We can all agree that we need energy to be productive and get things done. But we can all relate to times where we felt burned out and exhausted... even after we only worked on our business for an hour, which doesn't take a lot of energy... so where does this burnout come from?
Most people struggle with energy management and start their work day with an energy tank that's only half full (or less), leading them into burnout and exhaustion quicker and more often. One of the best ways to increase your energy to prevent burnout comes back to the basics - the food you eat and how you take care of yourself on a day-to-day basis.
In today's episode, you'll hear my health story and how our health impacts the success we reach as business owners.
BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL LEARN:
When you finish listening, I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway from today’s episode. Take a screenshot of the episode you're listening to, share it to your Instagram stories and tag me @monicalittlecoaching - or send me a DM!
While you're there, make sure youfollow meso you can see behind the scenes of how I grew my handmade organic skincare small business to multiple six-figures... and how you can grow and scale your business, too.
LEARN MORE FROM MONICA LITTLE
Website:www.monicalittlecoaching.com
Instagram: @monicalittlecoaching
My small business: www.shopplantbasedbeauty.com
We can all agree that we need energy to be productive and get things done. But we can all relate to times where we felt burned out and exhausted... even after we only worked on our business for an hour, which doesn't take a lot of energy... so where does this burnout come from?
Most people struggle with energy management and start their work day with an energy tank that's only half full (or less), leading them into burnout and exhaustion quicker and more often. One of the best ways to increase your energy to prevent burnout comes back to the basics - the food you eat and how you take care of yourself on a day-to-day basis.
In today's episode, you'll hear my health story and how our health impacts the success we reach as business owners.
BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL LEARN:
When you finish listening, I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway from today’s episode. Take a screenshot of the episode you're listening to, share it to your Instagram stories and tag me @monicalittlecoaching - or send me a DM!
While you're there, make sure youfollow meso you can see behind the scenes of how I grew my handmade organic skincare small business to multiple six-figures... and how you can grow and scale your business, too.
LEARN MORE FROM MONICA LITTLE
Website:www.monicalittlecoaching.com
Instagram: @monicalittlecoaching
My small business: www.shopplantbasedbeauty.com
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Hello, and welcome to episode 22 of the product biz Podcast. Today we are talking all about how to increase your energy to increase your productivity through some ways that maybe aren't at the top of your list when you think about how to be more productive. But to segue into this episode, I can guarantee that most small business owners, including yourself, can agree with the fact that we need energy in order to run our business and grow our business. And the days that we feel burnt out, or we easily feel depleted of our energy, or the days that we don't make any progress. And if we start to feel that way over and over and over, while it's no surprise that maybe our business isn't growing to the extent that we want, but if we need to manage our energy and prevent burnout in order to grow our business, then it should be pretty easy to understand and agree with the fact that the food that we eat is a direct correlation to the energy we have, which is a direct correlation to the productivity that we have when we work on our business. So today, we'll be diving into the importance of the food that you eat, how it can impact your energy, I'll be sharing a little bit more about my personal story of how I've gotten to where I am today and how I view food in terms of how it impacts my energy and allows me to show up for my business. And we'll also talk a little bit about mind and how to clear your mind and focus on the task at hand. Super excited for you to be joining me here inside of the product boost podcast. Are you ready to go behind the scenes and learn what it really takes to create consistent sales each and every month with your handmade small business? Join me Monica little self taught multiple six figure small business owner and your product business coach, as I give you the insight and inspiration on how to better run your business and increase your sales in ways that you may not have even been aware of. So that your business can truly become what you knew it could be fact when you first start, learn how to let go of perfection, overcome the fear of failure that is holding you back. And finally start taking action so that you walk away feeling like you've cracked the code on how to run a successful small business. You're listening to the product biz podcast. So last week, we talked about your physical environment and how your home you're making space, your office space, the like stimulation around you, if it's organized, if it's not organized, if you have music, like whatever is going on in your physical environment, how that can really impact if you're making progress on a day to day basis when you're learning challenging new skills, when you're trying something different when you're working towards something