083. How to Sleep Your Way to Greater Productivity with Tanessa Shears

Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck, and this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom one business at a time. All right, welcome, everybody, to the podcast. I'm so excited that you're here with us today. I have a really special guest and I'm going to introduce her very quickly, and we're just going to jump right in. I have Tennessa Shears here today, and we met in a mastermind in the past, and she reached back out to me, and I'm so glad she did because she's a kinesiologist, a certified sleep science coach, and a health consultant who helps entrepreneurs double their energy and focus so they can make more money in their business. With her 12 becoming limitless protocols, she works closely with business owners to eliminate brain fog and wake up well rested so they can get more done in less time, maintain consistent, stable energy throughout the day, and feel better than they have in years. And Tenessa is also the host of the Becoming Limitless podcast and where she shares her expertise in optimizing health and focus for business success. So I'm so glad you're here. And it's so funny because I'm feeling kind of tired today. So truth be told, I'm like, oh, this is perfect to talk about.

So welcome. Thank you. I love just when things show up right when we need them sometimes.

I know, I know. Well, and it's all my own fault because I am playing hockey twice a week during the summer. And the games, like, I don't get home till, I don't know, 10 or 10:30, which on a normal night, I'm like, in bed by 9:30. And so then I come home, I'm all hopped up on adrenaline and I'm stinky. I got to take a shower. And so it's like, it gets late. And that's probably not helpful for my days following, but it is what it is. So.

Yeah, absolutely. And we can always address some fun things that we can do to help wind down your brain a little faster. Because I totally get that, like, we're all humans, we have other things outside of just sleep. And sometimes it's night out with friends, sometimes it's playing hockey. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. So I love this idea of. Really?

And we. You were.

We were talking a little bit before we started recording about your podcast, but I love this idea that you talk about in Your podcast about biohacking for entrepreneurs. So tell us a little bit more about what that means and what that work is like.

Yeah. So first off, don't go Google biohacking because you'll get everything. You will get all the extreme stuff of, like, people like doing cryotherapy and like, re injecting stem cells. But biohacking in its essence, if you're looking at what it means, it's, we're essentially optimizing our own bodies from the inside out. And we're doing it on an experiment base. And the whole purpose is more brain clarity, more energy, longevity and focus. So it's really like an experiment study of one where I find, like, there's so much health advice that's just like, yes, you should get 10,000 steps per day, but why? And in biohacking, you're really like, how does this apply to me and how does this affect. And a lot of us, like, I love doing biohacking with wearable technology. Like, a lot of us now wear Apple watches or Fitbits. My preference, right, my preference is an aura ring. So I'm actually wearing a ring that tracks all my stats specifically. But when I go and implement a health habit, I am looking at it the same way I look at my business. I am asking, am I getting a return on my investment? We do it with Facebook ads, we do it with content, we do it with all this stuff we're looking at, did I get engagement? Is are people resonating with this? Am I getting a return on ad spend? So we want to do the same thing with our health. If I'm going to go implement a health habit, I want to see, is this directly affecting the quality of my sleep? Is it helping me sail through that afternoon energy with my energy, instead of hitting a slump, am I waking up feeling more refreshed? So when we're looking at biohacking specifically, I'm asking the question all the time, is this habit affecting me the way I want it, and is it allowing me to show up the way I want in my life and my business? So that's where I come from, really looking at all the different strategies and how we can really optimize the way our brain and our body works?

Yeah. So what have you found so far that's kind of common among many of us six and seven figure entrepreneurs as far as habits to increase our energy and help us sleep better and all those great things?

I can tell you, like, one of the things that I do is I look at a lot of Data. I love a spreadsheet. I love some data. And what I've noticed across the board is that the majority of entrepreneurs, and I will say this, the majority of the data I have looked at, entrepreneurs are awake between 60 to 90 minutes on average per night. Now, I want you to think about this. Let's just say, like, this is the thinking I used to have. If I go to bed at 11, wake up at 6, that's seven hours. That should be good, right? But if we start just subtracting off that, like, hour, hour and a half awake, we're now actually crossing into that territory where our brain is not getting the recovery that it needs to show up sharp, clear, and focused. So to answer your question about, like, what type of habit should we be looking at? I think the first one is looking at something I call sleep opportunity. So if you're looking at, like, how many hours do I have to be in bed? If I want to give myself enough time to sleep, I need to start there. So if I want to get seven hours of sleep, and let's just assume I'm like the average person and I'm awake for an hour each night, then we need to be in bed eight hours and giving yourself that opportunity. So I think that is one of the first habits, is really recognizing that we're not allowing ourselves the amount of sleep that we need for our brain to work properly.

