The Connection Between Personal Healing and Business Success
In this powerful episode of the Happy Productive Podcast, Jennifer Dawn, an experienced business coach, welcomes Susie Hayes, an expert in helping people become freed from stuck. Susie, who notes that “being stuck sucks”, introduces her transformative five-element method, F.R.E.E.D., which outlines the essential steps for creating lasting change in both personal life and business. This discussion is crucial for any small business coach or entrepreneur who recognizes that internal struggles, past trauma, and the resistance to uncomfortable grief can manifest as stagnation or self-sabotage in their business. Susie and Jennifer dive deep into why doing the personal work—the healing of old wounds—is not just optional, but foundational to achieving genuine business expansion and productivity.
Full Transcript
Jennifer Dawn: Hello, hello everybody. Welcome to today’s episode of Happy, Productive. I cannot wait to start this conversation with my guest today, Susie Hayes. Susie, welcome to the show.
Susie Hayes: Thank you. It is a delight to be here.
Jennifer Dawn: Yes, and I, I gotta tell you guys, you’re gonna laugh because I went to Susie’s website and the first thing I saw prominently on the website is being stuck sucks. And I was like, that’s gonna be the name of this episode. Being stuck sucks because it does. And I can think of many times in my own life where I have felt stuck and I don’t like feeling stuck, and I’ve learned how to get out of that now. But Susie, I just have to know that that must have come from somewhere. Before we jump in—I’m so excited—please introduce yourself to our audience. Tell everybody who you are, a little bit about yourself and how you came about to be doing the work that you’re doing right now.
Susie Hayes: Well, I am Susie Hayes and I help people become freed from stuck by helping them learn how to access internal resources they never knew they had to create what they never knew they could. I do that through counseling, coaching, hypnosis, speaking, and writing.
Jennifer Dawn: Wonderful, wonderful. And how did you come about to do this work?
Susie Hayes: Well, I have been actually in my own private practice for quite a few decades, and it was only a couple of years ago when I set out to write this book that I discovered that what I had been doing in all of the different arenas of my work was actually helping people become freed from stuck. So that kind of stuck and that has been my message.
Jennifer Dawn: Oh, I love it so much. It definitely resonates with me. And so when you have a person who is stuck, I think sometimes we tend to really know it’s like, “This kind of sucks”. But talk to me a little bit about, let’s say somebody is stuck and they may not know it. So what are some of the key things that you see from a person who is stuck?
Susie Hayes: I really identify stuck as being anytime in our life where we are aware of feeling frustrated, helpless, blocked, held back from living the quality of life that we really want to live. If we are not living, whatever we believe that to be, that’s when we are stuck, particularly if we are trying to make a change and we just can’t seem to accomplish that. We can’t seem to find a way to get from stuck to freed from stuck. That’s when we’re stuck.
Jennifer Dawn: I love that. And so when you are stuck and it totally sucks, I would love to hear your thoughts on that. How do you help somebody move out of that space and get themselves moving forward again?
Susie Hayes: There are really five elements, and I call them a, I call it a five-step method, but it’s really five elements that are essential if we’re going to create change and move from stuck to freed from stuck. And if we’re going to not only become freed from stuck, but be able to stay there and build on that and move beyond. So we use the acronym in writing the book of F.R.E.E.D., and the metaphor is about crossing a bridge.
The first **F** is **Face the bridge**, and what that is, is identifying what the real problem is. Sometimes what we think the problem is, isn’t the real problem. How we identify where we’re really stuck usually has to do with some pain point that we’re experiencing or some need that is not being met. So until we actually identify that truthfully and clearly, we might be trying different kinds of strategies, but we won’t get to where we really need to be. So that’s the first step is to face the bridge.
**R** is **Recognize the bridge**. And what that is, is actually looking across the bridge to the destination. That can be an accomplishment. It can be a goal, it can be the development of a habit. But we look across and we know that when my life changes, this is what I believe it will be like. And the more vivid that picture is in our mind and the more emotionally charged it is, the more it will fuel us to be able to do the journey of crossing the bridge.
Then the next element, the **E**, is **Embrace the bridge**. And what this is, is about identifying any challenges or obstacles that might be there, keeping us from where we want to live. It’s also about putting together a plan or a strategy to be able to cross the bridge.
