Dave Bricker (00:01)
Want to expand your speaking and storytelling skills and grow your influence business? This is Speakipedia Media brought to you by speakipedia .com. I’m your host, Dave Bricker, bringing you straight talk and smart strategies from visionary speakers, thought leaders, and storytellers.

Today’s guest has been featured on worldwide media, on radio, TV, and podcasts. She helps women professionals and entrepreneurs go from overwhelmed stress and exhaustion to focused, productive, and energized. She offers courses, workshops, and global speaking engagements, and she hosts the Empowering Family Health podcast. Because everything is better when you have enough sleep, please welcome certified sleep science coach, bestselling author, and global speaker.

Johan Callahan.

Johann Callaghan (00:53)
Hey Dave, how are you?

Dave Bricker (00:56)
Excellent, good to see you. So, Joanne, I’m trying to place your accent. You’re from Alabama, right?

Johann Callaghan (01:02)
a little bit further away from Alabama, I’m from Ireland, the green isle.

Dave Bricker (01:08)
Wonderful, wonderful. I love your voice. I could listen to you all day. I could marry you and become unproductive just to listen to you nag me all day.

Johann Callaghan (01:21)
Well you’d be hearing from me all day for sure.

Dave Bricker (01:26)
So.

Many of us are looking for that hot new topic. Like, I’ve added an AI and storytelling program to my list of programs, but three years ago nobody would have cared about that. You’ve taken the opposite route. You found the world’s oldest topic, let’s face it, dinosaurs probably slept, and you’ve turned it into speaking programs and courses. That means you’ve found a need, a problem to solve, where most people never bothered to look. There’s a lesson for our li –

listeners and viewers in that, sometimes your hot topic is hiding in the light. Were you a speaker looking for a topic or did your topic tap you on the shoulder and say, I’m yours? What’s the Joanne Callahan story?

Johann Callaghan (02:11)
Well Dave, I’m so glad you asked because when I was working on my job for 17 long years and I finally left my job, decided to leave my job because I figured this can’t be all there is to life because it was a grind working, get up the same time every day grinding, exhausted and work didn’t even enjoy my job.

I was a single mum at the time, so it was like Groundhog Day every single day. So I decided to leave the job. And that was my experience of being tired and exhausted. And I said to myself, I remember I said to myself, there has to be another way. I didn’t know what it was, Dave, but I knew that I couldn’t be living my life like this every single day. And when I went out into the world and I started my own business all in the health realm, the health field.

and I started doing the reiki, the massage and all of that and then I met my mentor and my mentor said to me, you’ve only got to write a book. And it was part of a strategy to raise my credibility. And I didn’t know what to write a book about. So I recalled my clients that were coming to me, my massage clients, and they were all tired and exhausted. And I said, oh my God, these people need more sleep. So that’s when I decided to write my book on sleep. And that was the start of the journey.

of my pathway down the road of helping people to sleep better.

Dave Bricker (03:46)
I love that.

So many of us start out as subject matter experts. And then once we’re interested in a topic, we need to do our own personal PhD in it so we can call ourselves experts without feeling phony. We take classes, we read books, we write books, we connect with mentors, fellow experts, especially in these days where every 19 year old yoga instructor offers life coaching services, we need to walk the walk. So tell us more about how you became a trusted

expert on sleep who could call yourself that.

Johann Callaghan (04:22)
Yeah, really great question because you know what Dave, there’s loads of coaches out there and you know people call themselves experts but they’re not really qualified, they just call themselves that and in this day and age now with the legislations and regulations and all that stuff, right, you’ve got to be certified and qualified and all this kind of thing.

So I began, I was always into learning, always curious, always curious about health and how I can empower myself to be a better person and to be more healthy, right? So I started doing the, I did all the massage and all the holistic therapies. But when it came to the sleep, I found a program in the Netherlands and it was a distance learning program for it to be a certified health coach. And the lady who taught me, she was a very highly accredited coach.

