile that in terms of having skills, but not necessarily having the passion in you of that's something that you always wanted to do? I think my passion was being an entrepreneur. That's where I found the passion within the business is being self-employed, um, content creation, problem solving, you know, working with my husband, having that freedom of being home to take my daughter to, you know, to school and pick her up and have that avenue. That I think that's where the passion really was was being self-employed. And yeah, you're completely right. There was a point at which where I'm like, okay, my husband, this was his baby initially that I came into. I loved the art. I've I'm more of like, I like the grappling. I I really enjoyed doing it. So it was very easy to get involved in it because I enjoyed participating. Um, but I think the real passion was the entrepreneurial side is, you know, the the business end of it, which can plug and play like those tools and that, you know, constant mind puzzle that you always get to work at. But when I got to the point I'm like, oh wow, I really kind of feel like I'm in his shadow. That's where I started the genes. That's where I've been looking for this avenue for myself that is my own identity in my own business, which is where I've led to where I'm at now because I've it's always been there. I just didn't have the experience behind me to back up what it was that I was trying to accomplish. Again, like I that little nut that little thing inside of me, I'm like, this, I know I need to be doing this, but it was like uh right idea, wrong time, right idea, wrong time. Okay, when is that gonna stick? And so I being an entrepreneur, I always I'm all we're always thinking of ideas. Most entrepreneurs are. It's like, how many different kinds of businesses can I start? I love fashion, I love jeans, I love makeup, I love like, okay, well, which one? I can I've like I can always branch out to the other things that I love, but you know, the entrepreneurial stuff has always been so wonderful. And that's where I think that natural problem solving has led me to now of coaching and helping women. Kind of, I joke that I'm their chaos coordinator because I've lived through chaos, like that's my comfort zone. So if you're uncomfortable there, I got you. I can help you unpack this chaos. And uh, so that's really I think where my passion has come from in that. And we both, you know, it eventually fizzled out as you know, as we do. And it's a young person sport, it's very hard as you get older, and then I got in a car accident. So we've evolved out of it. But the mindset of being an entrepreneur and content creation and all that is just still very much inside of us. So I think that's that's really where that fire comes from. It's once you have an avenue that you're good at, it just you point the the passion and you know, purpose with that fire in the right direction as a natural entrepreneur. Yeah, and and that makes so much sense. And what you talked about, having that flexibility is a huge reason why so many people either go into or stay with entrepreneurship, even despite the challenges. I know in in my case, you know, I didn't intend to be an entrepreneur, but then once I got involved and I recognize the control or the control it seems like you have over your life, at least with your schedule. You don't have someone telling you where you have to be and when. Some days you feel like I have to be here, I have to be there, I have to do all these 5,000 things, but really you have the choice, you know, and not somebody dictating it. So tell me how that played into a decision. Did you want to have children? You know, were you planning this? How easy was that to integrate with your life? And how old are, you know, do you have one? How many children do you have? How old are they now? And and how did that work when kids came along and you were suddenly a mother and a business owner? Yeah. So we we planned for it. Uh and I had one daughter, uh, she's 21 now, and I was in my my 20s. So, but I was teaching. And so what we planned was we finally we bought our house. And like I said, I I have like the broken family. So I did the like, okay, go to college, get a job, then buy house. Like actually did everything in the technical right order. So we bought our house, uh, moved most of our business into our house. So we turned the first floor into a gym. Uh, so my husband could work from home. I went back to teaching, which had the summers off, and he stayed home with her. So he was Mr. Mom for like the first four years uh when I was teaching. And so I was still the stable income. He was working at home, doing the online stuff, and then teaching some classes from the house, um, which, as you guys know, if you're an entrepreneur, you go right up part of it. So we had it was all built in, you know. So anytime we can problem solve and make the most of that very thing is kind of what we did. So he was Mr. Mom for the first four years. And that for me was hard because I missed a lot of the firsts. And that's where I really that bug finally hit. I'm like, I want to be there to drive my daughter to kindergarten on her first day. Like, I want to be able to do that. And even though as a school teacher, I'm usually on the same schedule. I just I felt like I needed a lot more freedom. And I had the key to unlock my own freedom from that job. And so I I took it. And so, but when she was born, and even as she grew up, she'd be