Heather Esposito, a money relationship and human design coach who spent three and a half years on Tony Robbins's coaching team, argues that most entrepreneurs are trying to out-push a fried nervous system. Her view is that changing your state and powering through can work for a while, but unresolved history stored in the body keeps finding its way back into decisions, energy, and money. Heather traces that belief to her own story: a depression so severe in her late 20s that a one-week sugar experiment became a turning point, a gluten-free bakery in Philadelphia that landed on Cupcake Wars, and a business partner who pushed her out of the company she started. She then walks host Eric Berman through the Safe and Sound Protocol, a quick vagus nerve exercise anyone can try, and a live reading of his human design chart, including why he should sleep on big decisions before saying yes.
In this episode, you'll discover:
- Why the push-through, change-your-state approach to performance often stalls when an entrepreneur's nervous system is stuck in fight or flight or in shutdown
- How the Safe and Sound Protocol uses about five hours of filtered music, introduced a minute at a time, to send signals of safety to the nervous system
- What Eric Berman's 4/6 manifesting generator chart reveals about pivoting energy, connecting people, and needing the right people to bridge a split definition
- Why Heather tells prospects with an emotional decision-making style to sleep on a sales decision instead of pressuring them to commit on the spot
- The costly lesson from Heather's first bakery, where trusting a partner with majority ownership led to being forced out of the business she created
- A simple look-up, smell, swallow, and exhale exercise Heather recommends for at least five minutes a day to calm a stressed system
Episode Summary
Heather Esposito's central argument is that strategy alone rarely fixes an exhausted founder. After coaching for Tony Robbins's organization, she saw many clients who were told to push, strive, and change their state, yet stayed burnt out and disconnected from the work that lit them up. Heather believes the missing piece is the nervous system, because past experiences are stored there and keep resurfacing. Eric Berman frames the episode around three connected ideas she teaches: rewiring the nervous system, using human design to understand how your energy is meant to work, and recognizing the money patterns that follow from both.
Her perspective comes from lived experience. Heather earned a master's in counseling and worked as a therapist in a group home for teenagers, where she concluded the system was not set up for healing. In her late 20s she became so depressed that she considered ending her life. Remembering a book that linked sugar and depression, and the impact of an aunt's suicide on her family, she gave herself one week without sugar. She says she was not 100 percent better, but the fog started lifting. That experience led her to health coaching school, culinary school focused on food and healing, and in 2010 a gluten-free, allergen-friendly bakery called Sweet Freedom on South Street in Philadelphia. The bakery drew families whose kids had never eaten a birthday cupcake and earned an appearance on Cupcake Wars.
The bakery also delivered the business lesson Heather returns to later. Because the partner was putting in the money, Heather accepted minority ownership despite two-plus years of recipe development and daily work in the shop. Two years in, the partner tried to force her out and refused to be bought out. After mediation, the partner bought Heather out. She later connects this to her money archetype as a nurturer and connector who assumed everyone would act as she would, and says she now knows how to keep those traits while acting in a way that empowers both sides.
The nervous system section centers on the Safe and Sound Protocol, developed by Stephen Porges, the creator of polyvagal theory. Heather explains the sympathetic fight-or-flight state, the dorsal vagal shutdown state, and why most people get stuck in one of them, comparing it to a car where either the gas pedal is jammed down or the emergency brake is stuck up. The protocol is a listening therapy of roughly five hours of filtered music, titrated over six to 12 weeks with a practitioner for co-regulation. Heather says that after doing it, she went through a holiday season of eating cookies without the suicidal thoughts sugar had triggered for years, and that she became more willing to be seen with her work. She also teaches a live exercise of looking up, smelling, swallowing, and exhaling through an imaginary straw.
The human design segment turns practical when Heather reads Eric's chart on screen. She describes the four types, explains that defined centers represent consistent energy while open centers show where you can be conditioned by other people, and identifies Eric as a 4/6 manifesting generator. She connects the line four networker and line six role model to his habit of connecting people, and explains that his split definition means the right people help his energy click. Most usefully for sales, she shows that Eric responds better to a choice than an open-ended question, and that his emotional authority means big decisions should wait about 24 hours. Eric admits he usually decides quickly and moves on.
The episode ties these threads together with Heather's Cupcake Wars oven story. Her team had recipes they knew but an unfamiliar oven, and their cupcakes baked unevenly. To Heather, frameworks like human design and money archetypes are the recipe, while a regulated nervous system is the oven. She describes the end state as more ease, peace in the body, and greater capacity to earn and hold money, and Eric notes how much a founder's own money comfort shapes how they ask for the sale.
Big Ideas Discussed
Why Changing Your State Is Not Enough for Burned-Out Founders
Heather Esposito's core claim is that the personal development formula of making a decision and changing your state only works so long when an entrepreneur's nervous system is dysregulated. During three and a half years coaching on Tony Robbins's team, she worked with clients who were pushing, striving, and powering through while staying exhausted. Eric Berman compared the approach to a band-aid: you can fake it for a while, but the history comes back. Heather agreed, saying it always does.
Her explanation borrows from polyvagal theory. In fight or flight, everything becomes constant reaction, which is why some high performers find a day off or a vacation stressful. In the dorsal vagal shutdown state, a person barely has capacity to act, like a client Heather describes whose business coaches kept handing him tasks he could not do. For a founder, the takeaway is that a stalled plan may be a capacity problem rather than a discipline problem, and more tactics will not fix that.
The Safe and Sound Protocol as a Listening-Based Nervous System Reset
Heather says the Safe and Sound Protocol, developed by polyvagal theory creator Stephen Porges, is what really made a big shift for her after years of other tools, including energy healing, hypnotherapy, internal family systems work, and plant medicine ceremonies. The protocol is about five hours of filtered music that sends signals of safety through the middle ear, played over non-noise-cancelling, over-the-ear headphones.
What makes it different, in Heather's description, is that the client does nothing but listen. The dose is titrated, starting with a minute and increasing slowly, so the full five hours usually spreads over six to 12 weeks. Because it can bring up difficult material, she works alongside clients so they have someone to co-regulate with. Experiences vary: one client described traumas popping like asteroids in a video game, while others simply felt calmer. Heather's own marker was a holiday season of eating cookies with no suicidal thoughts, and a new willingness to share her work publicly.
Using Human Design to Stop Following Someone Else's Playbook
Heather positions human design as a blueprint for how each person's energy is meant to move, and she sees it as the answer to a common business frustration: following a coach's proven eight-figure method and finding it does not work for you. She distinguishes it from Myers-Briggs, DISC, the Enneagram, and StrengthsFinder, which she says rely on how you answer questions, while human design is generated from birth date, time, and place.
Reading Eric Berman's chart live, Heather identified him as a manifesting generator, a type she describes as having both the spark of a manifestor and the life force energy of a generator, with energy that pivots and an inability to do just one thing. His 4/6 profile pairs the line four networker in the kitchen connecting everyone with the line six role model on the roof seeing the big picture. She also noted his split definition, meaning the right people bridge his energy, which matched Eric's experience of collaborators with whom things simply click.
