Your Nervous System Is Part of Your Business Plan
- Angela Skurtu
- 20 hours ago
- 5 min read
We talk about business as if it is primarily an intellectual exercise.
Learn marketing.
Understand your numbers.
Develop a product.
Create a website.
Find customers.
Make good decisions.
But there is another part of running a business that I don't think we talk about nearly enough:
Your nervous system has to be able to tolerate the business you're asking yourself to run.
Business requires us to live with uncertainty. Customers come and go. Technology changes. Markets change. Algorithms change. Something that worked beautifully for years can suddenly stop working. Employees leave. Expenses appear. A great month can be followed by a terrible month without a clear explanation.
You can understand all of that intellectually and still have a body that is screaming, Something is wrong.
That's where business becomes more than strategy.
Your Body Is Running the Business Too
When uncertainty increases, our nervous systems respond.
Some of us speed up. We start ten new projects, change the marketing plan, rewrite the website, launch something new, post more content, and desperately search for the thing that's going to fix everything.
Some of us freeze. We know there are things we should probably do, but we can't seem to make ourselves move.
Some of us avoid. We don't look at the bank account. We put off the difficult email. We don't check the numbers because we're afraid of what they're going to tell us.
And sometimes we become rigid. We keep doing what we've always done because changing course feels even scarier than watching something stop working.
Those can look like business problems.
Sometimes they're nervous-system responses to uncertainty.
That's why I don't think you can build a sustainable business by only teaching people what they should do. We also have to talk about what happens inside of us when doing those things feels risky.
Business Has Become More Complicated
I've been thinking about this a lot while looking back at earlier years in my own business.
There was a time when I did an enormous amount myself. I managed insurance panels. I marketed the practice. I networked. I spoke publicly. I worked with clients. I wrote. I maintained a website and figured out a surprising amount of the technology.
And for a long time, my interpretation of that history was, I used to be able to do all of this.
So when running the business started feeling harder, it was easy to wonder what had happened to me.
But that's not the whole story.
The business environment changed. Technology became more complicated and started changing faster. Digital marketing evolved. Search changed. Social media changed. The number of tools available to business owners exploded. There are more opportunities than ever to automate, create, distribute, measure and optimize, and every one of those opportunities is another thing somebody has to understand and manage.
But something else became apparent when I looked backward more carefully.
I wasn't actually doing everything alone then, either.
Remember the Support You Had
For years, I thought of myself as a solopreneur. And technically, I was.
But I had a bookkeeper. I had an accountant. And at the time, I had a spouse who was good with technology and helped me with my website. There were even occasions when I needed substantial follow-through with an insurance issue and had another person who could help carry some of that administrative burden.
That matters.
It's very easy to look backward and think, "I used to be capable of doing all of this myself. Why can't I handle it anymore?"
Except maybe I wasn't doing it completely by myself.
I had support.
And recognizing that isn't diminishing what I accomplished. It's understanding how I was able to accomplish it.
That distinction has become increasingly important to me.
Because sometimes when our nervous system is overwhelmed, we assume the solution is to become better at handling overwhelm.
Maybe the better question is:
Why am I asking one nervous system to hold all of this?
Support Is a Business Strategy
As businesses grow, we eventually encounter things that are outside our expertise or outside our capacity.
That creates another uncomfortable business decision:
When do I ask for help?
Hiring help costs money. Delegating requires trust. Teaching someone your systems takes time. Giving up control can feel uncomfortable. And when revenue feels uncertain, paying someone else can feel particularly risky.
So we tell ourselves, I'll just do it.
And sometimes that's exactly the right decision.
But sometimes doing everything ourselves creates a different kind of cost. We spend hours learning something another person could accomplish quickly. We exhaust ourselves on administrative work. We avoid projects because they feel overwhelming. Or we spend so much energy maintaining the machinery of the business that we have very little left for the work we're actually best at.
Eventually, capacity becomes part of the math.
Not just: "Can I technically do this?"
But: "What does it cost me to keep doing this?"
Regulation Doesn't Mean Becoming Comfortable With Everything
When I talk about the nervous system in business, I don't mean that our goal should be to eliminate discomfort.
Entrepreneurship is uncomfortable.
There will always be uncertainty. There will always be financial risk. There will always be decisions where we don't have enough information. There will always be moments when we have to do something before we feel completely ready.
The goal isn't to create a business that never activates your nervous system.
The goal is to build your capacity to tolerate reasonable uncertainty without letting that uncertainty run the business.
That might mean slowing down before making a panicked decision. It might mean looking at the numbers instead of avoiding them. It might mean testing an idea before investing heavily in it. It might mean asking someone else for perspective.
And sometimes regulation looks like hiring help.
Sometimes the healthiest response to overwhelm isn't another breathing exercise.
It's a bookkeeper.
Or a technology person.
Or an assistant.
Or a consultant.
Or simply another business owner who can sit across from you and say, "Yes, this part is hard."
Build a Business Your Nervous System Can Actually Carry
I've become increasingly interested in sustainability as I've grown as a business owner.
Not just: "Can this business make money?"
But:
"Can I keep running it?"
"Can I tolerate the level of risk it requires?"
"Can I manage its complexity?"
"Do I have enough support?"
"Am I spending my limited energy on the right things?"
"Have I created systems that reduce unnecessary chaos?"
"When the unavoidable chaos arrives, do I have people around me who can help me carry it?"
Those are business questions too.
This is part of what I teach through Open Business Doors and my Built to Last approach to business. We don't just need a good idea and a marketing plan. We have to test our ideas, take calculated risks, understand the math, listen to the market, and pay attention to the human being who is actually trying to execute all of it.
Because your business doesn't run on strategy alone.
It runs through a human nervous system with limited time, energy, attention and capacity.
Building a business that lasts means respecting all of those limits and building enough support around yourself that you don't have to carry the whole thing alone.
Want To Learn More?
Open Business Doors is is a complete leadership and team execution model designed to help business owners align operationally, culturally, strategically, relationally, and structurally through a step-by-step framework you can return to throughout every stage of your company's growth.
The Built to Last framework is a human growth model designed to help people communicate better, regulate their nervous systems, build trust, develop healthier identities, and create sustainable relationships, both personally and professionally.
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