Episode 84: The Hidden Cost of Stress on Your Body & Business with Dr. Lara Goode

Welcome back to She's Making Millions, the podcast for powerhouse women ready to scale, lead, and build true wealth. If you're building a business designed for freedom, impact, and legacy, this is the space for you.

Episode Summary & Show Notes Summary: In this episode, Taylor sits down with Dr. Lara Goode, a doctor of osteopathic medicine and founder of Coastal Therapies in the Northern Rivers  for the podcast's first-ever conversation with an osteopath. Laura shares the wild ride of building her clinic from scratch, including losing the entire business in the devastating 2022 Northern Rivers floods while 15 weeks pregnant, then rebuilding a space four times the size. From there, the conversation moves into Laura's zone of genius: what chronic stress and "high-functioning burnout" actually do to a woman's body  headaches, jaw clenching, gut issues, autoimmune flare-ups  and why she believes women are conditioned to have no boundaries at all. Laura also opens up about her own health scare: a sudden, stress-triggered hearing loss and her first Crohn's disease flare-up, and what it taught her about listening to the "whispers" before the body forces you to stop. This one is an equal parts business story and permission slip to slow down.

Key Takeaways:

Building a service-based business often means learning the business side (HR, systems, finances) the hard way  there's no such thing as starting "ready"

The metrics allied-health and service businesses should track: room/staff utilisation, weekly turnover, rebooking rates, and what each unit of your business needs to generate to cover expenses

"Tall poppy syndrome" and the discomfort around women discussing money are still very real  and worth pushing against

High-functioning burnout shows up physically: headaches, migraines, jaw clenching, tight hips, gut issues, and can escalate into autoimmune conditions

Women are often conditioned from childhood to be people-pleasers with no boundaries  and that conditioning shows up directly in business (and in burnout)

Habit stacking  attaching a small stress-relief action to something you already do daily (brushing teeth, driving, making coffee)  is one of the easiest ways to build a nervous-system reset into a busy schedule

Ignored stress signals can escalate to serious, sometimes irreversible, health outcomes  Laura shares her own experience with a stress-triggered Crohn's flare and sudden permanent hearing loss

Building a business that isn't 100% reliant on y