Plenty of business owners spend their days flat out, answer messages late at night, juggle too many tasks, and still feel like the business is not moving forward properly. That is one of the reasons the latest episode of Go Beyond Busy stood out. In my conversation with Kathy Hadizadeh from Heart Mind Tuning, we discussed a point many owners need to hear more often: being busy is not the same as business growth.
Kathy can be contacted through: Kathy can be contacted through https://heartmindtuning.com/
That might sound obvious on paper, but it is surprisingly easy to miss when you are in the middle of a full week, a crowded inbox, and a to-do list that seems to breed overnight.
Why busy can feel like progress
For many small business owners, being busy feels reassuring. A packed diary can make it look as though the business is healthy. Constant activity can create the sense that something useful must be happening. Calls are being made. Emails are being answered. Quotes are going out. New software is being tested. Social media posts are being planned. There is always something to do.
The trouble is that activity and progress are not the same thing.
Some tasks help the business grow. Some just keep the wheels turning. Some are a distraction dressed up as productivity. When everything feels urgent, it becomes harder to tell the difference.
The real cost of constant busyness
One of the more interesting points in the discussion with Kathy was that being busy is not always just a time problem. Sometimes it is a nervous system problem.
That rings true for many owners. A person can have the same number of hours in the day as always, but still feel scattered, foggy, reactive, and strangely unproductive. A big part of that comes from mental overload. When your attention is being dragged in six different directions, it becomes much harder to think clearly and choose well.
That is when business owners start doing a lot without getting enough done.
You can spend a whole day switching between tasks and end up feeling exhausted, while the work that would have made the biggest difference still hasn’t happened. The day was full, but the outcome was thin.
Shiny object syndrome is not helping
Kathy also spoke about something many of us know all too well: shiny object syndrome. There is always a new app, a new system, a new platform, or a new AI tool that promises to save time, bring in leads, or solve a problem in ten minutes flat.
Some of those tools are useful. Some are excellent. The trouble comes when owners keep adding more without first deciding what matters most.
That creates two problems.
First, there is the practical problem. Too many tools mean too many logins, too many subscriptions, too much learning, and too many loose ends. Second, there is the mental problem. Every unfinished system sits in the background like an open tab in your brain. It all adds weight.
That weight affects focus. It affects confidence. It affects decision-making. It also affects your ability to do the work that actually grows the business.
What business growth usually looks like
Real business growth is often less dramatic than people expect. It does not always arrive with fanfare. Quite often it looks like repeated good decisions made over time.
It can look like:
- Choosing one marketing channel and using it properly instead of dabbling in five
- Following up leads consistently instead of relying on memory
- Improving your quoting process so more jobs convert
- Putting systems in place so the team is not asking the same questions every week
- Reviewing your numbers regularly so you know what is working
- Making time to think before saying yes to every new idea
None of that is flashy. All of it matters.
Growth often comes from clarity, structure, and follow-through rather than drama, adrenaline, or heroic levels of busyness.
Why your “why” still matters
Another strong point from the episode was Kathy’s focus on vision and purpose. Knowing your “why” is not just a motivational exercise for a whiteboard. It helps when business gets hard, boring, repetitive, or messy, which it inevitably does.
When owners are clear on why the business exists and what they are trying to build, it becomes easier to make decisions. It becomes easier to say no. It becomes easier to stop chasing every opportunity that wanders past wearing a shiny hat.
A clear reason behind the work can steady you when the week is chaotic. It can also help you tell the difference between meaningful work and noise.
A useful question to ask yourself
If your business feels relentlessly busy at the moment, a good question to ask is this:
Is what I am doing today helping the business grow, or is it just keeping me occupied?
That question can be uncomfortable, which is probably why it is useful.
There will always be some maintenance work in business. No one gets out of admin completely. No one floats through the week doing only grand strategic thinking. Still, if most of your time is being swallowed by low-value work, interruptions, half-finished experiments, and reactive decisions, there is a good chance the business needs more structure.
Going beyond busy
For me, this is one of the biggest ideas behind Go Beyond Busy. Small business owners do not usually need more guilt, more pressure, or more things piled onto the list. What they often need is a better way to decide what matters, a calmer way to work, and systems that support progress rather than constant scrambling.
Being busy is not a badge of honour. It is not proof that the business is healthy. It is certainly not the same as growth.
Growth is what happens when effort is pointed in the right direction, repeated consistently, and backed by good decisions.
That tends to be a lot less glamorous than hustle culture would have you believe, but it is also far more useful.
Listen to the episode
If this topic hits a bit close to home, this episode with Kathy Hadizadeh is worth your time. We talk about focus, burnout, vision, nervous system overload, and what it really takes to move from constant activity to meaningful progress.
You can listen to the full episode of Go Beyond Busy and hear Kathy’s perspective for yourself.
If your business feels stuck in constant motion without enough real progress, that is also very much the kind of problem I help business owners work through. A clearer plan, better systems, and more focused action can make a bigger difference than simply working longer hours.
Want to read the transcript?
