This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors in spelling or inaccuracies in the spoken words.
Shauna Lynn Simon (01:49.88)
Shauna Lynn Simon (01:50.008)
Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business Podcast. Today's guest, Terry Tateossian, spent more than 20 years building and investing in tech and media companies. And she had the kind of career that looked really successful from the outside. But in her early 40s, a health crisis actually forced her to stop and take stock. She had early perimenopause, burnout, and years of emotional eating that had caught up with her.
And what followed ended up being a full rebuild. She lost more than 80 pounds through evidence-based nutrition training and mindset work. And along the way, she actually rebuilt how she wanted to work and live. So today, Terry is the founder of THOR, which stands for The House of Rose, which is a wellness brand helping women over 40 to build strength, support their hormone health, and create a stronger second half of life through retreats, coaching, and community.
She is a Harvard Medical School trained lifestyle medicine coach and nutritionist, and her work has actually been featured in CNN, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, and Parade, among others. I'm super excited to welcome her to the show. So, Terry, thank you so much for joining me today.
Thank you, Shauna Lynn, for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
I don't even know in all honesty which part of this I want to dive into first because there's so much goodness in all the things that you represent, all the things that you have done. But I think let's start with just sort of going back to, I mean, not quite the beginning, but let's go to the middle essentially. You're back in your early 40s. What was happening in your body? What was happening in your business? What was life looking like for you at that time?
Terry Tateossian (03:20.642)
Yeah, so it started actually exactly mid thirties. 35, I had my son second pregnancy. And I was running around in maternity clothes for another three years after that. And just at about 37, I started experiencing some interesting, different, unique things. And I couldn't figure out what was going on. I felt like I was still postpartum.
But things were changing and I had no explanation. I attributed a lot of it to being overweight. I was 80 pounds over my ideal weight. I was not sleeping. I was running a business. I had two children at that point. I had a two-year-old and a how old was she? Seven. She was seven years old. at that time. And lots of animals in the house, lots of all kinds of full life, okay? Full life.
Yeah. Full house, full life, full things, yeah.
Mm-hmm. And then everything just screeched to a halt. And now when I look back at it, I went postpartum to perimenopause directly. There was no in between. And things just started shifting. Things that used to work before did not work before. Things that I could do, you know, effortlessly or I mean, you know, reasonably well were extremely challenging.
I couldn't sleep, I couldn't think, everything was just hitting a wall, right? And so I attributed a lot of it to being overweight. So I blamed my fatness to everything. Everything was that. But eventually it took me a while, about 10 years, to figure out that it was perimenopause. I had entered early onset perimenopause. It was the fast and furious track because by 42 I was fully menopausal.
Shauna Lynn Simon (05:14.306)
Wow. And I think, some of the things that you're talking about here, it's so common for us women to, especially initially when you first start in perimenopause, but especially at a younger age like that, which we're now getting more information that actually shows that a lot of women are entering perimenopause closer to their mid 30s, more a lot earlier than we actually think we are. But it's, it's so easy to attribute any symptoms that we have to other things. And in fact, it's doesn't just come from us. This comes from health professionals. It comes from
society this comes from all the data that we have out there is telling us that what we're experiencing is not necessarily what we think we're experiencing. And at the same time, on the other side of things, if I Google, is this a ⁓ I talk to Gemini on a pretty regular basis and ask, hey, is this a part of perimenopause? And you know what answer is every single time? Yes. Because everything could potentially be a symptom of perimenopause.
So deciphering them is not an easy thing to do. And especially when you're postpartum, you're, you know, dealing with two young kids, dealing with your, you know, your health issues. Like there's so many things that are just stacking on top of each other. How do you pick all that apart and figure out, like, I must be in perimenopause? So I mean, I think it's pretty understandable that that wasn't the first thing that was clicking in. But so
Last thing on my mind.
And I I won't get into the details here because I know many of my listeners have heard me talk about this, but I hit burnout when I was in my late thirties myself. And it was something that it took me three years to recover from. And ended up gaining a lot of weight during this time that I've since lost as well. And so there's the journey that we go on as women in our thirties and forties is something that I don't think people are talking about nearly enough.
Shauna Lynn Simon (06:54.19)
So appreciate you sharing that on here. So you figured out that you were in menopause. You said 42, you hit menopause.
Yes, officially. So I haven't had a period in eight years, basically, right? my gosh. So I'm turning fifty this year from forty two to fifty, nothing, right? So that's postmenopause technically. Right. menopause was just the last day of my last period. Right. And everything after that is postmenopause.
Got it. Okay. So and thank you for clarifying that too, because I think there is a lot of misconceptions about what is peri versus what is menopause versus what is postmenopause. So that's a good distinction to make for that. You talked about navigating the health challenges and finding no science based nutrition. And you know, you clearly did a lot of work in terms of figuring things out at what stage, when was that happening? How was that happening?