at the at the gym with us. You know, she was around. We basically like we joked, she was raised in like a men's locker room. Poor thing. So she's she's seen and heard, you know, lots of stuff. Um, but grew up in it and just we called her like the kind of like the little princess of the the MMA princess. And so all she had so many basically uncles growing up. And and for her, we she now is a membership director and media director at the church. Being that entrepreneur and self-employed, we although we're we all we basically all run the church, it's still kind of a self-employed uh setup for the most part because it's so small. Um, but it's given her that platform. She didn't go to college. She's like, I don't want to go to college, my husband didn't go to college. Why do I need to pay somebody to teach me what I already know how to do with editing and reels and all this other stuff? And so um our background allowed her the freedom to find that choice for herself, where now she's been working since she was 14 and has a resume at 21 years old that most kids getting out of college don't have. And so that really transitioned for her and and watching us be that self-employed mindset, give her that kind of same platform and example of what your life can look like. Like you can go to college, these are the these are the options. You have the freedom to choose either one. And so she kind of has that nice roadmap of hey, you can be a teacher like mom was, or you can go down this path. This is what it all looks like, and you know, just kind of choose your own adventure at this point for her, which is really cool to watch. And when you were a teacher, you were in a school district. What grade were you teaching? Seventh grade. Okay, what subject were you teaching? Social studies, yeah. So it's so you were a traditional social studies seventh grade teacher, yeah, and then moved to you know, running, helping run this school in a sense. It's ended starting the kids program and everything there, yeah. So it was great. So you taught you brought some of that skill set from the education world, but just for your business, which was teaching something very, very niche with the MMA. So you didn't just it didn't blow up overnight necessarily. You built this business up over those four years when you had that stable income and and your uh your husband was taking care of your daughter. So he wasn't even necessarily, you know, working 18 hours a day. You can't if you've got a an infant and a toddler that you're taking care of. He was doing it in between naps and all of those things, and and you had people coming to your home, and then you were developing the online, and then you recognized that this is big enough, I can step in and it will be able to support us and this is the the route I want to go. And then once you dived into it, I would imagine that's when it really started to explode. So tell me. Yeah, exactly. About when the the drinking in your life started to explode. I would imagine when you were pregnant, you you weren't you weren't drinking right? Of course. No, I took four years off. Um, it was it started around 17 because I didn't have access to it in high school. It was more of a nerd. So I joked my first drug of choice was food in my freshman year that summer. I discovered it uh as my first coping mechanism. And then I met my husband, lost a lot of the weight that I gained in high school from just being overeating. I said it was on the seafood diet. If I saw food, I ate it in high school. And then I was now in this fitness industry and had access to amazing health and wellness, um, which also is giving me the background that I have now, which is fit, you know, fantastic. And then moving into the martial arts. Um and so at 17, I picked up my first drink. Most of my behavior in college was very normal for college-age drinking. Yeah. What happened was once I left college, the behavior started to escalate to more dangerous situations. And that's where we realized if okay, if we're gonna have a kid, you can't do this, first of all, just for the body, and second of all, because of the danger that you're, you know, putting these crazy situations in. So I ended up putting it down for four years and was, well, we call it dry drunk. And I didn't realize I'd had serious postpartum depression and untreated mental illness, alcoholism on top of all that. So it was a very hard four years, which is why I really only have one kid because it took so much to get out of that and get myself back. I didn't, I didn't think it was fair from I couldn't imagine going through that. I was in my 20s. It's not like, you know, it was not an easy venture to get myself back to normal mentally after that stretch. Then I took four years off and said, Hey, I took four years off. I can handle it now, I can control it. And what I don't realize is progressive mental illness. I picked up right where I left off. And again, the crazy situation started happening and it it just spiraled. But again, most every time I did anything wrong, someone swept it under the rug. You know, it was always a point of contention, but it, you know, it it wasn't bad enough that I got in too much trouble. Where it really, like I said, spiraled was when we moved to Florida and I was driving. I mean, the situations were just unacceptable on so many levels, as it it should be. And I got to the point where I was I had finally surrendered. I uh gotten into the rooms of recovery, understood what