And so I think it was nine months of training that I did before. And it was you get points from the ICF and accredited learning errors, all that kind of stuff. Right. And I always find it difficult to follow all those things. You have to do so many case studies and all this kind of thing. Right. It was a lot of work. So I did the health coaching and then I wanted to specifically do something in sleep to be qualified in sleep. So I took another certification course, a different.

course from Spencer Institute and I update that. I have to update all these programs every single year because we have to get the CBT points, the credit, what’s it called, the CBT, whatever it’s called, you see, one of them. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Bricker (05:56)
Continuing, the continuing, the CE’s, the Continuing Education Credits, yeah.

Johann Callaghan (06:01)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, all of that. So that doesn’t bother me, Dave, because I love learning. So that’s what I do. And, you know, I’ve done so many different courses. I’m always doing courses with other coaches and professional development and all sorts of stuff. But I’m really, really fascinated with sleep and what sleep can provide for people. So I’m really zoning in on that area, but also health, because our health and our lifestyle really has got a lot to do with how we sleep well. So I’m studying that whole.

whole area altogether.

Dave Bricker (06:33)
that. It’s all of that stuff. You graduate college with some sort of a degree and you don’t realize that that learning is just beginning. At some point you find something, hopefully, that attracts you and then you just take that endless journey of cultivating, developing your expertise. And expertise is what makes you an expert, right? So…

Now, everybody sleeps. My dog is asleep behind me right now. And I’ve heard we spend a third of our lives sleeping. And that should make us all natural experts at it. And yet we’re not. What is the story of our relationship with sleep? What are the consequences of poor sleep, not enough sleep, and inability to sleep?

Johann Callaghan (07:26)
Oh, Dave, do you know something? You hit the nail on the head when you said, what’s your relationship with sleep? Because I think that’s the bottom line, because there are a lot of people who deliberately deprive themselves of sleep. And there are also those people who desperately do want to get sleep, but they just can’t seem to do it. Right. So there’s these two different types of people. Sleep provides us with so many, so many benefits, you know, from

our brain working properly. This was only discovered in the last 15 years, I think, that we discovered these beta amyloid toxins in our brain that are washed out of our brain at night time when we’re asleep. And this was literally only discovered in the last 15 years. And there’s a connection with Alzheimer’s, you know, to these toxins in our brain. It helps us lay down our memories, our long -term memories, it gives us better cognitive function overall, our immune health.

our relationships, our mood, our hormonal health. I mean, the list goes on and on. The benefits that sleep can provide. And when we don’t relate to sleep in this way, what sleep can provide for us, then we don’t value sleep. And when we don’t value something, well, guess what? We’re not gonna prioritize it. And that’s the bottom line. So we need to fall in love with sleep again, Dave.

Dave Bricker (08:47)
And there’s your slogan right there, fall in love with sleep again. Keep that one. And I’m curious, can you get too much sleep? I know there’s a biological side to the sleep story and I imagine there’s also a psychological side of the story where people get depressed or stressed out and they end up hiding in bed instead of consciously living life. I do best, I think, on about six hours a night and if I get more or less, I feel foggy.

Johann Callaghan (08:52)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, everybody has a sweet spot. Look, you know, the recommended or guidelines is seven to nine hours for an adult, but it doesn’t have to be. That’s just a guideline. And this is why it’s really important that each individual understands how much sleep that they actually need. So basically when you wake up refreshed in the morning, so you know how much sleep you need, Dave. So that’s great. But we can’t sleep too much and we can’t sleep too little. But it’s individual. It’s down to the bio. It’s the bio individual.

And when we sleep too much, you see our bodies, we’re rhythmical creatures, creatures of rhythm, right? And we have this 24 hour cycle, the daytime, nighttime, this circadian rhythm that we call it. And from the time we were, you know, we were living in the caves, we’ve evolved with this daytime, nighttime. So by daytime, we’re awake and at nighttime, we’re asleep. And this is how we’ve evolved. So it’s not natural for us.

to be sleeping during the daytime. And it’s not natural for us to be up at night time, you know, to be up during the night. And this is why shift working is very, very difficult for a lot of people. And it can actually be detrimental long term because our body was never meant to be awake during the nighttime. So when we’re aligned with these rhythms, this is when we’re at our most healthiest because our body can work overall more optimally when we’re aligned with these rhythms. So yes, we can sleep too much and you will find…

A lot of people who experience anxiety or depression, they might not just want it. They have no purpose to get up for. They have nothing to get up for during the day. So, and I remember, I can relate to this because I did go through a period of depression after my daughter died. I went through a very long period of depression and I did not want to get out of bed. And the reason was I didn’t have to experience the pain. So I slept and I slept and I slept.