Yeah, that's so interesting because I totally fit into that statistic. I'm definitely awake an hour to an hour and a half at night. And then I feel like I compound it because I'm like, no, I have to be sleeping because I have to.

Get these eight hours.

And it's like I'm become like a overachiever in my sleep too. You know, it's like, so that's a great point. Like, you have to make time for sleep availability. So then when you're not sleeping, you don't have to stress about that too, because then I'm sure that doesn't help me sleep better.

Yeah, well, that sleep anxiety is totally normal. Like, we've all done that, been awake at 4:00am like, if I fall asleep now, then I'll get another hour and a half of sleep. And we're starting to do all that mental gymnastics and that math, right? Yeah. But I think really looking at, like, that's just the foundation is like, okay, we need to start by allowing you to get enough time to sleep. But then we go through and start looking at, well, what can we do so that I'm not awake so often during the night because question I really love to ask entrepreneurs specifically, knowing that we tend to carry a little bit more stress. We're now we're not just we don't get a reliable paycheck every two weeks like you would in a traditional job. Like, it is. There are the ebbs and the flows and the fluctuations. Right. So one of the questions I love to ask entrepreneurs is like, not how are you doing? But how are you sleeping? Because I can directly tell how we're taking care of ourselves, how our stress levels are by how consolidated our sleep is. Yeah.

And so what are some of the answers you typically hear to that question.

In terms of, like, how to make our sleep better?

No, how. When you ask how are you sleeping? Rather than how are you doing?

Yeah. So I'll get two answers. I'll get the. I'll get the. The people that are really aware of what's going on, they'll just be like, I am awake in the middle of the night. It's usually at the exact same time. It's like 4 o'.

Clock.

I'm awake for 45 minutes. I can't get back to sleep. It happens all the time. My brain likes to go through my to do list and I'll have those people that are very aware that, like, I can't fall asleep. I don't know what's going. And then I have the other group that's like, it's fine. My sleep is fine. Because that used to be me. Like, I had no idea. And it wasn't until I started getting into, like, wearing an aura ring and actually seeing the data to be like, whoa, this is not what I thought was going on. Because it's like, imagine. Imagine you have your credit card, you go shopping, but you have no access to your banking. No online banking. How would you know how much is in your bank account? I mean, you could probably take a guess. After a while it would become really confusing. And trying to do all that math. It's the same way if you don't actually aren't able to see what's going on with your sleep, you have no way of actually knowing. I've had a lot of clients that'll say, oh, I'm fine. And I'm like, great, let's just throw an aura ring on you for two weeks. And all of a sudden they'll be like, oh, my gosh, I didn't know I woke up that many times during the night. I didn't realize I was only getting six hours and so sometimes it's looking at, like, if you aren't able to actually quantify it, we don't know. So there's those two groups I think people fall into.

Yeah. And I think it's so interesting what I found since I started tracking my sleep is that like the amount of deep sleep I get. So I, you know, I guess what are the indicators of, you know, I'm using air quotes here. Good sleep. Yeah.

