Opening Scaling Tension
Most founder-led businesses hit the same wall on the way to $10M, $25M, or beyond: the org chart grows, the reporting improves, the team gets more capable — and decisions still route through one person. Not because the systems are broken. Because the operator at the center of them has never questioned whether they’re capable, in a given hour, of making a good decision.
This is the blind spot in most conversations about operational leverage. Founders audit their capital allocation, their pipeline, their SOPs, their hiring. Almost none of them audit the actual instrument making the calls: their own cognitive state. And that gap shows up exactly where it hurts most — in decision speed, in delegation that never fully lands, and in risk management that quietly degrades because the person setting the risk tolerance is running on inflammation and adrenaline rather than judgment.
The Hidden Constraint
The conversation, with neurologist and Brainshift Institute founder Dr. Romie Mushtaq, surfaces a constraint that rarely makes it into a strategy conversation: chronic stress produces measurable neuroinflammation, and neuroinflammation degrades the exact functions a scaling operator depends on — focus, impulse control, and the ability to tolerate letting go of control.
This matters for anyone allocating capital or building execution systems for a reason that has nothing to do with wellness framing and everything to do with operating discipline. A leader who is neurologically overloaded doesn’t make worse decisions because they lack frameworks. They make worse decisions because the part of the brain responsible for calm, data-driven judgment is functionally offline, and the part responsible for threat response and control-seeking is running the show. Delegation, in that state, isn’t a systems failure. It’s a biological one. The founder holds on to execution not out of poor management, but because the nervous system has classified letting go as unsafe.
That reframes the usual diagnosis. Most operators assume a delegation breakdown means the SOP was unclear, the hire was wrong, or the incentives were misaligned. Sometimes that’s true. But when the pattern repeats across multiple hires, multiple functions, and multiple attempts at structured delegation, the constraint isn’t the system. It’s leadership bandwidth — and specifically, the operator’s capacity to sit in ambiguity without re-inserting themselves.
The Operating Shift
The shift the conversation proposes is sequential, not parallel: protect your brain, then protect your team, then protect your business. Most operators run this backwards. They pour resources into team structure and business systems while treating their own cognitive load as a fixed cost, something to push through rather than something to manage as an input.
The reframe is closer to how a disciplined allocator treats any other constrained resource. You don’t deploy capital without first understanding your liquidity position. You don’t extend leverage without first pricing your risk tolerance. The same logic applies to the operator’s own attention and judgment: it is a finite asset, it can be measured, and it should inform how much responsibility a leader can competently hold before decision quality degrades. Treating cognitive load as unmeasured and infinite is itself a risk management failure — arguably a more consequential one than most balance-sheet risk, because it sits upstream of every other decision the business makes.
Execution in Practice
Several concrete mechanisms from the conversation translate directly into execution systems for an operator or investor:
A measurable baseline before a structural fix. Just as an allocator won’t extend credit without a score, the framework proposes a “brain score” — a validated diagnostic taken before any leadership or delegation intervention. The principle generalizes: don’t redesign your org structure, hiring plan, or decision rights until you’ve established a baseline for the thing actually constraining the redesign. Fixing a system on top of an unaddressed constraint just relocates the bottleneck.
Empathy and trust as a measured leadership skill, not a soft skill. The conversation describes an internal “trust index” used to measure whether team members trust their manager and leadership — treated with the same rigor as any other operating metric. For an operator scaling past the point of personal oversight, this matters more than most KPI dashboards: execution systems only function if the people running them trust that escalation and error-reporting won’t be punished. Trust, in this framing, is not a culture nicety. It’s the mechanism that makes decision-making frameworks actually get used rather than quietly bypassed.
Function transfer over hour transfer. Rather than measuring delegation in hours recovered, the more durable move is transferring ownership of a defined function entirely — a full handoff of scope and decision rights, not a partial offload of tasks. Partial delegation keeps the founder as the final checkpoint on every decision, which preserves the exact cognitive load the delegation was meant to relieve.
Trust built in drops, lost in buckets. This is a risk-asymmetry principle worth treating like any other exposure on the balance sheet: the downside of a single breach of trust with a team member or partner vastly outweighs the upside of many small deposits. Leadership bandwidth, once spent rebuilding trust after a breach, doesn’t return to its prior baseline — it has to be re-earned at a slower rate than it was lost.