And that was very unnatural for my body and because our body is expecting us to be moving, our blood needs to move, the lymph needs to move, you know, and so it’s not natural. And then we talk about serotonin, it was making me even more depressed. So I think a lot of people can relate to that, but sleeping too much during the daytime can have detrimental effects just as much as sleeping too little, Dave.

Dave Bricker (11:38)
you

And it’s interesting, I think about, for example, these circadian rhythms, and these change through your lives. Like, making junior high and high school students get up at 5 .30 in the morning to go to school, they’re just not wired for that. They’re at a different sleep cycle in that part of their life. And then I think of a lot of people who do their routine Monday through Friday, and then Friday night, Saturday night, they’re partying till early hours of the morning and sleep.

Johann Callaghan (11:51)
Yes!

Dave Bricker (12:09)
until the crack of noon, I know that I do best. I get up at the same time every morning seven days a week because my body does not understand weekday versus weekend even if my intellectual being knows that I’ve got to tend to clients and projects on certain days and I can do what I want on others.

Johann Callaghan (12:16)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

That’s great, you know, because Monday is the day where most people are late going into work or calling in late or calling in sick. And it’s because we’ve shifted our rhythms over the weekend, you know, with all the partying and what have you. And it’s interesting what you mentioned about the teenagers, they actually have a shift in their rhythms. So their rhythms are later. That’s why it’s not normal for them to be waking up at five, six o ‘clock in the morning. I mean, they’re supposed to be still in their deep sleep at that stage, you know, so it’s very abnormal.

And I know that in the States a few of the schools have passed laws, I think in California, where they started school times later, eight and a half, I think they didn’t start any earlier than that. And it made a drastic difference, made a drastic difference. So yeah, so it’s a natural shift in teenagers. So for the parents out there, give your teenagers a break, it’s not their fault.

Dave Bricker (13:24)
It’s tough because obviously parents need to get up, get to work on their adult circadian rhythm and in order to do that they’ve got to do something with the kids. They can’t just leave the house and expect their 11 or 12 year old to just get themselves together to go to school. At least not in most cases. So let’s talk a little bit about sleep and creativity. I…

Johann Callaghan (13:43)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, great.

Dave Bricker (13:54)
Because this is really for for speakers authors thought leaders. This is so important now

My first book was a novel, and I flow -wrote it, which means I didn’t outline the plot or plan the characters. I sat down at my desk every morning and just held the pen for God, and I’d watch new material appear on the screen every day. And more often than not, it had very little to do with my conscious plans for that day’s chapter. And then when I knew the book was coming to a close, I had this big pile of loose odds and ends, and I had no idea what to do.

how I’d tie them all together. But the Lord works in mysterious ways, right? That last night, I woke up at 3 a .m. I was completely clear on how the story would come together. I got up, wrote the ending, and that was that. So talk about the impact of sleep on our creative processes. Sleep does more than just charge our body batteries, doesn’t it?

Johann Callaghan (14:45)
Yeah.

Oh, you know, we are multi -dimensional beings, right? And I, you know, a lot of people think that when you get sleep, it restores your energy. Yes, it does that on a physical level, but it also opens up our emotional health, our spiritual health, you know, that drive, that passion, what it is that you’re after, what it is you want to create in the world, what you want to do, you know, living into your future. And you have to be very imaginative to visualize that future that you want to live into.

And then when we’re talking about creativity as well, so the brain has many different parts to it. And, you know, when we talk about sleep, there’s the executive function and the amygdala and the reptilian brain and all the creativity is in there as well. But here’s the thing, Dave, right? Here’s the thing. When we don’t sleep well, we actually, we’ve all heard the word stress and we’re all…

We all have, and there’s different levels of stress and different areas of stress, emotional stress, mental stress, physical, there’s all of that. But the modern world that we’re living in, it’s really busy and high demanding, right? So we’re always on the go. It’s like we’re living in this groundhog day. We’re always on the go, like how it was for me years ago when I was in that job, but I said there has to be a different way. This just cannot be how we live our lives, right? We want ourselves into the ground.

