Doubling Your Energy and Focus: Hacks to Boost Efficiency and Get More Done with Tanessa Shears

Our brains find it easier to commit to things in two week intervals. So what I'll often say to my clients is like, hey, why don't we try this for two weeks? You'll get to the end of two weeks, we'll look at your data, we'll see how you feel. And now you have had both experiences, both feeling what you're feeling now, the inflammation and feeling whatever the result of this is. And you get to choose what you want to keep.

Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy. Yo, yo. Another episode here for y'. All. And this time I'm bringing a new friend named Tennessa Shears on the podcast. Her mission and the reason why I really wanted to bring her on this show is that her whole thing is she helps entrepreneurs who want to optimize their health and energy levels to improve their productivity, success, and all around feeling great. And what she specializes in is sleep, sleep and all these different kind of biohacks that we can do to increase our health and specifically energy levels, because it's gonna make everything feel better. Her whole promise is essentially she helps people double their energy and double focus. So if that sounds like something that sounds pretty damn good to you, I think you're gonna dig this episode. And she's really cool. So she's a kinesiologist, she's a certified sleep certificate science coach, a health consultant, and has been helping specifically entrepreneurs do this, like I said, doubling their energy and focus so you can make more money and live better. So that's what we talk about. That's a lot of the big, big things we're chatting about here. And keep in mind that she is a busy mom as well. And she, she's living kind of this more of a nomad life coming up here pretty soon too. So props to her for that because that's something that my wife and I have been planning on doing pretty soon here with our family and experimenting around the world. Keeping that in mind, I think there's. It's going to open up a lot of things for you in this episode, and I think you're going to enjoy it. So get that notebook out if you are able to, and follow along and would love to hear what you think about this. And definitely go reach out to Tonessa, all of her. Her links. It's all linked up in the show notes. And she's also given away a cool playbook around these bio hacks. You can go find her at tennessa shears.com playbook or drop the playbook and you'll just get to her inner podcast. All right, go hang out with her and I and I'll see you there. All right, Tanessa, we made it happen finally. It'll blip out in the Internet yesterday, so you rock for being flexible. Thank you.

Yeah, all good. Internet hasn't been my friend all the time either.

I get it. This has been telling you this and I mean it, so I'm going to say it publicly. I feel like you're like the perfect guest to, to come on with this. Gets the angle this, the season of this podcast and how I love that. Yeah. And you have this really cool balance of let's do cool stuff in business and, you know, do it with a purpose. Find our Enough like we talked about that. And then really, like, you have a family, you have two daughters, you have a husband, and you're going to be flexible with where you're living, you're lifestyle focused and you're doing. It seems like you're having fun. So.

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's innovating, leading the way of something that's never been done before in our history of families. So it's kind of. It's kind of fun to break the mold, break the boundaries and do something fun.

That's right. So you have a. You have a background in kinesiology. Right. I feel like I should have done that same thing because I'm, like, obsessed with, like, figuring out how to optimize things in my body movement. I've fixed a lot of things with my, like, back pain and all sorts of fun stuff. We won't go there. But I'm like, I don't have any background officially in it professionally, that is, but I feel like I know a decent amount. But, like, you. So is that, like, where you started as your background and then like, how does this kind of work out, bringing you to Biohacking for Entrepreneurs?

Essentially, I started in a swimming pool, if you can believe it. I was a swimming teacher. I paid my way through university by doing swimming lessons four days a week. Freezing cold. And I was like, please, like, I'm so cold. Can I please do anything else? And the supervisors were like, well, if you want to teach the seniors aqua Fit class, like, have at it. And I was like, oh, let's go. And in the process of, like, learning, like, about the body and movement and everything like that, I was like, I need to change something. So I walked into the registrar's office at the university, and I was like, I shall not be a newscaster, a broadcaster anymore. I am going to be a kinesiologist. And so I switched my major. And then as soon as I graduated in 2013, I opened a personal training business, which took off really fast, and it was great, but 33 client hours a week on the floor, plus marketing, plus programming, plus admin. It was a lot. So just Naturally, in about 2015, I started moving online and noticed a lot of my clients were entrepreneurs. And I was like, what's going on, you guys? Like, why are you all entrepreneurs? And they're like, you know, we came to you to fit our jeans better, but I'm sleeping better. I'm more focused at work. I'm in a better mood. I'm more productive. And I was like, this is it. It's. Our brains are our biggest asset here. And if we can actually think about health as optimizing that instead of just our waistline, like, what might that create for our energy and our life and our focus?

