Creating Superfans Podcast Episode 309: Erin King

Brittany Hodak [00:00:00]:
I often say that if people leave most of their interactions with you feeling better than they felt before the interaction started, you’re gonna build a reputation as someone people want to be around, somebody they wanna do business with. Your customers, your colleagues, your vendors, and even your acquaintances will wanna spend more time with you because they quite literally feel better after they do. Today’s guest, Erin King, is here to tell you exactly how to do just that. She’s gonna give you the clues you need to identify and harness your energy so that you can be the very best version of yourself. She’s one of the world’s leading personal energy management experts, and, yes, we’re gonna get into exactly what that means. Erin is the creator of the energy exam, the world’s very first scientific assessment for personal human energy. She’s worked with Google, Disney, the Academy Awards, Visa, and even the United States Navy to unlock what she calls their big energy. I loved this conversation and can’t wait for you to hear it.

Brittany Hodak [00:01:05]:
Let’s jump right in. Erin, my friend, thank you for joining me on the show.

Erin King [00:01:11]:
Britney, thank you for having me. We’ve been chatting for 35 minutes already, and I’ve already had a total blast. So thank you for having me.

Brittany Hodak [00:01:19]:
Well, so I am probably like many of my listeners in that I had never thought about or even heard of the idea of personal energy management until you started talking about it probably, gosh, a year and a half, 2 years ago, before you were even talking about it on stage. So take us through a little bit. Like, what does this even mean, this idea of personal energy management?

Erin King [00:01:41]:
Okay. Well, I made up the term. I don’t know if it’s catching on or not. But, my position, as you may have seen on my Instagram, is I really believe that energy management is the new time management. You know, when you think about time management, whether you’re good at it or not, whether you’re blocking your calendar or not, it’s really important that we’re carving out time for fun, time for family, time for work. But the reality is if you show up to those time blocks that you have in your calendar and you’re depleted, you’re just exhausted, you’re not able to really bring that best version of you to the table, You can block your time and plan your time all you want. But if you’re not bringing your energy and bringing your essence to the party, it’s like, what’s the point? Right? So I sort of had this revelation. I think I told you a little bit about this, when we were talking in our mastermind the other day.

Erin King [00:02:24]:
But I I had sort of a, a very dramatic, like, life or death situation that happened to me. I was it was during the pandemic, and we had, you know, a lot of our friends had moved away. They were more like family than friends, really. We had put all our money in a really big investment that went south. So my husband was kinda bummed out. It was the pandemic. I was kinda lonely. My family was on the East Coast.

Erin King [00:02:49]:
My girlfriends had been like my family. They all left. So and then we had this awful situation where we we lost, a pandemic puppy that was, like, the love of our life. It was a terrible, awful, awful, freak accident. Like, she was on a leash walking back from the grocery store one day. It was awful. A car came out of nowhere. So my husband and I were sort of in this, like, really, really low phase of our life.

Erin King [00:03:12]:
You know, on top of that, my dad had got diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. We were just, like, hanging on by a thread. So you know when you have those moments in your life where it’s just drainer after drainer after drainer? I call it my drainy season. Right? And in this drainy season, you know, if someone listening is going through a drainy season of grief or loss or financial worries or just general stuckness, you know that there’s a lot of ways you can deal with it. You can either charge at it, which is probably the healthiest way to do it. But for many of us that are ambitious achievers and high performers like you, we tend to, like, use work as a way to sort of if we can just keep moving and keep going and keep putting points in the board, we can escape dealing with big, heavy, messy issues. So that’s kinda what I did, Britney. I mean, I was I was saying yes to everything.

Erin King [00:04:02]:
I was not enforcing boundaries. 1 week, I did 5 different keynotes on 5 different topics in 8 days. And I I just got home, and I was on this Zoom call with my team. And my my, the gal that runs my company, Ashley, who you’ve met before, she was talking to me and asking questions. And all of a sudden, I couldn’t hear her, and I couldn’t really breathe. I couldn’t get my breath. I couldn’t respond. And long story short, it was really scary.

Erin King [00:04:28]:
I ended up waking up in the hospital in the freaking ER. And I looked at my husband, and I’m like, you know, did I have a heart attack? He said, you had a panic attack. And it was just one of these things where if you’ve ever had your body responding to you in a way that’s like, hey. We’re waving the red flag. We’re not okay. And if you’re someone who has shushed those somatic signals, like, maybe you’re not sleeping well, you’re having anxiety, you’re having depression, maybe you had a full blown panic attack like I did. The truth is, like, your body will let you know. You cannot BS your body.