it would take to finally surrender, and that's where I finally just let go. But what spiraled me was having too much time. I became semi-retired. I I came down here, we were expecting to drive Bentleys and go to the beach every day. And so too much time, too much money, and and deep-seated depression because you think you're going to be happy when everything on the outside looks perfect. You know, we've we've moved down to paradise, retired, half retired early, and I have too much time on my hands to just spiral. And leaning on the fact that I had my car accident, I couldn't practice at the gym anymore, I couldn't teach anymore, couldn't work out anymore, was trying to navigate that injury. And so I really lost all the identity of what I figured I would put on paper to show that I had value in this world was taken away from me. And so I had to get down to, okay, who's Heather? And that's really, I just had to get raw and deal with who I was as a person, regardless of any of my accomplishments, and build myself back up, regardless of what I had accomplished in the in the world. It meant nothing once, you know, if if I was gonna die from alcoholism and from everything, it was just you know, it's time to build yourself up as who you are as a person inside, regardless of those things. Wow. So you were so young when you were like, hey, we've had such a success, we can do whatever we want, we can retire in a sense. Did you sell the business, you know, the online e-commerce, and you got a big payday? Like we can, yeah, you know, we're gonna millions of dollars. Yeah. Yeah. So we sold the school a portion of it to a shareholder. But then I got in the car accident. We throw opened a third location in Florida, we're supposed to go back and forth. And me being one of the key people for teaching, for implementing administration, it just it all kind of and then having a person in there who's supposed to be silent was not so silent. And so if you are going to bring in a shareholder, I would give everyone advice. Please choose carefully. So we yeah, we set ourselves up here, and then eventually, because of between my lack of sobriety and just the natural downfall of someone wrecking it basically from the inside out and not being able to hold it all together, it eventually just fizzled out. So we sold, we we gave one of our instructors and still runs the gym we started down in Florida. And the online just kind of fizzled because it just became that became saturated at the time. Um, and we did the passion was gone. We we moved into new careers. And so that's kind of if we wanted to keep plugging away at it, we could have. We had all the material. We actually, my husband has like eight unfinished projects on a weird hard drive somewhere. Um, but it we ended up between focusing on my sobriety and our new journey where we were, it just naturally just kind of faded away. And so we redirected our energies into our new careers now. So we are so I'm sure it's traumatic, but you also recognize it as a turning point in your life. Tell us about the accident. You know, were you alone? How old was your daughter at the time? And and you know, where what what happened and and what was the result? Yeah, so we we were down in Florida for about a year, or not a year, about a month. Um, it was newly moved. Newly moved, less than one month. So we're on the forefront of starting a whole third location. I'm supposed to start the kids program. Like we literally signed a lease. How old is your daughter at this point? She's seven. So she moved down to Florida when she was seven, just turned seven. In March, we moved in May of 2012. And um, so we're actually all in a vehicle at the time. And in Florida, at the time, especially, if you run a yellow that turns red, they will take a picture and mail you the ticket. And so I saw that it was yellow. I stopped at the light, the girl behind me was texting and driving, rammed right into us at 45 miles an hour. My knee was on the console because I've I have short legs, the way that I drove, so the entire impact hit my entire hip, my knee, my shoulder. Um, so all that movement went through my entire hip. And so I have nerve damage in there. Um, it took forever to even find out what was wrong with it because it wasn't like a break. It was, it ended up being nerve entrapment, which took absolutely forever to figure out. And so the girl's car, her hood was, it looked like a teepee, like it caved in. We had a larger S-class that took the brunt and it did barely look like it got hit. But all of that impact that her car, that's what happened inside of my body. And so everyone else was fine with their seatbelts and the rear ending, just a little like a little sore, but I was the one that took the brunt of that. And it just, that's where it really changed what I could do. And I still I've had to rebuild what I can do to work out, mitigating the nerve damage. It's it's been I've I'm used to it now, but that was really where the the rubber hit the road with the injury of like, nope, everything you thought you were gonna do down here is not gonna happen. So yeah. And you were sober. No, uh, I wasn't drinking when I was driving. Right. But um you but you weren't, yeah. So you you were not. Right. No, it was just a normal midday going running errands for groceries. Okay. The lights yellow, she wasn't paying attention. I stop at the red, she's not paying attention and texting and driving and just ran right into us. And you had your