But when we are stressed, when we don’t get sleep, when we don’t get adequate sleep, our body is in a hyper alert. It’s even more stressed because there’s more cortisol. This is the stress hormone. There’s more cortisol in the body. This is what causes us to eat more food, eat more of the wrong types of food. Now our blood sugars are out of balance. We can’t think straight now. We’ve got that with too much sugar in the system. But also…

We can’t, the executive function for the logical part, we can’t work. We’re working from the reptilian brain now and the amygdala where the subconscious, you know, where the automatic responses. So we’re living more from there. Right. Now, when we talk about creativity, right, in order to have this creativity, we need to feel safe. We need to. And when we feel safe,

We’re not on this hyper alert and our mind can be more open, more open to suggestion. It’s like having the helicopter view, the bird’s eye view. And this is where we can daydream in safety. You’ve heard of daydreaming, right? And it’s when we’re daydreaming is when we get these ideas or even in the middle of a dream when we’re dreaming at night time. So when we sleep well, Dave, our creativity opens up so much more. And a lot of people don’t connect us.

So if you’re doing a presentation, if you’re speaking on stage the next day and you’re worried about, you know, what it is that you’re going to say, when you get a good night of sleep, you can work from a place of flow instead of having to try and remember your lines. When you’re well slept, honest to God, when you’re well slept, you’re working from that place of flow. You’re an expert already, so you know your subject. So we want to get into a state of flow when we’re standing on that stage speaking, and we can do that when we have a good night of sleep.

Dave Bricker (18:02)
Amazing. So you’re tuned in to Speakipedia Media for aspiring and professional speakers and thought leaders who want to make more money by changing hearts, minds, and fortunes. My guest today is global speaker and sleep expert, Joanne Callahan.

Johann Callaghan (18:02)
Hope that answers your question.

Dave Bricker (18:22)
So let’s bring that last question home and talk about the dangerous myth that time spent sleeping is lost productivity. What are the impacts of sleep guilt?

Johann Callaghan (18:35)
Oh yes, oh my God. So there is a lot of people out there who, here’s the thing, right? There is how you’re feeling when you don’t sleep well at nighttime, right? Now there’s another layer on top of that as well that we start to worry about the fact that we didn’t sleep. This is called sleep anxiety. And then we might feel that the sleep guilt thing, oh, I didn’t, I didn’t, I yet.

It got too late before I went to bed last night or I shouldn’t have had that wine or I woke up too late yesterday morning or whatever it is. So we’re blaming ourselves, we’re sabotaging ourselves and that’s another layer that we’re adding on top of the fact that we haven’t slept well the night before. Here’s the thing, it’s actually natural to wake up during the night time in the middle of the night but it is also natural to be able to fall back asleep fairly quickly as well. This is the natural.

the natural process of sleep because we sleep in cycles. So we actually do wake up a few times during the night but we don’t wake up long enough for us to be conscious of it. So even if we do wake up, don’t worry about it if you need to go to the bathroom or whatever, it’s the anxiety and the clock watching. Oh, it’s five o ‘clock in the morning, I’ve only got one more hour of sleep and then we start the anxiety and start the cortisol. So when we can…

know that this is okay and be okay with it. It stops the anxiety and stops all the guilt and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, it’s just been aware and just knowing how sleep works and that it’s okay.

Dave Bricker (20:08)
Thanks.

It’s really kind of funny because how many times do we have a really important, say, 8 o ‘clock in the morning meeting? You wake up at 4 .30 in the morning and your brain, of course, you’re not in your logical self. You’re coming out of this kind of dream state. You’re not thinking super clearly, but it’s a little foggy half and half and say, oh my God, I have only three and a half hours to go. And intellectually, say, well, go back to sleep. It’s only going to take.

you an hour to get ready and get there. But no, you’re like, what if the alarm doesn’t go off? What if, and you get into this whole anxiety state, the next thing you know you’ve been lying in bed for two and a half hours. I think we all do that to some extent.

