Big Talk About Small Business

Your Anxiety is Killing Your Profit with Abi Harmon

• Big Talk About Small Business • Season 1 • Episode 127

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Ever feel like your brain is running a marathon while your body waves a white flag? We sat down with Abby Harmon, ex-Amazon leader and founder of House Harmon, to unpack how entrepreneurs can stay fast without frying their circuits. Abby lays out a simple truth: when you lead from a regulated nervous system, you make sharper decisions, sustain energy, and unlock real creativity. When you lead from fear, you push teams into urgency, narrow your time horizon, and quietly starve innovation.

Across the hour, we trace Abby’s path from corporate leadership to coaching founders, engineers, and executives through workshops, retreats, and flow-state priming. She explains why AI’s breakneck pace has many of us stuck in sympathetic overdrive, and how a few targeted habits, long exhales, tiny device-free breaks, or a walk outside, signal safety to the body and hand the wheel back to your prefrontal cortex. We also get practical with data: HRV and biometrics make the “soft stuff” visible, creating buy-in and measurable performance gains for leaders and teams.

We push into culture and execution: how to replace fear-led management with physiological safety so people think boldly, not just quickly. Abby shows how to name intense emotions without being ruled by them, reframe constraints into possibility, and delegate draining tasks to protect the mental bandwidth that actually moves the business. She even shares how she scales a high-touch practice with AI-powered workflows, proving small teams can deliver personalized impact at modern speed.

If you’re ambitious, exhausted, and ready to trade reactivity for clarity, this conversation gives you the playbook: regulate, then accelerate. Subscribe for more unvarnished tactics for founders and operators, share this with a leader who needs a reset, and leave a review to tell us the one habit you’ll try this week.

Subscribe and tune in for new episodes of Big Talk About Small Business with Mark Zweig and Eric Howerton. Each week we focus on practical insights and real-world strategies to grow your business!

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Opening: Fear-Based Management

SPEAKER_05

As soon as you start to manage a business via risk, then you're starting to build based on fear. Which is why innovation and agility don't exist in large-scale corporations and why entrepreneurs are able to disrupt. So that creativity comes from regulation. And that's where we have to build.

SPEAKER_01

You're in Seattle. We're in Northwest Arkansas. This is another episode of the Big Talk about small business. And we're glad you're here with us. Um, tell everybody a little bit about yourself, please. Um know more about Abby Harmon.

SPEAKER_05

Yes. Um, so I haven't been in Seattle my whole life. I actually grew up in Virginia, um, very sort of traditionally raised Jewish family. So I focused a lot on education, financial stability, business. Um, you know, I was driven towards STEM early as a as a child. Um, and uh I sort of followed um a career path from more of a corporate environment. I worked at the Target headquarters. Uh, and then I actually moved out to Seattle, gosh, now about 15 years ago to work at Amazon, back when they were a little tech startup. And my path has sort of progressed from there, um, increasingly getting into smaller and smaller organizations, kind of following disruption and maybe a sense of art within. Um, and then I started my own business now about 18 months ago. I never thought that I was going to land on the founder path. Um, but maybe working with founders like Eric has inspired and motivated me over the years.

SPEAKER_02

She's like a fan idiot can do it.

SPEAKER_01

Anybody can. Eric is inspirational. No, he really is. I he is. I come here every week just to get inspired by him. Thank you, Mart. That's it. That's the whole purpose. I come energized.

SPEAKER_02

I come here to get some wisdom from you. Well, you came to the wrong. You're like, you're you're basically you're my father. Oh, dad. Thanks, son.

SPEAKER_01

I'd be proud to have you as a son. I'll be proud to have you as a dad. Thanks. This is beautiful, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02

Isn't it?

SPEAKER_04

It is it is beautiful. I'm like, I'll just be a uh step cousin. Let me in.

SPEAKER_02

Hey, look, we literally just created a family on this show. We did. It's right here. It's Harman's Wag and Howarton. That's got a couple name to it. Does it? Harman's Wag and Howarton. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Could be good. Or Harman Howerton. Howerton Horman Zweig. Yeah. It all sounds good. Whatever. So anyway, Abby, so you keep working for smaller and smaller companies. You started your business 18 months ago. What is the name of your business and what does it do?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. So the business is called House Harmon. And it was born from a gap that I saw in the technology world that I was a part of for so long. Um, you know, a space that is so dependent on expansive innovation and creativity. And yet, as it has matured, a lot of transition into very short-term thinking mentality, a lot of fear of what is disrupting the market. And what I recognize is that a lot of leaders didn't have the skill set to actually navigate that type of constant change, the constant activation that they were under, and that that gap was actually physiological. So I completely pivoted, basically went back to school, learned neuroscience, learned a lot of Eastern medicine, philosophy, meditation, breathwork, all trying to figure out well, how do I link what is the gap of physiological performance back into what does the tech industry really need to be able to find that innovation and clarity of thought again? And so all of the work that I do is very much around the nervous system and both educating and actually integrating an understanding of the nervous system into day-to-day performance.

SPEAKER_02

I want to give some credibility to Abby real quick. I mean, we worked together at Flywheel, which was a great organization. That was the company that bought White Spider back Saturday. And that's how I met Abby. Abby would been there. You're what was your position there at Flywheel when when we got acquired?

