Sober Curious? Getting Started with Spencer Matthews

Susie Moore:

Welcome to Let It Be Easy with Susie Moore.

Today's guest and topic is a little different on the Let It Be Easy podcast. I am speaking about the magic, the power of sobriety with Spencer Matthews. If you're in the UK, you probably know him. He is a television personality, an entrepreneur, and a former London broker who created a life really in his twenties that involved a lot of partying, a career that encouraged a lot of drinking, being out with clients and out in the evenings. And it was actually before the birth of his first child that he decided to stop drinking. And that's really what this episode is about. We speak about a lot of things in this interview. Spencer touches on the success of his older brother, who was a former race car driver turned hedge fund manager, who's interestingly married to Pippa Middleton. And Spencer speaks about wanting to leave his mark on the world by doing something meaningful, and that's what led him to create his non-alcoholic drinks line called Clean Co.

In this conversation, we speak about a lot of different topics and I can tell that Spencer really caress about making being a fun non-drinker, accessible and cool. And I think that if you've ever been maybe sober curious or have a friend who is, this is the episode for you because by now you know that one small change, one shift, one belief upgrade can completely change your life. And Spencer is open with us. He's vulnerable, he's really been around the block, so to speak. He has a lot to offer us. So I think you'll get some laughs. We'll get some incredible advice out of this conversation and I'm very excited to share it with you. So I give you now Spencer Matthews.

Spencer Matthews, I've been looking forward to this conversation because what we're going to be discussing today is so often what people bring up to me, this trend of being sober, curious. And Spencer, I'm so happy to have you here because you've got such an interesting story that led you to not only become entirely sober in your life, but also help others with cool options. So Spencer, thank you first of all for being here. Thank you. Thank you. What a joy to have you.

Spencer Matthews:

Thanks so much. Thank you so much, Susie. That's really you to have me.

Susie Moore:

Joining us live and direct from London. Spencer, I would love you to just kick off by sharing a bit about your story and what led you to the work that you do now.

Spencer Matthews:

Okay, so I'm English, and in England it's still, as it is in most parts of the world, pretty ordinary I think, as an adult or even in your late teens to drink alcohol, which I'm not against by the way, but I had a number of jobs and have a particular character that led me to drink to excess more regularly than perhaps is normal. And it became unsustainable. To those that know me incredibly well, it probably didn't seem like a big problem or an elephant in the room. I was always an okay drunk, shall we say. And it was often a part of my work. I was a city broker. I worked at ICAP before that, I was at other brokerages and I worked in nightlife. I was a nightclub promoter, before that I worked in restaurants. So it was normal to be drinking and it was really fun.

I had an awesome time growing up in London and there's not too much that I regret, I don't think, but I've always been a very ambitious person and I've always thought that I would hopefully one day do interesting and exciting things in my life as others in my family had and people that I admire have done in the past. And I began to think as the realization set in that that might not happen, that I had a real roadblock in my life and that I was at times inherently lazy and wasn't going to become the person that I wanted to become. And I was trying to figure out why. And I settled on the fact that I was often out seeking joy, drinking alcohol, and I wasn't completely focused on anything really, to be honest, other than having a good time and being myself who I thought was brilliant, but wasn't really looking back at it.

And I met an amazing woman called Vogue, who's now my wife. We have three kids together. I've always said we have three kids under four until very recently because Theodore turned four last week. So I can't say that anymore. You get what I'm saying. We have three kids very close together. And about six months before Theodore was born, my drinking was quite bad. It was very regular. I would drink wine every night with dinner. I'd have a couple of beers most days with lunch, whether I was at work or not. And it was really beginning to slow me down and it was affecting me in ways that it hadn't affected me when I was younger. And essentially I thought to myself, I think it now would be a really good time to just give alcohol a break. I knew by the way, that moderating is not for me. If I had a message for people, it would be one of moderation.

I don't think that total abstinence is necessarily the way forward for everyone, but it certainly was for me, doing things in half measures has never been my style, that includes drinking. So I was always a full on or full off person. So I found that completely removing the option of drinking alcohol was easier for me than deciding when to have that occasional drink, and that would live rent-free in my head all week. Oh, well, I'm not going to drink during the week, but I'm going to drink on Friday night. And all of a sudden you have this amazing week where you are really productive. You're in the gym a lot, you're running, and then Friday comes and you're like, "God, I don't really feel like drinking, but I'm going to drink because it's my one night of the week where I can drink." I just found that it had this weird pressure almost attached to it, the moderation thing. And I'm not, "I can have a glass of wine with dinner and that's, that wasn't me." So sorry, I realized I just ramble.

Susie Moore:

I love a ramble. I love it.

Spencer Matthews:

I can easily speak for an hour. By the way.

Susie Moore:

I love the context because, Spencer, what I like about the way that you speak in the work that you do is it's judgment free. So you're saying everyone, maybe you are not somebody who likes to have half of a drink or one drink. And what I've noticed in the US is there is this sober curious trend, which I love. I think it's so healthy. I absolutely support and am fascinated by it. And what I think is interesting is there's quite a mix of people. So I can speak from experience, my father died of drug and alcohol addiction. So there is that end. And then there are people who say, quite like you, maybe not in prison, not in hospital, nothing too drastic or deadly is showing up in their lives, but where could they be being held back without even realizing it? And I know that you spoke about wanting to really unleash your potential and get to know yourself more fully as a person, how has your experience been?

Spencer Matthews:

But it happened so quickly, it was almost remarkable. Just little things like opening the post and just understanding tax law and how I should do my tax return. Just stuff that literally I would just shove under a rug before. Because I'd always be a little bit buzzed and I'd be like, "I'll do that some other time, or whatever, somebody else will help me with that type of thing." And just little things. I became really interested, really interested in business. I became really interested in business and I knew almost immediately, within 10 days of not drinking at all and having made that step for life, just told myself I'm going to turn this tap off, and I'm going to leave it off, and I'm just going to see how it goes. 10 days in, I knew that I would work for myself. I knew that I would start my own business, not necessarily around sobriety.

