Moderator: 0:01

Welcome to the Empowering Healthy Business podcast, THE podcast for small business owners. Your host, Cal Wilder, has built and sold businesses of his own and he has helped hundreds of other small businesses. Whether it is improving sales, profitability and cash flow; building a sustainable, scalable and saleable business; reducing your stress level, achieving work life balance, or improving physical and emotional fitness, Cal and his guests are here to help you run a healthier business, and in turn, have a healthier life.

Cal Wilder: 0:35

Welcome. So this podcast is really all about running a healthy business, and we can all bring more energy to our businesses when we're feeling healthy personally. And I think a lot of us might default to thinking about diet and exercise when it comes to things that can really impact our own health. But I think there's some other pillars of health as well, and one of those is sleep, which I personally think is an under appreciated nutrient. In this episode, I'm going to be speaking with Matt Beedle about a whole bunch of topics related to sleep. You know, why it matters, and ultimately, how we can improve our sleep. So welcome to the podcast, Matt.

Matt Beedle: 1:14

Absolute pleasure being here. Super grateful to you again, and I'll be very happy to sort of share some value with you guys, to hopefully help everyone grow their business a little bit more.

Cal Wilder: 1:26

So what got you interested in studying sleep and making a career out of this topic?

Matt Beedle: 1:36

Not to sound overly dramatic, but I got interested in sleep because I think I wouldn't be here if I hadn't. So it was, it was literally to save my life. My sleep had been terrible most of my life. It was particularly bad about three, four years ago, I'd full-on insomnia. I was waking up every day at two, 3am without any prevail. And it was slowly ruining my life. I didn't get much success with doctors or with the general healthcare system available to me. So I really just took, decided to go full on into actually learning about sleep so I could fix my own problems. To be quite frank, it was purely selfish reasons. Shortly after drastically improving my sleep, I just started thinking, well, if this was my experience, maybe I'm not alone, and this could be something to actually help other people. I'm not the I shouldn't be the only one who has to suffer this. So I hope that's not too dramatic, but it's the actual truth. I can only be honest. That's why I go into sleep.

Cal Wilder: 2:49

All right, so maybe we can do a little bit of sleep science 101. Most people, we think maybe we lie down, the body turns off for 6,7,8, maybe, hopefully, eight hours every night. But there's a lot that goes on when we're sleeping. What what do you see as the purpose of sleep, and why is it so important?

Matt Beedle: 3:13

It's quite an interesting philosophical question. I need to state off the bat, I'm not a scientist, so I can't explain in great detail how sleep spindles work, or theta waves or beta waves and all of this. But in very simple terms, our brain is phenomenally active when we're sleeping. It's not nothing's happening. There's all sorts of mechanisms happening between REM sleep, deep sleep, light sleep, the chemicals, chemicals being released from your brain. The brain is so active during sleep that some people have asked this question, which is basically, is our brain designed for sleep rather than for wakefulness?

Cal Wilder: 4:04

And so when we don't get enough sleep, how does that affect us? They're pros of getting a great night's sleep, and then there's cons of getting too little sleep. And so could you walk us through kind of as a society, what are we bearing through generally poor sleep habits these days?

Matt Beedle: 4:26

What I normally say to myself and to other people is, if there's two versions of you, one with a good night's sleep and one with a very bad night's sleep, who's going to win? It's the same answer every time. If it's that version of you who's not as good turning up one day a week that's 14% of your life, two days a week that's 28% of your life. You see where I'm going with this. A lot of people are having a diminished version of themselves turning up 3,4,5 days a week. If you've got a worse version of you that much of the week, just imagine the impact on society. Cars are crashing because the person was too tired. Operations that have been messed up because the surgeon's too tired. Business decisions being messed up because the person's too tired. Relationships falling apart because one person was too tired. I don't want to be on the negative, but it's, it's pretty-- when you really look at on the macro scale-- it's, the impact is ginormous. There's a RAND study in 2016 which they estimated the cost the US economy per year was about $416 billion due to poor sleep. And a lot of people sleep communities saying this is grossly low. It's probably five times that. But even if it's $416 billion, this is 2016 by the way, it's an enormous impact. It's huge.