Yeah, so that happened very organically. What I ended up figuring out is that I will probably always be a workaholic. Probably never gonna stop. And so I had to find something that had meaning to me. It had value that was beyond me, that contributed to health, wellness, mental health. I had to find something that I could really pour all of my heart and my soul and my time into that
I spent working on other things. It had to be something that had meaning. And so I started pivoting. really, it wasn't even by choice. I was so burned out that I literally had to step away from my own business at the time and let my partner take over while I try to figure out I mean, and I had obviously the privilege and I was lucky that I had that opportunity to do that. That everybody can do that. But I had to figure out what in the
Terry Tateossian (08:38.91)
Heck is happening to me? Because it wasn't just physical. It was mental. It was emotional. My nervous system was completely wrecked. I was drinking a lot of alcohol. I couldn't lose any weight. I would look at, you know, pasta dish and gain five pounds. My hormones were like just out of control. And so I had to put all these things together piece by piece by piece on my own. Because, first all, nobody was taking me seriously back then. You know, they're like a 30, you're 37. You look like you're.
25, you know, and yeah, you're not in menopause. Like, no, no, people aren't taking me seriously. And so I had to do it the hard way. I had to do it on my own. And as the changes started happening and they were showing visibly, and I want to make it, you know, clear to everybody listening, the changes that happen when you start changing your lifestyle, the visible changes are the very last ones that happen.
That is the very end of the transformation. The unseen things, the things you cannot really touch or point at, or they're not visible, are the most profound changes that take place. So by the time people started noticing, I was well into the journey and really deep into that. And people started asking me, like, what are you doing? How are you doing it? Can you help me? And I didn't really have professional accreditations at that time. I didn't have any certifications.
You know, and I couldn't really help anybody because I was like, Well, I that's not my thing. Like I didn't I mean I can tell you what I'm doing, but I can't help you professionally. And it started happening so often that, you know, people started telling me, Well, why don't you go get certified? Why don't you go get this certification, that certification? And I got really into it. And so I went and I did the official things and then it rolled into retreats.
And so they're kind of immersive events, basically immersive retreats for women that I started doing. And I got addicted to that. I love doing that. It was in person. The energy is very different. And so I slowly kind of pivoted my entire career from the digital agency, marketing and advertising to this space where it was deeply personal to me. I had skin in the game.
Terry Tateossian (11:00.948)
Everything that I researched and all the rabbit holes I went into, the connections I started making between, you know, all these things and how they're all tied to each other, it all had such intense value to me because it wasn't just personal to me. I could pass it on to everybody that was interested, to my children, my family, you know, all of that, the neighbors, my clients, all of that. So yeah.
It's so huge when you can actually bring that passion into something that not only helps others but also makes you money. I mean, let's be real about this. At the end of the day, we can all be as altruistic as we want to be, but we have very real bills to pay that don't get paid with good deeds and goodwill. So, you know, we actually do need to pay it with cold hard cash. And at the same time, being able to know that you're making a difference, that you're helping people in a meaningful way, in an accessible way, in a way that is allowing them to live their best life. I mean, that just
It sounds incredibly fulfilling. And I mean, that's exactly what we talked about on this show is, you know, most of our listeners are women who have followed their passion in some way, some with more plan behind it than others. I mean, you came from a a background of, you know, you already had another agency, you already had another business previously. So what did that transition look like? You know, how did you bring in the knowledge that you had? What did you leave behind? You know, how did you make that transition? And
I don't like using the term start over. Actually, one of the guests that we had on our show previously, she talked about instead of starting over, you're starting with experience because that's literally what you were doing was you were starting with experience. But what did that look like in a completely different industry in your forties now?
Gosh, I was... Funny, it's a great question because I was talking about that yesterday. And so the first business I started, I was twenty-five.
Shauna Lynn Simon (12:49.922)
Oh, wow. Good for you.
No. I was clueless. Okay. Idealistic, clueless. I had no clue what the heck I was doing. I'm a hard worker. Okay. I will work anybody, outwork anybody. But that's not really all you need, right? And so going into this business, I did not have the rushed mentality. So that was one thing that I've noticed.
is very different from every other business that I've had between 25 and 40. I was not rushed. I didn't feel like I had to make it work right away or it was a failure, right? I had a bit more of a runway, so to say, in terms of getting all the pieces right and setting the right foundation from the very beginning, right? I knew I was confident that the skills that I had were going to
Produce the result if I gave it enough time to kind of marinate, right? To figure out what my perfect client persona is. What problem am I solving? Am I solving a real problem that people actually need? Or am I just manufacturing solutions that nobody cares about? Right?
