HerBusiness

5 Science-Backed Ways to Regulate Your Nervous System as a Business Owner (The Inner Game of Business) — with Pauline Nguyen
Have you ever chased after a target or goal in your business, only to hit it and… feel nothing? That's where this week's conversation with Pauline Nguyen starts.
For twenty-five years, Pauline ran Red Lantern, the most awarded Vietnamese restaurant in the world, collecting accolade after accolade. But, despite all the success, she felt nothing. She was contantly in the doing, in reaching for what's next. She had mastered the outer game of business to perfection…
…but the inner game of business was a different story entirely.
Today, Pauline Nguyen coaches leaders who are in this exact position, and learn to regulate their nervous system to lead from calm instead of fear. She reclaims the word "spiritual" for it — the actual physics involved in your nervous system. The biochemistry of fear and the intelligence your body has been running on since before you even had words for it.
Today we're talking about why so many high-achieving women reach outer success, but feel a sense of emptiness underneath, and the 5 science-backed ways to regulate your nervous system as a business owner.
What You'll Discover in Episode 381: 5 Science-Backed Ways to Regulate Your Nervous System as a Business Owner (The Inner Game of Business) — with Pauline Nguyen
The question that changes how you view success in your business and your life
How to run an honest audit of the way you're really operating, and the signs you've slipped from healthy ambition to running on fumes
Why rest is a necessity for high performance, and the seven kinds of rest most of us never give ourselves
How to hold your boundaries as a way of keeping faith with yourself
Why wanting real wealth and living by your values were never in competition
Five science-backed ways to regulate your nervous system in just a few minutes so make clearer decisions
The difference between rewiring and relaxing, and why "freedom is an inside job"

Five Ways to Regulate Your Nervous System as a Business Owner and Leader
When fear or doubt start to take over, Pauline's approach is refreshingly simple. No hour meditation by a river or going on a 5 mile run. An emotion, she says, takes only about ninety seconds to move through — it's the stories we attach that keep it alive for weeks. Here are her 5 science-backed ways to regulate your nervous system as a business owner:
Change your body temperature. Cold water on the face or a cold shower.
Sound medicine. Humming, which releases nitric oxide and calms the vagus nerve.
Movement medicine. Moving the large muscle groups to release endorphins and serotonin.
Nature's medicine. Just 15 minutes of stepping outside and resetting your environment.
Breath medicine. Controlling your breath lets you control your emotion.
About Pauline Nguyen
Pauline Nguyen is one of Australia's most decorated entrepreneurs. As owner of Red Lantern — the most awarded Vietnamese restaurant in the world — she earned the Telstra Business Award, and in 2026 was named Global Transformational Leader of the Year. She has also been named one of "200 Women Who Will Change the Way You See the World."
At three years old, Pauline escaped Vietnam by boat — nine days at sea, a year in a Thai refugee camp, and a beginning that would have broken most. She chose, instead, to become the beneficiary of everything that happened to her.
Her memoir, Secrets of the Red Lantern, won international acclaim, and her latest, The Way of the Spiritual Entrepreneur, continues to move readers worldwide.
Combining the latest neuroscience with spirituality, traveling the world as an international Keynote Speaker and Executive Coach, she guides CEOs and founders into Conscious Leadership, rewiring their story from victim consciousness to creator consciousness, and learning to live life by design, not by default.
Mentioned in this Episode:
The Growth Network — the HerBusiness community for women business owners ready to do business by their own rules
Pauline Nguyen's Website
Connect with Pauline Nguyen Instagram and LinkedIn
Learn more about her upcoming retreat here.
Full episode summary and resources – Episode 381 Show Notes
@herbusiness on Instagram and Facebook