Johann Callaghan (20:55)
Yeah, we’ve all been there. We’ve all been there. And, you know, it’s interesting because we rely on the alarm clock and there’s something about the alarm clock. Like, I mean, listen to the name alarm, right? An alarm clock alarms us. And you don’t want to be woken up from a nice people’s slumber with an alarm clock.

And then the next thing we do is we snooze because we haven’t slept for all five more minutes, five more minutes. And that’s the worst thing that we can do, Dave, because we keep going deeper and deeper into a deep sleep. And then we’re left at the mercy of sleep inertia, which is where we get very, very groggy. And when you experience that sleep inertia, it can take three to four hours for that grogginess to leave. And that’s why we go for the cups of coffee first thing in the morning and another cup of coffee.

So if you do experience that where you’re anxious about waking up, when it does come to the time for you to wake up, just get up. It’s hard as it is. It would be more rewarding on your body if you’re like, I know it’ll be hard and uncomfortable, but get out of bed. Don’t hit that snooze button because we’ll end up in even worse.

Dave Bricker (22:02)
And there’s another side of that because I can remember a time in my life where at the advice of a friend and mentor, I did some pretty intense dream journaling. And if you just, when you wake up,

you’re kind of in transition and if you wake up and you train yourself, you get in the habit of grabbing a pen or pencil and a pad and writing down what you remember, you’ll find that you remember a lot more of your dreams than you think you do. And with some techniques that we don’t have time to get into today, you can discover all sorts of amazing insights about what’s going on in your subconscious, in your own head. And once you begin to make that a habit, you might have…

Johann Callaghan (22:26)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Bricker (22:49)
a dream for example where you receive a thank you card and that’s your subconscious saying hey thanks for paying attention i’m in here so there’s this whole world of of of dreams and subconscious processing that happens on another level and if we don’t engage in that allow time for that even though we may not be aware of that kind of processing that’s why it’s called the subconscious it’s very important to

to our well -being.

Johann Callaghan (23:21)
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m so glad you brought that up because our brainwaves change. Our brainwaves change. And as creatives, as a speaker, you know, as a speaker, presenter, educator, being able to access these creative ideas, you know, how you’re going to present something or an idea or a practice that you’re going to do or something that you’re writing, a book even or whatever, right.

Do you know some of the most great inventions and song lyrics from some of the most famous composers came to them at night time? You know, these creations came through a dream. So there is lucid dreaming that we can do and there’s loads of ways. I mean, people can look it up on YouTube. There’s loads of ways that we can do lucid dreaming, but also accessing that subconscious to the best times to do that is right before you go to bed as you’re drifting into sleep at night time.

And when you wake up first thing in the morning. So as you’re lying in bed and I do this every morning, I actually create intentions for my day as I’m waking up and that positive kind of that positive feeling where I’m going to do what I want to achieve today. But there’s something I want to say to you as well is mental rehearsal and your audience can look this up as well. So when it comes to speaking on stage, I remember my very first talk on stage, right?

I was a bag of nerves, right? And I’m sure all the speakers were a bag of nerves at one point, right? When they started out. But I was so nervous that I did not show up for my own event day, right? So nervous. Yeah. And so what happened was, now I did eventually turn up. My mentor got on the phone to me and had a few words at me and talked me through the process, told me not to think about it. He told me what to do. Just get in the car, drive. Don’t think about it because your brain will talk you out of it.

I did show up eventually. I was a bit late, but I did show up for my own events and I did take that stage. But here’s the thing. Afterwards, what I learned was with the dream and I’m not have you, I started mentally rehearsing my talks. I could visualize myself on the stage, going out onto the stage full of energy and, you know, first impressions kind of last and your audience will pick up from your energy and your energy is really, really important. So I visualized myself.

lots of energy walking out there on the stage. My projection was great and I was eye contact with everybody and there was applause and I imagined all of that and I really felt into it and it’s a great way to do a mental rehearse because a lot of speakers they may have imposter syndrome or oh I’m not good enough or what if I

mess up or whatever and it doesn’t matter if you mess up because that brings out the human side of you so be okay if you do do a mess up just continue on you’re the expert in your area you know your topic right so mental rehearsal is a great thing that we can do as well Dave.

Dave Bricker (26:13)
I love that.