Money Patterns, Sales Pressure, and Sleeping on Big Decisions
Heather's money philosophy is that how we do money is how we do everything. She says her own archetype as a nurturer and connector led her to trust a bakery partner with majority ownership and ultimately lose her place in the business. Recognizing the pattern let her keep those strengths while acting from a more empowered state. She compares frameworks to a recipe and the nervous system to the oven, drawing on a Cupcake Wars round her team lost because an unfamiliar oven baked their cupcakes unevenly.
The sales application is direct. Heather tells Eric that his defined solar plexus gives him emotional authority, which she says applies to about 53 percent of people, so big decisions should wait roughly 24 hours until the emotional high passes. She contrasts that with high-pressure closing she saw in the Tony Robbins world and says she now tells prospects to sleep on it. Eric calls knowing a prospect's design before a sales conversation a Jedi trick and notes that founders uncomfortable with money struggle to ask for the order.
Questions We Answer in This Episode
What does it mean when an entrepreneur says their nervous system is fried?
According to Heather Esposito, a fried nervous system usually feels like constant stress, burnout, or the sense that one more thing will make you explode. It can also look like shutdown, where you lack the capacity to act on anything. She explains it through polyvagal theory: people get stuck in sympathetic fight or flight or in dorsal vagal shutdown. Her analogy is a car with the gas pedal jammed down or the emergency brake stuck up, when healthy regulation means being able to use both as needed.
How does the Safe and Sound Protocol work, and how long does it take?
The Safe and Sound Protocol is a listening therapy developed by Stephen Porges that uses about five hours of filtered music to send signals of safety to the nervous system through the middle ear. Heather Esposito says clients listen remotely on over-the-ear, non-noise-cancelling headphones, starting with about a minute and slowly increasing. The full program typically takes six to 12 weeks; Heather says it took her just under two months. She works with clients throughout because the process can bring up difficult emotions that need support.
What is a quick exercise to calm the nervous system during a stressful day?
Heather Esposito demonstrates an exercise on the episode: keep your face forward, look up with your eyes, smell as if something pleasant is under your nose, swallow, then exhale slowly as if through a straw. She says looking up shifts your focus away from the problem you are fixated on, while smelling, swallowing, and exhaling engage muscles connected to the vagus nerve. Heather recommends doing it for at least five minutes a day and says difficulty swallowing can signal tightness that needs release.
How is human design different from personality tests like DISC or Myers-Briggs?
Heather Esposito says tools like Myers-Briggs, DISC, the Enneagram, and StrengthsFinder rely on answers from your mind, which can be wrong because people answer how they want to be. Human design, in her explanation, is generated from your birth date, birth time, and birthplace and looks at both mind and body, including how you see yourself and how others see you. She acknowledges some people consider it woo and recommends working with a practitioner because the charts contain a lot of information.
What is a manifesting generator in human design?
Heather Esposito describes a manifesting generator as a combination of a manifestor, who initiates and sparks ideas, and a generator, who has the life force energy to do the work. On Eric Berman's chart, a defined throat center connected to a defined sacral center makes him a manifesting generator. Heather says this type pivots often, jumps between steps instead of going in order, cannot do just one thing, and has a warm, enveloping aura that draws people in.
Why does Heather Esposito tell sales prospects not to decide on the spot?
Heather Esposito says people with a defined solar plexus, about 53 percent of the population by her account, have an emotional decision-making style and need to ride out the emotional high before committing. When she worked in the Tony Robbins world, she saw pressure to decide immediately as proof of seriousness, which she says is not true. Now, because she usually knows a prospect's human design by the first conversation, she tells them she does not want them to decide yet and asks them to sleep on it and return with questions.
How can a business partnership go wrong when one partner puts in the money?
In Heather Esposito's case, she let her partner hold majority ownership of their Philadelphia bakery, Sweet Freedom, because the partner supplied the capital, even though Heather had spent more than two years developing recipes and worked in the bakery. Two years in, the partner tried to force her out and refused Heather's offer to buy her out. After mediation, the partner bought Heather out. Heather links this to her trusting money archetype and assuming everyone would act as she would.
Full Episode Transcript
Read the Full Episode Transcript
Cold Open and Introducing Heather Esposito
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Heather Esposito: I coached so many people, you know, that it's just like, I got to push, I got to strive, I got to power through, but they're burnt out. They're exhausted. They're not doing the things that light them up.
Eric Berman: Because it's almost like a band-aid to some degree on really what the wounds that are. You almost can fake it for a minute if you can get yourself to that point, but ultimately that history is going to find its way back in.
Heather Esposito: It always does.
Eric Berman: So when talking to Heather, it turns out about 100% of us have a messed up, effed up nervous system. We are not optimized. And I'm so excited to talk to her today because we're going to talk about what it takes to rewire our nervous systems, how to actually optimize it using human design, which I'm so excited to dig into, and ultimately get a better understanding of really the money patterns in our lives and allow us to make more money by just doing some things that Heather Esposito out of Charlotte is going to teach us today. I'm so excited to have you on. We're going to even demo my human design. You have it pulled up. We haven't looked at it. You have it ready to go. And I've been interested in learning more about how this whole thing works because I hear about it. And I am pumped to have you. Welcome, Heather Esposito.
Heather Esposito: Oh my gosh. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. And I'm so excited that you're like, yes, let's dive into human design, because it's so freaking magical, but there's so much. So I'm going to warn you, we can't go over everything in the 30 minutes.
Eric Berman: All right. So you've been warned. We're going to do a little taste of human design in this episode. I mean, I love it when we say that 100% of us are effed up in something, and you've seen that and you've learned that. And your background, you know, if you're going to listen, we have some really cool stuff coming up here, because Heather's also a TV superstar. Well, I'll just say reality star, as she was featured on Cupcake Wars and has done some really cool stuff there. And she was also a coach and learned a lot under the Tony Robbins team, and then built out your own consulting practice, teaching the things you're teaching, and really found your lane, and all things we're going to talk about today. So give me a little bit of the background. I mean, how did you get to the point you're at today? And we'll just spend a couple of minutes getting there so we can all kind of follow the path.
A Group Home, Depression, and a One-Week Sugar Experiment
Heather Esposito: Yeah. So I love helping people. That has always been my mission and my passion. And once I understood my human design, I was like, okay, this all makes sense. But I got a master's in counseling, and my first job out of there was working as a therapist at a group home. So dealing with teenagers with, you know, abandonment issues, sexual trauma, sexual abuse. And I very quickly realized that the system is not set up for healing. And that was really hard for somebody who's all about wanting to heal stuff, help people heal. And I was having my own dark night of the soul, and I was talking to my dad, and he was like, well, just quit. You can go back to waitressing and substitute teaching till you figure out what you want to do. And I was like, I have a master's, that's humiliating. I can't do that. But it just got to the point where I was like, yeah, I really need to do that. And so I quit, and it was Christmas time, and I was doing what most people do around Christmas, which was eat a bunch of junk. And as I was eating the junk...
Eric Berman: So hold on, give us a time period. Like, you just graduated college?
Heather Esposito: I took the long route for college, because I made some bad choices in college and I had to put myself through school. So it took me a long time to get through undergrad to grad school. So I was late 20s, I think. And I got to a point where I was so depressed that I couldn't get out of bed, and I felt more tired getting up than I did the night before. My body felt like I had cement in it. And I decided that I want to die. And I thought about five ways to take my life.
Eric Berman: Wow.
