Ep.59 Transforming Business Through Health and Wellness - with Terry Tateossian

00:00:01: When you're building a digital business as a solopreneur, suddenly you become your biggest

00:00:07: asset.

00:00:08: And not only you, but also your health.

00:00:13: I invited Teri Teteosian, a serial entrepreneur and wellness expert.

00:00:20: She is opening up about growing up as an immigrant, the pressure to achieve financial stability, and facing severe burnout.

00:00:28: Teri shares her struggles with

00:00:30: Great Gain, and the societal

00:00:32: stigma around mental health in business.

00:00:35: She is also sharing with us why your health is your best business strategy and how to achieve it.

00:00:44: Welcome to the online business by design podcast.

00:00:47: I'm your host Ivana Iveneck and this is your mindset and marketing podcast to help you build a business

00:00:52: next to your nine to five without burning

00:00:54: out.

00:00:55: And most importantly, enjoying your business journey while you are making money and impact.

00:01:01: Grab your favorite note taking device, lean back and get inspired.

00:01:05: I believe that everything you need to build a business

00:01:07: of your

00:01:08: dreams is already within you.

00:01:12: Welcome back friends to another episode of the online business buddies and podcast.

00:01:16: It's your host Ivana Ivonek and I want to say thank you for listening.

00:01:20: I do really value your trust, your commitment for growth to build that business of your life and the dream you have for this.

00:01:29: so, so long because

00:01:31: you know

00:01:31: what?

00:01:32: I can tell you one thing, that whenever you decide to build a business, it's not going to be like a path straightforward.

00:01:40: The moment I realized this is not a straightforward path is when I realized that it is so important to develop and lean into personal growth.

00:01:49: And then the second time I realized that business is not just doing business, but business is also health.

00:01:54: That was actually a very great idea.

00:01:58: Today I am going to have an incredible conversation about health and how your health is your business strategy because running a small business you will most likely find yourself being in the business most of the time until it becomes something bigger where we can take ourselves a little bit back, but then it comes to big decision-making and big decisions are made when you are fully hydrated, when you slept well, and when you feel good about yourself.

00:02:26: because I can tell you one thing that if my confidence depletes and I feel like asking myself, what are you doing?

00:02:34: Why are you here?

00:02:36: Are you good enough for this?

00:02:37: I know that I need a couple of more hours of sleep.

00:02:41: How this is all connected to your health and business, my guest, Terry, will tell us all about it.

00:02:47: Hi, Terry, and welcome to the show.

00:02:50: Thank you, Ivana, for having me and looking forward to this conversation.

00:02:54: I can't wait to speak all health and how this is related to our business success.

00:03:01: But before we do so, you have a wild and wide background, Terry.

00:03:07: You are a graduate.

00:03:09: in computer science, serial entrepreneurs, startup investor with over twenty years of experience with TAG and in the media industry.

00:03:19: Today, you are a wellness expert.

00:03:21: Would you like to take us through that whole development, how you choose your career back in the days and why you pivoted into wellness?

00:03:31: Absolutely.

00:03:32: So it's a very interesting story.

00:03:34: I was not born in the United States.

00:03:37: I was born in a communist country in nineteen seventy six long time ago.

00:03:43: And what ended up happening in my formative years is that during that time the communism was going on, my parents defected from that country, spent some time in a refugee camp in Austria and then immigrated to the United States.

00:03:59: So as an immigrant, trial to immigrant parents, my entire childhood and young adult.

00:04:08: years, my formative years, were spent being told that, you know, I need to go all the way with my education.

00:04:16: I need to earn as much financially as possible in order to feel secure.

00:04:21: Everything was about financial stability.

00:04:25: I did not spend any time on health, wellness, fitness.

00:04:30: That was considered a waste of time, right?

00:04:33: And so what did I?

00:04:35: Yes.

00:04:37: mental health was please like I don't want to hear it kind of thing like go figure out your problems on your own.

00:04:45: nobody wants to know about it.

00:04:46: emotional health what the heck is emotional health?

00:04:50: that didn't exist.

00:04:51: let's not speak about it because what are gonna people think of us?

00:04:54: I remember Terry you're just saying it because back in the days I'm coming from a Slavic background too.

00:05:01: I didn't grow up during communism, but we immigrated shortly before the Yugoslavia war to Austria.

00:05:07: My parents moved to allow us, me and my siblings to have a stable life and not have to grow up in a war zone.

00:05:14: But that's what are gonna people think of us and how much money we make.

00:05:17: And just let's pretend everything is okay.

00:05:21: I told you anyway

00:05:22: to that,

00:05:23: yeah.

00:05:24: Yes, no, therapy is the curse word.

00:05:28: Yeah, that's only for the sick and for the, for the, oh, I don't know, you lost it.

00:05:32: Like back in the days in my family, the conversation around therapy was just like, you lost it, you're out of mind and therefore you need therapy.

00:05:39: So it was really something, it's a blue topic.

00:05:41: Yeah.

00:05:43: Yes.

