21 | Boosting Business with Broccoli: Tim’s Recipe for Business Success

Can treating your body like a business asset boost your entrepreneurial success? Join me on the Annoyingly Optimistic Show as I chat with Tim, exploring the transformative power of proper nutrition and exercise on business performance. Drawing from my personal 18-month health journey, we share actionable tips for avoiding sugar and ultra-processed foods, embracing whole foods, and maintaining a detailed food diary. Discover how these small, intentional changes can significantly enhance your productivity and overall success.

As we wrap up, we reflect on the essence of the Annoyingly Optimistic Show and introduce Tim as a relatable figure for anyone feeling exhausted and in need of support. Tim’s story fosters a sense of community among listeners, reminding us that we’re all in this together. Your quirky thoughts and burning business questions are welcome at voicemails2tim.com, with the chance to be featured in future episodes. Stay annoyingly optimistic, keep pushing forward, and always remember to find humor in life’s lemons.

If you are self-employed or run a small business and feel more like you're self-annoyed then get in touch, visit the website www.theannoyinglyoptimisticshow.com where you can submit a question or problem and start your journey to becoming self-enjoyed! 

The majority of 'business advice' out there isn't aimed at self-employed or micro businesses, following it leaves you frustrated and chasing quick fixes. I specialise in tools, systems, techniques, inspiration and help specifically designed for YOU, the person who has to do it all, who doesn't have a team of people, unlimited resources or the time to spend months learning complicated techniques. 

Transcript

Optimistic Advice on Healthy Eating

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey there, listeners, it's your annoyingly optimistic host here bringing you another season of the Annoyingly Optimistic Show. Welcome to Season 2, voicemails to Tim. Now let's meet Tim. He's been running his own small business for almost three years now and let's just say he's hit a bit of a rough patch. You know how it is Sometimes you get so stuck, you make yourself busy and just avoid finding the real problems. Well, that's Tim.

Speaker 1 0:23

So, as a good friend, I decide to leave him a daily voicemail, if I can't get hold of him, filled with nuggets of inspiration, insight and wisdom and downright brilliant ideas to help get him unstuck Every day. In just under 10 minutes, I'll share some tips, tricks and a healthy dose of optimism to get Tim, and maybe even you, back on track, because, let's face it, we're all a little tired, in need of help and muddling through. So here we go. Oh wait, never mind Tim's being busy. Here's the voicemail I left him today. Hi, tim, I'm sorry I missed you again, so had a had a thought, as I do. I'm sure I start all of these saying I have a thought, but it's generally some thought that bubbles up and I go. I've got to share that with Tim.

Speaker 1 1:07

So it was and this is a bit of a bit of a strange one although I think I said that recently on another one of these voicemails I left for you but it's something I've hinted on and you know it's a bit of a journey that I've been on and realizing the importance that it pays. And my belief in having done this for a while is that when we run our own business, we are the engine of the business. We have to fuel it, we have to power it, we have to imagine it, create it. It's a very demanding thing, it's a very hard thing and too much of the time we make it harder, we make it harder for ourselves and the specific thing they want to kind of touch upon. And I know that you're kind of guilty of this now don't say guilty because it sounds a bit kind of high and mighty. You know I've been on this, this journey, uh, for I'll come out 18 months now of something kind of clicked in terms. I needed to make a change physically, I needed to kind of get fit, I needed to lose some weight. Now it's only when I look back now understanding how much I needed to do and and the change over that period.

Speaker 1 2:21

But what it's shown me is that we, because we rely on ourselves entirely when we're self-employed, we find little tricks and tips really to to kind of power us through the day, and you know that that might be certain. You know sugary foods to pick over, those, that half-tooth slump. You know going for a walk is better but working long hours, so we just grab something kind of quick and easy and we're aware of kind of you know, nutrition, eating healthily. So a lot of the time we do. But then, god, I just fancy something and we'll buy some donuts or we'll, you know, whatever, all of that stuff and know whatever all of that stuff. And again, all of that nutrition. And and it was never something that I was, I thought I ate healthy ish, but what I realized is that I was a long way from eating, eating healthy. And having done that and combining it with exercise and stuff like that, it makes an incredible difference to what you're able to achieve in the business.

Speaker 1 3:26

Now they might sound totally unrelated. Well, how does what I do over here, how does that affect the business? And it affects it, you know. And one of the big things is sugar, and I don't want to vilify sugar, but sugar, the way our body processes it in terms of fat, in terms of the highs and lows and all the rest of it makes it, can make it very hard to regulate, so that we're we're almost constantly on this kind of treadmill of of. We don't want to feel like that, but we eat the thing that makes us feel better and then our body craves it more, so we eat more and we just get kind of stuck in this loop. So it becomes, you know, I've realized how important it is getting that correct nutrition from taking vitamins regularly, from making sure um, you're not making sure, it's not the right word but trying to eat whole foods and cut out the ultra processed foods.

