– Episode 218Clive Allwright

Episode 218: Transcript

[00:00:00] Antony Whitaker: Welcome to the Grow My Salon Business podcast, where we focus on the business side of hairdressing. I’m your host, Antony Whitaker, and I’ll be talking to thought leaders in the hairdressing industry, discussing insightful, provocative, and inspiring ideas that matter. So get ready to learn, get ready to be challenged, get ready to be inspired, and most importantly, get ready to grow your salon business.

[00:00:29] Antony Whitaker: Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Grow My Salon Business Podcast. I’m your host, Antony Whitaker, and it’s great to have you here with us today. And I do have a little favour to ask of you, and that is that you rate and review us on the Apple Podcast. By doing that, it helps other people to find us, and it also motivates us to keep producing great content for you.

[00:00:51] Antony Whitaker: So all you need to do is go to the Apple podcast app, search, grow my salon business, scroll to the bottom of the page, select ratings and reviews and write us a review. And we would be very appreciative. So with that said, let’s get on with today’s show. Alcohol and drug addiction are a fact of life for many people.

[00:01:11] Antony Whitaker: And in the creative industries, perhaps it’s more prevalent and widespread than others. Now, for some people having a drink two or three times a week. Does absolutely no harm at all, but for others, it’s the beginning of spiraling out of control. Now, my guest on today’s podcast is a very good friend of mine, Clive Allwright, who has recently started a podcast that he calls Straight Edge.

[00:01:36] Antony Whitaker: So in today’s podcast, we are going to discuss addiction in all its forms, whether it’s alcohol, drugs, gambling, food, sex, or just being addicted to your mobile phone. We’re also going to talk about the path to sobriety and helping those around you that have a problem, what to say and do, and perhaps what not to say and do, and so much more.

[00:01:57] Antony Whitaker: So, without further ado, welcome to the show Clive.

[00:02:00] Clive Allwright: Thank you, Antony. It’s an honour and a pleasure to be here. As you know, I’m a great fan of the podcast. So to ask me on to talk about this, which is definitely different to what we usually talk about. Yeah. You know, I’m not gonna not gonna lie. I’m a little bit nervous, but it’s uh, it’s an honour to be here.

[00:02:14] Clive Allwright: So thank you very much. Sure.

[00:02:16] Antony Whitaker: it’s my pleasure to have you on. So, let’s just start off with a brief overview. You have actually, uh, been on the podcast before a long time ago. I’m sure you remember it, but a lot of our audience probably, haven’t listened to it and, uh, it was way back in the beginning of the podcast. So probably about 200 odd episodes ago.

[00:02:35] Antony Whitaker: So let’s just start off with a quick overview for people who don’t know who you are. Who is Clive Allwright? Give us your sort of one or two minute backstory.

[00:02:46] Clive Allwright: So, um, I’m 54 years of age. I currently live in Sydney, Australia. I’ve been here for many years. Um, I’ve got a salon in Sydney in an area called Potts Point, but I’ve been in the hairdressing industry since I was 16. I was very fortunate to start my career. With Toni and Guy when they started off with two salons in London, um, I worked in the Mayfair salon and I’ve been in and around education my whole life.

[00:03:09] Clive Allwright: I’ve lived in Hong Kong. I spent many years living in LA and then I ended up in Australia. And, uh, I’ve been, uh, I’ve been very blessed to have a great career that’s taken me all around the world and met some incredible people. So, uh, education is what I’m very passionate about, but on a day to day basis, I run a salon with the team, with my business partner and, and do it 99 percent of every other hairdresser does.

[00:03:35] Clive Allwright: And, and that’s just, uh, work with our clients and, um, and I do a lot of education as well. So, yeah. Quite busy and it’s been a, been an amazing career.

[00:03:44] Antony Whitaker: Great. Okay. Now, um, last time we talked a lot about, you know, your business and your background and, and another project that you have, Pillaroo, which we’re not going to talk about today, but for anyone who is interested in finding out more about that, then, I’ll put the, I’ll put the link to the first episode that we did in the show notes for today.

[00:04:01] Antony Whitaker: So people can find out more about what you’re up to and follow you on social media. But as I said in the intro, And today, we’re going to talk about straight edge, which is a podcast that, that you’ve started with, um, a partner of yours, who is Amie Morris. Um, but I want to just jump straight in and start talking about that.

[00:04:22] Antony Whitaker: Uh, why did you start a podcast straight edge and what’s it all about?

[00:04:27] Clive Allwright: It’s a great question. Why, why did I out myself to the industry that I had struggles with alcohol and drugs? Um, it was big, big decision to make, but what happened is, uh, I’ve, I’ve been sober now for four and a half years. Uh, and I got asked to do. To be a contributor to an industry magazine here in Australia called Hairbiz and they said, can you talk about the future of the industry?

[00:04:50] Clive Allwright: And what I, what I actually wanted to speak about was, um, I’d been sober for a couple of years at this stage and I said, I think there’s a bigger picture that I’d love to talk about. And I wrote an article called Coming Clean About Sobriety. And that was no secret to the Australian hairdressing industry that, you know, I, I did like to have a drink and, uh, live life to the full.

[00:05:12] Clive Allwright: And when my life changed, I wrote about a lot of the challenges that I faced and also having that open conversation with people that I just don’t drink anymore. Um, and so once the article was published, I got this overwhelming response on social media, and I think it was in excess of 400 private messages after the article had gone out of support and how people had, um, many hairdressers had got family members or staff members that had also suffered with the same thing. And, and Louise May, who was also on the podcast with us, who’s the editor in chief of, uh, Mocha Group and the Hair Biz Magazine said, this is a big conversation.

[00:05:52] Clive Allwright: And I think we should, you know, if you’re comfortable, you can maybe do more with it. So, um. You know, it took a little time to go. It was a slow burn. And then I met Amie, who was one of our clients, who was a producer. And I mentioned to her, uh, we were out one day and I bumped into her and I wasn’t drinking.

[00:06:09] Clive Allwright: And we had this conversation and she said, Clive, you should do a podcast and talk about this because I think it’s quite prevalent in the media industry. It’s very prevalent, hairdressing, barbering, uh, industry as well, and I know many people that have suffered. Um, not just with alcohol and drugs, but all different, as you mentioned in your intro, great intro, by the way, I’m very impressed of how you just flowed through that so naturally.

[00:06:32] Clive Allwright: But, uh, yeah, so that’s, that’s, that’s how it all started. And, um, yeah, it’s, uh, it’s been a journey.

[00:06:41] Antony Whitaker: Okay. Now, um, I want to just sort of tell our listeners that at this point in time, straight edge has probably done only four or five episodes. I think I’ve listened to the first three. I know you might have a couple of others that are, uh, in the can that haven’t been released yet, but, uh, I highly recommend that if you’re listening to this, that you go and check out the first episode, but you check out all of them, but if you want to find out about Clive’s journey, um, he talks about that in episode one, episode one is basically Clive’s, you know.