00:05:43: And so that's how I grew up, right?

00:05:46: And I chose careers and jobs based on my reward financially.

00:05:54: During the time when I was in the nineties, when I was in college, um, ninety four, I believe, that's when the dot com boom was happening.

00:06:07: And so all of the engineers, all the software engineering, all the computer scientists were in very high demand.

00:06:15: And so I decided I was going to go into that.

00:06:18: path because that would give me the best opportunity for the high spring job that I could possibly get.

00:06:25: I mean, think about it.

00:06:26: I came to this country at the age of thirteen.

00:06:29: By the time I was twenty-two, I was in college.

00:06:31: So I had barely been in the country for nine years and I had to choose a path, right?

00:06:38: So I chose computer science.

00:06:40: Initially, I had started with political science.

00:06:42: I wanted to be an attorney.

00:06:44: That did not work out.

00:06:45: I switched to computer science because it was going to give me the fastest trajectory to the highest paying occupation at the time of the dot-com boom.

00:06:55: And I really enjoyed it.

00:06:57: I really enjoyed troubleshooting.

00:07:01: systems, troubleshooting computers, building algorithms, building software.

00:07:06: I became a systems engineer and a software engineer.

00:07:10: I worked in that field for many years.

00:07:12: And then as things progressed with the economy and the general direction of where the world was going, more and more and more companies were looking for specialists.

00:07:23: And so I started a different company.

00:07:27: the web development was just getting started.

00:07:31: And so the company that I created helped businesses and brands and companies with brand development, website development, all kinds of things like that.

00:07:41: And so that's how I ended up in the occupation and the business that I was in.

00:07:46: Now, if I had to be truly honest with that, the place I truly belonged, looking back now, Probably not.

00:07:54: If I had, you know, and I remember a long time ago, somebody asked me if you could do anything in the world and you didn't need to worry about your paycheck.

00:08:04: What would you do?

00:08:05: And my instant answer always was I wanted to be a yoga teacher on the beach, like a beach bomb.

00:08:11: I wanted to be a hippie.

00:08:15: That was my dream.

00:08:17: Okay.

00:08:18: And so I spent many years uh, working in this field, working with a lot of brands.

00:08:24: I built up the company and as many of your listeners know, building a company is like a full-time, you know, three full-time jobs, right?

00:08:36: You have to do a lot of things.

00:08:37: You spend a lot of time on top of that, add having children to the mix, having a family and things get very, very complicated very quickly.

00:08:48: So that's how it all began.

00:08:51: You said a lot that I want to touch on.

00:08:53: I think where it already starts with our maybe mental health or physical health is being stuck for many, many years in an environment where we no longer belong.

00:09:04: However, having that, having that set in our head that we need to make a certain amount of money, having to climb the corporate ladder, I think till the moment to really realize like, I want to get out of there.

00:09:18: I want to do something else.

00:09:20: It's almost too late.

00:09:22: It's almost like done because this would be probably the signals of your body already telling you like you are burned out.

00:09:30: You are tired of this.

00:09:31: You are mentally unstable because you are constantly in this fight-and-flight mode.

00:09:36: You are working on something, twenty-four-seven, because I'm only saying that building businesses is hard, but being in that occupation, you were in a very masculine world and having to do all these jobs, you know, having high leadership roles is not an easy thing.

00:09:55: When was it?

00:09:55: when you decided to or what happened at that moment?

00:09:59: when you decided, okay, I'm out of this.

00:10:01: I'm going to change this.

00:10:03: And why did you choose wellness specifically?

00:10:08: Great question, because here's the thing.

00:10:12: I never decided.

00:10:14: I never actually made a decision and said, this is what I'm going to do now.

00:10:21: It was a very organic transition.

00:10:26: Really in reality, what happened is that I was so burned out that I just walked away from my responsibilities in the corporate world.

00:10:36: I had to take a break and the break ended up lasting more than what I anticipated.

00:10:46: And I was working towards getting my health back.

00:10:51: I was working on getting losing over eighty pounds, which was one of the big health issues I was having.

00:10:59: that was creating other issues.

00:11:01: I was in the middle of perimenopause very early, which right now I don't think was early.

00:11:07: I think that's pretty common.

00:11:08: It's the average age, which was thirty seven.

00:11:12: But I didn't know that I nobody really talked about it back then.

00:11:16: I had no idea.

00:11:18: you know this was over twelve years ago and so I was going through all these things on my own to try and figure out how do I fix myself what do I need to do to get myself back together?

00:11:30: and I started sharing my journey on Instagram and you know, neighbors and friends and people started seeing the changes take place and started asking me for help.

00:11:41: So for, you know, a few

00:11:44: a

00:11:45: year or so, I was doing it basically for free.

00:11:48: I was helping people to learn what I was doing.

00:11:54: And more and more people started asking and then I started having to really think about like, well, I can't help you because like, officially, I can't Accept your money officially to help you with anything until I get certified.

00:12:11: in all of these different modalities.

