Episode Three: This Is Your Most Expensive Business Tool

Most business coaches will not take you here. But I'm not most business coaches.

In this episode I make the case — clearly, specifically, and with real biology behind it — that your body is not separate from your business strategy. Your body is your business strategy. 

And the version of you that is burned out, running on adrenaline, and gripping too tight is neurologically incapable of doing the work that gets you to your next level.

This is not a wellness conversation. This is a revenue conversation. 

Because the gap between the Tuesday where every idea comes easily and the Tuesday where you stare at the same document for forty minutes and write nothing is not a motivation gap. It is a capacity gap. And capacity lives in the body.

I share what I rebuilt after the Trader Joe's parking lot — the movement practice, the physical tools, and the one shift in thinking that changed everything. 

And I leave you with the smallest possible next step that will return more to you than almost anything else in your business.

You cannot receive with a fist that is clenched from exhaustion. This episode is about unclenching.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I want to take you back to that Trader Joe's parking lot for a second. Not because I enjoy revisiting it. Honestly, it took me a really long time to be able to tell that story without feeling the shame of it, but because there is something about that moment that I did not fully understand until much later. Something that changed the way I run my business and more importantly, the way I live inside my body every single day. When I pulled off that highway and sat in that parking lot shaking, I thought my body had betrayed me. I thought after everything I had given, after 10 years of showing up and pushing through and being the engine of everything, my body had picked the worst possible moment to fall apart. What I didn't understand, but what I understand now is that my body did not betray me. My body had been trying to save me for years. It had been sending signals. I was just too busy to read. It was the tension that lived permanently in my shoulders, the sleep that never felt like enough, no matter how many hours I got, the irritability that I blamed on stress and deadlines and everyone else's problems landing on my desk, the creative ideas that used to come easily and had quietly stopped coming at all. I had been treating my body like a vehicle, like something that existed to carry my brain from meeting to meeting and keep going until the work was done. And my body, with extraordinary patience, had been waiting for me to figure out that it was not a vehicle. It was the engine. And I had been running it on empty for a decade. Here's the thing about the 5D excavator that is different from everything we talked about in audio two. The 3D excavator is about what you do with your time, but the 5D excavator is about what you do with your energy. And those are not the same thing. You can free up 20 hours a week by delegating and automating and deleting and still not have access to the version of yourself who can actually use those 20 hours well. Because that version of you runs on a resource that no system can create for you. She runs on capacity, and capacity lives in the body. I want you to think about something. Have you ever had a day? Maybe it was a random Tuesday, maybe it was a morning after a really good night of sleep or workout that actually happened or a weekend where you genuinely rested, where ideas just came, where you sat down to work and the words were there and the decisions were there, where you sat down to work and the words were there and the decisions were clear and the thing you had been stuck on for two weeks just suddenly had an obvious answer. And have you ever had a day, the other kind of day, the kind that is actually most days, where you sat down to do the exact same work and nothing came. No matter how hard you tried, you stared at the same document for 40 minutes and wrote nothing, or made a decision you later regretted because you were too depleted to think clearly, or you snapped at someone on your team over something small because your nervous system had nothing left. It's the same work, the same woman, but a completely different output. That difference, that gap between the Tuesday where everything flows and the Tuesday where nothing does, that is not a motivation problem. And it's not a discipline problem either. It's not even a mindset problem. Although I know that is what most coaches will probably tell you. It is a body problem and it has a body solution. Here's what I mean when I say the body is the business strategy. I don't mean self-care Sundays. I don't mean treating yourself after a hard week. What I mean is something much, much more literal and much more urgent than that. Your brain, the brain that runs your business, makes your decisions, and generates your ideas, sees around corners that other people cannot see. That brain is a physical organ and it lives in a body. And the quality of the thinking that brain produces is directly, measurably, undeniably determined by the state of the body it lives in. A brain that's been running on chronic stress and four hours of broken sleep and a nervous system that's been in fight or flight for three years does not produce the same quality of thinking as a brain that is rested, regulated, and resourced. Just doesn't. And no amount of ambition or discipline or wanting it badly enough is going to change that biology. So when I say your body is your most expensive business tool, I mean it exactly and as literally as it sounds. The quality of every single decision you make, every idea you have, every piece of content you create, and every client call you show up for, all of it runs through your body first. Before it gets to your business, it goes through you. And I'm willing to bet that you have been running you on empty and calling it hustle. After the parking lot, I had to rebuild from scratch, not just my business systems, although I had to do that too, but I had to rebuild my relationship with my own body. And I