that's outside of your comfort zone. So I mentioned at the end of the episode a little bit more about like your internal environment. And I want to dive into that today and talk more about your mind, body and soul but more specifically on the body part and how you take care of yourself in order to make sure that you actually have energy to show up for your business. So how this really comes up is I see it so often with so many small business owners that they continue to say that they're exhausted and they're burnt out, and they're struggling to really find the energy or the time to work on their business. Yeah, when I really drill down to that, I want to understand like, why are you burnt out? Why are you exhausted? What's taking up all of your time? What's taking up all of your energy? And when I really drill down with these people and ask them, you know, why are you burnt out? What were you working on? How many hours were you working on it? It's super interesting that usually the people who are burned out, it's not because they are spending so much time on their business. The real reason that they're burnt out is because their energy management in general, is so low to begin with that then when they spend an hour or two hours doing something outside of their comfort zone, they instantly get burnt out. So I want you to think about it in terms of like a gas tank for a car. So if you fill up that gas tank, if you are managing your energy, then it's going to take you quite some time to actually get burned out because you have fuel, you have gasoline, you have energy, you're ready to take on new challenges. But if your gas tank is only 1/4 of the way full with energy, then you're going to get burned out so much quicker, so much faster. You're going to work for an hour on your business and be like I literally can't do anything more I need to go lay down and stop working for the day.
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So when I talk about energy management And like what will fill up that gas tank in terms of energy, I want to really focus on how this relates to like the human body. And we're going back to basics in terms of the food that you eat, and what you do to calm stress. And that goes a little bit more into the mind portion. So we'll be talking about body and we'll be talking about mind. One of the biggest things that I love to just pick apart and see is to look at successful business owners and see what are the habits? What do they do? What are their routines? What are the habits that they have? Just what are the similarities across these people who are highly successful? Because something that I'll say, over and over is success leaves clues. So these people that are successful, that are reaching new heights that are doing big things? What do they all have in common? What are their routines? And how do they take care of themselves.
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And another thing that I always say is, your business is a direct reflection of you. And I heard that from my own business coach. So where you are in your life, how you take care of yourself is going to be reflected in your business as well. So when I think of how to create energy, the first thing that comes to mind is the food that you eat, and energy management is the best way to be productive. So we have to realize the importance of managing our energy and effort, energy is managed by the food that we eat, then to be more productive, we need to eat better food, there is a direct link with that, because then you're filling up that energy gasoline tank, I guarantee the people who are burned out faster and quicker and more often than others are the ones who are also eating a ton of sugar, maybe not the healthiest food because that place is such a huge impact on your body, you're going to burn through that sugar really quickly, you're going to get a sugar high, and then you're going to get a sugar low. And that's when you're going to feel burnt out. So I can't stress enough the importance of the quality of the food that you eat, and how that impacts how you feel on a day to day basis. This is something for me, I'm going to take you guys on a little bit of a story that I've been really working on for the past like 10 years probably. And it was super interesting. I was on a call with Heidi from girl hoop. And I posted on social media about how being a small business owner is not just like the work you do, but it's the food you eat, the amount of water you drink, the amount of sleep that you get, the amount of social media news that you don't consume, all of those factors affect how you show up as a business owner, and will impact you to become a better business owner to grow your business faster and in new ways. And I was on a call with Heidi. And she's seen me post about this stuff on social media. And she asked me like has health been something that's been a big part of you on running your business? Or is this just something that's been more recent? And I was like, Oh, that's a really good question. I don't think I've ever, like shared my health journey, and how much this actually impacts my business today. So I thought it would be a good topic to dive into a little bit. So I'm going to take you guys on this journey just to understand like how to get to this state of energy management of eating healthy to feeling really good in your body and how that impacts how you show up for your business. But I remember when I first moved to Chicago, which is about 10 years ago, I had just graduated college and this was the first city I was living in. I