[00:07:12] Antony Whitaker: drug and alcohol addiction, you know, journey. Uh, and I said to Clive at the beginning of this, you know, before we started recording, I didn’t just want to repeat this episode, because I want you to go and listen to it, uh, because it’s a great story. Uh, well, it’s not a story. It’s a, well, it is a story.

[00:07:28] Antony Whitaker: It’s a story of his life. Um, and it’s something that I think a lot of hairdressers will connect with. And they will relate to. So, uh, I’ll put it, I’ll make sure I put a link in today’s show notes for, you know, a straight edge to podcast and start with episode one. Now you mentioned Amy. Amy is your sort of partner in crime on the podcast from what I gather.

[00:07:49] Antony Whitaker: And Amy’s not a hairdresser. But she is in the creative industry. Um, and, she’s sort of very much involved in the [00:08:00] production side as well as your co host. And I’ve listened to episode two, and I think I’m right in saying that episode two is basically Amy’s story, isn’t it? Like of a young woman and her

[00:08:09] Antony Whitaker: challenges with drugs, alcohol, food, whatever. Um, so, you know, there’s so much in there. I think that if you’re in this industry that you will find, um, people and stories that you can relate to. So, um, yeah, I just want to make sure everyone goes in that direction. Um, so. Your podcast is not just aimed at the hairdressing industry, is it?

[00:08:35] Antony Whitaker: And that’s also a good thing because I, I think that the hairdressing industry is a lot of podcasts now. Um, but I think that your story and Amy’s story, it’s sort of set out right from the beginning that this isn’t just about hair and beauty industry, but it is about the creative industries in general.

[00:08:53] Antony Whitaker: Is this something about People like us, people that are more on the creative side, as opposed to the academic side, that makes them more inclined to have problems with, with addiction, with drugs, alcohol, food, whatever. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but is there anything that you think from your research and people you’ve spoken to that would draw that conclusion?

[00:09:17] Clive Allwright: Sure. I mean, first of all, I need to point out that alcohol, um, any addiction doesn’t have any boundaries either. It doesn’t matter what background you come from, from your family group or whether, where you grew up. It doesn’t matter how much money or little money you have. Addiction is, it, it crosses all boundaries and affects so many people’s lives.

[00:09:36] Clive Allwright: So the thing is that, that I, I can relate to is, is that many hairdressers and barbers, um, if they’re like me, we didn’t really succeed at school. Uh, academia wasn’t really one of our strong points. And so when it came to leaving school, we were, okay, what do we do? And, and I was one of those percentage of hairdressers that I never, I never grew up wanting to be a hairdresser.

[00:09:58] Clive Allwright: It was just something that I fell into by chance. It’s not like something that I grew up and thought, right, that’s what I want to do. It did circumstances arose where an opportunity came up for me to work at this amazing salon in, in Mayfair. And I took it, I took that job, not knowing what I wanted to do.

[00:10:15] Clive Allwright: And I found myself in with a a creative tribe that, that showed me a side of life that I never knew existed. Like I was very fortunate to work with a big global brand to start off with. And as they grew, I grew. And a lot of the people I worked with were rock stars, you know, they were doing lots of education and traveling around and doing things on stage.

[00:10:38] Clive Allwright: And it just showed, it showed me a side of hairdressing. And I think when you talk to a lot of hairdressers. You know, we’re, we’re such creative people. And with that, like with artists, um, musicians, a lot of the time that, that involves some kind of substance do you think it enhances your creativity is what I’m trying to say, uh, it actually doesn’t, um, I know, I now know that, but

[00:11:04] Clive Allwright: there’s been many a times where I was putting shows together and I’d be drinking and, you know, listening to music and writing down notes and, um, planning bits and pieces and getting all creative and the next day I’d wake up and it was just a page of scribble, you know, and, uh, couldn’t, couldn’t decipher really what I’d written.

[00:11:22] Clive Allwright: So there’s definitely an underlying thing. And when I spoke to, to Amy, you know, and I said. I explained my situation. She said, Clive, it’s rife in the media industry. It’s rife in any industry, any industry, the banking industry. And so we’ve, we’ve tailored this podcast to reach an audience that I connect with and that Amy connects with and Louise connects with, and that is, you know, the hairdressing, barbering, media industry where, you know, it just, it is quite prevalent.

[00:11:50] Clive Allwright: And so we feel like we’ve got a good message to talk about. And, you know, we’re not the poster people of recovery, but I think by sharing our stories, um, they say you hear a lot when you’re in recovery and the opposite to addiction is connection. And if it, and when I first got sober. I listened to loads of podcasts from, from all over the world.

[00:12:13] Clive Allwright: And one of the things that was very, that was very prevalent in my recovery was when people was telling their stories that were so raw, because I think when you are in it and you don’t, and I need to point out, you don’t have to be on a park bench to be addicted to anything. I mean, I was a high functioning

[00:12:31] Clive Allwright: person that ran a business was married, and, and, and I had, you know, on the surface it all looked fantastic, but they were deep down I wasn’t coping and I was using alcohol and drugs to a degree, to cope.

[00:12:42] Clive Allwright: I got to a point where I just knew, well, I didn’t know any different. I just, it was a way that I coped, um, when I finished work, when I finished a show, when I, whatever happened, I could celebrate or commiserate it involved having a drink.

[00:12:56] Clive Allwright: And so. when I listened to a lot of podcasts at the beginning, one of the things that really have like impacted me was listening to people’s raw stories because I thought I was unique. I, I remember thinking to myself, I can’t be addicted to alcohol because I can go four or five days without it, you know,

[00:13:16] Clive Allwright: I heard these people share their stories and I thought to myself, Wow, that’s me. Like, I didn’t think that anyone else had a life like me. And I thought, I’m not like the people you see in the park.

[00:13:29] Clive Allwright: I’ve got a business and I’m, you know, hanging on to my marriage at the time. And it was borderline because things had got so out of control. And when I heard people talk on the podcast and share these brutally honest stories, and I was like, wow, I did that. I did that.

[00:13:43] Clive Allwright: And that was what I did. I just realized that I had a connection with people and. It’s definitely something in our industry that we don’t talk about a lot. when we’ve had 12 clients in a day or how many clients we do, and we’ve had a busy day, we’ve listened to so many people’s stories, some of really incredibly amazing and inspiring, and some of them are terribly tragic nine times out of 10.

