Rest as a Revenue Strategy with Kristin Brabant

Most of us learn the same lesson early. You get ahead by outworking everyone in the room. Work harder, sleep less, take on more, and the results will follow. And for a while, they do, and that's the trap. The strategy works just enough to keep you locked inside it. Right up until the moment your body or your kids or your own exhaustion forces the issue. My guest this week is Kristen Brabant, and she helps ambitious female business owners while they're revenue while actually resting more. Not in a "do nothing" and watch the money roll-in kind of way, it's something far more useful than that. She helps them build their business around their zone of genius, get ruthless about what they stop doing, and treat rest as a real strategy with a real ROI. We get into how she defines rest, which is a lot more subjective than you think. We talk about the seven different types of rest, and she even shares how one of her clients scaled to past a million dollars in revenue, all while shutting down work at 5.30 every day and taking monthly getaways for herself. So if you've ever hit a revenue number that impressed everyone around you, but left you feeling like you were dying, this episode is for you. Now, before we get into it, I want to tell you that this conversation sparked something for me too. Kristen's home message around working in your zone of genius and resting on purpose hit pretty close to home, because a summer with two little kids is not exactly a season of abundant focus time over here, and honestly, I don't want it to be. So that's why I'm running an interview series on the podcast all summer long. I'll be bringing on guests just like Kristen, which helps me lighten my own load while still putting really great conversations in your ears. And these are the kind of conversations that actually move you towards the business you want to build. This is me taking my own medicine on this topic, and I hope you'll take yours too. All right, let's get into the episode with Kristen Braband. Most business advice is built on one key assumption that what worked for someone else will work for you too. The Nourished CEO podcast exists to challenge that assumption and point to a better way. I'm Laura Schoenfeld, Strategic Advisor and Business Coach with over 15 years of experience online and multiple millions of dollars earned from my own business. I'm also a mom of two and a devoted wife who runs it all in about 20 hours a week. This show is for the established coach, consultant or service provider who is done following someone else's playbook and is ready to build a joyful, profitable business from their own authority. Every episode is a direct no filters conversation about the real challenges you're facing in your business with honest strategy and practical action steps that you can actually use right now. Because working smarter and building something sustainable matters a lot more than just chasing a bigger number. No recycled advice or empty inspiration here, just honest integrity driven conversations about building a business that fits your life as much as it fits your goals so that it gives more than it takes while nourishing everything you're building outside of it. If that sounds like the breath of fresh air you're looking for, you're in the right place. All right everyone, I am so excited to have with us on the show today, Kristen Braband, welcome to the Nurse CEO podcast. I'm so happy to be here, Laura. Thank you for having me. We connected in a networking group that we're in called the Mixer Mind and just when I got to know Kristen, there's so much stuff we have in common. We're even like, you can't see us, but we're literally wearing like the exact same outfit right now. So I knew immediately we had to have her on the show and the topic that she covers is one that fits extremely well with the theme of the nurse CEO and that is the concept of rest as a strategy. So I know you wanted to mention because as we were talking about before we hit record, everybody's got a different concept of rest. Before we even get into that though, I want to know how did this become the thing that you now work on with your clients? Was it like you're just really great at resting and you had to teach other people or did you know that's not the answer? Probably not. It never is. You know that is absolutely not how any of us come to our mission and our work. It's generally through some childhood drama. Okay. And a little bit of universal grace and guidance. But you know, to answer your question, the way I got into this was by blows for sure. And you know, growing up from the time I was three years old, I knew I was put on a cert to be a teacher. I would line up all of my dolls, which I am the youngest of three with two older brothers. So mom was originally a boy mom. So my dolls included Bart Simpson and action figures. And we had the one trusty dusty American girl doll, but I would line them up and school was in session. So I just felt like I was meant to be a teacher and my mom was a teacher. Grandma was a teacher and was a teacher. Cousin was a teacher. All the women in my life were these public educators. And so I had my mindset on that. But of course hindsight, you know, is is 2020 and I can see the roots of entrepreneurialism from the time I was young. You know, building businesses was how I also played when I was young. I would start these little businesses in my white bread, suburban neighborhood. I was hitting the pavement girl, hanging up pieces of paper, selling my wares. I had a failed jewelry making business learned real quick, not my forte, not my zone of genius. But I was really good and really successful with my pet sitting business and my babysitting side hustles. Okay, so growing up building businesses was part play and things that I just did to occupy myself for fun, which is also something that I, I do with my clients when we're looking for their zone of genius is look back at their childhood and pay attention to when left to your own devices. What did you do to entertain yourself, you know, when you had moments alone and no one was telling you what to do, what did you naturally gravitate towards what roles did you pick up and play in your friend groups on, you know, on the yard at school in group projects like where did you naturally gravitate towards and I think one of those places was building businesses and another place was teaching. And building businesses was also part duty when I was young because my mom, she had a candle business and network marketing candle business and I was her assistant from the time I was seven years old until the time I was 18. And she turned our three car garage into a candle warehouse, imagine the fire hazard, okay, growing up in Southern