The #1 way to eliminate distraction that all leaders NEED to know with Kathryn Fantauzzi

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book, Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026.

Goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today.

The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life, nail your goals.

I'll see you there.

Welcome to Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. In every episode, I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you lead your life and business on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

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We've got to look after it, right?

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Right.

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Love your brain and you want to go the extra mile to nurture it, head on over to Flowstate NZ and you can use the coupon code LEADONPURPOSE to get 15% off. Have you experienced stress in the last year? Well, if you're human, I imagine the answer to that is yes. Many times we experience stress every day in our lives and it can really impact us in terms of our energy, our focus, our sleep, our well being, our mood. And that in turn impacts our relationships, our professional outputs and success. So today I'm incredibly excited to welcome Catherine Fantouzi. Katherine is the co founder and CEO of Apollo Neuroscience, the company that developed and launched the first scientifically validated wearable technology that actively improves energy, focus and sleep. So sit back and enjoy the show.

Catherine, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thanks for having me.

Oh, so good. I've been waiting to talk to you about the Apollo Neuro. It's something that I wear and for those watching, you'll see it's on my wrist. For those listening, I'll put it in the show notes, you can go check it out. But I wanted to get this device. Yeah, Catherine's got hers right there. It's tiny, but it is powerful. It packs a punch. And we're going to talk about why, as leaders and high performers, we need.

To be looking at how technology can.

Actually really support us and what we're doing in our lives personally and professionally. So, just to get started, Katherine, let's chat about stress. What is stress and how does it impact us as leaders and humans?

Well, stress is strain, right? Stress is strain, whether that's physical stress from exercise or mental stress from deep focused work or accomplishing something.

And stress isn't all bad, right? Like if you think about exercise, right, when you do regular exercise, you're putting stress on the body. You're lifting something, you're running, you're moving, right? That's a stress. But then there's a recovery period afterwards. And so good stress is called eustress, right? So that stress the body can handle, it actually makes it grow. Learning, right, is good stress. You have to figure something out, learn a new skill, learn new information, apply it. That's all stress. But it's eustress. As long as it ends up, you know, your body is in a position to adapt, grow and be more resilient as as a result of it. Distress is when the stress is no longer beneficial to us. And that tends to happen not sometimes, because whatever it is that we're dealing with is quite hard. But it's usually not because of the stre, it's because of how resilient the body and the mind are to it when it comes up. And so if you have slept very well and you are calm and something stressful happens to you, you have all your resources to respond to it. If you are depleted because you haven't slept well or you haven't been taking care of yourself as well, you haven't been eating well and you're more likely to get sick, more likely to be run down, you're also more likely to be overwhelmed by the stre stress. And we see that when people get upset, they, you know, over. Some people would call overreact or they get, you know, angry or they get overwhelmed and they freeze. That's also a thing you see where like people get so overwhelmed they don't know what to do or they can't sleep. And that manifests itself in the short term, right? You're too stressed out. Something for instance, like you're too stressed out and somebody cuts you off in traffic, you're more likely to overreact than if you had just come from, I don't know, yoga or a long run. And the reason behind that is because you're already kind of what I call teed up. You're already on the edge because your body is strained and you don't have the capacity or resources to deal with what's happened. The challenge with that is that when you are depleted and you're experiencing stress over and over, or distress over and over, then you end up getting the consequences of that, which are the results of chronic stress, which is when you start to see sleep disturbances, insomnia, anxiety issues, weight gain, metabolic things going on. You start to see the toll that it takes. And so, you know, when you're a high performing person and you're on the go and you know, I like to think of myself as a really, you know, I say I'm highly acute, right? Like I'm fast and I am, I'm quick. And when I, that's like my first sign that I'm overtired is when I'm not as fast anymore. And I'm like, wow, now it's time for a nap. Just like your computer needs a reboot, right? Every once in a while, get the spinny wheel of death. You've got too many tabs open and you need to, you know, restart. The same with the person, right? You need to give yourself time to bounce back. And that allows you to actually be more resilient in the long term and be able to accomplish way more as long as you remember to fill up the tank and look at the signs of what's going on in terms of how you feel relative to how you're performing. Because it used to be this rise and grind mentality. And I'm really glad that people are starting to understand that. If you grind nonstop and don't take the time to recover or check in with yourself, the likelihood of you grinding yourself right into the ground is high. And then you can't perform the way you want to because you don't have anything left.

