Do you have a busy brain? You might not know what one is, but you might have a good idea of what it might mean. Our guest today is Dr. Romie Mushtaq, who shares with us her insight and research on the Busy Brain and some steps on how to cure it.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
If you have a busy brain, you are not alone.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- You can visit our guest’s website at:
- Purchase a copy of our guest’s book here: CLICK HERE.
- Attend our Franchise Sales Training Workshop:
- https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/franchisesalestraining/
- If you are ready to franchise your business or take it to the next level: CLICK HERE.
- Connect with our guest on social:
- https://www.instagram.com/drromie/
- https://twitter.com/DrRomie
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/drromie/
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC05grQ3WOYK_BX7hxTIvt7w
- https://www.facebook.com/DrRomie
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Dr. Romie is a board-certified physician who brings together more than two decades of leadership in neurology, integrative medicine, and mindfulness. She is an award-winning speaker working with Fortune 500 companies, professional athletes, & global associations. Her Brain Shift programs improve mental well-being and help to build a culture of wellness. Dr. Romie serves as Chief Wellness Officer for Great Wolf Resorts. Her expertise is featured in the national media, such as NPR,NBC, TED talks, and Forbes. Her first book, “The Busy Brain Cure “published by Harper Collins, released in January 2024.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/ or by calling Big Sky Franchise Team at: 855-824-4759.
If you are interested in being a guest on our podcast, please complete this request form or email podcast@bigskyfranchise.com and a team member will be in touch.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:01):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom Dufour, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team, and as we open today, I’m wondering if you have a busy brain? And maybe you’re not sure what one is, but the name of it probably gives you a good sense of what it might mean.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:26):
Well, our guest today is Dr. Romie Mushtaq, who shares with us her insight and research on the busy brain and some steps on how to cure it. Now Dr. Romie is a board certified physician who brings together more than two decades of leadership in neurology, integrative medicine and mindfulness. She’s an award-winning speaker working with Fortune 500 companies, professional athletes, and global associations. Her brain shift programs improve mental health wellbeing and help to build a culture of wellness. Dr. Romie serves as Chief Wellness Officer for Great Wolf Resorts. Her expertise is featured in the national media such as NPR, NBC, TED Talks and Forbes and many others. Her first book, The Busy Brain Cure, was published by Harper Collins and released in January of this year. You’re going to love this interview with Dr. Romie. She provides a ton of insightful useful information. So let’s go ahead and jump right into my interview.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (01:23):
Hello, Tom. I’m Dr. Romie Mushtaq, or people know me as their homie, Dr. Romie. I am the CEO and founder of the Brain Shift Institute.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:32):
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for being here, and you have a book called Busy Brain Cure, talking about this idea of busy brain syndrome. So I’d love for you to talk a little bit about the book and give an overview for someone who hasn’t had a chance to read it yet.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (01:47):
Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is a culmination of over 20 years of both my life experience and researcher as a triple board certified doctor, bringing together neurology, integrative medicine, and mindfulness and realizing that in today’s post pandemic world where we’re starting to have more open and honest conversations about mental wellbeing and mental health, we’re missing the mark with stress and burnout. I am not here on this podcast nor do when I speak at companies to say, “Tom, you just need to eat berries and breathe. And here’s a few Instagram reels of puppies hugging each other. And now go back and do your job.” And what we found was that there is a specific pattern of neuroinflammation that is happening in the brain when or under chronic stress that I call the busy brain. And in high achieving individuals, it shows up with these three key symptoms, difficulty focusing or adult onset ADHD, ruminating anxiety, and insomnia, difficulty falling and staying asleep.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (02:48):
How do you know you have busy brain? Well, let’s see. You put in this podcast and you’re like, where do Romie and Tom get their energy? I need a venti latte to get going in the morning. And I may tell them it’s a latte, but it’s really three energy drinks. And you still can’t focus with the multiple screens in front of your face and the multiple browser windows open in your brain, so you keep chugging coffee or a sugary snack to keep going. And then you’re anxiously over analyzing that email that you should have sent in under three minutes and 37 minutes later you’re still stuck on that or the quarterly sales report that you need to put together. And you’re like, I’m going to do the brain shift protocol for my busy brain and go home, but I can’t take the edge off, so let me have a glass of wine or three. Or maybe a prescription sleeping pill to take the edge off.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (03:34):
You’re wired and you’re tired and you put your head down on the pillow and there’s 72 warring conversations happening in your brain and the most insignificant and negative thought has hijacked your sleep. That’s a busy brain.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (03:49):
Oh, wow. Wow. So I guess what causes that or how do you identify that in yourself? I mean, you mentioned this quiz or assessment that you have?
