How to Build a Business That Doesn’t Wreck Your Health (with Jules Duncan)
Published: 01 Sept 2026 | The Healing Rebel Podcast, Episode251
“You cannot set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.”
That’s the quote from this week’s guest, Jules Duncan, and it captures the whole conversation. Because both of us have done it. Both of us have paid the price. And both of us want you to not do the same.
I’m Jen Wilson, The Healing Rebel, and I’m delighted to have Jules back on the podcast. Jules runs The Badass Business Club, she’s been coaching business owners for a decade, and we’ve known each other pretty much the whole time she’s been in business. This conversation goes into the reality of running a business without wrecking your health, and how to build what she calls a “rich life”, which has nothing to do with money.
Listen on your favourite platform:
[Spotify] [Apple Podcasts] [Amazon Music]
What is a “rich life”?
Jules opened the conversation with something that stayed with me: a rich life has nothing to do with money.
Most of us, when we picture the life we want, reach for the big events. The Florida holiday. The new car. The dream house. And those things are lovely when they happen. But if you’re miserable for 48 weeks of the year for the sake of four good ones, something’s gone wrong with the maths.
A rich life is being able to pick your kids up from school at half past three. It’s meeting a friend for coffee on a Thursday morning. It’s enjoying the day-to-day, not just the highlight reel. It’s the mundane stuff. The clients you enjoy working with, the times you choose to work, the days you have off, the small things that fill your cup.
It’s not toxic positivity. You’re still going to have days where you can’t stand it. You’re still human. But the overall shape of your week is one you actually want to live.
The calendar rule that changes everything
Both Jules and I run our lives by Google Calendar. If it’s not in the calendar, it doesn’t exist. If someone wants us to do something, they send an invite. If there’s no invite, it gets forgotten.
Jules made a great point: your brain isn’t designed to hold every commitment you’ve ever made. When you write things down, or better, when you put them in a calendar with reminders, your brain gets to stop worrying about them.
I’ve had that horrible moment plenty of times. Someone messages to ask if you’re coming to the thing, and you have that sinking feeling because you’d forgotten it was even happening. If everything is in the calendar, that stops.
The rule is simple. If someone wants your time, they book it into your calendar. If you commit to something, you put it in yourself, immediately. No mental to-do lists. No trying to remember. It all lives in one place.
Schedule your rest, holidays, and downtime first
Jules blocks out days for book releases. Whole days off, months in advance, because a book in her favourite series is coming out and she doesn’t want anything getting in the way of reading it.
That might sound frivolous. It isn’t. It’s one of the enormous benefits of running your own business, and most business owners never take it.
You give yourself all the stress and grief of self-employment, but you don’t take the freedoms that come with it. The freedom to block off a Tuesday because you want to. The freedom to work on a Sunday morning if that suits you better than a Monday morning. The freedom to build a schedule that improves your life.
I’ve now scheduled my holidays until the middle of next year. When someone asks about workshops or collaborations for next year, my first job is to check my downtime is protected. Then everything else fits around it.
If you wait until you have time, you’ll never have time. The downtime has to go in the calendar first.
The advantages of business ownership you’re probably not taking
Jules made a really strong point that stuck with me. Most business owners take on all the stress of self-employment and none of the advantages.
The stress is real. Building a business is much harder than any of us expected. The financial uncertainty, the responsibility, the never-quite-switching-off. All real.
But the advantages are also real, if you take them. The flexibility. The choice of hours. The choice of clients. The choice of location. The ability to structure your week around your energy, your body, your family, and your priorities.
If you’re running a business but still living by a corporate Monday-to-Friday nine-to-five schedule, you’re carrying the burden of self-employment without collecting any of the perks. Lean into the freedoms. Build the schedule that improves your life.
Business WhatsApp is non-negotiable
If there’s one practical tool from this episode that I want you to take away, it’s this. If you are a business owner, get Business WhatsApp.
It’s a separate app on your phone, with a separate number, that keeps your work messages separate from your personal ones. Your pals, your mum, your family are not in the same inbox as your clients. You put the app on a different page on your phone. You turn the notifications off. And you only see business messages when you scroll to it deliberately.