Erin King [00:05:02]:
So that was sort of the big life and death moment for me was like, okay. I’m gonna put my whole life on pause and figure out, you know, life’s gonna come for us. Things are gonna happen. This is not a healthy way to deal with things. So what do I do? Like, how do I be both a high performing individual but also someone who’s high enjoying even when this the chips are down, even when life comes to us? So I went on this big quest, and I I hired a team of PhD researchers. And we spent an entire year interviewing thousands of people all over the country about their energy habits. Basically, how they source, spend, and save their personal energy personally and professionally online and offline. And we it was so fascinating to discover all these incredible scientific headlines about energy.

Erin King [00:05:51]:
But most importantly for me, what I learned was some secrets of what I call the big energy beings. So these big energy beings were a very small subset of the study. Most people had low energy and low life satisfaction like many of us, like how I felt. Right? But there was this one sneaky group that we found where they reported that they had pretty high energy levels over the last 90 days. Right? So our scale was, like, 1 to 7. So if you’re checking your battery, like, where’s your energy over the last 90 days? Scale from 1 to 7, where do you land? So these big energy beings reported being, like, a 5 to 7 range. But on the other hand, they also scored super high on having what we call a high life satisfaction score. So that was like, how present are you? How joyful are you? Are you excited for the future? Do you feel successful? Questions like that.

Erin King [00:06:42]:
So we took this group of people who had both high energy and also high life satisfaction, and we asked them all the things, all the questions. Like, tell us your ways. How are you doing it? Can you preach to us right now? And what we uncovered was absolutely fascinating. We can walk through some of that in a little bit. But applying what I learned from studying these big energy beings, we call them the babes, the BEVs. It truly changed my life, Britney. Like, I I’m telling you, fast forward to today, and my company is more profitable than ever. I have so much more calm and peace and joy in my life.

Erin King [00:07:20]:
I feel really present with my people. The I feel like just the the joy and the passion is back in my work. And, you know, I know that life will you know, I don’t know what’s gonna happen with my dad with his illness or whatever life’s gonna turn my way. But I feel like from what I’ve learned from this experience, it’s really it’s it’s completely changed my life lives with my clients. And so I’m on a mission to just kinda, like, share the goods, you know, what I learned, which has really helped me. So, hopefully, it can help others to do the same.

Brittany Hodak [00:07:48]:
So you’re telling me there’s a way we can either learn from or maybe even become these bevs? Can we all be big energy beings? Is that is that an attainable thing for some of us that maybe aren’t there in life and energy management right now?

Erin King [00:08:03]:
Yeah. And, you know, it’s funny. So just to be clear, so big energy does not necessarily mean high energy. Like, I’m a fast talker. I’m high energy. So it’s not it’s not matching or mimicking my or anyone else’s energy. That’s not what it is. You know, big energy really is that version of you when you just feel like you are fully charged, ready to rock at your best.

Erin King [00:08:25]:
And people’s baseline energy levels, like my high energy might not be yours, might not be somebody else’s. And that’s okay. That’s more than okay. And it’s important as leaders and managers to understand that not everyone’s 100% fully charged looks the same. So what was also interesting in the study was we found there are 5 key energy types, each with their own baseline energy levels and their own, what we call, chargers and drainers. So how they source energy and how they essentially lose energy. So we created a little assessment called the energy exam so people can kinda have a little shortcut to their personal power source to figure out, like, you know, what does charge me, what does drain me, and what does my vibe feel like to the world around me? So, yes, people can become babes, but it’s their version of a babe. Right? It’s it’s their them feeling, yes.

Erin King [00:09:15]:
I’m excited about life, and, yes, my energy goes high. So full disclaimer. Obviously, if you’re not doing what we call the duh, right, so diet unwind hydrate, d u h is the duh. If you’re not getting enough sleep, if you’re not drinking water, if you’re eating like crap, your energy’s gonna suck. That’s obvious. We all know that. But the conversation that we’re really having about how do we mimic what we learn from the babes is really more about managing your emotional energy. So your your your emotional energy in interacting with others and your emotional energy in who you allow access to you.