My mind was alive. I had so much energy, so much time. The time that I would waste both drinking and because of the effects of the alcohol was monumental. And we'll come on to one of our platforms, like our signature platform for Clean Co, which is a life less wasted. And I'll tell you about Clean Co in a second, but in the UK, the average person spends about 252 hours hung over each year. And our mantra, if you will, is what could you do with that time back? So we essentially sell you time. The one thing that people can't afford or buy, here's a bottle of time, if you drink this with Tonic, you're going to have your morning back instead of being in bed. And that for me resonates enormously with who I've become. There is more time in the day, even with kids, three kids, and a pretty serious job and three podcasts, and whatever else I get up to.

I still have more time in my day than I did when I did nothing, because it was just consumed by hedonism and recovery, I suppose. So I don't know. For me, I was at a dinner party and I'd been sober about three months, and I'd found the rise of non-alcoholic beer fascinating. And I thought it was delicious as well. I thought it was fantastic. Heineken Zero killed it, and I was literally just like, "Oh my God, I'm sober now and I can still drink beer." It's the same because it would take me loads of Heinekens to get drunk. So I would never drink Heineken or beer to get drunk anyway. I would need so much of it, because I drank so much.

Susie Moore:

Too slow.

Spencer Matthews:

So for me, having a few Heineken Zeros in the sun was almost identical to having a few beers in the sun. So box ticked, I no longer need to drink soda water or Diet Coke when we're out and about having fun. And I was at a party, sorry, and somebody offered me a non-alcoholic gin and tonic, and I'd never heard of that before. And honestly, I felt like I was struck by lightning, or something. I was like, "What?" And they were like, "Yeah, there's non-alcoholic gin, and you mix it with tonic, it tastes like a gin and tonic." I was like, "You're kidding." So tried it, didn't taste like gin, but didn't pretend to be gin either. It was this amazing product. It was seed lip, actually don't know if you're familiar with it. And it was made with very interesting botanicals and bark and hay and peas, and stuff that you may not associate with something that you would want in a drink.

But it was this amazing botanical infusion that definitely elevated my tonic water, albeit in an interesting way. And I just thought, this is just remarkable. And I took the bottle away with me, studied it, got in touch with them because, for me, it opened up an entire world of non-alcoholic spirits that I'd never heard of. And there was nothing, like zero in the market, no other brands doing it. And I thought to myself, "Well, they don't call themselves a gin. Why wouldn't I make a non-alcoholic gin and make it juniper driven with citrus and [inaudible 00:13:03] root notes and all kinds of other botanicals that you would ordinarily find in gin, and give that actual gin and tonic experience that I thought I was going to get the other night. And then it spiraled into, "Let's make a rum, let's make a tequila, let's make a whiskey, let's make a vodka." And that's how Clean Co was born. And now you know.

Susie Moore:

It sounds to me Spencer like there are two things that are happening here. First of all, there's a realization of an incredible alternative which you then took and ran with, and created your own version of with a lot of passion, and also just the internal opening of something within you.

Spencer Matthews:

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Susie Moore:

You feel like something you're struck by lightning. Because there is still a little bit of a stigma. It's really not that cool to be the person with their Perrier like, "Oh yeah, I'm having loads of fun over here." And I think, I know people are listening to this thinking, but what happens to relationships? Do you have to tell people that you are not drinking? Okay, so Spencer's so far ahead, he's already like you've got it figured out, but I'm playing with it. Can I ask how it affected your relationships when you got started, when you gave up drinking?

Spencer Matthews:

I became a better person. I became more fun, I became more engaged. I became a better listener. I became all kinds of stuff. So I became different in so many positive ways that it affected my friends and family positively. And also one thing I would say to anyone who has a friend, or I suspect it wouldn't be a family member, but a friend that is against you not drinking, or urging you to drink. I don't mind saying this, it's a slightly juvenile thing to be pushing your friend to drink alcohol. And I think it's actually less common nowadays. And I think if you're taking the decision not to drink, whether it be for three hours or three days or three weeks, ordinarily people respect that, I think. Unless of course you have a very soft arm that is very easily twisted and your friends know that they can twist you into having a drink. But I think you need to want to moderate your alcohol, you need to want to give up drinking. I think if you are doing it for somebody else or whatever, it's unlikely. It's not necessarily the alcohol that is the issue, it's the habit. It's the trend of, "Oh, it's 5:00 PM on a Friday. I always go for drinks after work now, so that's what I'm going to do."

You very rarely find, well, of course outside of al alcoholism I mean, you'll very rarely find people who have to be drinking. So it's usually a conscious choice whether you drink or not. And I think not drinking is becoming alarmingly common. The Telegraph reported the other day that one in three pub visits are non-alcoholic now in the UK.

Susie Moore:

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Okay. So everyone was supportive in your life apart from maybe, I don't know, if there were a couple of friends, like you said, often it's not family, they always want the best for you, but your relationships improved.

Spencer Matthews:

Yeah. But I also think people progress through lives at different rates and in different stages. So it's not uncommon that your best friend when you are 20 isn't your best friend anymore when you're 30. I just think people place a lot of emphasis on prior relationships, how you were when you were a teenager, that's a lifetime ago for me. And people grow and evolve at different rates. And I think a lot of the time and in great relationships you can evolve together. Like my wife and I when we met are not the same people now as when we met. We both have enormous amounts ... More responsibility, we're both far further ahead with our careers, and we're both far more serious people than we were when we met, and we've grown together. And I think, not to sound horrible, but if you have a friend who's simply not with you or not moving at the same pace as you, you can ice that relationship, there's no need to carry people around with you or be carried around by people. I think people should be themselves and do what they think is right. And that goes for drinking alcohol. If you want to drink to excess every day, do it. Nobody's stopping you.

Susie Moore:

There's no law against it. And yet when a person changes, I find Spence, whenever I observe someone who gives up drinking or who's just maybe never been a non-drinker, I think people often secretly envy them.

Spencer Matthews:

Yeah.

Susie Moore:

And they're like, huh? So do they not have any social anxiety? Are they just so comfortable showing up at an event? Wait, what do they do on a Saturday? What happens? What happens at 6:00 PM on a Saturday afternoon?

Spencer Matthews:

There is always the turning point in the nights where the sober person prevails, always.

Susie Moore:

Tell us more.

