071: Biohacking for Women with Tanessa Shears

Kate Kordsmeier 0:00

Welcome back to the Success with Soul podcast. I'm your host, Kate Kordsmeier. And today we're kind of going back to my roots here. So, as many of you might know, I have a holistic wellness blog called root and revel, where I spent the last six years talking about stress and sleep and food and movement and intuitive eating and how we can truly care for our bodies as a whole. And today, my guest is helping us do that from an entrepreneurial mindset. So I'm super excited to introduce Tanessa shears to you who is a health consultant, the host of the becoming limitless podcast, she helps entrepreneurs scale their business by optimizing their health focus and productivity with science and biohacking. So her passion is working closely with business owners to implement effective sleep nutrition workflow and stress management strategies to eliminate brain fog and help them get more done in eight hours than most people can get done in a week. Sounds pretty good, right? So she does this by optimizing the performance capacity of your body and brain so you can produce more meaningful, impactful work output and scale your business faster. Sound good? Let's get into it. You're listening to the Success with Soul podcast with Kate Kordsmeier x journalists turned CEO of a multi six figure blog in online business. But it wasn't that long ago that Kate was a struggling entrepreneur who lacked confidence, clarity, and let's be honest money. But all those failures, experiments and lessons learned helped Kate create a thriving business that impacts 1000s and brings freedom, flexibility and fulfillment to her life. If you're ready to do the same and make something happen with holistic, soulful, step by step strategies from Kate and other experts, you're in the right place. here's your host, writer, educator, Mom, recovering perfectionist, bookworm, and sushi connoisseur, Kate Kordsmeier. So welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here.

Tanessa Shears 2:05

Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to talk today.

Kate Kordsmeier 2:08

Yes, I feel like our episode should be about how to pitch podcasts because your pitch to come on Success with Soul was one of the best I've ever received. But we're actually talking about something a little different today. I loved in your pitch, you said that you focus on entrepreneurs who have put their health in the backseat at the expense of growing their business. And I can so relate to this. I know so many of our listeners can. So I'm super excited to dive into this topic with you. give everyone a quick background of like who you are your story and how you got to where you are today.

Tanessa Shears 2:43

Yeah, so my name is Tanessa. I'm a health consultant. And I do work specifically with entrepreneurs. Specifically the entrepreneur that has just hit, you know, usually you get to your first milestone, whether that be a five figure month or a six figure year or whatever that might be. And all of a sudden, you're like, Oh my gosh, I've been working so hard on my business that like what is a healthy food? I don't remember the last time I've worked out what is sleep like all of these things have just fallen by the wayside. And what I often find is that when an entrepreneur comes to me, they're at that point where they're just like they can't turn their business brain off anymore. And they're you know, what family dinners and they're kind of sneaky checking their email, and they're always plugged into Instagram.

Kate Kordsmeier 3:23

That's not me at all. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah,

Tanessa Shears 3:25

they just almost feel like they've lost that sense of health and vibrancy and presence. And they're just kind of like this is it. Like, you know, we have all these ideas when we grow these businesses that we're gonna feel this, oh my gosh, you know, all our problems will go away when we hit that and we know the horizons always moving for us as entrepreneurs. So I usually end up working with clients at the point where they're like this, this doesn't feel the way I wanted to, how can I get that back and it's usually by bringing back the fun and the play and the way I really love to do that is by helping them optimize their brain and their body with science and biohacking specifically and to make it a little bit more fun because I believe that entrepreneurs are made for biohacking just are geared towards planning and you know, making sure we get return on investments for things and split testing and chat.

And yeah, that's a biohacking

is to me, because entrepreneurs, we don't have a ton of time to be like, okay, these are the 400 health habits that I need to do to be quote unquote, healthy. So I like to take it as like using wearable trackers like you know, your Apple Watch your Fitbit, your aura ring, stuff like that, like, are the habits I'm implementing actually getting me results? And if not, let's find something better than that. So that's what I do.