Good stuff. Yeah, that's. Because that's where I learned a lot of this stuff was in these CrossFit gyms. And luckily, you know, have a lot of friends there. They own the gyms, fortunately. Yeah, it's. It's a rough business. It's. It's tough. And not a lot of margins, of course, unless you do it right. I mean, there's ways to do it, but scaling online, I think you did a good move there. And. And niching down to entrepreneurs, I think is such a. This is what empowers me. Like, we're all driven people, you know, like, we have visions. We want to complete something and do it our way. And I feel like our way usually pushes us or can push us too far to burnout, overwhelm, stress, anxiety, and then that can then be reflected on our. Our kids, our spouses, and obviously our business. Too. So it's all connected.

Yeah, totally. I thought that was kind of so important going into the rebirth of my business. Like, when I went online, it wasn't like a. An immediate switch was I would drop out a day of personal training and bring in a day online, and it would slowly switch over time. But I knew, like, this iteration of the business, I'm not building like, the last one, because I want different things for my. I want to be location independent, I want kids. And that's going to have to come into play when I'm making decisions about how I'm structuring programs, my communication with clients, all of that kind of stuff. So it really shaped the business I have now for sure.

Smart. Yeah. You went through the. The fire, you know, no pun intended. Cause I know that's. Walk me. Like, did you. I guess your personal journey into this, like, when it comes to focusing on your energy, you know, sleep is a big one, but there's things like inflammation. I have some stories there about myself, and I know the powers of that. But I'm curious of, like, was there, like, a transformative moment for you that. And obviously you helped a lot of people. That could have been it, but maybe personally.

Yeah, it's not as, like, a big of a story as I think our usual transformation stories are, but I can tell you the moment that it pivoted for perfect. I decided to get a Fitbit when I was pregnant the first time, so about four years ago now, because I decided I was going to be the fittest pregnant lady with all the steps. Nobody told me about the pelvic pain that was coming down the road, and it pretty much sidelined me. And I was like, well, what else does this Fitbit do? And I was like, why is it telling me I'm not getting enough sleep? I sleep great. What are you talking about? Because I was the person at the time specifically, that, like, if I heard anything about sleep, my brain went, I'm fine. Next. And I find so many people do that too, because we. What we think is fine. Anyways, having looked at this watch, I was just like. Like, wait a second. And that's when I really started, you know, poking into all the different elements of sleep and heart rate and what it does and all of these things. And then naturally, I graduated to the aura ring, and the whole. My whole world just opened up. I was like, whoa, this is what's going on in my body while I sleep. And it just became so interesting when you could start tying that directly to productivity in your Work to amount of time saved when you're doing creative tasks. And when I could start to see that, I was like, this link is too powerful not to talk about.

Interesting. Yeah, it's, it's similar to when I finally started using, you know, Apple Watch. And there's some really cool apps on there. There's one weltary that I use and you know, it's again, comes down to the sleep. I feel like that's like the key metric which I want to dive into. But you mentioned like heart rate, like hrv, heart rate variability. Like I didn't realize how important that is. Even with our breath like steady in, steady out and how that affects our heart. But then how we can kind of almost train ourself in a lot of situations.

Oh, so good. And if you're listening right now, you're like, what is a heart rate variability? Which I know that was me the first time. It's like, it's basically a metric that can actually give you an indication of if your body is recovering well during the night. Like if you're in fight or flight or rest and digest and if you know whether to push the next day or take a bit more breaks. Like the amount of insights that we can get through technology now into what is happening during our recovery time is something I think that just nobody's talking about yet, especially as it relates to business.

So let's start there because I know seeing you talk about the OURA ring a lot, I don't have one, but maybe I will soon and maybe, you know, talk on the OURA ring, but talk about some of these other devices, Apple Watch or other Fitbit like things out there that could be helpful.

Yeah. So I mean, honestly, a really great place to start is with what feels comfortable and affordable. Like a Fitbit luxe is like $85. It's just what I think of as an entry point gives you the majority of the data you need. Now comparing that to an OURA ring, the only difference really there is the OURA ring data is validated by ECG data. So if they stuck bunch of electrodes on your chest, it's validated up against that. So it is like we think of as like the most accurate. However, it has a lot of data on it and can be very overwhelming, especially if you're just like wanting to poke in and see what's going on. My always my push for having something like this is we like to think of these as like gadgety things that are just like fun to look at and we don't do anything with it. But the way I think of this is, is like imagine I gave you a credit card and you just went spending on it, but you had no idea. Like, I don't know, am I over my limit yet? Am I going to get declined soon? Has the balance been paid off? Like, if you no access to online banking, you would have no idea what was going on with your money. This Oura ring, this Fitbit, whatever it is, is the way to your brain and how it's performing and how it's recovering. So I don't think of it as like, you know, a fun little side gadget. I think of it as an investment in my business. Like, I now know what days to push. I know what days are going to be productive. I know what days to schedule, a longer lunch. And I think it's just by really being not only in tune with your body, but knowing what to do with the data.