Spencer Matthews:

Well, that's just my opinion. So please, whoever's listening to this, please take my opinions as my own. I'm not preaching that this is right or wrong, but in my opinion, of course, there are times when you go to a cool party and everyone's drinking champagne or whatever, and everyone's dressed up and you're stood there with your non-alcoholic whatever, or non-alcoholic beer, and you feel like, "Oh, it'd be fun to get involved." And there's that little period, and it is short, where you feel like you could be on the wrong side of it. Then the night progresses and people drink more and more and the stories get worse and worse, and the makeup gets more and more smeared and the eyelashes start coming off, and all of a sudden you're talking to someone that is making absolutely no sense at all, and you just think, "I'm delighted with my decision not to have drank tonight."

And it happened to me recently. We were in Ireland. My wife has a podcast with me, but she also has a podcast with one of her comedian friends. And they sold out this, they did this huge live podcast, electric picnic, and they had 8,000 people watching in the tents, and 3000 people outside the tent. And it was amazing. And we went with a big crew of people and lots of people decided to drink very heavily for the entire day and it didn't go so well for them. And lots of people didn't drink at all. And we had an awesome time and we watched the Arctic Monkeys and Snow Patrol sober, completely sober. But it was great. I remember all of it. It was an awesome experience. I took loads of great photos. I went home and had a good night's sleep, and then the following morning we were doing whatever.

And I think a people associate drinking alcohol with having fun, which I think is inherently incorrect. Nobody thinks, I don't believe, that being drunk is fun, being drunk and having gone too far is not fun. It never has been fun. Being hungover is not fun. Being sick is not fun. I think in that first two, three drinks, is quite fun. Everyone can agree that that's quite fun. The fourth, fifth and sixth, is usually not that fun. And you never ever wake up ever saying, "I wish I drank more alcohol last night." Nobody's ever said that in the history of the world. "Oh, I feel a bit hungover. I wish I felt more hungover." No one's ever said that. So I just feel that if people could disassociate the alcohol consumption with the fun and understand that you can have a great time without drinking and also not have to recover the following day, it's quite a big hurdle for people to clear. But once you clear it, it's just really obvious.

Susie Moore:

Spencer has there-

Spencer Matthews:

You don't seem convinced by that, by the way.

Susie Moore:

I'm thinking in terms of what anyone who is and tuning in thinking, and I think that there is a lot of emotion around this. There's often sometimes a sense of loyalty, certainly the habit piece. And I know that on your journey you've done some impressive things physically, like running these rather challenging marathons in great heat as far as I understand, because I'm guessing this is also related to the time that you have, the energy that you naturally have. What if someone's thinking, "I don't know, what would I do?" So first of all, you naturally offer an alternative. Now it's the business that you have, which is so cool. But if someone thinks, "Well, how do I fill my time and my weekends if it's so punctuated, typically with so many ..." Because think of the hours spent at the pub, it can go all afternoon, and then again the next day. Did you have a tricky period transitioning with that much time on your hands that just suddenly became available?

Spencer Matthews:

I think I just focused on other things. I focused on work more. I focused on being fit and healthy more. I really got into running a lot when I became sober. But just you can use your clear minds to do whatever you like. You can learn a new language if you want. You can take up Jujutsu, you can learn how to fly a plane, you can do whatever you like. And it is just when you are free from, and again, this is all personal experience, I was really shackled to the pub. The pub pub owned me. It wasn't like, "Hey, I'm going to go to the pub with my friends for a few hours and then I'm going to have a normal night." It's like I'd go to the pub as you say, and I'd be there all day. I think when you realize, and this isn't for everyone, not everyone wants to do extraordinary things. Not everyone wants to try and start their own business and risk everything. And I'm not saying that I'm extraordinary in any way. It's just that I wanted a more interesting and exciting life than the life that I was living, I suppose.

And I think that once you understand that there's really nothing being gained from the pub trips, or they certainly weren't, in my case, I was seeing the same people talking about the same stuff. It's not like I was meeting Elon Musk discussing how we might manage to land a rocket on Mars. We weren't doing any of that cool stuff. We were just talking shit. And you begin to grow out of it, I guess. There was some pressure from my family just that I was drinking a lot and not really doing much. I was a broker at ICAP, which meant turning up every single morning and being at my desk at 6:30, and leaving at 6:00 PM, and trading the dollar against the Swiss Franc all day, making my boss and his boss and his boss loads of money and pocketing an all right salary, but nothing that's going to change the world.

And I just got really bored of it. And I think the boredom led to the boozing. I didn't feel fulfilled. I didn't feel like my purpose was meaningful, and I felt like I could do it drunk. So there was that element to it. But I don't know, I think-

Susie Moore:

I love how you found fun in different ways because I agree with you. What I've always found really interesting about alcohol is how it's tied to everything. It's like, "Oh, good news, let's celebrate. Bad news, let's commiserate. It's a party. Let's have fun. It's a funeral. We need to pay our respects with wine."

Spencer Matthews:

I had a reason to drink every single day, and you don't even need to look for it. You don't even need to look for it. You could just find it easily. "It's Wednesday," became good enough.

Susie Moore:

I noticed moving to the US that people do drink less here. It is less of a boozy lunch culture, like in the UK, in Australia, much more. And I always thought that was interesting, observing different cultures, but it's fascinated me over the years. So alcohol can be tied to every event, including kids' birthday parties, including truly everything. I like what you said about fun, the disassociation is so important because kids have fun.

Spencer Matthews:

Yeah, exactly.

Susie Moore:

Your kids, they're having fun most of the time and they're not drinking anything.

Spencer Matthews:

No, no, no, exactly. I've just realized as well, I'm coming off like I'm really against booze, and everyone must do exactly as they please. I'm just speaking from my own experience that my life became my life 10Xd the minute I stopped drinking because I was able to just focus and do things that, in my opinion, were meaningful. Whether they be big or small things, just going for a run or lifting weights or coming up with an idea for a business or spending more time with people that matter or spending more time with your parents even. Because you ignore your parents like the plague when you're out all the time.

And it's like I've developed a much closer relationship with my brother, who's always been someone that I've deeply admired, but for my entire life I always just assumed that we were so different, that I could never be like him. Because he was a professional racing driver. Then he started hedge funds and he's very successful, but he's very different to me. But he's just such a hard worker and he put me up in his house and all kinds of stuff, and you would never understand why I would just burn the candle so much. And then he did this race that you referred to earlier, the Marathon Les Sables. And I remember just thinking what possessed him to do this? I'd be on [inaudible 00:27:22] with a packet of Cheetos, or whatever, watching crap reality television. And I'd just be like, "Why does he want to go to the Sahara to run 250 kilometers in 50 degree heat? What is he trying to prove, and to who? [inaudible 00:27:43]?