[00:14:05] Clive Allwright: We’ll finish work as a group and go, let’s go next door to the bar. Let’s have a drink. And that’s the way you cope. And so. With the pathway that I’ve been on for the last four and a half years. I thought I need to have this conversation with as many people within the industry as possible. Because as I say, in my first episode, if I’d have heard my story when I was 19, maybe my decisions would have been slightly different because I really was on a mouse wheel, it was a merry go round and it just, I didn’t know how to change and until things really got to my personal rock bottom and then.

[00:14:42] Clive Allwright: What’s happened since that since then has been an amazing journey. And I think when you do get to see another side of life, you want to shout it from the rooftops to such, um, maybe I shout a little bit too much, but yeah, I think it’s definitely been a, a positive thing in my life for my business, for my marriage and for my personal growth as such, because I was drowning.

[00:15:07] Antony Whitaker: Mm. Yeah. Well, when you just used the term, uh, rock bottom, um, what was your sort of ground zero? Was there a moment? Was there a day where, is there an event where you thought, this is, this, is it, I mean, some people have a, a moment, do you know what I mean? Whether it’s they wake up in hospital or they wake up in prison or whatever it is, wa was there a moment for you?

[00:15:30] Antony Whitaker: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:31] Clive Allwright: There was many, there was hundreds. Um, And they were progressive. As I said, you know, addiction and recovery is progressive. And I woke up like most people thousands of times going, I’ll never drink again. And I’ve now learned on this journey that, you know, what happens with your mind is, is that no longer remembers pleasure or pain to a degree.

[00:15:54] Clive Allwright: You remember the time, but you don’t remember how you felt. So three days later, after I’ve, you know, recovered from my hangover and someone says, do you want a drink? I would go again and it would be a. Sort of two or three days a week where I would be constantly, you know, either, or I’d be thinking about it, doing it or recovering from it.

[00:16:14] Clive Allwright: And it just escalated slow, you know, slowly throughout my life until 2019, there was a big hairdressing event. In Australia called Hair Expo. And I think it was in the last time it was in that format. And we’d launched the Pillaroo site at the time. And we were doing a lot of meeting and greeting with people.

[00:16:34] Clive Allwright: And there was a lot of parties on in the evening. And I was just burning it at both ends. I mean, I was. Really hitting it hard. I was having to, I’m sure many hairdressers can, can relate to doing a show and doing an awards night and then having to, God forbid, if you win something, you’ve got to go on the telly the next day or whatever it is.

[00:16:53] Clive Allwright: You’ve got to get out of bed in the morning and go in front and talk to people. Well, mine was sort of five or six days of  hitting that really hard. And, um, I knew I was in trouble. I know, you know, my health had really deteriorated. I’d, I was 113 kilos. My doctor for two years prior had told me, you’re in a crossroads in your life.

[00:17:14] Clive Allwright: If you don’t change your lifestyle, this is going to probably end and end very soon. You know, your, your cirrhosis of the liver, your kidneys are excreting protein. I developed type 2 diabetes. And he said, all of this is lifestyle, Clive. And you need to, or not need to, but you should, um, I advise you to change.

[00:17:36] Clive Allwright: Otherwise you’re heading for a heart attack and it’s probably going to be soon. And, and I just put it in the too hard basket and I thought, I know what I’m doing. I can do this. And then during the course of that event, I went to an event on the Saturday night and I was broken and it was about eight o’clock at night.

[00:17:55] Clive Allwright: And I just was on that revolving door and I felt dreadful. I was sleep deprived. I was. Sort of shaking with, you know, sleep deprivation, anxiety, you name it. And I was at the time under the influence of, you know, cocaine and alcohol. And, um, and someone came up to me at the event and they, they asked me if I was okay.

[00:18:16] Clive Allwright: And I said, not for the first time, but I admitted it. And I was like, I’m really broken here and I need, I need to stop. And they calmly put their hand on my shoulder and then said, look, if you really want to get, and you’re serious, then contact me. And I knew that they were sober and I kept going until the Tuesday, the awards was on the Monday night, and I kept going until the Tuesday morning, and I was in such a world of pain, like the anxiety, I had to lock the front door, pull the blinds, which I’d done thousands of times before, but This was, this was to me, my rock bottom.

[00:18:53] Clive Allwright: And I, I quite often talk about it in recovery that if you, if you’re old enough, like, like us to see chariots of fire, I felt like mentally I crossed that finish line with my hands up. And I knew that if I didn’t change, then I was probably. It’s gonna die. And that’s why it took for me to to to ask for help.

[00:19:15] Clive Allwright: So that was my rock bottom. But I say there was thousands of those sort of tremors as such as if I could refer to it as before the real earthquake really hit me, you know, and it and then thankfully. I’ve not had a drink or taken any illegal substances since. And so I see the world very differently now.

[00:19:36] Clive Allwright: And I need to add that, you know, within four years, I’ve reversed the diabetes. My liver is at optimum level. My, you know, I, I. I do a lot of exercise. I do a lot of swimming and, um, you know, I’m down to 82 kilos and my doctor sat back in the chair and he said, Clive, he said, I don’t know what investments you’ve made in your private life, he said, but you’ve made the biggest investment in your, in your life, in your health.

[00:20:03] Clive Allwright: And he, he said, I only ever see, he said, you’re the second person that I’ve seen in my doctor’s surgery that’s actually done this. He said, there was another young man who was in a very similar state to you, but a lot younger. And he said to reverse, I mean, the diabetes will always be there dormant, but it’s just, I don’t have to worry about that anymore.

[00:20:23] Clive Allwright: Do you know what I mean? It’s like, I just, I eat healthy and that’s the thing when you’re drinking so much, you, you make bad choices when it comes to food and you, you’re too hung over to exercise and everything in your life starts slipping away. And mine had just crept up and crept up and living in a, in the U S um.

[00:20:42] Clive Allwright: You know, and traveling like I did was had big, um, you know, I used to eat a lot of rubbish. There’s so many great things to eat in America. It was fabulous. You know, I’d go to the LAX in there. I couldn’t go past Cinnabon, you know, without having one on the way in and one on the way out. And, uh, but, you know, and then, and then stop at the bar on the way through and then drink on the plane.

[00:21:03] Clive Allwright: It was just what I did. And so, yeah, it’s, uh, it, it was a. My life is very different now.

[00:21:10] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. Now, I’m not, I’m not being insensitive for anyone who’s listening to this, um, because this is what we’re here to talk about. But you mentioned alcohol. You also mentioned cocaine? Which was the bigger problem for you? Was it drugs or alcohol?

[00:21:22] Clive Allwright: Well, it was definitely the alcohol. So the alcohol was just something that I did. Um, and I mentioned it on my, on, on my episode about growing up in the UK. That’s where all of the communication happened, where we, as I said, we would. we’re celebrating or commiserating. We did it in the pub. I also need to point out as well in the, in the eighties, when I was working in London, there was no social media.