The benefit isn’t just for you. It’s for your clients too. When you open Business WhatsApp because you’ve made time to work, you’re in work mode. You’re focused. You give better responses. You’re not catching yourself distracted while you’re out walking the dog.
If you use one number and one WhatsApp for everything, please stop. Set up Business WhatsApp today.
I went even further and got a second phone. My work phone has all the social media apps and the business number. My other phone is an older model, black and white screen, no social media apps. That’s the one I take out with me. When I’m on holiday or on a downtime week, the work phone stays in the house, and my WhatsApp has an out-of-office message set up.
Total game changer.
You do not need to be contactable 24/7
Jules made this point with real force. She works with hundreds of business owners every week, and none of them need to be contactable in an emergency. None of us are providing emergency services. Nothing we do is life or death.
If you’re a coach advertising 24/7 WhatsApp support, please remove it immediately. Apart from anything else, if you’re offering constant support, when are you resting? When are you looking after your own health? And how good will your service actually be if you never take a break?
Even the emergency services have strict rules about rest. If you finish a shift, you can’t come back on for another 11 and a half hours. If people who genuinely save lives get proper rest built into their schedules, so should you.
Why fit isn’t the same as healthy
Both Jules and I are fitness professionals. Both of us have hit burnout so hard it took years to recover. Both of us looked “fit” while our nervous systems were completely fried.
At the peak of my old life, I was teaching 20 hours of classes a week plus training in the gym on top of that. Not eating properly. Running on adrenaline. Not sleeping. Buzzing on the caffeine and the movement.
Jules was doing 25 personal training sessions a week, teaching 20+ classes, hitting 25,000 steps a day. She looked incredible. She was walking into things, burning her own neck with the hair straightener because she was so exhausted she couldn’t see straight. Her Pilates teacher looked at her one day and said “you’re just so fatigued”, and Jules genuinely thought, do you think so?
That’s how far into it you can get. You literally can’t see it. Everyone around you is telling you how fit you look, and meanwhile your body is running on fumes.
Fit is a measurable output. Muscle definition, endurance, strength, cardiovascular capacity. Healthy is something else entirely. Healthy is waking up with energy, sleeping well, feeling settled in your nervous system, having capacity for the day ahead.
An elite athlete is enormously fit. They’re often not particularly healthy. They’re on the brink of a physical breakdown. Their bodies are being pushed so hard that recovery isn’t happening properly.
If you’re using fitness as a proxy for health, you might be missing the bigger picture. Especially if you’re in the industry, where being fit is part of the job description.
The point of no return
For both of us, there was a moment where the body said no and the choice was taken away.
For Jules, it was COVID. The lockdown forced a stop that she couldn’t have chosen for herself. When things reopened in 2021, she physically couldn’t go back to how she’d been operating before. Her body had had enough.
For me, it was a Crohn’s flare during COVID that put me in hospital. Losing autonomy in that hospital bed, having decisions made for me, being told what treatments I was getting whether I liked it or not, was the wake-up call. I got out and said, never again.
The recovery from burnout isn’t a couple of weeks. It isn’t even a couple of months. Jules said this year (2026) is the first year since 2022 that she’s felt properly like herself again. Four years of recovery. I’d say I’ve had the best year I’ve had since before my Crohn’s diagnosis, and that diagnosis was in 2017.
You don’t want to get to that point. It’s avoidable. But avoiding it means listening to your body long before it screams.
What it costs to please everyone
Jules said something that hit me hard. “You cannot set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.”
That is exactly what so many of us in the coaching and wellness industries are doing. Trying to be everything for everyone. Turning up to every workshop, offering every service, being available at every time, delivering everything with a smile because we don’t want to disappoint anyone.
You cannot control how everyone else feels. You cannot be responsible for everyone else’s happiness. If someone finds a different service that works better for them, they’ll leave. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care about your clients. It means you can’t set yourself on fire in the process of caring.
I’m working on this in therapy right now. I keep checking that everyone else is okay before I check that I’m okay. And usually I’m not okay, because I’ve been so busy looking after everyone else that I’ve forgotten myself.
I wrote about this in my book 10 years ago. And I’m still relearning it.
Hormones, age, and finally not caring
We got into whether being in your 40s changes the equation. Jules is 46. I’m 47.