Leverage Outcome
None of this is about working longer or pushing harder. It’s the opposite case: operational leverage comes from expanding what a leader can competently hold, not from adding hours to what they already do. A founder operating with a clear, well-regulated cognitive baseline can hold more complexity, delegate more completely, and make faster, better-calibrated decisions than the same founder running on adrenaline and inflammation working twice the hours.
Scaling discipline, in this framing, starts one layer below the org chart. Protect the instrument making the decisions first. Everything downstream — team structure, execution systems, capital allocation, risk tolerance — is only as sound as the judgment behind it.
Connect With the Guest
To learn more about Dr. Romie Mushtaq and her work: Website: https://www.drromie.com LinkedIn: [Insert LinkedIn Link]
(Note: I found and confirmed Dr. Romie’s website through search, but could not verify an exact LinkedIn URL — please confirm and drop it in before publishing.)
The Immediate Move
Leadership bandwidth is the real constraint on scaling — not headcount, not SOPs, not another tool. The founders who scale cleanly aren’t the ones working the most hours or holding the most decisions personally. They’re the ones who’ve reduced their own cognitive load enough to transfer real ownership, hold a team accountable to disciplined decision-making, and stay out of execution they’ve already delegated. Structure beats effort. Every time a founder re-inserts themselves into a decision they already delegated, it’s a signal to check the constraint — not the system, the operator.
Watch this before you hire your next support role.
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Full Podcast Transcript
Dr. Romie (00:00) Okay.
Adrienne Green (00:00) Sure.
A lot of entrepreneurs have what Dr. Romy likes to call a busy brain. And that is a challenge we are going to dive into today. So if you feel like maybe you can identify with that term of busy brain, today’s episode is going to definitely be worth your time. So Dr. Romy, thank you so much for visiting with me today and being on this podcast.
Dr. Romie (00:22) Adrian, it’s so important for us to have this conversation for your audience of entrepreneurs as a fellow entrepreneur. And I always start a podcast out with an intention and a gratitude. I thank the listeners who are taking time out of their schedules to put our voices between their ears. And my intention is that you are going to leave with an action step to brainshift from a busy brain to being focused, calm, and clear.
Adrienne Green (00:50) I love that. I I’m the the former teacher in me loves and we can start everything with like an objective of this is what you will accomplish at the end of this activity or exercise and that’s what you really just set up for us. I love it, Dr.
Dr. Romie (01:00) Yes. And and and my and
mindful leadership is about being intentional, right? And and so really is how can you and I be of service to the audience today completely.
Adrienne Green (01:11) I love it. And for our listeners, if you’re intrigued now, I do want to take a minute to tell you a little bit of like Dr. Romy’s like street cred here. Okay. She has over two decades of experience in the neuroscience field with leadership and workplace wellness, which is what we’re gonna, you know, dive into a little bit today in terms of applying her background as a physician with neuroscience into our work as entrepreneurs, how we are setting up our lives and setting it up so that we can stay focused.
not have burnout and really be healthy, happy and whole. So Dr. Romy, can you share the moment that kind of shifted your approach to leadership and wellness and how that shaped this brain shift and busy brain idea?
Dr. Romie (01:54) Yeah, Adrian, thank you so much. So for everyone listening, I am a triple board certified physician in neurology and integrative medicine. I entered neurology at a time where less than five percent of the brain doctors in the United States were women. So not only was I seeing patients, I was doing cutting edge research on the role of women’s hormones and the brain. And this was back before we would dare whisper anything about mental health in the workplace. And the term burnout didn’t even exist in our vernacular.
Adrienne Green (02:23) Yeah.
Dr. Romie (02:23) And
I learned firsthand that chronic stress can cause disease and chronic stress can kill you. And it nearly killed me. In 2010, I ended up in life-saving surgery. But Adrian, the worst part wasn’t waking up in the ICU wondering what the cardiothoracic surgeon was going to say to me. It was
that I knew in that moment what it felt like for hope to depart my soul. And I remember feeling alone, that nobody at work had asked if I was okay.
And I was visibly struggling. So today, as the CEO and founder of the Brainshift Institute, our neuroperformance and workplace culture programs ensure that everybody in the workplace feels seen.