Ooh, okay. Hold on a second. Before you go any further, I just really want that line to sink in for our listeners because that is such a valuable line that you just said, and you're kind of like just glossing over it. But are you actually solving a real problem? Are you just manufacturing solutions? And I think this is such a good question to be asking. It doesn't mean that what you're offering doesn't have value, but how you're positioning it maybe isn't quite right, or what your offer actually looks like. Like there's different ways and different angles of taking it. And the fact that you're taking the
Shauna Lynn Simon (14:40.888)
Time so early on in your business to answer that. I know people who've been in business 10, 15, 20 plus years who have never asked that question. And then when sales dip, they have no answers as to why the sales dip because people just always wanted what I had. And they never actually took the time to figure out what problem are they actually solving and what solutions do they actually offer. So I just really want to take a moment to stop it. And I'm so sorry to interrupt you, because especially if you're if you're also dealing with the post-menopausal brain.
I hope I didn't completely disrupt your entire train of thought on that one, but I didn't want that one to go by without catching it. So that's incredible that you were taking that time and doing that as intentionally as you were doing. So good for you.
Yeah, absolutely. a lot of times when people when I talk about it, ⁓ new business, new entrepreneur, whatever, people don't necessarily know the backstory or the history. And so one of the first businesses I started was a digital type of business was e-commerce. And then I had another e-commerce and then they multiplied into eight e-commerce.
types of companies. Then there were a few other ones where it was marketplaces, it was aggregators, things like that. And then eventually it turned into an agency. Now the agency, I think the last time I counted had worked with over 300 different clients. And they were in the Fortune 50, right? So it was Fortune 50 companies. Some of them are you use them every day and you know exactly who they are and all the way to a mom and pop shop.
Right. And so each of those have different challenges on their own. But one of the main issues that I saw over and over again was not really having a clear vision, not really understanding the customer, not really knowing how to communicate the value and how to communicate the solution that you're providing that is personal to the customer or to the client, not giving it enough time and having the wrong team.
Shauna Lynn Simon (16:40.748)
Right. So the team ultimately, what I found in common across everything I ever did was that the team made or broke the business. Absolutely. And so that was one of the hardest things for me to learn in the last 25 years that I've been an entrepreneur. Right. Is that you just cannot make it personal. Right. So when you're building a business and people see the potential in it, people are interested in it. They will try to either
Sabotage the business or try to be more important to the business themselves as an individual than the business as a whole. And so with this particular venture, I made it very clear that this is a baby. This business is a baby. It's a startup. It's brand new. It needs to be nurtured. It needs to be cared for. And no individual is more important than the baby itself. Right? Not me, not anybody.
Right. So the most important thing for this new venture was the health of the venture and how well it performed for its mission, which was to help women, truly help women, not just say it's gonna help, not just pretend it's gonna help, not just you know, make it pretty and look cute and all that, but actually provide value. And so if it didn't do that, it wasn't a healthy business. And so I had to let go of some people
Terry Tateossian (18:59.212)
at the very beginning that I felt were not aligned with the mission and the vision of this venture. I had to be very slow and steady in the way that I built it. I was not in a rush. I was not out to prove a point. I did not need to see success instantly. It was truly a love project and I was willing to put the seed in the ground and wait.
I mean, that takes a whole lot of patience and good for you because I think one of the biggest challenges that so many of my clients fall into is that, you know, they're so passionate. And I have so much respect for that passion that to your point of like that feeling rush and feeling hurried, like we often feel like when we get that good idea, like, my gosh, I have to just run with this before somebody takes it from me, before I lose the fire for it, before.
Something happens to derail things, whatever that might look like. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we often have as entrepreneurs is taking a moment to stop and slow down. Now I know that again, you came into this with the experience of your previous business and all of the challenges you had faced previously, the lessons that you had learned. But do you have any advice for anyone who's listening to this and saying, like, how exactly do you slow down? Because I think it also ties into
You know, we've talked about burnout. And I know anytime the word burnout comes up, first of all, so many of my listeners just tune it out. They're like, I'm not dealing with burnout. I this doesn't apply to me until all of a sudden it does. The other half of the listeners are like, Yeah, yeah, no, I'm definitely burnt out or I'm on the verge of burnout, but I don't know how to slow down. So there's nothing I can do to stop it. And they feel kind of helpless with it. So
With all of that in mind, so you can't come into this with all these lessons. What are some of the lessons that you can maybe provide with my audience of like, how did you do it slowly and intentionally? How did you pace yourself in that way?
