Lift Your Legacy: Creating a product, movement, and a lifestyle you love with Rock Grace founder and CEO Anne Hulett and Rabbi Jacob Rupp
Mindfulness drives my success. I don’t think people realize how important it is to take care of themselves and the importance of self-care habits and practices. Being mindful brings on a sense of strength and clarity needed to achieve success.
Anne is the founder and CEO of Rock Grace, a non-alcoholic beverage infused with crystal energy and adaptogens. She created Rock Grace to fill a gap of there not being anything exciting, healthy and interesting to drink in the non-alcoholic beverage category.
Before her recent Rock Grace adventure, Anne owned a health and wellness lifestyle business and worked in senior product and marketing positions for over 14 years leading results-driven initiatives for early stage health startups as well as Expedia, Inc. She is passionate about living a fulfilled, beautiful, fun and healthy lifestyle she calls the Rock Grace lifestyle. Anne loves to run, play tennis, travel, seek out new experiences in Seattle, plan private events and spend quality time with her family. She graduated from California Polytechnic University with a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you please share your “backstory” with us?
I wanted to improve the quality of my lifestyle by cleaning up my diet and beauty routine and exploring natural health remedies for stress and anxiety.
I found several lovely health and beauty products promoting wellness and balance to use for my daily routine, but couldn’t find a substitute for alcohol that promoted relaxation, positive energy, wellness, and beauty. I saw a huge gap, in a space I define as next generation drinking, for non-alcoholic wellness beverages designed for people that love to drink alcohol and want to start drinking with intention and without the hangover.
I believed non-alcoholic didn’t have to be boring and wanted to add excitement to the non-alcoholic beverage options offered while being social, glamorous, enjoying down time, and taking the edge off. Something to celebrate with that didn’t take away from all of the healthy habits I had put in place and didn’t have all of the negative side effects I experienced from alcohol, but would still help manage stress and anxiety and give me the sensation of taking a break and having a glass of wine.
After extensive research on alternative health remedies, I grew a deep fascination with and passion for crystals and adaptogens and their healing powers. I noticed the power these two energy balancers contained, the harmony they created, combined the two, and what I was looking for was born, Rock Grace.
After creating Rock Grace, I stopped drinking alcohol. Not drinking alcohol was unfathomable to me, I loved wine and the experience of drinking and wine tasting and was even married in wine country, Napa, Calif., one of my favorite destinations.
My quality of life has improved without drinking alcohol and I feel the healthiest I have ever felt in years. I feel that living the Rock Grace lifestyle is one of the best decisions I have ever made and was life changing for me. Many people can’t drink alcohol without it interfering with their intentions, goals and health. They may want to cut back on alcohol, but they still want to be social and drink beautiful drinks in beautiful glasses in beautiful settings.
I want Rock Grace to be a healthy beverage option that is associated with everything that comes to mind to most when envisioning themselves with a glass of wine in hand–happiness, joy, love, peace, relaxation, sexy, confident, worry free, beauty, glamour, balance, light, but sadly the reality of drinking too much is problematic, full of anxiety, health issues, mental instability, fatigue, lack of energy, pain, and hangovers.
At Rock Grace, we put our positive intentions and passion into our work to spread the message of strength and grace to others. We offer a product that lives up to its messaging of “drink this and you will feel good now and in the future.” It’s our gift to people actually seeking a positive lifestyle and who want to make positive changes in their life without feeling isolated or uncomfortable. To add the light back to some during a very dark situation if alcohol has caused them problems. Their happy place of drinking, relaxing and socializing can still exist without alcohol.
What role did mindfulness or spiritual practice play in your life growing up? Do you have a funny or touching story about that?
I didn’t learn a lot of mindful practices when I was growing up, I wish I had so I could have managed the stress and anxiety that came later in my life better. I did play on an extremely competitive soccer team growing up and we had several rituals we would practice such as a methodical warm up, visualization, focus and meditation exercises that enabled us to reach a high level of success in the game. Several of my teammates went on to play for the US Women’s National Soccer Team and we were on a Cheerios box when we were in high school.
How do your mindfulness or spiritual practices affect your business and personal life today?
