Your Biology is Your Ceiling with Dr. Susan LaValle

What If...
What if the very drive that made you successful is the exact thing that's quietly destroying your health? What if burnout doesn't announce itself with a dramatic breakdown, but instead shows up as bloating, fatigue, and a rash from eating eggs — and you, a physician, still miss it? Dr. Susan LaValle didn't just study burnout. She lived it, ignored it, and almost didn't survive it — three times.

The Summary & Guest Intro

Dr. Susan LaValle is a former professional ballet dancer turned plastic surgeon turned executive performance strategist — and that career arc alone tells you everything you need to know about how hard she pushes. As the founder of Balance Performance and author of Thrive: A Five-Week Guide to Mastering Your Energy at Any Age, Susan now helps high-achieving executives understand what their biology is trying to tell them before their body forces the conversation. After three ICU visits in a single year — including a blood clot that traveled from her entire left leg to her lungs — she rebuilt her life and her practice around a simple but radical truth: you cannot out-perform a body that is shutting down. This episode sits right at the intersection of Erica's Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors mission — because the "show must go on" mentality isn't just a personal habit, it's a system that rewards women for running themselves into the ground.

Inside the Episode

• The "Show Must Go On" Sticky Floor: Dr. Susan traces her relentless drive back to 14 years as a professional ballet dancer — and how that single belief followed her into the operating room, into motherhood, and straight into the ICU. Learn why the mindset that builds careers can also quietly dismantle your health.
• What Burnout Actually Looks Like: Forget the dramatic collapse. Dr. Susan breaks down what her burnout really looked like — weight gain, gut inflammation, food sensitivities, and fatigue she kept overriding — and why even a physician can miss the signs until it's almost too late.
• The Four-Day Work Week Win: After her third hospitalization, Dr. Susan restructured her entire plastic surgery practice around a four-day work week — and her team was just as productive, her patients were happier, and nobody had to sleep on a couch outside the exam rooms. Yes, really.
• The Listen, Let Go, and Live Framework: The three-step methodology behind Thrive — and why "let go" is the hardest of the three for every high achiever in the room. Spoiler: it's not the hot yoga you have to give up, it's the identity.
• Tests Don't Guess: Dr. Susan's approach to proving burnout to skeptical executives who swear they're "not stressed" — using cortisol labs and biological data to show what the body is doing when the mind refuses to admit it.
• The Sleep Gap Nobody Talks About: Why you can't go from four hours to eight hours overnight, and the one small shift — just 15 minutes — that Dr. Susan prescribes first to start closing the gap between how you're performing and how you could be.
• Your Biology is the Ceiling: The mic-drop reframe of the entire episode. You cannot outperform a body that is breaking down. When you take care of your physiology first, everything else — the meetings, the decisions, the leadership — gets easier.

Resources & Links

• 📖 Thrive: A Five-Week Guide to Mastering Your Energy at Any Age — Dr. Susan LaValle
• 🌐 Balance Performance — [balanceperformance.com] (confirm URL)
• 🧪 "Tests Don't Guess" — Dr. Susan's lab-based approach to diagnosing burnout
• 💌 Her Collective with Erica — DM Erica directly for a personal invitation to sit in on a live Her Collective session

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, the podcast where we stop playing small, start calling things out, and actually do something about it. I'm your host, Erika Rooney, executive coach, speaker, and a little bit of a movement maker, and I'm on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there.

Because let's be honest, we've been told to lean in, but not too far, to speak up, but not too loudly, to be ambitious, but somehow still likable. And y'all, we're done doing that. This is the space where we break it all down The sticky floors, the ceilings, and the gaps that are shaping who gets ahead, especially in this next era of AI and leadership.

Some of it's mindset, some of it's burnout, and some of it is the system working exactly as it was designed. Either way, we're not staying stuck in it. Each episode is your nudge to move, one decision, one shift, one bold [00:01:00] step forward. No overhauls, y'all. No waiting until you feel ready, just real momentum. So if you're ready to think bigger, move smarter, and build power on your own terms, you're in the right place.

Let's smash the ceilings and close the gaps. Today's guest is Dr. Susan LaValle, a physician turned, and I'm gonna get this right, executive performance strategist, y'all. Mm. That was a new title for me, but I am so intrigued by it. She is a TEDx speaker, the founder of Balance Performance, the author of Thrive, which is a five-week guide to mastering your energy at any age.