Erin King [00:09:46]:
So it’s really more like individual and interactional energy. And, you know, the babes, really, they revealed all their secrets. I don’t know that they necessarily knew what they were doing. They just shared with, like, here’s how I manage tough times. Here’s how here’s what I do when I’m tired. Here’s how I show up when I’m exhausted. Here’s what I say no to. And we really just aggregated these thousands of conversations and create what we call the the big energy being blueprint, which is sort of the 5 key steps that I don’t know if they knew they were taking them, but we sort of curated them and put them into a process that I follow every single day, every single week.

Erin King [00:10:20]:
Game changer. And we can dive into that too a little bit if you guys are interested in hearing more about that.

Brittany Hodak [00:10:26]:
Yeah. Let’s dive into it. Well, first, I wanna say you could take the energy exam. It’s the energy exam dot com. It is so much fun, and it’s so enlightening. I did it, and then I had Alex, who works with me on my team, do it, and we were both laughing because we had different types of energy, and our 2 types of energy work really well together. Like, it says, like, this is who you’re gonna be most attracted to. We were like, oh, that’s why we work together so well.

Brittany Hodak [00:10:48]:
So it’s a really, really I it’s a it’s a lot. It is exhaustive. Like, I was shocked how much value that you’re giving for free for people to be able to see, what they, you know, what they maybe, to your point, have been doing but didn’t realize that they were doing, and some really great tips of how to up level the energy that they feel so that they can spend less time with the drainers and more time with the chargers.

Erin King [00:11:11]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I so okay. Alex was synergistic, you said. Mhmm. And I believe you were generative. I was generative. Yeah.

Erin King [00:11:17]:
Okay. So there’s 5 key types. So when you guys dive into the energy exam, you’ll be one of 5 key types. So, quick flyover. So Britney is generative. So generative is really source energy the fastest from a sense of competency in creative realms. So feeling like they’re doing challenging but doable tasks with immediate feedback in creative spaces like podcasting, contenting, keynotes, basically what you do. So that’s why you have such a sparkly energy because of you spend a lot of your time intentionally in that zone that you are just more naturally designed to shine and thrive in.

Erin King [00:11:52]:
Now for Alex as a synergistic, synergistic really get a lot of energy from a sense of connection in the spiritual and emotional realms. So for her, when she is managing your clients, helping with your content, working on your communities, that sense of connectivity is what really lights her fire and gets her going. You know, for me, I’m a kinetic. So kinetics get more energy from the more they’re in motion, the more energy they get. So if they’re, like, if they’re bored or there’s too much downtime, that’s when they start to feel really drained. So the opposite, of that would be rigorous. So rigorous energy, they are allergic to, like, the high speed chaos. They like they like process order.

Erin King [00:12:33]:
You know, they like things to go where they go and and flow in a slow manner. Right? And then finally, we have our responses, which are the empaths, the deep feelers. The ones that really where they recharge their battery is boundaries and peace and process time. So it’s really fun to kinda dive into what type you are, and you’ll sort of learn more in the report. You’ll see all the details about it. But, you know, it’s interesting, as you mentioned, like, managing with Alex, you know, I manage Ashley on my team. So I know that Ashley is a fellow Kinetics. We’re both Kinetics.

Erin King [00:13:03]:
So our Zoom calls are just a lot of high vibe. Let’s keep going. Let’s keep going. But the downside to that is that we tend to neglect our physical health because we just keep going. And so that’s what happened to me with my kind of awful, you know, breakdown during the pandemic. And Ashley had a similar thing happen as well where she got burnt out. So kinetics are really susceptible to emotional burnout. So it’s something to watch out for if you are a kinetic to just be careful that you’re listening to your body and that you are making that time.

Erin King [00:13:34]:
You know, one of the things that when it comes to energy management, there’s so many ways that we mess it up. Right? Like and there’s really 3 big ways that most of us try our best to manage your energy, and we just fall short. Right? So the first one is, the classic kind of rise and grind, hustle culture. You just power through. Just, like, grab a gear and power through, which we’ve all done. And, of course, there’s times, like, where you have to power through. You have a launch. You have a project.