Heard and that nobody feels alone at work. I take that into the workplace as a keynote speaker in researching brain and mental health in the workplace. And I currently serve as chief wellness officer for Great Wolf Resorts, where I oversee the workplace wellness with data-driven solutions for more than 14,000 employees.
Adrienne Green (03:24) That is a lot of people that you’re getting to help and a lot on your plate. So I do appreciate you taking some time to help our listeners today. Now, my understanding is that you had an early leadership challenge that taught you about mental bandwidth and ownership.
Dr. Romie (03:39) I would say that has not been an early challenge, but a lifelong challenge, Adrian. If we could be
Adrienne Green (03:45) very true.
Dr. Romie (03:46) honest, right? It was one of the things, how many of you listening out there are impact-driven entrepreneurs or leaders in a workplace? Because we’ll be sharing this episode and I have a very large corporate audience, and you know your why.
And you’re driven by that mission. That’s exactly who I was, changing the face and the scope of how we approached women’s neurological care. And it felt like I had to do it all. And that anytime I slowed down or delegated something, God forbid, that somehow I wasn’t succeeding as a leader. That was number one. Then as I became an entrepreneur.
a lot of high functioning professionals, whether you’re a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, exiting a traditional corporate workplace, going into entrepreneurship, take that same attitude and mission of, well, only I know my why. And if I don’t do it, I’m not gonna find somebody who’s gonna care to do it well as me. And that dogma was a aha moment I had, one, because it led me to the ICU.
And now too, in my business at the Brainshift Institute, it was a scaling problem. And that was it. Is I was stuck at low six figures and knew that something had to change. And while your podcast and your company talks about those systems and scales, the place why I’m here today most, Adrian, is because we don’t talk about
the state of our brain and our brain score. And that will directly impact whether people are able to let go of the work and put the systems into place you teach. I’m gonna pause really quickly. Are
Adrienne Green (05:26) Sure.
Dr. Romie (05:26) you hearing static?
Adrienne Green (05:28) I am not. You’re actually sounding great.
Dr. Romie (05:31) Okay, as long as you’re not
I’m hearing something and I didn’t know if it was the gain on my microphone or something, but if if you’re not hearing something in the background, then it’s okay. It sounds like a vacuum cleaner or something is running in the background. So okay.
Adrienne Green (05:40) Yeah, no, actually. that’s
so funny. Yeah, no, I don’t hear anything in my world and I don’t hear anything on the headphones. It’s actually sounding good. Okay.
Dr. Romie (05:48) Okay, perfect. Okay. Okay.
Adrienne Green (05:52) So what I love about that, Dr. Romy, is I will say when I work with business owners, entrepreneurs about delegation, the issue really is these these psychological blocks. It’s not
knowing the logistics, it’s nothing like that. It’s it’s the psychological blocks that keep them from learning to delegate, from learning
Dr. Romie (06:10) Like
Adrienne Green (06:10) to use executive assistance, something like that. So what I will go ahead.
Dr. Romie (06:13) It is. And and then and then
they put that pl in place, right? And then they have such severe anxiety over it that you’re now becoming an ineffective leader because it turns into looking like micromanaging, not trusting your employees, not trusting that. This is all your busy brain.
Adrienne Green (06:31) Mm-hmm. I I I love this. I think it’s so helpful. and so how do you help leaders or, you know, business people reframe busyness into meaningful progress, right? The work that I like to say it’s their top twenty percent, and start to trust their teams so that they’re not having to do everything.
Dr. Romie (06:50) Yes. We have a framework, whether you’re a business of five or a business of 50,000 that I’m working with. And it’s in three steps. We talk about protect your brain, protect your team, and protect your business. What most business owners, whether you’re generating $1 million in revenue or $1 billion in revenue, the mistake we’re making in today’s world with AI and this rapid change that is happening and
What feels like uncontrollable global political economic issues, the number one mistake we make is we put all of our focus on acquiring the client and the client work or a a patient or that. And we don’t put the onus, and if there’s time, we do a team-building exercise, we throw a holiday party, we give
branded merch, you know, to our employees and we call it a day if there’s time and money left over for a culture activity. And the teams and the companies that I see, regardless of where your revenue is, that do this right, as number one as a leader, the first and most important thing is you protect your brain. And the next part is we talk about how to protect your team. You put those two things in place. That’s what helped me
scale and succeed a big neuroscience program in a private hospital in Arizona after I was sick. And it’s what’s helped me today as a chief wellness officer scaling programs to 14,000 employees and run my own business successfully as well.