SPEAKER_05

You were Yeah, I was the managing director, so I had taken over from the founders.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So she had a really heavy load there. Then you what what year did you work at Amazon? What years were that?

SPEAKER_05

I was at Amazon in the early teens, so about 2010 to 2015.

House Harmon: The Nervous System Gap

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so significant, I would say significant credibility in tech space, right? A lot in the ad space too, because I know that's what Flywheel did. Like, I mean, it was I mean, it's to our point, a lot of technology disruption going on all the time. I mean daily. And um uh and and then I think that you know, when when Nabby talks about that, and I still I'm in the space with Ad Fury again, deep and heavy, like not ex in the AI on top of this, but she talks about this technology disruption and the amount of overload that goes on in you know, plus the fear, you know. I mean, it's it's it's actually kind of real, right? And my experience in AI, when I jumped into the AI space in the ad tech AI space with ad fury, it was A, I I jumped back in, Abby, because I I wanted to make sure that I was engaged with the times. Really honestly didn't necessarily want to necessarily be back in the space as a whole, but I was like, I can't you felt like you needed it. I had to get there because A, it needed to be done right. And I'm only, you know, as entrepreneurs do, we only trust ourselves to do something right. Yep. Um, but man, I tell you, there is a big difference in what's going on today with AI, and I think it's impacting all businesses, obviously. But the velocity of change, I mean, is something I've never ever ever experienced before. Like every single day, multiple times. That's crazy. Something else is about to disrupt. And before he even got on the show, I was telling Mark, like, man, I'm exhausted at the end of the day. Like, just from brain fatigue. Like, I mean, and then it physically exhausts me. And it's happened to me twice this week, and it's pretty relevant to me right now. Like, I've gotten off at like five or six, and and I had plans to go do X, Y, and Z. I don't have the energy. I don't have anything in my I don't have anything left in me. And then I can't sleep well because now I have more energy by the time it's time for bed. Right? And that's am I am I hitting on a little bit about what you might help people do?

AI Velocity And Founder Fatigue

SPEAKER_05

Indeed. Yes. It's actually it's fascinating because the evolution and change of what's happened in the tech industry over, well, let's say the last 20 years, you know, having a phone that you look at within five minutes of waking up, something that you're on for sometimes eight hours a day, you know, you look at a generation that's using, yeah, all right, you know, if if if you're good, um, that's like the general stats across the entire population. But you look at folks that are under 40, they're using YouTube, TikTok to ingest all of their media on the phone for far longer. And then at the same time, you have you know 100 million downloads of apps like Calm and Better Help. So folks know that they don't feel good, but they don't necessarily know the why. And then you look at the last 18 months of what's happened with AI, um, so much disruption, uncertainty about the future, question marks on where my you know career and financial stability is going to come from. That type of active, constant, urgent stress is completely at odds with our human evolution. If you look at our human evolution, um, you know, we have two parts of our system. The parasympathetic came from sponges. So it's about 200 million years old. And then our like fight, flight, our ability to be predators, to chase, but also run away, you know, that is also millions of years old. So you apply hell yeah.

SPEAKER_01

We like the sponge part. No, we like the predator part, right? Wow, it sounds good to us.

SPEAKER_05

Predators are good, right? It's our ability to keep pace. We love that grind, that hustle, that agility. But the system works by mobilizing and then it needs to stabilize in order to mobilize again. So if we're always on, it actually creates a sense of, you know, I say dysregulation, but it basically creates dynamics from a physical state, from a mental state where we can't sustain at that pace. And so an understanding of the system and knowing like, well, how do I take these little micro breaks throughout the day so that I'm not exhausted, so that my brain can actually pace with the change that's happening, so that I can think clearly and creatively. Um, all of that is actually starting to realize, like, oh, our evolution has not nearly paced as fast as the technology industry around us.

SPEAKER_02

You know, when I had a preemptive discussion with Abby before she came on the show because I was like, Abby, listen, Mark and I don't want to slow down. Entrepreneurs, we don't want to slow down. This is we I would actually love to have a miracle shot that I could stick in the side of my neck every day. Yeah. That makes me go 24-7. I hate sleeping. Sleeping pisses me off because it's such a waste of time. Like, I wish I could just go and I don't want to eat.

SPEAKER_01

I don't hate taking an eating break. I'm telling you, it you what you're saying is so familiar to me. I mean, like, I feel like I'm working harder than I ever have, and I'm almost 68. Yeah. I'm trying to do other things like workout four days a week. I'm trying to change my diet. I'm hardly eating a regular meal ever. Yeah. I don't sleep well at all. Okay. And you talk about fear. I wake up every day in fear of what disaster is writing around the other corner. So, I mean, there used to be a book out. It was called something like doing better but feeling worse. Have you ever seen that? You shouldn't find that book. It's been a long time since I read it.