It’s very interesting that we use the word dream not only for what happens when we’re asleep, but we talk about creating our dreams, realizing our dreams. Dreams are our goal setting. Dreams are visualizing yourself in better circumstances. And we use that word dream so naturally. We don’t even think about its literal meaning. We don’t even consider that it’s a metaphor for something that’s very conscious and a very important part of.

storytelling. And also quick story just because this is so fascinating. A friend of mine is a computer programmer and he had a very difficult problem. He was just unable to get something to work.

Johann Callaghan (26:45)
Yep, absolutely, absolutely.

Dave Bricker (26:59)
Bing, three o ‘clock in the morning, he wakes up, he knows the answer. Oh, that’s how you do it. He sits down at the keyboard, writes the code, makes it work, goes back to sleep, gets up in the morning and looks at it and says, I don’t understand it. I know it works, but… So there’s all sorts of processes going on. And I love the idea that you’ve built speaking and coaching programs around this topic of sleep.

Johann Callaghan (27:16)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Bricker (27:29)
But you also have to sell those programs and that competes, you have to compete with sexy, trendy topics like AI, employee retention, leadership, diversity, equity, inclusion, et cetera. And I’ve got to imagine because my topic is storytelling, right? Some people say, sleep, I’ve been doing that since the day I was born. What kind of a topic is that?

So for those of us who have a “soft” speaking topic, so to speak, how do you change that conversation from price to value?

Johann Callaghan (28:04)
Yeah, brilliant. So look, here’s the thing. Like I said at the very beginning, we’re living in this hyper connected digital world, always on the go, never switched off. We’re always on our mobile phones, right? Our stress response, we have two parts to our nervous system and we’re always in that fight or flight, right? And if we go back to the cave times and we lived in the caves, we very easily switched between these two parts of our nervous system. So we’re not doing that now, right? So we’re hyper, hyper on the go all the time.

So there’s a lot of people now getting burnt out and especially entrepreneurs, coaches and look even coaches who are doing health coaching themselves, right? Because they’re, and look at the way the money situation is now at the moment and interest rates and all this rising prices, all this sort of thing. And people have this relationship with money as well that they need to have this one. The money conversation is a difficult one, right? We won’t go down that road.

But there’s all these challenges and all these beliefs that we have, we don’t have enough. And again, it’s coming back to this feeling of not being safe. So we’re in this continuous stress response and it’s burning us out. So when we recognize this and we recognize how rest during the daytime as well as sleeping well at night time, it’s what that can provide for us. It’s not just the process of sleeping at night time. It’s having a look and identifying and.

being aware and understanding what sleep can provide for us. It can provide us with a stronger immune system. We went through this episode a few years ago and sleep was probably the greatest asset we had, you know, for fighting infections and all this sort of thing. Sleep, we absolutely need, because most of our immune system is made at night time when we’re sleeping. We need sleep for healing and repair and we need sleep for our creativity. But we also need sleep for productivity as well. So when we are tired,

We’re not accessing that creativity part of our brain. We’re not accessing that flow state that we can easily get into. We can’t switch between these two parts of our nervous system. We’re always in the stress response. And this is what is causing us to be burnt out, high blood sugar levels, the diabetes thing, the overweight, that’s an epidemic in itself. You know, there’s all these chronic diseases that are emerging. And for other reasons too, it’s not just sleep.

But because we’re not sleeping well, it’s not helping the process. So we need sleep on so many different levels. But how I sell it, if you like, to people and look, when I use the word sell, sell doesn’t necessarily have to be a monetary thing. You know, we sell the idea to our children of going to bed at night time or they have to go to school or whatever. But when we the way I sell the idea is that it’s what sleep can provide for you. Sleep can provide you with more energy.

which will enable you to have more productivity, more vitality in your life. It will help you feel so much better, have greater relationships with your spouse, with your children, with your co -workers. Look at all the great things that sleep can provide you. So it’s not just the process of sleep and making you feel less tired. It’s so much more Dave.

Dave Bricker (31:13)
Yeah, and, hey, “You look a little tired. Why don’t you go grab an hour of power nap? Said nobody’s boss ever. And it strikes me that you’ve got an important contribution to make to this larger conversation everyone’s having about corporate culture. Because this idea, just sit at your desk, fight it off, pretend you’re not tired, take another coffee. We’re not at our best.