[00:21:46] Clive Allwright: When I worked, um, for Toni and Guy, we’d go to the pubs in central London. And so soon as we’d be in there, that’s where we discussed all the, all of the, the shows that we were doing and all that kind of stuff. So drinking was a big part of it. And then as I started to drink more, Then drugs got introduced in the nineties, um, you know, the party drugs to start off with, uh, and then that sort of ran its course because in the nineties was, was pretty hectic with the music, the whole music scene going on.

[00:22:16] Clive Allwright: And, uh, that was at the time, the house music thing. It just progressed into then cocaine got introduced because as you got drunk, the cocaine leveled me out and I could continue to drink and then I could continue to hold a conversation and then I could drink more. I was never, uh, you know.

[00:22:37] Clive Allwright: The user to the point where I would, they call it dry sniffing, where you don’t even have a drink, alcohol drink. You just go straight to the cocaine. That was never me. Mine was always, and I was a sesh head. What I used to do was I’d go on the weekends, I’d get to the weekend and I’d think, and I’d say to, I said to myself, Oh my God, I’ve worked really hard.

[00:22:54] Clive Allwright: I’m going out to drink and I would have a drink, but then it became to the point where I couldn’t stop and I would drink when I’d stop at the bottle shop or the liquor store or whatever. and then I would drink when I got home and yeah, it was, it was a. It was a problem. And then, you know, the drugs leveled the alcohol out, so they were both involved.

[00:23:13] Clive Allwright: And, and then it’s just going through that whole process of hating yourself. And then you’d wake up the next day and go, I can’t believe I’ve done it again. And then you’d eat rubbish. And it was this constant battle that I had and not knowing why I couldn’t stop. Um, and then. You know, since I got, I’ve got sober, I’ve had to really deconstruct my life and unpack it and find out what was behind it and what made me do it.

[00:23:40] Clive Allwright: And, um, or why I didn’t stop. I mean, it’s a big thing to go out and tell your friends that you don’t want to drink anymore. You know, there’s a lot of shame. There’s a big stigma about that. And I was thinking about it earlier on when I was driving back home and I was thinking about coming on this podcast and I was actually got quite nervous because.

[00:24:00] Clive Allwright: I mean, even though I’m doing my own podcast, you’ve got such a global audience. And I’m like, I have that massive insecurity of like, well, this is going out throughout the whole world. And do I really feel comfortable about doing that? When it reminded me of that same time, when I felt like I was going to turn up in the pub and go, I’m not drinking today.

[00:24:20] Clive Allwright: I didn’t know how to do life without alcohol. Um, I didn’t know how to, um, you know, it scared me. I didn’t know. What am I going to do for fun? Those are the people that hang out with me. Majority of the time, they would see the fun side of Clive. You know, I’d be buying the drinks. I’d be laughing and joking.

[00:24:37] Clive Allwright: You know, there was a definite dark side to that as well. When I got home and you know, everyone would go home and go to bed and I’d just keep going. And so. And my wife said to me, I mean, she deserves a medal for putting up with me. But, you know, she said, sitting back and watching you kill yourself is really awful.

[00:24:54] Clive Allwright: You know what I mean? It’s just, it’s, it was horrible and it was consistent and, you know, I’d go for periods of time and then it’d just keep going.

[00:25:03] Antony Whitaker: Mm-hmm. Um, on your podcast, I know you mentioned the word intervention and you’ve just spoken about your wife and, you know, the head dressing industry is a very social industry, and you know, there’s, you are, you are often not doing this by yourself and there are other people that are around you that. had the opportunity to, and maybe they do, that’s what I’m asking you about, um, interventions. What, what, how does that look? How does that, how did that work for you? Did people try and sit you down and say, Clive, you’ve got a problem and how did you respond? Like, what, what’s that side of things like for you?

[00:25:44] Antony Whitaker: Tell us

[00:25:44] Clive Allwright: Good question. I need to point out there as well, that you can’t force anyone into, to getting sober. It needs to come from within. I actually dealing with, um, someone at the moment that, you know, their family have reached out to me knowing what, knowing what I’ve been through. And they’re like, how can we, we help?

[00:26:03] Clive Allwright: We’re watching this person and they’re going to die if they don’t stop. And it’s that brutal honesty of like, I’m really sorry, but unless they actually reach out and they say they want to stop or they want to get out. You can put them in forcibly, put them in where you can’t actually, but rehab you’ve actually, if you ring a rehab and say to someone, I’ve got a friend here that, that I’m really concerned about, I think they’re going to die.

[00:26:25] Clive Allwright: Most rehabs will say until they pick up the phone and speak to us, then we can’t really talk to you because it’s got to be their decision. And that certainly happened with me. Like my friend, I’ve got a core memory of my friends meeting me one night in the bar. And I got there and there was this strange guy that was really ripped and really fit.

[00:26:45] Clive Allwright: And, uh, I thought at first he was, you know, coming to beat me up, but they said, um, they said, Clive, sit down. And they said, we’ve really noticed that your weight is so bad. And you know, you’re drinking all the time. And you’re a funny guy, we love you,  but we’re really concerned that you’re going to die.

[00:27:03] Clive Allwright: And this guy here is a personal trainer and, you know, he’s off, we’re offering to pay for him, for you to do some sessions with him because you, and I just looked at him and I was like, are you having a laugh? Like, I thought we were coming for a good time. Like, and I just went, see you later. Goodbye. And I walked out of there and, and

[00:27:22] Clive Allwright: when I look back on that now, and that’s really awful, you know, it’s quite horrible. There, you know, interventions, you can see, and I think, I talk about this on the podcast, if, you know, there’s a series right now on Netflix called Painkiller about the, um, the oxycodone in America. And if you think that it’s a choice, sometimes that.

[00:27:46] Clive Allwright: You know, you can see families destroyed, you can lose your kids, you can lose your family, you can lose, you can end up just being, and yet people are incapable of stopping, um, they’ve got to really want to make that change, and nothing you can do, you can, you can mask it for a little while, you can take them out of the scenario, and that’s one of the things I talk about on my show.

[00:28:07] Clive Allwright: Episode was I used to do these geographicals. I would work for a while in one country and then I go, right, I’ve got on the surface, it looked like a great career move and it was, it was a brilliant career move, I had a great career, but in deep down, it was like, Oh, it gives me a chance to clean the slate here and I can go and do, I can make a new circle of friends and yeah, the intervention thing is a tough one because it.

[00:28:30] Clive Allwright: It is horrible to sit back and watch a family member or loved one go on that pathway and you’re powerless until they actually reach out and ask for your help. And then that process can begin. But a lot of us will say, no, I’m fine

[00:28:45] Antony Whitaker: But do you,

[00:28:46] Clive Allwright: I know what I’m doing.