Kate Kordsmeier 4:37

Yeah, it's funny. You mentioned the Fitbit and Apple Watches of the world because I used to be such a numbers girl and I wanted to know, how many steps did I take and how many calories did I burn and all of this and what I realized is that it wasn't actually making me like move more do anything. I was just making me feel like shit about myself and so I threw them all away. I was like done with that. It's not about the numbers. It's about how I feel. So let's focus on that.

Tanessa Shears 5:04

Yeah, I've had that conversation with many, many clients, we get to the point where you know, when you're waking up and you're checking your sleep stats, just to say like, Did I do it? Tell me how I should feel today. So it's that definitely that that balance between you know, like, I always tell my clients like, don't check the data unless you plan to do something about it. Like you're genuinely working on getting more steps in a day, use that data. But if you're just looking at it to determine either how you feel about yourself or whether you're good enough, then that is not a reason to look at it. So that conversation usually always comes up at some point when somebody's like, look at I didn't sleep enough for three days in a row. I was like, Yeah, but where are you in your hormone cycle? Because that might be throwing it off. Like it's kind of a neat tool to almost learn compassion with yourself? Yes, at the same time.

Kate Kordsmeier 5:48

Yeah. Okay, cool. So let's get started with what some of this means. We talked a little bit about biohacking, and gave us a clue. I know biohacking and the term peak performance often go kind of hand in hand. What does it mean to you to live in this state of peak performance?

Tanessa Shears 6:05

To me, waking up in the morning with a clear, refreshed and focused brain is my version of peak performance because so many of us wake up tired all the time. And we just think it's very normal that everyday we wake up tired, dragged through the day rely on coffee, energy crashes in the afternoon, not recognizing that a lot of our lifestyle factors are playing into that, like, not just looking at Well, yeah, well, I was in bed for seven and a half, eight hours last night. But did you get seven or eight hours of sleep? Or were you tossing and turning and all of this kind of stuff? So when I look at biohacking specifically, I'm like, What can we do to alter not only the environment outside of us like with cool things like you know, biohacking your bedroom? But what can we change in our internal environment so that we have more longevity and energy and focus and the things that not only make us better humans, but make us better entrepreneurs as well?

Kate Kordsmeier 6:55

Yeah. And so how did you get here? Like, how did you figure this out?

Tanessa Shears 7:01

That Well, I've been I've run my own health business. I started as a personal trainer back in 2014. And that was, you know, just a very narrow focus on fitness. But as my entrepreneur brain can't sit still, I have to be learning. I am curious about everything. So that's when I started being like, well, I wonder what would happen if I just started incorporating some stuff about food, oh, and then oh, my gosh, about sleep. And it really started hitting home when I was pregnant a couple of years ago, and I got the Fitbit because I wanted to make sure that as my pregnancy went on, I was still staying really active. But what I found was that I had so much hip pain that it kind of knocked me out of the whole walking game, but I didn't know that these things tracked my sleep. And so what I was like, this is like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make my sleep even better. So I started doing really cool things like, you know, blacking out my bedroom, playing with the amount of blue light exposure I had, at the end of the night, like all kinds of things like that, and was using that to watch how my brain improved. And my sleep improved. And I was like, I didn't even know that it was biohacking at the time until I saw the term I was like, that's what I'm doing. That's it, that's the night but it's really just about waking up for me and, and having the energy to give full into my business. And then still be a mom at the end of the day and not just want to, you know, hide on the couch with Netflix. So if I want to go for a walk with her and be present, I have that capacity.

Kate Kordsmeier 8:20

Yeah, that's definitely something I have struggled with is like my husband and I have said, after this past year, especially, you know, there's been a pandemic, I had my second child during the pandemic, and no childcare and trying to work full time and all the things and so even now, you know, it's eight months, almost eight months later, and we do have our full time childcare back and all of that. But at the end of the workday, sometimes I just like, I'm a zombie. I'm so tired, like I'm with my kids. I'm not maybe always as present as I would like to be. And then as soon as they go down, I just crash. And so yeah, it's it's hard. I'm personally very interested to hear how you combat this.