Adrienne Green (08:16) So let’s dive into those, right? And I’ve heard you speak before and yet I still want to hear again and have you dive into if if we’ve got a listener here and they’re like, well, but you said start with protect my brain. What does that mean?
Dr. Romie (08:27) Yes, it is. It’s no so many people say, I’m burned out, Adrian, you’re burned out, we’re both burned out as women. We may be caregivers or business owners or all that. Who isn’t burned out and we just push through it? That is actually not accurate. It’s just here in the United States, you cannot pertain obtain a home mortgage, car insurance without a credit score check. Well, we should be doing the same.
For our brains. And we actually do something, which is we check people’s busy brain and we give you a brain score. It is, we will put it here in the show notes. It is for free on my website, on LinkedIn, Instagram. It’s called the busy brain test. This is an actual neuropsychology battery. Takes less than five minutes to do, and it gives you a score. And what we see is if you’re below 30, you’re in a healthy brain state. These are the
When I’m talking to a founder, these are the people whose advisory boards or boards I will sit in where I will think to invest. I look at someone’s brain state before I look at their financials. And if you’re above a a 30 to 40, we know you’re having change fatigue. The rate of change in our world, business and professionally, is so large that it can there’s
There’s easy things to do in that place. When you’re above a 40, we know you now have busy brain and you’re heading towards burnout. That is kind of like having a fair to poor credit score. And we need to fix your brain. And that is the neuroinflammation that you and I are going to dig deep into. And we look at few key areas and personalize that to everyone.
Now, how does that translate to a large organization? When I go in to give keynote lectures for teams or workshops for leadership retreats, everybody takes the busy brain test. Not only do you individually walk away with a plan of what to do, but now I’ve got aggregate data for your organization of what is the health of your leadership team or of your employees. And then we can start putting in systems in place with HR that can help that.
Adrienne Green (10:22) I love that. And that’s where you’re thinking like protect your brain. And then you took it to that step of protect your team. So it’s like individually, you take this, you know where you stand and can, you know, remedy any challenges you have.
And then as you know, if you’re a business owner or an entrepreneur with a team, you can know where your team stands. And that then gives you, and I am like data is my favorite word, I think. Data is my love language, let’s say. And what I love and what we have been trained to do as business owners is to have that data and to make data driven decisions, a phrase I noticed you say early on in this presentation. So you’re working with these companies to help give them the data so they can make data driven.
decisions about the wellness of their entire
Dr. Romie (11:06) Yeah.
Adrienne Green (11:06) organization.
Dr. Romie (11:07) And this is really difficult to say. It it makes sense. You and I are saying that our listeners are nodding along, but you and I have both sat there with other founders who are so passionate about their mission or the people they’re helping or their nonprofit that emotions is driving them and not data. And Adrian, I will tell you,
Adrienne Green (11:26) Mm.
Dr. Romie (11:26) I guarantee you, 90% of those entrepreneurs have a busy brain score above a 50. They’re in burnout.
And passion is disguising a busy brain and burnout. And you know, you
Adrienne Green (11:37) Right.
Dr. Romie (11:38) and I are both very good and passionate what we do. And in a calm brain state, we make data-driven solutions. I can’t give away my time that Great Wolf has about 50% of my protected time every year for free or at a lower cost. It just doesn’t make sense data-wise as a business owner.
Adrienne Green (11:56) Mm-hmm. Right. And I I think you’re right. I think a lot of my experience with business owners and entrepreneurs and and business leaders is that they don’t have the data or know how to get the data. And so they are making these emotional decisions. And what I think is
Dr. Romie (12:08) Yes.
Adrienne Green (12:09) it’s it reminds me of the phrase of like sometimes you have to slow down to speed up, right? And it’s like when somebody is
Dr. Romie (12:13) Yes, absolutely.
Adrienne Green (12:14) burned out and overwhelmed while they want to help, you know, whatever their mission is, further their mission, they’re less able to do that than if they paused.
fixed these issues and then we’re like I think of like scarcity and abundance mindset. Then they’re able to kind of approach everything from a better place, kind of like an abundance mindset, we might say, instead of stress.