moved in with my boyfriend at the time, who's now my husband, and we were living in downtown Chicago and looking back, I had the worst relationship with food possible. I was one of those people where I would try to literally eat as little as possible. And I was also running half marathons. So running like eight miles a day, something ridiculous. And I was trying to eat as little as possible. I had an awful relationship with food. It was such a hard time looking back but I was like so caught up into it that I didn't even realize how destructive it actually was. So back then I was probably like 20 pounds lighter than what I am now just extremely thin. And I realized that running and maybe isn't necessarily my favorite thing to do. But for some reason I was forcing myself to run every single day and it was just a really tough place to be across the board. So that kind of evolved and then I started weightlifting and if you know anything about me it's when I do something I like a go all in almost to a fault. So when I was running half marathons I was running every single day when I switched to more of like weightlifting, I took it so serious I was going to the gym am six, seven days a week. But the funny thing is, even though I was into weightlifting, and now I started to actually like track what I ate to see, you know how much protein, how much carbs how much fat was at eating. At that point in time, I was still eating a ton of like fat free food, which if you know anything about fat free food, it's full of chemicals. So sure, it might be fat free. But to give it some flavor, it's full of all these like chemicals that are just even worse for you than actually just eating the natural, full fat product. But for some reason, I was eating fat free everything I was eating oh my gosh, Walden Farms. If you guys remember that it was like this zero calorie maple syrup that I will just like douse on everything. And my relationship with food continued to be in this really awful spot. In my relationship with the gym, like I continued to just be in this really challenging position. And it's super interesting, because if you were to see photos of me at this, like weightlifting stage, I was probably in the best shape of my life. And I looked better than when I was running and super, super thin. But I actually like felt the worst that I've ever felt, internally, my entire body hurt all of the time, I would go to the gym. And I would do like one exercise and my lower back would kill me. And I remember going to my corporate office and I would be sitting at my desk and it would be so uncomfortable, I would have to get up after like 15 or 20 minutes because my lower back my quads, everything hurt. And I'm like, What am I doing wrong. I'm like tracking what I eat. I'm going to the gym, I'm stretching a ton, but my body is just in a ton of pain. And at that point in time, I was just like, in such a place where I was fed up with everything. I was working corporate job, I was doing this personal training online on the side, I was going to the gym so often, but it felt awful. And at that point in time, I remember I deleted all of my social media and I just was like, I need a break from everything. I need a break from social media, I needed a break from comparing myself I needed a break from tracking every single piece of food that I would eat. And I was just done, I was done with it. And this story so far, like the half marathon training to the weightlifting is probably about like two to three years of my life. When I first got to Chicago, maybe even like four years, it went on for quite a long time. But it was super interesting. When I finally deleted social media and let go of crazy tracking my food. I was like, okay, something is wrong, I need to get to the bottom of why I feel like crap. And since I didn't have social media, I had a ton of free time. And I was like, Oh, I'm just gonna like read books about you know, the body and health and like, figure out what's going on and why I have like this intense pain in my lower back in my neck and my traps and my quads everywhere across my body. You know, so interesting, because the more books that I read, the more that I learned about inflammation and inflammation, if you really want to get to like the health a technical part of it, just super crazy. Inflammation is basically when your body is triggering, that there is pain somewhere, but it's sending all of these like pain signals through that area. So something that should be a minor pain that your body can deal with all of a sudden, it's like this widespread alarm like pain, pain, pain. And when I think about my lower back pain, my quad pain, my neck pain, right trap pain at that point in time. That's exactly what it was, I maybe had a little bit of pain from like doing some exercises at the gym, a little bit of soreness, which your body should be able to adapt to and work through. But since I had so much inflammation in my body, all these inflammation triggers would go to that spot, and just amplify it and amplify it like crazy to the point that I couldn't sit at my desk for more than like 15 or 20 minutes, and I felt like I had to get up. So when I started to learn about inflammation, I started to learn about what causes inflammation. And this is not meant to be like a health episode. This is just talking through kind of what I went through and how it impacts my business today, which we'll get there. It's going to take me a couple minutes to get there. And what I learned about inflammation is basically, it's when you eat food that is hard for the body to digest, it