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Med Spa CEO
10 Leadership Rituals That Help Me Succeed as a CEO
00:32:42
Hustle doesn’t scale long-term, but your nervous system does. In this episode, I break down my 10 personal leadership rituals that have helped me lead and launch with more clarity, calm, and sustainability. I talk about how I built my support...
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Coaching is so impactful because I am always striving to be the best version of myself in different categories. Don't do it alone. If you need help in a certain area that you know that you want to get better in, why not shortcut it by investing in coaching? Welcome to the MedSpa CEO podcast where I teach you how to grow and scale your med, spa or aesthetic practice so that you can have the income and impact you know you were meant for without overwhelm, stress or feeling like you have to sacrifice your personal life and happiness to do so. It's totally possible for you and your business. Plus simpler than you think. Keep listening to find out how hey my friend. Welcome back to another episode. Today is a little bit different of a topic. I wanted to share some of the rituals and like the hidden environment that I've created for myself behind the scenes personally that has really helped me take off with my business professionally in the last really year or two. It's interesting because most of us launched our own businesses because of the freedom that those businesses and entrepreneurship can provide, right? But what ends up happening for many of us is that we end up actually working and not turning off from our business and entrepreneurship like guilty as charged here. And so the last year, and especially even at the beginning of 2025, I wanted to dial in my experience of how I run my business so that I, you know, I'd witnessed a number of friends and one really dear friend who about it was probably a year, year and a half ago, she actually abandoned her business entirely. And it was really because of the stress and the nervous system dysregulation that she had from her business. And I was like, I don't ever want to get to that point in my business. Yes, we talk about like if you're gonna do new things, you have to face and work through the fear and the anxiety and the discomfort of doing new things. But. But I don't really want to have a dysregulated nervous system while I am growing. I actually want to really enjoy the journey. It's so much more for wherever you're at in your business right now. The joy in finding the peace and the calm and the contentment in running your business means that there's no way you won't succeed but because you won't end up giving up. Now I've seen other sort of successful business people, you know. Vanessa Lau comes to mind cause she's really been open about sharing her story, but she basically like burned down her multiple seven figure business because of the stress. And I don't ever want that to be the case for myself. And I also, like many of you, became an entrepreneur because I love the creativity and the freedom that entrepreneurship provides. And so I wanted to take the time to. To kind of share 10 different leadership rituals that have really helped me personally so that I can thrive with running my business in a way that makes it so that I'm less dysregulated. The more calm I have, the more joy, the more inspired that I feel with my work. And I used to think because there's so much hustle culture out there right now, that it's like, it's all the reps. It's just like, go do. Do it. Like, you know, like, ignore the fact that it's stressful and just do it right. Like, there's so much messaging out there that's like that, and that's fine. Right? And ultimately, most of my folks, most of you who are listening to this or watching this, I don't attract folks that aren't doers. You are incredible at what you do, and you are taking massive action, Right? So I'm not attracting the folks that haven't started, right? So I'm attracting folks who are incredibly ambitious that are hard on themselves and that have the opposite problem. And so if you are like me in that you're type A and you are hard on yourself, and you feel like you have to use worry and stress to actually get yourself to do things. I wanted to share with you some of the personal rituals that I've incorporated and support networks that I've incorporated for myself so that I can actually enjoy the experience of growing and actually running my business. The first one is building a support team at home. I was in a mastermind. Gosh, this was probably 20, 21, and I was in this really premium mastermind that was for coaches. And it kicked off with an event in Cabo San Lucas. And I went to this event, and there was all different types of coaches there. And I was out on this beautif terrace that overlooked the ocean, and I was sitting with a couple of coaches. And I remember how stressed I felt at the time because I just did not have a lot of support at home. My three kids and their busy schedules and being a mom. And then I had my business, and I just felt so stretched all of the time. I was sharing it with Dr. Siobhan, one of my coach friends, and she's actually a marriage coach, and she's amazing, and I will make sure to grab her Information and link her up in the show notes for any of you who are interested in following somebody who's like, a genius when it comes to marriage and relationship coaching. And she looked at me and I was, you know, sharing with them honestly just how I was, my experience of running my business and my life at the moment. And she looked at me and she was like, oh, you need to build your support team at home. And I remember my initial reaction, my