So I think number one is that for the most part, we're crossing that at least seven, seven and a half hours of time of sleep per night. I think that's number one. Because if you don't getting enough sleep, it's very hard to get the quality of sleep. Now, if we're going to talk about quality sleep, we're looking between an hour and an hour and a half at minimum of deep sleep and at least an hour and a half of time spent dreaming. Because they have different functions. Right. The deep sleep is what helps us physically restore whether you were playing hockey or whether, you know, you were doing a lot of mental thinking that day. Like, these are things where you physically are restored during deep sleep. But dreaming, on the other hand, is, I think of it as like, entrepreneurial goal. Like, this is where the entrepreneur is created because it helps us with our problem solving skills and our ability to be creative and think outside of the box. And that is pretty much what the definition of entrepreneurship. It's solving problems. How creative can you be in solving big problems? And on top of that, like, it really helps us to read facial expressions and body gestures. So whether you have a team or you're a coach, my ability to check in with your body language and be doing that in the background, like, if someone is leaning back, I might think maybe I need to explain this differently. Or if they're leaning in, I'm like, okay, I'm on to something here. My ability to read that is going to make me a better coach. And then the last thing in there is if we are getting enough of this dream sleep. So that hour and a half per night, our ability to manage our emotions is so much better. So instead of swinging like a pendulum from like going for instant gratification to like doom and gloom, spiraling out, anxiety, overwhelm. Oh my gosh, your ability to maintain neutrality is so much more enhanced. And we know, like, we're always dealing with our brains and managing our thinking and trying to make sure that we are, you know, directing, managing our thinking and our focus. Right. Yeah, Well, I want to fight against myself. I want that to be as easy as possible. So I'm going to make sure that I'm hitting that REM sleep every night, that dream sleep.

Nice. So is dream sleep different than deep sleep?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So the majority of our deep sleep, which is think of deep sleep as physical restoration. Physical brain, physical body.

Yeah.

Dream sleep is mental restoration. Like actually our thinking, our cognitive ability, our emotion, our emotions, that kind of stuff. So deep sleep happens majority earlier in the night. Dreaming happens at the end of the night. Primarily, it's sprinkled throughout, but they're weighted more heavily in those areas.

Okay, that's interesting because it's funny the. And I'm just nerding out with you on this, like, because that. That in the app that I use to track my sleep, like it. It tracks deep sleep, but it doesn't track the dream sleep. Or maybe I just don't know how to view that.

Yeah. So with. With Apple Watch, I do find if you're wanting to accurately look at the sleep data, sometimes it can pair very nicely with an app called Pillow. And if you're looking at getting the heart rate variability, which is a measure of your body's fight or flight, how much under fight or flight or stress you are, it pairs very well with the Breathe app. Because when we look at specific devices like an Apple watch, it samples throughout the night at a different frequency than say, an aura ring. So that you wanting to pair it a different. I know this is a little getting into the weeds and the nerds, but sometimes these apps make the data more readable, so they're definitely ones to look at.

Cool. That's awesome. So what are some of your. When you put your antenna up, symptoms that you're seeing entrepreneurs struggle with when it comes to that energy level and overall performance? Like, what are some of the things that you're hearing?

My energy crashes mid afternoon and I have. My brain does not work. That's a really big one I hear. And I'm like, I can only do emails and admin tasks and like very basic stuff. So that's a really big one that, like, we might not be getting enough. Another one is it takes me a whole process to get going in the morning. I need my coffee. I need to boot up. My brain just does not turn up in the morning. I'm really exhausted. Another one I hear, which is interesting. And people often think that this is a good thing. I fall asleep the second my head hits the pillow. And that actually can be a sign if you're falling Asleep in less than five minutes. That's actually a red flag that you're actually very tired. It should take between 5 and 20 minutes for your brain to fall asleep. So if you're like asleep the second your head hits the pillow, that might be something to think. Am I getting enough sleep during the rest of the day? Right. So I think those are the big things I would look at. Actually. The other one I hear that's kind of a red flag is I only need six hours. I'm fine. But in fact, that's a gene mutation that allows that to be possible. And it's four in a hundred thousand people that have that.

Wow.

That you can function as well on six hours as you could on seven or eight. So I often ask, unless you know you have that gene mutation, you've probably just acclimated to the decrease in cognitive performance. You're just not aware that your thinking is slower, that your emotions are affected, that your processing power is not the same. So those are a bunch of red flags that I hear that maybe it might be a good idea to look into sleep.

Interesting. Yeah, I think I can relate to almost all of those calling myself out. So then how do you really. I mean, I'm thinking of like you and I, we've got kiddos, we've got families, we've got the business and all these things that we're managing. Like how do we make the time and space to really attend to ourselves? Like what is the role selling point there and attending to our sleep and performance.