Heather Esposito: It was really intense. But you know how these thoughts come through really fast, right? And so I was like, I'm going to take my own life. I just don't want to live like this. I have no hope. And then I thought about this book that I read that talked about how sugar caused depression. Now, I love sugar, so I did not like this book. But I also thought about, I have an aunt who took her life before I ever got to meet her, and I thought about how that impacted family, and I didn't want to do that to my nieces and nephews. So I made a deal with myself to not eat sugar for a week to see how I felt. And I said, if I, you know, felt better in a week, then maybe there was something I can explore. And if I didn't, then I gave myself permission to take my life.
Eric Berman: Oh my goodness.
Heather Esposito: Obviously I felt, you know, better. I wasn't 100%, but it was like, I can feel this fog lifting, you know, and I was like, there's something here.
Eric Berman: I'm just going back to that. You think about life's choose-your-own-adventure stories and, like, big decisions in their life, that one path one way, one path the other. My goodness, and what you had to will yourself to do that. I mean, I can't imagine how hard that was, even day one, day two, and how many times you probably played the mental game of, well, maybe I'll just do one bit of sugar. Do you remember those days? How tough was that?
Heather Esposito: Yeah, because it was over Christmas, it was exponentially harder. But I was just desperate. I was so desperate. And then I was like, I just can't do it anymore, because I need a solution. And I grew up in a conservative Christian home, so it was like, if you just have Jesus, you'll be fine. And I'm like, I'm not f-ing fine.
Eric Berman: Yeah, yeah.
Heather Esposito: There is something else fundamentally wrong. And I also knew that it wasn't that I needed Prozac or whatever prescription they were handing out of the day. I was like, there was something more internally that needed to be done.
Health Coaching, Culinary School, and Opening Sweet Freedom
Heather Esposito: And so I enrolled for health coaching school and didn't start until October. So I was reading all the pre-books that they were giving me and everything and just starting to make little changes. And when I went to school, it blew my mind. Like, I had no idea how to eat. I didn't know how to care for my human being, right? And so I started just literally changing everything I was eating. And I started teaching cooking classes, and I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea how to hold a knife properly, but I was so excited about feeling good in my body again. So I started working with clients, teaching cooking classes, and I was like, well, I need to learn how to actually cook if I'm going to teach lessons. So I went to culinary school, and it's the only culinary school that focuses on food and healing. So it was more about learning how to cook for heart disease, how to cook for diabetes, you know, that type of stuff.
Eric Berman: So you're just inspired on your own. You're like, oh my God, I got energy and excitement. What can I do with this? And I don't even know what I'm going to do yet, but I like this. What I found, maybe others can. So you had this natural ability, like you said, to want to heal. You just hadn't realized that you'd love to do this.
Heather Esposito: And also, because I don't know how to cook, I need to teach people how to cook. Yeah, because, and I really started to see that, okay, in therapy you can go for how long, right, and be talking and talking and talking, and things don't change. I'm like, I changed my diet in a very short time, my thoughts were different, and it was just like, this is mind-blowing to me. My parents started changing their diet and lifestyle. They were going off of medications and releasing weight. My clients that I was working with, my mom just kept referring her friends to me, because they were like, what are you doing? And so it just kind of snowballed from there. And then when I was in culinary school, I went to this bakery in New York. That bakery was the first bakery that was a gluten-free, allergen-friendly bakery. It was a really big deal at the time, because this is back in like 2006, '07, '08. And so I was in the bakery and I remember standing there and having this, the best way I can say it is like a download, which sounds wacky, I get it. But it was literally like, I need to open a bakery, and I'm going to go a step further than what they did. And this is back in, again, like 2008 when I had the idea. We opened in 2010, but everything was free of gluten, dairy, egg, soy, corn, and refined sugar, which now, not a big deal. Then it was a big deal. I was just hell-bent on having this bakery open. And so all of my 20s, I mentored high school kids. And one of the kids, I was really close with her family. And this is going to tie into stories later, or remind me to tie it in later. But her dad was a multimillionaire. And so her brother and sister-in-law, we were on this foundation trip, and I just kept talking about the bakery. And the sister-in-law was like, we'll back you. Let's open the bakery. She had an interest in health and went to the same health coaching school that I did, but never really, like, yeah. So we opened the bakery. Flash forward, we opened the bakery in 2010. And just from the get-go, it was really popular. We were on, for anybody who knows Philadelphia, we were on South Street of Philadelphia. And most people don't think of Philly as like a health-conscious town.
Eric Berman: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Think of Philly cheesesteaks.
Heather Esposito: But we were down the street from CHOP, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. So we had so many parents come in where their kid had never had a cupcake for their birthday. And they come in and they're like, I can eat anything here. And just seeing their faces light up, it chokes me up. And at the end of the day, nobody really needs to have a cupcake, but we live in America. It's like, you know, you need to have something for your birthday. It was so amazing seeing these kids be like, I was never able to eat this stuff and now I can. And so it just blew up, super popular, and my stuff was really good.
Cupcake Wars and Getting Pushed Out of Her Own Bakery
Heather Esposito: And one night I go home from the bakery. I was exhausted, and I turn on the TV, and I turn on the Food Network because I'm like, I just need something stupid to watch. And there's a show on, and it's this show Cupcake Wars, where it's this competition. And I remember watching it and being like, there's no way on God's green earth I would ever do this. That is too stressful, no way. I go to the bakery the next day, I check the answering machine, and they're like, this is so-and-so from the Food Network. We would love to have you on Cupcake Wars. And I was like, [unclear]. So I went back and forth, because sugar does so many things to our body. Like, we just don't need to have it. But one of the things that sugar does is feed cancer. And they asked us to come on for season two. I forget what number episode it was, but it was for Hard Rock Cafe's breast cancer awareness month. And I was like, I mean, here's a conflict, right? Because it causes cancer, like, sugar. And even though our stuff is like coconut sugar, still, at the end of the day, your body doesn't need it, right? But we decided to go on because we're like, this awareness, blah, blah, blah. So we did not win. We got eliminated, thankfully. It is such a hard thing to do. People don't realize all the things that go on behind the scenes. But I was glad that we got eliminated. But it was really fun to be on. And then we were on a couple of other shows that were on the Cooking Channel. And Eric, when I tell you, my family has videos of me running away from the camera. When I was a kid, I was so incredibly shy, but, you know, I grew, I evolved, and now I have no problem. I love being on the camera now. But that was so much fun. But one of the challenges with the bakery was that when I signed the deal with my partner, I am so trustworthy, and I expect everybody would act the way that I do. And so I let her have majority ownership because she was the one putting the money into it.
Eric Berman: Sure, yeah.
Heather Esposito: That was the sweat equity. I had already been working two-plus years on developing recipes, and I was also the one working in the bakery. And looking back, there are so many things that we did wrong about it, but I let her have majority ownership. And two years into it, she decided she didn't need me anymore. She tried to force me out, and I was like, this was my baby, my idea. Like, why don't I buy you out? And, you know, she was like, no, I thought about that, but the thought is unacceptable to me. I learned a lot of lessons.
Eric Berman: Yeah. Good luck to entrepreneurs listening, of course.
Heather Esposito: Yes.
Eric Berman: Even these examples. Yep, we've all been there, done that early. So nothing worse than you getting pushed out of your own baby and all the hard work. I mean, it is such an emotional ride. I've been there.