But what makes her story so powerful isn't just her expertise, it's how she earned it. Now, before building her work around wellness, performance, and executive vitality, which hello, that was a term I did not know when I was an executive, Susan was a successful plastic surgeon and the only one in her area, carrying an [00:02:00] enormous level of responsibility and pressure.

Now, from the outside, y'all, this looked like success, but underneath it, you know where I'm going here, the cost was building. Now, she actually landed in the ICU, y'all, three times in one year, and she was forced to confront a truth that so many of us, as high achievers, avoid for far too long, and that is that you can look accomplished on paper and be running straight towards burnout.

So Dr. Susan, I mean, that is just like a book cliffhanger. I don't know what. I am so excited. Thank you for joining me on the podcast. 

I am thrilled to be here. 

Oh, my goodness. Okay. So if people are just now getting introduced- Mm-hmm ... to you for the first time, give me a little bit about who you are now, the work you do, and why it's so important.

Oh, I love that question. So it really is a culmination of years and years and years. So initially, I was a professional ballet dancer, traveled [00:03:00] around the world for 14 years. Loved it, but you can't dance forever, right? Um, what I did get from that, though, was the show must go on. Oh. Okay? And so I took that with me when I went into plastic surgery, though no matter what was happening, you know, whether I was tired, exhausted, didn't matter what was going on, I knew that I had to continue to perform.

So when I first opened my plastic surgery practice, and we can go into the history of how I got there, um, but when I first opened it, um, I was- Really looking into... I was up- initially up in New York City. Okay? So that's where I opened my practice and where I was until the year after 9/11. Mm. At that point, we were raising kids, they were young, and New York City had changed.

Did not wanna be there any longer, and so we moved and kinda went in the exact opposite direction. We moved to northeast North Carolina to a small town where literally there were [00:04:00] 6,000 people, two traffic lights. 

Okay, how old are your kids at 

this point? Old enough to know that they were s- I was 

gonna say, 'cause they are probably like-

"Where did we land?" Where did we go? Like, "Mom has taken us to outer space with the aliens. Let's go." 

Yes. They were... My son was 12, my daughter was four years younger, so they were, they were aware, and they... But they actually acclimated pretty quickly. They really enjoyed being there eventually. But the thing was that even though the plastic surgery part of it was great, I worked, you know, I did my classes and, and, uh, saw my patients, did my surgeries, which was sometimes three hours, six hours, sometimes even eight hours long.

Um, but then when I came home, because we were now in this small town, I didn't want them to suffer for me choosing to move away from friends, family, you know, and a lot of ev- other things going on. And so I was a soccer mom, so went from working all day to coming home, being the soccer mom, which would have been great had I been taking [00:05:00] care of myself and if we didn't have the middle of the night Johnny fell off the table and has now a laceration on his forehead in the middle of the night.

So now, you know, I'm getting called into the emergency room in the middle of the night to sew lacerations because when Johnny has a laceration on their face, a cut on their face, who do you call? 

You call. See, I would've said, "Can you call me at 7:00 AM?" Like, "Can little Johnny just hold a little pressure on there for a 

little bit?"

Would've been wonderful except you... oh, you know good and well that's not, that's not gonna happen, so now I'm, you know, giving- 

Not if I'm Johnny's mama, you're coming 

in. You're coming in now. You're gonna have to come bring you in. Right? You're coming in now. Um, and so the lacerations, the dog bites, all of the emergencies that happen and that can't wait, I was taking care of them in the middle of the night.

And so now we're talking about almost 24/7, 'cause there was no other plastic surgeon anywhere around. Um, and like I said, had I been taking care of myself, it might've worked, but I wasn't. Um, when I first moved down [00:06:00] there, I literally gained 35 pounds, which for a short person is a lot of weight. 

Well, ex-ballerina, you know.

And for... and the plastic surgeon. Now you got all of these, you know, external ideas going on. Um, and, uh, what ended up happening, as I mentioned, I ended up in the intensive care unit three times in the space of a year. And what I wanna take away from that was that burnout doesn't look the same in different people.

And so sometimes we can completely miss the signs that it's building until it actually happens. And yeah. 

That's what I wanted to ask you. Yeah. I'm like, you're a physician. You've been through all of this. Like, you know what's going on, and still you went through, and so I'm wondering now, looking back, what were some of those signs?