And I think it comes back to two things. I think number one is there is a, an interesting belief that like, if I sleep more, it's going to be at the cost of my productivity because I could be getting more done, I could be having this other time. But I often think that when we jeopardize our sleep, we're stealing from tomorrow's productivity. So if it normally would take us like six hours to get our day's work of done, now maybe it's taking you seven or eight. So we're actually losing time on that end. So it kind of becomes this cycle of where you're always like cutting into your sleep to be more productive. So I think that's number one is that struggle. I think the second one is there is this thought we have that if I sleep more, it's cutting into my me time. And I already don't have very much of that. And so if I do that, I'm literally going to have no me time. Right. And to that one of the things I love to, like, just explore is, well, why is it that we need so much me time? Right? Like, why do you need two hours or three hours of me time as opposed to an hour? It's just an interesting question. And one of the things I love to ask my clients is, what is it that you're after in that time? What do you want to feel? And they're often like, well, I want to feel relaxed, or I want to feel calm, or I want to feel, you know, just like, I have some time and some space. Space. And I'm like, great. Is what you're doing during that time giving you that feeling? And they're like, well, I actually spend a lot of it scrolling on Instagram. And, no, it never makes me feel relaxed. And I think that's why we feel like we need a couple hours of it is because we're never quite getting what we want out of it. Right. And yes, Instagram scrolling will allow you to zone out, but I don't think refreshed or relaxed is exactly the feeling off of the back end of that for a lot of people. And so then what I always just like to ask is, okay, well, if you were to put something in that time block and not the whole thing, but some of it that actually makes you feel the way you want to feel, what would it be? So something we do in our house is, yeah, we'll watch a Netflix episode, and then I will read. And that combo together works really well because I know if I just watch Netflix all the way till bedtime, I kind of just feel like a zombie. I usually go to bed really late. And so it's kind of one of those things that if we're finding that we are worried about cutting into our me time, maybe it's about putting more potent activities in the meantime that, like, is it reading for you? Is it gardening? Is it stretching? Is it having a warm shower and doing, you know, taking your makeup off and doing a skin treatment? Like, everyone has something different, but just something that makes them feel a lot better than when they started.

Mm. Mm. Yeah. I love that mindset shift of attending to our rest and our restoration, really. And tending to ourselves really will help us to be at the peak of productivity during the time that we actually have set aside for working. Right?

Yeah. When it's interesting. Because do you know who Cal Newport is? If you read any of his books, Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, they're wonderful. He talks about this idea of a day within a day, and we plan our Work days. We plan our days in our businesses, but we don't really put the intention into how we want to spend our leisure time. We often are default faulting to activities that are all that we have the energy for. Like, that's what I'll often hear is like, it's all I have the energy for at the end of the day is just to lay on the couch and watch Netflix.

Yeah.

And there's nothing wrong with that if, if it's creating the life and the feeling that you want. But I always like to invite this option of like, well, what if we infused and actually were intentional about some of these things that we wanted to do? Not forced to do. But like, I have a client, she's like, I have so many blog articles that I would just love to dive into that I've saved and making time, those type of things instead of just thinking of it as like escape time to get to the next day.

Okay, yeah, I love that. So you can even have, I mean, air quotes again. Productive off time, like rest time. Yeah.

You know what's interesting? I actually had this conversation with someone yesterday. For me, reading isn't productive, but it still makes me feel better than if I were to watch tv. For me personally right now, that's the thing is like one of the things I think your audience could be thinking at this point is like, well, does all time have to be productive? But for me it's bad.

It's not really a great term, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, well, and that's because I've heard this before. So one of the things that I always just love to address is like reading fiction and fluffy beach reads is not productive. It does not move me forward in my business. It doesn't get my house any cleaner. And so that's the definition of what I mean. It doesn't have to be productive time, it doesn't have to be goal oriented time. It just needs to be intentionally creating what you want.

Well, it's like intentionally pleasurable. Right. So like zoning out, scrolling or zoning out with Netflix might not be as intentionally pleasurable as having some Netflix and then also getting to read. I mean, I love to read too. So.

Yeah, well, and it can even be some days you do the Netflix and some days you do something that makes you feel better. And I think it's just inviting and the opportunity that you don't have to go into your days so exhausted, like you can be intentional. Even if you can intentionally choose Netflix and feel down downtime and relax versus feeling like it's the default because it's all you have the energy for. I think that's the distinction is what are you intentionally choosing versus what are you defaulting to and what are the differences in how those make you feel? Because I don't think anybody says, I want to spend an hour and a half scrolling Instagram tonight. Right, Right.

And gets really excited about it.