Evolution, Phones, And Always-On Stress

SPEAKER_02

But don't I don't you wish you had like an EpiPen shot that you could stick, I mean, yeah, man. And just keep going, keep powering through. We want that predator energy, right? And so I I had talked to Abby, and I was like, hey, now here's the deal. Like, Mark and I want to know the secret sauces. So this dialogue is about how do we what you said at the end, take these micro moments so that we can continue to sustain more and do more. Yeah. That's what we want. And that's what we're giving to the audience today.

SPEAKER_01

Right. I take a micro moment a couple times, well, I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 times a day when I go outside and have a cigarette. I mean, seriously.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Well, that's I think the irony.

SPEAKER_01

I think that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_05

I actually generationally, well, I won't I won't speak to the smoking, but being in nature, being away from a device, I'm not a medically trained professional, so I want to.

SPEAKER_01

You're what? I'm still on my device. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He's smoking in Texas. It's a stimulant. I read somewhere once that when you smoke, if you like have a cigarette and drink a cup of coffee, your IQ goes up like seven points. It just doesn't last. Yeah. You know? That's only during the time as you're smoking. Yeah. Yeah. Your IQ goes up. And then it falls back. But I also, yeah, speaking of sponges, I also read something once that um if a four-year-old watches SpongeBob, their IQ goes down by seven. Does it really? And it lasts like three or four hours after they watch it. There's like an IQ hangover from that. Anyway, I know that's irrelevant. But Abby, you were saying like your source. If you have kids, don't let them watch SpongeBob. That's all I goes my big sponsor.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Just remote sponsor. But hey, Abby, so you were talking about like the nature part. Like, okay, so give us give us some tips. Like, yeah, what are we doing? Like we want to be, we want to attack more, more often and and harder and faster and longer and better. And better. Yeah. All the time.

Micro Breaks And Breath Basics

SPEAKER_05

Okay. So I know that this is a gonna be a tough audience because some of the things that I'm gonna tell you might seem like you're slowing down in a very small moment that then allows you to accelerate after. And so think about it exactly. Exactly. Think about it like a car. You almost have to warm up the engine before you can accelerate. And like a car, if you just have the gas pedal to the ground at some point, it's not gonna keep speeding up. And so we have to sort of treat our body in the same way. And one of the the simplest things to be aware of is our breath. Um exactly. And maybe you just each noticed when you took that breath that you hadn't been breathing very effectively before that. We tend to take really shallow breaths during our day, and that actually indicates to our nervous system that we're in that fight, flight, threat mode.

SPEAKER_02

I just got something. I just got something out of that. When I'm not breathing like that, like actually what's happening is your nerve, like so what Abby's kind of talking about, and correct me if I'm wrong, there is a central subconscious nervous system that's happening with you. Like we have our conscious side. We're dropping, dropping, dropping. And we're talking, talking, talking, talking, and we're not breathing or breathing or breathing, but our subconscious central nervous system is going like, hey, I don't give a shit what you think and what you think you are, and how big and awesome you you believe yourself to be, and how many things you want to merge. Here's the real here's the god dang reality because I'm gonna self-protect myself, and that means I need to start shutting down things because I'm trying to protect my organs, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Well, that's the workout, though, every day. I mean, if you do the workout, you're not on your phone and you gotta watch your breathing if you're lifting weights and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02

That's part of it, but I think that what Abby's saying, though, is that you need to do that throughout the day. You need to do that continue because I'll tell you this like I'll get on page pages and be talking, and I get dizzy while I'm talking to people because I'm in the and I'm wondering, like, what is the deal? I think is it too much adrenaline in my two? No, it's because I'm not freaking breathing. Share. I'm not breathing. And I can promise you, every time I get done with those meetings, I immediately have this 30-minute, 45-minute period of where I'm like, man, I'm so tired now. Like, what do I need to do? I go get some coffee. And no, I've when I drink coffee that I get jacked up and then I have another crash. Yeah. I just need to breathe.

Sympathetic vs Parasympathetic In Work

SPEAKER_05

Exactly. And, you know, your workout is actually still pushing adrenaline. It's still keeping you in that sympathetic state. Um, and you know, think about it like, you know, you work out, right? Every muscle has a reciprocal inhibition muscle. So when I'm flexing one muscle, I flex my bicep, my tricep relaxes. Our nervous system is the same way. When I'm using one part of it, the other part of it is basically offline. And we need it to be balanced in order to think clearly. And I'll say it's exactly tied to your brain. So the nervous system is your operating system. It goes from your brain through your spinal cord to every part of your body and it's autonomic. So it is, it's working without you having to think about it, but it controls your senses. It's bringing in stimulus from the outside. And based on the state that you're in, your brain is then predicting and responding to all of that stimulus based on the perceived state that you're in. So if you're exhausted, if you're not sleeping well, if you're stressed, if you're finding energy through caffeine and working out, your system is going to assume like we're in high scare mode. And so then your brain isn't necessarily using your logic center to make a lot of decisions. So you're reacting and you're reacting from urgency and speed versus how do I really think strategically about this? How do I be clear? Um, and so that can work in a short window. And some of us love that speed and urgency, but it might not mean that you're making the best is business decisions or certainly using the capacity of your mind to make those calls.

SPEAKER_01

How do you make a business out of this, though, Abby? I mean, seriously. That's a great question.