Cal Wilder: 6:14

So I think we might generally agree sleep is a problem for us. But what does good sleep actually look like? What should people be aiming for when it comes to sleep? You know, duration or scheduling, consistency, you know, what does good sleep really look like?

Matt Beedle: 6:31

I mean, one of the issues of sleep is extremely subjective, and it's very different for many different people. So one of the things that was a big eye opener for me is how much of your sleep is dictated by genetics. So some people genetically are totally fine on five, six hours sleep. Not many, but some people are. While a lot of people need way more than that. So there is no one size fits all advice I can give because there is a lot of variation. But I think safe rules to follow is, how do you feel? Can you get through the day without coffee? If the answer is an absolute, no, you're not sleeping enough. Period. Are you often yawning, desperately needing to nap all the time, possibly another sign that you're not sleeping enough, or the quality of your sleep isn't enough. And as a general rule of thumb, the average person needs around seven to nine hours sleep. And that's sleep. It's not time in bed. So I say this because time in bed is not the same as sleep. We all have something, and I don't know, like some viewers, this might seem too basic, I don't want to go too complex, but we all have something called sleep efficiency, which is basically how much time we're actually fully sleeping. And the average person has a sleep efficiency of about 85 to 90%. So to get to get seven hours sleep, you normally need about eight hours, eight minutes in bed. So to get eight hours sleep, you normally need nine hours, 12 minutes, something around this. Which is going to shock and maybe upset people who obviously want to be working and being in their mind productive as long as possible, but this is the actual reality of how to get enough sleep.

Cal Wilder: 8:31

When I first started focusing on sleep myself, several years ago, I got one of those wearable Oura rings. Which is very interesting to collect some of that data. Yes, I still wear it, although it's usually not charged at this point, because I kind of got to know what a good night's sleep means for me. To keep collecting data every single day about it, and worrying about the data every single day. But you know, it was very interesting to see the efficiency, and you know, the time to fall asleep, periods during the night when you're up and active not sleeping, going through the different estimated sleep cycles. So yeah, very interesting data you can parse through, right? You mentioned genetics. So how does somebody go about figuring out any genetic variants that they have that may impact their sleep?

Matt Beedle: 9:29

You can get a DNA test. So a number of DNA test companies now have sleep genetics as one of their packages or within their current packages. So you can actually find out a lot from your genetics, and even better is trial and error and actually seeing what works for you. The reason I think genetics is important is there are people who are feeling very tired because they're living a schedule that just isn't in line with their genetics. And it's not their fault. So you'll have some people who have DNA to be a night owl, which means they really want to go to bed at 11, midnight, 1am and maybe they're also unlucky, and they have DNA for needing longer sleep, which I have for the record, which means they need eight, nine, maybe more to be healthy, and then you got these people then getting up at 6am and they are they're going to bed. They're trying to go to bed at 10, but can't fall asleep. And it's just a lot of it's down to that person's genetics. So it's a mixture of getting DNA tests or trial and error, actually finding out what works for you. And I very much appreciate a lot of people are thinking right now, well, it's not my fault, like my job means I have to get up at this time. And there is just a sad reality. The world we're in, the post-industrial world, isn't very friendly to most people's sleep. We're living in this sort of man-made paradigm, which is not natural. And sadly, there are winners and losers from that, and some people are losing the genetic lottery when it comes to their sleep.

Cal Wilder: 11:16

So what we're talking a lot about is the number of hours of sleep. In your research, how important is your schedule, or the consistency of when you're sleeping those hours versus the total number of hours? Or thinking, well, I may be busy during the week, but I'll catch up over the weekend, or things like that.