Tanessa Shears 9:03

Yeah, so one of the first ways that I really like to focus with clients is I like to think of the low hanging fruit approach, like what can we do that is going to give you the most bang for your buck. And time and time again, when I look at the sleep data from my clients, what I'm seeing is the amount of time spent awake each and every night is on average, between an hour and about an hour and 17 minutes. That's where most people fall between. Now when we're going to bed at 11. And waking up at seven thinking that we had our great eight hours of sleep, we're not counting the time it took our brains to actually get into flow wave Delta sleep or to start going through our sleep cycles. And we're not counting tossing and turning, and we're not counting you know that time we wake up maybe we have to go pee in the middle of the night or the time we wake up early in the morning. We're not counting in that kind of stuff. So when we take you know what feels like we're supposed to be sleeping eight hours and we take off our wait time. We're not really only getting like six hours 45 minutes and you're actually sleep depriving your body Rain, right and when we don't get enough time to recover, because there are so many things that actually happened to your brain while you sleep that make us better entrepreneurs and better humans and more calm and more patient, that when we don't get that we show up the next day, and we're almost in more of a reaction mode instead of being able to feel energized and proactive about our lives.

Kate Kordsmeier 10:21

Totally. Yeah, 100%. I think a lot of people listening, myself included can relate to that. So I want to go on a little bit of a side tangent for a second, because I know if I don't ask this question, now, I'm gonna forget it. And one thing I was hearing is you started as a personal trainer, and a lot of people would say, like, if you're in that niche, that's nice enough, right? That you're just a personal trainer, and you don't like you have maybe a target market. That's pretty broad. But you've gotten really narrow, and you're targeting entrepreneurs, specifically. And I'm curious what you saw in the results of your own business when you did that?

Tanessa Shears 11:01

Yeah. So I found when I was starting Personal Training, like I had been, like, really present in the group fitness industry before that. So building that business up really fast was just kind of, you know, when things just happened really easily and fun. And I just was like, Yes, this is who I am. But there was an interesting point, when I looked at my client base, it was about probably four to five years in. And most of my clients were entrepreneurs. And I was like, this is interesting, because I wasn't marketing towards entrepreneurs, right. And this is at that point, what I had start bringing in food focus, and you know, offering, you know, online sessions, in addition to the personal training to talk about, you know, what's going on with your sleep and stuff like that. And what they would say to me over and over again, was this, I used to come to you, Tessa, just to get my workout done. But what I started noticing is implementing everything else is how much more I got done during my day at work because I wasn't so tired, or I wasn't feeling energy crashes, and they were noticing that they were able to stay present and focus a lot longer at work. And they weren't hurting sitting in their chairs anymore. So I was like, This is interesting. And I mean, having myself been an entrepreneur, during this journey, I had found it really easy to prioritize my health as well as grow the business, personally, was because I was in the fitness industry. And I was always surrounded by the gym. But at the same point, like the last thing you want to do when you're a personal trainer is go to the gym after you just kind of want to go home and get away from the gym. But it was one of those things where like, I was in the weeds with it realizing like how am I going to be consistent with my food? What has to happen in order to get my work done? How do I have to sleep effectively and still run my business? And that was something that was just really easy for me. And I think my clients look to that and was like, she's running your business. She's staying in shape. She's staying on top of her health, you know, her brain is prioritized. How can I do that? And I think that's kind of where that shift happened. And then it slowly started going online. And you know, splitting it up some clients in person some online to the point where I'm about 95% online, right.

Kate Kordsmeier 12:55

Okay, awesome. So cool.