initial thought was, like, I can't afford to build a support team at home right now. That seemed, like, so unattainable at the time. But she was like, she gave me all these ideas for doing it. And then she really drove home the fact that if I don't have support at home, she's like, you are always gonna have a glass ceiling on your business. And she was right. Right? If you constantly are not supported at home and you're coming to your business with an empty cup, where you feel stressed, you feel frazzled, you won't have the actual energy and the peace of mind and the clarity and the space that you need to actually be the creative leader of the business, the visionary of your business as well, too. And so that was the kickoff. And I remember coming home and talking to Bryce about it. And we, like, were talking about, okay, so what can we do? Right? And so since then, I have been so intentional with building my support team at home. And I don't think it's a coincidence that since 2021 to now, the trajectory of my business has grown lock in step since expanding my support at home. I have a housekeeper that comes once a week. My mom is actually our nanny and our, like, she helps manage our house as well, too. She's essentially part of our. Our team, our support team at home. I have help with food preparation as well. And so we have a handyman that is, like, on call, right? So that my husband and I, because he has a busy, successful career, too, so that we aren't spending all of our free time and actually just coming home to be, you know, and there's still plenty of stuff we have to do with our kids, even with having the support, but having a support team at home. So what could you be doing right now? It doesn't mean always spending more money, right? Could you trade off with a friend on watching your kids for a while? Right. Could you start with having a housekeeper come once a month or come every other week? Right. Where at home are you feeling stretched where you could invest in somebody that is $20 an hour so that you can focus and have more energy for the 100, the 500, the thousand dollar hour tasks that you need to have mental clarity and energy to focus on in order to take your business to the next level. The next thing is actually building your support team at work. And, and this is something that I have been building when it comes to, even when I look at where I'm recording right now, as opposed to how I used to record my podcast. I brought on a production team, shout out to Dani and Brianne and the good in media. They are my podcast production team. I invested in support so that producing my podcast every month is an actual joy now. And we're producing it better with better quality because I brought on a support team to help me with that. Right? I invested in a better ads team. I have an OBM Karen, who's been with me for years, who helps actually field and filter out things and helps with project management so that I don't get lost in the details because the details take so much energy. So where are you not supported at work right now? Where you know that you need to build your support team around you so that you can actually have more peace and calm in doing the things that you need to do as well, too. So number three is movement. I brought on a personal trainer. Now, I have always prioritized movement. So I've done everything from studio fitness to having fitness apps and then going to the gym and doing the workouts myself. You know, I've done at home videos P90X back in the day, a decade ago, longer than a decade ago. So I've always prioritized movement. There's so much science behind the fact that movement, exercise, fitness helps with anxiety, it helps with stress levels. It helps with motivation as well too. So where can you incorporate movement? Now I work with a personal trainer because I love that. I just show up for Brooke and she already has what I'm working on, what I'm doing. She keeps me accountable. And it's marked off on my calendar as a commitment. It actually is on my calendar before I fill in the rest of the things on my calendar. But before I did that, there's a bunch of doing personal, like training isn't in the budget right now or it isn't in the time. Like it's not effective for you. There's so many things. But where can you prioritize getting movement so that you have that release? In fact, Bryce and I were just talking about this. He had fallen, like where he hadn't been exercising for a few months. And then he just got back into it and he was just like, I can't believe that I stopped doing it because it is just such a stress relief. It feels so good. It makes him so much more clear and so much more energized when he comes to work. So many of you know that I'm a certified life coach through the life coach school, but. But that is a huge part of how over the last. And I actually got certified in 2021, a few months, I think I actually became officially certified a few months before I went to Cabo San Lucas for that retreat with that mastermind that I was in. And so a huge part of thought work and intentional thought creation. But I'm going to put that aside for a moment because it's a huge part of the work I do with clients and how I actually manage my energy and my. In the direction. But something that I have really started incorporating really just in the last six to 12 months is somatic nervous system regulation. And this is where you are actually doing physical things, you know, from breath work to different physical movements. And you can go to ChatGPT or Google and Google somatic nervous system regulation. But if you are somebody who, you're a human, so yes, you're nervous, so you are. If you're a human listening to this or watching this, then