Right. It's a default activity. Right. And it's not that we have to eliminate those. I think it's just being aware of how often we're doing it. And if we're not liking how we're feeling, then that might be a good place to kind of shine a flashlight in, see if there's room to grow in there.

Yeah, totally. Because it's like, yeah, where's the energy in those different activities that we're choosing to for rest and restoration?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love that because you're right. I mean, I can definitely relate to you feeling very low energy, but yet at the same time, like, oh, I wish I had the energy to just go for an evening walk, or I wish I had the energy to read more than, like, five words in my book because I'm so tired.

Yeah. Well, I also think there's that luxuriousness in, like, getting drowsy while you're reading.

Yes.

Like, I look forward to that feeling. I love falling asleep with a book in my hand. Like, it's. It's one of my favorites. It's just such a nice way for me to wrap the day up.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that, too. So what does, like, I guess, an ideal scenario look like? Because I'm thinking, okay, we've identified the issues, Right. Of feeling low energy and not being as productive as we want in our work time, maybe not having the energy to engage with our family and so forth in the after work time or around work time. So someone attends to their sleep and their. What. What does life look like after that? Like, when you're feeling great?

I always like to think of it as you finally get to start exploring some of the things that you were too tired to do before. So I'll give you a really good example of how that turned out in our life when we addressed, like, a lot of the. Just the fatigue and the energy issues and the lack of focus during the day. At the end of the day, like, I still had the energy to research some really fun things that me and my husband have wanted to look into. Like, we became really obsessed with this idea of, like, how. How can we allow him to quit his nine to five full time job so that we can travel more regularly as a family. And once we put that out there, like we had the energy to like after we worked to go into, go into looking at all this and we came up with a strategy and so we're actually going on a two month trip to Panama in, starting in January. That's where we're going to be starting our long term traveling while running our businesses. But like before when I just used to feel like at the end of my workday I just needed a nap. Like we just don't do those creative inspiring tasks. Like we what do we ask ourselves? Like what does that next phase look like? And then naturally when that conversation comes up it's like what where does my business need to pivot to fit this lifestyle? Right. So I think when you really start to feel good, I think it's the relationships get stronger because you're more present during them. I think it's your passions in your hobbies, you're able to pursue them more fully because you have the excitement for that and the energy. And I think the other thing that really changed is like we go on nightly walks with our girls. They're one in three. Right. And so being able to take them on those walks and show them and invite them into this healthy lifestyle that we've created, like, like being able to do that, it's allowed, I feel me to be a mom that I feel really good as a role model in that. And they can see me exercising, they see us eating well. You know what I mean? It's like I don't, I've decided for me that I don't want them to hear I'm tired as a reason for me not doing anything. This doesn't mean I don't ever feel tired. But I want them to know that like this is not something that I want to model for them is that this is how I make my life choices going forward.

Yeah, I love that. So what are some suggestions you have to get started with? Feeling better, feeling more energy and performing better.

Yeah. So after sleep, which I would say sleep is the thing you gotta master first, I think there's a couple things you can do in the morning that will really help. So I know that in the morning there are definitely things that we can do to help bring our brains, alertness levels up. And this is a great way to start the day. And this doesn't have to be if you're not a morning person or you're not a morning routine person, this can be condensed Quite quickly. So we're looking at how can I stimulate my brain so that I wake up quicker in the morning? And I'll give you a couple things. Number one is if we can get natural daylight outside in our eyes for 10 to 15 minutes in the morning. And I usually say within, you know, a couple hours of waking up, this will do so much not only for your mood, but your brain's ability to be alert and your energy throughout the day. So this can be as easy as sitting on the deck with a cup of coffee, take the dog out in the yard, walk the kid to the bus stop. I go for a quick lap around the block. Most mornings, something really simple like this will help. Another thing that you can do is by manipulating your body's temperature. So when you increase your core temperature, it wakes your brain up. It stimulates your body. Let's go. We need to increase the cortisol. That wakes us up. There's two ways you can do this. One is through movement. That's the obvious way we want to warm up our bodies. It could be a walk, stretching, exercise. And the second way, which is actually quite potent, is turn your shower to cold for the last 30 to 60 seconds. It drives up dopamine, it drives up adrenaline, and it is a wonderful way to really turn your brain on in the morning. But those are the two biggest ways I would say that you can really wake yourself up in the morning.

