We recently connected with Ken Middleton and have shared our conversation below.

Ken, appreciate you joining us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

My defining moment involved failing at entrepreneurship and realizing I needed to commit to going “all-in” before completely failing and having to go back to corporate America. If I failed, I at least wanted to be able to look myself in the mirror and say I gave it 100%

To do so, I had to let go of the one thing that I always felt was holding me back, but I enjoyed too much to give it up: alcohol.

When I was drinking, I had a life that was fun and exciting, but I wasn’t living up to my full capabilities.

I was underperforming massively on the days in which I was recovering from a hangover. I also didn’t recognize the immense emotional and cognitive impairment that alcohol was causing that wasn’t allowing me to reach my full potential in terms of emotional maturation and intellectual development.

Only when I stopped drinking and started allowing the healing process to take place mentally and physiologically was I able to begin to realize how much more of a ceiling I had to achieve things that I never thought possible before.

Giving up alcohol has meant EVERYTHING to me in terms of beginning the process of daily investing in my mental, emotional, and physical wellness to work towards becoming the very best version of myself.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My focus and slant on how I help others is to help them realize you don’t need to have a “problem” with alcohol to recognize it’s not serving you or good for your life. When I quit drinking, I wasn’t at or even close to rock bottom. If you looked at my bank account and my overall success, you would think that I was fairly successful by normal standards.

However, giving up alcohol for me was not about preventing me from losing things in life. It was more so a focus on what I had the opportunity to GAIN in life.

I consider myself a wellness advocate and NOT a sobriety coach…my focus is not on getting people “sober.”

What I mean by that is that if you are someone who has a serious problem with alcohol, then my writing and work may not be the first resource that you need to focus on. I never reached that point, so I don’t have enough of a frame of reference to speak on that.

However, I use the term alcohol-consciousness.

What this means is that you are conscious (aware) of what alcohol is doing to you and your life. You are aware of the scientific ways that it reduces your life dramatically, the emotional ways it stagnates your maturation into full adulthood, and the cognitive ways it greatly reduces your ability to intellectually develop and grow over time. You are aware of all of these negative deficiencies that alcohol causes and then you are making a decision to drink or not drink with that fully in mind.

The purpose of my writing is to not convince people to stop drinking.

It’s just to educate them on the tradeoffs they are making every day and long-term every time they decide to drink. As long as they are aware of that, then they are drinking alcohol “consciously” (i.e., cognizant) of their decision.

The hope is that those who decide to not drink will be no different than someone who is health conscious and decides to not eat fried chicken. It’s not because they are addicted to fried chicken or that it will ruin their lives. It’s about knowing that they can have a much better quality of life without it.

That’s the purpose and point of my writing and what Bamboozled…How Alcohol Makes Fools of Us All is all about.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

The biggest thing with almost any field is just the decision to not give up.

There are going to be times when things are going to get hard and you are going to want to throw in the towel. You are going to want to feel like giving up and trying something easier, which is completely natural. This is what most people feel and most people succumb to over time.

However, the successful aren’t always successful because they are the smartest, have the most talent, or are the luckiest.

Generally, they did two things: 1. Work the hardest and 2. Didn’t give up.

Most people are able to do the first one fairly easily, but it’s the second one that truly separates the winners from the also-rans.

Resiliency is the key.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

For me, it’s been all about relationships. I always try to help as many people as I can and get to know people on a personal level.

It’s not about what they can do for me, as much as it’s about how I can help them and make a new friend that I can cheerlead on in life.

As I look over my career, one of the main reasons that I would say I’ve been able to have any level of success is because I don’t make my business relationships about business. It’s about the human being and what they want to do in life as related to any business transaction.

If I can get to the core of that and get to know them as human beings, then I should be able to build the working relationship I need with them to help us achieve our business goals together.

No one lives to work, so how do you make sure that you are giving people what they need to be successful in their personal lives first? This is how I approach my business relationships and ventures, and this is one of the reasons I think I’ve been so successful in it.

Contact Info:

• Website: thebamboozledbook.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kenmmiddleton/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ken.middleton2
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenmmiddleton/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/kenmmiddleton