[00:28:48] Antony Whitaker: yeah, do you recommend that people try and do that or is that a bad idea

[00:28:53] Clive Allwright: No, absolutely. I mean, I think, I think

[00:28:55] Antony Whitaker: to instigate an intervention? So it’s better than sitting there doing nothing, at least, you know, you’ve, made some attempt to help them, Yeah, whether they meet you halfway or not, it might even just be that you open the door a little bit, you know, it’s a cracker, it’s a crack in the door for them to at least start considering and reflecting, even though like you did, you just turned and walked out, it may be started that process of you thinking, actually, maybe I do have a problem, you know, I don’t want to admit it, but do you know, do you know where I’m coming from?

[00:29:25] Clive Allwright: I do, I do 100%. And when I lived in LA, one of my good friends actually was the first person I knew that went to AA. And, um, he said to me, uh, Clive, I think you should come with me. And I went a couple of, for a couple of meetings. I think I went for maybe a month and I now realize that that was 20 years ago.

[00:29:45] Clive Allwright: And I thought, now I’m okay, I’ve got this, I don’t need, this is not for me right

[00:29:50] Clive Allwright: now. And, and we’re still friends and he’s 20, 25 years sober now. Uh, it took me a long time to stop, like a long time. But I think you, you can show someone love and kindness. Um, and I’m, you know, it’s funny cause we had a drug and alcohol counsellor come on that we recorded it this week that’s in an upcoming episode.

[00:30:13] Clive Allwright: And he, he spoke about if you’re in a relationship with someone and they have a problem, then you shouldn’t enable it. In other words, don’t drink around them. If they’re trying to stop drinking, don’t take drugs around them and, um, Be, be supportive. Don’t put people in that scenario of where they’re going to really struggle.

[00:30:31] Clive Allwright: And, you know, I’ve, I’ve seen and heard, there’s a lot of braver people than me in recovery that you hear some, you know, horrible stories where the children have pleaded with them to stop and they were still incapable, incapable, I’m saying of stopping. So you’ve got that planting that seed. I think the thing that happened with me, with my friend in the States was he planted a seed for me and I knew it was there.

[00:30:54] Clive Allwright: And I just was in denial for the next 20 years until, um, I went, I can’t do this anymore. I’ve got to, I’ve got to stop. So,

[00:31:04] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, I’ve written down something, which is a, it’s a back to front question. It’s not even a question. I just want you to comment on it. Uh, and I wrote down life and soul of the party. And then I did an arrow and I wrote drinking drugs. And then I did another arrow back to life and soul of the party, meaning that it’s this sort of circle.

[00:31:26] Antony Whitaker: You’re a funny guy. You’re a, you’re a great, you know, entertainer, you’re the, the sort of, you know, people like you, people are drawn to you, you’ve got a good personality, you’re larger than life. What comes first, is it the life and soul of the party that then has to get, you know, drunk and stoned, which reinforces the fact that they’re the life and soul of the party, or is it that you have to get drunk and stoned in order to be the life and soul of the party?

[00:31:51] Antony Whitaker: I don’t know if I’ve made a hash of that statement or not, but I just want you to comment on that as to how that sort of, you know, one thing reinforces the other.

[00:32:02] Clive Allwright: That’s a good question. Cause I think if I’m very honest with you, this whole thing started off way before I even tried alcohol. This was one of those things when I was a child growing up that you wanted to fit in. I was really short when I was growing up, I’m still not that tall now, but, you know, growing up in England in the seventies, you just, I had this masking to be around people and it’s, it’s hysterical.

[00:32:28] Clive Allwright: You might even pick up on it. I mean, we’ve known each other for a long time, put me in a room with people with an accent and all of a sudden I’ll start talking like them. And it’s just on a default mechanism because. I, I just want to, and it’s like a, a chameleon because like my business partner’s from Rochdale in England.

[00:32:46] Clive Allwright: And if I talk to her in a minute, I talk like that after a while, you know, um, and it’s this whole thing about fit, this whole thing about fitting in. And when I started going out. There was so many insecurities growing up, and I’ve always had that, I guess now the modern term for it is imposter syndrome.

[00:33:08] Clive Allwright: I’ve had an amazing career and like, how did I get here kind of thing? And with that comes an incredible amount of anxiety, like the paralyzing anxiety. I’ve worked with some incredibly talented hairdressers over the years. I mean, going up on stage, um, I used to work with Nick Irwin for years and, and I used to be physically sick before I walked up onto the, onto the stage before a big show and he used to pep talk me and he’d go, you know, you’re great, get up there and believe in yourself and.

[00:33:39] Clive Allwright: You know, then I had mentors of mine that we’d have a whiskey before we went on stage to calm the nerves. And it was the only way I knew to do it. And then afterwards you’d have that endorphin rush. That’s, you know, that serotonin, your brain would be going crazy because A, I was relieved it was finished.

[00:33:56] Clive Allwright: And this is, this is an example of a hair show, but this was on a daily life. and then I’d go to the pub and we’d celebrate. And I just would just keep going and keep going because I didn’t want that high to end.and then that once I experienced that, then that was what I was chasing all the time.

[00:34:17] Clive Allwright: It was that adrenaline, that anxiety that when you’ve got anxiety, what better thing? I hear it all the time in recovery, especially with. with women in their thirties. They talk about when they’re 14, they, they, the boys on the scene, they’ve got anxiety. They go to a party, they drink, um, alcohol and all of a sudden it gives them courage.

[00:34:41] Clive Allwright: They can talk to people. They’ve, they’re the life and soul of the party. There’s a pattern that goes on with so many of us in life that, you know, all of a sudden you just become. The life and soul of the party, you know, I’m trying my best to stay on track here with the question, but with me It wasn’t for the fact that I wanted to be funny It was the way that I just managed to get through life because put up, you know I’m funny anyway but then put alcohol in me and then I can get really funny and really stupid and Sometimes obnoxious and I can get it’s like flipping a switch, you know, it’s like which personality am I going to be?

[00:35:18] Clive Allwright: And sometimes it was, you know, it was challenging a lot of time. It was

[00:35:22] Antony Whitaker: Let me ask you this. There’d be, a lot of people listening to this that are salon owners and, uh, I’ve not been in the situation where you’ve got staff members who are a lot younger than you, you know, sometimes a lot younger, you know, they’re 20 year old or even 18, 19. And, uh, you know, you’ve, you’ve got a bit of a.