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Okay, so shifting back. We talked a little bit about what biohacking really mean. So how is this different for women versus men? A lot of what I've learned in this space, you know, I have root and revel, a holistic wellness blog and we've had a few biohacking guest posts and I feel It partners and things like that. And they're almost always men. Yes, I'm going to stop there and see your thoughts. I feel like you've got something juicy to say,

Tanessa Shears 15:07

I love this topic, because this is what really made my mind open up. Because when you know, if you even look back, as soon as like three, four years ago, kind of when intermittent fasting started becoming mainstream and stuff like that, all the research was focused on men. And the reason for that is when most research studies are done, it doesn't take into account women with an active menstrual cycle. And that's because based on whether they were in, you know, the early stage of their follicular phase, or whether they were in the luteal stage, which is the NCG, or cycle that affects the results of the study, and knowing that women are all in different stages at different times, the results weren't repeatable. So there was a giant amount of time where women were just left out of studies where you look at any studies and they're done on men and postmenopausal women. So naturally, as you know, a woman in my so my menstrual years, I was just like, Hey, I mean, I guess that'll work for me, but not really looking at you know, when my cycle would skip a couple months, and not realizing that it was affecting my hormones or you know, it would be late and stuff like that. And it wasn't until I started really reading into biohacking specifically for women. And understanding how our hormones fluctuate through our cycle, like men have a 24 hour hormone cycle, they get a testosterone boost so that it drops back down. They do that again, every day, their energy runs similar every day, their productivity, everything about that. But women we run on anywhere from like a 28 to 32 day on average cycle, which means we are more productive at certain times, our cortisol levels are higher at certain times, we have you know, more stable blood sugar at certain points, and then you know, less energy at certain points. And what I was recognizing is that we need to make sure that we're biohacking in a way that reflects where we are in our cycle. So I always track myself and have my clients track where they are in their cycle, and biohack accordingly. So a really good example is right about at the middle of your cycle, after we populate, you go into your luteal phase. And during that time, cortisol production, which is our stress hormone, it slowly starts ramping up. So by the time we're just like in the week before our cycle, our stress hormones are usually pretty high. Now, what I do with this is I make sure that my workouts during that time are a little less intense, so that I'm not producing more cortisol in my body in a place where my body is already at a higher level. So like you ever had a workout where you're just like, I don't get it. That was so hard. I could barely breathe, it was so much more difficult than it has been in the past. It's likely you're just in that window. So learning how to adjust for that. And specifically watch how my body responds. I'm now implementing food. I'm I think totally differently about my sleep. And we I move based on where I am in my cycle. And it's given me so much compassion. So if I really am like, I'm just not feeling it today, my energy's low. Here's why I'm in my cycle.

Kate Kordsmeier 18:00

I'm not getting mad that I missed a workout. I'm like, this is what my body needs right now. Right? Totally. I love this. Because basically what you're saying is biohacking for women looks like cyclical living. And that's something that we talk about all the time here of working with our bodies and our energy and that when you start doing that, things just start feeling easier, because you're not trying to force things when it's not like a natural place for your body to be or your brain to be functioning in that way. So that's so cool. I'm loved to hear that we're totally on the same page. And another piece of that I guess is do you consider self care to be different than biohacking or is biohacking a form of self care to you?

Tanessa Shears 18:44

Well, the way I look at biohacking is I like to divide it into almost different areas that all need equal attention, like we've talked about, we talked about the food and the sleep and the movement. But there's also this whole area of stress management, which I mean, we could also call self care because there's a lot of overlap between that. But when I'm looking at the idea of self care or stress management I'm looking at is my brain getting the opportunity to shift into alpha wave activity. So have you ever heard of the difference between like the different brainwave frequencies and what they mean for us as entrepreneurs?

Kate Kordsmeier 19:19

No. Oh, I'm so intrigued.

Tanessa Shears 19:22

I love it. Okay, so when you're focusing, think writing, copy, think designing something, think reading a really good book. Our brainwaves are in a state called beta. We like that we're alert, we're focused, we need that to be productive. Now, if you want to think of a nice relaxed state of mind think of like watching one of your favorite TV shows that you don't need to think too much. Maybe one of the ones you can walk in another room and you know what's going on friends pops to mind for me like we can pick up that show anywhere and I know what's going on got that like relax, like focus or maybe if you're even like watering the garden, just that kind of like it's a different feeling. That is When your brainwaves shift into what's called an alpha frequency, it is a slower frequency. Most of the entrepreneurs I work with are super good at beta, we know how to stay in beta. In fact, that's almost a problem is that we can't disengage. So what's happening is we're constantly connected, checking our Instagram, checking our Gmail, checking our, our Facebook, we're doing the cycle flipping all between them, oh, maybe see if I got any, like, we're literally cycling through them. But then we're also watching a TV show at the same time. And then we're