100%. I really resonate with that a lot. And what's your story? What inspired you to create this wearable? To create Apollo Neuroscience? Was there something in your life that you thought, hey, I'm inspired to take the next step to create something that solves this challenge.

Hey, James here.

I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejjlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes.

So the origin of how we developed Apollo was actually because we were working on a new intervention. So David, my co founder, is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, and he was working on a system to basically understand when someone is under strain and then be able to respond to them. The reason for that is that we know that meditation works, we know that breath work works, we know that biofeedback works. And there are some of us who are highly attuned to ourselves and we engage in these practices. But for a lot of people, they're really hard to access. And the reason for that is not because people are lazy. It's back to what we talked about between, you know, the body and the response to stress. When someone is overwhelmed frequently and they haven't had time to recover, it's actually harder to learn how to meditate. It's actually harder to learn how to do breath work and all of these new tools because your body's under strain and it's literally looking for relief in that moment. Which is why Haagen Dazs and Doom Scrolling are way easier than taking the 30 minutes to meditate. Right? It's because your body's like, help me, I need Help, please make me feel happy. Right? And so these immediate things that we do are actually detrimental to us. And the positive things that we do seem like they're impossible to achieve. And so when you think about these resting states that people are told to do, right? Oh, just take a deep breath. Or, oh, you could listen to this guided meditation as you go to sleep or whatever it is, wherever you are in the spectrum from the most, what I call a biohacker or a health hacker, someone who's really engaged with that high performance person trying to eke every bit out all the way to somebody who's just like, I just need to go to bed, right? Like the core of how all of these practices work is that they make you feel safe. Like if you break down the nervous system, there's the fight or flight response, sympathetic response. It's like my heart rate's going to go up and sweat, I'm going to run away from this bear. And then there's the rest and digest, which is like sleep, relaxation, reproduction, digestion. And if you're always in hyperdrive, all of these other elements get neglected. The concept of Apollo was a way to provide an intervention that actually helps the body get into the state that you get into when you deep breathe or when you meditate, when you listen to soft soothing music, or when someone you love gives you a hug, which is to feel safe. And then your parasympathetic tone increases, resting heart rate comes down, you start to breathe easier, and your body gets that chance to restore itself. And so we developed Apollo in mind because we were originally working with veterans who have ptsd. Asking a vet who has PTSD to learn to meditate is a lot to ask them to do because they're in hyperdrive. And we found that Apollo waves in healthy populations started as research at the University of Pittsburgh. In healthy populations, we saw measurable changes in heart rate variability and resting heart rate. But what mattered about that is that it demonstrated that we could, when someone was under stress, actually help them enter flow by supporting their body into recovery through their sense of touch. For those of you who don't know what Apollo is, Apollo is a wearable device that uses low frequency sound waves that you feel on your skin. So it feels like soothing vibration that comes and goes and it mimics the cardiac respiratory resonance pattern. So the, the resonant patterns of frequency in the body between your heart and your lungs. When you breathe at six breaths per minute and when you feel it, rather than you telling your body through, you know, top down learning Like, I'm going to breathe this way, I'm going to meditate this way, I'm going to hop in the cold plunge and the sauna and I'm going to do this breath work and I'm going to get this chamber instead of that. What you're doing is you're applying it to the skin and the body goes, hey, I know what that feels like. That feels like safety. And the body regulates itself. What we saw is that when we calm people's bodies down with this frequency, their head clears. We saw improvements in heart rate variability and resting heart rate that correlated with improved cognitive performance, improved physical performance, like ability to repeat exercise, improve cognitive performance, ability to attend to a very, if we get into the details, a very boring task, right? We increased accuracy by up to 25% in a double blind, randomized, placebo controlled crossover trial. And so what we did was we helped people's bodies calm down and therefore their mind cleared and they could choose what they were focusing on, how they spent their attention, and essentially also gave them this opportunity to have their body be regulated as if they had been meditating while they were dealing with a stressful event. If you can imagine how you feel walking out of a yoga class or after you've done deep breath work and then you're in a board meeting or you're driving your kids to school and you're in traffic, but you are having that same impact on your body. The purpose is, if we can, there's technology everywhere to distract us and stress us out. And Apollo is the first technology to use this modality to actually help restore us and make us feel more human again.