Matt Beedle: 11:37

It's tricky. I think I could, I could go about what's optimal, but I can also talk about what's realistic. I think the reality is a lot of people running businesses. I'm I run a business. I work long hours. I totally feel that. Feel it myself. It's hard to just go to bed every single day at the same time, and sometimes we do need to do some catch up, clear the sleep debt over the weekends. My advice around this is, I think that's okay, as long as long as that isn't going on forever. If every single weekend is a sleep hangover, where you're catching up desperately catch up from your sleep, sadly, that that will catch up with you. There is no you can't catch up and lost sleep so easily. The damage is can, as does, get done if you let that go on for a long time in terms of sleep consistency. I mean, a very recent study just some 2420 24 I think it was this year, or just end the last year, as done on the UK blood bank data like 20,000 person study, and that showed that consistency of sleep had a bigger impact on mortality than the length of sleep. So even if you're not sleeping long enough, by being consistent, you should, at least, according to science, get a lot of the benefits in terms of longevity that you'd get from sleeping long. So if there are people out there who can't sleep long, at least if they can make it as consistent as possible, they'd be doing themselves a great favor.

Cal Wilder: 13:18

So when you start doing some reading on sleep, you inevitably end up reading through the stages of sleep and REM sleep, deep sleep, light sleep, 90 minute sleep cycles. What's important to understand about the different stages of sleep?

Matt Beedle: 13:38

Honestly, I don't think it's important to normal people to know about that.

Cal Wilder: 13:45

The body knows what it's doing. Just let it do its thing.

Matt Beedle: 13:48

Yeah, because, first of all, okay, I wear an Oura. I wear a Garmin. I'm actually, I've ordered a whoop as well, so I'm gonna have a whoop as well. But I only do this for making YouTube videos and for collecting data to prove a point. If I wasn't a sleep influencer, I wouldn't wear any of these things to be quite honest with you. They're neither fully accurate, I believe, with aura and whoop, they're about 50 to 60% accurate when it comes to sleep cycles, which isn't great. So I wouldn't worry about rem and deep sleep per se. If someone's very worried about their deep sleep or their REM sleep, they're probably better off getting a PSG in a sleep clinic and having a sleep technician look at their scores. That's probably the only way you're going to get a good understanding of what your REM and deep sleep is. I can give basic advice on how to improve these things, but in terms of going into deep about these, I wouldn't recommend people put too much their time into that.

Cal Wilder: 14:51

Okay, so I know in my experience, once I'm in a groove for a number of days and weeks of good, regular sleep, I don't have to worry about falling asleep or sleeping through most of the night, and I'm generally good to go. But if I go through a period where I'm sleeping inconsistently, I'm working on projects, I'm traveling, something's disrupting my regular sleep, you know, it takes a lot, takes at least a few days, to kind of get back into the regular routine. And you're tempted to want to do things to help promote sleep, to get you into a better routine. And so I'm aware of some supplements. People will do alcohol or cannabis. They'll some people take prescription sleeping medication. You know, I think this is all done, you know, with the intent to do it temporarily, to get your body into a good sleeping routine. But it seems like some of these things are counterproductive, potentially. So in your research, what are you seeing people do to help promote better sleep for themselves? And you know, which of these would you support, and which ones do you think could be counterproductive?

Matt Beedle: 16:05

It's funny you say that, because every six months,

Cal Wilder: 16:05

Okay, so if somebody thinks they're getting poor I rank all the sleep habits from best to worst, and I make a video or post LinkedIn about it, so I'll look at it right now. So habits that people do that I think are terrible-- alcohol to sleep. I mean, drinking alcohol to fall asleep is probably the worst thing you can possibly do. Sleeping pills, antidepressants-- I think if you're in a very bad place and you need an SOS, they obviously have their place. But as a medium to long term way to fix your sleep, they're normally a terrible idea. You don't get proper sleep under them, and it can be very addictive all these sort of Instagram Tiktok mocktails, cocktails to fall asleep, if you actually look at science and normally just total garbage. They're not really helping sleep at all. Cannabis, THC, will wreck your REM sleep. Generally speaking, it's not advised at all. CBD isn't as bad, but it's, I think, as you say, it's a temporary measure, it might help, but as a long term mechanism to improve your sleep, it isn't helpful at all. And the same with the supplements, nearly none of the supplements work as well as people think. Probably the best one is maybe melatonin, which I know is available over the counter in the US. But even then, this is like, if you look at the clinical data on melatonin, it will improve your sleep by like 2%. So is maybe a pick me up or to maybe help adjust your rhythm after jet lag or something. I think melatonin can have its use. But as a general rule, nearly I'd say 90% of the advice on sleep that people are trying to do based on Tiktok, Instagram, what their friends tell them, Facebook groups, normally isn't very good. It's normally made to sell a product or to offer a quick fix rather than fix the real problem. So I hope I didn't go on too much of a rant there, Calvin. That's kind of my opinion about it. sleep, not enough sleep, or poor quality sleep, or both, where do they start in trying to improve their sleep? What's the process you think they should follow?