Dr. Romie (12:31) Yes. But if if you’re in
change fatigue or a busy brain, sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off, you can’t shift to that abundance mindset. No amount of meditation, manifestation, you have to heal that busy brain and the burnout and calm that neuroinflammation down. Otherwise, an organization like yours can come in and put the best systems in place and virtual assistants in place. But if an individual leader is having a busy brain or burnout,
It’s going to feel impossible for them to execute. And then we get to the protect your team, which you and I will discuss next, and they lack complete trust and empathy with their team members and it becomes a toxic work environment.
Adrienne Green (13:10) So let’s move on to that because I think when you say
Dr. Romie (13:12) What’s
Adrienne Green (13:13) toxic work environment, most people can be like, yeah, I’ve experienced that. So let’s let’s dive
Dr. Romie (13:18) Yes, we have.
Adrienne Green (13:19) into what does more of this protecting your team look like?
Dr. Romie (13:21) Yeah. When we think of toxic workplaces, most people will jump to say, I was doing the work of three people, which is every industry right now. And if you’re a business owner, we’re wearing 10 hats simultaneously at once. But when you break down the psychology of an employee or team member of what they call a toxic workplace, it isn’t that you were asking them to do more or work during a busy holiday season. It’s that they felt like
Their immediate manager or supervisor, the person they report to, does not care for them. A lack of empathy and a lack of trust. Those are the two things. Now, these sound like I loathe this word, Adrian, and I know you do too, soft skills. Am I right? But these are not soft skills. These are actually brain
Adrienne Green (14:05) Yeah.
Dr. Romie (14:07) states that you can train people on. You can, again, both of our favorite words, data. We go in.
And we use the ABI trust index. We can actually measure: does your team trust one another? Do they trust another department? Do they trust their manager manager? Do they trust corporate leadership, however big the infrastructure is? And we can measure that and we can train. And so the next thing we say is to protect your team, we institute empathetic communication. And this isn’t just a theory.
Please know I am chief wellness officer of over 14,000 employees. I am one person that scaled this program across two corporate offices and 23 lodges. And we put this into place with measurable action. And we saw a 10 point percentage jump in engagement data. And we directly measured: did people feel cared for? Did they trust their manager, their supervisor?
Adrienne Green (15:03) That’s amazing. And I I do think that that’s important and that’s something that’s a challenge when we to look at the idea of delegation from another perspective is let’s say you were the CEO of of Great Wolf, Great Wolf Lodge, right? And you’re bringing in this management team as the business grows, and it’s one of those things of like, hey, I maybe was a CEO and I was a fabulous manager and I was empathetic, and my team knew I cared, and I was.
had this great corporate culture, then as I hire other people to manage and to lead, maybe they don’t have that same natural soft skill of of creating that sense of empathy and everything. And so you’ve created a a system that people can use in their organization to ensure that, hey, we can teach these people, we can create a system within the organization that prioritizes
Dr. Romie (15:41) Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely.
Adrienne Green (15:48) and builds these skills that are so important for corporate wellness.
Dr. Romie (15:52) It is. It’s it it is so let’s backtrack there a couple of things. Empathy is not a soft skill, it’s a leadership skill. And when we’re hiring at the Brainshift Institute, and when I’ve seen other companies hire, you hire both for leadership skills and for your job skills, both. And so interviews
now actually look, you know, that I
I know it’s a toxic term, culture fit, but what they’re actually screening for is your level of empathy and your level of trust and your ability to have trust and build trust. Those are actual leadership skills that we develop in workshops with teams. And we teach people how to do this and continue to build that trust. So I want to say this, and this isn’t just about wellness, this is about a culture shift that.
is happening in the organization because if you and I put this in a bucket of a soft skill and wellness, you and I both know as business owners, people are like, I don’t have time for that. I’m putting out fires right now. I’m trying to grow business in this economy. And what if if I said without these leadership and culture skills in place, your business will erode and will not scale? I’ve been there. You’ve been there. You’ve seen so many, like you said, clients in that place.
Adrienne Green (17:06) Mm-hmm. Right. And that’s I think a good point you’re making, that this is something that directly ties to like the bottom line, we might say.
Dr. Romie (17:14) It it does. We actually
Adrienne Green (17:15) So
Dr. Romie (17:16) can go ahead.