SPEAKER_05

Um, I do a lot of corporate workshops. So that's a big part. I actually work to get tech teams before maybe a hackathon into flow state so that they're tapping into the logic center of their mind and then they're able to code for an extended period of time. I talk a lot about nervous system performance with executives, um, particularly because our system shows up in a room before anything that we speak. So how you think about leading a team, particularly through disruption and change, becomes a significant skill set for leaders that are in this space. Um, and then I also do a lot of executive coaching that tends to be a lot of pattern matching and mindset work tied into the physiological performance. Um, and then I also do retreats.

SPEAKER_01

That's uh the the coaching part uh uh sounds soft to me. How do you get uh entrepreneurs to buy into that? Okay, I mean, I've never paid a coach to do anything for me other than like coach my kids in soccer or something.

Coaching, Workshops, And Flow For Teams

SPEAKER_05

You know, I'll give you an example because I actually I work with a lot of founders, folks that are C-suite. Um, I have a client that I'm working with right now who is very senior level at Amazon. Now she runs a quant analyst firm. She is always on. She gets home at night, her partner asks her what she should eat for dinner, and she just breaks down into tears. Um, and so a lot of the work that we're doing is again, how do you sustain being always on and that level of performance? And, you know, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're a founder, you don't necessarily always get to compartmentalize the work then into your personal life.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. They bleed together for sure. Yeah. So you're like a therapist in a way, like a personal therapist.

SPEAKER_05

I would well, I'm not a trained therapist, right?

SPEAKER_02

But I would I would kind of tie it to like a per a therapist plus personal trainer. Okay. That helps me kind of think about it. Is that kind of accurate? Like where you're because a lot of this is physical, like you're talking about. Yeah.

Data, HRV, And Measurable Performance

SPEAKER_05

It's physical, and yet where it shows up is mindset. And I think a lot of times we don't realize that the way our body is reacting is creating a sense of, you know, a certain emotional or specific state in our mind. And I think we've all been there. I mean, I was, you know, a CEO that maybe looked very successful on paper. And on the inside, I felt this constant pressure, urgency, stress. And, you know, as I was going through major MA transitions, having to do large-scale layoffs, I started to think like everyone else on the executive team is against me. No one is helping me do this work. It's me against the world. You know, I had elbows out and it felt like, you know, they say leadership is a lonely place, like I am isolated by myself and it's only me. That's actually a huge symptom of a very dysregulated system. Um and so it's that kind of work of like, how do you know that you are safe so that you can be more collaborative, more intentional on how you're leading others, working with an executive team, you know, all of these things start to connect into the state of your nervous system. So it sounds soft because I, you know, you you can't necessarily see the data, except that there is pretty powerful data now from a health tech perspective that starts to show you what is actually happening in the system. Um, so I use a lot of heart rate variability and other heart data to show, like, hey, what's happening in the system? And then you can start to tangibly see what that does from a performance perspective.

SPEAKER_01

I'm collecting all that on my Apple Watch. That's good. You'd be, yeah, that'd be perfect for Abby Day and a lot, man. Well, you know, Abby, though, I mean, I can already see though, something about you that's different. You smile a lot. Yes. Okay. That is going to help your relationships with everybody, even delivering bad news. And if you smile in a way that's not an evil smile or like I've got some kind of a hidden agenda smile, it's genuine. Yeah. And it's got to help your relationships with other people. Sorry, I just had to jump in with that. That's great. I love it. It's natural. It's natural for you, and that's going to help you influence other people. Not everybody's like that, obviously. And it's it's it's like your superpower or one of them, maybe. Um, so yeah, what you said about the trainer though makes sense to me. I mean, I Understand the benefits of my trainer. They come at a certain time every day. They they've got their app, they track your stuff, they show you that you're improving in your performance, right? So that's what you're trying to do on a different level, right, Abby?

SPEAKER_05

And for the individual, but also, you know, when you look at learning development and the types of mindset or coaching programs that exist organizationally, there are major gaps in how we've seen technology change someone's physiological state and how we also address career development and leadership improvement from that vehicle as well. So it's pulling all of this advancement from a health space into the training world as well.

Smiles, Presence, And Leadership Signals

SPEAKER_02

You know what I like about this? Like I had no idea, you know, I knew Abby, I knew that she'd started this company, right? And, you know, and her, you know, just her uh, you know, character, I thought it would be great. And I think the application's great. But something that I didn't understand before she got on here is the physiology type practice here. There there's a what I like about this discussion is there's a universal truth that's happening. It's just the whole fight-flight mentality. Sure, we understand that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, your central nervous, like your body does things based off the start of humanity because it had to do things, and then now you're put into this fabricated plastic concrete jungle that is no nature to it. You know, we talk about this. Like there's the you know, the the idea that you have nothing to worry about and you can be an influencer and everything's perfect, and I look perfect, and all this stuff. Like we got all this bullcrap that we're learning and injusting on a daily basis. Social media, you know, technology fears, all that stuff. But all none of it's intangible. Like none of it's like real, like at the end of the day, right? And it's very comfortable. We sleep in comfortable beds, we drive cars everywhere. We can take a flight to Seattle to Seattle right now, and it's not that bad. It's three hours, five hours away, you know, blah, blah, blah, et cetera. Everything's so comfortable. But the reality is if you rewind, we talk you rewind back 80 years ago, shit was a lot different. Oh man, I'm telling you. Like, you know, I mean, like, if you took a trip to Seattle, it was literally a matter of life and death. Like, that's a big decision because gun trail. Yeah, represent the organ trail. Exactly, but the chances of you dying were almost higher than you survived the trip. Right. But now we can get there in five hours, nothing's okay, and we're worried about what's, you know, is Starbucks and be open by a land. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's a whole different what didn't change was your central nervous system. The way that you're yes.