Heather Esposito: It was so hard. And I fought back, so we ended up mediating, and she bought me out, which was great. But going back into the whole money thing, I didn't know what to do with it at the time. So I was going to open up a bakery with somebody else who also, he had a savory bakery in Philly, and we were going to partner and do sweet and savory. And then when he would meet with a potential investor, he's like, you can handle the meeting, can't you? And I was like, no, I'm done. I'm not doing this again.
Eric Berman: Yeah.
Heather Esposito: So that never happened. I didn't open up another one. Which, ironically, so the bakery was named Sweet Freedom. And on so many levels, there's so many lessons. And I'm like, I got to create the freedom for other people to have these baked goods, right? I was part of changing the industry. Like, last night I was at this brewery that has certain days where they shut the kitchen down, clean it all out, and they just have gluten-free stuff that day. And I'm like, I got to be a part of changing this trend.
Eric Berman: Amazing.
Joining Tony Robbins's Team and the Limits of Changing Your State
Heather Esposito: It's crazy to think about. Once I sold the bakery, I didn't know what I was going to do. I started going to Tony Robbins stuff. And so I was like, well, I need help, so he can have all the money. So I started going to all of his events, literally like in a year, I went to pretty much every event. And then I started volunteering for them. And then I was going to volunteer at an event in New Jersey. And I remember before going there, I was like, I'm going to go there and they're going to put me at the coaching table, because you never know what you're going to do when you get there, they just tell you. And I was like, and then they're going to ask me to join the coaching team. And literally I get there and they're like, Heather, you're going to go to the coaching table. I was like, oh, okay, thanks. And then three days into it, the head of the coaching department at the time, he was looking at my DISC profile, and he was like, we really need, like, your DISC profile, but in the feminine, on our team. He was like, could you ever think about joining the team? I was like, oh, that's a great idea. Let me think about that.
Eric Berman: Yeah.
Heather Esposito: So that's how that happened. And I coached for them for three and a half years.
Eric Berman: And you said therapy is like, let's talk about it over and over and over again, and half the time we don't get somewhere. Coaching in that environment is like, let's forget about the past and just move forward.
Heather Esposito: But you can't, because your past is all stuck in your nervous system.
Eric Berman: Right.
Heather Esposito: And so it's always going to show up.
Eric Berman: Right.
Heather Esposito: And I coached so many people, you know, that it's just like, I got to push, I got to strive, I got to power through, but they're burnt out. They're exhausted. They're not doing the things that light them up. And I was like, there's something more than just change your state. And at the end of the day, yes, it is change your state. Like, when I changed my diet, that was changing my state. But a lot of times in the world of personal development, it's like, just change your state. Just make a decision and do something different, and it's instantly going to happen. It doesn't work like that.
Eric Berman: Yeah, it's a really good point. You're right. Because it's like, okay, that's almost like a band-aid to some degree on really what the wounds that are. You almost can fake it for a minute if you can get yourself to that point, but ultimately that history is going to find its way back in.
Heather Esposito: It always does. It always does. Yeah. Yeah.
Energy Healing, Polyvagal Theory, and a Fried Nervous System
Heather Esposito: So that then sent me on this trajectory of, like, I want to go to something deeper. So then I got into energy healing and started doing energy healing with my clients that, like, all the tools that I got from Robbins weren't working with those clients. And so we started doing energy work and started seeing shifts there. And I was like, okay, there's something deeper. And that got me into studying, you know, subconscious healing, hypnotherapy, all these different modalities, and internal family systems, and all these things, so I get to the deeper level of healing. So I incorporate all of those things. And so it's hard when people are like, what do you do? And I'm like, I change lives. There's so many different modalities that I bring into my work, because everybody's different and everybody responds to things differently. So when I left Robbins, I was like, I'm just going to figure it out. And I have, and I've stumbled along the way, you know, in many ways. What really made a big shift for me is, I have done so many of the tools, like I mentioned. I've done more plant medicine ceremonies than the majority of people. But a friend was like, Heather, there's this protocol called the Safe and Sound Protocol that literally shifted things for me more than anything else.
Eric Berman: The Safe and Sound Protocol? You said that fast. Make sure the listeners get that.
Heather Esposito: So the SSP, the Safe and Sound Protocol, developed by Stephen Porges. So he's the one who created the polyvagal theory, which is essentially, you know, we have our parasympathetic state, which is rest and digest. And then there's a sympathetic state where you go into fight or flight. Most entrepreneurs are in that fight or flight. Everything is constant reaction mode, right? And it [unclear]. So you're like, I got a constant reaction. And so then when they have a day off, they're like, I don't know what to do with myself, because they're nervous.
Eric Berman: I always say sometimes, like, vacation or sitting around doing nothing is stressful. Like, it feels weird.
Heather Esposito: Yes. But then there's what we call the dorsal vagal state, and that's a shutdown state. Okay? So we want to have the ability to move through all of those, but most people are either stuck in this shutdown state or in that fight or flight. So I have a client right now who was referred to me because he's like, my nervous system is fried. And he's like, I keep having these business coaches tell me you need to do this, you need to do that. And he's like, I can't do anything, barely, right now. So he's just so in that shutdown state. And sometimes we do want to shut down. Sometimes we do want to go in that fight or flight.
Eric Berman: I want to make sure we really understand. When somebody says my nervous system is fried, how do we relate to that? What does that mean? Because that's not something I would normally say. What's another thing that I might say that's similar that actually really means my nervous system is fried? Is it stress? Is it anxiety? What is it?
Heather Esposito: Yeah, it could be like you just feel stressed all the time. You feel burnout. You feel like if just one more thing happens, I'm going to explode.
Eric Berman: Got it. You're just on the verge, you're on the verge of just losing it.
Heather Esposito: Yeah. I grew up with a dad who was an alcoholic, and every time you drop a pen, he's just like, oh my gosh, oh my God. It's a pen drop, right? But it's a big deal. Everything just feels like it's a big deal. Or you're so shut down that you're just like, I just can't even do anything. This guy's like, I can't even do anything. I don't have the capacity to do anything that these business coaches tell me to do, because he's just been in shutdown for so long. So we're working on getting his nervous system back up. But if you think about it like a car, you want to be able to step on the gas, because sometimes there's danger and you have to step on the gas. And then sometimes there's something in front of you and you need to pull the emergency brake up. But most people, either the gas pedal is stuck down or the emergency brake is stuck up. You want to have the flexibility to be able to push on the gas, push on the brake, use the emergency brake when you need it.
How the Safe and Sound Protocol Rewires the Nervous System
Heather Esposito: So when my friend told me about this protocol, I was like, well, I'll try it, but I don't think, what could it do for me? I'm pretty regulated. I've done so much work. But I want to go back to my story where I shared about how, before, when I was eating sugar and I was having suicidal thoughts, that still has carried with me. Even though I changed my diet and everything, and I've done so much work, whenever I eat sugar, instantly, within 24 hours, I start thinking suicidal thoughts again.
Eric Berman: Wow.