California, I knew we were toast if that thing got a match lit to it. The threat of evacuation was very real growing up in Southern California with the three car garage filled with candles, but I mean, I was my mom's assistant in her business, I did inventory for her, I, you know, I was calling customers, I was going to many of her candle shows, writing to the armpits of California, putting on these candle parties with her, packaging orders, calling the home office, you name it, right. But, you know, my mom, in addition to running this candle business, she had three jobs. So she was a full time high school teacher. And then of course, she took on any extra leadership role she could. So she was also the department chair. She had her candle business that I was her assistant in and she was also a part time college professor at night. So that's what I watched, right, that was my model of how you make money and how you become successful, how you fill your time, what do you do with your time, right, what makes you a good person versus a not good person, right, I watched my mom. And you know, what I watched was she relentlessly worked these 16 hour days. My mom would find a way to, you know, on her lunch break, she would drive to dental offices and for all of the dental hygienists, she would do a candle party on her lunch break. And then she would drive back to the high school and keep teaching. So that's what I watched. So no one is surprised that when I graduate college and go for, you know, my, my first jobs here, my strategy was exactly what I watched at home. It was outwork everybody in the room, right, the way that you become successful, the way that you provide for your family and you make money as you just work harder. And then you add on top of that, right? The extra information. influences from media, for us millennials and Gen Xers, it was all productivity hacking, right? And it was like just maximizing every possible minute and it was a lot of the, you know, the Tony Robbins and it was all men saying that if you wanna make money and you wanna make a name for yourself, you just work harder and you use every minute of that day and you only need to sleep four hours and I was like, fantastic. I only need four hours of sleep. So I use that strategy as I graduated from UC Berkeley and I pursued becoming a teacher and I taught in some inner city high schools in Oakland. I was a Spanish teacher, so I know, no one can see me but if you could see me, you would say, she's very white and blonde. And that is not a Spanish teacher and if you've ever worked in inner city schools, you know how this came about, right? The Spanish teacher quit mid-year, they looked at me and they're like, you speak Spanish, right? You're the new Spanish teacher, so I became a Spanish teacher and then I decided I wanted to become the best educator possible and I went into a graduate program. I flew to Boston, picked up my whole life, moved over there and I did what I do best, which is like work my ass off and there was this voice inside of me that kept whispering, this isn't it, but it's also an oh shit moment of, this was my only plan. There was no plan B. My plan was to be the best public educator possible and so if there's no plan B, you stick with it and so I stuck with it. And I kept ignoring that voice that was telling me it's not this and I would wake up every single morning with this crippling anxiety, knowing I needed to get out. It was like, how are we gonna get out? When are we gonna get out? We gotta get out. This isn't right, this isn't right and I would just stuff it away and I would lessen plan my ass off and I would go back into the trenches for another day and just say you just gotta push through and that made me a regular at urgent care. So I got all of these, I just had illness popping up in my body inexplicably and I think plenty of us have had these moments in our life. It was less paid attention to, I think, you know, 15 years ago and now there's a little bit more of a precedent set for the impact of stress, right? But that strategy of just outwork everybody in the room and push forward caused a lot of stress in me. And eventually I quit my graduate program but not after, you know, not until I passed all of the very stressful exams to like chop the teachers that couldn't keep up. I had no plan B and that process of figuring of quitting grad school and figuring out what am I gonna do, you know, my full education up to this point was building towards being an educator and I just quit, I had never quit anything in my life being the good little areas that I am and I had to figure it out and that process of figuring it out has become a process that now I use with my clients every single day of my work and it was paying attention to, you know, what am I the best at? Where do I come alive? Where do I get into the flow? Where do I shine? Where do I feel this manifold energy and then what sucks the life out of me? And how do I do more of what I'm really good at and adds energy to my life and get rid of bit by bit the things that suck the life out of me and that led me to my next job, which was helping young adults from underserved communities start their careers in tech. So I was helping young adults that were 18 to 25 without a college degree start their careers at LinkedIn, Facebook, Salesforce, Google, the major tech companies I was in San Francisco and that was perfect for a while. I was coaching, I was facilitating, I was doing really meaningful work and then again that voice came back of like not this and it's such an inconvenient voice, you know? That voice is just like, that is the last voice that you wanna hear and I did another successful job of avoiding that knowing for as long as possible. Until once again, like my body showed these signs of stress and I had to pull over on the way to work and call in sick pretend I was sick even though I was on Geary Street just pulled over having a panic attack on the way to work. And that was a wake up call and I decided to focus on the work that once again right lights me up the most and it was clear at that point it was coaching. And so there was a bridge period where I was building my coaching business. At the same time I had a full time job at the same time I was getting my coaching certification on nights and weekends and eventually I was able to quit my job and start my business. I've had my coaching business now for about nine years and I found that the work that I loved most really related to women in that look a lot like my mom, you know? Super ambitious, wildly smart and talented women whose strategy for success has always been, you know, grind, work harder. Build, outwork everybody in the room and then we reach these transition points whether it is hating your job and not