00:12:14: So I started working on getting my certified personal trainer certification, my nutritionist certification, emotional eating certification and women's hormones certification.

00:12:29: And currently I'm actually taking another course from Harvard Medical School on health.

00:12:36: and nutrition coaching.

00:12:37: And so it's a continuous type of interest for me because not only does it apply to my clients, but it applies to my well-being and my health as well.

00:12:45: So it doesn't feel unnatural for me to have an interest in this.

00:12:50: Now, over time, little by little, as I got my certification, I started getting more clients naturally through word of mouth.

00:12:56: I did not decide to be a coach.

00:12:58: In fact, I was doing all these things because I was being my own client, essentially.

00:13:05: You made it the other way around, which I always like to preach like before you start selling something to someone.

00:13:11: whatever your service is, dear listener, you will need that network and that community and a personal brand that you were building probably without really knowing because you were never really aiming for that business aspect.

00:13:23: But you had, you have built already a fan club, so to say, that has trusted you that they've been coming back for questions over and over again.

00:13:33: And I think that moment that once you have that community and that network that you have built, and you said, okay, and from today, I need to charge some for it because I need to pay my bills, I need a roof above my head and I also need to take care of my health.

00:13:47: You have already created something what we will call in business leads to sell to.

00:13:52: So keep that in mind, whether it comes organically, consciously, unconsciously, whatever you do, never start selling something to nobody.

00:14:00: So I think this is one of those beautiful stories where things happen organically, where you feel a a calling to do something for yourself and then people start asking you be like, Terry, show me how you've done it.

00:14:17: I feel the same.

00:14:18: And I think having these open conversations about, as you said, gaining weight.

00:14:23: body image.

00:14:24: I think women are struggling and suffering alone in their corners because on the outside we were taught, even if you're not from Eastern Europe, we are taught to look pretty, to always be well-dressed, sharp-looking, and that it becomes like something you have to carry yourself through life like this.

00:14:48: If anything goes off the grid, people will easily judge you on these sticks.

00:14:53: So you said you gained eighty pounds.

00:14:57: I assume that was due to the burnout and the stress.

00:15:00: You've been like chronic stress.

00:15:02: You accumulated over the time.

00:15:05: It was incremental, right?

00:15:08: So I was two hundred and ten pounds at the height of this phase of my life at five foot three.

00:15:18: And what ended up happening is my natural weight in my twenties was about one twenty five, one thirty.

00:15:26: And what ended up happening is little by little, I started gaining weight as I started working more and more and I had my first child.

00:15:33: I gained an enormous amount of weight.

00:15:36: What contributed to that was having gestational diabetes.

00:15:39: I was diagnosed with it when I was pregnant.

00:15:43: And once I gave birth.

00:15:46: I had no time whatsoever.

00:15:49: Maybe I dropped the initial weight that you dropped right after having a baby.

00:15:53: about twenty twenty five pounds naturally come off, but nothing other than that dropped off.

00:15:58: So I kept the additional weight I had gained.

00:16:01: And then I just kept going.

00:16:03: I had another child.

00:16:04: I had another.

00:16:05: I gained another massive amount of weight.

00:16:09: I had now climbed up to about one eighty at the end of that pregnancy after losing just a little bit.

00:16:17: After the initial baby comes out, you lose about ten, fifteen, twenty pounds.

00:16:22: And then little by little, I started continuing to gain.

00:16:25: I was completely out of control.

00:16:26: I did not know what to do.

00:16:28: I tried everything.

00:16:29: I starved myself.

00:16:30: I would lose a little weight, but it was unsustainable.

00:16:34: I was dizzy.

00:16:35: I had no energy.

00:16:37: I couldn't function.

00:16:38: I couldn't do my daily life things.

00:16:41: So I would jump from diet to diet to diet, and I would yo-yo around.

00:16:46: I would do all the options out there that are popular, South Beach, Keto, juicing, intermittent fasting, you name it, I tried it.

00:16:56: I'd always lose a little weight, and then it would always come back with a vengeance.

00:17:01: And so I just did that for... Who knows how long, right?

00:17:07: Endless hours of cardio.

00:17:09: I would try to, you know, sneak in in the one, you know, half an hour in the morning, half an hour during lunch, half an hour after work.

00:17:17: That was not sustainable.

00:17:19: So nothing I did really stayed long term.

00:17:24: I always gained it back.

00:17:26: And at the very height of it, I was really, really heavy and felt unwell.

00:17:34: So despite the fact that I was ashamed of the fact that I couldn't get my act together and I had, I was running a business and I had two children and I couldn't control my own body.

00:17:45: That was very shameful.

00:17:47: I looked terrible, right?

00:17:49: So I was wearing maternity clothes, ten years after giving birth to my first child.

00:17:59: And when people would ask me like, oh, where'd you get that outfit?

00:18:03: I would have to say like the maternity store, which was another aspect to a lot of shame involved in this, right?

00:18:14: Just not feeling like yourself, not feeling healthy, not feeling good and not knowing what to do.