Matt Beedle: 18:44

I mean, one of the reasons I got into what I'm doing is the frustration of trying lots of different things and nothing working. That's literally what I was doing four or five years ago. I was just trying-- I'm gonna do CBD. I'm gonna buy a new bed. I'm gonna buy new bed covers. I'm gonna get black out curtains. I'll just try random things. Some things worked, some things didn't, but I guess the best thing I could say is try not to be random if you really, really want to improve your sleep. And I mean really wanting to, because a lot of people say they do, but they don't really want to change. I'm just being harsh, but it's the truth. Then you have to start looking at the real causes. If you look at the real causes of your poor sleep, that's how you'll actually improve your sleep. So I can talk you through what the real causes are, if you like.

Cal Wilder: 19:37

Yeah, please do.

Matt Beedle: 19:39

So the number one cause from my experience is mental health and mindset. There's a stress, anxiety, trauma, limiting beliefs, poor ways of thinking, gremlins in our head, being overrun, being burnt out. All these things relate to mental health is the number one reason most people are struggling with sleep. So this is an area I implore anyone to really put time into improving their mental health. The second, which isn't very far behind, is physical issues, particularly around sleep apnea. So a lot of people have issues with breathing through their nose, or they've got issues with the airways. And the estimation is 20% of population have sleep apnea, but only. But out of that 20% of population, only 20% have actually been diagnosed. So we've got a huge number of people who have sleep apnea who don't even know it. So for anyone who's listening, I implore you, if you snore or if you have any symptoms of sleep apnea, choking in the night, waking up tired, waking up middle of night, things like this, to take the stop band quiz and to book in with a doctor to get a sleep study, because it's such a crazy number of people have this and they don't know. So sleep apnea, your nose, how you breathe, and then the other factors behind poor sleep are causational. Would be your lifestyle. So choices during the day, such as caffeine, alcohol, poor habits, sleep, procrastination, and then two lesser known causes, which I don't want to talk too much about, would be your genetics, and would also be sometimes your bedroom itself. So if you struggle to sleep in your bedroom, but you sleep fine elsewhere, maybe your bedroom is just very poorly set up. But the two main things, physical health, mental health, which I appreciate are big topics, but this is really where you can get the most bang for your buck in terms of improving your sleep.

Cal Wilder: 22:02

Yeah, my perspective is the body knows what it's doing most of the time. And so if we can remove the disruptions, the body wants to sleep, and probably does a pretty good job sleeping if we let it, right? That's what I'm more or less hearing you say too.

Matt Beedle: 22:17

Absolutely. We all know how to sleep. So if we forgotten, something, something has to be changed.

Cal Wilder: 22:25

So let me ask you a couple specific questions about bedroom environment. So inclined beds are something that I've used, to try it under the theory it would improve the glymphatic circulation at night, when your brain fluid circulates and is cleaned. I don't know if that's true or not. I've tried to find as much research as I can, but it's a practice I've adopted since there's a little bit of dementia that's in my family. I want to try to protect myself as much as I can. Do you know anything about inclined beds?

