Episode 417: Are the fundamentals in place?
In this episode, Fiona talks about the importance of maintaining health fundamentals to enhance business performance. Learn how prioritising health fundamentals can help your business. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
Importance of health in personal and business life
Personal health journey and family health background
Health tracking using tools like the Oura ring
Balancing data and intuition in health and business decisions
Impact of sleep and readiness on productivity
Prioritising fundamentals
Time management and creating space in daily routines
The connection between personal well-being and business success
Practical tips for integrating health practices into a busy schedule
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Welcome to episode 417 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today is a quick tip episode and it's where I share a tip, tool or tactic that you can implement immediately in your small business. Before we get stuck, I want to acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of this beautiful land on which I record this podcast. And that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's quick tip episode.
For the last three years, I have been focused on trying, not always achieving it, but trying to commit to being healthier. Being healthier doesn't just mean eating better and exercising and yes, exercising has been a big part of it, but more though, looking at proactively looking after my health, I'm in my forties now and my parents both passed away when I was in my thirties and they both had several health issues, particularly my mom at the end of her life. But my father had health issues for about 30 years, so they started kicking off in his fifties and he passed away in his eighties. I also come from a family of health professionals. My sister is a GP, my brother is a professor in psychology, and my sister is a practising psychologist.
My mom was a psychiatric nurse social worker and midwife. We would have a lot of conversations and be very open as a family about health and health concerns and health issues and challenges. I've just grown up with that and I am trying to take it a lot more seriously in my forties. And you might be thinking, what has this got to do with business? One of the things that I have been using lately is to track health information, and yes, I am somebody who likes to track things that go hand in hand with what I do with businesses. We are constantly using Excel sheets and looking at everything from their financials through to engagement through to their CRO and how we can increase your conversion rate and all sorts of things.
I always say though, with any decision, whether it's your health or your business, there should always be a mix of data and gut. What does the data tell you? And then what is your gut reaction and what is your gut and your instinct telling you? I think the same goes for health. Back in 2022 when I got diagnosed with three herniated discs in my spine and couldn't walk for weeks, or months, that was a shakeup to like, I'm not sitting correctly at my desk. I need a standing desk. Like I need to walk more. I need to be stretching more. I'm not in my twenties. I can't just bounce back from things in the same way. One of the tools that I've been using to look at my health data is the Oura ring.
I have to say a massive thank you to my good friend Marre Smit from Smit Club in the Netherlands who put me on this. I know that some people can get wound up by data. The Oura ring I think is cool because I have used an Apple watch before and I've used all sorts of different rings, I used a Fitbit and a Garmin and other things in the past, but I feel like the Oura ring is next-level, like it, it can tell you things that you're not even aware of. But what it does to start with when you start using a ring, and honestly I should have asked them for sponsorship for this, is that it tracks you over some time, much like if you start working with Facebook ads or meta ads or Google Ads specialist or agency, they will need to have a period of time to look at what works for your particular audience.
It's the same with this Oura ring. It tracks your body and what you are normally doing and your activity and everything in your sleep for a couple of weeks before it then says, we've been tracking you for a while, we have benchmarks and one of these is a readiness score. You'll get to the point of what this has to do with business in a second, but the readiness score looks at everything from how well you slept, how deep was your sleep, what was your activity like yesterday, how many breaks you had, how restful have you been, all sorts of things. It will tell you if you are ready for the day, and it will give you a score out of a hundred, and obviously, you're trying to get like the higher, the better, and where you've got this high resilience.
One thing that I've noticed is that it is on point like I can maybe have less sleep, but the sleep was good quality, so I have a higher readiness score or maybe I've had a restful day the day before. It'll say like, you can achieve this and this and this today. Likewise, on other days it'll be like, watch yourself. Today's going to be a bit harder than normal. One of the things I wanted to say in this quick tip episode is that when it comes to business, and I'm guilty of this, we can get caught up on which system, which platform, and which tech are we using because that will improve our business as opposed to just thinking about the fundamentals. And what I've been inspired by with this Oura ring is that it's the fundamental stuff that needs to be right first before anything else can be tackled.
I get sleep and I've talked about sleep is very hard to get when you've got young children. Not into this whole like, everyone should get eight hours and it's just that easy, not at all. But obviously, it is a huge factor in how mentally prepared we feel for the day. And that goes for how mentally prepared we feel for enacting things in our business that need to be done. Whether it's a hard conversation with somebody, whether it is getting into the backend of your Shopify Plus site, or whatever it is, you need to have that mental resilience sometimes to even face these things. While we can look at like productivity apps or are you using Notion or ClickUp, so often we haven't looked and checked the fundamentals like, are we getting enough sleep? Are we drinking enough water?