I understand now he's not trying to prove anything to anyone. He wouldn't even care if he ever knew that. He is just pushing himself to a limit that tests yourself because that becomes interesting. I think that having hardship in your life and putting yourself and testing yourself, putting yourself in difficult situations and testing yourself is about the only way that you can reliably grow. Pushing yourself, seeing how far you can go, understanding your breaking points, testing your mental resilience, testing your physical grit, your physical resilience. To me, it's important to understand the things that I can do. And I guess that was the case with him as well. And I remember he came back and he had holes in his feet. He'd lost all his toenails. He couldn't walk properly for ages. He came 160th out of 1200 people. And I was just like, "What a crazy ..." I literally, I didn't even have that much respect. I was just quite disgusted by it. I just found it so bizarre.

And when I got into running a bit, I was like, "You know what? I'd love to tackle that." And I did it. And it was the most cathartic, leveling experience where there's no showers, there's no cold water, you're eating out these disgusting little bags, all dry food, and you're running an average of about a marathon a day, with the exception of a double marathon on the fourth day through June. It was 59 degrees that day for me. You put yourself in situations that, in my case, that I couldn't have done if I still had my previous relationship with alcohol. So I found myself really valuing my sobriety. I found myself thinking, "Well, if I can do this, I can do anything." And that I found to be like, even if it's just in your own head, and obviously I'm talking to you about it now because relevant to our conversation, but it's not like I go around telling people that I think I can do anything, but it's a nice for me way of thinking. It's positive and things get in your way less.

Susie Moore:

It sounds to me, what I hear, which I think is so beautiful, is the word confidence comes from the origin, Latin word confida, meaning to trust. And what I sense is almost like this trust of the self, which creates a lot of confidence, which allows you to do these crazy things in the Sahara for the reasons now that you do understand and enjoy. But I can feel it's almost like an intimacy with the self, a comfort with the self.

Spencer Matthews:

Well, you are a life coach, right?

Susie Moore:

Yeah.

Spencer Matthews:

Do you teach confidence?

Susie Moore:

Yes, sure do.

Spencer Matthews:

So in your opinion, is it people are obviously naturally confident and then people are not confident, but learn confidence. How would you teach confidence?

Susie Moore:

The way that I define it is someone's willingness to be uncomfortable. And so if someone's willing to be uncomfortable, a lot becomes available. Because most of the time we don't do things because they're uncomfortable. What will someone say, I might get rejected, it could be embarrassing, I could fail. But if you're willing to fail, be rejected, be embarrassed, whatever it is.

Spencer Matthews:

That's so interesting, by the way. And it's a really good way of putting it. It is so interesting because-

Susie Moore:

Think about it, Spencer. People, people

Spencer Matthews:

People shouldn't fear failure. And I'm not just saying this, but failure, if you are willing to bounce back from it, will only ever make you stronger. And that's clear. So I went out to the Marathon Les Sables thinking, "There's a good chance I won't finish this." But I wanted to give it my all. And once you're there, you're there, God pulling that, you've got this little thing on you that if you're in dire straits, you can press a button, you get picked up by a helicopter, it's like, "You're not doing that. Come on. Everyone gets to see you being airlift out." It's like once you're in, you're in. And I really loved it. I would probably do it again. I found it fascinating. But that's a really good one. And I think confidence is really worth having, in my opinion. And I think, personally, I'm more confident sober. And people think that you get more confident when you drink, I think. And don't know what your take on that would be, but-

Susie Moore:

It's like a borrowed of confidence though. It's not something that's lasting.

Spencer Matthews:

It's like wearing heels as a guy, to be taller.

Susie Moore:

Well, what do you think about it? If you require an external substance, whatever it may be, even a person, someone by your side to feel courage, then it's not really going to last and it's not going to fill you with any sense of real accomplishment.

Spencer Matthews:

But what do you have to lose even, not that I've ever been dating, but if you are young and you are single and you fantasy someone, go up and talk to them. Because if you don't, you will always regret it.

Susie Moore:

We say, in my community, success is volume. So think about the person who is willing to have a girl say, "I don't want to go out with you." But if you keep shoving up with sincerity, not being creepy, but reaching out, there will be someone who says yes, it will.

Spencer Matthews:

But also you then know. You're not going to leave going, "Oh, well." Take dating out of it. I am fascinated by some of the world's more interesting minds. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, blah, blah, blah. Regardless of what you might read about them superfluously, I think they're all fascinating people. I can assure you that if I walked into a room and Elon Musk was there, I'd just walk up to him and chat to him, because I know for a fact that if I didn't, I'd be wandering what he's like for ages afterwards, and it would really annoy me. So you'd just pile into him and be like, "Hey, tell me about Mars."

Susie Moore:

I would too. Whoever interested me, I would too. Have you read the Ernest Hemingway book, The Old Man and the Sea?

Spencer Matthews:

I haven't, but I am aware that it's a brilliant book.

Susie Moore:

Oh, it's such a fantastic book. And there's one line in the book where he speaks to the younger man when a very famous sports star came to their town and they regret that they never spoke to him. And the old man says to the younger man, "Gosh, imagine if we spoke to him and he actually said he had a beer with us. We would always have that, have that experience, and I'm willing to look like a fool or whatever it may be to have a full life experience."

Spencer Matthews:

Yeah, my wife's brilliant at that when we go out. We came out of some members' club the other night, and there was some guy who was not wearing a shirt, but he was dressed in a suit without a shirt, just a jacket. But he looked really cool, and he was clearly really into his fashion and whatever, and my wife just bowled over to him, "Oh my God, I love this and that," and it's loads of people. He was almost so cool it was a bit threatening. It is like, "Oh, I'm not sure of that, I'm not sure I'm-"

Susie Moore:

Did he want to talk to you?

Spencer Matthews:

Yeah. I'm not sure I'm going to say anything to this guy because I'm wearing a polo shirt. But anyway.

Susie Moore:

The confidence that you're exercising, it's sincere. It's not fueled by anything. And you had this expression about taking the hand break off, Spencer. Could you tell us about that?