[00:35:41] Antony Whitaker: You have a responsibility. I mean, you’re their boss, but you’re also a human being that is able to connect with them maybe on another level that perhaps their parents or friends can’t. Maybe there’s a different level of respect. I suppose, so what I’m asking you is that if you’re a salon owner and you’re listening to this and you know you’ve got staff members or staff member that has a serious problem with, with drugs, alcohol, um, what should you do? or shouldn’t you do

[00:36:10] Clive Allwright: That’s a good question because as a salon owner, we are not just salon owners, are we? We are, um, financial advisors. We are therapists to our staff. You know, we, we are constantly, everyone’s got challenges. We, I believe we’ve all got some kind of a addictiveness in it. Each one of us has got some kind of a addictive nature as such, and whatever it is that you need to do to, whether it be sit on the toilet and scroll through your TikTok or whatever it is to take your mind off of stuff.

[00:36:43] Clive Allwright: We’ve all got stuff going on. Um, we’re all results driven and we’re, you know, in, in the salon. But the, it’s interesting because the drug and alcohol counselor that we had on the show, he, he mentioned about what I said to him, what can we do with stuff? And he said, sit people down, have a great conversation before you start.

[00:37:03] Clive Allwright: I mean, I know with, with your coaching business, with that, that communication, um, we talk about retail, we talk about, um, you know, hitting commissions and bits and pieces. And I think. There’s probably a good, this is a good time to then talk about people’s health and well being and how are they coping as well with what’s going on in your life.

[00:37:26] Clive Allwright: I, you know, I remember clearly when doing one of your courses and talking about what happens around the corner if you, someone gets sick or you have a car accident and, and all this thing. And I remember listening to it in the course and thinking, good God, what happens if that happens to me? Um, but.

[00:37:45] Clive Allwright: There’s so many other factors that can come in as well. You can have a staff member that just goes missing for three or four days and then they’re too scared to come back and they run and then you realize that they’re just in a world of pain. And I think with anything, as I say again, the opposite to addiction is connection.

[00:38:05] Clive Allwright: And if you’ve got somebody that’s understanding of what’s going on, When I first got clean and sober, I saw on an industry Facebook page, someone talking about how they discovered their 16 year old apprentice talk, she was at a party and she had a bong and she put a thing on going, I’ve seen this on Facebook, how should I deal with it?

[00:38:28] Clive Allwright: She’s obviously taking drugs and or smoking drugs. What should we do? And then I read the comments underneath and it was really quite awful. It was like, you know, maybe call the police. What you should do is dinner and you should fire her today. You should do this. And I read it and I’m like, what would you do if that was your daughter?

[00:38:47] Clive Allwright: How would you tackle it then? Right. how would you approach this? If it was, would you sit her down and say, look, I saw what you did on Facebook. I seen that you’ve been smoking marijuana or whatever it may be, but I’m coming from a place of, um, kindness and. You know, what you do in your private life is completely up to you.

[00:39:08] Clive Allwright: Butif you need help with something is a much better way than just go, well, you know, I’ve discovered this and we’re going to take, you know, take you out of the game.

[00:39:15] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. Um, as you were talking about that, uh, I was thinking about a salamander that I know who used to think it was a great idea at Christmas time to, to get all the team in a limousine and drive around the city and do lines of coke in the back of the, in the back of the limousine. and obviously that’s just, That’s just crazy at every level, because in that, because in that limousine, you’ve got all your team in there, like, I suppose what I’m saying to you is this, what you do as an adult is entirely up to you, but as a salon owner, you have a responsibility and often you’re employing young apprentices, young staff members that are so impressionable that they just want to be like you and they’re 17,18,19,20, whatever.

[00:40:06] Antony Whitaker: And when you demonstrate that as being normal behavior, aspirational behavior, that is. So irresponsible at every level. And, and yeah, I mean, it just, it just is it’s crazy, isn’t it? I suppose I just want to say that you have a responsibility and as a boss, as an employer, as a human being, you have a responsibility, I think, to reach out and try and help other people.

[00:40:33] Antony Whitaker: But I also think, and you’ve already touched on this, uh, and I remember I said, this in one of my books that I wrote that. You have to know when to cut them loose.

[00:40:43] Antony Whitaker: Because you can’t save people from themselves. So when they’re stealing from you, when they’re taking product and selling it, when they’re taking money from the till, whatever it is that they’re doing, there’s a point where you try and help people, but there’s also a point where you have to, it’s like what you said about the intervention, people and people ringing up a rehab center, they can’t do anything until that person goes, I’ve got a problem, I need help and they make that phone call or whatever.

[00:41:11] Antony Whitaker: So as an employer, I suppose, just as a way to finish that, it’s like you have a responsibility as a human being to try and help people. So I set the right example and be, if you see someone gone off the, off the tracks. Do the right thing and, and, and take them out and say, listen, we, we need to have a talk and I can hook you up with someone to, to help you

[00:41:31] Antony Whitaker: it’s the same with the family member. So if you see someone that the family member, it’s a bit like when they take money from the till and all that kind of stuff, you can lead them down the path and go, we’re here to help you. But there’s a cutoff point, right? And you’ve got to say, well, I can’t help you anymore.

[00:41:45] Clive Allwright: This just enabling you to, to continue using living in this house or whatever, or drinking, then it’s time for you to leave. And, then maybe then that’s where they’re going to hit their rock bottom, but you can’t.

[00:41:57] Antony Whitaker: Yeah.

[00:41:58] Clive Allwright: a saying, you’ve got to put your oxygen mask on first before you help someone else and you’ve got to make sure that you are really, you know, and so, yeah,

[00:42:07] Antony Whitaker: I was going to say that you’ve and you’ve sort of come at this already from different angles. And again, it’s one of my questions. It isn’t really a question. It’s a sort of a, I just want to see what you’ve got to say about this. And it’s the role that social media plays. Podcasts are to whatever degree part of social media.

[00:42:25] Antony Whitaker: they’re not, they’re not the same as Instagram and Facebook and, and whatever, but, I’m going to group podcast as being a component of social media as well. And it’s interesting how different generations. are so open to, um, exposing themselves on social media. Exposing themselves is probably the wrong word.

[00:42:47] Antony Whitaker: Generations are open to, um, You know, telling all on social media and so you, interestingly, you said, you know, before you came on today’s podcast, you thought, actually, am I really up for doing this? Because I know that, you know, Antony’s got a big audience and they’re gonna listen to this.

[00:43:05] Antony Whitaker: Is that really what I want to do? And as I said, before we even started recording, you can say what you want or not, what you want, and we can edit out whatever you don’t want to say. So I never put anyone under any pressure, but it just, it fascinates me how, like. Yeah, and you’ve done it again on this podcast.