knowing what's next or it is having this super successful model of business and then having a child and looking at the old model of business and saying, I hate this, this is terrible but having no plan B like what am I gonna do? How do I, you know, all of the strategies that worked up to this point no longer work? So we've got to figure out a new business model and a new way of working that fits the woman and the stage of life that I'm in now. And those are the problems that I fell in love solving, you know, with clients. So I think it takes a lot of root from watching mom and repeating a lot of those strategies and behaviors of just working harder and then getting into my 30s and realizing like, we can't keep this up. This is not a strategy for success and over time and a lot of testing in my own business and in my clients' businesses realizing that when we rested more their revenue, my revenue grew. And that's how we came to focus on building businesses, feeling rich and rested. I love it. And it's funny 'cause you were mentioning the Ares thing. Like I feel like I feel like there's some of us who we can outwork and outperform people at our baseline. Yes. And then we can also just like keep going harder and harder and harder, right? It's like, and it's a double-edged sword. Right. 'Cause it's like, you do see, oh, the more I work, like maybe it's not the results you want, but you're getting results from it, right? So it's kind of a dictating to be like, well, if I work harder, I get more results even though there's another way, right? And you're like, absolutely. I'm doing it in a different way. So I definitely, I'm resonating with that because I have a personal story that I think, I wouldn't say it matches that, but I think it's that same idea of like, I'm gonna just outwork everybody and I'm going to, you know, just go to the high level. - It's lightning. - Oh yeah. - Maybe the best I can be, right? And there's always more. It's always like I could always be better. I could always be better. And eventually you're like, but why do I want, what am I aiming for? What's at the end of this? Is there anything at the end of this? Or is it just like, like you said, kind of work until you're in the hospital essentially? So, well, thank you for sharing that story. I think I'm sure a lot of people really resonate with that. I know a lot of the clients I work with right now have kind of come into that same weird, okay, what I've built works technically. And like a lot of people would be really impressed by this. Like, oh yeah, I'm like hitting 30 K months. And a lot of people are like, oh my gosh, that's amazing. But I feel like I'm dying, right? And so, and I went through some things sort of similar where as I'm adding children, I'm on child number two who knows if this is the last one or not. but like every time I add a kid, it's like, "Oh, there's even less for me now. "Less energy, less time, less, you know, "just sleep all the things that I need to function." And so the stuff that used to work when I was, you know, skipping around doing whatever I wanted all day is just not even possible anymore. So I definitely have been able to do that myself. - Both of those things change, right? The vision of success changes, as do the circumstances, like the time for you where you're not in service to a small human and making sure that they're alive and happy and healthy, that time keeps decreasing. And then so do, right? Your priorities and actually what fulfills you and what success even looks like changes dramatically after you have kids. - Yeah, I mean, for me, like I can actually work all day, even this week there's been a few days where, like I literally worked a nine hour day today, which for me is a lot, like that's not normal, that's not generally how I like to live my life. But if I'm doing something I'm interested in and I get into that zone of like, I'm just grunting, I can actually work all day and I wouldn't be like mad about it at the end of the day, except for the fact that I have two little kids that are in a very special season of life. And I'm like, maybe I don't want to not see them all day. So it is, it's one of these things where if you're someone who is a high performer, especially it's not just, oh, I can't function at this level. It's like, sometimes it feels like there is no, there is no natural cutoff for you to just be like, I'm done, I need to go do something else and you really have to create that structure for yourself. - Absolutely, right? I mean, kids are these natural, I don't know, bumper rails on our ambition. And I don't mean that as in like cap ambition. No, I mean, in terms of they naturally function as this stopping point of work. And when you have kids, you wind up becoming an absolute genius at prioritization and what work matters most and what am I gonna do with those, you know, I mean, when they're first born, it's nap time. That's your time, right? Unless you've got child care at home. But what are you gonna do with those two hours or those four hours in your day? You become, I mean, there's the opportunity to become so dialed into that. And then before you have kids, it takes you putting the bumper rails on yourself, right? The structure on yourself to shut down work and take care of yourself. - Yeah, definitely. So we were mentioning before that the word rest can mean a lot of different things different people. I think sometimes people are like resting just mean sleep or resting means just not working. How do you define rest in this context? - I'm really glad that we're starting here. We were talking before the podcast and started. We started recording and I was like, I think we should define what rest even is because I think we all come in with these preconceived notions that you say the word rest and we assume we're all on the same page. We all know what rest is. And we don't. I think we all have very subjective concepts of rest and what rest is to each of us. And that's objectively true. You know, something that I really enjoyed reading was Claudia Hammond wrote this book called The Art of Rest, How to Find Respet in the Modern Age. And a lot of the work in that book pulls from the biggest study on rest that was ever done. It was called the rest test. And they pulled 18,000 participants from across the world. So this wasn't just in the United States where we've got our totally messed up concept of work and boundaries and rest and pleasure. It was from participants all over the world. And very unsurprisingly, the wide majority of people are not getting enough rest. They don't feel rested. And that rest test pulled all of these different people about how much rest they're getting and how they rest and what rest means to them. And what they found is it's super subjective. But there