I love that. So getting the morning going and attending to sleep are some really great ways to get started.

Yeah. Because also getting that light in the morning cues your brain that we need to go to sleep in about 16 hours from now. So it's a. It's kind of. It's the chicken or the egg. Like, does the morning set you up for the sleep, or does the sleep set you up for the morning? So kind of getting both of those in a good rhythm really helps.

Nice. I love that. So what do you notice or do you talk with your work with your clients at all? Because I met midlife. Right. And perimenopause, menopause, all those fun midlife things. Do you work with your clients or talk at all, study at all about that? The different stages that women go through more.

So a lot of my focus is around what happens during the monthly cycle and how our hormones choose. So I know when you hit perimenopause, it's just the irregularity of that cycle. Sometimes they can be really long, and sometimes they can be short, and sometimes they can go away for a while. But if you're actually looking at, like, the. How the hormones fluctuate, generally within the last half of the cycle. So seven to 10 days before your normal cycle would start, you're going to notice that that rapidly changing hormone profile will make you feel very tired during the day. And on top of that, and where paramount menopause might come into this is our inability to control our body temperature, because our body temperature needs to stay pretty cool while we sleep. And you ever. You've probably slept in a warm room before and found it very hard to stay asleep.

Yeah.

Right. So when we're going through either in a perimenopause or menopause state or in that last couple days of our cycle, what we can do is to help our body stay cool. So how I would, I guess, go about this is looking at, number one, making sure that we're not sleeping with socks on. It is our body's best way of cooling ourselves when we need to. So I found that that's a simple hack that sometimes just getting rid of the socks and also making sure your environment is cool. So the average best ideal sleeping temperature is between 65 and 68 Fahrenheit night. So if you can get your temperature down to the room temperature to that, have a fan if needed, anything you can do to stay cool. And there's some really cool biohacking options you can explore. They have these mattress pads. There's a company called eight Sleep One called Chilipad, and they will actually modulate the temperature of the mattress pad based on how your body temperature changes. So if you're going through a hot flash in the night, it will sense that and cool the mattress pad down to help you stay asleep and help it be less disruptive.

Oh, that's cool. That's fascinating. Yeah, the whole mattress technology thing is fascinating these days.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's just such a. It's. I've got my eye on one right now because I got to tell you, post baby number two, my cycles, I'm definitely getting a lot hotter in the last half of my cycle.

That's funny. All right, that's awesome. So talk a little bit about the. Like, you talk about going to bed earlier and how our night owls might rebel against that. Right. So how can we move from knowing we should go to bed earlier and actually doing it and some practical things we can do. Well, you just started talking about that for a better night's sleep, but yeah.

I'm gonna put a fun spin on this. So the time you go to bed or the optimal time to go to bed has less to do with your preference and more to do with something called your chronotype. So we all have a gene in our body and the length of it determines if you are more of an early morning preference or a late morning preference. So a really good example is there's a website, it goes with a book. The book is called the Power of when by Dr. Michael Bruce. And if you just Google like the Power of When quiz, what it will do is it'll ask you a bunch of questions and it'll give you your chronotype. And if you have an aura ring, it'll also show your chronotype. But your chronotype basically says this is when your best optimal sleep time and wake up time is to give you the most energy. And the interesting thing is only 10 to 15% of the population are true early birds, meaning waking up at 5am, then the most of the population, 50 to 60% wake up around 6:30 to 7 and then actually another 15 to 20% that actually function best waking up at 8am and going to bed around midnight. So I think what it is, is it's looking a little bit intuitively at like, okay, how can I allow myself, like where do I naturally feel drawn? And I think what we also have to take into account is are there activities in our evening that are artificially causing us to stay up later, like staring into screens or late night exercise or late night eating. All of these things will make us feel like we want to go to bed later. But naturally I think, I think it's really just embracing your natural rhythm and stop fighting against what your biology is. Because I know some people try to wake up at 5am because they think they should, but they really feel better at seven. And there is a whole field of science to support that. That might actually be the better option for some people.

Yeah, yeah, I know I started getting up early because when my kids were little because it was like the only time I could have any solitude. Right. But yeah, that's interesting. It would be interesting to see if, to take that test and see.