daughter and your husband in the car? Yeah, yeah, he was in the front seat, she was in the back seat in her seatbelt. So they were fine because they weren't the way that they were seated, it didn't affect them other than just being a little bit sore afterward. But where my knee, everything was placed in the car right up against console, all the impact that the car took, my my joints took. So I've like the cartilage busted behind my knee, the the whole bit. So had you driven uh during this time period, not that accident, but when you had been drunk, and did you, you know, how did that accident that didn't necessarily correlate with alcohol lead to you becoming clean and sober? Because of my injury. I couldn't, I normally hid myself behind all of the masks of my positions. And because of who I worked around or with, and they respected me, they would just sweep it under the rug. So I could basically just keep getting away with my behavior because everyone's like, well, and there's a lot of alcoholism in that industry as well. So they're like, well, she's not as bad as me. So by covering it up for me, it kept it covered up for them. So, but really what happened for me was I I couldn't do anything I I wanted to do before the depression. I now I have no identity. So, and in Florida, alcohol, we're we live in a tourist town, alcohol's everywhere. And so I was like, Well, I'm gonna go to the grocery store, I'm gonna go to CVS. And so it just um completely spiraled out of control because I had nothing else to do with my time. But well, I don't want to take pills for the pain, and so I drink it away the woes, and it just it got a lot of fun. Oh, so you were continuing to drink after the accident. That's what really spiraled, yeah, because I had, like I said, too much time in my hand. Oh, no identity. The drinking got worse after the accident. That was the final spiral, absolutely, because I was like, I what else am I gonna do with my time? Like and I I have nothing to lean on in my identity anymore. And I didn't want to look at myself, so I just I drank it away. And so it's like nope. And like I said, it was very easy to get down here. So anytime I had the compulsion or idea to drink, it's everywhere, like at gas stations. I used in New York and you'd have to fight to find the stuff that you liked here. It's like go at the gas station. There's a bottle of wine. It's it was just it's a completely different culture down here that uh gave me the access in in my final spiral of addiction to just finish finish myself out, basically. So I was just fortunate that that I, you know, to have survived needless to say, all the craziness that that brings. What was the rock bottom? What was the moment when you recognized that you had to stop? Because you had stopped once before for four years and then thought you could, you know, start up again and keep it under control. And then what did you do? Was there did you go through a rehab or AA or, you know, did you get court-ordered rehab? You know, what what was it that led to this? It wasn't, you know, usually it's not just somebody wakes up one day and says, okay, I'm gonna quit. Yeah, no, exactly. So we we found our church where we are now initially, and my drinking just kept getting out of control. My husband just couldn't, he didn't know how to handle me anymore. So he finally started asking people for help and bringing them in. So it really started to lift the bring light in on the situation where people were used to covering it up. No one was hiding it for me anymore. And instead, it became very everyone became very aware. And I I embarrassed very easily, and I just, it was hard for me to know that so many people knew that I had a problem. Um, and we ended up, I meet two women who were in actually in AA when we first moved to we went to the church who talked about their sobriety, they were happy about it, they were smiling about it, which blew me away. Because in my world, if you're drinking, you don't tell people about it, you lie about how much you drank, like, and you don't talk about it. We that's shh, no, we don't do that. Um, so when I got to the point where I couldn't control it anymore, I went and asked them for help. And so they brought me to my first AA meetings. One of those women would be my first sponsor. Um, and the pastor at the time, what I did, I went to the meetings, I got my coin, I got my Bible, and basically said, All right, everyone off my butt, leave me alone. I'm going to meetings, even though I kept drinking. And um, oh yeah, it's part of some a lot of us as part of the journey. And so I I call myself a high bottom drunk. I never had a DUI. I I didn't have the worldly circumstances, thank goodness, that most people hit to get sober. Um, I vacillated for about a year and a half or so in the recovery rooms because I didn't think that I it applied to me. I was I still thought I was special. Um, and I got to the point where I I'd stopped for six weeks, I picked back up, be right back where I started. And so finally, after my daughter's ninth birthday, I pretty much almost ruined it because I I was just hiding my drinking. And um, and now she jokes, she's like, Oh, now I know why you're behaving that way because now that she's old enough to understand. Um, and I got to the point where I couldn't drive past a place that sold alcohol without drinking it on my way home. I got home on April 30th. My husband, as you know, have I shared, we were best friends, like we