I like that. Yeah. And data as in business. So key, what are the KPIs, what are the metrics that we're going to, to actually figure out if we're doing the right thing or not?

Right. And if you think about it from like a return on investment standpoint, like we go on the Internet and there are 500 health habits that we all should be doing, but how do you know what actually works for you? And I think that, that like, if we tie it back to like if you run a Facebook ad, you want to know that you're making more money out than you put in or what's the point? I think the same thing with health habits. Like if you're going to set a goal, whether that be so many workouts per week, you want to eat a certain way, you want to sleep a certain amount of hours, like, are you seeing the improvement in the data that warrants you keeping that habit, spending time putting into it? Right. So think of it from a return on investment standpoint. Like, I want to know what's working and where to put my time.

Yeah. And I guess figure out what's our goal as well as I know like a lot of what you put out there is double your energy and double your focus. Right. Like, so there's a clear connection there. That is for us entrepreneurs to create and grow our businesses, but also still be present in what we're doing in our lives.

Yeah, totally. I mean, there's nothing better than hearing from someone that's like, like, I had no idea that you weren't supposed to feel so tired in the Morning all the time. I had no idea that afternoon energy crash. There are things to mitigate or eliminate that. And it's so fun. I feel as entrepreneurs we look at, around, at each other and we're all like, we're all tired. It's normal. But like I love to just like let's question that. Do you want that to be normal for you? And that's where I really like to start opening that of like, what would it look like if we took your brain capacity up 10%? If you were 10% more energized, 10% clearer? What happens if we build on what would your life look like, your business look like, your relationships, your mood? Like so many things are affected by your brain health.

I love it a hundred percent. And sleep, I guess like I really want to hone in on that first. And I know that's one of your, the things that you talk about a lot which so important because like tracking with the watch has completely changed my mind. And sleep, like I never tracked it every single night like that and, and realize, okay, well I was averaging like six hours, which I know is not enough for me or most people. I saw your stat. I think it's like, like point zero, zero point four or something. Percent yes, it is.

You're right.

Yeah. So I did a little bit of research but like I just knew getting the extra hour or two is like completely changes everything. And I didn't like, I always saw the stats, hey, you should probably get six to six to eight hours. You know, it's a big range though. And tracking definitely helped me realize, okay, how much deep sleep am I getting? But there's all these metrics, of course. But I think my metric that I took away really was like, I feel better. I'm not as cranky, I'm way more focused, not crashing in the afternoon and I take a little, little nap here and there, you know, or at least like chill out for like 10 minutes. I want your, I want to get your opinion on sleep and maybe we'll touch on naps too. It seems like you're into those.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Sleep is the single best thing you can do for your brain in terms of like looking at longevity and how your brain ages and how your brain will age and also right now how it's performing. I mean, we've all woken up in the morning and felt like we needed this big startup process. A couple cups of coffee. Felt like we sat down at our desk and things were going like, how much are we spending? Trying to feel more Energized. When we really just think about getting better sleep. And it's something that we do for a third of our lives, yet we know so little about. And I, I'm a huge fan of just thinking that the amount of quality of sleep that we get directly correlates to the type of entrepreneur we're going to be. And I'll give you an example. During those early morning hours, we get the most of our dream sleep, which is our REM sleep, rapid eye movement. Well, eye levels of rapid eye movement sleep have been correlated with creativity and ability to solve problems. What is our job as entrepreneurs? Solve big problems, come up with creative ways to do it, get your clients results. And our ability to think outside the box is created during that REM sleep. So if we are missing that, we're not going to solve problems. And then on top of that, we take into account that when we have good REM sleep, we can read each other's facial and body expressions so much better. So in my role as a consultant, I want to see if my client, are they leaning in? Do they get it? Are they leaning back? Do they look confused? Do I need to break that down? Do I need to explain it again? And my ability to read that is going to make me a better coach. Right. And so I'm piling all these things up. And then the cherry on the cake, like your ability to manage your emotions comes from REM sleep. We've all woken up with not enough sleep and felt irritable. We've all had an unexpected event pop into our calendar and felt like we spiraled out a little bit. Overwhelmed. We got a negative troll on Instagram. Something like that. I want to show up in integrity with my business. I want to respond in a way that reflects my values. And I can't do that if I'm spinning out an overwhelm and, you know, losing my cool over something like that. So your ability to maintain yourself emotionally is fostered while you are in REM sleep. So when I say like, it directly correlates to you as a business owner. It does. That's just not something I'm willing to, like, jeopardize.