can create the super small little holes inside your stomach lining that then these little particles can go into your bloodstream and then and also like just throughout your body. I'm not sure about bloodstream. So this is why I'm saying this isn't a health episode. But these little particles of like food now can get through your stomach lining into your body and then lead to that type of inflammation. So if you want to reduce inflammation, what you have to do is heal your stomach and heal your stomach lining. If you want to heal your stomach and your stomach lining All you have to do is cut out dairy cut out gluten cut out corn, there's all these foods that are really, really, really hard for the stomach to digest. So I learned about all this and I was just like, so amazed. This was like a whole new world to me. Because in my mind, I thought, if I look healthy, that means I am healthy. If I eat X amount of calories per day, then that means I'm healthy. As long as I'm not overeating. If I limit my fat intake, then that means I'm healthy. But all of those thoughts and beliefs that I had, basically got completely shattered when I started to actually do research about eating healthy, and eating in a holistic way. So there was a period of about three or four months that I did so much research on this, and that I ended up being dairy free and gluten free for about a year, maybe a little bit longer. And I just went on this massive, holistic healing protocol. So I was just eating a lot of Whole Foods, I was cooking food, I wasn't restricting my fat intake, I was just eating what felt good for my body. At that point in time, I was eating more protein, I was eating more healthy fats, I was eating more vegetables, more grains. And I was just avoiding all the bullshit that's in most of the food that we buy at the grocery store. All of like the packaged food, the fat free food, the chemical filled food, that is just so hard on your body to digest and so hard on us just to actually utilize this fuel. So I remember as the first three or four months, when I did this research to start to implement these changes into my diet. It took a while. But the end of the four months, I felt so much better. And it was such a weird realization. And because I didn't know that I felt bad. I didn't know that something was wrong. Sure. I had like inflammation and aches and pains. But it's so normalized nowadays, or I was like, Oh, I'm just getting older or Oh, I'm just pushing myself at the gym. But when looking back, I'm like, No, that wasn't okay, like something was wrong with my body, the body shouldn't feel like that on a day to day basis. So it was super eye opening for me to realize that I wasn't feeling my best in my body, and that there was a completely different way to actually feel. And that's when you start to really get just addicted to like, oh my gosh, I can feel so much better. I didn't know that I could and this opens up so many more things like what else is possible? How much else better can I feel. And when I say I felt better, like obviously a lot of the inflammation in terms of the pain in my body that went away. I remember like my lower back, even like sleeping at night was tough because it had so much inflammation and so much pain. And all of that pretty much went away. But also, there's other side effects that go away too, like brain fog,
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I had the worst brain fog that I will just hit a wall at 2pm or 3pm.
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I didn't want to do anything, I just wanted to scroll on social media. And I just didn't have the capacity to actually get any work done and my corporate job for my own business, once I hit like that two or 3pm wall. And that's another side effect that went away from eating healthy. And then I started to realize like, Okay, I was eating a lot of sugar. And that was really impacting like my blood sugar levels, not in like a diabete diabetes point of view. But in a point of view of when you eat sugar, your sugar goes up and you go on this high, and then you crash and you had a low. And that's a real thing that happens to people when they consume sugar. So I cut sugar out as well, and realize how much more steady my energy was on a day to day basis. So I started to see these awesome impacts. And it's super interesting during this time, another tangent I just go on all these tangents, but I promise I'll bring them back to the point that we're getting to. But at this time, I also started to experiment with my own skincare. And that's how plant based beauty was born. So during this time, I realized okay, not only is it like the food that I eat that has a bunch of chemicals and is actually really harmful for me, both physically how I feel and my energy levels. What about all the items in my house? What about my dish detergent? Like that's probably full of chemicals, too. And what about my laundry detergent, and the cleaning spray and oh my gosh, the makeup and the skincare products that I use. It really opened up this whole world of if I felt so much better from changing how I eat, can I continue to feel better by changing the products in my household. And it's super interesting because that makes a big difference to when you remove all of the chemicals in your products in your home. You will feel so much lighter. And it's this weird phenomena that you don't realize how much better you you can actually feel until you go through and do it, which is super crazy. And that's I saw a meme the other day that was like, I scary to think that so much of the