Speaker 1 4:16

Now, again, this isn't something you just turn on overnight, but equally it's not something that you get rid of everything. You know, I still I have kind of protein bars, which kind of, you know, very much like having a Mars bar kind of thing, but there's some more nutrients in there and things like that. It is kind of processed but it's combined with a very kind of like a whole food diet in terms of eating lots of fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, typically cooking meat, you know, just actually cooking it, as opposed to buying any kind of pre-packaged, ready-made meals or anything like that, and again, this sounds kind of I've heard all this before. What's that got to? Got to do with me?

Speaker 1 4:56

The thing is like with many, many things in our businesses. You know, we track our finances. We look at our banking apps, we have spreadsheets to track how how our business is going and stuff like that. We just apply that same logic to our bodies. Um, you know, we track what we put in them. We track what we eat.

Speaker 1 5:16

Because if you do nothing else, if you do a food diary for the next two weeks and write down everything you eat and drink during the course of those two weeks and then, on the beginning and the end of each one of those day is write down how you feel, how well did you sleep last night and things like that, and how much energy you had during the day and you had any dips basically, just keep a diary of not only what you put in your body but also how you feel during that period. What you will notice from doing that and it can happen within a couple of days, you don't necessarily need to do it for two weeks is you will notice that there is an a one-to-one correlation between the days you felt tired, the days when you didn't have as good night sleep, and things like that, compared with what you ate and drank the day before. Not enough to drink dehydrated affects your sleep. You get up the next day you're feeling kind of tired. Dehydration is worse, you know, and these things kind of, you know, build and build.

Speaker 1 6:12

So just by tracking what you put into your body and your mood that goes with that, you will see some of these kind of things. That then will hopefully give you a bit of an impetus to okay, well, how can I change these things, how can I, you know, kind of swap these things out? And by watching what you eat, as with many things, just by tracking it, you will actually start eating better because you're acutely aware and you're conscious of what you're eating. Then if you can start, you know, tweaking those things, reducing some of those calories and things like that, then you can suddenly, you will suddenly start to feel better, you will start to feel healthier. There's also, you know, as we advance through life two years away from 50 here, you know, there are various kind of supplements and things and things that it's very, very good for us to be eating in order to support the life that we want. Protein is a key thing. It's a building block that our bodies use to regenerate muscle, repair things, and as we get older, we need more protein, you know. So there's also supplements and things like that and we can delve into that.

Speaker 1 7:14

I'm not going to leave the longest voicemail in the world of all the kind of different things, but it was just, you know, just this kind of idea of if you're feeling sluggish, if you're feeling a bit, you know, blah and kind of continually tired and all the rest of it, look at what you're actually fueling your body with. Look at those routines, look at those things. So, you know, do that food diary and kind of mood and sleep diary for a couple of weeks and, and I promise you you will notice those trends straight away. And then you know, by fixing those, you can suddenly find that you know you were focusing over here because this was giving you stress in your business, whatever. But you realize that it wasn't the thing over there that was giving you stress. It was the, the foundation of what you were putting in your body and how you were feeling. That was just meaning that you weren't able to deal with that.

Tim's Voicemail Reflection and Support

Speaker 1 8:03

You know sleep and how we feel incredibly powerful things. How many times, you know, or every time, a problem feels worse if you're tired, if you're rushing around, if you're stressed, if you haven't had a good night's sleep. Now, the problem isn't worse, it's just that our capacity to deal with it and cope with it. So if you go into every day feeling energized, feeling good, feeling healthy, your ability to deal with those things when they come up is, you know they're a lot easier, and that then reduces the stress and it becomes, you know, rather're a lot easier, and that then reduces the stress and it becomes, you know, rather than this downward spiral, you create an upward spiral, or at least the very worst. You don't go down, you just kind of stay where you are. So it was just a bit of a stranger. You know, I've talked a little bit about, kind of about the health and some people kind of like go, oh, this has got nothing to do with it. But I firmly believe that if we have to look after ourselves as self-employed people, because we get sick, we get ill, we get tired, our business output stops. So we have to look after ourselves in order to then be able to run our businesses better. I hope that helps Tim Catch you soon.

Speaker 1 9:13

Bye, and that's it for today's episode of Voicemails to Tim on the Annoyingly Optimistic Show. Now remember, tim might be busy, but we're all in this together. Whether you're tired, in need of help or just muddling through, tim is here for you because, well, tim is you. Yes, you heard that right. Tim isn't just my friend, he's a reflection of all of us who are struggling to make it work. T-i-m stands for tired in need of help and muddling through. So if you're feeling like a Tim, you're not alone For all those ambitious listeners. If you've got a burning business question, a quirky thought or just want to see if you can leave an even weirder voicemail, head over to the website voicemails2timcom, submit your question and maybe, just maybe, you'll hear your idea in a future Voicemail to Tim. So until then, stay annoyingly optimistic, keep pushing forward and remember, if life gives you lemons, leave a voicemail about it.