I wanted to share with you that I personally have been using the Apollo Neuro device, this wearable technology, for several months now. And I've noticed improved sleep. I've noticed that I respond much more calmly when under stress or strain. I've been able to focus more deeply on work, be more present with clients. It's just helped in so many ways to create that flow state. And the best thing about it, I just set it and forget it. There's a little program you set up and it's done and you don't even know that it's there.

It's incredible.

So if you would like to get your hands on one, I've got a special offer just for you as a listener of the Lead on Purpose podcast. So head over to ApolloNeuro.com a P O L L O N E u r o apolloneuro.com and if you use Lead on purpose, you'll get a 10% discount. So in the discount code section, put in lead on purpose, they'll get you 10% off. But for now let's get back to the show.

Yes, quite incredible. I've been using it from last September, maybe October, early October and it's been incredible. So I always walk into things with lots of curiosity and questions and will this work and how does it work? And within about three days. So instantly right away I was like, oh, nothing's happening today. But second day, maybe third day, I started to feel different. I got to sleep quicker. I then woke up instead of to my alarm, I woke up to my Apollo Neuro gently vibrating on my wrist and I was like, wow. I woke up with like shuddering and shaking. It's like, this is great. So it's a very calm wake up. When I was speaking on stages, I would have it for about 30 minutes prior to going on stage, I would have it going off and it was amazing. It got me into really like a centered flow. State is probably the right word for that. So that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi the whole idea of flow, this got me there real quick. And yeah, I've used it in different ways but for me there is a measurable difference in how I feel and how I respond under pressure. Whether that's, you know, my, my six year old pushing my buttons or whatever it might be like I respond in a more calm way. And I felt the more I use it, the more I actually see, see the rewards from that. What I haven't done is measured HRV and measured that kind of stuff. How, how could someone, if someone's very detail and data oriented, a high C personality, how would they be able to measure some of these things?

Okay, so I'm going to unpack a whole bunch there. The flow thing that you mentioned is really interesting because when you're talking about flow and what it means. So the way that Apollo engenders that state of flow that you're talking about, where it makes you more resilient to the stress, makes it easier for you to fall asleep, makes it easier for you to not react, like maintain your composure and not react right or not feel the jitters when you're on stage, which for a lot of people is very stressful.

What'S happening there is those frequencies from Apollo are creating the coherent state between the heart and the lungs that you get when you are in flow. And so it's stimulating the body into that state of recovery. And so from A measurement perspective. The key metrics are heart rate variability, resting heart rate, the amount of sleep you get, the quality of the sleep that you get, are all metrics that can be measured. When we started at the university, at the University of Pittsburgh, we were never trying to necessarily create a product. We were trying to create a new solution which was to help people when they're under stress, actually get back to recovery that doesn't require them to do another thing. And so what we found in the lab was when we created the stress task. So in our first trial was a double blind, randomized, placebo controlled crossover trial where we gave people a task where they had to listen to single digit numbers and add the last two they heard every two seconds for three minutes. It's awful.

Yes, it's awful.