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (04:00):
Absolutely. You’re talking to a very rational brain doctor, like a fellow CEO, all of our founders, you need to know your numbers. We know our KPIs and our profit and loss statements, at least for the last quarter, if not last year, you know your credit score. Why should we not know our brain score?
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (04:19):
So we took a validated neuropsychology test and labeled it the Busy Brain Test, and we were going into companies starting in 2020 and our research ended at 2022. 17,000 people took the Busy Brain Test, high achieving individuals like you and I, Tom, all of your listeners, and it gave me a quantitative analysis of what chronic stress is doing to your memory and cognition, to your mood and to your physical health. And that’s how we came up with what’s happening in busy brains and how do we fix it with our brain shift protocol. So people can go to my website, DrRomie.com or social media, take the test for free. We’ll put it in your show notes. It takes under four minutes to answer these 20 questions, and if you have a score above 30, then I know you have this chronic inflammation happening in your brain. Above 40. You’ve got a busy brain, above 60, you’re at burnout. And we have a protocol to fix it.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (05:14):
Well, that was my next question, a quick tip or two or a suggestion to maybe get someone down this pathway of trying to get a little relief?
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (05:24):
Okay, that’s the inherent wrong question to ask that every podcaster, every television anchor asks me because don’t we live in this society of, “Let me give you three quick tips to financial success or health success here on Instagram, LinkedIn or TikTok, TokTik,” whatever the kids are calling it, right? But that’s not the way it works.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (05:48):
As an integrative medicine neurologist, we know I want to get to the root cause, but as a smart entrepreneur, I needed to be able to scale this as well. If I was going to get to your root cause and your score was above a 30, Tom, that would take me a 90-minute intake session. But I needed to do this at scale for companies that have hundreds or thousands of employees. So we put an eight-week protocol into place looking at something I called brain shifts. These are micro habits of little things you can layer in very thoughtfully into our already full schedules and they stack upon each other in an order for a reason. And when you do this eight-week protocol, you heal the root cause of a busy brain and identify it and we actually heal burnout.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (06:39):
And your pattern, Tom, may look a little different than my pattern or somebody else’s that’s listening, but we can put everyone through this and that… So I wanted to give the preference to it and not skirt around your question, tell me about the protocol. Because we can go there next. But what are you thinking when I tell you that?
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (07:00):
Oh, I think it’s fantastic. And I was hoping that it was not a fix this solution in 60 seconds and a quick spend or a quick something like that. I can’t imagine it’s a quick fix that happens overnight
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (07:15):
In all the experts you have in the world of business, entrepreneurship, all the different areas and health. I think no thought leader is going to come here with a quick fix. In my world, they’re known as snake oil salesman. Is that what they’re known in your world as as well?
