How Did I Become a Sobriety Influencer?

It definitely wasn't the plan.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

I often get asked this question, so I thought I’d try to tackle it here.

My usual response - that I just stumbled into becoming a sobriety influencer - is only partly true.

It’s true that I didn’t set out to become a sobriety influencer. If you would have told me 10 years ago when I started influencing that I would eventually be talking about my drinking stories and sharing my sobriety with the whole world, I would’ve balked. I mean, NO. No, no, no. Impossible.

A fashion influencer in the wild - never not with a scarf or a third piece. #affiliatedlinks, baby.

Actually, when I started "influencing,” my goal wasn’t to influence. I started My Kind of Sweet, both the blog and the IG, in 2015 as a way to reconnect with myself. I was a new mom and I was drowning in Postpartum OCD. I was throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck, and creating content and writing my blog just…stuck.

When I quit drinking on January 19, 2020 (you can hear more about that in my first podcast episode here), my influencing was going strong. I was averaging about 4 paid campaigns a month and dropping affiliated links left and right. I had no plans on changing my business model. It was working. I was able to earn more money than I had as a sales manager at Bloomingdale’s. I could make my own hours and work when my babies napped and in between loads of laundry and school drop offs and pick ups.

The influencer machine was running smoothly, which was great because I was a mess. Remember February 2020? Yeah. I was about 45 days sober when the world shut down. I had a 6 month old baby, a 2.5 year old and a 5 year old. It was chaos and confusion and I barely remember any of it.

By August 2020, I had just begun to assemble some of the scaffolding that would help build my sobriety. I’d spent the last 6 months listening, with one AirPod in and one ear open to make sure the kids were all still alive, to every quit lit audio book I could get my little ears on. Ideas formed. Notions dispelled. Thoughts bloomed. And so, as any good influencer does, I took it to social media and created @thesobermomlife Instagram account.

I didn’t tell anyone about the account at first, and I definitely didn’t share it with my audience @mykindofsweet. It was still all about fashion and motherhood over there. I wasn’t ready to publicly declare anything quite yet. Instead, I used the page as a landing place for me to test drive ideas. Slowly, I got my sobriety influencer sea legs.

I began sharing SML posts to my Stories on @mykindofsweet after about a month. This was before Reels (so, like a lifetime ago) and my feed was mostly static images and inspirational stuff. It’s fun to look back at it - like a digital scrapbook.

Dairyholic. Lol.

It kept going like this for a few years. Two separate worlds: the fashion/motherhood world, and the sobriety world. I would have conversations with my manager about it, and we agreed to keep them separate. @mykindofsweet was still the money-maker, and we didn’t want to rock the boat.

Then, I started The Sober Mom Life podcast in June 2022, when I realized I had so much more to say about my sobriety. I didn’t know the first thing about starting a podcast, but that’s never stopped me.

Building the Plane While I Fly It

Here’s the thing about me: I almost always start before I’m ready. With anything. I despise waiting. I hate mulling things over. Consternation feels propelled by anxiety and fear, and I’d rather move forward, even if it’s a mistake (and believe me, I’ve definitely made mistakes - like the Greek Orthodox cross I got tattooed on the back of my neck in college that I didn’t realize was a Greek Orthodox cross and to answer your question: No. I’m not Greek Orthodox.).

Of course, I would be remiss not to acknowledge the luxury of being able to invest in this thing on a whim. I know that’s not an option to many people, and I’m eternally grateful for the ability to do that due to my husband’s success. My influencer income has never gone to pay bills. I’ve been able to reinvest it into my business, which has made a HUGE difference. I took a chance and invested in The Sober Mom Life podcast, and it ended up working out. Had it not worked out, I would’ve licked my wounds, dusted off my pride and tried something else. I recognize that it’s much easier to jump when there is a net waiting to catch me. Still, I had to jump.

I’d just been on Raw Beauty Talks with Erin Treloar, so I picked her brain. Her podcast sounded legit and I wanted mine to sound legit. She gave me the name of her editor, and it was off to the races from there. (Shout out to Laura of Time Traveler Media who polishes up every epi and makes me sound legit!)

The response to the podcast was, and still is, mind-blowing to me. More and more women connected with what I was sharing, and wanted to hear more. And more.

At every turn, I was connecting with women all over the world who didn’t like their relationship with alcohol, but also didn’t consider themselves “alcoholics.” Hundreds of women turned into thousands of women. There was this groundswell, and somehow I had found my voice in it.

Made it official with this post in March 2023 🤍

Finally, I made the big decision in January 2023 to transition @mykindofsweet to sobriety content. If you’re not in the influencing world, this might not seem like a big deal. It was huge. Much more than simply changing my posts from style to sobriety, it was a complete shift of my business.

This shift meant tearing down what I had spent the last 8 years building in order to try to build something even bigger and more meaningful. It meant letting go of my manager, whose job it was to secure me brand deals. It meant allowing the main source of my income to dry up.

I was taking a huge chance, and I wasn’t sure it was going to work.

Simultaneously, I created a community for listeners of the podcast and followers who needed connection in sobriety. What started as bonus episodes on Patreon quickly grew to a large group on Discord, and is now a community of almost 400 women on Mighty Networks.

2023 was a tough year of transition. The numbers showed it. My bookkeeping team continue to remind me of how far we’ve come since this time last year.

Gratefully, the shift worked.

Today, I get to work with women who inspire me and push me to create and evolve as a sobriety influencer. I get to hear women’s stories of tragedy and triumph. I’m honored every time someone thanks me for putting into words something they’ve felt in the bones, but have never been able to utter.

Thank you to my team (My mom! Audrey, Jen, Laura, Amanda and her team at Notoire Media House, Alannah, Amanda F., JoEll, Kym, Noel, Kelly, Kristin, Amanda G, Brett, and Ange).

Thank you to everyone who has supported me on this wild ride. Be sure to hold on, because we’re just getting started.