Adrienne Green (17:17) No, go ahead.
Dr. Romie (17:19) Yeah, go
ahead.
Adrienne Green (17:19) what I was gonna ask next, Dr. Romy, is if you could share a story or example of of what you’re talking about here so people can see what it looked like in an organization.
Dr. Romie (17:30) Yeah, you know, I think we shared Great Wolf already. What I would love to do, knowing that you have business owners of various size businesses, a case study that is in my book and chapter 16 of the Busy Brain Cure, Kelly. I cringe at this, and this is why the US Healthcare is failing medicine. It broke my heart.
She was a seasoned sales executive on the pathway to promotion to VP,
SVP, and a you know, a C-suite executive one day in her industry.
And she was suffering crippling anxiety. That was her only symptom. Crippling anxiety. She had two children under the age of 10, and her primary care doctor said, You know what, Kelly? Either you choose your job or your children. You can’t have both.
How many employees have been told that? That you have to sacrifice your loved
Adrienne Green (18:20) Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Romie (18:24) ones, your family, your caregiving for the sake of work. And that’s not true. She was ready to walk away and she begrudgingly took the busy brain test because there, that company was a part of our research study and her entire sales team was doing it. And she played along and said, okay, I’m gonna go do the labs.
Well, it turned out her busy brain score. No surprise she’s anxious, anxious was above a 60. So she’s in burnout. That got her intention. She went back to the same primary care doctor and demanded these labs get done and threatened him,
Adrienne Green (18:54) Mm-hmm.
Dr. Romie (18:54) and he did them. And it turns out all of her markers of inflammation that we check were through the roof. A woman in her 30s looked like an 80-something year old with markers of inflammation with chronic disease.
But her thyroid panel was grossly abnormal. So much so that he did an emergency ultrasound and they found a stage one thyroid cancer. And remember, her only symptom was crippling anxiety. What happens when we push through change, we have a busy brain
Adrienne Green (19:17) Yeah.
Dr. Romie (19:26) and burnout is we keep pushing ourselves to exhaustion and we think everything is fine when we know in
Women, that 80% of women’s symptoms of burnout and hormone imbalance will present as I can’t focus and I’m anxious. And for men, it will feel like I’m no longer keeping up. And for men, we check a full thyroid panel and testosterone and other labs as well. So this is for men and women. So she does this, the anxiety goes away. She’s still working, she’s still a very engaged mother, and anxiety.
The and busy brain have been completely healed. And so think of this when you’re feeling like I have too many browser windows open on my computer and in my brain, and I’m wearing too many hats. Is it a busy brain and neuroinflammation that has sent your hormones and vitamin D levels out of balance?
Adrienne Green (20:16) Mm-hmm. And that’s with the Brizzy Brain, excuse me, with the Busy Brain assessment, you also have this recommendation of certain tests to get then.
Dr. Romie (20:25) Yes. With the imagine I many of your listeners have probably paid tens and thousands of dollars to go see an integrative functional medicine doctor like me. And I knew that’s out of reach for 99% of Americans and people around the world. So I used the research to make this eight-week, eight-step program. And week seven is checking labs. We’ve double-checked that most major US insurance health insurance care carriers cover these labs.
And they will find 90% of the problems of busy brain. So if you’re chronically stressed out, it will throw your brain and body in balance. We ask that you go check these labs. They are there in the book in chapter 16 and online as well. And we save lives every time we run those cohort and it up levels your.
Performance. If people ask how I do what I do, running a big successful business and being a C suite executive, and I say I practice what I preach, I brain shift, I check my labs twice a year, I’m on the correct hormones, etc.
Adrienne Green (21:25) Right, right. And I will say I found your lab list helpful. I know. so for listeners, I met Dr. Romy at a retreat in May. And since then it was like I did the busy brain test. I did the labs and I was happy that my scores on both were good, which you know, I think traveling the world and being out of the rat race in the US helps with that a lot. but I can testify that these were helpful assessments and tests to get done.
Dr. Romie (21:50) Thank you. I’m so glad that you took the busy brain test and checked lab panel and found answers that were helpful for you. So it is. And remember that you were in a normal range. We also look at what are your symptoms and what is your busy brain score. And then those labs are a snapshot so that everybody’s thyroid and in men testosterone and in women your estrogen, progesterone, thyro testosterone levels fluctuate. And so
we can now know what needs to be done. And this is not just for women and men that are in middle age. You know, this starts I I’m dealing with high functioning male executives that are in their twenties and suffering busy brain and may have an abnormal thyroid or testosterone level. So this is for everyone.