are these themes and they define rest as rest is how we unwind. It's how we call our minds and it's how we recharge our bodies. And I think I just sum that up in my own head as it's how we recharge our energy. And that's a good litmus test for me of is a rest activity actually helpful for me or is it not? Because I think a common thing that we think of when we think of rest is a massage. And for some folks, that may recharge your energy but for other folks, your mind is racing the entire time. And you're critically aware that for that hour long massage you're sacrificing getting done all these other things. And in that sense, it doesn't pass the rest test, right? It didn't recharge my body at all. So it's totally subjective. It's how you recharge your body. But they did find some similarities in the rest test that like restful activities most often involve solitude which I thought was really interesting being kind of an introverted extrovert. Being alone tends to recharge our energy most. And it's not excessive TV watching. So I think a lot of the ways that many of us try to decompress at the end of the day is turn on Netflix. - And binge on the show. - I mean, if not scrolling Instagram, that's not the rest activity of "Shall I Work Man?" I'm so good at that. I'm so good at getting lost in a good Instagram scroll. You get me going on any breed of dog and on just hours gone. But no, it's not scrolling. We all know what we feel it in our bodies, right? We feel it in our brains. We feel it in how our mood changes at the end of these activities. And those activities are most often numbing, right? And there's a place for that. There's a place for just disconnecting and creating a pause between, man, I was really mentally on for so many hours. I need an off switch. There's a place for that. But after an hour of that, it becomes actually detrimental. But back to what rest is, I think something else that's really helpful to think about is that rest is not just one type of thing. There's a medical doctor, her name's Dr. Sandra Dalton Smith. And she has a framework where she identifies seven different types of rest. And I think you could slice and dice that any different way. Or if you and I got in cahoots and we wanted to dream up our own framework, we could identify 15 different types of rest, right? But she chose seven. And the seven that she gives are physical rest. So things like sleeping, taking an app, mental rest, spiritual rest, emotional rest, social rest, sensory rest and creative rest. And when I'm working with a client to create their rest strategy with them, which I do in tandem with a revenue growth strategy, I always create their revenue growth strategy with them and their rest growth strategy. We look at all these different types of rest. And what's your body craving? How do you, what activities actually recharge you? What is your body telling you? It needs more of, we pay attention to that and we bake that into your own custom rest strategy. So that was a really long-winded way of saying, it's completely subjective, but a good litmus test for yourself, if you're figuring out what rest actually is up to snuff for you, what's worth the squeeze is, does it recharge your energy? Does it recharge your body? Does it calm your mind? - Yeah, and I would think there's some things that might not feel in the moment like it would be energizing. So I think about getting up early to do a spiritual practice, for example, I try to read the Bible in the morning, I'm trying to get better at that 'cause after having children that wake you up in the middle of the night, you're like, I just wanna not be awake right now. - You should sleep, right? I mean, I think that's one point in and of itself that you're bringing up, you know, that's one of them. The absolute necessities is your sleep. - Mm-hmm. - So there's, yes, the spiritual rest, we need that spiritual food, the reading of the Bible for you. It's gonna be a meditation, in visualization for myself, but there's also a hierarchy. - Yeah. you need that sleep. When you've got young kids in the house, you need that sleep. - Yeah. And I would say some of it might be around prioritizing your sleep schedule, 'cause if it's like, you're up until 11 o'clock's rolling, and then you're like, oh my gosh, it's like I should be getting up earlier to do some of this stuff 'cause it's the only time to do it, but I'm tired and then you're like sleeping and missing that. I think sometimes just those choices kind of, it's like a domino effect, right? So you have to be really disciplined about, if I need, let's say it's eight hours minimum, but the literal only time that I can do meditation or prayer, or whatever spiritual practice is that, 30 minutes or an hour before my kids get up, if you skip it and there's zero of that for your whole life, then it's probably not going to feel like you're resting comprehensively if you're just like sleeping past any other activities. Even though I have a friend that was mentioning, she's recommending to me, she's like, you should work out when you get up in the morning, it's like change my life as a mom and I'm like, okay, we will consider, I will think, I will bring it up with my board of advisors, me, myself and I, and we will take that into consideration, thank you. But that's an area in my life right now that I've noticed. When I'm in a busy season, it's very easy to just toss that to like, I don't need, it's okay, Ed, if I don't work out today, it's fine, but if it's over time becoming like, oh, I haven't gone to the gym and actually worked out other than going to the gym, just get work done with the kids in child care. If I haven't done that in a week, I'm like actually now that's starting to make me feel less energized. So I love that you're talking about the different categories because I do think it's really easy to say, just sleep more and don't work as much, but then if you're not actually making time for those other categories, that actually could be the missing piece that would benefit you more than just like sleeping in until, you know, nine o'clock or something like that. So, I mean, yeah, exactly. And it's such a, it's a work of art, like your rest strategy, your unique rest strategy, is a totally custom work of art. It's not just sleep eight hours. And if you went to bed at midnight and woke up at eight, that's not equal to going to bed at 10 waking up at six and having 30 minutes to read the Bible. These two are not created equal, right? I mean, trust me, I've tried. I know the last time I was up until midnight, so I remember I used to, but it has not happened in a while. And you know, it has, it has, like you mentioned, there's certain areas of rest, aspects of rest that I think many of us accomplish really naturally. We make the