No. And I never know the specifics about REM sleep. And yeah, I know it's what it's towards the tail end of your sleep. So I guess how do we optimize for REM sleep? Right. It seems like that's kind of like the 8020. Obviously we're not like hacking, tracking sleep now and trying to shorten it, but what are some best practices based off of what you just said?

Yeah. So the first thing that we look at is the information you're giving your brain before bed. Now, one of the things that has been shown in research over and over again to affect levels of REM sleep is actually light exposure before bed. Now, we've all heard a hundred times, like, don't look at your phone before bed. But when my brain understood why, I was like, ooh, I can get behind that. So think about this. Before we had indoor electricity, we relied on the sun's position in the sky to tell our brain and our bodies when to get going on these hormones that help us with sleep. So the sun gets low in the sky, it gets dim, it gets red and orange. But what do we do at night is we stare into these bright white blue devices, which actually tell our brain to stay awake. So what we want to think about doing is, like, with the environmental light in our home, can we drop to table lamps? Can we turn the wattage down? Can we dim it? Maybe swap a bulb or two for orange? Like, we're really looking at creating that indoor sunset. Because when they were comparing two different groups that were reading before bed, there was an iPad reading group and a book reading group, they found that the group that was reading on the iPad had a delayed melatonin ris, which basically means sleep hormone took way longer to ramp up, which means less time and quality sleep. And on top of that, it took them up to two to three days for that effect of that light exposure to finally pass. So it's called your digital hangover. So we think, you know, one night up on our phone before bed, but it's impacting you for two or three days. So we really want to start to take this seriously when we're talking about REM sleep, because REM sleep is what gets hit the hardest by blue light before bed.

Interesting. Is that the case with the night shift mode as well on iPads and iPhones? Sure.

That's helping too much. Yes and no. Know, because there's the color component of it, right? But even really bright red light can affect melatonin production. So we have to kind of play that, like, really dim and the reds, tones, reds and orange. But something that I kind of find is a halfway point, like, we want to stay up and watch a movie. I actually have a pair of glasses that have red lenses in them. And, I mean, it's weird. And TV's not quite the same. However, I really like feeling good on a daily basis, so I'M willing to sacrifice.

You've adapted.

Adapted. It feels like I'm on Mars after 8pm it's all good.

My wife's had to because I've had like Dave Asprey. He's been on the podcast in the past and he's always been a proponent of the glasses. And yeah, it's like not until you actually put them on. Or even like some of the bulbs in my house are leds, but, you know, change them to red or dim them at night. And yeah, my wife was definitely hesitant to that at first. But Heather, if you're listening, I know you've changed. It's.

But it makes better sleep because of it.

She has like no problem sleeping. It's more like. Well, I guess maybe I'll ask a selfish. But it's probably very related to light. But it's like I always find myself wanting to stay up a little later. And you know, it's like I just feel like, I don't know, the brain gets a little bit more active, but I think really gets into, you know, it's, it's this thing and I guess for like night owls, because I know a lot of entrepreneurs feel like they have this creative boost or something in the evening and they're like, oh, wow, you know, and it throws off all the schedules, especially if there's kids in the house. So what would you say to those types of people?

Ooh, I got two answers for you. I think in solid number of people, it's their evening habits that are pushing their bedtime later. And I'm not just talking about light, but I'm talking about late night exercise, I'm talking about late night eating, all of these things keeping the temperature really warm. Like all of these things are things that cue you to stay awake. So I think there's a large part of the population that their late night owl tendencies are really just habits that are. Are pushing the boundary.

I would agree with that. For me at least.

Yeah, so, but, but there's a whole category of people. You heard the word chronotype before.

Yeah.

Okay, so just to kind of give you a brief idea, chronotype is your body's genetic leaning to being an early person or a morning person. Now, there was a book that was written by Dr. Michael Bruce. It was called the Power of When. And he has a quiz, free quiz on his website. And it takes a bunch of personality traits and will cross reference those with what it believes is your chronotype and it'll tell you, hey, you probably operate best in the early morning or late at night. And that was fun. But over the last like four months, Oura Ring has brought in a feature that takes three months worth of sleep, wake data, temperatures, movement, all of that kind of stuff and tells you where you are best optimized to sleep for best energy. And I gotta tell you, it's been really accurate with that quiz. Like my optimal wake up time is 4:56am and my optimal bedtime is 8:56pm I have a client who's 11:56pm bedtime and 8:00am wake up. And since he let go of that, like I should be going to bed earlier, I should be waking up at 6 because that's what the productivity gurus say. He feels so much better because his body was designed to do that. It wasn't designed to be what my chronotype is. So there's that difference in there we gotta account for.