Heather Esposito: I wouldn't do anything, because I always knew that it was the sugar talking, but it was there, right? And nothing in my life changed, but it was still just there. So I'm going through this protocol, and it's nice. I don't really notice big, big difference until Christmas time, because I started in November. But Christmas time, I was like, wait a minute, I've been eating a lot of cookies and I have not had one suicidal thought. That to me was mind-blowing. That was the biggest thing that I started to notice. And then there are so many things since then, for me personally, that I noticed that shifted and changed. Just like letting myself be seen more in the world, like putting my work out into the world, where before I was like, no, I don't know, I'm not that good. Now I'm like, no, I know my work is good. But when my nervous system was fried, I was just holding back, fearful of sharing myself with the world. That's how, for me, it's impacted. It's different for everybody.
Eric Berman: So let's get into it. Now I'm curious, so what did you learn through this protocol? What are some tips for those listening, and what are some good takeaways from this?
Heather Esposito: Well, so here's the thing about this protocol, is that it is a listening therapy. So what it is, is five hours of music that is filtered, that sends signals of safety to your nervous system through your inner ear, your middle ear. And so where most nervous system things are like, here, tap on this, do this breathwork, reframe these thoughts, this, literally, you don't have to do anything but listen to music. And as you're listening to it, it shifts your nervous system. And everybody has such different experiences. Like, I have one of my clients, she's like, Heather, it feels like, she's like, you remember the game Space Invaders? And I'm like, yeah. And she's like, remember the asteroids being blown up? It's like, I feel like these things are popping off in my brain, and it's like these traumas are just being blasted off in my brain. Different people say they're like, I don't really feel anything when I'm listening to it, but I just have a deeper sense of safety or calm. I have a friend who also worked for Tony Robbins, so it's like, we have all these tools, right? They work in the world. He just could not get himself to move forward. He's got a ton of birth trauma, and we have done a lot of subconscious, like hypnotherapy, work around, like, you know, womb regression and all this kind of stuff, but it still wasn't moving the needle forward. Now he's like, oh my gosh, I never realized how protected I was and how much I was protecting myself. Now he's like, I can see me doing these things, and I actually want to move forward in business.
Eric Berman: So, all right. So is this like a one five-hour session, or is this a progression session?
Heather Esposito: It is a progression. We titrate and work really slowly. All my clients are remote, and so they have remote access to it. So you have to listen through headphones, over-the-ear, non-noise-cancelling headphones. And I start them off with a listening protocol, but we have to work together on adjusting, because some people can get up to listening to 20 minutes and be fine. Some people, they'll listen to five minutes and they're like, I need to take a break. And so that's where, with the Safe and Sound Protocol, the first foundation of it is safety, like feeling safety with the person that you're working with. It's because you have to have somebody to co-regulate with, to talk about, hey, this is coming up for me. Help me process through this, help me move through this. Because it's not just like, oh, I listen to it, move on. It does bring up stuff.
Eric Berman: So these sounds are literally reprogramming your brain over time. And like you said, you've done enough of these where you're hearing what they're saying. And then how long, typically, is a whole experience from start to finish?
Heather Esposito: So, five hours. Typically it could be six to 12 weeks, depending on, you know, the person. For me, it took like just under two months.
Eric Berman: All right. So it's five hours total listening that's spread out over a period of time.
Heather Esposito: Yes. So literally, we titrate it. We start listening to one minute, and then we increase two minutes, and then three minutes.
Eric Berman: Wow.
Heather Esposito: It's so weird. Like, all these doses, you get a dose of sound, it has to be slowly integrated. And then there's ways for you to see how it's working.
Eric Berman: Yeah. Yeah.
Heather Esposito: It's insane, Eric. It's crazy.
Eric Berman: It's crazy. And so certainly somebody listening could say, oh, I want to call Heather and learn more about this, and others may just be curious about this. I want a couple takeaways too for people that aren't ready yet to work with somebody like you, that they can work on to help their nervous system, their stress, whatever it is. Any thoughts on that?
Eric Berman: Everything you hear on this show comes back to one idea: proximity. I wrote the book on it, literally. Proximity Pays, my bestselling book, available now at proximitypays.com.
A Live Vagus Nerve Exercise for Everyday Stress
Heather Esposito: Well, I would say, you know, we have all these tools to regulate us when we're dysregulated.
Eric Berman: Yeah.
Heather Esposito: And if you're like, I'm not ready to actually go and do the work, use any nervous system tools that you have already on a daily basis, and those can help shift. And I'll give you one right now that's one of my favorites. And I'm going to invite you to do it, but I'm going to explain it first, and take off my glasses. What it is, is you're going to have your face looking straight forward, so you have like a 90 degree, you know, from your chin and your neck, as much 90 degree as possible, as most of us can, right? Your eyes are going to look up, either way, whichever, right or left, whatever way they go. And then you're going to smell. So I like to act as if you have, like, something, you know, really beautiful smelling underneath your nose. You're going to smell, and then you're going to swallow, and then you're going to exhale as if you're exhaling through a straw. And you're going to do that while you're looking up. So I'm going to invite you to do it. So put your head down, put your chin down.
Eric Berman: Yeah. I'll look up.
Heather Esposito: Your eyes look up. Yep. And you're going to smell, and then swallow, and then exhale as if you're exhaling through a straw. And Eric, while you do that for like two or three more rounds, I'm just going to talk and explain why we're doing this. So when we look up, it helps to shift our perspective, because oftentimes when we look at something, we're looking at a problem we're trying to solve, we get so focused that we actually can't even see what is there. And so moving our eyes shifts our focus. And then the smell and the swallow and the exhale, all those muscles are connected back to this big clump of the vagus nerve that meets there, sending signals of safety to your nervous system. So how was that, doing that for you?
Eric Berman: I mean, good. I think one thing is it got me away from thinking of all the million things in my head. So the hamster running the wheel in my head slowed down for a minute. And yeah, I feel good. It's a good little exercise. Everybody should try that.
Heather Esposito: Yeah. And when you're trying it, if you notice that the swallowing is really difficult, that's an indicator that there can be some tightness in your nervous system that needs to be released.
Eric Berman: Got it.
Heather Esposito: So I recommend people to do that exercise for at least five minutes a day, and that can really help shift things.
Eric Berman: I love it. I love it. Okay, how do you go from nervous system, SSP protocol, into human design, and how do you tie them together?
Human Design Basics: Types, Energy Centers, and Auras
Heather Esposito: Yeah. So we all have energy and how we're meant to move through the world.
Eric Berman: Agree. I believe in that. Yep.
Heather Esposito: Yep. And our human design is the blueprint of who we be, right? It's the potential of who we can be, like what we're meant to do and be in the world. And for me, and I'm going to explain this once we jump into your profile, because we have a type, which is how our energy is meant to move in the world. My energy is fast-moving, as you can see, right? And I can't do just one thing. And when I look at everything about my human design, part of who I am is I see this bigger vision and bigger picture for things and how things work together. And for me, it's like, okay, yeah, we got our nervous system. But if you don't understand what your role is here for the world, and you keep trying to do things the way that people tell you to do it, and you're like, why isn't this working for me? It's because it worked for him or her, but not for you. You got to work according to your energy.
Eric Berman: Got it. So we think about so much business coaching out there that's like, here, this is how I made, you know, eight figures, go do this. And somebody's like, well, I tried it, it didn't work for me.
Heather Esposito: Yeah. Right.
Eric Berman: Or maybe the example would be, I was successful, I did this, this, but I'm not feeling right. I'm not happy. I mean, your energy is not in the right spot where it should be. But despite that, you might have had some monetary success, but you might not be happy and you're feeling off. Is that, would that be another example?