Terry Tateossian (20:53.346)
Yeah, so I'm gonna be real and transparent, right? The purpose of a business is to make money. Period. Right. That's it. It's not to feed your ego. It's not to make you look successful. It's not to, you know, whatever. It's not none of those things. It's a very cold, hard truth. Right. Otherwise, you don't need a business, you need a hobby. Yep.
Right. And so
Yeah, you're not running the charity. Yeah.
And there's nothing wrong with any of those. You could run a charity, you can run an organization.
But charity still needs to make money.
Terry Tateossian (21:32.808)
Exactly. So if you're in business and you're going into a business, solopreneurship, entrepreneur, whatever, it doesn't matter, right? It has to make money or it's not sustainable. You can't continue doing it. And so the first question is, is this the type of business that can produce enough income where I don't have to be the only one doing all the things? And what is the timeline for this, right? Do you need capital investment? Do you need a partner? Do you need sweat equity?
investors, what kind of team can you build in the very beginning? Can you find people that are just as passionate as you are that are willing to work for free, basically, until you get the first few customers? There's many, many different ways of structuring it, right? Many different scenarios of how you can do that. Are you going to be your own investor? Are you your own backer? Can you be your own backer? Or do you need a silent backer or do you need a financial backer? Infrastructure, whatever, right? Many different ways.
And so that's the first thing. Are you going into a a type of business that can pay you enough money where you're not the only one that has to do all the things? Because if you're entering into that kind of business, you are heading into burnout. Because if you're doing that, you need to be the accountant, the bookkeeper, the salesperson, the marketing person, the content person, everything. Customer service.
Then you need to go do the work. You need to work in the business, out of the business, around the business, run all the circles. And do you have a family? Wait a minute. Right? You gotta add that on. and so
Even though it's a furry family, it's a responsibility, it's a dependency, it's a financial commitment, it's an emotional commitment, it's a time commitment, all the things, whatever. And family could be parents, family could be, close friends, whatever family looks like to you. Cause I think we often associate family as women raising children and dealing with spouses, and that's not necessarily always the case. Families can look very different, but there's a whole lot of other personal responsibilities outside of your job. Yeah.
Terry Tateossian (23:37.92)
Exactly. And I think my two cats and two dogs take up more time in terms of like care and you know, my walk my dog like two hours a day.
And good for you the dog needs that. I care for not only my cats, but I also have I foster cats as well. And I have a friend who's also a neighbor, lives a few blocks away from me, who also has cats of her own and also fosters cats. So when one of us is away, the other one takes on all cats, basically. So at any given time I could be caring for anywhere from 10 to 20 cats between our two households. And you know, they take a little bit of time and energy. Doesn't mean it's not fun, sure. It's a nice little
Instead of taking a coffee break, I take a kitten break sometimes. But nonetheless, it's a responsibility still. And we need to be able to balance all of that and not feel you don't want to feel like your time with your own children is a burden. You don't want to feel like your time with your friends and your loved ones is a burden. And you need to make sure that you're making time for it. Not next week, not next month, not next year, not after this final launch, not after this book gets done, not after this next big project that you're doing, but today, now and
every day making time for yourself and your family and the things that are personally important to you.
Yeah. Exactly. And so the business needs to be able to support that, right? And then figuring out how long is that going to take? All right. So a lot of people talk about balance, work-life balance, blah, blah, blah. I don't believe in that. I think that there are periods of time where you don't have any balance, right? And if you're starting a business, you're not going to have any balance. But how long?
Terry Tateossian (25:15.342)
Can you sustain that, right? So if you're gonna go all in on your business venture, can you do that for six months, 12 months, a year, five years, 10 years? How long is it gonna take before your baby produces, you know, it's bounty for you, right? And so when we enter into businesses where we don't think about that, we end up being the prisoners of the business. Like we're not really, we're not entrepreneurs in that business. We're working and there's no end.
Right. And so the burnout happens when like you're looking at it and you're disappointed. You're resentful towards it. You don't see a way out. It's not producing enough where you can hire more people to help you and you don't have financial backing. And now you're kind of stuck. Right. And so I wanted to avoid that whole thing.
I mean, good on you. Cause yeah, don't we all? Yeah. I mean, like everything that you're describing, I know so many women who've experienced where like they come to me and they say, like, the fire's just gone. You know, like I just I don't love it as much as I used to. And don't get me wrong, there's still elements that when they're doing it, they're like, this is the best thing ever. But they don't love the business the way that they did when they first started it. And didn't we get into business to do something that we love? So yeah, how are we?
Missing that important piece sometimes in how we're building it. So good for you for keeping sight of that and making sure that that was a priority as you built your business.
Yeah, it's a dangerous thing when you're not in love with it and you stay there because you feel like you don't have a choice. ⁓ a lot of I call them the boogeyman. the boogeyman come out, the self sabotaging behavior comes out. In my case, I had gained eighty pounds. Okay. I was drinking every night, like significant some amount. I am from the Soviet bloc, so vodka runs in our blood. Like we don't have real blood, we have vodka.