00:18:20: Have you experienced any setbacks in business because of that?

00:18:25: your confidence at that time or anything you would say was double hard because you were not the person you were meant to be?

00:18:34: You know, I had to wear a very thick mask when it came to my business because even though things were falling apart from me personally, I couldn't show that publicly.

00:18:53: And I had to put on a brave face and put my you know, mask on and act like nothing was bothering me.

00:19:03: But internally, I was just crumbling.

00:19:07: So my alcohol intake would go up.

00:19:11: I started drinking more and more.

00:19:13: I would be using food as another coping mechanism.

00:19:18: So the cycle of shame just kept going and going.

00:19:22: And it was my dirty little secret, right?

00:19:24: The dirty little secret.

00:19:26: as a business owner that You know, I had to be really smart, capable, resourceful.

00:19:33: I would do what I said I would do, deliver the work, run a team, be a leader, and I couldn't get my own act together.

00:19:44: So I was living with duality.

00:19:47: Yeah.

00:19:48: It's like two persons.

00:19:49: It is hard to keep up that mask.

00:19:52: You are so speaking to my soul and I wish.

00:19:56: Back in the days, I was only young, you know, twenty-two, twenty-one, when I started my first business, what I didn't know is that my passion for fitness or my addiction for fitness, which I thought was a good thing, but there was an underlying cause of bulimia.

00:20:14: I thought I am that CrossFit person.

00:20:17: I thought I am the born weightlifter.

00:20:19: And honestly, I did have fun.

00:20:21: You know, there is always, the nuances are really small.

00:20:26: till I realized that once when I started teaching it to others, once I started helping other women implement movement in their lives, I realized that my love for fitness is definitely there.

00:20:41: It's real love.

00:20:43: I don't want to break up with that.

00:20:45: But the amount I was putting myself to, like I was training three times a day, binge eating makes you feel shamed.

00:20:53: Just the way you said it, it was a circle of shame.

00:20:56: you eat and you think you need to run it off again.

00:20:59: Then you try to have conversations mentioning like I'm not feeling well in my body and then come society or even your friends or everybody around you not understanding because they say but look at you you look so great.

00:21:14: till I realized like I gotta stop this.

00:21:17: I mean, eventually my body stopped me because there was that came a point that I burned myself out so extremely and I was so ashamed that I needed to stop that business.

00:21:26: I mean, it was not going well either.

00:21:28: Like I didn't know nothing about marketing either, but nothing about my mental health.

00:21:31: So there was a total mess.

00:21:34: But

00:21:34: at some point I wasn't able to go off out of the house anymore.

00:21:37: And then when it started to, it wasn't just a journey of combat, but it was a full restoration of having to slowly but steady getting rid of that mask, as you said.

00:21:51: And I think as long as we are trying to stay behind it well, that we so carefully curated because no one ever will notice.

00:21:59: I think this is something our brain can do so well.

00:22:03: And then you realize who you really are.

00:22:07: What happened Terry when you said okay enough and how did you then?

00:22:13: Start getting that mask like layers by layers off?

00:22:16: and how did you lose your weight eventually?

00:22:20: So you felt you yeah, but you are yourself again.

00:22:25: So everything you just said.

00:22:26: I want to acknowledge that because it gave me full body chills.

00:22:31: I Literally had goosebumps when you were talking because that mask that we wear on a daily basis is on so naturally.

00:22:47: And it takes so much awareness and intention to take it off and to be mindful of when we put it on because we're used to it, right?

00:22:57: It comes up.

00:22:58: A minute you open your eyes in the morning, boom, the mask is on.

00:23:02: And it takes real intention and real awareness to take the mask.

00:23:07: down meaning to stop the lying, to stop the deception, and to stop the narrative in our minds.

00:23:19: And this is all happening in our minds.

00:23:20: We lie to ourselves, we deceive ourselves and we think that that's normal.

00:23:26: So it takes a lot of work.

00:23:28: I want to congratulate you for going through that experience because it's very difficult to do.

00:23:34: And so that was part of what I had to face.

00:23:37: I had to really look at myself without the mask.

00:23:42: And that is a scary, scary practice, right?

00:23:48: Because the radical honesty that it takes in order to see the truth, accept the truth, and build in your truth to move forward how to move forward with that truth also requires courage, a lot of it.

00:24:10: Yes.

00:24:10: And sometimes it doesn't work out the way we hope.

00:24:14: and we have to be willing to accept that and continue to be resilient in this journey of growth and self-discovery and really identifying who we truly are.

00:24:27: So I had to go through that phase of restoring the truth that I lost somewhere along the way of who I am, what I love, where I feel good, what my gift is to this world.

00:24:40: We all have one.

00:24:42: And to go from there to really heal my own, the damage I did to myself, I had to work on healing it.

00:24:50: And that involved asking for help, you know, looking towards some integrative doctors in my area, hiring a coach.

00:25:00: So I was a client.