Kate Kordsmeier 20:28

all like literally just describing my night

Tanessa Shears 20:30

for ya, right. And then what we're doing is we're keeping our brain in beta activity. And then what happens is we're staring into screens, we've got blue light in our eyes, which affects our nighttime hormones. And then all of a sudden, we decide to turn off the lights and we're like, be quiet brain Be quiet brain, and it just won't calm down. And we have poor sleep, and then all of a sudden, we're up at 2am. And I'm like, Oh, my gosh, it I remember to do that. Like there's so many things that we are thinking about, that really just means we haven't taken that time to shift into alpha wave state. So when I'm working through clients on that, like we all know, activities that should be coming, we're told about bubble baths and stuff like that. But I can tell you, I know a few people that have very stressed out bubble bath,

Kate Kordsmeier 21:13

bring your phone into the bubble bath with you. It's not it's kind of canceling it out.

Tanessa Shears 21:19

That's why I'm like, it's not about bubble bath. It's about your brainwaves. And it's that feeling that we need to achieve. So there are certain activities like even if you look at reading, when I'm reading a book by like, say Dr. Mark Hyman, or I'm reading a book by Ben Greenfield, somebody like, you know, in the nutrition and wellness space, my brain is like, this is amazing. How can I implement this? Can I do a post on this? Can I turn this into a podcast episode like that is not reading to relax, right? I have to read something fluffy and light, maybe a romance something that's easy, and that'll shift my brain out. But in that same breath, like, I've had clients that I've been working with, and I'm like, okay, end of the night, we need to do some alpha wave activity. Usually I just ask them to do between 1015, even 20 minutes before they go to bed as an intro. And one of the things I suggest with this is, you know, just if you want to stretch, if you want to do breathing, if you want to write yoga, like honestly, there's so many things we could do. But the goal is not the activity, it's the feeling you get from the activity. Okay. And as entrepreneurs have a hard time with that, like I have a client and she's like, I'm still not falling asleep. While I'm listening to my audio book. I was like, What are you doing while you're listening to your audio book? She's like, I'm playing online chess, and

Kate Kordsmeier 22:34

you're engaging your brain in so many different ways and expecting it to fall asleep at the same time.

Tanessa Shears 22:39

Yeah, that's that's what I mean is that a lot of us have trouble with that downshift, right. So there's actually an app that I recommend for entrepreneurs that are just like, I can't get my brain to downshift because it's a skill that we might have lost. And it's called brain FM. And it's kind of neat the way I like to think of it as it's like, think of it as like a remote control for your brain. And you can invite your brain into the state you want to get it into. So they have like, let's call it a channel called focus. And it's got a certain algorithm to the music that syncs your brain with beta. It also has that for relax. So for my clients, like this client that likes to read and you know, play online chess at the same time, I was like, Okay, I want you to listen to the relax tracks, because it invites your brainwaves into alpha, some of us need a little help to remember what it feels like to actually take a breath and unwind a little bit.

Kate Kordsmeier 23:28

Yeah, this is why I have to go to hot yoga, I mean, really any yoga or just movement in general. But for me, it's hot yoga. And that's because it's the only hour of my day where I'm not thinking about anything except what I'm doing. And so it's like, I feel like that's what it's happening. I'm getting into that alpha state. And my brain is able to just like, just focus on the pose and how it feels in your body and this and that. And I just like everything slows down a little bit.

Tanessa Shears 23:57

Yeah, when the interesting thing that you're probably doing during Yoga is activating your vagus nerve. Yeah, for sure. With the deep breathing because it ends in the diaphragm, right? So yeah, that's another great thing to do to help with that alpha wave state is just it's, you know, the heat, the single focus, you know, it's not everywhere, you're focusing here, the breathing such a good activity for alpha.