want to tell you what that actually looked like because I think people here take care of yourself and they picture someone who has a lot of free time and a very clean kitchen. And that just was not me. It started with movement every single day. It wasn't a heroic workout that was hours at the gym, nothing that required more willpower than I had available, just movement. It was as simple as taking a walk around the neighborhood and doing a couple wait sessions each week when I had the energy for it. I chose to do something every single day without exception because I finally understood that movement was not a reward I had to earn by finishing my to-do list first. It was the thing that made the to-do list possible. And then I started stacking tools the way I'd been stacking software subscriptions. I was intentional and I layered them one at a time until I had a physical practice that was all mine. I love a vibration plate in the morning. I love to do infrared sauna blanket on the days my body needed to rest. I use red light therapy, an EMF mat. All of these things are not because I had become someone who has a lot of time for elaborate routines, but because I had finally understood that the 10 minutes I spent on one of these tools was returning to me in hours of clearer thinking, better decisions, and creative energy that I had genuinely believed was just gone forever. It was not gone. It was just starved. It was an excavator without gas. And here's the piece I want you to really hear, because this is the one that shifted everything for me on a level that surprised even me. You cannot receive with a fist that is clenched from exhaustion. I mean that both literally and financially. There is a version of you that is working so hard, gripping so tight, controlling every single step and pushing so constantly that even when the opportunity arrives, even when the money is there, even when the thing you have been building toward finally shows up, you cannot feel it. You cannot hold it. You are so contracted that you cannot even receive it. I've watched this happen with so many women that I work. I've watched this happen with women I work with. The launch goes well, but she can't enjoy it because she's already onto the next thing. They have a client. She has a client who pays in full and she feels nothing because she's already worried about the next client she's going to get. The revenue goal hits and she moves the goalpost before she even celebrates because stopping even for one afternoon feels like falling behind. That is not ambition. That is a nervous system that has been in survival mode for so long, it's forgotten what it feels like to actually receive something. The 5D excavator is the practice of unclenching, of creating enough space in your body that when the good thing arrives, you can actually let it in. You can actually celebrate it. And I know that might sound abstract, so let me make it really concrete. When your body is chronically stressed, your stress hormone called cortisol is high. When your cortisol is high, your brain literally loses access to the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for creative thinking, strategic decision making, and seeing the big picture. So the version of you who is burned out and running on adrenaline. So what all of that science talk means is that the version of you who is burned out and running on adrenaline is not just tired. She is neurologically incapable of doing her best work. The excavator is parked. She's back to the shovel and she doesn't even know it because she does not have the brainwidth to notice. But when your nervous system is regulated, when your body has been moved, rested, nourished, and given even 10 minutes of deliberate care, you get your brain back. The ideas come, the decisions are clearer. The thing you've been overthinking for three weeks resolves itself on a Tuesday morning walk before you even get to your desk. That is not magic. That is biology. And biology is a business strategy. Now I want to ask you something honest. When is the last time you did something for your body? Not because you were trying to lose weight or because your doctor told you to, and not because you felt guilty about not doing it, but because you genuinely understood that your physical energy is the foundation everything else is built on. If the answer is a long time ago, or I'm not sure, or honestly never, I am not here to make you feel bad about that. I'm here to tell you that is the most available excavator most women have not touched yet, because it does not cost very much. It doesn't require a big team or a complex system or a significant investment. It requires one single decision. A daily decision that your body is not the thing you take cut, a daily decision that your body is not the thing you take care of after everything else is handled. Your body is the first thing because everything else runs through it. Before you go to audio four, here's what I want you to do. And I'm asking you to make this as small and as non-negotiable as possible because I know you. If you're like me, you are going to want to overhaul your entire morning routine after this. Do not do that. That is the achiever in you, reaching for the shovel. Pick one thing, one physical thing you are going to do tomorrow, not someday or next week. One thing that is for your body and only for your body. Maybe it's a 20-minute walk around the neighborhood. Maybe it's drinking enough water or eight hours of sleep that you actually protect instead of trading for one more hour of work. Pick one thing that is small enough you will actually do it and consistent enough that it becomes the spine of your whole day. That is your 5D excavator and it's closer than you think. Audio four is where we go to the layer that is going to surprise you the most and probably the one you've been most curious about since I mentioned it in audio one. We are going to talk about the kind of knowing that arrives before your brain has caught up, the intuition, the trust, the deeper intelligence that most business coaches are too afraid to name out loud. But I am not afraid of it, and neither are you. I will see you there.