The next **E** is **Exit the bridge**. And this is an element that we don’t talk about very often in the change process, but exiting the bridge requires that we leave behind what is no longer serving us. And whenever we do that, we experience grief. Even if we are willingly choosing to make a change, we know that it’s in our best interest. We must let go of something that is no longer serving us. And when we let go, it’s a loss and we grieve. And what we know about grief is that to the degree that we love is the degree that we grieve, and that there is no more difficult human task than grieving. That’s why we try to avoid it because it’s so hard. So it’s really important that we understand how important that is because if we don’t, we’re likely to want to return to what is familiar—not comfortable, but familiar—because we know how to manage that. Or we might simply go into a default because we haven’t really fully let go.
And then the **D** is to **Arrive at the destination while Discovering our destiny**. And by that I mean that in the process of transformation, what we hope will happen is that we get a clearer idea of who we are, what our values are, what our purpose is, what brings us joy, and that is really what I believe our destiny is about. It’s the purposefulness and the joy of our life. And as we change, we should come more clearly into that awareness. And we also know that accountability is so important, particularly at this point because we want to continue to build on what we have changed in our life. And accountability is not about being policed, it’s about having support. It’s about compassionate, truthful support in our life of someone coming alongside of us and encouraging us to continue to grow and expand beyond where we’ve been. And what we know is that whenever we cross one of those bridges, there will be another bridge.
Jennifer Dawn: No question whatsoever. Oh my gosh, I love that. F.R.E.E.D. That’s so powerful. And I wanna dive in on face the bridge and the grief. I’m right now—this is off topic, but not really—I’m going through a certification course. It’s a mind-body certification course. And one of the things I recently learned, which I thought was so powerful because I come from a history. I grew up in a very abusive household and I had to heal from a lot of that trauma and PTSD and triggers and that whole world. And so I’m fairly versed on that. And so the concept of, you know, we have to face something and the stress response kicks in and we go into fight, flight, or freeze. And one of the things that I’m learning about the freeze part is that when you’re frozen from a past trauma or something you’re afraid of, that that freeze response can actually manifest as depression, and it can manifest as “I don’t know what to do,” and it can manifest as “I’m stuck”, right? So we just say, “I’m stuck, I’m stuck, I’m stuck”. But what really is happening, not every time, but sometimes what can be happening is that we’re actually kind of stuck in that fight, flight, freeze from earlier trauma. And so I would love to hear your thoughts on that. When you talk about Face the bridge, does that correlate in the work that you do?
Susie Hayes: Absolutely. And one of the topics that I address in the book that is so important is the experience of trauma. And sometimes people can be in a state of trauma, and particularly as you’ve stated, they can be frozen in that trauma and not even know that that’s the case. Like you say, it can manifest as something else. And so it’s really important, first of all, that we acknowledge the reality of the trauma and the impact of that, because that, as you said, is an instinctive response from the nervous system. Our bodies freeze. Our bodies play dead, if you will, in that frozen state as a way of trying to protect us. And what happens is if that becomes a way of being, if that is sustained for a prolonged period of time, it becomes very difficult to move out of that. And so the first point is really to identify that that is in fact what is happening. It’s so crucial and so important that that be honored and that it be attended to in the healing process.
Jennifer Dawn: Yeah, so often I know that when I went through four years of trauma therapy, and I know that when I started, I didn’t wanna go back. I didn’t wanna think about what had happened to me. I didn’t wanna deal with it. And so often I think that’s the case, that the way that we cope, the way that we survive, is by moving forward, not thinking about it, distracting ourselves from it, shoving it down, not dealing with it. So often as adults, it will manifest, and it’ll manifest in, I’m a business coach, and so it’ll manifest in our businesses too. And so it’s funny because in my business coaching work, a client will work with me and it’ll go to the personal and we’re gonna have to go back and they don’t wanna go back. And it’s like, well, you know what? If you wanna fix what’s going on here, part of it is being willing to go back and do the work that you need to do. Otherwise you’re just gonna carry it forward forever. And I think that’s part of what you’re saying here, is that sometimes we really do have to go back to that, where that trauma was, if we wanna heal it. The good news is that if you heal it and you heal it right, you only have to heal it once. ‘Cause once it’s healed, it’s healed and you don’t have to keep going back. But if you haven’t really fully healed in these areas, it will keep popping up over and over again.