partners in life. Like the rider died, like that's it. And I got home and he just he wouldn't talk to me. He was just done. He just withdrew. I'm done. My daughter was like, Oh, great, mom's drunk again. And so I went to Bed, couldn't sleep, and it was too late to call my pastor, too late to call a sponsor, too late to call anyone. And I finally asked God for help. And I just got down on my knees and said, I just can't do this anymore. Like I literally pled foxhole prayer, take this from me. I can't, I just cannot do this anymore. I can't. And that compulsion literally got lifted from me. And so the compulsion to need to drink from that moment, that miracle moment, has just got, I mean, it's just a serious miracle. I've not needed to put alcohol in my body since then. I it was still a work in progress. I went to A meetings. I've I've had to do all the journey, all the work, and rebuilding myself. But that was truly the moment that I was just completely done. And and I did, I went to meetings, lied, and pretended I had sobriety, got coins I didn't deserve. So I'd make events to everyone there. And they're like, honey, we knew that's okay. You weren't fooling anyone. I was like, oh thank you. You guys are so so sweet. Now I can smell like hand sanitizer from across a building. Now I'm like, oh, they could smell me coming a mile away. So of course, of course they knew. But that's why it works so well because we understand how each other are wired. And when no one else is willing to deal with you at that point, uh, they know how to handle you because they've been there. And so that's just it it for me, church and and a fellowship were two sides of the same coin. And I've I've met some of those wonderful people through that process and had like father figures, grandfather figures, like real, just a re um instatement of a lot of family members that I didn't necessarily grow up with healthfully who helped guide me through my sobriety. Just one old timer, he was almost 45 years sober, was just like my A grandpa, like guiding me through so much stuff, just that old grit in New York, and it was just like tough love. So I was really blessed to where I ended up and the people who, you know, guided me through this, the journey of getting myself back together one one day at a time. Wow. And it's so important to be around people that you can relate and can relate to what you're going through, so you know that you all speak the same language, and you can't, like you said, really hide anything. So during this period, you had had this business that had been successful, you were financially secure, but as you said, sort of spiritually bankrupt. And so you're finding all a new path in life. And was that part of deciding to create this coaching business, this consultancy, and and what was your vision? And that was a while ago now. And how you you built that up? And and during that time, would you say now you're still semi-retired, or did you dive into this new business and you're, you know, doing it full time, you know, where you needed to find, you know, child care for your child, or you know, was your husband still retired and taking care of her? How did all those pieces come together? Because those are the things that cause a lot of people to stumble. Oh, yeah. So, like I said, my husband, he ended up working for the church. Um, he he had a bit of a new business. He tried to do SEO when we moved down here, search engine optimization, and had a few clients that carried me through when I had very part-time stuff, basically getting like my mind back in new sobriety. And um, then he ended up having a stable job, again, stable versus unstable. And so he went into more of a stable job. He drove my daughter to school back and forth. Um, she got a little older. And as my job, uh, when I was working for someone else during my early sobriety, uh, she would come with me to meetings, I would drop her off at school, pick her up back at school, and that we really were able to rebuild our relationship in her teens. Um, that now she's she helps me with my stuff on the back end, all the tech and everything. Um, and so my dad and my uh her dad and my husband eventually evolved into the lead pastor. He was pastor in training and then became the lead pastor here. And I that gave me the ability. I've because I've done administration for so many businesses, it initially started on let me help you be the main person. I know how to do the back end so you can focus on what you're good at. I'll la card it, let me be that for you so you can just you can grow your business on the forefront and not worry about the mechanics on the back end. And as I was coaching business people, I'm actually counseling them most of the time. And I'm counseling women both in church and in recovery. It's now evolved. It was like complete concierge business solutions to now complete concierge solutions. Now that I'm actually coaching business people, coaching business women, um, walking them through life on wellness, fitness, all the things that I've done have now culminated into the business that I run now, which is I'm very much employed. I'm so full-time, it's ridiculous. My husband's like, can you give me a Saturday? That'd be nice. Like we work six days a week between the church and what I do for a living. Um, and I wouldn't have it in any other way. I truly love waking up and having a purpose, having somewhere to go. I don't think I'll ever retire again. I for me personally, I