Erin King [00:14:00]:
You know, it’s the holidays. It’s back to school. You know, there’s always an opportunity to be like, I’m just gonna power through until this. Once things calm down then, when I get there and that’s really, really dangerous mindset to have because sometimes it calms down, but also life is life, and it doesn’t. You know? So

Brittany Hodak [00:14:21]:
Well, and a lot of times we’re like, well, I powered through that, so I’m gonna just power through this next thing. It’s like we almost take it as this badge of honor of, like, well, I worked 86 days in a row without taking a day off. So after this one day off now, I know I can work a 100.

Erin King [00:14:34]:
Oh, so well said. The busy badge is brutal. And and for some people, they might even recognize that they’re in that cycle of biz busy badge. My sister-in-law, she’s a super high performer. She has 4 kids. She has 2 dogs. I mean, she thrives in that environment, but she’s had a lot of health issues. Right? Because there’s her body is processing that this is a pace that’s not actually organic.

Erin King [00:14:56]:
That’s it’s really engineered at a level that maybe is a little too much powering through. Right? So then what happens is whether you have a situation like me where you go to the hospital or like you said, just like a weekend where you’re like, I my eyelashes are tired. Like, I’m just so fatigued. Right? Like, so when you have those moments, the second thing we do, the second mistake is that we’ll try to sort of just power down. Right? We’re like, oh my god. I just need to, like, not talk to anyone at a spa for 24 hours. Or, like, like, I’m locking my door, and I’m watching trash TV until I feel better. Right? So we power it down.

Erin King [00:15:27]:
And recharging and recalibrating and powering down, very important for sure. Like, I’m going on vacation on Sunday, and I cannot wait, Britney. Like, sign me up for the Aperol Spritz is in Italy. I’m so excited. But the reality is, like, powering down is only a short term solution. So if you think about powering through and powering down, you power through till you can’t anymore fist physically. You power down until you can’t anymore fiscally. Right? You can’t your body can’t afford you or your wallet can’t afford you.

Erin King [00:15:55]:
So they’re both good short term solutions. But we can get stuck in this, like, power through power down cycle, which, actually, the big energy beings in our study, they didn’t really use power down and power through language. They really didn’t. That wasn’t really how they operated. It wasn’t they were more talking about sustainability. Okay? So the third mistake that we, make a lot of times is that we try to, like, tackle our energy issue. Right? So we go on Instagram and we see red light therapy and saunas and cold plunges. Why is everyone jumping in ice cold bathtubs? What is going on with crazy people? So we’ll try to do, like, all the things, the juicing.

Erin King [00:16:30]:
We’ll just go crazy. Right? Yoga, meditation, incense. So the powering up is great. If you can work out and do all these things all the time perfectly, great. Then that works for you, freaking do it. But if you’re like me, wellness overwhelm is a very real issue. Feeling like you’re 2 scrolls deep in your app and you’re like, I’m not doing enough. Who has time for this? The reality is that we found in our study was that people who actually did all the things and by all the things, the number specifically, is 32.

Erin King [00:17:03]:
So 32 energizing activities a week was the average number that people had in our study where they maintained a nice baseline of their energy. Where they’re like, hey. You know what? Scale from 1 to 7, I’m clocking in around a 5 to 6. Pretty good. Right? So 32 energizing activities. This is like call Britney on a walk, catch up at work, get our steps in, have a cup of coffee, take a little breather, you know, do your workout. It could be maybe, like, creating something, listening to some music, whatever it is for you that that kind of powers up your battery, whatever your chargers are, more than 32, what we found in our study is that actually both energy levels went down and life satisfaction scores went down. So more is not more.

Erin King [00:17:45]:
Like, more efforts to get energy does not actually yield more energy. So good news. It’s not about doing more and more. It’s about doing your your type of energy management, which is where this kind of power grid, these 5 types of energies can come into play and give you a little shortcut to know what to focus on. So the big secret of the big energy beings was, like, they are hyper, hyper aware of what powers up their battery, and they prioritize it unapologetically. Like, as usual, the secret isn’t that much of a secret. They just have the discipline and the prioritization to say, you know what? I am gonna draw this boundary. You know what? I can’t do that.