Susie Hayes: That is so very true, and you know that obviously personally and professionally why that is so important. And I think there were a couple pieces there that I think are important. One is that if you enter into a healing process of trauma, the good news now is that to revisit that you are not revisiting it alone. The healer, the person that you’re working with, is going to come alongside of you in that and help you come to a place of being able to accept what happened and to no longer be afraid of the emotional charge and the fear that can be so profound and so strong in that. And I think another piece that’s really important to keep in mind is that the beauty of allowing ourselves to find the courage to go there is that we want to be able to remember what happened and to remember how it felt and what it was like without re-experiencing the trauma. And that’s when you know it’s healed. You can think about it, you can remember how it felt, but you’re not re-experiencing it. It’s not being re-triggered. That’s when you know that you have come to a place where you now are feeling empowered in relationship to that experience.
Jennifer Dawn: So powerful and so, so very true. Let’s talk a little bit on that grieving element because you said something so important there that grief is uncomfortable and we don’t want to be uncomfortable, so we will naturally try to do everything we can to get away from that, that feeling of grief. But I love how you said that when you embrace it and you go at it, you give it a big hug. “It’s okay that I’m grieving, I’m allowing myself that space to breathe”. That’s actually how you can move through grief. And in my experience, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this, I can waste so much time and energy trying to not feel it. Whereas if you just embrace it and allow yourself to feel it, it’s just energy. It will pass so much faster if you just embrace it instead of wasting—some people waste, you know, weeks, months, years, lifetimes—on trying not to feel these things. But when you focus your energy on just feeling it, it actually sometimes can move through so much faster than all the energy it takes to try to avoid it.
Susie Hayes: Absolutely. And you’re right, we try to avoid it and sometimes it’s because—let me back up—grieving sucks. It just, it sucks, right? There’s nothing more difficult than grieving. It can be just immobilizing and deeply, deeply painful. But the importance of the grieving is that it is honoring the experience, it’s honoring the person, the relationship, whatever it is that we have lost. Even the habit or the pattern that we’ve cultivated that’s not serving us anymore. It’s honoring that experience that we did the best we could. It’s honoring that it’s a real loss to us. And as you said, if we will allow ourself to enter into that very difficult space, we can move through it because we’re no longer resisting it. And it really is the resistance of the pain, which is so understandable. It’s that resistance that does not allow the grieving to heal. And we grieve because it’s an honoring experience in our human life. And, and you know, we don’t, just as a culture, we don’t like to talk about grief. We don’t like to talk about death and loss, and yet it is so much a part of our lives.
Jennifer Dawn: So very, very true. And talk to me a little bit about in your work, where do you see, because most of our listeners are gonna be business owners, and as a business owner, if you’re feeling stuck, if you haven’t done the work to get yourself unstuck, I’m just curious, what do you see in your work for business owners, how it relates back to the business owner and what happens when you don’t do this work to get unstuck in the business?
Susie Hayes: That is a really good question, and I think honestly, many people who are in the arena of business coaching do not appreciate the importance of this piece because you cannot, you cannot build a sustainable business beyond where you are internally in your own leadership. You might be able to put together a team of people that can move your business forward, but inevitably, you as the leader are going to set the direction of that business. And if there are aspects of your own internal world that are unresolved, areas where you are self-sabotaging, areas where you are resisting growing, areas where you are avoiding attending to certain difficult conflicts or interactions, that will not serve you in moving your business forward. So every way in which we can cultivate and promote and expand our own personal development expands our businesses proportionately. So the healthier, the more clear we are, the more we’re living in alignment with our true values, the stronger foundationally we are in terms of moving our businesses forward successfully.