need something to keep me going every single day. If I don't, I personally get myself in trouble. I'll find something I shouldn't be doing if I have too much time on my hands. Um so I'd rather be doing something constructive than deconstructive, especially in my recovery. So even if I'm not getting paid, I may eventually volunteer full time. But right now, this business is full full time. Like I have clients, I have small nonprofits I take care of and coaching, building online and the other end. So I'm moving out of the admin role on the back end with some of the few clients and moving, and it's hybrid right now of the coaching element on the on the other end. So eventually I'm calling it my exit ramp of all only call it the coaching and eventually no no more administration. So, or hiring someone to cover that portion of the business, and then I can they can do for me what I've done for everyone else. That's the eventual goal. So delegate. So your husband makes an income as the pastor. Yes, yeah, you volunteer handling the admin. Yes, you can eventually um have enough revenue that you can hire someone to take that over. Exactly. You want to make sure that your coaching business is bringing in income as well. Yeah, to transition. Yeah, so it's hybrid now. So yeah, exactly, as a different client. So I'm like, okay, I'm I'm good being the admin, but it's time it's time for me to be the front person to have someone do my admin for me. So that's that's the transition I'm in right now, is doing wearing, like I said, multiple hats. Um, but for me, it's just it's so beautiful to have every single part of everything I've done, like you said at the beginning, so many different careers come into one where you wouldn't think they all make sense, but they actually kind of do, which is, you know, the miracle of entrepreneurialship where it kind of all comes together in a puzzle you didn't think that was gonna get completed at the end of the day. So even though both of you are um very gung-ho in terms of, you know, going for it and and working harder than even if you had roles working for somebody else, you always had that flexibility, it sounds like, through, you know, most of the time that your daughter was growing up. So did you ever even need child care from anyone else, or was it always just either you or your husband? Only briefly with more for preschool. So she'd have preschool. And um, it was more for like her socializing uh than anything else. But we didn't, I luckily didn't need to take care because my husband worked from home. So if she needed to be home, there was a a parent there. If he had to work, like we've we've just always built a relationship that one of us has been home with her. And she might have after school care just more for like for the fun of it, but there's always been someone home for her to be able to do that. And so we've we've really kind of always arranged that. Like I said, we won, we had the income to do it, we had the ability to do it. That was always a part of the way that we were fortunate enough to be able to do it, which I know a lot of moms can't do, and I have to help coach them through that. We're sometimes helping them find the right place. And luckily, I'm a mass I have a master's in education where I can help you find the right places that your sources. Um, and and even if it's just for a season, you know, while they're working through having that freedom to be able to then take their kids out of daycare or be able to figure that out. So at least for us, that's we were fortunate enough to be able to make that work. And like I said, she's grown up in always in the back end, you know, it's kind of you, you know, always watching us do whatever it is with business, doing her homework in the background and we're making phone calls. So like this now, she'll say, I've been self-employed since I was four moms or whatever the case is. And you didn't have to do that goodbye at college. Um, she's still around because she's still lives at home working still lives at home, which is very common nowadays, you know, at that age. And so you've been through so much. I want to know after all that you've learned, if there is one time you could go back to an earlier version of you, knowing then what you know now, what is the one thing you would change? I don't think I would change anything. I really after all the trauma you've been through. It it has made me who I am. Tonight I've thought about it a lot of times. Like my husband and I played the like time machine game. Like if we could go back and visit our earlier selves. Um, I don't know that I'd change anything, but I think if I went back to talk to my younger self, I'd let I'd let myself know everything's gonna be okay. Like the you you're every everything's gonna be okay. You've got this. Like, but all of every journey, every mistake, everything that I've done, both you know, successes, you know, good decisions and bad decisions have brought me to the person that I am now that I don't think I would trade it for anything at this point because it's it's given me the solid foundation that I don't know that I would appreciate or have otherwise. That's beautiful. And and realizing back then, you know, despite how confident you it seems to have always been, you know, had doubts, like because we all do, right? And and so wanting to kind of hug that person back then and go, Oh yeah, don't worry, because it's okay, girl. It'll be all right. You got this well, and