They give this task to astronauts before they go into space to determine their tolerance for futility. So essentially it's like making sure that the guy or gal is not going to freak out and rip the bathroom door off, right? They want to see how well they can deal with repetitive annoying stress. And so it's a really good task to understand one. It's reliably makes people upset. Their sympathetic nervous system goes off. You see heart rate go up, you start sweating, you get brain fog, you can't think, and your performance inevitably goes down. It's like running out of time at the end of a standardized test or being late for being late and can't find a parking spot, right? Like that's the feeling. And what we did was we gave these frequencies, two Apollo frequencies, or what would become Apollo frequencies. Apollo wasn't even a thing yet. And then two dummy vibrations. So like one was a slow tapping and the other one was like a cell phone buzz. That are not like the waves that Apollo makes. The waves that Apollo makes are intended to create these coherent states. So they come and go and they're curated in a specific way to engender these states of safety in the body. Whereas like a cell phone buzz we're familiar with. And slow tapping is like a metronome, right? So like a tap, tap, tap, which is supposed to be relaxing. And then we had no vibration condition. Really interesting is that the no vibration condition and oh, subjects are blinded, researchers are blinded. So no one knows what's happening. The no vibration condition and the two controls, like the slow tapping and the cell phone buzz, the body responds exactly as we would expect it to respond under stress like nothing happened. Their heart rate goes up, they start sweating and they start tanking in performance on their Task with the two Apollo frequencies in this study. This is two frequencies in a lab. We saw effect size start in two minutes. 80% of the population has their HRV go up under stress with just these two frequencies that we're testing. And for everyone who has their HRV go up, their performance goes up by up to 25%, meaning they calm down. Your HRV does not go up when you're stressed out. It doesn't. HRV goes down, heart rate goes up. We saw resting heart rate come back down to their normal baseline level and their HRV improve and their accuracy improve. And so what we did was we created a flow state. People were calmer so they weren't having their mental resources deviated to managing their stress response, which is what happens, trying to control it instead, which is subconscious, they could just attend to the task, which is. What number was that? Okay, I added it. What number was that? I added it. And so they did up to 25% better. I thought this was fascinating. And we subsequently did studies in the lab where we showed that Apollo when compare, when comparing non meditators, like people who don't have meditation experience to people who are experienced meditators, that the non meditators brainwave states with Apollo started to catch up to the meditators in about 10 to 12 minutes. And you think about how long and hard it is to learn to meditate. Same thing with athletic recovery. And so we showed, right, you could then that that trial actually just published athletics trial which demonstrated that Apollo improves heart rate variability in athletes under strain and that it improved performance under strain. And so when you think about physical stress and mental stress at all, your body doesn't know the difference, right? Your body is just responding to something changing in the environment and how well you respond is based on how well you are recovered and the amount of balance you have in your own body. So if you're all tired out, stressed out, you're not going to do as well. We just know that, right? An athlete who didn't sleep the night before is not going to do as well at the game, just not what's going to happen. And so we found in these lab trials was that Apollo was improving cardiovascular metrics under stress, like reducing taking down resting heart rate to a good level, improving heart rate variability and then subsequently improving performance. And I was really fascinated that we could measurably change the body's response within a couple minutes. But what's really compelling and for anybody who's.

Like an at home scientist and they're measuring themselves with an aura ring or Whoop or any number of tools that are out in the market. What was really compelling for me is that, sure, you can show that when you're stressed out, you apply this thing, someone's able to manage the stress better because they're more resilient, they're more recovered, so they can perform better. But what happens over time. And so we did a study with the OURA Ring. So customers that had an Oura ring and also have an Apollo, and what we did there is we looked at a minimum baseline of three months, but most people had about a year of aura data before they introduced Apollo. And what we found is that the people who used Apollo three hours a day, five days a week, which is, you know, our average user uses Apollo more than three hours a day. Like, they're just wet because it's passive and you're just wearing it. Just like, you know your experience, you can, you know, like you're using it for focus or sleep and the program runs. It's not yet another thing you need to do. What we found is that Those folks got 25 to 30 minutes more sleep a night. Their deep sleep improved by 19%. Their REM sleep improved by 14%. Their HRV went up an average of 11%. What you're looking at there is that we showed in the lab. When you're stressed, you apply this thing, you feel less stressed, and you'll do better. But what the OURA Ring study proved was that if you use Apollo consistently, it actually helps to retrain the nervous system to be more resilient over time in the same way that a meditation routine would. That result, which we're publishing, showed that Apollo, when used consistently, actually gives you equivalent benefit to a meditation program over that same time period. For me, when you're thinking about, because I'm a CEO, co founder, I run a fast startup, I've got a zillion projects. I'm on the road all the time. I'm busy and not busy for the sake of it, but I'm really effective. But I am working a lot and I'm physically active, I'm mentally active. Apollo is a tool in my own life that I use regularly. You can look at my username. It's over six hours a day because I use it during the day, just like we saw that Oura Ring study. I use it during the day for focused work. I'm on social and open right now. Right. Which makes me feel a little bubbly and relaxed, but engaged. And then at night, I use the relax and sleep programs. But by doing that, I'm getting essentially the benefit of deep breathing while I'm.