time for them, we prioritize the time for them without thought. One example could be, you know, social rest and taking breaks from people and maybe we swing to the other extreme of we haven't seen any people in two weeks beyond the folks at the grocery store. But then there's other types of rest that we're actually craving that we're not prioritizing and with a few tweaks to our routines. It could create a massive return on your energy, your feeling of happiness and well-being and your creativity, you know, I think this is a really big aspect of how to rest in revenue link. It's because when we're rested, you know, our so many different things in our brain chemistry and our body chemistry change and as a result, we become much more creative folks. We see opportunity everywhere when we're rested. We basically are our aperture of what's possible, opens up. And when we don't rest, conversely, all those stress hormones get activated, the cortisol, the adrenaline. And that, the impact of those hormones on our brains is we're designed to focus only on what's in front of us. And generally, what's right in front of us is a fire. And our whole world becomes that. It's putting out fires, putting out fires. But if we rest, our brain starts to produce the anabolic hormones. So the hormones that actually regenerate our bodies, that stoke creativity. And so when we rest, we all have these experiences. We know this intuitively, you know, you know that when you go into the shower, all of the sudden better fresher ideas come to you. You know that when you go for the walk, you come back to a situation and it doesn't seem so dire. And you see a new opportunity of how you could handle things. And it's just that on steroids, right? If you have a rest growth strategy, you open yourself up to so much more opportunity. You see opportunity everywhere. You see the helpers that you couldn't see while you were running on fumes and adrenaline in cortisol. You see that client that, oh God, I should really reach back out to her, you know? She said she wanted to work together and I should follow back up with her, right? Or that collaborator that's waiting in the wings. Things just come to you when you are arrested that are also going to generate momentum and growth in your business. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So when we were chatting before we had record you said that your method to help somebody build this rest strategy is to start with their zone of genius, which I think is, it's funny. I was mentioning to Kristen before we recorded that so much of the work that I'm now doing. After my big pivot this year is really helping people identify their strengths and their personality gifts and the things that make them tick and the things that they can really build on naturally instead of kind of like building on the things that they're not good at and trying to like make those better. So I just love that this is what you do. So can you talk to our audience about how do you approach that zone of genius work and why is that the first step to creating a rest strategy? I know, I love how aligned we both are the same wavelength of like where do we begin? We go back to what are you excellent at? And the term zone of genius comes from, for anybody who geeks out over this stuff and just kind of wants to dive a little bit deeper. Comes from gay Hendrix's The Big Leap. So if somebody wanted to go down a rabbit hole, I highly recommend getting that book on Audible and just two X in it because he can drone on, okay? But it comes from The Big Leap and he defined your zone of genius as where you, it's the set of skills where you create these extraordinary results with ease. And this, the way that I go about helping clients find that, I usually have them focus on those three skill sets that make their zone of genius. And the way we go about finding that is by creating these four quadrants, your zone of incompetence, your zone of competence, your zone of excellence in your zone of genius. And we go through everything that they have to do inside of their business and we sort it into one of those four zones. And the zone of incompetence is just the stuff that like, we do it because we have to. There's nobody else in our business to do it for us. But we really don't know what we're doing, okay? That's me and taxes, okay? And so one of my first hires was absolutely some financial advising support because that is my zone of incompetence along with graphic design. I have no business doing graphic design. I will mess up some cute little square space template so fast. It's gonna make your head spin. Your zone of competence is the stuff that we do passingly, but somebody else certainly does it better than us. There's plenty of stuff for me that falls into that zone, things like sales copywriting, you know, I can do the job, but it's not where I excel with ease. The trickiest zone is our zone of excellence. And that's the area where I call, that's our golden handcuffs because we're really fricking good at that stuff. And then other people notice and they start paying us really well to do those things 'cause they don't wanna do them and then they see we're really good at them. And so that can really easily when clients start working with me, there's a lot of their businesses, their offers the way they run their team that falls into the zone of excellence. We can get stuck there. And I say stuck because what distinguishes zone of excellence from zone of justice. is we, it doesn't come naturally to us, the zone of excellence. Typically, we do a lot of like studying and training to get good at those things, and it's also not fulfilling. It's an energy drain. And yet, because we're compensated so well for those skill sets, our whole business can be blank. And that's what you're doing for other people. And they love it. And so you're rewarded for continuing to do it. But then we define the zone of genius. And that's the stuff where, like I said, it's, I narrow it down the three skills that where you create extraordinary results with ease. You enter a flow state doing them. You lose track of time. When you're doing it, obviously, you're investing energy into it, but it gives you manifold energy back. You get back more energy. Even if you just invested the amount of energy it takes to run a marathon, you walk away from doing that thing, feeling on cloud nine, like could my full business be just this? And for folks that struggle with finding their zone of genius, I have them look back at their childhood and we pay attention to, you know, what were the things that you just gravitated towards naturally? What stoked your curiosity when you had free time and you were left to your own devices? What did you do? What was fun for you? What was easy for your brain? And