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (07:31):
Yes, that’s right.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (07:33):
What I would say the first step to do after you get your score and you get that uh-oh moment, it’s above a 30, is I want to have a personal one-to-one moment with you. Something I wish someone had said to me when I had a busy brain. I am here not only because I’m a doctor and researcher in this area, but my journey started like many leaders I interface with is chronic stress can cause physical disease, chronic stress can kill you. It almost killed me, Tom. And I’m a brain doctor, I should have known better better.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (08:08):
And what I want to say as a first step to anybody listening and why it was so important for you and I to talk today because you have access to leaders, we’re often the loneliest people. Founders, C-suite executives, the medical data shows it. The Surgeon General is calling loneliness the next pandemic. I am here to tell you, Tom and I are here for you in this moment between your ears. You are not alone. Your brain is not broken, your mind is not a mess and hope did not depart your soul. That would, to me, would be the first key step.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (08:45):
Without maybe going into all the detail, but just part of your journey as you went through this discovery to understanding and now to where you are today. What did that all look like?
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (08:57):
Thank you for asking that. I remember waking up in the hospital after having lifesaving cardiothoracic surgery and thinking, good God, Tom, nothing I’ve learned in medical school has prepared me for this moment. I don’t know what to do next. All I know is if I go back to my job, I’m going to end up in the hospital again and maybe not get through surgery. And that was that aha moment for me that said, what are people doing, healers around the world, that I didn’t learn in medical school here from mindfulness to Ayurveda and Reiki and traditional Chinese medicine? And what are the psychological habits we know are proven in western medicine that you don’t have to go to a Chinese traditional medicine healer separately from a therapist and separately from an integrative medicine doctor and brain doctor to figure it out? How could I put it all easily scalable into one protocol for you?
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (09:53):
So this was maybe a four to five-year healing and learning journey for me to say, “I dug out of my miss and my miss so that I can help you avoid yours.” And so that first step is, I can’t say it enough, is know your brain score. Because otherwise, Tom, isn’t every listener, high achieving person listening to this podcast going to be, “Of course I’m busy, of course I’m stressed out and burned out. Who isn’t?” Look at the data from my American Psychological Association, 82% of high achieving professionals and the United States relate. Okay, but I want you to know your brain score. That’s step one. And then we can dig a little bit more into the protocol where I think it’s really important for some of your listeners.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (10:37):
I love thinking about this from the perspective of the leader and helping them take care of the person tuning in, taking care of yourself, but in most cases as the leader, we have a team of people we’re responsible for, many of whom are high achievers or people who are maybe in this busy brain situation. So how can we start to help our team?
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (11:02):
First of all, if you’re thinking that, thank you for being a caring leader because the mental health crisis in the United States and globally is stemming from the workplace and we need to fix that. So that’s key. The second step is please don’t just delegate it, if your company is big enough, off to HR and forget about it. As a chief wellness officer, and this is my second company as a chief wellness officer, in order to succeed, it is a every leader, like all hands on deck, we’re going to fix this.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (11:31):
The third thing I say for myself as a leader, and for you, Tom, and anyone listening is I need to fix my busy brain because I’m responsible for the energy I bring into the room physically or virtually into a virtual meeting. And if I have a busy brain, that energy is contagious in a negative way to the people that I’m working with no matter what tools and tips and therapy they have. And that translates to your bottom line of retention, employee engagement, productivity.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (12:04):