00:25:02: to a coach before I became a coach for many years, and then really slowly working and fighting for myself on a daily basis, being my own champion when my own thoughts were trying to take me down, my old habits were trying to take me down, understanding that every day was not going to be perfect.

00:25:25: I was going to have moments of relapse.

00:25:28: I was going to have you know, these situations or periods of time when maybe that was in the top priority, there were going to be emergencies that would take my attention away.

00:25:39: But realizing that I need to always come back to this truth that I am looking to discover.

00:25:47: And that involved, of course, you know, real life things like learning how to eat properly, lifting weights, not too much, not too little, just right, finding that balance, learning how to listen to my own thoughts and accept those particular stories and try to reframe them in some way, looking at society and really... Sometimes going into rabbit holes to figure out, well, wait a minute, where did this even come from?

00:26:15: Does this thought even belong to me or have I been conditioned to thinking this way?

00:26:19: And why, who said it had to be that way, right?

00:26:22: Why can't I change this?

00:26:25: And just doing a lot of that type of work, it did not happen overnight.

00:26:30: It took me ten years to get here to where I am now.

00:26:35: And I highly encourage everyone to think about.

00:26:39: you know, how can you work on rediscovering your true self and the truth of what we carry inside of us?

00:26:51: What I love hearing here and so often this is misunderstood and not often talked about that often this weight gain and that discomfort we create.

00:27:03: um and everything that.

00:27:06: um then we try to lose.

00:27:08: may it be dieting?

00:27:09: you mentioned all of them like juices cleansing and fasting whatever it is.

00:27:14: i'm not saying none of this is you know?

00:27:17: i i do appreciate like once a year a good you know three days of juices or even two and never make it.

00:27:24: but like you know there there is certain things that i enjoy doing or i i fast that i don't eat meat for some time etc.

00:27:30: etc.

00:27:31: but There is so much misconception out there that it all is physical.

00:27:37: And then we found ourselves hustling harder than ever before.

00:27:41: And I think this is how you end in a downward spiral before you start losing weight or before you start to try to cover up things.

00:27:51: It even feels like everything was good until I started to lose weight, until I started to try becoming, you know, better looking.

00:28:00: It's actually everything about all the appearances, just to realize that this entire mass comes from an internal source and maybe from what we learned how we need to be.

00:28:12: strongly believing in it, never questioning anyone, never questioning anybody telling you that you should look a certain way, or we just take questions for granted and I needed to discover or comments for granted.

00:28:25: I needed to discover.

00:28:26: my mom's always very worried about me.

00:28:28: You know, I started at one business that I lost and then I was not feeling well and she never really understood the whole concept.

00:28:34: We don't have entrepreneurs in our family.

00:28:36: This whole digital space, even when we speak online, she would say, what are you talking about all the time?

00:28:41: Who are you talking there?

00:28:42: Right?

00:28:43: So she would be always worried.

00:28:46: And one way, and this is again, the Eastern Europe mentality.

00:28:51: is to express her worry through questions that are not really reasonable, mostly not fitting, but one of them went like, um, I don't think you're doing well because look at you, you're so skinny.

00:29:03: No matter what weight, no matter how I looked, I was, there was a time where it was really muscular, like, you know, I was really lifting heavy going on competitions, but I was still too skinny.

00:29:14: Now I can say I'm too skinny, yes, because I lost some, um, muscle, and things because I changed my lifestyle, etc.

00:29:20: But it will be this constant state, same comment, meaning, are you doing well?

00:29:27: Right?

00:29:28: And then we never questioned that.

00:29:30: And I think once we open up and start questioning that it's not everything about your auto experience.

00:29:35: And I see this a lot in personal branding, and people say like, I've got to put my face out there, but I'm not a person,

00:29:41: or

00:29:41: I'm not looking as fit or as fancy or as good,

00:29:45: just

00:29:46: All of you listening to this, be reminded that as Terry says, look at your truth.

00:29:52: And this is not an easy path, but I do believe that we all carry our truth within and once uncovered, I think you become unstoppable.

00:30:00: Before now, moving on, you lost the weight, but I think very short after or was already menopause hitting while you were losing weight?

00:30:11: What was the intersection?

00:30:13: Menopause knocked on my front door.

00:30:17: I opened it.

00:30:18: I did not know it was menopause and it moved in.

00:30:24: Hello, and they have another friend living with us.

00:30:29: How did you find out?

00:30:30: it was menopause?

00:30:32: After it was over.

00:30:34: Oh boy.

00:30:35: Can you take us through that, Teri?

00:30:37: It was fast and furious, let me tell you.

00:30:42: And it was the type of symptom that I thought I was losing my mind because they started obviously very early, right?

00:30:50: So I had just had a baby at thirty-five.

00:30:53: And then all of a sudden at thirty-seven, I was having these heat cycles.

00:31:01: And I thought, I'm in heat.

00:31:05: Something crazy

00:31:06: is happening to me.

00:31:08: I don't know.

00:31:09: Then I started saying, oh, this is my body burning fat.

00:31:17: We'll always be looking for some sort of solution or answer, right?