Meet Kathy Hadizadeh
[00:00:00] Bernard: In this episode of Go Beyond Busy, Christine speaks with Kathy Hadizadeh from Los Angeles, founder of Heart Mind Tuning.
[00:00:08] Kathy works with leaders and business owners to improve strategic performance while protecting themselves from burnout.
[00:00:16] The conversation looks at why knowing your “why” matters in business, how busy-ness can become a nervous system problem, and how clearer focus can lead to better results.
[00:00:27] Christine Abela: Hi, I’m Christine from Go Beyond Busy. I’m here today with Kathy Hadizadeh, who is in Los Angeles in California.
[00:00:34] She runs a business called Heart Mind Tuning. How are you today, Kathy?
[00:00:40] Kathy Hadizadeh: I am doing fantastic. Thank you so much and thank you for having me, Christine.
Why Vision Matters
[00:00:43] Christine Abela: Very good. So tell me, Kathy, what have you learned about running a business that you wish you’d known earlier?
[00:00:50] Kathy Hadizadeh: That’s a very good question. I have learned a lot, but maybe one of the biggest things is how having a vision, and knowing your “Why” is so important to keep you steady on the journey of entrepreneurship and having your own business.
[00:01:14] Christine Abela: But how do you go about having a vision? Where does that come from?
[00:01:18] Kathy Hadizadeh: The one thing that I have noticed is that a lot of people get excited about the idea of having a business. They have a vision, some of them, or they have been able to observe a need within the society and they are tending to answer that need, which is a great way to go about a business.
[00:01:43] However, if you are not in a position that you have really researched beyond meeting a need. What is the bigger call out of all of this? What is the impact of meeting that need on humanity, on yourself, on your soul, on the legacy that you wish to leave in this world? Then when the going gets tough, which definitely any business will experience it, no matter how big or small they are, then there will be a time that you will have a hard time getting out of the bed in the morning and feeling jazzed about continuing with the journey.
[00:02:23] Christine Abela: So that’s where knowing your “Why” comes in. Is that right?
[00:02:28] Kathy Hadizadeh: Yes. That is one of the places that it comes handy. It’s not the only place, but that’s definitely one of the places.
Finding Your Why
[00:02:37] Christine Abela: So how do you go about working out what is your “Why”?
[00:02:42] Kathy Hadizadeh: My own story is I arrived at the idea for this business out of a journey. I was a corporate executive for Fortune 100 companies, so I was more of an employee with an employee mindset. And then it happened that I experienced with too much busy-ness, maybe, talking about being busy, that my brain decided to shut down.
[00:03:14] So I experienced an injury which was exacerbated in my opinion, by the burnout, that I did not have a name for the burnout at that time, because we were talking about 10 years ago. And burnout and the terminology probably hadn’t become this mainstream at that time. And during my healing journey, I came up with the idea and the vision for the business that I founded two years after my injury.
[00:03:47] So I arrived at it, but based on the journey of my life, ’cause it did not happen overnight, it was that I had been in the corporate world for 15 years and I had seen a lot or enough to give me ideas for another chapter of my life.
What Heart Mind Tuning Does
[00:04:09] Christine Abela: Tell me about your business and what do you do?
[00:04:13] Kathy Hadizadeh: So in my business we offer executive leadership coaching and advisory to corporate leaders to elevate their strategic performance for themselves and for their organizations. While keeping an eye on the leader as a whole person, so they will not experience the burnout that I experienced.
[00:04:40] Christine Abela: So does this only apply to people who are running great big Fortune 100 companies, or can it apply to small business owners as well?
[00:04:48] Kathy Hadizadeh: No, I have clients who are small business owners as well. I especially have clients who have been with the corporate world and desire to go a different route and create their own economy. And then we look into what is possible, what are the transferable skills, what is the vision, what is the “Why”? And I help them go about building a foundation before putting any capital or jumping into a path that they are not very certain about. So I have clients like that too.
[00:05:20] Christine Abela: Do you work with people worldwide or just in Los Angeles?
[00:05:24] Kathy Hadizadeh: No, I’ve worked with people worldwide. Majority of my clients are from Northern America, especially from US and Canada. Obviously the time zone is more convenient and I know the landscape of the business in this continent very well. But I also have served people in Europe and people in Southern America, some people in the Middle East.
Busy Is Not Time
[00:05:49] Christine Abela: So tell me about the concept busy-ness in business.
[00:05:56] Kathy Hadizadeh: So the thing is when you are the business for yourself, one of the things that you experience all of a sudden, or maybe gradually, that you are responsible for a lot of things, maybe more than you had imagined initially. That can be a daunting situation and people will start using the word, I’m busy, I’m too busy.
[00:06:22] And they forget about the fact that the busy is not always a time problem. Yes, of course there are only so many hours in a day, but sometimes the word being too busy or business can be a nervous system problem.
[00:06:43] Christine Abela: Tell me more about that. What do you mean by a nervous system problem?