SPEAKER_05

That's what's crazy is um if you think about that from an evolution perspective, you know, I get feedback on how I performed in this call. And my body reads it the same as I'm gonna get kicked out of the tribe, and I may not have someone that's keeping me safe or a place that's gonna help me find food. I'm literally reading the sort of human interaction and the fear and concern of that engagement the same way I would as if I'm gonna get kicked out. Our body doesn't know the difference. It reads an email notification, a Slack message, a notification from LinkedIn the same way as a threat of getting chased by some sort of beast. And so we just have to remind ourselves we're safe.

Physiology As Universal Truth

SPEAKER_02

I love that analogy because it's so true. It is. I'll go to my email. Uh, this happens to me all the time. I go to my email, I see something. So literally happened yesterday. Someone on my team asked me something that was just like, to them, they want to know an answer. To me, I'm like, why don't you already know this answer? Like six months ago. Why am I having to be the one that has to answer this? And I now I have an hour and a half worth of work on my plate that I did not expect, but it is absolutely urgent and important I do. Yeah. And I'm immediately going, I'm a failure for not leading this and explain this six months ago correctly. Do I have the right team on my team? And my and now payrolls coming up, do they really? I mean, like all these things come, right? And and and it just makes this this stuff just start triggering, triggering, triggering. And and and and I'm like, why am I thinking this way? You know, when the reality is, is I love Abby's example because it comes to a tribe mentality. Like if you rewound, if you run rewind it again, and somebody in your tribe comes to you and they screwed up, it was a matter of life and death. And if I'm kicked out of the tribe, I'm either gonna die alone or my family's gonna die right in front of my eyes. This shit was real back in the day. Like, real, real, real. Like if you did not go out and hunt well, Mark, and you're on the hunting team and you can't go kill something, you're out, bro. You're gonna be farming or you're gonna be doing something else, you're gonna be making tortillas or something instead. Yep. And that would put you in a different classification, which would completely rob you of all your masculinity until you prove to me again you could go hunt. And then eventually you get kicked out of the tribe and you're living out in the freaking mountains by yourself because I don't want you in my tribe, bro. Yeah, you can't do it. Because you help her. Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_05

And and all of that is subconsciously happening in your mind just from getting an email. But I I do want to call something out, Eric, because I think it's interesting. Our minds are so powerful. Again, their job is to predict threat to keep us safe and alive. And so you get an email and the story that you tell yourself on, you know, what you could have done better, all of that sort of like rumination and processing, that also is possibly a sign of where your nervous system is, and then what the reaction that your mind has to the situation. A lot of the work that I do, you know, it's a simple psychological framework, but it's basically what's the trigger, you know. And this is okay, Seattle. Traffic, terrible. I'm always angry. I have a little bit of road rage. I got that entrepreneurial spirit. I'm like, get me there fast and efficiently. Um, what do you're on the room?

SPEAKER_01

What do you drive? I'm sorry.

Notifications As Tribal Threats

SPEAKER_04

I have that Lexus UX.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't a Prius or something. With that, with that attitude. With that attitude. Okay, that's good. So I continue.

SPEAKER_04

I need some speed.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you're an aggressive driver. I got it. Uh, you can tell a lot about people and how they're gonna be by their driving. Sorry to interrupt your story.

SPEAKER_05

You're on the road. Seattle um has drivers that come from everywhere. We've got folks from California. Everyone has a different sense of urgency. And so you get cut off. I have a reaction to that. And then maybe, you know, I spend 30 minutes like angry, angry. I'm frustrated. Why do people do this? They're coming from all over, no one understands the system. There's too many bridges, there's too much water, there's too many mountains, it's just too beautiful. You know, get your act together. A lot of the work that I'm doing is like, okay, you have that trigger, you have an immediate subconscious reaction to it. How do you then notice what your mind did and change your reaction to that reaction? So I get an email, someone asks me a question, I'm like, they shouldn't be asking me this.

SPEAKER_01

And I could spend wow, I got scared, son knowing. Okay. That's the weapon Abby is like, are you shitting me? You just asked me what? The turtle.

SPEAKER_05

You know, I I could be spinning on like, should this person be here? Do we have the right TV place? Um, you know, what did I miss in their training? There's so many different things that spin on the shoulda, woulda, couldas versus like, oh, interesting, that's a thought. Why am I having a stressed response to that? Like, what's showing up? Why am I taking all of this on myself? Is there a different way that I can react? You know, this emotional state that I'm having is a temporary reaction and I want to control that. So maybe I take a breath, maybe I go outside and have a smoke, and then I come back and I say, okay, you know, this is how I'm going to address it practically, clearly, simply. And I don't spend the rumination time, the mental energy on the woulda coulda shoulda's.