population doesn't know what feeling good actually feels like, doesn't know what feeling healthy actually feels like doesn't know what feeling like optimal strength and fitness actually feels like, right. And it's been super eye opening for me to look back on this journey and how I now relate it to how I run my business. So I went through this period of being in a very particular protocol of dairy free, gluten free, sugar free. I know it sounds relatively restricting, but I loved it. And when you start to feel good, and you start to really understand what your body needs, you eat food from a place of how will this energize me? How will this make me feel, instead of how so many of us, including myself, eat food from a point of will this give me comfort? Will this provide me some sort of warm cozy feeling or remind me of my childhood or helped me manage this stress? That's where a lot of people view food. But when you go through this healing journey of how do you actually eat to feel your best, you look at food as energy. And that's essentially what it is and what it should be. So you want to eat food that actually energizes you and makes you feel your best. This now brings me probably to about a year ago, where now after I've gone through and really worked on the killing my stomach and things like that. Now, it's just extremely focused on intuitive eating. So I do eat some gluten and dairy every now and then I know how it affects me, I know I'm not going to feel my best the next day. And it's so interesting when you actually cut out all of the crap that's in your body, like the crap food and you know the preservatives and the chemicals and the fake this and the fake that. Once you actually release all of that out of your body, then what your body wants is just nutrients, you'll actually crave fruit, you'll crave vegetables, you'll you'll crave healthy fats, like an avocado, you'll crave all these super nutritious foods that actually come from the earth. And when you get to this spot, you can really eat intuitively, in terms of what does my body need right now. So it's been a really interesting journey. But I look at this, and I'm so thankful for it. Because I know right now, I'm a better business owner, because I know how to manage my energy. I know that if I eat healthy, I can work from nine to five, and I'm energized and I'm ecstatic. And I'm having fun. And I don't have brain fog, I can actually think clearly and I'm not burning myself out. So what I want to mention is if you are feeling like you are burned out constantly, but you're not burned out from doing a lot of work, you're just burned out because you don't have the energy, then we need to look to see where can you get more energy into your physical body. And food is going to be the easiest, the best thing that you can do to amplify your energy with nutrients that make that make you actually feel good. And food has been a big one. For me being physically active is something that also gives you so much energy. And then we can go more on the mind side, which is making sure you have something to help manage stress, because stress is going to be something else that totally leads to burnout. Super similar to how we were talking in the last episode, how physical stress in terms of stimulation and noise can lead to just way too much stress on the body way too much stress on the mind that you get burnt out and you feel like you can't do anything more. Also just the stress of work can do the same thing. It's not necessarily a physical stress, it's more just of I have to get this done, I have to get that done. I have so much to do. I'm learning a new skill. This is tough, this is challenging. I'm running a business, I have kids, I have a house, I have a job, like all these things that we have to do, which is stressful on the body and on the mind. So the second part of this is what I want to talk about, which is how do you ensure that you have practices are in place to manage your stress. So one of it could be physical activity, if you're going to the gym every morning or carving out some time at the end of the day, to actually release some stress through physical activity, going for a bike ride, going for a run, going to the gym, taking a workout class doing some yoga, there are so many great options out there that not only will give your body energy from the physical movement, but will also give your mind energy from the stress relief and balancing stress from your day. There's also other things that you can do and one that I'll mentioned as meditating. This has been a really big part of my practice and my evolution of health as you've seen throughout this episode. Really still Started with understanding health through food. And also it led to health through physical activity. So to kind of round that out, you heard me talk about how I was doing half marathons. And then I was doing extreme weightlifting. And then I actually went through about two to three years ago where I completely stopped going to the gym, because I had just way overdone it. And I was getting back in tune with eating healthy and going through a lot of that food stuff. And then finally, about two years ago, I found my physical health through going to studio three. And absolutely love studio three in Chicago, they are a group fitness studio, I'm still trying to find a good fit here in Scottsdale. And it's an amazing fitness studio where they do group classes, and it's super energizing, and you're around other people. And instead of me pushing myself at the gym and me forcing myself to do exercises and me forcing to run on the