Jennifer Dawn: Amen. Susie, you said that perfectly. I love that so much because I’ve had so many clients come to me and they said, you know, the last business coach I worked with basically just said if they brought up anything personal, it was, “We’re not gonna talk about that. Let’s get back to the business. Let’s get back to the business. We’re not gonna talk about that”. And I get it. And if you’re a coach and you wanna just work on the business, okay, great. I’m not dissing business coaches who just wanna focus on the business because we can get derailed from some of the personal. But my approach has always been look at the whole person because how are we supposed to overcome things in the business if they’re struggling with these things personally, because it’s gonna hamper the business. We’ve gotta go to that personal stuff and get that worked on, healed. We’ve gotta get unstuck in those areas because as you said, it will manifest in the business. Who you are internally is gonna manifest externally. And you guys who are listening right now, if you’re hearing this and you’re just like, “Hey, I’m so frustrated because I’m not able to get my business to the next level”, I really wanna encourage you to look inward and do that personal development work on you. And I’ve even seen it in my business. I could map my business revenues, and if I looked at my revenues over the last 10 years, if there were dips, I can tell you where I was emotionally and what I was struggling with. And if there are rises, I can be like, “Oh, this is where I was, this is what’s happening”. I can literally map my revenues to my emotional state of mind. Because it’s so true. As business owners, where we are at will manifest and show itself in our businesses, even if we think it’s some tactical business thing we’re not doing right. I’m gonna go inward first before I look at my tactical business things.
Susie Hayes: Yes, and there is so much wisdom in that. And perhaps a way of really appreciating that is that any energy that we’re using that is conflicted internally, that is working against us—once we do that inner work and there is resolution and healing—it allows us to redirect that energy that has been there in a protective posture toward moving the business forward in an even greater way. So that becomes freed up energy to re-channel, to expand and build in the business.
Jennifer Dawn: Agree completely. It’s so funny, when I stepped out on my own and I had started my coaching practice, this was almost 10 years ago. What caused it was I was in a partnership and my partner basically screwed me over. She had promised me equity in the company if I went in and did all this work, which I did. And then when I was asking her about, “Well, where’s the equity agreement?” It’s in my car. The dog ate it. You know, there’s always some excuse as to why she couldn’t provide it. And I eventually had to resign. And then the good news is though, that that really was the catapult for me to kind of start my own coaching practice. But the, oh, shoot, Susie, the thought just went right outta my head. I had a point and I lost it. I hate when that happens.
Susie Hayes: I do.
Jennifer Dawn: Ah. It’ll probably come back anyway.
Susie Hayes: We were talking about the flow of energy, and when we resolve that, then it frees us.
Jennifer Dawn: That’s it. That’s it. I got it. Thank you. The flow of energy. Thank you. So when I, so I started my coaching practice, but I did it from a really compromised emotional state. People were saying, “You should go sue her, you should go after the money that she owes you”. But emotionally, the whole thing was so difficult for me because I’d done so much work and I tripled their revenues while I was with this organization. I’d given it my heart and soul, and to have to walk away was really and truly heartbreaking. The good news, though, is I stepped away with an amazing network. Women who signed on to coach with me, I didn’t have a website, I didn’t have nothing. They just knew me and they were like, “Jennifer, we wanna stay with you”. Great. So I was able to really step into that. My emotional state was so compromised that at that time—now I had grown two other seven-figure companies and I’d had a lot of employees and a lot of people—but I remember at that time just being like, “I just wanna be a one-woman show. That’s it. I don’t wanna deal with people”. I mean, I wanna help my clients, but I don’t want partners. I don’t want employees. I don’t want contractors. I don’t want anybody, I just wanna be on my own. And that was my state. And for the first several years of my business, that is absolutely how I operated. And it wasn’t really until probably the last, I don’t know, three or four years, maybe more. I don’t know exactly, but somewhere along those lines, I started to shift. I started to change. I started to heal in those areas, and I started to be willing to bring more people in and expand the operation and take on partners. And I’m in two partnerships right now, and I was like, “Look at me being a big girl and being in a partnership”. Even when I talk about the old partnership that at the time was so devastating to me, now I can think about it, I can talk about it, I can remember how it felt, but it doesn’t hurt me anymore. It doesn’t hurt me anymore, and now it doesn’t stop me from moving forward with other partners. But that took many years for me to kind of make that transition and heal. But as soon as that started to happen, the business started to get bigger and to go kaboom. And now, I don’t even know how many people. I think we have probably 30 contractors now with the marketing agency, the coaches. Which for me is like, “Okay, that’s a lot of people to have my hands around and to manage”. But the shift, I know it happened within myself when I made that decision that I was ready and I had healed and I was ready to expand, the expansion then happened.