00:31:20: Everything that is going on and being weird, we need an explanation for that.

00:31:25: I totally get it.

00:31:26: Yes.

00:31:27: Then I had like some days I would be very, very tired.

00:31:33: Yes.

00:31:34: Other days I would be very energetic and I was like, what is going on?

00:31:39: Am I getting some kind of a thing happening?

00:31:41: Like I don't, I could not explain it.

00:31:44: And it was, I was going through it all by myself.

00:31:46: I didn't talk to anybody because it was so shameful, all the things that were happening to me.

00:31:50: And then I would have, oh yeah, the, the anti-social part.

00:31:55: I wanted to go nowhere.

00:31:57: I wanted to do nothing.

00:31:58: I didn't want to talk to anybody.

00:31:59: I didn't want to go out.

00:32:01: I just leave me alone.

00:32:02: I just need, I need to be, I need to be quiet.

00:32:07: I mean, such random weird things, right?

00:32:11: And I had no clue.

00:32:13: I had no clue.

00:32:13: And by the, when I realized it was around forty two.

00:32:18: So I went through this for quite a while.

00:32:20: I started my weight loss journey.

00:32:23: while I was in super, like, active perimenopause.

00:32:30: And I remember I would be laying in bed trying to go to sleep and I would, my whole body would just be on fire.

00:32:38: like from head to toe I was on it and it's the type of fire that you feel from your inside like it's not an external.

00:32:45: you could turn the AC on to fifty degrees but you're gonna feel like you're on fire because it's coming from your like inside your body and I would lay in bed and I would think to myself yeah this was because I went to the gym today and my body is burning fat and just crazy things like that.

00:33:03: I had no idea that was a half flash.

00:33:05: I would be sitting in a business meeting in a conference room and this would happen to me.

00:33:11: And I would be looking around to see if there's anybody noticing that I am literally on fire and I would think to myself.

00:33:18: I'm very uncomfortable and all kinds of stuff like that.

00:33:24: And it finally realized that I was in perimenopause when my period stopped coming and showing up maybe like three, four months straight.

00:33:35: Oh, then I thought I was, you know, critically ill.

00:33:39: I thought I was having some kind of a uterus issue because it was very inconsistent.

00:33:48: Never did it cross my mind that I was in perimenopause until it was gone and it didn't come back, which was.

00:33:56: around forty two.

00:33:57: So nobody told me and they just weren't expecting it either.

00:34:01: And so now now I'm looking back.

00:34:04: I'm like,

00:34:06: oh, now I know what I wish I would have known earlier.

00:34:09: There is obviously like in any a lot of things.

00:34:14: like most research anyway was done on man.

00:34:18: And perimenopause is more widely researched than perimenopause.

00:34:24: And when I mentioned potential perimenopause symptoms to my mom, she said, I'm crazy.

00:34:32: I'm way too young.

00:34:34: Now that I started reading because there was something very worrisome that I experienced, I had a phase after this.

00:34:42: a lot

00:34:43: of fitness, fitness, fitness, fitness, hustle, hustle, hustle for your muscles.

00:34:46: I recovered from that and I needed to establish my fitness levels.

00:34:50: Eventually I said, okay, what do you like?

00:34:52: How much do you want to do?

00:34:53: You know, like movement was always a thing, but honestly, weightlifting three times a day, thank you, no.

00:35:00: I do it once and then I go eat ice cream.

00:35:02: But that was my standard.

00:35:03: So I needed to establish new standards.

00:35:06: And eventually I In twenty three, we traveled with my partner to Southeast Asia.

00:35:14: You meet hard constantly, you know, changing locations.

00:35:18: And all I was busy with is running my business, you know, doing podcasts, doing this, doing that in all kind of establishments in Southeast Asia.

00:35:26: So the focus on health and fitness wasn't really there for that year.

00:35:32: So my body has changed.

00:35:34: I came back to Europe and then we moved to the Caribbean.

00:35:39: But in that period, I was looking back to getting, I mean, I was running in Southeast Asia, yes, but it was just not as consistent.

00:35:45: I was looking back to go into weightlifting.

00:35:49: Not nothing extreme, nothing wild.

00:35:51: You do like four exercises, lightweight, because I can't lift it anyway, right?

00:35:56: Where did you get back into the things?

00:35:58: And I felt three days sick, exhausted.

00:36:01: I had symptoms like as I would be getting a flu, like almost feverish.

00:36:06: not being able to move, to eat dehydrated.

00:36:09: It was like what I was doing in these fifteen minutes.

00:36:12: And I went through all kinds of blood tests, everything.

00:36:17: Till I realized it might be merimenopause.

00:36:22: I mentioned this to someone and I get laughed at and being like, you're way too young.

00:36:26: Till I did my own research eventually and came to the conclusion that actually magnesium and an increase of protein is really hitting hard.

00:36:35: And believe it or not, I can wait.

00:36:37: lift weights, I'll feel a muscle ache, but I'm no longer exhausted.