Because I 100% agree, it shows up differently in so many people. 

Yes. 

So whenever I hear somebody say they've been through it, I'm like, "Tell me more," because I think if we can actually talk about, well, it looked like this in me, and it looked like that in her, somebody [00:07:00] will say- Mm-hmm ... "Oh, that's what that is."

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So what were some of the signs that you can see now looking back? 

So the biggest thing I think for me was the fatigue, number one, just being tired. But remember what I said from dancing, show must go on. Doesn't matter, you keep working even though you are tired. And then the other thing was the inflammation.

Mm. So in my body, it was gut issues. It was I would get bloated if I ate something. I would swell, like if I ate eggs, you know, I would get a rash. So you wouldn't think that's burnout. 

And that had never happened before. 

That had never happened before. Interesting. Never happened before. So it was my body trying to tell me that it was tired, it was exhausted, I wasn't taking care of it, and to start to listen, you know?

And we'll, we'll get into how that, that works into some of the frameworks that I now teach. But, uh, didn't listen the first time, you know? Clot in the leg, went to the lungs, didn't listen. Came back, went [00:08:00] right back to work as soon as I could. Did it again six months later. Did it again, and then that last time, it was a huge clot that was my entire left leg- Mm

up until my waist, 'cause now I had a filter. Yeah. You know, after two to my lungs, they gave me a filter. So that third one, I almost didn't make it out of the intensive care unit and the hospital, and I realized that I had to change what I was doing. 

Man, so when you think about this and this underlying, like, the show must go on, right?

Like in my world, we talk a lot about Sticky Floors. Mm-hmm. And those are those limiting beliefs, toxic behaviors that keep us stuck, right? Chasing constant achievement, people pleasing. When you look at this constant need to be on all the time, 24/7- Mm-hmm ... what do you think that really anchored to for you?

Oh, really what it was was... Well- You always will give it a, a reason. Mm-hmm. You know? I, if I'm the plastic surgeon, I can't not be on my game. [00:09:00] 

Right. 

You know? I, I cannot afford to go in and have a bad day in the operating room. 

Which is true. 

Period. You know? Yeah, that's 

a fact. 

So then it's a, it's a fact. So, you know, you take that, and you take that to every other part of your life, and that's what I was doing.

Mm. 

You know? I, I couldn't not be perfect with my kids and, and take them to all of these games. I could not, you know, be there for my husband. I could not do anything else. Yeah, it was just 

so ingrained. 

Yeah. You know? It, it, it had to be in this, because if I wasn't on my game in, in surgery- Right ... there was a big problem.

Right. 

But taking that to the rest of my life and not letting anything else, you know, not giving way on anything else, you know? Yeah. I had to have the best meals. I had to have... It, it, it was just something that, uh, I took with me. 

Right. 

Yeah. 

Wow. Yeah, I was thinking about that a lot, because for those of you who are watching on YouTube, I've got a lovely blue...

or black sparkly boot on because I've broken my foot. Oof. [00:10:00] And I think about all of the things... It's actually a dancer's fracture. But I think about all the things that, like, I can't do right now that I would normally be doing, and it bugs me. Some of these things bugs me, like making sure my counters are all cleaned off at the end of the day.

Right. Right? But that doesn't need to be done. No. And it's really this exercise in forcing myself to accept a little bit less than my standard- Mm-hmm ... and have that be okay, which is interesting. But I would love to hear from you, once you have earned your, you know, fly miles coming through the- ... urgent care three times, right?

The ICU, not urgent care- Mm ... that's way worse. Mm. What made you actually stop, and then how did you kind of make that pivot to change the course of your life? What I was doing, 

yeah. Um, well, that third time when I came out, it... what I realized was that I couldn't even function anymore. Mm. You know? Just [00:11:00] something as simple as doing the laundry, trying to put something in the, the washing machine and taking it out took me a half hour, because I was that exhausted.

I couldn't walk my dogs from one house to the next house. I couldn't do that. And I said, "There's just no way." Um, it was f- interesting, because even in the office, even knowing that was what was going on at home, when it got to the office, I was still trying to push. You shut it down. Still trying to- Yep ... you know.

