Living The Red Life
Julie Hutchinson on Stress, Sleep, and the Science of Elite Success
Mon, 10 Mar 2025
SUMMARYJulie Hutchinson, an expert in neuroscience, resilience training, and high-performance coaching, joins the conversation to share powerful insights on optimizing mindset, stress management, and sleep for business success. With a background in sports science and biofeedback, she dives into the importance of rewiring the brain, controlling emotional responses, and using data-driven techniques to improve overall well-being. She emphasizes that entrepreneurs often hold onto stress and setbacks longer than necessary, which can negatively impact decision-making and performance.The discussion also highlights the underestimated power of sleep, with Julie explaining the neuroscience behind brain waves, recovery, and cognitive function. She shares practical strategies for optimizing sleep quality, including tracking sleep patterns, leveraging supplements, and understanding how the body stores stress. Listeners also get an introduction to her programs, including the Resilient Transformation Academy and the Becoming Supernatural course, designed to help leaders shift from survival mode to peak performance.CHAPTERS02:35 – The Power of Mindset in Business05:12 – Overcoming Setbacks and Building Resilience07:45 – The Link Between Thoughts, Emotions, and Performance10:18 – Why Entrepreneurs Struggle with Letting Go12:56 – How Stress Impacts Decision-Making and Health15:29 – The Science Behind Sleep and High Performance18:03 – Why Some CEOs Only Sleep 3 Hours (And Why It’s a Mistake)20:40 – How Sleep Affects Business Success and Physical Health23:17 – The Secret Behind High Energy and Productivity26:00 – Unlocking Your Full Potential with NeuroscienceGUEST DETAILSFull Name - Julie HutchinsonSocials - JuliehutchinsonWebsite - coreperformance.usConnect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter
Chapter 1: What is the power of mindset in business?
And when you can do that, you're managing the internal chemistry of the body that helps you remain healthy in the state of flow, helps your brain work better, and helps everything function better.
My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life.
Joining me today is a good friend, client, Julie. She's one of the best in the world for high-performance coaching, working with top-tier executives, CEOs, C-suite of major firms, and many great entrepreneurs just like you. And her job is to keep us all alive and functioning. Right. His entrepreneurs are crazy. We work hard. We burn out. And, you know, she's there like, you know, a pro athlete.
Chapter 2: How can entrepreneurs overcome setbacks and build resilience?
Olympic athlete has a sports psychologist and a team around them to keep them healthy. Basically, that's what Julie helps do for top performing CEOs and execs. Julie, welcome. Thank you. Is that a good summary of what you did? That's a pretty good summary. Okay, great. Because I'm fascinated by sports and the correlation to business and have a sport background.
And I think most people now have realized Olympic athletes have a team of 10 around them. And they're starting to see CEOs too, right? Like Elon Musk, Zuckerberg. They have this like...
Chapter 3: What is the link between thoughts, emotions, and performance?
performance team around them right like especially now most big ceos are getting into nutrition and health and fitness but a lot of them i think uh like billions if you've watched that show you know the psychologist side of it i think it's kind of the way ceos are going so why is that why is this shift to like this high performing ceo c-suite exec
Well, I think the main shift is because so many of us are so driven. A lot of CEOs and high performers are type A personalities. And we have this mindset that if we just do more, we're going to achieve more. But we're not managing our energy in the process. And so what happens is we just go, go, go, go until we burn out.
And then when we burn out, we're like, well, that's just part of being a CEO or a high performer. It's just kind of expected energy. And in reality, that's the old way of doing it. The new way of doing it is start managing your energy instead of managing your time.
Chapter 4: Why do entrepreneurs struggle with letting go of stress?
It's funny because I've never had that problem. I've always been good, I think, because I've been healthy and I have a good mindset and stuff. And I think another reason I've always never had this problem is when I was 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, I was a personal trainer. And my like clientele were executives. I worked at the most expensive health club in my city. So it had all the upper class.
So most of my clients were probably similar clients to you. And they were all what you, you know, it's funny. I just thought about it. They were all what you're saying. They're all burnt out, unhealthy. And they would just be like working out with me. And it was also a therapy session. Like they just complained to me.
Chapter 5: How does stress impact decision-making and health?
So I probably subconsciously when I became a CEO and entrepreneur, I was like, I don't want to be like that. yeah but I do agree like definitely especially 10 years ago I think that was like the way now there's this big shift to you know that that holistic health and that holistic great life versus great life over here miserable life unhappy life over here so so how did you get into all this
Well, it's something that you just said a minute ago, and I'm going to touch on that, and then I'll build onto it from there. You said, I never had that problem, but Rudy, you're still pretty young.
Sure. Maybe I'll have it down the line.
Chapter 6: What is the science behind sleep and high performance?
Oh, exactly.
I should have said, I've not had that problem yet.
I'll just tell you a quick story. So I have a client who is in their late 50s and he was telling me, well, I have high blood pressure, but my life is great. I don't have a lot of stress. I have this great job. I'm a Vistage coach and I'm a consultant for other people. My family life is great. And I said, well, how was your life the last 25 years?
Chapter 7: Why do some CEOs only sleep 3 hours and why is it a mistake?
And he said, I was running companies and I was selling them and I was stressed out. And I said, well, that's the challenge is that you spend so many years being stressed out, but now you have this really great life.
Yeah.
Chapter 8: How does sleep affect business success and physical health?
But you wired your nervous system for go, go, go, go, otherwise known as fight or flight. And when you wire your nervous system like that, it's going to break down eventually because what we see is 80% of primary care doctor visits are related to stress. Mm-hmm. irritable bowel syndrome, arrhythmias, anxiety, heart palpitations, all that stuff.
And so if we've been running, running, running at that pace for a long time, we're going to start breaking down. So the key is how do I start self-regulating? Because you have a lot of young entrepreneurs that work with you and they're driven. When you start to learn the self-regulation techniques that I'm going to teach you today is you can be driven, but you can also find that flow state.
You're an athlete. I'm an athlete. Probably a lot of people that are listening to this are athletes. We've all been in the zone, but I ask people, well, how do you get in the zone? And they usually say, oh, I slept good the night before. I had a good meal or something like that. What we teach you is scientifically how to get in the zone anytime, anywhere.
And when you can do that, you're managing the internal chemistry of the body that helps you remain healthy in the state of flow, helps your brain work better and helps everything function better.
Got it. So so so I'm excited to dive into those techniques just quickly before we do. Give us the 30 second backstory. Like how did you end up doing, you know, all of this?
Yeah. Great. Great question. So I was a driven person and I was just I kept climbing the corporate ladder. And then at one point I end up I was a fifth employee of a company in Austin, Texas, by the name of Sonio Solutions. We were a creative services agency.
We bootstrapped the company, and we said, we're not going out for any funding, and we're going to work with the biggest clients in the world. And at that time, it was IBM, 3M, Dell, Hewlett-Packard. I joined the team, fifth employee of the company, and our goal, being one of Inc. 's 5,000 fastest companies, we did it. And we did it in three years.
And it all sounds great and I had a great life and I had a great car and a boat and a house and threw parties all the time, but inside I was breaking down. And when I went to the doctor, the doctor said, your adrenal glands are shot, your cortisol, stress hormone, cortisol levels are through the roof. And here's the traditional way of dealing with it, which a lot of us know is taking medications.
I didn't want to take medications. I already had a pretty good diet. And I started to just figure out my way. I became a yoga instructor. I became a living food chef. I was a living food raw foodist for five years thinking that was going to fix it. But when I went to IBM's headquarters, I couldn't strike a downward dog or eat an apple and expect my stress to go away.
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