your nervous system becomes dysregulated from time to time. And depending on what's going on in your life, that dysregulation, it goes up and down depending on the circumstances of what's happening in your personal life and what have you. But regardless of that, even if you don't have a big life event happening, your baseline may be that your nervous system is more dysregulated. You might experience more anxiety, more, you know, heightened cortisol levels, bluesiness if you will. And that dysregulated nervous system, when we go to show up for our family, when we go to show up for work, it makes it so that we like even how our reticular, activating system sees problems. And there's a bunch of science and research behind this. It affects how our frontal lobe actually filters out and interprets the things that are happening to us. So the more dysregulated you are, the less you will see clear roadmaps for actually problem solving in a way that's going to be more effective as well. So it's actually incredibly important, even from a strategy perspective, to actually regulate your nervous system. And what I have been incorporating is a number of different somatic techniques. So everything from certain breath work, I have certain nervous system check ins that I will do. And then I test out different nervous system somatic things that I could be doing. And so you can google these to find them back in the day. I have a nervous system that tends to run more dysregulated with anxiety. Not unique to me. Many of you suffer from the same thing. But even in fourth grade, my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. England pulled my parents aside and was like, I've been teaching for 25 years and Heather is one of the most anxious fourth grade students that I've had. And so I really recommend and shout out to her because this was like in the fourth grade, this was like in the late 80s dating myself. So she was advanced for her time. She's like, she really recommended that my parents take me to a therapist and they did. And I did something called biofeedback which is a type of somatic practice where they actually hook you up to different. Like I had suction cups and they use a tool that actually measures your tension and other things. And then she would give me different things to do. So for example, she might play an oceanscape with dolphin sound and then give me different breath work to do and then she would actually rate the tension and what have you to find different tools for me to actually somatically regulate myself. And so if you find that you have dysregulated nervous system, I want you to go out and do a little bit of due diligence research to find different tools because they don't have have to take a lot of time. This isn't like, oh, you need to go up and climb to the top of a mountain and actually sit with your eyes closed for an hour. These are things that can be short and effective and help you just do those nervous system check ins to help you regulate your nervous system even more. Number five is continuous investment in coaching for myself. I am so bullish on coaching and I know this sounds self congratulatory in the sense that I am a coach telling you that I think you should invest in coaching. But I don't even just mean business coaching. Bryce and I have done parent coaching before when we felt like we were really struggling and needed some support with coaching. My personal trainer is my coach for fitness as well too. And then of course I have a business coach. I have hired nervous system regulating coaches over this last year that I've worked with and had the pleasure of working with as well too. So it's not just in one category. But coaching is so impactful because I am always striving to be the best version of myself in different categories. So don't do it alone. If you need help in a certain area that you know that you want to get better in, why not shortcut it? By investing in coaching? There's also just that third party, like a coach can help you see the label on the outside of the Mason jar when you are inside of the Mason jar, whether that's in your life, in your work, in your health as well. So investing in continuous coaching has had a huge impact on me. Okay, engineering safety. This is number six, Engineering safety around big moves. So what do I mean by that? It means once I have a big move that I've committed to. So for you, this might be launching something new, a big high impact event that you're going to host. It could be that you were invited to speak somewhere, right? It could be that you have a big promotional campaign coming up, right? So this week, the week that I'm recording this, I have my big Build an unstoppable Brand live experience where I'm actually teaching on building an unstoppable brand and then demonstrating how. Ask Heather. I can help you with it as well. And so for me, how can I engineer safety this week around X so that I can show up in an energy that, you know, a recent episode I hosted was all about, like, how do we. The energy matters more how we're doing it. The energy behind how we're doing something is more important than the actual thing that we're doing. Meaning I can give a strategy to 10 people. They're all going to implement it differently depending on the energy and the beliefs and how they show up to it. And so how can I create energy and safety around these big moves? So one was is making sure that my family knew I had a big week coming up as well so that they could be supportive. Making sure I had my exercise scheduled in that I didn't drop that off because this week is now busy with a podcast recording day and another day where I'm hosting a big live event, plus all the other things that I am doing in my