Shiny Object Overload
[00:06:46] Kathy Hadizadeh: Especially when you have your own business. There is something that a lot of people experience which is shiny object syndrome. Everything can be a new avenue for a revenue stream, or it can be a new lead generation mechanism, or it can be a new marketing thing, especially with the advent of AI. And there is all kinds of AI based apps and they are offering that they can do some sort of a magic.
[00:07:23] And before you know it, you can be pulled into all of these directions and exploring all of these things can be very taxing on the time, on the nervous system, on the pocket may be the last of the items, but on the nervous system.
[00:07:40] Why? Because imagine you have spent this much money and you are interested to really use that, but you possibly cannot use 10, 12, 13 of these apps at the same time, learn them, master them, fully be able to use them, or even delegate somebody in your business to do that.
[00:07:59] So what happens is that you become frustrated with yourself and that frustration deregulates your nervous system. And guess what? When your nervous system is deregulated, you are not able to think clearly.
[00:08:18] When we are not able to think clearly, we feel more and more busy because we are spending time, but we are not producing the output that we are supposed to be producing. We are thinking about thing A while, oh, we get attracted to the thing B, and then the thing C comes on the way. And we think that we are multitasking. We tell ourselves, oh yeah, I’m multitasking. Whereas you actually are not doing any of them and you are very busy and your family doesn’t see you and you are very focused on your business.
[00:08:55] But what is happening to the output?
Focus Creates Output
[00:08:59] Christine Abela: So this is something that you help your clients with.
[00:09:04] Kathy Hadizadeh: Absolutely, because I have been victim of it myself, and I still am a victim of it myself. I can still tell you how many apps or platforms I paid for last year that sounded interesting. And sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night, I’m like, oh, by the way, I never used that thing. I’m still paying for it, so I’m guilty as charged.
[00:09:27] But over the years, I have learned and I help people to learn how you can minimize this distraction so you can have more focused attention. And be that focused attention is that where your energy will go, and where your energy goes is where you will generate output. Sounds very simple if you look at it from a physics perspective.
New Book Preview
[00:09:57] Christine Abela: You were telling me earlier that you have written a book. What’s your book about and when are we going to be able to see this book?
[00:10:04] Kathy Hadizadeh: Thanks for the question. So the book is about building this space, the structure and ability in ourselves to get out of this train of business that is going at a very high speed so that we can examine: Am I in the right direction?
[00:10:29] And we talk about what happens when we do not do that checking. And also what is possible when we do that checking. So it has a dark side to it. And it has a shiny side to it. And the book has very clear three different segments so people do not get lost between what is the shiny side, what is the dark side, and what is the past that can help me with building this structure.
[00:11:01] The book, we are hoping to have it ready and available to the public by the end of the first quarter of 2026.
Go Beyond Busy Tips
[00:11:13] Christine Abela: So tell me, how do we actually go beyond busy and how does this inability to reframe that impact you in real life?
[00:11:24] Kathy Hadizadeh: That’s a really good question. And we can look at it from the perspective of reframing some of those mentalities that is really hardwired in us, maybe by our parents, maybe by the society, maybe by our dear selves.
[00:11:40] Always, a lot of highly ambitious people have really high expectations of themselves. They do not need another person. They themselves are enough. So number one thing is that busy is not a badge of honor. It’s actually a symptom of chronic urgency. if you are seeing that, you are tending to say, oh, I’m too busy, I’m busy. You might wanna look into and examine that and see where is it that needs to change.
[00:12:16] So that’s one thing. The other thing is that a lot of the business owners who are ambitious people are high achieving people who are running on adrenaline. Like they enjoy the rush that they get out of business. I’m being one of them. I am a recovering one of them, I would say. So another point to consider to reexamine with ourselves.
[00:12:45] And the third thing to understand is: a lot of people think that the opposite of being busy is doing nothing and going on a retreat and sit on top of a mountain and just stare at the horizon. That’s a choice, but that is not the opposite of busy-ness. The opposite of busy-ness and doing less is actually doing from a regulated state, which gives you more focus and attention, which increases your output level. So I leave people with these kind of changes to consider in their thinking.
Wrap Up And Resources
[00:13:26] Christine Abela: Thank you very much, Kathy. It’s been lovely talking with you. I’ll put Kathy’s contact details under this episode so you can get in touch with her. And if anyone listening is running their own business and they’d like to get in touch with me to have a business strategy session and work out what you might be able to do to improve your business as opposed to your busy-ness, I’ll put those contact details under this episode as well. Thank you very much, Kathy.
[00:13:54] Kathy Hadizadeh: Thank you for having me, Christine.
[00:13:56] Christine Abela: You’re welcome.
[00:13:58] Bernard: This has been Go Beyond Busy with Christine Abela.
[00:14:01] Today’s conversation with Kathy Hadizadeh looked at why having a clear vision matters, why busy-ness is often a symptom rather than a solution, and how focused attention leads to better results in business.
[00:14:15] If you would like to see more conversations with business owners and experts who share practical ideas for running a business without constant chaos, visit GoBeyondBusy.com.
[00:14:27] You will find more episodes there, along with articles and resources for business owners who want to grow their business, not their to-do list.
[00:14:36]