SPEAKER_02

Interesting. I love it because I think number one, you know, tying back to entrepreneurism, right? You don't want to lose your core character as an entrepreneur. You don't want to lose that whatever that makeup is that entrepreneurs have.

SPEAKER_01

Hard work, the hardware make a decision quickly. Yes, passion, drama, vision, all those things.

Reframing Triggers And Rumination

SPEAKER_02

Solve the problem, move on quick. Because you don't want to polish yourself into a corporate leader type because you're gonna lose the value of it you're even bringing to begin with. That's not the reading good to great's not the answer, folks, right? Amen to that. Right? But understanding, I think understanding that there is indeed a subconscious physiological reaction that my body has. Yeah. And getting better attuned to that just happened, and that's okay. That's okay that that happened because I am human and I'm perfectly designed this way. But but what is that trigger? Like it's it's normal, but I can I can actually You can manage that. Yeah, I can get into drivers. If could you imagine, bro, yeah, if you could control your central nervous system, if you've got the power, the Napoleon Hill, I can power to think my own thoughts, think and grow rich. Excellent, power over time, power over my thoughts. That's it. That's it. Being able to control those reactions and then directing them back with energy-fueled freaking responses in action. Oh.

SPEAKER_01

You should be doing commercials for Abby. I am doing Abby, though. Back on back on how you're making this into a business. I mean, how can you let's just say that you personally, as a coach and somebody who's been very successful at a high level in the business world, okay, that immediately, in my mind, separates you from somebody who's had like 10 different jobs, they never did anything, they took a coaching class, another coach. So you're you're in a different league. But let's say you could help you, you work with somebody like me and you help me, and I and I pay you to do your thing, and I maybe I uh bring you in to expand your work with some of the rest of my uh management team. How do you grow that in a business beyond you? I mean, how are you gonna make that into a business that's scalable for you and not just you doing everything? Because you're a business too. So I want to talk about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because right now it is a services-driven business that is dependent on me. But the joint of the tech space that we're in is what could be a business that's already using four or five people is me, and I'm heavily dependent on AI. So how I think about automated flows, how I've set up basically the technology scale of the sort of core operational infrastructure of the business is using Claude. It's building X-Mind. I'm, you know, using all of the technology so that the level of effort that I'm putting in is more centered on going out, doing the keynote, building the relationships and a lot of the internal infrastructure, the marketing, the sales, collateral, all of those components. You know, I get the tailwind of AI.

Offense vs Defense: Innovation Risk

SPEAKER_02

Sounds like a danger zone. Somebody that understands, that has that experience and knows the tech space and is building AI agentic flows to be the Abbey brain that actually scales her business to places that other folks don't understand. That's the power of AI, right?

SPEAKER_05

Well, and one of the fun things then in that is I'm actually starting to work with a lot of folks that want to do this type of mission-driven, wellness-oriented work. Um, you know, let's say a healing practitioner of some sort, but they definitely don't know how to use technology to deliver that type of scale, to have that efficiency in the back end so that they can reach their customers in a compelling but efficient way. So a lot of the systems that I'm building are something that I'm starting to scale to others that are doing this type of work. Um, so you know, it's it's early stage, but I think there's a lot of yeah. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02

You you said here you said something that's so key that I think every entrepreneur needs to know right now at the time of AI. Abby said, I'm building my flow and all the AI flows so that I can focus on presentations and building relationships. There is a reality to it that where there is so much room for small businesses, in spite of the tech uh uh acceleration and AI stuff, you can have the app like the uh the Numa app on your phone, but that doesn't solve the problem for every single person. And there's actually more I want. But if you go speak with Abby or one of these other folks that you've helped in this space, now you're getting Abby's attention for relation and value, the the custom personal service, the old historic, genuine value of a service-based business with the power of tech behind you. So you're actually, as a small business owner, even more powerful than these LLMs and these other apps because I'm giving you my personal attention of a service-based business. It goes back to the same thing.

SPEAKER_01

It maximizes that so you're not using your time to do the other stuff that you shouldn't have to be doing, which is really the true value of small business and service-based business.

SPEAKER_02

So we're actually we're actually gonna we're all scared about tech taking over everything, but what's gonna end up happening is the personalization, the curated, the the the created, you know, hyper service that we all have always appreciated in business. Yeah. And I love that.

Fear-Led Cultures And Creativity Loss

SPEAKER_05

Well, and I'll say, because I I need to, it also ties in back to the nervous system. The way that we build reflects the state that we're in. So if you're feeling stressed and this pressure and fear of what's disrupting in this space, you're going to build something that has a very short-term impact, is sort of built on pressure. If you're building from a regulated state, the amount of creativity that you can tap into, the ability that you have to look long-term to see how your vision can positively disrupt at scale in that long-term horizon, that's where you'll build from a more expansive state. And I think we all love, you know, I saw what technology disrupted positively from a customer perspective with Amazon. You know, there were no structures or, you know, I was using an MVP team. We were very scrappy, agile, and nimble, and we were just creating and innovating. And I'm sure you all appreciate this. As soon as you start to manage a business via risk, then you're starting to build based on fear, which is why innovation and agility don't exist in large-scale corporations and why entrepreneurs are able to disrupt. So that creativity comes from regulation, and that's where we have to build.