So the step one is again, what is my energy? And if my brain is dialed into busy brain, what am I doing to brain shift to come back to a station of a calm neutral to lead? The second step is I say get comfortable with your uncomfortable data in your company. Many of the wellness apps that are out there are designed to give what I call fluff to the leaders. Some well-meaning junior HR executive is going to get the dashboard and hand it off to the C-suite and they’re going to be like, “Look, we’re doing a good job. We spent $1.2 million on this wellness app and 3% of our population engaged and it had a 10% physical impact.” No, most of that is fluff and nonsense. I really want you to get out there on the ground as a leader and ask those difficult questions. What would make you, an employee, happier and healthier to be here at work and listen. And find a way to get that data in scalable action. It’s part of what we do here at the Brain Shift Institute. We go in and get the data that others miss.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (13:20):
How can an organization start to measure if they were to implement something like this? Every good leader says, “I’d love to, but I need to measure this to see-“
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (13:29):
Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (13:30):
“… is it effective? Are we successful? How are we doing?” How would you respond to that.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (13:36):
We have a comprehensive data collection system we use when we go in for corporate wellness consulting, and other companies do too. One of the innovative things I feel proud that I did was using this busy brain test at scale. So people are going to take it individually and you’re going to notice I’m asking you poignant questions about physical pain, your appetite, about your sleep. Now imagine if we get a thousand of your employees to take it. I now have a dashboard to give to your C-suite, to your HR to say, “Here are the symptoms. And the number one and two complaint of your employees are, ‘I can’t sleep,’ and, ‘I have no time for a personal life.’ Why are you doing a step challenge?” It’s simple and scalable and digestible, which is really what it needs to be.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (14:27):
I think most people are already sitting on other data. There’s the data, Tom, most companies already their HR teams are measuring once to twice a year, your utilization of your benefits, your engagement surveys. But some of the other things we go in and we asked in round tables, I want to know your measure of wellbeing day-to-day, week-to-week. I want to know how many days off do you actually get from work? Are you scheduled seven days a week? A lot of times the C-suite don’t know that. How long is your commute? How many people here used their PTO in the last year? Those are some of the, I think, data points that are… rewind this and listen to it or look at the show notes and go back and ask those questions. Because even as a leader, when you’re asking those questions, it shows that you care.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (15:19):
Then you take the data. Step two is take all of this uncomfortable data, synthesize it and share it transparently back with your organization, because nothing will create mistrust in an organization or make you roll your eye, “They’re doing another wellness survey. They didn’t listen the first time.” So an example, I’m chief wellness officer at Great Wolf Resorts, so over 12,000 employees and growing. We got all the uncomfortable data. We presented it first to our executive leadership team and wellness council. Now it’s going out to the entire company. So you’re like, “This is what you said and this is what we’re planning to do about it and give us your feedback. Or did we hit the mark?” Because that one thing is going to improve wellness and mental wellbeing in your company. Why? Because you’re showing that I care about you. I listened and I care.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (16:11):
One of the things I was listening to you talk about, and I understand you mentioned this few times about having a chief wellness officer. Many of our clients we work with, or most of our clients, we’re helping them expand as a franchise system. And so now they’re growing nationally. They have locations and franchises all over the country and things like this start to materialize, where they’d say, “Oh wow, we have resources now, we have a team. How would we integrate this into our system that is, let’s say, decentralized with locations all over the place where our team doesn’t necessarily all work together?” Or maybe a workplace today where it’s mostly remote staff not working in the same building together. How would you answer a question like that and how would a wellness officer fit in in that situation?
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (16:57):
I think the chief wellness officer is the role, not of the future, but of today, Tom. And I’m not saying it just because I’m one. I was one of the first physician chief wellness officers named in 2018, pre-pandemic. I had a visionary CEO who thought of that. About today, about 300 to 400 companies have someone in my role, whether they call it chief wellbeing officer, chief wellness officer, chief health officer. 10% of us are medical doctors or PhD doctors. I’m an MD. 90% are very senior HR executives that have medical personnel organizational psychologists helping. So this isn’t my wish. So I’m trying to think of a favorite franchise and right now I thought of CorePower Yoga is one of the franchisees that just came to my mind. Or is Cold Stone Creamery, my godsons love that, is that a franchise as well?