a lot of people will overlook their zone of genius skills because they make this wrongful assumption that everybody is good at that. I have lots of clients that, you know, we'll get into their zone of genius and they'll look at a skill like building a community and say, yeah, but everybody's good at that. And I'm like, girl, let me tell you from my own experience. Not everybody is a genius at building community. Not everybody is a genius at creating mutually beneficial partnerships. Not everybody is a genius at facilitating workshops. We tend to overlook our zone of genius. That's a really good clue that you've actually landed on it. Is it so easy for you? And yet it's an area where you create the biggest amount of impact and results for your customers that you actually downplay it and you think everybody's good at that. But when you get your offers and your business model and your team and your calendar in your zone of genius, it, you get to do less and we see how this begins to create more space for rest, more time for ourselves. You create bigger results with a lot less effort and you're more energized. You know, speaking of what recharges your body, if you're really operating in your zone of genius, like you're doing with your clients, helping them just pivot and create this next iteration of their business, focused on where they excel with ease, it's so energizing. And that's really restorative. It's restorative to our spirits. So before I even go creating a rest strategy with somebody, we figure out what their zone of genius is and then we create the strategy to position their offers, their themselves and their calendar. And then also their team in their zone of genius and their marketing and their sales strategy, all of it reflecting their zone of genius versus, you know, just copying and pasting whatever somebody else is saying worked for their business. Yeah, I had an experience in the last year or so where I tried out an offer where it was like heavily done for you because that's what people were asking for and willing to pay for and everyone's like, I don't want to just do another program. I just want this done for me. And I was like, I mean, we can do it. Let's do it for you. And I think it was such a strong example of the difference between zone of genius and zone of excellence because honestly, as somebody who has been on in this world for like 15 years now, I'm pretty excellent at a lot of stuff. I have to learn a lot of skills, how to do a lot of stuff that like just get it done. And it was so interesting to try this offer out. And like make good money for it to your point. Like it was not, I was not undercharging necessarily. I mean, in hindsight, maybe I was for the level of quality. But I just the amount of doing and the amount of actually building things for that offer, I didn't even realize like how much that does not excite me versus my top strength is ideation. I love helping people get ideas and like come up with ideas for how to do things, how to solve problems, how to like do the next thing. Just it's like I could do it all day. I could do it all. Like I could literally, like I used to be in a mastermind where I would go there and just like give all these other colleagues a bazillion ideas and they'd go off and like make tons of money from it. And I would leave being like, oh my gosh, that felt so good. And it was like, it wasn't getting paid for it. But that's how it feels to be operating within your zone of genius. And you could have rolled up to that mastermind on, you know, five hours of sleep. And yet somehow your brain is able to perform at this ultra high capacity and it's wildly satisfying for you. Everybody looks at Laura and it's like, Jesus, how do you do it? You know, that was incredible. And you're like, this is the thing. You know, and it's funny because for a good chunk of those events, I had the baby, like my older baby, she was baby at the time, but she was there with us. I was breastfeeding. She was like in the hotel room with us. And I would still be so charged up by these events. And that experience was actually what I was leaning on when I made this big change this year because I realized I want that to be what I'm getting paid for. Now that I'm going off into these rooms and like paying to do for other people, I'm like, this is, this is what I should actually be building my business around. So I completely, I love this concept. And it's something that it really, I think it really takes the experience of being like working and making money and being like, I hate the way I'm making money right now. Yeah. That brings you to this point of like, there's got to be a better way because I think if you're not making money, you're kind of like, well, maybe I'm just not doing the right thing. Maybe it's just like, you can find a strategy. Yeah. You start making money. And I'm like, is this, do I want more of this? I want to do this and like, because if I want to hit, you know, my next income goal, do I want to double this? No, I do not want to double this. So then it's just like, you don't want to double what I am doing right now. This is going for you. I just like, I stopped selling the done fee. It's like, I don't want to do that. Like I don't enjoy actually executing stuff. And to be fair, I could have hired people to do it. And I did have help with it. But I was like, I just want to work with people who I give them a great idea. And they go crush it. And they just make a ton of money from the idea. I just gave them. Right? I could do that and only do that. That would be my dream business. So we're working towards creating that. But I wanted to make sure we talk about the revenue side of things speaking of, because I do think a lot of people believe that their business will suffer financially if they rest. Because they're used to effort equals dollars. Yes. That's the societal belief. It's also like, I think there's a lot of evidence in business to say, if I don't work, I don't make money. They will see I rest and my income drops. Like they have a lot of evidence to support that belief. So for the people who are like nodding along, listening, they're like, this one's really great. But maybe this works for them and not for me. Well, would you say, like I know you've worked with a lot of people that you've seen the results. How do you talk to somebody who's like, I don't think resting is going to help me make more money? I think it's going to hurt my income. That's what all of my clients say when we get on a business position. So easy. I think this is everybody's belief. If you're thinking that, like you're a great company, don't sweat it. And I think that that's like the society's message and party line to all of us, right, is especially in the United States, right? We're