Johann Callaghan (31:37)
Yeah.

Dave Bricker (31:39)
I’ve got a client who does that and I mean I’m sure if I texted her at three o ‘clock in the morning I’d get an instant reply and it’s like thus I’m the opposite if I’m getting burnt out and feeling unproductive it’s like oh I’ve got two hours in my schedule I’m gonna go take a nap because I will be more productive maybe I’ll work later and make up the time but it’s not time it’s value it’s productivity and and I think that you

Johann Callaghan (31:48)
Mm -hmm.

Yes.

Dave Bricker (32:09)
you have a very important contribution to make to that conversation.

Johann Callaghan (32:15)
Absolutely, absolutely, Dave, because you know what, when you can tap into what your body needs and give it that and care for yourself, you know, we heard mind yourself, self care, but we need to be able to listen to our body. We’ve heard that term, listen to our body, but know how we’re feeling, you know, am I feeling tired? Do I feel like I need to have a little rest here? I had a little nap this afternoon right before we got on here, Dave, when we were before we start recording, I was telling you.

and I needed that and I just said, you know what, put the laptop down, put everything away, I need to have a little rest and I did that and it was great and it served me well. So we need to listen to our bodies. There is all this tech, you know, techware that we’re using these days and look, that’s kind of good as well but I’m not a fan of it because people are coming to me and they’re saying to me, oh Joanne, my watch says that I didn’t get enough deep sleep last night. My watch says blah, blah, blah and I’m like,

Yeah, that’s great, but what about you? How are you feeling? So we’re relying on our tech a lot more. Plus, now an awful lot of people have this, there is a name for it, I can’t remember it, but it’s an anxiety. It’s a type of anxiety where we’re using these tech devices as crutches, that we feel the need to have them all the time. So there’s an anxiety around it. So just be aware of that for everybody who uses tech devices. They are good, I’m not putting them down, but don’t be worried.

I actually run it 365 days, 7 days a week, you know.

Dave Bricker (33:43)
Yeah, yeah, I love that lesson. Listen to your body. So Joanne, we write our books and we put our programs together and then we have to deliver these programs. Tell us about your journey from expert to speaker. How have you developed your presentation skills and what recommendations can you make to speakers or teachers or other people who want to up their speaking game?

Johann Callaghan (33:49)
Mm -hmm.

Well, this is great because in the business that I run, right, there’s many different parts to it. It’s like a wheel. There’s many different spokes to the wheel. So there’s the speaking, obviously speaking on stage. There’s virtual speaking as well. But it’s not just speaking. I do. I have my own podcast, Empowering Family Health, which you’re going to appear on as well. And I have my book. I have my online courses. And I have masterminds. I have just all these other.

I do guest speaking as well. Other people pay me to speak to their groups. But in all of that, it’s very challenging for an entrepreneur when you’re starting off. Now, I was lucky because I had a lot of IT skills. So I was able to play around with the likes of my email autoresponder. It’s very important to build your email list. It’s very important to have a free gift that you can give away to people.

like in the ebook or a short video course or whatever it is, something digital maybe, that’s not going to cost you to post it out all the time type of thing, just an easy download and that way you’re giving them a free gift in exchange for an email. Now you know those people are interested in what you do. And it’s a sales funnel, so you build your sales funnel and you have different price points for your courses. So…

Like you can have a six week course like I do and that just gives people a little taster. It’s a lower price point and then they can go up to my three month group coaching program and so on and there are different higher price points. But people need to get a feel for who you are. They need to feel that they trust you because especially in the coaching area there can be a lot of vulnerable stuff that can come up and your client needs to be able to trust you. Like they really, really do. And your story of the reason why.

I’m teaching the importance of sleep. That’s important as well. So I have my story of not being able to sleep. And I told you when I went through that depression, I was sleeping all day long and I got very sick as a result of it. I also wasn’t able to sleep. My husband had sleep apnea for years and I never even realized it. We have the sleep divorce thing going on now. He sleeps in a separate room because it just doesn’t work for us to sleep in the same room. When I was young, my father was an alcoholic. I had lots and lots of experiences.