Erin King [00:18:27]:
You know what? No. It’s a complete sentence. You know what? I need to take a minute and power up. They were so much more intentional in their language even when drainers would come their way, whether it was, like I talked about, grief or loss or it was even just everyday stuff like stress or annoying coworkers or, like, a high maintenance client. They just were more aware of checking in with their battery, which is kind of the first step of the blueprint. Right? Which is, like, are you even asking yourself, where is my battery? Like, are you even taking a a hot second to check-in and see, like, where are you pacing right now? And is it I mean, because whatever Instagram is telling you or your coworkers or your boss, you know, your as the book says, the body keeps the score. Right? Like, your somatic signals. You know, it takes guts to go with your gut, but your body is screaming at you and telling you, like, this is a piece that I can handle or not.

Erin King [00:19:14]:
You know?

Brittany Hodak [00:19:16]:
Yeah. And what I so when I did the energy exam and I I was thinking about these things for the first time, I had a little bit of a flashback to when I bought my Tesla. And so I obviously had never had to, like, worry about how to charge a car battery and what’s best for a car battery. And one of the things that they tell you when you get I don’t know if this is for all electric cars, probably. I would imagine the batteries were somewhat the same way. Is that for the best performance of your battery over time, you need to keep your battery between 30 80% as much as you can. And when you charge your car at home, you’re not charging it to a 100%. You’re charging it to 80%, because that 80% is enough for most days.

Brittany Hodak [00:19:56]:
And if you charge the battery consistently to a 100%, the battery is not physically able to reach a 100% anymore. Right? You need to keep it at 80% for when it’s at 80%. And then when you need to go on a long trip, you say, yep. I’m gonna precondition this battery. I’m gonna charge it to a 100%. I’m gonna take it down maybe to, like, 10:15, much lower than I normally would because I’m usually recharging when it hits 30, and then I can go back to a 100% again. And I had, like, a flash back of reading about and watching the video about how to manage the battery in the car when I did the energy exam, and I was thinking about, wow. Why have I not applied what they told me to apply to my car battery to my life battery for 4 years? Like, why did it take me to reach 40 years old and do Aaron’s exam before I realized that I was trying to operate under this, like, dumb model of I have to get to a 100% every day and I’ve gotta start the day at a 100%.

Brittany Hodak [00:20:46]:
And then I drain back down to, like, you know, maybe 2, 3%. And I’m like, I did it. I’m recharging before I got to that 0 as if getting to 3% or 2% is something to celebrate. It is not. And so I really loved that. It it sorta, like, shifted my mindset of I’ve been thinking about energy management all wrong. And, I mean, thank god I’m figuring it out when I’m 40 and not when I’m 65. But, like, Erin, could you have not come up with this a decade ago? Come on.

Brittany Hodak [00:21:12]:
There were Well, it’s you and better late than never, I guess, but this is this is stuff that, like, everybody should be taught.

Erin King [00:21:22]:
Well, Britney, that analogy is so perfect and so beautiful. And and it’s interesting because so okay. So when you talk about the big the big energy blueprint process, so the first thing is ask, so checking on your battery. Number 2 is assess, which is what you’re talking about. Like, assessing what level of charge you need to be your best version, best version of you online, offline, at home, at work, which is so unique to you. And even just deciding what that looks like. Right? Like, you’re like, you were saying, I was trying to get to a 100. And it’s like, well, you know what? Sometimes, like, cruising at 80 or 13, depending on the situation, like, it’s not a one size battery fits all because the journey you were on was different.

Erin King [00:21:59]:
If you’re on the big road trip, which and you’re in there for the long haul, we’re human. Your battery is gonna go down to that 13, 12%. But making sure you’re pacing it in a way that makes sense before you’re in the red and you’re on the side of the highway, like, oh my god. I didn’t charge the Tesla. That’s another big secret of the big energy beings is they really never let their battery get in the red. They recharge before the red. And And sadly, for a lot of people, like, we don’t know that our battery is unempty until we have something happen, like a panic attack or just in general feeling like like you’re just hanging in there. Like, people that say, oh, I’m just living the dream in that sarcastic voice.

Erin King [00:22:34]:
Like, are you? Or, you know, it’s that survive energy versus that thrive energy. And so, yeah. So, anyway, it’s ask, it’s assess what charges you. And then the 3rd step is really align. What we found was that the the big energy beings, what they really talked about was they didn’t really, disregard their drainers. So what that means is, like, the people and projects that are taxing you, that you walk away and you physically just feel heavier. Like, your shoulders are, like, up in your ears. Your your body language, you’re clenching your your hands.