Spencer Matthews:

Just again, it was just an analogy about what sobriety felt like to me. It felt like, if we use the analogy that I'm a fast car, it felt like I was driving for the entirety of my twenties with my handbrake on, and fighting something to get anywhere. And the wheels were over revving just to get from A to B, and everything was just more than it would be to get from one place [inaudible 00:36:11]. And then when I decided to pack it in, it was just plain sailing, smooth sailing, very rarely in any disputes, very rarely in any trouble. Life, just generally easier, much faster, much quicker on decision-making and just able to perform at a generally higher level. So it was easy for me never to look back.

Susie Moore:

And so-

Spencer Matthews:

What's your drinking like, by the way, now that we're talking about it?

Susie Moore:

Oh, I'm very happy to talk about this. So I'm from the UK originally, and so I absolutely understand the culture and the pride, also the association of having a good tolerance. It is true for women also. And I know increasingly women, as a group, with different books that have been coming out, and I quit like a woman, so many of my friends love that they gave up alcohol immediately. And even I've also consumed a lot of the Alan Carr material. This is all fascinating to me. So I feel like my relationship with alcohol is now very healthy and comfortable. But I did have a break last year for three months, and that gave me a lot of clarity. I just felt like, "Oh, this is how some people just live." And it's so interesting too, because there is a lot more that is just simply available.

For me, the time piece, like you mentioned, it was just something that was so immediately clear. And I also found that whenever there is a space created, there is always something to fill that space. There is no shortage of incredible things to do with your life. And as a coach in my community, we use this expression regret-proofing a lot. How do you regret-proof your life? And a friend of mine recently, I think it's 12 years she stopped drinking and she never had a particular issue. She just was like, "I just know that I won't fulfill my potential." And she's doing some very, very big cool things, helping a lot of people with her work and hypnosis, and I just thought, "Huh, what could be available?" This is, I think, the question I think a lot of people have, but there's I think just maybe too many unknowns attached. And I think a lot of social anxiety that comes up too. And maybe perhaps what's the alternative? What do I do? These small things that can feel very big in our minds.

Spencer Matthews:

Yeah, no, absolutely. And you've got to remember, when everyone's on a night out, they're doing their own thing, typically. The fact when you are in a bar and you are not drinking, nobody is looking at you wandering why you are not drinking. Everyone is-

Susie Moore:

They're not, no one's paying attention to you.

Spencer Matthews:

No one's paying attention. Exactly. It's very possible to go to a party or a nightclub, and I was chatting to, I won't name him, but I was chatting to quite a prominent actor recently about Clean Co. And he made the distinction that he felt like promoting an alcohol brand would be promoting a cigarette brand. And he doesn't understand why A-listers are comfortable promoting full strength alcohol. And he said to me he hasn't drank since dry January. His girlfriend asked him to do dry January because he had a particularly wet December. And he essentially just said he hasn't drank since. And he was saying, "I live such a social life. And I was just really worried about what night clubbing in LA would feel like." He's really young. And he was like, "Now I go out, I go to clubs, I go to bars, I drink alternatives. I have non-A beer or non-A spirits." And he's just like, "It's fine. And it's great. And it's like once you get over that initial hump of just like, oh, I should be drinking, or ordinarily I'd be drunk in here, it's quite easy.," he said. I couldn't agree more. I just think it's-

Susie Moore:

I love the younger generation. We touched on this before we started recording. The younger generation are adopting this. I even heard, I don't even how old she is now, but I heard Miley Cyrus recently saying an interview that she doesn't drink or smoke anymore. And she realized that the thing that she was great at, so singing, performing, being an entertainer, it was actually being sabotaged by the way she was celebrating her wins as a successful entertainer. And she's like, "Don't you see the joke? The joke's on me. If I'm meant to do this stuff, but this stuff happens and it's going great, and I celebrate by ruining the thing that makes me unique."

Spencer Matthews:

Well, it's also in a smaller sense, but in a more widespread example, dry January or Sober October, people do it. They love it always. The people that stick to it love it. And they always say, "Oh my God, it's how you feel all the time?" It's like, "Yeah." And then they do 30 days and they say, "Oh my God, my wife prefers me. I've got a better relationship with my kids. I'm doing better at work. I'm in the gym every day. I've lost four kilos, five kilos," all this stuff. And then it's like 1st of February comes around and they're straight back into it. It's like, "Look at all the positives you just experienced. Why wouldn't you want more of that?" Or look, I don't know, it's very difficult to sit here and tell people they shouldn't drink alcohol. Obviously do whatever you want. I don't know. For me, I've been on both sides of the fence really aggressively. I've been really aggressively in the booze camp and I'm now really aggressively in the sober camp. They're not comparable camps. It's not like, "Oh, hey-"

Susie Moore:

[inaudible 00:42:09] very different.

Spencer Matthews:

It's not like kind of, "Oh hey, from time to time I wish I was in the boozy camp." No, I don't. I just don't.

Susie Moore:

Spencer, are you a spiritual person? Are you a meditator? Do you have a practice where you have to feel your feelings and go, "Okay, I'm a bit anxious right now," or, "I feel stressed, it's okay though, I can breathe." Do you have a-

Spencer Matthews:

I've only recently admitted that I feel stress in a traditional sense. Before meeting my wife, and this will probably go down a lead balloon on this podcast, but before meeting my wife, I didn't think anxiety was a real thing. So I'd paid no attention to anxiety. I'd obviously heard the word used by absolutely everyone, and I did not understand it at all. I am not an anxious person, never have been. And my wife isn't so much either, but when we first met, she was going through a couple of things and she would have anxiety, but proper anxiety. And I just began to pay more attention to it and began to understand it. But I didn't realize it was a physical thing. I thought it was like, "Oh, hey, I don't want to go to school today because I'm anxious, or whatever." And as I understand it now, most people have normal levels of anxiety. And then of course there's chronic anxiety. Not that my wife was chronically anxious, but there are different levels to this stuff. And essentially, I have never felt any level of anxiety or stress really. But I'm very good at just moving through things.