Running a startup, which is. Right.

No, not at all.

Yeah. And so that was really the idea was making this kind of stuff accessible to Right. Where you don't have to be like, oh, well, you need to do xyz. Yes. All those programs. Meditation is super duper important. Breathwork is an amazing tool. All of these are amazing tools. But Apollo is something you can take with you while you're doing everything else and still get the benefit. And what we found is that people who use it actually start to do these other practices more easily because they're feeling calmer and better. And it's way easier to take on a new practice or learn a new skill or dive in with something new when you feel relaxed, when you feel well. Right. If you feel tired and stressed out, the last thing you're going to want to do is they're like, do I really want to go to the gym? I don't know.

Totally. Now I can, I, I set it and forget it. So essentially I've got like five or six programs through the day. And so I've got a wake up program which is gentle and I've got a focus program when I'm working. I've got the one that goes off in the evening which says, hey, it's actually time to start switching your devices off. It's time to start getting down into that kind sleep time, pre sleep routine. So it's really helpful that it is a set and forget thing because I think as high performers, as leaders, you know, many are parents, many have got multiple commitments and responsibilities to have. One thing that you don't need to think about that's great for managing your stress is just, it's invaluable.

Yeah. And that scheduling feature, you're using it exactly right? The scheduling feature where you can set it to like wake you up in the morning, help you go sleep at night. I use it to the schedule specifically that pre bed time turn on. So I have the relax program turn on, you know, about nine o'. Clock. And what's funny about that is it if I'm out and it turns on, it's twofold. One, it's helping my body come down, but it's also going, hey, you're supposed to be at home going to bed. Right. It's like a little bit of a reminder for me too. And I'm like, oh, I can turn it off, I can press, I can take my Hand and press those two buttons and turn it off and ignore it. But it's also like, hey, you made a commitment to go to bed at a certain time, to wake up at a certain time, to have this certain schedule. And it's a reinforcement loop because it's supporting your body into that goal, right? Relaxed unwind before bed and then helping you enter deep states of relaxation for sleep. But it's also that reminder of your commitment to yourself that you're supposed to, you know, take care of your sleep and take care of your recovery during the day. Because if you don't, how are you going to perform the next day? How are you going to be at your peak? Right?

100%. And there's some real tactical uses for it too. So a couple of examples that work for me, that may work for the listener as well. If I'm in a meeting with someone, so we're having a coffee, we're having a meeting, and it's supposed to go for 30 minutes. Often I have my alarm set in my phone and it's really abrupt. It's sometimes a little bit. Feels like a bit rude. I've got it set up on the Apollo so it goes off five minutes before they're meeting. They don't hear it going off. I know that it's letting me know to leave. So then I'm able to say, hey, I've got about five minutes before I have to leave. It's just brilliant. It's helped me a lot.

Oh, wow, that's great. That is really great. I haven't used it like that, but I think I might now. It's like a little silent reminder that nobody else has to know about.

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Yeah, and it's the same on stage. So I sometimes run two and three day programs and there's like four or five different parts throughout the day where I should be wrapping up and stop talking. And instead of looking at a clock or someone coming up and say, james, it's time, I just set this up for the whole day to say, okay, 11 o', clock, it's got to go off. At 1:30, it's got to go off and nobody knows.