And, uh, I had an office, this office space with exam rooms in the front. My office was in the back. It was about maybe- I don't know, 50 yards. It wasn't a lot. Um, but I didn't have enough energy to walk back and forth from my office to the exam rooms, and so what I did was I had them put a little couch outside the exam room so that I would see a patient, come and sit on the couch for the next person, and then go into that next person.

And one day, I just kinda looked at it and I said, "Number one, what am I doing to myself? But two, what am I [00:12:00] teaching my staff as well?" That it's not okay to take care of yourself, that it's not okay to just understand what your body is and to care for your body so that you can care for everyone else. 

Yeah, we wear- Yeah

like a badge of honor. Yeah, yeah. Like, "Look at me, just really struggle through." I'm 

gonna "

But don't you do it. Don't you do this. This is just for me." Like, why do you think we hang our hats on so- Oh, my goodness ... strongly on that? 

It... 

I mean, that's the million-dollar question, right? 

That is the question. 

Okay.

Well, I have a question I think you can actually answer. But when you stepped away from being a plastic surgeon, did you have a hard time with the identity shift, or was that a natural next step for you? 

It's funny, 'cause, uh, now this is my second identity shift, from dancer to- Mm-hmm ... to surgeon, and surgeon to, to executive strategist, and each one takes its toll or took its toll.

Um, with the dancing, I missed performing. I didn't miss all of the, [00:13:00] all of the preparation. Right. So that, that was that sort of thing. But even today, I still love watching dance. I love... Well, good dance. My, my family says I'm very, um- She's 

a dance 

snob ... I'm very... I am. Let's call 

a spade a spade here, girl.

You're a dance snob. It's okay. I am. I am. You're an ex-ballerina. You're 

allowed to be. Um, but this, this next thing, it was the performance. You know, if I could just do surgery without all of the other stuff, I probably would still be doing a little, because that's what I loved about helping people transform.

You know, and what I love about what I do now is having someone come in, and I help them see what they can do to transform and become a new person. So there's good and bad to each one of those transitions. 

Yeah. I always say there's a red thread, and I mean, you outlined yours so beautifully there. Mm. I was actually a health and wellness coach for Verizon for almost a decade.

Oh, my goodness. And I did it because I loved helping people, and then I transitioned into HR because I loved helping people. And then as I [00:14:00] climbed the corporate ladder, I actually enjoyed the organizational piece of it and the strategy piece. And now, you know, I do all of this work, podcast, thought leader-

you know, speaker, all the things, and that's also helping people. But you find that red thread. Exactly. And for me, that's been helpful when having those kind of identity-shifting moments where it's like, "Okay, but what is at the core of all of this?" 

Of... Exactly. 

That's, like, tethering me and pulling me through all at the same time.

Exactly. 

So I love that. Okay. Yeah. I think this is a beautiful transition into what you do now- Mm-hmm ... as an executive strategist. So I would love to hear, before we dive into what you do, like, how did you know that this was gonna be the thing? 

I didn't. 

Ah, well, there you go. 

There it is. Yeah. So i- you know, when I first came out of, of plastics, it was...

And the main reason that I made that transition was because when I started talking to my plastic surgery patients about their health and their nutrition and their, their sleep and their hormones, they were like, "Uh, just cut [00:15:00] it off, okay?" Just do it. You know, just, just be done with it. And so it was really kind of a struggle.

And what I realized was that because I was more interested in that transformation that I could do forever, or c- I could continue doing this sort of thing forever, this is where I wanted to go, and that's when I made that split and left plastic surgery. But when I first came out, I still had that one-to-one, let-me-be-their-doctor mentality.

Mm-hmm. And I did that really for that first whole year when I, in that transition. Then 2020 hit, and everything changed, and you couldn't really do that anymore. So I started going online, started, you know, teaching people in groups and realized that I really... Number, two things: One, I enjoyed doing it.

Mm-hmm. And two, that it was a lot more efficient in making transformation, in helping people transform, than me working one-on-one. 'Cause really, with the depth of what I do now, I could work with maybe 10, 15 [00:16:00] people a month. Mm-hmm. Well, to do it well. 

Right. 

But if I'm speaking to groups, you know, and going to conferences and t- One to many

one to many, and teaching the, you know, teaching now, which is what I do also, is teaching providers, you know, now we're talking about that ripple effect, which is so much more Uh, rewarding- 

Right ... 

for, for anyone. Yeah. 