Matt Beedle: 23:07

I've heard of a few studies around it. I don't believe they're like the best studies ever. I don't think they're like double blind, randomized trials or anything. But in all fairness, very few things are that well studied in sleep. Sleep's pretty new area of science compared to other areas of medicine. When it comes to inclined beds, one area I know they can definitely help with is actually with sleep apnea. Because if you're more at an angle, be it your head, due to if you've got a pillow raising your head up, or if your beds at an angle, it actually reduces the pressure on the on your throats and on your airways. So it it can actually have a benefit in that regard. So I would have nothing bad to say about inclined beds having a slight incline, especially if you've got apnea symptoms, it can, it can genuinely relieve some of your sleep issues. So it could. I don't think it's a it's going to change most people's sleep, but there will be some people who will benefit a lot from that.

Cal Wilder: 24:12

OK, yeah, I'm talking about kind of a 5% incline where the head of the bed maybe six inches higher than the foot of the bed. And then I haven't done a lot of sleep hacks, but you hear about, you know, cooling blankets, or heavy blankets that weigh you down, or, pads that will cool the mattress, all kinds of different things like that. What's your perspective Are-- do those have merit? Or should people focus more on what you described as what you think the more real causes of sleep problems are?

Matt Beedle: 24:50

It's a good question. I mean, ultimately, if it works for the person, and that's great. I'll never want to say something doesn't work if it actually works for somebody. It's just like, if it works, it works. I know the science on weighted blankets is okay. It's not exactly-- there's like three or four studies on it, and there's some that show it works. My girlfriend uses a weighted blanket. So I think some people do genuinely get benefit from weighted blankets. Cooling mattresses or cooling blankets, I just say, why not? It's okay. It's just a case of, if you have serious sleep issues, you will get more return on investment by looking at the bigger problems, that's all. But nonetheless, I said mental health is a big issue, and for some people, just being in a weighted blanket makes them feel secure. It helps them get over traumas easier. Therefore they sleep easier. So there is merits in that. There's no doubt, but it can be a distraction for a lot of people that's all.

Cal Wilder: 25:57

So when you're working with a client, and I know everybody could be a little bit different, but what's the standard bedtime routine or standard process that you'd advise somebody to follow from, you know, when they more or less finish working at five or six or seven o'clock at the end of the afternoon to when they're want to fall asleep? What does that process look like optimally?

Matt Beedle: 26:23

I've learned this the hard way. I used to make these very complex morning routines, evening routines, and over time, I realized a lot of entrepreneurs, business people, high performers, they haven't got time for that. They're working a lot. They have very little time. They need time with their family. They need time to unwind, just like I'm sure you're for yourself. So my advice around nighttime routines is just keeping it extremely simple and something that you can do consistently. The key to it is that you can actually do it. If you've got this crazy, long and complex routine that you're not going to do because it's too hard or we can't do it consistently, there's no point. So I always recommend super, super basic stuff, like try if you're going to do some journaling before bed, start by just trying to a minute. A minute's journaling before bed might seem nothing. Might seem too little, but it beats nothing. If you're doing zero journaling last week and this week you do one minute, that's a big increase. Same with meditation, if you would rather do that. So I think just keeping these little base things very small, very digestible, and just start one thing at a time, if your nighttime routine is at the moment, is just watching TV and then having a drink of water, then going to beds, instead of totally changing that, I think it's just better to be Okay, watch TV, but finish five minutes earlier than you normally would. Get some water, if that's what you're doing, do some journaling for one minute, then go to bed, and when that works, then slowly add things at work. But I think the main thing with a nighttime routine is just trying to give your body and your brain some time to digest today and just to relax, because if you don't relax, then your brain's going to be thinking as soon as you hit the pillow, because it's not had the time to digest the feelings and emotions that have happened that day. So that's that's really what you want to achieve. But I recommend really small, basic things that don't overcomplicate it.

Cal Wilder: 28:39

And then as far as the actual bedroom environment, what does the data tell us about temperature, light, sound, watching TV in the bedroom? You know, you know the physical environment that you're trying to sleep in.