Do you know what's really actually quite fascinating about that? You're talking about this tactically, but what you're actually also doing is you're setting an intention with your, your goal with the device and aligning it with a period of time. Right. And so you're saying, like, okay, for this two hours I'm going to be focused, right? I'm going to go get this work done. Or for this next two, three hours, I'm running this program, I'm on stage, I'm working with people, I'm going to set it for this amount of time and then when it turns off one, yes, I know that I'm all done. But the other is that you've set an intention. So every time you get distracted or you're doing something else, like Apollo is very gentle, you know, like you're not something, like you're consciously perceptive of all the time. But do you happen to notice that when you get distracted, you notice the Apollo vibration again?

100%.

Isn't that interesting?

Yeah.

When you're in flow like you've set the attention, I'm going to be social with these people, I'm going to turn on social program and I'm going to run this workshop. And then when you get distracted or an intrusive thought shows up or you start to something in the environment shifts that takes you off of your game. You notice the device again, you notice the vibration again. And that's a reminder also that you said you were going to be present for this moment in time. And you can't let that intrusive thought happen. And so it's twofold, it's supporting the body to recover so that you can manage that intrusive thought more easily, you can manage that distraction more easily. But the other part of it is you go, hey, why do I notice this again? Oh, I'm distracted. Time to pay attention. And it's like, I mean for me one of the best tools for, you know, for me I'm on all the time, like it's like zoom meetings, in person meetings, managing all that stuff. And it's great reminder for me of just how I choose to focus and spend my time very deliberately and then aligning my purpose with something that's supporting my body to be in that state. It's like really great alignment for entering like deep states of flow, doing deep work and making really meaningful connections with people.

And that's what this world needs more of. We have somewhat of a digital dimension. Dementia is the word. I guess I'm looking forward where people are like so distracted. There's this focus dilution and it's global, I mean it's not in specific countries or areas. Like we are so distracted by our phones, so distracted by notifications. And I really feel like this Apollo neuro actually is bridging the gap between, hey, we still got to engage with the world but let's create moments where our parasympathetic nervous system can actually go. Yes, we get to engage and allow our bodies to relax and switches off the amygdala a little bit so they let us know we're safe. I have felt different using it and I'm going to continue to use it and see what the results are over the long term. But certainly for the lift listener that's listening right now that's maybe running a company or you know, they're doing their 50, 60 hour weeks, they've got family commitments. What do you think is probably the number one reason they should get an Apollo and give it a go?

Okay, so you just said Something really interesting, which is that everyone is distracted.

Right? Everyone's distracted. Like, just to have this call, I had to what, Turn my phone on airplane mode. I had to make sure my Slack notifications were turned off. I turned on Dirt Disturb on my computer. I did all these things when we were first setting up just so someone would not go, knock, knock, pay attention to me while I'm talking to you. The world didn't used to be like that before. If we were going to have an interview, we would be in person together in a studio and we'd be talking to each other and we'd have this in depth conversation. There would be no chance that anyone would knock on the door and bother us. Unless a building was on fire, right? Or something was really wrong. Like we would be totally engaged with each other. And now we have to actively take all these steps to protect our attention and protect our time. And your attention is your number one most important resource. How you choose to focus your energy and what you pay attention to is your most important skill. And everything around us is literally going, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock all day long, right? And so what is interesting about Apollo and the reason I use it is because Apollo helps my body be calm while I'm doing everything else. And so I have maximum control over my attention, my focus, my mood. I am present with myself. And when you think about why people choose to do a meditation practice or why people choose to do a breath work practice, or why they choose to do any of these mindfulness practices, or even when you think about, like how cycling or swimming or skiing, any of these repetitive motion exercises where you have a cadence with your breath, like all of these things are intended to create flow. And they're intended to create flow. So you remember flow and you can take flow with you. But that is the practice of meditation. The state of meditation is to be present at all times. When you talk to these Tibetan monks, they're not meditation. My one guy, Segurin Foshe, told me is that meditation is not sitting on top of a rock, on top of a mountain, in a flowing rope. Meditation is being present always so that you are there, focused, in a state of flow at all times in your life, because that's how you are your truest self is that when you are present in yourself and in your body. And Apollo is the way I use it and why I use it is because it makes me present all the time so I can get good, focused work done, feel calm, be a really good leader. Because I'm not Emotionally reactive things happen and we process it and we work through a problem together. Right. Without a big reaction. It's being responsive instead of reactive. And brass tacks. It helps me focus, it helps me sleep. Right. It gives me more energy. I drink less coffee, I drink less booze, you know, and I feel great. My HRV is awesome. But you know, you get down to the why. It's because I'm present all the time.