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (17:48):
Yes.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (17:48):
So I would tell you as the franchisee owner or owner of several locations, “I want you to ask your people about their wellness because it’s going to depend on your demographic of who’s working for you. It’s different across franchises and your location.” But to me, this is the corporate responsibility of CorePower Yoga or Cold Stone Creamery. So for you, Tom, I want to get into their leadership meetings and say, “Here is a brand standard we have at Cold Stone Creamery Ice Cream. We have a chief wellness officer that has these recommendations to roll out across franchises.” It can be done.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (18:24):
My first role, I was a chief wellness officer for a hospitality management company. We had over 125 hotels all across the United States and Canada. We had over 70% adaptation of our mindfulness and wellness programs. That’s unheard of across the industry. When you put a wellness app out or a benefit, most people have 3% engagement. And this is why I get called all the time, people are like, “How are you doing this?” So I want to see the corporate headquarters of all these franchisee models doing this. And listen, just because you’re a health and wellness brand like CorePower Yoga, and I keep picking on them, but what are some of the other health and wellness… Hand & Stone Massage? Right?
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (19:06):
Sure, Hand & Stone, yeah.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (19:06):
And please give us more examples as you’re listening to the podcast, tag Tom and I in your social media. I would tell them the same thing, “Just because you deliver a healthy and well experience to your clients. Are you taking care of your employees first?”
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (19:19):
Dr. Romie, this is a great time in the show where we like to make a transition and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go, and the first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (19:33):
I think I already shared my miss, Tom. And people expect to hear a business lesson or something like that. My miss was that I was wearing stress as a badge of honor and pushing myself to the edge of burnout, thinking my colleagues are all sleep-deprived, I should be too. And that nearly killed me. Your business and your bottom line is only as strong as your brain and your physical health. That was my miss.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (20:02):
Not only did it nearly cost my life, but let’s talk numbers. I was an intrapreneur, I believe the term is, when I was practicing medicine inside academic medicine. I had seen a need to create a comprehensive women with epilepsy program. We were doing cutting edge research that was being shared nationally. And I had created a multimillion dollar revenue stream inside the Department of Neurology that had not previously existed. And back in those days, Tom, neurology was not a money maker. Okay? So immediately when I’m out for the count, I didn’t have a succession plan. I was in my young thirties. There was no one to take over this brain power and the training that I had and this unique discipline. That multimillion dollar revenue stream collapsed. And that can happen in anybody’s franchise. You hear about it all the time of a partner having to take over a franchise because the owner got sick or passed away. So that was my biggest miss. That’s why I wrote this book, eight-week step for you to avoid your miss and your mess.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (21:07):
Well, let’s look at the other side. Let’s talk about a make or two or a highlight you’d like to share?
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (21:13):
I feel so thankful at this point in my career. And I want to say my make is that I looked where the problem was in integrative medicine and the innovative solutions to heal burnout, and it was only accessible to the top 1% of the 1%. You pay $5,000 to $10,000 to $15,000 to see a doctor like me individually and get treatment. And I went to corporate partners and did the research and partnered, found willing partners.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (21:45):
So the ability to partner with people who bought into this visionary idea, they had heard me speak and said, “Yes, we want to help our employees.” And was able to create a model that is simple, affordable, and scalable to do inside companies with the eight-week brain shift protocol. And the lab slip that’s inside is covered by most US insurance carriers. So this isn’t one of these specialty labs that my colleagues in integrative functional medicine send you for that can cost thousands of dollars, and it’s covered by insurance. And I want to share that make. I think this is one of the many reasons why this is a USA Today, Amazon bestselling book and I believe in it. So I hope that counts as a make. I feel really proud that I was able to deconstruct something very complex and expensive and make it simple and scalable and affordable.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:31):
Where can they get a copy of the book? Make sure we get a plugin for that.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (22:35):
The Busy Brain Cure is on sale anywhere in the United States and globally books are sold. It’s in eight additional languages. So Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Kindle, Audible, available in traditional standing bookstores, which I think we need more of, and, libraries in the world as well. And you can take the Busy Brain test and get your brain score for free at DrRomie.com on our social media and we’ll put a link here on the show notes for y’all.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:58):
Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you. Well, let’s talk about a multiplier. The name of the show’s Multiply Your Success. So have you used a multiplier to grow yourself personally, professionally, any of the organizations you’ve been a part of?