SPEAKER_03

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SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean, it's it's really it was a video I was telling Eric I I had a guest speaker in my classes the last two days. And he shows this video. It's basically the evolution of organizations to start out with the idea person, and then they get the barbarians, and then they get the content experts. And at some point, though, when you get the administrators in there, it goes from playing offense to defense. And when you're on defense all the time, then naturally the next step is deterioration. Okay? And that's exactly what you just said right there. It's like if our if we're on defense all the time, we're not playing offense. And and that we're we're we're working from a risk point of view.

SPEAKER_02

That's cool because even though as an entrepreneur, if it's just me and my business, right, and I have no, I don't have any staff or team right now, I can be very much on the offense and seemingly more offense than you if you had a bigger company. Yeah. But the reality is that there's still potentially physiological defensive things that are creeping up into my thinking. Yeah. And my job, if I could get that uh be a hundred percent offensive player, boy, I'm I'm a more of a force-to be bracket bug. You got it.

SPEAKER_01

Now, but at the same time, Abby, as a small business owner and entrepreneur myself in in a lot of different, you know, fields and all, um I feel like the fear that I have is a big part of my ability to overcome obstacles. Um I I I you know, I've said it before. I wake up every day scared. That keeps me doing the right thing. Okay, now there's fear that keeps me from doing anything, but that's not the same as fear that keeps me from doing that keeps me doing what I need to do every day. How do you differentiate those?

Naming Fear And Choosing Possibility

SPEAKER_05

I used to think the same way. I think I felt like this chip on my shoulder, this sense of always needing to do better, um, kind of a fear of what was happening externally, and then this immense pressure on myself was what allowed me to have such significant performance. And I think one of the biggest things that I've realized is one, um that type of fear puts pressure on the team around you. They feel it. Um our systems can be they need some.

SPEAKER_01

They're gonna smack off without it. I'm I'm gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_05

I think what I've seen in working with these suite individuals is the fear already exists in the organization. And then they also feel that threat and fear from a leader. The type of work that is then done is reactive and based on urgency. And yet our greatest gift as humans is the ability to be creative and innovate. So I suddenly have both my mentality and the team around me working in a very speed-driven, but not necessarily the most logical way. And if I actually create, you know, a lot of times in the corporate world, right, we say psychological safety. This is physiological safety. If I'm letting someone know, like fail fast, figure out different ways to do stuff, push hard against what we need to do on the business operations, the safety that they have and being able to really go heavy after that creates an immense more opportunity of creativity. Um, and if you don't create the spaces for an organization to really push in that way, then you may not unlock the top potential. And again, in a in a world of AI, we've got efficiency in spades. What I need from my team is to be creative and clear and really thoughtful in the decisions they're making. And if they're doing that from fear, and I'm introducing that first and foremost as my leadership style, I'm not gonna get the creativity that I'm investing in them to produce.

Real Constraints, Better Self-Talk

SPEAKER_02

So, Abby, like to go back, like what how do Mark and I, and I share the same thing he does too. Like, I think there's a lot, a lot of um, I wouldn't even say there's necessarily known fears, but there is a fear driver that I do wake up with that does give me this energy. So, like, let's say that if we could turn that into something different, or maybe we call it something, maybe it's really not, maybe we don't know it's not really fear. We're entitled in this fear. I don't know. But what would you say is you're so you used to think that way. Now, what do you think now? Like, what would you say that waking up, what's this emotion? Call it whatever it is that we're feeling, and how do we better use that?

SPEAKER_05

I think naming it and knowing that it is an emotional state. Fear is still ultimately an emotion that your brain is creating, your body has a response to, and you can create and change. So I can live in fear and sort of make excuses for it, or I can name it and say, okay, but today I'm actually going to be more focused on what are all of the possibilities of what could be created and the expansive way that I can do that and amplify the opportunity and the possibility versus that sense of scared or fear. And the simplest thing to do in naming it is being like, oh, okay, I'm waking up, I feel stressed and afraid. I'm going to take a really long exhale and tell my System, like actually, I'm safe. I'm a successful entrepreneur. I'm a successful business leader. Look at what I'm able to do and create today. Look at all of the opportunity. And if I use that mental energy to think about what I can deliver from a place of compassion and you know, possibility versus fear and constraint, the amount that perhaps sort of can be created in that space is outsized. You know, sometimes we have these like the best moments of creation happen, you're taking a walk, you're in a situation completely separate from the traditional business environment. Well, why do those creative ideas pop up then? It's because we're we're not in fear.

SPEAKER_02

That's an interesting point. It is. And again, she this dialogue makes me think back to thinking real rich, Napoleon Hill, right? This is you know, um when she was talking about recognizing the emotion, um but it's really uh reaffirming I am a successful entrepreneur. Like, because there is a lot of power in that. I know there's there is a difference of when look, let's let's say it this way. Let's say that I have$100,000 left in the business, and I've got$150,000 in expenses coming up in two weeks. Right? There's two ways there the the reality exists. I got one of those right now, right?