business as well too. Making sure. I told my team, I told Karen, I want you to show up and be there on the call and handle all the little technical difficulties. So she's gonna be a co host on that training just so that I can feel the support of her being there. That will create more safety for me that I don't feel alone when I'm showing up. Then I have had journal prompts that I created this week all around this event that I'm hosting. And so every single morning, I am going through certain journal prompts that are helping me feel like what I am doing has purpose so that I'm staying connected to the why of why I'm actually even hosting this big event, right? I'm hosting it because I care deeply about helping the folks who come to it be able to succeed, right? And when I can pull back everything else, all the other stressors, when I can refocus on the purpose and the mission of actually helping people that engineers safety for myself so that I can show up in a different way. The other thing is just reminding myself. So I said coaching. I had a coaching call with my mastermind where I told my coach I had this big event coming up. And I care about how I experience these events that I put on whatever it is in my business. I care about the experience. Because when you care about the experience of whatever it is you have to do in your business, and what I mean by that is like, I want to enjoy the experience of this. I don't want this to be just a thing. I'm surviving and getting through white knuckling with my cortisol through the roof and it being miserable because the likelihood I'm going to do it more and more and more lowers a lot when I hate the actual experience of doing the thing. So that's why I got coaching this week too. And she reminded me, like, really, anything new that you're launching, if you're hosting an event, you're launching something new, a new package, what have you, like, you in the beginning are just gathering information. And when you can remind yourself you're just gathering information, the first time you do it, you take off the pressure of it being like, this has to be the thing that produces X result. And then you can show up with more calmness, more curiosity as well too. And so where do you have big things, big moves you're trying to make? Or maybe you're procrastinating making those big moves because your perception of how horrible it's gonna feel for you to actually implement making that big move, where can you engineer safety around that big move so that your nervous system feels that safety and you can show up and enjoy the experience even more? Okay, number seven is saying no more often. This has been huge for me the last couple of years. And this sounds so. I mean, this is such a cute Instagram quote, isn't it? Like, say no more often winning it's actually hard in practice because for me, a lot of the things I had to say no to were things I actually would enjoy doing. And so, yes, it's like, okay, say no to the things you don't enjoy doing. Say no to the things that are. Energy sucks. Yes, do that. But sometimes you have to say no to some of the things that are good that you actually kind of like and would like to do and commit to in order to focus on the great things that you are going for because you can't do it all. So, like, I've shared, I had to say no to some of the commitments that I had from a social perspective, even from an impact perspective personally, because I couldn't do it all. And the dissonance between feeling like I was committed to too many things was just too much. And so where do you have to even say no to some of the things that you like doing in order to make room to really enjoy the experience of the things that you say yes to? Okay. Number eight is treating my body like a temple. Oh, treating my body like a temple. Now I have a confession. I, even with the food prep and all the things I can, sometimes when I get busy, forget to actually make sure that I'm nourishing myself enough, that I'm hydrating myself enough, because spoiler alert, I don't like water. And so I will not naturally drink a lot of water unless I put a hydration, like an electrolyte thing into it or I'm really conscious about putting it into a pretty like, Stanley cup or what have you to drink it and what have you. But the more I actually make sure that I'm taking the time to nourish my body in the same way that I make sure to actually get my fitness and strength training on the calendar, the more I have been able to to actually keep my nervous system regulated. Right? That's a key component of it. If I'm hangry, no somatic technique is gonna help when I'm hangry. Maybe it's gonna help a little bit, but like, why not just fix the hangry part of it and make sure that I'm nourishing myself with really good quality food that I'm not letting my blood sugar drop. You know, crazy. Cause I got busy and then, oops, it's 4pm And I didn't eat lunch. Hello, confession. I tend to do that sometimes. And so the more I make sure that I have set up and planned out so that I'm treating my body like the temple, the More I am just able to show up invigorated in a way that I can't when I'm just not feeding and treating my body well. Okay? So number nine is scheduled breaks and times to recharge. Now, my husband and I are notoriously not great at this. What I mean by this is we always refer to that like there is that. My husband was a psychology major in college because he thought he wanted to go into sports psychology when he was growing up after being a professional athlete. Okay. And so there's this infamous study that Bryce and I always refer to when we're observing how we don't take enough breaks for ourselves, and we don't necessarily take enough time to recharge in this