Kate Kordsmeier 24:18

Yeah. So the Vegas nerve for anybody who doesn't know is basically like the brain gut connection. It's like how the brain communicates with the rest of our body. And I feel like anything we can do to kind of like massage that is really helpful. So this entrepreneurial brain fog and sort of constant beta mode that we do you feel like that's the same thing, or am I confusing terms?

Tanessa Shears 24:43

I feel like they're often quite linked. But I can also tell you, I've had clients that can get into alpha that still have brain fog when they're in beta. Mm hmm. Okay.

Kate Kordsmeier 24:51

And so what does that look like?

Tanessa Shears 24:54

So brain fog is one of those things where you wouldn't be able to go to like the doctors you wouldn't be able to say to you like that's brain fog. I'm sorry, right. But it's like a Think of it like a collection of symptoms. And there's symptoms that we all know. So a good example, when I first had brain fog, here's how I feel it. The front of my head feels very heavy. And I sit down and I'm going to write an email. And I can't for the life of me remember the name of the person I was going to write the email too, even though I know it, it's forgetting things like that. And it's feeling like my brain is just low energy, and I can't quite focus so I'm doing something. But I'm also doing that, you know, the Facebook, Instagram, email, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, like that's what my brain is doing, despite the fact that I'm over supposed to be over here working on this. And it's that easy distraction, meaning our brains actually physically have trouble focusing and your thinking starts to feel really clunky, and cloudy. It's literally like a foggy cloudy day in your brain. And when we look at what is causing that, it's inflammation creeping in from a variety of places.

Kate Kordsmeier 26:03

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Tanessa Shears 28:02

Cat single easiest thing you can do is go to sleep and wake up at the same time give or take, you know half an hour on each end. The reason for this is that at the earlier part of our night, so let's say you go to bed at 10. So 10 1112 one, you're going to get the most potent amount of deep sleep and deep sleep is responsible for helping us convert you know long term memories or things into long term memories. Our actual brain gets a bath in spinal fluid and kind of you know, takes off some of the proteins that down the road could lead to Alzheimer's, we don't want that. And it's also when your body recovers from your workout and your day like deep sleep is very important for just feeling refreshed, right. But on the other end of the night. So think early morning hours, three, four or five, six, our brain actually shifts into a higher ratio of dreaming. Now dreaming is what I call entrepreneurial goals. And I love focusing on dream sleep for entrepreneurs because it makes us better problem solvers and helps us think outside of the box, which is really important as an entrepreneur for solving problems. The other thing that it does is it really helps us recognize facial expressions and body gestures on other people much more easy. If you're in a coaching or consulting position. We want to be able to tell when our clients you know, when those micro shifts and facial expressions, they lean back a little bit like reading those things makes us better at our job. And the last thing that's really cool is that when you get adequate dream sleep, your ability to manage your emotions and feel in control of just you know, the highs and the lows during the day are so much more like enhanced. So think about the last time you didn't get enough sleep, and maybe were irritable or were a little more snappy. That likely meant we didn't get enough dream sleep. So what does this have to do with going to bed and waking up at the same time? Well, if you're usually going to bed at 11 to seven but you decide to stay up two hours late. You don't just cut out two hours of sleep. You can cut out the majority of your deep sleep and the thing is sleeping in in the morning. Doesn't make up deep sleep, it just gives you more dream sleep, and works on the other end to meaning if we get up at five, or 431 morning, we're missing out on that dream sleep. So by going to sleep, and waking up at approximately the same time, you really optimize what's called your circadian rhythm, your body's ability to comfortably follow a 24 hour rhythm, our hormones are released at certain times, things like melatonin, and cortisol, you know, our sleep wake cycles follow that our body temperatures, our heart rate, our blood pressure, like our bodies are designed to follow that clock. And when we can maintain that as consistent as possible, we optimize all of those systems. So that's when you're really going to start waking up feeling like, Oh, my gosh, I feel good in the morning. And that's what I want out of a night's sleep.