SPEAKER_01

I know we're always in the bank and eight hundred thousand in expense. Yeah.

Delegate The Drain, Protect Focus

SPEAKER_02

Okay. Yeah. So okay, let's take that situation. There is one of two, there's the reality is there, it's not changing, right? But are we afraid of that? And so then therefore we start driving because we're afraid that that doom is about to come, or do we look at that and say, hey, you know what? You know, I'm a I am a really great thinker, I'm a great leader, I'm a great business entrepreneur. I've always figured out things before. I've done this a hundred times over, I'm gonna do it again. Yeah, I'm gonna roll and I'm gonna go take, I'm gonna I'm willing to point and direct the team in the right direction and help me solve problems. And you've actually you've shown me a lot of ways to do that, like on how you've like empowered teams to you know to do things that they didn't know that they could do. So I think that as just the entrepreneur and leader, like people look to us to as as a as a way to get them over or get them past themselves, right? If we can start our day like that. Well, we have to be get past ourselves. No, that's it. That's the real fight. See, that's it. But I think about exactly that, right?

SPEAKER_05

It's like you have so much capability and capacity, and yet think about the mental energy that you are spending on knowing over and over again, right? Here's what I've got in the bank, here's what I know I need to pay out. I'm spending all of this energy thinking about that. But think about what your mind could be spending that energy on instead. And I mean, I I don't mean to call you out, Eric, but I actually think one of the most compelling things that I've seen you do is you're like, it is a drag for me to spend some of my time and mental energy on those types of structural things. I'm gonna bring in a partner who's making sure that the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted, and that mental load of structure will be someone else's responsibility so that I can spend time on customers, so that I can create, so that I can think about the big picture. There's also a strategy of how to know, like, I'm gonna take this mental task that is fear-based and draining, and I'm gonna delegate it. I'm gonna give it to a deputy so that I can spend my capacity on something that's much better for the business.

How To Work With Abby

SPEAKER_02

That's a good point that relates to a lot of our partnership discussions that we've had on the show. In the essence, that's what we're in in the deepest sense, that's what we're actually doing. Yeah. But I mean, on the surface, like so when we articulate, hey, find somebody that has strengths that you don't have, okay, that's obvious. But really, the the essence of why is because of what you're saying. Like, I know, like, number one, I can't affirm myself out of it. I'm not like, hey, I'm I'm such a great mathematician and I understand all the accounting principles and the HR principles of the world. Blah, blah. I'm not, dude. Like, I hate it, I'm impatient about it. But if I can spit more time on affirming my own strengths that I know I have, such as, you know, like you're a great seller. You're yeah, I love people. I love being around, I love talking to folks and like and I can affirm myself out of that. And while my partner may not want to do that, yeah. You know, and he no, I shit that that's what makes that great. That's a good uh Abby. I know we're we're almost out of time. Uh Mark always asks this question how do people in you know get a hold of you and do inquire more about opportunities with you?

SPEAKER_05

Of course. So my website is househarmon.com.

SPEAKER_02

It's h-o-us e-h-a-r-m-o-n dot com.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_05

Yes. And you can easily find me on LinkedIn, Abby A B I Harmon. I have all of the socials as well. Um, and you know, again, the the simplest way to work with me is coaching. Um, I obviously come in and do workshops. And then if you're really curious about your individual performance, I do four-day immersive retreats. So those are very leadership oriented, integrating a lot of the skills around nervous system resilience. And there's a little bit of escapism in those as well.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. Okay, that's super cool. Yeah, it is. Well, this is good. I enjoyed the conversation. It is. Mark, what are you what do you think, man?

SPEAKER_01

You're uh I'm just thinking I just want to do some breathing right now. All right.

SPEAKER_05

I'm gonna come back and we'll do that live because there's a neuroscience concept called neurosception, where when we breathe together, it actually creates a really incredible nervous system state. So I'll hold you to it, I'll wear my hat and we'll breathe together.

Closing, Next Steps, And CTA

SPEAKER_01

I I I have discovered that biofeedback really works. Like if you look at your heart rate and you say to yourself, I'm gonna consciously calm down and and lower that, I can do that. And so I tell your discovery same thing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, very cool. That would be pretty cool. I'm wondering how that would turn out on like a video audio show. I don't know. If you hook us up to heart monitors and go, now breathe. Okay. But I think like we need to think about that when you come back on. Like if you're just listening to this on a drive, how do they participate with us on this? Yeah, think about that. That'd be kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_01

All right. Well, Abby, it's been great to meet you. Really, I am uh I'm really happy that um I got to. And I know Eric's always spoken highly of you, and I can see why you're successful what you're doing and have been in the past. Yeah, yep. So great. Thank you for being on our show. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you. It's wonderful with you both.

SPEAKER_02

Yep, we'll have it, we'll have it again. Thanks, Abby. Bye, Abby. Have a good day.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Big Talk About Small Business. If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, www.bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com, and click on the Ask the Host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show. Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business. And be sure to head over to our website to read articles, browse episodes, and ask questions about upcoming shows.