[00:43:25] Antony Whitaker: You’ve bared your soul. You’ve been very open and honest and transparent, and you’ve done that even more so on your own podcast, gone into a lot more detail about it. Um, and I, I know why you’re doing it because you, you, I hope I’m not putting the words in your mouth. You genuinely want to help other people that if your experience can serve to help other people, you don’t mind. embarrassing or whatever the words are yourself by saying, this is who I am. And this is what I’ve done. And I’ve had other people on the podcast. You’ve done that as well. Um, and so I’m just sort of wondering how much of that is part of the process of recovery. How much of that is an important step about being open and honest and saying to the people, listen, I’ve done all this.

[00:44:15] Antony Whitaker: Is that part of recovery?

[00:44:19] Clive Allwright: 100%. Embracing the old part of me is, is very important. You know, we’ve all got, especially when you’re drinking or whatever, you’ve all got those things in your past where you, you know, you’re not proud of as such, like drinking was a big thing of mine and, it’s easy to ignore that and just go on and just.

[00:44:41] Clive Allwright: Just go, okay, well, I’ve changed now. Well, the only way you’re going to get change is, is unfortunately to go back and look at, and that’s, I don’t want to use the word like where the bodies are buried as such, but I could use that as the skeletons in the past. And instead of ignoring those that then, then what I do is I go back and I, and I basically hug them and say, you are all part of this story together.

[00:45:04] Clive Allwright: And I can, I can’t move on unless I’m free from what I, you know, the. The addiction that I had, and it was a mindset with me. It was the old Clive. It was almost like I had to put Clive, the life and soul of the party that was really just a very fake person into being, okay, well, I’m going to be very honest now.

[00:45:28] Clive Allwright: And I’ve got, I have a lot of gratitude. And with that comes acceptance, with that becomes a lot of emotion and, you know. Uh, I drowned all those things out with alcohol and emotion can kill people. And it’s, it’s a powerful thing. And I just, I wanted to be, to go forward with some self, with lots of self awareness and, and realize that there was a pattern that I needed to break and to enable to break that pattern.

[00:45:57] Clive Allwright: I needed to be very real and transparent. There’s a thing. I mean, I’m in a 12 step program for both drugs and alcohol and by doing that. The steps of that program, I have to go back and, and make a list of all the things that I’ve, you know, I’ve done wrong. And I have to, you know, try and make amends where possible if I don’t hurt without hurting someone, you know, like with my wife, for instance, you know, I need to sit down and say, when I’ve, when I did this, I’m really sorry.

[00:46:24] Clive Allwright: I didn’t realize that, you know. Whatever, but you know what I mean? It’s the process of going through to make sure that I need to be free of that. And when you’re doing that, when, when you’re drinking, like I was you’re spinning plates on lots of things. And when you stop and you’ve take that anxiety away, you have that, you have that opportunity to really discover who you are and be a better person.

[00:46:50] Clive Allwright: And, um. You know, and take responsibility, and accountability of, of, um, of, um, of your life, really.

[00:46:58] Antony Whitaker: What, what’s the hardest thing about sobriety?

[00:47:02] Clive Allwright: There’s lots of hard things, but there’s a lot of good things as well. Like, there’s, life is always going to be complicated, and life’s always going to throw you a curveball. Um, one of the things that… I often say to myself, I haven’t given anything up. I’ve got everything back. And, um, there’s definitely a thing.

[00:47:22] Clive Allwright: I’ve got a guy coming on the podcast tomorrow. I’m really excited to talk to him about, and it came up recently in a conversation. And there’s a lot of things you’ve got to learn to do again, sober. So sex is one of them, you know, it’s like sober sex. so many people are like, someone mentioned to me the other day, I’m just going on the dating scene at the moment.

[00:47:43] Clive Allwright: And, um, you know, I don’t know if I’ve ever had sex on a date when I’ve been sober. And so the guy I’ve got talking tomorrow is, you know, there’s a lot of things out there you gotta do. Um. You know, there’s a, you’ve really got to, um, you know, you’ve got to, you know, there’s lots of firsts, right? So there’s your first birthday that you sober, there’s your first Christmas, there’s your first Friday, there’s all these firsts that you get, you know, you get your first Saturday night where you haven’t had a drink.

[00:48:12] Clive Allwright: And, and then with that, how do I go to a Christmas party? And this is the thing where a lot of people struggling with addiction. They go, Oh, well, I’ll just drink, but I’m going to drink on my birthday. And then I’ve got, I’ve got so and so’s wedding coming up. So I’ll have to have a drink then and understanding when you dig deeper into this addiction pattern, then you go, well, you don’t actually need any of that.

[00:48:32] Clive Allwright: And so, yeah, I mean, hear a lot of good things on various different podcasts. And, you know, one of the things that I loved hearing was someone said it’s sober Dave, his name has got a podcast out of England. And he said, if you went to a fish restaurant and you got that ill the next day, the way you got from a hangover, because you would go, I’m never going back there again, you know, I’ve never like that restaurant was terrible.

[00:48:59] Clive Allwright: And yet within three days, you’re like, Oh, I’m going to go back. You know, it wasn’t the food. It was the company that I was with. And you go back and you get sick again and it’s the pattern. And that’s what, you know, you’ve got to learn a whole new way to live. And, sobriety has given me everything that drugs and alcohol promised me.

[00:49:18] Clive Allwright: And that’s, that’s a, that’s the statement that I live by really, because I really do believe that, I believe that all of that party time and the drugs and alcohol were giving me everything I wanted, and it took away more than it gave me. Um, you know, and I say, I have to remind myself now, I go, I’ve got everything I need, not everything I want. That’s, that’s okay because I can, I’ve now got a clear mind to work with it. You know, I just, I can go, right, let’s focus. I mean, that’s one of the things about doing it, being in the 12 step program is, is that you do learn a new way to live and you’re surrounded by like minded people because, and it’s not the only route you can take to do what you want to do.

[00:50:04] Clive Allwright: There’s many different routes. That’s just the one that I chose, but yeah, that’s what we’re doing on the podcast is getting people to come on and tell their story.

[00:50:12] Antony Whitaker: How, how much of it, you know, that, that inward searching for meaning and who you are and dealing with. You know, your, your past, how much of that is a, um, a spiritual experience? I very consciously are saying spiritual as opposed to religious. Uh, it can be both. I’m sure. But I’m, I’m curious. Um, you know, because sometimes I’ll talk to people who, who from what I gather, I don’t actually know much about the 12 step program at all.

[00:50:47] Antony Whitaker: But for some people, they find, they find God for them going through that sort of process. Um, other people never talk about it from that religious sort of aspect. So I’m just asking you that. How much of that is it a spiritual experience for you, if that’s the right word? Um,

[00:51:05] Clive Allwright: a deep one. That’s the big, that’s the big thing that scares a lot of people off to stop, you know, to get into a program is that G word. Right. Um, and it is definitely a higher power, but I need to backtrack a little bit. My mom died suddenly when I was 18, which was a big part of um, me, my struggle with trauma.