Shauna Lynn Simon (27:07.758)
Stay looting with vodka at all times, yes.
It was serious, right? And so I had started walking the path towards diabetes. All kinds of terrible behaviors were taking place because I just was miserable. I didn't see a way out. I didn't see an end to it. I was just in that cycle in that loop of just working twenty-four hours. And it made me really sick, right? Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, in all the ways. And so once I crawled, clawed every possible way out of that.
I really I did not want to be back in a position where I w I'd be facing that again. And so I knew I needed a different approach.
I think that the worst thing about all of this, it's the best thing, but also just the, the challenge I think that every woman faces. As I said, I dealt with it myself. The way that my burnout showed up gave me shingles in my late 30s. I was, according to all the doctors, way too young to have shingles. And yet there I was. And my body just wouldn't recover from it. The shingles themselves cleared up, but my body was just, it was sent into a complete tailspin. And I won't go into all the details, but the point is though that.
Burnout showed up for me and I learned my lesson. And hence the reason why I've created a coaching practice that is centered around ensuring that we are respecting and maintaining your health, your wellness, making sure that we are dealing with stress in a healthy way, that we are dealing with nutrition and not just, you know, go, go, go all grit and no fun, essentially. The challenge is, and where I was kind of going with this with in terms of like the worst part about this is you and I learned our lessons from experience, from a very hard experience.
Shauna Lynn Simon (28:42.17)
And we would love for every woman listening to this who has not had that experience to completely avoid that experience. And unfortunately, sometimes we just don't learn from someone else's experiences and we need to go through it ourselves. And that's the hardest thing that I don't know how to, you know, I've talked often about your future self. Your future self is you, but it feels like a different person and we don't always treat it.
As that person that we genuinely love and care about. And if I could tell everyone listening to this, if you have not experienced burnout before, there's a good chance you're on your path to burnout based on how you've been working, how you've been running your business. And if you really care for that future version of yourself, you'll do something today. And so with that in mind, you know, you talk about how you work with women who are dealing with perimenopause, who are dealing with the stresses of their job, who are dealing, you know.
potentially facing burnout, have already experienced burnout. What does it look like when you're working with someone? I know you've mentioned you do retreats, you do coaching. How are you supporting their journey? Because I think one of the things that we find is it's we put our health on the back burner. That is it, you know, the order of priorities in our life, the health part of it just seems to sit somewhere way at the bottom that we might walk over a few times before we actually pay attention to it. So
How are you helping women to kind of reframe how they're supporting their health and their bodies as they're aging? And aging is I'm using the term aging very lightly. We're not old. We're just, you know, entering a new chapter, let's just say, as our body is changing.
Yeah, so most of us are shocked when we start entering perimenopause. We don't even know sometimes it's perimenopause, but we're just shocked because it feels like you're hitting a brick wall. And it's like all of a sudden you're high functioning, you managed everything before, you were able to do all this multitasking at work, at home, life, whatever, right? And then all of a sudden, perimenopause knocks on the door.
Terry Tateossian (30:50.154)
And knocks you out. And you're like, whoa, like what just happened, right? And it's a big, big wake-up call. And so that's when normally I hear, I'm burnout, I'm really tired, I can't function. Things that were, you know, I used to do effortlessly. I'm no longer able to do. I've gained 40 pounds. I can't lose it no matter what I do. I've done all the diets. I've done all the cardio. I've done all all the things and nothing
is working. And so that's when I think really the writing hits the writing is on the wall. Like this is a different kind of thing. This is something else going on. But burnout is very hard to define, right? Because it it shows up differently with different people. You know, it could show up as a lot of alcohol. It could show up with as depression, anxiety, not able to sleep, sleeping too much, having lost all
joy, motivation, inspiration, interest in anything. Becoming antisocial. You know, it's so many ways. Like not wanting to go anywhere. Not not feeling anything. Not being interested. Not caring, being self destructive. Like so many ways it can show up. You know, in my case it was a combination. I would just blow sh--- can I curse? I
Prefer you didn't, but I mean we'll bleep it out if you do. So yeah. See if we could reframe that.
I would blow things up. I would just be like, nope, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm walking away, right? Or I don't want to talk to you anymore. Blow up the relationship. And I would just be self-destructive, essentially, right? But it was just the inability to handle anymore. It was too much overstimulation. And so it shows up a differently with different people. But generally, my suggestion is to stop. Stop. Right. So everything has to.