Some women are so good at holding everything together — business, life, visibility, relationships, responsibilities — that no one around them realises just how much they're carrying.
You see the problem before anyone else does. You smooth the tension in the room. You fill in the gaps that no one else even notices. You keep the team moving, and make every hard situation look effortless.
Our guest this week, Jen Randle, is talking with us today about our ability to stabilise and mask, and why sometimes we have to stop holding it all together. Because over time, that ability that feels like a strength can wear you down (and prevents the people around you from stepping up).
This episode is about self-trust in leadership, what it costs high-achieving women to be the one who holds it all together… and what becomes possible when you loosen the grip, and let things wobble.
The Head, Heart, and Gut All Belong in Business
Your head helps you analyse and create the plan.
Your heart tells you what you actually want.
And your gut helps you sense what may not yet be obvious on paper.
Effective leadership isn't about abandoning data for intuition. It's about allowing all three sources of information to have a fair voice at the table.
Growing as a leader doesn't mean becoming more and more capable, or carrying even more weight… it means trusting yourself enough to stop carrying what was never yours to hold.
What You'll Discover in Episode 380 — Stop Holding It All Together: The Leadership Power of Letting Things Wobble, with Jen Randle
Why so many capable women learn to "mask" by showing up polished and measured… and why that survival instinct turns exhausting
How the very talent for reading a room and stabilising it can shift from a strength into a trap in all aspects of business and life
Jen Randle's "three doors" framework for any moment that feels unstable (and why the third door is the one most of us never let ourselves open)
Why striving for perfection and overfunctioning so often go hand-in-hand, and what to do about it
How to bring your head, your heart, and your gut back into the same conversation, rather than letting logic outvote everything
The shift from becoming ever more capable of carrying the load, to trusting yourself enough to put some of it down

About Jen Randle
Jen Randle works at the intersection of trust, signal interpretation, and what she calls institutional coherence — helping leaders and organisations read what's shifting beneath the surface before misalignment becomes a crisis. Through her practice, SGNL, she has worked with organisations including Nike, Starbucks, Pinterest, and Virgin. Alongside her institutional work, Jen developed a personal practice called intrinsic way-finding, and she's currently writing a book, THE FRAY.
Mentioned in this Episode:
The Growth Network — the HerBusiness community for women business owners ready to do business by their own rules
Read Jen's writing on Substack, including the article that sparked this conversation
Learn more about Jen's work through SGNL
Full episode summary and resources – Episode 379 Show Notes
@herbusiness on Instagram and Facebook

What if you got to love your business, not just run it?
For the majority of established women business owners, that question almost feels silly to ask… as if loving your business and your work is a reqard you only earn once you've proven yourself enough to deserve it. In this episode, Suzi Dafnis makes the case that it actually works the other way around. Loving what you do, and learning how to love your business again isn't the dessert you get after years of finishing your vegetables. It's actually the engine that increases your momentum, drives your growth, and lets you decide on the best (and most fulfilling) long-term strategy for your business.
So if there is a sense of 'flatness' in your business, resist that initial urge to fix it (something we talked about in last week's episode: Sell Your Business or Rebuild It? What Every Established Woman Entrepreneur Eventually Asks). Because it won't go away with a new system, or a new offer, or basic re-organisation. Underneath is a far more uncomfortable question — whether you actually love any of it.
Today, we're talking about how you can learn to love your business again, even if you've been in the same routine for years or decades. And discover tools you can actually use this week to identify the parts of business that light you up, and make you feel most alive.
What You'll Discover in Episode 379: How to Love Your Business Again, Not Just Run It
Why loving what you do gets treated as something you EARN eventually in your career… and why "eventually" almost never arrives, no matter the revenue or the milestones hit
The subtle way successful women learn to "sand down their wanting," until the business runs beautifully and you can't remember the last time you were excited to open your laptop
The difference between a business that's technically thriving and one that's empty… and why the second kind doesn't work for long
A plus-or-minus exercise for reading your actual week the same way you'd read a number on a spreadsheet
One thing you can stop doing to love your business more, and one thing that must be protected (these can happen without you redesigning your whole business)
Why the things you protect on your own calendar actually teach your team what's allowed for them, too
Three questions that you can sit with this week, including one that might scare you just a little

Three Questions to Sit With This Week
If you tracked your whole week, adding a plus or minus beside each task based only on whether you loved doing it (NOT whether it went well)… what percentage do you think would land in the plus column?
What's one thing on your calendar this week you'd mark a clear minus? Something you do because you've always done it, not because you love it, that you could hand to someone else or simply stop doing?
What's one thing you'd mark a clear plus? That thing that makes you feel the most like yourself while doing it… and could you protect that on your calendar the way you'd protect a client meeting?
Mentioned in this Episode:
The Growth Network — the HerBusiness community for women business owners ready to do business by their own rules
Full episode summary and resources – Episode 379 Show Notes
@herbusiness on Instagram and Facebook
Learn more about HerBusiness Podcast listener Kelly White, founder of The Skin Retreat by Oak & Sage. Oak & Sage offers beauty and skin treatments, plus monthly membership packages tailored to address a variety of skin concerns.