00:36:42: Like I was really feeling like I was running three marathons through the desert and survived.

00:36:49: Was there anything?

00:36:51: So you went through this, unfortunately or fortunately, because I think you can now teach so much about it.

00:36:58: Now that you are past that phase, you are your true self, you lost the weight.

00:37:03: Very menopause, menopause is over.

00:37:06: What is it?

00:37:08: What is your message, Terry, that you would like to give to women who are experiencing any kind of weirdness, maybe burnout, maybe symptoms that not everyone can maybe pinpoint at a time?

00:37:19: What are you recommending?

00:37:20: Where should we ask?

00:37:21: What should we do?

00:37:22: Yeah,

00:37:24: so the basics first, right?

00:37:26: So it's not the end of the world with these kinds of things happen.

00:37:31: It's very natural.

00:37:32: It's very normal.

00:37:33: Oh, it feels like it sometimes.

00:37:35: Yes, it does feel like it, but we're all going to go through it together and alone and in combination with other friends.

00:37:46: Some of us are going to go through it earlier.

00:37:48: Some of us are going to go through it later.

00:37:49: Some of us are going to just have a very fast and furious, very menopause phase.

00:37:55: And it's going to be over with a big bang.

00:37:57: And then some of us are going to go through it for a period of ten, fifteen, twenty years.

00:38:03: Everybody's really different, but we're all going to go through it.

00:38:05: It's normal.

00:38:06: It's natural and it's okay.

00:38:08: So the first thing that I would do is check your body, right?

00:38:14: In every possible way.

00:38:15: Are you deficient in any nutrients?

00:38:17: Are you deficient in minerals?

00:38:18: Are you eating enough protein?

00:38:20: Are you sleeping?

00:38:22: How stressed are you?

00:38:24: What does your recovery look like?

00:38:27: Are you moving on a daily basis?

00:38:29: Lifting weights three to four times a week is would be my recommendation to start building or retaining the muscle that you're inevitably going to start losing from the age of thirty and forward to keep your metabolism in a really good place.

00:38:49: So looking at those types of things.

00:38:52: So something else that I want to mention During perimenopause, I was losing hair.

00:38:56: I was having all kinds of hair, nail issues.

00:39:01: My body was so depleted in that stage of life because of all the things I had done to it in the past, that it was reacting in a very concerning way.

00:39:15: As soon as I started incorporating enough protein in my diet and enough vegetables and the right amount of starch, the right amount of fat, working out, taking creatine, taking collagen and doing all the right things, my hair improved, my skin improved.

00:39:33: I stopped drinking alcohol.

00:39:34: That's another one.

00:39:35: That's a big, big, big, big thing during period.

00:39:40: If I drink two glass of wine, I have a hangover the next day, but like for real, it's not a little bit dehydrated.

00:39:47: I'm suffering.

00:39:48: It's real.

00:39:49: Yeah.

00:39:51: And so once you get, and I know this sounds like a lot, right?

00:39:55: So when we're going through this, the last thing we want is another hundred things to do, but take it one day at a time, one step at a time.

00:40:03: make a little list and say, okay, for the next, for the first month, I'm going to focus on how much movement I'm getting in my day.

00:40:11: Because most of us sit, we're sitting around all day, our muscles are atrophying, or we're not used to doing anything intense, or even not even that intense, just walking, we're not used to walking anymore.

00:40:26: So take it one thing at a time and then look at your nutrition, right?

00:40:30: So do an audit.

00:40:32: And I know this is going to sound extreme, but write down everything you eat, how much of it you eat, and then add it up using a macro app on your phone.

00:40:43: And you'll be shocked at what's actually going into your mouth.

00:40:47: So that's contributing to weight gain.

00:40:49: And the weight gain is going to your belly because estrogen is fluctuating all over the place.

00:40:54: Now your testosterone is dropping and you don't have any motivation.

00:40:57: You don't really even feel like doing anything.

00:41:00: So like all of these things are going crazy because you have depleted your body up to that point.

00:41:08: And now it's going through this second adolescent stage.

00:41:13: and it has no resources.

00:41:15: It doesn't have what it needs in order to make the transition a little bit easier, right?

00:41:20: So that would be the first thing.

00:41:22: And then of course, there's a lot of cases of women that need HRT or they need, you know, something else, but there's far

00:41:31: and few

00:41:32: in between where you actually legitimately cannot feel better without directly going to a pharmaceutical drug.

00:41:44: That would be my advice.

00:41:46: Don't jump to the pharmaceutical right off the bat.

00:41:48: Try to fix things and clean things up on your own in your lifestyle.

00:41:54: And if none of those things make you feel any better, which I would be very shocked if they didn't feel better, then go to the next step rather than the other way around because I'm seeing this everywhere now on social.

00:42:06: People don't want to address the lifestyle.

00:42:09: They don't want to make changes.

00:42:11: They don't want to restructure, you know, how they eat, how they move, you know, muscle loss, sleep stress, and they just immediately jump to taking something from

00:42:23: those.

00:42:24: It's the easier way, Terry.