Terry Tateossian (32:45.902)
Stop immediately. Just shut it down. Don't make any decisions. Don't change your life in any drastic way. Take a pause. Take three, four, five days off and stay in stillness because the nervous system is overstimulated when we're burned out. Right. And so we have to find some way to de escalate the nervous system from where it's heading. And you know.
Trying different ways, different modalities. Like you can try breath work, meditation, things like that. Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better. But essentially, that's what I'm looking for is to stabilize the nervous system, basically being
nervous system triage, right? And then from there start moving forward because without the nervous system, you're not sleeping, your lymphatic system's jacked up, you're not eating right. You don't want to do anything. Maybe you're sleeping too much. Your food is not on point. Like everything is scrambled up.
And I think this is one of the challenges. we talked about this a little bit before I pressed record about the fact that you know there was a time where no one until recently, no one was talking about perimenopause and and menopause and how it impacts our bodies. And now
Everyone's talking about it, which is great. It's so fantastic for women, especially to just feel seen and feel, you know, understood in a way that hasn't existed previously. But the downside to that is also that there's just so much information saying what you need to get in terms of sleep and protein and do this and do that and eat this, don't eat that, don't exercise like this, exercise like this instead. And there's just so much information out there.
Shauna Lynn Simon (34:30.466)
So you've settled the nervous system. We've hit pause. We've stopped things. But now we're looking at things and saying, okay, well, I still have, these perimenopausal symptoms. I still have the weight gain. I still have, all the challenges that existed before we hit pause still exist, but now we need to find a path forward. How do we start to find that path forward for them? Is there a one size fits all that we could all just say, just do these five things and boom, you're set? Or is it a bit more customized or is a combination of the two?
I love this question. I'm gonna answer it in a bit of a cryptic way. Okay. So the same way they we approach building a new business from scratch. Right. New startup, new business, new idea, new venture is how we would approach that entire situation. Right. So when you have a brand new business, you're not gonna throw everything at it all at the same time, right? Because it can't handle it. It's a baby business. You need to kind of give it some time.
To marinate in itself, right? To blow up a little bit, right? And so it's the same thing. You stabilize the nervous system, but then all of a sudden, if you take some kind of a plan that has you doing a hundred different things, keeping track of a gazillion other things, five thousand supplements and you know, all this nutritional advice, you don't know what to follow, you're right back to where it started from.
Yeah, not to mention the brain fog is preventing me from retaining any of it. So I've got post-it notes everywhere telling me what I'm supposed to eat and what I'm supposed to eat it.
Yeah, exactly. So one thing at a time. So the first thing would be sleep in from my perspective, nervous system and then sleep. Because without those two things, you're not building a good foundation. Right. It's like the same thing in business. You're starting a business that has no customers and no product. How long is that gonna last?
Shauna Lynn Simon (36:22.784)
Exactly. And I will also say that there's a ton of historical data. There's a ton of studies that have been done that sleep, regardless of what stage you're at in life, regardless of whether or not you're you think you're facing burnout or perimenopause or any of these things, sleep is one of the most important things. And not just sleep, but rest. Getting rest. You are going to be more productive the more rest that you get. And we seem to somehow associate rest with being lazy or that we're not getting enough stuff done. And it is the complete opposite. The days that I rest,
I have a journal where I celebrate my wins every night. And one of my wins sometimes is like, I got some really good rest in today. That is a win to me because I'll admit that there are days that I don't prioritize it. And so when I do spend a quote lazy day, I am so darn proud of myself that day, let me tell you. And I think it's something we do not give enough credit to, no matter where you're at. Like you don't need to hit a wall before giving yourself that rest. You've earned the rest, you deserve it.
You don't need to earn it. You there's no such thing as earning rest. You just get to get it. Like that's just a part of life. And we're not getting nearly enough.
Absolutely. Just giving it even like a mental break. And that's where meditation comes in, right? So you can actually if you're type A like me and you have a schedule, you can actually schedule your meditations right into your calendar like a job. Like that's part of your job. Right. And you can throw in ten, fifteen minutes here and there to kind of reset the mind, give yourself a little mental break. But yeah, so that would be a daily kind of thing, nervous system, sleep. Then I would
Go after nutrition and really figuring out what does your body need in this stage of life? And it may not be what it needed 20 years ago. So it might be a very different type of approach. Everybody's very different. Obviously, there's tons of chatter about what to eat, what not to eat, all of that. You know, protein, fiber, top, top, top, top types of foods that you want to be paying attention to, sugar and alcohol.
Terry Tateossian (38:23.73)
Not so much, but everything else is pretty much on the table. And then pick things up and put them down. Life-changing. We're designed to walk and carry heavy things. Like that's what we're, you know, from all the way from the cave years. The caveman and the cave woman and the Neanderthal and all those guys, you know, before us, that's what they're designed to do. And we have not changed much as far as our
DNA or any of our biological functions for like, you know, 50,000 years or how however long we've been around. And so this whole sitting down thing and not being, you know, active in terms of load, putting load on the body is really showing itself in our health as a whole, you know, society epidemic that's going on right now. And so that would be the next thing.