Should you sell your business, rebuild it, or just burn it all down?
This is a common fork almost every established business owner reaches, often without warning.
Suzi Dafnis unpacks why the question of whether to sell your business tends to show up around year eight, nine, or ten of running a business — not because something's gone wrong, but because you've finally built something durable enough to ask whether you actually want it.
Suzi walks through why all three impulses — to sell your business, burn it down, or start over over — usually point to the same root cause: not the business, but the operating system it's still running on. The one you built years ago, under different conditions, with different resources, as a different version of yourself.
Using the story of a woman she calls Julia, an agency owner who nearly sold her fifteen-year business before realising what she actually wanted wasn't out, it was a different "in". Suzi introduces a fourth option nobody names: not selling, not burning it down, but rebuilding the woman running the business first, and letting the business follow.
You'll hear about the cost of sanding yourself down to be taken seriously over a decade-plus in business, and why the edge you learned to soften is often the same edge that made the work feel alive in the first place. Suzi reframes the whole decision: the real question isn't sell your business, burn it down, or rebuild it — it's what you'd build, or keep, if you stopped editing yourself down to fit it.
Suzi closes with three questions worth sitting with over the next week — not to answer immediately, but to write down honestly: 
What am I relieved to lose if I sold this, and what am I afraid to admit I'd miss? 
What am I actually craving when I imagine burning it down and starting from zero? And, 
If I stopped editing myself down to run this, what would I change about how I lead tomorrow?
Suzi also shares a first look at Majestic, a new experience she's building for women exactly at this fork. Applications open this October, and you can join the list now at majestic.herbusiness.com.
Also in this episode: a listener shoutout to Carol Robertson of Ms Property Melbourne, who left a review after our episode on visibility, and a reference back to that earlier conversation on being more visible. 
Check out the How Being More Visible Helps More Customers Choose You episode.
What You'll Discover In Episode 378: Sell Your Business or Rebuild It? What Every Established Woman Entrepreneur Eventually Asks
Why the thought, "Should I sell it, burn it down, or start over?" tends to arrive around year eight, nine, or ten… and what it's actually signaling
The difference between a business that's thriving and one that's durable, and why so many women reach "successful" before they let themselves ask who it's thriving FOR
How all three impulses usually trace back to the same root cause, and why that it actually great news for you
The "operating system" idea: how a business can scale for a decade while still running on the assumptions of a version of you who no longer exists
The fourth option almost nobody names, and why it all begins with the woman running the business rather than the org chart or the offer suite
The cost of sanding yourself down to be taken seriously, and how to tell whether your edge is gone for good… or is just waiting for permission to come back
Three questions worth sitting with this week
A first look at Majestic, the new experience Suzi's building for women standing at exactly this fork, with applications opening in October

Mentioned in this Episode:
The Growth Network — the HerBusiness community for women business owners ready to do business by their own rules
Full episode summary and resources – Episode 378 Show Notes
@herbusiness on Instagram and Facebook

What if your next business move didn't have to be performance-perfect? What if, instead, you started treating that next business move like a rehearsal? In this episode of the HerBusiness Podcast, Suzi Dafnis answers a listener question that almost every experienced business owner asks eventually: "How do I know if I'm building the RIGHT next thing?".
On the surface, it sounds like a question about strategy…
Should I create this program? Or this new product? 
Should I change my business model? Should I pursue this opportunity? 
Should I hire for this? Should I move into a different market? 
Should I finally retire this thing that has worked for years but that I don't really want to do anymore?
Underneath, it's really a question about certainty: How do I know this will work before I begin?
So many business owners get caught up in uncertainty, putting their next move on pause to get it perfect. In order to take the pressure of yourself and your business, start treating your next move as a rehearsal. It doesn't need to be perfect the first time. In this episode of the HerBusiness Podcast, Suzi Dafnis reveals exactly why taking that first step forward is the most important you can take, no matter how imperfect it may be.
You don't always think your way into the next version of your business. Sometimes you have to live your way into it.
What you'll discover in Episode 377: What If You Treated Your Next Business Move Like a Rehearsal?
Why so many business owners strive for perfection, and the reason that perfection can hold you back from growth (and doing what you love)
How to embrace uncertainty, and see it as a sign for what genuinely new work feels like
The trick experience can play on us, and why the very success that should free us to experiment starts giving us reasons not to
The real difference between performing and rehearsing — and which to value more
Why you can't always think your way into the next version of your business, and instead live your way through it
What "work" actually means, and why a first version that doesn't meet your expectations is exactly the feedback you need
The questions to sit with to tell whether an idea genuinely feels wrong, or you just want certainty before you begin

Mentioned in this Episode:
The Growth Network — the HerBusiness community for women business owners ready to do business by their own rules
Full episode summary and resources – Episode 377 Show Notes
@herbusiness on Instagram and Facebook