Even if something terrible happens, I'm pretty good at just understanding what happens, trying to see a straight path through it, choosing a way to deal with the problem and then putting it to bed. And I'm not one to ponder, wander, wake at night in some cold sweat thinking about it for an hour. I just don't do that. I've got a very robust way of thinking. And that's not to say that if a deal is taking a long time, it shouldn't be that I wouldn't bite my nails furiously. I do do that. I realize now that ... And my wife would say, "Well, that's anxiety." And I'd be like, Well, it's not anxiety in the way that some people feel anxiety." I don't think I notice now that I do bite my nails if I'm not in complete control of a situation. So if I'm being-

Susie Moore:

It's situational anxiety for you.

Spencer Matthews:

Yeah. And if something that I expect to be easy becomes hard, or expecting money and it's not coming, it's like I can feel normal levels of [inaudible 00:44:57] I don't even remember [inaudible 00:45:00].

Susie Moore:

I think one thing that comes up when people are concerned about giving up anything that can be soothing, even temporarily, even though it may not be soothing in the long term, is, "Well, what do I do? Okay, so what do I do instead? Do I take a bath? Do I need to meditate? Do I need to go for a run?" Because if you are going to have just your feelings without anything to offset them, or anything to temporarily relieve them, like I was just asking you do you have a practice, or is there something that you go to? Because if something feels too much-

Spencer Matthews:

I think if I stopped working out, my mood would be affected. So I have a pretty rigorous workout routine that I stick to regardless of where I'm in the world. And that's something I was never able to do again when I drank, because if I agreed to train Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 8:00 AM I would certainly miss two of those. And then it would just be like, "Okay." So I have real structure around that. So I do Jujutsu, I lift weights, but it's pretty set in stone that, and if I do have to miss a training session, I can feel lazy quite quickly even though I'm not lazy. Do you know what I mean? And it's like that can grate me. I don't meditate. I never have. I was recently on Mount Everest for five weeks, which was meditative, I suppose, because you don't move much. It's very high altitude. And we were making a film-

Susie Moore:

You climbed it?

Spencer Matthews:

I didn't climb the mountain. That wasn't why I was there. We were making a film, a Disney film, it comes out in February about finding my brother. He was the youngest Brit to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1999. And he died on the way down. And 23 years later I trekked to Everest to bring him home.

Susie Moore:

What's the name of the movie?

Spencer Matthews:

Finding Michael. And my brother was called Michael Matthews. So you asked me if I was spiritual. That's like the most spiritual I have ever felt, I suppose, because my head was just full of feeling for him and the family, and being up there was the closest I've probably ever felt to him. I was 10 when he died. And I think it was just a really interesting time. And that in itself was hard. Living in Basecamp is full on, it's freezing at night. The ground's moving, you're on a glacier, you're never comfortable. It's unpleasant being up there for a month, you're just sleep-deprived to hell. You can't breathe as we can breathe now. So you're always short of breath, but it's going to make for a really amazing film. I guess I'm spiritual in the sense that I believe in a greater good. I believe in karma, I suppose. I believe that what goes around comes around, but not in some way that if you're nasty to someone, you're going to get stung by a wasp or whatever. But I do think that the world has balance to it, if that's what you're asking. I think there is an inherent balance in the world.

Susie Moore:

And you manage your feelings alone. You manage them without any ... So you are able to feel your feelings, as a man.

Spencer Matthews:

Yeah, I'm not great at it. So when I gave up drinking, I did speak to somebody just about, I had therapy, not so much for my mental health, but just for a check-in just to stay on track and have somebody to talk to. And in that, it became quite apparent that I have suppressed feelings in my life and that I've always just tried to move through things and that I haven't dealt with stuff as a kid in my life, I never really mourned my brother because I was very young. I never really thought that he would ... I always thought I'd see him again. I didn't quite believe that he was dead. And then obviously you grow up and you know you'll never see him again. But I never had a period of grief for that. And also just my dad, despite being a really amazing loving person, was quite hard on us growing up. We've had a great childhood and I've had a good life. But he's a northerner, he's from Sheffield. His father was a coal miner. We had a lot of discipline in the house and if we hurt ourselves or fell over it, we were brought up with a, "Get up and carry on and stop crying." And that was just the way it was. So I guess you asked if I was emotional. Did you?

Susie Moore:

Yeah.

Spencer Matthews:

Not really is the answer.

Susie Moore:

I don't know.

Spencer Matthews:

It's an interesting one, because of course it's my little two-year old daughter's first day at school tomorrow. I find that really fun and fascinating. And I took her today for a little walk around the school and I was quite moved by it. And I love my kids, I love my wife, and you can probably count my good friends on a single hand because I just keep the people close to me. But no, I'm not emotionally tuned in the way that some people are. I have a lot of friends that cry regularly. I have a lot of friends who are quite easily offended and really emotional and I'm not. You can literally say anything you want to me. And I think as well, just the career path I've had, being on television for many years in the UK, and some of my earlier roles being a bit darker I suppose, means that there's always been plenty of criticism around me.

And I think at that stage in my development, if you were to take it all on board, it would've been quite a lot to handle. So I just brushed all that off as well. And it's like you have this impenetrable rhino hide, and I think the more people realize that they can't get to you, the more it becomes frustrating for them, I guess. But I think less so obviously in later life, I live a really normal life with my wife and kids, and there's less of a need to be as robust.

Susie Moore:

And the emotions that you feel now, as a father with different moving parts in your life, you handle your emotions in the natural way like, "Okay, this is how I'm feeling." Maybe, I think, we can always all get better at emotional regulation. I think emotional regulation is such a skill that I think we can all ... For me, it's always the goal, being able to manage how I feel, manage how I feel, and to do it without any help, without reaching for something. Just make me feel better for a second. That's the word. To me that just feels like truth. For me, ease is truth.

Spencer Matthews:

It's a funny one because even Clean Co's only been around for two and a bit years. And in the earlier days when something would go against us, I'd be pacing around the house trying to figure out how to handle it and how to ... And actually now, literally, the whole thing could implode and I'd just be like, "Okay, how do we fix it?" I'm super relaxed about just about like, "Okay, well-"

Susie Moore:

Stoic, like what the stoicism is, it's like-

Spencer Matthews:

That's interesting that that's happened. What are the three steps we need to take to fix that right now? And it's just like bam, bam, bam. And then hopefully that works. And if not, you're back to the drawing board type thing. But I find that detaching emotion from business is really helpful, if you can.

Susie Moore:

And understanding too, that you're not your business. [inaudible 00:53:37] Clean Co, so cool. We're going to talk about that in a second. But it's also not you.