Interesting. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I bet you never saw yourself coming back and now teaching providers, and- No

I'm sure you're able to help so many people just in sharing your own personal story. 

Uh, which is, which is hard at first. Yeah. I don't know about you, but y- I've never been one to just start talking about what's happened to me and all of everything that I went through, until I realized that it kind of hits people, you know?

And it, it makes... gives them permission to share that they're struggling as well. 

Yes. 

You know, 'cause they're looking at, "Oh, wow, if this person who is teaching me has struggled and gone through this, [00:17:00] and is still making changes in her life, then it's okay for me, too." 

Yes. Yeah. I will say I have always been a person that it w- I never showed the world what was hard, right?

Like, you were always the- Right ... positive person, so, you know, when someone asks you how you're doing, you say, "Great." Great. And it does not matter how sh*t-tastic your day has been- ... you are having a great day. And oh, if you've had a cold or the flu for a week, like- ... "It's fi- it's all right. You know, like, just broke foot.

No big deal." You know? And that was always me, and then I realized that that's what everybody always saw, and so they never actually saw any of the times that I was struggling. Right. Like, when I burned out as a chief people officer, no one knew that I was anywhere near burnout. Right. When I struggled with alcohol, nobody knew that was an outward struggle.

But what I find is that most of the people feel that way. Yes. Nobody wants anyone to see- Yes ... their vulnerable inside side. So when you bring that up and you say that first, that is the open door. And I started when I was a chief people [00:18:00] officer, and this is one of the moments I will always remember. I had brought my entire team to Raleigh to have an in-person meeting, and whoops, I had a therapy session right in the middle of our strategy session.

And like, you know, everything was, life was lifin'- I did not wanna give up this therapy appointment. And I just remember looking at them and I was like, "Y'all, I have a therapy appointment. It's one hour, it's virtual. Like, I'm just gonna go over here and do it. Y'all do emails- ... but, like, I will be back in an hour."

An hour. And I think, flash forward, like, two or three weeks, one of my team members came to me and she sent me a Slack message and she just said, "You know what? I'm really struggling with my mental health today. I think I just need to take a day where I can lay in bed while my kids are at school and do nothing."

Mm-hmm. And I was like, "No problem. Go." And then she came back and she said, "You know, the only reason I felt comfortable actually telling you that-" Because- "... was because you talked about how you had a therapist and you struggled with mental health, and so I knew you would understand." 

Yes. 

And I was like, [00:19:00] "Oh."

And that was the light bulb for me that- When you share your struggles, it makes it so much... And I'm coming from a position of power- 

Mm-hmm ... 

with a lot of privilege, right? Like, other people who are working, you know, more as individual contributors, not with the privi- privilege of a C-suite, like, they don't get to say that all the time.

Yes. 

And that gave her that permission. It was so powerful. 

It is. It's amazing, you know? And when I, when I made that first change and said, "Okay, I'm not gonna be- have the couch next in my room anymore" I'm 

gonna be 

an example. And it's, I'm gonna be okay. Um, you know, then we started sitting down and really started workshopping, well, how can we make this more efficient?

What can we do to make it easier on all of us? And we eventually, with all of our changes, ended up with a four-day work week. Four days, that was it, and we were gone. So three-day weekends every week, and we were just as efficient, got just as much done. Patients were happier because we were happier, and it was really all because, you know, I finally said, "Enough is enough.

I can't do this, and why am I trying to make you all do this [00:20:00] either?" 

Man. Yeah, 

yeah. 

I'd kill for that kind of a work week, right? Like, that's some good stuff. Yeah. Okay, so talk to me about Thrive. This is one of your biggest... It's the book. It's the five-week transformation. Yeah. I wanna hear all about it.

Yes. So this was actually a class and a way that I would take people through. My whole... I have a framework that is listen, let go, and live. 

I like it. 

So the first one is listen. Listen to what your body's trying to tell you because your body is so wise, and it knows exactly what you need. That's the first step, awareness.

And the next one is then let go. Let go of whatever isn't serving you. 

Girl, you see my raised eyebrows. Ooh, ooh. Like, that's the... I can listen. Ooh. The let go might be 

hard. Let go, and that is the hard... I think of the three, that is the hardest one, um, because we- we're used to things. We like them. They're comfortable.