Yes. The gift of presence. I mean, if we were all to be gifted a little bit more presence in our life, imagine the quality of the work that we would put out, the quality of the relationships we would have, the quality of our health and well being. It would skyrocket.

Yeah. Because you wouldn't feel like you're in a rush. The rush is like the distraction and the stress and the anxiety around getting something done. But if you're in flow, you just do it. You're Nike, right?

Of course. I see a collaboration coming on here.

Yeah. I mean, like when people are like, how, you know, the Air Jordans, Nike, just do it. Like, why did that resonate so much with people? It's because that was about presence and not worrying about who you are or whether you were a good enough athlete or what. Whatever it was, it was about inspiration for yourself.

Right.

And that's what presence is. It's like if you are feeling present and calm and connected with yourself all the time because your body's in a state of resilience, then you can go take care of whatever you want to take care of. You can do whatever you want. Nothing will stand in your way. It's all these other limitations that happen because you're strained.

I totally get it. I resonate. And with your research and studies, what's the cost of not looking after and managing your stress and your well being long term?

Yeah. So that's the bummer, right? So if you don't take care of the stress, and I've seen this, you asked me like what also inspired me in my own life. And you know, I know a lot of overachievers. Right. You know, my father, what you know, was a physician. You know, I have a lot of physicians in my family, a lot of caretakers in my family. And you see what the workload particularly like. And people became more aware of it during COVID Right. Like how much strain hospital people who work in a hospital actually go through. And if you don't get good care of yourself, like if you don't take care of your sleep or notice these changes, people don't necessarily notice. They're like, I have a neck ache. Oh, my stomach's funny, and I really can't eat these certain kinds of food. Or. Oh, yeah, but I wake up in the middle of the night. I guess I just have to get up and do some work and then I go back to sleep. Whatever these different things are, you don't necessarily understand. Oh, I have migraines. You don't necessarily understand that either of these things are caused by stress. Like straight up, let's just call it what it is. Or they're definitely worsened by it. And so when you look at you in the U.S. in the U.S. 20% of Americans are on a prescription medication for sleep. Wow, that's the numbers. 20%. So you think that's wildly underreported. Obviously, 50% say they're taking something to sleep half right. Like, that's insane.

That's nuts.

And then you look at what are all these things that cause morbidity in the United States? And I'll talk about the United States because those are the numbers. I know. But as you mentioned, these are not unique to America, right, Or to us. They're Western problems for the most part, and now they're spreading. When you look at like metabolic disease, diabetes, insomnia, mental health disorders, other disorders of inflammation, reproductive issues, all of these things are either and sometimes caused by or they are significantly worsened by unregulated stress.

In order to feel calmer and have more regulation, you need safety in the body. And Apollo is one way to get there. The other ways to get there are regular exercise, meditation, a good sleep, hygiene.

And I think, why not use all the tools in the toolbox to get you there? The behavioral stuff is super important, but sometimes reality hits and you didn't sleep super well, and you have a lot to accomplish that day. And wouldn't it be nice to have something that supports you in getting those things done and then getting you to sleep the next night? Because ultimately we can optimize for everything that life happens. And so Apollo is there to support you through all of it. When you're doing your best and when things are hard, it's using all the tools in the toolbox to support your body for full recovery so that you can be at your best 100%.