[00:51:23] Clive Allwright: And I’ve gone through my whole life as an atheist going, there isn’t a God becauseI don’t believe in there’s one because. At the time when I was 18, my life stopped turning and I just couldn’t comprehend that if there was someone up there, then that was pretty cruel. And so I’ve not, I’ve not been a religious person at all.

[00:51:43] Clive Allwright: However, during my program, during my journey of recovery, I’ve had to I’ve got a, definitely got a higher power. I’ve, I mentioned in my podcast, I do a lot of ocean swimming. I go out there, I put myself in vulnerable situations now for me. And someone, something got me to stop drinking. I didn’t, I didn’t keep going and die.

[00:52:04] Clive Allwright: Something got me to see, you know, I now look at the rest of my life for, and it’s an adventure. And I’m going to be honest with you, that higher power of spirit guide or whatever is something that’s really been introduced in my life in, in recent times. And as I say, it’s definitely a, it’s a high power. Do I get on my knees in the morning and actually do a pray processor?

[00:52:26] Clive Allwright: I actually do. Right. And I’m never admitted that to anyone on this podcast. Right. But I do, and I thank my higher power for the fact that I’m still alive. I actually talk to my mom in the morning. I talk to a few people that I know in this industry that are no longer with us, and. And I, and I actually believe that, you know, I have got a connection to something.

[00:52:49] Clive Allwright: Now, I didn’t think those words would ever would have come out of my mouth five years ago. There’s no way, but I do have, I believe that there’s Sidetracking here. My, my daughter was on a plane recently. She’s 12 years old. She was coming back from Brisbane and my wife, we sent her in a company. She went to see her friend.

[00:53:10] Clive Allwright: The shortened version is, is there was such massive high winds in Sydney when we, when we were going to pick her up from the airport. It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday night. And a lot of the flights were being redirected to Melbourne. We had not paid for my daughter to go unaccompanied. She was just a passenger.

[00:53:23] Clive Allwright: Cause she was getting picked up at either end. And then it dawned on us that if the flight gets redirected to Melbourne, she’s 12 years old, it’s going to be midnight. And what on earth is she going to do and where is she going to stay? I got to that airport and I went in the bathroom. I didn’t tell my wife and I actually prayed.

[00:53:39] Clive Allwright: I said, please make this plane come down safely and land in Sydney. And on the way back out. And we were driving, my daughter landed safely. She actually slept through the whole landing, throughout the whole line. When she came out, oblivious to the whole thing, I was completely relieved to see her. And I was like, Oh my God, he’s heard me, right?

[00:53:58] Clive Allwright: And then I got, we’re in the car. And I said to, I looked over at my wife and I went. I’ve got to tell you something, when I was in that airport, I actually went in the bathroom and I prayed that this was going to happen because it was the last flight in, she was, there was no more flight, she was going either back to Brisbane or Melbourne.

[00:54:13] Clive Allwright: My wife looked at me and she said, well, when you get home, make sure you ring him back and thank him. Right. That’s a conversation that that’s, that’s the conversation that would never have happened in my marriage. Right. I would have gone, we’re okay. In fact, I would have been waiting at the bar, nervous, drinking, waiting for that plane to land.

[00:54:34] Clive Allwright: And so there’s definitely a part of that in my life that that wasn’t there before. And I’m kind of grateful that it is.

[00:54:41] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. Yeah. Good. Good. Look, I, I could, I could go on, um, but I’m not going to go on. And I think that’s a really nice place to finish up. Um, where can people connect with you on Instagram or other social media channels? Uh, tell them the name of your podcast. Again, I will put all of this in the show notes so people can find it, but, uh, over to you.

[00:55:02] Clive Allwright: sure. I mean, it’s called Straight Edge, the podcast. We have a website, um, and connect with us on Instagram, Straight Edge, the podcast. It’s on Apple podcasts and on Spotify. And if anyone’s out there that’s got a similar story, I mean, if I can add. I remember when I first got sober, I listened to David Bronski and Philip Santos’s story, the guys from New Jersey and how they met on, when you, on the, on the podcast.

[00:55:28] Clive Allwright: And they said, Oh, we met in N. A. And I was only about eight months to a year clean, sober at that time. And I was like, wow, there’s other hairdressers out there that are just like me. And so if anyone is interested in coming on as a guest, we’d love, um, send us a message on, on, uh, Instagram. At Straight Edge, the podcast is the best way to get us.

[00:55:49] Clive Allwright: That will go through to Amy and we’d love to chat to you. Uh, it’s new. It’s only just, you know, we’re finding our feet. It’s growing. We’re getting, we’re getting some more, um, intelligent people on the podcast that can explain more about addiction. It’s a learning curve for me as well of how this all works because it’s, it’s, you know, everyone’s different.

[00:56:08] Clive Allwright: So yeah, I’m certainly been enjoying the journey. I’ve been learning a lot. Um, I can’t thank you enough for. Getting me on and as a guest and talking about this Antony. It’s definitely something that’s new to me and And I but I think it’s equally as important. So I know thank you, man.

[00:56:27] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. Yeah. No, look, I will put those links on, uh, our website, growmysalonbusiness. com, uh, and in the show notes for today’s, uh, podcast. So if you’re listening to this podcast with Clive and have enjoyed it, do me a favor, take a screenshot on your phone, share it to your Instagram stories, and it could be a way of, of sending something directly to someone that you.

[00:56:49] Antony Whitaker: think could, uh, could do with a little bit of, um, help, you know, where they don’t argue back and they can just listen to a podcast and share someone else’s story. So, um, don’t forget to subscribe and leave us a rating and review on the Apple podcast app. And finally, to wrap up Clive, I want to. So huge thank you for your, honesty, and your, your openness and, uh, you know, and willingness to sort of be vulnerable and, and share your story because I know that that will have a impact, a positive impact on people out there.

[00:57:25] Antony Whitaker: You will never even get to know who they are, but you know, it can be a turning point for people. And so it’s like, in some, so many ways, your honesty and your life. The better or worse is sometimes an example and uh, thanks for being a positive example today of your journey and how what’s that expression your past does not equal your future.

[00:57:44] Antony Whitaker: So, um, Clive Allwright, thanks for being on this week’s episode of the Grow My Salon Business podcast.

[00:57:50] Clive Allwright: Thank you, Antony It’s been a pleasure.

[00:57:52] Antony Whitaker: Cheers, mate.

[00:57:54] Antony Whitaker: Thank you for listening to today’s podcast If you’d like to connect with us you’ll find us at Grow My Salon business.com or on Facebook and Instagram at Grow My Salon business And if you enjoy tuning into our podcast make sure that you subscribe like and share it with your friends Until next time this is Antony Whitaker wishing you continued success