Interesting. Yeah. Some of these little things from the Weltry app based off of that and it's always sent. Yeah. Suggesting a little later for me. I really want to get the Oura ring so I think that I would love to compare hair, you know and especially since I'm sure it is more tapped in with for whatever reason, I'm sure there's pulse and temperature and all that stuff it's reading right. So.

Yeah. So the interesting thing about the Oura Ring is it reads more consistently throughout the night of data. I know that there's a lot of these devices you can look into kind of how they measure heart rate data, but they'll measure in segments throughout the night. And if for example, you measure it during REM sleep, you're going to get different data than if it was measured during deep sleep. Where some of the devices like the aura, they measure it consistently throughout the night. They don't choose chunks, so it could be more accurate. But be happy to nerd out about data anytime.

Yeah, I mean that's, it's all based off of data and that's where I think the biggest thing is to start tracking these things. Like so tracking our heart rate tracking. And I guess for like, are there other. Yeah, Oura Ring is great. I'm just thinking of other metrics that we should be aware of. Like HRV is when we mentioned. Is there anything else on that that you think is important to cover on, like how we can really optimize that? Like I mentioned breath work. I don't know if you know or do a lot of that with. In everything you do.

Yeah. Yeah. There's There are so many things that you can do to affect your heart rate variability. And so if you're measuring heart rate variability, one of the things I think we need to talk about right off the bat is like what a lot of us like to do is be like, mine is so low. How do I get it bigger? Like, how do I raise it Right? Because higher HRV is associated with more relax, rest and digest. But no two people's data is comparable. Your HRV and mine have nothing to do with each other. So your baseline is good for you. My baseline is good for me. And actually, actually as much as we all hear that we want to get better at that. What you actually want is resilience and this idea of quicker recovery. So here's a really good example. Let's say you got a good workout and you know those ones that leave you physically drained for like two or three days?

Oh yeah.

That is a sign of resilience. That takes three days. But what if we could get your body recovery in two days or in one day? So we actually, what we look for is a sign stable heart rate variability. That doesn't fluctuate very much. That is a sign of someone who is being quite resilient.

Interesting. Okay. Yeah. And the whole resilience factor, that's cool. That's something I know that you talk a lot about as well as building resilience. I'm sure sleep is the foundational piece. It sounds like, okay, start there, right. For thinking 80, 20, but. But yeah, with workouts, because that could completely drain you. Even if it's in the morning, you know, as compared to night, it could energize you and throw everything off. I've experienced that. I'm sure we all have. But yeah, in terms of resilience, I guess how does that optimiz health? I mean that translates completely to our emotional state and how we focus in business. So guess let's talk about that. Like how what are ways to build resilience outside of just sleep alone? What are some other techniques?

So we want to look at in general keeping inflammation in the body lower. And one of the big ways a lot of inflammation creeps in for a lot of us is food. Right. And looking specifically, one of the things that I like to target first off is talking about, I'm going to say fancy word, don't worry about it. It's glycemic variability, basically what's going on with your blood sugar. So so many of us hear the word blood sugar and we're like, I don't have diabetes. I'm good. But here's the thing. When we eat food, specifically carbohydrates, our blood sugar shifts and changes. Now, when you get a giant rise in blood sugar, it comes with a giant drop, and that often causes a lot of the energy crashes we experience. But when we eat foods that keep blood sugar high too long, that's when inflammation starts coming in. And we're talking about things like, you know, processed foods are a good one. Baked goods, things with a lot of, like, dense flowers and sugars and stuff like that. So what we're trying to do is if we want stable energy and we want focus and we want our body to be resilient, we need to be giving it things that keep our blood sugar stable. And the simple way to think about that is whole foods. Look at your plate. Did it come from the ground? Did it have a mother? Those are good sources of whole foods.

That's a good way to put it. I like that.

Yeah.

And I'll add something, because I've been studying a lot of. And I have old business partners who's launching something in the ayurvedic space where it's all about inflammation, you know, and managing that. And he was the first one to tell me Amish Shah is his name. So he'll be on the podcast shortly. If y' all are listening. I know you are, but is. He told me he's, like, cut out dairy. Like, think about cutting dairy out for me. I would have lattes in the morning, you know, espresso maker and stuff. I'd make one for my wife and my daughter as well. Just milk for her. But, like, I was like, oh, my God. Okay, this. I tried it, Tried it for, you know, a good two months. And, like, this extra kind of phlegm went away, but also, really is brain fog, like, more than anything. And I don't want to touch dairy really anymore, especially not the milks or ice cream or, you know, like. And there are things that I think a lot of us just do for granted, you know, I know grains and gluten can also trigger a lot of people with brain fog. What can we talk about there? Like, because that's all related to inflammation and, like, it shows up in so many ways, and our gut health. I know. Is part of it, too.