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (23:10):
Yeah. I want to talk about how you scale wellness. To go back to that franchisee model and how people ask us how we did it. It wasn’t me as the lone chief wellness officer. The multiplier was training brand ambassadors, wellbeing ambassadors. At Evolution Hospitality, we call them the evo mindful guides. They are going to be known as our pack wellness ambassadors here at Great Wolf Resorts where I’m the chief wellness officer. That is getting employees who are already saying, “I want to be a part of the solution. I want access to a chief wellness officer to improve my health.” And you get buy-in. And the movement isn’t about me or you as a leader. It’s about us inspiring and the movement is about the people. And that’s how you scale the movement inside the company. and it also needs to have complete and total buy-in from your entire C-suite.
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (24:00):
But that would be the secret to success I want to give you. And I think that model can be used over and over throughout your company, but of course, I, as a doctor and chief wellness officer, want you to take care of the mental wellbeing and mental health of your employees. So use wellness ambassadors and I think that would work beautifully across the franchisee model.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (24:19):
Thank you Dr. Romie. And the final question we ask every guest is what does success mean to you?
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (24:24):
I found this poem in a book in the public library when I was in the fifth grade, and I think it was a universal sign that I discovered Ralph Waldo Emerson and his very famous poem on success. And this one line has stayed with me since childhood. I felt like it was an angel whisper. “To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived this is to have succeeded.” So every night, instead of allowing a busy brain, because I still get it sometimes, to hijack my mind, I sit as a leader and think, who was that person that breathed easier today because I lived? And was I of service today? And if I wasn’t, how can I do better tomorrow?
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (25:11):
Wonderful. Wonderful. Wow. It’s a great poem. It’s one probably most people who listen to this have heard or familiar with, but to find that in fifth grade and to have that stick with you, that’s remarkable. Well, Dr. Romie, as we bring this to a close, is there anything you were maybe hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
Dr. Romie Mushtaq, Chief Wellness Officer (25:31):
I want to thank every leader for sticking to the end. There was something Tom and I talked about today that resonated with you, and I just really want you to know if you have a busy brain or burnout, you are not alone. And if you’re worried about what to say to your employees, it’s as simple as this. It’s to say, “Tom, hi, it’s me, Romie. I care about you and I’m here. I care and I am here. I care and I am here.” And that is what the world needs more of today. And be that leader.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (25:59):
Dr. Romie, thank you so much for a fantastic interview and let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is when she talked about the three symptoms of the busy brain. She said symptom one is having a difficulty focusing, also known as adult ADHD, number two is ruminating anxiety, and number three is insomnia. And if you have all three of these or some variation of that, it might be an indicator that you have busy brain. So then that leads us to step two, which are some protocols if you have busy brain. She said step one is to know your brain score and have your team to know their brain score. So she has that free brain score test and assessment that she offers on her website. We have that listed in the show notes. Step two is to get comfortable with your data.And step three is to understand what would make you happier and healthier at work. What does that actually look like? So that’s the three step protocol.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (27:04):
Takeaway number three is when she shared a miss, and I think this miss was great because she said her miss was when she was wearing stress and the stress and anxiety she was carrying as a badge of honor. And she was doing this as a physician. I’ve seen this in many entrepreneurs, including myself, where there have been times where I think that this is a badge of honor when it’s really probably just leading to burnout.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (27:31):
And now it’s time for today’s win-win. So today’s win-win comes from when Dr. Romie talked about what success means to her. And she referenced that Ralph Waldo Emerson poem where the poem says, “To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.” And so she thinks about that each day. I thought that combined with how she closed the session where she said, “If you have busy brain, remember you are not alone.” Someone on your team might have that busy brain. And so you need to let them know that you care and that you are here to help.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (28:15):
And so that’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at BigSkyFranchiseTeam.com. Thanks for tuning in and we look forward to having you back next week.