Erin King [00:23:08]:
You’re biting your lip. You’re clenching your jaw. All of a sudden, you need a coffee or a wine. You have a headache. Just you walk away from some interactions and you just feel exhausted. You just left 8 hours. Right? And so those drainers, what we found is, you know, they really dealt with their drainers. Like, they didn’t ignore them and say, well, I’ll deal with them when or kick down the road, the someday, someday, which is really a a dangerous slippery slope.

Erin King [00:23:34]:
Like, the someday slippery slope is so real. You know? And so for 4 Drainers, we asked them, like so every day, you’re just dealing with everything that’s hard? And they said no. And so they said, you know, it they would give it, like, 3 strikes. So, like, the first time, alright. Things happen. Someone can be a jerk or a product can be hard or, you know, this pivot is uncomfortable. But after three times of feeling like, really, like, this is not working for me, they would just sit down and they would pay attention to what they need. They make decisions about their drainers.

Erin King [00:24:07]:
So for example, you know, if they had a boss that was making them feel like crap at work, but by the 3rd time, they were like, you know what? It’s time to tackle this. Like, I’m gonna sit down with them, and I’m gonna get my big girl pants on, my big boy pants on, and I’m going to express that the way I’m being managed is not working for me. And it’s making me feel exhausted versus motivated. So I know you’re trying to motivate me, but it’s actually depleting me. You know, having a tough conversation in in a personal life with you know, there’s a a toxic relationship. That’s a friendship from childhood or a marriage that isn’t working anymore or the in law that is overstepping. I mean, these are complex, heavy, tricky drainers. But after, you know, 3, 4, 5 times, they they said, like, you know, I had the tough conversation or I tackled the tough moment.

Erin King [00:24:53]:
Like, there’s no big secret. They just dealt with it. Like, they didn’t ignore it and put it under the rug. And so, you know, even for me, with my situation I was talking about earlier, you know, my my primary energy is kinetic, so it’s staying in motion is my jam. But my secondary is responsive. And if you’re responsive, you know, your fastest path to having your battery really drained is when you lack a sense of control in the emotional realm. So when you’re a deep empath and a deep feeler like I was, and I was ignoring that I had trauma and grief and worry and fear and all these emotions, I was just ignoring them and just working myself to the bone to not deal with them. That drained my battery so fast.

Erin King [00:25:34]:
And so I was interviewing 1 gal, and she was talking about how she had had a lot of emotional heavy things happen, like a rainy season of her own. And, she said, you know, Erin, I’ve always been so judgy about therapy because I grew up with boomer parents. And boomer parents are like, rub some dirt on it. Right? Like, you know, when the going gets tough, the tough get going, my dad would always say. And, you know, they were allergic to, like, feelings and and weakness and emotion. And so for some of us, they grew up in boomer households where we didn’t talk about our feelings. It it can feel a bit like, oh my gosh. You’re going to therapy.

Erin King [00:26:09]:
What’s wrong with you? Right? So I sort of took a page out of her book, and she said that it really helped her to raise her energy level and raise her happiness level. She was actually one of the babes who had formerly been in that lower one to 4 range for energy and also scoring very low, in life satisfaction scores. And, so, you know, I did it. I I remember I was interviewing, Lewis Howes actually on my podcast for Success Magazine. And I asked him, like, know, what is your secret with your energy management? He said, Erin, I go to therapy, but here’s the trick. He said, I prepay for it a year in advance. He goes, it is so much money, and it’s so brutal. But if you pay for it in advance, then you’ll go.

Erin King [00:26:49]:
Because it’s way too easy to cancel or not go because you’re like, oh, who has $200 or $300? Like, what a waste of money. He goes, it’s all about the prepaid. That’s what gets your butt in the chair and unpacking the heavy drainers that are robbing you of your energy. And so after that day, the neck very next day, and I I emailed him. I’m like, alright. I prebooked. So I only did 3 months to I’m not as wealthy as Lewis House, so I did 3 months prebook. But, but it was a game changer.

Erin King [00:27:14]:
I mean, 90 days of once a week talking to someone, and I started to unpack some of these issues and really deal with it. And it was it what was really most surprising to me, Britney, about dealing with trainers is the progress that I felt energetically happened so much faster than I thought it would. I thought it was gonna take, like, years for me to figure all this out. And it was crazy when I just stopped ignoring it and ran right at it. I mean, I felt like my energy levels bounced back, like, shockingly fast by just biting the bullet and dealing with those trainers. So that was

Brittany Hodak [00:27:45]:
what closing tabs on your browser. Like, you don’t realize how slow things are because you have 58 open tabs until you do the work to close some of them, and you’re like, oh, wow. This who knew that having 7 open tabs instead of 57 would improve performance so much?