Yeah. I love what you said there, and you're right. It's so individual, and I think that's why I love to bring it back to this biohacking aspect of, like. Like, how does this affect me In a study of one. Because like we said, there's a lot out there. How do we know what's working for us? I had a client and we would. We pulled out gluten. I like to do things in experiments because I feel like our brains have a little trouble committing to like a life without dairy. If it's like, right, I've just slapped.

Over the face a few times, like.

What are we talking about here? But our brains find it easier to commit to things in two week intervals. So what I'll often say to my clients is like, hey, why don't we try this for two weeks? You'll get to the end of two weeks, we'll look at your data, we'll see how you feel. And now you have had both experiences, both feeling what you're feeling now, the inflammation and feeling whatever the result of this is, and you get to choose what you want to keep. And so this client of mine, we took gluten out and her hrv, her baseline actually increased, which basically means her body is experiencing lower inflammation.

Right.

And then she went back to gluten and it dropped again. Like, it was very obvious how well tied that was. And HRV is a wonderful measurement to use when you're making these changes. Was that good change? Did my body adapt well to that stressor or did it respond well? But yeah, gluten is one. I've had clients that have not done well with nightshades. So think of like peppers, potatoes, things like that. Everything is so different. Like for me, my two no foods, believe it or not, are broccoli and quinoa. They give me wicked stomach aches. And that's what it means about individuality. Like, we can't say one good food is good for everyone or one bad food is bad for everyone. That's why I love the testing it.

That's true. Yeah. And I. There's. I know there's a bunch of tests, but one was called Viome, which I forget the. The founder of it. But yeah, you essentially send a sample and it's your gut biome. And. Yeah, and this one's in an app and it tells you exactly the foods to avoid, which ones are superfoods. And it was like completely polar opposite of my wife. You know, something like. Oh, I would have never known. Some were obvious, but some were like, huh, tomatoes. What?

Well, you know what the interesting thing is about those is I had a gut health, health specialist on my podcast and she said something that I was like, whoa, I've never considered that about These tests. She was like, well, if you think about it, if you're eating all this junk, processed food, of course your gut is going to be inflamed. And when your gut is inflamed, it's going to react more to everything. So if you have. If you're in this place right now where you're eating a lot of junk food or it's really processed, and then you're going to test and you're going to be more sensitive to things. So she said what her process would be to do would be to. To actually clean up what we're eating, do the things we know that are healthy in general, which are, you know, remove the processed foods, get hydrated, and then at that point, test to see what you're actually responding to instead of having it just be like a tornado of, like, everything setting everything off. I thought that was a cool distinction she made.

It is. I like that. And it takes the pressure off of us as well. And. And I like it. You also said, like, don't try to just do everything at once, because, A, you can't even track it that way, you know, and. But B, just let us establish some habits, some new habits, healthy habits that aren't going to stress us out because obviously that'll change your HRV and your focus in general. And I'm a big believer in habits. There's a group of guys that, like, we're all keeping ourselves accountable for daily habits. We kind of went bonkers and there's like 12 every day. But at the same time, it's like, I could see the ones that are sticking more naturally and which ones need more work. I think everybody has that.

That.

What are some other habits that, like, that you've noticed? Because obviously the food and sleep are huge habits. But for entrepreneurs specifically, that have kept their energy levels high, their focus on point, just feeling great.

Yeah. One of my favorite ones is looking. You know, it's funny, it always goes back to these same things. You know, we talked about light exposure at night.

Yeah.

Light exposure in the morning. So when we wake up, what makes us feel alert is we get a big pulse of cortisol. Now, cortisol gets a bad rap, but we don't have cortisol. We're going to feel really groggy in the morning. We want a pulse of it. Now, when you go outside and view natural light as soon as you can in the morning, what that does is it drives up that cortisol even further and enhances alertness, and it sets your whole Body clock for the day so that you start getting tired at the right time. And I find a lot of what we do is we sit inside and we think, hey, my kitchen lights are on. These things are bright. But I've nerded out to the point where I have downloaded something called a lux meter on my phone. It measures the brightness of light. Light. I pointed at the lights in my kitchen that I thought were so bright they Clocked in at 150 lux. Walked outside on a cloudy day, a thousand on a cloudy day.

Cloudy Vancouver day.