Spencer Matthews:

But nothing is ever solved really when emotions are running high. You almost have to come back down to earth just to handle stuff. So losing your mind in the first place is pointless, really.

Susie Moore:

Well, there are just less neurons available. We can't be curious and afraid. And curiosity is always the path to creativity, whatever that is. And problem solving is creative.

Spencer Matthews:

It's also fun. Back to the hardship. It's like if everything is going swimmingly and everything is normal and everything is working well, what need is there for me? I enjoy a good problem.

Susie Moore:

And we all need each other too. This is why, as human beings, there are things that you can do that I can't do. Other people can do them. You can do things like ... This is why we all need each other. We need people who are passionate, showing up, doing what they care about, speaking so candidly and openly, and with humility, like you speaking about your own experience. There are people who, I know this, there are people who'll never tell you, whose names you'll never know who you help. Just by your own example. And not even by a podcast or a product, but just by observing you, seeing someone have a transformation still be deemed cool, nice, successful, whatever the adjective. Just someone's example of something that's positive is so generous.

Spencer Matthews:

Yeah, it's so funny that people are naturally drinking less, but also people struggle to believe it. At the electric picnic where we were in Ireland, I bumped into a girlfriend of ours of my wife and mine, who coincidentally was at the event that I last had a drink at, so ages ago, and I hadn't seen her since. And she was like, "Oh, let's get a drink." And I was like, "Actually, I haven't drank since I last saw you. Nothing to do with you, but I haven't drank." And she just looked at me and she's like, "Oh, Pinocchio." And I was like, "No, I haven't literally, I haven't drank in years." And she just didn't know. She wasn't aware of that, but she found it-

Susie Moore:

Impressive. I'm telling you-

Spencer Matthews:

Yeah. But she just brushed it off as some joke, initially. She was like, "Okay, yeah, sure, but you're drinking today, right?" I was like, "No, you're not listening."

Susie Moore:

How do you feel when you say that? So you meet someone from your, say former life, or still in your life, but you actually, no, I haven't. Are you going, "Oh, I can't wait, see your reaction." Are you like, "I'm so proud."

Spencer Matthews:

I didn't even know why she ... I only mentioned it because she was saying, "Let's have a drink," and I wasn't really expecting because it is been so long. I wasn't expecting it. Well, firstly, I expected her to know, for some reason, and she just didn't know. So I don't know, but I just think it's each to their own with it. Nobody should be forcing you to have a drink if you don't want to drink. My wife is a great example of someone that doesn't really drink that much, but when she does drink, she goes turbo. She's a binge drinker and she'll go out once every, I don't know, three weeks and the wheels will come off with her girlfriends, and that's fine, whatever. Do whatever you like, but she doesn't like ... And that makes it probably easier for me that she's not cracking open a bottle of wine every night. So it's very rare actually that there's any alcohol in the house, not because of me. There just isn't. It would've been me who's doing the drinking.

Susie Moore:

We don't have any actually alcohol in the house either, interestingly. It just so happens that way, and I like it. What I also like that you say Spence, or the way that you demonstrate this, it's just live in that live-mentality. It's like, "This is what works for me. If you are interested in what I have to offer, come on over here." What you do, you all love. Nothing else works either, by the way, nothing else even. But being a real life role model of someone who made a change, which felt significant, and it's significant, showing that it's possible like that. Words don't teach us.

Spencer Matthews:

But also for anyone who's on the fence with it, do it for a week and see how you feel. I don't know who's listening to this, but I suspect there's no pressure from loved ones in most cases to give up alcohol or there may well be, but ordinarily there wouldn't be. Firstly, if you think that you drink too much, then you probably do. And if you do, see if you can stop drinking for a week. This is the advice that I got right at the very beginning. It was like, "It's Thursday now, it's 8:00 AM, come back next Thursday at 8:00 AM and don't drink at all. And we'll have a conversation then." I was like, "All right." So I did that and just felt great anyway, and that snowballed into obviously two weeks, three weeks. "Okay. Do you get it like you need it?" But it is just interesting. It's like all things, if you're a smoker and you stop smoking, you're going to feel better. Do you smoke?

Susie Moore:

No, no. Very occasionally. And in those cases I like it and I celebrate it. But no.

Spencer Matthews:

No, I'm a bit with you. Well, yeah, I had a couple of cigarettes at the festival like type thing, but I wouldn't call myself a smoker. But again, it's like it's bad for you, but you do it anyway. And I think as long as you're ... Same thing as moderation. In fact, I'm able to moderate smoking because it's-

Susie Moore:

Interesting, right?

Spencer Matthews:

Well yeah, because I don't think I naturally enjoy sucking in the tar.

Susie Moore:

Love it.

Spencer Matthews:

I think it's like it feels nice for a moment, but if you were to say to me, have 10 cigarettes in quick succession, that's something that I couldn't do. Whereas 10 shots on the other hand, back in the day, no problem.

Susie Moore:

So Spencer Matthews, when people encounter your work, your story, your Clean Co. line, when they encounter [inaudible 01:00:07], how do you want them to feel?

Spencer Matthews:

Welcome I suppose? Welcome, accommodated. I'm not sure. So I've always been warm, friendly person, and keen to engage with interesting people basically, and anyone who's got ambition or a cool story, I'm all for it. I think I try to consciously spend time with people that I respect, which wasn't always the case. And like anything, I think respect is earned. I find what you do really interesting. So it's fun to talk to you, and I find a lot of people very interesting and it's fun to talk to them, but I have obviously made a conscious effort to distance myself from old friends of mine who drink all day because we don't have much in common anymore.

Susie Moore:

I love how you say welcome because, first of all, no one ever answers that question the same. No one's ever said, "I want people to feel welcome when they enter my world to find my work."

Spencer Matthews:

Live.

Susie Moore:

It's so interesting what people ... I just to have a podcast like what a fun thing. But I really-

Spencer Matthews:

Imagine saying intimidated. I want you to feel intimidated.

Susie Moore:

I want you to feel like you're a really, really failing at life when you look at me.

Spencer Matthews:

I want you to feel like a loser. Not really. I want people to feel welcome.

Susie Moore:

People to feel welcome.