Erin King [00:28:00]:
Yeah. And then we tell ourselves we need all these tabs open because we’re working, and we have to do all these things. And we need what if we had the access really quick? It’s like, no. You can actually go and re Google something if you have to. Like, the excuses of another part of this study was really interesting, was that a lot of the big energy beings, they were just straight shooters. Like, they really did not make a lot of the excuses of the lower energy people. So when we interviewed the low energy people, we would say, well, why haven’t you tackled this trainer? Or why why do you feel that you’re stuck in this same position, doing this same project, in the same place when you’ve clearly said that all of these are making you feel like you can’t even get out of bed in the morning? Like, when you feel like getting out of bed in the morning is the biggest win of your day, which many of them did say, that’s that’s an indicator that your battery is struggling. Like, you’re Tesla level 5%.

Erin King [00:28:47]:
Right? Maybe 0. And so so they had so many excuses and reasons, right, which is normal. So so my point is, like, they would say, like, I don’t have time or I just can’t or I shouldn’t. A lot of shouldn’t language was in our interviews. And, you know, the truth is, like, if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re like, yes, I have drainers I need to deal with. Yes. It’s a position I don’t like. It’s a place I’m in.

Erin King [00:29:10]:
It’s a relationship I’m in. You know, whatever it is that you’re like, okay. This was making my shoulders up in my ears. This was making my sleep or my hair come out or my breathing change. Like, for me, that was breathing. So whatever it is, I just would challenge you to, like, pause and just ask yourself to imagine what it would feel like to be on the other side of dealing with not all of your drainers, but just pick the heaviest one. Pick the one that at 3 AM, when you wake up, the one that just really weighs on your heart. Like, is there a relationship you have to set free? Is it a toxic habit that you know you need to stop eating, drinking, shopping, spending, whatever it is? You know, is it that it’s a job that you outgrew long ago, but you’re just telling yourself, what what else would I do? Who else would hire me? How could I pay the bills? Like, the truth is if you can just find that big energy within you and believe that if you can just let go of one one trainer for me, it was my emotions, like, letting go of the heaviness of the the awful draining season of the past.

Erin King [00:30:16]:
You will be shocked at how much more open and light. You’ll you’ll begin to rediscover that big, juicy essence of you version that that you know you had at one point, and that is is really begging to come back out. So I really hope that people will hear this on this podcast and just say, I’m gonna give myself 7 days. So I always give myself a week. When I identify a drainer, I say I’m gonna give myself 1 week. I have 1 week to deal with this drainer. But if I am still feeling this heaviness, 7 business days, I use on Sunday night, I I look it’s a whole calendar audit. So Sunday night, I look at my calendar.

Erin King [00:30:50]:
I’m like, okay. What’s coming up for the week? And when you look at your calendar and you see those certain meetings, like a certain vendor or a certain, like, you committed to that lunch or whatever, and you get that that somatic signal of, like, oh god. I hate oh my god. Make sure that you’re preparing. That is going to be a drainer. So deal with it. Either if you can’t cancel it and you can’t get out of it, at least build in 30 minutes beforehand to plug into your Tesla charger, to plug into for you, Britney, as a generative, that’s some creative time making a playlist, doing some writing. You know, for me, I’m a kinetic.

Erin King [00:31:25]:
It’s all about physical energy. If I have a Draynor meeting, I spend 10 minutes. I walk around the block really quickly just breathing before I hop on that Zoom. You know, if you’re responsive, sit in quiet with your feelings and gather your energies. You can go into that that drainer conversation with a little more juice. You know, if you’re a rigorous, make sure you have a nice organized agenda for exactly how you’re gonna deal with that interaction to prepare yourself. You know? If you’re a synergistic, you need connection to someone else or something higher than yourself. So either do some prayer or some meditation or call a friend for a quick 10 minute catch up.

Erin King [00:32:01]:
That will fuel your battery the fastest. So when you go into these dreamy situations, you’re better equipped to deal with it versus going in blindly, unintentionally. And then you walk out of there, and now you’re in the red. And now what are you gonna do? So it’s the little teeny things, almost just micro habits that you can introduce into your life that, honestly, it’s so small, but the impact is massive.