Yeah. So on a sunny day it can get up to 20,000 lux. So feels like similar brightness is not what our brain is registering. So if we really want to shift into better mood, alertness, focus, energy, I love to recommend if it's a nice clear day, we get outside 5, 10 minutes. Like walk your kids to the bus stop, take the dog out, sit on the iro's. Writing my newsletter on the deck this morning in the sun. I love doing stuff like that. That's super simple. Or just like head out for a walk. That's another good one. I love in the morning. 10 minutes does not need to be long. But such a good thing you can put in the beginning of your day.

I love it. Yeah. And it's every chance I can get to get away from the screen. At least in my office. Love my office. Have a light looking right at me. But I know it's not the lux level. And yeah, I find myself on the deck all the time. Either research and stuff or writing. And yeah, I know like Andrew Huberman definitely popularized the whole like viewing of sun in the morning. And there have been memes and all this people making fun of it. But I'm like, if you actually do it and do it religiously exactly how you said, like doesn't take long. And unfortunately I live kind of like right below the horizon. So I don't get like right at that point. But if I'm staring at like I feel a difference in my brain, like it almost goes all the way back. I'm like, oh my God, I'm like pumped. Even if the night wasn't that great. Like sleep wise.

Yeah, right. Because there's things like I think we have to account for that. Just what you said, like you've got little ones ones or little one? Little one soon I've got little ones. And for me I can't control if someone's up sick in the middle of the night. Like so I have to have tools in my toolbox to Kind of give me the boost in the morning if I couldn't control the things that were disrupting my sleep at night. That is one of them. The other one actually I really like to do. I like to manipulate my temperature on purpose. So when you increase your core temperature, it signals to your body, we're on our way up during the day, temperature is going up, alertness go up, all of that. That happens very similar to viewing the light. And there's a couple ways you can do this. You can manipulate your body temperature through movement. So stretching, yoga, go for a walk, do your workout in the morning. Drives temperature up. Everyone feels more alert after a workout in the morning. Right. But the other one actually is getting in a cold shower. It's kind of counterintuitive, right? But like cold water on the outside of the body. Body says this is cold, let's heat it up in here. So that like a little 60 second jolt on the end does amazing things for your dopamine levels and your norepinephrine. And it's all these little hacks you can put in your toolbox and be like, this is going to be my day. I've got stuff to do today. Let's fire up the brain.

I'm with you on that. That's one of the habits on my list is cold shower. 90 seconds and I'm San Diego. I don't have the coldest water through the pipes here, so gotta get a plunge. But I would imagine Vancouver, you know, a lot colder. But at the same time it's like, yeah, like if you wake up with a little headache, which I did today, I felt like the sleep wasn't as great. Well, guess what? Cold shower. And I did a WIM HOF HOF breathing sessions and it's like boom, boom. It just snaps it all out. And yeah, the cold showers are just like they're integral to every morning for me. I'll add something in there. And this is because of actually understanding what you said with the body temperature is like a hot tub or spa session. I have one of those, but in the evening. So it's like the opposite of the cold shower. So yeah, it's what it's. Your body is trying to lower the temperature so it's making you more sleepy essentially.

Yeah. Well. And you know what's funny? Picking up on what you said about the WIM HOF breathing. It's a type of breathing designed to engage your fight or flight system. Right. I like to wrap this and to bring our conversation back to resilience. Is like, I think, like it's not only just about eliminating stress because I don't think that's a thing. As an entrepreneur, I think it's a kind of a futile cause to try to eliminate. I like increasing our capacity to hold stress so the same amount of stress does not set off the same response. So one of the ways I do that is I look at different methods of increasing good stress on our body. So Wim Hof breathing is a wonderful way to put your body in that, that state. Cold showers, excellent saunas, doing exercise. All of these ways to intentionally put stress on your body so that you can become resilient and positively adapt to it translates directly to the amount of stress we can tolerate and still keep our cool and maintain our flow during the day.

Ooh, I like it. And it's all about the flow, right? Like if you get out of that flow, then there's just friction all over the place. Yeah, like flow research. The Flowman himself had Steven Kotler on the podcast and he's, he does all of his research around flow. And yeah, it's, it's basically nailing on a lot of the points that you've talked about here. And yeah, there's just so much science and if you get out of the flow, it's just like everything gets a little tougher. So these biohacks, I mean they're game changing for not only in business, but our lives and to be happy and showing up. Not always just happy, but I would say more of like a content, you know, finding that, that middle ground between the stressors in business and life and also the peaks, you know, the happy, joyful moments, but kind of coming back to center all these, these tax, you know, biohacks have really helped us. Tell me about like some next steps because like if people want to dive in with you, I know you have a cool. I think you have a biohack like checklist thing. So tell us about that and some other ways that they can find you and follow what you're doing.