Being mindful is how I operate today and stay consistent and driven. My main goal is to push myself to the limit without burning out or breaking down. The only way to do this is by being mindful about your intentions, habits, actions and what you put in your body. I prioritize going to an exercise studio everyday called Barre3 that teaches you to be empowered from within and is very grounding and harmonizing when life gets crazy. I also love to walk and run to clear my mind and release any negative energy. I’m mindful about everything I put in my body and know that if I don’t put the right things in my body it will be challenging to be the person I want to be. I have also labeled 2 alarms on my phone, one to wake up with that reads Radiant, Confident and Inspiring, this is how I want to be, the other goes off during the day with how I want to act towards others which reads Loving, Engaged, and Supportive. I’ve turned my personal lifestyle into the backbone of my business, if I don’t practice mindfulness in my personal life, my business will not be as powerful and will not succeed.
Do you find that you are more successful or less successful because of your integration of spiritual and mindful practices? Can you share an example or story about that with us?
Mindfulness drives my success. I don’t think people realize how important it is to take care of themselves and the importance of self-care habits and practices. Being mindful brings on a sense of strength and clarity needed to achieve success. When I am mindful, my thoughts are positive and I attract positive experiences in my life. Since living the Rock Grace lifestyle, I have met so many interesting people, inspired so many women and have created a product that is life changing.
What would you say is the foundational principle for one to “lead a good life”? Can you share a story that illustrates that?
For one to lead a good life you must put yourself first and make self-care a priority. This is the only way to find your energy and the power to control your life. Before creating Rock Grace, I didn’t prioritize self-care, I would do things for others before my own needs, I wasn’t ok with being uncomfortable, and was holding myself back. I lived a life of work hard and reward instead of having the journey be the reward and I would always reward myself with things that weren’t healthy for my body and it would set me back. Now I take breaks, put my needs first, prioritize eating healthy, mindful drinking, exercise, focusing on my family and not letting negative energy, stress and anxiety bring me down.
Can you share a story about one of the most impactful moments in your spiritual/mindful life?
One of the most impactful moments was when I was putting intentions into some of the crystals we use for Rock Grace with my son and I asked him to put some of his intentions into the crystals. I asked him after what they were and he said “There were 3, love yourself, take care of yourself and pray” and I thought wow, how amazing coming from an 8 year old, he had the secrets to a happy and healthy life☺.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
This is a touch question, but it would have to be from a counselor I used to see who really supported me not following text book advice in some problem areas of my life and encouraged me to follow my heart and intuition and that we can heal if we look at things differently and create what works for us. She also took me out of a state of naivete and just pushing me to paddle my own canoe.
Can you share some pieces of advice about how leaders can create a very “healthy and uplifting” work culture?
- Be passionate about the work you are doing
- Believe in your team and encourage them to believe in themselves
- Inspire your team through your actions, lead by example
- Promote self-care, breaks and healthy habits
- Incorporate inspirational activities like vision boards and inspirational speakers
- Have a clear goal, if you are putting in a lot of work towards a goal, you enjoy the work because it is getting you closer to your goal
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
This falls in line with exactly what I’m doing. I want people to find their Rock Grace happy place. Where you feel empowered and there is no desire for escape. Reality and fantasy are one of the same. It is a place that is authentic and pure, where your mind is healthy and clear and you feel beautiful and strong from within. Our goal is to let people know this place exists and inspire others to discover their Rock Grace happy place.
Living the Rock Grace lifestyle means you are taking care of yourself and being mindful about what you are putting in your body without feeling deprived or isolated. It is a desire to feel good in the moment and in the future and to live a fulfilled, healthy and beautiful lifestyle.
Many people can’t drink alcohol without it interfering with their intentions, goals and health. They may want to cut back on alcohol, but they still want to be social and drink beautiful drinks in beautiful glasses in beautiful settings. Rock Grace allows them to do this and gives people the opportunity to imbibe in next generation drinking by providing beauty and wellness crystal elixirs bottled and ready to drink in social settings. Their happy place of drinking, relaxing and socializing can still exist without alcohol.
How can people follow you and find out more about you?
@rockgrace
About the author: Jacob Rupp is a coach, author, speaker, podcaster, and rabbi. He is the founder of Lift Your Legacy, a community that helps people live a more authentic life. He has a regular, syndicated column that appears in ThriveGlobal and Medium magazine. To learn more about him or to listen to the Lift Your Legacy podcast, search iTunes or visit his site: liftyourlegacy.live
Lift Your Legacy: Creating a product, movement, and a lifestyle you love with Rock Grace founder… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