Both of us noticed a shift somewhere in the last couple of years. The exhaustion of trying to please everyone for decades hits a point where you simply run out of the estrogen required to give any more of a shit. There’s a meme going around: “I don’t make enough estrogen to care what you think about me anymore.”
Yes.
Perimenopause changes things. It shifts your tolerance for other people’s opinions. It shifts your tolerance for your own patterns of overworking and people-pleasing. And it can be one of the doorways into finally building the life you actually want, if you let it.
Every business is a service
One of Jules’s reframes that helped me was this: no matter how much you love your business, it’s a service.
You can be separate from your business. Your business isn’t your identity. It’s what you do to help people, and if it’s costing you your health, you’re not able to help anyone anyway.
If you’re not able to help anyone for another 25 years because you burned out at 42, you’ve limited how many people you can actually serve. Building a business that supports your life first is how you build a business that lasts long enough to help the most people.
Failure is necessary
We ended on this. There’s a saying that stuck with Jules: “School teaches you that failure is unacceptable. Entrepreneurship teaches you that failure is necessary.”
Nobody gets it right the first time. Or the fifth time. The most successful business owners are the people who fail quickly and get back up quickly. The shorter the lag between something going wrong and you trying the next thing, the faster you build something that works.
If you knew your absolute dream business was on attempt 100, how quickly would you fire through the first 99 attempts? You’d rip through them without a second thought.
Every mistake is data. Learn from it. Don’t make it twice. Keep moving.
Frequently asked questions
What is a “rich life”?
A rich life is one where you enjoy the day-to-day, not just the big events. It’s about the mundane moments, your routines, your relationships, and the small choices that add up to a life you actually want to live. It has nothing to do with money.
How do you protect your time as a self-employed business owner?
Put everything in your calendar, including your rest, holidays, and downtime. Get Business WhatsApp so work messages stay separate from personal ones. Turn off notifications. Don’t respond to messages outside of your working hours. Recognise that no one needs you 24/7.
Why do so many fitness and wellness professionals burn out?
The industry rewards being “on” all the time. The work is physical and demanding. Many of us confuse being fit with being healthy, and push our bodies so hard in the name of the job that we run into serious health issues, chronic illness, or full nervous system collapse.
Should you offer 24/7 support to clients?
No. Nobody needs 24/7 support from a coach, therapist, or wellness practitioner. Offering it undermines your own health, sets a poor example for the clients you’re supposedly helping look after themselves, and lowers the quality of the service you deliver.
How do you know when your business is costing you too much?
Look at what you’re paying, not just in money but in energy, time, sleep, health, and relationships. If a service or class is draining you more than it’s giving back, that’s information. Every commitment has a cost. Make sure the cost is one you’re willing to pay.
Why is failure necessary for building a successful business?
You can’t get everything right the first time. Mistakes are how you learn what works. The most successful business owners are the ones who fail quickly, learn quickly, and try the next thing quickly. Fear of failure keeps you stuck.
Find Jules
Instagram: @thebadassbusinessclub
For book recommendations: @badassbooksandbarbells
Want to start with something simple?
Download my free Lymphatic Drainage Self-Care Routine. A gentle, daily practice you can do in as little as one minute a day. A small daily rest for your nervous system.
[Download the free routine here]
Come in for a Reset or Recalibration
If you’re in or around Glasgow and you want protected, held time to properly exhale, I offer The Reset (90 minutes) and The Recalibration (3 hours) from my private home studio in Springburn, North Glasgow.
[The Reset (90 minutes, £85)] | [The Recalibration (3 hours, £197)] | [Check my other treatments here]
Related episodes
- “How to Build Rest Into Your Business and Life”
- “What to Focus On When Everything Feels Important
- “What I’ve Unlearned After 24 Years in the Wellness Industry”
About Jen:
Jen Wilson is The Healing Rebel, a holistic wellness practitioner with over 15 years in practice, supporting capable, responsible women over 40 who give to everyone and struggle to receive. Working from her private home studio in Springburn, North Glasgow, Jen offers The Reset, The Recalibration, Manual Lymphatic Drainage, Therapeutic Fascia Massage, Menopause Massage, Reiki, Reiki Drumming, Closing the Bones and Sound Healing, plus online classes and an on-demand subscription library.
Find out more at iamjenwilson.com