Spencer Matthews:

But I think the whole ethos of Clean Co. was firstly to lose the non-alcoholic thing. So non-alcoholic is negative. So for me, when I was ordering non-alcoholic beers, it sounds like you're an alcoholic. It sounds like you have a problem. You're choosing a product that is definitely a good choice, but it sounds like a bad choice. And people are like, "Oh, well, what's wrong with him? Oh, is she pregnant? Or, oh, he must be driving. It was so boring." It's like, it's not boring. I have stuff to do. Do you know what I mean? I can't get hammered.

Susie Moore:

The opposite of boring. It's like the coolest thing.

Spencer Matthews:

I have shit to do. One of our slogans at one point was going to be, "Clean Co. Booze for people with shit to do." I absolutely loved it.

Susie Moore:

Why did you get rid of that?

Spencer Matthews:

To be honest, I loved it.

Susie Moore:

I love it.

Spencer Matthews:

I prefer A Life Less Wasted as an overarching thing.

Susie Moore:

I love that too.

Spencer Matthews:

But booze for people with shit to do was, I thought it was fantastic and I loved it. But anyway, so we moved off that, but it is true. It's difficult to go through a busy life also drinking to excess. So anyway, so I wanted to lose that, and I loved the whole clean eating thing. I loved the whole clean living thing, and people pay attention to their minds and their body. But for some reason they're perfectly happy to drink excessively in many cases. So I wanted to create clean drinking as a thing, where you can have the full flavor experience of any cocktail you like without sugar, without fruit juice, and without compromise, without compromising on your social experience. I want to be able to walk into the Connaught or Claridges and have someone shake me a vodka martini, but with no alcohol. That's the other thing, mocktails, my God, it just sounds like a mockery. And I don't want a banana with some cherry with a toothpick stuck to the top of it. What I would like is a tequila picante. That's what I would want to drink.

Susie Moore:

Oh, yeah.

Spencer Matthews:

So why can't we drink picantes with no alcohol? Well, you can. And it's great. I'm taking a guy, a potential investor, tomorrow night for picantes in a bar in London that are going to have no alcohol in them, and they're made with Clean Co. clean tequila. So that was the idea, to create a bar call, as well as hopefully a movement around clean drinking, to the point where you don't even need to know who we are to get it right. It's like, "Oh, I feel like a mojito, but I don't want to drink, so I'm going to have a clean mojito, and it's going to taste like rum and it's going to be fiery and peppery, and it's going to have all those delicious Caribbean flavors kicking around with the mint, and it's going to be fantastic with 15 calories. Thanks." So that's where it originated. And our gin, our clean gin olive, we did a blind taste test with 2000 consumers against Tanqueray, full strength, and tonic. And we simply asked, 'Which is the better gin and tonic?" And we didn't say anything about non-alcoholic, and 73% chose the non-alcoholic one. And this is British consumers, as well. So it's 73%, seven to one. Seven in 10.

It would be better if it was nine out of 10 or 10 out of 10, but what I'm saying is one doesn't have any alcohol in it. So that's like me saying, "Which beer do you prefer? One's not." And like, "Oh, I prefer this beer." "Well, why are you drinking that beer then? Don't bother."

Susie Moore:

Interestingly, Spencer, too, I love the word, I love Clean Co. I love the word clean in coaching. Whenever we get down to what we do, it is called Belief Examination. We will shine a spotlight on a belief that probably isn't true, if it's unsupportive. And whenever we break through a bus through the block of the belief, we come to a place of truth. Whenever I say, "What's the feeling?" People say, "It feels clean."

Spencer Matthews:

There you go.

Susie Moore:

It's like an integrity with the self. I just love it. Okay, so how do we get this in the US? If someone's like, "How do I get this? I want to party, or where do I go?" Tell us what to do.

Spencer Matthews:

God. So we're in a load of liquor stores all over the US, but I'm not going to be particularly helpful at the moment because I don't have them to hand. We also are in Kroger, but specifically some Krogers. But I think, again, the reset is not immediately. So we are, the pipe fill is in Kroger, but the simple answer, and one that I should have said first, is going to drinkclean.com.

Susie Moore:

Easy to remember, drinkclean.com.

Spencer Matthews:

Drinkclean.com. And you can buy yourself clean rum, clean tequila, clean gin, and clean vodka. And the vodka is a spiced apple vodka and it's delicious. But yeah, I challenge anyone. Obviously these products are designed to be mixed. They have 0.4% alcohol, so they're not alcoholic by legal definition, they do have trace amounts of alcohol, but they're not alcoholic essentially. And obviously if you compare non-alcoholic tequila to full strength tequila in a shot glass, you are going to know the difference. But use it to mix yourself, a picante, a margarita, a Paloma, and you'll be off to the races. Honestly, you'll love it. But same with the gin. Drinking neat gin is ill-advised anyway, but have it with tonic water or make yourself something. There's all kinds of recipes on the website that you can turn to for delicious, clean cocktails, and begin your own little revolution.

Susie Moore:

Oh, I love this too because there is something rebellious about it. It's like there's a $10 billion industry that ties itself to everything. I want to rebel and be like, "No." There's something delicious about it. Just even this rebellion is like, "Yeah, I'm not doing that much."

Spencer Matthews:

Do you have the stuff? We should send you some so that you have it.

Susie Moore:

Oh, please do. I would love that. Thank you.

Spencer Matthews:

I'll be onto my Alexandra to sort you out.

Susie Moore:

Oh, yes I will, yes, a lovely friend, Alexandra. Spencer, thank you so much for being with us on the Let It Be Easy podcast. Any parting words or thoughts from you as we wrap?

Spencer Matthews:

Just hopefully that this didn't come across as preachy in any way, a firm believer that people should do whatever they like, but if you are considering cutting back your alcohol or not drinking at all, it's my firm belief that you'll be delighted with your decision, that you'll never look back. And I think it's definitely, definitely worth a go if you're on the edge. And if you want to make it really easy for yourself, do it with Clean Co.

Susie Moore:

Spencer, thank you. I hope you'll come back. I feel like there's so much more we could have talked about. So thank you, thank you so much, and I will speak to you again.

Spencer Matthews:

No worries, my darling. Thank you so much.

Susie Moore:

Thank you. Bye.

If you like this episode, you'll love my free workshop called Become Your Own Life Coach. Head on over to becomeyourownlifecoach.com now, and I'll teach you how to coach yourself through any of life's problems. I'll see you there.