Heather Esposito: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to screen share, and you're going to guess before you're looking at it.
Eric Berman: Okay.
Heather Esposito: Well, the reason why we brought this up, as I mentioned to you before we started recording, was I was reading your book, and I was like, oh my gosh, I have to see his human design, because of stuff that you were talking about, about how you love sharing and you love connecting with people. I'm like, I think I can pretty much guess at least his profile. There's so many other things, but at least your profile. And when I saw it, I was like, okay, this makes so much sense.
Eric Berman: We're going to put you on the spot and have you guess before you look at it, to see if you're right.
Heather Esposito: Well, no, because we pulled it up and I was like, yeah, I was right. I was right. So let me, where is it? And I got to screen share.
Eric Berman: Of course.
Heather Esposito: I'm like, okay, window.
Eric Berman: So she's pulling up. So for human design, I essentially just gave you my name, birth date, time I was born, and birthplace. So those three elements, and all of a sudden you get this amazing chart, which anybody could go, you can use AI and others. I think I cheated and just went to AI, and it gave me a bunch of stuff, but she's going to do it the right way and explain what this means, because I got a bunch of data and had no idea what it means. And she's the first one to actually explain this to me.
Heather Esposito: Okay. So again, anybody looking at this, I want to back up and say, people are like, okay, just give my birth time, that's a bunch of woo stuff. I get it. Totally get it. And the difference between human design and looking at something like Myers-Briggs, DISC, Enneagram, StrengthsFinder, all of those, you answer questions from your mind, and they just explain to you how your mind works. But a lot of times they're wrong, because you may answer how you want them to be. Human design, this looks at your mind and your body. It looks at how you see yourself and also how other people see you. So again, there's so much that we can go into here, but I'm just going to cover some of the basic stuff. So the thing, whenever people talk about their human design, when you ask them, they're like, oh, what are you? And like you would say, oh, I'm a 4/6 manifesting generator.
Eric Berman: Got it. Okay. My profile says four slash six, for those not looking, and my type is manifesting generator.
Heather Esposito: Yep. So your type, the manifesting generator, that's like, there are four types in human design, and some say five, but there's two types that basically have the same aura. The type explains your aura.
Eric Berman: Okay.
Heather Esposito: So the manifesting generator, I'm going to back up so we go high level. So there's manifestors in human design, and manifestors are the initiators. They are the ones to create the spark. And then we have the generators. And the generators, think about what a generator does. It generates energy. So when somebody in human design is a generator and they're doing what lights them up, it lights up everyone around them.
Eric Berman: You're saying it doesn't just light them up, it lights up everybody else around them?
Heather Esposito: It does.
Eric Berman: Okay.
Heather Esposito: Then we have projectors, and projectors are advisors. They're the ones who can see all the things that need to be done and then can tell people what needs to be done, but they're not the ones to actually do it. That's where the generators come in. Then we have what we call reflectors, and reflectors are like 1% of the population. They're super rare, but they're here to reflect back to us what we need to see. So a manifesting generator is a combination of a generator and a manifestor. You have the ability to spark ideas, inspiration, and you also have the energy, the life force energy, to do it. So when we look at your body graph here, for people who are watching, we have this picture of, like, it kind of looks like an airport terminal if you looked at an overview of it, right? Where there's a bunch of shapes, there's a bunch of lines. All the shapes are energy centers, similar to chakras, right? How chakras have their own energy, right? But similar to that. And we have some of those centers that are colored in and some that are not colored in. The ones that are colored in, each of those centers has their own function. And when it's colored in, that is your nature. It's your consistent energy. It's energy that you have consistent access to, or constant access to. Whereas the ones that are not colored in, they are ones that you don't have consistent energy to. It's more where you can be conditioned by other people. And so what makes you a manifesting generator is this brown center here, which is the throat center. And then this red square down here is your sacral center, and sacral is life force energy.
Eric Berman: Okay.
Heather Esposito: It's like having that energy to go and do things. Both of those are defined, they're colored in. And then your throat center, it is directly connected to your sacral center. And as long as the throat center is connected to the sacral, or there's three other centers that it can be connected to, that's what makes it a manifesting generator. So manifesting generators, like I said, they have that life force energy of the generator. And somebody who's a generator, they're the builders. Manifesting generators are express builders. Generators like to do things more step by step. Manifesting generators are like, there could be 15 steps, and you're going to be like, oh, I'm going to start at step four, and then I'm going to go to nine. Hey, maybe I should go back to one and see what I should do at step one.
Eric Berman: Right, right.
Heather Esposito: Kind of all over the place. Your energy pivots a lot, and you can't do just one thing.
Eric Berman: That's true.
Heather Esposito: If somebody was like, you need to pick a niche, you need to pick this one thing, you would wither and die.
Eric Berman: Correct.
Heather Esposito: So that's your type. Oh, and I talked about the aura. So the aura of a manifesting generator, and also generators, because they share the same aura, is this warm, enveloping aura. People feel drawn into you. They feel comfortable in your energy. Whereas a manifestor's aura is closed off, because if they're supposed to be the spark in the world, that has to come internally from them, so they have to block off all this energy coming at them. Make sense? So that's why people are like, well, there's five types. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. But generators and manifesting generators can be similar, but there's those nuances that I mentioned, the similarity of having that same aura.
Reading Eric's Chart: The 4/6 Profile and Split Definition
Heather Esposito: So then the profile. So the profile is, in human design, there's six profile numbers. And so you see, for people who are listening, on the right and the left of this body graph, there are 13 numbers on the right side and 13 numbers on the left side.
Eric Berman: Right.
Heather Esposito: All of the numbers have a decimal point after and a number after that. And that number is either going to be a one, two, three, four, five, or six.
Eric Berman: I see that. Yeah.
Heather Esposito: Okay. And those profile numbers, think of them like flavors. They give a different flavor to the first number there. And that first number there is, in human design, they call them gates. I like to call them gifts, but there's 64 of those numbers. Those numbers all come from the I Ching, which is an ancient Chinese text. It dates back to about 3,000-plus years ago. And all of those 64 numbers have their own archetypes. It's energy. It's a frequency that we have access to. And when you look at your human design, you'll see that there's certain numbers that are highlighted, and those are the ones that are more accessible for you. Okay. All of the ones that are in the centers that are colored, they're ones that are more familiar to you. And then the centers that are not colored in, those are lessons for you to learn in life. So these two centers up here, up top, so I'm looking at Eric's body graph, and we have two centers in our head, and the rest of the centers are in our body. So going back to the nervous system stuff, 80% of our nerves run from our body to our brain, 20% run from our brain to our body. So this is why mindset stuff doesn't work, because you can change your thought, but all that stuff's going to be hiding out in your body.
Eric Berman: All the way full circle.
Heather Esposito: Okay. Yeah. So in Eric's case, he's got these two centers up top, and that's the crown center, which is all about inspiration. And then the one below that, the technical term for that is Ajna, but that's conceptualization. And so for you, those being open, it's like you filter other people's ideas. Ideas can come through, and it's like everything is like, oh my gosh, this idea and this idea and this idea. And sometimes you may feel pressured to have all the answers because those centers are open.
Eric Berman: Yep. That's true.