Yeah, well, if you're like a one hack a day kind of person, you want to learn about it. My podcast, Becoming Limitless is like a deep dive in all the science you'd want to know and how to apply it. That's a good place to start. But beyond that, I've taken the 12 hacks that I really feel have the punch to them, meaning they're the cold showers of this, a little bit behind the why. And I've put them together in what I call my entrepreneur's playbook. 12 Ways to Biohack your energy. And it'll really help with those productive mornings and those high energy days in your business. You can grab that on my website@tennessashears.com this little free trainings at the top. Click on that. You'll find it.

I love it. And then also I just want to wrap up before this is or is it or after this. That is the whole travel that you're doing with your family. I want to shout that out really fast because. Because like we mentioned, we're doing things differently as entrepreneurs. Is you have a family of four and you're going away to do some cool traveling to slow down specifically you said slow living. I was like, ooh, I like that. Maybe you can give us a little bit of insight and almost like a teaser of how you've structured that to happen for you and your family. Because I know you have two young ones too. Just want to share like that's another way to add to the lifestyle as an entrepreneur and still, you know, really create a solid business financially and with a family here.

Yeah, I actually did like a full hour long podcast on this. So if anyone wants the full story, have at it over there.

Go there. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

But we did was we. We decided, it was about a year and a half ago that we wanted the opportunity to have my husband at home. That's actually where it started. Right. He was a full time mechanic at Lexus and we had decided that how can we figure out how to get him home? So what we ended up doing was we, we. Here's the caveat to this. When you have energy and you don't feel so exhausted at the end of the day, you can pursue these ideas and things and you can have the energy to research things and spend time in projects. And this is how this started, is we were just like, what do we want to do with this time? And so we ended up finding a strategy that helped us reach fire, which is an acronym for financial independence Retire early, which means that our investments completely cover our living expenses. So my business is now obviously profitable, but really for fun now he started a business business because we were able to actually have him quit his job last June. And so what this did for us was it opened up this door of like, well, he's location independent, I'm location independent. What do we want to do? So we, you know, looked at the map and we picked Panama and we've decided that we want to just go and follow the sun and we're not just going on a vacation. I find when we go on vacation, it's like, hurry up and relax. Hurry up and relax. Don't check work. We got to be able to relax. But what we're doing is. Is, yeah, we're taking our life and moving it to Panama. We're still going to be working, but it's going to be a slow version of it. Meaning, like, I have designed my business so I'm not always at my computer. Just a really slow way to kind of enjoy our family and spend time together and bring up our. Our girls in the world being educated by different cultures and experiences around them. And it's just. I'm so excited. We leave in, like six and a half months from now, and I'm all kinds of nervous. It's a big trip to plan, but.

It'S going to be fun.

Fun.

It's gonna be fun. I love it. Yeah, no, I. I wanted to put that in here because I feel like that's what us entrepreneurs, a lot of us with lifestyle type of businesses are. Aim for it. It's possible. And yeah, love the fact that you retired your husband and he started something as well. Location independent. I think a lot of us find ourselves in that mode now. So think. Think a little expansively here. And, and yeah, even with kids, like, this is when, you know, we have the two of them and they're old enough maybe next year that we're thinking about doing something similar two, three months abroad. So I think it's just a cool way to expand it everything, you know.

Oh, totally, totally. Especially with young kids. Like, our. Our thought was like, can we do two months away, four months back to. And just keep alternating this, right? And like, I haven't gotten to travel much and he hasn't, so, like, we can see the world and still have it. And I think when we get out of that mindset of, like, things have to be one way, you really start to explore other options. And like, I think the way we ended up this position now is never what we would plan. It kind of just came about in a roundabout way way, but it's a lot of fun.

Hey, that's how it should go. Go with the flow, right? Y. All right, Tanessa, this is great. Go to Tennesseers.com and go get the. The free. The free guide there for biohacking. But also, I know you have a whole program that deep dives on this and it looks pretty epic. I was. I was reading it yesterday too. So definitely, if you love this stuff, go check her out and go dive in and check out the podcast. So appreciate your time and again being flexible with me, but this is. It's opened my mind to even more REM sleep. That's my big takeaway. I'm gonna go study that further and get an overall ring.

Oh, I love it. Make sure you nerd out on the data with me when you get it.

I will. All righty. Have a good one. All right. All right. That's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But you know, work can be fun and it should be fueling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you just noodling on right now, please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list writing a review or whatever it might be. Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast and I will see you next time.

Sam.