Kate Kordsmeier 30:48

So let me ask you this. This is something I've wondered, as I've learned a lot about sleep over the last few years as well. And maybe it's because it's not always studies aren't done on women. How does the circadian rhythm a 24 hour cycle? How does that fit in with what we were talking about before with kind of cyclical living and going with our, our 28 to 32 ish day cycle as menstruating women?

Tanessa Shears 31:12

Yeah, so it's actually really interesting, there are our bodies function on different rhythms regardless of if we have a male hormone pattern or a female hormone pattern. So for example, when we are running on a 24 hour clock, that is called a circadian rhythm. And ingredion rhythm is something that takes longer than 24 hours. So a really good example of that is a female hormone cycle. You also have something called an ultradian rhythm, which is a good example is our digestive tract runs on about a four hour rhythm. But if we're looking at sleep, and how it affects our hormones, like during the monthly cycle. So I often find with my clients and especially myself as well, that I'm often reassuring them that that week before their period starts, it is totally normal if your sleep feels a little wacky, because that progesterone drop off that happens at that time. And projection is a hormone that we have, that's part of our cycle, it disrupts melatonin production. And Melatonin is the hormone that is responsible for signaling the body that it's time to sleep. Because the other interesting thing that happens in that latter phase of our cycle is our body temperature is elevated. So it's really cool. If you're able to track your temperature daily, I know my aura ring does, and I can see that it's elevated, well, we actually need a drop in temperature or core temperature in order for melatonin to be effectively released. So not only is that warmer body preventing you from having quality sleep, but melatonin production is just disrupted because of our hormones on top of our body being in a higher stress higher cortisol state. So during that time, I often like to a be more compassionate with myself, if I don't have a good sleep. I also don't schedule a lot of important things during that week. If I can, my schedule can allow it. Yeah, I am very conscious of giving myself a longer sleep opportunity. So that the time I spend asleep, that's the longer I give myself to sleep. So if I normally plan to be in bed for eight and a half hours, I might give myself nine, just to give myself that extra time. And the third thing and definitely I mean any type of supplementation, always talk to your doctor about it. But I look at supplementing some melatonin in that week as well, just to like really help my body achieve sleep when it's having a little trouble on its own.

Kate Kordsmeier 33:22

Yeah, that's so interesting. Okay, that is really helpful. So where does someone listening begin, if they're new to understanding how female hormones work,

Tanessa Shears 33:35

I think one of the best things to do and actually, we just start tracking your energy. Like there are definitely highs and lows as the hormones Fall and Rise during that. So one of the things that I like to do is, notice when my body is a little less energized, and notice when it is more energized. And it is going to follow a regular pattern like you'll find that beginning on the first day of your period, you're going to slowly get more of an increase in energy up until about middle of your cycle, and then it'll slowly follow. So one of the things that I love with that is I then start planning my workouts and stuff accordingly. So a really good example of that is I know during that like what I call the energy, slow drop, at the end of my cycle, I'll plan maybe some low impacts in classes, I'll do a lot more walking, I'll do more maybe yoga classes. Whereas in the beginning, when my energy's up, I'm doing like spin bootcamp classes, and I'm doing you know, all the burpees and the heavy heavy weights. So just monitoring your energy like that and start tuning something that you already do like your workouts. And if you're not consistent with your workouts, then even just starting with something and noticing like when do I feel most excited to work out? Okay, great. Where can I put my more higher energy workouts?

Kate Kordsmeier 34:51

Yeah, got it. Okay, so before we move into our lightning round, this has been so fascinating. Where can everybody find Follow along. And I know you have a special free gift for everybody that they can get at successwithsoul.co/tanessa. So tell us about that.