now you're doing it, paying it forward for your exactly. And that that's what brings me. I never thought a job could make me feel so energetic. Like when I see that spark in women, when I see them find that purpose. Like I have a woman who's like literally doing, like she's building a business to exit out of what she's doing and watch them see that light go on and that bulb and that passion ignite and watch them live their new version of their dream or rebuild that confidence or value in themselves from being broken. Uh, it it lights me up so much. Like I feel that's where I wouldn't change anything I've been through because I have the roadmap of what not to do. I wouldn't even be able to tell them what to avoid if I hadn't been through that. And to be able to walk them through that is is so it's such a beautiful blessing to have been through so many broken roads to be able to share that now. Do you have a niche of people that you feel like your best to serve? And and how would you describe that ideal person that you help as a coach? Yeah, honestly, it's women in general. Like I've worked with 20-something-year-olds to 70-something-year-olds, but it always seems to be high achieving women who just they're just they know they want something else for themselves. They either want to be entrepreneurs, like they just have that underlying passion inside of them. And so high achieving women, because we it have a certain way that we do things and not everyone understands us. I, you know, you're always, no matter what industry you're in, you're in an uphill battle. And so I love working with them to help them learn how to balance their like their bodies and their business. And I unfortunately, like I I went through things too fast without enjoying it. I really wish that I had given myself more time to stop and smell the roses, to prevent myself from burnout, to really truly appreciate what I had at that particular time. And, you know, I really had a wonderful vacations with my daughter and different things. I wouldn't trade, but I think I would have given myself a lot more balanced, relaxed time throughout the whole thing. So to be able to help a high-achieving woman use their natural tools to reorganize their entire life to maximize it is just, it's such a blessing to me. What do you think that you do that's different from there's so many other coaches out there right now? And you know, and people also lean on friends, they lean on their pastor. There's so they lean on online groups where they can meet like-minded people or people who can relate to them with so many resources out there. What do you think it is that people can get from you that they couldn't get somewhere else? Very good question. Honestly, for me, it's a chemistry thing. And I've been on, I've met so many different women that really my passion is if I can't, if I'm not a good fit for you, I will find someone who's a good fit for you. My angle is sober. I'm trying to re-you know it's a big movement to do, but I have a sober boss babe movement. I want to redefine what sober means as a person. You don't have to be an addict to be addicted. You to have, you know, these high-achieving women look at taking care of their bodies, minds, and their emotions so they can live a sober life and enjoy all sides of their life. And so that's where I think I bring a totally different angle to a businesswoman to really reevaluate maximizing her from the inside out very specifically and looking at, you know, good clean eating habits, sleeping habits, you know, cleaning up the past. And I have some kind of weird sixth sense where I can read people in a certain way. I'm like, do you want me to tell you what's wrong, or do you want to figure it out for yourself? You know? So it's just, I've just from my own niche and working with women, um, that's kind of where my superpower is. But also where I'm passionate, I'd rather know that someone has a coach that works well with them, chemistry-wise, with the the multiple people that I've met so far in this industry. Ever like I've met someone whose specialty is Lyme's disease. Like I now have a repertoire of women that if I can't help you, I'd be more than happy to help you find someone because I'd rather see you live your best journey than have to force you into what I think you fit into my program in that sense. And so I I that's really in my passion in doing all this. New passion as we evolve, right, in life. And and you've been doing it for quite a while. So not so new, but you've had many chapters, and we thank you for sharing them all and really deep diving into each each part of them. You've revealed so many insights on today's episode of Women in Work. If you were inspired by today's story, remember to share it with a friend, leave a review, and subscribe to meet our next amazing guest. If you or anyone you know is struggling to find the right childcare, just submit your criteria and then watch a video interview with the ideal nanny who fits your family at momsub.com. That's momsub like a substitute mom. Our mission is for you to get the help you need so you can discover what you want in life, pursue it with intensity, and fulfill your dream, reducing your stress, guilt, and self-criticism, and increasing your calm, confidence, and clarity along the way. Remember, your career, your choices, and your success are yours to define, right? So keep pushing boundaries and spreading your love and encouragement to other women who need it.