We don't wanna g- we don't wanna get out of that, that, that comfort zone. Um, so let go of whatever isn't serving you. And then the third is then live your [00:21:00] own version of thriving, and that means, you know, no matter what that looks like. And a lot of us want to fit into some mold that someone else has determined, whether it was our parents from decades ago or, you know, our partners now or our co- friends and coworkers, what they expect, but live your own version of thriving.

Mm. 

And I, I tell the, the funny thing about hot yoga 'cause there was a... Well, people still do hot yoga, but it was a really, really- Girl, I remember when it 

was a trend- It 

was a big thing ... 'cause I was all 

up 

in the trend. And I would say that, you know, look, I don't like hot yoga. I don't like being hot. I love yoga, but I don't like being hot, and so I'm not gonna do it.

Whether it was a, a fad or, or whatever, and so that whole... You know, people hear that, and they can kind of relate to that. But it's really you choose what makes you happy. Um, you know, I've talked with coders, you know, in, in some of our, our conferences, and they are... When you ask them, "Well, what do you do when you go home to relax?"

And they're like, "We code." And I'm like, "You what?" But that makes them happy, you know? And [00:22:00] so it's whatever makes you happy, that's what you do more of. 

Mm. 

So that listen, let go, and live. Um, so where were we? What were we talking about? We were 

talking about the Thrive, the five weeks, girl. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

I know, but that was such a good... Yes, but I'm really... It's 

the guide to 

mastering your energy at any age. Yes, yes. And I think that is so key because we've got people across all the different, you know- Exactly ... Gen X, Gen Y, Gen A, B, C, D, all the way up. Exactly. And so we all need to know this because I've seen burnout more than ever in the younger generations- Young, yes

all the way 

up to the C-suite. 

Yes, yes, yes. And they're, luckily, the, the younger generation's a little less, uh, willing to accept the things that will put them into that burnout, but yes, they, we are seeing it there as well. Um, so yeah, that book actually came from a class that I started teaching when I first realized that, okay, the one-to-one is really not gonna be very productive or as, as productive as I'd like it to be.

And so I was teaching classes to groups. Mm-hmm. And then [00:23:00] 2020 hit with, with, uh, COVID, and I started doing virtual. And, and initially it was very quiet before I figured out, okay, let's go virtual. And I said, "Well, rather than just sit here and twiddle my thumbs, why don't I take this class that I've been teaching and make it a book?"

And that's what I did. And 

here we are. 

So really just took what I was teaching and training and expanded it into a book. 

I love that. Yeah. I mean, it's so important now that we make these trainings and our knowledge base available in all the modalities, right? Podcast, book, everything, because somebody's gonna pick it up, and it's gonna make a difference.

But I know these physicians out there probably have one of the most stressful jobs- Mm. Yes ... in the world. I mean, my mom was a nurse, right? So we were very close to the medical profession. My best friend is an anesthesiologist, which I have to say this because it's the best joke out there. Yes. She got married, and now her name is Dr.

Knapp. 

Oh, no. 

I'm here to put you to sleep. I was like, "No, you cannot." 

I [00:24:00] love that. 

But I'm so thankful for the work that you're doing. I find it so fascinating. I would love to hear from you, when you go out there and you are working with executive leaders on their wellness and their performance, what are some of the things that you see high achievers get wrong about burnout?

Oof. Well, the first one is they don't even wanna accept that they are. 

Yes. Okay? I would agree. 

Uh. 

From personal experience. 

So that's number one, but uh, because I've spoken with people and told them that, you know, the, the biggest thing, the biggest impact on your... Well, two big things, stress and sleep. 

Mm.

And I w- I hear from them over and over and over again, "I'm not stressed." You know- 

That's like- Yep ... become the baseline. 

Right. Right. "I'm not stressed." And I'm like, "Well, how about this? How about this?" And you know, and it's check, check, check, check. And I say, "Well, if all of these things are going, guess what, you're stressed."

And sometimes the only way that they will understand and believe it [00:25:00] is to look at their labs, and that's one of the things that I also do. 

Oh, doctors love 

numbers. Yeah. I love the numbers. It's call- I- I call it tests don't guess. 

Yep. 

And it's not just me. That's- that's one of the ways that we, we talk about it.