valuable when we're being productive. And our worth comes from output. And so it makes sense to me, perfect sense, that we equate working harder with making more money. And also danger, if I don't work as hard, then I think there's big implications on that before we really examine those beliefs. I think there's big implications on that of, I'm not a good person. I'm not as valuable or as worthy, you know, all the people that I really admire in my life work really freaking hard, right? And it's so if I don't work as hard, that can chip away at our view of ourselves. So I think there's a lot at stake. And I understand the, you know, it can look like a pie in the sky kind of prospect. So like, oh yeah, just, just, uh, do less and you're going to make more money. Sure, that's going to work. And a good book to salary. That's totally bright. Like some white guy who's 46 is going to sell the crap out on that block. And that's not the strategy. That's not how we go about it. It's not that we don't work. It's that we work really smartly and we rest intentionally too. It's those two things in tandem, which is why with any client of mine, we create their revenue growth strategy. We're not just being like, OK, now what I want you to do is I want you to not work for a week and watch the dollars roll in. That's not it. There's a strategy for growing their revenue, customized to them, positioning them in their zone of genius, positioning their offers in their zone of genius, their marketing and their sales strategy in their zone of genius. And when you do that, there's also a part of the process is also identifying all the crap we're not going to do. What are we deprioritizing? What are we going to eventually be delegating and automating off of our plates? What offers are we going to sunset and let it sail away into the distance, like our done for you experiment? What are we going to stop doing? And this begins to create some space, some space in our schedule, some space mentally. And I had a client who was-- she is a vice president of a wealth management firm. And I met her when I was facilitating an entrepreneur retreat on branding. And she came in with her sister, who's her co-founder. And at the retreat, we were in Malibu at this gorgeous beach house. Homegirl's cell phone was buzzing. Every 25 seconds, it was like a masterclass in torture and driving people insane. Her cell phone would go off nonstop. And I didn't know how she did it. My cortisol was spiking through the roof with every notification she was getting and her checking her phone and feeling like if she wasn't manning the ship and running everything, everything was going to fall apart. And I think that's a really common feeling for successful and vicious women business owners is if I don't do it, nobody's going to do it. And if I'm not running the show, it's not going to get done. And if I step away, I'm not going to make money. And things are going to fall apart. These are super common beliefs that were running her show, for sure. When we first started, she shared with me, everything felt like an emergency. She said she had no boundaries, no systems, no set schedule, no delegation system. Her delegation system was asking somebody to do something and then looking at it and saying they don't do it as well as me. And then like a squirrel, she just grabs it, puts it back on her plate, right? And then she had a baby. So I met her at this retreat. And this was the state of the union. But she was able to keep that up until she had a kid. And it broke down, right? Obviously, we should see the writing on the wall, right? That system of just owning everything and pushing and working harder and tolerating a high degree of stress and responsibility. It no longer just work harder was not physically possible with a newborn. And so we got to step in and we created her revenue growth strategy focused totally on her zone of genius. But we also created her rest growth strategy. And with a small child, that looked like a hard shutdown at 5.30 p.m. She was in a habit of pulling back open the laptop at 10 and working until midnight, after the baby went to sleep. And I'm not actually knocking that. I think once again, I'm going to drive it home. Rest is subjective. And everybody's body is different. But it wasn't working for her. She was losing her mind, right? I would lose my mind. That's right. But as business coaches, we've been in so many different businesses. We've met so many different people. You know, we're like a rainbow. There are so many different folks. And for some folks, honestly, that can work. It didn't work for her. So we set part of her rest strategy was a hard shutdown at 5.30. Absolutely no working at night. Another thing that she needed that took us time to build up towards was taking time for herself, as well as being with her husband, maintaining your marriage with a brand new baby. That's rough. And so part of her rest strategy was doing monthly getaways to actually reset. And a big hurdle we had to cross for that was asking for help. And that was as much in her personal life as it was in her business life, asking for help and allowing people to support her and building trust that we can actually step away. And if people are trained properly, if we have the right SOPs, if we have the right people in place and the right roles, you can step away. And people can actually do things better than you. Right, imagine that. Imagine that. And we also worked on shifting her mindset to from I need to work harder to earn more, which is the baseline, right? Like you were talking about, I need to work harder in order to earn more money to earn more when I rest more. And I know it's will. People are going to say it's will to just like shift your mindset and everything shifts. But the more you learn about quantum physics, the more you just get it drilled into your head that our thoughts are creating our reality. And if you shift your beliefs, your circumstances are going to shift around you. So we really worked on that mindset of, I earn more when I rest more. And that became for reality. We worked together for 12 to 18 months, 18 months with her. And over that period, she stopped doing everything herself. She, when the work day ended, she actually shut off and got to prioritize what was important to her, which was actually being present with her daughter. And playing with her, trying to soak up this fleeting phase of life as much as possible. And I think one of the biggest wins is that she described herself and everyone on her team described her as calm at the end of this, which for somebody who was a ball of stress and everything felt like an emergency at the end of this process, us focusing everything on our zone of genius. Her doing less, but the things that she did do