I’ve not been able to sleep at night time and now I absolutely value my sleep. I so value my sleep. I really and now that I’m middle age as well and the whole menopause, perimenopause thing, so a lot of the professional women would be very challenged with that as well. And even if they’re working in a workplace, if they’re employed by somebody, they’re working nine to five or whatever, that can be very, very challenging. And most of those women, the biggest challenge that they have is sleep.

because their hormones are interfering with their ability to sleep all these change in hormones. So it’s a big, big topic. It’s a big, big area. And when we can sleep well, our stress response, we’re able to regulate, self -regulate more easily and the hormones be more balanced. You can have better relationships. So, yeah, so back to the courses. So there’s different various courses and it’s a sales funnel and there’s loads of different spokes to the wheel as well, Dave.

Dave Bricker (37:30)
Love it. So as we move toward the close of this interview, can you share a few strategies that our listeners and viewers can use to improve their sleeping habits? What are some of the basics?

Johann Callaghan (37:46)
Oh, there’s loads, but the basics, Dave, like if I was just to, you know, meet someone in a restaurant or whatever, the basics, what I would say to people is, so I talked about the circadian rhythm and I cannot, I cannot say this enough. We are creatures of rhythm, right? First thing in the morning when we wake up, it’s really important that we get outside as soon as we can after we wake up. It literally resets our circadian rhythm. And there’s a little timer inside our brain that goes off.

It sets a timer for 16 hours from the time you wake up in the morning and present yourself to the sun. So when you that literally switches off your melatonin, which is your sleep hormone, and it turns on the cortisol. So we need cortisol to get us up in the morning. Cortisol is naturally highest in the morning and it’s supposed to be this is the natural way. So our hormones have rhythms as well. So cortisol highest in the morning, lowest in the evening. At least it’s supposed to be lowest in the evening, right? But in our world, it’s not always that way.

So sunshine first thing in the morning is probably the best thing that we can do to reset our circadian rhythm. And the rays of the sun are really, really important because it’s information to the body what time of day it is. So even in sunshine is very good as well, sunrise, sunset, because it’s telling the body. So there’s all these orangey glows of the sun. It’s really important information to the body what time of day it is as well.

So I would say that in terms of getting in line with the circadian rhythm, watch what you eat, don’t eat too late before you go to bed. We were never designed to digest food late at night time and especially don’t eat sugary things. I don’t know about you Dave but a lot of people here in Ireland when they have their dinner and we have our dinner late in the evening when they come home from work and then they have a dessert, they’ll have ice cream or a cake and that’s full of sugar like you know on top of a meal. So it’s no wonder we’re all getting bigger.

and diabetes is an issue and blood sugars and all that sort of thing. And that’s adding to our inability to sleep well at night time. So there are two main simple little things, I suppose. Exercise is really important during just movement. I don’t even like the word exercise movement because that’s information to the body that we’re moving around its daytime. So there are just a few simple little things that we can do to help us be in alignment with our circadian rhythm and help us sleep better at night.

Dave Bricker (40:07)
And that’s wonderful. More sunrises and sunsets. Well, that’s tough medicine to swallow, right? I mean, we should all do more of that. So Joanne Callahan, where can our viewers and listeners learn more about you and your programs? How can we stay connected to you?

Johann Callaghan (40:16)
Easy peasy.

Well I’m all over social media so Joanne Callaghan, I spell my name J -O -H -A -N -N, long story, we won’t go into that. Joanne Callaghan and joanncallaghan .com is my website but I’m all over social media, just Google me, you’ll see loads of interviews and where I’ve appeared so Joanne Callaghan, yeah that’s great Dave.

Dave Bricker (40:46)
that. So Joanne, thank you so much for being a guest on Speakipedia Media. I’ve really had a great time today.

Johann Callaghan (40:54)
Thank you Dave so much and listen sleep well tonight.

Dave Bricker (40:57)
You too. I’m Dave Bricker inviting you to explore the world’s most comprehensive resource for speakers and storytellers at speakeepedia .com. If you’re watching this on social media video, please love, subscribe, and share your comments. If you’re listening to the podcast, keep your hands on the wheel, stay safe, and I’ll see you on the next episode of Speakeepedia Media.