And then I would most definitely for women over forty that are into entering perimenopause, menopause, all of that, really take advantage of modern technology and modern science and discoveries and check your hormones, you know, look at options if you're having really intense symptoms, which I did. I thought I was losing my mind, but nobody ever said a word to me about hormone therapy.
meanwhile they give it, they give you birth control when you're five years old. They don't tell you a thing about hormone therapy when you're really suffering. So it's ⁓ weird, no? But yeah, advocate for yourself when it comes to that. Obviously, it's not for everybody, but it's definitely on the table. And yeah, just keeping up the lifestyle is a full-time job. I joke around all the time in my retreats and I tell everybody, ladies, you're all
Fired from your jobs. You have a new job. You're the CEO of your lifestyle. You're the number one priority in your entire life. I don't give a rat's poop what your boss wants, what your coworker needs, you know, what your company is looking for. If you're not around, none of those things are gonna happen. And so your number one job.
Shauna Lynn Simon (40:19.598)
He
Terry Tateossian (40:45.772)
You're fired from all the other jobs. This is your job now.
And I think we really do need to start looking at it that way. Cause again, like we're not prioritizing it. And we hear all the cliche sayings out there, like, you can't pour from an empty cup and you gotta put your mask on first before you can help others. We hear it all, we understand it on a certain level, but in practice, we're still failing significantly. And I say that with so much love and adoration to every single person who's listened to this and nodded along and being like, Yeah, I've kind of screwed this up.
And it's something that, you know, it can be fixed. It can like at any time we can take the time to address ourselves. I feel like what we're probably getting from this episode is the internal thoughts of that most women are having is the the yeah buts. The yeah, but you don't have my life. Yeah, but you don't understand. I need to do X, Y, and Z. Yeah, but I can't right now. Yeah, but I just have to get through this. What do you say to women when they're giving you those yeah buts and trying to kind of put that
prioritizing on hold. Like I'm just gonna put a pin in that. I'll get back to that one day. What do you say to them?
Find the root cause of that thought. Right? So follow that thought all the way back to its origin. Because I promise you it's not what you think it is. Okay. The yes, it's valid. A lot of times these yeah buts are valid, but the reason why you're putting yourself on the very last part of the list, very last number, maybe you're not even on the list.
Terry Tateossian (42:24.276)
it like in my case, I wasn't on the list at all, ever. Right? There's a reason that that's happening, especially because in our mental intelligence, we understand we have to do these things. We're like we know we have to do these things. We know we need to do these things. That there's a certain part of us that's not putting us on the priority list. Okay. And so when the yah but and the what if and the okay but yeah you don't know me
those thoughts start coming up, ask it. Have a conversation with a thought. Okay, why do you feel that way? What makes you say that? Why do you think you don't have time? What why do why don't why don't we have time?
Why don't we have time? Why are there not more hours in the day? I mean, this is not, no one is going to solve the more hours in the day. This is never going to happen. We all have the same 24 hours. So we have to solve how we're using that time.
So ask that voice, what are you doing today that is so important that you cannot give me 30 minutes? What are you doing? Are you on Instagram for 30 minutes or whatever social media? Yeah. How many hours this week did you spend getting your hair and your nails done? Okay. So you went to soccer practice for your daughter and you spent three hours there every day. Why can't you figure out how to plan your meals in those three hours? Yeah.
Maybe yeah. Maybe instead of sitting there watching the game, you can walk around the track. Maybe you can run around the track. Maybe you can do some bodyweight squat or whatever. Exactly. Exactly. So there's always a like when you do a full audit, what we think we're doing is not exactly what we're doing. And there's there's another interesting aspect that I've noticed as well. So what people think they're eating is not actually.
Shauna Lynn Simon (43:51.542)
That's a little bit there, yeah.
Terry Tateossian (44:20.098)
The case in reality. All the time. It's like clockwork, it happens. I don't eat this and I don't eat that. And I try to be this and this and that. And then in reality, it's something completely different. Right. So what we think we we're saying that we don't have time for this or that, or we're too busy because we're doing all these things. In reality, when it's actually playing out in real time, it's very different.
Terry Tateossian (44:46.028)
Right. And so it requires radical honesty. It requires you to be brutally, painfully, horribly honest with yourself and really look at yourself in the mirror. And yes, there are gonna be days when you legitimately don't have time, but those days are not the majority, I promise.