created a lot more results. So the fewer things that she focused on, drove a lot more revenue. She stopped stressing everybody else out around her because she trusted them more and allowed them to be in their zone of genius and grow and learn and thrive. And she also had time for herself to just let her brain decrease its frequency and joy time at home, enjoy time by herself as well. And at the end of those 18 months, she scaled the business from 750 K in revenue to beyond a million in revenue. And that's just one example. It's just one example of somebody who actually had all the stuff going on, a newborn baby, really solid beliefs that I'm not going to make money unless I'm working. And gradually, bit by bit, we tested that and tested that and said, well, how about you step away for this weekend? And that weekend, and how about you shut down work at 5.30 instead of at midnight and her revenue grew month after month after month, her revenue grew. And she actually started to see the results that when she rested more, she did earn more. And so I don't think you start off by believing that. I think most of us start off with the belief of I earn more when I work more. But if you're willing, if you want to change how you do things, and you want more time for yourself, and you want to take better care of yourself, and you want to enjoy your life more-- not to put a value judgment on it-- but if you want that, and you're willing to shift your belief that you earn more when you rest more and you create the strategy to be able to do that, it becomes your reality. And she, yeah, she, in those 18 months, she's scaled past a million in revenue. She felt calmer and happier and more relaxed than she had in years and she enjoyed her work again. Right? And it was resentful of your work when you're exhausted and miserable, right? And it all turned around unsurprisingly as she consciously worked a rest strategy to take care of herself. Yeah. Well, Kristen, I feel like we could literally just go another hour right now on the topic. I love it. It's so, it's so important. And I think especially for all the very high achieving women out there who basically are like the over functioners, the ones that are like, I'll just get it done myself because I know that I'll do it the right way like that. That gets you to a certain point. And then eventually the wheels will fall off. And I've seen this in my own life. I've seen this in clients lives. And so I just, I just want to reiterate to what Kristen saying that this is so important. And if you have big goals and you want a life outside of your business as well, this has to be part of the equation. So I really appreciate bringing your expertise to the show today. If somebody wants to find out what a rest-based revenue growth strategy could look like for them, what would be their next step? I think the best next step would be, you know, I to connect on LinkedIn and get on my newsletter. So if you go to my website, KristenbraeBant.com, there's an easy opt in into my newsletter in every single week. This is what we're talking about. How to increase your revenue while resting more, creating more time for yourself and enjoying your life more. That's what we're talking about every single week. I think that's a great starting point. And if somebody is looking for one-on-one coaching, that's my jam. Now, my favorite part of my business is that deep one-on-one work with women, entrepreneurs, super ambitious women, service providers wanting to scale their revenue to multiple six and seven figures while taking two plus months off a year. And if that's something that they're looking for, then the first step I offer, I'm offering to your community here, a complimentary 90-minute goal-clarifying consultation. Totally free, 90-minute session together for us to clarify what is the look of professional and personal success 12 months from now for you. Because you mentioned this earlier, Laura, that so often we get in this habit of just working harder, building more, building more, just try this new strategy. And we really lose sight of what do I actually want? You know, maybe we're working off of a vision of what success was to us at 29 and not the updated version of what success looked like to you from a financial standpoint, a business standpoint, and a personal standpoint today. With everything being as it is, so we would clarify that together in that 90-minute goal-clarifying consultation and begin to talk about what's it going to take to make that happen in your business. And it's a great way for us to collaborate together, see if it's a fit working together. And no matter what, you walk away with a crystal clear vision of what success looks like in your business over the next 12 months. So that's what I would say. I think we'll include a link maybe, but that link is also on my website. If somebody is looking for it, we can book a 90-minute goal-clarifying consultation to see if it's a fit working together. Amazing. Well, we will definitely link to that in the show notes. If you guys are listening to this, go check that out. Thank you, Kristen. It was so fun to chat with you about this. Like I said, I feel like this could be a five-hour podcast on this. We could create that mini-course that neither of us wants to create together on this topic. Exactly. Well, thanks for having us. Thanks, Laura. I hope you had a great time listening to Kristen's genius on this particular topic. And we'll see you here next week on the Nurse CEO. Take care, everybody. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Nurse CEO podcast. And if this episode got you thinking about how you're actually wired to run your business, your next step is to take the CEO-type quiz. Because here's the thing. Most of the business advice out there was built for someone specific. And if that's someone isn't you, it doesn't matter how hard you work or how many strategies you implement. It's just never going to feel right and it's never going to work as well as it should. Knowing your CEO-type changes all of that. After you take the quiz, your results page will walk you through your natural strengths, your biggest blind spots, and a concrete game plan for your offers, messaging, sales, and even your calendar. All built around how you actually think and lead. Not generic advice? Your specific direction. It takes about five minutes and it's completely free. The link is in the show notes or you can go to LauraSjohnfel.com/quiz. If you already know your type and this episode resonated with you, share the quiz with someone else who needs it. The right framework at the right time can completely change how someone sees their business and honestly that's exactly why I made this. All right, I'll see you next time on the nearest CEO podcast. [Music]