Matt Beedle: 28:59

I don't focus super hard in this area, I've got to admit. I'm not aware of all the science from what I do understand, generally, science around bedding and a lot of these areas isn't super conclusive. There is a lot of science, however, around light. And there's a lot of science around temperature. Temperature is super important. It is temperature that literally dictates us falling asleep. Falling asleep happens when our core body temperature drops. So having a room that's cool, that remains a fairly stable temperature during the night, is a massive advantage when it comes to sleep. And that's backed by the studies. It's very conclusive. So I can strongly recommend, if you can get your bedroom to around 18-19, Celsius. Well, that isn't Fahrenheit. I don't know it of top of my head. I am British. I'm sorry for that.

Cal Wilder: 30:02

I think that's probably low-to-mid 60 degrees.

Matt Beedle: 30:07

So that that will help with sleep a lot. In terms of light, there's a lot of debate around light. And as far as I'm aware, there's no super hard consensus around blue light or around how impactful light really is on sleep. There are different opinions on both sides. It does have some impact. So obviously, anyone is advised to try and reduce the lights in their room, in their house, in the evening.

Cal Wilder: 30:42

Yeah.

Matt Beedle: 30:44

Go ahead.

Cal Wilder: 30:47

I'm pretty traditional. I like it cold, dark and quiet when I'm trying to sleep. So I'm personally very sensitive to light.

Matt Beedle: 30:59

Well actually on that note, having darkness during sleep is very important. There's no debate around that. So having blackout curtains or having an eye mask, especially if you're in a city with streetlights, is super important. I certainly can back that quite easily. And I recommend everyone, if you have issues with lights in your bedroom, to really invest in some blackout curtains.

Cal Wilder: 31:29

Yeah, I remember there's a study of mice, I believe, that were being kept in cages that were supposed to be dark. And the mice were getting sick during the study, kind of unrelated to what they were getting studied for. And the researchers of the lab realized there were some small holes or seams in the cages, and light was getting in there at night. And so they kind of concluded the kind of 24 hour exposure to light that these animals were receiving was making them sick. And I thought, wow, that's an incredible discovery, let's figure out how we apply that in society. But instead, they got new cages that were impenetrable to light and carried on.

Matt Beedle: 32:22

It's logical, right? It's so obvious when we think about it. So I really feel for people in environments like hospitals or warehouses at night where there's this is constant light, it's very, very difficult.

Cal Wilder: 32:39

So how do you work with clients Matt, when people engage with you? What kind of a process do you go through with them?

Matt Beedle: 32:49

Yep, so first of all, we try and understand the real cause of that issue. So I have a quiz. It's on my website. It's on my community as well, on school.com. It's a two minute quiz. The client takes a quiz, and the quiz will more or less indicate the most likely causes of their poor sleep. Once we know the most likely causes, we talk about what, why they're the causes, what could be causing it, and we just make some really basic, actionable steps. Most of my clients I catch up with once every two weeks, because they're business owners, they're managing people, they're busy. They haven't got time to be tracking all their data or filling in lots of sheets, or like -- they've got too much on their on their to do lists. So we keep it really simple. We talk, we understand the problem, and we make some suggestions how to deal with that problem. Two weeks later, we see how that works, and we change. Two weeks later, we add a few more little things to change. And it seems silly, but a few weeks of doing these little things adds into big, big changes after two months, three months. And that's a simple process that we follow to improve their sleep, but more importantly, to make them more productive, happy again. No one cares about the sleep. I don't care about sleep. If I could not sleep, I wouldn't. I care about being happy. I care about being productive. I care about feeling good about myself. And that's, that's what I offer people. The Sleep is just tool to enable that.

Cal Wilder: 34:31

Right. Are there other sleep topics you want to make sure we cover while we're talking today?

Matt Beedle: 34:38

Oh, goodness. I mean, I could talk forever about sleep, um, talk about sleep and business, sleep and profit. Given if a lot of people following you are business owners, it might be an interesting aspect. Because I think one of the issues around sleep is just simply that people don't value it. They don't see it as productivity. See it as an enemy of productivity.

Cal Wilder: 35:10

Yeah, I think that's very true. You hear people say, I'll sleep when I'm dead, right? But yeah, I think you're right, Matt, I think it's underappreciated nutrient the body needs. We gotta get the body what it needs. And that's the challenge. And there's a lot that in this world that we live in that gets in the way of getting a good night's sleep.

