Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have HER Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. HER Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, handling hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career and a life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside HER Collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. Have you ever noticed that most of the world's greatest leaders all have a fitness routine built into their daily lives, and that they often kick start their day with it? Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, designer Stacey Bendet, CFO Leslie Hale, and TV news anchor Robin Roberts all have dedicated time for health and wellness in their lives. I'll even toss in some men for you. How about Mark Cuban?

Erica: Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Richard Branson all have dedicated fitness routines. Whether you wanna believe it or not, your fitness routine directly impacts your leadership capabilities. And today, we're gonna go deep, and we're gonna talk about if you wanna be a better leader, you need to focus on your fitness.

Erica: Now y'all may know it, or you may not. But for years, I was a certified personal trainer, a certified pre and postnatal specialist, and a certified master health educator. And I actually worked as a personal trainer for years. I put myself through college that way, in both the private gym sector and in corporate America as a corporate health and wellness specialist. I taught boot camps, yoga, did one on ones, nutritional counseling.

Erica: You name it. I did it. This is actually the foundation of my career and it's my why, because I love helping people. And my career started that way, and it started with helping them meet their health and wellness goals, like bouncing back from pregnancy, being able to get up and down off the ground to play with their kids or their grandkids, and to just lead a healthier life. But once I hit that ceiling for growth in the fitness industry, I shifted into HR and now into executive coaching and keynote speaking, and, of course, this fabulous podcast.

Erica: But I'm here to tell you today that your fitness routine is directly linked to your leadership success. Yes. It is a bold statement, but it is true. Numerous studies have found that exercise is one of the most important habits that you can develop to transform your life. It makes you happier, healthier.

Erica: You get better sleep. It boosts your memory, concentration, and even your mental sharpness. Now John Ratey, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, says that exercise is the single best thing you can do for your brain in terms of memory and learning. And y'all, that's not it. That's not all. The key to being a successful leader is to mentally and physically push yourself farther.

Erica: Now, why do I say that? Because exercise teaches you that you can do hard things. It isn't easy to run a half marathon. It isn't easy to deadlift a 100 pounds. It isn't easy to take a hot yoga class where the room is a scorching 104 degrees.

Erica: I mean, is that how hot they make their room? I don't even know, but it's hard. I've done it. The point is regular exercise teaches us that we can do all of those things if and when we train for them. You don't become a successful marathon runner just by waking up and sprinting out 26.2 miles one morning.

Erica: You become a successful marathon runner because you put the miles in. You start with three, then you hit four, then five, and, yes, it takes time. And, no, it doesn't happen overnight. And sometimes you struggle so much that you may even have to repeat a certain distance for a week or two. But if you keep logging the miles, if you keep doing the reps, you will run that marathon, all 26.2 miles.

Erica: Exercise teaches you that with time and repetition, the hard things become easy, or at least they become easier. Now when I first started out, I could only do bicep curls with five pound dumbbells. I used to call these the baby weights. And at the peak of my strength training, I could easily curl 20 pound dumbbells, one in each hand, 15 times. Why?

Erica: How? Because I repeatedly focused on adding more weight over time, increasing my reps over time, and I got stronger. And the curling became easier. Just like in leadership, having tough conversations is hard. No one enjoys having tough conversations.

Erica: No one. And when I think back to the first time that I had to let someone go, I was sweating. My hands were shaking. My words were just garbled. And I remember just praying and waiting for it to be over.

Erica: That like five minutes that it took felt like an eternity. Today, I can have those conversations in a calm, direct manner. I still don't enjoy them, but my words no longer shake, and I can confidently walk into a room and have a tough conversation at the drop of a hat. Just as your muscles build layer upon layer of tissue, your leadership muscle does too. Your brain continues to form neuropathways and networks in your mind, centered on your words, your actions, and your attitudes.

Erica: While lifting weights, running races, or having tough conversations may be initially difficult and unnatural, they eventually become second nature. They become default. Now exercise also shows us that when you put in the work, you get the results. The trick?

Erica: It's gotta be consistent work. You can't train once a week and expect to lose 10 pounds, just like you can't touch base with your team once a quarter and expect to have a great rapport with them. You have to put in the work. You have to put in the time. Fitness is built one workout at a time.

Erica: Relationships are built one conversation at a time. The more time and energy you put in, the more reward you will get out. And exercise routines demand rest. You can't go hard with high intensity interval training workouts and long distance runs every single day of the week. Your body will physically collapse and you will be a hot mess express of injury.

Erica: Not to mention you're gonna be tired and irritable and very cranky. Leadership demands the same. You can't burn the candle at both ends. You can't log in early and stay up late on your laptop without running the risk to your personal relationships, your mental health, or your team culture. You have to build in fun.

Erica: You have to build in break time that stirs up the creativity. I believe that our bodies are physical manifestations of our minds. They are complex. They are strong. They are resilient, but most of all, they are deserving of care.

Erica: They are more closely linked than you may be comfortable in thinking. Richard Branson is quoted saying, I seriously doubt that I would have been as successful in my career and happy in my personal life if I hadn't always placed importance on my health and fitness. I definitely can achieve twice as much by keeping fit. It keeps the brain functioning well. Zuckerberg states, doing anything will require energy, and you have a lot more energy when you're fit.

Erica: Kind of a no brainer. And Mark Cuban says that I will find a way to get a workout done, and I think that reflects how relentless I can be in business as well. And while those three quotes focus on how fitness improves their leadership from the health aspect of it, you now know the life lessons that it teaches you. It teaches you that you can do hard things, that with time and practice the hard things become easy things, that if you put in the work you get the results. And that our bodies, our minds, they are our temples. We must treat them with some TLC.

Erica: Now my challenge for you today is to up your game. If you have a solid fitness routine, keep it. Keep doing it. Protect it at all costs, but don't be so hardcore that you injure yourself. And if you're struggling to put that fitness routine into place, start today and start small. Today, just like any day, it can be your day one.

Erica: It can be your ground zero. We can only go up from here. Next week, I'm gonna dive into how to create a successful fitness routine that works for a busy working executive mom. So stay tuned. If I can do it, you can do it.

Erica: And with that, thank you for listening. If you feel like, oh my god, this fitness routine thing is something that's gonna be so hard, I've struggled with it for years, don't freak out. Let me be your designated hype girl.

Erica: I got your back. Now let's climb that corporate ladder together. One last thing. Do you have a moment? Please rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast as it truly helps the message get into the hands of the powerful woman that needs to hear it most.