study. So I'm going to butcher the actual name of the study and the amount of marshmallows and all that, but you can look it up later. But the point of the study is the same. So basically, they observed kids and they were giving kids marshmallows. And what they told the kids is, you can have one marshmallow now. Or if you're able to wait, let's say, however much time it was an hour or 30 minutes or whatever the turn time of time was, you could have three or four marshmallows. Okay? And then they followed those kids into adulthood, and they found out that the kids that could wait the time that waited to get the three to four marshmallows, those kids were more successful in their adult life. And it's just this idea of delayed gratification. Bryce and I are very good at delayed gratification, almost to a fault. And so we oftentimes will refer to that study. And we're being like the kids with the marshmallows. We're always in delayed gratification mode because we're both really ambitious and good at delayed gratification. And that happens. Has served us really well until it doesn't. And so we did a staycation here in town, and we stayed at a boutique hotel on Camelback Mountain that is literally less than. It's like five to 10 minutes away from us. Okay. And we just did it for one night, and we were, like, so recharged. And we both agreed afterwards we felt more clear. And I did this the week before this week because I had a bunch of things I had to accomplish this week. But it just reminded us that taking the moment to pause and recharge is something we need to do more of. And of the things on this list that I'm sharing, this is probably The I have the most room for improvement in this area as well. So number 10 to rituals that I have done in my personal life to help myself is something that I call intentional belief creation that I use with thought work. Okay. And so I kind of alluded to this to the top. There's somatic things you can do to regulate your nervous system, but then there's also thought work that we can do so that we can decide how we want to think about things. And I think this was the biggest sort of aha. That I even learned when it came to becoming a certified life coach. And how I incorporate this with even working with my clients is that we actually get to decide how we want to think about things. Now, there are emotional things, and that's why I talked about the somatic tools there are. Emotions can precede thinking. Okay. So we can have anxiety. Like the little girl that I told you I was in fourth grade who, you know, I needed more than just thought work for my anxiety levels back then. Although thought work helps too. But when it comes to how I show up to my business, how I show up when I'm even creating the vision of what I'm working towards, knowing that I can use intentional thinking to actually create new beliefs for myself is just made everything that I do so much sweeter. And so taking the time. And this is why I like journaling in the morning times to actually do thought work, to actually dump out my thoughts. Because your thoughts create your reality. Your thoughts create your perception of the world that's happening. This is why there's so many different circumstances that are happening in our world. And if you go on social media, it's like there is such different interpretations for current events and what's happening in the world. And that is because of the thinking and the beliefs that the people have about those events that are happening. That's why they vary so widely. So it can make for really polarizing conversations on the Internet. It's also just such an empowering tool to know that the circumstances may be the same, but you can change how you think and show up to it. And so wherever you're at personally or professionally right now, one of the rituals I've gotten into is actually getting my thoughts down to see, like, how my thinking is impacting and then doing what I call thought work to actually show how the thinking is creating my feelings and how my feelings are driving my actions, and then ultimately my actions are producing my results. And there is a difference. Like, I actually. We don't think AI should be used for this. You can use AI to actually ask for maybe the journal prompts to help with your thought work, but there's a lot of research behind actually taking pen to paper and writing it out. It triggers a different part of your brain. And so using intentional belief creation so that I can create the beliefs that I need to go after the goals that I want to achieve and so that I can ultimately enjoy the journey of going after those goals more. All right, so those are some of the things that I have been doing personally to help me show up as the visionary leader that I want to show up for, for me and for my team and for my clients. But they're also the things that I've been doing so that I can stay on this journey a long time. Because ultimately the journey is 99% of what we're doing. So I hope you found these rituals helpful for you and I will see you next week. Hey, if you're enjoy this podcast and you're a boutique results driven med spa owner who is looking to drive more sales profitably each month without hustling yourself into the ground to do so, then you should consider applying to join us inside of the MedSpa Advantage. It's the only program designed to help you grow your revenue and profits while gaining back more time so that you don't feel scattered and drained while running and growing your business each month. To learn more about whether or not or not you're a fit for joining us, you can head over to heathertrain.com apply to apply to get on a call with us to learn more. That's heatherturveen.com apply to learn more.