Yeah. When the intro. If we actually look at the personality traits of someone that is likely an early morning person, they're actually more likely to be type A high achiever, which very much sounds like an entrepreneur profile as well. So I think that's the reason we see a lot of the 5am wake ups in the early mornings is because there might be a higher percentage of entrepreneurs in the morning populations versus the evening. But I Definitely. I have a client and his optimal schedule is 12am to 8pm and he feels wonderful, whereas mine is 8:30 to 5 in the morning. And I'm up like bright, full of energy, ready to go. And that's just because that's what works for me. Right. Instead of always trying to fit into a box.

Yeah, totally. I love that. Okay, so this has been so fun. I love hearing more about this because I feel like that we all have so much capacity to create value and to have an impact on the world and grow our businesses and make money. And part of that is we have to take care of ourselves. Right? Like, we are the most and our brains are the most important asset that our business has. And so maybe talk about that a little bit, like how you really get your clients on board with taking care of themselves. I mean, obviously they're taking the first step by coming to you, but like, how do you get us on board with making all these changes?

And yeah, I always just ask them too. It's like, what, what is it that we're waiting for when we want to take care of our health? Because a lot of us le know we want to feel better, we want to feel energized, but we often have this story of like, well, as soon as I hit my first $50,000 month, as soon as I hire my first team members and can delegate some of this, or as soon as I hit a seven figure run rate, I find that where brains like to go, then I will have the time. But I was always curious to find like, okay, we just have this belief that more time will be there. But I have never met an entrepreneur that doesn't achieve a goal and set another one like two seconds later. So that horizon is always moving, so we never actually get there. But in the meantime, we're postponing, feeling good and energized until we get there. So my always question is, if our brains right now are operating at, let's say 60% of what their capacity was, what would you be? How would your life feel? How would your relationships feel? What would you be able to achieve? What would your productivity be like if you were even just operating at a 70 or an 80%? Like, what would that feel like to feel like when you hit your desk in the morning? It's, it's simple. You're moving through your tasks, you're getting stuff done, your brain is sharp, you know exactly. You know, you can generate the thoughts that you need to and you still have the energy to be intentional about your life. Outside of your business. Right. And so if we're not just waiting until we get there anymore and we can decide on that now, like, imagine how, where you will be. Like, I'll often get clients that'll come to me and they'll be like, this is the year I'm going to 5x my company. And if I'm going to do that, I need to level up too, not only for my business, but for the example that I want to set for my team. I don't want to set the example that I don't take care of myself. I don't want to make this the standard that I respond at 11pm at night to emails. Right. Like, this is really just looking at an overarching picture of, like, am I going to be able to make it another 10 years if I keep up with the way I'm going? And so often the people that will end up in my world are the people that know that they're in this for the long haul. They have a lot of growth ahead of them and they want to feel really good doing it. They don't want to put it off until a dollar sign is hit or a, you know, a number of clients. They're just ready to do it now.

Yeah. Or until they get sick.

Oh. I mean, anybody who was hit by Covid over the last couple years, I know we had it in our family. I remember sitting there being like, it doesn't even matter that I have a business. I just. Just want to stop feeling so lousy. Right.

Yeah.

I think that's a great example of it. It's like, you don't have a business if you don't have your health. So it really does need to be that the main asset, the priority. Right.

Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you so much. I think this is such a good conversation because as women, we love to put ourselves last on the list. But this is a call, an invitation for all of us to put ourselves at the top of the list so that we can be our best to all those things that are important to us. So thank you so much.

I love that. Thank you so much, Melissa.

Yeah. So tell us how we can keep in touch with you. And I think you have a little free something for us today.

Yeah, well, there's definitely my podcast, Becoming Limitless. If you're like, oh, I want to know exactly how to implement that one thing she talked about, I guarantee there's an episode on it. So there's my podcast, but beyond that, I've actually created a playbook in which I've taken the 12 most effective hacks and strategies, put them in one place and called it 12 ways to biohack your energy. It's specifically to help with productive mornings and high energy and you can find that on my website@tenessashears.com but I mean in the meantime, if you've just got a specific question, ask me on Instagram. I'm super active on there. I'm @tennessashears. I love just getting into the nerding out, getting into the weeds of all this stuff. So feel free to come ask questions and say hi.

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

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