Brittany Hodak [00:32:24]:
Well, the impact is massive and not just for you, but for everyone around you. And so I have 2 little kids. I have a 4 year old and a 7 year old, and kids call out the energy that the rest of us notice and don’t say anything about. Or, like, you can be somewhere, and my 4 year old will be like, mommy, I think she’s having a bad day. Or, like, somebody will do something, and one of them will say like, oh, mommy. Like, is she your friend? Like, is this person a friend? Because they, like, pick up on the energy of whether it’s negative or positive or, you know, even frantic. Right? Like, when once the, like, nervous energy that we pick up on. So it is such a big deal, not just for you yourself individually, but as our energies connect with the energies of everyone around us.

Brittany Hodak [00:33:11]:
And that’s why everybody needs to go take the energy exam, find out which of these 5 types of energy they have so that they can start to think about their drainers and think about how they can replace or eliminate some of those and spend more time in a charging state versus a draining state.

Erin King [00:33:26]:
Yep. Well said, Britney. It’s so true. You mean, energy is contagious. I mean, we actually found exactly how contagious it is if you’re interested in that.

Brittany Hodak [00:33:34]:
I would love to hear. Yes.

Erin King [00:33:35]:
We we basically, so two things. Number 1, so we ask people to engage with individuals whose energy they admired and people whose energy they didn’t. And we measured their battery, what well, self reported, 1 to 7 before and after those interactions. And what we found, shocker, was that engaging people whose energy they did not admire, almost 90% of people felt themselves go from a high energy state to a low energy state or a low energy state to a lower. So, like, either they went from, like, a 5 to a 7 to somewhere in a 1 to 4, or if they were, like, a 3 or 4, they went to, like, a 1 or a 2. So exactly what you said is scientifically happening. But from a on a positive standpoint, as a leader, we found that almost 70% of our participants, when they spent time with a leader or anyone whose energy they admired was the word we used, they actually, 70% have moved from a low energy state to a high energy state. So Yeah.

Erin King [00:34:32]:
Everything that was feeling low vibe, just being around someone whose energy they admire. Like, even yesterday, you and I had that phone call, and I was in a low energy state because I’d had one of these draining conversations with a vendor. And after getting off the off the phone with you, you were, like, super high vibe and excited and, like, sharing all the same stuff. And I got off that call, and I even, like, texted you. I’m, like, oh my gosh. I feel so recharged just being around your energy for that 30 minutes was a game changer for my personal battery. So so it’s not to your point. It’s not just the individual benefits.

Erin King [00:35:02]:
It’s the interactional ones as well, that is really important to kinda keep in mind. And, you know, the other thing that’s really important is if you are a leader and you are listening to this and you’re thinking, okay. Energy is still a little bit of, like, a woo woo topic. You know, you’re good vibes only. You’re kinda rolling your eyes a little bit. We actually found that we asked people, hey. When it comes to a leader that you trust, a leader that influences you, someone actually convinces you to get on board with, like, a new initiative, working the extra hours, making the change, the uncomfortable asks, we actually found that we said, what do you think it is is the number one trait of that leader that makes you trust and follow them? And we gave them, like, 25 options to answer. So we’re like, is it their skill set, their experience? Is it their creativity, their moral compass, the hours they work, education, connections? And the number one response was their, quote, unquote, vibe slash way of being.

Erin King [00:36:01]:
So it’s not like a woo woo nicey to have good energy as a leader or as anyone. It’s really the number one necessity in the workplace that you could ever cultivate, particularly in the age of AI with AI and automation. Like, our energy is our edge and our vibe is our value. So just making some quick changes to ask where your battery is, assess what charges you, and then make some alignment choices around dealing with just 1 drainer a week can completely transform not just how you feel, but to your point, how everyone around you feels as well.

Brittany Hodak [00:36:33]:
Amazing. Well, Erin, where can everybody learn more and find out their big energy type? The energy exam dot com. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Erin. Please come back again soon.

Erin King [00:36:43]:
Thanks, Britney.

Brittany Hodak [00:36:44]:
That’s it for today’s episode. Please help me out by leaving a review for the show or sharing it with a friend. Until next time, remember, don’t settle for standard. Be super.