Heather Esposito: Right? Creepy, right?
Eric Berman: Yeah. Wow. It's so creepy. What does four six mean?
Heather Esposito: So four is the left, design; six is the personality. So four is how you see yourself, and the six is how other people see you. So I'm not going to go into explaining all of them too much, but I'll say, like, the line one, just to get a short understanding of the flavors. The line one is the investigator. The line two is what we call the natural. The line three is the discoverer. I'm going to pause myself and let me go back, okay, just to get a visual. So imagine a house in front of you, and you see somebody in the basement researching. That's the line one. The line two is the person in the living room strumming their guitar, just wanting to be left alone, exploring their passions. Don't call them out, because they're not ready to show their stuff to the world, and they don't realize how good they are. The line three is running up the stairs, going off on their next adventure. They have a backpack full of stories. They have bruises to show that they have fallen in life and gotten back up and discovered things again. The line four is in the kitchen pouring coffee for everybody, connecting people, getting people together and being like, oh, you guys would be great connections with each other. They're the networker. The line five is up in the attic window, and they are the ones that everybody's looking at, and they're like, oh, that person's going to save the day. They're the solutioner. They're the savior. They're the one who can lead us out of this mess. And then the line six, they're the ones sitting on top of the roof with binoculars in hand, seeing the big vision. And they're seeing the big picture of things, and they can see things that other people can't, because for the first 30 years of their life, they were the person running up the stairs, discovering, learning through trial and error, failing forward. And then, so the first 30 years are doing that, then from like 30 to 50, they're integrating stuff and just putting all those lessons together. And then 50-plus, they're that person on the roof being the wise sage of, like, hey, I can help you because I've experienced this.
Eric Berman: Wow. Wow. Interesting.
Heather Esposito: Okay. So I'm guessing some of that lands for you.
Eric Berman: Yeah. That definitely makes sense. Yeah. So you were reading my book, and then you thought what?
Heather Esposito: Well, one of the things that you talked about in your book was how you loved connecting people, and how you were always in different groups. Like, you couldn't be pigeonholed into one group of people.
Eric Berman: Yep. Yep.
Heather Esposito: And the line four, right, is all about people. And the line six, again, they're that leader and role model. And even though in your younger years you were in that trial-and-error thing, it's still that, like, I am going to connect all these different people.
Eric Berman: Wow.
Heather Esposito: And I see how these patterns work, and I see how these things all fit together.
Eric Berman: Got it. I love it. So, and then manifesting generators, what you would have guessed I was?
Heather Esposito: Yes.
Eric Berman: Community builders.
Heather Esposito: Community builders. And also because, like, you have multiple businesses. And not to say that somebody who's a generator, they can have multiple businesses and stuff too. But just, like, again, when we were in San Diego, you and I never spoke, but just seeing your energy and your aura, I could just be like, oh, okay, yeah, he's not a projector. I could tell that. Things that you can just tell energetically from somebody.
Eric Berman: Wow. Okay. Yeah, so that's just cool. So if you haven't done human design, you just got a really, really cool, a lot more than I have ever seen, insight into that. Any last tips for anybody that wanted to do this on their own and/or hire somebody like you to help them through this?
Heather Esposito: Yeah, hire somebody. There's a lot of information. And can I share with you one more thing about your design that is really good?
Eric Berman: Yeah.
Heather Esposito: So when we have these centers that are colored in, you can see, for somebody who's just listening, try to visualize a bunch of different shapes that are connected to each other. But you see, Eric, here that I'm circling, this red triangle is connected to this triangle, which is connected to the square, right? Those three are connected to each other. And then when you look at these other ones, you see that there's all lines connecting those all together. Does that make sense? But they're not connected to the other group, that first group that I talked about. So this is what's called, you see over here, it says you have a split definition. What it means is that your energy needs something to bridge the gap, to help it all connect. So for you, connecting with other people, when you're around the right people, they'll bridge that gap. So, like, it's hard to see here, but there's this one line where there's a half a line, it doesn't go all the way down. But if you're around somebody who has one of these other gifts, it could bridge that energy together. Have you ever been around certain people and you're like, man, things just click when I'm with them?
Eric Berman: Right, right. Magic happens. Let's go build something.
Heather Esposito: It's because they're bridging those gaps for you.
Eric Berman: Really cool.
Heather Esposito: And so your design, going back to the whole, like, you connecting people and stuff, some of it is them helping you connect back to yourself fully and bridging that energy for you.
Eric Berman: Wow.
Heather Esposito: And we won't even get into, like, I can look at your human design and tell you the best way for you to make decisions. And knowing that in business is so incredibly helpful.
Eric Berman: Wow.
Heather Esposito: Okay. And there's seven different ways to make decisions. And most people think, oh, you just got to do it this one way. But if you're not doing it according to your design, you're going to make crappy decisions.
Money Patterns, the Cupcake Oven, and Emotional Decision-Making
Eric Berman: I love it. All right, I'm sold on this. Well, you and I could definitely go a long time on this, so I'm excited. I want to wrap up the last piece that we talked about, and this has been really cool. You said, first, helping people rewire their nervous system, using human design to even amplify and optimize what you just learned on the nervous side. And then ultimately the last component is what you're finding in your clients, and where you can help people, and you've taught people, is just understanding money patterns and how people have made poor decisions. Walk through that as the last piece here.
Heather Esposito: Yeah. So how we do money is how we do everything. And our relationship with money shows up everywhere in life. And I had mentioned how I trusted my business partner, and I was just like, hey, she'll be just like me. My money archetype is a nurturer and a connector. I am so trustworthy of people. And so I effed myself out of a business, right? Because I was living in a disempowered state. Now that I understand this, I know how to still be a nurturer, still be a connector, but do it in a way that empowers both of us. When we understand those patterns in our relationship with money, we can start to see how it shows up, and then we can live in a more empowered state. And it ties in and weaves in with our human design. And if our nervous system is dysregulated, we keep going to those old patterns over and over again. And so it's like, I'm going to go back to Cupcake Wars. So when we were on Cupcake Wars, we were using an oven that we didn't know. We had recipes that we knew, but we didn't have an oven that we knew. And for anybody who's ever baked, you know that every oven is so completely different. And so human design and money archetypes are the recipe, and having an oven that is regulated properly is the nervous system. We weren't able to go past the second round because our cupcakes weren't cooked evenly.
Eric Berman: Right.
Heather Esposito: So it just makes a mess. We had the recipes. We knew exactly what we needed to do, but our, quote-unquote, nervous system, right, our oven, couldn't do it properly.
Eric Berman: Right. Right.
Heather Esposito: Frameworks are great to have, but if your nervous system doesn't support it, it won't go anywhere. But you can have a great nervous system but not know the frameworks of how your energy is meant to move. So that's why I love combining them all together.
Eric Berman: So if I'm optimized, my money patterns are optimized, and I follow those steps, what does that look like? What's the end state if you're doing things efficiently?
Heather Esposito: It looks like peace in your body. It looks like ease, like, wow, it gets to be this easy.
Eric Berman: Meaning making money, or just money not stressing you out as much?
Heather Esposito: Both, because it depends. Because some people can make it, and then they're just like, oh, I got to get rid of it right away. Some might have a harder time bringing it in. So everybody's different. So it just looks like more ease and more capacity to be able to earn more, to hold more, to feel safe with it.