Um, so when you know your numbers, when you see what your numbers are, you can no longer say, "I'm not." You know? When your, when your cortisol levels are skyrocketing or when they're like down in the, in the you know what- Mm-hmm ... um, either way, because that's what happens. They're initially they're really high, then over time they just tank.

And so when you show that to an executive who's been pushing through no matter what because the show must go on, then they're more likely to say, "Okay. Well, yeah, maybe I really do need to do something." 

Mm. 

Um, "Maybe this is true." And so that's the biggest change that I would say that I've made since, you know, switching over from just surgery into something like this, where you've gotta let...

You've got to show people what's going on [00:26:00] and then show them how to get out of whatever the, whatever box they put themselves into. Right. 

Do you still subscribe to that mantra, the show must go on? 

Honestly? 

We get real here, Dr. Susan. Honestly, 

um, let's just say that my, my- You can 

say yes 

and. Yeah. So let's just say that my, my family has the right to remind me when I'm getting kind of sleeping- When you go to the left a bit

back into that. Yeah. 

Mm-hmm. Okay. 

Yeah. 

Well, listen, I tell people all the time- ... sticky floors, right? Never go away. Y- you just get better at spotting them. Yes. And you put those things into place- Yeah ... like your family who can lovingly check you and say- Yes ... "Hey, girl, you're veering a little off course here."

Like, "You need to do something about 

it." Exactly. 

Um, so with that, I would love to ask you, like for the woman who's listening, 'cause I know we've got a lot of high achievers, a lot of executives out there who probably have that same stress level as a physician and that same the show must go on mentality [00:27:00] and I can't afford not to mentality, right?

Mm-hmm. I can't have a bad day. What piece of advice would you give her to just take that minute and listen, like- How do we get them to dial into 

that? Into that? Oh, it's hard. It is hard sometimes. 

Besides hitting them over the head, right? 

Yeah, yeah. With 

three trips to ICU. 

Exactly. Well, the labs help, you know?

Okay, get your labs done. And that's something that... Get your labs done- Number one ... um, so that you actually know what's going on with you. Um, number two, I ask them specifically about sleep. Mm. Because everyone... You ask someone, "Well, how many hours of sleep should you get every night?" Everyone's like- Eight

"Oh, seven to nine," you know? Yeah. They, they know the numbers. Yep. How much sleep do you actually get every night? And that's where I hear the four, the five- Mm-hmm ... the six hours. And I say, "Do you see that gap in there?" And you can't go from four hours to eight hours. That's not gonna work. But I do ask them, "Okay, if this is...

If, if your brain function is important, if being on top of things in all of your meetings is important, if your [00:28:00] ROI is that important to you, then you need to take as much care of your sleep and your body as you're taking care of your numbers." And so I ask them, "Just go back 15 minutes a night. That's all."

You know? Something that's doable. It's a number. 15 minutes you're gonna go to bed earlier or wake up, you know, a little bit, you know, 15 minutes later in the morning. And if you do that over the course of a month or so, you can get to six, and then eventually- Yeah ... seven hours of sleep. And then once they do that, they realize how much more, how much better they feel because we, we both know y- if you're tired, you're not gonna be efficient.

Correct. 

And it's gonna take you twice as long to do something as it would if you were rested. And then you're just 

spiraling 

down. And you're just spiraling. It's the same thing with, like, working through, um... You know, we now know that we work best in 60 minutes to 90 at the most at a time without taking a break.

Mm. 

And so when we actually force ourselves to do that and [00:29:00] see how much more we can accomplish in that period of time, it makes, you know, people much more likely to go ahead and, and continue with that. 

I love that. All right, last question, best question. Mm. If we could go back to the Dr. Susan who's laying up in that ICU again-

for the third time, probably ignoring all of the red flags that are flying all around her, what piece of advice would you give her today? 

Hmm. To realize that her biology is actually the ceiling of her high performance. Ooh. So you cannot be... You cannot top anything if your biology, if your physiology is tanking.

Mm. 

And so when you take care of that initially, everything else becomes so much easier. 

Amen. I always say success is the freedom of time and good health. 

Exactly 

But you must have that. 

Exactly. 

I love that. The [00:30:00] biology is the ceiling. All right, Dr. Susan, thank you so much. These were amazing, amazing stories, amazing tidbits for people to act on, but I think that last one was the mic drop right there.

So thank you so much for coming on the podcast. 

Thank you. Thanks for having me. 

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