And the one thing, the one word that comes to mind when I think of Apollo is ease. And there's so many products out there and services that are not easy to use, and there's a lot of friction, and I end up just not using them. And they get parked up somewhere and I don't engage. And I think that meditating is something I practice daily and I enjoy it. But I know for a lot of people that's just not something they're going to do. They're not interested. It's too difficult. I get it. Exercise is the same. I like to exercise. Maybe it's not every day, but it's frequently. But again for everyone that's not easy or possible. And I think having a tool that allows your amygdala to just quieten down a little bit and allow you to breathe and relax, to have a tool to do that passively and set it and forget it permanently, I mean, that's just priceless. So I really am excited to see what it does long term and I'm encouraging friends and family to try it as well because it's just incredible. And so I will actually I'll put a link in the show notes. So if the person listening right now, if you, if you'd like to try it, you can go to Apollo Neuro's website and you can use our discount code lead on purpose to get 10% off. But I'm truly excited to see where you take it and the impact that you can make on not only in the US there, but right across the world. It's very exciting.

Yeah. And we do sell, we do sell out the outside the US to, to Europe and Canada, so. And Australia too. So you should be able to get it. But that was a funny thing that you are an interesting thing that you said about, you know, maybe challenging with meditation or exercise, but that there's something that you can take with you and it's passive. That was the whole point of why we decided to go to Touch. Why Apollo is a tool for that uses touch that you can wear while you're doing everything else. Because we wanted a tool that people could use while their kids were screaming in the back of the car while they were late to, you know, to drop them off at practice while they're at work or having a difficult meeting or dealing, whatever they need to deal with. Because meditation and these other practices are great and you should do them, but you have to leave your day to day life to do yet another thing. And people need support with everything else going on. And frankly, when you look at how fast.

In the last 200 years the human experience has evolved. Like we absorb more information in the first 15 minutes of being awake that someone in 1950 absorbed in a whole week. That's kale. Right. We take I think it was like, we take more pictures in two minutes than like, collectively than we're taken in like a whole year in like 60s. Like, it's just like, if you wonder why you're so overwhelmed, it's because there's like a lot going on. And your body.

We've taken a long time to evolve as human beings from a physical perspective. The last 200 years has been an amount of epic change that our body hasn't had a chance to catch up.

For us. There was a purpose and created technology that actually helped restore the body to give us an opportunity to be able to catch up with what's going on, because there's a lot of technology to distract us. And Apollo is essentially there to help you get back in touch with yourself, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, so that you can focus and get good sleep.

Yeah, it's an amazing product that I feel has been developed on purpose, with purpose, and that's really what we are all about. So just one last question I'd love to ask you is if we were to fast forward into the future, many.

Many, many years into the future, it's.

Your last day on Earth. You know, it's your last day. You've been told this is your last day. And someone very near and dear that's very young, young child comes up to you and says, katherine, how do I lead my life on purpose? What advice would you give that young person?

Wow.

That's a serious question.

How. Wow. I'm thinking about it.

I think.

Staying in touch with your gut.

Feelings is. And understanding what they are.

Is probably the most important thing. Because, you know. Right. You know, there's a lot of different voices, there's a lot of different things telling you where to go and what to do and how to spend your time. And there's lots of people to look up to. But you know in your gut, you know in your heart what it is that you want to focus on. You know in your heart what it is that you want to accomplish. And so being really in touch with why you do the things you do, what is your intention, right. And how do you feel aligned with it is key because that's how you know that you've accomplished what you've wanted to do. You're not just doing things or creating things to do. You understand why. You're asking yourself that, why am I doing what I'm doing? Why am I paying attention to why? What I'm paying attention to? Why do I hang out with these people and not those people. Right. Because your purpose, your why should really be the underlying aspect of basically directing everything that you do.

Authentic. Right. And yourself. You're here for you.

That's so beautiful.

I can see that you do that. You know, you've got a brand that is about purpose and is giving back and contributing to humanity. So it's. It's incredible.

Well, thank you so much. Appreciate it now.

So great to connect with you. I feel like we'll have many more conversations as the brand continues to spread throughout the world. And for the listener that's listening, hope you've enjoyed it. I've learned a lot. So I have no doubt that you guys have picked up some stuff today as well. But Katherine, thank you so much for taking the time and sharing Apollo Neuro's story.

Thank you so much for having me. It was a real pleasure.

Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button. And I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks and leaders, it's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.