treadmill or do the Stairmaster I'm able to go to this class and just listen to what the instructor has to say and just get my ass kicked. And it's like 10 times more fun, but also 10 times better workout. So through studio three, I found such a good balance of workouts that I enjoy through group fitness classes, and also through yoga. So yoga is something that's been completely new to me over the last couple of years. But that has been such a good practice in my physical health, too. So you can see how the physical health of the food health all of that has been this inter woven path to get me to where I am today. And now as this path continues, and as I figured things out, now, it's like what else can I do to continue this mind body spirit evolution of becoming the best version of myself, so I can show up for myself and show up for my business. And that brings us back to what I was talking about in terms of meditation. Meditation has been the newest addition for me, I have been meditating probably for like a year, year and a half, maybe two years now maybe longer than that. But really just getting more in the habit of it and in the habit of truly calming my mind down, watching my thoughts, letting go of my thoughts, and being present just to where I am at this moment. So that's been a huge game changer to in terms of managing energy. Because a lot of the time we are struggling to manage our energy. Because we are just scatterbrained, we have our brain in 500 different places, we are thinking about this and thinking about this and worried about that and thinking about the future and the past and the present. And everything just is this huge cloud that we're trying to see through. So meditation has been a really big part of slowing down, focusing on one thing at a time, understanding what it means to truly be present. And I can take this to how I work on a day to day basis. So I want to bring this back to how does this affect business owners? How does this affect us when we're trying to grow a business? And what I started with is looking at successful small business owners and what do they do? And I can guarantee that almost every single successful business owner, no matter how big or small they are, they have these types of core values in their life. They eat really healthy, they're physically active, they get eight hours of sleep, and most of them probably meditate or have some sort of stress relief practice in play. So if all of these successful business owners are doing this, how do we learn from that and make sure that we're addressing our own energy, and showing up the best way possible by also focusing on these aspects. These are the things that no one wants to talk about. But they are so impactful for managing and running and growing a business. Because when you eat healthy, you have energy to work longer to do complex tasks, to learn new skills. When you're physically active, you have energy and all those same manners too. But you're also managing your stress, when you're getting enough sleep, then that means your brain is actually healthy and able to work through things on a daily basis. And when you're meditating and learning how to calm the thoughts and be present, then you can just focus on the task at hand without all of these other ideas and thoughts coming in and preventing you from progressing. So I hope this provided some new insights on how you and your body and your health can really impact your business. And this is something that I play so much value on because I know I work better show up better, work smarter when I feel my best. So what are you doing on a day to day basis to
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feel your absolute best? What are you doing to To address burnout, if you constantly feel burnt out, this is something I really want you to take a step back and assess where you currently are and what may be contributing to burnout. What could you change? What could you try differently, so you are showing up and feeling your best because your business is a reflection of you. So if we have some internal work, that we need to work on it to show up and feel our best and that's going to impact how we are for our business too. So that's really what I wanted to talk about today. It's a little bit of a different episode. But with that, I want to say thank you so much. If you've enjoyed this episode, please leave a five star review let me know what you found valuable. Next episode next week we have an amazing guest Her name is Kayla from docs design, we are going to talk about branding and the importance of branding and some branding tips and tricks for you to use on your small business. And until then I will see you on Instagram at Monica little coaching and I will talk to you so soon. Thank you so much for hanging out with me here inside the product biz podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and to leave a five star review. And if you're interested in learning more about product biz Academy my signature group coaching program for handmade small business owners like you who are looking to create consistent online sales with their business, then go to the product biz podcast.com to join the waitlist. Yours are currently closed but you'll be first notified when they reopen. Thank you so much and I'll see you on the next episode of the product based podcast.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
eat, energy, business, food, feel, body, burnt, super, gym, day, pain, stress, burnout, impacts, small business owners, half marathons, weightlifting, manage, inflammation, running