I am so thankful to you for stating that as clearly as you did, as directly as you did, because I think it needs to be heard. I actually host a quarterly workshop and one of the big things that I deal with in this workshop is instead of, you know, most quarterly workshops are like, let's set your goals for the next quarter. No. What I focus on is why are your goals not getting done? Because we can set all the goals that we want, but ultimately the things don't get done because we don't prioritize them.
And we allow other things to disrupt us, other things to take that precedence. And so for myself, for example, you know, I often hear people say that they can't believe that I run as often as I do. They're like, I wish I had time for that. Listen, there are plenty of things that I know I would like to be doing that I'm not doing yet. Like I would love to have a six-pack, but I don't because I haven't prioritized my core strength the same way I've prioritized my running. And it's not to say that I couldn't prioritize it. I can easily
Take one of my runs and cut it in half and add in a core workout, and which is something that I have been working on doing, to be clear. But the point is though that I can't blame time. I have to blame my priorities. One of my priorities is my runs. Like on an average Sunday, I will run anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours. And most people look at me like, like, I could never find that time. Like, well, the way that we plan our Sunday runs, which is our long run. So I'm part of a running group, the way that we plan it is.
What time do we have to start our run to be done by 8 a.m.? Our runs are always done on Sunday at 8 a.m. The trade-off is we just start it earlier. So my Sunday looks the same as pretty much everybody else's Sunday. My Saturday night looks a little bit different though, because I go to bed earlier so I can get up early for that run because that's a part of my priority. Now, this is not to say that you need to start spending three hours every Sunday morning running because that's just what some of us crazy people do. The point is that I have prioritized it and nothing gets in the way of my runs.
Shauna Lynn Simon (46:55.48)
But there are other things that are getting in the way of other things that I should be prioritizing in my life. And that's where I take the time to figure out how do I make this a bigger priority? How do I carve out the time for this? So I love what you're saying about there's so many things that we're doing that can we make that time more meaningful, more effective, more about us, even when we are there showing up for someone else. Cause I'm not trying to tell you don't go and watch your kids soccer game or whatever it is that you're going to, but is there a way that you can
show up and be present for them and cheer them on while also cheering yourself on and taking care of yourself. So that's beautiful. I think that's honestly probably one of the perfect places to close this episode. So I think we could talk for hours about this. It's a topic that I'm sure people would be very happy to listen to us talk about it for hours. We've covered some really great thoughts and practices in this interview. So I really, really appreciate you sharing everything with us.
I do know that you have an incredible offer for our listeners today. Can you tell us a little bit about what you've got for them?
Yeah. So this year, because I'm really into strength training and nutrition, but this year I got really into fascia. So myofascial release methods because they actually, when you know how to manipulate the fascia and the connective tissue, it helps with chronic pain, it helps with range of motion, mobility, all kinds of things. And I run yoga retreats for a living. So I have to do a lot of yoga, a lot of
Stretching, mobility, a lot of strength training, all that stuff. Hiking, I do lots and lots of hiking. So you want to stay pretty nimble, right? So my fascial release actually helps you find trigger points in the body that might be creating an issue somewhere else in the body because it's all connected. So I do have a 28-day free email course that will walk people through all the different places and the different ways that you could release connective tissue, find trigger points, and see if you could get yourself out of some pain.
Terry Tateossian (48:52.938)
and improve mobility, range of motion, things like that. You can find that on thehouseofrose.com/twentyeightdays.
Amazing. That's perfect. And that sounds like honestly, that sounds like something that I should definitely take part in. I have a tendency to sometimes injure myself. And I have an incredible sports therapist that works with me to get me back on track. But the reason that I find myself injured is because I'm not doing the daily practice of maintaining certain elements of my body. And especially when we get to a certain age, we do need to be paying more attention to that. So I'm definitely going check that out. So thank you so much for everything that you share today.
If there's one takeaway that you'd like our listeners to I because again, we kind of covered a whole range of things today, but if there's a woman listening to this, what's the one thing that you really hope that she takes away from this episode?
You can step away from your obligations and responsibilities and they will still be there tomorrow. Nothing bad's gonna happen.
The world is not going to end.
Terry Tateossian (49:55.392)
Really, it's not. And you can feel better and you can come back to those things fresher, healthier, and you do deserve to take care of yourself.
Thank you. I think we all needed to hear that today. Terry, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all that you did with my listeners. I really truly appreciate it.
Thank you, Shauna Lynn, for having me.
Amazing. So listen, if you're listening to this episode and what we're saying today is resonating with you, I hope that you will continue to tune in each week to the Real Women Real Business Podcast. Don't forget to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you get notified whenever a new episode drops. Leave us a review wherever you get your podcast. It really does help the algorithm. I truly appreciate it. But the best way that you can support not only this show, but your fellow women entrepreneurs.
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