Are we getting enough social activity with our friends and family? Do we feel lonely at the moment? All of those things need to be checked before we're able to kill it in business. And I'm not saying that there aren't people who are killing it in business who don't have great foundations, but a lot of the people that I work with, want to do well in business and they usually have a very meaningful attachment to their business, but they also want to have like a great life as well and have time outside of their business to do things. And I think in order to manage that, you need to have the fundamentals, right? I guess today's topic is the fundamentals in place in your life. And the fundamentals could look like just space, like time between meetings, for example.
If you have meetings in person, like are they 45 minutes or do they take the full hour? Do you feel like you have to go the full hour, even if they've been scheduled for an hour, do you have to fully use the whole hour or can you get through everything in 40 minutes and just call it a day? Sometimes I find that with meetings, people will be like, this is how long it's been scheduled, so I have to use all of that time. You don't. You don't. can you give yourself little blocks of time back? It could also be things like going into the office a bit later if you can, if even if you are the CEO and the leader, can you start work two days a week at 10:00 AM or 10 30 so that yes, everyone's in the office, but you may need that time to just regroup and figure out what are your priorities right now and just give yourself that little bit of time.
Likewise, maybe you've got a shop and you're like, okay, there's consistent, it's not that busy on these particular hours every Wednesday, so can you close the shop for a couple of hours and get the other things done so that you're not feeling like you're constantly stressed and constantly on the back foot when it comes to anything extra that pops up into your week? These are the things that we don't necessarily hear so much all the time from business, especially like productivity consultants or business leaders where it can be so much more about just keep going, keep going, keep going. Or find this productivity or this AI or this whatever tool that's going to help you get more time back. But sometimes even if you've got the time back, the fundamentals aren't in place. You can't even utilise that time or acknowledge it or enjoy that extra time, even if you did get it back with these productivity apps.
Ask yourself, are the fundamentals in my life in place? Am I getting enough sleep? Am I having a bit of time? Just some breathing time. Time to think, time to be still if you have a spiritual practice, where's the time for that? If you have children whether they're yours or just children in your life, maybe you're the awesome auntie when are they seeing you and when they are seeing you, are you present or are you thinking about 10 million things because you haven't had that switch off period or that time to just decompress? Thinking like I see in my little Oura ring app, how ready am I for the day I'm ready when the fundamentals are in place, and that means I'm ready for not only my life and my life as a mom and a wife and all of that, but also I'm ready for my business.
I'm ready to jump in and commit to executing the content or commit to doing this new thing or to sitting down and writing that email that needs to be written or commit to being in a meeting and being fully present in that meeting versus feeling rushed and behind and all of that. Those are things to focus on. And the fundamentals could also look like having a tidy workspace or having like a nice healthy lunch. It doesn't have to be healthy, it could be just delicious junk food, lunch, whatever, but having something packed. Again, you're not going the whole day and not eating like just these small things that are big in the long term. Because I've found that since I've been focused on my health and I'm not some massive health gym junkie, I don't go to the gym at all, but just the small things like, can I make sure that I'm going for those walks in the morning?
Can I make sure that I stick to turning up to my Pilates class so that I'm doing those stretches? Can I do the stretches multiple times a day when I'm getting my cups of tea? if somebody calls like a family member or a friend, can I pick up the phone and have a conversation because I'm not feeling like, I can't talk to anyone? I've got so much on my plate and I've been in that space. In the last few years I've been honing in on what makes a great life and a huge part of that is my health. If I have that space and I feel like I've slept and I feel like I've drunk enough water and I'm eating properly and also talking to friends and not feeling rushed all the time, then that to me is a lovely life and a great way to run my business as well.
That is it for today. Are the fundamentals in place? We'll link to anything that I've mentioned in the show notes and you'll be able to find the show notes for this episode at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/417. I'll also link to an episode I did a while ago on how I get out of the house and go for a walk because I did have a lovely client and friend say to me, I think it's great that you go for your morning walks, but like, how do you do that when you've got two young children that you know need to get ready for kinder and school? I talk about that and we'll link to that episode in the show notes. Thanks again for reading and I'll see you next time. Bye.