Susie Hayes: And don’t you think that part of what you were working through during that time was a grieving process? You had been deeply wounded and betrayed. You experienced a significant loss, and you needed time to recover from that, to really rebuild trust in yourself, trust in other people, trust in your ability to discern moving forward and to select the people that you were going to work with, that you knew you could have a good working relationship with, and that it would be honoring for all of you. And it took a while to get to that. And I commend you in that process because it takes courage. There are some people who call it a day and walk away and say, “I just can’t do that”. And you know, that might be okay. That might be the best decision for that person, but you really allowed yourself to move through that healing process and to begin to create something new inside of yourself, a new vision, a new direction, a new way of being. And look what has happened. You’re now thriving probably in a way that you would’ve never even expected.
Jennifer Dawn: You’re absolutely right. Never would have expected. Ever. And it is so true, and if you’re listening to this, you guys, the reason why I share it is because if you’re listening to this and you’re going through this, and it’s so easy to just give up and say, “I’m never gonna take on another partner again”. I get it. And that might be the right decision. But then if there are times where you wanna grow, you wanna expand, you wanna go into these new directions, you’re gonna have to get outside that comfort zone and go back to some of these places where you might have been wounded. But if you’re hearing it, just know that if you do the work to heal yourself, it was so funny, a couple weeks ago, we’re working on one of our business retreats and I have a different partner for that retreat. And the partner’s kind of flaking out on me right now, and I’m just like, “Okay, are they gonna be in or are they gonna be out?” I’m not quite sure. But instead of getting traumatized by the whole thing, I was telling my husband about it and he starts going off, “Well, this and that, tell him this,” and da, da, da, da. And I said to him, “You know what, if they flake out, they flake out. I’m not putting time and energy into the whole being pissed off about it”. I have to put my time and energy into pivoting because whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen. And now I know the universe has my back. If this partner flakes, it’s for a good reason. And my earlier partner, from 10 years ago, she was a horrible person. I didn’t know. But once you get to know him, you’re like, “Gosh, she was a horrible person. I don’t wanna ethically be around a person like that”. And so the universe has your back, and I want you guys to really hear this, is that if you have the guts and the courage to go at it, to get yourself unstuck, to make that decision, to do the healing work, the universe is going to support you in this, and it will absolutely have your back and give you the resources that you need, the people that you need. And then sometimes you look back and you go, “Oh, thank goodness that bad thing happened because it was really in my highest and best interests”.
Susie Hayes: Absolutely. And you know, the good news is, is that whenever there is that kind of disruption, it’s an indication that whatever is going on is not in alignment with who we really are. And so to be able to recognize that and to say, “I’m going to be open to those relationships or those experiences that are really in alignment with my true self, my higher self, myself that aspires to have the finest quality of life”. When we connect with that and with that intention, it makes all the difference in what we draw to ourselves. And so, you’re absolutely right. The universe is designed in such a way to accommodate and respond to our needs, and if we identify those needs in our heart and in our mind, and we come into focus on that and trust, it is amazing what can happen. And I’m not talking like airy fairy, I’m also not dismissing the reality that miracles can happen. I’m really talking about what happens in terms of our energy is that what we are is what we’re going to draw to ourselves.
Jennifer Dawn: I love that. So very, very powerful. So many amazing takeaways from this episode. Susie, you’re one of those people I could just sit and talk to all day long.
Susie Hayes: Thank you. It’s been an amazing conversation today. I love it.
Jennifer Dawn: Yeah, it really, really has. So would you please share with our listeners where they can find you if they want more information on your books and the work that you do.
Susie Hayes: Absolutely. My book is available on Amazon, but you can go to my website freedfromstuck.com and find a variety of resources there. So if you want to explore that, if you want to be in contact with me, that’s where you can go to. And if you’re interested in doing consultation work, you can go to that website and connect up in that way as well.
Jennifer Dawn: Oh, wonderful. Susie, thank you so much for being here with me today. And you guys look, being stuck does suck, but if you are willing to get the help and do the work and get out of it, I promise that being on the flip side is pretty awesome and it’s absolutely worth the work.
Susie Hayes: Absolutely.
Jennifer Dawn: You guys, thank you so much for listening today and being here with us. Now get out there and have a happy, productive day.
Relevant Links Mentioned
- Susie Hayes’ website: https://freedfromstuck.com
- Susie Hayes’ book is available on Amazon.
Links from Jennifer
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