Eric Berman: Got it. So once you understand all the things, I get it. So once you understand the things, understand the space you should be playing in and how your body needs to react, your relationship with money completely changes, because you're understanding what is it you really need, what's going to be safe, and then you're just optimizing across, versus having money be a stressor because you're probably not even doing the other things correctly.
Heather Esposito: Exactly.
Eric Berman: Interesting. Well, it all comes together. Very cool. Well, that's a good wrap. And I mean, it's interesting. I'm just thinking of an exercise I did with my EO forum, and just thinking about everybody's relationship with money and the way they think about it, and how different everybody is. It's just fascinating on that aspect. And that's a whole conversation in itself, the way you look at it.
Heather Esposito: It is. I'm right now doing a series of talks at a doctor's office and helping them understand this, because of the conversations that they have with patients. Like, some of them are just so afraid to share how much treatment costs because of their own money stories. So we're uncovering all this, but then we dive into human design and understanding how some people, when they make decisions, they need more time. Some people need more information. Some people need, all depending on their profile.
Eric Berman: You just said a really important point I want to double down on. The way we feel about money is the way we project. And oftentimes when we're going out there to sell and ask for the sale and close and all that, if we're not comfortable, or we think it's a high price, you're right, that'll come up in the way we're even presenting certain things, and we're not comfortable with it. Hard to ask for an order if you're not comfortable with money yourself and you're putting yourself in the client's shoes. That's really interesting as you're talking through that. Yeah. Well, cool. Is there anything I didn't ask you that we should have talked about that I might have missed?
Heather Esposito: I think we covered a lot of the good stuff. I will say this, though. One of the things, with what we were just talking about with the money stuff, is understanding the decision-making process is huge, because when you can understand, and I'll go back to you. For you, your decision-making process, well, do you want to know what your decision-making process is?
Eric Berman: Yeah. I'm like, okay, what do we have?
Heather Esposito: So that red center that was highlighted, that's the sacral. That's the life force energy. So I'm going to give you a little exercise. I want you to notice, I'm going to ask you two questions and just notice how you feel with the questions. I don't care about the answer. Just notice how you feel with the questions. Okay? What do you want for dinner? Okay, question one. Now, do you want Chinese or Mexican for dinner? Right. So what did you notice, the difference between those two questions?
Eric Berman: You already know the answer to that question. You know which question I liked and didn't like.
Heather Esposito: What did you feel in your body?
Eric Berman: More stress, more anxiety on the first one, because it required me to be thinking and analyzing something that I just, it's not a major, I have too many other things to make decisions on than dinner.
Heather Esposito: Yeah. So your design needs something to respond to.
Eric Berman: Yeah.
Heather Esposito: Well, it needs, like, a yes or no, right? So anybody who comes to you with open-ended things, be like, okay, give me a choice. So that's the first part, is you have to have a choice of something. But for you, your solar plexus is defined, which is your emotional part, which means you need to ride the emotional wave of something, which 53% of people have. And so when it comes to making big decisions, you're going to get that guttural yes or no. You listen to your gut, right? Your gut says yes or no to something, and you say, this sounds really great, give me 24 hours to feel into this. And then when the emotional high is gone, then you can make a decision.
Eric Berman: I get myself in trouble because I don't wait 24 hours. I just can make a decision quickly and just move on.
Heather Esposito: Exactly. Yeah. And that is what so many people do. And so with high-pressure sales, like, you know, when I worked for Tony Robbins, they would be on the phone with people and be like, well, if you don't make a decision now, you're not serious about changing your life. That's not true. 53% of the people need time to process that. So when I'm working with somebody, and already in our first conversation, I usually know the human design, I'm like, listen, this may feel great for you, but I don't want you to make a decision right now. I want you to go sleep on it. If you have more questions, come back to me.
Eric Berman: Well, [unclear] a Jedi trick. Get everybody's human design before you talk to them on sales, and say, they're going to love that when you're just like, I don't want your money. You need to sleep on it. You make too many impulsive decisions based on your human design. So yeah, no, that's cool.
Why Heather Joined Speakeasy and Closing Thoughts
Eric Berman: So Heather, [unclear] changing topics. Just a last note, I'm going to ask you a question. How has your experience so far been in Speakeasy? What are you enjoying?
Heather Esposito: Oh my gosh. So when I left the Tony Robbins world, I kind of took myself out of being in any type of networking, you know, or worlds, for many reasons. I'm a line two profile in human design, and we like to hermit. And so I've been hermitting for a long time. And I've had some crappy experiences. And so when I was introduced to Speakeasy, I was like, I don't know. I don't know. Because I need time to think and think. And I was still, like, you know, unsure, because I needed a little bit of time to warm up to some things. But especially going to San Diego and just seeing the authenticity of people, because there can be a lot of really, like, bro crap experiences with this type of environment, and it's not there at all. Everybody that I've met has been really genuine. Because of my background, I want to be around people who are thinking about how they're taking care of themselves, emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually. And while not everybody's going to meet that for me all the time, the majority of people that I met were high-level thinkers and can see things holistically, instead of just, like, how many sales do I have to get, and have things be transactional. Nobody walked up to me and was like, here's my card. And I'm like, whoa, I don't even know your name.
Eric Berman: Yeah. Yeah.
Heather Esposito: So I've really been enjoying it, and love the space that you guys have created, and love that you have, like, looking at your design, right? Got to use your gifts to bring this into the world. And I would love to, you know, because you can look at people's designs together, and I would love to see you and Glen's designs together, you know, and see what things you bring to each other. But I've really been enjoying it. And I think that if somebody's looking for a space to come into, that they want to grow and expand and serve, I think it's a great space.
Eric Berman: Awesome. I appreciate that. And I really appreciate your time. You gave me a lot of time today. So thank you for that, and all my personal lessons here on this. So I'm excited to take what I learned and dig in further. And thank you so much. I look forward to chatting with you more soon.
Heather Esposito: Yeah, you too. Thanks, Eric.
Announcer: And that's a wrap from the Speakeasy Podcast. If something sparked for you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it, review it, and pass it to the one person who needs to hear this right now. Want in on the real mastermind? Tap the link in the show notes to apply. Until next time, keep scaling, stay sharp, and don't be the smartest one in the room.
Eric Berman: Hello. I've been noticing you've been following along to Inside the Speakeasy Podcast. And if the conversations I'm having out there resonate with you, then I'd like to invite you to apply to learn more about becoming a member of Speakeasy.
About The Guest
Heather Esposito
Heather Esposito is a money relationship and human design coach, bestselling author, Body Code practitioner, and Safe and Sound Protocol practitioner. According to her show notes, she helps smart, heart-centered women build lives and businesses that do not trigger them by addressing trapped emotions, stored trauma, and nervous system dysregulation. Heather holds a master's in counseling and began her career as a therapist in a group home before training in health coaching and attending a culinary school focused on food and healing. In 2010 she opened Sweet Freedom, a gluten-free, allergen-friendly bakery in Philadelphia that competed on Cupcake Wars. She later coached on Tony Robbins's team for three and a half years, then built her own practice drawing on energy healing, hypnotherapy, internal family systems, human design, and the Safe and Sound Protocol. Heather works with clients remotely and is based in Charlotte.