00:42:26: I guess usually we want to, you know, avoid pain.

00:42:29: quote unquote, pain that we put ourselves through meaning hard work.

00:42:33: I see this in business too.

00:42:35: It's easier to buy the templates and to try another strategy and to go and jump on that because somebody has promised something big.

00:42:42: But the truth is the foundation is the layer of everything and knowing how to run your business and actually learn it from the base of what we are doing and how we are doing it.

00:42:53: There is no back.

00:42:54: bypassing.

00:42:55: And I think a healthy lifestyle, there is no bypassing.

00:42:57: It's a value that we need to develop.

00:42:59: if we haven't yet.

00:43:00: And then it's habit building.

00:43:01: And that's really, really, really hard, as you say, it's not going to be.

00:43:07: We won't be able to do everything at once.

00:43:09: I think that's a lot.

00:43:10: If you really never maintained a really healthy lifestyle, but little by little, like with everything in life and you will get there.

00:43:16: And I would like to know from you as well that what has changed?

00:43:20: How did you change as a leader and how did you change running your business since you are your healthy self and since you have changed your lifestyle?

00:43:29: I have a lot less anxiety.

00:43:32: There we go.

00:43:33: Confidence.

00:43:34: You don't need to work on confidence, work on your healthy lifestyle and confidence will hit right after, yeah?

00:43:41: I have a lot less anxiety.

00:43:43: I really, I firmly believe I'm exactly where I'm meant to be.

00:43:51: And I don't have any worries or fears for what's going to happen next.

00:43:57: Is this thing going to work out?

00:43:59: I already.

00:44:00: it's already working because I am in wanting that spirit and that joy and that energy for myself.

00:44:09: So whatever happens as far as business is concerned, I don't even care because I have already received the payout, which is the embodiment of where I am at.

00:44:25: the result

00:44:26: is Me.

00:44:27: I am the result and the business just follows along if I let it.

00:44:34: And so I have a choice, right?

00:44:36: It's not the other way around.

00:44:38: I'm not the one that's chasing the business.

00:44:41: I am not the one that's worrying about the business.

00:44:45: I'm not the one that is you know creating anxiety around the business because The way I look at it is the business should be worried about what I'm doing because I could kick it out at any moment because I am the payout.

00:45:04: Now I'm having a good fun moment because this is just so real.

00:45:09: Like we can hide forever behind this mask and you had a successful business too, but there is such a big difference when we shed this mask and we are true selves and suddenly things start falling into place that you probably couldn't have imagined that are possible.

00:45:24: And it's this entire whole feeling, how you wake up and how you carry yourself through life, your voice, your message and everything you are sharing with the world.

00:45:35: Terry, before we round up this conversation, I would like to, I would love to know from you How would you like to be spending your old years

00:45:44: doing exactly what I'm doing right now?

00:45:48: No, really, I will never stop showing up.

00:45:52: I will never stop looking at what's actually going on in the world.

00:46:00: I will probably never stop going down rabbit holes and investigating.

00:46:04: Is this true?

00:46:05: Is this real?

00:46:08: is this the right thing for me, us, my clients.

00:46:13: And I just don't see this ever going away.

00:46:16: Like it's literally who I am.

00:46:19: So I'll be doing exactly this and however old I am.

00:46:23: Thank you for sharing.

00:46:24: I think when you live a life

00:46:26: full of purpose,

00:46:27: there is

00:46:28: no stopping.

00:46:29: Absolutely.

00:46:31: Thank you for being vulnerable and thank you for being such a great addition to the show because these are conversations

00:46:36: we need to

00:46:37: have more of them.

00:46:38: Thank you so

00:46:38: much, Denon.

00:46:40: Thank you, Ivana, for having me.

00:46:41: It was a pleasure.

00:46:44: If you're feeling invisible, having a hard

00:46:47: time to break through the noise,

00:46:49: inconsistent with creating content, not knowing what to say and how to say it, but deep down you know your message and your work can change people's lives,

00:46:57: then

00:46:58: listen up.

00:46:59: I have created something so powerful for you.

00:47:02: It's called the Magnetic Influence Accelerator, a high-touch group

00:47:05: program

00:47:06: that helps you build a personal brand and visibility strategy that works for you without being glued to your phone.

00:47:13: twenty-four-seven.

00:47:14: This isn't about chasing trends or faking

00:47:17: authority.

00:47:18: It's about showing

00:47:18: up clearly,

00:47:19: consistently, so you attract clients, collaborations, podcast invites and real opportunities that grow your business.

00:47:28: Inside the program you will learn how to clarify your message and stories so you always know what to say, create content that feels aligned,

00:47:36: not

00:47:37: forced, build trust to present and not pressure.

00:47:41: Grow visibility beyond social media like pitching podcasts and guest posts.

00:47:46: And you get coaching,

00:47:48: feedback

00:47:48: and a supportive community.

00:47:50: so you're never doing it alone.

00:47:53: Head over to the show notes, the link for more information is right below.