Matt Beedle: 35:36

What I want to say to anybody around this is that I always ask people, I ask this to myself, what do you actually want in life? Because most people will say, they want love, they want family, they want money, they want to be productive, they want to be healthy. And then we say, Okay, what will give you that? And a lot of people like, well, if I slept more, probably get that, except for maybe money. But when it comes to money, a lot of people in business, entrepreneurs, leaders, I can, I mean, I'll speak for myself. I'm a content creator at my heart. I'll make the most money if I make great content. If I make a YouTube video that gets hundreds of views every single day, that will make me money. I could try and be a busy bee working 18 hours a day, but I'm far more likely to make some genius piece of content and film in a really nice way if I'm creative and well-rested, and I'm healthy. I think it's the same for nearly anyone in an intellectual type job where we make nearly all our money from 20% of our time. So Pareto principle. So my argument is always you're more likely to have these 20% moments when you're sleeping well than when you're trying to put in the hustle and the long hours. Normally when people are hustling, they're just being busy falls, and I've been that busy for most of my life. So this is why I really think the conversation around sleep and productivity and business and money needs to go around. We need to challenge this idea that sleep is a cost, when, in my opinion, and obviously I'm highly biased, it's an investment. Sleep will make you more money. And there's plenty of studies I can back this up with. It's not just a random

Cal Wilder: 37:57

And I think... I really struggle with trying to opinion. instill good sleeping habits with my kids because they're junior high school age, 13 years old now, and kind of at that point where, you know, they need to really start to understand more how to take care of themselves physically and sleep is a big part of that. But that's that's a struggle. It seems always very enticing to stay up that extra hour, and try to sleep in that extra hour in the morning. Unfortunately we can just add an extra hour every day.

Matt Beedle: 38:41

Absolutely and I can feel for people. Even I, I'm like a sleep guru or wharever, and I still struggle to sometimes get to sleep on time. There's so many distractions. Technology is so so alluring, and there's so much things going on. And it's when it's a very hard world to prioritize sleep. So for me, I just maybe, I mean, for your children, for anyone, it's always a question of what do they want in their life? What are their desires? What do they love? And if you can relate sleep to that, then, then it's in a position where we can have a more positive influence. And again, we're not going to win them all. But I think it's amazing that you're thinking about this, because a lot of people these things go they don't think about it. They think that children are invincible. They don't need sleep. But if anything, they need sleep more than anyone else. So it's good that you're mindful about that.

Cal Wilder: 39:42

Right. So I've really appreciated your time, Matt, Thank you for the information you've shared. If somebody wants to get in touch with you directly, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

Matt Beedle: 39:56

Good question you can find me on LinkedIn, just Matt M, A, T, T, Beadle, B, E, E, D, L, E. You can also find me on Instagram,@MakeSleepGreatAgain. And you can also find me on YouTube, just my name again, or you all my website. So I'm pretty findable if you just type my name into Google.

Cal Wilder: 40:21

Well, thanks so much, Matt. I appreciate it.

Matt Beedle: 40:24

And I've got loads and loads of free stuff, like free community, free course, free assessments, free eBook. So even if you're not looking for coaching or whatever it might be, which is absolutely fine, there's loads of value I've got available for people. So people should I'm more than welcome to that. I'd be happy to help them out.

Cal Wilder: 40:43

Yeah, we'll definitely get that into the show notes.

Matt Beedle: 40:46

I hope I've spoken too much. I like talking about sleep, and I'm very grateful for the platform you've given me to share this.

Cal Wilder: 40:54

Reference show notes and find other episodes on EmpoweringHealthyBusiness.com. If you would like to have a one-on-one discussion with me, or possibly engage SmartBooks to help with your business, you can reach me at Cal@EmpoweringHealthyBusiness.com or message me on LinkedIn where I am easy to find. Until next time, this is Empowering Healthy Business, the podcast for small business owners, signing off.