Tanessa Shears 35:09

Yeah, so if you want to just ask more questions, but all the bio hacking stuff, I'm on Instagram all the time at janessa shears. However, I have a PDF, and I call it my entrepreneurs playbook. And it is my top 12 bio hacks that I have found with my clients get the best bang for your buck, meaning like, these are the ones that you tend to start feeling best when implementing. So I've put them all together in a PDF called 12 ways to biohack your energy, because that's what we really want. We want to make that feeling energetic, because that's what makes us productive. So that's available at tanessa shears.com/energy and in there, you're going to hear not only the bio hacks, but how to get a link to my podcast becoming limitless, which is a deep dive every week on one area of bio hacking and how it relates to entrepreneurship.

Kate Kordsmeier 35:56

Awesome. So cool. Thank you. Okay, so quick lightning round. Alright, is your favorite way to make time for self care.

Tanessa Shears 36:05

I like to you know what, for the last three weeks, I've been watching the sun come up every morning, even if it's five or 10 minutes cup of coffee in hand, just watch the sun come up. Let the day start that way.

Kate Kordsmeier 36:14

Yeah, it's nice when we're in like summertime. And that happens later. So you're like, Oh, I wasn't up at four. But yeah. Okay, so what's one tool or strategy you use to help with time management

Tanessa Shears 36:27

Trello. Everything in my business is run on Trello including when my workouts are when my meal prep is I use it like a calendaring system instead of like a project planning tool.

Kate Kordsmeier 36:37

Yeah, gotcha.

Cool. What is one of the most powerful business or entrepreneurial books you've read?

Tanessa Shears 36:45

business and entrepreneurial books. Um, you know what's interesting, one of the books that pops to mind right away is breaking the habit of being yourself by Dr. Joe dispenza. Even though it is not a business book, The idea behind it is that, you know, learning that your thoughts, create your feelings. And I know in my business, I want to have fun and energy and be energized. And that's what's going to attract people to me. Right, then I need to make sure I'm taking care of my brain. So it's not business related, but it changed my business.

Kate Kordsmeier 37:14

Yeah. He also wrote you are the placebo, right? Yes, that is another favorite that's been mentioned in this lightning round with some of our other guests before to. Okay, let's see, what is a quote, or maybe an affirmation you're telling yourself lately.

Tanessa Shears 37:32

I was coached on this one time, and I've always stuck with it, it is that you can't solve a problem with the brain that created it. Meaning like, if you cannot see that it is your thinking that potentially created the problem, you will never think your thinking is the solution to it. And I always like to think that my brain can come up with solutions, but it does if I don't see that it is my mind and my belief and my way of thinking that is putting up the Roadblock, I will never believe that I can solve that problem.

Kate Kordsmeier 38:03

Yes, that is resonating. With me right now. Like, oh, my brain created this problem. So my brain is maybe not the answer to Okay, so the podcast is called Success with Soul. What does Success with Soul mean to you?

Tanessa Shears 38:19

I think it just has that, that vibe of showing up to your business and playing instead of you know, always watching the score, whether that be in revenue, or number of clients, or whatever that might be. It's playing to play. It's having success and having it feel like on an energetic level that it just I just like to put like that feeling of play and fun and lightness, and having that be more of the soul version of how I see my business because that's what keeps me showing up every day.

Kate Kordsmeier 38:47

Yes, love it. Thanks so much for being here. This is great. Thank you for having me. Wait a minute. I know I know you're eager to get back to your life. But before you turn off this episode, I want to share something super quick with you. I know you're probably sick of hearing other podcasters ask you to leave reviews. But here's the deal. If you like a podcast, and you want them to be able to continue delivering you free episodes every week, we need your support. If you subscribe on the apple podcast, Google podcast, app, Spotify, or wherever you listen, it makes it possible for me to continue to provide free helpful content and bring you amazing guests. And if you take it one step further by giving us a rating and review with your honest feedback, we can improve better serve you in the future. And you could even be featured on a future episode during our listener spotlights. Because if we don't get the reviews, we don't get the rankings and it makes it a lot harder to continue justifying the cost and time expensive producing a podcast every week and convincing amazing guests to come on the show. And of course your reviews are super helpful and motivating to me personally and I love hearing from you

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