Adrienne Green (22:31) That’s a very point. Now, one more thing I’d love for us to dive into because it, you know, is specifically for my business and I know for a lot of our listeners is we have these virtual or remote workplaces now, right? Where maybe we’re leading or managing people that we’re not seeing, you know, face to face, we’re not skin to skin. And so how can this apply? How can leaders think about this and have it apply when they have a virtual or remote team?
Dr. Romie (22:58) Yeah. I think this is so important. most of the workplaces I deal with are hybrid or remote. I myself run a fully remote team. And my I I I had two swings and misses, Adrian. And I don’t know if other business owners did. At first, when I hired virtual
team members about a decade ago, I was very transactional. I need you to do this and that. And it was very cold and I didn’t get results. And I probably it wasn’t a pleasant team. Then I somebody told me about culture and I was all about the feelings and cultivating fun on the team. And there was no accountability for work getting done. Right. And that’s everybody’s worst nightmare. And there has to be that balance. And how you do that is in protect your team and protect your business. And that
is starting with that laying down the foundation of empathy and trust. And I I would say if you can make sure your team meets in person at least once a year, skin to skin, as you say, that is an ideal situation and budget for that as you’re in budget season. And for the teams that can’t, because you have international team members, is really getting to know another employee’s why.
Why are they working? What’s important to them? And understanding what motivates them and taking that time to show empathy and build trust. We talk about trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. And it is on you and I as the
Adrienne Green (24:26) Yeah,
Dr. Romie (24:28) leaders and the business owner. It feels like a one-way street. The biggest mistake I see leaders making is.
Wow, well, I care for my team and I know everything that’s going on in their families. And nobody asked me how I was doing. Well, you know what? That’s okay. You’re a CEO, you’re a founder. That’s why we have business masterminds. That’s why we have therapists. That’s why we have our friends. But be that leader. And so, you know, a concrete example I will tell you is we love four legged family members on team brainshift. I make sure to know everybody’s pets, their names.
They get sent treats on a basis as often and and I’m always knowing what’s going on. And we welcome four legged friends making appearances on our virtual meeting. It just becomes this culture that something that is important to my team members is now important to me.
Adrienne Green (25:20) Right, right. Yeah, I I think that really resonates. I know for us at Workergenix, we a couple of years ago, or maybe even longer now, but at some point we were one of our challenges was turnover with the virtual assistants. And we focused on culture and community and building a lot of these things that you’re talking about, right? We implemented like a monthly happy hour and some other things to really work on this.
and show exactly what you’re talking about, where the executive team showed all this empathy and caring for everybody else and it’s really made a difference and it’s made us have virtually no turnover. So I can see that. Now, Dr. Roman
Dr. Romie (25:53) Amazing Adrian. Yeah, you’re you’re a case study right there. And yeah,
thank you.
Adrienne Green (25:57) Sorry, I I think we have some internet lags, so it’ll all get cleaned up in the recording. But Dr. Romey, you’ve shared so much for us. I appreciate you taking the time to come here and give some people this great wisdom. If somebody would like to learn more, what’s the best place for them to reach out?
Dr. Romie (26:11) Adrian, thank you. I think the first thing I would tell you as a business owner is what’s your brain score? It’s going to determine your success and your ability to scale. So we’ll put a link here in the show notes, but also you can go to my website, dromy.com, Instagram, LinkedIn. And if you have questions about your brain score and what to do next, message me back and you’ll receive an email with the instructions and the protocol that we researched in over 17,000 people. And, you know, in a
Today’s world, which it can feel like we’re walking slowly in molasses and chaos everywhere, take the time to practice empathy with another member of your team. And that’s how you and I, one interaction at a time, can make the world a better place.
Adrienne Green (26:54) my goodness. Yeah, you can’t end it better than that, Dr. Romy. That was so good. Thank you. Because it is really about not just our transactions, not just the business, but making the world a better place for other people. So thank you, Dr. Romy, and thanks to our listeners for joining me for another episode of Scale Smart Grow Fast with Workogenix. Join me again next week.